+--------------------------------------------------------------+ | transcriber's note: | | | | inconsistent hyphenation and dialect spelling in the | | original document have been preserved. | | | | obvious typographical errors have been corrected in this | | text. for a complete list, please see the end of document. | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ the colonel's dream a novel by charles w. chesnutt harlem moon broadway books new york published in by doubleday, new york. the colonel's dream dedication _to the great number of those who are seeking, in whatever manner or degree, from near at hand or far away, to bring the forces of enlightenment to bear upon the vexed problems which harass the south, this volume is inscribed, with the hope that it may contribute to the same good end._ _if there be nothing new between its covers, neither is love new, nor faith, nor hope, nor disappointment, nor sorrow. yet life is not the less worth living because of any of these, nor has any man truly lived until he has tasted of them all._ list of characters _colonel henry french_, a retired merchant _mr. kirby_, } _mrs. jerviss_, } his former partners _philip french_, the colonel's son _peter french_, his old servant _mrs. treadwell_, an old lady _miss laura treadwell_, her daughter _graciella treadwell_, her granddaughter _malcolm dudley_, a treasure-seeker _ben dudley_, his nephew _viney_, his housekeeper _william fetters_, a convict labour contractor _barclay fetters_, his son _bud johnson_, a convict labourer _caroline_, his wife _henry taylor_, a negro schoolmaster _william nichols_, a mulatto barber _haynes_, a constable one two gentlemen were seated, one march morning in --, in the private office of french and company, limited, on lower broadway. mr. kirby, the junior partner--a man of thirty-five, with brown hair and mustache, clean-cut, handsome features, and an alert manner, was smoking cigarettes almost as fast as he could roll them, and at the same time watching the electric clock upon the wall and getting up now and then to stride restlessly back and forth across the room. mr. french, the senior partner, who sat opposite kirby, was an older man--a safe guess would have placed him somewhere in the debatable ground between forty and fifty; of a good height, as could be seen even from the seated figure, the upper part of which was held erect with the unconscious ease which one associates with military training. his closely cropped brown hair had the slightest touch of gray. the spacious forehead, deep-set gray eyes, and firm chin, scarcely concealed by a light beard, marked the thoughtful man of affairs. his face indeed might have seemed austere, but for a sensitive mouth, which suggested a reserve of humour and a capacity for deep feeling. a man of well-balanced character, one would have said, not apt to undertake anything lightly, but sure to go far in whatever he took in hand; quickly responsive to a generous impulse, and capable of a righteous indignation; a good friend, a dangerous enemy; more likely to be misled by the heart than by the head; of the salt of the earth, which gives it savour. mr. french sat on one side, mr. kirby on the other, of a handsome, broad-topped mahogany desk, equipped with telephones and push buttons, and piled with papers, account books and letter files in orderly array. in marked contrast to his partner's nervousness, mr. french scarcely moved a muscle, except now and then to take the cigar from his lips and knock the ashes from the end. "nine fifty!" ejaculated mr. kirby, comparing the clock with his watch. "only ten minutes more." mr. french nodded mechanically. outside, in the main office, the same air of tense expectancy prevailed. for two weeks the office force had been busily at work, preparing inventories and balance sheets. the firm of french and company, limited, manufacturers of crashes and burlaps and kindred stuffs, with extensive mills in connecticut, and central offices in new york, having for a long time resisted the siren voice of the promoter, had finally faced the alternative of selling out, at a sacrifice, to the recently organised bagging trust, or of meeting a disastrous competition. expecting to yield in the end, they had fought for position--with brilliant results. negotiations for a sale, upon terms highly favourable to the firm, had been in progress for several weeks; and the two partners were awaiting, in their private office, the final word. should the sale be completed, they were richer men than they could have hoped to be after ten years more of business stress and struggle; should it fail, they were heavy losers, for their fight had been expensive. they were in much the same position as the player who had staked the bulk of his fortune on the cast of a die. not meaning to risk so much, they had been drawn into it; but the game was worth the candle. "nine fifty-five," said kirby. "five minutes more!" he strode over to the window and looked out. it was snowing, and the march wind, blowing straight up broadway from the bay, swept the white flakes northward in long, feathery swirls. mr. french preserved his rigid attitude, though a close observer might have wondered whether it was quite natural, or merely the result of a supreme effort of will. work had been practically suspended in the outer office. the clerks were also watching the clock. every one of them knew that the board of directors of the bagging trust was in session, and that at ten o'clock it was to report the result of its action on the proposition of french and company, limited. the clerks were not especially cheerful; the impending change meant for them, at best, a change of masters, and for many of them, the loss of employment. the firm, for relinquishing its business and good will, would receive liberal compensation; the clerks, for their skill, experience, and prospects of advancement, would receive their discharge. what else could be expected? the principal reason for the trust's existence was economy of administration; this was stated, most convincingly, in the prospectus. there was no suggestion, in that model document, that competition would be crushed, or that, monopoly once established, labour must sweat and the public groan in order that a few captains, or chevaliers, of industry, might double their dividends. mr. french may have known it, or guessed it, but he was between the devil and the deep sea--a victim rather than an accessory--he must take what he could get, or lose what he had. "nine fifty-nine!" kirby, as he breathed rather than spoke the words, threw away his scarcely lighted cigarette, and gripped the arms of his chair spasmodically. his partner's attitude had not varied by a hair's breadth; except for the scarcely perceptible rise and fall of his chest he might have been a wax figure. the pallor of his countenance would have strengthened the illusion. kirby pushed his chair back and sprung to his feet. the clock marked the hour, but nothing happened. kirby was wont to say, thereafter, that the ten minutes that followed were the longest day of his life. but everything must have an end, and their suspense was terminated by a telephone call. mr. french took down the receiver and placed it to his ear. "it's all right," he announced, looking toward his partner. "our figures accepted--resolution adopted--settlement to-morrow. we are----" the receiver fell upon the table with a crash. mr. french toppled over, and before kirby had scarcely realised that something was the matter, had sunk unconscious to the floor, which, fortunately, was thickly carpeted. it was but the work of a moment for kirby to loosen his partner's collar, reach into the recesses of a certain drawer in the big desk, draw out a flask of brandy, and pour a small quantity of the burning liquid down the unconscious man's throat. a push on one of the electric buttons summoned a clerk, with whose aid mr. french was lifted to a leather-covered couch that stood against the wall. almost at once the effect of the stimulant was apparent, and he opened his eyes. "i suspect," he said, with a feeble attempt at a smile, "that i must have fainted--like a woman--perfectly ridiculous." "perfectly natural," replied his partner. "you have scarcely slept for two weeks--between the business and phil--and you've reached the end of your string. but it's all over now, except the shouting, and you can sleep a week if you like. you'd better go right up home. i'll send for a cab, and call dr. moffatt, and ask him to be at the hotel by the time you reach it. i'll take care of things here to-day, and after a good sleep you'll find yourself all right again." "very well, kirby," replied mr. french, "i feel as weak as water, but i'm all here. it might have been much worse. you'll call up mrs. jerviss, of course, and let her know about the sale?" when mr. french, escorted to the cab by his partner, and accompanied by a clerk, had left for home, kirby rang up the doctor, and requested him to look after mr. french immediately. he then called for another number, and after the usual delay, first because the exchange girl was busy, and then because the line was busy, found himself in communication with the lady for whom he had asked. "it's all right, mrs. jerviss," he announced without preliminaries. "our terms accepted, and payment to be made, in cash and bonds, as soon as the papers are executed, when you will be twice as rich as you are to-day." "thank you, mr. kirby! and i suppose i shall never have another happy moment until i know what to do with it. money is a great trial. i often envy the poor." kirby smiled grimly. she little knew how near she had been to ruin. the active partners had mercifully shielded her, as far as possible, from the knowledge of their common danger. if the worst happened, she must know, of course; if not, then, being a woman whom they both liked--she would be spared needless anxiety. how closely they had skirted the edge of disaster she did not learn until afterward; indeed, kirby himself had scarcely appreciated the true situation, and even the senior partner, since he had not been present at the meeting of the trust managers, could not know what had been in their minds. but kirby's voice gave no hint of these reflections. he laughed a cheerful laugh. "if the world only knew," he rejoined, "it would cease to worry about the pains of poverty, and weep for the woes of wealth." "indeed it would!" she replied, with a seriousness which seemed almost sincere. "is mr. french there? i wish to thank him, too." "no, he has just gone home." "at this hour?" she exclaimed, "and at such a time? what can be the matter? is phil worse?" "no, i think not. mr. french himself had a bad turn, for a few minutes, after we learned the news." faces are not yet visible over the telephone, and kirby could not see that for a moment the lady's grew white. but when she spoke again the note of concern in her voice was very evident. "it was nothing--serious?" "oh, no, not at all, merely overwork, and lack of sleep, and the suspense--and the reaction. he recovered almost immediately, and one of the clerks went home with him." "has dr. moffatt been notified?" she asked. "yes, i called him up at once; he'll be at the mercedes by the time the patient arrives." there was a little further conversation on matters of business, and kirby would willingly have prolonged it, but his news about mr. french had plainly disturbed the lady's equanimity, and kirby rang off, after arranging to call to see her in person after business hours. mr. kirby hung up the receiver with something of a sigh. "a fine woman," he murmured, "i could envy french his chances, though he doesn't seem to see them--that is, if i were capable of envy toward so fine a fellow and so good a friend. it's curious how clearsighted a man can be in some directions, and how blind in others." mr. french lived at the mercedes, an uptown apartment hotel overlooking central park. he had scarcely reached his apartment, when the doctor arrived--a tall, fair, fat practitioner, and one of the best in new york; a gentleman as well, and a friend, of mr. french. "my dear fellow," he said, after a brief examination, "you've been burning the candle at both ends, which, at your age won't do at all. no, indeed! no, indeed! you've always worked too hard, and you've been worrying too much about the boy, who'll do very well now, with care. you've got to take a rest--it's all you need. you confess to no bad habits, and show the signs of none; and you have a fine constitution. i'm going to order you and phil away for three months, to some mild climate, where you'll be free from business cares and where the boy can grow strong without having to fight a raw eastern spring. you might try the riviera, but i'm afraid the sea would be too much for phil just yet; or southern california--but the trip is tiresome. the south is nearer at hand. there's palm beach, or jekyll island, or thomasville, asheville, or aiken--somewhere down in the pine country. it will be just the thing for the boy's lungs, and just the place for you to rest. start within a week, if you can get away. in fact, you've _got_ to get away." mr. french was too weak to resist--both body and mind seemed strangely relaxed--and there was really no reason why he should not go. his work was done. kirby could attend to the formal transfer of the business. he would take a long journey to some pleasant, quiet spot, where he and phil could sleep, and dream and ride and drive and grow strong, and enjoy themselves. for the moment he felt as though he would never care to do any more work, nor would he need to, for he was rich enough. he would live for the boy. phil's education, his health, his happiness, his establishment in life--these would furnish occupation enough for his well-earned retirement. it was a golden moment. he had won a notable victory against greed and craft and highly trained intelligence. and yet, a year later, he was to recall this recent past with envy and regret; for in the meantime he was to fight another battle against the same forces, and others quite as deeply rooted in human nature. but he was to fight upon a new field, and with different weapons, and with results which could not be foreseen. but no premonition of impending struggle disturbed mr. french's pleasant reverie; it was broken in a much more agreeable manner by the arrival of a visitor, who was admitted by judson, mr. french's man. the visitor was a handsome, clear-eyed, fair-haired woman, of thirty or thereabouts, accompanied by another and a plainer woman, evidently a maid or companion. the lady was dressed with the most expensive simplicity, and her graceful movements were attended by the rustle of unseen silks. in passing her upon the street, any man under ninety would have looked at her three times, the first glance instinctively recognising an attractive woman, the second ranking her as a lady; while the third, had there been time and opportunity, would have been the long, lingering look of respectful or regretful admiration. "how is mr. french, judson?" she inquired, without dissembling her anxiety. "he's much better, mrs. jerviss, thank you, ma'am." "i'm very glad to hear it; and how is phil?" "quite bright, ma'am, you'd hardly know that he'd been sick. he's gaining strength rapidly; he sleeps a great deal; he's asleep now, ma'am. but, won't you step into the library? there's a fire in the grate, and i'll let mr. french know you are here." but mr. french, who had overheard part of the colloquy, came forward from an adjoining room, in smoking jacket and slippers. "how do you do?" he asked, extending his hand. "it was mighty good of you to come to see me." "and i'm awfully glad to find you better," she returned, giving him her slender, gloved hand with impulsive warmth. "i might have telephoned, but i wanted to see for myself. i felt a part of the blame to be mine, for it is partly for me, you know, that you have been overworking." "it was all in the game," he said, "and we have won. but sit down and stay awhile. i know you'll pardon my smoking jacket. we are partners, you know, and i claim an invalid's privilege as well." the lady's fine eyes beamed, and her fair cheek flushed with pleasure. had he only realised it, he might have claimed of her any privilege a woman can properly allow, even that of conducting her to the altar. but to him she was only, thus far, as she had been for a long time, a very good friend of his own and of phil's; a former partner's widow, who had retained her husband's interest in the business; a wholesome, handsome woman, who was always excellent company and at whose table he had often eaten, both before and since her husband's death. nor, despite kirby's notions, was he entirely ignorant of the lady's partiality for himself. "doctor moffatt has ordered phil and me away, for three months," he said, after mrs. jerviss had inquired particularly concerning his health and phil's. "three months!" she exclaimed with an accent of dismay. "but you'll be back," she added, recovering herself quickly, "before the vacation season opens?" "oh, certainly; we shall not leave the country." "where are you going?" "the doctor has prescribed the pine woods. i shall visit my old home, where i was born. we shall leave in a day or two." "you must dine with me to-morrow," she said warmly, "and tell me about your old home. i haven't had an opportunity to thank you for making me rich, and i want your advice about what to do with the money; and i'm tiring you now when you ought to be resting." "do not hurry," he said. "it is almost a pleasure to be weak and helpless, since it gives me the privilege of a visit from you." she lingered a few moments and then went. she was the embodiment of good taste and knew when to come and when to go. mr. french was conscious that her visit, instead of tiring him, had had an opposite effect; she had come and gone like a pleasant breeze, bearing sweet odours and the echo of distant music. her shapely hand, when it had touched his own, had been soft but firm; and he had almost wished, as he held it for a moment, that he might feel it resting on his still somewhat fevered brow. when he came back from the south, he would see a good deal of her, either at the seaside, or wherever she might spend the summer. when mr. french and phil were ready, a day or two later, to start upon their journey, kirby was at the mercedes to see them off. "you're taking judson with you to look after the boy?" he asked. "no," replied mr. french, "judson is in love, and does not wish to leave new york. he will take a vacation until we return. phil and i can get along very well alone." kirby went with them across the ferry to the jersey side, and through the station gates to the waiting train. there was a flurry of snow in the air, and overcoats were comfortable. when mr. french had turned over his hand luggage to the porter of the pullman, they walked up and down the station platform. "i'm looking for something to interest us," said kirby, rolling a cigarette. "there's a mining proposition in utah, and a trolley railroad in oklahoma. when things are settled up here, i'll take a run out, and look the ground over, and write to you." "my dear fellow," said his friend, "don't hurry. why should i make any more money? i have all i shall ever need, and as much as will be good for phil. if you find a good thing, i can help you finance it; and mrs. jerviss will welcome a good investment. but i shall take a long rest, and then travel for a year or two, and after that settle down and take life comfortably." "that's the way you feel now," replied kirby, lighting another cigarette, "but wait until you are rested, and you'll yearn for the fray; the first million only whets the appetite for more." "all aboard!" the word was passed along the line of cars. kirby took leave of phil, into whose hand he had thrust a five-dollar bill, "to buy popcorn on the train," he said, kissed the boy, and wrung his ex-partner's hand warmly. "good-bye," he said, "and good luck. you'll hear from me soon. we're partners still, you and i and mrs. jerviss." and though mr. french smiled acquiescence, and returned kirby's hand clasp with equal vigour and sincerity, he felt, as the train rolled away, as one might feel who, after a long sojourn in an alien land, at last takes ship for home. the mere act of leaving new york, after the severance of all compelling ties, seemed to set in motion old currents of feeling, which, moving slowly at the start, gathered momentum as the miles rolled by, until his heart leaped forward to the old southern town which was his destination, and he soon felt himself chafing impatiently at any delay that threatened to throw the train behind schedule time. "he'll be back in six weeks," declared kirby, when mrs. jerviss and he next met. "i know him well; he can't live without his club and his counting room. it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks." "and i'm sure he'll not stay away longer than three months," said the lady confidently, "for i have invited him to my house party." "a privilege," said kirby gallantly, "for which many a man would come from the other end of the world." but they were both mistaken. for even as they spoke, he whose future each was planning, was entering upon a new life of his own, from which he was to look back upon his business career as a mere period of preparation for the real end and purpose of his earthly existence. _two_ the hack which the colonel had taken at the station after a two-days' journey, broken by several long waits for connecting trains, jogged in somewhat leisurely fashion down the main street toward the hotel. the colonel, with his little boy, had left the main line of railroad leading north and south and had taken at a certain way station the one daily train for clarendon, with which the express made connection. they had completed the forty-mile journey in two or three hours, arriving at clarendon at noon. it was an auspicious moment for visiting the town. it is true that the grass grew in the street here and there, but the sidewalks were separated from the roadway by rows of oaks and elms and china-trees in early leaf. the travellers had left new york in the midst of a snowstorm, but here the scent of lilac and of jonquil, the song of birds, the breath of spring, were all about them. the occasional stretches of brick sidewalk under their green canopy looked cool and inviting; for while the chill of winter had fled and the sultry heat of summer was not yet at hand, the railroad coach had been close and dusty, and the noonday sun gave some slight foretaste of his coming reign. the colonel looked about him eagerly. it was all so like, and yet so different--shrunken somewhat, and faded, but yet, like a woman one loves, carried into old age something of the charm of youth. the old town, whose ripeness was almost decay, whose quietness was scarcely distinguishable from lethargy, had been the home of his youth, and he saw it, strange to say, less with the eyes of the lad of sixteen who had gone to the war, than with those of the little boy to whom it had been, in his tenderest years, the great wide world, the only world he knew in the years when, with his black boy peter, whom his father had given to him as a personal attendant, he had gone forth to field and garden, stream and forest, in search of childish adventure. yonder was the old academy, where he had attended school. the yellow brick of its walls had scaled away in places, leaving the surface mottled with pale splotches; the shingled roof was badly dilapidated, and overgrown here and there with dark green moss. the cedar trees in the yard were in need of pruning, and seemed, from their rusty trunks and scant leafage, to have shared in the general decay. as they drove down the street, cows were grazing in the vacant lot between the bank, which had been built by the colonel's grandfather, and the old red brick building, formerly a store, but now occupied, as could be seen by the row of boxes visible through the open door, by the post-office. the little boy, an unusually handsome lad of five or six, with blue eyes and fair hair, dressed in knickerbockers and a sailor cap, was also keenly interested in the surroundings. it was saturday, and the little two-wheeled carts, drawn by a steer or a mule; the pigs sleeping in the shadow of the old wooden market-house; the lean and sallow pinelanders and listless negroes dozing on the curbstone, were all objects of novel interest to the boy, as was manifest by the light in his eager eyes and an occasional exclamation, which in a clear childish treble, came from his perfectly chiselled lips. only a glance was needed to see that the child, though still somewhat pale and delicate from his recent illness, had inherited the characteristics attributed to good blood. features, expression, bearing, were marked by the signs of race; but a closer scrutiny was required to discover, in the blue-eyed, golden-haired lad, any close resemblance to the shrewd, dark man of affairs who sat beside him, and to whom this little boy was, for the time being, the sole object in life. but for the child the colonel was alone in the world. many years before, when himself only a boy, he had served in the southern army, in a regiment which had fought with such desperate valour that the honour of the colonelcy had come to him at nineteen, as the sole survivor of the group of young men who had officered the regiment. his father died during the last year of the civil war, having lived long enough to see the conflict work ruin to his fortunes. the son had been offered employment in new york by a relative who had sympathised with the south in her struggle; and he had gone away from clarendon. the old family "mansion"--it was not a very imposing structure, except by comparison with even less pretentious houses--had been sold upon foreclosure, and bought by an ambitious mulatto, who only a few years before had himself been an object of barter and sale. entering his uncle's office as a clerk, and following his advice, reinforced by a sense of the fitness of things, the youthful colonel had dropped his military title and become plain mr. french. putting the past behind him, except as a fading memory, he had thrown himself eagerly into the current of affairs. fortune favoured one both capable and energetic. in time he won a partnership in the firm, and when death removed his relative, took his place at its head. he had looked forward to the time, not very far in the future, when he might retire from business and devote his leisure to study and travel, tastes which for years he had subordinated to the pursuit of wealth; not entirely, for his life had been many sided; and not so much for the money, as because, being in a game where dollars were the counters, it was his instinct to play it well. he was winning already, and when the bagging trust paid him, for his share of the business, a sum double his investment, he found himself, at some years less than fifty, relieved of business cares and in command of an ample fortune. this change in the colonel's affairs--and we shall henceforth call him the colonel, because the scene of this story is laid in the south, where titles are seldom ignored, and where the colonel could hardly have escaped his own, even had he desired to do so--this change in the colonel's affairs coincided with that climacteric of the mind, from which, without ceasing to look forward, it turns, at times, in wistful retrospect, toward the distant past, which it sees thenceforward through a mellowing glow of sentiment. emancipated from the counting room, and ordered south by the doctor, the colonel's thoughts turned easily and naturally to the old town that had given him birth; and he felt a twinge of something like remorse at the reflection that never once since leaving it had he set foot within its borders. for years he had been too busy. his wife had never manifested any desire to visit the south, nor was her temperament one to evoke or sympathise with sentimental reminiscence. he had married, rather late in life, a new york woman, much younger than himself; and while he had admired her beauty and they had lived very pleasantly together, there had not existed between them the entire union of souls essential to perfect felicity, and the current of his life had not been greatly altered by her loss. toward little phil, however, the child she had borne him, his feeling was very different. his young wife had been, after all, but a sweet and pleasant graft upon a sturdy tree. little phil was flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone. upon his only child the colonel lavished all of his affection. already, to his father's eye, the boy gave promise of a noble manhood. his frame was graceful and active. his hair was even more brightly golden than his mother's had been; his eyes more deeply blue than hers; while his features were a duplicate of his father's at the same age, as was evidenced by a faded daguerreotype among the colonel's few souvenirs of his own childhood. little phil had a sweet temper, a loving disposition, and endeared himself to all with whom he came in contact. the hack, after a brief passage down the main street, deposited the passengers at the front of the clarendon hotel. the colonel paid the black driver the quarter he demanded--two dollars would have been the new york price--ran the gauntlet of the dozen pairs of eyes in the heads of the men leaning back in the splint-bottomed armchairs under the shade trees on the sidewalk, registered in the book pushed forward by a clerk with curled mustaches and pomatumed hair, and accompanied by phil, followed the smiling black bellboy along a passage and up one flight of stairs to a spacious, well-lighted and neatly furnished room, looking out upon the main street. _three_ when the colonel and phil had removed the dust and disorder of travel from their appearance, they went down to dinner. after they had eaten, the colonel, still accompanied by the child, left the hotel, and following the main street for a short distance, turned into another thoroughfare bordered with ancient elms, and stopped for a moment before an old gray house with high steps and broad piazza--a large, square-built, two-storied house, with a roof sloping down toward the front, broken by dormer windows and buttressed by a massive brick chimney at either end. in spite of the gray monotone to which the paintless years had reduced the once white weatherboarding and green venetian blinds, the house possessed a certain stateliness of style which was independent of circumstance, and a solidity of construction that resisted sturdily the disintegrating hand of time. heart-pine and live-oak, mused the colonel, like other things southern, live long and die hard. the old house had been built of the best materials, and its woodwork dowelled and mortised and tongued and grooved by men who knew their trade and had not learned to scamp their work. for the colonel's grandfather had built the house as a town residence, the family having owned in addition thereto a handsome country place upon a large plantation remote from the town. the colonel had stopped on the opposite side of the street and was looking intently at the home of his ancestors and of his own youth, when a neatly dressed coloured girl came out on the piazza, seated herself in a rocking-chair with an air of proprietorship, and opened what the colonel perceived to be, even across the street, a copy of a woman's magazine whose circulation, as he knew from the advertising rates that french and co. had paid for the use of its columns, touched the million mark. not wishing to seem rude, the colonel moved slowly on down the street. when he turned his head, after going a rod or two, and looked back over his shoulder, the girl had risen and was re-entering the house. her disappearance was promptly followed by the notes of a piano, slightly out of tune, to which some one--presumably the young woman--was singing in a high voice, which might have been better had it been better trained, _"i dreamt that i dwe-elt in ma-arble halls with vassals and serfs at my si-i-ide."_ the colonel had slackened his pace at the sound of the music, but, after the first few bars, started forward with quickened footsteps which he did not relax until little phil's weight, increasing momentarily, brought home to him the consciousness that his stride was too long for the boy's short legs. phil, who was a thoroughbred, and would have dropped in his tracks without complaining, was nevertheless relieved when his father's pace returned to the normal. their walk led down a hill, and, very soon, to a wooden bridge which spanned a creek some twenty feet below. the colonel paused for a moment beside the railing, and looked up and down the stream. it seemed narrower and more sluggish than his memory had pictured it. above him the water ran between high banks grown thick with underbrush and over-arching trees; below the bridge, to the right of the creek, lay an open meadow, and to the left, a few rods away, the ruins of the old eureka cotton mill, which in his boyhood had harboured a flourishing industry, but which had remained, since sherman's army laid waste the country, the melancholy ruin the colonel had seen it last, when twenty-five years or more before, he left clarendon to seek a wider career in the outer world. the clear water of the creek rippled harmoniously down a gentle slope and over the site where the great dam at the foot had stood, while birds were nesting in the vines with which kindly nature had sought to cloak the dismantled and crumbling walls. mounting the slope beyond the bridge, the colonel's stride now carefully accommodated to the child's puny step, they skirted a low brick wall, beyond which white headstones gleamed in a mass of verdure. reaching an iron gate, the colonel lifted the latch, and entered the cemetery which had been the object of their visit. "is this the place, papa?" asked the little boy. "yes, phil, but it is farther on, in the older part." they passed slowly along, under the drooping elms and willows, past the monuments on either hand--here, resting on a low brick wall, a slab of marble, once white, now gray and moss-grown, from which the hand of time had well nigh erased the carved inscription; here a family vault, built into the side of a mound of earth, from which only the barred iron door distinguished it; here a pedestal, with a time-worn angel holding a broken fragment of the resurrection trumpet; here a prostrate headstone, and there another bending to its fall; and among them a profusion of rose bushes, on some of which the early roses were already blooming--scarcely a well-kept cemetery, for in many lots the shrubbery grew in wild unpruned luxuriance; nor yet entirely neglected, since others showed the signs of loving care, and an effort had been made to keep the walks clean and clear. father and son had traversed half the width of the cemetery, when they came to a spacious lot, surrounded by large trees and containing several monuments. it seemed less neglected than the lots about it, and as they drew nigh they saw among the tombs a very black and seemingly aged negro engaged in pruning a tangled rose tree. near him stood a dilapidated basket, partially filled with weeds and leaves, into which he was throwing the dead and superfluous limbs. he seemed very intent upon his occupation, and had not noticed the colonel's and phil's approach until they had paused at the side of the lot and stood looking at him. when the old man became aware of their presence, he straightened himself up with the slow movement of one stiff with age or rheumatism and threw them a tentatively friendly look out of a pair of faded eyes. "howdy do, uncle," said the colonel. "will you tell me whose graves these are that you are caring for?" "yas, suh," said the old man, removing his battered hat respectfully--the rest of his clothing was in keeping, a picturesque assortment of rags and patches such as only an old negro can get together, or keep together--"dis hyuh lot, suh, b'longs ter de fambly dat i useter b'long ter--de ol' french fambly, suh, de fines' fambly in beaver county." "why, papa!" cried little phil, "he means----" "hush, phil! go on, uncle." "yas, suh, de fines' fambly in cla'endon, suh. dis hyuh headstone hyuh, suh, an' de little stone at de foot, rep'esents de grave er ol' gin'al french, w'at fit in de revolution' wah, suh; and dis hyuh one nex' to it is de grave er my ol' marster, majah french, w'at fit in de mexican wah, and died endyoin' de wah wid de yankees, suh." "papa," urged phil, "that's my----" "shut up, phil! well, uncle, did this interesting old family die out, or is it represented in the present generation?" "lawd, no, suh, de fambly did n' die out--'deed dey did n' die out! dey ain't de kind er fambly ter die out! but it's mos' as bad, suh--dey's moved away. young mars henry went ter de norf, and dey say he's got rich; but he ain't be'n back no mo', suh, an' i don' know whether he's ever comin' er no." "you must have been very fond of them to take such good care of their graves," said the colonel, much moved, but giving no sign. "well, suh, i b'longed ter de fambly, an' i ain' got no chick ner chile er my own, livin', an' dese hyuh dead folks 'pears mo' closer ter me dan anybody e'se. de cullud folks don' was'e much time wid a ole man w'at ain' got nothin', an' dese hyuh new w'ite folks wa't is come up sence de wah, ain' got no use fer niggers, now dat dey don' b'long ter nobody no mo'; so w'en i ain' got nothin' e'se ter do, i comes roun' hyuh, whar i knows ev'ybody and ev'ybody knows me, an' trims de rose bushes an' pulls up de weeds and keeps de grass down jes' lak i s'pose mars henry'd 'a' had it done ef he'd 'a' lived hyuh in de ole home, stidder 'way off yandah in de norf, whar he so busy makin' money dat he done fergot all 'bout his own folks." "what is your name?" asked the colonel, who had been looking closely at the old man. "peter, suh--peter french. most er de niggers change' dey names after de wah, but i kept de ole fambly name i wuz raise' by. it wuz good 'nuff fer me, suh; dey ain' none better." "oh, papa," said little phil, unable to restrain himself longer, "he must be some kin to us; he has the same name, and belongs to the same family, and you know you called him 'uncle.'" the old negro had dropped his hat, and was staring at the colonel and the little boy, alternately, with dawning amazement, while a look of recognition crept slowly into his rugged old face. "look a hyuh, suh," he said tremulously, "is it?--it can't be!--but dere's de eyes, an' de nose, an' de shape er de head--why, it _must_ be my young mars henry!" "yes," said the colonel, extending his hand to the old man, who grasped it with both his own and shook it up and down with unconventional but very affectionate vigour, "and you are my boy peter; who took care of me when i was no bigger than phil here!" this meeting touched a tender chord in the colonel's nature, already tuned to sympathy with the dead past of which peter seemed the only survival. the old man's unfeigned delight at their meeting; his retention of the family name, a living witness of its former standing; his respect for the dead; his "family pride," which to the unsympathetic outsider might have seemed grotesque; were proofs of loyalty that moved the colonel deeply. when he himself had been a child of five or six, his father had given him peter as his own boy. peter was really not many years older than the colonel, but prosperity had preserved the one, while hard luck had aged the other prematurely. peter had taken care of him, and taught him to paddle in the shallow water of the creek and to avoid the suck-holes; had taught him simple woodcraft, how to fish, and how to hunt, first with bow and arrow, and later with a shotgun. through the golden haze of memory the colonel's happy childhood came back to him with a sudden rush of emotion. "those were good times, peter, when we were young," he sighed regretfully, "good times! i have seen none happier." "yas, suh! yas, suh! 'deed dem wuz good ole times! sho' dey wuz, suh, sho' dey wuz! 'member dem co'n-stalk fiddles we use' ter make, an' dem elderberry-wood whistles?" "yes, peter, and the robins we used to shoot and the rabbits we used to trap?" "an' dem watermillions, suh--um-m-m, um-m-m-m!" "_y-e-s_," returned the colonel, with a shade of pensiveness. there had been two sides to the watermelon question. peter and he had not always been able to find ripe watermelons, early in the season, and at times there had been painful consequences, the memory of which came back to the colonel with surprising ease. nor had they always been careful about boundaries in those early days. there had been one occasion when an irate neighbour had complained, and major french had thrashed henry and peter both--peter because he was older, and knew better, and henry because it was important that he should have impressed upon him, early in life, that of him to whom much is given, much will be required, and that what might be lightly regarded in peter's case would be a serious offence in his future master's. the lesson had been well learned, for throughout the course of his life the colonel had never shirked responsibility, but had made the performance of duty his criterion of conduct. to him the line of least resistance had always seemed the refuge of the coward and the weakling. with the twenty years preceding his return to clarendon, this story has nothing to do; but upon the quiet background of his business career he had lived an active intellectual and emotional life, and had developed into one of those rare natures of whom it may be truly said that they are men, and that they count nothing of what is human foreign to themselves. but the serenity of peter's retrospect was unmarred by any passing cloud. those who dwell in darkness find it easier to remember the bright places in their lives. "yas, suh, yas, suh, dem watermillions," he repeated with unction, "i kin tas'e 'em now! dey wuz de be's watermillions dat evuh growed, suh--dey doan raise none lack 'em dese days no mo'. an' den dem chinquapin bushes down by de swamp! 'member dem chinquapin bushes, whar we killt dat water moccasin dat day? he wuz 'bout ten foot long!" "yes, peter, he was a whopper! then there were the bullace vines, in the woods beyond the tanyard!" "sho' 'nuff, suh! an' de minnows we use' ter ketch in de creek, an' dem perch in de mill pon'?" for years the colonel had belonged to a fishing club, which preserved an ice-cold stream in a northern forest. for years the choicest fruits of all the earth had been served daily upon his table. yet as he looked back to-day no shining trout that had ever risen to his fly had stirred his emotions like the diaphanous minnows, caught, with a crooked pin, in the crooked creek; no luscious fruit had ever matched in sweetness the sour grapes and bitter nuts gathered from the native woods--by him and peter in their far-off youth. "yas, suh, yas, suh," peter went on, "an' 'member dat time you an' young mars jim wilson went huntin' and fishin' up de country tergether, an' got ti'ed er waitin' on yo'se'ves an' writ back fer me ter come up ter wait on yer and cook fer yer, an' ole marster say he did n' dare ter let me go 'way off yander wid two keerliss boys lak you-all, wid guns an' boats fer fear i mought git shot, er drownded?" "it looked, peter, as though he valued you more than me! more than his own son!" "yas, suh, yas, suh! sho' he did, sho' he did! old marse philip wuz a monstus keerful man, an' _i_ wuz winth somethin', suh, dem times; i wuz wuth five hundred dollahs any day in de yeah. but nobody would n' give five hundred cents fer me now, suh. dey'd want pay fer takin' me, mos' lakly. dey ain' none too much room fer a young nigger no mo', let 'lone a' ol' one." "and what have you been doing all these years, peter?" asked the colonel. peter's story was not a thrilling one; it was no tale of inordinate ambition, no odyssey of a perilous search for the prizes of life, but the bald recital of a mere struggle for existence. peter had stayed by his master until his master's death. then he had worked for a railroad contractor, until exposure and overwork had laid him up with a fever. after his recovery, he had been employed for some years at cutting turpentine boxes in the pine woods, following the trail of the industry southward, until one day his axe had slipped and wounded him severely. when his wound was healed he was told that he was too old and awkward for the turpentine, and that they needed younger and more active men. "so w'en i got my laig kyo'ed up," said the old man, concluding his story, "i come back hyuh whar i wuz bo'n, suh, and whar my w'ite folks use' ter live, an' whar my frien's use' ter be. but my w'ite folks wuz all in de graveya'd, an' most er my frien's wuz dead er moved away, an' i fin's it kinder lonesome, suh. i goes out an' picks cotton in de fall, an' i does arrants an' little jobs roun' de house fer folks w'at 'll hire me; an' w'en i ain' got nothin' ter eat i kin gor oun' ter de ole house an' wo'k in de gyahden er chop some wood, an' git a meal er vittles f'om ole mis' nichols, who's be'n mighty good ter me, suh. she's de barbuh's wife, suh, w'at bought ouah ole house. dey got mo' dan any yuther colored folks roun' hyuh, but dey he'ps de po', suh, dey he'ps de po'." "which speaks well for them, peter. i'm glad that all the virtue has not yet gone out of the old house." the old man's talk rambled on, like a sluggish stream, while the colonel's more active mind busied itself with the problem suggested by this unforeseen meeting. peter and he had both gone out into the world, and they had both returned. he had come back rich and independent. what good had freedom done for peter? in the colonel's childhood his father's butler, old madison, had lived a life which, compared to that of peter at the same age, was one of ease and luxury. how easy the conclusion that the slave's lot had been the more fortunate! but no, peter had been better free. there were plenty of poor white men, and no one had suggested slavery as an improvement of their condition. had peter remained a slave, then the colonel would have remained a master, which was only another form of slavery. the colonel had been emancipated by the same token that had made peter free. peter had returned home poor and broken, not because he had been free, but because nature first, and society next, in distributing their gifts, had been niggardly with old peter. had he been better equipped, or had a better chance, he might have made a better showing. the colonel had prospered because, having no peters to work for him, he had been compelled to work for himself. he would set his own success against peter's failure; and he would take off his hat to the memory of the immortal statesman, who in freeing one race had emancipated another and struck the shackles from a nation's mind. _four_ while the colonel and old peter were thus discussing reminiscences in which little phil could have no share, the boy, with childish curiosity, had wandered off, down one of the shaded paths. when, a little later, the colonel looked around for him, he saw phil seated on a rustic bench, in conversation with a lady. as the boy seemed entirely comfortable, and the lady not at all disturbed, the colonel did not interrupt them for a while. but when the lady at length rose, holding phil by the hand, the colonel, fearing that the boy, who was a child of strong impulses, prone to sudden friendships, might be proving troublesome, left his seat on the flat-topped tomb of his revolutionary ancestor and hastened to meet them. "i trust my boy hasn't annoyed you," he said, lifting his hat. "not at all, sir," returned the lady, in a clear, sweet voice, some haunting tone of which found an answering vibration in the colonel's memory. "on the contrary, he has interested me very much, and in nothing more than in telling me his name. if this and my memory do not deceive me, _you_ are henry french!" "yes, and you are--you are laura treadwell! how glad i am to meet you! i was coming to call this afternoon." "i'm glad to see you again. we have always remembered you, and knew that you had grown rich and great, and feared that you had forgotten the old town--and your old friends." "not very rich, nor very great, laura--miss treadwell." "let it be laura," she said with a faint colour mounting in her cheek, which had not yet lost its smoothness, as her eyes had not faded, nor her step lost its spring. "and neither have i forgotten the old home nor the old friends--since i am here and knew you the moment i looked at you and heard your voice." "and what a dear little boy!" exclaimed miss treadwell, looking down at phil. "he is named philip--after his grandfather, i reckon?" "after his grandfather. we have been visiting his grave, and those of all the frenches; and i found them haunted--by an old retainer, who had come hither, he said, to be with his friends." "old peter! i see him, now and then, keeping the lot in order. there are few like him left, and there were never any too many. but how have you been these many years, and where is your wife? did you bring her with you?" "i buried her," returned the colonel, "a little over a year ago. she left me little phil." "he must be like her," replied the lady, "and yet he resembles you." "he has her eyes and hair," said his father. "he is a good little boy and a lad of taste. see how he took to you at first sight! i can always trust phil's instincts. he is a born gentleman." "he came of a race of gentlemen," she said. "i'm glad it is not to die out. there are none too many left--in clarendon. you are going to like me, aren't you, phil?" asked the lady. "i like you already," replied phil gallantly. "you are a very nice lady. what shall i call you?" "call her miss laura, phil--it is the southern fashion--a happy union of familiarity and respect. already they come back to me, laura--one breathes them with the air--the gentle southern customs. with all the faults of the old system, laura--it carried the seeds of decay within itself and was doomed to perish--a few of us, at least, had a good time. an aristocracy is quite endurable, for the aristocrat, and slavery tolerable, for the masters--and the peters. when we were young, before the rude hand of war had shattered our illusions, we were very happy, laura." "yes, we were very happy." they were walking now, very slowly, toward the gate by which the colonel had entered, with little phil between them, confiding a hand to each. "and how is your mother?" asked the colonel. "she is living yet, i trust?" "yes, but ailing, as she has been for fifteen years--ever since my father died. it was his grave i came to visit." "you had ever a loving heart, laura," said the colonel, "given to duty and self-sacrifice. are you still living in the old place?" "the old place, only it is older, and shows it--like the rest of us." she bit her lip at the words, which she meant in reference to herself, but which she perceived, as soon as she had uttered them, might apply to him with equal force. despising herself for the weakness which he might have interpreted as a bid for a compliment, she was glad that he seemed unconscious of the remark. the colonel and phil had entered the cemetery by a side gate and their exit led through the main entrance. miss laura pointed out, as they walked slowly along between the elms, the graves of many whom the colonel had known in his younger days. their names, woven in the tapestry of his memory, needed in most cases but a touch to restore them. for while his intellectual life had ranged far and wide, his business career had run along a single channel, his circle of intimates had not been very large nor very variable, nor was his memory so overlaid that he could not push aside its later impressions in favour of those graven there so deeply in his youth. nearing the gate, they passed a small open space in which stood a simple marble shaft, erected to the memory of the confederate dead. a wealth of fresh flowers lay at its base. the colonel took off his hat as he stood before it for a moment with bowed head. but for the mercy of god, he might have been one of those whose deaths as well as deeds were thus commemorated. beyond this memorial, impressive in its pure simplicity, and between it and the gate, in an obtrusively conspicuous spot stood a florid monument of granite, marble and bronze, of glaring design and strangely out of keeping with the simple dignity and quiet restfulness of the surroundings; a monument so striking that the colonel paused involuntarily and read the inscription in bronze letters on the marble shaft above the granite base: "'_sacred to the memory of joshua fetters and elizabeth fetters, his wife._ "'_life's work well done, life's race well run, life's crown well won, then comes rest._'" "a beautiful sentiment, if somewhat trite," said the colonel, "but an atrocious monument." "do you think so?" exclaimed the lady. "most people think the monument fine, but smile at the sentiment." "in matters of taste," returned the colonel, "the majority are always wrong. but why smile at the sentiment? is it, for some reason, inappropriate to this particular case? fetters--fetters--the name seems familiar. who was fetters, laura?" "he was the speculator," she said, "who bought and sold negroes, and kept dogs to chase runaways; old mr. fetters--you must remember old josh fetters? when i was a child, my coloured mammy used him for a bogeyman for me, as for her own children." "'look out, honey,' she'd say, 'ef you ain' good, ole mr. fettuhs 'll ketch you.'" yes, he remembered now. fetters had been a character in clarendon--not an admirable character, scarcely a good character, almost a bad character; a necessary adjunct of an evil system, and, like other parasites, worse than the body on which he fed; doing the dirty work of slavery, and very naturally despised by those whose instrument he was, but finding consolation by taking it out of the negroes in the course of his business. the colonel would have expected fetters to lie in an unmarked grave in his own back lot, or in the potter's field. had he so far escaped the ruin of the institution on which he lived, as to leave an estate sufficient to satisfy his heirs and also pay for this expensive but vulgar monument? "the memorial was erected, as you see from the rest of the inscription, 'by his beloved and affectionate son.' that either loved the other no one suspected, for bill was harshly treated, and ran away from home at fifteen. he came back after the war, with money, which he lent out at high rates of interest; everything he touched turned to gold; he has grown rich, and is a great man in the state. he was a large contributor to the soldiers' monument." "but did not choose the design; let us be thankful for that. it might have been like his father's. bill fetters rich and great," he mused, "who would have dreamed it? i kicked him once, all the way down main street from the schoolhouse to the bank--and dodged his angry mother for a whole month afterward!" "no one," suggested miss laura, "would venture to cross him now. too many owe him money." "he went to school at the academy," the colonel went on, unwinding the thread of his memory, "and the rest of the boys looked down on him and made his life miserable. well, laura, in fetters you see one thing that resulted from the war--the poor white boy was given a chance to grow; and if the product is not as yet altogether admirable, taste and culture may come with another generation." "it is to be hoped they may," said miss laura, "and character as well. mr. fetters has a son who has gone from college to college, and will graduate from harvard this summer. they say he is very wild and spends ten thousand dollars a year. i do not see how it can be possible!" the colonel smiled at her simplicity. "i have been," he said, "at a college football game, where the gate receipts were fifty thousand dollars, and half a million was said to have changed hands in bets on the result. it is easy to waste money." "it is a sin," she said, "that some should be made poor, that others may have it to waste." there was a touch of bitterness in her tone, the instinctive resentment (the colonel thought) of the born aristocrat toward the upstart who had pushed his way above those no longer strong enough to resist. it did not occur to him that her feeling might rest upon any personal ground. it was inevitable that, with the incubus of slavery removed, society should readjust itself in due time upon a democratic basis, and that poor white men, first, and black men next, should reach a level representing the true measure of their talents and their ambition. but it was perhaps equally inevitable that for a generation or two those who had suffered most from the readjustment, should chafe under its seeming injustice. the colonel was himself a gentleman, and the descendant of a long line of gentlemen. but he had lived too many years among those who judged the tree by its fruit, to think that blood alone entitled him to any special privileges. the consciousness of honourable ancestry might make one clean of life, gentle of manner, and just in one's dealings. in so far as it did this it was something to be cherished, but scarcely to be boasted of, for democracy is impatient of any excellence not born of personal effort, of any pride save that of achievement. he was glad that fetters had got on in the world. it justified a fine faith in humanity, that wealth and power should have been attained by the poor white lad, over whom, with a boy's unconscious brutality, he had tyrannised in his childhood. he could have wished for bill a better taste in monuments, and better luck in sons, if rumour was correct about fetters's boy. but, these, perhaps, were points where blood _did_ tell. there was something in blood, after all, nature might make a great man from any sort of material: hence the virtue of democracy, for the world needs great men, and suffers from their lack, and welcomes them from any source. but fine types were a matter of breeding and were perhaps worth the trouble of preserving, if their existence were compatible with the larger good. he wondered if bill ever recalled that progress down main street in which he had played so conspicuous a part, or still bore any resentment toward the other participants? "could your mother see me," he asked, as they reached the gate, "if i went by the house?" "she would be glad to see you. mother lives in the past, and you would come to her as part of it. she often speaks of you. it is only a short distance. you have not forgotten the way?" they turned to the right, in a direction opposite to that from which the colonel had reached the cemetery. after a few minutes' walk, in the course of which they crossed another bridge over the same winding creek, they mounted the slope beyond, opened a gate, climbed a short flight of stone steps and found themselves in an enchanted garden, where lilac bush and jessamine vine reared their heads high, tulip and daffodil pushed their way upward, but were all dominated by the intenser fragrance of the violets. old peter had followed the party at a respectful distance, but, seeing himself forgotten, he walked past the gate, after they had entered it, and went, somewhat disconsolately, on his way. he had stopped, and was looking back toward the house--clarendon was a great place for looking back, perhaps because there was little in the town to which to look forward--when a white man, wearing a tinned badge upon his coat, came up, took peter by the arm and led him away, despite some feeble protests on the old man's part. _five_ at the end of the garden stood a frame house with a wide, columned porch. it had once been white, and the windows closed with blinds that still retained a faded tint of green. upon the porch, in a comfortable arm chair, sat an old lady, wearing a white cap, under which her white hair showed at the sides, and holding her hands, upon which she wore black silk mits, crossed upon her lap. on the top step, at opposite ends, sat two young people--one of them a rosy-cheeked girl, in the bloom of early youth, with a head of rebellious brown hair. she had been reading a book held open in her hand. the other was a long-legged, lean, shy young man, of apparently twenty-three or twenty-four, with black hair and eyes and a swarthy complexion. from the jack-knife beside him, and the shavings scattered around, it was clear that he had been whittling out the piece of pine that he was adjusting, with some nicety, to a wooden model of some mechanical contrivance which stood upon the floor beside him. they were a strikingly handsome couple, of ideally contrasting types. "mother," said miss treadwell, "this is henry french--colonel french--who has come back from the north to visit his old home and the graves of his ancestors. i found him in the cemetery; and this is his dear little boy, philip--named after his grandfather." the old lady gave the colonel a slender white hand, thin almost to transparency. "henry," she said, in a silvery thread of voice, "i am glad to see you. you must excuse my not rising--i can't walk without help. you are like your father, and even more like your grandfather, and your little boy takes after the family." she drew phil toward her and kissed him. phil accepted this attention amiably. meantime the young people had risen. "this," said miss treadwell, laying her hand affectionately on the girl's arm, "is my niece graciella--my brother tom's child. tom is dead, you know, these eight years and more, and so is graciella's mother, and she has lived with us." graciella gave the colonel her hand with engaging frankness. "i'm sure we're awfully glad to see anybody from the north," she said. "are you familiar with new york?" "i left there only day before yesterday," replied the colonel. "and this," said miss treadwell, introducing the young man, who, when he unfolded his long legs, rose to a rather imposing height, "this is mr. ben dudley." "the son of malcolm dudley, of mink run, i suppose? i'm glad to meet you," said the colonel, giving the young man's hand a cordial grasp. "his nephew, sir," returned young dudley. "my uncle never married." "oh, indeed? i did not know; but he is alive, i trust, and well?" "alive, sir, but very much broken. he has not been himself for years." "you find things sadly changed, henry," said mrs. treadwell. "they have never been the same since the surrender. our people are poor now, right poor, most of them, though we ourselves were fortunate enough to have something left." "we have enough left for supper, mother," interposed miss laura quickly, "to which we are going to ask colonel french to stay." "i suppose that in new york every one has dinner at six, and supper after the theatre or the concert?" said graciella, inquiringly. "the fortunate few," returned the colonel, smiling into her eager face, "who can afford a seat at the opera, and to pay for and digest two meals, all in the same evening." "and now, colonel," said miss treadwell, "i'm going to see about the supper. mother will talk to you while i am gone." "i must be going," said young dudley. "won't you stay to supper, ben?" asked miss laura. "no, miss laura; i'd like to, but uncle wasn't well to-day and i must stop by the drug store and get some medicine for him. dr. price gave me a prescription on my way in. good-bye, sir," he added, addressing the colonel. "will you be in town long?" "i really haven't decided. a day or two, perhaps a week. i am not bound, at present, by any business ties--am foot-loose, as we used to say when i was young. i shall follow my inclinations." "then i hope, sir, that you'll feel inclined to pay us a long visit and that i shall see you many times." as ben dudley, after this courteous wish, stepped down from the piazza, graciella rose and walked with him along the garden path. she was tall as most women, but only reached his shoulder. "say, graciella," he asked, "won't you give me an answer." "i'm thinking about it, ben. if you could take me away from this dead old town, with its lazy white people and its trifling niggers, to a place where there's music and art, and life and society--where there's something going on all the time, i'd _like_ to marry you. but if i did so now, you'd take me out to your rickety old house, with your daffy old uncle and his dumb old housekeeper, and i should lose my own mind in a week or ten days. when you can promise to take me to new york, i'll promise to marry you, ben. i want to travel, and to see things, to visit the art galleries and libraries, to hear patti, and to look at the millionaires promenading on fifth avenue--and i'll marry the man who'll take me there!" "uncle malcolm can't live forever, graciella--though i wouldn't wish his span shortened by a single day--and i'll get the plantation. and then, you know," he added, hesitating, "we may--we may find the money." graciella shook her head compassionately. "no, ben, you'll never find the money. there isn't any; it's all imagination--moonshine. the war unsettled your uncle's brain, and he dreamed the money." "it's as true as i'm standing here, graciella," replied ben, earnestly, "that there's money--gold--somewhere about the house. uncle couldn't imagine paper and ink, and i've seen the letter from my uncle's uncle ralph--i'll get it and bring it to you. some day the money will turn up, and then may be i'll be able to take you away. meantime some one must look after uncle and the place; there's no one else but me to do it. things must grow better some time--they always do, you know." "they couldn't be much worse," returned graciella, discontentedly. "oh, they'll be better--they're bound to be! they'll just have to be. and you'll wait for me, won't you, graciella?" "oh, i suppose i'll have to. you're around here so much that every one else is scared away, and there isn't much choice at the best; all the young men worth having are gone away already. but you know my ultimatum--i must get to new york. if you are ready before any one else speaks, you may take me there." "you're hard on a poor devil, graciella. i don't believe you care a bit for me, or you wouldn't talk like that. don't you suppose i have any feelings, even if i ain't much account? ain't i worth as much as a trip up north?" "why should i waste my time with you, if i didn't care for you?" returned graciella, begging the question. "here's a rose, in token of my love." she plucked the flower and thrust it into his hand. "it's full of thorns, like your love," he said ruefully, as he picked the sharp points out of his fingers. "'faithful are the wounds of a friend,'" returned the girl. "see psalms, xxvii: ." "take care of my cotton press, graciella; i'll come in to-morrow evening and work on it some more. i'll bring some cotton along to try it with." "you'll probably find some excuse--you always do." "don't you want me to come?" he asked with a trace of resentment. "i can stay away, if you don't." "oh, you come so often that i--i suppose i'd miss you, if you didn't! one must have some company, and half a loaf is better than no bread." he went on down the hill, turning at the corner for a lingering backward look at his tyrant. graciella, bending her head over the wall, followed his movements with a swift tenderness in her sparkling brown eyes. "i love him better than anything on earth," she sighed, "but it would never do to tell him so. he'd get so conceited that i couldn't manage him any longer, and so lazy that he'd never exert himself. i must get away from this town before i'm old and gray--i'll be seventeen next week, and an old maid in next to no time--and ben must take me away. but i must be his inspiration; he'd never do it by himself. i'll go now and talk to that dear old colonel french about the north; i can learn a great deal from him. and he doesn't look so old either," she mused, as she went back up the walk to where the colonel sat on the piazza talking to the other ladies. _six_ the colonel spent a delightful evening in the company of his friends. the supper was typically southern, and the cook evidently a good one. there was smothered chicken, light biscuit, fresh eggs, poundcake and tea. the tablecloth and napkins were of fine linen. that they were soft and smooth the colonel noticed, but he did not observe closely enough to see that they had been carefully darned in many places. the silver spoons were of fine, old-fashioned patterns, worn very thin--so thin that even the colonel was struck by their fragility. how charming, he thought, to prefer the simple dignity of the past to the vulgar ostentation of a more modern time. he had once dined off a golden dinner service, at the table of a multi-millionaire, and had not enjoyed the meal half so much. the dining-room looked out upon the garden and the perfume of lilac and violet stole in through the open windows. a soft-footed, shapely, well-trained negro maid, in white cap and apron, waited deftly upon the table; a woman of serious countenance--so serious that the colonel wondered if she were a present-day type of her race, and if the responsibilities of freedom had robbed her people of their traditional light-heartedness and gaiety. after supper they sat out upon the piazza. the lights within were turned down low, so that the moths and other insects might not be attracted. sweet odours from the garden filled the air. through the elms the stars, brighter than in more northern latitudes, looked out from a sky of darker blue; so bright were they that the colonel, looking around for the moon, was surprised to find that luminary invisible. on the green background of the foliage the fireflies glowed and flickered. there was no strident steam whistle from factory or train to assault the ear, no rumble of passing cabs or street cars. far away, in some distant part of the straggling town, a sweet-toned bell sounded the hour of an evening church service. "to see you is a breath from the past, henry," said mrs. treadwell. "you are a fine, strong man now, but i can see you as you were, the day you went away to the war, in your new gray uniform, on your fine gray horse, at the head of your company. you were going to take peter with you, but he had got his feet poisoned with poison ivy, and couldn't walk, and your father gave you another boy, and peter cried like a baby at being left behind. i can remember how proud you were, and how proud your father was, when he gave you his sword--your grandfather's sword, and told you never to draw it or sheath it, except in honour; and how, when you were gone, the old gentleman shut himself up for two whole days and would speak to no one. he was glad and sorry--glad to send you to fight for your country, and sorry to see you go--for you were his only boy." the colonel thrilled with love and regret. his father had loved him, he knew very well, and he had not visited his tomb for twenty-five years. how far away it seemed too, the time when he had thought of the confederacy as his country! and the sword, his grandfather's sword, had been for years stored away in a dark closet. his father had kept it displayed upon the drawing-room wall, over the table on which the family bible had rested. mrs. treadwell was silent for a moment. "times have changed since then, henry. we have lost a great deal, although we still have enough--yes, we have plenty to live upon, and to hold up our heads among the best." miss laura and graciella, behind the colonel's back, exchanged meaning glances. how well they knew how little they had to live upon! "that is quite evident," said the colonel, glancing through the window at the tasteful interior, "and i am glad to see that you have fared so well. my father lost everything." "we were more fortunate," said mrs. treadwell. "we were obliged to let belleview go when major treadwell died--there were debts to be paid, and we were robbed as well--but we have several rentable properties in town, and an estate in the country which brings us in an income. but things are not quite what they used to be!" mrs. treadwell sighed, and nodded. miss laura sat in silence--a pensive silence. she, too, remembered the time gone by, but unlike her mother's life, her own had only begun as the good times were ending. her mother, in her youth, had seen something of the world. the daughter of a wealthy planter, she had spent her summers at saratoga, had visited new york and philadelphia and new orleans, and had taken a voyage to europe. graciella was young and beautiful. her prince might come, might be here even now, if this grand gentleman should chance to throw the handkerchief. but she, laura, had passed her youth in a transition period; the pleasures neither of memory nor of hope had been hers--except such memories as came of duty well performed, and such hopes as had no root in anything earthly or corruptible. graciella was not in a reflective mood, and took up the burden of the conversation where her grandmother had dropped it. her thoughts were not of the past, but of the future. she asked many eager questions of new york. was it true that ladies at the waldorf-astoria always went to dinner in low-cut bodices with short sleeves, and was evening dress always required at the theatre? did the old knickerbocker families recognise the vanderbilts? were the rockefellers anything at all socially? did he know ward mcallister, at that period the beau brummel of the metropolitan smart set? was fifth avenue losing its pre-eminence? on what days of the week was the art museum free to the public? what was the fare to new york, and the best quarter of the city in which to inquire for a quiet, select boarding house where a southern lady of refinement and good family might stay at a reasonable price, and meet some nice people? and would he recommend stenography or magazine work, and which did he consider preferable, as a career which such a young lady might follow without injury to her social standing? the colonel, with some amusement, answered these artless inquiries as best he could; they came as a refreshing foil to the sweet but melancholy memories of the past. they were interesting, too, from this very pretty but very ignorant little girl in this backward little southern town. she was a flash of sunlight through a soft gray cloud; a vigorous shoot from an old moss-covered stump--she was life, young life, the vital principle, breaking through the cumbering envelope, and asserting its right to reach the sun. after a while a couple of very young ladies, friends of graciella, dropped in. they were introduced to the colonel, who found that he had known their fathers, or their mothers, or their grandfathers, or their grandmothers, and that many of them were more or less distantly related. a little later a couple of young men, friends of graciella's friends--also very young, and very self-conscious--made their appearance, and were duly introduced, in person and by pedigree. the conversation languished for a moment, and then one of the young ladies said something about music, and one of the young men remarked that he had brought over a new song. graciella begged the colonel to excuse them, and led the way to the parlour, followed by her young friends. mrs. treadwell had fallen asleep, and was leaning comfortably back in her armchair. miss laura excused herself, brought a veil, and laid it softly across her mother's face. "the night air is not damp," she said, "and it is pleasanter for her here than in the house. she won't mind the music; she is accustomed to it." graciella went to the piano and with great boldness of touch struck the bizarre opening chords and then launched into the grotesque words of the latest new york "coon song," one of the first and worst of its kind, and the other young people joined in the chorus. it was the first discordant note. at home, the colonel subscribed to the opera, and enjoyed the music. a plantation song of the olden time, as he remembered it, borne upon the evening air, when sung by the tired slaves at the end of their day of toil, would have been pleasing, with its simple melody, its plaintive minor strains, its notes of vague longing; but to the colonel's senses there was to-night no music in this hackneyed popular favourite. in a metropolitan music hall, gaudily bedecked and brilliantly lighted, it would have been tolerable from the lips of a black-face comedian. but in this quiet place, upon this quiet night, and in the colonel's mood, it seemed like profanation. the song of the coloured girl, who had dreamt that she dwelt in marble halls, and the rest, had been less incongruous; it had at least breathed aspiration. mrs. treadwell was still dozing in her armchair. the colonel, beckoning miss laura to follow him, moved to the farther end of the piazza, where they might not hear the singers and the song. "it is delightful here, laura. i seem to have renewed my youth. i yield myself a willing victim to the charm of the old place, the old ways, the old friends." "you see our best side, henry. night has a kindly hand, that covers our defects, and the starlight throws a glamour over everything. you see us through a haze of tender memories. when you have been here a week, the town will seem dull, and narrow, and sluggish. you will find us ignorant and backward, worshipping our old idols, and setting up no new ones; our young men leaving us, and none coming in to take their place. had you, and men like you, remained with us, we might have hoped for better things." "and perhaps not, laura. environment controls the making of men. some rise above it, the majority do not. we might have followed in the well-worn rut. but let us not spoil this delightful evening by speaking of anything sad or gloomy. this is your daily life; to me it is like a scene from a play, over which one sighs to see the curtain fall--all enchantment, all light, all happiness." but even while he spoke of light, a shadow loomed up beside them. the coloured woman who had waited at the table came around the house from the back yard and stood by the piazza railing. "miss laura!" she called, softly and appealingly. "kin you come hyuh a minute?" "what is it, catherine?" "kin i speak just a word to you, ma'am? it's somethin' partic'lar--mighty partic'lar, ma'am." "excuse me a minute, henry," said miss laura, rising with evident reluctance. she stepped down from the piazza, and walked beside the woman down one of the garden paths. the colonel, as he sat there smoking--with miss laura's permission he had lighted a cigar--could see the light stuff of the lady's gown against the green background, though she was walking in the shadow of the elms. from the murmur which came to him, he gathered that the black woman was pleading earnestly, passionately, and he could hear miss laura's regretful voice, as she closed the interview: "i am sorry, catherine, but it is simply impossible. i would if i could, but i cannot." the woman came back first, and as she passed by an open window, the light fell upon her face, which showed signs of deep distress, hardening already into resignation or despair. she was probably in trouble of some sort, and her mistress had not been able, doubtless for some good reason, to help her out. this suspicion was borne out by the fact that when miss laura came back to him, she too seemed troubled. but since she did not speak of the matter, the colonel gave no sign of his own thoughts. "you have said nothing of yourself, laura," he said, wishing to divert her mind from anything unpleasant. "tell me something of your own life--it could only be a cheerful theme, for you have means and leisure, and a perfect environment. tell me of your occupations, your hopes, your aspirations." "there is little enough to tell, henry," she returned, with a sudden courage, "but that little shall be the truth. you will find it out, if you stay long in town, and i would rather you learned it from our lips than from others less friendly. my mother is--my mother--a dear, sweet woman to whom i have devoted my life! but we are not well off, henry. our parlour carpet has been down for twenty-five years; surely you must have recognised the pattern! the house has not been painted for the same length of time; it is of heart pine, and we train the flowers and vines to cover it as much as may be, and there are many others like it, so it is not conspicuous. our rentable property is three ramshackle cabins on the alley at the rear of the lot, for which we get four dollars a month each, when we can collect it. our country estate is a few acres of poor land, which we rent on shares, and from which we get a few bushels of corn, an occasional load of firewood, and a few barrels of potatoes. as for my own life, i husband our small resources; i keep the house, and wait on mother, as i have done since she became helpless, ten years ago. i look after graciella. i teach in the sunday school, and i give to those less fortunate such help as the poor can give the poor." "how did you come to lose belleview?" asked the colonel, after a pause. "i had understood major treadwell to be one of the few people around here who weathered the storm of war and emerged financially sound." "he did; and he remained so--until he met mr. fetters, who had made money out of the war while all the rest were losing. father despised the slavetrader's son, but admired his ability to get along. fetters made his acquaintance, flattered him, told him glowing stories of wealth to be made by speculating in cotton and turpentine. father was not a business man, but he listened. fetters lent him money, and father lent fetters money, and they had transactions back and forth, and jointly. father lost and gained and we had no inkling that he had suffered greatly, until, at his sudden death, fetters foreclosed a mortgage he held upon belleview. mother has always believed there was something wrong about the transaction, and that father was not indebted to fetters in any such sum as fetters claimed. but we could find no papers and we had no proof, and fetters took the plantation for his debt. he changed its name to sycamore; he wanted a post-office there, and there were too many belleviews." "does he own it still?" "yes, and runs it--with convict labour! the thought makes me shudder! we were rich when he was poor; we are poor and he is rich. but we trust in god, who has never deserted the widow and the fatherless. by his mercy we have lived and, as mother says, held up our heads, not in pride or haughtiness, but in self-respect, for we cannot forget what we were." "nor what you are, laura, for you are wonderful," said the colonel, not unwilling to lighten a situation that bordered on intensity. "you should have married and had children. the south needs such mothers as you would have made. unless the men of clarendon have lost their discernment, unless chivalry has vanished and the fire died out of the southern blood, it has not been for lack of opportunity that your name remains unchanged." miss laura's cheek flushed unseen in the shadow of the porch. "ah, henry, that would be telling! but to marry me, one must have married the family, for i could not have left them--they have had only me. i have not been unhappy. i do not know that i would have had my life different." graciella and her friends had finished their song, the piano had ceased to sound, and the visitors were taking their leave. graciella went with them to the gate, where they stood laughing and talking. the colonel looked at his watch by the light of the open door. "it is not late," he said. "if my memory is true, you too played the piano when you--when i was young." "it is the same piano, henry, and, like our life here, somewhat thin and weak of tone. but if you think it would give you pleasure, i will play--as well as i know how." she readjusted the veil, which had slipped from her mother's face, and they went into the parlour. from a pile of time-stained music she selected a sheet and seated herself at the piano. the colonel stood at her elbow. she had a pretty back, he thought, and a still youthful turn of the head, and still plentiful, glossy brown hair. her hands were white, slender and well kept, though he saw on the side of the forefinger of her left hand the telltale marks of the needle. the piece was an arrangement of the well-known air from the opera of _maritana_: _"scenes that are brightest, may charm awhile, hearts which are lightest and eyes that smile. yet o'er them above us, though nature beam, with none to love us, how sad they seem!"_ under her sympathetic touch a gentle stream of melody flowed from the old-time piano, scarcely stronger toned in its decrepitude, than the spinet of a former century. a few moments before, under graciella's vigorous hands, it had seemed to protest at the dissonances it had been compelled to emit; now it seemed to breathe the notes of the old opera with an almost human love and tenderness. it, too, mused the colonel, had lived and loved and was recalling the memories of a brighter past. the music died into silence. mrs. treadwell was awake. "laura!" she called. miss treadwell went to the door. "i must have been nodding for a minute. i hope colonel french did not observe it--it would scarcely seem polite. he hasn't gone yet?" "no, mother, he is in the parlour." "i must be going," said the colonel, who came to the door. "i had almost forgotten phil, and it is long past his bedtime." miss laura went to wake up phil, who had fallen asleep after supper. he was still rubbing his eyes when the lady led him out. "wake up, phil," said the colonel. "it's time to be going. tell the ladies good night." graciella came running up the walk. "why, colonel french," she cried, "you are not going already? i made the others leave early so that i might talk to you." "my dear young lady," smiled the colonel, "i have already risen to go, and if i stayed longer i might wear out my welcome, and phil would surely go to sleep again. but i will come another time--i shall stay in town several days." "yes, _do_ come, if you _must_ go," rejoined graciella with emphasis. "i want to hear more about the north, and about new york society and--oh, everything! good night, philip. _good_ night, colonel french." "beware of the steps, henry," said miss laura, "the bottom stone is loose." they heard his footsteps in the quiet street, and phil's light patter beside him. "he's a lovely man, isn't he, aunt laura?" said graciella. "he is a gentleman," replied her aunt, with a pensive look at her young niece. "of the old school," piped mrs. treadwell. "and philip is a sweet child," said miss laura. "a chip of the old block," added mrs. treadwell. "i remember----" "yes, mother, you can tell me when i've shut up the house," interrupted miss laura. "put out the lamps, graciella--there's not much oil--and when you go to bed hang up your gown carefully, for it takes me nearly half an hour to iron it." "and you are right good to do it! good night, dear aunt laura! good night, grandma!" mr. french had left the hotel at noon that day as free as air, and he slept well that night, with no sense of the forces that were to constrain his life. and yet the events of the day had started the growth of a dozen tendrils, which were destined to grow, and reach out, and seize and hold him with ties that do not break. _seven_ the constable who had arrested old peter led his prisoner away through alleys and quiet streets--though for that matter all the streets of clarendon were quiet in midafternoon--to a guardhouse or calaboose, constructed of crumbling red brick, with a rusty, barred iron door secured by a heavy padlock. as they approached this structure, which was sufficiently forbidding in appearance to depress the most lighthearted, the strumming of a banjo became audible, accompanying a mellow negro voice which was singing, to a very ragged ragtime air, words of which the burden was something like this: _"w'at's de use er my wo'kin' so hahd? i got a' 'oman in de white man's yahd. w'en she cook chicken, she save me a wing; w'en dey 'low i'm wo'kin', i ain' doin' a thing!"_ the grating of the key in the rusty lock interrupted the song. the constable thrust his prisoner into the dimly lighted interior, and locked the door. "keep over to the right," he said curtly, "that's the niggers' side." "but, mistah haines," asked peter, excitedly, "is i got to stay here all night? i ain' done nuthin'." "no, that's the trouble; you ain't done nuthin' fer a month, but loaf aroun'. you ain't got no visible means of suppo't, so you're took up for vagrancy." "but i does wo'k we'n i kin git any wo'k ter do," the old man expostulated. "an' ef i kin jus' git wo'd ter de right w'ite folks, i'll be outer here in half a' hour; dey'll go my bail." "they can't go yo' bail to-night, fer the squire's gone home. i'll bring you some bread and meat, an' some whiskey if you want it, and you'll be tried to-morrow mornin'." old peter still protested. "you niggers are always kickin'," said the constable, who was not without a certain grim sense of humour, and not above talking to a negro when there were no white folks around to talk to, or to listen. "i never see people so hard to satisfy. you ain' got no home, an' here i've give' you a place to sleep, an' you're kickin'. you doan know from one day to another where you'll git yo' meals, an' i offer you bread and meat and whiskey--an' you're kickin'! you say you can't git nothin' to do, an' yit with the prospect of a reg'lar job befo' you to-morrer--you're kickin'! i never see the beat of it in all my bo'n days." when the constable, chuckling at his own humour, left the guardhouse, he found his way to a nearby barroom, kept by one clay jackson, a place with an evil reputation as the resort of white men of a low class. most crimes of violence in the town could be traced to its influence, and more than one had been committed within its walls. "has mr. turner been in here?" demanded haines of the man in charge. the bartender, with a backward movement of his thumb, indicated a door opening into a room at the rear. here the constable found his man--a burly, bearded giant, with a red face, a cunning eye and an overbearing manner. he had a bottle and a glass before him, and was unsociably drinking alone. "howdy, haines," said turner, "how's things? how many have you got this time?" "i've got three rounded up, mr. turner, an' i'll take up another befo' night. that'll make fo'--fifty dollars fer me, an' the res' fer the squire." "that's good," rejoined turner. "have a glass of liquor. how much do you s'pose the squire'll fine bud?" "well," replied haines, drinking down the glass of whiskey at a gulp, "i reckon about twenty-five dollars." "you can make it fifty just as easy," said turner. "niggers are all just a passell o' black fools. bud would 'a' b'en out now, if it hadn't be'n for me. i bought him fer six months. i kept close watch of him for the first five, and then along to'ds the middle er the las' month i let on i'd got keerliss, an' he run away. course i put the dawgs on 'im, an' followed 'im here, where his woman is, an' got you after 'im, and now he's good for six months more." "the woman is a likely gal an' a good cook," said haines. "_she'd_ be wuth a good 'eal to you out at the stockade." "that's a shore fact," replied the other, "an' i need another good woman to help aroun'. if we'd 'a' thought about it, an' give' her a chance to hide bud and feed him befo' you took 'im up, we could 'a' filed a charge ag'inst her for harborin' 'im." "well, i kin do it nex' time, fer he'll run away ag'in--they always do. bud's got a vile temper." "yes, but he's a good field-hand, and i'll keep his temper down. have somethin' mo'?" "i've got to go back now and feed the pris'ners," said haines, rising after he had taken another drink; "an' i'll stir bud up so he'll raise h--ll, an' to-morrow morning i'll make another charge against him that'll fetch his fine up to fifty and costs." "which will give 'im to me till the cotton crop is picked, and several months more to work on the jackson swamp ditch if fetters gits the contract. you stand by us here, haines, an' help me git all the han's i can out o' this county, and i'll give you a job at sycamo' when yo'r time's up here as constable. go on and feed the niggers, an' stir up bud, and i'll be on hand in the mornin' when court opens." when the lesser of these precious worthies left his superior to his cups, he stopped in the barroom and bought a pint of rotgut whiskey--a cheap brand of rectified spirits coloured and flavoured to resemble the real article, to which it bore about the relation of vitriol to lye. he then went into a cheap eating house, conducted by a negro for people of his own kind, where he procured some slices of fried bacon, and some soggy corn bread, and with these various purchases, wrapped in a piece of brown paper, he betook himself to the guardhouse. he unlocked the door, closed it behind him, and called peter. the old man came forward. "here, peter," said haines, "take what you want of this, and give some to them other fellows, and if there's anything left after you've got what you want, throw it to that sulky black hound over yonder in the corner." he nodded toward a young negro in the rear of the room, the bud johnson who had been the subject of the conversation with turner. johnson replied with a curse. the constable advanced menacingly, his hand moving toward his pocket. quick as a flash the negro threw himself upon him. the other prisoners, from instinct, or prudence, or hope of reward, caught him, pulled him away and held him off until haines, pale with rage, rose to his feet and began kicking his assailant vigorously. with the aid of well-directed blows of his fists he forced the negro down, who, unable to regain his feet, finally, whether from fear or exhaustion, lay inert, until the constable, having worked off his worst anger, and not deeming it to his advantage seriously to disable the prisoner, in whom he had a pecuniary interest, desisted from further punishment. "i might send you to the penitentiary for this," he said, panting for breath, "but i'll send you to h--ll instead. you'll be sold back to mr. fetters for a year or two tomorrow, and in three months i'll be down at sycamore as an overseer, and then i'll learn you to strike a white man, you----" the remainder of the objurgation need not be told, but there was no doubt, from the expression on haines's face, that he meant what he said, and that he would take pleasure in repaying, in overflowing measure, any arrears of revenge against the offending prisoner which he might consider his due. he had stirred bud up very successfully--much more so, indeed, than he had really intended. he had meant to procure evidence against bud, but had hardly thought to carry it away in the shape of a black eye and a swollen nose. _eight_ when the colonel set out next morning for a walk down the main street, he had just breakfasted on boiled brook trout, fresh laid eggs, hot muffins and coffee, and was feeling at peace with all mankind. he was alone, having left phil in charge of the hotel housekeeper. he had gone only a short distance when he reached a door around which several men were lounging, and from which came the sound of voices and loud laughter. stopping, he looked with some curiosity into the door, over which there was a faded sign to indicate that it was the office of a justice of the peace--a pleasing collocation of words, to those who could divorce it from any technical significance--justice, peace--the seed and the flower of civilisation. an unwashed, dingy-faced young negro, clothed in rags unspeakably vile, which scarcely concealed his nakedness, was standing in the midst of a group of white men, toward whom he threw now and then a shallow and shifty glance. the air was heavy with the odour of stale tobacco, and the floor dotted with discarded portions of the weed. a white man stood beside a desk and was addressing the audience: "now, gentlemen, here's lot number three, a likely young nigger who answers to the name of sam brown. not much to look at, but will make a good field hand, if looked after right and kept away from liquor; used to workin', when in the chain gang, where he's been, off and on, since he was ten years old. amount of fine an' costs thirty-seven dollars an' a half. a musical nigger, too, who plays the banjo, an' sings jus' like a--like a blackbird. what am i bid for this prime lot?" the negro threw a dull glance around the crowd with an air of detachment which seemed to say that he was not at all interested in the proceedings. the colonel viewed the scene with something more than curious interest. the fellow looked like an habitual criminal, or at least like a confirmed loafer. this must be one of the idle and worthless blacks with so many of whom the south was afflicted. this was doubtless the method provided by law for dealing with them. "one year," answered a voice. "nine months," said a second. "six months," came a third bid, from a tall man with a buggy whip under his arm. "are you all through, gentlemen? six months' labour for thirty-seven fifty is mighty cheap, and you know the law allows you to keep the labourer up to the mark. are you all done? sold to mr. turner, for mr. fetters, for six months." the prisoner's dull face showed some signs of apprehension when the name of his purchaser was pronounced, and he shambled away uneasily under the constable's vigilant eye. "the case of the state against bud johnson is next in order. bring in the prisoner." the constable brought in the prisoner, handcuffed, and placed him in front of the justice's desk, where he remained standing. he was a short, powerfully built negro, seemingly of pure blood, with a well-rounded head, not unduly low in the brow and quite broad between the ears. under different circumstances his countenance might have been pleasing; at present it was set in an expression of angry defiance. he had walked with a slight limp, there were several contusions upon his face; and upon entering the room he had thrown a defiant glance around him, which had not quailed even before the stern eye of the tall man, turner, who, as the agent of the absent fetters, had bid on sam brown. his face then hardened into the blank expression of one who stands in a hostile presence. "bud johnson," said the justice, "you are charged with escaping from the service into which you were sold to pay the fine and costs on a charge of vagrancy. what do you plead--guilty or not guilty?" the prisoner maintained a sullen silence. "i'll enter a plea of not guilty. the record of this court shows that you were convicted of vagrancy on december th, and sold to mr. fetters for four months to pay your fine and costs. the four months won't be up for a week. mr. turner may be sworn." turner swore to bud's escape and his pursuit. haines testified to his capture. "have you anything to say?" asked the justice. "what's de use er my sayin' anything," muttered the negro. "it won't make no diff'ence. i didn' do nothin', in de fus' place, ter be fine' fer, an' run away 'cause dey did n' have no right ter keep me dere." "guilty. twenty-five dollars an' costs. you are also charged with resisting the officer who made the arrest. guilty or not guilty? since you don't speak, i'll enter a plea of not guilty. mr. haines may be sworn." haines swore that the prisoner had resisted arrest, and had only been captured by the display of a loaded revolver. the prisoner was convicted and fined twenty-five dollars and costs for this second offense. the third charge, for disorderly conduct in prison, was quickly disposed of, and a fine of twenty-five dollars and costs levied. "you may consider yo'self lucky," said the magistrate, "that mr. haines didn't prefer a mo' serious charge against you. many a nigger has gone to the gallows for less. and now, gentlemen, i want to clean this case up right here. how much time is offered for the fine and costs of the prisoner, bud johnson, amounting to seventy-five dollars fine and thirty-three dollars and fifty-fo' cents costs? you've heard the evidence an' you see the nigger. ef there ain't much competition for his services and the time is a long one, he'll have his own stubbornness an' deviltry to thank for it. he's strong and healthy and able to do good work for any one that can manage him." there was no immediate response. turner walked forward and viewed the prisoner from head to foot with a coldly sneering look. "well, bud," he said, "i reckon we'll hafter try it ag'in. i have never yet allowed a nigger to git the better o' me, an', moreover, i never will. i'll bid eighteen months, squire; an' that's all he's worth, with his keep." there was no competition, and the prisoner was knocked down to turner, for fetters, for eighteen months. "lock 'im up till i'm ready to go, bill," said turner to the constable, "an' just leave the irons on him. i'll fetch 'em back next time i come to town." the unconscious brutality of the proceeding grated harshly upon the colonel's nerves. delinquents of some kind these men must be, who were thus dealt with; but he had lived away from the south so long that so sudden an introduction to some of its customs came with something of a shock. he had remembered the pleasant things, and these but vaguely, since his thoughts and his interests had been elsewhere; and in the sifting process of a healthy memory he had forgotten the disagreeable things altogether. he had found the pleasant things still in existence, faded but still fragrant. fresh from a land of labour unions, and of struggle for wealth and power, of strivings first for equality with those above, and, this attained, for a point of vantage to look down upon former equals, he had found in old peter, only the day before, a touching loyalty to a family from which he could no longer expect anything in return. fresh from a land of women's clubs and women's claims, he had reveled last night in the charming domestic, life of the old south, so perfectly preserved in a quiet household. things southern, as he had already reflected, lived long and died hard, and these things which he saw now in the clear light of day, were also of the south, and singularly suggestive of other things southern which he had supposed outlawed and discarded long ago. "now, mr. haines, bring in the next lot," said the squire. the constable led out an old coloured man, clad in a quaint assortment of tattered garments, whom the colonel did not for a moment recognise, not having, from where he stood, a full view of the prisoner's face. "gentlemen, i now call yo'r attention to lot number fo', left over from befo' the wah; not much for looks, but respectful and obedient, and accustomed, for some time past, to eat very little. can be made useful in many ways--can feed the chickens, take care of the children, or would make a good skeercrow. what i am bid, gentlemen, for ol' peter french? the amount due the co't is twenty-fo' dollahs and a half." there was some laughter at the squire's facetiousness. turner, who had bid on the young and strong men, turned away unconcernedly. "you'd 'a' made a good auctioneer, squire," said the one-armed man. "thank you, mr. pearsall. how much am i offered for this bargain?" "he'd be dear at any price," said one. "it's a great risk," observed a second. "ten yeahs," said a third. "you're takin' big chances, mr. bennet," said another. "he'll die in five, and you'll have to bury him." "i withdraw the bid," said mr. bennet promptly. "two yeahs," said another. the colonel was boiling over with indignation. his interest in the fate of the other prisoners had been merely abstract; in old peter's case it assumed a personal aspect. he forced himself into the room and to the front. "may i ask the meaning of this proceeding?" he demanded. "well, suh," replied the justice, "i don't know who you are, or what right you have to interfere, but this is the sale of a vagrant nigger, with no visible means of suppo't. perhaps, since you're interested, you'd like to bid on 'im. are you from the no'th, likely?" "yes." "i thought, suh, that you looked like a no'the'n man. that bein' so, doubtless you'd like somethin' on the uncle tom order. old peter's fine is twenty dollars, and the costs fo' dollars and a half. the prisoner's time is sold to whoever pays his fine and allows him the shortest time to work it out. when his time's up, he goes free." "and what has old peter done to deserve a fine of twenty dollars--more money than he perhaps has ever had at any one time?" "'deed, it is, mars henry, 'deed it is!" exclaimed peter, fervently. "peter has not been able," replied the magistrate, "to show this co't that he has reg'lar employment, or means of suppo't, and he was therefore tried and convicted yesterday evenin' of vagrancy, under our state law. the fine is intended to discourage laziness and to promote industry. do you want to bid, suh? i'm offered two yeahs, gentlemen, for old peter french? does anybody wish to make it less?" "i'll pay the fine," said the colonel, "let him go." "i beg yo' pahdon, suh, but that wouldn't fulfil the requi'ments of the law. he'd be subject to arrest again immediately. somebody must take the responsibility for his keep." "i'll look after him," said the colonel shortly. "in order to keep the docket straight," said the justice, "i should want to note yo' bid. how long shall i say?" "say what you like," said the colonel, drawing out his pocketbook. "you don't care to bid, mr. turner?" asked the justice. "not by a damn sight," replied turner, with native elegance. "i buy niggers to work, not to bury." "i withdraw my bid in favour of the gentleman," said the two-year bidder. "thank you," said the colonel. "remember, suh," said the justice to the colonel, "that you are responsible for his keep as well as entitled to his labour, for the period of your bid. how long shall i make it?" "as long as you please," said the colonel impatiently. "sold," said the justice, bringing down his gavel, "for life, to--what name, suh?" "french--henry french." there was some manifestation of interest in the crowd; and the colonel was stared at with undisguised curiosity as he paid the fine and costs, which included two dollars for two meals in the guardhouse, and walked away with his purchase--a purchase which his father had made, upon terms not very different, fifty years before. "one of the old frenches," i reckon, said a bystander, "come back on a visit." "yes," said another, "old 'ristocrats roun' here. well, they ought to take keer of their old niggers. they got all the good out of 'em when they were young. but they're not runnin' things now." an hour later the colonel, driving leisurely about the outskirts of the town and seeking to connect his memories more closely with the scenes around him, met a buggy in which sat the man turner. after the buggy, tied behind one another to a rope, like a coffle of slaves, marched the three negroes whose time he had bought at the constable's sale. among them, of course, was the young man who had been called bud johnson. the colonel observed that this negro's face, when turned toward the white man in front of him, expressed a fierce hatred, as of some wild thing of the woods, which finding itself trapped and betrayed, would go to any length to injure its captor. turner passed the colonel with no sign of recognition or greeting. bud johnson evidently recognised the friendly gentleman who had interfered in peter's case. he threw toward the colonel a look which resembled an appeal; but it was involuntary, and lasted but a moment, and, when the prisoner became conscious of it, and realised its uselessness, it faded into the former expression. what the man's story was, the colonel did not know, nor what were his deserts. but the events of the day had furnished food for reflection. evidently clarendon needed new light and leading. men, even black men, with something to live for, and with work at living wages, would scarcely prefer an enforced servitude in ropes and chains. and the punishment had scarcely seemed to fit the crime. he had observed no great zeal for work among the white people since he came to town; such work as he had seen done was mostly performed by negroes. if idleness were a crime, the negroes surely had no monopoly of it. _nine_ furnished with money for his keep, peter was ordered if again molested to say that he was in the colonel's service. the latter, since his own plans were for the present uncertain, had no very clear idea of what disposition he would ultimately make of the old man, but he meant to provide in some way for his declining years. he also bought peter a neat suit of clothes at a clothing store, and directed him to present himself at the hotel on the following morning. the interval would give the colonel time to find something for peter to do, so that he would be able to pay him a wage. to his contract with the county he attached little importance; he had already intended, since their meeting in the cemetery, to provide for peter in some way, and the legal responsibility was no additional burden. to peter himself, to whose homeless old age food was more than philosophy, the arrangement seemed entirely satisfactory. colonel french's presence in clarendon had speedily become known to the public. upon his return to the hotel, after leaving peter to his own devices for the day, he found several cards in his letter box, left by gentlemen who had called, during his absence, to see him. the daily mail had also come in, and the colonel sat down in the office to read it. there was a club notice, and several letters that had been readdressed and forwarded, and a long one from kirby in reference to some detail of the recent transfer. before he had finished reading these, a gentleman came up and introduced himself. he proved to be one john mclean, an old schoolmate of the colonel, and later a comrade-in-arms, though the colonel would never have recognised a rather natty major in his own regiment in this shabby middle-aged man, whose shoes were run down at the heel, whose linen was doubtful, and spotted with tobacco juice. the major talked about the weather, which was cool for the season; about the civil war, about politics, and about the negroes, who were very trifling, the major said. while they were talking upon this latter theme, there was some commotion in the street, in front of the hotel, and looking up they saw that a horse, attached to a loaded wagon, had fallen in the roadway, and having become entangled in the harness, was kicking furiously. five or six negroes were trying to quiet the animal, and release him from the shafts, while a dozen white men looked on and made suggestions. "an illustration," said the major, pointing through the window toward the scene without, "of what we've got to contend with. six niggers can't get one horse up without twice as many white men to tell them how. that's why the south is behind the no'th. the niggers, in one way or another, take up most of our time and energy. you folks up there have half your work done before we get our'n started." the horse, pulled this way and that, in obedience to the conflicting advice of the bystanders, only became more and more intricately entangled. he had caught one foot in a manner that threatened, with each frantic jerk, to result in a broken leg, when the colonel, leaving his visitor without ceremony, ran out into the street, leaned down, and with a few well-directed movements, released the threatened limb. "now, boys," he said, laying hold of the prostrate animal, "give a hand here." the negroes, and, after some slight hesitation, one or two white men, came to the colonel's aid, and in a moment, the horse, trembling and blowing, was raised to its feet. the driver thanked the colonel and the others who had befriended him, and proceeded with his load. when the flurry of excitement was over, the colonel went back to the hotel and resumed the conversation with his friend. if the new franchise amendment went through, said the major, the negro would be eliminated from politics, and the people of the south, relieved of the fear of "nigger domination," could give their attention to better things, and their section would move forward along the path of progress by leaps and bounds. of himself the major said little except that he had been an alternate delegate to the last democratic national nominating convention, and that he expected to run for coroner at the next county election. "if i can secure the suppo't of mr. fetters in the primaries," he said, "my nomination is assured, and a nomination is of co'se equivalent to an election. but i see there are some other gentlemen that would like to talk to you, and i won't take any mo' of yo' time at present." "mr. blake," he said, addressing a gentleman with short side-whiskers who was approaching them, "have you had the pleasure of meeting colonel french?" "no, suh," said the stranger, "i shall be glad to have the honour of an introduction at your hands." "colonel french, mr. blake--mr. blake, colonel french. you gentlemen will probably like to talk to one another, because you both belong to the same party, i reckon. mr. blake is a new man roun' heah--come down from the mountains not mo' than ten yeahs ago, an' fetched his politics with him; but since he was born that way we don't entertain any malice against him. mo'over, he's not a 'black and tan republican,' but a 'lily white.'" "yes, sir," said mr. blake, taking the colonel's hand, "i believe in white supremacy, and the elimination of the nigger vote. if the national republican party would only ignore the coloured politicians, and give all the offices to white men, we'll soon build up a strong white republican party. if i had the post-office here at clarendon, with the encouragement it would give, and the aid of my clerks and subo'dinates, i could double the white republican vote in this county in six months." the major had left them together, and the lily white, ere he in turn made way for another caller, suggested delicately, that he would appreciate any good word that the colonel might be able to say for him in influential quarters--either personally or through friends who might have the ear of the executive or those close to him--in reference to the postmastership. realising that the present administration was a business one, in which sentiment played small part, he had secured the endorsement of the leading business men of the county, even that of mr. fetters himself. mr. fetters was of course a democrat, but preferred, since the office must go to a republican, that it should go to a lily white. "i hope to see mo' of you, sir," he said, "and i take pleasure in introducing the honourable henry clay appleton, editor of our local newspaper, the _anglo-saxon_. he and i may not agree on free silver and the tariff, but we are entirely in harmony on the subject indicated by the title of his newspaper. mr. appleton not only furnishes all the news that's fit to read, but he represents this county in the legislature, along with mr. fetters, and he will no doubt be the next candidate for congress from this district. he can tell you all that's worth knowin' about clarendon." the colonel shook hands with the editor, who had come with a twofold intent--to make the visitor's acquaintance and to interview him upon his impressions of the south. incidentally he gave the colonel a great deal of information about local conditions. these were not, he admitted, ideal. the town was backward. it needed capital to develop its resources, and it needed to be rid of the fear of negro domination. the suffrage in the hands of the negroes had proved a ghastly and expensive joke for all concerned, and the public welfare absolutely demanded that it be taken away. even the white republicans were coming around to the same point of view. the new franchise amendment to the state constitution was receiving their unqualified support. "that was a fine, chivalrous deed of yours this morning, sir," he said, "at squire reddick's office. it was just what might have been expected from a southern gentleman; for we claim you, colonel, in spite of your long absence." "yes," returned the colonel, "i don't know what i rescued old peter from. it looked pretty dark for him there for a little while. i shouldn't have envied his fate had he been bought in by the tall fellow who represented your colleague in the legislature. the law seems harsh." "well," admitted the editor, "i suppose it might seem harsh, in comparison with your milder penal systems up north. but you must consider the circumstances, and make allowances for us. we have so many idle, ignorant negroes that something must be done to make them work, or else they'll steal, and to keep them in their place, or they would run over us. the law has been in operation only a year or two, and is already having its effect. i'll be glad to introduce a bill for its repeal, as soon as it is no longer needed. "you must bear in mind, too, colonel, that niggers don't look at imprisonment and enforced labour in the same way white people do--they are not conscious of any disgrace attending stripes or the ball and chain. the state is poor; our white children are suffering for lack of education, and yet we have to spend a large amount of money on the negro schools. these convict labour contracts are a source of considerable revenue to the state; they make up, in fact, for most of the outlay for negro education--which i approve of, though i'm frank to say that so far i don't see much good that's come from it. this convict labour is humanely treated; mr. fetters has the contract for several counties, and anybody who knows mr. fetters knows that there's no kinder-hearted man in the south." the colonel disclaimed any intention of criticising. he had come back to his old home for a brief visit, to rest and to observe. he was willing to learn and anxious to please. the editor took copious notes of the interview, and upon his departure shook hands with the colonel cordially. the colonel had tactfully let his visitors talk, while he listened, or dropped a word here and there to draw them out. one fact was driven home to him by every one to whom he had spoken. fetters dominated the county and the town, and apparently the state. his name was on every lip. his influence was indispensable to every political aspirant. his acquaintance was something to boast of, and his good will held a promise of success. and the colonel had once kicked the honourable mr. fetters, then plain bill, in presence of an admiring audience, all the way down main street from the academy to the bank! bill had been, to all intents and purposes, a poor white boy; who could not have named with certainty his own grandfather. the honourable william was undoubtedly a man of great ability. had the colonel remained in his native state, would he have been able, he wondered, to impress himself so deeply upon the community? would blood have been of any advantage, under the changed conditions, or would it have been a drawback to one who sought political advancement? when the colonel was left alone, he went to look for phil, who was playing with the children of the landlord, in the hotel parlour. commending him to the care of the negro maid in charge of them, he left the hotel and called on several gentlemen whose cards he had found in his box at the clerk's desk. their stores and offices were within a short radius of the hotel. they were all glad to see him, and if there was any initial stiffness or shyness in the attitude of any one, it soon became the warmest cordiality under the influence of the colonel's simple and unostentatious bearing. if he compared the cut of their clothes or their beards to his own, to their disadvantage, or if he found their views narrow and provincial, he gave no sign--their hearts were warm and their welcome hearty. the colonel was not able to gather, from the conversation of his friends, that clarendon, or any one in the town--always excepting fetters, who did not live in the town, but merely overshadowed it--was especially prosperous. there were no mills or mines in the neighbourhood, except a few grist mills, and a sawmill. the bulk of the business consisted in supplying the needs of an agricultural population, and trading in their products. the cotton was baled and shipped to the north, and re-imported for domestic use, in the shape of sheeting and other stuffs. the corn was shipped to the north, and came back in the shape of corn meal and salt pork, the staple articles of diet. beefsteak and butter were brought from the north, at twenty-five and fifty cents a pound respectively. there were cotton merchants, and corn and feed merchants; there were dry-goods and grocery stores, drug stores and saloons--and more saloons--and the usual proportion of professional men. since clarendon was the county seat, there were of course a court house and a jail. there were churches enough, if all filled at once, to hold the entire population of the town, and preachers in proportion. the merchants, of whom a number were jewish, periodically went into bankruptcy; the majority of their customers did likewise, and thus a fellow-feeling was promoted, and the loss thrown back as far as possible. the lands of the large farmers were mostly mortgaged, either to fetters, or to the bank of which he was the chief stockholder, for all that could be borrowed on them; while the small farmers, many of whom were coloured, were practically tied to the soil by ropes of debt and chains of contract. every one the colonel met during the afternoon had heard of squire reddick's good joke of the morning. that he should have sold peter to the colonel for life was regarded as extremely clever. some of them knew old peter, and none of them had ever known any harm of him, and they were unanimous in their recognition and applause of the colonel's goodheartedness. moreover, it was an index of the colonel's views. he was one of them, by descent and early associations, but he had been away a long time, and they hadn't really known how much of a yankee he might have become. by his whimsical and kindly purchase of old peter's time--or of old peter, as they smilingly put it, he had shown his appreciation of the helplessness of the negroes, and of their proper relations to the whites. "what'll you do with him, colonel?" asked one gentleman. "an ole nigger like peter couldn't live in the col' no'th. you'll have to buy a place down here to keep 'im. they wouldn' let you own a nigger at the no'th." the remark, with the genial laugh accompanying it, was sounding in the colonel's ears, as, on the way back to the hotel, he stepped into the barber shop. the barber, who had also heard the story, was bursting with a desire to unbosom himself upon the subject. knowing from experience that white gentlemen, in their intercourse with coloured people, were apt to be, in the local phrase; "sometimey," or uncertain in their moods, he first tested, with a few remarks about the weather, the colonel's amiability, and finding him approachable, proved quite talkative and confidential. "you're colonel french, ain't you, suh?" he asked as he began applying the lather. "yes." "yes, suh; i had heard you wuz in town, an' i wuz hopin' you would come in to get shaved. an' w'en i heard 'bout yo' noble conduc' this mawnin' at squire reddick's i wanted you to come in all de mo', suh. ole uncle peter has had a lot er bad luck in his day, but he has fell on his feet dis time, suh, sho's you bawn. i'm right glad to see you, suh. i feels closer to you, suh, than i does to mos' white folks, because you know, colonel, i'm livin' in the same house you wuz bawn in." "oh, you are the nichols, are you, who bought our old place?" "yes, suh, william nichols, at yo' service, suh. i've own' de ole house fer twenty yeahs or mo' now, suh, an' we've b'en mighty comfo'table in it, suh. they is a spaciousness, an' a air of elegant sufficiency about the environs and the equipments of the ed'fice, suh, that does credit to the tas'e of the old aristocracy an' of you-all's family, an' teches me in a sof' spot. for i loves the aristocracy; an' i've often tol' my ol' lady, 'liza,' says i, 'ef i'd be'n bawn white i sho' would 'a' be'n a 'ristocrat. i feels it in my bones.'" while the barber babbled on with his shrewd flattery, which was sincere enough to carry a reasonable amount of conviction, the colonel listened with curiously mingled feelings. he recalled each plank, each pane of glass, every inch of wall, in the old house. no spot was without its associations. how many a brilliant scene of gaiety had taken place in the spacious parlour where bright eyes had sparkled, merry feet had twinkled, and young hearts beat high with love and hope and joy of living! and not only joy had passed that way, but sorrow. in the front upper chamber his mother had died. vividly he recalled, as with closed eyes he lay back under the barber's skilful hand, their last parting and his own poignant grief; for she had been not only his mother, but a woman of character, who commanded respect and inspired affection; a beautiful woman whom he had loved with a devotion that bordered on reverence. romance, too, had waved her magic wand over the old homestead. his memory smiled indulgently as he recalled one scene. in a corner of the broad piazza, he had poured out his youthful heart, one summer evening, in strains of passionate devotion, to his first love, a beautiful woman of thirty who was visiting his mother, and who had told him between smiles and tears, to be a good boy and wait a little longer, until he was sure of his own mind. even now, he breathed, in memory, the heavy odour of the magnolia blossoms which overhung the long wooden porch bench or "jogging board" on which the lady sat, while he knelt on the hard floor before her. he felt very young indeed after she had spoken, but her caressing touch upon his hair had so stirred his heart that his vanity had suffered no wound. why, the family had owned the house since they had owned the cemetery lot! it was hallowed by a hundred memories, and now!---- "will you have oil on yo' hair, suh, or bay rum?" "nichols," exclaimed the colonel, "i should like to buy back the old house. what do you want for it?" "why, colonel," stammered the barber, somewhat taken aback at the suddenness of the offer, "i hadn' r'ally thought 'bout sellin' it. you see, suh, i've had it now for twenty years, and it suits me, an' my child'en has growed up in it--an' it kind of has associations, suh." in principle the colonel was an ardent democrat; he believed in the rights of man, and extended the doctrine to include all who bore the human form. but in feeling he was an equally pronounced aristocrat. a servant's rights he would have defended to the last ditch; familiarity he would have resented with equal positiveness. something of this ancestral feeling stirred within him now. while nichols's position in reference to the house was, in principle, equally as correct as the colonel's own, and superior in point of time--since impressions, like photographs, are apt to grow dim with age, and nichols's were of much more recent date--the barber's display of sentiment only jarred the colonel's sensibilities and strengthened his desire. "i should advise you to speak up, nichols," said the colonel. "i had no notion of buying the place when i came in, and i may not be of the same mind to-morrow. name your own price, but now's your time." the barber caught his breath. such dispatch was unheard-of in clarendon. but nichols, a keen-eyed mulatto, was a man of thrift and good sense. he would have liked to consult his wife and children about the sale, but to lose an opportunity to make a good profit was to fly in the face of providence. the house was very old. it needed shingling and painting. the floors creaked; the plaster on the walls was loose; the chimneys needed pointing and the insurance was soon renewable. he owned a smaller house in which he could live. he had been told to name his price; it was as much better to make it too high than too low, as it was easier to come down than to go up. the would-be purchaser was a rich man; the diamond on the third finger of his left hand alone would buy a small house. "i think, suh," he said, at a bold venture, "that fo' thousand dollars would be 'bout right." "i'll take it," returned the colonel, taking out his pocket-book. "here's fifty dollars to bind the bargain. i'll write a receipt for you to sign." the barber brought pen, ink and paper, and restrained his excitement sufficiently to keep silent, while the colonel wrote a receipt embodying the terms of the contract, and signed it with a steady hand. "have the deed drawn up as soon as you like," said the colonel, as he left the shop, "and when it is done i'll give you a draft for the money." "yes, suh; thank you, suh, thank you, colonel." the barber had bought the house at a tax sale at a time of great financial distress, twenty years before, for five hundred dollars. he had made a very good sale, and he lost no time in having the deed drawn up. when the colonel reached the hotel, he found phil seated on the doorstep with a little bow-legged black boy and a little white dog. phil, who had a large heart, had fraternised with the boy and fallen in love with the dog. "papa," he said, "i want to buy this dog. his name is rover; he can shake hands, and i like him very much. this little boy wants ten cents for him, and i did not have the money. i asked him to wait until you came. may i buy him?" "certainly, phil. here, boy!" the colonel threw the black boy a silver dollar. phil took the dog under his arm and followed his father into the house, while the other boy, his glistening eyes glued to the coin in his hand, scampered off as fast as his limbs would carry him. he was back next morning with a pretty white kitten, but the colonel discouraged any further purchases for the time being. * * * * * "my dear laura," said the colonel when he saw his friend the same evening, "i have been in clarendon two days; and i have already bought a dog, a house and a man." miss laura was startled. "i don't understand," she said. the colonel proceeded to explain the transaction by which he had acquired, for life, the services of old peter. "i suppose it is the law," miss laura said, "but it seems hardly right. i had thought we were well rid of slavery. white men do not work any too much. old peter was not idle. he did odd jobs, when he could get them; he was polite and respectful; and it was an outrage to treat him so. i am glad you--hired him." "yes--hired him. moreover, laura. i have bought a house." "a house! then you are going to stay! i am so glad! we shall all be so glad. what house?" "the old place. i went into the barber shop. the barber complimented me on the family taste in architecture, and grew sentimental about _his_ associations with the house. this awoke _my_ associations, and the collocation jarred--i was selfish enough to want a monopoly of the associations. i bought the house from him before i left the shop." "but what will you do with it?" asked miss laura, puzzled. "you could never _live_ in it again--after a coloured family?" "why not? it is no less the old house because the barber has reared his brood beneath its roof. there were always negroes in it when we were there--the place swarmed with them. hammer and plane, soap and water, paper and paint, can make it new again. the barber, i understand, is a worthy man, and has reared a decent family. his daughter plays the piano, and sings: _'i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls, with vassals and serfs by my side.'_ i heard her as i passed there yesterday." miss laura gave an apprehensive start. "there were negroes in the house in the old days," he went on unnoticing, "and surely a good old house, gone farther astray than ours, might still be redeemed to noble ends. i shall renovate it and live in it while i am here, and at such times as i may return; or if i should tire of it, i can give it to the town for a school, or for a hospital--there is none here. i should like to preserve, so far as i may, the old associations--_my_ associations. the house might not fall again into hands as good as those of nichols, and i should like to know that it was devoted to some use that would keep the old name alive in the community." "i think, henry," said miss laura, "that if your visit is long enough, you will do more for the town than if you had remained here all your life. for you have lived in a wider world, and acquired a broader view; and you have learned new things without losing your love for the old." _ten_ the deed for the house was executed on friday, nichols agreeing to give possession within a week. the lavishness of the purchase price was a subject of much remark in the town, and nichols's good fortune was congratulated or envied, according to the temper of each individual. the colonel's action in old peter's case had made him a name for generosity. his reputation for wealth was confirmed by this reckless prodigality. there were some small souls, of course, among the lower whites who were heard to express disgust that, so far, only "niggers" had profited by the colonel's visit. the _anglo-saxon_, which came out saturday morning, gave a large amount of space to colonel french and his doings. indeed, the two compositors had remained up late the night before, setting up copy, and the pressman had not reached home until three o'clock; the kerosene oil in the office gave out, and it was necessary to rouse a grocer at midnight to replenish the supply--so far had the advent of colonel french affected the life of the town. the _anglo-saxon_ announced that colonel henry french, formerly of clarendon, who had won distinction in the confederate army, and since the war achieved fortune at the north, had returned to visit his birthplace and his former friends. the hope was expressed that colonel french, who had recently sold out to a syndicate his bagging mills in connecticut, might seek investments in the south, whose vast undeveloped resources needed only the fructifying flow of abundant capital to make it blossom like the rose. the new south, the _anglo-saxon_ declared, was happy to welcome capital and enterprise, and hoped that colonel french might find, in clarendon, an agreeable residence, and an attractive opening for his trained business energies. that something of the kind was not unlikely, might be gathered from the fact that colonel french had already repurchased, from william nichols, a worthy negro barber, the old french mansion, and had taken into his service a former servant of the family, thus foreshadowing a renewal of local ties and a prolonged residence. the conduct of the colonel in the matter of his old servant was warmly commended. the romantic circumstances of their meeting in the cemetery, and the incident in the justice's court, which were matters of public knowledge and interest, showed that in colonel french, should he decide to resume his residence in clarendon, his fellow citizens would find an agreeable neighbour, whose sympathies would be with the south in those difficult matters upon which north and south had so often been at variance, but upon which they were now rapidly becoming one in sentiment. the colonel, whose active mind could not long remain unoccupied, was busily engaged during the next week, partly in making plans for the renovation of the old homestead, partly in correspondence with kirby concerning the winding up of the loose ends of their former business. thus compelled to leave phil to the care of some one else, he had an excellent opportunity to utilise peter's services. when the old man, proud of his new clothes, and relieved of any responsibility for his own future, first appeared at the hotel, the colonel was ready with a commission. "now, peter," he said, "i'm going to prove my confidence in you, and test your devotion to the family, by giving you charge of phil. you may come and get him in the morning after breakfast--you can get your meals in the hotel kitchen--and take him to walk in the streets or the cemetery; but you must be very careful, for he is all i have in the world. in other words, peter, you are to take as good care of phil as you did of me when i was a little boy." "i'll look aftuh 'im, mars henry, lak he wuz a lump er pyo' gol'. me an' him will git along fine, won't we, little mars phil?" "yes, indeed," replied the child. "i like you, uncle peter, and i'll be glad to go with you." phil and the old man proved excellent friends, and the colonel, satisfied that the boy would be well cared for, gave his attention to the business of the hour. as soon as nichols moved out of the old house, there was a shaking of the dry bones among the mechanics of the town. a small army of workmen invaded the premises, and repairs and improvements of all descriptions went rapidly forward--much more rapidly than was usual in clarendon, for the colonel let all his work by contract, and by a system of forfeits and premiums kept it going at high pressure. in two weeks the house was shingled, painted inside and out, the fences were renewed, the outhouses renovated, and the grounds put in order. the stream of ready money thus put into circulation by the colonel, soon permeated all the channels of local enterprise. the barber, out of his profits, began the erection of a row of small houses for coloured tenants. this gave employment to masons and carpenters, and involved the sale and purchase of considerable building material. general trade felt the influence of the enhanced prosperity. groceries, dry-goods stores and saloons, did a thriving business. the ease with which the simply organised community responded to so slight an inflow of money and energy, was not without a pronounced influence upon the colonel's future conduct. when his house was finished, colonel french hired a housekeeper, a coloured maid, a cook and a coachman, bought several horses and carriages, and, having sent to new york for his books and pictures and several articles of furniture which he had stored there, began housekeeping in his own establishment. succumbing willingly to the charm of old associations, and entering more fully into the social life of the town, he began insensibly to think of clarendon as an established residence, where he would look forward to spending a certain portion of each year. the climate was good for phil, and to bring up the boy safely would be henceforth his chief concern in life. in the atmosphere of the old town the ideas of race and blood attained a new and larger perspective. it would be too bad for an old family, with a fine history, to die out, and phil was the latest of the line and the sole hope of its continuance. the colonel was conscious, somewhat guiltily conscious, that he had neglected the south and all that pertained to it--except the market for burlaps and bagging, which several southern sales agencies had attended to on behalf of his firm. he was aware, too, that he had felt a certain amount of contempt for its poverty, its quixotic devotion to lost causes and vanished ideals, and a certain disgusted impatience with a people who persistently lagged behind in the march of progress, and permitted a handful of upstart, blatant, self-seeking demagogues to misrepresent them, in congress and before the country, by intemperate language and persistent hostility to a humble but large and important part of their own constituency. but he was glad to find that this was the mere froth upon the surface, and that underneath it, deep down in the hearts of the people, the currents of life flowed, if less swiftly, not less purely than in more favoured places. the town needed an element, which he could in a measure supply by residing there, if for only a few weeks each year. and that element was some point of contact with the outer world and its more advanced thought. he might induce some of his northern friends to follow his example; there were many for whom the mild climate in winter and the restful atmosphere at all seasons of the year, would be a boon which correctly informed people would be eager to enjoy. of the extent to which the influence of the treadwell household had contributed to this frame of mind, the colonel was not conscious. he had received the freedom of the town, and many hospitable doors were open to him. as a single man, with an interesting little motherless child, he did not lack for the smiles of fair ladies, of which the town boasted not a few. but mrs. treadwell's home held the first place in his affections. he had been there first, and first impressions are vivid. they had been kind to phil, who loved them all, and insisted on peter's taking him there every day. the colonel found pleasure in miss laura's sweet simplicity and openness of character; to which graciella's vivacity and fresh young beauty formed an attractive counterpart; and mrs. treadwell's plaintive minor note had soothed and satisfied colonel french in this emotional indian summer which marked his reaction from a long and arduous business career. _eleven_ in addition to a pronounced attractiveness of form and feature, miss graciella treadwell possessed a fine complexion, a clear eye, and an elastic spirit. she was also well endowed with certain other characteristics of youth; among them ingenuousness, which, if it be a fault, experience is sure to correct; and impulsiveness, which even the school of hard knocks is not always able to eradicate, though it may chasten. to the good points of graciella, could be added an untroubled conscience, at least up to that period when colonel french dawned upon her horizon, and for some time thereafter. if she had put herself foremost in all her thoughts, it had been the unconscious egotism of youth, with no definite purpose of self-seeking. the things for which she wished most were associated with distant places, and her longing for them had never taken the form of envy of those around her. indeed envy is scarcely a vice of youth; it is a weed that flourishes best after the flower of hope has begun to wither. graciella's views of life, even her youthful romanticism were sane and healthful; but since she had not been tried in the furnace of experience, it could only be said of her that she belonged to the class, always large, but shifting like the sands of the sea, who have never been tempted, and therefore do not know whether they would sin or not. it was inevitable, with such a nature as graciella's, in such an embodiment, that the time should come, at some important crisis of her life, when she must choose between different courses; nor was it likely that she could avoid what comes sometime to all of us, the necessity of choosing between good and evil. her liking for colonel french had grown since their first meeting. he knew so many things that graciella wished to know, that when he came to the house she spent a great deal of time in conversation with him. her aunt laura was often busy with household duties, and graciella, as the least employed member of the family, was able to devote herself to his entertainment. colonel french, a comparatively idle man at this period, found her prattle very amusing. it was not unnatural for graciella to think that this acquaintance might be of future value; she could scarcely have thought otherwise. if she should ever go to new york, a rich and powerful friend would be well worth having. should her going there be delayed very long, she would nevertheless have a tie of friendship in the great city, and a source to which she might at any time apply for information. her fondness for colonel french's society was, however, up to a certain time, entirely spontaneous, and coloured by no ulterior purpose. her hope that his friendship might prove valuable was an afterthought. it was during this happy period that she was standing, one day, by the garden gate, when colonel french passed by in his fine new trap, driving a spirited horse; and it was with perfect candour that she waved her hand to him familiarly. "would you like a drive?" he called. "wouldn't i?" she replied. "wait till i tell the folks." she was back in a moment, and ran out of the gate and down the steps. the colonel gave her his hand and she sprang up beside him. they drove through the cemetery, and into the outlying part of the town, where there were some shaded woodland stretches. it was a pleasant afternoon; cloudy enough to hide the sun. graciella's eyes sparkled and her cheek glowed with pleasure, while her light brown hair blown about her face by the breeze of their rapid motion was like an aureole. "colonel french," she said as they were walking the horse up a hill, "are you going to give a house warming?" "why," he said, "i hadn't thought of it. ought i to give a house warming?" "you surely ought. everybody will want to see your house while it is new and bright. you certainly ought to have a house warming." "very well," said the colonel. "i make it a rule to shirk no plain duty. if i _ought_ to have a house warming, i _will_ have it. and you shall be my social mentor. what sort of a party shall it be?" "why not make it," she said brightly, "just such a party as your father would have had. you have the old house, and the old furniture. give an old-time party." * * * * * in fitting up his house the colonel had been animated by the same feeling that had moved him to its purchase. he had endeavoured to restore, as far as possible, the interior as he remembered it in his childhood. at his father's death the furniture had been sold and scattered. he had been able, through the kindly interest of his friends, to recover several of the pieces. others that were lost past hope, had been reproduced from their description. among those recovered was a fine pair of brass andirons, and his father's mahogany desk, which had been purchased by major treadwell at the sale of the elder french's effects. miss laura had been the first to speak of the desk. "henry," she had said, "the house would not be complete without your father's desk. it was my father's too, but yours is the prior claim. take it as a gift from me." he protested, and would have paid for it liberally, and, when she would take nothing, declared he would not accept it on such terms. "you are selfish, henry," she replied, with a smile. "you have brought a new interest into our lives, and into the town, and you will not let us make you any return." "but i am taking from you something you need," he replied, "and for which you paid. when major treadwell bought it, it was merely second-hand furniture, sold under the hammer. now it has the value of an antique--it is a fine piece and could be sold in new york for a large sum." "you must take it for nothing, or not at all," she replied firmly. "it is highway robbery," he said, and could not make up his mind to yield. next day, when the colonel went home, after having been down town an hour, he found the desk in his library. the treadwell ladies had corrupted peter, who had told them when the colonel would be out of the house and had brought a cart to take the desk away. when the house was finished, the interior was simple but beautiful. it was furnished in the style that had been prevalent fifty years before. there were some modern additions in the line of comfort and luxury--soft chairs, fine rugs, and a few choice books and pictures--for the colonel had not attempted to conform his own tastes and habits to those of his father. he had some visitors, mostly gentlemen, and there was, as graciella knew, a lively curiosity among the ladies to see the house and its contents. the suggestion of a house warming had come originally from mrs. treadwell; but graciella had promptly made it her own and conveyed it to the colonel. * * * * * "a bright idea," he replied. "by all means let it be an old-time party--say such a party as my father would have given, or my grandfather. and shall we invite the old people?" "well," replied graciella judicially, "don't have them so old that they can't talk or hear, and must be fed with a spoon. if there were too many old, or not enough young people, i shouldn't enjoy myself." "i suppose i seem awfully old to you," said the colonel, parenthetically. "oh, i don't know," replied graciella, giving him a frankly critical look. "when you first came i thought you _were_ rather old--you see, you are older than aunt laura; but you seem to have grown younger--it's curious, but it's true--and now i hardly think of you as old at all." the colonel was secretly flattered. the wisest man over forty likes to be thought young. "very well," he said, "you shall select the guests." "at an old-time party," continued graciella, thoughtfully, "the guests should wear old-time clothes. in grandmother's time the ladies wore long flowing sleeves----" "and hoopskirts," said the colonel. "and their hair down over their ears." "or in ringlets." "yes, it is all in grandmother's bound volume of _the ladies' book_," said graciella. "i was reading it only last week." "my mother took it," returned the colonel. "then you must have read 'letters from a pastry cook,' by n.p. willis when they came out?" "no," said the colonel with a sigh, "i missed that. i--i wasn't able to read then." graciella indulged in a brief mental calculation. "why, of course not," she laughed, "you weren't even born when they came out! but they're fine; i'll lend you our copy. you must ask all the girls to dress as their mothers and grandmothers used to dress. make the requirement elastic, because some of them may not have just the things for one particular period. i'm all right. we have a cedar chest in the attic, full of old things. won't i look funny in a hoop skirt?" "you'll look charming in anything," said the colonel. it was a pleasure to pay graciella compliments, she so frankly enjoyed them; and the colonel loved to make others happy. in his new york firm mr. french was always ready to consider a request for an advance of salary; kirby had often been obliged to play the wicked partner in order to keep expenses down to a normal level. at parties débutantes had always expected mr. french to say something pleasant to them, and had rarely been disappointed. the subject of the party was resumed next day at mrs. treadwell's, where the colonel went in the afternoon to call. "an old-time party," declared the colonel, "should have old-time amusements. we must have a fiddler, a black fiddler, to play quadrilles and the virginia reel." "i don't know where you'll find one," said miss laura. "i'll ask peter," replied the colonel. "he ought to know." peter was in the yard with phil. "lawd, mars henry!" said peter, "fiddlers is mighty sca'ce dese days, but i reckon ole 'poleon campbell kin make you shake yo' feet yit, ef ole man rheumatiz ain' ketched holt er 'im too tight." "and i will play a minuet on your new piano," said miss laura, "and teach the girls beforehand how to dance it. there should be cards for those who do not dance." so the party was arranged. miss laura, graciella and the colonel made out the list of guests. the invitations were duly sent out for an old-time party, with old-time costumes--any period between and permissible--and old-time entertainment. the announcement created some excitement in social circles, and, like all of colonel french's enterprises at that happy period of his home-coming, brought prosperity in its train. dressmakers were kept busy making and altering costumes for the ladies. old archie christmas, the mulatto tailor, sole survivor of a once flourishing craft--mr. cohen's universal emporium supplied the general public with ready-made clothing, and, twice a year, the travelling salesman of a new york tailoring firm visited clarendon with samples of suitings, and took orders and measurements--old archie christmas, who had not made a full suit of clothes for years, was able, by making and altering men's garments for the colonel's party, to earn enough to keep himself alive for another twelve months. old peter was at archie's shop one day, and they were talking about old times--good old times--for to old men old times are always good times, though history may tell another tale. "yo' boss is a godsen' ter dis town," declared old archie, "he sho' is. de w'ite folks says de young niggers is triflin' 'cause dey don' larn how to do nothin'. but what is dere fer 'em to do? i kin 'member when dis town was full er black an' yaller carpenters an' 'j'iners, blacksmiths, wagon makers, shoemakers, tinners, saddlers an' cab'net makers. now all de fu'nicher, de shoes, de wagons, de buggies, de tinware, de hoss shoes, de nails to fasten 'em on wid--yas, an' fo' de lawd! even de clothes dat folks wears on dere backs, is made at de norf, an' dere ain' nothin' lef' fer de ole niggers ter do, let 'lone de young ones. yo' boss is de right kin'; i hopes he'll stay 'roun' here till you an' me dies." "i hopes wid you," said peter fervently, "i sho' does! yas indeed i does." peter was entirely sincere. never in his life had he worn such good clothes, eaten such good food, or led so easy a life as in the colonel's service. even the old times paled by comparison with this new golden age; and the long years of poverty and hard luck that stretched behind him seemed to the old man like a distant and unpleasant dream. * * * * * the party came off at the appointed time, and was a distinct success. graciella had made a raid on the cedar chest, and shone resplendent in crinoline, curls, and a patterned muslin. together with miss laura and ben dudley, who had come in from mink run for the party, she was among the first to arrive. miss laura's costume, which belonged to an earlier date, was in keeping with her quiet dignity. ben wore a suit of his uncle's, which the care of old aunt viney had preserved wonderfully well from moth and dust through the years. the men wore stocks and neckcloths, bell-bottomed trousers with straps under their shoes, and frock coats very full at the top and buttoned tightly at the waist. old peter, in a long blue coat with brass buttons, acted as butler, helped by a young negro who did the heavy work. miss laura's servant catherine had rallied from her usual gloom and begged the privilege of acting as lady's maid. 'poleon campbell, an old-time negro fiddler, whom peter had resurrected from some obscure cabin, oiled his rheumatic joints, tuned his fiddle and rosined his bow, and under the inspiration of good food and drink and liberal wage, played through his whole repertory, which included such ancient favourites as, "fishers' hornpipe," "soldiers' joy," "chicken in the bread-tray," and the "campbells are coming." miss laura played a minuet, which the young people danced. major mclean danced the highland fling, and some of the ladies sang old-time songs, and war lyrics, which stirred the heart and moistened the eyes. little phil, in a child's costume of , copied from _the ladies' book_, was petted and made much of for several hours, until he became sleepy and was put to bed. "graciella," said the colonel to his young friend, during the evening, "our party is a great success. it was your idea. when it is all over, i want to make you a present in token of my gratitude. you shall select it yourself; it shall be whatever you say." graciella was very much elated at this mark of the colonel's friendship. she did not dream of declining the proffered token, and during the next dance her mind was busily occupied with the question of what it should be--a ring, a bracelet, a bicycle, a set of books? she needed a dozen things, and would have liked to possess a dozen others. she had not yet decided, when ben came up to claim her for a dance. on his appearance, she was struck by a sudden idea. colonel french was a man of affairs. in new york he must have a wide circle of influential acquaintances. old mr. dudley was in failing health; he might die at any time, and ben would then be free to seek employment away from clarendon. what better place for him than new york? with a position there, he would be able to marry her, and take her there to live. this, she decided, should be her request of the colonel--that he should help her lover to a place in new york. her conclusion was really magnanimous. she might profit by it in the end, but ben would be the first beneficiary. it was an act of self-denial, for she was giving up a definite and certain good for a future contingency. she was therefore in a pleasant glow of self-congratulatory mood when she accidentally overheard a conversation not intended for her ears. she had run out to the dining-room to speak to the housekeeper about the refreshments, and was returning through the hall, when she stopped for a moment to look into the library, where those who did not care to dance were playing cards. beyond the door, with their backs turned toward her, sat two ladies engaged in conversation. one was a widow, a well-known gossip, and the other a wife known to be unhappily married. they were no longer young, and their views were marked by the cynicism of seasoned experience. "oh, there's no doubt about it," said the widow. "he came down here to find a wife. he tried a yankee wife, and didn't like the breed; and when he was ready for number two, he came back south." "he showed good taste," said the other. "that depends," said the widow, "upon whom he chooses. he can probably have his pick." "no doubt," rejoined the married lady, with a touch of sarcasm, which the widow, who was still under forty, chose to ignore. "i wonder which is it?" said the widow. "i suppose it's laura; he spends a great deal of time there, and she's devoted to his little boy, or pretends to be." "don't fool yourself," replied the other earnestly, and not without a subdued pleasure in disabusing the widow's mind. "don't fool yourself, my dear. a man of his age doesn't marry a woman of laura treadwell's. believe me, it's the little one." "but she has a beau. there's that tall nephew of old mr. dudley's. he's been hanging around her for a year or two. he looks very handsome to-night." "ah, well, she'll dispose of him fast enough when the time comes. he's only a poor stick, the last of a good stock run to seed. why, she's been pointedly setting her cap at the colonel all the evening. he's perfectly infatuated; he has danced with her three times to once with laura." "it's sad to see a man make a fool of himself," sighed the widow, who was not without some remnants of beauty and a heart still warm and willing. "children are very forward nowadays." "there's no fool like an old fool, my dear," replied the other with the cheerful philosophy of the miserable who love company. "these fair women are always selfish and calculating; and she's a bold piece. my husband says colonel french is worth at least a million. a young wife, who understands her business, could get anything from him that money can buy." "what a pity, my dear," said the widow, with a spice of malice, seeing her own opportunity, "what a pity that you were older than your husband! well, it will be fortunate for the child if she marries an old man, for beauty of her type fades early." old 'poleon's fiddle, to which one of the guests was improvising an accompaniment on the colonel's new piano, had struck up "camptown races," and the rollicking lilt of the chorus was resounding through the house. _"gwine ter run all night, gwine ter run all day, i'll bet my money on de bobtail nag, oh, who's gwine ter bet on de bay?"_ ben ran out into the hall. graciella had changed her position and was sitting alone, perturbed in mind. "come on, graciella, let's get into the virginia reel; it's the last one." graciella obeyed mechanically. ben, on the contrary, was unusually animated. he had enjoyed the party better than any he had ever attended. he had not been at many. colonel french, who had entered with zest into the spirit of the occasion, participated in the reel. every time graciella touched his hand, it was with the consciousness of a new element in their relations. until then her friendship for colonel french had been perfectly ingenuous. she had liked him because he was interesting, and good to her in a friendly way. now she realised that he was a millionaire, eligible for marriage, from whom a young wife, if she understood her business, might secure the gratification of every wish. the serpent had entered eden. graciella had been tendered the apple. she must choose now whether she would eat. when the party broke up, the colonel was congratulated on every hand. he had not only given his guests a delightful evening. he had restored an ancient landmark; had recalled, to a people whose life lay mostly in the past, the glory of days gone by, and proved his loyalty to their cherished traditions. ben dudley walked home with graciella. miss laura went ahead of them with catherine, who was cheerful in the possession of a substantial reward for her services. "you're not sayin' much to-night," said ben to his sweetheart, as they walked along under the trees. graciella did not respond. "you're not sayin' much to-night," he repeated. "yes," returned graciella abstractedly, "it was a lovely party!" ben said no more. the house warming had also given him food for thought. he had noticed the colonel's attentions to graciella, and had heard them remarked upon. colonel french was more than old enough to be graciella's father; but he was rich. graciella was poor and ambitious. ben's only assets were youth and hope, and priority in the field his only claim. miss laura and catherine had gone in, and when the young people came to the gate, the light still shone through the open door. "graciella," he said, taking her hand in his as they stood a moment, "will you marry me?" "still harping on the same old string," she said, withdrawing her hand. "i'm tired now, ben, too tired to talk foolishness." "very well, i'll save it for next time. good night, sweetheart." she had closed the gate between them. he leaned over it to kiss her, but she evaded his caress and ran lightly up the steps. "good night, ben," she called. "good night, sweetheart," he replied, with a pang of foreboding. in after years, when the colonel looked back upon his residence in clarendon, this seemed to him the golden moment. there were other times that stirred deeper emotions--the lust of battle, the joy of victory, the chagrin of defeat--moments that tried his soul with tests almost too hard. but, thus far, his new career in clarendon had been one of pleasant experiences only, and this unclouded hour was its fitting crown. _twelve_ whenever the colonel visited the cemetery, or took a walk in that pleasant quarter of the town, he had to cross the bridge from which was visible the site of the old eureka cotton mill of his boyhood, and it was not difficult to recall that it had been, before the war, a busy hive of industry. on a narrow and obscure street, little more than an alley, behind the cemetery, there were still several crumbling tenements, built for the mill operatives, but now occupied by a handful of abjectly poor whites, who kept body and soul together through the doubtful mercy of god and a small weekly dole from the poormaster. the mill pond, while not wide-spreading, had extended back some distance between the sloping banks, and had furnished swimming holes, fishing holes, and what was more to the point at present, a very fine head of water, which, as it struck the colonel more forcibly each time he saw it, offered an opportunity that the town could ill afford to waste. shrewd minds in the cotton industry had long ago conceived the idea that the south, by reason of its nearness to the source of raw material, its abundant water power, and its cheaper labour, partly due to the smaller cost of living in a mild climate, and the absence of labour agitation, was destined in time to rival and perhaps displace new england in cotton manufacturing. many southern mills were already in successful operation. but from lack of capital, or lack of enterprise, nothing of the kind had ever been undertaken in clarendon although the town was the centre of a cotton-raising district, and there was a mill in an adjoining county. men who owned land mortgaged it for money to raise cotton; men who rented land from others mortgaged their crops for the same purpose. it was easy to borrow money in clarendon--on adequate security--at ten per cent., and mr. fetters, the magnate of the county, was always ready, the colonel had learned, to accommodate the needy who could give such security. he had also discovered that fetters was acquiring the greater part of the land. many a farmer imagined that he owned a farm, when he was, actually, merely a tenant of fetters. occasionally fetters foreclosed a mortgage, when there was plainly no more to be had from it, and bought in the land, which he added to his own holdings in fee. but as a rule, he found it more profitable to let the borrower retain possession and pay the interest as nearly as he could; the estate would ultimately be good for the debt, if the debtor did not live too long--worry might be counted upon to shorten his days--and the loan, with interest, could be more conveniently collected at his death. to bankrupt an estate was less personal than to break an individual; and widows, and orphans still in their minority, did not vote and knew little about business methods. to a man of action, like the colonel, the frequent contemplation of the unused water power, which might so easily be harnessed to the car of progress, gave birth, in time, to a wish to see it thus utilised, and the further wish to stir to labour the idle inhabitants of the neighbourhood. in all work the shiftless methods of an older generation still survived. no one could do anything in a quarter of an hour. nearly all tasks were done by negroes who had forgotten how to work, or by white people who had never learned. but the colonel had already seen the reviving effect of a little money, directed by a little energy. and so he planned to build a new and larger cotton mill where the old had stood; to shake up this lethargic community; to put its people to work, and to teach them habits of industry, efficiency and thrift. this, he imagined, would be pleasant occupation for his vacation, as well as a true missionary enterprise--a contribution to human progress. such a cotton mill would require only an inconsiderable portion of his capital, the body of which would be left intact for investment elsewhere; it would not interfere at all with his freedom of movement; for, once built, equipped and put in operation under a competent manager, it would no more require his personal oversight than had the new england bagging mills which his firm had conducted for so many years. from impulse to action was, for the colonel's temperament, an easy step, and he had scarcely moved into his house, before he quietly set about investigating the title to the old mill site. it had been forfeited many years before, he found, to the state, for non-payment of taxes. there having been no demand for the property at any time since, it had never been sold, but held as a sort of lapsed asset, subject to sale, but open also, so long as it remained unsold, to redemption upon the payment of back taxes and certain fees. the amount of these was ascertained; it was considerably less than the fair value of the property, which was therefore redeemable at a profit. the owners, however, were widely scattered, for the mill had belonged to a joint-stock company composed of a dozen or more members. colonel french was pleasantly surprised, upon looking up certain musty public records in the court house, to find that he himself was the owner, by inheritance, of several shares of stock which had been overlooked in the sale of his father's property. retaining the services of judge bullard, the leading member of the clarendon bar, he set out quietly to secure options upon the other shares. this involved an extensive correspondence, which occupied several weeks. for it was necessary first to find, and then to deal with the scattered representatives of the former owners. _thirteen_ in engaging judge bullard, the colonel had merely stated to the lawyer that he thought of building a cotton-mill, but had said nothing about his broader plan. it was very likely, he recognised, that the people of clarendon might not relish the thought that they were regarded as fit subjects for reform. he knew that they were sensitive, and quick to resent criticism. if some of them might admit, now and then, among themselves, that the town was unprogressive, or declining, there was always some extraneous reason given--the war, the carpetbaggers, the fifteenth amendment, the negroes. perhaps not one of them had ever quite realised the awful handicap of excuses under which they laboured. effort was paralysed where failure was so easily explained. that the condition of the town might be due to causes within itself--to the general ignorance, self-satisfaction and lack of enterprise, had occurred to only a favoured few; the younger of these had moved away, seeking a broader outlook elsewhere; while those who remained were not yet strong enough nor brave enough to break with the past and urge new standards of thought and feeling. so the colonel kept his larger purpose to himself until a time when greater openness would serve to advance it. thus judge bullard, not being able to read his client's mind, assumed very naturally that the contemplated enterprise was to be of a purely commercial nature, directed to making the most money in the shortest time. "some day, colonel," he said, with this thought in mind, "you might get a few pointers by running over to carthage and looking through the excelsior mills. they get more work there for less money than anywhere else in the south. last year they declared a forty per cent. dividend. i know the superintendent, and will give you a letter of introduction, whenever you like." the colonel bore the matter in mind, and one morning, a day or two after his party, set out by train, about eight o'clock in the morning, for carthage, armed with a letter from the lawyer to the superintendent of the mills. the town was only forty miles away; but a cow had been caught in a trestle across a ditch, and some time was required for the train crew to release her. another stop was made in the middle of a swamp, to put off a light mulatto who had presumed on his complexion to ride in the white people's car. he had been successfully spotted, but had impudently refused to go into the stuffy little closet provided at the end of the car for people of his class. he was therefore given an opportunity to reflect, during a walk along the ties, upon his true relation to society. another stop was made for a gentleman who had sent a negro boy ahead to flag the train and notify the conductor that he would be along in fifteen or twenty minutes with a couple of lady passengers. a hot journal caused a further delay. these interruptions made it eleven o'clock, a three-hours' run, before the train reached carthage. the town was much smaller than clarendon. it comprised a public square of several acres in extent, on one side of which was the railroad station, and on another the court house. one of the remaining sides was occupied by a row of shops; the fourth straggled off in various directions. the whole wore a neglected air. bales of cotton goods were piled on the platform, apparently just unloaded from wagons standing near. several white men and negroes stood around and stared listlessly at the train and the few who alighted from it. inquiring its whereabouts from one of the bystanders, the colonel found the nearest hotel--a two-story frame structure, with a piazza across the front, extending to the street line. there was a buggy standing in front, its horse hitched to one of the piazza posts. steps led up from the street, but one might step from the buggy to the floor of the piazza, which was without a railing. the colonel mounted the steps and passed through the door into a small room, which he took for the hotel office, since there were chairs standing against the walls, and at one side a table on which a register lay open. the only person in the room, beside himself, was a young man seated near the door, with his feet elevated to the back of another chair, reading a newspaper from which he did not look up. the colonel, who wished to make some inquiries and to register for the dinner which he might return to take, looked around him for the clerk, or some one in authority, but no one was visible. while waiting, he walked over to the desk and turned over the leaves of the dog-eared register. he recognised only one name--that of mr. william fetters, who had registered there only a day or two before. no one had yet appeared. the young man in the chair was evidently not connected with the establishment. his expression was so forbidding, not to say arrogant, and his absorption in the newspaper so complete, that the colonel, not caring to address him, turned to the right and crossed a narrow hall to a room beyond, evidently a parlour, since it was fitted up with a faded ingrain carpet, a centre table with a red plush photograph album, and several enlarged crayon portraits hung near the ceiling--of the kind made free of charge in chicago from photographs, provided the owner orders a frame from the company. no one was in the room, and the colonel had turned to leave it, when he came face to face with a lady passing through the hall. "are you looking for some one?" she asked amiably, having noted his air of inquiry. "why, yes, madam," replied the colonel, removing his hat, "i was looking for the proprietor--or the clerk." "why," she replied, smiling, "that's the proprietor sitting there in the office. i'm going in to speak to him, and you can get his attention at the same time." their entrance did not disturb the young man's reposeful attitude, which remained as unchanged as that of a graven image; nor did he exhibit any consciousness at their presence. "i want a clean towel, mr. dickson," said the lady sharply. the proprietor looked up with an annoyed expression. "huh?" he demanded, in a tone of resentment mingled with surprise. "a clean towel, if you please." the proprietor said nothing more to the lady, nor deigned to notice the colonel at all, but lifted his legs down from the back of the chair, rose with a sigh, left the room and returned in a few minutes with a towel, which he handed ungraciously to the lady. then, still paying no attention to the colonel, he resumed his former attitude, and returned to the perusal of his newspaper--certainly the most unconcerned of hotel keepers, thought the colonel, as a vision of spacious lobbies, liveried porters, and obsequious clerks rose before his vision. he made no audible comment, however, but merely stared at the young man curiously, left the hotel, and inquired of a passing negro the whereabouts of the livery stable. a few minutes later he found the place without difficulty, and hired a horse and buggy. while the stable boy was putting the harness on the horse, the colonel related to the liveryman, whose manner was energetic and business-like, and who possessed an open countenance and a sympathetic eye, his experience at the hotel. "oh, yes," was the reply, "that's lee dickson all over. that hotel used to be kep' by his mother. she was a widow woman, an' ever since she died, a couple of months ago, lee's been playin' the big man, spendin' the old lady's money, and enjoyin' himself. did you see that hoss'n'-buggy hitched in front of the ho-tel?" "yes." "well, that's lee's buggy. he hires it from us. we send it up every mornin' at nine o'clock, when lee gits up. when he's had his breakfas' he comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives to the barber-shop nex' door, gits out, goes in an' gits shaved, comes out, climbs in the buggy, an' drives back to the ho-tel. then he talks to the cook, comes out an' gits in the buggy, an' drives half-way 'long that side of the square, about two hund'ed feet, to the grocery sto', and orders half a pound of coffee or a pound of lard, or whatever the ho-tel needs for the day, then comes out, climbs in the buggy and drives back. when the mail comes in, if he's expectin' any mail, he drives 'cross the square to the post-office, an' then drives back to the ho-tel. there's other lazy men roun' here, but lee dickson takes the cake. however, it's money in our pocket, as long as it keeps up." "i shouldn't think it would keep up long," returned the colonel. "how can such a hotel prosper?" "it don't!" replied the liveryman, "but it's the best in town." "i don't see how there could be a worse," said the colonel. "there couldn't--it's reached bed rock." the buggy was ready by this time, and the colonel set out, with a black driver, to find the excelsior cotton mills. they proved to be situated in a desolate sandhill region several miles out of town. the day was hot; the weather had been dry, and the road was deep with a yielding white sand into which the buggy tires sank. the horse soon panted with the heat and the exertion, and the colonel, dressed in brown linen, took off his hat and mopped his brow with his handkerchief. the driver, a taciturn negro--most of the loquacious, fun-loving negroes of the colonel's youth seemed to have disappeared--flicked a horsefly now and then, with his whip, from the horse's sweating back. the first sign of the mill was a straggling group of small frame houses, built of unpainted pine lumber. the barren soil, which would not have supported a firm lawn, was dotted with scraggy bunches of wiregrass. in the open doorways, through which the flies swarmed in and out, grown men, some old, some still in the prime of life, were lounging, pipe in mouth, while old women pottered about the yards, or pushed back their sunbonnets to stare vacantly at the advancing buggy. dirty babies were tumbling about the cabins. there was a lean and listless yellow dog or two for every baby; and several slatternly black women were washing clothes on the shady sides of the houses. a general air of shiftlessness and squalor pervaded the settlement. there was no sign of joyous childhood or of happy youth. a turn in the road brought them to the mill, the distant hum of which had already been audible. it was a two-story brick structure with many windows, altogether of the cheapest construction, but situated on the bank of a stream and backed by a noble water power. they drew up before an open door at one corner of the building. the colonel alighted, entered, and presented his letter of introduction. the superintendent glanced at him keenly, but, after reading the letter, greeted him with a show of cordiality, and called a young man to conduct the visitor through the mill. the guide seemed in somewhat of a hurry, and reticent of speech; nor was the noise of the machinery conducive to conversation. some of the colonel's questions seemed unheard, and others were imperfectly answered. yet the conditions disclosed by even such an inspection were, to the colonel, a revelation. through air thick with flying particles of cotton, pale, anæmic young women glanced at him curiously, with lack-luster eyes, or eyes in which the gleam was not that of health, or hope, or holiness. wizened children, who had never known the joys of childhood, worked side by side at long rows of spools to which they must give unremitting attention. most of the women were using snuff, the odour of which was mingled with the flying particles of cotton, while the floor was thickly covered with unsightly brown splotches. when they had completed the tour of the mills and returned to the office, the colonel asked some questions of the manager about the equipment, the output, and the market, which were very promptly and courteously answered. to those concerning hours and wages the replies were less definite, and the colonel went away impressed as much by what he had not learned as by what he had seen. while settling his bill at the livery stable, he made further inquiries. "lord, yes," said the liveryman in answer to one of them, "i can tell you all you want to know about that mill. talk about nigger slavery--the niggers never were worked like white women and children are in them mills. they work 'em from twelve to sixteen hours a day for from fifteen to fifty cents. them triflin' old pinelanders out there jus' lay aroun' and raise children for the mills, and then set down and chaw tobacco an' live on their children's wages. it's a sin an' a shame, an' there ought to be a law ag'inst it." the conversation brought out the further fact that vice was rampant among the millhands. "an' it ain't surprisin'," said the liveryman, with indignation tempered by the easy philosophy of hot climates. "shut up in jail all day, an' half the night, never breathin' the pyo' air, or baskin' in god's bright sunshine; with no books to read an' no chance to learn, who can blame the po'r things if they have a little joy in the only way they know?" "who owns the mill?" asked the colonel. "it belongs to a company," was the reply, "but old bill fetters owns a majority of the stock--durn, him!" the colonel felt a thrill of pleasure--he had met a man after his own heart. "you are not one of fetters's admirers then?" he asked. "not by a durn sight," returned the liveryman promptly. "when i look at them white gals, that ought to be rosy-cheeked an' bright-eyed an' plump an' hearty an' happy, an' them po' little child'en that never get a chance to go fishin' or swimmin' or to learn anything, i allow i wouldn' mind if the durned old mill would catch fire an' burn down. they work children there from six years old up, an' half of 'em die of consumption before they're grown. it's a durned outrage, an' if i ever go to the legislatur', for which i mean to run, i'll try to have it stopped." "i hope you will be elected," said the colonel. "what time does the train go back to clarendon?" "four o'clock, if she's on time--but it may be five." "do you suppose i can get dinner at the hotel?" "oh, yes! i sent word up that i 'lowed you might be back, so they'll be expectin' you." the proprietor was at the desk when the colonel went in. he wrote his name on the book, and was served with an execrable dinner. he paid his bill of half a dollar to the taciturn proprietor, and sat down on the shady porch to smoke a cigar. the proprietor, having put the money in his pocket, came out and stepped into his buggy, which was still standing alongside the piazza. the colonel watched him drive a stone's throw to a barroom down the street, get down, go in, come out a few minutes later, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, climb into the buggy, drive back, step out and re-enter the hotel. it was yet an hour to train time, and the colonel, to satisfy an impulse of curiosity, strolled over to the court house, which could be seen across the square, through the trees. requesting leave of the clerk in the county recorder's office to look at the records of mortgages, he turned the leaves over and found that a large proportion of the mortgages recently recorded--among them one on the hotel property--had been given to fetters. the whistle of the train was heard in the distance as the colonel recrossed the square. glancing toward the hotel, he saw the landlord come out, drive across the square to the station, and sit there until the passengers had alighted. to a drummer with a sample case, he pointed carelessly across the square to the hotel, but made no movement to take the baggage; and as the train moved off, the colonel, looking back, saw him driving back to the hotel. fetters had begun to worry the colonel. he had never seen the man, and yet his influence was everywhere. he seemed to brood over the country round about like a great vampire bat, sucking the life-blood of the people. his touch meant blight. as soon as a fetters mortgage rested on a place, the property began to run down; for why should the nominal owner keep up a place which was destined in the end to go to fetters? the colonel had heard grewsome tales of fetters's convict labour plantation; he had seen the operation of fetters's cotton-mill, where white humanity, in its fairest and tenderest form, was stunted and blighted and destroyed; and he had not forgotten the scene in the justice's office. the fighting blood of the old frenches was stirred. the colonel's means were abundant; he did not lack the sinews of war. clarendon offered a field for profitable investment. he would like to do something for humanity, something to offset fetters and his kind, who were preying upon the weaknesses of the people, enslaving white and black alike. in a great city, what he could give away would have been but a slender stream, scarcely felt in the rivers of charity poured into the ocean of want; and even his considerable wealth would have made him only a small stockholder in some great aggregation of capital. in this backward old town, away from the great centres of commerce, and scarcely feeling their distant pulsebeat, except when some daring speculator tried for a brief period to corner the cotton market, he could mark with his own eyes the good he might accomplish. it required no great stretch of imagination to see the town, a few years hence, a busy hive of industry, where no man, and no woman obliged to work, need be without employment at fair wages; where the trinity of peace, prosperity and progress would reign supreme; where men like fetters and methods like his would no longer be tolerated. the forces of enlightenment, set in motion by his aid, and supported by just laws, should engage the retrograde forces represented by fetters. communities, like men, must either grow or decay, advance or decline; they could not stand still. clarendon was decaying. fetters was the parasite which, by sending out its roots toward rich and poor alike, struck at both extremes of society, and was choking the life of the town like a rank and deadly vine. the colonel could, if need be, spare the year or two of continuous residence needed to rescue clarendon from the grasp of fetters. the climate agreed with phil, who was growing like a weed; and the colonel could easily defer for a little while his scheme of travel, and the further disposition of his future. so, when he reached home that night, he wrote an answer to a long and gossipy letter received from kirby about that time, in which the latter gave a detailed account of what was going on in the colonel's favourite club and among their mutual friends, and reported progress in the search for some venture worthy of their mettle. the colonel replied that phil and he were well, that he was interesting himself in a local enterprise which would certainly occupy him for some months, and that he would not visit new york during the summer, unless it were to drop in for a day or two on business and return immediately. a letter from mrs. jerviss, received about the same time, was less easily disposed of. she had learned, from kirby, of the chivalrous manner in which mr. french had protected her interests and spared her feelings in the fight with consolidated bagging. she had not been able, she said, to thank him adequately before he went away, because she had not known how much she owed him; nor could she fittingly express herself on paper. she could only renew her invitation to him to join her house party at newport in july. the guests would be friends of his--she would be glad to invite any others that he might suggest. she would then have the opportunity to thank him in person. the colonel was not unmoved by this frank and grateful letter, and he knew perfectly well what reward he might claim from her gratitude. had the letter come a few weeks sooner, it might have had a different answer. but, now, after the first pang of regret, his only problem was how to refuse gracefully her offered hospitality. he was sorry, he replied, not to be able to join her house party that summer, but during the greater part of it he would be detained in the south by certain matters into which he had been insensibly drawn. as for her thanks, she owed him none; he had only done his duty, and had already been thanked too much. so thoroughly had colonel french entered into the spirit of his yet undefined contest with fetters, that his life in new york, save when these friendly communications recalled it, seemed far away, and of slight retrospective interest. every one knows of the "blind spot" in the field of vision. new york was for the time being the colonel's blind spot. that it might reassert its influence was always possible, but for the present new york was of no more interest to him than canton or bogota. having revelled for a few pleasant weeks in memories of a remoter past, the reaction had projected his thoughts forward into the future. his life in new york, and in the clarendon of the present--these were mere transitory embodiments; he lived in the clarendon yet to be, a clarendon rescued from fetters, purified, rehabilitated; and no compassionate angel warned him how tenacious of life that which fetters stood for might be--that survival of the spirit of slavery, under which the land still groaned and travailed--the growth of generations, which it would take more than one generation to destroy. in describing to judge bullard his visit to the cotton mill, the colonel was not sparing of his indignation. "the men," he declared with emphasis, "who are responsible for that sort of thing, are enemies of mankind. i've been in business for twenty years, but i have never sought to make money by trading on the souls and bodies of women and children. i saw the little darkies running about the streets down there at carthage; they were poor and ragged and dirty, but they were out in the air and the sunshine; they have a chance to get their growth; to go to school and learn something. the white children are worked worse than slaves, and are growing up dulled and stunted, physically and mentally. our folks down here are mighty short-sighted, judge. we'll wake them up. we'll build a model cotton mill, and run it with decent hours and decent wages, and treat the operatives like human beings with bodies to nourish, minds to develop; and souls to save. fetters and his crowd will have to come up to our standard, or else we'll take their hands away." judge bullard had looked surprised when the colonel began his denunciation; and though he said little, his expression, when the colonel had finished, was very thoughtful and not altogether happy. _fourteen_ it was the week after the colonel's house warming. graciella was not happy. she was sitting, erect and graceful, as she always sat, on the top step of the piazza. ben dudley occupied the other end of the step. his model stood neglected beside him, and he was looking straight at graciella, whose eyes, avoiding his, were bent upon a copy of "jane eyre," held open in her hand. there was an unwonted silence between them, which ben was the first to break. "will you go for a walk with me?" he asked. "i'm sorry, ben," she replied, "but i have an engagement to go driving with colonel french." ben's dark cheek grew darker, and he damned colonel french softly beneath his breath. he could not ask graciella to drive, for their old buggy was not fit to be seen, and he had no money to hire a better one. the only reason why he ever had wanted money was because of her. if she must have money, or the things that money alone would buy, he must get money, or lose her. as long as he had no rival there was hope. but could he expect to hold his own against a millionaire, who had the garments and the manners of the great outside world? "i suppose the colonel's here every night, as well as every day," he said, "and that you talk to him all the time." "no, ben, he isn't here every night, nor every day. his old darky, peter, brings phil over every day; but when the colonel comes he talks to grandmother and aunt laura, as well as to me." graciella had risen from the step, and was now enthroned in a splint-bottomed armchair, an attitude more in keeping with the air of dignity which she felt constrained to assume as a cloak for an uneasy conscience. graciella was not happy. she had reached the parting of the ways, and realised that she must choose between them. and yet she hesitated. every consideration of prudence dictated that she choose colonel french rather than ben. the colonel was rich and could gratify all her ambitions. there could be no reasonable doubt that he was fond of her; and she had heard it said, by those more experienced than she and therefore better qualified to judge, that he was infatuated with her. certainly he had shown her a great deal of attention. he had taken her driving; he had lent her books and music; he had brought or sent the new york paper every day for her to read. he had been kind to her aunt laura, too, probably for her niece's sake; for the colonel was kind by nature, and wished to make everyone about him happy. it was fortunate that her aunt laura was fond of philip. if she should decide to marry the colonel, she would have her aunt laura come and make her home with them: she could give philip the attention with which his stepmother's social duties might interfere. it was hardly likely that her aunt entertained any hope of marriage; indeed, miss laura had long since professed herself resigned to old maidenhood. but in spite of these rosy dreams, graciella was not happy. to marry the colonel she must give up ben; and ben, discarded, loomed up larger than ben, accepted. she liked ben; she was accustomed to ben. ben was young, and youth attracted youth. other things being equal, she would have preferred him to the colonel. but ben was poor; he had nothing and his prospects for the future were not alluring. he would inherit little, and that little not until his uncle's death. he had no profession. he was not even a good farmer, and trifled away, with his useless models and mechanical toys, the time he might have spent in making his uncle's plantation productive. graciella did not know that fetters had a mortgage on the plantation, or ben's prospects would have seemed even more hopeless. she felt sorry not only for herself, but for ben as well--sorry that he should lose her--for she knew that he loved her sincerely. but her first duty was to herself. conscious that she possessed talents, social and otherwise, it was not her view of creative wisdom that it should implant in the mind tastes and in the heart longings destined never to be realised. she must discourage ben--gently and gradually, for of course he would suffer; and humanity, as well as friendship, counselled kindness. a gradual breaking off, too, would be less harrowing to her own feelings. "i suppose you admire colonel french immensely," said ben, with assumed impartiality. "oh, i like him reasonably well," she said with an equal lack of candour. "his conversation is improving. he has lived in the metropolis, and has seen so much of the world that he can scarcely speak without saying something interesting. it's a liberal education to converse with people who have had opportunities. it helps to prepare my mind for life at the north." "you set a great deal of store by the north, graciella. anybody would allow, to listen to you, that you didn't love your own country." "i love the south, ben, as i loved aunt lou, my old black mammy. i've laid in her arms many a day, and i 'most cried my eyes out when she died. but that didn't mean that i never wanted to see any one else. nor am i going to live in the south a minute longer than i can help, because it's too slow. and new york isn't all--i want to travel and see the world. the south is away behind." she had said much the same thing weeks before; but then it had been spontaneous. now she was purposely trying to make ben see how unreasonable was his hope. ben stood, as he obscurely felt, upon delicate ground. graciella had not been the only person to overhear remarks about the probability of the colonel's seeking a wife in clarendon, and jealousy had sharpened ben's perceptions while it increased his fears. he had little to offer graciella. he was not well educated; he had nothing to recommend him but his youth and his love for her. he could not take her to europe, or even to new york--at least not yet. "and at home," graciella went on seriously, "at home i should want several houses--a town house, a country place, a seaside cottage. when we were tired of one we could go to another, or live in hotels--in the winter in florida, at atlantic city in the spring, at newport in the summer. they say long branch has gone out entirely." ben had a vague idea that long branch was by the seaside, and exposed to storms. "gone out to sea?" he asked absently. he was sick for love of her, and she was dreaming of watering places. "no, ben," said graciella, compassionately. poor ben had so little opportunity for schooling! he was not to blame for his want of knowledge; but could she throw herself away upon an ignoramus? "it's still there, but has gone out of fashion." "oh, excuse me! i'm not posted on these fashionable things." ben relapsed into gloom. the model remained untouched. he could not give graciella a house; he would not have a house until his uncle died. graciella had never seemed so beautiful as to-day, as she sat, dressed in the cool white gown which miss laura's slender fingers had done up, and with her hair dressed after the daintiest and latest fashion chronicled in the _ladies' fireside journal_. no wonder, he thought, that a jaded old man of the world like colonel french should delight in her fresh young beauty! but he would not give her up without a struggle. she had loved him; she must love him still; and she would yet be his, if he could keep her true to him or free from any promise to another, until her deeper feelings could resume their sway. it could not be possible, after all that had passed between them, that she meant to throw him over, nor was he a man that she could afford to treat in such a fashion. there was more in him than graciella imagined; he was conscious of latent power of some kind, though he knew not what, and something would surely happen, sometime, somehow, to improve his fortunes. and there was always the hope, the possibility of finding the lost money. he had brought his great-uncle ralph's letter with him, as he had promised graciella. when she read it, she would see the reasonableness of his hope, and might be willing to wait, at least a little while. any delay would be a point gained. he shuddered to think that he might lose her, and then, the day after the irrevocable vows had been taken, the treasure might come to light, and all their life be spent in vain regrets. graciella was skeptical about the lost money. even mrs. treadwell, whose faith had been firm for years, had ceased to encourage his hope; while miss laura, who at one time had smiled at any mention of the matter, now looked grave if by any chance he let slip a word in reference to it. but he had in his pocket the outward and visible sign of his inward belief, and he would try its effect on graciella. he would risk ridicule or anything else for her sake. "graciella," he said, "i have brought my uncle malcolm's letter along, to convince you that uncle is not as crazy as he seems, and that there's some foundation for the hope that i may yet be able to give you all you want. i don't want to relinquish the hope, and i want you to share it with me." he produced an envelope, once white, now yellow with time, on which was endorsed in ink once black but faded to a pale brown, and hardly legible, the name of "malcolm dudley, esq., mink run," and in the lower left-hand corner, "by hand of viney." the sheet which ben drew from this wrapper was worn at the folds, and required careful handling. graciella, moved by curiosity, had come down from her throne to a seat beside ben upon the porch. she had never had any faith in the mythical gold of old ralph dudley. the people of an earlier generation--her aunt laura perhaps--may once have believed in it, but they had long since ceased to do more than smile pityingly and shake their heads at the mention of old malcolm's delusion. but there was in it the element of romance. strange things had happened, and why might they not happen again? and if they should happen, why not to ben, dear old, shiftless ben! she moved a porch pillow close beside him, and, as they bent their heads over the paper her hair mingled with his, and soon her hand rested, unconsciously, upon his shoulder. "it was a voice from the grave," said ben, "for my great-uncle ralph was dead when the letter reached uncle malcolm. i'll read it aloud--the writing is sometimes hard to make out, and i know it by heart: _my dear malcolm: i have in my hands fifty thousand dollars of government money, in gold, which i am leaving here at the house for a few days. since you are not at home, and i cannot wait, i have confided in our girl viney, whom i can trust. she will tell you, when she gives you this, where i have put the money--i do not write it, lest the letter should fall into the wrong hands; there are many to whom it would be a great temptation. i shall return in a few days, and relieve you of the responsibility. should anything happen to me, write to the secretary of state at richmond for instructions what to do with the money. in great haste_, _your affectionate uncle,_ ralph dudley" graciella was momentarily impressed by the letter; of its reality there could be no doubt--it was there in black and white, or rather brown and yellow. "it sounds like a letter in a novel," she said, thoughtfully. "there must have been something." "there must _be_ something, graciella, for uncle ralph was killed the next day, and never came back for the money. but uncle malcolm, because he don't know where to look, can't find it; and old aunt viney, because she can't talk, can't tell him where it is." "why has she never shown him?" asked graciella. "there is some mystery," he said, "which she seems unable to explain without speech. and then, she is queer--as queer, in her own way, as uncle is in his. now, if you'd only marry me, graciella, and go out there to live, with your uncommonly fine mind, _you'd_ find it--you couldn't help but find it. it would just come at your call, like my dog when i whistle to him." graciella was touched by the compliment, or by the serious feeling which underlay it. and that was very funny, about calling the money and having it come! she had often heard of people whistling for their money, but had never heard that it came--that was ben's idea. there really was a good deal in ben, and perhaps, after all---- but at that moment there was a sound of wheels, and whatever graciella's thought may have been, it was not completed. as colonel french lifted the latch of the garden gate and came up the walk toward them, any glamour of the past, any rosy hope of the future, vanished in the solid brilliancy of the present moment. old ralph was dead, old malcolm nearly so; the money had never been found, would never come to light. there on the doorstep was a young man shabbily attired, without means or prospects. there at the gate was a fine horse, in a handsome trap, and coming up the walk an agreeable, well-dressed gentleman of wealth and position. no dead romance could, in the heart of a girl of seventeen, hold its own against so vital and brilliant a reality. "thank you, ben," she said, adjusting a stray lock of hair which had escaped from her radiant crop, "i am not clever enough for that. it is a dream. your great-uncle ralph had ridden too long and too far in the sun, and imagined the treasure, which has driven your uncle malcolm crazy, and his housekeeper dumb, and has benumbed you so that you sit around waiting, waiting, when you ought to be working, working! no, ben, i like you ever so much, but you will never take me to new york with your uncle ralph's money, nor will you ever earn enough to take me with your own. you must excuse me now, for here comes my cavalier. don't hurry away; aunt laura will be out in a minute. you can stay and work on your model; i'll not be here to interrupt you. good evening, colonel french! did you bring me a _herald_? i want to look at the advertisements." "yes, my dear young lady, there is wednesday's--it is only two days old. how are you, mr. dudley?" "tol'able, sir, thank you." ben was a gentleman by instinct, though his heart was heavy and the colonel a favoured rival. "by the way," said the colonel, "i wish to have an interview with your uncle, about the old mill site. he seems to have been a stockholder in the company, and we should like his signature, if he is in condition to give it. if not, it may be necessary to appoint you his guardian, with power to act in his place." "he's all right, sir, in the morning, if you come early enough," replied ben, courteously. "you can tell what is best to do after you've seen him." "thank you," replied the colonel, "i'll have my man drive me out to-morrow about ten, say; if you'll be at home? you ought to be there, you know." "very well, sir, i'll be there all day, and shall expect you." graciella threw back one compassionate glance, as they drove away behind the colonel's high-stepping brown horse, and did not quite escape a pang at the sight of her young lover, still sitting on the steps in a dejected attitude; and for a moment longer his reproachful eyes haunted her. but graciella prided herself on being, above all things, practical, and, having come out for a good time, resolutely put all unpleasant thoughts aside. there was good horse-flesh in the neighbourhood of clarendon, and the colonel's was of the best. some of the roads about the town were good--not very well kept roads, but the soil was a sandy loam and was self-draining, so that driving was pleasant in good weather. the colonel had several times invited miss laura to drive with him, and had taken her once; but she was often obliged to stay with her mother. graciella could always be had, and the colonel, who did not like to drive alone, found her a vivacious companion, whose naïve comments upon life were very amusing to a seasoned man of the world. she was as pretty, too, as a picture, and the colonel had always admired beauty--with a tempered admiration. at graciella's request they drove first down main street, past the post-office, where she wished to mail a letter. they attracted much attention as they drove through the street in the colonel's new trap. graciella's billowy white gown added a needed touch of maturity to her slender youthfulness. a big straw hat shaded her brown hair, and she sat erect, and held her head high, with a vivid consciousness that she was the central feature of a very attractive whole. the colonel shared her thought, and looked at her with frank admiration. "you are the cynosure of all eyes," he declared. "i suppose i'm an object of envy to every young fellow in town." graciella blushed and bridled with pleasure. "i am not interested in the young men of clarendon," she replied loftily; "they are not worth the trouble." "not even--ben?" asked the colonel slyly. "oh," she replied, with studied indifference, "mr. dudley is really a cousin, and only a friend. he comes to see the family." the colonel's attentions could have but one meaning, and it was important to disabuse his mind concerning ben. nor was she the only one in the family who entertained that thought. of late her grandmother had often addressed her in an unusual way, more as a woman than as a child; and, only the night before, had retold the old story of her own sister mary, who, many years before, had married a man of fifty. he had worshipped her, and had died, after a decent interval, leaving her a large fortune. from which the old lady had deduced that, on the whole, it was better to be an old man's darling than a young man's slave. she had made no application of the story, but graciella was astute enough to draw her own conclusions. her aunt laura, too, had been unusually kind; she had done up the white gown twice a week, had trimmed her hat for her, and had worn old gloves that she might buy her niece a new pair. and her aunt had looked at her wistfully and remarked, with a sigh, that youth was a glorious season and beauty a great responsibility. poor dear, good old aunt laura! when the expected happened, she would be very kind to aunt laura, and repay her, so far as possible, for all her care and sacrifice. _fifteen_ it was only a short time after his visit to the excelsior mills that colonel french noticed a falling off in the progress made by his lawyer, judge bullard, in procuring the signatures of those interested in the old mill site, and after the passing of several weeks he began to suspect that some adverse influence was at work. this suspicion was confirmed when judge bullard told him one day, with some embarrassment, that he could no longer act for him in the matter. "i'm right sorry, colonel," he said. "i should like to help you put the thing through, but i simply can't afford it. other clients, whose business i have transacted for years, and to whom i am under heavy obligations, have intimated that they would consider any further activity of mine in your interest unfriendly to theirs." "i suppose," said the colonel, "your clients wish to secure the mill site for themselves. nothing imparts so much value to a thing as the notion that somebody else wants it. of course, i can't ask you to act for me further, and if you'll make out your bill, i'll hand you a check." "i hope," said judge bullard, "there'll be no ill-feeling about our separation." "oh, no," responded the colonel, politely, "not at all. business is business, and a man's own interests are his first concern." "i'm glad you feel that way," replied the lawyer, much relieved. he had feared that the colonel might view the matter differently. "some men, you know," he said, "might have kept on, and worked against you, while accepting your retainer; there are such skunks at the bar." "there are black sheep in every fold," returned the colonel with a cold smile. "it would be unprofessional, i suppose, to name your client, so i'll not ask you." the judge did not volunteer the information, but the colonel knew instinctively whence came opposition to his plan, and investigation confirmed his intuition. judge bullard was counsel for fetters in all matters where skill and knowledge were important, and fetters held his note, secured by mortgage, for money loaned. for dirty work fetters used tools of baser metal, but, like a wise man, he knew when these were useless, and was shrewd enough to keep the best lawyers under his control. the colonel, after careful inquiry, engaged to take judge bullard's place, one albert caxton, a member of a good old family, a young man, and a capable lawyer, who had no ascertainable connection with fetters, and who, in common with a small fraction of the best people, regarded fetters with distrust, and ascribed his wealth to usury and to what, in more recent years, has come to be known as "graft." to a man of colonel french's business training, opposition was merely a spur to effort. he had not run a race of twenty years in the commercial field, to be worsted in the first heat by the petty boss of a southern backwoods county. why fetters opposed him he did not know. perhaps he wished to defeat a possible rival, or merely to keep out principles and ideals which would conflict with his own methods and injure his prestige. but if fetters wanted a fight, fetters should have a fight. colonel french spent much of his time at young caxton's office, instructing the new lawyer in the details of the mill affair. caxton proved intelligent, zealous, and singularly sympathetic with his client's views and plans. they had not been together a week before the colonel realised that he had gained immensely by the change. the colonel took a personal part in the effort to procure signatures, among others that of old malcolm dudley and on the morning following the drive with graciella, he drove out to mink run to see the old gentleman in person and discover whether or not he was in a condition to transact business. before setting out, he went to his desk--his father's desk, which miss laura had sent to him--to get certain papers for old mr. dudley's signature, if the latter should prove capable of a legal act. he had laid the papers on top of some others which had nearly filled one of the numerous small drawers in the desk. upon opening the drawer he found that one of the papers was missing. the colonel knew quite well that he had placed the paper in the drawer the night before; he remembered the circumstance very distinctly, for the event was so near that it scarcely required an exercise, not to say an effort, of memory. an examination of the drawer disclosed that the piece forming the back of it was a little lower than the sides. possibly, thought the colonel, the paper had slipped off and fallen behind the drawer. he drew the drawer entirely out, and slipped his hand into the cavity. at the back of it he felt the corner of a piece of paper projecting upward from below. the paper had evidently slipped off the top of the others and fallen into a crevice, due to the shrinkage of the wood or some defect of construction. the opening for the drawer was so shallow that though he could feel the end of the paper, he was unable to get such a grasp of it as would permit him to secure it easily. but it was imperative that he have the paper; and since it bore already several signatures obtained with some difficulty, he did not wish to run the risk of tearing it. he examined the compartment below to see if perchance the paper could be reached from there, but found that it could not. there was evidently a lining to the desk, and the paper had doubtless slipped down between this and the finished panels forming the back of the desk. to reach it, the colonel procured a screw driver, and turning the desk around, loosened, with some difficulty, the screws that fastened the proper panel, and soon recovered the paper. with it, however, he found a couple of yellow, time-stained envelopes, addressed on the outside to major john treadwell. the envelopes were unsealed. he glanced into one of them, and seeing that it contained a sheet, folded small, presumably a letter, he thrust the two of them into the breast pocket of his coat, intending to hand them to miss laura at their next meeting. they were probably old letters and of no consequence, but they should of course be returned to the owners. in putting the desk back in its place, after returning the panel and closing the crevice against future accidents, the colonel caught his coat on a projecting point and tore a long rent in the sleeve. it was an old coat, and worn only about the house; and when he changed it before leaving to pay his call upon old malcolm dudley, he hung it in a back corner in his clothes closet, and did not put it on again for a long time. since he was very busily occupied in the meantime, the two old letters to which he had attached no importance, escaped his memory altogether. the colonel's coachman, a young coloured man by the name of tom, had complained of illness early in the morning, and the colonel took peter along to drive him to mink run, as well as to keep him company. on their way through the town they stopped at mrs. treadwell's, where they left phil, who had, he declared, some important engagement with graciella. the distance was not long, scarcely more than five miles. ben dudley was in the habit of traversing it on horseback, twice a day. when they had passed the last straggling cabin of the town, their way lay along a sandy road, flanked by fields green with corn and cotton, broken by stretches of scraggy pine and oak, growing upon land once under cultivation, but impoverished by the wasteful methods of slavery; land that had never been regenerated, and was now no longer tilled. negroes were working in the fields, birds were singing in the trees. buzzards circled lazily against the distant sky. although it was only early summer, a languor in the air possessed the colonel's senses, and suggested a certain charity toward those of his neighbours--and they were most of them--who showed no marked zeal for labour. "work," he murmured, "is best for happiness, but in this climate idleness has its compensations. what, in the end, do we get for all our labour?" "fifty cents a day, an' fin' yo'se'f, suh," said peter, supposing the soliloquy addressed to himself. "dat's w'at dey pays roun' hyuh." when they reached a large clearing, which peter pointed out as their destination, the old man dismounted with considerable agility, and opened a rickety gate that was held in place by loops of rope. evidently the entrance had once possessed some pretensions to elegance, for the huge hewn posts had originally been faced with dressed lumber and finished with ornamental capitals, some fragments of which remained; and the one massive hinge, hanging by a slender rust-eaten nail, had been wrought into a fantastic shape. as they drove through the gateway, a green lizard scampered down from the top of one of the posts, where he had been sunning himself, and a rattlesnake lying in the path lazily uncoiled his motley brown length, and sounding his rattle, wriggled slowly off into the rank grass and weeds that bordered the carriage track. the house stood well back from the road, amid great oaks and elms and unpruned evergreens. the lane by which it was approached was partly overgrown with weeds and grass, from which the mare's fetlocks swept the dew, yet undried by the morning sun. the old dudley "mansion," as it was called, was a large two-story frame house, built in the colonial style, with a low-pitched roof, and a broad piazza along the front, running the full length of both stories and supported by thick round columns, each a solid piece of pine timber, gray with age and lack of paint, seamed with fissures by the sun and rain of many years. the roof swayed downward on one side; the shingles were old and cracked and moss-grown; several of the second story windows were boarded up, and others filled with sashes from which most of the glass had disappeared. about the house, for a space of several rods on each side of it, the ground was bare of grass and shrubbery, rough and uneven, lying in little hillocks and hollows, as though recently dug over at haphazard, or explored by some vagrant drove of hogs. at one side, beyond this barren area, lay a kitchen garden, enclosed by a paling fence. the colonel had never thought of young dudley as being at all energetic, but so ill-kept a place argued shiftlessness in a marked degree. when the carriage had drawn up in front of the house, the colonel became aware of two figures on the long piazza. at one end, in a massive oaken armchair, sat an old man--seemingly a very old man, for he was bent and wrinkled, with thin white hair hanging down upon his shoulders. his face, of a highbred and strongly marked type, emphasised by age, had the hawk-like contour, that is supposed to betoken extreme acquisitiveness. his faded eyes were turned toward a woman, dressed in a homespun frock and a muslin cap, who sat bolt upright, in a straight-backed chair, at the other end of the piazza, with her hands folded on her lap, looking fixedly toward her _vis-à-vis_. neither of them paid the slightest attention to the colonel, and when the old man rose, it was not to step forward and welcome his visitor, but to approach and halt in front of the woman. "viney," he said, sharply, "i am tired of this nonsense. i insist upon knowing, immediately, where my uncle left the money." the woman made no reply, but her faded eyes glowed for a moment, like the ashes of a dying fire, and her figure stiffened perceptibly as she leaned slightly toward him. "show me at once, you hussy," he said, shaking his fist, "or you'll have reason to regret it. i'll have you whipped." his cracked voice rose to a shrill shriek as he uttered the threat. the slumbrous fire in the woman's eyes flamed up for a moment. she rose, and drawing herself up to her full height, which was greater than the old man's, made some incoherent sounds, and bent upon him a look beneath which he quailed. "yes, viney, good viney," he said, soothingly, "i know it was wrong, and i've always regretted it, always, from the very moment. but you shouldn't bear malice. servants, the bible says, should obey their masters, and you should bless them that curse you, and do good to them that despitefully use you. but i was good to you before, viney, and i was kind to you afterwards, and i know you've forgiven me, good viney, noble-hearted viney, and you're going to tell me, aren't you?" he pleaded, laying his hand caressingly upon her arm. she drew herself away, but, seemingly mollified, moved her lips as though in speech. the old man put his hand to his ear and listened with an air of strained eagerness, well-nigh breathless in its intensity. "try again, viney," he said, "that's a good girl. your old master thinks a great deal of you, viney. he is your best friend!" again she made an inarticulate response, which he nevertheless seemed to comprehend, for, brightening up immediately, he turned from her, came down the steps with tremulous haste, muttering to himself meanwhile, seized a spade that stood leaning against the steps, passed by the carriage without a glance, and began digging furiously at one side of the yard. the old woman watched him for a while, with a self-absorption that was entirely oblivious of the visitors, and then entered the house. the colonel had been completely absorbed in this curious drama. there was an air of weirdness and unreality about it all. old peter was as silent as if he had been turned into stone. something in the atmosphere conduced to somnolence, for even the horses stood still, with no signs of restlessness. the colonel was the first to break the spell. "what's the matter with them, peter? do you know?" "dey's bofe plumb 'stracted, suh--clean out'n dey min's--dey be'n dat way fer yeahs an' yeahs an' yeahs." "that's mr. dudley, i suppose?" "yas, suh, dat's ole mars ma'com dudley, de uncle er young mistah ben dudley w'at hangs 'roun miss grac'ella so much." "and who is the woman?" "she's a bright mulattah 'oman, suh, w'at use' ter b'long ter de family befo' de wah, an' has kep' house fer ole mars' ma'com ever sense. he 'lows dat she knows whar old mars' rafe dudley, _his_ uncle, hid a million dollahs endyoin' de wah, an' huh tongue's paralyse' so she can't tell 'im--an' he's be'n tryin' ter fin' out fer de las' twenty-five years. i wo'ked out hyuh one summer on plantation, an' i seen 'em gwine on like dat many 'n' many a time. dey don' nobody roun' hyuh pay no 'tention to 'em no mo', ev'ybody's so use' ter seein' 'em." the conversation was interrupted by the appearance of ben dudley, who came around the house, and, advancing to the carriage, nodded to peter, and greeted the colonel respectfully. "won't you 'light and come in?" he asked. the colonel followed him into the house, to a plainly furnished parlour. there was a wide fireplace, with a fine old pair of brass andirons, and a few pieces of old mahogany furniture, incongruously assorted with half a dozen splint-bottomed chairs. the floor was bare, and on the walls half a dozen of the old dudleys looked out from as many oil paintings, with the smooth glaze that marked the touch of the travelling artist, in the days before portrait painting was superseded by photography and crayon enlargements. ben returned in a few minutes with his uncle. old malcolm seemed to have shaken off his aberration, and greeted the colonel with grave politeness. "i am glad, sir," he said, giving the visitor his hand, "to make your acquaintance. i have been working in the garden--the flower-garden--for the sake of the exercise. we have negroes enough, though they are very trifling nowadays, but the exercise is good for my health. i have trouble, at times, with my rheumatism, and with my--my memory." he passed his hand over his brow as though brushing away an imaginary cobweb. "ben tells me you have a business matter to present to me?" the colonel, somewhat mystified, after what he had witnessed, by this sudden change of manner, but glad to find the old man seemingly rational, stated the situation in regard to the mill site. old malcolm seemed to understand perfectly, and accepted with willingness the colonel's proposition to give him a certain amount of stock in the new company for the release of such rights as he might possess under the old incorporation. the colonel had brought with him a contract, properly drawn, which was executed by old malcolm, and witnessed by the colonel and ben. "i trust, sir," said mr. dudley, "that you will not ascribe it to any discourtesy that i have not called to see you. i knew your father and your grandfather. but the cares of my estate absorb me so completely that i never leave home. i shall send my regards to you now and then by my nephew. i expect, in a very short time, when certain matters are adjusted, to be able to give up, to a great extent, my arduous cares, and lead a life of greater leisure, which will enable me to travel and cultivate a wider acquaintance. when that time comes, sir, i shall hope to see more of you." the old gentleman stood courteously on the steps while ben accompanied the colonel to the carriage. it had scarcely turned into the lane when the colonel, looking back, saw the old man digging furiously. the condition of the yard was explained; he had been unjust in ascribing it to ben's neglect. "i reckon, suh," remarked peter, "dat w'en he fin' dat million dollahs, mistah ben'll marry miss grac'ella an' take huh ter new yo'k." "perhaps--and perhaps not," said the colonel. to himself he added, musingly, "old malcolm will start on a long journey before he finds the--million dollars. the watched pot never boils. buried treasure is never found by those who seek it, but always accidentally, if at all." on the way back they stopped at the treadwells' for phil. phil was not ready to go home. he was intensely interested in a long-eared mechanical mule, constructed by ben dudley out of bits of wood and leather and controlled by certain springs made of rubber bands, by manipulating which the mule could be made to kick furiously. since the colonel had affairs to engage his attention, and phil seemed perfectly contented, he was allowed to remain, with the understanding that peter should come for him in the afternoon. _sixteen_ little phil had grown very fond of old peter, who seemed to lavish upon the child all of his love and devotion for the dead generations of the french family. the colonel had taught phil to call the old man "uncle peter," after the kindly southern fashion of slavery days, which, denying to negroes the forms of address applied to white people, found in the affectionate terms of relationship--mammy, auntie and uncle--designations that recognised the respect due to age, and yet lost, when applied to slaves, their conventional significance. there was a strong, sympathy between the intelligent child and the undeveloped old negro; they were more nearly on a mental level, leaving out, of course, the factor of peter's experience, than could have been the case with one more generously endowed than peter, who, though by nature faithful, had never been unduly bright. little phil became so attached to his old attendant that, between peter and the treadwell ladies, the colonel's housekeeper had to give him very little care. on sunday afternoons the colonel and phil and peter would sometimes walk over to the cemetery. the family lot was now kept in perfect order. the low fence around it had been repaired, and several leaning headstones straightened up. but, guided by a sense of fitness, and having before him the awful example for which fetters was responsible, the colonel had added no gaudy monument nor made any alterations which would disturb the quiet beauty of the spot or its harmony with the surroundings. in the northern cemetery where his young wife was buried, he had erected to her memory a stately mausoleum, in keeping with similar memorials on every hand. but here, in this quiet graveyard, where his ancestors slept their last sleep under the elms and the willows, display would have been out of place. he had, however, placed a wrought-iron bench underneath the trees, where he would sit and read his paper, while little phil questioned old peter about his grandfather and his great-grandfather, their prowess on the hunting field, and the wars they fought in; and the old man would delight in detailing, in his rambling and disconnected manner, the past glories of the french family. it was always a new story to phil, and never grew stale to the old man. if peter could be believed, there were never white folks so brave, so learned, so wise, so handsome, so kind to their servants, so just to all with whom they had dealings. phil developed a very great fondness for these dead ancestors, whose graves and histories he soon knew as well as peter himself. with his lively imagination he found pleasure, as children often do, in looking into the future. the unoccupied space in the large cemetery lot furnished him food for much speculation. "papa," he said, upon one of these peaceful afternoons, "there's room enough here for all of us, isn't there--you, and me and uncle peter?" "yes, phil," said his father, "there's room for several generations of frenches yet to sleep with their fathers." little phil then proceeded to greater detail. "here," he said, "next to grandfather, will be your place, and here next to that, will be mine, and here, next to me will be--but no," he said, pausing reflectively, "that ought to be saved for my little boy when he grows up and dies, that is, when i grow up and have a little boy and he grows up and grows old and dies and leaves a little boy and--but where will uncle peter be?" "nem mine me, honey," said the old man, "dey can put me somewhar e'se. hit doan' mattuh 'bout me." "no, uncle peter, you must be here with the rest of us. for you know, uncle peter, i'm so used to you now, that i should want you to be near me then." old peter thought to humour the lad. "put me down hyuh at de foot er de lot, little mars' phil, unner dis ellum tree." "oh, papa," exclaimed phil, demanding the colonel's attention, "uncle peter and i have arranged everything. you know uncle peter is to stay with me as long as i live, and when he dies, he is to be buried here at the foot of the lot, under the elm tree, where he'll be near me all the time, and near the folks that he knows and that know him." "all right, phil. you see to it; you'll live longer." "but, papa, if i should die first, and then uncle peter, and you last of all, you'll put uncle peter near me, won't you, papa?" "why, bless your little heart, phil, of course your daddy will do whatever you want, if he's here to do it. but you'll live, phil, please god, until i am old and bent and white-haired, and you are a grown man, with a beard, and a little boy of your own." "yas, suh," echoed the old servant, "an' till ole peter's bones is long sence crumble' inter dus'. none er de frenches' ain' never died till dey was done growed up." on the afternoon following the colonel's visit to mink run, old peter, when he came for phil, was obliged to stay long enough to see the antics of the mechanical mule; and had not that artificial animal suddenly refused to kick, and lapsed into a characteristic balkiness for which there was no apparent remedy, it might have proved difficult to get phil away. "there, philip dear, never mind," said miss laura, "we'll have ben mend it for you when he comes, next time, and then you can play with it again." peter had brought with him some hooks and lines, and, he and phil, after leaving the house, followed the bank of the creek, climbing a fence now and then, until they reached the old mill site, upon which work had not yet begun. they found a shady spot, and seating themselves upon the bank, baited their lines, and dropped them into a quiet pool. for quite a while their patience was unrewarded by anything more than a nibble. by and by a black cat came down from the ruined mill, and sat down upon the bank at a short distance from them. "i reckon we'll haf ter move, honey," said the old man. "we ain't gwine ter have no luck fishin' 'g'ins' no ole black cat." "but cats don't fish, uncle peter, do they?" "law', chile, you'll never know w'at dem critters _kin_ do, 'tel you's watched 'em long ez i has! keep yo' eye on dat one now." the cat stood by the stream, in a watchful attitude. suddenly she darted her paw into the shallow water and with a lightning-like movement drew out a small fish, which she took in her mouth, and retired with it a few yards up the bank. "jes' look at dat ole devil," said peter, "playin' wid dat fish jes' lack it wuz a mouse! she'll be comin' down heah terreckly tellin' us ter go 'way fum her fishin' groun's." "why, uncle peter," said phil incredulously, "cats can't talk!" "can't dey? hoo said dey couldn'? ain't miss grac'ella an' me be'n tellin' you right along 'bout bre'r rabbit and bre'r fox an de yuther creturs talkin' an' gwine on jes' lak folks?" "yes, uncle peter, but those were just stories; they didn't really talk, did they?" "law', honey," said the old man, with a sly twinkle in his rheumy eye, "you is de sma'tes' little white boy i ever knowed, but you is got a monst'us heap ter l'arn yit, chile. nobody ain' done tol' you 'bout de black cat an' de ha'nted house, is dey?" "no, uncle peter--you tell me." "i didn' knowed but miss grac'ella mought a tole you--she knows mos' all de tales." "no, she hasn't. you tell me about it, uncle peter." "well," said peter, "does you 'member dat coal-black man dat drives de lumber wagon?" "yes, he goes by our house every day, on the way to the sawmill." "well, it all happen' 'long er him. he 'uz gwine long de street one day, w'en he heared two gent'emen--one of 'em was ole mars' tom sellers an' i fuhgot de yuther--but dey 'uz talkin' 'bout dat ole ha'nted house down by de creek, 'bout a mile from hyuh, on de yuther side er town, whar we went fishin' las' week. does you 'member de place?" "yes, i remember the house." "well, as dis yer jeff--dat's de lumber-wagon driver's name--as dis yer jeff come up ter dese yer two gentlemen, one of 'em was sayin, 'i'll bet five dollahs dey ain' narry a man in his town would stay in dat ha'nted house all night.' dis yer jeff, he up 'n sez, sezee, 'scuse me, suh, but ef you'll 'low me ter speak, suh, i knows a man wat'll stay in dat ole ha'nted house all night.'" "what is a ha'nted house, uncle peter?" asked phil. "w'y. law,' chile, a ha'nted house is a house whar dey's ha'nts!" "and what are ha'nts, uncle peter?" "ha'nts, honey, is sperrits er dead folks, dat comes back an' hangs roun' whar dey use' ter lib." "do all spirits come back, uncle peter?" "no, chile, bress de lawd, no. only de bad ones, w'at has be'n so wicked dey can't rest in dey graves. folks lack yo' gran'daddy and yo' gran'mammy--an' all de frenches--dey don' none er _dem_ come back, fer dey wuz all good people an' is all gone ter hebben. but i'm fergittin' de tale. "'well, hoo's de man--hoo's de man?' ax mistah sellers, w'en jeff tol' 'im dey wuz somebody wat 'ud stay in de ole ha'nted house all night. "'i'm de man,' sez jeff. 'i ain't skeered er no ha'nt dat evuh walked, an' i sleeps in graveya'ds by pref'ence; fac', i jes nach'ly lacks ter talk ter ha'nts. you pay me de five dollahs, an' i'll 'gree ter stay in de ole house f'm nine er clock 'tel daybreak.' "dey talk' ter jeff a w'ile, an' dey made a bahgin wid 'im; dey give 'im one dollah down, an' promus' 'im fo' mo' in de mawnin' ef he stayed 'tel den. "so w'en he got de dollah he went uptown an' spent it, an' 'long 'bout nine er clock he tuk a lamp, an' went down ter de ole house, an' went inside an' shet de do'. "dey wuz a rickety ole table settin' in de middle er de flo'. he sot de lamp on de table. den he look 'roun' de room, in all de cawners an' up de chimbly, ter see dat dey wan't nobody ner nuthin' hid in de room. den he tried all de winders an' fastened de do', so dey couldn' nobody ner nuthin' git in. den he fotch a' ole rickety chair f'm one cawner, and set it by de table, and sot down. he wuz settin' dere, noddin' his head, studyin' 'bout dem other fo' dollahs, an' w'at he wuz gwine buy wid 'em, w'en bimeby he kinder dozed off, an' befo' he knowed it he wuz settin' dere fast asleep." "w'en he woke up, 'long 'bout 'leven erclock, de lamp had bu'n' down kinder low. he heared a little noise behind him an' look 'roun', an' dere settin' in de middle er de flo' wuz a big black tomcat, wid his tail quirled up over his back, lookin' up at jeff wid bofe his two big yaller eyes. "jeff rub' 'is eyes, ter see ef he wuz 'wake, an w'iles he sot dere wond'rin' whar de hole wuz dat dat ole cat come in at, fus' thing he knowed, de ole cat wuz settin' right up 'side of 'im, on de table, wid his tail quirled up roun' de lamp chimbly. "jeff look' at de black cat, an' de black cat look' at jeff. den de black cat open his mouf an' showed 'is teef, an' sezee----" "'good evenin'!' "'good evenin' suh,' 'spon' jeff, trimblin' in de knees, an' kind'er edgin' 'way fum de table. "'dey ain' nobody hyuh but you an' me, is dey?' sez de black cat, winkin' one eye. "'no, suh,' sez jeff, as he made fer de do', _'an' quick ez i kin git out er hyuh, dey ain' gwine ter be nobody hyuh but you!_'" "is that all, uncle peter?" asked phil, when the old man came to a halt with a prolonged chuckle. "huh?" "is that all?" "no, dey's mo' er de tale, but dat's ernuff ter prove dat black cats kin do mo' dan little w'ite boys 'low dey kin." "did jeff go away?" "did he go 'way! why, chile, he jes' flew away! befo' he got ter de do', howsomevuh, he 'membered he had locked it, so he didn' stop ter try ter open it, but went straight out'n a winder, quicker'n lightnin', an' kyared de sash 'long wid 'im. an' he'd be'n in sech pow'ful has'e dat he knock' de lamp over an' lack ter sot de house afire. he nevuh got de yuther fo' dollahs of co'se, 'ca'se he didn't stay in de ole ha'nted house all night, but he 'lowed he'd sho'ly 'arned de one dollah he'd had a'ready." "why didn't he want to talk to the black cat, uncle peter?" "why didn' he wan' ter talk ter de black cat? whoever heared er sich a queshtun! he didn' wan' ter talk wid no black cat, 'ca'se he wuz skeered. black cats brings 'nuff bad luck w'en dey doan' talk, let 'lone w'en dey does." "i should like," said phil, reflectively, "to talk to a black cat. i think it would be great fun." "keep away f'm 'em, chile, keep away f'm 'em. dey is some things too deep fer little boys ter projec' wid, an' black cats is one of 'em." they moved down the stream and were soon having better luck. "uncle peter," said phil, while they were on their way home, "there couldn't be any ha'nts at all in the graveyard where my grandfather is buried, could there? graciella read a lot of the tombstones to me one day, and they all said that all the people were good, and were resting in peace, and had gone to heaven. tombstones always tell the truth, don't they, uncle peter?" "happen so, honey, happen so! de french tombstones does; an' as ter de res', i ain' gwine to 'spute 'em, nohow, fer ef i did, de folks under 'em mought come back an' ha'nt me, jes' fer spite." _seventeen_ by considerable effort, and a moderate outlay, the colonel at length secured a majority of interest in the eureka mill site and made application to the state, through caxton, for the redemption of the title. the opposition had either ceased or had proved ineffective. there would be some little further delay, but the outcome seemed practically certain, and the colonel did not wait longer to set in motion his plans for the benefit of clarendon. "i'm told that fetters says he'll get the mill anyway," said caxton, "and make more money buying it under foreclosure than by building a new one. he's ready to lend on it now." "oh, damn fetters!" exclaimed the colonel, elated with his victory. he had never been a profane man, but strong language came so easy in clarendon that one dropped into it unconsciously. "the mill will be running on full time when fetters has been put out of business. we've won our first fight, and i've never really seen the fellow yet." as soon as the title was reasonably secure, the colonel began his preparations for building the cotton mill. the first step was to send for a new england architect who made a specialty of mills, to come down and look the site over, and make plans for the dam, the mill buildings and a number of model cottages for the operatives. as soon as the estimates were prepared, he looked the ground over to see how far he could draw upon local resources for material. there was good brick clay on the outskirts of the town, where bricks had once been made; but for most of the period since the war such as were used in the town had been procured from the ruins of old buildings--it was cheaper to clean bricks than to make them. since the construction of the railroad branch to clarendon the few that were needed from time to time were brought in by train. not since the building of the opera house block had there been a kiln of brick made in the town. inquiry brought out the fact that in case of a demand for bricks there were brickmakers thereabouts; and in accordance with his general plan to employ local labour, the colonel looked up the owner of the brickyard, and asked if he were prepared to take a large contract. the gentleman was palpably troubled by the question. "well, colonel," he said, "i don't know. i'd s'posed you were goin' to impo't yo' bricks from philadelphia." "no, mr. barnes," returned the colonel, "i want to spend the money here in clarendon. there seems to be plenty of unemployed labour." "yes, there does, till you want somethin' done; then there ain't so much. i s'pose i might find half a dozen niggers round here that know how to make brick; and there's several more that have moved away that i can get back if i send for them. if you r'al'y think you want yo'r brick made here, i'll try to get them out for you. they'll cost you, though, as much, if not more than, you'd have to pay for machine-made bricks from the no'th." the colonel declared that he preferred the local product. "well, i'm shore i don't see why," said the brickmaker. "they'll not be as smooth or as uniform in colour." "they'll be clarendon brick," returned the colonel, "and i want this to be a clarendon enterprise, from the ground up." "well," said barnes resignedly, "if you must have home-made brick, i suppose i'll have to make 'em. i'll see what i can do." colonel french then turned the brick matter over to caxton, who, in the course of a week, worried barnes into a contract to supply so many thousand brick within a given time. "i don't like that there time limit," said the brickmaker, "but i reckon i can make them brick as fast as you can get anybody roun' here to lay 'em." when in the course of another week the colonel saw signs of activity about the old brickyard, he proceeded with the next step, which was to have the ruins of the old factory cleared away. "well, colonel," said major mclean one day when the colonel dropped into the hotel, where the major hung out a good part of the time, "i s'pose you're goin' to hire white folks to do the work over there." "why," replied the colonel, "i hadn't thought about the colour of the workmen. there'll be plenty, i guess, for all who apply, so long as it lasts." "you'll have trouble if you hire niggers," said the major. "you'll find that they won't work when you want 'em to. they're not reliable, they have no sense of responsibility. as soon as they get a dollar they'll lay off to spend it, and leave yo' work at the mos' critical point." "well, now, major," replied the colonel, "i haven't noticed any unnatural activity among the white men of the town. the negroes have to live, or seem to think they have, and i'll give 'em a chance to turn an honest penny. by the way, major, i need a superintendent to look after the work. it don't require an expert, but merely a good man--gentleman preferred--whom i can trust to see that my ideas are carried out. perhaps you can recommend such a person?" the major turned the matter over in his mind before answering. he might, of course, offer his own services. the pay would doubtless be good. but he had not done any real work for years. his wife owned their home. his daughter taught in the academy. he was drawn on jury nearly every term; was tax assessor now and then, and a judge or clerk of elections upon occasion. nor did he think that steady employment would agree with his health, while it would certainly interfere with his pleasant visits with the drummers at the hotel. "i'd be glad to take the position myself, colonel," he said, "but i r'aly won't have the time. the campaign will be hummin' in a month or so, an' my political duties will occupy all my leisure. but i'll bear the matter in mind, an' see if i can think of any suitable person." the colonel thanked him. he had hardly expected the major to offer his services, but had merely wished, for the fun of the thing, to try the experiment. what the colonel really needed was a good foreman--he had used the word "superintendent" merely on the major's account, as less suggestive of work. he found a poor white man, however, green by name, who seemed capable and energetic, and a gang of labourers under his charge was soon busily engaged in clearing the mill site and preparing for the foundations of a new dam. when it was learned that the colonel was paying his labourers a dollar and a half a day, there was considerable criticism, on the ground that such lavishness would demoralise the labour market, the usual daily wage of the negro labourer being from fifty to seventy-five cents. but since most of the colonel's money soon found its way, through the channels of trade, into the pockets of the white people, the criticism soon died a natural death. _eighteen_ once started in his career of active benevolence, the colonel's natural love of thoroughness, combined with a philanthropic zeal as pleasant as it was novel, sought out new reforms. they were easily found. he had begun, with wise foresight, at the foundations of prosperity, by planning an industry in which the people could find employment. but there were subtler needs, mental and spiritual, to be met. education, for instance, so important to real development, languished in clarendon. there was a select private school for young ladies, attended by the daughters of those who could not send their children away to school. a few of the town boys went away to military schools. the remainder of the white youth attended the academy, which was a thoroughly democratic institution, deriving its support partly from the public school fund and partly from private subscriptions. there was a coloured public school taught by a negro teacher. neither school had, so far as the colonel could learn, attained any very high degree of efficiency. at one time the colonel had contemplated building a schoolhouse for the children of the mill hands, but upon second thought decided that the expenditure would be more widely useful if made through the channels already established. if the old academy building were repaired, and a wing constructed, for which there was ample room upon the grounds, it would furnish any needed additional accommodation for the children of the operatives, and avoid the drawing of any line that might seem to put these in a class apart. there were already lines enough in the town--the deep and distinct colour line, theoretically all-pervasive, but with occasional curious exceptions; the old line between the "rich white folks" or aristocrats--no longer rich, most of them, but retaining some of their former wealth and clinging tenaciously to a waning prestige--and the "poor whites," still at a social disadvantage, but gradually evolving a solid middle class, with reinforcements from the decaying aristocracy, and producing now and then some ambitious and successful man like fetters. to emphasise these distinctions was no part of the colonel's plan. to eradicate them entirely in any stated time was of course impossible, human nature being what it was, but he would do nothing to accentuate them. his mill hands should become, like the mill hands in new england towns, an intelligent, self-respecting and therefore respected element of an enlightened population; and the whole town should share equally in anything he might spend for their benefit. he found much pleasure in talking over these fine plans of his with laura treadwell. caxton had entered into them with the enthusiasm of an impressionable young man, brought into close contact with a forceful personality. but in miss laura the colonel found a sympathy that was more than intellectual--that reached down to sources of spiritual strength and inspiration which the colonel could not touch but of which he was conscious and of which he did not hesitate to avail himself at second hand. little phil had made the house almost a second home; and the frequent visits of his father had only strengthened the colonel's admiration of laura's character. he had learned, not from the lady herself, how active in good works she was. a lady bountiful in any large sense she could not be, for her means, as she had so frankly said upon his first visit, were small. but a little went a long way among the poor of clarendon, and the life after all is more than meat, and the body more than raiment, and advice and sympathy were as often needed as other kinds of help. he had offered to assist her charities in a substantial way, and she had permitted it now and then, but had felt obliged at last to cease mentioning them altogether. he was able to circumvent this delicacy now and then through the agency of graciella, whose theory was that money was made to spend. "laura," he said one evening when at the house, "will you go with me to-morrow to visit the academy? i wish to see with your eyes as well as with mine what it needs and what can be done with it. it shall be our secret until we are ready to surprise the town." they went next morning, without notice to the principal. the school was well ordered, but the equipment poor. the building was old and sadly in need of repair. the teacher was an ex-confederate officer, past middle life, well taught by the methods in vogue fifty years before, but scarcely in harmony with modern ideals of education. in spite of his perfect manners and unimpeachable character, the professor, as he was called, was generally understood to hold his position more by virtue of his need and his influence than of his fitness to instruct. he had several young lady assistants who found in teaching the only career open, in clarendon, to white women of good family. the recess hour arrived while they were still at school. when the pupils marched out, in orderly array, the colonel, seizing a moment when miss treadwell and the professor were speaking about some of the children whom the colonel did not know, went to the rear of one of the schoolrooms and found, without much difficulty, high up on one of the walls, the faint but still distinguishable outline of a pencil caricature he had made there thirty years before. if the wall had been whitewashed in the meantime, the lime had scaled down to the original plaster. only the name, which had been written underneath, was illegible, though he could reconstruct with his mind's eye and the aid of a few shadowy strokes--"bill fetters, sneak"--in angular letters in the printed form. the colonel smiled at this survival of youthful bigotry. yet even then his instinct had been a healthy one; his boyish characterisation of fetters, schoolboy, was not an inapt description of fetters, man--mortgage shark, labour contractor and political boss. bill, seeking official favour, had reported to the professor of that date some boyish escapade in which his schoolfellows had taken part, and it was in revenge for this meanness that the colonel had chased him ignominiously down main street and pilloried him upon the schoolhouse wall. fetters the man, a goliath whom no david had yet opposed, had fastened himself upon a weak and disorganised community, during a period of great distress and had succeeded by devious ways in making himself its master. and as the colonel stood looking at the picture he was conscious of a faint echo of his boyish indignation and sense of outraged honour. already fetters and he had clashed upon the subject of the cotton mill, and fetters had retired from the field. if it were written that they should meet in a life-and-death struggle for the soul of clarendon, he would not shirk the conflict. "laura," he said, when they went away, "i should like to visit the coloured school. will you come with me?" she hesitated, and he could see with half an eye that her answer was dictated by a fine courage. "why, certainly, i will go. why not? it is a place where a good work is carried on." "no, laura," said the colonel smiling, "you need not go. on second thought, i should prefer to go alone." she insisted, but he was firm. he had no desire to go counter to her instincts, or induce her to do anything that might provoke adverse comment. miss laura had all the fine glow of courage, but was secretly relieved at being excused from a trip so unconventional. so the colonel found his way alone to the schoolhouse, an unpainted frame structure in a barren, sandy lot upon a street somewhat removed from the centre of the town and given over mainly to the humble homes of negroes. that his unannounced appearance created some embarrassment was quite evident, but his friendliness toward the negroes had already been noised abroad, and he was welcomed with warmth, not to say effusion, by the principal of the school, a tall, stalwart and dark man with an intelligent expression, a deferential manner, and shrewd but guarded eyes--the eyes of the jungle, the colonel had heard them called; and the thought came to him, was it some ancestral jungle on the distant coast of savage africa, or the wilderness of another sort in which the black people had wandered and were wandering still in free america? the attendance was not large; at a glance the colonel saw that there were but twenty-five pupils present. "what is your total enrolment?" he asked the teacher. "well, sir," was the reply, "we have seventy-five or eighty on the roll, but it threatened rain this morning, and as a great many of them haven't got good shoes, they stayed at home for fear of getting their feet wet." the colonel had often noticed the black children paddling around barefoot in the puddles on rainy days, but there was evidently some point of etiquette connected with attending school barefoot. he had passed more than twenty-five children on the streets, on his way to the schoolhouse. the building was even worse than that of the academy, and the equipment poorer still. upon the colonel asking to hear a recitation, the teacher made some excuse and shrewdly requested him to make a few remarks. they could recite, he said, at any time, but an opportunity to hear colonel french was a privilege not to be neglected. the colonel, consenting good-humouredly, was introduced to the school in very flowery language. the pupils were sitting, the teacher informed them, in the shadow of a great man. a distinguished member of the grand old aristocracy of their grand old native state had gone to the great north and grown rich and famous. he had returned to his old home to scatter his vast wealth where it was most needed, and to give his fellow townsmen an opportunity to add their applause to his world-wide fame. he was present to express his sympathy with their feeble efforts to rise in the world, and he wanted the scholars all to listen with the most respectful attention. colonel french made a few simple remarks in which he spoke of the advantages of education as a means of forming character and of fitting boys and girls for the work of men and women. in former years his people had been charged with direct responsibility for the care of many coloured children, and in a larger and indirect way they were still responsible for their descendants. he urged them to make the best of their opportunities and try to fit themselves for useful citizenship. they would meet with the difficulties that all men must, and with some peculiarly their own. but they must look up and not down, forward and not back, seeking always incentives to hope rather than excuses for failure. before leaving, he arranged with the teacher, whose name was taylor, to meet several of the leading coloured men, with whom he wished to discuss some method of improving their school and directing their education to more definite ends. the meeting was subsequently held. "what your people need," said the colonel to the little gathering at the schoolhouse one evening, "is to learn not only how to read and write and think, but to do these things to some definite end. we live in an age of specialists. to make yourselves valuable members of society, you must learn to do well some particular thing, by which you may reasonably expect to earn a comfortable living in your own home, among your neighbours, and save something for old age and the education of your children. get together. take advice from some of your own capable leaders in other places. find out what you can do for yourselves, and i will give you three dollars for every one you can gather, for an industrial school or some similar institution. take your time, and when you're ready to report, come and see me, or write to me, if i am not here." the result was the setting in motion of a stagnant pool. who can measure the force of hope? the town had been neglected by mission boards. no able or ambitious negro had risen from its midst to found an institution and find a career. the coloured school received a grudging dole from the public funds, and was left entirely to the supervision of the coloured people. it would have been surprising had the money always been expended to the best advantage. the fact that a white man, in some sense a local man, who had yet come from the far north, the land of plenty, with feelings friendly to their advancement, had taken a personal interest in their welfare and proved it by his presence among them, gave them hope and inspiration for the future. they had long been familiar with the friendship that curbed, restricted and restrained, and concerned itself mainly with their limitations. they were almost hysterically eager to welcome the co-operation of a friend who, in seeking to lift them up, was obsessed by no fear of pulling himself down or of narrowing in some degree the gulf that separated them--who was willing not only to help them, but to help them to a condition in which they might be in less need of help. the colonel touched the reserves of loyalty in the negro nature, exemplified in old peter and such as he. who knows, had these reserves been reached sooner by strict justice and patient kindness, that they might not long since have helped to heal the wounds of slavery? "and now, laura," said the colonel, "when we have improved the schools and educated the people, we must give them something to occupy their minds. we must have a library, a public library." "that will be splendid!" she replied with enthusiasm. "a public library," continued the colonel, "housed in a beautiful building, in a conspicuous place, and decorated in an artistic manner--a shrine of intellect and taste, at which all the people, rich and poor, black and white, may worship." miss laura was silent for a moment, and thoughtful. "but, henry," she said with some hesitation, "do you mean that coloured people should use the library?" "why not?" he asked. "do they not need it most? perhaps not many of them might wish to use it; but to those who do, should we deny the opportunity? consider their teachers--if the blind lead the blind, shall they not both fall into the ditch?" "yes, henry, that is the truth; but i am afraid the white people wouldn't wish to handle the same books." "very well, then we will give the coloured folks a library of their own, at some place convenient for their use. we need not strain our ideal by going too fast. where shall i build the library?" "the vacant lot," she said, "between the post-office and the bank." "the very place," he replied. "it belonged to our family once, and i shall be acquiring some more ancestral property. the cows will need to find a new pasture." the announcement of the colonel's plan concerning the academy and the library evoked a hearty response on the part of the public, and the _anglo-saxon_ hailed it as the dawning of a new era. with regard to the colonel's friendly plans for the negroes, there was less enthusiasm and some difference of opinion. some commended the colonel's course. there were others, good men and patriotic, men who would have died for liberty, in the abstract, men who sought to walk uprightly, and to live peaceably with all, but who, by much brooding over the conditions surrounding their life, had grown hopelessly pessimistic concerning the negro. the subject came up in a little company of gentlemen who were gathered around the colonel's table one evening, after the coffee had been served, and the havanas passed around. "your zeal for humanity does you infinite credit, colonel french," said dr. mackenzie, minister of the presbyterian church, who was one of these prophetic souls, "but i fear your time and money and effort will be wasted. the negroes are hopelessly degraded. they have degenerated rapidly since the war." "how do you know, doctor? you came here from the north long after the war. what is your standard of comparison?" "i voice the unanimous opinion of those who have known them at both periods." "_i_ don't agree with you; and i lived here before the war. there is certainly one smart negro in town. nichols, the coloured barber, owns five houses, and overreached me in a bargain. before the war he was a chattel. and taylor, the teacher, seems to be a very sensible fellow." "yes," said dr. price, who was one of the company, "taylor is a very intelligent negro. nichols and he have learned how to live and prosper among the white people." "they are exceptions," said the preacher, "who only prove the rule. no, colonel french, for a long time _i_ hoped that there was a future for these poor, helpless blacks. but of late i have become profoundly convinced that there is no place in this nation for the negro, except under the sod. we will not assimilate him, we cannot deport him----" "and therefore, o man of god, must we exterminate him?" "it is god's will. we need not stain our hands with innocent blood. if we but sit passive, and leave their fate to time, they will die away in discouragement and despair. already disease is sapping their vitals. like other weak races, they will vanish from the pathway of the strong, and there is no place for them to flee. when they go hence, it is to go forever. it is the law of life, which god has given to the earth. to coddle them, to delude them with false hopes of an unnatural equality which not all the power of the government has been able to maintain, is only to increase their unhappiness. to a doomed race, ignorance is euthanasia, and knowledge is but pain and sorrow. it is his will that the fittest should survive, and that those shall inherit the earth who are best prepared to utilise its forces and gather its fruits." "my dear doctor, what you say may all be true, but, with all due respect, i don't believe a word of it. i am rather inclined to think that these people have a future; that there is a place for them here; that they have made fair progress under discouraging circumstances; that they will not disappear from our midst for many generations, if ever; and that in the meantime, as we make or mar them, we shall make or mar our civilisation. no society can be greater or wiser or better than the average of all its elements. our ancestors brought these people here, and lived in luxury, some of them--or went into bankruptcy, more of them--on their labour. after three hundred years of toil they might be fairly said to have earned their liberty. at any rate, they are here. they constitute the bulk of our labouring class. to teach them is to make their labour more effective and therefore more profitable; to increase their needs is to increase our profits in supplying them. i'll take my chances on the golden rule. i am no lover of the negro, _as_ negro--i do not know but i should rather see him elsewhere. i think our land would have been far happier had none but white men ever set foot upon it after the red men were driven back. but they are here, through no fault of theirs, as we are. they were born here. we have given them our language--which they speak more or less corruptly; our religion--which they practise certainly no better than we; and our blood--which our laws make a badge of disgrace. perhaps we could not do them strict justice, without a great sacrifice upon our own part. but they are men, and they should have their chance--at least _some_ chance." "i shall pray for your success," sighed the preacher. "with god all things are possible, if he will them. but i can only anticipate your failure." "the colonel is growing so popular, with his ready money and his cheerful optimism," said old general thornton, another of the guests, "that we'll have to run him for congress, as soon as he is reconverted to the faith of his fathers." colonel french had more than once smiled at the assumption that a mere change of residence would alter his matured political convictions. his friends seemed to look upon them, so far as they differed from their own, as a mere veneer, which would scale off in time, as had the multiplied coats of whitewash over the pencil drawing made on the school-house wall in his callow youth. "you see," the old general went on, "it's a social matter down here, rather than a political one. with this ignorant black flood sweeping up against us, the race question assumes an importance which overshadows the tariff and the currency and everything else. for instance, i had fully made up my mind to vote the other ticket in the last election. i didn't like our candidate nor our platform. there was a clean-cut issue between sound money and financial repudiation, and _i_ was tired of the domination of populists and demagogues. all my better instincts led me toward a change of attitude, and i boldly proclaimed the fact. i declared my political and intellectual independence, at the cost of many friends; even my own son-in-law scarcely spoke to me for a month. when i went to the polls, old sam brown, the triflingest nigger in town, whom i had seen sentenced to jail more than once for stealing--old sam brown was next to me in the line. "'well, gin'l,' he said, 'i'm glad you is got on de right side at las', an' is gwine to vote _our_ ticket.'" "this was too much! i could stand the other party in the abstract, but not in the concrete. i voted the ticket of my neighbours and my friends. we had to preserve our institutions, if our finances went to smash. call it prejudice--call it what you like--it's human nature, and you'll come to it, colonel, you'll come to it--and then we'll send you to congress." "i might not care to go," returned the colonel, smiling. "you could not resist, sir, the unanimous demand of a determined constituency. upon the rare occasions when, in this state, the office has had a chance to seek the man, it has never sought in vain." _nineteen_ time slipped rapidly by, and the colonel had been in clarendon a couple of months when he went home one afternoon, and not finding phil and peter, went around to the treadwells' as the most likely place to seek them. "henry," said miss laura, "philip does not seem quite well to-day. there are dark circles under his eyes, and he has been coughing a little." the colonel was startled. had his growing absorption in other things led him to neglect his child? phil needed a mother. this dear, thoughtful woman, whom nature had made for motherhood, had seen things about his child, that he, the child's father, had not perceived. to a mind like colonel french's, this juxtaposition of a motherly heart and a motherless child seemed very pleasing. he despatched a messenger on horseback immediately for dr. price. the colonel had made the doctor's acquaintance soon after coming to clarendon, and out of abundant precaution, had engaged him to call once a week to see phil. a physician of skill and experience, a gentleman by birth and breeding, a thoughtful student of men and manners, and a good story teller, he had proved excellent company and the colonel soon numbered him among his intimate friends. he had seen phil a few days before, but it was yet several days before his next visit. dr. price owned a place in the country, several miles away, on the road to mink run, and thither the messenger went to find him. he was in his town office only at stated hours. the colonel was waiting at home, an hour later, when the doctor drove up to the gate with ben dudley, in the shabby old buggy to which ben sometimes drove his one good horse on his trips to town. "i broke one of my buggy wheels going out home this morning," explained the doctor, "and had just sent it to the shop when your messenger came. i would have ridden your horse back, and let the man walk in, but mr. dudley fortunately came along and gave me a lift." he looked at phil, left some tablets, with directions for their use, and said that it was nothing serious and the child would be all right in a day or two. "what he needs, colonel, at his age, is a woman's care. but for that matter none of us ever get too old to need that." "i'll have tom hitch up and take you home," said the colonel, when the doctor had finished with phil, "unless you'll stay to dinner." "no, thank you," said the doctor, "i'm much obliged, but i told my wife i'd be back to dinner. i'll just sit here and wait for young dudley, who's going to call for me in an hour. there's a fine mind, colonel, that's never had a proper opportunity for development. if he'd had half the chance that your boy will, he would make his mark. did you ever see his uncle malcolm?" the colonel described his visit to mink run, the scene on the piazza, the interview with mr. dudley, and peter's story about the hidden treasure. "is the old man sane?" he asked. "his mind is warped, undoubtedly," said the doctor, "but i'll leave it to you whether it was the result of an insane delusion or not--if you care to hear his story--or perhaps you've heard it?" "no, i have not," returned the colonel, "but i should like to hear it." this was the story that the doctor told: * * * * * when the last century had passed the half-way mark, and had started upon its decline, the dudleys had already owned land on mink run for a hundred years or more, and were one of the richest and most conspicuous families in the state. the first great man of the family, general arthur dudley, an ardent patriot, had won distinction in the war of independence, and held high place in the councils of the infant nation. his son became a distinguished jurist, whose name is still a synonym for legal learning and juridical wisdom. in ralph dudley, the son of judge dudley, and the immediate predecessor of the demented old man in whom now rested the title to the remnant of the estate, the family began to decline from its eminence. ralph did not marry, but led a life of ease and pleasure, wasting what his friends thought rare gifts, and leaving his property to the management of his nephew malcolm, the orphan son of a younger brother and his uncle's prospective heir. malcolm dudley proved so capable a manager that for year after year the large estate was left almost entirely in his charge, the owner looking to it merely for revenue to lead his own life in other places. the civil war gave ralph dudley a career, not upon the field, for which he had no taste, but in administrative work, which suited his talents, and imposed more arduous tasks than those of actual warfare. valour was of small account without arms and ammunition. a commissariat might be improvised, but gunpowder must be manufactured or purchased. ralph's nephew malcolm kept bachelor's hall in the great house. the only women in the household were an old black cook, and the housekeeper, known as "viney"--a negro corruption of lavinia--a tall, comely young light mulattress, with a dash of cherokee blood, which gave her straighter, blacker and more glossy hair than most women of mixed race have, and perhaps a somewhat different temperamental endowment. her duties were not onerous; compared with the toiling field hands she led an easy life. the household had been thus constituted for ten years and more, when malcolm dudley began paying court to a wealthy widow. this lady, a mrs. todd, was a war widow, who had lost her husband in the early years of the struggle. war, while it took many lives, did not stop the currents of life, and weeping widows sometimes found consolation. mrs. todd was of clarendon extraction, and had returned to the town to pass the period of her mourning. men were scarce in those days, and mrs. todd was no longer young, malcolm dudley courted her, proposed marriage, and was accepted. he broke the news to his housekeeper by telling her to prepare the house for a mistress. it was not a pleasant task, but he was a resolute man. the woman had been in power too long to yield gracefully. some passionate strain of the mixed blood in her veins broke out in a scene of hysterical violence. her pleadings, remonstrances, rages, were all in vain. mrs. todd was rich, and he was poor; should his uncle see fit to marry--always a possibility--he would have nothing. he would carry out his purpose. the day after this announcement viney went to town, sought out the object of dudley's attentions, and told her something; just what, no one but herself and the lady ever knew. when dudley called in the evening, the widow refused to see him, and sent instead, a curt note cancelling their engagement. dudley went home puzzled and angry. on the way thither a suspicion flashed into his mind. in the morning he made investigations, after which he rode round by the residence of his overseer. returning to the house at noon, he ate his dinner in an ominous silence, which struck terror to the heart of the woman who waited on him and had already repented of her temerity. when she would have addressed him, with a look he froze the words upon her lips. when he had eaten he looked at his watch, and ordered a boy to bring his horse round to the door. he waited until he saw his overseer coming toward the house, then sprang into the saddle and rode down the lane, passing the overseer with a nod. ten minutes later dudley galloped back up the lane and sprang from his panting horse. as he dashed up the steps he met the overseer coming out of the house. "you have not----" "i have, sir, and well! the she-devil bit my hand to the bone, and would have stabbed me if i hadn't got the knife away from her. you'd better have the niggers look after her; she's shamming a fit." dudley was remorseful, and finding viney unconscious, sent hastily for a doctor. "the woman has had a stroke," said that gentleman curtly, after an examination, "brought on by brutal treatment. by g--d, dudley, i wouldn't have thought this of you! i own negroes, but i treat them like human beings. and such a woman! i'm ashamed of my own race, i swear i am! if we are whipped in this war and the slaves are freed, as lincoln threatens, it will be god's judgment!" many a man has been shot by southern gentlemen for language less offensive; but dudley's conscience made him meek as moses. "it was a mistake," he faltered, "and i shall discharge the overseer who did it." "you had better shoot him," returned the doctor. "he has no soul--and what is worse, no discrimination." dudley gave orders that viney should receive the best of care. next day he found, behind the clock, where she had laid it, the letter which ben dudley, many years after, had read to graciella on mrs. treadwell's piazza. it was dated the morning of the previous day. an hour later he learned of the death of his uncle, who had been thrown from a fractious horse, not far from mink run, and had broken his neck in the fall. a hasty search of the premises did not disclose the concealed treasure. the secret lay in the mind of the stricken woman. as soon as dudley learned that viney had eaten and drunk and was apparently conscious, he went to her bedside and took her limp hand in his own. "i'm sorry, viney, mighty sorry, i assure you. martin went further than i intended, and i have discharged him for his brutality. you'll be sorry, viney, to learn that your old master ralph is dead; he was killed by an accident within ten miles of here. his body will be brought home to-day and buried to-morrow." dudley thought he detected in her expressionless face a shade of sorrow. old ralph, high liver and genial soul, had been so indulgent a master, that his nephew suffered by the comparison. "i found the letter he left with you," he continued softly, "and must take charge of the money immediately. can you tell me where it is?" one side of viney's face was perfectly inert, as the result of her disorder, and any movement of the other produced a slight distortion that spoiled the face as the index of the mind. but her eyes were not dimmed, and into their sombre depths there leaped a sudden fire--only a momentary flash, for almost instantly she closed her lids, and when she opened them a moment later, they exhibited no trace of emotion. "you will tell me where it is?" he repeated. a request came awkwardly to his lips; he was accustomed to command. viney pointed to her mouth with her right hand, which was not affected. "to be sure," he said hastily, "you cannot speak--not yet." he reflected for a moment. the times were unsettled. should a wave of conflict sweep over clarendon, the money might be found by the enemy. should viney take a turn for the worse and die, it would be impossible to learn anything from her at all. there was another thought, which had rapidly taken shape in his mind. no one but viney knew that his uncle had been at mink run. the estate had been seriously embarrassed by roger's extravagant patriotism, following upon the heels of other and earlier extravagances. the fifty thousand dollars would in part make good the loss; as his uncle's heir, he had at least a moral claim upon it, and possession was nine points of the law. "is it in the house?" he asked. she made a negative sign. "in the barn?" the same answer. "in the yard? the garden? the spring house? the quarters?" no question he could put brought a different answer. dudley was puzzled. the woman was in her right mind; she was no liar--of this servile vice at least she was free. surely there was some mystery. "you saw my uncle?" he asked thoughtfully. she nodded affirmatively. "and he had the money, in gold?" yes. "he left it here?" yes, positively. "do you know where he hid it?" she indicated that she did, and pointed again to her silent tongue. "you mean that you must regain your speech before you can explain?" she nodded yes, and then, as if in pain, turned her face away from him. viney was carefully nursed. the doctor came to see her regularly. she was fed with dainty food, and no expense was spared to effect her cure. in due time she recovered from the paralytic stroke, in all except the power of speech, which did not seem to return. all of dudley's attempts to learn from her the whereabouts of the money were equally futile. she seemed willing enough, but, though she made the effort, was never able to articulate; and there was plainly some mystery about the hidden gold which only words could unravel. if she could but write, a few strokes of the pen would give him his heart's desire! but, alas! viney may as well have been without hands, for any use she could make of a pen. slaves were not taught to read or write, nor was viney one of the rare exceptions. but dudley was a man of resource--he would have her taught. he employed a teacher for her, a free coloured man who knew the rudiments. but viney, handicapped by her loss of speech, made wretched progress. from whatever cause, she manifested a remarkable stupidity, while seemingly anxious to learn. dudley himself took a hand in her instruction, but with no better results, and, in the end, the attempt to teach her was abandoned as hopeless. years rolled by. the fall of the confederacy left the slaves free and completed the ruin of the dudley estate. part of the land went, at ruinous prices, to meet mortgages at ruinous rates; part lay fallow, given up to scrub oak and short-leaf pine; merely enough was cultivated, or let out on shares to negro tenants, to provide a living for old malcolm and a few servants. absorbed in dreams of the hidden gold and in the search for it, he neglected his business and fell yet deeper into debt. he worried himself into a lingering fever, through which viney nursed him with every sign of devotion, and from which he rose with his mind visibly weakened. when the slaves were freed, viney had manifested no desire to leave her old place. after the tragic episode which had led to their mutual undoing, there had been no relation between them but that of master and servant. but some gloomy attraction, or it may have been habit, held her to the scene of her power and of her fall. she had no kith nor kin, and her affliction separated her from the rest of mankind. nor would dudley have been willing to let her go, for in her lay the secret of the treasure; and, since all other traces of her ailment had disappeared, so her speech might return. the fruitless search was never relinquished, and in time absorbed all of malcolm dudley's interest. the crops were left to the servants, who neglected them. the yard had been dug over many times. every foot of ground for rods around had been sounded with a pointed iron bar. the house had suffered in the search. no crack or cranny had been left unexplored. the spaces between the walls, beneath the floors, under the hearths--every possible hiding place had been searched, with little care for any resulting injury. * * * * * into this household ben dudley, left alone in the world, had come when a boy of fifteen. he had no special turn for farming, but such work as was done upon the old plantation was conducted under his supervision. in the decaying old house, on the neglected farm, he had grown up in harmony with his surroundings. the example of his old uncle, wrecked in mind by a hopeless quest, had never been brought home to him as a warning; use had dulled its force. he had never joined in the search, except casually, but the legend was in his mind. unconsciously his standards of life grew around it. some day he would be rich, and in order to be sure of it, he must remain with his uncle, whose heir he was. for the money was there, without a doubt. his great-uncle had hid the gold and left the letter--ben had read it. the neighbours knew the story, or at least some vague version of it, and for a time joined in the search--surreptitiously, as occasion offered, and each on his own account. it was the common understanding that old malcolm was mentally unbalanced. the neighbouring negroes, with generous imagination, fixed his mythical and elusive treasure at a million dollars. not one of them had the faintest conception of the bulk or purchasing power of one million dollars in gold; but when one builds a castle in the air, why not make it lofty and spacious? from this unwholesome atmosphere ben dudley found relief, as he grew older, in frequent visits to clarendon, which invariably ended at the treadwells', who were, indeed, distant relatives. he had one good horse, and in an hour or less could leave behind him the shabby old house, falling into ruin, the demented old man, digging in the disordered yard, the dumb old woman watching him from her inscrutable eyes; and by a change as abrupt as that of coming from a dark room into the brightness of midday, find himself in a lovely garden, beside a beautiful girl, whom he loved devotedly, but who kept him on the ragged edge of an uncertainty that was stimulating enough, but very wearing. _twenty_ the summer following colonel french's return to clarendon was unusually cool, so cool that the colonel, pleasantly occupied with his various plans and projects, scarcely found the heat less bearable than that of new york at the same season. during a brief torrid spell he took phil to a southern mountain resort for a couple of weeks, and upon another occasion ran up to new york for a day or two on business in reference to the machinery for the cotton mill, which was to be ready for installation some time during the fall. but these were brief interludes, and did not interrupt the current of his life, which was flowing very smoothly and pleasantly in its new channel, if not very swiftly, for even the colonel was not able to make things move swiftly in clarendon during the summer time, and he was well enough pleased to see them move at all. kirby was out of town when the colonel was in new york, and therefore he did not see him. his mail was being sent from his club to denver, where he was presumably looking into some mining proposition. mrs. jerviss, the colonel supposed, was at the seaside, but he had almost come face to face with her one day on broadway. she had run down to the city on business of some sort. moved by the instinct of defense, the colonel, by a quick movement, avoided the meeting, and felt safer when the lady was well out of sight. he did not wish, at this time, to be diverted from his southern interests, and the image of another woman was uppermost in his mind. one moonlight evening, a day or two after his return from this brief northern trip, the colonel called at mrs. treadwells'. caroline opened the door. mrs. treadwell, she said, was lying down. miss graciella had gone over to a neighbour's, but would soon return. miss laura was paying a call, but would not be long. would the colonel wait? no, he said, he would take a walk, and come back later. the streets were shady, and the moonlight bathed with a silvery glow that part of the town which the shadows did not cover. strolling aimlessly along the quiet, unpaved streets, the colonel, upon turning a corner, saw a lady walking a short distance ahead of him. he thought he recognised the figure, and hurried forward; but ere he caught up with her, she turned and went into one of a row of small houses which he knew belonged to nichols, the coloured barber, and were occupied by coloured people. thinking he had been mistaken in the woman's identity, he slackened his pace, and ere he had passed out of hearing, caught the tones of a piano, accompanying the words, _"i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls, with vassals and serfs at my s-i-i-de."_ it was doubtless the barber's daughter. the barber's was the only coloured family in town that owned a piano. in the moonlight, and at a distance of some rods, the song sounded well enough, and the colonel lingered until it ceased, and the player began to practise scales, when he continued his walk. he had smoked a couple of cigars, and was returning toward mrs. treadwells', when he met, face to face, miss laura treadwell coming out of the barber's house. he lifted his hat and put out his hand. "i called at the house a while ago, and you were all out. i was just going back. i'll walk along with you." miss laura was visibly embarrassed at the meeting. the colonel gave no sign that he noticed her emotion, but went on talking. "it is a delightful evening," he said. "yes," she replied, and then went on, "you must wonder what i was doing there." "i suppose," he said, "that you were looking for a servant, or on some mission of kindness and good will." miss laura was silent for a moment and he could feel her hand tremble on the arm he offered her. "no, henry," she said, "why should i deceive you? i did not go to find a servant, but to serve. i have told you we were poor, but not how poor. i can tell you what i could not say to others, for you have lived away from here, and i know how differently from most of us you look at things. i went to the barber's house to give the barber's daughter music lessons--for money." the colonel laughed contagiously. "you taught her to sing-- _'i dreamt that i dwelt in marble halls?'_" "yes, but you must not judge my work too soon," she replied. "it is not finished yet." "you shall let me know when it is done," he said, "and i will walk by and hear the finished product. your pupil has improved wonderfully. i heard her singing the song the day i came back--the first time i walked by the old house. she sings it much better now. you are a good teacher, as well as a good woman." miss laura laughed somewhat excitedly, but was bent upon her explanation. "the girl used to come to the house," she said. "her mother belonged to us before the war, and we have been such friends as white and black can be. and she wanted to learn to play, and offered to pay me well for lessons, and i gave them to her. we never speak about the money at the house; mother knows it, but feigns that i do it out of mere kindness, and tells me that i am spoiling the coloured people. our friends are not supposed to know it, and if any of them do, they are kind and never speak of it. since you have been coming to the house, it has not been convenient to teach her there, and i have been going to her home in the evening." "my dear laura," said the colonel, remorsefully, "i have driven you away from your own home, and all unwittingly. i applaud your enterprise and your public spirit. it is a long way from the banjo to the piano--it marks the progress of a family and foreshadows the evolution of a race. and what higher work than to elevate humanity?" they had reached the house. mrs. treadwell had not come down, nor had graciella returned. they went into the parlour. miss laura turned up the lamp. * * * * * graciella had run over to a neighbour's to meet a young lady who was visiting a young lady who was a friend of graciella's. she had remained a little longer than she had meant to, for among those who had called to see her friend's friend was young mr. fetters, the son of the magnate, lately returned home from college. barclay fetters was handsome, well-dressed and well-mannered. he had started at one college, and had already changed to two others. stories of his dissipated habits and reckless extravagance had been bruited about. graciella knew his family history, and had imbibed the old-fashioned notions of her grandmother's household, so that her acknowledgment of the introduction was somewhat cold, not to say distant. but as she felt the charm of his manner, and saw that the other girls were vieing with one another for his notice, she felt a certain triumph that he exhibited a marked preference for her conversation. her reserve gradually broke down, and she was talking with animation and listening with pleasure, when she suddenly recollected that colonel french would probably call, and that she ought to be there to entertain him, for which purpose she had dressed herself very carefully. he had not spoken yet, but might be expected to speak at any time; such marked attentions as his could have but one meaning; and for several days she had had a premonition that before the week was out he would seek to know his fate; and graciella meant to be kind. anticipating this event, she had politely but pointedly discouraged ben dudley's attentions, until ben's pride, of which he had plenty in reserve, had awaked to activity. at their last meeting he had demanded a definite answer to his oft-repeated question. "graciella," he had said, "are you going to marry me? yes or no. i'll not be played with any longer. you must marry me for myself, or not at all. yes or no." "then no, mr. dudley," she had replied with spirit, and without a moment's hesitation, "i will not marry you. i will never marry you, not if i should die an old maid." she was sorry they had not parted friends, but she was not to blame. after her marriage, she would avoid the embarrassment of meeting him, by making the colonel take her away. sometime she might, through her husband, be of service to ben, and thus make up, in part at least, for his disappointment. as she ran up through the garden and stepped upon the porch--her slippers were thin and made no sound--she heard colonel french's voice in the darkened parlour. some unusual intonation struck her, and she moved lightly and almost mechanically forward, in the shadow, toward a point where she could see through the window and remain screened from observation. so intense was her interest in what she heard, that she stood with her hand on her heart, not even conscious that she was doing a shameful thing. * * * * * her aunt was seated and colonel french was standing near her. an open bible lay upon the table. the colonel had taken it up and was reading: "'who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. the heart of her husband doth safely trust in her. she will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. strength and honour are her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.' "laura," he said, "the proverb maker was a prophet as well. in these words, written four thousand years ago, he has described you, line for line." the glow which warmed her cheek, still smooth, the light which came into her clear eyes, the joy that filled her heart at these kind words, put the years to flight, and for the moment laura was young again. "you have been good to phil," the colonel went on, "and i should like him to be always near you and have your care. and you have been kind to me, and made me welcome and at home in what might otherwise have seemed, after so long an absence, a strange land. you bring back to me the best of my youth, and in you i find the inspiration for good deeds. be my wife, dear laura, and a mother to my boy, and we will try to make you happy." "oh, henry," she cried with fluttering heart, "i am not worthy to be your wife. i know nothing of the world where you have lived, nor whether i would fit into it." "you are worthy of any place," he declared, "and if one please you more than another, i shall make your wishes mine." "but, henry, how could i leave my mother? and graciella needs my care." "you need not leave your mother--she shall be mine as well as yours. graciella is a dear, bright child; she has in her the making of a noble woman; she should be sent away to a good school, and i will see to it. no, dear laura, there are no difficulties, no giants in the pathway that will not fly or fall when we confront them." he had put his arm around her and lifted her face to his. he read his answer in her swimming eyes, and when he had reached down and kissed her cheek, she buried her head on his shoulder and shed some tears of happiness. for this was her secret: she was sweet and good; she would have made any man happy, who had been worthy of her, but no man had ever before asked her to be his wife. she had lived upon a plane so simple, yet so high, that men not equally high-minded had never ventured to address her, and there were few such men, and chance had not led them her way. as to the others--perhaps there were women more beautiful, and certainly more enterprising. she had not repined; she had been busy and contented. now this great happiness was vouchsafed her, to find in the love of the man whom she admired above all others a woman's true career. "henry," she said, when they had sat down on the old hair-cloth sofa, side by side, "you have made me very happy; so happy that i wish to keep my happiness all to myself--for a little while. will you let me keep our engagement secret until i--am accustomed to it? it may be silly or childish, but it seems like a happy dream, and i wish to assure myself of its reality before i tell it to anyone else." "to me," said the colonel, smiling tenderly into her eyes, "it is the realisation of an ideal. since we met that day in the cemetery you have seemed to me the embodiment of all that is best of my memories of the old south; and your gentleness, your kindness, your tender grace, your self-sacrifice and devotion to duty, mark you a queen among women, and my heart shall be your throne. as to the announcement, have it as you will--it is the lady's privilege." "you are very good," she said tremulously. "this hour repays me for all i have ever tried to do for others." * * * * * graciella felt very young indeed--somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten, she put it afterward, when she reviewed the situation in a calmer frame of mind--as she crept softly away from the window and around the house to the back door, and up the stairs and into her own chamber, where, all oblivious of danger to her clothes or her complexion, she threw herself down upon her own bed and burst into a passion of tears. she had been cruelly humiliated. colonel french, whom she had imagined in love with her, had regarded her merely as a child, who ought to be sent to school--to acquire what, she asked herself, good sense or deportment? perhaps she might acquire more good sense--she had certainly made a fool of herself in this case--but she had prided herself upon her manners. colonel french had been merely playing with her, like one would with a pet monkey; and he had been in love, all the time, with her aunt laura, whom the girls had referred to compassionately, only that same evening, as a hopeless old maid. it is fortunate that youth and hope go generally hand in hand. graciella possessed a buoyant spirit to breast the waves of disappointment. she had her cry out, a good, long cry; and when much weeping had dulled the edge of her discomfiture she began to reflect that all was not yet lost. the colonel would not marry her, but he would still marry in the family. when her aunt laura became mrs. french, she would doubtless go often to new york, if she would not live there always. she would invite graciella to go with her, perhaps to live with her there. as for going to school, that was a matter which her own views should control; at present she had no wish to return to school. she might take lessons in music, or art; her aunt would hardly care for her to learn stenography now, or go into magazine work. her aunt would surely not go to europe without inviting her, and colonel french was very liberal with his money, and would deny his wife nothing, though graciella could hardly imagine that any man would be infatuated with her aunt laura. but this was not the end of graciella's troubles. graciella had a heart, although she had suppressed its promptings, under the influence of a selfish ambition. she had thrown ben dudley over for the colonel; the colonel did not want her, and now she would have neither. ben had been very angry, unreasonably angry, she had thought at the time, and objectionably rude in his manner. he had sworn never to speak to her again. if he should keep his word, she might be very unhappy. these reflections brought on another rush of tears, and a very penitent, contrite, humble-minded young woman cried herself to sleep before miss laura, with a heart bursting with happiness, bade the colonel good-night at the gate, and went upstairs to lie awake in her bed in a turmoil of pleasant emotions. miss laura's happiness lay not alone in the prospect that colonel french would marry her, nor in any sordid thought of what she would gain by becoming the wife of a rich man. it rested in the fact that this man, whom she admired, and who had come back from the outer world to bring fresh ideas, new and larger ideals to lift and broaden and revivify the town, had passed by youth and beauty and vivacity, and had chosen her to share this task, to form the heart and mind and manners of his child, and to be the tie which would bind him most strongly to her dear south. for she was a true child of the soil; the people about her, white and black, were her people, and this marriage, with its larger opportunities for usefulness, would help her to do that for which hitherto she had only been able to pray and to hope. to the boy she would be a mother indeed; to lead him in the paths of truth and loyalty and manliness and the fear of god--it was a priceless privilege, and already her mother-heart yearned to begin the task. and then after the flow came the ebb. why had he chosen her? was it _merely_ as an abstraction--the embodiment of an ideal, a survival from a host of pleasant memories, and as a mother for his child, who needed care which no one else could give, and as a helpmate in carrying out his schemes of benevolence? were these his only motives; and, if so, were they sufficient to ensure her happiness? was he marrying her through a mere sentimental impulse, or for calculated convenience, or from both? she must be certain; for his views might change. he was yet in the full flow of philanthropic enthusiasm. she shared his faith in human nature and the triumph of right ideas; but once or twice she had feared he was underrating the power of conservative forces; that he had been away from clarendon so long as to lose the perspective of actual conditions, and that he was cherishing expectations which might be disappointed. should this ever prove true, his disillusion might be as far-reaching and as sudden as his enthusiasm. then, if he had not loved her for herself, she might be very unhappy. she would have rejoiced to bring him youth and beauty, and the things for which other women were preferred; she would have loved to be the perfect mate, one in heart, mind, soul and body, with the man with whom she was to share the journey of life. but this was a passing thought, born of weakness and self-distrust, and she brushed it away with the tear that had come with it, and smiled at its absurdity. her youth was past; with nothing to expect but an old age filled with the small expedients of genteel poverty, there had opened up to her, suddenly and unexpectedly, a great avenue for happiness and usefulness. it was foolish, with so much to be grateful for, to sigh for the unattainable. his love must be all the stronger since it took no thought of things which others would have found of controlling importance. in choosing her to share his intellectual life he had paid her a higher compliment than had he praised the glow of her cheek or the contour of her throat. in confiding phil to her care he had given her a sacred trust and confidence, for she knew how much he loved the child. _twenty-one_ the colonel's schemes for the improvement of clarendon went forward, with occasional setbacks. several kilns of brick turned out badly, so that the brickyard fell behind with its orders, thus delaying the work a few weeks. the foundations of the old cotton mill had been substantially laid, and could be used, so far as their position permitted for the new walls. when the bricks were ready, a gang of masons was put to work. white men and coloured were employed, under a white foreman. so great was the demand for labour and so stimulating the colonel's liberal wage, that even the drowsy negroes around the market house were all at work, and the pigs who had slept near them were obliged to bestir themselves to keep from being run over by the wagons that were hauling brick and lime and lumber through the streets. even the cows in the vacant lot between the post-office and the bank occasionally lifted up their gentle eyes as though wondering what strange fever possessed the two-legged creatures around them, urging them to such unnatural activity. the work went on smoothly for a week or two, when the colonel had some words with jim green, the white foreman of the masons. the cause of the dispute was not important, but the colonel, as the master, insisted that certain work should be done in a certain way. green wished to argue the point. the colonel brought the discussion to a close with a peremptory command. the foreman took offense, declared that he was no nigger to be ordered around, and quit. the colonel promoted to the vacancy george brown, a coloured man, who was the next best workman in the gang. on the day when brown took charge of the job the white bricklayers, of whom there were two at work, laid down their tools. "what's the matter?" asked the colonel, when they reported for their pay. "aren't you satisfied with the wages?" "yes, we've got no fault to find with the wages." "well?" "we won't work under george brown. we don't mind working _with_ niggers, but we won't work _under_ a nigger." "i'm sorry, gentlemen, but i must hire my own men. here is your money." they would have preferred to argue their grievance, and since the colonel had shut off discussion they went down to clay jackson's saloon and argued the case with all comers, with the usual distortion attending one-sided argument. jim green had been superseded by a nigger--this was the burden of their grievance. thus came the thin entering wedge that was to separate the colonel from a measure of his popularity. there had been no objection to the colonel's employing negroes, no objection to his helping their school--if he chose to waste his money that way; but there were many who took offense when a negro was preferred to a white man. through caxton the colonel learned of this criticism. the colonel showed no surprise, and no annoyance, but in his usual good-humoured way replied: "we'll go right along and pay no attention to him. there were only two white men in the gang, and they have never worked under the negro; they quit as soon as i promoted him. i have hired many men in my time and have made it an unvarying rule to manage my own business in my own way. if anybody says anything to you about it, you tell them just that. these people have got to learn that we live in an industrial age, and success demands of an employer that he utilise the most available labour. after green was discharged, george brown was the best mason left. he gets more work out of the men than green did--even in the old slave times negroes made the best of overseers; they knew their own people better than white men could and got more out of them. when the mill is completed it will give employment to five hundred white women and fifty white men. but every dog must have his day, so give the negro his." the colonel attached no great importance to the incident; the places of the workmen were filled, and the work went forward. he knew the southern sensitiveness, and viewed it with a good-natured tolerance, which, however, stopped at injustice to himself or others. the very root of his reform was involved in the proposition to discharge a competent foreman because of an unreasonable prejudice. matters of feeling were all well enough in some respects--no one valued more highly than the colonel the right to choose his own associates--but the right to work and to do one's best work, was fundamental, as was the right to have one's work done by those who could do it best. even a healthy social instinct might be perverted into an unhealthy and unjust prejudice; most things evil were the perversion of good. the feeling with which the colonel thus came for the first time directly in contact, a smouldering fire capable always of being fanned into flame, had been greatly excited by the political campaign which began about the third month after his arrival in clarendon. an ambitious politician in a neighbouring state had led a successful campaign on the issue of negro disfranchisement. plainly unconstitutional, it was declared to be as plainly necessary for the preservation of the white race and white civilisation. the example had proved contagious, and fetters and his crowd, who dominated their state, had raised the issue there. at first the pronouncement met with slight response. the sister state had possessed a negro majority, which, in view of reconstruction history was theoretically capable of injuring the state. such was not the case here. the state had survived reconstruction with small injury. white supremacy existed, in the main, by virtue of white efficiency as compared with efficiency of a lower grade; there had been places, and instances, where other methods had been occasionally employed to suppress the negro vote, but, taken as a whole, the supremacy of the white man was secure. no negro had held a state office for twenty years. in clarendon they had even ceased to be summoned as jurors, and when a negro met a white man, he gave him the wall, even if it were necessary to take the gutter to do so. but this was not enough; this supremacy must be made permanent. negroes must be taught that they need never look for any different state of things. new definitions were given to old words, new pictures set in old frames, new wine poured into old bottles. "so long," said the candidate for governor, when he spoke at clarendon during the canvas, at a meeting presided over by the editor of the _anglo-saxon_, "so long as one negro votes in the state, so long are we face to face with the nightmare of negro domination. for example, suppose a difference of opinion among white men so radical as to divide their vote equally, the ballot of one negro would determine the issue. can such a possibility be contemplated without a shudder? our duty to ourselves, to our children, and their unborn descendants, and to our great and favoured race, impels us to protest, by word, by vote, by arms if need be, against the enforced equality of an inferior race. equality anywhere, means ultimately, equality everywhere. equality at the polls means social equality; social equality means intermarriage and corruption of blood, and degeneration and decay. what gentleman here would want his daughter to marry a blubber-lipped, cocoanut-headed, kidney-footed, etc., etc., nigger?" there could be but one answer to the question, and it came in thunders of applause. colonel french heard the speech, smiled at the old arguments, but felt a sudden gravity at the deep-seated feeling which they evoked. he remembered hearing, when a boy, the same arguments. they had served their purpose once before, with other issues, to plunge the south into war and consequent disaster. had the lesson been in vain? he did not see the justice nor the expediency of the proposed anti-negro agitation. but he was not in politics, and confined his protests to argument with his friends, who listened but were not convinced. behind closed doors, more than one of the prominent citizens admitted that the campaign was all wrong; that the issues were unjust and reactionary, and that the best interests of the state lay in uplifting every element of the people rather than selecting some one class for discouragement and degradation, and that the white race could hold its own, with the negroes or against them, in any conceivable state of political equality. they listened to the colonel's quiet argument that no state could be freer or greater or more enlightened than the average of its citizenship, and that any restriction of rights that rested upon anything but impartial justice, was bound to re-act, as slavery had done, upon the prosperity and progress of the state. they listened, which the colonel regarded as a great point gained, and they agreed in part, and he could almost understand why they let their feelings govern their reason and their judgment, and said no word to prevent an unfair and unconstitutional scheme from going forward to a successful issue. he knew that for a white man to declare, in such a community, for equal rights or equal justice for the negro, or to take the negro's side in any case where the race issue was raised, was to court social ostracism and political death, or, if the feeling provoked were strong enough, an even more complete form of extinction. so the colonel was patient, and meant to be prudent. his own arguments avoided the stirring up of prejudice, and were directed to the higher motives and deeper principles which underlie society, in the light of which humanity is more than race, and the welfare of the state above that of any man or set of men within it; it being an axiom as true in statesmanship as in mathematics, that the whole is greater than any one of its parts. content to await the uplifting power of industry and enlightenment, and supremely confident of the result, the colonel went serenely forward in his work of sowing that others might reap. _twenty-two_ the atmosphere of the treadwell home was charged, for the next few days, with electric currents. graciella knew that her aunt was engaged to colonel french. but she had not waited, the night before, to hear her aunt express the wish that the engagement should be kept secret. she was therefore bursting with information of which she could manifest no consciousness without confessing that she had been eavesdropping--a thing which she knew miss laura regarded as detestably immoral. she wondered at her aunt's silence. except a certain subdued air of happiness there was nothing to distinguish miss laura's calm demeanor from that of any other day. graciella had determined upon her own attitude toward her aunt. she would kiss her, and wish her happiness, and give no sign that any thought of colonel french had ever entered her own mind. but this little drama, rehearsed in the privacy of her own room, went unacted, since the curtain did not rise upon the stage. the colonel came and went as usual. some dissimulation was required on graciella's part to preserve her usual light-hearted manner toward him. she may have been to blame in taking the colonel's attentions as intended for herself; she would not soon forgive his slighting reference to her. in his eyes she had been only a child, who ought to go to school. he had been good enough to say that she had the making of a fine woman. thanks! she had had a lover for at least two years, and a proposal of marriage before colonel french's shadow had fallen athwart her life. she wished her aunt laura happiness; no one could deserve it more, but was it possible to be happy with a man so lacking in taste and judgment? her aunt's secret began to weigh upon her mind, and she effaced herself as much as possible when the colonel came. her grandmother had begun to notice this and comment upon it, when the happening of a certain social event created a diversion. this was the annual entertainment known as the assembly ball. it was usually held later in the year, but owing to the presence of several young lady visitors in the town, it had been decided to give it early in the fall. the affair was in the hands of a committee, by whom invitations were sent to most people in the county who had any claims to gentility. the gentlemen accepting were expected to subscribe to the funds for hall rent, music and refreshments. these were always the best the town afforded. the ball was held in the opera house, a rather euphemistic title for the large hall above barstow's cotton warehouse, where third-class theatrical companies played one-night stands several times during the winter, and where an occasional lecturer or conjurer held forth. an amateur performance of "pinafore" had once been given there. henry w. grady had lectured there upon white supremacy; the reverend sam small had preached there on hell. it was also distinguished as having been refused, even at the request of the state commissioner of education, as a place for booker t. washington to deliver an address, which had been given at the town hall instead. the assembly balls had always been held in the opera house. in former years the music had been furnished by local negro musicians, but there were no longer any of these, and a band of string music was brought in from another town. so far as mere wealth was concerned, the subscribers touched such extremes as ben dudley on the one hand and colonel french on the other, and included barclay fetters, whom graciella had met on the evening before her disappointment. the treadwell ladies were of course invited, and the question of ways and means became paramount. new gowns and other accessories were imperative. miss laura's one party dress had done service until it was past redemption, and this was graciella's first assembly ball. miss laura took stock of the family's resources, and found that she could afford only one gown. this, of course, must be graciella's. her own marriage would entail certain expenses which demanded some present self-denial. she had played wall-flower for several years, but now that she was sure of a partner, it was a real sacrifice not to attend the ball. but graciella was young, and in such matters youth has a prior right; for she had yet to find her mate. graciella magnanimously offered to remain at home, but was easily prevailed upon to go. she was not entirely happy, for the humiliating failure of her hopes had left her for the moment without a recognised admirer, and the fear of old maidenhood had again laid hold of her heart. her aunt laura's case was no consoling example. not one man in a hundred would choose a wife for colonel french's reasons. most men married for beauty, and graciella had been told that beauty that matured early, like her own, was likely to fade early. one humiliation she was spared. she had been as silent about her hopes as miss laura was about her engagement. whether this was due to mere prudence or to vanity--the hope of astonishing her little world by the unexpected announcement--did not change the comforting fact that she had nothing to explain and nothing for which to be pitied. if her friends, after the manner of young ladies, had hinted at the subject and sought to find a meaning in colonel french's friendship, she had smiled enigmatically. for this self-restraint, whatever had been its motive, she now reaped her reward. the announcement of her aunt's engagement would account for the colonel's attentions to graciella as a mere courtesy to a young relative of his affianced. with regard to ben, graciella was quite uneasy. she had met him only once since their quarrel, and had meant to bow to him politely, but with dignity, to show that she bore no malice; but he had ostentatiously avoided her glance. if he chose to be ill-natured, she had thought, and preferred her enmity to her friendship, her conscience was at least clear. she had been willing to forget his rudeness and be a friend to him. she could have been his true friend, if nothing more; and he would need friends, unless he changed a great deal. when her mental atmosphere was cleared by the fading of her dream, ben assumed larger proportions. perhaps he had had cause for complaint; at least it was only just to admit that he thought so. nor had he suffered in her estimation by his display of spirit in not waiting to be jilted but in forcing her hand before she was quite ready to play it. she could scarcely expect him to attend her to the ball; but he was among the subscribers, and could hardly avoid meeting her, or dancing with her, without pointed rudeness. if he did not ask her to dance, then either the virginia reel, or the lancers, or quadrilles, would surely bring them together; and though graciella sighed, she did not despair. she could, of course, allay his jealousy at once by telling him of her aunt laura's engagement, but this was not yet practicable. she must find some other way of placating him. ben dudley also had a problem to face in reference to the ball--a problem which has troubled impecunious youth since balls were invented--the problem of clothes. he was not obliged to go to the ball. graciella's outrageous conduct relieved him of any obligation to invite her, and there was no other woman with whom he would have cared to go, or who would have cared, so far as he knew, to go with him. for he was not a lady's man, and but for his distant relationship would probably never have gone to the treadwells'. he was looked upon by young women as slow, and he knew that graciella had often been impatient at his lack of sprightliness. he could pay his subscription, which was really a sort of gentility tax, the failure to meet which would merely forfeit future invitations, and remain at home. he did not own a dress suit, nor had he the money to spare for one. he, or they, for he and his uncle were one in such matters, were in debt already, up to the limit of their credit, and he had sold the last bale of old cotton to pay the last month's expenses, while the new crop, already partly mortgaged, was not yet picked. he knew that some young fellows in town rented dress suits from solomon cohen, who, though he kept only four suits in stock at a time, would send to new york for others to rent out on this occasion, and return them afterwards. but ben would not wear another man's clothes. he had borne insults from graciella that he never would have borne from any one else, and that he would never bear again; but there were things at which his soul protested. nor would cohen's suits have fitted him. he was so much taller than the average man for whom store clothes were made. he remained in a state of indecision until the day of the ball. late in the evening he put on his black cutaway coat, which was getting a little small, trousers to match, and a white waistcoat, and started to town on horseback so as to arrive in time for the ball, in case he should decide, at the last moment, to take part. _twenty-three_ the opera house was brilliantly lighted on the night of the assembly ball. the dancers gathered at an earlier hour than is the rule in the large cities. many of the guests came in from the country, and returned home after the ball, since the hotel could accommodate only a part of them. when ben dudley, having left his horse at a livery stable, walked up main street toward the hall, carriages were arriving and discharging their freight. the ladies were prettily gowned, their faces were bright and animated, and ben observed that most of the gentlemen wore dress suits; but also, much to his relief, that a number, sufficient to make at least a respectable minority, did not. he was rapidly making up his mind to enter, when colonel french's carriage, drawn by a pair of dashing bays and driven by a negro in livery, dashed up to the door and discharged miss graciella treadwell, radiantly beautiful in a new low-cut pink gown, with pink flowers in her hair, a thin gold chain with a gold locket at the end around her slender throat, white slippers on her feet and long white gloves upon her shapely hands and wrists. ben shrank back into the shadow. he had never been of an envious disposition; he had always looked upon envy as a mean vice, unworthy of a gentleman; but for a moment something very like envy pulled at his heartstrings. graciella worshipped the golden calf. _he_ worshipped graciella. but he had no money; he could not have taken her to the ball in a closed carriage, drawn by blooded horses and driven by a darky in livery. graciella's cavalier wore, with the ease and grace of long habit, an evening suit of some fine black stuff that almost shone in the light from the open door. at the sight of him the waist of ben's own coat shrunk up to the arm-pits, and he felt a sinking of the heart as they passed out of his range of vision. he would not appear to advantage by the side of colonel french, and he would not care to appear otherwise than to advantage in graciella's eyes. he would not like to make more palpable, by contrast, the difference between colonel french and himself; nor could he be haughty, distant, reproachful, or anything but painfully self-conscious, in a coat that was not of the proper cut, too short in the sleeves, and too tight under the arms. while he stood thus communing with his own bitter thoughts, another carriage, drawn by a pair of beautiful black horses, drew up to the curb in front of him. the horses were restive, and not inclined to stand still. some one from the inside of the carriage called to the coachman through the open window. "ransom," said the voice, "stay on the box. here, you, open this carriage door!" ben looked around for the person addressed, but saw no one near but himself. "you boy there, by the curb, open this door, will you, or hold the horses, so my coachman can!" "are you speaking to me?" demanded ben angrily. just then one of the side-lights of the carriage flashed on ben's face. "oh, i beg pardon," said the man in the carriage, carelessly, "i took you for a nigger." there could be no more deadly insult, though the mistake was not unnatural. ben was dark, and the shadow made him darker. ben was furious. the stranger had uttered words of apology, but his tone had been insolent, and his apology was more offensive than his original blunder. had it not been for ben's reluctance to make a disturbance, he would have struck the offender in the mouth. if he had had a pistol, he could have shot him; his great uncle ralph, for instance, would not have let him live an hour. while these thoughts were surging through his heated brain, the young man, as immaculately clad as colonel french had been, left the carriage, from which he helped a lady, and with her upon his arm, entered the hall. in the light that streamed from the doorway, ben recognised him as barclay fetters, who, having finished a checkered scholastic career, had been at home at sycamore for several months. much of this time he had spent in clarendon, where his father's wealth and influence gave him entrance to good society, in spite of an ancestry which mere character would not have offset. he knew young fetters very well by sight, since the latter had to pass mink run whenever he came to town from sycamore. fetters may not have known him, since he had been away for much of the time in recent years, but he ought to have been able to distinguish between a white man--a gentleman--and a negro. it was the insolence of an upstart. old josh fetters had been, in his younger days, his uncle's overseer. an overseer's grandson treated him, ben dudley, like dirt under his feet! perhaps he had judged him by his clothes. he would like to show barclay fetters, if they ever stood face to face, that clothes did not make the man, nor the gentleman. ben decided after this encounter that he would not go on the floor of the ballroom; but unable to tear himself away, he waited until everybody seemed to have gone in; then went up the stairs and gained access, by a back way, to a dark gallery in the rear of the hall, which the ushers had deserted for the ballroom, from which he could, without discovery, look down upon the scene below. his eyes flew to graciella as the needle to the pole. she was dancing with colonel french. the music stopped, and a crowd of young fellows surrounded her. when the next dance, which was a waltz, began, she moved out upon the floor in the arms of barclay fetters. ben swore beneath his breath. he had heard tales of barclay fetters which, if true, made him unfit to touch a decent woman. he left the hall, walked a short distance down a street and around the corner to the bar in the rear of the hotel, where he ordered a glass of whiskey. he had never been drunk in his life, and detested the taste of liquor; but he was desperate and had to do something; he would drink till he was drunk, and forget his troubles. having never been intoxicated, he had no idea whatever of the effect liquor would have upon him. with each succeeding drink, the sense of his wrongs broadened and deepened. at one stage his intoxication took the form of an intense self-pity. there was something rotten in the whole scheme of things. why should he be poor, while others were rich, and while fifty thousand dollars in gold were hidden in or around the house where he lived? why should colonel french, an old man, who was of no better blood than himself, be rich enough to rob him of the woman whom he loved? and why, above all, should barclay fetters have education and money and every kind of opportunity, which he did not appreciate, while he, who would have made good use of them, had nothing? with this sense of wrong, which grew as his brain clouded more and more, there came, side by side, a vague zeal to right these wrongs. as he grew drunker still, his thoughts grew less coherent; he lost sight of his special grievance, and merely retained the combative instinct. he had reached this dangerous stage, and had, fortunately, passed it one step farther along the road to unconsciousness--fortunately, because had he been sober, the result of that which was to follow might have been more serious--when two young men, who had come down from the ballroom for some refreshment, entered the barroom and asked for cocktails. while the barkeeper was compounding the liquor, the young men spoke of the ball. "that little treadwell girl is a peach," said one. "i could tote a bunch of beauty like that around the ballroom all night." the remark was not exactly respectful, nor yet exactly disrespectful. ben looked up from his seat. the speaker was barclay fetters, and his companion one tom mcrae, another dissolute young man of the town. ben got up unsteadily and walked over to where they stood. "i want you to un'erstan'," he said thickly, "that no gen'l'man would mensh'n a lady's name in a place like this, or shpeak dissuspeckerly 'bout a lady 'n any place; an' i want you to unerstan' fu'thermo' that you're no gen'l'man, an' that i'm goin' t' lick you, by g--d!" "the hell you are!" returned fetters. a scowl of surprise rose on his handsome face, and he sprang to an attitude of defence. ben suited the action to the word, and struck at fetters. but ben was drunk and the other two were sober, and in three minutes ben lay on the floor with a sore head and a black eye. his nose was bleeding copiously, and the crimson stream had run down upon his white shirt and vest. taken all in all, his appearance was most disreputable. by this time the liquor he had drunk had its full effect, and complete unconsciousness supervened to save him, for a little while, from the realisation of his disgrace. "who is the mucker, anyway?" asked barclay fetters, readjusting his cuffs, which had slipped down in the melee. "he's a chap by the name of dudley," answered mcrae; "lives at mink run, between here and sycamore, you know." "oh, yes, i've seen him--the 'po' white' chap that lives with the old lunatic that's always digging for buried treasure---- _'for my name was captain kidd, as i sailed, as i sailed.'_ but let's hurry back, tom, or we'll lose the next dance." fetters and his companion returned to the ball. the barkeeper called a servant of the hotel, with whose aid, ben was carried upstairs and put to bed, bruised in body and damaged in reputation. _twenty-four_ ben's fight with young fetters became a matter of public comment the next day after the ball. his conduct was cited as sad proof of the degeneracy of a once fine old family. he had been considered shiftless and not well educated, but no one had suspected that he was a drunkard and a rowdy. other young men in the town, high-spirited young fellows with plenty of money, sometimes drank a little too much, and occasionally, for a point of honour, gentlemen were obliged to attack or defend themselves, but when they did, they used pistols, a gentleman's weapon. here, however, was an unprovoked and brutal attack with fists, upon two gentlemen in evening dress and without weapons to defend themselves, "one of them," said the _anglo-saxon_, "the son of our distinguished fellow citizen and colleague in the legislature, the honourable william fetters." when colonel french called to see miss laura, the afternoon of next day after the ball, the ladies were much concerned about the affair. "oh, henry," exclaimed miss laura, "what is this dreadful story about ben dudley? they say he was drinking at the hotel, and became intoxicated, and that when barclay fetters and tom mcrae went into the hotel, he said something insulting about graciella, and when they rebuked him for his freedom he attacked them violently, and that when finally subdued he was put to bed unconscious and disgracefully intoxicated. graciella is very angry, and we all feel ashamed enough to sink into the ground. what can be the matter with ben? he hasn't been around lately, and he has quarrelled with graciella. i never would have expected anything like this from ben." "it came from his great-uncle ralph," said mrs. treadwell. "ralph was very wild when he was young, but settled down into a very polished gentleman. i danced with him once when he was drunk, and i never knew it--it was my first ball, and i was intoxicated myself, with excitement. mother was scandalised, but father laughed and said boys would be boys. but poor ben hasn't had his uncle's chances, and while he has always behaved well here, he could hardly be expected to carry his liquor like a gentleman of the old school." "my dear ladies," said the colonel, "we have heard only one side of the story. i guess there's no doubt ben was intoxicated, but we know he isn't a drinking man, and one drink--or even one drunk--doesn't make a drunkard, nor one fight a rowdy. barclay fetters and tom mcrae are not immaculate, and perhaps ben can exonerate himself." "i certainly hope so," said miss laura earnestly. "i am sorry for ben, but i could not permit a drunken rowdy to come to the house, or let my niece be seen upon the street with him." "it would only be fair," said the colonel, "to give him a chance to explain, when he comes in again. i rather like ben. he has some fine mechanical ideas, and the making of a man in him, unless i am mistaken. i have been hoping to find a place for him in the new cotton mill, when it is ready to run." they were still speaking of ben, when there was an irresolute knock at the rear door of the parlour, in which they were seated. "miss laura, o miss laura," came a muffled voice. "kin i speak to you a minute. it's mighty pertickler, miss laura, fo' god it is!" "laura," said the colonel, "bring catharine in. i saw that you were troubled once before when you were compelled to refuse her something. henceforth your burdens shall be mine. come in, catharine," he called, "and tell us what's the matter. what's your trouble? what's it all about?" the woman, red-eyed from weeping, came in, wringing her apron. "miss laura," she sobbed, "an' colonel french, my husban' bud is done gone and got inter mo' trouble. he's run away f'm mistah fettuhs, w'at he wuz sol' back to in de spring, an' he's done be'n fine' fifty dollahs mo', an' he's gwine ter be sol' back ter mistah fettuhs in de mawnin', fer ter finish out de ole fine and wo'k out de new one. i's be'n ter see 'im in de gyard house, an' he say mistah haines, w'at use' ter be de constable and is a gyard fer mistah fettuhs now, beat an' 'bused him so he couldn' stan' it; an' 'ceptin' i could pay all dem fines, he'll be tuck back dere; an'he say ef dey evah beats him ag'in, dey'll eithuh haf ter kill him, er he'll kill some er dem. an' bud is a rash man, miss laura, an' i'm feared dat he'll do w'at he say, an' ef dey kills him er he kills any er dem, it'll be all de same ter me--i'll never see 'm no mo' in dis worl'. ef i could borry de money, miss laura--mars' colonel--i'd wuk my fingers ter de bone 'tel i paid back de las' cent. er ef you'd buy bud, suh, lack you did unc' peter, he would n' mind wukkin' fer you, suh, fer bud is a good wukker we'n folks treats him right; an' he had n' never had no trouble nowhar befo' he come hyuh, suh." "how did he come to be arrested the first time?" asked the colonel. "he didn't live hyuh, suh; i used ter live hyuh, an' i ma'ied him down ter madison, where i wuz wukkin'. we fell out one day, an' i got mad and lef' 'im--it wuz all my fault an' i be'n payin' fer it evuh since--an' i come back home an' went ter wuk hyuh, an' he come aftuh me, an de fus' day he come, befo' i knowed he wuz hyuh, dis yer mistah haines tuck 'im up, an' lock 'im up in de gyard house, like a hog in de poun', an' he didn' know nobody, an' dey didn' give 'im no chanst ter see nobody, an' dey tuck 'im roun' ter squi' reddick nex' mawnin', an' fined 'im an' sol' 'im ter dis yer mistuh fettuhs fer ter wo'k out de fine; an' i be'n wantin' all dis time ter hyuh fum 'im, an' i'd done be'n an' gone back ter madison to look fer 'im, an' foun' he wuz gone. an' god knows i didn' know what had become er 'im, 'tel he run away de yuther time an' dey tuck 'im an' sent 'im back again. an' he hadn' done nothin' de fus' time, suh, but de lawd know w'at he won' do ef dey sen's 'im back any mo'." catharine had put her apron to her eyes and was sobbing bitterly. the story was probably true. the colonel had heard underground rumours about the fetters plantation and the manner in which it was supplied with labourers, and his own experience in old peter's case had made them seem not unlikely. he had seen catharine's husband, in the justice's court, and the next day, in the convict gang behind turner's buggy. the man had not looked like a criminal; that he was surly and desperate may as well have been due to a sense of rank injustice as to an evil nature. that a wrong had been done, under cover of law, was at least more than likely; but a deed of mercy could be made to right it. the love of money might be the root of all evil, but its control was certainly a means of great good. the colonel glowed with the consciousness of this beneficent power to scatter happiness. "laura," he said, "i will attend to this; it is a matter about which you should not be troubled. don't be alarmed, catharine. just be a good girl and help miss laura all you can, and i'll look after your husband, and pay his fine and let him work it out as a free man." "thank'y, suh, thank'y, mars' colonel, an' miss laura! an' de lawd is gwine bless you, suh, you an' my sweet young lady, fuh bein' good to po' folks w'at can't do nuthin' to he'p deyse'ves out er trouble," said catharine backing out with her apron to her eyes. * * * * * on leaving miss laura, the colonel went round to the office of squire reddick, the justice of the peace, to inquire into the matter of bud johnson. the justice was out of town, his clerk said, but would be in his office at nine in the morning, at which time the colonel could speak to him about johnson's fine. the next morning was bright and clear, and cool enough to be bracing. the colonel, alive with pleasant thoughts, rose early and after a cold bath, and a leisurely breakfast, walked over to the mill site, where the men were already at work. having looked the work over and given certain directions, he glanced at his watch, and finding it near nine, set out for the justice's office in time to reach it by the appointed hour. squire reddick was at his desk, upon which his feet rested, while he read a newspaper. he looked up with an air of surprise as the colonel entered. "why, good mornin', colonel french," he said genially. "i kind of expected you a while ago; the clerk said you might be around. but you didn' come, so i supposed you'd changed yo' mind." "the clerk said that you would be here at nine," replied the colonel; "it is only just nine." "did he? well, now, that's too bad! i do generally git around about nine, but i was earlier this mornin' and as everybody was here, we started in a little sooner than usual. you wanted to see me about bud johnson?" "yes, i wish to pay his fine and give him work." "well, that's too bad; but you weren't here, and mr. turner was, and he bought his time again for mr. fetters. i'm sorry, you know, but first come, first served." the colonel was seriously annoyed. he did not like to believe there was a conspiracy to frustrate his good intention; but that result had been accomplished, whether by accident or design. he had failed in the first thing he had undertaken for the woman he loved and was to marry. he would see fetters's man, however, and come to some arrangement with him. with fetters the hiring of the negro was purely a commercial transaction, conditioned upon a probable profit, for the immediate payment of which, and a liberal bonus, he would doubtless relinquish his claim upon johnson's services. learning that turner, who had acted as fetters's agent in the matter, had gone over to clay johnson's saloon, he went to seek him there. he found him, and asked for a proposition. turner heard him out. "well, colonel french," he replied with slightly veiled insolence, "i bought this nigger's time for mr. fetters, an' unless i'm might'ly mistaken in mr. fetters, no amount of money can get the nigger until he's served his time out. he's defied our rules and defied the law, and defied me, and assaulted one of the guards; and he ought to be made an example of. we want to keep 'im; he's a bad nigger, an' we've got to handle a lot of 'em, an' we need 'im for an example--he keeps us in trainin'." "have you any power in the matter?" demanded the colonel, restraining his contempt. "me? no, not _me_! i couldn't let the nigger go for his weight in gol'--an' wouldn' if i could. i bought 'im in for mr. fetters, an' he's the only man that's got any say about 'im." "very well," said the colonel as he turned away, "i'll see fetters." "i don't know whether you will or not," said turner to himself, as he shot a vindictive glance at the colonel's retreating figure. "fetters has got this county where he wants it, an' i'll bet dollars to bird shot he ain't goin' to let no coon-flavoured no'the'n interloper come down here an' mix up with his arrangements, even if he did hail from this town way back yonder. this here nigger problem is a south'en problem, and outsiders might's well keep their han's off. me and haines an' fetters is the kind o' men to settle it." the colonel was obliged to confess to miss laura his temporary setback, which he went around to the house and did immediately. "it's the first thing i've undertaken yet for your sake, laura, and i've got to report failure, so far." "it's only the first step," she said, consolingly. "that's all. i'll drive out to fetters's place to-morrow, and arrange the matter. by starting before day, i can make it and transact my business, and get back by night, without hurting the horses." catharine was called in and the situation explained to her. though clearly disappointed at the delay, and not yet free of apprehension that bud might do something rash, she seemed serenely confident of the colonel's ultimate success. in her simple creed, god might sometimes seem to neglect his black children, but no harm could come to a negro who had a rich white gentleman for friend and protector. _twenty-five_ it was not yet sunrise when the colonel set out next day, after an early breakfast, upon his visit to fetters. there was a crisp freshness in the air, the dew was thick upon the grass, the clear blue sky gave promise of a bright day and a pleasant journey. the plantation conducted by fetters lay about twenty miles to the south of clarendon, and remote from any railroad, a convenient location for such an establishment, for railroads, while they bring in supplies and take out produce, also bring in light and take out information, both of which are fatal to certain fungus growths, social as well as vegetable, which flourish best in the dark. the road led by mink run, and the colonel looked over toward the house as they passed it. old and weather-beaten it seemed, even in the distance, which lent it no enchantment in the bright morning light. when the colonel had travelled that road in his boyhood, great forests of primeval pine had stretched for miles on either hand, broken at intervals by thriving plantations. now all was changed. the tall and stately growth of the long-leaf pine had well nigh disappeared; fifteen years before, the turpentine industry, moving southward from virginia, along the upland counties of the appalachian slope, had swept through clarendon county, leaving behind it a trail of blasted trunks and abandoned stills. ere these had yielded to decay, the sawmill had followed, and after the sawmill the tar kiln, so that the dark green forest was now only a waste of blackened stumps and undergrowth, topped by the vulgar short-leaved pine and an occasional oak or juniper. here and there they passed an expanse of cultivated land, and there were many smaller clearings in which could be seen, plowing with gaunt mules or stunted steers, some heavy-footed negro or listless "po' white man;" or women and children, black or white. in reply to a question, the coachman said that mr. fetters had worked all that country for turpentine years before, and had only taken up cotton raising after the turpentine had been exhausted from the sand hills. he had left his mark, thought the colonel. like the plague of locusts, he had settled and devoured and then moved on, leaving a barren waste behind him. as the morning advanced, the settlements grew thinner, until suddenly, upon reaching the crest of a hill, a great stretch of cultivated lowland lay spread before them. in the centre of the plantation, near the road which ran through it, stood a square, new, freshly painted frame house, which would not have seemed out of place in some ohio or michigan city, but here struck a note alien to its surroundings. off to one side, like the negro quarters of another generation, were several rows of low, unpainted cabins, built of sawed lumber, the boards running up and down, and battened with strips where the edges met. the fields were green with cotton and with corn, and there were numerous gangs of men at work, with an apparent zeal quite in contrast with the leisurely movement of those they had passed on the way. it was a very pleasing scene. "dis yer, suh," said the coachman in an awed tone, "is mistah fetters's plantation. you ain' gwine off nowhere, and leave me alone whils' you are hyuh, is you, suh?" "no," said the colonel, "i'll keep my eye on you. nobody'll trouble you while you're with me." passing a clump of low trees, the colonel came upon a group at sight of which he paused involuntarily. a gang of negroes were at work. upon the ankles of some was riveted an iron band to which was soldered a chain, at the end of which in turn an iron ball was fastened. accompanying them was a white man, in whose belt was stuck a revolver, and who carried in one hand a stout leather strap, about two inches in width with a handle by which to grasp it. the gang paused momentarily to look at the traveller, but at a meaning glance from the overseer fell again to their work of hoeing cotton. the white man stepped to the fence, and colonel french addressed him. "good morning." "mornin', suh." "will you tell me where i can find mr. fetters?" inquired the colonel. "no, suh, unless he's at the house. he may have went away this mornin', but i haven't heard of it. but you drive along the road to the house, an' somebody'll tell you." the colonel seemed to have seen the overseer before, but could not remember where. "sam," he asked the coachman, "who is that white man?" "dat's mistah haines, suh--use' ter be de constable at cla'endon, suh. i wouldn' lak to be in no gang under him, suh, sho' i wouldn', no, suh!" after this ejaculation, which seemed sincere as well as fervent, sam whipped up the horses and soon reached the house. a negro boy came out to meet them. "is mr. fetters at home," inquired the colonel? "i--_i_ don' know, suh--i--i'll ax mars' turner. _he's_ hyuh." he disappeared round the house and in a few minutes returned with turner, with whom the colonel exchanged curt nods. "i wish to see mr. fetters," said the colonel. "well, you can't see him." "why not?" "because he ain't here. he left for the capital this mornin', to be gone a week. you'll be havin' a fine drive, down here and back." the colonel ignored the taunt. "when will mr. fetters return?" he inquired. "i'm shore i don't know. he don't tell me his secrets. but i'll tell _you_, colonel french, that if you're after that nigger, you're wastin' your time. he's in haines's gang, and haines loves him so well that mr. fetters has to keep bud in order to keep haines. there's no accountin' for these vi'lent affections, but they're human natur', and they have to be 'umoured." "i'll talk to your _master_," rejoined the colonel, restraining his indignation and turning away. turner looked after him vindictively. "he'll talk to my _master_, like as if i was a nigger! it'll be a long time before he talks to fetters, if that's who he means--if i can prevent it. not that it would make any difference, but i'll just keep him on the anxious seat." it was nearing noon, but the colonel had received no invitation to stop, or eat, or feed his horses. he ordered sam to turn and drive back the way they had come. as they neared the group of labourers they had passed before, the colonel saw four negroes, in response to an imperative gesture from the overseer, seize one of their number, a short, thickset fellow, overpower some small resistance which he seemed to make, throw him down with his face to the ground, and sit upon his extremities while the overseer applied the broad leathern thong vigorously to his bare back. the colonel reached over and pulled the reins mechanically. his instinct was to interfere; had he been near enough to recognise in the negro the object of his visit, bud johnson, and in the overseer the ex-constable, haines, he might have yielded to the impulse. but on second thought he realised that he had neither authority nor strength to make good his interference. for aught he knew, the performance might be strictly according to law. so, fighting a feeling of nausea which he could hardly conquer, he ordered sam to drive on. the coachman complied with alacrity, as though glad to escape from a mighty dangerous place. he had known friendless coloured folks, who had strayed down in that neighbourhood to be lost for a long time; and he had heard of a spot, far back from the road, in a secluded part of the plantation, where the graves of convicts who had died while in fetters's service were very numerous. _twenty-six_ during the next month the colonel made several attempts to see fetters, but some fatality seemed always to prevent their meeting. he finally left the matter of finding fetters to caxton, who ascertained that fetters would be in attendance at court during a certain week, at carthage, the county seat of the adjoining county, where the colonel had been once before to inspect a cotton mill. thither the colonel went on the day of the opening of court. his train reached town toward noon and he went over to the hotel. he wondered if he would find the proprietor sitting where he had found him some weeks before. but the buggy was gone from before the piazza, and there was a new face behind the desk. the colonel registered, left word that he would be in to dinner, and then went over to the court house, which lay behind the trees across the square. the court house was an old, square, hip-roofed brick structure, whose walls, whitewashed the year before, had been splotched and discoloured by the weather. from one side, under the eaves, projected a beam, which supported a bell rung by a rope from the window below. a hall ran through the centre, on either side of which were the county offices, while the court room with a judge's room and jury room, occupied the upper floor. the colonel made his way across the square, which showed the usual signs of court being in session. there were buggies hitched to trees and posts here and there, a few negroes sleeping in the sun, and several old coloured women with little stands for the sale of cakes, and fried fish, and cider. the colonel went upstairs to the court room. it was fairly well filled, and he remained standing for a few minutes near the entrance. the civil docket was evidently on trial, for there was a jury in the box, and a witness was being examined with some prolixity with reference to the use of a few inches of land which lay on one side or on the other of a disputed boundary. from what the colonel could gather, that particular line fence dispute had been in litigation for twenty years, had cost several lives, and had resulted in a feud that involved a whole township. the testimony was about concluded when the colonel entered, and the lawyers began their arguments. the feeling between the litigants seemed to have affected their attorneys, and the court more than once found it necessary to call counsel to order. the trial was finished, however, without bloodshed; the case went to the jury, and court was adjourned until two o'clock. the colonel had never met fetters, nor had he seen anyone in the court room who seemed likely to be the man. but he had seen his name freshly written on the hotel register, and he would doubtless go there for dinner. there would be ample time to get acquainted and transact his business before court reassembled for the afternoon. dinner seemed to be a rather solemn function, and except at a table occupied by the judge and the lawyers, in the corner of the room farthest from the colonel, little was said. a glance about the room showed no one whom the colonel could imagine to be fetters, and he was about to ask the waiter if that gentleman had yet entered the dining room, when a man came in and sat down on the opposite side of the table. the colonel looked up, and met the cheerful countenance of the liveryman from whom he had hired a horse and buggy some weeks before. "howdy do?" said the newcomer amiably. "hope you've been well." "quite well," returned the colonel, "how are you?" "oh, just tol'able. tendin' co't?" "no, i came down here to see a man that's attending court--your friend fetters. i suppose he'll be in to dinner." "oh, yes, but he ain't come in yet. i reckon you find the ho-tel a little different from the time you were here befo'." "this is a better dinner than i got," replied the colonel, "and i haven't seen the landlord anywhere, nor his buggy." "no, he ain't here no more. sad loss to carthage! you see bark fetters--that's bill's boy that's come home from the no'th from college--bark fetters come down here one day, an' went in the ho-tel, an' when lee dickson commenced to put on his big airs, bark cussed 'im out, and lee, who didn't know bark from adam, cussed 'im back, an' then bark hauled off an' hit 'im. they had it hot an' heavy for a while. lee had more strength, but bark had more science, an' laid lee out col'. then bark went home an' tol' the ole man, who had a mortgage on the ho-tel, an' he sol' lee up. i hear he's barberin' or somethin' er that sort up to atlanta, an' the hotel's run by another man. there's fetters comin' in now." the colonel glanced in the direction indicated, and was surprised at the appearance of the redoubtable fetters, who walked over and took his seat at the table with the judge and the lawyers. he had expected to meet a tall, long-haired, red-faced, truculent individual, in a slouch hat and a frock coat, with a loud voice and a dictatorial manner, the typical southerner of melodrama. he saw a keen-eyed, hard-faced small man, slightly gray, clean-shaven, wearing a well-fitting city-made business suit of light tweed. except for a few little indications, such as the lack of a crease in his trousers, fetters looked like any one of a hundred business men whom the colonel might have met on broadway in any given fifteen minutes during business hours. the colonel timed his meal so as to leave the dining-room at the same moment with fetters. he went up to fetters, who was chewing a toothpick in the office, and made himself known. "i am mr. french," he said--he never referred to himself by his military title--"and you, i believe, are mr. fetters?" "yes, sir, that's my name," replied fetters without enthusiasm, but eyeing the colonel keenly between narrowed lashes. "i've been trying to see you for some time, about a matter," continued the colonel, "but never seemed able to catch up with you before." "yes, i heard you were at my house, but i was asleep upstairs, and didn't know you'd be'n there till you'd gone." "your man told me you had gone to the capital for two weeks." "my man? oh, you mean turner! well, i reckon you must have riled turner somehow, and he thought he'd have a joke on you." "i don't quite see the joke," said the colonel, restraining his displeasure. "but that's ancient history. can we sit down over here in the shade and talk by ourselves for a moment?" fetters followed the colonel out of doors, where they drew a couple of chairs to one side, and the colonel stated the nature of his business. he wished to bargain for the release of a negro, bud johnson by name, held to service by fetters under a contract with clarendon county. he was willing to pay whatever expense fetters had been to on account of johnson, and an amount sufficient to cover any estimated profits from his services. meanwhile fetters picked his teeth nonchalantly, so nonchalantly as to irritate the colonel. the colonel's impatience was not lessened by the fact that fetters waited several seconds before replying. "well, mr. fetters, what say you?" "colonel french," said fetters, "i reckon you can't have the nigger." "is it a matter of money?" asked the colonel. "name your figure. i don't care about the money. i want the man for a personal reason." "so do i," returned fetters, coolly, "and money's no object to me. i've more now than i know what to do with." the colonel mastered his impatience. he had one appeal which no southerner could resist. "mr. fetters," he said, "i wish to get this man released to please a lady." "sorry to disoblige a lady," returned fetters, "but i'll have to keep the nigger. i run a big place, and i'm obliged to maintain discipline. this nigger has been fractious and contrary, and i've sworn that he shall work out his time. i have never let any nigger get the best of me--or white man either," he added significantly. the colonel was angry, but controlled himself long enough to make one more effort. "i'll give you five hundred dollars for your contract," he said rising from his chair. "you couldn't get him for five thousand." "very well, sir," returned the colonel, "this is not the end of this. i will see, sir, if a man can be held in slavery in this state, for a debt he is willing and ready to pay. you'll hear more of this before i'm through with it." "another thing, colonel french," said fetters, his quiet eyes glittering as he spoke, "i wonder if you recollect an incident that occurred years ago, when we went to the academy in clarendon?" "if you refer," returned the colonel promptly, "to the time i chased you down main street, yes--i recalled it the first time i heard of you when i came back to clarendon--and i remember why i did it. it is a good omen." "that's as it may be," returned fetters quietly. "i didn't have to recall it; i've never forgotten it. now you want something from me, and you can't have it." "we shall see," replied the colonel. "i bested you then, and i'll best you now." "we shall see," said fetters. fetters was not at all alarmed, indeed he smiled rather pityingly. there had been a time when these old aristocrats could speak, and the earth trembled, but that day was over. in this age money talked, and he had known how to get money, and how to use it to get more. there were a dozen civil suits pending against him in the court house there, and he knew in advance that he should win them every one, without directly paying any juryman a dollar. that any nigger should get away while he wished to hold him, was--well, inconceivable. colonel french might have money, but he, fetters, had men as well; and if colonel french became too troublesome about this nigger, this friendship for niggers could be used in such a way as to make clarendon too hot for colonel french. he really bore no great malice against colonel french for the little incident of their school days, but he had not forgotten it, and colonel french might as well learn a lesson. he, fetters, had not worked half a lifetime for a commanding position, to yield it to colonel french or any other man. so fetters smoked his cigar tranquilly, and waited at the hotel for his anticipated verdicts. for there could not be a jury impanelled in the county which did not have on it a majority of men who were mortgaged to fetters. he even held the judge's note for several hundred dollars. the colonel waited at the station for the train back to clarendon. when it came, it brought a gang of convicts, consigned to fetters. they had been brought down in the regular "jim crow" car, for the colonel saw coloured women and children come out ahead of them. the colonel watched the wretches, in coarse striped garments, with chains on their legs and shackles on their hands, unloaded from the train and into the waiting wagons. there were burly negroes and flat-shanked, scrawny negroes. some wore the ashen hue of long confinement. some were shamefaced, some reckless, some sullen. a few white convicts among them seemed doubly ashamed--both of their condition and of their company; they kept together as much as they were permitted, and looked with contempt at their black companions in misfortune. fetters's man and haines, armed with whips, and with pistols in their belts, were present to oversee the unloading, and the colonel could see them point him out to the state officers who had come in charge of the convicts, and see them look at him with curious looks. the scene was not edifying. there were criminals in new york, he knew very well, but he had never seen one. they were not marched down broadway in stripes and chains. there were certain functions of society, as of the body, which were more decently performed in retirement. there was work in the state for the social reformer, and the colonel, undismayed by his temporary defeat, metaphorically girded up his loins, went home, and, still metaphorically, set out to put a spoke in fetters's wheel. _twenty-seven_ his first step was to have caxton look up and abstract for him the criminal laws of the state. they were bad enough, in all conscience. men could be tried without jury and condemned to infamous punishments, involving stripes and chains, for misdemeanours which in more enlightened states were punished with a small fine or brief detention. there were, for instance, no degrees of larceny, and the heaviest punishment might be inflicted, at the discretion of the judge, for the least offense. the vagrancy law, of which the colonel had had some experience, was an open bid for injustice and "graft" and clearly designed to profit the strong at the expense of the weak. the crop-lien laws were little more than the instruments of organised robbery. to these laws the colonel called the attention of some of his neighbours with whom he was on terms of intimacy. the enlightened few had scarcely known of their existence, and quite agreed that the laws were harsh and ought to be changed. but when the colonel, pursuing his inquiry, undertook to investigate the operation of these laws, he found an appalling condition. the statutes were mild and beneficent compared with the results obtained under cover of them. caxton spent several weeks about the state looking up the criminal records, and following up the sentences inflicted, working not merely for his fee, but sharing the colonel's indignation at the state of things unearthed. convict labour was contracted out to private parties, with little or no effective state supervision, on terms which, though exceedingly profitable to the state, were disastrous to free competitive labour. more than one lawmaker besides fetters was numbered among these contractors. leaving the realm of crime, they found that on hundreds of farms, ignorant negroes, and sometimes poor whites, were held in bondage under claims of debt, or under contracts of exclusive employment for long terms of years--contracts extorted from ignorance by craft, aided by state laws which made it a misdemeanour to employ such persons elsewhere. free men were worked side by side with convicts from the penitentiary, and women and children herded with the most depraved criminals, thus breeding a criminal class to prey upon the state. in the case of fetters alone the colonel found a dozen instances where the law, bad as it was, had not been sufficient for fetters's purpose, but had been plainly violated. caxton discovered a discharged guard of fetters, who told him of many things that had taken place at sycamore; and brought another guard one evening, at that time employed there, who told him, among other things, that bud johnson's life, owing to his surliness and rebellious conduct, and some spite which haines seemed to bear against him, was simply a hell on earth--that even a strong negro could not stand it indefinitely. a case was made up and submitted to the grand jury. witnesses were summoned at the colonel's instance. at the last moment they all weakened, even the discharged guard, and their testimony was not sufficient to justify an indictment. the colonel then sued out a writ of habeas corpus for the body of bud johnson, and it was heard before the common pleas court at clarendon, with public opinion divided between the colonel and fetters. the court held that under his contract, for which he had paid the consideration, fetters was entitled to johnson's services. the colonel, defeated but still undismayed, ordered caxton to prepare a memorial for presentation to the federal authorities, calling their attention to the fact that peonage, a crime under the federal statutes, was being flagrantly practised in the state. this allegation was supported by a voluminous brief, giving names and dates and particular instances of barbarity. the colonel was not without some quiet support in this movement; there were several public-spirited men in the county, including his able lieutenant caxton, dr. price and old general thornton, none of whom were under any obligation to fetters, and who all acknowledged that something ought to be done to purge the state of a great disgrace. there was another party, of course, which deprecated any scandal which would involve the good name of the state or reflect upon the south, and who insisted that in time these things would pass away and there would be no trace of them in future generations. but the colonel insisted that so also would the victims of the system pass away, who, being already in existence, were certainly entitled to as much consideration as generations yet unborn; it was hardly fair to sacrifice them to a mere punctilio. the colonel had reached the conviction that the regenerative forces of education and enlightenment, in order to have any effect in his generation, must be reinforced by some positive legislative or executive action, or else the untrammelled forces of graft and greed would override them; and he was human enough, at this stage of his career to wish to see the result of his labours, or at least a promise of result. the colonel's papers were forwarded to the proper place, whence they were referred from official to official, and from department to department. that it might take some time to set in motion the machinery necessary to reach the evil, the colonel knew very well, and hence was not impatient at any reasonable delay. had he known that his presentation had created a sensation in the highest quarter, but that owing to the exigencies of national politics it was not deemed wise, at that time, to do anything which seemed like an invasion of state rights or savoured of sectionalism, he might not have been so serenely confident of the outcome. nor had fetters known as much, would he have done the one thing which encouraged the colonel more than anything else. caxton received a message one day from judge bullard, representing fetters, in which fetters made the offer that if colonel french would stop his agitation on the labour laws, and withdraw any papers he had filed, and promise to drop the whole matter, he would release bud johnson. the colonel did not hesitate a moment. he had gone into this fight for johnson--or rather to please miss laura. he had risen now to higher game; nothing less than the system would satisfy him. "but, colonel," said caxton, "it's pretty hard on the nigger. they'll kill him before his time's up. if you'll give me a free hand, i'll get him anyway." "how?" "perhaps it's just as well you shouldn't know. but i have friends at sycamore." "you wouldn't break the law?" asked the colonel. "fetters is breaking the law," replied caxton. "he's holding johnson for debt--and whether that is lawful or not, he certainly has no right to kill him." "you're right," replied the colonel. "get johnson away, i don't care how. the end justifies the means--that's an argument that goes down here. get him away, and send him a long way off, and he can write for his wife to join him. his escape need not interfere with our other plans. we have plenty of other cases against fetters." within a week, johnson, with the connivance of a bribed guard, a poor-white man from clarendon, had escaped from fetters and seemingly vanished from beaver county. fetters's lieutenants were active in their search for him, but sought in vain. _twenty-eight_ ben dudley awoke the morning after the assembly ball, with a violent headache and a sense of extreme depression, which was not relieved by the sight of his reflection in the looking-glass of the bureau in the hotel bedroom where he found himself. one of his eyes was bloodshot, and surrounded by a wide area of discolouration, and he was conscious of several painful contusions on other portions of his body. his clothing was badly disordered and stained with blood; and, all in all, he was scarcely in a condition to appear in public. he made such a toilet as he could, and, anxious to avoid observation, had his horse brought from the livery around to the rear door of the hotel, and left for mink run by the back streets. he did not return to town for a week, and when he made his next appearance there, upon strictly a business visit, did not go near the treadwells', and wore such a repellent look that no one ventured to speak to him about his encounter with fetters and mcrae. he was humiliated and ashamed, and angry with himself and all the world. he had lost graciella already; any possibility that might have remained of regaining her affection, was destroyed by his having made her name the excuse for a barroom broil. his uncle was not well, and with the decline of his health, his monomania grew more acute and more absorbing, and he spent most of his time in the search for the treasure and in expostulations with viney to reveal its whereabouts. the supervision of the plantation work occupied ben most of the time, and during his intervals of leisure he sought to escape unpleasant thoughts by busying himself with the model of his cotton gin. his life had run along in this way for about two weeks after the ball, when one night barclay fetters, while coming to town from his father's plantation at sycamore, in company with turner, his father's foreman, was fired upon from ambush, in the neighbourhood of mink run, and seriously wounded. groaning heavily and in a state of semi-unconsciousness he was driven by turner, in the same buggy in which he had been shot, to doctor price's house, which lay between mink run and the town. the doctor examined the wound, which was serious. a charge of buckshot had been fired at close range, from a clump of bushes by the wayside, and the charge had taken effect in the side of the face. the sight of one eye was destroyed beyond a peradventure, and that of the other endangered by a possible injury to the optic nerve. a sedative was administered, as many as possible of the shot extracted, and the wounds dressed. meantime a messenger was despatched to sycamore for fetters, senior, who came before morning post-haste. to his anxious inquiries the doctor could give no very hopeful answer. "he's not out of danger," said doctor price, "and won't be for several days. i haven't found several of those shot, and until they're located i can't tell what will happen. your son has a good constitution, but it has been abused somewhat and is not in the best condition to throw off an injury." "do the best you can for him, doc," said fetters, "and i'll make it worth your while. and as for the double-damned scoundrel that shot him in the dark, i'll rake this county with a fine-toothed comb till he's found. if bark dies, the murderer shall hang as high as haman, if it costs me a million dollars, or, if bark gets well, he shall have the limit of the law. no man in this state shall injure me or mine and go unpunished." the next day ben dudley was arrested at mink run, on a warrant sworn out by fetters, senior, charging dudley with attempted murder. the accused was brought to clarendon, and lodged in beaver county jail. ben sent for caxton, from whom he learned that his offense was not subject to bail until it became certain that barclay fetters would recover. for in the event of his death, the charge would be murder; in case of recovery, the offense would be merely attempted murder, or shooting with intent to kill, for which bail was allowable. meantime he would have to remain in jail. in a day or two young fetters was pronounced out of danger, so far as his life was concerned, and colonel french, through caxton, offered to sign ben's bail bond. to caxton's surprise dudley refused to accept bail at the colonel's hands. "i don't want any favours from colonel french," he said decidedly. "i prefer to stay in jail rather than to be released on his bond." so he remained in jail. graciella was not so much surprised at ben's refusal to accept bail. she had reasoned out, with a fine instinct, the train of emotions which had brought her lover to grief, and her own share in stirring them up. she could not believe that ben was capable of shooting a man from ambush; but even if he had, it would have been for love of her; and if he had not, she had nevertheless been the moving cause of the disaster. she would not willingly have done young mr. fetters an injury. he had favoured her by his attentions, and, if all stories were true, he had behaved better than ben, in the difficulty between them, and had suffered more. but she loved ben, as she grew to realise, more and more. she wanted to go and see ben in jail but her aunt did not think it proper. appearances were all against ben, and he had not purged himself by any explanation. so graciella sat down and wrote him a long letter. she knew very well that the one thing that would do him most good would be the announcement of her aunt laura's engagement to colonel french. there was no way to bring this about, except by first securing her aunt's permission. this would make necessary a frank confession, to which, after an effort, she nerved herself. "aunt laura," she said, at a moment when they were alone together, "i know why ben will not accept bail from colonel french, and why he will not tell his side of the quarrel between himself and mr. fetters. he was foolish enough to imagine that colonel french was coming to the house to see me, and that i preferred the colonel to him. and, aunt laura, i have a confession to make; i have done something for which i want to beg your pardon. i listened that night, and overheard the colonel ask you to be his wife. please, dear aunt laura, forgive me, and let me write and tell ben--just ben, in confidence. no one else need know it." miss laura was shocked and pained, and frankly said so, but could not refuse the permission, on condition that ben should be pledged to keep her secret, which, for reasons of her own, she was not yet ready to make public. she, too, was fond of ben, and hoped that he might clear himself of the accusation. so graciella wrote the letter. she was no more frank in it, however, on one point, than she had been with her aunt, for she carefully avoided saying that she _had_ taken colonel french's attentions seriously, or built any hopes upon them, but chided ben for putting such a construction upon her innocent actions, and informed him, as proof of his folly, and in the strictest confidence, that colonel french was engaged to her aunt laura. she expressed her sorrow for his predicament, her profound belief in his innocence, and her unhesitating conviction that he would be acquitted of the pending charge. to this she expected by way of answer a long letter of apology, explanation, and protestations of undying love. she received, instead, a brief note containing a cold acknowledgment of her letter, thanking her for her interest in his welfare, and assuring her that he would respect miss laura's confidence. there was no note of love or reproachfulness--mere cold courtesy. graciella was cut to the quick, so much so that she did not even notice ben's mistakes in spelling. it would have been better had he overwhelmed her with reproaches--it would have shown at least that he still loved her. she cried bitterly, and lay awake very late that night, wondering what else she could do for ben that a self-respecting young lady might. for the first time, she was more concerned about ben than about herself. if by marrying him immediately she could have saved him from danger and disgrace she would have done so without one selfish thought--unless it were selfish to save one whom she loved. * * * * * the preliminary hearing in the case of the state _vs._ benjamin dudley was held as soon as doctor price pronounced barclay fetters out of danger. the proceedings took place before squire reddick, the same justice from whom the colonel had bought peter's services, and from whom he had vainly sought to secure bud johnson's release. in spite of dudley's curt refusal of his assistance, the colonel, to whom miss laura had conveyed a hint of the young man's frame of mind, had instructed caxton to spare no trouble or expense in the prisoner's interest. there was little doubt, considering fetters's influence and vindictiveness, that dudley would be remanded, though the evidence against him was purely circumstantial; but it was important that the evidence should be carefully scrutinised, and every legal safeguard put to use. the case looked bad for the prisoner. barclay fetters was not present, nor did the prosecution need him; his testimony could only have been cumulative. turner described the circumstances of the shooting from the trees by the roadside near mink run, and the driving of the wounded man to doctor price's. doctor price swore to the nature of the wound, its present and probable consequences, which involved the loss of one eye and perhaps the other, and produced the shot he had extracted. mcrae testified that he and barclay fetters had gone down between dances, from the opera ball, to the hotel bar, to get a glass of seltzer. they had no sooner entered the bar than the prisoner, who had evidently been drinking heavily and showed all the signs of intoxication, had picked a quarrel with them and assaulted mr. fetters. fetters, with the aid of the witness, had defended himself. in the course of the altercation, the prisoner had used violent and profane language, threatening, among other things, to kill fetters. all this testimony was objected to, but was admitted as tending to show a motive for the crime. this closed the state's case. caxton held a hurried consultation with his client. should they put in any evidence, which would be merely to show their hand, since the prisoner would in any event undoubtedly be bound over? ben was unable to deny what had taken place at the hotel, for he had no distinct recollection of it--merely a blurred impression, like the memory of a bad dream. he could not swear that he had not threatened fetters. the state's witnesses had refrained from mentioning the lady's name; he could do no less. so far as the shooting was concerned, he had had no weapon with which to shoot. his gun had been stolen that very day, and had not been recovered. "the defense will offer no testimony," declared caxton, at the result of the conference. the justice held the prisoner to the grand jury, and fixed the bond at ten thousand dollars. graciella's information had not been without its effect, and when caxton suggested that he could still secure bail, he had little difficulty in inducing ben to accept colonel french's friendly offices. the bail bond was made out and signed, and the prisoner released. caxton took ben to his office after the hearing. there ben met the colonel, thanked him for his aid and friendship, and apologised for his former rudeness. "i was in a bad way, sir," he said, "and hardly knew what i was doing. but i know i didn't shoot bark fetters, and never thought of such a thing." "i'm sure you didn't, my boy," said the colonel, laying his hand, in familiar fashion, upon the young fellow's shoulder, "and we'll prove it before we quit. there are some ladies who believe the same thing, and would like to hear you say it." "thank you, sir," said ben. "i should like to tell them, but i shouldn't want to enter their house until i am cleared of this charge. i think too much of them to expose them to any remarks about harbouring a man out on bail for a penitentiary offense. i'll write to them, sir, and thank them for their trust and friendship, and you can tell them for me, if you will, that i'll come to see them when not only i, but everybody else, can say that i am fit to go." "your feelings do you credit," returned the colonel warmly, "and however much they would like to see you, i'm sure the ladies will appreciate your delicacy. as your friend and theirs, you must permit me to serve you further, whenever the opportunity offers, until this affair is finished." ben thanked the colonel from a full heart, and went back to mink run, where, in the effort to catch up the plantation work, which had fallen behind in his absence, he sought to forget the prison atmosphere and lose the prison pallor. the disgrace of having been in jail was indelible, and the danger was by no means over. the sympathy of his friends would have been priceless to him, but to remain away from them would be not only the honourable course to pursue, but a just punishment for his own folly. for graciella, after all, was only a girl--a young girl, and scarcely yet to be judged harshly for her actions; while he was a man grown, who knew better, and had not acted according to his lights. three days after ben dudley's release on bail, clarendon was treated to another sensation. former constable haines, now employed as an overseer at fetters's convict farm, while driving in a buggy to clarendon, where he spent his off-duty spells, was shot from ambush near mink run, and his right arm shattered in such a manner as to require amputation. _twenty-nine_ colonel french's interest in ben dudley's affairs had not been permitted to interfere with his various enterprises. work on the chief of these, the cotton mill, had gone steadily forward, with only occasional delays, incident to the delivery of material, the weather, and the health of the workmen, which was often uncertain for a day or two after pay day. the coloured foreman of the brick-layers had been seriously ill; his place had been filled by a white man, under whom the walls were rising rapidly. jim green, the foreman whom the colonel had formerly discharged, and the two white brick-layers who had quit at the same time, applied for reinstatement. the colonel took the two men on again, but declined to restore green, who had been discharged for insubordination. green went away swearing vengeance. at clay johnson's saloon he hurled invectives at the colonel, to all who would listen, and with anger and bad whiskey, soon worked himself into a frame of mind that was ripe for any mischief. some of his utterances were reported to the colonel, who was not without friends--the wealthy seldom are; but he paid no particular attention to them, except to keep a watchman at the mill at night, lest this hostility should seek an outlet in some attempt to injure the property. the precaution was not amiss, for once the watchman shot at a figure prowling about the mill. the lesson was sufficient, apparently, for there was no immediate necessity to repeat it. the shooting of haines, while not so sensational as that of barclay fetters, had given rise to considerable feeling against ben dudley. that two young men should quarrel, and exchange shots, would not ordinarily have been a subject of extended remark. but two attempts at assassination constituted a much graver affair. that dudley was responsible for this second assault was the generally accepted opinion. fetters's friends and hirelings were openly hostile to young dudley, and haines had been heard to say, in his cups, at clay jackson's saloon, that when young dudley was tried and convicted and sent to the penitentiary, he would be hired out to fetters, who had the country contract, and that he, haines, would be delighted to have dudley in his gang. the feeling against dudley grew from day to day, and threats and bets were openly made that he would not live to be tried. there was no direct proof against him, but the moral and circumstantial evidence was quite sufficient to convict him in the eyes of fetter's friends and supporters. the colonel was sometimes mentioned, in connection with the affair as a friend of ben's, for whom he had given bail, and as an enemy of fetters, to whom his antagonism in various ways had become a matter of public knowledge and interest. one day, while the excitement attending the second shooting was thus growing, colonel french received through the mail a mysteriously worded note, vaguely hinting at some matter of public importance which the writer wished to communicate to him, and requesting a private interview for the purpose, that evening, at the colonel's house. the note, which had every internal evidence of sincerity, was signed by henry taylor, the principal of the coloured school, whom the colonel had met several times in reference to the proposed industrial school. from the tenor of the communication, and what he knew about taylor, the colonel had no doubt that the matter was one of importance, at least not one to be dismissed without examination. he thereupon stepped into caxton's office and wrote an answer to the letter, fixing eight o'clock that evening as the time, and his own library as the place, of a meeting with the teacher. this letter he deposited in the post-office personally--it was only a step from caxton's office. upon coming out of the post-office he saw the teacher standing on an opposite corner. when the colonel had passed out of sight, taylor crossed the street, entered the post-office, and soon emerged with the letter. he had given no sign that he saw the colonel, but had looked rather ostentatiously the other way when that gentleman had glanced in his direction. at the appointed hour there was a light step on the colonel's piazza. the colonel was on watch, and opened the door himself, ushering taylor into his library, a very handsome and comfortable room, the door of which he carefully closed behind them. the teacher looked around cautiously. "are we alone, sir?" "yes, entirely so." "and can any one hear us?" "no. what have you got to tell me?" "colonel french," replied the other, "i'm in a hard situation, and i want you to promise that you'll never let on to any body that i told you what i'm going to say." "all right, mr. taylor, if it is a proper promise to make. you can trust my discretion." "yes, sir, i'm sure i can. we coloured folks, sir, are often accused of trying to shield criminals of our own race, or of not helping the officers of the law to catch them. maybe we does, suh," he said, lapsing in his earnestness, into bad grammar, "maybe we does sometimes, but not without reason." "what reason?" asked the colonel. "well, sir, fer the reason that we ain't always shore that a coloured man will get a fair trial, or any trial at all, or that he'll get a just sentence after he's been tried. we have no hand in makin' the laws, or in enforcin' 'em; we are not summoned on jury; and yet we're asked to do the work of constables and sheriffs who are paid for arrestin' criminals, an' for protectin' 'em from mobs, which they don't do." "i have no doubt every word you say is true, mr. taylor, and such a state of things is unjust, and will some day be different, if i can help to make it so. but, nevertheless, all good citizens, whatever their colour, ought to help to preserve peace and good order." "yes, sir, so they ought; and i want to do just that; i want to co-operate, and a whole heap of us want to co-operate with the good white people to keep down crime and lawlessness. i know there's good white people who want to see justice done--but they ain't always strong enough to run things; an' if any one of us coloured folks tells on another one, he's liable to lose all his frien's. but i believe, sir, that i can trust you to save me harmless, and to see that nothin' mo' than justice is done to the coloured man." "yes, taylor, you can trust me to do all that i can, and i think i have considerable influence. now, what's on your mind? do you know who shot haines and mr. fetters?" "well, sir, you're a mighty good guesser. it ain't so much mr. fetters an' mr. haines i'm thinkin' about, for that place down the country is a hell on earth, an' they're the devils that runs it. but there's a friend of yo'rs in trouble, for something he didn' do, an' i wouldn' stan' for an innocent man bein' sent to the penitentiary--though many a po' negro has been. yes, sir, i know that mr. ben dudley didn' shoot them two white men." "so do i," rejoined the colonel. "who did?" "it was bud johnson, the man you tried to get away from mr. fetters--yo'r coachman tol' us about it, sir, an' we know how good a friend of ours you are, from what you've promised us about the school. an' i wanted you to know, sir. you are our friend, and have showed confidence in us, and i wanted to prove to you that we are not ungrateful, an' that we want to be good citizens." "i had heard," said the colonel, "that johnson had escaped and left the county." "so he had, sir, but he came back. they had 'bused him down at that place till he swore he'd kill every one that had anything to do with him. it was mr. turner he shot at the first time and he hit young mr. fetters by accident. he stole a gun from ole mr. dudley's place at mink run, shot mr. fetters with it, and has kept it ever since, and shot mr. haines with it. i suppose they'd 'a' ketched him before, if it hadn't be'n for suspectin' young mr. dudley." "where is johnson now," asked the colonel. "he's hidin' in an old log cabin down by the swamp back of mink run. he sleeps in the daytime, and goes out at night to get food and watch for white men from mr. fetters's place." "does his wife know where he is?" "no, sir; he ain't never let her know." "by the way, taylor," asked the colonel, "how do _you_ know all this?" "well, sir," replied the teacher, with something which, in an uneducated negro would have been a very pronounced chuckle, "there's mighty little goin' on roun' here that i _don't_ find out, sooner or later." "taylor," said the colonel, rising to terminate the interview, "you have rendered a public service, have proved yourself a good citizen, and have relieved mr. dudley of serious embarrassment. i will see that steps are taken to apprehend johnson, and will keep your participation in the matter secret, since you think it would hurt your influence with your people. and i promise you faithfully that every effort shall be made to see that johnson has a fair trial and no more than a just punishment." he gave the negro his hand. "thank you, sir, thank you, sir," replied the teacher, returning the colonel's clasp. "if there were more white men like you, the coloured folks would have no more trouble." the colonel let taylor out, and watched him as he looked cautiously up and down the street to see that he was not observed. that coloured folks, or any other kind, should ever cease to have trouble, was a vain imagining. but the teacher had made a well-founded complaint of injustice which ought to be capable of correction; and he had performed a public-spirited action, even though he had felt constrained to do it in a clandestine manner. about his own part in the affair the colonel was troubled. it was becoming clear to him that the task he had undertaken was no light one--not the task of apprehending johnson and clearing dudley, but that of leavening the inert mass of clarendon with the leaven of enlightenment. with the best of intentions, and hoping to save a life, he had connived at turning a murderer loose upon the community. it was true that the community, through unjust laws, had made him a murderer, but it was no part of the colonel's plan to foster or promote evil passions, or to help the victims of the law to make reprisals. his aim was to bring about, by better laws and more liberal ideas, peace, harmony, and universal good will. there was a colossal work for him to do, and for all whom he could enlist with him in this cause. the very standards of right and wrong had been confused by the race issue, and must be set right by the patient appeal to reason and humanity. primitive passions and private vengeance must be subordinated to law and order and the higher good. a new body of thought must be built up, in which stress must be laid upon the eternal verities, in the light of which difficulties which now seemed unsurmountable would be gradually overcome. but this halcyon period was yet afar off, and the colonel roused himself to the duty of the hour. with the best intentions he had let loose upon the community, in a questionable way, a desperate character. it was no less than his plain duty to put the man under restraint. to rescue from fetters a man whose life was threatened, was one thing. to leave a murderer at large now would be to endanger innocent lives, and imperil ben dudley's future. the arrest of bud johnson brought an end to the case against ben dudley. the prosecuting attorney, who was under political obligations to fetters, seemed reluctant to dismiss the case, until johnson's guilt should have been legally proved; but the result of the negro's preliminary hearing rendered this position no longer tenable; the case against ben was nolled, and he could now hold up his head as a free man, with no stain upon his character. indeed, the reaction in his favour as one unjustly indicted, went far to wipe out from the public mind the impression that he was a drunkard and a rowdy. it was recalled that he was of good family and that his forebears had rendered valuable service to the state, and that he had never been seen to drink before, or known to be in a fight, but that on the contrary he was quiet and harmless to a fault. indeed, the clarendon public would have admired a little more spirit in a young man, even to the extent of condoning an occasional lapse into license. there was sincere rejoicing at the treadwell house when ben, now free in mind, went around to see the ladies. miss laura was warmly sympathetic and congratulatory; and graciella, tearfully happy, tried to make up by a sweet humility, through which shone the true womanliness of a hitherto undeveloped character, for the past stings and humiliations to which her selfish caprice had subjected her lover. ben resumed his visits, if not with quite their former frequency, and it was only a day or two later that the colonel found him and graciella, with his own boy phil, grouped in familiar fashion on the steps, where ben was demonstrating with some pride of success, the operation of his model, into which he was feeding cotton when the colonel came up. the colonel stood a moment and looked at the machine. "it's quite ingenious," he said. "explain the principle." ben described the mechanism, in brief, well-chosen words which conveyed the thought clearly and concisely, and revealed a fine mind for mechanics and at the same time an absolute lack of technical knowledge. "it would never be of any use, sir," he said, at the end, "for everybody has the other kind. but it's another way, and i think a better." "it is clever," said the colonel thoughtfully, as he went into the house. the colonel had not changed his mind at all since asking miss laura to be his wife. the glow of happiness still warmed her cheek, the spirit of youth still lingered in her eyes and in her smile. he might go a thousand miles before meeting a woman who would please him more, take better care of phil, or preside with more dignity over his household. her simple grace would adapt itself to wealth as easily as it had accommodated itself to poverty. it would be a pleasure to travel with her to new scenes and new places, to introduce her into a wider world, to see her expand in the generous sunlight of ease and freedom from responsibility. true to his promise, the colonel made every effort to see that bud johnson should be protected against mob violence and given a fair trial. there was some intemperate talk among the partisans of fetters, and an ominous gathering upon the streets the day after the arrest, but judge miller, of the beaver county circuit, who was in clarendon that day, used his influence to discountenance any disorder, and promised a speedy trial of the prisoner. the crime was not the worst of crimes, and there was no excuse for riot or lynch law. the accused could not escape his just punishment. as a result of the judge's efforts, supplemented by the colonel's and those of doctor price and several ministers, any serious fear of disorder was removed, and a handful of fetters's guards who had come up from his convict farm and foregathered with some choice spirits of the town at clay jackson's saloon, went back without attempting to do what they had avowedly come to town to accomplish. _thirty_ one morning the colonel, while overseeing the work at the new mill building, stepped on the rounded handle of a chisel, which had been left lying carelessly on the floor, and slipped and fell, spraining his ankle severely. he went home in his buggy, which was at the mill, and sent for doctor price, who put his foot in a plaster bandage and ordered him to keep quiet for a week. peter and phil went around to the treadwells' to inform the ladies of the accident. on reaching the house after the accident, the colonel had taken off his coat, and sent peter to bring him one from the closet off his bedroom. when the colonel put on the coat, he felt some papers in the inside pocket, and taking them out, recognised the two old letters he had taken from the lining of his desk several months before. the housekeeper, in a moment of unusual zeal, had discovered and mended the tear in the sleeve, and peter had by chance selected this particular coat to bring to his master. when peter started, with phil, to go to the treadwells', the colonel gave him the two letters. "give these," he said, "to miss laura, and tell her i found them in the old desk." it was not long before miss laura came, with graciella, to call on the colonel. when they had expressed the proper sympathy, and had been assured that the hurt was not dangerous, miss laura spoke of another matter. "henry," she said, with an air of suppressed excitement, "i have made a discovery. i don't quite know what it means, or whether it amounts to anything, but in one of the envelopes you sent me just now there was a paper signed by mr. fetters. i do not know how it could have been left in the desk; we had searched it, years ago, in every nook and cranny, and found nothing." the colonel explained the circumstances of his discovery of the papers, but prudently refrained from mentioning how long ago they had taken place. miss laura handed him a thin, oblong, yellowish slip of paper, which had been folded in the middle; it was a printed form, upon which several words had been filled in with a pen. "it was enclosed in this," she said, handing him another paper. the colonel took the papers and glanced over them. "mother thinks," said miss laura anxiously, "that they are the papers we were looking for, that prove that fetters was in father's debt." the colonel had been thinking rapidly. the papers were, indeed, a promissory note from fetters to mr. treadwell, and a contract and memorandum of certain joint transactions in turpentine and cotton futures. the note was dated twenty years back. had it been produced at the time of mr. treadwell's death, it would not have been difficult to collect, and would have meant to his survivors the difference between poverty and financial independence. now it was barred by the lapse of time. miss laura was waiting in eager expectation. outwardly calm, her eyes were bright, her cheeks were glowing, her bosom rose and fell excitedly. could he tell her that this seemingly fortunate accident was merely the irony of fate--a mere cruel reminder of a former misfortune? no, she could not believe it! "it has made me happy, henry," she said, while he still kept his eyes bent on the papers to conceal his perplexity, "it has made me very happy to think that i may not come to you empty-handed." "dear woman," he thought, "you shall not. if the note is not good, it shall be made good." "laura," he said aloud, "i am no lawyer, but caxton shall look at these to-day, and i shall be very much mistaken if they do not bring you a considerable sum of money. say nothing about them, however, until caxton reports. he will be here to see me to-day and by to-morrow you shall have his opinion." miss laura went away with a radiantly hopeful face, and as she and graciella went down the street, the colonel noted that her step was scarcely less springy than her niece's. it was worth the amount of fetters's old note to make her happy; and since he meant to give her all that she might want, what better way than to do it by means of this bit of worthless paper? it would be a harmless deception, and it would save the pride of three gentlewomen, with whom pride was not a disease, to poison and scorch and blister, but an inspiration to courtesy, and kindness, and right living. such a pride was worth cherishing even at a sacrifice, which was, after all, no sacrifice. he had already sent word to caxton of his accident, requesting him to call at the house on other business. caxton came in the afternoon, and when the matter concerning which he had come had been disposed of, colonel french produced fetters's note. "caxton," he said, "i wish to pay this note and let it seem to have come from fetters." caxton looked at the note. "why should you pay it?" he asked. "i mean," he added, noting a change in the colonel's expression, "why shouldn't fetters pay it?" "because it is outlawed," he replied, "and we could hardly expect him to pay for anything he didn't have to pay. the statute of limitations runs against it after fifteen years--and it's older than that, much older than that." caxton made a rapid mental calculation. "that is the law in new york," he said, "but here the statute doesn't begin to run for twenty years. the twenty years for which this note was given expires to-day." "then it is good?" demanded the colonel, looking at his watch. "it is good," said caxton, "provided there is no defence to it except the statute, and provided i can file a petition on it in the county clerk's office by four o'clock, the time at which the office closes. it is now twenty minutes of four." "can you make it?" "i'll try." caxton, since his acquaintance with colonel french, had learned something more about the value of half an hour than he had ever before appreciated, and here was an opportunity to test his knowledge. he literally ran the quarter of a mile that lay between the colonel's residence and the court house, to the open-eyed astonishment of those whom he passed, some of whom wondered whether he were crazy, and others whether he had committed a crime. he dashed into the clerk's office, seized a pen, and the first piece of paper handy, and began to write a petition. the clerk had stepped into the hall, and when he came leisurely in at three minutes to four, caxton discovered that he had written his petition on the back of a blank marriage license. he folded it, ran his pen through the printed matter, endorsed it, "estate of treadwell _vs._ fetters," signed it with the name of ellen treadwell, as executrix, by himself as her attorney, swore to it before the clerk, and handed it to that official, who raised his eyebrows as soon as he saw the endorsement. "now, mr. munroe," said caxton, "if you'll enter that on the docket, now, as of to-day, i'll be obliged to you. i'd rather have the transaction all finished up while i wait. your fee needn't wait the termination of the suit. i'll pay it now and take a receipt for it." the clerk whistled to himself as he read the petition in order to make the entry. "that's an old-timer," he said. "it'll make the old man cuss." "yes," said caxton. "do me a favour, and don't say anything about it for a day or two. i don't think the suit will ever come to trial." _thirty-one_ on the day following these events, the colonel, on the arm of old peter, hobbled out upon his front porch, and seating himself in a big rocking chair, in front of which a cushion had been adjusted for his injured ankle, composed himself to read some arrears of mail which had come in the day before, and over which he had only glanced casually. when he was comfortably settled, peter and phil walked down the steps, upon the lowest of which they seated themselves. the colonel had scarcely begun to read before he called to the old man. "peter," he said, "i wish you'd go upstairs, and look in my room, and bring me a couple of light-coloured cigars from the box on my bureau--the mild ones, you know, peter." "yas, suh, i knows, suh, de mil' ones, dem wid de gol' ban's 'roun' 'em. now you stay right hyuh, chile, till peter come back." peter came up the steps and disappeared in the doorway. the colonel opened a letter from kirby, in which that energetic and versatile gentleman assured the colonel that he had evolved a great scheme, in which there were millions for those who would go into it. he had already interested mrs. jerviss, who had stated she would be governed by what the colonel did in the matter. the letter went into some detail upon this subject, and then drifted off into club and social gossip. several of the colonel's friends had inquired particularly about him. one had regretted the loss to their whist table. another wanted the refusal of his box at the opera, if he were not coming back for the winter. "i think you're missed in a certain quarter, old fellow. i know a lady who would be more than delighted to see you. i am invited to her house to dinner, ostensibly to talk about our scheme, in reality to talk about you. "but this is all by the way. the business is the thing. take my proposition under advisement. we all made money together before; we can make it again. my option has ten days to run. wire me before it is up what reply to make. i know what you'll say, but i want your 'ipse dixit.'" the colonel knew too what his reply would be, and that it would be very different from kirby's anticipation. he would write it, he thought, next day, so that kirby should not be kept in suspense, or so that he might have time to enlist other capital in the enterprise. the colonel felt really sorry to disappoint his good friends. he would write and inform kirby of his plans, including that of his approaching marriage. he had folded the letter and laid it down, and had picked up a newspaper, when peter returned with the cigars and a box of matches. "mars henry?" he asked, "w'at's gone wid de chile?" "phil?" replied the colonel, looking toward the step, from which the boy had disappeared. "i suppose he went round the house." "mars phil! o mars phil!" called the old man. there was no reply. peter looked round the corner of the house, but phil was nowhere visible. the old man went round to the back yard, and called again, but did not find the child. "i hyuhs de train comin'; i 'spec's he's gone up ter de railroad track," he said, when he had returned to the front of the house. "i'll run up dere an' fetch 'im back." "yes, do, peter," returned the colonel. "he's probably all right, but you'd better see about him." little phil, seeing his father absorbed in the newspaper, and not wishing to disturb him, had amused himself by going to the gate and looking down the street toward the railroad track. he had been doing this scarcely a moment, when he saw a black cat come out of a neighbour's gate and go down the street. phil instantly recalled uncle peter's story of the black cat. perhaps this was the same one! phil had often been warned about the railroad. "keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, honey," the old man had repeated more than once. "it's as dange'ous as a gun, and a gun is dange'ous widout lock, stock, er bairl: i knowed a man oncet w'at beat 'is wife ter def wid a ramrod, an' wuz hung fer it in a' ole fiel' down by de ha'nted house. dat gun couldn't hol' powder ner shot, but was dange'ous 'nuff ter kill two folks. so you jes' better keep 'way f'm dat railroad track, chile." but phil was a child, with the making of a man, and the wisest of men sometimes forget. for the moment phil saw nothing but the cat, and wished for nothing more than to talk to it. so phil, unperceived by the colonel, set out to overtake the black cat. the cat seemed in no hurry, and phil had very nearly caught up with him--or her, as the case might be--when the black cat, having reached the railroad siding, walked under a flat car which stood there, and leaping to one of the truck bars, composed itself, presumably for a nap. in order to get close enough to the cat for conversational purposes, phil stooped under the overhanging end of the car, and kneeled down beside the truck. "kitty, kitty!" he called, invitingly. the black cat opened her big yellow eyes with every evidence of lazy amiability. peter shuffled toward the corner as fast as his rickety old limbs would carry him. when he reached the corner he saw a car standing on the track. there was a brakeman at one end, holding a coupling link in one hand, and a coupling pin in the other, his eye on an engine and train of cars only a rod or two away, advancing to pick up the single car. at the same moment peter caught sight of little phil, kneeling under the car at the other end. peter shouted, but the brakeman was absorbed in his own task, which required close attention in order to assure his own safety. the engineer on the cab, at the other end of the train, saw an old negro excitedly gesticulating, and pulled a lever mechanically, but too late to stop the momentum of the train, which was not equipped with air brakes, even if these would have proved effective to stop it in so short a distance. just before the two cars came together, peter threw himself forward to seize the child. as he did so, the cat sprang from the truck bar; the old man stumbled over the cat, and fell across the rail. the car moved only a few feet, but quite far enough to work injury. a dozen people, including the train crew, quickly gathered. willing hands drew them out and laid them upon the grass under the spreading elm at the corner of the street. a judge, a merchant and a negro labourer lifted old peter's body as tenderly as though it had been that of a beautiful woman. the colonel, somewhat uneasy, he scarcely knew why, had started to limp painfully toward the corner, when he was met by a messenger who informed him of the accident. forgetting his pain, he hurried to the scene, only to find his heart's delight lying pale, bleeding and unconscious, beside the old negro who had sacrificed his life to save him. a doctor, who had been hastily summoned, pronounced peter dead. phil showed no superficial injury, save a cut upon the head, from which the bleeding was soon stanched. a negro's strong arms bore the child to the house, while the bystanders remained about peter's body until the arrival of major mclean, recently elected coroner, who had been promptly notified of the accident. within a few minutes after the officer's appearance, a jury was summoned from among the bystanders, the evidence of the trainmen and several other witnesses was taken, and a verdict of accidental death rendered. there was no suggestion of blame attaching to any one; it had been an accident, pure and simple, which ordinary and reasonable prudence could not have foreseen. by the colonel's command, the body of his old servant was then conveyed to the house and laid out in the front parlour. every honour, every token of respect, should be paid to his remains. _thirty-two_ meanwhile the colonel, forgetting his own hurt, hovered, with several physicians, among them doctor price, around the bedside of his child. the slight cut upon the head, the physicians declared, was not, of itself, sufficient to account for the rapid sinking which set in shortly after the boy's removal to the house. there had evidently been some internal injury, the nature of which could not be ascertained. phil remained unconscious for several hours, but toward the end of the day opened his blue eyes and fixed them upon his father, who was sitting by the bedside. "papa," he said, "am i going to die?" "no, no, phil," said his father hopefully. "you are going to get well in a few days, i hope." phil was silent for a moment, and looked around him curiously. he gave no sign of being in pain. "is miss laura here?" "yes, phil, she's in the next room, and will be here in a moment." at that instant miss laura came in and kissed him. the caress gave him pleasure, and he smiled sweetly in return. "papa, was uncle peter hurt?" "yes, phil." "where is he, papa? was he hurt badly?" "he is lying in another room, phil, but he is not in any pain." "papa," said phil, after a pause, "if i should die, and if uncle peter should die, you'll remember your promise and bury him near me, won't you, dear?" "yes, phil," he said, "but you are not going to die!" but phil died, dozing off into a peaceful sleep in which he passed quietly away with a smile upon his face. it required all the father's fortitude to sustain the blow, with the added agony of self-reproach that he himself had been unwittingly the cause of it. had he not sent old peter into the house, the child would not have been left alone. had he kept his eye upon phil until peter's return the child would not have strayed away. he had neglected his child, while the bruised and broken old black man in the room below had given his life to save him. he could do nothing now to show the child his love or peter his gratitude, and the old man had neither wife nor child in whom the colonel's bounty might find an object. but he would do what he could. he would lay his child's body in the old family lot in the cemetery, among the bones of his ancestors, and there too, close at hand, old peter should have honourable sepulture. it was his due, and would be the fulfilment of little phil's last request. the child was laid out in the parlour, amid a mass of flowers. miss laura, for love of him and of the colonel, with her own hands prepared his little body for the last sleep. the undertaker, who hovered around, wished, with a conventional sense of fitness, to remove old peter's body to a back room. but the colonel said no. "they died together; together they shall lie here, and they shall be buried together." he gave instructions as to the location of the graves in the cemetery lot. the undertaker looked thoughtful. "i hope, sir," said the undertaker, "there will be no objection. it's not customary--there's a coloured graveyard--you might put up a nice tombstone there--and you've been away from here a long time, sir." "if any one objects," said the colonel, "send him to me. the lot is mine, and i shall do with it as i like. my great-great-grandfather gave the cemetery to the town. old peter's skin was black, but his heart was white as any man's! and when a man reaches the grave, he is not far from god, who is no respecter of persons, and in whose presence, on the judgment day, many a white man shall be black, and many a black man white." the funeral was set for the following afternoon. the graves were to be dug in the morning. the undertaker, whose business was dependent upon public favour, and who therefore shrank from any step which might affect his own popularity, let it be quietly known that colonel french had given directions to bury peter in oak cemetery. it was inevitable that there should be some question raised about so novel a proceeding. the colour line in clarendon, as in all southern towns, was, on the surface at least, rigidly drawn, and extended from the cradle to the grave. no negro's body had ever profaned the sacred soil of oak cemetery. the protestants laid the matter before the cemetery trustees, and a private meeting was called in the evening to consider the proposed interment. white and black worshipped the same god, in different churches. there had been a time when coloured people filled the galleries of the white churches, and white ladies had instilled into black children the principles of religion and good morals. but as white and black had grown nearer to each other in condition, they had grown farther apart in feeling. it was difficult for the poor lady, for instance, to patronise the children of the well-to-do negro or mulatto; nor was the latter inclined to look up to white people who had started, in his memory, from a position but little higher than his own. in an era of change, the benefits gained thereby seemed scarcely to offset the difficulties of readjustment. the situation was complicated by a sense of injury on both sides. cherishing their theoretical equality of citizenship, which they could neither enforce nor forget, the negroes resented, noisly or silently, as prudence dictated, its contemptuous denial by the whites; and these, viewing this shadowy equality as an insult to themselves, had sought by all the machinery of local law to emphasise and perpetuate their own superiority. the very word "equality" was an offence. society went back to egypt and india for its models; to break caste was a greater sin than to break any or all of the ten commandments. white and coloured children studied the same books in different schools. white and black people rode on the same trains in separate cars. living side by side, and meeting day by day, the law, made and administered by white men, had built a wall between them. and white and black buried their dead in separate graveyards. not until they reached god's presence could they stand side by side in any relation of equality. there was a negro graveyard in clarendon, where, as a matter of course the coloured dead were buried. it was not an ideal locality. the land was low and swampy, and graves must be used quickly, ere the water collected in them. the graveyard was unfenced, and vagrant cattle browsed upon its rank herbage. the embankment of the railroad encroached upon one side of it, and the passing engines sifted cinders and ashes over the graves. but no negro had ever thought of burying his dead elsewhere, and if their cemetery was not well kept up, whose fault was it but their own? the proposition, therefore, of a white man, even of colonel french's standing, to bury a negro in oak cemetery, was bound to occasion comment, if nothing more. there was indeed more. several citizens objected to the profanation, and laid their protest before the mayor, who quietly called a meeting of the board of cemetery trustees, of which he was the chairman. the trustees were five in number. the board, with the single exception of the mayor, was self-perpetuating, and the members had been chosen, as vacancies occurred by death, at long intervals, from among the aristocracy, who had always controlled it. the mayor, a member and chairman of the board by virtue of his office, had sprung from the same class as fetters, that of the aspiring poor whites, who, freed from the moral incubus of slavery, had by force of numbers and ambition secured political control of the state and relegated not only the negroes, but the old master class, to political obscurity. a shrewd, capable man was the mayor, who despised negroes and distrusted aristocrats, and had the courage of his convictions. he represented in the meeting the protesting element of the community. "gentlemen," he said, "colonel french has ordered this negro to be buried in oak cemetery. we all appreciate the colonel's worth, and what he is doing for the town. but he has lived at the north for many years, and has got somewhat out of our way of thinking. we do not want to buy the prosperity of this town at the price of our principles. the attitude of the white people on the negro question is fixed and determined for all time, and nothing can ever alter it. to bury this negro in oak cemetery is against our principles." "the mayor's statement of the rule is quite correct," replied old general thornton, a member of the board, "and not open to question. but all rules have their exceptions. it was against the law, for some years before the war, to manumit a slave; but an exception to that salutary rule was made in case a negro should render some great service to the state or the community. you will recall that when, in a sister state, a negro climbed the steep roof of st. michael's church and at the risk of his own life saved that historic structure, the pride of charleston, from destruction by fire, the muncipality granted him his freedom." "and we all remember," said mr. darden, another of the trustees, "we all remember, at least i'm sure general thornton does, old sally, who used to belong to the mcrae family, and was a member of the presbyterian church, and who, because of her age and infirmities--she was hard of hearing and too old to climb the stairs to the gallery--was given a seat in front of the pulpit, on the main floor." "that was all very well," replied the mayor, stoutly, "when the negroes belonged to you, and never questioned your authority. but times are different now. they think themselves as good as we are. we had them pretty well in hand until colonel french came around, with his schools, and his high wages, and now they are getting so fat and sassy that there'll soon be no living with them. the last election did something, but we'll have to do something more, and that soon, to keep them in their places. there's one in jail now, alive, who has shot and disfigured and nearly killed two good white men, and such an example of social equality as burying one in a white graveyard will demoralise them still further. we must preserve the purity and prestige of our race, and we can only do it by keeping the negroes down." "after all," said another member, "the purity of our race is not apt to suffer very seriously from the social equality of a graveyard." "and old peter will be pretty effectually kept down, wherever he is buried," added another. these sallies provoked a smile which lightened the tension. a member suggested that colonel french be sent for. "it seems a pity to disturb him in his grief," said another. "it's only a couple of squares," suggested another. "let's call in a body and pay our respects. we can bring up the matter incidentally, while there." the muscles of the mayor's chin hardened. "colonel french has never been at my house," he said, "and i shouldn't care to seem to intrude." "come on, mayor," said mr. darden, taking the official by the arm, "these fine distinctions are not becoming in the presence of death. the colonel will be glad to see you." the mayor could not resist this mark of intimacy on the part of one of the old aristocracy, and walked somewhat proudly through the street arm in arm with mr. darden. they paid their respects to the colonel, who was bearing up, with the composure to be expected of a man of strong will and forceful character, under a grief of which he was exquisitely sensible. touched by a strong man's emotion, which nothing could conceal, no one had the heart to mention, in the presence of the dead, the object of their visit, and they went away without giving the colonel any inkling that his course had been seriously criticised. nor was the meeting resumed after they left the house, even the mayor seeming content to let the matter go by default. _thirty-three_ fortune favoured caxton in the matter of the note. fetters was in clarendon the following morning. caxton saw him passing, called him into his office, and produced the note. "that's no good," said fetters contemptuously. "it was outlawed yesterday. i suppose you allowed i'd forgotten it. on the contrary, i've a memorandum of it in my pocketbook, and i struck it off the list last night. i always pay my lawful debts, when they're properly demanded. if this note had been presented yesterday, i'd have paid it. to-day it's too late. it ain't a lawful debt." "do you really mean to say, mr. fetters, that you have deliberately robbed those poor women of this money all these years, and are not ashamed of it, not even when you're found out, and that you are going to take refuge behind the statute?" "now, see here, mr. caxton," returned fetters, without apparent emotion, "you want to be careful about the language you use. i might sue you for slander. you're a young man, that hopes to have a future and live in this county, where i expect to live and have law business done long after some of your present clients have moved away. i didn't owe the estate of john treadwell one cent--you ought to be lawyer enough to know that. he owed me money, and paid me with a note. i collected the note. i owed him money and paid it with a note. whoever heard of anybody's paying a note that wasn't presented?" "it's a poor argument, mr. fetters. you would have let those ladies starve to death before you would have come forward and paid that debt." "they've never asked me for charity, so i wasn't called on to offer it. and you know now, don't you, that if i'd paid the amount of that note, and then it had turned up afterward in somebody else's hands, i'd have had to pay it over again; now wouldn't i?" caxton could not deny it. fetters had robbed the treadwell estate, but his argument was unanswerable. "yes," said caxton, "i suppose you would." "i'm sorry for the women," said fetters, "and i've stood ready to pay that note all these years, and it ain't my fault that it hasn't been presented. now it's outlawed, and you couldn't expect a man to just give away that much money. it ain't a lawful debt, and the law's good enough for me." "you're awfully sorry for the ladies, aren't you?" said caxton, with thinly veiled sarcasm. "i surely am; i'm honestly sorry for them." "and you'd pay the note if you had to, wouldn't you?" asked caxton. "i surely would. as i say, i always pay my legal debts." "all right," said caxton triumphantly, "then you'll pay this. i filed suit against you yesterday, which takes the case out of the statute." fetters concealed his discomfiture. "well," he said, with quiet malignity, "i've nothing more to say till i consult my lawyer. but i want to tell you one thing. you are ruining a fine career by standing in with this colonel french. i hear his son was killed to-day. you can tell him i say it's a judgment on him; for i hold him responsible for my son's condition. he came down here and tried to demoralise the labour market. he put false notions in the niggers' heads. then he got to meddling with my business, trying to get away a nigger whose time i had bought. he insulted my agent turner, and came all the way down to sycamore and tried to bully me into letting the nigger loose, and of course i wouldn't be bullied. afterwards, when i offered to let the nigger go, the colonel wouldn't have it so. i shall always believe he bribed one of my men to get the nigger off, and then turned him loose to run amuck among the white people and shoot my boy and my overseer. it was a low-down performance, and unworthy of a gentleman. no really white man would treat another white man so. you can tell him i say it's a judgment that's fallen on him to-day, and that it's not the last one, and that he'll be sorrier yet that he didn't stay where he was, with his nigger-lovin' notions, instead of comin' back down here to make trouble for people that have grown up with the state and made it what it is." caxton, of course, did not deliver the message. to do so would have been worse taste than fetters had displayed in sending it. having got the best of the encounter, caxton had no objection to letting his defeated antagonist discharge his venom against the absent colonel, who would never know of it, and who was already breasting the waves of a sorrow so deep and so strong as almost to overwhelm him. for he had loved the boy; all his hopes had centred around this beautiful man child, who had promised so much that was good. his own future had been planned with reference to him. now he was dead, and the bereaved father gave way to his grief. _thirty-four_ the funeral took place next day, from the episcopal church, in which communion the little boy had been baptised, and of which old peter had always been an humble member, faithfully appearing every sunday morning in his seat in the gallery, long after the rest of his people had deserted it for churches of their own. on this occasion peter had, for the first time, a place on the main floor, a little to one side of the altar, in front of which, banked with flowers, stood the white velvet casket which contained all that was mortal of little phil. the same beautiful sermon answered for both. in touching words, the rector, a man of culture, taste and feeling, and a faithful servant of his master, spoke of the sweet young life brought to so untimely an end, and pointed the bereaved father to the best source of consolation. he paid a brief tribute to the faithful servant and humble friend, to whom, though black and lowly, the white people of the town were glad to pay this signal tribute of respect and appreciation for his heroic deed. the attendance at the funeral, while it might have been larger, was composed of the more refined and cultured of the townspeople, from whom, indeed, the church derived most of its membership and support; and the gallery overflowed with coloured people, whose hearts had warmed to the great honour thus paid to one of their race. four young white men bore phil's body and the six pallbearers of old peter were from among the best white people of the town. the double interment was made in oak cemetery. simultaneously both bodies were lowered to their last resting-place. simultaneously ashes were consigned to ashes and dust to dust. the earth was heaped above the graves. the mound above little phil's was buried with flowers, and old peter's was not neglected. beyond the cemetery wall, a few white men of the commoner sort watched the proceedings from a distance, and eyed with grim hostility the negroes who had followed the procession. they had no part nor parcel in this sentimental folly, nor did they approve of it--in fact they disapproved of it very decidedly. among them was the colonel's discharged foreman, jim green, who was pronounced in his denunciation. "colonel french is an enemy of his race," he declared to his sympathetic following. "he hires niggers when white men are idle; and pays them more than white men who work are earning. and now he is burying them with white people." when the group around the grave began to disperse, the little knot of disgruntled spectators moved sullenly away. in the evening they might have been seen, most of them, around clay jackson's barroom. turner, the foreman at fetters's convict farm, was in town that evening, and jackson's was his favourite haunt. for some reason turner was more sociable than usual, and liquor flowed freely, at his expense. there was a great deal of intemperate talk, concerning the negro in jail for shooting haines and young fetters, and concerning colonel french as the protector of negroes and the enemy of white men. _thirty-five_ at the same time that the colonel, dry-eyed and heavy-hearted, had returned to his empty house to nurse his grief, another series of events was drawing to a climax in the dilapidated house on mink run. even while the preacher was saying the last words over little phil's remains, old malcolm dudley's illness had taken a sudden and violent turn. he had been sinking for several days, but the decline had been gradual, and there had seemed no particular reason for alarm. but during the funeral exercises ben had begun to feel uneasy--some obscure premonition warned him to hurry homeward. as soon as the funeral was over he spoke to dr. price, who had been one of the pallbearers, and the doctor had promised to be at mink run in a little while. ben rode home as rapidly as he could; as he went up the lane toward the house a negro lad came forward to take charge of the tired horse, and ben could see from the boy's expression that he had important information to communicate. "yo' uncle is monst'ous low, sir," said the boy. "you bettah go in an' see 'im quick, er you'll be too late. dey ain' nobody wid 'im but ole aun' viney." ben hurried into the house and to his uncle's room, where malcolm dudley lay dying. outside, the sun was setting, and his red rays, shining through the trees into the open window, lit the stage for the last scene of this belated drama. when ben entered the room, the sweat of death had gathered on the old man's brow, but his eyes, clear with the light of reason, were fixed upon old viney, who stood by the bedside. the two were evidently so absorbed in their own thoughts as to be oblivious to anything else, and neither of them paid the slightest attention to ben, or to the scared negro lad, who had followed him and stood outside the door. but marvellous to hear, viney was talking, strangely, slowly, thickly, but passionately and distinctly. "you had me whipped," she said. "do you remember that? you had me whipped--whipped--whipped--by a poor white dog i had despised and spurned! you had said that you loved me, and you had promised to free me--and you had me whipped! but i have had my revenge!" her voice shook with passion, a passion at which ben wondered. that his uncle and she had once been young he knew, and that their relations had once been closer than those of master and servant; but this outbreak of feeling from the wrinkled old mulattress seemed as strange and weird to ben as though a stone image had waked to speech. spellbound, he stood in the doorway, and listened to this ghost of a voice long dead. "your uncle came with the money and left it, and went away. only he and i knew where it was. but i never told you! i could have spoken at any time for twenty-five years, but i never told you! i have waited--i have waited for this moment! i have gone into the woods and fields and talked to myself by the hour, that i might not forget how to talk--and i have waited my turn, and it is here and now!" ben hung breathlessly upon her words. he drew back beyond her range of vision, lest she might see him, and the spell be broken. now, he thought, she would tell where the gold was hidden! "he came," she said, "and left the gold--two heavy bags of it, and a letter for you. an hour later _he came back and took it all away_, except the letter! the money was here one hour, but in that hour you had me whipped, and for that you have spent twenty-five years in looking for nothing--something that was not here! i have had my revenge! for twenty-five years i have watched you look for--nothing; have seen you waste your time, your property, your life, your mind--for nothing! for ah, mars' ma'colm, you had me whipped--_by another man_!" a shadow of reproach crept into the old man's eyes, over which the mists of death were already gathering. "yes, viney," he whispered, "you have had your revenge! but i was sorry, viney, for what i did, and you were not. and i forgive you, viney; but you are unforgiving--even in the presence of death." his voice failed, and his eyes closed for the last time. when she saw that he was dead, by a strange revulsion of feeling the wall of outraged pride and hatred and revenge, built upon one brutal and bitterly repented mistake, and labouriously maintained for half a lifetime in her woman's heart that even slavery could not crush, crumbled and fell and let pass over it in one great and final flood the pent-up passions of the past. bursting into tears--strange tears from eyes that had long forgot to weep--old viney threw herself down upon her knees by the bedside, and seizing old malcolm's emaciated hand in both her own, covered it with kisses, fervent kisses, the ghosts of the passionate kisses of their distant youth. with a feeling that his presence was something like sacrilege, ben stole away and left her with her dead--the dead master and the dead past--and thanked god that he lived in another age, and had escaped this sin. as he wandered through the old house, a veil seemed to fall from his eyes. how old everything was, how shrunken and decayed! the sheen of the hidden gold had gilded the dilapidated old house, the neglected plantation, his own barren life. now that it was gone, things appeared in their true light. fortunately he was young enough to retrieve much of what had been lost. when the old man was buried, he would settle the estate, sell the land, make some provision for aunt viney, and then, with what was left, go out into the world and try to make a place for himself and graciella. for life intrudes its claims even into the presence of death. when the doctor came, a little later, ben went with him into the death chamber. viney was still kneeling by her master's bedside, but strangely still and silent. the doctor laid his hand on hers and old malcolm's, which had remained clasped together. "they are both dead," he declared. "i knew their story; my father told it to me many years ago." ben related what he had overheard. "i'm not surprised," said the doctor. "my father attended her when she had the stroke, and after. he always maintained that viney could speak--if she had wished to speak." _thirty-six_ the colonel's eyes were heavy with grief that night, and yet he lay awake late, and with his sorrow were mingled many consoling thoughts. the people, his people, had been kind, aye, more than kind. their warm hearts had sympathised with his grief. he had sometimes been impatient of their conservatism, their narrowness, their unreasoning pride of opinion; but in his bereavement they had manifested a feeling that it would be beautiful to remember all the days of his life. all the people, white and black, had united to honour his dead. he had wished to help them--had tried already. he had loved the town as the home of his ancestors, which enshrined their ashes. he would make of it a monument to mark his son's resting place. his fight against fetters and what he represented should take on a new character; henceforward it should be a crusade to rescue from threatened barbarism the land which contained the tombs of his loved ones. nor would he be alone in the struggle, which he now clearly foresaw would be a long one. the dear, good woman he had asked to be his wife could help him. he needed her clear, spiritual vision; and in his lifelong sorrow he would need her sympathy and companionship; for she had loved the child and would share his grief. she knew the people better than he, and was in closer touch with them; she could help him in his schemes of benevolence, and suggest new ways to benefit the people. phil's mother was buried far away, among her own people; could he consult her, he felt sure she would prefer to remain there. here she would be an alien note; and when laura died she could lie with them and still be in her own place. "have you heard the news, sir," asked the housekeeper, when he came down to breakfast the next morning. "no, mrs. hughes, what is it?" "they lynched the negro who was in jail for shooting young mr. fetters and the other man." the colonel hastily swallowed a cup of coffee and went down town. it was only a short walk. already there were excited crowds upon the street, discussing the events of the night. the colonel sought caxton, who was just entering his office. "they've done it," said the lawyer. "so i understand. when did it happen?" "about one o'clock last night. a crowd came in from sycamore--not all at once, but by twos and threes, and got together in clay johnson's saloon, with ben green, your discharged foreman, and a lot of other riffraff, and went to the sheriff, and took the keys, and took johnson and carried him out to where the shooting was, and----" "spare me the details. he is dead?" "yes." a rope, a tree--a puff of smoke, a flash of flame--or a barbaric orgy of fire and blood--what matter which? at the end there was a lump of clay, and a hundred murderers where there had been one before. "can we do anything to punish _this_ crime?" "we can try." and they tried. the colonel went to the sheriff. the sheriff said he had yielded to force, but he never would have dreamed of shooting to defend a worthless negro who had maimed a good white man, had nearly killed another, and had declared a vendetta against the white race. by noon the colonel had interviewed as many prominent men as he could find, and they became increasingly difficult to find as it became known that he was seeking them. the town, he said, had been disgraced, and should redeem itself by prosecuting the lynchers. he may as well have talked to the empty air. the trail of fetters was all over the town. some of the officials owed fetters money; others were under political obligations to him. others were plainly of the opinion that the negro got no more than he deserved; such a wretch was not fit to live. the coroner's jury returned a verdict of suicide, a grim joke which evoked some laughter. doctor mckenzie, to whom the colonel expressed his feelings, and whom he asked to throw the influence of his church upon the side of law and order, said: "it is too bad. i am sorry, but it is done. let it rest. no good can ever come of stirring it up further." later in the day there came news that the lynchers, after completing their task, had proceeded to the dudley plantation and whipped all the negroes who did not learn of their coming in time to escape, the claim being that johnson could not have maintained himself in hiding without their connivance, and that they were therefore parties to his crimes. the colonel felt very much depressed when he went to bed that night, and lay for a long time turning over in his mind the problem that confronted him. so far he had been beaten, except in the matter of the cotton mill, which was yet unfinished. his efforts in bud johnson's behalf--the only thing he had undertaken to please the woman he loved, had proved abortive. his promise to the teacher--well, he had done his part, but to no avail. he would be ashamed to meet taylor face to face. with what conscience could a white man in clarendon ever again ask a negro to disclose the name or hiding place of a coloured criminal? in the effort to punish the lynchers he stood, to all intents and purposes, single-handed and alone; and without the support of public opinion he could do nothing. the colonel was beaten, but not dismayed. perhaps god in his wisdom had taken phil away, that his father might give himself more completely and single-mindedly to the battle before him. had phil lived, a father might have hesitated to expose a child's young and impressionable mind to the things which these volcanic outbursts of passion between mismated races might cause at any unforeseen moment. now that the way was clear, he could go forward, hand in hand with the good woman who had promised to wed him, in the work he had laid out. he would enlist good people to demand better laws, under which fetters and his kind would find it harder to prey upon the weak. diligently he would work to lay wide and deep the foundations of prosperity, education and enlightenment, upon which should rest justice, humanity and civic righteousness. in this he would find a worthy career. patiently would he await the results of his labours, and if they came not in great measure in his own lifetime, he would be content to know that after years would see their full fruition. so that night he sat down and wrote a long answer to kirby's letter, in which he told him of phil's death and burial, and his own grief. something there was, too, of his plans for the future, including his marriage to a good woman who would help him in them. kirby, he said, had offered him a golden opportunity for which he thanked him heartily. the scheme was good enough for any one to venture upon. but to carry out his own plans, would require that he invest his money in the state of his residence, where there were many openings for capital that could afford to wait upon development for large returns. he sent his best regards to mrs. jerviss, and his assurance that kirby's plan was a good one. perhaps kirby and she alone could handle it; if not, there must be plenty of money elsewhere for so good a thing. he sealed the letter, and laid it aside to be mailed in the morning. to his mind it had all the force of a final renunciation, a severance of the last link that bound him to his old life. long the colonel lay thinking, after he retired to rest, and the muffled striking of the clock downstairs had marked the hour of midnight ere he fell asleep. and he had scarcely dozed away, when he was awakened by a scraping noise, as though somewhere in the house a heavy object was being drawn across the floor. the sound was not repeated, however, and thinking it some trick of the imagination, he soon slept again. as the colonel slept this second time, he dreamed of a regenerated south, filled with thriving industries, and thronged with a prosperous and happy people, where every man, having enough for his needs, was willing that every other man should have the same; where law and order should prevail unquestioned, and where every man could enter, through the golden gate of hope, the field of opportunity, where lay the prizes of life, which all might have an equal chance to win or lose. for even in his dreams the colonel's sober mind did not stray beyond the bounds of reason and experience. that all men would ever be equal he did not even dream; there would always be the strong and the weak, the wise and the foolish. but that each man, in his little life in this our little world might be able to make the most of himself, was an ideal which even the colonel's waking hours would not have repudiated. following this pleasing thread with the unconscious rapidity of dreams, the colonel passed, in a few brief minutes, through a long and useful life to a happy end, when he too rested with his fathers, by the side of his son, and on his tomb was graven what was said of ben adhem: "here lies one who loved his fellow men," and the further words, "and tried to make them happy." * * * * * shortly after dawn there was a loud rapping at the colonel's door: "come downstairs and look on de piazza, colonel," said the agitated voice of the servant who had knocked. "come quick, suh." there was a vague terror in the man's voice that stirred the colonel strangely. he threw on a dressing gown and hastened downstairs, and to the front door of the hall, which stood open. a handsome mahogany burial casket, stained with earth and disfigured by rough handling, rested upon the floor of the piazza, where it had been deposited during the night. conspicuously nailed to the coffin lid was a sheet of white paper, upon which were some lines rudely scrawled in a handwriting that matched the spelling: _kurnell french_: _take notis. berry yore ole nigger somewhar else. he can't stay in oak semitury. the majority of the white people of this town, who dident tend yore nigger funarl, woant have him there. niggers by there selves, white peepul by there selves, and them that lives in our town must bide by our rules._ _by order of_ cumitty. the colonel left the coffin standing on the porch, where it remained all day, an object of curious interest to the scores and hundreds who walked by to look at it, for the news spread quickly through the town. no one, however, came in. if there were those who reprobated the action they were silent. the mob spirit, which had broken out in the lynching of johnson, still dominated the town, and no one dared to speak against it. as soon as colonel french had dressed and breakfasted, he drove over to the cemetery. those who had exhumed old peter's remains had not been unduly careful. the carelessly excavated earth had been scattered here and there over the lot. the flowers on old peter's grave and that of little phil had been trampled under foot--whether wantonly or not, inevitably, in the execution of the ghoulish task. the colonel's heart hardened as he stood by his son's grave. then he took a long lingering look at the tombs of his ancestors and turned away with an air of finality. from the cemetery he went to the undertaker's, and left an order; thence to the telegraph office, from which he sent a message to his former partner in new york; and thence to the treadwells'. _thirty-seven_ miss laura came forward with outstretched hands and tear-stained eyes to greet him. "henry," she exclaimed, "i am shocked and sorry, i cannot tell you how much! nor do i know what else to say, except that the best people do not--cannot--could not--approve of it!" "the best people, laura," he said with a weary smile, "are an abstraction. when any deviltry is on foot they are never there to prevent it--they vanish into thin air at its approach. when it is done, they excuse it; and they make no effort to punish it. so it is not too much to say that what they permit they justify, and they cannot shirk the responsibility. to mar the living--it is the history of life--but to make war upon the dead!--i am going away, laura, never to return. my dream of usefulness is over. to-night i take away my dead and shake the dust of clarendon from my feet forever. will you come with me?" "henry," she said, and each word tore her heart, "i have been expecting this--since i heard. but i cannot go; my duty calls me here. my mother could not be happy anywhere else, nor would i fit into any other life. and here, too, i am useful--and may still be useful--and should be missed. i know your feelings, and would not try to keep you. but, oh, henry, if all of those who love justice and practise humanity should go away, what would become of us?" "i leave to-night," he returned, "and it is your right to go with me, or to come to me." "no, henry, nor am i sure that you would wish me to. it was for the old town's sake that you loved me. i was a part of your dream--a part of the old and happy past, upon which you hoped to build, as upon the foundations of the old mill, a broader and a fairer structure. do you remember what you told me, that night--that happy night--that you loved me because in me you found the embodiment of an ideal? well, henry, that is why i did not wish to make our engagement known, for i knew, i felt, the difficulty of your task, and i foresaw that you might be disappointed, and i feared that if your ideal should be wrecked, you might find me a burden. i loved you, henry--i seem to have always loved you, but i would not burden you." "no, no, laura--not so! not so!" "and you wanted me for phil's sake, whom we both loved; and now that your dream is over, and phil is gone, i should only remind you of where you lost him, and of your disappointment, and of--this other thing, and i could not be sure that you loved me or wanted me." "surely you cannot doubt it, laura?" his voice was firm, but to her sensitive spirit it did not carry conviction. "you remembered me from my youth," she continued tremulously but bravely, "and it was the image in your memory that you loved. and now, when you go away, the old town will shrink and fade from your memory and your heart and you will have none but harsh thoughts of it; nor can i blame you greatly, for you have grown far away from us, and we shall need many years to overtake you. nor do you need me, henry--i am too old to learn new ways, and elsewhere than here i should be a hindrance to you rather than a help. but in the larger life to which you go, think of me now and then as one who loves you still, and who will try, in her poor way, with such patience as she has, to carry on the work which you have begun, and which you--oh, henry!" he divined her thought, though her tear-filled eyes spoke sorrow rather than reproach. "yes," he said sadly, "which i have abandoned. yes, laura, abandoned, fully and forever." the colonel was greatly moved, but his resolution remained unshaken. "laura," he said, taking both her hands in his, "i swear that i should be glad to have you with me. come away! the place is not fit for you to live in!" "no, henry! it cannot be! i could not go! my duty holds me here! god would not forgive me if i abandoned it. go your way; live your life. marry some other woman, if you must, who will make you happy. but i shall keep, henry--nothing can ever take away from me--the memory of one happy summer." "no, no, laura, it need not be so! i shall write you. you'll think better of it. but i go to-night--not one hour longer than i must, will i remain in this town. i must bid your mother and graciella good-bye." he went into the house. mrs. treadwell was excited and sorry, and would have spoken at length, but the colonel's farewells were brief. "i cannot stop to say more than good-bye, dear mrs. treadwell. i have spent a few happy months in my old home, and now i am going away. laura will tell you the rest." graciella was tearfully indignant. "it was a shame!" she declared. "peter was a good old nigger, and it wouldn't have done anybody any harm to leave him there. i'd rather be buried beside old peter than near any of the poor white trash that dug him up--so there! i'm so sorry you're going away; but i hope, sometime," she added stoutly, "to see you in new york! don't forget!" "i'll send you my address," said the colonel. _thirty-eight_ it was a few weeks later. old ralph dudley and viney had been buried. ben dudley had ridden in from mink run, had hitched his horse in the back yard as usual, and was seated on the top step of the piazza beside graciella. his elbows rested on his knees, and his chin upon his hand. graciella had unconsciously imitated his drooping attitude. both were enshrouded in the deepest gloom, and had been sunk, for several minutes, in a silence equally profound. graciella was the first to speak. "well, then," she said with a deep sigh, "there is absolutely nothing left?" "not a thing," he groaned hopelessly, "except my horse and my clothes, and a few odds and ends which belong to me. fetters will have the land--there's not enough to pay the mortgages against it, and i'm in debt for the funeral expenses." "and what are you going to do?" "gracious knows--i wish i did! i came over to consult the family. i have no trade, no profession, no land and no money. i can get a job at braking on the railroad--or may be at clerking in a store. i'd have asked the colonel for something in the mill--but that chance is gone." "gone," echoed graciella, gloomily. "i see my fate! i shall marry you, because i can't help loving you, and couldn't live without you; and i shall never get to new york, but be, all my life, a poor man's wife--a poor white man's wife." "no, graciella, we might be poor, but not poor-white! our blood will still be of the best." "it will be all the same. blood without money may count for one generation, but it won't hold out for two." they relapsed into a gloom so profound, so rayless, that they might almost be said to have reveled in it. it was lightened, or at least a diversion was created by miss laura's opening the garden gate and coming up the walk. ben rose as she approached, and graciella looked up. "i have been to the post-office," said miss laura. "here is a letter for you, ben, addressed in my care. it has the new york postmark." "thank you, miss laura." eagerly ben's hand tore the envelope and drew out the enclosure. swiftly his eyes devoured the lines; they were typewritten and easy to follow. "glory!" he shouted, "glory hallelujah! listen!" he read the letter aloud, while graciella leaned against his shoulder and feasted her eyes upon the words. the letter was from colonel french: _"my dear ben_: _i was very much impressed with the model of a cotton gin and press which i saw you exhibit one day at mrs. treadwells'. you have a fine genius for mechanics, and the model embodies, i think, a clever idea, which is worth working up. if your uncle's death has left you free to dispose of your time, i should like to have you come on to new york with the model, and we will take steps to have the invention patented at once, and form a company for its manufacture. as an evidence of good faith, i enclose my draft for five hundred dollars, which can be properly accounted for in our future arrangements._" "o ben!" gasped graciella, in one long drawn out, ecstatic sigh. "o graciella!" exclaimed ben, as he threw his arms around her and kissed her rapturously, regardless of miss laura's presence. "now you can go to new york as soon as you like!" _thirty-nine_ colonel french took his dead to the north, and buried both the little boy and the old servant in the same lot with his young wife, and in the shadow of the stately mausoleum which marked her resting-place. there, surrounded by the monuments of the rich and the great, in a beautiful cemetery, which overlooks a noble harbour where the ships of all nations move in endless procession, the body of the faithful servant rests beside that of the dear little child whom he unwittingly lured to his death and then died in the effort to save. and in all the great company of those who have laid their dead there in love or in honour, there is none to question old peter's presence or the colonel's right to lay him there. sometimes, at night, a ray of light from the uplifted torch of the statue of liberty, the gift of a free people to a free people, falls athwart the white stone which marks his resting place--fit prophecy and omen of the day when the sun of liberty shall shine alike upon all men. when the colonel went away from clarendon, he left his affairs in caxton's hands, with instructions to settle them up as expeditiously as possible. the cotton mill project was dropped, and existing contracts closed on the best terms available. fetters paid the old note--even he would not have escaped odium for so bare-faced a robbery--and mrs. treadwell's last days could be spent in comfort and miss laura saved from any fear for her future, and enabled to give more freely to the poor and needy. barclay fetters recovered the use of one eye, and embittered against the whole negro race by his disfigurement, went into public life and devoted his talents and his education to their debasement. the colonel had relented sufficiently to contemplate making over to miss laura the old family residence in trust for use as a hospital, with a suitable fund for its maintenance, but it unfortunately caught fire and burned down--and he was hardly sorry. he sent catherine, bud johnson's wife, a considerable sum of money, and she bought a gorgeous suit of mourning, and after a decent interval consoled herself with a new husband. and he sent word to the committee of coloured men to whom he had made a definite promise, that he would be ready to fulfil his obligation in regard to their school whenever they should have met the conditions. * * * * * one day, a year or two after leaving clarendon, as the colonel, in company with mrs. french, formerly a member of his firm, now his partner in a double sense--was riding upon a fast train between new york and chicago, upon a trip to visit a western mine in which the reorganised french and company, limited, were interested, he noticed that the pullman car porter, a tall and stalwart negro, was watching him furtively from time to time. upon one occasion, when the colonel was alone in the smoking-room, the porter addressed him. "excuse me, suh," he said, "i've been wondering ever since we left new york, if you wa'n't colonel french?" "yes, i'm mr. french--colonel french, if you want it so." "i 'lowed it must be you, suh, though you've changed the cut of your beard, and are looking a little older, suh. i don't suppose you remember me?" "i've seen you somewhere," said the colonel--no longer the colonel, but like the porter, let us have it so. "where was it?" "i'm henry taylor, suh, that used to teach school at clarendon. i reckon you remember me now." "yes," said the colonel sadly, "i remember you now, taylor, to my sorrow. i didn't keep my word about johnson, did i?" "oh, yes, suh," replied the porter, "i never doubted but what you'd keep your word. but you see, suh, they were too many for you. there ain't no one man can stop them folks down there when they once get started." "and what are you doing here, taylor?" "well, suh, the fact is that after you went away, it got out somehow that i had told on bud johnson. i don't know how they learned it, and of course i knew you didn't tell it; but somebody must have seen me going to your house, or else some of my enemies guessed it--and happened to guess right--and after that the coloured folks wouldn't send their children to me, and i lost my job, and wasn't able to get another anywhere in the state. the folks said i was an enemy of my race, and, what was more important to me, i found that my race was an enemy to me. so i got out, suh, and i came no'th, hoping to find somethin' better. this is the best job i've struck yet, but i'm hoping that sometime or other i'll find something worth while." "and what became of the industrial school project?" asked the colonel. "i've stood ready to keep my promise, and more, but i never heard from you." "well, suh, after you went away the enthusiasm kind of died out, and some of the white folks throwed cold water on it, and it fell through, suh." when the porter came along, before the train reached chicago, the colonel offered taylor a handsome tip. "thank you, suh," said the porter, "but i'd rather not take it. i'm a porter now, but i wa'n't always one, and hope i won't always be one. and during all the time i taught school in clarendon, you was the only white man that ever treated me quite like a man--and our folks just like people--and if you won't think i'm presuming, i'd rather not take the money." the colonel shook hands with him, and took his address. shortly afterward he was able to find him something better than menial employment, where his education would give him an opportunity for advancement. taylor is fully convinced that his people will never get very far along in the world without the good will of the white people, but he is still wondering how they will secure it. for he regards colonel french as an extremely fortunate accident. * * * * * and so the colonel faltered, and, having put his hand to the plow, turned back. but was not his, after all, the only way? for no more now than when the man of sorrows looked out over the mount of olives, can men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles. the seed which the colonel sowed seemed to fall by the wayside, it is true; but other eyes have seen with the same light, and while fetters and his kind still dominate their section, other hands have taken up the fight which the colonel dropped. in manufactures the south has gone forward by leaps and bounds. the strong arm of the government, guided by a wise and just executive, has been reached out to crush the poisonous growth of peonage, and men hitherto silent have raised their voices to commend. here and there a brave judge has condemned the infamy of the chain-gang and convict lease systems. good men, north and south, have banded themselves together to promote the cause of popular education. slowly, like all great social changes, but visibly, to the eye of faith, is growing up a new body of thought, favourable to just laws and their orderly administration. in this changed attitude of mind lies the hope of the future, the hope of the republic. but clarendon has had its chance, nor seems yet to have had another. other towns, some not far from it, lying nearer the main lines of travel, have been swept into the current of modern life, but not yet clarendon. there the grass grows thicker in the streets. the meditative cows still graze in the vacant lot between the post-office and the bank, where the public library was to stand. the old academy has grown more dilapidated than ever, and a large section of plaster has fallen from the wall, carrying with it the pencil drawing made in the colonel's schooldays; and if miss laura treadwell sees that the graves of the old frenches are not allowed to grow up in weeds and grass, the colonel knows nothing of it. the pigs and the loafers--leaner pigs and lazier loafers--still sleep in the shade, when the pound keeper and the constable are not active. the limpid water of the creek still murmurs down the slope and ripples over the stone foundation of what was to have been the new dam, while the birds have nested for some years in the vines that soon overgrew the unfinished walls of the colonel's cotton mill. white men go their way, and black men theirs, and these ways grow wider apart, and no one knows the outcome. but there are those who hope, and those who pray, that this condition will pass, that some day our whole land will be truly free, and the strong will cheerfully help to bear the burdens of the weak, and justice, the seed, and peace, the flower, of liberty, will prevail throughout all our borders. * * * * * +--------------------------------------------------------------+ | typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | page : resposeful replaced with reposeful | | page : retrogade replaced with retrograde | | page : h'anted replaced with ha'nted | | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+ included in the scans.] cassell and company, limited london, paris, new york, toronto and melbourne all rights reserved [illustration: "the men would salute their old general, the general salute his old regiment"] contents chapter i. wistaria terrace chapter ii. the wall between chapter iii. the new estate chapter iv. boy and girl chapter v. "old blood and thunder" chapter vi. the blue ribbon chapter vii. a chance meeting chapter viii. groves of academe chapter ix. the race with death chapter x. dispossessed chapter xi. the lion chapter xii. her ladyship chapter xiii. the heart of a father chapter xiv. lovers' parting chapter xv. the general has an idea chapter xvi. the leading and the light chapter xvii. a night of spring chapter xviii. halcyon weather chapter xix. wild thyme and violets chapter xx. jealousy, cruel as the grave chapter xxi. two women chapter xxii. light on the way chapter xxiii. the news in the _westminster_ chapter xxiv. the friend chapter xxv. the one woman chapter xxvi. golden days chapter xxvii. the intermediary chapter xxviii. noel! noel! list of illustrations "the men would salute their old general, the general salute his old regiment" "sir robin drummond had come to mary's side, and turned the page of her music" "'do you know what i came here in the mind to ask you?'" "'miss nelly is in the drawing-room, sir'" mary gray chapter i wistaria terrace the house where mary gray was born and grew towards womanhood was one of a squat line of mean little houses that hid themselves behind a great church. the roadway in front of the houses led only to the back entrance of the church. over against the windows was the playground of the church schools, surrounded by a high wall that shut away field and sky from the front rooms of wistaria terrace. the houses were drab and ugly, with untidy grass-plots in front. they presented an exterior of three windows and a narrow round-topped hall-door which was a confession of poverty in itself. five out of six houses had a ramping plaster horse in the fanlight of the hall door, a fixture which went with the house and was immune from breakage because no one ever thought of cleaning the fanlights. in the back gardens the family wash was put to dry. some of the more enterprising inhabitants kept fowls; but there was not much enterprise in wistaria terrace. earlier inhabitants had planted the gardens with lilac and laburnum bushes, with gooseberries and currants. there were no flowers there that did not sow themselves year after year. they were damp, grubby places, but even there an imaginative child like mary gray could find suggestions of delight. mary's father, walter gray, was employed at a watchmaker's of repute. he spent all his working life with a magnifying glass in his eye, peering into the mechanism of watches, adjusting the delicate pivots and springs on which their lives moved. his occupation had perhaps encouraged in him a habit of introspection. perhaps he found the human machine as worthy of interest as the works of watches and clocks. anyhow, in his leisure moments, which were few, he would discuss curiously with mary the hidden springs that kept the human machine in motion, the strange workings and convolutions of it. from the very early age when she began to be a comfort and a companion to her father, mary had been accustomed to such speculations as would have written walter gray down a madman if he had shared them with the grown people about him rather than with a child. mary was the child of his romance, of his first marriage, which had lasted barely a year. he never talked of her mother, even to mary, though she had vague memories of a time when he had not been so reticent. that was before the stepmother came, the stepmother whom, honestly, walter gray had married because his child was neglected. he had not anticipated, perhaps, the long string of children which was to result from the marriage, whose presence in the world was to make mary's lot a more strenuous one than would have been the case if she had been a child alone. not that mary grumbled about the stepbrothers and sisters. year after year, from the time she could stagger under the weight of a baby, she had received a new burden for her arms, and had found enough love for each newcomer. the second mrs. gray was a poor, puny, washed-out little rag of a woman, whose one distinction was the number of her children. they had always great appetites to be satisfied. as soon as they began to run about, the rapidity with which they wore out their boots and the knees of their trousers, and outgrew their frocks, was a subject upon which mrs. gray could expatiate for hours. mary had a tender, strong pity from the earliest age for the down-at-heel, over-burdened stepmother, which lightened her own load, as did the vicarious, motherly love which came to her for each succeeding fat baby. mary was nurse and nursery-governess to all the family. wistaria terrace had one great recompense for its humble and hidden condition. it was within easy reach of the fields and the mountains. for an adventurous spirit the sea was not at an insuperable distance. indeed, but for the high wall of the school playground, the lovely line of mountains had been well in view. as it was, many a day in summer mary would carry off her train of children to the fields, with a humble refection of bread and butter and jam, and milk for their mid-day meal; and these occasions allowed mrs. gray a few hours of peace that were like a foretaste of paradise. she never grumbled, poor little woman, because her husband shared his thoughts with mary and not with her. whatever ambitions she had had to rise to her walter's level--she had an immense opinion of his learning--had long been extinguished under the accumulation of toils and burdens that made up her daily life. she was fond of mary, and leant on her strangely, considering their relative ages. for the rest, she toiled with indifferent success at household tasks, and was grateful for having a husband so absorbed in distant speculations that he was insensible of the near discomfort of a badly-cooked dinner or a buttonless shirt. the gardens of the houses opened on a lane which was a sort of rubbish-shoot for the houses that gave upon it. across the lane was a row of stabling belonging to far more important houses than wistaria terrace. beyond the stables and stable yards were old gardens with shady stretches of turf and forest trees enclosed within their walls. beyond the gardens rose the fine old-fashioned houses of the mall, big georgian houses that looked in front across the roadway at the line of elm-trees that bordered the canal. the green waters of the canal, winding placidly through its green channel, with the elm-trees reflected greenly in its green depths, had a suggestion of holland. the lane was something of an adventure to the children of wistaria terrace. there, any day, you might see a coachman curry-combing his satin-skinned horses, hissing between his teeth by way of encouragement, after the time-honoured custom. or you might see a load of hay lifted up by a windlass into the loft above the stables. or you might assist at the washing of a carriage. sometimes the gate at the farther side of the stable was open, and a gardener would come through with a barrowful of rubbish to add to the accumulation already in the lane. through the open gateway the children would catch glimpses of fairyland. a broad stretch of shining turf dappled with sun and shade. tall snapdragons and lilies and sweet-williams and phlox in the garden-beds. a fruit tree or two, heavy with blossom or fruit. only old-fashioned people lived in the mall nowadays, and the glimpses the children caught of the owners of those terrestrial paradises fitted in with the idea of fairyland. they were always old ladies and gentlemen, and they were old-fashioned in their attire, but very magnificent. there was one old lady who was the very fairy godmother of the stories. she was the one who had the magnificent mulberry-tree in her garden. one day in every year the children were called in to strip the tree of its fruit; and that was a great day for wistaria terrace. the children were allowed to bring basins to carry away what they could not eat; and benevolent men-servants would ascend to the overweighted boughs of the tree by ladders and pick the fruit and load up the children's basins with it. again, the apples would be distributed in their season. while the distribution went on, the old lady would stand at a window with her little white dog in her arms nodding her head in a well-pleased way. the children called her lady anne. they had no such personal acquaintance with the other gardens and their owners, so their thoughts were very full of lady anne and her garden. when mary was about fourteen she made the acquaintance of lady anne--her full name was lady anne hamilton--and that was an event which had a considerable influence on her fortunes. the meeting came about in this way. mary had gone marketing one day, and for once had deserted the shabby little row of shops which ran at the end of wistaria terrace, at right angles to it. she had gone out into the great main thoroughfare, the noise of which came dimly to wistaria terrace because of the huge mass of the church blocking up the way. she had done her shopping and was on her way home, when, right in the track of the heavy tram as it came down the steep descent from the bridge over the canal, she saw a helpless bit of white fur, as it might well seem to anyone at a distance. the thing was almost motionless, or stirring so feebly that its movements were not apparent. evidently the driver of the tram had not noticed it, or was not troubled to save its life, for he stood with the reins in his hand, glancing from side to side of the road for possible passengers as the tram swept down the long incline. mary never hesitated. the tram was almost upon the thing when she first saw it. "why, it is lady anne's dog!" she cried, and launched herself out in the roadway to save it. she was just in time to pick up the blind, whimpering thing. the driver of the tram, seeing mary in its path, put on the brakes sharply. the tram lumbered to a stoppage, but not before mary had been flung down on her face and her arm broken by the hoof of the horse nearest her. it was likely to be an uncommonly awkward thing for the gray household, seeing that it was mary's right arm that was injured. for one thing, it would involve the dispossession of that year's baby. for another, it would put mrs. gray's capable helper entirely out of action. when mary was picked up, and stood, wavering unsteadily, supported by someone in the crowd which had gathered, hearing, as from a great distance, the snarling and scolding of the tram-driver, who was afraid of finding himself in trouble, she still held the blind and whimpering dog in her uninjured arm. she wanted to get away as quickly as possible from the crowd, but her head swam and her feet were uncertain. then she heard a quiet voice behind her. "has there been an accident? i am a doctor," it said. "a young woman trying to kill herself along of an old dog," said the tram-driver indignantly. "as though there wasn't enough trouble for a man already." "let me see," the doctor said, coming to mary's side. "ah, i can't make an examination here. better come with me, my child. i am on my way to the hospital. my carriage is here." "not to hospital," said mary faintly. "let me go home; they would be so frightened." "i shan't detain you, i promise you. but this must be bandaged before you can go home. ah, is this basket yours, too?" someone had handed up the basket from the tram-track, where it had lain disgorging cabbages and other articles of food. "i will send you home as soon as i have seen to your arm," the doctor said, pushing her gently towards his carriage. "and the little dog--is he your own? i suppose he is, since you nearly gave your life for him?" "he is not mine," said mary faintly. "he belongs to lady anne--lady anne hamilton. she lives at no. , the mall. she will be distracted if she misses the little dog. she is so very fond of it." "ah! lady anne hamilton. i have heard of her. we can leave the dog at home on our way. come, child." the mall was quite close at hand. they drove there, and just as the carriage stopped at the gate of no. , which had a long strip of green front garden, overhung by trees through which you could discern the old red-brick house. lady anne herself came down the gravel path. over her head was a little shawl of old lace; it was caught by a seed-pearl brooch with an amethyst centre. she was wearing a quilted red silk petticoat and a bunched sacque of black flowered silk. she had magnificent dark eyes and white hair. under it her peaked little face was the colour of old ivory. she was calling to her dog, "fifine, fifine, where can you be?" a respectable-looking elderly maid came hurrying after her. "i've looked everywhere, my lady, and i cannot find the little thing," she said in a frightened voice. meanwhile, the doctor had got out of the carriage and had taken fifine gently from mary's lap. now that mary was coming to herself she began to discover that the doctor was young and kind-looking, but more careworn than his youth warranted. he opened the garden gate and went up to lady anne. "is this your little dog, madam?" he asked. "my fifine, my darling!" cried lady anne, embracing the trembling bit of wool. "you don't know what she is to me, sir. my little grandson"--the imperious old voice shook--"loved the dog. she was his pet. the child is dead. you understand----" "perfectly," said the doctor. "i, too--i know what loss is. the little dog strayed. she was found in the high road. i am very glad to restore her to you; but pray do not thank me. there is a young girl in my carriage at the gate. she picked up your dog from under the wheels of a tramcar, and broke her arm, i fear, in doing it. i am on my way to the hospital, the house of mercy, where i am doing work for a friend who is on holiday. i am taking her with me so that i may set the arm where i have all the appliances." "she saved my fifine? heroic child! let me thank her." the old lady clutched her recovered treasure to her breast with fervour, then handed the dog over to the maid. "take me to see fifine's preserver," she said in a commanding voice. mary was almost swooning with the pain of her arm. she heard lady anne's praises as though from a long distance off. "stay, doctor," the old lady said; "i cannot have her jolted over the paving-stones of the city to the mercy. bring her in here. we need not detain you very long. we can procure splints and bandages, all you require, from a chemist's shop. there is one just round the corner. what, do you say, child? they will be frightened about you at home! i shall send word. be quiet now; you must let us do everything for you." so the doctor assisted mary into the old house behind the trees. lady anne walked the other side of her, pretending to assist mary and really imagining that she did. the splints and the bandages were on, and mary had borne the pain well. "i'm afraid i must go," said the doctor, looking at his watch. "i am half an hour behind my time. and where am i to visit my patient?" "where but here?" said lady anne with decision. "it is now half-past eleven. i have lunch at half-past one. could you return to lunch, dr.--ah, dr. carruthers. you are dr. carruthers, are you not? you took the big house at the corner of magnolia road a year ago?" "yes, i am dr. carruthers; and i shall be very pleased to return to lunch, lady anne. i don't think the little dog is any the worse for her experience." his face was flushed as he stood with his hat in his hand, bowing and smiling. if only lady anne hamilton would take him up! that big house at the corner of magnolia road had been a daring bid for fortune. so had the neat, single brougham, hired from a livery-stable. so had been the three smart maids. but so far fortune had not favoured him. he was one of fifty or so waiters on fortune. when people were ill in the smart suburban neighbourhood they liked to be attended by dr. pownall, who always drove a pair of hundred guinea horses. none of your hired broughams for them. "you are paying too big a rent for a young man," said lady anne. "you can't have made it or anything like made it. pownall grows careless. the last time i sent for him he kept me two hours waiting. when i had him to stewart, my maid, he was in a hurry to be gone. pownall has too much to do--too much by half." her eyes rested thoughtfully on the agitated dr. carruthers. "you shall tell me all about it when you come back to lunch," she said; "and i should like to call on your wife." chapter ii the wall between "the child has brought us luck--luck at last, mildred," dr. carruthers was saying, a few hours later. "when i lifted her in my arms she was as light as a feather. a poor little shabby, overworked thing, all eyes, and too big a forehead. her boots were broken, and i noticed that her fingers were rough with hard work." he was walking up and down his wife's drawing-room in a tremendous state of excitement, while she smiled at him from the sofa. "it is wonderful, coming just now, too, when i had made up my mind that we couldn't keep afloat here much longer, and had resolved to give up this house at the september quarter and retire into a dingier part of the town. once it is known that i am lady anne hamilton's medical man the snobs of the neighbourhood will all be sending for me." "poor dr. pownall!" said mrs. carruthers, laughing softly. "oh, pownall is all right. they say he's immensely wealthy. he can retire now and enjoy his money. if the public did not go back on him he'd be a dead man in five or six years. he does the work of twenty men. i pity the others, the poor devils who are waiting on fortune as i have waited." "there is no fear of lady anne disappointing you?" she asked, in a hesitating voice. she did not like to seem to throw cold water on his joyful mood. "there is no fear," he answered, standing midway of the room with its three large windows. "she is coming to see you, milly. if i have failed in anything you will succeed. you will see me at the top of the tree yet. you will have cause to be proud of me." "i am always proud of you. kit," she said, in a low, impassioned voice. meanwhile, lady anne herself had made a pilgrimage to wistaria terrace in the hour preceding the luncheon hour. she had left mary in a deep chair in the big drawing-room. outside were the boughs of trees. from the windows you could surprise the secrets of the birds if you would. the room was very spacious, with chairs and sofas round the walls, a great mirror at either end, a paper on its walls which pretended to be panels wreathed in roses. the ceiling had a gay picture of gods and goddesses reclining in a flowery mead. the mantelpiece was carrara marble, curiously inlaid with coloured wreaths. there was a fire in the brass grate, although it was summer weather. the proximity of the trees and the natural climate of the place meant damp. the fire sparkled in the brass dogs and the brass jambs of the fireplace. the skin of a tiger stretched itself along the floor. the terrible teeth grinned almost at mary's feet. the child was sick and faint from the pain of having her arm set. she lay in the deep sofa, covered with red damask, amid a bewildering softness of cushions and rugs, and wondered what lady anne was saying to mamie. mamie was mrs. gray. from the first mary had not called her mother. her name was matilda, and mamie was a sort of compromise. meanwhile, lady anne had gone out by her garden, through the stable, and into the lane at the back. there was a little door open in the opposite wall; beyond it was a shabby trellis with scarlet-runners clambering upon it. lady anne peeped within. a disheartened-looking woman was hanging a child's frock on the line which was stretched from wall to wall. three children, ranging in age from two to five, were sitting on the grass plot. two were playing with white stones. the third was surveying its own small feet with great interest, sucking at a fat thumb as though it conveyed some delicious nourishment. "do i speak to mrs. gray?" asked lady anne, advancing. she had a sunshade over her head, a deep-fringed thing with a folding handle. she had bought it in paris in the days of the second empire. mrs. gray stared at the stranger within her gates, whom she knew by sight. there was some perturbation in her face. she had been worried about the unusual duration of mary's absence. mary had not come back with the market basket which contained the children's dinner. at one o'clock the four elder ones would be upon her, ravening. what on earth had become of mary? the poor woman had not realised how much she depended on mary, since mary was always present and always willing to take the burdens off her stepmother's thin, stooped shoulders on to her own. now she caught sight of the market-basket. one of lady anne's white-capped maids had come in and deposited it quietly. "mary?" she gasped. "what has become of mary?" "pray don't frighten yourself," said lady anne. "i have a message from mary. she is at my house. as a matter of fact, she met with an accident. there--don't go so pale. it is only a matter of time. her arm is broken. she got it broken in saving the life of my little maltese, who had strayed out and had got in the way of the tram. i always said that those trams should not be allowed. the tracks are so very unpleasant--dangerous even, for the carriages of gentlefolk. there is far too much traffic allowed on the public highways nowadays, far too much. people ought to walk if they cannot keep carriages." she broke off abruptly and looked at the three small children. "these are yours?" she asked. "they seem very close together in age." "a year and a half, three years, four years and three months," said mrs. gray, forgetting in her special cause for pride her awe of lady anne. "dear me, i should have thought they were all twins," said the old lady. "how very remarkable! have you any more?" "four at school. the eldest is nine. you see, they came so quickly, my lady. only for mary i don't know how i should have reared them." "h'm! mary is very stunted. it struck me that she would have been tall if she had had a chance. those heavy babies, doubtless. well, i am going to keep mary for a while. how will you do without her?" mrs. gray's faded eyes filled with tears. "i can't imagine, my lady. you see, we have never kept a servant. when i lived at home with my mamma we always had three. mr. gray has literary attainments, my lady. he is not practical." "i can send you an excellent charwoman," lady anne broke in, "for the present. i will see what is to be done about mary. the child has rendered me an inestimable service. i must do something for her in return. by the way, she is not your daughter?" "my stepdaughter." "ah, i thought so. well, the charwoman shall come in at once. she can cook. later on, we shall see--we shall see." "by the way," said lady anne, coming back with a rustle of silks while mrs. gray yet stood in bewilderment, holding the baby's frock in her limp fingers. "by the way, mary is very anxious about her father--how he will take her accident. will you tell your husband that i shall be glad to see him when he comes home this evening?" "i will, my lady," said mrs. gray; "and, my lady, would you please not to mention to mr. gray about the charwoman? he's that proud; it would hurt him, i'm sure. if he isn't told he'll never know she's there. a child isn't as easily deceived as walter." "i shall certainly not tell him," lady anne said graciously. she did not object to the honest pride in walter gray. he was probably a superior man for his station, being mary's father. as for that poor slattern, lady anne had lived too long in the world to be amazed by the marriages men made, either in her own exalted circle or in those below it. walter gray came, in a flutter of tender anxiety, at half-past six in the evening, to lady anne's garden, where mary was sitting in her wicker chair under the mulberry tree. lady anne had given orders that he was to be shown out to the garden when he called. "my poor little girl!" he said, with an arm about mary's shoulder. then he took off his hat to lady anne. there was respect in his manner, but nothing over-humble, nothing to say that they were not equals in a sense. his eyes, at once bright and dreamy, rested on her with a friendly regard. "the man has gentle blood in him somewhere," said the old lady to herself. she had a sense of humour which kept her knowledge of her own importance from becoming overweening. "i believe his respect is for my age, not for my rank. i wonder what the world is coming to!" she went away then and left the father and daughter together. walter, who had taken a chair by mary's, looked with a half-conscious pleasure round the velvet sward on which the shadows of the trees lay long. the trees were at their full summer foliage, dark as night, mysterious, magnificent. "what a very pleasant place!" walter gray said, with grave enjoyment. "how sweet the evening smells are! how quiet everything is! who could believe that wistaria terrace was over the wall?" "i have been missing wistaria terrace," mary said. "you don't know how lonesome it feels for the children. i wonder how mamie is getting on without me. i want to go home. indeed, i feel quite able to. i don't know how i shall do without going home." "if you went home," said walter gray, unexpectedly practical, "your arm would never set, mary. you'd be forgetting and doing all manner of things you oughtn't to do. if lady anne is kind enough to ask you to visit her, stay a while and rest, dear. indeed, you do too much for your size." "you will all miss me so dreadfully." "indeed, i don't think we shall miss you--in that way. oddly enough--i suppose matilda was on her mettle--the house seemed quieter when i came home. the children were in bed. i smelt something good from the kitchen. don't imagine that we shall not be able to do without you, child." mary, who knew no more of the capable charwoman than walter gray did, looked on this speech of her father's as a mere string of tender subterfuges. she said nothing, but her eyes rested on her grey woollen skirt, faded by wear and the weather, and she had an unchildish sense of the incongruity of her presence as a visitor in lady anne's house. walter gray's glance roamed over his young daughter. he saw nothing of her dreary attire. he saw only the spiritual face, over-pale, the slender, young, unformed body, graceful as a half-opened flower in its ill-fitting covering, the slender feet that had a suggestion of race, the toil-worn hands the fingers of which tapered to fine points. "you have always done too much, child," he said, with sudden, tender compunction. when he rose to go mary clung to him as though their parting was to be for years. "i will come in again to-morrow," he said. "i shall sleep better to-night for thinking of you in this quiet, restful place. get some roses in your cheeks, little girl, before you come back to us." "i wish i were going back now," said mary piteously. she looked round the old walls with their climbing fruit trees as though they were the walls of a prison. "it is awful not to be able to come and go. and mamie will never be able to do without me. the children will be ill----" he left her in tears. as he re-entered the house by its iron steps up to a glass door lady anne came out from her morning-room and called him within. he looked about him at the room, walled in with books, with yellowed marble busts of great men on top of the book-cases. his feet sank in soft carpets. the smell of a pot of lilies mingled with the smell of leather bindings. the light in the room, filtered through the leaves of an overhanging creeper, was green and gold. it seemed to him that he must have known such a room in some other world, where he had not had to make watches all day with a glass screwed in his eye, but had abundant leisure for books and beautiful things. not but that there might be worse things than the watchmaking. over the works of the watches, the fine little wheels and springs, walter gray thought hard, thought incessantly. he thought, perhaps, the harder that he had neither the leisure nor opportunity for putting down his thoughts on paper or imparting them to another like-minded with himself. how his fellows would have stared if they could have known the things that went on inside walter gray's mind as he leant above his table, peering into the interior of the watch-cases! "sit down, mr. gray," said lady anne graciously; "i want to talk to you about mary." she approached the matter delicately, having wit enough to see that walter gray was no common person. while she talked she looked with frank admiration at his face: the fine, high, delicate nose; the arched brows, like mary's own; the over-development of the forehead. the dust of years and worries lay thick upon his face, yet lady anne said to herself that it was a beautiful face beneath the dust. "i want to talk to you about mary," she went on. "the child interests me strongly. she is a fine vessel, this little daughter of yours. pray excuse me if i speak plainly. she has been doing far too much for her age and her strength. haven't you noticed that she is pulled down to earth? those babies, mr. gray--they are remarkably fat and heavy; they are killing mary." "her mother died of consumption," walter gray said, his face whitening with terror. "ah!" the old lady thought; "she is the child of his heart. those three twins are merely the children of his home. that poor drudge of a mother of theirs! mary is the child of her father's heart and mind." then aloud: "you had better let me have her, mr. gray." "let you have her, lady anne? what would you do with my mary?" he looked scarcely less aghast than he had done a moment before at the suggestion of consumption. "not separate her from you, mr. gray. this house is my home, and i am not likely to leave it, except for a month or two at a time, at my age. i think the child will be a companion to me. i have no romantic suggestions to make. i am not proposing to adopt mary. i shall pay her a salary, and give her opportunities for education that you cannot. she interests me, as i have said. let me have her. when i no longer need her--i am an old woman, mr. gray--she will be fit to earn her own living. everything i have goes back to my nephew jarvis lord iniscrone. but mary will not suffer. think! what have you to give her but a life of drudgery under which she will break down--die, perhaps?" she watched the emotion in his face with her little keen, bright eyes. "it is not a fine lady's caprice?" he said. "you won't make my mary accustomed to better things than i could give her and then send her back to be a drudge?" "the lord judge between thee and me," she answered solemnly. "then i trust you, lady anne hamilton," he said. the strange thing was that the proud old lady was gratified, almost flattered, by the confidence in walter gray's unworldly eyes. "thank you, mr. gray," she said; then, as he took up his hat to go, she laid a detaining hand on his shabby coat sleeve. "why not have dinner with mary in the garden?" she suggested. "do, pray. i want you to tell her what we have agreed upon. i can send word to mrs. gray." walter gray was pleased enough to go back to his little girl whom he had left in tears for the comfortless house and the burden of the young stepbrothers and stepsisters. it was pleasure, half pain, to see the uplifted face with which mary regarded him when she saw him return. how was he going to put the barrier between them that this plan to which he had given his consent would surely mean? he had no illusions. over the wall, lady anne had said. but the wall that separated wistaria terrace and the mall was in reality a high and a great wall. he would never have mary in the old close communion again. all passes. how good the old times were that were only a few hours away, yet seemed worlds! never again! they would never be all and all to each other in a solitude which took no count of the others. yet it was for mary's sake. for mary's sake the wall was to rise between them. as he began to tell her the strange, wonderful thing, his heart was heavy within him because a chapter of his life was closed. he had come to the end of an epoch. henceforth things might be conceivably better, but--they would be different. chapter iii the new estate mary took the news of her great promotion in an unthankful spirit. "lady anne is very kind," she said tearfully; "but i don't want to stay with her. i couldn't bear to live anywhere but in wistaria terrace. it is absurd that you should say you have given your consent, papa. how could you possibly have consented when the house could not get on without me? you know it could not. why, even for a day things would be all topsy-turvy without me." "and so you have not gone to school," the father answered, with an accent of self-reproach. "you have been weighed down with responsibilities and cares that you ought to have been free of for years to come. you have even been stunted in your growth, as lady anne said. it is time things were altered. i don't know how i was so blind. we ought to be grateful to the accident that has opened a door to us." when he had gone, lady anne came and comforted mary. there was a deal of kindness in the old lady's heart. "you shall help them," she said. "dear me, how much help you will be able to give them! imagine beginning with a salary at fifteen! you are to leave things to me, mary. i have sent help to your stepmother--an excellent woman, mrs. devine, whom i have known for many years. she is very capable. i will tell her that she must remain with your stepmother. it is amazing what one really capable woman can do. and afterwards there will be the salary." the salary, and perhaps a quick, warm feeling for lady anne which sprang up suddenly in mary's heart, settled the question. after all, as lady anne said, despite her greatness she was very lonely. she had lost her son and her grandson, and she could not endure her nephew or his family. she had only a few old cronies. as a matter of fact, although she had taken a fancy to mary gray and captured the child's susceptible heart, she was not a particularly amiable or lovable old lady to the rest of the world. she was too keen-sighted and sharp-tongued to be popular. mary slept that night in such a room as she had never dreamt of. there was a little bed in the corner of it with a flowing veil of white, lace-trimmed muslin like a baby's cot. there was white muslin tied with blue ribbons at the window, and the dressing-table was as gaily and innocently adorned. there was a work-box on a little table, a writing-desk on another; a shelf of books hung on the wall. the room had really been made ready for a dear young cousin of lady anne's, who had not lived to enjoy it. if mary had only known, she owed something of lady anne's interest to the fact that her eyes were grey, like viola's, her cheek transparent like viola's. apart from the discomfort of the broken arm, as she lay in the soft, downy little bed, she was ill at ease, wondering how they were getting on without her at wistaria terrace. her breast had an ache for the baby who was used to lie warm against it. her good arm felt strange and lonely for the familiar little body. she kept putting it out in a panic during her sleep because she missed the baby. in the morning simmons, lady anne's maid, came to help her dress. it was very difficult, mary found, to do things for one's self with a broken arm. her head ached because of the disturbed sleep and the pain of the broken limb. simmons had come to her in a somewhat hostile frame of mind. she did not hold with picking up gutter-children from no one knew where and setting people as were respectable to wait upon them. but at heart she was a good-natured woman, and her indignation disappeared before the unchildish pain and weariness of mary's face. "there," she said, "i wouldn't be fretting, if i were you. lor' bless you, there's fine treats in store for you. her ladyship sent only last night for a roll of grey cashmere. i'm to fit you after your breakfast and make it up as quick as i can. then you'll be fit to go out with her ladyship in the carriage and get your other things." it was the last day of the ugly linsey. simmons got through her task with great quickness. she was a woman of taste, else she had not been lady anne's maid. lady anne was more particular about her garments than most young women. and, having once made up her mind to like mary, simmons took an interest in her task. "you are so kind, mrs. simmons," mary said gratefully, feeling the gentleness and dexterity with which the woman tried on her new garments without once jarring the broken arm. "i'm kind enough to those who take me the proper way," said simmons, greatly pleased with mary's prefix of mrs., which was brevet rank, since simmons had never married. it would have made a great difference to mary's comfort at this time if she had been sufficiently ill-advised to call simmons without a prefix, as lady anne did. dr. carruthers had called to see mary the morning after the accident. he had interviewed his patient in the morning-room, and was passing out through the hall when lady anne's voice over the banisters summoned him to her presence. "you can give me a little while, dr. carruthers?" she said. "i shall not be interfering with your work?" "i am quite free"--a little colour came into his cheeks. "the friend whose work i was doing at the house of mercy returned last night. yesterday was my last day." "ah! and yesterday brought you an unexpected patient. how do you find her?" "she has less physique than she ought to have." "yes, she has been underfed and overworked. i am going to alter all that. i have taken her into my house as my little companion." dr. carruthers stared in spite of himself. "you think it very odd of me? well, i _am_ odd, and i can afford to do what pleases me. mary gray is going to live here. you should know her father. a quite remarkable man, i consider him. now, about yourself. i have heard of you, dr. carruthers. i have heard that you are a very clever young man and devoted to your work, that you have all the knowledge of the schools at your fingertips, but very little experience, and no practice to speak of." "excuse me, lady anne. i was three years house surgeon at the good samaritan; and i have done a great deal of work since i have been here. i will confess that my patients have been of a poor class." "who have not paid you a penny. i don't know whether you do it for philanthropy or to keep your hand in----" "a little of both," the young man said with a faint smile. "but it is a good thing to do," the old lady went on, without noticing his interpellation. "you're spoken well of by the poor, if the rich have not heard anything about you. i know you're living beyond your means in a big house, hoping that a paying practice will come to you. my dear man, it never will, so long as people think you are in need of it. they like dr. pownall at their doors with his carriage and pair, even if he can only give them five minutes. pownall forgot himself with me. i remember his father--a very decent, respectable man who used to grow cabbages. that's nothing against pownall--creditable to him, i should say. still, he hadn't time to listen to my symptoms, and he was rude. 'a woman of your age,' he said. i should like to know who told dr. pownall my age. a lady has no age. 'it's time you retired,' i said to him. 'i don't think of it,' said he; 'not for ten years yet. my patients won't hear of it.' 'you're greedy,' said i; 'if you weren't your patients might go to hong kong.' he thought it was a joke--hadn't time to find out whether i was serious or not. i made him, dr. carruthers. it's time for him to retire now. i shall mention to all my friends that you are my body-physician." she spoke like one of the royal family. but dr. carruthers had no inclination to laugh. his eyes were dim as he murmured his acknowledgments. it was fame, it was fortune, in those parts to be approved by lady anne hamilton. hitherto she had been understood to swear by dr. pownall. "it means a deal to us, lady anne," he said, stumbling over his words. "we had made up our minds to give up the big house and look for a slum practice. the children--i have two living--are not very strong, any more than mildred. we put all we could into the venture of taking the house. it was our bid for fortune." "i wouldn't approve of it in a general way," said lady anne. "still, it has turned out well. will your wife be at home to-morrow afternoon? i should like to call upon her." "she will be delighted." dr. carruthers was regaining his self-control. he knew that the presence of lady anne's barouche at his door for an hour in the afternoon would be more potent in opening doors to him than if he had made the most brilliant cure on record. mary was with lady anne next day when she went to call on mrs. carruthers. it was characteristic of lady anne that she thought to tell jennings, the coachman, to drive up and down in front of the house and round the sides, for dr. carruthers' house was a corner one with a frontage to three sides. it was a hot summer day, and jennings wondered disrespectfully what bee the old lady had got in her bonnet. such a jangling of harness, such a flashing of polished surfaces! every window that commanded the three sides of dr. carruthers' house had an eye at the pane. the tidings flew from one to another that lady anne hamilton was visiting mrs. carruthers, and was making a very long call. mildred was still on her sofa. she would have risen when lady anne came in, but the old lady prevented her. lady anne could be royally kind when it pleased her. she drew a chair by the sofa and sat down. mary, who had come in with her, listened in some wonder to lady anne's sympathetic questions about the children. that was something in which mary was interested, in which mary had knowledge and experience; but though she listened she would not have spoken a word for worlds. as she sat there on the edge of one of mrs. carruthers' chairs--the drawing-room furniture was of the sparsest; a chair or small table dotted here and there on the wilderness of polished floor--she could see herself in a pier-glass at the other end of the room. it was a quite unfamiliar presentment she saw. this mary was dressed in soft dove-grey. she had a little white muslin folded fichu about her shoulders. she had a wide black hat, with one long white ostrich feather. her good hand was gloved in delicate grey kid. there was something quaint about her aspect; for that artist, simmons, had discovered that mary, for all her fifteen years, looked her best with her soft fine brown hair piled on top of her head. when she presented mary so to lady anne the old lady was fain to acknowledge that simmons was right. there was a quaint and delightful stateliness about mary which made lady anne say to herself once more that the child had gentle blood in her. "dear me," mildred carruthers thought, as her eyes wandered again and again to the elegant little figure, "kit said nothing of this. i expected to find a rather interesting child of the humbler classes. i remember particularly that he said she looked as though she had had a hard time." mary's changed aspect had one unforeseen result. when she presented herself at wistaria terrace the baby did not know her. her stepmother shed a few tears, which were half-gratification. the elder children were already a bit shy of her, the baby's immediate predecessor even murmuring of her as "the yady," and surveying her from afar, finger in mouth. but the baby could in no way be brought to recognise her, and only shouted lustily when she tried to force herself upon his recognition. "i shall come to-morrow in my old frock," mary said, bitterly hurt by this lack of perception on the baby's part. "i hate these hideous things; so i do. to-morrow he will come to his mary, so he will." but when the morrow came, and she sought for her old work-a-day garments in that pretty white and blue wardrobe where she had hung them when she had discarded them for the grey frock and hat, they were not to be found. there were numbers of things such as mary had never dreamed of. lady anne had provided her with an outfit, simple according to her thoughts, but splendid in mary's eyes. a white cashmere dressing-gown, trimmed with lace, hung on the peg where the grey linsey had been. mary flew to simmons to know where her old frock had gone to. the good woman, who by this time had taken mary under her wing to uphold her against the rest of the household if it were inclined to resent the new inmate, looked at her reprovingly. "you never wanted that old frock, and you her ladyship's companion? no, miss mary--for so i shall call you, as by her ladyship's orders, let some people say what they like--that frock you never will see, for gone it has to a poor child that'll maybe find it a comfort when winter comes. i wonder at you for thinking on it, so i do, seeing as how i've taken so much trouble with your clothes." mary turned away with a desolate feeling. the grey linsey might have been like the feathers of the enchanted bird that became a woman for the love of a mortal, the feathers which, if she wore them again, had the power of transporting her back to her kindred and her old estate. the old life was indeed closed to mary with the disappearance of the grey linsey; and it was long before she lost the feeling that if she could only have kept her old garments she need not have been so separated from the old life. chapter iv boy and girl it was during those early days that mary made the acquaintance of robin drummond. she had a comfortless feeling afterwards about the meeting; but it was not because of sir robin or anything he did: he was always a kind boy in her memory of him. it was because of his mother, lady drummond. mary knew from lady anne, who always thought aloud, that lady drummond made a good many people feel uncomfortable. they had driven out all the way from the city to the court, the big house on its wide plain below the mountains. it was a long drive--quite twenty miles there and back--and jennings, who liked to have a good deal of his time to himself, had been rather cross about it. not that he dared show any temper to lady anne, who was easy and kindly with her servants, as a rule, but could reduce an insubordinate one to humble submission as well as any old lady ever could. but mary, who knew the household pretty well by this time, knew that jennings was out of temper by the set of his shoulders, as she surveyed them from her seat in the barouche. it was a road, too, he never liked to take, because of a certain steam tram which ran along it and made the horses uncomfortable when they met it face to face. and there his mistress was unsympathetic towards him. she had been a brilliant and daring horsewoman in her youth and middle age. "i never thought i should live to amble along like this," she confided to mary as they drove between golden harvest fields. "rheumatic gout is a great humbler of the spirit. ah! here comes one of those black monsters to make the pair curvet a little. they are too fat, mary. they have too easy a life. it is only on such an occasion as this that they remember their hot youth." they reached the court without mishap, although once or twice the horses behaved as though they meditated a mild runaway. "you shall take the other road home, jennings," lady anne said graciously, as she alighted in front of the great square, imposing house, amid its flower-beds of all shapes, its ornamental fountains flinging high jets of golden water in the sun. "it's time we gave up the horses, my lady," jennings said, with bitterness, "with the likes o' them black beasts on the road." later, as she and mary waited in the great drawing-room for lady drummond, she returned to the subject of jennings and his grievance. "he is always bad-tempered when we come to the court," she said. "for all its grandeur it is not a hospitable house. jennings will have to go without his tea this afternoon." mary looked with wonder down the great length of the magnificent room. her feet sank in the turkey carpet. the walls, which were papered in deep red, were lined with full-length portraits, some of them equestrian. the place had an air of rich comfort. was it possible that the mistress of so much magnificence could grudge a visitor's coachman his tea? "her ladyship looks after the bawbees," lady anne went on, thinking aloud as usual, rather than talking to mary. "and those who are in her employment must think of them too, or they go. ah! you are looking at gerald drummond's portrait. what do you think of it, child?" it was one of the equestrian portraits. the subject, a man in the thirties, dressed in a lancer uniform, stood by his horse's head. his helmet was off, lying on the ground at his feet; and it was easy to see why the artist had chosen to paint the sitter with his head uncovered. the upper part of the face--the forehead and eyes--was strikingly handsome. the sweep of golden hair, despite its close military cut, was beautiful also. for the rest, the nose was too large and not particularly well-shaped, the chin was rugged, the mouth stern. lantern-jawed was the epithet one thought of when looking at the portrait of the man whose deeds were written in his country's history. it was an epithet mary gray would not have thought of. indeed, she stared at the hero in fascinated awe, but would not have known how to express an opinion regarding his looks. fortunately, lady anne did not wait for an answer to her question--had not, perhaps, ever intended that it should be answered. "it is very like," she went on. "half greek god, half fanatic. he led his charges with bible words on his lips. he spent the night before a battle in prayer and fasting. he was as stern as john knox, and as sweet as francis de sales. the only time his light deserted him was when he married matilda stewart. we were all in love with him. i was, although i ought to have had sense, being ten years his senior and a widow. he picked the worst of the bunch. luckily, he could get away from matilda, for he was always fighting somewhere, and perhaps he never found out. he kept his simplicity to the day he died. some people thought he married matilda because she was one of the stewart heiresses, and the drummonds were as poor as church mice. they didn't know him. it was more likely he'd marry her because she was plain, with a face like a horse, and was head over ears in love with him. i will say that for matilda. she was desperately in love with her husband, although no one would believe now that she had ever been in love with anybody." lady drummond delayed about coming to her guests. lady anne tapped an impatient small foot on the floor. "she's heckling someone now--take my word for it," she said. then her face wrinkled up, shrewdly humorous. "what are you thinking, child?" she asked. "thinking of how oddly we in the world talk of the friends we go to visit? i don't trouble the court much. but i am interested in gerald's boy. i should like to know how he is going to turn out. not much of her ladyship in him, i fancy." however, there was no question of mary's judging her benefactress; and lady anne smiled as she noticed that the girl had not heard her question, and watched the innocent, tender, worshipping look with which she was gazing at sir gerald's portrait. the smile faded off into a sigh. "_ah, le beau temps passe!_" the expression on mary's face recalled to lady anne the one romantic passion of her life, which had come to her after widowhood had put an end to a marriage in which esteem and liking for an elderly husband had taken the place of love. "you must excuse me, anne." a monotonous, important voice broke into lady anne's dream like a harsh discord, shattering it to atoms. "you must excuse me. i've been interviewing my gardener. in your town life you are spared much. considering the size of the gardens here and the labour i pay for, the yield is far too little. i expect the gardens to pay for themselves, and send the fruit to market. this year there is a great falling-off." "it has been a wet summer," said lady anne. "ah! and who is this young lady?" lady drummond's voice told that she had no need to ask the question. she had heard of anne hamilton's extraordinary freak and had suggested that for the protection of the interests of anne's relatives she had better be put under proper restraint. still, she asked the question. one would have said from the deadly monotony of lady drummond's voice that she could not get any expression into it. yet she could on occasion; and the chilling disapproval in it now made mary look up in a frightened surprise. "this young lady, miss gray, is my companion," lady anne said, with a stiffening of herself for battle and a light in her eye which showed that she had not mistaken lady drummond's challenge, and had no objection to take it up. "ah!" lady drummond again lifted the lorgnette that hung at her belt and stared at mary through it. "the young lady is very young for the post, and a companion is a new thing--is it not, anne?--for you to require." "you mean that i never could get one to live with me," lady anne said good-humoredly. "well, mary and i get on very well together--don't we, mary?" "miss gray is very young." "if we are going to discuss her, need she stay?" lady anne asked. "i am sure she is longing to see the gardens. i couldn't get round myself. the damp has made me stiff." "can you find your way, miss gray?" lady drummond was plainly anxious to be rid of mary, and made an effort at politeness which was only awkward and discouraging. "i think so," said mary, looking round with an air of flight. lady drummond's disapproval chilled her. she was not accustomed to be disapproved of, and it filled her with a vague terror as though she had done something wrong ignorantly. she glided out of the room like a shadow. as she went, lady drummond's unlowered voice followed her. "your choice is a very odd one, anne hamilton. that gawky child, all eyes and forehead. i remember i wanted you to have my excellent miss bradley." "i wouldn't have your excellent bradley for an hour...." but mary had fled beyond the hearing of the voices. she had no curiosity to hear any more of lady drummond's unflattering remarks concerning her. once again she longed for wistaria terrace. there was no place for her in _this_ world, she said to herself; and sent a tender reproach in her own mind to the father who had given her up for her good. then she felt contrite about lady anne. how good the old lady was to her, and how she stood up for her, would stand up for her, even to the terrible lady drummond! still, it was not her world; it never would be. she thought, with sudden childish tears filling her eyes, that the next time lady anne went to see any of her fine friends she would pray to be left at home. the great suite of rooms opened one into the other. mary was in the last of them--a library walled in books from floor to ceiling. the heavy velvet curtains that draped the arched entrance by which she had come had fallen behind her. the silence in the room where the feet fell so softly could be felt. there was not a sound but the ticking of a clock on the mantel-shelf. suddenly she came to a standstill. she had entered the room, but how was she to leave it? the doors were constructed of a piece with the book-shelves. the backs of them were dummy books. mary did not know in the least how to discover the doors. in fact, she supposed that there were not any. she would have to retrace the way she came--perhaps even ask the terrible lady drummond how to get out. she looked up at the long windows with the eye of a bird who has strayed in and cannot find the way out. the elusive air of flight that was hers was more pronounced at the moment. suddenly there was a sound, and, as mary thought, the book-shelves opened. she saw light through the opening. a tall boy came in, whistling, and pulled up short as his eyes fell on her. he was about her own age, or a little older. mary never forgot in after years the kindness and friendliness of his face as his eyes rested upon her. he came forward slowly, putting out his hand. the colour flooded his face to the roots of his fair hair. "you came with lady anne hamilton," he said. "i found the carriage outside. i have sent it round to the stables and told the man to put up the horses for a while. he will want some refreshment; and they need a rest." mary put a limp hand into the frankly extended one. "i couldn't find my way out," she said, with a sigh of relief. "i thought there were no doors. i was going to see the gardens while lady anne and lady drummond talked." "let me come with you," the boy said eagerly. "i don't know how anybody stays in the house on such a day. do you like puppies? i have a beautiful litter of clumber spaniels. and i should like you to see my pony. i have just been out on him. it's a bit slow here, all alone, after so many fellows at school. i'm at eton, you know. i am going back next thursday. shan't be altogether sorry, either, though i'll miss some things." they went out together into the golden autumn afternoon. first they went round the gardens, where the boy picked some roses and made them into a little bunch for mary. he took a peach from a red wall and gave it to her. they sat down together on a seat to eat their fruit. gardeners and gardeners' assistants passing by touched their hats respectfully. it was, "yes, sir robin," and "no, sir robin." the young master had a good many questions to ask of the gardeners. he was evidently well liked, to judge by the smiles with which they greeted him. "they're no end of good fellows," he confided to mary. "the mater's rather down on them; thinks they don't do enough. it's a mistake, a woman trying to run a place like this. she can't understand as a man does. now, if you've finished your peach, miss gray, we'll go round to the stable yard and see the puppies. after that i'll show you the pony. his name's ajax, and he's rather rippin'. do you like kerry cows? the mater has a herd of them--jolly little beasts, but a bit wicked, some of them. you needn't be afraid of them. they wouldn't touch you while i'm there." mary inspected the clumber puppies, and was promised the pick of the litter if lady anne would allow her to accept it. "she won't refuse," said the boy, confidently. "she thinks no end of me." "unless the puppy might worry fifine." "the puppy wouldn't take any notice of that thing--the old dog, i mean. besides, she lives in her basket, doesn't she? you might keep the puppy in the stables and take him for walks whenever you can. he'll have a beautiful coat like his mother, and if he's half as clever as she is...!" "he's a lovely thing," said mary, hugging the puppy, who was licking her face energetically and patting her with tremendous paws. they visited the paddock next; and sir robin, springing on ajax's back, trotted him up and down for mary's inspection. he had a good seat in the saddle, and he looked his best on horseback. to be sure, mary had not discovered that sir robin was plain, his mother's plainness militating in him against what share of beauty he might have inherited from his father. there was something so exhilarating to mary in the afternoon's experience, after its beginning so badly, that she forgot what had gone before. she thought sir robin a kind and delightful boy. they saw the kerries, and afterwards there were the rabbits, and the ferrets, and the guinea-pigs to be visited. intimacy advanced by leaps and bounds. before the inspection had concluded she was "mary" to her new-found friend, although she was too reticent by nature to think of addressing him so familiarly. they had forgotten the time till half-past five struck from a clock in the stable-yard. at this time they were down by a pond in the shrubbery, where there was an islet with a water-hen's nest and a couple of swans sailing on the water. there was a boat, too, and sir robin was just getting it out preparatory to rowing mary round the pond. "oh!" she said, with a little start. "what time is that?" "half-past five. i'd no idea it was so late." "nor i. i must go back at once. lady anne said we should be returning about five. i hope she will not be very angry with me." mary had begun to tremble. she always trembled in moments of agitation, as a slender young poplar might shiver in the wind. the boy jumped out of the boat hastily. "there, don't be frightened," he said. he had caught a glimpse of mary's face. "lady anne won't mind. she's a good sort. you should see the hampers she sends me. the mater doesn't approve of school hampers. you must put the blame on me. it was my fault entirely, for i had a watch." they hurried along the path leading back to the open space in front of the house. when they emerged into the open a breathless maid came towards them. "i've been looking everywhere for you and the young lady, sir robin," she said. "lady anne hamilton is waiting for miss gray." poor mary! when they arrived in the drawing-room it was not with lady anne she had to count. lady anne sat with an air of humorous patience on her face, but lady drummond's brow was thunderous. the haughty indignation in her pale eyes terrified the very soul in mary. she shrank away from it in terror. "i had no idea you were with miss gray, robin," she heard the lady say in glacial accents. "i discovered miss gray trying to find her way out of the library. no one could find those doors without knowing something about them. and we went to see the puppies and the pony and the other beasts." "we'd better be going, mary," lady anne said, standing up. "you and robin have made my visit quite a visitation." "the horses had to rest and the coachman to have his tea," said sir robin, sturdily. "you take too much care of your horses, anne," lady drummond said. "they are too fat; they can't be healthy. and your coachman is very fat, too." "oh, they take it easy, they take it easy," lady anne said, laughing; "they've only my temper to worry them." they left lady drummond looking as black as thunder in the drawing-room. sir robin escorted them to their carriage. "so sorry, lady anne," he said, apologetically. "it was my fault. i hope you won't be angry with miss gray." "it is your mother's annoyance has to be considered, my dear boy," answered lady anne, while he tucked the rug about her. "all the same, miss gray and i had a rippin' time," he said, flinging back his head with an air of humorous defiance. "and--i say--you're too good to me, you know, you really are." lady anne had pressed something into his palm. "the mater doesn't see what boys want with so much pocket-money. sometimes i don't know what i'd do only for you. there are so many things a fellow has to subscribe to." the carriage rolled off, leaving him bare-headed on the drive in front of the house. "that's a good boy," said lady anne, emphatically. "he has his father's heart. he's getting the ways of the master about him, too. i can tell by jennings' back that he's had a good tea. he'll be a good son, but the time will come when he'll choose for himself. well, mary, i hope you've enjoyed yourself. matilda won't want to see me for a month of sundays again. nor i her, for the matter of that. dear me, she can make herself unpleasant." mary sat in a conscience-stricken silence during that homeward drive. yet lady anne was not angry with her--that was very obvious. she seemed to be enjoying herself, too, judging by the smile that played about her lips. now and again she cast a humorous glance on mary. once she chuckled aloud. "never mind me, my dear," she said, in answer to mary's glance. "i was only thinking of something denis drummond, gerald drummond's elder brother, said of her ladyship. ah, poor denis! he'd face a charge of the guns more readily than he would her ladyship. odd, isn't it, mary, how those thoroughly disagreeable women can make themselves feared?" chapter v "old blood and thunder" sir denis drummond had been his brother gerald's senior by some seven or eight years. he, too, was a soldier, and had inherited the baronetcy from his father, upon whom the title had been bestowed by a grateful country for services in the field. a second baronetcy in the family had been specially created for sir gerald. it would not have been easy to say which was the finer soldier of the two brothers; for while sir gerald had made his name famous by the most dare-devil and brilliant feats, sir denis was rather the old type of soldier--cool as well as daring, always reliable and steady. worshipped by his men, his name was one to be held in constant regard by the british public, which calls its heroes by their christian names abbreviated, if they do not happen, indeed, to have a nickname for them. "old blood and thunder" was the name by which sir denis was known to his men, and that from a certain violence of speech of which he had never been able, or perhaps had never desired, to divest himself. this violence had somewhat annoyed his brother gerald, who could get as much exhortation out of a verse of scripture as ever he needed. sir denis, like many old soldiers, was quite a devout man in his way; but he had none of the zealot passion of his younger brother. the hidden fires which had given sir gerald a certain haggardness of aspect, as though a sculptor had hewed him roughly in marble, had never burned in sir denis's breast. he was a red-faced, white-moustached veteran, as blustering as the west wind, but with a heart as soft as wax in the hands of his daughter nelly, and, indeed, in the hands of anyone else who knew the way to it. his servants adored him, as did the dogs and all animals and children. he was beautiful in his manner to women of high and low degree, with perhaps one exception. he was as simple as a child, and loved the popular applause which fell to him whenever he made any kind of public appearance, for he had been so long a londoner that now the london crowd knew him and had a sense of possession in him. his rosy face would beam all over when the crowd shouted itself hoarse for "old blood and thunder." he did not at all object to the name, which had filtered from regimental into common use. the crowd was always "boys!" to him. he had a most amiable feeling towards it, were it ever so frowsy and undersized and sallow. but he loved a soldier-man, and could hardly bear to pass one in the street without stopping to speak to him. one delightful thing about sir denis was the esteem in which he held his own calling of arms. it might be questioned whether he held the church even in higher honour. he was no subscriber to the belief that the army must necessarily be a refuge of rapscallions. "straighten your shoulders, sir; hold your head high; for, remember that you are now a soldier!" he would say to the newest recruit who had just scraped through with a margin of chest. his thunderous wrath and sorrow when one of his "boys" was guilty of conduct unbecoming a soldier were something which, in time, impressed even the least impressionable. his old regiment, which he delighted to talk about, he had left a model regiment. "there's a deal of good in the soldier-man," he would say to his daughter nelly. "the poor fellows, they're good boys, they're very good boys." sir denis had married, as he was approaching middle age, a very beautiful young girl, who had fallen in love at first with the soldier, and afterwards with the man. his nell had left him in his daughter nelly a replica of herself. during the years of service that remained to him the child was always as near to him as might be. fortunately, by this time the period of his foreign service was all but at an end. wherever he had his command the child and her nurse were always within riding distance. he did not believe in barracks and towns for the rearing of anything so fresh and tender. his nelly must have the fields and the woods and the waters. in later years her milkmaid freshness owed, perhaps, something to this upbringing. later, she went to school. sir gerald's widow, to whom sir denis always referred as the dowager, who had taken an unasked-for interest in the motherless child from her birth, had found the ideal school for nelly--a school where the daughters of the aristocracy were kept in a conventual seclusion while they learnt as little as might be of the simpler virtues, but a deal of the way to step in and out of a carriage, to comport themselves with dignity, to bear themselves in the presence of their sovereign, and so on. sir denis, who had not been consulted, made a pretence of interviewing the misses de crespigny, by whom this aristocratic preserve was safeguarded. he had listened to miss selina de crespigny's eloquent exposition of the system adopted at de crespigny house. then he had torn it all to pieces as one might the delicate fabric of a spider's web, constructed at infinite cost. "and, tell me now, do you teach them to be good daughters and wives and mothers?" he asked, with his air of convincing simplicity. "do you teach them their duties to their husbands and children, ma'am, may i ask?" miss de crespigny positively gasped. there was an indelicacy about the general's speech, to her manner of thinking. "we expect our young ladies' mothers to teach them all that," she said, stiffly. "and they don't. in nine cases out of ten they don't. they've too much to do otherwise. whether it is philanthropy or politics, or just amusing themselves, they've all got too much to do," sir denis said, with a simple air that made it doubtful if this criticism of society's ways was adverse or not. nelly did not go to de crespigny house. she went, instead, to a much less pretentious school, kept by a family of four sisters, for whom the dry bones of teaching had been clothed with life. the house was perched on a high, windy cliff. the sisters, miss stella and miss clara, miss lucy and miss marianne, did their own teaching, and did it in a perfectly unconventional way to the twenty or so girls who made up their school. when nelly came home to her father at seventeen years of age, it would not have been easy to find a fresher, franker specimen of young girlhood. in fact, to her father's eyes she was somewhat alarmingly bright and fair. "the young fellows will be about her thick as bees," he said to himself in a frightened way. "i won't have any nonsense about nelly. i want my girl to myself for a little while. afterwards there is that arrangement of the dowager's about nelly and robin. i don't care for the marriage of first cousins. and i'm not sure that i care for robin; still, he is poor gerald's son. there can be nothing against poor gerald's son." he was so afraid of possible lovers for nelly that he actually suggested to her that she should go to a smart finishing school for the couple of years that separated him from the sixty-five limit. "after that," he said, faintheartedly, for there was a sparkle in nelly's eye which discouraged him, "we shall settle down in london, and you shall see all you want to see. there are quiet nooks and corners to be had, even in london. i think i know the one i shall choose. be a good girl, nelly, and go to madame celeste's. a garrison town is no place for you. unless, indeed, you would like to go to the dowager, as she wishes." "i shan't go to the dowager, and i shan't go to madame celeste's," said nelly, dimpling and sparkling. "i shall stay with my old dad and take care of him." "what, nell? 'shan't'! you forget you're talking to your commanding officer. rank insubordination--that is what i call it!" "call it what you like," miss nelly replied. "i'm going to stay. a finishing school at seventeen! i never heard the like!" with that she put her arms round the general's neck, and that was the final argument. secretly, indeed, he was not altogether sorry to be worsted. he had done his best to ward off the things that might happen. now he was going to trust in providence and keep his little girl with him. to be sure, he had known that she would never go to the dowager's. nelly had never considered that possibility. after all, it was a relief that they were not going to be parted. during the two years nelly, indeed, had many admirers and lovers, but she was not attracted by any of them. she was kind and friendly and engaging; but she was unconscious with her lovers, or so it seemed to the jealous, fatherly eyes, to the verge of coldness. he often said to himself that he could not understand nell. none of the gay, handsome, gallant soldier lads seemed to have the least attraction in that way for her. to be sure, she was a child, and there was plenty of time. why shouldn't her old father keep her for the years to come? unless--unless, that fellow robin had been beforehand with the others--robin, who had refused point-blank to be a soldier, and had even, to the general's bitter offence, actually spoken at the oxford union "on the waste and wickedness of a standing army." the general had nearly had a fit over that. good heavens! gerald's son, sir massey drummond's grandson, to be found on the side of the philistines like that! what chill was in the boy's blood? what crook in his character? what bee in his bonnet? the general had sworn then that robin never should have his nelly. but the dowager had been sapping and mining and laying plans to bring about the marriage almost from nelly's infancy, when she had come in and altered the constituents of nelly's baby bottles, and had infuriated nelly's wholesome country nurse to the point of departure. the general had come just in time then to find mrs. loveday fastening the cherry-coloured strings of her bonnet with fingers that trembled, and had been put to the very edge of his simple diplomacy to undo the dowager's work. he knew his own helplessness where women were concerned. nelly might see something in robin, confound him, that the general could not. at this point he would remember that, after all, robin was poor gerald's son, if an unworthy one, and be contrite. but then the grievance would revive of a far-back quaker ancestor of lady drummond, whom the general blamed for the peace-loving instincts of poor gerald's boy; and once again he would be furious. meanwhile, nelly's frank, innocent eyes, blue as gentians, had no consciousness of a lover. her old father seemed to be enough for her. at one moment they gave him the fullest assurance; the next he was in heats and colds of apprehension about the lover, be it robin or another, who would take his little girl from him. chapter vi the blue ribbon the half-dozen years or so following sir denis's retirement were years of peace, in which he forgot for long periods, broken only by the dowager's visits to london, his fear of losing his nelly. he had taken a house in sherwood square, where there is a space and breeziness that the fashionable districts could not possibly allow. the square sits on top of one of the highest hills in london, and entrenches itself as a fortress against the poverty and squalor that are creeping up the hill towards it. around the square there are still gardens and crescents and roads of consideration, but ever dwindling in social status as one goes down the hill, till the consideration vanishes in the degradation of cheap boarding-houses and the homes of jews of the shopkeeping classes. sir denis had discovered sherwood square for himself, and was uncommonly proud of it. he liked to point out to his friends that he rented a palatial mansion for what a _pied-à-terre_ in mayfair would have cost him. the houses had been built by wealthy merchants and professional people in the eighteenth century. they had splendours of double doors and marble pavements, of frescoed walls and ceilings, and carved mantelpieces. they were entered from a quiet street which showed hardly a sign of life. there were lions couchant guarding the entrances. the walls on that side showed mostly blank, uninteresting windows. with an odd pride the great houses showed only their duller aspects to the world. all the living-rooms except one looked on the other side; and what a difference! there was a great stretch of emerald-green turf such as one would never look to see in london; to be sure, gardeners had been watering and mowing and rolling it for over a century. in the turf were many flower-beds, and here and there were forest trees which had been there when the district was fields. country birds came and built there year after year. you might hear the thrush begin about january. and in the spring it was a wilderness of sweet hyacinths and daffodils, lilac and may. the rooms were spacious and splendid within the big cream-coloured house; and the general used to say that in the early morning, when the smoke had cleared away, it was possible from the upper windows to see as far as the surrey hills. however, that was something which nobody but himself had tested. in the house love and friendliness and good-will reigned supreme. the general had insisted on engaging his own servants, much to the disgust of the dowager, who had several _protégés_ of her own practically engaged. when the general had outwitted lady drummond on this occasion by a flank movement, he was very gleeful in his confidential moments alone with nelly. "she wanted to put in her spies and satellites, did she, nelly, my girl? pretty stories of us they'd have carried to her ladyship. the only womanly thing your aunt has, my girl, is an invincible curiosity. she'd like to know what we had for lunch and dinner, who came to see us, and what clothes we wore. i'm glad you wouldn't have that mantua-maker of hers. cannot my girl have her frocks made where she likes? i'll tell you what, nelly: your aunt is a presumptuous, meddling, overbearing, impertinent woman--that she is." "why don't you tell her to leave us alone, papa?" but the general, whose courage had never been doubted during all the years of his strenuous life, had very little bravery when it came to a question of telling hard truths to a woman, and that woman the dowager. "we must remember, after all, nelly," he would say then, "that she is your uncle gerald's widow. poor gerald! what a dear fellow he was! no matter what we say between ourselves, we can't quarrel with gerald's widow." and sir denis, who was becoming garrulous in old age, would slip off into some reminiscence of the younger brother to whom he had been tenderly attached, and for whom he had also a certain hero-worship because he had been so fine and heroic a soldier. certainly it said well for the servants whom sir denis and nelly had chosen for themselves that they fell in so completely with the kindness and honesty and good-will of the house. some credit was doubtless due also to sir denis's soldier servant, whom he had installed as butler; for pat's loyalty and devotion to "old blood and thunder" must have influenced the class of persons who are so susceptible of impressions from those of their own station, while the standards and exhortations of their social superiors are as though they were not. pat was lynx-eyed for a malingerer in his honour's service; and, indeed, where the rule was so easy and pleasant there was no excuse for malingering. pat, too, was ably seconded by bridget, the cook, who had come in originally as kitchen-maid, and had in time taken the place of the very important and pretentious functionary with whom they had started, and whose cookery did not at all suit sir denis's digestion, impaired somewhat by long years in india. the young kitchen-maid had taken the cook's place during the latter's holiday, and had sent up for sir denis's dinner a little clear soup, a bit of turbot with a sauce which was in itself genius, a bird roasted to the nicest golden brown, and a pudding which was only ground rice, but had an insubstantial delicacy about it quite unlike what one associates with the homely cereal. "you've saved my life, my girl," said sir denis, meeting bridget on the stairs the morning after this banquet, and presenting her with a golden sovereign, "and if you like to stay on as cook at forty pounds a year, why so you shall." "you could shave yourself in her sauce-pans, your honour," said pat, when he heard of this amazing promotion. it was pat's way of saying that bridget polished her utensils till they reflected like a mirror. "she's a rale good little girsha, that's what she is, the same bridget; and i'm rale glad, your honour, that ould consiquince isn't comin' back again." after that there were few changes. the servants were in clover, and since pat and bridget knew it, and impressed it on their subordinates, it came to be a generally recognised fact. to be sure, it made it pleasanter for everyone in the house when, thanks to bridget's excellent plain cooking. sir denis forgot he had such a thing as a liver, and had no more of the gouty attacks which made his temper east-windy instead of west-windy. during those peaceful years he forgot to be choleric. he was overflowing with kindness and helpfulness to those about him, and took a paternal interest in the affairs of his household. "sure," pat would say to bridget, "'tis for marrying us he'd be, if he knew how it was with us, same as he married off rose to the postman and gave them a cottage; and that new girl isn't up to rose's work yet, nor ever will be, unless i'm mistaken." "'twould be a sin to take advantage of him," bridget would answer. "and we're both young enough to wait a bit, pat. there'll be new ways when miss nelly marries sir robin. maybe 'tis going to live with them he'd be." "he never will, so long as her ladyship's alive," said pat, emphatically. "then maybe we'd be havin' him for a furnished lodger," said bridget. "i'd rather it 'ud be something in the country. why wouldn't you be his coachman as well, pat? sure, anything you don't know about horses isn't worth the knowin'." "true for you. we might have a little lodge," said pat. they were really the quietest and most peaceful years--unless the dowager happened to be in town. then something went dreadfully wrong with the general's temper, and he would come roaring downstairs and along the corridors like a winter storm. the servants' hall used to take a tender interest in those bad days. "somebody ought to spake to her," said bridget. "supposin' the gout was to go to his heart! he was bad enough after the last time she was here." "she'll never lave hoult of him," said pat, solemnly. "the sort of her ladyship houlds on the tighter the more you wriggle. he's preparing a quare bed of repentance for himself, so he is, the langwidge he's usin' about her all over the house. by-and-by he'll be rememberin' she's sir gerald's widdy, and'll be askin' me ashamed-like, 'i hope i didn't say too much about her ladyship in my timper, pat. she's a tryin' woman, a very tryin' woman. i'm afraid i'm apt to forget now an' agin that she's my dear brother's widdy, so i am.'" pat's imitation of sir denis was really admirable. "'tis a pity he doesn't run her out of the house," said bridget, "instead of lettin' her bother the heart out of him like that." "he couldn't say a rough word to a woman, not if it was to save his life," said pat. "nothin' rougher thin 'no, ma'am,' and 'yes, ma'am,' i ever heard him say to her. whirroo, bridget, you should ha' heard him whin his timper was up givin' it to us long ago in the barrack square. i hope it isn't the suppressed gout she'll be giving him the next time! 'tisn't half as bad whin it's out." however, the storms were few and far between. the household lived by rule. every morning, winter and summer, the horses were at the door by eight o'clock for the morning canter of the general and miss nelly in the park. at nine o'clock the household assembled for prayers. after breakfast sir denis walked to his club in pall mall, wet or dry. he would read the papers and discuss the cheeseparing policy of the government with some of his old chums, lunch at the club, play a game of dominoes or draughts, and return home in time for dinner. frequently they entertained a friend or two quietly at dinner. but, company or no company, there were prayers at ten o'clock, after which the general took his candle and went to his bedroom. there were times, of course, when nelly went out to balls and entertainments, and then sir denis was to be seen on duty, even though there were a good many ladies who would be willing to take the chaperonage of his daughter off his hands. but that was an office he would relinquish to no one. he was the most patient of chaperons, too, and never grumbled if the daylight found him still at the whist-table, although he would rise at the same hour as usual and carry out his appointed round for the day as if he had not lost his sleep over-night. of course, nelly might stay a-bed. he wouldn't have nelly's roses spoilt, and the young needed their proper amount of sleep. as for himself, he couldn't sleep a wink after seven, no matter how late he had been up the night before. but, on the whole, they lived a quiet life. nelly was too unselfish, too fond of her father, to cost him many nights without his usual sleep. she had really the quietest tastes. her few friends, her books, her music, her dogs and birds, sufficed for her happiness. they had a houseful of dogs, by the way, and any description of the way of life in sherwood square which made no mention of dogs would be quite insufficient. duke the irish terrier and bonaparte the pug, usually boney, and nelson the bull terrier, were as important and characteristic members of the household as anyone else, except, perhaps, sir denis and miss nelly. nelly used to explain her stay-at-home ways to her friends by saying that the dogs were offended with her if she went out for a walk without them. the dogs had many tricks. they knew the terms of drill as well as any soldier, and were always ready for parade, or to die for their country, or groan for their country's enemies, at the general's word of command. nelly had to be much out-of-doors, as the dogs were clamorous for walks, and she kept her roses in london with the old milkmaid sweetness. there was one happening of the quiet day that stood out for sir denis, and, although he did not know it, for his daughter also. sir denis's old regiment happened to be stationed at a barracks in the immediate neighbourhood. to reach their parade-ground it was possible for the troops, by making a little detour, to pass along the quiet street on which the houses in sherwood square opened. it became an established thing that they should pass every morning about nine o'clock. how that came sir denis did not trouble to ask. he was quite satisfied and delighted that "the boys" should do him honour. the breakfast-room was one of the few rooms that did not overlook the square but the street. every morning, just as sir denis concluded prayers, there would come the steady trot of cavalry and the jingle of accoutrements. if he had not quite finished, he would say "amen" in a reverent hurry. "come now, boys and girls," he would say to the servants, "i want you to see my old regiment." he would step out on the balcony above the hall-door with a beaming face, and his arm around his nelly's waist. the servants would press behind him, the dogs push to the front with the curiosity of their kind. down the street the soldiers would come, all flashing in scarlet and gold, the sleek horses shining in the morning sun with a deeper lustre than their polished accoutrements. there would be a halt for a second in front of the house. the men would salute their old general, the general salute his old regiment. then the cavalcade would sweep on its way and the street be duller than before. one morning--it was a bright, breezy morning of march--the wind had caught nelly's golden hair and blown it in a halo about her face. she was wearing a blue ribbon in it. she was fond of blue, and the simplicity of it became her fresh youth. just as the soldiers halted the wind caught nelly's blue bow, and, having played with it a little, sent it drifting down like a little blue flower among the men on horseback. it was such a slight thing that the general might not have noticed it. anyhow, he made no comment, but watched the troops out of sight as usual. the odd thing was that nelly passed over her loss in silence, although she must have missed her blue ribbon, since without it her hair had become loose in the wind. at breakfast, when the servants had left the room, the general made a remark. "that young langrishe sits his horse well," he said. "he's a good soldier, nelly, my girl. a very good soldier, or i'm much mistaken." but nelly was apparently too absorbed in her duty of making the tea to answer the remark. for an instant she was redder than a rose. no one would have suspected sir denis of slyness, but the look he shot at the girl was certainly sly. under the white tablecloth he rubbed his hands softly together. chapter vii a chance meeting it was worse for the general when sir robin drummond left oxford and settled in london, with an avowed intention of reading for the bar, and at the same time making politics his real career. "a man ought to do something in the world," he said to his irate uncle. "the bar is always a stepping-stone. i confess i don't look to practice very much; my real bent is for politics. but the law interests me, and it is always a stepping-stone." "i should have thought that the profession of arms, which your father and your grandfather adorned, as well as a good many of your forbears, might serve you as well," sir denis said, hotly. "you leave out my uncle, sir," the young man replied, with urbane good humour. "yes, the drummonds have done very well for the profession of arms. still, with my beliefs on the subject of war----" "pray don't air them, don't air them. you know what i think about them. your father's son ought to be ashamed of professing such sentiments." "one must abide by one's sentiments, one's convictions, if one is to be good for anything. uncle denis," sir robin said, patiently. "you'll have no chance in politics. no constituency will return you. what we want now is a strong government that will strengthen us, through our army and navy, sir, against our enemies. such a government will come in at the next election a-top of the wave. the people, or i am much mistaken, are not going to see the bulwarks of our power tampered with. the country is all for war. where do you come in?" sir robin smiled ever so slightly. it was that smile of his, with its faintest hint of intellectual superiority, that riled the general to bursting point. "i don't believe there is a war feeling, uncle denis," he said. "the country has had enough of war. however, i should not come in on top of a wave of war feeling in any case. you would be quite right in asking where i should come in. to be sure, i look to come in on top of the anti-war wave. my side is pledged against war. the working man----" "you don't mean to say that you're going to appeal to _him_!" sir denis shouted. "you don't mean to say that you're going to side with the radicals! i've lived to see many strange things, but--gerald's son a radical!" he brought out the ejaculations with the sound of guns popping. his face was red with indignation, his eyes leaping at his degenerate nephew. the next words did not tend to calm him. "do you know, uncle denis, i believe that if my father had been a politician he would have been a radical? his profound feeling for christianity, his adherence to the creed of its founder, whose whole life was a glorification of toil----" "spare me, spare me!" cried the general, restraining himself with difficulty. "so a man can't be a christian and a gentleman! and you think your father would have been a radical! i can tell you, young gentleman----" at this moment nelly came into the room, charming in her short-waisted frock of white satin, with a little cap of pearls on her hair. both men turned and stared at her, pleasure and affection in their eyes. "so you've been heckling poor robin as usual," she said, stroking her father's cheek. "heckling poor robin and getting your hair on end like a fretful porcupine. i'll never be able to make you into a nice, sweet, quiet old gentleman." "turn your attention to him," said the general, indicating his nephew by an unfriendly nod. "what do you think, nell? he's a radical. he's going to contest a seat for the radicals. what do you say now?" "pooh!" said nelly, with her pretty chin in the air. "pooh! why shouldn't he? lots of nice people are radicals. if he feels that way, of course he ought to do it." robin's unpractical eyes thanked her mutely. he was as plain-looking a man as he had been a boy, more hatchet-faced than ever. he was long and lean and angular, and his positions were ungraceful. but his eyes were the eyes of don quixote. the eyes had appealed to nelly as long as she could remember. "oh, if you're against me, nell!" said sir denis, lamely. "ah! there's the bell! and a good thing, too. i couldn't eat my lunch to-day for old grogan of the artillery. he's a man with a grievance. it soured my wine and spoilt my food. well, well, robin, if you're under nelly's protection you may do what you like--join the peace society, if you like." "i mean to, sir," sir robin said, placidly. "in fact, i'm speaking on 'the ideal of a universal peace' on monday evening at the finsbury democratic debating club." when sir robin came to town there had been an apprehension in his uncle's breast, too well-founded, that the dowager would follow him. she was devoted to her son, and not at all disposed to take the general's views about his recreancy in politics. "a good many good people are on the radical side, after all," she said, "and there is, perhaps, more room, too, for a young man of robin's ambitions in the radical party." "so far as i can see," said the general, acidly, "his ambitions are rather to succeed at the bottom than at the top. the applause of the multitude appeals to him more than the praise of his equals or superiors." lady drummond glanced coldly at his heated face. "i fancy you've an attack of gout coming on, denis," she said. "i should send for sir harley dix, if i were you." she had stopped the general just as he was on his own doorstep, setting his face cheerfully eastwards on his way to pall mall. he had come back with her. he knew his duty to his brother's widow better than to do anything else. it was wednesday, and on wednesday there was always a particular curry at lunch which he much affected. he was a connoisseur in curries, and the _chef_ always made this with an eye to sir denis's approval. he would have to shorten his walk and 'bus part of the way, or the curry would be cold. he hated to be put out in his daily routine. "i never was freer from gout in my life, matilda," he said, with indignation. "i don't trouble the doctors much. when i want their advice i shall ask for it. i always ask for advice when i want it." she looked at him with unconcern. "do you think nelly will soon be back?" she asked. "i don't know. when she takes the dogs for a walk she is often out for a couple of hours. perhaps it would be too long a time to wait." in his mind he could see the curry disappearing before the other men who liked it as much as he did. grogan would always eat curry--that special curry--to the general's indignation. why, curry was the last thing grogan ought to eat! wasn't he as yellow as the curry itself with chronic liver? grogan was greedy over that curry--a greedy fellow, the general said to himself, remembering the many occasions when it had been impossible for him to break away from grogan and his grievances. if her ladyship was going to sit on endlessly! the general's manners were too good to leave her to sit by herself. and she was untying her bonnet strings! he might as well lunch at home. no, he wouldn't do that, not if her ladyship was going to stay to lunch. he supposed he could have lunch somewhere, if not at his club. "pray, don't put yourself out for me, denis," her ladyship was saying, with what passed for graciousness in her. "i know your usual habits. at your age a man doesn't like to be put out of his habits. don't mind me, pray. i can amuse myself very well till nelly comes in. plenty of books and papers, i see. you subscribe to mudie's. i thought no one subscribed to mudie's now that we have so many free libraries. i have never been able to afford myself a library subscription, even although we lived in the country. now that i am going to settle in town----" "settle in town!" the general's eyes were almost starting from his head. "i'd no idea, matilda, you were going to settle in town. what's going to become of the court?" "i have an idea of letting it for a few years. mr. higbid, the very rich hide merchant, has taken a fancy to the place. i have yet to hear what robin will say. mr. higbid is prepared to pay a fancy price----" "he'd have to before i'd let him into my drawing-room," said the general, with disgust. "imagine letting the court! and to a man who sells hides!" "his money is as good as anybody else's. and he is received everywhere. you are really too old-fashioned, denis. your ways need altering." "i am too old to change, ma'am," said the general, getting up and giving himself a shake like a dog. "if you don't really mind being left----" he wanted to get away to think over the fact that the dowager was going to settle in town. he could hardly keep himself from groaning. his peace was all at an end. if he had not been too old to change, he would have fled from london and left it to the dowager. but big as it was, it was too little to contain himself and the dowager with any prospect of peace. "i'll stay and have lunch with nelly," the dowager went on, quite ignorant of his perturbation. "afterwards, i'm going to take her to see houses with me. _of course_, i shall settle in your immediate neighbourhood, if i can find anything suitable. i'm going to take nelly off your hands a bit, take her about and advise her as to her frocks. she was wearing white chiffon the last time we dined here--a most perishable material. i don't think your purse is long enough for white chiffon, denis. then the young people ought to see more of each other. we ought to be talking about trousseaux----" but at this point the general fled. if he had stayed another second he would have said things that his kind and chivalrous heart would have grieved over later. he fled, and left her ladyship staring after him in amazement. he clean forgot about the curry in the fretting and fuming of his mind, or it occurred to him only to be consigned to grogan, as though grogan were a synonym for something much stronger. his fiery indignation between sherwood square and pall mall was quite amazing. the dowager in the next street! why, he might as well order his coffin. and talking about taking nelly from him. that muff, robin, too! when had the fellow shown any impatience? he didn't want the girl to marry an oyster. he remembered the glory and glamour of his own love affair, of that golden year of marriage. his nelly ought to be loved as her mother had been before her, as her mother's daughter deserved to be. he wasn't going to yield her to a fellow who would only give her half his tepid heart, who would leave her to spend her evenings alone while he spouted in radical clubs or in that big talking shop, the house of commons. he wouldn't have it. and still----robin was poor gerald's son, and there was nothing against him but his politics. somewhere, at the back of his mind, the general recognised the fact that he could have forgiven the politics if it had not been for the dowager. he had almost reached the doors of his club--grogan might eat the curry for him, and be hanged to him!--when he saw advancing towards him the spare, elegant figure that sat its horse in front of the regiment below the general's window every morning. the oddest gleam came into his eyes. the young man had recognised him, and was blushing like a girl as he came towards him. he had velvety brown eyes and regular features, was a handsome lad, the general said to himself as young langrishe lifted his hat from his sleek, well-shaped head. he had the barest acquaintance with sir denis, and he would have passed by if the old soldier had not stopped him. "how do you do, captain langrishe?" he said. "i am very much obliged to you for the pleasure you give me every morning. i take it as uncommonly kind of you to bring 'the boys' past my house. i assure you i quite look forward to it--i quite look forward to it." langrishe stammered something about the regiment delighting to do honour to its old general, growing redder and redder as he did so. his confusion became him in the general's eyes. he was certainly a pleasant-looking, well-mannered boy, the general decided, and the confusion of the young soldier in the presence of the old soldier an entirely natural and creditable thing. "i'll tell you what, my lad," said sir denis, putting his arm within the other's: "if you've nothing better to do, supposing you come and lunch with me. i'm just going in to the club. and you--on your way to it? i thought so. you'll give me the pleasure of your company?" the general was half an hour late, yet he found a small table in a window recess unappropriated. it was set for two, and a screen was drawn about it so that the two could be as retired as they wished. more--the general had not been forgotten in the distribution of the curry. their portions came up piping hot. from where they sat the general could see sir rodney vivash and grogan button-holing each other. they were the bores of the club, and for once they had foregathered, willingly or unwillingly. after all, there were compensations--there were compensations; and the general was hungry. his manner towards young langrishe had an air of fatherly kindness. there was a gratified flush on the young fellow's lean, dark cheek. what was it the general had heard about langrishe? oh, yes, that he had had rough luck--that his old uncle. sir peter--the general remembered him for a curmudgeon--had married and had a son, after rearing the young fellow as his heir. no wonder the lad looked careworn. the regiment was an expensive one; not too expensive for sir peter langrishe's heir, but much too expensive for a poor man. however, it was no business of the general's--not just yet. "you have met my daughter, i think?" he said. they were at the cheese by this time, and the general was apparently divided between the merits of gruyère and stilton. he did not glance at captain langrishe, but he knew quite as well as if he had that the colour came again to his cheek, that the brown eyes looked unhappily conscious. "i have met miss drummond several times," he answered. "ah, you must dine with us one evening." young langrishe looked at him in a startled way. "thank you very much, sir," he said, "but, as a matter of fact, i am negotiating a change into an indian regiment. i don't know how long i shall be here. and i shall be very busy, i'm afraid." "ah! just as you like--just as you like." the general, by the easiest of transitions, passed on to the subject of soldiering in india. he had an unwontedly exhilarated feeling which later had its reaction in a consciousness of guilt. "what would poor gerald have said?" he thought, as he walked homewards that evening. "and i've nothing against robin--i've nothing really against robin, except his peace societies and all the rest of it. and the dowager--yes, there's always the dowager. i should like to know what on earth ever induced poor gerald to marry the dowager." chapter viii groves of academe after that keen disappointment about the baby's forgetting her, although she excused it to herself, arguing that at twenty months one cannot be expected to have a long memory, mary was more reconciled to the changed conditions of her life. "i hope we are going to be together for a good many years," lady anne said, "and presently you must be able to play and sing to me, to read to me and take an interest in the things in which i am interested. you are to go to school, mary." so mary went to school, first to the queen's preparatory school, then to the queen's college. her years there were very happy ones, especially those years at the college, after she had found her feet and made friends, and gained confidence in herself and the world. "she sucks up knowledge as a sponge sucks up water," was the report of the principal, miss merton, to the delighted lady anne. "i hope lady anne, that you will permit her to go in for her b.a. i should not be surprised, indeed, if she captured a fellowship." "no fellowships," lady anne said, firmly. "what would she do with a fellowship? i propose, as soon as she has done with you, to take her abroad. i have a mind to see the world again through young eyes. and it will put the coping-stone on her education. i shouldn't dare leave her too long with you. learning so often destroys a woman's imagination. they work too hard, i suppose. it doesn't seem to come natural to them yet as it does to men." "there's no question of mary's working too hard," the lady principal said, bearing these hard sayings of lady anne's with composure. "she has fine brains. whatever she wants in an intellectual way she can come at easily." mary, indeed, took her b.a. without over-much burning of the midnight oil. afterwards she always spoke with the tenderest affection of her old school-days. she recalled with delight the spacious class-rooms, the old garden with its great woodland trees, and the tiny rooms of the girls who were in residence at the college, with their quaint and pretty adornments--the place of so much young _camaraderie_ and soaring ambition and happy emulation. "i can hardly remember that anyone was ever unkind," she used to say long afterwards. as a matter of fact, the band of elder students with whom mary was connected in her latter days at the college had a generous enthusiasm for her beauty, taking it as in a sense a credit to themselves. "you will be a living answer to them," said jessie baynes, who was small and plain-looking, "when they say that learned women are always ugly." and the whole of the class applauded her speech. "i shall love to see you in your cap and gown," jessie went on, firing at the picture in her own imagination. "very few of the men will be taller than you, mary. how they will shout!" jessie had no thought at all of her own lack of height and grace, as she had no idea of how pleasant her little brown face was despite its plainness. she was going to earn her living by teaching, and, what was more, going to make living easier and pleasanter for her mother and her young sister. to get her mother out of stuffy town lodgings to a seaside cottage, which was an unattainable heaven to the mother's thoughts, to educate edie and give her a chance in life--these were the things that filled jessie's mind to the exclusion of fear whenever she thought of her ordeal at the conferring of the university degrees. to be sure, she trembled a little when she thought of the long, brilliantly lighted hall, and all the fine ladies, and the scarlet robes of the senators, and the young barbarians in the gallery, and all the thousands of eyes fixed on the one little dumpling of a woman going up to receive her degree. if she might only win the fellowship! she would not care what ordeal she passed through for that. so she put away the fear from her mind. if she could only win the fellowship! but she was too humble about her own attainments to have more than a little, little hope of that. how generous they all were, mary thought, with an impulse of gratitude towards those dear class-fellows that brought the tears to her eyes. "when we are photographed in our caps and gowns," said another, "you must stand up in the middle of us, mary, so that they will see how tall you are." mary reported their generosity to lady anne, with whom, by this time, she was on the loving terms that cast out fear. "very creditable to them," the old lady said, twinkling. "don't let it make you vain, mary. you're well enough, but you aren't half as pretty as a rose, or half as tall as a tree, and there are thousands of trees and roses in the world." "i don't think myself pretty," mary said, in a hurt voice. "there are several of the girls far prettier. as for being tall, it is no pleasure. i would much rather be little." "your skirts will always cost you more than other girls'." "it is only because they are so kind and generous that they think well of me," mary went on. "and, oh! i do hope that jessie will win the fellowship. everyone does, even----" "even her opponents," the old lady said, drily. it was always lady anne's way to seem cynical over things, even with those she loved best. "she has worked so hard for it," said mary, "and alice egerton, who is in the running, too, has shaken hands with jessie, and told her that if she wins it will only prove she is the better man." "dear me, we are cultivating the manly virtues, too," said lady anne. "let me see: there are twenty young ladies in your class, and not a spiteful one among them. i have never heard of so low a percentage." "if women were given something to think of besides petty interests," mary began hotly. "if they were educated, if they were given ideals----" "you are only on your trial yet, child," lady anne suggested. "we produced very good women before women's colleges were heard of. i'm glad they've not spoilt you, anyhow. no stooped shoulders, no narrow chest, no dimmed eyes. i couldn't have forgiven them if they had made you pay a price for your learning." when mary received her b.a. degree she was applauded more rapturously from the gallery than even the new fellow, miss jessica baynes, b.a., who knew little enough about her own reception, since, as she left the daïs, she had glanced up and made out her mother's little nutcracker face, so like her own, in one of the circles of faces overhead. there was a little group in the balcony watching mary with fond pride. lady anne hamilton's face shone again as the tall, slender young figure went up amid the furious applause of the undergraduates, through which the general clapping of hands could hardly be heard. behind lady anne were mary's father and stepmother. lady anne had taken care that they should not be forgotten in the distribution of tickets. walter gray looked on quietly. he was very proud of his girl; but he had, perhaps, too great a wisdom to set much store by the plaudits of the many. mrs. gray, in a bonnet mary had made for her and a mantle which had been mary's gift, was in a timid rapture. she was older by some years than she had been when mary went to lady anne first, but she was far more comely. her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and she was no more the helpless drudge she had been. several of the children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of mary's had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even refinement to walter gray's home. "well," said lady anne, turning round, and touching walter gray's arm, "i have not made too bad a fairy godmother, have i, now?" "she would never have grown so tall," walter gray said, with absent eyes. he had yielded up mary for her good, but he had never ceased to miss her. one person who sat among the most distinguished group in the hall looked at mary with a lively interest. "what a charming girl!" she said to her host, a very great person. "i believe she has been adopted as a sort of companion by old lady anne hamilton, who is a cousin of my wife's," he responded. "the girl has been educated at her expense. yes, it's a pretty thing. i only hope it won't become a blue-stocking." "i must positively know her," said the lady. "she interests me." "you make me jealous," returned the great person, with playful gallantry. lady agatha had been a peeress in her own right since she had attained the tender age of two years. her father and mother had died too early for her to miss them, and she had shown from her childhood a capacity to think for herself, which nurses and governesses and all such persons looked on as absolutely shocking. she had had a guardian, a soft, woolly, comfortable gentleman whose will she had brushed aside and replaced by her own from the time she was eight years old. legally, she was not of age till twenty-one; in reality, she was of age at fifteen or thereabouts. she consulted colonel st. john, her guardian, about her affairs, as an act of grace, because she was so fond of him and wouldn't hurt his feelings for anything; but she made no secret of the fact that at twenty-one she was going to be absolutely her own mistress. "you are your own mistress now," colonel st. john said once, a little ruefully. "you never do what i wish--you make me do what _you_ wish. don't go too fast, agatha, my dear. at twenty-one one is not wiser than old people, though one may feel so." but he knew that he was talking to empty air. she was so eager to lay hold on life. and she was equipped for it--there was no doubt of that. mr. grainger, of grainger, ellison and wells, who had had charge of the business of the estate from time immemorial, whose trade it was to be cautious, was cheerful over the colonel's misgivings. "you wouldn't feel anxious if she was a lad," he said. "i'd set her against nine hundred and ninety lads out of a thousand for sound common-sense. she won't do anything foolish. take my word for it, she won't do anything foolish." she did not do anything foolish. she took her own way about some things against colonel st. john, and even against mr. grainger, but she turned out to be right in the end. she had a good many people dependent in one way or another upon her for their well-being, and she insisted on coming face to face with these--on dealing with them without an intermediary. and she made no mistakes. she could see through shifty dishonesty as well as if she had had three times her years and a wide knowledge of the seamy side of human nature. she had always been an outdoor girl, and now she displayed a knowledgeable interest in her own home farm and in the affairs of her tenants. she used to say that the days were not long enough for all she had to do. certainly, she contrived to cram into them three times as much pleasure, business, and philanthropy as her neighbours. she had an idea of the obligations of her position as lady of the soil which made poor colonel st. john gasp when she talked about it. there was so much to be done for the people--churches to be built, or chapels, if they preferred them, and school-houses, industries to be fostered--so much encouragement to be given to honest endeavour. her idea was that the land should afford all the people wished for. she was going to stop the terrible drifting of the people into the towns. their lives were to be made gayer. there should be entertainments. the farmers' wives and daughters were to make butter and cheese like their forbears, to grow fruit and vegetables, to rear poultry and sell eggs; but they were not, therefore, to lead a life of narrow toil. they were to be rewarded for their skill and industry. the fruit of their labours was to make life sweeter and pleasanter for them. there were to be libraries and reading-rooms, debating clubs, social gatherings. "stuff and nonsense!" colonel st. john said, with his cotton-wool eyebrows puffed out. "she'll dip the estate, and then she'll be coming to ask us to pull her out. worse, she'll only make them discontented." "she'll come out all right," mr. grainger said, rubbing his hands softly together. "if she blunders, she'll learn wisdom from the experiment. you'll see she'll come out all right, colonel. the only thing that troubles me is that she may have no time to get married. we don't want her to be a spinster, hey? i confess i should like to see the succession assured." it was this notable young lady who came in not so long after to queen's college, where a distinguished woman of letters was giving a series of lectures on "the poetry of the sixteenth century." her entrance created somewhat of a flutter. she was as tall as mary gray, but much more opulently built. she had short, curling, dark hair, irregular features, and violet eyes--not a bit handsome, but big and bonny and lovesome. her dress fluttered even these students. it was of purple velvet, with a great stole of sables, and her sable muff had a big bunch of real violets, which brought an odour of the quickening and burgeoning earth. she sat by the lady principal, and afterwards had tea with the students. she asked especially for an introduction to mary gray, and then she insisted on driving her as far as the mall in her motor-car, which she drove herself, while the chauffeur sat with folded arms behind. on the way she talked poetry and politics with the same fervour she brought to all her pursuits. "it has been borne in on me," she said vehemently, "that in working among my own people as i have been doing i have been only tinkering at things, just tinkering. one has to go to the root of the matter, to abolish unjust laws, to replace them by good ones. supposing i made my estate, as i hope to make it, a utopia, still there would be hundreds of estates where the people would be in misery. it ought not to be left to our good will to do things. we should be compelled to do them." mary watched the flashing eyes with the greatest admiration. she felt that lady agatha was a glorious creature, for whom she could do anything. the hero-worship which is latent in the heart of all young people worth their salt sprang into sudden life. lady agatha glanced at her, noticed her expression, and smiled a rich, sweet, gratified smile. she had made a disciple. to make a disciple was very pleasant to one of her temperament. like most women, she was a thorough propagandist. as she swept up to the gate of lady anne's house, the old lady herself was standing just within it. she had come in from driving her little pony phaeton, which she liked to drive herself. she had a little wild, bright-eyed mountain pony, which would eat sugar and apples from her hands, and was as much of a pet as a dog. "well, mary," she said, "introduce me. how do you do, lady agatha? i know you by sight already. won't you come inside and have some tea? i'm very glad my chloe didn't meet that uncanny monster of yours. i have something to do to get her past the trams, i can tell you, much less the motorcars." "you shouldn't go out alone," mary said, with tender concern. "her little pony is very wild, lady agatha, and she won't take the carriage, unless she goes visiting." "you want to make me out an old woman," lady anne said, "and i shall never be that. come along in, lady agatha. i've been hearing about you. what do you mean by making my tenants discontented? they're very well as they are. we shall have to form a league against you, we indolent ones." her ladyship had a way of winning her welcome wherever she went. lady anne had begun, like a good many other people, with a certain distrust of the brilliant young woman who desired to conquer so many kingdoms. in the end she yielded unreservedly. "a fine, big-hearted, generous creature," she said. "it makes me young to look at her and hear her talk. and so she has taken a huge fancy to my mary. very well, then, she can come and go; but she's not to have my mary for all that, for i want her for myself." "no one really wants me," said mary, with suddenly dimmed eyes, "except you and papa. but if they did they couldn't have me. i belong to you and papa." chapter ix the race with death it might have been considered great promotion for the daughter of walter gray, who attended all day to the ailments of watches with a magnifying glass stuck in his eye, to be the friend of lady agatha chenevix as well as the adopted child almost of lady anne hamilton. indeed, in the early days, when lady agatha's friendship for mary brought her into the finest society the country provided, lady anne sometimes watched mary narrowly, to see how she was taking it. the result of these observations must have been quite satisfactory to the old lady, judging by the energetic shaking of her head after one or two of these occasions when she was alone and thought over things. once she spoke her thoughts to lady agatha, to whom, indeed, she found herself often talking in a way that surprised herself. there was something about the minx that forced even a suspicious and reticent old lady into trust and confidence, and as her trust and confidence increased so did her affection for the brilliant young peeress. "people said i was mad," she remarked, "when i took mary gray into my house, and into my heart. matilda drummond even said--and i have never forgotten it to her--that if she was my nephew, jarvis, she'd have my condition of mind inquired into. yet see how it has turned out! is she spoilt? is she an upstart? is she set above her family? she's over there this minute with that poor little drab stepmother of hers. she worships her father. the joys and sorrows of the poor little household are as much to her to-day as the day she left them." "i know," said lady agatha. "she's pure gold. i saw it in her face the first day i laid eyes on her. the only quarrel i have with her is that so many people push me out with her. i don't mean you, of course, lady anne. but yesterday i could not have her because she must go to your doctor's wife, and to-day she was going for a long walk with that little miss baynes. to-morrow it will be her father. it is his free afternoon." "i heard an amusing thing about the father the other day," said lady anne. "of course, mary knows nothing about it. i called at gordon's--that is where mr. gray is employed--about a new catch for my amethyst bracelet. i have known mr. gordon for years. he is a thoroughly respectable man. it seems there is a very ill-conditioned person who works in the same room as mr. gray--a good workman, but most ill-conditioned. when he is especially bad-tempered he vents his anger on his quiet room-fellow, who never seems to hear him but works away as though he were a thousand miles distant from the grumbling and scolding. well, it seems that the other day, despairing, perhaps, of rousing mr. gray by any other methods, he made a reference to mary as having got into fine society and looking down on her father. it's a little place, after all, my dear, and you and your motor-car are known as well as the town hall. mr. gray got up very quietly and threw the man downstairs; then went back to his work without a word. gordon saw it in quite the right way. he said that the person thoroughly well deserved it, but that the next time he mightn't get off with a few bruises, and that would be awkward for mr. gray. so he has given him another room." "ah, bravo!" lady agatha clapped her hands together. "that's where mary gets it. i've seen the light of battle in her eye--haven't you?" "sometimes--when she has heard of cruelty and injustice." now that mary's schooling was over, she was to see the world under lady anne's auspices. they were to go abroad soon after christmas, to be in rome for easter, to dawdle about the continent where they would and for as long as they would. everything was planned and mapped out. mary had her neat travelling-dress of grey cloth, tailor-made, her close-fitting toque, her veil and gloves, all her equipment, lying ready to put on. her old friend, simmons, had packed her travelling trunk. it had come to almost the last day. and, to be sure, mary must be much with her father and the others during those last hours. she had gone with her father for a long country walk. "i wish you were coming, too," said mary, clinging closely to his arm. "you will be bringing me back fine stories," her father said, patting her hand. "i shall be seeing the world through your eyes, child." "i shall write to you every day." "i shan't expect that, mary. you will be moving from place to place. i know you will write when you can, and i am always sure of your love." while they talked lady anne was receiving dr. carruthers professionally. she had had symptoms, weaknesses, pangs, of which she had told nobody. "i was inclined to go without telling you anything about it, doctor," she said. "i was as keen upon it as the child. i am more disappointed than she will be. i have been wilful all my life, but i am glad i did not take my own way this time. it would have been a nice thing for poor mary if i had been taken ill in some of those foreign places." "you will be much better in your own comfortable home." dr. carruthers spoke cheerfully, but he could not keep the anxiety out of his face. "you must have suffered a deal lately," he said pityingly. he had not forgotten what lady anne had done for him and his mildred. she had been their faithful and kind friend from that propitious day when he had picked mary gray from under the feet of the tram-horses. his position was now an assured one, and he and his wife had a tender affection for their benefactress. "i'm an obstinate old woman," said lady anne, with very bright eyes. the doctor's visit had been an ordeal to her. "i have had the pain off and on for the last few months, but i assured myself that it was merely indigestion, which mimics so many things. i am glad my common-sense came to the rescue at last. do you think i shall go off suddenly, or shall i have to lie, panting, like those poor creatures i've seen at the hospital, labouring for breath? i shouldn't like that." the doctor shook his head. how was he to know when the worn-out heart would cease to perform its functions, and after what manner? "we must hope that you will not suffer," he said gently. "i will do my best to save you that." "and i've plenty of spirit for whatever the good god sends," lady anne said, her face lighting up. "i've always had great spirit. they said i pulled through my childish illnesses twice as well because of my spirit. i remember my dear mother telling me that when i had croup at two years old i mimicked the cows and sheep and cats and dogs between the paroxysms. i was just the same later on. i ought to have married a soldier. my poor husband was a man of peace. he couldn't bear a loud voice. have a glass of wine before you go, doctor. i've just had a bottle of comet port opened. try it. there's very little like it left in the world." after dr. carruthers had taken his departure she went to her desk and set about writing a letter. but she paused after she had written a few lines, looked at the clock, and sat for a minute thinking. "no," she said aloud. "i won't wait till to-morrow. mary shan't take the chances. who knows if i shall be here to-morrow? if i drive out to marleigh i shall just catch buckton. he will be pottering round that orchid-house of his. he will just be home from the office. he can make me a new will there as well as here. indeed, i ought not to have postponed it for so long." she ordered her little pony phaeton. it was nearly five o'clock. there would be plenty of time to drive to marleigh abbey, where her lawyer lived, to interview him, and get back again before it was dark. she would make mary's interests safe. she had come to care for the child more than she had ever expected to care. she was going to make a provision for her, so that she should be secure against the chances and changes of this life. nothing very startling, nothing that need make jarvis grumble to any great extent; just a modest provision which would not keep mary from making use of the talents with which god had endowed her and the education her fairy godmother had given her. it was not long before she had left the town behind, and was driving along the winding road that ran by the foot of the mountains. the road was very lonely. chloe was rather nervous, not to say hysterical, on this particular afternoon. her mistress had not considered her as was her wont. she had taken the shortest road, forcing her to meet a black monster of a steam-tram which she had sometimes seen at a distance, a thing which was her special abomination. chloe had made a bolt for it, and had passed the tram safely and got away on to the back road. she had been accustomed, when she had made her small runaways before, to be petted and soothed afterwards. indeed, as soon as her terror had calmed a little, and she was on the road she knew to be harmless, she slackened down, expecting to hear her mistress's voice of tender scolding, to have her mistress alight and stroke her with soft words. instead of that she was touched up pretty sharply. "get me there, my girl," said lady anne. "get me there quickly. you can take your time going home, and we'll go the lower road. i feel as though death and i were running a race. i could never forgive myself if i died before i'd provided for mary." the pony gave her head a shake as though in answer to her mistress's words, pricked up her ears and set off at a sharp canter. suddenly something happened. lady anne had at first no realisation of what it was. jennings, the coachman, said afterwards that it must have been the work of one of the mischievous lads whom he had driven with his whip from staring in at his stable door. what happened was that the pony's bridle, which had been snipped with a knife, had come apart, fallen about her neck and then under her feet. she was off like the wind. as for poor lady anne, suddenly rendered helpless, she caught at the side of the little carriage, which was being dragged violently at the pony's heels. she had need of all her spirit. fortunately, the road was a straight one, but there was not a soul in sight to help her, not a sower in the fields, not a ploughman, not even a boy herding cattle along the road. her right hand still grasped the useless rein. she stared before her, while the rocking of the little carriage grew more and more violent, and the hedges and trees flew past them. how long would it be before the terrified pony shook herself free of the carriage altogether, or upset it on one of those mud-banks? the old spirit kept wonderfully calm and collected. there was just one chance--that chloe might keep the middle of the road, and presently pull up of herself, being exhausted. if only the phaeton would not rock so much. it was swaying from side to side at a terrific rate. the few seconds of the runaway seemed æons of time to lady anne. she was holding on now to both sides of the carriage, but her arm was through the reins. thank heaven, the road seemed absolutely open and chloe must exhaust herself soon. then--her eyes were distended in her face. they had swung round a little incline, with a miraculous escape of running on a heap of shingle intended for mending the roads. just ahead of them were the lodge gates and lodge of a big house. the gates were open. out through them there toddled a small child about three years old. the child set out to cross the road. his attention was arrested by the noise of the runaway. he stood in the middle of the road staring. lady anne uttered a loud, sharp cry. the child moved a few steps, fell, and lay directly in the path of chloe's feet. a woman ran out of the lodge, screaming "patsy, patsy; where are you, patsy?" then she began to wring her hands and call on all the saints. the pony, however, had of herself come to a standstill. the child was under her feet, between her four little hoofs. she was shaking and sweating and looking down. as for the child, after a second or so he broke into a lusty roar. he was only frightened, not hurt, but it took a little time for the mother to find that out by reason of the mud on his face and the noise he was making. when she had reassured herself, she carried him inside and closed the door of the lodge upon him. then she returned to the pony-carriage. chloe was still standing there, in a piteous state of terror. someone was coming along the road--a policeman. someone else was running from the opposite direction. as for lady anne, the little figure had fallen forward. her forehead was down on the reins. her eyes were wide open, and had a mortal terror in their gaze. she would never set things right for mary in this world. she and death had run a race together, and she had been beaten. chapter x dispossessed lady anne's nephew and heir, lord iniscrone, showed no friendly face to mary. he came as soon as possible, and took possession of the premises. lady iniscrone was with him. she was a lady with a wide, flat, doughy face. her eyes were little and pale and cold. mary thought afterwards that if it had not been for lady iniscrone, lord iniscrone might have been kinder. she remembered that lady anne had detested lady iniscrone to the extent that she would never have her inside the house. she had an idea, which she could not put away, while she hated it, that lady iniscrone remembered that fact. she took possession of everything thoroughly, as though she revenged herself on the dead woman. in her cold speech she disparaged the things lady anne had held dear. their attitude towards mary was as though she were a servant no longer necessary. she was not to eat at their table; she was to eat in her own room or in the servants' hall. "is it miss gray, my lady?" saunders, the elderly parlourmaid, asked, aghast. "her ladyship thought the world of miss gray. she might have been her own child. and i will say, though we didn't hold with it at first, yet----" lady iniscrone closed the discussion haughtily. "miss gray will have her meals in the servants' hall, or in her own room if she prefers it, till after the funeral. we shall make other arrangements then, of course." saunders flounced out of the room. although she was elderly and had lived in lady anne hamilton's house since she was fourteen, when she had come as a between-maid, she had not forgotten how to flounce. "mark my words," she said in the kitchen, "she'll make a clean sweep of us, same as miss mary, as soon as ever the funeral is over. supposing as how _we_ gives the notice!" and they did, to lady iniscrone's discomfiture, for she had intended to stay on at the mall and to keep the staff as it stood till she had supplied its place. however, she showed her dismay only by her bad temper. "i suppose you've all pretty well feathered your nests," she said acridly, "and can afford to retire." nor was her bitterness lessened by the fact that lady anne had left handsome legacies to each of the servants, annuities to the elder ones, sums of money to the younger. but the will, dated some years back, made no mention at all of mary gray. "it seems clear to me," said mr. buckton, talking the matter over with lord iniscrone, her ladyship being present, "that lady anne intended to make some provision for her _protégée_. in fact, the letter which she had begun writing to me, which was found in her blotter after her death, plainly indicates that. she was, apparently, on her way to my house when the lamentable accident happened. dr. carruthers had seen her that afternoon, and had told her that her heart was in a bad way. i believe she grew alarmed about the unprovided state in which she would leave miss gray if she had a sudden seizure, and hurried off to me. in the circumstances----" "of course, we could not think of doing anything more for miss gray," lady iniscrone put in, anticipating her lord. "she has already been dealt with very handsomely out of the estate. she has had a most unsuitable education for a person in her rank of life. she has lived like a lady; been clothed like one. when i saw her she was wearing ornaments--a brooch of amethysts, with pearls around it, i remember, which, i am sure, ought to belong to the estate. i can't see that lord iniscrone is called upon to do anything more for the young person. what with those absurd legacies to the servants and the way lady anne lived--a big house and a staff of servants and carriages and horses for one old lady!--the estate has been impoverished." "lady anne had a great sense of her own dignity," the lawyer put in. "and this house had been her home for more than fifty years." "everything needs replacing," lady iniscrone grumbled, with a disparaging look around. "those curtains and carpets----" "your lordship will, i am sure, feel that, in making some little provision for miss gray, you will be doing what lady anne wished and intended to do," mr. buckton said earnestly, turning from the lady to her husband. lord iniscrone's eyes fluttered nervously. he was not a bad little man at heart, but he was entirely ruled by his wife. "i don't think the estate will bear it, mr. buckton," he said in a peevish voice. "it is heavily burdened as it is. if a five-pound note would be of any use----" "i can't see that we are called upon to do anything, jarvis," his wife put in again. "in fact, mr. buckton, you may take it that we do not intend to do anything more for miss gray." "very well, lady iniscrone." mr. buckton turned away and busied himself with his papers. he could not trust himself at the moment to speak lest he should forget his professional discretion. but mary had not waited for the result of his intercession on her behalf, of which, indeed, she knew nothing. mary, who was sensitive to every breath of praise and blame, had fled out of the dear house, the atmosphere of which had become suddenly unfriendly. a good many friends would have been glad to have had her. lady agatha chenevix was away, else she would have been by her friend's side to take her part with passionate generosity and indignation. she was away, but jessie baynes's little house on the edge of the sea, a bare little homely place, full of sunlight and the sea-wind, had its doors open to her. one could not imagine a better place for a sad and sorrowful heart than jessie's little spare room, with its balcony opening like the deck of a ship on to the blue floor of the sea. mildred carruthers had come at once, in the first hour of the girl's grief, to carry her off to the big house, which was now amply justified by the size of the doctor's practice. only, where would mary go to but home? in all those years in the great house on the mall she had never come to find wistaria terrace too little and lowly for her. indeed, there was a wonderful wholesomeness and sweetness to her mind about the little house. the transfiguring mists of her love lay rosily over even the drudgery of her childish days. to be sure, there had been hard work and short commons. she had been insufficiently clad in winter, too heavily clad in summer. her people had gone without fires and many other things which some would have considered essential. but there had always been love. looking back on those days, mary saw with the eyes of the spirit which miss out immaterial material things. she fled back home. she took nothing with her but what she stood up in. only her friend, simmons, while lady iniscrone was absent from the house, packed up all mary's belongings, and conveyed them, with the assistance of the coachman, across the lane to wistaria terrace. the servants had made up their minds that mary was not coming back. lady iniscrone had hoped, in conversation with lord iniscrone, that mary would not give them any trouble. never was anyone less inclined to give trouble than mary. not for worlds would she have gone back to the house where the new cold rule was, to meet lady iniscrone's unfriendly eyes. only while the body of her benefactress was yet above ground she had stolen across at quiet hours, in the absence of the enemy, to look for the last time on the quiet face. she had carried away little fifine. fifine was seventeen years old now, and shook incessantly and moaned in a lost way in her darkness. but she knew mary's voice. mary was the one that could comfort her. at wistaria terrace they went to the unheard-of extravagance of having a fire in mary's room, day after day, so that fifine might lie before it in a basket, and feel the warmth in her little bones, and hear mary's voice. the day of the funeral came. mary stood by the graveside quietly, with a veil down over her face. walter gray was by her side. she had come in the doctor's carriage, and she had no leisure or thought for the insolence with which lady iniscrone stared at her, as though her presence there required explanation. she was going to work, to begin at once. her dear, kind old friend, who had meant to do so well by her, had at least equipped her for earning her own bread. the lady principal of queen's college had found her work--temporary work, to be sure, but something to go on with till she could look about her. the lady principal and dr. carruthers were against her making any definite plans till lady agatha chenevix should return--she was in america, arranging for a display of her industries at a forthcoming exhibition. they had an idea that lady agatha would expect to be consulted in any plan that affected her friend's future. returning home after the funeral mary found that all her attention would be required for a short time for fifine. the little dog had had a fit or something of the kind, and had rallied wonderfully, considering her great age. she had missed her one friend during that hour of absence. dr. carruthers came in and looked at the dog, stooping to examine it with as much tender care as though it had been human and a paying patient. "keep her warm," he said. "there isn't much else possible. there is nothing the matter, only old age. she seems to know you, mary. she is positively wagging her tail." "she is miserable without me," mary said, wondering what she was to do about fifine when she took up that temporary work which the lady principal of queen's college had found for her. meanwhile she devoted herself to the little creature. but about three days after lady anne's funeral fifine solved all difficulties concerning her by dying quietly in the night. mary slipped in stealthily to the garden of the old house when the new owners were not likely to be about, and placed the little rigid body in the grave jennings had dug for it, lined with a few flowers that had come up in the beds, snowdrops and wallflowers and little pale mauve double primroses. she wept a few bitter tears above the grave. the death of the little dog was like her last link with her dear old friend. the day had the bright, clear, strong sunshine of march. there were yet drifts of snow in the valleys among the hills, but spring was coming, and the bare boughs would soon be thick with the buds of leafage. she took one look at the sunny, green place and the old house which had harboured her so kindly. then she went away with a drooping head. that very afternoon lady agatha came. she rushed in on mary like the march wind, big and beautiful, in her long cloak of orange-tawny velvet, breathing fire and fury over the unkindness to mary. she had interviewed lady iniscrone, and had gathered from her what had been happening. "in one way i am selfishly glad, mary, because you will belong so much more to me. i am going to take possession of you. for the first time for many years chenevix house is to be opened this season. i am going to be among the political hostesses. i shall do all sorts of things. i have found a dear old lady to live with us, my father's twenty-second cousin, mrs. morres. she will make it possible for me to do the things i want without running tilt against all the windmills of prejudice. i shall respect your mourning. you will have your own room to which you can retire. chenevix house looks over a quiet, green square. you shall see the spring come even there. afterwards, when the season is at an end, we shall bury ourselves in the green country." she paused for breath, and mary smiled at her. she was so big and bonny and generous it was impossible not to smile at her. "where do i come in?" she asked. "i want to earn my bread." "and so you shall. you shall earn it hard. you are to be my secretary, mary. i am going to be a leading radical lady. they want hostesses. there are things a woman can do for a cause much better than a man. i consider my wealth, at least, my comparative wealth, my rank and youth and energy and brains, and my splendid health, as so many weapons given to me by god so that i may help the right." "you forget your charm," mary reminded her. "it is the most potent of all." lady agatha suddenly blushed. it was the first time mary had seen her blush. "charm--oh, come, mary! why not beauty if you are inclined to flatter?" "yes, indeed; why not beauty?" mary repeated, looking at her with loving eyes of admiration. "a big, black, bounding beggar!" lady agatha quoted against herself merrily. but mary was not inclined to make any further excursions from home. the soul in her was chilled by her recent experiences. in her hurt and unhappy state the little house at wistaria terrace seemed most desirable. it gave her satisfaction to note the discomforting things about her--the bare floor, the windows that shook and rattled, the ill-fitting doors, the ugliness of the painted dressing-table from which the paint had long departed, the chipped jug and basin that did not match each other. she liked it all, even the carelessness about meals, for there was love with it. her younger sisters growing up had a kind of worship for mary. they served her out of pure love. she was not allowed to do anything for herself. yes, for the present, at least, home was best. she could go out and earn money and bring it home to them. she would stay henceforth in the world into which she had been born. she would make no more excursions. however, these thoughts of hers were rendered vain by the fact that walter gray positively took lady agatha's part against her. there was no room for mary in the cramped life of wistaria terrace. she had brains and beauty and sympathy. the opportunity to make use of these gifts was given her. she must not reject it. the thing was put on a business basis. mary was to be lady agatha's secretary, with a handsome salary. "i shall work you till you cry out," her ladyship promised, and it seemed like enough to be true. she was talking already of writing a novel when they should retire to the country. her energy overflowed. she was perpetually seeking new outlets for it. her secretary was not likely to enjoy a sinecure. "no one but you could have sent me from you again," mary said to her father, in tender reproach. "it is for your good, moll. you have outgrown wistaria terrace. we could not long have contented you." but mary shook her head. she thought she would have been very well content at home. she could have got plenty of teaching to do. she thought of the little house as of a resting place from which she was to be debarred. but she would not dispute her father's will for her. he rallied her, saying that if they kept her her head and shoulders would presently be pushing themselves above the slates. "it was big enough for you," she said indignantly, "and your mind rises to greater heights than mine ever will. you cramped yourself into it, if it were a question of cramping. why should not i?" "sometimes it was not big enough, moll," he answered. "sometimes it was sore cramping, and at other times it was big enough to contain the heaven and all the stars. perhaps the ambition i flung away for myself i keep for you. i would not have you at microscopic work all your days." so it was settled. for a little while longer mary stayed on at home. then, when the leaves were just opening out in pale green silk, and all the world was fragrant and full of the joy of birds, she went, unwillingly, and turning back many times to make her sorrowful farewells. "i don't want you to stay till you begin to feel cramped," walter gray had said. "i had rather you went away with your illusions." she did carry away her illusions. it was a happy and blessed thing for her that she could make illusions about common things all the days she was to live. yet somewhere, in her hidden heart, she knew her father was right. chapter xi the lion mary was established, high up in chenevix house. she was amazed at the spaciousness of the rooms, the feeling in them as though the streets were far away. the square was a wonder of waving and tossing green, across which mary looked from her window and saw other stately old houses like the one she was in. at first she was never tired of admiring the miracle of spring in london. she realised that no country greenness is equal to the glory of the new leaf against the dingy house-fronts, the green freshness about the black stems and boughs and branches. lady agatha was in a perpetual whirl of affairs and gaiety. all her days, and her nights into the small hours, seemed to be filled. at this time mary had a great deal of her time to herself. in the morning she wrote her ladyship's letters, and selected from the newspapers such things as her ladyship ought to read. by-and-by she would be much busier. she was taking lessons in short-hand and type-writing in the afternoons. her ladyship would come in only in time to dress for dinner. she had been driving in the park, she had been calling, she had been at a concert, or a matinée, or an "at home." she had been attending this or that meeting. she was never in bed before the summer dawn, yet she would be at the breakfast-table as fresh as a milkmaid, smiling at mary and telling her this and that bit of news or event of the time since they had met. mrs. morres, who had to accompany her to many places, slept every hour of the day she could. she confessed to mary in her dry way, that did not ask for pity, that she found her ladyship's energy superhuman. sometimes there was an interesting debate in the house of commons, and lady agatha must drop in after dinner to sit for an hour behind the gilded grille. afterwards she would go on to a political reception. later to a ball, where she would dance as though there had been nothing in all the long day to tire her. once or twice she had a quiet dinner-party, to which mary came down in her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair paleness. at these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. in the drawing-room afterwards she saw lady agatha the centre of a brilliant group. someone said of her that she was likely to be the spoilt child of politics, since she could be audacious with even the greatest, and move them to speak when no one else could. the great men shook their heads at her and smiled. they warned her that she went too fast for them, that impulsiveness, charming as it was in a woman, was not to be permitted in politics. "if you would but learn diplomacy, my dear lady!" sir michael auberon sighed. but diplomacy seemed likely to be the last thing lady agatha chenevix would learn. mary used to sit under mrs. morres's wing, and listen, through her witty and wise talk, to the utterances of the great. she felt very shy of these companies of distinguished men and women. lady agatha made one or two attempts to draw her closer. then, perceiving that she was happier in her corner, she let her be. in her corner mary listened. she listened with all her ears. her cheeks would flush and her eyes shine as she listened. there was a younger school of politicians which was well represented at lady agatha's parties. their theories had the generosity of youth. sir michael auberon would listen to them, nodding his head, his fine, beautiful old face lit up with as great a generosity as warmed theirs. he was very fond of his "boys." if he must show them what was impracticable in their views he did it gently. he rallied them with tenderness. he had none of the mockery which is so searing and blighting a thing to hot youth. one night mary, looking down the dinner-table, saw a face she remembered. the owner of the face--a tall, loosely-built, plain-looking young man--glanced her way at the moment, and stared--stared and looked away again with a baffled air. mary knew him at once for the boy she had met seven or eight years before at the court. he had aged considerably. men like him have a way of falling into their manhood all at once. his hair was even a little thin on top--with that and his lean, hatchet face he might have been thirty-five. afterwards in the drawing-room he was one of those who stood nearest to sir michael. some of the others laughed at him, calling him don quixote, and she heard sir michael say that the young man's theories were those of the gironde. "the revolution devours her own children," he said, with his fine old ironic smile. "and a good many of us have to eat our own professions before we're forty. the great thing would be if we could keep our youthful generosity with the wisdom of our prime." looking towards mary, he caught the flame of enthusiasm in her eyes, and again he smiled. but this time it was a smile without irony, rather an understanding and, one might have said, a grateful smile. all the world knew that sir michael's private sorrows were heavy ones, and that he leant the more on the alleviations and consolations his public life brought him. afterwards he asked to be introduced to mary and talked with her for a little while, making her the envy of the room. "she has a clear mind as well as a sound heart," he said. "she is on fire with the passion for humanity. take her about with you"--this to lady agatha. "let her see how the people live--what serfs we have under our free banner. there is fine material in her. she should do good work." meanwhile mrs. morres sat by mary, doing crochet, with a quiet smile. her tongue dripped cold water on all the enthusiasms. "believe me, my dear, they will do nothing," she said placidly in mary's ear. that placidity of hers gave her the air of being as relentless as a fate. "parties are tweedledum and tweedledee. let sir michael get into office and he'll do nothing. those fine young gentlemen over there will be the office-holders of twenty years to come, the fat sinecurists and pluralists. the people were better off when, like the lower animals, they had no souls. they were protected by their betters. now they are at war with them and they are more soulless than before. dear me, how much fine talk i have heard that never came to anything!" she would go on till the company had departed, and lady agatha would come to her side, laughing, and ask her what horrible feudal theories she had been propounding. the two differed on every point but one, and that was in the mere matter of loving each other. lady agatha delighted in her cousin's conservatism; and always said she would not have it otherwise if she could. it was a _sauce piquante_ to the dish of their daily lives. "you shan't lead mary astray," she would say with pretended indignation. "if she knew the things sir michael has been saying about her!" "my dear agatha, don't _you_ go leading her astray. politics are no _métier_ for a woman, or they should be subservient to something else. go marry, agatha, and bring children into the world, and when you have reared them you can set up a political salon and theorise about the regeneration of humanity. let miss gray do likewise. you play with these things when you are young--later on you will find them dry bones." "dear me!" lady agatha said, with admiration. "what a pity she isn't with us, mary! what a pity she is only a destructive critic! don't listen to her, child!" that first evening of their meeting sir robin drummond had come to mary's side and turned the page of her music while she sang. she had a fresh and sweet voice, although of no great range or compass, and she could sing, without music, song after song of the old english masters, of arne and purcell and bishop, and their delightful school. "she brings strawberries and cream to town," said someone who was not particularly imaginative. mary was conscious of the young man's scrutiny as he turned her pages, and it embarrassed her, but she made no sign. afterwards she met sir robin many times. he was at this time the adopted candidate for an east-end constituency, and was becoming well known as an advanced politician. he went further than his party, indeed, and somewhat offended even his particular _clientèle_ by the breadth of his views. he and lady agatha were at this time engaged in the work of organising labour, especially amongst the girls and women of the worst-paid and most dangerous trades. it brought them often together amid forlorn habitations and hopeless humanity. one of the difficulties was the question of whether the alien women should be brought in. "they will join the union and they will go on underselling all the same," said someone. but sir robin was of those who held that the alien should have equal rights with her english sister, and that it was possible to teach her to stand on her feet like one of the free-born. he was not chary of his denunciations of certain methods among the trade unions and the trade unionists, and therefore a crowd sometimes howled him down. but there was always a minority at least to stand by him, and the minority included the industrious and sober, the honest and thinking, among those he desired to help. by-and-by he fell into a quiet friendliness with mary gray. he used to take charge of the ladies when they went into the east end. lady agatha used to say that he was a drag on the wheel, because he would not let her do imprudent things, because he would veto it when a question of their going into dangerous streets or houses or rooms, because he insisted on their leaving by a side door a meeting which was becoming turbulent, because he was always forbidding some extravagance or other of her ladyship's. "there is one thing about that young man," said mrs. morres, who was chary of praise of her ladyship's party: "he has excellent common-sense, and i thank heaven for it." "ah, yes; he has excellent common-sense," lady agatha echoed, with a ruefulness which made mary laugh suddenly. "you ought to marry him, my dear," mrs. morres went on, looping another stitch of the endless crochet. "marry bob drummond!" lady agatha repeated. "marry bob drummond! why, it is the last thing in the world i should dream of doing." one evening, just at the end of the season, someone brought the latest lion to a small reception at lady agatha chenevix's. he was a very modest and retiring lion, a quiet, very bronzed young man, who wore his arm in a sling. he had had his shoulder torn in an encounter with an african leopard. he had fought almost hand to hand with the beast over the body of a kaffir servant, and had rescued the man at the cost of his own life, it seemed at first, later on of his right arm. it was doubtful whether the strength and vitality of it would ever be restored. he was not merely a brave man, however, this mr. jardine. he had gone to the gold coast, and from there into central africa, inspired, in the first place, by the desire of knowledge and love of adventure. but, amid the thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes, there had grown up in his heart the liveliest interest in and sympathy with the people he found himself amongst. he discovered that they had an ancient civilisation of their own. to be sure, what remained of it hung in shreds and patches on some of them; but there were others, civilised after a fashion, which was not the western one. he discovered traditions, folk-lore, ancient poetry, laws, a wealth of customs. understanding the people, he came to love them. they interested him profoundly. he was going back to them as soon as he could. he stayed after the other guests, and was yet talking eagerly to his hostess when the dressing-bell rang. "we dine alone," lady agatha said to the old friend who had brought mr. jardine. "and i go nowhere afterwards: i am fagged out. how glad i am that next week sees us at hazels! if you and mr. jardine could dine, colonel brind?" the old friend answered her wistful look. "our lodgings are not far off; we have only to jump into a hansom; we should be back before the dinner-bell rings. only--this fellow has a host of engagements." "ah!" lady agatha had hardly sighed when jardine woke up as if from a dream. "have i engagements?" he asked. "i do not remember any. anyhow, i am a convalescent, and the privileges of convalescence are mine. i vote for that hansom, brind." after dinner they sat around the fire and talked. although it was june, it had been a sunless day of arid east wind, and lady agatha, who always snatched at the least excuse for a fire because it was so beautiful, had ordered one to be lit. the three long windows were open beyond the red leather screen that made a cosy corner of the fireplace, and the scent of flowers came in from the balcony. paul jardine talked as much as they desired him to talk. he started on his hobby about those west african peoples, and rode it with spirit and energy. his friend laughed at him. "why, jardine," he said, "i can never again call you the lion that will not roar." "am i horribly loquacious?" the hero smiled, but was not more silent. he had great things to tell, and he told them well and modestly. lady agatha sat with her cheek shaded by a peacock-feather fan. there was a deep glow in her eyes. glancing across at her from the opposite corner, mary thought it must be the reflection of the firelight. she came to mary's room after the guests had departed, when mary was preparing for bed, and sat down in the chair by the open window. "what do you think of him, mary?" she asked. "of whom?" mary said sleepily. they had met a good many people during the day, so the question was a pardonable one. "of whom! why, of mr. jardine! who else could it be?" she lifted her arms about her head, and the loose white sleeves of her gown fell away from their roundness and softness. "what a man!" she said, with a long sigh. "what a man! that is life, if you like. how tame the others seem beside him!" "he roared very gently," said mary, "but it was very exciting." "yes, wasn't it? that sail in the canoe down the river, with the jungle on each side of them alive with wild beasts and venomous reptiles, to say nothing of cannibals, and deadly sicknesses worse than any of those. he said so little about the danger. one got an impression of the extraordinary languorous beauty of the tropical vegetation; one smelt it, that african night, with its enormous moon beyond the mists. there was death on every side of him, in every breath he drew. he found what he went for, the antidote to the bite of the death's-head spider. henceforth life in those latitudes will be robbed of one of its terrors. what a man!" "it is a pity that we could not have heard him at the royal society," mary said, with a little yawn--they had been keeping late hours. "if it had been a day or two earlier!" "but i am going," said lady agatha. "why, mary, it is only to alter our arrangements by a day. hazels--the dear place--will keep for a day longer." chapter xii her ladyship at hazels mary found her duties more onerous than they had been in town. it was delightful to see lady agatha among her own people. she had made life easier for them. mary marvelled at the prettiness of the red-brick farmhouses, with roses and honeysuckle to their eaves. she could never get over the feeling that it was only a picture. they would walk or drive to them, and the farmer's wife would come out and beg her ladyship to come in for a glass of cowslip wine; and she and mary would go in to a rather dark parlour--to be sure, the windows were smothered in jessamine and roses and honeysuckle--and sit down in chairs covered in flowery chintz, and sip the fragrant wine and eat the home-made cake, while the topics of interest between landlord and tenant were discussed. then the farmer would come in himself, hat in hand, and his eyes would light up at the sight of the visitor, and there would be more pleasant homely talk of cattle and crops, and the harvest and the plans for the autumn sowing, and the state of fairs and markets. there was nuthatch village, which seemed to have stepped out of morland's pictures. it was all so pretty and peaceful, with its red gabled cottages sending up their blue spirals of smoke into the overhanging boughs of great trees. mary cried out in delight at the quaint dormers, with their diamond panes, at the wooden fronts, at the gardens chockfull of the gayest and most old-fashioned flowers. "as for prettiness," said lady agatha, "it isn't a patch on highercombe, a mile away, and, what is more, i've done more than anyone else to spoil its prettiness. i've filled in the pond and driven the swan and the water-hen to other haunts. i've given them a new water-supply and done away with the most picturesque pump, which was sunk in by dame elizabeth chenevix. i've put new grates and new floors into the houses, and i've seen to it that all windows open and shut. the pity of it is that i can't compel them to make use of their privilege of opening. also, i've introduced cowls on the chimneys. my friend, lionel armytage, the painter, lifted his hands in horror at my doings. i'd have liked to get at the chimneys, but i'd have had to pull down every cottage in the place to rectify them. oh, i've spoilt nuthatch, there's not a doubt of it. you must see highercombe." "the children seem healthy," mary said thoughtfully, "and the old people walk straighter than one sees them often." "ah, yes, that is it." lady agatha's face flushed and lit up. "i've made it healthy for them. highercombe is a painted lie--a pest-house, a charnel-house, full of unwholesome miasmas from its pretty green, its pond covered with water-lilies. death lurks in that pond. there is bad drainage and bad water; the damp oozes through the old brick floors of the houses. the whole place is as deadly in its way as those west african jungles of which mr. jardine told us." they were to see mr. jardine later. at present he was on a round of visiting at the houses of the great. the names of the people who had elected to do honour to paul jardine would have been a list of pretty well the most illustrious persons in the kingdom. when lady agatha had suggested to him that he might give a week to hazels before the summer was done, he had been eager about it, had even suggested dropping some of his other engagements. but that she would not hear of. she seemed to take an odd pride and pleasure in the way he had conquered the world best worth conquering. "what!" she had said. "drop sir richard greville and lord overbury! not for worlds! you may find it dull. sir richard lives the life of a hermit, and you won't get anything fit to eat at lord overbury's. he never knows what he's eating, and his cook has long given up trying to do credit to herself. i believe that only for his dining-out he'd be starved. even as it is, he's been known to take mustard with his soup and red-currant jelly with his cheese. still--he's lord overbury!" they led a very quiet life at hazels, seeing hardly anyone. lady agatha had declared that she was going to make up for her rackety life in town, as well as to prepare for the winter. she had looked as fresh as a rose through all the racketing, and when she talked about the need for rest she had smiled. as a matter of fact, her energy was too overflowing to permit of her resting as other folk rested. a change of occupation was about as much as one could hope for. and now she was restless as she had not been before, for, energetic as she had always been, she had never driven others. indeed, many people had found absolute restfulness in her ladyship's big, wholesome presence. "the life in town has only stimulated me, mary," she confessed; "just stimulated me and excited my brain. i must work it off somehow. let us begin at the novel to-morrow." they began at the novel. lady agatha dictated it, and mary took it down in short-hand. they worked out of doors. mary had her seat under the boughs of a splendid chestnut tree on a little green lawn. the lawn was at the side of the house, not over-looked, enclosed on three sides by a splendid yew hedge. the dogs would lie at mary's feet. there were roy the st. bernard, and brian the bull-dog, a toy pomeranian, and a little chow. the dogs always stayed at hazels. "if i took them up to town," lady agatha said, "they would see more of me, to be sure, but then they would always be losing me, for, of course, i couldn't take them out in town. and they always know i'll come back--they're so wise. the parting is dreadful, but they know i'll come back." mary sometimes wondered how her ladyship had found time to think out her novel. for it seemed all ready and prepared in her mind. she would sweep up and down the grass while she dictated. mary used to say that it meant a ten-mile walk of a morning. the train of her white morning-dress lopped the daisies in their places; the incessant passage of her feet made a track in the grass. sometimes she would pass out of her secretary's hearing and have to be recalled by mary's laughing voice of remonstrance. "am i afflicting you, mary?" she asked on one of these occasions. "am i overwhelming you? it's a horrible flood, isn't it?" "you are very fluent," mary answered, looking down at the queer little dots and spirals on her paper. "i daresay we'll have to prune it before it's printed. but it is a good fluency, a rich fluency. to me it is irresistible--like a spring freshet, like the sap rushing madly through all the veins of spring." "ah, you feel it?--you feel it like that, mary? i feel it so myself; i riot in it." "it will have no sense of effort--it is vital. i hope we shall be able to keep it up." "why not, o cassandra?" she stood with one hand on the back of mary's chair, and looked up into the tree. "the book should have been written in spring," she went on. "i feel the spring in my blood. why should i, mary, now when it is full summer, and the trees are dark?" "i don't know, unless that you were so busy in spring that you had not time to enjoy it. come, let us get on; perhaps presently you will flag. we must get the book done before anyone comes to interrupt us." "never was there such a willing co-worker. you mustn't overdo it, mary. how many words did i dictate to you yesterday?" "six thousand." "and you gave them to me typewritten this morning." "i wanted to see how they looked in type. it is all right, agatha. even you cannot go on for long, dictating six thousand words a day. we must take the tide at the flow." "afterwards i shall do a play--after i have given you a rest." "more kingdoms to conquer," mary laughed. "there is only one person like you--the kaiser." "i have an immense admiration for him." mrs. morres meanwhile sat and smiled to herself. she had given up the crochet for point-lace, which, as it had more intricate stitches, necessitated the more care. sometimes she knitted and read with a book in her lap. but when she was not reading, she smiled quietly to herself. it was a curious smile, half-satisfied as one whose prognostications have come true, half-dissatisfied as though there was no great cause for congratulation. once mary was curious enough to ask her why she smiled. lady agatha at the piano was playing wagner like a professional musician. mrs. morres's smile grew more inscrutable. "it amuses me," she said, talking loudly, so that her words might reach mary through the storm of the music, "to find that agatha is just a woman, after all. it amuses me--and yet--it had been happier for you and me if she had contented herself with the unrealities of life a little longer." mary did not understand at the moment. she began to understand a little later when mr. jardine came. the novel, after all, had not been finished. for the last week or so before the visitor arrived her ladyship had apparently lost interest in it. "my brain has dried up, mary," she said. "i should only spoil it if i went on. put it away in a drawer, and when i feel like it we can go on again. you want a rest. i've over-tired you." "i felt i couldn't rest till it was done," mary said, with a little sigh. "i wanted to know what became of them all. and it is such an interesting point. tell me, does clotilde marry mark, after all?" "how should i know? i have nothing to do with what she does. clotilde knows her own mind. i do not. wait till we get back to it." "ah! you should finish it--you should finish it. you'll never get that young green world in it again. it was an inspiration. we should have held on to it like jacob to the angel's robe." but for the time lady agatha's literary energy was exhausted. "i daresay there's a deal of fustian in it. there's sure to be," she said. "i don't think anything could be really good that was produced with so little pain. i daresay i'll be for tearing it up, so you'd better lock it away. do you feel equal to walking ten miles? if not, get your bicycle and i'll walk beside you. i've been cramped up too long." this time it was a mood of physical restlessness. she walked and rode and went out golfing, and played tennis, and rowed on the river, and did a thousand things, while mrs. morres made her delicate wheels and trefoils, and smiled a more sibylline smile than ever. at last he came. when the sound of his footstep and of his voice reached them where they stood in the drawing-room awaiting him, her ladyship turned to mary, and her face was full of an immense relief. "i didn't really believe he'd come," she said. "i've been feeling quite sure that something would occur to prevent his coming." "the weeks have been endless," paul jardine said, coming in and taking her ladyship's two hands. "how could you put me off till september? i've had a heavy time. i don't like being made much of by other folk, so i am going out again after christmas." then, to be sure, mary knew. the pair leaped to each other as though they had been two halves of one whole separated long ago, and now drawn together in a magnetic rush. mary had always known that when lady agatha attracted she attracted irresistibly; there was no half-way, no haltings, no looking back possible. "we are out of it, mary, we two," mrs. morres said, and the smile had become a trifle weak and wavering. "what do you suppose is going to become of us? hazels is a pleasant place, and there has always been something of assurance and comfort about agatha. i had a hard life, my dear, before i came here. yet what would she do with us? she can't very well take us out to africa. i, at least, should not know what to do in those places." it was a wooing that was not long a-doing. her ladyship and mr. jardine came in one evening in time for afternoon tea. the days were closing in by this time, and a fire was welcome. there had been rain, and the fire sparkled on her ladyship's black curls and her eyelashes as she stood by the fire, taking off the long cloak in which she wrapped herself when she went out walking in bad weather. her eyes were at once bright and shy. "congratulate me," she said. "he has consented to take me with him. he held out for a long time, but i was determined to go. as though i should take the chances!" "it is i who am to be congratulated," said paul jardine, and the happiness in his voice thrilled his listeners. "of course, i wouldn't have listened to her if she wasn't so splendidly strong. it will be an odd place for a honeymoon. do you think i ought not to have consented to take her, mrs. morres?" "for how long?" mrs. morres's voice shook. all the sibylline quality was gone from it now. "for a year. i must fulfil my engagements. afterwards i must do my best for them over here. i never thought that i could do as i would as a married man. do you think i ought not to have consented?" "she would have gone without your consent." lady agatha came over and put a hand on her shoulder, a kind, caressing hand. "you are quite right," she said. "oh, he has wriggled, but it had to be. it had to be, from the first minute we met." "i knew it." "you did, you wise woman. and you will keep house for me when i am gone? you will take care of the dogs for me? you will oscillate between hazels and town? you will keep the places ready against our return? you are never to leave us." mrs. morres's eyes overflowed. "my dear," she said, "it would have broken my heart to have left you. and mary--what is to become of mary?" "i have a plan for mary, unless she will stay here with you." "i must earn my bread," said mary. "for all the bread you eat, i eat four times as much as you. still, you have talents to be used for the many, as sir michael auberon said. i have no right to keep you from them. you will talk to robin drummond about that. he is starting a bureau for purposes of organisation amongst the women. he has had his eye on you. i told him he could not have you. now, it will fill a gap, perhaps. i shall need you again." "the funny thing," said mrs. morres, and the amusement had come back in her voice--"is that colonel st. leger won't like your marriage at all. he has always wanted you to be married. but now--this african marriage--he will talk about it as though you were marrying a man of colour, agatha, my dear. how his eyebrows will go out!" "to think," said mary, with a little sigh, "that the novel is unfinished, after all." "a novel is so much more interesting," said lady agatha, "when you live it, mary. besides, it has troubled me that if i published the novel i must come into competition with the legitimate workers. they should form a trades' union against us, women of leisure and money, to keep us from poaching on their preserves. they really should. my dears, i have a presentiment that the novel never will be finished." chapter xiii the heart of a father oddly enough, seeing the general's feeling towards his sister-in-law, seeing, too, that he and nelly had hardly ever had a thought or taste that was not in common, a certain affection grew up on nelly's part for lady drummond. an acute observer would have said that the affection had something conscience-stricken about it. there were times when nelly's eyes asked pardon of the dowager for some offence committed against her, and this usually happened when the dowager was making much of her, as of a daughter-in-law who would be dearly welcome when the time came. something of the love lady drummond had borne for her husband had passed on to his niece. she was immensely proud, in her secret heart, of the deeds of the drummonds. despite her hectoring ways, she looked up to and admired the general, although he had been too simple to discern the fact and profit by it. robin's divergence from his father's ways was, secretly, an acute disappointment to her. when she caressed nelly with a warmth which none of her friends would have credited her with possessing, there was compunction with the tenderness. the child ought to have had the delight of marrying a soldier, a hero whom she could adore, as she herself had adored her gerald. when she pressed the golden head to her angular bosom she was asking the girl's pardon for her son's shortcomings. "i shall have heroic grandchildren," she said to herself. "although robin is a throwback to the quaker, the grandsons of gerald and denis drummond must be fighting men." she pondered long over those grandchildren, and derived a grim pleasure from the thought of them. she even spoke of them to the general, when nelly was out of hearing. "it was a disappointment to both of us that robin is a man of peace," she said, acknowledging the fact for the first time. "not but that he is a good boy--a very good boy. the fighting strain will recur in the next generation. we shall have soldiers among our grandchildren." "grandchildren!" growled the general, turning very crimson in the face. "i call it indelicate to discuss such subjects. as for nelly's marrying, why, she's only a child. i should feel very little obliged to the man who would want to take her from me at her age." "nelly is nineteen," the dowager reminded him, "and the marriage can't be delayed much longer. it ought to be a source of satisfaction to us that the young people are so pleased with the arrangement. i know that robin has never thought of anyone but his cousin, and i am sure it is just the same with the dear child." the general grew red again--not this time with anger, but rather as though the dowager's words had stirred some sense of guilt in his breast. he muttered something grumpily, and, discovering that his favourite pipe must have been left in his own den, he escaped from lady drummond for a while. as a matter of fact, his mind had been plotting mischief. he did not care so much that it was against the dowager, if it had not been that the memory of his dead brother came in to complicate things. and, after all, his plotting seemed to have come to naught. he had gone so far as to invite young langrishe to dinner for a specific occasion, without result. the young man had written to say that he had effected his exchange into the --th madras light infantry, and would be so very much occupied up to the time of his departure that he feared dining out was out of the question. the general had known he was going away. he had known it before he received that letter, before he had seen it in the gazette. he had known from the day the regiment had gone by without captain langrishe in his wonted place. he had felt with his arm about his girl's shoulders the sudden shock that had passed through her. so she had not known either. he had not prepared her. there was not an understanding between them. he saluted as light-heartedly as ever to all appearance, but he did not look at nelly. nor did he make any remark on the change in the regiment. after that day the passing of his "boys" ceased to be the old joy to him. something was gone out of the ceremonial. it took all his _esprit de corps_ to pretend to himself as well as to others that he felt no difference. he felt the limpness and dejection in nelly. he saw that her roses had faded, that she walked without the old joyous spring. he heard her no longer talking to the dogs, trilling to the canary. it was january now, and raw, cold weather. it seemed as though the sunshine had vanished from the house for good. the general had been wont to say that the cheerfulness of his house was within it, not without it. he had come home from london fog and rain with a happy sense of its bright fires and spaciousness, its carpets and furniture, not so new that a muddy foot or a stray shower of tobacco-ash was a thing to be feared--old friends every one of them. the love and loyalty within his doors were something that came out to welcome the general's home-coming like a sudden firelight streaming out into the black night. now his little girl was unhappy, and the shadow of her unhappiness was over his nights and days. it was when he felt this that he had written to captain langrishe, saying nothing to her about it, stealing out, in fact, at night to post the letter secretly, he whose correspondence, such as it was--he was no great penman--had always lain in the letter-basket on the hall table for the servants to scrutinise the addresses if they would before it was posted. when the answer came he congratulated himself on his forethought. luckily, that morning he was first at the breakfast-table. of late nelly, who had been wont to rise as cheerfully as a waking bird, was tardy occasionally. the general suspected broken sleep, and had bidden the servants tenderly not to call her, although the breakfast-table was not the same thing with no bright face and golden head opposite to him. when he had read the letter he thrust it into an inner pocket. the servant, who was attending, went away at the moment, and the general got up quickly, and with a stealthy glance at the door, buried the letter in the heart of the fire, raked the coals over it, and was in his place before the servant returned. "confound the fellow!" he said under his breath. plainly, there was nothing more to be done. the child had to go through it. people had to endure such things. yet he was miserable, watching furtively her dimmed roses and the circles about her eyes. his little nell, who had lived in the sunshine all her days! it was, perhaps, not to be wondered at that, in the perturbation of his mind, the pendulum should have swung towards robin. "confound the fellow!"--(meaning captain langrishe)--"what did he mean by making nelly unhappy?" a still, small voice whispered to the general that the young man was acting on some foolish, overstrained, honourable scruple just as he would have done himself in his youth--nay, to-day, for the matter of that. but he would not listen to the voice. he fretted and fumed, puffed himself up into a great rage as men of his temperament will. confound the fellow! he had gone half-way to meet him, for nelly's sake, and the fellow had refused to budge. confound him and be hanged to him! the general would have used much worse language if the simple piety which hid behind his blusterousness had not come in to restrain him. he blamed himself--to be sure, he blamed himself. what a selfish old curmudgeon he had been, always thinking of himself and his own likes and dislikes! where could his nelly find greater security for happiness than in the keeping of gerald's son? everybody thought well of robin. there had never been anything against him. why, not a week ago, one of the finest soldiers in the army, a field-marshal, a household word in the homes of england, had button-holed the general to congratulate him on a speech of robin's. "that young man will be a credit to you, drummond," he had said. "mark my words, that young man will be a credit to you." and the general had been oddly impressed by the opinion, coming from his old comrade in arms, and one of the finest soldiers that ever stepped. and, to be sure, he had been trying to set nelly against robin all the days of her life. when he had come to this point in his meditations he groaned aloud. a thought had come to him of how little nelly would be really his, married to robin drummond. he would have no need for the house then. he would have to dismiss the servants, the old servants of whom he was fond, who adored him, and go into lodgings. he might keep pat, perhaps. even the dogs would go with nelly. he would never have his girl any more. the dowager would be always there. the dowager would know better than anyone how to set up an invisible barrier between nelly and her father. why, since she had been their neighbour things had not been the same. she had carried nelly hither and thither, to concerts and at homes and picture-galleries and what-not. she talked of presenting her at court, with an air of significance which the general loathed. the question in her eye and smile--the general called it a smirk--the very transparent question was as to whether it was not better to wait and present nelly on her marriage. when the dowager was sly she made the general furious. was his little girl to be married out of hand to robin drummond without being given the chance to see the world and other men? he asked the question hotly, pacing up and down the faded persian rug in his den. then a chill came on his heat. he had not been able to keep nelly from choosing, and she had chosen unwisely. he had had a dream of himself and young langrishe and nelly and the babies in the big happy house. they would belong to him--no one would push him away from his girl. they would be together till they closed his eyes. the thought of it now was like a green oasis in the desert; but it was a mirage, only a mirage! and nelly must not suffer. langrishe had rejected her--rejected that sweet thing, confound him! and there was her cousin robin, patient and faithful, waiting to make her happy. he forgot that once upon a time he had been furious with robin for his patience. robin was a kind fellow, a good fellow. he seemed to be always at the beck and call of his mother and nelly, always ready to escort them. why, only yesterday nelly had said that there was no one so comfortable as robin to go about with, and then, in a fit of compunction, had flown to her father and hugged him hard. "never mind, nell, never mind," the general had said. "i never took you about much, did i? we were great home-keepers, you and i. never seemed to want to gad about, did we? i ought to have taken you about more. it was a dull life for a young girl--a dull life. i ought to be obliged to your aunt for showing me the error of my ways, for making life pleasanter for you." he gulped over the end of the speech. "it was a lovely life," cried nelly wildly, and then burst into tears. the general was terribly distressed. he had had no experience of nelly in tears. she had never wept or fainted or done any of the interesting things young ladies were supposed to do in his time. she had been always the light of the house, always happy and healthy and gay. while he looked at the bell uncertainly, being half of a mind to summon assistance, nelly relieved him from his doubt by running away out of the room, and when they met again he did not remind her of the scene. that discretion of his went to her heart. it was so strange and pitiful for him to be discreet, so unlike him. after that he began to praise robin drummond, not too suddenly nor too effusively at first, but by degrees, so as not to awaken nelly's suspicions. he amazed robin drummond by his cordiality in those days, and the young fellow commented on it whimsically to nelly herself. "he has been telling me all my life that i am a poor creature," he said, "and here he is, to all intents and purposes, eating his own words. just fancy his wading through that speech of mine on the estimates and pretending to be interested in it, even praising it, nell. seeing that the speech was all against our maintaining our big standing army, on a motion to cut down the expenditure, it is bewildering. is it a mild joke, nell dear?" "you may call it a joke if you like," she said, her eyes filling with tears. "i call it heart-breaking, heart-breaking. if he would only abuse you as he used to do!" "dear nell, what's up?" asked robin, in great penitence. "i had no idea i was saying anything to hurt you. the dear old man! why, i never resented his abuse. i'd rather he'd abuse me, like a dog, as they say--though i don't see why anyone should want to abuse a dog--if it made you happier." certainly, all nelly's world was very good to her in those days. as for robin drummond, he thought of women with a chivalrous tenderness somewhat strange considering that the dowager was his mother. to him they were something delicate, mysterious, inexplicable. if he had had a sister he would have adored her. not having one, he lavished on nelly the feeling he would have given a sister; and hitherto he had been content with the ardour of his feelings. what could a man wish for sweeter and prettier beside his hearth than little nelly? he had fallen in love with that plan of his mother's for him and nell with lazy contentment. he liked nelly's society, and it did not occur to him that he would be just as well pleased with her daily companionship if he could have it without the tie between them becoming more than cousinly. chapter xiv lovers' parting it might have been better for nelly if her father had told her of those tentative advances to captain langrishe, for then her pride might have come to her aid. as it was, she had nothing to go upon but those looks of his, and his manner to her when they had met at the houses of friends. for they had met, and that was something the general did not know. more, nelly had engineered, with the cleverness of a girl in love, an acquaintance with captain langrishe's sister, a mrs. rooke, who lived in one of the bayswater squares. mrs. rooke was a vivacious little dark woman, with a cheek like a peach's rosy side. she was perfectly happy in her own married life, and she had the happily-married woman's desire to bring lovers together. she had taken a prodigious fancy to nelly. while captain langrishe yet remained in england that house in the bayswater square had an overwhelming attraction for nelly. she had gone there first under the dowager's wing. cyprian rooke, k.c., belonged to an unexceptionable family, and even the proud dowager could find no fault with nelly's friendship for his wife. in those days poor nelly used to feel a perfect monster of deceit. for, first of all, she was deceiving her dear old father. the name of rooke signified nothing one way or the other to him. then there was the dowager, who had proved the most patient and considerate of chaperons, sitting wide-eyed and cheerful till her charge had danced through the programme if it so pleased her; going hither and thither to crowded at homes, attending first nights at the play--doing, in fact, everything to give nelly a good time. to be sure, the dowager attached no importance to the name of langrishe any more than the general did to that of rooke. mrs. rooke gave a good many dances after christmas, and nelly was at them all. sometimes robin was there, sometimes that was not possible. and robin was out of his element at such gatherings, since he did not dance and could find no conversation to his mind while he leant against the wall of the ball-room or hung about the doors. life was so full of work for him that it seemed unreasonable to keep him where there was nothing he could do. captain langrishe turned up at the dances as unfailingly as nelly herself. he came in spite of many resolutions to the contrary, as the moth comes to singe its wings in the flame of the candle. he did not make nelly conspicuous for the dowager or anyone else to see. sometimes he asked her for several dances. again, he would be merely polite in asking her for one; and would yield her up coldly to her next partner and never come to her side again for the rest of the evening. unlike sir robin, he danced conspicuously well. nelly had thrilled to a speech of robin's: "one cannot despise the art of dancing for a man when a fellow like that thinks it worth his while to excel in it." one night, when the guests had departed, mrs. rooke had something to tell her husband. "that little wretch, nelly drummond!" she said. "i thought she was as innocent and candid as a child. would you believe it that all the time she has been engaged to that gawky cousin of hers?" "my dear belinda, all what time?" "well, for a lawyer, cyprian----" "i know i'm obtuse, but the law doesn't favour deductions. all what time?" "why, all the time poor godfrey's been falling head over ears in love with her." mr. rooke whistled. he was fond of his wife's brother. "are you sure, bel? i noticed particularly that he was dancing with the wallflowers to-night. he's a good fellow, so that didn't surprise me. now you mention it, i caught sight of the little girl dancing with jack menzies. she didn't look particularly happy." "she hasn't been looking particularly happy. i have been imagining that godfrey's poverty stood between them. he is so impracticable. and i have been making opportunities for them to meet. after all, she is sir denis drummond's only child, and is sure to be sufficiently well off. and here, after all my trouble, i find she is engaged to her cousin. i wonder what she can see in that ugly stick to prefer him to godfrey!" "she may not prefer him, my dear. it may be a marriage of convenience. and drummond is not a stick. that is your feminine prejudice. he is a very clever fellow, although he has got the socialistic bee in his bonnet. however, he's young, and has time to mend his ways." "i don't want to discuss him. how coldblooded you are, cyprian! i can only think of my poor godfrey going off to the ends of the earth, and his being deceived and hurt by that heartless girl." "you will let him know?" "i certainly shall. he ought to know. it may be the quickest way to make him forget her." "since he seems to have made up his mind to go away without speaking to her, i can't see that any great harm has been done," mr. rooke said, with his masculine common-sense. "i shall never forgive her," mrs. rooke retorted, with true feminine inconsequence. she took an early opportunity of telling her brother what the dowager had told her. the occasion was in her own drawing-room at the afternoon-tea hour, and, since the room was only lit by firelight and a tall standard lamp, his face, where he stood by the mantel-shelf, was in shadow. there had been something portentous in the manner of the telling. for a few seconds he kept silence. then he spoke very quietly. "i hope miss drummond may be happy," he said. he did not trouble to put on a pretence of indifference with bel, just as he did not wish to talk about it. he went on to speak of ordinary topics. that evening he stayed to dinner. he had only a week more in england. under the electric light at the dinner-table his haggardness was revealed. "for once," said cyprian rooke afterwards, "your discovery wasn't a mare's nest, my dear bel. godfrey looks hard hit." the week turned round quietly. nelly had not heard definitely the date of captain langrishe's departure. for six days she kept away from the rookes' house. on that last evening he had been icily cold. the poor girl was in torture. all the week she was calling pride to her aid. the sixth day it refused to bolster her up any longer. the sixth day she met at lunch a friend of hers and belinda rooke's. she asked a question about the rookes with averted eyes. "poor girl," said the friend; "she is in grief over godfrey langrishe. he sails to-morrow." the rest of that luncheon-party was a phantasmagoria of faces and voices to poor nelly. he was going, and she would never see him again, although he had shown her by a thousand infallible signs that he loved her. despite his occasional coldness, she was sure he loved her. her pride was down with a vengeance. she felt nothing at the moment but a desire to see him before he should go--just to see him, to see the lighting up of his gloomy eyes, as they had lit up on seeing her suddenly before he could get his face under control. after that one meeting, the deluge! but she must see him--she must see him for the last time. the kindly hostess insisted on her going home in a cab. when she had been driven some distance, nelly pushed up the little trapdoor of the hansom and gave another address than sherwood square. having done it, she felt happier. however it ended, she was making a last attempt to see him. she could not have endured a passive acquiescence in her destiny, whatever was to be the end of it. the luncheon-party had been prolonged, and the gas-lamps in the streets were lit. it was the close of the short winter's day. night came prematurely between the high bayswater houses. it was almost dark when she stood at last on mrs. rooke's doorstep, asking herself what she should do if mrs. rooke was away from home. mrs. rooke was out, as it happened, but the maid-servant, who knew nelly, and, like all servants, had been captivated by her pleasant, friendly ways, invited her in to await the lady's return. mrs. rooke was expected back to tea. with a smile on her lips she held the drawing-room door open for nelly to enter. nelly passed through. there was a big french screen by the door. she had passed beyond it and out into the warm firelit room before she realised that there was another occupant. someone stood up from the couch by the fireplace as she came towards it. fate had been on her side for once. the person was captain langrishe. "my sister will not be very long, miss drummond," he began, in a tone he tried in vain to make indifferent. "i hope you won't mind waiting in my company." mind waiting, indeed! to nelly, as to himself, the seconds were precious ones. mrs. rooke was shopping on that particular afternoon. it was a kind fate that made it so difficult for her to find just the things she wanted, that sent half-a-dozen acquaintances and friends in her way. he took nelly's hand in his. it was quite cold and clammy, although it had come out of a satin-lined muff. the hand trembled. "i heard you were going to-morrow," she said. "i'm so glad i am in time to wish you _bon voyage_." "won't you sit down?" he set a chair for her in front of the fire. the flames lit up her golden hair, and revealed her charming face in its becoming setting of the sables she wore. he sat in his obscure corner, watching her with moody eyes. he said to himself that he would never see her again, yet he laboured to make ordinary everyday talk. he asked after the general, and regretted that the hurry of these latter days had prevented his calling at sherwood square. "we miss you at the head of the squadron," said nelly, innocently. "it isn't the same thing now that there is a stranger." "ah!" a flame leaped into his eyes. he leant forward a little. "that reminds me i ought not to go without making a confession." he was taking a pocket-book from his breastpocket. he opened it, and held it under nelly's eyes. there was a piece of blue ribbon there. she recognised it with a great leap of her heart. it was her own ribbon which she had lost that spring day as she stood on the balcony looking down at the soldiers. "you recognise it? it was yours. the wind blew it down close to my hand. i caught it. i have kept it ever since. may i keep it still? it can do no harm to anybody, my having it--may i keep it?" she answered something under her breath, which he construed to be "yes." she had been feeling the cruelty of it all, that their last hour together should be taken up by talking of commonplaces. at the sudden change in his tone--although it was unhappy, there was passion in it, and the chill seemed to pass away from her heart--the tears filled her eyes, overflowed them, ran warmly down her cheeks. at the sight of those tears the young man forgot everything, except that she was lovely and he loved her and she was crying for him. he leaped to her side and dropped on his knees. he put both his arms about her and pressed her closely to him. "are you crying because i am going, my darling?" he said. "good heavens! don't cry--i'm not worth it. and yet i shall remember, when the world is between us, that you cried because i was going, you angel of mercy." an older woman than nelly might have had the presence of mind to ask him why he was going. but she was silent. she felt it over-whelmingly sweet to be held so, to feel his hand smoothing her hair. the bunch of lilies of the valley she had been wearing was crushed between his breast and her breast. the sweetness of them rose up as something exquisite and forlorn. his hand moved tremblingly over her hair to her cheek. "give me a kiss, nelly," he said, "and i will go. just one kiss. i shall never have another in all my days. good-bye, my heart's delight." for a second their lips clung together. then his arms relaxed. he put her down gently into a chair. she lay back with closed eyes. she heard the door shut behind her. then she sprang to her feet, realising that he was gone and it was too late to recall him. why should he go? she asked herself, as, with trembling hands, she arranged the disorder of her hair. then the merely conventional came in, as it will even at such tense moments. she asked herself how she would look to his sister, if she appeared at this moment; to the maid, who might be expected at any moment bringing in the lamp. the room was dark but for the firelight. how would she look, with her tear-stained visage and the disorder of her appearance? she could not sit and make small talk. that was a heroism beyond her. and she was afraid to speak to anyone lest she should break down. she adopted a cowardly course. afterwards she must explain it to mrs. rooke somehow. she put the consideration of how out of sight: it could wait till the turmoil of her thoughts was over. she stole from the room, let herself out quietly, and was grateful for the dark and the cool, frosty air. about five minutes after she had gone mrs. rooke came in laden with small parcels. "the captain and miss drummond are in the drawing-room, ma'am," said the maid. "then you can bring tea." mrs. rooke opened the drawing-room door leisurely, turning the handle once or twice before she did so. she was excited at the thought of the things that might be happening the other side of the door. supposing that nelly had discovered that life with a poor foot-captain was a more desirable thing than life with a well-endowed baronet, a coming man in the political world to boot! supposing--there was no end to the suppositions that passed through mrs. rooke's busy brain in a few seconds of time. then--she entered the room and found emptiness. "you are sure that neither the captain nor miss drummond left a message?" she said to the maid who brought the tea. "quite sure, ma'am. i had no idea they were gone." "do you suppose they went away together, jane?" mrs. rooke was ready to accept a crumb of possible comfort from her handmaid. "i do remember now, ma'am, that when i was pulling down the blind upstairs i heard the hall-door shut twice. i never thought of looking in the drawing-room, ma'am. i made sure that the noise of the blinds had deceived me into taking next-door for ours." "ah, thank you, jane, that will do." the omens were not at all propitious. mrs. rooke was fain to acknowledge as much to herself dejectedly. nor did cyprian think them propitious when taken into counsel. when she went downstairs, she found that her brother had come in. he was to spend the last evening at his sister's house. captain langrishe's face, however, did not invite questions. he made no allusion at all to the happenings of the afternoon, and his sister felt that she could not ask him. she had a heavy heart for him as she bade him good-night, although she called something after him with a cheerful pretence about their rendezvous next morning. "it _is_ nine-thirty at fenchurch street, isn't it?" she asked. "do you think you will ever manage it, bel?" captain langrishe smiled at her haggardly. "oh, yes, easily--by staying up all night," she answered. but her heart was as heavy as lead for him. chapter xv the general has an idea when sir denis came home from his club that evening he learned that miss nelly had gone to bed with a headache. pat, who told him, looked away as he gave the information, as though he did not believe in his own words. miss nelly with a headache! why, god bless her, she had never had such a thing, not from the day she was born! to be sure, the whole affectionate household knew that there was some cloud over miss nelly. they didn't talk much about it. pat and bridget knew better than to have the servants' hall gossiping over the master and miss nelly. a new under-housemaid, who was greatly addicted to the reading of penny novelettes, suggested that miss nelly was being forced into marrying her cousin by the machinations of his mother, who was not _persona grata_ with the servants' hall. but pat had nipped the young person's imaginings in the bud. "she may be contrairy enough to give the general the gout in his big toe and the twisht in his timper, as often she's done. but she can't make our miss nelly marry where she don't like. if you'd put your romantic notions into your scrubbin' now, miss higgs; but i suppose it's your name is the matter with you, and you can't help it." the under-housemaid, whose name happened to be gladys higgs, was reduced to tears by this remark, and the tears brought the kind-hearted pat to repentance for his hastiness. "whatever the dickens came over me," he imparted to bridget when they were having a snack of bread and cheese between meals in the room allotted to the cook, who was now also housekeeper, "to go sharpenin' my tongue on that foolish little girl? it isn't for you an' me to be makin' fun of their quare names. 'tis no credit to us if we have elegant names in the counthry we come from." "aye, indeed. where would you find pleasanter thin macgeoghegan or mcgroarty or magillacuddy? there was a polisman in our town by the name of mcguffin. i always thought it real pleasant." "sure what would be on the little girl?--'tis miss nelly, i mean," said pat, in a manner that showed his real anxiety. "she scared me, so she did, with her nonsense, that gladys. for it stands to reason that miss nelly wouldn't mind marryin' sir robin--isn't he the fittest match for her?--if it wasn't that there might be someone else. and who could it be, i ask you, unbeknownst to us that has watched over her from a babby?" "you're a foolish man to be takin' that much notice of that gladys girl and her talk. why shouldn't miss nelly have a headache? why, i remember the miss o'flahertys, lord dunshanbo's daughters, when i was a little girl; and 'twas faintin' on the floor they were every other minute and everyone havin' to run and cut their stay-laces. they were fifty, too, if they were a day, so they ought to have had more sense. why wouldn't miss nelly have quality ways?" "young ladies aren't like that nowadays," pat said dolefully. "'tis the bicycle and the golf. they've no stay-laces to cut, so they don't go faintin' away. and miss nelly, poor lamb, she'd never be thinkin' of doing such a thing." he went off sorrowfully, shaking his head. the mysteriousness of the change in miss nelly perturbed him the more. he looked away from the general when he gave the information about the headache. "miss nelly said, sir," he volunteered, "that she was to be called, unless she was asleep, when you came home to dinner. shall i send up fanny to call her?" "not for worlds," said the general. "i'll go myself. she mustn't be disturbed, poor child, if she has a headache." he went upstairs softly, pursing out his lips as he went along in troubled thought. he opened the door of his daughter's room, and spoke her name in a whisper. there was not a sound. "fast asleep," he said, with a sigh, as he went to his dressing-room to dress for dinner. that was something he would not have omitted for any possible calamity that could befall him. he ate his dinner in lonely state. bridget had done her best by way of expressing her sympathy, but he ate without his usual enjoyment. "sure," said pat afterwards, "he didn't know but what it was sawdust he was atin' instead of that beautiful volly-vong of yours. he could barely touch the mutton, and a beautiful little joint it was. sure, there's a sad change come over the house, anyway." the general gave orders that miss nelly was not to be disturbed again that night. after dinner he retired to his den and made a pretence of reading the papers, but his heart wasn't in it. he missed even a speech of robin's which would have enraged him in happier times. he sat turning over the sheets and sighing to himself now and again; only when pat came in with a pretence of replenishing the fire--it was pat's way of showing his silent sympathy--was the general absorbed in his newspaper. not that it imposed on pat, who mentioned afterwards to bridget that he didn't believe the master knew a word of what he was looking at. about half-past nine the general relinquished that pretence of reading. he felt the house to be nearly as sad as though someone were lying dead in it, and he could support it no longer. he must find out what was the matter with the child, or at least show her how her old father's heart bled for her. he got up quietly from his big easy-chair, from which he had been used to survey his nelly's face at the other side of the fireplace for many a happy year. to be sure, it had not been the same since the dowager had come, and nelly had gone gadding of evenings. still, she had always come in to kiss him before she went off, looking radiant and sweet, with the hood of her evening cloak over her bright head and framing the dearest face in the world. she had always clung to him with her soft arms about his neck, and he had not minded her absence since she was enjoying herself as she ought at her age. he climbed up the stairs of the high house. nelly had chosen a bedroom right at the top, whence she could look away over the london roofs to the mists that hid the country. the blinds were up and the cold winter moon lay on the girl's bed. the general came in tip-toe, trying to avoid creaking on the bare boards, which nelly preferred to carpets. but his precaution was unnecessary. she was lying wide-awake. the darkness of her eyes in her face, unnaturally white from the moonlight, frightened him. he had a memory of nelly's mother as he had seen her newly-dead, and the memory scared him. "is that you, papa?" nelly asked, half-lifting herself on her pillow. "come and sit down. i was thinking of dressing myself and coming down to you." "you mustn't do that if your headache is not better." "it was nothing at all of a headache," she said with a weary little sigh, "but i must have fallen asleep. if i had not i should have come down to dinner. i only awoke just before the church clock struck nine. were you very lonely?" "i am always lonely without you, nell. you have had nothing to eat, have you? no. well, perhaps you'd better come down and have a little meal in the study by the fire. unless you'd prefer a fire up here. the room strikes cold. to be sure, the windows are open. there is snow coming, i think." "i like the cold. i'm not hungry, but i shall get up presently. i haven't really gone to bed." she put out a chilly little hand over her father's, and he took it into his. when had they wanted anyone but each other? what new love could ever be as true and tender as his? "oh!" cried nelly, burying her face in her pillow. "i'm a wicked girl to be discontented. i ought to have everything in the world, having you." "and when did my nelly become discontented?" he asked, with a passionate tenderness. "what has clouded over my girl, the light of the house? what is it, nell?" he had been both father and mother to her. for a second or two she kept her face buried, as if she would still hold her secret from him. his hand brushed the pale ripples of her hair, as another hand had brushed them a short time back. he expected her to answer him, and he was waiting. "it is captain langrishe," she whispered at last. "his boat goes from tilbury to-morrow morning." "from tilbury." the general remembered that grogan of the artillery, the club bore, had a daughter and son-in-law sailing from tilbury next morning, and had suggested his accompanying him to the docks. "why he should have asked me," the general had said irritably, "when i can barely endure him for half-an-hour, is more than i can imagine!" "what is wrong between you and langrishe, nell?" he asked softly. "i thought he was a good fellow. i know he's a good soldier; and a good soldier must be a good fellow. has anyone been making mischief?" he sent a sudden wrathful thought towards the dowager. who else was so likely to make mischief? the thought that someone had been making mischief was almost hopeful, since mischief done could be undone if one only set about it rightly. "no one," nelly answered mournfully. the general suddenly stiffened. his one explanation of langrishe's pride standing in the way was forgotten; it was not reason enough. was it possible that langrishe had been playing fast-and-loose with his girl? was it possible--this was more incredible still--that he did not return her innocent passion? for a few seconds he did not speak. his indignation was ebbing into a dull acquiescence. if langrishe did not care--why, no one on earth could make him care. no one could blame him even. "you must give up thinking of him, nell," he said at last. he could not bring himself to ask her if langrishe cared. "you must forget him, little girl, and try to be satisfied with your old father till someone more worthy comes along." "but he is worthy." nelly spoke with a sudden flash of spirit. "and he cares so much. i always felt he cared. but i never knew how much till we met at his sister's this afternoon and he bade me good-bye." "then why is he going?" the general asked, with pardonable amazement. "oh, i don't know," nelly answered irritably. she had never been irritable in all her sunny life. "but although he is gone i am happier than i have been for a long time since i know he cares so much." "i'll tell you what,"--the general got up quite briskly--"dress yourself, nell, and come down to the study, and we'll talk things over. you may be sure, little girl, that your old father will leave no stone unturned to secure your happiness. i'll ring for your dinner to be brought up on a tray and we'll have a happy evening together. and you'd better have a fire here, nell. it's a very pretty room, my dear, with all your pretty fal-lals, but it strikes me as being very chilly." he went downstairs and rang the bell for miss nelly's dinner. the fire had been stoked in his absence, and was now burning gloriously. he drew nelly's chair closer to it and a screen around the chair. he put a cushion for her back, and a hassock for her feet. the little acts were each an eloquent expression of his love for her. he was suddenly, irrationally hopeful. he reproached himself because he had done so little. he had thought he was doing a great deal when he, an old man and so high in his profession, had made advances to the young fellow for his girl's sake. to be sure, he had been certain that langrishe was in love with nell, else the thing had not been possible. now that his love was beyond doubt the old idea recurred to him. it must be some chivalrous, overstrained scruple about his poverty which came between poor nell and her happiness. standing by the fire, waiting for nelly, he rubbed his hands together with a return of cheerfulness. in a few minutes she came gliding in shyly. that confidence had only been possible in the dark. the general felt her embarrassment and busied himself in stirring the fire. pat came up with the tray--such a dainty tray, loaded with good things. the general called for a glass of wine for miss nelly. he waited on her with a tender assiduity and she forced herself to eat, saying to herself with passionate gratitude that she would be a brute if she did not swallow to please him. the wine brought a colour to her cheeks. she watched her father with shy eyes. what could he do to bring her and her lover together, seeing that it was captain langrishe's last night in england and that he would not return for five years? five years spread out an eternity to nelly's youthful gaze. she might be dead before five years were over. this afternoon she had felt no great desire to live, but that despair, of course, was wrong. she had not remembered at the moment how dear she and her father were to each other. as long as they were together there must be compensations for anything in life. she had expected her father to speak, but he did not. while he had been standing by the fire awaiting her coming he had had qualms. supposing she had made a mistake about the young fellow's feeling for her. such things happened with girls sometimes. supposing--no, it was better to keep silence for the present. if things turned out well, it would be time enough to tell nelly. if things turned out well! what, after all, were five years? to the general, for whom the wheel of the days and the years had been turning giddily fast and ever faster these many years back, five years counted for little. he had a hale, hearty old life. surely the lord in his goodness would permit him to look on nelly's happiness and his grandchildren! it was another thing to think of nelly's children when the match was not of the dowager's making. he inspired nelly with something of his own hopefulness. she saw that he had some design which she was not to share. well, she could trust his love to move mountains for her happiness. the evening was far better than she could have hoped for, and she went to bed comforted. "early breakfast, nell," he said as they parted. "i've ordered it for eight o'clock. but i shan't expect to see you unless you feel like it. these cold mornings it's allowable to be a little lazy." this from the general, who rose at half-past six all the year round and had his cold bath even when he had to break the ice on it. nelly's laziness, too, was a matter of recent date. she had always loved the winter and had seemed to glow the fresher the colder the weather. the general thought of himself as an arch-diplomatist, but he was transparent enough to his daughter. "he doesn't want me at breakfast," she said to herself. "he doesn't want me to ask questions. so i shall save him embarrassment by not appearing." the next morning there was no general to see the squadron of the old regiment gallop past. no family prayers either. what were things coming to? the servants asked each other. and second breakfast at nine for miss nelly! "take my word for it," said bridget to pat, "the next thing'll be miss nelly havin' her breakfast in bed like lord dunshanbo's daughters. five of them there was, pat, all old maids. and they used to sit round in their beds, every one with a satin quilt, and their hair in curl-papers, and a newspaper spread out to save the quilt." "'tis too early and too cowld," said pat, interrupting this reminiscence, "for the master to be goin' out. and he doesn't like bein' put out of his habits, not by the half of a second. i used to think before i was a soldier that punctuality was the most onnecessary thing on earth, but i've come to like it somehow." "the same here," said bridget, "though it wasn't in my blood. i wondher what they'd think of us at home?" chapter xvi the leading and the light the general was at fenchurch street by half-past nine. he rather expected to see old grogan on the platform, and was not sure whether he was relieved or disappointed by his absence. on the one hand, he could hardly have borne grogan's twaddle on the journey to tilbury, his mind being engrossed as it was. on the other, he looked to him to cover his presence at the boat. now that he was started on the adventure he was nervously anxious lest he should compromise his girl by betraying to langrishe the errand he was come on, unless, indeed, langrishe gave him the lead. he was as sensitive as nelly herself could have been about offering her where she was not desired or was likely to be rejected. but he assured himself that everything would be right. in the sudden surprise of seeing him, langrishe would say or do something that would give him a lead. he would be able to bring back a message of hope to nelly. five years--after all, what were five years? especially to a girl as young as nelly. they could wait very well till langrishe came home again. at the booking-office he was told that the special train for the _sutlej_ had just gone. another train for tilbury was leaving in five minutes. "you will get in soon after the special," the booking-clerk assured him. "plenty of time to see your friends before she sails. why, she's not due to sail till twelve o'clock. there'll be a deal of luggage to be got on board." the general unfolded his _standard_ in the railway carriage, and turned to the principal page of news. a big headline, followed by a number of smaller ones, caught his eye: "outrage at shawur. an english officer and five sepoys caught in a trap. death of major sayers. regiment sent in pursuit. statement in the house." the general bent his brows over the report. he had known poor sayers--a most distinguished soldier, but brave to rashness. and the wazees tribe, treacherous rascals! the general had some experience of them too. ah, so mordaunt was sent in pursuit. the tribe had retired after the murder to its fastnesses in the hills. he remembered those fortified towers in the hill valleys. he had had to smoke them out once like rats in a hole. ah, poor sayers! the brutes! and sayers had a young wife! he lifted his head from the paper, and stared out of the carriage windows, where tiny cottages, with neat white stones for their garden borders, showed that the train was passing through a residential district much affected by retired sailor-men. the mast of a ship seemed to be a favourite ornament, and a little flag was hoisted on many lawns. flakes of dry snow came in the wind, but, cold as it was, a good many of the old sailors were out pottering about their tiny gardens. here a glimpse of the river, or a church spire with many graves nestled under it, came to break the monotony of the little houses. the general looked without seeing. he was thinking of sayers' young wife--to be sure, she was not so young now: she must be well over thirty--an innocent-faced creature, sitting at the piano in a white gown, singing, while he and poor sayers paced the garden-walk in the twilight. poor woman! how was she to bear it? those knives, too! the general ground his teeth in fury. then suddenly another aspect of the matter flashed upon him, so suddenly that he almost leaped in his seat. why, the --th madras light infantry--he remembered now--it was langrishe's regiment. how extraordinary that he should not have remembered before! it was the regiment sent in pursuit. langrishe would fall in for some fighting--he would find it ready-made to his hand. those little frontier wars were endless things once they started. and what toll they took of precious human lives! in the last one more young fellows of the general's acquaintance had been killed than he liked to remember. such deaths, too! even the bravest soldier might well shrink from the fiendish things the wazees were capable of. suddenly the train pulled up abruptly, so abruptly that for a few seconds it quivered as a horse will after being hard-driven. the general went to the window and looked out. the houses had been left behind and around them was a country of grey mud-flats with the river dragging its sluggish length through it like a great serpent. there was a windmill on the horizon, breaking the uniform grey of land and river and sky. the sky was heavy with coming snow. the guard of the train was standing on the line, beating his two arms against his breast to warm them, and answering stolidly the impatient questions of the passengers. "obstruction on the line in front, sir," he said, addressing nobody in particular. "waggon broke away from the siding and got on to our track. there's a breakdown gang doing its level best to get us clear. how long? can't say, i'm sure, sir. matter of half an hour, maybe." the matter of half an hour became a matter of three-quarters, of an hour, of an hour and a quarter. the train grumbled from end to end. here and there a particularly indignant passenger got out with the expressed intention of walking to his destination. the officials bore it all patiently. it was no fault of theirs. the breakdown gang, was doing its best. it was a very lucky thing the runaway had been discovered just before the train came round the corner. the train for the _sutlej_ must have had a narrow shave of meeting it. the general sat in his compartment, which he had to himself, with his watch in his hand. he was thinking of sayers and sayers' young wife. mordaunt was not married, but he had an old mother at home in england. it was bad enough for the men, the brave fellows. but that women should have to suffer such things through their love was intolerable. the cold intensified. philosophical passengers either wrapped themselves in their rugs or got out and walked up and down, stamping their feet, their hands in their coat-pockets. the general sat, quiet as a fate, staring at his watch. his thoughts were tending towards a certain conclusion. at first he had been merely impatient for the train to get on. as time passed he became more impatient as it was borne in on him that he might possibly be too late for the _sutlej_. he might lose the chance of looking in langrishe's eyes and getting the lead he desired so that he might say the words which would bring happiness to his nelly. still the time went on. his moustache became little icicles. if anyone had been looking at him they might have thought that he suggested being frozen himself, so stiff and grey was he. they were within a few miles of tilbury. it was now half-past eleven. the _sutlej_ was to sail at twelve. was there any chance of his being there in time? the guard had said half an hour! if he had not, the general might have walked with those other impatient passengers. but if the general was a religious man--nay, rather because he was a religious man--he looked for signs and portents from god for the direction of his everyday life. he believed that god, amid all his whirling world of stars and all his ages, had leisure to attend to every unit of a life upon earth. he believed in special providences. everything that was dear to him or near to his heart he commended to god in his prayers. he had prayed for direction and guidance in this matter of his girl and young langrishe. he had thought to do his best. well, was not the breakdown of the train a sign that his best was not god's best? at ten minutes to twelve the track was free, and the train resumed its journey. it was now one chance in a thousand that the general would not be too late. if that chance came, if he saw langrishe he would take it as a sign that god approved his first intention. if the _sutlej_ had sailed--well, that, too, was the leading and the light. as they ran into tilbury station a train was standing at the departure platform. the general beckoned to a porter. "do you know if the _sutlej_ has sailed?" "yes, sir--sailed at ten minutes to twelve. might catch her at southampton, sir, perhaps. there's a good many people as well as you disappointed in this 'ere train. there's another train back in three minutes." "when is the next train?" "three hours' time." the general went to the door of the carriage and looked out; then retired hastily. he had caught sight of grogan and mrs. grogan and a number of boys and girls of all ages. not for worlds would he have let grogan see him. the amazement at seeing him, the questions about his presence there, grogan's laugh, grogan's slap on the back, would be more than the general could bear at this moment. "i shall wait for the next train," he said to the astonished porter. the porter had not thought of tilbury as a place where the casual visitor desired to wait for three hours. the general remained in the train till the other had steamed out of the station. when all danger was over he alighted and walked to the hotel of many partings. he ordered his lunch, a chop and a vegetable, biscuits and cheese. while his chop was cooking he would stretch his legs, cramped by that long time in the train. he walked along the docks, dodging lorries and waggons, getting out at the side of a basin, with a clear walk along its edge. it was empty--the _sutlej_ had left it only three-quarters of an hour ago. he paced up and down by the grey water, lost in thought. the _sutlej_ had sailed, ten minutes before the time anticipated. god had given him the sign. he had turned him from his presumptuous attempt to be providence to his nelly. the general never had been, never could be, passive. he was made for the activities of life. yet his religious ideal was passivity--to be in the hands of god expecting, accepting, his will for all things. it was an ideal he had never attained to, and it was, perhaps, therefore the dearer. he was oblivious of the cold, of the creeping water, of the thickening flakes in the air which nearly blotted out the silent ship the other side of the basin. he saw nothing but the pointing finger, the finger that pointed away from the course he had marked out for himself. he felt uplifted, glad, as one who has escaped a great peril. was his nelly to suffer the torture of an engagement to a man who would presently be every hour in danger of a horrible death? was she, poor child, to suffer like mrs. sayers? like poor old mrs. mordaunt? no. she must be saved from the possibility of that. he would say nothing. he would have to endure the looks she would send him from under her white eyelids, the looks of wistful entreaty. after all, he had not _said_ he was going to do anything. he had implied it, to be sure, but he had not committed himself to anything very definite. perhaps nelly would not discover, for a time at least, the dangerous service langrishe had gone on. she was no more fond of the newspapers than any other young girl. for the moment he was grateful to the dowager that she claimed so much of nelly's time. he began to look forward with a fearful anticipation to nelly's marriage to her cousin. something must be settled at once, before she could begin to grieve over langrishe. he would be alone, of course, but nelly would be in harbour. he did so much justice to robin that he believed her happiness would be safe with him. he felt as if he must go home and put matters in train at once. he was impatient till nelly was safe. it did not occur to him that he was, perhaps, once more wresting the conduct of his daughter's happiness from the hand in whose guidance he humbly trusted. he awoke with a start to the fact that he had been more than half an hour pacing along by the water's edge. he hurried back to the hotel. fortunately, his chop was not put on the grill till he returned, and it was served to him piping hot, with tomatoes and a bottle of burton. rather to his amazement, he enjoyed it thoroughly, but when he had finished it he had still more than an hour to wait. he drove across country to another station, and arrived home early in the afternoon. during the return journey his mind was quite calm and unperturbed. he had had the guidance he needed, and now he had only to let things be--as though it were in his character to let things be! he dreaded meeting nelly's eyes and welcomed the dowager's presence with effusion. he suggested to the lady that she should dine, and afterwards they would visit a theatre--_a soldier's love_ at the adelphi was well worth seeing, he believed. lady drummond accepted, flattered by this unwonted friendliness. he would hardly let her out of his sight all that afternoon. she was his safeguard against nelly's wondering, reproachful eyes. he had to endure those eyes all the next day. then--the eyes retired in on themselves, became introspective. it was hardly easier for the general, that look of a suffering woman in his nelly's eyes. to be sure, poor nelly had known of that journey to tilbury just as well as if she had accompanied him. the only thing she did not know was that he had failed to see captain langrishe. and his silence--the looks of tender pity he sent her when he thought he was unobserved, what could they mean but that his mediation had been in vain? for some strange, cruel reason, although he loved her and he must know he was breaking her heart, her lover would have none of her. even the knowledge that he loved her ceased to be an anodyne in those days. everyone was so good to her. she seemed to have found a way to the dowager's arid heart, as her own son had not. the dowager seemed dimly aware that nelly was suffering in some way, and was tender to her. she came to the general with a proposal. why should they not all go abroad together and escape the east winds of spring? the general leaped at it. once get nelly abroad and she would know nothing of what was happening on the indian frontier. he, and nelly and the dowager. he had not imagined the dowager in such a party--yet, he shrank from the prolonged _tête-à-tête_ with nell which the trip would have been without the dowager's presence. robin would join them at easter. they could all travel home together. there was a time of bustle when nelly and the dowager were getting their travelling outfits. a spark of excitement, of anticipation, lit up nelly's sad eyes. the general could have hugged the dowager. "your dear father," the dowager said to nelly one day, "how calm he grows as he turns round to old age! i see in him more and more the brother my dear gerald looked up to and reverenced." the peacefulness, the good understanding, had their effect, too, on nelly. it was good that those she loved should dwell together in amity. she was in that state that she could not have endured sharpness or rancour. only pat shook his head disapprovingly. "if he goes on like this," he said, "he'll be goin' to heaven before his time. i'd a deal sooner hear him grumblin' about her ladyship as he used to do. it 'ud be more natural-like, so it would. why would we be callin' him 'old blood and thunder' if 'twas to be like an image he was? och, the ould times were ever the best!" "he'll come to himself yet," said bridget more hopefully. chapter xvii a night of spring the room was a long bare one, with three deep windows. they were all open so that the fog and the noises of the street came in freely. it had for furniture a long office table, an american desk, several cupboards--the door of one of these last stood open, revealing lettered pigeon-holes inside. everywhere there were files, letter-baskets, all manner of receptacles for papers. there were a number of hard, painted chairs. an american clock ticked on the mantel-shelf, a fire burned in the grate behind a high wire screen. the unshaded gas-lights gave the room a dreary aspect it need not have had otherwise. the only occupant of the room was mary gray, who sat at a small table working a typewriter. she had pulled a gas-jet down low over her head, and the light of it was on her hair, bringing out bronze lights in it, on her neck, showing its whiteness and roundness. the machine clicked away busily. sheet after sheet was pulled from it and dropped into a basket. the basket was half-filled with the pile of papers that had fallen into it. suddenly there came a little tap at the door. mary raised her head and looked towards it expectantly as she said, "come in." someone came in, someone whom she had expected to see, although she had said to herself that she supposed the caretaker of the building had grown tired of waiting, and was coming to remind her that the church clock had just struck seven. "ah, sir robin," she said, turning about to shake hands with him. "who would have thought of seeing you? i am just going home." "as i came past this way i looked up and saw your light through the fog. i thought you would be going home, and that you would let me escort you to your own door. there is a bit of a fog really." "i am glad you did not come out of your way. thank you. i shall be ready in a few minutes. you don't mind waiting?" "not at all. may i smoke?" "do. it will be pleasanter than the smell of the fog." "ah! i hadn't noticed the smell. i have a delusion, or do i really smell--violets?" "there are some violets by your elbow. i was wearing them, but they drooped, so i put them into water to revive them." she turned back again to her work, and the clicking of the machine began anew. he leant to inhale the smell of the violets. then, with a glance at her bent head, he drew one from the bunch, and, taking a pocket-book out of his coat-pocket, he opened it, and laid the violet between two of its pages. while he waited he looked about him. the ugliness of the room did not affect him. the flaring gas, the business-like furniture, the unhomely aspect of the place, did not depress him. on the contrary, in his eyes it was pleasant. he always came to it with a sensation of happiness, which was not lessened because he felt half-guilty about it. to him the room was the room which for certain hours of every day contained mary gray. what did it matter if the case was unlovely since it held her? presently the clicking of the machine ceased, and she looked up at him with a smile. "you are very good to wait for me," she said. "am i?" he answered, smiling back at her. "there is not very much to do to-day. the house is not sitting, and my constituency has been less exacting than usual." she put the cover on her machine, locked up her desk, and then retired into a corner, where she changed her shoes, putting her slippers away tidily in a cupboard. she put on her hat, setting it straight before a little glass that hung in one corner. she got into her little blue jacket, with its neat collar and cuffs of astrachan. then she came to him, drawing on her gloves. "i am quite ready now," she said. they lowered the gas, and went down the stone steps side by side. at the foot of the stairs mary stopped to call into the depths of the back premises that she was going home, and a woman's voice bade her good-night. it was cold in the street, and there was a light brown fog through which the street lamps shone yellowly. the omnibuses crept by quietly, in a long string, making a muffled sound in the fog. as they went towards the nearest station a wind suddenly blew in their faces. "it is the west wind," she said. "and it breathes of the spring." "there will be no fog to-night," he answered. "see, it is lifting. the west wind will blow it away." "it comes from fields and woods and mountains and the sea," she said dreamily. the fog was indeed disappearing. the gas-jets shone more clearly; the 'buses broke into a decorous trot. the long line of lights came out suddenly, crossing each other like a string of many-coloured gems. outside the tube station they paused as though the same thought had struck both of them. "it is like the washing of the week before last," mary said, as the indescribable odour floated out to them. "why not take a 'bus?" said he. "the air grows more delicious." "why not, indeed?" she answered. "except that i shall be so late getting home. and it will keep you late for your dinner." "so it will," he said. "to say nothing of your dinner. i know you had only sandwiches and tea for lunch. you have told me that when you go home you make yourself a chafing-dish supper. you must need a meal at this moment. supposing--miss gray, will you do me the honour of dining with me?" "will you let me pay for my dinner? i am a working-woman, and expect to be treated like a man." "if you insist. but i hope you will not insist." she looked at him for a moment hesitatingly. there was no prudery about mary gray. she had become a woman of the world, and she had had no reason to distrust the _camaraderie_ of men or to think it less than honest. "very well, then," she said, "if you will let me pay for your lunch another time." "why, so you shall," he answered. for a usually grave young man he laughed with an uncommon joyousness. "you shall give me one day a french lunch with a bottle of wine thrown in at one-and-sixpence. mind, i must have the wine." "you shall have the wine. but it isn't good form to talk about the price of a lunch you are invited to." laughing light-heartedly, they plunged into a labyrinth of dark streets. the west wind had brought a gentle rain with it now. it was benignant upon their faces, with a suggestion of grasses and spring flowers pushing their heads above the earth. they passed by the soho restaurants, crowded to the doors. they found one at last in a more pretentious street. over the dinner they laughed and talked. there was something intoxicating to robin drummond's somewhat phlegmatic nature in their being together after this friendly fashion. "you have a crease in your forehead, just above your nose," he said, while they waited for their salmon, the waiter having removed the plates from which they had eaten their _bisque_. "have the working women been more unsatisfactory than usual to-day?" "i was not thinking of the working women," she answered. "it is family cares that are on my mind. supposing you had seven young brothers and sisters whom you wanted to help to place out in the world----" "heaven forbid! it's no wonder you look worried. what do you want to do for them, miss gray?" "there's jim. he's seventeen years old. i think he'd make a very good bank-clerk, but at present he wants to go to sea. there isn't the remotest chance of his being able to go to sea. the question is whether he can get a nomination to a bank. it will be quite a step in the social scale if we can manage it for jim." she looked at drummond with her frank, direct gaze, and he blushed awkwardly. "i don't know anything at all about your people, or anything of that sort, miss gray, but if i could help----" "i don't think you could help." mary's big mysterious eyes under their dark lashes, under their beautiful brows, looked at him reflectively. "you see, you don't know anything about us. i am the eldest of a large family. the others are my stepbrothers and sisters. i love them dearly, and i love my stepmother, too. but not like my father--oh, not at all like my father. i would never have left him only he sent me away. lady agatha was very good to me. she paid me a disproportionate salary. and besides--after i had been away from them for a time they could really do very well without me. cis and minnie grew up so fast. to be sure, none of them make up to father for me. but he was really anxious that i should go. he thought i would be cramped at home, after----" she paused, and then went on: "he would never think of himself when it was a question of me." what she was saying did not greatly enlighten him. but, without a doubt, something would come out of the desultory talk by-and-by. as he watched her in the light of the electric candle-lamps on the table, which, sending their shaded light upwards reflected from the white cloth, made her face luminous in the shadow of her cloudy hair, he was struck again by a baffling resemblance to someone he had known. now and again during the months since they had known each other her face had seemed familiar; then the likeness had disappeared; he had forgotten to be curious about it. at this moment the suggestion was very strong. they had the top of the 'bus to themselves as they went on westward. at this hour the traffic was eastward, and the mist of rain saved them from fellow-travellers. they were as much alone as though they were in a desert, up there in the darkness at the back of the bus, with the long line of blurred jewels that were the street lamps stretching away before them. they passed close to the trees overhanging a square, and the branches brushed them. "the sap is stirring in the trees to-night," she said. "can't you smell the sap and the earth?" "i associate you with the country and green things," he answered irrelevantly. "can you tell me, miss gray, how it is that i who have always seen you in london yet always think of you in fields and woods?" she laughed with a fresh sound of mirth. "we met long ago, sir robin," she said. "i have always been wondering how long it would be before you found out." "where?" "think!" a sudden light broke over him. "you were the little girl who came with old lady anne hamilton to the court. it is nine years ago. i never knew your name. lady anne died one long vacation when i was abroad. i did not hear of it for a long time afterwards. i asked my mother once if she knew what had become of you, but she did not. why, to be sure, you are that little girl." "lady anne was very good to me. she gave me an education. only for her the thing i am would not be possible. and i mean to be more than that. do you know that i am writing a book?" "a novel? poems?" "that is what my father's daughter ought to be doing. no--it is a book on the economic conditions of women's work." "it is sure to be good, _citoyenne_." "i am a revolutionary," she said seriously. "i have learnt so much since i have been at this work. i have things to tell. oh, you will see." "i remember lady anne as the staunchest of conservatives." "yes, yet she was tolerant of other opinions in her friends. she was very good to me, dear old lady anne." "to think i should not have remembered!" "i knew you all the time. to be sure, there was your name. i don't think you ever knew my name. you called me mary all the afternoon. do you remember the puppy you sent me--the clumber spaniel? he died in distemper. he had a happy little life. i wept bitter tears over him." "why didn't you tell me before?" "i thought i'd leave you to find out." "i am a stupid fellow." he leant towards her, and inhaled the scent of her violets. "i don't think i should have guessed it now," he said, "only for the spring. to think you are mary!" he lingered over the name. "i am sorry about the clumber. you shall have another when you ask for it." it was a long drive westward. they got down at kensington church, and went up the hill. close by the carmelites they turned into a little alley. the lit doorway of a high building of flats faced them. "now, you must come no farther," she said, turning to him and holding out her hand. "let me see you to your door," he pleaded. "if you will, but it is a climb for nothing." "what a barrack you live in!" he said, as they went up the stone steps. "it was built for working men originally, but perhaps there is none hereabouts. it is now chiefly occupied by working women. they are extremely pleasant and friendly. to be sure, they are west-end working women. now, sir robin, i must bid you good-bye." they were at the very top of the house. the staircase window was wide open, and the sweet smell of wet earth came in. she had put the latch-key in the door and opened it--she had turned on the electric light. now, as she held out her hand to him in farewell, he caught sight of the pleasant little room beyond. he had the strongest wish to cross the threshold on which she was standing; but, of course, it was impossible. "when my cousin comes back from abroad," he said, "i want you to know each other, miss gray. perhaps you will ask us to tea here." "i shall be delighted," she said frankly. "you like your quarters?" he was oddly reluctant to go. "very much indeed." "you are near heaven." "i hear the singing at the carmelites. i can see the tops of the trees in kensington gardens. to be sure, i ought to live nearer my work. but these things counterbalance the distance. by the way, do you know that mrs. morres is in town?" "i had not heard." "she has come up for a week's shopping." "ah! i must call on her. i like her douches of cold water on all our schemes." "so do i." he looked at her with a dawning intention in his eyes. before he could speak the words that were on his lips the opposite door opened, and a young woman, wearing an artist's blouse, with close-cropped dark hair and a frank boyish face, came out. "i beg your pardon, miss gray, do you happen to have any methylated spirit?" "good-night, miss gray." he lifted his hat and went down the stairs. on the next landing he paused and listened with a smile to the conversation overhead. it appeared that mary had only enough methylated spirit for a single occasion. "then you must come to breakfast with me in the morning," said the other girl. "can you oblige me with a few slices of bacon?" it was the true communistic life. he was smiling to himself still as he walked up the hill homewards. "winter is over and past, and the spring is come," he murmured to himself. and to think that a few hours ago the fog was creeping over the city! chapter xviii halcyon weather mrs. morres was looking benignantly, for her, at sir robin drummond. "well, i must say i'm pleased to see you," she said. "it's very handsome of you, too, to give up the affairs of the nation for an old woman like me. how do you suppose things are getting on without you?" "the house is not sitting this afternoon. you know it rises for the easter vacation to-morrow." "on thursday i go down to hazels. i wanted that bad person, mary gray, to come with me. she says she has to work at her book. did you ever hear such stuff and nonsense? as though the world can't get on without one young woman's book. i told her she could do it at hazels. she says she couldn't--that she'll have to be out all day long. london will not tempt her out, she says. is she to go bending her back and dimming her eyes while the lambs are at play in the fields and the primroses thick in the woods?" "she's an obstinate person, mrs. morres. when she has made up her mind to do a thing----" "ah! you know her pretty well." "we first met about nine years ago." "dear me! i had no idea that you were such old friends. i thought you met first in this house." "lady anne hamilton, the old lady who adopted miss gray, was my mother's friend." he said nothing about the fact that twelve hours ago he had not known mary gray for the child he had played with for one afternoon, nor of the long gap between that occasion and their next meeting. not from any disingenuousness; but he had a feeling that he liked to keep that meeting of long ago to himself. "dear me, to be sure you would be interested in mary. you would know a good deal about her. nine years--it is a long time." if he had been the most consummate plotter he could not better have paved the way for the suggestion he was about to make. "put off your return to hazels till saturday morning. i want to take you and miss gray into the country for a day on thursday." "indeed, young man! and wait for the saturday crowd of holiday-makers! a nice figure i should be struggling among them." "i will be at victoria to see you off." "oh, you needn't do that." mrs. morres turned about with the inconsequence of her sex. "i've brought one of the maids up with me. she will take care of me better than most men. she is alarming, this good susan, to the people who don't know her. but i thought you were going abroad?" "so i am. saturday morning will do me very well." "how did you know i was in town? no one is supposed to. all the blinds are down in front and will be till her ladyship returns." "miss gray told me. i saw her yesterday." she looked at him sharply. his honest, plain face reassured her. a friendship of nine years, too. what trouble could there possibly arise after a friendship of nine years? mary must know that he was all but engaged to his cousin. "does she approve of the country trip?" "i have not asked her. i left that to you to do. she has been shut up in london all the winter. she needs a breath of country air." "so she does. she shows the london winter, though you may not see it. very well, you shall take us both into the country on thursday. mary will not dream of refusing me." "that is it. she means to spend those six days between thursday and wednesday toiling at her book. i have heard her say that she will spend thursday at the british museum." "stuff and nonsense, she shan't! the world will do just as well without the book. she must come to hazels on saturday. you will help me to persuade her?" "i will do my best. how did you leave hazels?" "lovely. for the rest, a wilderness of despairing dogs. they will forgive me if i bring back mary. by the way, what have you got for me to do on friday? if you will keep me in town when all the shops are shut! not that it matters. i've finished all my shopping. but am i to spend my good friday here, in this room? london streets are no place for a poor woman on good friday." "will you go to church? there is a service at a church near here, with bach's passion music." "i should like to, of all things. afterwards, perhaps, mary would give us tea at her eyrie. you and she must dine with me. she is coming this evening to dinner. come back to dinner at half-past seven and help me to persuade her. i can only give you a chop. some mysterious person in the lower region cooks for me. she is the plainest of the plain." "it will be a banquet, with you." sir robin was not a young man who paid compliments easily. when he did pay one it had always an air of sincerity. mrs. morres looked pleased. she was very fond of robin drummond. when he and mary met at the door a few hours later he made a jest about their dining together again so soon, and they laughed about it--to be sure, that dinner at the restaurant was a secret, something that did not belong to the conventional life. there was the air of a little understanding between them when they presented themselves to mrs. morres in the book-room which she used for all purposes of a sitting-room during her flying visit to town. it was a pleasant room, with book-cases all round it filled with green glass in a lattice of brass-work. the books were hidden by the glass, but it reflected every movement of a bird or a twig or a cloud outside like green waters. the ceiling was domed like a sky and painted in sunny italian scenery. it was not dull in the book-room on the dullest day. "did you come together?" mrs. morres asked curiously. "i swear we did not," sir robin replied, with mock intensity. "i came from the east, miss gray from the west. we met on your doorstep." "you looked as if you were enjoying a joke when you came in." "there was time for one between the ringing of the bell and the opening of the door." "ah, you see, the people downstairs are very old." mary allowed herself to be persuaded to the country expedition next day. the spring had been calling to her, calling to her to come out of london to the fields. more, she consented to go to hazels on the saturday. the spring had disturbed her with a delicious disturbance. it was no use trying to be dry-as-dust since the spring had got into her blood. the book must wait till she came back. on thursday the exodus from town had not yet begun. they left soon after breakfast. as mary hurried from her kensington flat to paddington station she met the church-goers with their prayer-books in their hands. it was holy thursday, to be sure--a day for solemn thought and thanksgiving. she hoped hers would not be less acceptable because it was made in the quietness of the fields. it was an exquisite day of april--true holy week weather, with white clouds, like lambs straying in the blue pastures of the sky, shepherded by the south-west wind. the almond trees were in bloom. they had begun to drop their blossoms on the pavements, making a dust of roses in london streets. as they went down from paddington the river-side orchards and gardens were starred with the blossom of pear and plum. everywhere the birds were singing jocundly. the promise of spring a few days earlier had been nobly fulfilled. the sun shone powerfully as they left the country station and went down a road set with bare hedges on either side. a week ago there had been frost. now there was a grateful odour from the millions and millions of little spear-heads of grass that were pushing above the ground. on the banks by the side of the road there were primroses and violets, while there was yet a drift of last week's snow in the sheltered copses. they found an inn by the side of the road. to the back of it lay a belt of woods. in front was a great stretch of cornfield and pasturage. in the distance a church-spire and yet other woods. there was no village in sight. the village was, as a matter of fact, lying about its green and velvety common just a little way down the road. the place was full of the singing of the birds, and of another sound as sweet, the rushing of waters. a little river ran down from the higher country and passed through the inn-garden, turning a water-wheel as it went. the picture on the old sign was of a water-wheel. the inn was called the water-wheel. "what a name to think upon!" said mary, with a sigh, "in a torrid london august! it sounds full of refreshment." "its patrons would no doubt prefer the beer-keg," said mrs. morres, and was reproached for being cynical on such a day. while they waited for a meal they explored the delightful inn-garden. it was not sir robin's first visit, and he was able to point out to them the lions of the place. there was the landlord's aviary of canary-birds, so hardy that they lived in the open air all the year round. there were the ferrets in a cage. not far off, in a proximity which must have profoundly interested the ferrets, there was an enclosure of white rabbits. there was a wild duck which had been picked up injured in the leg one cold winter, and had become tame and followed them about now from place to place. there were a peacock and a peahen, a sty full of tiny, squeaking black piglets, hives of bees, all manner of pleasant country things. a lordly st. bernard, with deep eyes of affection, followed sir robin as a well-remembered friend. "out in the woods," sir robin said, "there is a pond which later will be covered with water-lilies. the nightingales will have begun now. the wood is a grove of them. the landlord owned up handsomely when i came here first that 'they dratted things kept one awake at night.' i was only sorry they did not keep me. but after the first i slept too soundly." "what did you find to do?" mrs. morres asked. "fish. there are plenty of trout in the upper reaches of the river." they found their lunch of cold roast beef and salad, rhubarb tart and cream, delicious. the landlord had some good old claret in his cellar and produced it as though sir robin were an honoured guest. they sat to the meal by an open window. there were wallflowers under the window. in a bowl on the table were hyacinths and sweet-smelling narcissi. after the meal mrs. morres was tired. "let me rest," she said, "till tea-time. what did you say was the train? five-thirty? will you order tea for half-past four? it is half-past two now. go and explore the woods. i believe i shall go asleep if i'm allowed. the buzzing of the bees out there is a drowsy sound." mary voted for walking up-stream, and confessed to a passion for tracking rivers to their sources. they stepped out briskly. she was wearing a long cloak of grey-blue cloth, which became her. presently she took it off and carried it on her arm. her frock beneath repeated the colour of the cloak. it had a soft fichu about the neck of yellowed muslin, with a pattern of little roses. he looked at her with admiration. he knew as little about clothes as most men, and, like most men, he loved blue. she did well to wear blue on such a day. the grey of her eyes took on the blue of her garments, a blue slightly silvered, like the blue of the april sky. as the ground ascended, the stream brawled and leaped over little boulders green with the water-stain and lichens. there were quiet pools beside the boulders. as they stood by one they saw the fin of a trout in the obscurity. they met no one. presently they were higher than the woods and out on a green hillside. when they first appeared the place was alive with rabbits, who hurried to their burrows with a flash of white scuts. "if we sit down on the hillside we can see the valley," sir robin said. "we can look down into the valley at our leisure. it is filled with a golden haze. this good sun is drawing out the winter damps. you shall have my coat to sit on. wasn't i far-seeing to bring it?" he spread the coat, which he had been carrying on his arm, for mary, and she sat down on the very edge of the incline. the st. bernard laid his silver and russet head on her skirt. they had lost sight of the river now. it had retired into the woods. when they sat down sir robin consulted his watch, and found that they might stay for nearly an hour. there was a bruised sweetness in the atmosphere about them, which they discovered presently to be wild thyme. they were sitting on a bed of it. he thought of it afterwards as one of the sweetnesses that must be always associated with mary gray, like the smell of violets. the full golden sun poured on them, warming them to the heart. the bees buzzed about the wild thyme and the golden heads of gorse. little blue moths fluttered on the hillside. the rabbits, lower down the hill, came out of their burrows again and gambolled in the sunshine. "how sweet it all is!" mary said impulsively. "i shall always remember this day." "and i." he plucked idly at the wild thyme and the little golden vetches among the coarse grass of the hillside. a fold of the blue dress lay beside him. he touched it inadvertently, and the colour came to his cheek: unobserved, because he had his hat pulled down over his eyes, and mary was sketching for him in detail the plan of her book. it interested him because it was hers. her voice sounded like poetry. he had not wanted poetry. blue-books and statistics had satisfied him very well, hitherto. but, to be sure, he had read poetry in his oxford days. lines and tags of it came into his mind dreamily as he listened to her voice. he did not touch that fold of her gown again. if he was sure--but he was not quite sure. and there was nelly. he supposed nelly cared for him if she was willing to marry him. if nelly cared--why, then, he had no right to think of other possibilities. something had gone out of the glory and enchantment of the day as they went back down the hillside. those lambs of clouds had suddenly banked themselves up into grey fleeces which covered the sun. the wind blew a little cold. "it is the capriciousness of april," said mary, unconscious of any change in the mental atmosphere. he stopped on the downhill path, took her cloak from her arm, and with kind carefulness laid it about her shoulders. as he arranged it he touched one of the soft curls that lay on her white neck, and again a thrill passed through him. he began to wish that he had not planned this country expedition, after all. he ought really to have started this morning for the continent. going on saturday, he would have very little time to stay. on the homeward way mrs. morres reproached him with his dulness. what had come to him? he hesitated, glancing at mary in her corner. mary had enjoyed her day thoroughly, and was wearing an air of great content. she was carrying a bunch of the wild thyme. she had taken off her hat and her cloudy hair seemed blown about her head like an aureole. she had a delicate, wild, elusive air. he withdrew his glance abruptly. "it is a guilty conscience," he said. "i ought not to come back and dine with you to-night. i ought to put you into a cab and myself into another, go home for my bag and take the night-express to paris. the house only rises for ten days and i have to be in my place on the opening night." mary looked up at him with a friendly air of being disappointed. she was engaged in putting the wild thyme into a bunch, stalk by stalk. mrs. morres began to protest-- "well, of all the deceitful persons! after luring me to spend a good friday in town. to be sure, i shall have mary. will you come to the good friday service at st. hugh's with me, mary?" "i should love to come." "very well, then. have your bag packed and come back with me to sleep. we shall get off the earlier on saturday morning. so we shan't miss you at all, sir robin." he looked at her with great contrition. "my mother--" he began. "to be sure, your mother has first claim. to say nothing of another." he coloured. mary was looking at him with kind interest. mrs. morres sent him a quick glance--then looked away again. "to be sure, you must go, sir robin," she said, in a serious voice. "i was only jesting. ah! here we are! so it is good-bye." "au revoir," he corrected. "well, au revoir. i hope you'll have a very happy time at lugano. but you are sure to." a moment later they had gone off in their cab, and he was feeling the blank of their absence. chapter xix wild thyme and violets while sir robin and mary gray sat on that english hillside, nelly and her father walked on a hilly road above lugano. the april afternoon was paradise. below, the lake lay blue as a sapphire mirroring a sapphire sky. the space between them and the lake's edge was tinged with a bloom of bluish-rose, for all the almond groves were out in blossom. below them were drifts of sweet-scented narcissi. all around them lay the mountains, monte rosa silver against the sapphire sky. below the fantastic houses clustered to the lake's edge in their little groves and coppices of green. they were talking of robin's coming. the hour of his arrival was somewhat uncertain. they might find him at the hotel when they returned, going home in the evening quietness, when monte rosa would be flushed to rose-pink and the blue sky would die off in splendours of rose and orange. nelly was certainly looking better. not a hint had come to her of the frontier war in which, by this time, her lover must be engaged. the general starved for his newspapers in these days, if he did not get the chance of a surreptitious peep at one at the english library, or when some friendly fellow-guest in the hotel would hand him a belated print two days old. nelly had a wild rose bloom in her cheek and a light in her eye at this moment. who could look upon such a scene and not praise the designer? not nelly, certainly. as they paused for the hundredth time to look she breathed sighs of content and pressed her father's arm close to hers in a caress. even though one's lover had been cruel and had gone away without speaking, it was good to be alive. the appealing influence of the season was about them, too. they had just peeped into a little wayside chapel, where there was a small altar ablaze with lights set amid masses of flowers. the place was heavy with sweetness. here and there knelt worshippers with bent heads. the general had bowed with a reverent knee, and nelly had knelt with him before they had gone out into the blaze of the day again. "there are only two armies, after all, nell," the general had said, explaining himself. "the army of the lord and the army of the prince of darkness. let us rejoice that we have so many fellow-soldiers in the lord's army, though we fight in different regiments." "to-morrow," said nelly dreamily, "the lights will be all out and the little chapel draped in black. there will be the service of the three hours' agony. do you think we might come?" "i'm afraid the dowager would be shocked," her father replied hastily. "she would look upon it as deserting the flag. many excellent women are very narrow-minded." they went along in silence. at intervals they sat down to enjoy at leisure the beautiful world about them. they did not say much. there was little need for talk between two who understood each other so thoroughly. while they dawdled, half-way round the lake from their hotel, the sun dropped behind the hills and left them in shadow. it was time for them to go home. as they went along leisurely, nelly's face, uplifted towards the sky, seemed to have caught an illumination from it. it was the eve of the great sacrifice. already the shadow and the light of it lay over the world. nelly was thrilled and touched. that visit to the wayside chapel had set chords vibrating in her heart. sacrifice for love's sake appealed to her as it does to all generous, impressionable young souls. though her own personal happiness had vanished, gone down under the world with the _sutlej_, there was yet the happiness possible of making those she loved happy. she had understood her father's wistful looks and tentative speeches. she knew that he desired her happiness to be in her cousin's keeping. the old days were over, the sweet days before that other had come, when she and her father had sufficed for each other. they could never come again, and he wanted her to marry robin. robin's mother, who was good to her, had suggested that she was trying robin's patience too far. why, if she could make them all happy--she was not in a state of mind to appreciate what marriage with one man while she loved another was going to cost her--if she could make them all happy, ought she not to do so? "father!" she whispered. "father!" "what is it, nell?" she rubbed her cheek slowly against his arm, not speaking for a second or two. "father, i am ready to marry robin whenever you will." the general's heart bounded up with an immense relief. "whenever i will?" he said, with an air of rallying her. "is it not rather whenever you will? poor robin has been waiting long enough." "you are quite sure he wants me: i mean soon?" "he'd be a dull fellow if he didn't." the general had suddenly a memory of the time when he had called robin a dull fellow in his secret heart because he had been content to wait, endlessly to all appearances. he put the memory away hastily as an uncomfortable one. "to be sure, he wants you soon, nelly, my dear," he said. "as soon as your old father can give you up to him. you have always been robin's little sweetheart from the time you were a child. he has never thought of any girl but you." he made the speech with a gulp, as though it were distasteful to him. "i never thought there was any girl," nelly said simply. "robin is not at all a young man for girls. only he cares so much for politics. he has not seemed in any hurry." "god bless my soul, to be sure, he is in a hurry. he must be in a hurry. when you get back to your looking-glass, little nell, ask yourself whether it is likely that he should not be in a hurry!" he was talking as much to reassure himself as nelly. to be sure, robin must be as eager a lover as it was in his capacity to be. there was nothing volcanic about robin. he was steady, sensible, reliable! yes, better let the affair be settled at once. june would be a good month for the wedding. he could go afterwards and take the cure at vichy for his gout. pat could go with him. perhaps nelly would take over bridget and some of the other servants. why shouldn't robin and nelly have the house just as it stood? he would make them a deed of gift of it. he could have a bachelor's flat somewhere near the parks and the clubs, with pat to look after him. it would be easier for him if the old house sanctified by many memories were not to be broken up. nelly's exaltation carried her on to saturday afternoon. sir robin had arrived on the morning of that day while the general and nelly were out climbing the lower range of a hill. the dowager was no climber. more than that, she had acquired tact and good feeling it seemed in her latter days, for she left father and daughter very much together. the general's heart had begun to soften towards her. he had begun to ask himself how it was that he could have so persistently misjudged her all those years. if gerald had liked her well enough to marry her, surely he could have done her more justice than so to dislike her. the dowager had her son to herself for some hours of the saturday forenoon. he had suggested following nelly and her father up the mountain track, but she had detained him with a demonstrativeness unusual in her, which struck him like a jarring note. what had come over his mother? she had always been a woman of a cold and even harsh manner, at least to him. to be sure, he had noticed with amazement that she had been different to nelly. she ought to have had a daughter instead of a son. he had no idea that if he had been a dashing soldier he might have been a far less dutiful son, a far less satisfactory member of society than he was and yet have awakened a feeling in his mother's breast which she had never given to him. now he was embarrassed somewhat by her playful insistence on her mother's right to her boy for a time. playfulness sat as ill on her as could well be imagined, and he was captious over her raillery on his hurry to be at his cousin's side, calling it atrocious taste in his irritable mind, he who had never been irritable, to whom it would have seemed the worst of taste to question good taste in his mother. more than one person was irritable with the dowager that day. the general was furiously irritable over the transparent man[oe]uvre by which she packed off the young people together. "enough to spoil the whole thing," he thought, pursing his lips and pushing out his eyebrows as he did when he was annoyed. "indelicate! stupid! i'd rather have her when she was disagreeable. my poor nell! she did not look very happy as she went. i had a great mind to go with her and spoil things, after all." the cousins found their way to nelly's favourite haunt, the little coppice of low almond trees with the troops of narcissi and violets and primroses colouring all the brown earth. they went into the little chapel together. it smelt of incense after the ceremonies of the morning. the mournful black had been removed. there were flowers on a side-table, and the sacristan was setting the candlesticks on the fair white cloth which he had just laid along the altar. the scents in the woods at home had been thin and faint by these. standing with his hat in his hand at the threshold of the little chapel, robin drummond had a memory of the scent of wild thyme. he was not one to hesitate when he had made up his mind. his mother had told him that nelly was waiting, ready for the word which might have been hers any time those two or three years back. her father thought the time had come to arrange a date for their marriage. his mother, too, was anxious to see him settled. neither she nor the general was young any longer. they had a right to look upon their children's happiness for the years that were left to them of life. the young people were high on a mountain path, where few were to be met with except an occasional englishman climbing like themselves, or the goatherds with their little flocks. he had helped her up a steep bit of climbing. the exertion had brought an unwonted colour to her face. her hand lay in his, soft and warm. his closed on it and held it. it was the hand of one who had never done anything toilsome in her life, the hand of a petted darling. he remembered another hand, thin, brown, capable. none of mary's later years of ease had given her the hand of a woman of leisure. it was the hand of a comrade, a helpmate. nelly's hand fluttered in his and was suddenly cold. "well, nell," he said, "do you know what i came here in the mind to ask you?" "yes." he saw the quick rise and fall of her bosom; he noticed the almost terrified look of her eyes. was that how women showed their happy agitation when their lovers claimed them? poor little nell! how easily frightened she was! she had turned quite pale. he would have to be very good to her in the days to come. "haven't you kept me waiting long enough, little girl?" he went on with a tenderness which might easily have passed for a lover's. "i've been very patient, haven't i? but now my patience has come to an end. when are you going to fix a date for our marriage?" "we have been very happy," began nelly with trembling lips. "not so happy as we are going to be. god knows, nell, i will do my best to make you happy, and may god bless my best!" as he said it the scent of some little plant, bruised beneath his feet, rose to his nostrils, sharply aromatic. it was the wild thyme, the fragrance of which had hung about him those few days back, no matter how he tried to banish it. "i will be very good to you, nelly, if you can trust me with yourself." it was not the least bit in the world like the love-making of nelly's dreams. to be sure, he was good and kind, the dear, kind old robin he had always been. she was grateful that he was not more lover-like according to her ideals. if he had taken her in his arms and kissed her passionately like that other--she smelt lilies of the valley where robin drummond smelt the wild thyme--she could not have endured it. as it was, she answered him sweetly. "i know you will be good to me, robin. when were you ever anything but good?" then he kissed her, a light kiss that brushed her lips. he felt his own shortcomings as a lover when he saw the blood rush tumultuously to her face, cover even her neck. why, she must care for him with some passion to blush like that for his kiss. he had no idea that it was the memory of another kiss which had caused that wild flush of colour. "well, nell, when is it to be?" he asked, trying to galvanise himself out of his coldness, trying to make the pity and tenderness which she awoke in him take the place of passion. "when you will, robin." "you will never repent it, god helping me," he said again. they came back, as they were expected to, with things settled between them. robin had consulted a calendar in his pocket-book and named a date--thursday, rd of july. he would be free then. the house would have risen and he would be able to devote himself to his honeymooning with a clear mind. he had not asked for an earlier date, but it did not occur to nelly to wonder at that. she was relieved to find it so far off. already she thought of the time between as a respite, the "long day, my lord!" of those condemned to death. the dowager saw nothing wrong with the date. they could wander about the continent leisurely, coming home early in june to prepare nelly's wedding-clothes. the general, after his first irritation had passed, had brought himself to tell her of his plan about the house. she approved graciously as she thought. it was very generous of the general. to be sure, robin must have a town house now he was married. sherwood square was a little out of the way and quite unfashionable. still, it was a fine house in an excellent situation to balance those drawbacks. and of course it must be new-papered and painted and modern conveniences placed in it. that could be done while the young couple were away honeymooning. robin must be on the telephone, of course. that was indispensable. and the furniture must be fresh-covered, so much of it as they decided to keep. a deal of it was old-fashioned and had better go to a sale-room. new carpets too. already the dowager was making calculations of what it was going to cost the general. she was capable of a certain grim enjoyment in the spending of other people's money. "do you propose to live with them, ma'am?" the general asked at last, in a constrained voice. she looked at him in amazement. "why, to be sure. poor child, she will need someone beside her. those servants of yours, denis, they've had their own way too much. i've no doubt there's a terrible leakage in the establishment." "if you propose to live with them, ma'am," the general went on, bursting with fury, "i don't give up my house at all. robin can find his own town-house. the servants have done very well for me and nelly. so have the chairs and tables and carpets. i'd nearly as soon send my own flesh and blood to an auction-room." the dowager was alarmed. she tried to propitiate the general after her usual manner towards him. it was as though she tried to distract a froward child. "dear me," she said, "dear me! i didn't mean to offend you, denis. the house is shabby. those dogs have always sat in the chairs and on the carpets. i only thought that we might put our heads together for the good of the young people." "i'm a dutchman if we will, ma'am!" shouted the general. "as for the dogs, did you intend to exclude them, too, from the fine new house? you'd never teach them not to sit in chairs at this time of their lives." this outbreak was followed by the usual fit of repentance, in which the general reproached himself for his hastiness. to be sure, he had been annoyed that the wedding should have been put off for so long. in his haste he had said derogatory things about robin in his heart, which was unreasonable. the fellow was a member of parliament and had to stick to his post, to stick to his post like a soldier. yet, there would be all those weeks of june and july when bad news might come any day about langrishe: and nell would be in london and would hear of it. so, although the thing had come about which he desired, the general was not happy. chapter xx jealousy, cruel as the grave it was the latter end of april when sir robin drummond presented himself again in the big bare room where mary gray transacted the business of her bureau. the windows were wide open now, and the dull roar of the distant street traffic came in. it had been a showery day, and he had noticed as he came up the stairs the many marks of muddy feet which showed that business at the bureau was brisk. the women were coming at last to be organised, to learn a spirit of _camaraderie_, to see that their good was the common good, to have hope for a future which would not be always starvation and deprivation, sufferings in cold and heats, intolerable miseries crowding upon each other. he came up the stairs, looking sadder and sterner than was his wont. he remembered how all last winter he had run up those stairs like a school-boy, being so glad at last to get to the hour he had desired all day. as he passed up the staircase now he looked at the walls, distempered a dirty pink. outside mary's door they were adorned by the effusions of amateur artists, the children of the working women, messenger boys, casual urchins, with the desire of their kind for scribbling. it was all quite unlovely, yet it had made him happy to come there. it was a happiness that he had had no right to and now it must be relinquished. this was the last time he should come after this intimate fashion. he turned the handle of the door and went in, rather dreading to find mary engaged with other visitors; but she was alone. she turned round from her desk as he came in, and, jumping up at sight of him, she came to meet him with an outstretched hand. "congratulate me," she said. "the book is finished and accepted. strangmans have taken it. they took only a week to decide. i am wild with pride and joy. maurice ilbert is one of their readers. he got it to read and recommended it enthusiastically. they are to publish it in june. wasn't it generous of him, because there is so little of it he can agree with?" "oh, ilbert's conscience is pretty elastic, i should say, and he can agree with many things," sir robin answered. he felt vaguely annoyed that ilbert should have had anything to do with mary or her book. ilbert was one of the younger school of tories, a free-lance he called himself, handsome, conceited, immensely clever, a golden youth with an air of oxford and the schools added to him. he was one of the youngest members of parliament, and was gifted with a dazzling and impertinent wit. sir robin had occasionally smarted under ilbert's sallies. he was a target for them, with his serious and simple views, his lean air of don quixote. mary looked at him reproachfully, as though the speech grieved her. "he is very generous," she repeated. "he has come to see me. i found him most sympathetic. it is not a question of parties. he thinks awfully well of the book. he says it will stir the public conscience. to be sure, it is written out of experience, just the plain story of things as they are. i have learned so much since i began this work." he had got over his first ill-temper, and now he spoke gently. "i am sure it is a good book," he said. "i have always felt that you would make a good book of it because you know. ilbert is a very capable critic." he did ilbert justice with some difficulty. he had a sharp thought of ilbert coming in and out as he had been used to, when he should come no more. for the first time in his life, which had had no room for self-consciousness, he compared himself with another man, handsome, debonair, and remembered the lean visage over which mornings he passed the razor, dark, lantern-jawed, almost grotesque. it was the only aspect of himself he knew, the one which was presented to him when he shaved. "now you are like yourself," mary said sweetly. "it was not like you to throw cold water on my pleasure." he turned away his head from her reconciled eyes. she was making what he had come to say doubly hard for him. "i want to tell you something," he said. "i should like you to hear it from me first, because you have been so good a friend to me. i have spoken to you of my cousin, nelly. i wanted you to be her friend. well--i am to marry my cousin in july." there was silence for a moment after he had said it, a silence broken only by the ticking of the noisy clock on the mantelpiece, by the sounds of the street outside. "there has been an implicit engagement between my cousin and myself," he went on as though he set his teeth to it. "i couldn't tell you when it began. it was made for us. i was always ready to be bound by it. she is as sweet a thing as ever lived; but sometimes i have thought that perhaps, perhaps, the cousinly closeness would make the other tie a difficult thing for nelly to accept. i was wrong. she has no desire to break through that implicit bond." he was making an explanation, and mary gray was not the girl to misunderstand him. "i am very glad," she said cheerfully, "very glad. i hope you will be very happy. i am sure that you will be." he looked at her with relief, which was not altogether agreeable. he had not done her any wrong after all. she was not angry with him. but, to be sure, why should she be? it was unlikely that she would have taken more than a friendly interest in him. he mocked at himself, and thought of his harsh uncomeliness. if he had been ilbert now his conduct of all this winter past would have been unpardonable. but ilbert and he were made in a different mould. oddly, the thought did not comfort him--was a bitter one, rather. "won't you sit down and tell me about it?" mary said, her eyes looking at him frankly and kindly. "i am not at all busy. the business of the bureau is pretty well over for the day, and i can finish my proofs at home. do, sir robin." she pushed a chair towards him, and he sat down in it. he felt that he ought to go. it was a concession to his own weakness that he stayed. and he had no inclination at all to talk about his engagement. he tried to say something, tried to imagine what a man happily engaged to be married would find to say to a sympathetic woman-friend about it. he could think of nothing, only that so far as he could see there was no consciousness in the serious bright eyes that watched him. to be sure he ought to be glad. he would be the most miserable hound on earth if he wished her to be unhappy because he was marrying his cousin. yet he was not glad of that ready sympathy. "well," she said at last, "you have nothing to tell me." "what can i say"--he laughed awkwardly--"that i have not already said? we have been brought up like brother and sister, but our elders always expected us to marry when we should be old enough. we have been taking it easy, nell and i; thought there was plenty of time, you know." "and at last you have decided that the plenty of time is up?" she said, filling the gap in his speech. her eyes were wondering now. it was a strange thing to her that lovers should take it easy. "yes, that was it." "of course, i understand now why you felt you had to go that thursday in holy week. it was very good of you to give us so much of your time." "you didn't tell me how you got on, what you did," he said eagerly. he was glad to escape from the discussion of his too intimate affairs. "what did you do on good friday, after all?" "mrs. morres spent the day with me. it was a lovely day. we went to the service at st. hugh's. the music was wonderful. afterwards we sat by the open window and talked. my window-box was full of daffodils. they are just over now. mrs. morres said it was like the country. afterwards i locked up the flat, put the key in my pocket, discovered a hansom--it wasn't easy, but 'tilda, who comes in to tidy up for me every day, managed it. her young man is a hansom-driver. i stayed the night at the square, and we went down to hazels next morning." "was it good?" "exquisite. i finished the book there. we had miraculous weather. i was able to work out of doors in the very same green garden where her ladyship and i worked at the novel last year. the dogs used to sit all around me: and i believe the birds remembered me. i am sure i recognised one robin. i came back like a lion refreshed, with the full copy of the book done up in my portmanteau. since then i have been enjoying the sweets of a mind at ease." "you look it." she did, indeed, look like a flower refreshed. she was wearing a soft grey gown with a little good, yellowed lace about the shoulders. the lace had been a gift from lady anne. it gave the final touch of distinction to mary's air. she had the warm, pale complexion that goes well, with grey, and her hair seemed to have more than usual of gold in it. standing against the light it was blown out like a little aureole full of stars. he had thought that he could like her in nothing so well as her dark blue frock, but now he thought that grey should be her only wear. "what time do you leave?" he asked, glancing at the clock. "not for a long time yet. it is only half-past five. people come in and out here up to quite late. i foresee that my hours will be later and later." "you mustn't let them take too much of your time. you must have time for exercise, for meals, for rest, for your friends----" "i am so profoundly interested in the work that i don't grumble. as for my friends, they can see me here. for exercise i walk most of the way between kensington and this, either coming or going. society is not likely to claim me--at least, not in her ladyship's absence. my few friends can find me here." it was on his lips to ask her to let him walk part of the way home with her. he might have this last pleasure since he was coming here no more, at least not in the old way. but, as though her words had been a challenge, there was a clatter of wheels and horses in the narrow street below. "a carriage," mary said. "it will be one of the fine ladies who are interested in philanthropy and politics." there was a rustle of silks and murmur of voices coming up the stairs. sir robin sat holding his hat in one hand, vaguely annoyed. why should one of those meddlesome fine ladies choose for the hour of her empty, unimportant visit his last hour with mary gray? he sat irritated, shy, awkward, his feelings faithfully reflected in his face. the door opened. a lady came in whom he had occasionally met in drawing-rooms, a slight, tall woman, with a brilliant brunette face. a delicate perfume came with her entrance. she was finely dressed, as fine as a humming-bird, and it became her. she looked incredibly young to be the mother of the slim youth who followed her. the youth was maurice ilbert. his mother, mrs. ilbert, was well known as one of the most brilliant and exclusive hostesses in fine london circles. now she was holding mary's two hands in her own grey-gloved ones. "i insisted that my son should bring me to see you, miss gray," she was saying with _empressement_. "i hope you will excuse my descending on you like this. but i positively had to. this wonderful book of yours--my boy has been talking of it every hour we have been alone. it is such a pleasure to meet you. ah--sir robin drummond, how do you do? are you also privileged to know about the wonderful book?" to robin drummond's mind ilbert's smile and nod had something amused, mocking in them. he had acknowledged the greeting with the curtest of nods. now he got up, shook hands awkwardly with mrs. ilbert, and made his farewells to mary gray. it was sheer ill-temper drove him out as soon as they had come. he had wanted to ask mary if he might bring nelly when she returned to town. he had wanted ... a good many other things. but now he stalked away from her presence with fury in his heart. if the ilberts were going to take her up!--to exploit the book! the ilberts belonged to the young tory party which his soul detested, or he said so in his wrath; as a matter of fact, he had not many detestations, and in the matter of politics he had no personal rancours. yet at the moment he thought he had, and fancied that a part of his indignation was because mary gray, who had learnt in the radical school, was going to be made much of by advanced tories. as he sat in his hansom, "stepping westward" into the heart of the sunset, he bit the ends of his moustache, and it was like chewing the cud of bitterness. mary gray had expanded to answer the genial warmth of mrs. ilbert's manner as a flower opens to the sun. it was not in her to be ungracious, and mrs. ilbert was a charming woman. and now he asked himself what was he going to do for the next month or six weeks till his mother and nelly came home? all the winter he had been in the habit of seeing mary gray two or three times a week. he had been home a week from lugano, and he had kept away; and all the time something stronger than himself had seemed to be tugging at him to take the old familiar road. he had found it a hard struggle to keep away for those ten days. and how was he going to do it for all those weeks to come? he had always had so much to say to her--or, at least, there had always been things he wanted to say, for in his most intimate moments he was naturally rather silent. for a second his thoughts escaped his control, and settled on the pleasantness that bare ugly work-a-day room had meant to him all the winter through. the sodden winter streets, swept by bitter winds, horrible in fog and snow, through which he had hurried on his way had had something heavenly about them. "ah, le beau temps passé!" he pulled himself together with a sharp shock of reproach. he was to marry nelly in less than three months' time, and he was an honourable man. when nelly was his wife he meant that every thought of his heart should belong to her. he must see mary gray no more. yet as he pushed the thought of her away from him it came to him that another man might find the ugly gas-lit room, the wet winter streets with their bawling crowds and flaring lights, something of the same magical world that he had found them. supposing that man were ilbert? well, supposing it were so, what business had he to resent it? but however he might ask himself rhetorical questions, the jealousy of the natural man swept over him in passion and fury. he said to himself that now he knew why he had always hated ilbert. it was a prevision of this hour. and at the moment the general was offering up his heartfelt thanks that nelly's happiness was secure in the keeping of one so steady and reliable, if rather dull and slow, as robin drummond. chapter xxi two women the travellers came home the first week of june. during the weeks that had come and gone since easter they had wandered about as the fancy took them. rome, florence, genoa, venice. they followed a path of wonders; but, somewhat to her father's dismay, nelly did not prove the passionate pilgrim he had expected. she looked on listlessly at the wonder-world. now that her first exaltation had died away it did not seem so simple a matter to make others happy. there was no royal road, she discovered, to the happiness of others any more than to her own. her father said to himself that nell would be all right as soon as the wedding was over. he had not come to the point of thinking yet that marriage with robin drummond was not the way the finger of god had pointed out to him. it was impossible not to notice nelly's listless step and heavy eyes. the dowager put down these things to ordinary delicacy, something the girl would outgrow. "she wants a husband's care," she said. "to be sure, my dear denis, you have done your best for her. but what, after all, could you know about girls?" "as much as robin drummond, ma'am," the general said, with a growl; and was not placated by the dowager's tolerant smile. he was at once glad and sorry when the weeks were over. he dreaded, for one thing, going back to london where nelly might hear news of godfrey langrishe. to be sure, he had acted entirely for her happiness, yet he had an idea that nell might be angry with him for keeping things from her if she found out that langrishe's regiment was engaged in the deadly frontier war. he had been so used to being perfectly frank with her that his reservation galled him. he had studied with attentiveness the columns of such papers as had come his way, dreading to find langrishe's name among the casualties. hitherto it had not occurred, and for that he was deeply grateful. if there had been news he must have betrayed it to nelly by his eyes and his voice. "i wish we could have stayed longer," she said to him on the eve of their departure from italy. "and i, nell." "oh," she looked at him in wonder. "i thought you were keen to be gone." "is it likely?" he asked with playful tenderness, "that i should be anxious to shorten the time in which you are mine and not robin drummond's?" they were alone, and she turned and put her head on his shoulder. "i shall always be yours," she said. "and i think marriage and giving in marriage a weariness of the spirit." "not really, nell?" the general looked at her golden head in alarm, but already she was reproaching herself. "never mind, dear papa," she said. "i didn't altogether mean it. poor, kind robin! what a very ungrateful girl i am to you all!" as soon as they got back the dowager engaged her in a whirl of shops and dressmakers, and for that the general was grateful. he resorted to man[oe]uvres in those days to keep the newspapers out of nelly's way that revealed to himself hitherto unsuspected depths of cunning. he opened the papers with a tremor. the orange and green and pink bills of the evening newspapers stuck up where nelly could see them, laid on the pavement almost under her feet, brought his heart into his mouth. if they could only tide over the dangerous time, and nelly be married and gone off on her leisurely honeymoon! langrishe might almost fade out of her mind, become at least a gentle memory, before anything could happen to him: or the deadly little dragging war might be over and langrishe have carried out a whole skin. it was the height of the season and nelly had her social engagements as well as the preparations for her wedding. as often as was possible robin drummond put in an appearance, but the house was sitting and much of his time was taken up. he looked rather more hatchet-faced than of old. once, sitting in the strangers' gallery of the house, the general heard someone say as robin was about to speak: "who is that careworn-looking young man?" careworn, indeed! the general fumed and fretted over it, the more because it fell in with a certain secret thought he had had once or twice. robin had always been somewhat too much of an old head on young shoulders to please his uncle. to be sure, he had fed on blue books and slept on statistics, yet his engagement to a lovely girl like nelly ought to have made him look happier. it was indecent in the circumstances, that's what it was, that anybody, with the remotest justification for the epithet, could call him careworn. once robin on an afternoon when the house was not sitting called for his cousin and carried her off in a hansom without saying where he was taking her to. that was something of which the general heartily approved. if robin had done it oftener his opinion of him would have gone up immensely. he rubbed his hands while he asked the dowager what mrs. grundy would say to such doings. "supposing they made a runaway match of it, ma'am, where should we be?" he asked cheerfully. to which the dowager replied that robin would never think of anything so silly. why should he, when the wedding was fixed for the twenty-third and everything ordered, even the bridesmaids' dresses and the wedding-cake? "perhaps for that reason," replied the general. but this was a dark saying to the dowager. the visit that afternoon was to mary gray. even nelly had heard of the book which sir michael auberon had praised so highly, which the newspapers had declared to be more interesting than any novel. she had roused herself to be interested in the visit, to talk, to ask questions, to look about her, as they drove into the east, instead of gazing inwards with that introspective glance which had given her eyes of late the beauty of mystery, making them larger and darker than they had been in the old days. she was exquisitely dressed, in a long cloak of cream lace over an indian muslin frock, and an airy hat of chiffon and feathers. she had put on her best for her outing with robin, her visit to robin's friend. it was one of the sweet things she was always doing, with an intention in her own mind to make up for some lack or other which certainly her lover had not felt. when she alighted in the busy street people stared as though they had seen a white bird of paradise; and coming into mary gray's room with a basket of roses in her hand she looked like a bride. now, at least, she wore the pilgrim air. she looked curiously about the unlikely place which housed the wonderful woman as she set down her roses, then back at mary herself. mary had come to meet her with outstretched hands. her bright look at robin drummond was full of sympathetic admiration, of felicitation. she kissed nelly warmly. she was not an effusive person, and nothing had been further from her thoughts than kissing, but her heart went out at once to this charming girl. "_how_ good of you to come to see me!" she said, pressing nelly's hands in hers. "into the east, too! and you must be so busy just now." "i have been longing to see you," nelly responded. "robin has talked so much about you." at that moment nelly had no doubt that he had talked. "and i wanted to see you here, in your ordinary life. robin says you will not be here much longer--that there will be an official position found for you. and it was here that 'creatures of burden' was written!" "nearly all here," mary said, smiling down at the young enthusiast. robin drummond stood aside, in one of his characteristically awkward attitudes, his hat in his hand, watching them. he was not thinking sufficiently of himself to feel awkward, although he looked it. he was thinking of those two dear women, as he called them to himself, objurgating himself for his unworthiness to be the kinsman and lover of one, the friend of the other. he had never seen nelly look like that before. her air of worship was charming. now she let mary gray's hands fall while she went swiftly to the table on which she had deposited her beautiful red roses. "i brought them for you," she said, offering them to mary gray. "how delicious! how sweet of you!" the smell of the roses was in the room. it might have been the aura of the two exquisite women, he thought. nelly had come in carrying a little whiff of scent that went with her, as much a part of her as the soft rustling of her garments. he closed his eyes and there came to his memory, sweet and sharp, the odour of wild thyme. not a second of time had passed when he opened them again. mary was still praising her roses. she was holding them to her face, leaning towards nelly as she did so. her expression was more than kind: it was tender. she put down her basket of roses and took nelly's hands between hers. for a moment she held them against her breast before she relinquished them. she spoke with a little tremor in her voice. why was it that robin drummond thought suddenly of the nightingale who leans his breast upon a thorn? in an instant the thrill in the atmosphere had passed. she was bustling about to make them tea, if her soft, quiet movements could be called bustling. she brought a kettle from the unpainted deal cupboard which housed her utensils of every day. she disappeared for a few seconds and returned with the kettle full of water and set it on the gas-stove. she pushed the papers away from one end of the table and covered it with a dainty tea-cloth. she brought out cups and saucers of thin japanese porcelain, some sugar, a loaf and butter, a box of biscuits. while she set her table she went on talking and smiling at them. the kettle began to sing on the fire. "ah!" she said, with a sudden thought. "the milkman will not call for an hour yet. what are we to do?" "let me go and forage," said drummond eagerly. "the nearest dairy is a good bit off." "trust me to find one." when he had gone the two girls sat down and looked at each other. no wonder she was beloved, mary thought to herself, gloating over nelly's golden head, her blue eyes with the dark lashes, her lovely colouring, her innocent mouth. she had a poor opinion of her own beauty and rarely looked in a glass, but she was none the less generous to beauty in others. "and you are very happy?" she asked. she had an inclination to put her arms about nelly drummond as though she were a beautiful child. she was so glad robin had remembered to bring her at last. it had been strange and lonely when he had ceased to come as he had been used to. it had been so pleasant to look up when his tap came at the door and to see his plain, pleasant face looking at her with a friendly smile. she had grown used to his visits all that winter through; and when they had ceased abruptly she had missed them more than she cared to acknowledge to herself. she had an impulse to take nelly's hand to her breast and hold it there for comfort. "and you are very happy?" she said again. she was prepared for a happy girl's outpourings. what she was not prepared for was the sudden shadow that fell on nelly's face, the weariness, as though she had been brought back to the thought of something disagreeable. a sudden wintriness went over her charming face. the eyes drooped, the lips trembled and were steadied with an effort. "i ought to be very happy," she said. "everyone is good to me. i have the dearest old father in the world and robin is so kind and good. i ought to be very happy and to make other people happy." but she was not happy! mary stared at the golden head with incredulity. for the moment nelly's mask--a transparent one enough at best--with which she faced the world was down. no happy girl had ever spoken so, looked so. and it wanted only a few weeks to her marriage! mary, no more logical than women less intellectual than she, felt as her first impulse a coldness, chilling her heart that had been so warm towards the girl robin drummond had chosen. the chill must have reached nelly's delicate apprehension, for she looked up in a startled way. "robin promised me your friendship," she began. "and, to be sure, it is yours," mary gray said, still wondering at the inexplicable thing that robin drummond's promised wife could have secret cause for unhappiness. she had no further inclination to caress the girl for whom she had been passed by. "we are going to be great friends," she said with a cold sweetness. then the kettle boiled over and created a diversion. while mary was still mopping up the pool it had made on the floor sir robin returned. his voyage of discovery had not been in vain. he had indeed chartered a hansom to make it, and had brought back fascinating things in the way of cream and tea-cakes and other dainties. as he came in he glanced at the two whom he hoped to see friends. a shadow rested on nelly's face. he saw nothing amiss with mary gray as she went to and fro, busy with the little meal, and had no fault to find with her words as they parted. "we are going to be great friends, miss drummond and i," she said. but the note of the nightingale that leans his breast on the thorn, the note of self-sacrifice and yearning tenderness had gone out of her voice. chapter xxii light on the way it wanted three weeks to her wedding when one day nelly suddenly came upon mrs. rooke in one of the narrow, fashionable streets south of oxford street. mrs. rooke was coming out of a florist's shop, and she was carrying a sheaf of lilies in her hand. for one second she looked as though she would have turned aside and avoided nelly. then she came straight on with a little unfriendly uplifting of her white chin. she might have passed with a bow if nelly had not stopped straight in her path. "how d'ye do?" she said coldly. "what a delightful day! i had no idea you were back. but to be sure ... i must congratulate you. it is next month, is it not?" "yes; it is next month," nelly said with stiff lips. "the twenty-third of july, to be accurate. i have wondered about you. i hope mr. rooke is well and cuckoo and bunny." bunny was the youngest hope of the rooke household, a wise, fat, golden-haired child, who had taken a huge fancy to nelly. at the mention of his name his mother faltered. she had been used to swear by bunny's sagacity. bunny had been fond of nelly drummond; and there had been a time when bunny's mother had referred to that fact as though it were nelly's patent of nobility. "cuckoo is at school. bunny hasn't been very well. those east winds in may caught him. i had a horrible fright about him. imagine bunny--bunny--choking with croup! i thought i should have gone mad!" for the moment she had forgotten nelly's offences, and only remembered that she had been bunny's friend. nelly looked back at her as aghast as herself. "croup! i never thought of such a thing," she responded. "he has never had it before, has he?" "never. that was why i was so terrified. i didn't know what to do. there, don't look so frightened about it! it is over--weeks ago. indeed, the next day he was about, as well as ever. i should never be so frightened again. it was the horrible novelty of it." that frightened look in nelly's eyes had softened the little woman's not very hard heart. "i wish i had known," said nelly. "i have wanted to come to see bunny. i brought him a toy from paris--a lamb that walks about by itself." "ah! you were thinking of him!" there was complete reconciliation now in the mother's voice and eyes. how could she hate the girl who loved bunny and had remembered to bring him from paris a lamb that walked about by itself? she put an impulsive hand on nelly's arm. "come home with me and see him. you are not very busy? you can spare the time?" nelly was on her way to keep a dress-making appointment, but she felt that not for worlds would she have said so. she flushed up quite happily. that moment of hostility on mrs. rooke's part had chilled her sensitive soul. "might i call at sherwood square for the lamb, do you think?" she asked diffidently. "to be sure you may. and i'll tell you what--stay to lunch with me. there'll be nobody but ourselves, of course. it comes to me now that i haven't seen you for centuries." "yes; i should like to stay for lunch, thank you." mrs. rooke rather wondered at the pale determination which came over nelly's soft face, succeeding the flush of a minute before. it did not occur to her that nelly had been pushing away from her with both hands during the weeks since her return the temptation which at this moment was offered to her. nelly was only too conscious of the strength of her desire to hear something of godfrey langrishe. it was a feeling she did not dare look in the face. if she had had any idea at the time she agreed to marry robin that she was going to be haunted by the thought of another man she would never have agreed. even of late there had been moments when her common-sense had whispered in her ears, protesting against the folly of marrying one man when another had so taken possession of her thoughts. but day by day the net had been drawn closer about her feet. the wedding-clothes, the wedding-breakfast, the bridesmaids, the wedding-cake, the hundred and one arrangements for the wedding, had all been strands of the net that held her ever tighter and tighter. how could she, at this stage, contemplate the breaking of her engagement? how could she? the courage of her race had not risen to that. mrs. rooke suggested a 'bus, and nelly agreed. now that she had done the thing against which her conscience protested she did not want to think over-much. she even wanted to postpone the hearing of the name which she had been hungry to hear for so long. the news she had desired too. how was she going to listen to his name, to talk of him calmly? she wanted time to gain courage. a 'bus did not give one opportunities for talking, hardly for thinking. she knew perfectly well that she should find a clear coast at sherwood square. the general had come part of the journey into town with her on his way to the club. poor sir denis! if he could only have seen his nelly now he would not have been so easy in his mind. lady drummond was engaged during the morning hours; she had to lunch with an old friend. nelly had been contemplating lunch in a quiet regent street restaurant rather than the going back to the lonely meal at home. she had known that a telegram to robin would have brought him to her side, but she had not meditated sending that telegram. she had been glad, in her innermost guilty, repentant heart of her morning of freedom from mother and son. the 'bus rumbled along as that vehicle of the middle ages does, making a prodigious screaming in the ears, filling one with horrible electric thrills as the brake was jammed down. neither conversation nor thinking was possible. nelly closed her eyes a little wearily in her corner. the other people in the 'bus had stared as she got in at the fresh daintiness of her attire, conspicuous in the dingy vehicle. now, as she leant back with closed eyes, the tired lines came out in her face. mrs. rooke, from the other side of the 'bus, glanced at her with pitying wonder. "dear me!" she thought to herself. "it isn't the nelly drummond i knew. what has she been doing to herself? she must have been racketting a deal. she doesn't look in the least like a happy bride should. poor child! i wonder if she is marrying against her will?" arrived at sherwood square the lamb was brought down and displayed to bunny's delighted mother. pat whistled for a hansom, and when the two ladies were in he carried out the animal and placed it in front of them, where it created some excitement in its passage through the street. behold nelly, then, presently seated on the nursery floor, winding up the lamb for bunny and forgetting all about her beautiful lavender muslin frock. the mother and nurse stood by as eager as nelly herself. bunny, indeed, was the least interested of the party. to be sure in the wonder-world of bunny's mind baa-lambs that went of themselves and bleated were no great wonder, even though it was a pleasing novelty to find one in his nursery. he was more excited over the reappearance of nelly herself and stood by her with one fat affectionate arm about her neck in a contented silence. in vain his mother asked him if he wasn't pleased. "he is always like that," she said at last. "we took him to the hippodrome and he only yawned, even when seeth's lions came on. he didn't take the smallest interest." "begging your pardon, ma'am, that he did," the nurse interposed. "he were flinging 'imself on his precious 'ead twenty times a day for a week after. 'twas a wonder he had any 'ead left, the precious lamb. them there dratted clowns, i don't 'old with them nohow!" the reconciliation between bunny's mother and bunny's friend and admirer was complete by the time they went down to lunch. nelly had begged for bunny's presence at the meal, and so the young monarch of all he surveyed was seated opposite to her in his high chair, with a napkin tucked under his chin, playing a fandango with a spoon and fork on the little table in front of him. bunny filled the lunch-hour, bunny's sayings and doings--there were not many of the former, but his mother managed to extract gems of wit and wisdom from his taciturnity--bunny's likes and dislikes, bunny's amazing development. only once was langrishe's name mentioned. he had sent home a beautiful mug of beaten silver for bunny. at the sound of his name nelly's eyes were suddenly startled: she caught her breath; the colour swept over her face and ebbed away, leaving her paler than before. presently the luncheon-hour was over and bunny had been carried off for his afternoon's outing. the half-hour or so in the drawing-room was over. nelly was drawing on her gloves, standing by the window which over-looked the narrow slip of square, invisible now for the flowers on the balcony. the fateful visit was nearly at an end and godfrey langrishe's name had been mentioned only once. she had a wild thought that her one opportunity was slipping out of her grasp. she had come here to have news of him. she must not come again. she must try and forget that he existed till such time at least as she could think of him calmly. now she _must_ know, she _must_ hear, what was happening to him away there at the end of the world. she glanced furtively around the pretty room, to which she would not come again. it was as though she said farewell to its comfort and pleasantness. she was not going to see bunny and his mother again, not for a long time at least. her gaze came back to the window, pausing ever so slightly on its way to glance at a portrait of langrishe which hung on the wall, a portrait painted in the days when he had been his uncle's heir, by a great painter. she had been conscious all the time she had been in the room of the presence of the portrait although she had not looked its way. the picture had caught the quiet passion and intensity of godfrey langrishe's gaze, as though he looked on deeds of glory and fought his way towards them. the face was less stern than she remembered it; it had yet some of the bloom and bonniness of his boyhood; renunciation had not written its deeper meaning in lines about the lips and eyes. she opened her mouth to speak of him, but at first no words would come. the fastening of her glove took all her attention it seemed. she had turned to the light for it, away from mrs. rooke's sympathetic glances. she had almost controlled her voice to speak without trembling when the thing was taken out of her hands. "i must not let you go," mrs. rooke said, "without giving you a message from godfrey. a message and gift. it came a week ago. see--here it is. i was going to post it to you." she took up a packet from the side-table. "how is he?" at last it was said. nelly's hand closed over the little packet. she would open it when she got home. to think that he remembered--that he had chosen a gift for her! was there a word with it, perhaps? her first letter--and her last letter--from him was lying perhaps in her hand. but what was it mrs. rooke was saying? she bent her ears greedily to listen. "he was well when he wrote, but the letter was written some time ago. where he is, it is not easy to get letters carried in safety. one never knows what may be happening. it is, of course, a terrible anxiety." the tears came into her eyes. there had been a little shadow over her brightness even while she had watched bunny. nelly had been aware of it dimly. what did she mean? "anxiety!" nelly repeated falteringly. "why should you be anxious? he is not ill, is he?" her heart had sunk, heavy as lead. her soul cried out in fear. "you know he is with the punitive expedition against the wazees for the murder of major sayers and his companions? you never can tell what dreadful thing may be happening to him. it isn't possible you didn't know? and i had been thinking you hardhearted! ah!" her arms went round nelly. "it isn't possible you didn't know? _don't_ look like that! do you care so much as all that, nelly? why, then, why, in the name of heaven, did you let him go? why are you marrying your cousin? my poor godfrey!" she was conscious of a strident voice shouting the evening papers in the street outside. indeed, even while she spoke to nelly, half her brain was listening in a strained way to that voice as it came nearer. what was it the creature was shouting? before she could hear distinctly the voice died away again in the distance. "why did i let him go?" nelly repeated after her. "because, because, he would not stay. he knew that i loved him, but he would not stay. he never seemed to think of staying. when he had broken my heart it seemed that i might as well make others happy. my father, lady drummond, my cousin; they have been so good to me always." "but you were engaged to your cousin, weren't you, when godfrey left?" little mrs. rooke's dark eyes looked black in her frightened face. "you were engaged to your cousin, were you not, just as you are to-day?" "i never accepted my cousin till--till captain langrishe had gone. it was understood that when we grew up we should marry to please our parents if we saw nothing against it. no one would have wanted to bind me if i did not wish to be bound." mrs. rooke flung up her hands with a dramatic gesture. "heaven forgive me, my poor nelly, for it was i who sent godfrey from you! i told him you were engaged to your cousin. i had been told so explicitly by lady drummond herself. how could i doubt that it was true?" nelly turned a white face towards her. oddly enough, in spite of its pallor the face had a certain illumination. "so he went away because of that. only that stood between us. do you think i am going to let that--a lie, a mistake--stand between us? i am going to break off my engagement, even at the eleventh hour." the daughter of the drummonds had found the courage of her race. she stared uncomprehendingly at the alarm in mrs. rooke's expression. "don't do anything rash," the little woman said, in a frightened voice. "supposing godfrey did not come back. supposing----" again there sounded in the distance the voices of the vendors of evening papers. the voices came nearer, one, two, half a dozen of them. they were all shouting together. "there must be some news," mrs. rooke said under her breath. "i shall come and see you to-morrow," nelly said. "to-morrow i shall be free to come and go where i like. do you know that i was bidding this room and you and bunny a long good-bye five minutes ago? and if he never comes back--well, he will know i waited for him." so preoccupied was she with her intention that she never noticed the newspaper boys and men fluttering their stop press editions like the wings of some birds of evil omen. as she sat in the hansom she drew the engagement ring off her finger and dropped it into her purse. then she sighed, as though an immense burden had fallen from her. chapter xxiii the news in the _westminster_ as nelly's hansom drew up at her own door another hansom was just turning away from it. she wondered with an impatient wonder who could have come. at the moment she could not have endured any hindrance between her and her project of telling her father that the engagement with robin was to come to an end. she was not in the least afraid of what she had to do. the spirit of the drummonds was thoroughly awake now. beyond her announcement to her father lay something vaguely painful which at the moment she did not consider. she would have to tell lady drummond and robin, of course, and it would hurt them: they would be angry with her. she was going to make a scandal, a nine days' wonder. her father would be grieved--angry, too, perhaps; but that could not be helped either. and then--some resentment stirred in her heart against him for the first time during all the years in which they had been together. he had kept her in ignorance of her lover's peril. she was not a child that she should have been kept in ignorance. for the moment she had no tender excuses for him. if he had been candid with her, then all this trouble about robin might have been spared, for she could never have promised herself as wife to another man while the one she loved was in daily and hourly danger. she went into the house with a look of stern accusation on her young face. the dogs came shrieking down the stairs in vociferous welcome as usual, but she took no notice of them. being old dogs and wise, they recognised a forbidding mood in her, and retired with deprecating wrigglings of their bodies. she asked pat if there were a visitor in the drawing-room. "no, then, miss, only the master. i can't make out what came over him at all to be comin' home in a hansom." he was minded to tell her that the general was not looking himself, to give her an affectionate, intimate warning; but she passed him by. he stood watching her, holding the door open in his hand till she took the bend of the staircase that hid her from his sight. "bedad, the dowager couldn't have done it better," he said, "shweepin' by me without a 'by your l'ave, pat'; and the master, callin' me 'murphy' to my face, what he's never done since he left the rig'ment. i wonder what's the matter with pat. 'twill be 'corporal' next." nelly looked into the drawing-room. her father was not there. she turned the handle of another door, the door of the general's own particular den, and going in she found him. she never thought of asking herself how he came to be there at this hour of the day, he who lived by rule, the click of whose latch-key had sounded in the hall-door every evening at a quarter to seven as long as she could remember. the clock on the mantelpiece pointed to ten minutes to five. the general was sitting in an armchair by the fireplace as though he had dropped into it on his entering the room. he was doing absolutely nothing, and that was an alarming thing enough, if but she had noticed it. a green evening paper was crumpled on his knee. if she had eyes to see it there was calamity in his attitude and his looks. but she had no eyes. she was too much absorbed in the thing she had to do. "what, nell!" he said, getting up as she entered. "we must have come home almost together. where have you been, child?" to his own ear his voice rang false, but she did not notice it. she did not meet his kiss. she did not see that he was looking at her with a fearful apprehension. "what is the matter, nell?" he stammered, noticing the alteration in her looks. she came and stood beside him, seeming to tower above him. "father," she said, "i am not going to marry robin. i want him to know at once." "not marry robin!" this was something the general was unprepared for. "not marry robin! god bless my soul, nell! it's very late for you to say such a thing--within three weeks of your wedding! and all the arrangements made! what will people say? what will the dowager say? you can't play fast and loose with a man like that, nell. why, it will be the talk of the town." he tried to work himself up to the old fretting and fuming, but there was no heartiness in it. under the projecting eyebrows his old frostily-blue eyes had a scared look. but if he had been in such a passion as he had shown on a certain historic occasion when the regiment had nearly scattered before the approach of screaming dervishes--a passion which had rallied the men and won sir denis his v.c.--it would have been all the same to nelly. "all that is perfectly immaterial," she said. "i am sorry for robin and for aunt matilda. but all that will pass. i was mad to consent to the marriage. i am only glad that i came to my senses in time." was this nelly?--this young, sure, inflexible creature! he stared at her in utter amazement. "supposing i were to say that you must go on now since you have gone so far, nell?" he said, and felt at the same time the futility of the saying. "i never thought my girl would play so shabby a trick on gerald's son. you know that people will laugh at robin?" "they won't. robin is not the sort of person to be laughed at--at least, not for long. besides, if it is any consolation to you, father, i may tell you that it will not hurt robin much: robin is not and never has been in love with me." "what!" the general now was genuinely indignant. he had forgotten for the moment his other perturbation, whatever it might be. "what do you mean, nell? your cousin not in love with you! after all the years during which you have been meant for each other! impossible, nell! robin _must_ be in love with you." "he is not; he never has been. that is my consolation, so far as he is concerned. father, why did you keep from me the fact that captain langrishe was fighting the wazees? why did you?" the general's colour deserted his cheeks once again. "poor langrishe! what was the good of letting you know, nell? you used to be--interested in the poor fellow." "you shouldn't have kept it from me. i didn't read the newspapers, or i should have known. do you know why i didn't read them? because if i had i must have turned to the army news. i was fighting that as a temptation. i was trying to drive him from my mind. i kept away from his sister, although she had been kind to me; i went nowhere where i might hear his name. then to-day i met her by accident. i went home with her. she told me--do you know what she told me?" "what, nell?" "that her brother went away under the impression that i was engaged to robin drummond. aunt matilda had told her so and she had told him. so that is why he left me." "i see," the general groaned. "a nice lot of trouble has come out of that scheme of your aunt matilda's for marrying you and robin. i never would agree to it; i used to say: 'let it be till the children are old enough to choose for themselves.' i wish i had taken a stronger stand. i only wished for your happiness, nell. i always liked poor langrishe, and felt i could trust him with even what i held dearest on earth. i did my best for you, nell. if i kept his danger from you, it was only that i hoped to keep you from suffering like those other poor women." she did not notice the haggardness of his face, nor the repetition of "poor langrishe." she was too much absorbed in getting to the root of things. she was determined to know everything. "what happened when you went to tilbury?" was this young inquisitor his nell? "i didn't see him. the boat had gone." "and i thought you had offered me to him, and that he had rejected me! oh, i know you would have done it in the most delicate way. there need not have been a word spoken. but it would have been the same thing in the end. i thought his love was not great enough to conquer his pride." "my train broke down, nell; i came ten minutes too late. i thought the hand of god was in it." "it was a mere accident. god had nothing to do with it. i am only grateful that it has not ended worse. if i had married robin and then discovered these things----" "don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me, nell." the general took out a big white silk handkerchief and wiped his forehead with it. "don't say that you couldn't have forgiven me! i meant it all for the best. my little nell couldn't be hard with her old father." she stooped suddenly and caught his hand to her lips. she noticed with a tender contraction of her heart that it was an old hand--knotted, with purple stains. "i should be a brute if i could be angry with you," she said; and the tenseness of her face relaxed to its old softness. "ah, that's right, nell--that's right. we couldn't do without each other. you've always your old father, you know--haven't you, dearie?--no matter what happens. i'll stand by you, nell. i'll take you away. no one shall be angry with my nell." "you are too good to me," she said. "and i've been angry with you! what a wretch i was to be angry with you! on my way here i telegraphed to robin to come this evening. i must get it over. you shall take me away if you will afterwards. i would stay and face it if it would do any good, but it wouldn't. after all, there is no great harm done. robin's heart will not be broken." "and afterwards, nell?" "afterwards? oh, you and i shall be together." "yes; we did very well when we were together. listen, nell." he put his arm about her. "i want you to be strong and brave. i came home to tell you, lest you should hear by accident. his poor sister did not know----" the general's den looked out on the square gardens. it was quite a long way across them to the road; yet through the quietness of the golden afternoon there came the shouting of the newsboys. it all flashed on nelly with a blinding suddenness. to be sure, they had been calling the same thing while she stood with his sister and learned why he had left her, only she had not known. "he is dead," she said, with an immense quietness. it was as though she had known it always. "no; not dead, nell--terribly wounded, but not dead. he is in english hands." he stopped, shuddering. if he had been in those black devils' hands to be tortured to death! he had been only saved by a sudden rush of his men. even his wounds would not have saved him from torture if god had not delivered him out of their hands. "show it to me." all of a sudden she saw the newspaper which had been lying crumpled on his knee. that had contained the news all the time while they had been talking about things that mattered so much less. he did not try to keep it from her. he turned over the paper and found the page of it which had the latest news. there it was, with its staring headlines. she seemed to have seen it just so, in another life. she read it through to the end. it had been an ambush. the small detachment of troops had been led by the guide into the midst of a large body of the enemy--it had been surrounded. captain langrishe had fallen, as had a young lieutenant. the men had stood shoulder to shoulder, fighting desperately. by the most desperate courage they had rescued the bodies of their officers, which were being carried by the tribesmen into one of their towers among the hills. they had fought their way back with the bodies strapped to their horses. lieutenant foley proved to be dead. he had been hacked and hewed with knives. captain langrishe had been more fortunate; the life was still in him when the last intelligence had been sent down. there was very little hope of his recovery. nelly neither cried out nor fainted. when she had finished the reading she laid down the paper quietly. her father watched her in mingled terror and relief. she was seeing it all--the rocky gorge with the inaccessible hills on either side, filled in with scrub and low trees; at the little neck of the gorge the dreadful tower; the small body of britishers fighting their way step by step backward; the dazzling blue sky over all. was heaven empty that such things happened? she remembered in a kind of daze that she had been at a garden-party that very afternoon. she had worn for the first time her white silk frock with the roses on it and she had seen in many eyes how well it became her. that had happened in another world. a great gulf stretched between even the events of the afternoon and this time--this time, in which she knew that godfrey langrishe was dead or dying. "i wish he might have known," she said quietly, "that after all i was not engaged to robin." chapter xxiv the friend robin drummond had heard from his cousin's own lips his dismissal. her father would have spared her, but nelly would not hear of that and he let her have her way. she told robin everything in a dull, unmodulated voice, with a dead-tiredness in it which revealed her unhappiness more eloquently than words could have done. she stood by the mantel-shelf, holding one hand over her eyes while she told him. when she had finished there was a momentary silence. "you are not angry with me?" she asked, turning about and looking at him with eyes of suffering. "my poor child! could i have the heart to be angry with you?" "ah! that is right. you were always kind, robin. i shouldn't have liked you to be unkind now. you must win me your mother's forgiveness." "she will come round in time." he had an idea his mother would take it badly. but, of course, she would have to come round. the whole bad business had been her fault in a way; and if she was hard on nelly, he felt like telling her so. "i am glad to think i have done you no great harm, robin. indeed, the harm would have been in marrying you. i have realised for some time that i was not essential to your happiness." he opened his mouth to speak and then closed it again. he was not a diplomatist. "i am very fond of you, nelly," he said, after a pause. "yes, i know you are. so am i fond of you. it was not enough, of course; i ought to have known better." "and i. i can't forgive myself, nell, for having been in a way the cause of the mischief. take courage, dear. all may yet be well. god knows what happiness is in store for you." "god knows," she echoed; but there was no assurance in her tone. the general, lying in wait for him, drew him into his own den. he put his hand on robin's shoulder, leaning heavily on it, like an old man with his son. "i'm sorry for this, so far as it concerns you, my lad," he said. "but my great trouble is for my girl. she is taking it too quietly. i don't know what is happening--inside. one knows so little about women--how they take those things. she ought to have a woman with her." "his sister. she is a good little woman, and she adores him. she would be good to nelly." "you can't go tearing off to people's houses at this hour of the evening"--it was nine o'clock--"and asking them to come with you. to be sure, the sister knows. i don't want nell talked about." "nor i. let him come home well and then they can talk of the nine-days' happy wonder. i'm going to the sister. if she fails, there is miss gray." the general snatched at the idea. "she came to see nell the other day and i liked her. i began with a prejudice--i've no liking for women who take up the trade of politics. writing books, too! i'm glad my nell doesn't write books. i shouldn't like to see her name stuck up in the papers. but this miss gray of yours. she overcame my prejudice. she looks clean, my lad, clean outside and within. nell's fond of her. the dogs pawed her as if they had known her all her life. i trust a dog's judgment. she didn't mind it either, though she was fresh as a daisy. what do you propose to do? to ask her to come round and see nell to-morrow, if the sister fails? you can't very well ask her to come to-night." he looked wistfully at robin. "miss gray often works late," the other said, consulting his watch. "if she is at home, why shouldn't she come back with me? she may be out, of course; the world has begun to run after her. she is not much attracted by the world, but she gives kindness for what she takes to be kindness. she is not conventional. if she feels she is wanted she won't mind coming in at ten o'clock." "i believe nell would talk to her," the father said eagerly. "if nell would talk to someone my mind would be at rest. poor nell! the purpose of my life was to keep her from pain and sorrow." he went back to his room shaking his old head, and robin drummond went out into the night. he drove first to mrs. rooke's house, and found the mistress absent. she had gone off to an old mother who had to be consoled. fortunately it was not far to mary gray's little flat, not more than ten minutes' hansom drive. he told the driver to wait while he ran up the stone steps. to his relief, when he had rung the bell at the white door he heard someone stirring within. mary herself opened the door. "forgive my coming at this hour," he began apologetically. even as he spoke he remembered that he had had a chance of seeing those little rooms that held mary and had relinquished it on that bygone good friday. he looked enviously beyond mary herself to the glimpse of lamplit room. he could see a white wall with pictures on its panels, a bit of a dwarf bookcase, a chair drawn to a table heaped with books, a green-shaded reading-lamp. against the lighted background mary's cloudy hair stood out illumined. "what is it?" "it is my cousin. she is in great trouble. i will explain to you as we go along. can you come to her? her father is anxious about her." she was a woman in ten thousand. she asked no questions, although it occurred to him that it must seem odd to her that she should be summoned, that nelly should be in great trouble, seeing that he and her father were well. "shall i stay the night?" she asked. "your cousin was so very anxious that i should come and stay with her. she showed me the room i should have--next to hers. sir denis seconded the invitation warmly. i said that i would try to come." "it will be the best thing in the world. how long will you take to get ready? i have a hansom at the door." "five minutes." she came down the stairs in four and a half minutes. robin had been expeditious; it yet wanted twenty minutes to ten by his watch. he helped her into the hansom, got in himself and placed her little bag at their feet. the hansom turned up the hill. she waited for him to speak. "nelly has found out that she made a mistake," he said quietly. "her heart was not given to me, but to a captain langrishe of her father's old regiment. news has come that he has been badly wounded, so badly that in all probability he is dead by this time. he had exchanged into an indian regiment, and almost as soon as he got out he was sent into the hills on the business of this wretched little war. those conquests of ours, what they cost us! why should we have all those thousands of miles of frontiers to defend? why can't we stay at home and let the territories be for their own people?" she smiled quietly to herself in the corner of the cab. the sudden excursion into politics was so characteristic of him. the wind of the summer night came cool and friendly in their faces. the blue heaven was studded with stars. a little half-moon hung above the quiet shadows of the square through which they were passing. for the stillness they might have been miles away from london. "what a don quixote you are!" she said. "i believe you would cede india if you had your way." "i believe i should. don't you wonder at me, miss gray? my forbears devoted their existence chiefly to extending the boundaries of the british empire. am i not their degenerate descendant?" "oh, you're a fighting man in other ways. you don't mind facing a hostile audience and saying unpalatable things to them. mr. ilbert says you'll have to fight for your seat at the next election." "i wouldn't be bothered with a seat i hadn't to fight for. all the same, i'm obliged to ilbert for his interest in my affairs. do you know that he referred to me as a little englander the other night, as though there were only one way of loving one's country and that to rob other people of theirs?" his tone was an offended one. the name of ilbert seemed to have power to irritate him. he resented the idea that ilbert had talked to mary of him, disparaged him; he supposed she saw ilbert often. the idea was exceedingly distasteful to him. "he has the highest opinion of your honesty and capacity, your patriotism too," mary said. he did not want ilbert's commendation; he hated that mary should quote his opinions. he lay back in the hansom, staring before him, and his expression was one of unmixed gloom. even her neighbourhood had no power to cheer him, although at first he had had a sensation of delight in her nearness to him, the perfume as of flowers that hung about her, the soft folds of her dress which he had touched in the darkness. they were driving along sherwood square now. across the square itself robin could see the lit windows of the general's house. their time together was short, he thought; and perhaps the same thought occurred to mary, for she touched his sleeve with a gesture of sympathy. "will you let me say," she said, "how sorry i am for the pain and trouble this must be to you?" "you mean, because nelly has--has chucked me?" "yes; i mean that." for a moment he looked down in silence. he wondered if he had any right to tell the truth. would it not be like a disparagement of nelly if he were to confess that he had never loved her? a memory floated into his mind. it was of lady agatha chenevix and something she had said to him once at a dinner-party. "when i must be indiscreet----" she had begun. "yes?" he had answered laughingly. "when was your ladyship ever anything but indiscreet? and who has made indiscretion adorable like you?" her ladyship had bidden him hold his tongue with frank camaraderie, and had finished the speech. "when i am indiscreet, i am indiscreet to mary. she is like a little well, into which one drops one's indiscretions and puts the lid on." "a very clear, transparent, honest well," he had said. after the momentary pause he lifted his head. the rest of the world might think him heartbroken if it would; he wanted mary to know the truth. "as a matter of fact, miss gray," he said, "nelly has not broken my heart. she had always been very dear to me, like a dear little sister. there was a time when i felt that it would be quite easy to fall in with my mother's plan and marry nelly. but i had come to the conclusion that my feeling for her was not enough for marriage, before that time in the spring when my mother intimated to me that nelly was ready to fulfil her engagement. i never considered it an engagement. i was actually about to make things clear when that intimation was given to me. then, i was led to believe that nelly had taken it as binding. what could i do only go on? if nelly cared for me--i confess that i ought to have known it to be an unlikely thing--then my great concern in life was that nelly should not suffer. it was all a pretty bad mistake, but i am glad it has gone no further." he heard something like a sigh, so faint that he could be hardly sure he heard it. it was, in reality, mary's thanksgiving and great relief; a burden which had lain at her heart for months past taking wings to itself and flying away. she had not acknowledged to herself that cold doubt about robin drummond, who had seemed to come so near to her, while all the time he belonged to another woman. she had pushed away the doubt with loyal refusal to hear it; but it had been there all the time. now it was gone for ever. there was no more need of excuses or explanations to her own heart. "thank you for telling me," she said. they were at the house-door and the hansom had pulled up. they went up the steps between the couchant lions and before they could knock pat had opened the door, as though he had been listening for them. "miss nelly is in the drawing-room, sir," he said in his privileged irish way; "but the master has just gone into the study." they went up to the drawing-room. nelly was sitting in a chair by the open window as robin had left her, tearless, her unemployed hands lying in her lap. the circle of dogs about her watching her with anxious eyes would have been humorous in other circumstances. the lamps were lit behind her, but there was no light on her face, except the dying light in the pale western sky. "i have brought you a visitor, nelly," robin said. she looked up indifferently. then something of interest stirred in her face. "you have heard what has happened?" she said in a half-whisper. mary knelt down beside her and put her arms round the little frozen figure. "why, you are cold!" she said. "come away from the window. i am going to ask for a fire, and then you will talk to me about it." robin drummond left them together, and went down to tell pat to light the fire in the drawing-room, because miss nelly was cold. chapter xxv the one woman mary gray's loving, capable care and sympathy carried nelly through the worst days of her trouble. there were times when mary had to hold the girl's hands, to fight with all her might against the acute suffering which menaced for a time her sanity and her health. the horrors into which nelly fell when she thought upon the things which happened in such wars as this with cruel and cunning savages, were the worst things to fight. there were hours in which all the fears of the world seemed to be let loose on the unhappy child, when it seemed impossible to vanquish those powers of darkness with one poor woman's love and prayers. during these days mary gray hardly left nelly's side. fortunately she had ceased to direct the bureau, and another capable, much more common-place, young woman had taken up her task. the official appointment was on its way, but had not yet arrived. so she was free to devote herself to her friend. the doctor whom sir denis called in could do little for the patient except prescribe sleeping draughts to be taken at need. he understood that the girl had had a shock. he suggested a change, but nelly would not hear of that. she must stay on in london where the first news would come. so stay on they did, through the torrid heats of july, when the dust was in arid drifts on the square green gardens and blew in through the open windows, powdering everything with its faint grey. "this young lady is better than my prescriptions," the doctor said handsomely of mary gray. and added, "indeed, what can we do for sorrow except give the body a sedative?" "if she could face her trouble clear-eyed," mary said, "i should feel glad in spite of everything. it is these mists and shadows in her mind that it is so hard to fight against." after a little while they were left pretty well to themselves in sherwood square. the dowager was angry with nelly as her son had anticipated; and, after a scene with robin which prevented a scene with sir denis, she had gone off over the sea to the court. everybody went out of town: even sherwood square emptied itself away to the sea and the foreign spas. only robin drummond stayed in town and came constantly. during the early days when nelly kept the house and refused obstinately to go out of doors, he would leave sir denis in charge and carry mary off for a walk in the square. the first sign of interest that nelly showed in other things than her sorrow was when she indicated to her father the distant figures of mary and robin moving briskly along at the farther side of the square. "do you notice anything there, papa?" she asked. "what do you mean, my pet?" sir denis was quite flurried at nelly's suddenly coming out of her brooding silence. "i mean mary and robin," she answered. "it has been borne in on me that that is why robin was not in love with me. poor robin! he would have gone through it heroically. never say again, papa, that he is not a true drummond. and i should never have known if he could have helped it that i wasn't the only woman for him." "you don't mean to say, nell, that robin is in love with miss gray?" "that is it, papa." the general turned very red. for a second his impulse was towards wrath; then he checked himself. "to be sure, as you didn't want him, nell, it would be the height of unreasonableness to expect poor robin to be miserable for your sake. and miss gray is a fine creature--a fine, handsome, clever creature. still, there is a great difference in their positions. it will be a blow to the dowager." "mrs. ilbert would not have minded." "god bless my soul! you don't mean to say that miss gray could have had ilbert?" "she has refused him, but i don't think he has given up hope." "god bless my soul! why, the ilberts are connected with half the peerage. we drummonds are only country squires beside them. such a handsome fellow too, and with such a reputation! why should she refuse ilbert? is the girl mad?" "robin was first in the field. but i happen to know that mary refused mr. ilbert while yet robin and i were engaged. what do you think of that?" "madder and madder. i don't understand women, nell. such a fellow as ilbert! why, he might marry anybody. we must make it easy for them with the dowager, nell--as easy as we can. we owe a good deal to miss gray." "oh, she'll come round--she'll have to come round." "do you suppose they understand each other, nell?" "i don't think robin has spoken. he seems to be waiting for something. i have only noticed the last day or two. before that i was absorbed in my troubles--such a selfish daughter, papa." "my darling, we have all felt with you. it is so good to see you more yourself, nell." "ah!" she turned away her head. "i have a feeling--there is no reason for it at all--that good news is coming. i felt it when i awoke this morning." meanwhile robin drummond and mary had the square almost to themselves, except for a gardener or two. all around the square were shuttered and silent houses. it was the most torrid of early august days, and presently the heat drove them to a sheltered seat beneath a tree. in the mist of heat around them the bedding-plants, the scarlet geraniums, the lobelia and beet, made a vivid glare. only in the forest trees, too dense for the dust to penetrate, were there shadow and relief. they were talking of nelly. "she will be all right now," mary said. "she has come out of the darkness. even if she has his death to bear i think she will bear it. she reproaches herself for the pain she has caused her father." "poor uncle denis! he lives in terror about nelly. she is all he has had since her mother died." "i think he may rest easy now. nelly is not going to die--not even of grief. now that she is better, sir robin, why don't you go away? i know your yacht is waiting for you, and you have got the london look; you want change." "i shan't go till there is news one way or another." "there ought to be news soon. it is hard on you waiting from day to day." "i don't feel it hard. perhaps if the good news came i might induce them to come away with me on the yacht. it would be the best thing in the world for them. for the matter of that, why don't you go away? you also have the london look." "oh, i shall go gladly when i may. i am really longing to be off. do you know what i shall hear when i go over there?--a sound i am longing for." "what?" "the rain. i close my eyes now and fancy i hear it pattering on the leaves. oh, the music of it! one is never long without it at home. we've had six weeks without rain here. can't you imagine the soft, delicious downpour of it? the music of the rain--my ears hunger for it." "oh, now indeed i see that it is time you went. you will probably have enough of the rain." he spoke gloomily, and she laughed. "it will probably rain all the time i am there. and i shall be able to forgive it because of its first delicious moments." "what are you going to do?" he asked the question almost roughly. "i am going to be with my father, in a mean, little two-storied house of six rooms. at least, it is mean outwardly; but no house could be mean inside where he lived and spread his light. he will have to be at his work every day till he gets his fortnight's holiday in september. if i get away in, say, a fortnight's time, i shall help my stepmother about the house while he is at business all day; i shall have a thousand things to do. they have only one servant; and my stepmother and sisters do the greater part of the work. they would treat me like a queen when i go over there, if i would let them; but i never do let them. i love dusting, and cooking, and mending, and helping the little ones with their lessons. then as soon as my father is free i am going to carry them off to a hotel i know between the mountains and the sea. it is a big, old-fashioned house, and there is a lovely garden, full of roses and lilies, and phlox and stocks and hollyhocks and mignonette and sweet peas. i stayed there once with dear lady anne. we shall all have a lovely time. there is a trout-stream at the end of the garden and the trout sail by in it. there are hundreds of little streams running down from the mountains. they make golden pools in the road and they hang like gold and silver fringes from the crags that edge the road." there had been a deliberation in what she told him about the little house. but she was mistaken if she thought to surprise him. he was picturing her there at her domestic duties and thinking that no small or mean surroundings could dwarf her soul's stature. hadn't the hideous official room that held her been heaven to him?--the singing of the naked gas-jets the music of the spheres? "it will be a great change from london," he said. "i am going back to the old days. i have refused to see any of my fine new friends. the ilberts will be staying over there with the lord lieutenant at the same time. i have forbidden mr. ilbert to call." again his mood changed to one of unreasonable irritation. what had she to do with the ilberts, or they with her? "if i find myself over there i shall certainly call," he said, with an air of doggedness. "oh, very well, then, you shall," she said merrily. "_you_ won't embarrass us, not even if we have to ask you to dinner." an hour or two later the good news came, brought by mrs. rooke in person. captain langrishe could hardly yet be considered out of danger, but he lived; he had been sent down in a litter to the nearest station, where there were appliances and comforts and white people all about him, outside the sights and sounds of war, beyond the danger of recapture by the enemy. nelly bore the better news well: she had been prepared for it, she said. seeing her so quiet, mrs. rooke brought out a scrap of blue ribbon cut through and blood-stained. it was in a little case which had been hacked through by knives. it had been sent home to her at the first when there was no hope, when, practically, godfrey langrishe was a dead man. "it is not mine, my dear," she said to nelly, "and i think it must be yours. i did not dare show it to you before." nelly went pale and red. yes, it was her ribbon, which had fallen from her hair that morning more than a year ago when captain langrishe had ridden by with the regiment and the wind had carried off her ribbon. she received it with a trembling eagerness. "yes, it is mine," she said. "i knew he had it. he showed it to me before he went away." "how furious godfrey will be when he misses it!" mrs. rooke said. "somebody will be having a bad quarter of an hour. and now, nelly, when are you going to be well enough to come to see my mother? she longs to know you. she is the dearest old soul. she wanted me to bring you to her while yet we were in suspense. but i waited for news, one way or another." "i should love to go," nelly said. "she has a room in a gable fitted up for you; the windows open on roses. the place is full of sweet sounds and sights. all through this trouble her thoughts have been with you. will you come?" "if papa can spare me." "then i shall ask him, and we can go down on saturday. won't he come for the day? when you know my mother i am going to leave you there with her. poor cyprian is off to marienbad and i must go with him. he's dreadfully afraid of losing his figure. a fat lawyer, he says, is the one unpardonable thing. will you look after my mother?" the general was only too glad to give his consent to the plan which had brought the colour to nelly's cheek and the light to her eye. after leaving nelly in sussex he and robin would go down to southampton, get out the yacht and cruise about the coast till nelly felt inclined for a longer run. so mary gray was free to go. she went out in the afternoon, leaving robin to look after his cousin. the general had gone off to the club with a lighter heart than he had known for many a month. robin had suggested a drive, but nelly would not hear of that. she was going to save up her pleasure, she said, for sussex and saturday. she consented to walk in the square, where she had not been for quite a long time. he noticed that she looked delicate and languid and his manner to her was very tender. in fact, a new under-gardener in the square, who was very susceptible to romance, put quite an erroneous interpretation on robin's manner to his cousin, and hovered in their vicinity with eager curiosity till he was pulled up sharply by one of his superior officers. "so we are all going to scatter, nell," drummond said, half regretfully. she glanced at him. "poor robin! it was too bad, keeping you in town." "i haven't minded it at all, i assure you, nell. indeed, i couldn't have gone happily while you were in suspense." "robin," she said suddenly, "what are you waiting for?" he started. "waiting for?" he repeated. "what do you mean, nell?" "you're not going to let mary go without speaking to her?" under her light shawl her hand felt for and held the locket which contained the blood-stained blue ribbon. "haven't you waited long enough? i believe she would wait an eternity for you, but don't try her. speak now." "my dear nell," he stammered, "it is only a fortnight or so from the day that should have been our wedding day." "i was thinking as much. what have you had in your mind? some foolish quixotic notion. what were you waiting for?" "to tell the truth, nell, till you should be happy." "don't take the chances of letting her go away without telling her. do you think i haven't known that you were in love with her all the time? why, that first day i saw her i said to myself in amazement, 'where were his eyes that he could have chosen you before her?'" "nelly, how do i know that she will look at me?" "she will never look at anyone else. speak now, if only in fairness to the men who might be in love with her, who are in love with her and may have false hopes." "she won't look at me, nell." "she has sent mr. ilbert about his business, but he will not let her be. he says that so long as she is not anybody else's she may yet be his. i didn't want to betray him, but i must make you understand." poor ilbert! for a moment drummond's mind was filled with a lordly compassion towards him. ilbert rejected! and for him! to be sure, he knew mary cared for him. she was not the girl to have admitted him to the intimacy of last winter unless she cared. she had borne with him exquisitely. she had even taken her successful rival to her breast. he had made her suffer, the magnanimous woman. suddenly he took fire. he had been a slow, dull fellow, he said to himself, and quaked at the thought that ilbert might have robbed him of his jewel. now, he felt as though he must follow her, and make her his without even the possible mischances of a few hours of absence. "she comes back to dinner?" he asked. "she comes back to tea," his cousin answered, "and you have made me tired, robin. i am going to rest till tea-time." they went back to the house and nelly left him in the drawing-room while she went away to her own room. he knew that she was giving him his opportunity and was grateful for it. how could he have been so mad as to think of letting mary go away with nothing settled between them? he walked up and down restlessly, while the dogs watched him in amazement from their cushions. it was a topsy-turvy world in which the dogs found themselves of late. they had almost reached the point of being surprised at nothing. it was lucky the carpet was so faded and shabby, for of late the general had worn a path in it with his restless movements; and now here was his nephew behaving as though he were an untamed creature in a cage and not a sober, serious legislator. at last he heard her knock, and her light foot ascending the stairs. she looked surprised to find him alone and asked rather anxiously for nelly. "you didn't let her get over-tired?" she asked, apprehensively. "no; we walked very little. she said she would rest till tea-time. well, have you packed?" "i have put my things together. i am going to ask to be allowed off to-morrow. i shall sleep at the flat to-morrow night, if they can spare me, and be off the next morning." "you are glad to be free?" "very glad. i was also glad to stay. and you?" he rose up to his awkward length from the chair into which he had dropped on hearing her knock and went close to her. "i shall never be free again in this world," he said. and then, with a change of tone: "do you suppose i am going to let you go over there a free woman?" he drew her almost roughly to him. "i have always loved you," he said. "and i," she answered, "i have loved you since i was sixteen." "my one woman!" he cried in a rapture. chapter xxvi golden days the time went peacefully with nelly and the mother in the little house among the sussex woods. and presently, since nelly showed no indication of wishing to join them, and could not be spared indeed, and since robin was plainly ill at ease yachting up and down the coast, the general declared his intention of going off to a grouse-moor in scotland, rented by an old friend, over which he had shot year after year for many years back. on hearing of this sudden change of plans robin expressed a polite regretfulness, but the general looked at him with twinkling eyes--he and robin had come to be on the best of terms of late--and bade him be off to dublin without any confounded hypocrisy about it. "you've been wishing me anywhere, my lad, this last week or two except aboard the _seagull_," he said. "not but what you've borne with me--oh, yes, you've borne with me; a lad of my own couldn't have done more: and now you've earned your reward." so the general went off northward for what was left of the grouse season. later, he was to go into sussex for the partridge and pheasant shooting, not so far from where nelly was living in a state of blissful peace, with excellent reports of langrishe's recovery coming by every mail. and be sure, the _seagull_ spread her white wings and flew, as fast as wind and wave could carry her, across the irish sea. sir robin presented himself unannounced at the little house in wistaria terrace, where the youngest but two of the miss grays opened the door half-way to him, and was visibly alarmed at the sound of his title. the little house smelt of cookery, perhaps of washing, although doors and windows were open. but little robin drummond cared for that. beyond the demure child who had admitted him he caught sight of mary sitting on the shabby little grass-plot, in a wicker-chair, with a japanese umbrella over her head. and roses could not have been sweeter than the atmosphere. the simplicity which belonged to his character came out in his dealings with mary's family. walter gray came home to find his daughter's grand lover stretching his long figure on the grass at her feet, while the smaller grays, their shyness quite departed, rolled and tumbled over him as confident as puppies. to be sure walter gray, with his disbelief in distinctions of rank as otherwise than accidental, was not unduly elated by the fine company in which he found himself. he looked hard and long at robin drummond as hand met hand. then a bright look of reassurance came over his face. he could trust even mary to the owner of those eyes. they discovered a deal in common later on as they walked, with mary for a third, in the long twilight and early moonlight. walter gray imparted his secret thoughts as to a spiritual brother. his dreams, his aspirations, his utopia of a world as he would have made it, he laid bare to robin drummond in his slow, easy talk, with a hand through his arm. "he was born to be a great man," robin drummond said to mary later, in a generous enthusiasm, "and he shall not miss his vocation. he must have leisure and ease. when we are married he shall have a corner of the court to himself, and he shall put his dreams into black and white. i know the room; it looks into an elm-tree, and the owner of the room has the key to the birds' secrets. there is an oriel window, and in the room is a little old organ, yet wonderfully sweet. you shall play to him when he lacks inspiration." "he could do better with the young ones about him and the mother grumbling placidly in his ear," said mary. "then they shall have the cottage. it is within the walls and looks to the mountains. it is a roomy old place and has a big overgrown garden of its own." "i wonder if he will take it from you?" "he will have to," said the lover. then they went back to supper: and he was introduced to gerald, the young bank-clerk, whose mind was not yet cured of the fever for the sea, who had a roving eye in his smooth young face; and marcella, the eldest one of the young grays, who was a typist in the same employment as her father. and though at first the young people were shy of mary's lover they were quickly at home with him. the fine breeding of walter gray had passed on, to some extent, to every one of his children. "it will be my privilege to look after them," robin drummond said to mary. "as for the lad, he will never be a financier. he is too old for the navy, but why should he not learn the seaman's trade on the yacht? he has a pining look which i don't altogether like." "it will be said that you are marrying all my people," mary said uneasily. "we shall not hear it said," her lover answered placidly. "we shall be out of hearing of that sort of thing." when their friendship had the ratification of weeks upon it he broached the matter of the cottage to walter gray. they were walking together as they usually did of evenings; and walter gray walked with a stick, leaning on him, with the other hand thrust through his arm. he had a groping way of walking, which drummond had noticed and ascribed to his abstraction from the things about him. after drummond had unfolded his plans there was a silence, during which he watched walter gray curiously. was he going to refuse, as mary had suggested? they were near a lamp on the suburban road which stood up in the boughs of a lime, making a green flame of the tree. walter gray pulled up suddenly and lifted his eyes to the light. "do you notice anything?" he asked. drummond peered down into the eyes. yes, there was a slight film upon the pupil of one. "cataract," said walter gray cheerfully. "i shall never be fit for my work any more, even if an operation should be successful. marcella knows. good girl, she has kept her own counsel. i have not been working for some time at the watches. mr. gordon, kind soul, continues my salary. i have been learning type-writing against the days that are to come. i confess i have a desire to write a book. i have saved nothing, sir robin drummond. how is it possible, with fifty shillings a week and eight children? i have no pride about accepting your offer. if my scrip is empty and yours is full i don't object to receiving from a fellow-pilgrim what i should give if our cases were reversed." "ah! that is right," said robin drummond. "as for cataract, in its early stages it is easily curable. sir george osborne----" "i will do whatever you and mary wish. but i anticipate blindness. i shall not mind very much if i have the light within. there will be the book to solace my age; and after a time i shall not be so helpless." the dowager came round after all sooner than was expected. the reconciliation was hastened by a letter she received from mrs. ilbert congratulating her on her prospective daughter-in-law. "my poor maurice," she wrote. "i don't mind telling you, dear lady drummond, that maurice was head-over-ears in love with your charming and distinguished daughter-in-law that is to be. the boy takes it very well, says that the better man has won, which is exactly like maurice. since your son has chosen a political career i congratulate him on having such a woman as miss gray by his side. she will be a force in political life, so says maurice. and she will be the noblest inspiration. though i am grieved that she is to be your son's egeria and not mine yet i offer you and sir robin my heartiest congratulations. i may add that i also congratulate the party to which your son belongs." lady drummond had rubbed her eyes over this letter. congratulate _her_--was it possible?--on being the prospective mother-in-law of mary gray, the daughter of a man who worked for his living at repairing the insides of watches! she, the widow of a hero, a rich woman of social importance! congratulate _her_ and robin and robin's party! and not one word of congratulating mary gray! was caroline ilbert mad? however, the thing impressed her. it worked by slow degrees into her mind. she had listened often to such foolish heresies as that which declared brains more important than rank or wealth. in a general way she had not dissented. brains were very important. gerald had thought a good deal of brains. if he had lived he had meditated a book on napoleon's wars. she had often met writing and painting and musical people in her friends' drawing-rooms. they had not appealed to her nor she to them. but she had grown accustomed to their presence there and to meeting them on an equality to which in her heart she had never subscribed. however, she had the wisdom to see that there was no use in holding out against her son and to console herself with the idea that mary was going to be a personage, even apart from the incredible social promotion of marrying sir robin drummond. so she actually reached the point of coming in person to wistaria terrace to make a formal recantation of her opposition to the marriage, and to take mary to her imposing, black-bugled breast. to be sure the little house had almost driven her back from its threshold. she filled the small shabby hall, she fell over the brushes left by the general servant who had been scrubbing the oilcloth, not expecting her ladyship; she sat uncomfortably on the green rep chairs of the drawing-room staring at a berlin-wool banner-screen which represented a poodle with beads for his eyes, at the silver shavings in the grate, and the school drawings, finished by the nuns, of the younger misses gray. there were certain aspects of that drawing-room dear to mrs. gray which mary had been too tenderhearted to try to alter. there mary had found her and had been moved in her innermost humorous sense; but she had been glad to be friends with robin's mother, and so had done her best to advance the reconciliation. lady drummond had a surprising proposal to make. it seemed that her friend, lady iniscrone, had placed at miss gray's disposal for the wedding the big house on the mall formerly occupied by lady anne hamilton. lady iniscrone wrote that they had heard of miss gray from a friend of lady agatha chenevix, and had felt interested in her progress ever since. of course, remembering the tie which had existed between lord iniscrone's aunt and miss gray, lord and lady iniscrone could never be without interest in miss gray's progress. mary smiled a smile of fine humour over the reading of the letter. at first she was in the mood to refuse. but, being her father's daughter, and so endowed with that sense of the comedy as well as the tragedy of life which makes it easy to regard things and persons equably, she consented at last. she would have preferred to be married from wistaria terrace, but she had no difficulty in making a concession to robin's mother. so the wedding-breakfast was spread in the dining-room where she and lady anne used to have their meals together. mrs. gray held a terrified reception of the few fine folk whom lady drummond had declared it necessary to ask in the long drawing-room with the three windows where lady anne used to sit with little fifine in her lap. mary had wished to be married from the poor little house where she had grown up, but on her wedding day she felt that she had done as lady anne would have wished. there was nothing changed in the house: the old-fashioned substantial furniture, the faded carpets and curtains, were just the same. there were one or two familiar faces among the servants. after all, lord and lady iniscrone had used the house little, since lord iniscrone had developed a chest affection which kept him following the sun round the world for three-fourths of the year. the marriage had taken place earlier at the big, dim old church behind which wistaria terrace hid itself away, and the few fine folk were not bidden to the wedding but to the reception. a great many glittering things were spread out on the tables in the long drawing-room. it was surprising how many well-wishers the new lady drummond seemed to have in the great world. sir denis drummond had come over for the wedding, and nelly was a bridesmaid, with mary's type-writing sister, marcella. she was a different nelly from her of a couple of months earlier, her delicacy gone, her old pretty bloom come back, her eyes bright as of old. "mrs. langrishe wants me to return to her!" she confided to mary, "but we are going to sherwood square. you know, _he_ is on his way home. in a week or two he will be on the sea. he must come to me, not find me there waiting for him. do you know, mary, that though his mother and sister have taken me to their hearts, he has not written me a line? you don't suppose, mary, that he could be going to keep silence _now_?" "of course not," said mary. "seeing what you have suffered for him----" "he must never know that," nelly said, with gentle dignity, "until he has spoken. what should i do, mary, if he never spoke? but i think everyone would keep my secret, even his sister and mother. i asked them not to speak of me in their letters. i am in suspense, mary." "it will not be for long," the happy bride assured her. as though she were wiser than another in knowing the way of any particular man with any particular maid! chapter xxvii the intermediary some time in december captain langrishe came home. nelly knew the day and the hour that he was expected, but she was as terrified of meeting him as though she had not had so much assurance of his love for her. she knew the events of the day as though she had been present at their happening. cyprian rooke's brother, a young, distinguished doctor well on his way to harley street although only a few discriminating people had found him out, had gone down to southampton with mrs. rooke and her mother to meet the invalid, who even yet must bear traces of the terrible illness through which he had passed. nelly could see it all, from the moment the big boat came into southampton docks till the arrival in london. captain langrishe was going down to his sister's cottage in sussex. the mother and sister, who already claimed nelly as their own, had been eager for her to be there on their arrival, or to come later. but nelly was adamant. "he must come to me," she said. "and i think the one thing i could not forgive is that anyone should interfere: _anyone_, even you two whom i dearly love. promise me that you will not." they had promised her. they were women of discretion; and they felt that now he was come back to them things might safely be left to take their own course. to be sure, as soon as he could he would go to nelly as to his mate, naturally, joyfully. in an early letter, written before nelly's embargo, mrs. rooke had told him that nelly's engagement had been broken off. later, she had conveyed the news that robin drummond had consoled himself with rapidity, and was to be married to the miss gray whose book on the conditions of women's labour among the poor had made such a stir, and not only in political circles. godfrey langrishe in his letters had not commented on these communications. "let godfrey be!" said the sister, who knew him with the thoroughness of a nursery companion. "he will do his own wooing. he would not thank us for doing it for him." all next day nelly waited. after the very early morning she did not dare go outdoors lest he should come in her absence. the general went off to his club to be out of the way. at a quarter to seven he opened the door with his latch-key and came in, more than half-expecting to find an overcoat which did not belong to him in the hall. there was none; and he went on to the drawing-room with a vague sense of disappointment. langrishe must have been and gone. in the drawing-room he found nelly alone. "well, papa," she said, as he came in, and offered no further remark. "no one been, nell?" he asked, with a little foreboding. "no one." "ah, well, to be sure the boat must have arrived late. they may not have got back to town till to-day." the next day passed in the same way, and the next day. the fourth day nelly went out and did her christmas shopping. she held her head high now, in a spirited way which hurt her father to see, for her face was very pale. that evening she put on a little scarlet silk dinner-jacket, in which the general declared that she looked every inch a soldier's daughter. but the brilliant colour only made her look paler by contrast. on the fifth day the general, instead of going to his club, went to see mrs. rooke and fortunately found her at home. he hardly knew the little woman, but she was a friend of nell's and had been good to her. besides, he was so bent upon getting to the root of the business about langrishe and nell that he felt no embarrassment on the subject of his errand. "my dear," he said, bowing over mrs. rooke's pretty hand--he had a charming way with women--"i have come without my daughter knowing. perhaps she would never forgive me if she knew. tell me: what is the mystery about your brother? why has he not been to see us?" "i am so glad you came to ask me, sir denis," mrs. rooke replied. "i was just about to go to nelly. godfrey is so obstinate. the doctors cannot say yet if he is going to be a cripple or not. his sword-arm was almost slashed through. jerome rooke, my brother-in-law, says it will be all right. on the other hand, sir simon gresham shakes his head over it. godfrey is to see him again in a few weeks' time. he is waiting for his verdict before he speaks to nelly. my opinion is that if the verdict is adverse he will never speak at all." "why, god bless my soul, then!" shouted the general in his most thunderous voice, "he must speak before! he must speak before! everything must be settled. they shall hear sir simon's verdict together." those people had been right who had called sir denis unworldly. mrs. rooke blinked her pretty eyes before his outburst. "you know, of course, sir denis, that his profession will be closed to him in case his arm doesn't get well. godfrey has always felt that he had too little to offer your daughter. but now--it will be a maimed life if the worst happens. both my mother and i appreciated godfrey's reasons. we could not say that he was not right. poor godfrey! i don't know what he will do if he loses his profession. you know he was devoted to his work." "i know, ma'am." the old soldier's eye lit up with a sudden spark. "in any case, with the help of god, he will have nell to comfort him. your brother's address is----" "you are going to him?" "it seems the one thing to do. i've no pride about offering my girl where i know she is deeply loved." "you are a trump, general!" mrs. rooke said, with sparkling eyes. "thank you, ma'am," the general answered, blushing like a school-boy. "i was never one to sit with folded hands. the lord didn't make me like it. and i've asked his direction, ma'am; i've asked his direction humbly, and i hope humbly that he is granting it to me." "well, god speed you!" mrs. rooke said. "godfrey will be good to nelly, sir denis. he has always been so trustworthy. and he has had so many hard knocks. he deserves happiness in the end." "he shall have it, with the help of god." the general never made any forecast without the latter proviso, although that was often said only in the silence of his heart. the railway journey, unlike the last made in the cause of nelly's happiness, went without a hitch. the day was a beautiful, bright, sunshiny one, with clear skies overhead. the general had the carriage to himself, so that he was able to sit with both windows open as he liked it. he felt the winter air quite invigorating as the train rushed through the pale golden landscape. robins were singing in the bare trees, which showed their every twig outlined delicately against the pale sky. the brown coppices and hedges by which the train hurried were bright with the scarlet of many berries. the general, sitting up spare and erect--he had never lolled in his life, and held all such soft ways only suitable for ladies--contrasted the journey with the last; and took the radiant day like a good omen. he wished nell could have been with him to have the roses blown in her cheeks by the delicious fresh wind. however, he was going to bring her home roses, pink roses; the white rose in his nelly's cheek did not at all please him. the little house was quite near the railway, a gabled, two-storied cottage with diamond-paned windows, and creepers and roses all over its walls. even yet on the sheltered side there was a monthly rose or two on the leafless bushes. the house basked in the sun; and mrs. langrishe's red-and-white collie came to meet the general, wagging his tail with a friendly greeting. the maid who opened the door smiled on him. she knew him for miss nelly's father; and nelly had a way of making herself beloved by servants wherever she went, and not only because she was ready always to empty her little purse among them. mrs. langrishe? mrs. langrishe was out, but was expected in to lunch. the captain had just come in. would sir denis see him? sir denis would see the captain. he followed the maid through the clean, orderly little house, every inch of it shining with the perfection of cleanliness, to the study at the back which opened on the garden. captain langrishe was sitting in a chair in a dejected attitude at the moment the general first caught sight of him. he sprang to his feet, turning red and pale when he saw who his visitor was. "well, my lad," the general said, taking the uninjured left hand in a cordial grip. "and how do you feel?" langrishe looked up at him with shy eyes. "to tell the truth, sir denis, not very cheerful. i have been, in fact, keeping company with the blue devils pretty well since i came home. you know----" "yes, i know. we must hope for the best. but, if you can't carry a sword any longer, why it must mean that the master of us all has another post for you. and now, why didn't you come to sherwood square?" "i couldn't, with this in suspense," langrishe stammered. "it is most kind of you to come to see me." "my dear boy," the general put his hand on langrishe's shoulder, "you must come, with this in suspense. do you know that my girl has looked for you day after day?" the young man flushed and stared at the general's kind face in bewilderment. "i would rather die than cause her a minute's pain," he said, with quiet fervour. "you have caused her a good many," the general said grimly. "not willingly, i am sure of that, or i wouldn't be here. haven't you heard how she suffered? why, god bless my soul, i was afraid at one time that i might be going to lose her; and all through you, young man--all through you. now i'll have no more shilly-shally. if nell is fond of you and you are fond of nell----" "god knows how i love her!" langrishe cried out, a glow of passion lighting up his worn, dark face. "but you don't understand, sir denis. i feel sure you don't understand. i have nothing in the world but my sword. my uncle, sir peter, gave me that. he gave me nothing else. lady langrishe, who nursed my uncle through an attack of the gout before he married her, has just presented him with an heir. i have no hopes from my uncle. if i lose my sword-arm i lose everything. i am likely to lose my sword-arm, sir denis." "whether you do or whether you do not is in the hands of god," the general said. "i don't think nell will mind very much if your sword-arm is ineffectual or not. you've done enough for honour, anyhow. and i'm not going to betray any more of the child's secrets. you'd better come and hear them yourself. i'll tell you what: come on christmas day. come to lunch and bring your bag with you. i daresay you won't want to cut your visit short?" "you really mean it, sir denis?" "mean it, my lad? i've meant it for a long time. i've watched your career, langrishe. i know pretty well all about you. you'd never give me credit for half the cunning i've got." the general rubbed his hands softly together and tried to look machiavellian, failing ludicrously in the attempt. "there's no man i would more willingly trust my girl to. why, i went after you to tilbury when you were going out--to find out what you meant. i'll tell you about it." for the moment the general forgot completely how he had man[oe]uvred in the second place to marry nelly to robin drummond. in fact, he didn't remember about it till he was going home, and then, after a momentary shamefacedness about his unintentional disingenuousness, he decided, like a sensible man, that there was no use talking about that now. before that time, however, he had lunched with mrs. langrishe and her son after a talk with the latter. now that he had succeeded in breaking down the lover's scruples, godfrey langrishe was only too anxious to fling himself into the next train and be carried off to his love. but the general would not have it so, though he was pleased at the young man's impatience. "it wants but five days to christmas day," he said. "come then. you can spare him, ma'am?" to mrs. langrishe. "i have had to spare him for less happy things," the mother responded cheerfully. there was no happier old soldier in all his majesty's dominions than was sir denis drummond on his homeward journey. in fact, he found himself several times displaying his gratification so evidently in his face that people smiled and looked significantly at each other. one lady whispered to another of the christmas spirit. it was by a stern effort of his will that he composed his face as he went up the stairs of his own house. he didn't deceive pat, who had admitted him--for once the general had forgotten his latch-key. pat reported to bridget: "sorra wan o' me knows what's come to the master; he's gone up the stairs, and the heart of him that light that his foot is only touchin' the ground in an odd place." "'twill be somethin' good for miss nelly then," bridget replied sagely. the general schooled his face to wear an absurdly transparent look of gloom as he entered the drawing-room, but it was quite wasted on nelly, who didn't look at him. she had a screen between her face and the fire as she sat in her fireside chair, and her little pale, hurt, haughty profile showed up clearly against the peacock's feathers of the screen. the general had meant to have some play with nell, but that forlorn look of hers went to his heart. "i saw langrishe to-day, nell," he said. "he's coming for christmas. we can put him up--hey?" "papa!" he heard the incredulously joyful half-whisper, and he felt the pang that comes to all fathers at such a moment. nell was not going to be only his ever again. he had been enough for her once on a time; yet, here she was, come to womanhood, breaking her heart for a stranger. "if i were you, nell," he said gently, "i'd be seeing about my wedding-clothes." chapter xxviii noel! noel! captain langrishe arrived only just in time for lunch on the christmas day. by the time he had been shown his room and had deposited his bag and returned to the drawing-room it was time for the luncheon-bell. the meeting between nelly and himself would have seemed to outsiders a cold one. to be sure, it took place under the general's eye. one might have supposed that the general would have absented himself from that lovers' meeting, but as a matter of fact he did not. nelly's flush, the shy, burning look which langrishe sent her from his dark eyes, were enough for the two principals. for the rest, all seemed to be of the most ordinary. no one could have supposed that for the two persons mainly concerned this was the most wonderful christmas day there ever had been since the beginning. during lunch langrishe talked mainly to the general. they had plenty to talk about. the general found it necessary to apologise to nelly for "talking shop," an apology which was tendered in a whimsical spirit and received in the same. pat, waiting at table, quite forgot that he was sir denis drummond's manservant, listening to the stirring tale; and was once again corporal murphy, back in "th' ould rig'mint." in fact, he once almost forgot himself so far as to put in an eager comment, but fortunately pulled himself up in time. he mentioned afterwards to bridget that the captain's talk had nearly brought him to the point of "joinin'" again. "only that i remembered that at last you'd consinted to my spakin' to sir denis i couldn't have held myself in, bridget, my jewel," he said. "but the thought of gettin' kilt before ever i'd made you mrs. murphy was too much for me." there was considerable excitement in the servants' hall over captain langrishe's presence. pat, of course, knew all about him since he belonged to "th' ould rig'mint"; but it was through bridget's feminine perspicacity that it broke on the amazed couple that it was for him miss nelly had been breaking her heart all the time. "it 'ud do you good," said pat, "to see the way she carries her little sojer's jacket, and the holly berries on her pretty head like a crown." to be sure, the younger ones of the servants' hall were talking too, and they even approached pat, who outside the duties of his office was not awesome, for the satisfaction of their curiosity. "just wait," said pat oracularly, "an' ye'll see what ye'll see." the speech meant nothing to pat's own mind except that they would be all wiser later on. however, it went nearer the mark than he had intended. the afternoon of christmas day was always the occasion for a christmas tree. everyone in the house was remembered in the distribution of presents, even the dogs. the tree was set up in the servants' hall and the general had never omitted to distribute the presents himself in all the years they had been at sherwood square. he had mentioned the tree to langrishe at lunch, apologising for asking his assistance at so homely an occasion. his eye twinkled as he said it; and rather to nelly's bewilderment the young man blushed like a girl. apparently he had heard of the christmas tree before, for he made no comment. after lunch the lovers were a little while alone. sir denis had his secrecies about the tree, gifts which had to go on at the last moment and to be placed there by himself. when he came back to the drawing-room he was aware from the looks of the young couple that everything had been satisfactorily arranged between them. he looked as cheerful himself as anyone could desire. while he put those last touches to the tree he had been thinking how good it was that he was going to have his children to himself, no troublesome dowager with her claims and exactions to come between them. for a long time to come, anyhow, langrishe must be off active service; and they would all be together in the kind, spacious old house. and presently there would be nelly's children. please god he would live to deck the tree for the delight of nelly's children! it was the thought of the golden heads of the little lads and lasses yet to be dancing about the tree that brought the dimness to his eyes, the look of happy dreams to his face. the tree was far from being a perfunctory, haphazard affair. everything had been thought out and planned beforehand. the servants sat in a circle with eager, expectant faces. in front of them was a circle of dogs. the dogs' presents were not much of a novelty. a new collar for one, a new basket for another, a medal for the oldest of the dogs; the possible gifts were very soon exhausted, but they made hilarity, and the dogs barked as they received their gifts as though they understood and enjoyed it all, as no doubt they did. there was a delightful sensation for the servants' hall when the gold watch which had been hanging near the top of the tree was handed down, and its inscription proved to be: "to bridget burke, on the occasion of her marriage to patrick murphy, with the affection and esteem of the master and miss nelly." the servants' hall broke into cheers. they had all known that there was something between bridget and pat, but the thing had hung fire so long that it might well have hung fire for ever. pat's present was a ten-pound note for the honeymoon. mr. and mrs. murphy were to have a fortnight together after their marriage in some seaside place, before settling down to their old duties. sir denis had made pat the offer of a cottage in the country, but this pat had refused, to his master's great relief. "sure, what would you do without me?" he said. "i was thinking the same myself," responded the general. the general had it in his mind that presently, when those children came, it might be necessary to give up sherwood square and live in the country for their sakes. a little place in ireland now, the general thought, where there was always plenty of sport and good-fellowship. however, that might wait. but the thought was a sweet one, to be turned over in the old man's mind. sometimes the present took odd shapes. there was a young housemaid whose eyes were ringed about with black circles, eyes pale with much weeping. her mother was ill among the essex marshes, and the only chance for her life, said the doctors, was to get her away to a mild, bracing place for some months. bournemouth would do very well. bournemouth? why, heaven was much more accessible, it seemed, than bournemouth for the poor mother of many children. "emma brooks," said the general. "i wonder what's in this envelope for emma brooks." poor emma came up, smiling a wavering smile that was on the edge of tears. she took the envelope, peered within it, and then cried out, "oh, god bless you, sir!" it contained a letter of admission to a convalescent home at bournemouth for six months, and the money for the expenses of getting there. "it's my mother's life, sir," cried emma. "you shall go home to-morrow, my girl, and take her there," said the general. "i'll pay whatever is necessary." at last the tree was stripped of nearly everything but its candles and its bright dingle-dangles. there was a little basket at the foot of the tree addressed to the general, which had been moving about in a peculiar way during the proceedings, and had been a source of much fascinated interest to the dogs. on its being opened a fat, waddling, brindle bull-dog puppy sidled himself out of a warm bed, and made straight for the general's feet. a puppy was something sir denis never could resist, and though there were already several dogs at sherwood square, all desperately jealous at the moment and being held in by the servants, he discovered that he had wanted a brindled bull-dog all his life. "but what is that," he asked, "up there at the top of the tree? why, i was near forgetting it. come here, pat, you rascal, and hand it down to me. it's a pretty, shining thing for my nelly, as bright as her eyes. hand it down to me, pat. i want to put it on her pretty neck." the gift was a beautiful flexible snake of opals in gold, with diamonds for its eyes and its forked tongue, such a jewel as the heart of woman could not resist. the general himself clasped the ornament on nelly's neck, where it lay emitting soft fires of milky rose and emerald. there was a little pause. the tree seemed to be finished. the women-folk began to clear their throats for the _adeste fideles_ with which the festivity concluded. afterwards there was to be a glass of champagne all round. the pause, however, was a device of the general's to give more effect to what was to follow. captain langrishe had been standing apart, his shy and modest air commending him the more to the women who thought him so handsome and the men who knew him for heroic; for had not pat sung his praises? and to be sure, the women's hearts swelled at beholding a hero taking part in their own particular festivity of the year, a hero that is to say with his heroism brand-new upon him and from the outside world, so to speak. they were so accustomed to a hero for a master all the year round, that in that particular connection they hardly thought upon him. "i believe, after all," said sir denis, as though he were talking to children--it was his way with women and children and dependents and animals--"i believe there's something for my girl which she'll think more of than anything else. it's hidden just down here at the foot of the tree, and might very easily be over-looked if one didn't know beforehand that it was there. captain langrishe, will you give this little packet to my nelly? it's your gift. she'll like it from you." langrishe came forward, looking radiantly happy and handsome, and wearing withal that look of becoming shyness. he extracted from somewhere near the roots of the tree a white paper-covered packet, very tiny and tied with blue ribbon, which he undid with quick, nervous fingers. when he had laid the covering aside it revealed itself as a little ring-case. opening it, he took out a beautiful old-fashioned ring, a large pearl surrounded by diamonds. he held it for a second between his fingers; and turning round he went to nelly's side and taking her hand lifted it to his lips. then he slipped the ring on to her third finger. "my dear friends," said the general in an agitated voice, "i am very happy to announce to you the engagement of my daughter to captain langrishe." at that the cheering broke out, led by pat. as the dogs joined in, and even the brindle puppy added his shrill note, there was the happiest, merriest uproar lasting over several minutes, during which the general stood, looking proudly from the shy and smiling lovers to those dependants whom he had really made his friends. and at last, when the pause came, the general spoke: "and now, my friends," he said, "to show that god is not forgotten in our happiness and in our grateful hearts, we will sing the _adeste fideles_." file was produced from images generously made available by the kentuckiana digital library) making people happy [illustration] making people happy by thompson buchanan author of a woman's way frontispiece by harrison fisher new york w.j. watt & company publishers copyright, , by w. j. watt & company _published september_ press of braunworth & co. bookbinders and printers brooklyn, n.y. making people happy chapter i the bride hammered the table desperately with her gavel. in vain! the room was in pandemonium. the lithe and curving form of the girl--for she was only twenty, although already a wife--was tense now as she stood there in her own drawing-room, stoutly battling to bring order out of chaos. usually the creamy pallor of her cheeks was only most daintily touched with rose: at this moment the crimson of excitement burned fiercely. usually her eyes of amber were soft and tender: now they were glowing with an indignation that was half-wrath. still the bride beat a tattoo of outraged authority with the gavel, wholly without avail. the confusion that reigned in the charming drawing-room of cicily hamilton did but grow momently the more confounded. the civitas club was in full operation, and would brook no restraint. each of the twelve women, who were ranged in chairs facing the presiding officer, was talking loudly and swiftly and incessantly. none paid the slightest heed to the frantic appeal of the gavel.... then, at last, the harassed bride reached the limit of endurance. she threw the gavel from her angrily, and cried out shrilly above the massed clamor of the other voices: "if you don't stop," she declared vehemently, "i'll never speak to one of you again!" that wail of protest was not without its effect. there came a chorus of ejaculations; but the monologues had been efficiently interrupted, and the attention of the garrulous twelve was finally given to the presiding officer. for a moment, silence fell. it was broken by ruth howard, a girl with large, soulful brown eyes and a manner of rapt earnestness, who uttered her plaint in a tone of exceeding bitterness: "and we came together in love!" at that, cicily hamilton forgot her petulance over the tumult, and smiled with the sweetness that was characteristic of her. "really, you know," she confessed, almost contritely, "i don't like to lecture you in my own house; but we came together for a serious purpose, and you are just as rude as if you'd merely come to tea." one of the women in the front row of chairs uttered a crisp cry of approval. this was mrs. flynn, a visiting militant suffragette from england. her aggressive manner and the eager expression of her narrow face with the gleaming black eyes declared that this woman of forty was by nature a fighter who delighted in the fray. "yes; mrs. hamilton is right," was her caustic comment. "we are forgetting our great work--the emancipation of woman!" cicily beamed approval on the speaker; but she inverted the other's phrase: "yes," she agreed, "our great work--the subjugation of man!" the statement was not, however, allowed to go unchallenged. helen johnson, who was well along in the twenties at least, and still a spinster, prided herself on her powers of conquest, despite the fact that she had no husband to show for it. so, now, she spoke with an air of languid superiority: "oh, we've already accomplished the subjugation of man," she drawled, and smiled complacently. "some of us have," cicily retorted; and the accent on the first word pointed the allusion. "oh, hush, dear!" the chiding whisper came from mrs. delancy, a gray-haired woman of sixty-five, somewhat inclined to stoutness and having a handsome, kindly face. she was the aunt of cicily, and had reared the motherless girl in her new york home. now, on a visit to her niece, the bride of a year, she found herself inevitably involved in the somewhat turbulent session of the civitas club, with which as yet she enjoyed no great amount of sympathy. her position in the chair nearest the presiding officer gave her opportunity to voice the rebuke without being overheard by anyone save the militant mrs. flynn, who smiled covertly. cicily bent forward, and spoke softly to her aunt's ear: "i just had to say it, auntie," she avowed happily. "you know, she tried her hardest to catch charles." mrs. morton, a middle-aged society woman, who displayed sporadic interest in the cause of woman during the dull season, now rose from the chair immediately behind mrs. flynn, and spoke with a tone of great decisiveness: "yes, ladies of the civitas club, mrs. flynn is perfectly right." she indicated the identity of the militant suffragette, who was a stranger to most of those in the company, by a sweeping gesture. "it is our duty to follow firmly on the path which our sister has indicated toward the emancipation of woman. we should get the club started at once, and the work done immediately. lent will be over soon, and then there will be no time for it." "yes, indeed," cicily agreed enthusiastically, as mrs. morton again subsided into her chair; "let's get the club going right away." the presiding officer hesitated for a moment, fumbling among the papers on the table. "what's the name--? oh, here it is!" she concluded, lifting a sheet from the litter before her. "listen! it's the civitas society for the uplift of woman and for encouraging the spread of social equality among the masses." as this gratifyingly sonorous designation was enunciated by cicily in her most impressive voice, the members of the club straightened in their places with obvious pride, and there was a burst of hand-clapping. ruth howard's great eyes rolled delightedly. "oh," she gushed, "isn't it a darling duck of a name! let's see--the vivitas society for--for--what is it for, anyhow?" cicily came to the rescue of the forgetful zealot. "it's for the purpose of bringing men and women closer together," she explained with dignity. miss johnson gushed approval with her usual air of coquettish superiority. "oh, read it again, cicily," she urged. "it's so inspiring!" "yes, do read it again," a number of enthusiasts cried in chorus. the presiding officer was on the point of complying with the demand for a repetition of the sonorous nomenclature: "the civitas society for--" she began, with stately emphasis. but she broke off abruptly, under the impulse of a change in mood. "oh, what's the use?" she questioned flippantly. "you'll all get copies of it in full in your mail to-morrow morning." mightily pleased with this labor-saving expedient, cicily beamed on her fellow club-members. "what next?" she inquired, amiably. mrs. carrington rose to her feet, and addressed the assembly with that dignity befitting one deeply experienced in parliamentary exercises. "having voted on the name," she remarked ponderously, evidently undisturbed by the exceedingly informal nature of the voting, if such it could be called, "i think it is now time for us to start the society." she stared condescendingly through her lorgnette at the duly impressed company, and sank back into her chair. there were many exclamations of assent to mrs. carrington's timely proposal, and much nodding of heads. plainly, the ladies were minded to start the society forthwith. unhappily, however, there remained an obstacle to the accomplishment of that desirable end--a somewhat general ignorance as to the proper method of procedure. ruth howard turned the gaze of her large brown eyes wistfully on mrs. carrington, and voiced the dilemma by a question: "how do we start?" she asked, in a tone of gentle wonder. before mrs. carrington could formulate a reply to this pertinent interrogation, the militant suffragette from england began an oration. "the start of a great movement such as is this," mrs. flynn declaimed, "is like unto the start of a great race, or the start of a noble sport; it is like--" cicily was so enthusiastic over this explanation that she interrupted the speaker in order to demonstrate the fact that she understood the matter perfectly. "you mean," she exclaimed joyously, "that you blow a whistle, or shoot a pistol!" this appalling ignorance of parliamentary tactics induced some of the more learned to ill-concealed titters; miss johnson permitted herself to laugh in a gurgling note that she affected. but it was mrs. carrington who took it on herself to utter a veiled rebuke. "i fear mrs. hamilton has not been a member of many clubs," she remarked, icily. at miss johnson's open flouting, cicily had flushed painfully. now, however, she was ready with a retort to mrs. carrington's implied criticism: "oh, on the contrary!" she exclaimed. "why, i was chief rooter of the pi iota gammas, when i went to boarding-school at briarcliff." miss johnson spoke with dangerous suavity of manner: "then, my dear, since you were one of the pigs--pardon my using the english of it, but i never could pronounce those greek letters--" "of course not," cicily interrupted, with her sweetest smile. "i remember, helen, dear: you had no chance to practise, not having belonged at briarcliff." kindly mrs. delancy was on nettles during the passage of the gently spoken, but none the less acrimonious, remarks between her niece and miss johnson. she was well aware of cicily's deep-seated aversion for the coquettish older woman, who had not scrupled to employ all her arts to win away another's lover. that she had failed utterly in her efforts to make an impression on the heart of charles hamilton did not mitigate the offense in the estimation of the bride. so strong was cicily's feeling, indeed, and so impulsive her temperament, that the aunt was really alarmed for fear of an open rupture between the two young women, for helen johnson had a venomous tongue, and a liking for its employment. so, now, mrs. delancy hastened to break off a conversation that threatened disaster. "let us select the officers, the first thing," she suggested, rising for the sake of effectiveness in securing attention to herself. "it is, i believe, usual in clubs to have officers, and, for that reason, it seems to me that it would be well to select officers for this club, here and now." mrs. delancy reseated herself, well satisfied with her effort, for there was a general buzz of interest among her auditors. cicily, with the lively change of moods that was distinctive of her, was instantly smiling again, but now with sincerity. without a moment of hesitation, she accepted the suggestion, and acted upon it. she turned toward mrs. carrington, and addressed her words to that dignified person: "yes, indeed," she declared gladly, "i accept the suggestion.... won't you be president, mrs. carrington?" the important lady was obviously delighted by this suggestion. she smiled radiantly, and she fairly preened herself so that the spangles on her black gown shone proudly. "thank you, my dear mrs. hamilton," she replied tenderly, with a pretense of humility that failed completely. "but i believe there are certain formalities that are ordinarily observed--i believe that it is a matter of selection by the club as a whole. of course, if--" she paused expectantly, and regarded those about her with a smile that was weighted with suggestion. cicily was somewhat perturbed by the error into which she had fallen. it occurred to her that helen johnson might here find another opportunity for the gratification of malice. a glance showed that this detestable young woman was in fact exchanging pitying glances with mrs. flynn. cicily was flushed with chagrin, as she spoke falteringly, with an apologetic inflection: "oh, the president has to be elected? i beg your pardon! i thought it was like the army, and--went by age." at this unfortunate explanation, the simper of gratified vanity on mrs. carrington's features vanished as if by magic. she stiffened visibly, as she acridly ejaculated a single word: "really!" the inflection was scathing. mrs. flynn, who was smiling complacently over the evident confusion of cicily, now stood up to instruct that unhappy presiding officer: "no, indeed, mrs. hamilton," she announced with great earnestness, "for the most part, it is the young women, even young wives no older than yourself oftentimes, who are at the front, fighting gloriously the battle of all women in this great movement.... at least, that is the way in england." she paused and bridled as she surveyed the attentive company, her manner full of self-content. "there, i may say, the youngest and the most beautiful women have been the leaders in the fray. ahem!" cicily did not hesitate to remove all ambiguity from the utterance of the militant suffragette with the sallow, narrow face. "and you were a great leader, were you not, mrs. flynn?" she demanded, bluntly. there were covert smiles from the other women; but the englishwoman was frankly gratified by the implication. she was smiling with pleasure as she answered: "i may say truthfully that i know the inside of almost every police-station in london." at this startling announcement, uttered with every appearance of pride, the suffragette's hearers displayed their amazement by exclamations and gestures. mrs. carrington especially made manifest the fact that she had scant patience with this manner of martyrdom in the cause of woman's emancipation. "my dear mrs. flynn," she said, with a hint of contempt in her voice, "here in america, we do not think that getting into jail is necessarily a cause for pride." there were murmurs of assent from most of the others; but mrs. flynn herself was in no wise daunted. "well, then, it should be," she retorted, briskly. "zeal is the watchword!" "i think that mrs. flynn should be president," miss johnson cried with sudden enthusiasm. "she has suffered in the cause!" "oh, for that matter," interjected mrs. morton flippantly, "most of us are married." it was known to all those whom she addressed, save perhaps the englishwoman, that at the age of forty mrs. morton had undergone two divorces, and that she was now living wretchedly with a third husband, so she spoke with the authority of one having had sufficient experience. but mrs. flynn was too much interested in her own harrowing experiences to be diverted by cynical raillery. "the last time i went to jail," she related, "i had chained myself to the gallery in the house of commons, and, when they tried to release me, i bit a policeman--hard!" "oh, you man-eater!" it was cicily who uttered the exclamation, half-reproachfully, half-banteringly. "i fail to see why, if one should prefer even chicago roast beef to an irish policeman, that should be held against one." this was mrs. carrington's indignant comment on the narrative of the mordant martyr. the remark affected mrs. flynn, however, in a fashion totally unexpected. she cried out in genuine horror and disgust over the suggested idea. "good heavens! do you imagine i would ever bite an irish policeman?" "if not," mrs. carrington rejoined slyly, "you will have very small opportunity in new york for the exercise of your very peculiar talents." cicily interposed a remark concerning the appetizing charms of some of the mounted policemen. it seemed to her that the conversation between the two older women had reached a point where interruption were the course of prudence. "i think we had better do some more business, now," she added hastily, with an appealing glance toward her aunt. mrs. delancy rose to the emergency on the instant. "by all means," she urged. "let us get on with the business. we haven't been going ahead very fast, it seems to me. why not elect the officers right away?" once again, the entire company became agog with interest over the project of securing duly authorized officials. there were murmured conversations, confidential whisperings. as ruth howard earnestly declared, it was so exciting--a real election. a stealthy canvas of candidates was in full swing. the names of mrs. flynn and of mrs. carrington were heard oftenest. incidentally, certain sentences threw light on individual methods of determining executive merit. a prim spinster shook her head violently over some suggestion from the woman beside her. "no, my dear," she replied aggressively, "i certainly shall not vote for her--vote for a woman who wears a transformation? no, indeed!"... cicily improved the interval of general bustle to inquire secretly of her aunt as to the possible shininess of her nose. "it always gets shiny when i get excited," she explained, ruefully. as a matter of fact, there was nothing whatever the matter with that dainty feature, which had a fascination all its own by reason of the fact that one was forever wondering whether it was classically straight or up-tilted just the least infinitesimal fraction. it was mrs. morton who first took energetic action toward an election. she stood up, and spoke with a tone of finality: "i think that dear mrs. carrington would make a splendid officer. i nominate dear mrs. carrington for our president." "did you hear that, mrs. carrington?" cicily inquired, with a pleased smile for the one thus honored. "you're nominated." "oh, it's so thrilling!" ruth howard exclaimed, with irrepressible enthusiasm. but miss johnson, to whom ruth particularly addressed herself, had on occasion been unmercifully snubbed by mrs. carrington. in consequence, now, she showed no sign of sympathy with her companion's emotion. on the contrary, she sniffed indignantly, and muttered something about "that woman!" meantime, mrs. morton was waxing restless over the fact that things remained at a standstill, despite the nomination she had made. she rose to her feet, and surveyed the company with a glance eloquent of haughty surprise. "i am waiting for a second to my motion," she remarked, icily. then, as there was no audible response to this information, she added with rising indignation: "well, really!" there was a wealth of contemptuous reproach in the tone. the effect on the susceptible cicily was instantaneous. with her customary impulsiveness, and her eagerness to do the right thing for any and all persons, she felt that she herself had been woefully remiss in not having hurried to mrs. morton's support at once. so, to make amends, she spoke with vivacity: "oh, i second it!... mrs. carrington," she continued, turning to the gratified candidate, "you're seconded." she was rewarded for her conduct by a stately bow of thanks from mrs. morton. half a dozen others, taking their cue from the presiding officer, noisily cried out in seconding the candidacy of mrs. carrington, whereat mrs. morton grew flushed with pleasure, and was moved to consummate the affair without a moment's delay. "i move that the election of mrs. carrington as president be now made, and also that the election be made unanimous," she demanded, with much unction in her voice. she smiled persuasively at the presiding officer as she concluded: "won't you put that motion, my dear?" cicily rose to the occasion with an access of becoming dignity. "it is moved and seconded," she announced loudly, "that mrs. carrington be elected president of this club. all in favor of this motion--" "one moment, please," miss johnson interrupted, excitedly. "madam chairman, i move that mrs. flynn, the great, the tried, the proven, the trusted crusader in the cause of women, from england, be elected president, and that her election be made unanimous." she paused to turn to ruth, whom she addressed in a fierce whisper: "if you don't second me, i'll never speak to you again." "oh, i second you," ruth cried, anxiously. "of course, i second you." but, by this time, cicily had come to a realization of the fact that the other women present were every whit as ignorant of parliamentary law as was she herself. so, in this emergency, she did not scruple to make audacious retort. she answered with exceeding blandness: "but, you see, miss johnson, there's already a motion before the house." thereupon, mrs. morton hastened valiantly to her own support. "yes, indeed," she declared, haughtily; "my motion was first. i must insist that it be voted upon. if miss johnson wished to have an imported english president for our american society, she should have nominated mrs. flynn first." she made direct appeal to the presiding officer. "am i not right, dear?" cicily beamed on mrs. morton, and was about to reply, when a sudden thought came to her that did greater credit to her ingenuity than to her executive knowledge. forthwith, she beamed, somewhat hypocritically, on miss johnson in turn. "yes, certainly," she affirmed; "i'm sure you're both quite right." "thank you, madam chairman, for agreeing with me," miss johnson replied, placated by cicily's unexpected amiability toward her. "my motion also is before the house, and i insist that it be voted on. mrs. flynn has been seconded." there was a spirit of hostility in the manner with which miss johnson and mrs. morton faced each other that boded ill for peace. the rival candidates sat in rigid erectness, disdainfully aloof while their supporters wrangled. the whisperings of the others suggested a growing acrimoniousness of debate. that earnest maiden, ruth, was alarmed by the tension of strife. "i think i'd rather go," she faltered. "i'm afraid you're going to quarrel, helen." but the resources of cicily's inspiration were by no means ended. she waved a conciliatory hand toward the adversaries, and spoke with an air of finality that produced an instantaneous effect as of oil on troubled waters. "i'll tell you: i'll put one motion, and the other can be an amendment." at this profound suggestion, the whole company breathed a sigh of relief. only ruth appeared somewhat puzzled. "what's an amendment?" she questioned frankly, while the others regarded her with evident scorn for such ignorance. "an amendment, ruth," the presiding officer explained patiently, "is--is--oh, just listen, and don't interrupt the proceedings, and you'll know all about it in a few minutes." she beamed once again, first on mrs. morton and then on miss johnson. "which of you would rather be the amendment?" she inquired. mrs. morton, as became her years, was first to make reply. "it's entirely immaterial to me, just so my motion is put." miss johnson adopted a manner that was not without signs of heroic self-sacrifice. "i'll be the amendment," were her words. with that, she bowed very formally to mrs. morton, who returned the salute with a fine dignity, after which the two at last subsided into their chairs. cicily was elated with the subtle manner in which she had evolved order out of chaos. her eyes glowed with pride, and the flush in her cheeks deepened. there was an added music in her voice, as she once more addressed the company. "splendid!" she ejaculated. "now, all in favor of mrs. motion's morton--i mean mrs. morton's motion, please say ay!" in a clear, ringing voice she led the chorus in the affirmative. yes, every woman present, including the presiding officer, voted an enthusiastic ay, whereupon cicily declared the motion carried; and mrs. morton rose and said: "thank you, ladies." next, mrs. carrington stood up, placed a hand on her heart, and expressed her appreciation of the honor done her: "i deeply thank you, ladies." the incident was fittingly concluded by an outburst of applause in which all the club joined, although ruth beat her palms in rather a bewildered manner.... cicily immediately entered on the new phase of the situation. "now, all in favor of miss johnson's amendment, please say ay," she directed. again, she led the chorus in the affirmative, and the entire company joined in the vote without a dissenting voice. "amendment carried," the presiding officer announced, gleefully. it was now the turn of miss johnson to rise and offer her thanks, and mrs. flynn followed, saying, very neatly: "from over the sea, i thank you." the usual applause was of the heartiest.... but cicily was still energetic. "now, all in favor of the motion and of the amendment, please say ay," she requested. for the third time, she led the chorus, and the vote was unopposedly affirmative. "the motion and the amendment are carried unanimously," cicily announced, and the hand clapping sounded a happy content on the part of the civitas club. afterward, came a little intermission of conversation in which was expressed much appreciation of the efficiency of the club in carrying on its session. "it all goes to show how businesslike women can be," mrs. carrington remarked, triumphantly. mrs. flynn was even more emphatic. "i've never seen a meeting more gloriously typical of our great cause." the tribute was welcomed with a buzz of assent.... but, finally, there came a lull in the talking. it was broken by mrs. delancy, who spoke thoughtlessly out of a confused mind, with no suspicion as to the sinister effect to be wrought by her words: "who's elected?" was her simple question. there was a moment of amazed silence, in which the members of the club stared at one another with widened eyes. it was broken very speedily, however, by mrs. carrington, who rose to her feet with more activity of movement than was customary to her dignified bearing. "i have the honor," she stated, sharply. instantly, mrs. flynn, the militant suffragette, was up, her face belligerent. "pardon me, but the honor belongs to me," she snapped, regarding the first claimant with a fierce indignation that was returned in kind. most of the others were too confounded for speech, but mrs. morton rose to support her candidate's claims. "pray pardon me," she began placatingly, "but probably mrs. flynn does not understand. the interpretation of parliamentary law in england may be quite different. probably, it is. the customs of that country vary widely from ours in many respects. so, they probably do in the matter of elections in clubs. now, i belong to ten clubs--american clubs--and i assure you that, according to the parliamentary law in every one of those ten clubs, mrs. carrington is certainly elected." this advocacy was, naturally, a challenge to miss johnson, who promptly rose up to champion her own candidate. "mrs. carrington, i am sure, has no desire to take advantage of a distinguished stranger within our gates--and one who has served as gloriously in the cause as mrs. flynn--but, even if someone--" she regarded mrs. morton with great significance--"i say, even if someone should wish to take unfair advantage of a technicality, it would be altogether impossible, for my amendment to the original motion was carried--unanimously! mrs. flynn is the president of the club, duly elected." some hazy notion of parliamentary procedure moved mrs. flynn to a suggestion. "i think the matter might best be settled by the chair," she said, doubtfully. "the chair put the motion. let us then leave the decision to madam chairman." mrs. carrington nodded a stately agreement to the proposal, and the company as a whole appeared vastly relieved, with the exceptions of miss johnson, who sniffed defiantly, and of ruth, who appeared more than ever bewildered by the succession of events. now, at last, cicily felt herself baffled by the crisis of her own making. she looked from one to another with reproach in her amber eyes. "but--but you cannot expect me to decide between my guests," she espostulated. there was appeal for relief in the pathetic droop of the scarlet lips of the bride, but it was of no avail. the company asserted with vehemence that she must render the decision in this unfortunate dilemma.... and, again, the angel of inspiration whispered a solution of the difficulty. impulsive as ever, a radiant smile curved her mouth, and her eyes shone happily. "very well," she yielded. "since you insist on putting your hostess in such an unfortunate position, i decide that it is up to the ladies themselves. which one wishes to take the office, to force herself forward against the wishes of the other?" she cast a seemingly guileless glance of inquiry first on mrs. carrington, then on mrs. flynn, who simultaneously uttered exclamations of indignation at the imputation thus laid upon them. mrs. carrington was quick to make explicit answer. "if the ladies of the club do not desire me to be president, i must decline to accept the office, in spite of a unanimous vote. if, however--" she broke off to stare accusingly at her rival, then about the room in search of encouragement for her claims. [illustration] mrs. flynn took advantage of the opportunity for speech in her own behalf. "naturally, as a stranger, i hesitate to force myself forward, even though my record is such that it is hard to see how any opposition could possibly develop against me. however--" "of course, mrs. carrington is elected," mrs. morton interrupted. at the same time, miss johnson urged aggressiveness on her candidate. "don't back down," she implored. "remember the policeman!" mrs. carrington muttered maliciously, as she caught the words. "in view of mrs. flynn's record," she began, "i scarcely feel justified--" her mock humility was copied by mrs. flynn on the instant. "as a stranger, i cannot force myself--" the presiding officer decided that this was in truth the psychological moment in which to dominate the situation. "indeed, the chair appreciates the rare quality of your self-denial," she announced in an authoritative voice that commanded the respectful attention of all. "now, ladies," she continued with an air of grave rebuke, "you see what comes of putting your hostess in such an unfortunate position as compelling her to force on one of her guests something she doesn't want. mrs. carrington and mrs. flynn, both, are my friends and my guests as well, and i must certainly decline to embarrass them further in this matter. the only thing i can do, since neither of them is willing to take the presidency, is regretfully to accept it myself. so, i will be president, and i do now so declare myself." at this astounding decision, mrs. carrington and mrs. flynn sank down in their chairs, too dumfounded to protest: but their distress, along with the similar emotion of mrs. morton and miss johnson, was not observed by the others in the general hubbub of enthusiasm aroused by the new solomon come to judgment. after an interval of tumultuous cheering, there came demand for a speech by the newly fleeted president.... cicily acceded, after due urging. "i'm ever so much obliged to you," she declared, and kissed her hands gracefully to her fellow club-members. thereat, the applause was of the briskest. "really, i am," she made assurance, and wafted another kiss. on this occasion, the applause was of even greater volume than ever before, although four of those present did not join in the ovation to the new chief executive. "yes, really--truly!" cicily went on, fluently. "and i think this is a wonderful club we have started. we need a club. it gives us--us married women--something to do. that's the real answer--the real cause, i think, of the woman question. these men have gone on inventing vacuum cleaners and gas-stoves and apartment hotels and servants that know more than we do. they haven't treated us fairly. they've taken away all our occupation, and now we've got to retaliate. we can't keep house for them any more, and, if we--if we care anything about them, or want to help them, we've got to go into business, or to help them vote.... well, they brought it on themselves. they've got too proud. they used to be dependent on us: now, we're dependent on them, on their inventions and their servants. so, we're going to show them. we'll make them dependent on us in the wider outside world, just as they used to be dependent on us in the home. they've hurt our pride, and we're going to make them pay. they say we are nervous and reckless and always on the go.... it's their fault: they've made the new woman, and now we are going to make the new man. they put us out of work, and made us so, and now they're going to be sorry.... the time is fast coming when each of us will have at least three or four men--" it was miss johnson who caused the interruption to this burst of eloquence. "why, that's positively immoral!" gasped the outraged spinster. "--at least three or four men dependent upon her," concluded the unabashed president of the civitas club, as she cast a withering look on her enemy, who quailed visibly. "and i think that's all," cicily added, contentedly. she felt that she could with justice claim to have conducted herself nobly throughout a critical situation. "i move that we adjourn," said mrs. flynn, energetically. her vigorous temperament would permit no longer sulking in silence despite the humiliation to which she had so recently been subjected. mrs. carrington, however, had not yet rejected all hope of office. "we must first select a secretary," she suggested. this was opposed by miss johnson, always persistently moved to discredit the older woman who had snubbed her socially. "why not select a professional stenographer as a member of the club; then make her secretary? any number of young working women would doubtless be glad of the honor." this brought an outcry against the admission of any professional working woman into the exclusive civitas. "oh, remember that we have ideals!" ruth howard remonstrated, with sincere, if vague, adherence to her ideals; and she up-turned her great eyes toward the ceiling. mrs. flynn, curiously enough, was opposed to the idealist in this instance. "yes," she said, "i fear that it's quite true. the professional working woman thinks more of her salary and a comfortable living than of our great cause." cicily herself disposed of the matter with a blithesome nonchalance that was beautiful to behold. "oh, don't bother," was her way of cutting the gordian knot. "i'll make my husband's stenographer do the work." "i move that we adjourn," the militant suffragette repeated in a most businesslike manner. mrs. carrington was determined that her rival should not outdistance her at the finish. she spoke with her most forcible dignity: "i second the motion." the motion was put and carried.... thus ended the first session of that epoch-marking organization: the civitas society for the uplift of woman and for encouraging the spread of social equality among the masses. chapter ii cicily hamilton, bride of a year, was seemingly as fortunate a young woman as the city of new york could offer to an envious world. her house in the east sixties, just off the avenue, was a charming home, dainty, luxurious, in the best of taste, with a certain individuality in its arrangement and ornamentation that spoke agreeably of the personality of its mistress. her husband, charles hamilton, was a handsome man of twenty-six, who adored his wife, although recently, in the months since the waning of the honeymoon, he had been so absorbed in business cares that he had rather neglected those acts of tenderness so vital to a woman's happiness. some difficulties that disturbed him downtown rendered him often preoccupied when at home, and the effect on his wife was unwholesome. little by little, the girl-woman felt a certain discontent growing within her, indeterminate in a great measure, but none the less forceful in its influence on her moods day by day. the statements that cicily had made in her inaugural speech to the civitas society exhibited, albeit crudely, some of the facts breeding revolt in her. in very truth, she found herself without sufficient occupation to hold her thoughts from fanciful flights that led to no satisfactory result in action. an excellent housekeeper, who was far wiser in matters of ménage than she could ever be, held admirable sway over the domestic machinery. the servants, thus directed, were as those untroubling inventions of which she had complained. since she was not devoted to the distraction of social gaieties, cicily found an appalling amount, of unemployed time on her hands. she was blest with an excellent education; but, with no great fondness for knowledge as such, she was not inclined to prosecute any particular study with the ardor of the scholar. to rid herself of the boredom induced by this state of affairs, the young wife decided that she must develop a new interest in her fellow creatures. she went farther, and resolved to establish herself on a basis of equality with her husband, not merely in love, but in the sterner world of business. thus, she was brought to entertain a convincing belief in equality for the sexes, in society and in the home. she revealed something of her mind and heart to her aunt on the afternoon of the day following the singular session of the civitas society. the two women were together in cicily's boudoir, a delightful room, all paneled in rose silk, with furniture _louis quatorze_, and dresden ornaments.... it was an hour yet before time for the dressing-bell. cicily, in a negligee of white silk that fitted well with the color scheme of the room and that only emphasized the purity of her ivory skin, suddenly sat up erect in the chair where she had been nestling in curving abandonment. "why, aunt emma," she exclaimed, with a new sparkle in the amber eyes, "we forgot to set any date for another meeting of the club?" but mrs. delancy did not seem impressed by the oversight. "do you think it makes any real difference, dear?" she questioned placidly. at this taunt, cicily assumed an air of reproach that was hardly calculated to deceive the astute old lady, who had known the girl for twenty years. "don't you take our club seriously?" she questioned in her turn. her musical voice was touchingly plaintive. "oh, it's serious enough," was the retort. "it's either seriously pitiful, or pitifully serious, whichever way you choose to look at it." cicily abandoned her disguise of concern, and laughed heartily before she spoke again. "i must admit that i think it's a joke, myself," she admitted: "more's the pity." there was a note of genuine regret in her voice now. then, she smiled again, with much zest. "but it was so amusing--stirring them up, and then calmly taking the presidency myself, because none of them knew just how to stop me!" "it was barefaced robbery!" mrs. delancy exclaimed reprovingly, although she, too, was compelled to smile at the audacity of the achievement. "but," she added meditatively, "i really don't see what it all amounts to, anyhow?" "i suspect that you didn't listen attentively to the president's speech," cicily railed. "i listened," mrs. delancy declared, firmly. "in spite of that fact, my dear, what does it all mean? down deep, are you serious in some things i have heard you say, lately?" "oh, yes, i'm serious enough," was the answer, spoken with a hint of bitterness in the tone. "that is, i'm seriously bored--desperately bored, for the matter of that. i tell you, aunt emma, a married woman must have something to do. as for me, why, i have absolutely nothing to do. those other women, too, or at least most of them, have nothing to do, and they are all desperately bored. well, that's the cause of the new club. unfortunately, the club, too, has nothing to do--nothing at all--and so, the club, too, is desperately bored.... oh, if only i could give that club an object--a real object!" mrs. delancy murmured some remonstrance over the new enthusiasm that sounded in her niece's voice while uttering the aspiration in behalf of the civitas society; but the bride paid no heed. "yes," she mused, straightening the arches of her brows in a frown of perplexity, "it could be made something, with an object. i myself could be made something, with an object--something worth while to strive for.... heavens, how i wish i had something to do!" this iconoclastic fashion of speech was not patiently endured by the orthodox aunt, who listened to the plaint with marked displeasure. "a bride with a young husband and a beautiful home," she remarked tartly, "seeking something to do! in my day, a bride was about the busiest and the happiest person in the community." her voice took on a tone of tender reminiscence, and a little color crept into the wrinkled pallor of her cheeks, and she perked her head a bit coquettishly, in a youthful manner not unbecoming, as she continued: "i remember how happy--oh, how happy!--i was then!" cicily, however, displayed a rather shocking lack of sympathy for this emotion on the part of her relative. she was, in fact, selfishly absorbed in her own concerns, after the manner of human nature, whether young or old. "yes," she said, almost spitefully, "i have noticed how always old married ladies continually remember the happy time when they were brides. a bride's happy time is as much advertised as a successful soap.... but i--i--well, i'm not a bride any longer--that's all. i've been married a whole year!" "a whole year!" mrs. delancy spoke the word with the fine scorn of one who was looking forward complacently to the celebration of a golden wedding anniversary in the near future. cicily, however, was impervious to the sarcasm of the repetition. "yes," she repeated gloomily, "a whole year. think of it.... and all the women in my family live to be seventy. mamma would have been alive if she hadn't been drowned. a good many live to be eighty. why, you're not seventy yet. poor dear! you may have ten or a dozen more years of it!" mrs. delancy was actually horrified by her niece's commiseration. "cicily," she eluded, "you must not speak in that manner. i've been happily married. you--" the afflicted bride was not to be turned aside from her woe. "i'm perfectly wretched," she announced, fiercely. "auntie, charles is a bigamist!" "good lord!" mrs. delancy ejaculated with pious fervor, and sank back limply in her chair, too much overcome for further utterance. then, in a flash of memory, she beheld again the facts as she had known them as to her niece's courtship and marriage. the girl and charles hamilton had been sweethearts as children. the boy had developed into the man without ever apparently wavering in his one allegiance. cicily, too, had had eyes for no other suitor, even when many flocked about her, drawn by the fascination of her vivacious beauty and the little graces of her form and the varied brilliance of her moods. it was because of the steadfastness of the two lovers in their devotion that mr. and mrs. delancy had permitted themselves to be persuaded into granting consent for an early marriage. it had seemed to them that the constancy of the pair was sufficiently established. they believed that here was indeed material for the making of an ideal union. their belief seemed justified by the facts in the outcome, for bride and groom showed all the evidences of rapturous happiness in their union. it had only been revealed during this present visit to the household by the aunt that, somehow, things were not as they should be between these two erstwhile so fond.... and now, at last, the truth was revealed in all its revolting nudity. mrs. delancy recalled, with new understanding of its fatal significance, the aloof manner recently worn by the young husband in his home. so, this was the ghastly explanation of the change: the man was a bigamist! the distraught woman had hardly ears for the words her niece was speaking. "yes," cicily said, after a long, mournful pause, "besides me, charles has married--" she paused, one foot in a dainty satin slipper beating angrily on the white fur of the rug. "what woman?" mrs. delancy demanded, with wrathful curiosity. "oh, a factory full of them!" the young wife spoke the accusation with a world of bitterness in her voice. "good gracious, what an extraordinary man!" mrs. delancy, under the stimulus of this outrageous guilt again sat erect in her chair. once more, the flush showed daintily in the withered cheeks; but, now, there was no hint of tenderness in the rose--it was the red of anger. "i know how you must feel, dear," she said, gently. "i was jealous once, of one woman. but to be jealous of a factory full--oh, lord!" "yes," cicily declared, in tremulous tones, "all of them, and the men besides!" mrs. delancy bounced from her seat, then slowly subsided into the depths of the easy chair, whence she fairly gaped at her former ward. when, finally, she spoke, it was slowly, with full conviction. "cicily, you're crazy!" "no," the girl protested, sadly; "only heartbroken. i am so miserable that i wish i were dead!" "but, my dear," mrs. delancy argued, "it can't be that you are quite--er--sensible, you know." "of course, i'm not sensible," cicily admitted, petulantly. "i said i was jealous, didn't i? naturally, i can't be sensible." "but charles can't be married to the men, too!" mrs. delancy asserted, wonderingly. at that, cicily flared in a burst of genuine anger. "yes, he is, too," she stormed; "and to the women, too--to the buildings, to the machinery, to the nasty ground, to the fire-escapes--to every single thing about that horrid business of his! oh, i hate it! i hate it! i hate every one of them!... and he is a bigamist, i tell you--yes, a bigamist! he's married to me and to his business, too, and he cares more for his business!" "humph!" the exclamation came from mrs. delancy with much energy. it was surcharged, with relief, for the tragedy was made clear to her at last. surely, there was room for trouble in the situation, but nothing like that over which she had shuddered during the period of her misapprehension. in the first minute of relief, she felt aroused to indignation against her niece who had so needlessly shocked her. "i do wish, cicily," she remonstrated, "that you would endeavor to curb your impetuosity. it leads you into such absurdities of speech and of action. your extravagant way of opening this subject caused me utterly to mistake your meaning, and set me all a-tremble--for a tempest in a teapot." "i think i'll get a divorce," cicily declared, defiantly. the bride was not in an apologetic mood, inasmuch, as she regarded herself as the one undeservedly suffering under great wrongs. "perhaps!" mrs. delancy retorted, sarcastically. her usual good humor was returning, after the first reaction from the stress she had undergone by reason of the young wife's fantastic mode of speech. "i suppose you will name charles's business as the co-respondent." "it takes more out of him than any woman could," was the spirited retort. "of course, i shall. why not?" mrs. delancy, now thoroughly amused, explained to her niece some details concerning the grounds required by the statutes in the state of new york for the granting of absolute divorce, of which hitherto the carefully nurtured girl had been in total ignorance. cicily was at first astounded, and then dismayed. but, in the end, she regained her poise, and reverted with earnestness to the need of reform in the courts where such gross injustice could be. she surmised even that in this field she might find ultimately some outlet of a satisfactory sort for her wasted energies. "why, i and my club, and other clubs like it," she concluded, "find the cause of our being in such things as this. we women haven't any occupation, and we haven't any husbands, essentially speaking--and we're determined to have both." the bold declaration was offensive to the old lady's sense of propriety. "you can't interfere with your husband's business, cicily," she said by way of rebuke, somewhat stiffly. the young wife, however, was emancipated from such admonitions. she did not hesitate to express her dissent boldly. "yes," she exclaimed indignantly, "that's the idea that you old married women have been putting up with, without ever whimpering. why, you've even been preaching it yourselves--preaching it until you've spoilt the men utterly. so, now, thanks to your namby-pamby knuckling under always, it's business first, last, and all the time--and marriage just nowhere. i tell you, it's all wrong.... i know you're older," she went on vehemently, as mrs. delancy's lips parted. "i guess that's why you're wrong.... anyhow, it isn't as it was intended. for the matter of that, which was first, marriage or business? did adam have a business when he married? huh! there! no man could answer that!" cicily paused in triumph, and, in the elation wrought by developing a successful argument, turned luminous eyes on her aunt, while her red lips bent into the daintiest of smiles. mrs. delancy was not to be beguiled from the fixed habits of thoughts carried through scores of years by the winsome blandishments of her whilom ward. she had no answering gentleness for the gladness in the girl's face. when she spoke, it was with an emphasis of acute disapproval: "do you mean that you are going to make your husband choose between you and his business, cicily?" something in the tone disturbed the young wife's serenity. the direct question itself was sufficient to destroy the momentary equanimity evolved out of a mental achievement such as the argument from adam. she realized, on the instant, that her desire must be defeated by the facts of life. "no," she admitted, after a brief period of hesitancy, "of course not. charles chooses business first--any man would." the inexorable question followed: "well, what are you going to do?" then, as no answer came: "i beg of you, cicily, not to be rash. don't do anything that will cause you regret after you have come into a calmer mood. of course, once on a time, marriage was first with men, and i think that it should be first now--i know that it should. but it is the truth that business has now come to be first in the lives of our american men. and, my dear, you can't overcome conditions all by yourself. at heart, charles loves you, cicily. i'm sure of that, even though he does seem, wrapt up in his business affairs. yet, he loves you, just the same. that's the one thing we older women learn to cling to, to solace ourselves with: that, deep down in their hearts, our husbands do love us, no matter how indifferent they may seem. when a woman once loses faith in that, why, she just can't go on, that's all. oh, i beg you, cicily, don't ever lose that faith. it means shipwreck!" the young wife shook her head slowly--doubtfully; then quickly--determinedly. "no, i won't put up with just that," she asserted, morosely, "i want more. i'll have more, or--" she checked herself abruptly, and once again the arch of her dark brows was straightened, as she mused somberly over her future course. there fell an interval of silence, in which the two reflected on the mysteries that lie between man and woman in the way of love. it was broken finally by mrs. delancy, who spoke meditatively, hardly conscious that the words were uttered aloud. "of course, you're not really dependent on charles. your own fortune--" the girl's interruption came in a passionate outburst that filled her hearer with distress and surprise. it would seem that cicily had been thinking very tenderly, yet very unhappily, of those mysteries of love. "but i am dependent on him--dependent on him for every ray of sunshine in my heart, for every breath of happiness in my life; while he--" her voice broke suddenly; it came muffled as she continued quiveringly--"while he--he's not dependent on me at all!" after a little interval, she went on, more firmly, but with the voice of despair. "that's the pity of it. that's what makes us women nowadays turn to something else--to some other man, or to some work, some fad, some hobby, some folly, some madness--anything to fill the void in our hearts that our husbands forget to fill, because their whole attention is concentrated on business.... but i'm not going to be that wife, i give you warning. i'm going to make my husband fill all my heart, and, too, i'm going to make him dependent on me. i'll make him know that he can't do without me!" "nonsense!" mrs. delancy objected, incredulously. "why, as to that, charles is dependent on you now. you haven't really lost his love--not a bit of it, my dear!" there was infinite sadness in the young wife's gesture of negation. "aunt emma," she said earnestly, "charles and i haven't had an evening together in weeks. we haven't had a real old talk in months.... why, i--i doubt if he even remembers what day this is!" "you mean--?" "our first anniversary! long ago, we planned to celebrate the day--just the theater and a little supper after--only us two.... i wonder if he will remember." the tremulous voice gave evidence that the tears were very near. "oh, of course, he will," mrs. delancy declared briskly, with a manner of cheerful certainty. nevertheless, out of the years of experience in the world of married folk, a great doubt lurked in her heart. cicily's head with the coronal of dark brown hair, usually poised so proudly, now drooped dejectedly; there was no hopefulness in her tones as she replied: "i don't know--i am afraid. why, since the tobacco trust bought out that carrington box factory five months ago, and began fighting charles, he talks tobacco boxes in his sleep." "don't take it so seriously," the aunt argued. "all men are that way. my dear, your uncle jim mumbles woolens--even during dog days. no, you mustn't take things so seriously, cicily. you are not the only wife who has to suffer in this way. you are not the only one who was ever lonesome. your case isn't unusual--more pity! it's the case of almost every wife whose husband wins in this frightful battle with business. years ago, dear, i suffered as you are suffering. your uncle never told me anything. i've never known anything at all about more than half of his life. he rebuffed me the few times at first, when i tried to share those things with him. he said that a woman had no place in a man's business affairs. so, after a little, i stopped trying. for a time, i was lonesome--very lonesome--oh, so lonesome!... and, then, i began to make a life for myself outside the home--as he had already by his business. i tried in my humble way to do something for others. that's the best way to down a heartache, my dear--try making someone else happy." the words arrested cicily's heed. as their meaning seeped into her consciousness, the expression of her face changed little by little. "making people happy!" she repeated the phrase as she had formulated the idea again, very softly, with a persistence that would have surprised mrs. delancy, could she have caught the inaudible murmur. presently, the faint rose in the pallor of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper red, and the amber eyes grew radiant, as she lifted the long, curving lashes, and fixed her gaze on her aunt. there was a new animation in her voice as she spoke; there was a new determination in the resolute set of the scarlet lips. "why, that's something to do!" she exclaimed, joyously. "it's something to do, really, after all--isn't it?" "yes," her aunt agreed, sedately; "something big to do. for my part, i joined church circles, and worked first for the heathen." "oh, bother the heathen!" cicily ejaculated, rudely. "charles is heathen enough for me!" with her characteristic impulsiveness, she sprang to her feet, as mrs. delancy quietly rose to go, ran to her aunt, and embraced that astonished woman with great fervor. "i honestly believe that you've given me the idea i was looking for," she declared enthusiastically. "you darling!... making people happy! it would be something for the club, too.... yes," she concluded decisively, "i'll do it!" "do what?" mrs. delancy questioned, bewildered by the swift succession of moods in the girl she loved, yet could never quite understand. "you just wait, aunt emma," was the baffling answer. mrs. delancy turned at the door, and spoke grimly: "my dear cicily," she said, "you're getting to be quite as reticent as your uncle and charles." but the girl disdained any retort to the gibe. instead, she was saying softly, over and over: "making other people happy! making other people happy!" chapter iii cicily hamilton was inclined to be captious with her maid as she dressed that evening. she was finical to the point of absurdity even, which is often the fault of beauty, and perhaps a fault not altogether unbecoming, since its aim is the last elaboration of loveliness. indeed, the fault becomes a virtue, when its motive lies in the desire to attain supreme charm for the one beloved. it was so with the young wife to-night. she was filled with anxious longing to display her beauty in its full measure for the pleasuring of the man to whom she had given her whole heart. for that fond purpose, she was curt with her maid, and reproachful with herself. she was deeply troubled by the thought that a darker shade to her brows might enhance the brilliance of her eyes. she hesitated before, but finally resisted, a temptation to use a touch of pencil to gain the effect. she was exceedingly querulous over the coiling of her tresses into the crown that added so regally to the dignity of her bearing. the selection of the gown was a matter for profound deliberation, and ended in a mood of dubiety. that passed, however, when at last she surveyed her length in the cheval glass. then, she became aware, beyond peradventure of doubt, that the white lacery of silk, molded to her slender form and interwoven with heavy threads of gold, was supremely becoming. the gleam of precious metal in the fabric scorned to transmute the amber of her eyes into a glory of gold. the pearls of her necklace harmonized with the warm pallor of her complexion. despite the pains taken, there remained time to spare before the dinner hour, when the toilette had been thus happily completed. as she was about to dismiss the maid, cicily bethought her to ask a question. "has mr. hamilton come in yet, albine?" "yes, madam--a half-hour ago. he went to the study, with his secretary." left alone, cicily mused on the maid's information, and bitterness again swept over her. during the period of dressing, she had been so absorbed in the attempt to make the most of her charms that, for the time being, she had forgotten her apprehensions as to her husband's neglect. now, however, those apprehensions were recalled, and they became more poignant. only a stern regard for the appearance she must present anon held her back from tears. it seemed to her longing a dreadful thing that on this day of all others her husband must bring back to his home this rival of whom she was so jealous. for it could mean nothing else, if he were closeted with his secretary at this hour: he was dallying in the embraces of business, with never a thought for the wife whom he had sworn to love always. for all that she was beautiful, possessed of ample fortune, married to the man of her choice and, by reason of her youth, full of the joy of life, cicily hamilton was a very wretched woman, as she strolled slowly down the broad, winding stair, and entered the drawing-room, where already mrs. delancy was waiting. [illustration] that good lady, in her turn, had found herself sorely perturbed. the mood of revolt in which her niece was, caused a measure of alarm in the bosom of the loving older woman. her own course at this moment was not clear to her. she had been aware that to-day was the first anniversary of the marriage of the hamiltons, and it was on this account that she had prolonged her visit. yet, she had meant to go away in time to permit the young pair their particular fête in a _solitude à deux_. she, too, however, had learned of the present absorption of mr. hamilton in business affairs, and there at she became suspicious that her niece's fears as to his forgetfulness might be realized. in the end, she had determined to remain until immediately before the dinner hour, leaving the going or staying to be ruled by the facts as they developed. arrived at this decision, she had telephoned to her own home as to the uncertainty in regard to her movements, and thereafter had awaited the issue of events with that simple placidity which is the boon sometimes granted by much experience of the world. hardly a moment after the meeting of the two women in the drawing-room, the master of the house entered hurriedly, bearing in his hand a sheaf of papers. charles hamilton was a large, dark man, remarkably good-looking in a boyish, clean-shaven, typically american, businesslike fashion. still short of the thirties, he had nevertheless formed those habits of urgent industry that characterize the successful in the metropolis. already, he had become enslaved by the business man's worst habit--that most dangerous to domestic happiness--the taking of mutual love between him and his wife as something conceded once for all, not requiring exhibition or culture or protection or nourishment of any sort. in this mistake he was perhaps less blamable than are some, inasmuch as he was fettered by a great ignorance of feminine nature. from earliest boyhood, he had been cicily's abject worshiper. that devotion had held him aloof from other women. in consequence, he had missed the variety of experiences through which many men pass, from which, perforce, they garner stores of wisdom, to be used for good or ill as may be. hamilton, unfortunately, knew nothing concerning woman's foibles. he had no least suspicion as to her constant craving for the expression of affection, her heart-hunger for the murmured words of endearment, her poignant yearning for gentle, tender caresses day by day. they loved; they were safely married: those blessed facts to him were sufficient. there was no need to talk about it. in fact, in his estimation, there was not time. there was business to be managed--no dillydallying in this day and generation, unless one would join the down-and-out club! such was the point of view from which this bridegroom of a year surveyed his domestic life. it was a point of view established almost of necessity from the environment in which he found himself established. he was in no wise unique: he was typical of his class. he was clean and wholesome, industrious, energetic, clever--but he knew nothing of woman.... so, now, he immediately rushed up to mrs. delancy, without so much as a glance toward the wife who had studied long and anxiously to make the delight of his eyes. "hello, aunt emma!" he exclaimed gaily, and kissed her. "i am glad you stayed over to cheer up the little girl, while husband was away grubbing the money for her." "oh, do you think, then, that she needs cheering?" there was a world of significance in the manner with which the old lady put the pertinent question; but the absorbed business man was deaf to the implication. cicily, however, spared him the pains of any disclaimer by uttering one for herself. "need cheering!--i! what an absurd idea!" hamilton smiled gladly as he heard his wife speak thus bravely in assurance of her entire contentment. now, for the first time, he turned toward her. but it was plain that he failed to note her appearance with any degree of particularity. he had no phrase of appreciation for the exquisite woman, in the exquisite gown. he spoke with a certain tone of fondness; yet it was the fondness of habit. "that's right," he said heartily, as he crossed the room to her side, and bestowed a perfunctory marital peck on the oval cheek. "i'm mighty glad you haven't been lonesome, sweetheart." "you were thinking that i might be lonesome?" there was a note of wistfulness in the musical voice as she asked the question. the glow in the golden eyes uplifted to his held a shy hint of hope. manlike, he failed to understand the subtle appeal. "of course, i didn't," he replied. "if i thought about it at all--which i greatly doubt, we've been so rushed at the office--i probably thought how glad you must be not having a man under foot around the house when your friends called for gossip. oh, i understand the sex; i know how you women sit about and talk scandal." an indignant humph! from mrs. delancy was ignored by hamilton, but he could not escape feeling a suggestion of sarcasm in his wife's deliberately uttered comment: "yes, charles, you do know an awful lot about women!" "i knew enough to get you," he riposted, neatly. then, he had an inspiration that he believed to be his duty as a host: as a matter of fact, it was rudeness in a husband toward his wife on the first anniversary of their marriage. he turned suavely to mrs. delancy. "you'll stay to dinner, of course, aunt emma." and he added, fatuously: "you and cicily can chat together afterward, you know.... i've a horrible pile of work to get through to-night." at her husband's unconscious betrayal of her dearest hopes, cicily started as if she had been struck. as he ceased speaking, she nerved herself to the ordeal, and made her statement with an air as casual as she could muster, while secretly a-quiver with anxiety. "why, charles, we are going to the theater to-night, you know." "to-night?" hamilton spoke the single word with an air of blank astonishment. it needed no more to make clear the fact that he had no guess as to the importance of this especial day in the calendar of their wedded lives. cicily's spirits sank to the lowest deeps of discouragement before this confession of her husband's inadvertence to that which she regarded as of vital import in the scheme of happiness. "yes," she answered dully, "to-night. i have the the tickets. don't you remember what day this is?" she strove to make her tone one of the most casual inquiry, but the attempt was miserably futile before the urge of her emotion. "why, to-day is thursday, of course," hamilton declared, with an ingenuous nonchalance that was maddening to the distraught wife. "yes, it is thursday," she rejoined; and now there was no mistaking the bitter feeling that welled in the words. "it is the anniversary of our wedding day." hamilton caught his unhappy bride in his arms. he was all contrition in this first moment when his delinquency was brought home to consciousness. he kissed her tenderly on the brow. "by jove, i'm awfully sorry, dear." there was genuine regret for such culpable carelessness in his voice. "how ever did i forget it?" he drew her closer in his embrace for a brief caress. then, after a little, his natural buoyancy reasserted itself, and he spoke with a mischievousness that would, he hoped, serve to stimulate the neglected bride toward cheerfulness. "i say," he demanded, "did you remember it all by yourself, sweetheart, or did aunt emma remind you? i know she's a great sharp on all the family dates." the badinage seemed in the worst possible taste to the watching mrs. delancy, but she forbore comment, although she saw her niece wince visibly. cicily's pride, however, came to her rescue, and she contrived to restrain herself from any revelation of her hurt that could make itself perceptible to hamilton, who now released her from his arms. "oh," she said with an assumption of lightness, "aunt emma told me, of course. how in the world could you suppose that i, in my busy life, could possibly remember a little thing like the anniversary of our wedding?" "no, naturally you wouldn't," the husband agreed, in all seriousness. "gad! if you hadn't been so engrossed with that wonderful club and all your busy society doings, you probably would have remembered, and then you would have told me." the young wife perceived that it would be impossible to arouse him to any just realization of the flagrancy of his fault. yet, she dared venture a forlorn hope that all was not yet lost. "well, anyhow, charles," she said, very gently, "i have got the tickets, and it is our anniversary." "even if i had remembered about it," was the answer, spoken with a quickly assumed air of abstraction, as business returned to his thoughts, "i couldn't have gone to-night. you see, i have a conference on--very important. it means a great deal. morton and carrington are coming around to see me.... i can't bother you with details, but you know it must be important. i can't get out of it, anyhow." "but, charles--" the voice was very tender, very persuasive. it moved hamilton to contrition. the pleading accents could never have been resisted by any lover; but by a husband--ah, there is a tremendous difference, as most wives learn. hamilton merely elaborated his defense against yielding to his wife's wishes. "i tell you, cicily, it's a matter of business--business of the biggest importance to me. you're my wife, dear: you don't want to interfere with my business, do you? why, i'll leave it to aunt emma here, if i'm not right." he faced about toward mrs. delancy, with an air of triumphant appeal. "come, aunt emma, what would you and uncle jim do in such a case?" "i think cicily already knows the answer to that question," was the neutral reply, with which hamilton was wholly satisfied. now, indeed, the girl abandoned her last faint hope. the magnitude of the failure shook her to the deeps of her being. she felt her muscles relax, even as her spirit seemed to grow limp within her. she was in an agony of fear lest she collapse there under the eyes of the man who had so spurned her adoration. under the spur of that fear, she moved forward a little way toward the window, the while hamilton chatted on amiably with mrs. delancy, continuing to justify the position he had taken. as he paused finally, cicily had regained sufficient self-control to speak in a voice that told him nothing beyond the bare significance of the words themselves. "oh, of course, you're right, charles. don't bother any more about it. attend to your conference, and be happy. there will be plenty more anniversaries!" chapter iv the preliminary conference with morton and carrington, which had so fatally interfered with cicily's anniversary plans, proved totally unsatisfactory from the standpoint of charles hamilton. as a matter of fact, a crisis had arisen in his business affairs. he was threatened with disaster, and as yet he was unable to see clearly any way out. he was one of countless individuals marked for a tidbit to glut the gormandizing of a trust. he had by no means turned craven as yet; he was resolved to hold fast to his business until the last possible moment, but he could not blind himself to the fact that his ultimate yielding seemed inevitable. in circumstances such as these, it was natural enough that hamilton should appear more than ever distrait in his own home, for he found himself wholly unable to cast out of his mind the cares that harassed him. they were ever present during his waking moments; they pursued him in the hours devoted to slumber: his nights were a riot of financial nightmares. he was polite to his wife, and even loverlike with the set phrases and gestures and caresses of habit. beyond that, he paid her no attention at all. his consuming interest left no room for tender concerns. he had no time for social recreations, for the theater, or functions, or informal visits to friends in cicily's company. his dark face grew gloomy as the days passed. the faint creases between the eyebrows deepened into something that gave warning of an habitual frown not far away in the future, which would mar the boyish handsomeness of his face. the firm jaw had advanced a trifle, set in a steadfast defiance against the fate that menaced. his speech was brusquer. cicily, already in a state of revolt against the conditions of her life, was stimulated to carry out the ideas nebulously forming in her alert brain. she felt that the present manner of living must soon prove unendurable to her. it was essential that a change should be made, and that speedily, for she was aware of the limitations to her own patience. her temperament was not one to let her sit down in sackcloth and ashes to weep over the ruins of romance. rather, she would bestir herself to create a new sphere of activity, wherein she might find happiness in some other guise. yet, despite the ingenuity of her mind, she could not for some time determine on the precise course of procedure that should promise success to her aspirations. primarily, her desire was to work out some alteration in the status of all concerned by which the domestic ideal might be maintained in all its splendid integrity. but her tentative efforts in this direction, made lightly in order that their purport might not be guessed by the husband, were destined to ignominious failure. mrs. delancy, a week after the melancholy anniversary occasion, made mention of the fact that she had cautiously spoken to charles in reference to his neglect of the young wife. she explained that his manner of reply convinced her that, in reality, the man was merely a bit too deeply occupied for the moment, and that, when the temporary pressure had passed, everything would again be idyllic. mrs. delancy's motive in telling her niece of the interview was to convince this depressed person that the matter was, after all, of only trifling importance. in this, however, she failed signally. cicily regarded the incident as yet another evidence of a developing situation that must be checked quickly, or never. but she took advantage of the circumstances to introduce the topic with hamilton. to her, the conversation was momentous, although neither by word nor by manner did she let her husband suspect that the discussion was aught beyond the casual. as usual now, hamilton, on his return at night from the office, had shut himself in the library, and was busily poring over a bundle of papers, when there came a timid knock at the door. in response to his call, cicily entered. the young man greeted his wife politely enough, and even called her "darling" in a meaningless tone of voice; but the frown did not relax, and constantly his eyes wandered to the bundle of documents. cicily, however, was not to be daunted, for his manner was no worse than she had expected. she crossed to a chair that faced his, and seated herself. when, finally, she spoke, it was with an air of tender solicitude, and the smile on her scarlet lips was gently maternal. "you are working too hard, dear," she remonstrated. "you must relax a little when you are away from the office, or you'll have--oh, brain-fag, or nervous prostration, or some such dreadful thing." "well, i'll try to put the office out of my head for a little while," was the obedient answer, which gave the woman the chance she desired. "but you must do it for your own sake--not mine, you know. you see, aunt emma told me that she had been lecturing you a bit--said you ought to pay me more attention, and all that sort of thing." "yes, and so i shall; but i'm pressed to death just now--after a bit--" "you are so different!" cicily said, almost timidly, as his voice trailed into silence. "sometimes, i think--i fear--" her voice, in turn, died. for the moment, the husband was moved to a sudden tenderness. he spoke softly, earnestly, leaning toward her. "cicily, you can't realize what a pleasure it is to a fellow, when he is pounding away downtown, to stop for a second and think of his wife at home waiting for him--that dear girl who loves him--the darling one far away from all the turmoil of the sordid fight." the rhapsody, although genuine enough, was not satisfying to the wife. the limit of time to a "second" was unfortunate. there was distinct irony in her tone as she answered with a question: "and the farther away the home, the greater the pleasure, doubtless?" for once, hamilton was susceptible; and he was keenly distressed, momentarily. "cicily!" he cried. "you don't doubt my love, do you? why, when a man and a woman marry, each ought to take the other's love for granted--take it on faith." but the wife was in no wise consoled by this trite defense. it had been made too familiar to her in previous discussions between them. her answer was tinged with bitterness: "that's the only way in which i've had a chance to take it lately," she said slowly, with her eyes downcast. the persistence of her mood aggravated the man beyond the bounds of that restraint which he had imposed on himself. his nerves were overwrought, and, under the impulse of irritation over another worry at home added to those by which he was already overburdened, he flared. "cicily!" he exclaimed, sharply. "what in the world has come over you? you don't want to hold me back, do you? you don't want to be that sort of a wife?" "charles!" cicily exclaimed, in her turn sharply. she was grievously hurt by this rebuke from the man whom she loved. "forgive me!" hamilton begged, swiftly contrite. "i'm just nervous--tired. it's been a fearfully hard day downtown." his obvious sincerity won instant forgiveness. cicily rose from her chair, and came to seat herself on the arm of his. he took one of her hands in his, and her free hand stroked his hair in a familiar caress. when she spoke, it was with a tenderness that was half-humility. "would it help, dear, to talk to me? we used always to talk over things, you know. don't you remember? you said ever so many times that i had so much common sense!" again, hamilton spoke with a tactlessness that was fairly appalling: "oh, yes, i remember very well. that was before we were married." "yes--before!" there was scorn in the emphasis of the repetition. it aroused the husband to knowledge of his blunder. "i--didn't mean to--" he stammered. "i--i--of course, you understand--really, dearest, i'm sorry i've been so occupied lately. i hope things will brighten up soon; then, i shall be more sociable. i've thought about our anniversary, too. it's too bad i was tied up that night!" cicily rose from her position on the arm of her husband's chair, and strolled across the room. "oh, that's all right," she remarked, in an indifferent tone of voice. "of course, business must come first." her beautiful face was very somber now; her eyes were turned away from the man. but hamilton was amply content. his absorption in other things rendered him somewhat unobservant of certain niceties in expression just now. he sprang up, and went to his wife. with his hands on her shoulders, he declared his satisfaction with the situation as it appeared to him at this time: "that's my real cicily--my little girl!... now, another anniversary--" "oh, yes," the wife agreed, "as i reminded you before, there will be plenty of other anniversaries--lots more--so many more!" the melancholy note in her voice escaped the listener, as she had known that it would. his answer was enthusiastic: "yes, indeed! both of our families are long-lived. do you remember, when we got engaged, how you said it was so awfully serious, because all the women in your family lived to be seventy or more?" "yes, i remember!" then, abruptly recalling the original motive with which she had sought this conversation, cicily, by an effort of will that cost her much, spoke with a manner half-gaily sympathetic: "charles, why don't you tell me now all about this horrid business of yours?" at the question, the man's face quickly grew grim, and the frown deepened perceptibly between his brows. he dropped his hands from his wife's shoulders, turned away, and went back to reseat himself in the chair by the broad table, on which was spread out the bundle of business papers. he did not look up toward the woman, who followed him with something of timidity, and took her position anew in the chair facing him. he had no eyes for the pleading anxiety in the gaze that was fixed on him. his mood was once more heavy under the weight of business worry. "oh, what's the use of telling you!" he snapped, brutally; but that he had meant nothing personal in the question was shown at once, for he added, in the same sentence: "--or anybody else?" cicily had whitened a little at the opening phrase, but her color crept back, as she heard the end of the impatient question. after a little, she ventured to repeat her request for some information as to the status of affairs in the factory. "why, as to that," hamilton replied, in a tone of discomfort, "the facts are simple enough; but they spell disaster for me, unless i can contrive some way or another out of the mess in which i'm involved by the new moves. you see, carrington has sold his factory. he's sold out to the trust--that's the root of the whole trouble. so, he and morton are making a fight against me. they mean to put me down and out. it's good business from their standpoint; but it's ruin for me, if they succeed. they think that i'm only a youngster, and that i sha'n't be able to stand up against their schemes. they are of the opinion that, since dad is gone, they will have a snap in wiping me off the map. they fancy that i don't know a blessed thing in the world except football." hamilton paused for a moment, and his jaw shot out a little farther forward; his lips shut tensely for a few seconds. then, they relaxed again, as he continued his explanation of the situation that confronted him. "they're down in my territory now, plotting to undermine my business in various ways. they have the belief that i am not up to their plans; but i know more than they give me credit for." his voice rose a little, and grew harsher. "well, i'm not such a fool as they fancy i am, perhaps. i'm going to show 'em! i'm in this game, and i'm going to fight, and to fight hard. i'm not going to let 'em score. the play won't be over till the whistle blows. i tell you, i'll show 'em!" as he continued speaking, the wife's expression changed rapidly. by the time he had come to a pause, it was radiant. indeed, now, for the first time in many dreary weeks, cicily felt that she was truly a wife in all senses of the word. here, at last, she was become a helpmeet to her husband. that _bête noire_ business was no longer the thing apart from her. she was made the confidante of her husband's affairs abroad. she was made the recipient of the most vital explanations. she was asked to share his worries, to counsel him. thus, in her usual impulsiveness, the volatile girl was carried much too far, much beyond the actuality. as hamilton ceased speaking, she leaned forward eagerly. the rose was deeply red in her checks; the amber eyes were glowing. her voice was musically shrill, as she cried out, with irrepressible enthusiasm: "yes, yes, charles, we'll show 'em! we'll show 'em!" for a moment, the man stared at the speaker dumfounded by the unexpected outbreak. presently, however, the import of her speech began to be made clear to him. "we?" he repeated, doubtfully. "you mean--" he hesitated, then added: "you mean that you--and i--that is, you mean that you--?" "yes, yes," cicily answered hastily, with no abatement of her excitement and triumph. "yes, together, we'll show 'em!" at this explicit declaration, hamilton burst out laughing. "you!" he ejaculated, derisively. "yes, i," cicily maintained, stoutly. "why, i showed mrs. carrington the other day. next, we'll beat her husband. you know, i beat her for the presidency of the club." "well, then, stick to your club, my dear," hamilton counseled, tersely. "i'll attend to the real business for this family." his face was grown somber again. "that's just like uncle jim," cicily retorted, bitterly disappointed by this disillusionment. "i suppose you want me to be like aunt emma." "she's perfect--certainly!" cicily abandoned the struggle for the time being, acknowledging almost complete defeat. there was only a single consoling thought. at least, he had talked with her intimately concerning his affairs. with an abrupt change of manner, she stood up listlessly, and spoke in such a fashion as might become an old-fashioned wife, although her voice was lifeless. "i'll get your house-coat, dear," she said, simply. "and, then, while you look after your business during the evening, i'll do--my knitting!" her hands clenched tightly as she went forth from the study, but the master of the house was unobservant when it came to such insignificant details. he was already poring over the documents on the table; but he called out amiably as he heard the door open. "that's the dear girl!" he said. chapter v two evenings after this memorable interview between husband and wife, carrington and morton were closeted with hamilton in his library. to anyone who had chanced to look in on the group, it would have seemed rather an agreeable trio of friends passing a sociable evening of elegant leisure. hamilton alone, as he sat in the chair before the table, displayed something of his inner feelings by the creases between his brows and the compression of his lips and a slight tensity in his attitude. morton was stretched gracefully in a chair facing that of his host and prospective victim, while carrington was close by, so that the two seemed ranked against the one. a close student of types would have had no hesitation in declaring morton to be much the more intelligent and crafty of the two visitors. he appeared the familiar shrewd, smooth, well-groomed new yorker, excellently preserved for all his sixty-five years; one who could be at will persuasive and genial, or hard as steel. in his evening dress, he showed to advantage, and his manner toward hamilton was gently paternal, as that of an old family friend who has chanced in for a pleasant hour with the son of a former intimate. carrington, on the contrary, was of the grosser type of successful business man. a frock-coat sufficed him for the evening always. there was about him in every way a heaviness that indicated he could not be a leader, only a follower after the commands of wiser men. but, in such following, he would be of powerful executive ability. [illustration] "do you know," morton was saying, "it's really a great personal pleasure for me to come here, hamilton, my boy. it reminds me of the many times when i used to sit here with your father." as he ceased speaking, he smiled benevolently on the young man opposite him. hamilton nodded, without much appearance of graciousness. he was more than suspicious as to the sincerity of this man's kindly manner. "yes, i know," he said. "you and he had many dealings together, i believe, didn't you, mr. morton?" "oh, yes, indeed," came the ready answer; "many and many. he was a shrewd trader, was your father. it's a pity he cannot be here to know what a promising young man of business his son has become. he would be proud of you, my boy." "thank you, mr. morton," hamilton responded. "for that matter, i myself wish that dad were here just now to help me." again, the visitor smiled, and with a warm expansiveness that was meant to indicate a heart full of generous helpfulness. "you don't need him, my boy," he declared, unctuously. "you are dealing with an old friend." carrington nodded in ponderous corroboration of the statement. "of course not, of course not!" he rumbled, in a husky bass voice. hamilton let irritation run away with discretion. he spoke with something that was very like a sneer: "i thought possibly that was just why i might need him." morton seemed not to hear the caustic comment. at any rate, he blandly ignored it, as he turned to address carrington. "you remember hamilton, senior, don't you?" he asked. "very well!" replied the gentleman of weight. his red face grew almost apoplectic, and the big body writhed in the chair. his tones were surcharged with a bitterness that he tried in vain to conceal. morton regarded these signs of feeling with an amusement that he had no reluctance in displaying. on the contrary, he laughed aloud in his associate's face. "well, yes," he said, still smiling, "i fancy that you ought to remember hamilton, senior, and remember him very well, too. but, anyhow, by-gones are by-gones. you weren't alone in your misery, carrington. he beat me, too, several times." hamilton smiled now, but wryly. "so," he suggested whimsically, yet bitterly, "now that he's dead, you two gentlemen have decided to combine in order to beat his son. that's about it, eh?" carrington, who was not blessed with a self-control, or an art of hypocrisy equal to that of his ally, emitted a cackling laugh of triumph. but morton refused to accept the charge. instead, he spoke with an admirable conviction in his voice, a hint of indignant, pained remonstrance. "ridiculous, my dear boy--ridiculous! just look on me as being in your father's place. no, no, hamilton, there's room for all of us. there's a reasonable profit for all of us in the business--if only we'll be sensible about it." "it only remains to decide as to the sensible course, then," hamilton rejoined, coldly. "i suppose, in this instance, it means that i should decide to follow the course you have outlined for me. now, i have your offer before me on this paper. briefly stated, your proposition to me is that you will take all the boxes i am able to deliver to you--that is to say, you agree to keep my factory busy. for this promise on your part, you require two stipulations from me as conditions. the first is that i shall not sell any boxes to the independent plug tobacco factory; the second is that i shall sell my boxes to you at a regular price of eleven cents each. i believe i have stated the matter accurately. have i not?" "you have stated it exactly," morton assured the questioner. "that is the situation in a nutshell." "unfortunately," hamilton went on, speaking with great precision, "it's quite impossible for me to make any such agreement with you--utterly impossible." he looked his adversary squarely in the eye, and shook his head in emphatic negation. carrington merely emitted a bourdon grunt. morton, however, maintained the argument, undeterred by the finality of hamilton's manner. "but, my dear boy," he exclaimed quickly, "we're not asking you to do anything that you haven't done already. why, you furnished me with one lot at nine cents." "at a loss, in order to secure custom against competition," was the prompt retort. "it costs exactly eleven cents to turn out those boxes." morton persisted in his refusal to admit the justice of the young man's refusal to accept the terms offered. "but, my dear boy," he continued, "take your last four bids. i mean the bids that you and carrington made before we bought out carrington. the first, time, carrington bid eleven cents; while you bid fourteen. on the second lot carrington bid thirteen; and you bid nine." "you illustrate my contention very well," hamilton interrupted. "at eleven cents a box, carrington hardly quit even. it was for that reason he bid thirteen on the following lot; while i, because i was bound to get a look in on the business, even at a loss--why, i bid nine cents. the result was that i got the order, and it cost me a loss of just two cents on each and every box to fill it." a contented rumble from the large man emphasized the truth of the statement. nothing daunted, morton resumed his narrative of operations in the box trade. "on the third lot, carrington bid eight cents, while you bid eighteen." carrington's indignation was too much for reticence. "yes, i got that order," he roared, wrathfully. "it was a million box order, too--" the withering look bestowed on the speaker by morton caused him to break off and to cower as abjectly in his chair as was possible to one of his bulk. "his success in being the winner in that bout cost him three cents each for the million boxes," hamilton commented. "well?" "well," morton said crisply, "for the fourth and biggest order, carrington bid seventeen, and you bid sixteen." "yes, yes!" carrington spluttered, forgetful of the rebuke just administered to him. "and, on the four lots, hamilton, you cleaned up a profit, while i lost out--so much that i had to sell control of my plant. and you call that fair competition!" morton grinned appreciation. the young man regarded the ponderous figure of carrington with something approaching stupefaction over the sheer bravado of the question. "was that your motive in joining the trust," he demanded ironically: "to get fair competition?" again, morton laughed aloud, in keen enjoyment of the thrust. "you're your own father's son, hamilton," he declared, gaily. hamilton, however, was not to be cajoled into friendliness by superficial compliment. "probably," he said sternly, "i might not have been able to do so well, if you had not been clever enough to let both carrington and myself each see the figures of the other's secret bid as a great personal favor." as the words entered carrington's consciousness, the ungainly form sat erect with a sudden violence of movement that sent the chair sliding back three feet over the polished floor. the red face darkened to a perilous purple, and the narrow, dull eyes flashed fire. he struggled gaspingly for a moment to speak--in vain. morton's eyes were fixed on the man, and those eyes were very clear and very cold. carrington met the steady stare, and it sobered his wrath in a measure, so that presently he was able to utter words intelligibly. but, now, they were not what they would have been a few seconds earlier: "you--you told him what i bid?" hamilton took the answer on himself. "surely, he did, carrington." the young man spoke with cheerfulness, in the presence of the discomfiture of his enemy. "he told you what i bid; and, in just the same way, he told me what you bid--every time!" for a long minute, morton stared on at his underling whom he had betrayed. under that look, the unhappy victim of a superior's wiles, sat uneasily at first, in a vague effort toward defiance; then, his courage oozed away, he shifted uneasily in his seat, and his eyes wandered abashedly about the room. convinced that the revolt was suppressed, morton turned again to the young man opposite him. "all that is done with now." the tone was sharp; the mask of urbanity had fallen from the resolute face, which showed now an expression relentless, dominant. "hamilton, what are you going to do?" the manner of the question was a challenge. "i can't make money selling boxes at eleven cents," hamilton answered wearily. "nobody could." "at least, you won't lose any," was the meaning answer. then, in reply to hamilton's half-contemptuous shrug, morton continued frankly. "after all, hamilton, you can make a profit. it won't be large, but it will be a profit. this is the day of small profits, you must remember. it will be necessary for you to put in a few more of the latest-model machines, and to cut labor a bit. in that way, you will secure a profit. you must cut expense to the limit." the young man regarded morton with strong dislike. "what you mean," he said angrily, "is that i must put my factory on a starvation business. now, i don't want to cut wages. it's a sad fact that the men at present don't get a cent more than they're worth. besides that, some of them have been working in the factory for father more than thirty years." "there is no room for such pensioners in these days of small profits," morton declared, superciliously. "however, it's no business of mine. remember, though, it's your only chance to keep clear." "no," hamilton announced bravely, "i'll not cut the wage-scale. i'll sell to the trade, at thirteen. it's mighty little profit, but it's something." morton shook his head. "the carrington factory," he said threateningly, "will sell to the trade for ten cents, until--" "--until i'm cleaned out!" hamilton cried, fiercely. morton lifted a restraining hand. he was again his most suave self. "my dear boy," he said gently, "i liked your father, and i esteemed him highly. he was a shrewd trader: he never tried to match pennies against hundred-dollar bills.... the moral is obvious, when you consider your factory alone as opposed to certain other interests. so, take my advice. try cutting. the men would much rather have smaller wages than none at all, i'm sure. think it over. let me know by saturday.... the carrington factory is to issue its price-list on monday." hamilton was worn out by the unequal combat. he hesitated for a little, then spoke moodily: "very well. i'll let you know by saturday." when, at last, his guests had departed, the wretched young man dropped his head on his arms over the heap of papers, and groaned aloud.... he could see no ray of hope--none! chapter vi it was a half-hour after the breaking up of the conference when hamilton at last raised his head from his arms. he looked about him dazedly for a little while, as if endeavoring to put himself in touch once again with the humdrum facts of existence. then, when his brain cleared from the lethargy imposed by the strain to which it had so recently been subjected, he gave a sudden defiant toss of his head, and muttered wrathfully: "go broke, or starve your men!" he got out of his chair, and paced to and fro swiftly for a little interval, pondering wildly. but, of a sudden, he reseated himself, drew a pad of paper to him, and began scrawling figures at the full speed of his pencil. and, as he wrote, he was murmuring to himself: "there is a way out--there must be!" it was while the husband was thus occupied that the door opened softly, without any preliminary knock, and the wife stepped noiselessly into the room. the anxiety that beset her was painfully apparent in her bearing and in the expression of her face. her form seemed drooping, as if under shrinking apprehension of some blow about to fall. the eyes of amber, usually so deep and radiant, were dulled now, as if by many tears; the rich scarlet of the lips' curves was bent downward mournfully. she stood just within the doorway for a brief space, watching intently the man who was so busy over his scrawled figures. at last, she ventured forward, walking in a laggard, rhythmic step, as do church dignitaries and choir-boys in a processional. by such slow stages, she came to a place opposite her husband. there, she remained, upright, mute, waiting. the magnetism of her presence penetrated to him by subtle degrees.... he looked up at her, with no recognition in his eyes. "they've gone, dear?" she spoke the words very softly, for she understood instinctively something as to the trance in which he was held. hamilton's abstraction was dissipated as the familiar music of cicily's voice beat gently on his ears. "yes--oh, yes, they've gone." his voice was colorless. his eyes went out to the array of figures that sprawled recklessly over the sheet before him. but the young woman was not to be frustrated in her intention by such indifference on his part. she spoke again, at once, a little more loudly: "tell me: did you come out all right?" hamilton raised his head with an impatient movement. evidently, this persistence was a distracting influence--a displeasing. there was harshness in his voice as he replied: "did i come out all right? well, yes--since i came out at all. oh, yes!" his voice mounted in the scale, under the impulse of a sudden access of rage against his enemies. he spoke with a savage rapidity of utterance: "and i can lick carrington any day in the week. why, i've already put him out. it's morton--that old fox morton who's got me guessing.... what do you think? they even had the nerve to threaten me. of course, it was in a round-about way; but it was a threat all the same. they threatened to close up the hamilton factory. gad! the nerve of it!" "they threatened to close up your factory, charles?" cicily exclaimed, astonished and angry. "but you own the hamilton factory. what have they to do with it? the impudence of them!" "yes, i own the factory, all right," the husband agreed. "but, you see--" hamilton broke off abruptly, and was silent for a moment. when he spoke again, the liveliness was gone from his voice: it was become quietly patronizing. "oh, let's forget it, dear. i must be going dotty. i'll be talking business with you, the first thing i know." "i only wish you would!" cicily answered, with a note of pleading in her tones. "nonsense!" was the gruff exclamation. "the idea of talking business with you. that would be a joke, wouldn't it?" he spoke banteringly, with no perception of the gravity in his wife's desire to share in this phase of his life. but he looked up from the papers after a moment into his wife's face. she had turned from him, and then had reclined wearily in the chair opposite him, whence she had been staring at him with a tormenting feeling of impotence. the expression on her face was such that hamilton realized her distress, without having any clue to its cause. "now, sweetheart, what's wrong?" he questioned. he was half-sympathetic over her apparent misery, half-annoyed. cicily, with the intuitive sensitiveness of a woman to recognize a lover's hostile feeling beneath the spoken words, was acutely conscious of the annoyance; she ignored the modicum of sympathy. to conceal her hurt, she had resort to a fictitious gaiety that was ill calculated, however, to deceive, for the stress of her disappointment was very great. "the matter with me?" she repeated, with an assumption of surprise. "why, the matter with me is that i'm so happy--that's all!" "cicily!" now, at last, the husband was both shocked and grieved over his wife's mood. "yes, that's it--happy!" the suffering girl repeated. "why, i'm so happy--just so happy--that i could scream!" hamilton leaned forward in his chair, to regard his wife scrutinizingly. he was filled with alarm over the nervous, almost hysterical, condition in which he now beheld her. "cicily, are you well?" he asked. there was a distinct quaver of fear in his voice. "you look--strange, somehow." "oh, not at all!" came the flippant retort. "it's merely that you haven't really taken a good look at me lately--until just this minute. so, of course, i'd look a bit strange to you." it must be remembered that hamilton, although usually intelligent, had a clear conscience and no suspicion whatsoever as to any culpability on his part in his relations with his wife: thus it was that now he was wholly impervious to the sarcasm of her reference, which he answered with the utmost seriousness. "my dear, i saw you this morning, last night--oh, heaps of times, every day." "oh, your physical eyes have seen; but your mind, your heart, your soul--the true you--hasn't seen me for i don't know how long." this cryptic explanation was too subtle for hamilton to grasp while yet his brain was fogged by the intricacies of his business affairs. he gazed on his wife in puzzled fashion for a few seconds, then abandoned the problem as one altogether beyond his solving. to clear up a vague suspicion that this might be some new astonishing display of a woman's indirect wiles, he put a question: "my dear, do you want a new automobile, or a doctor?" "neither!" came the crisp reply; and for once the musical voice was almost harsh, "i want a husband!" "good lord! another?" hamilton was pained and scandalized, as, indeed, was but natural before a confession so indecorous seemingly and so unflattering to himself. "i don't want the one i have now," cicily affirmed, with great emphasis. she rather enjoyed the manner in which the man shrank under her declaration. but he said nothing as she paused: he was momentarily too dumfounded for speech, "i want my first one back," cicily concluded. hamilton gaped at his wife, powerless to do aught beyond grope in mental blackness for some ray of understanding as to this horrible revelation made by the woman he loved. "you--you want your first one back!" he repeated stupidly, at last. of a sudden, a gust of fury shook him. "god!" he cried savagely. "and i thought i knew that girl!" cicily rested unperturbed before the outbreak. she was absorbed in her own torment, with no sentiment to spare for the temporary anguish she was inflicting on her husband, which, in her opinion, he richly deserved. "you did know me once," she answered, coldly. "that was before you changed toward me." the injustice of this charge, as he deemed it, was beyond hamilton's powers of endurance. he sprung from his chair, and stood glowering down on cicily, who bore the stern accusation of his eyes without flinching. the pallor of her face was a little more pronounced than usual, less touched from within with the hue of abounding health, and her crimson mouth was less tender than it was wont to be. but she leaned back in her chair in a posture of grace that displayed to advantage the slender, curving charm of her body, and her eyes, shining golden in the soft light of the room, met the man's steadfastly, fearlessly. "i--changed--to you!" hamilton stormed. "cicily! cicily! what madness! you know--oh, absurd! why, cicily, i love you.... i think of you always!" "oh, yes, you love me," cicily agreed, contemptuously, "you think of me always--when your other love will let you." "cicily!" "i mean it," came uncompromisingly, in answer to hamilton's look of horror. "i mean every word of it!" "cicily," the husband besought, as a great dread fell on his soul, "remember, you are my wife--my love!" "yes, i'm one of them." the tone was icy; the gaze fixed on his face was unwavering. but this utterance was too sinister to be borne. the pride of the man in his own faithfulness was outraged. his voice was low when he spoke again, yet in it was a quality that the young wife had never heard before. it frightened her sorely, although she concealed its effect by a mighty effort of will. "that is an insult to you and to me, cicily. it is an insult i cannot--i will not--permit." it was evident to cicily that she had carried the war in this direction far enough; she hastened her retreat. "oh, i didn't say that you were in love with another woman," she explained, with an excellent affectation of carelessness. "for that matter, i know very well that you're not." then, as hamilton regarded her with a face blankly uncomprehending, she went on rapidly, with something of the venomous in her voice: "sometimes, i wish you were. then, i'd fight her, and beat her. it would give me something to do." she paused for a moment, and laughed bitterly. "oh, please, charles, do fall in love with some other woman, won't you?" hamilton started toward the telephone in the hall. "it's the doctor you want, not the automobile," he called over his shoulder. "nonsense!" cicily cried. "stop!" and, as he turned back reluctantly, she went on with her explanation: "no, it isn't the lure of some siren in a paquin dress--or undress: it's the lure of the game--the great, horrid, hideous business game, which has got you, just as it's got most of the american husbands who are worth having. that's the lure we american women can't overcome; that's the rival who is breaking our hearts. you are the man of business, charles--i'm the woman out of a job! that's all there is to it." hamilton listened dazedly to this fluent discourse, the meaning of which was not altogether clear to him. he frowned in bewilderment, as he again seated himself in the chair opposite his wife. he could think of nothing with which to rebuke her diatribe, save the stock platitudes of a past generation, and to these necessarily he had immediate recourse. "you have the home--the house--to look out for, cicily. that's a woman's work. what more can you wish?" "the home! the house!" the exclamation was eloquent of disgust. "ah, yes, once on a time, it was a woman's work--once on a time! but, then, you men were dependent on us. marriage was a real partnership. nowadays, what with servants and countless inventions, so that machinery supplies the work, the home is a joke. the house itself is an automatic machine that runs on--buttons, push-buttons. you men can get along without us just as well. you don't really depend on us for anything in the home. your lives are full up with interest; every second is occupied. our lives are empty. my life is empty, charles. i'm lonely, and heart-hungry, i've no ambition to go in for bridge. i'm not a gambler by choice. i don't wish to follow society as a vocation. i'm not eager even to be a suffragette. i want to be an old-fashioned wife--to do something that counts in my husband's life. i want him to depend on me for some things, always. i want to be my husband's partner." little by little, while she was speaking, the coldness passed from the woman's voice; in its stead grew warmth; there was passionate fervor in the final plea. it moved hamilton to pity, although he was ignorant as to the means by which he might assuage his wife's so great discontent. manlike, he attempted to overcome emotion by argument. "cicily," he urged, "just now, i'm up to my ears and over in work. they are crowding me mighty hard. there's dissatisfaction at the mill--danger of a strike. morton is heading a syndicate--a trust, really--trying to absorb us. i'm fighting for my very life--my business life.... cicily, you wouldn't throw obstacles in my way now, would you?" "obstacles! no; i want to help you." "in business?" hamilton queried, astounded. "you--help me--in business?" "yes," cicily answered, steadily. "i can do something, i know." there was intensity of purpose in the glow of the golden eyes, as they met those of her husband; there was intensity of conviction in the tones of her voice as she uttered the assurance. she realized that the crisis of her ambition was very near at hand. "you can do nothing." the man's blunt statement was uttered with a conviction as uncompromising as her own. the egotism of it repelled the woman. there was a hint of menace in her manner, as she replied: "take care, charles. don't shut me out. you're making a plaything of me--not a wife.... and i--i won't be your plaything!" "you mean--?" "i mean," went on the wife relentlessly, "that this is the most serious moment of our married life. if you put me off now, if you shut me out of your life now--out of your full life--i can't answer for what will happen." there followed a long interval of silence, the while husband and wife stared each into the other's eyes. in these moments of poignant emotion, the profound feeling of the woman penetrated the being of the man, readied his heart, and touched it to sympathy--more: it mounted to his brain, which it stimulated to some measure of understanding. that understanding was fleeting enough, it was vague and incomplete, as must always be man's inadequate knowledge of woman. but it was dominant for the time being. under its sway, hamilton spoke in gracious yielding, almost gratefully. "very well. you can help." the young wife sat silent for a time, thrilling with the joy of conquest. the roses of her checks blossomed again; the radiance of her eyes grew tender; the scarlet lips wreathed in their happiest curves. at last, she rose swiftly, and seated herself on the arm of her husband's chair. she wound her arms about his neck, and kissed him fondly on cheek and brow and mouth. hamilton accepted these caresses with the pleasure of a fond bridegroom of a year, and, too, with a certain complacency as the tribute of gratitude to his generosity. but, when she separated herself again from his embrace, he was moved to ask a question that was calculated to be somewhat disconcerting. "what can you do?" he demanded. "oh, i don't know," cicily answered, nonchalantly; "but something. i shall do something big! you see, you've done so much. now, i must do something too--something big!" [illustration] "but what have i done?" the husband questioned, perplexed anew by this charming wife of many moods. "what have you done?" cicily repeated, joyously. "why, you've made me the happiest woman in the world--a partner!" again, the rounded arms were wreathed about his neck; her face was hidden on his shoulder. hamilton's eyes were turned ceilingward, as if seeking some illumination from beyond. he listened, stupid, bemused, to that word echoing wildly through his brain: "partner!" he understood fully at last, and with understanding came utter dismay. "partner!... oh, lord!" chapter vii in the days that followed, cicily was almost riotously happy. the schemes that had been formulating themselves dimly in her mind following the altruistic suggestion made to her by mrs. delancy now took on definite shape and became substantial. in view of the fact that her husband had explicitly brought her into a business partnership with himself, it occurred to her that she might well combine the idea of making other people happy with practical uses in behalf of business. to this end, then, she devoted her intelligence diligently, with the result that she soon had concrete plans of betterment for the many, and these of a sort to redound directly to her husband's advantage in a business way. in brief, she conceived certain philanthropic operations to be carried out for the enjoyment of her husband's employés; the effect of such changes would inevitably be a better understanding between them and their employer, and an increased loyalty and efficiency on the part of the workers. with this laudable purpose, cicily, after broaching the subject in detail to hamilton, who made no objection, since her helpfulness was to be operated out of her private fortune, at once busied herself with the execution of the project. the factory downtown was soon a-chatter with excitement over the startling innovations that were under way. the employés cursed or cheered according to their natures, as they learned of the gifts bestowed by the wife of their employer. they regarded the new bath-tubs with wonder, albeit somewhat doubtfully. they discussed the library with appreciation, or lack of appreciation, according to their degrees of illiteracy or learning: the socialistic element condemned the inanity of the volumes selected; there were only histories, biographies, books of travel, foolish novels and the like--nothing to teach the manner by which the brotherhood of man must be worked out. in addition to her activities for good in this direction, cicily added something actual to her ideas in reference to the up-lift of woman. she made herself known to the wives of some of the men who worked in the factory, and called on them in their homes. she invited them to visit her in return, and she matured a project to make the civitas society her ally in this noble work of up-lift and equalization in the social order. with such eager works, her days were filled full, and she was glad in the realization that it was, indeed, become her splendid privilege to share in her husband's broader life.... she was his--partner! it may be doubted if hamilton had more than the shadow of knowledge as to his wife's happiness in the changed order. the episode, as he deemed it, in which she had been given a partnership with him, hardly remained in his memory. when he thought of it at all, he smiled over it as over the vagary of one among a woman's innumerable varying moods. but he thought of it very rarely, for his time was absorbed in the desperate struggle to find a way out from the destruction that loomed very close at hand. in the end, he decided not to reject the offer made by morton in behalf of the trust. otherwise, he would be confronted by carrington's competition in selling to the independent trade at a dead loss. but he was determined ultimately to combat this competition to the limit of his ability and capital. it was apparent to him that success would be impossible from the outset unless he should reduce his operating expenses to the minimum. for this reason, he planned to make the cut in wage-scale that had been suggested by morton, although in reality it was to overcome the machinations of the trust, not to further them. he solaced his conscience by reiteration of the truth: that, in the event of winning, the reduction would have been but a temporary thing; whereas, without it, he must close down the factory immediately. for the sake of his workers, as well as for his own, he was resolved to pursue the one course that offered a hope of victory. naturally enough, the employés did not understand or approve. when news of the proposed cut in the scale was made known, there came clamor and wrath and sorrow. meetings of the workers were held, and in due time a committee of three waited on hamilton by appointment in the study of his house uptown. schmidt, the most garrulous of the three, was a man in the prime of life, heavily built, bald, with a white mustache that gave him a certain grotesque resemblance to bismarck. the other two members of the committee were ferguson, a thin, alert-mannered yankee of forty, who spoke with a pronounced drawl; and mcmahon, a short, red-headed, shrewd irishman, with a face on which shone a volatile good-humor. the three, on entering the library and being greeted by hamilton, found that their employer had fortified himself for the conference by the presence of mr. delancy, in whose business judgment the younger man had great confidence. the men received the pleasant salutation of hamilton with awkwardness, but without any trace of shamefacedness, for they had the consciousness of their righteous cause to give them confidence in a strange environment. hardly were they seated at their host's request in chairs facing him and mr. delancy, when schmidt bounced up, and, after squaring himself resolutely in a position of advantage before the empty fireplace, proceeded to declaim vigorously as to the rights between labor and capital, speaking sonorously, with a pronounced german accent. after some five minutes of this, mr. delancy, who was both nervous and irritable, as the orator paused for breath at a period, ventured to protest. "yes, yes, man," he exclaimed, testily. "but i don't care a damn about schopenhauer and socialism, and i'm sure mr. hamilton doesn't. let's get to the wages paid in the hamilton factory." ferguson came to the support of delancy, as did mcmahon, who said amiably: "give the boss a chance, smitty." schmidt, however, was inclined to be recalcitrant. "there was no arrangement yet to give the boss a chance," he argued. "just give him a chance then because he's a friend of mine," urged the irishman with a grin of such exceeding friendliness toward the german himself that it was not to be resisted. schmidt nodded in token that the employer should be allowed to speak, but he retained his position as a presiding officer before the fireplace. hamilton forthwith set out to present his side of the case to the men before him. "as you know," he said briskly, "i'm the owner of the hamilton factory. i pay the wages. now, the hamilton factory has been kept running through good times and through bad times for more than thirty years. sometimes, too, it has been run at a loss, without any cut in the wage-scale to help the owner in that period of loss. well, it seems to me under the circumstances that i have a right to run my own business." "oh, certainly!" ferguson agreed, languidly. but schmidt added a correction to the general concession. "as long as you run it in our way, and don't cut wages." "i'm sorry, men," hamilton retorted, without any avoidance of the issue; "but that cut must go." the members of the committee looked from one to another, and shook their heads dolefully. they knew too well the hardships that would be wrought among their fellows by a ten per cent. cut the length of the scale. it was mcmahon who spoke first, with his usual air of good-nature in the sarcasm, but a note of grimness underlying the surface pleasantry. "well, now, you see," he said in his rich brogue, addressing ferguson and schmidt, "the boss has to save a mite to pay for the new bath-tubs and that natty bit of a gymnasium and the library they've been putting in lately." "_ach, himmel!_" schmidt snorted, disgustedly. "we will have manicures soon already!" he stared at his pudgy fingers with the work-begrimed nails, and grinned sardonically. hamilton flushed under the taunts. "i have nothing to do with those improvements," he declared, in self-justification. "they are all being put in by mrs. hamilton at her own expense. she is doing it to make you men and women there more contented with your lot--to make you happy." "to make us happy!" schmidt grunted. "bathtubs!" mcmahon's sense of humor led him to indulge in another flight of pleasantry, which shadowed forth the grim reality of these lives. "sure, but the gymnasium is great," he said, blandly. his tone was so deceptive that hamilton smiled in appreciation of the compliment to his wife's undertaking, and even mr. delancy relaxed the harsh set of his features. "the longer you work in it," the irishman continued innocently, "outside of hours of course, the stronger you get, and the more you can do in hours for the boss.... sure, it's great!" hamilton hastily changed the subject. he explained that, the cut would not be applied to the wages of the women in the packing-department, where a hundred were employed. he declared frankly that their pay was insufficient to stand such a reduction. "and do you think we make enough to stand it?" ferguson exclaimed, indignantly. "somebody has to stand it," was hamilton's moody retort. "you have threatened to strike, if i make this cut. well, i am forced to threaten you in turn. if you won't accept the cut, i shall strike--i must strike!" schmidt, from his position before the fireplace, rose on his toes in high indignation. "you strike!" he clamored, huffily. "who has given you that permission to strike? you are no union. bah!" hamilton shrugged his shoulders, wearily. "listen, men," he requested. "i'll put the facts before you plainly, for i place my whole confidence in your loyalty. you think, perhaps, that you're being strung in this deal. well, we'll all be strung, and hung over the side of the boat, too, unless we work together. you men are dissatisfied, because, although you are working full time, you are asked to take a ten per cent. cut. the truth of the matter is that the factory is not making a cent of profit. i have to make the boxes for sale at a loss now, on account of the competition of the trust factory, which is trying to put me out of business. i must work at cost, or even at a loss, for a time. with the ten per cent. cut, i can keep going. without it, i must close down. as soon as this crisis is over, if i win out, the old wage-scale will be restored. i hope that time will not be long away. i may venture to tell you something in confidence: i'm planning to take on some side lines--some things in which i hope to make big money. as soon as they're started, i'll give you back the present scale." "why don't your wife help pay the wages?" schmidt questioned, shrewdly. "she has plenty of money for foolishness." "faith, and that isn't a bad idea at all, at all, mr. hamilton," mcmahon agreed. "it's a better use for her money. since she's been coming around to the house these last few weeks, it's cost me a week's pay to get a hat for my old woman in imitation of hers.... women have no place in business, i'm thinking." ferguson added his testimony to the like effect: "that's right," he declared. he looked about for a place in which to spit by way of emphasis, but, seeing none, forbore. "my girl, sadie, she put two dollars in false hair this very week. your wife is sure making it mighty hard for us, mr. hamilton. how can i buy false hair with a ten per cent. cut? durned if i can see!" again, hamilton was afflicted with embarrassment over the infelicitous results of his wife's benevolent activity, and again he changed the subject. "well, boys," he said frankly, "i've put the matter to you straight. i'm sorry. but, unless you take the cut, i don't see any future for any of us.... it's up to you." "the men decide for themselves," ferguson replied, glumly. "we only report back to them." "but you three really decide," hamilton persisted. "come, give me your decision now." ferguson and mcmahon regarded each other doubtfully, in silence, as if uncertain how to proceed. but schmidt was not given to hesitation in expressing himself on any occasion. he spoke now with an air of phlegmatic determination, brandishing his right arm at the start: "well, speaking for myself only, i want to say--how do you do, mrs. hamilton." chapter viii as schmidt concluded his oratorical flourish in this astonishing fashion, the other occupants of the room turned amazedly, to behold cicily herself, standing in the open doorway of the study. the young wife was a very charming, radiant vision, as she rested there motionless. she was gowned for the street, wearing that ravishing hat which had been the cause of mcmahon's undoing, a dainty and rather elaborate device in black and red, and a black cloth gown, short and closely cut, which showed to delightful advantage the lissome curves of her form. beneath, a luxurious _chaussure_ in black showed the inimitable grace of tiny feet and ankles. now, as she regarded the company in some astonishment, the perfect oval of her cheeks was broken by the play of dimples as she smiled a general welcome on the men before her. but her attention was particularly arrested by schmidt, who, after his first greeting in words, was now bowing stiffly from the hips, a feat of some difficulty by reason of his girth. cicily watched the formal performance with mingled emotions of amusement and alarm. when, at last, it was successfully accomplished, however, and the pudgy figure straightened, she recognized the socialist, and came forward. "why, it's mr. schmidt!" she exclaimed, cordially. "i'm so glad to see you!" to this, the german murmured a guttural response, too much overcome by pleasure for coherent speech. the new-comer passed on, and made her greetings to ferguson and mcmahon with the like pleasant hospitality, shaking hands with each. "this is, indeed, charming," she exclaimed heartily. "did you bring your wives along?" schmidt, as usual, constituted himself the spokesman. "mrs. hamilton," he stated, with somber impressiveness, "this is business." "good gracious!" mrs. hamilton exclaimed, with some trepidation. "i hope it's nothing that they would not approve of." "be easy," ferguson, admonished, soothingly. "sure, it's only that we're talking business. it's a matter of wages. the woman folk always approve of them." schmidt rolled his eyes heavenward in despair. "but, when we tell them of the ten per cent. cut! _ach, himmel!_" cicily turned a startled glance on her husband. "a ten per cent. cut!" she exclaimed, involuntarily. "why, charles!" hamilton was annoyed by this unexpected irruption of the feminine into the most serious of business discussions--the intrusion of the female on the financial. he spoke with distinct note of disapproval in his voice: "now, cicily, you know nothing of this." delancy, too, added the weight of his accustomed authority. "don't bother with things that do not concern you, cicily." there was a patronizing quality in the admonition that irritated the wife. ferguson spoke to the same effect, but with a radically different motive underlying his words: "of course, it don't concern you, mrs. hamilton. i guess you'll be glad to have some more money to put in bath-tubs and libraries and gymnasiums. no, ma'am, it don't concern you. but it'll make some difference to our wives and daughters, i'm thinking--ten per cent. out of the pay-envelope every week. it'll take the curl out of my sadie's false hair, all right." "there will be always some good in everything," schmidt murmured cynically, but not loud enough for the yankee to hear. cicily was aware of the tension about her, and deemed it the part of wisdom to create a diversion. "what a coincidence!" she exclaimed, gayly. "mrs. schmidt and mrs. ferguson and mrs. mcmahon are all coming around here this afternoon. i invited them to attend a meeting of our club." the dignified face of mr. delancy, which was that of the old-school business man, clean-shaven save for the white tufts of side-whisker, was distorted by an emotion of genuine horror; his pink cheeks grew scarlet. "cicily!" he gasped. hamilton, too, was hardly less disconcerted, for all his familiarity with his wife's equalization whimsies. "invited them here?" he questioned, frowning. the manner of both utterances was of a sort that must inevitably offend the husbands of the women. cicily, with the sensitiveness of her sex, sought to cover the impression by speaking with a manner of increased enthusiasm. "oh, yes," she answered. "isn't it good of them? they have promised to return my call this afternoon." ferguson yielded to a yankee propensity for dry humour: "i only hope that mr. delancy and mr. hamilton won't be too nice to them." mcmahon, too, would have made some comment; but hamilton, who now perceived his blunder, which might have a disastrous effect on the attitude of these men toward him, hastened to make a diversion on his own account. "now, men," he said, as affably as he could contrive, "i've made you acquainted with the difficulties and the necessities of the situation. as i said before, i depend on your loyalty.... will you let me hear from you later in the afternoon to-day?" "you'll hear from us, all right," the yankee assured his employer, with significant emphasis, before schmidt had a chance to speak; and mcmahon nodded agreement. once again, cicily strove to lighten the mood of the men. "if you're going away to think something over, be sure you come back in time to take your wives home, after they've joined the club. it's the civitas society, you know, for the up-lift of women." no sooner were the members of the committee out of the room than cicily turned anxiously to her husband. "oh, charles," she exclaimed, "tell me! it's not true, is it, that there's to be a cut in wages at the factory?" hamilton turned away impatiently from the appealing face. "cicily," he said shortly, "uncle jim and i are very busy. we have business of the highest importance to discuss." delancy, who from long experience knew much concerning his niece's wilfulness, now read aright the resolute expression on her face. he tugged nervously at his tufts of whisker, and spoke in a tone of resignation: "oh, tell her, charles, and have done with it.... or, listen, cicily. it's this way: these men are getting more money than they ought to get. charles can't make a penny profit, running his business this way. that's all there is to it--he's got to cut them ten per cent. i've advised it, myself." cicily's charming nose was now distinctly tip-tilted, whatever might be its normal line. "yes, i'd expect you to advise it, uncle jim," she remarked, dryly. she turned to her husband, accusingly. "but, charles, there is no reason why you should follow his advice. why didn't you ask me? i'm your partner. i don't think you have treated me fairly in this." hamilton, overwrought and exasperated by the multiplication of his worries, began a sharp answer; but it was interrupted by the decisiveness with which his wife went on speaking: "charles, you have treated me like a child, like a fool.... and you said that you'd let me help you!" this reproach appealed to hamilton as grossly unfair. "why, cicily," he exclaimed, "i did let you help. i've let you do everything that you wanted to do--no matter how--" in a sudden access of discretion, he choked back the "foolish." delancy, presuming on the right of criticism that had been his during the years of guardianship, spoke with a candor that was not flattering. "he let you do more than i'd have let you do. he let you waste your money on bath-tubs and libraries, and such foolishness, to make the men dissatisfied. i wish somebody would tell me what a man working for two dollars a day can do with a bath-tub and a library at the works." "if anybody were to tell you, you wouldn't listen," was cicily's pert retort. delancy tugged at his wisp of whisker, and wagged his head dolefully. "i don't know what young women these days are coming to," was his melancholy comment. "what you men are driving us to, you mean!" cicily fairly snapped. it was difficult enough to manage her husband, without having her position jeopardized by the interference of this meddlesome old man, who stood for that exclusion of her sex against which she was fighting. she went to the chair in which ferguson had been sitting, and reclined there in a posture of graceful ease that was far from expressing the turmoil of her spirit. as he watched her movements, and studied the loveliness of her, with her delicate face aglow and her amber eyes brilliant in this mood of excitement, hamilton forgot his worriment for the moment in uxorious admiration. he was smiling fondly on his wife, even as delancy uttered an exclamation of rebuke to him: "and you're her husband!" his emphasis made it clear that a husband like himself would have suppressed such insubordination long ago. "well," hamilton replied placidly, and with a hint of amusement in his voice, "you brought her up, you know." "i did not--no such thing!" the old man spluttered. in his indignation, he pulled so viciously on a whisker that he winced from the pain, which by no means tended to soothe his ruffled temper. "you're quite right, uncle jim," cicily agreed, with dangerous sweetness in the musical voice. "of course, you never had any time to pay attention to me, or to aunt emma either, for that matter. oh, no, you were too much absorbed in that horrid business of yours. you drove aunt emma into working for the heathen, and incidentally, you did teach me one thing: you taught me what sort of a wife not to be. i learned from you never to be married after the fashion in which you and aunt emma are married." delancy was not blest with an overabundant sense of humor. now, he forgot the general charge against him in shocked surprise over the final statement, which he took literally. "look here, cicily," he remonstrated. "it took twenty-two minutes in the old first presbyterian church to marry your aunt emma and me. you couldn't possibly get a more binding ceremony." cicily laughed disdainfully. "well, it's my opinion that you've never been married at all, really," she persisted, with a bantering seriousness. "you wouldn't have been really married if you had spent two whole days in the church." then, in answer to the pained amazement expressed on her uncle's face, she continued succinctly: "yes, i mean it, uncle jim. aunt emma has been second wife ever since those twenty-two minutes in the old first presbyterian church, to which you referred so feelingly.... and she has my sympathy. you married business first, and aunt emma afterward. business had the first claim, and has always kept first place. that's why aunt emma has my sympathy." delancy rose from his chair, greatly offended, now that he perceived the manner in which he had been bamboozled by the wayward humor of his niece. he moved toward the door at a pace as hurried as dignity would permit. there, he turned to address his disrespectful former ward. "charles has my sympathy!" he growled; and stalked from the room. "don't forget that you are coming to dinner on sunday--with your second wife!" the irrepressible cicily called after him impertinently. but, if the reminder was heard, it was not answered; and husband and wife were left alone together. hamilton would have remonstrated with his bride over her wholly unnecessary irritating of her uncle, but he was not given an opportunity. before the door was fairly shut behind her offended relation, cicily took the war into the enemy's camp by a curt question: "now, charles, why do you cut wages?" "because i have to," was the prompt response. "and why didn't you tell me?" "tell you? nonsense!" the man's tone was expressive of extreme annoyance. "but i'm your partner," cicily persisted bravely, although her heart sank under the rebuff. "you yourself said that i was." "well, and so you are, since you want it so," hamilton admitted; "and you're attending to your end, aren't you?" "yes, the little end," cicily agreed, disparagingly. at that, hamilton was plainly exasperated. "what end did you expect?" he demanded. "i tell you, cicily," he continued, in the tone of one arguing with labored patience to convince a child of some truism, "that business is too big, too serious, too strong for a woman like you, my dear." "yes, that's just the fear that grips my heart sometimes, charles," the wife admitted. with an ingenuity characteristic of her active intelligence, she had perceived a method whereby to twist his words to her own purpose. "look here!" she went on in a caressing voice, utterly unlike the emphatic one in which she had spoken hitherto. "do you for a moment imagine that i really like business? well, then, i don't--not a little bit! for that matter, hardly any woman does, i fancy. as to myself, charles, i'm afraid of it--that's the whole truth. i'm only in it to watch it--and you!" the change in her manner had immediate effect on the husband. again, he was surveying her with eyes in which admiration shone. for the ten-thousandth time, he was reveling in the beauty of that oval contour, in the tender curves of the scarlet lips.... but he forgot to voice his thoughts. indeed, what need? he had told her so many times already! "you talk as if business were a woman," he said, with a smile of conscious sex superiority, "and as if you were jealous." cicily concealed her resentment of the patronizing manner, and replied with no apparent diminution in her amiability: "that's just it: i am jealous!" "good heavens!" hamilton cried, indignantly. "surely, you know that i never think twice of any woman i meet in business." the wife smiled in high disdain. "woman!" she ejaculated, with scornful emphasis. "i'm not in the least afraid of any woman being more to you than i am, charles. just let one try!" "why, what would you do?" hamilton inquired, curiously. the answer was swift and vigorous, pregnant with the insolent consciousness of power that is the prerogative of a lovely woman. cicily leaned forward in her chair, and the golden eyes darkened and flashed. "why, i'd beat her! i'd be everything to you that she was--and more. i'd outdress her, i'd out-talk her, i'd outwit her, i'd out-think her. i'd play on your love and on your masculine jealousy. oh, there'd be plenty of men to play the play with me. i'd be more alluring, more fascinating, more difficult, until i held you safe again in the hollow of my hand, and then--why, then, i'd be very much tempted to throw you away!" the verve with which this girl-woman thus vaunted her skill in the use of those charms that dominate the opposite sex thrilled and fascinated the lover, pierced the reserve that possession had overcast on ardor. his cheeks flushed, under the provocation of the glances with which she marked the allurements of which she was the mistress. as she finished speaking, he sprang up from his chair, caught her in his arms, and drew her passionately to his breast. but cicily avoided the kiss he would have pressed on her lips. with her mouth at his ear, she whispered, plaintively now, no longer boastful, only a timid, fearing, jealous woman: [illustration] "yes, i can fight a rival who is a woman, charles, and i can win. but this other rival, this fascinating monstrous, evil goddess--ah!" hamilton held his wife away from him by the shoulders, mid regarded her in bewilderment. "evil goddess!" he repeated, half in doubt as to her meaning. "surely, she must be that," cicily declared, firmly; "this spirit who is the goddess of modern business, whom i feel absorbing you day by day, taking from me more and ever more of your thoughts, of your heart, of your soul, changing you in every vital way, and doing it in spite of all that i can do, though i fight against her with all my strength! oh, it's terrible, the hopelessness of it all! some day all of you will be gone, forever!" "swallowed up by the evil spirit?" hamilton asked, quizzically, with a smile. "yes!" the answer was given with a seriousness that rebuked his levity in the presence of possible catastrophe. the husband repeated his threadbare argument. "but, dear," he urged gently, "you know that i love you just the same." there was a curious, cynical sadness in the wife's voice as she replied: "probably, a man under ether loves one just the same. but who wants to be loved by a man under ether?" "cicily, you exaggerate!" hamilton exclaimed. he dropped his hands from her shoulders, and reseated himself, while she remained standing before him. there was petulance in his inflection when he spoke again: "i have you, and i have my business." cicily made a _moué_ that sufficiently expressed her weariness of this time-worn fact. "your two loves!" she said, bitterly. "now, at this moment, you think that they're equal. well, perhaps they are--at this moment. some day, the crisis will come. then, you'll have to choose. it's a new triangle, charles--the twentieth-century triangle in america: the wife, the husband and the business. but remember: when the choice comes for us, i shall not be an aunt emma!" the manner of his wife, as well as her words, disturbed the husband strangely. never had she seemed more appealing in her loveliness, never more daintily alluring to the eye of a man; yet, never had she seemed to hold herself so coldly aloof, to be so impersonally remote. he felt a longing to draw her again into the gentle trustfulness of the maiden who had gloried in his love. "what do you want me to do, dear?" he questioned. "i told you that you could help me. i let you help." cicily seated herself again before she replied. when, at last, she spoke, her voice was listless: "yes; you let me spend some of my own money for luxuries. it seems that i could have used it to better advantage in helping to pay the men their wages, and thus save you from a possible strike." "no," was the serious response. "at best, that would have been only a makeshift--putting off the evil day. no; this thing must be fought out, once for all. we are running at a loss. to take money from you would be merely to waste it. let me tell you, too, that there isn't a chance in the world for the hamilton factory in the event of a strike." cicily seized on the admission as favoring her side of the argument. "then, you must not cut the wages," she declared, with spirit. "you must fight morton and carrington." "how can one man fight the trust?" hamilton questioned, in return. "no, i'm caught between the two millstones: morton, carrington, the trust, above; the men, labor, below. to live, i must cut into the men. that's business." "now, i know it isn't right," cicily exclaimed. "tell me," she continued, bending forward in her eagerness, until he could watch the beating pulse of her round throat, "if i were to give you all my money, couldn't you fight, and yet keep up the wages? i have quite a lot, you know. it was accumulating, uncle said, all the time while i was growing up." she refused to be convinced by her husband's shake of the head in negation. "i've met a lot of their women and children, in these last few weeks, while i have been--playing at being in business. none of the families have any more than enough for their needs--i know! some of them have barely that. a cut in wages will be something awful in its effects. why, charles, some of the families have six or seven children." "i know," the harassed employer acknowledged, with a sigh that was almost a groan. "but, cicily, my dear, unless there is a cut, i shall be ruined. that is the long and the short of the matter. unless i make the men suffer a little now, the factory must be closed down; all dad's work must go for nothing. it's either i or them. if they don't take the cut for the time being, they'll soon be without any wages at all. now, if you really want to help me, in a way to count, just do all you possibly can to prevent a strike. then, you'll be helping me, and, too, you'll be helping them as well. of course, you understand that i shall put back the wages as soon as ever i can." "good!" the wife cried, happily. "i'll help." despite her distress over the situation as it affected both the workmen and her husband, she was elated by the fact that, at last, she was wholly within her husband's confidence; that, at last, she was actually to coöperate with him in his business concerns: a practical, no longer merely a theoretical, partner! hamilton himself gave the cap to the climax of her delight. "now," he said, with a tender smile, "you're positively in business, according to your heart's desire. you're on the inside, all ready to fight the what-do-you-call-it." but a new thought had changed the mood of the impulsive bride. of a sudden, she sobered, and her eyes widened in fear. "yes," she said slowly, tremulously; "i'll help you, charles, in any way that i can, for a strike would be too terrible. it would come between you and me." small wonder that, hamilton was astounded by this declaration on the part of his wife. his usually firm jaw relaxed, dropped; he sat staring at the fair woman opposite him with unrestrained amazement. "how under heaven could a strike at the factory come between you and me?" he queried, at last. the answer was slow in coming; but it came, none the less--came firmly, unhesitatingly, unequivocally. "if there were to be a strike, i could not let those women and those children suffer without doing something to help them." at this candid statement as to what her course would be, the husband stiffened in his chair. his expression grew severe, minatory. "what?" he ejaculated, harshly. "you'd use your money to help them? my wife use her money to fight me?" his frown was savage. cicily preserved her appearance of calm confidence, although she was woefully minded to cower back, and to cover her eyes from the menace in his. she was a woman of strongly fixed principles, however chimerical her ideas in some directions, and now her conscience drove her on, when love would have bade her retreat. "i'd use my money to keep women and children from starving to death," she said, in a low voice, which trembled despite her will. hamilton smothered an angry imprecation. he strove to master his wrath as he spoke again, very sternly: "cicily, you are my wife. you have said that you were my partner. as either, as both, you have responsibilities toward my welfare that must be respected." "i'm a woman, with responsibilities as a human being first of all," was the undaunted retort. "i wouldn't be fit to be a wife, if i were to let women and children starve without trying to help." "nonsense, cicily!" hamilton's anger was controlled now; but he remained greatly incensed over this stubborn folly on his wife's part, as he esteemed it. "strikers don't starve to death, nowadays. they have benefits and funds, and all sorts of things, to help them. they don't even go hungry." "then, why do they ever give in?" was the pertinent query. "i tell you they do go hungry--often, even at the best of times. i've been down among those people. i've seen them with three, six, children to feed and clothe, and rent to pay, on two to four dollars a day. what chance have they to save? i tell you, if there's a strike, some of them will starve, and, if you let them starve, charles, you won't be my husband!" "cicily!" "i mean it." the wife rose from her chair, went to her husband, and kissed him, tenderly, sorrowfully. then, she turned to leave the room. but, before she reached the door, hamilton spoke again, gravely, quite without anger: "cicily, my dear," he said, "i give you credit for being as sincere and honest as you are foolish. so, the only chance for all of us is that you should do your best now, at once, to prevent an issue that may spell catastrophe for all of us. it's up to you now, my dear partner, to do your best to win them, to keep them from striking." the young wife paused in the doorway, and faced her husband. there was a trace of tears veiling the radiance of the golden eyes. her voice quivered, but the low music of it was very earnest: "i will, charles--i will fight hard--my hardest--for my happiness and for yours!" chapter ix mrs. schmidt, mrs. mcmahon and miss sadie ferguson, whom cicily had selected as the principal beneficiaries in her initial work of up-lift, arrived a half-hour before the time set for the meeting of the civitas society, and were shown into the drawing-room. mrs. schmidt, a thin wisp of faded womanhood, effaced herself in a remote corner, while mrs. mcmahon, a brawny amazon with red, round face and shrewdly twinkling eyes, frankly wandered about the room, scrutinizing the furnishings and ornaments and commenting on them without restraint. sadie ferguson, on the other hand, seated herself elegantly upright on an upholstered chair, and disported herself altogether after the manner of heroines of high degree as described by her favorite brooklyn author. at times, she stared intently, as some impressive thing strange to her experience caught her eye; but always she recalled her manners speedily, and forthwith relapsed into a languid indifference of demeanor such as becomes the vere de vere. the trio had not long to wait before their hostess appeared, and greeted them with a genuine cordiality that put them at their ease, as far as ease was possible in an environment so novel. she was at pains to pay a compliment to the girl: "prettier than ever, sadie!" she exclaimed, with honest admiration. and, in fact, the girl would have been charming, but for the disfiguring effects of an over-gaudy dress and an abominable hat. "aw, quit yer kiddin'," sadie answered coquettishly, intensely pleased and quite forgetting the vere de vere manner in her pleasure over the compliment. an expression of horror came in her face, as she realized her violent departure from the ideal; and she added stammeringly: "i mean, you're really too kind, my dear mrs. hamilton." having achieved this, the girl drew a long breath of relief. she felt that she had redeemed herself in the matter of social elegance. cicily smiled pleasantly on sadie, then turned to mrs. mcmahon, for she was minded to put these women in the best of humors, in order thus to work toward the avoidance of a strike by means of their influence over their husbands. she observed the hat that had been the cause of mcmahon's complaint, which was, in truth, a riot of variegated ugliness. cicily believed, however, that in this instance the end must justify the means. "what a beautiful hat!" she cried, in a tone of convincing sincerity. she even clasped her hands to emphasize her admiration. mrs. mcmahon preened herself, and tossed her head; so that feathers and flowers dashed their hues worse than before. "it's nothing so much! it's just some odds and ends they threw together for me!" "odds and ends!" cicily repeated, in a hushed voice; and she added, truthfully: "i never saw anything like it in my life." she purposely avoided directly addressing mrs. schmidt, for she was aware of the woman's painful shyness. "it was ever so good of you to come around this afternoon," she went on. "i'm going to have some friends here to meet you." "gentleman friends?" sadie questioned, eagerly. her face fell when cicily answered in the negative, and she could not restrain an ejaculation of disappointment. mrs. mcmahon felt it incumbent on her to administer a rebuke to the girl. "what do you care, sadie, so long as they're mrs. hamilton's friends?" and she added majestically, turning to her hostess: "excuse her, ma'am." at this public correction, sadie flushed scarlet, and glanced appealingly toward mrs. schmidt. "what a nerve!" she commented, angrily. then, she addressed mrs. mcmahon herself. "if you will pardon me, mrs. mcmahon," she said, very haughtily, "i prefer to present my own apologies in individual person." and, finally, she turned to cicily. "mrs. hamilton, if you consider my interrogation regarding the sex of your guests impertinent, my humblest apologies are at your disposal." "and she didn't choke!" the irishwoman murmured, admiringly. cicily insisted that there was no occasion for apology, and afterward went on to explain something as to the character and aims of the civitas society for the uplift of women. but here, at once, she found herself beset with unexpected difficulties. mrs. mcmahon drew herself up with all the dignity of her great bulk, and voiced her feeling by the tone in which she asked: "i would like to know, mrs. hamilton, if you think we are subjects for uplifting?" "can you beat it!" sadie cried, in outraged pride. cicily hastened to soothe her guests by an explanation that was more ingenious than ingenuous. "you don't understand," she remonstrated. "this is the club i spoke to you about. i want you to become members of the society. we need you to help in the work." "you're on!" sadie declared, with gusto. again, she realized how she had departed from her idols. "i would say," she went on mincingly, "it will afford me great pleasure." "you mean, then," mrs. mcmahon inquired, "that you've picked us out to help uplift the other women?" as cicily nodded assent, she continued, condescendingly: "well, if i do have to say it myself, there's many of them as needs it." presently, mrs. carrington and mrs. morton were shown into the drawing-room, and welcomed by cicily, who insisted on introducing them to "three other earnest workers." the newcomers submitted to the introductions with obvious unwillingness, and their acknowledgments were of the frigidest. "they," cicily explained, with a wave of her hand toward the three, "have had large practical experience in the work of the club." "sure, and i have that," mrs. mcmahon agreed, expansively; "and so have frieda and sadie--in a smaller way, of course." mrs. carrington unbent so far as to ejaculate, "indeed!" the while she surveyed the speaker through a lorgnette; and mrs. morton added an unenthusiastic, "really!" cicily, who was all anxiety to establish harmonious relations between the two parties of her guests, since so much might depend on the result of her efforts, spoke placatingly to the company: "i'm sure you ladies will find one another entertaining." "oh, vastly entertaining, no doubt!" mrs. morton replied; but her tone was far from satisfactory to the worried hostess. nor was the manner of mrs. mcmahon calculated to relieve the tension. "if i live, i'll have the time of my life!" she declared, grimly. she turned to mrs. morton: "is your husband's family any relation to the mortons of county clare, if i may make so bold as to ask?" "yes," mrs. morton answered, with much complacency. "mr. morton at present keeps up his old family estate in ireland." "sure, and that wouldn't bust him," mrs. mcmahon commented caustically. "i remember the estate--a bit of a cabin in a bog." the amazon's huge frame shook as she chuckled. "just ask your husband; he'll remember me well. sure, the last time i saw him was when his aunt, nora, married tom mcmahon, my husband's uncle. faith, it's cousins we are by marriage." what might have been mrs. morton's attitude toward this suddenly discovered kinship must remain forever in doubt; for, to cicily's unbounded relief, a diversion was now offered by the appearance on the scene of mrs. flynn, miss johnson and ruth howard. once again, the necessary introductions were made. mrs. flynn displayed astonishment at the style of these "ladies," but contrived a neutral manner that was void of offense. miss johnson was distant, but ruth was honestly pleased with this opportunity for sisterly association for the sake of uplift, and rolled her large eyes ecstatically. "these ladies," cicily explained anew, "are the members whom the club has met to consider. they have had wide experience in the great work of helping women." "indeed, and you're right, mrs. hamilton," mrs. mcmahon affirmed. "whenever anything happens on the block, it's katy mcmahon they send for. faith, setting-ups and laying-outs are my specialties." mrs. carrington and mrs. morton had withdrawn to a _tête-à-tête_ at some distance, where they were engaged in a low-toned conversation, punctuated by many head-shakings. the hostess had seated the new arrivals in chairs opposite mrs. mcmahon and sadie. it was evident by their exclamations that mrs. flynn and ruth were mystified and impressed by the irishwoman's explanation. but miss johnson maintained an air of impenetrable reserve. "setting-ups!" quoth the militant suffragette. "laying-outs!" sighed ruth; and she turned up her eyes, with a blink of inquiry. "yes," mrs. mcmahon went on, unctuously; "setting up with the sick, and laying out the dead. faith, sometimes, i have to be nurse and undertaker, all in one." "so," ruth gushed, unrolling her eyes with some difficulty, "sitting up with the sick, and laying out the dead, is your great work!" "oh, not that entirely," the irishwoman continued, "not that entirely! of course, i have to run my house; and, now and then, when a family's too poor to have a doctor, 'tis myself that brings a baby into the world on the side, so to speak. having had five myself, i'm quite familiar with the how of it." there came a horrified gasp from the women listening. "cheese it!" sadie whispered, fiercely. from her study of the favorite author, she surmised that mrs. mcmahon was wandering far afield from the small talk of a clara vere de vere. "your subject for conversation is really positively shocking and disgusting," she added, aloud. cicily attempted yet once again to establish harmony among discordant elements. "mrs. mcmahon has done so much good in homes of suffering," she said gently, "that she's very direct in her speech." the good-natured irishwoman herself chose to make the _amende honorable_, but after her own fashion. "sure, excuse me, ladies," she exclaimed, heartily. "faith, i didn't mean to speak of anything so unfashionable as the bearing of children." mrs. delancy and a friend entered at this moment, to the great relief of cicily, who greeted her kinswoman warmly, and at once led her toward mrs. mcmahon. "here is someone whom you know, aunt emma," she said, with significant emphasis. mrs. delancy, after one look of shocked amazement at the unwieldy figure squeezed into a gilt chair, which threatened momentarily to collapse under the unaccustomed burden, recovered the poise of the well-bred woman of unquestioned social position, and went forward cordially, holding out her hand. "oh, it's mrs. mcmahon!" she exclaimed, with a pleasant smile. "i'm delighted to have you with us in this work." under this geniality, all of the irishwoman's resentment vanished, and she returned the greeting warmly. "and how is little jimmy?" mrs. delancy continued, returning to mrs. mcmahon, after having spoken to mrs. schmidt and sadie. thus addressed, the maternal amazon displayed certain evidences of confusion, and, indeed, seemed inclined to evade the issue, for she replied after a little hesitation: "sure, ma'am, michael and terence and patrick and katy and nora are all fine." "and jimmy?" mrs. delancy persisted, albeit somewhat puzzled by the woman's manner. "well, ma'am," mrs. mcmahon made answer, with an embarrassment that was a stranger to her "you see, ma'am, there's only five, at present.... we haven't had jimmy yet!" there came a gasping chorus from the whole company. cicily, who had taken her position behind the table set for the presiding officer of the civitas club, lifted a scarlet face, as she beat a tattoo with the gavel, and called out bravely: "the civitas society will now come to order!" chapter x there was a little delay while the members of the club shifted positions in such manner as to bring them facing the president. when this had been accomplished, the militant suffragette at once stood up, and spoke with the aggressive energy that marked her every act. "i move that we dispense with the reading of the minutes of the last meeting." "yes, i think we ought to," cicily agreed, and she smiled approval on mrs. flynn. "in fact, there were no minutes." but mrs. carrington nourished rancor against her rival for the presidency, and the fact that mrs. flynn had made a suggestion, was reason enough why she should combat it. "i think," she remarked coldly, getting to her feet slowly, "that we should certainly read the minutes. it's most interesting to read the minutes." she re-seated herself, with an air of great importance. "but," cicily objected, "there are no minutes." mrs. carrington did not trouble to rise for her retort: "i don't see what that has to do with the question at issue." "oh, very well, then," cicily rejoined, with one of those flashes of inspiration that were of such service to her as a presiding officer, "you read them yourself, mrs. carrington." at this happy suggestion, mrs. carrington uttered an ejaculation, but vouchsafed nothing more precise. cicily waited for a few seconds, then continued gaily: "now that the minutes are read, the specific business before the house is the consideration of new members. all working clubs to be successful must take in constantly virile, live members." mrs. morton, who had by no means forgotten her conversation with mrs. mcmahon and cherished a distinct grudge against that excellent woman, voiced a caution: "but, mrs. hamilton," she objected, "due care should be exercised in the selection." "the club cannot be too careful," mrs. carrington agreed. mrs. mcmahon was fuming in her chair, evidently on the edge of an outbreak. mrs. delancy saved the situation by prompt action. "i think," she said, rising, "that, if new members are to be voted on, they should not be present in the meeting during the discussion." "oh, yes," cicily made decision, with a smile of gratitude for her aunt. she nodded brightly toward the three candidates, and addressed them in her most winning voice. "mrs. mcmahon, will you and mrs. schmidt and miss ferguson kindly await the club's action in the next room?" she indicated the curtained archway that led into the withdrawing-room at the back. "certainly, ma'am," the irishwoman answered, with a rough haughtiness all her own. she heaved herself up from the gilt chair, which seemed to creak a sigh of relief; and the trio went out in the midst of a deep silence. their departure set free a babel of chatter, a great part of it addressed in personal remonstrance to the presiding officer. cicily lost patience, and called out sharply, with the authority of her office: "any member addressing the chair will please follow the usual parliamentary procedure!" mrs. carrington was the first to take advantage of the formal method. sitting elegantly in her place, she spoke: "madam chairman, i rise to a point of order." "very well, then, mrs. carrington," cicily rejoined, with her most official manner, "please rise." the outraged member bounced to her feet with an alacrity that was not her habit. it was evident that the lady was angry. "really," she declared in an acid voice, "i never in my whole life--" "what was your point of order?" cicily interrupted, blandly. "why, well--well--that is, i've forgotten it now. but it was very big!" the presiding officer's sense of humor ran away with her discretion. "the chair," she announced gravely, "regrets exceedingly that the member found her point of order too big to raise." [illustration] it was mrs. delancy who, after her usual fashion, strove to restore peace, as mrs. carrington indignantly settled back into her chair: "madam chairman, if this meeting is called to consider the election of new members, i would like to nominate mrs. mcmahon, mrs. schmidt and miss ferguson." ruth now made display of her customary need for information. she turned her large eyes on the presiding officer, and inquired plaintively: "how do you elect new members?" cicily explained with an air of patient toleration. "they must first be nominated, my dear, and then be seconded. you have a chance of performing a valuable service to the club now, ruth, by seconding the nominations already made." "oh, have i?" the girl demanded, animatedly, evidently pleased by this unexpected opportunity of fulfilling her ideals. "well, then, i second them--yes, every one of them!" "it is moved and seconded," cicily stated briskly, "that mrs. mcmahon, mrs. schmidt and miss sadie ferguson be elected as members of the civitas society for the uplift of women and the spread of social equality among the masses." the militant suffragette was on her feet before the presiding officer had finished speaking. "madam chairman," she announced in her resonant voice, "i rise on a question of rules." "but there is a question before the house," cicily protested. "i am exceedingly sorry to antagonize the chair," mrs. flynn maintained resolutely, "but, since my late lamentable experience in this club, i have made it a point to look up the matter of parliamentary law as exercised in america." by way of verification, she held aloft a formidable-appearing, fat volume. "now, i would like to know whether members are elected to this club by a plurality of votes, or by a two-thirds majority, or whether or no a single adverse vote can keep out a candidate from the privileges of the club." "a plurality is quite sufficient, mrs. flynn, i assure you," cicily decided without the slightest hesitation, despite the fact that her knowledge as to the difference, if any, between plurality and majority was of the vaguest. "now, all in favor of the candidates, please--" once again, her purpose was frustrated by the suffragette, who had been busily consulting the formidable volume. "a moment, madam chairman," she demanded, peremptorily. "this american book on parliamentary law says that the club has the right to decide how new members are to be elected. therefore, i move that these elections be as the elections in england, made by secret voting, and that three black balls be sufficient to defeat any candidate in her candidacy." "i second the motion," miss johnson called out, rallying to the support of mrs. flynn as on a former occasion, because she believed that such action would tend toward the annoyance of her dear friends, mrs. carrington and cicily. cicily forthwith offered the motion to a vote, and it was carried, although mrs. carrington, mrs. morton and mrs. delancy voted against it. immediately, mrs. flynn brought to view from a mysterious pocket a small black box of wood. "i have here," she explained impressively, "the voting-box used in our club in england. i'm very sorry we did not have it on the occasion of the election of the president at the last session of this club. i have no doubt that the issue would have been quite otherwise. yet, i hope that no one will misunderstand my position. it is merely my tendency toward the strong upholding of constitutional rights as opposed unalterably and forever to tyranny and the forces of disorder and anarchy. naturally, there can be no doubt as to the ultimate election of one at least of the candidates in this particular instance, inasmuch as that particular candidate is the relation of a member of the civitas society." mrs. morton flounced out of her seat, with an agility that showed her full appreciation of the thrust. "it is unconstitutional for one club-member to insult a fellow club-member," she cried, in a rage. "and, anyhow, i wish to deny that statement. i'm not a relation--i'm not, i'm not!" "pardon me," the militant suffragette declared, belligerently. her narrow, sallow face was set; the lust of battle shone in her snapping eyes. "i know that in ireland the mortons and the mcmahons are close relatives. being an englishwoman, i naturally know all about it." cicily deemed this a fitting time for the exercise of her prerogative as presiding officer, and rapped violently on the table with the gavel. "order! order!" she commanded. then, she beamed approvingly on mrs. flynn. "will you carry the box around, mrs. flynn, please?" she requested. the suffragette courteously acquiesced, and, as a formal return to the chair for the honor bestowed on her, first presented the box to cicily, who under instructions as to the manner of operation dropped a white ball into the receptacle, after exhibiting it ostentatiously so that all the company could see. next, mrs. flynn offered the box to mrs. morton, who selected a black ball, and permitted all who would to observe the color before her vote was concealed within the box. "i congratulate you on your triumph over natural family affection," the presiding officer remarked, bitterly. in turn, the box was presented to each of the members present. this task accomplished, mrs. flynn, at the request of cicily, set herself to counting the votes, while the idle ladies discussed the exciting events of the session with great animation. presently, the teller looked up, and addressed the chair. "madam chairman," she announced in a businesslike tone, "the vote stands eight to two." at this statement, the presiding officer clapped her hands merrily, in a manner more joyous than dignified. "good!" she cried, and her dainty smile was all-embracing, as her happy eyes roved over the assembly. "then, they're all elected, after all. it's great! oh, i thank you! i knew our club would vindicate itself. i knew that you would live up to our motto--whatever it is. i knew that you were too big to let social prejudices stand in the way of the progress of real womanhood. i knew that we were actually a live club, come together with a genuine aim to do real good. i can see now that we are going to accomplish something worth while. we are not going to be merely a set of empty-headed, silly women with nothing to do. oh, i tell you that i have some great plans, now that at last we are really started out right. now, we can outline our plans of work among women less fortunate than we ourselves. we can find places for them, we can lead them on to better things, we can teach them our own doctrine of living for others, our own principle of making other people happy." the young wife had spoken with an ever increasing enthusiasm. her eyes were sparkling; her voice deepened musically; the color glowed brightly in her cheeks; her slender form was held proudly erect in the tense eagerness of an exalted sincerity of purpose. the other women listened wonderingly at first; but, little by little, the eloquent vehemence of their president moved them to sympathetic excitement, so that they nodded and smiled assent to the speaker's lofty sentiments. only mrs. flynn seemed entirely unaffected by the oratorical outburst. now, when the speech came to a close, that militant suffragette again addressed the chair. "madam chairman," she said with brutal directness, "the vote stands eight to two. there are two white balls, and eight black balls." at this shocking revelation of the fact, cicily stared dazedly for a moment; then, an expression of bleak disappointment stole over her features. she uttered a sound of dismay, which was almost a moan, and the color fled from her face. "oh, i don't--can't believe it!" she cried, with sudden fierceness. with the words, she snatched up the box, which mrs. flynn had deposited on the table, and poured out the balls. she stared at them affrightedly for a moment. there could be no mistake: they were two white and eight black! cicily regarded the incontrovertible evidence of defeat for a minute with dilated eyes. then, abruptly, she laughed hardily, straightened up from her scrutiny of the balls, and gazed wrathfully out upon her fellow club-members. when she spoke, her tone was of ice. her utterance was made with the utmost of deliberation. "so," she said, while her amber eyes flashed fire, "you are a set of empty-headed, silly women with nothing to do, after all!" "cicily!" mrs. delancy exclaimed, aghast, while the others could only gasp in horror before this unparalleled vituperation. "i mean it--every word of it!" cicily repeated, hotly. but the impetuosity of her mood was checked as she beheld the general consternation consequent on her attack; for now all the others were on their feet, moving hurriedly and muttering excitedly. "i suppose this is parliamentary law as it is understood in america," the militant suffragette made sarcastic comment, in a shrill voice. "i prefer the english fashion of doing things, for my part." cicily realized, with an increase of misery, how intolerable had been her conduct. with that swift changefulness that was distinctive of her nature, she sought to make amends as best she could, although she understood that the task was well-nigh a hopeless one. "i beg your pardon," she said, with as much humility as she could summon. "but, oh, you don't know what you are doing. you can't know! don't you realize that you are spoiling our one chance for doing good--spoiling our chance to make this a genuine club to help women actually, not just merely making a joke by pretending?" mrs. morton voiced the general sentiment of disagreement succinctly: "i fail to see how association with such persons could be anything but distasteful, even disgusting." "exactly!" mrs. carrington agreed. "such women have their own clubs," miss johnson pointed out for the enlightenment of the presiding officer. she was very happy over her dear cicily's discomfiture. "how can they help in any really great work? let them work among the creatures of their own class. we," she concluded loftily, "have our ideals." "my ideal," the president retorted bitterly, "is to do something--not merely to talk about it. not one of you," she continued, waxing wroth again, "has ever done any real good, has ever put herself out to be of service to others, has ever really done anything for anybody else--not one of you!" "mrs. hamilton," mrs. morton protested indignantly, "i cannot permit such a statement. i for one send my check to the charity organization every christmas, without fail." others, too, boasted of their philanthropies, always exercised through some most respectable medium. as the clamor of rebuke died away, cicily ventured one more plea: "then, won't you do this for me?" she asked. "i, as your president, ask that you elect these women. let them in, to help me in doing the hard work. you needn't do anything, but just belong and take the credit. i am under obligations to these persons. i promised them election to the club. i know now that i had no right to do so, but i did. i am sorry that i was so hasty in the matter. but won't you make my word good in this one case?" the musical voice was tenderly persuasive. some of those who listened yielded to the spell of it and the winning radiance of the amber eyes. but mrs. flynn was not of these. "there's nothing in this book of american parliamentary law that says the president has a right to promise anything binding on the club. i move that the president consider herself rebuked for exceeding her authority." "ruth, there's another chance to second something," cicily suggested, ironically. the maiden of the large eyes was pleased and flattered by the suggestion, which she accepted in all seriousness. "really?" she exclaimed, and turned her gaze aloft. "oh, then, i second it--i second it, of course!" "it is moved and seconded," cicily declared listlessly, "that the president be rebuked for trying to be of some genuine use to herself and to her fellow women. all in favor of the motion will please say ay." the form in which the president had stated the motion was not satisfactory to most of the members, who preserved a silence of indecision, with the single exception of ruth, who uttered an enthusiastic affirmative vote, as a matter of course, only to shrink back perplexedly when she found angry eyes focused on her from every side. but cicily nonchalantly announced the motion as having been carried, without troubling to call for the contrary vote. "ladies," she said, "the president accepts the rebuke; and she also resigns from her office and from the club. she is done with you, with all of you, and with your pitiful joke of a club." she stood serenely defiant, while the company of babbling, head-tossing women hastened forth from the drawing-room, until only mrs. delancy remained. chapter xi for a few moments after the passing of the civitas society, cicily remained in her place, motionless, tense, her face whitely set. then, of a sudden, the rigidity of her pose relaxed. she moved swiftly to where her aunt was sitting, dropped to her knees, and buried her face in the old lady's lap. the dainty form was shaken by a storm of sobs.... mrs. delancy, wise from years, attempted no word of comfort for the time being--only stroked the shining brown tresses softly, and patted a shoulder tenderly. so, the girl, for now she was no more than that, wept out the first fury of her grief in this comforting, sheltering presence, as so often she had done in the years before marriage claimed her. little by little, the fierceness of her emotion was worn out, until at last she was able to raise a sorrow-stricken face, in which the clear gold of the eyes still shone beautiful, though dimmed, through the veil of tears. the scarlet lips were tremulous, and the notes of the musical voice came brokenly as she spoke her despair. "i've ruined him!" came the hopeless wail. mrs. delancy misunderstood the final pronoun, for the articulation of the girl, clogged by feeling, was none too distinct. "pooh!" she ejaculated, cheerfully. "for my part, i think you're well rid of them." "but you don't understand," cicily almost moaned. "it's him--him! i've ruined him, i tell you." this time, mrs. delancy understood the pronoun, but she understood nothing beyond that. "ruined him?" she repeated, wholly at a loss. "whom have you ruined, cicily? what do you mean?" then, the young wife poured forth the tale of the disaster she had all unwittingly wrought in the affairs of her husband. she explained her high hopes of saving a dangerous situation by means of her own influence over the women, who, in turn, controlled the leaders among the workmen in the factory. cicily was painfully aware of the mischief that must result from the refusal of the civitas society to welcome into its sacred circle the three candidates whom she had proposed. she knew the sensitiveness of these women, knew that they would bitterly resent the slight thus put upon them. where she had meant to bind their friendship for her, she had succeeded only in creating a situation by which they might well come to detest her for having subjected them to needless humiliation. with their hostility aroused against her, they would throw their influence, which she believed dominant, to persuade the men against any concessions in favor of their employer. with a full perception of the catastrophe in which she had so innocently become involved, the wife hurriedly recounted the facts to her aunt, bewailing the evil destiny that had worked such dire havoc with her schemes for good. "well, you did what you could," mrs. delancy suggested consolingly, when at last the melancholy recital was ended. "and i failed!" came the retort, in a voice of misery. certain utterances of the girl on a former occasion had rankled in the bosom of the old lady, perhaps because she perceived a certain element of justice in them, and by so much a measure of dereliction on her own part in the regulating of affairs between herself and her husband. now, despite the kindliness of her nature and her real sympathy for the suffering of the niece who knelt at her knees, she could not forbear a mild reproof: "well, cicily," she said gently, "it all comes of a woman fooling with business. why, if you'd only been content to work for the heathen--" "i've just finished with the heathen!" was the quick interruption. "well, my dear," mrs. delancy commented drily, "if you'd only work for the far-off heathen, you'd find it much more satisfactory. you might not do any good, to be sure; but, anyhow, the bad results wouldn't affect you." cicily got to her feet, without making any reply, and went to the mirror at one end of the drawing-room. there, she busied herself after the feminine fashion with concealing the more apparent ravages made by her weeping. when she came back to face her aunt again, she was her usual charming self, save for a lack of color in her cheeks, and a portentous gravity in the drooping of the mouth.... happily, she was not of the majority, whose noses bloom redly when watered with tears. "and now," she said, desolately, "i've got to tell them!" she nodded toward the withdrawing-room, where the three candidates were waiting; and mrs. delancy understood. "why don't you write it to them?" she advised. "whenever i have anything uncomfortable to tell anyone, i always write it. then, i let your uncle jim read the reply.... it's so much more satisfactory that way, and, you know, he can say right out what i don't dare even to think." but cicily had courage and a conscience. she felt that she must not shirk the consequences to herself of her own indiscretion. "no, i'll tell them," she declared resolutely; but her heart was sick within her at contemplation of the scene that waited. fortunately, perhaps, small time was given cicily for dread anticipations. hardly had she ceased speaking when the door into the withdrawing-room was cautiously opened, and the face of mrs. mcmahon was made visible to the two women who had faced about at sound of the knob turning. on perceiving that the room was empty save for the hostess and mrs. delancy, the irishwoman threw the door wide, and came forward. "faith, it was so quiet i was sure they'd gone," she announced, with manifest pride in her deductive powers. there was, too, a general air of elation in the woman's manner of carriage that struck a chill to cicily's heart. and the cold of it deepened as mrs. schmidt and sadie ferguson followed into the drawing-room, each evidently in a state of exaltation. the three ranged themselves in rude dignity before their hostess. mrs. mcmahon constituted herself the spokeswoman. "well," she inquired genially, "now that we're members of the club, what is it you'd be after having us to do?" an interval of silence followed, under the influence of which the three waiting candidates seemed visibly to droop, as if by a subtle instinct they began to apprehend misfortune. when, finally, cicily spoke, it was in a colorless voice: "i'm afraid there is nothing that any of us can do, now." the three started, and exchanged glances in which was dawning alarm, "i mean," the unhappy hostess went on, making her confession of failure by a mighty effort of will, "that--that the election did not go as i had expected it to." again, there was a painful silence, in which sadie fidgeted and mrs. schmidt seemed to grow more shrunken and faded than before. mrs. mcmahon alone stood unmovingly erect, stiffly pugnacious on the instant. "so, that's it!" she exclaimed, at last. her big voice was raucous with anger. "sure, then, and we're not members, at all!" as the bald truth was thus made known to sadie, she flared into complete forgetfulness of the ideal deportment of her heroines. "them cats turn us down!" she screeched. mrs. schmidt uttered no word, for she was by nature given to profound silences, almost unbroken for days. perhaps, she believed the garrulity of her husband ample for the entire family. nevertheless, in this critical moment, mrs. schmidt opened her mouth repeatedly, like a fish out of water, as if she were striving her utmost to speak. "and--and," cicily added weakly, "i'm awfully sorry." "sure, and you don't need to trouble yourself, mrs. hamilton," the irishwoman declared, viciously. "the likes of us know how you rich people have a habit of bringing us into your parlors to make fun for their friends. you come to our homes, and we treated you like a lady. faith, now we come here, and you treat us like monkeys--that's all the difference. we're much obliged to you for the lesson. sure, and we won't bother you again, not a bit of it. and we'll be pleased if you'll treat us the same.... good-day to you, mrs. hamilton." the irate woman bobbed her head energetically at her hostess, and strode toward the doorway into the hall. but she halted for a moment as cicily addressed her impetuously. "mrs. mcmahon, you must listen to me! i had no idea that this would turn out as it did. i have been your friend--i am your friend. when the club refused to admit you, i resigned from the club. there is nothing more that i can do. oh, i am so sorry that it all occurred!" "faith, we'll take your explanation for all it's worth," was the wrathful woman's comment, uttered with scorn. she was too deeply hurt to be solaced by explanations that did not alter the shameful fact one whit. she turned again toward the doorway, only to be halted by the appearance there of her husband, accompanied by schmidt and ferguson. mcmahon paused just within the room, and stood rubbing his hands, and grinning jovially, his round face aglow with satisfaction. he addressed his wife banteringly, evidently in high good spirits: "faith, katy mcmahon," he exclaimed, "but you're looking proud the day! sure, now, i'll have the automobile to take us all up to sherry's in just a minute, when we've done talking with mr. hamilton. bedad, with our wives and daughters moving in such elegant society and members of such a grand club with the boss's wife, we wouldn't dare take them any less place at all!" "it's a bad mind-reader you are!" fairly shouted the outraged wife. sadie added something unintelligible, it was so rapidly uttered and so venomously hissed. even mrs. schmidt displayed every symptom of speech save sound. "what's the matter, sadie?" ferguson demanded, not unkindly, as he observed the expression on his daughter's face. "wasn't your false hair the right shade? i'm sorry, if it ain't, because i don't see as how i can buy you any more with this ten per cent. cut we're taking." instantly, cicily aroused to new hope. she moved a stop forward, her hands up-raised in eagerness. a glow of color burned in either cheek, and her eyes sparkled again. "oh," she questioned tensely, "then you're not going to strike--you'll take the cut?" it was schmidt who answered, beaming happily on his hostess. "strike? ah, no! when you make friends with our wives, and mr. hamilton, he tells us the truth just like one man with another, we appreciate it, yes; we stand by and help, yes!" "schmidt's right," ferguson added. "mr. hamilton and you, ma'am, are human. so, we've decided to stick it out for a while, anyhow." mcmahon, too, yielded his tribute of commendation. "yes, mrs. hamilton," he said seriously, "there's one thing that the bosses generally don't understand; but the men always appreciate it when the boss, and the boss's wife, too, are on the level." to the amazement of everyone, mrs. schmidt broke into speech; find that outburst was like the eruction of krakatao in its unexpectedness, its suddenness, its overwhelming virulence. "yes, yes, yes," she clamored, addressing her hapless husband, who stood appalled before the attack, "you are one big, fat fool! you always were. you are in love with her--no? you let her bring your wife here, make her for a joke to her rich friends, let her get insults. they laugh and make fun of me, frieda schmidt, your wife; and then, when they have had the good laugh, they say: 'what do you think we want of you? you are not like us. we are grand ladies: you are a working woman. get out! get out! we have had our laugh at you. now, go! we are through; we are tired of you. it was very good of mrs. hamilton to bring you here for us to laugh at; but it is over. get out!'... and then you come and thank her because she insults your wife, insults your name; and you take less wages from her husband because she insults your name and me. if you take that cut, you are not my man--never with me no more!" with the last words, she darted from the room, and a moment later the street-door slammed violently behind her. "good for frieda!" mrs. mcmahon applauded. "when she does talk, sure she says something.... you heard her, mike mcmahon? well, what she said, them's my sentiments. you know what she did now." a jerk of the head indicated the wretched hostess. "she pretended to ask us to join a club. she brought us here to insult us, to make fun of us. she made us the laughing-stock of morton and carrington's wives. do you hear that? morton and carrington! put the names of them in your pipe and smoke it. mike mcmahon, listen to what i'm telling you. if you take a cut from them that insult your wife, you can forget to come home for good, my bucco." in her turn, the irishwoman stalked out of the room and from the house with a tread of heavy dignity. "that goes with me, pop!" sadie declared, as she flounced out. "it's all been a terrible mistake," cicily ventured to the three men who stood regarding her with sullen faces and baleful eyes after the revelations that had just been made. "i'm thinking you're right," mcmahon agreed. there was something sinister in his voice. "but it's us that made the mistake. we thought the boss and his wife could be on the level with us. what a bunch of damn fools we were!" and his two confrères nodded gloomy assent. it was at this most unpropitious moment that hamilton came briskly into the room. he stopped short in the doorway, at sight of the three men of the committee, who turned to face him. "well, boys," he exclaimed briskly, "have you decided?" the men nodded without speaking. "well?" "i'll do the talking," ferguson said, holding up a hand to check schmidt. "we've decided, mr. hamilton. we're going to strike. we'll make you come to terms, or we'll bust you if we can." hamilton's face hardened, and he squared his shoulders. "i suppose you know what you're up against?" he questioned harshly. "yes, we've just found out," ferguson retorted, with gusty rage. "we'd been thinking that you were on the level--you and your wife, too. we swallowed that funny story of your being crushed by the trust. oh, we were suckers, all right. we were suckers for fair! we were going to fall for it. we were going take your cut. and then your wife brings our wives and daughters here, pretending she's going to put them in her club--brings them here to make a laugh for morton and carrington's wives. yes, morton and carrington, the very men you say are crushing you, your enemies! oh, your enemies are all right! do you think we are fools? no, to hell with you!" the furious man's voice rose to a shriek with the last words. he whirled, and made for the door, and the other two followed him. [illustration] "one minute," hamilton called. "you needn't go back to the works. we close down in ten minutes. come back to see me when you are hungry." he stood motionless as the men passed silently out, and until he heard the sound of the street-door closing behind them. then, he turned to cicily, who had waited pallid and shaken, her eyes downcast, her hands clasped distressedly. his voice, as he spoke, was not softened; even, it was harder than before. "you see what you have done," he said simply. "this settles it. i'm going into a big fight. i can't be handicapped. for the future, you will stay where you belong. you will confine your activities to the house, where they will be less dangerous, let us hope--less fatal!" without awaiting any reply, he wheeled, and strode from the room. chapter xii cicily sent word of a severe headache, and did not appear at the dinner-table that night, nor did she see her husband during the evening. she retired to her bed-chamber at an early hour, but not to sleep. instead, she abandoned herself to torturing reflections on the malevolent predicament into which she had been brought. she did not attempt to disguise from herself the hideous fact that her own precipitancy of action in the matter of the candidates for the club had been the primary cause of the peril that now beset her husband's business prosperity by reason of the strike thus induced. she bewailed the impetuous character of her emotions, which had so evilly led her into an action fraught with such dire consequences. she had no regret for the motives that had impelled her, but she was profoundly sorrowful over the thoughtless haste with which she had entered on a course of more than doubtful expediency. her one relief was in a reiteration that she would, that she must, find some way by which to make amends for the catastrophe she had so ingenuously engineered. to the discovery of a method for retrieving her error, she gave her mind with an almost frenzied concentration; but the effort was fruitless. cudgel her wearied brain as she would, it could not make pace to the goal she sought. when, after a sleepless night, she rose, it was with the maze of disaster still unthreaded. her usual ingenuity of resource was become impotent. raging against her own supineness, she was yet forced into ignoble inactivity. cicily learned that her husband had breakfasted early, and had left the house, without any message to her, or any statement as to when he might return. the sight of food sickened her, but she managed to drink a cup of coffee, which put a little heart into her after the wearing hours of the night. a turn around the park and along the drive still further quickened her spirits; but the day passed without any flash of inspiration as to a means for undoing the ill she had wrought. she made a toilette for dinner by a brave effort. yet, she might have spared her pains, for hamilton did not appear. she idled through the meal with as much cheeriness of demeanor as she could summon for the benefit of the servants. afterward, she sought the seclusion of her boudoir, leaving word that she should be notified immediately in the event of her husband's return. in the meantime, hamilton himself had opportunity for meditation, and this had softened his mood to some degree. he admitted to himself that her interest in the wives of his workmen had been the prime factor in their determination to endure a temporary cut in the wage-scale without striking. to be sure, his own attitude of confidential intercourse with the leaders in stating his position frankly had had its influence; but he did not for a moment believe that this alone would have sufficed to bend the men to his will. no, it had been the happy effect of his wife's intimate association on terms of equality with the women that had been the chief factor in creating a sentiment of sympathy for him to the extent of coöperation. without her work in his behalf, the men would certainly have struck. now, since her mistake in judgment had been the immediate cause of the strike, in justice she could hardly be held guilty of more than an act of folly. essentially, the final situation was what it would have been without any intervention whatsoever on her part. in going over the succession of events logically and calmly, hamilton came to the decision that he would absolve his wife from any real guilt in the affair. he even felt a half-hearted kindliness toward her for her blundering good-will. but he was none the less resolved that he would tolerate no further injection of this charming feminine personality into his business concerns. the wife must mind her own business--the home--and that alone; she must have no part in his.... it was in this mood that he returned to his house late in the evening, and shut himself into the study. there, presently, cicily came, seeking him. the bride was very beautiful to-night, with a touch of sadness in her expression that gave her a new spirituelle charm. she had chosen a black gown as becoming the melancholy of the time, but its austere lines, without any touch of adornment, only brought into full relief the exquisite outlines of the slenderly rounded form, and served to emphasize the creamy whiteness of a complexion that was flawless. there was hardly a glimpse of rose in the ivory curve of the cheeks, but there was no lessening of the bending scarlet in the lips and the amber eyes were luminous even beyond their wont, as their gentle radiance shone forth above the dark circles traced by a sleepless night. hamilton turned a little as the door opened. he regarded his wife quizzically as she walked forward with a step of native grace, now grown a trifle languid from the weight on her spirit. he did not speak, however, until she had seated herself in the chair facing his. then, when at last she looked up, and her somber gaze encountered his, he spoke lightly: "cicily, my dear, i think you are well rid of that coterie of cats." "why, how did you know?" cicily questioned, in some astonishment as to his knowledge of her break with the members of the civitas society. "oh, in a very simple way. aunt emma told uncle jim, and uncle jim told me," then, out of the kindness of his heart, the young husband went on speaking in such wise, according to his best judgment, as should console the very apparent misery of his wife. "my dear," he said gently, "i want you to know that i don't really blame you for this wretched strike. i'd have had it on my hands just the same, if you'd never had a finger in the pie. so, don't go grieving over something that can't be helped. and, of course, i give you all credit for the very best of intentions in the matter. only--" he broke off discreetly; but the discretion had come too late. "only what?" cicily questioned, quietly. there was something ominous in the quiet, and this the man realized. nevertheless, hamilton was not one to shirk that which he deemed his duty. so, now, he answered lucidly with just what was in his mind as to the future relations between them, although he understood sufficiently well the ambitions of the woman before him to know that he must wound her deeply. "sweetheart," he said softly, "i don't wish to grieve you in any way. yet, i must insist calmly now on what i said yesterday in the heat of anger. you must attend to your duty in the home. it is for me, and for me alone, to conduct matters of business outside. can you not understand that you are by nature and training utterly incompetent for the rôle you seek to play? business aptitude is not a thing to be picked up in an instant, haphazard, at the wish of anyone. it is something acquired by long striving and experience. the man has it in greater or less degree, as the result of generations of the work; he inherits an aptitude; he develops it by systematic training. feminine intuition cannot give you a substitute for the practical needs of business. so, my dear, i beg you to be reasonable. you must not meddle further in my affairs. but, don't, for heaven's sake, be melancholy over it. i love you, my dear, and i want you to be happy. you will be, if only you can get the right point of view. try! won't you, dear?" as he finished speaking with this appeal, hamilton leaned forward anxiously, pleadingly. deep down in his heart he felt a glow of pride over the mildness and the reasonableness with which he had presented the case in its true light to this irrational, dear creature. for a long minute, cicily vouchsafed no answer, although she felt the intensity of his gaze fixed upon her. she remained motionless, leaning back in the chair, her taper fingers loosely clasped on her lap, her eyes downcast, as one absorbed in earnest, yet not disquieting, thought. finally, however, she raised her head slowly, and her gaze met that of her husband fairly. it seemed to him that perhaps the faint touch of color in her cheeks had grown a little brighter, but of this he could not be sure. otherwise, certainly, she betrayed no sign of particular emotion; whereat he rejoiced, since he knew from experience that her temperament might manifest tumultuously on occasion. "then, it's come," she said at last, in a low voice. again, her eyes were downcast, and she rested there, to all appearance, tranquilly indifferent. hamilton stirred uneasily. this was not what he had expected, and he found himself unprepared for the emergency. "if you mean that common-sense has come," he remarked grimly, "i beg to tell you that it has, and that it has come to stay!" the wife spoke again, rather languidly, without troubling to raise her eyes. "you mean that you are going to push me back, that you are going to shut me out of your life totally--out of your big, whole, full life? you mean that, for the future, you are going to treat me as a doll, as a plaything with which to amuse yourself when you chance to be tired and in a mood for such diversion--in fact, as other men of the average sort treat their wives? you have told your side of it. now, i'm going to tell you mine. and i'm going to ask you not to decide too hastily. think over the matter carefully, i beg of you. for, you see, it involves our whole future, yours and mine.... charles, once you yielded to my wishes. you took me in. you let me help you." "yes," exclaimed hamilton, in exasperation of spirit. "and you made a mess of things all round!" he shook his head emphatically. "no, cicily; i tell you, no!" "charles, wait!" the wife commanded, raising her eyes, and straightening her form in sudden animation. "take my money--take everything that i have. throw it away, if you want to. use it in your business, if it will help the least bit. do whatever you please--only, don't shut me out. tell me everything. teach me something of your knowledge concerning these things. let me share as much as i can. you direct, of course. i'll only do what you wish me to do. but don't drive me away from you." she paused, leaned farther forward, and went on speaking in a tone of deepest seriousness: "if we part this way now, if i am to cease from any interest in your affairs, and you go on alone, why, then, i'll never have you again. i know that for the truth. that's why i am pleading like this. once, i demanded it as a right; now, i beg it as a favor. here is the choice, charles. you can't be as uncle jim is, simply because i won't be like aunt emma in this matter. if you shut me out now, i'll shut you out--for good!" "good god! was there ever such a woman!" hamilton cried, in desperation. "why, if i were to take you in, within two weeks you'd be down there, helping the families of the strikers. you told me that, yourself." "would you have me see them starve, charles, when i had the means for their relief?" came the undaunted retort. "that does settle it!" hamilton exclaimed, with angry vehemence. it came to him in this instant that all his reasonableness and gentleness were futile when opposed to the unfeminine ambition of his girl wife. temper had him in its clutch, and he yielded blindly to its guidance. "i'm your husband, cicily," he announced, dictatorially. "please, understand that, from now on, i direct the affairs of this family. there can be no happiness in a house without head--only bother and worry and confusion. from now on, i direct. i'm the head of this house.... i have a big fight on. i intend that you shall be loyal. i mean that you shall be faithful to me straight through." "you demand this?" the woman's voice was like ice. "yes," the husband replied, roughly. "i demand that you take your proper place, the place of a wife in her husband's home; and that you stay there, doing as i tell you. and, in this strike, you keep your hands off. this is what you must do, as long as i am your husband." the man's eyes were masterful; his jaw was thrust forward. "well, if that's the sort of man you are, i won't have you for a husband," cicily declared, quietly. there was an air of aloofness about her that was more disturbing than had been a display of passion. "if that's your idea of marriage, we'd be better apart, for it isn't mine. no, you're not my husband," she stood up, slowly drew the wedding-ring from her finger, and laid it on the table. "cicily!" hamilton cried, aghast, as she turned away. she did not pause until she was come to the door. but, there, she faced about for a final utterance. "no, i won't have you for a husband," was her ultimatum.... "and yet, i think that i'll teach you a lesson. i have a fancy to save you--in spite of yourself!" and, leaving hamilton to ponder these astounding words, she went forth from the room. chapter xiii the week that followed was to cicily the most strenuous and the most exciting that she had ever experienced in the brief span of her years. she steadfastly maintained her pose as a woman who had renounced her husband; yet, she remained in that husband's house, with a sublime disregard for the inconsistency of her conduct. she studiously avoided any discussion, of the status she had established. what her future course would be was left wholly to conjecture. she presided at the table with inimitable grace and self-possession, taking care to treat her husband with every consideration, but always with a trace of formality that was significant of the changed relation. hamilton, on his part, was inclined to regard his wife's dramatic renunciation of him as a passing whim, which it were wiser to ignore until such time as it should have worn itself out. in the meantime, he was so much absorbed by the struggle over his business difficulties that, he had little time or disposition to make researches into feminine psychology, even that of his wife. he had an optimistic theory that, in the end, his domestic troubles would adjust themselves by some process of natural evolution. he was confident, too, that his assertion of mastery must eventually be accepted by his wife. so, he smiled pleasantly on cicily, when he was not too busy to notice her presence, and betimes he felt the little packet that he carried in the inner pocket of his waistcoat, and was fondly content, wondering when the dear girl would again slip the bond of servitude willingly on the finger whence she had removed it with such magnificent disdain. it was that wedding-ring, thus cherished by hamilton, which caused the wife more concern than aught else in her domestic entanglement. she had regarded the symbol as something splendidly sacred, and she now bitterly regretted the impulse that had led her to discard it so needlessly. indeed, the very night on which she defied her husband, she had crept down to the library when all the house was quiet, and had there made sure that it was not still lying disregarded on the table where she had cast it down in resentment. now, she hoped and believed that her husband had locked it away in some drawer where at least it would be safe. only, she wished that she had saved it as a souvenir of mingled happiness and sorrow. apart from this matter of the ring, cicily had no remorse. she regretted the course of action thrust on her by malign fate, but her conscience was clear of reproach. perhaps, in some subtle, unconfessed recess of her heart, she nourished a hope that ultimately joy would return to her life. but her openly expressed conviction to herself was that she was done with the life of love. yet, a curious personal ambition urged her on to make good the declaration to her husband that she would save him in spite of himself. to this end, she bent all her energies. as she reflected on the circumstances under which she had so ignominiously failed, she decided that she must have recourse again to the means by which she had so nearly attained success in her plans for her husband's welfare, only to fail miserably on account of the obstinacy of the civitas society. so, she sought out the women whom she had unhappily offered as candidates to the club, and set herself with all the art that was in her to win back their favor. she was sure that by alliance with them she could mold circumstance to her will, and ultimately triumph gloriously over the erring man who had flouted her ambition to help in a business struggle. cicily made a full confession of her marital disaster to mrs. delancy, who by turns scolded and cried over the wilful girl. the old lady disapproved strongly of her niece's conduct, which was without any excuse whatsoever according to her own notions of conventional requirements. but, since she loved this child whom she had mothered, she forgave her, and by degrees came to feel a certain sympathy for her, which reacted mildly in her own attitude toward her husband.... it was on one of her visits to her aunt that cicily encountered mr. delancy, who was already aware of the unfortunate position of affairs, and now felt himself called on to protest. he expressed himself with some severity, and concluded with a hope that she was not determined to persevere in her folly. "i was never more determined in my whole life, uncle jim," was the emphatic answer. mr. delancy resisted a temptation to snatch up one of the teacups from the exquisite sèvres service over which his wife and his niece were sitting, and to hurl it into the fireplace, for the sake of relieving his choler. he refrained from any overt act, however, by a great effort of will, and perforce contented himself with an explicit statement of his opinion: "you were never more bull-headed in your life," he snorted, stopping short in his agitated pacing of the drawing-room, to face his niece with a scowl; "and that's saying a great deal--a very great deal!" "james!" mrs. delancy exclaimed, in mild remonstrance. but cicily was not to be suppressed by this man who typified the evils against which she had fought. "would you have me give up my principles?" she questioned, scornfully. once again, mr. delancy snorted contemptuously. "you haven't got any principles," he declared, baldly. "no woman has." at this brutal statement on the part of her husband, mrs. delancy stiffened, and an exclamation of shocked amazement burst from her. cicily smiled cynically, as she addressed her aunt: "well, aunt emma," she said amusedly, "you see now what your attitude has led to. you began with no backbone. so, now, you have no principles. oh, you nice, sweet-faced, gray-headed, deceiving old-lady reprobate, you!" but mrs. delancy refused to see any element of humor in the situation. indeed, she was on the verge of tears over the wantonly injurious statement made by the husband whom she had cherished for a lifetime. "james, how could you!" she cried out, in a voice broken by emotion. "to say such things to your wife--oh!" too late, the irascible husband realized that he had committed a serious fault, had in fact been guilty of a gross injustice, which was hardly less than an insult, to the woman whom he thoroughly respected. "emma--" he began, appealingly. but mrs. delancy had changed in an instant from tearful reproach to righteous indignation. "no, don't speak to me!" she commanded; and she deliberately turned her back on the culprit. under the goad of this treatment, delancy addressed his niece in a tone that was almost ferocious. "so," he snarled, "not content with breaking up your own home, you'd try to ruin mine, would you! you should apologize to your aunt emma, at once." "dear auntie," cicily exclaimed without a moment's hesitation, in a voice of contrition, "i beg you to let me apologize to you very humbly for what uncle james said." "what the--!" stormed the badgered old gentleman. "now, look here, cicily. you think you're very smart. but do you know what your attitude has led to?--scandal!" mrs. delancy forgot for the moment her own subject for complaint. "yes," she agreed, turning to her niece, "it's a scandal to live in a house with a strange man--you know, that's what you yourself called charles." "it's a worse scandal," delancy amended, "not to live with him." "oh, i see," cicily remarked, meditatively. "i must have a chaperon. but, on the other hand, now, charles is, or rather he was, my husband. that seems, somehow, to make a difference. at least, we are well acquainted, although strangers at present, in a sense. and, besides, i have the kindliest feeling for charles, and that's more than lots of women have for their husbands. as to that, you know, since he's not my husband now, there is really no reason why i should not have the very kindliest of feelings for him." "well, you claim to renounce your husband," delancy argued angrily, "and yet you continue to live with him in the same house. it's a monstrous state of affairs. will you tell me, please, madam, when this scandalous situation is to end?" "would you have me desert charles in a crisis?" cicily demanded, haughtily. "no, i'll give no one an opportunity to accuse me of desertion in the face of the enemy." "oh, lord!" delancy exclaimed; and his tone was eloquent. "oh, no, you haven't deserted him!" "i don't see what that has to do with it," cicily objected, flushing painfully. "charles and i have merely--that is, we've--broken off diplomatic relations." at this extraordinary statement of the case, mrs. delancy, in her turn, flushed a dainty pink, which was wondrously becoming to her waxen cheeks, not unduly wrinkled despite her burden of years. delancy himself forgot indignation for the moment, and laughed outright, as he regarded his wife to observe the manner in which she received the surprising information. his eyes took on a kindlier expression as he saw the change that gave her a wondrously younger look, and a rush of memories caused him to smile reminiscently, half-sadly, half-tenderly. the effect on him was apparent in the pleasanter voice with which he next addressed his niece, playfully: "my, my! she'd be sending him home to his mother, i expect, if only he had a mother." cicily, still suffering in the throes of a painful embarrassment, retorted hotly: "uncle jim, i'd just like to shake you!" "oh, don't mind my gray hairs," delancy scoffed. "and, when you're done with me, you might spank your aunt emma." that good woman shook her head dolorously, as the flush died from her face. "i don't know what we're coming to," she mourned. "anarchy!" was her husband's prompt answer, as he mounted again on his favorite hobby. "once women begin to believe that they have intelligence, anarchy will be the natural, the inevitable result. god never made them to think." in his excitement, he had forgotten the manner in which he had already once offended his wife. "then, why did god give women brains?" cicily demanded. "i can't waste my time in arguing with a woman," delancy answered loftily, and, turning away, tugged superciliously at a wisp of whisker. "that's it! oh, yes, that's it!" cicily exclaimed, with rising indignation. her embarrassment had passed, but a flush remained in her cheeks, and her radiant eyes were alight with the battle-lust. "you think women haven't any intelligence. you can't waste your time arguing with them! very well, then, i tell you that it's you who haven't the intelligence to recognize a new point of view--a new force in the world; the force of women's brains--until it shall hit you in the face. that's why i'm holding out against charles, fighting him, to save him, to keep him from growing into a narrow-minded, hard-headed, ignorant old fossil!" the application of this explicit description was not far to seek. it was evident that delancy took it to himself, for he, in his turn at last, colored rosily. but he did not choose to accept a personal reference, and contented himself with a bit of repartee: "huh, no fear! he won't live to be a fossil. his troubles will kill him off early, or i lose my guess.... so, that's your excuse for ruining him, is it?" "i'd help him, if he'd let me," cicily answered, sadly, forgetful of her indignation against the sex. "you help him!" delancy exclaimed, mockingly. "why, you brought on the strike." "but--" cicily would have protested, only to be interrupted by the indignant old gentleman, who shook an accusing forefinger at her. "you can't tell me! yes, you did, with your impertinent interference. huh! when women get to fooling with business, we shall all go to the dogs. why, if it hadn't been for you and for what you did with your precious 'helping,' charles would have had a chance to make good money. now, morton and carrington are charging the independent dealers twenty-two cents a box. but for this strike, charles might have induced those old pirates to raise their price to him a little, and let him make some money.... help him--oh, piffle!" "well," cicily declared, not a whit abashed, "if i were charles, i'd start up again, pay wages, and sell to the independents." the seriousness with which the young woman spoke for a moment betrayed delancy into discussing business with one of the unintelligent sex. "but his contracts!" he objected. "what are contracts," cicily interrupted serenely, "when the workmen are hungry?" "there, emma!" delancy cried, in deep disgust. "do you hear? now, isn't that just like a woman?" "yes, james," mrs. delancy answered meekly; "i know that you're right. but, somehow, i think cicily, too, is right." at this paradoxical pronouncement, delancy stared fixedly at his wife in stark amazement. "what!" he gasped. "what! after forty years, you say that to me! you question my business judgment! emma, you, my wife!" he struggled wildly for a few seconds to gain control of his emotions. "no," he continued bitterly; "i deserve it for forgetting myself. i beg my own pardon for mentioning a word of business to a woman.... i'm going to charles--poor fellow!" after a long, resentful stare directed against his former ward, he marched out of the room. "see what you've made me do!" mrs. delancy said accusingly to her niece, as the two were left alone together. "why, i've actually appeared rebellious to james." "you ought to have been so years ago," cicily rejoined, stubbornly. but mrs. delancy could only shake her head morosely in negation of this audacious idea. then, her thoughts reverted to the young woman's doubtful position. "how is it all going to end?" was her despondent query. "you mean, when are charles and i going to make public the true state of affairs? when are we going to part before the world?" the old lady nodded acquiescence. "well, that will be when the strike is over, and charles's business troubles are settled--not before." "if this sort of thing keeps on," mrs. delancy announced, with another access of self-pity, "your uncle jim and i probably will be parted by that time, too!" "nonsense!" cicily jeered, smitten to sudden compunction for her part in causing distress of mind to the woman whom she really loved and honored. "why, auntie, if you were to leave uncle jim, whom would he have to bully? pooh, dear, you and he'll never part." again, the old lady's thoughts veered from herself. "but, cicily," she ventured, "you're doing your best to prolong the strike. you're actually giving those women money, i know. yesterday, when i called to see you, i saw the stub in your chequebook, which was lying open on the desk in your boudoir. i didn't mean to pry, but i couldn't help seeing it." "well, i'm not letting them starve," was the unashamed admission. "cicily," mrs. delancy said, with an abrupt transition from one phase of the subject under consideration to another, "about this matter of you and charles separating, i have a suspicion that you are very much like that highly improper young woman in the french story, who was going to live with her lover as long as the geranium lasted. and you're going to live in the house with charles while his troubles continue. and that improper young woman used to get up in the night, every night, to water the geranium, secretly. and you are providing the strikers with food, to prolong the strike. humph! you don't want to go." cicily blushed a little, but attempted no reply. "you're in love with him--you know you are!" the young wife's reserve broke down a little before the keen glance that accompanied the words. "i--oh, i'm interested in his spiritual development," she stammered, weakly. "anyhow," she added defensively, "he--doesn't know it!" "thank heaven, you're still moral!" mrs. delancy ejaculated, in accents of huge relief. "i think i must be," was the low-spoken admission, "because--because i'm so unhappy!" the scarlet lips drooped to a tremulous pathos, as she went on speaking in a voice of poignant feeling. "oh, aunt emma, when i see charles so harassed, so tired, so troubled in every way, i just long to throw my arms around his neck, and to kiss all those hard lines away from his dear face, and to tell him how much i love him, and how sorry i am, and how much i want to help him." "heaven bless you, child!" mrs. delancy exclaimed, surprised and delighted. "why don't you, then?" "because," came the gloomy explanation, "if i did, i'd be like you." the old lady was not gratified by this candid defense. "humph! well, you might do worse, if i do say so myself," she declared, with a toss of her head. "of course, you old dear," cicily agreed, with an air of humility, "in lots and lots of ways--but--" "you're obstinate!" came the tart rebuke. "if you're really in love with him, give in!" "that's just the trouble," the young wife said. "because i'm so much in love with him, i can't give in in this particular. i love him too much to be content with just the bits of him that are left over from the other things. i want a partnership. marriage has changed since your day, auntie. real marriage to-day must be a partnership in all things. i must have that, a full share in my husband's life--or nothing! i tell you, there is too much of men and women swearing before god to become as one, and walking away to begin life and to live it ever after as two. it was all very well when the women had the house to keep, and didn't think; but nowadays most of them have no house to keep, and they are beginning to think." "but," mrs. delancy objected, much discomposed by this tirade against matrimony as she knew it, "you're upsetting all the holy things. to look up to your husband--that's love." "that's lonesomeness and a crick in the neck!" was the flippant denial. "my woman would stand where her brains entitle her to stand, beside her husband, looking into his eyes, working for him, working with him, being together with him straight through everything. that's love; that's real marriage!" "cicily," mrs. delancy protested, totally bemused by her niece's fiery eloquence, "i think you're wrong, but i--i feel that you're right." "deep down in your heart, dear," the young woman asserted with profound conviction, "you know that i'm right, because you're a real woman. the men don't know it--poor things!--but the ruling passion of a woman's life is usefulness. and isn't it much nicer to work for a husband whom you love than for the heathen?" before her aunt could frame an adequate answer to this very pertinent inquiry, cicily sprung up, with the graceful animation that was usual with her. "and, now, i must hurry home," she announced, "to receive mrs. mcmahon and mrs. schmidt and sadie ferguson, who are coming to call." "merciful providence!" mrs. delancy ejaculated, in genuine horror. "you don't mean to tell me that those women come to your house now?" "oh, yes," was the nonchalant assent. "why shouldn't they? you know, we're friends again now. i've organized them into a club." "well, i do not think it's at all proper," the old lady said, with severe decisiveness. but cicily only laughed under the reproof, bestowed a hasty kiss on her aunt's cheek, and swept buoyantly from the room. chapter xiv when mrs. mcmahon, mrs. schmidt and miss ferguson were ushered into the drawing-room of the hamilton house, cicily was there, ready to welcome her guests warmly. "and how is madam president of our club?" she said with a delightful assumption of deference to mrs. mcmahon, who bridled and simpered in proud happiness over this recognition of the honor she enjoyed. "indeed, she's as proud as a peacock, that she is," she avowed candidly. "and, if you noticed, mrs. hamilton, i didn't so much as say how do you do to the man at the door, as i always have before, nor even so much as look at him.... for such is the high-society way of it, they're after telling me." cicily smiled, and then addressed sadie with a like cordiality. "everything is shipshape, miss secretary?" she inquired. "this club could go ten rounds without turning a hair," was the spirited reply. then, the ambitious girl recalled her most esteemed author, and paraphrased her statement: "i mean, every thing is really quite splendid." mrs. schmidt, too, smiled in appreciation, although without committing herself to words, when she was addressed as madam vice-president. then, after all were seated, the irishwoman delivered herself of a message of gratitude. "mrs. hamilton," she said, and her great, round face was very kindly, "we want to thank you here and now for that last cheque. you'll be glad to know that murphy's babies are fine and dandy; and those dagos--you know, the ones in the sixth floor front in sadie's house--faith, the wife come home from the hospital last night looking just grand." "and say, mrs. hamilton," sadie interrupted enthusiastically, again forgetful of niceties in diction by reason of her excess of feeling, "maybe you ain't in strong with that bunch! they were all singing and praying for you all last night to beat the band. they made so much fuss pop had to go up with a club, and threaten to bust some heads in before anybody could get to sleep in the house. of course, father didn't understand. he heard them say something about hamilton, and guessed they might be some sort of poor connection of the boss." cicily, pleased by this information as to the gratitude of those whom she had sought to serve, yet tried to change the subject for modesty's sake. "you, mrs. mcmahon," she directed briskly, "must be in charge. you must let me know about the sick ones and the hungry ones, and then i'll see what can be done." "'deed, and i will that," was the eager response. then, the irishwoman shook her huge head admiringly. "sure, when the women get the votes, you'll be elected alderman from the ward." but, as cicily would have laughingly protested against this arrant flattery, a sudden thought came to the president of the new club, and she spoke with an increase of seriousness: "and, oh, i was forgetting one thing! what do you think now, mrs. hamilton? carrington's men have been around!" in answer to her hostess's look of bewildered inquiry, she explained the significance of the fact: "yes, carrington--bad luck to him!--is getting ready to start another factory, they say; and, so, he wanted to see how many of the boys he could get." cicily uttered an exclamation of astonishment, mingled with alarm, at the news. "yes, ma'am. i was talking to mike mcmahon, and telling him that, after all, i thought mr. hamilton was on the level, and that it would be a good thing to take the cut for a little while. and, then, he got mad, and he blurted out the whole thing to me. it's tim doolin, him what used to work in the hamilton factory, and was discharged, and so went over to carrington's. he's come around as a sounder. he's been advancing the boys a little on the side, and promising them good jobs and steady wages, if they'll hold out until carrington is ready to use them at his place." the amazon, who had raced through her narrative, paused, panting for breath. cicily was tense in her chair, with her cheeks flaming indignation, her golden eyes darkened with excitement. "so," she exclaimed fiercely, "that's the way they are fighting! shameful!" cicily was in the throes of a righteous wrath. unaccustomed to the sharp practices that are endured almost without rebuke in the world of business affairs, this revelation of trickery on the part of her husband's enemies filled her with a disgusted horror. there was in the girl-wife a strong quality of the protecting maternal love in her attitude toward her husband. it was in obedience to its impelling force that she had followed so steadfastly her ambition to help him in his business, to be his partner. it was the dominance of this feeling that had caused her to stay on in her husband's house to comfort him, and if possible to save him, in the time of his tribulation. so, now, this phase of character caused her to resent as something unspeakably vile the machinations just revealed to her. there and then, she uttered a silent vow to worst these sinister foes by fair means or by foul. her will commanded their undoing, no matter how unscrupulous the method; and conscience voiced no protest. a movement of expectancy among the three visitors aroused cicily from the fit of abstraction into which she had fallen, and on which the others had not ventured to obtrude themselves. she looked up, and then, following the direction of her guests' gaze, turned to see her husband, standing motionless just within the doorway of the drawing-room. he was staring with obvious amazement at the trio of women in his wife's company. moreover, it was easy to judge from the expression on his face, with the brows drawn and the mouth set sternly, that his amazement was not builded on pleasure.... cicily immediately rose, forgetful for the moment of her plans for vengeance against the plotters, and went forward with a pleased smile. she was well aware that her husband would not regard this visitation with equanimity, but she hoped to prevent any overt act on his part that might fatally antagonize these women, whose good will she had struggled so hard to regain for his sake. so, she faced him with an air of happy self-confidence, and spoke with the most musical cadences of her voice, the while the caress of her eyes sought to beguile the frown from his face. "charles, you know mrs. mcmahon, and mrs. schmidt, and miss ferguson." "yes, i know them," came the uncompromising answer. the grimness of his face did not relax. he had had a day of tedious worries, and the sight of the women here in his own home exasperated him almost beyond the point of endurance. "an unexpected pleasure!" he added, with an inflection that was unmistakable. "oh, we didn't come to see you, mr. hamilton," sadie declared resentfully, in answer to that inflection. "we came to see your wife." "these are the officers of our new woman's club," cicily interposed, hastily. "do sit down for a moment, charles." she returned to her own chair; but hamilton made no movement to obey her request. instead, he addressed the visitors in a tone even more unpleasant than that which he had used hitherto. "oh, you came to get something from mrs. hamilton," he sneered. "indeed, and we did not!" the irishwoman retorted roughly, furious at the insinuation. but her anger melted as she caught cicily's pleading eyes. there was a grateful softness in the brogue as she added: "sure, she's given too much already, and that's the truth." there was no hint of relaxing in the tense severity of hamilton's face, as he replied, without a glance toward his wife: "so, mrs. hamilton has been helping the wives of the men?" "'tis that same she's been doing--the saints preserve her!" mrs. mcmahon answered, with pious fervor. "faith, if the women could vote, it's president they'd make her, so it is." cicily could not resist a temptation to appeal. "charles," she urged, "if only you'll have a little patience, you'll find that they can be of service--of great service!" still, hamilton ignored his wife utterly, while he addressed the three women impersonally. "i did not know that the men were in the habit of using their wives in a strike like this." his manner was designedly offensive. again, it was sadie who was first to retort, which she did with a manner that aped his own insolence. "well, if mrs. hamilton can butt into it, it's a cinch we can!" the man's face darkened with wrath. his voice, when he spoke, sounded dangerously low and controlled. "mrs. hamilton has nothing whatever to do with my business affairs," he declared, explicitly. "she has nothing whatever to do with this strike. if you women come from the men, go back and tell them that i'm not dealing with women--neither now nor in the future. if they want anything at any time, let them come for it themselves." "can you beat it?" sadie demanded wonderingly, of the universe at large. but the irishwoman took it on herself to answer, with an explicitness equal to hamilton's own: "faith, and we didn't come to see you, as you know very well, i'm thinking. if it wasn't for mrs. hamilton--god bless her--we wouldn't be here at all.... and 'tis sorry i am we are." "then, you'd better go, and relieve your feelings," was the tart rejoinder. "and you will please remember one thing: mrs. hamilton has absolutely no influence of any kind in this strike. i do not know in the least what she may have been doing; but, whatever it is, it's entirely apart from me." "charles, please--" cicily would have protested. it seemed to her a vicious violation of good taste thus to air their marital disagreements in the presence of others. there was a perilous fire in the golden eyes; but hamilton had no heed just now for niceties of conduct. he went on speaking, ruthlessly breaking in on his wife's attempted plea: "whatever mrs. hamilton has accomplished has been done without my consent and with her own money--entirely apart from me.... good-day!" now, at last, hamilton moved from the position he had steadily maintained before the doorway. he stepped to one side, and bowed formally to the three women, who rose promptly as they realized the significance of his action. cicily, too, stood up, wordless in her suffering. for the moment, at least, her indomitable spirit was overwhelmed by this crowning misfortune, and she felt all her ambition hopelessly baffled. through this last catastrophe, her benevolent scheming must be brought to nought. it was impossible for her to believe that these women, on whose support she had relied for so much that was vital to her plans, could remain loyal to her after the gross insult to which they had been subjected in her own house. she realized that, deprived of their aid, she could not hope to cope with the situation that threatened ruin to the man whom she loved. in that instant of disaster, she hated her husband as much as she loved him, for his folly had destroyed all the structure of safety that her devotion had builded. so, she stood silent, watching the discarded guests as they walked toward the door. her slender form was drawn to its full height; the scarlet lips were set tensely; the clear gold of her eyes burned with the fires of bitter resentment against this man whose blundering had wrought calamity. chapter xv even as the three outraged women moved forward slowly toward the door with that slowness which their dignity demanded of them under the circumstances, there came an interruption. a servant appeared in the doorway, and then stood aside to usher in three newcomers. these were no others than mr. mcmahon, mr. schmidt and mr. ferguson, who halted in astonishment on the threshold, at beholding their wives thus unexpectedly bearing down on them in the house of the enemy. in their turn, the women came to an abrupt standstill, regarding the men with round eyes. for a few seconds, the six remained thus facing one another, too dumfounded by the encounter for speech. then, presently, the german uttered a guttural ejaculation in his own tongue, which seemed to relieve the general paralysis. "caught with the goods!" ferguson exclaimed sardonically, with a scowl of rebuke directed toward his daughter. at the same moment, mcmahon fairly shouted an indignant question at his wife as to her presence in this house. but that amazonian female did not shrivel before the blistering growl of her husband. "sure, i'll trouble you, mike mcmahon," she declared fiercely, "if it's endearing terms you're about to use, to wait till we get home." under the spell of this admonition, the irishman contented himself with subterranean mutterings, to which his wife discreetly paid no attention. "but what's it all about?" ferguson inquired sharply, of his daughter. "ah, forget it!" came the unfilial retort. then, recalling the vere de vere, she amended her statement: "i mean, father dear, do not make a scene, i beg of you." "a scene!" ferguson exclaimed, savagely. "why, i'll--" what the irate yankee might have done was never revealed, for he was interrupted by cicily, who had now recovered her poise, so that she spoke pleasantly, favoring the tumultuous parent with her sweetest smile. "sadie and the other ladies came to call on me, mr. ferguson," she exclaimed, well aware that this announcement left the mystery of the women's presence as it had been before. mrs. mcmahon, however, shed a ray of light on the puzzle. "faith, and 'tis that," she agreed, glibly. "we just dropped in for a cup of tea with a member of our club." it was hamilton who now interrupted further questions by the three husbands. he had been nervously fidgeting where he stood, and at last his impatience found vent in words. "i'm not interested in these domestic affairs," he snapped. "if you men have anything to say to your wives and daughters, take them home, and say it to them there. this is not the place for it. there's only one thing that i have time to listen to from you." schmidt waddled forward a pace beyond his fellows, and addressed his former employer with the dignity born of constituted authority. "well, mr. hamilton," he said ponderously, with his accent more pronounced than usual by reason of the emotion under which he labored, "i speak as the chairman of the committee. so, sir, you will listen to us right here and now." he paused for a moment to wipe the perspiration from his forehead with an adequately huge handkerchief. ferguson seized on the opportunity thus given to voice the rancor that was in his heart. "yes, yes," he cried excitedly, "you want to understand that we're men! we're striking--yes! but we're fighting you in the open, like men. and we've come to tell you that we're not going to stand for the way you fight.... is that plain enough for you, mr. hamilton?" the amazement of hamilton over the charge thus brought against him was undoubtedly genuine. he stepped forward as if to strike, but checked himself almost instantly. there was no longer any look of boyishness in the drawn fare, with the chin thrust forward belligerently, the brows drawn low, the eyes blazing. "the way i fight!" he repeated challengingly, menacingly. schmidt, having restored the handkerchief to its pocket, took up the accusation. "yes," he declared, with surly spitefulness. "i have been in a dozen strikes, and this is the first time any employer ever attacked me in my affections--through my frieda." the german's narrow eyes were alight with venomous resentment, as he glowered at hamilton. astounded by this attack, hamilton forgot rage in stark bewilderment. "what on earth do you--can you--mean?" he stormed. "it is not right," was the stolid asseveration of the german. "the home is sacred." the speaker's tone was so malevolent that hamilton was impressed, in spite of himself. and then, suddenly, a suspicion upreared itself in his brain--a suspicion so monstrous, so absurd, so baseless, so extravagantly impossible, that he would have laughed aloud, but for the sincerity of the feeling manifested in the faces of the men before him. his eyes roved from schmidt to the faded woman who was the man's wife. he saw her shrinking behind the ample bulk of mrs. mcmahon, her mouth opening and closing soundlessly, as if in a wordless soliloquy. then, again, his eyes returned to the man who had just uttered the preposterous accusation, and he beheld the usually jocund face distorted by a spasm of jealous fury, the insensate fury of the male in the loathed presence of a rival. no, here was no room for laughter. however ludicrous the mistake in its essence, its fruits were too serious for mirth. he turned his gaze on mcmahon, and saw there the like virile detestation of himself. he ventured a glance toward the amazon, who loomed over-buxom and stalwart. again, he was tempted to amusement; but, again, a look toward the husband checked any inclination toward lightness of mood. finally, he regarded ferguson, and there, too, he beheld a passionate reproach. he did not trouble to stare at the girl. he remembered perfectly her cheap prettiness, her mincing manner, her flamboyant smartness of apparel from grand street emporiums of fashion. the strain of a false situation gripped him evilly, so that for the moment he faltered before it, uncertain as to his course. denial, he felt, must be almost hopeless, since how could men capable of such crude stupidity digest reason? he hesitated visibly, and in that hesitation his accusers read guilt. it was evident from a sudden, flaming red that suffused mrs. mcmahon's expansive countenance that she was beginning to grasp the purport of the accusations against hamilton. she started toward her husband with a demeanor that augured ill for peaceful conference, when she was stayed by cicily's grasp on her arm. "wait!" came the command, in a soothing voice. "let me speak to these foolish men. you'll only stir them up, and make them worse." the amazon yielded reluctantly, for she loved as well as honored the woman who had won her friendship by so much endeavor; but there was dire warning of things to come in the gaze she fixed on her suspicious husband. "i'll not listen to this foolishness any longer," cicily declared, dearly, in a cold voice that held the attention of all. "you men are too utterly absurd. there's no love lost between your wives and my husband, i assure you. if you had chanced in a few minutes earlier, you would have been well aware of the fact." her statement was corroborated by the vehement nods of the women and the glances of disdainful aversion that they cast on the master of the house at this reference as to the status of their mutual affection. "your wives and daughters," cicily concluded haughtily, with a level look at the three husbands, which was not wanting in its effect, "are my friends." but ferguson was not dismayed by the reproof. "yes, mrs. hamilton," he answered, with bitter emphasis, "you're the one--we know that! you're the cat's-paw, with your clubs and your benefits." he turned to hamilton, and went on speaking with even greater virulence. "it's through her that you're fighting; it's through her that you're attacking us in our homes; it's through her that you're turning our wives and our daughters against us until our lives are miserable with them, morning, noon and night. they're forever talking against the strike, trying to make us come back to you, and to take the cut. and it ain't fair, i tell you! no honest employer would fight that way from behind a woman's petticoats. women haven't got any place in business, according to our way of thinking. we didn't mind your wife's butting in with bath-tubs and gymnasiums and libraries, and such foolish truck as that; but, when it comes to mixing up in the strike, and organizing our wives and daughters against us, why, we kick. that's the long and the short of it, mr. hamilton. no real man would stoop to that sort of work. it's a woman's trick, that's what it is--and women have no place in business." schmidt and mcmahon, almost in unison, rumbled assent. at last, the badgered employer felt himself sure of his ground. "you're right, ferguson," he declared, with intense conviction. "women have no place in business. you don't need to argue to convince me of that fact. if you doubt my sentiments in that respect, just ask my wife--she knows what my ideas on the subject are. but i knew nothing of all this. mrs. hamilton has mixed herself up with this affair entirely without my knowledge or consent. she has nothing whatever to do with my business affairs. as for the future, you may rest assured--" "you may rest assured," cicily interpolated, "that mrs. hamilton will continue to do precisely as she pleases." "but, cicily--" hamilton would have protested. "precisely as she pleases," came the repetition, with an added emphasis, which, hamilton knew from experience, it would be useless to combat. "faith," exclaimed mcmahon, in humorous appreciation of the scene, "the filly has the bit in her teeth and is running away." cicily, however, was not to be diverted from a frank exposition of her position. now, she faced the men, and made clear her attitude: "let me tell you that mrs. hamilton is proud to be merely a member of the club which you have heard referred to and certainly she is not going to resign her membership in it. you men have your union. there's no reason why we women should not have our club as well. you say that i've been helping them. very well, what of it? yes, i have been helping them. why shouldn't the women take money from me, i'd like to know. for that matter, it's nothing like what you men have been doing--taking money from carrington and morton.... and you talk about fighting fair!" at the final statement made by his wife, hamilton whirled on the men. "what's that?" he fairly barked. "are morton and carrington supplying you fellows with money to prolong the strike?" "yes," cicily replied, as the men maintained a sullen silence. "and these men of yours have been listening to their lying promises about starting a new factory, as soon as you are down and out for keeps." she eyed the men scornfully, as she continued: "haven't you the sense to see that it's merely a plan to ruin mr. hamilton completely? they want to kill him off for good and all. then, when he's out of the way, you'll have to work for any sort of wages they are willing to give you. good gracious, the scheme is plain enough! why can't you see it as it is--a plot to do him up through you? a woman can see the inside of it easily enough!" but her sensible argument was wasted on the men, who already had their opinions formed, and were not likely to change them readily at a word. "women have no place in business," schmidt reiterated, heavily. "we have proved that. now, mr. hamilton, you just keep your wife to yourself. we don't want her meddling around in our concerns. and we'll keep our wives to ourselves. they don't want you!" he added significantly; and mcmahon and ferguson endorsed the sentiment by vigorous nods of assent. "so," the german concluded, "we will settle this strike ourselves, like men, without any more woman's interference. am i right?" "that's exactly what i want you to do," hamilton replied. "and any time you want to come back with the cut, let me know." "i hope you won't hold your breath while you're waiting," the irishman advised grimly. "and i hope you won't be hungry," hamilton retorted. with this exchange of civilities, the meeting between the men and their former employer came to an abrupt end. without any further farewells than a series of curt nods, the men filed from the room. "i'm thinking that it's a pleasant talk we'll be having together, this night," mrs. mcmahon remarked judicially, after the departure of the committee. "so, it's thinking i am that we'd better start early, and then we'll have time a plenty to thrash it out with the boys. good-by, mrs. hamilton.... and please to remember that the next meeting of the club is to be on the thursday." "i'll surely be there," cicily promised. the adieux were quickly spoken, and the women took their departure, leaving husband and wife alone together, standing silently. chapter xvi hamilton stirred presently, turned, and threw himself heavily into the nearest chair, whence he stared curiously at his wife with morose eyes of resentment. cicily felt the scrutiny, but she did not lift her gaze to his. she was not shirking the conflict between them, which seemed inevitable after this last episode; but she was minded to let her husband begin the attack. in her turn, she sought a chair, into which she sank gracefully, and rested in a pose of languid indifference that was fascinating in itself, but at this moment for some inexplicable reason peculiarly aggravating to the man. it may be that her apparent ease at a critical period in their fortunes appealed to him as hatefully incongruous; it may be that the gracious femininity of her, her desirability as a woman, thus revealed by the lissome lassitude of her body, emphasized the fact that she was a creature created for joy and dalliance, not for the rasping stratagems of the market-place. whatever the cause, it is certain that the lazy abandon of her posture irritated him, and it was with an attempt to veil his chagrin that at last he spoke: "well," he exclaimed petulantly, "some more of your work, i see!" cicily, however, disguised the fact that she winced under the contempt in his tone. "yes," she answered eagerly. "now, don't you see that i was right?" the device did not suffice to divert hamilton from his purpose of rebuke. "so," he went on, speaking roughly, "not content with forgetting your duty, not satisfied with your dreary failure as a wife, you've turned traitor, too." "you seem to forget that it was yourself who failed in your duty--not i," cicily retorted. "is that trumped up, farcical idea, your excuse for fighting me?" "i'm not making any excuses," cicily replied, stiffly. "and for the simple and very sufficient reason that i am not fighting you." "then, what under heaven do you call it?" hamilton demanded, with a sneer. "is it by any chance saving me?" [illustration] "yes, i'd do that," came the courageous statement, "if only you'd let me." "and your manner of doing it," hamilton went on, still in a tone of sneering contempt, "i suppose would be by going on the way you have been going--giving money to my enemies, and so prolonging the strike, and so ruining me!" "i do believe you are blind!" cicily declared, angrily. she changed her pose to one of erect alertness, and her eyes flashed fire at her husband. "is it possible that you don't appreciate why i gave those women money--why i helped them? why, i wouldn't be a woman, if i didn't. as i've told you before, i was a woman before i became a wife. if keeping other women and little children from going hungry isn't wifely, isn't businesslike, then thank god i'm not wifely, not businesslike!" "well, you're not, all right," hamilton announced succinctly. "i'm glad that you're satisfied with yourself--nobody else is." "oh, i know what you want," was the contemptuous answer. "you want the conventional, old-time wife, the sort that is always standing ready and waiting to swear that her husband is right, even when her instinct, her brain, her heart, all cry out to her that he is wrong. well, charles, i am not that sort of wife, nor ever will be. the real root of the trouble is that we women are changing, developing, while you men are not: you are the same. we, as a sex, are growing up, at last; your sex is standing still. the ideas our grandmothers held, the lives they led, would kill us of dry rot. but you men are just where your grandfathers were in relation to your homes and your beliefs as to the duty of your wives. of course, your old-time wife looked up to her over-lord with reverence; she hung on his every word with profound respect; she swore by his every careless opinion, without ever daring to call her soul or her mind her own. for that matter, why shouldn't she have done so? he was educated, after some sort of fashion at least; and he went abroad into the world, where he mixed with his fellows, where he did things, good or bad; while she, poor, pretty, ignorant doll, snatched up by him in early girlhood, and afterward kept sequestered, forced to assume the tragic responsibilities of a wife and mother before she was old enough to appreciate her difficult position--what chance did she have? now, to-day, i tell you, it is all different. we're as well educated as you men--better, oftentimes. we have discovered that we can think intelligently; we do think. we, too, go abroad into the world; we, too, do things. best of all, we see with a new, clearer vision. and we see certain things that you men have become blinded to through centuries of usage, of selfish, careless struggling for your own ends. we are able to see with the distinctness of truth the right relation of the man and the woman--an equal relation, with equal rights for each, with equal claims on each other, with equal duties to each other in the home and in the world outside the home--partners, held together by love." "my dear," hamilton remarked dryly, as his wife paused, "you have omitted one salient qualification of the modern woman: she is, preëminently an orator. why, you, yourself, are a feminine demosthenes--nothing less." but he abandoned, his tone of raillery, as he continued: "and so, what you've been doing--that's your idea of partnership, is it?" "yes," cicily declared, spiritedly. "when one partner makes a mistake, it's the duty of the other to set things straight." "by ruining him!" the husband ejaculated, in savage distrust. "have i ruined you?" there was a flame of indignation in the amber eyes, and the curving lips were turned scornfully; but there was a restrained timbre of triumph in the music of her voice. "no! why, let me tell you something: those women are for you, already. they are helping me against their husbands. you'll win in the end--in spite of all the damage you tried to do to-day with your colossal blundering. but they're loyal to me, and they'll forgive you for my sake, and they'll give you the victory in the fight.... just wait and see!" "nonsense!" hamilton mocked. he considered his wife's assertions as merely the maunderings of an extravagant enthusiast. she was sincere--more the pity!--but she knew absolutely nothing of the problems with which she insisted on entangling herself so futilely. "i promise you," cicily persisted, undismayed by her husband's jeering attitude of scepticism, "that you will win in the end. yes, you will; because it is right: that you should. i am doing my part, not only to help you; but, too, because it is right. we owe a duty not only to ourselves, but to those people as well.... even you must see that!" "well, i don't," hamilton maintained, consistently. but he winced involuntarily under the expression of pity for his ignorance that now showed in his wife's face. "well, it only serves to illustrate what i said," cicily went on, with a complacency that annoyed the man almost beyond endurance. "the woman has the clearer visions nowadays. that's where we differ from our dear departed grandmothers, from our mothers even. they had a personal conscience that stopped short at the front and back doors of the home. we women of to-day have a bigger conscience, which takes in the bigger family. it's a social conscience, and that it is which makes us different from those women of the earlier generations. don't you see, charles, that you and i are really a sort of big brother and sister to those in our employ? so, let us help them, even if we have to do it against their own mistaken efforts of resistance." "of course," hamilton suggested, still sneeringly, "morton and carrington, too, are our dear brothers." for an instant, cicily was nonplused by the question; but, of a sudden, she received one of those inspirations on which she usually relied for escape from a predicament. "oh, yes, indeed," she replied happily, and beamed radiantly on her astonished husband, in anticipatory enjoyment of her repartee. "they're our bad brothers, whom we must spank--hard!" "if there's any spanking to be done, i'll attend to it, myself," hamilton declared, gruffly. "oh, very well," cicily agreed. "but you don't seem to be doing it effectively at present.... tell me, why are they paying the men to stay on strike?" "it must be that they recognize the brotherhood claim of which you were speaking so eloquently." the man's voice was vibrant with sarcastic indignation. "now, see here, charles," cicily remonstrated, the flush in her cheeks deepening under the rebuff in his flippant answer. "you know why they're doing it just as well as i do. it's simply because they want to keep you closed down, so that they can go on charging the independents twenty-two cents a box." "no," the husband declared, enticed despite his will into discussing business for a moment with his wife, "they could charge them that anyhow. i couldn't interfere, because they have me tied up with a contract at eleven cents." "then, if i were you," cicily argued with new animation, "i'd break that contract. yes, i'd open up right away, pay full wages, and sell to the independents at fifteen cents a box. they'd come to you fast enough." "break a contract with a trust!" hamilton jeered. he laughed aloud over the folly of this idea as a means of escape from disaster. "what are contracts when the men are starving?" the question came with an earnestness that did more credit to the heart than to the head of the wife. "if that isn't like a woman!" the man's tone was surcharged with disgust. "cicily, i've had enough of this." "then, you won't fight?" an energetic shake of the head was the answer. "you won't help the men?" again, the gesture of refusal. "you won't make any move at all?" a third time, the man silently denied her plea. "then, i will!" cicily concluded, defiantly. she leaned back in her chair, clasped her slender hands behind her head, and stared ceilingward, with the air of one who has pleasantly solved all the perplexities of life. "good heavens, what do you mean to do next?" hamilton questioned, in frank alarm. "never mind: you'll see," came the nonchalant answer. the contented air of the woman, coupled with her tone of assurance as she spoke, goaded the man to an assertion of authority. "i demand that, as long as you're in my house--" he was interrupted by the cold voice of his wife. she did not turn her eyes from their dreamy contemplation of the ceiling, nor did she alter in any way the languor of her posture, the indifference of her manner. but, somehow, the quality in her voice was insistent, and the gentle, musical tone broke on his delivery with a subtle force sufficient to halt it against his will. "you can't demand," cicily said, evenly. "we stopped that relationship three weeks ago." "it is true," hamilton answered, more quietly, "that you've refused to live with me as my wife. but, if you are to remain in my house, i must insist that you keep out of meddling with my business affairs. otherwise, i shall be forced--" again, the softly spoken words from his wife's lips held a spell that checked his own, and compelled him to listen grudgingly. "you cannot force me, charles--for the simple reason that i won't leave. no, indeed! i am quite certain that when you think things over in a saner mood, you will be convinced of the fact that just at this time it would be highly inadvisable for you to complicate your affairs further by a public scandal. so, i tell you that i sha'n't go. i shall stay here until you are out of this mess. since i feel that to be my duty, i shall do it!" "oh, lord, if you were a man--!" hamilton choked helplessly. "if i were a man," was the placid conclusion offered by cicily, "i suppose i'd sit still, and do nothing, like you. but i'm not a man, thank heaven!... the only pity is, you won't take my perfectly good advice." "your advice--oh, the devil!" hamilton sprang from his chair. his face was distraught, as he stood for a moment staring in baffled anger at his wife, who still held her eyes meditatively content on the ceiling. he clenched his hands fiercely, and shook them in impotent fury. "your advice!" he repeated, in a voice that was nigh moaning. then, he whirled about, and strode from the room, trampling heavily. cicily listened until she heard the door of the library slam noisily. in the interval, she retained her attitude of consummate ease. but, with the sound of the closing door, she was suddenly metamorphosed. her eyes drooped wearily. she cowered within the chair as one stricken with a vertigo. the slender hands unclasped from behind her head, and shut themselves over her face. her form was bowed together, and shaken violently. there came the sound of muffled sobs. chapter xvii in the days that followed, cicily found herself on the very verge of despair. she had pinned the hope of success for her husband on a restored influence with the wives of the leaders in the strike. she had felt confident that, with them fighting in her behalf, she would achieve victory. she had not doubted that these women could mold the men to their will. now, however, she had, to a great extent, lost faith in the efficacy of this method. she had seen and heard those husbands defy their womankind openly. they, too, were obstinate in their belief that women should not obtrude into business affairs. she realized that she was combating one of the most tangible and potent factors in human affairs, the pride of the male in his dominion over the female--an hereditary endowment, a thing of natural instinct, the last and most resistant to yield before the presentations of reason. the resolute fashion in which her husband held to his prerogative of sole control was merely typical. these other men of a humbler class were like unto him. evidently, then, she must contrive some other strategy, if she would save her husband from the pit he had digged for himself by yielding to the specious processes of morton and carrington. yet, she could imagine no scheme that offered any promise of success.... she grew thinner, so that her loveliness took on an ethereal quality. her nights were well nigh sleepless; her days became long hours of harrowing anxiety. she was sitting in her boudoir late one afternoon, still revolving the round of failure in her plans. she had dressed to go out; but, at the last moment, a wave of discouragement had swept over her, and she had sunk down on a couch, moodily feeling that any exertion whatsoever were a thing altogether useless. she was disturbed from her morbid reflections by the entrance of a servant, who announced the presence of mr. morton and mr. carrington in the drawing-room, who had called to see mr. hamilton. in sheer desperation, with no precise idea as to her course, cicily resolved to interview these callers, since her husband had not yet returned home. so, she bade the servant inform the gentlemen that mr. hamilton was expected to return very soon, and that in the meantime she would be glad to give them a cup of tea. as soon as the servant had left the room, she regarded herself minutely in the mirror, made some adjustments to the masses of her golden brown hair, pinched her pale checks until roses grew in them, observed that her skirt hung properly, and then descended to the drawing-room, which she entered with an air of smiling hospitality, of luminous loveliness, of radiant youthfulness, calculated to beguile the sternest of men from their habitual discretion. the two gentlemen rose to greet her with every indication of pleasure. as a matter of fact, they enjoyed the charm that radiated from the beautiful young woman, but, in addition, they rejoiced in this opportunity to gather from her carelessness some information that the reserve of her husband would certainly have withheld. it was with deliberate suggestion that morton addressed her heartily as "mrs. partner," having in mind a former interview, in which she had so declared herself. but it was carrington who, after the three were seated, and while waiting for the tea-equipage, ventured to introduce the topic of his desires directly by asking how business was. "oh, business is booming!" cicily answered, with such a manner of enthusiasm that it hoodwinked her hearers completely. they uttered ejaculations of surprise involuntarily, but managed to refrain from any more open expressions of wonder. "oh, yes, indeed!" cicily continued, following blindly an instinct of prevarication that had been suddenly born within her brain. "isn't it splendid? we just ended our strike to-day." she stared intently at carrington with sparkling eyes. it filled her with secret delight to witness the expression of consternation on that gentleman's face; and she could not resist the temptation to add maliciously, although she veiled her voice: "i know that you're glad for us, mr. carrington. i can just tell it by looking at you." "er--oh--yes, of course," carrington stammered hastily, the while he attempted a wry smile. he pulled his handkerchief from a pocket, and wiped his forehead. "yes, indeed; we're both delighted," morton added quickly, to cover the too evident confusion of his associate. "ah," cicily went on gloatingly, turning the iron in the wound relentlessly, "it does surely make you feel good when you win a strike, doesn't it? next to an easter hat, i think the winning of a strike is the grandest sensation!" "so, you really won?" morton inquired, half-suspiciously. "oh, yes!" cicily assured him, with an inflection of absolute sincerity. then, abruptly, the expression of her face changed to one of alarm, mingled with cajolery. "but, please, mr. morton," she pleaded, "you won't say anything about it, will you? charles doesn't wish to have it announced just yet, for some reason or another." "no, certainly not, mrs. hamilton," morton assured her. "we won't tell of it." "thank you so much!" was the grateful response; and cicily fairly dazzled the puzzled gentlemen by the brilliancy of her smile. "you know," she continued mournfully, "charles did scold me so after you were here that other time when i talked to you. he scolded me really frightfully for talking so much.... it didn't do a bit of good my telling him that i didn't say a thing. but i didn't, did i?" she asked the question with the ingenuous air of an innocent child, which imposed on the two men completely. "indeed, you didn't!" morton declared with much heartiness, as he darted a monitory glance toward carrington. "why, for a business woman, i thought you a very model of discretion, mrs. hamilton. and so did carrington--eh, carrington?" "exactly!" carrington agreed under this urging of his master. "if all women in business were like mrs. hamilton here, business would not be so difficult." cicily felt the sneer in the words, but she deemed it the part of prudence to conceal any resentment. on the contrary, she assumed a hypocritical air of triumph. "good! i'll tell that to charles," she declared, joyously. "you know he's such a horribly suspicious person that he doesn't trust anyone." once again, she turned to morton with an alluring smile. "of course, he ought to be very glad, indeed, to trust you, his father's oldest friend." "i hope that you told him that," morton replied primly, albeit he was hard put to it to prevent himself from chuckling aloud over the naïveté of this indiscreet young woman. cicily maintained her mask of guilelessness. "yes, indeed, i did!... he said that was why he didn't trust you." morton saw fit to change the rather delicate subject. "it must be a matter of great satisfaction that you have at last won this strike," he remarked, somewhat inanely. "of course, it is," cicily agreed, with a renewal of her former enthusiasm. "oh, i'm so glad, because now we can pay our men their old wages! that's how we won the strike, you know," she went on, with a manner of simplicity that was admirably feigned; "just by giving in to them. all we had to do was to give them what they wanted, and everything was all settled right away." "ahem!" morton cleared his throat to disguise the laugh that would come. "yes. i've known a good many strikes that were won in that same way." carrington, who had been ruminating with a puzzled face, now voiced his difficulty. "to save my life," he exclaimed to morton, "i don't see how hamilton can pay the old wages, and deliver boxes at eleven cents. i couldn't do it!" "why, you see, that's just it," cicily declared blithely, still following her inspiration with blind faith. "we're not going to deliver boxes at eleven cents." at this amazing statement, the two men first regarded their hostess in sheer astonishment, then stared at each other as if in search of a clue to the mystery in her words. the entrance of a maid with the tea-tray afforded a brief diversion, as cicily rose and seated herself at the table, where she busied herself in preparing the three cups. when this was accomplished, and the guests had received each his portion, carrington at once reverted to the announcement that had so bewildered him. "you say, you're not going to deliver boxes for eleven cents?" he said, tentatively. "no," cicily replied earnestly, without the slightest hesitation; "we're going to sell to the independents at fifteen. we've gone in with them, now." she felt a grim secret delight as she observed the unmistakable confusion with which her news was received by the two men before her. "you say you've gone in with the independents?" carrington repeated, helplessly. his mouth hung open in indication of the turmoil in his wits as he waited for her reply. "yes, that's it!" cicily reiterated, with an inflection of surpassing gladness over the event. "oh, it does make me so happy, because now, you see, we can all be genuinely friendly together. we're not competitors any more." but now, at last, morton's temper overcame his caution. he turned to carrington with a frown that made his satellite quake; but the fierceness of it was not for that miserable victim of his machinations: it was undoubtedly for hamilton, who, according to the wife's revelations, dared pit himself against the trust by violating his contracts with it. "we'll see meyers about this," morton declared, savagely. "so, he'd go in with the independents, would he? well, let him try it on--that's all!" cicily stared from one to the other of the two men, with her golden eyes wide and frightened. "oh," she stammered nervously, "did i--have i said anything?... oh, my goodness, charles will be so angry!" she maintained her attitude and expression of acute distress, while the two men rose, and, very rudely, without a word of excuse to their hostess, moved to the far end of the drawing-room, where they were out of earshot. but, on the instant when their backs were turned, the volatile young wife cast off her mock anxiety, and, in the very best of spirits, wrinkled her nose saucily at the disturbed twain.... and, as long as they conferred together, with no eyes for her, she sat alertly erect, smiling to herself, as one highly gratified by the course of events. "now, if only charles doesn't spoil things again!" she murmured. chapter xviii morton and carrington were just finishing their low-toned, but very animated, conference at the end of the drawing-room, when their attention, together with that of cicily, was attracted by a noise at the door. all three looked up, to see hamilton striding into the room. behind him came delancy. at a gesture of warning from his wife, hamilton faced about, and saw his two business foes. "well, well, i didn't know that you were here," he exclaimed, with a fair showing of cordiality, as he advanced, and shook hands with the visitors. delancy contented himself with bowing to each in turn, then went to cicily, and asked for a cup of tea. during the few moments spent in offering this hospitality, cicily whispered rapidly to the old gentleman, who appeared mightily startled at her words. "mrs. hamilton has been entertaining us again," morton remarked, in an acid tone, to his host. "really, she has been rather more interesting than she was before." at this statement, hamilton shifted uneasily. he turned an indignant stare on his wife, wondering dismally what new imbroglio had been precipitated by her lack of restraint. "oh, you needn't look at me in that fashion," cicily objected, with a pout. "i didn't say anything this time, either. i only told them about our winning the strike, and--" "what!" hamilton brought out the word like a pistol-shot. "surely, you couldn't mind my telling them that," cicily said, in a voice suspiciously demure. "and that's all i told them, except--" "except what?" hamilton fairly shouted. "why, except about the contracts to do the work for the independents at fifteen cents--that's all." "you--you told them that!" the astounded husband gasped. he whirled toward morton. "why, it isn't so, mr. morton--not a word of it! you must realize that it isn't--that it couldn't be so." morton, however, was not convinced by the earnestness of the young man's repudiation. instead, he looked his host up and down with a sneering scrutiny that was infinitely galling. [illustration] "i see," he said harshly, "that you're just like your father before you. he could always manage to contrive some way by which to accomplish his ends, without being over-troubled with scruples. only, he would never have confided his business secrets to a woman." hamilton turned reproachful eyes on his wife. "cicily," he cried entreatingly, "i want you to tell mr. morton--" but that resourceful woman interrupted him. her face showed a shocked amazement, as she spoke swiftly: "charles, do you mean that you want me to--?" she did not finish the sentence; but the inference was so plain that morton did not hesitate to make use of it. "trying to make your wife lie for you won't do any good, hamilton," he advised, disagreeably. but, if hamilton had been perplexed before, he was now suddenly dazed by the inexplicable conduct of delancy, who advanced nimbly from the tea-table, caught hamilton by the arm, and drew him apart a little. he spoke hurriedly, in a low voice, but intentionally pitched so that morton could overhear. "it's no good, my boy," he declared, warningly. "you see, the fact of the matter is, you're caught--caught with the goods on, as the police say. and, when you're caught with the goods, don't waste time in lying. it makes a bad business worse, that's all." having uttered these extraordinary words of advice to his marveling nephew, the old gentleman turned jauntily on the seething morton. "well, what are you going to do about it?" he demanded, composedly. morton, frantic over the trickery that, as he believed, had been attempted against him, made no pretense of suavity in this emergency. in his vindictiveness, he spoke with a candor unusual to him in his business dealings. "do?" he rasped. "i'll show you mighty quick what i'll do! you seem to forget, hamilton, that we have a contract with you. you are under agreement with us to put all your work out for us at eleven cents a box." hamilton would have entered a violent protest against any purpose of evading his obligations; but delancy silenced the young man by an imperative gesture, and took it on himself to reply, bearing in mind the whispered directions of his niece. he addressed morton in a condescending fashion that was unspeakably annoying to that important personage. "i never heard of any such contract," he declared blandly, "and i have a bit of money invested in the plant, too.... has he one, charles?" "he has a verbal one," hamilton answered, more and more bewildered by the progress of affairs. "he wouldn't give a written one." "huh! a verbal agreement!" delancy sniffed. "well, morton, may i ask how you are going to work to prove this verbal agreement?" "we'll show that he did the work at that price," was the aggressive answer. "that will suffice." "very good," delancy said, judicially. "only, morton, i venture to predict that you can't prove your verbal contract--not by any manner of means.... who was with you at the time when that verbal agreement was made between you and hamilton, as you allege?" carrington, who had been almost as greatly puzzled over the course of affairs as was hamilton, now perceived something that was definitely within his own knowledge. "mr. morton and i were together," he vouchsafed. "and, so, you met the two hamilton partners?" delancy queried. both morton and carrington denied that the wife had been present at the interview. "i have an idea," delancy continued imperturbably, "that mrs. hamilton here would be quite willing to go on the stand and swear that she was present at the interview with her husband, to which you have referred. from something she has let drop to me, i have a very strong impression to this effect." there was a whimsicality in the old gentleman's tone that none save his niece marked. "but i tell you," carrington vociferated, "she wasn't there!" "i hardly see what that has to do with it," cicily interpolated languidly, from her place at the tea-table. "i remember it all quite perfectly." there was a smothered ejaculation from morton, which sounded almost profane; carrington's eyes were widely rounded as he stared at his hostess. "yes," she went on, her musical voice gently casual in its modulations, "i remember it so well, because it was the day after--after--oh, well, after something or other! i shall remember what presently. and i wore--" "never mind all that," delancy interrupted. "it doesn't matter what you wore, or whether you wore anything, or not." "uncle jim," cicily cried, horrified. on this occasion, the emotion in her voice was wholly genuine. but delancy was in a combative mood, and eager to get on with the fight toward which he had been guided involuntarily by the whispered instructions of his niece. "morton," he inquired briskly, "have you read those recent decisions of bischoff's on unfair contracts?" then, as the other shook his head in sullen negation, the old gentleman went on complacently: "well, i have--every word! incidentally, the last one was against myself, so, naturally, i took a rather keen interest. especially, as the court of appeals has just sustained it.... it happens, therefore, that i know what i'm talking about." "if it's fight you want, you'll get it--more than you want, i fancy," morton growled. "we'll put the price down to nine cents, and break you." "you might as well put your price down to eight cents, while you're about it," delancy retorted, with a chuckle. "you see, your price won't really matter a particle to us, since we have a fair--notice, please, that i said fair--contract at fifteen cents for five years, with a privilege of renewal at the same terms. oh, yes, put your price down to eight cents, by all means!" carrington's face turned purple, as he heard the fleering announcement of his rival's success, and morton betrayed signs of a consuming anxiety. "have you such a contract?" he questioned, more mildly than he had spoken hitherto. delancy turned to face hamilton, and put the question bluntly. "have we, charles?" there was no reply forthcoming from the distracted young man, only a burst of sardonic laughter. it seemed to him clear that everyone had gone mad together. quickly, then, the old gentleman directed the question to his niece. "have we, mrs. partner?" "you bet we have!" cicily answered on the instant, inelegantly, but with convincing emphasis. a faint ray of illumination stole into the mental blackness of hamilton. under its influence, he addressed morton with a half-sneer: "do you think any man would have the nerve to try bluffing on a thing like that?" in his thoughts there was a forceful emphasis on the word "man," but he carefully avoided letting it appear in the spoken word. there followed a lengthy and acrimonious debate among the men, to which cicily listened with an air of half-amused, half-bored tolerance. she was, in fact, thrilling with delight over her inspiration, which had at last come after such long waiting. she felt an intuitive conviction that her ruse would win the battle for her husband's success. she need worry no more over the powerlessness of her women allies to bend the husbands to their will. hereafter, she would retain the friendship of those worthy women, but without any ulterior object beyond their own welfare. it appealed to her as vastly more fitting that triumph should come from duping these men, who were her husband's enemies, who would have ruined him by their schemes, but for her intervention with a woman's wiles where man's vaunted sagacity had proved itself utterly at fault. the sincerity of her belief had sufficed in a minute to win the coöperation of uncle jim, that most determined opponent to woman's intrusion on business affairs. he had listened to her suggestion at the tea-table, at first with scornful displeasure over her venturing an opinion of any sort on business. then, as he comprehended the purport of her scheme, his instinct for finesse had caused him to seize on it impetuously, to act upon it immediately.... surely, cicily thought, since uncle jim had been won over, there remained only the working out of details to insure a glorious victory--her victory for charles! she aroused herself from her abstraction with a start of alarm as she heard morton crying out defiance. "i tell you," he was saying heatedly, "those independent people have contracts with us. all this plotting of yours is just damned foolishness--i beg your pardon, mrs. hamilton." the enraged capitalist flushed with new annoyance, for he prided himself greatly on the elegance of his manners, and it horrified him that he should have so far forgotten himself as to swear in the presence of a lady. "but they've no place in business anyhow!" he thought to himself consolingly. "oh, don't mention it!" cicily answered, with an air of unconcern. to herself, she was reflecting amusedly on how much greater than the offender knew was his discourtesy toward herself, since she it was who was the author of that "damned foolishness" to which he had so feelingly referred. but delancy had no time to fritter away on niceties of etiquette. "oh, no, morton!" he scoffed. "johnson of the independents told me that you never gave them contracts, except for each lot. you see, that's how we got in on the deal." "yes, that's how we got in," cicily echoed, in a gentle murmur. there was an infinity of satisfaction in her voice. "we'll make them break with you," carrington shouted, roughly. "just try it!" taunted hamilton, who, at last, found himself embarked on this mad adventure in chicanery. "i have five millions in negotiable securities," delancy added. "i'm willing to spend every penny of it in 'busting' you, if you try it." hamilton now took up the argument, with a spirit that delighted the listening wife. it was evident to her that he had grasped the significance of her deceit, and was enthusiastic in following it up to the best of his ability. "so," he said to morton, "you fancy that you can make the independents leave us! well, you'll learn your mistake presently. do you suppose for a minute that they'll pass us up, when we offer a fair contract for fifteen cents, to deal with you, after you've just put the price up to twenty-two? nonsense!" morton raised an imperatively restraining hand as carrington was about to splutter some threat. of a sudden, the diplomatic man of affairs resumed his gracious, suave bearing; and his voice was agreeably modulated when he spoke: "gentlemen, it seems to me that we're arguing a great deal, needlessly. now, you know, both of you, that i always liked old charley hamilton. well, as a matter of fact, i'm delighted to discover that his son here has the same quality of business ability. so, my boy, why shouldn't you come in with us? there's ample future for brains with us.... of course, i'm saying this on the supposition that everything is just as you have represented it." the cold caution of the man of business cropped out in the concluding sentence. "make a proposition," hamilton directed, curtly. "well," morton replied, speaking with thoughtful deliberation, "we might take over a controlling interest in your factory for, say, two hundred and fifty thousand." "such an offer as that is merely a joke," was hamilton's contemptuous retort. "what do you think it's worth?" "conservatively, a million." "oh, absurd!" morton exclaimed, reprovingly; but his voice retained its pleasant quality. "dear me! youth is so hasty! now, my boy, the truth is that you know your factory isn't worth anything like that sum." "i suspect that you have forgotten five fat years of prospective profits." there came a groan from carrington at this reference, and morton's face lost for a moment its wheedling amiability. but the latter's discomfiture was of the briefest, if one might judge by appearance. "is a million your lowest figure?" he demanded. then, as a nod of assent from the owner answered his question, he added: "and a sixty-days' option goes with your offer?" hamilton, however, had other conditions to impose. "if you take over the control," he asked, "do i stay in charge as president and manager? i must stipulate for that." "oh, well," morton agreed graciously, "the brain that could pull off this deal ought to be of some use to us.... all right, my boy." at this final statement from the magnate, cicily could not forbear a subdued ripple of laughter. "the brain that could pull off this deal"--oh, splendid! who now would dare deny that she was a partner in very truth, a partner worth while!... then, her inspiration again urged her on. she was beset with feverish impatience, as the four men dallied tediously over their adieux. when, at last, the visitors were safely out of the house, the young wife bore down like a whirlwind on delancy. she could not waste even a word on hamilton yet. "quick! quick!" she commanded. the red in her cheeks was deeper than it had been for weary weeks; her eyes shot fires of eagerness; her delicate fingers clutched the old gentleman's arm in a grasp so earnest that he winced from the pain of it. "eh, what?" he demanded, confused by the violence of her onslaught. "oh, do hurry, uncle jim!" cicily cried. "the telephone--johnson!" "good heavens, yes!" delancy exclaimed, instantly aroused to the exigencies of the situation, while hamilton stared blankly at the two conspirators. "i should say so! i've got to get hold of johnson." "he's on the wire by this time, i'm sure," cicily announced. "while you were getting rid of those men, i sent watson to call him up." "bully, cicily!" hamilton shouted, in irrepressible enthusiasm. for the first time, he had spoken honest praise of his wife's business ability, and the soul of the woman was filled with a glorious triumph. delancy was already on his way toward the telephone in the hall. but he turned to speak his mind: "why on earth don't your aunt emma have ideas like that," he questioned, resentfully; "practical ideas?" "perhaps she has," cicily replied, accusingly. "but you would never listen." there was no answer beyond an unintelligible grunt from the old gentleman. "hurry! uncle jim!" hamilton urged, in his turn. "and do your best. if johnson's with us, the deal will go through. he's never gone back on his word, and he controls the independents." "yes, boy," delancy cried over his shoulder, as he vanished through the doorway, "if he's with us, we--your wife--wins!" "anyhow," hamilton soliloquized, "win or lose, it's a great game!" then, he turned to regard his wife, with eyes in which amazement vied with admiration. chapter xix cicily, under her husband's intent gaze, felt a glow of embarrassment. to conceal her emotion, she turned, and seated herself in a chair, where she relaxed into a posture as listlessly indifferent as she could contrive in this moment of pleasurable turmoil. now, indeed, she realized that the moment of her vindication in this man's estimation was at hand. it was her brain that had evolved the ruse by which his enemies would be worsted. delancy and hamilton might still retain doubts as to the issue of the affair, but she had none. her instinct, which had so ably guided her to this point, now assured her that victory was assured. it must be, then, that the husband who had treated her claims and pretensions so fleeringly would henceforth recognize her worth. he had been helpless in the grasp of circumstance, and the flood of disaster had threatened to overwhelm him. she had plucked him forth from the whirlpool, had brought him safe to shore. she had most nobly justified herself in the rôle of mrs. partner.... this was her hour of supreme delight. the lines of fatigue had vanished from the lovely face as if by magic; her eyes were happy, shining in a clear contentment; her scarlet lips were molded into a smile of joy, and from them a dimple crept to make a tiny shadow in the pale oval of the cheek. as for hamilton, that young business man found himself in a maze of perplexity, as he stood for a long time in silence, studying the fair picture of femininity there offered to his gaze. in his breast, various emotions warred lustily. he was a-thrill with elation over the possibility of outwitting the foes who had used every wile and subterfuge of trickiness to ruin him. he was moved to a profound admiration for the intelligence that had originated and carried out a counter plot so instantly effective in his interests. but underlying these was a grievous hurt to his egotism. the pride of the male was wounded sore. where he, the head of the house, the lord of the home, the man of affairs, had ignominiously failed, that frail creature, his wife, whom he had criticised and rebuked time and again, had snatched victory from defeat by clever and unscrupulous machinations worthy of a master of high finance. this feat was something incredible, yet it was true that it had been achieved. it was something absolutely contrary to all the conventions in which he had been reared. it was directly opposed to his personal beliefs, as he had expressed them times without number, to all and sundry--notably to his wife. here was the sting to his vanity. he had been wrong. of that, there could be no doubt. in other cases, in all probability, his contentions would have been justified; but there was small consolation in this fact, since in his own vital concerns he had been proven wrong. he winced as he reflected on the humility that would be becoming on his part.... then, he was moved to a sudden rapture, and forgot his hurt pride, as he realized again the exceeding worth of the woman whom he loved. under the urge of this feeling, he exclaimed with candid vehemence of admiration: "you darling little liar!" the fondness in his voice made the epithet a word of sweetest praise. cicily stirred animatedly, casting off her assumed listlessness, in the bliss of this honest tribute from him who had so sternly flouted her aforetime. her eyes of gold lighted radiantly as they were lifted to his. "oh, no--a big liar, i'm very much afraid." she leaned forward, and her voice was gloating as she continued: "oh, charles, isn't it just splendid! and it was all so gloriously simple! why, it isn't on my conscience one tiny little bit. you see, they lied, and so, of course, i was justified in lying. it was to save you, and to help our workers down there. so, i lied, and i'm glad of it." she gurgled unrestrainedly for a moment. "do you know, charles, dear, a woman can beat a man lying, any time!... oh, it's great!" but hamilton, not being under the thrall of intuitions, was not yet ready to rejoice over a victory that remained to be won. "wait," he admonished. "you know, we haven't heard from johnson yet. we don't know what he'll do." "pooh!" cicily retorted confidently, for in her wisdom she accepted the dictum of her instinct without reserve. "if it should be necessary, why, i'll convince him, too." his curiosity prompted hamilton to ask a leading question. "how did you come to think of it?" he inquired eagerly. "oh, i just thought of it because--because--" cicily halted, completely at a loss. she knew very well how she had come to think of it. the idea had been the kindly gift of intuition--that was all there was to it. but the explanation of the fact to a mere man, with his finical dependence on logic and all manner of foolishness in the way of reasoning, offered considerable difficulty. so, she rested silent, puzzling over a means for making the truth lucid to a member of the non-intuitional sex. "well, because what?" hamilton repeated, suggestively. "why, just because--" unable to find adequate words for interpreting the cause, cicily attempted a diversion. "and, anyhow, i'm so glad! now, you do see that i can help you, that i can do something for you that counts." for the life of her, the young wife could not resist a temptation to boast a little over her accomplishment in the world of business. she even ventured to hint as to the "because" which she had left unexplained. "surely, charles, now you must see how it's possible for us women to help our husbands outside the home--once in a while, at least. really, there is some room in business on occasion for intuition, just as there is in other things. but the few men who possess the gift don't call it by its right name--not they! i imagine they're too busy and prosperous to call it anything." "you mustn't think i'm not grateful, cicily," hamilton answered, with surprising meekness. "i know how much i shall owe you, if this deal goes through." he went to the chair where his wife was sitting, and kissed her tenderly. "yes, you'll find me grateful enough," he repeated earnestly, as he straightened again, and stood regarding her with lover-like intentness. cicily, however, was not wholly content with the expression of feeling on her husband's part. her ambition toward really sharing his whole life was not to be thwarted by accepting a single success, and the resultant gratitude on the part of the one served, as a sufficient achievement. "it's not gratitude that i want, charles," she declared, resolutely; "that is, not gratitude alone. i want recognition." "but i do recognize everything, cicily," hamilton urged, manifestly at a loss to understand his wife's precise meaning. then, of a sudden, his vision cleared, and he spoke with a new gentleness, yet with something of the old authority. "i recognize most clearly that here and now is the real turning point of our lives. we have both made mistakes--" "oh, both?" cicily questioned, rebelliously. her serene confidence in herself did not relish the open confession of error. "yes," hamilton maintained, judicially; "we've both made mistakes. i've cared too much for business. i admit that fully and freely. i let it intrude on my home life; i let it hamper the expression of my love for you. as for you, you adorable creature, you've been headstrong beyond belief. you've been impulsive to the limit of that very impulsive temperament of yours. you've been unreasonable to the verge of distraction. but, thank heaven! you've been--as you'd call it--intuitional, too. that redeems you from criticism--as it may redeem me from ruin in my business. so, darling, isn't it fair, when i say that i'm going to change, to say that i want you to change, too? to sum it up, dear heart, we must begin all over again." nevertheless, cicily, although she was a-quiver with delight over the open revelation of her husband's changed feeling toward her and toward himself, did not hesitate to combat his determination. she shook her head slowly in negation of his proposal, and spoke with the energy of profound conviction: "it's too late, charles. we can't go back." "but, cicily," hamilton remonstrated, greatly hurt by her resistance to his humble resolve, "you don't understand! i admit that i was wrong--more than partly to blame, perhaps." that was as far as he could go. the wife who loved him smiled secretly at the obvious effort with which he acknowledged so much. it was enough to satisfy her in that direction--more than enough! but there remained still the fact that she was totally out of harmony with his scheme of turning backward to begin their life together afresh, after a finer plan of conduct. "there's no such thing as going backward in life, charles," she declared, intently. "we must go forward--only forward!" "no," hamilton answered, gravely. "that would never do. the old struggle would come up again. you were right in your argument, cicily, and i see it now. i recognize the existence of that modern triangle, as you described it. one must choose, inevitably. it's either you or business. i chose once, and i went wrong. now, let me choose again, dear. oh, you must believe me, sweetheart. you are the dearer--infinitely the dearer to me! it is you i love--only you!" there was genuine passion in the man's voice. it rang heavenly harmonies in the soul of the wife. for the moment, she was half-inclined to throw away the troubles begotten of ambition, the strivings engendered by ideals, to rest content with the happiness of love's transports. she fought the temptation stoutly, but it was almost beyond her woman's strength to resist. she feinted for time by haphazard questioning, voiced in broken, uncertain tones while she strove to maintain her purpose: "what are you going to do, charles? how will you prove that i am dearer to you, after all, than is this hateful business?" "how am i going to prove it?" hamilton repeated, with immense self-satisfaction. "why, i'm going to sell out to morton, to-morrow." at this explicit statement of his purpose, cicily was swiftly recalled from her temporary mood of yielding. "you're going to quit?" she demanded, sharply. "is that what you mean, charles?" "yes," came the complacent answer, firm in the intensity of sudden resolve. "i have it all planned out, already. we'll take a steamer the last of the week for another--a better, wiser--honeymoon. we'll go to the italian lakes, to switzerland. then, afterward, we'll drop down to that little village in the south of france. you remember the place, don't you, dearest?" "yes," cicily answered, very softly. her cheeks were flushed with tender memories of that embowered nook which had given lotos-eating pause to their wedding-journey. her eyes were dreamy with fond reminiscence, as she imagined again the quaint beauties of that lover's paradise. but, by a fierce effort of will, she threw off the spell that threatened to defeat her most cherished ambition; and she spoke with an accent of supreme determination, in a voice become suddenly vibrant with new energy. "but i won't go!" her face, too, had lost the delicate, yielding lines of the woman wooed and won, rejoicing in submission; it was again alert, set to fixedness of plan that would brook no denial. at sight of the change in her, hamilton stared in dismay. he could not understand this development in her. he had humiliated himself in vain. he had offered the abandonment of all that could offend her, yet she remained obdurate, discontented, defiant of his every desire. he almost groaned, as he cast himself disconsolately into a chair, and buried his head in his hands, despairing of any understanding as to the whims of a woman. "don't you see, dear," cicily went on, gently persuasive, "that we can't--we just can't!--quit? why, charles, being a quitter is the one thing that you've most hated all your life. and i, too, have hated it. no, you can't quit, because you're held here by duty--by duty to yourself, by duty to those men and women, our little brothers and sisters, who depend on you for their livelihood." "the trust will take care of them," hamilton declared mechanically, without lifting his face from his hands. "you know how the trust will take care of them," cicily retorted, with a touch of bitterness. "it will pay them a starvation wage--no more!" "but you're jealous of business!" hamilton objected, raising his head to gaze curiously at this most paradoxical person. "and, now, you are urging me to keep at it. i don't understand." cicily laughed aloud, in genuine enjoyment. her eyes were alight with the fires of victory. "i used to be jealous of it," she admitted, joyously. "i'm not any longer--because i've beaten it. your offer just now proves that, doesn't it?... but, now that i have won a triumph over my old rival, why, we've got to go forward." "together?" there was a tender, half-fearful doubt in the husband's voice as he asked the question that meant so much to him, for he loved this variable wife of his in this moment more than he had ever dreamed that he could love a woman. the wife's head drooped shyly, and her face flamed. her word came very softly spoken, but it rang a peal of happiness in the heart of her husband. "yes." the man rose from his chair, and went to his wife's side, where he stooped, and took her face in his hands, and raised it until he could look deep into the eyes of gold. "you will care again, as you used to care?" and she answered bravely, although a gentle confusion held her all a-tremble: "i will care because--because i've never stopped caring!" "thank god!" hamilton said reverently, and gathered her into his arms. afterward, the twain lovers talked of many things, as lovers will, of things grave and gay, of things silly and profound. they talked of business affairs, into which cicily might on occasion flash the light of intuition to clear the way for grosser reason. they discussed the mutuality of interests that would be theirs, a lesson of supreme worth to a conventional world. they arranged philanthropic schemes for the betterment of conditions for the little brothers and sisters who gained a sustenance by toil at their behest. but, most of all, they talked those divine absurdities that are the privilege of all true lovers. the husband bewailed the incredible stupidity that had led him into neglect of the most adorable being in the universe; the wife mourned over the stern necessity that had driven her to sacrifice ineffable happiness on the altar of conscience. [illustration] they drew apart a little, when delancy came bustling in from his conversation over the telephone; but they scarcely had ears for his jubilant announcement of victory. "johnson thinks it's great!" the old gentleman cried, triumphantly. "he's coming right up here in his machine, with a lawyer, to draw the papers.... and i've 'phoned for our attorney to get here as fast as he can. my boy, we've got 'em! hooray!" hamilton responded with a perfunctory enthusiasm, but his eyes never left his wife's face. as for cicily, she sat silent, her eyes veiled, reveling in the glad riot of her thoughts. through her brain went echoing the words spoken by her aunt emma, which had served in a measure to guide her course of action, and she smiled in perfect content as she mused on their meaning in her life. she had sought "to make other people happy." she had striven valiantly in behalf of the workers in the factory; she had struggled for her husband. well, she had succeeded for them--surely, she had made other people happy; and out of her labors for those others she had won the supreme happiness for herself. but it was after delancy had left them that hamilton reached into the inner pocket of his waistcoat, and plucked forth a little packet of tissue paper, which he unrolled with a touch that was half-caressing. of a sudden, cicily, watching, uttered a cry of delight. "you cared--so much?" she questioned, with shy eagerness, as she put out her left hand. the husband slipped the wedding-ring to its place. "i cared so much," he said softly; "and infinitely more!" the amber eyes of the wife were veiled with tears, as she lifted them to his. "oh, thank god, it is back again!" she whispered. the end [illustration: "your address!" bawled the duke.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ the place of honeymoons by harold macgrath author of the man on the box, the goose girl, the carpet from bagdad, etc. with illustrations by arthur i. keller indianapolis the bobbs-merrill company publishers ------------------------------------------------------------------------ copyright the bobbs-merrill company press of braunworth & co. bookbinders and printers brooklyn, n. y. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ to b. o'g. horace calls no more to me, homer in the dust-heap lies: i have found my odyssey in the lightness of her glee, in the laughter of her eyes. ovid's page is thumbed no more, e'en catullus has no choice! there is endless, precious lore, such as i ne'er knew before, in the music of her voice. breath of hyssop steeped in wine, breath of violets and furze, wild-wood roses, grecian myrrhs, all these perfumes do combine in that maiden breath of hers. nay, i look not at the skies, nor the sun that hillward slips, for the day lives or it dies in the laughter of her eyes, in the music of her lips! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ contents chapter page i. at the stage door ii. there is a woman? iii. the beautiful tigress iv. the joke of monsieur v. captive or runaway vi. the bird behind bars vii. battling jimmie viii. moonlight and a prince ix. colonel caxley-webster x. marguerites and emeralds xi. at the crater's edge xii. dick courtlandt's boy xiii. everything but the truth xiv. a comedy with music xv. herr rosen's regrets xvi. the apple of discord xvii. the ball at the villa xviii. pistols for two xix. courtlandt tells a story xx. journey's end ------------------------------------------------------------------------ the place of honeymoons ------------------------------------------------------------------------ chapter i at the stage door courtlandt sat perfectly straight; his ample shoulders did not touch the back of his chair; and his arms were folded tightly across his chest. the characteristic of his attitude was tenseness. the nostrils were well defined, as in one who sets the upper jaw hard upon the nether. his brown eyes--their gaze directed toward the stage whence came the voice of the prima donna--epitomized the tension, expressed the whole as in a word. just now the voice was pathetically subdued, yet reached every part of the auditorium, kindling the ear with its singularly mellowing sweetness. to courtlandt it resembled, as no other sound, the note of a muffled burmese gong, struck in the dim incensed cavern of a temple. a burmese gong: briefly and magically the stage, the audience, the amazing gleam and scintillation of the opera, faded. he heard only the voice and saw only the purple shadows in the temple at rangoon, the oriental sunset splashing the golden dome, the wavering lights of the dripping candles, the dead flowers, the kneeling devoteés, the yellow-robed priests, the tatters of gold-leaf, fresh and old, upon the rows of placid grinning buddhas. the vision was of short duration. the sigh, which had been so long repressed, escaped; his shoulders sank a little, and the angle of his chin became less resolute; but only for a moment. tension gave place to an ironical grimness. the brows relaxed, but the lips became firmer. he listened, with this new expression unchanging, to the high note that soared above all others. the french horns blared and the timpani crashed. the curtain sank slowly. the audience rustled, stood up, sought its wraps, and pressed toward the exits and the grand staircase. it was all over. courtlandt took his leave in leisure. here and there he saw familiar faces, but these, after the finding glance, he studiously avoided. he wanted to be alone. for while the music was still echoing in his ears, in a subtone, his brain was afire with keen activity; but unfortunately for the going forward of things, this mental state was divided into so many battalions, led by so many generals, indirectly and indecisively, nowhere. this plan had no beginning, that one had no ending, and the other neither beginning nor ending. outside he lighted a cigar, not because at that moment he possessed a craving for nicotine, but because like all inveterate smokers he believed that tobacco conduced to clarity of thought. and mayhap it did. at least, there presently followed a mental calm that expelled all this confusion. the goal waxed and waned as he gazed down the great avenue with its precise rows of lamps. far away he could discern the outline of the brooding louvre. there was not the least hope in the world for him to proceed toward his goal this night. he realized this clearly, now that he was face to face with actualities. it required more than the chaotic impulses that had brought him back from the jungles of the orient. he must reason out a plan that should be like a straight line, the shortest distance between two given points. how then should he pass the night, since none of his schemes could possibly be put into operation? return to his hotel and smoke himself headachy? try to become interested in a novel? go to bed, to turn and roll till dawn? a wild desire seized him to make a night of it,--maxim's, the cabarets; riot and wine. who cared? but the desire burnt itself out between two puffs of his cigar. ten years ago, perhaps, this particular brand of amusement might have urged him successfully. but not now; he was done with tomfool nights. indeed, his dissipations had been whimsical rather than banal; and retrospection never aroused a furtive sense of shame. he was young, but not so young as an idle glance might conjecture in passing. to such casual reckoning he appeared to be in the early twenties; but scrutiny, more or less infallible, noting a line here or an angle there, was disposed to add ten years to the score. there was in the nose and chin a certain decisiveness which in true youth is rarely developed. this characteristic arrives only with manhood, manhood that has been tried and perhaps buffeted and perchance a little disillusioned. to state that one is young does not necessarily imply youth; for youth is something that is truly green and tender, not rounded out, aimless, light-hearted and desultory, charming and inconsequent. if man regrets his youth it is not for the passing of these pleasing, though tangled attributes, but rather because there exists between the two periods of progression a series of irremediable mistakes. and the subject of this brief commentary could look back on many a grievous one brought about by pride or carelessness rather than by intent. but what was one to do who had both money and leisure linked to an irresistible desire to leave behind one place or thing in pursuit of another, indeterminately? at one time he wanted to be an artist, but his evenly balanced self-criticism had forced him to fling his daubs into the ash-heap. they were good daubs in a way, but were laid on without fire; such work as any respectable schoolmarm might have equaled if not surpassed. then he had gone in for engineering; but precise and intricate mathematics required patience of a quality not at his command. the inherent ambition was to make money; but recognizing the absurdity of adding to his income, which even in his extravagance he could not spend, he gave himself over into the hands of grasping railroad and steamship companies, or their agencies, and became for a time the slave of guide and dragoman and carrier. and then the wanderlust, descended to him from the blood of his roving dutch ancestors, which had lain dormant in the several generations following, sprang into active life again. he became known in every port of call. he became known also in the wildernesses. he had climbed almost inaccessible mountains, in europe, in asia; he had fished and hunted north, east, south and west; he had fitted out polar expeditions; he had raided the pearl markets; he had made astonishing gifts to women who had pleased his fancy, but whom he did not know or seek to know; he had kept some of his intimate friends out of bankruptcy; he had given the most extravagant dinners at one season and, unknown, had supported a bread-line at another; he had even financed a musical comedy. whatever had for the moment appealed to his fancy, that he had done. that the world--his world--threw up its hands in wonder and despair neither disturbed him nor swerved him in the least. he was alone, absolute master of his millions. mamas with marriageable daughters declared that he was impossible; the marriageable daughters never had a chance to decide one way or the other; and men called him a fool. he had promoted elephant fights which had stirred the indian princes out of their melancholy indifference, and tiger hunts which had, by their duration and magnificence, threatened to disrupt the efficiency of the british military service,--whimsical excesses, not understandable by his intimate acquaintances who cynically arraigned him as the fool and his money. but, like the villain in the play, his income still pursued him. certain scandals inevitably followed, scandals he was the last to hear about and the last to deny when he heard them. many persons, not being able to take into the mind and analyze a character like courtlandt's, sought the line of least resistance for their understanding, and built some precious exploits which included dusky island-princesses, diaphanous dancers, and comic-opera stars. simply, he was without direction; a thousand goals surrounded him and none burned with that brightness which draws a man toward his destiny: until one day. personally, he possessed graces of form and feature, and was keener mentally than most young men who inherit great fortunes and distinguished names. * * * * * automobiles of all kinds panted hither and thither. an occasional smart coupé went by as if to prove that prancing horses were still necessary to the dignity of the old aristocracy. courtlandt made up his mind suddenly. he laughed with bitterness. he knew now that to loiter near the stage entrance had been his real purpose all along, and persistent lying to himself had not prevailed. in due time he took his stand among the gilded youth who were not privileged (like their more prosperous elders) to wait outside the dressing-rooms for their particular ballerina. by and by there was a little respectful commotion. courtlandt's hand went instinctively to his collar, not to ascertain if it were properly adjusted, but rather to relieve the sudden pressure. he was enraged at his weakness. he wanted to turn away, but he could not. a woman issued forth, muffled in silks and light furs. she was followed by another, quite possibly her maid. one may observe very well at times from the corner of the eye; that is, objects at which one is not looking come within the range of vision. the woman paused, her foot upon the step of the modest limousine. she whispered something hurriedly into her companion's ear, something evidently to the puzzlement of the latter, who looked around irresolutely. she obeyed, however, and retreated to the stage entrance. a man, quite as tall as courtlandt, his face shaded carefully, intentionally perhaps, by one of those soft bavarian hats that are worn successfully only by germans, stepped out of the gathering to proffer his assistance. courtlandt pushed him aside calmly, lifted his hat, and smiling ironically, closed the door behind the singer. the step which the other man made toward courtlandt was unequivocal in its meaning. but even as courtlandt squared himself to meet the coming outburst, the stranger paused, shrugged his shoulders, turned and made off. the lady in the limousine--very pale could any have looked closely into her face--was whirled away into the night. courtlandt did not stir from the curb. the limousine dwindled, once it flashed under a light, and then vanished. "it is the american," said one of the waiting dandies. "the icicle!" "the volcano, rather, which fools believe extinct." "probably sent back her maid for her bible. ah, these americans; they are very amusing." "she was in magnificent voice to-night. i wonder why she never sings _carmen_?" "have i not said that she is too cold? what! would you see frost grow upon the toreador's mustache? and what a name, what a name! eleonora da toscana!" courtlandt was not in the most amiable condition of mind, and a hint of the ribald would have instantly transformed a passive anger into a blind fury. thus, a scene hung precariously; but its potentialities became as nothing on the appearance of another woman. this woman was richly dressed, too richly. apparently she had trusted her modiste not wisely but too well: there was the strange and unaccountable inherent love of fine feathers and warm colors which is invariably the mute utterance of peasant blood. she was followed by a russian, huge of body, jovian of countenance. an expensive car rolled up to the curb. a liveried footman jumped down from beside the chauffeur and opened the door. the diva turned her head this way and that, a thin smile of satisfaction stirring her lips. for flora desimone loved the human eye whenever it stared admiration into her own; and she spent half her days setting traps and lures, rather successfully. she and her formidable escort got into the car which immediately went away with a soft purring sound. there was breeding in the engine, anyhow, thought courtlandt, who longed to put his strong fingers around that luxurious throat which had, but a second gone, passed him so closely. "we shall never have war with russia," said some one; "her dukes love paris too well." light careless laughter followed this cynical observation. another time courtlandt might have smiled. he pushed his way into the passage leading to the dressing-rooms, and followed its windings until he met a human barrier. to his inquiry the answer was abrupt and perfectly clear in its meaning: la signorina da toscana had given most emphatic orders not to disclose her address to any one. monsieur might, if he pleased, make further inquiries of the directors; the answer there would be the same. presently he found himself gazing down the avenue once more. there were a thousand places to go to, a thousand pleasant things to do; yet he doddered, full of ill-temper, dissatisfaction, and self-contempt. he was weak, damnably weak; and for years he had admired himself, detachedly, as a man of pride. he started forward, neither sensing his direction nor the perfected flavor of his habana. opera singers were truly a race apart. they lived in the world but were not a part of it, and when they died, left only a memory which faded in one generation and became totally forgotten in another. what jealousies, what petty bickerings, what extravagances! with fancy and desire unchecked, what ingenious tricks they used to keep themselves in the public mind,--tricks begot of fickleness and fickleness begetting. and yet, it was a curious phase: their influence was generally found when history untangled for posterity some gordian knot. in old times they had sung the _marseillaise_ and danced the _carmagnole_ and indirectly plied the guillotine. and to-day they smashed prime ministers, petty kings, and bankers, and created fashions for the ruin of husbands and fathers of modest means. devil take them! and courtlandt flung his cigar into the street. he halted. the madeleine was not exactly the goal for a man who had, half an hour before, contemplated a rout at maxim's. his glance described a half-circle. there was durand's; but durand's on opera nights entertained many americans, and he did not care to meet any of his compatriots to-night. so he turned down the rue royale, on the opposite side, and went into the taverne royale, where the patrons were not over particular in regard to the laws of fashion, and where certain ladies with light histories sought further adventures to add to their heptamerons. now, courtlandt thought neither of the one nor of the other. he desired isolation, safety from intrusion; and here, did he so signify, he could find it. women gazed up at him and smiled, with interest as much as with invitation. he was brown from long exposure to the wind and the sun, that golden brown which is the gift of the sun-glitter on rocking seas. a traveler is generally indicated by this artistry of the sun, and once noted instantly creates a speculative interest. even his light brown hair had faded at the temples, and straw-colored was the slender mustache, the ends of which had a cavalier twist. he ignored the lips which smiled and the eyes which invited, and nothing more was necessary. one is not importuned at the taverne royale. he sat down at a vacant table and ordered a pint of champagne, drinking hastily rather than thirstily. would monsieur like anything to eat? no, the wine was sufficient. courtlandt poured out a second glass slowly. the wine bubbled up to the brim and overflowed. he had been looking at the glass with unseeing eyes. he set the bottle down impatiently. fool! to have gone to burma, simply to stand in the golden temple once more, in vain, to recall that other time: the starving kitten held tenderly in a woman's arms, his own scurry among the booths to find the milk so peremptorily ordered, and the smile of thanks that had been his reward! he had run away when he should have hung on. he should have fought every inch of the way.... "monsieur is lonely?" a pretty young woman sat down before him in the vacant chair. chapter ii there is a woman? anger, curiosity, interest; these sensations blanketed one another quickly, leaving only interest, which was courtlandt's normal state of mind when he saw a pretty woman. it did not require very keen scrutiny on his part to arrive swiftly at the conclusion that this one was not quite in the picture. her cheeks were not red with that redness which has a permanency of tone, neither waxing nor waning, abashed in daylight. nor had her lips found their scarlet moisture from out the depths of certain little porcelain boxes. decidedly she was out of place here, yet she evinced no embarrassment; she was cool, at ease. courtlandt's interest strengthened. "why do you think i am lonely, mademoiselle?" he asked, without smiling. "oh, when one talks to one's self, strikes the table, wastes good wine, the inference is but natural. so, monsieur is lonely." her lips and eyes, as grave and smileless as his own, puzzled him. an adventure? he looked at some of the other women. those he could understand, but this one, no. at all times he was willing to smile, yet to draw her out he realized that he must preserve his gravity unbroken. the situation was not usual. his gaze came back to her. "is the comparison favorable to me?" she asked. "it is. what is loneliness?" he demanded cynically. "ah, i could tell you," she answered. "it is the longing to be with the one we love; it is the hate of the wicked things we have done; it is remorse." "that echoes of the ambigu-comique." he leaned upon his arms. "what are you doing here?" "i?" "yes. you do not talk like the other girls who come here." "monsieur comes here frequently, then?" "this is the first time in five years. i came here to-night because i wanted to be alone, because i did not wish to meet any one i knew. i have scowled at every girl in the room, and they have wisely left me alone. i haven't scowled at you because i do not know what to make of you. that's frankness. now, you answer my question." "would you spare me a glass of wine? i am thirsty." he struck his hands together, a bit of orientalism he had brought back with him. the observant waiter instantly came forward with a glass. the young woman sipped the wine, gazing into the glass as she did so. "perhaps a whim brought me here. but i repeat, monsieur is lonely." "so lonely that i am almost tempted to put you into a taxicab and run away with you." she set down the glass. "but i sha'n't," he added. the spark of eagerness in her eyes was instantly curtained. "there is a woman?" tentatively. "is there not always a woman?" "and she has disappointed monsieur?" there was no marked sympathy in the tone. "since eve, has that not been woman's part in the human comedy?" he was almost certain that her lips became firmer. "smile, if you wish. it is not prohibitory here." it was evident that the smile had been struggling for existence, for it endured to the fulness of half a minute. she had fine teeth. he scrutinized her more closely, and she bore it well. the forehead did not make for beauty; it was too broad and high, intellectual. her eyes were splendid. there was nothing at all ordinary about her. his sense of puzzlement renewed itself and deepened. what did she want of him? there were other men, other vacant chairs. "monsieur is certain about the taxicab?" "absolutely." "ah, it is to emulate saint anthony!" "there are several saints of that name. to which do you refer?" "positively not to him of padua." courtlandt laughed. "no, i can not fancy myself being particularly concerned about bambini. no, my model is noah." "noah?" dubiously. "yes. at the time of the flood there was only one woman in the world." "i am afraid that your knowledge of that event is somewhat obscured. still, i understand." she lifted the wine-glass again, and then he noticed her hand. it was large, white and strong; it was not the hand of a woman who dallied, who idled in primrose paths. "tell me, what is it you wish? you interest me, at a moment, too, when i do not want to be interested. are you really in trouble? is there anything i can do ... barring the taxicab?" she twirled the glass, uneasily. "i am not in actual need of assistance." "but you spoke peculiarly regarding loneliness." "perhaps i like the melodrama. you spoke of the ambigu-comique." "you are on the stage?" "perhaps." "the opera?" "again perhaps." he laughed once more, and drew his chair closer to the table. "monsieur in other moods must have a pleasant laughter." "i haven't laughed from the heart in a very long time," he said, returning to his former gravity, this time unassumed. "and i have accomplished this amazing thing?" "no. you followed me here. but from where?" "followed you?" the effort to give a mocking accent to her voice was a failure. "yes. the idea just occurred to me. there were other vacant chairs, and there was nothing inviting in my facial expression. come, let me have the truth." "i have a friend who knows flora desimone." "ah!" as if this information was a direct visitation of kindness from the gods. "then you know where the calabrian lives? give me her address." there was a minute wrinkle above the unknown's nose; the shadow of a frown. "she is very beautiful." "bah! did she send you after me? give me her address. i have come all the way from burma to see flora desimone." "to see her?" she unguardedly clothed the question with contempt, but she instantly forced a smile to neutralize the effect. concerned with her own defined conclusions, she lost the fine ironic bitterness that was in the man's voice. "aye, indeed, to see her! beautiful as venus, as alluring as phryne, i want nothing so much as to see her, to look into her eyes, to hear her voice!" "is it jealousy? i hear the tragic note." the certainty of her ground became as morass again. in his turn he was puzzling her. "tragedy? i am an american. we do not kill opera singers. we turn them over to the critics. i wish to see the beautiful flora, to ask her a few questions. if she has sent you after me, her address, my dear young lady, her address." his eyes burned. "i am afraid." and she was so. this wasn't the tone of a man madly in love. it was wild anger. "afraid of what?" "you." "i will give you a hundred francs." he watched her closely and shrewdly. came the little wrinkle again, but this time urged in perplexity. "a hundred francs, for something i was sent to tell you?" "and now refuse." "it is very generous. she has a heart of flint, monsieur." "well i know it. perhaps now i have one of steel." "many sparks do not make a fire. do you know that your french is very good?" "i spent my boyhood in paris; some of it. her address, if you please." he produced a crisp note for a hundred francs. "do you want it?" she did not answer at once. presently she opened her purse, found a stubby pencil and a slip of paper, and wrote. "there it is, monsieur." she held out her hand for the bank-note which, with a sense of bafflement, he gave her. she folded the note and stowed it away with the pencil. "thank you," said courtlandt. "odd paper, though." he turned it over. "ah, i understand. you copy music." "yes, monsieur." this time the nervous flicker of her eyes did not escape him. "you are studying for the opera, perhaps?" "yes, that is it." the eagerness of the admission convinced him that she was not. who she was or whence she had come no longer excited his interest. he had the calabrian's address and he was impatient to be off. "good night." he rose. "monsieur is not gallant." "i was in my youth," he replied, putting on his hat. the bald rudeness of his departure did not disturb her. she laughed softly and relievedly. indeed, there was in the laughter an essence of mischief. however, if he carried away a mystery, he left one behind. as he was hunting for a taxicab, the waiter ran out and told him that he had forgotten to settle for the wine. the lady had refused to do so. courtlandt chuckled and gave him a ten-franc piece. in other days, in other circumstances, he would have liked to know more about the unknown who scribbled notes on composition paper. she was not an idler in the rue royale, and it did not require that indefinable intuition which comes of worldly-wiseness to discover this fact. she might be a friend of the desimone woman, but she had stepped out of another sphere to become so. he recognized the quality that could adjust itself to any environment and come out scatheless. this was undeniably an american accomplishment; and yet she was distinctly a frenchwoman. he dismissed the problem from his mind and bade the driver go as fast as the police would permit. meanwhile the young woman waited five or ten minutes, and, making sure that courtlandt had been driven off, left the restaurant. round the corner she engaged a carriage. so that was edward courtlandt? she liked his face; there was not a weak line in it, unless stubbornness could be called such. but to stay away for two years! to hide himself in jungles, to be heard of only by his harebrained exploits! "follow him; see where he goes," had been the command. for a moment she had rebelled, but her curiosity was not to be denied. besides, of what use was friendship if not to be tried? she knew nothing of the riddle, she had never asked a question openly. she had accidentally seen a photograph one day, in a trunk tray, with this man's name scrawled across it, and upon this flimsy base she had builded a dozen romances, each of which she had ruthlessly torn down to make room for another; but still the riddle lay unsolved. she had thrown the name into the conversation many a time, as one might throw a bomb into a crowd which had no chance to escape. fizzles! the man had been calmly discussed and calmly dismissed. at odd times an article in the newspapers gave her an opportunity; still the frank discussion, still the calm dismissal. she had learned that the man was rich, irresponsible, vacillating, a picturesque sort of fool. but two years? what had kept him away that long? a weak man, in love, would not have made so tame a surrender. perhaps he had not surrendered; perhaps neither of them had. and yet, he sought the calabrian. here was another blind alley out of which she had to retrace her steps. bother! that puck of shakespeare was right: what fools these mortals be! she was very glad that she possessed a true sense of humor, spiced with harmless audacity. what a dreary world it must be to those who did not know how and when to laugh! they talked of the daring of the american woman: who but a frenchwoman would have dared what she had this night? the taxicab! she laughed. and this man was wax in the hands of any pretty woman who came along! so rumor had it. but she knew that rumor was only the attenuated ghost of ananias, doomed forever to remain on earth for the propagation of inaccurate whispers. wax! why, she would have trusted herself in any situation with a man with those eyes and that angle of jaw. it was all very mystifying. "follow him; see where he goes." the frank discussion, then, and the calm dismissal were but a woman's dissimulation. and he had gone to flora desimone's. the carriage stopped before a handsome apartment-house in the avenue de wagram. the unknown got out, gave the driver his fare, and rang the concierge's bell. the sleepy guardian opened the door, touched his gold-braided cap in recognition, and led the way to the small electric lift. the young woman entered and familiarly pushed the button. the apartment in which she lived was on the second floor; and there was luxury everywhere, but luxury subdued and charmed by taste. there were fine old persian rugs on the floors, exquisite oils and water-colors on the walls; and rare japanese silk tapestries hung between the doors. in one corner of the living-room was a bronze jar filled with artificial cherry blossoms; in another corner near the door, hung a flat bell-shaped piece of brass--a burmese gong. there were many photographs ranged along the mantel-top; celebrities, musical, artistic and literary, each accompanied by a liberal expanse of autographic ink. she threw aside her hat and wraps with that manner of inconsequence which distinguishes the artistic temperament from the thrifty one, and passed on into the cozy dining-room. the maid had arranged some sandwiches and a bottle of light wine. she ate and drank, while intermittent smiles played across her merry face. having satisfied her hunger, she opened her purse and extracted the bank-note. she smoothed it out and laughed aloud. "oh, if only he had taken me for a ride in the taxicab!" she bubbled again with merriment. suddenly she sprang up, as if inspired, and dashed into another room, a study. she came back with pen and ink, and with a celerity that came of long practise, drew five straight lines across the faint violet face of the bank-note. within these lines she made little dots at the top and bottom of stubby perpendicular strokes, and strange interlineal hieroglyphics, and sweeping curves, all of which would have puzzled an egyptologist if he were unused to the ways of musicians. carefully she dried the composition, and then put the note away. some day she would confound him by returning it. a little later her fingers were moving softly over the piano keys; melodies in minor, sad and haunting and elusive, melodies that had never been put on paper and would always be her own: in them she might leap from comedy to tragedy, from laughter to tears, and only she would know. the midnight adventure was forgotten, and the hero of it, too. with her eyes closed and her lithe body swaying gently, she let the old weary pain in her heart take hold again. chapter iii the beautiful tigress flora desimone had been born in a calabrian peasant's hut, and she had rolled in the dust outside, yelling vigorously at all times. specialists declare that the reason for all great singers coming from lowly origin is found in this early development of the muscles of the throat. parents of means employ nurses or sedatives to suppress or at least to smother these infantile protests against being thrust inconsiderately into the turmoil of human beings. flora yelled or slept, as the case might be; her parents were equally indifferent. they were too busily concerned with the getting of bread and wine. moreover, flora was one among many. the gods are always playing with the calabrian peninsula, heaving it up here or throwing it down there: _il terremoto_, the earthquake, the terror. here nature tinkers vicariously with souls; and she seldom has time to complete her work. constant communion with death makes for callosity of feeling; and the calabrians and the sicilians are the cruellest among the civilized peoples. flora was ruthless. she lived amazingly well in the premier of an apartment-hotel in the champs-elysées. in england and america she had amassed a fortune. given the warm beauty of the southern italian, the passion, the temperament, the love of mischief, the natural cruelty, the inordinate craving for attention and flattery, she enlivened the nations with her affairs. and she never put a single beat of her heart into any of them. that is why her voice is still splendid and her beauty unchanging. she did not dissipate; calculation always barred her inclination; rather, she loitered about the forbidden tree and played that she had plucked the apple. she had an example to follow; eve had none. men scattered fortunes at her feet as foolish greeks scattered floral offerings at the feet of their marble gods--without provoking the sense of reciprocity or generosity or mercy. she had worked; ah, no one would ever know how hard. she had been crushed, beaten, cursed, starved. that she had risen to the heights in spite of these bruising verbs in no manner enlarged her pity, but dulled and vitiated the little there was of it. her mental attitude toward humanity was childish: as, when the parent strikes, the child blindly strikes back. she was determined to play, to enjoy life, to give back blow for blow, nor caring where she struck. she was going to press the juice from every grape. a thousand odd years gone, she would have led the cry in rome--"bread and the circus!" or "to the lions!" she would have disturbed nero's complacency, and he would have played an obbligato instead of a solo at the burning. and she was malice incarnate. they came from all climes--her lovers--with roubles and lire and francs and shillings and dollars; and those who finally escaped her enchantment did so involuntarily, for lack of further funds. they called her villas circe's isles. she hated but two things in the world; the man she could have loved and the woman she could not surpass. arrayed in a kimono which would have evoked the envy of the empress of japan, supposing such a gorgeous raiment--peacocks and pine-trees, brilliant greens and olives and blues and purples--fell under the gaze of that lady's slanting eyes, she sat opposite the slavonic jove and smoked her cigarette between sips of coffee. frequently she smiled. the short powerful hand of the man stroked his beard and he beamed out of his cunning eyes, eyes a trifle too porcine to suggest a keen intellect above them. "i am like a gorilla," he said; "but you are like a sleek tigress. i am stronger, more powerful than you; but i am always in fear of your claws. especially when you smile like that. what mischief are you plotting now?" she drew in a cloud of smoke, held it in her puffed cheeks as she glided round the table and leaned over his shoulders. she let the smoke drift over his head and down his beard. in that moment he was truly jovian. "would you like me if i were a tame cat?" she purred. "i have never seen you in that rôle. perhaps i might. you told me that you would give up everything but the paris season." "i have changed my mind." she ran one hand through his hair and the other she entangled in his beard. "you'd change your mind, too, if you were a woman." "i don't have to change my mind; you are always doing it for me. but i do not want to go to america next winter." he drew her down so that he might look into her face. it was something to see. "bah!" she released herself and returned to her chair. "when the season is over i want to go to capri." "capri! too hot." "i want to go." "my dear, a dozen exiles are there, waiting to blow me up." he spoke italian well. "you do not wish to see me spattered over the beautiful isle?" "tch! tch! that is merely your usual excuse. you never had anything to do with the police." "no?" he eyed the end of his cigarette gravely. "one does not have to be affiliated with the police. there is class prejudice. we russians are very fond of egypt in the winter. capri seems to be the half-way place. they wait for us, going and coming. poor fools!" "i shall go alone, then." "all right." in his dull way he had learned that to pull the diva, one must agree with her. in agreeing with her one adroitly dissuaded her. "you go to capri, and i'll go to the pavilion on the neva." she snuffed the cigarette in the coffee-cup and frowned. "some day you will make me horribly angry." "beautiful tigress! if a man knew what you wanted, you would not want it. i can't hop about with the agility of those dancers at the théâtre du palais royale. the best i can do is to imitate the bear. what is wrong?" "they keep giving her the premier parts. she has no more fire in her than a dead grate. the english-speaking singers, they are having everything their own way. and none of them can act." "my dear flora, this eleonora is an actress, first of all. that she can sing is a matter of good fortune, no more. be reasonable. the consensus of critical opinion is generally infallible; and all over the continent they agree that she can act. come, come; what do you care? she will never approach your carmen...." "you praise her to me?" tempest in her glowing eyes. "i do not praise her. i am quoting facts. if you throw that cup, my tigress...." "well?" dangerously. "it will spoil the set. listen. some one is at the speaking-tube." the singer crossed the room impatiently. ordinarily she would have continued the dispute, whether the bell rang or not. but she was getting the worst of the argument and the bell was a timely diversion. the duke followed her leisurely to the wall. "what is it?" asked flora in french. the voice below answered with a query in english. "is this the signorina desimone?" "it is the duchess." "the duchess?" "yes." "the devil!" she turned and stared at the duke, who shrugged. "no, no," she said; "the duchess, not the devil." "pardon me; i was astonished. but on the stage you are still flora desimone?" "yes. and now that my identity is established, who are you and what do you want at this time of night?" the duke touched her arm to convey that this was not the moment in which to betray her temper. "i am edward courtlandt." "the devil!" mimicked the diva. she and the duke heard a chuckle. "i beg your pardon again, madame." "well, what is it you wish?" amiably. the duke looked at her perplexedly. it seemed to him that she was always leaving him in the middle of things. preparing himself for rough roads, he would suddenly find the going smooth. he was never swift enough mentally to follow these flying transitions from enmity to amity. in the present instance, how was he to know that his tigress had found in the man below something to play with? "you once did me an ill turn," came up the tube. "i desire that you make some reparation." "sainted mother! but it has taken you a long time to find out that i have injured you," she mocked. there was no reply to this; so she was determined to stir the fire a little. "and i advise you to be careful what you say; the duke is a very jealous man." that gentleman fingered his beard thoughtfully. "i do not care a hang if he is." the duke coughed loudly close to the tube. silence. "the least you can do, madame, is to give me her address." "her address!" repeated the duke relievedly. he had had certain grave doubts, but these now took wing. old flames were not in the habit of asking, nay, demanding, other women's addresses. "i am speaking to madame, your highness," came sharply. "we do not speak off the stage," said the singer, pushing the duke aside. "i should like to make that young man's acquaintance," whispered the duke. she warned him to be silent. came the voice again: "will you give me her address, please? your messenger gave me your address, inferring that you wished to see me." "i?" there was no impeaching her astonishment. "yes, madame." "my dear mr. courtlandt, you are the last man in all the wide world i wish to see. and i do not quite like the way you are making your request. his highness does not either." "send him down!" "that is true." "what is?" "i remember. you are very strong and much given to fighting." the duke opened and shut his hands, pleasurably. here was something he could understand. he was a fighting man himself. where was this going to end, and what was it all about? "do you not think, madame, that you owe me something?" "no. what i owe i pay. think, mr. courtlandt; think well." "i do not understand," impatiently. "_ebbene_, i owe you nothing. once i heard you say--'i do not like to see you with the calabrian; she is--well, you know.' i stood behind you at another time when you said that i was a fool." "madame, i do not forget that, that is pure invention. you are mistaken." "no. you were. i am no fool." a light laugh drifted down the tube. "madame, i begin to see." "ah!" "you believe what you wish to believe." "i think not." "i never even noticed you," carelessly. "take care!" whispered the duke, who noted the sudden dilation of her nostrils. "it is easy to forget," cried the diva, furiously. "it is easy for you to forget, but not for me." "madame, i do not forget that you entered my room that night ..." "your address!" bawled the duke. "that statement demands an explanation." "i should explain at once, your highness," said the man down below calmly, "only i prefer to leave that part in madame's hands. i should not care to rob her of anything so interesting and dramatic. madame the duchess can explain, if she wishes. i am stopping at the grand, if you find her explanations are not up to your requirements." "i shall give you her address," interrupted the diva, hastily. the duke's bristling beard for one thing and the ice in the other man's tones for another, disquieted her. the play had gone far enough, much as she would have liked to continue it. this was going deeper than she cared to go. she gave the address and added: "to-night she sings at the austrian ambassador's. i give you this information gladly because i know that it will be of no use to you." "then i shall dispense with the formality of thanking you. i add that i wish you twofold the misery you have carelessly and gratuitously cost me. good night!" click! went the little covering of the tube. "now," said the duke, whose knowledge of the english tongue was not so indifferent that he did not gather the substance, if not all the shadings, of this peculiar conversation; "now, what the devil is all this about?" "i hate him!" "refused to singe his wings?" "he has insulted me!" "i am curious to learn about that night you went to his room." her bear had a ring in his nose, but she could not always lead him by it. so, without more ado, she spun the tale, laughing at intervals. the story evidently impressed the duke, for his face remained sober all through the recital. "did he say that you were a fool?" "of course not!" "shall i challenge him?" "oh, my russian bear, he fences like a chicot; he is a dead shot; and is afraid of nothing ... but a woman. no, no; i have something better. it will be like one of those old comedies. i hate her!" with a burst of fury. "she always does everything just so much better than i do. as for him, he was nothing. it was she; i hurt her, wrung her heart." "why?" mildly. "is not that enough?" "i am slow; it takes a long time for anything to get into my head; but when it arrives, it takes a longer time to get it out." "well, go on." her calm was ominous. "love or vanity. this american singer got what you could not get. you have had your way too long. perhaps you did not love him. i do not believe you can really love any one but flora. doubtless he possessed millions; but on the other hand, i am a grand duke; i offered marriage, openly and legally, in spite of all the opposition brought to bear." flora was undeniably clever. she did the one thing that could successfully cope with this perilous condition of the ducal mind. she laughed, and flung her arms around his neck and kissed him. "i have named you well. you are a tigress. but this comedy of which you speak: it might pass in russia, but not in paris." "i shall not be in the least concerned. my part was suggestion." "you suggested it to some one else?" "to be sure!" "my objections ..." "i will have my way in this affair. besides, it is too late." her gesture was explicit. he sighed. he knew quite well that she was capable of leaving the apartment that night, in her kimono. "i'll go to capri," resignedly. dynamite bombs were not the worst things in the world. "i don't want to go now." the duke picked up a fresh cigarette. "how the devil must have laughed when the lord made eve!" chapter iv the joke of monsieur with the same inward bitterness that attends the mental processes of a performing tiger on being sent back to its cage, courtlandt returned to his taxicab. he wanted to roar and lash and devour something. instead, he could only twist the ends of his mustache savagely. so she was a grand duchess, or at least the morganatic wife of a grand duke! it did not seem possible that any woman could be so full of malice. he simply could not understand. it was essentially the italian spirit; doubtless, till she heard his voice, she had forgotten all about the episode that had foundered his ship of happiness. her statement as to the primal cause was purely inventive. there was not a grain of truth in it. he could not possibly have been so rude. he had been too indifferent. too indifferent! the repetition of the phrase made him sit straighter. pshaw! it could not be that. he possessed a little vanity; if he had not, his history would not have been worth a scrawl. but he denied the possession vehemently, as men are wont to do. strange, a man will admit smashing those ten articles of advisement known as the decalogue and yet deny the inherent quality which surrenders the admission--vanity. however you may look at it, man's vanity is a complex thing. the vanity of a woman has a definite and commendable purpose: the conquest of man, his purse, and half of his time. too indifferent! was it possible that he had roused her enmity simply because he had made it evident that her charms did not interest him? beyond lifting his hat to her, perhaps exchanging a comment on the weather, his courtesies had not been extended. courtlandt was peculiar in some respects. a woman attracted him, or she did not. in the one case he was affable, winning, pleasant, full of those agreeable little surprises that in turn attract a woman. in the other case, he passed on, for his impressions were instant and did not require the usual skirmishing. a grand duchess! the straw-colored mustache now described two aggressive points. what an impossible old world it was! the ambition of the english nobility was on a far lower scale than that of their continental cousins. on the little isle they were satisfied to marry soubrettes and chorus girls. here, the lady must be no less a personage than a grand-opera singer or a _première danseuse_. the continental noble at least showed some discernment; he did not choose haphazard; he desired the finished product and was not to be satisfied with the material in the raw. oh, stubborn dutchman that he had been! blind fool! to have run away instead of fighting to the last ditch for his happiness! the desimone woman was right: it had taken him a long time to come to the conclusion that she had done him an ill turn. and during all these weary months he had drawn a melancholy picture of himself as a wounded lion, creeping into the jungle to hide its hurts, when, truth be known, he had taken the ways of the jackass for a model. he saw plainly enough now. more than this, where there had been mere obstacles to overcome there were now steep mountains, perhaps inaccessible for all he knew. his jaw set, and the pressure of his lips broke the sweep of his mustache, converting it into bristling tufts, warlike and resolute. as he was leaving, a square of light attracted his attention. he looked up to see the outline of the bearded russ in the window. poor devil! he was going to have a merry time of it. well, that was his affair. besides, russians, half the year chilled by their bitter snows, were susceptible to volcanoes; they courted them as a counterbalance. perhaps he had spoken roughly, but his temper had not been under control. one thing he recalled with grim satisfaction. he had sent a barbed arrow up the tube to disturb the felicity of the dove-cote. the duke would be rather curious to know what was meant in referring to the night she had come to his, courtlandt's, room. he laughed. it would be a fitting climax indeed if the duke called him out. but what of the pretty woman in the taverne royale? what about her? at whose bidding had she followed him? one or the other of them had not told the truth, and he was inclined to believe that the prevarication had its source in the pomegranate lips of the calabrian. to give the old barb one more twist, to learn if its venomous point still held and hurt; nothing would have afforded the diva more delight. courtlandt glared at the window as the shade rolled down. when the taxicab joined the long line of carriages and automobiles opposite the austrian ambassador's, courtlandt awoke to the dismal and disquieting fact that he had formulated no plan of action. he had done no more than to give the driver his directions; and now that he had arrived, he had the choice of two alternatives. he could wait to see her come out or return at once to his hotel, which, as subsequent events affirmed, would have been the more sensible course. he would have been confronted with small difficulty in gaining admission to the house. he knew enough of these general receptions; the announcing of his name would have conveyed nothing to the host, who knew perhaps a third of his guests, and many of these but slightly. but such an adventure was distasteful to courtlandt. he could not overstep certain recognized boundaries of convention, and to enter a man's house unasked was colossal impudence. beyond this, he realized that he could have accomplished nothing; the advantage would have been hers. nor could he meet her as she came out, for again the odds would have been largely in her favor. no, the encounter must be when they two were alone. she must be surprised. she must have no time to use her ready wit. he had thought to wait until some reasonable plan offered itself for trial; yet, here he was, with nothing definite or recognizable but the fact that the craving to see her was not to be withstood. the blood began to thunder in his ears. an idea presented itself. it appealed to him at that moment as quite clever and feasible. "wait!" he called to the driver. he dived among the carriages and cars, and presently he found what he sought,--her limousine. he had taken the number into his mind too keenly to be mistaken. he saw the end of his difficulties; and he went about the affair with his usual directness. it was only at rare times that he ran his head into a cul-de-sac. if her chauffeur was regularly employed in her service, he would have to return to the hotel; but if he came from the garage, there was hope. every man is said to have his price, and a french chauffeur might prove no notable exception to the rule. "are you driver for madame da toscana?" courtlandt asked of the man lounging in the forward seat. the chauffeur looked hard at his questioner, and on finding that he satisfied the requirements of a gentleman, grumbled an affirmative. the limousine was well known in paris, and he was growing weary of these endless inquiries. "are you in her employ directly, or do you come from the garage?" "i am from the garage, but i drive mademoiselle's car most of the time, especially at night. it is not madame but mademoiselle, monsieur." "my mistake." a slight pause. it was rather a difficult moment for courtlandt. the chauffeur waited wonderingly. "would you like to make five hundred francs?" "how, monsieur?" courtlandt should have been warned by the tone, which contained no unusual interest or eagerness. "permit me to remain in mademoiselle's car till she comes. i wish to ride with her to her apartment." the chauffeur laughed. he stretched his legs. "thanks, monsieur. it is very dull waiting. monsieur knows a good joke." and to courtlandt's dismay he realized that his proposal had truly been accepted as a jest. "i am not joking. i am in earnest. five hundred francs. on the word of a gentleman i mean mademoiselle no harm. i am known to her. all she has to do is to appeal to you, and you can stop the car and summon the police." the chauffeur drew in his legs and leaned toward his tempter. "monsieur, if you are not jesting, then you are a madman. who are you? what do i know about you? i never saw you before, and for two seasons i have driven mademoiselle in paris. she wears beautiful jewels to-night. how do i know that you are not a gentlemanly thief? ride home with mademoiselle! you are crazy. make yourself scarce, monsieur; in one minute i shall call the police." "blockhead!" english of this order the frenchman perfectly understood. "_là, là!_" he cried, rising to execute his threat. courtlandt was furious, but his fury was directed at himself as much as at the trustworthy young man getting down from the limousine. his eagerness had led him to mistake stupidity for cleverness. he had gone about the affair with all the clumsiness of a boy who was making his first appearance at the stage entrance. it was mightily disconcerting, too, to have found an honest man when he was in desperate need of a dishonest one. he had faced with fine courage all sorts of dangerous wild animals; but at this moment he hadn't the courage to face a policeman and endeavor to explain, in a foreign tongue, a situation at once so delicate and so singularly open to misconstruction. so, for the second time in his life he took to his heels. of the first time, more anon. he scrambled back to his own car, slammed the door, and told the driver to drop him at the grand. his undignified retreat caused his face to burn; but discretion would not be denied. however, he did not return to the hotel. mademoiselle da toscana's chauffeur scratched his chin in perplexity. in frightening off his tempter he recognized that now he would never be able to find out who he was. he should have played with him until mademoiselle came out. she would have known instantly. that would have been the time for the police. to hide in the car! what the devil! only a madman would have offered such a proposition. the man had been either an american or an englishman, for all his accuracy in the tongue. bah! perhaps he had heard her sing that night, and had come away from the opera, moonstruck. it was not an isolated case. the fools were always pestering him, but no one had ever offered so uncommon a bribe: five hundred francs. mademoiselle might not believe that part of the tale. mademoiselle was clever. there was a standing agreement between them that she would always give him half of whatever was offered him in the way of bribes. it paid. it was easier to sell his loyalty to her for two hundred and fifty francs than to betray her for five hundred. she had yet to find him untruthful, and to-night he would be as frank as he had always been. but who was this fellow in the bavarian hat, who patrolled the sidewalk? he had been watching him when the madman approached. for an hour or more he had walked up and down, never going twenty feet beyond the limousine. he couldn't see the face. the long dark coat had a military cut about the hips and shoulders. from time to time he saw him glance up at the lighted windows. eh, well; there were other women in the world besides mademoiselle, several others. he had to wait only half an hour for her appearance. he opened the door and saw to it that she was comfortably seated; then he paused by the window, touching his cap. "what is it, françois?" "a gentleman offered me five hundred francs, mademoiselle, if i would permit him to hide in the car." "five hundred francs? to hide in the car? why didn't you call the police?" "i started to, mademoiselle, but he ran away." "oh! what was he like?" the prima donna dropped the bunch of roses on the seat beside her. "oh, he looked well enough. he had the air of a gentleman. he was tall, with light hair and mustache. but as i had never seen him before, and as mademoiselle wore some fine jewels, i bade him be off." "would you know him again?" "surely, mademoiselle." "the next time any one bothers you, call the police. you have done well, and i shall remember it. home." the man in the bavarian hat hurried back to the third car from the limousine, and followed at a reasonably safe distance. the singer leaned back against the cushions. she was very tired. the opera that night had taxed her strength, and but for her promise she would not have sung to the ambassador's guests for double the fee. there was an electric bulb in the car. she rarely turned it on, but she did to-night. she gazed into the little mirror; and utter weariness looked back from out the most beautiful, blue, irish eyes in the world. she rubbed her fingers carefully up and down the faint perpendicular wrinkle above her nose. it was always there on nights like this. how she longed for the season to end! she would fly away to the lakes, the beautiful, heavenly tinted lakes, the bare restful mountains, and the clover lawns spreading under brave old trees; she would walk along the vineyard paths, and loiter under the fig-trees, far, far away from the world, its clamor, its fickleness, its rasping jealousies. some day she would have enough; and then, good-by to all the clatter, the evil-smelling stages, the impossible people with whom she was associated. she would sing only to those she loved. the glamour of the life had long ago passed; she sang on because she had acquired costly habits, because she was fond of beautiful things, and above all, because she loved to sing. she had as many moods as a bird, as many sides as nature. a flash of sunshine called to her voice; the beads of water, trembling upon the blades of grass after a summer shower, brought a song to her lips. hers was a god-given voice, and training had added to it nothing but confidence. true, she could act; she had been told by many a great impressario that histrionically she had no peer in grand opera. but the knowledge gave her no thrill of delight. to her it was the sum of a tremendous physical struggle. she shut off the light and closed her eyes. she reclined against the cushion once more, striving not to think. once, her hands shut tightly. never, never, never! she pressed down the burning thoughts by recalling the bright scenes at the ambassador's, the real generous applause that had followed her two songs. ah, how that man paderewski played! they two had cost the ambassador eight thousand francs. fame and fortune! fortune she could understand; but fame! what was it? upon a time she believed she had known what fame was; but that had been when she was striving for it. a glowing article in a newspaper, a portrait in a magazine, rows upon rows of curious eyes and a patter of hands upon hands; that was all; and for this she had given the best of her life, and she was only twenty-five. the limousine stopped at last. the man in the bavarian hat saw her alight. his car turned and disappeared. it had taken him a week to discover where she lived. his lodgings were on the other side of the seine. after reaching them he gave crisp orders to the driver, who set his machine off at top speed. the man in the bavarian hat entered his room and lighted the gas. the room was bare and cheaply furnished. he took off his coat but retained his hat, pulling it down still farther over his eyes. his face was always in shadow. a round chin, two full red lips, scantily covered by a blond mustache were all that could be seen. he began to walk the floor impatiently, stopping and listening whenever he heard a sound. he waited less than an hour for the return of the car. it brought two men. they were well-dressed, smoothly-shaven, with keen eyes and intelligent faces. their host, who had never seen either of his guests before, carelessly waved his hand toward the table where there were two chairs. he himself took his stand by the window and looked out as he talked. in another hour the room was dark and the street deserted. in the meantime the prima donna gave a sigh of relief. she was home. it was nearly two o'clock. she would sleep till noon, and saturday and sunday would be hers. she went up the stairs instead of taking the lift, and though the hall was dark, she knew her way. she unlocked the door of the apartment and entered, swinging the door behind her. as the act was mechanical, her thoughts being otherwise engaged, she did not notice that the lock failed to click. the ferrule of a cane had prevented that. she flung her wraps on the divan and put the roses in an empty bowl. the door opened softly, without noise. next, she stopped before the mirror over the mantel, touched her hair lightly, detached the tiara of emeralds ... and became as inanimate as marble. she saw another face. she never knew how long the interval of silence was. she turned slowly. "yes, it is i!" said the man. instantly she turned again to the mantel and picked up a magazine-revolver. she leveled it at him. "leave this room, or i will shoot." courtlandt advanced toward her slowly. "do so," he said. "i should much prefer a bullet to that look." "i am in earnest." she was very white, but her hand was steady. he continued to advance. there followed a crash. the smell of burning powder filled the room. the burmese gong clanged shrilly and whirled wildly. courtlandt felt his hair stir in terror. "you must hate me indeed," he said quietly, as the sense of terror died away. he folded his arms. "try again; there ought to be half a dozen bullets left. no? then, good-by!" he left the apartment without another word or look, and as the door closed behind him there was a kind of finality in the clicking of the latch. the revolver clattered to the floor, and the woman who had fired it leaned heavily against the mantel, covering her eyes. "nora, nora!" cried a startled voice from a bedroom adjoining. "what has happened? _mon dieu_, what is it?" a pretty, sleepy-eyed young woman, in a night-dress, rushed into the room. she flung her arms about the singer. "nora, my dear, my dear!" "he forced his way in. i thought to frighten him. it went off accidentally. oh, celeste, celeste, i might have killed him!" the other drew her head down on her shoulder, and listened. she could hear voices in the lower hall, a shout of warning, a patter of steps; then the hall door slammed. after that, silence, save for the faint mellowing vibrations of the burmese gong. chapter v captive or runaway at the age of twenty-six donald abbott had become a prosperous and distinguished painter in water-colors. his work was individual, and at the same time it was delicate and charming. one saw his italian landscapes as through a filmy gauze: the almond blossoms of sicily, the rose-laden walls of florence, the vineyards of chianti, the poppy-glowing campagna out of rome. his italian lakes had brought him fame. he knew very little of the grind and hunger that attended the careers of his whilom associates. his father had left him some valuable patents--wash-tubs, carpet-cleaners, and other labor-saving devices--and the royalties from these were quite sufficient to keep him pleasantly housed. when he referred to his father (of whom he had been very fond) it was as an inventor. of what, he rarely told. in america it was all right; but over here, where these inventions were unknown, a wash-tub had a peculiar significance: that a man should be found in his money through its services left persons in doubt as to his genealogical tree, which, as a matter of fact, was a very good one. as a boy his schoolmates had dubbed him "the sweep" and "suds," and it was only human that he should wish to forget. his earnings (not inconsiderable, for tourists found much to admire in both the pictures and the artist) he spent in gratifying his mild extravagances. so there were no lines in his handsome, boyish, beardless face; and his eyes were unusually clear and happy. perhaps once or twice, since his majority, he had returned to america to prove that he was not an expatriate, though certainly he was one, the only tie existing between him and his native land being the bankers who regularly honored his drafts. and who shall condemn him for preferring italy to the desolate center of new york state, where good servants and good weather are as rare as are flawless emeralds? half after three, on wednesday afternoon, abbott stared moodily at the weather-tarnished group by dalou in the luxembourg gardens--the _triumph of silenus_. his gaze was deceptive, for the rollicking old bibulous scoundrel had not stirred his critical sense nor impressed the delicate films of thought. he was looking through the bronze, into the far-away things. he sat on his own folding stool, which he had brought along from his winter studio hard by in the old boul' miche'. he had arrived early that morning, all the way from como, to find a thunderbolt driven in at his feet. across his knees fluttered an open newspaper, the paris edition of the new york _herald_. all that kept it from blowing away was the tense if sprawling fingers of his right hand; his left hung limply at his side. it was not possible. such things did not happen these unromantic days to musical celebrities. she had written that on monday night she would sing in _la bohème_ and on wednesday, _faust_. she had since vanished, vanished as completely as though she had taken wings and flown away. it was unreal. she had left the apartment in the avenue de wagram on saturday afternoon, and nothing had been seen or heard of her since. at the last moment they had had to find a substitute for her part in the puccini opera. the maid testified that her mistress had gone on an errand of mercy. she had not mentioned where, but she had said that she would return in time to dress for dinner, which proved conclusively that something out of the ordinary had befallen her. the automobile that had carried her away had not been her own, and the chauffeur was unknown. none of the directors at the opera had been notified of any change in the singer's plans. she had disappeared, and they were deeply concerned. singers were generally erratic, full of sudden indispositions, unaccountable whims; but the signorina da toscana was one in a thousand. she never broke an engagement. if she was ill she said so at once; she never left them in doubt until the last moment. indecision was not one of her characteristics. she was as reliable as the sun. if the directors did not hear definitely from her by noon to-day, they would have to find another marguerite. the police began to move, and they stirred up some curious bits of information. a man had tried to bribe the singer's chauffeur, while she was singing at the austrian ambassador's. the chauffeur was able to describe the stranger with some accuracy. then came the bewildering episode in the apartment: the pistol-shot, the flight of the man, the astonished concierge to whom the beautiful american would offer no explanations. the man (who tallied with the description given by the chauffeur) had obtained entrance under false representations. he claimed to be an emissary with important instructions from the opera. there was nothing unusual in this; messengers came at all hours, and seldom the same one twice; so the concierge's suspicions had not been aroused. another item. a tall handsome italian had called at eleven o'clock saturday morning, but the signorina had sent down word that she could not see him. the maid recalled that her mistress had intended to dine that night with the italian gentleman. his name she did not know, having been with the signorina but two weeks. celeste fournier, the celebrated young pianist and composer, who shared the apartment with the missing prima donna, stated that she hadn't the slightest idea where her friend was. she was certain that misfortune had overtaken her in some inexplicable manner. to implicate the italian was out of the question. he was well-known to them both. he had arrived again at seven, saturday, and was very much surprised that the signorina had not yet returned. he had waited till nine, when he left, greatly disappointed. he was the barone di monte-verdi in calabria, formerly military attaché at the italian embassy in berlin. sunday noon mademoiselle fournier had notified the authorities. she did not know, but she felt sure that the blond stranger knew more than any one else. and here was the end of things. the police found themselves at a standstill. they searched the hotels but without success; the blond stranger could not be found. abbott's eyes were not happy and pleasant just now. they were dull and blank with the reaction of the stunning blow. he, too, was certain of the barone. much as he secretly hated the italian, he knew him to be a fearless and an honorable man. but who could this blond stranger be who appeared so sinisterly in the two scenes? from where had he come? why had nora refused to explain about the pistol-shot? any woman had a perfect right to shoot a man who forced his way into her apartment. was he one of those mad fools who had fallen in love with her, and had become desperate? or was it some one she knew and against whom she did not wish to bring any charges? abducted! and she might be, at this very moment, suffering all sorts of indignities. it was horrible to be so helpless. the sparkle of the sunlight upon the ferrule of a cane, extending over his shoulder, broke in on his agonizing thoughts. he turned, an angry word on the tip of his tongue. he expected to see some tourist who wanted to be informed. "ted courtlandt!" he jumped up, overturning the stool. "and where the dickens did you come from? i thought you were in the orient?" "just got back, abby." the two shook hands and eyed each other with the appraising scrutiny of friends of long standing. "you don't change any," said abbott. "nor do you. i've been standing behind you fully two minutes. what were you glooming about? old silenus offend you?" "have you read the _herald_ this morning?" "i never read it nowadays. they are always giving me a roast of some kind. whatever i do they are bound to misconstrue it." courtlandt stooped and righted the stool, but sat down on the grass, his feet in the path. "what's the trouble? have they been after you?" abbott rescued the offending paper and shaking it under his friend's nose, said: "read that." courtlandt's eyes widened considerably as they absorbed the significance of the heading--"eleonora da toscana missing." "bah!" he exclaimed. "you say bah?" "it looks like one of their advertising dodges. i know something about singers," courtlandt added. "i engineered a musical comedy once." "you do not know anything about her," cried abbott hotly. "that's true enough." courtlandt finished the article, folded the paper and returned it, and began digging in the path with his cane. "but what i want to know is, who the devil is this mysterious blond stranger?" abbott flourished the paper again. "i tell you, it's no advertising dodge. she's been abducted. the hound!" courtlandt ceased boring into the earth. "the story says that she refused to explain this blond chap's presence in her room. what do you make of that?" "perhaps you think the fellow was her press-agent?" was the retort. "lord, no! but it proves that she knew him, that she did not want the police to find him. at least, not at that moment. who's the italian?" suddenly. "i can vouch for him. he is a gentleman, honorable as the day is long, even if he is hot-headed at times. count him out of it. it's this unknown, i tell you. revenge for some imagined slight. it's as plain as the nose on your face." "how long have you known her?" asked courtlandt presently. "about two years. she's the gem of the whole lot. gentle, kindly, untouched by flattery.... why, you must have seen and heard her!" "i have." courtlandt stared into the hole he had dug. "voice like an angel's, with a face like bellini's donna; and irish all over. but for all that, you will find that her disappearance will turn out to be a diva's whim. hang it, suds, i've had some experience with singers." "you are a blockhead!" exploded the younger man. "all right, i am." courtlandt laughed. "man, she wrote me that she would sing monday and to-night, and wanted me to hear her. i couldn't get here in time for _la bohème_, but i was building on _faust_. and when she says a thing, she means it. as you said, she's irish." "and i'm dutch." "and the stubbornest dutchman i ever met. why don't you go home and settle down and marry?--and keep that phiz of yours out of the newspapers? sometimes i think you're as crazy as a bug." "an opinion shared by many. maybe i am. i dash in where lunatics fear to tread. come on over to the soufflet and have a drink with me." "i'm not drinking to-day," tersely. "there's too much ahead for me to do." "going to start out to find her? oh, sir galahad!" ironically. "abby, you used to be a sport. i'll wager a hundred against a bottle of pop that to-morrow or next day she'll turn up serenely, with the statement that she was indisposed, sorry not to have notified the directors, and all that. they do it repeatedly every season." "but an errand of mercy, the strange automobile which can not be found? the engagement to dine with the barone? celeste fournier's statement? you can't get around these things. i tell you, nora isn't that kind. she's too big in heart and mind to stoop to any such devices," vehemently. "nora! that looks pretty serious, abby. you haven't gone and made a fool of yourself, have you?" "what do you call making a fool of myself?" truculently. "you aren't a suitor, are you? an accepted suitor?" unruffled, rather kindly. "no, but i would to heaven that i were!" abbott jammed the newspaper into his pocket and slung the stool over his arm. "come on over to the studio until i get some money." "you are really going to start a search?" "i really am. i'd start one just as quickly for you, if i heard that you had vanished under mysterious circumstances." "i believe you honestly would." "you are an old misanthrope. i hope some woman puts the hook into you some day. where did you pick up the grouch? some of your dusky princesses give you the go-by?" "you, too, abby?" "oh, rot! of course i never believed any of that twaddle. only, i've got a sore head to-day. if you knew nora as well as i do, you'd understand." courtlandt walked on a little ahead of the artist, who looked up and down the athletic form, admiringly. sometimes he loved the man, sometimes he hated him. he marched through tragedy and comedy and thrilling adventure with no more concern that he evinced in striding through these gardens. nearly every one had heard of his exploits; but who among them knew anything of the real man, so adroitly hidden under unruffled externals? that there was a man he did not know, hiding deep down within those powerful shoulders, he had not the least doubt. he himself possessed the quick mobile temperament of the artist, and he could penetrate but not understand the poise assumed with such careless ease by his friend. dutch blood had something to do with it, and there was breeding, but there was something more than these: he was a reversion, perhaps, to the type of man which had made the rovers of the lowlands feared on land and sea, now hemmed in by convention, hampered by the barriers of progress, and striving futilely to find an outlet for his peculiar energies. one bit of knowledge gratified him; he stood nearer to courtlandt than any other man. he had known the adventurer as a boy, and long separations had in nowise impaired the foundations of this friendship. courtlandt continued toward the exit, his head forward, his gaze bent on the path. he had the air of a man deep in thought, philosophic thought, which leaves the brows unmarred by those corrugations known as frowns. yet his thoughts were far from philosophic. indeed, his soul was in mad turmoil. he could have thrown his arms toward the blue sky and cursed aloud the fates that had set this new tangle at his feet. he longed for the jungles and some mad beast to vent his wrath upon. but he gave no sign. he had returned with a purpose as hard and grim as iron; and no obstacle, less powerful than death, should divert or control him. abduction? let the public believe what it might; he held the key to the mystery. she was afraid, and had taken flight. so be it. "i say, ted," called out the artist, "what did you mean by saying that you were a dutchman?" courtlandt paused so that abbott might catch up to him. "i said that i was a dutchman?" "yes. and it has just occurred to me that you meant something." "oh, yes. you were talking of da toscana? let's call her harrigan. it will save time, and no one will know to whom we refer. you said she was irish, and that when she said a thing she meant it. my boy, the irish are notorious for claiming that. they often say it before they see clearly. now, we dutchmen,--it takes a long time for us to make up our minds, but when we do, something has got to bend or break." "you don't mean to say that you are going to settle down and get married?" "i'm not going to settle down and get married, if that will ease your mind any." "man, i was hoping!" "three meals a day in the same house, with the same woman, never appealed to me." "what do you want, one for each meal?" "there's the dusky princess peeking out again. the truth is, abby, if i could hide myself for three or four years, long enough for people to forget me, i might reconsider. but it should be under another name. they envy us millionaires. why, we are the lonesomest duffers going. we distrust every one; we fly when a woman approaches; we become monomaniacs; one thing obsesses us, everybody is after our money. we want friends, we want wives, but we want them to be attracted to us and not to our money-bags. oh, pshaw! what plans have you made in regard to the search?" gloom settled upon the artist's face. "i've got to find out what's happened to her, ted. this isn't any play. why, she loves the part of marguerite as she loves nothing else. she's been kidnaped, and only god knows for what reason. it has knocked me silly. i just came up from como, where she spends the summers now. i was going to take her and fournier out to dinner." "who's fournier?" "mademoiselle fournier, the composer. she goes with nora on the yearly concert tours." "pretty?" "charming." "i see," thoughtfully. "what part of the lake; the villa d'este, cadenabbia?" "bellaggio. oh, it was ripping last summer. she's always singing when she's happy. when she sings out on the terrace, suddenly, without giving any one warning, her voice is wonderful. no audience ever heard anything like it." "i heard her friday night. i dropped in at the opera without knowing what they were singing. i admit all you say in regard to her voice and looks; but i stick to the whim." "but you can't fake that chap with the blond mustache," retorted abbott grimly. "lord, i wish i had run into you any day but to-day. i'm all in. i can telephone to the opera from the studio, and then we shall know for a certainty whether or not she will return for the performance to-night. if not, then i'm going in for a little detective work." "abby, it will turn out to be the sheep of little bo-peep." "have your own way about it." when they arrived at the studio abbott telephoned promptly. nothing had been heard. they were substituting another singer. "call up the _herald_," suggested courtlandt. abbott did so. and he had to answer innumerable questions, questions which worked him into a fine rage: who was he, where did he live, what did he know, how long had he been in paris, and could he prove that he had arrived that morning? abbott wanted to fling the receiver into the mouth of the transmitter, but his patience was presently rewarded. the singer had not yet been found, but the chauffeur of the mysterious car had turned up ... in a hospital, and perhaps by night they would know everything. the chauffeur had had a bad accident; the car itself was a total wreck, in a ditch, not far from versailles. "there!" cried abbott, slamming the receiver on the hook. "what do you say to that?" "the chauffeur may have left her somewhere, got drunk afterward, and plunged into the ditch. things have happened like that. abby, don't make a camel's-hair shirt out of your paint-brushes. what a pother about a singer! if it had been a great inventor, a poet, an artist, there would have been nothing more than a two-line paragraph. but an opera-singer, one who entertains us during our idle evenings--ha! that's a different matter. set instantly that great municipal machinery called the police in action; sell extra editions on the streets. what ado!" "what the devil makes _you_ so bitter?" "was i bitter? i thought i was philosophizing." courtlandt consulted his watch. half after four. "come over to the maurice and dine with me to-morrow night, that is, if you do not find your prima donna. i've an engagement at five-thirty, and must be off." "i was about to ask you to dine with me to-night," disappointedly. "can't; awfully sorry, abby. it was only luck that i met you in the luxembourg. be over about seven. i was very glad to see you again." abbott kicked a broken easel into a corner. "all right. if anything turns up i'll let you know. you're at the grand?" "yes. by-by." "i know what's the matter with him," mused the artist, alone. "some woman has chucked him. silly little fool, probably." courtlandt went down-stairs and out into the boulevard. frankly, he was beginning to feel concerned. he still held to his original opinion that the diva had disappeared of her own free will; but if the machinery of the police had been started, he realized that his own safety would eventually become involved. by this time, he reasoned, there would not be a hotel in paris free of surveillance. naturally, blond strangers would be in demand. the complications that would follow his own arrest were not to be ignored. he agreed with his conscience that he had not acted with dignity in forcing his way into her apartment. but that night he had been at odds with convention; his spirit had been that of the marauding old dutchman of the seventeenth century. he perfectly well knew that she was in the right as far as the pistol-shot was concerned. further, he knew that he could quash any charge she might make in that direction by the simplest of declarations; and to avoid this simplest of declarations she would prefer silence above all things. they knew each other tolerably well. it was extremely fortunate that he had not been to the hotel since saturday. he went directly to the war-office. the great and powerful man there was the only hope left. they had met some years before in algiers, where courtlandt had rendered him a very real service. "i did not expect you to the minute," the great man said pleasantly. "you will not mind waiting for a few minutes." "not in the least. only, i'm in a deuce of a mess," frankly and directly. "innocently enough, i've stuck my head into the police net." "is it possible that now i can pay my debt to you?" "such as it is. have you read the article in the newspapers regarding the disappearance of signorina da toscana, the singer?" "yes." "i am the unknown blond. to-morrow morning i want you to go with me to the prefecture and state that i was with you all of saturday and sunday; that on monday you and your wife dined with me, that yesterday we went to the aviation meet, and later to the odéon." "in brief, an alibi?" smiling now. "exactly. i shall need one." "and a perfectly good alibi. but i have your word that you are in nowise concerned? pardon the question, but between us it is really necessary if i am to be of service to you." "on my word as a gentleman." "that is sufficient." "in fact, i do not believe that she has been abducted at all. will you let me use your pad and pen for a minute?" the other pushed over the required articles. courtlandt scrawled a few words and passed back the pad. "for me to read?" "yes," moodily. the frenchman read. courtlandt watched him anxiously. there was not even a flicker of surprise in the official eye. calmly he ripped off the sheet and tore it into bits, distributing the pieces into the various waste-baskets yawning about his long flat desk. next, still avoiding the younger man's eye, he arranged his papers neatly and locked them up in a huge safe which only the artillery of the german army could have forced. he then called for his hat and stick. he beckoned to courtlandt to follow. not a word was said until the car was humming on the road to vincennes. "well?" said courtlandt, finally. it was not possible for him to hold back the question any longer. "my dear friend, i am taking you out to the villa for the night." "but i have nothing...." "and i have everything, even foresight. if you were arrested to-night it would cause you some inconvenience. i am fifty-six, some twenty years your senior. under this hat of mine i carry a thousand secrets, and every one of these thousand must go to the grave with me, yours along with them. i have met you a dozen times since those algerian days, and never have you failed to afford me some amusement or excitement. you are the most interesting and entertaining young man i know. try one of these cigars." precisely at the time courtlandt stepped into the automobile outside the war-office, a scene, peculiar in character, but inconspicuous in that it did not attract attention, was enacted in the gare de l'est. two sober-visaged men stood respectfully aside to permit a tall young man in a bavarian hat to enter a compartment of the second-class. what could be seen of the young man's face was full of smothered wrath and disappointment. how he hated himself, for his weakness, for his cowardice! he was not all bad. knowing that he was being watched and followed, he could not go to versailles and compromise her, uselessly. and devil take the sleek demon of a woman who had prompted him to commit so base an act! "you will at least," he said, "deliver that message which i have intrusted to your care." "it shall reach versailles to-night, your highness." the young man reread the telegram which one of the two men had given him a moment since. it was a command which even he, wilful and disobedient as he was, dared not ignore. he ripped it into shreds and flung them out of the window. he did not apologize to the man into whose face the pieces flew. that gentleman reddened perceptibly, but he held his tongue. the blare of a horn announced the time of departure. the train moved. the two men on the platform saluted, but the young man ignored the salutation. not until the rear car disappeared in the hazy distance did the watchers stir. then they left the station and got into the tonneau of a touring-car, which shot away and did not stop until it drew up before that imposing embassy upon which the french will always look with more or less suspicion. chapter vi the bird behind bars the most beautiful blue irish eyes in the world gazed out at the dawn which turned night-blue into day-blue and paled the stars. rosal lay the undulating horizon, presently to burst into living flame, transmuting the dull steel bars of the window into fairy gold, that trick of alchemy so futilely sought by man. there was a window at the north and another at the south, likewise barred; but the irish eyes never sought these two. it was from the east window only that they could see the long white road that led to paris. the nightingale was truly caged. but the wild heart of the eagle beat in this nightingale's breast, and the eyes burned as fiercely toward the east as the east burned toward the west. sunday and monday, tuesday and wednesday and thursday, to-day; and that the five dawns were singular in beauty and that she had never in her life before witnessed the creation of five days, one after another, made no impression upon her sense of the beautiful, so delicate and receptive in ordinary times. she was conscious that within her the cup of wrath was overflowing. of other things, such as eating and sleeping and moving about in her cage (more like an eagle indeed than a nightingale), recurrence had blunted her perception. her clothes were soiled and crumpled, sundrily torn; her hair was in disorder, and tendrils hung about her temples and forehead--thick black hair, full of purple tones in the sunlight--for she had not surrendered peacefully to this incarceration. dignity, that phase of philosophy which accepts quietly the inevitable, she had thrown to the winds. she had fought desperately, primordially, when she had learned that her errand of mercy was nothing more than a cruel hoax. "oh, but he shall pay, he shall pay!" she murmured, striving to loosen the bars with her small, white, helpless hands. the cry seemed to be an arietta, for through all these four maddening days she had voiced it,--now low and deadly with hate, now full-toned in burning anger, now broken by sobs of despair. "will you never come, so that i may tell you how base and vile you are?" she further addressed the east. she had waited for his appearance on sunday. late in the day one of the jailers had informed her that it was impossible for the gentleman to come before monday. so she marshaled her army of phrases, of accusations, of denunciations, ready to smother him with them the moment he came. but he came not monday, nor tuesday, nor wednesday. the suspense was to her mind diabolical. she began to understand: he intended to keep her there till he was sure that her spirit was broken, then he would come. break her spirit? she laughed wildly. he could break her spirit no more easily than she could break these bars. to bring her to versailles upon an errand of mercy! well, he was capable of anything. the room was large and fairly comfortable, but contained nothing breakable, having been tenanted at one time by a strenuous lunatic, who had considerately died after his immediate family and relations had worn themselves into their several graves, taking care of him. but eleonora harrigan knew nothing of the history of the room while she occupied it. so, no ghost disturbed her restless slumberless nights, consumed in watching and listening. she was not particularly distressed because she knew that it would not be possible for her to sing again until the following winter in new york. she had sobbed too much, with her face buried in the pillow. had these sobs been born of weakness, all might have been well; but rage had mothered them, and thus her voice was in a very bad way. this morning she was noticeably hoarse, and there was a break in the arietta. no, she did not fret over this side of the calamity. the sting of it all lay in the fact that she had been outraged in the matter of personal liberty, with no act of reprisal to ease her immediate longing to be avenged. nora, as she stood in the full morning sunlight, was like to gladden the eyes of all mankind. she was beautiful, and all adjectives applicable would but serve to confuse rather than to embellish her physical excellence. she was as beautiful as a garden rose is, needing no defense, no ramparts of cloying phrases. the day of poets is gone, otherwise she would have been sung in cantos. she was tall, shapely, deep-bosomed, fine-skinned. critics, in praising her charms, delved into mythology and folk-lore for comparisons, until there wasn't a goddess left on olympus or on northland's icy capes; and when these images became a little shop-worn, referred to certain masterpieces of the old fellows who had left nothing more to be said in oils. nora enjoyed it all. she had not been happy in the selection of her stage name; but she had chosen eleonora da toscana because she believed there was good luck in it. once, long before the world knew of her, she had returned home from italy unexpectedly. "molly, here's nora, from tuscany!" her delighted father had cried: who at that time had a nebulous idea that tuscany was somewhere in ireland because it had a celtic ring to it. being filled with love of italy, its tongue, its history, its physical beauty, she naïvely translated "nora from tuscany" into italian, and declared that when she went upon the stage she would be known by that name. there had been some smiling over the pseudonym; but nora was irish enough to cling to it. by and by the great music-loving public ceased to concern itself about her name; it was her fresh beauty and her wonderful voice they craved to see and hear. kings and queens, emperors and empresses, princes and princesses,--what is called royalty and nobility in the newspapers freely gave her homage. quite a rise in the world for a little girl who had once lived in a shabby apartment in new york and run barefooted on the wet asphalts, summer nights! but nora was not recalling the happy scenes of her childhood; indeed, no; she was still threatening paris. once there, she would not lack for reprisals. to have played on her pity! to have made a lure of her tender concern for the unfortunate! never would she forgive such baseness. and only a little while ago she had been as happy as the nightingale to which they compared her. never had she wronged any one; she had been kindness and thoughtfulness to all with whom she had come in contact. but from now on!... her fingers tightened round the bars. she might have posed as dido when she learned that the noble Æneas was dead. war, war; woe to the moths who fluttered about her head hereafter! ah, but had she been happy? her hands slid down the bars. her expression changed. the mouth drooped, the eagle-light in her eyes dimmed. from out the bright morning, somewhere, had come weariness, and with this came weakness, and finally, tears. she heard the key turn in the lock. they had never come so early before. she was astonished to see that her jailer did not close the door as usual. he put down the breakfast tray on the table. there was tea and toast and fruit. "mademoiselle, there has been a terrible mistake," said the man humbly. "ah! so you have found that out?" she cried. "yes. you are not the person for whom this room was intended." which was half a truth and perfectly true, paradoxical as it may seem. "eat your breakfast in peace. you are free, mademoiselle." "free? you will not hinder me if i walk through that door?" "no, mademoiselle. on the contrary, i shall be very glad, and so will my brother, who guards you at night. i repeat, there has been a frightful mistake. monsieur champeaux ..." "monsieur champeaux!" nora was bewildered. she had never heard this name before. "he calls himself that," was the diplomatic answer. all nora's suspicions took firm ground again. "will you describe this monsieur champeaux to me?" asked the actress coming into life. "he is short, dark, and old, mademoiselle." "rather is he not tall, blond, and young?" ironically. the jailer concealed what annoyance he felt. in his way he was just as capable an actor as she was. the accuracy of her description startled him; for the affair had been carried out so adroitly that he had been positive that until her real captor appeared she would be totally in the dark regarding his identity. and here she had hit it off in less than a dozen words. oh, well; it did not matter now. she might try to make it unpleasant for his employer, but he doubted the ultimate success of her attempts. however, the matter was at an end as far as he was concerned. "have you thought what this means? it is abduction. it is a crime you have committed, punishable by long imprisonment." "i have been mademoiselle's jailer, not her abductor. and when one is poor and in need of money!" he shrugged. "i will give you a thousand francs for the name and address of the man who instigated this outrage." ah, he thought: then she wasn't so sure? "i told you the name, mademoiselle. as for his address, i dare not give it, not for ten thousand francs. besides, i have said that there has been a mistake." "for whom have i been mistaken?" "who but monsieur champeaux's wife, mademoiselle, who is not in her right mind?" with inimitable sadness. "very well," said nora. "you say that i am free. that is all i want, freedom." "in twenty minutes the electric tram leaves for paris. you will recall, mademoiselle," humbly, "that we have taken nothing belonging to you. you have your purse and hat and cloak. the struggle was most unfortunate. but, think, mademoiselle, think; we thought you to be insane!" "permit me to doubt that! and you are not afraid to let me go?" "not in the least, mademoiselle. a mistake has been made, and in telling you to go at once, we do our best to rectify this mistake. it is only five minutes to the tram. a carriage is at the door. will mademoiselle be pleased to remember that we have treated her with the utmost courtesy?" "i shall remember everything," ominously. "very good, mademoiselle. you will be in paris before nine." with this he bowed and backed out of the room as though nora had suddenly made a distinct ascension in the scale of importance. "wait!" she called. his face appeared in the doorway again. "do you know who i am?" "since this morning, mademoiselle." "that is all." free! her veins tingled with strange exultation. he had lost his courage and had become afraid of the consequences. free! monsieur champeaux indeed! cowardice was a new development in his character. he had been afraid to come. she drank the tea, but did not touch the toast or fruit. there would be time enough for breakfast when she arrived in paris. her hands trembled violently as she pinned on her hat, and she was not greatly concerned as to the angle. she snatched up her purse and cloak, and sped out into the street. a phaeton awaited her. "the tram," she said. "yes, mademoiselle." "and go quickly." she would not feel safe until she was in the tram. a face appeared at one of the windows. as the vehicle turned the corner, the face vanished; and perhaps that particular visage disappeared forever. a gray wig came off, the little gray side-whiskers, the bushy grey eyebrows, revealing a clever face, not more than thirty, cunning, but humorously cunning and anything but scoundrelly. the painted scar aslant the nose was also obliterated. with haste the man thrust the evidences of disguise into a traveling-bag, ran here and there through the rooms, all bare and unfurnished save the one with the bars and the kitchen, which contained two cots and some cooking utensils. nothing of importance had been left behind. he locked the door and ran all the way to the place d'armes, catching the tram to paris by a fraction of a minute. all very well done. she would be in paris before the police made any definite move. the one thing that disturbed him was the thought of the blockhead of a chauffeur, who had got drunk before his return from versailles. if he talked; well, he could say nothing beyond the fact that he had deposited the singer at the house as directed. he knew positively nothing. the man laughed softly. a thousand francs apiece for him and antoine, and no possible chance of being discovered. let the police find the house in versailles; let them trace whatever paths they found; the agent would tell them, and honestly, that an aged man had rented the house for a month and had paid him in advance. what more could the agent say? only one bit of puzzlement: why hadn't the blond stranger appeared? who was he, in truth, and what had been his game? all this waiting and wondering, and then a curt telegram of the night before, saying, "release her." so much the better. what his employer's motives were did not interest him half so much as the fact that he had a thousand francs in his pocket, and that all element of danger had been done away with. true, the singer herself would move heaven and earth to find out who had been back of the abduction. let her make her accusations. he was out of it. he glanced toward the forward part of the tram. there she sat, staring at the white road ahead. a young frenchman sat near her, curling his mustache desperately. so beautiful and all alone! at length he spoke to her. she whirled upon him so suddenly that his hat fell off his head and rolled at the feet of the onlooker. "your hat, monsieur?" he said gravely, returning it. nora laughed maliciously. the author of the abortive flirtation fled down to the body of the tram. and now there was no one on top but nora and her erstwhile jailer, whom she did not recognize in the least. * * * * * "mademoiselle," said the great policeman soberly, "this is a grave accusation to make." "i make it, nevertheless," replied nora. she sat stiffly in her chair, her face colorless, dark circles under her eyes. she never looked toward courtlandt. "but monsieur courtlandt has offered an alibi such as we can not ignore. more than that, his integrity is vouched for by the gentleman at his side, whom doubtless mademoiselle recognizes." nora eyed the great man doubtfully. "what is the gentleman to you?" she was interrogated. "absolutely nothing," contemptuously. the minister inspected his rings. "he has annoyed me at various times," continued nora; "that is all. and his actions on friday night warrant every suspicion i have entertained against him." the chief of police turned toward the bandaged chauffeur. "you recognize the gentleman?" "no, monsieur, i never saw him before. it was an old man who engaged me." "go on." "he said that mademoiselle's old teacher was very ill and asked for assistance. i left mademoiselle at the house and drove away. i was hired from the garage. that is the truth, monsieur." nora smiled disbelievingly. doubtless he had been paid well for that lie. "and you?" asked the chief of nora's chauffeur. "he is certainly the gentleman, monsieur, who attempted to bribe me." "that is true," said courtlandt with utmost calmness. "mademoiselle, if monsieur courtlandt wished, he could accuse you of attempting to shoot him." "it was an accident. his sudden appearance in my apartment frightened me. besides, i believe a woman who lives comparatively alone has a legal and moral right to protect herself from such unwarrantable intrusions. i wish him no physical injury, but i am determined to be annoyed by him no longer." the minister's eyes sought courtlandt's face obliquely. strange young man, he thought. from the expression of his face he might have been a spectator rather than the person most vitally concerned in this little scene. and what a pair they made! "monsieur courtlandt, you will give me your word of honor not to annoy mademoiselle again?" "i promise never to annoy her again." for the briefest moment the blazing blue eyes clashed with the calm brown ones. the latter were first to deviate from the line. it was not agreeable to look into a pair of eyes burning with the hate of one's self. perhaps this conflagration was intensified by the placidity of his gaze. if only there had been some sign of anger, of contempt, anything but this incredible tranquillity against which she longed to cry out! she was too wrathful to notice the quickening throb of the veins on his temples. "mademoiselle, i find no case against monsieur courtlandt, unless you wish to appear against him for his forcible entrance to your apartment." nora shook her head. the chief of police stroked his mustache to hide the fleeting smile. a peculiar case, the like of which had never before come under his scrutiny! "circumstantial evidence, we know, points to him; but we have also an alibi which is incontestable. we must look elsewhere for your abductors. think; have you not some enemy? is there no one who might wish you worry and inconvenience? are your associates all loyal to you? is there any jealousy?" "no, none at all, monsieur," quickly and decidedly. "in my opinion, then, the whole affair is a hoax, perpetrated to vex and annoy you. the old man who employed this chauffeur may not have been old. i have looked upon all sides of the affair, and it begins to look like a practical joke, mademoiselle." "ah!" angrily. "and am i to have no redress? think of the misery i have gone through, the suspense! my voice is gone. i shall not be able to sing again for months. is it your suggestion that i drop the investigation?" "yes, mademoiselle, for it does not look as if we could get anywhere with it. if you insist, i will hold monsieur courtlandt; but i warn you the magistrate would not hesitate to dismiss the case instantly. monsieur courtlandt arrived in marseilles thursday morning; he reached paris friday morning. since arriving in paris he has fully accounted for his time. it is impossible that he could have arranged for the abduction. still, if you say, i can hold him for entering your apartment." "that would be but a farce." nora rose. "monsieur, permit me to wish you good day. for my part, i shall pursue this matter to the end. i believe this gentleman guilty, and i shall do my best to prove it. i am a woman, and all alone. when a man has powerful friends, it is not difficult to build an alibi." "that is a reflection upon my word, mademoiselle," quietly interposed the minister. "monsieur has been imposed upon." nora walked to the door. "wait a moment, mademoiselle," said the prefect. "why do you insist upon prosecuting him for something of which he is guiltless, when you could have him held for something of which he is really guilty?" "the one is trivial; the other is a serious outrage. good morning." the attendant closed the door behind her. "a very determined young woman," mused the chief of police. "exceedingly," agreed the minister. courtlandt got up wearily. but the chief motioned him to be reseated. "i do not say that i dare not pursue my investigations; but now that mademoiselle is safely returned, i prefer not to." "may i ask who made this request?" asked courtlandt. "request? yes, monsieur, it was a request not to proceed further." "from where?" "as to that, you will have to consult the head of the state. i am not at liberty to make the disclosure." the minister leaned forward eagerly. "then there is a political side to it?" "there would be if everything had not turned out so fortunately." "i believe that i understand now," said courtlandt, his face hardening. strange, he had not thought of it before. his skepticism had blinded him to all but one angle. "your advice to drop the matter is excellent." the chief of police elevated his brows interrogatively. "for i presume," continued courtlandt, rising, "that mademoiselle's abductor is by this time safely across the frontier." chapter vii battling jimmie there is a heavenly terrace, flanked by marvelous trees. to the left, far down below, is a curving, dark-shaded, turquoise body of water called lecco; to the right there lies the queen of lakes, the crown of italy, a corn-flower sapphire known as como. over and about it--this terrace--poets have raved and tousled their neglected locks in vain to find the perfect phrasing; novelists have come and gone and have carried away peace and inspiration; and painters have painted it from a thousand points of view, and perhaps are painting it from another thousand this very minute. it is the place of honeymoons. rich lovers come and idle there; and lovers of modest means rush up to it and down from it to catch the next steamer to menaggio. eros was not born in greece: of all barren mountains, unstirring, hymettus, or olympus, or whatever they called it in the days of the junketing gods, is completest. no; venus went a-touring and abode a while upon this same gracious spot, once dear to pliny the younger. between the blessed ledge and the towering mountains over the way, rolls a small valley, caressed on either side by the lakes. there are flower gardens, from which in summer rises the spicy perfume of lavender; there are rows upon rows of grape-vines, terraced downward; there are purple figs and white and ruby mulberries. around and about, rising sheer from the waters, wherever the eye may rove, heaven-touching, salmon-tinted mountains abound, with scarfs of filmy cloud aslant their rugged profiles, and beauty-patches of snow. and everywhere the dark and brooding cypress, the copper beech, the green pine accentuate the pink and blue and white stucco of the villas, the rich and the humble. behind the terrace is a promontory, three or four hundred feet above the waters. upon the crest is a cultivated forest of all known evergreens. there are ten miles of cool and fragrant paths, well trodden by the devoteés of eros. the call of love is heard here; the echoes to-day reverberate with the impassioned declarations of yesterday. the englishman's reserve melts, the american forgets his coupons, the german puts his arm around the robust waist of his frau or fräulein. (this is nothing for him; he does it unconcernedly up and down the great urban highways of the world.) again, between the terrace ledge and the forest lies a square of velvet green, abounding in four-leaf clover. _buona fortuna!_ in the center there is a fountain. the water tinkles in drops. one hears its soft music at all times. along the terrace parapet are tea-tables; a monster oak protects one from the sun. if one (or two) lingers over tea and cakes, one may witness the fiery lances of the setting sun burn across one arm of water while the silver spars of the rising moon shimmer across the other. nature is whole-souled here; she gives often and freely and all she has. seated on one of the rustic benches, his white tennis shoes resting against the lower iron of the railing, a bavarian dachel snoozing comfortably across his knees, was a man of fifty. he was broad of shoulder, deep of chest, and clean-shaven. he had laid aside his panama hat, and his hair was clipped closely, and was pleasantly and honorably sprinkled with gray. his face was broad and tanned; the nose was tilted, and the wide mouth was both kindly and humorous. one knew, from the tint of his blue eyes and the quirk of his lips, that when he spoke there would be a bit of brogue. he was james harrigan, one time celebrated in the ring for his gameness, his squareness, his endurance; "battling jimmie" harrigan, who, when he encountered his first knock-out, retired from the ring. he had to his credit sixty-one battles, of which he had easily won forty. he had been outpointed in some and had broken even in others; but only once had he been "railroaded into dreamland," to use the parlance of the game. that was enough. he understood. youth would be served, and he was no longer young. he had, unlike the many in his peculiar service, lived cleanly and with wisdom and foresight: he had saved both his money and his health. to-day he was at peace with the world, with three sound appetites the day and the wherewithal to gratify them. true, he often dreamed of the old days, the roped square, the lights, the haze of tobacco smoke, the white patches surrounding, all of a certain expectant tilt, the reporters scribbling on the deal tables under the very posts, the cheers as he took his corner and scraped his shoes in the powdered resin, the padded gloves thrown down in the center of the canvas which was already scarred and soiled by the preliminaries. but never, never again; if only for the little woman's sake. only when the game was done did he learn with what terror and dread she had waited for his return on fighting nights. to-day "battling jimmie" was forgotten by the public, and he was happy in the seclusion of this forgetfulness. a new and strange career had opened up before him: he was the father of the most beautiful prima donna in the operatic world, and, difficult as the task was, he did his best to live up to it. it was hard not to offer to shake hands when he was presented to a princess or a duchess; it was hard to remember when to change the studs in his shirt; and a white cravat was the terror of his nights, for his fingers, broad and stubby and powerful, had not been trained to the delicate task of tying a bow-knot. by a judicious blow in that spot where the ribs divaricate he could right well tie his adversary into a bow-knot, but this string of white lawn was a most damnable thing. still, the puttering of the two women, their daily concern over his deportment, was bringing him into conformity with social usages. that he naturally despised the articles of such a soulless faith was evident in his constant inclination to play hooky. one thing he rebelled against openly, and with such firmness that the women did not press him too strongly for fear of a general revolt. on no occasion, however impressive, would he wear a silk hat. christmas and birthdays invariably called forth the gift of a silk hat, for the women trusted that they could overcome resistance by persistence. he never said anything, but it was noticed that the hotel porter, or the gardener, or whatever masculine head (save his own) was available, came forth resplendent on feast-days and sundays. leaning back in an iron chair, with his shoulders resting against the oak, was another man, altogether a different type. he was frowning over the pages of bagot's _italian lakes_, and he wasn't making much headway. he was italian to the core, for all that he aped the english style and manner. he could speak the tongue with fluency, but he stumbled and faltered miserably over the soundless type. his clothes had the piccadilly cut, and his mustache, erstwhile waxed and militant, was cropped at the corners, thoroughly insular. he was thirty, and undeniably handsome. near the fountain, on the green, was a third man. he was in the act of folding up an easel and a camp-stool. the tea-drinkers had gone. it was time for the first bell for dinner. the villa's omnibus was toiling up the winding road among the grape-vines. suddenly harrigan tilted his head sidewise, and the long silken ears of the dachel stirred. the italian slowly closed his book and permitted his chair to settle on its four legs. the artist stood up from his paintbox. from a window in the villa came a voice; only a lilt of a melody, no words,--half a dozen bars from _martha_; but every delightful note went deep into the three masculine hearts. harrigan smiled and patted the dog. the italian scowled at the vegetable garden directly below. the artist scowled at the italian. "fritz, fritz; here, fritz!" the dog struggled in harrigan's hands and tore himself loose. he went clattering over the path toward the villa and disappeared into the doorway. nothing could keep him when that voice called. he was as ardent a lover as any, and far more favored. "oh, you funny little dog! you merry little dachel! fritz, mustn't; let go!" silence. the artist knew that she was cuddling the puppy to her heart, and his own grew twisted. he stooped over his materials again and tied the box to the easel and the stool, and shifted them under his arm. "i'll be up after dinner, mr. harrigan," he said. "all right, abbott." harrigan waved his hand pleasantly. he was becoming so used to the unvarying statement that abbott would be up after dinner, that his reply was by now purely mechanical. "she's getting her voice back all right; eh?" "beautifully! but i really don't think she ought to sing at the haines' villa sunday." "one song won't hurt her. she's made up her mind to sing. there's nothing for us to do but to sit tight. no news from paris?" "no." "say, do you know what i think?" "what?" "some one has come across to the police." "paris is not new york, mr. harrigan." "oh, i don't know. there's a hundred cents to the dollar, my boy, paris or new york. why haven't they moved? they can't tell me that tow-headed chap's alibi was on the level. i wish i'd been in paris. there'd been something doing. and who was he? they refuse to give his name. and i can't get a word out of nora. shuts me up with a bang when i mention it. throws her nerves all out, she says. i'd like to get my hands on the blackguard." "so would i. it's a puzzle. if he had molested her while she was a captive, you could understand. but he never came near her." "busted his nerve, that's what." "i have my doubts about that. a man who will go that far isn't subject to any derangement of his nerves. want me to bring up the checkers?" "sure. i've got two rubbers hanging over you." the artist took the path that led around the villa and thence down by many steps to the village by the waterside, to the cream-tinted cluster of shops and enormous hotels. the italian was more fortunate. he was staying at the villa. he rose and sauntered over to harrigan, who was always a source of interest to him. study the man as he might, there always remained a profound mystery to his keen italian mind. every now and then nature--to prove that while she provided laws for humanity she obeyed none herself--nature produced the prodigy. ancestry was nothing; habits, intelligence, physical appearance counted for naught. harrigan was a fine specimen of the physical man, yes; but to be the father of a woman who was as beautiful as the legendary goddesses and who possessed a voice incomparable in the living history of music, here logic, the cold and accurate intruder, found an unlockable door. he liked the ex-prizefighter, so kindly and wholesome; but he also pitied him. harrigan reminded him of a seal he had once seen in an aquarium tank: out of his element, but merry-eyed and swimming round and round as if determined to please everybody. "it will be a fine night," said the italian, pausing at harrigan's bench. "every night is fine here, barone," replied harrigan. "why, they had me up in marienbad a few weeks ago, and i'm not over it yet. it's no place for a sick man; only a well man could come out of it alive." the barone laughed. harrigan had told this tale half a dozen times, but each time the barone felt called on to laugh. the man was her father. "do you know, mr. harrigan, miss harrigan is not herself? she is--what do you call?--bitter. she laughs, but--ah, i do not know!--it sounds not real." "well, she isn't over that rumpus in paris yet." "rumpus?" "the abduction." "ah, yes! rumpus is another word for abduction? yes, yes, i see." "no, no! rumpus is just a mix-up, a row, anything that makes a noise, calls in the police. you can make a rumpus on the piano, over a game of cards, anything." the barone spread his hands. "i comprehend," hurriedly. he comprehended nothing, but he was too proud to admit it. "so nora is not herself; a case of nerves. and to think that you called there at the apartment the very day!" "ah, if i had been there the right time!" "but what puts me down for the count is the action of the fellow. never showed up; just made her miss two performances." "he was afraid. men who do cowardly things are always afraid." the barone spoke with decided accent, but he seldom made a grammatical error. "but sometimes, too, men grow mad at once, and they do things in their madness. ah, she is so beautiful! she is a nightingale." the italian looked down on como whose broad expanse was crisscrossed by rippled paths made by arriving and departing steamers. "it is not a wonder that some man might want to run away with her." harrigan looked curiously at the other. "well, it won't be healthy for any man to try it again." the father held out his powerful hands for the barone's inspection. they called mutely but expressively for the throat of the man who dared. "it'll never happen again. her mother and i are not going away from her any more. when she sings in berlin, i'm going to trail along; when she hits the high note in paris, i'm lingering near; when she trills in london, i'm hiding in the shadow. and you may put that in your pipe and smoke it." "i smoke only cigarettes," replied the barone gravely. it had been difficult to follow, this english. harrigan said nothing in return. he had given up trying to explain to the italian the idiomatic style of old broadway. he got up and brushed his flannels perfunctorily. "well, i suppose i've got to dress for supper," resentfully. he still called it supper; and, as in the matter of the silk hat, his wife no longer strove to correct him. the evening meal had always been supper, and so it would remain until that time when he would cease to look forward to it. "do you go to the dancing at cadenabbia to-night?" "me? i should say not!" harrigan laughed. "i'd look like a bull in a china-shop. abbott is coming up to play checkers with me. i'll leave the honors to you." the barone's face lighted considerably. he hated the artist only when he was visible. he was rather confused, however. abbott had been invited to the dance. why wasn't he going? could it be true? had the artist tried his luck and lost? ah, if fate were as kind as that! he let harrigan depart alone. why not? what did he care? what if the father had been a fighter for prizes? what if the mother was possessed with a misguided desire to shine socially? what mattered it if they had once resided in an obscure tenement in a great city, and that grandfathers were as far back as they could go with any certainty? was he not his own master? what titled woman of his acquaintance whose forebears had been powerful in the days of the borgias, was not dimmed in the presence of this wonderful maid to whom all things had been given unreservedly? her brow was fit for a royal crown, let alone a simple baronial tiara such as he could provide. the mother favored him a little; of this he was reasonably certain; but the moods of the daughter were difficult to discover or to follow. to-night! the round moon was rising palely over lecco; the moon, mistress of love and tides, toward whom all men and maids must look, though only eros knows why! evidently there was no answer to the italian's question, for he faced about and walked moodily toward the entrance. here he paused, looking up at the empty window. again a snatch of song-- _o solo mio_ ... _che bella cosa_...! what a beautiful thing indeed! passionately he longed for the old days, when by his physical prowess alone oft a man won his lady. diplomacy, torrents of words, sly little tricks, subterfuges, adroitness, stolen glances, careless touches of the hand; by these must a maid be won to-day. when she was happy she sang, when she was sad, when she was only mischievous. she was just as likely to sing _o terra addio_ when she was happy as _o sole mio_ when she was sad. so, how was a man to know the right approach to her variant moods? sighing deeply, he went on to his room, to change his piccadilly suit for another which was supposed to be the last word in the matter of evening dress. below, in the village, a man entered the grand hotel. he was tall, blond, rosy-cheeked. he carried himself like one used to military service; also, like one used to giving peremptory orders. the porter bowed, the director bowed, and the proprietor himself became a living carpenter's square, hinged. the porter and the director recognized a personage; the proprietor recognized the man. it was of no consequence that the new arrival called himself herr rosen. he was assigned to a suite of rooms, and on returning to the bureau, the proprietor squinted his eyes abstractedly. he knew every woman of importance at that time residing on the point. certainly it could be none of these. _himmel!_ he struck his hands together. so that was it: the singer. he recalled the hints in certain newspaper paragraphs, the little tales with the names left to the imagination. so that was it? what a woman! men looked at her and went mad. and not so long ago one had abducted her in paris. the proprietor threw up his hands in despair. what was going to happen to the peace of this bucolic spot? the youth permitted nothing to stand in his way, and the singer's father was a retired fighter with boxing-gloves! chapter viii moonlight and a prince when he had fought what he considered two rattling rounds, harrigan conceded that his cravat had once more got the decision over him on points. and the cravat was only a second-rater, too, a black-silk affair. he tossed up the sponge and went down to the dining-room, the ends of the conqueror straggling like the four points of a battered weather-vane. his wife and daughter and mademoiselle fournier were already at their table by the casement window, from which they could see the changing granite mask of napoleon across lecco. at the villa there were seldom more than ten or twelve guests, this being quite the capacity of the little hotel. these generally took refuge here in order to escape the noise and confusion of a large hotel, to avoid the necessity of dining in state every night. few of the men wore evening dress, save on occasions when they were entertaining. the villa wasn't at all fashionable, and the run of american tourists fought shy of it, preferring the music and dancing and card-playing of the famous hostelries along the water-front. of course, everybody came up for the view, just as everybody went up the corner grat (by cable) at zermatt to see the matterhorn. but for all its apparent dulness, there, was always an english duchess, a russian princess, or a lady from the faubourg st.-germain somewhere about, resting after a strenuous winter along the riviera. nora harrigan sought it not only because she loved the spot, but because it sheltered her from idle curiosity. it was almost as if the villa were hers, and the other people her guests. harrigan crossed the room briskly, urged by an appetite as sound as his views on life. the chef here was a king; there was always something to look forward to at the dinner hour; some new way of serving spinach, or lentils, or some irresistible salad. he smiled at every one and pulled out his chair. "sorry to keep you folks waiting." "james!" "what's the matter now?" he asked good-naturedly. never that tone but something was out of kilter. his wife glanced wrathfully at his feet. wonderingly he looked down. in the heat of the battle with his cravat he had forgotten all about his tennis shoes. "i see. no soup for mine." he went back to his room, philosophically. there was always something wrong when he got into these infernal clothes. "mother," said nora, "why can't you let him be?" "but white shoes!" in horror. "who cares? he's the patientest man i know. we're always nagging him, and i for one am going to stop. look about! so few men and women dress for dinner. you do as you please here, and that is why i like it." "i shall never be able to do anything with him as long as he sees that his mistakes are being condoned by you," bitterly responded the mother. "some day he will humiliate us all by his carelessness." "oh, bother!" nora's elbow slyly dug into celeste's side. the pianist's pretty face was bent over her soup. she had grown accustomed to these little daily rifts. for the great, patient, clumsy, happy-go-lucky man she entertained an intense pity. but it was not the kind that humiliates; on the contrary, it was of a mothering disposition; and the ex-gladiator dimly recognized it, and felt more comfortable with her than with any other woman excepting nora. she understood him perhaps better than either mother or daughter; he was too late: he belonged to a distant time, the beginning of the christian era; and often she pictured him braving the net and the trident in the saffroned arena. mrs. harrigan broke her bread vexatiously. her husband refused to think for himself, and it was wearing on her nerves to watch him day and night. deep down under the surface of new adjustments and social ambitions, deep in the primitive heart, he was still her man. but it was only when he limped with an occasional twinge of rheumatism, or a tooth ached, or he dallied with his meals, that the old love-instinct broke up through these artificial crustations. true, she never knew how often he invented these trivial ailments, for he soon came into the knowledge that she was less concerned about him when he was hale and hearty. she still retained evidences of a blossomy beauty. abbott had once said truly that nature had experimented on her; it was in the reproduction that perfection had been reached. to see the father, the mother, and the daughter together it was not difficult to fashion a theory as to the latter's splendid health and physical superiority. arriving at this point, however, theory began to fray at the ends. no one could account for the genius and the voice. the mother often stood lost in wonder that out of an ordinary childhood, a barelegged, romping, hoydenish childhood, this marvel should emerge: her's! she was very ambitious for her daughter. she wanted to see nothing less than a ducal coronet upon the child's brow, british preferred. if ordinary chorus girls and vaudeville stars, possessing only passable beauty and no intelligence whatever, could bring earls into their nets, there was no reason why nora could not be a princess or a duchess. so she planned accordingly. but the child puzzled and eluded her; and from time to time she discovered a disquieting strength of character behind a disarming amiability. ever since nora had returned home by way of the orient, the mother had recognized a subtle change, so subtle that she never had an opportunity of alluding to it verbally. perhaps the fault lay at her own door. she should never have permitted nora to come abroad alone to fill her engagements. but that nora was to marry a duke was, to her mind, a settled fact. it is a peculiar phase, this of the humble who find themselves, without effort of their own, thrust up among the great and the so-called, who forget whence they came in the fierce contest for supremacy upon that tottering ledge called society. the cad and the snob are only infrequently well-born. mrs. harrigan was as yet far from being a snob, but it required some tact upon nora's part to prevent this dubious accomplishment. "is mr. abbott going with us?" she inquired. "donald is sulking," nora answered. "for once the barone got ahead of him in engaging the motor-boat." "i wish you would not call him by his first name." "and why not? i like him, and he is a very good comrade." "you do not call the barone by his given name." "heavens, no! if i did he would kiss me. these italians will never understand western customs, mother. i shall never marry an italian, much as i love italy." "nor a frenchman?" asked celeste. "nor a frenchman." "i wish i knew if you meant it," sighed the mother. "my dear, i have given myself to the stage. you will never see me being led to the altar." "no, you will do the leading when the time comes," retorted the mother. "mother, the men i like you may count upon the fingers of one hand. three of them are old. for the rest, i despise men." "i suppose some day you will marry some poverty-stricken artist," said the mother, filled with dark foreboding. "you would not call donald poverty-stricken." "no. but you will never marry him." "no. i never shall." celeste smoothed her hands, a little trick she had acquired from long hours spent at the piano. "he will make some woman a good husband." "that he will." "and he is most desperately in love with you." "that's nonsense!" scoffed nora. "he thinks he is. he ought to fall in love with you, celeste. every time you play the fourth _ballade_ he looks as if he was ready to throw himself at your feet." "_pouf!_ for ten minutes?" celeste laughed bravely. "he leaves me quickly enough when you begin to sing." "glamour, glamour!" "well, i should not care for the article second-hand." the arrival of harrigan put an end to this dangerous trend of conversation. he walked in tight proper pumps, and sat down. he was only hungry now; the zest for dining was gone. "don't go sitting out in the night air, nora," he warned. "i sha'n't." "and don't dance more than you ought to. your mother would let you wear the soles off your shoes if she thought you were attracting attention. don't do it." "james, that is not true," the mother protested. "well, molly, you do like to hear 'em talk. i wish they knew how to cook a good club steak." "i brought up a book from the village for you to-day," said mrs. harrigan, sternly. "i'll bet a dollar it's on how to keep the creases in a fellow's pants." "trousers." "pants," helping himself to the last of the romaine. "what time do you go over?" "at nine. we must be getting ready now," said nora. "don't wait up for us." "and only one cigar," added the mother. "say, molly, you keep closing in on me. tobacco won't hurt me any, and i get a good deal of comfort out of it these days." "two," smiled nora. "but his heart!" "and what in mercy's name is the matter with his heart? the doctor at marienbad said that father was the soundest man of his age he had ever met." nora looked quizzically at her father. he grinned. out of his own mouth he had been nicely trapped. that morning he had complained of a little twinge in his heart, a childish subterfuge to take mrs. harrigan's attention away from the eternal society page of the _herald_. it had succeeded. he had even been cuddled. "james, you told me..." "oh, molly, i only wanted to talk to you." "to do so it isn't necessary to frighten me to death," reproachfully. "one cigar, and no more." "molly, what ails you?" as they left the dining-room. "nora's right. that sawbones said i was made of iron. i'm only smoking native cigars, and it takes a bunch of 'em to get the taste of tobacco. all right; in a few months you'll have me with the stuffed canary under the glass top. what's the name of that book?" diplomatically. "_social usages._" "break away!" nora laughed. "but, dad, you really must read it carefully. it will tell you how to talk to a duchess, if you chance to meet one when i am not around. it has all the names of the forks and knives and spoons, and it tells you never to use sugar on your lettuce." and then she threw her arm around her mother's waist. "honey, when you buy books for father, be sure they are by dumas or haggard or doyle. otherwise he will never read a line." "and i try so hard!" tears came into mrs. harrigan's eyes. "there, there, molly, old girl!" soothed the outlaw. "i'll read the book. i know i'm a stupid old stumbling-block, but it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, that is, at the ring of the gong. run along to your party. and don't break any more hearts than you need, nora." nora promised in good faith. but once in the ballroom, that little son of satan called malice-aforethought took possession of her; and there was havoc. if a certain american countess had not patronized her; if certain lorgnettes (implements of torture used by said son of satan) had not been leveled in her direction; if certain fans had not been suggestively spread between pairs of feminine heads,--nora would have been as harmless as a playful kitten. from door to door of the ballroom her mother fluttered like a hen with a duckling. even celeste was disturbed, for she saw that nora's conduct was not due to any light-hearted fun. there was something bitter and ironic cloaked by those smiles, that tinkle of laughter. in fact, nora from tuscany flirted outrageously. the barone sulked and tore at his mustache. he committed any number of murders, by eye and by wish. when his time came to dance with the mischief-maker, he whirled her around savagely, and never said a word; and once done with, he sternly returned her to her mother, which he deemed the wisest course to pursue. "nora, you are behaving abominably!" whispered her mother, pale with indignation. "well, i am having a good time ... your dance? thank you." and a tender young american led her through the mazes of the waltz, as some poet who knew what he was about phrased it. it is not an exaggeration to say that there was not a woman in the ballroom to compare with her, and some of them were marvelously gowned and complexioned, too. she overshadowed them not only by sheer beauty, but by exuberance of spirit. and they followed her with hating eyes and whispered scandalous things behind their fans and wondered what had possessed the marchesa to invite the bold thing: so does mediocrity pay homage to beauty and genius. as for the men, though madness lay that way, eagerly as of old they sought it. by way of parenthesis: herr rosen marched up the hill and down again, something after the manner of a certain warrior king celebrated in verse. the object of his visit had gone to the ball at cadenabbia. at the hotel he demanded a motor-boat. there was none to be had. in a furious state of mind he engaged two oarsmen to row him across the lake. and so it came to pass that when nora, suddenly grown weary of the play, full of bitterness and distaste, hating herself and every one else in the world, stole out to the quay to commune with the moon, she saw him jump from the boat to the landing, scorning the steps. instantly she drew her lace mantle closely about her face. it was useless. in the man the hunter's instinct was much too keen. "so i have found you!" "one would say that i had been in hiding?" coldly. "from me, always. i have left everything--duty, obligations--to seek you." "from any other man that might be a compliment." "i am a prince," he said proudly. she faced him with that quick resolution, that swift forming of purpose, which has made the irish so difficult in argument and persuasion. "will you marry me? will you make me your wife legally? before all the world? will you surrender, for the sake of this love you profess, your right to a great inheritance? will you risk the anger and the iron hand of your father for my sake?" "_herr gott!_ i am mad!" he covered his eyes. "that expression proves that your highness is sane again. have you realized the annoyances, the embarrassments, you have thrust upon me by your pursuit? have you not read the scandalous innuendoes in the newspapers? your highness, i was not born on the continent, so i look upon my work from a point of view not common to those of your caste. i am proud of it, and i look upon it with honor, honor. i am a woman, but i am not wholly defenseless. there was a time when i thought i might number among my friends a prince; but you have made that impossible." "come," he said hoarsely; "let us go and find a priest. you are right. i love you; i will give up everything, everything!" for a moment she was dumb. this absolute surrender appalled her. but that good fortune which had ever been at her side stepped into the breach. and as she saw the tall form of the barone approach, she could have thrown her arms around his neck in pure gladness. "oh, barone!" she called. "am i making you miss this dance?" "it does not matter, signorina." the barone stared keenly at the erect and tense figure at the prima donna's side. "you will excuse me, herr rosen," said nora, as she laid her hand upon the barone's arm. herr rosen bowed stiffly; and the two left him standing uncovered in the moonlight. "what is he doing here? what has he been saying to you?" the barone demanded. nora withdrew her hand from his arm. "pardon me," said he contritely. "i have no right to ask you such questions." it was not long after midnight when the motor-boat returned to its abiding place. on the way over conversation lagged, and finally died altogether. mrs. harrigan fell asleep against celeste's shoulder, and the musician never deviated her gaze from the silver ripples which flowed out diagonally and magically from the prow of the boat. nora watched the stars slowly ascend over the eastern range of mountains; and across the fire of his innumerable cigarettes the barone watched her. as the boat was made fast to the landing in front of the grand hotel, celeste observed a man in evening dress, lounging against the rail of the quay. the search-light from the customs-boat, hunting for tobacco smugglers, flashed over his face. she could not repress the little gasp, and her hand tightened upon nora's arm. "what is it?" asked nora. "nothing. i thought i was slipping." chapter ix colonel caxley-webster abbott's studio was under the roof of one of the little hotels that stand timorously and humbly, yet expectantly, between the imposing cream-stucco of the grand hotel at one end and the elaborate pink-stucco of the grande bretegne at the other. the hobnailed shoes of the teuton (who wears his mountain kit all the way from hamburg to palermo) wore up and down the stairs all day; and the racket from the hucksters' carts and hotel omnibuses, arriving and departing from the steamboat landing, the shouts of the begging boatmen, the quarreling of the children and the barking of unpedigreed dogs,--these noises were incessant from dawn until sunset. the artist glared down from his square window at the ruffled waters, or scowled at the fleeting snows on the mountains over the way. he passed some ten or twelve minutes in this useless occupation, but he could not get away from the bald fact that he had acted like a petulant child. to have shown his hand so openly, simply because the barone had beaten him in the race for the motor-boat! and nora would understand that he was weak and without backbone. harrigan himself must have reasoned out the cause for such asinine plays as he had executed in the game of checkers. how many times had the old man called out to him to wake up and move? in spirit he had been across the lake, a spirit in hades. he was not only a fool, but a coward likewise. he had not dared to "... put it to the touch to gain or lose it all." he saw it coming: before long he and that italian would be at each other's throats. "come in!" he called, in response to a sudden thunder on the door. the door opened and a short, energetic old man, purple-visaged and hawk-eyed, came in. "why the devil don't you join the trappist monks, abbott? if i wasn't tough i should have died of apoplexy on the second landing." "good morning, colonel!" abbott laughed and rolled out the patent rocker for his guest. "what's on your mind this morning? i can give you one without ice." "i'll take it neat, my boy. i'm not thirsty, i'm faint. these italian architects; they call three ladders flights of stairs! ... ha! that's irish whisky, and jolly fine. want you to come over and take tea this afternoon. i'm going up presently to see the harrigans. thought i'd go around and do the thing informally. taken a fancy to the old chap. he's a little bit of all right. i'm no older than he is, but look at the difference! whisky and soda, that's the racket. not by the tubful; just an ordinary half dozen a day, and a dem climate thrown in." "difference in training." "rot! it's the sized hat a man wears. i'd give fifty guineas to see the old fellow in action. but, i say; recall the argument we had before you went to paris?" "yes." "well, i win. saw him bang across the street this morning." abbott muttered something. "what was that?" "nothing." "sounded like 'dem it' to me." "maybe it did." "heard about him in paris?" "no." "the old boy had transferred his regiment to a lonesome post in the north to cool his blood. the youngster took the next train to paris. he was there incognito for two weeks before they found him and bundled him back. of course, every one knows that he is but a crazy lad who's had too much freedom." the colonel emptied his glass. "i feel dem sorry for nora. she's the right sort. but a woman can't take a man by the scruff of his neck and chuck him." "but i can," declared abbott savagely. "tut, tut! he'd eat you alive. besides, you will find him too clever to give you an opening. but he'll bear watching. he's capable of putting her on a train and running away with her. between you and me, i don't blame him. what's the matter with sicking the barone on him? he's the best man in southern italy with foils and broadswords. sic 'em, towser; sic 'em!" the old fire-eater chuckled. the subject was extremely distasteful to the artist. the colonel, a rough soldier, whose diplomacy had never risen above the heights of clubbing a recalcitrant hill man into submission, baldly inferred that he understood the artist's interest in the rose of the harrigan family. he would have liked to talk more in regard to the interloper, but it would have been sheer folly. the colonel, in his blundering way, would have brought up the subject again at tea-time and put everybody on edge. he had, unfortunately for his friends, a reputation other than that of a soldier: he posed as a peacemaker. he saw trouble where none existed, and the way he patched up imaginary quarrels would have strained the patience of job. still, every one loved him, though they lived in mortal fear of him. so abbott came about quickly and sailed against the wind. "by the way," he said, "i wish you would let me sketch that servant of yours. he's got a profile like a medallion. where did you pick him up?" "in the hills. he's a sikh, and a first-class fighting man. didn't know that you went for faces." "not as a usual thing. just want it for my own use. how does he keep his beard combed that way?" "i've never bothered myself about the curl of his whiskers. are my clothes laid out? luggage attended to? guns shipshape? that's enough for me. some day you have got to go out there with me." "never shot a gun in all my life. i don't know which end to hold at my shoulder." "teach you quick enough. every man's a born hunter. rao will have tigers eating out of your hand. he's a marvel; saved my hide more than once. funny thing; you can't show 'em that you're grateful. lose caste if you do. i rather miss it. get the east in your blood and you'll never get it out. fascinating! but my liver turned over once too many times. ha! some one coming up to buy a picture." the step outside was firm and unwearied by the climb. the door opened unceremoniously, and courtlandt came in. he stared at the colonel and the colonel returned the stare. "caxley-webster! well, i say, this globe goes on shrinking every day!" cried courtlandt. the two pumped hands energetically, sizing each other up critically. then they sat down and shot questions, while abbott looked on bewildered. elephants and tigers and chittahs and wild boar and quail-running and strange guttural names; weltering nights in the jungles, freezing mornings in the hills; stupendous card games; and what had become of so-and-so, who always drank his whisky neat; and what's-his-name, who invented cures for snake bites! abbott deliberately pushed over an oak bench. "am i host here or not?" "abby, old man, how are you?" said courtlandt, smiling warmly and holding out his hand. "my apologies; but the colonel and i never expected to see each other again. and i find him talking with you up here under this roof. it's marvelous." "it's a wonder you wouldn't drop a fellow a line," said abbott, in a faultfinding tone, as he righted the bench. "when did you come?" "last night. came up from como." "going to stay long?" "that depends. i am really on my way to zermatt. i've a hankering to have another try at the matterhorn." "think of that!" exclaimed the colonel. "he says another try." "you came a roundabout way," was the artist's comment. "oh, that's because i left paris for brescia. they had some good flights there. wonderful year! they cross the channel in an airship and discover the north pole." "pah! neither will be of any use to humanity; merely a fine sporting proposition." the colonel dug into his pocket for his pipe. "but what do you think of germany?" "fine country," answered courtlandt, rising and going to a window; "fine people, too. why?" "do you--er--think they could whip us?" "on land, yes." "the devil!" "on water, no." "thanks. in other words, you believe our chances equal?" "so equal that all this war-scare is piffle. but i rather like to see you english get up in the air occasionally. it will do you good. you've an idea because you walloped napoleon that you're the same race you were then, and you are not. the english-speaking races, as the first soldiers, have ceased to be." "well, i be dem!" gasped the colonel. "it's the truth. take the american: he thinks there is nothing in the world but money. take the britisher: to him caste is everything. take the money out of one man's mind and the importance of being well-born out of the other...." he turned from the window and smiled at the artist and the empurpling anglo-indian. "abbott," growled the soldier, "that man will some day drive me amuck. what do you think? one night, on a tiger hunt, he got me into an argument like this. a brute of a beast jumped into the middle of it. courtlandt shot him on the second bound, and turned to me with--'well, as i was saying!' i don't know to this day whether it was nerve or what you americans call gall." "divided by two," grinned abbott. "ha, i see; half nerve and half gall. i'll remember that. but we were talking of airships." "i was," retorted courtlandt. "you were the man who started the powwow." he looked down into the street with sudden interest. "who is that?" the colonel and abbott hurried across the room. "what did i say, abbott? i told you i saw him. he's crazy; fact. thinks he can travel around incognito when there isn't a magazine on earth that hasn't printed his picture." "well, why shouldn't he travel around if he wants to?" asked courtlandt coolly. the colonel nudged the artist. "there happens to be an attraction in bellaggio," said abbott irritably. "the moth and the candle," supplemented the colonel, peering over courtlandt's shoulder. "he's well set up," grudgingly admitted the old fellow. "the moth and the candle," mused courtlandt. "that will be nora harrigan. how long has this infatuation been going on?" "year and a half." "and the other side?" "there isn't any other side," exploded the artist. "she's worried to death. not a day passes but some scurrilous penny-a-liner springs some yarn, some beastly innuendo. she's been dodging the fellow for months. in paris last year she couldn't move without running into him. this year she changed her apartment, and gave orders at the opera to refuse her address to all who asked for it. consequently she had some peace. i don't know why it is, but a woman in public life seems to be a target." "the penalty of beauty, abby. homely women seldom are annoyed, unless they become suffragists." the colonel poured forth a dense cloud of smoke. "what brand is that, colonel?" asked courtlandt, choking. the colonel generously produced his pouch. "no, no! i was about to observe that it isn't ambrosia." "rotter!" the soldier dug the offender in the ribs. "i am going to have the harrigans over for tea this afternoon. come over! you'll like the family. the girl is charming; and the father is a sportsman to the backbone. some silly fools laugh behind his back, but never before his face. and my word, i know rafts of gentlemen who are not fit to stand in his shoes." "i should like to meet mr. harrigan." courtlandt returned his gaze to the window once more. "and his daughter?" said abbott, curiously. "oh, surely!" "i may count on you, then?" the colonel stowed away the offending brier. "and you can stay to dinner." "i'll take the dinner end of the invitation," was the reply. "i've got to go over to menaggio to see about some papers to be signed. if i can make the three o'clock boat in returning, you'll see me at tea. dinner at all events. i'm off." "do you mean to stand there and tell me that you have important business?" jeered abbott. "my boy, the reason i'm on trains and boats, year in and year out, is in the vain endeavor to escape important business. now and then i am rounded up. were you ever hunted by money?" humorously. "no," answered the englishman sadly. "but i know one thing: i'd throw the race at the starting-post. millions, abbott, and to be obliged to run away from them! if the deserts hadn't dried up all my tears, i should weep. why don't you hire a private secretary to handle your affairs?" "and have him following at my heels?" courtlandt gazed at his lean brown hands. "when these begin to shake, i'll do so. well, i shall see you both at dinner, whatever happens." "that's courtlandt," said abbott, when his friend was gone. "you think he's in singapore, the door opens and in he walks; never any letter or announcement. he arrives, that's all." "strikes me," returned the other, polishing his glass, holding it up to the light, and then screwing it into his eye; "strikes me, he wasn't overanxious to have that dish of tea. afraid of women?" "afraid of women! why, man, he backed two musical shows in the states a few years ago." "musical comedies?" the glass dropped from the colonel's eye. "that's going tigers one better. forty women, all waiting to be stars, and solemn courtlandt wandering among them as the god of amity! afraid of them! of course he is. who wouldn't be, after such an experience?" the colonel laughed. "never had any serious affair?" "never heard of one. there was some tommy-rot about a mahommedan princess in the newspapers; but i knew there was no truth in that. queer fellow! he wouldn't take the trouble to deny it." "never showed any signs of being a woman-hater?" "no, not the least in the world. but to shy at meeting nora harrigan...." "there you have it; the privilege of the gods. perhaps he really has business in menaggio. what'll we do with the other beggar?" "knock his head off, if he bothers her." "better turn the job over to courtlandt, then. you're in the light-weight class, and courtlandt is the best amateur for his weight i ever saw." "what, boxes?" "a tough 'un. i had a corporal who beat any one in northern india. courtlandt put on the gloves with him and had him begging in the third round." "i never knew that before. he's as full of surprises as a rummage bag." courtlandt walked up the street leisurely, idly pausing now and then before the shop-windows. apparently he had neither object nor destination; yet his mind was busy, so busy in fact that he looked at the various curios without truly seeing them at all. a delicate situation, which needed the lightest handling, confronted him. he must wait for an overt act, then he might proceed as he pleased. how really helpless he was! he could not force her hand because she held all the cards and he none. yet he was determined this time to play the game to the end, even if the task was equal to all those of hercules rolled into one, and none of the gods on his side. at the hotel he asked for his mail, and was given a formidable packet which, with a sigh of discontent, he slipped into a pocket, strolled out into the garden by the water, and sat down to read. to his surprise there was a note, without stamp or postmark. he opened it, mildly curious to learn who it was that had discovered his presence in bellaggio so quickly. the envelope contained nothing more than a neatly folded bank-note for one hundred francs. he eyed it stupidly. what might this mean? he unfolded it and smoothed it out across his knee, and the haze of puzzlement drifted away. three bars from _la bohème_. he laughed. so the little lady of the taverne royale was in bellaggio! chapter x marguerites and emeralds from where he sat courtlandt could see down the main thoroughfare of the pretty village. there were other streets, to be sure, but courtesy and good nature alone permitted this misapplication of title: they were merely a series of torturous enervating stairways of stone, up and down which noisy wooden sandals clattered all the day long. over the entrances to the shops the proprietors were dropping the white and brown awnings for the day. very few people shopped after luncheon. there were pleasanter pastimes, even for the women, contradictory as this may seem. by eleven o'clock courtlandt had finished the reading of his mail, and was now ready to hunt for the little lady of the taverne royale. it was necessary to find her. the whereabouts of flora desimone was of vital importance. if she had not yet arrived, the presence of her friend presaged her ultimate arrival. the duke was a negligible quantity. it would have surprised courtlandt could he have foreseen the drawing together of the ends of the circle and the relative concernment of the duke in knotting those ends. the labors of hercules had never entailed the subjugation of two temperamental women. he rose and proceeded on his quest. before the photographer's shop he saw a dachel wrathfully challenging a cat on the balcony of the adjoining building. the cat knew, and so did the puppy, that it was all buncombe on the puppy's part: the usual european war-scare, in which one of the belligerent parties refused to come down because it wouldn't have been worth while, there being the usual powers ready to intervene. courtlandt did not bother about the cat; the puppy claimed his attention. he was very fond of dogs. so he reached down suddenly and put an end to the sharp challenge. the dachel struggled valiantly, for this breed of dog does not make friends easily. "i say, you little dutchman, what's the row? i'm not going to hurt you. funny little codger! to whom do you belong?" he turned the collar around, read the inscription, and gently put the puppy on the ground. nora harrigan! his immediate impulse was to walk on, but somehow this impulse refused to act on his sense of locomotion. he waited, dully wondering what was going to happen when she came out. he had left her room that night in paris, vowing that he would never intrude on her again. with the recollection of that bullet whizzing past his ear, he had been convinced that the play was done. true, she had testified that it had been accidental, but never would he forget the look in her eyes. it was not pleasant to remember. and still, as the needle is drawn by the magnet, here he was, in bellaggio. he cursed his weakness. from brescia he had made up his mind to go directly to berlin. before he realized how useless it was to battle against these invisible forces, he was in milan, booking for como. at como he had remained a week (the dullest week he had ever known); at the villa d'este three days; at cadenabbia one day. it had all the characteristics of a tug-of-war, and irresistibly he was drawn over the line. the night before he had taken the evening boat across the lake. and herr rosen had been his fellow-passenger! the goddess of chance threw whimsical coils around her victims. to find himself shoulder to shoulder, as it were, with this man who, perhaps more than all other incentives, had urged him to return again to civilization; this man who had aroused in his heart a sentiment that hitherto he had not believed existed,--jealousy.... ah, voices! he stepped aside quickly. "fritz, fritz; where are you?" and a moment later she came out, followed by her mother ... and the little lady of the taverne royale. did nora see him? it was impossible to tell. she simply stooped and gathered up the puppy, who struggled determinedly to lick her face. courtlandt lifted his hat. it was in nowise offered as an act of recognition; it was merely the mechanical courtesy that a man generally pays to any woman in whose path he chances to be for the breath of a second. the three women in immaculate white, hatless, but with sunshades, passed on down the street. courtlandt went into the shop, rather blindly. he stared at the shelves of paper-covered novels and post-cards, and when the polite proprietor offered him a dozen of the latter, he accepted them without comment. indeed, he put them into a pocket and turned to go out. "pardon, sir; those are one franc the dozen." "ah, yes." courtlandt pulled out some silver. it was going to be terribly difficult, and his heart was heavy with evil presages. he had seen celeste. he understood the amusing if mysterious comedy now. nora had recognized him and had sent her friend to follow him and learn where he went. and he, poor fool of a blunderer, with the best intentions in the world, he had gone at once to the calabrian's apartment! it was damnable of fate. he had righted nothing. in truth, he was deeper than ever in the quicksands of misunderstanding. he shut his teeth with a click. how neatly she had waylaid and trapped him! "those are from lucerne, sir." "what?" bewildered. "those wood-carvings which you are touching with your cane, sir." "i beg your pardon," said courtlandt, apologetically, and gained the open. he threw a quick glance down the street. there they were. he proceeded in the opposite direction, toward his hotel. tea at the colonel's? scarcely. he would go to menaggio with the hotel motor-boat and return so late that he would arrive only in time for dinner. he was not going to meet the enemy over tea-cups, at least, not under the soldier's tactless supervision. he must find a smoother way, calculated, under the rose, but seemingly accidental. it was something to ponder over. "nora, who was that?" asked mrs. harrigan. "who was who?" countered nora, snuggling the wriggling dachel under her arm and throwing the sunshade across her shoulder. "that fine-looking young man who stood by the door as we passed out. he raised his hat." "oh, bother! i was looking at fritz." celeste searched her face keenly, but nora looked on ahead serenely; not a quiver of an eyelid, not the slightest change in color or expression. "she did not see him!" thought the musician, curiously stirred. she knew her friend tolerably well. it would have been impossible for her to have seen that man and not to have given evidence of the fact. in short, nora had spoken truthfully. she had seen a man dressed in white flannels and canvas shoes, but her eyes had not traveled so far as his face. "mother, we must have some of those silk blankets. they're so comfy to lie on." "you never see anything except when you want to," complained mrs. harrigan. "it saves a deal of trouble. i don't want to go to the colonel's this afternoon. he always has some frump to pour tea and ask fool questions." "the frump, as you call her, is usually a countess or a duchess," with asperity. "fiddlesticks! nobility makes a specialty of frumps; it is one of the species of the caste. that's why i shall never marry a title. i wish neither to visit nor to entertain frumps. frump,--the word calls up the exact picture; frump and fatuity. oh, i'll go, but i'd rather stay on my balcony and read a good book." "my dear," patiently, "the colonel is one of the social laws on como. his sister is the wife of an earl. you must not offend him. his sundays are the most exclusive on the lake." "the word exclusive should be properly applied to those in jail. the social ladder, the social ladder! don't you know, mother mine, that every rung is sawn by envy and greed, and that those who climb highest fall farthest?" "you are quoting the padre." "the padre could give lessons in kindness and shrewdness to any other man i know. if he hadn't chosen the gown he would have been a poet. i love the padre, with his snow-white hair and his withered leathery face. he was with the old king all through the freeing of italy." "and had a fine time explaining to the vatican," sniffed the mother. "some day i am going to confess to him." "confess what?" asked celeste. "that i have wished the calabrian's voice would fail her some night in _carmen_; that i am wearing shoes a size too small for me; that i should like to be rich without labor; that i am sometimes ashamed of my calling; that i should have liked to see father win a prizefight; oh, and a thousand other horrid, hateful things." "i wish to gracious that you would fall violently in love." "spiteful! there are those lovely lace collars; come on." "you are hopeless," was the mother's conviction. "in some things, yes," gravely. "some day," said celeste, who was a privileged person in the harrigan family, "some day i am going to teach you two how to play at foils. it would be splendid. and then you could always settle your differences with bouts." "better than that," retorted nora. "i'll ask father to lend us his old set of gloves. he carries them around as if they were a fetish. i believe they're in the bottom of one of my steamer trunks." "nora!" mrs. harrigan was not pleased with this jest. any reference to the past was distasteful to her ears. she, too, went regularly to confession, but up to the present time had omitted the sin of being ashamed of her former poverty and environment. she had taken it for granted that upon her shoulders rested the future good fortune of the harrigans. they had money; all that was required was social recognition. she found it a battle within a battle. the good-natured reluctance of her husband and the careless indifference of her daughter were as hard to combat as the icy aloofness of those stars into whose orbit she was pluckily striving to steer the family bark. it never entered her scheming head that the reluctance of the father and the indifference of the daughter were the very conditions that drew society nearward, for the simple novelty of finding two persons who did not care in the least whether they were recognized or not. the trio invaded the lace shop, and nora and her mother agreed to bury the war-hatchet in their mutual love of venetian and florentine fineries. celeste pretended to be interested, but in truth she was endeavoring to piece together the few facts she had been able to extract from the rubbish of conjecture. courtlandt and nora had met somewhere before the beginning of her own intimacy with the singer. they certainly must have formed an extraordinary friendship, for nora's subsequent vindictiveness could not possibly have arisen out of the ruins of an indifferent acquaintance. nora could not be moved from the belief that courtlandt had abducted her; but celeste was now positive that he had had nothing to do with it. he did not impress her as a man who would abduct a woman, hold her prisoner for five days, and then liberate her without coming near her to press his vantage, rightly or wrongly. he was too strong a personage. he was here in bellaggio, and attached to that could be but one significance. why, then, had he not spoken at the photographer's? perhaps she herself had been sufficient reason for his dumbness. he had recognized her, and the espionage of the night in paris was no longer a mystery. nora had sent her to follow him; why then all this bitterness, since she had not been told where he had gone? had nora forgotten to inquire? it was possible that, in view of the startling events which had followed, the matter had slipped entirely from nora's mind. many a time she had resorted to that subtle guile known only of woman to trap the singer. but nora never stumbled, and her smile was as firm a barrier to her thoughts, her secrets, as a stone wall would have been. celeste had known about herr rosen's infatuation. aside from that which concerned this stranger, nora had withheld no real secret from her. herr rosen had been given his congé, but that did not prevent him from sending fabulous baskets of flowers and gems, all of which were calmly returned without comment. whenever a jewel found its way into a bouquet of flowers from an unknown, nora would promptly convert it into money and give the proceeds to some charity. it afforded the singer no small amusement to show her scorn in this fashion. yes, there was one other little mystery which she did not confide to her friends. once a month, wherever she chanced to be singing, there arrived a simple bouquet of marguerites, in the heart of which they would invariably find an uncut emerald. nora never disposed of these emeralds. the flowers she would leave in her dressing-room; the emerald would disappear. was there some one else? mrs. harrigan took the omnibus up to the villa. it was generally too much of a climb for her. nora and celeste preferred to walk. "what am i going to do, celeste? he is here, and over at cadenabbia last night i had a terrible scene with him. in heaven's name, why can't they let me be?" "herr rosen?" "yes." "why not speak to your father?" "and have a fisticuff which would appear in every newspaper in the world? no, thank you. there is enough scandalous stuff being printed as it is, and i am helpless to prevent it." as the climb starts off stiffly, there wasn't much inclination in either to talk. celeste had come to one decision, and that was that nora should find out courtlandt's presence here in bellaggio herself. when they arrived at the villa gates, celeste offered a suggestion. "you could easily stop all this rumor and annoyance." "and, pray, how?" "marry." "i prefer the rumor and annoyance. i hate men. most of them are beasts." "you are prejudiced." if celeste expected nora to reply that she had reason, she was disappointed, nora quickened her pace, that was all. at luncheon harrigan innocently threw a bomb into camp by inquiring: "say, nora, who's this chump herr rosen? he was up here last night and again this morning. i was going to offer him the cot on the balcony, but i thought i'd consult you first." "herr rosen!" exclaimed mrs. harrigan, a flutter in her throat. "why, that's...." "a charming young man who wishes me to sign a contract to sing to him in perpetuity," interrupted nora, pressing her mother's foot warningly. "well, why don't you marry him?" laughed harrigan. "there's worse things than frankfurters and sauerkraut." "not that i can think of just now," returned nora. chapter xi at the crater's edge harrigan declared that he would not go over to caxley-webster's to tea. "but i've promised for you!" expostulated his wife. "and he admires you so." "bosh! you women can gad about as much as you please, but i'm in wrong when it comes to eating sponge-cake and knuckling my knees under a dinky willow table. and then he always has some frump...." "frump!" repeated nora, delighted. "frump inspecting me through a pair of eye-glasses as if i was a new kind of an animal. it's all right, molly, when there's a big push. they don't notice me much then. but these six by eight parties have me covering." "very well, dad," agreed nora, who saw the storm gathering in her mother's eyes. "you can stay home and read the book mother got you yesterday. where are you now?" "page one," grinning. mrs. harrigan wisely refrained from continuing the debate. james had made up his mind not to go. if the colonel repeated his invitation to dinner, where there would be only the men folk, why, he'd gladly enough go to that. the women departed at three, for there was to be tennis until five o'clock. when harrigan was reasonably sure that they were half the distance to the colonel's villa, he put on his hat, whistled to the dachel, and together they took the path to the village. "we'd look fine drinking tea, wouldn't we, old scout?" reaching down and tweaking the dog's velvet ears. "they don't understand, and it's no use trying to make 'em. nora gets as near as possible. herr rosen! now, where have i seen his phiz before? i wish i had a real man to talk to. abbott sulks half the time, and the barone can't get a joke unless it's driven in with a mallet. on your way, old scout, or i'll step on you. let's see if we can hoof it down to the village at a trot without taking the count." he had but two errands to execute. the first was accomplished expeditely in the little tobacconist's shop under the arcade, where the purchase of a box of minghetti cigars promised later solace. these cigars were cheap, but harrigan had a novel way of adding to their strength if not to their aroma. he possessed a meerschaum cigar-holder, in which he had smoked perfectos for some years. the smoke of an ordinary cigar became that of a regalia by the time it passed through the nicotine-soaked clay into the amber mouthpiece. he had kept secret the result of this trifling scientific research. it wouldn't have been politic to disclose it to molly. the second errand took time and deliberation. he studied the long shelves of tauchnitz. having red corpuscles in superabundance, he naturally preferred them in his literature, in the same quantity. "ever read this?" asked a pleasant voice from behind, indicating _rodney stone_ with the ferrule of a cane. harrigan looked up. "no. what's it about?" "best story of the london prize-ring ever written. you're mr. harrigan, aren't you?" "yes," diffidently. "my name is edward courtlandt. if i am not mistaken, you were a great friend of my father's." "are you dick courtlandt's boy?" "i am." "well, say!" harrigan held out his hand and was gratified to encounter a man's grasp. "so you're edward courtlandt? now, what do you think of that! why, your father was the best sportsman i ever met. square as they make 'em. not a kink anywhere in his make-up. he used to come to the bouts in his plug hat and dress suit; always had a seat by the ring. i could hear him tap with his cane when there happened to be a bit of pretty sparring. he was no slouch himself when it came to putting on the mitts. many's the time i've had a round or two with him in my old gymnasium. well, well! it's good to see a man again. i've seen your name in the papers, but i never knew you was dick's boy. you've got an old grizzly's head in your dining-room at home. some day i'll tell you how it got there, when you're not in a hurry. i went out to montana for a scrap, and your dad went along. after the mill was over, we went hunting. come up to the villa and meet the folks.... hang it, i forgot. they're up to caxley-webster's to tea; piffle water and sticky sponge-cake. i want you to meet my wife and daughter." "i should be very pleased to meet them." so this was nora's father? "won't you come along with me to the colonel's?" with sudden inspiration. here was an opportunity not to be thrust aside lightly. "why, i just begged off. they won't be expecting me now." "all the better. i'd rather have you introduce me to your family than to have the colonel. as a matter of fact, i told him i couldn't get up. but i changed my mind. come along." the first rift in the storm-packed clouds; and to meet her through the kindly offices of this amiable man who was her father! "but the pup and the cigar box?" "send them up." harrigan eyed his own spotless flannels and compared them with the other's. what was good enough for the son of a millionaire was certainly good enough for him. besides, it would be a bully good joke on nora and molly. "you're on!" he cried. here was a lark. he turned the dog and the purchases over to the proprietor, who promised that they should arrive instantly at the villa. then the two men sought the quay to engage a boat. they walked shoulder to shoulder, flat-backed, with supple swinging limbs, tanned faces and clear animated eyes. perhaps harrigan was ten or fifteen pounds heavier, but the difference would have been noticeable only upon the scales. * * * * * "padre, my shoe pinches," said nora with a pucker between her eyes. "my child," replied the padre, "never carry your vanity into a shoemaker's shop. the happiest man is he who walks in loose shoes." "if they are his own, and not inherited," quickly. the padre laughed quietly. he was very fond of this new-found daughter of his. her spontaneity, her blooming beauty, her careless observation of convention, her independence, had captivated him. sometimes he believed that he thoroughly understood her, when all at once he would find himself mentally peering into some dark corner into which the penetrating light of his usually swift deduction could throw no glimmer. she possessed the sins of the butterfly and the latent possibilities of a judith. she was the most interesting feminine problem he had in his long years encountered. the mother mildly amused him, for he could discern the character that she was sedulously striving to batten down beneath inane social usages and formalities. some day she would revert to the original type, and then he would be glad to renew the acquaintance. in rather a shamefaced way (a sensation he could not quite analyze) he loved the father. the pugilist will always embarrass the scholar and excite a negligible envy; for physical perfection is the most envied of all nature's gifts. the padre was short, thickset, and inclined toward stoutness in the region of the middle button of his cassock. but he was active enough for all purposes. "i have had many wicked thoughts lately," resumed nora, turning her gaze away from the tennis players. she and the padre were sitting on the lower steps of the veranda. the others were loitering by the nets. "the old plaint disturbs you?" "yes." "can you not cast it out wholly?" "hate has many tentacles." "what produces that condition of mind?" meditatively. "is it because we have wronged somebody?" "or because somebody has wronged us?" "or misjudged us, by us have been misjudged?" softly. "good gracious!" exclaimed nora, springing up. "what is it?" "father is coming up the path!" "i am glad to see him. but i do not recollect having seen the face of the man with him." the lithe eagerness went out of nora's body instantly. everything seemed to grow cold, as if she had become enveloped in one of those fogs that suddenly blow down menacingly from hidden icebergs. fortunately the inquiring eyes of the padre were not directed at her. he was here, not a dozen yards away, coming toward her, her father's arm in his! after what had passed he had dared! it was not often that nora harrigan was subjected to a touch of vertigo, but at this moment she felt that if she stirred ever so little she must fall. the stock whence she had sprung, however, was aggressive and fearless; and by the time courtlandt had reached the outer markings of the courts, nora was physically herself again. the advantage of the meeting would be his. that was indubitable. any mistake on her part would be playing into his hands. if only she had known! "let us go and meet them, padre," she said quietly. with her father, her mother and the others, the inevitable introduction would be shorn of its danger. what celeste might think was of no great importance; celeste had been tried and her loyalty proven. where had her father met him, and what diabolical stroke of fate had made him bring this man up here? "nora!" it was her mother calling. she put her arm through the padre's, and they went forward leisurely. "why, father, i thought you weren't coming," said nora. her voice was without a tremor. the padre hadn't the least idea that a volcano might at any moment open up at his side. he smiled benignly. "changed my mind," said harrigan. "nora, molly, i want you to meet mr. courtlandt. i don't know that i ever said anything about it, but his father was one of the best friends i ever had. he was on his way up here, so i came along with him." then harrigan paused and looked about him embarrassedly. there were half a dozen unfamiliar faces. the colonel quickly stepped into the breach, and the introduction of courtlandt became general. nora bowed, and became at once engaged in an animated conversation with the barone, who had just finished his set victoriously. the padre's benign smile slowly faded. chapter xii dick courtlandt's boy presently the servants brought out the tea-service. the silent dark-skinned sikh, with his fierce curling whiskers, his flashing eyes, the semi-military, semi-oriental garb, topped by an enormous brown turban, claimed courtlandt's attention; and it may be added that he was glad to have something to look at unembarrassedly. he wanted to catch the indian's eye, but rao had no glances to waste; he was concerned with the immediate business of superintending the service. courtlandt had never been a man to surrender to impulse. it had been his habit to form a purpose and then to go about the fulfilling of it. during the last four or five months, however, he had swung about like a weather-cock in april, the victim of a thousand and one impulses. that morning he would have laughed had any one prophesied his presence here. he had fought against the inclination strongly enough at first, but as hour after hour went by his resolution weakened. his meeting harrigan had been a stroke of luck. still, he would have come anyhow. "oh, yes; i am very fond of como," he found himself replying mechanically to mrs. harrigan. he gave up rao as hopeless so far as coming to his rescue was concerned. he began, despite his repugnance, to watch nora. "it is always a little cold in the higher alps." "i am very fond of climbing myself." nora was laughing and jesting with one of the english tennis players. not for nothing had she been called a great actress, he thought. it was not humanly possible that her heart was under better control than his own; and yet his was pounding against his ribs in a manner extremely disquieting. never must he be left alone with her; always must it be under circumstances like this, with people about, and the more closely about the better. a game like this was far more exciting than tiger-hunting. it was going to assume the characteristics of a duel in which he, being the more advantageously placed, would succeed eventually in wearing down her guard. hereafter, wherever she went, there must he also go: st. petersburg or new york or london. and by and by the reporters would hear of it, and there would be rumors which he would neither deny nor affirm. sport! he smiled, and the blood seemed to recede from his throat and his heart-beats to grow normal. and all the while mrs. harrigan was talking and he was replying; and she thought him charming, whereas he had not formed any opinion of her at all, nor later could remember a word of the conversation. "tea!" bawled the colonel. the verb had its distinct uses, and one generally applied it to the colonel's outbursts without being depressed by the feeling of inelegance. there is invariably some slight hesitation in the selection of chairs around a tea-table in the open. nora scored the first point of this singular battle by seizing the padre on one side and her father on the other and pulling them down on the bench. it was adroit in two ways: it put courtlandt at a safe distance and in nowise offended the younger men, who could find no cause for alarm in the close proximity of her two fathers, the spiritual and the physical. a few moments later courtlandt saw a smile of malice part her lips, for he found himself between celeste and the inevitable frump. "touched!" he murmured, for he was a thorough sportsman and appreciated a good point even when taken by his opponent. "i never saw anything like it," whispered mrs. harrigan into the colonel's ear. "saw what?" he asked. "mr. courtlandt can't keep his eyes off of nora." "i say!" the colonel adjusted his eye-glass, not that he expected to see more clearly by doing so, but because habit had long since turned an affectation into a movement wholly mechanical. "well, who can blame him? gad! if i were only twenty-five or thereabouts." mrs. harrigan did not encourage this regret. the colonel had never been a rich man. on the other hand, this edward courtlandt was very rich; he was young; and he had the entrée to the best families in europe, which was greater in her eyes than either youth or riches. between sips of tea she builded a fine castle in spain. abbott and the barone carried their cups and cakes over to the bench and sat down on the grass, turkish-wise. both simultaneously offered their cakes, and nora took a ladyfinger from each. abbott laughed and the barone smiled. "oh, daddy mine!" sighed nora drolly. "huh?" "don't let mother see those shoes." "what's the matter with 'em? everybody's wearing the same." "yes. but i don't see how you manage to do it. one shoe-string is virgin white and the other is pagan brown." "i've got nine pairs of shoes, and yet there's always something the matter," ruefully. "i never noticed when i put them on. besides, i wasn't coming." "that's no defense. but rest easy. i'll be as secret as the grave." "now, i for one would never have noticed if you hadn't called my attention," said the padre, stealing a glance at his own immaculate patent-leathers. "ah, padre, that wife of mine has eyes like a pilot-fish. i'm in for it." "borrow one from the colonel before you go home," suggested abbott. "that's not half bad," gratefully. harrigan began to recount the trials of forgetfulness. slyly from the corner of her eye nora looked at courtlandt, who was at that moment staring thoughtfully into his tea-cup and stirring the contents industriously. his face was a little thinner, but aside from that he had changed scarcely at all; and then, because these two years had left so little mark upon his face, a tinge of unreasonable anger ran over her. "men have died and worms have eaten them," she thought cynically. perhaps the air between them was sufficiently charged with electricity to convey the impression across the intervening space; for his eyes came up quickly, but not quickly enough to catch her. she dropped her glance to abbott, transferred it to the barone, and finally let it rest on her father's face. four handsomer men she had never seen. "you never told me you knew courtlandt," said harrigan, speaking to abbott. "just happened that way. we went to school together. when i was little they used to make me wear curls and wide collars. many's the time courtlandt walloped the school bullies for mussing me up. i don't see him much these days. once in a while he walks in. that's all. always seems to know where his friends are, but none ever knows where he is." abbott proceeded to elaborate some of his friend's exploits. nora heard, as if from afar. vaguely she caught a glimmer of what the contest was going to be. she could see only a little way; still, she was optimistically confident of the result. she was ready. indeed, now that the shock of the meeting was past, she found herself not at all averse to a conflict. it would be something to let go the pent-up wrath of two years. never would she speak to him directly; never would she permit him to be alone with her; never would she miss a chance to twist his heart, to humiliate him, to snub him. from her point of view, whatever game he chose to play would be a losing one. she was genuinely surprised to learn how eager she was for the game to begin so that she might gage his strength. "so i have heard," she was dimly conscious of saying. "didn't know you knew," said abbott. "knew what?" rousing herself. "that courtlandt nearly lost his life in the eighties." "in the eighties!" dismayed at her slip. "latitudes. polar expedition." "heavens! i was miles away." the padre took her hand in his own and began to pat it softly. it was the nearest he dared approach in the way of suggesting caution. he alone of them all knew. "oh, i believe i read something about it in the newspapers." "five years ago." abbott set down his tea-cup. "he's the bravest man i know. he's rather a friendless man, besides. horror of money. thinks every one is after him for that. tries to throw it away; but the income piles up too quickly. see that indian, passing the cakes? wouldn't think it, would you, that courtlandt carried him on his back for five miles! the indian had fallen afoul a wounded tiger, and the beaters were miles off. i've been watching. they haven't even spoken to each other. courtlandt's probably forgotten all about the incident, and the indian would die rather than embarrass his savior before strangers." "your friend, then, is quite a hero?" what was the matter with nora's voice? abbott looked at her wonderingly. the tone was hard and unmusical. "he couldn't be anything else, being dick courtlandt's boy," volunteered harrigan, with enthusiasm. "it runs in the family." "it seems strange," observed nora, "that i never heard you mention that you knew a mr. courtlandt." "why, nora, there's a lot of things nobody mentions unless chance brings them up. courtlandt--the one i knew--has been dead these sixteen years. if i knew he had had a son, i'd forgotten all about it. the only graveyard isn't on the hillside; there's one under everybody's thatch." the padre nodded approvingly. nora was not particularly pleased with this phase in the play. courtlandt would find a valiant champion in her father, who would blunder in when some fine passes were being exchanged. and she could not tell him; she would have cut out her tongue rather. it was true that she held the principal cards in the game, but she could not table them and claim the tricks as in bridge. she must patiently wait for him to lead, and he, as she very well knew, would lead a card at a time, and then only after mature deliberation. from the exhilaration which attended the prospect of battle she passed into a state of depression, which lasted the rest of the afternoon. "will you forgive me?" asked celeste of courtlandt. never had she felt more ill at ease. for a full ten minutes he chatted pleasantly, with never the slightest hint regarding the episode in paris. she could stand it no longer. "will you forgive me?" "for what?" "that night in paris." "do not permit that to bother you in the least. i was never going to recall it." "was it so unpleasant?" "on the contrary, i was much amused." "i did not tell you the truth." "so i have found out." "i do not believe that it was you," impulsively. "thanks. i had nothing to do with miss harrigan's imprisonment." "do you feel that you could make a confidant of me?" he smiled. "my dear miss fournier, i have come to the place where i distrust even myself." "forgive my curiosity!" courtlandt held out his cup to rao. "i am glad to see you again." "ah, sahib!" the little frenchwoman was torn with curiosity and repression. she wanted to know what causes had produced this unusual drama which was unfolding before her eyes. to be presented with effects which had no apparent causes was maddening. it was not dissimilar to being taken to the second act of a modern problem play and being forced to leave before the curtain rose upon the third act. she had laid all the traps her intelligent mind could invent; and nora had calmly walked over them or around. nora's mind was celtic: french in its adroitness and irish in its watchfulness and tenacity. and now she had set her arts of persuasion in motion (aided by a piquant beauty) to lift a corner of the veil from this man's heart. checkmate! "i should like to help you," she said, truthfully. "in what way?" it was useless, but she continued: "she does not know that you went to flora desimone's that night." "and yet she sent you to watch me." "but so many things happened afterward that she evidently forgot." "that is possible." "i was asleep when the pistol went off. oh, you must believe that it was purely accidental! she was in a terrible state until morning. what if she had killed you, what if she had killed you! she seemed to hark upon that phrase." courtlandt turned a sober face toward her. she might be sincere, and then again she might be playing the first game over again, in a different guise. "it would have been embarrassing if the bullet had found its mark." he met her eyes squarely, and she saw that his were totally free from surprise or agitation or interest. "do you play chess?" she asked, divertingly. "chess? i am very fond of that game." "so i should judge," dryly. "i suppose you look upon me as a meddler. perhaps i am; but i have nothing but good will toward you; and nora would be very angry if she knew that i was discussing her affairs with you. but i love her and want to make her happy." "that seems to be the ambition of all the young men, at any rate." jealousy? but the smile baffled her. "will you be here long?" "it depends." "upon nora?" persistently. "the weather." "you are hopeless." "no; on the contrary, i am the most optimistic man in the world." she looked into this reply very carefully. if he had hopes of winning nora harrigan, optimistic he certainly must be. perhaps it was not optimism. rather might it not be a purpose made of steel, bendable but not breakable, reinforced by a knowledge of conditions which she would have given worlds to learn? "is she not beautiful?" "i am not a poet." "wait a moment," her eyes widening. "i believe you know who did commit that outrage." for the first time he frowned. "very well; i promise not to ask any more questions." "that would be very agreeable to me." then, as if he realized the rudeness of his reply, he added: "before i leave i will tell you all you wish to know, upon one condition." "tell it!" "you will say nothing to any one, you will question neither miss harrigan nor myself, nor permit yourself to be questioned." "i agree." "and now, will you not take me over to your friends?" "over there?" aghast. "why, yes. we can sit upon the grass. they seem to be having a good time." what a man! take him over, into the enemy's camp? nothing would be more agreeable to her. who would be the stronger, nora or this provoking man? so they crossed over and joined the group. the padre smiled. it was a situation such as he loved to study: a strong man and a strong woman, at war. but nothing happened; not a ripple anywhere to disclose the agitation beneath. the man laughed and the woman laughed, but they spoke not to each other, nor looked once into each other's eyes. the sun was dropping toward the western tops. the guests were leaving by twos and threes. the colonel had prevailed upon his dinner-guests not to bother about going back to the village to dress, but to dine in the clothes they wore. finally, none remained but harrigan, abbott, the barone, the padre and courtlandt. and they talked noisily and agreeably concerning man-affairs until rao gravely announced that dinner was served. it was only then, during the lull which followed, that light was shed upon the puzzle which had been subconsciously stirring harrigan's mind: nora had not once spoken to the son of his old friend. chapter xiii everything but the truth "i don't see why the colonel didn't invite some of the ladies," mrs. harrigan complained. "it's a man-party. he's giving it to please himself. and i do not blame him. the women about here treat him abominably. they come at all times of the day and night, use his card-room, order his servants about, drink his whisky and smoke his cigarettes, and generally invite themselves to luncheon and tea and dinner. and then, when they are ready to go back to their villas or hotel, take his motor-boat without a thank-you. the colonel has about three thousand pounds outside his half-pay, and they are all crazy to marry him because his sister is a countess. as a bachelor he can live like a prince, but as a married man he would have to dig. he told me that if he had been born adam, he'd have climbed over eden's walls long before the angel of the flaming sword paddled him out. says he's always going to be a bachelor, unless i take pity on him," mischievously. "has he...?" in horrified tones. "about three times a visit," nora admitted; "but i told him that i'd be a daughter, a cousin, or a niece to him, or even a grandchild. the latter presented too many complications, so we compromised on niece." "i wish i knew when you were serious and when you were fooling." "i am often as serious when i am fooling as i am foolish when i am serious...." "nora, you will have me shrieking in a minute!" despaired the mother. "did the colonel really propose to you?" "only in fun." celeste laughed and threw her arm around the mother's waist, less ample than substantial. "don't you care! nora is being pursued by little devils and is venting her spite on us." "there'll be too much burgundy and tobacco, to say nothing of the awful stories." "with the good old padre there? hardly," said nora. celeste was a french woman. "i confess that i like a good story that isn't vulgar. and none of them look like men who would stoop to vulgarity." "that's about all you know of men," declared mrs. harrigan. "i am willing to give them the benefit of a doubt." "celeste," cried nora, gaily, "i've an idea. supposing you and i run back after dinner and hide in the card-room, which is right across from the dining-room? then we can judge for ourselves." "nora harrigan!" "molly harrigan!" mimicked the incorrigible. "mother mine, you must learn to recognize a jest." "ah, but yours!" "fine!" cried celeste. as if to put a final period to the discussion, nora began to hum audibly an aria from _aïda_. they engaged a carriage in the village and were driven up to the villa. on the way mrs. harrigan discussed the stranger, edward courtlandt. what a fine-looking young man he was, and how adventurous, how well-connected, how enormously rich, and what an excellent catch! she and celeste--the one innocently and the other provocatively--continued the subject to the very doors of the villa. all the while nora hummed softly. "what do you think of him, nora?" the mother inquired. "think of whom?" "this mr. courtlandt." "oh, i didn't pay much attention to him," carelessly. but once alone with celeste, she seized her by the arm, a little roughly. "celeste, i love you better than any outsider i know. but if you ever discuss that man in my presence again, i shall cease to regard you even as an acquaintance. he has come here for the purpose of annoying me, though he promised the prefect in paris never to annoy me again." "the prefect!" "yes. the morning i left versailles i met him in the private office of the prefect. he had powerful friends who aided him in establishing an alibi. i was only a woman, so i didn't count." "nora, if i have meddled in any way," proudly, "it has been because i love you, and i see you unhappy. you have nearly killed me with your sphinx-like actions. you have never asked me the result of my spying for you that night. spying is not one of my usual vocations, but i did it gladly for you." "you gave him my address?" coldly. "i did not. i convinced him that i had come at the behest of flora desimone. he demanded her address, which i gave him. if ever there was a man in a fine rage, it was he as he left me to go there. if he found out where we lived, the calabrian assisted him, i spoke to him rather plainly at tea. he said that he had had nothing whatever to do with the abduction, and i believe him. i am positive that he is not the kind of man to go that far and not proceed to the end. and now, will you please tell carlos to bring my dinner to my room?" the impulsive irish heart was not to be resisted. nora wanted to remain firm, but instead she swept celeste into her arms. "celeste, don't be angry! i am very, very unhappy." if the irish heart was impulsive, the french one was no less so. celeste wanted to cry out that she was unhappy, too. "don't bother to dress! just give your hair a pat or two. we'll all three dine on the balcony." celeste flew to her room. nora went over to the casement window and stared at the darkening mountains. when she turned toward the dresser she was astonished to find two bouquets. one was an enormous bunch of violets. the other was of simple marguerites. she picked up the violets. there was a card without a name; but the phrase scribbled across the face of it was sufficient. she flung the violets far down into the grape-vines below. the action was without anger, excited rather by a contemptuous indifference. as for the simple marguerites, she took them up gingerly. the arc these described through the air was even greater than that performed by the violets. "i'm a silly fool, i suppose," she murmured, turning back into the room again. it was ten o'clock when the colonel bade his guests good night as they tumbled out of his motor-boat. they were in more or less exuberant spirits; for the colonel knew how to do two things particularly well: order a dinner, and avoid the many traps set for him by scheming mamas and eligible widows. abbott, the barone and harrigan, arm in arm, marched on ahead, whistling one tune in three different keys, while courtlandt set the pace for the padre. all through the dinner the padre had watched and listened. faces were generally books to him, and he read in this young man's face many things that pleased him. this was no night rover, a fool over wine and women, a spendthrift. he straightened out the lines and angles in a man's face as a skilled mathematician elucidates an intricate geometrical problem. he had arrived at the basic knowledge that men who live mostly out of doors are not volatile and irresponsible, but are more inclined to reserve, to reticence, to a philosophy which is broad and comprehensive and generous. they are generally men who are accomplishing things, and who let other people tell about it. thus, the padre liked courtlandt's voice, his engaging smile, his frank unwavering eyes; and he liked the leanness about the jaws, which was indicative of strength of character. in fact, he experienced a singular jubilation as he walked beside this silent man. "there has been a grave mistake somewhere," he mused aloud, thoughtfully. "i beg your pardon," said courtlandt. "i beg yours. i was thinking aloud. how long have you known the harrigans?" "the father and mother i never saw before to-day." "then you have met miss harrigan?" "i have seen her on the stage." "i have the happiness of being her confessor." they proceeded quite as far as a hundred yards before courtlandt volunteered: "that must be interesting." "she is a good catholic." "ah, yes; i recollect now." "and you?" "oh, i haven't any religion such as requires my presence in churches. don't misunderstand me! as a boy i was bred in the episcopal church; but i have traveled so much that i have drifted out of the circle. i find that when i am out in the open, in the heart of some great waste, such as a desert, a sea, the top of a mountain, i can see the greatness of the omnipotent far more clearly and humbly than within the walls of a cathedral." "but god imposes obligations upon mankind. we have ceased to look upon the hermit as a holy man, but rather as one devoid of courage. it is not the stone and the stained windows; it is the text of our daily work, that the physical being of the church represents." "i have not avoided any of my obligations." courtlandt shifted his stick behind his back. "i was speaking of the church and the open field, as they impressed me." "you believe in the tenets of christianity?" "surely! a man must pin his faith and hope to something more stable than humanity." "i should like to convert you to my way of thinking," simply. "nothing is impossible. who knows?" the padre, as they continued onward, offered many openings, but the young man at his side refused to be drawn into any confidence. so the padre gave up, for the futility of his efforts became irksome. his own lips were sealed, so he could not ask point-blank the question that clamored at the tip of his tongue. "so you are miss harrigan's confessor?" "does it strike you strangely?" "merely the coincidence." "if i were not her confessor i should take the liberty of asking you some questions." "it is quite possible that i should decline to answer them." the padre shrugged. "it is patent to me that you will go about this affair in your own way. i wish you well." "thank you. as miss harrigan's confessor you doubtless know everything but the truth." the padre laughed this time. the shops were closed. the open restaurants by the water-front held but few idlers. the padre admired the young man's independence. most men would have hesitated not a second to pour the tale into his ears in hope of material assistance. the padre's admiration was equally proportioned with respect. "i leave you here," he said. "you will see me frequently at the villa." "i certainly shall be there frequently. good night." courtlandt quickened his pace which soon brought him alongside the others. they stopped in front of abbott's pension, and he tried to persuade them to come up for a nightcap. "nothing to it, my boy," said harrigan. "i need no nightcap on top of cognac forty-eight years old. for me that's a whole suit of pajamas." "you come, ted." "abbey, i wouldn't climb those stairs for a bottle of horace's falernian, served on seneca's famous citron table." "not a friend in the world," abbott lamented. laughingly they hustled him into the hallway and fled. then courtlandt went his way alone. he slept with the dubious satisfaction that the first day had not gone badly. the wedge had been entered. it remained to be seen if it could be dislodged. harrigan was in a happy temper. he kissed his wife and chucked nora under the chin. and then mrs. harrigan launched the thunderbolt which, having been held on the leash for several hours, had, for all of that, lost none of its ability to blight and scorch. "james, you are about as hopeless a man as ever was born. you all but disgraced us this afternoon." "mother!" "me?" cried the bewildered harrigan. "look at those tennis shoes; one white string and one brown one. it's enough to drive a woman mad. what in heaven's name made you come?" perhaps it was the after effect of a good dinner, that dwindling away of pleasant emotions; perhaps it was the very triviality of the offense for which he was thus suddenly arraigned; at any rate, he lost his temper, and he was rather formidable when that occurred. "damn it, molly, i wasn't going, but courtlandt asked me to go with him, and i never thought of my shoes. you are always finding fault with me these days. i don't drink, i don't gamble, i don't run around after other women; i never did. but since you've got this social bug in your bonnet, you keep me on hooks all the while. nobody noticed the shoe-strings; and they would have looked upon it as a joke if they had. after all, i'm the boss of this ranch. if i want to wear a white string and a black one, i'll do it. here!" he caught up the book on social usages and threw it out of the window. "don't ever shove a thing like that under my nose again. if you do, i'll hike back to little old new york and start the gym again." he rammed one of the colonel's perfectos (which he had been saving for the morrow) between his teeth, and stalked into the garden. nora was heartless enough to laugh. "he hasn't talked like that to me in years!" mrs. harrigan did not know what to do,--follow him or weep. she took the middle course, and went to bed. nora turned out the lights and sat out on the little balcony. the moonshine was glorious. so dense was the earth-blackness that the few lights twinkling here and there were more like fallen stars. presently she heard a sound. it was her father, returning as silently as he could. she heard him fumble among the knickknacks on the mantel, and then go away again. by and by she saw a spot of white light move hither and thither among the grape arbors. for five or six minutes she watched it dance. suddenly all became dark again. she laid her head upon the railing and conned over the day's events. these were not at all satisfactory to her. then her thoughts traveled many miles away. six months of happiness, of romance, of play, and then misery and blackness. "nora, are you there?" "yes. over here on the balcony. what were you doing down there?" "oh, nora, i'm sorry i lost my temper. but molly's begun to nag me lately, and i can't stand it. i went after that book. did you throw some flowers out of the window?" "yes." "a bunch of daisies?" "marguerites," she corrected. "all the same to me. i picked up the bunch, and look at what i found inside." he extended his palm, flooding it with the light of his pocket-lamp. nora's heart tightened. what she saw was a beautiful uncut emerald. chapter xiv a comedy with music the harrigans occupied the suite in the east wing of the villa. this consisted of a large drawing-room and two ample bedchambers, with window-balconies and a private veranda in the rear, looking off toward the green of the pines and the metal-like luster of the copper beeches. always the suite was referred to by the management as having once been tenanted by the empress of germany. indeed, tourists were generally and respectively and impressively shown the suite (provided it was not at the moment inhabited), and were permitted to peer eagerly about for some sign of the vanished august presence. but royalty in passing, as with the most humble of us, leaves nothing behind save the memory of a tip, generous or otherwise. it was raining, a fine, soft, blurring alpine rain, and a blue-grey monotone prevailed upon the face of the waters and defied all save the keenest scrutiny to discern where the mountain tops ended and the sky began. it was a day for indoors, for dreams, good books, and good fellows. the old-fashioned photographer would have admired and striven to perpetuate the group in the drawing-room. in the old days it was quite the proper thing to snap the family group while they were engaged in some pleasant pastime, such as spinning, or painting china, or playing the piano, or reading a volume of poems. no one ever seemed to bother about the incongruence of the eyes, which were invariably focused at the camera lens. here they all were. mrs. harrigan was deep in the intricate maze of the amelia ars of bologna, which, as the initiated know, is a wonderful lace. by one of the windows sat nora, winding interminable yards of lace-hemming from off the willing if aching digits of the barone, who was speculating as to what his neapolitan club friends would say could they see, by some trick of crystal-gazing, his present occupation. celeste was at the piano, playing (_pianissimo_) snatches from the operas, while abbott looked on, his elbows propped upon his knees, his chin in his palms, and a quality of ecstatic content in his eyes. he was in his working clothes, picturesque if paint-daubed. the morning had been pleasant enough, but just before luncheon the rain clouds had gathered and settled down with that suddenness known only in high altitudes. the ex-gladiator sat on one of those slender mockeries, composed of gold-leaf and parabolic curves and faded brocade, such as one sees at the trianon or upon the stage or in the new home of a new millionaire, and which, if the true facts be known, the ingenious louis invented for the discomfort of his favorites and the folly of future collectors. it creaked whenever harrigan sighed, which was often, for he was deeply immersed (and no better word could be selected to fit his mental condition) in the baneful book which he had hurled out of the window the night before, only to retrieve like the good dog that he was. to-day his shoes offered no loophole to criticism; he had very well attended to that. his tie harmonized with his shirt and stockings; his suit was of grey tweed; in fact, he was the glass of fashion and the mold of form, at least for the present. "say, molly, i don't see what difference it makes." "difference what makes, james?" mrs. harrigan raised her eyes from her work. james had been so well-behaved that morning it was only logical for her to anticipate that he was about to abolish at one fell stroke all his hard-earned merits. "about eating salads. we never used to put oil on our tomatoes. sugar and vinegar were good enough." "sugar and vinegar are not nourishing; olive-oil is." "we seemed to hike along all right before we learned that." his guardian angel was alert this time, and he returned to his delving without further comment. by and by he got up. "pshaw!" he dropped the wearisome volume on the reading-table, took up a paper-covered novel, and turned to the last fight of the blacksmith in _rodney stone_. here was something that made the invention of type excusable, even commendable. "play the fourth _ballade_," urged abbott. celeste was really a great artist. as an interpreter of chopin she had no rival among women, and only one man was her equal. she had fire, tenderness, passion, strength; she had beyond all these, soul, which is worth more in true expression than the most marvelous technique. she had chosen chopin for his brilliance, as some will chose turner in preference to corot: riots of color, barbaric and tingling. she was as great a genius in her way as nora was in hers. there was something of the elfin child in her spirit. whenever she played to abbott, there was a quality in the expression that awakened a wonderment in nora's heart. as celeste began the _andante_, nora signified to the barone to drop his work. she let her own hands fall. harrigan gently closed his book, for in that rough kindly soul of his lay a mighty love of music. he himself was without expression of any sort, and somehow music seemed to stir the dim and not quite understandable longing for utterance. mrs. harrigan alone went on with her work; she could work and listen at the same time. after the magnificent finale, nothing in the room stirred but her needle. "bravo!" cried the barone, breaking the spell. "you never played that better," declared nora. celeste, to escape the keen inquiry of her friend and to cover up her embarrassment, dashed into one of the lighter compositions, a waltz. it was a favorite of nora's. she rose and went over to the piano and rested a hand upon celeste's shoulder. and presently her voice took up the melody. mrs. harrigan dropped her needle. it was not that she was particularly fond of music, but there was something in nora's singing that cast a temporary spell of enchantment over her, rendering her speechless and motionless. she was not of an analytical turn of mind; thus, the truth escaped her. she was really lost in admiration of herself: she had produced this marvelous being! "that's some!" harrigan beat his hands together thunderously. "great stuff; eh, barone?" the barone raised his hands as if to express his utter inability to describe his sensations. his elation was that ascribed to those fortunate mortals whom the gods lifted to olympus. at his feet lay the lace-hemming, hopelessly snarled. "father, father!" remonstrated nora; "you will wake up all the old ladies who are having their siesta." "bah! i'll bet a doughnut their ears are glued to their doors. what ho! somebody's at the portcullis. probably the padre, come up for tea." he was at the door instantly. he flung it open heartily. it was characteristic of the man to open everything widely, his heart, his mind, his hate or his affection. "come in, come in! just in time for the matinée concert." the padre was not alone. courtlandt followed him in. [illustration: courtlandt followed him in.] "we have been standing in the corridor for ten minutes," affirmed the padre, sending a winning smile around the room. "mr. courtlandt was for going down to the bureau and sending up our cards. but i would not hear of such formality. i am a privileged person." "sure yes! molly, ring for tea, and tell 'em to make it hot. how about a little peg, as the colonel says?" the two men declined. how easily and nonchalantly the man stood there by the door as harrigan took his hat! celeste was aquiver with excitement. she was thoroughly a woman: she wanted something to happen, dramatically, romantically. but her want was a vain one. the man smiled quizzically at nora, who acknowledged the salutation by a curtsy which would have frightened away the banshees of her childhood. nora hated scenes, and courtlandt had the advantage of her in his knowledge of this. celeste remained at the piano, but nora turned as if to move away. "no, no!" cried the padre, his palms extended in protest. "if you stop the music i shall leave instantly." "but we are all through, padre," replied nora, pinching celeste's arm, which action the latter readily understood as a command to leave the piano. celeste, however, had a perverse streak in her to-day. instead of rising as nora expected she would, she wheeled on the stool and began _morning mood_ from peer gynt, because the padre preferred grieg or beethoven to chopin. nora frowned at the pretty head below her. she stooped. "i sha'n't forgive you for this trick," she whispered. celeste shrugged, and her fingers did not falter. so nora moved away this time in earnest. "no, you must sing. that is what i came up for," insisted the padre. if there was any malice in the churchman, it was of a negative quality. but it was in his latin blood that drama should appeal to him strongly, and here was an unusual phase in the great play. he had urged courtlandt, much against the latter's will this day, to come up with him, simply that he might set a little scene such as this promised to be and study it from the vantage of the prompter. he knew that the principal theme of all great books, of all great dramas, was antagonism, antagonism between man and woman, though by a thousand other names has it been called. he had often said, in a spirit of raillery, that this antagonism was principally due to the fact that eve had been constructed (and very well) out of a rib from adam. naturally she resented this, that she had not been fashioned independently, and would hold it against man until the true secret of the parable was made clear to her. "sing that, padre?" said nora. "why, there are no words to it that i know." "words? _peste!_ who cares for words no one really ever understands? it is the voice, my child. go on, or i shall make you do some frightful penance." nora saw that further opposition would be useless. after all, it would be better to sing. she would not be compelled to look at this man she so despised. for a moment her tones were not quite clear; but celeste increased the volume of sound warningly, and as this required more force on nora's part, the little cross-current was passed without mishap. it was mere pastime for her to follow these wonderful melodies. she had no words to recall so that her voice was free to do with as she elected. there were bars absolutely impossible to follow, note for note, but she got around this difficulty by taking the key and holding it strongly and evenly. in ordinary times nora never refused to sing for her guests, if she happened to be in voice. there was none of that conceited arrogance behind which most of the vocal celebrities hide themselves. at the beginning she had intended to sing badly; but as the music proceeded, she sang as she had not sung in weeks. to fill this man's soul with a hunger for the sound of her voice, to pour into his heart a fresh knowledge of what he had lost forever and forever! courtlandt sat on the divan beside harrigan who, with that friendly spirit which he observed toward all whom he liked, whether of long or short acquaintance, had thrown his arm across courtlandt's shoulder. the younger man understood all that lay behind the simple gesture, and he was secretly pleased. but mrs. harrigan was not. she was openly displeased, and in vain she tried to catch the eye of her wayward lord. a man he had known but twenty-four hours, and to greet him with such coarse familiarity! celeste was not wholly unmerciful. she did not finish the suite, but turned from the keys after the final chords of _morning mood_. "thank you!" said nora. "do not stop," begged courtlandt. nora looked directly into his eyes as she replied: "one's voice can not go on forever, and mine is not at all strong." and thus, without having originally the least intent to do so, they broke the mutual contract on which they had separately and secretly agreed: never to speak directly to each other. nora was first to realize what she had done, and she was furiously angry with herself. she left the piano. as if her mind had opened suddenly like a book, courtlandt sprang from the divan and reached for the fat ball of lace-hemming. he sat down in nora's chair and nodded significantly to the barone, who blushed. to hold the delicate material for nora's unwinding was a privilege of the gods, but to hold it for this man for whom he held a dim feeling of antagonism was altogether a different matter. "it is horribly tangled," he admitted, hoping thus to escape. "no matter. you hold the ball. i'll untangle it. i never saw a fish-line i could not straighten out." nora laughed. it was not possible for her to repress the sound. her sense of humor was too strong in this case to be denied its release in laughter. it was free of the subtler emotions; frank merriment, no more, no less. and possessing the hunter's extraordinarily keen ear, courtlandt recognized the quality; and the weight of a thousand worlds lightened its pressure upon his heart. and the barone laughed, too. so there they were, the three of them. but nora's ineffectual battle for repression had driven her near to hysteria. to escape this dire calamity, she flung open a casement window and stood within it, breathing in the heavy fragrance of the rain-laden air. this little comedy had the effect of relaxing them all; and the laughter became general. abbott's smile faded soonest. he stared at his friend in wonder not wholly free from a sense of evil fortune. never had he known courtlandt to aspire to be a squire of dames. to see the barone hold the ball as if it were hot shot was amusing; but the cool imperturbable manner with which courtlandt proceeded to untangle the snarl was disturbing. why the deuce wasn't he himself big and strong, silent and purposeful, instead of being a dawdling fool of an artist? no answer came to his inquiry, but there was a knock at the door. the managing director handed harrigan a card. "herr rosen," he read aloud. "send him up. some friend of yours, nora; herr rosen. i told mr. jilli to send him up." the padre drew his feet under his cassock, a sign of perturbation; courtlandt continued to unwind; the barone glanced fiercely at nora, who smiled enigmatically. chapter xv herr rosen's regrets herr rosen! there was no outward reason why the name should have set a chill on them all, turned them into expectant statues. yet, all semblance of good-fellowship was instantly gone. to mrs. harrigan alone did the name convey a sense of responsibility, a flutter of apprehension not unmixed with delight. she put her own work behind the piano lid, swooped down upon the two men and snatched away the lace-hemming, to the infinite relief of the one and the surprise of the other. courtlandt would have liked nothing better than to hold the lace in his lap, for it was possible that herr rosen might wish to shake hands, however disinclined he might be within to perform such greeting. the lace disappeared. mrs. harrigan smoothed out the wrinkles in her dress. from the others there had been little movement and no sound to speak of. harrigan still waited by the door, seriously contemplating the bit of pasteboard in his hand. nora did not want to look, but curiosity drew her eyes imperiously toward courtlandt. he had not risen. did he know? did he understand? was his attitude pretense or innocence? ah, if she could but look behind that impenetrable mask! how she hated him! the effrontery of it all! and she could do nothing, say nothing: dared not tell them then and there what he truly was, a despicable scoundrel! the son of her father's dearest friend; what mockery! a friend of the family! it was maddening. herr rosen brushed past harrigan unceremoniously, without pausing, and went straight over to nora, who was thereupon seized by an uncontrollable spirit of devilment. she hated herr rosen, but she was going to be as pleasant and as engaging as she knew how to be. she did not care if he misinterpreted her mood. she welcomed him with a hand. he went on to mrs. harrigan, who colored pleasurably. he was then introduced, and he acknowledged each introduction with a careless nod. he was there to see nora, and he did not propose to put himself to any inconvenience on account of the others. the temporary restraint which had settled upon the others at the announcement of herr rosen's arrival passed away. courtlandt, who had remained seated during the initial formalities (a fact which bewildered abbott, who knew how punctilious his friend was in matters of this kind) got up and took a third of the divan. harrigan dropped down beside him. it was his habit to watch his daughter's face when any guest arrived. he formed his impression on what he believed to be hers. that she was a consummate actress never entered into his calculations. the welcoming smile dissipated any doubts. "no matter where we are, they keep coming. she has as many friends as t. r. i never bother to keep track of 'em." "it would be rather difficult," assented courtlandt. "you ought to see the flowers. loads of 'em. and say, what do you think? every jewel that comes she turns into money and gives to charity. can you beat it? fine joke on the johnnies. of course, i mean stones that turn up anonymously. those that have cards go back by fast-mail. it's a good thing i don't chance across the senders. now, boy, i want you to feel at home here in this family; i want you to come up when you want to and at any old time of day. i kind of want to pay back to you all the kind things your dad did for me. and i don't want any oh-pshawing. get me?" "whatever you say. if my dad did you any favors it was because he liked and admired you; not with any idea of having you discharge the debt in the future by way of inconveniencing yourself on my account. just let me be a friend of the family, like abbott here. that would be quite enough honor for me." "you're on! say, that blacksmith yarn was a corker. he was a game old codger. that was scrapping; no hall full of tobacco-smoke, no palm-fans, lemonade, peanuts and pop-corn; just right out on the turf, and may the best man win. i know. i went through that. no frame-ups, all square and on the level. a fellow had to fight those days, no sparring, no pretty footwork. sometimes i've a hankering to get back and exchange a wallop or two. nothing to it, though. my wife won't let me, as the song goes." courtlandt chuckled. "i suppose it's the monotony. a man who has been active hates to sit down and twiddle his thumbs. you exercise?" "walk a lot." "climb any?" "don't know that game." "it's great sport. i'll break you in some day, if you say. you'll like it. the mountains around here are not dangerous. we can go up and down in a day." "i'll go you. but, say, last night nora chucked a bunch of daisies out of the window, and as i was nosing around in the vineyard, i came across it. you know how a chap will absently pick a bunch of flowers apart. what do you think i found?" "a note?" "this." harrigan exhibited the emerald. "who sent it? where the dickens did it come from?" courtlandt took the stone and examined it carefully. "that's not a bad stone. uncut but polished; oriental." "oriental, eh? what would you say it was worth?" "oh, somewhere between six and seven hundred." "suffering shamrocks! a little green pebble like this?" "cut and flawless, at that size, it would be worth pounds instead of dollars." "well, what do you think of that? nora told me to keep it, so i guess i will." "why, yes. if a man sends a thing like this anonymously, he can't possibly complain. have it made into a stick pin." courtlandt returned the stone which harrigan pocketed. "sometimes i wish nora'd marry and settle down." "she is young. you wouldn't have quit the game at her age!" "i should say not! but that's different. a man's business is to fight for his grub, whether in an office or in the ring. that's a part of the game. but a woman ought to have a home, live in it three-fourths of the year, and bring up good citizens. that's what we are all here for. molly used to stay at home, but now it's the social bug, gadding from morning until night. ah, here's carlos with the tea." herr rosen instantly usurped the chair next to nora, who began to pour the tea. he had come up from the village prepared for a disagreeable half-hour. instead of being greeted with icy glances from stormy eyes, he encountered such smiles as this adorable creature had never before bestowed upon him. he was in the clouds. that night at cadenabbia had apparently knocked the bottom out of his dream. women were riddles which only they themselves could solve for others. for this one woman he was perfectly ready to throw everything aside. a man lived but once; and he was a fool who would hold to tinsel in preference to such happiness as he thought he saw opening out before him. nora saw, but she did not care. that in order to reach another she was practising infinite cruelty on this man (whose one fault lay in that he loved her) did not appeal to her pity. but her arrow flew wide of the target; at least, there appeared no result to her archery in malice. not once had the intended victim looked over to where she sat. and yet she knew that he must be watching; he could not possibly avoid it and be human. and when he finally came forward to take his cup, she leaned toward herr rosen. "you take two lumps?" she asked sweetly. it was only a chance shot, but she hit on the truth. "and you remember?" excitedly. "one lump for mine, please," said courtlandt, smiling. she picked up a cube of sugar and dropped it into his cup. she had the air of one wishing it were poison. the recipient of this good will, with perfect understanding, returned to the divan, where the padre and harrigan were gravely toasting each other with benedictine. nora made no mistake with either abbott's cup or the barone's; but the two men were filled with but one desire, to throw herr rosen out of the window. what had begun as a beautiful day was now becoming black and uncertain. the barone could control every feature save his eyes, and these openly admitted deep anger. he recollected herr rosen well enough. the encounter over at cadenabbia was not the first by many. herr rosen! his presence in this room under that name was an insult, and he intended to call the interloper to account the very first opportunity he found. perhaps celeste, sitting as quiet as a mouse upon the piano-stool, was the only one who saw these strange currents drifting dangerously about. that her own heart ached miserably did not prevent her from observing things with all her usual keenness. ah, nora, nora, who have everything to give and yet give nothing, why do you play so heartless a game? why hurt those who can no more help loving you than the earth can help whirling around the calm dispassionate sun? always they turn to you, while i, who have so much to give, am given nothing! she set down her tea-cup and began the aria from _la bohème_. nora, without relaxing the false smile, suddenly found emptiness in everything. "sing!" said herr rosen. "i am too tired. some other time." he did not press her. instead, he whispered in his own tongue: "you are the most adorable woman in the world!" and nora turned upon him a pair of eyes blank with astonishment. it was as though she had been asleep and he had rudely awakened her. his infatuation blinded him to the truth; he saw in the look a feminine desire to throw the others off the track as to the sentiment expressed in his whispered words. the hour passed tolerably well. herr rosen then observed the time, rose and excused himself. he took the steps leading abruptly down the terrace to the carriage road. he had come by the other way, the rambling stone stairs which began at the porter's lodge, back of the villa. "padre," whispered courtlandt, "i am going. do not follow. i shall explain to you when we meet again." the padre signified that he understood. harrigan protested vigorously, but smiling and shaking his head, courtlandt went away. nora ran to the window. she could see herr rosen striding along, down the winding road, his head in the air. presently, from behind a cluster of mulberries, the figure of another man came into view. he was going at a dog-trot, his hat settled at an angle that permitted the rain to beat squarely into his face. the next turn in the road shut them both from sight. but nora did not stir. herr rosen stopped and turned. "you called?" "yes." courtlandt had caught up with him just as herr rosen was about to open the gates. "just a moment, herr rosen," with a hand upon the bars. "i shall not detain you long." there was studied insolence in the tones and the gestures which accompanied them. "be brief, if you please." "my name is edward courtlandt, as doubtless you have heard." "in a large room it is difficult to remember all the introductions." "precisely. that is why i take the liberty of recalling it to you, so that you will not forget it," urbanely. a pause. dark patches of water were spreading across their shoulders. little rivulets ran down courtlandt's arm, raised as it was against the bars. "i do not see how it may concern me," replied herr rosen finally with an insolence more marked than courtlandt's. "in paris we met one night, at the stage entrance of the opera, i pushed you aside, not knowing who you were. you had offered your services; the door of miss harrigan's limousine." "it was you?" scowling. "i apologize for that. to-morrow morning you will leave bellaggio for varenna. somewhere between nine and ten the fast train leaves for milan." "varenna! milan!" "exactly. you speak english as naturally and fluently as if you were born to the tongue. thus, you will leave for milan. what becomes of you after that is of no consequence to me. am i making myself clear?" "_verdampt!_ do i believe my ears?" furiously. "are you telling me to leave bellaggio to-morrow morning?" "as directly as i can." herr rosen's face became as red as his name. he was a brave young man, but there was danger of an active kind in the blue eyes boring into his own. if it came to a physical contest, he realized that he would get the worst of it. he put his hand to his throat; his very impotence was choking him. "your highness...." "highness!" herr rosen stepped back. "yes. your highness will readily see the wisdom of my concern for your hasty departure when i add that i know all about the little house in versailles, that my knowledge is shared by the chief of the parisian police and the minister of war. if you annoy miss harrigan with your equivocal attentions...." "_gott!_ this is too much!" "wait! i am stronger than you are. do not make me force you to hear me to the end. you have gone about this intrigue like a blackguard, and that i know your highness not to be. the matter is, you are young, you have always had your way, you have not learnt restraint. your presence here is an insult to miss harrigan, and if she was pleasant to you this afternoon it was for my benefit. if you do not go, i shall expose you." courtlandt opened the gate. "and if i refuse?" "why, in that case, being the american that i am, without any particular reverence for royalty or nobility, as it is known, i promise to thrash you soundly to-morrow morning at ten o'clock, in the dining-room, in the bureau, the drawing-room, wherever i may happen to find you." courtlandt turned on his heel and hurried back to the villa. he did not look over his shoulder. if he had, he might have felt pity for the young man who leaned heavily against the gate, his burning face pressed upon his rain-soaked sleeve. when courtlandt knocked at the door and was admitted, he apologized. "i came back for my umbrella." "umbrella!" exclaimed the padre. "why, we had no umbrellas. we came up in a carriage which is probably waiting for us this very minute by the porter's lodge." "well, i am certainly absent-minded!" "absent-minded!" scoffed abbott. "you never forgot anything in all your life, unless it was to go to bed. you wanted an excuse to come back." "any excuse would be a good one in that case. i think we'd better be going, padre. and by the way, herr rosen begged me to present his regrets. he is leaving bellaggio in the morning." nora turned her face once more to the window. chapter xvi the apple of discord "it is all very petty, my child," said the padre. "life is made up of bigger things; the little ones should be ignored." to which nora replied: "to a woman, the little things are everything; they are the daily routine, the expected, the necessary things. what you call the big things in life are accidents. and, oh! i have pride." she folded her arms across her heaving bosom; for the padre's directness this morning had stirred her deeply. "wilfulness is called pride by some; and stubbornness. but you know, as well as i do, that yours is resentment, anger, indignation. yes, you have pride, but it has not been brought into this affair. pride is that within which prevents us from doing mean or sordid acts; and you could not do one or the other if you tried. the sentiment in you which should be developed...." "is mercy?" "no; justice, the patience to weigh the right or wrong of a thing." "padre, i have eyes, eyes; i _saw_." he twirled the middle button of his cassock. "the eyes see and the ears hear, but these are only witnesses, laying the matter before the court of the last resort, which is the mind. it is there we sift the evidence." "he had the insufferable insolence to order herr rosen to leave," going around the barrier of his well-ordered logic. "ah! now, how could he send away herr rosen if that gentleman had really preferred to stay?" nora looked confused. "shall i tell you? i suspected; so i questioned him last night. had i been in his place, i should have chastised herr rosen instead of bidding him be gone. it was he." nora, sat down. "positively. the men who guarded you were two actors from one of the theaters. he did not come to versailles because he was being watched. he was found and sent home the night before your release." "i am sorry. but it was so like _him_." the padre spread his hands. "what a way women have of modifying either good or bad impulses! it would have been fine of you to have stopped when you said you were sorry." "padre, one would believe that you had taken up his defense!" "if i had i should have to leave it after to-day. i return to rome to-morrow and shall not see you again before you go to america. i have bidden good-by to all save you. my child, my last admonition is, be patient; observe; guard against that impulse born in your blood to move hastily, to form opinions without solid foundations. be happy while you are young, for old age is happy only in that reflected happiness of recollection. write to me, here. i return in november. _benedicite?_" smiling. nora bowed her head and he put a hand upon it. * * * * * "and listen to this," began harrigan, turning over a page. "'it is considered bad form to call the butler to your side when you are a guest. catch his eye. he will understand that something is wanted.' how's that?" "that's the way to live." courtlandt grinned, and tilted back his chair until it rested against the oak. the morning was clear and mild. fresh snow lay upon the mountain tops; later it would disappear. the fountain tinkled, and swallows darted hither and thither under the sparkling spray. the gardeners below in the vegetable patch were singing. by the door of the villa sat two old ladies, breakfasting in the sunshine. there was a hint of lavender in the lazy drifting air. a dozen yards away sat abbott, two or three brushes between his teeth and one in his hand. a little behind was celeste, sewing posies upon one of those squares of linen toward which all women in their idle moments are inclined, and which, on finishing, they immediately stow away in the bottom of some trunk against the day when they have a home of their own, or marry, or find some one ignorant enough to accept it as a gift. "'and when in doubt,'" continued harrigan, "'watch how other persons use their forks.' can you beat it? and say, honest, molly bought that for me to read and study. and i never piped the subtitle until this morning. 'advice to young ladies upon going into society.' huh?" harrigan slapped his knee with the book and roared out his keen enjoyment. somehow he seemed to be more at ease with this young fellow than with any other man he had met in years. "but for the love of mike, don't say anything to molly," fearfully. "oh, she means the best in the world," contritely. "i'm always embarrassing her; shoe-strings that don't match, a busted stud in my shirt-front, and there isn't a pair of white-kids made that'll stay whole more than five minutes on these paws. i suppose it's because i don't think. after all, i'm only a retired pug." the old fellow's eyes sparkled suspiciously. "the best two women in all the world, and i don't want them to be ashamed of me." "why, mr. harrigan," said courtlandt, letting his chair fall into place so that he could lay a hand affectionately upon the other's knee, "neither of them would be worth their salt if they ever felt ashamed of you. what do you care what strangers think or say? you know. you've seen life. you've stepped off the stage and carried with you the recollection of decent living, of playing square, of doing the best you could. the worst scoundrels i ever met never made any mistake with their forks. perhaps you don't know it, but my father became rich because he could judge a man's worth almost at sight. and he kept this fortune and added to it because he chose half a dozen friends and refused to enlarge the list. if you became his friend, he had good reason for making you such." "well, we did have some good times together," harrigan admitted, with a glow in his heart. "and i guess after all that i'll go to the ball with molly. i don't mind teas like we had at the colonel's, but dinners and balls i have drawn the line at. i'll take the plunge to-night. there's always some place for a chap to smoke." "at the villa rosa? i'll be there myself; and any time you are in doubt, don't be afraid to question me." "you're in class a," heartily. "but there's one thing that worries me,--nora. she's gone up so high, and she's such a wonderful girl, that all the men in christendom are hiking after her. and some of 'em.... well, molly says it isn't good form to wallop a man over here. why, she went on her lonesome to india and japan, with nobody but her maid; and never put us hep until she landed in bombay. the men out that way aren't the best. east of suez, you know. and that chap yesterday, herr rosen. did you see the way he hiked by me when i let him in? he took me to be the round number before one. and he didn't speak a dozen words to any but nora. not that i mind that; but it was something in the way he did it that scratched me the wrong way. the man who thinks he's going to get nora by walking over me, has got a guess coming. of course, it's meat and drink to molly to have sons of grand dukes and kings trailing around. she says it gives tone." "isn't she afraid sometimes?" "afraid? i should say not! there's only three things that molly's afraid of these days: a spool of thread, a needle, and a button." courtlandt laughed frankly. "i really don't think you need worry about herr rosen. he has gone, and he will not come back." "say! i'll bet a dollar it was you who shoo'd him off." "yes. but it was undoubtedly an impertinence on my part, and i'd rather you would not disclose my officiousness to miss harrigan." "piffle! if you knew him you had a perfect right to pass him back his ticket. who was he?" courtlandt poked at the gravel with his cane. "one of the big guns?" courtlandt nodded. "so big that he couldn't have married my girl even if he loved her?" "yes. as big as that." harrigan riffled the leaves of his book. "what do you say to going down to the hotel and having a game of _bazzica_, as they call billiards here?" "nothing would please me better," said courtlandt, relieved that harrigan did not press him for further revelations. "nora is studying a new opera, and molly-o is ragging the village dressmaker. it's only half after ten, and we can whack 'em around until noon. i warn you, i'm something of a shark." "i'll lay you the cigars that i beat you." "you're on!" harrigan put the book in his pocket, and the two of them made for the upper path, not, however, without waving a friendly adieu to celeste, who was watching them with much curiosity. for a moment nora became visible in the window. her expression did not signify that the sight of the men together pleased her. on the contrary, her eyes burned and her brow was ruffled by several wrinkles which threatened to become permanent if the condition of affairs continued to remain as it was. to her the calm placidity of the man was nothing less than monumental impudence. how she hated him; how bitterly, how intensely she hated him! she withdrew from the window without having been seen. "did you ever see two finer specimens of man?" celeste asked of abbott. "what? who?" mumbled abbott, whose forehead was puckered with impatience. "oh, those two? they _are_ well set up. but what the deuce _is_ the matter with this foreground?" taking the brushes from his teeth. "i've been hammering away at it for a week, and it does not get there yet." celeste rose and laid aside her work. she stood behind him and studied the picture through half-closed critical eyes. "you have painted it over too many times." then she looked down at the shapely head. ah, the longing to put her hands upon it, to run her fingers through the tousled hair, to touch it with her lips! but no! "perhaps you are tired; perhaps you have worked too hard. why not put aside your brushes for a week?" "i've a good mind to chuck it into the lake. i simply can't paint any more." he flung down the brushes. "i'm a fool, celeste, a fool. i'm crying for the moon, that's what the matter is. what's the use of beating about the bush? you know as well as i do that it's nora." her heart contracted, and for a little while she could not see him clearly. "but what earthly chance have i?" he went on, innocently but ruthlessly. "no one can help loving nora." "no," in a small voice. "it's all rot, this talk about affinities. there's always some poor devil left outside. but who can help loving nora?" he repeated. "who indeed!" "and there's not the least chance in the world for me." "you never can tell until you put it to the test." "do you think i have a chance? is it possible that nora may care a little for me?" he turned his head toward her eagerly. "who knows?" she wanted him to have it over with, to learn the truth that to nora harrigan he would never be more than an amiable comrade. he would then have none to turn to but her. what mattered it if her own heart ached so she might soothe the hurt in his? she laid a hand upon his shoulder, so lightly that he was only dimly conscious of the contact. "it's a rummy old world. here i've gone alone all these years...." "twenty-six!" smiling. "well, that's a long time. never bothered my head about a woman. selfish, perhaps. had a good time, came and went as i pleased. and then i met nora." "yes." "if only she'd been stand-offish, like these other singers, why, i'd have been all right to-day. but she's such a brick! she's such a good fellow! she treats us all alike; sings when we ask her to; always ready for a romp. think of her making us all take the _kneip_-cure the other night! and we marched around the fountain singing 'mary had a little lamb.' barefooted in the grass! when a man marries he doesn't want a wife half so much as a good comrade; somebody to slap him on the back in the morning to hearten him up for the day's work; and to cuddle him up when he comes home tired, or disappointed, or unsuccessful. no matter what mood he's in. is my english getting away from you?" "no; i understand all you say." her hand rested a trifle heavier upon his shoulder, that was all. "nora would be that kind of a wife. 'honor, anger, valor, fire,' as stevenson says. hang the picture; what am i going to do with it?" "'honor, anger, valor, fire,'" celeste repeated slowly. "yes, that is nora." a bitter little smile moved her lips as she recalled the happenings of the last two days. but no; he must find out for himself; he must meet the hurt from nora, not from her. "how long, abbott, have you known your friend mr. courtlandt?" "boys together," playing a light tattoo with his mahl-stick. "how old is he?" "about thirty-two or three." "he is very rich?" "oceans of money; throws it away, but not fast enough to get rid of it." "he is what you say in english ... wild?" "well," with mock gravity, "i shouldn't like to be the tiger that crossed his path. wild; that's the word for it." "you are laughing. ah, i know! i should say dissipated." "courtlandt? come, now, celeste; does he look dissipated?" "no-o." "he drinks when he chooses, he flirts with a pretty woman when he chooses, he smokes the finest tobacco there is when he chooses; and he gives them all up when he chooses. he is like the seasons; he comes and goes, and nobody can change his habits." "he has had no affair?" "why, courtlandt hasn't any heart. it's a mechanical device to keep his blood in circulation; that's all. i am the most intimate friend he has, and yet i know no more than you how he lives and where he goes." she let her hand fall from his shoulder. she was glad that he did not know. "but look!" she cried in warning. abbott looked. a woman was coming serenely down the path from the wooded promontory, a woman undeniably handsome in a cedar-tinted linen dress, exquisitely fashioned, with a touch of vivid scarlet on her hat and a most tantalizing flash of scarlet ankle. it was flora desimone, fresh from her morning bath and a substantial breakfast. the errand that had brought her from aix-les-bains was confessedly a merciful one. but she possessed the dramatist's instinct to prolong a situation. thus, to make her act of mercy seem infinitely larger than it was, she was determined first to cast the apple of discord into this charming corner of eden. the apple of discord, as every man knows, is the only thing a woman can throw with any accuracy. the artist snatched up his brushes, and ruined the painting forthwith, for all time. the foreground was, in his opinion, beyond redemption; so, with a savage humor, he rapidly limned in a score of impossible trees, turned midday into sunset, with a riot of colors which would have made the chinese new-year in canton a drab and sober event in comparison. he hated flora desimone, as all nora's adherents most properly did, but with a hatred wholly reflective and adapted to nora's moods. "you have spoiled it!" cried celeste. she had watched the picture grow, and to see it ruthlessly destroyed this way hurt her. "how could you!" "worst i ever did." he began to change the whole effect, chuckling audibly as he worked. sunset divided honors with moonlight. it was no longer incongruous; it was ridiculous. he leaned back and laughed. "i'm going to send it to l'asino, and call it an afterthought." "give it to me." "what?" "yes." "nonsense! i'm going to touch a match to it. i'll give you that picture with the lavender in bloom." "i want this." "but you can not hang it." "i want it." "well!" the more he learned about women the farther out of mental reach they seemed to go. why on earth did she want this execrable daub? "you may have it; but all the same, i'm going to call an oculist and have him examine your eyes." "why, it is the signorina fournier!" in preparing studiously to ignore flora desimone's presence they had forgotten all about her. "good morning, signora," said celeste in italian. "and the signore abbott, the painter, also!" the calabrian raised what she considered her most deadly weapon, her lorgnette. celeste had her fancy-work instantly in her two hands; abbott's were occupied; flora's hands were likewise engaged; thus, the insipid mockery of hand-shaking was nicely and excusably avoided. "what is it?" asked flora, squinting. "it is a new style of the impressionist which i began this morning," soberly. "it looks very natural," observed flora. "natural!" abbott dropped his mahl-stick. "it is vesuv', is it not, on a cloudy day?" this was too much for abbott's gravity, and he laughed. "it was not necessary to spoil a good picture ... on my account," said flora, closing the lorgnette with a snap. her great dark eyes were dreamy and contemplative like a cat's, and, as every one knows, a cat's eye is the most observing of all eyes. it is quite in the order of things, since a cat's attitude toward the world is by need and experience wholly defensive. "the signora is wrong. i did not spoil it on her account. it was past helping yesterday. but i shall, however, rechristen it vesuvius, since it represents an eruption of temper." flora tapped the handle of her parasol with the lorgnette. it was distinctly a sign of approval. these americans were never slow-witted. she swung the parasol to and fro, slowly, like a pendulum. "it is too bad," she said, her glance roving over the white walls of the villa. "it was irrevocably lost," abbott declared. "no, no; i do not mean the picture. i am thinking of la toscana. her voice was really superb; and to lose it entirely...!" she waved a sympathetic hand. abbott was about to rise up in vigorous protest. but fate itself chose to rebuke flora. from the window came--"_sai cos' ebbe cuore!_"--sung as only nora could sing it. the ferrule of flora desimone's parasol bit deeply into the clover-turf. chapter xvii the ball at the villa "do you know the duchessa?" asked flora desimone. "yes." it was three o'clock the same afternoon. the duke sat with his wife under the vine-clad trattoria on the quay. between his knees he held his panama hat, which was filled with ripe hazelnuts. he cracked them vigorously with his strong white teeth and filliped the broken shells into the lake, where a frantic little fish called _agoni_ darted in and about the slowly sinking particles. "why?" the duke was not any grayer than he had been four or five months previous, but the characteristic expression of his features had undergone a change. he looked less jovian than job-like. "i want you to get an invitation to her ball at the villa rosa to-night." "we haven't been here twenty-four hours!" in mild protest. "what has that to do with it? it doesn't make any difference." "i suppose not." he cracked and ate a nut. "where is he?" "he has gone to milan. he left hurriedly. he's a fool," impatiently. "not necessarily. foolishness is one thing and discretion is another. oh, well; his presence here was not absolutely essential. presently he will marry and settle down and be a good boy." the next nut was withered, and he tossed it aside. "is her voice really gone?" "no." flora leaned with her arms upon the railing and glared at the wimpling water. she had carried the apple of discord up the hill and down again. nora had been indisposed. "i am glad of that." she turned the glare upon him. "i am very glad of that, considering your part in the affair." "michael...!" "be careful. michael is always a prelude to a temper. have one of these," offering a nut. she struck it rudely from his hand. "sometimes i am tempted to put my two hands around that exquisite neck of yours." "try it." "no, i do not believe it would be wise. but if ever i find out that you have lied to me, that you loved the fellow and married me out of spite...." he completed the sentence by suggestively crunching a nut. the sullen expression on her face gave place to a smile. "i should like to see you in a rage." "no, my heart; you would like nothing of the sort. i understand you better than you know; that accounts for my patience. you are italian. you are caprice and mood. i come from a cold land. if ever i do get angry, run, run as fast as ever you can." flora was not, among other things, frivolous or light-headed. there was an earthquake hidden somewhere in this quiet docile man, and the innate deviltry of the woman was always trying to dig down to it. but she never deceived herself. some day this earthquake would open up and devour her. "i hate him. he snubbed me. i have told you that a thousand times." he laughed and rattled the nuts in his hat. "i want you to get that invitation." "and if i do not?" "i shall return immediately to paris." "and break your word to me?" "as easily as you break one of these nuts." "and if i get the invitation?" "i shall fulfil my promise to the letter. i will tell her as i promised." "out of love for me?" "out of love for you, and because the play no longer interests me." "i wonder what new devilment is at work in your mind?" "michael, i do not want to get into a temper. it makes lines in my face. i hate this place. it is dead. i want life, and color, and music. i want the rest of september in ostend." "paris, capri, taormina, ostend; i marvel if ever you will be content to stay in one place long enough for me to get my breath?" "my dear, i am young. one of these days i shall be content to sit by your great russian fireplace and hold your hand." "hold it now." she laughed and pressed his hand between her own. "michael, look me straight in the eyes." he did so willingly enough. "there is no other man. and if you ever look at another woman ... well!" "i'll send over for the invitation." he stuffed his pockets with nuts and put on his hat. flora then proceeded secretly to polish once more the apple of discord which, a deal tarnished for lack of use, she had been compelled to bring down from the promontory. * * * * * "am i all right?" asked harrigan. courtlandt nodded. "you look like a soldier in mufti, and more than that, like the gentleman that you naturally are," quite sincerely. the ex-gladiator blushed. "this is the reception-room. there's the ballroom right out there. the smoking-room is on the other side. now, how in the old harry am i going to get across without killing some one?" courtlandt resisted the desire to laugh. "supposing you let me pilot you over?" "you're the referee. ring the gong." "come on, then." "what! while they are dancing?" backing away in dismay. the other caught him by the arm. "come on." and in and out they went, hither and thither, now dodging, now pausing to let the swirl pass, until at length harrigan found himself safe on shore, in the dim cool smoking-room. "i don't see how you did it," admiringly. "i'll drop in every little while to see how you are getting on," volunteered courtlandt. "you can sit by the door if you care to see them dance. i'm off to see mrs. harrigan and tell her where you are. here's a cigar." harrigan turned the cigar over and over in his fingers, all the while gazing at the young man's diminishing back. he sighed. _that_ would make him the happiest man in the world. he examined the carnelian band encircling the six-inches of evanescent happiness. "what do you think of that!" he murmured. "same brand the old boy used to smoke. and if he pays anything less than sixty apiece for 'em at wholesale, i'll eat this one." then he directed his attention to the casual inspection of the room. a few elderly men were lounging about. his sympathy was at once mutely extended; it was plain that they too had been dragged out. at the little smoker's tabouret by the door he espied two chairs, one of which was unoccupied; and he at once appropriated it. the other chair was totally obscured by the bulk of the man who sat in it; a man, bearded, blunt-nosed, passive, but whose eyes were bright and twinkling. hanging from his cravat was a medal of some kind. harrigan lighted his cigar, and gave himself up to the delights of it. "they should leave us old fellows at home," he ventured. "perhaps, in most cases, the women would much prefer that." "foreigner," thought harrigan. "well, it does seem that the older we get the greater obstruction we become." "what is old age?" asked the thick but not unpleasant voice of the stranger. "it's standing aside. years don't count at all. a man is as young as he feels." "and a woman as old as she looks!" laughed the other. "now, i don't feel old, and i am fifty-one." the man with the beard shot an admiring glance across the tabouret. "you are extraordinarily well preserved, sir. you do not seem older than i, and i am but forty." "the trouble is, over here you play cards all night in stuffy rooms and eat too many sauces." harrigan had read this somewhere, and he was pleased to think that he could recall it so fittingly. "agreed. you americans are getting out in the open more than any other white people." "wonder how he guessed i was from the states?" aloud, harrigan said: "you don't look as though you'd grow any older in the next ten years." "that depends." the bearded man sighed and lighted a fresh cigarette. "there's a beautiful young woman," with an indicative gesture toward the ballroom. harrigan expanded. it was nora, dancing with the barone. "she's the most beautiful young woman in the world," enthusiastically. "ah, you know her?" interestedly. "i am her father!"--as louis xiv might have said, "i am the state." the bearded man smiled. "sir, i congratulate you both." courtlandt loomed in the doorway. "comfortable?" "perfectly. good cigar, comfortable chair, fine view." the duke eyed courtlandt through the pall of smoke which he had purposefully blown forth. he questioned, rather amusedly, what would have happened had he gone down to the main hall that night in paris? among the few things he admired was a well-built handsome man. courtlandt on his part pretended that he did not see. "you'll find the claret and champagne punches in the hall," suggested courtlandt. "not for mine! run away and dance." "good-by, then." courtlandt vanished. "there's a fine chap. edward courtlandt, the american millionaire." it was not possible for harrigan to omit this awe-compelling elaboration. "edward courtlandt." the stranger stretched his legs. "i have heard of him. something of a hunter." "one of the keenest." "there is no half-way with your rich american: either his money ruins him or he runs away from it." "there's a stunner," exclaimed harrigan. "wonder how she got here?" "to which lady do you refer?" "the one in scarlet. she is flora desimone. she and my daughter sing together sometimes. of course you have heard of eleonora da toscana; that's my daughter's stage name. the two are not on very good terms, naturally." "quite naturally," dryly. "but you can't get away from the calabrian's beauty," generously. "no." the bearded man extinguished his cigarette and rose, laying a _carte-de-visite_ on the tabouret. "more, i should not care to get away from it. good evening," pleasantly. the music stopped. he passed on into the crowd. harrigan reached over and picked up the card. "suffering shamrocks! if molly could only see me now," he murmured. "i wonder if i made any breaks? the grand duke, and me hobnobbing with him like a waiter! james, this is all under your hat. we'll keep the card where molly won't find it." young men began to drift in and out. the air became heavy with smoke, the prevailing aroma being that of turkish tobacco of which harrigan was not at all fond. but his cigar was so good that he was determined not to stir until the coal began to tickle the end of his nose. since molly knew where he was there was no occasion to worry. abbott came in, pulled a cigarette case out of his pocket, and impatiently struck a match. his hands shook a little, and the flare of the match revealed a pale and angry countenance. "hey, abbott, here's a seat. get your second wind." "thanks." abbott dropped into the chair and smoked quickly. "very stuffy out there. too many." "you look it. having a good time?" "oh, fine!" there was a catch in the laugh which followed, but harrigan's ear was not trained for these subtleties of sound, "how are you making out?" "i'm getting acclimated. where's the colonel to-night? he ought to be around here somewhere." "i left him a few moments ago." "when you see him again, send him in. he's a live one, and i like to hear him talk." "i'll go at once," crushing his cigarette in the jeypore bowl. "what's your hurry? you look like a man who has just lost his job." "been steering a german countess. she was wound up to turn only one way, and i am groggy. i'll send the colonel over. by-by." "now, what's stung the boy?" nora was enjoying herself famously. the men hummed around her like bees around the sweetest rose. from time to time she saw courtlandt hovering about the outskirts. she was glad he had come: the lepidopterist is latent or active in most women; to impale the butterfly, the moth falls easily into the daily routine. she was laughing and jesting with the men. her mother stood by, admiringly. this time courtlandt gently pushed his way to nora's side. "may i have a dance?" he asked. "you are too late," evenly. she was becoming used to the sight of him, much to her amazement. "i am sorry." "why, nora, i didn't know that your card was filled!" said mrs. harrigan. she had the maternal eye upon courtlandt. "nevertheless," said nora sweetly, "it is a fact." "i am disconsolate," replied courtlandt, who had approached for form's sake only, being fully prepared for a refusal. "i have the unfortunate habit of turning up late," with a significance which only nora understood. "so, those who are late must suffer the consequences." "supper?" "the barone rather than you." the music began again, and abbott whirled her away. she was dressed in burmese taffeta, a rich orange. in the dark of her beautiful black hair there was the green luster of emeralds; an indian-princess necklace of emeralds and pearls was looped around her dazzling white throat. unconsciously courtlandt sighed audibly, and mrs. harrigan heard this note of unrest. "who is that?" asked mrs. harrigan. "flora desimone's husband, the duke. he and mr. harrigan were having quite a conversation in the smoke-room." "what!" in consternation. "they were getting along finely when i left them." mrs. harrigan felt her heart sink. the duke and james together meant nothing short of a catastrophe; for james would not know whom he was addressing, and would make all manner of confidences. she knew something would happen if she let him out of her sight. he was eternally talking to strangers. "would you mind telling mr. harrigan that i wish to see him?" "not at all." nora stopped at the end of the ballroom. "donald, let us go out into the garden. i want a breath of air. did you see her?" "couldn't help seeing her. it was the duke, i suppose. it appears that he is an old friend of the duchess. we'll go through the conservatory. it's a short-cut." the night was full of moonshine; it danced upon the water; it fired the filigree tops of the solemn cypress; it laced the lawn with quivering shadows; and heavy hung the cloying perfume of the box-wood hedges. "_o bellissima notta!_" she sang. "is it not glorious?" "nora," said abbott, leaning suddenly toward her. "don't say it. donald; please don't. don't waste your love on me. you are a good man, and i should not be worthy the name of woman if i did not feel proud and sad. i want you always as a friend; and if you decide that can not be, i shall lose faith in everything. i have never had a brother, and in these two short years i have grown to look on you as one. i am sorry. but if you will look back you will see that i never gave you any encouragement. i was never more than your comrade. i have many faults, but i am not naturally a coquette. i know my heart; i know it well." "is there another?" in despair. "once upon a time, donald, there was. there is nothing now but ashes. i am telling you this so that it will not be so hard for you to return to the old friendly footing. you are a brave man. any man is who takes his heart in his hand and offers it to a woman. you are going to take my hand and promise to be my friend always." "ah, nora!" "you mustn't, donald. i can't return to the ballroom with my eyes red. you will never know how a woman on the stage has to fight to earn her bread. and that part is only a skirmish compared to the ceaseless war men wage against her. she has only the fortifications of her wit and her presence of mind. was i not abducted in the heart of paris? and but for the cowardice of the man, who knows what might have happened? if i have beauty, god gave it to me to wear, and wear it i will. my father, the padre, you and the barone; i would not trust any other men living. i am often unhappy, but i do not inflict this unhappiness on others. be you the same. be my friend; be brave and fight it out of your heart." quickly she drew his head toward her and lightly kissed the forehead. "there! ah, donald, i very much need a friend." "all right, nora," bravely indeed, for the pain in his young heart cried out for the ends of the earth in which to hide. "all right! i'm young; maybe i'll get over it in time. always count on me. you wouldn't mind going back to the ballroom alone, would you? i've got an idea i'd like to smoke over it. no, i'll take you to the end of the conservatory and come back. i can't face the rest of them just now." nora had hoped against hope that it was only infatuation, but in the last few days she could not ignore the truth that he really loved her. she had thrown him and celeste together in vain. poor celeste, poor lovely celeste, who wore her heart upon her sleeve, patent to all eyes save donald's! thus, it was with defined purpose that she had lured him this night into the garden. she wanted to disillusion him. the barone, glooming in an obscure corner of the conservatory, saw them come in. abbott's brave young face deceived him. at the door abbott smiled and bowed and returned to the garden. the barone rose to follow him. he had committed a theft of which he was genuinely sorry; and he was man enough to seek his rival and apologize. but fate had chosen for him the worst possible time. he had taken but a step forward, when a tableau formed by the door, causing him to pause irresolutely. nora was face to face at last with flora desimone. "i wish to speak to you," said the italian abruptly. "nothing you could possibly say would interest me," declared nora, haughtily and made as if to pass. "do not be too sure," insolently. their voices were low, but they reached the ears of the barone, who wished he was anywhere but here. he moved silently behind the palms toward the exit. "let me be frank. i hate you and detest you with all my heart," continued flora. "i have always hated you, with your supercilious airs, you, whose father...." "don't you dare to say an ill word of him!" cried nora, her irish blood throwing hauteur to the winds. "he is kind and brave and loyal, and i am proud of him. say what you will about me; it will not bother me in the least." the barone heard no more. by degrees he had reached the exit, and he was mightily relieved to get outside. the calabrian had chosen her time well, for the conservatory was practically empty. the barone's eyes searched the shadows and at length discerned abbott leaning over the parapet. [illustration: "i hate you and detest you with all my heart."] "ah!" said abbott, facing about. "so it is you. you deliberately scratched off my name and substituted your own. it was the act of a contemptible cad. and i tell you here and now. a cad!" the barone was italian. he had sought abbott with the best intentions; to apologize abjectly, distasteful though it might be to his hot blood. instead, he struck abbott across the mouth, and the latter promptly knocked him down. chapter xviii pistols for two courtlandt knocked on the studio door. "come in." he discovered abbott, stretched out upon the lounge, idly picking at the loose plaster in the wall. "hello!" said abbott carelessly. "help yourself to a chair." instead, courtlandt walked about the room, aimlessly. he paused at the window; he picked up a sketch and studied it at various angles; he kicked the footstool across the floor, not with any sign of anger but with a seriousness that would have caused abbott to laugh, had he been looking at his friend. he continued, however, to pluck at the plaster. he had always hated and loved courtlandt, alternately. he never sought to analyze this peculiar cardiac condition. he only knew that at one time he hated the man, and that at another he would have laid down his life for him. perhaps it was rather a passive jealousy which he mistook for hatred. abbott had never envied courtlandt his riches; but often the sight of courtlandt's physical superiority, his adaptability, his knowledge of men and affairs, the way he had of anticipating the unspoken wishes of women, his unembarrassed gallantry, these attributes stirred the envy of which he was always manly enough to be ashamed. courtlandt's unexpected appearance in bellaggio had also created a suspicion which he could not minutely define. the truth was, when a man loved, every other man became his enemy, not excepting her father: the primordial instinct has survived all the applications of veneer. so, abbott was not at all pleased to see his friend that morning. at length courtlandt returned to the lounge. "the barone called upon me this morning." "oh, he did?" "i think you had better write him an apology." abbott sat up. he flung the piece of plaster violently to the floor. "apologize? well, i like your nerve to come here with that kind of wabble. look at these lips! man, he struck me across the mouth, and i knocked him down." "it was a pretty good wallop, considering that you couldn't see his face very well in the dark. i always said that you had more spunk to the square inch than any other chap i know. but over here, suds, as you know, it's different. you can't knock down an officer and get away with it. so, you just sit down at your desk and write a little note, saying that you regret your hastiness. i'll see that it goes through all right. fortunately, no one heard of the row." "i'll see you both farther!" wrathfully. "look at these lips, i say!" "before he struck you, you must have given provocation." "sha'n't discuss what took place. nor will i apologize." "that's final?" "you have my word for it." "well, i'm sorry. the barone is a decent sort. he gives you the preference, and suggests that you select pistols, since you would be no match for him with rapiers." "pistols!" shouted abbott. "for the love of glory, what are you driving at?" "the barone has asked me to be his second. and i have despatched a note to the colonel, advising him to attend to your side. i accepted the barone's proposition solely that i might get here first and convince you that an apology will save you a heap of discomfort. the barone is a first-rate shot, and doubtless he will only wing you. but that will mean scandal and several weeks in the hospital, to say nothing of a devil of a row with the civil authorities. in the army the italian still fights his _duello_, but these affairs never get into the newspapers, as in france. seldom, however, is any one seriously hurt. they are excitable, and consequently a good shot is likely to shoot wildly at a pinch. so there you are, my boy." "are you in your right mind? do you mean to tell me that you have come here to arrange a duel?" asked abbott, his voice low and a bit shaky. "to prevent one. so, write your apology. don't worry about the moral side of the question. it's only a fool who will offer himself as a target to a man who knows how to shoot. you couldn't hit the broadside of a barn with a shot-gun." abbott brushed the dust from his coat and got up. "a duel!" he laughed a bit hysterically. well, why not? since nora could never be his, there was no future for him. he might far better serve as a target than to go on living with the pain and bitterness in his heart. "very well. tell the barone my choice is pistols. he may set the time and place himself." "go over to that desk and write that apology. if you don't, i promise on my part to tell nora harrigan, who, i dare say, is at the bottom of this, innocently or otherwise." "courtlandt!" "i mean just what i say. take your choice. stop this nonsense yourself like a reasonable human being, or let nora harrigan stop it for you. there will be no duel, not if i can help it." abbott saw instantly what would happen. nora would go to the barone and beg off for him. "all right! i'll write that apology. but listen: you will knock hereafter when you enter any of my studios. you've kicked out the bottom from the old footing. you are not the friend you profess to be. you are making me a coward in the eyes of that damned italian. he will never understand this phase of it." thereupon abbott ran over to his desk and scribbled the note, sealing it with a bang. "here you are. perhaps you had best go at once." "abby, i'm sorry that you take this view." "i don't care to hear any platitudes, thank you." "i'll look you up to-morrow, and on my part i sha'n't ask for any apology. in a little while you'll thank me. you will even laugh with me." "permit me to doubt that," angrily. he threw open the door. courtlandt was too wise to argue further. he had obtained the object of his errand, and that was enough for the present. "sorry you are not open to reason. good morning." when the door closed, abbott tramped the floor and vented his temper on the much abused footstool, which he kicked whenever it came in the line of his march. in his soul he knew that courtlandt was right. more than that, he knew that presently he would seek him and apologize. unfortunately, neither of them counted on the colonel. without being quite conscious of the act, abbott took down from the wall an ancient dueling-pistol, cocked it, snapped it, and looked it over with an interest that he had never before bestowed on it. and the colonel, bursting into the studio, found him absorbed in the contemplation of this old death-dealing instrument. "ha!" roared the old war dog. "had an idea that something like this was going to happen. put that up. you couldn't kill anything with that unless you hit 'em on the head with it. leave the matter to me. i've a pair of pistols, sighted to hit a shilling at twenty yards. of course, you can't fight him with swords. he's one of the best in all italy. but you've just as good a chance as he has with pistols. nine times out of ten the tyro hits the bull's-eye, while the crack goes wild. just you sit jolly tight. who's his second; courtlandt?" "yes." abbott was truly and completely bewildered. "he struck you first, i understand, and you knocked him down. good! my tennis-courts are out of the way. we can settle this matter to-morrow morning at dawn. ellicott will come over from cadenabbia with his saws. he's close-mouthed. all you need to do is to keep quiet. you can spend the night at the villa with me, and i'll give you a few ideas about shooting a pistol. here; write what i dictate." he pushed abbott over to the desk and forced him into the chair. abbott wrote mechanically, as one hypnotized. the colonel seized the letter. "no flowery sentences; a few words bang at the mark. come up to the villa as soon as you can. we'll jolly well cool this italian's blood." and out he went, banging the door. there was something of the directness of a bullet in the old fellow's methods. literally, abbott had been rushed off his feet. the moment his confusion cleared he saw the predicament into which his own stupidity and the amiable colonel's impetuous good offices had plunged him. he was horrified. here was courtlandt carrying the apology, and hot on his heels was the colonel, with the final arrangements for the meeting. he ran to the door, bareheaded, took the stairs three and four at a bound. but the energetic anglo-indian had gone down in bounds also; and when the distracted artist reached the street, the other was nowhere to be seen. apparently there was nothing left but to send another apology. rather than perform so shameful and cowardly an act he would have cut off his hand. the barone, pale and determined, passed the second note to courtlandt who was congratulating himself (prematurely as will be seen) on the peaceful dispersion of the war-clouds. he was dumfounded. "you will excuse me," he said meekly. he must see abbott. "a moment," interposed the barone coldly. "if it is to seek another apology, it will be useless. i refuse to accept. mr. abbott will fight, or i will publicly brand him, the first opportunity, as a coward." courtlandt bit his mustache. "in that case, i shall go at once to colonel caxley-webster." "thank you. i shall be in my room at the villa the greater part of the day." the barone bowed. courtlandt caught the colonel as he was entering his motor-boat. "come over to tiffin." "very well; i can talk here better than anywhere else." when the motor began its racket, courtlandt pulled the colonel over to him. "do you know what you have done?" "done?" dropping his eye-glass. "yes. knowing that abbott would have no earthly chance against the italian, i went to him and forced him to write an apology. and you have blown the whole thing higher than a kite." the colonel's eyes bulged. "dem it, why didn't the young fool tell me?" "your hurry probably rattled him. but what are we going to do? i'm not going to have the boy hurt. i love him as a brother; though, just now, he regards me as a mortal enemy. perhaps i am," moodily. "i have deceived him, and somehow--blindly it is true--he knows it. i am as full of deceit as a pomegranate is of seeds." "have him send another apology." "the barone is thoroughly enraged. he would refuse to accept it, and said so." "well, dem me for a well-meaning meddler!" "with pleasure, but that will not stop the row. there is a way out, but it appeals to me as damnably low." "oh, abbott will not run. he isn't that kind." "no, he'll not run. but if you will agree with me, honor may be satisfied without either of them getting hurt." "women beat the devil, don't they? what's your plan?" courtlandt outlined it. the colonel frowned. "that doesn't sound like you. beastly trick." "i know it." "we'll lunch first. it will take a few pegs to get that idea through this bally head of mine." when abbott came over later that day, he was subdued in manner. he laughed occasionally, smoked a few cigars, but declined stimulants. he even played a game of tennis creditably. and after dinner he shot a hundred billiards. the colonel watched his hands keenly. there was not the slightest indication of nerves. "hang the boy!" he muttered. "i ought to be ashamed of myself. there isn't a bit of funk in his whole make-up." at nine abbott retired. he did not sleep very well. he was irked by the morbid idea that the barone was going to send the bullet through his throat. he was up at five. he strolled about the garden. he realized that it was very good to be alive. once he gazed somberly at the little white villa, away to the north. how crisply it stood out against the dark foliage! how blue the water was! and far, far away the serene snowcaps! nora harrigan ... well, he was going to stand up like a man. she should never be ashamed of her memory of him. if he went out, all worry would be at an end, and that would be something. what a mess he had made of things! he did not blame the italian. a duel! he, the son of a man who had invented wash-tubs, was going to fight a duel! he wanted to laugh; he wanted to cry. wasn't he just dreaming? wasn't it all a nightmare out of which he would presently awake? "breakfast, sahib," said rao, deferentially touching his arm. he was awake; it was all true. "you'll want coffee," began the colonel. "drink as much as you like. and you'll find the eggs good, too." the colonel wanted to see if abbott ate well. the artist helped himself twice and drank three cups of coffee. "you know, i suppose all men in a hole like this have funny ideas. i was just thinking that i should like a partridge and a bottle of champagne." "we'll have that for tiffin," said the colonel, confidentially. in fact, he summoned the butler and gave the order. "it's mighty kind of you, colonel, to buck me up this way." "rot!" the colonel experienced a slight heat in his leathery cheeks. "all you've got to do is to hold your arm out straight, pull the trigger, and squint afterward." "i sha'n't hurt the barone," smiling faintly. "are you going to be ass enough to pop your gun in the air?" indignantly. abbott shrugged; and the colonel cursed himself for the guiltiest scoundrel unhung. half an hour later the opponents stood at each end of the tennis-court. ellicott, the surgeon, had laid open his medical case. he was the most agitated of the five men. his fingers shook as he spread out the lints and bandages. the colonel and courtlandt had solemnly gone through the formality of loading the weapons. the sun had not climbed over the eastern summits, but the snow on the western tops was rosy. "at the word three, gentlemen, you will fire," said the colonel. the two shots came simultaneously. abbott had deliberately pointed his into the air. for a moment he stood perfectly still; then, his knees sagged, and he toppled forward on his face. "great god!" whispered the colonel; "you must have forgotten the ramrod!" he, courtlandt, and the surgeon rushed over to the fallen man. the barone stood like stone. suddenly, with a gesture of horror, he flung aside his smoking pistol and ran across the court. "gentlemen," he cried, "on my honor, i aimed three feet above his head." he wrung his hands together in anxiety. "it is impossible! it is only that i wished to see if he were a brave man. i shoot well. it is impossible!" he reiterated. [illustration: suddenly he flung aside his smoking pistol.] rapidly the cunning hand of the surgeon ran over abbott's body. he finally shook his head. "nothing has touched him. his heart gave under. fainted." when abbott came to his senses, he smiled weakly. the barone was one of the two who helped him to his feet. "i feel like a fool," he said. "ah, let me apologize now," said the barone. "what i did at the ball was wrong, and i should not have lost my temper. i had come to you to apologize then. but i am italian. it is natural that i should lose my temper," naïvely. "we're both of us a pair of fools, barone. there was always some one else. a couple of fools." "yes," admitted the barone eagerly. "considering," whispered the colonel in courtlandt's ear; "considering that neither of them knew they were shooting nothing more dangerous than wads, they're pretty good specimens. eh, what?" chapter xix courtlandt tells a story the colonel and his guests at luncheon had listened to courtlandt without sound or movement beyond the occasional rasp of feet shifting under the table. he had begun with the old familiar phrase--"i've got a story." "tell it," had been the instant request. at the beginning the men had been leaning at various negligent angles,--some with their elbows upon the table, some with their arms thrown across the backs of their chairs. the partridge had been excellent, the wine delicious, the tobacco irreproachable. burma, the tinkle of bells in the temples, the strange pictures in the bazaars, long journeys over smooth and stormy seas; romance, moving and colorful, which began at rangoon, had zigzagged around the world, and ended in berlin. "and so," concluded the teller of the tale, "that is the story. this man was perfectly innocent of any wrong, a victim of malice on the one hand and of injustice on the other." "is that the end of the yarn?" asked the colonel. "who in life knows what the end of anything is? this is not a story out of a book." courtlandt accepted a fresh cigar from the box which rao passed to him, and dropped his dead weed into the ash-bowl. "has he given up?" asked abbott, his voice strangely unfamiliar in his own ears. "a man can struggle just so long against odds, then he wins or becomes broken. women are not logical; generally they permit themselves to be guided by impulse rather than by reason. this man i am telling you about was proud; perhaps too proud. it is a shameful fact, but he ran away. true, he wrote letter after letter, but all these were returned unopened. then he stopped." "a woman would a good deal rather believe circumstantial evidence than not. humph!" the colonel primed his pipe and relighted it. "she couldn't have been worth much." "worth much!" cried abbott. "what do you imply by that?" "no man will really give up a woman who is really worth while, that is, of course, admitting that your man, courtlandt, _is_ a man. perhaps, though, it was his fault. he was not persistent enough, maybe a bit spineless. the fact that he gave up so quickly possibly convinced her that her impressions were correct. why, i'd have followed her day in and day out, year after year; never would i have let up until i had proved to her that she had been wrong." "the colonel is right," abbott approved, never taking his eyes off courtlandt, who was apparently absorbed in the contemplation of the bread crumbs under his fingers. "and more, by hook or crook, i'd have dragged in the other woman by the hair and made her confess." "i do not doubt it, colonel," responded courtlandt, with a dry laugh. "and that would really have been the end of the story. the heroine of this rambling tale would then have been absolutely certain of collusion between the two." "that is like a woman," the barone agreed, and he knew something about them. "and where is this man now?" "here," said courtlandt, pushing back his chair and rising. "i am he." he turned his back upon them and sought the garden. tableau! "dash me!" cried the colonel, who, being the least interested personally, was first to recover his speech. the barone drew in his breath sharply. then he looked at abbott. "i suspected it," replied abbott to the mute question. since the episode of that morning his philosophical outlook had broadened. he had fought a duel and had come out of it with flying colors. as long as he lived he was certain that the petty affairs of the day were never again going to disturb him. "let him be," was the colonel's suggestion, adding a gesture in the direction of the casement door through which courtlandt had gone. "he's as big a man as nora is a woman. if he has returned with the determination of winning her, he will." they did not see courtlandt again. after a few minutes of restless to-and-froing, he proceeded down to the landing, helped himself to the colonel's motor-boat, and returned to bellaggio. at the hotel he asked for the duke, only to be told that the duke and madame had left that morning for paris. courtlandt saw that he had permitted one great opportunity to slip past. he gave up the battle. one more good look at her, and he would go away. the odds had been too strong for him, and he knew that he was broken. when the motor-boat came back, abbott and the barone made use of it also. they crossed in silence, heavy-hearted. on landing abbott said: "it is probable that i shall not see you again this year. i am leaving to-morrow for paris. it's a great world, isn't it, where they toss us around like dice? some throw sixes and others deuces. and in this game you and i have lost two out of three." "i shall return to rome," replied the barone. "my long leave of absence is near its end." "what in the world can have happened?" demanded nora, showing the two notes to celeste. "here's donald going to paris to-morrow and the barone to rome. they will bid us good-by at tea. i don't understand. donald was to remain until we left for america, and the barone's leave does not end until october." "to-morrow?" dim-eyed, celeste returned the notes. "yes. you play the fourth _ballade_ and i'll sing from _madame_. it will be very lonesome without them." nora gazed into the wall mirror and gave a pat or two to her hair. when the men arrived, it was impressed on nora's mind that never had she seen them so amiable toward each other. they were positively friendly. and why not? the test of the morning had proved each of them to his own individual satisfaction, and had done away with those stilted mannerisms that generally make rivals ridiculous in all eyes save their own. the revelation at luncheon had convinced them of the futility of things in general and of woman in particular. they were, without being aware of the fact, each a consolation to the other. the old adage that misery loves company was never more nicely typified. if celeste expected nora to exhibit any signs of distress over the approaching departure, she was disappointed. in truth, nora was secretly pleased to be rid of these two suitors, much as she liked them. the barone had not yet proposed, and his sudden determination to return to rome eliminated this disagreeable possibility. she was glad abbott was going because she had hurt him without intention, and the sight of him was, in spite of her innocence, a constant reproach. presently she would have her work, and there would be no time for loneliness. the person who suffered keenest was celeste. she was awake; the tender little dream was gone; and bravely she accepted the fact. never her agile fingers stumbled, and she played remarkably well, from beethoven, chopin, grieg, rubinstein, macdowell. and nora, perversely enough, sang from old light opera. when the two men departed, celeste went to her room and nora out upon the terrace. it was after five. no one was about, so far as she could see. she stood enchanted over the transformation that was affecting the mountains and the lakes. how she loved the spot! how she would have liked to spend the rest of her days here! and how beautiful all the world was to-day! she gave a frightened little scream. a strong pair of arms had encircled her. she started to cry out again, but the sound was muffled and blotted out by the pressure of a man's lips upon her own. she struggled violently, and suddenly was freed. "if i were a man," she said, "you should die for that!" "it was an opportunity not to be ignored," returned courtlandt. "it is true that i was a fool to run away as i did, but my return has convinced me that i should have been as much a fool had i remained to tag you about, begging for an interview. i wrote you letters. you returned them unopened. you have condemned me without a hearing. so be it. you may consider that kiss the farewell appearance so dear to the operatic heart," bitterly. he addressed most of this to the back of her head, for she was already walking toward the villa into which she disappeared with the proud air of some queen of tragedy. she was a capital actress. a heavy hand fell upon courtlandt's shoulder. he was irresistibly drawn right about face. "now, then, mr. courtlandt," said harrigan, his eyes blue and cold as ice, "perhaps you will explain?" with rage and despair in his heart, courtlandt flung off the hand and answered: "i refuse!" "ah!" harrigan stood off a few steps and ran his glance critically up and down this man of whom he had thought to make a friend. "you're a husky lad. there's one way out of this for you." "so long as it does not necessitate any explanations," indifferently. "in the bottom of one of nora's trunks is a set of my old gloves. there will not be any one up at the tennis-court this time of day. if you are not a mean cuss, if you are not an ordinary low-down imitation of a man, you'll meet me up there inside of five minutes. if you can stand up in front of me for ten minutes, you need not make any explanations. on the other hand, you'll hike out of here as fast as boats and trains can take you. and never come back." "i am nearly twenty years younger than you, mr. harrigan." "oh, don't let that worry you any," with a truculent laugh. "very well. you will find me there. after all, you are her father." "you bet i am!" harrigan stole into his daughter's room and soundlessly bored into the bottom of the trunk that contained the relics of past glory. as he pulled them forth, a folded oblong strip of parchment came out with them and fluttered to the floor; but he was too busily engaged to notice it, nor would he have bothered if he had. the bottom of the trunk was littered with old letters and programs and operatic scores. he wrapped the gloves in a newspaper and got away without being seen. he was as happy as a boy who had discovered an opening in the fence between him and the apple orchard. he was rather astonished to see courtlandt kneeling in the clover-patch, hunting for a four-leaf clover. it was patent that the young man was not troubled with nerves. "here!" he cried, bruskly, tossing over a pair of gloves. "if this method of settling the dispute isn't satisfactory, i'll accept your explanations." for reply courtlandt stood up and stripped to his undershirt. he drew on the gloves and laced them with the aid of his teeth. then he kneaded them carefully. the two men eyed each other a little more respectfully than they had ever done before. "this single court is about as near as we can make it. the man who steps outside is whipped." "i agree," said courtlandt. "no rounds with rests; until one or the other is outside. clean breaks. that's about all. now, put up your dukes and take a man's licking. i thought you were your father's son, but i guess you are like the rest of 'em, hunters of women." courtlandt laughed and stepped to the middle of the court. harrigan did not waste any time. he sent in a straight jab to the jaw, but courtlandt blocked it neatly and countered with a hard one on harrigan's ear, which began to swell. "fine!" growled harrigan. "you know something about the game. it won't be as if i was walloping a baby." he sent a left to the body, but the right failed to reach his man. for some time harrigan jabbed and swung and upper-cut; often he reached his opponent's body, but never his face. it worried him a little to find that he could not stir courtlandt more than two or three feet. courtlandt never followed up any advantage, thus making harrigan force the fighting, which was rather to his liking. but presently it began to enter his mind convincingly that apart from the initial blow, the younger man was working wholly on the defensive. as if he were afraid he might hurt him! this served to make the old fellow furious. he bored in right and left, left and right, and courtlandt gave way, step by step until he was so close to the line that he could see it from the corner of his eye. this glance, swift as it was, came near to being his undoing. harrigan caught him with a terrible right on the jaw. it was a glancing blow, otherwise the fight would have ended then and there. instantly he lurched forward and clenched before the other could add the finishing touch. the two pushed about, harrigan fiercely striving to break the younger man's hold. he was beginning to breathe hard besides. a little longer, and his blows would lack the proper steam. finally courtlandt broke away of his own accord. his head buzzed a little, but aside from that he had recovered. harrigan pursued his tactics and rushed. but this time there was an offensive return. courtlandt became the aggressor. there was no withstanding him. and harrigan fairly saw the end; but with that indomitable pluck which had made him famous in the annals of the ring, he kept banging away. the swift cruel jabs here and there upon his body began to tell. oh, for a minute's rest and a piece of lemon on his parched tongue! suddenly courtlandt rushed him tigerishly, landing a jab which closed harrigan's right eye. courtlandt dropped his hands, and stepped back. his glance traveled suggestively to harrigan's feet. he was outside the "ropes." "i beg your pardon, mr. harrigan, for losing my temper." "what's the odds? i lost mine. you win." harrigan was a true sportsman. he had no excuses to offer. he had dug the pit of humiliation with his own hands. he recognized this as one of two facts. the other was, that had courtlandt extended himself, the battle would have lasted about one minute. it was gall and wormwood, but there you were. "and now, you ask for explanations. ask your daughter to make them." courtlandt pulled off the gloves and got into his clothes. "you may add, sir, that i shall never trouble her again with my unwelcome attentions. i leave for milan in the morning." courtlandt left the field of victory without further comment. "well, what do you think of that?" mused harrigan, as he stooped over to gather up the gloves. "any one would say that he was the injured party. i'm in wrong on this deal somewhere. i'll ask miss nora a question or two." it was not so easy returning. he ran into his wife. he tried to dodge her, but without success. "james, where did you get that black eye?" tragically. "it's a daisy, ain't it, molly?" pushing past her into nora's room and closing the door after him. "father!" "that you, nora?" blinking. "father, if you have been fighting with _him_, i'll never forgive you." "forget it, nora. i wasn't fighting. i only thought i was." he raised the lid of the trunk and cast in the gloves haphazard. and then he saw the paper which had fallen out. he picked it up and squinted at it, for he could not see very well. nora was leaving the room in a temper. "going, nora?" "i am. and i advise you to have your dinner in your room." alone, he turned on the light. it never occurred to him that he might be prying into some of nora's private correspondence. he unfolded the parchment and held it under the light. for a long time he stared at the writing, which was in english, at the date, at the names. then he quietly refolded it and put it away for future use, immediate future use. "this is a great world," he murmured, rubbing his ear tenderly. chapter xx journey's end harrigan dined alone. he was in disgrace; he was sore, mentally as well as physically; and he ate his dinner without relish, in simple obedience to those well regulated periods of hunger that assailed him three times a day, in spring, summer, autumn and winter. by the time the waiter had cleared away the dishes, harrigan had a perfecto between his teeth (along with a certain matrimonial bit), and smoked as if he had wagered to finish the cigar in half the usual stretch. he then began to walk the floor, much after the fashion of a man who has the toothache, or the earache, which would be more to the point. to his direct mind no diplomacy was needed; all that was necessary was a few blunt questions. nora could answer them as she chose. nora, his baby, his little girl that used to run around barefooted and laugh when he applied the needed birch! how children grew up! and they never grew too old for the birch; they certainly never did. they heard him from the drawing-room; tramp, tramp, tramp. "let him be, nora," said mrs. harrigan, wisely. "he is in a rage about something. and your father is not the easiest man to approach when he's mad. if he fought mr. courtlandt, he believed he had some good reason for doing so." "mother, there are times when i believe you are afraid of father." "i am always afraid of him. it is only because i make believe i'm not that i can get him to do anything. it was dreadful. and mr. courtlandt was such a gentleman. i could cry. but let your father be until to-morrow." "and have him wandering about with that black eye? something must be done for it. i'm not afraid of him." "sometimes i wish you were." so nora entered the lion's den fearlessly. "is there anything i can do for you, dad?" "you can get the witch-hazel and bathe this lamp of mine," grimly. she ran into her own room and returned with the simpler devices for reducing a swollen eye. she did not notice, or pretended that she didn't, that he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. he sat down in a chair, under the light; and she went to work deftly. "i've got some make-up, and to-morrow morning i'll paint it for you." "you don't ask any questions," he said, with grimness. "would it relieve your eye any?" lightly. he laughed. "no; but it might relieve my mind." "well, then, why did you do so foolish a thing? at your age! don't you know that you can't go on whipping every man you take a dislike to?" "i haven't taken any dislike to courtlandt. but i saw him kiss you." "i can take care of myself." "perhaps. i asked him to explain. he refused. one thing puzzled me, though i didn't know what it was at the time. now, when a fellow steals a kiss from a beautiful woman like you, nora, i don't see why he should feel mad about it. when he had all but knocked your daddy to by-by, he said that you could explain.... don't press so hard," warningly. "well, can you?" "since you saw what he did, i do not see where explanations on my part are necessary." "nora, i've never caught you in a lie. i never want to. when you were little you were the truthfullest thing i ever saw. no matter what kind of a licking was in store for you, you weren't afraid; you told the truth.... there, that'll do. put some cotton over it and bind it with a handkerchief. it'll be black all right, but the swelling will go down. i can tell 'em a tennis-ball hit me. it was more like a cannon-ball, though. say, nora, you know i've always pooh-poohed these amateurs. people used to say that there were dozens of men in new york in my prime who could have laid me cold. i used to laugh. well, i guess they were right. courtlandt's got the stiffest kick i ever ran into. a pile-driver, and if he had landed on my jaw, it would have been _dormi bene_, as you say when you bid me good night in dago. that's all right now until to-morrow. i want to talk to you. draw up a chair. there! as i said, i've never caught you in a lie, but i find that you've been living a lie for two years. you haven't been square to me, nor to your mother, nor to the chaps that came around and made love to you. you probably didn't look at it that way, but there's the fact. i'm not paul pry; but accidentally i came across this," taking the document from his pocket and handing it to her. "read it. what's the answer?" nora's hands trembled. "takes you a long time to read it. is it true?" "yes." "and i went up to the tennis-court with the intention of knocking his head off; and now i'm wondering why he didn't knock off mine. nora, he's a man; and when you get through with this, i'm going down to the hotel and apologize." "you will do nothing of the sort; not with that eye." "all right. i was always worried for fear you'd hook up with some duke you'd have to support. now, i want to know how this chap happens to be my son-in-law. make it brief, for i don't want to get tangled up more than is necessary." nora crackled the certificate in her fingers and stared unseeingly at it for some time. "i met him first in rangoon," she began slowly, without raising her eyes. "when you went around the world on your own?" "yes. oh, don't worry. i was always able to take care of myself." "an irish idea," answered harrigan complacently. "i loved him, father, with all my heart and soul. he was not only big and strong and handsome, but he was kindly and tender and thoughtful. why, i never knew that he was rich until after i had promised to be his wife. when i learned that he was the edward courtlandt who was always getting into the newspapers, i laughed. there were stories about his escapades. there were innuendoes regarding certain women, but i put them out of my mind as twaddle. ah, never had i been so happy! in berlin we went about like two children. it was play. he brought me to the opera and took me away; and we had the most charming little suppers. i never wrote you or mother because i wished to surprise you." "you have. go on." "i had never paid much attention to flora desimone, though i knew that she was jealous of my success. several times i caught her looking at edward in a way i did not like." "she looked at him, huh?" "it was the last performance of the season. we were married that afternoon. we did not want any one to know about it. i was not to leave the stage until the end of the following season. we were staying at the same hotel, with rooms across the corridor. this was much against his wishes, but i prevailed." "i see." "our rooms were opposite, as i said. after the performance that night i went to mine to complete the final packing. we were to leave at one for the tyrol. father, i saw flora desimone come out of his room." harrigan shut and opened his hands. "do you understand? i saw her. she was laughing. i did not see him. my wedding night! she came from his room. my heart stopped, the world stopped, everything went black. all the stories that i had read and heard came back. when he knocked at my door i refused to see him. i never saw him again until that night in paris when he forced his way into my apartment." "hang it, nora, this doesn't sound like him!" "i saw her." "he wrote you?" "i returned the letters, unopened." "that wasn't square. you might have been wrong." "he wrote five letters. after that he went to india, to africa and back to india, where he seemed to find consolation enough." harrigan laid it to his lack of normal vision, but to his single optic there was anything but misery in her beautiful blue eyes. true, they sparkled with tears; but that signified nothing: he hadn't been married these thirty-odd years without learning that a woman weeps for any of a thousand and one reasons. "do you care for him still?" "not a day passed during these many months that i did not vow i hated him." "any one else know?" "the padre. i had to tell some one or go mad. but i didn't hate him. i could no more put him out of my life than i could stop breathing. ah, i have been so miserable and unhappy!" she laid her head upon his knees and clumsily he stroked it. his girl! "that's the trouble with us irish, nora. we jump without looking, without finding whether we're right or wrong. well, your daddy's opinion is that you should have read his first letter. if it didn't ring right, why, you could have jumped the traces. i don't believe he did anything wrong at all. it isn't in the man's blood to do anything underboard." "but i _saw_ her," a queer look in her eyes as she glanced up at him. "i don't care a kioodle if you did. take it from me, it was a put-up job by that calabrian woman. she might have gone to his room for any number of harmless things. but i think she was curious." "why didn't she come to me, if she wanted to ask questions?" "i can see you answering 'em. she probably just wanted to know if you were married or not. she might have been in love with him, and then she might not. these italians don't know half the time what they're about, anyhow. but i don't believe it of courtlandt. he doesn't line up that way. besides, he's got eyes. you're a thousand times more attractive. he's no fool. know what i think? as she was coming out she saw _you_ at your door; and the devil in her got busy." nora rose, flung her arms around him and kissed him. "look out for that tin ear!" "oh, you great big, loyal, true-hearted man! open that door and let me get out to the terrace. i want to sing, sing!" "he said he was going to milan in the morning." she danced to the door and was gone. "nora!" he called, impatiently. he listened in vain for the sound of her return. "well, i'll take the count when it comes to guessing what a woman's going to do. i'll go out and square up with the old girl. wonder how this news will harness up with her social bug?" courtlandt got into his compartment at varenna. he had tipped the guard liberally not to open the door for any one else, unless the train was crowded. as the shrill blast of the conductor's horn sounded the warning of "all aboard," the door opened and a heavily veiled woman got in hurriedly. the train began to move instantly. the guard slammed the door and latched it. courtlandt sighed: the futility of trusting these italians, of trying to buy their loyalty! the woman was without any luggage whatever, not even the usual magazine. she was dressed in brown, her hat was brown, her veil, her gloves, her shoes. but whether she was young or old was beyond his deduction. he opened his _corriere_ and held it before his eyes; but he found reading impossible. the newspaper finally slipped from his hands to the floor where it swayed and rustled unnoticed. he was staring at the promontory across lecco, the green and restful hill, the little earthly paradise out of which he had been unjustly cast. he couldn't understand. he had lived cleanly and decently; he had wronged no man or woman, nor himself. and yet, through some evil twist of fate, he had lost all there was in life worth having. the train lurched around a shoulder of the mountain. he leaned against the window. in a moment more the villa was gone. what was it? he felt irresistibly drawn. without intending to do so, he turned and stared at the woman in brown. her hand went to the veil and swept it aside. nora was as full of romance as a child. she could have stopped him before he made the boat, but she wanted to be alone with him. "nora!" she flung herself on her knees in front of him. "i am a wretch!" she said. he could only repeat her name. "i am not worth my salt. ah, why did you run away? why did you not pursue me, importune me until i wearied? ... perhaps gladly? there were times when i would have opened my arms had you been the worst scoundrel in the world instead of the dearest lover, the patientest! ah, can you forgive me?" "forgive you, nora?" he was numb. "i am a miserable wretch! i doubted you, i! when all i had to do was to recall the way people misrepresented things i had done! i sent back your letters ... and read and reread the old blue ones. don't you remember how you used to write them on blue paper? ... flora told me everything. it was only because she hated me, not that she cared anything about you. she told me that night at the ball. i believe the duke forced her to do it. she was at the bottom of the abduction. when you kissed me ... didn't you know that i kissed you back? edward, i am a miserable wretch, but i shall follow you wherever you go, and i haven't even a vanity-box in my hand-bag!" there were tears in her eyes. "say that i am a wretch!" he drew her up beside him. his arms closed around her so hungrily, so strongly, that she gasped a little. he looked into her eyes; his glance traveled here and there over her face, searching for the familiar dimple at one corner of her mouth. "nora!" he whispered. "kiss me!" and then the train came to a stand, jerkily. they fell back against the cushions. "lecco!" cried the guard through the window. they laughed like children. "i bribed him," she said gaily. "and now...." "yes, and now?" eagerly, if still bewilderedly. "let's go back!" the end transcriber's note: this etext was produced from amazing stories january . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. heart by henry slesar _monk had three questions he lived by: where can i find it? how much will it cost? when can you deliver? but now they said that what he needed wasn't for sale. "want to bet?" he snorted._ * * * * * _systole_ ... _diastole_ ... the cardiophone listened, hummed, and recorded; tracing a path of perilous peaks and precipices on the white paper. "relax!" dr. rostov pleaded. "please relax, mr. monk!" the eyes of fletcher monk replied. rostov knew their language well enough to read the glaring messages they transmitted. indignation ... "_don't use that commanding tone with me, doctor!_" protest ... "_i am relaxed; completely relaxed!_" warning.... "_get me out of this electric chair, rostov!_" the physician sighed and clicked the apparatus off. swiftly, but with knowing fingers, he disengaged his patient from the wire and rubber encumbrances of the reclining seat. fletcher monk sat up and rubbed his forearms, watching every movement the doctor made as he prepared to study the results of his examination. "you're fussing, rostov," he said coldly. "my shirt." "in a moment." "_now,_" said monk impatiently. the physician shook his head sadly. he handed monk his shirt and waited until the big man had buttoned it half way down. then he returned to the cardiophone for a more critical study. a fine analysis was hardly necessary; the alarming story had been told with the first measurements of the heart machine. [illustration: money buys anything, i tell you--anything!] "cut it out," said monk brusquely. "you've got that death's-head look again, rostov. if you want to say something, say it." "you were tight as a drum," said the doctor. "that's going to influence my findings, you know. if you hadn't refused the narcotic--" fletcher monk barked: "i won't be drugged!" "it would have relaxed you--" "i was as relaxed as i ever am," the other man said candidly, and rostov recognized the truth of his analysis. monk lived in a world of taut muscles and nerves stretched out just below the breaking point. tenseness was his trademark; there was no more elasticity in monk's body than there was in the hard cash he accumulated so readily. "well?" the patient jeered. "what's the verdict, you damned sawbones? going to throw away my cigars? going to send me on a long sea voyage?" rostov frowned. "don't look so smug!" monk exploded. "i know you think there's something wrong with me. you can't wait to bury me!" "you're sick, mr. monk," said the doctor. "you're very sick." monk glowered. "you're wrong," he said icily. "you've made a lousy diagnosis." "what was that feeling you described?" asked rostov. "remember what you told me? like a big, black bird, flapping its wings in your chest. didn't that mean something to you, mr. monk?" * * * * * the industrialist paled. "all right. get to the point," he said quietly. "what did that gadget tell you?" "bad news," said the doctor. "your heart's been strained almost to bursting. it's working on will power, mr. monk; hardly anything else." "_get to the point!_" monk shouted. "that _is_ the point," rostov said stiffly. "you have a serious heart condition. a dangerous condition. you've ignored eight years of my advice, and now your heart is showing the effects." "what can it do to me?" "kill you," said the doctor bluntly. "frankly, i can't even promise that the usual precautions will do any good. but we have no other choice than to take them. the human body is a miraculous affair, and even the most desperate damages sometimes can't prevent it from going on living. but i won't mince words with you, mr. monk. you're a direct sort of person, so i'm telling you directly. your chances are slim." monk sat down and put his black tie on distractedly. he sat deep in thought for a while, and then said: "how much would it cost to fix it?" "what?" "money!" the big man cried. "how much money would it take to get me repaired?" "but it's not a matter of money--" "don't give me that!" monk put his jacket on with a violent motion. "i've learned better than that in my fifty years, dr. rostov. money fixes everything. everything! i could curdle your milk by telling you some of the things i've fixed with money!" the physician shrugged. "money doesn't buy health." "doesn't it?" the patient gave an abrupt laugh. "money buys people, dr. rostov. it buys loyalty and disloyalty. it buys friends and sells enemies. all these are commodities, doctor. i found that out--the hard way." "mr. monk, you don't know what i'm telling you. your heart action is unreliable, and no amount of dollars can bring it back to normal--" the industrialist stood up. "you think the heart is incorruptible, eh?" he snorted. "well, i think different. someplace on earth there's a man or a method that can fix me up. it'll take money to find the answer, that's for sure. but i'll find it!" rostov put out his hand helplessly. "you're being unreasonable, mr. monk. there is nothing on earth--" "_all right!_" fletcher monk shouted. "so maybe there's nothing on earth!" his body trembled with his emotion. "then i'll go to the stars, if i have to!" * * * * * rostov started. "if you mean this gravity business--" "what's that?" monk froze. "what's that you said?" "this gravity thing," the doctor said. "this silly story about the mars colony they've been spreading--" "what silly story?" asked monk, narrowing his eyes. "i haven't heard it. what do you mean?" rostov regretted his words. but he knew it was too late to stop the industrialist from extracting the details from him. he made a despairing gesture and went over to his desk. from the top drawer, he withdrew a folded sheet torn from the pages of a daily newspaper that specialized in lurid articles and wild imaginings. * * * * * monk snatched it from the doctor's hand. "let me see that!" he said. he turned the paper over in his hand until he found the red-pencilled article the doctor had referred to. "mars boon to heart cases, says space doctor." monk read the headline aloud, and then looked at rostov. "it's a misquotation," the physician said. "dr. feasley never made such a bald statement. they've taken something out of context to make a sensational story--" "let me see for myself," snapped monk. he began to read. "... 'space medicine association ... dr. samuel feasley, renowned' ... here it is!... 'the effects of earth's gravitational pull on the body versus the relatively light gravitation encountered by the members of the martian colony ... two-fifths the pull of earth ... interesting speculation on the heart action...!'" he crushed the paper in his hands. "by god!" he cried. "here's my answer, you gloomy old fool!" "no, no!" said rostov hurriedly. "you don't know what you're saying--" fletcher monk laughed loudly. "i always know what i'm saying, doctor rostov. here it is in black and white! why should i die on earth--when i can live on mars?" "but it's impossible! there are so many problems--" "money solves problems!" "not this one!" said the doctor heatedly. "not the problem of acceleration! you'll never reach mars alive!" monk paused. "what do you mean?" he blinked. "the acceleration will kill you!" rostov said in a shaking voice. "three g's are enough to burst that sick heart of yours. and the acceleration reaches a gravity of _nine_ at one point. you'd never make it!" "i'll never make it _here_," said monk, biting out the words. "you told me that yourself." "at least there's a chance," the doctor argued. "a slim one, surely. but you're talking about almost certain death!" "how do you know?" said monk contemptuously. "you've never had anything to do with space medicine. you're what they call a groundworm, doc. just like me." "you'll never even get aboard a spaceship. there's a rigid physical examination required. you couldn't pass it in a million years! it's suicide to think of it." * * * * * monk paced the floor. "but if i did pass it--" "impossible!" "but if i _did_," monk insisted. "would my chances for living be better on mars?" "i suppose so. your heart wouldn't have to work nearly so hard. you'd weigh less than ninety pounds...." "then it's worth a try, isn't it?" he grasped the physician by the shoulders and shook him. "isn't it?" he shouted. "mr. monk, i can't let you even consider it!" "_you_ can't?" monk looked at him threateningly. "are you dictating my affairs now, doctor? are you forgetting who i am?" "the mars colony is a working organization," the doctor said, desperately. "the life there is hard, rugged--" "_hard?_" monk roared. "hardness and monk are synonymous words, doctor rostov. don't you read the papers? don't you know what they call me? the iron millionaire!" he laughed. "and there's something else you're not aware of. i own a lot of this country. but i also own a good piece of the mars colony. just let 'em try and stop me!" rostov threw his hands in the air. "you're completely off balance, mr. monk. what you're thinking about is impossible in a dozen different ways. but i'm not going to worry about it. you'll never get near a space vessel--" "that remains to be seen," said monk. "the best thing for you," the doctor continued, "is to start slowing down--right now, today. and the first project we have to work on is the loss of some thirty or forty pounds. you're much too heavy for that heart of yours." monk didn't appear to be listening. thoughtfully, he reached inside his coat and brought out a long black cigar. he bit off the end and spat it out onto the polished floor of the examining room. "you'll have to lose those, too," the doctor cautioned. "cigars are out." fletcher monk jammed the cigar between his teeth. he looked at the doctor and smiled grimly. "o.k., doc," he said. "i'm going to follow your advice. and the first thing i'm going to arrange is the loss of some weight." he lit the cigar and puffed heavily. "about a hundred and thirty pounds," he said. monk put his hat on his head and walked out. he felt better already. * * * * * monk found his informant in the person of a spacelane employee named horner. garcia, the converted hood that now "assisted" monk in his personal affairs, brought the spacelane man into the industrialist's office and gestured him into a chair. "all right," said monk. "garcia's told you what i want. now let's go." he picked up a paper from his desk, and began to read off the list of typewritten names. "houston," he said. "no good," said horner. "he's the dispatch officer. crusty old guy. spent eleven years in space, and he's plenty mean." "i don't care about his disposition," said monk testily. "can he be bought?" horner shook his head. "i doubt it." "all right, then." monk rattled the paper. "how about roth?" "uh-uh. he's the chief medical officer. very army. he helped draft the original physical standards for space flight." "davis!" said monk. "well ..." horner looked pensive. "he doesn't mind a fast buck now and then. but he's only a supplies officer. he couldn't do anything about smuggling you aboard." "christy." "don't know much about christy. he's a pilot, and pretty close-mouthed. spends most of his time between trips in the bosom of his family, so to speak. which is maybe understandable, because he's got a wife that is absolutely--" "skip that junk," said garcia toughly. "the boss wants facts." "keep out of this, you," said monk. he smiled humorlessly at horner. "what about christy's wife?" "well, she's--i mean, she's a looker, understand? a real beauty. only from what i heard around the base, she's a groundworm's delight, if you know what i mean--" "i don't know what you mean," said monk patiently. "well, with her husband away six months out of every year, and a swell-lookin' doll like that ... figure it out for yourself." monk grunted. "i'll keep it in mind," he said. "now how about this fellow forsch?" "maybe there's something there," said horner. "he's a doctor, too. handles most of the routine physicals. but i heard a rumor about some pretty unethical practices he was mixed up in before he took this job. there may be nothing to it, but if you could look into it--" "i will," said monk abruptly. he handed the paper over to the spacelane employee. "anybody else here you want to tell me about?" horner looked over the list. "that's about it, i guess," he said. "nobody here can do you any good. but you look into this guy forsch. he may be your boy." monk smiled tightly. "pay him," he said to garcia. * * * * * when the detectives handed fletcher monk the completed report on the activities of diana christy, he read it through thoroughly, savoring each juicy word between puffs of his cigar. the report was excellently constructed. it was painstaking in its detail. it named names, places, times, events, and even recorded certain revealing conversations. it gave the background of each of mrs. christy's lovers, even down to their income and place of birth. it was a marvelous document, in monk's estimation, and not the first of its kind he had had prepared. a powerful piece of persuasion. with great satisfaction, he replaced the volume in an envelope and buzzed for garcia. his instructions to the assistant were crisp and definite. the assignment was the kind that garcia both understood and relished. he took the report from monk's hands and went on his way to call on the lady in question. bill christy, recently returned from a mars flight, was both amazed and disturbed by the strange request his beautiful young wife made of him. it was awful--illegal--even criminal! to arrange for the certification of a man with a weak heart; to virtually counterfeit the medical records of the spacelane company! but he _was_ her uncle, diana christy pleaded. the only relative she had in the world; the only one she loved outside of christy himself. he _must_ help her; he must give her poor sick uncle a chance to make a new life for himself in the mars colony. he wouldn't do it; he couldn't! but she cried, with great wet tears streaming down the smooth planes of her face. didn't he love her? wasn't this one little favor worth doing for the sake of her happiness? no one would be hurt by it. the motives were altruistic, after all. but the risk-- there wasn't any risk, she assured him. her uncle was wealthy; very wealthy. he could supply all the money bill would need. if what people said about dr. forsch was true, he might be approached. that would make it simple, wouldn't it? it was such a small thing he could do--but how she would appreciate it! how she would love him for it! and of course, finally, with her cool arms about his neck and her soft cheek pressed against his, he replied: "i'll do it." * * * * * monk handed his luggage to the official at the spacelane flight desk. but he kept the brown leather bag in his hand, and no amount of argument could separate him from it. it was easy to understand his devotion to this particular piece of personal property; it contained some four million dollars in cash. "i may not be the youngest man on mars," he smiled to himself as he walked onto the loading platform. "but i'll be the richest!" aboard the ship, the pilot bill christy gave him a worried glance and assisted him into the contour chair. christy showed concern. "you feel okay, mr. wheeler?" he asked. monk smiled back, but not in answer to the question. he enjoyed the pseudonym, because it was the name of an old competitor, long-since buried beneath monk's superior talents in the business of making money. "try and relax as much as you can," said christy. "we'll give you a mild sedative before blast-off. remember, there are going to be distinct variations in the g forces as we accelerate, so try to remember the breathing instructions." "i will," said monk. "once more, though--" "there'll be a steady buildup of acceleration for about ninety seconds. we'll go rapidly from zero gravity to nine. breathe deeply and regularly on the way up. then, when you feel a normal amount of pressure, hold your breath. don't let it out until you feel the g forces increase again." "i understand," monk nodded. "we'll get up to a peak of g's, and hold that for about two minutes. do the same thing--hold your breath when we start accelerating once more. it'll be easy after that." * * * * * the pilot made a final check of monk's g suit and straps. then he clapped the industrialist on the shoulder and strode off. twenty minutes later, when they were ready for blast-off, a warning bell sounded throughout the ship. with a deafening roar of its rocket motors, the great vessel lifted itself laboriously from the ground, squatting on flame, filling fletcher monk's mind with the first real sense of fear since he learned the grim facts of his ailment in rostov's office. then the acceleration began, and in less than a minute, monk knew a taste of hell. his vision blurred as the crushing force of naked speed pasted him against the contour seat. consciousness began to leave him, but not soon enough. for there, in the tortured imaginings of his pain-constricted brain, came the ugly black bird again, shrieking horribly and perching itself on his chest. its huge claws raked his ribs, and its dripping beak fastened itself on his throat. now he recognized the species for what it was: a vulture, a bird of prey, unwilling to be robbed of its earth victim; trying to pinion him to the planet with the strength of its anger. its great wings flapped, flapped, flapped, beating against his body, flooding it with unrelieved anguish-- then monk gasped. gone! the bird was gone! a moment's peace, a moment's peace, a moment's freedom from torment-- no! the vulture returned, bent on its evil purpose. it wouldn't be denied; it raked its razor-sharp claws across monk's shoulder; dug its beak into his chest; flapping, flapping-- fletcher monk screamed. * * * * * he opened his eyes, admitted a rush of clean air gratefully into his lungs. "it's a miracle," said bill christy. "nothing more. you were in a bad way, mr. wheeler, but you'll be okay now." "thank you, thank you!" panted fletcher monk. "we're well on our way now. we'll reach the big bird in a matter of minutes--" "the big bird?" said monk in horror. christy smiled. "that's what we call the space station. we'll pick up some supplies and fuel there, and then we'll take off again. but you won't have to be concerned about the acceleration on the second blast-off. you can take that easily." "are you sure?" said monk anxiously. "positive. there won't be any gravitational pull to overcome this time. you'll be fine." "i appreciate this, christy. i won't forget your help." "that's okay, mr. wheeler. it makes my wife happy." "yes." monk felt well enough now to give the pilot a sardonic smile. "she's a wonderful girl, diana. a wonderful girl." "you're telling me?" said bill christy. * * * * * the space suit that fletcher monk had been assigned before the descent on mars was a little tight-fitting for his comfort. he wondered what life would be like in this eternal bulky costume. but he was comforted by the picture of the mars colony he had received back on earth; a labyrinth of airtight interiors, burrowing their way over and into the planet, served by gigantic oxygen tanks. the network of buildings had been expanding every year, until now it covered some hundred miles of the planet's surface. he'd spend most of his time safely indoors, he promised himself, where he wouldn't need the cumbersome trappings of space clothing. his life had been an indoor affair anyway, back on earth. the passengers were led into the quarantine section, where they would spend their first three days on mars. it was a relief to monk to shed the heavy space-suit in the air-filled room. and it was a revelation, for with helmet and boots removed, he found himself almost floating with each step he took, moving feather-light over the ground. he was surprised, and a little unnerved at first, but then he remembered that this feeble gravitation was the preserver of his health--and he laughed aloud. "something funny?" said the man at the front desk. he was a young man, about thirty, but there was an ageless competence in his features. monk smiled. "just feeling good, that's all." he patted the brown leather bag in his hand. "name?" "well, it will be listed as wheeler...." the official scanned the list. "here it is. ben wheeler." he looked up at monk curiously. "how old are you, mr. wheeler?" "fifty," said monk. "pretty old for the colony, aren't you, mr. wheeler?" monk smirked. "the first thing we have to do is get rid of that wheeler business, young man. my name is monk. fletcher monk." the official looked puzzled. "i don't get it. why the phoney name?" "i used an alias for reasons of my own. now i'm telling you my real name. monk." the man shrugged and wrote something on the manifest. "i don't expect you to cheer," said monk sarcastically. "but you could show some reaction." "what does that mean?" monk flushed. "don't tell me you've never heard of me. i'm _fletcher monk_. i _own_ half of this place." "so?" "what do you mean 'so?' my firm controls thirty percent of the mineral rights of the colony. we ship you practically all of your earth supplies. we can buy or sell this place at the drop of a quotation!" "listen, bud." the young man seemed annoyed. "if you're trying to impress me, forget it. and if you're threatening my job, you can take it!" "insolence!" monk raged. "who's your commanding officer? i want to see him right away!" "my pleasure," the official grinned. "hey, gregorio!" he called to the man at the desk behind him. "call captain moore. gentleman here wants a word with him." * * * * * monk took a seat while the other passengers went through the initial formalities. he sat there, fuming, until a tall man with an untrimmed beard entered the room. he took off his helmet and spoke briefly to the young man at the front desk, then looked over at monk and came to his side. "mr. monk?" he said. "i'm captain moore." "nice to meet you, captain. i've just had a little conversation with your official greeter." he smiled, man-to-man. "not a very friendly chap." "we forget a lot about manners up here," said the captain, not smiling back. "we're kept pretty busy." * * * * * "i realize that, of course," said the industrialist. "but i would expect a little common courtesy--" "you'll _earn_ the right to courtesy out here, mr. monk," the captain snapped. "the mars colony lives on labor, and that's our first consideration. courtesy comes about last on our list. we're in a battle here, twenty-four hours and thirty-seven minutes a day. we've got to fight to keep alive, and we've got to wrestle with a whole new planet if we want to unearth its secrets. courtesy is a distinct privilege on mars, mr. monk." monk bristled. "i don't quite get your meaning, captain," he said indignantly. "but don't expect to pull rank or a holy attitude on me. in case you didn't realize it, i'm in a position to exert a great deal of influence over your little colony--and don't think i won't use it!" the captain shrugged. "use it," he said. "go on. see if your influence really holds up here. remember, mr. monk--you came to us of your own volition, and you can always turn around and go back." "impossible," said monk, blanching. "i'm going to live here--for good." "then you'll have to adjust to _our_ way," said the captain grimly. "you'll have to learn our way of doing things and cooperate a hundred percent. and the first thing you'll have to do is take a work assignment--" "work?" monk gasped. "why should i? you can't force me to work for you--" "remember captain john smith, mr. monk? he said the same thing to his colonists that i'm going to say to you now. if you don't work--you don't eat." "but what could i do? i'm no scientist. i'm no--" "there's plenty to do," the captain interrupted. "and most of it is dirty, physical labor. we have a thousand minerologists, chemists, geologists, botanists, physicists, meteorologists, and a lot more technical people at work on this planet. they can use all the help they can get. don't worry about that!" "but i'm _fletcher monk_!" the industrialist said. "i won't go grubbing around this filthy place! you can't enslave me like some chain-gang prisoner--" "you'll do what you have to do," said the captain, "and you'll probably even like it. there's a wonderland outside this door," he said enthusiastically. "a crazy, wild, improbable wonderland, where we never see a rain-fall, where the plants grow scarlet, and clouds chase you down the street! we're uncovering marvelous things here. we have to fight and sometimes die to do it, but frankly, we enjoy the work." he gave monk his first smile. "nobody's a prisoner on mars, mr. monk. we're all volunteers." he started to leave, but monk stopped him. "wait," he said, licking his lips. "i have one more thing to say." he lowered his voice. "i can make a deal with you, captain. a deal like you never had in your whole life." he patted the brown leather bag. "name your price," he said. "and don't be shy about the figure." "what do you mean?" "you know what i'm talking about, mr. moore. money. real, hard, earth dollars. just name the amount it would take to buy a few small creature comforts around this place--and the right to live my own life." "you can't buy your way out of working, mister--" * * * * * "don't give me that! you'll sing a different tune when i tell you how much is in this bag. all you have to do is quote a figure--and it's yours!" "sorry, mr. monk," said the captain tersely. "what do you mean by _sorry_?" "i'm on a lifetime assignment here, and so are practically all the members of the colony. it's a job that can barely be completed in a lifetime. and the economy we operate under doesn't call for money. your dollars are so much excess baggage on mars." "what are you talking about?" monk rasped. "i'm offering you a fortune. money is money, you fool!" "you can paper the walls of your quarters with it," said the officer sharply. "see if it helps keep out the martian cold. that's about all the usefulness it has up here." wildly, fletcher monk unlocked the bag and dipped inside. his hand came out with a fistfull of green bills. "look!" he cried. "i'm not joking about this! look at it! doesn't the sight of it mean anything to you?" "it brings back some memories," said the captain smiling. "that's about all. now you better go back to the desk and get your quarantine instructions." he saluted the industrialist casually, and turned away. "okay, mr. moneybags," said the young official as the captain left. "let's get acquainted." * * * * * a year later, captain harlan moore presided at the dedication of the first fully-equipped hospital erected on the planet mars. it was an impressive affair, despite the fact that it took place in a small, crowded chamber, and that the attending assemblage were still begrimed by their day's work. when the ceremonies were completed, captain moore made an inspection of the new medical center, and one of his first stops was the bed-side of fletcher monk. "we knew he wasn't a well man," said the young physician who stood by the bed, taking monk's pulse. he watched as the captain picked up the chart hooked to the edge of the bed. "yes," said moore. "he was a very sick man when he first came to the colony. in more ways than one," he added. the doctor looked perplexed. "but this illness still surprises me," he said. "i've examined him almost monthly for the past year, and frankly, i would have bet on his survival. he began to improve rapidly--physically, anyway. it might have been the lesser gravity, or the healthier life." he looked at the captain curiously. "yet he wasn't assigned to any over-strenuous duties?" "you know he wasn't," said the captain. "we don't want anybody to undertake work they can't handle. his labor was hardly physical. he worked in the geological and botanical groups, but not in the field. he did classifying and clerical work." "then that wouldn't account for the trouble--" "perhaps it does, in a way," the captain bent over the puffy, chalk-white face of the industrialist, listening to his shallow breathing. "he was never happy doing it. he had different ideas about himself than we did. he never understood what we were doing or why." "it's the greatest mystery of them all," said the physician, shaking his head. "what is?" "the human body. it's incredible how much we've learned about the physical world, and even the physical features of our own construction. but there's still a mystery we haven't penetrated--" the captain smiled. "that doesn't sound like you." "i know," the young physician answered. "but when i see a case like this--a man breathing his life away for a reason i really can't understand--" the doctor rubbed the back of his head. "i know it's crazy, and old-fashioned, and doesn't make the least bit of sense in these scientific times, captain. but if anyone were to ask me--off the record, and completely unofficially--i could only give them one honest diagnosis of this case. i think this man is dying of a broken heart." the end * * * * * mrs. cliff's yacht [illustration: burke determined to get near enough to hail the dunkery beacon] mrs. cliff's yacht by frank r. stockton _illustrated by a. forestier_ new york charles scribner's sons copyright, , by charles scribner's sons norwood press j. s. cushing & co.--berwick & smith norwood mass. u.s.a. contents chapter page i. alone with her wealth ii. willy croup doesn't know iii. miss nancy shott iv. a launch into a new life v. a fur-trimmed overcoat and a silk hat vi. a temperance lark vii. mr. burke accepts a responsibility viii. mr. burke begins to make things move in plainton ix. a meeting of heirs x. the intellect of miss inchman xi. the arrival of the new dining-room xii. the thorpedyke sisters xiii. money hunger xiv. willy croup as a philanthropic diplomatist xv. miss nancy makes a call xvi. mr. burke makes a call xvii. mrs. cliff's yacht xviii. the dawn of the grove of the incas xix. the "summer shelter" xx. the synod xxi. a telegram from captain horn xxii. the "summer shelter" goes to sea xxiii. willy croup comes to the front xxiv. changes on the "summer shelter" xxv. a note for captain burke xxvi. "we'll stick to shirley!" xxvii. on board the "dunkery beacon" xxviii. the people on the "monterey" xxix. the "vittorio" from genoa xxx. the battle of the merchant ships xxxi. "she backed!" xxxii. a head on the water xxxiii. ° ' " n. lat. by ° ' " w. long. xxxiv. plainton, maine list of illustrations page burke determined to get near enough to hail the "dunkery beacon" _frontispiece_ the gentleman raised his hat and asked if mrs. cliff lived there mrs. cliff's invitation was discussed with lively appreciation there, fastened against the fore-mast, was a large piece of paper when shirley went on deck he was much pleased to see the "summer shelter" banker could not hold back he seized it and raised it to his shoulder willy sat and looked at him mrs. cliff's yacht chapter i alone with her wealth on a beautiful september afternoon in a handsome room of one of the grand, up-town hotels in new york sat mrs. cliff, widow and millionaire. widow of a village merchant, mistress of an unpretending house in the little town of plainton, maine, and, by strange vicissitudes of fortune, the possessor of great wealth, she was on her way from paris to the scene of that quiet domestic life to which for nearly thirty years she had been accustomed. she was alone in the hotel; her friends, captain horn and his wife edna, who had crossed the ocean with her, had stayed but a few days in new york and had left early that afternoon for niagara, and she was here by herself in the hotel, waiting until the hour should arrive when she would start on a night train for her home. her position was a peculiar one, altogether new to her. she was absolutely independent,--not only could she do what she pleased, but there was no one to tell her what it would be well for her to do, wise for her to do, or unwise. everything she could possibly want was within her reach, and there was no reason why she should not have everything she wanted. for many months she had been possessed of enormous wealth, but never until this moment had she felt herself the absolute, untrammelled possessor of it. until now captain horn, to whom she owed her gold, and the power it gave her, had been with her or had exercised an influence over her. until the time had come when he could avow the possession of his vast treasures, it had been impossible for her to make known her share in them, and even after everything had been settled, and they had all come home together in the finest state-rooms of a great ocean liner, she had still felt dependent upon the counsels and judgment of her friends. but now she was left absolutely free and independent, untrammelled, uncounselled, alone with her wealth. she rose and looked out of the window, and, as she gazed upon the crowd which swept up and down the beautiful avenue, she could not but smile as she thought that she, a plain new england countrywoman, with her gray hair brushed back from her brows, with hands a little hardened and roughened with many a year of household duties, which had been to her as much a pleasure as a labor, was in all probability richer than most of the people who sat in the fine carriages or strolled in their fashionable clothes along the sidewalk. "if i wanted to do it," she thought, "i could have one of those carriages with prancing horses and a driver in knee breeches, or i could buy that house opposite, with its great front steps, its balconies, and everything in it, but there is nobody on this earth who could tempt me to live there." "now," said mrs. cliff to herself, as she turned from the window and selected a fresh easy chair, and sank down into its luxurious depths, "there is nothing in this world so delightful as to go back rich to plainton. to be rich in paris or new york is nothing to me; it would simply mean that i should be a common person there as i used to be at home, and, for the matter of that, a little more common." as the good lady's thoughts wandered northward, and spread themselves from the railroad station at plainton all over the little town, she was filled with a great content and happiness to go to her old home with her new money. this was a joy beyond anything she had dreamed of as possible in this world. but it was the conjunction of the two which produced this delightful effect upon her mind. the money anywhere else, or plainton without it, would not have made mrs. cliff the happy woman that she was. it pleased her to let her mind wander over the incidents of her recent visit to her old home, the most unhappy visit she had ever made in all her life, but everything that was unpleasant then would help to make everything more delightful in the present home-coming. she thought of the mental chains and fetters she had worn when she went to plainton with plenty of money in her purse and a beautiful pair of california blankets in her handsome trunk; when she had been afraid to speak of the one or to show the other; when she had sat quietly and received charity from people whose houses and land, furniture, horses, and cows, she could have bought and given away without feeling their loss; when she had been publicly berated by nancy shott for spending money on luxuries which should have been used to pay her debts; when she had been afraid to put her money in the bank for fear it would act as a dynamite bomb and blow up the fortunes of her friends, and when she could find no refuge from the miseries brought upon her by the necessity of concealing her wealth except to go to bed and cover up her head so that she should not hear the knock of some inquiring neighbor upon her front door. then when she had made this background as dark and gloomy as it was possible to make it, she placed before it the glittering picture of her new existence in plainton. but this new life, bright as it now appeared to her, was not to be begun without careful thought and earnest consideration. ever since her portion of the golden treasure had been definitely assigned to her, the mind of mrs. cliff had been much occupied with plans for her future in her old home. it was not to be altogether a new life. all the friends she had in the world, excepting captain and mrs. horn, lived in plainton. she did not wish to lose these friends,--she did not wish to be obliged to make new ones. with simple-minded and honest willy croup, who had long lived with her and for her; with mrs. perley, the minister's wife; with all her old neighbors and friends, she wished to live as she had always lived, but, of course, with a difference. how to manage, arrange, and regulate that difference was the great problem in her mind. one thing she had determined upon: her money should not come between her and those who loved her and who were loved by her. no matter what she might do or what she might not do, she would not look down upon people simply because she was rich, and oh, the blessed thought which followed that! there would be nobody who could look down upon her because she was not rich! she did not intend to be a fine new woman; she did not intend to build a fine new house. she was going to be the same mrs. cliff that she used to be,--she was going to live in the same house. to be sure, she would add to it. she would have a new dining-room and a guest's chamber over it, and she would do a great many other things which were needed, but she would live in her old home where she and her husband had been so happy, and where she hoped he would look down from heaven and see her happy until the end of her days. as she thought of the things she intended to do, and of the manner in which she intended to do them, mrs. cliff rose and walked the floor. she felt as if she were a bird, a common-sized bird, perhaps, but with enormous wings which seemed to grow and grow the more she thought of them until they were able to carry her so far and so high that her mind lost its power of directing them. she determined to cease to think of the future, of what was going to be, and to let her mind rest and quiet itself with what really existed. here she was in a great city full of wonders and delights, of comforts, conveniences, luxuries, necessities, and all within her power. almost anything she could think of she might have; almost anything she wanted to do she might do. a feeling of potentiality seemed to swell and throb within her veins. she was possessed of an overpowering desire to do something now, this moment, to try the power of her wealth. near her on the richly papered wall was a little button. she could touch this and order--what should she order? a carriage and prancing pair to take her to drive? she did not wish to drive. a cab to take her to the shops, or an order to merchants to send her samples of their wares that here, in her own room, like a queen or a princess, she might choose what she wanted and think nothing of the cost? but no, she did not wish to buy anything. she had purchased in paris everything that she cared to carry to plainton. she went and stood by the electric button. she must touch it, and must have something! her gold must give her an instant proof that it could minister to her desires, but what should she ask for? her mind travelled over the whole field of the desirable, and yet not one salient object presented itself. there was absolutely nothing that she could think of that she wished to ask for at that moment. she was like a poor girl in a fairy tale to whom the good fairy comes and asks her to make one wish and it shall be granted, and who stands hesitating and trembling, not being able to decide what is the one great thing for which she should ask. so stood mrs. cliff. there was a fairy, a powerful fairy, in her service who could give her anything she desired, and with all her heart she wanted to want something that minute. what should she want? in her agitation she touched the bell. half frightened at what she had done, she stepped back and sat down. in a few minutes there was a knock, the door opened, a servant entered. "bring me a cup of tea," said mrs. cliff. chapter ii willy croup doesn't know the next afternoon as the train approached plainton, mrs. cliff found herself a great deal agitated as she thought of the platform at the station. who would be there,--how should she be met? with all her heart she hoped that there would not be anything like a formal reception, and yet this was not improbable. everybody knew she was coming; everybody knew by what train she would arrive. she had written to willy croup, and she was very sure that everybody knew everything that she had written. more than this, everybody knew that she was coming home rich. how rich they were not aware, because she had not gone into particulars on this subject, but they knew that the wealthy mrs. cliff would arrive at . that afternoon, and what were they going to do about it? when she had gone home before, all her friends and neighbors, and even distant acquaintances,--if such people were possible in such a little town,--had come to her house to bid her welcome, and many of them had met her at the station. but then they had come to meet a poor, shipwrecked widow, pitied by most of them and loved by many. even those who neither pitied nor loved her had a curiosity to see her, for she had been shipwrecked, and it was not known in plainton how people looked after they had been wrecked. but now the case was so different that mrs. cliff did not expect the same sort of greeting, and she greatly feared formality. if mr. perley should appear on the platform, surrounded by some of the leading members of his congregation, and should publicly take her by the hand and bid her "welcome home!" and if those who felt themselves entitled to do so, should come forward and shake hands with her, while others, who might feel that they belonged to a different station in life, should keep in the background and wait until she came to speak to them, she would be deeply hurt. after all, plainton and the people in it were dearer to her than anything else in the world, and it would be a great shock if she should meet formality where she looked for cordial love. she wanted to see mr. perley,--he was the first person she had seen when she came home before,--but now she hoped that he would not be there. she was very much afraid that he would make a stiff speech to her; and if he did that, she would know that there had been a great change, and that the friends she would meet were not the same friends she had left. she was almost afraid to look out of the window as the train slowed up at the station. the minds of the people of plainton had been greatly exercised about this home-coming of mrs. cliff. that afternoon it was probable that no other subject of importance was thought about or talked about in the town, and for some days before the whole matter had been so thoroughly considered and discussed that the good citizens, without really coming to any fixed and general decision upon the subject, had individually made up their minds that, no matter what might happen afterward, they would make no mistake upon this very important occasion which might subsequently have an influence upon their intercourse with their old, respected neighbor, now millionnaire. each one for himself, or herself, decided--some of them singly and some of them in groups--that as they did not know what sort of a woman mrs. cliff had become since the change in her circumstances, they would not place themselves in false positions. other people might go and meet her at the station, but they would stay at home and see what happened. even mr. perley thought it wise, under the circumstances, to do this. therefore it was, that when mrs. cliff stepped down upon the platform, she saw no one there but willy croup. if mrs. cliff was a little shocked and a good deal surprised to find no one to meet her but that simple-minded dependant and relative, her emotions were excited in a greater degree by the manner in which she was greeted by this old friend and companion. instead of rushing toward her with open arms,--for willy was an impulsive person and given to such emotional demonstrations,--miss croup came forward, extending a loosely filled black cotton glove. her large, light-blue eyes showed a wondering interest, and mrs. cliff felt that every portion of her visible attire was being carefully scanned. for a moment mrs. cliff hesitated, and then she took the hand of willy croup and shook it, but she did not speak. she had no command of words, at least for greeting. willy earnestly inquired after her health, and said how glad she was to see her, but mrs. cliff did not listen. she looked about her. for an instant she thought that possibly the train had come in ahead of time, but this, of course, was absurd--trains never did that. "willy," she said, her voice a little shaken, "has anything happened? is anybody sick?" "oh no!" said willy; "everybody is well, so far as i know. i guess you are wondering why there is nobody here to meet you, and i have been wondering at that too. they must have thought that you did not want to be bothered when you were attending to your baggage and things. is anybody with you?" "with me!" exclaimed mrs. cliff; "who could be with me?" "oh, i didn't know," replied the other; "i thought perhaps you might have a maidservant, or some of those black people you wrote about." mrs. cliff was on the point of telling willy she was a fool, but she refrained. "here is the baggage-man," said willy, "and he wants your checks." as mrs. cliff took the little pieces of brass from her purse and handed them to the man, willy looked on in amazement. "good gracious!" she exclaimed. "seven! i guess you had to pay for extra baggage. shall i get you a carriage, and where do you want to be driven to--to your own house or the hotel?" now mrs. cliff could not restrain herself. "what is the matter with you, willy? have you gone crazy?" she exclaimed. "of course i am going to my own house, and i do not want any carriage. did i ever need a carriage to take me such a short distance as that? tell the man to bring some one with him to carry the trunks upstairs, and then come on." "let me carry your bag," said willy, as the two walked away from the station at a much greater pace, it may be remarked, than willy was accustomed to walk. "no, you shall not carry my bag," said mrs. cliff, and not another word did she speak until she had entered the hallway of her home. then, closing the door behind her, and without looking around at any of the dear objects for a sight of which she had so long been yearning, she turned to her companion. "willy," she cried, "what does this mean? why do you treat me in this way when i come home after having been away so long, and having suffered so much? why do you greet me as if you took me for a tax collector? why do you stand there like a--a horrible clam?" willy hesitated. she looked up and she looked down. "things are so altered," she said, "and i didn't know--" "well, know now," said mrs. cliff, as she held out her arms. in a moment the two women were clasped in a tight embrace, kissing and sobbing. "how should i know?" said poor willy, as she was wiping her eyes. "chills went down me as i stood on that platform, wondering what sort of a grand lady you would look like when you got out of the car, with two servant women, most likely, and perhaps a butler, and trying to think what i should say." mrs. cliff laughed. "you were born addle-pated, and you can't help it. now, let us go through this house without wasting a minute!" willy gazed at her in amazement. "you're just the same as you always was!" she cried "indeed i am!" said mrs. cliff. "did you clean this dining-room yourself, willy? it looks as spick and span as if i had just left it." "indeed it does," was the proud reply, "and you couldn't find a speck of dust from the ceiling to the floor!" when mrs. cliff had been upstairs and downstairs, and in the front yard, the side yard, and the back yard, and when her happy eyes had rested upon all her dear possessions, she went into the kitchen. "now, willy," she said, "let us go to work and get supper, for i must say i am hungry." at this willy croup turned pale, her chin dropped, a horrible suspicion took possession of her. could it be possible that it was all a mistake, or that something dreadful had happened; that the riches which everybody had been talking about had never existed, or had disappeared? she might want to go to her old home; she might want to see her goods and chattels, but that she should want to help get supper--that was incomprehensible! at that moment the world looked very black to willy. if mrs. cliff had gone into the parlor, and had sat down in the best rocking-chair to rest herself, and had said to her, "please get supper as soon as you can," willy would have believed in everything, but now--! the grinding of heavy wheels was heard in front of the house, and willy turned quickly and looked out of the window. there was a wagon containing seven enormous trunks! since the days when plainton was a little hamlet, up to the present time, when it contained a hotel, a bank, a lyceum, and a weekly paper, no one had ever arrived within its limits with seven such trunks. instantly the blackness disappeared from before the mind of willy croup. "now, you tell the men where to carry them," she cried, "and i will get the supper in no time! betty handshall stayed here until this morning, but she went away after dinner, for she was afraid if she stayed she would be in the way, not knowing how much help you would bring with you." "i wonder if they are all crack-brained," thought mrs. cliff, as she went to the front door to attend to her baggage. that evening nearly all plainton came to see mrs. cliff. no matter how she returned,--as a purse-proud bondholder, as a lady of elegant wealth with her attendants, as an old friend suddenly grown jolly and prosperous,--it would be all right for her neighbors to go in and see her in the evening. there they might suit themselves to her new deportment whatever it might be, and there would be no danger of any of them getting into false positions, which would have been very likely indeed if they had gone to meet her at the station. her return to her own house gave her real friends a great deal of satisfaction, for some of them had feared she would not go there. it would have been difficult for them to know how to greet mrs. cliff at a hotel, even such an unpretentious one as that of plainton. all these friends found her the same warm-hearted, cordial woman that she had ever been. in fact, if there was any change at all in her, she was more cordial than they had yet known her. as in the case of willy croup, a cloud had risen before her. she had been beset by the sudden fear that her money already threatened to come between her and her old friends. "not if i can help it!" said mrs. cliff to herself, as fervently as if she had been vowing a vow to seek the holy grail; and she did help it. the good people forgot what they had expected to think about her, and only remembered what they had always thought of her. no matter what had happened, she was the same. but what had happened, and how it had happened, and all about it, up and down, to the right and the left, above and below, everybody wanted to know, and mrs. cliff, with sparkling eyes, was only too glad to tell them. she had been obliged to be so reserved when she had come home before, that she was all the more eager to be communicative now; and it was past midnight before the first of that eager and delighted company thought of going home. there was one question, however, which mrs. cliff successfully evaded, and that was--the amount of her wealth. she would not give even an approximate idea of the value of her share of the golden treasure. it was very soon plain to everybody that mrs. cliff was the same woman she used to be in regard to keeping to herself that which she did not wish to tell to others, and so everybody went away with imagination absolutely unfettered. chapter iii miss nancy shott the next morning mrs. cliff sat alone in her parlor with her mind earnestly fixed upon her own circumstances. out in the kitchen, willy croup was dashing about like a domestic fanatic, eager to get the morning's work done and everything put in order, that she might go upstairs with mrs. cliff, and witness the opening of those wonderful trunks. she was a happy woman, for she had a new dish-pan, which mrs. cliff had authorized her to buy that very morning, the holes in the bottom of the old one having been mended so often that she and mrs. cliff both believed that it would be very well to get a new one and rid themselves of further trouble. willy also had had the proud satisfaction of stopping at the carpenter shop on her way to buy the dish-pan, and order him to come and do whatever was necessary to the back-kitchen door. sometimes it had been the hinges and sometimes it had been the lock which had been out of order on that door for at least a year, and although they had been tinkering here and tinkering there, the door had never worked properly; and now mrs. cliff had said that it must be put in perfect order even if a new door and a new frame were required, and without any regard to what it might cost. this to willy was the dawn of a new era, and the thought of it excited her like wine. mrs. cliff's mind was not excited; it was disquieted. she had been thinking of her investments and of her deposits, all of which had been made under wise advice, and it had suddenly occurred to her to calculate how much richer she was to-day than she had been yesterday. when she appreciated the fact that the interest on her invested property had increased her wealth, since the previous morning, by some hundreds of dollars, it frightened her. she felt as if an irresistible flood of opulence was flowing in upon her, and she shuddered to think of the responsibility of directing it into its proper courses, and so preventing it from overwhelming her and sweeping her away. to-morrow there would be several hundred dollars more, and the next day more, and so on always, and what was she doing, or what had she planned to do, to give proper direction to these tidal waves of wealth? she had bought a new dish-pan and ordered a door repaired! to be sure, it was very soon to begin to think of the expenditure of her income, but it was a question which could not be postponed. the importance of it was increasing all the time. every five minutes she was two dollars richer. for a moment she wished herself back in paris or new york. there she might open some flood-gate which would give instant relief from the pressure of her affluence and allow her time to think; but what could she do in plainton? at least, how should she begin to do anything? she got up and walked about the room. she was becoming annoyed, and even a little angry. she resented this intrusion of her wealth upon her. she wanted to rest quietly for a time, to enjoy her home and friends, and not be obliged to think of anything which it was incumbent upon her to do. from the bottom of her heart she wished that her possessions had all been solid gold, or in some form in which they could not increase, expand, or change in any way until she gave them leave. then she would live for a week or two, as she used to live, without thought of increment or responsibilities, until she was ready to begin the life of a rich woman and to set in motion the currents of her exuberant income. but she could not change the state of affairs. the system of interest had been set in motion, and her income was flowing in upon her hour by hour, day by day, steadily and irresistibly, and her mind could not be at rest until she had done something--at least, planned something--which would not only prevent her from being overwhelmed and utterly discouraged, but which would enable her to float proudly, on this grand current of absolute power, over the material interests of the world. mrs. cliff was a woman of good sense. no matter how much money she might possess, she would have considered herself its unworthy possessor if she should spend any of it without proper value received. she might spend it foolishly, but she wanted the worth of her money. she would consider it a silly thing, for instance, to pay a thousand dollars for an india shawl, because few people wore india shawls, and she did not care for them; but if she had done so, she would have been greatly mortified if she found that she had paid too much, and that she might have bought as good a shawl for seven hundred and fifty dollars. since she had been in that room and thinking about these things, enough interest had come to her to enable her to buy a good silver watch for some deserving person. now, who was there to whom she could give a plain silver watch? willy croup would be glad to have it, but then it would be better to wait a few hours and give her a gold one. now it was that willy came into the room with a disappointed expression upon her countenance. "i was just coming in to tell you," she said, "that i was ready now to go up and help you open the trunks, but here comes that horrid miss shott, and dear knows how long she will stay!" nancy shott was the leading spinster of plainton. in companies where there were married ladies she was sometimes obliged to take a second place, but never among maidens, old or young. there were very few subjects upon which miss shott had not an opinion; and whatever this opinion might be, she considered it her first duty in life to express it. as a rule, the expression was more agreeable to her than to others. when mrs. cliff heard that miss shott was approaching, she instantly forgot her wealth and all her perplexities concerning it. miss shott had not called upon her the previous evening, but she had not expected her, nor did she expect her now. on her previous visit to plainton, mrs. cliff had been shamefully insulted by miss shott, who had accused her of extravagance, and, by implication, of dishonesty, and in return, the indignant widow had opened upon her such a volley of justifiable retaliation that miss shott, in great wrath, had retired from the house, followed, figuratively, by a small coin which she had brought as a present and which had been hurled after her. but mrs. cliff knew that her acrimonious neighbor could never be depended upon to do anything which might be expected of her, and she was not quite so much surprised as she was annoyed. of course, she had known she must meet nancy shott, and she had intended to do nothing which would recall to the mind of any one that she remembered the disagreeable incident referred to, but she had not expected that the meeting would be in private. she knew that nancy would do something decidedly unpleasant. if she had stayed away because she wanted a chance to re-open the previous quarrel, that would be bad enough; but if she had determined to drop all resentment and had come prepared to offer honey and sugar, and thus try to make a rich friend out of one she had considered as a poor enemy, that would be still more disagreeable. but by the time the visitor had entered the parlor, mrs. cliff had made up her mind to meet her as if nothing unpleasant had ever happened between them, and then to await the course of events. she was not at all pleased with the visit, but, notwithstanding this, she had great curiosity to know what miss shott had to say about the change in her circumstances. nancy shott was different from other people. she was capable of drawing the most astounding inferences and of coming to the most soul-irritating conclusions, even on subjects which could not be otherwise than pleasant to ordinary people. "how do you do?" said miss shott, offering her hand. "i am glad to see you back, mrs. cliff." mrs. cliff replied that she was quite well and was glad to be back. "you are not looking as hale as you did," said the visitor, as she seated herself; "you must have lost a good many pounds, but that was to be expected. from what i have heard, south america must be about as unhealthy a place as any part of the world, and then on top of that, living in paris with water to drink which, i am told, is enough to make anybody sick to look at it, is bound to have some sort of an effect upon a person." mrs. cliff smiled. she was used to this sort of talk from nancy shott. "i am better than i was two years ago," she said, "and the last time i was weighed i found that i had gained seven pounds." "well, there is no accounting for that," said her visitor, "except as we grow old we are bound to show it, and sometimes aging looks like bad health, and as to fat, that often comes as years go on, though as far as i am concerned, i think it is a great misfortune to have more to carry, as you get less and less able to carry it." mrs. cliff might have said that that sort of thing would not be likely to trouble miss shott, whose scantily furnished frame was sure to become thinner and thinner as she became older and weaker, but she merely smiled and waited to hear what would come next. "i do not want to worry you," said miss shott; "but several people that were here last night said you was not looking as they had hoped to see you look, and i will just say to you, if it is anything connected with your appetite, with a feeling of goneness in the mornings, you ought to buy a quassia cup and drink the full of it at least three times a day." miss shott knew that mrs. cliff absolutely detested the taste of quassia. mrs. cliff was not annoyed. she hoped that her visitor would soon get through with these prefatory remarks and begin to take the stand, whatever it might be, which she had come there that morning to take. "there has been sickness here since you last left," said miss shott, "and it has been where it was least to be expected, too. barney thompson's little boy, the second son, has had the diphtheria, and where he got it nobody knows, for it was vacation time, and he did not go to school, and there was no other diphtheria anywhere in all this town, and yet he had it and had it bad." "he did not die?" said mrs. cliff. "oh no, he got over it, and perhaps it was a bad case and perhaps it was not; but you may be sure i did not go near it, for i considered it my duty to keep away, and i did keep away, but the trouble is--" "and did none of the other children take it?" asked mrs. cliff. "no, they didn't. but the trouble is, that when diphtheria or anything like it comes up suddenly like this, without any reason that nobody can see, it is just as likely to come up again without any reason, and i am expecting to hear every day of another of them thompson children being stricken down; and i was very sorry indeed, mrs. cliff, to see, this very morning, willy croup coming out of barney thompson's house and to hear from her afterwards that she had been to order him to come here to put up a new kitchen door, which i do not suppose is absolutely needed, and even if it is, i am sure i would wait a good while before i would have barney thompson come into my house with diphtheria, that very minute, perhaps, in the throats of one or maybe more of his children; but of course, if people choose to trifle with their own lives, it is their own business." "it was not real diphtheria," said willy croup, who happened to be passing the open door at this moment; "it was only a bad sore throat, and the child was well in two days." "i suppose, of course," said miss shott, "that if the disease did get into this house, willy croup would be the first to take it, because she is such a spongy person that she takes almost anything that is in the air and is not wholesome; but then you would not want to lose her, and after a funeral in the house, no matter whose it may be, things is always gloomy for a long time afterwards, and nobody can feel easy if it was a catchin' disease that the person died of." mrs. cliff was naturally desirous to hear all the domestic news of the town, but she would have liked to have had something pleasant thrown in among the gloomy tidings of which miss shott had made herself the bearer, and so she made a little effort to turn the conversation. "i shall be glad to go about and see my old friends and neighbors," she said, "for i am interested in everything which has happened to them; but i suppose it will be some days before i can settle down and feel ready to go on in the old way. it seems to me as if i had been on the move ever since i left here, although, of course, i was not travelling all the time." "i suppose nobody has told you," said miss shott, "that edward darley has ploughed up that little pasture of his and planted it with young apple trees. now, it does seem to me that for a man like edward darley, who comes of a consumptive family, and who has been coughin' regularly, to my certain knowledge, for more than a year, to go and plant apple trees, which he can't expect to live to see bear fruit, is nothing more or less than a wicked waste of money, time, and labor. i suppose if i was to go and tell him so he would not like that, but i do not know as i ought to consider it. there are people in this world who'll never know anything if they're not told!" five other topics of the town, each of a doleful nature and each indicating an evident depravity in a citizen of plainton, were related by miss shott, and then she arose to go. "i hope you'll remember what i told you about thompson's children," she said, as she walked to the front door, "and if i was you, i'd have that kitchen fumigated after he has put the door in!" "there now!" said miss shott to herself, as she proudly walked down the street. "the widow cliff can't say i've done any toadying; and, no matter what she's got, and what she hasn't got, she can't say to herself that i consider her any better able to give me twenty-five cents than she was when she was here before; or that it makes any difference to me whether she has much or little!" chapter iv a launch into a new life it required the greater part of two days for mrs. cliff and willy to open the seven trunks, and properly display and dispose of the various articles and goods, astonishing in their variety and beauty, and absolutely amazing when the difference between the price paid for them and what they would have cost in new york was considered. during these fascinating operations it so happened that at one time or another nearly all of mrs. cliff's female friends dropped in, and all were wonderfully impressed by what they saw and what they heard; but although miss shott did not come there during the grand opening, it was not long before she knew the price and something of the general appearance of nearly everything that mrs. cliff had brought with her. among the contents of the trunks were a great many presents for mrs. cliff's friends, and whenever miss shott heard of one of these gifts, she made a remark to the effect that she had not a doubt in the world that the widow cliff knew better than to bring her a present, for she would not want the thing, whatever it was, whether a glass pitcher or a pin-cushion, flung back at her after the fashion that she had set herself at a time when everybody was trying their best to be kind to her. it was clearly a fact, that through the influence of the seven trunks mrs. cliff was becoming a very popular woman, and miss shott did not like it at all. she had never had any faith--at least she said so--in those lumps of gold found in a hole in some part of the world that nobody had ever heard of; and had not hesitated to say that fortunes founded on such wild-goose stories as these should not even be considered by people of good sense who worked for their living, or had incomes which they could depend on. but the dress goods, the ribbons, the gloves, the little clocks, the shoes, the parasols, the breast-pins, the portfolios of pictures, the jewelry, the rugs and table covers, and hundreds of other beautiful and foreign things, were a substantial evidence that mrs. cliff's money was not all moonshine. it was very pleasant for mrs. cliff to bring out her treasures to display them to her enthusiastic friends, and to arrange them in her house, and to behold the rapturous delight of willy croup from early morn until bed-time. but the seven empty trunks had been carried up into the garret, and now mrs. cliff set her mind to the solution of the question--how was she to begin her new life in her old home? it must be a new life, for to live as she had lived even in the days of her highest prosperity during her husband's life would be absurd and even wicked. with such an income she must endeavor as far as was possible to her to live in a manner worthy of it; but one thing she was determined upon--she would not alienate her friends by climbing to the top of her money and looking down upon them. none of them knew how high she would be if she were to perch herself on the very top of that money, but even if she climbed up a little way, they might still feel that they were very small in her sight. no, the money should always be kept in the background. it might be as high as the sky and as glorious as a sunset, but she would be on the ground with the people of plainton, and as far as was possible, they should all enjoy the fine weather together. she could not repress a feeling of pride, for she would be looked upon as one of the principal persons--if not the principal person--in plainton; but she could not believe that any real friend could possibly object to that. if her husband had lived and prospered, it was probable he would have been the principal man in plainton, the minister always excepted; but now there was no reason whatever why any one should object to her being a principal personage, and, in this case, she could not see why the minister's wife should be excepted. but plainton was to be her home; the plainton people were to be her friends. how should she set about using her money in such a way that she should not be driven forth to some large city to live as ordinary wealthy people live, in a fashion to which she was utterly unsuited, and which possessed for her no attractions whatever? of course, she had early determined to devote a large sum to charitable purposes, for she would have thought herself a very unworthy woman if her wealth had not benefited others than herself, but this was an easy matter to attend to. the amount she had set aside for charity was not permanently invested, and, through the advice of mr. perley, there would be no difficulty in devoting this to suitable objects. already she had confidentially spoken to her pastor on the subject, and had found him enthusiastic in his desire to help her in every possible way in her benevolent purposes. but who was there who could help her in regard to herself? who was there who could tell her how she ought to live so as to gain all the good that her money should give her, and yet not lose that which was to her the highest object of material existence,--a happy and prosperous life among her old friends in her native town? should she choose to elevate herself in the social circle by living as ordinary very rich people live, she could not hope to elevate her friends in that way, although she would be glad enough to do it in many cases, and there would be a gap between them which would surely grow wider and wider; and yet here was this money coming in upon her in a steady stream day by day, and how was she going to make herself happier with it? she must do that, or, she believed, it would be her duty to hand it over to somebody else who was better adapted by nature to use it. "if i did not take so much pleasure in things which cost so little and which are so easy for me to buy," said poor mrs. cliff to herself, "or if i did not have so much money, i am sure i should get on a great deal better." mrs. cliff's belief that she must not long delay in selecting some sort of station in life, and endeavoring to live up to it, was soon strengthened by willy croup. during the time of the trunk opening, and for some days afterwards, when all her leisure hours were occupied with the contemplation and consideration of her own presents, willy had been perfectly contented to let things go on in the old way, or any way, but now the incongruity of mrs. cliff's present mode of living, and the probable amount of her fortune, began to impress itself upon her. "it does seem to me," said she, "that it's a sin and a shame that you should be goin' about this house just as you used to do, helpin' me upstairs and downstairs, as if you couldn't afford to hire nobody. you ought to have a girl, and a good one, and for the matter of that, you might have two of 'em, i suppose. and even if it wasn't too much for you to be workin' about when there's no necessity for it, the people are beginnin' to talk, and that ought to be stopped." "what are they talking about?" asked mrs. cliff. "well, it's not everybody that's talkin'," returned willy, "and i guess that them that does gets their opinions from one quarter, but i've heard people say that it's pretty plain that all you got out of that gold mine you spent in buyin' the things you brought home in your trunks; for if you didn't, you wouldn't be livin' like this, helpin' to do your own housework and cookin'." in consequence of this conversation, a servant-of-all-work was employed; for mrs. cliff did not know what she would do with two women until she had made a change in her household arrangements; and with this as a beginning, our good widow determined to start out on her career as a rich woman who intended to enjoy herself in the fashion she liked best. she sent for mr. thompson, the carpenter, and consulted with him in regard to the proposed additions to her house, but when she had talked for a time, she became disheartened. she found that it would be necessary to dig a new cellar close to her present premises; that there would be stones, and gravel, and lime, and sand, and carts and horses, and men, and dirt; and that it would be some months before all the hammering, and the sawing, and the planing, and the plastering, and tinwork could be finished, and all this would be going on under her eye, and close to her ears during those first months in which she had proposed to be so happy in her home. she could not bear to give the word to dig, and pound, and saw. it was not like building a new house, for that would not be near her, and the hub-bub of its construction would not annoy her. so she determined she would not begin a new dining-room at present. she would wait a little while until she had had some good of her house as it was, and then she would feel better satisfied to live in the midst of pounding, banging, and all-pervading dust; but she would do something. she would have the fence which separated the sidewalk from her front yard newly painted. she had long wanted to have that done, but had not been able to afford it. but when mr. thompson went to look at the fence, he told her that it would be really a waste of money to paint it, for in many places it was old and decayed, and it would be much wiser to put up a new one and paint that. again mrs. cliff hesitated. if that fence had to be taken down, and the posts dug up, and new posts put in, and the flower-bed which ran along the inside of it destroyed, it would be just as well to wait until the other work began and have it all done at once; so she told mr. thompson he need not send a painter, for she would make the old fence do for a while. mrs. cliff sighed a little as the carpenter walked away, but there were other things to do. there was the pasture lot at the rear of her garden, and she could have a cow, and there was the little barn, and she could have a horse. the idea of the horse pleased her more than anything she had yet thought of in connection with her wealth. in her days of prosperity it had been her greatest pleasure to drive in her phaëton with her good brown horse, generally with willy croup by her side; to stop at shops or to make calls upon friends, and to make those little excursions into the surrounding country in which she and willy both delighted. they had sometimes gone a long distance and had taken their dinner with them, and willy was really very good in unharnessing the horse and watering him at a brook, and in giving him some oats. to return to these old joys was a delightful prospect, and mrs. cliff made inquiries about her horse, which had been sold in the town; but he was gone. he had been sold to a drover, and his whereabouts no one knew. so she went to mr. williams, the keeper of the hotel, who knew more about horses than anybody else, and consulted with him on the subject of a new steed. she told him just what she wanted: a gentle horse which she could drive herself, and one which willy could hold when she went into a house or a shop. now, it so happened that mr. williams had just such a horse, and when mrs. cliff had seen it, and when willy had come up to look at it, and when the matter had been talked about in all the aspects in which it presented itself to mrs. cliff's mind, she bought the animal, and it was taken to her stable, where andrew marks, a neighbor, was engaged to take care of it. the next morning mrs. cliff and willy took a drive a little way out of town, and they both agreed that this horse, which was gray, was a great deal better traveller than the old brown, and a much handsomer animal; but both of them also agreed that they did not believe that they would ever learn to love him as they had their old horse. still he was very easy to drive, and he went along so pleasantly, without needing the whip in the least, that mrs. cliff said to herself, that for the first time since her return she really felt herself a rich woman. "if everything," she thought, "should come to me as this horse came to me, how delightful my life would be! when i wanted him, i found him. i did not have to trouble myself in the least about the price; i simply paid it, and ordered him sent home. now, that sort of thing is what makes a person feel truly rich." when they had gone far enough, and had reached a wide place in the road, mrs. cliff turned and started back to plainton. but now the horse began to be a different kind of a horse. with his face towards his home, he set out to trot as fast as he could, and when mrs. cliff, not liking such a rapid pace, endeavored to pull him in, she found it very hard to do, and when she began to saw his mouth, thinking that would restrain his ardor, he ambled and capered, and mrs. cliff was obliged to let him resume his rapid gait. he was certainly a very hard-mouthed horse, going home, and mrs. cliff's arms ached, and willy croup's heart quaked, long before they reached the town. when they reached plainton, mrs. cliff began to be afraid that he would gallop through the streets, and she told willy that if he did, she must not scream, but must sit quietly, and she would endeavor to steer him clear of the vehicles and people. but although he did not gallop, the ardent gray seemed to travel faster after he entered the town, and mrs. cliff, who was getting very red in the face from her steady tugging at the reins, thought it wise not to attempt to go home, but to let her horse go straight to the hotel stables where he had lived. when mrs. cliff had declared to mr. williams that that horse would never suit her, that she would not be willing to drive it, and would not even think of going into a house and leaving willy croup to hold him, he was very much surprised, and said that he had not a gentler horse in his stable, and he did not believe there was one in the town. "all horses," said he, "want to go home, especially at dinner-time." "but the old brown did not," urged mrs. cliff. "that is the sort of horse i want." "some very old beast might please you better," said he; "but really, mrs. cliff, that is not the sort of horse you should have. he would die or break down in a little while, and then you would have to get another. what you should do is to have a good horse and a driver. you might get a two-seated carriage, either open or closed, and go anywhere and everywhere, and never think of the horse." that was not the thing she longed for; that would not bring back the happy days when she drove the brown through the verdant lanes. if she must have a driver, she might as well hire a cab and be driven about. but she told mr. williams to get her a suitable vehicle, and she would have andrew marks to drive her; and she and willy croup walked sadly home. as to the cow, she succeeded better. she bought a fairly good one, and willy undertook to milk her and to make butter. "now, what have i done so far?" said mrs. cliff, on the evening of the day when the cow came home. "i have a woman to cook, i have a new kitchen door, and i have a cow! i do not count the horse and the wagon, for if i do not drive, myself, i shall not feel that they are mine in the way that i want them to be." chapter v a fur-trimmed overcoat and a silk hat mrs. cliff now began to try very hard to live as she ought to live, without pretensions or snobbery, but in a style becoming, in some degree, her great fortune. there was one thing she determined to do immediately, and that was, to begin a series of hospitalities,--and it made her feel proud to think that she could do this and do it handsomely, and yet do it in the old home where everybody knew she had for years been obliged to practise the strictest economy. she gave a dinner to which she invited her most select friends. mr. and mrs. perley were there, and the misses thorpedyke, two maiden ladies who constituted the family of the highest social pretension of plainton. there were other people who were richer, but miss eleanor thorpedyke, now a lady of nearly seventy, and her sister barbara, some ten years younger, belonged to the very best family in that part of the country, and were truly the aristocrats of the place. but they had always been very friendly with mrs. cliff, and they were glad to come to her dinner. the other guests were all good people, and a dinner-party of more distinction could not have been collected in that town. but this dinner did not go off altogether smoothly. if the people had come merely to eat, they must have been abundantly satisfied, for everything was of the very best and well cooked, mrs. cliff and willy having seen to that; but there were certain roughnesses and hitches in the management of the dinner which disturbed mrs. cliff. in her travels and at the hotels where she had lived she had seen a great deal of good service, and she knew what it was. willy, who, being a relative, should really have come to the table, had decidedly declined to do so, and had taken upon herself the principal part of the waiting, assisted by the general servant and a small girl who had been called in. but the dining-room was very small, some of the chairs were but a little distance from the wall, and it was evident that willy had not a true appreciation of the fact that in recent years she had grown considerably rounder and plumper than she used to be; and it made mrs. cliff's blood run cold to see how she bumped the back of mr. perley's chair, as she thrust herself between it and the wall. the small girl had to be told almost everything that she must do, and the general servant, who did not like to wait on table, only came in when she was called and left immediately when she had done what she had been called for. when the guests had gone, mrs. cliff declared to willy that that was the last large dinner she would give in that house. "it was not a dinner which a woman of my means should offer to her friends." willy was amazed. "i don't see how it could have been better," said she, "unless you had champagne, and i know mr. perley wouldn't have liked that. everything on the table was just as good as it could be." but mrs. cliff shook her head. she knew that she had attempted something for which her present resources were insufficient. after this she invited people to dinner once or twice a week, but the company was always very small and suited to the resources of the house. "i will go on this way for a while," thought the good lady, "and after a time i will begin to spread out and do things in a different style." several times she drove over to harrington, a large town some five miles away, which contained a furniture factory, and there she purchased many articles which would be suitable for the house, always securing the best things for her purposes, but frequently regretting that certain beautiful and imposing pieces of furniture were entirely unsuited to the capacity of her rooms and hallways. but when her dining-room should be finished, and the room above it, she would have better opportunity of gratifying her taste for handsome wood in imposing designs. then it might be that harrington would not be able to give her anything good enough. her daily mail was now much larger than it ever had been before. business people sent her cards and circulars, and every now and then she received letters calling her attention to charities or pressing personal needs of the writers, but there were not very many of these; for although it was generally known that mrs. cliff had come into a fortune, her manner of living seemed also a matter of public knowledge. even the begging letters were couched in very moderate terms; but all these mrs. cliff took to mr. perley, and, by his advice, she paid attention to but very few of them. day by day mrs. cliff endeavored to so shape and direct her fortunes that they might make her happy in the only ways in which she could be happy, but her efforts to do so did not always gain for her the approval of her fellow townspeople. there were some who thought that a woman who professed to have command of money should do a good many things which mrs. cliff did not do, and there were others who did not hesitate to assert that a woman who lived as mrs. cliff should not do a great many things which she did do, among which things some people included the keeping of a horse and carriage. it was conceded, of course, that all this was mrs. cliff's own business. she had paid the money she had borrowed to go to south america; she had been very kind to some of the poor people of the town, and it was thought by some had been foolishly munificent to old mrs. bradley, who, from being a very poor person threatened with the loss of her home, was now an independent householder, and enjoyed an annuity sufficient to support her. more than that, mrs. cliff had been very generous in regard to the church music. it was not known exactly how much she had given towards this object, but there were those who said that she must have given her means a considerable strain when she made her contribution. that is, if the things were to be done which mr. perley talked about. when mrs. cliff heard what had been said upon this subject,--and willy croup was generally very well able to keep her informed in regard to what the people of the town said about her,--she thought that the gossips would have been a good deal astonished if they had known how much she had really given to the church, and that they would have been absolutely amazed if they knew how much mr. perley had received for general charities. and then she thought, with a tinge of sadness, how very much surprised mr. perley would have been if he had known how much more she was able to give away without feeling its loss. weeks passed on, the leaves turned red and yellow upon the trees, the evenings and mornings grew colder and colder, and mrs. cliff did everything she could towards the accomplishment of what now appeared to her in the light of a great duty in her life,--the proper expenditure of her income and appropriation of her great fortune. her labors were not becoming more cheerful. day after day she said to herself that she was not doing what she ought to do, and that it was full time that she should begin to do something better, but what that better thing was she could not make up her mind. even the improvements she contemplated were, after all, such mere trifles. it was a very cold morning in october when mrs. cliff went into her parlor and said to willy that there was one thing she could do,--she could have a rousing, comfortable fire without thinking whether wood was five, ten, or twenty dollars per cord. when willy found that mrs. cliff wanted to make herself comfortable before a fine blazing fire, she seemed in doubt. "i don't know about the safety of it," she said. "that chimney's in a pretty bad condition; the masons told us so years ago, and nothin' has ever been done to it! there have been fires in it, but they have been little ones; and if i was you, i wouldn't have too large a blaze in that fireplace until the chimney has been made all right!" mrs. cliff was annoyed. "well then, willy, i wish you would go for the mason immediately, and tell him to come here and repair the chimney. it's perfectly ridiculous that i can't have a fire in my own parlor when i am able to have a chimney as high and as big as bunker hill monument if i wanted it!" willy croup smiled. she did not believe that mrs. cliff really knew how much such a chimney would cost, but she said, "you have got to remember, you know, that we can't have the cuthberts here to dinner to-morrow if the masons come to work at that chimney. ten to one they will have to take the most part of it down, and we shall be in a general mess here for a week." mrs. cliff sat down with a sigh. "you need not mind to have the wood brought in," she said; "just give me a few sticks and some kindling, so that i can give things a little air of cheerfulness." as she sat before the gently blazing little fire, mrs. cliff felt that things needed an air of cheerfulness. she had that morning been making calculations, and, notwithstanding all she had bought, all she had done, and even including with the most generous margin all she had planned to do, her income was gaining upon her in a most discouraging way. "i am not fit for it," she said to herself. "i don't know how to live as i want to live, and i won't live as i don't want to live. the whole business is too big for me. i don't know how to manage it. i ought to give up my means to somebody who knows how to use them, and stay here myself with just enough money to make me happy." for the fortieth time she considered the question of laying all her troubles before mr. perley, but she knew her pastor. the great mass of her fortune would quickly be swallowed up in some grand missionary enterprise; and this would not suit mrs. cliff. no matter how much she was discouraged, no matter how difficult it was to see her way before her, no matter how great a load she felt her wealth to be, there was always before her a glimmering sense of grand possibilities. what they were she could not now see or understand, but she would not willingly give them up. [illustration: the gentleman raised his hat and asked if mrs. cliff lived there] she was an elderly woman, but she came of a long-lived family, all of whom had lived in good health until the end of their days, and if there was any grand, golden felicity which was possible to her, she felt that there was reason to believe she would live long to enjoy it when she wanted it. one morning as mrs. cliff sat thinking over these things, there was a knock at the front door, and, of course, willy croup ran to open it. no matter where she was, or no matter what she was doing, willy always went to the door if she could, because she had so great a desire to know who was there. this time it was a gentleman, a very fine gentleman, with a high silk hat and a handsome overcoat trimmed with fur--fur on the collar, fur on the sleeves, and fur down the front. willy had never seen such a coat. it was october and it was cool, but there was no man in plainton who would have worn such a coat as that so early in the season even if he had one. the gentleman had dark eyes and a very large mustache, and he carried a cane and wore rather bright tan-colored gloves. all these things willy observed in an instant, for she was very quick in taking notice of people's clothes and general appearance. the gentleman raised his hat and asked if mrs. cliff lived there. now willy thought he must be an extraordinary fine gentleman, for how should he know that she was not a servant, and in those parts gentlemen did not generally raise their hats to girls who opened front doors. the gentleman was admitted and was ushered into the parlor, where sat mrs. cliff. she was a little surprised at the sight of this visitor, who came in with his hat on, but who took it off and made her a low bow as soon as he saw her. but she thought she appreciated the situation, and she hardened her heart. a strange man, so finely dressed, and with such manners, must have come for money, and mrs. cliff had already learned to harden her heart towards strangers who solicited. but the hardness of her heart utterly disappeared in her amazement when this gentleman, having pulled off his right glove, advanced toward her, holding out his hand. "you don't remember me, mrs. cliff?" he said in a loud, clear voice. "no wonder, for i am a good deal changed, but it is not the same with you. you are the same as ever--i declare you are!" mrs. cliff took the proffered hand, and looked into the face of the speaker. there was something there which seemed familiar, but she had never known such a fine gentleman as this. she thought over the people whom she had seen in france and in california, but she could not recollect this face. "it's a mean thing to be puzzlin' you, mrs. cliff," said the stranger, with a cheery smile. "i'm george burke, seaman on the _castor_, where i saw more of you, mrs. cliff, than i've ever seen since; for though we have both been a good deal jumbled up since, we haven't been jumbled up together, so i don't wonder if you don't remember me, especially as i didn't wear clothes like these on the _castor_. not by any means, mrs. cliff!" "i remember you," she said, and she shook his hand warmly. "i remember you, and you had a mate named edward shirley." "yes, indeed!" said mr. burke, "and he's all right, and i'm all right, and how are you?" the overcoat with the fur trimmings came off, and, with the hat, the cane, and the gloves, was laid upon a chair, and burke and mrs. cliff sat down to talk over old times and old friends. chapter vi a temperance lark as mrs. cliff sat and talked with george burke, she forgot the calculations she had been making, she forgot her perplexities and her anxieties concerning the rapid inroads which her income was making upon her ability to dispose of it, in the recollection of the good-fellowships which the presence of her companion recalled. but mr. burke could give her no recent news of captain horn and edna, she having heard from them later than he had; and the only one of the people of the _castor_ of whom he could tell her was edward shirley, who had gone into business. he had bought a share in a shipyard, and, as he was a man who had a great idea about the lines of a vessel, and all that sort of thing, he had determined to put his money into that business. he was a long-headed fellow, and burke had no doubt but that he would soon hear of some fine craft coming from the yard of his old shipmate. "but how about yourself, mr. burke? i want to know what has happened to you, and what you intend doing, and how you chanced to be coming this way." "oh, i will tell you everything that has happened to me," said mr. burke, "and it won't take long; but first let me ask you something, mrs. cliff?" and as he spoke he quietly rose and shut the parlor door. "now then," said he, as he seated himself, "we have all been in the same box, or, i should say, in the same boxes of different kinds, and although i may not have the right to call myself a friend, i am just as friendly to you as if i was, and feel as if people who have been through what we have ought to stand by each other even after they've got through their hardest rubs. "now, mrs. cliff, has anything happened to you? have you had any set-backs? i know that this is a mighty queer world, and that even the richest people can often come down with a sudden thump just as if they had slipped on the ice." mrs. cliff smiled. "nothing has happened to me," she said. "i have had no set-backs, and i am just as rich to-day,--i should say a great deal richer, than i was on the day when captain horn made the division of the treasure. but i know very well why you thought something had happened to me. you did not expect to find me living in this little house." "no, by the lord harry, i didn't!" exclaimed burke, slapping his knee. "you must excuse me, mrs. cliff, for speaking out in that way, but really i never was so much surprised as when i came into your front yard. i thought i would find you in the finest house in the place until you could have a stately mansion built somewhere in the outskirts of the town, where there would be room enough for a park. but when i came to this house, i couldn't help thinking that perhaps some beastly bank had broke, and that your share of the golden business had been swept away. things like that do happen to women, you know, and i suppose they always will; but i am mighty glad to hear you are all right! "but, as you have asked me to tell you my story, i will make short work of it, and then i would like to hear what has happened to you, as much as you please to tell me about it. "now, when i got my money, mrs. cliff, which, when compared to what your share must have been, was like a dory to a three-mast schooner, but still quite enough for me, and, perhaps, more than enough if a public vote could be taken on the subject, i was in paris, a jolly place for a rich sailor, and i said to myself,-- "'now, mr. burke,' said i, for i might as well begin by using good manners, 'the general disposition of a sea-faring man with a lot of money is to go on a lark, or, perhaps, a good many larks, and so get rid of it and then ship again before the mast for fourteen dollars per month, or thereabouts.' "but i made up my mind right there on the spot that that sort of thing wouldn't suit me. the very idea of shipping again on a merchant vessel made the blood run cold inside of me, and i swore to myself that i wouldn't do it. "to be sure, i wouldn't give up all notion of a lark. a sailor with money,--and i don't believe there ever was an able-bodied seaman with more money than i had,--who doesn't lark, at least to some degree, has no right to call himself a whole-souled mariner; so i made up my mind to have one lark and then stop." mrs. cliff's countenance clouded. "i am sorry, mr. burke," said she, "that you thought it necessary to do that. i do hope you didn't go on one of those horrible--sprees, do they call them?" "oh no!" interrupted burke, "i didn't do anything of that kind. if i'd begun with a bottle, i'd have ended with nothing but a cork, and a badly burnt one at that. no ma'am! drinking isn't in my line. i don't take anything of that sort except at meals, and then only the best wine in genteel quantities. but i was bound to have one lark, and then i would stop and begin to live like a merchant-tailor, with no family nor poor relations." "but what did you do?" asked mrs. cliff. "if it was a lark without liquor, i want to hear about it." "it was a temperance lark, ma'am," said burke, "and this is what it was. "now, though i have been to sea ever since i was a boy, i never had command of any kind of craft, and it struck me that i would like to finish up my life on the ocean wave by taking command of a vessel. it is generally understood that riches will give you anything you want, and i said to myself that my riches should give me that. i didn't want a sailin' vessel. i was tired of sailin' vessels. i wanted a steamer, and when i commanded a steamer for a little while i would stop short and be a landsman for the rest of my life. "so i went up to brest, where i thought i might find some sort of steamer which might suit me, and in that harbor i did find an english steamer, which had discharged her cargo and was expectin' to sail again pretty much in ballast and brandy, so far as i could make out. i went to this vessel and i made an offer to her captain to charter her for an excursion of one week--that was all i wanted. "well, i'm not going to bother you, mrs. cliff, with all that was said and done about this little business, which seemed simple enough, but which wasn't. there are people in this world who think that if you have money you can buy anything you want, but such people might as well get ready to change their opinions if they ever expect to come into money." "that is true," said mrs. cliff; "every word of it is true, as i have found out for myself!" "well," continued burke, "there had to be a lot of telegraphin' to the owners in london and a general fuss with the officers of the port about papers, and all that, but i got the business through all right; for if money won't get you everything, it's a great help in making things slip along easy. and so one fine afternoon i found myself on board that steamer as commander for one week. "of course, i didn't want to give orders to the crew, but i intended to give my orders to the captain, and tell him what he was to do and what he was not to do for one week. he didn't like that very much, for he was inclined to bulldogism, but i paid him extra wages, and he agreed to knuckle under to me. "so i gave him orders to sail out of the harbor and straight to the island of ushant, some twenty-five miles to the west of northwest. "'there's no use going there,' said the captain,--his name was dork,--'there's nothing on that blasted bit of rock for you to see. there's no port i could run this steamer into.' "i had been studying out my business on the chart, and this little island just suited my idea, and though the name was 'ushant,' i said to him, 'you shall,' and i ordered him to sail to that island and lay to a mile or two to the westward; and as to the landing, he needn't talk about that until i mentioned it myself. "so when we got about a couple of miles to the west of ushant, we lay to. now i knew we were on the forty-eighth parallel of latitude, for i had looked that out on the chart, so i said to captain dork,-- "'now, sir!' says i, 'i want you to head your vessel, sir, due west, and then to steam straight ahead for a hundred miles, keepin' your vessel just as near as you can on that line of latitude.'" "i see!" said mrs. cliff, very much interested. "if he once got on that line of latitude and kept sailing west without turning one way or the other, he would be bound to keep on it." "that's exactly it!" said mr. burke. "'twas pretty near midnight when we started off to run along the forty-eighth parallel, but i kept my eyes on the man at the wheel and on the compass, and i let them know that that ship was under the command of an able-bodied seaman who knew what he was about, and if they skipped to one side of that line or to the other he would find it out in no time. "i went below once to take a nap, but, as i promised the fellow at the wheel ten shillings if he would keep her head due west, and told him he would be sure to wake me up if he didn't, i felt certain we wouldn't skip the line of latitude. "well, that steamer, which was called the _duke of dorchester_, and which was a vessel of not more than a thousand tons, wasn't much of a sailer, or perhaps they was saving coal, i don't know which, and, not knowing how much coal ought to be used, i kept my mouth shut on that point; but i had the log thrown a good deal, and i found that we never quite came up to ten knots an hour, and when we took an observation at noon the next day, we saw that we hadn't quite done the hundred miles; but a little before one o'clock we did it, and then i ordered the captain to stop the engine and lay to. "there was a brig about a mile away, and when she saw us layin' to, she put about and made for us, and when she was near enough she hailed to know if anything was the matter. she was a french brig, but captain dork understood her, and i told him to bid her 'good morning,' and to tell her that nothin' was the matter, but that we were just stoppin' to rest. i don't know what he did tell her, but she put about her helm and was off again on her own business. "'now,' said i to captain dork, 'i want you to back this steamer due east to the island of ushant.' "he looked at me and began to swear. he took me for a maniac,--a wild, crazy man, and told me the best thing i could do would be to go below and turn in, and he would take me back to my friends, if i had any. "i didn't want to tell him what i was up to, but i found i had to, and so i explained to him that i was a rich sailor takin' a lark, and the lark i wanted to take was, to sail on a parallel of latitude a hundred miles in a steamer, and then to back that steamer along that same parallel to the place where she started from. i didn't believe that there was ever a ship in the world that had done that, and bein' on a lark, i wanted to do it, and was willin' to pay for it; and if his engineers and his crew grumbled about backing the steamer for a hundred miles, he could explain to them how the matter stood, and tell them that bein' on a lark i was willin' to pay for all extra trouble i might put them to, and for any disturbances in their minds which might rise from sailin' a vessel in a way which didn't seem to be accordin' to the ordinary rules of navigation. "now, when captain dork knew that i was a rich sailor on a lark, he understood me, and he made no more objections, though he said he wouldn't have spent his money in that way; and when he told his crew and his engineers and men about the extra pay, they understood the matter, and they agreed to back her along the forty-eighth parallel just as nigh as they could until they lay to two miles west of ushant. "so back we went, and they kept her due east just as nigh as they could, and they seemed to take an interest in it, as if all of them wanted me to have as good a lark as i could for my money, and we didn't skip that parallel very much, although it wasn't an easy job, i can tell you, to keep her head due west and her stern due east, and steam backwards. they had to rig up the compass abaft the wheel, and do some other things that you wouldn't understand, madam, such as running a spar out to stern to take sight by." "i declare," said mrs. cliff, "that sort of sailing must have astonished any ship that saw it. did you meet any other vessels?" "oh yes," said burke. "after daybreak we fell in with a good many sail and some steamers, and most of them ran close and hailed us, but there wasn't any answer to give them, except that we were returning to port and didn't want no help; but some of the skippers of the smaller crafts were so full of curiosity that they stuck to us, and when we arrived off ushant, which wasn't until nearly dark the next day, the _duke of dorchester_ had a convoy of five sloops, two schooners, a brig, eight pilot boats, and four tugs." although mr. burke had said that he was going to make very short work with his story, it had already occupied a good deal of time, and he was not half through with it; but mrs. cliff listened with the greatest interest, and the rich sailor went on with his recital of adventures. "now, when i had finished scoring that forty-eighth parallel backward and forward for a hundred miles, i took out my purse and i paid that captain and all the crew what i promised to give them, and then we steamed back to brest, where i told him to drop anchor and make himself comfortable. "i stayed on board for a day and a night just to get my fill feeling i was in command of a steamer, before i gave up a sea-faring life forever. i threw up the rest of the week that i was entitled to and went ashore, and my lark was over. "i went to england and took passage for home, and i had a first-class state-room, and laid in a lot of good clothes before i started. i don't think i ever had greater comfort in my life than sittin' on deck, smokin' a good cigar, and watchin' the able-bodied seamen at their work. "i hope i'm not tiring you, madam, but i'm trying to cut things as short as i can. it's often said that a sailor is all at sea when he is on shore, but i was a country fellow before i was a sailor, and land doings come naturally to me when i fix my mind on them. "i'd made up my mind i was going to build my mother a house on cape cod, but when i got home i thought it better to buy her one already built, and that's what i did, and i stayed there with her a little while, but i didn't like it. i'd had a notion of having another house near my mother's, but i gave up that. there's too much sea about cape cod. "now, she liked it, for she's a regular sailor's mother, but i couldn't feel that i was really a rich fellow livin' ashore until i got out of hearin' of the ocean, and out of smellin' of salt and tar, so i made up my mind that i'd go inland and settle somewhere on a place of my own, where i might have command of some sort of farm. "i didn't know just exactly what i wanted, nor just exactly where i wanted to go, so i thought it best to look around a little and hold council with somebody or other. i couldn't hold council with my mother, because she wanted me to buy a ship and take command of her. and then i thought of captain horn, and goin' to ask him. but the captain is a great man--" "indeed he is!" exclaimed mrs. cliff. "we all know that!" "but he is off on his own business," continued burke, "and what sort of a princely concern he's got on hand i don't know. anyway, he wouldn't want me followin' him about and botherin' him, and so i thought of everybody i could, and at last it struck me that there wasn't anybody better than you, mrs. cliff, to give me the points i wanted, for i always liked you, mrs. cliff, and i consider you a woman of good sense down to the keel. and, as i heard you were livin' in sort of a country place, i thought you'd be the very person that i could come and talk to and get points. "i felt a hankerin', anyway, after some of the old people of the _castor_; for, after having had all that money divided among us, it made me feel as if we belonged to the same family. i suppose that was one reason why i felt a sort of drawing to you, you know. anyway, i knew where you lived, and i came right here, and arrived this morning. after i'd taken a room at the hotel, i asked for your house and came straight here." "and very glad am i to see you, mr. burke!" said mrs. cliff, speaking honestly from the bottom of her heart. she had not known burke very well, but she had always looked upon him as a fine, manly sailor; and now that he had come to her, she was conscious of the family feeling which he had spoken of, and she was very glad to see him. she saw that burke was very anxious to know why she was living in a plain fashion in this unpretentious house, but she found it would be very difficult to explain the matter to him. hers was not a straightforward tale, which she could simply sit and tell, and, moreover, although she liked burke and thought it probable that he was a man of a very good heart, she did not believe that he was capable of advising her in the perplexities which her wealth had thrown about her. still, she talked to him and told him what she thought she could make him properly understand, and so, from one point to another, she went on until she had given the ex-sailor a very good idea of the state of her mind in regard to what she was doing, and what she thought she ought to do. when mrs. cliff had finished speaking, burke thrust his hands into his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and looked at the ceiling of the room, the walls, and the floor. he wanted to say something, but he was not prepared to do so. his mind, still nautical, desired to take an observation and determine the latitude and longitude of mrs. cliff, but the skies were very much overcast. at this moment willy croup knocked at the parlor door, and when mrs. cliff went to her, she asked if the gentleman was going to stay to dinner. mrs. cliff was surprised. she had no idea it was so late, but she went back to mr. burke and urged him to stay to dinner. he consented instantly, declaring that this was the first time that anybody, not his mother, had asked him to dinner since he came into his fortune. when mrs. cliff had excused herself to give some directions about the meal, burke walked about the parlor, carefully examining everything in it. when he had finished his survey, he sat down and shook his head. "the trouble with her is," he said to himself, "that she's so dreadfully afraid of running ashore that she will never reach any port, that's what's the matter!" when mrs. cliff returned, she asked her visitor if he would like to see her house, and she showed him over it with great satisfaction, for she had filled every room with all the handsome and appropriate things she could get into it. burke noticed everything, and spoke with approbation of many things, but as he walked behind his hostess, he kept shaking his head. he went down to dinner, and was introduced to willy croup, who had been ordered to go and dress herself that she might appear at the meal. he shook hands with her very cordially, and then looked all around the little dining-room, taking in every feature of its furnishing and adornment. when he had finished, he would have been glad to shake his head again, but this would have been observed. when the dinner came on, however, mr. burke had no desire to shake his head. it was what might have been called a family dinner, but there was such a variety, such an abundance, everything was so admirably cooked, and the elderberry wine, which was produced in his honor, was so much more rich and fragrant to his taste than the wines he had had at hotels, that mr. burke was delighted. now he felt that in forming an opinion as to mrs. cliff's manner of living he had some grounds to stand upon. "what she wants," thought he, "is all the solid, sensible comfort her money can give her, and where she knows what she wants, she gets it; but the trouble seems to be that in most things she doesn't know what she wants!" when mr. burke that afternoon walked back to the hotel, wrapped in his fur-trimmed coat and carefully puffing a fine havana cigar, he had entirely forgotten his own plans and purposes in life, and was engrossed in those of mrs. cliff. chapter vii mr. burke accepts a responsibility willy croup was very much pleased with mr. burke, and she was glad that she had allowed herself to be persuaded to sit at table with such a fine gentleman. he treated her with extreme graciousness of manner, and it was quite plain to her that if he recognized her in her silk gown as the person who, in a calico dress, had opened the front door for him, he had determined to make her feel that he had not noticed the coincidence. he was a good deal younger than she was, but willy's childlike disposition had projected itself into her maturer years, and in some respects there was a greater sympathy, quickly perceived by both, between her and mr. burke than yet existed between him and mrs. cliff. after some of the amusing anecdotes which he told, the visitor looked first towards willy to see how she appreciated them; but it must not be supposed that he was not extremely attentive and deferential to his hostess. if willy had known what a brave, gallant, and daring sailor he was, she would have made a hero of him; but mrs. cliff had never said much about burke, and willy simply admired him as the best specimen of the urbane man of the world with whom she had yet met. the two women talked a good deal about their visitor that evening, and mrs. cliff said that she hoped he was not going to leave town very soon, for it was possible that she might be of help to him if he wanted to settle down in that part of the country. the next morning, soon after breakfast, when willy opened the front gate of the yard and stepped out upon the street with a small covered basket in her hand, she had gone but a very little distance when she met mr. burke, with his furs, his cane, and his silk hat. the latter was lifted very high as its owner saluted miss croup. willy, who was of a fair complexion, reddened somewhat as she shook hands with the gentleman, informed him, in answer to his questions, that mrs. cliff was very well, that she was very well; that the former was at home and would be glad to see him, and that she herself was going into the business part of the town to make some little purchases. she would have been better pleased if she had not been obliged to tell him where she was going, but she could not do otherwise when he said he supposed she was walking for the benefit of the fresh morning air. he added to her discomfiture by requesting to be allowed to walk with her, and by offering to carry her basket. this threw willy's mind into a good deal of a flutter. why could she not have met this handsomely dressed gentleman sometime when she was not going to the grocery store to buy such things as stove-blacking and borax? it seemed to her as if these commodities must suggest to the mind of any one rusty iron and obtrusive insects, and as articles altogether outside the pale of allusion in high-toned social intercourse. it also struck her as a little odd that a gentleman should propose to accompany a lady when she was going on domestic errands; but then this gentleman was different from any she had known, and there were many ways of the world with which she was not at all acquainted. mr. burke immediately began to speak of the visit of the day before. he had enjoyed seeing mrs. cliff again and he had never sat down to a better dinner. "yes," said willy, "she likes good eatin', and she knows what it is, and if she had a bigger dining-room she would often invite people to dinner, and i expect the house would be quite lively, as she seems more given to company than she used to be, and that's all right, considerin' she's better able to afford it." mr. burke took a deep satisfied breath. the opportunity had already come to him to speak his mind. "afford it!" said he. "i should think so! mrs. cliff must be very rich. she is worth, i should say--well, i don't know what to say, not knowing exactly and precisely what each person got when the grand division was made." willy's loyalty to mrs. cliff prompted her to put her in as good a light as possible before this man of the world, and her own self-esteem prompted her to show that, being a friend and relative of this rich lady, she was not ignorant of her affairs in life. "oh, she's rich!" said willy. "i can't say, of course, just how much she has, but i'm quite sure that she owns at least--" willy wished to put the amount of the fortune at one hundred thousand dollars, but she was a little afraid that this might be too much, and yet she did not wish to make the amount any smaller than could possibly be helped. so she thought of seventy-five, and then eighty, and finally remarked that mrs. cliff must be worth at least ninety thousand dollars. mr. burke looked up at the sky and wanted to whistle. "ninety thousand dollars!" he said to himself. "i know positively that it was at least four millions at the time of the division, and she says she's richer now than she was then, which is easy to be accounted for by the interest coming in. i see her game! she wants to keep shady about her big fortune because her neighbors would expect her to live up to it, and she knows it isn't in her to live up to it. now, i'm beginning to see through the fog." "it seems to me," said he, "that mrs. cliff ought to have a bigger dining-room." this remark pulled up the flood-gate to willy's accumulated sentiments on the subject, and they poured forth in a rushing stream. yes, indeed, mrs. cliff ought to have a bigger dining-room, and other rooms to the house, and there was the front fence, and no end of things she ought to have, and it was soon made clear to mr. burke that willy had been lying awake at night thinking, and thinking, and thinking about what mrs. cliff ought to have and what she did not have. she said she really and honestly believed that there was no reason at all why she did not have them, except that she did not want to seem to be setting herself up above her neighbors. in fact, mrs. cliff had told willy two or three times, when there had been a discussion about prices, that she was able to do anything she wanted, and if she could do that, why did she not do it? people were all talking about it, and they had talked and talked her fortune down until in some families it was not any more than ten thousand dollars. on and on talked willy, while mr. burke said scarcely a word, but he listened with the greatest attention. they had now walked on until they had reached the main street of the little town, gone through the business part where the shops were, and out into the suburbs. suddenly willy stopped. "oh dear!" she exclaimed, "i've gone too far! i was so interested in talking, that i didn't think." "i'm sorry," said mr. burke, "that i've taken you out of your way. can't i get you what you want and save you the trouble?" now willy was in another flutter. after the walk with the fur-trimmed coat, and the talk about dollars by thousands and tens of thousands, she could not come down to mention borax and blacking. "oh no, thank you!" said she, trying her best to think of some other errand than the one she had come upon. "i don't believe it's finished yet, and it's hardly worth while to stop. there was one of those big cushion covers that she brought from paris, that was to be filled with down, but i don't believe it's ready yet, and i needn't stop." mr. burke could not but think it a little odd that such a small basket should be brought for the purpose of carrying home a large down cushion, but he said nothing further on the subject. he had had a most gratifying conversation with this communicative and agreeable person, and his interest in mrs. cliff was greatly increased. when he neared the hotel, he took leave of his companion, saying that he would call in the afternoon; and willy, after she had looked back and was sure he was out of sight, slipped into the grocery store and got her borax and blacking. mr. burke called on mrs. cliff that afternoon, and the next morning, and two or three times the day after. they came to be very much interested in each other, and burke in his mind compared this elderly friend with his mother, and not to the advantage of the latter. burke's mother was a woman who would always have her own way, and wanted advice and counsel from no one, but mrs. cliff was a very different woman. she was so willing to listen to what burke said--and his remarks were nearly always on the subject of the proper expenditure of money--and appeared to attach so much importance to his opinions, that he began to feel that a certain responsibility, not at all an unpleasant one, was forcing itself upon him. he did not think that he should try to constitute himself her director, or even to assume the position of professional suggester, but in an amateur way he suggested, and she, without any idea of depending upon him for suggestions, found herself more and more inclined to accept them as he continued to offer them. she soon discovered that he was the only person in plainton who knew her real fortune, and this was a bond of sympathy and union between them, and she became aware that she had succeeded in impressing him with her desire to live upon her fortune in such a manner that it would not interfere with her friendships or associations, and her lifelong ideas of comfort and pleasure. the people of the town talked a great deal about the fine gentleman at the hotel, but they knew he was one of the people who had become rich in consequence of captain horn's discovery; and some of them, good friends of mrs. cliff, felt sorry that she had not profited to as great a degree by that division as this gentleman of opulent taste, who occupied two of the best rooms in the hotel, and obliged mr. williams to send to harrington, and even to boston, for provisions suitable to his epicurean tastes, and who drove around the country with a carriage and pair at least once a day. when burke was ready to make his suggestions, he thought he would begin in a mild fashion, and see how mrs. cliff would take them. "if i was in your place, madam," said he, "the first thing i would do would be to have a lot of servants. there's nothin' money can give a person that's better than plenty of people to do things. lots of them on hand all the time, like the crew of a ship." "but i couldn't do that, mr. burke," said she; "my house is too small. i haven't any place for servants to sleep. when i enlarge my house, of course, i may have more servants." "oh, i wouldn't wait for that," said he; "until then you could board them at the hotel." this suggestion was strongly backed by willy croup, and mrs. cliff took the matter to heart. she collected together a domestic establishment of as many servants as she thought her establishment could possibly provide with work, and, although she did not send them to be guests at the hotel, she obtained lodging for them at the house of a poor woman in the neighborhood. when she had done this, she felt that she had made a step in the direction of doing her duty by her money. mr. burke made another suggestion. "if i was you," said he, "i wouldn't wait for times or seasons, for in these days people build in winter the same as in summer. i would put up that addition just as soon as it could be done." mrs. cliff sighed. "i suppose that's what i should do," said she. "i feel that it is, but you know how i hate to begin it." "but you needn't hate it," said he. "there isn't the least reason in the world for any objection to it. i've a plan which will make it all clear sailin'. i've been thinkin' it out, and this is the way i've thought it." mrs. cliff listened with great attention. "now then," said burke, "next to you on the west is your own lot that you're going to put your new dining-room on. am i right there?" "yes," said mrs. cliff, "you are right there." "well, next to that is the little house inhabited by a family named barnard, i'm told, and next to that there's a large corner lot with an old house on it that's for sale. now then, if i was you, i'd buy that corner lot and clear away the old house, and i'd build my dining-room right there. i'd get a good architect and let him plan you a first-class, a number one, dining-room, with other rooms to it, above it and below it, and around it; with porticos, and piazzas, and little balconies to the second story, and everything that anybody might want attached to a first-class dining-room." mrs. cliff laughed. "but what good would it be to me away up there at the corner of the next street?" "the reason for putting it there," said burke, "is to get clear of all the noise and dirt of building, and the fuss and bother that you dislike so much. and then when it was all finished, and painted, and papered, and the carpets down, if you like, i'd have it moved right up here against your house just where you want it. when everything was in order, and you was ready, you could cut a door right through into the new dining-room, and there you'd be. they've got so in the way of slidin' buildings along on timbers now that they can travel about almost like the old stage coaches, and you needn't have your cellar dug until you're ready to clap your new dining-room right over it." mrs. cliff smiled, and willy listened with open eyes. "but how about the barnard family and their house?" said she. "oh, i'd buy them a lot somewhere else," said he, "and move their house. they wouldn't object if you paid them extra. what i'd have if i was in your place, mrs. cliff, would be a clear lot down to the next street, and i'd have a garden in it with flowers, and gravel walks, and greenhouses, and all that sort of thing." "all stretching itself out in the sunshine under the new dining-room windows!" cried willy croup, with sparkling eyes. mrs. cliff sat and considered, a cheerful glow in her veins. here, really, was an opportunity of stemming the current of her income without shocking any of her social instincts! chapter viii mr. burke begins to make things move in plainton it was not long before mr. burke began to be a very important personage in plainton. it was generally known that he intended to buy land and settle in the neighborhood, and as he was a rich man, evidently inclined to be liberal in his expenditures, this was a matter of great interest both in social and business circles. he often drove out to survey the surrounding country, but when he was perceived several times standing in front of an old house at the corner of the street near mrs. cliff's residence, it was supposed that he might have changed his mind in regard to a country place, and was thinking of building in the town. he was not long considered a stranger in the place. mrs. cliff frequently spoke of him as a valued friend, and there was reason to believe that in the various adventures and dangers of which they had heard, mr. burke had been of great service to their old friend and neighbor, and it was not unlikely that his influence had had a good deal to do with her receipt of a portion of the treasure discovered by the commander of the expedition. several persons had said more than once that they could not see why mrs. cliff should have had any claim upon this treasure, except, perhaps, to the extent of her losses. but if she had had a friend in camp,--and mr. burke was certainly a friend,--it was easy to understand why he would do the best he could, at a time when money was so plenty, for the benefit of one whom he knew to be a widow in straitened circumstances. so mr. burke was looked upon not only as a man of wealth and superior tastes in regard to food and personal comfort, but as a man of a liberal and generous disposition. furthermore, there was no pride about him. often on his return from his drives, his barouche and pair, which mr. williams had obtained in harrington for his guest's express benefit, would stop in front of mrs. cliff's modest residence; and two or three times he had taken that good lady and willy croup to drive with him. but mrs. cliff did not care very much for the barouche. she would have preferred a little phaëton and a horse which she could drive herself. as for her horse and the two-seated wagon, that was declared by most of the ladies of the town to be a piece of absolute extravagance. it was used almost exclusively by willy, who was known to deal with shops in the most distant part of the town in order that she might have an excuse, it was said, to order out that wagon and have andrew marks to drive her. of course they did not know how often mrs. cliff had said to herself that it was really not a waste of money to keep this horse, for willy was no longer young; and if she could save her any weary steps, she ought to do it, and at the same time relieve a little the congested state of her income. moreover, mr. burke was not of an unknown family. he was quite willing to talk about himself, especially to mr. williams, as they sat and smoked together in the evening, and he said a good deal about his father, who had owned two ships at nantucket, and who, according to his son, was one of the most influential citizens of the place. mr. williams had heard of the burkes of nantucket, and he did not think any the less of the one who was now his guest, because his father's ships had come to grief during his boyhood, and he had been obliged to give up a career on shore, which he would have liked, and go to sea, which he did not like. a brave spirit in poverty coupled with a liberal disposition in opulence was enough to place mr. burke on a very high plane in the opinions of the people of plainton. half a mile outside the town, upon a commanding eminence, there was a handsome house which belonged to a family named buskirk. these people were really not of plainton, although their post-office and railroad station were there. they were rich city people who came to this country place for the summer and autumn, and who had nothing to do with the town folks, except in a limited degree to deal with some of them. this family lived in great style, and their coachman and footman in knee breeches, their handsome horses with docked tails, the beautiful grounds about their house, a feebly shooting fountain on the front lawn, were a source of anxious disquietude in the mind of mrs. cliff. they were like the skeletons which were brought in at the feasts of the ancients. "if i should ever be obliged to live like the buskirks on the hill," the good lady would say to herself, "i would wish myself back to what i used to be, asking only that my debts be paid." even the buskirks took notice of mr. burke. in him they thought it possible they might have a neighbor. if he should buy a place and build a fine house somewhere in their vicinity, which they thought the only vicinity in which any one should build a fine house, it might be a very good thing, and would certainly not depreciate the value of their property. a wealthy bachelor might indeed be a more desirable neighbor than a large family. the buskirks had been called upon when they came to plainton a few years before by several families. of course, the clergyman, mr. perley, and his wife, paid them a visit, and the two misses thorpedyke hired a carriage and drove to the house, and, although they did not see the family, they left their cards. after some time these and other calls were returned, but in the most ceremonious manner, and there ended the social intercourse between the fine house on the hill and the town. as the buskirks drove to harrington to church, they did not care about the perleys, and although they seemed somewhat inclined to cultivate the thorpedykes, who were known to be of such an excellent old family, the thorpedykes did not reciprocate the feeling, and, having declined an invitation to tea, received no more. but now mr. buskirk, who had come up on saturday to spend sunday with his family, actually called on mr. burke at the hotel. the wealthy sailor was not at home, and the city gentleman left his card. when mr. burke showed this card to mrs. cliff, her face clouded. "are you going to return the visit?" said she. "oh yes!" answered burke. "some of these days i will drive up and look in on them. i expect they have got a fancy parlor, and i would like to sit in it a while and think of the days when i used to swab the deck. there's nothin' more elevatin', to my mind, than just that sort of thing. i do it sometime when i am eatin' my meals at the hotel, and the better i can bring to mind the bad coffee and hard tack, the better i like what's set before me." mrs. cliff sighed. she wished mr. buskirk had kept away from the hotel. as soon as mrs. cliff had consented to the erection of the new dining-room on the corner lot,--and she did not hesitate after mr. burke had explained to her how easy it would be to do the whole thing almost without her knowing anything about it, if she did not want to bother herself in the matter,--the enterprise was begun. burke, who was of an active mind, and who delighted in managing and directing, undertook to arrange everything. there was no agreement between mrs. cliff and himself that he should do this, but it pleased him so much to do it, and it pleased her so much to have him do it, that it was done as a thing which might be expected to happen naturally. sometimes she said he was giving her too much of his time, but he scorned such an idea. he had nothing to do, for he did not believe that he should buy a place for himself until spring, because he wanted to pick out a spot to live in when the leaves were coming out instead of when they were dropping off, and the best fun he knew of would be to have command of a big crew, and to keep them at work building mrs. cliff's dining-room. "i should be glad to have you attend to the contracts," said mrs. cliff, "and all i ask is, that while you don't waste anything,--for i think it is a sin to waste money no matter how much you may have,--that you will help me as much as you can to make me feel that i really am making use of my income." burke agreed to do all this, always under her advice, of course, and very soon he had his crew, and they were hard at work. he sent to harrington and employed an architect to make plans, and as soon as the general basis of these was agreed upon, the building was put in charge of a contractor, who, under mr. burke, began to collect material and workmen from all available quarters. "we've got to work sharp, for the new building must be moored alongside mrs. cliff's house before the first snowstorm." a lawyer of plainton undertook the purchase of the land and, as the payments were to be made in cash, and as there was no chaffering about prices, this business was soon concluded. as to the barnard family, mr. burke himself undertook negotiations with them. when he had told them of the handsome lot on another street, which would be given them in exchange, and how he would gently slide their house to the new location, and put it down on any part of the lot which they might choose, and guaranteed that it should be moved so gently that the clocks would not stop ticking, nor the tea or coffee spill out of their cups, if they chose to take their meals on board during the voyage; and as, furthermore, he promised a handsome sum to recompense them for the necessity of leaving behind their well, which he could not undertake to move, and for any minor inconveniences and losses, their consent to the change of location was soon obtained. four days after this burke started the barnard house on its travels. as soon as he had made his agreement with the family, he had brought a man down from harrington, whose business it was to move houses, and had put the job into his hands. he stipulated that at one o'clock p.m. on the day agreed upon the house was to begin to move, and he arranged with the mason to whom he had given the contract for preparing the cellar on the new lot, that he should begin operations at the same hour. he then offered a reward of two hundred dollars to be given to the mover if he got his house to its destination before the cellar was done, or to the mason if he finished the cellar before the house arrived. the barnards had an early dinner, which was cooked on a kerosene stove, their chimney having been taken down, but they had not finished washing the dishes when their house began to move. mrs. cliff and willy ran to bid them good-bye, and all the barnards, old and young, leaned out of a back window and shook hands. mr. burke had arranged a sort of gang-plank with a railing if any of them wanted to go on shore--that is, step on terra firma--during the voyage. but samuel rolands, the mover, heedful of his special prize, urged upon them not to get out any oftener than could be helped, because when they wished to use the gang-plank he would be obliged to stop. there were two boys in the family who were able to jump off and on whenever they pleased, but boys are boys, and very different from other people. houses had been moved in plainton before, but never had any inhabitants of the place beheld a building glide along upon its timber course with, speaking comparatively, the rapidity of this travelling home. most of the citizens of the place who had leisure, came at some time that afternoon to look at the moving house, and many of them walked by its side, talking to the barnards, who, as the sun was warm, stood at an open window, very much excited by the spirit of adventure, and quite willing to converse. over and over they assured their neighbors that they would never know they were moving if they did not see the trees and things slowly passing by them. as they crossed the street and passed between two houses on the opposite side, the inhabitants of these gathered at their windows, and the conversation was very lively with the barnards, as the house of the latter passed slowly by. all night that house moved on, and the young people of the village accompanied it until eleven o'clock, when the barnards went to bed. mr. burke divided his time between watching the moving house, at which all the men who could be employed in any way, and all the horses which could be conveniently attached to the windlasses, were working in watches of four hours each, in order to keep them fresh and vigorous,--and the lot where the new cellar was being constructed, where the masons continued their labors at night by the light of lanterns and a blazing bonfire fed with resinous pine. the excitement caused by these two scenes of activity was such that it is probable that few of the people of the town went to bed sooner than the barnard family. early the next morning the two barnard boys looked out of the window of their bedroom and saw beneath them the hastings' barnyard, with the hastings boy milking. they were so excited by this vision that they threw their shoes and stockings out at him, having no other missiles convenient, and for nearly half an hour he followed that house, trying to toss the articles back through the open window, while the cow stood waiting for the milking to be finished. on the evening of the third day after its departure from its original position, the barnard house arrived on the new lot, and, to the disgust of samuel rolands, he found the cellar entirely finished and ready for him to place the house upon it. but mr. burke, who had been quite sure that this would be the result of the competition, comforted him by telling him that as he had done his best, he too should have a prize equal to that given to the mason. this had been suggested by mrs. cliff, because, she said, that as they were both hard-working men with families, and although the house-mover was not a citizen of plainton, he had once lived there, she was very glad of this opportunity of helping them along. as soon as this important undertaking had been finished, mr. burke was able to give his sole attention to the new dining-room on the corner lot. he and the architect had worked hard upon the plans, and when they were finished they had been shown to mrs. cliff. she understood them in a general way, and was very glad to see that such ample provisions had been made in regard to closets, though she was not able to perceive with her mind's eye the exact dimensions of a room nineteen by twenty-seven, nor to appreciate the difference between a ceiling twelve feet high, and another which was nine. however, having told mr. burke and the architect what she wanted, and both of them having told her what she ought to have, she determined to leave the whole matter in their hands. this resolution was greatly approved by her sailor friend, for, as the object of the plan of construction was to relieve her of all annoyance consequent upon building operations, the more she left everything to those who delighted in the turmoil of construction, the better it would be for all. everything had been done in the plans to prevent interference with the neatness and comfort of mrs. cliff's present abode. the door of the new dining-room was so arranged that when it was moved up to the old house, it would exactly fit against a door in the latter which opened from a side hall upon a little porch. this porch being removed, the two doors would fit exactly to each other, and there would be none of the dust and noise consequent upon the cutting away of walls. so mrs. cliff and willy lived on in peace, comfort, and quiet in their old home, while on the corner lot there was hammering, and banging, and sawing all day. mr. burke would have had this work go on by night, but the contractor refused. his men would work extra hours in consideration of extra inducements, but good carpenter work, he declared, could not be done by lantern light. the people of plainton did not at all understand the operations on the corner lot. mr. burke did not tell them much about it, and the contractor was not willing to talk. he had some doubts in regard to the scheme, but as he was well paid, he would do his best. it had been mentioned that the new building was to be mrs. cliff's dining-room, but this idea soon faded out of the plainton mind, which was not adapted to grasp and hold it. consequently, as mr. burke had a great deal to do with the building, and as mrs. cliff did not appear to be concerned in it at all, it was generally believed that the gentleman at the hotel was putting up a house for himself on the corner lot. this knowledge was the only conclusion which would explain the fact that the house was built upon smooth horizontal timbers, and not upon a stone or brick foundation. a man who had been a sailor might fancy to build a house something as he would build a ship in a shipyard, and not attach it permanently to the earth. chapter ix a meeting of heirs while the building operations were going on at such a rapid rate on the corner lot, mrs. cliff tried to make herself as happy as possible in her own home. she liked having enough servants to do all the work, and relieve both her and willy. she liked to be able to drive out when she wanted to, or to invite a few of her friends to dinner or to tea, and to give them the very best the markets afforded of everything she thought they might like; but she was not a satisfied woman. it was true that mr. burke was doing all that he could with her money, and doing it well, she had not the slightest doubt; but, after all, a new dining-room was a matter of small importance. she had fears that even after it was all finished and paid for she would find that her income had gained upon her. as often as once a day the argument came to her that it would be wise for her to give away the bulk of her fortune in charity, and thus rid herself of the necessity for this depressing struggle between her desire to live as she wanted to live, and the obligations to herself under which her fortune placed her; but she could not consent to thus part with her great fortune. she would not turn her back upon her golden opportunities. as soon as she had so determined her life that the assertion of her riches would not interfere with her domestic and social affairs, she would be charitable enough, she would do good works upon a large scale; but she must first determine what she was to do for herself, and so let her charities begin at home. this undecided state of mind did not have a good effect upon her general appearance, and it was frequently remarked that her health was not what it used to be. miss nancy shott thought there was nothing to wonder at in this. mrs. cliff had never been accustomed to spend money, and it was easy to see, from the things she had bought abroad and put into that little house, that she had expended a good deal more than she could afford, and no wonder she was troubled, and no wonder she was looking thin and sick. other friends, however, did not entirely agree with miss shott. they thought their old friend was entirely too sensible a woman to waste a fortune, whether it had been large or small, which had come to her in so wonderful a manner; and they believed she had money enough to live on very comfortably. if this were not the case, she would never consent to keep a carriage almost for willy croup's sole use. they thought, perhaps, that the example and companionship of mr. burke might have had an effect upon her. it was as likely as not that she had borne part of the expense of moving the barnard house, so that there should be nothing between her and the new building. but this, as they said themselves, was mere surmise. mr. burke might fancy large grounds, and he was certainly able to have them if he wanted them. whatever people said and thought about mrs. cliff and her money, it was generally believed that she was in comfortable circumstances. still, it had to be admitted that she was getting on in years. now arose a very important question among the gossips of plainton: who was to be mrs. cliff's heir? everybody knew that mrs. cliff had but one blood relation living, and that was willy croup, and no one who had given any thought whatever to the subject believed that willy croup would be her heir. her husband had some distant relatives, but, as they had had nothing to do with mrs. cliff during the days of her adversity, it was not likely that she would now have anything to do with them. especially, as any money she had to leave did not come through her husband. but, although the simple-minded willy croup was a person who would not know how to take care of money if she had it, and although everybody knew that if mrs. cliff made a will she would never think of leaving her property to willy, still, everybody who thought or talked about the matter saw the appalling fact staring them in their faces--that if mrs. cliff died without a will, willy would inherit her possessions! the more it was considered, the more did this unpleasant contingency trouble the minds of certain of the female citizens of plainton. miss cushing, the principal dressmaker of the place, was greatly concerned upon this subject, and as her parlor, where she generally sat at her work, was a favorite resort of certain ladies, who sometimes had orders to give, and always had a great deal to say, it was natural that those good women who took most to heart mrs. cliff's heirless condition should think of miss cushing whenever they were inclined to talk upon the subject. miss shott dropped in there one day with a very doleful countenance. that very morning she had passed mrs. cliff's house on the other side of the way, and had seen that poor widow standing in her front yard with the most dejected and miserable countenance she had ever seen on a human being. "people might talk as much as they pleased about mrs. cliff being troubled because she had spent too much money, that all might be, or it might not be, but it was not the reason for that woman looking as if she was just ready to drop into a sick-bed. when people go to the most unhealthy regions in the whole world, and live in holes in the ground like hedgehogs, they cannot expect to come home without seeds of disease in their system, which are bound to come out. and that those seeds were now coming out in mrs. cliff no sensible person could look at her and deny." when miss cushing heard this, she felt more strongly convinced than ever of the importance of the subject upon which she and some of her friends had been talking. but she said nothing in regard to that subject to miss shott. what she had to say and what she had already said about the future of mrs. cliff's property, and what her particular friends had said, were matters which none of them wanted repeated, and when a citizen of plainton did not wish anything repeated, it was not told to miss shott. but after miss shott had gone, there came in mrs. ferguson, a widow lady, and shortly afterwards, miss inchman, a middle-aged spinster, accompanied by mrs. wells and mrs. archibald, these latter both worthy matrons of the town. mrs. archibald really came to talk to miss cushing about a winter dress, but during the subsequent conversation she made no reference to this errand. miss cushing was relating to mrs. ferguson what nancy had told her when the other ladies came in, but nancy shott had stopped in at each of their houses and had already given them the information. "nancy always makes out things a good deal worse than they are," said mrs. archibald, "but there's truth in what she says. mrs. cliff is failing; everybody can see that!" "of course they can," said miss cushing, "and i say that if she has any friends in plainton,--and everybody knows she has,--it's time for them to do something!" "the trouble is, what to do, and who is to do it," remarked mrs. ferguson. "what to do is easy enough," said miss cushing, "but who is to do it is another matter." "and what would you do?" asked mrs. wells. "if she feels she needs a doctor, she has sense enough to send for one without waiting until her friends speak about it." "the doctor is a different thing altogether!" said miss cushing. "if he comes and cures her, that's neither here nor there. it isn't the point! but the danger is, that, whether he comes or not, she is a woman well on in years, with a constitution breaking down under her,--that is as far as appearances go, for of course i can't say anything positive about it,--and she has nobody to inherit her money, and as far as anybody knows she has never made a will!" "oh, she has never made a will," said mrs. wells, "because my john is in the office, and if mrs. cliff had ever come there on such business, he would know about it." "but she ought to make a will," said miss cushing. "that's the long and short of it; and she ought to have a friend who would tell her so. that would be no more than a christian duty which any one of us would owe to another, if cases were changed." "i don't look upon mrs. cliff as such a very old woman," said miss inchman, "but i agree with you that this thing ought to be put before her. willy croup will never do it, and really if some one of us don't, i don't know who will." "there's mrs. perley," said mrs. archibald. "oh, she'd never do!" struck in miss cushing. "mrs. perley is too timid. she would throw it off on her husband, and if he talks to mrs. cliff about a will, her money will all go to the church or to some charity. i should say that one of us ought to take on herself this friendly duty. of course, it would not do to go to her and blurt out that we all thought she would not live very long, and that she ought to make her will; but conversation could be led to the matter, and when mrs. cliff got to consider her own case, i haven't a doubt but that she would be glad to have advice and help from an old friend." all agreed that this was a very correct view of the case, but not one of them volunteered to go and talk to mrs. cliff on the subject. this was not from timidity, nor from an unwillingness to meddle in other people's business, but from a desire on the part of each not to injure herself in mrs. cliff's eyes by any action which might indicate that she had a personal interest in the matter. miss cushing voiced the opinion of the company when she said: "when a person has no heirs, relatives ought to be considered first, but if there are none of these, or if they aren't suitable, then friends should come in. of course, i mean the oldest and best friends of the party without heirs." no remark immediately followed this, for each lady was thinking that she, probably more than any one else in plainton, had a claim upon mrs. cliff's attention if she were leaving her property to her friends, as she certainly ought to do. in years gone by mrs. cliff had been a very kind friend to miss cushing. she had loaned her money, and assisted her in various ways, and since her return to plainton she had put a great deal of work into miss cushing's hands. dress after dress for willy croup had been made, and material for others was still lying in the house; and mrs. cliff herself had ordered so much work, that at this moment miss cushing had two girls upstairs sewing diligently upon it. having experienced all this kindness, miss cushing felt that if mrs. cliff left any of her money to her friends, she would certainly remember her, and that right handsomely. if anybody spoke to mrs. cliff upon the subject, she would insist, and she thought she had a right to insist, that her name should be brought in prominently. mrs. ferguson had also well-defined opinions upon the subject. she had two daughters who were more than half grown, had learned all that they could be taught in plainton, and she was very anxious to send them away to school, where their natural talents could be properly cultivated. she felt that she owed a deep and solemn duty to these girls, and she had already talked to mrs. cliff about them. the latter had taken a great deal of interest in the matter, and although she had not said she would help mrs. ferguson to properly educate these girls, for she had not asked her help, she had taken so much interest in the matter that their mother had great hopes. and if this widow without any children felt inclined to assist the children of others during her life, how much more willing would she be likely to be to appropriate a portion of what she left behind her to such an object! mrs. wells and mrs. archibald had solid claims upon mrs. cliff. it was known that shortly after the death of her husband, when she found it difficult to make collections and was very much in need of money for immediate expenses, they had each made loans to her. it is true that even before she started for south america she had repaid these loans with full legal interest. but the two matrons could not forget that they had been kind to her, nor did they believe that mrs. cliff had forgotten what they had done, for the presents she had brought them from france were generally considered as being more beautiful and more valuable than those given to anybody else,--except the thorpedykes and the perleys. this indicated a very gratifying gratitude upon which the two ladies, each for herself, had every right to build very favorable hopes. miss inchman and mrs. cliff had been school-fellows, and when they were both grown young women there had been a good deal of doubt which one of them william cliff would marry. he made his choice, and susan inchman never showed by word or deed that she begrudged him to her friend, to whom she had always endeavored to show just as much kindly feeling as if there had been two william cliffs, and each of the young women had secured one of them. if mrs. cliff, now a widow with money enough to live well upon and keep a carriage, was making out her will, and was thinking of her friends in plainton, it would be impossible for her to forget one who was the oldest friend of all. so it is easy to see why she did not want to go to mrs. cliff and prejudice her against herself, by stating that she ought to make a will for the benefit of the old friends who had always loved and respected her. miss cushing now spoke. she knew what each member of the little company was thinking about, and she felt that it might as well be spoken of. "it does seem to me," said she, "and i never would have thought of it, if it hadn't been for the talk we had,--that we five are the persons that mrs. cliff would naturally mention in her will, not, perhaps, regarding any money she might have to leave--" "i don't see why!" interrupted mrs. ferguson. "well, that's neither here nor there," continued miss cushing. "money is money, and nobody knows what people will do with it when they die, and if she leaves anything to the church or to charity, it's her money! but i'm sure that mrs. cliff has too much hard sense to order her executors to sell all the beautiful rugs, and table-covers, and glass, and china, and the dear knows what besides is in her house at this moment! they wouldn't bring anything at a sale, and she would naturally think of leaving them to her friends. some might get more and some might get less, but we five in this room at this present moment are the old friends that mrs. cliff would naturally remember. and if any one of us ever sees fit to speak to her on the subject, we're the people who should be mentioned when the proper opportunity comes to make such mention." "you're forgetting willy croup," said mrs. wells. "no," answered miss cushing, a little sharply, "i don't forget her, but i'll have nothing to do with her. i don't suppose she'll be forgotten, but whatever is done for her or whatever is not done for her is not our business. it's my private opinion, however, that she's had a good deal already!" "well," said mrs. ferguson, "i suppose that what you say is all right,--at least i've no objections to any of it; but whoever's going to speak to her, it mustn't be me, because she knows i've daughters to educate, and she'd naturally think that if i spoke i was principally speaking for myself, and that would set her against me, which i wouldn't do for the world. and whatever other people may say, i believe she will have money to leave." miss cushing hesitated for a moment, and then spoke up boldly. "it's my opinion," said she, "that miss inchman is the proper person to speak to mrs. cliff on this important subject. she's known her all her life, from the time when they were little girls together, and when they were both grown she made sacrifices for her which none of the rest of us had the chance to make. "now, for miss inchman to go and open the subject in a gradual and friendly way would be the right and proper thing, no matter how you look at it, and it's my opinion that we who are now here should ask her to go and speak, not in our names perhaps, but out of good-will and kindness to us as well as to mrs. cliff." mrs. wells was a lady who was in the habit of saying things at the wrong time, and she now remarked, "we've forgotten the thorpedykes! you know, mrs. cliff--" miss cushing leaned forward, her face reddened. "bother the thorpedykes!" she exclaimed. "they're no more than acquaintances, and ought not to be spoken of at all. and as for mrs. perley, if any one's thinking of her, she's only been here four years, and that gives her no claim whatever, considering that we've been lifelong friends and neighbors of sarah cliff. "and now, in behalf of all of us, i ask you, miss inchman, will you speak to mrs. cliff?" miss inchman was rather a small woman, spare in figure, and she wore glasses, which seemed to be of a peculiar kind, for while they enabled her to see through them into surrounding space, they did not allow people who looked at her to see through them into her eyes. people often remarked that you could not tell the color of miss inchman's eyes when she had her spectacles on. thus it was that although her eyes were sometimes brighter than at other times, and this could be noticed through her spectacles, it was difficult to understand her expression and to discover whether she was angry or amused. now miss inchman's eyes behind her spectacles brightened very much as she looked from miss cushing to the other members of the little party who had constituted themselves the heirs of mrs. cliff. none of them could judge from her face what she was likely to say, but they all waited to hear what she would say. at this moment the door opened, and mrs. cliff entered the parlor. chapter x the intellect of miss inchman it was true that on that morning mrs. cliff had been standing in her front yard looking as her best friends would not have liked her to look. there was nothing physically the matter with her, but she was dissatisfied and somewhat disturbed in her mind. mr. burke was so busy nowadays that when he stopped in to see her it was only for a few minutes, and willy croup had developed a great facility in discovering things which ought to be attended to in various parts of the town, and of going to attend to them with andrew marks to drive her. not only did mrs. cliff feel that she was left more to herself than she liked, but she had the novel experience of not being able to find interesting occupation. she was was glad to have servants who could perform all the household duties, and could have done more if they had had a chance. still, it was unpleasant to feel that she herself could do so little to fill up her unoccupied moments. so she put on a shawl and went into her front yard, simply to walk about and get a little of the fresh air. but when she went out of the door, she stood still contemplating the front fence. here was a fence which had been an eyesore to her for two or three years! she believed she had money enough to fence in the whole state, and yet those shabby palings and posts must offend her eye every time she came out of her door! the flowers were nearly all dead now, and she would have had a new fence immediately, but mr. burke had dissuaded her, saying that when the new dining-room was brought over from the corner lot there would have to be a fence around the whole premises, and it would be better to have it all done at once. "there are so many things which i can afford just as well as not," she said to herself, "and which i cannot do!" and it was the unmistakable doleful expression upon her countenance, as she thought this, which was the foundation of miss shott's remarks to her neighbors on the subject of mrs. cliff's probable early demise. miss shott was passing on the other side of the street, and she was walking rapidly, but she could see more out of the corner of her eye than most people could see when they were looking straight before them at the same things. suddenly mrs. cliff determined that she must do something. she felt blue,--she wanted to talk to somebody. and, feeling thus, she naturally went into the house, put on her bonnet and her wrap, and walked down to see miss cushing. there was not anything in particular that she wanted to see her about, but there was work going on and she might talk about it; or, it might happen that she would be inclined to give some orders. she was always glad to do anything she could to help that hard-working and kind-hearted neighbor! when mrs. cliff entered the parlor of miss cushing, five women each gave a sudden start. the dressmaker was so thrown off her balance that she dropped her sewing on the floor, and rising, went forward to shake her visitor by the hand, a thing she was not in the habit of doing to anybody, because, as is well known to all the world, a person who is sewing for a livelihood cannot get up to shake hands with the friends and acquaintances who may happen in upon her. at this the other ladies rose and shook hands, and it might have been supposed that the new-comer had just returned from a long absence. then miss cushing gave mrs. cliff a chair, and they all sat down again. mrs. cliff looked about her with a smile. the sight of these old friends cheered her. all her blues were beginning to fade, as that color always fades in any kind of sunshine. "i'm glad to see so many of you together," she said. "it almost seems as if you were having some sort of meeting. what is it about,--can't i join in?" at this there was a momentary silence which threatened to become very embarrassing if it continued a few seconds more, and miss cushing was on the point of telling the greatest lie of her career, trusting that the other heirs would stand by her and support her in whatever statements she made, feeling as they must the absolute necessity of saying something instantly. but miss inchman spoke before any one else had a chance to do so. "you're right, mrs. cliff," said she, "we are considering something! we didn't come here on purpose to talk about it, but we happened in together, and so we thought we would talk it over. and we all came to the conclusion that it was something which ought to be mentioned to you, and i was asked to speak to you about it." four simultaneous gasps were now heard in that little parlor, and four chills ran down the backs of four self-constituted heirs. "i must say, susan," remarked mrs. cliff, with a good-humored smile, "if you want me to do anything, there's no need of being so wonderfully formal about it! if any one of you, or all of you together, for that matter, have anything to say to me, all you had to do was to come and say it." "they didn't seem to think that way," said miss inchman. "they all thought that what was to be said would come better from me because i'd known you so long, and we had grown up together." "it must be something out of the common," said mrs. cliff. "what in the world can it be? if you are to speak, susan, speak out at once! let's have it!" "that's just what i'm going to do," said miss inchman. if mrs. cliff had looked around at the four heirs who were sitting upright in their chairs, gazing in horror at miss inchman, she would have been startled, and, perhaps, frightened. but she did not see them. she was so much interested in what her old friend susan was saying, that she gave to her her whole attention. but now that their appointed spokeswoman had announced her intention of immediately declaring the object of the meeting, each one of them felt that this was no place for her! but, notwithstanding this feeling, not one of them moved to go. miss cushing, of course, had no excuse for leaving, for this was her own house; and although the others might have pleaded errands, a power stronger than their disposition to fly--stronger even than their fears of what mrs. cliff might say to them when she knew all--kept them in their seats. the spell of self-interest was upon them and held them fast. whatever was said and whatever was done they must be there! at this supreme moment they could not leave the room. they nerved themselves, they breathed hard, and listened! "you see, sarah," said miss inchman, "we must all die!" "that's no new discovery," answered mrs. cliff, and the remark seemed to her so odd that she looked around at the rest of the company to see how they took it; and she was thereupon impressed with the idea that some of them had not thought of this great truth of late, and that its sudden announcement had thrown them into a shocked solemnity. but the soul of miss cushing was more than shocked,--it was filled with fury! if there had been in that room at that instant a loaded gun pointed towards miss inchman, miss cushing would have pulled the trigger. this would have been wicked, she well knew, and contrary to her every principle, but never before had she been confronted by such treachery! "well," continued miss inchman, "as we must die, we ought to make ourselves ready for it in every way that we can. and we've been thinking--" at this moment the endurance of mrs. ferguson gave way. the pace and the strain were too great for her. each of the others had herself to think for, but she had not only herself, but two daughters. she gave a groan, her head fell back, her eyes closed, and with a considerable thump she slipped from her chair to the floor. instantly every one screamed and sprang towards her. "what in the world is the matter with her?" cried mrs. cliff, as she assisted the others to raise the head of the fainting woman and to loosen her dress. "oh, i suppose it's the thought of her late husband!" promptly replied miss inchman, who felt that it devolved on her to say something, and that quickly. mrs. cliff looked up in amazement. "and what has mr. ferguson to do with anything?" she asked. "oh, it's the new cemetery i was going to talk to you about," said miss inchman. "it has been spoken of a good deal since you went away, and we all thought that if you'd agree to go into it--" "go into it!" cried mrs. cliff, in horror. "i mean, join with the people who are in favor of it," said miss inchman. "i haven't time to explain,--she's coming to now, if you'll all let her alone! all i've time to say is, that those who had husbands in the old graveyard and might perhaps be inclined to move them and put up monuments, had the right to be first spoken to. although, of course, it's a subject which everybody doesn't care to speak about, and as for mrs. ferguson, it's no wonder, knowing her as we do, that she went off in this way when she knew what i was going to say, although, in fact, i wasn't in the least thinking of mr. ferguson!" the speaker had barely time to finish before the unfortunate lady who had fainted, opened her eyes, looked about her, and asked where she was. and now that she had revived, no further reference could be made to the unfortunate subject which had caused her to swoon. "i don't see," said mrs. cliff, as she stood outside with miss inchman, a few minutes later, "why mr. ferguson's removal--i'm sure it isn't necessary to make it if she doesn't want to--should trouble mrs. ferguson any more than the thought of mr. cliff's removal troubles me. i'm perfectly willing to do what i can for the new cemetery, and nobody need think i'm such a nervous hysterical person that i'm in danger of popping over if the subject is mentioned to me. so when you all are ready to have another meeting, i hope you will let me know!" when mrs. ferguson felt herself well enough to sit up and take a glass of water, with something stimulating in it, she was informed of the nature of the statements which had been finally made to mrs. cliff. "you know, of course," added miss cushing, still pale from unappeased rage, "that that susan inchman began as she did, just to spite us!" "it's just like her!" said mrs. archibald. "but i never could have believed that such a dried codfish of a woman could have so much intellect!" chapter xi the arrival of the new dining-room the little meeting at the house of miss cushing resulted in something very different from the anticipations of those ladies who had consulted together for the purpose of constituting themselves the heirs of mrs. cliff. that good lady being then very much in want of something to do was so pleased with the idea of a new cemetery that she entered into the scheme with great earnestness. she was particularly pleased with this opportunity of making good use of her money, because, having been asked by others to join them in this work, she was not obliged to pose as a self-appointed public benefactor. mrs. cliff worked so well in behalf of the new cemetery and subscribed so much money towards it, through mr. perley, that it was not many months before it became the successor to the little crowded graveyard near the centre of the town; and the remains of mr. cliff were removed to a handsome lot and overshadowed by a suitable monument. mrs. ferguson, however, in speaking with mrs. cliff upon the subject, was happy to have an opportunity of assuring her that she thought it much better to devote her slender means to the education of her daughters than to the removal of her late husband to a more eligible resting-place. "i'm sure he's done very well as he is for all these years," she said, "and if he could have a voice in the matter, i'm quite sure that he would prefer his daughters' education to his own removal." mrs. cliff did not wish to make any offer which might hurt mrs. ferguson's very sensitive feelings, but she said that she had no doubt that arrangements could be made by which mr. ferguson's transfer could be effected without interfering with any plans which might have been made for the benefit of his daughters; but, although this remark did not satisfy mrs. ferguson, she was glad of even this slight opportunity of bringing the subject of her daughters' education before the consideration of her friend. as to the other would-be heirs, they did not immediately turn upon miss inchman and rend her in revenge for the way in which she had tricked and frightened them, for there was no knowing what such a woman would do if she were exasperated, and not for the world would they have mrs. cliff find out the real subject of their discussion on that unlucky morning when she made herself decidedly one too many in miss cushing's parlor. consequently, all attempts at concerted action were dropped, and each for herself determined that mrs. cliff should know that she was a true friend, and to trust to the good lady's well-known gratitude and friendly feeling when the time should come for her to apportion her worldly goods among the dear ones she would leave behind her. there were certain articles in mrs. cliff's house for which each of her friends had a decided admiration, and remarks were often made which it was believed would render it impossible for mrs. cliff to make a mistake when she should be planning her will, and asking herself to whom she should give this, and to whom that? it was about a week after the events in miss cushing's parlor, that something occurred which sent a thrill through the souls of a good many people in plainton, affecting them more or less according to their degree of sensibility. willy croup, who had been driven about the town attending to various matters of business and pleasure, was informed by andrew marks, as she alighted about four o'clock in the afternoon at the house of an acquaintance, that he hoped she would not stop very long because he had some business of his own to attend to that afternoon, and he wanted to get the horse cared for and the cow milked as early as possible, so that he might lock up the barn and go away. to this willy answered that he need not wait for her, for she could easily walk home when she had finished her visit. but when she left the house, after a protracted call, she did not walk very far, for it so happened that mr. burke, who had found leisure that afternoon to take a drive in his barouche, came up behind her, and very naturally stopped and offered to take her home. willy, quite as naturally, accepted the polite proposition and seated herself in the barouche by the side of the fur-trimmed overcoat and the high silk hat. thus it was that the people of the town who were in the main street that afternoon, or who happened to be at doors or windows; that the very birds of the air, hopping about on trees or house-tops; that the horses, dogs, and cats; that even the insects, whose constitutions were strong enough to enable them to buzz about in the autumn sunlight, beheld the startling sight of willy croup and the fine gentleman at the hotel riding together, side by side, in broad daylight, through the most public street of the town. once before these two had been seen together out of doors, but then they had been walking, and almost any two people who knew each other and who might be walking in the same direction, could, without impropriety walk side by side and converse as they went; but now the incident was very different. it created a great impression, not all to the advantage of mr. burke, for, after the matter had been very thoroughly discussed, it was generally conceded that he must be no better than a fortune-hunter. otherwise, why should he be paying attention to willy croup, who, as everybody knew, was not a day under forty-five years old, and therefore at least ten years older than the gentleman at the hotel. in regard to the fortune which he was hunting, there was no difference of opinion; whatever mrs. cliff's fortune might be, this mr. burke wanted it. of course, he would not endeavor to gain his object by marrying the widow, for she was entirely too old for him; but if he married willy, her only relative, that would not be quite so bad as to age, and there could be no doubt that these two would ultimately come into mrs. cliff's fortune, which was probably more than had been generally supposed. she had always been very close-mouthed about her affairs, and there were some who said that even in her early days of widowhood she might have been more stingy than she was poor. she must have considerable property, or mr. burke would not be so anxious to get it. thus it happened that the eventful drive in the barouche had a very different effect upon the reputations of the three persons concerned. mr. burke was lowered from his position as a man of means enjoying his fortune, for even his building operations were probably undertaken for the purpose of settling himself in mrs. cliff's neighborhood, and so being able to marry willy as soon as possible. willy croup, although everybody spoke of her conduct as absolutely ridiculous and even shameful, rose in public estimation simply from the belief that she was about to marry a man who, whatever else he might be, was of imposing appearance and was likely to be rich. as to mrs. cliff, there could be no doubt that the general respect for her was on the increase. if she were rich enough to attract mr. burke to the town, she was probably rich enough to do a good many other things, and after all it might be that that new house at the corner was being built with her money. miss shott was very industrious and energetic in expressing her opinion of mr. burke. "there's a chambermaid at the hotel," she said, "who's told me a lot of things about him, and it's very plain to my mind that he isn't the gentleman that he makes himself out to be! his handkerchiefs and his hair-brush aren't the kind that go with fur overcoats and high hats, and she has often seen him stop in the hall downstairs and black his own boots! everybody knows he was a sailor, but as to his ever having commanded a vessel, i don't believe a word of it! but willy croup and that man needn't count on their schemes coming out all right, for sarah cliff isn't any older than i am, and she's just as likely to outlive them as she is to die before them!" the fact that nobody had ever said that burke had commanded a vessel, and that miss shott had started the belief that mrs. cliff was in a rapid decline, entirely escaped the attention of her hearers, so interested were they in the subject of the unworthiness of the fine gentleman at the hotel. winter had not yet really set in when george burke, who had perceived no reason to imagine that he had made a drop in public estimation, felt himself stirred by emotions of triumphant joy. the new building on the corner lot was on the point of completion! workmen and master-workmen, mechanics and laborers, had swarmed in, over, and about the new edifice in such numbers that sometimes they impeded each other. close upon the heels of the masons came the carpenters, and following them the plumbers and the plasterers; while the painters impatiently restrained themselves in order to give their predecessors time to get out of their way. the walls and ceilings were covered with the plaster which would dry the quickest, and the paper-hangers entered the rooms almost before the plasterers could take away their trowels and their lime-begrimed hats and coats. cleaners with their brooms and pails jostled the mechanics, as the latter left the various rooms, and everywhere strode mr. burke. he had made up his mind that the building must be ready to move into the instant it arrived at its final destination. it was a very different building from what mrs. cliff had proposed to herself when she decided to add a dining-room to her old house. it was so different indeed, that after having gone two or three times to look upon the piles of lumber and stone and the crowds of men, digging, and hammering, and sawing on the corner lot, she had decided to leave the whole matter in the hands of mr. burke, the architect, and the contractor. and when willy croup endeavored to explain to her what was going on, she always stopped her, saying that she would wait until it was done and then she would understand it. mr. burke too had urged her, especially as the building drew near to completion, not to bother herself in the least about it, but to give him the pleasure of presenting it to her entirely finished and ready for occupancy. so even the painting and paper-hanging had been left to a professional decorator, and mrs. cliff assured burke that she was perfectly willing to wait for the new dining-room until it was ready for her. this dining-room, large and architecturally handsome, was planned, as has been said, so that one of its doors should fit exactly against the side hall door of the little house, but the other door of the dining-room opened into a wide and elegant hall, at one end of which was a portico and spacious front steps. on the other side of this hall was a handsome drawing-room, and behind the drawing-room and opening into it, an alcove library with a broad piazza at one side of it. back of the dining-room was a spacious kitchen, with pantries, closets, scullery, and all necessary adjuncts. in the second and third stories of the edifice were large and beautiful bedrooms, small and neat bedrooms, bath-rooms, servants' rooms, trunk-rooms, and every kind of room that modern civilization demands. now that the building was finished, mr. burke almost regretted that he had not constructed it upon the top of a hill in order that he might have laid his smooth and slippery timbers from the eminence to the side of mrs. cliff's house, so that when all should be ready he could have knocked away the blocks which held the building, so that he could have launched it as if it had been a ship, and could have beheld it sliding gracefully and rapidly from its stocks into its appointed position. but as this would probably have resulted in razing mrs. cliff's old house to the level of the ground, he did not long regret that he had not been able to afford himself the pleasure of this grand spectacle. the night before the day on which the new building was to be moved, the lot next to mrs. cliff's house was covered by masons, laborers, and wagons hauling stones, and by breakfast-time the next morning the new cellar was completed. almost immediately the great timbers, which, polished and greased, had been waiting for several days, were put in their places, and the great steam engines and windlasses, which had been ready as long a time, were set in motion. and, as the house began to move upon its course, it almost missed a parting dab from the brush of a painter who was at work upon some final trimming. that afternoon, as mrs. cliff happened to be in her dining-room, she remarked to willy that it was getting dark very early, but she would not pull up the blind of the side window, because she would then look out on the new cellar, and she had promised mr. burke not to look at anything until he had told her to do so. willy, who had looked out of the side door at least fifty times that day, knew that the early darkness was caused by the shadows thrown by a large building slowly approaching from the west. when mrs. cliff came downstairs the next morning she was met by willy, very much excited, who told her that mr. burke wished to see her. "where is he?" said she. "at the dining-room door," answered willy, and as mrs. cliff turned towards the little room in which she had been accustomed to take her meals, willy seized her hand and led her into the side hall. there, in the open doorway, stood mr. burke, his high silk hat in one hand, and the other outstretched towards her. "welcome to your new dining-room, madam!" said he, as he took her hand and led her into the great room, which seemed to her, as she gazed in amazement about her, like a beautiful public hall. we will not follow mrs. cliff, willy, and the whole body of domestic servants, as they passed through the halls and rooms of that grand addition to mrs. cliff's little house. "carpets and furniture is all that you want, madam!" said burke, "and then you're at home!" when mrs. cliff had been upstairs and downstairs, and into every chamber, and when she had looked out of the window and had beheld hundreds of men at work upon the grounds and putting up fences; and when mr. burke had explained to her that the people at the back of the lot were beginning to erect a stable and carriage house,--for no dining-room such as she had was complete, he assured her, without handsome quarters for horses and carriages,--she left him and went downstairs by herself. as she stood by the great front door and looked up at the wide staircase, and into the lofty rooms upon each side, there came to her, rising above all sentiments of amazement, delight, and pride in her new possessions, a feeling of animated and inspiring encouragement. the mists of doubt and uncertainty, which had hung over her, began to clear away. this noble edifice must have cost grandly! and, for the first time, she began to feel that she might yet be equal to her fortune. chapter xii the thorpedyke sisters the new and grand addition to mrs. cliff's house, which had been so planned that the little house to which it had been joined appeared to be an architecturally harmonious adjunct to it, caused a far greater sensation in plainton than the erection of any of the public buildings therein. its journey from the corner lot was watched by hundreds of spectators, and now mrs. cliff, willy, and mr. burke spent day and evening in exhibiting and explaining this remarkable piece of building enterprise. mr. burke was very jolly. he took no credit to himself for the planning of the house, which, as he truthfully said, had been the work of an architect who had suggested what was proper and had been allowed to do it. but he did feel himself privileged to declare that if every crew building a house were commanded by a person of marine experience, things would move along a good deal more briskly than they generally did, and to this assertion he found no one to object. mrs. cliff was very happy in wandering over her new rooms, and in assuring herself that no matter how grand they might be when they were all furnished and fitted up, nothing had been done which would interfere with the dear old home which she had loved so long. it is true that one of the windows of the little dining-room was blocked up, but that window was not needed. mr. burke was not willing to give mrs. cliff more than a day or two for the contemplation of her new possessions, and urged upon her that while the chimneys were being erected and the heating apparatus was being put into the house, she ought to attend to the selection and purchase of the carpets, furniture, pictures, and everything which was needed in the new establishment. mrs. cliff thought this good advice, and proposed a trip to boston; but burke did not think that would do at all, and declared that new york was the only place where she could get everything she needed. willy, who was to accompany mrs. cliff, had been to boston, but had never visited new york, and she strongly urged the claims of the latter city, and an immediate journey to the metropolis was agreed upon. but when mrs. cliff considered the magnitude and difficulties of the work she was about to undertake, she wished for the counsel and advice of some one besides willy. this good little woman was energetic and enthusiastic, but she had had no experience in regard to the furnishing of a really good house. when, in her mind, she was running over the names of those who might be able and willing to go with her and assist her, mrs. cliff suddenly thought of the thorpedyke ladies, and there her mental category stopped as she announced to willy that she was going to ask these ladies to go with them to new york. willy thought well of this plan, but she had her doubts about miss barbara, who was so quiet, domestic, and unused to travel that she might be unwilling to cast herself into the din and whirl of the metropolis. but when she and mrs. cliff went to make a call upon the thorpedykes and put the question before them, she was very much surprised to find that, although the elder sister, after carefully considering the subject, announced her willingness to oblige mrs. cliff, miss barbara agreed to the plan with an alacrity which her visitors had never known her to exhibit before. as soon as the necessary preparations could be made, a party of five left plainton for new york, and a very well-assorted party it was! mr. burke, who guided and commanded the expedition, supplied the impelling energy; mrs. cliff had her check book with her; willy was ready with any amount of enthusiasm; and the past life of miss eleanor thorpedyke and her sister barbara had made them most excellent judges of what was appropriate for the worthy furnishing of a stately mansion. their youth and middle life had been spent near boston, in a fine old house which had been the home of their ancestors, and where they had been familiar with wealth, distinguished society, and noble hospitality. but when they had been left the sole representatives of their family, and when misfortune after misfortune had come down upon them and swept away their estates and nearly all of their income, they had retired to the little town of plainton where they happened to own a house. there, with nothing saved from the wreck of their prosperity but their family traditions, and some of the old furniture and pictures, they had settled down to spend in quiet the rest of their lives. for two weeks our party remained in new york, living at one of the best hotels, but spending nearly all their time in shops and streets. mrs. cliff was rapidly becoming a different woman from the old mrs. cliff of plainton. at the time she stepped inside of the addition to her house the change had begun, and now it showed itself more and more each day. she had seen more beautiful things in paris, but there she looked upon them with but little thought of purchasing. in new york whatever she saw and desired she made her own. the difference between a mere possessor of wealth and one who uses it became very apparent to her. not until now had she really known what it was to be a rich woman. not only did this consciousness of power swell her veins with a proud delight, but it warmed and invigorated all her better impulses. she had always been of a generous disposition, but now she felt an intense good-will toward her fellow-beings, and wished that other people could be as happy as she was. she thought of mrs. ferguson and remembered what she had said about her daughters. to be sure, mrs. ferguson was always trying to get people to do things for her, and mrs. cliff did not fancy that class of women, but now her wealth-warmed soul inclined her to overlook this prejudice, and she said to herself that when she got home she would make arrangements for those two girls to go to a good school; and, more than that, she would see to it that mr. ferguson was moved. it seemed to her just then that it would be a very cheerful thing to make other people happy. the taste and artistic judgment of the elder miss thorpedyke, which had been dormant for years, simply because there was nothing upon which they could exercise themselves, now awoke in their old vigor, and with mrs. cliff's good sense, reinforced by her experience gained in wandering among the treasures of paris, the results of the shopping expedition were eminently satisfactory. and, with the plan of the new building, which mr. burke carried always with him, everything which was likely to be needed in each room, hall, or stairway, was selected and purchased, and as fast as this was done, the things were shipped to plainton, where people were ready to put them where they belonged. willy croup was not always of service in the purchasing expeditions, for she liked everything that she saw, and no sooner was an article produced than she went into ecstasies over it; but as she had an intense desire to see everything which new york contained, she did not at all confine herself to the shops and bazaars. she went wherever she could and saw all that it was possible for her to see; but in the midst of the sights and attractions of the metropolis she was still willy croup. one afternoon as she and miss barbara were passing along one of the side streets on their return from an attempt to see how the poorer people lived, willy stopped in front of a blacksmith's shop where a man was shoeing a horse. "there!" she exclaimed, her eyes sparkling with delight, "that's the first thing i've seen that reminds me of home!" "it is nice, isn't it!" said gentle miss barbara. chapter xiii money hunger during the latter part of their sojourn in the city, willy went about a good deal with miss barbara because she thought this quiet, soft-spoken lady was not happy and did not take the interest in handsome and costly articles which was shown by her sister. she had been afraid that this noisy bustling place would be too much for miss barbara, and now she was sure she had been right. the younger miss thorpedyke was unhappy, and with reason. for some months a little house in boston which had been their principal source of income had not been rented. it needed repairs, and there was no money with which to repair it. the agent had written that some one might appear who would be willing to take it as it stood, but that this was doubtful, and the heart of miss barbara sank very low. she was the business woman of the family. she it was who had always balanced the income and the expenditures. this adjustment had now become very difficult indeed, and was only accomplished by adding a little debt to the weight on the income scale. she had said nothing to her sister about this sad change in their affairs because she hoped against hope that soon they might have a tenant, and she knew that her sister eleanor was a woman of such strict and punctilious honor that she would insist upon living upon plain bread, if their supply of ready money was insufficient to buy anything else. to see this sister insufficiently nourished was something which miss barbara could not endure, and so, sorely against her disposition and her conscience, she made some little debts; and these grew and grew until at last they weighed her down until she felt as if she must always look upon the earth and could never raise her head to the sky. and she was so plump, and so white, and gentle, and quiet, and peaceful looking that no one thought she had a care in the world until willy croup began to suspect in new york that something was the matter with her, but did not in the least attribute her friend's low spirits to the proper cause. when miss barbara had favored so willingly and promptly the invitation of mrs. cliff, she had done so because she saw in the new york visit a temporary abolition of expense, and a consequent opportunity to lay up a little money by which she might be able to satisfy for a time one of her creditors who was beginning to suspect that she was not able to pay his bill, and was therefore pressing her very hard. even while she had been in new york, this many-times rendered bill had been forwarded to her with an urgent request that it be settled. it was not strange, therefore, that a tear should sometimes come to the eye of miss barbara when she stood by the side of her sister and mrs. cliff and listened to them discussing the merits of some rich rugs or pieces of furniture, and when she reflected that the difference in price between two articles, one apparently as desirable as the other, which was discussed so lightly by mrs. cliff and eleanor, would pay that bill which was eating into her soul, and settle, moreover, every other claim against herself and her sister. but the tears were always wiped away very quickly, and neither mrs. cliff nor the elder miss thorpedyke ever noticed them. but although willy croup was not at all a woman of acute perceptions, she began to think that perhaps it was something more than the bustle and noise of new york which was troubling miss barbara. and once, when she saw her gazing with an earnest eager glare--and whoever would have thought of any sort of a glare in miss barbara's eyes--upon some bank-notes which mrs. cliff was paying out for a carved cabinet for which it was a little doubtful if a suitable place could be found, but which was bought because miss eleanor thought it would give an air of distinction in whatever room it might be placed, willy began to suspect the meaning of that unusual exhibition of emotion. "she's money hungry," she said to herself, "that's what's the matter with her!" willy had seen the signs of such hunger before, and she understood what they meant. that night willy lay in her bed, having the very unusual experience of thinking so much that she could not sleep. her room adjoined miss barbara's, and the door between them was partly open, for the latter lady was timid. perhaps it was because this door was not closed that willy was so wakeful and thoughtful, for there was a bright light in the other room, and she could not imagine why miss barbara should be sitting up so late. it was a proceeding entirely at variance with her usual habits. she was in some sort of trouble, it was easy to see that, but it would be a great deal better to go to sleep and try to forget it. so after a time willy rose, and, softly stepping over the thick carpet, looked into the other room. there was miss barbara in her day dress, sitting at a table, her arms upon the table, her head upon her arms, fast asleep. upon her pale face there were a great many tear marks, and willy knew that she must have cried herself to sleep. a paper was spread out near her. willy was sure that it would be a very mean and contemptible thing for her to go and look at that paper, and so, perhaps, find out what was troubling miss barbara, but, without the slightest hesitation, she did it. her bare feet made no sound upon the carpet, and as she had very good eyes, it was not necessary for her to approach close to the sleeper. it was a bill from william bullock, a grocer and provision dealer of plainton. it contained but one item,--'to bill rendered,' and at the bottom was a statement in mr. bullock's own handwriting to the effect that if the bill was not immediately paid he would be obliged to put it into the hands of a collector. willy turned and slipped back into her room. then, after sitting down upon her bed and getting up again, she stepped boldly to the door and knocked upon it. instantly she heard miss barbara start and push back her chair. "what are you doing up so late?" cried willy, cheerfully. "don't you feel well?" "oh, yes," replied the other, "i accidentally fell asleep while reading, but i will go to bed instantly." the mind of willy croup was a very small one and had room in it for but one idea at a time. for a good while she lay putting ideas into this mind, and then taking them out again. having given place to the conviction that the thorpedykes were in a very bad way indeed,--for if that bill should be collected, they would not have much left but themselves, and mr. bullock was a man who did collect when he said he would,--she was obliged to remove this conviction, which made her cry, in order to consider plans of relief; and while she was considering these plans, one at a time, she dropped asleep. the first thing she thought of when she opened her eyes in the morning was poor miss barbara in the next room, and that dreadful bill; and then, like a flash of lightning, she thought of a good thing to do for the thorpedykes. the project which now laid itself out, detail after detail, before her seemed so simple, so sensible, so absolutely wise and desirable in every way, that she got up, dressed herself with great rapidity, and went in to see mrs. cliff. that lady was still asleep, but willy awakened her, and sat on the side of the bed. "do you know what i think?" said willy. "how in the world should i!" said mrs. cliff. "is it after breakfast-time?" "no," said willy; "but it's this! what are you going to do in that big house, with all the bedrooms, parlor, library, and so forth? you say that you are going to have one room, and that i'm to have another, and that we'll go into the old house to feel at home whenever we want to; but i believe we'll be like a couple of flies in a barrel! you're going to furnish your new house with everything but people! you ought to have more people! you ought to have a family! that house will look funny without people! you can't ask mr. burke, because it would be too queer to have him come and live with us, and besides, he'll want a house of his own. why don't you ask the thorpedykes to come and live with us? their roof is dreadfully out of repairs. i know to my certain knowledge that they have to put tin wash-basins on every bed in the second story when it rains, on account of the holes in the shingles! if they had money to mend those holes, they'd mend them, but as they don't mend them, of course they haven't the money. and it strikes me that they aren't as well off as they used to be, and they'll have a hard time gettin' through this winter. now, there isn't any piece of furniture that you can put in your house that will give it 'such an air of distinction,' as miss eleanor calls it, as she herself will give it if you put her there! if you could persuade miss eleanor to come and sit in your parlor when you are having company to see you, it would set you up in plainton a good deal higher than any money can set you up." "they would never agree to anything of the kind," said mrs. cliff, "and you know it, willy!" "i don't believe it," said willy. "i believe they'd come! just see how willing they were to come here with you! i tell you, sarah, that the older and older those thorpedyke ladies get, the more timid they get, and the more unwilling to live by themselves! "if you make miss eleanor understand that it would be the greatest comfort and happiness to both of us if she would come and spend the winter with you, and so help you to get used to your great big new house; and more than that, if they'd bring with them some of their candle-sticks and pictures on ivory and that sort of thing, which everybody knows can't be bought for money, it would be the great accommodation to you and make your house look something like what you would like to have it. i believe that old-family lady would come and stay with you this winter, and think all the time that she was giving you something that you ought to have and which nobody in plainton could give you but herself. and as to miss barbara, she'd come along as quick as lightning!" "willy," said mrs. cliff, very earnestly, "have you any good reason to believe that the thorpedykes are in money trouble?" "yes, i have," said willy, "i'm positive of it, and what's more, it's only miss barbara who knows it!" mrs. cliff sat for some minutes without answering, and then she said, "willy, you do sometimes get into your head an idea that absolutely sparkles!" chapter xiv willy croup as a philanthropic diplomatist mrs. cliff was late to breakfast that day, and the reason was that thinking so much about what willy had said to her she had been very slow in dressing. as soon as she had a chance, mrs. cliff took willy aside and told her that she had determined to adopt her advice about the thorpedykes. "the more i think of the plan," she said, "the better i like it! but we must be very, very careful about what we do. if miss eleanor suspects that i invite them to come to my house because i think they are poor, she will turn into solid stone, and we will find we cannot move her an inch,--but i think i can manage it! when we go home, i will tell them how pleasant we found it for us all to be together, and speak of the loneliness of my new big house. if i can get miss eleanor to believe that she is doing me a favor, she may be willing to come; but on no account, willy, do you say a word to either of them about this plan. if you do, you will spoil everything, for that's your way, willy, and you know it!" willy promised faithfully that she would not interfere in the least; but although she was perfectly satisfied with this arrangement, she was not happy. how could she be happy knowing what she did about miss barbara? that poor lady was looking sadder than ever, and willy was very much afraid that she had had another letter from that horrid mr. bullock, with whom, she was delighted to think, mrs. cliff had never dealt. it would be some days yet before they would go home and make the new arrangement, and then there would be the bill and the collector, and all that horrid business, and if miss eleanor found out the condition of affairs,--and if the bill was not paid, she must find out,--she would never come to them. she would probably stay at home and live on bread! now, it so happened that willy had in her own possession more than enough money to pay that wretched bullock bill. mrs. cliff made her no regular allowance, but she had given her all the money that she might reasonably expect to spend in new york, and willy had spent but very little of it, for she found it the most difficult thing in the world to select what it was she wanted out of all the desirable things she saw. it would rejoice her heart to transfer this money to miss barbara; but how in the world could she do it? she first thought that she might offer to buy something that was in the thorpedyke house, but she knew this idea was absurd. then she thought of mentioning, in an off-hand way, that she would like to put some money out at interest, and thus, perhaps, induce miss barbara to propose a business transaction. but this would not do. even miss barbara would suspect some concealed motive. idea after idea came to her, but she could think of no satisfactory plan of getting that money into miss barbara's possession. she did not go out with the party that morning, but sat in her room trying in vain to solve this problem. at last she gave it up and determined to do what she wanted to do without any plan whatever. she went into miss barbara's room and placed upon the table, in the very spot where the bill had been lying, some bank-notes, considerably more than sufficient to pay the amount of the bill, which amount she well remembered. it would not do to leave just money enough, for that would excite suspicion. and so placing miss barbara's hair-brush upon the bank-notes, so that she would be sure not to overlook them, for she would not think of going down to luncheon without brushing her hair, willy retired to her own room, nearly closing the door, leaving only a little crack through which she might see if any servant entered the room before miss barbara came back. then willy set herself industriously to work hemming a pocket handkerchief. she could not do this very well, because she was not at all proficient in fine sewing, but she worked with great energy, waiting and listening for miss barbara's entrance. at last, after a long time, willy heard the outer door of the other room open, and glancing through the crack, she saw miss barbara enter. then she twisted herself around towards the window and began to sew savagely, with a skill much better adapted to the binding of carpets than to any sort of work upon cambric handkerchiefs. in a few minutes she heard a little exclamation in the next room, and then her door was opened suddenly, without the customary knock, and miss barbara marched in. her face was flushed. "willy croup," said she, "what is the meaning of that money on my table?" "money?" said willy, turning towards her with as innocent an expression as her burning cheeks and rapidly winking eyes would permit; "what do you mean by--money?" miss barbara stood silent for some moments while willy vainly endeavored to thread the point of her needle. "willy," said miss barbara, "did you come into my room last night, and look at the bill which was on my table?" now willy dropped her needle, thread, and handkerchief, and stood up. "yes, i did!" said she. miss barbara was now quite pale. "and you read the note which mr. bullock had put at the bottom of it?" "yes, i read it!" said willy. "and don't you know," said the other, "that to do such a thing was most--" "yes, i do!" interrupted willy. "i knew it then and i know it now, but i don't care any more now than i did then! i put it there because i wanted to! and if you'll take it, miss barbara, and pay it back to me any time when you feel like it,--and you can pay me interest at ten per cent if you want to, and that will make it all right, you know; and oh, miss barbara! i know all about that sort of bill, because they used to come when my father was alive. and if you'd only take it, you don't know how happy i would be!" at this she began to cry, and then miss barbara burst into tears, and the two sat down beside each other on a lounge and cried earnestly, hand in hand, for nearly ten minutes. "i'm so glad you'll take it!" said willy, when miss barbara went into her room, "and you may be just as sure as you're sure of anything that nobody but our two selves will ever know anything about it!" immediately after luncheon miss barbara went by herself to the post-office, and when she came back her sister said to her that new york must just be beginning to agree with her. "it is astonishing," said miss eleanor, "how long it takes some people to get used to a change, but it often happens that if one stays long enough in the new place, great benefit will be experienced, whereas, if the stay is short, there may be no good result whatever!" that afternoon mrs. cliff actually laughed at miss barbara--a thing she had never done before. they were in a large jewelry store where they were looking at clocks, and miss barbara, who had evinced a sudden interest in the beautiful things about her, called mrs. cliff's attention to a lovely necklace of pearls. "if i were you," said miss barbara, "i would buy something like that! i should not want to wear it, perhaps, but it would be so delightful to sit and look at it!" the idea of miss barbara thinking of buying necklaces of pearls! no wonder mrs. cliff laughed. when the party returned to plainton, mrs. cliff was amazed to find her new house almost completely furnished; and no time was lost in proposing the thorpedyke project, for mrs. cliff felt that it would be wise to make the proposition while the sense of companionship was still fresh upon them all. miss thorpedyke was very much surprised when the plan was proposed to her, but it produced a pleasant effect upon her. she had much enjoyed the company she had been in; she had always liked society, and lately had had very little of it, for no matter how good and lovable sisters may be, they are sometimes a little tiresome when they are sole companions. as to barbara, she trembled as she thought of mrs. cliff's offer: trembled with joy, which she could not repress; and trembled with fear that her sister might not accept it. but it was of no use for her to say anything,--and she said nothing. eleanor always decided such questions as these. after a day's consideration miss thorpedyke came to a conclusion, and she sent miss barbara with a message to mrs. cliff to the effect that as the winters were always lonely, and as it would be very pleasant for them all to be together, she would, if mrs. cliff thought it would be an advantage to her, come with her sister and live in some portion of the new building which mrs. cliff did not intend to be otherwise occupied, and that they would pay whatever board mrs. cliff thought reasonable and proper; but in order to do this, it would be necessary for them to rent their present home. they would offer this house fully furnished,--reserving the privilege of removing the most valuable heirlooms which it now contained, and, as soon as such an arrangement could be made, they would be willing to come to mrs. cliff and remain with her during the winter. when miss barbara had heard this decision her heart had fallen! she knew that it would be almost impossible to find a tenant who would take that house, especially for winter occupancy, and that even if a tenant could be found, the rent would be very little. and she knew, moreover, that having come to a decision eleanor could not be moved from it. she found mr. burke and willy with mrs. cliff, but as he knew all about the project and had taken great interest in it, she did not hesitate to tell her message before him. mrs. cliff was very much disappointed. "that ends the matter!" said she. "your house cannot be rented for the winter!" "i don't know about that!" exclaimed mr. burke. "by george! i'll take the house myself! i want a house,--i want just such a house; i want it furnished,--except i don't want to be responsible for old heirlooms, and i'm willing to pay a fair and reasonable rent for it; and i'm sure, although i never had the pleasure of being in it, it ought to bring rent enough to pay the board of any two ladies any winter, wherever they might be!" "but, mr. burke," miss barbara said, her voice shaking as she spoke, "i must tell you, that the roof is very much out of repair, and--" "oh, that doesn't matter at all!" said burke. "a tenant, if he's the right sort of tenant, is bound to put a house into repair to suit himself. i'll attend to the roof if it needs it, you may be sure of that! and if it doesn't need it, i'll leave it just as it is! that'll be all right, and you can tell your sister that you've found a tenant. i'm getting dreadfully tired of living at that hotel, and a house of my own is somethin' that i've never had before! but one thing i must ask of you, miss thorpedyke: don't say anything to your sister about tobacco smoke, and perhaps she will never think of it!" chapter xv miss nancy makes a call it was a day or two after the most satisfactory arrangement between the thorpedykes, mrs. cliff, and mr. burke had been concluded, and before it had been made public, that miss nancy shott came to call upon mrs. cliff. as she walked, stiff as a grenadier, and almost as tall, she passed by the new building without turning her head even to glance at it, and going directly up to the front door of the old house, she rang the bell. as mrs. cliff's domestic household were all engaged in the new part of the building, the bell was not heard, and after waiting nearly a minute, miss shott rang it again with such vigor that the door was soon opened by a maid, who informed her that mrs. cliff was not at home, but that miss croup was in. "very well," said miss shott, "i'll see her!" and, passing the servant, she entered the old parlor. the maid followed her. "there's no fire here," she said. "won't you please walk into the other part of the house, which is heated? miss croup is over there." "no!" said miss shott, seating herself upon the sofa. "this suits me very well, and willy croup can come to me here as well as anywhere else!" presently willy arrived, wishing very much that she also had been out. "do come over to the other parlor, miss shott!" said she. "there's no furnace heat here because mrs. cliff didn't want the old house altered, and we use this room so little that we haven't made a fire." "i thought you had the chimney put in order!" said miss shott, without moving from her seat. "doesn't it work right?" willy assured her visitor that the chimney was in good condition so far as she knew, and repeated her invitation to come into a warmer room, but to this miss shott paid no attention. "it's an old saying," said she, "that a bad chimney saves fuel!--i understand that you've all been to new york shopping?" "yes," said willy, laughing. "it was a kind of shopping, but that's not exactly what i'd call it!" and perceiving that miss shott intended to remain where she was, she took a seat. "well, of course," said miss shott, "everybody's got to act according to their own judgments and consciences! if i was going to buy winter things, i'd do what i could to help the business of my own town, and if i did happen to want anything i couldn't get here, i'd surely go to harrington, where the people might almost be called neighbors!" willy laughed outright. "oh, miss shott," she said, "you couldn't buy the things we bought, in harrington! i don't believe they could be found in boston!" "i was speaking about myself," said miss nancy. "i could find anything i wanted in harrington, and if my wants went ahead of what they had there, i should say that my wants were going too far and ought to be curbed! and so you took those poor old thorpedyke women with you. i expect they must be nearly fagged out. i don't see how the oldest one ever stood being dragged from store to store all over new york, as she must have been! she's a pretty old woman and can't be expected to stand even what another woman, younger than she is, but old enough, and excited by having money to spend, can stand! it's a wonder to me that you brought her back alive!" "miss eleanor came back a great deal better than she was when she left!" exclaimed willy, indignantly. "she'll tell you, if you ask her, that that visit to new york did her a great deal of good!" "no, she won't!" said miss shott, "for she don't speak to me. it's been two years since i had anything to do with her!" willy knew all about the quarrel between the thorpedyke ladies and nancy, and wished to change the subject. "don't you want to go and look at the new part of the house?" she said. "perhaps you'd like to see the things we've bought in new york, and it's cold here!" to this invitation and the subsequent remark miss shott paid no attention. she did not intend to give willy the pleasure of showing her over the house, and it was not at all necessary, for she had seen nearly everything in it. during the absence of mrs. cliff she had made many visits to the house, and, as she was acquainted with the woman who had been left in charge, she had examined every room, from ground to roof, and had scrutinized and criticised the carpets as they had been laid and the furniture as it had been put in place. she saw that willy was beginning to shiver a little, and was well satisfied that she should feel cold. it would help take the conceit out of her. as for herself, she wore a warm cloak and did not mind a cold room. "i'm told," she said, "that mrs. cliff's putting up a new stable. what was the matter with the old one?" "it wasn't big enough," said willy. "it holds two horses, don't it, and what could anybody want more than that, i'd like to know!" willy was now getting a little out of temper. "that's not enough for mrs. cliff," she said. "she's going to have a nice carriage and a pair of horses, and a regular coachman, not andrew marks!" "well!" said miss shott, and for a few moments she sat silent. then she spoke. "i suppose mrs. cliff's goin' to take boarders." "boarders!" cried willy. "what makes you say such a thing as that?" "if she isn't," said miss shott, "i don't see what she'll do with all the rooms in that new part of the house." "she's goin' to live in it," said willy. "that's what she's goin' to do with it!" "boarders are very uncertain," remarked miss shott, "and just as likely to be a loss as a profit. mr. williams tried it at the hotel summer after summer, and if he couldn't make anything, i don't see how mrs. cliff can expect to." "she doesn't expect to take boarders, and you know it!" said willy. miss shott folded her hands upon her lap. "it's goin' to be a dreadful hard winter. i never did see so many acorns and chestnuts, and there's more cedar berries on the trees than i've ever known in all my life! i expect there'll be awful distress among the poor, and when i say 'poor' i don't mean people that's likely to suffer for food and a night's lodging, but respectable people who have to work hard and calculate day and night how to make both ends meet. these're the folks that're goin' to suffer in body and mind this winter; and if people that's got more money than they know what to do with, and don't care to save up for old age and a rainy day, would think sometimes of their deserving neighbors who have to pinch and suffer when they're going round buyin' rugs that must have cost at least as much as twenty dollars apiece and which they don't need at all, there bein' carpet already on the floor, it would be more to their credit and benefit to their fellow-beings. but, of course, one person's conscience isn't another person's, and we've each got to judge for ourselves, and be judged afterwards!" now willy leaned forward in her chair, and her eyes glistened. as her body grew colder, so did her temper grow warmer. "if it's mrs. cliff you're thinkin' about, nancy shott," said she, "i'll just tell you that you're as wrong as you can be! there isn't a more generous and a kinder person in this whole town than mrs. cliff is, and she isn't only that way to-day, but she's always been so, whether she's had little or whether she's had much!" "what did she ever do, i'd like to know!" said miss nancy. "she's lined her own nest pretty well, but what's she ever done for anybody else--" "now, nancy shott," said willy, "you know she's been doin' for other people all her life whenever she could! she's done for you more than once, as i happen to know,--and she's done for other neighbors and friends. and, more than that, she's gone abroad to do good, and that's more than anybody else in this town's done, as i know of!" "she didn't go to south america to do good to anybody but herself," coolly remarked the visitor. "i'm not thinking of that!" said willy. "she went there on business, as everybody knows! but you remember well enough when she was in the city, and i was with her, when the dreadful cholera times came on! everybody said that there wasn't a person who worked harder and did more for the poor people who were brought to the hospital than sarah did. "she worked for them night and day; before they were dead and after they were dead! i did what i could, but it wasn't nothin' to what she did! both of us had been buyin' things, and makin' them up for ourselves, for cotton and linen goods was so cheap then. if it hadn't been for the troubles which came on, we'd had enough to last us for years! but sarah cliff isn't the kind of woman to keep things for herself when they're wanted by others, and when she had given everything that she had to those poor creatures at the hospitals, she took my things without as much as takin' the trouble to ask me, for in times like that she isn't the woman to hesitate when she thinks she's doin' what ought to be done, and at one time, in that hospital, there was eleven corpses in my night-gowns!" "horrible!" exclaimed miss shott, rising to her feet. "it would have killed me to think of such a thing as that!" "well, if it would have killed you," said willy, "there was another night-gown left." "if you're going to talk that way," said miss shott, "i might as well go. i supposed that when i came here i would at least have been treated civilly!" chapter xvi mr. burke makes a call mrs. cliff now began her life as a rich woman. the thorpedykes were established in the new building; her carriage and horses, with a coachman in plain livery, were seen upon the streets of plainton; she gave dinners and teas, and subscribed in a modestly open way to appropriate charities; she extended suitable aid to the members of mrs. ferguson's family, both living and departed; and the fact that she was willing to help in church work was made very plain by a remark of miss shott, who, upon a certain sunday morning at the conclusion of services, happened to stop in front of mrs. cliff, who was going out of the church. "oh," said miss shott, suddenly stepping very much to one side, "i wouldn't have got in your way if i'd remembered that it was you who pays the new choir!" mr. burke established himself in the thorpedyke house, which he immediately repaired from top to bottom; but although he frequently repeated to himself and to his acquaintances that he had now set up housekeeping in just the way that he had always wished for, with plenty of servants to do everything just as he wanted it done, he was not happy nevertheless. he felt the loss of the stirring occupation which had so delighted him, and his active mind continually looked right and left for something to do. he spoke with mrs. cliff in regard to the propriety of proposing to the thorpedykes that he should build an addition to their house, declaring that such an addition would make the old mansion ever so much more valuable, and as to the cost, he would arrange that so that they would never feel the payment of it. but this suggestion met with no encouragement, and poor burke was so hard put to it for something to occupy his mind that one day he asked mrs. cliff if she had entirely given up her idea of employing some of her fortune for the benefit of the native peruvians, stating that if she wanted an agent to go down there and to attend to that sort of thing, he believed he would be glad to go himself. but mrs. cliff did not intend to send anything to the native peruvians. according to the arrangements that captain horn had made for their benefit they would have as large a share of the incas' gold as they could possibly claim, and, therefore, she did not feel herself called upon to do anything. "if we had kept it all," she said, "that would have been a different thing!" in fact, mrs. cliff's conscience was now in a very easy and satisfied condition. she did not feel that she owed anything to her fellow-beings that she was not giving them, or that she owed anything to herself that she was not giving to herself. the expenses of building and of the improvements to her spacious grounds had been of so much assistance in removing the plethora of her income that she was greatly encouraged. she felt that she now had her fortune under control, and that she herself might be able to manage it for the future. already she was making her plans for the next year. many schemes she had for the worthy disposition of her wealth, and the more she thought of them and planned their details, the less inclined she felt to leave for an hour or two her spacious and sumptuous apartments in the new building and go back to her little former home where she might think of old times and relieve her mind from the weight of the novelty and the richness of her new dining-room and its adjuncts. often as she sat in her stately drawing-room she longed for her old friend edna, and wished that she and the captain might come and see how well she had used her share of the great fortune. but captain horn and his wife were far away. mrs. cliff had frequent letters from edna, which described their leisurely and delightful travels in the south and west. their minds and bodies had been so strained and tired by hard thinking and hard work that all they wanted now was an enjoyment of life and the world as restful and as tranquil as they could make it. after a time they would choose some happy spot, and make for themselves a home. three of the negroes, maka and cheditafa and mok, were with them, and the others had been left on a farm where they might study methods of american agriculture until the time should come when the captain should require their services on his estate. ralph was in boston, where, in spite of his independent ideas in regard to his education, he was preparing himself to enter harvard. "i know what the captain means when he speaks of settling down!" said burke when he heard of this. "he'll buy a cañon and two or three counties and live out there like a lord! and if he does that, i'll go out and see him. i want to see this inca money sprouting and flourishing a good deal more than it has done yet!" "what do you mean?" asked mrs. cliff. "don't you call this splendid house and everything in it a sign of sprouting and flourishing?" "oh, my dear madam," said burke, rising from his seat and walking the floor, "if you could have looked through the hole in the top of the mound and have seen under you cartloads and cartloads of pure gold, and had let your mind rest on what might have grown out of it, a house like this would have seemed like an acorn on an oak tree!" "and you think the captain will have the oak tree?" she asked. "yes," said burke; "i think he's the sort of man to want it, and if he wants it he'll have it!" there were days when the weather was very bad and time hung unusually heavy upon mr. burke's hands, when he thought it might be a good thing to get married. he had a house and money enough to keep a wife as well as any woman who would have him had any reason to expect. but there were two objections to this plan. in the first place, what would he do with his wife after he got tired of living in the thorpedyke house; and secondly, where could he find anybody he would like to marry? he had female acquaintances in plainton, but not one of them seemed to have the qualifications he would desire in a wife. willy croup was a good-natured and pleasant woman, and he always liked to talk to her, but she was too old for him. he might like to adopt her as a maiden aunt, but then that would not be practicable, for mrs. cliff would not be willing to give her up. at this time burke would have gone to make a visit to his mother, but there was also an objection to this. he would not have dared to present himself before her in his fur-trimmed overcoat and his high silk hat. she was a true sailor's mother, and she would have laughed him to scorn, and so habituated had he become to the dress of a fine gentleman that it would have seriously interfered with his personal satisfaction to put on the rough winter clothes in which his mother would expect to see him. the same reason prevented him from going to his old friend shirley. he knew very well that shirley did not wear a high silk hat and carry a cane, and he had a sufficient knowledge of human nature and of himself to know that if his present personal appearance were made the subject of ridicule, or even inordinate surprise, it would not afford him the same stimulating gratification which he now derived from it. fortunately the weather grew colder, and there was snow and excellent sleighing, and now burke sent for a fine double sleigh, and, with a fur cap, a great fur collar over his overcoat, fur gloves, and an enormous lap-robe of fur, he jingled and glided over the country in great delight, enjoying the sight of the fur-garbed coachman in front of him almost as much as the glittering snow and the crisp fresh air. he invited the ladies of the cliff mansion to accompany him in these sleigh-rides, but although the misses thorpedyke did not fancy such cold amusement, mrs. cliff and willy went with him a few times, and once willy accompanied him alone. this positively decided the opinion of plainton in regard to his reason for living in that town. but there were those who said that he might yet discover that his plans would not succeed. mrs. cliff now seemed to be in remarkably good health, and as it was not likely that mr. burke would actually propose marriage to willy until he saw some signs of failing in mrs. cliff, he might have to wait a long, long time; during which his intended victim would probably grow so wrinkled and old that even the most debased of fortune-hunters would refuse to have her. then, of course, the fine gentleman would find out that he had lost all the time he had spent scheming here in plainton. the buskirks were spending this winter in their country home, and one afternoon mr. burke thought he would drive up in his sleigh and make a call upon them. he had been there before, but had seen no one, and some weeks afterward mr. buskirk had dropped in at the hotel, but had not found him. this sort of visiting did not suit our friend burke, and he determined to go and see what a buskirk was really like. having jingled and pranced up to the front of the handsome mansion on the hill, and having been informed that the gentleman of the house was not at home, he asked for his lady, and, as she was in, he was ushered into a parlor. here, having thrown aside some of his superincumbent furs, george burke sat and looked about him. he had plenty of time for observation, for it was long before mrs. buskirk made her appearance. with the exception of mrs. cliff's house, with which he had had so much to do, burke had never before been inside a dwelling belonging to a very rich person, and the buskirk mansion interested him very much. although he was so little familiar with fine furniture, pictures, and bric-a-brac, he was a man of quick perceptions and good judgment, and it did not take him long to discover that the internal furnishings of the buskirk house were far inferior to those of the addition to mrs. cliff's old home. the room in which he sat was large and pretentious, but when it had been furnished there had been no lady of good family accustomed to the furnishings of wealth and culture, and with an artistic taste gained in travel at home and abroad, to superintend the selection of these pictures, this carpet, and the coverings of this furniture! he laughed within himself as he sat, his fur cape on his knees and his silk hat in his hand, and he was so elated and pleased with the knowledge of the superiority of mrs. cliff's home over this house of the proud city people who had so long looked down upon plainton, that he entirely forgot his intention of recalling, as he sat in the fine parlor of the buskirks, the olden times when he used to get up early in the morning and swab the deck. "these people ought to come down and see mrs. cliff's house," thought burke, "and i'll make them do it if i can!" when mrs. buskirk, a lady who had always found it necessary to place strong guards around her social position, made her appearance, she received her visitor with an attentive civility. she had been impressed by his appearance when she had seen him grandly careering in his barouche or his sleigh, and she was still more impressed as she saw him in her parlor with additional furs. she had heard he had been a sailor, but now as she talked to him, the belief grew upon her that he might yet make a very good sailor. he was courteous, entirely at his ease, and perhaps a little too bland, and mrs. buskirk thought that although her husband might like to sit and smoke with this well-dressed, sun-burned man, he was not a person very desirable for the society of herself and daughters. but she was willing to sit and talk to mr. burke, for she wanted to ask him some questions about mrs. cliff. she had heard about that lady's new house, or rather the improvement to her old one, and she had driven past it, and she did not altogether understand the state of affairs. she had known that mrs. cliff was a widow of a storekeeper of the town, and that she had come into possession of a portion of a treasure which had been discovered somewhere in the west indies or south america, but those portions of treasures which might be allotted to the widow of a storekeeper in a little country town were not likely to be very much, and mrs. buskirk was anxious to know something definite about mrs. cliff's present circumstances. burke felt a little embarrassed in regard to his answers. he knew that mrs. cliff was very anxious not to appear as a millionnaire in the midst of the friends and associations of her native town,--at least, that she did not desire to do so until her real financial position had been gradually understood and accepted. nothing she would dislike so much as to be regarded as the people in her social circle regarded the buskirks on the hill. so burke did not blaze out as he would have liked to do with a true and faithful statement of mrs. cliff's great wealth,--far in excess, he was very sure, of that of the fine lady with whom he was talking,--but he said everything he could in a modest way, or what seemed so to him, in regard to his friend's house and belongings. "but it seems to me," said mrs. buskirk, "that it's a very strange thing for any one to build a house, such as the one you describe, in such a neighborhood, when there are so many desirable locations on the outskirts of the town. the houses on the opposite side of the street are very small, some of them even mean; if i am not mistaken there is a little shop somewhere along there! i should consider that that sort of thing would spoil any house, no matter how good it might be in itself!" "oh, that makes no difference whatever!" said burke, with a wave of his hand, and delighted to remember a proposition he had made to mrs. cliff and which she had viewed with favor. "mrs. cliff will soon settle all that! she's going to buy that whole block opposite to her and make a park of it. she'll clear away all the houses and everything belonging to them, and she'll plant trees, and lay out lawns and driveways, and have a regular landscape gardener who'll superintend everything. and she's going to have the water brought in pipes which will end in some great rocks, which we'll have hauled from the woods, and from under these rocks a brook will flow and meander through the park. and there'll be flowers, and reeds, and rushes, and, very likely, a fountain with the spare water. "and that'll be a public park for the use of the whole town, and you can see for yourself, madam, that it'll be a grand thing to look out from mrs. cliff's windows on such a beautiful place! it will be fitted up and railed off very much after the style of her own grounds, so that the whole thing will be like a great estate right in the middle of the town. she's thinkin' of callin' the park 'the grove of the incas.' that sounds nice; don't you think so, madam?" "it sounds very well indeed," said mrs. buskirk. she had heard before of plans made by people who had suddenly come into possession of money. burke saw that he had not yet made the impression that he desired. he wanted, without actually saying so, to let this somewhat supercilious lady know that if the possession of money was a reason for social position,--and he knew of no other reason for the buskirks' position,--mrs. cliff would be aft, talking to the captain while the buskirks would be walking about by themselves amidship. but he did not know how to do this. he knew it would be no use to talk about horses and carriages, and all that sort of thing, for these the buskirks possessed, and their coachman wore top boots,--a thing mrs. cliff would never submit to. he was almost on the point of relinquishing his attempt to make mrs. buskirk call upon the widow of the storekeeper, when the lady helped him by asking in a casual way if mrs. cliff proposed living winter and summer in her new house. "no," said burke, "not in the summer. i hear plainton is pretty hot in the summer, and she'll go--" (oh, a radiant thought came to him!) "i expect she'll cruise about in her yacht during the warm weather." "her yacht!" exclaimed mrs. buskirk, for the first time exhibiting marks of actual interest. "has mrs. cliff a yacht?" "she's going to have one," said burke to himself, "and i'll put her up to it before i go home this day." "yes," he said aloud, "that is, she hasn't got it yet, but she's going to have it as soon as the season opens. i shall select it for her. i know all about yachts and every other kind of craft, and she'll have one of the very finest on this coast. she's a good sailor, mrs. cliff is, for i've cruised with her! and nothing will she enjoy better in hot weather than her noble yacht and the open sea!" now this did make an impression upon mrs. buskirk. a citizen of plainton who possessed a yacht was not to be disregarded. after this she was rather abstracted, and the conversation fell off. burke saw that it was time for him to go, and as he had now said all he cared to say, he was willing to do so. in parting with him mrs. buskirk was rather more gracious than when she received him. "i hope when you call again," she said, "that you may find my husband at home. i know he will be glad to see you!" as burke jingled and pranced away he grinned behind his great fur collar. "she'll call!" said he to himself. "she'll call on the yacht if she doesn't call on anything else!" chapter xvii mrs. cliff's yacht when the interview with mrs. buskirk was reported that afternoon to mrs. cliff, the good lady sat aghast. "i've decided about the park," she said, "and that is all very well. but what do you mean by a yacht? what could be more ridiculous than to talk about me and a yacht!" "ridiculous!" exclaimed burke. "it's nothing of the kind! the more i think of the idea, the better i like it, and if you'll think of it soberly, i believe you'll like it just as much as i do! in the first place, you've got to do something to keep your money from being dammed up and running all over everything. this house and furniture cleared away things for a time, but the whole business will be just as much clogged up as it was before if you don't look out. i don't want to give advice, but it does strike me that anybody as rich as you are oughtn't to feel that they could afford to sit still here in plainton, year in and year out, no matter how fine a house they might have! they ought to think of that great heap of gold in the mound and feel that it was their duty to get all the grand and glorious good out of it that they knew how!" "but it does seem to me," said mrs. cliff, "that a yacht would be an absolute extravagance and waste of money. and, you know, i have firmly determined i will not waste my money." "to call sittin' in a beautiful craft, on a rollin' sea, with a spankin' breeze, a waste of money, is something i can't get into my brain!" said mr. burke. "but you could do good with a yacht. you could take people out on cruises who would never get out if you didn't take them! and now i've an idea! it's just come to me. you might get a really big yacht. if i was you, i'd have a steam yacht, because you'd have more control over that than you'd have over a sailin'-vessel, and besides a person can get tired of sailin'-vessels, as i've found out myself. and then you might start a sort of summer shelter for poor people; not only very poor people, but respectable people, who never get a chance to sniff salt air. and you might spend part of the summer in giving such people what would be the same as country weeks, only you'd take them out to sea instead of shipping them inland to dawdle around farms. i tell you that's a splendid idea, and nobody's done it." day after day, the project of the yacht was discussed by mrs. cliff and burke, and she was beginning to view its benevolent features with a degree of favor when mrs. buskirk called. that lady's visit was prompted partly by a curiosity to see what sort of a woman was the widow of the plainton storekeeper who would cruise the next summer in her yacht; and partly by a feeling that to such a person a certain amount of respect was due even from a buskirk. but when she entered the house, passed through the great hall, and seated herself in the drawing-room, she saw more than she had expected to see. she saw a house immeasurably better fitted out and furnished than her own. she knew the value of the rugs which miss shott had declared must have cost at least twenty dollars each, and she felt, although she did not thoroughly appreciate, the difference in artistic merit between the pictures upon her walls and the masterly paintings which had been selected by the ladies thorpedyke for the drawing-room of mrs. cliff. the discovery startled her. she must talk to her husband about it as soon as he reached home. it was not only money, but a vast deal of money, and something more, which had done all this. she had asked for the ladies, knowing that mrs. cliff did not live alone, and all the ladies were at home. amid those surroundings, the elder miss thorpedyke, most carefully arrayed, made an impression upon mrs. buskirk very different from that she had produced on the occasion of their single former interview in the darkened little parlor of the thorpedyke house. mrs. cliff, in a costume quite simple, but as rich as her conscience would allow, felt within herself all the uplifting influence of her wealth, as she stepped forward to salute this lady who had always been so uplifted by her wealth. in the course of the conversation, the yacht was mentioned. the visitor would not go away without being authoritatively informed upon this subject. "oh yes," said mrs. cliff, promptly, "i shall have a yacht next summer. mr. burke will select one for me, and i know it will be a good one, for he thoroughly understands such matters." before she left, mrs. buskirk invited mrs. cliff, the misses thorpedyke, and miss croup to take luncheon with her quite informally on the following tuesday. she would have made it a dinner, but in that case her husband would have been at home, and it would have been necessary to invite mr. burke, and she was not yet quite sure about mr. burke. this invitation, which soon became known throughout the town, decided the position of mrs. cliff at plainton. when that lady and her family had gone, with her carriage and pair, to the mansion of the buskirks on the hill, and had there partaken of luncheon, very informally, in company with three of the most distinguished ladies of harrington, who had also been invited very informally; and when the news of the magnificent repast which had been served on the occasion, with flowers from the greenhouse nearly covering the table, with everything tied up with ribbons which could possibly be so decorated, and with a present for each guest ingeniously concealed under her napkin, floated down into the town, there was no woman in that place who could put her hand upon her heart and honestly declare that hereafter mrs. cliff could look up to anybody in plainton. this recognition, which soon became obvious to mrs. cliff, was a source of genuine gratification to that good lady. she had never been inclined to put herself above her neighbors on account of her fortune, and would have been extremely grieved if she had been convinced that her wealth would oblige her to assume a superior position but when that wealth gradually and easily, without creating any disturbance or commotion in her circle, raised her of itself, without any action on her part, to the peak of social eminence in her native place, her genuine satisfaction was not interfered with in the least degree by her conscience. her position had come to her, and she had assumed it as if she had been born to it. but whenever she thought of her preëminence,--and she did not think of it nearly so often as other people thought of it,--she determined that it should make no difference to her; and when next she gave a high tea,--not the grand repast to which she intended to invite the buskirks on the hill,--she invited miss cushing. now, there were people in plainton who did not invite the dressmaker to their table, but mrs. cliff had asked her when they were all poor together, and she would have her now again when they were not all poor together. as the winter went on, burke became more and more interested in mrs. cliff's yacht, and if he had not had this subject to talk about, and plan about, and to go at all hours to see mrs. cliff about, it is likely that he would have been absolutely obliged to leave plainton for want of occupation. but the idea of commanding a steam yacht was attraction enough to keep him where he could continually consider it. he assured mrs. cliff that it was not at all necessary to wait until pleasant weather before undertaking this great enterprise. as soon as the harbors were reasonably free of ice it would be well for him to go and look at yachts, and then when he found one which suited him, mrs. cliff could go and look at it, and if it suited her, it could be immediately put into commission. they could steam down into southern waters, and cruise about there. the spring up here in the north was more disagreeable than any other season of the year, and why should they not go and spend that season in the tranquil and beautiful waters of florida or the west indies? mrs. cliff had now fully determined to become the owner of a yacht, but she would not do so unless she saw her way clear to carry out the benevolent features of the plan which mr. burke had suggested. "what i want," said mrs. cliff, "is to have the whole thing understood! i am perfectly willing to spend some of the pleasant months sailing about the coast and feeling that i'm giving health and pleasure to poor and deserving people, especially children, but i am not willing to consider myself a rich woman who keeps an expensive yacht just for the pleasure of cruising around when she feels like it! but i do like the plan of giving country weeks at sea." "very good, madam," he said, "and we can fix that thing so that nobody can possibly make any mistake about it. what do you say to calling your yacht the _summer shelter_? we'll paint the name in white letters on the bows and stern, and nobody can take us for idle sea-loafers with more money than we know what to do with!" "i like that!" said mrs. cliff, her face brightening. "you may buy me a yacht as soon as you please, and we'll call her the _summer shelter_!" in consequence of this order, mr. burke departed from plainton the next day, and began a series of expeditions to the seaport towns on the atlantic coast in search of a steam yacht for sale. the winter grew colder, and the weather was very bad; there were heavy snows and drifts, and many hardships. there were cases of privations and suffering, and never did she hear of one of these cases that a thankful glow did not warm the heart of mrs. cliff as she thought that she was able to relieve it. but mrs. cliff knew, and if she had not known she would have soon found out, that it was often very difficult to relieve distress of body without causing distress of mind, but she and willy and the misses thorpedyke had known all phases of the evil which has its root in the want of money, and they always considered people's sensibilities when they held charitable councils. there was one case in which mrs. cliff felt that she must be very careful indeed. old nancy shott was not standing the winter well. she had a bad cold, and was confined to her bed, and one day miss inchman mentioned, during a call on mrs. cliff, that she did not believe the poor old thing was able to keep herself warm. she had been to see her, and the coverings on her bed were very insufficient she thought. the shotts never did keep a warm house, nor did they care to spend their money upon warm clothes; but although that sort of thing might do very well while they were in health and were constantly on the move, it did not do when they were sick in bed. when miss inchman had gone, mrs. cliff called willy. "where are we using those california blankets which i brought home with me?" she asked. "using them!" exclaimed willy. "we aren't using them anywhere! i'm sure nobody would think of using such blankets as those, except when some extra company might happen to come. it ought to be a long time before those blankets would have to go into the wash, and i've kept them covered up on the top shelf of the linen closet!" "well, i wish you would go and get them," said mrs. cliff, "and then wrap them up and take them to miss shott as a present from me." "take them to nancy shott!" cried willy. "i never heard of such a thing in my life! she's able to buy blankets, dozens of them if she wants them, and to take to her such blankets as the ones you brought from california,--why it takes my breath away to think of it!" "but you must take them to her," said mrs. cliff. "she may be stingy, but she is suffering, and i want her to have those blankets because they are the very best that i could possibly send her. you can get andrew marks to drive you there, but stop two or three doors from the house. she will think you are putting on airs if you drive up to the door. and i wish you would give her the blankets just as if it was a matter of course that anybody would send things to a sick person." "oh yes!" said willy. "as if you hadn't a pot of jelly to spare and so sent her these blankets fit for an emperor on his throne!" that very evening the reluctant willy took the blankets to miss shott, for mrs. cliff knew it was going to be a very cold night, and she wanted her to have them as soon as possible. when nancy shott beheld the heavy and beautiful fabrics of fine wool which willy spread out upon her bed in order that she might better examine them, the eyes of the poor old woman flashed with admiring delight. "well," said she, "sarah cliff has got a memory!" "what do you mean?" asked willy. "why, she remembers," said miss shott, "that i once joined in to give her a pair of blankets!" "good gracious!" exclaimed willy, and she was on the point of speaking her mind in regard to the salient points in the two transactions, but she refrained. the poor old thing was sick, and she must not say anything to excite her. "i suppose," said miss shott, after lifting a corner of a blanket and rubbing and pinching it, "that these are all wool!" then willy thought herself privileged to speak, and for some minutes she dilated on the merits of those superb blankets, the like of which were not to be found in the whole state, and, perhaps, not in any state east of the rocky mountains. "well," said miss shott, "you may tell her that i will not throw her present back at her as she once threw one back at me! and now that you're here, willy croup, i may as well say to you what i've intended to say to you the next time i saw you. and that is, that when i was at your house you told me an out and out falsehood,--i won't use any stronger word than that,--and how you could sleep after having done it i'm sure i don't know!" "falsehood!" cried willy. "what do you mean?" "you told me," said nancy, "that mrs. cliff wasn't goin' to take boarders,--and now look at those thorpedykes! not two days after you tried to deceive me they went there to board! and now what have you got to say to that?" willy had not a word to say. she sprang to her feet, she glared at the triumphant woman in the bed, and, turning, went downstairs. chapter xviii the dawn of the grove of the incas a man may have command of all the money necessary, and he may have plenty of knowledge and experience in regard to the various qualities of sea-going vessels, but even with these great advantages he may find it a very difficult thing to buy, ready to his hand, a suitable steam yacht. the truth of this statement was acknowledged by mr. burke after he had spent nearly a month in boston, new york, and various points between these cities, and, after advertising, inquiring, and investigating the subject in all possible ways, found nothing which he could recommend mrs. cliff to purchase. he wrote to her a great many letters during this period, all of which were interesting, although there were portions of many of them which she did not quite understand, being expressed in a somewhat technical fashion. burke liked to write letters. it was a novel experience for him to have time to write and something to write about. he had been better educated than the ordinary sailor, and his intelligence and habits of observation enabled him to supplement to a considerable extent what he had learned at school. his spelling and grammar were sometimes at fault, but his handwriting was extremely plain and distinct, and willy croup, who always read his letters, declared that it was much better to write plainly than to be always correct in other respects, for what was the good of proper spelling and grammar if people could not make out what was written? mrs. cliff was not at all disturbed by the delay in the purchase of a yacht; for, according to her idea, it would be a long time yet before it was pleasant to sail upon the sea, and if it was interesting to mr. burke to go from place to place and have interviews with ship-owners and sea-faring people, she was glad that she was able to give him an opportunity to do so. as for herself, she was in a pleasant state of feminine satisfaction. without any sort of presumption or even effort on her part she had attained a high and unquestioned position among her fellow-citizens, and her mind was not set upon maintaining that position by worthy and unoffensive methods of using her riches. she now had a definite purpose in life. if she could make herself happy and a great many other people happy, and only a few people envious or jealous, and, at the same time, feel that she was living and doing things as a person of good common sense and great wealth ought to live and do things, what more could be expected of her in this life? thus backed up by her conscience and her check-book, she sat, morning after morning, before a cheerful fire of hickory logs and outlined her career. this was in the parlor of her old house, which she now determined to use as an office or business-room. she could afford the warmest fire of the best seasoned wood; her chimney was in perfect order, and she was but fifty-five years old and in excellent health;--why should she not enjoy the exhilarating blaze, and plan for years of exhilarating occupation. soon after mr. burke left plainton mrs. cliff began work upon the new park. this she could do without his assistance, and it was work the mere contemplation of which delighted her. she had legal assistance in regard to the purchase of the grounds and buildings of the opposite block, and while this was in the hands of her lawyers, she was in daily consultation with an eminent landscape-constructor who had come to plainton for the purpose. he lodged at the hotel, and drew most beautiful plans of the proposed park. in the happy morning hours during which mrs. cliff's mind wandered over the beautiful drives, or stood upon the rustic bridges which crossed the stream dashing among its rocks and spreading itself out into placid pools; or when, mentally, she sat in the shade of the great trees and looked out upon the wide stretches of verdant lawn, relieved by the brilliant colors of the flower-beds, she often felt it was almost the same thing as if it were actually summer, and that she really saw the beautiful grass and flowers, heard the babbling of the stream, and felt the refreshing breezes which rustled the great limbs of the trees. she did not selfishly keep these pleasures to herself, but often on the stormy evenings, she and willy and the misses thorpedyke would go over the brilliantly colored plans of the incas' grove, admire what had been proposed, and suggest things which they thought would be desirable. miss thorpedyke, who had a vivid recollection of the gardens of luxemburg, spoke of many of their beautiful and classic features which she would recommend for the new park if it were not that they would cost so much money. all these were noted down with great care by mrs. cliff, and mentioned to the landscape-constructor the next day. thus at home, in church circles, in the society of the town, and in the mental contemplation of the charming landscape which in consequence of her own will and command would soon spread itself out before her windows, mrs. cliff was very happy. but among all her sources of enjoyment there was nothing, perhaps, which pleased her better than to think on a cold winter's night, when the piercing winds were roaring about the house, that poor old nancy shott was lying warm and comfortable under two of the finest blankets which ever came from californian looms. the great object of willy croup's thoughts at this time was not the park,--for she could not properly appreciate trees and grass in this shivery weather,--but the entertainment, the grand lunch, or the very high tea which was to be given to mrs. buskirk and daughters on the hill. this important event had been postponed because the sleighing had become rather bad and the buskirks had gone to the city. but as soon as they returned, willy hoped with all her heart that mrs. cliff would be able to show them what may be done in the line of hospitable entertainment by people who had not only money but something more. there had been a time when willy thought that when people wished to entertain there was nothing needed but money, but then she had not lived in the house with the misses thorpedyke, and had not heard them and mrs. cliff discuss such matters. the peace of mind of mrs. cliff was disturbed one day by the receipt of a letter from mr. burke, who wrote from new york and informed her that he had found a yacht which he believed would suit her, and he wished very much that she would come and look at it before he completed the purchase. mrs. cliff did not wish to go to new york and look at yachts. she had then under consideration the plan of a semicircular marble terrace which was to overlook one end of a shaded lakelet, which mr. humphreys, her professional adviser, assured her she could have just as well as not, by means of a dam, and she did not wish to interrupt this most interesting occupation. mr. humphreys had procured photographs of some of the romantic spots of the luxemburg, and mrs. cliff felt within herself the gladdening impulses of a good magician as she planned the imitation of all this classic beauty. besides, it was the middle of march, and cold, and not at all the season in which she would be able to properly appreciate the merits of a yacht. still, as mr. burke had found the vessel and wanted her to see it, and as there was a possibility, he had written, that delay might cause her to lose the opportunity of getting what she wanted, and as she was very desirous of pleasing him, she decided that she and willy would go to new york and look at the vessel. it would not take long, because, of course, mr. burke had already found out everything that was necessary in regard to its sea-going qualities, and a great many other things of which she would not be a judge. in fact, it was not necessary for her to go at all; but as she was to pay for it, mr. burke would be better satisfied if first she saw it. it was very pleasant to think that she could go away whenever she pleased and leave her house in the care of two such ladies as miss eleanor thorpedyke and her sister. chapter xix the "summer shelter" when mrs. cliff and willy, as well wrapped up in handsome furs as mr. burke himself, who accompanied them, left their new york hotel to drive over to brooklyn and examine the yacht which had been selected, willy's mind vainly endeavored to form within itself an image of the object of the expedition. she was so thoroughly an inland woman and had so little knowledge of matters connected with the sea, that when she first heard the mention of the yacht it had brought into her mind the idea of an asiatic animal, with long hair and used as a beast of burden, which she had read about in her school-books. but when she had discovered that the object in question was a vessel and not a bovine ruminant, her mind carried her no farther than to a pleasure boat with a sail to it. even mrs. cliff, who had travelled, had inadequate ideas concerning a steam yacht. she had seen the small steamers which ran upon the seine, and she had taken little trips upon them; and if she had given the subject careful consideration she might have thought that the yacht intended for the use of a private individual would be somewhat smaller than one of these. it would be difficult, therefore, to imagine the surprise and even amazement of mrs. cliff and willy croup when they beheld the vessel to which mr. burke conducted them. it was in fact a sea-going steamer of small comparative size, it is true, but of towering proportions when compared with the ideals in the minds of the two female citizens of plainton who had come, the one to view it and the other to buy it. "before we go on board," said mr. burke, as he proudly stood upon the pier, holding fast to his silk hat in the cold breeze which swept along the water front, "i want you to take a general look at her! i don't suppose you know anything about her lines and build, but i can tell you they're all right! but you can see for yourselves that she's likely to be a fine, solid, comfortable craft, and won't go pitchin' and tossin' around like the crafts that some people go to sea in!" "why, the name is on it!" cried willy. "_summer shelter!_ how did you happen to find one with that name, mr. burke?" "oh, i didn't!" said he. "she had another name, but i wanted you to see her just as she'd look if she really belonged to you,--so i had the other name painted out and this put on in good big white letters that can be seen for a long distance. if you don't buy her, mrs. cliff, of course i'll have the old name put back again. now what do you think of her, mrs. cliff, lookin' at her from this point of view?" the good lady stood silent. she gazed at the long high hull of the steamer, she looked up at the black smokestack, and at the masts which ran up so shapely and so far, and her soul rose higher than it had been uplifted even by the visions of the future grove of the incas. "i think it is absolutely splendid!" said she. "let us go in!" "on board, madam," said burke, gently correcting her. "this way to the gang-plank!" for nearly two hours mrs. cliff and willy wandered over the upper and lower decks of the yacht; examined its pretty little state-rooms; sat excitedly upon the sofas of its handsomely decorated saloon; examined the folding tables and all the other wonderful things which shut themselves up out of the way when they were not needed; tapped the keys of the piano; investigated the storerooms, lockers, and all the marine domestic conveniences, and forgot it was winter, forgot that the keen wind nearly blew their bonnets off as they walked the upper deck, and felt what a grand thing it would be to sail upon the sea upon such a noble vessel. to all this there was added in mrs. cliff's mind the proud feeling that it would be her own, and in it she could go wherever she pleased and come back again when it suited her. willy, who had never been to sea, was perfectly free to form an idea of an ocean voyage as delightful and charming as she pleased, and this she did with great enthusiasm. even had it been necessary that this perfectly lovely vessel should remain moored at the pier, it would have given joy to her soul to live in it, to sleep in one of those sweet little rooms, and to eat, and read, and sew in that beautiful saloon. "mr. burke," said mrs. cliff, "i don't believe you could find any vessel better suited to our purpose than this one, and i wish you would buy it!" "madam," said burke, "i'll do it immediately! and i tell you, madam, that this is a wonderful chance for this time of the year when yachts and pleasure crafts in this part of the world are generally laid up and can't be seen properly; and what's more, would have to be docked and overhauled generally before they would be ready for sea. but here is a yacht that's been cruising down south and in the west indies and has just come up here, and is all ready to go to sea again whenever you like it. if you don't mind going home by yourselves, i'll go to the office of the agent of the owner, and settle the business at once!" it would have been impossible for any purchase or any possession of palace, pyramid, or principality to make prouder the heart of mrs. cliff than did the consciousness that she was the owner of a fine sea vessel worked by steam. she acknowledged to herself that if she had been at home she could not have prevented herself from putting on those airs which she had been so anxious to avoid. but these would wear off very soon she knew, and so long as there was no one, except willy, to notice a possible change of manner, it did not matter. now that mrs. cliff and willy were in new york they both agreed that it would be well for them to attend to some shopping for which they had intended coming to the city later in the spring. it had been found that there were many things wanted to supplement the furnishing of the new house, and to the purchase of these the two ladies now devoted their mornings. but every afternoon, in company with mr. burke, they went on board the _summer shelter_ to see what he had been doing and to consult with him about what he was going to do. it was astonishing how many little things were needed to be done to a yacht just returned from a cruise, and how interesting all these things were to mrs. cliff and willy, considering that they knew so little about them. the engineer and fireman had not been discharged, but were acting as watchmen, and burke strongly recommended that they should be engaged immediately, because, as he said, if mrs. cliff were to let them go it would be difficult to get such men again. "it was a little expensive, to be sure, but when a yacht is not laid up," he said, "there should always be men aboard of her." and so the painting, and the cleaning, and the necessary fitting up went on, and mr. burke was very happy, and mrs. cliff was very proud, although the external manifestation of this feeling was gradually wearing off. "i don't want to give advice, madam," said burke one evening, as the little party sat together discussing nautical matters, "but if i was in your place, i wouldn't go back to plainton before i had taken a little trial trip on the yacht. it doesn't matter a bit about the weather! after we get out to sea it will be only a few days before we find we're in real spring weather and the warm water of the gulf stream. we can touch at savannah, and cruise along the florida coast, and then go over to the bahamas, and look around as long as we feel like! and when we get back here it will be beginning to be milder, and then you can go home and arrange for the voyages you're goin' to make in her during the summer!" mrs. cliff considered. this was a tempting proposition. and while she considered, willy sat and looked at her with glowing cheeks and half-open mouth. it would not have required one second for her to decide such a question. "you know," said mr. burke, "it wouldn't take me long to get her ready for sea. i could soon coal her and put her stores aboard, and as to a crew, i can get one in no time. we could leave port in a week just as well as not!" "let's go!" said willy, seizing the hand of her friend. "it need only be a little trip, just to see how it would all feel." mrs. cliff smiled. "very good," said she, "we'll take a little trial trip just as soon as you are ready, captain burke! that is, if you have not made any plans which will prevent you from accepting the position." "madam," said burke, springing to his feet and standing proudly before mrs. cliff, "i'd throw up the command of the finest liner on the atlantic to be captain of the _summer shelter_ for this summer! i see far more fun ahead in the cruises that you're going to make than in any voyage i've looked forward to yet; and when people have a chance to mix fun and charity as we're goin' to mix them, i say such people ought to call themselves lucky! this is wednesday! well now, madam, by next wednesday the _summer shelter_ will be all fitted out for the cruise, and she'll be ready to sail out of the harbor at whatever hour you name, for the tide won't make any difference to her!" "there is only one thing i don't like about the arrangement," said mrs. cliff, when the captain had left them, "and that is, that we will have to take this trip by ourselves. it seems a pity for three people to go sailing around in a big vessel like that with most of the state-rooms empty; but, of course, people are not prepared yet for country weeks at sea! and it will take some time to make my plans known in the proper quarters." "i don't suppose," said willy, "that there's anybody in plainton that we could send for on short notice. people there want so much time to get ready to do anything!" "but there is nobody in the town that i would care to take on a first voyage," said mrs. cliff. "you know, something might go wrong and we would have to come back, and if it is found necessary to do that, i don't want any plainton people on board!" "no indeed!" exclaimed willy, her mind involuntarily running towards nancy shott, to whom a voyage to the west indies would doubtless be of great service. "don't let's bother about anything of that kind! let's make the first trip by ourselves! i think that will be glorious!" chapter xx the synod as most of mrs. cliff's business in new york was now finished, and as she and willy were waiting there only for the yacht to be made ready for sea, she had a good deal of time on her hands. on the saturday following her decision to make a trial trip on the _summer shelter_, when returning from the daily visit to the yacht, mrs. cliff stopped in at a brooklyn church in which a synod was at that time convened. she had read of the proceedings of this body in the papers, and, as the deliberations concerned her own denomination, she thought she would be interested in them. willy, however, preferred to go on by herself to new york, as she had something to do there which she thought would be more to her taste than the proceedings of a synod. it was not long after she had been seated in the church that mrs. cliff began to regret that she had not attended some of the earlier meetings, for the questions debated were those in which she took an interest. after a time she saw near her mrs. arkwright, a lady who had visited mrs. perley some years before, and with whom she had then become acquainted. joining her, mrs. cliff found mrs. arkwright able to give her a great deal of information in regard to the members of the synod, and as the two sat and talked together in whispers, a desire arose in the mind of mrs. cliff that she and her wealth might in some way join in the work in which all these people were engaged. as her mind rested upon this subject, there came into it a plan which pleased her. here were all these delegates, many of them looking tired and pale, as if they had been hard-worked during the winter, and here was she, the mistress of the _summer shelter_, about to take a trip to warm and sunny regions with an almost empty vessel. as soon as the meeting adjourned, mrs. cliff, accompanied by mrs. arkwright, made her way to the front, where many of the members were standing together, and was introduced by her friend to several clergymen with whom mrs. arkwright was acquainted. as soon as possible mrs. cliff referred to the subject which was upon her mind, and informed the gentlemen with whom she had just been made acquainted, that if they thought well of it she would like to invite a party of such of the delegates who would care for such an excursion at this season, to accompany her on a short trip to the west indies. her vessel would easily accommodate twelve or fifteen of the gentlemen, and she would prefer to offer her invitation first to the clerical members of the synod. the reverend gentlemen to whom this offer was made were a little surprised by it, but they could not help considering it was a most generous and attractive proposition, and one of them undertook to convey the invitation to some of his brethren of the synod. [illustration: mrs. cliff's invitation was discussed with lively appreciation] although the synod had adjourned, many of the delegates remained for a considerable time, during which mrs. cliff's invitation was discussed with lively appreciation, some of the speakers informing her that if they could make the arrangements necessary for their pulpits and their families during a short absence, they would be delighted to accept her invitation. the synod would finally adjourn on the next tuesday, and she was promised that before that time she would be informed of the exact number of guests she might expect. the next morning when mr. burke appeared to accompany the ladies to the yacht, he found willy croup alone in their parlor. "do you know what's happened?" cried willy, springing towards him as he entered. "of course you don't, for mrs. cliff is going to give the first country week on the _summer shelter_ to a synod!" "to a what?" cried burke. "a synod," explained willy. "it's a congregation, i mean a meeting, mostly of ministers, come together to settle church matters. she invited the whole lot of them, but of course they all can't come,--for there are more than a hundred of them,--but there will be about a dozen who can sail with us next wednesday!" mr. burke's jaw dropped. "a dozen ministers!" he exclaimed. "sail with us! by george! miss croup, will you excuse me if i sit down?" "you know," said willy, "that the _summer shelter_ was bought for this sort of thing! that is, to do good to people who can't get that sort of good in other ways! and if mrs. cliff takes out poor children from the slums, and hard-working shopgirls, and seamstresses, why shouldn't she take hard-working ministers and give them some fresh air and pleasure?" "a dozen ministers!" groaned mr. burke. "i tell you, miss croup, i can't take them in!" "oh, there'll be room enough!" said willy, mistaking his meaning, "for mrs. cliff says that each of those little rooms will easily hold two!" "oh, it isn't that!" said burke, his eyes fixed steadfastly upon a chair near him as if it had been something to look at. "but twelve ministers coming down on me so sudden, rather takes me aback, miss croup!" "i don't wonder," said willy, "for i don't believe that a synod ever went out yachting before in a bunch!" mr. burke rose and looked out of the window. "miss croup," said he, "do you remember what i said about mixin' fun and charity in these cruises? well, i guess we'll have to take our charity straight this time!" but when mrs. cliff had come in and had talked with animation and enthusiasm in regard to her plan, the effects of the shock which mr. burke had received began to wear off. "all right, madam!" said he. "you're owner, and i'm captain, and i'll stand by you! and if you take it into your head to ship a dozen popes on the _summer shelter_, i'll take them where you want them to go to, and i'll bring them back safe. i suppose we'll have all sorts of customers on the yacht this season, and if we've got to get used to queer passengers, a synod will do very well to begin with! if you'll find out who's goin' and will write to them to be on hand tuesday night, i'll see that they're taken care of!" mrs. cliff's whole heart was now in the projected cruise of the _summer shelter_. when she had thought of it with only willy and herself as passengers, she could not help considering it was a great extravagance. now she was going to begin her series of sea-trips in a fashion far superior and more dignified than anything yet thought of. to be able to give such an invitation to a synod was something of which she might well be proud, and she was proud. chapter xxi a telegram from captain horn it was early tuesday morning, and mrs. cliff and willy having just finished their breakfast, were busily engaged in packing the two trunks they proposed taking with them, and the elder lady was stating that although she was perfectly willing to dress in the blue flannel suit which had been ordered, she was not willing to wear a white cap, although willy urged that this was the proper thing, as they had been told by the people where they had bought their yachting suits; and mrs. cliff was still insisting that, although it would do very well for willy to wear a white cap, she would wear a hood,--the same kind of a hood which she had worn on all her other voyages, which was more like a bonnet and more suitable to her on that account than any other kind of head covering, when mr. burke burst--actually burst--without knocking, into the room. his silk hat was on the back of his head, and he wore no overcoat. "mrs. cliff," he exclaimed, "i've just seen shirley! you remember shirley?" "indeed, i do," said mrs. cliff. "i remember him very well, and i always thought him to be a remarkably nice man! but where did you see him, and what in the world did he tell you to throw you into such a flurry?" "he said a lot to me!" replied burke. "and i'll try to make as straight a tale of it as i can! you see, about a week ago shirley got a telegraphic message from captain horn--" "captain horn!" exclaimed mrs. cliff. "where is he, and what did he say?" "he's in mexico," said burke; "and the telegram was as long as a letter--that's one advantage in not being obliged to think of what things cost,--and he told shirley a lot--" "how did they say they were?" asked mrs. cliff, eagerly. "or did he say anything about mrs. horn? are they well?" "oh, i expect they're all right," said burke; "but i don't think he treated that subject. it was all about that gold, and the part of it that was to go to peru! "when the business of dividing up the treasure was settled in london in the way we know all about, word was sent to the peruvian government to tell them what had happened, and to see what they said about it. and when they heard the news, they were a good deal more than satisfied,--as they ought to have been, i'm sure,--and they made no bones about the share we took. all they wanted was to have their part sent to them just as soon as could be, and i don't wonder at it; for all those south american countries are as poor as beggars, and if any one of them got a sum of money like that, it could buy up all the others, if it felt like spending the money in that way! "those peruvians were in such a hurry to get the treasure that they wouldn't agree to have the gold coined into money, or to be sent a part at a time, or to take drafts for it; but they wanted it just as it was as soon as they could get it, and, as it was their own, nobody could hinder them from doing what they pleased with it. shirley and i have made up our minds that most likely the present government thought that they wouldn't be in office when the money arrived if they didn't have it on hand in pretty short order; and, of course, if they got their fingers on that treasure, they could stay in power as long as they pleased. "it is hard to believe that any government could be such fools,--for they ordered it all shipped on an ordinary merchant vessel, an english steamer, the _dunkery beacon_, which was pretty nigh ready to sail for lima. now, any other government in this world would have sent a man-of-war for that gold, or some sort of an armed vessel to convoy it, but that wasn't the way with the peruvians! they wanted their money, and they wanted it by the first steamer which could be got ready to sail. they weren't going to wait until they got one of their cruisers over to england,--not they! "the quickest way, of course, would have been to ship it to aspinwall, and then take it by rail to panama, and from there ship it to lima, but i suppose they were afraid to do that. if that sort of freight had been carried overland, they couldn't have hindered people from finding out what it was, and pretty nearly everybody in central america would have turned train-robber. anyway, the agents over there got the _dunkery beacon_ to sail a little before her regular time. "now here comes the point! they actually shipped a hundred and sixty million dollars' worth of pure gold on a merchant steamer that was going on a regular voyage, and would actually touch at jamaica and rio janeiro on account of her other freight, instead of buying her outright, or sending her on the straightest cruise she could make for lima! just think of that! more than that, this business was so talked about by the peruvian agents, while they were trying to get the earliest steamer possible for it, that it was heard of in a good many more ports than one! "well, this steamer with all the gold on board sailed just as soon as it could; and the very next day our london bankers got a telegram from paris from the head of a detective bureau there to tell them that no less than three vessels were fitting out in the biggest kind of hurry to go after that slow merchant steamer with the millions on board!" mrs. cliff and willy uttered a simultaneous cry of horror. "do you mean they're pirates, and are going to steal the gold?" cried mrs. cliff. "of course they are!" continued burke. "and i don't wonder at it! why, i don't believe such a cargo of gold ever left a port since the beginning of the world! for such a thing as that is enough to tempt anybody with the smallest streak of rascal blood in him and who could get hold of a ship! "well, these three vessels were fitting out hard as they could,--two in france, at toulon and marseilles, and one in genoa; and although the detectives were almost positive what their business was, they were not sure that they could get proof enough to stop them. if the _dunkery beacon_ had been going on a straight voyage, even to rio janeiro, she might have got away from them, but, you see, she was goin' to touch at jamaica! "and now, now,--this very minute,--that slow old steamer and those three pirates are on the atlantic ocean together! why, it makes your blood creep to think of it!" "indeed it does! it's awful!" cried mrs. cliff. "and what are the london people going to do?" "they're not going to do anything so far as i know!" said burke. "if they could get through with the red-tape business necessary to send any sort of a cruiser or war-vessel after the _dunkery beacon_ to protect her,--and i'm not sure that they could do it at all,--it would be a precious long time before such a vessel would leave the english channel! but i don't think that they'll try anything of the sort; all i know is, that the london people sent a cable message to captain horn. i suppose that they thought he ought to know what was likely to happen, considerin' that he was the head man in the whole business!" "and what did the captain do?" cried mrs. cliff. "what could he do?" "i don't know," answered burke. "i expect he did everything that could be done in the way of sending messages; and among other things, he sent that telegram, about a thousand words more or less, to shirley. he might have telegraphed to me, perhaps, but he didn't know my address, as i was wandering around. but shirley, you know, is a fixture in his shipyard;--and so he sent it to him!" "i haven't a doubt," said mrs. cliff, "that he would have telegraphed to you if he had known where you were!" "i hope so," said burke. "and when he had told shirley all that had happened, he asked him to pull up stakes, and sail by the first steamer he could catch for jamaica. there was a chance that he might get there before the _dunkery beacon_ arrived, or while she was in port, and then he could tell everything to make her captain understand that he needn't be afraid to lose anything on account of his ship stopping in kingston harbor until arrangements could be made for his carrying his gold in safety to lima. captain horn didn't think that the pirates would try to do anything before the _dunkery beacon_ left kingston. they would just follow her until she got into the south atlantic, and then board her, most likely! "captain horn said that he was going to jamaica too, but as he didn't know how soon he would be able to sail from vera cruz, he wanted shirley to go ahead without losing a minute. and then shirley he telegraphed to me up at plainton,--thinking i was there and that i ought to know all about it, and the women at my house took so long forwarding it that i did not get it until yesterday evening, and then i rushed around to where shirley was staying, and got there just in time to catch him, for the next steamer to jamaica sailed early this morning. but he had plenty of time to tell me everything. "the minute he got the captain's telegram, he just dropped everything and started for new york. and i can tell you, mrs. cliff, i'd have done the same, for i don't know what i wouldn't do to get the chance to see captain horn again!" "and you wanted to go with mr. shirley?" said mrs. cliff, with an eager light in her eyes. "indeed i did!" said burke. "but, of course, i wouldn't think of such a thing as going off and leaving you here with that yacht on your hands, and no knowing what you would do with the people on board, and everything else! so i saw shirley off about seven o'clock this morning, and then i came to report to you." "that was too much to expect, mr. burke," said mrs. cliff, "but it was just like you, and i shall never forget it! but, now tell me one thing,--is mrs. horn going to jamaica with the captain?" "i don't know," said burke, "but, of course, she must be--he wouldn't leave her alone in mexico!" "of course she is!" cried mrs. cliff. "and mr. shirley will see them! and oh, mr. burke, why can't we see them? of all things in the world i want to see edna, and the captain too! and why can't we go straight to jamaica in the _summer shelter_ instead of going anywhere else? we may get there before they all leave; don't you think we could do that?" the eyes of captain burke fairly blazed. "do it!" he cried, springing to his feet. "i believe we can do it; at any rate we can try! the same to you, madam, i would do anything in the world to see captain horn, and nobody knows when we will have the chance! well, madam, it's all the plainest kind of sailing; we can get off at daylight to-morrow morning, and if that yacht sails as they told me she sails, i believe we may overhaul shirley, and, perhaps, we will get to kingston before any of them! and now i've got to bounce around, for there's a good deal to be done before night-fall!" "but what about the synod?" asked willy croup. "bless my soul!" exclaimed mr. burke, stopping suddenly on his way to the door. "i forgot the synod." mrs. cliff hesitated for a moment. "i don't think it need make any difference! it would be a great shame to disappoint all those good men; why couldn't we take them along all the same? their weight wouldn't make the yacht go any slower, would it, mr. burke?" "not a bit of it!" said he. "but they may not want to go so far. besides, if we find the captain at kingston, we mayn't feel like going back in a hurry. i'll tell you what we could do, mrs. cliff! we wouldn't lose any time worth speaking of if we touched at nassau,--that's in the bahamas, and a jolly place to go to. then we might discharge our cargo of ministers, and if you paid their board until the next steamer sailed for new york, and their passage home, i should think they would be just as well satisfied as if they came back with us!" mrs. cliff reflected. "that's true!" said she, presently. "i can explain the case to them, and i don't see why they should not be satisfied. and as for me, nobody could be more willing than i am to give pleasure to these ministers, but i don't believe that i could give up seeing edna and captain horn for the sake of any members of any synod!" "all right, madam!" cried the impatient burke. "you settle the matter with the parsons, and i haven't a doubt you can make it all right; and i'll be off! everything has got to be on board to-night. i'll come after you early this evening." with this he departed. when mr. burke had gone, mrs. cliff, very much excited by what she had heard and by the thought of what she was going to do, told willy that she could go on with the packing while she herself went over to the church in brooklyn and explained matters to the members of the synod who intended to go with her, and give them a chance to decide whether or not the plan proposed by mr. burke would suit them. she carried out this intention and drove to brooklyn in a carriage, but, having been delayed by many things which willy wanted to know about the packing, and having forgotten in what street the church was situated, she lost a good deal of time; and when she reached her destination she found that the synod had adjourned _sine die_. mrs. cliff sighed. it was a great pity to have taken so much trouble, especially when time was so precious, but she had done what she could. it would be impossible for her to find the members in their temporary places of abode, and the only thing she could do now was to tell them the change in her plans when they came on board that evening, and then, if they did not care to sail with her, they would have plenty of time to go on shore again. chapter xxii the "summer shelter" goes to sea mr. burke did not arrive to escort mrs. cliff and willy croup to the yacht until nearly nine o'clock in the evening. they had sent their baggage to the vessel in the afternoon, and had now been expecting him, with great impatience, for nearly an hour, but when mr. burke arrived, it was impossible to find fault with him, for he had been busy, he said, every minute of the day. he had made up a full crew; he had a good sailing-master, and the first mate who had been on the yacht before; everything that he could think of in the way of provisions and stores were on board, and there was nothing to prevent their getting out of the harbor early in the morning. when mrs. cliff stepped on board her yacht, the _summer shelter_, her first thought was directed towards her guests of the synod; and when the mate, mr. burdette, had advanced and been introduced to her, she asked him if any of the clergymen had yet appeared. "they're all aboard, madam," said he--"fourteen of them! they came aboard about seven o'clock, and they stayed in the saloon until about half-past nine, and one of them came to me and said that as they were very tired they thought they'd go to bed, thinking, most likely, as it was then so late you wouldn't come aboard until morning. so the steward showed them their state-rooms, and we had to get one more ready than we expected to, and they're now all fast asleep; but i suppose i could arouse some of them up if you want to see them!" mrs. cliff turned to burke with an expression of despair on her face. "what in the world shall i do?" said she. "i wanted to tell them all about it and let them decide, but it would be horrible to make any of them who didn't care to go to get up and dress and go out into this damp night air to look for a hotel!" "well," said burke, "all that's going ashore has got to go ashore to-night. we'll sail as soon as it is daylight! if i was you, mrs. cliff, i wouldn't bother about them. you invited them to go to the bahamas, and you're going to take them there, and you're going to send them back the best way you can, and i'm willing to bet a clipper ship against your yacht that they will be just as well satisfied to come back in a regular steamer as to come back in this! you might offer to send them over to savannah, and let them come up by rail,--they might like that for a change! the way the thing looks to me, madam, you're proposing to give them a good deal more than you promised." "well," said mrs. cliff, "one thing is certain! i'm not going to turn any of them out of their warm beds this night; and we might as well go to our rooms, for it must be a good deal after ten." when willy croup beheld her little state-room, she stood at the door and looked in at it with rapture. she had a beautiful chamber in mrs. cliff's new house, fully and elegantly furnished, but there was something about this little bit of a bedroom, with all its nautical conveniences, its hooks, and shelves, and racks, its dear little window, and its two pretty berths,--each just big enough and not a bit too big,--which charmed her as no room she had ever seen had charmed her. the _summer shelter_ must have started, mrs. cliff thought, before daylight the next morning, for when she was awakened by the motion of the engine it was not light enough to distinguish objects in the room. but she lay quietly in her berth, and let her proud thoughts mount high and spread wide. as far as the possession of wealth and the sense of power could elevate the soul of woman, it now elevated the soul of mrs. cliff. this was her own ship which was going out upon the ocean! this was her engine which was making everything shake and tremble! the great screw which was dashing the water at the stern and forcing the vessel through the waves belonged to her! everything--the smoke-stacks, the tall masts, the nautical instruments--was her property! the crew and stewards, the engineers, were all in her service! she was going to the beautiful island of the sunny tropics because she herself had chosen to go there! it was with great satisfaction, too, that she thought of the cost of all this. a great deal of money had been paid for that yacht, and it had relieved, as scarcely any other expenditure she would be likely to make could have relieved, the strain upon her mind occasioned by the pressure of her income. even after the building of her new apartments her money had been getting the better of her. now she felt that she was getting the better of her money. by the way the yacht rolled and, at the same time, pitched and tossed, mrs. cliff thought it likely that they must be out upon the open sea, or, at least, well down the outer bay. she liked the motion, and the feeling that her property, moving according to her will, was riding dominant over the waves of the sea, sent a genial glow through every vein. it was now quite light, and when mrs. cliff got up and looked out of her round window she could see, far away to the right, the towering lighthouses of sandy hook. about eight o'clock she dressed and went out on deck. she was proud of her good sailing qualities. as she went up the companion-way, holding firmly to the bright brass rail, she felt no more fear of falling than if she had been one of the crew. when she came out on the upper deck, she had scarcely time to look about her, when a man, whom at first sight she took for a stranger, came forward with outstretched hand. but in an instant she saw it was not a stranger,--it was captain burke, but not as she had ever seen him before. he was dressed in a complete suit of white duck with gold buttons, and he wore a white cap trimmed with gold,--an attire so different from his high silk hat and the furs that it was no wonder that at first she did not recognize their wearer. "why, captain burke," she cried, "i didn't know you!" "no wonder," said he; "this is a considerable change from my ordinary toggery, but it's the uniform of a captain of a yacht; you see that's different from what it would be if i commanded a merchant vessel, or a liner, or a man-of-war!" "it looks awfully cool for such weather," said she. "yes," said the captain, "but it's the proper thing; and yachts, you know, generally cruise around in warmish weather. however, we're getting south as fast as we can. i tell you, madam, this yacht is a good one! we've just cast the log, and she's doing better than fourteen knots an hour, and we haven't got full steam on, either! it seems funny, madam, for me to command a steamer, but i'll get used to it in no time. if it was a sailing-vessel, it wouldn't be anything out of the way, because i've studied navigation, and i know more about a ship than many a skipper, but a steam yacht is different! however, i've got men under me who know how to do what i order them to do, and if necessary they're ready to tell me what i ought to order!" "i don't believe there could be a better captain," said mrs. cliff, "and i do hope you won't take cold! and now i want to see the ministers as soon as they are ready. i think it will be well for me to receive them up here. i am not sure that i remember properly the names of all of them, but i shall not hesitate to ask them, and then i shall present each one of them to you: it will be a sort of a reception, you know! after that we can all go on pleasantly like one family. we will have to have a pretty big table in the saloon, but i suppose we can manage that!" "oh yes," said mr. burke; "and now i'll see the steward and tell him to let the parsons know that you're ready to receive them." about a quarter of an hour after this the steward appeared on deck, and approaching mrs. cliff and the captain, touched his hat. "come to report, sir," said he, "the ministers are all sea-sick! there ain't none of them wants to get out of their berths, but some of them want tea." mrs. cliff and the captain could not help laughing, although she declared it was not a laughing matter. "but it isn't surprising," said the captain; "it's pretty rough, and i suppose they're all thorough-bred landsmen. but they'll get over it before long, and when they come on deck it's likely it will be pleasanter weather. we're having a considerable blow just now, and it will be worse when we get farther out! so i should say that you and miss croup and myself had better have our breakfast." the steward was still standing by, and he touched his hat again, this time to mrs. cliff. "the other lady is very sea-sick! i heard her groaning fearfully as i passed her door." "oh, i must go down to willy," said mrs. cliff. "and, captain, you and i will have to breakfast together." as mrs. cliff opened the door of willy croup's state-room, a pale white face in the lower berth was turned towards her, and a weak and trembling voice said to her, "oh, sarah, you have come at last! is there any way of getting me out of this horrible little hole?" for two days mrs. cliff and captain burke breakfasted, dined, and supped by themselves. they had head-winds, and the sea was very rough, and although the yacht did not make the time that might have been expected of her in fair weather, she did very well, and burke was satisfied. the two stewards were kept very busy with the prostrate and dejected members of the synod, and mrs. cliff and the stewardess devoted their best efforts to the alleviation of the woes of willy, which they were glad to see were daily dwindling. they had rounded cape hatteras, the sea was smoother, the cold wind had gone down, and willy croup, warmly wrapped up, was sitting in a steamer chair on deck. the desire that she might suddenly be transferred to plainton or to heaven was gradually fading out of her mind, and the blue sky, the distant waves, and the thought of the approaching meal were exercising a somewhat pleasurable influence upon her dreamy feeling, when captain burke, who stood near with a telescope, announced that the steamer over there on the horizon line was heading south and that he had a notion she was the _antonina_, the vessel on which shirley had sailed. "i believed that we could overhaul her!" said he to mrs. cliff. "i didn't know much about her sailing qualities, but i had no reason to believe she has the speed of this yacht, and, as we're on the same course, i thought it likely we would sight her, and what's more, pass her. we'll change our course a little so that we will be closer to her when we pass." mrs. cliff, who had taken the glass, but could not see through it very well, returned it to the captain and remarked, "if we can go so much faster than she does, why can't we take mr. shirley on board when we catch up to her?" "i don't know about that," said burke. "to do that, both vessels would have to lay to and lose time, and she might not want to do it as she's a regular steamer, and carries the mail. and besides, if shirley's under orders,--that is, the same thing as orders,--to go straight to jamaica, i don't know that we have any right to take him off his steamer and carry him to nassau. of course, he might get to jamaica just as soon, and perhaps sooner, if he sailed with us, but we don't know it! we may be delayed in some way; there're lots of things that might happen, and anyway, i don't believe in interfering with orders, and i know shirley doesn't either. i believe he would want to keep on. besides, we don't really know yet that that's the _antonina_." a couple of hours, however, proved that captain burke's surmise had been correct, and it was not long before the two vessels were abreast of each other. the yacht had put on all steam and had proved herself capable of lively speed. as the two vessels approached within hailing distance, captain burke went up on the little bridge, with a speaking-trumpet, and it was not long before shirley was on the bridge of the other steamer, with another trumpet. to the roaring conversation which now took place, everybody on each vessel who was not too sick, who had no duties, or could be spared from them, listened with the most lively interest. a colloquy upon the lonely sea between two persons, one upon one vessel and the other upon another, must always be an incident of absorbing importance. very naturally shirley was amazed to find it was his friend burke who was roaring at him, and delighted when he was informed that the yacht was also on its way to jamaica to meet captain horn. after a quarter of an hour of high-sounding talk, during which shirley was informed of burke's intention to touch at nassau, the interview terminated; the _summer shelter_ shaping her course a little more to the south, by night-fall the _antonina_ had faded out of sight on the northeast horizon. "i shouldn't wonder," said captain burke at dinner, "if we got to jamaica before her anyway, although we're bound to lose time in the harbor at nassau." the company at the dinner-table was larger than it had yet been. five members of the synod had appeared on deck during the speaking-trumpet conversation, and feeling well enough to stay there, had been warmly greeted and congratulated by mrs. cliff. the idea of a formal reception had, of course, been given up, and there was no need of presenting these gentlemen to the captain, for he had previously visited all of his clerical passengers in their berths, and was thus qualified to present them to mrs. cliff as fast as they should make their appearance. at dinner-time two more came into the saloon, and the next morning at breakfast the delegation from the synod were all present, with the exception of two whose minds were not yet quite capable of properly appreciating the subject of nutrition. when at last the _summer shelter_ found herself in the smoother waters and the warmer air of the gulf stream, when the nautilus spread its gay-colored sail in the sunlight by the side of the yacht, when the porpoises flashed their shining black bodies out of the water and plunged in again as they raced with the swiftly moving vessel, when great flocks of flying-fish would rise into the air, skim high above the water, and then all fall back again with a patter as of big rain-drops, and the people on the deck of the _summer shelter_ took off their heavy wraps and unbuttoned their coats, it was a happy company which sailed with mrs. cliff among the beautiful isles of the west indies. chapter xxiii willy croup comes to the front the pleasant rays of the semi-tropical sun so warmed and subsequently melted the varied dispositions of the company on board the _summer shelter_ that in spite of their very different natures they became fused, as it were, into a happy party of friends. willy croup actually felt as if she were a young woman in a large party of gentlemen with no rivals. she was not young, but many of her youthful qualities still remained with her, and under the influence of her surroundings they all budded out and blossomed bravely. at the end of a day of fine weather there was not a clergyman on board who did not wish that miss croup belonged to his congregation. as for the members of the synod, there could be no doubt that they were thoroughly enjoying themselves. tired with the long winter's work, and rejoiced, almost amazed, to be so suddenly freed from the cold wintry weather of their homes, all of their spirits rose and most of their hearts were merry. there were but few gray heads among these clergymen, and the majority of them were under middle age. some of them had been almost strangers to each other when they came on board, but now there were no strangers on the _summer shelter_. some of them had crossed the atlantic, but not one had ever taken a coastwise voyage on a comparatively small vessel, and although the consequence of this new experience, their involuntary seclusion of the first days of the trip, and their consequent unconventional and irregular acceptance of mrs. cliff's hospitality, had caused a little stiffness in their demeanor at first, this speedily disappeared, hand in hand with the recollection of that most easily forgotten of human ills which had so rudely interfered with their good manners. as far as the resources of their portmanteaus would allow, these reverend clergymen dressed themselves simply and in semi-nautical costumes. some played quoits upon the upper deck, in which sport willy joined. others climbed up the shrouds, preferably on the inside,--this method of exercise, although very difficult, being considered safer in case of a sudden lurch of the vessel. and the many other sportive things they did, and the many pleasant anecdotes they told, nearly all relating to the discomfiture of clergymen under various embarrassing circumstances, caused captain burke to say to mrs. cliff that he had never imagined that parsons were such jolly fellows, and so far as he was concerned, he would be glad to take out another party of them. "but if we do," he said, "i think we'd better ship them on a tug and let them cruise around the lightship for two or three days. then when they hoisted a signal that they were all well on board, we could go out and take them off. in that way, you see, they'd really enjoy a cruise on the _summer shelter_." as the sun went down behind the distant coast of florida they were boarded by a negro pilot, and in the morning they awoke to find themselves fast to a pier of the city of nassau, lying white in the early daylight. the members of the synod had readily agreed to mrs. cliff's plan to leave them at nassau and let them return by a regular passenger steamer, and they all preferred to go by sea to savannah and then to their homes by rail. with expenses paid, none but the most unreasonable of men could have objected to such a plan. as captain burke announced that he would stop at nassau for a day to take in some fresh stores, especially of fruit and vegetables, and to give mrs. cliff and willy croup an opportunity to see the place, the _summer shelter_ was soon deserted. but in the evening, everybody returned on board, as the company wished to keep together as long as possible, and there would be plenty of time in the morning for the members of the synod to disembark and go to the hotel. very early in the morning captain burke was aroused by the entrance of the sailing-master, mr. portman, into his state-room. "'morning, sir," said mr. portman. "i want you to come out here and look at something!" perceiving by the manner and tones of the other that there was something important to be looked at, captain burke jumped up, quickly dressed himself, and went out on deck. there, fastened against the fore-mast, was a large piece of paper on which were written these words:-- "we don't intend to sail on a filibustering cruise. we know what it means when you take on arms in new york, and discharge your respectable passengers in nassau. we don't want nothing to do with your next lot of passengers, and don't intend to get into no scrapes. so good-bye! (signed) the crew." [illustration: there, fastened against the foremast, was a large piece of paper] "you don't mean to say," cried burke, "that the crew has deserted the vessel?" "that's what it is, sir," said mr. burdette, the first mate, who had just joined them. "the crew has cleared out to a man! mr. portman and i are left, the engineer's left and his assistant,--they belonged to the yacht and don't have much to do with the crew,--but the rest's all gone! deckhands, stewards, and even the cook. the stewardess must have gone too, for i haven't seen her." "what's the meaning of all this," shouted burke, his face getting very red. "when did they go, and why did they go?" "it's the second mate's watch, and he is off with them," said mr. burdette. "i expect he's at the bottom of it. he's a mighty wary fellow. just as like as not he spread the report that we were going on a filibustering expedition to cuba, and the ground for it, in my opinion, is those cases of arms you opened the other day!" "i think that is it, sir," said mr. portman. "you know there's a rising in cuba, and there was lots of talk about filibustering before we left. i expect the people thought that the ladies were going on shore the same as the parsons." burke was confounded. he knew not what to say or what to think, but seeing mrs. cliff appearing at the head of the companion-way, he thought it his first duty to go and report the state of affairs to her, which he did. that lady's astonishment and dismay were very great. "what are we going to do?" she asked. "and what do you mean by the cases of arms?" "i'm afraid that was a piece of folly on my part," said burke. "i didn't know we had arms on board!" "well, what we have don't amount to much," said burke. "but this was the way of it. after i heard the message from captain horn about the pirates, and everything, and as i didn't know exactly what sort of craft we would meet round about jamaica, i thought we would feel a good deal safer, especially on account of you and miss croup, if we had some firearms aboard. so i put in some repeating rifles and ammunition, and i paid for them out of my own pocket! such things always come in useful, and while i was commanding the vessel on which you were sailing, mrs. cliff, i didn't want to feel that i'd left anything undone which ought to be done. of course, there was no reason to suppose that we would ever have to use them, but i knew i would feel better if i had them. but there was one thing i needn't have done, and that was,--i needn't have opened them, which i did the other day in company with mr. burdette, because i hadn't had time before to examine them, and i wanted to see what they were. some of the crew must have noticed the guns, and as they couldn't think why we wanted them, unless we were going on a filibustering expedition, they got that notion into their heads and so cut the ship. it was easy enough to do it, for we were moored to a pier, and the second mate, whose watch they went away in, was most likely at the head of the whole business!" "but what are we going to do?" asked mrs. cliff. "i must get another crew just as soon as i can," said he, "and there isn't a minute to be lost! i was stretching a point when i agreed to stop over a day, but i thought we could afford that and reach kingston as soon as shirley does, but when he gets there with his message to the captain of the _dunkery beacon_, i want to be on hand. there's no knowing what will have to be done, or what will have to be said. i don't want shirley to think that he's got nobody to stand by him!" "indeed," said mrs. cliff, "we ought to lose no time, for captain horn may be there. it is a most dreadful misfortune to lose the crew this way! can't you find them again? can't you make them come back?" "if they don't want to be found," said burke, "it will take a good while to find them. but i'm going on shore this minute, and i wish you would be good enough to tell miss croup and the ministers how matters stand!" the news of the desertion of the crew when told by mrs. cliff to those of the passengers who had come on deck, and speedily communicated by these to their companions, created a great sensation. willy croup was so affected that she began to cry. "is there any danger?" she said; "and hadn't we better go on shore? suppose some other vessel wanted to come up to this wharf, and we had to move away,--there's nobody to move us! and suppose we were to get loose in some way, there's nobody to stop us!" "you are very practical, miss croup," remarked the reverend mr. hodgson, the youngest clergyman on board. "but i am sure you need not have the least fear. we are moored firm and fast, and i have no doubt captain burke will soon arrive with the necessary men to take you to jamaica." willy dried her eyes, and then she said, "there's another practical thing i'm thinking of,--there isn't any breakfast, and the cook's gone! but i believe we can arrange that. i could cook the breakfast myself if i had anybody to help me. i'll go speak to mrs. cliff." mrs. cliff was decidedly of the opinion that they all ought to have breakfast, and that she and willy could at least make coffee, and serve the passengers with bread and butter and preserved meats, but she remarked to mr. hodgson that perhaps the gentlemen would rather go to their hotels and get their breakfast. "no indeed," said mr. hodgson, a stout, sun-browned fellow, who looked more like a hunter than a clergyman. "we have been talking over the matter, and we are not going to desert you until the new men come. and as to breakfast, here are mr. litchfield and myself ready to serve as stewards, assistants, cooks, or in any culinary capacity. we both have camped out and are not green hands. so you must let us help you, and we shall consider it good fun." "it will be funny," said willy, "to see a minister cook! so let's go down to the kitchen. i know where it is, for i've been in it!" "i think, miss croup," said mr. litchfield, a tall young man with black hair and side whiskers, and a good deal of manner, "that you should say galley or caboose, now that we are all nautical together." "well, i can't cook nautical," said willy, "and i don't intend to try! but i guess you can eat the food if it isn't strictly naval." in a few minutes the volunteer cooks were all at work, and willy's familiarity with household affairs, even when exhibited under the present novel conditions, shone out brightly. she found some cold boiled potatoes, and soon set mr. hodgson to work frying them. mrs. cliff took the coffee in hand with all her ante-millionnaire skill, and willy skipped from one thing to another, as happy as most people are whose ability has suddenly forced them to the front. "oh, you ought to see the synod setting the table!" she cried, bursting into the galley. "they're getting things all wrong, but it doesn't matter, and they seem to be enjoying it. now then, mr. litchfield, i think you have cut all the bread that can possibly be eaten!" mr. burdette had gone on shore with the captain, and mr. portman considered it his duty to remain on deck, but the volunteer corps of cooks and stewards did their work with hearty good-will, and the breakfast would have been the most jolly meal that they had yet enjoyed together if it had not been for the uncertainty and uneasiness naturally occasioned by the desertion of the crew. it was after ten o'clock when captain burke and mr. burdette returned. "we're in a bad fix," said the former, approaching mrs. cliff, who, with all the passengers, had been standing together watching them come down the pier. "there was a steamer cleared from here the day before yesterday which was short-handed, and seems to have carried off all the available able seamen in the port. but i believe that is all stuff and nonsense! the real fact seems to be,--and mr. burdette and i've agreed on that point,--that the report has got out that we're filibusters, and nobody wants to ship with us! everything looks like it, you see. here we come from new york with a regular lot of passengers, but we've got arms on board, and we drop the passengers here and let them go home some other way, and we sail on, saying we're bound for jamaica--for cuba is a good deal nearer, you know. but the worst thing is this, and i'm bound to tell it so that you can all know how the case stands and take care of yourselves as you think best. there's reason to believe that if the government of this place has not already had its eye on us, it will have its eye on us before very long, and for my part i'd give a good deal of money to be able to get away before they do; but without a crew we can't do it!" mrs. cliff and burke now retired to consult. "madam," said he, "i'm bound to ask you as owner, what do you think we ought to do? if you take my advice, the first thing to be done is to get rid of the ministers. you can settle with them about their travelling and let them go to their hotels. then perhaps i can rake up a few loafers, landsmen, or anybody who can shovel coal or push on a capstan bar, and by offering them double wages get them to ship with us. once in jamaica, we shall be all right!" "but don't you think it will be dangerous," said mrs. cliff, "to go around offering extra pay in this way?" "that may be," he answered, "but what else is there to do?" at this moment mr. litchfield approached. "madam," said he, "we have been discussing the unfortunate circumstances in which you find yourself placed, and we now ask if you have made any plans in regard to your future action?" "the circumstances are truly unfortunate," replied mrs. cliff; "for we are anxious to get to jamaica as soon as possible on account of very important business, and i don't see how we are to do it. we have made no plans, except that we feel it will be well for you gentlemen to leave us and go to your hotel, where you can stay until the steamer will sail for savannah day after to-morrow. as for ourselves, we don't know what we are going to do. unless, indeed, some sort of a vessel may be starting for jamaica, and in that case we could leave the _summer shelter_ here and go on her." "no," said burke, "i thought of that and inquired. nothing will sail under a week, and in that time everybody we want to see may have left jamaica!" "will you excuse me for a few minutes?" said mr. litchfield, and with that he returned to his companions. "captain," said willy, "won't you come down and have your breakfast? i don't believe you have eaten a thing, and you look as if you needed it!" captain burke really did look as if he needed a good many things,--among others, a comb and a brush. his gold-trimmed cap was pushed on the back of his head; his white coat was unbuttoned, and the collar turned in; and his countenance was troubled by the belief that his want of prudence had brought mrs. cliff and her property into a very serious predicament. "thank you," said he, "but i can't eat. breakfast is the last thing i can think of just now!" now approached mr. litchfield, followed by all his clerical brethren. "madam," said he, "we have had a final consultation and have come to make a proposition to you and the captain. we do not feel that we would be the kind of men we would like to think we are, if, after all your kindness and great consideration, we should step on shore and continue the very delightful programme you have laid out for us, while you are left in doubt, perplexity, and perhaps danger, on your yacht. there are five of us who feel that they cannot join in the offer which i am about to make to you and the captain, but the rest of us wish most earnestly and heartily to offer you our services--if you think they are worth anything--to work this vessel to jamaica. it is but a trip of a few days i am told, and i have no doubt that we can return to new york from kingston almost as conveniently as we can from here. we can all write home and arrange for any contingencies which may arise on account of the delay in our return. in fact, it will not be difficult for most of us to consider this excursion as a part, or even the whole, of our annual vacation. those of us who can go with you are all able-bodied fellows, and if you say so, captain, we will turn in and go to work this moment. we have not any nautical experience, but we all have powers of observation, and so far as i am able to judge, i believe i can do most of the things i have seen done on this vessel by your common seamen, if that is what you call them!" mrs. cliff looked at captain burke, and he looked at her. "if it was a sailin'-vessel," he exclaimed, "i'd say she couldn't be worked by parsons, but a steamer's different! by george! madam, let's take them, and get away while we can!" chapter xxiv changes on the "summer shelter" when captain burke communicated to mr. portman and mr. burdette the news that nine of their passengers had offered to ship as a crew, the sailing-master and the first mate shook their heads. they did not believe that the vessel could be worked by parsons. "but there isn't anybody else!" exclaimed burke. "we've got to get away, and they're all able-bodied, and they have more sense than most landsmen we can ship. and besides, here are five experienced seamen on board, and i say, let's try the parsons." "all right," said mr. burdette. "if you're willing to risk it, i am." mr. portman also said he was willing, and the engineer and his assistant, who were getting very nervous, agreed to the plan as soon as they heard of it. captain burke shook himself, pulled his cap to the front of his head, arranged his coat properly and buttoned it up, and began to give orders. "now, then," said he, "all passengers going ashore, please step lively!" and while this lively stepping was going on, and during the leave-taking and rapid writing of notes to be sent to the homes of the clerical crew, he ordered mr. burdette to secure a pilot, attend to the clearance business, and make everything ready to cast off and get out of the harbor as soon as possible. when the five reverend gentlemen who had decided not to accompany the _summer shelter_ in her further voyaging had departed for the hotel, portmanteaus in hand, and amply furnished by mrs. cliff with funds for their return to their homes, the volunteer crew, most of them without coats or waistcoats, and all in a high picnic spirit, set to work with enthusiasm, doing more things than they knew how to do, and embarrassing mr. burdette a good deal by their over-willingness to make themselves useful. but this untrained alacrity was soon toned down, and early in the afternoon, the hawsers of the _summer shelter_ were cast off, and she steamed out of the eastern passage of the harbor. there were remarks made in the town after the departure of the yacht; but when the passengers who had been left behind, all clergymen of high repute, had related the facts of the case, and had made it understood that the yacht, whose filibustering purpose had been suspected by its former crew, was now manned by nine members of the synod recently convened in brooklyn, and under the personal direction of mrs. cliff, an elderly and charitable resident of plainton, maine, all distrust was dropped, and was succeeded in some instances by the hope that the yacht might not be wrecked before it reached jamaica. the pilot left the _summer shelter_; three of the clergymen shovelled coal; four of them served as deck hands; and two others ran around as assistant cooks and stewards; mr. portman and mr. burdette lent their hands to things which were not at all in their line of duty; mrs. cliff and willy pared the vegetables, and cooked without ever thinking of stopping to fan themselves; while captain burke flew around like half-a-dozen men, with a good word for everybody, and a hand to help wherever needed. it was truly a jolly voyage from nassau to kingston. the new crew was divided into messes, and mrs. cliff insisted that they should come to the table in the saloon, no matter how they looked or what they had been doing: on her vessel a coal-heaver off duty was as good as a captain,--while the clergymen good-humoredly endeavored to preserve the relative lowliness of their positions, each actuated by a zealous desire to show what a good deck hand or steward he could make when circumstances demanded it. working hard, laughing much, eating most heartily, and sleeping well, the busy and hilarious little party on board the _summer shelter_ steamed into the harbor of kingston, after a much shorter voyage than is generally made from nassau to that port. "if i could get a crew of jolly parsons," cried captain burke, "and could give them a month's training on board this yacht, i'd rather have them than any crew that could be got together from cape horn to the north pole!" "and by the time you had made able seamen of them," said mr. burdette, who was of a conventional turn of mind, "they'd all go back to their pulpits and preach!" "and preach better!" said mr. litchfield, who was standing by. "yes, sir, i believe they would all preach better!" when the anchor was dropped, not quite so promptly as it would have been done if the clerical crew had had any previous practice in this operation, mr. burke was about to give orders to lower a boat,--for he was anxious to get on shore as soon as possible,--when he perceived a large boat rowed by six men and with a man in the stern, rapidly approaching the yacht. if they were port officials, he thought, they were extremely prompt, but he soon saw that the man in the stern, who stood up and waved a handkerchief, was his old friend shirley. "he must have been watching for us," said captain burke to mrs. cliff, "and he put out from one of the wharves as soon as we hove in sight. shirley is a good fellow! you can trust to him to look out for his friends!" in a very short time the six powerful negro oarsmen had shirley's boat alongside, and in a few seconds after that, he stood upon the deck of the _summer shelter_. burke was about to spring forward to greet his old comrade, but he stepped back to give way to mrs. cliff, who seized the hand of shirley and bade him a most hearty welcome, although, had she met him by herself elsewhere, she would not have recognized him in the neat travelling suit which he now wore. shirley was delighted to meet burke and mrs. cliff, he expressed pleasure in making the acquaintance of miss croup, who, standing by mrs. cliff's side, was quickly introduced, and he looked with astonishment at the body of queer-looking men who were gathered on the deck, and who appeared to be the crew of the yacht. but he wasted no time in friendly greetings nor in asking questions, but quickly informed burke that they were all too late, and that the _dunkery beacon_ had sailed two days before. "and weren't you here to board her?" cried burke. "no," said shirley; "our steamer didn't arrive until last night!" burke and mrs. cliff looked at each other in dismay. tears began to come into willy croup's eyes, as they nearly always did when anything unusual suddenly happened, and all the members of the synod, together with mr. portman and mr. burdette, and even the two engineers, who had come up from below, pressed close around shirley, eager to hear what next should be said. everybody on board had been informed during the trip from nassau of the errand of the yacht, for mrs. cliff thought she would be treating those generous and kind-hearted clergymen very badly if she did not let them know the nature of the good work in which they were engaged. and so it had happened that everybody who had sailed from nassau on the yacht had hoped,--more than that, had even expected,--for the _dunkery beacon_ was known to be a very slow steamer,--to find her in the harbor of kingston taking on goods or perhaps coaling, and now all knew that even shirley had been too late. "this is dreadful!" exclaimed mrs. cliff, who was almost on the point of imitating willy in the matter of tears. "and they haven't any idea, of course, of the dangers which await them." "i don't see how they could know," said shirley, "for of course if they had known, they wouldn't have sailed!" "did you hear anything about her?" asked burke. "was she all right when she arrived?" "i have no doubt of that!" was the answer. "i made inquiries last night about the people who would most likely be consignees here, and this morning i went to a house on harbor street,--beaver & hughes. this house, in a way, is the jamaica agent of the owners. i got there before the office was open, but i didn't find out much. she delivered some cargo to them and had sailed on time!" "by george!" cried burke, "captain horn was right! they could hardly get a chance to safely interfere with her until she had sailed from kingston, and now i bet they are waiting for her outside the caribbees!" "that's just what i thought," said shirley; "but of course i didn't say anything to these people, and i soon found out they didn't know much except so far as their own business was concerned. it's pretty certain from what i have heard that she didn't find any letters here that would make her change her course or do anything out of the way,--but i did find something! while i was talking with one of the heads of the house, the mail from new york, which had come over in my steamer too late to be delivered the night before, was brought in, and one of the letters was a cable message from london to new york to be forwarded by mail to jamaica, and it was directed to 'captain hagar, of the _dunkery beacon_, care of beaver & hughes.' as i had been asking about the steamer, beaver or hughes, whichever it was, mentioned the message. i told him on the spot that i thought it was his duty to open it, for i was very sure it was on important business. he considered for a while, saying that perhaps the proper thing was to send it on after captain hagar by mail; but when he had thought about it a little he said perhaps he had better open it, and he did. the words were just these:-- "'on no account leave kingston harbor until further orders.--blackburn.' blackburn is the head owner." "what did you say then," asked mrs. cliff, very earnestly, "and what did he say?" "i didn't say anything about her being a treasure ship," replied shirley. "if it was not known in jamaica that she was carrying that gold, i wasn't going to tell it; for there are as many black-hearted scoundrels here as in any other part of the world! but i told the beaver & hughes people that i also had a message for captain hagar, and that a friend of mine was coming to kingston in a yacht, and that if he arrived soon i hadn't a doubt that we could overhaul the _dunkery beacon_, and give the captain my message and the one from london besides, and that we'd try to do it, for it was very important. but they didn't know me, and they said they would wait until my friend's yacht should arrive, and then they would see about sending the message to captain hagar. now, i've done enough talking, and we must do something!" "what do you think we ought to do?" asked burke. "well, i say," answered shirley, "if you have any passengers to put ashore here, put them ashore, and then let's go after the _dunkery beacon_ and deliver the message. a stern chase is a long chase, but if i'm to judge by the way this yacht caught up to the _antonina_ and passed her, i believe there's a good chance of overhauling the _dunkery beacon_ before the pirates get hold of her. then all she's got to do is to steam back to kingston." "but suppose the pirates come before she gets back," said mrs. cliff. "well, they won't fool with her if she is in company," replied shirley. "now, and what do you say?" he asked, addressing burke, but glancing around at the others. "i don't know how this ship's company is made up, or how long a stop you are thinking of making here, or anything about it! but you're the owner, mrs. cliff, and if you lend burke and me your yacht, i reckon he'll be ready enough to steam after the _dunkery beacon_ and deliver the messages. it's a thing which captain horn has set his heart upon, and it's a thing which ought to be done if it can be done, and this yacht, i believe, is the vessel that can do it!" during this speech mr. burke, generally so eager to speak and to act, had stood silent and troubled. he agreed with shirley that the thing to do was to go after the _dunkery beacon_ at the best speed the yacht could make. he did not believe that mrs. cliff would object to his sailing away with her yacht on this most important errand,--but he remembered that he had no crew. these parsons must be put off at kingston, and although he had had no doubt whatever that he could get a crew in this port, he had expected to have a week, and perhaps more, in which to do it. to collect in an hour or two a crew which he could trust with the knowledge which would most likely come to them in some way or other that the steamer they were chasing carried untold wealth, was hardly to be thought of. "as far as i am concerned," cried mrs. cliff, "my yacht may go after that steamer just as soon as she can be started away!" "and what do you say, burke?" exclaimed shirley. burke did not answer. he was trying to decide whether or not he and shirley, with burdette and portman, and the two engineers could work the yacht. but before he had even a chance to speak, mr. hodgson stepped forward and exclaimed:-- "i'll stick to the yacht until she has accomplished her business! i'd just as soon make my vacation a week longer as not. i can cut it off somewhere else. if you are thinking about your crew, captain, i want to say that so far as i am concerned, i am one volunteer!" "and i am another!" said mr. litchfield. "now that i know how absolutely essential it is that the _dunkery beacon_ should be overtaken, i would not for a moment even consider the surrender of my position upon this vessel, which i assure you, madam, i consider as an honor!" mr. shirley stared in amazement at the speaker. what sort of a seaman was this? his face and hands were dirty, but he had been shovelling coal; but such speech shirley had never heard from mariners' lips. the rest of the crew seemed very odd, and now he noticed for the first time that although many of them were in their shirt sleeves, nearly all wore black trousers. he could not understand it. "mr. litchfield, sir," said a large, heavy man with a nose burned very red, a travelling cap upon his head, and wearing a stiffly starched shirt which had once been white, no collar, and a waistcoat cut very straight in front, now opened, but intended to be buttoned up very high, "i believe mr. litchfield has voiced the sentiments of us all. as he was speaking, i looked from one brother to another, and i think i am right." "you are right!" cried every one of the sturdy fellows who had so recently stepped from synod to yacht. "i knew it!" exultingly exclaimed the speaker. "i felt it in my heart of hearts! madam, and captain, knowing what we do we are not the men to desert you when it is found necessary to continue the voyage for a little!" "and what would happen to us if we did leave the yacht?" said another. "we might simply have to remain at kingston until you returned. oh no, we wouldn't think of it!" "burke," said shirley, in a low tone, "who are these people?" "can't tell you now," said burke, his eyes glistening, "you might tumble overboard backwards if i did! gentlemen," he cried, turning to his crew, "you're a royal lot! and if any of you ever ask me to stand by you, i'll do it while there's breath in my body! and now, madam," said he, his doubt and perplexity gone and his face animated by the necessity of immediate action, "i can't now say anything about your kindness in lending us your yacht, but if you and miss croup want to go ashore, here is a boat alongside." "go ashore!" screamed mrs. cliff. "what are you talking about? if anybody stays on this yacht, i do! i wouldn't think of such a thing as going ashore!" "nor i!" cried willy. "what's got into your head, mr. burke,--do you intend to go without eating?" "ladies," cried burke, "you are truly trumps, and that's all i've got to say! and we'll get out of this harbor just as fast as we can!" "look here," cried shirley, running after burke to the captain's room; "i've got to go ashore again and get that cable message! we must have authority to turn that steamer back if we overhaul her, and i've got to have somebody to go with me. but before we do anything you must take time to tell me who these queer-looking customers are that you've got on board." burke shut the door of his room, and in as few words as possible he explained how some of the members of the recent synod happened to be acting as crew of the yacht. shirley was a quiet and rather a sedate man, but when he heard this tale, he dropped into a chair, leaned back, stretched out his legs, and laughed until his voice failed him. "oh, it's all funny enough," said burke, almost as merry as his friend, "but they're good ones, i can tell you that! you couldn't get together a better set of landsmen, and i tell you what i'll do. if you want anybody to go with you to certify that you are all right, i'll send a couple of parsons!" "just what i want!" cried shirley. burke quickly stepped out on deck, and calling the mate, "mr. burdette," he said, "i want you to detail the reverend charles attlebury and reverend mr. gillingham to go ashore with mr. shirley. tell them to put on their parson's toggery, long coats, high hats, and white cravats, and let each man take with him the address of his church on a card. they are to certify to mr. shirley. tell them to step round lively--we have no time to lose!" soon after the boat with shirley and the clergymen had pulled away from the yacht, two of the clerical crew came to mrs. cliff, and told her that they were very sorry indeed to say, that having consulted the sailing-master, and having been told by him that it was not at all probable that the yacht would be able to return to kingston in a week, they had been forced to the conclusion that they would not be able to offer her their services during the voyage she was about to make. important affairs at home would make it impossible for them to prolong their most delightful vacation, and as they had been informed that the _antonina_ would return to new york in a few days, it would be advisable for them to leave the yacht and take passage to new york in her. they felt, however, that this apparent desertion would be of less importance than it would have been if it had occurred in the port of nassau, because now the crew would have the assistance of mr. shirley, who was certainly worth more than both of them together. when burke heard this, he said to mrs. cliff that he was not sure but what the parsons were quite correct, and although everybody was sorry to lose two members of the party, it could not be helped, and all who had letters to send to new york went to work to scribble them as fast as they could. mrs. cliff also wrote a note to captain horn, informing him of the state of affairs, and of their reasons for not waiting for him, and this the departing clergymen undertook to leave with beaver & hughes, where captain horn would be sure to call. when shirley reached the counting-house of beaver & hughes, he found that it was a great advantage to be backed up by a pair of reverend clergymen, who had come to kingston in a handsome yacht. the message for captain hagar was delivered without hesitation, and the best wishes were expressed that they might be able to overtake the _dunkery beacon_. "her course will be south of tobago island," said mr. beaver, "and then if your yacht is the vessel you say it is, i should say you ought to overtake her before she gets very far down the coast. i don't know that captain hagar will turn back when he gets this message, having gone so far, but, of course, if it is important, i am glad there is a vessel here to take it to him." "what sort of a looking vessel is the _dunkery beacon_?" asked shirley. "she is about two thousand tons," said the other, "has two masts which do not rake much, and her funnel is painted black and white, the stripes running up and down. there are three steamers on the line, and all their funnels are painted that way." "we'll be apt to know her when we see her," said shirley, and with a hurried leave, he and his companions hastened back to the wharves. but on the way a thought struck shirley, and he determined to take time to go to the post-office. there might be something for him, and he had not thought of it before. there he found a telegraphic message addressed to him and sent from vera cruz to new york, and thence forwarded by mail. it was from captain horn, and was as long as an ordinary business note, and informed shirley that the captain expected to be in jamaica not long after this message reached kingston. there was no regular steamer which would reach there in good time, but he had chartered a steamer, the _monterey_, which was then being made ready for sea as rapidly as possible, and would probably clear for kingston in a few days. it urged shirley not to fail to keep the _dunkery beacon_ in port until he arrived. shirley stood speechless for some minutes after he had read this message. this telegram had come with him on the _antonina_ from new york! what a fool he had been not to think sooner of the post-office--but what difference would it have made? what could he have done that he had not done? if the captain sailed in a few days from the time he sent the message, he would be here very soon, for the distance between kingston and vera cruz was less than that from new york. the captain must have counted on shirley reaching jamaica very much sooner than he really did arrive. puzzled, annoyed, and disgusted with himself, shirley explained the message to his companions, and they all hastened back to the yacht. there a brief but very hurried consultation was held, in which nearly everybody joined. the question to be decided was, should they wait for captain horn? a great deal was said in a very short time, and in the midst of the confused opinions, mrs. cliff spoke out, loudly and clearly. "it is my opinion," said she, "that we should not stop. if fitting out a steamer is like fitting out anything else in this world that i know of, it is almost certain to take more time than people expect it to take. if captain horn telegraphed to us this minute, i believe he would tell us to go after that ship with the gold on board, just as fast as we can, and tell them to turn back." this speech was received with favor by all who heard it, and without a word in answer to mrs. cliff, captain burke told mr. burdette that they would clear for a cruise and get away just as soon as they could do it. when the yacht had been made ready to start, the two clergymen descended into the boat, which was waiting alongside, and the _summer shelter_ steamed out of the harbor of kingston, and headed away for tobago island. chapter xxv a note for captain burke notwithstanding the fact that the _summer shelter_ made very good time, that she had coaled at nassau, and was therefore ready for an extended cruise, it was impossible for any of those on board of her to conceal from themselves the very strong improbability of sighting the _dunkery beacon_ after she had got out upon the wide atlantic, and that she would pass the comparatively narrow channel south of tobago island before the yacht reached it, was almost a foregone conclusion. mr. burke assured mrs. cliff and his passengers that although their chase after the steamer might reasonably suggest a needle and a haystack, still, if the _dunkery beacon_ kept down the coast in as straight a line as she could for cape st. roque, and if the _summer shelter_ also kept the same line, and if the yacht steamed a great deal faster than the other vessel, it stood to reason that it could not be very long before the _summer shelter_ overhauled the _dunkery beacon_. but those who consulted with mr. portman were not so well encouraged as those who pinned their faith upon the captain. the sailing-master had very strong doubts about ever sighting the steamer that had sailed away two days before they left kingston. the ocean being so very large, and any steamer being so very small comparatively, if they did not pass her miles out of sight, and if they never caught up to her, he would not be in the least surprised. four days had passed since they left kingston, when burke and shirley stood together upon the deck, scanning the horizon with a glass. "don't you think it begins to look like a wild goose chase?" said the latter. burke thrust his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "yes," said he, "it does look like that! i did believe that we were going to overhaul her before she got outside the caribbees, but she must be a faster vessel than i thought she was." "i don't believe she's fast at all," said shirley. "she's had two days' start, and that's enough to spoil our business, i'm afraid!" "but we'll keep on," said burke. "we're not going to turn back until our coal bunkers tell us we've got to do it!" steamers they saw, sometimes two in an hour,--sailing-vessels were sighted, near by or far away;--schooners, ships, or brigs, and these were steaming and sailing this way and that, but never did they see a steamer with a single funnel painted black and white, with the stripes running up and down. it was very early next morning after the conversation between burke and shirley that the latter saw a long line of smoke just above the horizon which he thought might give him reason for looking out for the steamer of which they were in quest; but when he got his glass, and the masts appeared above the horizon, he saw that this vessel was heading eastward, perhaps a little northeast, and therefore was not likely to be the _dunkery beacon_. but in half an hour his glass showed him that there were stripes on the funnel of this steamer which ran up and down, and in a moment burke was called, and was soon at his side. "i believe that's the _dunkery_!" cried the captain, with the glass to his eye. "but she's on the wrong course! it won't take us long to overhaul her. we'll head the yacht a few points to the east. don't say anything to anybody,--we don't want to disappoint them." "oh, we can overhaul her," said shirley, who now had the glass, "for it isn't a stern chase by any means." in less than half an hour everybody on board the _summer shelter_ knew that the large steamer, which they could plainly see on the rolling waves to the south, must be the _dunkery beacon_, unless, indeed, they should find that this was one of her sister ships coming north. there was great excitement on board the yacht. the breakfast, which was in course of preparation, was almost entirely forgotten by those who had it in charge, and everybody who could possibly leave duty crowded to the rail, peering across the waves to the southward. it was not long before shirley, who had the best eyes on board, declared that he could read with his glass the name _dunkery beacon_ on the port bow. "that's not where we ought to see it," cried burke; "we ought to see it on the stern! but we've got her, boys!"--and then he remembered himself, and added,--"ladies; and now let's give three good cheers!" three rousing cheers were given by all on board with such good-will that they would have been heard on the other steamer had not the wind been pretty strong from the west. the _summer shelter_ gained upon the larger vessel, and burke now ran up signals for her to lay to, as he wished to speak with her. to these signals, however, the _dunkery_ paid no immediate attention, keeping steadily on, although altering her course towards the south-east. "what does that mean, mr. shirley?" asked mrs. cliff. "mr. burke wants her to stop, doesn't he?" "yes," said shirley, "that is what the signal is for." "but she doesn't stop!" said mrs. cliff. "do you think there is any chance of her not stopping at all?" "can't say, madam," he answered. "but she's got good reason for keeping on her way; a vessel with all that treasure on board could hardly be expected to lay to because a strange vessel that she knows nothing about asked her to shut off steam." "that seems to me very reasonable, indeed," said mr. litchfield, who was standing by. "but it would be very bad fortune, if, after all the trouble and anxiety you have had in overtaking this vessel, she should decline to stop and hear the news we have to tell." there was a strong breeze and a good deal of sea, but burke determined to get near enough to hail the _dunkery beacon_ and speak to her. so he got round on her weather quarter, and easily overtaking her, he brought the _summer shelter_ as near to the other vessel as he considered it safe to do. then he hailed her, "_dunkery beacon_, ahoy! is that captain hagar?" the wind was too strong for the captain of the other vessel to answer through his trumpet, but he signalled assent. then burke informed him that he wished him to lay to in order that he might send a boat on board; that he had very important orders to captain hagar from his owners, and that he had followed him from jamaica in order to deliver them. for some time there was no answer whatever to these loudly bellowed remarks, and the two vessels kept on side by side. "anyway," said burke to mr. burdette, "she can see that we're a lot faster than she is, and that she can't get away from us!" "it may be that she's afraid of us," said the mate, "and thinks we're one of the pirates." "that can't be," said burke, "for she doesn't know anything about the pirates! i'll hail her again, and tell her what we are, and what our business is. i think it won't be long before she lays to just to see what we want." sure enough, in less than fifteen minutes the _dunkery beacon_ signalled that she would lay to, and before long the two vessels, their engines stopped and their heads to the wind, lay rising and falling on the waves, and near enough to speak to each other. "now, then, what do you want?" shouted the captain of the _dunkery_. "i want to send a boat aboard with an important message from blackburn!" after a few minutes the answer came, "send a boat!" orders were given to lower one of the yacht's boats, and it was agreed that shirley ought to be the man to go over to the _dunkery beacon_. "who do you want to go with you?" asked burke. "nobody but the boat's crew," he answered. "i can explain things better by myself. captain hagar seems to be an obstinate fellow, and it won't be easy to turn him back on his course. but if i want anybody to stand by me and back me up in what i say, you might let some of the clergymen come over. he might believe them, and wouldn't me. but i'll talk to him first by myself." every member of the synod declared that he was perfectly willing to go to the other vessel if he should be needed, and mrs. cliff assured burke that if she could be of any good in making the captain of the _dunkery beacon_ understand that he ought to turn back, she would be perfectly willing to be rowed over to his vessel. "i don't think it will be necessary to put a lady into a boat on such a sea as this," said burke. "but when he hears what shirley has to tell him, that captain will most likely be glad enough to turn back." captain burke was afraid to trust any of his clerical crew to row a ship's boat on such a heavy sea, and although he would be perfectly willing to go himself as one of the oarsmen, he would not leave the yacht so long as mrs. cliff was on board; but mr. burdette, the sailing-master, and the assistant engineer volunteered as crew of the boat, while shirley himself pulled an oar. when the boat reached the _dunkery beacon_, shirley was soon on board, while the three men in the boat, holding to a line which had been thrown them, kept their little craft from bumping against the side of the big steamer by pushing her off with their oars. on board the _summer shelter_ everybody stood and gazed over the rail, staring at the other steamer as if they could hear with their eyes what was being said on board of her. after waiting about twenty minutes, a note was passed down to the men in the boat, who pushed off and rowed back with it to the _summer shelter_. the note, which captain burke opened and read as soon as he could lay hold of it, ran as follows: "to captain burke of the 'summer shelter': "it's my opinion that you're trying to play a beastly trick on me! it isn't like my owners to send a message to me off the coast of south america. if they wanted to send me a message, it would have been waiting for me at kingston. i don't know what sort of a trick you are trying to play on me, but you can't do it. i know my duties, and i'm going to keep on to my port. and what's more, i'm not going to send back the man you sent aboard of me. i'll take him with me to rio janeiro, and hand him over to the authorities. they'll know what to do with him, but i don't intend to send him back to report to you whatever he was sent aboard my vessel to find out. "i don't know how you came to think i had treasure on board, but it's none of your business anyway. you must think i'm a fool to turn back to kingston because you tell me to. anybody can write a telegram. so i'm going to get under way, and you can steam back to kingston, or wherever you came from. "captain hagar." captain burke had hardly finished reading this extraordinary letter when he heard a cry from the boat lying by the side of the yacht in which the three men were waiting, expecting to go back to the other vessel with an answer. "hello!" cried mr. burdette. "she's getting under way! that steamer's off!" and at this a shout arose from everybody on board the _summer shelter_. the propeller of the _dunkery beacon_ was stirring the water at her stern, and she was moving away, her bow turned southward. burke leaned over the rail, shouted to his men to get on board and haul up the boat, and then he gave orders to go ahead full speed. "what does all this mean?" cried mrs. cliff. "what's in that letter, mr. burke? are they running away with mr. shirley?" "that's what it looks like!" he cried. "but here's the letter. you can all read it for yourselves!" and with that he dashed away to take charge of his vessel. all now was wild excitement on board the _summer shelter_, but what was to be done or with what intention they were pursuing the _dunkery beacon_ and rapidly gaining upon her, no one could say, not even captain burke himself. the yacht was keeping on the weather quarter of the other vessel, and when she was near enough, he began again to yell at her through his speaking-trumpet, but no answer or signal came back, and everybody on board the larger vessel seemed to be attending to his duties as if nothing had happened, while mr. shirley was not visible. while the captain was roaring himself red in the face, both mrs. cliff and willy croup were crying, and the face of each clergyman showed great anxiety and trouble. presently mrs. cliff was approached by the reverend mr. arbuckle, the oldest of the members of the late synod who had shipped with her. "this is a most unfortunate and totally unexpected outcome of our expedition," said he. "if mr. shirley is taken to rio janeiro and charges made against him, his case may be very serious. but i cannot see what we are to do! don't you believe it would be well to call a consultation of those on board?" mrs. cliff wiped her eyes, and said they ought to consult. if anything could be done, it should be done immediately. captain burke put the yacht in charge of the mate, and came aft where five of the clergymen, the sailing-master, and mrs. cliff and willy were gathered together. "i'm willing to hold council," said he, "but at this minute i can't give any advice as to what ought to be done. the only thing i can say, is that i don't want to desert shirley. if i could do it, i would board that vessel and take him off, but i don't see my way clear to that just yet. i'm not owner of this yacht, but if mrs. cliff will give the word, i'll follow that steamer to rio janeiro, and if shirley is put on shore and charges made against him, i'll be there to stand by him!" "of course, we will not desert mr. shirley," cried mrs. cliff. "this yacht shall follow that vessel until we can take him on board again. i can't feel it in my heart, gentlemen, to say to you that i'm willing to turn back and take you home if you want to go. it may be very hard to keep you longer, but it will be a great deal harder if we are to let the captain of that ship take poor mr. shirley to rio janeiro and put him into prison, with nobody to say a word for him!" "madam," said mr. arbuckle, "i beg that you will not speak of the question of an immediate return on our account. this is in every way a most unfortunate affair, but we all see what ought to be done, what it is our duty to do, and we will do it! can you give me an idea, mr. portman, of the length of time it would probably require for us to reach rio janeiro?" "i think this yacht could get there in a week," said the sailing-master; "but if we're to keep company with that hulk over there, it will take us ten days. we may have trouble about coal, but if we have good winds like these, we can keep up with the _dunkery beacon_ with half steam and our sails." "mr. litchfield," said mrs. cliff, "the captain is up in the pilot house. i can't climb up there, but won't you go and tell him that i say that we must stand by mr. shirley no matter what happens, nor where we have to go to!" chapter xxvi "we'll stick to shirley!" when night began to fall, the _dunkery beacon_ was still keeping on her course,--a little too much to the eastward, mr. portman thought,--and the _summer shelter_ was still accompanying her almost abreast, and less than half a mile away. during the day it had been seldom that the glasses of the yacht had not been directed upon the deck of the larger vessel. several times mr. shirley had been seen on the main deck, and he had frequently waved his hat. it was encouraging to know that their friend was in good condition, but there were many hearts on board the _summer shelter_ which grew heavier and heavier as the night came on. burke and burdette stood together in the pilot house. "suppose she gets away from us in the night?" said the mate. "i don't intend to let her do it," replied his captain. "even if she douses every glim on board, i'll keep her in sight! it will be starlight, and i'm not afraid, with a vessel as easily managed as this yacht, to lie pretty close to her." "then there's another thing," said burdette. "you're thinking they may get rid of him?" asked burke. "yes," said the other, "i was thinking of that!" the captain did not reply immediately. "that came across my mind too," said he, "but it's all nonsense! in the first place, they haven't got any reason for wanting to get rid of him that way, and besides, they know that if they went into rio janeiro without shirley, we could make it very hot for them!" "but he's a queer one--that captain hagar!" said burdette. "what was he doing on that easterly course? i think he's a scaly customer, that's what i think!" "can't say anything about that," answered burke. "but one thing i know,--i'm going to stick to him like a thrasher to a whale!" very early the next morning mr. hodgson came aft where captain burke was standing with the sailing-master. "sir," said he, "i am a clergyman and a man of peace, but i declare, sir, that i do not think any one, no matter what his profession, should feel himself called upon to submit to the outrageous conduct of the captain of that vessel! is there no way in which we could approach her and make fast to her, and then boldly press our way on board in spite of objection or resistance, and by force, if it should be necessary, bring away mr. shirley, whose misfortune has made us all feel as if he were not only our friend, but our brother. then, sir, i should let that vessel go on to destruction, if she chooses to go." burke shook his head. "you may be sure if i considered it safe to run the two vessels together i would have been on board that craft long ago! but we couldn't do it,--certainly not with mrs. cliff on the yacht!" "no indeed!" added mr. portman. "nobody knows what damage they might do us. for my part, i haven't any faith in that vessel. i believe she's no better than a pirate herself!" "hold on!" exclaimed burke. "don't talk like that! it wouldn't do for the women to get any such notions into their heads!" "but it is in your head, isn't it, sir?" said mr. hodgson. "yes," said burke, "something of the sort. i don't mind saying that to you." "and i will also say to you," replied the young clergyman, "that we talked it over last night, and we all agreed that the actions of the _dunkery beacon_ are very suspicious. it does not seem at all unlikely that the great treasure she carries has been too much of a temptation for the captain, and that she is trying to get away with it." "of course, i don't know anything about that captain," said burke, "or what he is after, but i'm pretty sure that he won't dare to do anything to shirley as long as i keep him in sight. and now i'm going to bear down on him again to hail him!" the _summer shelter_ bore down upon the other steamer, and her captain hailed and hailed for half an hour, but no answer came from the _dunkery beacon_. willy croup was so troubled by what had happened, and even more by what was not happening,--for she could not see any good which might come out of this persistent following of the one vessel by the other,--that her nerves disordered and tangled themselves to such a degree that she was scarcely able to cook. but mrs. cliff kept up a strong heart. she felt that a great deal depended upon her. at any moment an emergency might arise when she would be called upon, as owner of the yacht, to decide what should be done. she hoped very earnestly that if the captain of the _dunkery beacon_ saw that the _summer shelter_ was determined to follow him wherever he went, and whatever he might do, he would at last get tired of being nagged in that way, and consent to give up mr. shirley. about eight o'clock in the morning, all belief in the minds of the men on board the yacht that the _dunkery beacon_ intended to sail to rio janeiro entirely disappeared, for that steamer changed her course to one considerably north of east. a little after that a steamer was seen on the horizon to the north, and she was bearing southward. in the course of half an hour it seemed as if this new steamer was not only likely to run across the course of the _dunkery beacon_, but was trying to do it. "captain," exclaimed mrs. cliff, grasping burke by the arm, "don't you think it looks very much as if that captain hagar was trying to run away with the treasure which has been entrusted to him?" "i didn't intend to say anything to you about that," he replied, "but it looks like it most decidedly!" "if that should be the case," said mrs. cliff, "don't you think mr. shirley's situation is very dangerous?" "nobody knows anything about that, madam," said he, "but until we get him back on this yacht, i'll stick to her!" burke could not make out the new-comer very well, but he knew her to be a mediterranean steamer. she was of moderate size, and making good headway. "i haven't the least bit of a doubt," said he to burdette, "that that's the pirate vessel from genoa!" "i shouldn't wonder if you're right!" said the mate, taking the glass. "i think i can see a lot of heads in her bow, and now i wonder what is going to happen next!" "that nobody knows," said burke, "but if i had shirley on board here, i'd steam away and let them have it out. we have done all we're called upon to do to keep those peruvian fools from losing that cargo of gold!" the strange vessel drew nearer and nearer to the _dunkery beacon_, and the two steamers, much to the amazement of the watchers on the yacht, now lay to and seemed prepared to hail each other. they did hail, and after a short time a boat was lowered from the stranger, and pulled to the _dunkery beacon_. there were but few men in the boat, although there were many heads on the decks from which they had come. "this beats me!" ejaculated burke. "they seem willing enough to lay to for her!" "it looks to me," said mr. burdette, "as if she wanted to be captured!" "i'd like to know," said the captain, "what's the meaning of that queer bit of blotched bunting that's been run up on the _dunkery_?" "can't tell," said the other, "but there's another one like it on the other steamer!" "my friends," said mr. arbuckle, standing in a group of his fellow-clergymen on the main deck, "it is my earnest opinion that those two ships are accomplices in a great crime." "if that be so," said another, "we are here in the position of utterly helpless witnesses. but we should not allow ourselves to look on this business from one point of view only. it may be that the intentions of that recently arrived vessel are perfectly honorable. she may bring later orders from the owners of the _dunkery beacon_, and bring them too with more authority than did mr. shirley, who, after all, was only a volunteer!" the yacht was lying to, and at this moment the lookout announced a sail on the starboard quarter. glancing in that direction, nearly everybody could see that another steamer, her hull well up in view, was coming down from the north. "by george!" cried burke, "most likely that's another of the pirates!" "and if it is," said his mate, "i think we'll have to trust to our heels!" burke answered quietly, "yes, we'll do that when we've got shirley on board, or when it's dead sure we can't get him!" the people from the mediterranean steamer did not remain on board the _dunkery beacon_ more than half an hour, and when they returned to their vessel, she immediately started her engines and began to move away. making a short circuit, she turned and steamed in the direction of the distant vessel approaching from the northward. "there," cried burke, "that steamer off there is another of the pirates, and these scoundrels here are going to meet her. they've got the whole thing cut and dried, and i'll bet my head that the _dunkery beacon_ will cruise around here until they're ready to come down and do what they please with her!" the actions of the treasure ship now seemed to indicate that mr. burke was correct in his surmises. she steamed away slowly towards the south, and then making a wide sweep, she steered northward, directing her course toward the yacht as if she would speak with it. chapter xxvii on board the "dunkery beacon" when edward shirley stepped on board the big steamer which he had so earnestly and anxiously followed from kingston, and was received by her captain, it did not take him long to form the opinion that captain hagar belonged to a disagreeable class of mariners. he was gruff, curt, and wanted to know in the shortest space of time why in the name of his satanic majesty he had been asked to lay to, and what message that yacht had for him. shirley asked for a private interview, and when they were in the captain's room he put the whole matter into as few words as possible, showed the cablegram from blackburn, and also exhibited his message from captain horn. the other scrutinized the papers very carefully, asked many questions, but made few remarks in regard to his own opinion or intentions. when he had heard all that shirley had to tell him, and had listened to some very earnest advice that he should immediately turn back to kingston, or at least run into georgetown, where he might safely lie in harbor until measures had been taken for the safe conveyance of the treasure to peru, the captain of the _dunkery beacon_ arose, and asking shirley to remain where he was until he should go and consult with his first mate, he went out, closing the door of the room behind him. during this absence he did not see the first mate, but he went to a room where there was pen, ink, and paper, and there he wrote a note to captain burke of the _summer shelter_, which note, as soon as he had signed it, he gave to the men in the small boat waiting alongside, telling them that it was from their mate who had come on board, and that he wanted an answer just as soon as possible. mr. burdette, mr. portman, and the assistant engineer having no reason whatever to suspect treachery under circumstances like these, immediately rowed back to the _summer shelter_. and, as we already know, it was not long before the _dunkery beacon_ was steaming away from the yacht. the moment that shirley, who was getting a little tired of waiting, felt the movement of the engines, he sprang to the door, but found it locked. now he began to kick, but in a very few moments the captain appeared. "you needn't make a row," said he. "nobody's going to hurt you. i have sent a note to your skipper, telling him i'm going to keep you on board a little while until i can consider this matter. my duty to my owners wouldn't allow me to be a-layin' to here--but i'll think over the business and do what i consider right. but i've got to keep on my course--i've got no right to lose time whether this is all a piece of foolin' or not." "there's no fooling about it," said shirley, warmly. "if you don't turn back you will be very likely to lose a good deal more than time. you may lose everything on board, and your lives too, for all you know." the captain laughed. "pirates!" said he. "what stuff! there are no pirates in these days!" and then he laughed again. "well, i can't talk any more now," said he, "but i'll keep your business in my mind, and settle it pretty soon. then you can go back and tell your people what i'll do. you had better go on deck and make yourself comfortable. if you'll take my advice, you won't do any talking. the people on this vessel don't know what she carries, and i don't want them to know! so if i see you talking to anybody, i'll consider that you want to make trouble--and i can tell you, if some of these people on board knew what was in them boxes in the hold, there would be the worst kind of trouble. you can bet your head on that! so you can go on and show yourself. your friends won't be worried about you--i've explained it all to them in my note!" when shirley went on deck he was very much pleased to see that the _summer shelter_ was not far away, and was steaming close after the larger vessel. he waved his hat, and then he turned to look about him. there seemed to be a good many men on the steamer, a very large crew, in fact; and after noticing the number of sailors who were at work not far away from him, shirley came to the conclusion that there were more reasons than one why he would not hold conversation with them. from their speech he thought that they must all be foreigners--french, or italians, he could scarcely tell which. it did not seem to him that these belonged to the class of seamen which a careful captain of a british merchantman would wish to ship when carrying a cargo of treasure to a distant land, but then all sorts of crews were picked up in english ports. her captain, in fact, surprised shirley more than did the seamen he had noticed. this captain must, of course, be an englishman, for the house of blackburn brothers would not be likely to trust one of their vessels, and such an important one, to the charge of any one but an englishman. but he had a somewhat foreign look about him. his eyes and hair were very black, and there was a certain peculiarity in his pronunciation that made shirley think at first that he might be a welshman. while shirley was considering these matters, the _summer shelter_ was rapidly gaining on the other steamer and was now alongside and within hailing distance, and burke was on the bridge with a trumpet in his hand. at this moment shirley was accosted by the captain. "i've got something to say to you," said he; "step in my room. perhaps we can give your friend an answer at once." [illustration: when shirley went on deck he was much pleased to see the summer shelter] shirley followed the other, the door was shut, and the captain of the _dunkery beacon_ began to tell how extremely injudicious it would be, in his opinion, to turn back, for if pirates really were following him,--although he did not believe a word of it,--he might run right into their teeth, whereas, by keeping on his course, he would most likely sail away from them, and when he reached rio janeiro, he could make arrangements there for some sort of a convoy, or whatever else was considered necessary. "i'll go and hail my skipper," said shirley, "if you'll let me have a speaking-trumpet." "no," said the other, "i don't want you to do that. i don't mind tellin' you that i don't trust you. i've got very heavy responsibility on me, and i don't know who you are no more than if you was a porpoise come a-bouncin' up out of the sea. i don't want you and your skipper holdin' no conversation with each other until i've got this matter settled to my satisfaction, and then i can put you on board your vessel, and go ahead on my course, or i can turn back, just whichever i make up my mind to do. but until i make up my mind, i don't want no reports made from this vessel to any other, and no matter what you say when you are hailin', how do i know what you mean, and what sort of signals you've agreed on between you?" shirley was obliged to accept the situation, and when burke had ceased to hail, he was allowed to go on deck. then, after waving his hat to the yacht,--which was now at a considerable distance, although within easy range of a glass,--shirley lighted his pipe, and walked up and down the deck. he saw a good many things to interest him; but he spoke to no one, and endeavored to assume the demeanor of one who was much interested in his own affairs, and very little in what was going on about him. but shirley noticed a great many things which made a deep impression upon him. the crew seemed to be composed of men not very well disciplined, but exceedingly talkative, and although shirley did not understand french, he was now pretty sure that all the conversation he heard was in that tongue. then, again, the men did not appear to be very well acquainted with the vessel--they frequently seemed to be looking for things, the position of which they should have known. he could not understand how men who had sailed on a vessel from southampton should show such a spirit of inquiry in regard to the internal arrangements of the steamer. a boatswain, who was giving the orders to a number of men, seemed more as if he were instructing a class in the nautical management of a vessel than in giving the ordinary everyday orders which might be expected on such a voyage as this. once he saw the captain come on deck with a book in his hand, apparently a log-book, and he showed it to one of the mates. these two stood turning over the leaves of the book as if they had never seen it before, and wanted to find something which they supposed to be in it. it was not long after this that shirley said to himself that he could not understand how such a vessel, with such a cargo, could have been sent out from southampton in charge of such a captain and such a crew as this. and then, almost immediately, the idea came to him in a flash that perhaps this was not the crew with which the _dunkery beacon_ had sailed! now he seemed to see the whole state of affairs as if it had been printed on paper. the _dunkery beacon_ had been captured by one of the pirates, probably not long after she got outside the caribbees, and that instead of trying to take the treasure on board their own vessel, the scoundrels had rid the _dunkery_ of her captain and crew, and had taken possession of the steamer and everything in it. this would explain her course when she was first sighted from the yacht. she was not going at all to rio janeiro--she was on her way across the atlantic. now everything that he had seen, and everything that he had heard, confirmed this new belief. of course the pirate captain did not wish to lay to when he was first hailed, and he probably did so at last simply because he found he need not be afraid of the yacht, and that he could not rid himself of her unless he stopped to see what she wanted. of course this fellow would not have him go back to the yacht and make a report. of course this crew did not understand how things were placed and stored on board the vessel, for they themselves had been on board of her but a very short time. the captain spoke english, but he was not an englishman. shirley saw plainer and plainer every second that the _dunkery beacon_ had been captured by pirates; that probably not a man of her former crew was on board, and that he was here a prisoner in the hands of these wretches--cut-throats for all he knew, and yet he did not reproach himself for having run into such a trap. he had done the proper thing, in a proper, orderly, and seamanlike way. he had had the most unexpected bad luck, but he did not in the least see any reason to blame himself. he saw, however, a great deal of reason to fear for himself, especially as the evening drew on. that black-headed villain of a captain did not want him on board, and while he might not care to toss him into the sea in view of a vessel which was fast enough to follow him wherever he might go, there was no reason why he should not do what he pleased, if, under cover of the night, he got away from that vessel. the fact that he was allowed to go where he pleased, and see what he pleased, gave much uneasiness to shirley. it looked to him as if they did not care what he might say, hear, or see, for the reason that it was not intended that he should have an opportunity of making reports of any sort. shirley had his supper to himself, and the captain showed him a bunk. "they can't do much talkin' to you," he said. "i had to sail ahead of time, and couldn't ship many englishmen." "you liar," thought shirley, "you didn't ship any!" shirley was a brave man, but as he lay awake in his bunk that night, cold shivers ran down his back many times. if violence were offered to him, of course he could not make any defence, but he was resolved that if an attack should be made upon him, there was one thing he would try to do. he had carefully noted the location of the companion-ways, and he had taken off only such clothes as would interfere with swimming. if he were attacked, he would make a bolt for the upper deck, and then overboard. if the yacht should be near enough to hear or see him, he might have a chance. if not, he would prefer the ocean to the _dunkery beacon_ and her crew. but the night passed on, and he was not molested. he did not know, down there below decks, that all night the _summer shelter_ kept so close to the _dunkery beacon_ that the people in charge of the latter cursed and swore dreadfully at times when the yacht, looking bigger and blacker by night than she did by day, rose on the waves in their wake, so near that it seemed as if a sudden squall might drive the two vessels together. but there was really no reason for any such fear. burke had vowed he would stick to shirley, and he also stuck to the wheel all night, with burdette or the sailing-master by his side. and there was not an hour when somebody, either a mariner or a clergyman, did not scan the deck of the _dunkery beacon_ with a marine glass. shirley was not allowed to go on deck until quite late the next morning, after burke had given up his desperate attempt to communicate with the _dunkery beacon_; and when he did come up, and had assured himself at a glance that the _summer shelter_ still hung upon the heels of the larger steamer, and had frantically waved his hat, the next thing he saw was the small mediterranean steamer which was rapidly coming down from the north, while the _dunkery beacon_ was steaming northeast. he also noticed that some men near him were running up a queer little flag or signal, colored irregularly red and yellow, and then he saw upon the approaching steamer a bit of bunting which seemed to resemble the one now floating from the _dunkery_. of course, under the circumstances, there was nothing for him to believe but that this approaching vessel was one of the pirate ships, and that she was coming down not to capture the _dunkery beacon_, but to join her. now matters were getting to be worse and worse, and as shirley glanced over at the yacht,--still hovering on the weather quarter of the _dunkery_, ready at any time to swoop down and hail her if there should be occasion,--he trembled for the fate of his friends. to be sure these two pirate vessels--for sure the dunkery beacon now belonged to that class--were nothing but merchantmen. there was no cannon on this steamer, and as the other was now near enough for him to see her decks as she rolled to windward, there was no reason to suppose that she carried guns. if these rascals wished to attack or capture a vessel, they must board her, but before they could do that they must catch her, and he knew well enough that there were few ordinary steamers which could overhaul the _summer shelter_. if it were not for his own most unfortunate position, the yacht could steam away in safety and leave these wretches to their own devices, but he did not believe that his old friend would desert him. more than that, there was no reason to suppose that the people on the _summer shelter_ knew that the _dunkery beacon_ was now manned by pirates, although it was likely that they would suspect the character of the new-comer. but shirley could only stand, and watch, and wait. once he thought that it might be well for him to jump overboard and strike out to the yacht. if he should be seen by his friends--and this he believed would happen--and if he should be picked up, his report would turn back into safer waters this peaceful pleasure vessel, with its two ladies and its seven clergymen. if he should be struck by a ball in the back of the head before he got out of gunshot of the _dunkery's_ crew, then his friends would most likely see him sink, the reason for their remaining in the vicinity of these pirates would be at an end, and they might steam northward as fast as they pleased. the strange vessel came on and on, and soon showed herself to be a steamer of about nine hundred tons, of a model with which shirley was not familiar, and a great many men on board. the _dunkery beacon_ lay to, and it was not long before this stranger had followed her example, and had lowered a boat. when three or four men from this boat had scrambled to the deck of the _dunkery beacon_, they were gladly welcomed by the black-headed fellow who had passed himself off as captain hagar, and a most animated conversation now took place. shirley could not understand anything that was said, and he had sense enough not to appear to be trying to do so; but no one paid any attention to him, nor seemed to care whether he knew what was going on or not. at first the manner of the speakers indicated that they were wildly congratulating each other, but very soon it was evident that the _summer shelter_ was the subject of their discourse. they all looked over at the yacht, some of them even shook their fists at her, and although shirley did not understand their language, he knew very well that curses, loud and savage, were pouring over the bulwarks in the direction of his friends and their yacht. then the subject of the conference changed. the fellows began to gaze northward, a glass was turned in that direction, the exclamations became more violent than before, and when shirley turned, he saw for the first time the other vessel which was coming down from the north. this was now far away, but she was heading south, and it could not be long before she would arrive on the scene. now shirley's heart sank about as far down as it would go. he had no doubt that this very vessel was another of the pirates. if she carried a gun, even if it were not a heavy one, he might as well bid good-bye to the _summer shelter_. the pirates would not allow her to go to any port to tell her tale. the noisy conference now broke up. the boat with its crew returned to the other vessel, which almost immediately started, turned, and steamed away to the north, in the direction of the approaching steamer. this settled the matter. she was off to join her pirate consort. now the _dunkery beacon_ started her engines, and steamed slowly in the direction of the yacht, as if she wished to hail her. shirley's heart rose a little. if there was to be a parley, perhaps the pirates had decided to warn the yacht to stop meddling, and to take herself away, and if, by any happy fortune, it should be decided to send him to his friends, he would implore them, with all his heart and soul, to take the advice without the loss of a second. chapter xxviii the people on the "monterey" the vessel which had last appeared upon the scene and which was now steaming down towards the _dunkery beacon_ and the _summer shelter_, while the small steamer from the mediterranean was making her way northward to meet her, was the _monterey_ of vera cruz, and carried captain philip horn and his wife edna. as soon as captain horn had heard of the danger which threatened the treasure which was on its way from london to the peruvian government,--treasure which had cost him such toil, anxiety, and suffering, and in the final just disposition of which he felt the deepest interest and even responsibility,--although, in fact, the care and charge of which had passed entirely out of his hands,--he determined not only to write to shirley to go to jamaica, but to go there himself without loss of time, believing from what he had heard that he could surely reach kingston before the arrival there of the _dunkery beacon_. but that steamer started before her time, and when he reached vera cruz, he found it impossible to leave immediately for his destination. and when at last he bought a steamer, and arrived at kingston, the _dunkery beacon_ and the yacht _summer shelter_ had both departed. but the captain found the letter from mrs. cliff, and while this explained a great deal, it also puzzled him greatly. his wife and mrs. cliff had corresponded with some regularity, but the latter had never mentioned the fact that she was the owner of a yacht. mrs. cliff had intended to tell edna all about this new piece of property, but when she looked at the matter from an outside point of view, it seemed to her such a ridiculous thing that she should own a yacht that she did not want to write anything about it until her plans were perfected, and she could tell just what she was going to do. but when she suddenly decided to sail for jamaica, her mind was so occupied with the plans of the moment that she had no time to write. therefore it was that captain and mrs. horn wondered greatly what in the name of common sense mrs. cliff was doing with a yacht. but they knew that shirley and burke were on board, and that they had sailed on the track of the _dunkery beacon_, hoping to overtake her and deliver the message which shirley carried. the captain decided that it was his duty to follow these two vessels down the coast of south america. the _monterey_ was a large steamer sailing in ballast, and of moderate speed, and the captain had with him--besides his wife and her maid--the three negro men whom he had brought up from south america and who were now his devoted personal attendants, and a good-sized crew. captain horn had little hope of overhauling the two steamers, for even the yacht, which he had heard was a fast-sailing vessel, had had twenty-four hours' start of him; but he had reason to hope that he might meet one or both of them on their return; for if the yacht should fail to overhaul the _dunkery beacon_, she would certainly turn back to kingston. edna was as enthusiastic and interested in this voyage as her husband. she sympathized in all his anxiety in regard to the safety of the treasure, but even stronger than this was her desire to see once more her dear friend, whom she had come to look upon almost as an elder sister. during each day the captain and his wife were almost constantly on deck, their glasses sweeping the south-eastern horizon, hoping for the sight of two steamers coming back to kingston. they saw vessels coming and going, but they were not the craft they looked for, and after they left the caribbean sea the sail became fewer and fewer. on the second day after they left tobago island they fell in with a small steamer apparently in distress, for she was working her way under sail and against head-winds towards the coast. when the captain spoke this steamer, he received a request to lower a boat and go on board of her. there he found an astonishing state of affairs. the steamer was from a french port, she carried no cargo, and she was commanded and manned by captain hagar and the crew of the english ship _dunkery beacon_. captain hagar's story was not a long one, and he told it as readily to captain horn as he would to any other friendly mariner who might have boarded him. he had left kingston with his vessel as he left it many times before, and the caribbees were not half a day behind him when he was hailed by a steamer,--the one he was now on, which had been following him for some time. he was told that this steamer carried a message from his owners, and without suspecting anything, he lay to, and a boat came to him from the other ship. this boat had in it a good many more men than was necessary, but he suspected no evil until half-a-dozen men were on his deck and half-a-dozen pistols were pointed at the heads of himself and those around him. then two more boats came over, more men boarded him, and without a struggle, or hardly a cross word,--as he expressed it,--the _dunkery beacon_ was in the hands of sea-robbers. captain hagar was a mild-mannered man, an excellent seaman, and of good common sense. he had before found orders waiting for him at jamaica, and had not thought it surprising that orders should now have been sent after him. he had firearms on board and might have defended himself to a certain extent, but he had suspected no evil, and when the pirates had boarded him it was useless to think of arms or defence. the men who had captured the _dunkery beacon_ made very short work of their business. they simply exchanged vessels. they commanded captain hagar and all his men to go over to the french steamer, while they all came on board the _dunkery beacon_, bringing with them whatever they cared for. captain hagar was told that he could work his new vessel to any port in the world which suited him best, and then the _dunkery beacon_ was headed southward and steamed away. when captain hagar's engineers attempted to start the engines of their vessel, they found it impossible to do so. several important pieces of the machinery had been taken out, hoisted on deck, and dropped overboard. whatever port they might make, they must make it under sail. a broken-hearted and dejected man was captain hagar. he had lost a vast treasure which had been entrusted to him, and he had not ceased to wonder why the pirates had not murdered him and all his crew, and thrown them overboard. he hoped that in time he and his men might reach georgetown, or some other port, but it would be slow and disheartening work under the circumstances. captain horn was also greatly cast down by the news he had received. with the least possible amount of trouble, the pirates had carried off, not only the treasure, but the ship which conveyed it, and now in all probability were far away with their booty. he could understand very well why they would not undertake such wholesale crime as the murder of all the people on the _dunkery_, for it is probable that there were men among them who could not be trusted even had the leaders been willing to undertake such useless bloodshed. if captain hagar and his men were set adrift on a steamer without machinery, it would be long before they could reach any port, and even if they should soon speak a vessel and report their misfortune, where was the policeman of the sea who would have authority to sail after the stolen vessel, or, if he had, would know on what course to follow her? captain horn gave up the treasure as lost. the _dunkery beacon_ was probably shaping her course for the coast of africa, and even if he had a swifter vessel and could overhaul her, what could he do? but now he almost forgot his trouble about the treasure, in his deep concern in the fate of mrs. cliff and her yacht. he had made up his mind that his friends on board that little vessel--he had very shadowy ideas as to what sort of a yacht it was--had embarked upon this cruise entirely for his sake. they knew that he took such a deep personal interest in the safety of the _dunkery beacon_; they knew that he had done everything possible to detain that vessel at jamaica, and that now, for his peace of mind, for the gratification of his feelings of honor,--no matter how exaggerated they might consider them,--they were following in a little pleasure craft a steamer which they supposed to be a peaceful merchantman, but which was in fact a pirate ship manned by miscreants without conscience. his plan was soon decided upon. he told captain hagar that he would take him and his men on his own vessel, and that he would carry them with him on his search for the yacht on which his friends had sailed. captain hagar agreed in part to this proposition. he would be glad to go with captain horn, for it was possible he might hear news of his lost vessel, but he did not wish to give up the french steamer. she was worth money, and if she could be got into port, he felt it his duty to get her there. so he left on board a crew sufficient to work her to georgetown, but with the majority of his crew came on board the _monterey_, and captain horn continued on his southern course. when on the following morning captain horn perceived far away to the south a steamer which captain hagar, standing by with a glass to his eye, declared to be none other than his old vessel, the _dunkery beacon_, and when, not long afterwards, he made out a smaller vessel, apparently keeping company with the _dunkery beacon_, with another steamer lying off to the eastward, he was absolutely amazed and confounded. he could not comprehend the state of affairs. what was the _dunkery beacon_ doing down south, when by this time she ought to be far away to the east, if she were running away with the treasure, and what were those two other vessels keeping so close to her? he could not imagine what they could be, unless, indeed, they were her pirate consorts. "if that's the case," thought captain horn, but saying no word to any one, "this is not a part of the sea for my wife to sail upon!" still he knew nothing, and he could decide upon nothing. he could not be sure that one of those vessels was not the yacht which had sailed from kingston with mrs. cliff, and burke, and shirley on board, and so the _monterey_ did not turn back, but steamed on slowly towards the distant steamers. chapter xxix the "vittorio" from genoa when captain horn on the _monterey_ perceived that one of the vessels he had sighted was steaming northward with the apparent intention of meeting him, his anxieties greatly increased. he could think of no righteous reason why that vessel should come to meet him. he had made out that this vessel with the two others had been lying to. why should it not wait for him if it wished to speak with him? the course of this stranger looked like mischief of some sort, and the captain could think of no other probable mischief than that which had been practised upon the _dunkery beacon_. the steamer which he now commanded carried a treasure far more valuable than that which lay in the hold of the _dunkery_, and if she had been a swifter vessel he would have turned and headed away for safety at the top of her speed. but he did not believe she could outsail the steamer which was now approaching, and safety by flight was not to be considered. there was another reason which determined him not to change his course. the observers on the _monterey_ had now decided that the small vessel to the westward of the _dunkery beacon_ was very like a yacht, and the captain thought that if there was to be trouble of any sort, he would like to be as near shirley and burke as possible. why that rapidly approaching steamer should desire to board him as the _dunkery beacon_ had been boarded he could not imagine, unless it was supposed that he carried part of the treasure, but he did not waste any time on conjectures. it was not likely that this steamer carried a cannon, and if she intended to attack the _monterey_, it must be by boarding her; probably by the same stratagem which had been practised before. but captain horn determined that no man upon any mission whatever should put his foot upon the deck of the _monterey_ if he could prevent it. since he had taken on board captain hagar and his men, he had an extraordinarily large crew, and on the number of his men he depended for defence, for it was impossible to arm them as well as the attacking party would probably be armed, if there should be an attacking party. captain horn now went to edna and told her of the approaching danger, and for the second time in his life he gave her a pistol and requested her to use it in any way she thought proper if the need should come. he asked her to stay for the present in the cabin with her maid, promising to come to her again very shortly. then he called all the available men together, and addressed them very briefly. it was not necessary to tell the crew of the _dunkery beacon_ what dangers might befall them if the pirates should come upon them a second time, and the men he had brought with him from vera cruz now knew all about the previous affair, and that it would probably be necessary for them to stand up boldly for their own defence. the captain told his men that the only thing to be done was to keep the fellows on that approaching steamer from boarding the _monterey_ whether they tried to do so by what might look like fair means or by foul means. all the firearms of every kind which could be collected were distributed around among those who it was thought could best use them, while the rest of the men were armed with belaying pins, handspikes, hatchets, axes, or anything with which a blow could be struck, and they were ranged along the bulwarks on each side of the ship from bow to stern. the other steamer was now near enough for her name, _vittorio_, to be read upon her bow. this and her build made the captain quite sure that she was from the mediterranean, and without doubt one of the pirates of whom he had heard. he could see heads all along her rail, and he thought it possible that she might not care to practise any trick upon him, but might intend a bold and undisguised attack. she had made no signal, she carried no colors or flag of any kind, and he thought it not unlikely that when she should be near enough, she would begin operations by a volley of rifle shots from her deck. to provide against this danger he made most of his men crouch down behind the bulwarks, and ordered all the others to be ready to screen themselves. a demand to lie to, and a sharp fusillade might be enough to insure the immediate submission of an ordinary merchantman, but captain horn did not consider the _monterey_ a vessel of this sort. he now ran down to edna, and was met by her at the cabin door. she had had ideas very like his own. "i shouldn't wonder if they would fire upon us," she said, her face very pale; "and i want you to remember that you are most likely the tallest man on board. no matter what happens, you must take care of yourself,--you must never forget that!" "i will take care of you," he said, with his arms about her, "and i will not forget myself. and now keep close, and watch sharply. i don't believe they can ever board us,--we're too many for them!" the instant the captain had gone, edna called maka and cheditafa, the two elderly negroes who were the devoted adherents of herself and her husband. "i want you to watch the captain all the time," she said. "if the people on that ship fire guns, you pull him back if he shows himself. if any one comes near him to harm him, use your hatchets; never let him out of your sight, follow him close, keep all danger from him." the negroes answered in the african tongue. they were too much excited to use english, but she knew what they meant, and trusted them. to mok, the other negro, she gave no orders. even now he could speak but little english, and he was in the party simply because her brother ralph--whose servant mok had been--had earnestly desired her to take care of him until he should want him again, for this coal-black and agile native of africa was not a creature who could be left to take care of himself. the _vittorio_, which was now not more than a quarter of a mile away, and which had slightly changed her course, so that she was apparently intending to pass the _monterey_, and continue northward contented with an observation of the larger vessel, was a very dangerous pirate ship, far more so than the one which had captured the _dunkery beacon_. she was not more dangerous because she was larger or swifter, or carried a more numerous or better-armed crew, but for the reason that she had on board a certain mr. banker who had once belonged to a famous band of desperadoes, called the "rackbirds," well-known along the pacific coast of south america. he had escaped destruction when the rest of his band were drowned in a raging torrent, and he had made himself extremely obnoxious and even dangerous to mrs. horn and to captain horn when they were in paris at a very critical time of their fortunes. this ex-rackbird banker had had but a very cloudy understanding of the state of affairs when he was endeavoring to blackmail mrs. horn, and making stupid charges against her husband. he knew that the three negroes he had met in paris in the service of mrs. horn had once been his own slaves, held not by any right of law, but by brutal force, and he knew that the people with whom they were then travelling must have been in some way connected with his old comrades, the rackbirds. he had made bold attempts to turn this scanty knowledge to his own benefit, but had mournfully failed. in the course of time, however, he had come to know everything. the news of captain horn's great discovery of treasure on the coast of peru had gone forth to the public, and banker's soul had writhed in disappointed rage as he thought that he and his fellows had lived and rioted like fools for months, and months, and months, but a short distance from all these vast hoards of gold. this knowledge almost maddened him as he brooded over it by night and by day. when he had been set free from the french prison to which his knavery had consigned him, banker gave himself up body and soul to the consideration of the treasure which captain horn had brought to france from peru. he considered it from every possible point of view, and when at last he heard of the final disposition which it had been determined to make of the gold, he considered it from the point of his own cupidity and innate rascality. he it was who devised the plan of sending out a swift steamer to overhaul the merchantman which was to carry the gold to peru, and who, after consultation with the many miscreants whom he was obliged to take into his confidence and to depend upon for assistance, decided that it would be well to fit out two ships, so that if one should fail in her errand, the other might succeed. the steamers from genoa and toulon were fitted out and manned under the direction of banker, but with the one which sailed from marseilles he had nothing to do. this expedition was organized by men who had quarrelled with him and his associates, and it was through the dissension of the opposing parties in this intended piracy that the detectives came to know of it. banker had sailed from genoa, but the toulon vessel had got ahead of him. it had sighted the _dunkery beacon_ before she reached kingston; it had cruised in the caribbean sea until she came sailing down towards tobago island; it had followed her out into the atlantic, and when the proper time came it had taken her--hull, engine, gold, and everything which belonged to her, except her captain and her crew, and had steamed away with her. banker did not command the _vittorio_, for he was not a seaman, but he commanded her captain, and through him everybody on board. he directed her course and her policy. he was her leading spirit and her blackest devil. it had been no part of banker's intentions to cruise about the south atlantic and search for a steamer with black and white stripes running up and down her funnel. his plan of action was to be the same as that of the other pirate, and the _vittorio_ therefore steamed for kingston as soon as she could manage to clear from genoa. his calculations were very good ones, but there was a flaw in them, for he did not know that the _dunkery beacon_ sailed three days before her regular time. consequently, the _vittorio_ was the last of the four steamers which reached jamaica on business connected with the incas' treasure. the _vittorio_ did not go into kingston harbor, but banker got himself put on shore and visited the town. there he not only discovered that the _dunkery beacon_ had sailed, that an american yacht had sailed after her, but that a steamer from vera cruz, commanded by captain horn, now well known as the discoverer of the wonderful treasure, had touched here, expecting to find the _dunkery beacon_ in port, and had then, scarcely twelve hours before, cleared for jamaica. the american yacht was a mystery to banker. it might be a pirate from the united states for all he knew, but he was very certain that captain horn had not left kingston for any reason except to accompany and protect the _dunkery beacon_. if a steamer commanded by this man, whom banker now hated more than he hated anybody else in the world, should fall in and keep company with the steamer which was conveying the treasure to peru, it might be a very hard piece of work for him or his partner in command of the vessel from toulon to get possession of that treasure, no matter what means they might employ, but all banker could do was to swear at his arch-enemy and his bad luck, and to get away south with all speed possible. if he could do nothing, he might hear of something. he would never give up until he was positive there was no chance for him. so he took the course that the _dunkery beacon_ must have taken, and sailed down the coast under full head of steam. when at last he discovered the flag of his private consort hoisted over the steamer which carried the golden prize, and had gone on board the _dunkery beacon_ and had heard everything, his satanic delight blazed high and wild. he cared nothing for the yacht which hung upon the heels of the captured steamer,--it would not be difficult to dispose of that vessel,--but his turbulent ecstasies were a little dampened by the discovery of a large steamer bearing down from the north. this he instantly suspected to be the _monterey_, which must have taken a more westerly course than that which he had followed, and which he had therefore passed without sighting. the ex-rackbird did not hesitate a moment as to what ought to be done. that everlastingly condemned meddler, horn, must never be allowed to put his oar into this business. if he were not content with the gold which he had for himself, he should curse the day that he had tried to keep other people from getting the gold that they wanted for themselves. no matter what had to be done, he must never reach the _dunkery beacon_--he must never know what had happened to her. here was a piece of work for the _vittorio_ to attend to without the loss of a minute. when banker gave orders to head for the approaching steamer he immediately began to make ready for an attack upon her, and, as this was to be a battle between merchant ships, neither of them provided with any of the ordinary engines of naval warfare, his plan was of a straightforward, old-fashioned kind. he would run his ship alongside the other; he would make fast, and then his men, each one with a cutlass and a pistol, should swarm over the side of the larger vessel and cut down and fire until the beastly hounds were all dead or on their knees. if he caught sight of captain horn,--and he was sure he would recognize him, for such a fellow would be sure to push himself forward no matter what was going on,--he would take his business into his own hands. he would give no signal, no warning. if they wanted to know what he came for, they would soon find out. before he left genoa he had thought that it was possible that he might make this sort of an attack upon the _dunkery beacon_, and he had therefore provided for it. he had shipped a number of grappling-irons with long chains attached which were run through ring-bolts on his deck. with these and other appliances for making fast to a vessel alongside, banker was sure he could stick to an enemy or a prize as long as he wanted to lie by her. everything was now made ready for the proposed attack, and all along the starboard side of the _vittorio_ mattresses were hung in order to break the force of the shock when the two vessels should come together. every man who could be spared was ordered on deck, and fully armed. the men who were to make fast to the other steamer were posted in their proper places, and the rest of his miscreants were given the very simple orders to get on board the _monterey_ the best way they could and as soon as they could, and to cut down or shoot every man they met without asking questions or saying a word. whether or not it would be necessary to dispose of all the crew which captain horn might have on board, banker had not determined. but of one thing he was certain: he would leave no one on board of her to work her to the nearest port and give news of what had happened. one mistake of that kind was enough to make, and his stupid partner, who had commanded the vessel from toulon, had made it. chapter xxx the battle of the merchant ships when the _vittorio_ showed that in veering away from the _monterey_ she had done so only in order to make a sweep around to the west, and when she had headed south and the mattresses lowered along her starboard side showed plainly to captain horn that she was about to attack him and how she was going to do it, his first thought was to embarrass her by reversing his course and steering this way and that, but he instantly dismissed this idea. the pirate vessel was smaller and faster than his own, and probably much more easily managed, and apart from the danger of a collision fatal to his ship, he would only protract the conflict by trying to elude her. he was so sure that he had men enough to beat down the scoundrels when they tried to board that he thought the quicker the fight began, the better. if only he had shirley and burke with him, he thought; but although they were not here, he had edna to fight for, and that made three men of himself. with most of his men crouching behind his port bulwarks, and others protected by deck houses, smokestack, and any other available devices against gunshots, captain horn awaited the coming of the pirate steamer, which was steaming towards him as if it intended to run him down. as she came near, the _vittorio_ slowed up, and the _monterey_ veered to starboard; but, notwithstanding this precaution and the fact that they sailed side by side for nearly a minute without touching, the two vessels came together with such force that the _monterey_, high out of water, rolled over as if a great wave had struck her. as she rolled back, grappling-irons were thrown over her rail, and cables and lines were made fast to every available place which could be reached by eager hands and active arms. some of the grappling-irons were immediately thrown off by the crew of the monterey, but the chains of others had been so tightened as the vessel rolled back to an even keel that it was impossible to move them. the _monterey's_ rail was considerably higher than that of the _vittorio_, and as none of the crew of the former vessel had shown themselves, no shots had yet been fired, but with the activity of apes the pirates tried to scramble over the side of the larger vessel. now followed a furious hand-to-hand combat. blows rained down on the heads and shoulders of the assailants, some of whom dropped back to the deck of their ship, while others drew their pistols and fired right and left at the heads and arms they saw over the rail of the _monterey_. the pirate leaders were amazed at the resistance they met with. they had not imagined that captain horn had so large a crew, or that it was a crew which would fight. but these pirates had their blood up, and not one of them had any thought of giving up their enterprise on account of this unexpected resistance. dozens of them at a time sprang upon the rail of their own vessel, and, with cutlass or pistol in one hand, endeavored to scramble up the side of the _monterey_; but although the few who succeeded in crossing her bulwarks soon fell beneath the blows and shots of her crew, the attack was vigorously kept up, especially by pistol shots. whenever there was a chance, a pirate hand would be raised above the rail of the _monterey_ and a revolver discharged upon her rail, and every few minutes there would be a rush to one point or another and a desperate fight upon the rail. the engines of both vessels had been stopped, and the screaming and roaring of the escaping steam gave additional horror to this fearful battle. not a word could be heard from any one, no matter how loudly it might be shouted. whatever firearms were possessed by the men on the _monterey_ were used with good effect, but in this respect they were vastly inferior to the enemy. when they had fired their pistols and their guns, some of them had no more ammunition, and others had no opportunity to reload. the men of the _vittorio_ had firearms in abundance and pockets full of cartridges. consequently it was not long before captain horn's men were obliged to rely upon their hatchets, their handspikes, their belaying-pins, and their numbers. banker was in a very furious state of mind. he had expected to board the _monterey_ without opposition, and now he had been fighting long and hard, and not a man of his crew was on board the other vessel. he had soon discovered that there were a great many men on board the _monterey_, but he believed that the real reason for the so far successful resistance was the fact that captain horn commanded them. several times he mounted the upper deck of the _vittorio_, and with a rifle in hand endeavored to get a chance to aim at the tall figure of which he now and then caught sight, and who he saw was directing everything that was going on. but every time he stood out with his rifle a pistol ball whizzed by him, and made him jump back. whoever fired at him was not a good shot, but banker did not wish to expose himself to any kind of a shot. once he got a chance of taking aim at the captain from behind the smokestack, but at that moment the captain stepped back hurriedly out of view, as if somebody had been pulling him by the coat, and a ball rang against the funnel high above his own head. it was plain he was watched, and would not expose himself. but that devil horn must be killed, and he swore between his grinding teeth that he himself would do it. his men, many of them with bloody heads, were still fighting, swearing, climbing, and firing. none of them had been killed except those who had gained the deck of the other vessel, but banker did not believe that they would be able to board the _monterey_ until its captain had been disposed of. if he could put a ball into that fellow, the fight would be over. banker now determined to lead a fresh attack instead of simply ordering one. if he could call to his men from the deck of the _monterey_, they would follow him. the _vittorio_ lay so that her bow was somewhat forward of that of the _monterey_, and as the rails at the bows of the two vessels were some distance apart, there was no fighting forward. the long boom of the fore-mast of the _vittorio_ stretched over her upper deck, and, crouching low, banker cut all the lines which secured it. then with a quick run he seized the long spar near its outer end, and thus swinging it out until it struck the shrouds, he found himself dangling over the forward deck of the _monterey_, upon which he quickly dropped. it so happened that the fight was now raging aft, and for a moment banker stood alone looking about him. he believed his rapid transit through the air had not been noticed. he would not call upon his men to follow as he had intended. without much fear of detection he would slip quietly behind the crew of the _monterey_, and take a shot at captain horn the moment he laid eyes on him. then he could shout out to his men to some purpose. banker moved on a few steps, not too cautiously, for he did not wish to provoke suspicion, when suddenly a hand was placed upon his chest. there was nobody in front of him, but there was the hand, and a very big one it was, and very black. like a flash banker turned, and beheld himself face to face with the man mok, the same chimpanzee-like negro who had been his slave, and with whom in the streets of paris he had once had a terrible struggle, which had resulted in his capture by the police and his imprisonment. here was that same black devil again, his arms about him as if they had been chain-cables on a windlass. banker had two pistols, but he had put them in his pockets when he made his swing upon the boom, and he had not yet drawn them, and now his arms were held so tightly to his sides that he could not get at his weapons. there was no one near. banker was wise enough not to call out or even to swear an oath, and mok had apparently relapsed into the condition of the speechless savage beast. with a wrench which might have torn an ordinary limb from its socket, banker freed his left arm, but a black hand had grasped it before he could reach his pistol. then there was a struggle--quick, hard, silent, and furious, as if two great cobras were writhing together, seeking each other's death. mok was not armed. banker could not use knife or pistol. they stumbled, they went down on their knees, they rose and fell together against the rail. instantly banker, with his left arm and the strength of his whole body, raised the negro to the rail and pushed him outward. the action was so sudden, the effort of the maddened pirate was so great, that mok could not resist it--he went over the side. but his hold upon banker did not relax even in the moment when he felt himself falling, and his weight was so great and the impetus was so tremendous that banker could not hold back, and followed him over the rail. still clutching each other tightly, the two disappeared with a splash into the sea. fears were beginning to steal into the valiant heart of captain horn. the pirates were so well armed, they kept up such a savage fire upon his decks, that although their shots were sent at random, several men had been killed, and others--he knew not how many--wounded, that he feared his crew, ordinary sailors and not accustomed to such savage work as this, might consider the contest too unequal, and so lose heart. if that should be the case, the affair would be finished. but there was still one means of defence on which he thought he might rely to drive off the scoundrels. the _monterey_ had been a cotton ship, and she was provided with hose by which steam could be thrown upon her cargo in case of fire, and captain hagar had undertaken to try to get this into condition to use upon the scoundrels who were endeavoring to board the vessel. by this time two heavy lines of hose had been rigged and attached to the boiler, and the other ends brought out on deck--one forward and the other amidships. [illustration: banker could not hold back] captain hagar was a quiet man, and in no way a fighter, but now he seemed imbued with a reckless courage; and without thinking of the danger of exposing himself to pistol or to rifle, he laid the nozzle of his hose over the rail and directed it down upon the deck below. as soon as the hot steam began to pour upon the astonished pirates there were yells and execrations, and when another scalding jet came in upon them over the forward bulwarks of the _monterey_, the confusion became greater on the pirate ship. it was at this moment, as edna, her face pale and her bright eyes fixed upon the upper deck of the _vittorio_, stood with a revolver in her hand at the window of her cabin, which was on deck, that her swedish maid, trembling so much that she could scarcely stand, approached her and gave her notice that she must quit her service. edna did not hear what she said. "are you there?" she cried. "look out--tell me if you can see captain horn!" the frightened girl, scarcely knowing what she did, rushed from the cabin to look for captain horn, not so much because her mistress wanted information of him as because she thought to throw herself upon his protection. she believed that the captain could do anything for anybody, and she ran madly along the deck on the other side from that on which the battle was raging, and meeting no one, did not stop until she had nearly reached the bow. then she stopped, looked about her, and in a moment was startled by hearing herself called by her name. there was no one near her; she looked up, she looked around. then again she heard her name, "sophee! sophee!" now it seemed to come from the water, and looking over the low rail she beheld a black head on the surface of the sea. its owner was swimming about, endeavoring to find something on which he could lay hold, and he had seen the white cap of the maid above the ship's side. sophia and mok were very good friends, for the latter had always been glad to wait upon her in every way possible, and now she forgot her own danger in her solicitude for the poor black man. "oh, mok! mok!" she cried, "can't you get out of the water? can i help you?" mok shouted out one of his few english words. "rope! rope!" he said. but sophia could see no rope except those which were fast to something, and in her terror she ran aft to call for assistance. there was now not so much noise and din. the steam was not escaping from the boilers of the _monterey_, for it was needed for the hose, and there were no more shots fired from the _vittorio_. the officers of the pirate ship were running here and there looking for banker, that they might ask for orders, while the men were crowding together behind every possible protection, and rushing below to escape the terrible streams of scalding steam. now that they could work in safety, the _monterey's_ men got their handspikes under the grappling-irons, and wrenched them from their holes, and leaning over the side they cut the ropes which held them to the pirate ship. the two vessels now swung apart, and captain horn was on the point of giving orders to start the engines and steam ahead, when the maid, sophia, seized him by the arm. "mrs. horn wants you," she said, "and mok's in the water!" "mok!" exclaimed the captain. "yes, here! here!" cried sophia, and running to the side, she pointed to where mok's black head and waving arms were still circling about on the surface of the sea. when a rope had been cast to mok, and he had been hauled up the side, the captain gave orders to start ahead, and rushed to the cabin where he had left edna; but it was not during that brief interval of thankfulness that he heard how she had recognized the rackbird, banker, on the pirate ship, and how she had fired at him every time he had shown himself. the _monterey_ started southward towards the point where they had last seen the yacht and the _dunkery beacon_, and the pirate ship, veering off to the south-east, steamed slowly away. the people on board of her were looking everywhere for banker, for without him they knew not what they ought to do, but if their leader ever came up from the great depth to which he had sunk with mok's black hands upon his throat, his comrades were not near the spot where, dead or alive, he floated to the surface. chapter xxxi "she backed!" when captain burke observed the _dunkery beacon_ steaming in his direction, and soon afterwards perceived a signal on this steamer to the effect that she wished to speak with the yacht, he began to hope that he was going to get out of his difficulties. the natural surmise was that as one of the pirates had gone to join another just arriving upon the scene, the _dunkery beacon_--the captain and crew of which must have turned traitors--was now coming to propose some arrangement, probably to give up shirley if the yacht would agree to go its way and cease its harassing interference. if this proposition should be made, burke and mrs. cliff, in conference, decided to accept it. they had done all they could, and would return to kingston to report to captain horn what they had done, and what they had discovered. but it was not long before the people on the yacht began to wonder very much at the conduct of the great steamer which was now rapidly approaching them, apparently under full head of steam. the yacht was lying to, her engines motionless, and the _dunkery beacon_ was coming ahead like a furious ram on a course, which, if not quickly changed, would cause her to strike the smaller vessel almost amidships. it became plainer and plainer every second that the dunkery did not intend to change her course, and that her object was to run down the yacht. why the _dunkery beacon_ should wish to ram the _summer shelter_ nobody on board the yacht considered for a moment, but every one, even willy croup, perceived the immediate necessity of getting out of the way. burke sprang to the wheel, and began to roar his orders in every direction. his object was to put the yacht around so that he could get out of the course of the _dunkery beacon_ and pass her in the opposite direction to which she was going, but nobody on board seemed to be sufficiently alive to the threatening situation, or to be alert enough to do what was ordered at the very instant of command; and burke, excited to the highest pitch, began to swear after a fashion entirely unknown to the two ladies and the members of the synod. his cursing and swearing was of such a cyclonic and all-pervading character that some of those on board shuddered almost as much on account of his language as for fear of the terrible crash which was impending. "this is dreadful!" said one of the clergymen, advancing as if he would mount to the pilot house. "stop!" said mr. arbuckle, excitedly placing his hand upon the shoulder of the other. "don't interfere at such a moment. the ship must be managed." in a very short time, although it seemed like long, weary minutes to the people on the yacht, her engines moved, her screw revolved, and she slowly moved around to leeward. if she could have done this half a minute sooner, she would have steamed out of the course of the _dunkery beacon_ so that that vessel must have passed her, but she did not do it soon enough. the large steamer came on at what seemed amazing speed, and would have struck the yacht a little abaft the bow had not burke, seeing that a collision could not be avoided, quickly reversed his helm. almost in the next second the two vessels came together, but it was the stem of the yacht which struck the larger steamer abaft the bow. the shock to the _summer shelter_ was terrific, and having but little headway at the moment of collision she was driven backward by the tremendous momentum of the larger vessel as if she had been a ball struck by a bat. every person on board was thrown down and hurled forward. mrs. cliff extended herself flat upon the deck, her arms outspread, and every clergyman was stretched out at full length or curled up against some obstacle. the engineer had been thrown among his levers and cranks, bruising himself badly about the head and shoulders, while his assistant and mr. hodgson, who were at work below, were jammed among the ashes of the furnace as if they were trying to stop the draught with their bodies. mr. burdette was on the forward deck, and if he had not tripped and fallen, would probably have been shot overboard; and the sailing-master was thrown against the smokestack with such violence that for a few moments he was insensible. burke, who was at the wheel, saw what was coming and tried to brace himself so that he should not be impaled upon one of the handles, but the shock was too much for him and he pitched forward with such force that he came near going over the wheel and out of the window of the pilot house. as soon as captain burke could recover himself he scrambled back to his position behind the wheel. he had been dazed and bruised, but his senses quickly came to him and he comprehended the present condition of affairs. the yacht had not only been forced violently backward, but had been veered around so that it now lay with its broadside towards the bow of the other steamer. in some way, either unwittingly by the engineer or by the violence of the shock, her engine had been stopped and she was without motion, except the slight pitching and rolling occasioned by the collision. the _dunkery beacon_ was not far away, and burke saw to his horror that she was again moving forward. she was coming slowly, but if she reached the yacht in the latter's present position, she would have weight and force enough to turn over the smaller vessel. immediately burke attempted to give the order to back the yacht. the instant performance of this order was the only chance of safety, but he had been thrown against the speaking-tube with such violence that he had jammed it and made it useless. if he pulled a bell the engineer might misunderstand. she must back! she could not pass the other vessel if she went ahead. he leaned out of the door of the pilot house and yelled downward to the engineer to back her; he yelled to somebody to tell the engineer to back her; he shouted until his shouts became screams, but nobody obeyed his orders, no one seemed to hear or to heed. but one person did hear. willy croup had been impelled out of the door of the saloon and had slid forward on her knees and elbows until she was nearly under the pilot house. at the sound of burke's voice, she looked up, she comprehended that orders were being given to which no attention was paid. the wild excitement of the shouting captain filled her with an excitement quite as wild. she heard the name of the engineer, she heard the order, and without taking time to rise to her feet, she made a bound in the direction of the engine room. thrusting her body half through the doorway she yelled to the engineer, who, scarcely conscious of where he was or what he was doing, was pushing himself away from among his bars and rods. "back her!" screamed willy, and without knowing what she said or did, she repeated this order over and over again in a roaring voice which no one would have supposed her capable of, and accompanied by all the oaths which at that moment were being hurled down from the pilot house. the engineer did not look up; he did not consider himself nor the situation. there was but one impression upon his mind made by the electric flash of the order backed by the following crash of oaths. instinctively he seized his lever, reversed the engine, and started the _summer shelter_ backward. slowly, very slowly, she moved. burke held his breath! but the great steamer was coming on slowly. her motion was increasing, but so was that of the yacht, and when, after some moments of almost paralyzing terror, during which willy croup continued to hurl her furious orders into the engine room, not knowing they had been obeyed, the two vessels drew near each other, the _dunkery beacon_ crossed the bow of the _summer shelter_ a very long biscuit-toss ahead. "miss croup," said mr. litchfield, his hand upon her shoulder, "that will do! the yacht is out of immediate danger." willy started up. her wild eyes were raised to the face of the young clergyman, the roar of her own invectives sounded in her ears. tears poured from her eyes. "mercy on me, mr. litchfield," she exclaimed, "what have i been saying?" "never mind now, miss croup," said he. "don't think of what you said. she backed!" chapter xxxii a head on the water with her engines in motion and her wheel in the hands of captain burke, the _summer shelter_ was in no danger of being run into by the _dunkery beacon_, for she was much the more easily managed vessel. as soon as they had recovered a moderate command of their senses, burdette and portman hurried below to find out what damage had been sustained by the yacht; but, although she must have been greatly strained and might be leaking through some open seams, the tough keelson of the well-built vessel, running her length like a stiff backbone, had received and distributed the shock, and although her bowsprit was shivered to pieces and her cut-water splintered, her sides were apparently uninjured. furniture, baggage, coils of rope, and everything movable had been pitched forward and heaped in disordered piles all over the vessel. a great part of the china had been broken. books, papers, and ornaments littered the floors, and even the coal was heaped up in the forward part of the bunkers. burke gave the wheel to burdette and came down, when mrs. cliff immediately rushed to him. she was not hurt, but had been dreadfully shaken in body and mind. "oh, what are we going to do?" she cried. "they are wretched murderers! will they keep on trying to sink us? can't we get away?" "we can get away whenever we please," said burke, his voice husky and cracked. "if it wasn't for shirley, i'd sail out of their sight in half an hour." "but we can't sail away and leave mr. shirley," said she. "we can't go away and leave him!" but little effort was made to get anything into order. bruised heads and shoulders were rubbed a little, and all on board seemed trying to get themselves ready for whatever would happen next. burke, followed by portman, ran to the cases containing the rifles, and taking them out, they distributed them, giving one to every man on board. some of the clergymen objected to receiving them, and expostulated earnestly and even piteously against connecting themselves with any bloodshed. "cannot we leave this scene of contention?" some of them said. "not with shirley on that steamer," said burke, and to this there was no reply. burke had no definite reason for thus arming his crew, but with such an enemy as the _dunkery beacon_ had proved herself to be, lying to a short distance away, two other vessels, probably pirates, in the vicinity, and the strong bond of shirley's detention holding the yacht where she was, he felt that he should be prepared for every possible emergency. but what to do he did not know. it would be of no use to hail the _dunkery_ and demand shirley. he had done that over and over again before that vessel had proved herself an open enemy. he stood with brows contracted, rifle in hand, and his eyes fixed on the big steamer ahead. the two other vessels he did not now consider, for they were still some miles away. willy croup was sitting on the floor of the saloon, sobbing and groaning, and mrs. cliff did not know what in the world was the matter with her. but mr. litchfield knew, and he knew also that it would be of no use to try to comfort her with any ordinary words of consolation. he was certain that she had not understood anything that she had said, not even, perhaps, the order to back the yacht, but the assertion of this would have made but little impression upon her agitated mind. but a thought struck him, and he hurried to burke and told him quickly what had happened. burke listened, and could not even now restrain a smile. "it's just like that dear willy croup," said he; "she's an angel!" "will you be willing," said mr. litchfield, "to come and tell her that your orders could not have been forcibly and quickly enough impressed upon the engineer's mind in any other way?" without answering, burke ran to where willy was still groaning. "miss croup," he exclaimed, "we owe our lives to you! if you hadn't sworn at the engineer, he never would have backed her in time, and we would all have been at the bottom of the sea!" mrs. cliff looked aghast, and willy sprang to her feet. "do you mean that, mr. burke?" she cried. "yes," said he, "in such desperate danger you had to do it. it's like a crack on the back when you're choking. you were the only person able to repeat my orders, and you were bound to do it!" "yes," said mr. litchfield, "and you saved the ship!" willy looked at him a few moments in silence, then wiping her eyes, she said, "well, you know more about managing a ship than i do, and i hope and trust i'll never be called upon to back one again!" burke and most of the other men now gathered on deck, watching the _dunkery beacon_. she was still lying to, blowing off steam, and there seemed to be a good deal of confusion on her deck. suddenly burke saw a black object in the water near her starboard quarter. gazing at it intently, his eyes began to glisten. in a few moments he exclaimed, "look there! it's shirley! he's swimming to the yacht!" now everybody on deck was straining his eyes over the water, and mrs. cliff and willy, who had heard burke's cry, stood with the others. "is it shirley, really?" exclaimed mrs. cliff. "are you sure that's his head in the water?" "yes," replied burke, "there's no mistake about it! he's taking his last chance and has slipped over the rail without nobody knowing it." "and can he swim so far?" gasped willy. "oh, he can do that," answered burke. "i'd steam up closer if i wasn't afraid of attracting attention. if they'd get sight of him they'd fire at him, but he can do it if he's let alone!" not a word was now said. scarcely a breath seemed to come or go. everybody was gazing steadfastly and rigidly at the swimmer, who with steady, powerful strokes was making a straight line over the gently rolling waves towards the yacht. although they did not so express it to themselves, the coming of that swimmer meant everything to the pale, expectant people on the _summer shelter_. if he should reach them, not only would he be saved, but they could steam away to peace and safety. on swam shirley, evenly and steadily, until he had nearly passed half the distance between the two vessels, when suddenly a knot of men were seen looking over the rail of the _dunkery_. then there was a commotion. then a man was seen standing up high, a gun in his hand. willy uttered a stifled scream, and mrs. cliff seized her companion by the arm with such force that her nails nearly entered the flesh, and almost in the same instant there rang out from the yacht the report of eight rifles. every man had fired at the fellow with the gun, even burdette in the pilot house. some of the balls had gone high up into the rigging, and some had rattled against the hull of the steamer, but the man with the gun disappeared in a flash. whether he had been hit or frightened, nobody knew. shirley, startled at this tremendous volley, turned a quick backward glance and then dived, but soon reappeared again, striking out as before for the yacht. "now, then," shouted burke, "keep your eyes on the rail of that steamer! if a man shows his head, fire at it!" if this action had been necessary, very few of the rifles in the hands of the members of the late synod would have been fired, for most of them did not know how to recharge their weapons. but there was no need even for burke to draw a bead on a pirate head, for now not a man could be seen on the _dunkery beacon_. they had evidently been so surprised and astounded by a volley of rifle shots from this pleasure yacht, which they had supposed to be as harmless as a floating log, that every man on deck had crouched behind the bulwarks. now burke gave orders to steam slowly forward, and for everybody to keep covered as much as possible; and when in a few minutes the yacht's engine stopped and shirley swam slowly around her stern, there was a rush to the other side of the deck, a life preserver was dropped to the swimmer, steps were let down, and the next minute shirley was on deck, burke's strong arm fairly lifting him in over the rail. in a few moments the deck of the yacht was the scene of wild and excited welcome and delight. each person on board felt as if a brother had suddenly been snatched from fearful danger and returned to their midst. "i can't tell you anything now," said shirley. "give me a dram, and let me get on some dry clothes! and now all of you go and attend to what you've got to do. don't bother about that steamer--she'll go down in half an hour! she's got a big hole stove in her bow!" with a cry of surprise burke turned and looked out at the _dunkery beacon_. even now she had keeled over to starboard so much that her deck was visible, and her head was already lower than her stern. "she'll sink," he cried, "with all that gold on board!" "yes," said shirley, turning with a weak smile as he made his way to the cabin, accompanied by mr. hodgson, "she'll go down with every bar of it!" there was great commotion now on the _dunkery beacon_. it was plain that the people on board of her had discovered that it was of no use to try to save the vessel, and they were lowering her boats. burke and his companions stood and watched for some minutes. "what shall we do!" exclaimed mr. arbuckle, approaching burke. "can we offer those unfortunate wretches any assistance?" "all we can do," said burke, "is to keep out of their way. i wouldn't trust one of them within pistol shot." now shirley reappeared on deck--he had had his dram, and had changed his clothes. "you're right," said he, "they're a set of pirates--every man of them! if we should take them on board, they'd cut all our throats. they've got boats enough, and the other pirates can pick them up. keep her off, burke; that's what i say!" there was no time now for explanations or for any story to be told, and burke gave orders that the yacht should be kept away from the sinking steamer and her boats. suddenly burdette, from the pilot house, sung out that there was a steamer astern, and the eyes which had been so steadfastly fixed upon the _dunkery beacon_ now turned in that direction. there they saw, less than a mile away, a large steamer coming down from the north. burke's impulse was to give orders to go ahead at full speed, but he hesitated, and raised his glass to his eye. then in a few moments he put down his glass, turned around, and shouted, "that's the _monterey_! the _monterey_! and captain horn!" chapter xxxiii ° ' " n. lat. by ° ' " w. long. the announcement of the approach of captain horn created a sensation upon the _summer shelter_ almost equal to that occasioned by any of the extraordinary incidents which had occurred upon that vessel. burke and shirley were wild with delight at the idea of meeting their old friend and commander. willy croup had never seen captain horn, but she had heard so much about him that she considered him in her mind as a being of the nature of a heathen deity who rained gold upon those of whom he approved, and utterly annihilated the unfortunates who incurred his displeasure. as for mrs. cliff, her delight in the thought of meeting captain horn, great as it was, was overshadowed by her almost frantic desire to clasp once more in her arms her dear friend edna. the clergymen had heard everything that the _summer shelter_ people could tell them about captain horn and his exploits, and each man of them was anxious to look into the face and shake the hand of the brave sailor, whom they had learned to look upon as a hero; and one or two of them thought that it might be proper, under the circumstances, to resume their clerical attire before the interview. but this proposition, when mentioned, was discountenanced. they were here as sailors to work the yacht, and they ought not to be ashamed to look like sailors. the yacht was now put about and got under headway, and slowly moved in the direction of the approaching steamer. when captain horn had finished the fight in which he was engaged with the _vittorio_, and had steamed down in the direction of the two other vessels in the vicinity, it was not long before he discovered that one of them was an american yacht. why it and the _dunkery beacon_ should be lying there together he could not even imagine, but he was quite sure that this must be the vessel owned by mrs. cliff, and commanded by his old shipmate, burke. when at last the _monterey_ and the _summer shelter_ were lying side by side within hailing distance, and captain horn had heard the stentorian voice of burke roaring through his trumpet, he determined that he and edna would go on board the yacht, for there were dead men and wounded men on his own vessel, and the condition of his deck was not such as he would wish to be seen by mrs. cliff and whatever ladies might be with her. when captain horn and his wife, with captain hagar, rowed by four men, reached the side of the _summer shelter_, they were received with greater honor and joy than had ever been accorded to an admiral and his suite. the meeting of the five friends was as full of excited affection as if they were not now standing in the midst of strange circumstances, and, perhaps, many dangers of which none of them understood but a part. captain horn seized the first opportunity which came to him to ask the question, "what's the matter with your yacht? you seem to have had a smash-up forward." "yes," said burke, "there's been a collision. those beastly hounds tried to run us down, but we caught her squarely on her bow." at this moment the conversation was interrupted by a shout from captain hagar, who had taken notice of nobody on the yacht, but stood looking over the water at his old ship. "what's the matter," he cried, "with the _dunkery beacon_? has she sprung a leak? are those the pirates still on board?" captain horn and the others quickly joined him. "sprung a leak!" cried shirley. "she's got a hole in her bow as big as a barrel. i've been on board of her, but i can't tell you about that now. there's no use to think of doing anything. those are bloody pirates that are lowering the boats, and we can't go near them. besides, you can see for yourself that that steamer is settling down by the head as fast as she can." captain horn was now almost as much excited as the unfortunate commander of the _dunkery beacon_. "where's that gold?" he cried. "where is it stowed?" "it is in the forward hold, with a lot of cargo on top of it!" groaned captain hagar. shirley now spoke again. "don't think about the gold!" he said. "i kept my eyes opened and my ears sharpened when i was on board, and although i didn't understand all their lingo, i knew what they were at. when they found there was no use pumping or trying to stop the leak, they tried to get at that gold, but they couldn't do it. the water was coming in right there, and the men would not rig up the tackle to move the cargo. they were all wild when i left." captain horn said no more, but stood with the others, gazing at the _dunkery beacon_. but captain hagar beat his hands upon the rail and declared over and over again that he would rather never have seen the ship again than to see her sink there before his eyes, with all that treasure on board. the yacht lay near enough to the _dunkery beacon_ for captain hagar to see plainly what was going on on his old ship, without the aid of a glass. with eyes glaring madly over the water, he stood leaning upon the rail, his face pale, his whole form shaking as if he had a chill. every one on the deck of the yacht gathered around him, but no one said anything. this was no time for asking questions, or making explanations. the men on the _dunkery beacon_ were hurrying to leave the vessel. one of the starboard boats was already in the water, with too many men in her. the vessel had keeled over so much that there seemed to be difficulty in lowering the boats on the port side. everybody seemed rushing to starboard, and two other boats were swinging out on their davits. every time the bow of the steamer rose and fell upon the swell it seemed to go down a little more and up a little less, and the deck was slanted so much that the men appeared to slide down to the starboard bulwarks. now the first boat pushed off from the sinking ship, and the two others, both crowded, were soon pulling after her. it was not difficult to divine their intentions. the three boats headed immediately for the northeast, where, less than two miles away, the _vittorio_ could be plainly seen. at this moment captain hagar gave a yell; he sprang back from the rail, and his eyes fell upon a rifle which had been laid on a bench by one of the clergymen. he seized it and raised it to his shoulder, but in an instant captain horn took hold of it, pointing it upward. "what are you going to do?" he said. "captain, you don't mean to fire at them?" "of course i mean it!" cried captain hagar. "we've got them in a bunch. we must follow them up and shoot them down like rats!" [illustration: he seized it and raised it to his shoulder] "we'll get up steam and run them down!" shouted burke. "we ought to sink them, one boat after another, the rascally pirates! they tried to sink us!" "no, no," said captain horn, taking the gun from captain hagar, "we can't do that. that's a little too cold-blooded. if they attack us, we'll fight them, but we can't take capital punishment into our own hands." now the excited thoughts of captain hagar took another turn. "lower a boat! lower a boat!" he cried. "let me be pulled to the _dunkery_! everything i own is on that ship, the pirates wouldn't let me take anything away. lower a boat! i can get into my cabin." shirley now stepped to the other side of captain hagar. "it's no use to think of that, captain," he said. "it would be regular suicide to go on board that vessel. those fellows were afraid to stay another minute. she'll go down before you know it. look at her bows now!" captain hagar said no more, and the little company on the deck of the yacht stood pale and silent, gazing out over the water at the _dunkery beacon_. willy croup was crying, and there were tears in the eyes of mrs. cliff and edna. in the heart of the latter was deep, deep pain, for she knew what her husband was feeling at that moment. she knew it had been the high aim of his sensitive and honorable soul that the gold for which he had labored so hard and dared so much should safely reach, in every case, those to whom it had been legally adjudged. if it should fail to reach them, where was the good of all that toil and suffering? he had in a measure taken upon himself the responsibility of the safe delivery of that treasure, and now here he was standing, and there was the treasure sinking before his eyes. as she stood close by him, edna seized her husband's hand and pressed it. he returned the pressure, but no word was said. now the _dunkery beacon_ rolled more heavily than she had done yet, and as she went down in the swell it seemed as if the water might easily flow over her forward bulwarks; and her bow came up with difficulty, as if it were sticking fast in the water. her masts and funnel were slanting far over to starboard, and when, after rising once more, she put her head again into the water, she dipped it in so deep that her rail went under and did not come up again. her stern seemed to rise in the air, and at the same time the sea appeared to lift itself up along her whole length. then with a dip forward of her funnel and masts, she suddenly went down out of sight, and the water churned, and foamed, and eddied about the place where she had been. the gold of the incas was on its way to the bottom of the unsounded sea. captain hagar sat down upon the deck and covered his face with his hands. no one said anything to him,--there was nothing to say. the first to speak was mrs. cliff. "captain horn," said she, her voice so shaken by her emotion that she scarcely spoke above a whisper, "we did everything we could, and this is what has come of it!" "everything!" exclaimed captain horn, suddenly turning towards her. "you have done far more than could be expected by mortals! and now," said he, turning to the little party, "don't let one of us grieve another minute for the sinking of that gold. if anybody has a right to grieve, it's captain hagar here. he's lost his ship, but many a good sailor has lost his ship and lived and died a happy man after it. and as to the cargo you carried, my mate," said he, "you would have done your duty by it just the same if it had been pig lead or gold; and when you have done your duty, there's the end of it!" captain hagar looked up, rose to his feet, and after gazing for a second in the face of captain horn, he took his extended hand. "you're a good one!" said he; "but you're bound to agree that it's tough. there's no getting around that. it's all-fired tough!" "burke," said captain horn, quickly, glancing up at the noon-day sun, "put her out there near the wreckage, and take an observation." it was shortly after this that mr. portman, the sailing-master, came aft and reported the position of the yacht to be eleven degrees, thirty minutes, nineteen seconds north latitude by fifty-six degrees, ten minutes, forty-nine seconds west longitude. "what's the idea," said burke to captain horn, "of steering right to the spot? do you think there'll ever be a chance of getting at it?" captain horn was marking the latitude and longitude in his note-book. "can't say what future ages may do in the way of deep-sea work," said he, "but i'd like to put a dot on my chart that will show where the gold went down." nothing could be more unprofitable for the shaken and disturbed, spirits of the people on the _summer shelter_ than to stand gazing at the few pieces of wood and the half-submerged hencoop which floated above the spot where the _dunkery beacon_ had gone down, or to look out at the three boats which the pirates were vigorously rowing towards the steamer in the distance, and this fact strongly impressed itself upon the practical mind of mrs. cliff. "captain horn," said she, "is there any reason why we should not go away?" "none in the world," said he, "and there's every reason why your vessel and mine should get under headway as soon as possible. where are you bound for now?" "wherever you say, captain," she answered. "this is my ship, and mr. burke is my captain, but we want you to take care of us, and you must tell us where we should go." "we'll talk it over," said he, and calling burke and captain hagar, a consultation was immediately held; and it did not take long to come to a decision when all concerned were of the same mind. it was decided to set sail immediately for kingston, for each vessel had coal enough, with the assistance of her sails, to reach that port. mrs. cliff insisted that edna should not go back to the _monterey_, and captain horn agreed to this plan, for he did not at all wish any womankind on the _monterey_ in her present condition. the yacht had been found to be perfectly seaworthy, and although a little water was coming in, her steam pump kept her easily disposed of it. edna accepted mrs. cliff's invitation, provided her husband would agree to remain on the yacht, and, somewhat to her surprise, he was perfectly willing to do this. the idea had come to him that the best thing for all parties, and especially for the comfort and relief of the mind of captain hagar, was to put him in command of a ship and give him something to think about other than the loss of his vessel. while they were talking over these matters, and making arrangements to send to the _monterey_ for edna's maid and some of her baggage, captain horn sought burke in his room. "i want to know," said he, "what sort of a crew you've got on board this yacht? one of them--a very intelligent-looking man, by the way, with black trousers on--came up to me just now and shook hands with me, and said he was ever so much pleased to make my acquaintance and hoped he would soon have some opportunities of conversation with me. that isn't the kind of seaman i'm accustomed to." burke laughed. "it's the jolliest high-toned, upper-ten crew that ever swabbed a deck or shoveled coal. they're all ministers." "ministers!" ejaculated captain horn, absolutely aghast. then burke told the story of the synod. captain horn sank into a chair, leaned back, and laughed until the tears ran down his cheeks. "i didn't suppose," he said presently, "that anything could make me laugh on a day like this, but the story of those synod gentlemen has done it! but, burke, there's no use of their serving as seamen any longer. let them put on their black clothes and be comfortable and happy. i've got a double crew on board the _monterey_, and can bring over just as many men as are needed to work this yacht. i'll go over myself and detail a crew, and then, when everything is made ready, i'll come on board here myself. and after that i want you to remember that i'm a passenger and haven't anything to do with the sailing of this ship. you're captain and must attend to your own vessel, and i'm going to make it my business to get acquainted with all these clergymen, and that lady i see with mrs. cliff. who is she?" "by george!" exclaimed burke, "she's the leading trump of the world! that's willy croup!" there was no time then to explain why willy was a leading trump, but captain horn afterwards heard the story of how she backed the ship, and he did not wonder at burke's opinion. when the _summer shelter_, accompanied by the _monterey_, had started northward, burke stood by shirley on the bridge. mr. burdette had a complete crew of able seamen under his command; there was a cook in the kitchen, and stewards in the saloons, and there was a carpenter with some men at work at a spare spar which was to be rigged as a bowsprit. "i'm mighty glad to lay her course for home," said burke, "for i've had enough of it as things are; but if things were not exactly as they are, i wouldn't have enough of it." "what do you mean?" said shirley. "i mean this," was the answer. "if this was my yacht, and there was no women on board, and no ministers, i would have put on a full head of steam, and i would have gone after those boats, and i would have run them down, one after another, and drowned every bloody pirate on board of them. it makes my blood boil to think of those scoundrels getting away after trying to run us down, and to shoot you!" "it would have served them right to run them down, you know," said shirley, "but you couldn't do it, and there's no use talking about it. it would have been a cold-blooded piece of business to run down a small boat with a heavy steamer, and i don't believe you would have been willing to do it yourself when you got close on to them! but the captain says if we get to kingston in good time, we may be able to get a cable message to london, and set the authorities at every likely port on the lookout for the _vittorio_." the voyage of the _summer shelter_ to kingston was uneventful, but in many respects a very pleasant one. there had been a great disappointment, there had been a great loss, and, to the spirits of some of the party, there had been a great shock, but every one now seemed determined to forget everything which had been unfortunate, and to remember only that they were all alive, all safe, all together, and all on their way home. the clergymen, relieved of their nautical duties, shone out brightly as good-humored and agreeable companions. their hardships and their dangers had made them so well acquainted with each other, and with everybody else on board, and they had found it so easy to become acquainted with captain and mrs. horn, and they all felt so much relieved from the load of anxiety which had been lifted from them, that they performed well their parts in making up one of the jolliest companies which ever sailed over the south atlantic. at kingston the _summer shelter_ and the _monterey_ were both left,--the former to be completely repaired and brought home by mr. portman, and the other to be coaled and sent back to vera cruz, with her officers and her crew,--and our whole party, including captain hagar, sailed in the next mail steamer for new york. chapter xxxiv plainton, maine it was late in the summer, and mrs. cliff dwelt happy and serene in her native town of plainton, maine. she had been there during the whole warm season, for plainton was a place to which people came to be cool and comfortable in summer-time, and if she left her home at all, it would not be in the months of foliage and flowers. it might well be believed by any one who would look out of one of the tall windows of her drawing-room that mrs. cliff did not need to leave home for the mere sake of rural beauty. on the other side of the street, where once stretched a block of poor little houses and shops, now lay a beautiful park, the grove of the incas. the zeal of mr. burke and the money of mrs. cliff had had a powerful influence upon the minds of the contractors and landscape-gardeners who had this great work in hand, and the park, which really covered a very large space in the village, now appeared from certain points of view to extend for miles, so artfully had been arranged its masses of obstructing foliage, and its open vistas of uninterrupted view. the surface of the ground, which had been a little rolling, had been made more unequal and diversified, and over all the little hills and dells, and upon the wide, smooth stretches there was a covering of bright green turf. it had been a season of genial rains, and there had been a special corps of workmen to attend to the grass of the new park. great trees were scattered here and there, and many people wondered when they saw them, but these trees, oaks and chestnuts, tall hickories and bright cheerful maples, had been growing where they stood since they were little saplings. the people of plainton had always been fond of trees, and they had them in their side yards, and in their back yards, and at the front of their houses; and when, within the limits of the new park, all these yards, and houses, and sheds, and fences had been cleared away, there stood the trees. hundreds of other trees, evergreens and deciduous, many of them of good size, had been brought from the adjacent country on great wheels, which had excited the amazement of the people in the town, and planted in the park. through the middle of the grounds ran a wide and turbulent brook, whirling around its rocks and spreading out into its deep and beautiful pools, and where once stood the widow casey's little house,--which was built on the side of a bank, so that the caseys went into the second story when they entered by the front,--now leaped a beautiful cataract over that very bank, scattering its spray upon the trunks of the two big chestnuts, one of which used to stand by the side of mrs. casey's house, and the other at the front. in the shade of the four great oak trees which had stood in william hamilton's back yard, and which he intended to cut down as soon as he had money enough to build a long cow-stable,--for it was his desire to go into the dairy business,--now spread a wide, transparent pool, half surrounded at its upper end by marble terraces, on the edges of which stood tall statues with their white reflections stretching far down into the depths beneath. here were marble benches, and steps down to the water, and sometimes the bright gleams of sunshine came flittering through the leaves, and sometimes the leaves themselves came fluttering down and floated on the surface of the pool. and when the young people had stood upon the terraces, or had sat together upon the wide marble steps, they could walk away, if they chose, through masses of evergreen shrubbery, whose quiet paths seemed to shut them out from the world. on a little hill which had once led up to parson's barn, but now ended quite abruptly in a little precipice with a broad railing on its edge and a summer-house a little back, one could sit and look out over the stretch of bright green lawns, between two clumps of hemlocks, and over a hedge which concealed the ground beyond, along the whole length of the vista made by becker street, which obligingly descended slightly from the edge of the park so that its houses were concealed by the hemlocks, and then out upon the country beyond, and to the beautiful hills against the sky; and such a one might well imagine, should he be a stranger, that all he saw was in the grove of the incas. upon all the outer edges of this park there were masses of shrubbery, or little lines of hedge, irregularly disposed, with bits of grass opening upon the street, and here and there a line of slender iron railing with a group of statuary back of it, and so the people when they walked that way scarcely knew when they entered the park, or when they left it. the home of mrs. cliff, itself, had seemed to her to be casting off its newness and ripening into the matured home. much of this was due to work which had been done upon the garden and surrounding grounds, but much more was due to the imperceptible influence of the misses thorpedyke. these ladies had not only taken with them to the house so many of the time-honored objects which they had saved from their old home, but they had brought to bear upon everything around them the courtly tastes of the olden time. willy croup had declared, as she stood in the hall gazing up at the staircase, that it often seemed to her, since she came back, as if her grandfather had been in the habit of coming down those stairs. "i never saw him," she said, "and i don't know what sort of stairs he used to come down, but there's something about all this which makes me think of things far back and grand, and i know from what i've heard of him that he would have liked to come down such stairs." mrs. horn and her husband had made a long visit to mrs. cliff, and they had departed early in the summer for a great property they had bought in the west, which included mountains, valleys, a cañon, and such far extending groves of golden fruit that edna already called the captain "the prince of orange." edna's brother, ralph, had also been in plainton. he had come there to see his sister and captain horn, and that splendid old woman, mrs. cliff, but soon after he reached the town it might well be supposed it was mr. burke whom he came to visit. this worthy mariner and builder still lived in plainton. his passion for an inland residence had again grown upon him, and he seemed to have given up all thoughts of the sea. he and ralph had royal times together, and if the boy had not felt that he must go with captain horn and his sister to view the wonders of the far west, he and burke would have concocted some grand expedition intended for some sort of an effect upon the civilization of the world. but although mrs. cliff, for many reasons, had no present desire to leave her home, she did not relinquish the enterprise for which the _summer shelter_ had been designed. when captain hagar had gone to london and had reported to his owners the details of his dire and disastrous misfortune, he had been made the subject of censure and severe criticism; but while no reason could be found why he should be legally punished for what had happened, he was made to understand that there was no ship for him in the gift of the house he had so long served. when mrs. cliff heard of this,--and she heard of it very soon, through captain horn,--she immediately offered captain hagar the command of the _summer shelter_, assuring him that her designs included cruises of charity in the north in summer and in tropical waters in the winter-time, and that of all men she knew of, he was the captain who should command her yacht. he was, indeed, admirably adapted to this service, for he was of a kind and gentle nature, and loved children, and he had such an observing mind that it frequently happened when he had looked over a new set of passengers, and had observed their physical tendencies, that he did not take a trip to sea at all, but cruised up the smooth quiet waters of the hudson. as soon as it could possibly be done, captain horn caused messages to be sent to many ports on the french and spanish coast and along the mediterranean, in order that if the _vittorio_ arrived in any of these harbors, her officers and men might be seized and held; but it was a long time before there was any news of the pirate ship, and then she was heard of at mogador, a port on the western coast of morocco, where she had been sold under very peculiar circumstances and for a very small price by the men who had come there in her, and who had departed north at different times on trading-vessels which were bound for marseilles and gibraltar. more definite information was received of the third of the pirate vessels which had been fitted out to capture the peruvians' treasure, for, as this vessel approached the west indies, she was overhauled by a spanish cruiser, who, finding her manned by a suspicious crew and well supplied with firearms, had seized her as a filibuster, and had taken her into a cuban port, where she still remained, with her crew in prison awaiting trial or a tardy release, in case it became inconvenient to detain them longer. the other pirate vessel, on which captain hagar and his men had been placed when they were forced to leave the _dunkery beacon_, finally reached georgetown, british guiana, where, after a long course of legal action, it was condemned and sold, and as much of the price as was left after costs had been paid, was handed over to the owners of the _dunkery beacon_. among the reasons which made mrs. cliff very glad to remain at plainton was one of paramount importance. she was now engaged in a great work which satisfied all her aspirations and desires to make herself able to worthily and conscientiously cope with her income. when, after the party on the _summer shelter_ had separated at new york, and the ex-members of the synod had gone to their homes, mrs. cliff and her party, which included shirley as well as captain horn and his wife, had reached plainton, their minds were greatly occupied with the subject of the loss of the peruvians' share of the incas' treasures. it was delightful for mrs. cliff and willy to reach again their charming home, and their friends were filled with a pleasure which they could scarcely express to see and enjoy the beauties and the comforts with which mrs. cliff had surrounded herself; but there was still upon them all the shadow of that great misfortune which had happened off the eastern coast of south america. news came to them of what had been said and done in london, and of what had been said and done, not only in peru, but in other states of south america in regard to the loss of the treasure, but nothing was said of done in any quarter which tended to invalidate their right to the share of the gold which had been adjudged to them. the portion of the treasure allotted to the peruvian government had been duly delivered to its agents, and it was the fault of those agents, acting under the feverish orders of their superiors, which had been the reason of its injudicious and hasty transportation and consequent loss. but although the ownership of the treasure which was now in the safe possession of those to whom it had been adjudged was not considered a matter to be questioned or discussed, mrs. cliff was not satisfied with the case as it stood, and her dissatisfaction rapidly spread to the other members of the party. it pained her to think that the native peruvians, those who might be considered the descendants of the incas, would now derive no benefit from the discovery of the treasure of their ancestors, and she announced her intention to devote a portion of her wealth to the interests and advantage of these natives. captain horn was much impressed with this idea, and agreed that if mrs. cliff would take the management of the enterprise into her own hands, he would contribute largely to any plan which she might adopt for the benefit of the peruvians. edna, who now held a large portion of the treasure in her own right, insisted upon being allowed to contribute her share to this object, and burke and shirley declared that they would become partners, according to their means, in the good work. there was, of course, a great deal of talk and discussion in regard to the best way of using the very large amount of money which had been contributed by the various members of the party, but before captain horn and his wife left plainton everything was arranged, and mrs. cliff found herself at the head of an important and well-endowed private mission to the native inhabitants of peru. she did not make immediately a definite plan of action, but her first steps in the direction of her great object showed that she was a woman well qualified to organize and carry on the great work in the cause of civilization and enlightenment which she had undertaken. she engaged the reverend mr. hodgson and the reverend mr. litchfield, both young men whose dispositions led them to prefer earnest work in new and foreign lands to the ordinary labors of a domestic parish, to go to peru to survey the scene of the proposed work, and to report what, in their opinion, ought to be done and how it should be undertaken. mrs. cliff, now in the very maturity of her mental and physical powers, felt that this great work was the most congenial task that she could possibly have undertaken, and her future life now seemed open before her in a series of worthy endeavors in which her conscientious feelings in regard to her responsibilities, and her desire to benefit her fellow-beings should be fully satisfied. as to her fellow-workers and those of her friends who thoroughly comprehended the nature of the case, there was a general belief that those inhabitants of peru who were rightfully entitled to the benefits of the discovered treasure, would, under her management and direction of the funds in her hands, receive far more good and advantage than they could possibly have expected had the treasure gone to the peruvian government. in fact, there were those who said that had the _dunkery beacon_ safely arrived in the port of callao, the whole of the continent of south america might have been disturbed and disrupted by the immense over-balance of wealth thrown into the treasury of one of its states. it is true that mrs. cliff's plans and purposes did not entirely pass without criticism. "it's all very well," said miss nancy shott to mrs. ferguson one morning when the latter had called upon her with a little basket of cake and preserves, "for mrs. cliff to be sending her money to the colored poor of south america, but a person who has lived as she has lived in days gone by ought to remember that there are poor people who are not colored, and who live a great deal nearer than south america." miss shott was at work as she said this, but she could always talk when she was working. she was busy packing the california blankets, which mrs. cliff had given her, in a box for the summer, putting pieces of camphor rolled up in paper between their folds. "if she wanted to find people to give money to, she needn't hire ministers to go out and hunt for them. there are plenty of them here, right under her nose, and if she doesn't see them, it's because she shuts her eyes wilfully, and won't look." "but it seems to me, miss shott," said mrs. ferguson, "that mrs. cliff has done ever so much for the people of plainton. for instance, there are those blankets. what perfectly splendid things they are,--so soft and light, and yet so thick and warm! they're all wool, every thread of them, i have no doubt." "all wool!" said miss shott. "of course they are, and that's the trouble with them. some of these days they'll have to be washed, and then they'll shrink up so short that i suppose i'll have to freeze either my chin or my toes. and as to her giving them to me, 'turn about's fair play.' i once joined in to give her a pair." "oh," said mrs. ferguson. mr. george burke was now the only member of our little party of friends who did not seem entirely satisfied with his condition and prospects. he made no complaints, but he was restless and discontented. he did not want to go to sea, for he vowed he had had enough of it, and he did not seem to find any satisfaction in a life on shore. he paid a visit to his mother, but he did not stay with her very long, for plainton seemed to suit him better. but when he returned to his house in that town, he soon left it to go and spend a few days with shirley. when he came back, mrs. cliff, who believed that his uneasy state of mind was the result of want of occupation and the monotonous life of a small town, advised him to go out west and visit captain horn. there was so much in that grand country to interest him and to occupy him, body and mind; but to this advice mr. burke stoutly objected. "i'm not going out there," he said. "i've seen enough of captain horn and his wife. to tell you the truth, mrs. cliff, that's what's the matter with me." "i don't understand you," said she. "it's simply this," said burke. "since i've seen so much of the captain and his wife, and the happiness they get out of each other, i've found out that the kind of happiness they've got is exactly the kind of happiness i want, and there isn't anything else--money, or land, or orange groves, or steamships--that can take the place of it." "in other words," said mrs. cliff, with a smile, "you want to get married." "you've hit it exactly," said he. "i want a wife. of course i don't expect to get exactly such a wife as captain horn has--they're about as scarce as buried treasure, i take it--but i want one who will suit me and who is suited to me. that's what i want, and i shall never be happy until i get her." "i should think it would be easy enough for you to get a wife, mr. burke," said mrs. cliff. "you are in the prime of life, you have plenty of money, and i don't believe it would be at all hard to find a good woman who would be glad to have you." "that's what my mother said," said he. "when i was there she bored me from morning until night by telling me i ought to get married, and mentioning girls on cape cod who would be glad to have me. but there isn't any girl on cape cod that i want. to get rid of them, i came away sooner than i intended." "well then," said mrs. cliff, "perhaps there is some one in particular that you would like to have." "that's it exactly," said burke, "there is some one in particular." "and do you mind telling me who it is?" she asked. "since you ask me, i don't mind a bit," said he. "it's miss croup." mrs. cliff started back astonished. "willy croup!" she exclaimed. "you amaze me! i don't think she would suit you." "i'd like to know why not?" he asked quickly. "in the first place," said she, "it's a long time since willy was a girl." "that's the kind i want," he answered. "i don't want to adopt a daughter. i want to marry a grown woman." "well," said mrs. cliff, "willy is certainly grown. but then, it doesn't seem to me that she would be adapted to a married life. i am sure she has made up her mind to live single, and she hasn't been accustomed to manage a house and conduct domestic affairs. she has always had some one to depend upon." "that's what i like," said he. "let her depend on me. and as to management, you needn't say anything to me about that, mrs. cliff. i saw her bouncing to the galley of the _summer shelter_, and if she manages other things as well as she managed the cooking business there, she'll suit me." "it seems so strange to me, mr. burke," said mrs. cliff, after a few moments' silence. "i never imagined that you would care for willy croup." mr. burke drew himself forward to the edge of the chair on which he was sitting, he put one hand on each of his outspread knees, and he leaned forward, with a very earnest and animated expression on his countenance. "now, look here, mrs. cliff," he said, "i want to say something to you. when i see a young woman, brought up in the very bosom of the sunday school, and on the quarter deck of respectability, and who never, perhaps, had a cross word said to her in all her life, or said one to anybody, judging from her appearance, and whose mind is more like a clean pocket-handkerchief in regard to hard words and rough language than anything i can think of;--when i see that young woman with a snow-white disposition that would naturally lead her to hymns whenever she wanted to raise her voice above common conversation,--when i see that young woman, i say, in a moment of life or death to her and every one about her, dash to the door of that engine room, and shout my orders down to that muddled engineer,--knowing i couldn't leave the wheel to give them myself,--ramming them into him as if with the point of a handspike, yelling out everything that i said, word for word, without picking or choosing, trusting in me that i knew what ought to be said in such a moment, and saying it after me, word for word, cursing, swearing, slamming down oaths on him just as i did, trusting in me all the time as to what words ought to be used, and just warming up that blasted engineer until sense enough came to him to make him put out his hand and back her,--then, mrs. cliff, i know that a woman who stands by me at a time like that will stand by me at any time, and that's the woman i want to stand by. and now, what have you got to say?" "all i have to say," answered mrs. cliff, who had been listening intently to mr. burke's extraordinary flow of words, "all i have to say is, if that's the way you think about her, you ought to speak to her." "madam," said burke, springing to his feet, "that suits me. i would have spoken to her before, but i had my doubts about what you'd think of it. but now that i see you're willing to sign the papers, what i want to know is, where will i be likely to find miss croup?" mrs. cliff laughed. "you are very prompt," said she, "and i think you will find willy in the little parlor. she was sewing there when i saw her last." in less than a minute mr. burke stood before willy croup in the little parlor. "miss croup," said he, "i want to ask you something." [illustration: willy sat and looked at him] "what is it?" said willy, letting her work drop in her lap. "miss croup," said he, "i heard you swear once, and i never heard anybody swear better, and with more conscience. you did that swearing for me, and now i want to ask you if you will be willing to swear for me again?" "no," said willy, her cheeks flushing as she spoke, "no, i won't! it was all very well for you to tell me that i didn't do anything wrong when i talked in that dreadful way to mr. maxwell, and for you to get the ministers to tell me that as i didn't understand what i was saying, of course there was no sin in it; but although i don't feel as badly about it as i did, i sometimes wake up in the night and fairly shiver when i think of the words i used that day. and i've made up my mind, no matter whether ships are to be sunk or what is to happen, i will never do that thing again, and i don't want you ever to expect it of me." "but, william croup," exclaimed mr. burke, forgetting in his excitement that the full form of her christian name was not likely to be masculine, "that isn't the way i want you to swear this time. what i want you to do is, to stand up alongside of me in front of a minister and swear you'll take me for your loving husband to love, honor, and protect, and all the rest of it, till death do us part. now, what do you say to that?" willy sat and looked at him. the flush went out of her cheeks, and then came again, but it was a different kind of a flush this time, and the brightness went out of her eyes, and another light, a softer and a different light, came into them. "oh! is that what you want?" she said, presently. "i wouldn't mind that." the end * * * * * novels and short stories by frank r. stockton charles scribner's sons, publishers, new york "of mr. stockton's stories what is there to say, but that they are an unmixed blessing and delight? he is surely one of the most inventive of talents, discovering not only a new kind in humor and fancy, but accumulating an inexhaustible wealth of details in each fresh achievement, the least of which would be riches from another hand."--w. d. howells, in _harper's magazine_. _just issued_ the adventures of captain horn mo, $ . a novel unlike any that has hitherto appeared from this popular writer's pen. it is a romance of the most adventurous kind, whose events, born of mr. stockton's imagination, are wholly extraordinary, and yet, through the author's ingenuity, appear altogether real. that captain horn's adventures are varied may be inferred from the fact that they extend from patagonia to maine and from san francisco to paris, and include the most remarkable episodes and marvelous experiences--all of which are woven together by the pleasing thread of a love-story, and brightened by the gleam of mr. stockton's fanciful humor. concerning mr. stockton's stories. "mr. stockton, more, perhaps, than any recent writer, has helped to define the peculiar virtues of the short story. he has shown how possible it is to use surprise as an effective element, and to make the turn of a story rather than the crisis of a plot account for everything. it may be said in general that mr. stockton does not rely often upon a sudden reversal at the end of a story to capture the reader, but gives him a whimsey or caprice to enjoy; while he works out the details in a succession of amusing turns."--_the atlantic monthly._ _new uniform edition of the following volumes:_ the watchmaker's wife and other stories. mo, $ . . "his stories are characterized by the oddity and drollery which distinguish mr. stockton's from that of the ordinary humorists."--_charleston news and courier._ the late mrs. null mo, $ . . "we can assure prospective readers that their only regret after finishing the book will be that never again can they hope for the pleasure of reading it for the first time."--_the critic._ rudder grange mo, paper, cents; cloth, $ . . "humor like this is perennial."--_washington post._ the rudder grangers abroad and other stories. mo, paper, cents; cloth, $ . . "it will be eagerly sought by all old friends of pomona and jonas and the other characters who have so delighted the numberless readers of 'rudder grange.'"--_the outlook._ the lady, or the tiger? and other stories. mo, paper, cents; cloth, $ . . "his unique stories always hit the mark. but 'the lady, or the tiger?' was a shaft condensed from the entire stocktonese."--_century magazine._ the christmas wreck and other stories. mo, paper, cents; cloth, $ . . "with the charm of a most delicate humor, his stories become irresistibly attractive."--_philadelphia times._ the beeman of orn and other fanciful tales. mo, $ . . 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"a very pretty story, tender, and full of gentle humor."--_philadelphia press._ [asterism] the set, nine volumes, mo, $ . . mr. stockton's books for the young "his books for boys and girls are classics."--_newark advertiser._ the clocks of rondaine, and other stories. with illustrations by blashfield, rogers, beard, and others. square vo, $ . . personally conducted. illustrated by pennell, parsons, and others. square vo, $ . . the story of viteau. illustrated by r. b. birch. mo, $ . . a jolly fellowship. with illustrations. mo, $ . . the floating prince and other fairy tales. illustrated. square vo, $ . . the ting-a-ling tales. illustrated. mo, $ . . roundabout rambles in lands of fact and fiction. illustrated. square vo, $ . . tales out of school. with nearly illustrations. square vo, $ . . _novels and short stories by frank r. stockton_ _in uniform style. illustrated by a. b. frost_ pomona's travels [illustration: jone and pomona.] a series of letters to the mistress of rudder grange from her former handmaiden. fully illustrated by a. b. frost. mo, $ . . "it forms one of the most delightful books mr. stockton has ever written. it is capital reading, and will more firmly establish mr. stockton in his place with bret harte among contemporary american writers. mr. frost's pictures are all admirable."--_new york times._ "it will be remembered that pomona married a certain jonas, a young man of eccentric ways and dry humor. they make a journey abroad, and their experiences are as enjoyable as those of the days at rudder grange. the book is capitally illustrated."--_boston transcript._ rudder grange with over illustrations by a. b. frost. mo, gilt top, $ . . "it is possible that there are readers and buyers of books who have yet to make the acquaintance of 'rudder grange.' if so, it is hard to tell whether they are objects of pity or envy--pity for having lost so much enjoyment, or envy for the pleasure that is still in store for them."--_philadelphia times._ "mr. frost's suggestive illustrations add greatly to the attractiveness of mr. stockton's famous story. he has caught the spirit of the book, and sketched its leading characters and scenes with rare humor."--_london literary world._ [asterism] _the above two books, handsomely bound in uniform style, with special cover designs by a. b. frost, gilt top, mo, in a box, $ . ._ [illustration: rudder grange.] charles scribner's sons - fifth avenue, new york note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) the wishing moon by louise dutton author of "the goddess girl" [illustration: "'_oh, judith, won't you speak to me?_'"] [illustration: publisher's logo] illustrated by everett shinn garden city new york doubleday, page & company copyright, , by louise dutton all rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the scandinavian copyright, , the metropolitan magazine company list of illustrations "'oh, judith, won't you speak to me?'" _frontispiece_ (see page ) facing page "'i know what this means,' she asserted" "'shut your eyes'" "'judith, you don't hate me? say it--say it'" the wishing moon the wishing moon chapter one a little girl sat on the worn front doorsteps of the randall house. she sat very still and straight, with her short, white skirts fluffed daintily out on both sides, her hands tightly clasped over her thin knees, and her long, silk-stockinged legs cuddled tight together. she was bare-headed, and her short, soft hair showed silvery blonde in the fading light. her hair was bobbed. for one miserable month it had been the only bobbed head in green river. her big, gray-green eyes had a fugitive, dancing light in them. the little girl had beautiful eyes. the little girl was miss judith devereux randall. she was eleven years old, and she felt happier to-night than she remembered feeling in all the eleven years of her life. the randalls' lawn was hedged with a fringe of lilac and syringa bushes, with one great, spreading horse-chestnut tree at the corner. the house did not stand far back from the street. the little girl could see a generous section of main street sloping past, dark already under shadowing trees. the street was empty. it was half-past six, and supper-time in green river, but the randalls did not have supper, they dined at night, like the everards. to-night mother and father were dining with the everards, and the little girl had plans of her own. father was dressed, and waiting, shut in the library. mother was dressing in her big corner room upstairs, with all the electric lights lighted. the little girl could see them, if she turned her head, but mother was very far away, in spite of that, for her door was locked, and you could not go in. you could not watch her brush her long, wonderful hair, or help her into her evening gown. mother's evening gown was black this summer, with shiny spangles--a fairy gown. mother had to be alone while she dressed, because she was going to the everards'. there were two everards, the colonel, who was old because his hair was white, and his wife, who wore even more beautiful clothes than mother. she had heard her father say that the colonel had made the town, and she had heard norah, the cook, say that he owned the town. she had an idea that these two things were not quite the same, though they sounded alike, for father was fond of the colonel, and norah was not. at any rate, he was president of the bank--father and norah agreed about that--and he lived in a house at the edge of the town, in what used to be a part of larribees' woods. father used to go mayflowering there, but now nobody could. the house was ugly, with things sticking out all over it, towers and balconies and cupolas, and it was the little girl's twin. she was born the year the everards settled in green river. "and you're marked with it," norah said, in one of their serious talks, when mollie, the second girl, was out, and the two had the kitchen to themselves. norah was peeling apples for a pie, and allowing her unlimited ginger-snaps, straight from the jar. "marked with it, miss judy." "what?" "that house, and what goes on in it." "what does go on?" "you'll know soon enough." "i'm not marked with it. i've got a birthmark, but it's a strawberry, on my left side, like the princesses have in the fairy tales." "you are a kind of a princess, miss judy." "is that a bad thing to be, nana?" "it's a lonesome thing." "my strawberry's fading. mother says it will go away." "it won't go away. what we're born to be, we will be, miss judy----. bless your heart, you're crying, with the big eyes of you. what for, dear?" "i don't know. i don't want to be a princess. i don't want to be lonesome. i hate the everards." "well, there's many to say that now, and there'll be more to say it soon." norah muttered this darkly, into her yellow bowl of apples, but judith heard: "here, eat this apple, child. you musn't hate anybody." "i do. i hate the everards." queer things came into your head to say when you were talking with norah, who had an aunt with the second sight, and told beautiful fairy tales herself, and even believed in fairies; judith did not. the everards gave judith and no other little girl in town presents at christmas, and invited judith and no other little girl to lunch. they had a great deal to do with her trouble, her serious trouble, which she would not discuss even with norah. but she did not really hate the everards--certainly not to-night. she was too happy. judith was going out to hang may-baskets. so was every other little girl in town who wanted to, and it was a wonderful thing to be doing to-night. it was really may night, by the weather as well as the calendar--the kind of night that norah's fairies meant should come on the first of may: warm, with a tiny chill creeping into the air as the dark came, a pleasant, shivery chill, as if there might really be fairies or ghosts about. it was still and clear. one star, that had just come up above the horse-chestnut tree, looked very small and bright and close, as if it had climbed up into the sky out of the dark, clustering leaves of the tree. this was the star that judith usually wished on, but she could wish on the moon to-night; norah had told her so; wish once instead of three nights running, and get her wish whether she thought of the red fox's tail or not. the new moon of may was a wishing moon. a wishing moon! the small white figure on the steps cuddled itself into a smaller heap. judith sighed happily and closed her eyes. she was going with the others. she had her wish already. it was judith's great trouble that she was not like other little girls. until she was six judith had a vague idea that she was the only child in the world. then she tried to make friends with two small, dirty girls over the back fence, and found out that there were other children, but she must not play with them. one day norah found her crying in the nursery because she could not think what to play, and soon after willard nash, the fat little boy next door, came to dinner and into her life, and after that, eddie and natalie ward, from the white house up the street, and lorena drew, from over the river. still other children came to her parties, so many that she could not remember their names. then judith's trouble began. she was not like them. she did not look like them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress, but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in different places. she could not do what they did; mollie called for her at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an hour after dinner, before it was dark. she had to do things that they did not do: make grown-up calls with her mother and wear gloves, and take lessons in fancy dancing instead of going to dancing school. but she had gone to school now for almost a year, a private school in the big billiard-room at the larribees', but a real school, with other children in it. they did not make fun of her clothes, or the way she pronounced her words, very often now. she belonged to a secret society with rena and natalie. she had spent one night with natalie, though she had to come home before breakfast. the other children did not know she was different, but judith knew. unexpected things might be required of her at a moment's notice: to be excused from school and pass cakes at a tea at the everards'; to leave a picnic before the potatoes were roasted, because mollie had appeared, inexorable; unaccountable things, but she was to be safe to-night. may night was not such a wonderful night for any little girl as it was for judith. the lights were on in nashs' parlour, and not turned off in the dining-room, which meant that the rest of the family were not through supper, but willard was. presently she heard three loud, unmelodious whistles, his private signal, and a stocky figure pushed itself through a gap in the hedge which looked, and was, too small for it, and judith rubbed her eyes and sat up--it crossed the lawn to her. "good morning, merry sunshine," said willard, ironically. "i wasn't asleep." "you were." "i heard you coming." "you did not." "i did so." these formalities over, she made room for him eagerly on the steps. willard looked fatter to judith after a meal, probably because she knew how much he ate. his clean collar looked much too clean and white in the dark, and he was evidently in a teasing mood, but such as he was, he was her best friend, and she needed him. "willard, guess what i'm going to do?" "i don't know, kid." willard's tone implied unmistakably that he did not want to know. "to-night!" judith's voice thrilled. willard stared at her. her eyes looked wider than usual, and very bright. she was smiling a strange little smile, and a rare dimple, which he really believed she had made with a slate pencil, showed in her cheek. the light in her face was something new to him, something he did not understand, and therefore being of masculine mind, wished to remove. "you're going to miss it to-night for one thing, kid," he stated deliberately. "oh, am i?" judith dimpled and glowed. "we're going to stay out until ten. vivie's not going." willard's big sister had chaperoned the expedition the year before. now it was to go out unrestrained into the night. "that's lovely." willard searched his brain for more overwhelming details. "we've got a dark lantern." "that's nice." "i got it. it's father's. he won't miss it. it's hidden in the drews' barn. we're going to meet at the drews, to fool them. they'll be watching the wards'." "they will?" "sure." "the--paddies?" "sure." judith drew an awed, ecstatic breath. he was touching now on the chief peril and charm of the expedition. hanging may-baskets, conferring an elaborately-made gift upon a formal acquaintance, was not the object of it--nothing so philanthropic; it was the escape after you had hung them. you went out for adventure, to ring the bell and get away, to brave the dangers of the night in small, intimate companies. and the chief danger, which you fled from through the dark, was the paddies. she did not know much about them. she would not show her ignorance by asking questions. but there were little boys with whom a state of war existed. they chased you, even fought with you, made a systematic attempt to steal your may-baskets. they were mixed up in her mind with gnomes and pirates. she was deliciously afraid of them. she hardly thought they had human faces. she understood that they were most of them irish, and that it was somehow a disgrace for them to be irish, though her own norah was irish and proud of it. "sure!" said willard. "irish boys. paddies from paddy lane. ed got a black eye last year. we'll get back at them. it will be some evening." judith did not look jealous or wistful yet. "the whole crowd's going." "yes, i know," thrilled judith. "oh, willard----" "oh, willard," he mimicked. judith pronounced all the letters in his name, which was not the popular method. "oh, willard, what do you think i heard viv say to the gaynor girl about you?" "don't know. willard, won't the paddies see the dark lantern?" "viv said you were as pretty as a doll, but just as stiff and stuck-up," pronounced willard sternly. "and your father's only the cashier of the bank, and just because the everards have taken your mother up is no reason for her to put on airs and get a second girl and get into debt----" he broke off, discouraged. judith did not appear to hear him. after the masculine habit, as he could not control the situation, he rose to leave. "well, so long, kid. i've got to go to the post-office." even the mention of this desirable rendezvous, which was denied to her because mollie always brought home the evening mail in a black silk bag, did not dim the dancing light in judith's eyes. she put a hand on his sleeve. "willard----" "well, kid?" "willard, don't you wish i was going to-night?" "what for, to fight the paddies, or carry the dark lantern?" "i could fight," said judith, with a little quiver in her voice, as if she could. "fight? you couldn't even run away. they'd"--willard hissed it mysteriously--"they'd get you." "no, they wouldn't, because"--something had happened to her eyes, so that they did not look tantalizing--"you'd take care of me, willard," she announced surprisingly, "wouldn't you?" "forget it," murmured willard, flattered. "wouldn't you?" "i----" "willard!" "yes." "well--i am. father made mother let me. i'm going with you." the words she had been trying to say were out at last in a hushed voice, because her heart was beating hard, but they sounded beautiful to her, like a kind of song. perhaps willard heard it, too. he really was her best friend, and he did not look so fat, after all, in the twilight. she waited breathlessly. "you are?" judith nodded. she could not speak. "well!" willard's feelings were mixed, his face was not fashioned to express a conflict of emotions, and words failed him, too. "you're a queer kid. why didn't you tell me before?" "aren't you glad, willard?" "you'll get sleepy." "aren't you glad?" "sure i'm glad. but you can't run, and you are a cry-baby." these were known facts, not insults, but now judith's eyes had stopped dancing. "judy, are you mad with me?" "no." "you're the queerest kid." up the street, he caught sight of a member of a simpler sex than judith's. "there's ed coming out of the gate. i've got to see him about something. see you later. don't be mad. so long!" the house was astir behind judith. father was opening and shutting doors, and hunting for things. norah was helping mother into her wraps and scolding. somebody was telephoning. mother's carriage was late. but it was turning into the yard now, a big, black hack from the inn, with a white horse. judith liked white horses best. the front door opened, and her father, very tall and blond, with his shirt-front showing white, and her mother, with something shiny in her black hair, swept out. "look who's here," said her father, and picked her up with his hands under her elbows. "going to paint the town red to-night, son?" "red?" breathed judith. how strong father was, and how beautiful mother was. she smelled of the perfume in the smallest bottle on the toilet-table. how kind they both were. "red?" "harry, you see she doesn't care a thing about going. she'd be better off in bed. careful, baby! your hair is catching on my sequins. put her down, harry. you'll spoil the shape of her shoulders some day." "don't you want to go, son?" "i--" judith choked, "i----" "well, she's not crazy about it, is she?" "then do send her to bed." "no, you can't break your promise to a child, minna." "prig," said mother sweetly, as if a prig were a pleasant thing to be. "all right, let her go, then. oh, harry, look at that horse. they've sent us the knock-kneed old white corpse again." mother hurried him into the carriage, and it clattered out of the yard. they did not look back. they were always in a hurry, and rather cross when they went to the everards. for once she was glad to see them go, such a dreadful crisis had come and passed. how could father think she did not want to go, father who used to hang may-baskets himself? norah was calling her, but she did not answer. norah was cross to-night. she did not know how happy judith was. nobody knew, but now judith did not want to tell. she did not want sympathy. she was not lonely. this secret was too important to tell. and, before her eyes, a lovely and comforting thing was happening, silently and suddenly, as lovely things do happen. quite still on the steps, a white little figure, alone in a preoccupied world, but calm in spite of it, judith looked and looked. above the horse-chestnut tree, so filmy and faint that the star looked brighter than ever, so pale that it was not akin to the stars or the flickering lights in the street, but to the dark beyond, where adventures were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in your heart come true, whether you were clever enough to wish it out loud or not, hung the wishing moon. chapter two a small, silent procession was edging its way along church street, darkly silhouetted against a faintly starred sky. it was a long hour later now, and looked later still on church street. there were few lights left in the string of houses near the white church, at the lower end of the street, and here, at the upper end, there were no lights but the one street lamp near the railroad bridge that arched black overhead, and there were few houses. the street did not look like a street at all, but a country road, and a muddy one. the narrow board sidewalk creaked, so the procession avoided it, and stuck to the muddy side of the road. the procession looked mysterious enough, even if you were walking at the tail of it and carrying a heavy market basket; if you had to smell the lantern, swung just in front of you, but did not have the fun of carrying it; if a shaker cloak, hooded and picturesque, in the procession, hampered your activities; if you had questions to ask, and nobody answered you. "willard." "sh!" one by one, they came into sight, in the wavering light of the street lamp, and melted into the dark under the bridge; ed, in his white sweater, captaining them, and keenly aware of it; rena and natalie, with the larger market basket between them; willard, bulky in two sweaters, and tenderly shielding his lantern with a third, and judith. her face showed pale with excitement against the scarlet of her hood. one hand plucked vainly at willard's sleeve; he stalked on, and would not turn. only these five, but they had consulted and organized and reorganized for half an hour in the drews' barn before they started, and had hung only three may-baskets yet. however, the adventure was under way now. "willard, now it's my turn to carry the lantern." "judy, you can't." "why?" "it might explode." the feeble flame gave one dispirited upward spurt at this encouragement, causing excitement in front. "oh, ed!" "ed, make him put it out." "rena and nat, you keep still. judy's not scared, are you judy?" "no! oh, no!" "the lantern's a sick looking sight, and he can carry it if he wants to, but we don't need it." "i like that. you tried to get me to let you carry it, ed." "don't talk so much." "who started the talk?" "well, who's running this, anyway--you, willard nash?" "there's a dog in that house." "sh!" "but that dog's only a cocker spaniel. he can't hurt you." "judy, sh!" sh! somebody was always saying that. it was part of the ceremony, which had been the same all three times. the procession was halting opposite the nealy house. a whispered quarrel started every time they approached a house, and was hushed halfway through and not taken up again. the quarrel and the hush were part of the ceremony, too. the nealy house was small and harmless looking, and entirely dark, but they did not allow that to make them reckless. they stood looking warily across the dark street. "but there's nobody there. maggie nealy's out, too, to-night, and her mother----" "sh!" willard put a hand over judith's mouth. it smelled of kerosene, and she struggled, but did not make a noise. just at this dramatic moment the nealy's dog barked. judith could hear her heart beat and feel her damp feet getting really wet and cold. "now," ed whispered, close to her ear and uncomfortably loud, and she fumbled in her basket. willard jiggled the lantern dizzily over her shoulder, tissue paper tore under her fingers, and bonbons rattled. hanging may-baskets was certainly hard on the may-baskets, and they were so pretty; pale coloured, like flowers. "i can't find the right one. the marks are all falling off. the candy's falling out." "we can't stand here all night. here----" "willard, take your hands out. not that one----" "willard and judy stop fighting. that one will do. i'm going." there was dead silence now, and ed, clutching the wreck of a sizable crêpe-paper creation to the bosom of his white sweater, doubled into a crouching, boy scout attitude, crossed the road, and approached the house. nothing but his own commendable caution delayed his approach. the small dog's dreams within were untroubled now. there were no signs of life. he reached the front door, deposited the may-basket with a force that further demolished it, and took to his heels. after another breathless wait the procession formed behind him and trailed after him up the road, hilly here, so that the market basket grew heavier. "some evening," willard murmured to himself, not the rest of the world, but he sounded amiable. "willard." "well, kid." "there wasn't anybody in that house. ed knew it." "there might have been. they might have come home." "but they didn't ... willard, is this all there is to it?" "what?" "hanging may-baskets. throwing them down that way. i thought maybe they really hung them, on the doorknob--i thought----" "silly! ed's going cross lots, and up the wood road to larribees'. good work. that will throw them off the track." "throw who off the track?" "you scared? want to go home?" "oh, no! but who? there's nobody chasing us. nobody." "no. we've got them fooled. it's some evening." "willard, where are the paddies?" that was the question judith had been wanting to ask more and more, for an hour, but it came in a choked voice, and nobody heard. they were plunging into a rough and stubbly wood lot, and hushing each other excitedly. twigs caught at judith's skirt, and it was hard to see your way, with the moon, small and high above the trees in larribee's woods, only making the trees look darker. the wood road was little used and overgrown. "if they get us in here!" "they won't, willard." judith's voice trembled. "cry-baby!" "i am not." "here, buck up. we're coming out right here, back of the carriage house. if ed catches you crying he'll send you home." but ed had his mind upon higher things. "you girls stay here with the baskets. don't move. willard, you go right and i'll go left, and we'll meet at the carriage-house steps, if the coast is clear." "if they get us----" if! the boys crunched out of hearing on the gravel, awesome silence set in, and rena and natalie whispered; judith was not to be awed. four may-baskets hung, and nobody objecting; dark cross-streets chosen instead of main street and no danger pursuing them there. if there was no danger in the whole town, why should there be in one little strip of woods, though it was dark and strange, and full of whispering noises? judith had clung to willard's hand in terror, turning into the cross-streets, and nothing came of it. she was not to be fooled any longer. there was no danger. not that she wanted to be chased. she did not know what she wanted. but she had come out into the dark to find something that was not there. she had been happier on the doorsteps thinking about it. this, then, was hanging may-baskets--all there was to it. but it was pleasant here in the dark, pleasanter than walking through mud, and quarrelling. now rena and nat were quarrelling again. "get back there! ed said not to move." "they've been gone too long. something's the matter." "there they come. i hear them. get back!" they were coming, but something else was happening. willard's three whistles sounded, then ed's voice, and a noise of scuffling on the gravel--and a new boy's voice. rena and natalie, upsetting their basket as they started, and not noticing it, pushed through the trees and ran. judith stood still and listened. she did not know the voice. it was shrill and clear. she could hear the words it said above the others' voices, all clamouring, now, at once. she held her breath and listened. she could not move. "i don't want your damn may-baskets." "liar! get back of him, rena. come on, nat." "you'll get hurt. let me go." "liar--paddy!" the magic word fell unheeded. the boy was laughing, and the laugh filled her ears, a splendid laugh, fearless and clear. "paddy!" "i don't want your damn may-baskets." "paddy--paddy!" this time there was no answer. judith, tearing at the hooks of her cape, and throwing it off as she ran, broke through the circling trees. then she stopped and looked. rena stood high on the carriage-house steps and held the lantern. it wavered and swung in her hand, and threw a flickering circle of light round the group by the steps. the sprawled shadows at their feet seemed to have an undue number of arms and legs, and the children were a struggling, uncertain mass of motion, hard to make out, like the shadows, but they were only four: willard, grunting and groaning; natalie attacking spasmodically in the rear, and the strange little boy, the enemy. he was the heart of the struggling group, and judith looked only at him. she could do nothing but look, for judith had never seen a little boy like this. they were three against one, and the one was a match for them. he was slender and strong, holding his ground and making no noise. he was coatless and ragged shirted, and one sleeve of his shirt was torn, so that you could see how thin his shoulder was. he held his head high, and smiled as he fought. a shock of blond hair was tossed high above his forehead. he had a thin, white face, and dark jewels of flashing eyes. as she stood and looked, they met judith's eyes, and judith knew that she had never seen a boy like this, because there was no boy like this--no little boy so wild and strange and free, so ragged and brave. if he could come out of the dark, it was full of unguessable things, splendid and strange and new. judith's heart beat hard, a hot feeling swept over her, and a queer mist came before her eyes. a wonderful boy; a fairy boy! what would they do to him? what did they do to paddies? there was no little boy like this in the world. "judy!" the others had seen her and were calling her. "come on. help get him down." "he chased willard round here." "he led the gang last year." "it's neil donovan." "get him down!" judith did not answer then. her cheeks flamed red, and her eyes looked as big and dark as the stranger's, and her small hands clenched tight. it was only a minute that she stood so. the three were close to him, hiding him. she saw his face again, above willard's pushing shoulder, and then--she could not see it. "judy, what's the matter? come on!" and judith came. she plunged straight into the struggling group, and hammered at it indiscriminately with two small fists. she caught at a waving coat sleeve, and pulled it--willard's, and it tore in her hands. she spotted eds white sweater, and beat at it fiercely, with all her strength. "that's me, judy. cut it out!" "then let him go. three to one is no fair. let him go!" they did not hear her, or care which side she was on, or take the trouble to drive her away. judith drew back and stood and looked at them, breathless and glowing and undefeated, for one long minute. "boy," she called then, softly, as if he could hear when the others could not, "wait! it's all right, boy. it's all right." then she charged up the steps at rena. judy, the most demure and faithful of allies, confronted rena, amazingly but unmistakably changed to a foe; judy, with her immaculate and enviable frock smirched and torn, and her sleek hair wildly tossed, her cheeks darkly flushed, and her eyes strange and shining; a judy to be reckoned with and admired and feared--a new judy. "what's the matter? are you crazy? what do you want?" "make them let him go. they've got to let him go." "he's a paddy--neil donovan--a paddy." "they've got to let him go.... give that to me." "what for? judy, don't hurt me. judy!" judith wasted no more words. she caught rena's wrist, twisted it, and snatched the lantern out of her hand. she held it high above her head, and shook it recklessly. "don't, judy! don't!" the flame sputtered crazily. judy still shook the lantern, dancing out of reach, and laughing. "nat--everybody--stop judy. she's making the lantern explode. oh, ed!" natalie heard, and then the others. they looked up at her, all of them. rena and natalie screamed. willard started toward her. "put it down, kid," he was calling. "i'll put it down.... now boy." there he was, with ed's arm gripping his shoulders. he did not give any sign that he knew she was trying to help him, or that he wanted help. he was not afraid of the lantern, like the others. his black eyes were laughing at all of them--laughing at judith, too. he was looking straight at judith. "now, boy," she called, "now run!" and she gripped the lantern tight, swung it high, and dashed it to the ground. it fell at the foot of the steps with a crash of breaking glass. the light sputtered out. the air was full of the smell of spilled kerosene. in the faint radiance that was not moonlight, but a glimmering reflection of it, more confusing than darkness, dim figures struggled and shrill voices were lifted. "get him. hold him." "get the lantern." "get judy." "hold him, ed." "that's me." "get him, rena." judith laughed, and out of the dark he had come from, the dark of may-night, lit by a wishing moon, that grants your secret wish for better or for worse, irrevocably, a far-away laugh answered judith's. the boy was gone. chapter three miss judith devereux randall was getting into her first evening gown. the green river high school football team was giving its annual september concert and ball in odd fellows' hall to-night. the occasion was as important to the school as a coming-out party. the new junior class, just graduated from seclusion upstairs to the big assembly room where the seniors were, made its first public appearance in society there. judith was a junior now. her first dance, and her first evening gown; it was a memorable scene, fit to immortalize with the first love-letter and the first proposal, in a series of pictures of great moments in a girl's life--chosen by some masculine illustrator, touchingly confident that he knows what the great moments of a girl's life are. judith seemed to be taking this moment too calmly for one. the dress lay ready on the bed, fluffy and light and sheer, a white dream of a dress, with two unopened florist's boxes beside it, but there was no picturesque disarray of excited toilet-making in her big, brightly lighted room, and no dream-promoting candlelight. and there were no pennants or football trophies disfiguring the daintily flowered wall paper, and no pictures or programs in the mirror of the dainty dressing-table; there was no other young girl's room in town where they were prohibited, but there was no other room so charming as judith's, all blue-flowered chintz and bird's-eye maple and white fur rugs, and whiter covers and curtains. judith was the most charming and immaculate thing in the room, as she stood before the cheval-glass, bare armed and slim and straight in beruffled, beribboned white, pinning the soft, pale braids tight around her small, high-poised head. quite the most charming thing, and norah, fingering the dress on the bed disapprovingly, and giving her keen, sidelong glances, was aware of it, but did not believe in compliments, even to the creature she loved best in the world. her mouth was set and her brown eyes were bright with the effort of repressing them. judith, seeing her face in the glass, turned suddenly and slipped her arms round the formidable old creature's neck, and laughed at her. "don't you think i'm perfectly beautiful?" she demanded. "if you really love me, why not tell me so?" "your colour's good." judith pressed a delicately flushed cheek to norah's, and attempted a butterfly kiss, which she evaded grimly. "good enough--healthy and natural." "oh, no. i made it. oh, with hot water and then cold, i mean. nana, don't begin about rouge. don't be silly. that red stuff in the box on mother's dresser is only nail paste, truly." "who sent the flowers?" "look and see." "much you care, if you'll let me look." "do you want me to care?" "much you care about the flowers or the party." judith had caught up the alluring dress without a second glance, and slipped it expertly over her head, and was jerking capably at the fastenings. "with the spoiled airs of you, and willard nash sending to wells for flowers, when his father clerked in a drygoods store at his age----" "oh, carnations are cheap--or he wouldn't get them." "these aren't cheap, then." the smaller box was full of white violets. "give them to me. no, you can't see the card. you don't deserve to. you're too cross, and besides you wouldn't like it. do my two top hooks. now, am i perfectly beautiful?" under her capable hands a pretty miracle had been going on, common enough, but always new. ruffle above ruffle, the soft, shapeless mass of white had shaken itself into its proper lines and contours, lightly, like a bird's plumage settling itself, and with it the change that comes when a woman with the inborn, unteachable trick of wearing clothes puts on a perfect gown, had come to her slight girl's figure. it looked softer, rounder, and more lightly poised. her throat looked whiter above the encircling folds of white. her shy half smile was sweeter. the white violets, caught to her high girdle, were sweeter, too. norah surrendered, her voice husky and reluctant. "you're too good for them." "for the g. h. s. dance? for willard?" judith pretended great humility: "nana!" "there's others you're more than too good for. others----" "nana, don't." "come here." norah put two heavy hands on her shoulders and regarded her grimly. it was the kind of look that judith used to associate with second sight, and dread. it was quite formidable still. but judith met it steadily, with something mature and assured about her look that had nothing to do with the softness and sweetness of her in her fluffy draperies, something that had no place in the heart of a child; something that norah saw. "too good for them, and you know it," pronounced norah. "you know it too well. you know too many things. a heart of gold you've got, but your head will rule your heart." "nonsense." norah permitted herself to be kissed, still looking forbidding, but holding judith tight. "little white lamb, may you find what's good enough for you," she conceded, unexpectedly, "and may you know it when you find it." "you're an old dear, and you're good enough for me." downstairs there was a more critical audience to face. judith saw it in the library door, and stood still on the stair landing, looking down. she held her head high, and coloured faintly. she looked very slender and white against the dark woodwork of the hall. the randall house had been renovated the year before--becoming ten years older in the process, early colonial instead of a comfortable mixture of late colonial and mid-victorian. the hall was particularly colonial, and a becoming background for judith, but the dark-haired lady in the door had no more faith in compliments than norah, and there was a worried wrinkle in her low forehead to-night, as if her mind were on other things. "will i do, mother?" "it's a good little gown, but there's something wrong with the neck line. you're really going then?" "i thought i would." "be back by half-past ten. we're going to have some cards here. the colonel likes you to pass things." "i thought father's head ached." "he's sleeping it off." "i--wanted him to see how i looked." "i can't see why you go." "i thought i would. i'll go outside now, and wait for willard." judith closed the early colonial door softly behind her, and settled down on the steps. she arranged her coat, not the one her mother lent her for state occasions, but a white polo coat of her own, with due regard for her ruffles and her violets. the violets were from colonel everard. norah, with her tiresome prejudice against the everards, and mother, who thought and talked so much about them that she was almost tiresome, too, were both wrong about this party. she did want to go. the church clock was striking nine. there was nothing deep toned or solemn about the chime; it was rather tinny, but she liked it. it sounded wide awake, as if things were going to happen. nine, and the party was under way. the concert was almost over. the concert was only for chaperones and girls who were afraid of not getting their dance orders filled. the truly elect arrived just in time to dance. some of them were passing the house already. judith saw girls with light-coloured gowns showing under dark coats, and swathing veils that preserved elaborate coiffures. bits of conversation, monosyllabic and formal, to fit the clothes, drifted across the lawn to her. she had not been allowed to help decorate the hall, but she had driven with willard to nashes' corners for goldenrod, and when they carried it in, big, glowing bundles of it, she had seen fascinating things: japanese lanterns, cheesecloth in yellow and white, the school colours, still in the piece, and full of unguessable possibilities, and a rough board table, the foundation of the elaborately decorated counter where rena and other girls would serve the fruit punch. all the time she dressed she had been listening for the music of dugan's orchestra, and caught only tantalizing strains of tunes that she could not identify. there was a sameness about the repertoire. most of the tunes sounded unduly sentimental and resigned. but now they were playing their star number, a dramatic piece of program music called "a day on the battlefield." the day began with bird notes and bugle calls, but was soon enlivened by cavalry charges and cannonades. the drum, and an occasional blank cartridge, very telling in effect, were producing them now. judith listened eagerly. she needed friends of her own age for the next two years, but she must not identify herself with them too closely, because she would have wider social opportunities by and by; that was what her mother said, and she did not contest it; by and by, but this party was to-night. willard was coming for her now, half an hour ahead of time, as usual. he crossed the lawn, and sat heavily down on the steps. "hello. don't talk," said judith. willard was silent only long enough to turn this remark over in his mind, and decide that she could not mean it, but that was five minutes, for all his mental processes were slow. down in the hall the last of the heroes was dying, and dugan's orchestra rendered taps sepulchrally. judith drew a long breath of shivering content. "cold?" inquired willard. "no." "you're looking great to-night." "in the dark? in an old polo coat?" "you always look great." judith was aware of an ominous stir beside her, and changed her position. "oh, judy." "when you know i won't let you hold my hand, what makes you try?" "if i didn't try, how would i know?" said willard neatly. "oh, if you don't know without trying," judith sighed. the cannonade in the hall was over, and the night was empty without it. "they took in thirteen dollars and fifty-two cents selling tickets for to-night." willard, checked upon sentimental subjects, proceeded to facts. he had so many at command that he could not be checked. "who did?" "the team. they divide it. only this year they've got to let the sub-team in on it, the faculty made them, and they're sore. and there's a sub on the reception committee." "i don't care." "you ought to. a sub, and a roughneck. the sub-team is a bunch of roughnecks, but he's the worst. on the reception committee! but they'll take it out of him." "who? the reception committee?" "no, the girls. they won't dance with him. he won't get a decent name on his card. roughneck, keeping ed off the team. he's an irish boy." "an irish boy?" something, vague as an unforgotten dream that comes back at night, though you are too busy to recall it in waking hours, urged judith to protest. "so is the senior president irish." "no, the vice-president." there was a wide distinction between the two offices. "besides"--this was a wider distinction--"murph lives at the falls." living at the falls, the little settlement at the head of the river, and lunching at noon, in the empty schoolhouse, out of tin boxes, with a forlorn assembly of half a dozen or so, was a handicap that few could live down. "murph?" "the team calls him murphy. i don't know why. they're crazy about him. he lives a half mile north of the falls. walking five miles a day to learn latin! he's a fool and a roughneck, but he can play ball. yesterday on brown's field----" willard started happily upon technicalities of football formations. judith stopped listening. he could talk on unaided, pausing only for an occasional yes or no. brown's field! it was a tree-fringed stretch of level grass set high at the edge of the woods, on the other side of the river, with glimpses of the river showing through the trees far below. here, on long autumn afternoons, sparkling and cool, but golden at the heart, ending gloriously in red, sudden sunsets, football practice went on every day; shifting here and there, mysteriously, over the field, the arbitrary evolutions that were football, the shuffling, and shouting, and panting silence; on rugs and sweaters under the trees, an audience of girls, shivering delightfully, or holding some hero's sweater, too proud to be cold. judith had seen all this through willard's eyes, or from a passing carriage, but now she would go herself, go perhaps every day. her mother would let her. she would not understand, but she would let her, just as she had to-night. judith could be part of the close-knit life of the school in the last two years there--the years that counted. the party was a test and her mother had met it favourably. that was why she was glad to go, as nearly as she understood. she did not know quite what she wanted of the party, only how very much she wanted to go. willard was asking a question insistently: "didn't he do pretty work?" "who?" "why, the fellow i'm telling you about--the roughneck." "roughneck," said judith dreamily. the word had a fine, strong sound. willard was holding her hand again, and she felt too comfortable and content to stop him. the orchestra down the street was playing the number that usually ended its programs, a medley of plantation melodies. they were never such a strain on the resources of a hard-working but only five-piece orchestra as the ambitious, martial selections, and here, heard across the dark, they were beautiful: plaintive and thrillingly sweet. "old kentucky home," was the sweetest of all, lonely and sad as youth, and insistent as youth, claiming its own against an alien world. "oh, willard!" breathed judith. then, in quite another tone, "oh, willard!" encouraged by her silence, he was reaching for her other hand, and slipping an arm round her waist. "you feel so soft," objected judith frankly, getting up. "i do hope i'll never fall in love with a fat man. come on, let's go!" she waited for him politely on the sidewalk, and permitted her arm to be duly grasped. willard, sulky and silent, but preserving appearances, piloted her dutifully down the street. willard's silences were rare, and judith usually made the most of them, but she did not permit this one to last. she did not want any one, even willard, to be unhappy to-night. "willard." "what?" "don't take such long steps, or i can't keep up with you. you're so tall." "do you want to be late?" "oh, no! are we?" "no." "but there's only one couple behind us, and the music's stopped." "it takes half an hour to get the chairs moved out." "willard." "well?" "is the first dance a grand march and circle?" "no, that's gone out. they have contras instead, but the first is a waltz." "willard, mother said i mustn't dance contras, but i shall--with you." "well!" "don't you want me to?" "yes." "willard, are you cross with me?" "no." they were in front of the odd fellows' building now. the door was open. the pair behind them crowded past and clattered hurriedly up the bare, polished stairs. the orchestra could be heard tuning industriously above. they were almost late, but willard drew her into a corner of the entrance hall, and pressed her hand ardently. "judy, i couldn't be cross with you." "don't be too sure!" judith laughed, and ran upstairs ahead of him. "there's the ladies' dressing-room. i'll get the dance orders and meet you outside." there was a whispering, giggling crowd in the dressing-room, mostly seniors, girls she did not know, but they seemed to know her, and she was conscious of curious looks at her hair and dress. it was the simplest dress in the room, and her mother would not have approved of the other dresses, but judith did. there was something festive about the bright colours, too bright most of them: sharp pinks, and cold, hard blues. there was a yellow dress on a brunette, who was cheapened by the crude colour, and a scarlet dress too bright for any one to wear successfully on a big, pretty blond girl, who almost could. judith smelled three distinct kinds of cheap talcum powder, and preferred them all to her own unscented french variety. she had a moment of sudden loneliness. was she so glad to be here, after all? it was only a moment. the tuning of instruments outside broke off, and the first bars of a waltz droned invitingly out: "if you really love me," the song that had been in her ears all the evening, a flimsy ballad of the year, hauntingly sweet, as only such short-lived songs can be. moving to the tune of it, judith crowded with the other girls out of the dressing-room. the hall was transformed. it was not the room she had dreamed of, a great room, dimly lit, peopled with low-talking dancers, circling through the dimness. the place looked smaller decorated, and the decorations themselves seemed to have shrunk since she saw them. the lanterns had been hung only where nails were already driven, and under the supervision of the janitor, who would not permit them to be lighted. the cheesecloth was conspicuous nowhere except around the little stage, which it draped in tight, mathematically measured festoons. beneath, under the misleading legend, "g. h. s.," painted in yellow on a suspended football, dugan's orchestra performed its duties faithfully, with handkerchiefs guarding wilted collars. the goldenrod, tortured and wired into a screen to hide the footlights, was drooping away already and showing the supporting wires. the benches were stacked against the wall, all but an ill-omened row designed for wall-flowers, and the floor was cleared and waxed. but little patches of wax that were not rubbed in lurked for unwary feet, and there were clouds of dust in the air. in one corner of the hall most of the prominent guests of the evening were attempting to obtain dance orders at once, or to push their way back with them to the young ladies they were escorting. these ladies, and other ladies without escorts, were crowding each other against the stacked benches and maneuvering for positions where their dance orders would fill promptly. the atmosphere was one of strife and stress. but judith found no fault with it. she was not aware of it. in a corner near the stage, by the closed door of the refreshment-room, a boy was standing alone. he was tearing up his dance order. it was empty, and he was making no further attempts to fill it. he tore it quite unostentatiously so that no young lady disposed to be amused by his defeat could see anything worth staring at in his performance, and he was forgotten in his corner. but judith stared. she had remembered him tall, but he was only a little taller than herself. his black suit was shiny, and a size too small for him, but it was carefully brushed, and he wore it with an air. his hair was darker than she remembered, a pale, soft brown. it was too long, and it curled at the temples. he stood squarely, facing the room, as if he did not care what anybody did to him, but there was a look about his mouth as if he cared. he raised his eyes. they were darker than she remembered, darker and stranger than any eyes in the world. they looked hurt, but there was a laugh in them, too, and across the hall they were looking straight at judith. "here you are. i've got myself down for all your contras. just in time." willard, mopping his brow, slipping on a patch of wax, and saving himself with a skating motion, brought up triumphantly beside her, waving two dance orders. judith pushed them away, and said something--she hardly knew what. "what, judy? what's that? you're engaged for this? you can't dance it with me?" "no. no, i can't." judith slipped past him, and started across the floor. the music was louder now, as if you were really meant to dance, and dance with the person you wanted to most. the floor was filling now with dancers stepping forward awkwardly, but turning into different creatures when they danced, caught by the light, sure swing of the music, whirling and gliding. the words sang themselves to judith, the silly, beautiful words: please don't keep me waiting. won't you let me know that you really love me? tell--me--so. a girl in red was dancing in a quick, darting sort of way, in and out, among the others, and her dress was beautiful, too, like a flower. the boy in the corner was watching it. he did not see judith come. "i thought you couldn't be real. when i never saw you again i thought i had dreamed you." judith said it softly and breathlessly, and he did not hear. she put her hand on his arm, and he turned and looked at her. "don't you remember me?" judith was too happy to be hurt even by this. the light, sweet music called to her. "don't you remember? never mind! come and dance with me." chapter four willard stood still and stared after judith for one bewildered minute; that was as long as he could stand still. odd fellows' hall had ceased to afford standing-room. the floor was filling and more than filling with determined young persons who were there to dance, and looked as if they had never had any aim but to dance. the enthralled silence, which was more general than conversation, advertised it. even acknowledged belles, like the girl in red, coquetted incidentally, with significant but brief confidences and briefer upward glances. there was an alarming concentration, intent as youth itself, to be read in their unsmiling faces and eager eyes. they danced quite wonderfully, most of them, as only country-bred young people can, with free-limbed young bodies, more used to adventuring in the open air than to dancing, but attuned to the rhythm of the dance by right of their youth. the old-fashioned waltz, that our grandmothers lost their hearts to the time of, still prevailed in green river; not the jerkier performance that was already opening the way for the one-step and the dance craze in larger centres, but the old waltz, with the first beat of each measure heavily emphasized--a slow swinging, beautiful dance, and they danced it with all their hearts. in and out among them, two slender, quick-turning figures were making an intricate way. the girl danced delicately and surely, a faint, half smile parting her lips, her small, smooth head erect, the silvery gold hair that crowned it shimmering and pale in the uncompromising light of the newly installed electric chandeliers, her eyes intent on the boy. his performance was not expert, but it had a charm all its own. he put a great deal of strength into it, and made it evident that he possessed still more; strength enough to master the art of dancing once and for all, by the sheer force of it, if he cared to exert it, and a laughing light in his eyes, as if dancing was not important enough for that, and nothing else was. an ambitious pair, experimenting with the dip waltz, just introduced that year, and pausing on the most awkward spots in the crowded floor, blocked his path, and he swung heavily out of their way just in time, squaring his chin and holding his head a shade higher. the girl in red was whirled toward him in double-quick time, and he dodged, miscalculated his distance, but met the shock of her squarely, whisking judith out of her way. "good try, murph," her partner called. willard regarded the encounter disapprovingly from the door of the gentlemen's dressing-room, to which he had edged his way. his was not an expressive countenance, and that was a protection to him just now. he was bewildered and deeply hurt, but he merely looked fat and slightly puzzled, as usual. "judy turn you down?" inquired his friend mr. ward, also watching from the dressing-room door, with the few other gentlemen who were without partners for this dance. it was the most important dance of the evening, for you danced it with the lady of your choice, or with nobody. it cemented new intimacies or foreshadowed the breaking of old; settled anew the continually agitated question of "who was going with who." "judy turn you down?" said mr. ward, but he meant it as a pleasantry. mr. willard nash was not often turned down, even at this early age. he was too eligible. "rena turn you down, ed?" "yes." mr. ward became suddenly confidential, and lowered his voice. "mad. she wanted me to get her a shinguard to mount tintypes on--tintypes of the team." "buy it or steal it?" inquired willard sarcastically. "i offered to buy it," his friend confessed, "buy her a new pair, but she wants one that's been used." "you spoil rena. you can't spoil a girl." they laughed wisely. "it don't pay." "mad with judy?" "well--no," said willard magnanimously. he thought quite rapidly, as his brain, not overworked at other times, could do in emergencies. "my feet hurt. pumps slip at the heel. i've been stuffing them out. judy came with me, but i had to be excused for this dance." "good thing for him." "who?" "for murph--for neil donovan. they'll all dance with him if she does; though judy don't know that. she's not stuck on herself, and never will be. i didn't know she knew murph." "well, you know it now," said willard shortly, his man-of-the-world composure failing him. judith was circling nearer now, slender and desirable. he hesitated between an angry glare and a forgiving smile, but she did not look to see which he chose. she whirled quickly by. "smooth little dancer, and she's no snob. judy's all right," said ed. "watch murph! he's catching on--never danced till last night. some of the fellows taught him. he never danced with a girl before." "if my feet hurt," remarked mr. nash irrelevantly, and without the close attention from his friend which this important announcement called for, "i may not dance at all to-night." willard stopped abruptly. "what do you know about that"; a voice was saying, in the rear of the dressing-room; he stiffly refrained from turning to see whose, "judith is dancing the first dance with neil donovan!" judith was dancing the first dance with neil donovan. it was social history already, accepted as such, and not further discussed, even by willard. but many epoch-making events are not even so much discussed, they look so simple on the face of them. we cross a room, and change the course of our lives by crossing it, and few people even observe that we have crossed the room. if judith had affected the course of her life materially by crossing the room to the strange boy, she did not seem to be thinking of it just now. she was not thinking at all. she was only dancing, following her partner's erratic course quite faithfully, and quite intent on doing so; feeling every beat of the music, and showing it, pink-cheeked and sparkling eyed, and pleasantly excited, but nothing more. the wistful and dreamy look was gone from her eyes, and her half-formed desire for something to happen this evening, something that had never happened before, was gone from her, too. she felt content with whatever was going to happen, and deeply interested in it, and particularly interested in dancing. they had danced almost in silence, rather a grim silence at first, but now that the boy could let the music carry him with it, and was beginning to trust it, too, the silence was comfortable. but the few words he managed to say were worth listening to and answering, not to be dreamed through and ignored, like willard's. his voice was not as she remembered it, and that was interesting, too, deeply significant, though she could not have said why. everything seemed unaccountably interesting to-night. "i thought it was louder," she said, "or higher--or something." "what?" "your voice." it was quite husky and low, and he pronounced a word here and there with a brogue like norah's, only pleasanter, with a kind of singing sound. it was never the word you expected. you had to watch for it. she could hear it now. "won't you please tell me who you are?" "i know who you are, and i know where you live." "where do i?" "at the falls, and i know when you moved there--five years ago, or six." "six. how do you know?" "oh, i know." as you grew older, and learned to call more boys and girls in the school by name, and more of the clerks in the shops, you discovered new people in the town where you thought you knew everybody, and it made the town infinitely large. but this boy had not been so near her, or she would have seen him. he could not have been in school with her. he must have worked on a farm and studied by himself with the grammar-school teacher at the falls, and taken special examinations to enter the junior class this year, as willard said that some boy at the falls was doing. he must be that boy or judith would surely have seen him. she nodded her head wisely. "i know." "you know a lot." in his soft brogue this sounded like the most complimentary thing that could be said. "but you don't remember me." this had troubled her at first. now it seemed like the most delicious of jokes, and they laughed at it together. "that was the first thing you said to me." "isn't it queer"--judith's eyes widened and darkened as if it were something more than queer, something far worse--"so queer! i can't think what the first thing was that you said to me." they confronted this problem in silence, staring at each other with wide-open eyes. though they were circling smoothly at last, carried on by the slow, sweet music, so that they hardly seemed to be moving at all, and though he did not really move his head, the boy's eyes seemed to judith to be coming nearer to hers, nearer all the time. they were beautiful eyes, deep brown, and very clear. his brown hair grew in a squarish line across his forehead, and waved softly at the temples. it looked as if he had brushed it hard there to brush the curl out, but it was curliest there. "you've got the brownest eyes," said judith. "you've got the biggest eyes. won't you tell me your name?" judith did not answer. she looked away from the disconcerting brown eyes and down at her hand, against his shoulder, her own little hand, with the careful manicure and the dull polish that was all her mother permitted; bare of rings, though norah had given her a beautiful garnet ring for christmas. how shiny his coat-sleeve was, and her hand looked unfamiliar to her--not like her own at all. she pressed tighter against his shoulder to steady herself. the music was growing quicker and louder, working up gradually but surely into a breathless crescendo that meant the end of the dance. it whirled them dizzily about. the sleepy spell of the dance broke in this final crash of noise, and as it broke a sudden panic caught judith. what had she been saying to this boy? she had never talked like this to a boy before. and why was she dancing with him? she ought to be dancing with willard--willard, waiting there in the dressing-room door with her dance order in his hand, with the patient and puzzled look in his eyes, with brick-red colour in his cheeks from the affront she had subjected him to. what would willard think of her? what would her mother think? and who was this boy? just what the children had called him in taunting screams, on that long-ago may night, and she would have liked to scream it now--a paddy. instead, she lifted her head, no longer afraid of the boy's brown eyes, and said it, as cruelly as she could, in her soft and clear little voice: "paddy," she said; "a paddy from paddy lane." she looked defiantly into his eyes, but they did not grow angry. they only grew very soft and kind, and they laughed at her. she wanted to look away from the laughter in them, but she could not look away from the kindness. now she was not angry with him any more, but glad she was dancing with him. she knew she never wanted to stop dancing. "paddy?" he thought she had said it to remind him of that may night; he was remembering it now. "are you that little girl?" "yes." "the little girl who broke the lantern?" "yes," said judith proudly. "and had such long black legs, and went scuttling across the lawn, and screaming out to me--that funny little girl?" "but i did break the lantern," said judith. all the bravest stories that she had made up in the dark to put herself to sleep with at night, all the perilous adventures of land and sea, camp fire or pirate ship, began with the breaking of that lantern, and the boy she rescued had been her companion upon them, her brushwood boy, her own boy. she had found him at last, and he was laughing--laughing at her. "sure you did. as if i couldn't have broken away from a bunch of fool kids, without being doped with the smell of kerosene, and yelled at by another fool kid. sure you broke the lantern. how mad i was." "you didn't remember." it was not a joke any longer now, but a tragedy, and judith felt overwhelmed by it, alone in the world. "you forgot, and i--remembered." the brown eyes and the gray met in one last long look and when the brown eyes saw the hurt in judith's, the laughter died out of them. again they seemed to be growing nearer and nearer to hers, but this time judith was not afraid, she was glad. "if you didn't save my life then, you did to-night." it came in a husky burst of confidence, straight from his shy boy's heart, very rare and very precious. judith caught her breath. "oh, did i? did i?" "yes. this crowd here had me mad--crazy mad. i was going home. i was going to get off the team. i wasn't going to school next week, and i've worked my hands off to get there. maybe you remembered and i forgot, but--i won't forget again. you were that little girl." it was not a slight to the little girl she used to be, but a tribute to the girl she was; that was what looked out of his brown eyes at judith, and sang through the brogue in his voice. "you were that little girl--you!" "yes," breathed judith; "yes!" they whirled faster and faster. this was really the end of the dance, and this dance could never come again. judith held tight to his shiny shoulder, breathless, hurrying to part with her secret and strip herself bare of mystery generously in a breath. all sorts of barriers might come between them, she might put them there herself, and she was quite aware of it, but not yet, not until the music stopped. "my name's judith--judith randall. call me judy." chapter five colonel everard sat at the head of his dinner table. a little dinner for twelve was well under way at the birches. mrs. everard was confined to her tower suite to-night with one of the sudden headaches which unkind critics held were likely to come when the colonel entertained. randolph sebastian, his secretary, had superintended the arrangements for the dinner. pink roses, rather too many of them, were massed on the big, round table. rather too much polished silver was to be seen on it; the most ornate candlesticks in the everard collection, and a too complete array of small, scattered objects, each with a possible but not an essential function, littering a cloth already complicated by elaborate inserts of lace. but the brilliantly lighted, over-decorated table was effective enough in the big, darkly wainscoted room, a little island of light and colour. the room was characterless, but finely and generously proportioned, and not so blatantly new as the rest of the colonel's house still looked. against the dark walls the pale-coloured gowns around the table were charming. indeed, most of the gowns were designed for this setting. for there were no outsiders among the colonel's guests to-night. sometimes there were distinguished outsiders, politicians and other big men, diverted from triumphant tours through larger centres by the colonel's influence, and by his courtesy exhibited to green river after they had dined, or bigger men still, whose comings and goings the public press was not permitted to chronicle. sometimes, too, there were outsiders on probation, the outer fringe of green river society, admitted to formal functions, and hoping in vain to penetrate to intimate ones; ladies flustered and flattered, gentlemen sulky but flattered, conscious that each appearance here might be their last, and trying to seem indifferent to the fact. but this was the colonel's inner circle, gathered by telephone at twenty-four hours' notice, as they so often were. no course that the chef had contributed to the rather too elaborate menu was new to them. the pol roger which the big english butler was just starting on his second round was of the vintage year usually to be found on the colonel's wine list, and on most intelligently supervised wine lists. a dinner for twelve, like plenty of little dinners elsewhere, no more correct and no less, but it had this to distinguish it; it was being served in green river. served complete from hors-d'oeuvres to liqueurs, in a new england town where high tea had been the fashion not ten years ago, and church suppers were still important occasions--where you were rich on five thousand a year, and there were not a dozen capitalists secure of so much, where a second maid was an object of pride, and there was no butler except the colonel's. and he had imported this butler and his chef and his wines, but not his guests; they were quite as impressive, quite able to appreciate his hospitality, if not to return it in kind, and they were all but one native products of green river. the youngest guest was eating mushrooms _sous cloche_ in contented silence at the colonel's left. the scene was not new to her. she could not remember her first party here; she was probably the only person in green river who could pass over that momentous occasion so lightly. she had grown up as the only child in the inner circle. she had been privileged to excuse herself, when the formal succession of courses at some holiday function was too much for her, and read fairy tales on a cushion by the library fire, out of the fat, purple edition de luxe of the "arabian nights" that was always waiting for her there. though her white ruffled skirts had grown long now, and her silvery gold braids were pinned up, and she was allowed to fill an empty place at the colonel's table whenever he asked her, if not quite on his regular dinner list yet, judith was not much changed from that wide-eyed child, and to-night her eyes looked sleepy and soft, as if she had serious thoughts of the cushion by the fire and the fairy book still. the scene was not new, but it kept a fascination for her, like a transformation scene in a pantomime. mr. j. cleveland kent, the manager of the shoe factory, who had taken her in to dinner, had been leaning out of a factory window in his shirt-sleeves, his black hair tumbled, and badly in need of a shave, when she passed on her way home from school. he looked mysterious and interesting in a dinner coat, like her idea of an italian nobleman. when judith knocked at the kitchen door to deliver a note, mrs. theodore burr, in a pink cooking apron, corsetless, and with her beautiful yellow hair in patent curlers, had been blackening the kitchen stove, and quarrelling with the furnace man about an overcharge of fifty cents on his monthly bill. the burrs had no maid. theodore burr had been assisting judge saxon ever since he passed his bar examinations, but he was not admitted to partnership yet. this was beginning to make gossip, for he worked hard. he had broken his dinner engagement to-night, as he often did, to stay at home and work. randolph sebastian, the secretary, with the queer, hybrid foreign name, and thin face and ingratiating brown eyes, had his place at the table. mrs. burr, stately and slender now in jetted black, the lowest cut gown in the room, her yellow hair fluffing and flaring into an unbelievable number of well-filled-out puffs, was chattering to the colonel in a low voice, so that judith could not understand, and breaking into french at intervals--green river high school french, but she spoke it with an air, narrowing her blue-gray eyes after an alluring fashion she had and laughing her full-toned laugh. she was a full-blown, emphatic creature, though she had been married only three years, and was lil gaynor still to half the town. auburn-haired little mrs. kent had been lying down all the afternoon, as her disapproving domestic had informed any one who inquired at the door in a shrill voice that did not promote repose. she was very piquant and enticing now, with her bright, slanting hazel eyes, and a contagious laugh, but her dinner partner, judith's father, was tired and hard to amuse. he looked very boyish when he was tired; his blue eyes looked large and pathetic. the other two young women and judith's mother, whose dark, low-browed madonna beauty was gracious and fresh to-night, set off by her clear-blue gown, with a gardenia caught in her sheer, white scarf, deserved the honourable joseph grant's flowery name for them, the three graces. before the colonel's time and judith's the honourable joe had been the most important man in green river, and in evening things, and after a properly concocted cocktail he still looked it, florid and portly and well set-up, with a big voice that could still sound hearty though it rang rather empty and hollow sometimes. he looked ten years younger than his old friend, judge saxon. the judge's coat was getting shiny at the seams, and--this appeared even more unfortunate to judith--he was in the habit of pointing out that it was shiny, and without embarrassment. mrs. saxon's pearl-gray satin was of excellent quality, but of last year's cut, and the modest neck was filled in with the net guimpe which she affected at informal dinners. the saxons were not quite in the picture, but they were always very kind to judith. and if they were not in the picture, mrs. joseph grant, certainly not the youngest woman in the room, though she was not the oldest, occupied the centre of it. she was like the picture of the beautiful princess on the hill of glass, in a book of judith's, and besides, she had once been a real débutante, of the kind that judith liked to read about in novels, before the honourable joe brought her from boston to green river. judith liked to look at her better than any one here except colonel everard. "cosmopolitan--ten years ahead of wells, or any town in your state; real give and take in the table talk; really pretty women; the same little group of people rubbing wits against each other day after day and getting them sharpened instead of dulled by it; a concentrated, pocket edition of a social life, but complete--nothing provincial about it," a very distinguished outsider had said after his last week-end with the colonel. but he was fresh from a visit to the state capital, the most provincial city in the state when the legislature was not in session; also he had a known weakness for pretty women. green river did not admire the colonel's circle so unreservedly, but green river was jealous. whatever you thought of it, it was made of fixed and unpromising material, and making it was no mean achievement, and the man at the head of the table looked capable of it, and of bigger things. the colonel was a big man and a public character, and as with many bigger men, you could divide the facts of his life into two classes: what everybody knew and what nobody knew. if the known facts were not the most dramatic ones, they were dramatic enough. he was sixty now. at fifteen he had been a student in a small theological seminary, working for his board on his uncle's farm, and engaged to the teacher of the district school, who helped him with his greek at night. he gave up the ministry for the law, used his law practice as a stepping-stone into state politics, climbed gradually into national politics, built up a fortune somehow--these were the days of big graft--married for money and got an assured position in washington society thrown in, and soon after his marriage chose green river as a basis of operations, spending a winter month in washington which later lengthened to three, ostensibly for the sake of his wife's health. the title of colonel came from serving on the governor's staff in an uneventful year. he had held no very important office, but his importance to his party in state and national politics was not to be measured by that. white haired, slightly built, managing with perfectly apparent tricks of carriage and dress to look taller than he was, he was the effective figure in this rather unusually good-looking group of people. just now he was lighting a fresh cigarette for mrs. burr so gracefully that even judge saxon must enjoy watching, so judith thought, though there was a tradition that he did not like women to smoke. shocking the judge was one of their favourite games here. it was only a game. of course they could never shock anybody. they were quite harmless people, too grown up to be very interesting, but almost always kind, and always gay. the colonel's profile was really beautiful through the curling, bluish smoke, and judith liked his quick, flashing smile. he turned now and smiled at judith. her own smile was charming, a faint, half smile, that never knew whether to turn into a real smile or to go away and not come again, but was always just on the point of deciding. "is our débutante bored?" "oh, no; i was just thinking. no." "she's blushing. look at her." "yes, look at a real one. do you good, lil," agreed the judge, and mrs. burr rubbed a pink cheek with her table napkin, exhibited it daintily, and laughed. "rose-white youth! but she doth protest too much." the honourable joe was fond of quotations, and often tried to make his remarks sound like them, when he could not recall appropriate ones, raising a solemn fat finger to emphasize them: "the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." "wrong, wrong thoughts," supplied randolph sebastian, so gravely that the honourable joe accepted the amendment, and looked worried, as only the thought of losing his grip on bartlett's "familiar quotations" could worry him at the end of a perfect meal. "wrong thought?" he repeated, in a puzzled voice. "thinking's barred here. what's the penalty, judge?" "you aren't likely to get it inflicted on you, so i won't tell you, lil." "no, i don't think; i act," mrs. burr admitted cheerfully. she always became a shade more cheerful just when you expected her to lose her temper. "how true that is," observed mr. sebastian gently. "ranny!" "didn't you play auction with me last night? we're out just----" "don't tell me. i can't think in anything beyond three figures. ted's doing higher mathematics over it. that's why he's home, really. i'll play with you again to-night, for your sins." "for my sins!" he made melancholy eyes, as if he were really confessing them. mr. sebastian always pretended a deep devotion to mrs. burr. judith thought it was one of the silliest of their games. "but what was judy thinking about?" demanded mrs. grant, in the sweet, indifferent voice that always made itself heard. "she met a fairy prince at the ball last night. they are still to be met--at balls." "you'd meet one anywhere he made a date, wouldn't you, edith kent?" said the judge rudely. "give miss judy a penny for her thoughts, if you want them, everard. you've got to pay sometimes, you know--even you." "don't commercialize her too young," said mr. sebastian smoothly. "though, on the whole--can you commercialize them too young?" "judith, what were you thinking about?" the colonel interrupted, rather quickly, turning every one's eyes upon her at once, as he could with a word. judith met them confidently--amused, curious eyes, but all friendly and gay. they talked a great deal of nonsense here, but it did not irritate her, as it did her friend judge saxon, though she was not always amused, and could not always understand. they never tried to shock her. she was sorry for the judge. he was not at home with these gay and good-natured people, and it was so easy to be. she tipped her head backward in deliberate imitation of edith kent, whom she admired, half closed her eyes, like lillian burr, whom she admired still more, gazed up at the colonel, and said, in her clear little voice: "i was thinking about you." "that's the answer," said mr. kent, and rewarded it with a lump of sugar dipped in his apricot brandy. "for an ingénue?" said mrs. burr, very sweetly indeed. "'she's getting older every day,'" hummed mrs. kent, in her charming, throaty contralto. but judge saxon pushed back his chair and rose abruptly. "i've had dinner enough," he said, "and so have you, miss judy." "we all have, hugh," said the colonel quickly, and rose, too, and slipped an intimate hand through his arm. "run along, children! hugh, about that brady matter----" judge saxon submitted sulkily, but was laughing companionably with the colonel by the time they all reached the library. judith never admired the colonel more than when he was managing judge saxon in a sulky mood. and she never admired the colonel and his friends more than she did in the lazy intimate hour here before the cards began. the room was long and high, and too narrow; unfriendly, as only a room that is both badly proportioned and unusually large can be, but you forgot this in the softening glow of candles and rose-shaded lights. you forgot, too, that you were an exile from your own generation, among elders who bored you, though you were subtly flattered to be among them. safe on a high window-bench in the most remote window, entirely your own, since the architect had not designed it to be sat on, and nobody else took the trouble to climb up, it was so much pleasanter to watch these people than to talk to them; they had such pretty clothes, and wore them so well, and made such effective, changing pictures of themselves in the big room. sometimes they amused themselves with the parlour tricks that they had so many of, and sometimes they drifted in and out in groups of two and three, to more intimate parts of the house: the smoking-room, or mrs. everard's suite, if she was well, or out through the french windows, across the broad, glassed-in veranda that ran the length of the room and darkened it unpleasantly by day, into the colonel's rose garden. it was warm enough for that to-night, and a yellow, september moon showed invitingly through the windows. mrs. grant, who liked to be alone, as judith could quite understand, since she had to listen to the honourable joe's big voice so much of the time, was slipping out through a window now, taking the coat that mr. sebastian brought her, but refusing to let him go with her. he went to the piano, ran his thin, flexible brown fingers over the keys, struck into a spanish serenade, and sang a verse of it in his brilliant but tricky tenor, with his languishing eyes upon mrs. burr. "ranny, do you want to tell the whole world of our love? you terrify me," she said, and took refuge on one arm of the colonel's chair. judith's mother, protesting that she needed a chaperon, promptly took possession of the other arm, disposing her blue, trailing skirts demurely, and looking more madonna-like than ever through the cloudy smoke of a belated cigarette. the others made themselves equally comfortable, all but judge saxon, who had ceased to advertise the fact that he was not. "smile at me," mrs. kent begged, hovering over his chair; "i'm going to sing by and by, and i need it. do smile! if you don't, i'm going to kiss you, judge." "go as far as you like, but be sure how far you like to go, edith," said the judge quietly. she flushed, and turned away abruptly, playing with a pile of songs. "i'm looking for a lullaby. our youngest seems to need it." "not in your line, are they?" said sebastian, and began to improvise one, while judith, in her corner, closed her eyes contentedly. whether there was any truth or not in the report that he had been playing a ramshackle piano in an east side restaurant in new york when the colonel picked him up, sebastian could do charming things with quite simple little tunes, if you did not inquire into problems of harmony and counterpoint too closely. he was doing them now, weaving odds and ends of familiar tunes, rather scapegrace and thin, into a lovely, reassuring whole, that made you feel rested and safe. judith, making herself comfortable against a stiff and unwieldy arts and crafts sort of cushion, as long experience had taught her to, listened, smiling. she had no idea what a unique position she was occupying there. judge saxon grumbled and scolded, but he was part of the group in the room. he had grown into it, and belonged to them, as he might have belonged to an uncongenial family. the colonel's distinguished guests saw them only on their best behaviour. their local critics never penetrated here at all. judith was the only outsider who did, and she had besides the irrevocable right of youth to pronounce judgment upon those who have prepared the world for it to occupy. she was their only licensed critic. what did she think of them? her blond head drooped sleepily. she did not look disposed to say. sebastian played on, drifting into something sophisticated, with a suggestion of waltz rhythms running through it. there was a stir of movement in the room, and the sound of windows opening and shutting, once, and then again. judith did not turn her head to see who had gone out. she was too comfortable. it was strange that he could make you so comfortable with his music, when he made you so uncomfortable if you talked to him, watching you so closely with his queer, bright eyes. he stopped abruptly, with a big, crashing discord, and judith rubbed her eyes and sat up. mrs. kent was going to sing now. she tossed some music to him. "that's over your head," she said; "over all your heads; better put me up there, too, cleve. besides, i want to dance. that table will do." she cleared it unceremoniously, with her husband's help, and established herself there, poised motionless, through the introductory bars of the song, her sleepy eyes wide awake now, and a red rose from a bowl on the table caught between her teeth. quietly, always careful to avoid the reputation of being shocked, like the judge, judith slipped down from her perch, and across the room, and out through the window. "please keep my folks from kickin'; grab me while i'm a chicken, i'm getting older every day." mrs. kent's fresh voice was urging, as judith tiptoed across the veranda. the rowdy words of her little songs and the demure plaintiveness of mrs. kent's voice made an effective contrast. it amused judith as much as any one, and she liked to laugh, but she liked better to cry, and if you could not hear the words, mrs. kent's voice made you cry; big, luxurious tears, that stood in your eyes and did not fall. as she found her way across the lawn, among the elaborate flower-beds, the voice followed her, mellow and sweet. it had never sounded so sweet before. everything sweet in the world was sweeter to-night. at the edge of the lawn judith paused. ahead of her three marble steps, flanked by urns filled with ivy, glaring things in the daytime but glimmering shadowy white and alluring now, led up the terrace to the rose garden; a fairy place, far from the world, so hedged in and shadowed by trees that it was dark even by moonlight, entered through an old-fashioned trellised arbour, that was so mysterious and dark, she liked it almost as well now when the rambler roses were not in flower. when she left the room her mother had been sitting in colonel everard's chair, she seemed to remember, and the colonel and mrs. burr were nowhere to be seen. the whole room looked emptier, though she did not know who else was missing. but there were two people now in the rose arbour. she could just hear their voices, low, with long silences between. she wanted the place to herself. she stood still, hoping that they would go. there was a path into the woods on the other side of the little garden: the colonel's bare, semicultivated woods, combed clean of underbrush, but you did not miss it at night. the woods were full of adventure, but the garden was better to dream in, and judith had a great deal to dream about. the lighted house looked quite small and far away across the wide, moonlit lawn. they had stopped singing, and the laughter that followed the song did not sound so clear as the music; you could just hear it. presently you could hear nothing, and it was quiet in the rose arbour, too. she waited until she was sure, standing quite still at the edge of the dark enclosure, not a ruffle of her white dress fluttering, very slender and small against the dark of the leaves. then she slipped into the arbour. through a fringe of drooping vine that half hid the picture, she could see the garden, empty and dimly moonlit, with the marble benches faintly white. she hurried through, pushed a trailing vine aside, then dropped it and shrank back under the trellis. the garden was empty. but across it, just at the entrance of the wood path, she saw a man and a woman. at first she took the two figures for one, they were standing so closely embraced. she could not see their faces, only the two dark figures standing there like one. they stood still a long time. they might have been lovers in a picture, only you could not paint pictures of darkly clothed, ungraceful, shapeless people. finally they moved, the man turning suddenly, slipping an arm higher around the woman's shoulders, and putting his face down to hers. then he drew her into the wood path, and they passed down it out of sight. judith did not know who the woman was, but the man was colonel everard. and they had kissed each other. now they were gone. judith drew a deep breath of relief and stepped out into the enclosure, pacing across it with slow steps, possessing it for her own and dismissing alien presences. there was a high-backed marble erection between the benches, which looked like a memorial to the dear departed, but was designed for a chair. she seated herself there deliberately, leaning back, at ease somehow in the unfriendly depths of it, a slender, uncompromising creature, like a young princess sitting in judgment on her throne. they had kissed each other. she knew they did things like this, but now she had seen it, which was different, and not very pleasant. but they were all so old. did it really matter whether they kissed each other or not? "stupid old things," said colonel everard's only authorized critic, "i don't care what they do." here in the quiet of the garden you were free to think about more interesting things than the everards or even fairy princes. "stupid," repeated judith absently, and forgot the everards. the moon, far away but very clear, shone down at her in an unwinking, concentrated way, as if it were shining into the colonel's garden and nowhere else, and at nobody but judith. she did not look disconcerted by the attention, but stared back at it with eyes that were not sleepy now, but very big and bright--wondering, but not afraid. on still nights like this you could just hear the church clock strike from the garden, but you could not count all the strokes. judith listened for the sound. it was early, and out here, in the cool, still air, it felt early, though the time had passed so slowly in the colonel's sleepy rooms. she could hear no music from the house. they would soon begin to put out the bridge tables. there was always a chance that they would need her to complete a table, but if they did not, the colonel's car was to take her home at nine. and the colonel's youngest guest had further plans for the evening. chapter six "that will be all, miss?" "yes," said judith, with unnecessary emphasis. "oh, yes, indeed!" the everards' car turned and flashed out of the drive and up the street. judith stood still on the steps and watched it, if a young lady with her breath coming fast and her eyes shining bright in the dark, and her heart beating unaccountably hard can be said to be standing still. one light burned forlornly over the entrance of the inn. light was judge saxon's one extravagance, and plenty of it was waiting for him in the house next door, though it would be two before any one left the everards' but judith. the house before her was dark, and the dimly lighted street was profoundly still, with the heavy and brooding stillness that comes upon village streets after nine and is to be found nowhere else in the world. judith did not seem depressed by it. somewhere on a side street solitary footsteps echoed hollow through the silence, and she listened intently, but they came no nearer, and presently died away. she fumbled excitedly with her key, threw open the door, and groped her way across the unlighted hall. she encountered the telephone table prematurely, clutched it, and laughed a high-keyed, strange little laugh. "who's there?" demanded a voice from the stairs, disconcertingly close. the lights, switched suddenly on, flashed into judith's eyes, and norah confronted her, peculiarly forbidding in a discarded cape of judith's and her own beflowered best hat. "oh, it's you," she said. "who did you expect? anybody else? did--anybody come?" "i expected you a half hour ago." "what made you wait for me?" "didn't you want me to?" "nana, of course, but if your sister is sick and needs you----" norah listened to this irreproachable sentiment suspiciously. "it's late to go," she said. "i'll walk up with you if you're frightened." "you! can you unhook that dress?" "yes. i'm going to bed pretty soon. i'm awfully sleepy." "there's some ginger ale on the ice." "i can get it open myself. did anybody come?" "a boy you know." "who?" "you're too anxious to know, and too anxious to get rid of me. and you're acting nervous." "i'm not. i'm just sleepy." norah, her grimmest self, as she always was just before relenting, began to fumble with her hat-pins. "let me help, if you really want to take off your hat. you'll spoil your beautiful roses. darling, you look like your niece, the lovely miss maggie brady, in that hat. don't take it off. you're cross because you know where i've been. well, they didn't eat me. i'm all here. it was willard who came, and i don't care whether you tell me or not. and i don't want to get rid of you. and i love you and you love me, and you're not cross now." "if i love you, you've got need of it, then." norah struggled perfunctorily, and permitted herself to be kissed. "alone here till all hours of the night, and mollie at the dance at the falls, and your own mother----" "but you won't worry about me? and you'll go? and you'll go now, before it gets later, so you won't be frightened. you'll go this minute? and--oh, nana----" norah, departing by the front door because the back one was secured by an elaborate system of locks of her own invention, and operated only by herself, turned to give judith a farewell glance of grim adoration. "nana, was it willard that came?" "yes." "and not--anybody else?" "no." norah, winding herself tightly into the cape in a way that converted that traditionally graceful garment into a kind of armour, disappeared up the street. when she was out of sight, and not until then, judith slammed the door shut, laughing her tense, excited laugh again. then, for a sleepy young woman, she began to display surprising activity. first she turned off all the lights in the hall but one, in an opalescent globe, over the front door, looked at the faintly lighted vestibule with a calculating eye, and turned that out also. she looked critically in at the library, close curtained for the night, and dimly lit by the embers of the wood fire, raked apart, but not dead. she pushed them together expertly, and added a stick, a little one, which would soon burn down to picturesque embers, like the rest. she pulled an armchair closer to the fire, pushed it away again, and dropped two cushions on the hearth with a discreet space between. the remains of willard's last half-dozen carnations and a box of the eighty-cent-a-pound candy which only mr. edward ward was extravagant enough to prefer to the generally popular fifty-cent belle isle, were conspicuous on the table, and judith carried them into the next room, out of sight. just then the telephone rang. judith started, dropped the candy, ran into the hall, and stood looking down at the small instrument resentfully, as if it were personally to blame because she could not see who was calling her without answering and committing herself. once she picked it up doubtfully, but finally put it down, still ringing intermittently, and hurried into the kitchen. she put a second bottle of ginger ale on the ice, brought a hammered brass tray and two glasses from the butler's pantry, then substituted a less ostentatious bamboo tray, hesitated, and then put them all away again. now she went to her own room, turned on an unbecoming but searchingly clear toplight, and frowned at herself in the mirror, jerked out her hairpins, shook out her soft hair, and brushed and pulled at it with unsteady hands. in spite of them, the pale gold braids, rearranged, looked almost as well as before, if no better, and the heightened colour in her cheeks was charming. from a corner of her glove-case she produced the two cosmetics then in favour with the younger set in green river, burnt matches, and a bit of scarlet ribbon, which made an excellent substitute for rouge if you moistened it. the ribbon was an unhealthy red, and looked peculiarly so to-night. judith dropped it impulsively into her wastebasket, but experimented with the matches. she made both her delicately shaded eyebrows an even splotchy black, admired the result, then suddenly rubbed it off, turned away from the mirror without a backward glance, and ran down into the hall. the clock was just striking ten. judith paused for one breathless minute at the library door, pressing both hands against her heart, then she went into the firelit room and made the last and most important of her preparations. she switched on the lights, toplights and sidelights and reading-lamp, all of them, went to the middle one of the three front windows, crushed the curtains back, and raised both shades high to the top, so that the light in the room looked out at the street from this window from sill to ceiling. judith slipped quickly out of range of the window, dropped down on one of the cushions by the fire, and waited. she had fluttered through her little hurry of preparation excitedly, but now there was evidence of deeper excitement about the tense quiet of her, huddled on her cushion, small hands clasping silken knees, and brooding eyes on the fire. there was a dignity about her, too, in spite of her childish pose and a drooping grace that was almost a woman's. what she was waiting for was slow to come, but she did not seem disturbed by that. the hands of the clock above her seemed to move with the unbelievable quickness characteristic of clock hands when there is no other activity in the room, and she observed them calmly. soon they pointed to the quarter hour, they passed it. she looked faintly worried then. the telephone rang again; she pressed her hands over her ears and shut her eyes tight, and did not answer. the stick on the fire burned low and she did not replace it. it parted and fell from the andirons with a dull noise that echoed loudly through the empty room. judith started and jumped up, her eyes hard and bright, her hands tightly clenched. she eyed the clock threateningly, as if it were personally responsible for whatever disappointment she might be feeling, and she were daring it not to strike. it struck half-past ten in spite of her. judith's mouth trembled childishly, and tears started to her eyes. they did not fall. footsteps sounded outside. they turned into the drive. judith stood on tiptoe and peeped at herself in the mantel mirror--her flushed cheeks, tumbled hair, and sparkling eyes. the steps crossed the porch, and she ran to the door and threw it open--the length of the chain, and no wider. she did not unbar the chain. on the threshold, with a substantial box of belle isle under his arm, stood mr. willard nash. judith regarded mr. nash and his belle isle with disfavour. "you can't come in," she said. mr. nash, who had been stooping to flick some dust from his boots, straightened guiltily. "why?" "it's too late." "i've got to see you." "you do see me." a white dress, a face almost as white, and big, dark eyes were all he could see, but it seemed to be enough. he inserted a square-toed boot cautiously in the opening of the door. "i want to see you _about_ something." "what?" "a new comic song for the quartette. they won't let us do 'amos moss' at the lyceum concert. that part about the red shirt is vulgar. the new one's close harmony. it will show off murph's voice." "it's too late now. go home, willard." "but i brought you this." "go home and eat it," suggested judith. willard turned scarlet, swung round, then changed his mind and inserted his foot in the crack of the door again, this time with a purposeful air. he was to develop into the type of man to whom an unpropitious time and place are an irresistible temptation to demand a show-down. it is a type that goes far, though it is not essentially popular. judith sighed, then resigned herself. "judy, i don't make you out." "you don't have to." "i do." willard's voice was impressive, as even a fat boy's can be when he is in the grip of fate and conscious of it. "i do." "i'm sorry, willard, dear," murmured judith, with disarming sweetness, but he was not to be turned from his purpose. "judy, are you going with me or not?" "going with you?" "don't be a snob. what else can i call it but going with me? i don't know any other way to say it." "then don't say it." "you've got my class pin and i've got yours. i know there isn't anybody else. you let me call and take you places, but you won't let me----" "what?" willard looked sheepishly down at his boots, then bravely up at judith. "put my arm round you at picnics. kiss you good-night." judith cut short this catalogue crisply. "spoon?" this word was forbidden in the upper circles of the green river younger set, and willard looked pained, but collected himself. "we are the same as engaged," he insisted sturdily. he had forced an issue at last, but judith evaded it, laughing softly in the dark. "oh, are we?" "aren't we?" "how do you know there isn't anybody else?" "well, you won't look at ed, and murph don't count." willard made this pronouncement lightly, though the adamantine rules and impassable barriers of a whole social order were embodied in it. "murph that you're so thick with, all of a sudden. he's a bully fellow, all right, next captain of the team, probably. good thing he's broken into the crowd a little way. too bad he's irish. murph don't count." "no--no!" a sudden and poignant sweetness thrilled in judith's voice. the tenor of the green river high school quartette, not ordinarily sensitive to variations of tone in the voices of others, could not ignore it. the change had disturbed him vaguely. it seemed to call for some comment. "judy, you look great to-night.... i'd do anything for you." "then go home, willard." "you haven't answered my question." "what question?" "don't tease." "i honestly don't know." "you don't hear one word i'm saying to you." judith laughed guiltily. "then what makes you talk to me?" "judith--are we the same as engaged?" judith hesitated. "kissing each other good-night--and all that--is silly. i don't want to. only sometimes i want to, and then afterward i'm ashamed, and can't understand why. willard, i don't want to grow up. i don't ever want to. i want things to stay just the way they are. they are--lovely. oh, willard----" she stopped, with tears in her eyes. there had been a real appeal in his earnest young voice, and she had done her best to answer it, painfully thinking out loud, with her heart in her words, making him an authentic confidence. but the confidence was off the point, and he ignored it, pursuing his subject with the concentration which will keep his sex the stronger one, votes for women or no votes for women. "are you the same as engaged to me?" "will you go home if i say i am?" "are you?" "there isn't any such thing as being the same as engaged." "are you?" "yes." willard, forgetting himself in the heat of debate, had withdrawn his foot from the door. judith, narrowly on the watch for this moment, now seized it, shutting him and his belle isle outside, and slamming the door in his face. he had gained his point, and would not linger. she heard him ring the bell once or twice in perfunctory protest, then put down his candy on the steps. "good-night," he called cheerfully, through the flimsy barrier of the pseudo-colonial door. "good-night, willard--dear!" judith's voice was sweet, but indifferent, and her manner was indifferent, for a young lady who would have seemed, to a literal-minded person, to have materially affected her whole future life by this conversation. she did not watch willard go. she turned and stood in the library door, smiling absently and humming a little snatch of a waltz tune. it was eleven now, but the hour had ceased to concern her, as if she had been watching the clock for willard. presently, as if she really had, she tossed the cushions back on the couch, drew the shades over the window, turned off the lights, and disappeared upstairs. muffled sounds of a methodical but unhurried preparation for bed drifted faintly down, one last ripple of song, and then it was silent there. it was very still in the library. the stillness of the whole empty house and the moonless night outside seemed to centre there. the dying fire threw out little spurts of flame and made wavering shadows on the hearth as if judith were still crouching there. the embers glowed as red as when she had been fire-gazing, but they did not show what it was she had seen in the fire. they kept her secrets as safely as she kept them herself; as youth must keep its secrets, inarticulate, dumb, because it sees into the heart of the world so deeply that if it were granted speech it would make the world too wise. what judith had seen in the fire, what had really been in her heart when she talked to willard in the groping and pitiful language of youth, the only language she had, the fire could not tell, and perhaps judith did not know. it was still, and the tiniest sounds were exaggerated: a board creaking at the head of the stairs, and creaking again, the stair-rail creaking, the ghost of a faint little sigh; tiny and intermittent sounds, but the silence became a listening hush because of them: listening harder and harder. at last a sound broke it: the doorbell, rung three times, one long peal and two short. it was rung faintly, but loud enough. there was a soft hurry of slippered feet down the stairs, and a slender figure, tall in straight-falling draperies, slipped cautiously down and across the hall to the door, stopped and stood leaning with one ear pressed against it, silent and motionless, hardly breathing. the faint signal was repeated. judith did not move. there was one more ring, a soft tapping, and then silence. judith listened for a minute, then whistled softly, a clear little signal, one long and two short, like the signal ring. there was no answer. she pulled frantically at the chain, got it loose, and threw open the door. a boy was standing on the steps, a stolid, unmoving figure, looming deceptively tall in the dark. he did not step forward or greet her. judith put out a groping hand and caught at his shoulder. "is it you? oh, i thought you had gone," she said. "i was watching for you upstairs." "i am going. i can't come in so late." "no, of course not." "then what made you watch for me?" "i wanted to see if you came." "well, i did come, and now i'm going." "you walked past the house five times." "eight." the boy laughed shortly, and judith's soft laugh echoed his. "oh, what's the use? i'm going." "don't you want to come in?" "no." "then what made you walk past the house?" "you know well enough." "i want you to tell me.... you can come in just five minutes if you want to." "i--you----" judith caught her trailing draperies tighter round her, conscious that they were under observation. "it's not a kimono, it's a negligee. and you've seen my hair in braids before, when i played basket-ball. but you needn't come in unless you want to." "i don't." "you're not very nice to me. willard tried to break in. rena's been trying to get me by 'phone, to stay all night with me. you're not nice to me at all." his only reply was a kind of tortured groan, but she seemed content with it. her voice grew compellingly sweet. "i want to talk to you." "go on and talk." she huddled her draperies closer. "i'm too cold." "go to bed then." "i won't. if you don't come in i shall stand here till mother comes. i'll probably get pneumonia." this threat evoked no reply. "neil," the name was said as only names are said that are new and dear--not often used yet, but often dreamed over, but there was still no answer. "neil, i'm awfully cold." "i don't care." "oh, don't you?" "you know i do. you know---- oh, judith, won't you please let me go? i don't want to come in, i tell you." "but you're coming?" "yes." yielding abruptly, he stepped into the hall beside her. judith, suddenly silent, concerned herself conscientiously with the chain. "don't stand there like that. i can't fasten this if you do," she said breathlessly. "why?" "go into the library, and don't light the lights, if you're afraid of pigtails." "i'm not afraid of--anything." "well--i'm not." with a reckless laugh, which made this comprehensive challenge to the world still more comprehensive, she followed him into the firelit room. slender and straight in soft-falling white, her face flushed and sweet, framed between silvery gold braids, her eyes wide and challenging, she stood looking at him across the hearth. he faced her awkwardly but bravely, tall in the shadowy room, his face very white, his dark eyes catching the last rays of light from the dying fire. the two did not move or speak till he gave a sudden, shaken laugh. "you wanted to talk to me--talk." he smiled a quick flashing smile. judith drew away from him and he followed. "now you've got me here, can't you shake hands with me?" "neil, be careful." "i'm doing the best i can," he said in a choked voice. "you shouldn't get me here. you shouldn't get me to a house by night that's not open to me by day." "but it is. only they'll never let me see you alone, and i like to. i like to talk to you. it makes me feel--comfortable. isn't it comfortable here?" judith paused, overcome by an unaccountable difficulty with her breathing, but mastered it. "comfortable and cozy? aren't you glad you came in?" "comfortable!" he laughed, came two steps nearer to her, and stopped stiffly. judith, disposing her soft, silky draperies daintily, observed him in silence from a big chair which she had taken possession of rather abruptly, faintly smiling. "don't look at me like that," he commanded. "like what? sit down--over there, neil. isn't it cozy? willard's got a new song that----" "willard!" "don't be cross. we--haven't very much time." "judith, where is this getting us? we're not children. won't you talk straight to me? you ought to leave me alone, or talk straight." "please don't be cross." "cross!" he came across the hearth and stood close before her, awkward no longer, but splendid with youth in the firelight, his dark eyes shining. "you knew i'd come, no matter how hard i tried not to?" "yes," judith breathed. "and you meant to let me in?" "oh, yes." "and you know, if i come, if you let me, i can't help--can't help----" "what?" "oh, judith!" he dropped on his knees beside her and hid his face. judith did not touch the dark head that she could see dimly in the shadowy room, outlined against her cloudy white, but she leaned closer to it, her lips parting softly, her eyes wide and strange. "i don't want you to help it," she breathed. "but where will it get us?" pleaded a muffled voice. "i don't care." her hand hovered over the dark hair, touching it with the wonderful, blended awkwardness and adroitness of first caresses. he brushed the butterfly touch away and raised his head and looked long at her, slipping both arms round her waist and holding her tight. "will you always say that?" "i don't know." "oh, judith!" her sweet, flushed face was close above him now, eyes drooping, lips faintly apart, drawn down to his as gently and inevitably as tired eyes close into sleep. "judith, some day you'll have to care." "not yet. neil, don't talk any more." "i--can't." "then kiss me." chapter seven it was winter in green river. the town, attracting colonel everard to it sixteen years before, newly prosperous, outgrowing its old lumbering days, with the ship-building industry already a thing of the past, with the power in the little river awaiting development, money in the small but thriving bank, and a new spirit everywhere, beyond the control of old leaders, too progressive for a provincial magnate's direction, had been in the interesting and dangerous condition of a woman ready for her next love affair; if the right man comes, she may live happy ever after, but even if the wrong man comes, a flirtation is due. like a woman again, the town showed the strength of his hold on her in his absence; in winter, when the big, unfriendly house was shuttered and closed, the ladies of the inner circle wore out their summer evening gowns at mild winter gayeties, church socials, village improvement society bridge parties, and the old-fashioned supper parties which the nashes and larribees and saxons still ventured to give. humble festivities which he would not have honoured with his presence lacked allurement because he was not in town and staying away from them. great matters and small hung fire to await his deciding vote, from the list of books to be bought for the library to the chairmanship of the school board. marking time and waiting for the colonel to come home; that was what winter meant to most of green river, but not to judith randall. winter was a charmed time to her; the time when her mother did not care what she did. freedom was always sweet, but this winter it was sweeter than ever before to judith. she was never lonely now. whispering groups in the dingy corridor of the old schoolhouse, or in that sacred spot, the senior's corner, a cluster of seats in the northwest corner of the assembly-room devoted by tradition to secret conclaves, though not distinguishable from the rest of the seats in the room to uninitiated eyes, drew her in without question, slipping intimate arms round her waist. attempts at informal gatherings in the randall drawing-room were failures, chilled by brief but devastating invasions of mrs. randall with a too polite manner and disapproving eyes. but wherever the crowd drifted after school hours, judith drifted, too, or was summoned by telephone, by imperative messages, vague, and of infinite possibilities: "judy, this is ed. there'll be something doing to-night at our house. bring your new dance records." or, as the outer fringe of the younger set, jealously on the watch for snobbishness, but disarmed at last, claimed her diffidently but eagerly, new names at which her mother raised her eyebrows appeared on her dance orders: joe garland, whose father kept the fish market, and abie stern, junior, the tailor's son. "is this judith randall? well, judith, this is joe; joe garland. i'm getting up a crowd to go skating to-night, and have a rarebit afterward. would you care to come?" she was one of the crowd. natalie, little, sparkling-eyed, and black-haired, with the freshest and readiest of laughs, was more popular, filling her dance orders first and playing the lead in theatricals, and rena drew was more prominent, president of the class and the debating society, and the proud owner of the strongest voice in the school quartette, a fine big contralto which wrapped itself round judith's small, clear soprano at public appearances and nearly extinguished it. willard, the most eligible of the boys, was judith's unquestioned property, otherwise nothing distinguished her. she was one of the crowd, and accepted the fact demurely, as if it were a matter of course, not a dream come true. just as discreetly she conducted her affair with neil donovan, captain-elect of the team, literary editor of the school paper, star debater, and in his way a creditable conquest, if she had cared to claim him openly. "neil danced three dances with me," confided natalie, in the hushed whisper appropriate to the confidences that were part of the ceremony of spending the night together after a party, though natalie's room, with the old-fashioned feather bed, where the two were cuddling together, was on the third story of the rambling white house, and safe out of hearing. "neil?" "judy, it's too bad to call him murph and make fun of him. the day he came into the store to solicit ads for the _record_ father said that boy would go far, if he had half a chance, but no boy had a chance in this town, the way it is run, and no irish boy ever did have a chance. well, an irish boy is just as good as anybody, if they only thought so." "but they don't." "judy, you are horrid about neil. you always are about any boy i get crushed on. neil has perfectly beautiful eyes, and he is so sensitive. he kept looking at you all through that last schottische as if you had hurt his feelings. he must have gone home soon after that. i didn't see him again. you didn't dance with him once." "no." "poor boy. and he's up there in the schoolhouse with you, hour after hour, practising quartette stuff, and willard so crazy about you he can't see, and rena crazy about willard----" "rena can have willard." miss ward was not to be diverted. "neil's father did keep a saloon, but he died when neil was a baby. his uncle that he lives with keeps a store at the falls, and that's all right. his aunt took in washing, but his mother never did. charles brady does get drunk, but maggie drives him to it. she's getting awfully wild. she's a perfect beauty, though, and i wish i had her hair. but charlie's only neil's second cousin. and neil is so quiet and pleasant, not like that brady boy that was in my sister lutie's crowd; just as fascinating, but neil doesn't take liberties." "i'm getting sleepy, nat." "judy, the way i feel about neil, about irish boys, is this: we can't go with them afterward, but while they're in school with us, they are just as good as we are, and we ought to give them just as good a time as we can. if you know what i mean." "i don't. i'm sleepy." "i'm not. i shan't shut my eyes." but miss ward did shut them. "judy." "well?" "judy, abraham lincoln split rails." "cheer up. the warren worth comedy company is going to play at the hall next week, and warren worth has perfectly beautiful eyes, too." "not like neil's." "go to sleep, nat." but judith did not go to sleep until after an hour of staring wide-eyed into the dark, and she did not confide to natalie or any one what had happened in the intermission after the schottische. "you act restless," willard complained to her then. "you hardly looked at me all through the encore." "i'll look at you now, but get me some water first," she directed, and having disposed of him, slipped out alone into the dim and draughty corridor. odd fellows' building, the centre of various business activities by day, looked deserted and forlorn at night, when the suites of offices were dark and closed, and the hall where they danced, gayly lighted and tenanted, was a little island of brightness in the surrounding dark. "neil," judith called softly, "neil, where are you? i saw you come out here. i know you're here." the corridor was empty, but several office doors opened on it, and on one of them she saw charlie brady's name. she knocked at it. "you're in there. i know you are. let me in." she tried the door, found it unlocked, and opened it. the room was dark, faintly lighted by the street lamps outside the one uncurtained window, where he sat with his head in his hands, huddled in a discouraged heap over charlie brady's desk. judith came and perched on it triumphantly. "running away?" she said. "it's all i'm good for." "look at me." "i thought you hadn't any dances free." "i haven't. this is willard's." "go back to willard.... what did you come here for?" "i don't know." "don't you?" he looked up now, with magic in his eyes and voice, the strange magic that came and went, and when it left him judith could never believe it would come again. but it was here. with a little sigh she slipped off the desk and into the arms he held out for her, closing her eyes. "i didn't want to dance with you," she whispered; "not with all those lights, and before those people." "no, dear." "i can't stay very long. they'd miss me." "i'll let you go when you want to." "i don't want to. i feel so comfortable--all sleepy, but so wide-awake. i never want to go." judith, remembering this moment until she carried it into her dreams with her, could not have shared it with natalie. it was a dream already, to be wondered at and forgotten by daylight, as she stared across the schoolroom at neil, not a romantic figure at all with his ill-fitting suit and his tumbled hair; forgotten until the next moment like it came--next in a lengthening series of dream pictures, of moonlight and candlelight and faintly heard music, a secret too sweet to share, a hidden treasure of dreams. certain pictures stood out clearest. in one, she was skating with neil. willard was giving a chowder party at the hiawatha club. this imposing name belonged to a rough one-room camp with a kitchen in a lean-to and a row of bunks in the loft above, and a giant chimney, with a crackling blaze of fire to combat the bleakness of the view through the uncurtained windows--mirror lake. it was a failure as a mirror that day, veiled with snow, and the white birches fringing it showed bare and cold among the warm green of spruce and pine. the camp was built and owned and the canoes and iceboats kept in repair in the boathouse, and the cook maintained and replaced when he left from loneliness, all by a syndicate with judge saxon as president. forming it was one of the last independent social activities of the town before the colonel took charge. it was bad ice-boating to-day. the wind was fitful, and the boat, a graceful and winged thing in full flight, dragged heavily along, looking the clumsy makeshift box of unpainted boards that it was. it was a day to be towed along on your skates with one hand on the boat. judith and neil had tired of this and fallen behind. close together, but not taking hands, they swung slowly through the unpeopled emptiness, leaving a tiny scattering of tracks behind, the blue-white ice firm under their feet through a light film of snow. the ice-boat was out of sight, the sprightly and unexpurgated ballad of "amos moss," rendered in the closest of close harmony, could be heard no longer, and a heavy silence hung over the lake. the camp lay far behind them, a vanishing speck. "neil, take me back," judith directed suddenly. "not yet." "please. i want some pop-corn.... neil, i don't like you. you won't talk. you're queer to-day." he did not answer. they cut through the ice in silence. it was rougher here. they were near the north end of the lake. there was open water there to-day, black water into which a boat might crash and go down; it made the water under them seem nearer to judith, black water with only the floor of ice between. she shivered, and neil broke the silence abruptly, his eyes still straight ahead. "judith." "oh, you can talk then?" "judith--do you love me?" "don't be silly." judith spoke sharply. days at the camp were always a trial to her. the crowd, bunched together in a big hay-rack mounted on runners, started out noisy and gay, like a party of children, singing, groping for apples in the straw, and playing children's games. but at night, slipping home under the moon to a tinkle of sleigh-bells, covered with rugs two by two, a change would take place: arms would slip around waists that yielded after perfunctory protest; in the dark of the woods there would be significant whispering and more significant silences; willard would be unmanageable. judith saw this with alien eyes because of neil, and dreaded it. this that was between them was so much more beautiful, not love-making, not real love, only a strange, white dream. "you don't, then? you don't love me?" "we're too young." he did not argue the point. his silence had made her lonely before, now it frightened her. she slipped a hand into his, warm through its clumsy glove. "cross hands. don't you want to?" "no." "but i want to. i'm tired. how limp your hand feels. hold my hands tighter. neil----" "what?" "you don't mind--what i said just now?" "what did you say?" "that about not loving you." "that?" he laughed a bitter, lonely sort of laugh, as if she were talking about something that happened a long time ago. "you had to say it. it's true. i knew it well enough. i just thought i'd ask you." "do you want me to very much--want me to love you?" "don't talk any more about it." "neil, suppose i should marry willard?" "i suppose you will." "you won't mind too much?" "what call would i have to mind? who am i? what am i?" he laughed again, the same hard and bitter laugh, and struck out faster, gripping her hands hard, so that it hurt, but looking away from her across the dead, even white of the trackless snow. there was a pain not to be comforted or reached in his beautiful eyes. it had nothing to do with her. "neil, wouldn't you care at all?" she said jealously. "care?" "if i married willard?" "oh, yes." "neil, do you love me?" he did not answer or seem to hear, and now judith gave up asking questions. carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. his left arm was behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there, warm and strong. breathing when he breathed, her heart beating in time with his, swinging far to right and left, tense with the stroke or yielding deliciously in the recovery, caught in the rhythm of it as if some force outside them both were carrying them on like one, and not two, and would never let them go, judith yet felt far away from him. she was alone in the heart of a snow-covered world, but she was growing content to be alone. she looked up at his white, set face with wide and fearless eyes, while the lure of unexplored and unseen ice invited them all around, and the gray and brooding sky shut them in closer and closer. "neil," she said softly, not caring now whether he answered or heard, "i wish we needn't ever go back. i love to-day." not long after this judith and neil went snow-shoeing one saturday afternoon by special appointment, an epoch-making event for them. judith did not often walk with him or take him driving when the sleigh was entrusted to her. she was not often seen with him. with quartette practice and committee work for the dramatic club and other official pretexts for the time they spent together, willard was not jealous yet, though the winter was almost over, and the treasury of dreams was filling fast. but this time she made an engagement with neil as openly as if he were willard, while natalie listened jealously. she started with him openly from the front door, with her mother's disapproving eyes upon them from the library window, and neil proudly carrying her snowshoes, all unconscious of the critical eyes. the afternoon began well, but no afternoon with neil could be counted upon to go as it began. two hours later, when they emerged from the everard woods into the colonel's snow-covered rose garden, they had quarrelled about half a dozen unrelated subjects, all equally unimportant in themselves, but suddenly important to neil, who now found further matter for debate. "what did you bring me in here for?" "didn't you know i was?" "how should i know? i'm no friend of everard's. i don't know my way through his grounds." "what makes you call him everard, without any colonel or mr.? it sounds so--common." "it's good enough for me. here, i don't want to go near his house. i hate the sight of it." "but you can't go back by the path. it's too broken up." judith plunged into the dismantled rose arbour. "come on, if you don't want to see the house, take my hand and shut your eyes." "that's what green river does," neil muttered darkly, "shuts its eyes." but he followed her. "the red etin's castle," judith announced; "you know, in the fairy tale: "the red etin of ireland, he lived in ballygan. he stole king malcolm's daughter, the pride of fair scotlan'. 'tis said there's one predestinate to be his mortal foe---- well, you talk as if the colonel were the red etin, poor dear. oh, neil, look!" sinister enough, looming turreted and tall against a background of winter woods, its windows, unshuttered still, since the last of the colonel's week-end parties, and curtainless, catching the slanting rays of the afternoon sun and glaring malignantly, the house confronted them across the drifted lawn. in the woods that circled the house, denuded of undergrowth, seeming always to be edging forlornly closer to the upstanding edifice for comfort because it was barren and unfriendly, too, the new-fallen snow lay shadowy and soft, clothing the barrenness with grace. giant pine and spruce that had survived his invasion stood up proud and green under the crown of snow that lay lightly upon them, as it had lain long ago, before the colonel came. and between woods and house, erasing all trace of tortuous landscape gardening, flower-bed and border and path, as if it had never been, lay a splendid, softly shining sweep of blue-white snow. the colonel's unbidden guests forgot their quarrel and plunged eagerly across the white expanse. "catch me," judith called, but it was neil, snatching off her toboggan cap by its impudent tassel, who had to be caught. it was heavy and breath-taking work on the broad, old-fashioned snowshoes which she managed with clumsy grace. judith, short-skirted and trim in fleecy white sweater, collar rolled high to the tips of small, pink ears, blond curls blowing in the wind, pursued ardently. neil evaded her like a lean and darting shadow, hands deep in the pockets of his old gray sweater, cap low over his brooding eyes. under the unrelenting glare of the colonel's windows, and across the deserted grandeur of his lawn, the two small and dishevelled figures dodged and doubled and retreated, only to grapple and trip each other up at last at the foot of the veranda steps, and collapse there, breathless and laughing. but their laughter died quickly, and judith, pulling the recovered cap over her wind-tossed curls, watched the brooding gloom come back into neil's eyes as he settled into a sulky heap on the step below her. her quarrels with neil were as strange as her beautiful hours with him, fed by black undercurrents of feeling that swept and surprised her, flaming up suddenly like banked fires. she was hotly angry with him now. "neil, i heard what you said about green river shutting its eyes. it was foolish." "i'd say it to his face." neil flashed a black look at the bland and elegant drawing-room windows, as if he could talk to the colonel through them. "i've got worse than that to say to everard." "then say it to me. don't hint. i'm tired of hearing you. you're as bad as norah." "you wouldn't understand." that is the irresistible challenge to any woman. judith's eyes kindled. neil slouched lower on the steps, dropping his head in his hands. "everard," he threw out presently, "has bought the hiawatha club camp." "i don't believe it." "the club was in debt. that's a bad thing for a club or a man to be, if the colonel knows it. and it's a worse thing for a woman." "what do you mean?" he did not explain or raise his head. "i've got a job for the summer vacation," he said presently. "already? fine." "oh, fine. in the fish market--tend store, drive the cart. and i'm fired from the _record_, judith." "fired?" "they're going to take on one more man, and pay him real money." "but you've got the green river jottings to do for the wells _clarion_." "and i may get two dollars a month out of it." "did you see judge saxon again?" "last week." "why didn't you tell me what he said?" "i told you what he would say." "oh, neil!" "the judge hates to say no, that's why he took time to think it over. he'd be a bigger man if he didn't hate to say no. he was right to say no to me." "then i wouldn't admit it." "what's it worth to read law in a country law office? the time for that's past. he's right. and suppose he took me on, what would it do for me? look at charlie. doing hack work and dirty work to pay the rent of a place to drink himself to death in. he's got brains enough. he knows law enough. he's slaved and starved and got ready for his chance, and his chance don't come. why? because he's charlie brady. well i'm neil donovan. i'm irish, too, what they called me the first time i saw you--a paddy." "that's not the colonel's fault." "who do you think gets the _record_ job?" judith shook her blond head, disdaining to answer, a gathering storm in her eyes. "chet gaynor--mr. j. chester gaynor. lil burr's brother. her prize brother, the one that's been fired from three prep schools. everard got him a scholarship at the last one." "why not? he ought to help his friends. he's a kind man and lots of fun. it's not his fault if you don't get on. it's your own fault. you don't have to work in a fish market if you don't want to, or sit there and sneer at a man who doesn't care what you think of him. abraham lincoln split rails----" judith stopped, amazed. quite abruptly neil had ceased to sit on the steps and sneer. he was on his feet, hands clenched, thin body tense and dangerous, face dead white and eyes blazing, as judith had never seen him before, or only once before, too angry for words, but not needing them. "neil, do you really hate him? hate him like that? i never thought you meant it. but why--what has he done?" "care what i think? if i was any one else--your fool of a willard--any one in this town but me, i'd make him care." "he's done nothing wrong. neil, don't. your eyes look all queer. you're frightening me." "no, he's done nothing wrong, nothing you could get him for. he's too careful. he plays favourites. he fools women. he locks the door to every chance to get on in this town and he sells the keys. he's got his hand on the neck of the town, and he's shutting it tighter and tighter. that's all he does. that's all everard does." "you can't prove it." "he takes good care i can't." "you can't prove a word of it." "your father could." "he's kind to father. he's kind to me." "you talk like a child." "well, you talk like my mother's cook.... oh, neil, i didn't mean to say that. forgive me. where are you going? i didn't mean to say it." "let me go." "you're hurting me." "i hate you! you're one of them--one of the everard crowd. i hate you, too!" "what are you going to do?" her short, panting struggle with him over, her wrists smarting from the backward twist that had broken her hold on him, she leaned against the veranda rail breathless and stared with fascinated eyes. when this quarrel had gone the way of their other quarrels, atoned for by inarticulate words of infinite meaning, justified by the keen delight of reconciling kisses, judith was to keep one picture from it: neil as she saw him then, standing over her white-faced and angry, ragged and splendid, neil as she had seen him once before. "may-night!" she cried. "you look the way you did that may-night. i'm afraid of you." "everard!" he turned from her, and looking at the windows again as if the colonel were behind him, swung back his arm, and sent it crashing through the glass of the nearest one--once and a second time. "oh, you don't want me to call him everard. colonel everard!" "neil, i'm afraid." he looked at the fragments of broken glass and at judith scornfully, but the angry light was fading out of his eyes already, the magic light; against her will she was sorry to see it go. "are you hurt? did you hurt your hand?" "what do you care if i did? don't be afraid, judy. he can pay for a pane of glass or two. he wouldn't care if i burned his house down. nobody cares what i do. i'm a paddy." awkward, suddenly conscious of his snowshoes, he shuffled across the matched boards of the colonel's veranda and down the steps, turning there for a farewell word: "i'm going. don't cry. i'm not worth it. i'm a paddy, from paddy lane." dream pictures, pleasant or sad, making her cheeks burn in the dark, or little secret smiles come when judith recalled them. some lived in her heart and some faded. judith did not choose or reject them deliberately. they chose or rejected themselves, arranging themselves into an intricate pattern of growing clearness. she did not watch it grow. it was only when it was quite complete that she would see it, but it was growing fast. chapter eight "you'll find the coffee pot on the back of the stove. i'm washing out a few things," said mrs. donovan. though she kept her five little nephews and nieces in dark-patterned dresses or shirts, as the case might be, and encouraged her brother michael to wear flannel shirts, and even limited her eldest niece, maggie brady, clerking in the green river dry goods emporium now, instead of helping her father in his little store at the falls, to three white waists a week, she was usually washing out a few things. the contending odours of damp clothes and rank coffee were as much a part of the brady kitchen as the dishes stacked in the sink for neil to wash, or the broken-legged, beautifully grained mahogany card table in the warm corner near the stove, where his school books were piled, a relic of his dead father's prosperous saloon-keeping days, or the view of larribee's marsh through the curtainless windows with their torn green shades. the swampy field was the most improvident part of an improvident purchase--a brown, tumbledown house, wind swept and cold, inconveniently far from the settlement at the falls and the larger town, heavily mortgaged, and not paid for yet, but early on sunny spring mornings like this the field was beautiful; level and empty and green, the only monotonous thing in that restless stretch of new england country, billowy with little hills, and rugged with clumps of trees. a boy could people the sunlit emptiness of the field with airy creatures of folk-lore, eagerly gleaned in a busy mother's rare story-telling moments, or with cæsar's cohorts marching across it, splendid in the sun, if he had eyes for them. the only boy who ever had regarded the familiar, glinting green of the field with unkindled eyes to-day as he sat finishing his lukewarm breakfast. yet it was saturday morning, that magic time, the last saturday of his last spring vacation, and he had only one more term of school before him. on this saturday morning he had an unpleasant errand to do, and he was carefully dressed for it, just as he had been dressed for the lyceum declamation contest and ball the night before, but not so effectively, for his best black suit showed threadbare in the morning sun, and the shine on his shoes was painstakingly applied, and a heavy, even, blue black, but they needed tapping. his brown eyes had a big, rather hungry look that was unquestionably picturesque, and miss natalie ward would have approved of it, if his mother did not, watching him as she trailed in and out of the room. "making out all right? don't hurry," she said. "i'm in no hurry to get there," agreed her son. "he won't say no to you. he never has yet, and he likes you." "oh, he won't say no. nothing new will happen to me in this town; not even that." neil's mother paused, balancing her clothes basket against one hip, and deftly favouring the string-mended handle, then put it heavily down, and leaned on the table and looked at him--a small, tired, pretty woman, with gray, far-away eyes that were like no other eyes in green river, and a smile like neil's. "tired?" she said. "dog tired." "well, you were out till three." "one. that was maggie you heard at three. where was she?" "that's her business." "it's charlie's, if he's going to marry her." "it's not yours, then. never mind maggie. your uncle and i had a talk about you last night." "why don't you ask to see my dance order?" he made a defensive clutch at his pocket as if she had, and quick colour swept into his cheeks. she watched it, and watched it fade, leaving his face tired and sullen, and too old for its years. "uncle!" "he's been like a father to you." "i've been two sons to him, then. he's worked me like two. if he grudges the time i take off, i can make it up to him. there's been little enough of it, and there'll be little more, and there's been little enough enjoyment in it, and i'm not ashamed of it. why don't he spy on his own daughter, if he's curious? why----" this outburst ended as suddenly as it began, in a short, sullen laugh as he pushed his empty cup away. "dan thinks he can land something for me with the telephone company. i couldn't send money home at first, but i'd be off your hands. tell that to uncle." "would you be with dan, in wells?" "somewhere outside wells. it won't be too gay. you needn't be afraid i'll go to too many dances." "don't glare at me. i'm not your uncle." "sorry. i don't know what's wrong with me." "don't you?" he flushed, laughed, and ignored the question, producing a small box and offering it. "i got that last night. don't wipe your hands. they're good enough to handle it wet." a gold medal glittered in her hand. he observed it without enthusiasm, and noticing that, his mother shut the box abruptly. "neil, that's the first prize." "looks like it. i spoke the gettysburg address, and they always fall for that. good-bye, i'm off." "neil, come back here." he swung round with his cap doubled under his arm, and stood before her, helpless and sullen, hedged about with that sudden dignity which no woman creature can break through, but seeming to derive no comfort from it. painful colour mounted to her cheeks, as if the effort of keeping him there was all she could manage without the effort of opening delicate subjects. "neil, i'm worried about you." "why? are you afraid i'll marry beneath me? i won't marry without your consent. it's not being done." "you got three dollars from the _clarion_ last week." "are you afraid i'll try to support a wife on it?" "it's the most you've made from them. why weren't you proud of it? why aren't you proud of this prize? a year ago you'd have had me up at one to speak your piece to me. there's no life in you, and no pride, and i know why." "me with so much to be proud of." "you're good enough for any girl, but----" "do you think i don't know my place, with the whole town teaching it to me going on eighteen years? i've got no false hopes, and i shan't lose my head over any girl. let me be." "it's not the town that's taught you your place, it's----" "don't you say her name." "--empty headed and overdressed." "go on. judith randall don't care what you think of her." "can't you even get up enough spirit to stand up for her? you that thought you had your fortune all but made when you got the chickens paid for, and followed me round the house, telling me how you'd run the town? you that could tell what was wrong with the _record_ editorials, if you couldn't pay for a year's subscription to the paper? you----" "yes, i come from one of the five lines in ireland what have a right to the o', but you never tell me that unless you've got something else to tell me that you're afraid to tell. what is it this time?" "you come of irish kings." "what did uncle say last night?" "well, he's getting to be an old man." "what did he say?" his mother did not reply. she avoided his eyes, and made no further criticism of him, or of a young lady who was no doubt as indifferent to her criticisms as neil said, since she did not recognize mrs. donovan on the street. "uncle," neil decided deliberately, "wants me to help in the store. i can't go to wells." "he can't get on alone now maggie's gone. we need your board money to run the house at all. dan was wild to get away from green river, but in two years he's got no farther than wells, and ten dollars a week. i know we ought to leave you free to start yourself, if we can't give you a start, but----" "is that all you want to tell me?" she put out an unaccustomed arm and pulled him awkwardly close. he came obediently, and patted her shoulder stiffly but did not kiss her. "i know what this means," she asserted, and showed a rapidly forming intention of crying on his shoulder. "it hurts me like it does you." [illustration: "'_i know what this means,' she asserted_'"] "it don't hurt me. i ought to have seen it myself. i ought not to have planned to go. it's all right, mother. is that all?" "all? it's enough. i was awake half the night planning to break it to you." "you broke it all right. i'll be going." he shook out his crushed cap, and adjusted it with dignity, looking at her calmly out of impenetrable eyes, like a young prince ending an audience, with more power behind him than he knew, kissed her gravely on the cheek with cool young lips, and opened the door, and walked off into the sunshine. "it's the girl," said his mother, but not until the door had closed behind him. "no girl is good enough to do what she's done to you." then she selected the frilliest of maggie's blouses, which had dried while she talked, and spread it on the ironing table to sprinkle again. neil did not look like a young man crossed in love, or a young man with his future wrecked by a word. he did not give a backward glance to the little brown house with the sun on its many-paned windows, or seem to hear the children's voices from the old barn behind the house--the favourite refuge of the little bradys when they were banished from the kitchen--that echoed after him in the clear morning air, shrill and then fainter as he left the place behind. he had settled into his usual pace for this familiar walk--a steady stride that you could fit the unmanageable parts of a latin verb to the rhythm of, or the refractory words of a song; but it was not a usual day. it was the first warm day of that april, warmer already, with the goading urge of spring in the softening air that frets and troubles with new desires and a sense of unfitness for them at once, and will not let you be. the road, fringed with scattering trees, and wind-swept and bleak on winter days, was golden with new sunlight, spongy underfoot, but drying under your eyes in the morning sun. the boy's brooding face did not change as he walked, but his shoulders straightened themselves, and lost their patient look, and his lean young body gave itself more gayly to the swing of his pace and looked strong and free, alive with the unconscious strength of youth that must be caught and harnessed to make the wheels of the world go round before it can be taught what its purpose is. whether it troubled him or not--his face did not tell--all that his mother had hinted was wrong with his world, and more. no outsider had ever won a place like neil's in green river high school society so far as the unwritten history of it recorded. charlie brady in his time, and dan after him, had been extra men at big dances, hard worked and patronized in school entertainments, more intimate with the boys than the girls. charlie, deep in a secret love affair with lil gaynor, had still called her miss in public, and treated her as respectfully as he did now that the affair was forgotten and she was mrs. burr and one of the everard circle. charlie and dan had only looked over impassable barriers. neil had been really inside--included in small, intimate parties, like week-ends at camp hiawatha, openly favoured by natalie, if not judith--inside and he would soon be shut out. there were new signs of it every day. the long, friendly winter, when he had been safe in that intimate fellowship, was over. the girls were planning their gowns for college commencement dances. willard came back from a week-end at the state university pledged to a fraternity there and refusing to discuss minor subjects. god-like creatures in amazing neckties condescended to visit him, and natalie was beginning to collect fraternity pins. rena and ed were engaged, and under the impression that it was a secret, and a place was being made for ed in the bank. in one way or another, the world was opening to all of them, and closing to neil. and with the spring, the everards had come back to green river. the big, over-decorated house had not been open a week, but already they pervaded the town. their cars whirled through the splashing spring streets, and ladies not upon mrs. everard's calling list peered at the passengers to see who was in her favour. the colonel was turning the hiawatha club into a private camp, and closing it to the town, but nobody protested much. he was ordering a complete set of slip covers from the furniture department of ward's emporium, and the daring group of prominent business men who ventured to assail the colonel's political views and private morals sometimes in the little room at the rear of the store lacked support from ward. neil had the run of the store and hung about and listened, but never contributed. whether these criticisms were justified or not, the everards were back again. judith had given up the lyceum dance for the first of the everard dinners the night before. it was three days since neil had seen her, and he was to see her to-day, but he was showing no impatience for the meeting. the end of the world, not the beginning of it, that was what spring would mean to him, and that is a graver catastrophe at eighteen than at eighty. the boy who was facing it had passed the outlying straggle of houses, and had come to the edge of the town, and to the end of the long, hilly street that led down past the court-house, straight into post office square, the heart of the town. it was still empty of traffic at ten, and looked sunny and empty and clean, wide-awake for the day. he took his hands out of his pockets, stopped whistling "amos moss," and hurried down court-house hill, stepping in time to the tune of it. a mud-splashed ford clattered down main street, and drew up in front of the post-office as neil reached it with a flourish that would have done credit to a more elegant equipage than this second-hand one of the nashes. two elegant young gentlemen, week-end guests of willard's and duly presented to neil the night before, ignored his existence, perusing a gaudily covered series of topical songs with exaggerated attention on the rear seat of the car, but willard greeted him exuberantly: "ah, there, murph. you don't look like the morning after. sorry i haven't got room for you. we've got other plans. we love the ladies." "i'm tied up, anyway. so long." willard's tone was too patronizing, but he was not to blame, for the days when they would exchange intimate greetings at all were numbered. as neil left them one of the elegant guests demanded audibly: "who's your friend?" neil flushed but did not look back. he had an errand to do in the few minutes before his appointment with judge saxon. he crossed the street to ward's store. ward's dry goods emporium, three stores in one, and literally three stores bought out one by one, and joined by connecting doors, though they could never be united in their style of architecture, was rather dark and chaotic inside, though a brave showing of plate glass across the front advertised its prosperity. luther ward himself, in his shirt sleeves, was looking over a tray of soiled, pale-coloured spats, assisted by a tall, full-bodied girl with a sweet, sulky mouth, and a towering mass of blue-black hair. "hello, donovan, what's new?" he said, with only a shade more condescension than willard, and distinctly more friendliness. "nothing, sir," said neil with conviction. "you want to talk to maggie, here. i won't intrude on a family quarrel," said mr. ward, and chuckling heartily at his own mild joke, as he generally did, and few others did, disappeared into the furniture department, the central one of the three stores, and his favourite. the two cousins regarded each other across the tray of spats as if the family quarrel were not a joke, but an unpleasant reality. "you can't come here and take up my time," stated miss brady. "your time is pretty full--evenings, too. do you know where charlie was last night?" "i don't care." "you ought. he's your second cousin, and goes by the same name as you, if you're not in love with him. he was in halloran's billiard hall." "if he can't keep himself out of the gutter, i can't keep him out," stated miss brady logically. "well, don't push him in," her cousin advised, but the light of battle had died out of his eyes, leaving them listless. "it's nothing to me. i only came to bring you this." he produced something from an inner pocket and tossed it on the counter, something wrapped in a twist of newspaper, which parted as the girl bent eagerly over it, something which shone and twinkled alluringly, as she straightened it out with caressing fingers and held it up to the light--a little necklace of rather ornate design and startling colours, crimson stones and green and blue, the gayest of toys. "seems to be yours all right." his cousin, who seemed to have forgotten his existence for one rapt moment, remembered it with a start. "did you show this to your mother?" she asked sharply. "why?" "well, she don't like to have me spend my money on imitation jewellery." miss brady delivered this very natural explanation haltingly. "do you?" one of the sudden, vivid blushes which had helped to establish her reputation as a beauty overspread miss brady's cheek. "i missed it this morning and didn't have time to hunt for it, and i was worried. i don't want to show it to her. it cost a good deal." "it must have. they say a ruby's the only stone you can't imitate." "what do you mean?" miss brady's cheeks grew still redder. "why don't you save your big talk for saxon? you may need it. why don't you mind your own affairs, and leave mine alone?" "leave that on the kitchen floor for mother to find and sweep up in a broken dust-pan, or one of the kids to show to your father?" "why not? haven't i got a right to do what i want with my own money? haven't i got a right to do what i want with myself? who are you to dictate to me, with the randall girl making a fool of you? why----" "that will be all." though miss brady's voice had been threatening to make itself heard throughout all the three stores in one, she stopped obediently, looking defiant but frightened, but when her cousin spoke again the ring of authority which had shocked her was gone from his voice. "don't be scared. it's nothing to me what you do, and i shan't talk too much. you know me, mag." "no, i don't, not lately. you act doped, not half there. i can't make you out. if you think--if you suspect----" "i don't. it's nothing to me. i'm due at saxon's. put your glass beads away before ward sees them. good luck to you." miss brady, standing quite still in one of her carefully cultivated, statuesque poses, watched her cousin cross the street and disappear into a narrow and shabbily painted doorway there. then she took his advice, and producing a red morocco wrist bag from under the counter, shut the necklace into it with a vicious snap, as if she did not derive so much pleasure as before from handling it now. her cousin climbed the three flights of stairs to judge saxon's office. the stairs were dingy and looked unswept, and a pane of glass in the door of the untenanted suite across the landing from the judge's was broken. nothing about the judge's quarters indicated that he was colonel everard's attorney, a big man in the town before the everard régime, and under it--an unusual combination. his office was shabby outside and in. the lettering on the door, saxon and burr, attorneys-at-law, looked newer than it was by contrast, and it was still only six months old. theodore burr had his delayed junior partnership at last. the judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this. they were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. he looked quite unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to bear--or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief in establishing the fact. he knocked and stepped inside. chapter nine a fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morning chill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morning sun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still close and cloudy with wood smoke. at a battered, roll-topped desk in the sunniest window mr. theodore burr was struggling with the eccentricities of an ancient remington, and looking superior to it and to all his surroundings, but the judge was nowhere to be seen. mr. burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair which would have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set, green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the same time. he was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated their effectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the remington for quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressive look upon his client. "well, donovan?" he said. mr. burr's manner was as patronizing as mr. ward's with the friendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it. "theodore, where's the judge?" he asked. "mr. burr." the pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made the correction. "the judge is engaged." "i don't believe it." mr. burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. from the other side of a door labelled private--misleadingly, for the judge's little sanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in and tipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroom that the town afforded, now that the hiawatha club was no more--muffled voices were faintly audible. "you can talk to me," said mr. burr. "i can, and i can go away and come back when he's not engaged. he said he'd see me." "he's changed his mind. he don't want to see you. i know all about your case." "you've learned a lot in six months." "talk like that won't get you anything, donovan, here or anywhere else," remarked mr. burr, reasonably, if somewhat offensively. admitting it, his client dropped into one of the judge's big office chairs, and sat there, fingering his cap as he talked, and looking suddenly beaten and tired. "you're right, theodore. well, what's all this you know about my case?" "mike brady sends you here begging when he's ashamed to come himself. it's hard on you, neil." "my uncle's too busy to come. is that all you know?" "i know what you want to-day, and you can't have it." "what do i want?" mr. burr's manner had become alarmingly official, but his client continued to smile at him, and to fold and unfold his cap methodically. "an extension of time on your uncle's mortgage. the principal is due the first of next month. you've kept the judge waiting twice for the interest, the security is insufficient, the bank holds a first mortgage on the house, and for fourteen months your uncle has made no payment to the judge whatever." "don't rub it in, theodore." "this is no laughing matter. business is business," stated the junior partner importantly. "more like charity, with the judge, but uncle isn't holding him up for much this time. uncle's getting on his feet. the judge never expected him to, and i didn't, but the automobiles help. maggie served tea before she went to ward's, and he's going on with it. his luck has turned. he's got the money to pay this year's interest and half the back interest that's due, but he wants to keep it and put it into repairs--the roof wants shingling, and if we could fix up the storeroom for a place to serve tea and ice-cream we could double trade. then, next year----" "we've heard too much about next year, donovan." "don't get tragic, theodore. this is a new proposition. i'll go into figures with the judge and prove it to him--don't want to waste them on you. but he won't be sending good money after bad this time, like he's done too many times. i'm as glad for him as i am for uncle." "it can't be done." "nonsense, theodore. i won't wait to see the judge now, but you tell him----" "it don't make any difference what i tell him. the judge has made up his mind, and he won't change it. you can take it from me as well as him. you won't get another dollar of his money, and you won't get another month's extension of time. we're done with you." "i almost believe you mean that, theodore." "as i said, the house is insufficient security, but for the sake of the dignity of the firm we must protect ourselves----" "i believe you mean it, and the judge gave you authority to say it." "we must go through the form of protecting ourselves and----" his client laughed. "you don't mean the judge wants to take over the house. that's 'way down east stuff. if money's tight with him, we'll pay the interest and manage some way, though i don't see how. but the house would be no good to him if he took it, and he wouldn't take it if it was. i know the judge. don't let your imagination get away with you, theodore." "i'm sorry for you, donovan." "you think he's going to take it?" "i know he is." "you mean that," his client decided slowly, "and you've got the judge's authority for it, too." "take it quietly. it's the best way," urged the junior partner helpfully. "i understand that's your motto, theodore," said his client, and proceeded to take his advice, sitting quite still in the judge's big chair, and fixing a clear-seeing but unappreciative gaze upon the immaculate folds of mr. burr's turquoise-blue tie. he took the advice too literally. the silence grew oppressive and sinister, and as if he found it so, mr. burr broke into a monologue, disjointed, but made up of irreproachable sentiments. "this is hard on your uncle, neil, and it's hard on you, but it may be the best thing in the end. he's been hiding behind you too long. a business that can't stand on its own feet deserves to fail. he can start new and start clean. the judge has been a good friend to you----" "don't explain him to me. you don't own him, whoever else does," interrupted the judge's protégé softly. "what do you mean? if you don't think you're getting a square deal, say so." "do you want me to weep on your shoulder, theodore?" "the judge is your friend, and," mr. burr added handsomely, "i'm your friend, too." his client arose briskly, as if encouraged by this. "theodore, you don't want to tell me what's back of your turning me down?" he asked. "no, i thought not. well----" "i'm your friend," repeated mr. burr, generously if irrelevantly, and this time without effect. his client had crossed the room without another glance at him, and had his hand on the knob of the judge's office door. his manner still had the composure which mr. burr had advocated, but his face was very pale, ominously pale, and his brown eyes were changed and bright, dangerously bright. to imaginative eyes like mr. burr's he must have looked suddenly taller. mr. burr was facing an unmistakable crisis, with no time to wonder how long it had been forming, or why. he hurried after the boy and caught him fiercely if ineffectively by the arm. "you can't go in there," stated mr. burr arbitrarily, all logic deserting him. "you can't. you don't know----" "oh, i'm not going to knife the judge," his client explained kindly. "i'm only going to find out what's back of this." "take it quietly," was the ill-chosen sentiment which suggested itself to mr. burr. neil donovan swung round angrily, and paused to reply to it, with fires which the somewhat negative though offensive personality of the pink young man could never have kindled alight in his brown eyes. "quietly? there's been too much of that in this town. i'm sick of it. the only friend i've got who hasn't got one foot in the gutter goes back on me for no reason at all, the first time i ask a favour of him that don't amount to picking his pockets. the only big man in this rotten town who's halfway straight since everard turned the town rotten begins to act like he wasn't straight. what's back of it? i'm going to know. get out of my way, theodore." "you don't know who's in there." "i don't care. i'm going to know." disposing of the hovering and anxious intervention of mr. burr, and throwing the door open, he slammed it in the pink young man's perturbed face, and stepped alone out of the sunshine into the judge's dim little inner office. the judge's friendly littered little room was not so inviting in working hours as it was in the hospitable hours of late afternoon. it was like a woman seen in evening dress by daylight. but the boy who had invaded it so hotly unmasked no conspiracy here. the men at the table near the one window, with a pile of official but entirely innocent looking papers between them, had every right to be there. they were the judge and colonel everard. the great man looked quite undisturbed by the boy's invasion, glancing up at him indifferently from the papers that he was turning over with his finely moulded, delicately used hands; he even looked mildly amused, but the boy turned to him first instinctively, and not to the judge, who was peering at him with troubled and kindly eyes over the top of his glasses. "i've got to speak to the judge. i'm sorry." he stammered out his half-apology awkwardly enough, but the smouldering fires were still alight in his brown eyes, tragic fires of cowed and rebellious youth. the great man regarded him indifferently for a minute and then turned rather ostentatiously to his papers again. "judge, i've got to speak to you alone." "you can't just now, son." "i've got to." "why?" the judge's kind, drawling voice was not quite as usual, and his blue, near-sighted eyes were not; they were wistful and deprecating, and rather tired, a beaten man's eyes, eyes with an irresistible appeal to the race that is vowed to lost causes, this boy's race. the boy stepped instinctively closer. "i don't blame you, sir, but i've got to understand this and know what's behind it." "better go home before you say anything you'll be sorry for, neil." "why did you go back on me?" "you're taking a sentimental attitude about a business matter. it's natural enough that you should. i'm sorry for you, son." "why----" the judge drew himself up a shade straighter in his chair, and met the boy's insistent challenge with sudden dignity, kindly but judicial, peculiarly his own, but his flashes of it were not very frequent now. "neil," he said deliberately, "i've got nothing to say to you alone. i've got nothing to say to you at all that mr. burr hasn't said. is that quite clear to you?" it was entirely clear. the judge had left no room for uncertainty or argument, and the boy did not attempt to argue or even to answer. he stood looking uncertainly down at the judge, as if for the moment he could not see anything in the room quite distinctly, the judge's face, with its near-sighted blue eyes and red-gold beard and thinning hair, or colonel everard's clear-cut profile. "better go," said the judge gently. "i'd better go," the boy repeated mechanically, but he did not move. colonel everard put down his papers deliberately, and favoured him with a glance, amused and surprised, as if he had not expected to find him still in the room, and was prepared to forget at once that he was there; a disconcerting sort of glance, but the boy's brown eyes met it gallantly, and cleared as they looked. they grew bright and defiant again, with a little laugh in the depths of them. the ghost of a laugh, too, lurked in the boy's low voice somewhere. "you're right, judge. i'll go. i'm wasting my time here," he said, "asking you who's back of what you've done to me--when i know. i won't ask you again, but i'll ask you, i'll ask you both, who's back of everything that's crooked or wrong in this town? little or big, he's back of it all; straight back of it, or well back of it, hiding his face and pulling the wires. he's to blame for it all, for he's made the town what it is. "he's got his hand on the neck of the town, and got hold of it tighter, gradual, so nobody saw it and knocked it off; tighter and tighter, squeezing the life out. he never made a gift to the town with one hand that he didn't take it back with the other. what the town gets without him giving it, he won't let it keep. the whole town's got his stamp on it, grafting and lying and putting up a front. the whole town's afraid of him. the judge here, that's the best man in town, don't dare call his soul his own. me, i'm afraid of him, too, and the only reason i dare stand up and say to his face what's said behind his back is because i've got nothing to lose. it's him, there----" "don't, son," muttered the judge tardily, unregarded, but colonel everard listened courteously, with a faint, amused smile growing rather stiff on his thin lips. "him, that's too good to speak to me or look at me, sitting there grinning, and reading fine print, making out not to care, he's back of it all--him, everard." the two men, who had heard him out, did not interrupt him now. it was only a passionate jumble of boyish words they had listened to, but behind it, vibrating in his tense voice, was something bigger than he could frame words to express, something that commanded silence; pain forcing its way into speech, long repression broken at last. the dignity of it was about him still, though his brown eyes flashed no more defiance, and he was only a shabby and hopeless boy walking uncertainly to the office door, and fumbling with the handle. "i'll go out this way," he said. "i've had enough of theodore. and i've had enough of this place. i'll say good morning, gentlemen." in a prosaic and too often unsatisfactory world, which is not the stage, no curtain drops to relieve you of the embarrassment of thinking what to say next after a record speech; you have to step out of the limelight, and walk somewhere else. neil donovan, emerging from the ancient building which contained judge saxon's office into post-office square after a brief interval of struggling successfully for self-control in a dusty corridor little suited to such struggles, and not even ensuring the privacy which is wrongly believed to be necessary for them, had one more appointment to keep. he was late for it already. he glanced at the town clock and started off hurriedly to keep it. back of court-house hill another street, starting parallel to court street, rapidly loses its sense of direction and its original character of a business street, wavers to right and left, past a scatter of discouraged looking houses, and finally slants off in the general direction of the woods at the edge of the town, and the abortive, sparsely wooded hill known to generations of picnickers--not the élite of the town, but humbler, more rowdy picnickers--as mountain rock. the street never reaches it, but loses itself in a grubby tangle of smaller streets, thickly set with small houses, densely and untidily populated, the section known at first derisively and later in good faith as paddy lane. through the intricate geography of this quarter colonel everard's only openly declared enemy might have been seen making a hasty and expert way ten minutes later; quickly and directly as it permitted him to, he approached the base of the hill. disregarding more public and usual ways of ascent, he struck straight across a stubbly field that lay behind a row of peculiarly forlorn and tumbledown houses into a path so narrow that it was hard to see until you were actually looking down it, between the twin birches that marked the entrance. he followed it to the base of the cliff itself. the belt of stunted birches and dusty-looking alders that skirted the cliff was broken by an occasional scraggly pine. the boy stopped under one of them, leaned against the decaying trunk, produced a letter, and read it. it was only a pencilled scrawl of a letter, on the roughest of copy paper, and so crumpled that he must have been quite familiar with it, but he read it intently. "neil," it ran, "i'll meet you saturday, on top of mountain rock, same time and place. i shan't see you till then. i don't want to. you frightened me last night. i don't like you lately. be nice to me saturday. judith." only a pencilled scrawl, but he knew every word of it by heart, and of the burst of excited speech in the judge's office nothing remained in his mind but the general impression that he had made a fool of himself there. perhaps he was too familiar with judith's letter, for the sting he had found there at first was gone from the words. he looked at them dully. "i can't stand much more," he said aloud. he said it lifelessly, and with no defiance in his eyes, stating only a wearisome fact. he had seen the colonel's face through a kind of red mist in the judge's office, and felt reckless and strong. he did not feel like a hero now. he was tired. he would hardly have cared just now if you had told him that back in judge saxon's office two men who had not moved from their chairs since he left them, and who would not move until several vital points were settled, were discussing something he would not have believed them capable of discussing at such length and with so much feeling--the fortunes of the donovan family. he did not care just now for the little sights and sounds of spring that were all around him, the cluster of arbutus leaves at his feet, the faint, nestling bird noises, sweeter than song, and the stir and rustle of tiny, unclassified sounds that were signs of the pulse of spring beating everywhere, of change and growth going on whether human beings perceived or denied it. "i can't stand any more," said the boy. up the cliff to his right, strewn with pine needles that were brown-gold in the sun, a steep and tiny trail led the way to the top of the hill and his rendezvous. now the boy crushed judith's letter into his pocket, turned to the trail with a sigh, and began to climb. chapter ten "they won't like it, judith," said mrs. randall for the last time, as she slipped into her evening coat. "they? if you mean the colonel----" "i do." judith, looking up at her mother from the chaise-longue, could not have seen the radiant vision that she had adored as a child, when the spring and the everards and the habit of evening dress all returned at once to green river. mrs. randall's blue gown was the creation of a wells dressmaker, but lacked the charm of earlier evening frocks, anxiously contrived with the help of a local seamstress, when the clear blue that was still her favourite colour had been her best colour, when there was a touch more pink in the warm white of her complexion, and before the tiny, worried line in her broad, low forehead was there to stay. but there was no reflection of these changes in her daughter's big, watching eyes. "it will do him good not to like it," said judith sweetly. "what do you mean?" "oh, nothing, mamma. is that the carriage? don't be late." minna randall looked down at her daughter in puzzled silence a moment, with the little line in her forehead deepening, then slipped to her knees beside her with a disregard for her new gown which was unusual, and put a caressing hand on her forehead, a demonstration which was more unusual still. "your head does feel hot," she said, "but to stay away from a dance at your age, just for a headache----" "i went to one last night." "a high school dance!" "there won't be any more of them. you needn't grudge it to me." judith buried her face in the cushions, and lay very still. "but the colonel really arranged this for you. dancing bores him. he said you ought to be amused." "he didn't say so to me." "are you laughing? i thought you were crying a minute ago." judith gave no further signs of either laughing or crying. "judith, what does he say to you? when you went with him to look at that night-blooming flower with the queer name, last week, and were gone so long, what did he talk to you about? you heard me. please answer." "he's a stupid old thing." "what did he talk about?" "i don't remember." "judith," judith's mother stood plucking ineffectively at her long gloves, and looking at the motionless white figure, very slender and childish against the chintz of the cushions, soft, tumbled hair, and hidden face, with a growing trouble in her eyes, "i ought to talk to you--i ought to tell you--you're old enough now--old enough----" judith turned with a soft, nestling movement, and opened her eyes again, deep, watchful eyes that asked endless questions, and made it impossible to answer them, eyes that knew no language but their own, the secret and alien language of youth. her mother sighed. "you're the strangest child. sometimes you seem a hundred years old, and sometimes--you don't feel too badly to stay alone? mollie would have stayed in with you, or norah." "no. i would have gone, if i'd known you cared so much, but it won't do any good to make yourself late, mamma. father's calling," said judith gravely. still grave and unrelaxed, she returned her mother's rare good-night kiss, and watched her sweep out of the room, turning the rose-shaded night lamp low as she passed. there was a hurry of preparation downstairs, her mother's low, fretful voice and her father's high and strained one joined in a heated argument, and they started still deep in it, for her father did not call a good-night to judith. the street door shut, and she was alone in the house. carriage wheels creaked out of the yard and there was no returning sound of them in search of some forgotten thing; a long enough interval passed so that it was safe to infer that there would not be, but judith lay as her mother had left her, as still as if her headache were really authentic, her questioning eyes on the rose-shaded light. there was much that might have increased her mother's concern for her in her face, if you could interpret it fully; sometimes the eyes suggested a fair proportion of the hundred years her mother had credited her with, sometimes there was dawning fear in them, and sometimes an inconsequent, gipsy light; sometimes her soft lips trembled pitifully, and sometimes they smiled. always it was a lovely face, rose flushed and eager in the rosy light, and always something was evident which was enough to account for her mother's concern and for more concern than her mother was capable of feeling; miss judith devereux randall was growing up. whatever questions occupied her answered themselves in a satisfactory way at last, even an amusing way, for her smile had come to stay and her eyes were dancing, when she jumped up from the chaise-longue at last, turned on more lights, opened closets and bureau drawers all at once, dropped various hastily chosen and ill-assorted articles on the immaculate counterpane of her bed, and began to dress. she dressed without a glance into the mirror, and without need of it, it appeared, when she stood before it at last, pulling a left-over winter tam over rebellious curls which she had made no attempt to subdue. she had buttoned herself hastily into the dress she had taken off last, a tumbled organdy, and thrown a disreputable polo coat over it, white like the cap, but of more prehistoric date, but on her slender person these incongruous garments had acquired a harmony of their own, and become a costume somehow. it might not have withstood a long or critical inspection, but it was not subjected to one. youth, in its divinely suited garb of white, regarded itself with grave eyes for one breathless minute, flushed and coquetted with itself for another, and then was gone from the mirror. judith turned off the lights and stole out of the room, and downstairs. there was nothing in the dark and empty house to frighten her. it must have been fear of whatever was before her that made her slip so softly across the hall, and tremble and stand still when the door chain rattled. the door was open at last. with a soft, inarticulate gasp of excitement, she stepped out into the may night. colonel everard had an ideal night for the little dance in his garden, warm, but with a quiver of new life in the air. the may moon was in its last quarter, but lanterns were to supplement it. but the colonel's guest of honour, pausing at the corner of main street and looking sharply to left and right, and then turning quickly off it, found very little light on the narrow and tree-fringed cross-street through which she was hurrying now but the moon. it hung slender and pale and low above the ragged row of little houses, and seemed to go with her through the dark, but she took no notice of its companionship. the street was deserted, and the tap of her little heels sounded disconcertingly loud in the emptiness of it as she hurried on, turning from the narrow street into a narrower one. this street had only one real end; pending the appropriation needed to carry it straight through, witheld by agencies which could only be connected by guess with colonel everard, it led feebly past a few houses which were nearly all untenanted and looked peculiarly so to-night, to a clump of alders at the edge of an unpenetrated wood lot, where it had paused. just in front of it the girl paused, too. her small, white-coated figure was only dimly to be seen in the dark of the street; the group in the shadow of the trees was harder to see, but it moved; a horse pawed the ground impatiently, the boy in the buggy leaned forward and spoke to him. then judith started uncertainly toward him, and spoke softly, in the arrogant phrasing of lovers, to whom there is only one "you" in the world: "is that you?" "is it you?" the boy's voice came hoarse through the dark. "i thought you weren't coming. i waited an hour for you yesterday on the rock." "i couldn't help it. i oughn't to be here now, and i almost didn't come, but i thought we'd have to-night. neil, you hurt my hand. be nice to me." she was standing close beside him now, and they could see each other's faces, white and strange in the dark, but the boy's looked whiter, and his breath came oddly, in irregular gasps. he held both her hands in his, but he did not bend down to her, nor kiss her. "what makes you look so queer? i don't like you. be nice to me." there was something terribly wrong with the smug little phrases, or with any words at all just then, there in the heart of the silent dark, and facing the strangeness of the boy's eyes; words failed her suddenly, and she pulled her hands away, and hid her face in them. "i won't go with you--i'll go home, if you aren't nice to me--if----" "you can't go home now." there was something in the boy's voice that was like the fierce clasp of his hands, something from which it was not so easy to escape. "it might be better if you hadn't come, better for both of us, but you can't go back now. it's too late. yes, we'll have to-night. get in, judith." chapter eleven "get in, judith." "i won't go. you can't make me." the boy did not answer or move. boy and buggy and horse--charlie brady's ancient chestnut mare, not such a dignified creature by daylight, but high shouldered and mysterious now against the dark of the grove--might all have been part of the surrounding dark, they were so still, and judith's little white figure was motionless, too. judith stood looking up at the boy for one long, silent minute. such minutes are really longer than other minutes, if you measure them by heartbeats, and how else are you to measure them? strange, breathless minutes, that settle grave questions irrevocably by the mere fact of their passing, whether you watch them pass with open eyes or are helpless and young and vaguely afraid before them; helpless, but full of the untaught strength of youth, which works miracles without knowing how or why. "get in," said the boy, very softly this time, so that his voice just made itself heard through the dark; it was like part of the dark, caressing and hushed and secret, and not to be denied. with a soft little laugh that was attuned to it, judith yielded suddenly, and slipped into the carriage beside him, drawing the robe tight round her, and settling into her corner, all with one quick, nestling motion, like a bird perching. "where are we going?" she said rather breathlessly, "hurry. let's go a long, long way." "all right. don't be frightened, judith." "frightened?" he did not answer. charlie's horse, debarred from its destined career by bad driving, that broke its wind in its first race, but of sporting ancestry and unable to forget it, especially when charlie's adventures in the green river under-world cheated it of exercise too long, was remembering it now, and bolting down the hilly little street, settled at last into a jerky and tentative gait with the air of accepting their guidance until it could arrange further plans, but remembering its ancestry still. "splendid," judith breathed. "keep off main street." "yes." the ancient vehicle, well oiled, but rattling faintly still, swung alarmingly close to one street corner lamp-post and then another. judith nestled almost out of sight in her corner. neil leaned forward, gripping the reins with an ungloved hand that whitened at the knuckles, his dark eyes looking straight ahead. his brooding eyes and quiet mouth, and even the whiteness of his face had something unfamiliar about them, something that did not all come from the unhealthy light of the street lamps, something strange but unaccountably charming, too. judith had no eyes for it just then. "this is silly. i ought not to have come. who's that?" "nobody. just a tree. sit still. we'll go under the railroad bridge and out over grant's hill. there won't be any more lights." "it looked like some one." "what do you care?" "it looked like your cousin maggie." "she's at home in bed. she was tired to-night." "oh. well, it looked like her. it was silly to come. i never shall come again." as if this were not a new threat, or had for some reason lost it terrors to-night, the boy did not contradict her. they had left track and railroad bridge behind now, darker blots against the surrounding dark, with the lights of the station showing faintly far down the track. they were passing the last of the houses that straggled along the unfashionable quarter above the railroad track. most of the houses here were dark now. in the nashs' windows the last light puffed suddenly out as they went by. down in the town behind them other sleepy little lights were burning faintly, or going out, but ahead of them the faintly moonlit road looked wide-awake. it was an alluring road. it dipped into wooded hollows, it broke suddenly into arbitrary curves and windings but found its way out again, and kept on somehow, and gradually lifted itself higher and higher toward the crest of the hill five miles away that you reached without ever seeming to climb it, to be confronted all at once with the only real view between wells and green river. "i used to think grant's hill was the end of the world," said judith softly. "maybe it is. it's funny i can say things like that to you, when you only laugh and won't answer. listen. isn't it still, so still it almost makes a noise." it was very still. you could feel the pulse of the night here. there was a whisper and stir of life in the rustling trees when the road crossed some belt of woods; there was a look of blind, creeping life about the clustering shadows in stretches of moonlight, and the low-hanging moon above the dark fields they passed was a living thing, too, the most alive of all. judith stirred in her corner, and turned and looked at it. "it's sweet," she said. "and it's ours. it's still may. but we can't wish on the moon now; it's too late. and i don't want to wish, i'm so comfortable. aren't you? well, you needn't answer, then, and you needn't hold my hand." she had felt for a hand that avoided hers. with a sleepy, satisfied laugh, like a petted kitten purring, she settled herself again, with her head against an unresponsive shoulder, and pulled an unresponsive arm round her waist. "you aren't as soft as the cushions--not nearly. you're pretty hard, but i like you. i was afraid to come, but now----" "now what?" "there's nothing to be afraid of. i'm so happy. there's nobody in the world but you and me. neil, i'm going to sleep." "all right. shut your eyes, then, and don't keep staring at me. what makes your eyes so bright?" [illustration: "'_shut your eyes_'"] "you." "shut your eyes." "all right. nobody but you and me." they were really alone in the world now, alone in the heart of the night. their little murmur of talk, so low that they could just hear it themselves, had been such a tiny trickle of sound that it did not quite break the silence, and now it had died away. asleep or awake, the girl was quite still, with her cheek pressed against the boy's shoulder, and her long-lashed eyes tight shut. the horse carried them over the moonlit road at a rate of speed that did not seem possible from its strange, loping gait. the effect of it was uncanny. boy and girl and queer, high-shouldered horse, darkly silhouetted in the moonlight, lost to sight in the shadows of tall trees that looked taller in the dark, and then coming silently into view again, were like dim, flitting shadows in the night; like peculiarly helpless and insignificant shadows, restless and purposeless. the moon, soft and far away and still, seemed more alive than they did, and more competent to adjust their affairs. they required adjusting. that was in the watching brightness of the girl's eyes, fluttering open once or twice, only to close quickly again, in the tenseness of the boy's arm around her, in the set of his shoulders and lift of his stubborn young chin, in the very air that he breathed uneasily, the soft, disturbing air of the may night. it was not a boy and girl quarrel that was before them: it was something more. it was the strangest hour that had come to them in their secret treasury of strange hours that were touched with the glamour of black magic and swayed by laws they did not know. it might be the darkest hour. it was the test hour. there is no sure and easy way through such hours. if they faced theirs unprepared and afraid, so must the rest of the world, the part that is older and counted wiser. but this could have been no comfort just then to the boy and girl in the antiquated buggy, under the untroubled gaze of the wishing moon. they were almost on the crest of the hill now. one long, upward slant of road led straight to it, bare of trees, and silvery in the moonlight. at the foot, and just at the edge of a thick belt of woods, the boy pulled up as if to rest his horse for the gradual ascent. at his left, hardly visible at all to-night unless you stopped your horse to look for it, a narrow and overgrown road led off through the trees. tightening the arm that held her cautiously, the boy looked down at the face against his shoulder, the faint, half-smile on the lips, and the lightly closed eyes. the girl did not move. her cap had slipped off, and one small, bare hand clutched the fuzzy white thing tight, as a sleeping child's hand might have closed on some favourite toy. her hair showed silvery blond and soft against his dark coat. with a quick, hungry motion, the boy dropped his head and kissed it lightly. then, gripping the reins with a firmness that no present activity of the animal called for, he left green river's only noteworthy view without a backward glance, and turned his horse into the road through the woods. for the next few minutes he had no attention to spare for judith, suspiciously quiet in his arms. he could not see her face. it was black dark under the trees, dark as if it had never been light. the track was wider than it looked, but also rougher. the trees grew close. branches that he brushed aside sprinkled dew into his face. the buggy creaked out vain protests and useless warnings. finally moonlight showed at the end of the black tunnel, and the horse, which had been encountering its difficulties in resourceful silence, made a faint, snorting comment which sounded relieved, and presently, with unexpected jauntiness, swung into the road again. it was technically a road, and it was the wreck of a very good road, but it was not in much better shape than the track they had reached it by. aspiring amateurs had sketched it and camera fiends haunted it in their day. it was colonel everard's favourite bridle path, which naturally prevented repairs upon it. but before the railroad went through it had been green river's only link with a wider world. now a better built but more circuitous road had replaced it, designed for motoring. no motors ever penetrated here, and few carriages. it was left to the ghosts of ancient traffic, if they ventured here. the glancing moonlight under the close-growing trees might have been full of them to-night. but the boy was not looking for ghosts or interested in the history of the road or its charm, as he hurried his high-shouldered horse along it, still responding jauntily. he squared his chin more stubbornly than ever, and muttered encouragingly to the horse, and reached for his battered whip. round this corner, beyond this milestone, the stage drivers used to make up time when the mail was late. a generous mile of almost level road curved ahead of neil into the moonlight, a fairly clean bit of going even now. judith and neil were on the old coaching road to wells. neil reached for his whip, but did not take it out of the socket. a small hand closed over his. the head on his shoulder did not move, but dark eyes, watchful and deliberate, opened and looked up at him quietly. "now," said a cool little voice, "you can take me home." "you're awake?" "of course." "then why----" "i waited to see where you were going, and what you were going to do," explained judith simply. they were covering the banner stretch of road at a rate the old stage drivers had never emulated. judith pushed neil's arm away, and sat straight and looked at him. her cheeks were gloriously flushed with the quick motion, and her soft, tumbled hair had broken into baby curls round her forehead, but her eyes were a woman's dark, unforgiving eyes. neil gave her one furtive glance, and looked away. "i told you to take me home," she said. he made a muttered reply, inarticulate, so that it would have been hard to tell whether it was really addressed to judith or the horse, and bent forward over the reins. the colour deepened in judith's cheeks, her soft lips tightened into a straight line that was like her mother's mouth. her cool, unhurried voice was like her mother's, too: "i knew when we started out i'd have trouble with you. now i don't intend to have any more. i don't want to have to tell you again. take me home." she had adopted the tone which green river's self-made gentlewomen like mrs. theodore burr mistakenly believed to be effective with servants. the boy beside her gave no sign that it was effective with him. he spoke softly to the horse again, and flicked at it coaxingly with the whip. "neil, i am sorry for you," judith stated presently, with no sympathy whatever in her judicial young voice. "i have been awfully good to you." "good!" "yes, good. i--had to be. because i knew we didn't have much time. i knew--this--would have to stop some day. i knew it and you knew it, too. you always knew it. well, i've been trying to tell you for a long time that it had got to stop. i tried, but you wouldn't let me. we're both getting older, too old for this, and i'm going away next year. and some things have happened to me, just lately--last week--that made me think. i've got to be careful. i've got to take care of myself. this has got to stop now--to-night. i wanted to tell you so. that's why i came; because----" "i know why you came." "don't be cross. be good, and turn round now, and take me home. neil, i'm not sorry, you know, for--anything. ever since that first night at the dance you've been so sweet to me. i'm not sorry. are you?" "no." "how funny your voice sounds. why don't you turn round?" he had no explanation to offer. the buggy plunged faster through the dark, and judith braced herself in her corner. "neil, turn round. don't you hear me?" he gave no sign of hearing. the horse swung gallantly into a bit of road where the stage drivers had never been in the habit of hurrying, a tricky bit of road, with overhanging rocks jutting out just where you might graze them at sudden turns, and with abrupt dips into precipitous hollows. one stretched dark ahead of them now. judith caught her breath as they plunged into it, and clutched neil's arm. he laughed shortly, and did not shake off her hand. she pulled at his wrist and shook it. "upset us if you want to. we'd go together," he urged, with a logic not to be questioned. "together, and that suits me, judy." "neil, turn round. neil!" judith's voice was shrill with sudden terror repressed too long, but she struggled to make it steady and cold again, in one last effort at control. "who do you think you are, neil donovan? i tell you to take me home." he did not even turn to look at her. he was getting the horse down the rocky slant of dimly lit road with a patience and concentration which there was nobody to appreciate just then. judith collapsed into her corner. there was a faint sound of helpless crying from her, then silence as she choked back the tears; silence, and an erect, stubborn figure showing oppressively big and dark between judith and the moon. "neil, i'm sorry.... neil, i can't stand this," came a muffled voice. "please speak to me." they were on level ground again, and the horse was disposed to make the most of it. the boy pulled her into a jolting walk which was not the most successful of her gaits, but represented a triumph for him just now, and then he turned abruptly to judith, gathering both her hands into his free hand and gripping them tight. "i'll talk to you now," he said. "it's time i told you. judith, you and i are not going back." chapter twelve "what do you mean?" "we're not going back," he repeated deliberately. "we are!" flashed judith. "we're not going back. we're never going back." judith drew back and stared at him, her hands still in his, and the boy stared back with a look that matched her own in his big, deeply lit, dark eyes. white faces, with angry, dark eyes, were all that they could see clearly, though they were crossing a patch of road where a ragged gap in the trees let some of the moonlight through; white faces like strangers' faces. they were only a boy and girl jolting through the woods in the night in a rattletrap buggy behind a caricature of a horse, but what looked out of their angry eyes and spoke in their tense young voices was greater than the immediate issue of their quarrel, and older and wiser than they were; as old as the world. ancient enemies were at war once more. a man and a woman were making their age-old fight for mastery over themselves and each other. "never, judy." "where are we going, then?" "what difference does it make?" "where?" "to wells. we can make it by morning. i've got the mortgage money with me." "your uncle's?" "yes. what difference does that make? that, or anything? we'd go if we hadn't any money at all. we'd have to. oh, judith----" "you don't know what you're saying. take me home. what are you laughing at?" "you. you sounded just like them, then, giving me orders--just like your whole rotten crowd, but you're through with them now, and you're through ordering me about and making a fool of me. i've been afraid to say my soul was my own. it wasn't, i guess. but we're all through with that. we're through, judith." "yes, of course. of course we're through. it's all right. everything's all right, neil dear." "everything's all wrong, and i know whose fault it is now: it's your fault. maybe i only had one chance in a hundred to get on, but one chance is enough, and i was taking it. you made me ashamed to take it. i was ashamed to do the work that was all i could get to do, and i had my head so full of you i couldn't do any work. maggie's better than i am. she don't sit around with her hands folded and wait for everard to get tired of her. and the whole town don't laugh at her. the whole town don't know----" "neil, i said i was sorry. please don't." "you've got the smooth ways of them all, but it's too late for that between us, judy. smooth, lying ways." "we can't go to wells, neil dear. what could we do there? think." "i'm sick of thinking. i'd get work maybe. i don't know. i don't care. judith----" "we can't. not to-night, neil. wait." "i'm sick of waiting. i've got nothing to gain by it. i've done all the waiting i could. i've stood all i could. you're the only thing i want in the world, and i couldn't wait for you any longer if i could get you that way--and i wouldn't get you. i'd lose you." "not to-night. to-morrow, if you really want me to go. to-morrow, truly." "you're lying to me, and i'm tired of it." "no, neil--neil dear." "you're lying." "how dare you say that! i hate you!" "that's right. we'll talk straight now. it's time." "i hate you. don't touch me. you're going to take me home--you must--and i'm never going to speak to you again. i think you're crazy. but i'm not afraid of you--i'm not afraid." the low-keyed, hurrying voices broke off abruptly. there was no sound in the buggy but judith's rapid breathing, more and more like sobs, but no tears came. the two faces that confronted each other were alike in the gloom, white and angry and very young; alike as the faces of enemies are when they measure each other's strength in silence. it was a cruel, tense little silence, but the sound that broke it was more cruel. it was dry and hard and had nothing to do with his own conquering laugh, that the girl knew, but it came from the boy. "how dare you laugh at me. i hate you!" judith's voice came hoarse and unrecognizable. a hand caught blindly at the reins; another hand closed over it. then there was silence again in the buggy, broken by panting sounds and little sobs. at the end of it judith, forced back into her corner and held there, was really crying now, with hysterical sobs that hurt, and hot tears that hurt, too. "let me go," she panted. "i hate you! you've got to let me go." "what for?" "i'm going home. i'm going to get out and walk home." "ten miles?" "i'd walk a hundred miles to get away from you." "you'd have to walk farther to do that." the dry little laugh cut through the dark again, and judith struck furiously at the arm that held her. "i hate you!" she sobbed. "no." "oh, i do--i do----" "i don't care." the boy's voice sounded light and dry, like his laugh. "i don't care. kiss me." "i won't! i won't! i'll never speak to you again. i'll never forgive you." "lying to me--fooling me; taking me up and dropping me like everard does to women.... you're no better than he is. you're one of his crowd, but you're through with them.... lying to me, when you do care. you do." "i hate you!" "ah, no, you don't." little bursts of confused speech, all they had breath for and more, disconnected, not always understood, not always articulate, but always angry, came from them, with intervals of silent, panting struggle between. the two young creatures in the buggy were struggling in earnest now. the struggle was clumsy, like most really significant ones; sudden and clumsy and blind. the two figures swayed aimlessly back and forth. the boy and girl were both on their feet now. the boy had dropped the reins. both arms held the girl. her pinioned arms fought to free themselves. "judith, you don't hate me. say it--say it." [illustration: "'_judith, you don't hate me? say it--say it_'"] the two shadowy figures were like one now, but the girl's arms were free, pushing the boy away, striking at him impotently. "you needn't say it. i know. you had to come to-night. you couldn't stay away. you don't hate me. you never will. you couldn't. i'm crazy about you. you're the only thing that matters, if we should die the next minute. everything's all wrong, and it's not my fault or yours. everything's wrong, and this is wrong, too, but i don't care and you don't. do you? do you?" "neil, let me go. i can't breathe." "i love you." "let me go." the shadow figures swayed and then were still. the girl's arms dropped. the little, one-sided struggle was over. there was a long, tired sigh, and then silence; silence, and one shadow face bending hungrily over the other shadow face. "judith," the boy whispered breathlessly, "do you hate me now?" "yes." "do you want me to let you go? do you want me to take you home?" "yes," came the same answering whisper, the faintest and most uncertain of whispers, but two arms, gently freeing themselves, found their way to his shoulders, two hands locked behind his head and drew it gently down, until the two shadow faces were close once more, and lips that were not shadow lips met and clung together; not shadow lips, but hungry and warm and alive--untaught but unafraid young lips, ready for kisses that are no two alike and can never come again--wonderful kisses that blot everything out of the changing world but themselves. "judith"--the boy lifted his head at last, and looked down at the face against his shoulder, pale and small, but with all the colour and light and life that night had taken from the world and hidden, burning undimmed in the awakening eyes--"you don't want me to take you home? you don't--care what happens?" "no." he could hardly hear her low whisper, but her face was answer enough, even for a boy who could not know what had touched it with new beauty, but had to guess, as his own heart and the night might teach him. "no, i don't care. i don't care." "judith, you do love me?" "yes. oh, yes." "you're so sweet," he whispered, "i feel as if i'd never kissed you before--or seen you before. i love you, judith." "yes." "i love you and i don't want to hurt you. you know that, don't you?" "yes." "but nothing's going to take you away from me now." "nothing." "i don't want to hurt you." "i tell you, i don't care what happens. i--don't--care." "judith!" once more her hands drew him close; shy hands, groping uncertainly in the dark, and shy lips kissed him. it was the coolest and lightest of kisses, but it was worth all the others, if the boy knew how much it promised--more than all her broken speech had promised, more than any spoken words. judith herself did not know, but some instinct older than she was made her whisper: "be good to me. will you be good to me?" "yes, judith." the boy answered her small, shaken whisper solemnly, as if he were taking a formal and irrevocable vow, but there was no one to listen to it here, and bear witness to it as irrevocable. the girl did not answer him. suddenly shy, breathing quickly, and trying to laugh, she slipped out of his arms. the boy let her go. some time before the trailing reins had been caught up and twisted twice round the whip socket. he had done this instinctively, he could not have told just when. he bent down and untwisted them now, rather slowly and awkwardly, not looking at judith. then he sat down stiffly beside her. "you're tired," he said, with new gentleness in his voice. he put an arm loosely round her waist in the manner of an affectionate but inexperienced parent, and her head dropped on his shoulder. "very tired?" "no." "judith, i'm sorry." "no, i'm sorry. how could i be so horrid? what made me? did i hurt you, dear, with my hands?" "you couldn't hurt me." "neil, you know what you said just now?" "never mind what i said." "you said you didn't want anything to take me away from you. well, if it did, if anything did take me away from you--now, i'd----" "what, dear?" "i'd never forgive you. i couldn't. i'd despise you." this warning came in a low, uncertain voice, wasted, as countless warnings have been wasted on wiser masculine ears than the boy's. "look at our moon up there. it's glad, i guess--glad about you and me. why don't you listen to me?" "i'm thinking, judith. i've got to think." "you look very nice when you think. your eyes look so big and still. you look--beautiful. i could really sleep now, i guess." "all right, dear." "but i don't want to. i'm too happy. how late is it?" "i don't know." "well, it's late. we couldn't get home now before awfully late--two or something. and the road's so narrow here, we couldn't turn round. we couldn't go home if we wanted to. could we?" "not very well, dear." "i'm glad.... neil." "yes." "are you thinking now?" "yes." "you do look beautiful. i don't know just why. i never saw you look just like this before; kind, but years older than i am, and miles away. neil----" "yes, dear." "neil, don't think any more. just love me.... i love you." chapter thirteen colonel everard's little party was quite successful enough without the guest of honour. at least, it would have seemed so to judith, if she could have looked in upon it just before midnight. a distinguished guest of the colonel's had made an ungrateful criticism of the inner circle, on parade for his benefit only the week before at camp hiawatha, which was elaborately rebuilt now, and rechristened camp everard. he complained that the colonel's parties were too successful. "too many pretty women," he said, "or they work too hard at it--dress too well, or talk too well--don't dare to let down. you need more background, more men like grant. you need to be bored. you can't have cream without milk. you can't take the essentials of a society and make a whole society out of them without adulterating them. it won't last. that's why adam and eve didn't stay in the garden. they couldn't--too much tension there. they needed casual acquaintances, and you need background. you can't get on without it." "we do," said his host. the distinguished critic was far away from the colonel's town to-night, but the colonel's party was all that he had complained of; the thing he had felt and tried to account for and explain was here, as it was at all the colonel's parties, though a discreet selection of outsiders had been admitted to-night; the same sense of effort and tension, of working too hard, of a gayety brilliant but forced--artificial, but justifying the elaborate processes that created it by its charm, like some rare hothouse flower. you saw it in quick glimpses of passing faces thrown into strong relief by the light of the swinging lanterns, and then dancing out of sight; you heard it in strained, sweet laughter, and felt it in the beat of the music, and in the whole picture the party made of itself in the garden, the restless, changing picture, but this was not all--it was in the air. you could close your eyes and breathe it and feel it. it was unusually keen to-night, real, like a thing you could actually touch and see. you lost the keen sense of it if you looked too closely for signs of it. if you overheard bits of talk, they were not always clever at all, or even entirely gay. worried lines showed under elaborate makeup in the women's faces, as if cinderella had put on white gloves to hide smutty fingers; indeed, though they were trained to forget it and make you forget it, they were only so many cinderellas, after all. seen too closely, there was a look of strain about some of the men's faces. there was a reason for this look to-night, besides the set of reasons which the gentlemen of the colonel's circle always had for looking worried; living beyond their incomes, living in uncertainty of any income at all, and other private reasons, different in each case, but all quite compelling; there was a reason, and the colonel's guest of the week before was connected with it. others would follow him soon, secret conferences would take place unrecorded, the colonel's private telephone wire would be busy, and the telegrams he received would be frequent and not intelligible to the casual reader. these were the months before election, when the things that were going to happen began to happen. their beginnings were obscure. the man in the street talked politics, but the man with his hands in the game kept still. even when they slipped away to the smoking-room, or gathered at the edge of the lawn in groups of two and three that scattered as their host approached, the colonel's guests were not discussing politics to-night. no tired lines were permitted to show in mrs. randall's face. her fresh, cool prettiness was of the valuable kind that shows off best at the height of the evening, when other women look tired. if she was aware of the fact and made the most of it, overworking her charming smile and wide-open, tranquil eyes, you could not blame her. it was not the time or place to overlook any weapons you might have. whatever duties or privileges belonged to the colonel's inner circle, you had to take care of yourself if you were part of it, and you learned to; that was evident from her manner. it seemed easy for her to-night. just now she was sharing a bench and an evening cloak with mrs. burr, smooth, dark head close to her fluffy, blond one, and smiling into her face confidingly, as if all that lady's purring, disconnected remarks were equally agreeable to her. "we miss judy so much," she said sweetly. "i can see just how much, dear," said judith's mother more sweetly still. "and it's so long since she's been here." "she has her school work to do. she's just a child. she's not well to-night." "but i got the idea he meant this to be her evening." "he did." "there he is." the third person singular, unqualified, could mean only one gentleman to the ladies of the colonel's circle, and that gentleman was passing close to them now, though he seemed unconscious of the fact. he was guiding mrs. kent through an old-fashioned waltz with elaborate precision. his concentration upon the performance increased as he passed them, and he did not look away from his partner's face, though it was not absorbingly attractive just now. the piquant profile had a blurred look, and the cheeks were flushed under the daintily calculated touch of rouge. mrs. burr turned to her friend with a faint but relentless light of amusement in her narrowed eyes. "edie's had just one cocktail too many." "yes." they ignored the more obvious fact that the colonel had. the evening had reached the stage when he always had. "he hasn't danced with you many times, minna dear." "i'm tired of dancing, but don't let me keep you here, lil." "i haven't seen him dance with you at all." "he hasn't yet." "no?" said mrs. burr, very casually. "no. lil, i think ranny wants you. he's wandering about, looking vague." "don't you want me, dear? well, ranny always wants me." mr. randolph sebastian, discovering her suddenly, gave exaggerated proof of this as he carried her off. if the colonel's secretary had really been recruited from a dance hall, he had profited by what he saw there, and showed it in every quick, graceful turn he made. his partner was the type of woman that dancing might have been invented to show off; it gave her lazy, graciously built body a reason for being, and put a flicker of meaning into her shallow eyes so that she was not floridly pretty any longer, but beautiful. this was peculiarly apparent when she danced with mr. sebastian. she seemed to have been created for the purpose of dancing with him; it could not have been more apparent if their elaborate game of devotion to each other had been real, and they were really lovers. mrs. clifford kent, suddenly appearing alone, slipped into mrs. burr's empty place. her dance with the colonel was over. "my lord's in fine form to-night," she confided without preliminary. "we're going to play blind-man's buff after the duchess goes home." the duchess was mrs. grant, the honourable joe's wife, still the first lady of green river, but the younger women were beginning to make fun of her discreetly behind her back. "he told me the tiger story." this represented a triumph. getting the colonel's smoking-room stories at first hand instead of second hand, from their husbands, was the only form of rivalry about which these ladies were frank with each other. "i got it out of cliff first, anyway. he said he couldn't tell me, but he did. i made him. where was harry last night?" "what do you mean?" "cliff had a crowd of men locked into his den until two, talking. didn't harry know about it?" "what were they doing?" "just talking. the colonel and i don't know who else. i heard two strange voices, and i didn't hear harry's voice. didn't harry know?" "i suppose so. what did they talk about?" "campaign stuff--prohibition or something. cliff wouldn't tell me." "was teddy burr there?" "i didn't hear him. what do you care?" "i don't care." "if harry didn't know, i ought not to have told you, but i can't help it now." "edith, don't go. wait." "i can't. i have this next with my lord, too. i'm going to sit it out in the library and meet him inside. the duchess is getting jealous. besides, there comes the dragon." judge saxon, looking shabby and old and tired, was making a circuitous way toward them. "let me go. oh, darling--" she put her small, flushed face suddenly close to her friend's to ask the question, and after it, fluttered away without waiting for the answer, leaving the echo of her pretty, empty laugh behind--"why didn't judith come? what's the real reason? has anybody been making trouble for her here? never mind. you needn't tell me. good-bye." mrs. randall closed her eyes and pressed two fingers against her temples for a moment, and then looked up with almost her usual welcoming smile at judge saxon, who had come close to her, and stood looking down at her keenly with his kind, near-sighted, blue eyes. "hiding?" he said. "tired?" "not hiding from you. take care of me." "minna," he decided, "you little girls aren't so nice to me unless you're in wrong somehow and feel sorry for yourselves. what's the matter? where's harry?" "inside somewhere. don't ask me any more questions. i've answered all i can to-night." "all right. i'll just sit here and enjoy the view and keep the other boys away." the view was hardly one to promote unmixed enjoyment. the two settled into a friendly silence in their corner, broken by an occasional quiet word in the judge's intimate, drawling voice. around them the temper of the party was changing, and a series of little signs marked the general change. more men crowded into the smoking-room between dances, and they stayed longer. mrs. grant left first according to her established privilege, and a scattering of other guests followed her. nobody seemed to miss them or to be conspicuously happier without them. there was a heavy, dull look about the passing faces, a heaviness and staleness now about the whole atmosphere of the party, and this, like the unnatural excitement which it followed, and like the light, endless fire of inconsequent, malicious chatter, always the same, whether it meant nothing or meant real trouble brewing, was an essential part of all the colonel's parties, too. the judge regarded the change with faraway eyes, as he talked on in the wistful voice that goes with talking your own private language openly to people who cannot answer you in it. "don't need the moon, do we, with those lanterns? but it was here first, and will be a long time after, and it's a good moon, too; quite decorative for a moon." "i hate it," said mrs. randall, with a personal vindictiveness not usually directed against natural phenomena. the judge took no immediate notice of it. more guests had gone. in a cleared circle in the heart of the lanternlight mrs. kent was performing one of the more expurgated and perfunctory of her dances for the benefit of the select audience that remained, to scattered, perfunctory applause. the motif of it was faintly spanish. "paper doll," commented the judge, "that's all that girl is. you and harry are the best of them, minna. they're a faky lot, all of them--about as real as a house of cards. it looks big, but it will all tumble down if you pull one card out--only one card. the devil of it is to know which card to take hold of, and who's to pull it out if you haven't got the nerve? i haven't. i'm too old. but it's a comfort to think of it. don't you agree with me?" "i didn't really hear you." "minna, i've known you since you were two. can't you tell me what's the matter? you're frightened." she looked at him for a minute as if she could, turning a paling face to him, with the mask off and the eyes miserable, then she tried to laugh. "nothing's the matter. nothing new." "well, there's enough wrong here without anything new," said the judge, rebuffed but still gentle. "i won't trouble you any longer, my dear. there comes harry." mrs. randall's husband, an unmistakable figure even with the garden and the broad, unlighted lawn between, stood in the rectangle of light that one of the veranda windows made, slender and boyish still in spite of the slight stoop of his shoulders, and then started across the lawn toward the garden. his wife got rather stiffly to her feet and waited, looking away from the lighted enclosure, over the low hedge, at the lawn. her eyes were dizzy from the flickering lights. she could not see him clearly, and the figure that followed him across the lawn was harder to see. it was a man's figure, slightly taller than her husband's. the man had not come from the veranda windows, or from the house at all, he had slipped round one corner of the house, stood still in the shelter of it, seeming to hesitate there, and then plunged suddenly across the lawn at a queer little staggering run. twice she saw him stand still, so still that she lost sight of him under the trees, as if he had slipped away through the dark. in the garden mrs. kent's performance was over, and the game of blind-man's buff was beginning. it was a novelty, and acclaimed even at this stage of the evening. lillian burr's shrill laugh and edith kent's pretty, childish one could be heard through the other sounds. they were trying to blindfold the colonel, who struggled but laughed, too, looking somehow vacuous and old, with his longish, white hair straggling across his forehead. no one in the garden but minna randall had attention to spare for an arriving guest, expected or unexpected. which was he? he was out of sight again, but this time she had seen him reach the edge of the lighted enclosure. was he gone, or waiting outside, or had he stepped under the trellis of the rose arbour, to appear suddenly at the end of it and among them? instinctively she kept her eyes upon it, though her husband had already passed through. she was watching for the figure that it might frame next. "harry," she said to her husband, who had seen her and elbowed his way to her, and stood beside her, looking pale and tired like herself in the lanternlight and not boyish at all, "who was that man? who was it following you?" he paid no attention to her question. he did not seem to hear it. he put a hand on her arm, and she could feel that it trembled. "oh, harry, what is it?" she said. "i've had such a horrible evening. i'm so afraid." "don't be afraid, minna," he said very gently, "but you must come to the telephone. norah's calling you. she's just come home. she wants to tell you something about judith." chapter fourteen "judith?" mrs. randall took her husband's news quietly, with something that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "what is it? is she ill, harry?" "come and talk to norah." "no, we'll go straight home." "but she's not there, minna. that's all norah'll say to me, but she's got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. judith isn't there." "it must be nearly morning." "it's two." "it was after nine when we started." "minna, didn't you hear what i said?" mrs. randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. the lips still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two women's attempts to blindfold the colonel--unaided now, but hilariously applauded by the circle around her--with the same mild, interested eyes, wide-set and madonna calm. "i tell you, judith's not there. what does norah know? why don't you do something? where is she?... my god, look at them. what are they doing now? look at everard." mrs. burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was manipulating, and slipped out of the colonel's arms and out of reach. he followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after edith kent, who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. the game of blind-man's buff was under way. crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening to overflow it, a pushing, struggling mass of people kept rather laboriously out of one another's way and the colonel's, not so much amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from childhood than now that they were playing a children's game. in the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the first gentleman of green river disported himself. his white head was easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it was evident even now--much of his old dignity, and the charm that was peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some flying skirt and missed it. he was the first gentleman of green river still, but he was something else. his white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf. the trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes were hidden. the beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin lipped and sensual. the colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old man. "look at him. that's what she's seen. this was judith's party. that's what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose. we never can get away now. we can't----" "keep still, harry. do you want to be heard? did any one hear you at the telephone? keep still and come home." "you're right. you're wonderful. you don't lose your nerve." "i can't afford to, and neither can you. come---- oh, harry, look. i saw him following you. what does he want? what's the matter? what is he going to do?" mrs. randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his arm. now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire of excited questions. the entrance to the garden was blocked. an uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there. his entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. the crowd had closed in round the colonel, with edith kent caught suddenly in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape. interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. nobody saw the newcomer except the randalls. he stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. he kept one hand behind him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. he was staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he saw there. it was the man mrs. randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees, but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact. here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw him, too, and stared at him. they all knew him. he was neil donovan's cousin, the discredited young lawyer, charlie brady. he did not speak or move. he only stood still and looked at them with vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak, but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. he could not command it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first, but he was there. one by one his audience had become conscious of it, and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. young chester gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard admonishing him excitedly. "don't you get hurt, dear." "how did he get here? why can't somebody get him out?" other excited ladies inquired. "get judge saxon," directed mr. j. cleveland kent's calm and authoritative voice. "get sebastian. where is the fellow? is he afraid?" demanded the honourable joe from the extreme rear. some one laughed hysterically. it was mrs. burr. the laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. he laughed, too, a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice, which he now found abruptly. "lillie," he called. "hello, lillie dear." mrs. burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he hardly paused for a reply. his light, high, curiously detached sounding voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency. "lillie," he urged cordially, "i heard you. i know you're there. come out and let's have a look at you. i don't see anything of you lately. you're too grand for me. i don't care. i'm in love with a prettier girl. but you used to treat me all right, lillie dear, and i treated you right, too. i never told. a gentleman don't tell. and you were straight with me. you never double-crossed me, like you and the dago sebastian do to everard. everard! that's who i want to talk to. where is he?" at the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now, while he looked, the crowd parted. pushing his way through, the colonel faced his uninvited guest. the great man was not at his best. his most ardent admirer could hardly have claimed it. he had pulled the muffling scarf down from his eyes, but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. mrs. kent had come fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. he struck her hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a member of his favoured circle. "keep out of this, edith, and you keep quiet, lil. you girls make me sick," he snapped. "half the trouble in this town comes because you can't learn to hold your tongues. you'd better learn. you're going to pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. well, brady, what does this mean? what can i do for you?" the ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it back by sheer will power. he had stepped forward alone, and stood looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. his guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified figure still and a dangerous one. there was the snarling menace of impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night, but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the colonel had spent in green river. "i'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest. "then apologize and get out." "i can't." "i think you'll find you can, brady." "i can't. i've got to ask you a few questions." they seemed to be slow in framing themselves. there was a little pause, the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the moment of any desire to move or speak. the unassuming figure of the young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side to side. a deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. gradually the smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. he held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the garden toward colonel everard. it would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling run forward, the colonel's instinctive move to check it, the stampede of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in that game, lillian burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. it had all happened at once. but now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, mr. brady and his host stood facing each other alone, and the colonel, now entirely himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of mr. brady's revolver. it was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. brady's thin hand grasped it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. he laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a threat in it, too. "what have you got to say for yourself? i'll give you a chance to say it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her. she was always a good girl. she is a good girl. what have you done with her? where is she?" "you don't make yourself altogether clear, brady," said the colonel smoothly. "where's maggie?" "maggie?" the colonel's eyes swept the circle of his guests deliberately, as if to assure himself that no lady of that name was among them. "maggie. you know the name well enough." the sound of it seemed to give the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the colonel might do well to be afraid of him. "maggie's missing. i'm going to find her. that's all i want of you. i won't ask you who's worked on her and made a fool of her. i won't ask you how far she's been going. but i want her back before the whole town knows. i want to find her and find her quick. she's a good girl and a decent girl. she's going to keep her good name. she's coming home." "commendable," said the colonel, not quite smoothly enough. his guest was past listening to him. "maggie. that's all i want. you're getting off easy. luck's with you. i've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. it will stand a lot more, and i will. get maggie back. get her back and give her to me and leave her alone, and i'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't feed me, the same as the rest"--he came two wavering steps nearer, and dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque and sinister parody of a confidence--"the rest, that don't know what i know." "what do you mean?" "i won't tell. don't be afraid. a gentleman don't tell, and there's nobody that can but me. young neil don't know. the luck's with you, sir, just the same as it always was." "i've had enough of this. get home, brady," cried the colonel, in a voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but still gripping the clumsy revolver tight. "just the same as it was when old neil donovan died." "get home," shrilled the colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words conveyed no sting of their own. "neil donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. he sold rum over a counter, but he was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. a gentleman don't tell." but the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or not, was to proceed no further. the audience pressed closer, as eager to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. there was a new and surprising development in this one. the two men had closed with each other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but the colonel himself. it was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger about it still. the colonel was angry. he had tried to knock the weapon out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. he was angry, suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an enemy. his face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. his breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in his throat. he struck furious and badly directed blows. it was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. it did not last long. the two struggling figures broke away from each other, and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his hand. he was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. some one who had an eye for danger signals, if the colonel had not, had made his unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. he was not the most formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a right to be there, and the colonel turned to him as if he recognized it. "hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?" "judge, you keep out of this," brady called, "keep out, sir." judge saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm, stood regarding mr. brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. he had quite his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently interested in them. "charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing mr. brady for the first time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "why, charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly, too. "everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. this is a pretty poor time for you to get excited, everard." "you're right, hugh," muttered the judge's most prominent client thickly; "you're right. get him away. get him home." "he's a good boy," pronounced the judge. it was not the obvious description of mr. brady just at that moment. there was only friendly amusement in the judge's drawling voice and shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made every careless word worth listening to. mr. brady was resisting it. his face worked pitifully. "judge, i told you to keep out. i don't want to hurt you." "thanks, charlie." "every word i say is god's truth, judge." the judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. he was studying mr. brady's weapon with some interest. "your uncle's," he commented, pleased. "why, i didn't know you still owned that thing, charlie." "i want maggie. i want----" "i'll tell you what you want," offered the judge, amicably, "you want to hand that thing to me, and go home." mr. brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. indeed, they were painfully uncertain, and showed it. bits of advice reached the judge's ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of it. he only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man who knew what would happen next. "hand it to me," he repeated gently. "i won't, judge." mr. brady's weapon wavered, and then steadied itself. his thin body trembled. the fanatic light in his eyes blazed bright. the excitement which had gripped him, too keen to last long, reached its climax now in one last burst of hysterical speech. "he's a liar and a thief," he asserted, uncontradicted. he was not to be contradicted. there was a dignity of its own about the hysterical indictment, grotesque as it was, an unforgettable suggestion of truth. "he's a thief and a murderer, too. i don't have to tell what i know. everybody knows. you all know, all of you, and you don't dare to tell. he's murdering the town." the high, screaming voice broke off abruptly. mr. brady, still with the echo of his big words in his ears and apparently dazed by it, stood looking blankly into the judge's steady and friendly eyes. "i can't--i won't----" he stammered. "hand it to me," said the judge, as if no interruption had occurred. for a moment the boy before him looked too dull and dazed to obey or to hear. then, as suddenly as if some unseen hand had struck it out of his, the revolver dropped to the ground, and he collapsed, sobbing heartbrokenly, into the judge's arms. he was a heroic figure no longer. the alien forces that made him one had deserted him abruptly, and he looked unworthy of their support already, only an inconsiderable creature of jangled nerves and hysterical speech, which would be discredited if you looked at him, even if it still echoed in your ears. the judge, holding him and quieting him, looked allied with him, humble and discredited, too. the relieved audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the colonel and offer him belated support. the colonel said a few inaudible words to judge saxon, and then turned from him and his protégé with the air of washing his hands of the whole affair. he looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even stimulated by it. the interruption to his party was over. * * * * * it ended as it had begun, the most successful party of the year. mr. brady's invasion was not the first unscheduled event which had enlivened a party at the birches. there was more open and general speculation about the fact that the randalls left immediately after, did not linger over their good-nights, and were obviously not permitted by their host to do so. mrs. randall, leaning back in her corner with her hand tight in harry's, and her long-lashed eyes, that were like judith's, tightly shut, showed the full strain of the evening in her pale face. she was a woman who did not look tired easily, but she was also a woman who could not afford to look tired. there was no appeal or charm about her pale face now, only a naked look of hardness and strain. her husband, staring straight ahead of him with troubled eyes, and his weak, boyish mouth set in a hard, worried line, spoke rapidly and disconnectedly not of judith, or the colonel's ominous coldness to him, but of mr. brady. "maggie's a bad lot," he was explaining for approximately the fifth time as they whirled into the drive and under their own dark windows. "she always was. everard isn't making away with the belle of paddy lane. not yet. he's not that far down. but that dope about old neil donovan----" "oh, harry, hush," his wife said, "here we are. what do you care about brady?" "nothing," he whispered, his arm tightening round her as he lifted her down. "i don't care about anything in the world but judith." "neither do i. not really," she said in a hurried, shaken voice that was not like her own, "you believe that, don't you, harry?" he did not answer. gathering up her skirts, she followed him silently to the front of the house, single file along the narrow boardwalk, not yet taken up for the summer, creaking loudly under their feet. "look," she whispered, catching at his arm. the front of the house was dark except for two lights, a flickering lamp that was being carried nearer to them through the hall, and a soft, shaded light that showed at a bedroom window. the window was judith's. he fumbled for his key, but the door opened before them. norah, her forbidding face more militant than ever in the flickering light of the kerosene hand-lamp she held, her white pompadour belligerently erect, and her brown eyes maliciously alight, peered at them across the door chain, and then gingerly admitted them. "it's a sweet time of night to be coming home to the only child you've got," she commented, "why do you take the trouble to come home at all?" it was a characteristic greeting from her. if it had not been, mrs. randall would not have resented it now. she clutched at the old woman's unresponsive shoulder. "where is she?" she demanded breathlessly. "judith is it you mean?" "oh, yes." "how should i know how she spends her evenings? at some of the girls' to-night. rena drew's maybe. i don't know. it's a new thing for you to care. she was late in, and it's no wonder i was worried. she's like my own to me. but she needs her sleep now. you'd better go softly upstairs." "do you mean she's here?" "what is it to you?" norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as if she were capable of using any weapon for judith, barred the way up the stairs. "i tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb--poor lamb," she said, "and you're not to go near her to-night. you're to promise me that. but she's here fast enough. my lamb is safe at home in her own bed." chapter fifteen on an afternoon in june a year later than the interrupted party at the everards' a young man sat at mr. theodore burr's desk in judge saxon's outer office. it was still technically mr. burr's desk, but the young man looked entirely at home there. a litter of papers which that fastidious gentleman would never have permitted himself now covered it, and the air was faintly scented with the smoke of a cigarette widely popular in green river, but not with devotees of twenty-five-cent cigars, like mr. burr. the bulky volume open on the desk was thumbed and used as mr. burr had never used any book that looked or was so heavy. the book was thayer on constitutional law, and the young man dividing his attention between it and main street under his window flooded with june sunshine was neil donovan. he divided his attention unequally, as main street late on that sunny afternoon might persuade the most studious of young men to do. the square was crowded--crowded, it is true, much as a busy street on the stage is crowded, where the same overworked set of supers pass and repass. the group of bareheaded girls now pacing slowly by arm in arm under the window were returning from what was approximately their fourth visit that afternoon to the post-office, the ice-cream parlours, the new gift shop and tea-room, or some kindred attraction. the nashes' new touring car, driven by the prettiest girl in willard's june house party, under the devoted instruction of willard himself, was whirling through the shopping district for at least the third time. however, it was an imposing pageant enough, though the boy at the window did not appear to find it so, regarding it with approving but grave eyes, and returning mr. nash's flourishing salute unsmilingly--a brave pageant of gay and flimsy gowns, of youth returning to the town, and movement and colour, and june fairly begun. june so far was like other junes in green river. colonel everard and the season of social and political intrigues were here. rallies in the town hall would soon begin. men with big names in state politics would make speeches there, while the colonel presided with his usual self-effacing charm, which did not advertise the known fact that he was a bigger power in the state than any of them. the good old question of prohibition was the chief issue, as usual; discreet representatives of the people would, according to a catch phrase at the capital, vote for prohibition, and then go round to the best hotel and get drunk; and discreet politicians, like the colonel, would make money out of both these facts in their own way. behind the closed door of judge saxon's office low-keyed, monotonous voices were talking, and a secret conference was going on. troubled times were here again for those deep in the colonel's councils. they were never sure of a permanent place there, but always on the watch for one of his sudden changes of front, which threatened not only his enemies but his friends. but he had recovered and held their confidence before, and he could this year. all scandals of the year before were decently hidden. maggie brady was missing and continued to be missing. by this time it was the general verdict that she had always been bound to come to a bad end, and charlie brady to drink himself to death. nobody interrupted his attempts to do so. his drunken outburst of speech had echoed a growing sentiment in the town, but it grew slowly, for under its thin veneer of sophistication green river was only a new england town still, conservative and slow to change. green river had not changed much in a year, but neil donovan's fortunes had. nobody knew the full history of the change except neil, but others could have thrown sidelights upon it, among them mrs. randall's second maid, mollie. on the morning after that same party of the colonel's, which mr. brady attended so unexpectedly, and judith did not attend, mollie opened the randalls' door to an early caller. even in curl papers, she was usually too much for the young man now on the doorstep. he was in the habit of looking at his boots and addressing them instead of her, and mollie quite understood that, for they were shabby boots. they looked shabbier than ever to-day, and so did his shiny coat, but his eyes were steady and clear, and there was clear colour in his cheeks, as if he had had the only restful and well-earned sleep in green river. "miss judith," he said. "not at home," said mollie, in a manner successfully copied from french maids in the ten, twenty, thirties. "nonsense. her curtains aren't up," replied the young man who was usually made speechless by it. "she's asleep," conceded mollie, in a manner more colloquial but also more forbidding. "she don't want to see you." mollie was incapable of interpreting judith's wishes, but the young man was not; his smile conveyed this, though it was friendly enough. "when miss judith gets up, tell her----" "i tell you she don't want to see you," snapped mollie in a tone any french maid would have deplored. "she don't want to see anybody." "tell her that i'll call again at three this afternoon," directed the young man calmly, and completed his disturbing effect upon mollie by turning and walking briskly away without a backward glance, and without his usual air of self-consciousness when her eyes were upon him. he carried his shabby coat with an air, and held his head high, and swung out of sight down the sleepy little street as if he were the only wide-awake thing in the whole sunny, sleepy town. it was a disconcerting moment for mollie or any lady properly conscious of her power, and sorry to see a sign of it disappear, even the humblest of signs. it would still have been disconcerting, if she could have foreseen that judith would not receive this young man alone, either at three that afternoon, or for many afternoons. the young man was not overawed by mollie. that was established once and for all. he would never be overawed by her again. she slammed the door rather viciously. "keep quiet there," said norah, appearing inopportunely, as her habit was, with a heavily laden breakfast tray. "she needs her rest. but she's awake. she rang. you can take this up and leave it outside her door. who was talking to you?" "well, i don't know what's come to him," mollie complained. "who does he think he is? did anybody leave him a fortune over night? it was the donovan boy." a few minutes after neil's encounter with mollie, when mr. theodore burr admitted him listlessly after his third knock at judge saxon's door, he could see no evidence that any one had left the donovan boy a fortune over night, but did note a change in him. there was something appealingly grave and sedate about his face, as if a part of its youth, the freakish, unconquerable laughter of it, that had defied and antagonized mr. burr, were gone forever, burned away, somehow, in a night. it was a look mr. burr was to grow well used to in the next few months. perhaps the unaccountable affection he was to feel for the boy in the course of them was born then and there. neil emerged from the judge's private office after a briefer talk than usual, and the judge did not escort him to the door in his accustomed, friendly fashion. mr. burr did, and made him clumsy and unwonted confidences there. "the old man's not quite fit to-day," he said. "i ought to have told you. it's a poor time to get anything out of him. been shut up there by himself doping out something. won't say two words to me." "then he must be in a bad way, theodore," said the boy, with the ghost of his old, mocking smile, which mr. burr somehow did not find annoying at all. "look here, neil," he surprised himself by saying, "i like you. i always did. you deserve a square deal. you're too good for the brady gang. you're too good for the town. if there was anything i could do for you----" "maybe there is, theodore," the boy turned in the corridor to say. "cheer up. you'll have a chance to see. i'm coming to work for the judge, i start in next week." "but the judge turned you down." mr. burr's brain struggled with the problem, thinking out loud for the sake of greater clearness, but too evidently not achieving it. "the judge likes you, too, but he couldn't take you in if he wanted to. he talked of it, but gave it up. he'd be afraid to. everard----" "i start in next week," repeated mr. donovan. "but what did you say to him?" demanded mr. burr. "what did he say to you? how did you dare to ask him again?" "i didn't ask him. don't worry, theodore. i haven't been trying any black magic on the judge. i don't know any. maybe i'll learn some. i'm going to learn a good deal. i've got to. nobody knows how much. even the judge don't know. i'm coming to work for the judge, that's all, but i didn't ask him." mr. burr, listening incredulously, did not know that this was a faithful if condensed account of his talk with the judge and more, the key to much that was to happen to this pale and determined young man, the secret of all his success. he gave it away openly, and without pride: "i just told him so." neil started in the next week. if mr. burr watched his young associate somewhat jealously at first in the natural belief that a boy who had changed the course of his life in a five-minute interview would do something equally spectacular next, and if the judge, who had said to him at last, "well, it's my bad morning, son, and your good morning, so you get your way, but you're climbing on a sinking ship, and remember i told you so. and i'll tell you something else. it will be poor pickings here for all of us, and i'm sorry, but i'm the sorriest for you," was inclined to follow him furtively over the top of his spectacles with a look that held all the pathetic apology of age to youth in his kind, near-sighted eyes, this was only at first. colonel everard, returning a few weeks later from one of his sudden, unexplained absences from town, and making an early morning visit to his attorney, was admitted by a young man whom he recognized, but pretended not to. "who are you?" he inquired, "the office boy?" "just about that, sir," the young man admitted, as if he had no higher ambition, but the judge, entering the room with more evidence of beginning the day with the strength that the day required, than he had been showing lately in his carriage and look, put a casual hand on the boy's shoulder, and kept it there. "the last time we discussed enlarging my office force, you didn't advocate it, everard," he said rather formally. "so you aren't discussing it with me now?" "do you think you'd better discuss it?" "do you?" "i think you are in no position to discuss it. you've been recently furnished with much more important material to discuss. i haven't seen you since your garden party, have i?" "no." both men seemed to have forgotten the boy's existence, but now the colonel recalled it, and apparently without annoyance, and flashed a disarming smile at him, giving up gracefully, as he always did if he was forced to give up at all. "well, you're right, hugh. you're always right. do as you please. but this boy's got a temper of his own and--quite a flow of speech. runs in his family, evidently. properly handled, these are assets, but----" "i'm sorry, sir," neil found himself stammering. "i shouldn't have spoken to you as i did that day. i'm sorry." "next time be sure of your facts." the voice was friendly, almost paternal, but it held an insidious challenge, too, and for one betraying moment all the native antagonism that was really there flashed in the colonel's eyes. few enemies of his had been permitted to see it so clearly. it was a triumph for neil, if a barren one. "be very sure." "i will, sir," said neil deliberately, but very courteously. then the colonel disappeared into the private office with his arm about his trusted attorney's shoulders, and the young man for whose sake his attorney had openly defied him for the first time in years began to empty the office waste-baskets. the winter weeks in the judge's office passed without even moments of repressed drama like this. there was little to prove that they were the most important weeks of his life to neil. at first they were lonely weeks. mr. burr, unusually prompt, reached the office one crisp september morning in time to find him staring out of the window at a straggling procession passing on its way up the hill to the schoolhouse, hurrying on foot in excited groups, or crowded into equipages of varying sizes and degrees of elegance, properly theirs or pressed into service. "first day of school," said neil, and did not need to explain further, even to mr. burr. from to-day on new faces would look out of the many-paned windows of the old, white-painted building. new voices would sing in the night on their way home from barge rides and dances. there were to be new occupants of the seats of the mighty; a new crowd would own the town. the door of the country of the young was shut in this boy's face from to-day, and that is always a hard day, but it was peculiarly hard in green river, where the country of the young was the only unspoiled and safe place to live. and there were signs of a private and more personal hurt in the boy's faraway eyes. "what's that letter?" said mr. burr. "seed catalogue." "don't she write to you every day?" "who?" "is she too proud, or did she forget all about you? she'll have time to, away half the summer, and not coming home for vacations. she won't see you till next june." "if you mean judith randall," her late class-mate replied in a carefully expressionless voice, "why should she write to me, and why shouldn't she forget all about me?" there was a faint, reminiscent light in his eyes, as if he were not seriously threatened with the prospect, but it died away quickly, and his face grew very grave. "i'm a business man now, theodore." "you are," said his newest friend, "and we couldn't keep house without you now. you're in a class by yourself." this was true. neil did not take his big chance at life as other boys equally in need of it would have done. he did not lose his head. he showed no pride in it. green river, soon seeing this, rewarded him in various ways, each significant in its own fashion. nondescript groups round the stove in his uncle's little store ceased to look for signs that he felt superior to them, and welcomed him as before, restoring to him his privilege of listening to talk that was more important than it seemed, public sentiment uncoloured and without reserve, the real voice of the town. mrs. saxon, of the old aristocracy of the town, with inborn social prejudices stronger than any acquired from the everards, broke all her rules and invited him to sunday-night supper. "the boy's not spoiled," his old friend luther ward said to the judge approvingly. "he knows his place." "that's the surest way to climb out of it," said judge saxon, advisedly, for it was the judge who had the closest and most discerning eyes upon neil donovan's career. listlessly at first, because he had looked on at too many uphill and losing fights against the world, but later with interest, forced from him almost against his will, he watched it grow. to a casual observer the boy would have seemed to be fitting himself not for an ornament to the legal profession, but for the office boy colonel everard had called him, but he would have seemed a willing office boy. he spent hours uncomplainingly looking up obscure points of law for some purpose nobody explained to him. he devoted long, sunny afternoons to looking up titles connected with some mortgage loan which nobody gave him the details of, and he seemed satisfied with his occupation, and equally satisfied to devote a morning to plodding through new-fallen snow delivering invitations to some party of mrs. saxon's. when he was actually studying, he lost himself in the judge's out-of-date reference books, as if they contained some secret as vital as the elixir of youth, and might yield it at any moment. mr. burr, at first ridiculing pupil and course of instruction alike, and with some show of reason, began shamefacedly and afterward openly to give him what benefit he could from the more modern education which had been wasted upon him. between his two teachers the boy arrived at conclusions of his own. neil was studying law by the old method which evolved so many different men of letters and keen-witted lawyers, a method obsolete as the judge's clothes, but neil gave allegiance to it ardently, as if it had been invented for him. "what do you get out of this?" the judge demanded, coming upon neil late one afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of mr. thayer by the fading light. "what do you hope to get?" "all there is in it," said the boy simply, and without oratorical intent. "suppose you do pass your bar examinations. what then? what will you do with it?" "i'll wait and see then. i had to begin somewhere." "why?" said the judge, and as he asked the question, the answer to it, which he had once known so well and forgotten, looked at him in the boy's pale face and glowing eyes, the great answer not to be silenced, youth, and the wonderful, wasteful urge of youth. "don't you know this town's sick?" he demanded abruptly. "it's dirty. you can't clean it up. don't you ever try. don't you stir things up. don't you dig in too deep. i suppose you know the town's got no room for you?" "yes, sir, i know." "where do you expect to end?" the judge began irritably, "in the poorhouse? you're so damn young," he grumbled. "it's a good thing i didn't know you when i was young. i'd have listened to you then." "you will now, sir," said the boy, and the judge did not contradict him, but instead, under shy pretence of groping for the switch of the desk lamp, found the boy's hand and gripped it. "you're a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "mind what i said, and don't dig in too deep." the judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by this vague warning. probably he could not have explained. it was one of those instinctive pronouncements which shape themselves in rare moments when two people are close and mean more than either of them know. certainly if the key to any secret was to be found within the judge's dingily decorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner, the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. theodore burr's intimacy with neil developed rapidly. he stuck to it obstinately, in spite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had in years. the two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the first mayflowers of the year together. only the week before he had committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the everards' to go shooting with neil. the judge, in the strenuous days of colonel everard's summer campaign, had no time to observe the growth of this intimacy or to think much about neil, but he might have been interested in a snatch of talk in the brady kitchen one evening, if he could have overheard it, more interested than mrs. donovan, who did not remember it long. her son was an hour late for supper, but she was used to that, for now that he was on his feet the house revolved around him. she served him, and then sat watching him with her hands folded, and the new dignity that had come with his first bit of success straightening her tired shoulders, and the look of age and pain that had been growing there since maggie disappeared widening her soft, deep eyes. he had dropped wearily into his chair, and he ate almost in silence, but she was used to that, too. outside the short, june twilight was over, and a pattering summer rain had begun to fall. neil's dark hair was damp with it and clung to his forehead in close curls. once, passing his chair, she smoothed it with a hand that was work hardened but finely made and could touch him lightly and shyly still. her son pulled her suddenly close, and hid his face against her. "what is it?" she asked, softly and not too soon as she stood still and held him. "what's wrong, then? where have you been?" "nothing's wrong. nothing new. i went round to theodore burr's, but i left there at five. i didn't mean to be late home or make work. but i had a hunch to look in at halloran's. i thought i'd find charlie there. i did, and i had to get him home." "taking your strength," said mr. brady's aunt, unfeelingly but truthfully, "a good-for-nothing----" "that's not the worst thing he does." "what is, then?" "talking." "he don't mean anything by that." "sometimes he does. sometimes he tells you things that you never suspected and you don't believe him at first, but you find they're true; things that have been locked up in his addled brain so long that they're out of date, and you don't know how to profit by them or handle them, but they're true--all true." "neil, you don't half know what you're saying. you're tired." mrs. donovan released herself abruptly to get the tea-pot from the stove. her son, who had been talking in a low, monotonous voice, more to himself than her, watched her with dazed eyes that slowly cleared. "i guess you're right," he said. "i didn't mean to frighten you. charlie was no more loose mouthed to-day than he always is. i got hold of nothing new, but i have hold of more than i can handle, and i'm tired and i'm scared, and there's only one of me." but mrs. donovan preferred her own interpretation of the situation, as most ladies would have. she made it tactfully, keeping her eyes away from him, busy with the tea-pot. "you're young, and it's june. neil, the children walked round with the sullivan girl to take home the wash to the randalls'. they had some talk with norah there. judith will be home this week." she had mentioned the much-debated name in a voice which she kept indifferent, but she flashed a quick, apprehensive glance at him. she was quite unprepared for its effect upon him. he only laughed, and then his face sobered quickly, and his eyes grew lonely and tired again. "judith," he said, "you think that's my trouble, mother. well, i'm not so young as i was last june." then he began with considerable relish to drink his tea. "you're contrary and close mouthed, but you're only a boy like all other boys," said mrs. donovan, sticking to her point, "and you're a good son to me." the boy who had made this rare and abortive attempt at confidences only the night before showed no need of repeating it as he gazed out of the judge's window. he looked quite competent to bear all his own troubles alone, and a generous share of other people's, though somewhat saddened by them. perhaps his mother's diagnosis of him was correct. he leaned his chin on his hands and stared out of the window like any dreaming boy, as if it was. but the winter that had passed so lightly over green river had left traces of its own upon him. his profile had a clearer, more sharply outlined look. the lines at the corners of his mouth were firmer though they were no deeper, and the mouth was still a boy's mouth, red-lipped and lightly closed. but the dreaming eyes were a man's, dreaming still, but alert, and ready to banish dreams. the afternoon light was fading fast. it was not so easy now to read the fine print of mr. thayer's notes, and the boy made no further pretence of trying to. he let mr. thayer slip to the floor, and stretched himself in his chair with a sigh of relief. the sounds of talk in the judge's room had grown fainter and more intermittent and finally ceased. the judge, still deep in conference with them, had left with his guests by the private door. the boy was alone in the office. gradually, as he sat there, the bright pageant of the busy little street had dimmed. it made a softer and mellower picture, a blend of delicate colours in the slant mellow light, and it was not so busy now. there were fewer passers-by, and they hurried and did not loiter past. it was almost supper-time. willard nash, not joy riding now, but dispatched reluctantly alone on some emergency errand, flashed by in his car, and disappeared up main street. beyond the double row of shops the upper section of the street was empty. the maples, in full leaf now and delicately green, shadowed the upward slant of smooth road alluringly. touched with golden afternoon light, and half hidden by the spreading green, the old, solidly built houses planted so heavily in the midst of their well-kept lawns had new and unguessed possibilities. any one of them just then might have sheltered a fairy princess. the one that did was just within range of the boy's grave, patient eyes, a protruding porch, disproportionately enlarged and ugly, a sweep of vividly green lawn stripped bare of the graceful, dishevelled growth of lilac and syringa bushes that had graced it before mrs. randall's day. not from that house, but from somewhere beyond it, a car flashed into view and cut smoothly and quickly down through the street, almost deserted now. the boy followed it idly with his eyes. the low-built, graceful lines of it held them. it approached, and slowed down directly under the windows, and the boy leaned forward and looked. it was stopping there. it was one of the everard cars, as the trim lines and perfection of detail would have shown without the english chauffeur's familiar, supercilious face. the car had only one occupant, a slender young person in white. she slipped quickly out, and disappeared into the dingy entrance hall below. she had not seen the boy at the window. he stood still now in his corner, and waited. the tap of her feet was light even on the old creaking stairs, but he heard. she knocked once and a second time, and then threw open the door impatiently, saw who was there, and stopped just inside the door, and looked at him. her white dress and big, beflowered hat looked as cool and as new as june itself. they did not make the dingy room look dingier, they made you forget it was dingy. her soft, befrilled skirts fluffed and flared in the brave and bewildering mode of the moment. skirts, small shoes that were built to dance, not to walk, the futuristic blend of flowers in her hat, and the girdle, unrelentingly high and futuristic of colour, too, that gave her waist an unbelievably slender look, were all in the dainty and sophisticated taste of a sophisticated young lady, and under the elaborate hat there was a sophisticated young face. it looked smaller and more faintly pink. the small chin was more prominent. but she still had the wide, reproachful eyes of a child. they regarded the boy unwinkingly. one hand went behind her, found the knob of the door, and closed it mechanically, but the eyes did not leave his face. he stepped uncertainly forward, and stopped. "well, judith," he said, in a voice that held all the authority judge saxon's assistant had acquired in the long year of his service and more, "well?" and then, in a voice that held no authority at all, but was suddenly husky and small: "oh, judith, won't you speak to me?" chapter sixteen "judith," neil said. neil's visitor flashed a quick glance round the dim office, empty except for the lean young figure that confronted her. it was a hunted glance, as if she really meant to turn without speaking and pick up her beruffled skirts, and run away down the dusty stairs, but she did not run away. suddenly quite herself, recovering by tapping some emergency reserve of strength as only ladies can, but as most of them can, even the most amateurish and beruffled of ladies, she crossed the room to him. she came deliberately, with an impressive flutter of hidden silk. she was smiling a faint half-smile, sweet but indefinably teasing, and holding out a daintily gloved hand. it touched neil's lightly and impersonally, not like a girl's warm hand at all, but like the hand of a society forever beyond his reach, held out patronizingly to this boy beyond its pale, only to emphasize the distance between them. "how do you do?" she murmured, formally but sweetly. "how do you do?" the boy stammered. "judith, oh, judith, i----" he broke off, staring helplessly into her eyes. they were dark and accusing and grave, and a heartache shadowed the depths of them, the lonely and infinite heartache of youth, when you cannot measure your pain or argue it away, but must suffer and suffer instead. but the boy was too miserable just then to read it there. "judith," he began, "don't you care any more? why wouldn't you read my letters? why wouldn't you let me explain? won't you let me now? i can, judith." still smiling, not taking the trouble to interrupt him, she waited for him to finish, and as she waited and smiled, he had suddenly nothing more to say. judith was so slender and white and still as she stood there. all the outraged dignity of an offended schoolgirl was helping to make this overwhelming little effect of hers, and every trick of poise and carriage that she had acquired in a year, and something else, something that shamed and silenced the boy as no tricks could have done, and made her pathetic little show of injured dignity real. a woman's shy soul was reaching out for every defence it had to protect itself; a woman's new-born, bewildered soul looked out of judith's beautiful, grieved eyes. it was very still in the office. outside an automobile horn sounded aggressively, once and again, and judith gave the boy an amused, apologetic glance. "parks is in a hurry," she said. "he ought not to do that. the colonel wouldn't like it. but i won't keep him waiting. i'm going out to the camp for supper. father and mother are there already. i stopped for the judge, but he doesn't seem to be here. he is walking out to the camp, i suppose. i'm--glad to have seen you." her voice choked perilously over this irreproachable sentiment, then steadied and modulated itself according to the instructions of the highly accredited elocution teacher of which she had enjoyed the benefit for a year. "good-night." again she put out her cool little hand, but this time the boy's hand closed on it tight. "judith," he began, his words coming fast, the contact seeming to release all that had been storing itself up in his lonely heart for a year. once released, it came tumbling out incoherently, with the lilting brogue of the ragged little boy that he used to be singing through it, and the breathless catch in his voice that is the supremest eloquence for the kind of words that he had to say. but judith gave no sign of being moved by it, and while she listened, a hard look, too unrelenting for any eloquence to reach, was growing in her eyes. "judith, you're so sweet, so sweet; sweeter than you were last year--sweeter than you ever were before. i didn't know anybody could be sweeter, even you. i was so lonely. i wanted you so, and now you've come. everything will be all right, now you've come. and you came straight here. you knew i was here, and you came because you knew. you came straight to me." "i came for the judge," she corrected him gravely. "but you knew i was here." "i knew you were working for the judge, but i didn't think you'd be here so late in the afternoon. i didn't come to see you. i didn't want to. why should i? but i'm glad you are doing so well. good-night, neil." "good-night," he muttered mechanically, checked once more in spite of himself. but as he spoke, he felt her hands, both in his now, and held tight, tremble and try softly at first, and then in sudden panic, to pull themselves away. her voice, that had been so grave and cool, with no echo of the excitement that was in his, failed her now, though she kept her wide-open eyes bravely upon him. she was afraid of him, this young lady who was making such elaborate attempts to hide it, this young lady not of his world, and so anxious to prove it to him, this calm stranger with judith's eyes. she was very much afraid, and she could not hide it any longer. "let me go," she tried to say. "judith," he dropped her hands obediently, but his arms reached out for her and caught her and held her close, "you didn't come for the judge. you came to see me." "no. no." her face was hidden against his shoulder. her voice came muffled and soft. neil paid no further attention to it. "no," it insisted faintly. "let me go." then it insisted no more, and the boy laughed a soft, triumphant little laugh. "you did come to see me, and you love me. you love me and i love you. you were angry, of course. of course you sent back my letters. but you're going to listen to me now. you're going to let me explain. i couldn't that night. i couldn't talk any more. i didn't dare. i had to keep hold of myself. i had to get you home. and i did, dear. i turned round and took you home, and i got you home--safe. you're going to listen? and not be angry any more? you won't, will you? you won't--dear?" her face was still out of sight, and her white figure was motionless in his arms. she did not relax there, but she did not struggle. she looked very slender and helpless so. her futuristic hat had slipped from its daring and effective adjustment, and fallen to the judge's dusty floor, where it lay unregarded. the silvery blond head against his shoulder was changed like the rest of her, a mass of delicately adjusted puffs and curls, but in the fast-fading light he saw only the soft, pale colour of her hair and the tender curve of her throat. he kissed it reverently and lightly, once only, and then his arms let her go. "you're so sweet," he whispered; "too sweet for me. but you're mine, aren't you? tell me you are. and you forgive me for--everything? tell me, judith." she seemed in no hurry to tell him. she faced him silently, her white dress whiter than ever in the fading light, and her face big eyed and expressionless. he waited reverently for her answer, and quite confidently, picking up the elaborate hat mechanically, and then smoothing the ribbons tenderly, and pulling at the flowers, as he realized what he held. "poor little hat," he said softly, with the brogue coaxing insinuatingly in his voice. "poor little girl. i didn't mean to frighten you. and i didn't mean to--that night.... judith!" it was undoubtedly judith who confronted him, and no strange lady now. it was as if she had been waiting for some cue from him, and heard it, and sprung into life again, not the strange lady, not even the girl of the year before, but a long-ago judith, the child who had come to his rescue on a forgotten may night, the child of the moonlit woods, with her shrill voice and flashing eyes. she was that judith again, but grown to a woman, and now she was not his ally, but his enemy. she snatched the beflowered hat away, and swung it upon her head with the same reckless hand that had swept the lantern to the ground in her childish defence of him. her eyes defied him. "that night," she stormed, "that night. don't you ever speak of that night to me again. i never want to hear you speak again. i never want to see you again. i'll never forgive you as long as i live. i hate you!" "judith, listen to me," begged the boy. "listen. you must." but the girl who swept past him and turned to confront him at the door was past listening to him. words that she hardly heard herself, and would not remember, came to her, and she flung them at him in a breathless little burst of speech that hurt and was meant to hurt. the boy took it silently, not trying to interrupt, slow colour reddening his cheeks, his eyes growing angry then sullen. the words that judith used hardly mattered. they were futile and childish words, but because of the blaze of anger behind them, that had been gathering long and would go on after they were forgotten, they were splendid, too. "i hate you! i don't belong to you. i don't belong to anybody. i'm not like anybody else. nobody cares what i do, and i don't care. i don't care. nobody ever takes care of me or knows when i need it. well, i can take care of myself. i'm going to now. i never want to belong to anybody. if i did, it wouldn't be you." "judith, stop! you'll be sorry for this." "if i am, it's no business of yours. it's nobody's business but mine." "you'll be sorry," the boy muttered again, and this time the girl did not contradict him or answer. her shrill little burst of defiance was over, and with it the sullen resentment that had crimsoned the boy's face as he listened began to die away. he was rebuffed and thrown back upon himself. his heart would not open so easily again. it would be a long time before it opened at all. but he did not resent this. he only looked baffled and puzzled and miserable, and the girl staring mutely at him from the doorway with big, starved eyes, looked miserable, too. she would be angry again. all the hurt pride and anger that had been gathering in her heart for a year was not to be relieved by an unrehearsed burst of speech. it had been sleeping in her heart. it was all awake now, and she would be angrier with the boy and the world than ever before, angrier and more reckless. but just now her anger was blotted out and she was only miserable. in the gloom of the office there was something curiously alike about the two tragic young faces. the two were alone together there, but they had never been farther apart. there was a whole world between them, a lonely world, where people all speak different languages, and understand each other only by a miracle, and most of them are so used to being alone that they forget they once had a moment of first realizing it. but when it was upon them, it was a bitter moment. these two young creatures were both living through it now. they looked at each other blankly, all antagonism gone. "you won't listen?" said the boy wonderingly, admitting defeat. "you won't forgive me?" "no," said judith pitifully. "i can't." neil looked at her forlornly, but did not contest this. he came meekly forward, not trying to touch her again, and opened the door for her. "well, good-night," he said. "good-night, dear." "good-bye," judith said. "good-bye, neil." then, jerking her flaunting hat into adjustment with trembling fingers, and shaking out her befrilled skirts with a poor little imitation of her earlier airs and graces, she slipped out into the corridor, groped for the dusty stair rail, and clutched at it with a new disregard for her immaculate whiteness, and disappeared down the stairs. in the street below the last of the afternoon light still lingered, reflected from the polished windows of the bank building, and faintly illuminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going down behind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light. judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberately for a minute, ignoring the chauffeur's discreet manifestations of impatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in the colonel's car. she sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. she seemed to have recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princess beyond neil's reach once more. watching her gravely from the judge's window, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the reckless light in them. little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetly impatient, as if they voiced all the feelings that the correct parks repressed. he relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from the horn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, and out of sight. judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boy in the window. she had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop and tried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; mr. willard nash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his old allegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of his forlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfully after the vanished car. the boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. judith was gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he was a man of affairs once more. he was not a very cheerful man of affairs to-night. he was not singing or whistling to himself, as he usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering the judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help from them. he rearranged this room, giving just the straightening touches to the jumble of papers on the desk that the judge permitted, and no more, and putting the outer office in order, too. by his own desk he paused, fingering mr. thayer's thumbed pages absently. he had no attention to spare for them just then, or for the graver questions that had absorbed him just before judith came. they would soon claim him again. they awaited him now, but out in the gathering dark that he watched from the darkening office something else waited, too. his heart ached with it, but it beat harder and stronger for it, and new strength to meet old issues came pulsing from it, as if he were awake again after a year of sleep. he was grieved and miserable, but he was awake. for his mother was right: he was only a boy like other boys; he was young and it was june, and whether she was kind or unkind, judith randall was back in green river. * * * * * judith, whirled along the fast-darkening road between close-growing pines, dulling from green to black, and birches, silver against them, looked for the welcoming lights of camp everard through a mist of angry tears. she shed them decorously, even under cover of the dark; she was still a dainty and proud little lady, with nothing about her to advertise conspicuously that she was crying, or why. but her little gloved hands were closing and unclosing themselves, her lips were trembling in spite of her, and there was a hunted look in her eyes as she turned them toward the dark woods, as if her quarrel with neil were not her only trouble. the tears that she controlled so gallantly were a protest against a world only half understood and full of enemies whose alien presence she was just beginning to feel. but neil, as she had just seen him, was enough to occupy the mind of such a young lady, or a much older one. the look in his eyes as he stood holding open the judge's door for her was a highly irritating one for any lady to meet. he was older and wiser than she was, no matter what she could say or do to hurt him; he was stronger than she was, and patiently waiting to prove it to her; that was what neil's eyes were saying. they said it first when he left her at her own door without a good-night on that strange may night a year ago; when she stood looking up at him changed and alien and silent, with the may moon behind him, that had brought her bad fortune instead of good, still dim and alluring with false promises above the shadowy elms in the little street, and they looked down at her just so--neil's grave, unforgettable, conquering eyes. they were eyes that followed you to-night, when you tried to forget them and look at the dark woods and fields; eyes that looked at you still when you closed your own. but judith would not look at them. the eyes were lying to her. neil was not really wise or kind. he was cruel. he had hurt her and slighted her, and she was through with him. "parks, can't you go faster?" she said suddenly, in her clear little voice. "it's so late, and i'm hungry and cold." "it's bad going through here, miss," the chauffeur said. they were turning into a narrow mile or so of road that sloped gradually down through a series of arbitrary curves and bends to the lake and the camp, a changed and elaborate structure now, overweighted with verandas and uncompromisingly lit with new electric lights. but the road was one of the things that the colonel did not improve when he changed the public camp into a private one. it was unchanged and unspoiled, a mysterious wood road still, alluring now in the gloom. judith's own people were waiting for her there at the end of that road. they were all the people she had. willard and schooltime and playtime were more than a year behind her; they were behind her forever. she could never go back to them. she had never really been part of them. she had forced herself into a place there, but she had lost it now, and it could never be hers again. these were her people. they were strange to her still, but she had grown up breathing the feverish air that they breathed, and with little whispers of hidden scandal about her. judith was alone between two worlds: one was closed to her, and she was before the door of another, where she did not know her way. she was really alone, as she had told neil, more alone than she knew; a lonely and tragic figure, white and small in the corner of the big car. but she was not crying now. she dabbed expertly at her eyes with an overscented scrap of handkerchief and sat up, looking eagerly down the dark road. she could catch far echoes of a song through the still night air, faint echoes only, but it was a song that she knew, a gay little song, and it came from a place where people were always kind and gay. it was like a hand stretched out to her through the dark, a warm hand, to beckon her nearer, and then draw her close. she leaned forward and listened and looked. there was the camp, the first glimpse of it, though soon a dip of the road would hide it again. it was an enchanting glimpse, a far, low-lying flicker of light. and there, just by the big, upstanding boulder where the road turned abruptly, she saw something else. she saw it before parks did, as if she had been watching for it. it was a man's figure that started forward, came to the edge of the road, and waited. the man looked more than his slender height in the shadow, but his light, quick walk was unmistakable. it was colonel everard. "stop, parks," judith said, with new authority in her voice. he stood waiting for her silently, without any greeting at all, and she slipped her hand into his and stepped out and stood beside him. "go on," he said to the chauffeur. "it's too rough here for the car. it's easier on foot. miss randall will walk with me." the car, skilfully manipulated along the steep, zigzag road, but a clumsy thing at best here in the woods, and an artificial and ugly thing, lumbered away, breaking through outreaching branches. judith watched it out of sight. then and not till then she turned to her host. "aren't you going to speak to me?" the great man inquired respectfully, as if her intentions deserved the most serious consideration. "yes," said judith serenely, unflattered by it. "what are you going to say?" "what do you want me to say?" "i want you to shake hands with me." a hand touched his lightly. it drew quickly away, but it was a confiding little hand. "you don't seem surprised to see me." "i'm not," said judith. "but you're glad to see me?" "yes." "it's stuffy inside, and they've got a fire in the billiard room and won't leave it. i wanted----" judith laughed and let him draw her hand through his arm as they began to grope their way down the road. "you wanted to meet me." she made the correction triumphantly and confidently, as she would have made it to willard. all this was coquetry, as she and willard understood it, and it was an old game to her, and a childish game, but there was something strangely exciting about the fact that the colonel understood it, too, and condescended to play at it. it was more exciting than usual to-night. "why should i want to meet you?" he said. "i don't know." "why weren't you downstairs last night when i came to see your father?" "i was tired." "you weren't running away from me?" "no." "and you won't ever run away from me?" "i don't know." "you're afraid of me." "am i?" "aren't you?" "i don't know," said judith. "look, there's the moon." it was low above the trees, rising solemn and round and slow. it looked reproachful and grave, like neil's eyes. it was looking straight at judith. judith turned her eyes sternly away. what was the colonel saying? something that did not sound like willard at all, or like the colonel, either. nobody had ever spoken to her in just that voice before. it was a choked, queer voice. but judith smiled up at him and listened, tightening the clasp of her hand on his arm. "don't be afraid of me. don't ever be afraid.... you're so sweet to-night." "no, i won't," said judith defiantly, straight to the round, accusing moon. "i won't be afraid." chapter seventeen "i don't like the look of you," said mrs. donovan. "then you're hard to please." neil turned at the foot of the steps to say, trying to smile as he said it. "harder than i am. i do like the look of you." the donovans, mother and son, were both quite sufficiently attractive to the eye at that moment. this was the second day of september, and also the second day of the county fair in madison, five miles away--the big day of the fair, and neil's uncle had been up at dawn to escort the younger bradys there in a borrowed rig, and in the company of at least half green river in equipages of varied style and state of repair. neil had slept late, breakfasted sketchily, and dined elaborately alone with his mother. now the long, still, sunny afternoon was half over, and she stood in the kitchen door, watching him start for town. the kitchen, newly painted this year, looked empty and unnaturally neat behind her, but friendly and lived in, too, with the old, creaking rocker pulled to an inviting angle at the window overlooking the marsh, and a sofa under the other window, its worn upholstery covered freshly with turkey-red; one splash of clear colour, sketched in boldly, just in the corner where it satisfied the eye. her neighbours did not take this humble fabric seriously for decorative purposes; indeed, they would not have permitted a sofa in the kitchen at all, but her neighbours were not of her gracious race. they could not wear a plain and necessary white apron like the completing touch to a correct toilette assumed deliberately. mrs. donovan could, and she did to-day. also her brown hair, dulled to a softer, more indefinite brown by its sprinkling of white, rippled softly about her low forehead, and her dress was faded to a tender, vague blue like the blue of her eyes. her eyes, almost on a level with neil's as she stood on the step above him, had the charm that was peculiarly their own to-day, cloudy as they were with the faraway look of a race that believes in fairies, but warm and human, too, with an intimate mother look of concern for neil. neil met it steadily, not a sullen boy as he would have been under that questioning a year ago, not resenting it at all, but keeping his secrets deliberately. it had always been hard for her to make him answer questions. it was not even easy for her to ask them now. "you don't sleep," she began. "neither do you, if you've been catching me at it," reasoned her son correctly. "you work too hard." she had made an accusation that he could not deny, so he only smiled his quick, flashing smile. "you won't even take a day to yourself." "i'll have the office and most of the town to myself this afternoon. i'll have to go. i've got something special to look into." "where's charlie?" she demanded at once. "oh, he's not troubling me to-day. he's safe at madison with his new mare. he'll break loose there, then come home and repent and stay straight for weeks and make no trouble for me. he's due to break loose. he's been good too long--too good to be true. he was in fine form last night." mr. charlie brady's cousin grinned reminiscently. "what do you mean?" "he gave me quite a little side talk on good form in dress and diction. charlie claims i won't make an orator, and he don't like my taste in ties." "who does he think he is?" flashed mr. brady's aunt indignantly. "who do you think he is?" her son inquired unexpectedly. "for whatever you think, that's me. i'm no better than charlie." "charlie?" mrs. donovan gasped, and then plunged into an indignant defence of her son, not pausing to take breath. "you?" she began. "you that's planted firm on the ladder and right-hand to the judge already, and him getting older every day, and theodore burr just kept on in the office because everard's after burr's wife. so he is, and the town knows it, and theodore'll wake up to it soon. a fine partner theodore is for the judge, poor boy, but he's a good boy, too, though none too strong in the head; lil burr is a good girl, too, and she'd make a good wife to theodore if she could be left to herself. she'd make it up with theodore, as many a girl has done that's got more for her husband to forgive than lil. "poor lil. her head's high above me now, but the time was she cried on my shoulder; crying for charlie, she was, before ever charlie took up with maggie and lil with theodore; when the four of them were all young together, and the one as good as the other. young they were, and the hearts of them young--wild, doubtful hearts. many's the time lil would come to me then, here in this same kitchen, and go down on her knees, her that was tall and a fine figure of a girl, and cling onto me, crying her heart out; crying she was for all the world like--like----" mrs. donovan checked herself abruptly with shrewd eyes upon her son. "like young things do cry, and tell you their troubles in tears, not words." she ended somewhat vaguely, and came quickly back to her main subject again. "you that can walk into the big rally next week and sit with the men that count, and whisper and talk to them, and hold your head high, with nothing against you, and will be sitting up on the platform soon, with the best of them, and be mayor yet, like everard's going to be, or governor, maybe--you to compare yourself with charlie, if he is my half-sister's own son. he's a drunken good-for-nothing. he's got no spirit in him if he'll stay here at all, where he's ashamed himself and make a show of himself. how is it he's able to stay? where does he get the money he spends? this town don't pay it to him. who does?" "what put that into your head?" her son asked sharply. "there's talk enough of it, and there'll be more. the whole town will be asking soon." "the town asks a lot of questions it don't dare hear the answers to," said neil softly, unregarded. his mother returned to her grievance: "you to be likening yourself to charlie." "when charlie was twenty-five," neil began slowly, "he was where i will be then, or better. the judge was a friend to him, too, and the judge was a better friend then to have. charlie was setting up for himself, well thought of. my own father trusted him. when i was a boy and not grown, charlie was a son to him, and more. he was a better spoken lawyer than i'll ever make, quick and smooth with his tongue, and he was fine appearing, and put up a better front than i do. i've gone part of the road that charlie went. what will stop me from going the whole road? what's beat charlie is strong enough to beat me.... don't look so scared, mother. i don't want to scare you. i only want you to be fair to charlie." "his heart's broke," she conceded, melting. "he's nothing with maggie gone." "his heart's broke, but that's not what beat him," her son stated with authority. "he was beat before." "when?" "he was beat," neil stated deliberately, "when everard moved to green river." this was a sweeping statement, but neil did not qualify it. he dropped the subject and stood silent, turning absent eyes upon the green expanse of marshy field that had been the starting-place of all his dreams when he was a dream-struck, gazing boy. his mother's eyes followed his, growing cloudier and soft as if even now she could read them there. "rests your eyes," neil said, after a minute; "looks pretty, too, in the sun. it's a pretty green. we'll drain it, perhaps, by the time i'm mayor or governor. it might pay. i'll be going now." "neil, when did you see her last?" asked his mother suddenly. "see who?" he muttered, and then flushed, and straightened himself, and met her eyes bravely. "i saw judith yesterday," he said, "on main street, and--she cut me." "did she walk past you?" "no, she wouldn't do that. she pretended not to see me, but she saw me, all right. she passed me in an automobile." "whose?" "one of everard's." "was he with her?" "yes." "neil," his mother began a little breathlessly, "i want to tell you something. i've said hard things to you, and they weren't deserved. i know it now, and i'm sorry. i want to take them all back. i've said hard things about judith randall." she hurried on, afraid of being stopped, but he made no move to stop her. he listened courteously, his face not changing. "neil, she's not what i thought. there's no harm in her. there's no pride in her. she's just lonesome. she's just a young, young girl. she's sweet-spoken and sweet-faced. neil, from all i hear----" "you didn't hear all this direct from--judith, then?" "judith?" she hesitated, flashing a questioning glance at him. "is it likely? how would i get the chance? but from all i hear, she's too good for everard and the like. and she's not safe with them. she needs----" "what?" interrupted her son gravely, with the air of seeking information on a subject quite strange to him and rather distasteful. but she tried to go on. "--judith needs--any one that's fond of her, any one that she's fond of, to be good to her now. i've seen her, and it's in the eyes of her. no man ever knows just what a woman is grieving for, but that's all one if he'll comfort her when she's grieving. she needs----" neil's eyes were expressionless. she sighed and put her two hands on his shoulders. "have it your own way," she said. "i'll say no more." neil caught at one of the hands on his shoulders and kissed it. "for one thing," he said, "judith or any girl needs a mother with a heart in her--like i've got, but you're the one in the world. i'm going." but he did not go at once. standing beside her, suddenly awkward and shy, he first gave her the confidence that she could not force from him, all in one generous breathless burst of words. "mother, charlie's not the only one with his heart broke. but heart-break isn't the worst thing i've got to bear. there's something else. i can't tell you. i'd rather bear it alone. i've got to. good-bye." then he left her standing still in the door, shading her cloudy blue eyes with one small hand and looking after him. he swung into the dusty road and, keeping his head high and his eyes straight ahead, undazzled by the sharp sunlight of mid-afternoon on the long stretch of unshaded way, passed out of sight toward green river. chapter eighteen neil turned into post-office square just on the stroke of four. the square was as empty and strange to the eye as his mother's kitchen, though this was the rush hour of the day in that business centre upon ordinary days, when the fair had not emptied the town. a solitary ford of prehistoric make stood before the post-office, and even that was just cranking up. it lurched dispiritedly off, leaving a cloud of dust behind. a dejected-looking group of children hung about the door of the ice-cream parlour, and appeared to lack the initiative to enter in. half the shops were shut. in the big show-window of the central section of ward's emporium luther ward, usually on parade and magnificently in charge of his shop and his staff of employees at this time of day, stood in his shirt sleeves, embracing an abnormally slender lady in a mauve velveteen tailored suit. at first glance he seemed to be instructing her in the latest dance steps, but on a nearer view the visible part of her proved to be wax, and the suit was ticketed nineteen-fifty. he jerked her into place, turned and saw neil, and hailed him cheerfully, waving him round to the main entrance door, where he joined him, still wiping his brow. "if you want a thing well done, do it yourself," he said, explaining his late exertions with the air of believing the explanation was original with him and did credit to his intellect. "what are you here for, brother? isn't madison good enough for you?" "no," neil said. "not with the big race called off." "called off? how's that?" "because you weren't there, luther." mr. ward gave a gratified laugh at this graceful compliment, and descended to facts. "i'm too old for horse racing. it's my boy's turn. he went over with willard nash's crowd to-day. why didn't you?" mr. ward demanded severely. "oh, willard asked me all right. he's quite strong for me now." mr. ward had doubted this, being on the watch for slights to neil and resenting them, though he never made an effort to prevent them. this was the usual attitude of neil's more influential friends. "willard's a shrimp," said mr. ward gruffly. "and i like you," he added in a burst of frankness. "i always did like you, neil. you've pulled yourself up by your boot-straps, and i hope you hang on to them tight. there's nobody better pleased than i am. oh, i got a rig and sent all the help from the store over to the fair to-day," he added, turning quickly to impersonal subjects. "you always do treat them right." "well, this wasn't my idea. i got it from the colonel." a look of harmless but plainly evident pride came into mr. ward's open and ruddy countenance as he mentioned the great man's name. it was only the week before that he had received his first dinner invitation from the everards. it came at the eleventh hour and did not include his wife, but he was dazzled by it still. "you know what he's doing? closing his house, practically, for all three days of the fair, and sending all the help on the place over there--two touring cars full. it's a fine thing for them. they're high-class help and don't have it any too interesting down here. anybody that says he's not democratic don't know the colonel. this town don't half know him yet." "you're right," neil put in softly. "democratic," declaimed mr. ward, "and public spirited. look at the fountain he's going to put up in the square. look at the old grant house going to be fitted up for a library. look at him running for mayor, when he's been turning down chances at bigger offices for years--willing to stay here and serve for the good of the town. there's talk against him more than ever this year. i know that. it amounts to an indignation meeting when the boys get together at halloran's. well, failures hate a successful man, and their talk don't count. it will die down. but i hate to hear of it. for the colonel's put this town on the map. he's not perfect, but who is? and suppose he does have a good time his own way? we've got a right to--all of us. it's a free country." mr. ward delivered this last sentiment with touching faith in its force and freshness, and waved a plump hand of invitation toward the little private office back of the main section of his store, where he had developed his unfailing eloquence of speech upon subjects of public interest, and liked best to practise it. but neil, himself listened to with growing deference by the groups that forgathered there, was not to be lured to that sanctum to-day. speaking hastily and vaguely of work to be done, he escaped from his good friend and across the street to judge saxon's office. he climbed the stairs heavily, and did not linger before the door to picture the sign changed to "saxon, burr, and donovan," as he had done more times than he cared to admit. the office was not a thing to be proud of as a step up in life for him to-day; it was a place to be alone in, as men feel alone and safe in the place that is their own because they have worked there. showing this in every move, neil locked the door, threw off his cap, and dropped into the broken-springed chair at the desk that was nominally theodore burr's, but really his. he groped mechanically for the handle of the drawer where he usually rested his feet, found it hard to open, gave up the attempt and, leaning back without its support, stared at mr. burr's ornate, brass-mounted blotter with unseeing eyes. sitting there, he was no longer the boy who had the privilege of intimate talk with prominent citizens like mr. ward and valued it; or the boy who had laughed at his mother's anxiety so bravely. he was not even the boy that he used to be, sullen, but rebellious, too. to-day for the first time he was something worse, a defeated boy. the long minutes dragged like hours, and he sat through them as he would have sat through hours, silent and motionless, losing run of time and acknowledging defeat. for there was something that this boy wanted, and had always wanted, as he could never want other things, even success or love, as a boy or a man can want one thing only in one lifetime. it was a remote and preposterous dream that he had, a dream that nobody else in green river was foolhardy enough to cherish long, but this boy belonged to the race of poets and dreamers, the race that must sometimes dream true, because it always dreams. his dream had taken different forms: sometimes he saw himself doing desperate things, setting fire to a house that he knew and hated, striking a blow in the dark for which nobody thanked him, but the issue was always the same, and the dream never left him. he was to find green river a new master. he was to save the town. that was his dream. it had never left him till now. he was only a lean, tense boy, crouched over a battered desk and staring out of the window at a country street with absent, beautiful eyes, but he was living through a tragic hour; the terrible hour that poets and dreamers know when they lose hold upon their dreams. measured by minutes, this hour was not long. neil passed a hand across his forehead and sat up, reaching for his cap in a dazed way, for he was not to be permitted to hide longer from his trouble here. the plump and personable figure of mr. theodore burr was crossing the square and disappearing into the door below. his unhurried step climbed the stairs. neil opened the door to him. "hello, stranger. why aren't you at madison?" neil said. "i didn't go," said mr. burr lucidly. "where are you going? i don't want to drive you away from here." "oh, just out. i was going anyway." "you don't invite me. i don't blame you. i'm poor company, and i've got business to attend to here." "no!" "why shouldn't i have business here?" snapped mr. burr. "you should, you should, theodore. say"--the question had been troubling neil subconsciously all the time he sat at the desk--"what's wrong with that lower drawer? i can't open it." "it's locked." "what for?" "that," said mr. burr with dignity, "is my private drawer--for private papers." "papers!" mr. burr's private papers were known to consist chiefly of a file of receipted bills and a larger file of unreceipted bills, both kept with his usual fastidious neatness. "what papers?" "that's my business. i've got some rights here, if i am a figurehead. i've got some privileges." "sure. don't you feel right to-day, theodore?" "that," said mr. burr, "is my business, too." neil stared at his friend. mr. burr was faultlessly groomed, as always, his tie was of the vivid and unique blue that he affected so often, and a very recent close shave had acted upon him as usual, giving him a pink and new-born appearance, but his eyes looked old and tired, as if he had not slept for weeks and had no immediate prospect of sleeping, and there were lines of strain about his weak mouth. he was not himself. even a boy preoccupied with his own troubles could not ignore it. "don't you feel right?" neil said. "don't you want me to do something, theodore?" "yes. get out of here. leave me alone," mr. burr snapped angrily. "sure," said neil soothingly. suddenly mr. burr gripped neil's reluctant, shy, boy's hand, kept it in his for a minute in silence, and then abruptly let it go, pushing neil toward the door. "don't begrudge me one locked drawer when you'll own the whole place some day," he said, with all the dignity that his fretful burst of irritation had lacked. "i'd like to see that day. you're a good boy, donovan." "you're not right. you've got a grouch. come with me and walk it off," neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friend had little more to say. his silence was perhaps the most unusual thing about his behaviour, which was all out of key to-day. neil remembered afterward that just as he closed the door upon mr. burr and his vagaries, shutting them at the same time out of his mind, mr. burr, sitting rather heavily down in the broken-springed desk chair, was bending and stretching out a faultlessly manicured, slightly unsteady hand toward the locked drawer of the desk. neil stepped out into the street with a cautious eye upon the emporium across the way, but no portly form was in sight there now, and no hearty voice hailed him. he crossed the square and turned north, walking quickly, soon leaving the larger houses behind, and then the smaller houses above the railroad track, always climbing gradually as he walked. finally, at the entrance to an overgrown road that led off to his left, and at the highest point of his long and slow ascent, he turned and looked back at the town. the town that colonel everard had put on the map hardly deserved the honour, seen so in a glitter of afternoon light, with the long, sloping hill leading down to it, and the white tower of the church pointing high above it, a cozy huddle of houses at the foot of the hill. it looked unassuming and sheltered and safe, only a group of homes to make a simple and sheltered home in. the boy looked long at it, then turned abruptly and plunged into the road before him. it led straight across a shallow belt of fields and deep into the woods. only a cart-track at first, it soon lost itself here in a path, and the path in turn grew fainter and became a brown, alluring ghost of a path. it was hard to trace, but this was ground that neil knew, a favourite haunt of his, though few other boys ventured to trespass here. the woods were part of the everard estate. neil had found his first may flowers here on the first spring that he was privileged to give them to judith. last year she had helped him look for them here. his errand here was not so pleasant to-day. the brown path did not really lead to the heart of the woods as it seemed to. it was not so long as it looked. it was a fairly direct short cut to the everard house. the boy followed it quickly, with no eyes for the dim lure of the woods to-day. "you've beat me," he muttered once to himself; "i'll have a look at you." soon the woods were not so thick. they fell away around him, carelessly thinned at first, littered with fallen trees and stumps, but nearer the house combed out accurately by the relentless processes of landscape gardening, and looking orderly and empty. the little path vanished entirely here. ahead of neil, through a thin fringe of trees, was the colonel's rose garden; beyond it, the broad stretch of lawn and the house, bulky and towered and tall. neil broke through the trees and stood and looked at it, straight ahead, seen through the frame of the trellised entrance to the garden, upstanding and ugly and arrogant. "you've beat me," he said to the colonel's house. "you've beat me; you and him. i hate you!" his voice had a hollow sound in the empty garden. garden and lawn and house had the same look that the whole deserted town had caught to-day; the look of suddenly empty rooms where much life has been, a breathless strangeness that holds echoes of what has happened there, and even hints of what is to happen; haunted rooms. it is not best to linger there. neil turned uneasily toward the path again. he turned, then he turned back, stood for a tense minute listening, then broke through the rose garden and began to run across the lawn. very faint and small, so that he could not tell whether it was in a man's voice or a woman's, but echoing clearly across the deserted garden, he had heard a scream from the house. it came from the house somewhere, though as neil ran toward it the house still looked tenantless. the veranda was without its usual gay litter of cushions and books and serving trays. at the long windows that opened on it all the curtains were close drawn--or at all but one. as neil reached the house he saw that the middle window was thrown high and the long, pale-coloured curtain was dragged from its rod and dangling over the sill. just then he heard a second scream from the house. it was so choked and faint that he barely heard it. neil ran up the steps and slipped through the open window into the everards' library. little light came through the curtained windows. the green room, sparsely scattered with furniture in summer covers of light chintz that glimmered pale and forbidding, looked twice its unfriendly length in the gloom. there was a heavy, dead scent of too many flowers in the air. on a table across the room a bowl of hothouse hyacinths, just overturned, crushed the flowers with its weight and dripped water into the sodden rug. neil, at the window looking uncertainly into the half-dark room, saw the bowl and the white mass of crushed flowers, and then something else, something that shifted and stirred in a far corner of the room. he saw it dimly at first, a dark, struggling group. there were two men in it. one was a man who had screamed, but he was not screaming now. it would hardly have been convenient for him to scream, for the other, the smaller and slighter man of the two, was clutching him by the throat, gripping it with a hand that he could not shake off as the two figures swayed back and forth. "who's there?" neil cried. nobody answered him. nobody needed to, for just then the two men who seemed to be fighting swung into the narrow strip of light before the uncurtained window and he could see their faces. he could see, too, that they were not fighting now, though they had seemed to be. the bigger man was choked into submission already. no sound came from him and he hung limp and still in the little man's hold. just in the centre of the strip of light the little man relaxed his grip, and let him fall. he dropped to the floor in a limp, untidy looking heap, and lay still there, with the light full on his face, closed eyes and grinning mouth. the man was colonel everard, the man who stood over him was charlie brady. as neil looked brady dropped on his knees beside the colonel, felt for his heart, and found it. he knelt there, motionless, holding his hand pressed over it and peering intently into his face. presently he got to his feet deliberately, gave a deep sigh of entire content with himself, and looked about him. then and not until then he saw neil. he saw him without surprise, if without much pleasure, it appeared. "you're late," he remarked. "you drunken fool," neil began furiously, then stopped, staring at his cousin. whatever the meaning of this exhibition was, charlie was not drunk. the excitement that possessed him was excitement of some other kind. it possessed him entirely, though it was under control for the moment. his muscles twitched with it. his shoulders shifted restlessly. his hands closed and unclosed. his eyes were strangely lit, and there was an absent, exalted look about them. whatever the excitement, it was strong--stronger than charlie. neil, his eyes now used to the half-light, could see no weapon in the room, dropped on the floor or discarded. mr. brady, normally a coward in his cups and out of them, had attacked his enemy with his bare hands. "charlie, what's got you?" neil said. "what's come to you?" "what's come to him, there?" charlie said, in a voice that was changed, too, and was as remote and as strange as his eyes, a low voice, with the deceptive, terrible calm of gathering hysteria about it. "look what's come to him," the voice went on. "don't he deserve it, and worse? how did i find him to-day when i broke in through the window there? at his old tricks again. there was a woman with him in the library there, when he came out to me. he locked the door. she's there now. neil, you'd better get away from here. i don't know what you're doing here, but you'd better go, and go quick." he had given this advice indifferently. he made his next observation indifferently, too, with his furtive, absent eyes on the library door. "i've killed him." "what's got you? are you crazy?" "no--not now. you'd better go. i want to take a look in there first. the key's in the door." "charlie, come back here." the note of command that he was used to responding to in his young cousin's voice reached and controlled mr. brady even now; he obeyed and swung round and stood still, looking at neil. neil's dark eyes, just above the level of his own, and so like them, were unrecognizable now. they were dull with anger, and they were angry with him. "what's the matter?" he quavered. "what's the matter, neil?" between the two cousins, as they stood facing each other, the colonel lay ominously still. the cruel eyes did not open, and the distorted mouth did not change. "look! you can see for yourself. feel his heart," mr. brady offered, but his cousin's dark, disconcerting eyes did not leave his face. "what's the matter, neil? what are you going to do?" "i'm going to make you talk out to me," neil said. "you'll tell me what's got you, and why you did this, which will be the ruin of you and me, too, but first you'll tell me something else. you'll tell me what you've hid from me for a year, you who can tell me the truth when you're drunk and lie out of it when you're sober, till you've worn me out and i'm sick of trying to get the truth from you. i'll be getting it now too late, but i'll get it. have you or have you not been living on this man's money?" "yes." "was it hush money?" "yes," mr. brady said. "neil, i'll tell you everything. you've guessed most of it, but i'll tell you the rest. i can prove it. i can prove everything i know. i did take hush money. it was dirty money, but i didn't care. i didn't care what happened. i didn't care till to-day." "to-day?" "i got--a letter." "go on," neil said. as he spoke mr. brady's face began suddenly to change, lighting again with that strange excitement which had gripped him, revived, and burning through its thin veneer of control. his eyes blazed with it, and his voice shook with it. he waved a trembling hand toward the library door. a sound had come from the library, the faintest of sounds, a low, frightened cry. it was like the ghost of a cry, but he heard. neil heard it, too, and was at the door before him, trying to unlock it, fumbling with the key. "she's there yet," mr. brady cried; "whoever she is. well, she'll be the last of them. i had a letter, i tell you, a letter from maggie. she's coming home, what's left of her--what he's left of her--everard. i never thought he was to blame. i said he was, but i was talked out of it. if i'd thought so, if i'd suspected it, would i have touched a penny of his dirty money? but she's coming home. maggie's coming home." for the moment neil was not concerned with the fact. graver revelations might have passed over him unheeded. the key had turned at last. then neil felt the door being pushed open from inside. he stepped back and waited. the door opened cautiously for an inch or two, then swung suddenly wide. standing motionless, framed in the library door, was judith. chapter nineteen the two cousins, mr. brady shocked into sudden silence, stood with colonel everard's unconscious body behind them, unregarded, like any other bulky and motionless shape in the dim room, and stared at the girl who had come from the locked library. "not you," neil's voice said dully. "not here." but the girl was judith. bare-headed, slender in soft-falling white, she stood in the library door with both hands behind her, clasping her big, limp hat by its flaring brim. her lightly poised, blond head was fluffy with small, escaping curls, her clear-coloured cheeks were warmly flushed, and between her red, slightly parted lips her breath came too quickly, but softly, still. a sheer, torn ruffle trailed from her skirt. one rose-coloured bow hung from her girdle awry and crushed, and looked the softer for that, like a crumpled flower. about her dress and her whole small self there was a drooping and crumpled look. it was the look of a child that has played too hard. surely the most incongruous and pathetic little figure that had ever appeared from a room where a distressed or designing lady was suspected of hiding, she stood and returned neil's look, but there was blank panic in her eyes. they turned from neil to mr. brady, wild eyed and pale beside him, to the disordered room, and back to neil again, with no change of expression at all. they were wide and dilated and dark, intent still on some picture that they held and could not let go. judith came an uncertain step or two forward into the room, stiffly, as if she were walking in her sleep, and stood still. "neil, what did you come here for?" she said. "i'm glad you came." her voice was sweet and expressionless, like her eyes, and though she had called neil by name, she looked at him as if she had never seen him before. one small hand reached out uncertainly, pulled at his sleeve, and then, as he made no move to take it, dropped again, and began to finger the big hat that she held, and pluck at the flowers on it, but her eyes did not leave his face. "will they stand for this?" mr. brady was demanding incoherently behind them, "as young as this? will the town stand it? no. and they won't blame me now. they can't. it was coming to you--you----" he was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to colonel everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of an answer. it was an uncanny proceeding. the girl and boy did not watch it. they were seeing only each other. "judith," neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? what's frightened you so? what you heard out here? that's all that frightened you, isn't it? isn't it? but what made you come here alone like this? didn't you know---- oh, judith----" he stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. there was no answer to them in judith's eyes, only blank fear. as neil looked, the fear in judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and taking possession there. "oh, judith," he whispered miserably. "oh, judith." judith seemed to have heard what he said to her from far away, and to be only faintly puzzled by it, not interested or touched. her eyes kept their secrets under his questioning eyes. they defied him. she was not like his little lost sweet-heart found again, but a stranger and an enemy, one of the people he hated, people who intrigued and lied, but were out of his reach and above him, and were all his enemies. the boy's world was upsetting. nothing that had happened to him in that room or ever had happened to him before had shaken it like that minute of doubt that he lived through in silence, with the strain of it showing in his pale face, and charlie's voice echoing half heard in his ears. he drew back from judith slightly as they stood. he was trembling. judith's face was a blur of white before his eyes, then he could not see it--and then, as suddenly as it had come, his black minute was over. "take me away. i don't want to stay where he is any more. is he dead?" judith said, and she slipped her hand into neil's. judith's voice was as lifeless and strange as before, and the hand in his was cold, but it was judith's own little clinging hand, and the boy's hand closed on it tight. he stood still, feeling it in his, and holding it as if the poor little cold hand could give him back all his strength again. he looked round him at the dim room and its motionless owner and charlie as if he were seeing them clearly for the first time. he was not angry with charlie any longer. he was not angry at all. he drew a deep, sobbing breath of relief, dropped his dark head suddenly and awkwardly toward judith's unresponsive hand and kissed it, and then very gently let it go. "judith, you're you," he said, "just you, no matter what happens, and nothing else matters; nothing in the world, as long as you are you." judith only smiled her faint half smile at him, as if she guessed that some crisis had come and passed, but did not greatly care. "take me away," she repeated patiently. "i thought there'd be other people here. he said so. but i've come here alone before, only he was different to-day. he was different." "don't tell me. i don't want to know. i won't ever ask you again. i never ought to have asked you. it's all right, dear. it's all right." "i didn't know people were like that--anybody, ever. i just didn't know----" "don't, dear," said neil sharply. the small, bewildered voice that held more wonder and pain than her words broke off, but her bewildered eyes still wondered and grieved. neil's arms went out to her suddenly and drew her close, holding her gently, and hiding her small, pathetic face against his shoulder. "don't," he whispered. "i'll take care of you. i'm going to take care of you. nobody's going to hurt you any more." "neil, i just didn't know. i didn't know." "it's all right. i'm going to take you away. just wait, dear. i'm going to take care of you." he spoke to her softly, saying the same thing over and over, as if he were quieting a frightened child. she was quiet in his arms like a frightened and tired child in any arms held out to it. one arm had slipped round his neck and clung to him. she drew long choking breaths as if she were too tired to cry. gradually they stopped, but the arm round his neck only clung tighter. "don't leave me," she whispered. "no, i'm not going to. i'm going to take care of you. you know that, don't you, judith?" "yes. neil?" "yes, dear." "neil." still in his arms, because she felt safe and protected there, judith lifted her head and looked at him, and into her sweet, dazed eyes, full of a terror that she could not understand, came a faint flash of anger. this boy who held her so safe and comforted was her enemy, too. long before the ugly accident of what had happened behind the library doors he had been her enemy, and he was her enemy now, though she needed his protection and took it. their quarrel was not over. "neil, i don't forgive you. i'm never going to forgive you." "all right, dear." "and i hate you. you know that, don't you? i hate you." "yes, dear, i know it. we aren't going to talk about that now. let me go." both arms were round him now. judith let him draw them gently apart and down, and drew back from him. the anger was gone from her eyes. she watched him wide eyed and still, as children watch the incomprehensible activities of grownups, or devoted but jealous dogs watch them. "don't leave me," she said. "you're sweet to me." then she gave a sharp, startled little cry. "neil," she begged, "don't touch him. i don't want you to touch him. what are you going to do?" the light had not had time to dim or shift perceptibly in colonel everard's big room while so much was settling itself for neil and judith. the colonel still lay with the pale shaft of afternoon light on his unconscious face. now the boy was kneeling beside him. he slipped a strong, careful arm under his shoulders, and bent over him, touching him with quick, sure hands. he ignored mr. brady, who stood crying out incoherent protests beside him, and finally put a shaking hand on his shoulder. neil shook it off, and rose and stood facing his cousin. "i thought so," he said, with a short laugh. "you had me going at first, charlie, when i came in here and saw what a pretty picture you made. i believed you. i thought you had killed him. i might have known things like that don't happen in green river." neil put both hands on his cousin's shoulders and looked at him. mr. brady was not an attractive sight at that moment. the excitement that had held and swayed him was leaving him now, and he looked shaken and weak. an unhealthy colour purpled his cheeks, and his sullen eyes glared vindictively, but could not meet neil's eyes. "don't laugh at me," he muttered. "don't you dare to laugh at me." "going to beat me up, too?" his cousin inquired. "poor old charlie! let's hope your friend there will laugh at you when he talks this over with you. he'll come out of this all right, but he'll be in a better temper if he has a doctor here. i'll 'phone for one." "what do you mean? i've killed him. i'm glad i killed him." his cousin laughed again. "killed him? the man's no more dead than you are. you've knocked him out, that's all. but you didn't kill him. is that the 'phone over there?" a desk telephone on a big louis quinze table at one end of the room, the instrument masked by the frilly skirts of a french mannequin, perhaps the only lady who had ever been permitted to be insipid in that room and to stay there long, answered neil's question by ringing faintly, once and again. neil started toward it, but did not reach it. mr. brady had flung himself suddenly upon him in a last burst of feverish strength, which he dissipated recklessly by shrieking out incoherent things, and striking misdirected blows. neil parried them easily, caught his thin arms and held them at his sides. keeping them so, he forced him against the edge of the flimsy table and held him there and looked at him. "you shan't answer that 'phone," mr. brady cried, in a last futile burst of defiance. "you shan't stop me. you shan't interfere. i'll kill him, i tell you, and you shan't answer that 'phone. you shan't----" mr. brady's voice died away, and he was silent under his cousin's eyes. "through?" said neil presently. "yes," he muttered. "do you mean it?" mr. brady nodded sullenly. "you've made a fool of yourself?" mr. brady nodded again. "neil," he got out presently, "i can make it up to you. i haven't been square with you, but i can. i will. you don't know----" "you've done talking enough. will you go now?" "yes." "you'll quiet down and go to mother's and stay there till i come?" "yes." neil let him go. "maybe i'll finish up your friend for you myself, charlie, after you leave here," he offered. "i've thought of it often enough. now i come here and fight for him instead of fighting against him. i fight with you. poor old charlie. murder and sudden death! i tell you, things like that don't happen in green river." neil stopped talking suddenly. the telephone at his elbow had rung again, this time with a sharp, sudden peal, peremptory as an impatient voice speaking. neil caught it up, jerked off the simpering lady by her audacious hat, and answered. at once, strangely intimate and near in that room where the three had been shut in for the last half hour alone and away from the rest of the world while it went on as usual or faster, a man's voice spoke to him. it was almost unrecognizable, so excited and hoarse, but it was luther ward's. "hello," neil said. "hello. yes, this is everards'. no, he can't come to the 'phone. he--what? what's that?" neil stopped and listened breathlessly. mr. brady, slinking head down from the room, turned curiously to stare at him, and judith, slipping across the room like a little white ghost, drew close to him and felt for his hand. neil took her hand, this time with no response of heart or nerves. he had put down the telephone, replacing the receiver mechanically, but luther ward's voice still echoed in his ears. it had spoken to an uncanny accompaniment of half-heard voices, rattling unintelligibly in the room where ward was, the prosaic, tobacco-scented room that neil knew so well. "tell everard to come," ward's voice had said. "he's to come down here, to saxon's office. i'm there now. theodore burr has shot himself. yes, shot himself. he won't live through the night. who's this talking to me? neil donovan, it's you. what are you doing at everard's? never mind. come down here yourself. come straight down. theodore's conscious, and talking, and he's been asking for you." chapter twenty green river was getting ready for the rally in odd fellows' hall. it was six o'clock on the evening of the seventeenth of september, and "grand rally, odd fellows' hall, september seventeenth at eight-thirty," had been featured for weeks in the green river _record_, on the list that with a somewhat arrogant suggestion of prophetic powers possessed by the _record_ was headed "coming events." it was always a scanty list, especially in the fall, when ten, twenty, thirty companies began to play larger centres, and church lawn parties and circuses could no longer appear on it. sometimes not more than six events were to come in a gray and workaday world. but six were enough to announce. even a true prophet is not expected to see all the future, only to see clearly all that he sees, and the _record_ did that. this rally was important enough to be listed all by itself, and it did not need the adjective grand. it was the rally. it was green river's own--a local, almost a family, affair. no out-of-town celebrities were to be imported this time, to be listened to with awe and then wined and dined by the colonel safe from the curious eyes of the town. this time old joe grant was to preside, as he had done as a matter of course on all such occasions when he was the acknowledged head of the town in political and financial matters, in the old days of high-sounding oratory and simpler politics that were gone forever, but were not very long ago. judge saxon, an old timer, too, and better loved than the honourable joe, had declined the honour of presiding, but had the authentic offer of it, his first distinction of the kind for years. it was a local but very important occasion. it was colonel everard's first official appearance as candidate for mayor. it was to be a very modest appearance. no more time was allotted for his speech than for luther ward's. he was putting himself on a level with luther and the judge and the honourable joe and identifying himself at last with local politics. the evening emphasized the great man's condescension in accepting this humble office and honouring green river. even with the scandal of theodore burr's suicide unexplained still and only two weeks old, interest centred on the rally. it was a triumph for the town. green river was almost ready. dugan's orchestra was engaged for the evening, instead of a rival organization from wells, which the colonel often imported upon private and public occasions. jerry dugan was getting old, too, like the judge and the honourable joe. he had not lost the peculiar wail and lilt from his fiddling, but he had made few recent additions to his repertoire. just now the band concert in front of odd fellows' hall was winding up with his old favourite: "a day on the battlefield." it had the old swing still, contagious as ever. loafers in front of the hall shuffled their feet in time to it. moon-struck young persons hanging two by two over the railings of the bridge to gaze at the water straightened themselves and listened. an ambitious soloist lounging against the court-house fence across the square began to whistle it with elaborate variations, at the inspiring moment when "morning in the forest" had bird-called and syncopated itself into silence, and actual fighting, and the martial music of the charge began. high and lilting and shrill, it hung in the still night air, alive for the hour, challenging the echoes of dead tunes that lingered about the square, only to die away and be one with them at last; band music, old-fashioned band music, blatant and empty and splendid, clear through the still night air, attuned to the night and the town. "good old tune. gets into your feet," judge saxon said, while his wife adjusted his tie before the black walnut mirror in their bedroom, but his unusual tribute to the tune was perfunctory to-night, and his wife ignored it, wisely taking this moment of helpfulness to plunge him suddenly and briskly into a series of questions which she had been trying in vain for some time to get the correct answers to. "hugh," she said, "why wouldn't you take the chair to-night?" "you were the only thing i ever tried to take away from joe grant and got away with it, millie," the judge explained gallantly. "don't you think this rally is like old times? don't you want to see the town stand on its own feet again, instead of being run from outside?" "i do, millie." mrs. saxon made her next point triumphantly, connecting it with the point before by some obscure logic known only to ladies. "hugh, a father could not do more for lillian burr than the colonel has since poor theodore went. the house full of flowers, calling there himself every day and twice a day, though she won't see him; but lillian won't see any one. the colonel's been ailing himself, too, but he wouldn't put off the rally and disappoint the town. and the new library will open this fall, and there's talk that he's giving an organ to the church. hugh, don't you think theodore's death may have sobered him? don't you think this may be the beginning of better things? don't you think----" "i think you're making a butterfly bow. i don't like them," said the judge, with the ingenuous smile that somehow closed a subject. she sighed, but changed her attack. "turn round now. i want to brush you. hugh, what has happened to neil donovan?" "what do you mean, happened to him?" snapped the judge, and then added soberly, "i don't know, millie. i wish i did." "an irish boy can get just so far and no farther." "how far, millie?" "don't be flippant, hugh. there's something strange about neil lately. he didn't speak three times at the table last time he came to supper here. he looks at me as if he didn't know who i was when i speak to him on the street sometimes. there's no life in him. he's like charlie and all the rest of them--giving out just when things are going his way; that's an irish boy every time." "when things are going his way? when his best friend has just shot himself?" "i didn't refer to that, hugh," said mrs. saxon with dignity. "no?" "i referred to neil's family affairs, and the fact that colonel everard has taken him up." "maggie home and behaving herself and no questions asked, charlie shipped to wells, and neil going shooting twice with the colonel?" "three times, hugh." "and that's what you call things going his way." "hugh, why should those two spend any time together at all? they hate each other, or i always thought so--that is, if a man like the colonel could hate a boy like neil. what does he want of neil now? what does neil want of him?" "they don't tell me, millie." "but it's queer. it frightens me, hugh. it's as queer as----" "what?" "everything," mrs. saxon said, goaded into an exaggeration foreign to her placid type, "everything, lately. you refusing to preside to-night. lillian burr shutting herself up in this uncanny way. it is uncanny, even if she is in trouble. minna randall taking to church work, and sewing for hours at a time, and taking long drives with her husband. they haven't been inside the colonel's doors for weeks. their second girl told our mary that they have refused five invitations there in the last month. it's my idea that he gave that last stag dinner because he couldn't get minna or edith there, or any woman. why should his own circle turn against him, just when he's doing real good to the town? and it's not only his own circle that's against him. i was matching curtains at ward's when sebastian came in to-day, and luther ward was barely civil to him--the colonel's own secretary. what's wrong with the town, hugh? can't it be grateful to the colonel, now when he really deserves it?" "don't worry about what everard deserves. he's not likely to get it, millie." again the judge was closing the subject, and this time his wife had no more to say. she gave his threadbare, scrupulously pressed coat a final pat and jerk of adjustment, and stood off and looked at him. "you'll do," she said, "now go along. the music's stopping. it won't look well if you're late." she turned off the flickering gas jet above the marble-topped bureau abruptly, but not before the judge had caught the gleam of tears in her eyes. "why girl," he said, and came close to her and slipped an arm round her plump, comfortable waist. "you're really troubled." "yes." "and vexed with me for not helping you." "yes." he had drawn her toward a front window of the big, square room. the judge and his wife stood by it quietly, looking down through a triangle of white, starched curtains at the glimmering, sparsely lit length of street below, and straightening out their difficulties in darkness and silence, as all true lovers should, even lovers at fifty, as these two were fortunate enough to be. "millie, i don't want to tease you," the judge said. "i'll tell you anything you want to know." "i've been so worried," she wept comfortably against his shoulder. "i'm so afraid." "why?" "i feel as if something--anything might happen. i--oh, you'll only laugh. i can't just tell you, hugh." "i'll tell you," said the judge. he hesitated and then went on slowly, speaking more to himself than to her. "women hate change. that makes them dread it, even when it's not coming. you're dreading it, but it's not coming now, dear. there's feeling against everard. you're right, but you exaggerate it. it's instinctive and unformulated. it hasn't gone far and won't go any farther. he won't let it. the rally and the library and this new democracy stuff, stag dinners to ward's crowd and all, are part of a campaign to stop it. the campaign will succeed. everard's own crowd won't quarrel with him. they can't afford to. everard has pulled through worse times than this. i've helped him myself, and i shall help him again. "there'll be no change, millie. things will go on just the way they are. i've lived the best years of my life believing that it was best they should, and if i'm wrong, i'm too old to change my mind. i've said somebody had to own the town, and it might as well be everard. i've said the burrs and kents and randalls, and old joe grant's young wife with their parties and drinks and silly little love affairs, were playing too hard, but doing no real harm, planting their cheap, fake smart set here in green river where it don't belong. now poor theodore burr's dead. that don't look like play. harry randall's so deep in debt to the bank for what everard's let him borrow that he has to stay on there at three thousand a year, though he's been offered twice that in wells. everard won't let him go. and the best i can say about myself in the years i've worked for everard is that i've kept my hands clean, if i have had to keep my eyes shut, but i can say that to you, millie." "it does look like old times down there," he went on softly, after a minute. "the street and the lights are the same. and it sounds like old times. it was from a rally in the hall that i first went home with you, millie. remember? i was just a boy then, but i wish i was half the man i was then, to-night." he heard a murmur of protest, and laughed. "but i do, millie. i--wouldn't be helping everard." "oh, hugh!" "don't worry. everard will pull through all right. look at the randalls over there, starting for the hall. leave your windows open, millie, and you'll soon hear them all cheering for everard. the moon won't rise till late, but it will be full to-night. listen, the band's going into the hall now." the judge rested his cheek for a moment against his wife's soft, smooth hair, the decorous, satisfying caress of a decorous generation, then he raised his head with a long, tired sigh. "i wish i was young," he said. "i wish i was young to-night." * * * * * "i wish i was young," the judge had said, with a thrill and hunger that was the soul of youth itself in his voice. at the moment when he said it, a boy who had the privilege that the judge coveted, and was not enjoying it just then, was leaning against the court-house railing, and watching green river crowd into odd fellows' hall. another boy had pushed his way across the square to his side, and was not heartily welcomed there, but was calmly unconscious of it. "some night, donovan," he remarked. "some night, willard," neil agreed gravely. "going in? good for three hours of hot air?" "i'm not going. no." "good boy. say--" mr. willard nash lowered his voice as he made this daring suggestion--"we'll go around to halloran's, and get into a little game." his invitation was not accepted. "jerry dugan's not dead yet," observed willard presently. strains of a deservedly popular waltz tune, heard from inside the hall, gave faint but unmistakable proof of this. willard kept time with his feet as he listened, paying the tune the tribute of silence, a rare one from him. standing so, the two were sharply contrasted figures, though the flickering lamps in the square threw only faint light here, and showed them darkly outlined against the railing, as they leaned there side by side. pose, carriage, every movement and turn of the head were different, as different as a bulky and overgrown child is from a boy turning into a man. "some night," willard repeated, unanswered, but unchilled by it, "and some crowd." the hall had been filling fast. though the waltz still swung its faint challenge into the night, so much of green river had responded to it already that now it was arriving only by twos and threes. but the groups still followed each other fast under the big globe of light at the entrance door, gayly shaded with red for the occasion, and up the bare, clattering stairs to the floor above, and the hall. willard was right, more right than he knew. there was a crowd up there, a crowd as willard did not understand the word; a crowd with a tone and temper of its own and a personality of its own. it was subject to laws of its own and could think and feel for itself, and its thoughts and feelings were made up of the brain stuff of every person in it, but different from them all. it was a newly created thing, a new factor in the world, and like all crowds it was born for one evening, to live for that evening only, and do its work and die. upstairs behind closed doors, such a crowd was forming; getting ready to think its own thoughts and act and feel, and so many houses, little and big, had emptied themselves to contribute to it, so many family discussions like the saxons' had gone on as a prelude to it, that you might fairly say the crowd up there was green river. willard, watching the late arrivals and commenting upon them to neil, still an uncommunicative audience, was vaguely stirred. "this gets me," he conceded. "there's something about old dugan's music that always gets me. for two cents, i'd go in. i sat through a patent medicine show there last week, because i didn't have the sense to stay away. it always gets me when there is anything doing in the hall. and--" he paused, heavily testing his powers of self-analysis, "it gets me," he brought out at length, "more to-night than it ever did before. it--gets me." "look, there's joe grant," willard went on. "this is his night, all right. look at the bulge to that manuscript case, and the shine to his hair. he mixes varnish with his hair dye, all right. i said, look at him." "i'm looking." "well, you don't do much else. what's eating you to-night? say, will you go in if i will?" an inarticulate murmur answered him. "what's that?" "no." "all right. well, what do you know about that? look there." "i'm looking." the latest comers were crowding hurriedly into the entrance hall by this time, and with them, a slender, heavily veiled figure had slipped quickly through the door and out of sight. "was that lil?" willard said. "lil burr?" "yes." "she wouldn't come here; i don't believe it." "i know it." "how?" "she told me." "what was she doing, talking to you? why, she won't talk to anybody. she----" "you'll be late at hallorans'." "aren't you coming?" "no." "but you said you would. i don't want to go if you don't. i don't half like to leave you here, you act so queer to-night. what makes you act so? what's eating----" "nothing." willard detached himself from the railings and regarded his friend, suddenly breathless with surprise, and deeply grieved. nothing. the word, harmless in itself, had been spoken so that it hit him like an actual blow, straight from the shoulder. neil, shifting so that the light showed his face, was returning his look with the sudden, unreasoning anger that we feel toward little sounds that beat their slow way into our consciousness at night, to irritate us unendurably at last. "go," he urged, "go along to halloran's. go anywhere." "well, what do you know about that?" began willard, offended, and then forgave him. there was a look in neil's pale face that commanded forgiveness. it was pale and strained with a trouble that had nothing to do with willard, and willard was respectful and inarticulate before it. "that's all right," willard muttered, "that will be all right. i'll go." neil took no notice of this promise. up in the hall the waltz had swelled to a high, light-hearted climax, heady and strained, like the sudden excitements that sweep a crowd. it came clear through the open windows, making one last appeal to the boy below to come up and be part of what was there. and just then a small closed car swept down through the empty square and stopped. two men stepped out, and paused in the doorway under the red-shaded light. one was the colonel's secretary, waiting on the step beyond range of the light, a tall, shadowy figure, and the other, who stood with the light on his face, was colonel everard. he was still pale from his week of illness, but his keen eyes and clear-cut profile were more effective for that. he stood listening to the sounds from upstairs, and he smiled as he listened. he turned at last and looked out across the square as if he could feel neil's eyes upon him and were returning their look, and then turned away and disappeared up the stairs. "neil," willard was announcing uneasily, "i think a lot of you. i'd do a lot for you. if you're in wrong, any way, if----" willard broke off, rebuffed. neil did not even look at him. he stood staring at the lighted doorway where the colonel had stood and smiled, as if he could still see him there. he was a creature beyond willard's world, as he looked, but unaccountably fascinating to willard. willard regarded him in awed silence. now dugan's music had stopped. some one above shut a window with a clatter that echoed disproportionately loud. then there was silence up there, tense silence, and the call of the silence was harder to resist than the music. the boy by the court-house railing could not resist it. he pushed away willard's detaining hand, and without a word to him or another glance at him, was across the square and through the red-lighted door, and running up the stairs. "what do you know about that?" willard demanded, in vain. "what do you know----" willard, certainly, knew nothing, and gave up the attempt to understand, with a sigh. a little later the vantage point of the court-house fence was unoccupied. of the two boys who had occupied it, one was making a belated and rather disconsolate way toward halloran's--the one who would be boasting to-morrow that he had spent the last fifteen minutes with neil donovan. the other boy stood listening outside the closed doors of the hall. * * * * * it was half an hour later and it had been an important half-hour in odd fellows' hall, that uneventful but vital time when the newly made creature that is the crowd is passive, gathering its forces slowly, getting ready to fling the weight of them into one side of a balance irrevocably, if it has decisions to make; the most important half-hour of the evening if you were interested in the psychology of crowds. the honourable joe grant was not. he would have said that the first speech dragged and the half-hour had been dull. dull or significant, that half-hour was over, and green river was waking up. in the listening hush of the hall the big moments of the evening, whatever they were to be, were creeping nearer and nearer. now they were almost here. the honourable joe had just introduced luther ward and heavily resumed his seat. he sat portly and erect and entirely happy behind the thin-legged, inadequate looking table that held a water pitcher, his important looking papers, and his watch. the ornately chased gold watch that had measured so many epoch-making hours for green river was in public life again, like the honourable joe. he fingered it affectionately, wiped his forehead delicately from time to time with a purple silk handkerchief, followed mr. ward's remarks with unwavering brown eyes, and smiled his benevolent, public-spirited smile. this was his night indeed. behind the honourable joe, on the stage in a semicircular row of chairs were the speakers of the evening, and before him was green river. the badly proportioned little hall was not at its best to-night. it was too brightly lit and the footlights threw an uncompromising glare upon the tiny stage. red, white, and blue cheesecloth in crude, sharp colouring draped windows and stage, making gay little splashes of colour that emphasized the dinginess of the room. only the grand army flag, borrowed and draped elaborately above the stage, showed faded and thin against the brightness of the cheesecloth, but kept its dignity and kept up its claim to homage still. and the ugliness of the room was a thing to be discounted and forgotten, like some beautiful, full-blooded woman's tawdry, and ill-chosen clothes, because this room held green river. green river, filling the little room to over-flowing, standing in the rear of the room, crowding every available inch of space on benches, window sills, and an emergency supply of camp chairs, impressive as that much sheer bulk of humanity, crowded between four walls, becomes impressive, and impressive in its own right, too; green river represented as it was, with all the warring, unreconciled elements that made the town. for they were all here, paddy lane, and the everard circle, and the intermediate stages of society, the gaynors and other prosperous farmers and unprosperous farmers and their wives, from the outskirts of the town, and citizens a cut above them both, like the wards, were all represented here. mrs. kent, hatless and evening coated, was elbowed by a lady from paddy lane, hatless because she had no presentable hat, and wearing a ragged shawl. these two were side by side, and they had the same look on their faces. there was something of it now on every face in the room. it was a look of listening and waiting. it was on every face, and it grew more intense every minute that luther ward's speech droned on, though it was only a dry, illogical rehash of political issues that could not have called that look into any face. it was as if the audience listened eagerly through it because every word of it was bringing them nearer to something that was to follow. what was it? what did green river want? what was it waiting for? green river itself did not know, but it was very near. perhaps it was coming now. this might well be the climax of the evening. no more important event was scheduled. luther ward, looking discontented with his performance, but relieved to complete it, had sunk into his chair to a scattered echoing of applause, and the next speaker was colonel everard. the honourable joe was rising to introduce him. the little introductory speech was a masterpiece, for, though the colonel had edited every word of it, it was still in the honourable joe's best style, flowery and sprinkled with quotations. "i will not say more," it concluded magnificently, "of one whose life and work among you can best speak for itself, and who will speak for himself now, in his own person. i present to you the republican candidate for mayor, colonel everard." and now the honourable joe had bowed and smiled himself into his seat, and the great man was on his feet, and coming forward to the centre of the stage. the first real applause of the evening greeted him, not very hearty or sustained, but prompt at least. he looked like a very great man indeed, as he stood acknowledging it, his most effective self, a strong man, though so lightly built, erect and pliant of carriage, a man with infinite reserves of power and dignity. he was smiling, and his smile was the same that the boy by the court-house fence had seen, a tantalizing smile of assurance and charm and power, as if he were master of himself and the town. this was his moment, planned for and led up to for weeks, but colonel everard was slow to take advantage of it. he stood still, with his eyes toward the rear of the hall. as he stood so, heads here and there turned and looked where he was looking. presently all green river saw what the colonel saw. a boy was pushing his way toward the front of the hall--a boy who had slipped quietly inside the doors unnoticed fifteen minutes before, and came forward now just as quietly, but held their eyes as he came. now he had reached the stage, and he broke through the barrier of goldenrod that fenced the short flight of steps, crushing the flowers under his feet, and now he was on the stage confronting colonel everard. it was neil donovan. "sit down," he said to the great man. "they're not going to listen to you. they're going to listen to me." after that he did not wait to see if the great man took his amazing advice. he came forward alone, and spoke to green river. he was not an imposing figure as he stood there, only a lean, eager boy, with dark, flashing eyes, and a face that was very pale in the glare of the footlights. he hardly raised his tense, low-pitched voice as he spoke, but green river heard. "you're going to listen to me." and it was true. green river was going to listen. in the middle of the hall, where the chief delegation from paddy lane was massed, a ripple of excitement promised the boy support. it was seconded by a muttering and shuffling of feet on the rear benches, devoted to the youth of the town. from here and there in the hall there were murmurs of protest, too, dying out one by one, and ceasing automatically, like the whispered consultation that went on behind him on the stage. but the boy did not wait for support or regard interruptions. he did not need to. the audience was his in spite of them, and he knew it and they knew it. whatever he had to say, important or not, it was what they had been waiting for; that was what the evening had been leading to, and it was here at last. pale and intent, the boy looked across the footlights at green river. the audience was his, but he had no pride in the triumph. he began haltingly to speak. "it will do no good to you or me, but you're going to listen. i've got a word to say about everard. "he's sucked your town dry for years and you know it. he's had the pick of your men and used their brains and their youth, and he's had the pick of your women. if there are any of you here that he's got no hold on, it's because you're worth nothing to him. he's got the town. now he's driven one of your boys to his death. "'i can't beat him.' that's what theodore burr said to me the night he died. 'they won't blame him for this. i want to die because i don't want to live in the world with him, but i'll do no harm to him by dying, only to lily and me. they won't blame him. you can't beat everard.' "well, you don't blame everard. he's got you where you don't blame him, whatever he does. you shut your eyes to it. he's got you. you know all this and you shut your eyes. now i'll tell you some things you don't know. everard's been trying for weeks to bribe me to keep my mouth shut, like he bribed charlie for years. he might have saved his breath and his money. i can't hurt him, whether i keep my mouth shut or not. you won't blame him. you'll let him get away with this, too. but you're going to know." the boy came closer still to the footlights and leaned across them, pausing and deliberately choosing his words. the pause, and the look in his dark, intent eyes as he stood there challenged green river and dared it to interrupt him. but it was too late to interrupt, too late to stop him now. and behind him in the place of honour in the centre of the row of chairs on the stage, one man at least was powerless to stop him: colonel everard, who listened with a set smile on his lips, and a set stare in his eyes. "he's the man that broke maggie brady's life to pieces," neil's low voice went on. "everard's the man. he got her away from town. he filled her head with him and set her wild and she had to go. when he was tired of her, he left her in a place he thought she'd be too proud to come back from. she was proud, but he's broken her pride, and she crawled back to us. the prettiest girl in the town, she was, and you all knew that, and my sister and more to me----" he broke off abruptly, and laughed a dry little laugh that echoed strangely in the silent room. his voice sounded dry and hard as he went on. "he broke maggie's life, but what's that to you, that give him a chance at your women, knowing well what he is, and leave them to take care of themselves with him, your own women that are yours to take care of, daughters and wives? it's nothing to you, but you're going to know it, and you're going to know this. i had it straight from theodore burr the night he died. "everard's going to sell you out at the next election, the whole of you--his own crowd, too. he's been planning it for months. he's worked prohibition for all it's worth to him; worked for it till the state went dry, and then he's made money for you that are in it with him, and more for himself, protecting places like halloran's that sell liquor on the quiet, and the smuggling of liquor into the state. well, he's made money enough that way, and it's getting risky, and now he sees a way to make more and let nobody in on it. he's going to sell out to the liquor interests and work against prohibition, and the big card he'll use will be exposing halloran's and the secret traffic in liquor, and all the crowd that's been buying protection from him. there's a big campaign started already, and big money being spent. there'll be big money in it for him. there'll be arrests made here and a public scandal. he's going to sell the town. "maybe that interests you some. maybe it gets you. it won't for long. he'll crawl out of it and lie out of it and talk you and buy you back to him. well, i know one thing more, and he can't lie or crawl out of it. my father could have put him behind bars any time in twenty years. he's a common thief. "it was when he was seventeen, and studying law first, back in a town up state that's not on the map or likely to get there, and he was called by a name there that wasn't everard. he was seventeen, but he was the same then as now; he had the same will to get on and the power to, no matter who he trampled on to get there, and the same charm that got men and women both, though they didn't trust him--got them even when he was trampling on them and they knew it. it got him into trouble there with two girls at once. one was the girl that gave him his start, the chance to go into her uncle's office. he was the biggest man in the town. older than everard, this girl was, and teaching in the school he went to, when she fell in love with him and brought him home to her town and gave him his chance. he was tired of her, and she was where it was bound to come out soon how things were with them, and so was the other girl, a girl that he wasn't tired of, the daughter of the woman where he boarded. he tried to get her to go away with him. she wouldn't go and she wouldn't forgive him, but the town was getting too hot for him, and he had to go. "he had to go quick and make a clean getaway and he wanted a real start this time. he had to have money. that was a dead little town. there was only one place he could get money enough, in the little hotel there. it was the only bank they had. the keeper of it used to cash checks and make loans. everard was lucky, the same then as now. there was almost five thousand dollars in the safe in the hotel office the night he broke into it, and that was enough for him. he had a fight with the hotel clerk, but he got away with the money, and he got away from the town. "the clerk was his best friend in town--never trusted him, but fell for him the same as the girls and lent him money and listened to his troubles--and fell for him again when he ran across him again, years later, here in green river. everard told him he'd sent the money back, and he kept the secret. he never took hush money for it like charlie. he said everard ought to have his chance, and was straight now. but he fell for everard again, that's what happened. everard had him, the same as the rest of you. "the clerk was my father." the boy's voice broke off. there was dead silence in the hall. green river had been listening almost in silence, and did not break it now. presently the boy sighed, shrugged his thin shoulders as if they were throwing off an actual weight, and spoke again, this time in a lifeless voice, with all the colour and drama wiped out of it, a voice that was very tired. "that's all," he said. "that's back of him, with his fine airs and his far-reaching schemes and his big name in the state. you've stood for a crook. will you stand for a common criminal, a common thief? now you know and it's up to you. that's all." * * * * * an hour later a boy was hurrying through the dark along the road to the falls. he was almost home. green river lay far behind with its scattered, sparsely strewn lights. the flat fields around him and the unshaded road before him, so bleak by day, were beautiful to-night, far reaching and mysterious. above them, flat looking and unreal, remote in a coldly clouded sky, hung the yellow september moon. "i've done for myself," the boy was saying half out loud, as if the faraway moon could hear. "i've lost everything now. i've done for myself." the boy was sure of this, but could have told little more about the events of the evening. he remembered listening outside the hall doors until he was drawn inside in spite of himself, and listening there until something snapped in his brain, and suddenly the long days of repression, of vainly wondering what to do with his hard-won knowledge, were over, and he was pouring it all out in one jumbled burst of speech. he had no plan and no hope of doing harm to his enemy by speaking. he had to speak. after he had spoken he remembered getting down from the stage and out of the hall somehow. he remembered the crushed goldenrod, slippery under his feet. against a background of blurred, unrecognizable faces, he remembered a tall, black-garbed figure that rose to its feet swaying and then steadying itself. it was lilian burr. less clearly he remembered a wave of sound from the hall that followed him as he hurried away across the square. it was not like applause. he did not know or care what it meant. after that, he remembered only the cool dark of the september night as he walked through it aimlessly at first, and then turned toward home. "i've lost everything," he had said, and it must be true. how could he face the judge again? how could he go on living in green river? this was what all his long-cherished dreams had come to; a scene that charlie might have made, and disgrace in the eyes of the town. he had lost everything. yet strangely, as he said it, he knew that it was not true. whatever he had lost, he had better things left. he had those free and splendid minutes of speaking out his heart. they could not be taken from him. the freedom and relief of them was with him still. and he had the road firm under his feet, and the clean air blowing the fever out of his brain, and the strength of his own young body, clean strength, good to feel as he walked through the night. and along the dark road before him, familiar as it was, and worn so many times by discouraged feet, the white track of moonlight beckoned him, clean and new. it was a way that might lead anywhere--to fairy-land, to success, to the end of the world. now the boy made the turn in the road that brought him within sight of home. faint lights twinkling from it, intimate and warm, invited him as never before. was his mother waiting up for him? home itself, lighted and intimate and safe, was enough to find waiting. his heart gave a strange little leap that hurt, but was keen pleasure, too. almost running, he covered the last bit of road, crossed the grassy front yard and then climbed the creaking front steps, and stood for a minute that was unendurably long, fumbling with the door. the door was unlocked and gave suddenly, opening wide, and he stood on the threshold of the kitchen. the lights he had seen were in the sitting-room beyond. in this room there was only moonlight. it came through the window that looked out on the marshy field, the fairies' field. surely there must be fairies there to-night, out in the empty green spaces, flooded with moonlight. but the fairies were not all in the field, there was one in the room. neil could see it. the old rocking chair stood in the moonlit window. it was holding two, his mother, and some one else--the fairy, golden haired and white robed and slender, and close in his mother's arms. as he stood and wondered and looked, a board creaked under his feet. it was the faintest of sounds, but a fairy's ears are keen, and the fairy heard, and stirred, and turned in his mother's arms. now neil could see her face. it was flushed and human and warm, and in her eyes, opening grave and deep, was a look that was the shyest but surest of welcomes. the welcome was all for neil, and the fairy was judith. chapter twenty-one a boy and a girl sat on the doorsteps of the randall house. it was almost a year since the night of the rally. it was an evening in late may--late, but it was may, and the fairies' month still. there was a pleasant, shivery chill in the air. a far sprinkling of stars made the dark of the still, windless night look darker and warmer and safer to whisper in. the big horse-chestnut tree at the corner of the syringa hedge was only a darker blot against the surrounding dark, and the slope of faintly lit street on the other side of the hedge looked far away, with the dark sweep of lawn between. it was a night for the fairies, or for the girl and boy, and that was quite as it should be, for it was their first together for months. judith and neil sat discreetly erect on the steps, undoing what those months apart had done with little bursts of shy speech, and long, shy silences that helped them more. in the longest and shyest silence their hands had groped for each other once, met as if they had never touched before, and clung together for a minute as if they never meant to let go, but judith kept firmly to impersonal subjects still. "you did it all," she said. "things do happen so fast when they happen. just think, this time last year he was like a king!" "everard?" "yes. do you remember how i used to be cross when you called him that, and wouldn't say colonel? how childish that was!" judith patronized her dead self, as a young lady may, with her twentieth birthday almost upon her. "you weren't childish." "what was i?" "just what you are now." "what's that?" "wonderful." neil chose his one adequate word, from the tiny vocabulary of youth, small because few words are worthy to voice the infinite dreams of it. "wonderful." "no, i'm not wonderful. you are. that dreadful old man, and every one knew he was dreadful and wouldn't do anything about it till you----" "bawled him out? that's all i did, you know, really. it was a kid's trick. he lost out because it was coming to him anyway. poor theodore saw to that. he turned the town against everard when he killed himself. it wasn't turning fast, but it was turning. i did give it a shove and make it turn faster, but i didn't even have sense enough to know i had until the day after the rally, when the judge sent for me and told me. i didn't dare go near him until he sent for me, and i thought he had sent for me to fire me." "but you broke up the rally. they were dead still in the hall until you left, and then they went crazy, calling for you, and all talking at once, talking against you, some of them, till it really wasn't a rally any more, but just like a mob. oh, i know. the judge tells me, every time i go to ride with him, and when he came on to the school last winter and saw me there, he told me all over again. father has never half told me. he hates to talk about the rally or the colonel either, but i don't care, he and mother are both so sweet to me lately--just sweet. "so it was just like a mob, and then poor mrs. burr got up and tried to speak, and they got quiet and listened, and she said "every word the boy says is true and more--more----" just like that, and then she got faint and had to stop, and then the judge took hold. that's what he says he did, took hold, and he says it was time, because they might have tarred and feathered the colonel if he hadn't. i don't suppose they would, but i wish i could have seen the judge take hold. i love him." "don't you love anybody else?" judith ignored this frivolous interruption, as it deserved. "and so your work was done, though you didn't know it and ran away. and the judge says you are a born orator, neil. that you've got the real gift, the thing that makes an audience yours. i don't know just what he means, but i know you've got it, too. you're going to be a great man, neil." "i didn't do anything." "you're the only man in town who thinks that, then, or has since that night. he--everard--was done for the minute you stepped on the stage, the judge says. only they managed it decently, the judge and the few that kept their heads. they announced that colonel everard was indisposed and couldn't speak, and the judge took him home. he really was ill next day. there's something wrong with his horrid heart. and that gave him a good excuse not to run for mayor, he gave that up himself. and in a few days the judge and luther ward went to him and told him what else he had to do, and he did it. he had to resign from everything, everything he was in charge of or was trustee of, or had anything to do with, and get out of town. if he'd do that, they wouldn't make any scandal or bother him afterward, but let him start new. and they gave him six months to do all that decently and save his face. why did he have to do it decently? why couldn't they tar and feather him? i wish they had. i wish----" "wish something else, judith. something about us." "what do you mean by us?" "you and me." "isn't it splendid the judge is going to be president of the bank?" said judith hastily. "splendid," said a future president of the green river bank, who was occupying the step beside her. "and isn't it nice that poor mrs. burr is going to marry mr. sebastian, even if she does have to move away from green river? i like people to be happy, don't you?" "no. no, i don't. not other people. i don't care whether they are happy or not, and i don't want to talk about them, only about you and me." "if you don't like the way i talk, i'll keep still," judith said, in a severe but small voice, but a small hand groping for his softened the threat, and a soft, sudden laugh as his arm slipped round her atoned for it entirely. then there was silence on the steps, a long, whispering, wonderful silence. long before judith spoke again all the work of the lonely months was undone. and the low whispers that the two exchanged conveyed no further information about colonel everard. but there was no more to tell. the master of green river was master no longer and the end of all the intricate planning and scheming that had made and kept him master was a story that judith could tell in a few careless sentences and forget. if she had seen and guessed some things that she could not forget, in the strange little circle that had found a place for her, she would never see them again. that order was gone from the town forever, with the man who had created it, and beside her on the steps was the boy who could make her forget it, and see beyond the long, hard years between. and, as she almost could guess, in these magic minutes when she could dream and dream true, that boy was the future master of green river. judith sighed, and stirred in his arms. "are you happier now?" she whispered. "yes." "but you're going to be great. you are, really." "i am if you want me to. judith, how long does your father think you and i ought to wait?" "i don't know. you can ask him. he likes you better than me. he always wanted me to be a boy.... neil, i want to tell you something. keep your arm like that, but don't look at me." "why?" "it's about what you don't like me to talk about." "everard?" "yes, and it's about something dreadful, that day in his library when i was alone with him, and you came. he--frightened me." "never mind, dear, now." "he frightened me but that was--all. i wasn't hurt or anything. i just didn't know he--anybody--could look the way he was looking, or act the way he was acting, and then i felt sick all over. i was afraid. but he was just trying to kiss me, of course, and i wasn't going to let him, the horrid old man. so i think now it was silly to be frightened. was it?" "no, it wasn't silly, dear." "i'm glad. and neil--i want to tell you something else. it's about--that night--in the buggy, on the old road to wells, you know, when you were going to elope with me and changed your mind." "when i frightened you so. oh, judith." "you didn't--frighten me," said a very small voice indeed. "you----" "what, dear?" "made me want you--want to go away with you. i never felt like that before, all waked up and different and--happy. oh, you didn't frighten me. i wasn't angry because you tried to take me away. it was because you brought me back." "don't you know why i brought you back?" "no." "why, because i loved you. i didn't love you till then, not really; not till that minute in the carriage. i know just what minute. when you let me kiss you, and didn't mind any more. then i knew about--love. i never knew before, but i'll never forget again. it isn't just wanting people, it's taking care of them, and not hurting them. waiting till you can have things--right. so i wanted to have you right and be fit for you, and after that night i went to work and i wouldn't be stopped, not by anything in this town or the world. oh, judith, why don't you speak to me? it isn't much use to talk. you don't understand." "i--do." "you're crying!" she was crying, and she did understand. before this unexpected, beautiful proof of it, the boy was reverent and half ashamed, as if a woman's tears were a sacred miracle invented for him. he held her hand timidly and pressed it. presently she drew it away, and suddenly she was not crying, but laughing, a low, full-throated laugh as wonderful to him as her tears. "i told you, you did it all," she said softly. "well, you didn't. neil, there's what did it all. because, if you only go on believing in things and being sweet and true and not afraid, and--wishing, then everything will come right. it's got to, just because you want it to. so there's what did it all and made us so happy, you and me. i love it. love it, neil." neil looked where judith was looking. above the horse-chestnut tree, so filmy and faint that the stars looked brighter than ever, so pale that it was not akin to the stars, but to the dark beyond, where adventures were, so friendly and sweet that it could make the wish in your heart come true, hung a new-risen silvery crescent of light. "but it's only the moon," neil said. "it's--the wishing moon," said judith. * * * * * transcriber's note: minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. some illustrations have been relocated for better flow. the lost child by françois edouard joachim coppée translated by j. matthewman copyright, , by the current literature publishing company. on that morning, which was the morning before christmas, two important events happened simultaneously--the sun rose, and so did m. jean-baptiste godefroy. unquestionably the sun, illuminating suddenly the whole of paris with its morning rays, is an old friend regarded with affection by everybody, it is particularly welcome after a fortnight of misty atmosphere and gray skies, when the wind has cleared the air and allowed the sun's rays to reach the earth again. besides all of which the sun is a person of importance. formerly, he was regarded as a god, and was called osiris, apollyon, and i don't know what else. but do not imagine that because the sun is so important he is of greater influence than m. jean-baptiste godefroy, millionaire banker, director of the _comptoir général de crédit_, administrator of several big companies, deputy and member of the general counsel of the eure, officer of the legion of honor, etc., etc. and whatever opinion the sun may have about himself, he certainly has not a higher opinion than m. jean-baptiste godefroy has of _him_self. so we are authorized to state, and we consider ourselves justified in stating, that on the morning in question, at about a quarter to eight, the sun and m. jean-baptiste godefroy rose. certainly the manner of rising of these two great powers mentioned was not the same. the good old sun began by doing a great many pretty actions. as the sleet had, during the night, covered the bare branches of the trees in the boulevard malesherbes, where the _hôtel_ godefroy is situated, with a powdered coating, the great magician sun amused himself by transforming the branches into great bouquets of red coral. at the same time he scattered his rays impartially on those poor passers-by whom necessity sent out, so early in the morning, to gain their daily bread, he even had a smile for the poor clerk, who, in a thin overcoat, was hurrying to his office, as well as for the _grisette_, shivering under her thin, insufficient clothing; for the workman carrying half a loaf under his arm, for the car-conductor as he punched the tickets, and for the dealer in roast chestnuts, who was roasting his first panful. in short, the sun gave pleasure to everybody in the world. m. jean-baptiste godefroy, on the contrary, rose in quite a different frame of mind. on the previous evening he had dined with the minister for agriculture. the dinner, from the removal of the _potage_ to the salad, bristled with truffles, and the banker's stomach, aged forty-seven years, experienced the burning and biting of pyrosis. so the manner in which m. jean-baptiste godefroy rang for his valet-de-chambre was so expressive that, as he got some warm water for his master's shaving, charles said to the kitchen-maid: "there he goes! the monkey is barbarously ill-tempered again this morning. my poor gertrude, we're going to have a miserable day." whereupon, walking on tiptoe, with eyes modestly cast down, he entered the chamber of his master, opened the curtains, lit the fire, and made all the necessary preparations for the toilet with the discreet demeanor and respectful gestures of a sacristan placing the sacred vessels on the altar for the priest. "what sort of weather this morning?" demanded m. godefroy curtly, as he buttoned his undervest of gray swandown upon a stomach that was already a little too prominent. "very cold, sir," replied charles meekly. "at six o'clock the thermometer marked seven degrees above zero. but, as you will see, sir, the sky is quite clear, and i think we are going to have a fine morning." in stropping his razor, m. godefroy approached the window, drew aside one of the hangings, looked on the boulevard, which was bathed in brightness, and made a slight grimace which bore some resemblance to a smile. it is all very well to be perfectly stiff and correct, and to know that it is bad taste to show feeling of any kind in the presence of domestics, but the appearance of the roguish sun in the middle of december sends such a glow of warmth to the heart that it is impossible to disguise the fact. so m. godefroy deigned, as before observed, to smile. if some one had whispered to the opulent banker that his smile had anything in common with that of the printer's boy, who was enjoying himself by making a slide on the pavement, m. godefroy would have been highly incensed. but it really was so all the same; and during the space of one minute this man who was so occupied by business matters, this leading light in the financial and political worlds, indulged in the childish pastime of watching the passers-by, and following with his eyes the files of conveyances as they gaily rolled in the sunshine. but pray do not be alarmed. such a weakness could not last long. people of no account, and those who have nothing to do, may be able to let their time slip by in doing nothing. it is very well for women, children, poets, and riffraff. m. godefroy had other fish to fry; and the work of the day which was commencing promised to be exceptionally heavy. from half-past eight to ten o'clock he had a meeting at his office with a certain number of gentlemen, all of whom bore a striking resemblance to m. godefroy. like him, they were very nervous; they had risen with the sun, they were all _blasés_, and they all had the same object in view--to gain money. after breakfast (which he took after the meeting), m. godefroy had to leap into his carriage and rush to the bourse, to exchange a few words with other gentlemen who had also risen at dawn, but who had not the least spark of imagination among them. (the conversations were always on the same subject--money.) from there, without losing an instant, m. godefroy went to preside over another meeting of acquaintances entirely void of compassion and tenderness. the meeting was held round a baize-covered table, which was strewn with heaps of papers and well provided with ink-wells. the conversation again turned on money, and various methods of gaining it. after the aforesaid meeting he, in his capacity of deputy, had to appear before several commissions (always held in rooms where there were baize-covered tables and ink-wells and heaps of papers). there he found men as devoid of sentiment as he was, all utterly incapable of neglecting any occasion of gaining money, but who, nevertheless, had the extreme goodness to sacrifice several hours of the afternoon to the glory of france. after having quickly shaved he donned a morning suit, the elegant cut and finish of which showed that the old beau of nearly fifty had not ceased trying to please. when he shaved he spared the narrow strip of pepper-and-salt beard round his chin, as it gave him the air of a trust-worthy family man in the eyes of the arrogants and of fools in general. then he descended to his cabinet, where he received the file of men who were entirely occupied by one thought--that of augmenting their capital. these gentlemen discussed several projected enterprises, all of them of considerable importance, notably that of a new railroad to be laid across a wild desert. another scheme was for the founding of monster works in the environs of paris, another of a mine to be worked in one of the south american republics. it goes without saying that no one asked if the railway would have passengers or goods to carry, or if the proposed works should manufacture cotton nightcaps or distil whisky; whether the mine was to be of virgin gold or of second-rate copper: certainly not. the conversation of m. godefroy's morning callers turned exclusively upon the profits which it would be possible to realize during the week which should follow the issue of the shares. they discussed particularly the values of the shares, which they knew would be destined before long to be worth less than the paper on which they were printed in fine style. these conversations, bristling with figures, lasted till ten o'clock precisely, and then the director of the _comptoir général de crédit_, who, by the way, was an honest man--at least, as honest as is to be found in business--courteously conducted his last visitor to the head of the stairway. the visitor named was an old villain, as rich as croesus, who, by a not uncommon chance, enjoyed the general esteem of the public; whereas, had justice been done to him, he would have been lodging at the expense of the state in one of those large establishments provided by a thoughtful government for smaller delinquents; and there he would have pursued a useful and healthy calling for a lengthy period, the exact length having been fixed by the judges of the supreme court. but m. godefroy showed him out relentlessly, notwithstanding his importance--it was absolutely necessary to be at the bourse at o'clock--and went into the dining-room. it was a luxuriously furnished room. the furniture and plate would have served to endow a cathedral. nevertheless, notwithstanding that m. godefroy took a gulp of bicarbonate of soda, his indigestion refused to subside, consequently the banker could only take the scantiest breakfast--that of a dyspeptic. in the midst of such luxury, and under the eye of a well-paid butler, m. godefroy could only eat a couple of boiled eggs and nibble a little mutton chop. the man of money trifled with dessert--took only a crumb of roquefort--not more than two cents' worth. then the door opened and an overdressed but charming little child--young raoul, four years old--the son of the company director, entered the room, accompanied by his german nursery governess. this event occurred every day at the same hour--a quarter to eleven, precisely, while the carriage which was to take the banker to the bourse was awaiting the gentleman who had only a quarter of an hour to give to paternal sentiment. it was not that he did not love his son. he did love him--nay, he adored him, in his own particular way. but then, you know, business _is_ business. at the age of forty-two, when already worldly-wise and _blasé_, he had fancied himself in love with the daughter of one of his club friends--marquis de neufontaine, an old rascal--a nobleman, but one whose card-playing was more than open to suspicion, and who would have been expelled from the club more than once but for the influence of m. godefroy, the nobleman was only too happy to become the father-in-law of a man who would pay his debts, and without any scruples he handed over his daughter--a simple and ingenuous child of seventeen, who was taken from a convent to be married--to the worldly banker. the girl was certainly sweet and pretty, but she had no dowry except numerous aristocratic prejudices and romantic illusions, and her father thought he was fortunate in getting rid of her on such favorable terms. m. godefroy, who was the son of an avowed old miser of andelys, had always remained a man of the people, and intensely vulgar. in spite of his improved circumstances, he had not improved. his entire lack of tact and refinement was painful to his young wife, whose tenderest feelings he ruthlessly and thoughtlessly trampled upon. things were looking unpromising, when, happily for her, madame godefroy died in giving birth to her firstborn. when he spoke of his deceased wife, the banker waxed poetical, although had she lived they would have been divorced in six months. his son he loved dearly for several reasons--first, because the child was an only son; secondly, because he was a scion of two such houses as godefroy and neufontaine; finally, because the man of money had naturally great respect for the heir to many millions. so the youngster had golden rattles and other similar toys, and was brought up like a young dauphin. but his father, overwhelmed with business worries, could never give the child more than fifteen minutes per day of his precious time--and, as on the day mentioned, it was always during "cheese"--and for the rest of the day the father abandoned the child to the care of the servants. "good morning, raoul." "good morning, papa." and the company director, having put his serviette away, sat young raoul on his left knee, took the child's head between his big paws, and in stroking and kissing it actually forgot all his money matters and even his note of the afternoon, which was of great importance to him, as by it he could gain quite an important amount of patronage. "papa," said little raoul suddenly, "will father christmas put anything in my shoe tonight?" the father answered with "yes, if you are a good child." this was very striking from a man who was a pronounced freethinker, who always applauded every anti-clerical attack in the chamber with a vigorous "hear, hear." he made a mental note that he must buy some toys for his child that very afternoon. then he turned to the nursery governess with: "are you quite satisfied with raoul, mademoiselle bertha?" mademoiselle bertha became as red as a peony at being addressed, as if the question were scarcely _comme il faut_, and replied by a little imbecile snigger, which seemed fully to satisfy m. godefroy's curiosity about his son's conduct. "it's fine to-day," said the financier, "but cold. if you take raoul to monceau park, mademoiselle, please be careful to wrap him up well." mademoiselle, by a second fit of idiotic smiling, having set at rest m. godefroy's doubts and fears on that essential point, he kissed his child, left the room hastily, and in the hall was enveloped in his fur coat by charles, who also closed the carriage door. then the faithful fellow went off to the café which he frequented, rue de miromesnil, where he had promised to meet the coachman of the baroness who lived opposite, to play a game of billiards, thirty up--and spot-barred, of course. ***** thanks to the brown bay--for which a thousand francs over and above its value was paid by m. godefroy as a result of a sumptuous snail supper given to that gentleman's coachman by the horse-dealer--thanks to the expensive brown bay which certainly went well, the financier was able to get through his many engagements satisfactorily. he appeared punctually at the bourse, sat at several committee tables, and at a quarter to five, by voting with the ministry, he helped to reassure france and europe that the rumors of a ministerial crisis had been totally unfounded. he voted with the ministry because he had succeeded in obtaining the favors which he demanded as the price of his vote. after he had thus nobly fulfilled his duty to himself and his country, m. godefroy remembered what he had said to his child on the subject of father christmas, and gave his coachman the address of a dealer in toys. there he bought, and had put in his carriage, a fantastic rocking-horse, mounted on casters--a whip in each ear; a box of leaden soldiers--all as exactly alike as those grenadiers of the russian regiment of the time of paul i, who all had black hair and snub noses; and a score of other toys, all equally striking and costly. then, as he returned home, softly reposing in his well-swung carriage, the rich banker, who, after all, was a father, began to think with pride of his little boy and to form plans for his future. when the child grew up he should have an education worthy of a prince, and he would be one, too, for there was no longer any aristocracy except that of money, and his boy would have a capital of about , , francs. if his father, a pettifogging provincial lawyer, who had formerly dined in the latin quarter when in paris, who had remarked every evening when putting on a white tie that he looked as fine as if he were going to a wedding--if he had been able to accumulate an enormous fortune, and to become thereby a power in the republic; if he had been able to obtain in marriage a young lady, one of whose ancestors had fallen at marignano, what an important personage little raoul might become. m. godefroy built all sorts of air-castles for his boy, forgetting that christmas is the birthday of a very poor little child, son of a couple of vagrants, born in a stable, where the parents only found lodging through charity. in the midst of the banker's dreams the coachman cried: "door, please," and drove into the yard. as he went up the steps m. godefroy was thinking that he had barely time to dress for dinner; but on entering the vestibule he found all the domestics crowded in front of him in a state of alarm and confusion. in a corner, crouching on a seat, was the german nursery-governess, crying. when she saw the banker she buried her face in her hands and wept still more copiously than before. m. godefroy felt that some misfortune had happened. "what's the meaning of all this? what's amiss? what has happened?" charles, the _valet de chambre_, a sneaking rascal of the worst type, looked at his master with eyes full of pity and stammered: "mr. raoul--" "my boy?" "lost, sir. the stupid german did it. since four o'clock this afternoon he has not been seen." the father staggered back like one who had been hit by a ball. the german threw herself at his feet, screaming: "mercy, mercy!" and the domestics all spoke at the same time. "bertha didn't go to _parc monceau_. she lost the child over there on the fortifications. we have sought him all over, sir. we went to the office for you, sir, and then to the chamber, but you had just left. just imagine, the german had a rendezvous with her lover every day, beyond the ramparts, near the gate of asnières. what a shame! it is a place full of low gipsies and strolling players. perhaps the child has been stolen. yes, sir, we informed the police at once. how could we imagine such a thing? a hypocrite, that german! she had a rendezvous, doubtless, with a countryman--a prussian spy, sure enough!" his son lost! m. godefroy seemed to have a torrent of blood rushing through his head. he sprang at mademoiselle, seized her by the arms and shook her furiously. "where did you lose him, you miserable girl? tell me the truth before i shake you to pieces. do you hear? do you hear?" but the unfortunate girl could only cry and beg for mercy. the banker tried to be calm. no, it was impossible. nobody would dare to steal _his_ boy. somebody would find him and bring him back. of that there could be no doubt. he could scatter money about right and left, and could have the entire police force at his orders. and he would set to work at once, for not an instant should be lost. "charles, don't let the horses be taken out. you others, see that this girl doesn't escape. i'm going to the prefecture." and m. godefroy, with his heart thumping against his sides as if it would break them, his hair wild with fright, darted into his carriage, which at once rolled off as fast as the horses could take it. what irony! the carriage was full of glittering playthings, which sparkled every time a gaslight shone on them. for the next day was the birthday of the divine infant at whose cradle wise men and simple shepherds alike adored. "my poor little raoul! poor darling! where is my boy?" repeated the father as in his anguish he dug his nails into the cushions of the carriage. at that moment all his titles and decorations, his honors, his millions, were valueless to him. he had one single idea burning in his brain. "my poor child! where is my child?" at last he reached the prefecture of police. but no one was there--the office had been deserted for some time. "i am m. godefroy, deputy from l'eure--my little boy is lost in paris; a child of four years. i must see the prefect." he slipped a louis into the hand of the _concierge_. the good old soul, a veteran with a gray mustache, less for the sake of the money than out of compassion for the poor father, led him to the prefect's private apartments. m. godefroy was finally ushered into the room of the man in whom were centred all his hopes. he was in evening dress, and wore a monocle; his manner was frigid and rather pretentious. the distressed father, whose knees trembled through emotion, sank into an armchair, and, bursting into tears, told of the loss of his boy--told the story stammeringly and with many breaks, for his voice was choked by sobs. the prefect, who was also father of a family, was inwardly moved at the sight of his visitor's grief, but he repressed his emotion and assumed a cold and self-important air. "you say, sir, that your child has been missing since four o'clock?" "yes." "just when night was falling, confound it. he isn't at all precocious, speaks very little, doesn't know where he lives, and can't even pronounce his own name?" "unfortunately that is so." "not far from asnières gate? a suspected quarter. but cheer up. we have a very intelligent _commissaire de police_ there. i'll telephone to him." the distressed father was left alone for five minutes. how his temples throbbed and his heartbeat! then, suddenly, the prefect reappeared, smiling with satisfaction. "found!" whereupon m. godefroy rushed to the prefect, whose hand he pressed till that functionary winced with the pain. "i must acknowledge that we were exceedingly fortunate. the little chap is blond, isn't he? rather pale? in blue velvet? black felt hat, with a white feather in it?" "yes, yes; that's he. that's my little raoul." "well, he's at the house of a poor fellow down in that quarter who had just been at the police office to make his declaration to the commissaire. here's his address, which i took down: '_pierron, rue des cailloux, levaïlois-perret_.' with good horses you may reach your boy in less than an hour. certainly, you won't find him in an aristocratic quarter; his surroundings won't be of the highest. the man who found him is only a small dealer in vegetables." but that was of no importance to m. godefroy, who, having expressed his gratitude to the prefect, leaped down the stairs four at a time, and sprang into his carriage. at that moment he realized how devotedly he loved his child. as he drove away he no longer thought of little raoul's princely education and magnificent inheritance. he was decided never again to hand over the child entirely to the hands of servants, and he also made up his mind to devote less time to monetary matters and the glory of france and attend more to his own. the thought also occurred to him that france wouldn't be likely to suffer from the neglect. he had hitherto been ashamed to recognize the existence of an old-maid sister of his father, but he decided to send for her to his house. she would certainly shock his lackeys by her primitive manners and ideas. but what of that? she would take care of his boy, which to him was of much more importance than the good opinion of his servants. the financier, who was always in a hurry, never felt so eager to arrive punctually at a committee meeting as he was to reach the lost little one. for the first time in his life he was longing through pure affection to take the child in his arms. the carriage rolled rapidly along in the clear, crisp night air down boulevard malesherbes; and, having crossed the ramparts and passed the large houses, plunged into the quiet solitude of suburban streets. when the carriage stopped m. godefroy saw a wretched hovel, on which was the number he was seeking; it was the house where pierron lived. the door of the house opened immediately, and a big, rough-looking fellow with red mustache appeared. one of his sleeves was empty. seeing the gentleman in the carriage, pierron said cheerily: "so you are the little one's father. don't be afraid. the little darling is quite safe," and, stepping aside in order to allow m. godefroy to pass, he placed his finger on his lips with: "hush! the little one is asleep!" yes, it was a real hovel. by the dim light of a little oil lamp m. godefroy could just distinguish a dresser from which a drawer was missing, some broken chairs, a round table on which stood a beer-mug which was half empty, three glasses, some cold meat on a plate, and on the bare plaster of the wall two gaudy pictures--a bird's-eye view of the exposition of , with the eiffel tower in bright blue, and the portrait of general boulanger when a handsome young lieutenant. this last evidence of weakness of the tenant of the house may well be excused, since it was shared by nearly everybody in france. the man took the lamp and went on tiptoe to the corner of the room where, on a clean bed, two little fellows were fast asleep. in the little one, around whom the other had thrown a protecting arm, m. godefroy recognized his son. "the youngsters were tired to death, and so sleepy," said pierron, trying to soften his rough voice. "i had no idea when you would come, so gave them some supper and put them to bed, and then i went to make a declaration at the police office. zidore generally sleeps up in the garret, but i thought they would be better here, and that i should be better able to watch them." m. godefroy, however, scarcely heard the explanation. strangely moved, he looked at the two sleeping infants on an iron bedstead and covered with an old blanket which had once been used either in barracks or hospital. little raoul, who was still in his velvet suit, looked so frail and delicate compared with his companion that the banker almost envied the latter his brown complexion. "is he your boy?" he asked pierron. "no," answered he. "i am a bachelor, and don't suppose i shall ever marry, because of my accident. you see, a dray passed over my arm--that was all. two years ago a neighbor of mine died, when that child was only five years old. the poor mother really died of starvation. she wove wreaths for the cemeteries, but could make nothing worth mentioning at that trade--not enough to live. however, she worked for the child for five years, and then the neighbors had to buy wreaths for her. so i took care of the youngster. oh, it was nothing much, and i was soon repaid. he is seven years old, and is a sharp little fellow, so he helps me a great deal. on sundays and thursdays, and the other days after school, he helps me push my handcart. zidore is a smart little chap. it was he who found your boy." "what!" exclaimed m. godefroy--"that child!" "oh, he's quite a little man, i assure you. when he left school he found your child, who was walking on ahead, crying like a fountain. he spoke to him and comforted him, like an old grandfather. the difficulty is, that one can't easily understand what your little one says--english words are mixed up with german and french. so we couldn't get much out of him, nor could we learn his address. zidore brought him to me--i wasn't far away; and then all the old women in the place came round chattering and croaking like so many frogs, and all full of advice. "'take him to the police,'" said some. but zidore protested. "that would scare him," said he, for like all parisians, he has no particular liking for the police-- "and besides, your little one didn't wish to leave him. so i came back here with the child as soon as i could. they had supper, and then off to bed. don't they look sweet?" when he was in his carriage, m. godefroy had decided to reward the finder of his child handsomely--to give him a handful of that gold so easily gained. since entering the house he had seen a side of human nature with which he was formerly unacquainted--the brave charity of the poor in their misery. the courage of the poor girl who had worked herself to death weaving wreaths to keep her child; the generosity of the poor cripple in adopting the orphan, and above all, the intelligent goodness of the little street arab in protecting the child who was still smaller than himself--all this touched m. godefroy deeply and set him reflecting. for the thought had occurred to him that there were other cripples who needed to be looked after as well as pierron, and other orphans as well as zidore. he also debated whether it would not be better to employ his time looking after them, and whether money might not be put to a better use than merely gaining money. such was his reverie as he stood looking at the two sleeping children. finally, he turned round to study the features of the greengrocer, and was charmed by the loyal expression in the face of the man, and his clear, truthful eyes. "my friend," said m. godefroy, "you and your adopted son have rendered me an immense service. i shall soon prove to you that i am not ungrateful. but, for to-day--i see that you are not in comfortable circumstances, and i should like to leave a small proof of my thankfulness." but the hand of the cripple arrested that of the banker, which was diving into his coat-pocket where he kept bank-notes. "no, sir; no! anybody else should have done just as we have done. i will not accept any recompense; but pray don't take offense. certainly, i am not rolling in wealth, but please excuse my pride--that of an old soldier; i have the tonquin medal--and i don't wish to eat food which i haven't earned." "as you like," said the financier; "but an old soldier like you is capable of something better. you are too good to push a handcart. i will make some arrangement for you, never fear." the cripple responded by a quiet smile, and said coldly: "well, sir, if you really wish to do something for me--" "you'll let me care for zidore, won't you?" cried m. godefroy, eagerly. "that i will, with the greatest of pleasure," responded pierron, joyfully. "i have often, thought about the child's future. he is a sharp little fellow. his teachers are delighted with him." then pierron suddenly stopped, and an expression came over his face which m. godefroy at once interpreted as one of distrust. the thought evidently was: "oh, when he has once left us he'll forget us entirely." "you can safely pick the child up in your arms and take him to the carriage. he'll be better at home than here, of course. oh, you needn't be afraid of disturbing him. he is fast asleep, and you can just pick him up. he must have his shoes on first, though." following pierron's glance m. godefroy perceived on the hearth, where a scanty coke fire was dying out, two pairs of children's shoes;--the elegant ones of raoul, and the rough ones of zidore. each pair contained a little toy and a package of bonbons. "don't think about that," said pierron in an abashed tone. "zidore put the shoes there. you know children still believe in christmas and the child jesus, whatever scholars may say about fables; so, as i came back from the _commissaire_, as i didn't know whether your boy would have to stay here to-night, i got those things for them both." at which the eyes of m. godefroy, the freethinker, the hardened capitalist, and _blasé_ man of the world, filled with tears. he rushed out of the house, but returned in a minute with his arms full of the superb mechanical horse, the box of leaden soldiers, and the rest of the costly playthings bought by him in the afternoon, and which had not even been taken out of the carriage. "my friend, my dear friend," said he to the greengrocer, "see, these are the presents which christmas has brought to my little raoul. i want him to find them here, when he awakens, and to share them with zidore, who will henceforth be his playmate and friend. you'll trust me now, won't you? i'll take care both of zidore and of you, and then i shall ever remain in your debt, for not only have you found my boy, but you have also reminded me, who am rich and lived only for myself, that there are other poor who need to be looked after. i swear by these two sleeping children, i won't forget them any longer." such is the miracle which happened on the th of december of last year, ladies and gentlemen, at paris, in the full flow of modern egotism. it doesn't sound likely--that i own; and i am compelled to attribute this miraculous event to the influence of the divine child who came down to earth nearly nineteen centuries ago to command men to love one another. proofreading team. html version by al haines. the rosary by florence l. barclay contents chapter i enter--the duchess ii introduces the honourable jane iii the surprise packet iv jane volunteers v confidences vi the veil is lifted vii garth finds his rosary viii added pearls ix lady ingleby's house party x the revelation xi garth finds the cross xii the doctor's prescription xiii the answer of the sphinx xiv in deryck's safe control xv the consultation xvi the doctor finds a way xvii enter--nurse rosemary xviii the napoleon of the moors xix the voice in the darkness. xx jane reports progress xxi hard on the secretary xxii dr. rob to the rescue xxiii the only way xxiv the man's point of view xxv the doctor's diagnosis xxvi hearts meet in sightless land xxvii the eyes garth trusted xxviii in the studio xxix jane looks into loves mirror xxx "the lady portrayed" xxxi in lighter vein xxxii an interlude xxxiii "something is going to happen!" xxxiv "love never faileth" xxxv nurse rosemary has her reward xxxvi the revelation of the rosary xxxvii "in the face of this congregation" xxxviii perpetual light the rosary chapter i enter the duchess. the peaceful stillness of an english summer afternoon brooded over the park and gardens at overdene. a hush of moving sunlight and lengthening shadows lay upon the lawn, and a promise of refreshing coolness made the shade of the great cedar tree a place to be desired. the old stone house, solid, substantial, and unadorned, suggested unlimited spaciousness and comfort within; and was redeemed from positive ugliness without, by the fine ivy, magnolia trees, and wistaria, of many years' growth, climbing its plain face, and now covering it with a mantle of soft green, large white blooms, and a cascade of purple blossom. a terrace ran the full length of the house, bounded at one end by a large conservatory, at the other by an aviary. wide stone steps, at intervals, led down from the terrace on to the soft springy turf of the lawn. beyond--the wide park; clumps of old trees, haunted by shy brown deer; and, through the trees, fitful gleams of the river, a narrow silver ribbon, winding gracefully in and out between long grass, buttercups, and cow-daisies. the sun-dial pointed to four o'clock. the birds were having their hour of silence. not a trill sounded from among the softly moving leaves, not a chirp, not a twitter. the stillness seemed almost oppressive. the one brilliant spot of colour in the landscape was a large scarlet macaw, asleep on his stand under the cedar. at last came the sound of an opening door. a quaint old figure stepped out on to the terrace, walked its entire length to the right, and disappeared into the rose-garden. the duchess of meldrum had gone to cut her roses. she wore an ancient straw hat, of the early-victorian shape known as "mushroom," tied with black ribbons beneath her portly chin; a loose brown holland coat; a very short tweed skirt, and engadine "gouties." she had on some very old gauntlet gloves, and carried a wooden basket and a huge pair of scissors. a wag had once remarked that if you met her grace of meldrum returning from gardening or feeding her poultry, and were in a charitable frame of mind, you would very likely give her sixpence. but, after you had thus drawn her attention to yourself and she looked at you, sir walter raleigh's cloak would not be in it! your one possible course would be to collapse into the mud, and let the ducal "gouties" trample on you. this the duchess would do with gusto; then accept your apologies with good nature; and keep your sixpence, to show when she told the story. the duchess lived alone; that is to say, she had no desire for the perpetual companionship of any of her own kith and kin, nor for the constant smiles and flattery of a paid companion. her pale daughter, whom she had systematically snubbed, had married; her handsome son, whom she had adored and spoiled, had prematurely died, before the death, a few years since, of thomas, fifth duke of meldrum. he had come to a sudden and, as the duchess often remarked, very suitable end; for, on his sixty-second birthday, clad in all the splendours of his hunting scarlet, top hat, and buff corduroy breeches, the mare he was mercilessly putting at an impossible fence suddenly refused, and thomas, duke of meldrum, shot into a field of turnips; pitched upon his head, and spoke no more. this sudden cessation of his noisy and fiery life meant a complete transformation in the entourage of the duchess. hitherto she had had to tolerate the boon companions, congenial to himself, with whom he chose to fill the house; or to invite those of her own friends to whom she could explain thomas, and who suffered thomas gladly, out of friendship for her, and enjoyment of lovely overdene. but even then the duchess had no pleasure in her parties; for, quaint rough diamond though she herself might appear, the bluest of blue blood ran in her veins; and, though her manner had the off-hand abruptness and disregard of other people's feelings not unfrequently found in old ladies of high rank, she was at heart a true gentlewoman, and could always be trusted to say and do the right thing in moments of importance: the late duke's language had been sulphurous and his manners georgian; and when he had been laid in the unwonted quiet of his ancestral vault--"so unlike him, poor dear," as the duchess remarked, "that it is quite a comfort to know he is not really there"--her grace looked around her, and began to realise the beauties and possibilities of overdene. at first she contented herself with gardening, making an aviary, and surrounding herself with all sorts of queer birds and beasts; upon whom she lavished the affection which, of late years, had known no human outlet. but after a while her natural inclination to hospitality, her humorous enjoyment of other people's foibles, and a quaint delight in parading her own, led to constant succession of house-parties at overdene, which soon became known as a liberty hall of varied delights where you always met the people you most wanted to meet, found every facility for enjoying your favourite pastime, were fed and housed in perfect style, and spent some of the most ideal days of your summer, or cheery days of your winter, never dull, never bored, free to come and go as you pleased, and everything seasoned everybody with the delightful "sauce piquante" of never being quite sure what the duchess would do or say next. she mentally arranged her parties under three heads--"freak parties," "mere people parties," and "best parties." a "best party" was in progress on the lovely june day when the duchess, having enjoyed an unusually long siesta, donned what she called her "garden togs" and sallied forth to cut roses. as she tramped along the terrace and passed through the little iron gate leading to the rose-garden, tommy, the scarlet macaw, opened one eye and watched her; gave a loud kiss as she reached the gate and disappeared from view, then laughed to himself and went to sleep again. of all the many pets, tommy was prime favourite. he represented the duchess's one concession to morbid sentiment. after the demise of the duke she had found it so depressing to be invariably addressed with suave deference by every male voice she heard. if the butler could have snorted, or the rector have rapped out an uncomplimentary adjective, the duchess would have felt cheered. as it was, a fixed and settled melancholy lay upon her spirit until she saw in a dealer's list an advertisement of a prize macaw, warranted a grand talker, with a vocabulary of over five hundred words. the duchess went immediately to town, paid a visit to the dealer, heard a few of the macaw's words and the tone in which he said them, bought him on the spot, and took him down to overdene. the first evening he sat crossly on the perch of his grand new stand, declining to say a single one of his five hundred words, though the duchess spent her evening in the hall, sitting in every possible place; first close to him; then, away in a distant corner; in an arm-chair placed behind a screen; reading, with her back turned, feigning not to notice him; facing him with concentrated attention. tommy merely clicked his tongue at her every time she emerged from a hiding-place; or, if the rather worried butler or nervous under-footman passed hurriedly through the hall, sent showers of kisses after them, and then went into fits of ventriloquial laughter. the duchess, in despair, even tried reminding him in a whisper of the remarks he had made in the shop; but tommy only winked at her and put his claw over his beak. still, she enjoyed his flushed and scarlet appearance, and retired to rest hopeful and in no wise regretting her bargain. the next morning it became instantly evident to the house-maid who swept the hall, the footman who sorted the letters, and the butler who sounded the breakfast gong, that a good night's rest had restored to tommy the full use of his vocabulary. and when the duchess came sailing down the stairs, ten minutes after the gong had sounded, and tommy, flapping his wings angrily, shrieked at her: "now then, old girl! come on!" she went to breakfast in a more cheerful mood than she had known for months past. chapter ii introduces the honourable jane the only one of her relatives who practically made her home with the duchess was her niece and former ward, the honourable jane champion; and this consisted merely in the fact that the honourable jane was the one person who might invite herself to overdene or portland place, arrive when she chose, stay as long as she pleased, and leave when it suited her convenience. on the death of her father, when her lonely girlhood in her norfolk home came to an end, she would gladly have filled the place of a daughter to the duchess. but the duchess did not require a daughter; and a daughter with pronounced views, plenty of back-bone of her own, a fine figure, and a plain face, would have seemed to her grace of meldrum a peculiarly undesirable acquisition. so jane was given to understand that she might come whenever she liked, and stay as long as she liked, but on the same footing as other people. this meant liberty to come and go as she pleased; and no responsibility towards her aunt's guests. the duchess preferred managing her own parties in her oven way. jane champion was now in her thirtieth year. she had once been described, by one who saw below the surface, as a perfectly beautiful woman in an absolutely plain shell; and no man had as yet looked beneath the shell, and seen the woman in her perfection. she would have made earth heaven for a blind lover who, not having eyes for the plainness of her face or the massiveness of her figure, might have drawn nearer, and apprehended the wonder of her as a woman, experiencing the wealth of tenderness of which she was capable, the blessed comfort of the shelter of her love, the perfect comprehension of her sympathy, the marvellous joy of winning and wedding her. but as yet, no blind man with far-seeing vision had come her way; and it always seemed to be her lot to take a second place, on occasions when she would have filled the first to infinite perfection. she had been bridesmaid at weddings where the charming brides, notwithstanding their superficial loveliness, possessed few of the qualifications for wifehood with which she was so richly endowed. she was godmother to her friends' babies, she, whose motherhood would have been a thing for wonder and worship. she had a glorious voice, but her face not matching it, its existence was rarely suspected; and as she accompanied to perfection, she was usually in requisition to play for the singing of others. in short, all her life long jane had filled second places, and filled them very contentedly. she had never known what it was to be absolutely first with any one. her mother's death had occurred during her infancy, so that she had not even the most shadowy remembrance of that maternal love and tenderness which she used sometimes to try to imagine, although she had never experienced it. her mother's maid, a faithful and devoted woman, dismissed soon after the death of her mistress, chancing to be in the neighbourhood some twelve years later, called at the manor, in the hope of finding some in the household who remembered her. after tea, fraulein and miss jebb being out of the way, she was spirited up into the schoolroom to see miss jane, her heart full of memories of the "sweet babe" upon whom she and her dear lady had lavished so much love and care. she found awaiting her a tall, plain girl with a frank, boyish manner and a rather disconcerting way as she afterwards remarked, of "taking stock of a body the while one was a-talking," which at first checked the flow of good sarah's reminiscences, poured forth so freely in the housekeeper's room below, and reduced her to looking tearfully around the room, remarking that she remembered choosing the blessed wall-paper with her dear lady now gone, whose joy had been so great when the dear babe first took notice and reached up for the roses. "and i can show you, miss, if you care to know it just which bunch of roses it were." but before sarah's visit was over, jane had heard many undreamed-of-things; amongst others, that her mother used to kiss her little hands, "ah, many a time she, did, miss; called them little rose-petals, and covered them with kisses." the child, utterly unused to any demonstrations of affection, looked at her rather ungainly brown hands and laughed, simply because she was ashamed of the unwonted tightening at her throat and the queer stinging of tears beneath her eyelids. thus sarah departed under the impression that miss jane had grown up into a rather a heartless young lady. but fraulein and jebbie never knew why, from that day onward, the hands, of which they had so often had cause to complain, were kept scrupulously clean; and on her birthday night, unashamed in the quiet darkness, the lonely little child kissed her own hands beneath the bedclothes, striving thus to reach the tenderness of her dead mother's lips. and in after years, when she became her own mistress, one of her first actions was to advertise for sarah matthews and engage her as her own maid, at a salary which enabled the good woman eventually to buy herself a comfortable annuity. jane saw but little of her father, who had found it difficult to forgive her, firstly, for being a girl when he desired a son; secondly, being a girl, for having inherited his plainness rather than her mother's beauty. parents are apt to see no injustice in the fact that they are often annoyed with their offspring for possessing attributes, both of character and appearance, with which they themselves have endowed them. the hero of jane's childhood, the chum of her girlhood and the close friend of her maturer years, was deryck brand, only son of the rector of the parish, and her senior by nearly ten years. but even in their friendship, close though it was, she had never felt herself first to him. as a medical student, at home during vacations, his mother and his profession took precedence in his mind of the lonely child, whose devotion pleased him and whose strong character and original mental development interested him. later on he married a lovely girl, as unlike jane as one woman could possibly be to another; but still their friendship held and deepened; and now, when he was rapidly advancing to the very front rank of his profession, her appreciation of his work, and sympathetic understanding of his aims and efforts, meant more to him than even the signal mark of royal favour, of which he had lately been the recipient. jane champion had no close friends amongst the women of her set. her lonely girlhood had bred in her an absolute frankness towards herself and other people which made it difficult for her to understand or tolerate the little artificialities of society, or the trivial weaknesses of her own sex. women to whom she had shown special kindness--and they were many--maintained an attitude of grateful admiration in her presence, and of cowardly silence in her absence when she chanced to be under discussion. but of men friends she had many, especially among a set of young fellows just through college, of whom she made particular chums; nice lads, who wrote to her of their college and mess-room scrapes, as they would never have dreamed of doing to their own mothers. she knew perfectly well that they called her "old jane" and "pretty jane" and "dearest jane" amongst themselves, but she believed in the harmlessness of their fun and the genuineness of their affection, and gave them a generous amount of her own in return. jane champion happened just now to be paying one of her long visits to overdene, and was playing golf with a boy for whom she had long had a rod in pickle on this summer afternoon when the duchess went to cut blooms in her rose-garden. only, as jane found out, you cannot decorously lead up to a scolding if you are very keen on golf, and go golfing with a person who is equally enthusiastic, and who all the way to the links explains exactly how he played every hole the last time he went round, and all the way back gloats over, in retrospection, the way you and he have played every hole this time. so jane considered her afternoon, didactically, a failure. but, in the smoking-room that night, young cathcart explained the game all over again to a few choice spirits, and then remarked: "old jane was superb! fancy! such a drive as that, and doing number seven in three and not talking about it! i've jolly well made up my mind to send no more bouquets to tou-tou. hang it, boys! you can't see yourself at champagne suppers with a dancing-woman, when you've walked round the links, on a day like this, with the honourable jane. she drives like a rifle shot, and when she lofts, you'd think the ball was a swallow; and beat me three holes up and never mentioned it. by jove, a fellow wants to have a clean bill when he shakes hands with her!" chapter iii the surprise packet the sun-dial pointed to half past four o'clock. the hour of silence appeared to be over. the birds commenced twittering; and a cuckoo, in an adjacent wood, sounded his note at intervals. the house awoke to sudden life. there was an opening and shutting of doors. two footmen, in the mulberry and silver of the meldrum livery, hurried down from the terrace, carrying folding tea-tables, with which they supplemented those of rustic oak standing permanently under the cedar. one, promptly returned to the house; while the other remained behind, spreading snowy cloths over each table. the macaw awoke, stretched his wings and flapped them twice, then sidled up and down his perch, concentrating his attention upon the footman. "mind!" he exclaimed suddenly, in the butler's voice, as a cloth, flung on too hurriedly, fluttered to the grass. "hold your jaw!" said the young footman irritably, flicking the bird with the table-cloth, and then glancing furtively at the rose-garden. "tommy wants a gooseberry!" shrieked the macaw, dodging the table-cloth and hanging, head downwards, from his perch. "don't you wish you may get it?" said the footman viciously. "give it him, somebody," remarked tommy, in the duchess's voice. the footman started, and looked over his shoulder; then hurriedly told tommy just what he thought of him, and where he wished him; cuffed him soundly, and returned to the house, followed by peals of laughter, mingled with exhortations and imprecations from the angry bird, who danced up and down on his perch until his enemy had vanished from view. a few minutes later the tables were spread with the large variety of eatables considered necessary at an english afternoon tea; the massive silver urn and teapots gleamed on the buffet-table, behind which the old butler presided; muffins, crumpets, cakes, and every kind of sandwich supplemented the dainty little rolled slices of white and brown bread-and-butter, while heaped-up bowls of freshly gathered strawberries lent a touch of colour to the artistic effect of white and silver. when all was ready, the butler raised his hand and sounded an old chinese gong hanging in the cedar tree. before the penetrating boom had died away, voices were heard in the distance from all over the grounds. up from the river, down from the tennis courts, out from house and garden, came the duchess's guests, rejoicing in the refreshing prospect of tea, hurrying to the welcome shade of the cedar;--charming women in white, carefully guarding their complexions beneath shady hats and picturesque parasols;--delightful girls, who had long ago sacrificed complexions to comfort, and now walked across the lawn bareheaded, swinging their rackets and discussing the last hard-fought set; men in flannels, sunburned and handsome, joining in the talk and laughter; praising their partners, while remaining unobtrusively silent as to their own achievements. they made a picturesque group as they gathered under the tree, subsiding with immense satisfaction into the low wicker chairs, or on to the soft turf, and helping themselves to what they pleased. when all were supplied with tea, coffee, or iced drinks, to their liking, conversation flowed again. "so the duchess's concert comes off to-night," remarked some one. "i wish to goodness they would hang this tree with chinese lanterns and, have it out here. it is too hot to face a crowded function indoors." "oh, that's all right," said garth dalmain, "i'm stage-manager, you know; and i can promise you that all the long windows opening on to the terrace shall stand wide. so no one need be in the concert-room, who prefers to stop outside. there will be a row of lounge chairs placed on the terrace near the windows. you won't see much; but you will hear, perfectly." "ah, but half the fun is in seeing," exclaimed one of the tennis girls. "people who have remained on the terrace will miss all the point of it afterwards when the dear duchess shows us how everybody did it. i don't care how hot it is. book me a seat in the front row!" "who is the surprise packet to-night?" asked lady ingleby, who had arrived since luncheon. "velma," said mary strathern. "she is coming for the week-end, and delightful it will be to have her. no one but the duchess could have worked it, and no place but overdene would have tempted her. she will sing only one song at the concert; but she is sure to break forth later on, and give us plenty. we will persuade jane to drift to the piano accidentally and play over, just by chance, the opening bars of some of velma's best things, and we shall soon hear the magic voice. she never can resist a perfectly played accompaniment." "why call madame velma the `surprise packet'?" asked a girl, to whom the overdene "best parties" were a new experience. "that, my dear," replied lady ingleby, "is a little joke of the duchess's. this concert is arranged for the amusement of her house party, and for the gratification and glorification of local celebrities. the whole neighbourhood is invited. none of you are asked to perform, but local celebrities are. in fact they furnish the entire programme, to their own delight, the satisfaction of their friends and relatives, and our entertainment, particularly afterwards when the duchess takes us through every item, with original notes, comments, and impersonations. oh, dal! do you remember when she tucked a sheet of white writing-paper into her tea-gown for a dog collar, and took off the high-church curate nervously singing a comic song? then at the very end, you see--and really some of it is quite good for amateurs--she trots out velma, or some equally perfect artiste, to show them how it really can be done; and suddenly the place is full of music, and a great hush falls on the audience, and the poor complacent amateurs realise that the noise they have been making was, after all, not music; and they go dumbly home. but they have forgotten all about it by the following year; or a fresh contingent of willing performers steps into the breach. the duchess's little joke always comes off." "the honourable jane does not approve of it," said young ronald ingram; "therefore she is generally given marching orders and departs to her next visit before the event. but no one can accompany madame velma so perfectly, so this time she is commanded to stay. but i doubt if the 'surprise packet' will come off with quite such a shock as usual, and i am certain the fun won't be so good afterwards. the honourable jane has been known to jump on the duchess for that sort of thing. she is safe to get the worst of it at the time, but it has a restraining effect afterwards." "i think miss champion is quite right," said a bright-faced american girl, bravely, holding a gold spoon poised for a moment over the strawberry ice-cream with which garth dalmain had supplied her. "in my country we should call it real mean to laugh, at people who had been our guests and performed in our houses." "in your country, my dear," said myra ingleby, "you have no duchesses." "well, we supply you with quite a good few," replied the american girl calmly, and went on with her ice. a general laugh followed; and the latest anglo-american match came up for discussion. "where is the honourable jane?" inquired someone presently. "golfing with billy," said ronald ingram. "ah, here they come." jane's tall figure was seen, walking along the terrace, accompanied by billy cathcart, talking eagerly. they put their clubs away in the lower hall; then came down the lawn together to the tea-tables. jane wore a tailor-made coat and skirt of grey tweed, a blue and white cambric shirt, starched linen collar and cuffs, a silk tie, and a soft felt hat with a few black quills in it. she walked with the freedom of movement and swing of limb which indicate great strength and a body well under control. her appearance was extraordinarily unlike that of all the pretty and graceful women grouped beneath the cedar tree. and yet it was in no sense masculine--or, to use a more appropriate word, mannish; for everything strong is masculine; but a woman who apes an appearance of strength which she does not possess, is mannish;--rather was it so truly feminine that she could afford to adopt a severe simplicity of attire, which suited admirably the decided plainness of her features, and the almost massive proportions of her figure. she stepped into the circle beneath the cedar, and took one of the half-dozen places immediately vacated by the men, with the complete absence of self-consciousness which always characterised her. "what did you go round in, miss champion?" inquired one of the men. "my ordinary clothes," replied jane; quoting punch, and evading the question. but billy burst out: "she went round in--" "oh, be quiet, billy," interposed jane. "you and i are practically the only golf maniacs present. most of these dear people are even ignorant as to who 'bogie' is, or why we should be so proud of beating him. where is my aunt? poor simmons was toddling all over the place when we went in to put away our clubs, searching for her with a telegram." "why didn't you open it?" asked myra. "because my aunt never allows her telegrams to be opened. she loves shocks; and there is always the possibility of a telegram containing startling news. she says it completely spoils it if some one else knows it first, and breaks it to her gently." "here comes the duchess," said garth dalmain, who was sitting where he could see the little gate into the rose-garden. "do not mention the telegram," cautioned jane. "it would not please her that i should even know of its arrival. it would be a shame to take any of the bloom off the unexpected delight of a wire on this hot day, when nothing unusual seemed likely to happen." they turned and looked towards the duchess as she bustled across the lawn; this quaint old figure, who had called them together; who owned the lovely place where they were spending such delightful days; and whose odd whimsicalities had been so freely discussed while they drank her tea and feasted off her strawberries. the men rose as she approached, but not quite so spontaneously as they had done for her niece. the duchess carried a large wooden basket filled to overflowing with exquisite roses. every bloom was perfect, and each had been cut at exactly the right moment. chapter iv jane volunteers the duchess plumped down her basket in the middle of the strawberry table. "there, good people!" she said, rather breathlessly. "help yourselves, and let me see you all wearing roses to-night. and the concert-room is to be a bower of roses. we will call it 'la fete des roses.' ... no, thank you, ronnie. that tea has been made half an hour at least, and you ought to love me too well to press it upon me. besides, i never take tea. i have a whiskey and soda when i wake from my nap, and that sustains me until dinner. oh yes, my dear myra, i know i came to your interesting meeting, and signed that excellent pledge 'pour encourager les autres'; but i drove straight to my doctor when i left your house, and he gave me a certificate to say i must take something when i needed it; and i always need it when i wake from my nap.... really, dal, it is positively wicked for any man, off the stage, to look as picturesque as you do, in that pale violet shirt, and dark violet tie, and those white flannels. if i were your grandmother i should send you in to take them off. if you turn the heads of old dowagers such as i am, what chance have all these chickens? ... hush, tommy! that was a very naughty word! and you need not be jealous of dal. i admire you still more. dal, will you paint my scarlet macaw?" the young artist, whose portraits in that year's academy had created much interest in the artistic world, and whose violet shirt had just been so severely censured, lay back in his lounge-chair, with his arms behind his head and a gleam of amusement in his bright brown eyes. "no, dear duchess," he said. "i beg respectfully to decline the commission, tommy would require a landseer to do full justice to his attitudes and expression. besides, it would be demoralising to an innocent and well-brought-up youth, such as you know me to be, to spend long hours in tommy's society, listening to the remarks that sweet bird would make while i painted him. but i will tell you what i will do. i will paint you, dear duchess, only not in that hat! ever since i was quite a small boy, a straw hat with black ribbons tied under the chin has made me feel ill. if i yielded to my natural impulses now, i should hide my face in miss champion's lap, and kick and scream until you took it off. i will paint you in the black velvet gown you wore last night, with the medici collar; and the jolly arrangement of lace and diamonds on your head. and in your hand you shall hold an antique crystal mirror, mounted in silver." the artist half closed his eyes, and as he described his picture in a voice full of music and mystery, an attentive hush fell upon the gay group around him. when garth dalmain described his pictures, people saw them. when they walked into the academy or the new gallery the following year, they would say: "ah, there it is! just as we saw it that day, before a stroke of it was on the canvas." "in your left hand, you shall hold the mirror, but you shall not be looking into it; because you never look into mirrors, dear duchess, excepting to see whether the scolding you are giving your maid, as she stands behind you, is making her cry; and whether that is why she is being so clumsy in her manipulation of pins and things. if it is, you promptly promise her a day off, to go and see her old mother; and pay her journey there and back. if it isn't, you scold her some more. were i the maid, i should always cry, large tears warranted to show in the glass; only i should not sniff, because sniffing is so intensely aggravating; and i should be most frightfully careful that my tears did not run down your neck." "dal, you ridiculous child!" said the duchess. "leave off talking about my maids, and my neck, and your crocodile tears, and finish describing the portrait. what do i do, with the mirror?" "you do not look into it," continued garth dalmain, meditatively; "because we know that is a thing you never do. even when you put on that hat, and tie those ribbons--miss champion, i wish you would hold my hand--in a bow under your chin, you don't consult the mirror. but you shall sit with it in your left hand, your elbow resting on an eastern table of black ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl. you will turn it from you, so that it reflects something exactly in front of you in the imaginary foreground. you will be looking at this unseen object with an expression of sublime affection. and in the mirror i will paint a vivid, brilliant, complete reflection, minute, but perfect in every detail, of your scarlet macaw on his perch. we will call it 'reflections,' because one must always give a silly up-to-date title to pictures, and just now one nondescript word is the fashion, unless you feel it needful to attract to yourself the eye of the public, in the catalogue, by calling your picture twenty lines of tennyson. but when the portrait goes down to posterity as a famous picture, it will figure in the catalogue of the national gallery as 'the duchess, the mirror, and the macaw.'" "bravo!" said the duchess, delighted. "you shall paint it, dal, in time for next year's academy, and we will all go and see it." and he did. and they all went. and when they saw it they said: "ah, of course! there it is; just as we saw it under the cedar at overdene." "here comes simmons with something on a salver," exclaimed the duchess. "how that man waddles! why can't somebody teach him to step out? jane! you march across this lawn like a grenadier. can't you explain to simmons how it's done? ... well? what is it? ha! a telegram. now what horrible thing can have happened? who would like to guess? i hope it is not merely some idiot who has missed a train." amid a breathless and highly satisfactory silence, the duchess tore open the orange envelope. apparently the shock was of a thorough, though not enjoyable, kind; for the duchess, at all times highly coloured, became purple as she read, and absolutely inarticulate with indignation. jane rose quietly, looked over her aunt's shoulder, read the long message, and returned to her seat. "creature!" exclaimed the duchess, at last. "oh, creature! this comes of asking them as friends. and i had a lovely string of pearls for her, worth far more than she would have been offered, professionally, for one song. and to fail at the last minute! oh, creature!" "dear aunt," said jane, "if poor madame velma has a sudden attack of laryngitis, she could not possibly sing a note, even had the queen commanded her. her telegram is full of regrets." "don't argue, jane!" exclaimed the duchess, crossly. "and don't drag in the queen, who has nothing to do with my concert or velma's throat. i do abominate irrelevance, and you know it! why must she have her what--do--you--call--it, just when she was coming to sing here? in my young days people never had these new-fangled complaints. i have no patience with all this appendicitis and what not--cutting people open at every possible excuse. in my young days we called it a good old-fashioned stomach-ache, and gave them turkey rhubarb!" myra ingleby hid her face behind her garden hat; and garth dalmain whispered to jane: "i do abominate irrelevance, and you know it!" but jane shook her head at him, and refused to smile. "tommy wants a gooseberry!" shouted the macaw, having apparently noticed the mention of rhubarb. "oh, give it him, somebody!" said the worried duchess. "dear aunt," said jane, "there are no gooseberries." "don't argue, girl!" cried the duchess, furiously; and garth, delighted, shook his head at jane. "when he says 'gooseberry,' he means anything green, as you very well know!" half a dozen people hastened to tommy with lettuce, water-cress, and cucumber sandwiches; and garth picked one blade of grass, and handed it to jane; with an air of anxious solicitude; but jane ignored it. "no answer, simmons," said the duchess. "why don't you go? ... oh, how that man waddles! teach him to walk, somebody! now the question is, what is to be done? here is half the county coming to hear velma, by my invitation; and velma in london pretending to have appendicitis--no, i mean the other thing. oh, 'drat the woman!' as that clever bird would say." "hold your jaw!" shouted tommy. the duchess smiled, and consented to sit down. "but, dear duchess," suggested garth in his most soothing voice, "the county does not know madame velma was to be here. it was a profound secret. you were to trot her out at the end. lady ingleby called her your 'surprise packet.'" myra came out from behind her garden hat, and the duchess nodded at her approvingly. "quite true," she said. "that was the lovely part of it. oh, creature!" "but, dear duchess," pursued garth persuasively, "if the county did not know, the county will not be disappointed. they are coming to listen to one another, and to hear themselves, and to enjoy your claret-cup and ices. all this they will do, and go away delighted, saying how cleverly the dear duchess, discovers and exploits local talent." "ah, ha!" said the duchess, with a gleam in the hawk eye, and a raising of the hooked nose-which mrs. parker bangs of chicago, who had met the duchess once or twice, described as "genuine plantagenet"--"but they will go away wise in their own conceits, and satisfied with their own mediocre performances. my idea is to let them do it, and then show them how it should be done." "but aunt 'gina," said jane, gently; "surely you forget that most of these people have been to town and heard plenty of good music, madame velma herself most likely, and all the great singers. they know they cannot sing like a prima donna; but they do their anxious best, because you ask them. i cannot see that they require an object lesson." "jane," said the duchess, "for the third time this afternoon i must request you not to argue." "miss champion," said garth dalmain, "if i were your grandmamma, i should send you to bed." "what is to be done?" reiterated the duchess. "she was to sing the rosary. i had set my heart on it. the whole decoration of the room is planned to suit that song--festoons of white roses; and a great red-cross at the back of the platform, made entirely of crimson ramblers. jane!" "yes, aunt." "oh, don't say 'yes, aunt,' in that senseless way! can't you make some suggestion?" "drat the woman!" exclaimed tommy, suddenly. "hark to that sweet bird!" cried the duchess, her good humour fully restored. "give him a strawberry, somebody. now, jane, what do you suggest?" jane champion was seated with her broad back half turned to her aunt, one knee crossed over the other, her large, capable hands clasped round it. she loosed her hands, turned slowly round, and looked into the keen eyes peering at her from under the mushroom hat. as she read the half-resentful, half-appealing demand in them, a slow smile dawned in her own. she waited a moment to make sure of the duchess's meaning, then said quietly: "i will sing the rosary for you, in velma's place, to-night, if you really wish it, aunt." had the gathering under the tree been a party of "mere people," it would have gasped. had it been a "freak party," it would have been loud-voiced in its expressions of surprise. being a "best party," it gave no outward sign; but a sense of blank astonishment, purely mental, was in the air. the duchess herself was the only person present who had heard jane champion sing. "have you the song?" asked her grace of meldrum, rising, and picking up her telegram and empty basket. "i have," said jane. "i spent a few hours with madame blanche when i was in town last month; and she, who so rarely admires these modern songs, was immensely taken with it. she sang it, and allowed me to accompany her. we spent nearly an hour over it. i obtained a copy afterwards." "good," said the duchess. "then i count on you. now i must send a sympathetic telegram to that poor dear velma, who will be fretting at having to fail us. so 'au revoir,' good people. remember, we dine punctually at eight o'clock. music is supposed to begin at nine. ronnie, be a kind boy, and carry tommy into the hall for me. he will screech so fearfully if he sees me walk away without him. he is so very loving, dear bird!" silence under the cedar. most people were watching young ronald, holding the stand as much at arm's length as possible; while tommy, keeping his balance wonderfully, sidled up close to him, evidently making confidential remarks into ronnie's terrified ear. the duchess walked on before, quite satisfied with the new turn events had taken. one or two people were watching jane. "it is very brave of you," said myra ingleby, at length. "i would offer to play your accompaniment, dear; but i can only manage au clair de la lune, and three blind mice, with one finger." "and i would offer to play your accompaniment, dear," said garth dalmain, "if you were going to sing lassen's allerseelen, for i play that quite beautifully with ten fingers! it is an education only to hear the way i bring out the tolling of the cemetery chapel bell right through the song. the poor thing with the bunch of purple heather can never get away from it. even in the grand crescendo, appassionata, fortissimo, when they discover that 'in death's dark valley this is holy day,' i give then no holiday from that bell. i don't know what it did 'once in may.' it tolls all the time, with maddening persistence, in my accompaniment. but i have seen the rosary, and i dare not face those chords. to begin with, you start in every known flat; and before you have gone far you have gathered unto yourself handfuls of known and unknown sharps, to which you cling, not daring to let them go, lest they should be wanted again the next moment. alas, no! when it is a question of accompanying the rosary, i must say, as the old farmer at the tenants' dinner the other day said to the duchess when she pressed upon him a third helping of pudding: 'madam, i cannot!'" "don't be silly, dal," said jane. "you could accompany the rosary perfectly, if i wanted it done. but, as it happens, i prefer accompanying myself." "ah," said lady ingleby, sympathetically, "i quite understand that. it would be such a relief all the time to know that if things seemed going wrong, you could stop the other part, and give yourself the note." the only two real musicians present glanced at each other, and a gleam of amusement passed between them. "it certainly would be useful, if necessary," said jane. "_i_ would 'stop the other part' and 'give you the note,'" said garth, demurely. "i am sure you would," said jane. "you are always so very kind. but i prefer to keep the matter in my own hands." "you realise the difficulty of making the voice carry in a place of that size unless you can stand and face the audience?" garth dalmain spoke anxiously. jane was a special friend of his, and he had a man's dislike of the idea of his chum failing in anything, publicly. the same quiet smile dawned in jane's eyes and passed to her lips as when she had realised that her aunt meant her to volunteer in velma's place. she glanced around. most of the party had wandered off in twos and threes, some to the house, others back to the river. she and dal and myra were practically alone. her calm eyes were full of quiet amusement as she steadfastly met the anxious look in garth's, and answered his question. "yes, i know. but the acoustic properties of the room are very perfect, and i have learned to throw my voice. perhaps you may not know--in fact, how should you know?--but i have had the immense privilege of studying with madame marchesi in paris, and of keeping up to the mark since by an occasional delightful hour with her no less gifted daughter in london. so i ought to know all there is to know about the management of a voice, if i have at all adequately availed myself of such golden opportunities." these quiet words were greek to myra, conveying no more to her mind than if jane had said: "i have been learning tonic sol-fa." in fact, not quite so much, seeing that lady ingleby had herself once tried to master the tonic sol-fa system in order to instruct her men and maids in part-singing. it was at a time when she owned a distinctly musical household. the second footman possessed a fine barytone. the butler could "do a little bass," which is to say that, while the other parts soared to higher regions, he could stay on the bottom note if carefully placed there, and told to remain. the head housemaid sang what she called "seconds"; in other words, she followed along, slightly behind the trebles as regarded time, and a major third below them as regarded pitch. the housekeeper, a large, dark person with a fringe on her upper lip, unshaven and unashamed, produced a really remarkable effect by singing the air an octave below the trebles. unfortunately lady ingleby was apt to confuse her with the butler. myra herself was the first to admit that she had not "much ear"; but it was decidedly trying, at a moment when she dared not remove her eyes from the accompaniment of good king wenceslas, to have called out: "stay where you are, jenkins!" and then find it was mrs. jarvis who had been travelling upwards. but when a new footman, engaged by lord ingleby with no reference to his musical gifts, chanced to possess a fine throaty tenor, myra felt she really had material with which great things might be accomplished, and decided herself to learn the tonic sol-fa system. she easily mastered mi, re, do, and so, fa, fa, mi, because these represented the opening lines of three blind mice, always a musical landmark to myra. but when it came to the fugue-like intricacies in the theme of "they all ran after the farmer's wife," lady ingleby was lost without the words to cling to, and gave up the tonic sol-fa system in despair. so the name of the greatest teacher of singing of this age did not convey much to myra's mind. but garth dalmain sat up. "i say! no wonder you take it coolly. why, velma herself was a pupil of the great madame." "that is how it happens that i know her rather well," said jane. "i am here to-day because i was to have played her accompaniment." "i see," said garth. "and now you have to do both. 'land's sake!' as mrs. parker bangs says when you explain who's who at a marlborough house garden party. but you prefer playing other people's accompaniments, to singing yourself, don't you?" jane's slow smile dawned again. "i prefer singing," she said, "but accompanying is more useful." "of course it is," said garth. "heaps of people can sing a little, but very few can accompany properly." "jane," said myra, her grey eyes looking out lazily from under their long black lashes, "if you have had singing lessons, and know some songs, why hasn't the duchess turned you on to sing to us before this?" "for a sad reason," jane replied. "you know her only son died eight years ago? he was such a handsome, talented fellow. he and i inherited our love of music from our grandfather. my cousin got into a musical set at college, studied with enthusiasm, and wanted to take it up professionally. he had promised, one christmas vacation, to sing at a charity concert in town, and went out, when only just recovering from influenza, to fulfil this engagement. he had a relapse, double pneumonia set in, and he died in five days from heart failure. my poor aunt was frantic with grief; and since then any mention of my love of music makes her very bitter. i, too, wanted to take it up professionally, but she put her foot down heavily. i scarcely ever venture to sing or play here." "why not elsewhere?" asked garth dalmain. "we have stayed about at the same houses, and i had not the faintest idea you sang." "i do not know," said jane slowly. "but--music means so much to me. it is a sort of holy of holies in the tabernacle of one's inner being. and it is not easy to lift the veil." "the veil will be lifted to-night," said myra ingleby. "yes," agreed jane, smiling a little ruefully, "i suppose it will." "and we shall pass in," said garth dalmain. chapter v confidences the shadows silently lengthened on the lawn. the home-coming rooks circled and cawed around the tall elm trees. the sun-dial pointed to six o'clock. myra ingleby rose and stood with the slanting rays of the sun full in her eyes, her arms stretched over her head. the artist noted every graceful line of her willowy figure. "ah, bah!" she yawned. "it is so perfect out here, and i must go in to my maid. jane, be advised in time. do not ever begin facial massage. you become a slave to it, and it takes up hours of your day. look at me." they were both looking already. myra was worth looking at. "for ordinary dressing purposes, i need not have gone in until seven; and now i must lose this last, perfect hour." "what happens?" asked jane. "i know nothing of the process." "i can't go into details," replied lady ingleby, "but you know how sweet i have looked all day? well, if i did not go to my maid now, i should look less sweet by the end of dinner, and at the close of the evening i should appear ten years older." "you would always look sweet," said jane, with frank sincerity; "and why mind looking the age you are?" "my dear, 'a man is as old as he feels; a woman is as old as she looks,'" quoted myra. "i feel just seven," said garth. "and you look seventeen," laughed myra. "and i am twenty-seven," retorted garth; "so the duchess should not call me 'a ridiculous child.' and, dear lady, if curtailing this mysterious process is going to make you one whit less lovely to-night, i do beseech you to hasten to your maid, or you will spoil my whole evening. i shall burst into tears at dinner, and the duchess hates scenes, as you very well know!" lady ingleby flapped him with her garden hat as she passed. "be quiet, you ridiculous child!" she said. "you had no business to listen to what i was saying to jane. you shall paint me this autumn. and after that i will give up facial massage, and go abroad, and come back quite old." she flung this last threat over her shoulder as she trailed away across the lawn. "how lovely she is!" commented garth, gazing after her. "how much of that was true, do you suppose, miss champion?" "i have not the slightest idea," replied jane. "i am completely ignorant on the subject of facial massage." "not much, i should think," continued garth, "or she would not have told us." "ah, you are wrong there," replied jane, quickly. "myra is extraordinarily honest, and always inclined to be frank about herself and her foibles. she had a curious upbringing. she is one of a large family, and was always considered the black sheep, not so much by her brothers and sisters, as by her mother. nothing she was, or said, or did, was ever right. when lord ingleby met her, and i suppose saw her incipient possibilities, she was a tall, gawky girl, with lovely eyes, a sweet, sensitive mouth, and a what-on-earth-am-i-going-to-do-next expression on her face. he was twenty years her senior, but fell most determinedly in love with her and, though her mother pressed upon him all her other daughters in turn, he would have myra or nobody. when he proposed to her it was impossible at first to make her understand what he meant. his meaning dawned on her at length, and he was not kept waiting long for her answer. i have often heard him tease her about it. she looked at him with an adorable smile, her eyes brimming over with tears, and said: 'why, of course. i'll marry you gratefully, and i think it is perfectly sweet of you to like me. but what a blow for mamma!' they were married with as little delay as possible, and he took her off to paris, italy, and egypt, had six months abroad, and brought her back--this! i was staying with them once, and her mother was also there. we were sitting in the morning room,--no men, just half a dozen women,--and her mother began finding fault about something, and said: 'has not lord ingleby often told you of it?' myra looked up in her sweet, lazy way and answered: 'dear mamma, i know it must seem strange to you, but, do you know, my husband thinks everything i do perfect.' 'your husband is a fool!' snapped her mother. 'from your point of view, dear mamma,' said myra, sweetly." "old curmudgeon!" remarked garth. "why are people of that sort allowed to be called 'mothers'? we, who have had tender, perfect mothers, would like to make it law that the other kind should always be called 'she-parents,' or 'female progenitors,' or any other descriptive title, but not profane the sacred name of mother!" jane was silent. she knew the beautiful story of garth's boyhood with his widowed mother. she knew his passionate adoration of her sainted memory. she liked him best when she got a glimpse beneath the surface, and did not wish to check his mood by reminding him that she herself had never even lisped that name. garth rose from his chair and stretched his slim figure in the slanting sun-rays, much as myra had done. jane looked at him. as is often the case with plain people, great physical beauty appealed to her strongly. she only allowed to that appeal its right proportion in her estimation of her friends. garth dalmain by no means came first among her particular chums. he was older than most of them, and yet in some ways younger than any, and his remarkable youthfulness of manner and exuberance of spirits sometimes made him appear foolish to jane, whose sense of humour was of a more sedate kind. but of the absolute perfection of his outward appearance, there was no question; and jane looked at him now, much as his own mother might have looked, with honest admiration in her kind eyes. garth, notwithstanding the pale violet shirt and dark violet tie, was quite unconscious of his own appearance; and, dazzled by the golden sunlight, was also unconscious of jane's look. "oh, i say, miss champion!" he cried, boyishly. "isn't it nice that they have all gone in? i have been wanting a good jaw with you. really, when we all get together we do drivel sometimes, to keep the ball rolling. it is like patting up air-balls; and very often they burst, and one realises that an empty, shrivelled little skin is all that is left after most conversations. did you ever buy air-balls at brighton? do you remember the wild excitement of seeing the man coming along the parade, with a huge bunch of them--blue, green, red, white, and yellow, all shining in the sun? and one used to wonder how he ever contrived to pick them all up--i don't know how!--and what would happen if he put them all down. i always knew exactly which one i wanted, and it was generally on a very inside string and took a long time to disentangle. and how maddening it was if the grown-ups grew tired of waiting, and walked on with the penny. only i would rather have had none, than not have the one on which i had fixed my heart. wouldn't you?" "i never bought air-balls at brighton," replied jane, without enthusiasm. garth was feeling seven again, and jane was feeling bored. for once he seemed conscious of this. he took his coat from the back of the chair where he had hung it, and put it on. "come along, miss champion," he said; "i am so tired of doing nothing. let us go down to the river and find a boat or two. dinner is not until eight o'clock, and i am certain you can dress, even for the role of velma, in half an hour. i have known you do it in ten minutes, at a pinch. there is ample time for me to row you within sight of the minster, and we can talk as we go. ah, fancy! the grey old minster with this sunset behind it, and a field of cowslips in the foreground!" but jane did not rise. "my dear dal," she said, "you would not feel much enthusiasm for the minster or the sunset, after you had pulled my twelve stone odd up the river. you would drop exhausted among the cowslips. surely you might know by now that i am not the sort of person to be told off to sit in the stern of a tiny skiff and steer. if i am in a boat, i like to row; and if i row, i prefer rowing stroke. but i do not want to row now, because i have been playing golf the whole afternoon. and you know perfectly well it would be no pleasure to you to have to gaze at me all the way up and all the way down the river; knowing all the time, that i was mentally criticising your stroke and marking the careless way you feathered." garth sat down, lay back in his chair, with his arms behind his sleek dark head, and looked at her with his soft shining eyes, just as he had looked at the duchess. "how cross you are, old chap," he said, gently. "what is the matter?" jane laughed and held out her hand. "oh, you dear boy! i think you have the sweetest temper in the world. i won't be cross any more. the truth is, i hate the duchess's concerts, and i don't like being the duchess's 'surprise-packet.'" "i see," said garth, sympathetically. "but, that being so, why did you offer?" "ah, i had to," said jane. "poor old dear! she so rarely asks me anything, and her eyes besought. don't you know how one longs to have something to do for some one who belongs to one? i would black her boots if she wished it. but it is so hard to stay here, week after week, and be kept at arm's length. this one thing she asked of me, and her proud old eyes pleaded. could i refuse?" garth was all sympathy. "no, dear," he said thoughtfully; "of course you couldn't. and don't bother over that silly joke about the 'surprise packet.' you see, you won't be that. i have no doubt you sing vastly better than most of them, but they will not realise it. it takes a velma to make such people as these sit up. they will think the rosary a pretty song, and give you a mild clap, and there the thing will end. so don't worry." jane sat and considered this. then: "dal," she said, "i do hate singing before that sort of audience. it is like giving them your soul to look at, and you don't want them to see it. it seems indecent. to my mind, music is the most revealing thing in the world. i shiver when i think of that song, and yet i daren't do less than my best. when the moment comes, i shall live in the song, and forget the audience. let me tell you a lesson i once had from madame blanche. i was singing bemberg's chant hindou, the passionate prayer of an indian woman to brahma. i began: 'brahma! dieu des croyants,' and sang it as i might have sung 'do, re, mi.' brahma was nothing to me. 'stop!' cried madame blanche in her most imperious manner. 'ah, vous anglais! what are you doing? brahma, c'est un dieu! he may not be your god. he may not be my god. but he is somebody's god. he is the god of the song. ecoutez!' and she lifted her head and sang: 'brahma! dieu des croyants! maitre des cites saintes!' with her beautiful brow illumined, and a passion of religious fervour which thrilled one's soul. it was a lesson i never forgot. i can honestly say i have never sung a song tamely, since." "fine!" said garth dalmain. "i like enthusiasm in every branch of art. i never care to paint a portrait, unless i adore the woman i am painting." jane smiled. the conversation was turning exactly the way she had hoped eventually to lead it. "dal, dear," she said, "you adore so many in turn, that we old friends, who have your real interest at heart, fear you will never adore to any definite purpose." garth laughed. "oh bother!" he said. "are you like all the rest? do you also think adoration and admiration must necessarily mean marriage. i should have expected you to take a saner and more masculine view." "my dear boy," said jane, "your friends have decided that you need a wife. you are alone in the world. you have a lovely home. you are in a fair way to be spoiled by all the silly women who run after you. of course we are perfectly aware that your wife must have every incomparable beauty under the sun united in her own exquisite person. but each new divinity you see and paint apparently fulfils, for the time being, this wondrous ideal; and, perhaps, if you wedded one, instead of painting her, she might continue permanently to fulfil it." garth considered this in silence, his level brows knitted. at last he said: "beauty is so much a thing of the surface. i see it, and admire it. i desire it, and paint it. when i have painted it, i have made it my own, and somehow i find i have done with it. all the time i am painting a woman, i am seeking for her soul. i want to express it on my canvas; and do you know, miss champion, i find that a lovely woman does not always have a lovely soul." jane was silent. the last things she wished to discuss were other women's souls. "there is just one who seems to me perfect," continued garth. "i am to paint her this autumn. i believe i shall find her soul as exquisite as her body." "and she is--?" inquired jane. "lady brand." "flower!" exclaimed jane. "are you so taken with flower?" "ah, she is lovely," said garth, with reverent enthusiasm. "it positively is not right for any one to be so absolutely flawlessly lovely. it makes me ache. do you know that feeling, miss champion, of perfect loveliness making you ache?" "no, i don't," said jane, shortly. "and i do not think other people's wives ought to have that effect upon you." "my dear old chap," exclaimed garth, astonished; "it has nothing to do with wives or no wives. a wood of bluebells in morning sunshine would have precisely the same effect. i ache to paint her. when i have painted her and really done justice to that matchless loveliness as i see it, i shall feel all right. at present i have only painted her from memory; but she is to sit to me in october." "from memory?" questioned jane. "yes, i paint a great deal from memory. give me one look of a certain kind at a face, let me see it at a moment which lets one penetrate beneath the surface, and i can paint that face from memory weeks after. lots of my best studies have been done that way. ah, the delight of it! beauty--the worship of beauty is to me a religion." "rather a godless form of religion," suggested jane. "ah no," said garth reverently. "all true beauty comes from god, and leads back to god. 'every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights.' i once met an old freak who said all sickness came from the devil. i never could believe that, for my mother was an invalid during the last years of her life, and i can testify that her sickness was a blessing to many, and borne to the glory of god. but i am, convinced all true beauty is god-given, and that is why the worship of beauty is to me a religion. nothing bad was ever truly beautiful; nothing good is ever really ugly." jane smiled as she watched him, lying back in the golden sunlight, the very personification of manly beauty. the absolute lack of self-consciousness, either for himself or for her, which allowed him to talk thus to the plainest woman of his acquaintance, held a vein of humour which diverted jane. it appealed to her more than buying coloured air-balls, or screaming because the duchess wore a mushroom hat. "then are plain people to be denied their share of goodness, dal?" she asked. "plainness is not ugliness," replied garth dalmain simply. "i learned that when quite a small boy. my mother took me to hear a famous preacher. as he sat on the platform during the preliminaries he seemed to me quite the ugliest man i had ever seen. he reminded me of a grotesque gorilla, and i dreaded the moment when he should rise up and face us and give out a text. it seemed to me there ought to be bars between, and that we should want to throw nuts and oranges. but when he rose to speak, his face was transfigured. goodness and inspiration shone from it, making it as the face of an angel. i never again thought him ugly. the beauty of his soul shone through, transfiguring his body. child though i was, i could differentiate even then between ugliness and plainness. when he sat down at the close of his magnificent sermon, i no longer thought him a complicated form of chimpanzee. i remembered the divine halo of his smile. of course his actual plainness of feature remained. it was not the sort of face one could have wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite to one at table. but then one was not called to that sort of discipline, which would have been martyrdom to me. and he has always stood to my mind since as a proof of the truth that goodness is never ugly; and that divine love and aspiration shining through the plainest features may redeem them temporarily into beauty; and, permanently, into a thing one loves to remember." "i see," said jane. "it must have often helped you to a right view to have realised that so long ago. but now let us return to the important question of the face which you are to have daily opposite you at table. it cannot be lady brand's, nor can it be myra's; but, you know, dal, a very lovely one is being suggested for the position." "no names, please," said garth, quickly. "i object to girls' names being mentioned in this sort of conversation." "very well, dear boy. i understand and respect your objection. you have made her famous already by your impressionist portrait of her, and i hear you are to do a more elaborate picture 'in the fall.' now, dal, you know you admire her immensely. she is lovely, she is charming, she hails from the land whose women, when they possess charm, unite with it a freshness and a piquancy which place them beyond compare. in some ways you are so unique yourself that you ought to have a wife with a certain amount of originality. now, i hardly know how far the opinion of your friends would influence you in such a matter, but you may like to hear how fully they approve your very open allegiance to--shall we say--the beautiful 'stars and stripes'?" garth dalmain took out his cigarette case, carefully selected a cigarette, and sat with it between his fingers in absorbed contemplation. "smoke," said jane. "thanks," said garth. he struck a match and very deliberately lighted his cigarette. as he flung away the vesta the breeze caught it and it fell on the lawn, flaming brightly. garth sprang up and extinguished it, then drew his chair more exactly opposite to jane's and lay back, smoking meditatively, and watching the little rings he blew, mount into the cedar branches, expand, fade, and vanish. jane was watching him. the varied and characteristic ways in which her friends lighted and smoked their cigarettes always interested jane. there were at least a dozen young men of whom she could have given the names upon hearing a description of their method. also, she had learned from deryck brand the value of silences in an important conversation, and the art of not weakening a statement by a postscript. at last garth spoke. "i wonder why the smoke is that lovely pale blue as it curls up from the cigarette, and a greyish-white if one blows it out." jane knew it was because it had become impregnated with moisture, but she did not say so, having no desire to contribute her quota of pats to this air-ball, or to encourage the superficial workings of his mind just then. she quietly awaited the response to her appeal to his deeper nature which she felt certain would be forthcoming. presently it came. "it is awfully good of you, miss champion, to take the trouble to think all this and to say it to me. may i prove my gratitude by explaining for once where my difficulty lies? i have scarcely defined it to myself, and yet i believe i can express it to you." another long silence. garth smoked and pondered. jane waited. it was a very comprehending, very companionable silence. garth found himself parodying the last lines of an old sixteenth-century song: "then ever pray that heaven may send such weeds, such chairs, and such a friend." either the cigarette, or the chair, or jane, or perhaps all three combined were producing in him a sublime sense of calm, and rest, and well-being; an uplifting of spirit which made all good things seem better; all difficult things, easy; and all ideals, possible. the silence, like the sunset, was golden; but at last he broke it. "two women--the only two women who have ever really been in my life--form for me a standard below which i cannot fall,--one, my mother, a sacred and ideal memory; the other, old margery graem, my childhood's friend and nurse, now my housekeeper and general tender and mender. her faithful heart and constant remembrance help to keep me true to the ideal of that sweet presence which faded from beside me when i stood on the threshold of manhood. margery lives at castle gleneesh. when i return home, the sight which first meets my eyes as the hall door opens is old margery in her black satin apron, lawn kerchief, and lavender ribbons. i always feel seven then, and i always hug her. you, miss champion, don't like me when i feel seven; but margery does. now, this is what i want you to realise. when i bring a bride to gleneesh and present her to margery, the kind old eyes will try to see nothing but good; the faithful old heart will yearn to love and serve. and yet i shall know she knows the standard, just as i know it; i shall know she remembers the ideal of gentle, tender, christian womanhood, just as i remember it; and i must not, i dare not, fall short. believe me, miss champion, more than once, when physical attraction has been strong, and i have been tempted in the worship of the outward loveliness to disregard or forget the essentials,--the things which are unseen but eternal,--then, all unconscious of exercising any such influence, old margery's clear eyes look into mine, old margery's mittened hand seems to rest upon my coat sleeve, and the voice which has guided me from infancy, says, in gentle astonishment: `is this your choice, master garthie, to fill my dear lady's place?' no doubt, miss champion, it will seem almost absurd to you when you think of our set and our sentiments, and the way we racket round that i should sit here on the duchess's lawn and confess that i have been held back from proposing marriage to the women i have most admired, because of what would have been my old nurse's opinion of them! but you must remember her opinion is formed by a memory, and that memory is the memory of my dead mother. moreover, margery voices my best self, and expresses my own judgment when it is not blinded by passion or warped by my worship of the beautiful. not that margery would disapprove of loveliness; in fact, she would approve of nothing else for me, i know very well. but her penetration rapidly goes beneath the surface. according to one of paul's sublime paradoxes, she looks at the things that are not seen. it seems queer that i can tell you all this, miss champion, and really it is the first time i have actually formulated it in my own mind. but i think it so extremely friendly of you to have troubled to give me good advice in the matter." garth dalmain ceased speaking, and the silence which followed suddenly assumed alarming proportions, seeming to jane like a high fence which she was vainly trying to scale. she found herself mentally rushing hither and thither, seeking a gate or any possible means of egress. and still she was confronted by the difficulty of replying adequately to the totally unexpected. and what added to her dumbness was the fact that she was infinitely touched by garth's confession; and when jane was deeply moved speech always became difficult. that this young man--adored by all the girls for his good looks and delightful manners; pursued for his extreme eligibility by mothers and chaperons; famous already in the world of art; flattered, courted, sought after in society--should calmly admit that the only woman really left in his life was his old nurse, and that her opinion and expectations held him back from a worldly, or unwise marriage, touched jane deeply, even while in her heart she smiled at what their set would say could they realise the situation. it revealed garth in a new light; and suddenly jane understood him, as she had not understood him before. and yet the only reply she could bring herself to frame was: "i wish i knew old margery." garth's brown eyes flashed with pleasure. "ah, i wish you did," he said. "and i should like you to see castle gleneesh. you would enjoy the view from the terrace, sheer into the gorge, and away across the purple hills. and i think you would like the pine woods and the moor. i say, miss champion, why should not _i_ get up a 'best party' in september, and implore the duchess to come and chaperon it? and then you could come, and any one else you would like asked. and--and, perhaps--we might ask--the beautiful 'stars and stripes,' and her aunt, mrs. parker bangs of chicago; and then we should see what margery thought of her!" "delightful!" said jane. "i would come with pleasure. and really, dal, i think that girl has a sweet nature. could you do better? the exterior is perfect, and surely the soul is there. yes, ask us all, and see what happens." "i will," cried garth, delighted. "and what will margery think of mrs. parker bangs?" "never mind," said jane decidedly. "when you marry the niece, the aunt goes back to chicago." "and i wish her people were not millionaires." "that can't be helped," said jane. "americans are so charming, that we really must not mind their money." "i wish miss lister and her aunt were here," remarked garth. "but they are to be at lady ingleby's, where i am due next tuesday. do you come on there, miss champion?" "i do," replied jane. "i go to the brands for a few days on tuesday, but i have promised myra to turn up at shenstone for the week-end. i like staying there. they are such a harmonious couple." "yes," said garth, "but no one could help being a harmonious couple, who had married lady ingleby." "what grammar!" laughed jane. "but i know what you mean, and i am glad you think so highly of myra. she is a dear! only do make haste and paint her and get her off your mind, so as to be free for pauline lister." the sun-dial pointed to seven o'clock. the rooks had circled round the elms and dropped contentedly into their nests. "let us go in," said jane, rising. "i am glad we have had this talk," she added, as he walked beside her across the lawn. "yes," said garth. "air-balls weren't in it! it was a football this time--good solid leather. and we each kicked one goal,--a tie, you know. for your advice went home to me, and i think my reply showed you the true lie of things; eh, miss champion?" he was feeling seven again; but jane saw him now through old margery's glasses, and it did not annoy her. "yes," she said, smiling at him with her kind, true eyes; "we will consider it a tie, and surely it will prove a tie to our friendship. thank you, dal, for all you have told me." arrived in her room, jane found she had half an hour to spare before dressing. she took out her diary. her conversation with garth dalmain seemed worth recording, particularly his story of the preacher whose beauty of soul redeemed the ugliness of his body. she wrote it down verbatim. then she rang for her maid, and dressed for dinner, and the concert which should follow. chapter vi the veil is lifted "miss champion! oh, here you are! your turn next, please. the last item of the local programme is in course of performance, after which the duchess explains velma's laryngitis--let us hope she will not call it 'appendicitis'--and then i usher you up. are you ready?" garth dalmain, as master of ceremonies, had sought jane champion on the terrace, and stood before her in the soft light of the hanging chinese lanterns. the crimson rambler in his button-hole, and his red silk socks, which matched it, lent an artistic touch of colour to the conventional black and white of his evening clothes. jane looked up from the comfortable depths of her wicker chair; then smiled at his anxious face. "i am ready," she said, and rising, walked beside him. "has it gone well?" she asked. "is it a good audience?" "packed," replied garth, "and the duchess has enjoyed herself. it has been funnier than usual. but now comes the event of the evening. i say, where is your score?" "thanks," said jane. "i shall play it from memory. it obviates the bother of turning over." they passed into the concert-room and stood behind screens and a curtain, close to the half-dozen steps leading, from the side, up on to the platform. "oh, hark to the duchess!" whispered garth. "my niece, jane champion, has kindly consented to step into the breach--' which means that you will have to step up on to that platform in another half-minute. really it would be kinder to you if she said less about velma. but never mind; they are prepared to like anything. there! appendicitis! i told you so. poor madame velma! let us hope it won't get into the local papers. oh, goodness! she is going to enlarge on new-fangled diseases. well, it gives us a moment's breathing space.... i say, miss champion, i was chaffing this afternoon about sharps and flats. i can play that accompaniment for you if you like. no? well, just as you think best. but remember, it takes a lot of voice to make much effect in this concert-room, and the place is crowded. now--the duchess has done. come on. mind the bottom step. hang it all! how dark it is behind this curtain!" garth gave her his hand, and jane mounted the steps and passed into view of the large audience assembled in the overdene concert-room. her tall figure seemed taller than usual as she walked alone across the rather high platform. she wore a black evening gown of soft material, with old lace at her bosom and one string of pearls round her neck. when she appeared, the audience gazed at her and applauded doubtfully. velma's name on the programme had raised great expectations; and here was miss champion, who certainly played very nicely, but was not supposed to be able to sing, volunteering to sing velma's song. a more kindly audience would have cheered her to the echo, voicing its generous appreciation of her effort, and sanguine expectation of her success. this audience expressed its astonishment, in the dubiousness of its faint applause. jane smiled at them good-naturedly; sat down at the piano, a bechstein grand; glanced at the festoons of white roses and the cross of crimson ramblers; then, without further preliminaries, struck the opening chord and commenced to sing. the deep, perfect voice thrilled through the room. a sudden breathless hush fell upon the audience. each syllable penetrated the silence, borne on a tone so tender and so amazingly sweet, that casual hearts stood still and marvelled at their own emotion; and those who felt deeply already, responded with a yet deeper thrill to the magic of that music. "the hours i spent with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me; i count them over, ev'ry one apart, my rosary,--my rosary." softly, thoughtfully, tenderly, the last two words were breathed into the silence, holding a world of reminiscence--a large-hearted woman's faithful remembrance of tender moments in the past. the listening crowd held its breath. this was not a song. this was the throbbing of a heart; and it throbbed in tones of such sweetness, that tears started unbidden. then the voice, which had rendered the opening lines so quietly, rose in a rapid crescendo of quivering pain. "each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, to still a heart in absence wrung; i tell each bead unto the end, and there-- a cross is hung!" the last four words were given with a sudden power and passion which electrified the assembly. in the pause which followed, could be heard the tension of feeling produced. but in another moment the quiet voice fell soothingly, expressing a strength of endurance which would fail in no crisis, nor fear to face any depths of pain; yet gathering to itself a poignancy of sweetness, rendered richer by the discipline of suffering. "o memories that bless and burn! o barren gain and bitter loss! i kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn to kiss the cross ... to kiss the cross." only those who have heard jane sing the rosary can possibly realise how she sang "i kiss each bead." the lingering retrospection in each word; breathed out a love so womanly, so beautiful, so tender, that her identity was forgotten--even by those in the audience who knew her best--in the magic of her rendering of the song. the accompaniment, which opens with a single chord, closes with a single note. jane struck it softly, lingeringly; then rose, turned from the piano, and was leaving the platform, when a sudden burst of wild applause broke from the audience. jane hesitated, paused, looked at her aunt's guests as if almost surprised to find them there. then the slow smile dawned in her eyes and passed to her lips. she stood in the centre of the platform for a moment, awkwardly, almost shyly; then moved on as men's voices began to shout "encore! 'core!" and left the platform by the side staircase. but there, behind the scenes, in the semi-darkness of screens and curtains, a fresh surprise awaited jane, more startling than the enthusiastic tumult of her audience. at the foot of the staircase stood garth dalmain. his face was absolutely colourless, and his eyes shone out from it like burning stars. he remained motionless until she stepped from the last stair and stood close to him. then with a sudden movement he caught her by the shoulders and turned her round. "go back!" he said, and the overmastering need quivering in his voice drew jane's eyes to his in mute astonishment. "go back at once and sing it all over again, note for note, word for word, just as before. ah, don't stand here waiting! go back now! go back at once! don't you know that you must?" jane looked into those shining eyes. something she saw in them excused the brusque command of his tone. without a word, she quietly mounted the steps and walked across the platform to the piano. people were still applauding, and redoubled their demonstrations of delight as she appeared; but jane took her seat at the instrument without giving them a thought. she was experiencing a very curious and unusual sensation. never before in her whole life had she obeyed a peremptory command. in her childhood's days, fraulein and miss jebb soon found out that they could only obtain their desires by means of carefully worded requests, or pathetic appeals to her good feelings and sense of right. an unreasonable order, or a reasonable one unexplained, promptly met with a point-blank refusal. and this characteristic still obtained, though modified by time; and even the duchess, as a rule, said "please" to jane. but now a young man with a white face and blazing eyes had unceremoniously swung her round, ordered her up the stairs, and commanded her to sing a song over again, note for note, word for word, and she was meekly going to obey. as she took her seat, jane suddenly made up her mind not to sing the rosary again. she had many finer songs in her repertoire. the audience expected another. why should she disappoint those expectations because of the imperious demands of a very highly excited boy? she commenced the magnificent prelude to handel's "where'er you walk," but, as she played it, her sense of truth and justice intervened. she had not come back to sing again at the bidding of a highly excited boy, but of a deeply moved man; and his emotion was of no ordinary kind. that garth dalmain should have been so moved as to forget even momentarily his punctilious courtesy of manner, was the highest possible tribute to her art and to her song. while she played the handel theme--and played it so that a whole orchestra seemed marshalled upon the key-board under those strong, firm finger--she suddenly realised, though scarcely understanding it, the must of which garth had spoken, and made up her mind to yield to its necessity. so; when the opening bars were ended, instead of singing the grand song from semele she paused for a moment; struck once more the rosary's; opening chord; and did as garth had bidden her to do. "the hours i spent with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me; i count them over, ev'ry one apart, my rosary,--my rosary. "each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer, to still a heart in absence wrung; i tell each bead unto the end, and there-- a cross is hung! "o memories that bless and burn! o barren gain and bitter loss! i kiss each bead, and strive at last to learn to kiss the cross ... to kiss the cross." when jane left the platform, garth was still standing motionless at the foot of the stairs. his face was just as white as before, but his eyes had lost that terrible look of unshed tears, which had sent her back, at his bidding, without a word of question or remonstrance. a wonderful light now shone in them; a light of adoration, which touched jane's heart because she had never before seen anything quite like it. she smiled as she came slowly down the steps, and held out both hands to him with an unconscious movement of gracious friendliness. garth stepped close to the bottom of the staircase and took them in his, while she was still on the step above him. for a moment he did not speak. then in a low voice, vibrant with emotion: "my god!" he said, "oh, my god!" "hush," said jane; "i never like to hear that name spoken lightly, dal." "spoken lightly!" he exclaimed. "no speaking lightly would be possible for me to-night. 'every perfect gift is from above.' when words fail me to speak of the gift, can you wonder if i apostrophise the giver?" jane looked steadily into his shining eyes, and a smile of pleasure illumined her own. "so you liked my song?" she said. "liked--liked your song?" repeated garth, a shade of perplexity crossing his face. "i do not know whether i liked your song." "then why this flattering demonstration?" inquired jane, laughing. "because," said garth, very low, "you lifted the veil, and i--i passed within." he was still holding her hands in his; and, as he spoke the last two words, he turned them gently over and, bending, kissed each palm with an indescribably tender reverence; then, loosing them, stood on one side, and jane went out on to the terrace alone. chapter vii garth finds his rosary jane spent but a very few minutes in the drawing-room that evening. the fun in progress there was not to her taste, and the praises heaped upon herself annoyed her. also she wanted the quiet of her own room in order to think over that closing episode of the concert, which had taken place between herself and garth, behind the scenes. she did not feel certain how to take it. she was conscious that it held an element which she could not fathom, and garth's last act had awakened in herself feelings which she did not understand. she extremely disliked the way in which he had kissed her hands; and yet he had put into the action such a passion of reverent worship that it gave her a sense of consecration--of being, as it were, set apart to minister always to the hearts of men in that perfect gift of melody which should uplift and ennoble. she could not lose the sensation of the impress of his lips upon the palms of her hands. it was as if he had left behind something tangible and abiding. she caught herself looking at them anxiously once or twice, and the third time this happened she determined to go to her room. the duchess was at the piano, completely hidden from view by nearly the whole of her house party, crowding round in fits of delighted laughter. ronnie had just broken through from the inmost circle to fetch an antimacassar; and billy, to dash to the writing-table for a sheet of note-paper. jane knew the note-paper meant a clerical dog collar, and she concluded something had been worn which resembled an antimacassar. she turned rather wearily and moved towards the door. quiet and unobserved though her retreat had been, garth was at the door before her. she did not know how he got there; for, as she turned to leave the room, she had seen his sleek head close to myra ingleby's on the further side of the duchess's crowd. he opened the door and jane passed out. she felt equally desirous of saying two things to him,--either: "how dared you behave in so unconventional a way?" or: "tell me just what you want me to do, and i will do it." she said neither. garth followed her into the hall, lighted a candle, and threw the match at tommy; then handed her the silver candlestick. he was looking absurdly happy. jane felt annoyed with him for parading this gladness, which she had unwittingly caused and in which she had no share. also she felt she must break this intimate silence. it was saying so much which ought not to be said, since it could not be spoken. she took her candle rather aggressively and turned upon the second step. "good-night, dal," she said. "and do you know that you are missing the curate?" he looked up at her. his eyes shone in the light of her candle. "no," he said. "i am neither missing nor missed. i was only waiting in there until you went up. i shall not go back. i am going out into the park now to breathe in the refreshing coolness of the night breeze. and i am going to stand under the oaks and tell my beads. i did not know i had a rosary, until to-night, but i have--i have!" "i should say you have a dozen," remarked jane, dryly. "then you would be wrong," replied garth. "i have just one. but it has many hours. i shall be able to call them all to mind when i get out there alone. i am going to 'count each pearl.'" "how about the cross?" asked jane. "i have not reached that yet," answered garth. "there is no cross to my rosary." "i fear there is a cross to every true rosary, dal," said jane gently, "and i also fear it will go hard with you when you find yours." but garth was confident and unafraid. "when i find mine," he said, "i hope i shall be able to"-- involuntarily jane looked at her hands. he saw the look and smiled, though he had the grace to colour beneath his tan,--"to face the cross," he said. jane turned and began to mount the stairs; but garth arrested her with an eager question. "just one moment, miss champion! there is something i want to ask you. may i? will you think me impertinent, presuming, inquisitive?" "i have no doubt i shall," said jane. "but i am thinking you all sorts of unusual things to-night; so three adjectives more or less will not matter much. you may ask." "miss champion, have you a rosary?" jane looked at him blankly; then suddenly understood the drift of his question. "my dear boy, no!" she said. "thank goodness, i have kept clear of 'memories that bless and burn.' none of these things enter into my rational and well-ordered life, and i have no wish that they should." "then," deliberated garth, "how came you to sing the rosary as if each line were your own experience; each joy or pain a thing--long passed, perhaps--but your own?" "because," explained jane, "i always live in a song when i sing it. did i not tell you the lesson i learned over the chant hindou? therefore i had a rosary undoubtedly when i was singing that song to-night. but, apart from that, in the sense you mean, no, thank goodness, i have none." garth mounted two steps, bringing his eyes on a level with the candlestick. "but if you cared," he said, speaking very low, "that is how you would care? that is as you would feel?" jane considered. "yes," she said, "if i cared, i suppose i should care just so, and feel as i felt during those few minutes." "then it was you in the song, although the circumstances are not yours?" "yes, i suppose so," jane replied, "if we can consider ourselves apart from our circumstances. but surely this is rather an unprofitable 'air-ball.' goodnight, 'master garthie!'" "i say, miss champion! just one thing more. will you sing for me to-morrow? will you come to the music-room and sing all the lovely things i want to hear? and will you let me play a few of your accompaniments? ah, promise you will come. and promise to sing whatever i ask, and i won't bother you any more now." he stood looking up at her, waiting for her promise, with such adoration shining in his eyes that jane was startled and more than a little troubled. then suddenly it seemed to her that she had found the key, and she hastened to explain it to herself and to him. "oh, you dear boy!" she said. "what an artist you are! and how difficult it is for us commonplace, matter-of-fact people to understand the artistic temperament. here you go, almost turning my steady old head by your rapture over what seemed to you perfection of sound which has reached you through the ear; just as, again and again, you worship at the shrine of perfection of form, which reaches you through the eye. i begin to understand how it is you turn the heads of women when you paint them. however, you are very delightful in your delight, and i want to go up to bed. so i promise to sing all you want and as much as you wish to-morrow. now keep your promise and don't bother me any more to-night. don't spend the whole night in the park, and try not to frighten the deer. no, i do not need any assistance with my candle, and i am quite used to going upstairs by myself, thank you. can't you hear what personal and appropriate remarks tommy is making down there? now do run away, master garthie, and count your pearls. and if you suddenly come upon a cross--remember, the cross can, in all probability, be persuaded to return to chicago!" jane was still smiling as she entered her room and placed her candlestick on the dressing-table. overdene was lighted solely by lamps and candles. the duchess refused to modernise it by the installation of electric light. but candles abounded, and jane, who liked a brilliant illumination, proceeded to light both candles in the branches on either side of the dressing-table mirror, and in the sconces on the wall beside the mantelpiece, and in the tall silver candlesticks upon the writing-table. then she seated herself in a comfortable arm-chair, reached for her writing-case, took out her diary and a fountain pen, and prepared to finish the day's entry. she wrote, "sang 'the rosary' at aunt 'gina's concert in place of velma, failed (laryngitis)," and came to a full stop. somehow the scene with garth was difficult to record, and the sensations which still remained therefrom, absolutely unwritable. jane sat and pondered the situation, content to allow the page to remain blank. before she rose, locked her book, and prepared for rest, she had, to her own satisfaction, clearly explained the whole thing. garth's artistic temperament was the basis of the argument; and, alas, the artistic temperament is not a very firm foundation, either for a theory, or for the fabric of a destiny. however, faute de mieux, jane had to accept it as main factor in her mental adjustment, thus: this vibrant emotion in garth, so strangely disturbing to her own solid calm, was in no sense personal to herself, excepting in so far as her voice and musical gifts were concerned. just as the sight of paintable beauty crazed him with delight, making him wild with alternate hope and despair until he obtained his wish and had his canvas and his sitter arranged to his liking; so now, his passion for the beautiful had been awakened, this time through the medium, not of sight, but of sound. when she had given him his fill of song, and allowed him to play some of her accompaniments, he would be content, and that disquieting look of adoration would pass from those beautiful brown eyes. meanwhile it was pleasant to look forward to to-morrow, though it behooved her to remember that all this admiration had in it nothing personal to herself. he would have gone into even greater raptures over madame blanche, for instance, who had the same timbre of voice and method of singing, combined with a beauty of person which delighted the eye the while her voice enchanted the ear. certainly garth must see and hear her, as music appeared to mean so much to him. jane began planning this, and then her mind turned to pauline lister, the lovely american girl, whose name had been coupled with garth dalmain's all the season. jane felt certain she was just the wife he needed. her loveliness would content him, her shrewd common-sense and straightforward, practical ways would counterbalance his somewhat erratic temperament, and her adaptability would enable her to suit herself to his surroundings, both in his northern home and amongst his large circle of friends down south. once married, he would give up raving about flower and myra, and kissing people's hands in that--"absurd way," jane was going to say, but she was invariably truthful, even in her thoughts, and substituted "extraordinary" as the more correct adjective--in that extraordinary way. she sat forward in her chair with her elbows on her knees, and held her large hands before her, palms upward, realising again the sensations of that moment. then she pulled herself up sharply. "jane champion, don't be a fool! you would wrong that dear, beauty-loving boy, more than you would wrong yourself, if you took him for one moment seriously. his homage to-night was no more personal to you than his appreciation of the excellent dinner was personal to aunt georgina's chef. in his enjoyment of the production, the producer was included; but that was all. be gratified at the success of your art, and do not spoil that success by any absurd sentimentality. now wash your very ungainly hands and go to bed." thus jane to herself. * * * * * and under the oaks, with soft turf beneath his feet, stood garth dalmain, the shy deer sleeping around unconscious of his presence; the planets above, hanging like lamps in the deep purple of the sky. and he, also, soliloquised. "i have found her," he said, in low tones of rapture, "the ideal woman, the crown of womanhood, the perfect mate for the spirit, soul, and body of the man who can win her.--jane! jane! ah, how blind i have been! to have known her for years, and yet not realised her to be this. but she lifted the veil, and i passed in. ah grand, noble heart! she will never be able to draw the veil again between her soul and mine. and she has no rosary. i thank god for that. no other man possesses, or has ever possessed, that which i desire more than i ever desired anything upon this earth, jane's love, jane's tenderness. ah, what will it mean? 'i count each pearl.' she will count them some day--her pearls and mine. god spare us the cross. must there be a cross to every true rosary? then god give me the heavy end, and may the mutual bearing of it bind us together. ah, those dear hands! ah, those true steadfast eyes! ... jane!--jane! surely it has always been jane, though i did not know it, blind fool that i have been! but one thing i know: whereas i was blind, now i see. and it will always be jane from this night onward through time and-please god--into eternity." the night breeze stirred his thick dark hair, and his eyes, as he raised them, shone in the starlight. * * * * * and jane, almost asleep, was roused by the tapping of her blind against the casement, and murmured "anything you wish, garth, just tell me, and i will do it." then awakening suddenly to the consciousness of what she had said, she sat up in the darkness and scolded herself furiously. "oh, you middle-aged donkey! you call yourself staid and sensible, and a little flattery from a boy of whom you are fond turns your head completely. come to your senses at once; or leave overdene by the first train in the morning." chapter viii added pearls the days which followed were golden days to jane. there was nothing to spoil the enjoyment of a very new and strangely sweet experience. garth's manner the next morning held none of the excitement or outward demonstration which had perplexed and troubled her the evening before. he was very quiet, and seemed to jane older than she had ever known him. he had very few lapses into his seven-year-old mood, even with the duchess; and when someone chaffingly asked him whether he was practising the correct deportment of a soon-to-be-married man, "yes," said garth quietly, "i am." "will she be at shenstone?" inquired ronald; for several of the duchess's party were due at lady ingleby's for the following week-end. "yes," said garth, "she will." "oh, lor'!" cried billy, dramatically. "prithee, benedict, are we to take this seriously?" but jane who, wrapped in the morning paper, sat near where garth was standing, came out from behind it to look up at him and say, so that only he heard it "oh, dal, i am so glad! did you make up your mind last night?" "yes," said garth, turning so that he spoke to her alone, "last night." "did our talk in the afternoon have something to do with it?" "no, nothing whatever." "was it the rosary?" he hesitated; then said, without looking at her: "the revelation of the rosary? yes." to jane his mood of excitement was now fully explained, and she could give herself up freely to the enjoyment of this new phase in their friendship, for the hours of music together were a very real delight. garth was more of a musician than she had known, and she enjoyed his clean, masculine touch on the piano, unblurred by slur or pedal; more delicate than her own, where delicacy was required. what her voice was to him during those wonderful hours he did not express in words, for after that first evening he put a firm restraint upon his speech. under the oaks he had made up his mind to wait a week before speaking, and he waited. but the new and strangely sweet experience to jane was that of being absolutely first to some one. in ways known only to himself and to her garth made her feel this. there was nothing for any one else to notice, and yet she knew perfectly well that she never came into the room without his being instantly conscious that she was there; that she never left a room, without being at once missed by him. his attentions were so unobtrusive and tactful that no one else realised them. they called forth no chaff from friends and no "hoity-toity! what now?" from the duchess. and yet his devotion seemed always surrounding her. for the first time in her life jane was made to feel herself first in the whole thought of another. it made him seem strangely her own. she took a pleasure and pride in all he said, and did, and was; and in the hours they spent together in the music-room she learned to know him and to understand that enthusiastic beauty-loving, irresponsible nature, as she had never understood it before. the days were golden, and the parting at night was sweet, because it gave an added zest to the pleasure of meeting in the morning. and yet during these golden days the thought of love, in the ordinary sense of the word, never entered jane's mind. her ignorance in this matter arose, not so much from inexperience, as from too large an experience of the travesty of the real thing; an experience which hindered her from recognising love itself, now that love in its most ideal form was drawing near. jane had not come through a dozen seasons without receiving nearly a dozen proposals of marriage. an heiress, independent of parents and guardians, of good blood and lineage, a few proposals of a certain type were inevitable. middle-aged men--becoming bald and grey; tired of racketing about town; with beautiful old country places and an unfortunate lack of the wherewithal to keep them up--proposed to the honourable jane champion in a business-like way, and the honourable jane looked them up and down, and through and through, until they felt very cheap, and then quietly refused them, in an equally business-like way. two or three nice boys, whom she had pulled out of scrapes and set on their feet again after hopeless croppers, had thought, in a wave of maudlin gratitude, how good it would be for a fellow always to have her at hand to keep him straight and tell him what he ought to do, don't you know? and--er--well, yes--pay his debts, and be a sort of mother-who-doesn't scold kind of person to him; and had caught hold of her kind hand, and implored her to marry them. jane had slapped them if they ventured to touch her, and recommended them not to be silly. one solemn proposal she had had quite lately from the bachelor rector of a parish adjoining overdene. he had often inflicted wearisome conversations upon her; and when he called, intending to put the momentous question, jane, who was sitting at her writing-table in the overdene drawing-room, did not see any occasion to move from it. if the rector became too prosy, she could surreptitiously finish a few notes. he sank into a deep arm-chair close to the writing-table, crossed his somewhat bandy legs one over the other, made the tips of his fingers meet with unctuous accuracy, and intoned the opening sentences of his proposition. jane, sharpening pencils and sorting nibs, apparently only caught the drift of what he was saying, for when he had chanted the phrase, "not alone from selfish motives, my dear miss champion; but for the good of my parish; for the welfare of my flock, for the advancement of the work of the church in our midst," jane opened a despatch-box and drew out her cheque-book. "i shall be delighted to subscribe, mr. bilberry," she said. "is it for a font, a pulpit, new hymn-books, or what?" "my dear lady," said the rector tremulously, "you misunderstand me. my desire is to lead you to the altar." "dear mr. bilberry," said jane champion, "that would be quite unnecessary. from any part of your church the fact that you need a new altar-cloth is absolutely patent to all comers. i will, with the greatest pleasure, give you a cheque for ten pounds towards it. i have attended your church rather often lately because i enjoy a long, quiet walk by myself through the woods. and now i am sure you would like to see my aunt before you go. she is in the aviary, feeding her foreign birds. if you go out by that window and pass along the terrace to your left, you will find the aviary and the duchess. i would suggest the advisability of not mentioning this conversation to my aunt. she does not approve of elaborate altar-cloths, and would scold us both, and insist on the money being spent in providing boots for the school children. no, please do not thank me. i am really glad of an opportunity of helping on your excellent work in this neighbourhood." jane wondered once or twice whether the cheque would be cashed. she would have liked to receive it back by post, torn in half; with a few wrathful lines of manly indignation. but when it returned to her in due course from her bankers, it was indorsed p. bilberry, in a neat scholarly hand, without even a dash of indignation beneath it; and she threw it into the waste-paper basket, with rather a bitter smile. these were jane's experiences of offers of marriage. she had never been loved for her own sake; she had never felt herself really first in the heart and life of another. and now, when the adoring love of a man's whole being was tenderly, cautiously beginning to surround and envelop her, she did not recognise the reason of her happiness or of his devotion. she considered him the avowed lover of another woman, with whose youth and loveliness she would not have dreamed of competing; and she regarded this closeness of intimacy between herself and garth as a development of a friendship more beautiful than she had hitherto considered possible. thus matters stood when tuesday arrived and the overdene party broke up. jane went to town to spend a couple of days with the brands. garth went straight to shenstone, where he had been asked expressly to meet miss lister and her aunt, mrs. parker bangs. jane was due at shenstone on friday for the week-end. chapter ix lady ingleby's house party as jane took her seat and the train moved out of the london terminus she leaned back in her corner with a sigh of satisfaction. somehow these days in town had seemed insufferably long. jane reviewed them thoughtfully, and sought the reason. they had been filled with interests and engagements; and the very fact of being in town, as a rule, contented her. why had she felt so restless and dissatisfied and lonely? from force of habit she had just stopped at the railway book-stall for her usual pile of literature. her friends always said jane could not go even the shortest journey without at least half a dozen papers. but now they lay unheeded on the seat in front of her. jane was considering her tuesday, wednesday, and thursday, and wondering why they had merely been weary stepping-stones to friday. and here was friday at last, and once in the train en route for shenstone, she began to feel happy and exhilarated. what had been the matter with these three days? flower had been charming; deryck, his own friendly, interesting self; little dicky, delightful; and baby blossom, as sweet as only baby blossom could be. what was amiss? "i know," said jane. "of course! why did i not realise it before? i had too much music during those last days at overdene; and such music! i have been suffering from a surfeit of music, and the miss of it has given me this blank feeling of loneliness. no doubt we shall have plenty at myra's, and dal will be there to clamour for it if myra fails to suggest it." with a happy little smile of pleasurable anticipation, jane took up the spectator, and was soon absorbed in an article on the south african problem. myra met her at the station, driving ponies tandem. a light cart was also there for the maid and baggage; and, without losing a moment, jane and her hostess were off along the country lane at a brisk trot. the fields and woods were an exquisite restful green in the afternoon sunshine. wild roses clustered in the hedges. the last loads of hay were being carted in. there was an ecstasy in the songs of the birds and a transporting sense of sweetness about all the sights and scents of the country, such as jane had never experienced so vividly before. she drew a deep breath and exclaimed, almost involuntarily: "ah! it is good to be here!" "you dear!" said lady ingleby, twirling her whip and nodding in gracious response to respectful salutes from the hay-field. "it is a comfort to have you! i always feel you are like the bass of a tune--something so solid and satisfactory and beneath one in case of a crisis. i hate crises. they are so tiring. as i say: why can't things always go on as they are? they are as they were, and they were as they will be, if only people wouldn't bother. however, i am certain nothing could go far wrong when you are anywhere near." myra flicked the leader, who was inclined to "sugar," and they flew along between the high hedges, brushing lightly against overhanging masses of honeysuckle and wild clematis. jane snatched a spray of the clematis, in passing. "'traveller's joy,'" she said, with that same quiet smile of glad anticipation, and put the white blossom in her buttonhole. "well," continued lady ingleby, "my house party is going on quite satisfactorily. oh, and, jane, there seems no doubt about dal. how pleased i shall be if it comes off under my wing! the american girl is simply exquisite, and so vivacious and charming. and dal has quite given up being silly--not that _i_ ever thought him silly, but i know you did--and is very quiet and pensive; really were it any one but he, one would almost say 'dull.' and they roam about together in the most approved fashion. i try to get the aunt to make all her remarks to me. i am so afraid of her putting dal off. he is so fastidious. i have promised billy anything, up to the half of my kingdom, if he will sit at the feet of mrs. parker bangs and listen to her wisdom, answer her questions, and keep her away from dal. billy is being so abjectly devoted in his attentions to mrs. parker bangs that i begin to have fears lest he intends asking me to kiss him; in which case i shall hand him over to you to chastise. you manage these boys so splendidly. i fully believe dal will propose to pauline lister tonight. i can't imagine why he didn't last night. there was a most perfect moon, and they went on the lake. what more could dal want?--a lake, and a moon, and that lovely girl! billy took mrs. parker bangs in a double canoe and nearly upset her through laughing so much at the things she said about having to sit flat on the bottom. but he paddled her off to the opposite side of the lake from dal and her niece, which was all we wanted. mrs. parker bangs asked me afterwards whether billy is a widower. now what do you suppose she meant by that?" "i haven't the faintest idea," said jane. "but i am delighted to hear about dal and miss lister. she is just the girl for him, and she will soon adapt herself to his ways and needs. besides, dal must have flawless loveliness, and really he gets it there." "he does indeed," said myra. "you should have seen her last night, in white satin, with wild roses in her hair. i cannot imagine why dal did not rave. but perhaps it is a good sign that he should take things more quietly. i suppose he is making up his mind." "no," said jane. "i believe he did that at overdene. but it means a lot to him. he takes marriage very seriously. whom have you at shenstone?" lady ingleby told off a list of names. jane knew them all. "delightful!" she said. "oh! how glad i am to be here! london has been so hot and so dull. i never thought it hot or dull before. i feel a renegade. ah! there is the lovely little church! i want to hear the new organ. i was glad your nice parson remembered me and let me have a share in it. has it two manuals or three?" "half a dozen i think," said lady ingleby, "and you work them up and down with your feet. but i judged it wiser to leave them alone when i played for the children's service one sunday. you never know quite what will happen if you touch those mechanical affairs." "don't you mean the composition pedals?" suggested jane. "i dare say i do," said myra placidly. "those things underneath, like foot-rests, which startle you horribly if you accidentally kick them." jane smiled at the thought of how garth would throw back his head and shout, if she told him of this conversation. lady ingleby's musical remarks always amused her friends. they passed the village church on the green, ivy-clad, picturesque, and, half a minute later, swerved in at the park gates. myra saw jane glance at the gate-post they had just shaved, and laughed. "a miss is as good as a mile," she said, as they dashed up the long drive between the elms, "as i told dear mamma, when she expostulated wrathfully with me for what she called my 'furious driving' the other day. by the way, jane, dear mamma has been quite cordial lately. by the time i am seventy and she is ninety-eight i think she will begin to be almost fond of me. here we are. do notice lawson. he is new, and such a nice man. he sings so well, and plays the concertina a little, and teaches in the sunday-school, and speaks really quite excellently at temperance meetings. he is extremely fond of mowing the lawns, and my maid tells me he is studying french with her. the only thing he seems really incapable of being, is an efficient butler; which is so unfortunate, as i like him far too well ever to part with him. michael says i have a perfectly fatal habit of liking people, and of encouraging them to do the things they do well and enjoy doing, instead of the things they were engaged to do. i suppose i have; but i do like my household to be happy." they alighted, and myra trailed into the hall with a lazy grace which gave no indication of the masterly way she had handled her ponies, but rather suggested stepping from a comfortable seat in a barouche. jane looked with interest at the man-servant who came forward and deftly assisted them. he had not quite the air of a butler but neither could she imagine him playing a concertina or haranguing a temperance meeting and he acquitted himself quite creditably. "oh, that was not lawson," explained myra, as she led the way upstairs. "i had forgotten. he had to go to the vicarage this afternoon to see the vicar about a 'service of song' they are getting up. that was tom, but we call him 'jephson' in the house. he was one of michael's stud grooms, but he is engaged to one of the housemaids, and i found he so very much preferred being in the house, so i have arranged for him to understudy lawson, and he is growing side whiskers. i shall have to break it to michael on his return from norway. this way, jane. we have put you in the magnolia room. i knew you would enjoy the view of the lake. oh, i forgot to tell you, a tennis tournament is in progress. i must hasten to the courts. tea will be going on there, under the chestnuts. dal and ronnie are to play the final for the men's singles. it ought to be a fine match. it was to come on at about half-past four. don't wait to do any changings. your maid and your luggage can't be here just yet." "thanks," said jane; "i always travel in country clothes, and have done so to-day, as you see. i will just get rid of the railway dust, and follow you." ten minutes later, guided by sounds of cheering and laughter, jane made her way through the shrubbery to the tennis lawns. the whole of lady ingleby's house party was assembled there, forming a picturesque group under the white and scarlet chestnut-trees. beyond, on the beautifully kept turf of the court, an exciting set was in progress. as she approached, jane could distinguish garth's slim, agile figure, in white flannels and the violet shirt; and young ronnie, huge and powerful, trusting to the terrific force of his cuts and drives to counterbalance garth's keener eye and swifter turn of wrist. it was a fine game. garth had won the first set by six to four, and now the score stood at five to four in ronnie's favour; but this game was garth's service, and he was almost certain to win it. the score would then be "games all." jane walked along the line of garden chairs to where she saw a vacant one near myra. she was greeted with delight, but hurriedly, by the eager watchers of the game. suddenly a howl went up. garth had made two faults. jane found her chair, and turned her attention to the game. almost instantly shrieks of astonishment and surprise again arose. garth had served into the net and over the line. game and set were ronnie's. "one all," remarked billy. "well! i never saw dal do that before. however; it gives us the bliss of watching another set. they are splendidly matched. dal is lightning, and ronnie thunder." the players crossed over, garth rather white beneath his tan. he was beyond words vexed with himself for failing in his service, at that critical juncture. not that he minded losing the set; but it seemed to him it must be patent to the whole crowd, that it was the sight, out of the tail of his eye, of a tall grey figure moving quietly along the line of chairs, which for a moment or two set earth and sky whirling, and made a confused blur of net and lines. as a matter of fact, only one of the onlookers connected garth's loss of the game with jane's arrival, and she was the lovely girl, seated exactly opposite the net, with whom he exchanged a smile and a word as he crossed to the other side of the court. the last set proved the most exciting of the three. nine hard-fought games, five to garth, four to ronnie. and now ronnie was serving, and fighting hard to make it games-all. over and over enthusiastic partisans of both shouted "deuce!" and then when garth had won the "vantage," a slashing over-hand service from ronnie beat him, and it was "deuce" again. "don't it make one giddy?" said mrs. parker bangs to billy, who reclined on the sward at her feet. "i should say it has gone on long enough. and they must both be wanting their tea. it would have been kind in mr. dalmain to have let that ball pass, anyway." "yes, wouldn't it?" said billy earnestly. "but you see, dal is not naturally kind. now, if i had been playing against ronnie, i should have let those over-hand balls of his pass long ago." "i am sure you would," said mrs. parker bangs, approvingly; while jane leaned over, at myra's request, and pinched billy. slash went ronnie's racket. "deuce! deuce!" shouted half a dozen voices. "they shouldn't say that," remarked mrs. parker bangs, "even if they are mad about it." billy hugged his knees, delightedly; looking up at her with an expression of seraphic innocence. "no. isn't it sad?" he murmured. "i never say naughty words when i play. i always say 'game love.' it sounds so much nicer, i think." jane pinched again, but billy's rapt gaze at mrs. parker bangs continued. "billy," said myra sternly, "go into the hall and fetch my scarlet sunshade. yes, i dare say you will miss the finish," she added in a stern whisper, as he leaned over her chair, remonstrating; "but you richly deserve it." "i have made up my mind what to ask, dear queen," whispered billy as he returned, breathless, three minutes later and laid the parasol in lady ingleby's lap. "you promised me anything, up to the half of your kingdom. i will have the head of mrs. parker bangs in a charger." "oh, shut up, billy!" exclaimed jane, "and get out of the light! we missed that last stroke. what is the score?" once again it was garth's vantage, and once again ronnie's arm swung high for an untakable smasher. "play up, dal!" cried a voice, amid the general hubbub. garth knew that dear voice. he did not look in its direction, but he smiled. the next moment his arm shot out like a flash of lightning. the ball touched ground on ronnie's side of the net and shot the length of the court without rising. ronnie's wild scoop at it was hopeless. game and set were garth's. they walked off the ground together, their rackets under their arms, the flush of a well-contested fight on their handsome faces. it had been so near a thing that both could sense the thrill of victory. pauline lister had been sitting with garth's coat on her lap, and his watch and chain were in her keeping. he paused a moment to take them up and receive her congratulations; then, slipping on his coat, and pocketing his watch, came straight to jane. "how do you do, miss champion?" his eyes sought hers eagerly; and the welcoming gladness he saw in them filled him with certainty and content. he had missed her so unutterably during these days. tuesday, wednesday, and thursday had just been weary stepping-stones to friday. it seemed incredible that one person's absence could make so vast a difference. and yet how perfect that it should be so; and that they should both realise it, now the day had come when he intended to tell her how desperately he wanted her always. yes, that they should both realise it--for he felt certain jane had also experienced the blank. a thing so complete and overwhelming as the miss of her had been to him could not be one-sided. and how well worth the experience of these lonely days if they had thereby learned something of what together meant, now the words were to be spoken which should insure forever no more such partings. all this sped through garth's mind as he greeted jane with that most commonplace of english greetings, the everlasting question which never receives an answer. but from garth, at that moment, it did not sound commonplace to jane, and she answered it quite frankly and fully. she wanted above all things to tell him exactly how she did; to hear all about himself, and compare notes on the happenings of these three interminable days; and to take up their close comradeship again, exactly where it had left off. her hand went home to his with that firm completeness of clasp, which always made a hand shake with jane such a satisfactory and really friendly thing. "very fit, thank you, dal," she answered. "at least i am every moment improving in health and spirits, now i have arrived here at last." garth stood his racket against the arm of her chair and deposited himself full length on the grass beside her, leaning on his elbow. "was anything wrong with london?" he asked, rather low, not looking up at her, but at the smart brown shoe, planted firmly on the grass so near his hand. "nothing was wrong with london," replied jane frankly; "it was hot and dusty of course, but delightful as usual. something was wrong with me; and you will be ashamed of me, dal, if i confess what it was." garth did not look up, but assiduously picked little blades of grass and laid them in a pattern on jane's shoe. this conversation would have been exactly to the point had they been alone. but was jane really going to announce to the assembled company, in that dear, resonant, carrying voice of hers, the sweet secret of their miss of one another? "liver?" inquired mrs. parker bangs suddenly. "muffins!" exclaimed billy instantly, and, rushing for them, almost shot them into her lap in the haste with which he handed them, stumbling headlong over garth's legs at the same moment. jane stared at mrs. parker bangs and her muffins; then looked down at the top of garth's dark head, bent low over the grass. "i was dull," she said, "intolerably dull. and dal always says 'only a dullard is dull.' but i diagnosed my dulness in the train just now and found it was largely his fault. do you hear, dal?" garth lifted his head and looked at her, realising in that moment that it was, after all, possible for a complete and overwhelming experience to be one-sided. jane's calm grey eyes were full of gay friendliness. "it was your fault, my dear boy," said jane. "how so?" queried garth; and though there was a deep flush on his sunburned face, his voice was quietly interrogative. "because, during those last days at overdene, you led me on into a time of musical dissipation such as i had never known before, and i missed it to a degree which was positively alarming. i began to fear for the balance of my well-ordered mind." "well," said myra, coming out from behind her red parasol, "you and dal can have orgies of music here if you want them. you will find a piano in the drawing-room and another in the hall, and a bechstein grand in the billiard-room. that is where i hold the practices for the men and maids. i could not make up my mind which makers i really preferred, erard, broadwood, collard, or bechstein; so by degrees i collected one of each. and after all i think i play best upon the little cottage piano we had in the school-room at home. it stands in my boudoir now. i seem more accustomed to its notes, or it lends itself better to my way of playing." "thank you, myra," said jane. "i fancy dal and i will like the bechstein." "and if you want something really exciting in the way of music," continued lady ingleby, "you might attend some of the rehearsals for this 'service of song' they are getting up in aid of the organ deficit fund. i believe they are attempting great things." "i would sooner pay off the whole deficit, than go within a mile of a 'service of song,'" said jane emphatically. "oh, no," put in garth quickly, noting myra's look of disappointment. "it is so good for people to work off their own debts and earn the things they need in their churches. and 'services of song' are delightful if well done, as i am sure this will be if lady ingleby's people are in it. lawson outlined it to me this morning, and hummed all the principal airs. it is highly dramatic. robinson crusoe--no, of course not! what's the beggar's name? 'uncle tom's cabin'? yes, i knew it was something black. lawson is uncle tom, and the vicar's small daughter is to be little eva. miss champion, you will walk down with me to the very next rehearsal." "shall i?" said jane, unconscious of how tender was the smile she gave him; conscious only that in her own heart was the remembrance of the evening at overdene when she felt so inclined to say to him: "tell me just what you want me to do, and i will do it." "pauline will just love to go with you," said mrs. parker bangs. "she dotes on rural music." "rubbish, aunt!" said miss lister, who had slipped into an empty chair near myra. "i agree with miss champion about 'services of song,' and i don't care for any music but the best." jane turned to her quickly, with a cordial smile and her most friendly manner. "ah, but you must come," she said. "we will be victimised together. and perhaps dal and lawson will succeed in converting us to the cult of the 'service of song.' and anyway it will be amusing to have dal explain it to us. he will need the courage of his convictions." "talking of something 'really exciting in the way of music,'" said pauline lister, "we had it on board when we came over. there was a nice friendly crowd on board the arabic, and they arranged a concert for half-past eight on the thursday evening. we were about two hundred miles off the coast of ireland, and when we came up from dinner we had run into a dense fog. at eight o'clock they started blowing the fog-horn every half-minute, and while the fog-horn was sounding you couldn't hear yourself speak. however, all the programmes were printed, and it was our last night on board, so they concluded to have the concert all the same. down we all trooped into the saloon, and each item of that programme was punctuated by the stentorian boo of the fog-horn every thirty seconds. you never heard anything so cute as the way it came in, right on time. a man with a deep bass voice sang rocked in the cradle of the deep, and each time he reached the refrain, 'and calm and peaceful is my sle-eep,' boo went the fog-horn, casting a certain amount of doubt on our expectations of peaceful sleep that night, anyway. then a man with a sweet tenor sang oft in the stilly night, and the fog-horn showed us just how oft, namely, every thirty seconds. but the queerest effect of all was when a girl had to play a piano-forte solo. it was something of chopin's, full of runs and trills and little silvery notes. she started all right; but when she was half-way down the first page, boo went the fog-horn, a longer blast than usual. we saw her fingers flying, and the turning of the page, but not a note could we hear; and when the old horn stopped and we could hear the piano again, she had reached a place half-way down the second page, and we hadn't heard what led to it. my! it was funny. that went on all through. she was a plucky girl to stick to it. we gave her a good round of applause when she had finished, and the fog-horn joined in and drowned us. it was the queerest concert experience i ever had. but we all enjoyed it. only we didn't enjoy that noise keeping right on until five o'clock next morning." jane had turned in her chair, and listened with appreciative interest while the lovely american girl talked, watching, with real delight, her exquisite face and graceful gestures, and thinking how dal must enjoy looking at her when she talked with so much charm and animation. she glanced down, trying to see the admiration in his eyes; but his head was bent, and he was apparently absorbed in the occupation of tracing the broguing of her shoes with the long stalk of a chestnut leaf. for a moment she watched the slim brown hand, as carefully intent on this useless task, as if working on a canvas; then she suddenly withdrew her foot, feeling almost vexed with him for his inattention and apparent indifference. garth sat up instantly. "it must have been awfully funny," he said. "and how well you told it. one could hear the fog-horn, and see the dismayed faces of the performers. like an earthquake, a fog-horn is the sort of thing you don't ever get used to. it sounds worse every time. let's each tell the funniest thing we remember at a concert. i once heard a youth recite tennyson's charge of the light brigade with much dramatic action. but he was extremely nervous, and got rather mixed. in describing the attitude of mind of the noble six hundred, he told us impressively that it was" "'theirs not to make reply; theirs not to do or die; theirs but to reason why.'" "the tone and action were all right, and i doubt whether many of the audience noticed anything wrong with the words." "that reminds me," said ronald ingram, "of quite the funniest thing i ever heard. it was at a thanksgiving service when some of our troops returned from south africa. the proceedings concluded by the singing of the national anthem right through. you recollect how recently we had had to make the change of pronoun, and how difficult it was to remember not to shout:" "'send her victorious'? well, there was a fellow just behind me, with a tremendous voice, singing lustily, and taking special pains to get the pronouns correct throughout. and when he reached the fourth line of the second verse he sang with loyal fervour." "'confound his politics, frustrate his knavish tricks!'" "that would amuse the king," said lady ingleby. "are you sure it is a fact, ronnie?" "positive! i could tell you the church, and the day, and call a whole pewful of witnesses who were convulsed by it." "well, i shall tell his majesty at the next opportunity, and say you heard it. but how about the tennis? what comes next? final for couples? oh, yes! dal, you and miss lister play colonel loraine and miss vermount; and i think you ought to win fairly easily. you two are so well matched. jane, this will be worth watching." "i am sure it will," said jane warmly, looking at the two, who had risen and stood together in the evening sunlight, examining their rackets and discussing possible tactics, while awaiting their opponents. they made such a radiantly beautiful couple; it was as if nature had put her very best and loveliest into every detail of each. the only fault which could possibly have been found with the idea of them wedded, was that her dark, slim beauty was so very much just a feminine edition of his, that they might easily have been taken for brother and sister; but this was not a fault which occurred to jane. her whole-hearted admiration of pauline increased every time she looked at her; and now she had really seen them together, she felt sure she had given wise advice to garth, and rejoiced to know he was taking it. * * * * * later on, as they strolled back to the house together,--she and garth alone,--jane said, simply: "dal, you will not mind if i ask? is it settled yet?" "i mind nothing you ask," garth replied; "only be more explicit. is what settled?" "are you and miss lister engaged?" "no," garth answered. "what made you suppose we should be?" "you said at overdene on tuesday--tuesday! oh! doesn't it seem weeks ago?--you said we were to take you seriously." "it seems years ago," said garth; "and i sincerely hope you will take me--seriously. all the same i have not proposed to miss lister; and i am anxious for an undisturbed talk with you on the subject. miss champion, after dinner to-night, when all the games and amusements are in full swing, and we can escape unobserved, will you come out onto the terrace with me, where i shall be able to speak to you without fear of interruption? the moonlight on the lake is worth seeing from the terrace. i spent an hour out there last night--ah, no; you are wrong for once--i spent it alone, when the boating was over, and thought of--how--to-night--we might be talking there together." "certainly i will come," said jane; "and you must feel free to tell me anything you wish, and promise to let me advise or help in any way i can." "i will tell you everything," said garth very low, "and you shall advise and help as only you can." * * * * * jane sat on her window-sill, enjoying the sunset and the exquisite view, and glad of a quiet half-hour before she need think of summoning her maid. immediately below her ran the terrace, wide and gravelled, bounded by a broad stone parapet, behind which was a drop of eight or ten feet to the old-fashioned garden, with quaint box-bordered flower-beds, winding walks, and stone fountains. beyond, a stretch of smooth lawn sloping down to the lake, which now lay, a silver mirror, in the soft evening light. the stillness was so perfect; the sense of peace, so all-pervading. jane held a book on her knee, but she was not reading. she was looking away to the distant woods beyond the lake; then to the pearly sky above, flecked with rosy clouds and streaked with gleams of gold; and a sense of content, and gladness, and well-being, filled her. presently she heard a light step on the gravel below and leaned forward to see to whom it belonged. garth had come out of the smoking-room and walked briskly to and fro, once or twice. then he threw himself into a wicker seat just beneath her window, and sat there, smoking meditatively. the fragrance of his cigarette reached jane, up among the magnolia blossoms. "'zenith,' marcovitch," she said to herself, and smiled. "packed in jolly green boxes, twelve shillings a hundred! i must remember in case i want to give him a christmas present. by then it will be difficult to find anything which has not already been showered upon him." garth flung away the end of his cigarette, and commenced humming below his breath; then gradually broke into words and sang softly, in his sweet barytone: "'it is not mine to sing the stately grace, the great soul beaming in my lady's face.'" the tones, though quiet, were so vibrant with passionate feeling, that jane felt herself an eavesdropper. she hastily picked a large magnolia leaf and, leaning out, let it fall upon his head. garth started, and looked up. "hullo!" he said. "you--up there?" "yes," said jane, laughing down at him, and speaking low lest other casements should be open, "i--up here. you are serenading the wrong window, dear 'devout lover.'" "what a lot you know about it," remarked garth, rather moodily. "don't i?" whispered jane. "but you must not mind, master garthie, because you know how truly i care. in old margery's absence, you must let me be mentor." garth sprang up and stood erect, looking up at her, half-amused, half-defiant. "shall i climb the magnolia?" he said. "i have heaps to say to you which cannot be shouted to the whole front of the house." "certainly not," replied jane. "i don't want any romeos coming in at my window. 'hoity-toity! what next?' as aunt 'gina would say. run along and change your pinafore, master garthie. the 'heaps of things' must keep until to-night, or we shall both be late for dinner." "all right," said garth, "all right. but you will come out here this evening, miss champion? and you will give me as long as i want?" "i will come as soon as we can possibly escape," replied jane; "and you cannot be more anxious to tell me everything than i am to hear it. oh! the scent of these magnolias! and just look at the great white trumpets! would you like one for your buttonhole?" he gave her a wistful, whimsical little smile; then turned and went indoors. "why do i feel so inclined to tease him?" mused jane, as she moved, from the window. "really it is i who have been silly this time; and he, staid and sensible. myra is quite right. he is taking it very seriously. and how about her? ah! i hope she cares enough, and in the right way.--come in, matthews! and you can put out the gown i wore on the night of the concert at overdene, and we must make haste. we have just twenty minutes. what a lovely evening! before you do anything else, come and see this sunset on the lake. ah! it is good to be here!" chapter x the revelation all the impatience in the world could not prevent dinner at shenstone from being a long function, and two of the most popular people in the party could not easily escape afterwards unnoticed. so a distant clock in the village was striking ten, as garth and jane stepped out on to the terrace together. garth caught up a rug in passing, and closed the door of the lower hall carefully behind him. they were quite alone. it was the first time they had been really alone since these days apart, which had seemed so long to both. they walked silently, side by side, to the wide stone parapet overlooking the old-fashioned garden. the silvery moonlight flooded the whole scene with radiance. they could see the stiff box-borders, the winding paths, the queerly shaped flower-beds, and, beyond, the lake, like a silver mirror, reflecting the calm loveliness of the full moon. garth spread the rug on the coping, and jane sat down. he stood beside her, one foot on the coping, his arms folded across his chest, his head erect. jane had seated herself sideways, turning towards him, her back to an old stone lion mounting guard upon the parapet; but she turned her head still further, to look down upon the lake, and she thought garth was looking in the same direction. but garth was looking at jane. she wore the gown of soft trailing black material she had worn at the overdene concert, only she had not on the pearls or, indeed, any ornament save a cluster of crimson rambler roses. they nestled in the soft, creamy old lace which covered the bosom of her gown. there was a quiet strength and nobility about her attitude which thrilled the soul of the man who stood watching her. all the adoring love, the passion of worship, which filled his heart, rose to his eyes and shone there. no need to conceal it now. his hour had come at last, and he had nothing to hide from the woman he loved. presently she turned, wondering why he did not begin his confidences about pauline lister. looking up inquiringly, she met his eyes. "dal!" cried jane, and half rose from her seat. "oh, dal,--don't!" he gently pressed her back. "hush, dear," he said. "i must tell you everything, and you have promised to listen, and to advise and help. ah, jane, jane! i shall need your help. i want it so greatly, and not only your help, jane--but you--you, yourself. ah, how i want you! these three days have been one continual ache of loneliness, because you were not there; and life began to live and move again, when you returned. and yet it has been so hard, waiting all these hours to speak. i have so much to tell you, jane, of all you are to me--all you have become to me, since the night of the concert. ah, how can i express it? i have never had any big things in my life; all has been more or less trivial--on the surface. this need of you--this wanting you--is so huge. it dwarfs all that went before; it would overwhelm all that is to come,--were it not that it will be the throne, the crown, the summit, of the future.--oh, jane! i have admired so many women. i have raved about them, sighed for them, painted them, and forgotten them. but i never loved a woman before; i never knew what womanhood meant to a man, until i heard your voice thrill through the stillness--'i count each pearl.' ah, beloved, i have learned to count pearls since then, precious hours in the past, long forgotten, now remembered, and at last understood. 'each hour a pearl, each pearl a prayer,' ay, a passionate plea that past and present may blend together into a perfect rosary, and that the future may hold no possibility of pain or parting. oh, jane--jane! shall i ever be able to make you understand--all--how much--oh, jane!" she was not sure just when he had come so near; but he had dropped on one knee in front of her, and, as he uttered the last broken sentences, he passed both his arms around her waist and pressed his face into the soft lace at her bosom. a sudden quietness came over him. all struggling with explanations seemed hushed into the silence of complete comprehension--an all-pervading, enveloping silence. jane neither moved nor spoke. it was so strangely sweet to have him there--this whirlwind of emotion come home to rest, in a great stillness, just above her quiet heart. suddenly she realised that the blank of the last three days had not been the miss of the music, but the miss of him; and as she realised this, she unconsciously put her arms about him. sensations unknown to her before, awoke and moved within her,--a heavenly sense of aloofness from the world, the loneliness of life all swept away by this dear fact--just he and she together. even as she thought it, felt it, he lifted his head, still holding her, and looking into her face, said: "you and i together, my own--my own." but those beautiful shining eyes were more than jane could bear. the sense of her plainness smote her, even in that moment; and those adoring eyes seemed lights that revealed it. with no thought in her mind but to hide the outward part from him who had suddenly come so close to the shrine within, she quickly put both hands behind his head and pressed his face down again, into the lace at her bosom. but, to him, those dear firm hands holding him close, by that sudden movement, seemed an acceptance of himself and of all he had to offer. for ten, twenty, thirty exquisite seconds, his soul throbbed in silence and rapture beyond words. then he broke from the pressure of those restraining hands; lifted his head, and looked into her face once more. "my wife!" he said. * * * * * into jane's honest face came a look of startled wonder; then a deep flush, seeming to draw all the blood, which had throbbed so strangely through her heart, into her cheeks, making them burn, and her heart die within her. she disengaged herself from his hold, rose, and stood looking away to where the still waters of the lake gleamed silver in the moonlight. garth dalmain stood beside her. he did not touch her, nor did he speak again. he felt sure he had won; and his whole soul was filled with a gladness unspeakable. his spirit was content. the intense silence seemed more expressive than words. any ordinary touch would have dimmed the sense of those moments when her hands had held him to her. so he stood quite still and waited. at last jane spoke. "do you mean that you wish to ask me to be--to be that--to you?" "yes, dear," he answered, gently; but in his voice vibrated the quiet of strong self-control. "at least i came out here intending to ask it of you. but i cannot ask it now, beloved. i can't ask you to be what you are already. no promise, no ceremony, no giving or receiving of a ring, could make you more my wife than you have been just now in those wonderful moments." jane slowly turned and looked at him. she had never seen anything so radiant as his face. but still those shining eyes smote her like swords. she longed to cover them with her hands; or bid him look away over the woods and water, while he went on saying these sweet things to her. she put up one foot on the low parapet, leaned her elbow on her knee, and shielded her face with her hand. then she answered him, trying to speak calmly. "you have taken me absolutely by surprise, dal. i knew you had been delightfully nice and attentive since the concert evening, and that our mutual understanding of music and pleasure in it, coupled with an increased intimacy brought about by our confidential conversation under the cedar, had resulted in an unusually close and delightful friendship. i honestly admit it seems to have--it has--meant more to me than any friendship has ever meant. but that was partly owing to your temperament, dal, which tends to make you always the most vivid spot in one's mental landscape. but truly i thought you wanted me out here in order to pour out confidences about pauline lister. everybody believes that her loveliness has effected your final capture, and truly, dal, truly--i thought so, too." jane paused. "well?" said the quiet voice, with its deep undertone of gladness. "you know otherwise now." "dal--you have so startled and astonished me. i cannot give you an answer to-night. you must let me have until to-morrow--to-morrow morning." "but, beloved," he said tenderly, moving a little nearer, "there is no more need for you to answer than i felt need to put a question. can't you realise this? question and answer were asked and given just now. oh, my dearest--come back to me. sit down again." but jane stood rigid. "no," she said. "i can't allow you to take things for granted in this way. you took me by surprise, and i lost my head utterly--unpardonably, i admit. but, my dear boy, marriage is a serious thing. marriage is not a mere question of sentiment. it has to wear. it has to last. it must have a solid and dependable foundation, to stand the test and strain of daily life together. i know so many married couples intimately. i stay in their homes, and act sponsor to their children; with the result that i vowed never to risk it myself. and now i have let you put this question, and you must not wonder if i ask for twelve hours to think it over." garth took this silently. he sat down on the stone coping with his back to the lake and, leaning backward, tried to see her face; but the hand completely screened it. he crossed his knees and clasped both hands around them, rocking slightly backward and forward for a minute while mastering the impulse to speak or act violently. he strove to compose his mind by fixing it upon trivial details which chanced to catch his eye. his red socks showed clearly in the moonlight against the white paving of the terrace, and looked well with black patent-leather shoes. he resolved always to wear red silk socks in the evening, and wondered whether jane would knit some for him. he counted the windows along the front of the house, noting which were his and which were jane's, and how many came between. at last he knew he could trust himself, and, leaning back, spoke very gently, his dark head almost touching the lace of her sleeve. "dearest--tell me, didn't you feel just now--" "oh, hush!". cried jane, almost harshly, "hush, dal! don't talk about feelings with this question between us. marriage is fact, not feeling. if you want to do really the best thing for us both, go straight indoors now and don't speak to me again to-night. i heard you say you were going to try the organ in the church on the common at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. well--i will come there soon after half-past eleven and listen while you play; and at noon you can send away the blower, and i will give you my answer. but now--oh, go away, dear; for truly i cannot bear anymore. i must be left alone." garth loosed the strong fingers clasped so tightly round his knee. he slipped the hand next to her along the stone coping, close to her foot. she felt him take hold of her gown with those deft, masterful fingers. then he bent his dark head quickly, and whispering: "i kiss the cross," with a gesture of infinite reverence and tenderness, which jane never forgot, he kissed the hem of her skirt. the next moment she was alone. she listened while his footsteps died away. she heard the door into the lower hall open and close. then slowly she sat down just as she had sat when he knelt in front of her. now she was quite alone. the tension of these last hard moments relaxed. she pressed both hands over the lace at her bosom where that dear, beautiful, adoring face had been hidden. had she felt, he asked. ah! what had she not felt? tears never came easily to jane. but to-night she had been called a name by which she had never thought to be called; and already her honest heart was telling her she would never be called by it again. and large silent tears overflowed and fell upon her hands and upon the lace at her breast. for the wife and the mother in her had been wakened and stirred, and the deeps of her nature broke through the barriers of stern repression and almost masculine self-control, and refused to be driven back without the womanly tribute of tears. and around her feet lay the scattered petals of crushed rambler roses. * * * * * presently she passed indoors. the upper hall was filled with merry groups and resounded with "good-nights" as the women mounted the great staircase, pausing to fling back final repartees, or to confirm plans for the morrow. garth dalmain was standing at the foot of the staircase, held in conversation by pauline lister and her aunt, who had turned on the fourth step. jane saw his slim, erect figure and glossy head the moment she entered the hall. his back was towards her, and though she advanced and stood quite near, he gave no sign of being aware of her presence. but the joyousness of his voice seemed to make him hers again in this new sweet way. she alone knew what had caused it, and unconsciously she put one hand over her bosom as she listened. "sorry, dear ladies," garth was saying, "but to-morrow morning is impossible. i have an engagement in the village. yes--really! at eleven o'clock." "that sounds so rural and pretty, mr. dalmain," said mrs. parker bangs. "why not take pauline and me along? we have seen no dairies, and no dairy-maids, nor any of the things in adam bede, since we came over. i would just love to step into mrs. poyser's kitchen and see myself reflected in the warming-pans on the walls." "perhaps we would be de trop in the dairy," murmured miss lister archly. she looked very lovely in her creamy-white satin gown, her small head held regally, the brilliant charm of american womanhood radiating from her. she wore no jewels, save one string of perfectly matched pearls; but on pauline lister's neck even pearls seemed to sparkle. all these scintillations, flung at garth, passed over his sleek head and reached jane where she lingered in the background. she took in every detail. never had miss lister's loveliness been more correctly appraised. "but it happens, unfortunately, to be neither a dairy-maid nor a warming-pan," said garth. "my appointment is with a very grubby small boy, whose rural beauties consist in a shock of red hair and a whole pepper-pot of freckles." "philanthropic?" inquired miss lister. "yes, at the rate of threepence an hour." "a caddy, of course," cried both ladies together. "my! what a mystery about a thing so simple!" added mrs. parker bangs. "now we have heard, mr. dalmain, that it is well worth the walk to the links to see you play. so you may expect us to arrive there, time to see you start around." garth's eyes twinkled. jane could hear the twinkle in his voice. "my dear lady," he said, "you overestimate my play as, in your great kindness of heart, you overestimate many other things connected with me. but i shall like to think of you at the golf links at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning. you might drive there, but the walk through the woods is too charming to miss. only remember, you cross the park and leave by the north gate, not the main entrance by which we go to the railway station. i would offer to escort you, but duty takes me, at an early hour, in quite another direction. besides, when miss lister's wish to see the links is known, so many people will discover golf to be the one possible way of spending to-morrow morning, that i should be but a unit in the crowd which will troop across the park to the north gate. it will be quite impossible for you to miss your way." mrs. parker bangs was beginning to explain elaborately that never, under any circumstances, could he be a unit, when her niece peremptorily interposed. "that will do, aunt. don't be silly. we are all units, except when we make a crowd; which is what we are doing on this staircase at this present moment, so that miss champion has for some time been trying ineffectually to pass us. do you golf to-morrow, miss champion?" garth stood on one side, and jane began to mount the stairs. he did not look at her, but it seemed to jane that his eyes were on the hem of her gown as it trailed past him. she paused beside miss lister. she knew exactly how effectual a foil she made to the american girl's white loveliness. she turned and faced him. she wished him to look up and see them standing there together. she wanted the artist eyes to take in the cruel contrast. she wanted the artist soul of him to realise it. she waited. garth's eyes were still on the hem of her gown, close to the left foot; but he lifted them slowly to the lace at her bosom, where her hand still lay. there they rested a moment, then dropped again, without rising higher. "yes," said mrs. parker bangs, "are you playing around with mr. dalmain to-morrow forenoon, miss champion?" jane suddenly flushed crimson, and then was furious with herself for blushing, and hated the circumstances which made her feel and act so unlike her ordinary self. she hesitated during the long dreadful moment. how dared garth behave in that way? people would think there was something unusual about her gown. she felt a wild impulse to stoop and look at it herself to see whether his kiss had materialised and was hanging like a star to the silken hem. then she forced herself to calmness and answered rather brusquely: "i am not golfing to-morrow; but you could not do better than go to the links. good-night, mrs. parker bangs. sleep well, miss lister. good-night, dal." garth was on the step below them, handing pauline's aunt a letter she had dropped. "good-night, miss champion," he said, and for one instant his eyes met hers, but he did not hold out his hand, or appear to see hers half extended. the three women mounted the staircase together, then went different ways. miss lister trailed away down a passage to the right, her aunt trotting in her wake. "there's been a tiff there," said mrs. parker bangs. "poor thing!" said miss lister softly. "i like her. she's a real good sort. i should have thought she would have been more sensible than the rest of us." "a real plain sort," said her aunt, ignoring the last sentence. "well, she didn't make her own face," said miss lister generously. "no, and she don't pay other people to make it for her. she's what sir walter scott calls: 'nature in all its ruggedness.'" "dear aunt," remarked miss lister wearily, "i wish you wouldn't trouble to quote the english classics to me when we are alone. it is pure waste of breath, because you see i know you have read them all. here is my door. now come right in and make yourself comfy on that couch. i am going to sit in this palatial arm-chair opposite, and do a little very needful explaining. my! how they fix one to the floor! these ancestral castles are all right so far as they go, but they don't know a thing about rockers. now i have a word or two to say about miss champion. she's a real good sort, and i like her. she's not a beauty; but she has a fine figure, and she dresses right. she has heaps of money, and could have rarer pearls than mine; but she knows better than to put pearls on that brown skin. i like a woman who knows her limitations and is sensible over them. all the men adore her, not for what she looks but for what she is, and, my word, aunt, that's what pays in the long run. that is what lasts. ten years hence the honourable jane will still be what she is, and i shall be trying to look what i'm not. as for garth dalmain, he has eyes for all of us and a heart for none. his pretty speeches and admiring looks don't mean marriage, because he is a man with an ideal of womanhood and he can't see himself marrying below it. if the sistine madonna could step down off those clouds and hand the infant to the young woman on her left, he might marry her; but even then he would be afraid he might see some one next day who did her hair more becomingly, or that her foot would not look so well on his persian rugs as it does on that cloud. he won't marry money, because he has plenty of it. and even if he hadn't, money made in candles would not appeal to him. he won't marry beauty, because he thinks too much about it. he adores so many lovely faces, that he is never sure for twenty-four hours which of them he admires most, bar the fact that, as in the case of fruit trees, the unattainable are usually the most desired. he won't marry goodness--virtue--worth--whatever you choose to call the sterling qualities of character--because in all these the honourable jane champion is his ideal, and she is too sensible a woman to tie such an epicure to her plain face. besides, she considers herself his grandmother, and doesn't require him to teach her to suck eggs. but garth dalmain, poor boy, is so sublimely lacking in self-consciousness that he never questions whether he can win his ideal. he possesses her already in his soul, and it will be a fearful smack in the face when she says 'no,' as she assuredly will do, for reasons aforesaid. these three days, while he has been playing around with me, and you and other dear match-making old donkeys have gambolled about us, and made sure we were falling in love, he has been worshipping the ground she walks on, and counting the hours until he should see her walk on it again. he enjoyed being with me more than with the other girls, because i understood, and helped him to work all conversations round to her, and he knew, when she arrived here, i could be trusted to develop sudden anxiety about you, or have important letters to write, if she came in sight. but that is all there will ever be between me and garth dalmain; and if you had a really careful regard for my young affections you would drop your false set on the marble wash-stand, or devise some other equally false excuse for our immediate departure for town to-morrow.--and now, dear, don't stay to argue; because i have said exactly all there is to say on the subject, and a little more. and try to toddle to bed without telling me of which cute character in dickens i remind you, because i am cuter than any of them, and if i stay in this tight frock another second i can't answer for the consequences.--oui, josephine, entrez!--good-night, dear aunt. happy dreams!" but after her maid had left her, pauline switched off the electric light and, drawing back the curtain, stood for a long while at her window, looking out at the peaceful english scene bathed in moonlight. at last she murmured softly, leaning her beautiful head against the window frame: "i stated your case well, but you didn't quite deserve it, dal. you ought to have let me know about jane, weeks ago. anyway, it will stop the talk about you and me. and as for you, dear, you will go on sighing for the moon; and when you find the moon is unattainable, you will not dream of seeking solace in more earthly lights--not even poppa's best sperm," she added, with a wistful little smile, for pauline's fun sparkled in solitude as freely as in company, and as often at her own expense as at that of other people, and her brave american spirit would not admit, even to herself, a serious hurt. meanwhile jane had turned to the left and passed slowly to her room. garth had not taken her half-proffered hand, and she knew perfectly well why. he would never again be content to clasp her hand in friendship. if she cut him off from the touch which meant absolute possession, she cut herself off from the contact of simple comradeship. garth, to-night, was like a royal tiger who had tasted blood. it seemed a queer simile, as she thought of him in his conventional evening clothes, correct in every line, well-groomed, smart almost to a fault. but out on the terrace with him she had realised, for the first time, the primal elements which go to the making of a man--a forceful determined, ruling man--creation's king. they echo of primeval forests. the roar of the lion is in them, the fierceness of the tiger; the instinct of dominant possession, which says: "mine to have and hold, to fight for and enjoy; and i slay all comers!" she had felt it, and her own brave soul had understood it and responded to it, unafraid; and been ready to mate with it, if only--ah! if only-- but things could never be again as they had been before. if she meant to starve her tiger, steel bars must be between them for evermore. none of those sentimental suggestions of attempts to be a sort of unsatisfactory cross between sister and friend would do for the man whose head she had unconsciously held against her breast. jane knew this. he had kept himself magnificently in hand after she put him from her, but she knew he was only giving her breathing space. he still considered her his own, and his very certainty of the near future had given him that gentle patience in the present. but even now, while her answer pended, he would not take her hand in friendship. jane closed her door and locked it. she must face this problem of the future, with all else locked out excepting herself and him. ah! if she could but lock herself out and think only of him and of his love, as beautiful, perfect gifts laid at her feet, that she might draw them up into her empty arms and clasp them there for evermore. just for a little while she would do this. one hour of realisation was her right. afterwards she must bring herself into the problem,--her possibilities; her limitations; herself, in her relation to him in the future; in the effect marriage with her would be likely to have upon him. what it might mean to her did not consciously enter into her calculations. jane was self-conscious, with the intense self-consciousness of all reserved natures, but she was not selfish. at first, then, she left her room in darkness, and, groping her way to the curtains, drew them back, threw up the sash, and, drawing a chair to the window, sat down, leaning her elbows on the sill and her chin in her hands, and looked down upon the terrace, still bathed in moonlight. her window was almost opposite the place where she and garth had talked. she could see the stone lion and the vase full of scarlet geraniums. she could locate the exact spot where she was sitting when he--memory awoke, vibrant. then jane allowed herself the most wonderful mental experience of her life. she was a woman of purpose and decision. she had said she had a right to that hour, and she took it to the full. in soul she met her tiger and mated with him, unafraid. he had not asked whether she loved him or not, and she did not need to ask herself. she surrendered her proud liberty, and tenderly, humbly, wistfully, yet with all the strength of her strong nature, promised to love, honour, and obey him. she met the adoration of his splendid eyes without a tremor. she had locked her body out. she was alone with her soul; and her soul was all-beautiful--perfect for him. the loneliness of years slipped from her. life became rich and purposeful. he needed her always, and she was always there and always able to meet his need. "are you content, my beloved?" she asked over and over; and garth's joyous voice, with the ring of perpetual youth in it, always answered: "perfectly content." and jane smiled into the night, and in the depths of her calm eyes dawned a knowledge hitherto unknown, and in her tender smile trembled, with unspeakable sweetness, an understanding of the secret of a woman's truest bliss. "he is mine and i am his. and because he is mine, my beloved is safe; and because i am his, he is content." thus she gave herself completely; gathering him into the shelter of her love; and her generous heart expanded to the greatness of the gift. then the mother in her awoke and realised how much of the maternal flows into the love of a true woman when she understands how largely the child-nature predominates in the man in love, and how the very strength of his need of her reduces to unaccustomed weakness the strong nature to which she has become essential. jane pressed her hands upon her breast. "garth," she whispered, "garth, i understand. my own poor boy, it was so hard to you to be sent away just then. but you had had all--all you wanted, in those few wonderful moments, and nothing can rob you of that fact. and you have made me so yours that, whatever the future brings for you and me, no other face will ever be hidden here. it is yours, and i am yours--to-night, and henceforward, forever." jane leaned her forehead on the window-sill. the moonlight fell on the heavy coils of her brown hair. the scent of the magnolia blooms rose in fragrance around her. the song of a nightingale purled and thrilled in an adjacent wood. the lonely years of the past, the perplexing moments of the present, the uncertain vistas of the future, all rolled away. she sailed with garth upon a golden ocean far removed from the shores of time. for love is eternal; and the birth of love frees the spirit from all limitations of the flesh. * * * * * a clock in the distant village struck midnight. the twelve strokes floated up to jane's window across the moonlit park. time was once more. her freed spirit resumed the burden of the body. a new day had begun, the day upon which she had promised her answer to garth. the next time that clock struck twelve she would be standing with him in the church, and her answer must be ready. she turned from the window without closing it, drew the curtains closely across, switched on the electric light over the writing-table, took off her evening gown, hung up bodice and skirt in the wardrobe, resolutely locking the door upon them. then she slipped on a sage-green wrapper, which she had lately purchased at a bazaar because every one else fled from it, and the old lady whose handiwork it was seemed so disappointed, and, drawing a chair near the writing-table, took out her diary, unlocked the heavy clasp, and began to read. she turned the pages slowly, pausing here and there, until she came to those she sought. over them she pondered long, her head in her hands. they contained a very full account of her conversation with garth on the afternoon of the day of the concert at overdene; and the lines upon which she specially dwelt were these: "his face was transfigured.... goodness and inspiration shone from it, making it as the face of an angel.... i never thought him ugly again. child though i was, i could differentiate even then between ugliness and plainness. i have associated his face ever since with the wondrous beauty of his soul. when he sat down, at the close of his address, i no longer thought him a complicated form of chimpanzee. i remembered the divine halo of his smile. of course it was not the sort of face one could have wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite one at table, but then one was not called to that sort of discipline, which would have been martyrdom to me. and he has always stood to my mind since as a proof of the truth that goodness is never ugly, and that divine love and aspiration, shining through the plainest features, may redeem them, temporarily, into beauty; and permanently, into a thing one loves to remember." at first jane read the entire passage. then her mind focussed itself upon one sentence: "of course it was not the sort of face one could have wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite one at table, ... which would have been martyrdom to me." at length jane arose, turned on all the lights over the dressing-table, particularly two bright ones on either side of the mirror, and, sitting down before it, faced herself honestly. * * * * * when the village clock struck one, garth dalmain stood at his window taking a final look at the night which had meant so much to him. he remembered, with an amused smile, how, to help himself to calmness, he had sat on the terrace and thought of his socks, and then had counted the windows between his and jane's. there were five of them. he knew her window by the magnolia tree and the seat beneath it where he had chanced to sit, not knowing she was above him. he leaned far out and looked towards it now. the curtains were drawn, but there appeared still to be a light behind them. even as he watched, it went out. he looked down at the terrace. he could see the stone lion and the vase of scarlet geraniums. he could locate the exact spot where she was sitting when he-- then he dropped upon his knees beside the window and looked up into the starry sky. garth's mother had lived long enough to teach him the holy secret of her sweet patience and endurance. in moments of deep feeling, words from his mother's bible came to his lips more readily than expressions of his own thought. now, looking upward, he repeated softly and reverently: "'every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.' and oh, father," he added, "keep us in the light--she and i. may there be in us, as there is in thee, no variableness, neither shadow which is cast by turning." then he rose to his feet and looked across once more to the stone lion and the broad coping. his soul sang within him, and he folded his arms across his chest. "my wife!" he said. "oh! my wife!" * * * * * and, as the village clock struck one, jane arrived at her decision. slowly she rose, and turned off all the lights; then, groping her way to the bed, fell upon her knees beside it, and broke into a passion of desperate, silent weeping. chapter xi garth finds the cross the village church on the green was bathed in sunshine as jane emerged from the cool shade of the park. the clock proclaimed the hour half-past eleven, and jane did not hasten, knowing she was not expected until twelve. the windows of the church were open, and the massive oaken doors stood ajar. jane paused beneath the ivy-covered porch and stood listening. the tones of the organ reached her as from an immense distance, and yet with an all-pervading nearness. the sound was disassociated from hands and feet. the organ seemed breathing, and its breath was music. jane pushed the heavy door further open, and even at that moment it occurred to her that the freckled boy with a red head, and garth's slim proportions, had evidently passed easily through an aperture which refused ingress to her more massive figure. she pushed the door further open, and went in. instantly a stillness entered into her soul. the sense of unseen presences, often so strongly felt on entering an empty church alone, the impress left upon old walls and rafters by the worshipping minds of centuries, hushed the insistent beating of her own perplexity, and for a few moments she forgot the errand which brought her there, and bowed her head in unison with the worship of ages. garth was playing the "veni, creator spiritus" to attwood's perfect setting; and, as jane walked noiselessly up to the chancel, he began to sing the words of the second verse. he sang them softly, but his beautifully modulated barytone carried well, and every syllable reached her. "enable with perpetual light the dulness of our blinded sight; anoint and cheer our soiled face with the abundance of thy grace; keep far our foes; give peace at home; where thou art guide, no ill can come." then the organ swelled into full power, pealing out the theme of the last verse without its words, and allowing those he had sung to repeat themselves over and over in jane's mind: "where thou art guide, no ill can come." had she not prayed for guidance? then surely all would be well. she paused at the entrance to the chancel. garth had returned to the second verse, and was singing again, to a waldflute accompaniment, "enable with perpetual light--." jane seated herself in one of the old oak stalls and looked around her. the brilliant sunshine from without entered through the stained-glass windows, mellowed into golden beams of soft amber light, with here and there a shaft of crimson. what a beautiful expression--perpetual light! as garth sang it, each syllable seemed to pierce the silence like a ray of purest sunlight. "the dulness of--" jane could just see the top of his dark head over the heavy brocade of the organ curtain. she dreaded the moment when he should turn, and those vivid eyes should catch sight of her--"our blinded sight." how would he take what she must say? would she have strength to come through a long hard scene? would he be tragically heart-broken?--"anoint and cheer our soiled face"--would he argue, and insist, and override her judgment?--"with the abundance of thy grace"--could she oppose his fierce strength, if he chose to exert it? would they either of them come through so hard a time without wounding each other terribly?--"keep far our foes; give peace at home"--oh! what could she say? what would he say? how should she answer? what reason could she give for her refusal which garth would ever take as final?--"where thou art guide, no ill can come." and then, after a few soft, impromptu chords; the theme changed. jane's heart stood still. garth was playing "the rosary." he did not sing it; but the soft insistence of the organ pipes seemed to press the words into the air, as no voice could have done. memory's pearls, in all the purity of their gleaming preciousness, were counted one by one by the flute and dulciana; and the sadder tones of the waldflute proclaimed the finding of the cross. it all held a new meaning for jane, who looked helplessly round, as if seeking some way of escape from the sad sweetness of sound which filled the little church. suddenly it ceased. garth stood up, turned, and saw her. the glory of a great joy leaped into his face. "all right, jimmy," he said; "that will do for this morning. and here is a bright sixpence, because you have managed the blowing so well. hullo! it's a shilling! never mind. you shall have it because it is such a glorious day. there never was such a day, jimmy; and i want you to be happy also. now run off quickly, and shut the church door behind you, my boy." ah! how his voice, with its ring of buoyant gladness, shook her soul. the red-headed boy, rather grubby, with a whole pepper-pot of freckles, but a beaming face of pleasure, came out from behind the organ, clattered down a side aisle; dropped his shilling on the way and had to find it; but at last went out, the heavy door closing behind him with a resounding clang. garth had remained standing beside the organ, quite motionless, without looking at jane, and now that they were absolutely alone in the church, he still stood and waited a few moments. to jane those moments seemed days, weeks, years, an eternity. then he came out into the centre of the chancel, his head erect, his eyes shining, his whole bearing that of a conqueror sure of his victory. he walked down to the quaintly carved oaken screen and, passing beneath it, stood at the step. then he signed to jane to come and stand beside him. "here, dearest," he said; "let it be here." jane came to him, and for a moment they stood together, looking up the chancel. it was darker than the rest of the church, being lighted only by three narrow stained-glass windows, gems of colour and of significance. the centre window, immediately over the communion table, represented the saviour of the world, dying upon the cross. they gazed at it in reverent silence. then garth turned to jane. "my beloved," he said, "it is a sacred presence and a sacred place. but no place could be too sacred for that which we have to say to each other, and the holy presence, in which we both believe, is here to bless and ratify it. i am waiting for your answer." jane cleared her throat and put her trembling hands into the large pockets of her tweed coat. "dal," she said; "my answer is a question. how old are you?" she felt his start of intense surprise. she saw the light of expectant joy fade from his face. but he replied, after only a momentary hesitation: "i thought you knew, dearest. i am twenty-seven." "well," said jane slowly and deliberately, "i am thirty; and i look thirty-five, and feel forty. you are twenty-seven, dal, and you look nineteen, and often feel nine. i have been thinking it over, and--you know--i cannot marry a mere boy." silence--absolute. in sheer terror jane forced herself to look at him. he was white to the lips. his face was very stern and calm--a strange, stony calmness. there was not much youth in it just then. "anoint and cheer our soiled face"--the silent church seemed to wail the words in bewildered agony. at last he spoke. "i had not thought of myself," he said slowly. "i cannot explain how it comes to pass, but i have not thought of myself at all, since my mind has been full of you. therefore i had not realised how little there is in me that you could care for. i believed you had felt as i did, that we were--just each other's." for a moment he put out his hand as if he would have touched her. then it dropped heavily to his side. "you are quite right," he said. "you could not marry any one whom you consider a mere boy." he turned from her and faced up the chancel. for the space of a long silent minute he looked at the window over the holy table, where hung the suffering christ. then he bowed his head. "i accept the cross," he said, and, turning, walked quietly down the aisle. the church door opened, closed behind him with a heavy clang, and jane was alone. she stumbled back to the seat she had left, and fell upon her knees. "o, my god," she cried, "send him back to me, oh, send him back! ... oh, garth! it is i who am plain and unattractive and unworthy, not you. oh, garth--come back! come back! come back! ... i will trust and not be afraid ... oh, my own dear--come back!" she listened, with straining ears. she waited, until every nerve of her body ached with suspense. she decided what she would say when the heavy door reopened and she saw garth standing in a shaft of sunlight. she tried to remember the veni, but the hollow clang of the door had silenced even memory's echo of that haunting music. so she waited silently, and as she waited the silence grew and seemed to enclose her within cruel, relentless walls which opened only to allow her glimpses into the vista of future lonely years. just once more she broke that silence. "oh, darling, come back! i will risk it," she said. but no step drew near, and, kneeling with her face buried in her clasped hands, jane suddenly realised that garth dalmain had accepted her decision as final and irrevocable, and would not return. how long she knelt there after realising this, she never knew. but at last comfort came to her. she felt she had done right. a few hours of present anguish were better than years of future disillusion. her own life would be sadly empty, and losing this newly found joy was costing her more than she had expected; but she honestly believed "she had done rightly towards him, and what did her own pain matter?" thus comfort came to jane. at last she rose and passed out of the silent church into the breezy sunshine. near the park gates a little knot of excited boys were preparing to fly a kite. jimmy, the hero of the hour, the centre of attraction, proved to be the proud possessor of this new kite. jimmy was finding the day glorious indeed, and was being happy. "happy also," garth had said. and jane's eyes filled with tears, as she remembered the word and the tone in which it was spoken. "there goes my poor boy's shilling," she said to herself sadly, as the kite mounted and soared above the common; "but, alas, where is his joy?" as she passed up the avenue a dog-cart was driven swiftly down it. garth dalmain drove it; behind him a groom and a portmanteau. he lifted his hat as he passed her, but looked straight before him. in a moment he was gone. had jane wanted to stop him she could not have done so. but she did not want to stop him. she felt absolutely satisfied that she had done the right thing, and done it at greater cost to herself than to him. he would eventually--ah, perhaps before so very long--find another to be to him all, and more than all, he had believed she could be. but she? the dull ache at her bosom reminded her of her own words the night before, whispered in the secret of her chamber to him who, alas, was not there to hear: "whatever the future brings for you and me, no other face will ever be hidden here." and, in this first hour of the coming lonely years, she knew them to be true. in the hall she met pauline lister. "is that you, miss champion?" said pauline. "well now, have you heard of mr. dalmain? he has had to go to town unexpectedly, on the . train; and aunt has dropped her false teeth on her marble wash-stand and must get to the dentist right away. so we go to town on the . . it's an uncertain world. it complicates one's plans, when they have to depend on other people's teeth. but i would sooner break false teeth than true hearts, any day. one can get the former mended, but i guess no one can mend the latter. we are lunching early in our rooms; so i wish you good-by, miss champion." chapter xii the doctor's prescription the honourable jane champion stood on the summit of the great pyramid and looked around her. the four exhausted arabs whose exertions, combined with her own activity, had placed her there, dropped in the picturesque attitudes into which an arab falls by nature. they had hoisted the honourable jane's eleven stone ten from the bottom to the top in record time, and now lay around, proud of their achievement and sure of their "backsheesh." the whole thing had gone as if by clock-work. two mahogany-coloured, finely proportioned fellows, in scanty white garments, sprang with the ease of antelopes to the top of a high step, turning to reach down eagerly and seize jane's upstretched hands. one remained behind, unseen but indispensable, to lend timely aid at exactly the right moment. then came the apparently impossible task for jane, of placing the sole of her foot on the edge of a stone four feet above the one upon which she was standing. it seemed rather like stepping up on to the drawing-room mantelpiece. but encouraged by cries of "eiwa! eiwa!" she did it; when instantly a voice behind said, "tyeb!" two voices above shouted, "keteer!" the grip on her hands tightened, the arab behind hoisted, and jane had stepped up, with an ease which surprised herself. as a matter of fact, under those circumstances the impossible thing would have been not to have stepped up. arab number four was water-carrier, and offered water from a gourd at intervals; and once, when jane had to cry halt for a few minutes' breathing space, schehati, handsomest of all, and leader of the enterprise, offered to recite english shakespeare-poetry. this proved to be: "jack-an-jill went uppy hill, to fetchy paily water; jack fell down-an broke his crown-an jill came tumbling after." jane had laughed; and schehati, encouraged by the success of his attempt to edify and amuse, used lines of the immortal nursery epic as signals for united action during the remainder of the climb. therefore jane mounted one step to the fact that jack fell down, and scaled the next to information as to the serious nature of his injuries, and at the third, schehati, bending over, confidentially mentioned in her ear, while ali shoved behind, that "jill came tumbling after." the familiar words, heard under such novel circumstances, took on fresh meaning. jane commenced speculating as to whether the downfall of jack need necessarily have caused so complete a loss of self-control and equilibrium on the part of jill. would she not have proved her devotion better by bringing the mutual pail safely to the bottom of the hill, and there attending to the wounds of her fallen hero? jane, in her time, had witnessed the tragic downfall of various delightful jacks, and had herself ministered tenderly to their broken crowns; for in each case the jill had remained on the top of the hill, flirting with that objectionable person of the name of horner, whose cool, calculating way of setting to work--so unlike poor jack's headlong method--invariably secured him the plum; upon which he remarked "what a good boy am i!" and was usually taken at his own smug valuation. but jane's entire sympathy on these occasions was with the defeated lover, and more than one jack was now on his feet again, bravely facing life, because that kind hand had been held out to him as he lay in his valley of humiliation, and that comprehending sympathy had proved balm to his broken crown. "dickery, dickery, dock!" chanted schehati solemnly, as he hauled again; "moses ran up the clock. the clock struck 'one'--" the clock struck "one"?--it was nearly three years since that night at shenstone when the clock had struck "one," and jane had arrived at her decision,--the decision which precipitated her jack from his pisgah of future promise. and yet--no. he had not fallen before the blow. he had taken it erect, and his light step had been even firmer than usual as he walked down the church and left her, after quietly and deliberately accepting her decision. it was jane herself, left alone, who fell hopelessly over the pail. she shivered even now when she remembered how its icy waters drenched her heart. ah, what would have happened if garth had come back in answer to her cry during those first moments of intolerable suffering and loneliness? but garth was not the sort of man who, when a door has been shut upon him, waits on the mat outside, hoping to be recalled. when she put him from her, and he realised that she meant it he passed completely out of her life. he was at the railway station by the time she reached the house, and from that day to this they had never met. garth evidently considered the avoidance of meetings to be his responsibility, and he never failed her in this. once or twice she went on a visit to houses where she knew him to be staying. he always happened to have left that morning, if she arrived in time for luncheon; or by an early afternoon train, if she was due for tea. he never timed it so that there should be tragic passings of each other, with set faces, at the railway stations; or a formal word of greeting as she arrived and he departed,--just enough to awaken all the slumbering pain and set people wondering. jane remembered with shame that this was the sort of picturesque tragedy she would have expected from garth dalmain. but the man who had surprised her by his dignified acquiescence in her decision, continued to surprise her by the strength with which he silently accepted it as final and kept out of her way. jane had not probed the depth of the wound she had inflicted. never once was his departure connected, in the minds of others, with her arrival. there was always some excellent and perfectly natural reason why he had been obliged to leave, and he was openly talked of and regretted, and jane heard all the latest "dal stories," and found herself surrounded by the atmosphere of his exotic, beauty-loving nature. and there was usually a girl--always the loveliest of the party--confidentially pointed out to jane, by the rest, as a certainty, if only dal had had another twenty-four hours of her society. but the girl herself would appear quite heart-whole, only very full of an evidently delightful friendship, expressing all dal's ideas on art and colour, as her own, and confidently happy in an assured sense of her own loveliness and charm and power to please. never did he leave behind him traces which the woman who loved him regretted to find. but he was always gone--irrevocably gone. garth dalmain was not the sort of man to wait on the door-mat of a woman's indecision. neither did this jack of hers break his crown. his portrait of pauline lister, painted six months after the shenstone visit, had proved the finest bit of work he had as yet accomplished. he had painted the lovely american, in creamy white satin, standing on a dark oak staircase, one hand resting on the balustrade, the other, full of yellow roses, held out towards an unseen friend below. behind and above her shone a stained-glass window, centuries old, the arms, crest, and mottoes of the noble family to whom the place belonged, shining thereon in rose-coloured and golden glass. he had wonderfully caught the charm and vivacity of the girl. she was gaily up-to-date, and frankly american, from the crown of her queenly little head, to the point of her satin shoe; and the suggestiveness of placing her in surroundings which breathed an atmosphere of the best traditions of england's ancient ancestral homes, the fearless wedding of the new world with the old, the putting of this sparkling gem from the new into the beautiful mellow setting of the old and there showing it at its best,--all this was the making of the picture. people smiled, and said the painter had done on canvas what he shortly intended doing in reality; but the tie between artist and sitter never grew into anything closer than a pleasant friendship, and it was the noble owner of the staircase and window who eventually persuaded miss lister to remain in surroundings which suited her so admirably. one story about that portrait jane had heard discussed more than once in circles where both were known. pauline lister had come to the first sittings wearing her beautiful string of pearls, and garth had painted them wonderfully, spending hours over the delicate perfecting of each separate gleaming drop. suddenly one day he seized his palette-knife, scraped the whole necklace off the canvas with a stroke and, declared she must wear her rose-topazes in order to carry out his scheme of colour. she was wearing her rose-topazes when jane saw the picture in the academy, and very lovely they looked on the delicate whiteness of her neck. but people who had seen garth's painting of the pearls maintained that that scrape of the palette-knife had destroyed work which would have been the talk of the year. and pauline lister, just after it had happened, was reported to have said, with a shrug of her pretty shoulders: "schemes of colour are all very well. but he scraped my pearls off the canvas because some one who came in hummed a tune while looking at the picture. i would be obliged if people who walk around the studio while i am being painted will in future refrain from humming tunes. i don't want him to scoop off my topazes and call for my emeralds. also i feel like offering a reward for the discovery of that tune. i want to know what it has to do with my scheme of colour, anyway." when jane heard the story, she was spending a few days with the brands in wimpole street. it was told at tea, in lady brand's pretty boudoir. the duchess's concert, at which garth had heard her sing the rosary, was a thing of the past. nearly a year had elapsed since their final parting, and this was the very first thought or word or sign of his remembrance, which directly or indirectly, had come her way. she could not doubt that the tune hummed had been the rosary. "the hours i spent with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me; i count them over, every one, apart." she seemed to hear garth's voice on the terrace, as she heard it in those first startled moments of realising the gift which was being laid at her feet--"i have learned to count pearls, beloved." jane's heart was growing cold and frozen in its emptiness. this incident of the studio warmed and woke it for the moment, and with the waking came sharp pain. when the visitors had left, and lady brand had gone to the nursery, she walked over to the piano, sat down, and softly played the accompaniment of "the rosary." the fine unexpected chords, full of discords working into harmony, seemed to suit her mood and her memories. suddenly a voice behind her said: "sing it, jane." she turned quickly. the doctor had come in, and was lying back luxuriously in a large arm-chair at her elbow, his hands clasped behind his head. "sing it, jane," he said. "i can't, deryck," she answered, still softly sounding the chords. "i have not sung for months." "what has been the matter--for months?" jane took her hands off the keys, and swung round impulsively. "oh, boy," she said. "i have made a bad mess of my life! and yet i know i did right. i would do the same again; at least--at least, i hope i would." the doctor sat in silence for a minute, looking at her and pondering these short, quick sentences. also he waited for more, knowing it would come more easily if he waited silently. it came. "boy--i gave up something, which was more than life itself to me, for the sake of another, and i can't get over it. i know i did right, and yet--i can't get over it." the doctor leaned forward and took the clenched hands between his. "can you tell me about it, jeanette?" "i can tell no one, deryck; not even you." "if ever you find you must tell some one, jane, will you promise to come to me?" "gladly." "good! now, my dear girl, here is a prescription for you. go abroad. and, mind, i do not mean by that, just to paris and back, or switzerland this summer, and the riviera in the autumn. go to america and see a few big things. see niagara. and all your life afterwards, when trivialities are trying you, you will love to let your mind go back to the vast green mass of water sweeping over the falls; to the thunderous roar, and the upward rush of spray; to the huge perpetual onwardness of it all. you will like to remember, when you are bothering about pouring water in and out of teacups, 'niagara is flowing still.' stay in a hotel so near the falls that you can hear their great voice night and day, thundering out themes of power and progress. spend hours walking round and viewing it from every point. go to the cave of the winds, across the frail bridges, where the guide will turn and shout to you: 'are your rings on tight?' learn, in passing, the true meaning of the rock of ages. receive niagara into your life and soul as a possession, and thank god for it." "then go in for other big things in america. try spirituality and humanity; love and life. seek out mrs. ballington booth, the great 'little mother' of all american prisoners. i know her well, i am proud to say, and can give you a letter of introduction. ask her to take you with her to sing-sing, or to columbus state prison, and to let you hear her address an audience of two thousand convicts, holding out to them the gospel of hope and love,--her own inspired and inspiring belief in fresh possibilities even for the most despairing." "go to new york city and see how, when a man wants a big building and has only a small plot of ground, he makes the most of that ground by running his building up into the sky. learn to do likewise.--and then, when the great-souled, large-hearted, rapid-minded people of america have waked you to enthusiasm with their bigness, go off to japan and see a little people nobly doing their best to become great.--then to palestine, and spend months in tracing the footsteps of the greatest human life ever lived. take egypt on your way home, just to remind yourself that there are still, in this very modern world of ours, a few passably ancient things,--a well-preserved wooden man, for instance, with eyes of opaque white quartz, a piece of rock crystal in the centre for a pupil. these glittering eyes looked out upon the world from beneath their eyelids of bronze, in the time of abraham. you will find it in the museum at cairo. ride a donkey in the mooskee if you want real sport; and if you feel a little slack, climb the great pyramid. ask for an arab named schehati, and tell him you want to do it one minute quicker than any lady has ever done it before." "then come home, my dear girl, ring me up and ask for an appointment; or chance it, and let stoddart slip you into my consulting-room between patients, and report how the prescription has worked. i never gave a better; and you need not offer me a guinea! i attend old friends gratis." jane laughed, and gripped his hand. "oh, boy," she said, "i believe you are right. my whole ideas of life have been focussed on myself and my own individual pains and losses. i will do as you say; and god bless you for saying it.--here comes flower. flower," she said, as the doctor's wife trailed in, wearing a soft tea-gown, and turning on the electric lights as she passed, "will this boy of ours ever grow old? here he is, seriously advising that a stout, middle-aged woman should climb the great pyramid as a cure for depression, and do it in record time!" "darling," said the doctor's wife, seating herself on the arm of his chair, "whom have you been seeing who is stout, or depressed, or middle-aged? if you mean mrs. parker bangs, she is not middle-aged, because she is an american, and no american is ever middle-aged. and she is only depressed because, even after painting her lovely niece's portrait, garth dalmain has failed to propose to her. and it is no good advising her to climb the great pyramid, though she is doing egypt this winter, because i heard her say yesterday that she should never think of going up the pyramids until the children of israel, or whoever the natives are who live around those parts, have the sense to put an elevator right up the centre." jane and the doctor laughed, and flower, settling herself more comfortably, for the doctor's arm had stolen around her, said: "jane, i heard you playing the rosary just now, such a favourite of mine, and it is months since i heard it. do sing it, dear." jane met the doctor's eyes and smiled reassuringly; then turned without any hesitation and did as flower asked. the prescription had already done her good. at the last words of the song the doctor's wife bent over and laid a tender little kiss just above his temple, where the thick dark hair was streaked with silver. but the doctor's mind was intent on jane, and before the final chords were struck he knew he had diagnosed her case correctly. "but she had better go abroad," he thought. "it will take her mind off herself altogether, giving her a larger view of things in general, and a better proportioned view of things in particular. and the boy won't change; or, if he does, jane will be proved right, to her own satisfaction. but, if this is her side, good heavens, what must his be! i had wondered what was sapping all his buoyant youthfulness. to care for jane would be an education; but to have made jane care! and then to have lost her! he must have nerves of steel, to be facing life at all. what is this cross they are both learning to kiss, and holding up between them? perhaps niagara will sweep it away, and she will cable him from there." then the doctor took the dear little hand resting on his shoulder and kissed it softly, while jane's back was still turned. for the doctor had had past experience of the cross, and now the pearls were very precious. so jane took the prescription, and two years went by in the taking; and here she was, on the top of the great pyramid, and, moreover, she had done it in record time, and laughed as she thought of how she should report the fact to deryck. her arabs lay around, very hot and shiny, and content. large backsheesh was assured, and they looked up at her with pleased possessive eyes, as an achievement of their own; hardly realising how large a part her finely developed athletic powers and elastic limbs had played in the speed of the ascent. and jane stood there, sound in wind and limb, and with the exhilarating sense, always helpful to the mind, of a bodily feat accomplished. she was looking her best in her norfolk coat and skirt of brown tweed with hints of green and orange in it, plenty of useful pockets piped with leather, leather buttons, and a broad band of leather round the bottom of the skirt. a connoisseur would have named at once the one and only firm from which that costume could have come, and the hatter who supplied the soft green tyrolian hat--for jane scorned pith helmets--which matched it so admirably. but schehati was no connoisseur of clothing, though a pretty shrewd judge of ways and manners, and he summed up jane thus: "nice gentleman-lady! give good backsheesh, and not sit down halfway and say: `no top'! but real lady-gentleman! give backsheesh with kind face, and not send poor arab to assouan." jane was deeply tanned by the eastern sun. burning a splendid brown, and enjoying the process, she had no need of veils or parasols; and her strong eyes faced the golden light of the desert without the aid of smoked glasses. she had once heard garth remark that a sight which made him feel really ill, was the back view of a woman in a motor-veil, and jane had laughingly agreed, for to her veils of any kind had always seemed superfluous. the heavy coils of her brown hair never blew about into fascinating little curls and wisps, but remained where, with a few well-directed hairpins, she each morning solidly placed them. jane had never looked better than she did on this march day, standing on the summit of the great pyramid. strong, brown, and well-knit, a reliable mind in a capable body, the undeniable plainness of her face redeemed by its kindly expression of interest and enjoyment; her wide, pleasant smile revealing her fine white teeth, witnesses to her perfect soundness and health, within and without. "nice gentleman-lady," murmured schehati again: and had jane overheard the remark it would not have offended her; for, though she held a masculine woman only one degree less in abhorrence than an effeminate man, she would have taken schehati's compound noun as a tribute to the fact that she was well-groomed and independent, knowing her own mind, and, when she started out to go to a place, reaching it in the shortest possible time, without fidget, fuss, or flurry. these three feminine attributes were held in scorn by jane, who knew herself so deeply womanly that she could afford in minor ways to be frankly unfeminine. the doctor's prescription had worked admirably. that look of falling to pieces and ageing prematurely--a general dilapidation of mind and body--which it had grieved and startled him to see in jane as she sat before him on the music-stool, was gone completely. she looked a calm, pleasant thirty; ready to go happily on, year by year, towards an equally agreeable and delightful forty; and not afraid of fifty, when that time should come. her clear eyes looked frankly out upon the world, and her sane mind formed sound opinions and pronounced fair judgments, tempered by the kindliness of an unusually large and generous heart. just now she was considering the view and finding it very good. its strong contrasts held her. on one side lay the fertile delta, with its groves of waving palm, orange, and olive trees, growing in rich profusion on the banks of the nile, a broad band of gleaming silver. on the other, the desert, with its far-distant horizon, stretching away in undulations of golden sand; not a tree, not a leaf, not a blade of grass, but boundless liberty, an ocean of solid golden glory. for the sun was setting, and the sky flamed into colour. "a parting of the ways," said jane; "a place of choice. how difficult to know which to choose--liberty or fruitfulness. one would have to consult the sphinx--wise old guardian of the ages, silent keeper of time's secrets, gazing on into the future as it has always gazed, while future became present, and present glided into past.--come, schehati, let us descend. oh, yes, i will certainly sit upon the stone on which the king sat when he was prince of wales. thank you for mentioning it. it will supply a delightful topic of conversation next time i am honoured by a few minutes of his gracious majesty's attention, and will save me from floundering into trite remarks about the weather.--and now take me to the sphinx, schehati. there is a question i would ask of it, just as the sun dips below the horizon." chapter xiii the answer of the sphinx moonlight in the desert. jane ordered her after-dinner coffee on the piazza of the hotel, that she might lose as little as possible of the mystic loveliness of the night. the pyramids appeared so huge and solid, in the clear white light; and the sphinx gathered unto itself more mystery. jane promised herself a stroll round by moonlight presently. meanwhile she lay back in a low wicker chair, comfortably upholstered, sipping her coffee, and giving herself up to the sense of dreamy content which, in a healthy body, is apt to follow vigorous exertion. very tender and quiet thoughts of garth came to her this evening, perhaps brought about by the associations of moonlight. "the moon shines bright:--in such a night as this, when the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, and they did make no noise--" ah! the great poet knew the effect upon the heart of a vivid reminder to the senses. jane now passed beneath the spell. to begin with, garth's voice seemed singing everywhere: "enable with perpetual light the dulness of our blinded sight." then from out the deep blue and silvery light, garth's dear adoring eyes seemed watching her. jane closed her own, to see them better. to-night she did not feel like shrinking from them, they were so full of love. no shade of critical regard was in them. ah! had she wronged him with her fears for the future? her heart seemed full of trust to-night, full of confidence in him and in herself. it seemed to her that if he were here she could go out with him into this brilliant moonlight, seat herself upon some ancient fallen stone, and let him kneel in front of her and gaze and gaze in his persistent way, as much as he pleased. in thought there seemed to-night no shrinking from those dear eyes. she felt she would say: "it is all your own, garth, to look at when you will. for your sake, i could wish it beautiful; but if it is as you like it, my own dear, why should i hide it from you?" what had brought about this change of mind? had deryck's prescription done its full work? was this a saner point of view than the one she had felt constrained to take when she arrived, through so much agony of renunciation, at her decision? instead of going up the nile, and then to constantinople and athens, should she take the steamer which sailed from alexandria to-morrow, be in london a week hence, send for garth, make full confession, and let him decide as to their future? that he loved her still, it never occurred to jane to doubt. at the very thought of sending for him and telling him the simple truth, he seemed so near her once more, that she could feel the clasp of his arms, and his head upon her heart. and those dear shining eyes! oh, garth, garth! "one thing is clear to me to-night," thought jane. "if he still needs me--wants me--i cannot live any longer away from him. i must go to him." she opened her eyes and looked towards the sphinx. the whole line of reasoning which had carried such weight at shenstone flashed through her mind in twenty seconds. then she closed her eyes again and clasped her hands upon her bosom. "i will risk it," she said; and deep joy awoke within her heart. a party of english people came from the dining-room on to the piazza with a clatter. they had arrived that evening and gone in late to dinner. jane had hardly noticed them,--a handsome woman and her daughter, two young men, and an older man of military appearance. they did not interest jane, but they broke in upon her reverie; for they seated themselves at a table near by and, in truly british fashion, continued a loud-voiced conversation, as if no one else were present. one or two foreigners, who had been peacefully dreaming over coffee and cigarettes, rose and strolled away to quiet seats under the palm trees. jane would have done the same, but she really felt too comfortable to move, and afraid of losing the sweet sense of garth's nearness. so she remained where she was. the elderly man held in his hand a letter and a copy of the morning post, just received from england. they were discussing news contained in the letter and a paragraph he had been reading aloud from the paper. "poor fellow! how too sad!" said the chaperon of the party. "i should think he would sooner have been killed outright!" exclaimed the girl. "i know i would." "oh, no," said one of the young men, leaning towards her. "life is sweet, under any circumstances." "oh, but blind!" cried the young voice, with a shudder. "quite blind for the rest of one's life. horrible!" "was it his own gun?" asked the older woman. "and how came they to be having a shooting party in march?" jane smiled a fierce smile into the moonlight. passionate love of animal life, intense regard for all life, even of the tiniest insect, was as much a religion with her as the worship of beauty was with garth. she never could pretend sorrow over these accounts of shooting accidents, or falls in the hunting-field. when those who went out to inflict cruel pain were hurt themselves; when those who went forth to take eager, palpitating life, lost their own; it seemed to jane a just retribution. she felt no regret, and pretended none. so now she smiled fiercely to herself, thinking: "one pair of eyes the less to look along a gun and frustrate the despairing dash for home and little ones of a terrified little mother rabbit. one hand that will never again change a soaring upward flight of spreading wings, into an agonised mass of falling feathers. one chance to the good, for the noble stag, as he makes a brave run to join his hinds in the valley." meanwhile the military-looking man had readjusted his eye-glasses and was holding the sheets of a closely written letter to the light. "no," he said after a moment, "shooting parties are over. there is nothing doing on the moors now. they were potting bunnies." "was he shooting?" asked the girl. "no," replied the owner of the letter, "and that seems such hard luck. he had given up shooting altogether a year or two ago. he never really enjoyed it, because he so loved the beauty of life and hated death in every form. he has a lovely place in the north, and was up there painting. he happened to pass within sight of some fellows rabbit-shooting, and saw what he considered cruelty to a wounded rabbit. he vaulted over a gate to expostulate and to save the little creature from further suffering. then it happened. one of the lads, apparently startled, let off his gun. the charge struck a tree a few yards off, and the shot glanced. it did not strike him full. the face is only slightly peppered and the brain quite uninjured. but shots pierced the retina of each eye, and the sight is hopelessly gone." "awful hard luck," said the young man. "i never can understand a chap not bein' keen on shootin'," said the youth who had not yet spoken. "ah, but you would if you had known him," said the soldier. "he was so full of life and vivid vitality. one could not imagine him either dying or dealing death. and his love of the beautiful was almost a form of religious worship. i can't explain it; but he had a way of making you see beauty in things you had hardly noticed before. and now, poor chap, he can't see them himself." "has he a mother?" asked the older woman. "no, he has no one. he is absolutely alone. scores of friends of course; he was a most popular man about town, and could stay in almost any house in the kingdom if he chose to send a post-card to say he was coming. but no relations, i believe, and never would marry. poor chap! he will wish he had been less fastidious, now. he might have had the pick of all the nicest girls, most seasons. but not he! just charming friendships, and wedded to his art. and now, as lady ingleby, says, he lies in the dark, helpless and alone." "oh, do talk of something else!" cried the girl, pushing back her chair and rising. "i want to forget it. it's too horribly sad. fancy what it must be to wake up and not know whether it is day or night, and to have to lie in the dark and wonder. oh, do come out and talk of something cheerful." they all rose, and the young man slipped his hand through the girl's arm, glad of the excuse her agitation provided. "forget it, dear," he said softly. "come on out and see the old sphinx by moonlight." they left the piazza, followed by the rest of the party; but the man to whom the morning post belonged laid it on the table and stayed behind, lighting a cigar. jane rose from her chair and came towards him. "may i look at your paper?" she said abruptly. "certainly," he replied, with ready courtesy. then, looking more closely at her: "why, certainly, miss champion. and how do you do? i did not know you were in these parts." "ah, general loraine! your face seemed familiar, but i had not recognised you, either. thanks, i will borrow this if i may. and don't let me keep you from your friends. we shall meet again by and by." jane waited until the whole party had passed out of sight and until the sound of their voices and laughter had died away in the distance. then she returned to her chair, the place where garth had seemed so near. she looked once more at the sphinx and at the huge pyramid in the moonlight. then she took up the paper and opened it. "enable with perpetual light the dulness of our blinded sight." yes--it was garth dalmain--her garth, of the adoring shining eyes--who lay at his house in the north; blind, helpless, and alone. chapter xiv in deryck's safe control the white cliffs of dover gradually became more solid and distinct, until at length they rose from the sea, a strong white wall, emblem of the undeniable purity of england, the stainless honour and integrity of her throne, her church, her parliament, her courts of justice, and her dealings at home and abroad, whether with friend or foe. "strength and whiteness," thought jane as she paced the steamer's deck; and after a two years' absence her heart went out to her native land. then dover castle caught her eye, so beautiful in the pearly light of that spring afternoon. her mind leaped to enjoyment, then fell back stunned by the blow of quick remembrance, and jane shut her eyes. all beautiful sights brought this pang to her heart since the reading of that paragraph on the piazza of the mena house hotel. an hour after she had read it, she was driving down the long straight road to cairo; embarked at alexandria the next day; landed at brindisi, and this night and day travelling had brought her at last within sight of the shores of england. in a few minutes she would set foot upon them, and then there would be but two more stages to her journey. for, from the moment she started, jane never doubted her ultimate destination,--the room where pain and darkness and despair must be waging so terrible a conflict against the moral courage, the mental sanity, and the instinctive hold on life of the man she loved. that she was going to him, jane knew; but she felt utterly unable to arrange how or in what way her going could be managed. that it was a complicated problem, her common sense told her; though her yearning arms and aching bosom cried out: "o god, is it not simple? blind and alone! my garth!" but she knew an unbiased judgment, steadier than her own, must solve the problem; and that her surest way to garth lay through the doctor's consulting-room. so she telegraphed to deryck from paris, and at present her mind saw no further than wimpole street. at dover she bought a paper, and hastily scanned its pages as she walked along the platform in the wake of the capable porter who had taken possession of her rugs and hand baggage. in the personal column she found the very paragraph she sought. "we regret to announce that mr. garth dalmain still lies in a most precarious condition at his house on deeside, aberdeenshire, as a result of the shooting accident a fortnight ago. his sight is hopelessly gone, but the injured parts were progressing favourably, and all fear of brain complications seemed over. during the last few days, however, a serious reaction from shock has set in, and it has been considered necessary to summon sir deryck brand, the well-known nerve specialist, in consultation with the oculist and the local practitioner in charge of the case. there is a feeling of wide-spread regret and sympathy in those social and artistic circles where mr. dalmain was so well-known and so deservedly popular." "oh, thank you, m'lady," said the efficient porter when he had ascertained, by a rapid glance into his palm, that jane's half-crown was not a penny. he had a sick young wife at home, who had been ordered extra nourishment, and just as the rush on board began, he had put up a simple prayer to the heavenly father "who knoweth that ye have need of these things," asking that he might catch the eye of a generous traveller. he felt he had indeed been "led" to this plain, brown-faced, broad-shouldered lady, when he remembered how nearly, after her curt nod from a distance had engaged him, he had responded to the blandishments of a fussy little woman, with many more bags and rugs, and a parrot cage, who was now doling french coppers out of the window of the next compartment. "seven pence 'apenny of this stuff ain't much for carrying all that along, i don't think!" grumbled his mate; and jane's young porter experienced the double joy of faith confirmed, and willing service generously rewarded. a telegraph boy walked along the train, saying: "honrubble jain champyun" at intervals. jane heard her name, and her arm shot out of the window. "here, my boy! it is for me." she tore it open. it was from the doctor. "welcome home. just back from scotland. will meet you charing cross, and give you all the time you want. have coffee at dover. deryck." jane gave one hard, tearless sob of thankfulness and relief. she had been so lonely. then she turned to the window. "here, somebody! fetch me a cup of coffee, will you?" coffee was the last thing she wanted; but it never occurred to any one to disobey the doctor, even at a distance. the young porter, who still stood sentry at the door of jane's compartment, dashed off to the refreshment room; and, just as the train began to move, handed a cup of steaming coffee and a plate of bread-and-butter in at the window. "oh, thank you, my good fellow," said jane, putting the plate on the seat, while she dived into her pocket. "here! you have done very well for me. no, never mind the change. coffee at a moment's notice should fetch a fancy price. good-bye." the train moved on, and the porter stood looking after it with tears in his eyes. over the first half-crown he had said to himself: "milk and new-laid eggs." now, as he pocketed the second, he added the other two things mentioned by the parish doctor: "soup and jelly"; and his heart glowed. "your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of these things." and jane, seated in a comfortable corner, choked back the tears of relief which threatened to fall, drank her coffee, and was thereby more revived than she could have thought possible. she, also, had need of many things. not of half-crowns; of those she had plenty. but above all else she needed just now a wise, strong, helpful friend, and deryck had not failed her. she read his telegram through once more, and smiled. how like him to think of the coffee; and oh, how like him to be coming to the station. she took off her hat and leaned back against the cushions. she had been travelling night and day, in one feverish whirl of haste, and at last she had brought herself within reach of deryck's hand and deryck's safe control. the turmoil of her soul was stilled; a great calm took its place, and jane dropped quietly off to sleep. "your heavenly father knoweth that ye have need of these things." * * * * * washed and brushed and greatly refreshed, jane stood at the window of her compartment as the train steamed into charing cross. the doctor was stationed exactly opposite the door when her carriage came to a standstill; mere chance, and yet, to jane, it seemed so like him to have taken up his position precisely at the right spot on that long platform. an enthusiastic lady patient had once said of deryck brand, with more accuracy of definition than of grammar: "you know, he is always so very just there." and this characteristic of the doctor had made him to many a very present help in time of trouble. he was through the line of porters and had his hand upon the handle of jane's door in a moment. standing at the window, she took one look at the firm lean face, now alight with welcome, and read in the kind, steadfast eyes of her childhood's friend a perfect sympathy and comprehension. then she saw behind him her aunt's footman, and her own maid, who had been given a place in the duchess's household. in another moment she was on the platform and her hand was in deryck's. "that is right, dear," he said. "all fit and well, i can see. now hand over your keys. i suppose you have nothing contraband? i telephoned the duchess to send some of her people to meet your luggage, and not to expect you herself until dinner time, as you were taking tea with us. was that right? this way. come outside the barrier. what a rabble! all wanting to break every possible rule and regulation, and each trying to be the first person in the front row. really the patience and good temper of railway officials should teach the rest of mankind a lesson." the doctor, talking all the time, piloted jane through the crowd; opened the door of a neat electric brougham, helped her in, took his seat beside her, and they glided swiftly out into the strand, and turned towards trafalgar square. "well," said the doctor, "niagara is a big thing isn't it? when people say to me, 'were you not disappointed in niagara? we were!' i feel tempted to wish, for one homicidal moment, that the earth would open her mouth and swallow them up. people who can be disappointed in niagara, and talk about it, should no longer be allowed to crawl on the face of the earth. and how about the 'little mother'? isn't she worth knowing? i hope she sent me her love. and new york harbour! did you ever see anything to equal it, as you steam away in the sunset?" jane gave a sudden sob; then turned to him, dry-eyed. "is there no hope, deryck?" the doctor laid his hand on hers. "he will always be blind, dear. but life holds other things beside sight. we must never say: 'no hope.'" "will he live?" "there is no reason he should not live. but how far life will be worth living, largely depends upon what can be done for him, poor chap, during the next few months. he is more shattered mentally than physically." jane pulled off her gloves, swallowed suddenly, then gripped the doctor's knee. "deryck--i love him." the doctor remained silent for a few moments, as if pondering this tremendous fact. then he lifted the fine, capable hand resting upon his knee and kissed it with a beautiful reverence,--a gesture expressing the homage of the man to the brave truthfulness of the woman. "in that case, dear," he said, "the future holds in store so great a good for garth dalmain that i think he may dispense with sight.-- meanwhile you have much to say to me, and it is, of course, your right to hear every detail of his case that i can give. and here we are at wimpole street. now come into my consulting-room. stoddart has orders that we are on no account to be disturbed." chapter xv the consultation the doctor's room was very quiet. jane leaned back in his dark green leather arm-chair, her feet on a footstool, her hands gripping the arms on either side. the doctor sat at his table, in the round pivot-chair he always used,--a chair which enabled him to swing round suddenly and face a patient, or to turn away very quietly and bend over his table. just now he was not looking at jane. he had been giving her a detailed account of his visit to castle gleneesh, which he had left only on the previous evening. he had spent five hours with garth. it seemed kindest to tell her all; but he was looking straight before him as he talked, because he knew that at last the tears were running unchecked down jane's cheeks, and he wished her to think he did not notice them. "you understand, dear," he was saying, "the actual wounds are going on well. strangely enough, though the retina of each eye was pierced, and the sight is irrecoverably gone, there was very little damage done to surrounding parts, and the brain is quite uninjured. the present danger arises from the shock to the nervous system and from the extreme mental anguish caused by the realisation of his loss. the physical suffering during the first days and nights must have been terrible. poor fellow, he looks shattered by it. but his constitution is excellent, and his life has been so clean, healthy, and normal, that he had every chance of making a good recovery, were it not that as the pain abated and his blindness became more a thing to be daily and hourly realised, his mental torture was so excessive. sight has meant so infinitely much to him,--beauty of form, beauty of colour. the artist in him was so all-pervading. they tell me he said very little. he is a brave man and a strong one. but his temperature began to vary alarmingly; he showed symptoms of mental trouble, of which i need not give you technical details; and a nerve specialist seemed more necessary than an oculist. therefore he is now in my hands." the doctor paused, straightened a few books lying on the table, and drew a small bowl of violets closer to him. he studied these attentively for a few moments, then put them back where his wife had placed them and went on speaking. "i am satisfied on the whole. he needed a friendly voice to penetrate the darkness. he needed a hand to grasp his, in faithful comprehension. he did not want pity, and those who talked of his loss without understanding it, or being able to measure its immensity, maddened him. he needed a fellow-man to come to him and say: 'it is a fight--an awful, desperate fight. but by god's grace you will win through to victory. it would be far easier to die; but to die would be to lose; you must live to win. it is utterly beyond all human strength; but by god's grace you will come through conqueror.' all this i said to him, jeanette, and a good deal more; and then a strangely beautiful thing happened. i can tell you, and of course i could tell flower, but to no one else on earth would i repeat it. the difficulty had been to obtain from him any response whatever. he did not seem able to rouse sufficiently to notice anything going on around him. but those words, 'by god's grace,' appeared to take hold of him and find immediate echo in his inner consciousness. i heard him repeat them once or twice, and then change them to 'with the abundance of thy grace.' then he turned his head slowly on the pillow, and what one could see of his face seemed transformed. he said: 'now i remember it, and the music is this'; and his hands moved on the bedclothes, as if forming chords. then, in a very low voice, but quite clearly, he repeated the second verse of the veni, creator spiritus. i knew it, because i used to sing it as a chorister in my father's church at home. you remember?" "'enable with perpetual light the dulness of our blinded sight. anoint and cheer our soiled face with the abundance of thy grace. keep far our foes; give peace at home; where thou art guide, no ill can come.'" "it was the most touching thing i ever heard." the doctor paused, for jane had buried her face in her hands and was sobbing convulsively. when her sobs grew less violent, the doctor's quiet voice continued: "you see, this gave me something to go upon. when a crash such as this happens, all a man has left to hold on to is his religion. according as his spiritual side has been developed, will his physical side stand the strain. dalmain has more of the real thing than any one would think who only knew him superficially. well, after that we talked quite definitely, and i persuaded him to agree to one or two important arrangements. you know, he has no relations of his own, to speak of; just a few cousins, who have never been very friendly. he is quite alone up there; for, though he has hosts of friends, this is a time when friends would have to be very intimate to be admitted; and though he seemed so boyish and easy to know, i begin to doubt whether any of us knew the real garth--the soul of the man, deep down beneath the surface." jane lifted her head. "i did," she said simply. "ah," said the doctor, "i see. well, as i said, ordinary friends could not be admitted. lady ingleby went, in her sweet impulsive way, without letting them know she was coming; travelled all the way up from shenstone with no maid, and nothing but a handbag, and arrived at the door in a fly. robert mackenzie, the local medical man, who is an inveterate misogynist, feared at first she was an unsuspected wife of dal's. he seemed to think unannounced ladies arriving in hired vehicles must necessarily turn out to be undesirable wives. i gather they had a somewhat funny scene. but lady ingleby soon got round old robbie, and came near to charming him--as whom does she not? but of course they did not dare let her into dal's room; so her ministry of consolation appears to have consisted in letting dal's old housekeeper weep on her beautiful shoulder. it was somewhat of a comedy, hearing about it, when one happened to know them all, better than they knew each other. but to return to practical details. he has had a fully trained male nurse and his own valet to wait on him. he absolutely refused one of our london hospital nurses, who might have brought a little gentle comfort and womanly sympathy to his sick-room. he said he could not stand being touched by a woman; so there it remained. a competent man was found instead. but we can now dispense with him, and i have insisted upon sending up a lady nurse of my own choosing; not so much to wait on him, or do any of a sick-nurse's ordinary duties--his own man can do these, and he seems a capable fellow--but to sit with him, read to him, attend to his correspondence,--there are piles of unopened letters he ought to hear,--in fact help him to take up life again in his blindness. it will need training; it will require tact; and this afternoon i engaged exactly the right person. she is a gentlewoman by birth, has nursed for me before, and is well up in the special knowledge of mental things which this case requires. also she is a pretty, dainty little thing; just the kind of elegant young woman poor dal would have liked to have about him when he could see. he was such a fastidious chap about appearances, and such a connoisseur of good looks. i have written a descriptive account of her to dr. mackenzie, and he will prepare his patient for her arrival. she is to go up the day after to-morrow. we are lucky to get her, for she is quite first-rate, and she has only just finished with a long consumptive case, now on the mend and ordered abroad. so you see, jeanette, all is shaping well.--and now, my dear girl, you have a story of your own to tell me, and my whole attention shall be at your disposal. but first of all i am going to ring for tea, and you and i will have it quietly down here, if you will excuse me for a few minutes while i go upstairs and speak to flower." * * * * * it seemed so natural to jane to be pouring out the doctor's tea, and to watch him putting a liberal allowance of salt on the thin bread-and-butter, and then folding it over with the careful accuracy which had always characterised his smallest action. in the essentials he had changed so little since the days when as a youth of twenty spending his vacations at the rectory he used to give the lonely girl at the manor so much pleasure by coming up to her school-room tea; and when it proved possible to dispose of her governess's chaperonage and be by themselves, what delightful times they used to have, sitting on the hearth-rug, roasting chestnuts and discussing the many subjects which were of mutual interest. jane could still remember the painful pleasure of turning hot chestnuts on the bars with her fingers, and how she hastened to do them herself, lest he should be burned. she had always secretly liked and admired his hands, with the brown thin fingers, so delicate in their touch and yet full of such gentle strength. she used to love watching them while he sharpened her pencils or drew wonderful diagrams in her exercise books; thinking how in years to come, when he performed important operations, human lives would depend upon their skill and dexterity. in those early years he had seemed so much older than she. and then came the time when she shot up rapidly into young womanhood and their eyes were on a level and their ages seemed the same. then, as the years went on, jane began to feel older than he, and took to calling him "boy" to emphasise this fact. and then came--flower;--and complications. and jane had to see his face grow thin and worn, and his hair whiten on the temples. and she yearned over him, yet dared not offer sympathy. at last things came right for the doctor, and all the highest good seemed his; in his profession; in his standing among men; and, above all, in his heart life, which flower had always held between her two sweet hands. and jane rejoiced, but felt still more lonely now she had no companion in loneliness. and still their friendship held, with flower admitted as a third--a wistful, grateful third, anxious to learn from the woman whose friendship meant so much to her husband, how to succeed where she had hitherto failed. and jane's faithful heart was generous and loyal to both, though in sight of their perfect happiness her loneliness grew. and now, in her own hour of need, it had to be deryck only; and the doctor knew this, and had arranged accordingly; for at last his chance had come, to repay the faithful devotion of a lifetime. the conversation of that afternoon would be the supreme test of their friendship. and so, with a specialist's appreciation of the mental effect of the most trivial external details, the doctor had ordered muffins, and a kettle on the fire, and had asked jane to make the tea. by the time the kettle boiled, they had remembered the chestnuts, and were laughing about poor old fraulein's efforts to keep them in order, and the strategies by which they used to evade her vigilance. and the years rolled back, and jane felt herself very much at home with the chum of her childhood. nevertheless, there was a moment of tension when the doctor drew back the tea-table and they faced each other in easy-chairs on either side of the fireplace. each noticed how characteristic was the attitude of the other. jane sat forward, her feet firmly planted on the hearth-rug, her arms on her knees, and her hands clasped in front of her. the doctor leaned back, one knee crossed over the other, his elbows on the arms of his chair, the tips of his fingers meeting, in absolute stillness of body and intense concentration of mind. the silence between them was like a deep, calm pool. jane took the first plunge. "deryck, i am going to tell you everything. i am going to speak of my heart, and mind, and feelings, exactly as if they were bones, and muscles, and lungs. i want you to combine the offices of doctor and confessor in one." the doctor had been contemplating his finger-tips. he now glanced swiftly at jane, and nodded; then turned his head and looked into the fire. "deryck, mine has been a somewhat lonely existence. i have never been essential to the life of another, and no one has ever touched the real depths of mine. i have known they were there, but i have known they were unsounded." the doctor opened his lips, as if to speak; then closed them in a firmer line than before, and merely nodded his head silently. "i had never been loved with that love which makes one absolutely first to a person, nor had i ever so loved. i had--cared very much; but caring is not loving.--oh, boy, i know that now!" the doctor's profile showed rather white against the dark-green background of his chair; but he smiled as he answered: "quite true, dear. there is a distinction, and a difference." "i had heaps of friends, and amongst them a good many nice men, mostly rather younger than myself, who called me 'miss champion.' to my face, and 'good old jane' behind my back." the doctor smiled. he had as often heard the expression, and could recall the whole-hearted affection and admiration in the tones of those who used it. "men as a rule," continued jane, "get on better with me than do women. being large and solid, and usually calling a spade 'a spade;' and not 'a garden implement,' women consider me strong-minded, and are inclined to be afraid of me. the boys know they can trust me; they make a confidante of me, looking upon me as a sort of convenient elder sister who knows less about them than an elder sister would know, and is probably more ready to be interested in those things which they choose to tell. among my men friends, deryck, was garth dalmain." jane paused, and the doctor waited silently for her to continue. "i was always interested in him, partly because he was so original and vivid in his way of talking, and partly because"--a bright flush suddenly crept up into the tanned cheeks-"well, though i did not realise it then, i suppose i found his extraordinary beauty rather fascinating. and then, our circumstances were so much alike,--both orphans, and well off; responsible to no one for our actions; with heaps of mutual friends, and constantly staying at the same houses. we drifted into a pleasant intimacy, and of all my friends, he was the one who made me feel most like `a man and a brother.' we discussed women by the dozen, all his special admirations in turn, and the effect of their beauty upon him, and i watched with interest to see who, at last, would fix his roving fancy. but on one eventful day all this was changed in half an hour. we were both staying at overdene. there was a big house party, and aunt georgina had arranged a concert to which half the neighbourhood was coming. madame velma failed at the last minute. aunt 'gina, in a great state of mind, was borrowing remarks from her macaw. you know how? she always says she is merely quoting `the dear bird.' something had to be done. i offered to take velma's place; and i sang." "ah," said the doctor. "i sang the rosary--the song flower asked for the last time i was here. do you remember?" the doctor nodded. "i remember." "after that, all was changed between garth and me. i did not understand it at first. i knew the music had moved him deeply, beauty of sound having upon him much the same effect as beauty of colour; but i thought the effect would pass in the night. but the days went on, and there was always this strange sweet difference; not anything others would notice; but i suddenly became conscious that, for the first time in my whole life, i was essential to somebody. i could not enter a room without realising that he was instantly aware of my presence; i could not leave a room without knowing that he would at once feel and regret my absence. the one fact filled and completed all things; the other left a blank which could not be removed. i knew this, and yet--incredible though it may appear--i did not realise it meant love. i thought it was an extraordinarily close bond of sympathy and mutual understanding, brought about principally by our enjoyment of one another's music. we spent hours in the music-room. i put it down to that; yet when he looked at me his eyes seemed to touch as well as see me, and it was a very tender and wonderful touch. and all the while i never thought of love. i was so plain and almost middle-aged; and he, such a beautiful, radiant youth. he was like a young sun-god, and i felt warmed and vivified when he was near; and he was almost always near. honestly, that was my side of the days succeeding the concert. but his! he told me afterwards, deryck, it had been a sudden revelation to him when he heard me sing the rosary, not of music only, but of me. he said he had never thought of me otherwise than as a good sort of chum; but then it was as if a veil were lifted, and he saw, and knew, and felt me as a woman. and--no doubt it will seem odd to you. boy; it did to me;--but he said, that the woman he found then was his ideal of womanhood, and that from that hour he wanted me for his own as he had never wanted anything before." jane paused, and looked into the glowing heart of the fire. the doctor turned slowly and looked at jane. he himself had experienced the intense attraction of her womanliness,--all the more overpowering when it was realised, because it did not appear upon the surface. he had sensed the strong mother-tenderness lying dormant within her; had known that her arms would prove a haven of refuge, her bosom a soothing pillow, her love a consolation unspeakable. in his own days of loneliness and disappointment, the doctor had had to flee from this in jane,--a precious gift, so easy to have taken because of her very ignorance of it; but a gift to which he had no right. thus the doctor could well understand the hold it would gain upon a man who had discovered it, and who was free to win it for his own. but he only said, "i do not think it odd, dear." jane had forgotten the doctor. she came back promptly from the glowing heart of the fire. "i am glad you don't," she said. "i did.--well, we both left overdene on the same day. i came to you; he went to shenstone. it was a tuesday. on the friday i went down to shenstone, and we met again. having been apart for a little while seemed to make this curious feeling of `togetherness,' deeper and sweeter than ever. in the shenstone house party was that lovely american girl, pauline lister. garth was enthusiastic about her beauty, and set on painting her. everybody made sure he was going to propose to her. deryck, i thought so, too; in fact i had advised him to do it. i felt so pleased and interested over it, though all the while his eyes touched me when he looked at me, and i knew the day did not begin for him until we had met, and was over when we had said good-night. and this experience of being first and most to him made everything so golden, and life so rich, and still i thought of it only as an unusually delightful friendship. but the evening of my arrival at shenstone he asked me to come out on to the terrace after dinner, as he wanted specially to talk to me. deryck, i thought it was the usual proceeding of making a confidante of me, and that i was to hear details of his intentions regarding miss lister. thinking that, i walked calmly out beside him; sat down on the parapet, in the brilliant moonlight, and quietly waited for him to begin. then--oh, deryck! it happened." jane put her elbows on her knees, and buried her face in her clasped hands. "i cannot tell you--details. his love--it just poured over me like molten gold. it melted the shell of my reserve; it burst through the ice of my convictions; it swept me off my feet upon a torrent of wondrous fire. i knew nothing in heaven or earth but that this love was mine, and was for me. and then--oh, deryck! i can't explain--i don't know myself how it happened--but this whirlwind of emotion came to rest upon my heart. he knelt with his arms around me, and we held each other in a sudden great stillness; and in that moment i was all his, and he knew it. he might have stayed there hours if he had not moved or spoken; but presently he lifted up his face and looked at me. then he said two words. i can't repeat them, boy; but they brought me suddenly to my senses, and made me realise what it all meant. garth dalmain wanted me to marry him." jane paused, awaiting the doctor's expression of surprise. "what else could it have meant?" said deryck brand, very quietly. he passed his hand over his lips, knowing they trembled a little. jane's confessions were giving him a stiffer time than he had expected. "well, dear, so you--?" "i stood up," said jane; "for while he knelt there he was master of me, mind and body; and some instinct told me that if i were to be won to wifehood, my reason must say `yes' before the rest of me. it is `spirit, soul, and body' in the word, not `body, soul, and spirit,' as is so often misquoted; and i believe the inspired sequence to be the right one." the doctor made a quick movement of interest. "good heavens, jane!" he said. "you have got hold of a truth there, and you have expressed it exactly as i have often wanted to express it without being able to find the right words. you have found them, jeanette." she looked into his eager eyes and smiled sadly. "have i, boy?" she said. "well, they have cost me dear.--i put my lover from me and told him i must have twelve hours for calm reflection. he was so sure--so sure of me, so sure of himself--that he agreed without a protest. at my request he left me at once. the manner of his going i cannot tell, even to you, dicky. i promised to meet him at the village church next day and give him my answer. he was to try the new organ at eleven. we knew we should be alone. i came. he sent away the blower. he called me to him at the chancel step. the setting was so perfect. the artist in him sang for joy, and thrilled with expectation. the glory of absolute certainty was in his eyes; though he had himself well in hand. he kept from touching me while he asked for my answer. then--i refused him, point blank, giving a reason he could not question. he turned from me and left the church, and i have not spoken to him from that day to this." a long silence in the doctor's consulting-room. one manly heart was entering into the pain of another, and yet striving not to be indignant until he knew the whole truth. jane's spirit was strung up to the same pitch as in that fateful hour, and once more she thought herself right. at last the doctor spoke. he looked at her searchingly now, and held her eyes. "and why did you refuse him, jane?" the kind voice was rather stern. jane put out her hands to him appealingly. "ah, boy, i must make you understand! how could i do otherwise, though, indeed, it was putting away the highest good life will ever hold for me? deryck, you know garth well enough to realise how dependent he is on beauty; he must be surrounded by it, perpetually. before this unaccountable need of each other came to us he had talked to me quite freely on this point, saying of a plain person whose character and gifts he greatly admired, and whose face he grew to like in consequence: 'but of course it was not the sort of face one would have wanted to live with, or to have day after day opposite to one at table; but then one was not called to that sort of discipline, which would be martyrdom to me.' oh, deryck! could i have tied garth to my plain face? could i have let myself become a daily, hourly discipline to that radiant, beauty-loving nature? i know they say, 'love is blind.' but that is before love has entered into his kingdom. love desirous, sees only that, in the one beloved, which has awakened the desire. but love content, regains full vision, and, as time goes on, those powers of vision increase and become, by means of daily, hourly, use,--microscopic and telescopic. wedded love is not blind. bah! an outsider staying with married people is apt to hear what love sees, on both sides, and the delusion of love's blindness is dispelled forever. i know garth was blind, during all those golden days, to my utter lack of beauty, because he wanted me so much. but when he had had me, and had steeped himself in all i have to give of soul and spirit beauty; when the daily routine of life began, which after all has to be lived in complexions, and with features to the fore; when he sat down to breakfast and i saw him glance at me and then look away, when i was conscious that i was sitting behind the coffee-pot, looking my very plainest, and that in consequence my boy's discipline had begun; could i have borne it? should i not, in the miserable sense of failing him day by day, through no fault of my own, have grown plainer and plainer; until bitterness and disappointment, and perhaps jealousy, all combined to make me positively ugly? i ask you, deryck, could i have borne it?" the doctor was looking at jane with an expression of keen professional interest. "how awfully well i diagnosed the case when i sent you abroad," he remarked meditatively. "really, with so little data to go upon--" "oh, boy," cried jane, with a movement of impatience, "don't speak to me as if i were a patient. treat me as a human being, at least, and tell me--as man to man--could i have tied garth dalmain to my plain face? for you know it is plain." the doctor laughed. he was glad to make jane a little angry. "my dear girl," he said, "were we speaking as man to man, i should have a few very strong things to say to you. as we are speaking as man to woman,--and as a man who has for a very long time respected, honoured, and admired a very dear and noble woman,--i will answer your question frankly. you are not beautiful, in the ordinary acceptation of the word, and no one who really loves you would answer otherwise; because no one who knows and loves you would dream of telling you a lie. we will even allow, if you like, that you are plain, although i know half a dozen young men who, were they here, would want to kick me into the street for saying so, and i should have to pretend in self-defence that their ears had played them false and i had said, 'you are jane,' which is all they would consider mattered. so long as you are yourself, your friends will be well content. at the same time, i may add, while this dear face is under discussion, that i can look back to times when i have felt that i would gladly walk twenty miles for a sight of it; and in its absence i have always wished it present, and in its presence i have never wished it away." "ah, but, deryck, you did not have to have it always opposite you at meals," insisted jane gravely. "unfortunately not. but i enjoyed the meals more on the happy occasions when it was there." "and, deryck--you did not have to kiss it." the doctor threw back his head and shouted with laughter, so that flower, passing up the stairs, wondered what turn the conversation could be taking. but jane was quite serious; and saw in it no laughing matter. "no, dear," said the doctor when he had recovered; "to my infinite credit be it recorded, that in all the years i have known it i have never once kissed it." "dicky, don't tease! oh, boy, it is the most vital question of my whole life; and if you do not now give me wise and thoughtful advice, all this difficult confession will have been for nothing." the doctor became grave immediately. he leaned forward and took those clasped hands between his. "dear," he said, "forgive me if i seemed to take it lightly. my most earnest thought is wholly at your disposal. and now let me ask you a few questions. how did you ever succeed in convincing dalmain that such a thing as this was an insuperable obstacle to your marriage?" "i did not give it as a reason." "what then did you give as your reason for refusing him?" "i asked him how old he was." "jane! standing there beside him in the chancel, where he had come awaiting your answer?" "yes. it did seem awful when i came to think it over afterwards. but it worked." "i have no doubt it worked. what then?" "he said he was twenty-seven. i said i was thirty, and looked thirty-five, and felt forty. i also said he might be twenty-seven, but he looked nineteen, and i was sure he often felt nine." "well?" "then i said that i could not marry a mere boy." "and he acquiesced?" "he seemed stunned at first. then he said of course i could not marry him if i considered him that. he said it was the first time he had given a thought to himself in the matter. then he said he bowed to my decision, and he walked down the church and went out, and we have not met since." "jane," said the doctor, "i wonder he did not see through it. you are so unused to lying, that you cannot have lied, on the chancel step, to the man you loved, with much conviction." a dull red crept up beneath jane's tan. "oh, deryck, it was not entirely a lie. it was one of those dreadful lies which are 'part a truth,' of which tennyson says that they are 'a harder matter to fight.'" "'a lie which is all a lie may be met and fought with outright; but a lie which is part a truth is a harder matter to fight,'" quoted the doctor. "yes," said jane. "and he could not fight this, just because it was partly true. he is younger than i by three years, and still more by temperament. it was partly for his delightful youthfulness that i feared my maturity and staidness. it was part a truth, but oh, deryck, it was more a lie; and it was altogether a lie to call him--the man whom i had felt complete master of me the evening before--'a mere boy.' also he could not fight it because it took him so utterly by surprise. he had been all the time as completely without self-consciousness, as i had been morbidly full of it. his whole thought had been of me. mine had been of him and--of myself." "jane," said the doctor, "of all that you have suffered since that hour, you deserved every pang." jane bent her head. "i know," she said. "you were false to yourself, and not true to your lover. you robbed and defrauded both. cannot you now see your mistake? to take it on the lowest ground, dalmain, worshipper of beauty as he was, had had a surfeit of pretty faces. he was like the confectioner's boy who when first engaged is allowed to eat all the cakes and sweets he likes, and who eats so many in the first week, that ever after he wants only plain bread-and-butter. you were dal's bread-and-butter. i am sorry if you do not like the simile." jane smiled. "i do like the simile," she said. "ah, but you were far more than this, my dear girl. you were his ideal of womanhood. he believed in your strength and tenderness, your graciousness and truth. you shattered this ideal; you failed this faith in you. his fanciful, artistic, eclectic nature with all its unused possibilities of faithful and passionate devotion, had found its haven in your love; and in twelve hours you turned it adrift. jane--it was a crime. the magnificent strength of the fellow is shown by the way he took it. his progress in his art was not arrested. all his best work has been done since. he has made no bad mad marriage, in mockery of his own pain; and no grand loveless one, to spite you. he might have done both--i mean either. and when i realise that the poor fellow i was with yesterday--making such a brave fight in the dark, and turning his head on the pillow to say with a gleam of hope on his drawn face: `where thou art guide, no ill can come'--had already been put through all this by you--jane, if you were a man, i'd horsewhip you!" said the doctor. jane squared her shoulders and lifted her head with more of her old spirit than she had yet shown. "you have lashed me well, boy," she said, "as only words spoken in faithful indignation can lash. and i feel the better for the pain.-- and now i think i ought to tell you that while i was on the top of the great pyramid i suddenly saw the matter from a different standpoint. you remember that view, with its sharp line of demarcation? on one side the river, and verdure, vegetation, fruitfulness, a veritable 'garden enclosed'; on the other, vast space as far as the eye could reach; golden liberty, away to the horizon, but no sign of vegetation, no hope of cultivation, just barren, arid, loneliness. i felt this was an exact picture of my life as i live it now. garth's love, flowing through it, as the river, could have made it a veritable 'garden of the lord.' it would have meant less liberty, but it would also have meant no loneliness. and, after all, the liberty to live for self alone becomes in time a weary bondage. then i realised that i had condemned him also to this hard desert life. i came down and took counsel of the old sphinx. those calm, wise eyes, looking on into futurity, seemed to say: 'they only live who love.' that evening i resolved to give up the nile trip, return home immediately, send for garth, admit all to him, asking him to let us both begin again just where we were three years ago in the moonlight on the terrace at shenstone. ten minutes after i had formed this decision, i heard of his accident." the doctor shaded his face with his hand. "the wheels of time," he said in a low voice, "move forward--always; backward, never." "oh, deryck," cried jane, "sometimes they do. you and flower know that sometimes they do." the doctor smiled sadly and very tenderly. "i know," he said, "that there is always one exception which proves every rule." then he added quickly: "but, unquestionably, it helps to mend matters, so far as your own mental attitude is concerned, that before you knew of dalmain's blindness you should have admitted yourself wrong, and made up your mind to trust him." "i don't know that i was altogether clear about having been wrong," said jane, "but i was quite convinced that i couldn't live any longer without him, and was therefore prepared to risk it. and of course now, all doubt or need to question is swept away by my poor boy's accident, which simplifies matters, where that particular point is concerned." the doctor looked at jane with a sudden raising of his level brows. "simplifies matters?" he said. then, as jane, apparently satisfied with the expression, did not attempt to qualify it, he rose and stirred the fire; standing over it for a few moments in silent thought. when he sat down again, his voice was very quiet, but there was an alertness about his expression which roused jane. she felt that the crisis of their conversation had been reached. "and now, my dear jeanette," said the doctor, "suppose you tell me what you intend doing." "doing?" said jane. "why, of course, i shall go straight to garth. i only want you to advise me how best to let him know i am coming, and whether it is safe for him to have the emotion of my arrival. also i don't want to risk being kept from him by doctors or nurses. my place is by his side. i ask no better thing of life than to be always beside him. but sick-room attendants are apt to be pig-headed; and a fuss under these circumstances would be unbearable. a wire from you will make all clear." "i see," said the doctor slowly. "yes, a wire from me will undoubtedly open a way for you to garth dalmain's bedside. and, arrived there, what then?" a smile of ineffable tenderness parted jane's lips. the doctor saw it, but turned away immediately. it was not for him, or for any man, to see that look. the eyes which should have seen it were sightless evermore. "what then, deryck? love will know best what then. all barriers will be swept away, and garth and i will be together." the doctor's finger-tips met very exactly before he spoke again; and when he did speak, his tone was very level and very kind. "ah, jane," he said, "that is the woman's point of view. it is certainly the simplest, and perhaps the best. but at garth's bedside you will be confronted with the man's point of view; and i should be failing the trust you have placed in me did i not put that before you now.--from the man's point of view, your own mistaken action three years ago has placed you now in an almost impossible position. if you go to garth with the simple offer of your love--the treasure he asked three years ago and failed to win--he will naturally conclude the love now given is mainly pity; and garth dalmain is not the man to be content with pity, where he has thought to win love, and failed. nor would he allow any woman--least of all his crown of womanhood--to tie herself to his blindness unless he were sure such binding was her deepest joy. and how could you expect him to believe this in face of the fact that, when he was all a woman's heart could desire, you refused him and sent him from you?--if, on the other hand, you explain, as no doubt you intend to do, the reason of that refusal, he can but say one thing: 'you could not trust me to be faithful when i had my sight. blind, you come to me, when it is no longer in my power to prove my fidelity. there is no virtue in necessity. i can never feel i possess your trust, because you come to me only when accident has put it out of my power either to do the thing you feared, or to prove myself better than your doubts.' my dear girl, that is how matters stand from the man's point of view; from his, i make no doubt, even more than from mine; for i recognise in garth dalmain a stronger man than myself. had it been i that day in the church, wanting you as he did, i should have grovelled at your feet and promised to grow up. garth dalmain had the iron strength to turn and go, without a protest, when the woman who had owned him mate the evening before, refused him on the score of inadequacy the next morning. i fear there is no question of the view he would take of the situation as it now stands." jane's pale, startled face went to the doctor's heart. "but deryck--he--loves--" "just because he loves, my poor old girl, where you are concerned he could never be content with less than the best." "oh, boy, help me! find a way! tell me what to do!" despair was in jane's eyes. the doctor considered long, in silence. at last he said: "i see only one way out. if dal could somehow be brought to realise your point of view at that time as a possible one, without knowing it had actually been the cause of your refusal of him, and could have the chance to express himself clearly on the subject--to me, for instance--in a way which might reach you without being meant to reach you, it might put you in a better position toward him. but it would be difficult to manage. if you could be in close contact with his mind, constantly near him unseen--ah, poor chap, that is easy now--i mean unknown to him; if, for instance, you could be in the shoes of this nurse-companion person i am sending him, and get at his mind on the matter; so that he could feel when you eventually made your confession, he had already justified himself to you, and thus gone behind his blindness, as it were." jane bounded in her chair. "deryck, i have it! oh, send me as his nurse-companion! he would never dream it was i. it is three years since he heard my voice, and he thinks me in egypt. the society column in all the papers, a few weeks ago, mentioned me as wintering in egypt and syria and remaining abroad until may. not a soul knows i have come home. you are the best judge as to whether i have had training and experience; and all through the war our work was fully as much mental and spiritual, as surgical. it was not up to much otherwise. oh, dicky, you could safely recommend me; and i still have my uniforms stowed away in case of need. i could be ready in twenty-four hours, and i would go as sister--anything, and eat in the kitchen if necessary." "but, my dear girl," said the doctor quietly, "you could not go as sister anything, unfortunately. you could only go as nurse rosemary gray; for i engaged her this morning, and posted a full and explicit account of her to dr. mackenzie, which he will read, to our patient. i never take a case from one nurse and give it to another, excepting for incompetency. and nurse rosemary gray could more easily fly, than prove incompetent. she will not be required to eat in the kitchen. she is a gentlewoman, and will be treated as such. i wish indeed you could be in her shoes, though i doubt whether you could have carried it through--and now i have something to tell you. just before i left him, dalmain asked after you. he sandwiched you most carefully in between the duchess and flower; but he could not keep the blood out of his thin cheeks, and he gripped the bedclothes in his effort to keep his voice steady. he asked where you were. i said, i believed, in egypt. when you were coming home. i told him i had heard you intended returning to jerusalem for easter, and i supposed we might expect you home at the end of april or early in may. he inquired how you were. i replied that you were not a good correspondent, but i gathered from occasional cables and post-cards that you were very fit and having a good time. i then volunteered the statement that it was i who had sent you abroad because you were going all to pieces. he made a quick movement with his hand as if he would have struck me for using the expression. then he said: 'going to pieces? she!' in a tone of most utter contempt for me and my opinions. then he hastily made minute inquiries for flower. he had already asked about the duchess all the questions he intended asking about you. when he had ascertained that flower was at home and well, and had sent him her affectionate sympathy, he begged me to glance through a pile of letters which were waiting until he felt able to have them read to him, and to tell him any of the handwritings known to me. all the world seemed to have sent him letters of sympathy, poor chap. i told him a dozen or so of the names i knew,--a royal handwriting among them. he asked whether there were any from abroad. there were two or three. i knew them all, and named them. he could not bear to hear any of them read; even the royal letter remained unopened, though he asked to have it in his hand, and fingered the tiny crimson crown. then he asked. 'is there one from the duchess?' there was. he wished to hear that one, so i opened and read it. it was very characteristic of her grace; full of kindly sympathy, heartily yet tactfully expressed. half-way through she said: 'jane will be upset. i shall write and tell her next time she sends me an address. at present i have no idea in which quarter of the globe my dear niece is to be found. last time i heard of her she seemed in a fair way towards marrying a little jap and settling in japan. not a bad idea, my dear dal, is it? though, if japan is at all like the paper screens, i don't know where in that liliputian country they will find a house, or a husband, or a what-do-you-call-'em thing they ride in, solid enough for our good jane!' with intuitive tact of a very high order, i omitted this entire passage about marrying the jap. when your aunt's letter was finished, he asked point blank whether there was one from you. i said no, but that it was unlikely the news had reached you, and i felt sure you would write when it did. so i hope you will, dear; and nurse rosemary gray will have instructions to read all his letters to him." "oh, deryck," said jane brokenly, "i can't bear it! i must go to him!" the telephone bell on the doctor's table whirred sharply. he went over and took up the receiver. "hullo! ... yes, it is dr. brand.... who is speaking? ... oh, is it you, matron?"--jane felt quite sorry the matron could not see the doctor's charming smile into the telephone.--"yes? what name did you say? ... undoubtedly. this morning; quite definitely. a most important case. she is to call and see me to-night ... what? ... mistake on register? ah, i see ... gone where? ... where? ... spell it, please ... australia! oh, quite out of reach! ... yes, i heard he was ordered there ... never mind, matron. you are in no way to blame ... thanks, i think not. i have some one in view ... yes.... yes.... no doubt she might do ... i will let you know if i should require her ... good-bye, matron, and thank you." the doctor hung up the receiver. then he turned to jane; a slow, half-doubtful smile gathering on his lips. "jeanette," he said, "i do not believe in chance. but i do believe in a higher control, which makes and unmakes our plans. you shall go." chapter xvi the doctor finds a way "and now as to ways and means," said the doctor, when jane felt better. "you must leave by the night mail from euston, the day after to-morrow. can you be ready?" "i am ready," said jane. "you must go as nurse rosemary gray." "i don't like that," jane interposed. "i should prefer a fictitious name. suppose the real rosemary gray turned up, or some one who knows her." "my, dear girl, she is half-way to australia by now, and you will see no one up there but the household and the doctor. any one who turned up would be more likely to know you. we must take these risks. besides, in case of complications arising, i will give you a note, which you can produce at once, explaining the situation, and stating that in agreeing to fill the breach you consented at my request to take the name in order to prevent any necessity for explanations to the patient, which at this particular juncture would be most prejudicial. i can honestly say this, it being even more true than appears. so you must dress the part, jane, and endeavour to look the part, so far as your five foot eleven will permit; for please remember that i have described you to dr. mackenzie as 'a pretty, dainty little thing, refined and elegant, and considerably more capable than she looks.'" "dicky! he will instantly realise that i am not the person mentioned in your letter." "not so, dear. remember we have to do with a scotchman, and a scotchman never realises anything 'instantly.' the gaelic mind works slowly, though it works exceeding sure. he will be exceeding sure, when he has contemplated you for a while, that i am a 'verra poor judge o' women,' and that nurse gray is a far finer woman than i described. but he will have already created for dalmain, from my letter, a mental picture of his nurse; which is all that really matters. we must trust to providence that old robbie does not proceed to amend it by the original. try to forestall any such conversation. if the good doctor seems to mistrust you, take him on one side, show him my letter, and tell him the simple truth. but i do not suppose this will be necessary. with the patient, you must remember the extreme sensitiveness of a blind man's hearing. tread lightly. do not give him any opportunity to judge of your height. try to remember that you are not supposed to be able to reach the top shelf of an eight-foot bookcase without the aid of steps or a chair. and when the patient begins to stand and walk, try to keep him from finding out that his nurse is slightly taller than himself. this should not be difficult; one of his fixed ideas being that in his blindness he will not be touched by a woman. his valet will lead him about. and, jane, i cannot imagine any one who has ever had your hand in his, failing to recognise it. so i advise you, from the first, to avoid shaking hands. but all these precautions do not obviate the greatest difficulty of all,--your voice. do you suppose, for a moment, he will not recognise that?" "i shall take the bull by the horns in that case," said jane, "and you must help me. explain the fact to me now, as you might do if i were really nurse rosemary gray, and had a voice so like my own." the doctor smiled. "my dear nurse rosemary," he said, "you must not be surprised if our patient detects a remarkable similarity between your voice and that of a mutual friend of his and mine. i have constantly noticed it myself." "indeed, sir," said jane. "and may i know whose voice mine so closely resembles?" "the honourable jane champion's," said the doctor, with the delightful smile with which he always spoke to his nurses. "do you know her?" "slightly," said jane, "and i hope to know her better and better as the years go by." then they both laughed. "thank you, dicky. now i shall know what to say to the patient.--ah, but the misery of it! think of it being possible thus to deceive garth,--garth of the bright, keen all--perceiving vision! shall i ever have the courage to carry it through?" "if you value your own eventual happiness and his you will, dear. and now i must order the brougham and speed you to portland place, or you will be late--for dinner, a thing the duchess cannot overlook 'as you very well know,' even in a traveller returned from round the world. and if you take my advice, you will tell your kind, sensible old aunt the whole story, omitting of course all moonlight details, and consult her about this plan. her shrewd counsel will be invaluable, and you may be glad of her assistance later on." they rose and faced each other on the hearth-rug. "boy," said jane with emotion, "you have been so good to me, and so faithful. whatever happens, i shall be grateful always." "hush," said the doctor. "no need for gratitude when long-standing debts are paid.--to-morrow i shall not have a free moment, and i foresee the next day as very full also. but we might dine together at euston at seven, and i will see you off. your train leaves at eight o'clock, getting you to aberdeen soon after seven the next morning, and out to gleneesh in time for breakfast. you will enjoy arriving in the early morning light; and the air of the moors braces you wonderfully.--thank you, stoddart. miss champion is ready. hullo, flower! look up, jane. flower, and dicky, and blossom, are hanging over the topmost banisters, dropping you showers of kisses. yes, the river you mentioned does produce a veritable 'garden of the lord.' god send you the same, dear. and now, sit well back, and lower your veil. ah, i remember, you don't wear them. wise girl! if all women followed your example it would impoverish the opticians. why? oh, constant focussing on spots, for one thing. but lean back, for you must not be seen if you are supposed to be still in cairo, waiting to go up the nile. and, look here"--the doctor put his head in at the carriage window--"very plain luggage, mind. the sort of thing nurses speak of as 'my box'; with a very obvious r. g. on it!" "thank you, boy," whispered jane. "you think of everything." "i think of you," said the doctor. and in all the hard days to come, jane often found comfort in remembering those last quiet words. chapter xvii enter--nurse rosemary nurse rosemary gray had arrived at gleneesh. when she and her "box" were deposited on the platform of the little wayside railway station, she felt she had indeed dropped from the clouds; leaving her own world, and her own identity, on some far-distant planet. a motor waited outside the station, and she had a momentary fear lest she should receive deferential recognition from the chauffeur. but he was as solid and stolid as any other portion of the car, and paid no more attention to her than he did to her baggage. the one was a nurse; the other, a box, both common nouns, and merely articles to be conveyed to gleneesh according to orders. so he looked straight before him, presenting a sphinx-like profile beneath the peak of his leather cap, while a slow and solemn porter helped jane and her luggage into the motor. when she had rewarded the porter with threepence, conscientiously endeavouring to live down to her box, the chauffeur moved foot and hand with the silent precision of a machine, they swung round into the open, and took the road for the hills. up into the fragrant heather and grey rocks; miles of moor and sky and solitude. more than ever jane felt as if she had dropped into another world, and so small an incident as the omission of the usual respectful salute of a servant, gave her a delightful sense of success and security in her new role. she had often heard of garth's old castle up in the north, an inheritance from his mother's family, but was hardly prepared for so much picturesque beauty or such stateliness of archway and entrance. as they wound up the hillside and the grey turrets came into view, with pine woods behind and above, she seemed to hear garth's boyish voice under the cedar at overdene, with its ring of buoyant enjoyment, saying: "i should like you to see castle gleneesh. you would enjoy the view from the terrace; and the pine woods, and the moor." and then he had laughingly declared his intention of getting up a "best party" of his own, with the duchess as chaperon; and she had promised to make one of it. and now he, the owner of all this loveliness, was blind and helpless; and she was entering the fair portals of gleneesh, unknown to him, unrecognised by any, as a nurse-secretary sort of person. jane had said at overdene: "yes, ask us, and see what happens." and now this was happening. what would happen next? garth's man, simpson, received her at the door, and again a possible danger was safely passed. he had entered garth's service within the last three years and evidently did not know her by sight. jane stood looking round the old hall, in the leisurely way of one accustomed to arrive for the first time as guest at the country homes of her friends; noting the quaint, large fireplace, and the shadowy antlers high up on the walls. then she became aware that simpson, already half-way up the wide oak staircase, was expecting the nurse to hurry after him. this she did, and was received at the top of the staircase by old margery. it did not require the lawn kerchief, the black satin apron, and the lavender ribbons, for jane to recognise garth's old scotch nurse, housekeeper, and friend. one glance at the grave, kindly face, wrinkled and rosy,--a beautiful combination of perfect health and advancing years,--was enough. the shrewd, keen eyes, seeing quickly beneath the surface, were unmistakable. she conducted jane to her room, talking all the time in a kindly effort to set her at her ease, and to express a warm welcome with gentle dignity, not forgetting the cloud of sadness which hung over the house and rendered her presence necessary. she called her "nurse gray" at the conclusion of every sentence, with an upward inflection and pretty rolling of the r's, which charmed jane. she longed to say: "you old dear! how i shall enjoy being in the house with you!" but remembered in time that a remark which would have been gratifying condescension on the part of the honourable jane champion, would be little short of impertinent familiarity from nurse rosemary gray. so she followed meekly into the pretty room prepared for her; admired the chintz; answered questions about her night journey; admitted that she would be very glad of breakfast, but still more of a bath if convenient. and now bath and breakfast were both over, and jane was standing beside the window in her room, looking down at the wonderful view, and waiting until the local doctor should arrive and summon her to garth's room. she had put on the freshest-looking and most business-like of her uniforms, a blue print gown, linen collar and cuffs, and a white apron with shoulder straps and large pockets. she also wore the becoming cap belonging to one of the institutions to which she had once been for training. she did not intend wearing this later on, but just this morning she omitted no detail which could impress dr. mackenzie with her extremely professional appearance. she was painfully conscious that the severe simplicity of her dress tended rather to add to her height, notwithstanding her low-heeled ward shoes with their noiseless rubber soles. she could but hope deryck would prove right as to the view dr. mackenzie would take. and then far away in the distance, along the white ribbon of road, winding up from the valley, she saw a high gig, trotting swiftly; one man in it, and a small groom seated behind. her hour had come. jane fell upon her knees, at the window, and prayed for strength, wisdom, and courage. she could realise absolutely nothing. she had thought so much and so continuously, that all mental vision was out of focus and had become a blur. even his dear face had faded and was hidden from her when she frantically strove to recall it to her mental view. only the actual fact remained clear, that in a few short minutes she would be taken to the room where he lay. she would see the face she had not seen since they stood together at the chancel step--the face from which the glad confidence slowly faded, a horror of chill disillusion taking its place. "anoint and cheer our soiled face with the abundance of thy grace." she would see that dear face, and he, sightless, would not see hers, but would be easily deluded into believing her to be some one else. the gig had turned the last bend of the road, and passed out of sight on its way to the front of the house. jane rose and stood waiting. suddenly she remembered two sentences of her conversation with deryck. she had said: "shall i ever have the courage to carry it through?" and deryck had answered, earnestly: "if you value your own eventual happiness and his, you will." a tap came at her door. jane walked across the room, and opened it. simpson stood on the threshold. "dr. mackenzie is in the library, nurse," he said, "and wishes to see you there." "then, will you kindly take me to the library, mr. simpson," said nurse rosemary gray. chapter xviii the napoleon of the moors on the bear-skin rug, with his back to the fire, stood dr. robert mackenzie, known to his friends as "dr. rob" or "old robbie," according to their degrees of intimacy. jane's first impression was of a short, stout man, in a sealskin waistcoat which had seen better days, a light box-cloth overcoat three sizes too large for him, a napoleonic attitude,--little spindle legs planted far apart, arms folded on chest, shoulders hunched up,--which led one to expect, as the eye travelled upwards, an ivory-white complexion, a roman nose, masterful jaw, and thin lips folded in a line of conscious power. instead of which one found a red, freckled face, a nose which turned cheerfully skyward, a fat pink chin, and drooping sandy moustache. the only striking feature of the face was a pair of keen blue eyes, which, when turned upon any one intently, almost disappeared beneath bushy red eyebrows and became little points of turquoise light. jane had not been in his presence two minutes before she perceived that, when his mind was working, he was entirely unconscious of his body, which was apt to do most peculiar things automatically; so that his friends had passed round the remark: "robbie chews up dozens of good pen-holders, while dr. mackenzie is thinking out excellent prescriptions." when jane entered, his eyes were fixed upon an open letter, which she instinctively knew to be deryck's, and he did not look up at once. when he did look up, she saw his unmistakable start of surprise. he opened his mouth to speak, and jane was irresistibly reminded of a tame goldfish at overdene, which used to rise to the surface when the duchess dropped crumbs. he closed it without uttering a word, and turned again to deryck's letter; and jane felt herself to be the crumb, or rather the camel, which he was finding it difficult to swallow. she waited in respectful silence, and deryck's words passed with calming effect through the palpitating suspense of her brain. "the gaelic mind works slowly, though it works exceeding sure. he will be exceeding sure that i am a verra poor judge o' women." at last the little man on the hearth-rug lifted his eyes again to jane's; and, alas, how high he had to lift them! "nurse--er?" he said inquiringly, and jane thought his searching eyes looked like little bits of broken blue china in a hay-stack. "rosemary gray," replied jane meekly, with a curtsey in her voice; feeling as if they were rehearsing amateur theatricals at overdene, and the next minute the duchess's cane would rap the floor and they would be told to speak up and not be so slow. "ah," said dr. robert mackenzie, "i see." he stared hard at the carpet in a distant corner of the room, then walked across and picked up a spline broken from a bass broom; brought it back to the hearth-rug; examined it with minute attention; then put one end between his teeth and began to chew it. jane wondered what was the correct thing to do at this sort of interview, when a doctor neither sat down himself nor suggested that the nurse should do so. she wished she had asked deryck. but he could not possibly have enlightened her, because the first thing he always said to a nurse was: "my dear nurse so-and-so, pray sit down. people who have much unavoidable standing to do should cultivate the habit of seating themselves comfortably at every possible opportunity." but the stout little person on the hearth-rug was not deryck. so jane stood at attention, and watched the stiff bit of bass wag up and down, and shorten, inch by inch. when it had finally disappeared, dr. robert mackenzie spoke again. "so you have arrived, nurse gray," he said. "truly the mind of a scotchman works slowly," thought jane, but she was thankful to detect the complete acceptance of herself in his tone. deryck was right; and oh the relief of not having to take this unspeakable little man into her confidence in this matter of the deception to be practised on garth. "yes, sir, i have arrived," she said. another period of silence. a fragment of the bass broom reappeared and vanished once more, before dr. mackenzie spoke again. "i am glad you have arrived, nurse gray," he said. "i am glad to have arrived, sir," said jane gravely, almost expecting to hear the duchess's delighted "ha, ha!" from the wings. the little comedy was progressing. then suddenly she became aware that during the last few minutes dr. mackenzie's mind had been concentrated upon something else. she had not filled it at all. the next moment it was turned upon her and two swift turquoise gleams from under the shaggy brows swept over her, with the rapidity and brightness of search-lights. dr. mackenzie commenced speaking quickly, with a wonderful rolling of r's. "i understand, miss gray, you have come to minister to the patient's mind rather than to his body. you need not trouble to explain. i have it from sir deryck brand, who prescribed a nurse-companion for the patient, and engaged you. i fully agreed with his prescription; and, allow me to say, i admire its ingredients." jane bowed, and realised how the duchess would be chuckling. what an insufferable little person! jane had time to think this, while he walked across to the table-cloth, bent over it, and examined an ancient spot of ink. finding a drop of candle grease near it, he removed it with his thumb nail; brought it carefully to the fire, and laid it on the coals. he watched it melt, fizzle, and flare, with an intense concentration of interest; then jumped round on jane, and caught her look of fury. "and i think there remains very little for me to say to you about the treatment, miss gray," he finished calmly. "you will have received minute instructions from sir deryck himself. the great thing now is to help the patient to take an interest in the outer world. the temptation to persons who suddenly become totally blind, is to form a habit of living entirely in a world within; a world of recollection, retrospection, and imagination; the only world, in fact, in which they can see." jane made a quick movement of appreciation and interest. after all she might learn something useful from this eccentric little scotchman. oh to keep his attention off rubbish on the carpet, and grease spots on the table-cloth! "yes?" she said. "do tell me more." "this," continued dr. mackenzie, "is our present difficulty with mr. dalmain. there seems to be no possibility of arousing his interest in the outside world. he refuses to receive visitors; he declines to hear his letters. hours pass without a word being spoken by him. unless you hear him speak to me or to his valet, you will easily suppose yourself to have a patient who has lost the power of speech as well as the gift of sight. should he express a wish to speak to me alone when we are with him, do not leave the room. walk over to the fireplace and remain there. i desire that you should hear, that when he chooses to rouse and make an effort, he is perfectly well able to do so. the most important part of your duties, nurse gray, will be the aiding him day by day to resume life,--the life of a blind man, it is true; but not therefore necessarily an inactive life. now that all danger of inflammation from the wounds has subsided, he may get up, move about, learn to find his way by sound and touch. he was an artist by profession. he will never paint again. but there are other gifts which may form reasonable outlets to an artistic nature." he paused suddenly, having apparently caught sight of another grease spot, and walked over to the table; but the next instant jumped round on jane, quick as lightning, with a question. "does he play?" said dr. rob. but jane was on her guard, even against accidental surprises. "sir deryck did not happen to mention to me, dr. mackenzie, whether mr. dalmain is musical or not." "ah, well," said the little doctor, resuming his napoleonic attitude in the centre of the hearth-rug; "you must make it your business to find out. and, by the way, nurse, do you play yourself?" "a little," said jane. "ah," said dr. rob. "and i dare say you sing a little, too?" jane acquiesced. "in that case, my dear lady, i leave most explicit orders that you neither sing a little nor play a little to mr. dalmain. we, who have our sight, can just endure while people who 'play a little' show us how little they can play; because we are able to look round about us and think of other things. but to a blind man, with an artist's sensitive soul, the experience might culminate in madness. we must not risk it. i regret to appear uncomplimentary, but a patient's welfare must take precedence of all other considerations." jane smiled. she was beginning to like dr. rob. "i will be most careful," she said, "neither to play nor to sing to mr. dalmain." "good," said dr. mackenzie. "but now let me tell you what you most certainly may do, by-and-by. lead him to the piano. place him there upon a seat where he will feel secure; none of your twirly, rickety stools. make a little notch on the key-board by which he can easily find middle c. then let him relieve his pent-up soul by the painting of sound-pictures. you will find this will soon keep him happy for hours. and, if he is already something of a musician,--as that huge grand piano, with no knick-knacks on it indicates,--he may begin that sort of thing at once, before he is ready to be worried with the braille system, or any other method of instructing the blind. but contrive an easy way--a little notch in the wood-work below the note--by means of which, without hesitation or irritation, he can locate himself instantly at middle c. never mind the other notes. it is all the seeing he will require when once he is at the piano. ha, ha! not bad for a scotchman, eh, nurse gray?" but jane could not laugh; though somewhere in her mental background she seemed to hear laughter and applause from the duchess. this was no comedy to jane,--her blind garth at the piano, his dear beautiful head bent over the keys, his fingers feeling for that pathetic little notch, to be made by herself, below middle c. she loathed this individual who could make a pun on the subject of garth's blindness, and, in the back of her mind, tommy seemed to join the duchess, flapping up and down on his perch and shrieking: "kick him out! stop his jaw!" "and now," said dr. mackenzie unexpectedly, "the next thing to be done, nurse gray, is to introduce you to the patient." jane felt the blood slowly leave her face and concentrate in a terrible pounding at her heart. but she stood her ground, and waited silently. dr. mackenzie rang the bell. simpson appeared. "a decanter of sherry, a wine-glass, and a couple of biscuits," said dr. rob. simpson vanished. "little beast!" thought jane. "at eleven o'clock in the morning!". dr. rob stood, and waited; tugging spitefully at his red moustache, and looking intently out of the window. simpson reappeared, placed a small tray on the table, and went quietly out, closing the door behind him. dr. rob poured out a glass of sherry, drew up a chair to the table, and said: "now, nurse, sit down and drink that, and take a biscuit with it." jane protested. "but, indeed, doctor, i never--" "i have no doubt you 'never,'" said dr. rob, "especially at eleven o'clock in the morning. but you will to-day; so do not waste any time in discussion. you have had a long night journey; you are going upstairs to a very sad sight indeed, a strain on the nerves and sensibilities. you have come through a trying interview with me, and you are praising heaven it is over. but you will praise heaven with more fervency when you have drunk the sherry. also you have been standing during twenty-three minutes and a half. i always stand to speak myself, and i prefer folk should stand to listen. i can never talk to people while they loll around. but you will walk upstairs all the more steadily, nurse rosemary gray, if you sit down now for five minutes at this table." jane obeyed, touched and humbled. so, after all, it was a kind, comprehending heart under that old sealskin waistcoat; and a shrewd understanding of men and matters, in spite of the erratic, somewhat objectionable exterior. while she drank the wine and finished the biscuits, he found busy occupation on the other side of the room, polishing the window with his silk pocket-handkerchief; making a queer humming noise all the time, like a bee buzzing up the pane. he seemed to have forgotten her presence; but, just as she put down the empty glass, he turned and, walking straight across the room, laid his hand upon her shoulder. "now, nurse," he said, "follow me upstairs, and, just at first, speak as little as possible. remember, every fresh voice intruding into the still depths of that utter blackness, causes an agony of bewilderment and disquietude to the patient. speak little and speak low, and may god almighty give you tact and wisdom." there was a dignity of conscious knowledge and power in the small quaint figure which preceded jane up the staircase. as she followed, she became aware that her spirit leaned on his and felt sustained and strengthened. the unexpected conclusion of his sentence, old-fashioned in its wording, yet almost a prayer, gave her fresh courage. "may god almighty give you tact and wisdom," he had said, little guessing how greatly she needed them. and now another voice, echoing through memory's arches to organ-music, took up the strain: "where thou art guide, no ill can come." and with firm though noiseless step, jane followed dr. mackenzie into the roam where garth was lying, helpless, sightless, and disfigured. chapter xix the voice in the darkness just the dark head upon the pillow. that was all jane saw at first, and she saw it in sunshine. somehow she had always pictured a darkened room, forgetting that to him darkness and light were both alike, and that there was no need to keep out the sunlight, with its healing, purifying, invigorating powers. he had requested to have his bed moved into a corner--the corner farthest from door, fireplace, and windows--with its left side against the wall, so that he could feel the blank wall with his hand and, turning close to it, know himself shut away from all possible prying of unseen eyes. this was how he now lay, and he did not turn as they entered. just the dear dark head upon the pillow. it was all jane saw at first. then his right arm in the sleeve of a blue silk sleeping-suit, stretched slightly behind him as he lay on his left side, the thin white hand limp and helpless on the coverlet. jane put her hands behind her. the impulse was so strong to fall on her knees beside the bed, take that poor hand in both her strong ones, and cover it with kisses. ah surely, surely then, the dark head would turn to her, and instead of seeking refuge in the hard, blank wall, he would hide that sightless face in the boundless tenderness of her arms. but deryck's warning voice sounded, grave and persistent: "if you value your own eventual happiness and his--" so jane put her hands behind her back. dr. mackenzie advanced to the side of the bed and laid his hand upon garth's shoulder. then, with an incredible softening of his rather strident voice, he spoke so slowly and quietly, that jane could hardly believe this to be the man who had jerked out questions, comments, and orders to her, during the last half-hour. "good morning, mr. dalmain. simpson tells me it has been an excellent night, the best you have yet had. now that is good. no doubt you were relieved to be rid of johnson, capable though he was, and to be back in the hands of your own man again. these trained attendants are never content with doing enough; they always want to do just a little more, and that little more is a weariness to the patient.--now i have brought you to-day one who is prepared to do all you need, and yet who, i feel sure, will never annoy you by attempting more than you desire. sir deryck brand's prescription, nurse rosemary gray, is here; and i believe she is prepared to be companion, secretary, reader, anything you want, in fact a new pair of eyes for you, mr. dalmain, with a clever brain behind them, and a kind, sympathetic, womanly heart directing and controlling that brain. nurse gray arrived this morning, mr. dalmain." no response from the bed. but garth's hand groped for the wall; touched it, then dropped listlessly back. jane could not realise that she was "nurse gray." she only longed that her poor boy need not be bothered with the woman! it all seemed, at this moment, a thing apart from herself and him. dr. mackenzie spoke again. "nurse rosemary gray is in the room, mr. dalmain." then garth's instinctive chivalry struggled up through the blackness. he did not turn his head, but his right hand made a little courteous sign of greeting, and he said in a low, distinct voice: "how do you do? i am sure it is most kind of you to come so far. i hope you had an easy journey." jane's lips moved, but no sound would pass them. dr. rob made answer quickly, without looking at her: "miss gray had a very good journey, and looks as fresh this morning as if she had spent the night in bed. i can see she is a cold-water young lady." "i hope my housekeeper will make her comfortable. please give orders," said the tired voice; and garth turned even closer to the wall, as if to end the conversation. dr. rob attacked his moustache, and stood looking down at the blue silk shoulder for a minute, silently. then he turned and spoke to jane. "come over to the window, nurse gray. i want to show you a special chair we have obtained for mr. dalmain, in which he will be most comfortable as soon as he feels inclined to sit up. you see? here is an adjustable support for the head, if necessary; and these various trays and stands and movable tables can be swung round into any position by a touch. i consider it excellent, and sir deryck approved it. have you seen one of this kind before, nurse gray?" "we had one at the hospital, but not quite so complete as this," said jane. in the stillness of that sunlit chamber, the voice from the bed broke upon them with startling suddenness; and in it was the cry of one lost in an abyss of darkness, but appealing to them with a frantic demand for instant enlightenment. "who is in the room?" cried garth dalmain. his face was still turned to the wall; but he had raised himself on his left elbow, in an attitude which betokened intent listening. dr. mackenzie answered. "no one is in the room, mr. dalmain, but myself and nurse gray." "there is some one else in the room!" said garth violently. "how dare you lie to me! who was speaking?" then jane came quickly to the side of the bed. her hands were trembling, but her voice was perfectly under control. "it was i who spoke, sir," she said; "nurse rosemary gray. and i feel sure i know why my voice startled you. dr. brand warned me it might do so. he said i must not be surprised if you detected a remarkable similarity between my voice and that of a mutual friend of yours and his. he said he had often noticed it." garth, in his blindness, remained quite still; listening and considering. at length he asked slowly: "did he say whose voice?" "yes, for i asked him. he said it was miss champion's." garth's head dropped back upon the pillow. then without turning he said in a tone which jane knew meant a smile on that dear hidden face: "you must forgive me, miss gray, for being so startled and so stupidly, unpardonably agitated. but, you know, being blind is still such a new experience, and every fresh voice which breaks through the black curtain of perpetual night, means so infinitely more than the speaker realises. the resemblance in your voice to that of the lady sir deryck mentioned is so remarkable that, although i know her to be at this moment in egypt, i could scarcely believe she was not in the room. and yet the most unlikely thing in the world would be that she should have been in this room. so i owe you and dr. mackenzie most humble apologies for my agitation and unbelief." he stretched out his right hand, palm upwards, towards jane. jane clasped her shaking hands behind her. "now, nurse, if you please," broke in dr. mackenzie's rasping voice from the window, "i have a few more details to explain to you over here." they talked together for a while without interruption, until dr. rob remarked: "i suppose i will have to be going." then garth said: "i wish to speak to you alone, doctor, for a few minutes." "i will wait for you downstairs, dr. mackenzie," said jane, and was moving towards the door, when an imperious gesture from dr. rob stopped her, and she turned silently to the fireplace. she could not see any need now for this subterfuge, and it annoyed her. but the freckled little napoleon of the moors was not a man to be lightly disobeyed. he walked to the door, opened and closed it; then returned to the bedside, drew up a chair, and sat down. "now, mr. dalmain," he said. garth sat up and turned towards him eagerly. then, for the first time, jane saw his face. "doctor," he said, "tell me about this nurse. describe her to me." the tension in tone and attitude was extreme. his hands were clasped in front of him, as if imploring sight through the eyes of another. his thin white face, worn with suffering, looked so eager and yet so blank. "describe her to me, doctor," he said; "this nurse rosemary gray, as you call her." "but it is not a pet name of mine, my dear sir," said dr. rob deliberately. "it is the young lady's own name, and a pretty one, too. 'rosemary for remembrance.' is not that shakespeare?" "describe her to me," insisted garth, for the third time. dr. mackenzie glanced at jane. but she had turned her back, to hide the tears which were streaming down her cheeks. oh, garth! oh, beautiful garth of the shining eyes! dr. rob drew deryck's letter from his pocket and studied it. "well," he said slowly, "she is a pretty, dainty little thing; just the sort of elegant young woman you would like to have about you, could you see her." "dark or fair?" asked garth. the doctor glanced at what he could see of jane's cheek, and at the brown hands holding on to the mantelpiece. "fair," said dr. rob, without a moment's hesitation. jane started and glanced round. why should this little man be lying on his own account? "hair?" queried the strained voice from the bed. "well," said dr. rob deliberately, "it is mostly tucked away under a modest little cap; but, were it not for that wise restraint, i should say it might be that kind of fluffy, fly-away floss-silk, which puts the finishing touch to a dainty, pretty woman." garth lay back, panting, and pressed his hands over his sightless face. "doctor," he said, "i know i have given you heaps of trouble, and to-day you must think me a fool. but if you do not wish me to go mad in my blindness, send that girl away. do not let her enter my room again." "now, mr. dalmain," said dr. mackenzie patiently; "let us consider this thing. we may take it you have nothing against this young lady excepting a chance resemblance in her voice to that of a friend of yours now far away. was not this other lady a pleasant person?" garth laughed suddenly, bitterly; a laugh like a hard, sob. "oh, yes," he said, "she was quite a pleasant person." "'rosemary for remembrance,'" quoted dr. rob. "then why should not nurse rosemary call up a pleasant remembrance? also it seems to me to be a kind, sweet, womanly voice, which is something to be thankful for nowadays, when so many women talk, fit to scare the crows; cackle, cackle, cackle--like stones rattling in a tin canister." "but can't you understand, doctor," said garth wearily, "that it is just the remembrance and the resemblance which, in my blindness, i cannot bear? i have nothing against her voice, heaven knows! but i tell you, when i heard it first i thought it was--it was she--the other--come to me--here--and--" garth's voice ceased suddenly. "the pleasant lady?" suggested dr. rob. "i see. well now, mr. dalmain, sir deryck said the best thing that could happen would be if you came to wish for visitors. it appears you have many friends ready and anxious to come any distance in order to bring you help or cheer. why not let me send for this pleasant lady? i make no doubt she would come. then when she herself had sat beside you, and talked with you, the nurse's voice would trouble you no longer." garth sat up again, his face wild with protest. jane turned on the hearth-rug, and stood watching it. "no, doctor," he said. "oh, my god, no! in the whole world, she is the last person i would have enter this room!" dr. mackenzie bent forward to examine minutely a microscopic darn in the sheet. "and why?" he asked very low. "because," said garth, "that pleasant lady, as you rightly call her, has a noble, generous heart, and it might overflow with pity for my blindness; and pity from her i could not accept. it would be the last straw upon my heavy cross. i can bear the cross, doctor; i hope in time to carry it manfully, until god bids me lay it down. but that last straw--her pity--would break me. i should fall in the dark, to rise no more." "i see," said dr. rob gently. "poor laddie! the pleasant lady must not come." he waited silently a few minutes, then pushed back his chair and stood up. "meanwhile," he said, "i must rely on you, mr. dalmain, to be agreeable to nurse rosemary gray, and not to make her task too difficult. i dare not send her back. she is dr. brand's choice. besides--think of the cruel blow to her in her profession. think of it, man!--sent off at a moment's notice, after spending five minutes in her patient's room, because, forsooth, her voice maddened him! poor child! what a statement to enter on her report! see her appear before the matron with it! can't you be generous and unselfish enough to face whatever trial there may be for you in this bit of a coincidence?" garth hesitated. "dr. mackenzie," he said at last, "will you swear to me that your description of this young lady was accurate in every detail?" "'swear not at all,'" quoted dr. rob unctuously. "i had a pious mother, laddie. besides i can do better than that. i will let you into a secret. i was reading from sir deryck's letter. i am no authority on women myself, having always considered dogs and horses less ensnaring and more companionable creatures. so i would not trust my own eyes, but preferred to give you sir deryck's description. you will allow him to be a fine judge of women. you have seen lady brand?" "seen her? yes," said garth eagerly, a slight flush tinting his thin cheeks, "and more than that, i've painted her. ah, such a picture!--standing at a table, the sunlight in her hair, arranging golden daffodils in an old venetian vase. did you see it, doctor, in the new gallery, two years ago?" "no," said dr. rob. "i am not finding myself in galleries, new or old. but"--he turned a swift look of inquiry on jane, who nodded--"nurse gray was telling me she had seen it." "really?" said garth, interested. "somehow one does not connect nurses with picture galleries." "i don't know why not," said dr. rob. "they must go somewhere for their outings. they can't be everlastingly nosing shop windows in all weathers; so why not go in and have a look at your pictures? besides, miss rosemary is a young lady of parts. sir deryck assures me she is a gentlewoman by birth, well-read and intelligent.--now, laddie, what is it to be?" garth considered silently. jane turned away and gripped the mantelpiece. so much hung in the balance during that quiet minute. at length garth spoke, slowly, hesitatingly. "if only i could quite disassociate the voice from the--from that other personality. if i could be quite sure that, though her voice is so extraordinarily like, she herself is not--" he paused, and jane's heart stood still. was a description of herself coming?--"is not at all like the face and figure which stand clear in my remembrance as associated with that voice." "well," said dr. rob, "i'm thinking we can manage that for you. these nurses know their patients must be humoured. we will call the young lady back, and she shall kneel down beside your bed--bless you! she won't mind, with me to play old gooseberry!--and you shall pass your hands over her face and hair, and round her little waist, and assure yourself, by touch, what an elegant, dainty little person it is, in a blue frock and white apron." garth burst out laughing, and his voice had a tone it had not yet held. "of all the preposterous suggestions!" he said. "good heavens! what an ass i must have been making of myself! and i begin to think i have exaggerated the resemblance. in a day or two, i shall cease to notice it. and, look here, doctor, if she really was interested in that portrait--here, i say--where are you going?" "all right, sir," said dr. rob. "i was merely moving a chair over to the fireside, and taking the liberty of pouring out a glass of water. really you are becoming abnormally quick of hearing. now i am all attention. what about the portrait?" "i was only going to say, if she the nurse, you know--is really interested in my portrait of lady brand, there are studies of it up in the studio, which she might care to see. if she brought them here and described them to me i could explain--but, i say, doctor. i can't have dainty young ladies in and out of my room while i'm in bed. why shouldn't i get up and try that chair of yours? send simpson along; and tell him to look out my brown lounge-suit and orange tie. good heavens! what a blessing to have the memory of colours and of how they blend! think of the fellows who are born blind. and please ask miss gray to go out in the pine wood, or on the moor, or use the motor, or rest, or do anything she likes. tell her to make herself quite at home; but on no account to come up here until simpson reports me ready." "you may rely on nurse gray to be most discreet," said dr. rob; whose voice had suddenly become very husky. "and as for getting up, laddie, don't go too fast. you will not find your strength equal to much. but i am bound to tell you there is nothing to keep you in bed if you feel like rising." "good-bye, doctor," said garth, groping for his hand; "and i am sorry i shall never be able to offer to paint mrs. mackenzie!" "you'd have to paint her with a shaggy head, four paws, and the softest amber eyes in the world," said dr. rob tenderly; "and, looking out from those eyes, the most faithful, loving dog-heart in creation. in all the years we've kept house together she has never failed to meet me with a welcome, never contradicted me or wanted the last word, and never worried me for so much as the price of a bonnet. there's a woman for you!--well, good-bye, lad, and god almighty bless you. and be careful how you go. do not be surprised if i look in again on my way back from my rounds to see how you like that chair." dr. mackenzie held open the door. jane passed noiselessly out before him. he followed, signing to her to precede him down the stairs. in the library, jane turned and faced him. he put her quietly into a chair and stood before her. the bright blue eyes were moist, beneath the shaggy brows. "my dear," he said, "i feel myself somewhat of a blundering old fool. you must forgive me. i never contemplated putting you through such an ordeal. i perfectly understand that, while he hesitated, you must have felt your whole career at stake. i see you have been weeping; but you must not take it too much to heart that our patient made so much of your voice resembling this miss champion's. he will forget all about it in a day or two, and you will be worth more to him than a dozen miss champions. see what good you have done him already. here he is wanting to get up and explain his pictures to you. never you fear. you will soon win your way, and i shall be able to report to sir deryck what a fine success you have made of the case. now i must see the valet and give him very full instructions. and i recommend you to go for a blow on the moor and get an appetite for lunch. only put on something warmer than that. you will have no sick-room work to do; and having duly impressed me with your washableness and serviceableness, you may as well wear something comfortable to protect you from our highland nip. have you warmer clothing with you?" "it is the rule of our guild to wear uniform," said jane; "but i have a grey merino." "ah, i see. well, wear the grey merino. i shall return in two hours to observe how he stands that move. now, don't let me keep you." "dr. mackenzie," said jane quietly, "may i ask why you described me as fair; and my very straight, heavy, plainly coiled hair, as fluffy, fly-away floss-silk?" dr. rob had already reached the bell, but at her question he stayed his hand and, turning, met jane's steadfast eyes with the shrewd turquoise gleam of his own. "why certainly you may ask, nurse rosemary gray," he said, "though i wonder you think it necessary to do so. it was of course perfectly evident to me that, for reasons of his own, sir deryck wished to paint an imaginary portrait of you to the patient, most likely representing some known ideal of his. as the description was so different from the reality, i concluded that, to make the portrait complete, the two touches unfortunately left to me to supply, had better be as unlike what i saw before me as the rest of the picture. and now, if you will be good enough--" dr. rob rang the bell violently. "and why did you take the risk of suggesting that he should feel me?" persisted jane. "because i knew he was a gentleman," shouted dr. rob angrily. "oh, come in, simpson--come in, my good fellow--and shut that door! and god almighty be praised that he made you and me men, and not women!" a quarter of an hour later, jane watched him drive away, thinking to herself: "deryck was right. but what a queer mixture of shrewdness and obtuseness, and how marvellously it worked out to the furtherance of our plans." but as she watched the dog-cart start off at a smart trot across the moor, she would have been more than a little surprised could she have overheard dr. rob's muttered remarks to himself, as he gathered up the reins and cheered on his sturdy cob. he had a habit of talking over his experiences, half aloud, as he drove from case to case; the two sides of his rather complex nature apparently comparing notes with each other. and the present conversation opened thus: "now what has brought the honourable jane up here?" said dr. rob. "dashed if i know," said dr. mackenzie. "you must not swear, laddie," said dr. rob; "you had a pious mother." chapter xx jane reports progress letter from the honourable jane champion to sir deryck brand. castle gleneesh, n. b. my dear deryck: my wires and post-cards have not told you much beyond the fact of my safe arrival. having been here a fortnight, i think it is time i sent you a report. only you must remember that i am a poor scribe. from infancy it has always been difficult to me to write anything beyond that stock commencement: "i hope you are quite well;" and i approach the task of a descriptive letter with an effort which is colossal. and yet i wish i might, for once, borrow the pen of a ready writer; because i cannot help knowing that i have been passing through experiences such as do not often fall to the lot of a woman. nurse rosemary gray is getting on capitally. she is making herself indispensable to the patient, and he turns to her with a completeness of confidence which causes her heart to swell with professional pride. poor jane has got no further than hearing, from his own lips, that she is the very last person in the whole world he would wish should come near him in his blindness. when she was suggested as a possible visitor, he said: "oh, my god, no!" and his face was one wild, horrified protest. so jane is getting her horsewhipping, boy, and--according to the method of a careful and thoughtful judge, who orders thirty lashes of the "cat," in three applications of ten--so is jane's punishment laid on at intervals; not more than she can bear at a time; but enough to keep her heart continually sore, and her spirit in perpetual dread. and you, dear, clever doctor, are proved perfectly right in your diagnosis of the sentiment of the case. he says her pity would be the last straw on his already heavy cross; and the expression is an apt one, her pity for him being indeed a thing of straw. the only pity she feels is pity for herself, thus hopelessly caught in the meshes of her own mistake. but how to make him realise this, is the puzzle. do you remember how the israelites were shut in, between migdol and the sea? i knew migdol meant "towers," but i never understood the passage, until i stood upon that narrow wedge of desert, with the red sea in front and on the left; the rocky range of gebel attaka on the right, towering up against the sky, like the weird shapes of an impregnable fortress; the sole outlet or inlet behind, being the route they had just travelled from egypt, and along which the chariots and horsemen of pharaoh were then thundering in hot pursuit. even so, boy, is poor jane now tramping her patch of desert, which narrows daily to the measure of her despair. migdol is his certainty that her love could only be pity. the red sea is the confession into which she must inevitably plunge, to avoid scaling migdol; in the chill waters of which, as she drags him in with her, his love is bound to drown, as waves of doubt and mistrust sweep over its head,--doubts which he has lost the power of removing; mistrust which he can never hope to prove to have been false and mistaken. and behind come galloping the hosts of pharaoh; chance, speeding on the wheels of circumstance. at any moment some accident may compel a revelation; and instantly he will be scaling rocky migdol, with torn hands and bleeding feet; and she--poor jane--floundering in the depths of the red sea. o for a moses, with divine commission, to stretch out the rod of understanding love, making a safe way through; so that together they might reach the promised land! dear wise old boy, dare you undertake the role of moses! but here am i writing like a page of baedeker, and failing to report on actual facts. as you may suppose, jane grows haggard and thin in spite of old margery's porridge--which is "put on" every day after lunch, for the next morning's breakfast, and anybody passing "gives it a stir." did you know that was the right way to make porridge, deryck? i always thought it was made in five minutes, as wanted. margery says that must be the english stuff which profanely goes by the name. (n.b. please mark the self-control with which i repeat scotch remarks, without rushing into weird spelling; a senseless performance, it seems to me. for if you know already how old margery pronounces "porridge," you can read her pronunciation into the sentence; and if you do not know it, no grotesque spelling on my part could convey to your mind any but a caricatured version of the pretty scotch accent with which margery says: "stir the porridge, nurse gray." in fact, i am agreeably surprised at the ease with which i understand the natives, and the pleasure i derive from their conversation; for, after wrestling with one or two modern novels dealing with the highlands, i had expected to find the language an unknown tongue. instead of which, lo! and behold, old margery, maggie the housemaid, macdonald the gardener, and macalister the game-keeper, all speak a rather purer english than i do; far more carefully pronounced, and with every r sounded and rolled. their idioms are more characteristic than their accent. they say "whenever" for "when," and use in their verbs several quaint variations of tense.) but what a syntactical digression! oh, boy, the wound at my heart is so deep and so sore that i dread the dressings, even by your delicate touch. where was i? ah, the porridge gave me my loophole of escape. well, as i was saying, jane grows worn and thin, old margery's porridge notwithstanding; but nurse rosemary gray is flourishing, and remains a pretty, dainty little thing, with the additional charm of fluffy, fly-away floss-silk, for hair,--dr. rob's own unaided contribution to the fascinating picture. by the way, i was quite unprepared to find him such a character. i learn much from dr. mackenzie, and i love dr. rob, excepting on those occasions when i long to pick him up by the scruff of his fawn overcoat and drop him out of the window. on the point of nurse rosemary's personal appearance, i found it best to be perfectly frank with the household. you can have no conception how often awkward moments arose; as, for instance, in the library, the first time garth came downstairs; when he ordered simpson to bring the steps for miss gray, and simpson opened his lips to remark that nurse gray could reach to the top shelf on her own tiptoes with the greatest ease, he having just seen her do it. mercifully, the perfect training of an english man-servant saved the situation, and he merely said: "yessir; certainly sir," and looked upon, me, standing silently by, as a person who evidently delighted in giving unnecessary trouble. had it been dear old margery with her scotch tongue, which starts slowly, but gathers momentum as it rolls, and can never be arrested until the full flood of her thought has been poured forth, i should have been constrained to pick her up bodily in my dainty arms and carry her out. so i sent for simpson and margery to the dining-room that evening, when the master was safely out of ear-shot, and told them that, for reasons which i could not fully explain, a very incorrect description of my appearance had been given him. he thought me small and slim; fair and very pretty; and it was most important, in order to avoid long explanations and mental confusion for him, that he should not at present be undeceived. simpson's expression of polite attention did not vary, and his only comment was: "certainly, miss. quite so." but across old margery's countenance, while i was speaking, passed many shades of opinion, which, fortunately, by the time i had finished, crystallized into an approving smile of acquiescence. she even added her own commentary: "and a very good thing, too, i am thinking. for master garth, poor laddie, was always so set upon having beauty about him. 'master garthie,' i would say to him, when he had friends coming, and all his ideas in talking over the dinner concerned the cleaning up of the old silver, and putting out of valentine glass and worstered china; 'master garthie,' i would say, feeling the occasion called for the apt quoting of scripture, 'it appears to me your attention is given entirely to the outside of the cup and platter, and you care nothing for all the good things that lie within.' so it is just as well to keep him deceived, miss gray." and then, as simpson coughed tactfully behind his hand, and nudged her very obviously with his elbow, she added, as a sympathetic after-thought: "for, though a homey face may indeed be redeemed by its kindly expression, you cannot very well explain expression to the blind." so you see, deryck, this shrewd old body, who has known garth from boyhood, would have entirely agreed with the decision of three years ago. well, to continue my report. the voice gave us some trouble, as you foresaw, and the whole plan hung in the balance during a few awful moments; for, though he easily accepted the explanation we had planned, he sent me out, and told dr. mackenzie my voice in his room would madden him. dr. rob was equal to the occasion, and won the day; and garth, having once given in, never mentioned the matter again. only, sometimes i see him listening and remembering. but nurse rosemary gray has beautiful hours when poor anxious, yearning jane is shut out. for her patient turns to her, and depends on her, and talks to her, and tries to reach her mind, and shows her his, and is a wonderful person to live with and know. jane, marching about in the cold, outside, and hearing them talk, realises how little she understood the beautiful gift which was laid at her feet; how little she had grasped the nature and mind of the man whom she dismissed as "a mere boy." nurse rosemary, sitting beside him during long sweet hours of companionship, is learning it; and jane, ramping up and down her narrowing strip of desert, tastes the sirocco of despair. and now i come to the point of my letter, and, though i am a woman, i will not put it in a postscript. deryck, can you come up soon, to pay him a visit, and to talk to me? i don't think i can bear it, unaided, much longer; and he would so enjoy having you, and showing you how he had got on, and all the things he had already learned to do. also you might put in a word for jane; or at all events, get at his mind on the subject. oh, boy, if you could spare forty-eight hours! and a breath of the moors would be good for you. also i have a little private plan, which depends largely for its fulfilment on your coming. oh, boy--come! yours, needing you, jeanette. from sir deryck brand to nurse rosemary gray, castle gleneesh, n. b. wimpole street. my dear jeanette: certainly i will come. i will leave euston on friday evening. i can spend the whole of saturday and most of sunday at gleneesh, but must be home in time for monday's work. i will do my best, only, alas! i am not moses, and do not possess his wonder-working rod. moreover, latest investigations have proved that the israelites could not have crossed at the place you mention, but further north at the bitter lakes; a mere matter of detail, in no way affecting the extreme appositeness of your illustration, rather, adding to it; for i fear there are bitter waters ahead of you, my poor girl. still i am hopeful, nay, more than hopeful,--confident. often of late, in connection with you, i have thought of the promise about all things working together for good. any one can make good things work together for good: but only the heavenly father can bring good out of evil; and, taking all our mistakes and failings and foolishnesses, cause them to work to our most perfect well-being. the more intricate and involved this problem of human existence becomes, the greater the need to take as our own clear rule of life: "trust in the lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. in all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths." ancient marching orders, and simple; but true, and therefore eternal. i am glad nurse rosemary is proving so efficient, but i hope we may not have to face yet another complication in our problem. suppose our patient falls in love with dainty little nurse rosemary, where will jane be then? i fear the desert would have to open its mouth and swallow her up. we must avert such a catastrophe. could not rosemary be induced to drop an occasional h, or to confess herself as rather "gone" on simpson? oh, my poor old girl! i could not jest thus, were i not coming shortly to your aid. how maddening it is! and you so priceless! but most men are either fools or blind, and one is both. trust me to prove it to him,--to my own satisfaction and his,--if i get the chance. yours always devotedly, deryck brand. from sir deryck brand to dr. robert mackenzie. dear mackenzie: do you consider it to be advisable that i should shortly pay a visit to our patient at gleneesh and give an opinion on his progress? i find i can make it possible to come north this week-end. i hope you are satisfied with the nurse i sent up. yours very faithfully, deryck brand. from dr. robert mackenzie to sir deryck brand. dear sir deryck: every possible need of the patient's is being met by the capable lady you sent to be his nurse. i am no longer needed. nor are you--for the patient. but i deem it exceedingly advisable that you should shortly pay a visit to the nurse, who is losing more flesh than a lady of her proportions can well afford. some secret care, besides the natural anxiety of having the responsibility of this case, is wearing her out. she may confide in you. she cannot quite bring herself to trust in your humble servant, robert mackenzie. chapter xxi hard on the secretary nurse rosemary sat with her patient in the sunny library at gleneesh. a small table was between them, upon which lay a pile of letters--his morning mail--ready for her to open, read to him, and pass across, should there chance to be one among them he wished to touch or to keep in his pocket. they were seated close to the french window opening on to the terrace; the breeze, fragrant with the breath of spring flowers, blew about them, and the morning sun streamed in. garth, in white flannels, wearing a green tie and a button-hole of primroses, lay back luxuriously, enjoying, with his rapidly quickening senses, the scent of the flowers and the touch of the sun-beams. nurse rosemary finished reading a letter of her own, folded it, and put it in her pocket with a feeling of thankful relief. deryck was coming. he had not failed her. "a man's letter, miss gray," said garth unexpectedly. "quite right," said nurse rosemary. "how did you know?" "because it was on one sheet. a woman's letter on a matter of great importance would have run to two, if not three. and that letter was on a matter of importance." "right again," said nurse rosemary, smiling. "and again, how did you know?" "because you gave a little sigh of relief after reading the first line, and another, as you folded it and replaced it in the envelope." nurse rosemary laughed. "you are getting on so fast, mr. dalmain, that soon we shall be able to keep no secrets. my letter was from--" "oh, don't tell me," cried garth quickly, putting out his hand in protest. "i had no idea of seeming curious as to your private correspondence, miss gray. only it is such a pleasure to report progress to you in the things i manage to find out without being told." "but i meant to tell you anyway," said nurse rosemary. "the letter is from sir deryck, and, amongst other things, he says he is coming up to see you next saturday." "ah, good!" said garth. "and what a change he will find! and i shall have the pleasure of reporting on the nurse, secretary, reader, and unspeakably patient guide and companion he provided for me." then he added, in a tone of suddenly awakened anxiety: "he is not coming to take you away, is he?" "no," said nurse rosemary, "not yet. but, mr. dalmain, i was wanting to ask whether you could spare me just during forty-eight hours; and dr. brand's visit would be an excellent opportunity. i could leave you more easily, knowing you would have his companionship. if i may take the week-end, leaving on friday night, i could return early on monday morning, and be with you in time to do the morning letters. dr. brand would read you saturday's and sunday's--ah, i forgot; there is no sunday post. so i should miss but one; and he would more than take my place in other ways." "very well," said garth, striving not to show disappointment. "i should have liked that we three should have talked together. but no wonder you want a time off. shall you be going far?" "no; i have friends near by. and now, do you wish to attend to your letters?" "yes," said garth, reaching out his hand. "wait a minute. there is a newspaper among them. i smell the printing ink. i don't want that. but kindly give me the rest." nurse rosemary took out the newspaper; then pushed the pile along, until it touched his hand. garth took them. "what a lot!" he said, smiling in pleasurable anticipation. "i say, miss gray, if you profit as you ought to do by the reading of so many epistles written in every possible and impossible style, you ought to be able to bring out a pretty comprehensive 'complete letter-writer.' do you remember the condolences of mrs. parker-bangs? i think that was the first time we really laughed together. kind old soul! but she should not have mentioned blind bartimaeus dipping seven times in the pool of siloam. it is always best to avoid classical allusions, especially if sacred, unless one has them accurately. now--" garth paused. he had been handling his letters, one by one; carefully fingering each, before laying it on the table beside him. he had just come to one written on foreign paper, and sealed. he broke off his sentence abruptly, held the letter silently for a moment, then passed his fingers slowly over the seal. nurse rosemary watched him anxiously. he made no remark, but after a moment laid it down and took up the next. but when he passed the pile across to her, he slipped the sealed letter beneath the rest, so that she should come to it last of all. then the usual order of proceedings commenced. garth lighted a cigarette--one of the first things he had learned to do for himself--and smoked contentedly, carefully placing his ash-tray, and almost unfailingly locating the ash, in time and correctly. nurse rosemary took up the first letter, read the postmark, and described the writing on the envelope. garth guessed from whom it came, and was immensely pleased if, on opening, his surmise proved correct. there were nine to-day, of varying interest,--some from men friends, one or two from charming women who professed themselves ready to come and see him as soon as he wished for visitors, one from a blind asylum asking for a subscription, a short note from the doctor heralding his visit, and a bill for ties from a bond street shop. nurse rosemary's fingers shook as she replaced the eighth in its envelope. the last of the pile lay on the table. as she took it up, garth with a quick movement flung his cigarette-end through the window, and lay back, shading his face with his hand. "did i shoot straight, nurse?" he asked. she leaned forward and saw the tiny column of blue smoke rising from the gravel. "quite straight," she said. "mr. dalmain, this letter has an egyptian stamp, and the postmark is cairo. it is sealed with scarlet sealing-wax, and the engraving on the seal is a plumed helmet with the visor closed." "and the writing?" asked garth, mechanically and very quietly. "the handwriting is rather bold and very clear, with no twirls or flourishes. it is written with a broad nib." "will you kindly open it, nurse, and tell me the signature before reading the rest of the letter." nurse rosemary fought with her throat, which threatened to close altogether and stifle her voice. she opened the letter, turned to the last page, and found the signature. "it is signed 'jane champion,' mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary. "read it, please," said garth quietly. and nurse rosemary began. dear dal: what can i write? if i were with you, there would be so much i could say; but writing is so difficult, so impossible. i know it is harder for you than it would have been for any of us; but you will be braver over it than we should have been, and you will come through splendidly, and go on thinking life beautiful, and making it seem so to other people. _i_ never thought it so until that summer at overdene and shenstone when you taught me the perception of beauty. since then, in every sunset and sunrise, in the blue-green of the atlantic, the purple of the mountains, the spray of niagara, the cherry blossom of japan, the golden deserts of egypt, i have thought of you, and understood them better, because of you. oh, dal! i should like to come and tell you all about them, and let you see them through my eyes; and then you would widen out my narrow understanding of them, and show them again to me in greater loveliness. i hear you receive no visitors; but cannot you make just one exception, and let me come? i was at the great pyramid when i heard. i was sitting on the piazza after dinner. the moonlight called up memories. i had just made up my mind to give up the nile, and to come straight home, and write asking you to come and see me; when general loraine turned up, with an english paper and a letter from myra, and--i heard. would you have come, garth? and now, my friend, as you cannot come to me, may i come to you? if you just say: "come," i will come from any part of the world where i may chance to be when the message reaches me. never mind this egyptian address. i shall not be there when you are hearing this. direct to me at my aunt's town house. all my letters go there, and are forwarded unopened. let me come. and oh, do believe that i know something of how hard it is for you. but god can "enable." believe me to be, yours, more than i can write, jane champion. garth removed the hand which had been shielding his face. "if you are not tired, miss gray, after reading so many letters, i should like to dictate my answer to that one immediately, while it is fresh in my mind. have you paper there? thank you. may we begin?-- dear miss champion ... i am deeply touched by your kind letter of sympathy ... it was especially good of you to write to me from so far away amid so much which might well have diverted your attention from friends at home." a long pause. nurse rosemary gray waited, pen in hand, and hoped the beating of her heart was only in her own ears, and not audible across the small table. "i am glad you did not give up the nile trip but--" an early bee hummed in from the hyacinths and buzzed against the pane. otherwise the room was very still. --"but of course, if you had sent for me i should have come." the bee fought the window angrily, up and down, up and down, for several minutes; then found the open glass and whirled out into the sunshine, joyfully. absolute silence in the room, until garth's quiet voice broke it as he went on dictating. "it is more than kind of you to suggest coming to see me, but--" nurse rosemary dropped her pen. "oh, mr. dalmain," she said, "let her come." garth turned upon her a face of blank surprise. "i do not wish it," he said, in a tone of absolute finality. "but think how hard it must be for any one to want so much to be near a--a friend in trouble, and to be kept away." "it is only her wonderful kindness of heart makes her offer to come, miss gray. she is a friend and comrade of long ago. it would greatly sadden her to see me thus." "it does not seem so to her," pleaded nurse rosemary. "ah, cannot you read between the lines? or does it take a woman's heart to understand a woman's letter? did i read it badly? may i read it over again?" a look of real annoyance gathered upon garth's face. he spoke with quiet sternness, a frown bending his straight black brows. "you read it quite well," he said, "but you do not do well to discuss it. i must feel able to dictate my letters to my secretary, without having to explain them." "i beg your pardon, sir," said nurse rosemary humbly. "i was wrong." garth stretched his hand across the table, and left it there a moment; though no responsive hand was placed within it. "never mind," he said, with his winning smile, "my kind little mentor and guide. you can direct me in most things, but not in this. now let us conclude. where were we? ah--'to suggest coming to see me.' did you put `it is most kind' or `it is more than kind?'" "'more than kind,'" said nurse rosemary, brokenly. "right, for it is indeed more than kind. only she and i can possibly know how much more. now let us go on ... but i am receiving no visitors, and do not desire any until i have so mastered my new circumstances that the handicap connected with them shall neither be painful nor very noticeable to other people. during the summer i shall be learning step by step to live this new life, in complete seclusion at gleneesh. i feel sure my friends will respect my wish in this matter. i have with me one who most perfectly and patiently is helping--ah, wait!" cried garth suddenly. "i will not say that. she might think--she might misunderstand. had you begun to write it? no? what was the last word? 'matter?' ah yes. that is right. full stop after 'matter.' now let me think." garth dropped his face into his hands, and sat for a long time absorbed in thought. nurse rosemary waited. her right hand held the pen poised over the paper. her left was pressed against her breast. her eyes rested on that dark bowed head, with a look of unutterable yearning and of passionate tenderness. at last garth lifted his face. "yours very sincerely, garth dalmain;" he said. and, silently, nurse rosemary wrote it. chapter xxii dr. rob to the rescue into the somewhat oppressive silence which followed the addressing and closing of the envelope, broke the cheery voice of dr. rob. "which is the patient to-day? the lady or the gentleman? ah, neither, i see. both flaunt the bloom of perfect health and make the doctor shy. it is spring without, but summer within," ran on dr. rob gaily, wondering why both faces were so white and perturbed, and why there was in the air a sense of hearts in torment. "flannels seem to call up boating and picnic parties; and i see you have discarded the merino, nurse gray, and returned to the pretty blue washables. more becoming, undoubtedly; only, don't take cold; and be sure you feed up well. in this air people must eat plenty, and you have been perceptibly losing weight lately. we don't want too airy-fairy dimensions." "why do you always chaff miss gray about being small, dr. rob?" asked garth, in a rather vexed tone. "i am sure being short is in no way detrimental to her." "i will chaff her about being tall if you like," said dr. rob, looking at her with a wicked twinkle, as she stood in the window, drawn up to her full height, and regarding him with cold disapproval. "i would sooner no comments of any kind were made upon her personal appearance," said garth shortly; then added, more pleasantly: "you see, she is just a voice to me--a kind, guiding voice. at first i used to form mental pictures of her, of a hazy kind; but now i prefer to appropriate in all its helpfulness what i do know, and leave unimagined what i do not. did it ever strike you that she is the only person--bar that fellow johnson, who belongs to a nightmare time i am quickly forgetting--i have yet had near me, in my blindness, whom i had not already seen; the only voice i have ever heard to which i could not put a face and figure? in time, of course, there will be many. at present she stands alone to me in this." dr. rob's observant eye had been darting about during this explanation, seeking to focus itself upon something worthy of minute examination. suddenly he spied the foreign letter lying close beside him on the table. "hello!" he said. "pyramids? the egyptian stamp? that's interesting. have you friends out there, mr. dalmain?" "that letter came from cairo," garth replied; "but i believe miss champion has by now gone on to syria." dr. rob attacked his moustache, and stared at the letter meditatively. "champion?" he repeated. "champion? it's an uncommon name. is your correspondent, by any chance, the honourable jane?" "why, that letter is from her," replied garth, surprised. "do you know her?" his voice vibrated eagerly. "well," answered dr. rob, with slow deliberation, "i know her face, and i know her voice; i know her figure, and i know a pretty good deal of her character. i know her at home, and i know her abroad. i've seen her under fire, which is more than most men of her acquaintance can claim. but there is one thing i never knew until to-day and that is her handwriting. may i examine this envelope?" he turned to the window;--yes, this audacious little scotchman had asked the question of nurse rosemary. but only a broad blue back met his look of inquiry. nurse rosemary was studying the view. he turned back to garth, who had evidently already made a sign of assent, and on whose face was clearly expressed an eager desire to hear more, and an extreme disinclination to ask for it. dr. mackenzie took up the envelope and pondered it. "yes," he said, at last, "it is like her,--clear, firm, unwavering; knowing what it means to say, and saying it; going where it means to go, and getting there. ay, lad, it's a grand woman that; and if you have the honourable jane for your friend, you can be doing without a few other things." a tinge of eager colour rose in garth's thin cheeks. he had been so starved in his darkness for want of some word concerning her, from that outer light in which she moved. he had felt so hopelessly cut off from all chance of hearing of her. and all the while, if only he had known it, old robbie could have talked of her. he had had to question brand so cautiously, fearing to betray his secret and hers; but with dr. rob and nurse gray no such precautions were needed. he could safely guard his secret, and yet listen and speak. "where--when?" asked garth. "i will tell you where, and i will tell you when," answered dr. rob, "if you feel inclined for a war tale on this peaceful spring morning." garth was aflame with eagerness. "have you a chair, doctor?" he said. "and has miss gray a chair?" "i have no chair, sir," said dr. rob, "because when i intend thoroughly to enjoy my own eloquence it is my custom to stand. nurse gray has no chair, because she is standing at the window absorbed in the view. she has apparently ceased to pay any heed to you and me. you will very rarely find one woman take much interest in tales about another. but you lean back in your own chair, laddie, and light a cigarette. and a wonderful thing it is to see you do it, too, and better than pounding the wall. eh? all of which we may consider we owe to the lady who disdains us and prefers the scenery. well, i'm not much to look at, goodness knows; and she can see you all the rest of the day. now that's a brand worth smoking. what do you call it--'zenith'? ah, and 'marcovitch.' yes; you can't better that for drawing-room and garden purposes. it mingles with the flowers. lean back and enjoy it, while i smell gun-powder. for i will tell you where i first saw the honourable jane. out in south africa, in the very thick of the boer war. i had volunteered for the sake of the surgery experience. she was out there, nursing; but the real thing, mind you. none of your dabbling in eau-de-cologne with lace handkerchiefs, and washing handsome faces when the orderlies had washed them already; making charming conversation to men who were getting well, but fleeing in dread from the dead or the dying. none of that, you may be sure, and none of that allowed in her hospital; for miss champion was in command there, and i can tell you she made them scoot. she did the work of ten, and expected others to do it too. doctors and orderlies adored her. she was always called 'the honourable jane,' most of the men sounding the h and pronouncing the title as four syllables. ay, and the wounded soldiers! there was many a lad out there, far from home and friends, who, when death came, died with a smile on his lips, and a sense of mother and home quite near, because the honourable jane's arm was around him, and his dying head rested against her womanly breast. her voice when she talked to them? no,--that i shall never forget. and to hear her snap at the women, and order along the men; and then turn and speak to a sick tommy as his mother or his sweetheart would have wished to hear him spoken to, was a lesson in quick-change from which i am profiting still. and that big, loving heart must often have been racked; but she was always brave and bright. just once she broke down. it was over a boy whom she tried hard to save--quite a youngster. she had held him during the operation which was his only chance; and when it proved no good, and he lay back against her unconscious, she quite broke down and said: 'oh, doctor,--a mere boy--and to suffer so, and then die like this!' and gathered him to her, and wept over him, as his own mother might have done. the surgeon told me of it himself. he said the hardest hearts in the tent were touched and softened. but, it was the only time the honourable jane broke down." garth shielded his face with his hand. his half-smoked cigarette fell unheeded to the floor. the hand that had held it was clenched on his knee. dr. rob picked it up, and rubbed the scorched spot on the carpet carefully with his foot. he glanced towards the window. nurse rosemary had turned and was leaning against the frame. she did not look at him, but her eyes dwelt with troubled anxiety on garth. "i came across her several times, at different centres," continued dr. rob; "but we were not in the same departments, and she spoke to me only once. i had ridden in, from a temporary overflow sort of place where we were dealing with the worst cases straight off the field, to the main hospital in the town for a fresh supply of chloroform. while they fetched it, i walked round the ward, and there in a corner was miss champion, kneeling beside a man whose last hour was very near, talking to him quietly, and taking measures at the same time to ease his pain. suddenly there came a crash--a deafening rush--and another crash, and the honourable jane and her patient were covered with dust and splinters. a boer shell had gone clean through the roof just over their heads. the man sat up, yelling with fear. poor chap, you couldn't blame him; dying, and half under morphine. the honourable jane never turned a hair. 'lie down, my man,' she said, 'and keep still.' 'not here,' sobbed the man. 'all right,' said the honourable jane; 'we will soon move you.' then she turned and saw me. i was in the most nondescript khaki, a non-com's jacket which i had caught up on leaving the tent, and various odds and ends of my outfit which had survived the wear and tear of the campaign. also i was dusty with a long gallop. 'here, serjeant,' she said, 'lend a hand with this poor fellow. i can't have him disturbed just now.' that was jane's only comment on the passing of a shell within a few yards of her own head. do you wonder the men adored her? she placed her hands beneath his shoulders, and signed to me to take him under the knees, and together we carried him round a screen, out of the ward, and down a short passage; turning unexpectedly into a quiet little room, with a comfortable bed, and photographs and books arranged on the tiny dressing-table. she said: 'here, if you please, serjeant,' and we laid him on the bed. 'whose is it?' i asked. she looked surprised at being questioned, but seeing i was a stranger, answered civilly: 'mine.' and then, noting that he had dozed off while we carried him, added: 'and he will have done with beds, poor chap, before i need it.' there's nerve for you!--well, that was my only conversation out there with the honourable jane. soon after i had had enough and came home." garth lifted his head. "did you ever meet her at home?" he asked. "i did," said dr. rob. "but she did not remember me. not a flicker of recognition. well, how could i expect it? i wore a beard out there; no time to shave; and my jacket proclaimed me a serjeant, not a surgeon. no fault of hers if she did not expect to meet a comrade from the front in the wilds of--of piccadilly," finished dr. rob lamely. "now, having spun so long a yarn, i must be off to your gardener's cot in the wood, to see his good wife, who has had what he pathetically calls 'an increase.' i should think a decrease would have better suited the size of his house. but first i must interview mistress margery in the dining-room. she is anxious about herself just now because she 'canna eat bacon.' she says it flies between her shoulders. so erratic a deviation from its normal route on the part of the bacon, undoubtedly requires investigation. so, by your leave, i will ring for the good lady." "not just yet, doctor," said a quiet voice from the window. "i want to see you in the dining-room, and will follow you there immediately. and afterwards, while you investigate margery, i will run up for my bonnet, and walk with you through the woods, if mr. dalmain will not mind an hour alone." when jane reached the dining-room, dr. robert mackenzie was standing on the hearth-rug in a napoleonic attitude, just as on the morning of their first interview. he looked up uncertainly as she came in. "well?" he said. "am i to pay the piper?" jane came straight to him, with both hands extended. "ah, serjeant!" she said. "you dear faithful old serjeant! see what comes of wearing another man's coat. and my dilemma comes from taking another woman's name. so you knew me all the time, from the first moment i came into the room?" "from the first moment you entered the room," assented dr. rob. "why did you not say so?" asked jane. "well, i concluded you had your reasons for being 'nurse rosemary gray,' and it did not come within my province to question your identity." "oh, you dear!" said jane. "was there ever anything so shrewd, and so wise, and so bewilderingly far-seeing, standing on two legs on a hearth-rug before! and when i remember how you said: 'so you have arrived, nurse gray?' and all the while you might have been saying. 'how do you do, miss champion? and what brings you up here under somebody else's name?" "i might have so said," agreed dr. rob reflectively; "but praise be, i did not." "but tell me" said jane "why let it out now?" dr. rob laid his hand on her arm. "my dear, i am an old fellow, and all my life i have made it my business to know, without being told. you have been coming through a strain,--a prolonged period of strain, sometimes harder, sometimes easier, but never quite relaxed,--a strain such as few women could have borne. it was not only with him; you had to keep it up towards us all. i knew, if it were to continue, you must soon have the relief of some one with whom to share the secret,--some one towards whom you could be yourself occasionally. and when i found you had been writing to him here, sending the letter to be posted in cairo (how like a woman, to strain at a gnat, after swallowing such a camel!), awaiting its return day after day, then obliged to read it to him yourself, and take down his dictated answer, which i gathered from your faces when i entered was his refusal of your request to come and see him, well, it seemed to me about time you were made to realise that you might as well confide in an old fellow who, in common with all the men who knew you in south africa, would gladly give his right hand for the honourable jane." jane looked at him, her eyes full of gratitude. for the moment she could not speak. "but tell me, my dear," said dr. rob, "tell me, if you can: why does the lad put from him so firmly that which, if indeed it might be his for the asking, would mean for him so great, so wonderful, so comforting a good?" "ah, doctor," said jane, "thereby hangs a tale of sad mistrust and mistake, and the mistrust and mistake, alas, were mine. now, while you see margery, i will prepare for walking; and as we go through the wood i will try to tell you the woeful thing which came between him and me and placed our lives so far apart. your wise advice will help me, and your shrewd knowledge of men and of the human heart may find us a way out, for indeed we are shut in between migdol and the sea." as jane crossed the hall and was about to mount the stairs, she looked towards the closed library door. a sudden fear seized her, lest the strain of listening to that tale of dr. rob's had been too much for garth. none but she could know all it must have awakened of memory to be told so vividly of the dying soldiers whose heads were pillowed on her breast, and the strange coincidence of those words, "a mere boy--and to suffer so!" she could not leave the house without being sure he was safe and well. and yet she instinctively feared to intrude when he imagined himself alone for an hour. then jane, in her anxiety, did a thing she had never done before. she opened the front door noiselessly, passed round the house to the terrace, and when approaching the open window of the library, trod on the grass border, and reached it without making the faintest sound. never before had she come upon him unawares, knowing he hated and dreaded the thought of an unseen intrusion on his privacy. but now--just this once-- jane looked in at the window. garth sat sideways in the chair, his arms folded on the table beside him, his face buried in them. he was sobbing as she had sometimes heard men sob after agonising operations, borne without a sound until the worst was over. and garth's sob of agony was this: "oh, my wife--my wife--my wife!" jane crept away. how she did it she never knew. but some instinct told her that to reveal herself then, taking him at a disadvantage, when dr. rob's story had unnerved and unmanned him, would be to ruin all. "if you value your ultimate happiness and his," deryck's voice always sounded in warning. besides, it was such a short postponement. in the calm earnest thought which would succeed this storm, his need of her, would win the day. the letter, not yet posted, would be rewritten. he would say "come"--and the next minute he would be in her arms. so jane turned noiselessly away. coming in, an hour later, from her walk with dr. rob, her heart filled with glad anticipation, she found him standing in the window, listening to the countless sounds he was learning to distinguish. he looked so slim and tall and straight in his white flannels, both hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat, that when he turned at her approach it seemed to her as if the shining eyes must be there. "was it lovely in the woods?" he asked. "simpson shall take me up there after lunch. meanwhile, is there time, if you are not tired, miss gray, to finish our morning's work?" five letters were dictated and a cheque written. then jane noticed that hers to him had gone from among the rest. but his to her lay on the table ready for stamping. she hesitated. "and about the letter to miss champion?" she said. "do you wish it to go as it is, mr. dalmain?" "why certainly," he said. "did we not finish it?" "i thought," said jane nervously, looking away from his blank face, "i thought perhaps--after dr. rob's story--you might--" "dr. rob's story could make no possible difference as to whether i should let her come here or not," said garth emphatically; then added more gently: "it only reminded me--" "of what?" asked jane, her hands upon her breast. "of what a glorious woman she is," said garth dalmain, and blew a long, steady cloud of smoke into the summer air. chapter xxiii the only way when deryck brand alighted at the little northern wayside station, he looked up and down the gravelled platform, more than half expecting to see jane. the hour was early, but she invariably said "so much the better" to any plan which involved rising earlier than usual. nothing was to be seen, however, but his portmanteau in the distance--looking as if it had taken up a solitary and permanent position where the guard had placed it--and one slow porter, who appeared to be overwhelmed by the fact that he alone was on duty to receive the train. there were no other passengers descending; there was no other baggage to put out. the guard swung up into his van as the train moved off. the old porter, shading his eyes from the slanting rays of the morning sun, watched the train glide round the curve and disappear from sight; then slowly turned and looked the other way,--as if to make sure there was not another coming,--saw the portmanteau, and shambled towards it. he stood looking down upon it pensively, then moved slowly round, apparently reading the names and particulars of all the various continental hotels at which the portmanteau had recently stayed with its owner. dr. brand never hurried people, he always said: "it answers best, in the long run, to let them take their own time. the minute or two gained by hurrying them is lost in the final results." but this applied chiefly to patients in the consulting-room; to anxious young students in hospital; or to nurses, too excitedly conscious at first of the fact that he was talking to them, to take in fully what he was saying. his habit of giving people, even in final moments, the full time they wanted, had once lost him an overcoat, almost lost him a train, and won him the thing in life he most desired. but that belongs to another story. meanwhile he wanted his breakfast on this fresh spring morning. and he wanted to see jane. therefore, as porter and portmanteau made no advance towards him, the doctor strode down the platform. "now then, my man!" he called. "i beg your pardon?" said the scotch porter. "i want my portmanteau." "would this be your portmanteau?" inquired the porter doubtfully. "it would," said the doctor. "and it and i would be on our way to castle gleneesh, if you would be bringing it out and putting it into the motor, which i see waiting outside." "i will be fetching a truck," said the porter. but when he returned, carefully trundling it behind him, the doctor, the portmanteau, and the motor were all out of sight. the porter shaded his eyes and gazed up the road. "i will be hoping it was his portmanteau," he said, and went back to his porridge. meanwhile the doctor sped up into the hills, his mind alight with eagerness to meet jane and to learn the developments of the last few days. her non-appearance at the railway station filled him with an undefinable anxiety. it would have been so like jane to have been there, prompt to seize the chance of a talk with him alone before he reached the house. he had called up, in anticipation, such a vivid picture of her, waiting on the platform,--bright, alert, vigorous, with that fresh and healthy vigour which betokens a good night's rest, a pleasant early awakening, and a cold tub recently enjoyed,--and the disappointment of not seeing her had wrought in him a strange foreboding. what if her nerve had given way under the strain? they turned a bend in the winding road, and the grey turrets of gleneesh came in sight, high up on the other side of the glen, the moor stretching away behind and above it. as they wound up the valley to the moorland road which would bring them round to the house, the doctor could see, in the clear morning light, the broad lawn and terrace of gleneesh, with its gay flower-beds, smooth gravelled walks, and broad stone parapet, from which was a drop almost sheer down into the glen below. simpson received him at the hall door; and he just stopped himself in time, as he was about to ask for miss champion. this perilous approach to a slip reminded him how carefully he must guard words and actions in this house, where jane had successfully steered her intricate course. he would never forgive himself if he gave her away. "mr. dalmain is in the library, sir deryck," said simpson; and it was a very alert, clear-headed doctor who followed the man across the hall. garth rose from his chair and walked forward to meet him, his right hand outstretched, a smile of welcome on his face, and so direct and unhesitating a course that the doctor had to glance at the sightless face to make sure that this lithe, graceful, easy-moving figure was indeed the blind man he had come to see. then he noticed a length of brown silk cord stretched from an arm of the chair garth had quitted to the door. garth's left hand had slipped lightly along it as he walked. the doctor put his hand into the one outstretched, and gripped it warmly. "my dear fellow! what a change!" "isn't it?" said garth delightedly. "and it is entirely she who has worked it,--the capital little woman you sent up to me. i want to tell you how first-rate she is." he had reached his chair again, and found and drew forward for the doctor the one in which jane usually sat, "this is her own idea." he unhitched the cord, and let it fall to the floor, a fine string remaining attached to it and to the chair, by which he could draw it up again at will. "there is one on this side leading to the piano, and one here to the window. now how should you know them apart?" "they are brown, purple, and orange," replied the doctor. "yes," said garth. "you know them by the colours, but i distinguish them by a slight difference in the thickness and in the texture, which you could not see, but which i can feel. and i enjoy thinking of the colours, too. and sometimes i wear ties and things to match them. you see, i know exactly how they look; and it was so like her to remember that. an ordinary nurse would have put red, green, and blue, and i should have sat and hated the thought of them knowing how vilely they must be clashing with my persian carpet. but she understands how much colours mean to me, even though i cannot see them." "i conclude that by 'she' you mean nurse rosemary," said the doctor. "i am glad she is a success." "a success!" exclaimed garth. "why, she helped me to live again! i am ashamed to remember how at the bottom of all things i was when you came up before, brand,--just pounding the wall, as old robbie expresses it. you must have thought me a fool and a coward." "i thought you neither, my dear fellow. you were coming through a stiffer fight than any of us have been called to face. thank god, you have won." "i owe a lot to you, brand, and still more to miss gray. i wish she were here to see you. she is away for the week-end." "away! j--just now?" exclaimed the doctor, almost surprised into another slip. "yes; she went last night. she is week-ending in the neighbourhood. she said she was not going far, and should be back with me early on monday morning. but she seemed to want a change of scene, and thought this a good opportunity, as i shall have you here most of the time. i say, brand, i do think it is extraordinarily good of you to come all this way to see me. you know, from such a man as yourself it is almost overwhelming." "you must not be overwhelmed, my dear chap; and, though i very truly came to see you, i am also up, about another old friend in the near neighbourhood in whom i am interested. i only mention this in order to be quite honest, and to lift from off you any possible burden of feeling yourself my only patient." "oh, thanks!" said garth. "it lessens my compunction without diminishing my gratitude. and now you must be wanting a brush up and breakfast, and here am i selfishly keeping you from both. and i say, brand,"--garth coloured hotly, boyishly, and hesitated,--"i am awfully sorry you will have no companion at your meals, miss gray being away. i do not like to think of you having them alone, but i--i always have mine by myself. simpson attends to them." he could not see the doctor's quick look of comprehension, but the understanding sympathy of the tone in which he said: "ah, yes. yes, of course," without further comment, helped garth to add: "i couldn't even have miss gray with me. we always take our meals apart. you cannot imagine how awful it is chasing your food all round your plate, and never sure it is not on the cloth, after all, or on your tie, while you are hunting for it elsewhere." "no, i can't imagine," said the doctor. "no one could who had not been through it. but can you bear it better with simpson than with nurse rosemary? she is trained to that sort of thing, you know." garth coloured again. "well, you see, simpson is the chap who shaves me, and gets me into my clothes, and takes me about; and, though it will always be a trial, it is a trial to which i am growing accustomed. you might put it thus: simpson is eyes to my body; miss gray is vision to my mind. simpson's is the only touch which cores to me in the darkness. do you know, miss gray has never touched me,--not even to shake hands. i am awfully glad of this. i will tell you why presently, if i may. it makes her just a mind and voice to me, and nothing more; but a wonderfully kind and helpful voice. i feel as if i could not live without her." garth rang the bell and simpson appeared. "take sir deryck to his room; and he will tell you what time he would like breakfast. and when you have seen to it all, simpson, i will go out for a turn. then i shall be free, brand, when you are. but do not give me any more time this morning if you ought to be resting, or out on the moors having a holiday from minds and men." the doctor tubbed and got into his knickerbockers and an old norfolk jacket; then found his way to the dining-room, and did full justice to an excellent breakfast. he was still pondering the problem of jane, and at the same time wondering in another compartment of his mind in what sort of machine old margery made her excellent coffee, when that good lady appeared, enveloped in an air of mystery, and the doctor immediately propounded the question. "a jug," said old margery. "and would you be coming with me, sir deryck,--and softly, whenever you have finished your breakfast?" "softly," said margery again, as they crossed the hall, the doctor's tall figure closely following in her portly wake. after mounting a few stairs she turned to whisper impressively: "it is not what ye make it in; it is how ye make it." she ascended a few more steps, then turned to say: "it all hangs upon the word fresh," and went on mounting. "freshly roasted--freshly ground--water--freshly-boiled--" said old margery, reaching the topmost stair somewhat breathless; then turning, bustled along a rather dark passage, thickly carpeted, and hung with old armour and pictures. "where are we going, mistress margery?" asked the doctor, adapting his stride to her trot--one to two. "you will be seeing whenever we get there, sir deryck," said margery. "and never touch it with metal, sir deryck. pop it into an earthenware jug, pour your boiling water straight upon it, stir it with a wooden spoon, set it on the hob ten minutes to settle; the grounds will all go to the bottom, though you might not think it; and you pour it out--fragrant, strong, and clear. but the secret is, fresh, fresh, fresh, and don't stint your coffee." old margery paused before a door at the end of the passage, knocked lightly; then looked up at the doctor with her hand on the door-handle, and an expression of pleading earnestness in her faithful scotch eyes. "and you will not forget the wooden spoon, sir deryck?" the doctor looked down into the kind old face raised to his in the dim light. "i will not forget the wooden spoon, mistress margery," he said, gravely. and old margery, turning the handle whispered mysteriously into the half-opened doorway: "it will be sir deryck, miss gray," and ushered the doctor into a cosy little sitting-room. a bright fire burned in the grate. in a high-backed arm-chair in front of it sat jane, with her feet on the fender. he could only see the top of her head, and her long grey knees; but both were unmistakably jane's: "oh, dicky!" she said, and a great thankfulness was in her voice, "is it you? oh, come in, boy, and shut the door. are we alone? come round here quick and shake hands, or i shall be plunging about trying to find you." in a moment the doctor had reached the hearth-rug, dropped on one knee in front of the large chair, and took the vaguely groping hands held out to him. "jeanette?" he said. "jeanette!" and then surprise and emotion silenced him. jane's eyes were securely bandaged. a black silk scarf, folded in four thicknesses, was firmly tied at the back of her smooth coils of hair. there was a pathetic helplessness about her large capable figure, sitting alone, in this bright little sitting-room, doing nothing. "jeanette!" said the doctor, for the third time. "and you call this week-ending?" "dear," said jane, "i have gone into sightless land for my week-end. oh, deryck, i had to do it. the only way really to help him is to know exactly what it means, in all the small, trying details. i never had much imagination, and i have exhausted what little i had. and he never complains, or explains how things come hardest. so the only way to find out is to have forty-eight hours of it one's self. old margery and simpson quite enter into it, and are helping me splendidly. simpson keeps the coast clear if we want to come down or go out; because with two blind people about, it would be a complication if they ran into one another. margery helps me with all the things in which i am helpless; and, oh dicky, you would never believe how many they are! and the awful, awful dark--a black curtain always in front of you, sometimes seeming hard and firm, like a wall of coal, within an inch of your face; sometimes sinking away into soft depths of blackness--miles and miles of distant, silent, horrible darkness; until you feel you must fall forward into it and be submerged and overwhelmed. and out of that darkness come voices. and if they speak loudly, they hit you like tapping hammers; and if they murmur indistinctly, they madden you because you can't see what is causing it. you can't see that they are holding pins in their mouths, and that therefore they are mumbling; or that they are half under the bed, trying to get out something which has rolled there, and therefore the voice seems to come from somewhere beneath the earth. and, because you cannot see these things to account for it, the variableness of sound torments you. ah!--and the waking in the morning to the same blackness as you have had all night! i have experienced it just once,--i began my darkness before dinner last night,--and i assure you, deryck, i dread to-morrow morning. think what it must be to wake to that always, with no prospect of ever again seeing the sunlight! and then the meals--" "what! you keep it on?" the doctor's voice sounded rather strained. "of course," said jane. "and you cannot imagine the humiliation of following your food all round the plate, and then finding it on the table-cloth; of being quite sure there was a last bit somewhere, and when you had given up the search and gone on to another course, discovering it, eventually, in your lap. i do not wonder my poor boy would not let me come to his meals. but after this i believe he will, and i shall know exactly how to help him and how to arrange so that very soon he will have no difficulty. oh, dicky, i had to do it! there was no other way." "yes," said the doctor quietly, "you had to do it." and jane in her blindness could not see the working of his face, as he added below his breath: "you being you, dear, there was no other way." "ah, how glad i am you realise the necessity, deryck! i had so feared you might think it useless or foolish. and it was now or never; because i trust--if he forgives me--this will be the only week-end i shall ever have to spend away from him. boy, do you think he will forgive me?" it was fortunate jane was blind: the doctor swallowed a word, then: "hush, dear," he said. "you make me sigh for the duchess's parrot. and i shall do no good here, if i lose patience with dalmain. now tell me; you really never remove that bandage?" "only to wash my face," replied jane, smiling. "i can trust myself not to peep for two minutes. and last night i found it made my head so hot that i could not sleep; so i slipped it off for an hour or two, but woke and put it on again before dawn." "and you mean to wear it until to-morrow morning?" jane smiled rather wistfully. she knew what was involved in that question. "until to-morrow night, boy," she answered gently. "but, jeanette," exclaimed the doctor, in indignant protest; "surely you will see me before i go! my dear girl, would it not be carrying the experiment unnecessarily far?" "ah, no," said jane, leaning towards him with her pathetic bandaged eyes. "don't you see, dear, you give me the chance of passing through what will in time be one of his hardest experiences, when his dearest friends will come and go, and be to him only voice and touch; their faces unseen and but dimly remembered? deryck, just because this hearing and not seeing you is so hard, i realise how it is enriching me in what i can share with him. he must not have to say: 'ah, but you saw him before he left.' i want to be able to say: 'he came and went,--my greatest friend,--and i did not see him at all.'" the doctor walked over to the window and stood there, whistling softly. jane knew he was fighting down his own vexation. she waited patiently. presently the whistling stopped and she heard him laugh. then he came back and sat down near her. "you always were a thorough old thing!" he said. "no half-measures would do. i suppose i must agree." jane reached out for his hand. "ah, boy," she said, "now you will help me. but i never before knew you so nearly selfish." "the 'other man' is always a problem," said the doctor. "we male brutes, by nature, always want to be first with all our women; not merely with the one, but with all those in whom we consider, sometimes with egregious presumption, that we hold a right. you see it everywhere,--fathers towards their daughters, brothers as regards their sisters, friends in a friendship. the 'other man,' when he arrives, is always a pill to swallow. it is only natural, i suppose; but it is fallen nature and therefore to be surmounted. now let me go and forage for your hat and coat, and take you out upon the moors. no? why not? i often find things for flower, so really i know likely places in which to search. oh, all right! i will send margery. but don't be long. and you need not be afraid of dalmain hearing us, for i saw him just now walking briskly up and down the terrace, with only an occasional touch of his cane against the parapet. how much you have already accomplished! we shall talk more freely out on the moor; and, as i march you along, we can find out tips which may be useful when the time comes for you to lead the 'other man' about. only do be careful how you come downstairs with old margery. think if you fell upon her, jane! she does make such excellent coffee!" chapter xxiv the man's point of view a deep peace reigned in the library at gleneesh. garth and deryck sat together and smoked in complete fellowship, enjoying that sense of calm content which follows an excellent dinner and a day spent in moorland air. jane, sitting upstairs in her self-imposed darkness, with nothing to do but listen, fancied she could hear the low hum of quiet voices in the room beneath, carrying on a more or less continuous conversation. it was a pity she could not see them as they sat together, each looking his very best,--garth in the dinner jacket which suited his slight upright figure so well; the doctor in immaculate evening clothes of the latest cut and fashion, which he had taken the trouble to bring, knowing jane expected the men of her acquaintance to be punctilious in the matter of evening dress, and little dreaming she would have, literally, no eyes for him. and indeed the doctor himself was fastidious to a degree where clothes were concerned, and always well groomed and unquestionably correct in cut and fashion, excepting in the case of his favourite old norfolk jacket. this he kept for occasions when he intended to be what he called "happy and glorious," though lady brand made gentle but persistent attempts to dispose of it. the old norfolk jacket had walked the moors that morning with jane. she had recognised the feel of it as he drew her hand within his arm, and they had laughed over its many associations. but now simpson was folding it and putting it away, and a very correctly clad doctor sat in an arm-chair in front of the library fire, his long legs crossed the one over the other, his broad shoulders buried in the depths of the chair. garth sat where he could feel the warm flame of the fire, pleasant in the chill evening which succeeded the bright spring day. his chair was placed sideways, so that he could, with his hand, shield his face from his visitor should he wish to do so. "yes," dr. brand was saying thoughtfully, "i can easily see that all things which reach you in that darkness assume a different proportion and possess a greatly enhanced value. but i think you will find, as time goes on, and you come in contact with more people, there will be a great readjustment, and you will become less consciously sensitive to sound and touch from others. at present your whole nervous system is highly strung, and responds with an exaggerated vibration to every impression made upon it. a highly strung nervous system usually exaggerates. and the medium of sight having been taken away, the other means of communication with the outer world, hearing and touch, draw to themselves an overplus of nervous force, and have become painfully sensitive. eventually things will right themselves, and they will only be usefully keen and acute. what was it you were going to tell me about nurse rosemary not shaking hands?" "ah, yes," said garth. "but first i want to ask, is it a rule of her order, or guild, or institution, or whatever it is to which she belongs, that the nurses should never shake hands with their patients?" "not that i have ever heard," replied the doctor. "well, then, it must have been miss gray's own perfect intuition as to what i want, and what i don't want. for from the very first she has never shaken hands, nor in any way touched me. even in passing across letters, and handing me things, as she does scores of times daily, never once have i felt her fingers against mine." "and this pleases you?" inquired the doctor, blowing smoke rings into the air, and watching the blind face intently. "ah, i am so grateful for it," said garth earnestly. "do you know, brand, when you suggested sending me a lady nurse and secretary, i felt i could not possibly stand having a woman touch me." "so you said," commented the doctor quietly. "no! did i? what a bear you must have thought me." "by no means," said the doctor, "but a distinctly unusual patient. as a rule, men--" "ah, i dare say," garth interposed half impatiently. "there was a time when i should have liked a soft little hand about me. and i dare say by now i should often enough have caught it and held it, perhaps kissed it--who knows? i used to do such things, lightly enough. but, brand, when a man has known the touch of the woman, and when that touch has become nothing but a memory; when one is dashed into darkness, and that memory becomes one of the few things which remain, and, remaining, brings untold comfort, can you wonder if one fears another touch which might in any way dim that memory, supersede it, or take away from its utter sacredness?" "i understand," said the doctor slowly. "it does not come within my own experience, but i understand. only--my dear boy, may i say it?--if the one woman exists--and it is excusable in your case to doubt it, because there were so many--surely her place should be here; her actual touch, one of the things which remain." "ah, say it," answered garth, lighting another cigarette. "i like to hear it said, although as a matter of fact you might as well say that if the view from the terrace exists, i ought to be able to see it. the view is there, right enough, but my own deficiency keeps me from seeing it." "in other words," said the doctor, leaning forward and picking up the match which, not being thrown so straight as usual, had just missed the fire; "in other words, though she was the one woman, you were not the one man?" "yes," said garth bitterly, but almost beneath his breath. "i was 'a mere boy.'" "or you thought you were not," continued the doctor, seeming not to have heard the last remark. "as a matter of fact, you are always the one man to the one woman, unless another is before you in the field. only it may take time and patience to prove it to her." garth sat up and turned a face of blank surprise towards the doctor. "what an extraordinary statement!" he said. "do you really mean it?" "absolutely," replied the doctor in a tone of quiet conviction. "if you eliminate all other considerations, such as money, lands, titles, wishes of friends, attraction of exteriors--that is to say, admiration of mere physical beauty in one another, which is after all just a question of comparative anatomy; if, freed of all this social and habitual environment, you could place the man and the woman in a mental garden of eden, and let them face one another, stripped of all shams and conventionalities, soul viewing soul, naked and unashamed; if under those circumstances she is so truly his mate, that all the noblest of the man cries out: 'this is the one woman!' then i say, so truly is he her mate, that he cannot fail to be the one man; only he must have the confidence required to prove it to her. on him it bursts, as a revelation; on her it dawns slowly, as the breaking of the day." "oh, my god," murmured garth brokenly, "it was just that! the garden of eden, soul to soul, with no reservations, nothing to fear, nothing to hide. i realised her my wife, and called her so. and the next morning she called me 'a mere boy,' whom she could not for a moment think of marrying. so what becomes of your fool theory, brand?" "confirmed," replied the doctor quietly. "eve, afraid of the immensity of her bliss, doubtful of herself, fearful of coming short of the marvel of his ideal of her, fleeing from adam, to hide among the trees of the garden. don't talk about fool theories, my boy. the fool-fact was adam, if he did not start in prompt pursuit." garth sat forward, his hands clutching the arms of his chair. that quiet, level voice was awakening doubts as to his view of the situation, the first he had had since the moment of turning and walking down the shenstone village church three years ago. his face was livid, and as the firelight played upon it the doctor saw beads of perspiration gleam on his forehead. "oh, brand," he said, "i am blind. be merciful. things mean so terribly much in the dark." the doctor considered. could his nurses and students have seen the look on his face at that moment, they would have said that he was performing a most critical and delicate operation, in which a slip of the scalpel might mean death to the patient. they would have been right; for the whole future of two people hung in the balance; depending, in this crisis, upon the doctor's firmness and yet delicacy of touch. this strained white face in the firelight, with its beads of mental agony and its appealing "i am blind," had not entered into the doctor's calculations. it was a view of "the other man" upon which he could not look unmoved. but the thought of that patient figure with bandaged eyes sitting upstairs in suspense, stretching dear helpless hands to him, steadied the doctor's nerve. he looked into the fire. "you may be blind, dalmain, but i do not want you to be a fool," said the doctor quietly. "am i--was i--a fool?" asked garth. "how can i judge?" replied the doctor. "give me a clear account of the circumstances from your point of view, and i will give you my opinion of the case." his tone was so completely dispassionate and matter-of-fact, that it had a calming effect on garth, giving him also a sense of security. the doctor might have been speaking of a sore throat, or a tendency to sciatica. garth leaned back in his chair, slipped his hand into the breast-pocket of his jacket, and touched a letter lying there. dare he risk it? could he, for once take for himself the comfort of speaking of his trouble to a man he could completely trust, and yet avoid the danger of betraying her identity to one who knew her so intimately? garth weighed this, after the manner of a chess-player looking several moves ahead. could the conversation become more explicit, sufficiently so to be of use, and yet no clue be given which would reveal jane as the one woman? had the doctor uttered a word of pressure or suggestion, garth would have decided for silence. but the doctor did not speak. he leaned forward and reached the poker, mending the fire with extreme care and method. he placed a fragrant pine log upon the springing flame, and as he did so he whistled softly the closing bars of veni, creator spiritus. garth, occupied with his own mental struggle, was, for once, oblivious to sounds from without, and did not realise why, at this critical moment, these words should have come with gentle insistence into his mind: "keep far our foes; give peace at home; where thou art guide, no ill can come." he took them as an omen. they turned the scale. "brand," he said, "if, as you are so kind as to suggest, i give myself the extreme relief of confiding in you, will you promise me never to attempt to guess at the identity of the one woman?" the doctor smiled; and the smile in his voice as he answered, added to garth's sense of security. "my dear fellow," he said, "i never guess at other people's secrets. it is a form of mental recreation which does not appeal to me, and which i should find neither entertaining nor remunerative. if i know them already, i do not require to guess them. if i do not know them, and their possessors wish me to remain in ignorance, i would as soon think of stealing their purse as of filching their secret." "ah, thanks," said garth. "personally, i do not mind what you know. but i owe it to her, that her name should not appear." "undoubtedly," said the doctor. "except in so far as she herself, chooses to reveal it, the one woman's identity should always remain a secret. get on with your tale, old chap. i will not interrupt." "i will state it as simply and as shortly as i can," began garth. "and you will understand that there are details of which no fellow could speak.--i had known her several years in a friendly way, just staying at the same houses, and meeting at lord's and henley and all the places where those in the same set do meet. i always liked her, and always felt at my best with her, and thought no end of her opinion, and so forth. she was a friend and a real chum to me, and to lots of other fellows. but one never thought of love-making in connection with her. all the silly things one says to ordinary women she would have laughed at. if one had sent her flowers to wear, she would have put them in a vase and wondered for whom they had really been intended. she danced well, and rode straight; but the man she danced with had to be awfully good at it, or he found himself being guided through the giddy maze; and the man who wanted to be in the same field with her, must be prepared for any fence or any wall. not that i ever saw her in the hunting-field; her love of life and of fair play would have kept her out of that. but i use it as a descriptive illustration. one was always glad to meet her in a house party, though one could not have explained why. it is quite impossible to describe her. she was just--well, just--" the doctor saw "just jane" trembling on garth's lips, and knew how inadequate was every adjective to express this name. he did not want the flood of garth's confidences checked, so he supplied the needed words. "just a good sort. yes, i quite understand. well?" "i had had my infatuations, plenty of them," went on the eager young voice. "the one thing i thought of in women was their exteriors. beauty of all kinds--of any kind--crazed me for the moment. i never wanted to marry them, but i always wanted to paint them. their mothers, and aunts, and other old dowagers in the house parties used to think i meant marriage, but the girls themselves knew better. i don't believe a girl now walks this earth who would accuse me of flirting. i admired their beauty, and they knew it, and they knew that was all my admiration meant. it was a pleasant experience at the time, and, in several instances, helped forward good marriages later on. pauline lister was apportioned to me for two whole seasons, but she eventually married the man on whose jolly old staircase i painted her. why didn't i come a cropper over any of them? because there were too many, i suppose. also, the attraction was skin-deep. i don't mind telling you quite frankly: the only one whose beauty used to cause me a real pang was lady brand. but when i had painted it and shown it to the world in its perfection, i was content. i asked no more of any woman than to paint her, and find her paintable. i could not explain this to the husbands and mothers and chaperons, but the women themselves understood it well enough; and as i sit here in my darkness not a memory rises up to reproach me." "good boy," said deryck brand, laughing. "you were vastly misunderstood, but i believe you." "you see," resumed garth, "that sort of thing being merely skin-deep, i went no deeper. the only women i really knew were my mother, who died when i was nineteen, and margery graem, whom i always hugged at meeting and parting, and always shall hug until i kiss the old face in its coffin, or she straightens me in mine. those ties of one's infancy and boyhood are among the closest and most sacred life can show. well, so things were until a certain evening in june several years ago. she--the one woman--and i were in the same house party at a lovely old place in the country. one afternoon we had been talking intimately, but quite casually and frankly. i had no more thought of wanting to marry her than of proposing to old margery. then--something happened,--i must not tell you what; it would give too clear a clue to her identity. but it revealed to me, in a few marvellous moments, the woman in her; the wife, the mother; the strength, the tenderness; the exquisite perfection of her true, pure soul. in five minutes there awakened in me a hunger for her which nothing could still, which nothing ever will still, until i stand beside her in the golden city, where they shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; and there shall be no more darkness, or depending upon sun, moon, or candle, for the glory of god shall lighten it; and there shall be no more sorrow, neither shall there be any more pain, for former things shall have passed away." the blind face shone in the firelight. garth's retrospection was bringing him visions of things to come. the doctor sat quite still and watched the vision fade. then he said: "well?" "well," continued the young voice in the shadow, with a sound in it of having dropped back to earth and finding it a mournful place; "i never had a moment's doubt as to what had happened to me. i knew i loved her; i knew i wanted her; i knew her presence made my day and her absence meant chill night; and every day was radiant, for she was there." garth paused for breath and to enjoy a moment of silent retrospection. the doctor's voice broke in with a question, clear, incisive. "was she a pretty woman; handsome, beautiful?" "a pretty woman?" repeated garth, amazed: "good heavens, no! handsome? beautiful? well you have me there, for, 'pon my honour, i don't know." "i mean, would you have wished to paint her?" "i have painted her," said garth very low, a moving tenderness in his voice; "and my two paintings of her, though done in sadness and done from memory, are the most beautiful work i ever produced. no eye but my own has ever seen them, and now none ever will see them, excepting those of one whom i must perforce trust to find them for me, and bring them to me for destruction." "and that will be--?" queried the doctor. "nurse rosemary gray," said garth. the doctor kicked the pine log, and the flames darted up merrily. "you have chosen well," he said, and had to make a conscious effort to keep the mirth in his face from passing into his voice. "nurse rosemary will be discreet. very good. then we may take it the one woman was beautiful?" but garth looked perplexed. "i do not know," he answered slowly. "i cannot see her through the eyes of others. my vision of her, in that illuminating moment, followed the inspired order of things,--spirit, soul, and body. her spirit was so pure and perfect, her soul so beautiful, noble, and womanly, that the body which clothed soul and spirit partook of their perfection and became unutterably dear." "i see," said the doctor, very gently. "yes, you dear fellow, i see." (oh, jane, jane! you were blind, without a bandage, in those days!) "several glorious days went by," continued garth. "i realise now that i was living in the glow of my own certainty that she was the one woman. it was so clear and sweet and wonderful to me, that i never dreamed of it not being equally clear to her. we did a lot of music together for pure enjoyment; we talked of other people for the fun of it; we enjoyed and appreciated each other's views and opinions; but we did not talk of ourselves, because we knew, at least _i_ knew, and, before god, i thought she did. every time i saw her she seemed more grand and perfect. i held the golden key to trifling matters not understood before. we young fellows, who all admired her, used nevertheless to joke a bit about her wearing collars and stocks, top boots and short skirts; whacking her leg with a riding-whip, and stirring the fire with her toe. but after that evening, i understood all this to be a sort of fence behind which she hid her exquisite womanliness, because it was of a deeper quality than any man looking upon the mere surface of her had ever fathomed or understood. and when she came trailing down in the evening, in something rich and clinging and black, with lots of soft old lace covering her bosom and moving with the beating of her great tender heart; ah, then my soul rejoiced and my eyes took their fill of delight! i saw her, as all day long i had known her to be,--perfect in her proud, sweet womanliness." "is he really unconscious," thought the doctor, "of how unmistakable a word-picture of jane he is painting?" "very soon," continued garth, "we had three days apart, and then met again at another house, in a weekend party. one of the season's beauties was there, with whom my name was being freely coupled, and something she said on that subject, combined with the fearful blankness of those three interminable days, made me resolve to speak without delay. i asked her to come out on to the terrace that evening. we were alone. it was a moonlight night." a long silence. the doctor did not break it. he knew his friend was going over in his mind all those things of which a man does not speak to another man. at last garth said simply, "i told her." no comment from the doctor, who was vividly reminded of jane's "then--it happened," when she had reached this point in the story. after a few moments of further silence, steeped in the silver moonlight of reminiscence for garth; occupied by the doctor in a rapid piecing in of jane's version; the sad young voice continued: "i thought she understood completely. afterwards i knew she had not understood at all. her actions led me to believe i was accepted, taken into her great love, even as she was wrapped around by mine. not through fault of hers,--ah, no; she was blameless throughout; but because she did not, could not, understand what any touch of hers must mean to me. in her dear life, there had never been another man; that much i knew by unerring instinct and by her own admission. i have sometimes thought that she may have had an ideal in her girlish days, against whom, in after years, she measured others, and, finding them come short, held them at arm's length. but, if i am right in this surmise, he must have been a blind fool, unconscious of the priceless love which might have been his, had he tried to win it. for i am certain that, until that night, no man's love had ever flamed about her; she had never felt herself enveloped in a cry which was all one passionate, in-articulate, inexplicable, boundless need of herself. while i thought she understood and responded,--heaven knows i did think it,--she did not in the least understand, and was only trying to be sympathetic and kind." the doctor stirred in his chair, slowly crossed one leg over the other, and looked searchingly into the blind face. he was finding these confidences of the "other man" more trying than he had expected. "are you sure of that?" he asked rather huskily. "quite sure," said garth. "listen. i called her--what she was to me just then, what i wanted her to be always, what she is forever, so far as my part goes, and will be till death and beyond. that one word,--no, there were two,--those two words made her understand. i see that now. she rose at once and put me from her. she said i must give her twelve hours for quiet thought, and she would come to me in the village church next morning with her answer. brand, you may think me a fool; you cannot think me a more egregious ass than i now think myself; but i was absolutely certain she was mine; so sure that, when she came, and we were alone together in the house of god, instead of going to her with the anxious haste of suppliant and lover, i called her to me at the chancel step as if i were indeed her husband and had the right to bid her come. she came, and, just as a sweet formality before taking her to me, i asked for her answer. it was this: 'i cannot marry a mere boy.'" garth's voice choked in his throat on the last word. his head was bowed in his hands. he had reached the point where most things stopped for him; where all things had ceased forever to be as they were before. the room seemed strangely silent. the eager voice had poured out into it such a flow of love and hope and longing; such a revealing of a soul in which the true love of beauty had created perpetual youth; of a heart held free by high ideals from all playing with lesser loves, but rising to volcanic force and height when the true love was found at last. the doctor shivered at that anticlimax, as if the chill of an empty church were in his bones. he knew how far worse it had been than garth had told. he knew of the cruel, humiliating question: "how old are you?" jane had confessed to it. he knew how the outward glow of adoring love had faded as the mind was suddenly turned inward to self-contemplation. he had known it all as abstract fact. now he saw it actually before him. he saw jane's stricken lover, bowed beside him in his blindness, living again through those sights and sounds which no merciful curtain of oblivion could ever hide or veil. the doctor had his faults, but they were not peter's. he never, under any circumstances, spoke because he wist not what to say. he leaned forward and laid a hand very tenderly on garth's shoulder. "poor chap," he said. "ah, poor old chap." and for a long while they sat thus in silence. chapter xxv the doctor's diagnosis "so you expressed no opinion? explained nothing? let him go on believing that? oh, dicky! and you might have said so much!" in the quiet of the scotch sabbath morning, jane and the doctor had climbed the winding path from the end of the terrace, which zigzagged up to a clearing amongst the pines. two fallen trees at a short distance from each other provided convenient seats in full sunshine, facing a glorious view,--down into the glen, across the valley, and away to the purple hills beyond. the doctor had guided jane to the sunnier of the two trunks, and seated himself beside her. then he had quietly recounted practically the whole of the conversation of the previous evening. "i expressed no opinion. i explained nothing. i let him continue to believe what he believes; because it is the only way to keep you on the pinnacle where he has placed you. let any other reason for your conduct than an almost infantine ignorance of men and things be suggested and accepted, and down you will come, my poor jane, and great will be the fall. mine shall not be the hand thus to hurl you headlong. as you say, i might have said so much, but i might also have lived to regret it." "i should fall into his arms," said jane recklessly, "and i would sooner be there than on a pinnacle." "excuse me, my good girl," replied the doctor. "it is more likely you would fall into the first express going south. in fact, i am not certain you would wait for an express. i can almost see the honourable jane quitting yonder little railway station, seated in an empty coal-truck. no! don't start up and attempt to stride about among the pine needles," continued the doctor, pulling jane down beside him again. "you will only trip over a fir cone and go headlong into the valley. it is no use forestalling the inevitable fall." "oh, dicky," sighed jane, putting her hand through his arm; and leaning her bandaged eyes against the rough tweed of his shoulder; "i don't know what has come to you to-day. you are not kind to me. you have harrowed my poor soul by repeating all garth said last night; and, thanks to that terribly good memory of yours, you have reproduced the tones of his voice in every inflection. and then, instead of comforting me, you leave me entirely in the wrong, and completely in the lurch." "in the wrong--yes," said deryck; "in the lurch--no. i did not say i would do nothing to-day. i only said i could do nothing last night. you cannot take up a wounded thing and turn it about and analyse it. when we bade each other good-night, i told him i would think the matter over and give him my opinion to-day. i will tell you what has happened to me if you like. i have looked into the inmost recesses of a very rare and beautiful nature, and i have seen what havoc a woman can work in the life of the man who loves her. i can assure you, last night was no pastime. i woke this morning feeling as if i had, metaphorically, been beaten black and blue." "then what do you suppose _i_ feel?" inquired jane pathetically. "you still feel yourself in the right--partly," replied deryck. "and so long as you think you have a particle of justification and cling to it, your case is hopeless. it will have to be: 'i confess. can you forgive?'" "but i acted for the best," said jane. "i thought of him before i thought of myself. it would have been far easier to have accepted the happiness of the moment, and chanced the future." "that is not honest, jeanette. you thought of yourself first. you dared not face the possibility of the pain to you if his love cooled or his admiration waned. when one comes to think of it, i believe every form of human love--a mother's only excepted--is primarily selfish. the best chance for dalmain is that his helpless blindness may awaken the mother love in you. then self will go to the wall." "ah me!" sighed jane. "i am lost and weary and perplexed in this bewildering darkness. nothing seems clear; nothing seems right. if i could see your kind eyes, boy, your hard voice would hurt less." "well, take off the bandage and look," said the doctor. "i will not!" cried jane furiously. "have i gone through all this to fail at the last?" "my dear girl, this self-imposed darkness is getting on your nerves. take care it does not do more harm than good. strong remedies--" "hush!" whispered jane. "i hear footsteps." "you can always hear footsteps in a wood if you hearken for them," said the doctor; but he spoke low, and then sat quiet, listening. "i hear garth's step," whispered jane. "oh, dicky, go to the edge and look over. you can see the windings of the path below." the doctor stepped forward quietly and looked down upon the way they had ascended. then he came back to jane. "yes," he said. "fortune favours us. dalmain is coming up the path with simpson. he will be here in two minutes." "fortune favours us? my dear dicky! of all mis-chances!" jane's hand flew to her bandage, but the doctor stayed her just in time. "not at all," he said. "and do not fail at the last in your experiment. i ought to be able to keep you two blind people apart. trust me, and keep dark--i mean, sit still. and can you not understand why i said fortune favours us? dalmain is coming for my opinion on the case. you shall hear it together. it will be a saving of time for me, and most enlightening for you to mark how he takes it. now keep quiet. i promise he shall not sit on your lap. but if you make a sound, i shall have to say you are a bunny or a squirrel, and throw fir cones at you." the doctor rose and sauntered round the bend of the path. jane sat on in darkness. "hullo, dalmain," she heard deryck say. "found your way up here? an ideal spot. shall we dispense with simpson? take my arm." "yes," replied garth. "i was told you were up here, brand, and followed you." they came round the bend together, and out into the clearing. "are you alone?" asked garth standing still. "i thought i heard voices." "you did," replied the doctor. "i was talking to a young woman." "what sort of young woman?" asked garth. "a buxom young person," replied the doctor, "with a decidedly touchy temper." "do you know her name?" "jane," said the doctor recklessly. "not 'jane,'" said garth quickly,--"jean. i know her,--my gardener's eldest daughter. rather weighed down by family cares, poor girl." "i saw she was weighed down," said the doctor. "i did not know it was by family cares. let us sit on this trunk. can you call up the view to mind?" "yes," replied garth; "i know it so well. but it terrifies me to find how my mental pictures are fading; all but one." "and that is--?" asked the doctor. "the face of the one woman," said garth in his blindness. "ah, my dear fellow," said the doctor, "i have not forgotten my promise to give you this morning my opinion on your story. i have been thinking it over carefully, and have arrived at several conclusions. shall we sit on this fallen tree? won't you smoke? one can talk better under the influence of the fragrant weed." garth took out his cigarette case, chose a cigarette, lighted it with care, and flung the flaming match straight on to jane's clasped hands. before the doctor could spring up, jane had smilingly flicked it off. "what nerve!" thought deryck, with admiration. "ninety-nine women out of a hundred would have said 'ah!' and given away the show. really, she deserves to win." suddenly garth stood up. "i think we shall do better on the other log," he said unexpectedly. "it is always in fuller sunshine." and he moved towards jane. with a bound the doctor sprang in front of him, seized jane with one strong hand and drew her behind him; then guided garth to the very spot where she had been sitting. "how accurately you judge distance," he remarked, backing with jane towards the further trunk. then he seated himself beside garth in the sunshine. "now for our talk," said the doctor, and he said it rather breathlessly. "are you sure we are alone?" asked garth. "i seem conscious of another presence." "my dear fellow," said the doctor, "is one ever alone in a wood? countless little presences surround us. bright eyes peep down from the branches; furry tails flick in and out of holes; things unseen move in the dead leaves at our feet. if you seek solitude, shun the woods." "yes," replied garth, "i know, and i love listening to them. i meant a human presence. brand, i am often so tried by the sense of an unseen human presence near me. do you know, i could have sworn the other day that she--the one woman--came silently, looked upon me in my blindness, pitied me, as her great tender heart would do, and silently departed." "when was that?" asked the doctor. "a few days ago. dr. rob had been telling us how he came across her in--ah! i must not say where. then he and miss gray left me alone, and in the lonely darkness and silence i felt her eyes upon me." "dear boy," said the doctor, "you must not encourage this dread of unseen presences. remember, those who care for us very truly and deeply can often make us conscious of their mental nearness, even when far away, especially if they know we are in trouble and needing them. you must not be surprised if you are often conscious of the nearness of the one woman, for i believe--and i do not say it lightly, dalmain--i believe her whole heart and love and life are yours." "good lord!" exclaimed garth, and springing up, strode forward aimlessly. the doctor caught him by the arm. in another moment he would have fallen over jane's feet. "sit down, man," said the doctor, "and listen to me. you gain nothing by dashing about in the dark in that way. i am going to prove my words. but you must give me your calm attention. now listen. we are confronted in this case by a psychological problem, and one which very likely has not occurred to you. i want you for a moment to picture the one man and the one woman facing each other in the garden of eden, or in the moonlight--wherever it was--if you like better. now will you realise this? the effect upon a man of falling in love is to create in him a complete unconsciousness of self. on the other hand, the effect upon a woman of being loved and sought, and of responding to that love and seeking, is an accession of intense self-consciousness. he, longing to win and take, thinks of her only. she, called upon to yield and give, has her mind turned at once upon herself. can she meet his need? is she all he thinks her? will she be able to content him completely, not only now but in the long vista of years to come? the more natural and unconscious of self she had been before, the harder she would be hit by this sudden, overwhelming attack of self-consciousness." the doctor glanced at jane on the log six yards away. she had lifted her clasped hands and was nodding towards him, her face radiant with relief and thankfulness. he felt he was on the right tack. but the blind face beside him clouded heavily, and the cloud deepened as he proceeded. "you see, my dear chap, i gathered from yourself she was not of the type of feminine loveliness you were known to admire. might she not have feared that her appearance would, after a while, have failed to content you?" "no," replied garth with absolutely finality of tone. "such a suggestion is unworthy. besides, had the idea by any possibility entered her mind, she would only have had to question me on the point. my decision would have been final; my answer would have fully reassured her." "love is blind," quoted the doctor quietly. "they lie who say so," cried garth violently. "love is so far-seeing that it sees beneath the surface and delights in beauties unseen by other eyes." "then you do not accept my theory?" asked the doctor. "not as an explanation of my own trouble," answered garth; "because i know the greatness of her nature would have lifted her far above such a consideration. but i do indeed agree as to the complete oblivion to self of the man in love. how else could we ever venture to suggest to a woman that she should marry us? ah, brand, when one thinks of it, the intrusion into her privacy; the asking the right to touch, even her hand, at will; it could not be done unless the love of her and the thought of her had swept away all thoughts of self. looking back upon that time i remember how completely it was so with me. and when she said to me in the church: 'how old are you?'--ah, i did not tell you that last night--the revulsion of feeling brought about by being turned at that moment in upon myself was so great, that my joy seemed to shrivel and die in horror at my own unworthiness." silence in the wood. the doctor felt he was playing a losing game. he dared not look at the silent figure opposite. at last he spoke. "dalmain, there are two possible solutions to your problem. do you think it was a case of eve holding back in virginal shyness, expecting adam to pursue?" "ah, no," said garth emphatically. "we had gone far beyond all that. nor could you suggest it, did you know her. she is too honest, too absolutely straight and true, to have deceived me. besides, had it been so, in all these lonely years, when she found i made no sign, she would have sent me word of what she really meant." "should you have gone to her then?" asked the doctor. "yes," said garth slowly. "i should have gone and i should have forgiven--because she is my own. but it could never have been the same. it would have been unworthy of us both." "well," continued the doctor, "the other solution remains. you have admitted that the one woman came somewhat short of the conventional standard of beauty. your love of loveliness was so well known. do you not think, during the long hours of that night,--remember how new it was to her to be so worshipped and wanted,--do you not think her courage failed her? she feared she might come short of what eventually you would need in the face and figure always opposite you at your table; and, despite her own great love and yours, she thought it wisest to avoid future disillusion by rejecting present joy. her very love for you would have armed her to this decision." the silent figure opposite nodded, and waited with clasped hands. deryck was pleading her cause better than she could have pleaded it herself. silence in the woods. all nature seemed to hush and listen for the answer. then:--"no," said garth's young voice unhesitatingly. "in that case she would have told me her fear, and i should have reassured her immediately. your suggestion is unworthy of my beloved." the wind sighed in the trees. a cloud passed before the sun. the two who sat in darkness, shivered and were silent. then the doctor spoke. "my dear boy," he said, and a deep tenderness was in his voice: "i must maintain my unalterable belief that to the one woman you are still the one man. in your blindness her rightful place is by your side. perhaps even now she is yearning to be here. will you tell me her name, and give me leave to seek her out, hear from herself her version of the story; and, if it be as i think, bring her to you, to prove, in your affliction, her love and tenderness?" "never!" said garth. "never, while life shall last! can you not see that if when i had sight, and fame, and all heart could desire, i could not win her love, what she might feel for me now, in my helpless blindness, could be but pity? and pity from her i could never accept. if i was 'a mere boy' three years ago, i am 'a mere blind man' now, an object for kind commiseration. if indeed you are right, and she mistrusted my love and my fidelity, it is now out of my power forever to prove her wrong and to prove myself faithful. but i will not allow the vision of my beloved to be dimmed by these suggestions. for her completion, she needed so much more than i could give. she refused me because i was not fully worthy. i prefer it should be so. let us leave it at that." "it leaves you to loneliness," said the doctor sadly. "i prefer loneliness," replied garth's young voice, "to disillusion. hark! i hear the first gong, brand. margery will be grieved if we keep her sunday dishes waiting." he stood up and turned his sightless face towards the view. "ah, how well i know it," he said. "when miss gray and i sit up here, she tells me all she sees, and i tell her what she does not see, but what i know is there. she is keen on art, and on most of the things i care about. i must ask for an arm, brand, though the path is wide and good. i cannot risk a tumble. i have come one or two awful croppers, and i promised miss gray--the path is wide. yes, we can walk two abreast, three abreast if necessary. it is well we had this good path made. it used to be a steep scramble." "three abreast," said the doctor. "so we could--if necessary." he stepped back and raised jane from her seat, drawing her cold hand through his left arm. "now, my dear fellow, my right arm will suit you best; then you can keep your stick in your right hand." and thus they started down through the wood, on that lovely sabbath morn of early summer; and the doctor walked erect between those two severed hearts, uniting, and yet dividing them. just once garth paused and listened. "i seem to hear another footstep," he said, "besides yours and mine." "the wood is full of footsteps," said the doctor, "just as the heart is full of echoes. if you stand still and listen you can hear what you will in either." "then let us not stand still," said garth, "for in old days, if i was late for lunch, margery used to spank me." chapter xxvi hearts meet in sightless land "it will be absolutely impossible, miss gray, for me ever to tell you what i think of this that you have done for my sake." garth stood at the open library window. the morning sunlight poured into the room. the air was fragrant with the scent of flowers, resonant with the songs of birds. as he stood there in the sunshine, a new look of strength and hopefulness was apparent in every line of his erect figure. he held out eager hands towards nurse rosemary, but more as an expression of the outgoing of his appreciation and gratitude than with any expectation of responsive hands being placed within them. "and here was i, picturing you having a gay weekend, and wondering where, and who your friends in this neighbourhood could be. and all the while you were sitting blindfold in the room over my head. ah, the goodness of it is beyond words! but did you not feel somewhat of a deceiver, miss gray?" she always felt that--poor jane. so she readily answered: "yes. and yet i told you i was not going far. and my friends in the neighbourhood were simpson and margery, who aided and abetted. and it was true to say i was going, for was i not going into darkness? and it is a different world from the land of light." "ah, how true that is!" cried garth. "and how difficult to make people understand the loneliness of it, and how they seem suddenly to arrive close to one from another world; stooping from some distant planet, with sympathetic voice and friendly touch; and then away they go to another sphere, leaving one to the immensity of solitude in sightless land." "yes," agreed nurse rosemary, "and you almost dread the coming, because the going makes the darkness darker, and the loneliness more lonely." "ah, so you experienced that?" said garth. "do you know, now you have week-ended in sightless land, i shall not feel it such a place of solitude. at every turn i shall be able to say:--'a dear and faithful friend has been here.'" he laughed a laugh of such almost boyish pleasure, that all the mother in jane's love rose up and demanded of her one supreme effort. she looked at the slight figure in white flannels, leaning against the window frame, so manly, so beautiful still, and yet so helpless and so needing the wealth of tenderness which was hers to give. then, standing facing him, she opened her arms, as if the great preparedness of that place of rest, so close to him must, magnet-like, draw him to her; and standing thus in the sunlight, jane spoke. was she beautiful? was she paintable? would a man grow weary of such a look turned on him, of such arms held out? alas! too late! on that point no lover shall ever be able to pass judgment. that look is for one man alone. he only will ever bring it to that loving face. and he cannot pronounce upon its beauty in voice of rapturous content. he cannot judge. he cannot see. he is blind! "mr. dalmain, there are many smaller details; but before we talk of those i want to tell you the greatest of all the lessons i learned in sightless land." then, conscious that her emotion was producing in her voice a resonant depth which might remind him too vividly of notes in the rosary, she paused, and resumed in the high, soft edition of her own voice which it had become second nature to her to use as nurse rosemary: "mr. dalmain, it seems to me i learned to understand how that which is loneliness unspeakable to one might be paradise of a very perfect kind for two. i realised that there might be circumstances in which the dark would become a very wonderful meeting-place for souls. if i loved a man who lost his sight, i should be glad to have mine in order to be eyes for him when eyes were needed; just as, were i rich and he poor, i should value my money simply as a thing which might be useful to him. but i know the daylight would often be a trial to me, because it would be something he could not share; and when evening came, i should long to say: 'let us put out the lights and shut away the moonlight and sit together in the sweet soft darkness, which is more uniting than the light.'" while jane was speaking, garth paled as he listened, and his face grew strangely set. then, as if under a reaction of feeling, a boyish flush spread to the very roots of his hair. he visibly shrank from the voice which was saying these things to him. he fumbled with his right hand for the orange cord which would guide him to his chair. "nurse rosemary," he said, and at the tone of his voice jane's outstretched arms dropped to her sides; "it is kind of you to tell me all these beautiful thoughts which came to you in the darkness. but i hope the man who is happy enough to possess your love, or who is going to be fortunate enough to win it, will neither be so unhappy nor so unfortunate as to lose his sight. it will be better for him to live with you in the light, than to be called upon to prove the kind way in which you would be willing to adapt yourself to his darkness. how about opening our letters?" he slipped his hand along the orange cord and walked over to his chair. then, with a sense of unutterable dismay, jane saw what she had done. she had completely forgotten nurse rosemary, using her only as a means of awakening in garth an understanding of how much her--jane's--love might mean to him in his blindness. she had forgotten that, to garth, nurse rosemary's was the only personality which counted in this conversation; she, who had just given him such a proof of her interest and devotion. and--o poor dear garth! o bold, brazen nurse rosemary!--he very naturally concluded she was making love to him. jane felt herself between scylla and charybdis, and she took a very prompt and characteristic plunge. she came across to her place on the other side of the small table and sat down. "i believe it was the thought of him made me realise this," she said; "but just now i and my young man have fallen out. he does not even know i am here." garth unbent at once, and again that boyish heightening of colour indicated his sense of shame at what he had imagined. "ah, miss gray," he said eagerly, "you will not think it impertinent or intrusive on my part, but do you know i have wondered sometimes whether there was a happy man." nurse rosemary laughed. "well, we can't call him a happy man just now," she said, "so far as his thoughts of me are concerned. my whole heart is his, if he could only be brought to believe it. but a misunderstanding has grown up between us,--my fault entirely,--and he will not allow me to put it right." "what a fool!" cried garth. "are you and he engaged?" nurse rosemary hesitated. "well--not exactly engaged," she said, "though it practically amounts to that. neither of us would give a thought to any one else." garth knew there was a class of people whose preliminary step to marriage was called "keeping company," a stage above the housemaid's "walking out," both expressions being exactly descriptive of the circumstances of the case; for, whereas pretty phyllis and her swain go walking out of an evening in byways and between hedges, or along pavements and into the parks,--these keep each other company in the parlours and arbours of their respective friends and relations. yet, somehow, garth had never thought of nurse rosemary as belonging to any other class than his own. perhaps this ass of a fellow, whom he already cordially disliked, came of a lower stratum; or perhaps the rules of her nursing guild forbade a definite engagement, but allowed "an understanding." anyway the fact remained that the kind-hearted, clever, delightful little lady, who had done so much for him, had "a young man" of her own; and this admitted fact lifted a weight from garth's mind. he had been so afraid lately of not being quite honest with her and with himself. she had become so necessary to him, nay, so essential, and by her skill and devotion had won so deep a place in his gratitude. their relation was of so intimate a nature, their companionship so close and continuous; and into this rather ideal state of things had heavily trodden dr. rob the other day with a suggestion. garth, alone with him, bad been explaining how indispensable miss gray had become to his happiness and comfort, and how much he dreaded a recall from her matron. "i fear they do not let them go on indefinitely at one case; but perhaps sir deryck can arrange that this should be an exception," said garth. "oh, hang the matron, and blow sir deryck," said dr. rob breezily. "if you want her as a permanency, make sure of her. marry her, my boy! i'll warrant she'd have you!" thus trod dr. rob, with heavily nailed boots, upon the bare toes of a delicate situation. garth tried to put the suggestion out of his mind and failed. he began to notice thoughts and plans of nurse rosemary's for his benefit, which so far exceeded her professional duties that it seemed as if there must be behind them the promptings of a more tender interest. he put the thought away again and again, calling dr. rob an old fool, and himself a conceited ass. but again and again there came about him, with nurse rosemary's presence, the subtile surrounding atmosphere of a watchful love. then, one night, he faced and fought a great temptation. after all why should he not do as dr. rob suggested? why not marry this charming, capable, devoted nurse, and have her constantly about him in his blindness? she did not consider him "a mere boy." ... what had he to offer her? a beautiful home, every luxury, abundant wealth, a companionship she seemed to find congenial ... but then the tempter overreached himself, for he whispered: "and the voice would be always jane's. you have never seen the nurse's face; you never will see it. you can go on putting to the voice the face and form you adore. you can marry the little nurse, and go on loving jane." ... then garth cried out in horror: "avaunt, satan!" and the battle was won. but it troubled his mind lest by any chance her peace of heart should be disturbed through him. so it was with relief, and yet with an unreasonable smouldering jealousy, that he heard of the young man to whom she was devoted. and now it appeared she was unhappy through her young man, just as he was unhappy through--no, because of--jane. a sudden impulse came over him to do away forever with the thought which in his own mind had lately come between them, and to establish their intimacy on an even closer and firmer basis, by being absolutely frank with her on the matter. "miss gray," he said, leaning towards her with that delightful smile of boyish candour which many women had found irresistible, "it is good of you to have told me about yourself; and, although i confess to feeling unreasonably jealous of the fortunate fellow who possesses your whole heart, i am glad he exists, because we all miss something unless we have in our lives the wonderful experience of the one woman or the one man. and i want to tell you something, dear sweet friend of mine, which closely touches you and me; only, before i do so, put your hand in mine, that i may realise you in a closer intimacy than heretofore. you, who have been in sightless land, know how much a hand clasp means down here." garth stretched his hand across the table, and his whole attitude was tense with expectation. "i cannot do that, mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary, in a voice which shook a little. "i have burned my hands. oh, not seriously. do not look so distressed. just a lighted match. yes; while i was blind. now tell me the thing which touches you and me." garth withdrew his hand and clasped both around his knee. he leaned back in his chair, his face turned upwards. there was upon it an expression so pure, the exaltation of a spirit so lifted above the temptations of the lower nature, that jane's eyes filled with tears as she looked at him. she realised what his love for her, supplemented by the discipline of suffering, had done for her lover. he began to speak softly, not turning towards her. "tell me," he said, "is he--very much to you?" jane's eyes could not leave the dear face and figure in the chair. jane's emotion trembled in nurse rosemary's voice. "he is all the world to me," she said. "does he love you as you deserve to be loved?" jane bent and laid her lips on the table where his outstretched hand had rested. then nurse rosemary answered: "he loved me far, far more than i ever deserved." "why do you say 'loved'? is not 'loves' the truer tense?" "alas, no!" said nurse rosemary, brokenly; "for i fear i have lost his love by my own mistrust of it and my own wrong-doing." "never!" said garth. "'love never faileth.' it may for a time appear to be dead, even buried. but the easter morn soon dawns, and lo, love ariseth! love grieved, is like a bird with wet wings. it cannot fly; it cannot rise. it hops about upon the ground, chirping anxiously. but every flutter shakes away more drops; every moment in the sunshine is drying the tiny feathers; and very soon it soars to the tree top, all the better for the bath, which seemed to have robbed it of the power to rise." "ah,--if my beloved could but dry his wings," murmured nurse rosemary. "but i fear i did more than wet them. i clipped them. worse still,--i broke them." "does he know you feel yourself so in the wrong?" garth asked the question very gently. "no," replied nurse rosemary. "he will give me no chance to explain, and no opportunity to tell him how he wrongs himself and me by the view he now takes of my conduct." "poor girl!" said garth in tones of sympathy and comprehension. "my own experience has been such a tragedy that i can feel for those whose course of true love does not run smooth. but take my advice, miss gray. write him a full confession. keep nothing back. tell him just how it all happened. any man who truly loves would believe, accept your explanation, and be thankful. only, i hope he would not come tearing up here and take you away from me!" jane smiled through a mist of tears. "if he wanted me, mr. dalmain, i should have to go to him," said nurse rosemary. "how i dread the day," continued garth, "when you will come and say to me: 'i have to go.' and, do you know, i have sometimes thought--you have done so much for me and become so much to me--i have sometimes thought--i can tell you frankly now--it might have seemed as if there were a very obvious way to try to keep you always. you are so immensely worthy of all a man could offer, of all the devotion a man could give. and because, to one so worthy, i never could have offered less than the best, i want to tell you that in my heart i hold shrined forever one beloved face. all others are gradually fading. now, in my blindness, i can hardly recall clearly the many lovely faces i have painted and admired. all are more or less blurred and indistinct. but this one face grows clearer, thank god, as the darkness deepens. it will be with me through life, i shall see it in death, the face of the woman i love. you said 'loved' of your lover, hesitating to be sure of his present state of heart. i can neither say 'love' nor 'loved' of my beloved. she never loved me. but i love her with a love which makes it impossible for me to have any 'best' to offer to another woman. if i could bring myself, from unworthy motives and selfish desires, to ask another to wed me, i should do her an untold wrong. for her unseen face would be nothing to me; always that one and only face would be shining in my darkness. her voice would be dear, only in so far as it reminded me of the voice of the woman i love. dear friend, if you ever pray for me, pray that i may never be so base as to offer to any woman such a husk as marriage with me would mean." "but--" said nurse rosemary. "she--she who has made it a husk for others; she who might have the finest of the wheat, the full corn in the ear, herself?" "she," said garth, "has refused it. it was neither fine enough nor full enough. it was not worthy. o my god, little girl--! what it means, to appear inadequate to the woman one loves!" garth dropped his face between his hands with a groan. silence unbroken reigned in the library. suddenly garth began to speak, low and quickly, without lifting his head. "now," he said, "now i feel it, just as i told brand, and never so clearly before, excepting once, when i was alone. ah, miss gray! don't move! don't stir! but look all round the room and tell me whether you see anything. look at the window. look at the door. lean forward and look behind the screen. i cannot believe we are alone. i will not believe it. i am being deceived in my blindness. and yet--i am not deceived. i am conscious of the presence of the woman i love. her eyes are fixed upon me in pity, sorrow, and compassion. her grief at my woe is so great that it almost enfolds me, as i had dreamed her love would do ... o my god! she is so near--and it is so terrible, because i do not wish her near. i would sooner a thousand miles were between us--and i am certain there are not many yards! ... is it psychic? or is it actual? or am i going mad? ... miss gray! you would not lie to me. no persuasion or bribery or confounded chicanery could induce you to deceive me on this point. look around, for god's sake, and tell me! are we alone? and if not, who is in the room besides you and me?" jane had been sitting with her arms folded upon the table, her yearning eyes fixed upon garth's bowed head. when he wished her a thousand miles away she buried her face upon them. she was so near him that had garth stretched out his right hand again, it would have touched the heavy coils of her soft hair. but garth did not raise his head, and jane still sat with her face buried. there was silence in the library for a few moments after garth's question and appeal. then jane lifted her face. "there is no one in the room, mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary, "but you--and me." chapter xxvii the eyes garth trusted "so you enjoy motoring, miss gray?" they had been out in the motor together for the first time, and were now having tea together in the library, also for the first time; and, for the first time, nurse rosemary was pouring out for her patient. this was only monday afternoon, and already her week-end experience had won for her many new privileges. "yes, i like it, mr. dalmain; particularly in this beautiful air." "have you had a case before in a house where they kept a motor?" nurse rosemary hesitated. "yes, i have stayed in houses where they had motors, and i have been in dr. brand's. he met me at charing cross once with his electric brougham." "ah, i know," said garth. "very neat. on your way to a case, or returning from a case?" nurse rosemary smiled, then bit her lip. "to a case," she replied quite gravely. "i was on my way to his house to talk it over and receive instructions." "it must be splendid working under such a fellow as brand," said garth; "and yet i am certain most of the best things you do are quite your own idea. for instance, he did not suggest your week-end plan, did he? i thought not. ah, the difference it has made! now tell me. when we were motoring we never slowed up suddenly to pass anything, or tooted to make something move out of the way, without your having already told me what we were going to pass or what was in the road a little way ahead. it was: 'we shall be passing a hay cart at the next bend; there will be just room, but we shall have to slow up'; or, 'an old red cow is in the very middle of the road a little way on. i think she will move if we hoot.' then, when the sudden slow down and swerve came, or the toot toot of the horn, i knew all about it and was not taken unawares. did you know how trying it is in blindness to be speeding along and suddenly alter pace without having any idea why, or swerve to one side, and not know what one has just been avoiding? this afternoon our spin was pure pleasure, because not once did you let these things happen. i knew all that was taking place, as soon as i should have known it had i had my sight." jane pressed her hand over her bosom. ah, how able she was always to fill her boy's life with pure pleasure. how little of the needless suffering of the blind should ever be his if she won the right to be beside him always. "well, mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary, "i motored to the station with sir deryck yesterday afternoon, and i noticed all you describe. i have never before felt nervous in a motor, but i realised yesterday how largely that is owing to the fact that all the time one keeps an unconscious look-out; measuring distances, judging speed, and knowing what each turn of the handle means. so when we go out you must let me be eyes to you in this." "how good you are!" said garth, gratefully. "and did you see sir deryck off?" "no. i did not see sir deryck at all. but he said good-bye, and i felt the kind, strong grip of his hand as he left me in the car. and i sat there and heard his train start and rush away into the distance." "was it not hard to you to let him come and go and not to see his face?" jane smiled. "yes, it was hard," said nurse rosemary; "but i wished to experience that hardness." "it gives one an awful blank feeling, doesn't it?" said garth. "yes. it almost makes one wish the friend had not come." "ah--" there was a depth of contented comprehension in garth's sigh; and the brave heart, which had refused to lift the bandage to the very last, felt more than recompensed. "next time i reach the gulf of partings in sightless land," continued garth, "i shall say: 'a dear friend has stood here for my sake.'" "oh, and one's meals," said nurse rosemary laughing. "are they not grotesquely trying?" "yes, of course; i had forgotten you would understand all that now. i never could explain to you before why i must have my meals alone. you know the hunt and chase?" "yes," said nurse rosemary, "and it usually resolves itself into 'gone away,' and turns up afterwards unexpectedly! but, mr. dalmain, i have thought out several ways of helping so much in that and making it all quite easy. if you will consent to have your meals with me at a small table, you will see how smoothly all will work. and later on, if i am still here, when you begin to have visitors, you must let me sit at your left, and all my little ways of helping would be so unobtrusive, that no one would notice." "oh, thanks," said garth. "i am immensely grateful. i have often been reminded of a silly game we used to play at overdene, at dessert, when we were a specially gay party. do you know the old duchess of meldrum? or anyway, you may have heard of her? ah, yes, of course, sir deryck knows her. she called him in once to her macaw. she did not mention the macaw on the telephone, and sir deryck, thinking he was wanted for the duchess, threw up an important engagement and went immediately. luckily she was at her town house. she would have sent just the same had she been at overdene. i wish you knew overdene. the duchess gives perfectly delightful 'best parties,' in which all the people who really enjoy meeting one another find themselves together, and are well fed and well housed and well mounted, and do exactly as they like; while the dear old duchess tramps in and out, with her queer beasts and birds, shedding a kindly and exciting influence wherever she goes. last time i was there she used to let out six egyptian jerboas in the drawing-room every evening after dinner, awfully jolly little beggars, like miniature kangaroos. they used to go skipping about on their hind legs, frightening some of the women into fits by hiding under their gowns, and making young footmen drop trays of coffee cups. the last importation is a toucan,--a south american bird, with a beak like a banana, and a voice like an old sheep in despair. but tommy, the scarlet macaw, remains prime favourite, and i must say he is clever and knows more than you would think." "well, at overdene we used to play a silly game at dessert with muscatels. we each put five raisins at intervals round our plates, then we shut our eyes and made jabs at them with forks. whoever succeeded first in spiking and eating all five was the winner. the duchess never would play. she enjoyed being umpire, and screaming at the people who peeped. miss champion and i--she is the duchess's niece, you know--always played fair, and we nearly always made a dead heat of it." "yes," said nurse rosemary, "i know that game. i thought of it at once when i had my blindfold meals." "ah," cried garth, "had i known, i would not have let you do it!" "i knew that," said nurse rosemary. "that was why i week-ended." garth passed his cup to be refilled, and leaned forward confidentially. "now," he said, "i can venture to tell you one of my minor trials. i am always so awfully afraid of there being a fly in things. ever since i was a small boy i have had such a horror of inadvertently eating flies. when i was about six, i heard a lady visitor say to my mother: 'oh, one has to swallow a fly--about once a year! i have just swallowed mine, on the way here!' this terrible idea of an annual fly took possession of my small mind. i used to be thankful when it happened, and i got it over. i remember quickly finishing a bit of bread in which i had seen signs of legs and wings, feeling it was an easy way of taking it and i should thus be exempt for twelve glad months; but i had to run up and down the terrace with clenched hands while i swallowed it. and when i discovered the fallacy of the annual fly, i was just as particular in my dread of an accidental one. i don't believe i ever sat down to sardines on toast at a restaurant without looking under the toast for my bugbear, though as i lifted it i felt rather like the old woman who always looks under the bed for a burglar. ah, but since the accident this foolishly small thing has made me suffer! i cannot say: 'simpson, are you sure there is not a fly in this soup?' simpson would say: 'no--sir; no fly--sir,' and would cough behind his hand, and i could never ask him again." nurse rosemary leaned forward and placed his cup where he could reach it easily, just touching his right hand with the edge of the saucer. "have all your meals with me," she said, in a tone of such complete understanding, that it was almost a caress; "and i can promise there shall never be any flies in anything. could you not trust my eyes for this?" and garth replied, with a happy, grateful smile: "i could trust your kind and faithful eyes for anything. ah! and that reminds me: i want to intrust to them a task i could confide to no one else. is it twilight yet, miss gray, or is an hour of daylight left to us?" nurse rosemary glanced out of the window and looked at her watch. "we ordered tea early," she said, "because we came in from our drive quite hungry. it is not five o'clock yet, and a radiant afternoon. the sun sets at half-past seven." "then the light is good," said garth. "have you finished tea? the sun will be shining in at the west window of the studio. you know my studio at the top of the house? you fetched the studies of lady brand from there. i dare say you noticed stacks of canvases in the corners. some are unused; some contain mere sketches or studies; some are finished pictures. miss gray, among the latter are two which i am most anxious to identify and to destroy. i made simpson guide me up the other day and leave me there alone. and i tried to find them by touch; but i could not be sure, and i soon grew hopelessly confused amongst all the canvases. i did not wish to ask simpson's help, because the subjects, are--well, somewhat unusual, and if he found out i had destroyed them it might set him wondering and talking, and one hates to awaken curiosity in a servant. i could not fall back on sir deryck because he would have recognised the portraits. the principal figure is known to him. when i painted those pictures i never dreamed of any eye but my own seeing them. so you, my dear and trusted secretary, are the one person to whom i can turn. will you do what i ask? and will you do it now?" nurse rosemary pushed back her chair. "why of course, mr. dalmain. i am here to do anything and everything you may desire; and to do it when you desire it." garth took a key from his waistcoat pocket, and laid it on the table. "there is the studio latch-key. i think the canvases i want are in the corner furthest from the door, behind a yellow japanese screen. they are large--five feet by three and a half. if they are too cumbersome for you to bring down, lay them face to face, and ring for simpson. but do not leave him alone with them." nurse rosemary picked up the key, rose, and went over to the piano, which she opened. then she tightened the purple cord, which guided garth from his chair to the instrument. "sit and play," she said, "while i am upstairs, doing your commission. but just tell me one thing. you know how greatly your work interests me. when i find the pictures, is it your wish that i give them a mere cursory glance, just sufficient for identification; or may i look at them, in the beautiful studio light? you can trust me to do whichever you desire." the artist in garth could not resist the wish to have his work seen and appreciated. "you may look at them of course, if you wish," he sail. "they are quite the best work i ever did, though i painted them wholly from memory. that is--i mean, that used to be--a knack of mine. and they are in no sense imaginary. i painted exactly what i saw--at least, so far as the female face and figure are concerned. and they make the pictures. the others are mere accessories." he stood up, and went to the piano. his fingers began to stray softly amongst the harmonies of the veni. nurse rosemary moved towards the door. "how shall i know them?" she asked, and waited. the chords of the veni hushed to a murmur, garth's voice from the piano came clear and distinct, but blending with the harmonies as if he were reciting to music. "a woman and a man ... alone, in a garden--but the surroundings are only indicated. she is in evening dress; soft, black, and trailing; with lace at her breast. it is called: 'the wife.'" "yes?" "the same woman; the same scene; but without the man, this time. no need to paint the man; for now--visible or invisible--to her, he is always there. in her arms she holds"--the low murmur of chords ceased; there was perfect silence in the room-"a little child. it is called: 'the mother.'" the veni burst forth in an unrestrained upbearing of confident petition: "keep far our foes; give peace at home"--and the door closed behind nurse rosemary. chapter xxviii in the studio jane mounted to the studio; unlocked the door, and, entering, closed it after her. the evening sun shone through a western window, imparting an added richness to the silk screens and hangings; the mauve wistaria of a japanese embroidery; or the golden dragon of china on a deep purple ground, wound up in its own interminable tail, and showing rampant claws in unexpected places. several times already jane had been into garth's studio, but always to fetch something for which he waited eagerly below; and she had never felt free to linger. margery had a duplicate key; for she herself went up every day to open the windows, dust tenderly all special treasures; and keep it exactly as its owner had liked it kept, when his quick eyes could look around it. but this key was always on margery's bunch; and jane did not like to ask admission, and risk a possible refusal. now, however, she could take her own time; and she seated herself in one of the low and very deep wicker lounge-chairs, comfortably upholstered; so exactly fitting her proportions, and supporting arms, knees, and head, just rightly, that it seemed as if all other chairs would in future appear inadequate, owing to the absolute perfection of this one. ah, to be just that to her beloved! to so fully meet his need, at every point, that her presence should be to him always a source of strength, and rest, and consolation. she looked around the room. it was so like garth; every detail perfect; every shade of colour enhancing another, and being enhanced by it. the arrangements for regulating the light, both from roof and windows; the easels of all kinds and sizes; clean bareness, where space, and freedom from dust, were required; the luxurious comfort round the fireplace, and in nooks and corners; all were so perfect. and the plain brown wall-paper, of that beautiful quiet shade which has in it no red, and no yellow; a clear nut-brown. on an easel near the further window stood an unfinished painting; palette and brushes beside it, just as garth had left them when he went out on that morning, nearly three months ago; and, vaulting over a gate to protect a little animal from unnecessary pain, was plunged himself into such utter loss and anguish. jane rose, and took stock of all his quaint treasures on the mantelpiece. especially her mind was held and fascinated by a stout little bear in brass, sitting solidly yet jauntily on its haunches, its front paws clasping a brazen pole; its head turned sideways; its small, beady, eyes, looking straight before it. the chain, from its neck to the pole denoted captivity and possible fierceness. jane had no doubt its head would lift, and its body prove a receptacle for matches; but she felt equally certain that, should she lift its head and look, no matches would be within it. this little bear was unmistakably early victorian; a friend of childhood's days; and would not be put to common uses. she lifted the head. the body was empty. she replaced it gently on the mantelpiece, and realised that she was deliberately postponing an ordeal which must be faced. deryck had told her of garth's pictures of the one woman. garth, himself, had now told her even more. but the time had come when she must see them for herself. it was useless to postpone the moment. she looked towards the yellow screen. then she walked, over to the western window, and threw it wide open. the sun was dipping gently towards the purple hills. the deep blue of the sky began to pale, as a hint of lovely rose crept into it. jane looked heavenward and, thrusting her hands deeply into her pockets, spoke aloud. "before god" she said,--"in case i am never able to say or think it again, i will say it now--i believe i was right. i considered garth's future happiness, and i considered my own. i decided as i did for both our sakes, at terrible cost to present joy. but, before god, i believed i was right; and--i believe it still." jane never said it again. chapter xxix jane looks into love's mirror behind the yellow screen, jane found a great confusion of canvases, and unmistakable evidence of the blind hands which had groped about in a vain search, and then made fruitless endeavours to sort and rearrange. very tenderly, jane picked up each canvas from the fallen heap; turning it the right way up, and standing it with its face to the wall. beautiful work, was there; some of it finished; some, incomplete. one or two faces she knew, looked out at her in their pictured loveliness. but the canvases she sought were not there. she straightened herself, and looked around. in a further corner, partly concealed by a cairo screen, stood another pile. jane went to them. almost immediately she found the two she wanted; larger than the rest, and distinguishable at a glance by the soft black gown of the central figure. without giving them more than a passing look, she carried them over to the western window, and placed them in a good light. then she drew up the chair in which she had been sitting; took the little brass bear in her left hand, as a talisman to help her through what lay before her; turned the second picture with its face to the easel; and sat down to the quiet contemplation of the first. the noble figure of a woman, nobly painted, was the first impression which leapt from eye to brain. yes, nobility came first, in stately pose, in uplifted brow, in breadth of dignity. then--as you marked the grandly massive figure, too well-proportioned to be cumbersome, but large and full, and amply developed; the length of limb; the firmly planted feet; the large capable hands,--you realised the second impression conveyed by the picture, to be strength;--strength to do; strength to be; strength to continue. then you looked into the face. and there you were confronted with a great surprise. the third thought expressed by the picture was love--love, of the highest, holiest, most ideal, kind; yet, withal, of the most tenderly human order; and you found it in that face. it was a large face, well proportioned to the figure. it had no pretensions whatever to ordinary beauty. the features were good; there was not an ugly line about them; and yet, each one just missed the beautiful; and the general effect was of a good-looking plainness; unadorned, unconcealed, and unashamed. but the longer you looked, the more desirable grew the face; the less you noticed its negations; the more you admired its honesty, its purity, its immense strength of purpose; its noble simplicity. you took in all these outward details; you looked away for a moment, to consider them; you looked back to verify them; and then the miracle happened. into the face had stolen the "light that never was on sea or land." it shone from the quiet grey eyes,--as, over the head of the man who knelt before her, they looked out of the picture--with an expression of the sublime surrender of a woman's whole soul to an emotion which, though it sways and masters her, yet gives her the power to be more truly herself than ever before. the startled joy in them; the marvel at a mystery not yet understood; the passionate tenderness; and yet the almost divine compassion for the unrestrained violence of feeling, which had flung the man to his knees, and driven him to the haven of her breast; the yearning to soothe, and give, and content;--all these were blended into a look of such exquisite sweetness, that it brought tears to the eyes of the beholder. the woman was seated on a broad marble parapet. she looked straight before her. her knees came well forward, and the long curve of the train of her black gown filled the foreground on the right. on the left, slightly to one side of her, knelt a man, a tall slight figure in evening dress, his arms thrown forward around her waist; his face completely hidden in the soft lace at her bosom; only the back of his sleek dark head, visible. and yet the whole figure denoted a passion of tense emotion. she had gathered him to her with what you knew must have been an exquisite gesture, combining the utter self-surrender of the woman, with the tender throb of maternal solicitude; and now her hands were clasped behind his head, holding him closely to her. not a word was being spoken. the hidden face was obviously silent; and her firm lips above his dark head were folded in a line of calm self-control; though about them hovered the dawning of a smile of bliss ineffable. a crimson rambler rose climbing some woodwork faintly indicated on the left, and hanging in a glowing mass from the top left-hand corner, supplied the only vivid colour in the picture. but, from taking in these minor details, the eye returned to that calm tender face, alight with love; to those strong capable hands, now learning for the first time to put forth the protective passion of a woman's tenderness; and the mind whispered the only possible name for that picture: the wife. jane gazed at it long, in silence. had garth's little bear been anything less solid than early victorian brass; it must have bent and broken under the strong pressure of those clenched hands. she could not doubt, for a moment, that she looked upon herself; but, oh, merciful heavens! how unlike the reflected self of her own mirror! once or twice as she looked, her mind refused to work, and she simply gazed blankly at the minor details of the picture. but then again, the expression of the grey eyes drew her, recalling so vividly every feeling she had experienced when that dear head had come so unexpectedly to its resting-place upon her bosom. "it is true," she whispered; and again: "yes; it is true. i cannot deny it. it is as i felt; it must be as i looked." and then, suddenly; she fell upon her knees before the picture. "oh, my god! is that as i looked? and the next thing that happened was my boy lifting his shining eyes and gazing at me in the moonlight. is this what he saw? did i look so? and did the woman who looked so; and who, looking so, pressed his head down again upon her breast, refuse next day to marry him, on the grounds of his youth, and her superiority?... oh, garth, garth! ... o god, help him to understand! ... help him to forgive me!" in the work-room just below, maggie the housemaid was singing as she sewed. the sound floated through the open window, each syllable distinct in the clear scotch voice, and reached jane where she knelt. her mind, stunned to blankness by its pain, took eager hold upon the words of maggie's hymn. and they were these. "o love, that will not let me go, i rest my weary soul in thee; i give thee back the life i owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller be." "o light, that followest all my way, i yield my flick'ring torch to thee; my heart restores its borrowed ray, that in thy sunshine's blaze its day may brighter, fairer be." jane took the second picture, and placed it in front of the first. the same woman, seated as before; but the man was not there; and in her arms, its tiny dark head pillowed against the fulness of her breast, lay a little child. the woman did not look over that small head, but bent above it, and gazed into the baby face. the crimson rambler had grown right across the picture, and formed a glowing arch above mother and child. a majesty of tenderness was in the large figure of the mother. the face, as regarded contour and features, was no less plain; but again it was transfigured, by the mother-love thereon depicted. you knew "the wife" had more than fulfilled her abundant promise. the wife was there in fullest realisation; and, added to wifehood, the wonder of motherhood. all mysteries were explained; all joys experienced; and the smile on her calm lips, bespoke ineffable content. a rambler rose had burst above them, and fallen in a shower of crimson petals upon mother and child. the baby-fingers clasped tightly the soft lace at her bosom. a petal had fallen upon the tiny wrist. she had lifted her hand to remove it; and, catching the baby-eyes, so dark and shining, paused for a moment, and smiled. jane, watching them, fell to desperate weeping. the "mere boy" had understood her potential possibilities of motherhood far better than she understood them herself. having had one glimpse of her as "the wife," his mind had leaped on, and seen her as "the mother." and again she was forced to say: "it is true--yes; it is true." and then she recalled the old line of cruel reasoning: "it was not the sort of face one would have wanted to see always in front of one at table." was this the sort of face--this, as garth had painted it, after a supposed year of marriage? would any man weary of it, or wish to turn away his eyes? jane took one more long look. then she dropped the little bear, and buried her face in her hands; while a hot blush crept up to the very roots of her hair, and tingled to her finger-tips. below, the fresh young voice was singing again. "o joy, that seekest me through pain, i cannot close my heart to thee; i trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not vain that morn shall tearless be." after a while jane whispered: "oh, my darling, forgive me. i was altogether wrong. i will confess; and, god helping me, i will explain; and, oh, my darling, you will forgive me?" once more she lifted her head and looked at the picture. a few stray petals of the crimson rambler lay upon the ground; reminding her of those crushed roses, which, falling from her breast, lay scattered on the terrace at shenstone, emblem of the joyous hopes and glory of love which her decision of that night had laid in the dust of disillusion. but crowning this picture, in rich clusters of abundant bloom, grew the rambler rose. and through the open window came the final verse of maggie's hymn. "o cross, that liftest up my head, i dare not ask to fly from thee; i lay in dust life's glory dead, and from the ground there blossoms red life that shall endless be." jane went to the western window, and stood, with her arms stretched above her, looking out upon the radiance of the sunset. the sky blazed into gold and crimson at the horizon; gradually as the eye lifted, paling to primrose, flecked with rosy clouds; and, overhead, deep blue--fathomless, boundless, blue. jane gazed at the golden battlements above the purple hills, and repeated, half aloud: "and the city was of pure gold;--and had no need of the sun, neither of the moon to shine in it: for the glory of god did lighten it. and there shall be no more death; neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." ah, how much had passed away since she stood at that western window, not an hour before. all life seemed readjusted; its outlook altered; its perspective changed. truly garth had "gone behind his blindness." jane raised her eyes to the blue; and a smile of unspeakable anticipation parted her lips. "life, that shall endless be," she murmured. then, turning, found the little bear, and restored him to his place upon the mantelpiece; put back the chair; closed the western window; and, picking up the two canvases, left the studio, and made her way carefully downstairs. chapter xxx "the lady portrayed" "it has taken you long, miss gray. i nearly sent simpson up, to find out what had happened." "i am glad you did not do that, mr. dalmain. simpson would have found me weeping on the studio floor; and to ask his assistance under those circumstances, would have been more humbling than inquiring after the fly in the soup!" garth turned quickly in his chair. the artist-ear had caught the tone which meant comprehension of his work. "weeping!" he said. "why?" "because," answered nurse rosemary, "i have been entranced. these pictures are so exquisite. they stir one's deepest depths. and yet they are so pathetic--ah, so pathetic; because you have made a plain woman, beautiful." garth rose to his feet, and turned upon her a face which would have blazed, had it not been sightless. "a what?" he exclaimed. "a plain woman," repeated nurse rosemary, quietly. "surely you realised your model to be that. and therein lies the wonder of the pictures. you have so beautified her by wifehood, and glorified her by motherhood, that the longer one looks the more one forgets her plainness; seeing her as loving and loved; lovable, and therefore lovely. it is a triumph of art." garth sat down, his hands clasped before him. "it is a triumph of truth," he said. "i painted what i saw." "you painted her soul," said nurse rosemary, "and it illuminated her plain face." "i saw her soul," said garth, almost in a whisper; "and that vision was so radiant that it illumined my dark life. the remembrance lightens my darkness, even now." a very tender silence fell in the library. the twilight deepened. then nurse rosemary spoke, very low. "mr. dalmain, i have a request to make of you. i want to beg you not to destroy these pictures." garth lifted his head. "i must destroy them, child," he said. "i cannot risk their being seen by people who would recognise my--the--the lady portrayed." "at all events, there is one person who must see them, before they are destroyed." "and that is?" queried garth. "the lady portrayed," said nurse rosemary, bravely. "how do you know she has not seen them?" "has she?" inquired nurse rosemary. "no," said garth, shortly; "and she never will." "she must." something in the tone of quiet insistence struck garth. "why?" he asked; and listened with interest for the answer. "because of all it would mean to a woman who knows herself plain, to see herself thus beautified." garth sat very still for a few moments. then: "a woman who--knows--herself--plain?" he repeated, with interrogative amazement in his voice. "yes," proceeded nurse rosemary, encouraged. "do you suppose, for a moment, that that lady's mirror has ever shown her a reflection in any way approaching what you have made her in these pictures? when we stand before our looking-glasses, mr. dalmain, scowling anxiously at hats and bows, and partings, we usually look our very worst; and that lady, at her very worst, would be of a most discouraging plainness." garth sat perfectly silent. "depend upon it," continued nurse rosemary, "she never sees herself as 'the wife'--'the mother.' is she a wife?". garth hesitated only the fraction of a second. "yes," he said, very quietly. jane's hands flew to her breast. her heart must be held down, or he would hear it throbbing. nurse rosemary's voice had in it only a slight tremor, when she spoke again. "is she a mother?" "no," said garth. "i painted what might have been." "if--?" "if it had been," replied garth, curtly. nurse rosemary felt rebuked. "dear mr. dalmain," she said, humbly; "i realise how officious i must seem to you, with all these questions, and suggestions. but you must blame the hold these wonderful paintings of yours have taken on my mind. oh, they are beautiful--beautiful!" "ah," said garth, the keen pleasure of the artist springing up once more. "miss gray, i have somewhat forgotten them. have you them here? that is right. put them up before you, and describe them to me. let me hear how they struck you, as pictures." jane rose, and went to the window. she threw it open; and as she breathed in the fresh air, breathed out a passionate prayer that her nerve, her voice, her self-control might not fail her, in this critical hour. she herself had been convicted by garth's pictures. now she must convince garth, by her description of them. he must be made to believe in the love he had depicted. then nurse rosemary sat down; and, in the gentle, unemotional voice, which was quite her own, described to the eager ears of the blind artist, exactly what jane had seen in the studio. it was perfectly done. it was mercilessly done. all the desperate, hopeless, hunger for jane, awoke in garth; the maddening knowledge that she had been his, and yet not his; that, had he pressed for her answer that evening, it could not have been a refusal; that the cold calculations of later hours, had no place in those moments of ecstasy. yet--he lost her--lost her! why? ah, why? was there any possible reason other than the one she gave? nurse rosemary's quiet voice went on, regardless of his writhings. but she was drawing to a close. "and it is such a beautiful crimson rambler, mr. dalmain," she said. "i like the idea of its being small and in bud, in the first picture; and blooming in full glory, in the second." garth pulled himself together and smiled. he must not give way before this girl. "yes," he said; "i am glad you noticed that. and, look here. we will not destroy them at once. now they are found, there is no hurry. i am afraid i am giving you a lot of trouble; but will you ask for some large sheets of brown paper, and make a package, and write upon it: 'not to be opened,' and tell margery to put them back in the studio. then, when i want them, at any time, i shall have no difficulty in identifying them." "i am so glad," said nurse rosemary. "then perhaps the plain lady--" "i cannot have her spoken of so," said garth, hotly. "i do not know what she thought of herself--i doubt if she ever gave a thought to self at all. i do not know what you would have thought of her. i can only tell you that, to me, hers is the one face which is visible in my darkness. all the loveliness i have painted, all the beauty i have admired, fades from my mental vision, as wreaths of mist; flutters from memory's sight, as autumn leaves. her face alone abides; calm, holy, tender, beautiful,--it is always before me. and it pains me that one who has only seen her as my hand depicted her should speak of her as plain." "forgive me," said nurse rosemary, humbly. "i did not mean to pain you, sir. and, to show you what your pictures have done for me, may i tell you a resolution i made in the studio? i cannot miss what they depict--the sweetest joys of life--for want of the courage to confess myself wrong; pocket my pride; and be frank and humble. i am going to write a full confession to my young man, as to my share of the misunderstanding which has parted us. do you think he will understand? do you think he will forgive?" garth smiled. he tried to call up an image of a pretty troubled face, framed in a fluffy setting of soft fair hair. it harmonised so little with the voice; but it undoubtedly was nurse rosemary gray, as others saw her. "he will be a brute if he doesn't, child," he said. chapter xxxi in lighter vein dinner that evening, the first at their small round table, was a great success. nurse rosemary's plans all worked well; and garth delighted in arrangements which made him feel less helpless. the strain of the afternoon brought its reaction of merriment. a little judicious questioning drew forth further stories of the duchess and her pets; and miss champion's name came in with a frequency which they both enjoyed. it was a curious experience for jane, to hear herself described in garth's vivid word-painting. until that fatal evening at shenstone, she had been remarkably free from self-consciousness; and she had no idea that she had a way of looking straight into people's eyes when she talked to them, and that that was what muddled up "the silly little minds of women who say they are afraid of her, and that she makes them nervous! you see she looks right into their shallow shuffling little souls, full of conceited thoughts about themselves, and nasty ill-natured thoughts about her; and no wonder they grow panic-stricken, and flee; and talk of her as 'that formidable miss champion.' i never found her formidable; but, when i had the chance of a real talk with her, i used to be thankful i had nothing of which to be ashamed. those clear eyes touched bottom every time, as our kindred over the water so expressively put it." neither had jane any idea that she always talked with a poker, if possible; building up the fire while she built up her own argument; or attacking it vigorously, while she demolished her opponent's; that she stirred the fire with her toe, but her very smart boots never seemed any the worse; that when pondering a difficult problem, she usually stood holding her chin in her right hand, until she had found the solution. all these small characteristics garth described with vivid touch, and dwelt upon with a tenacity of remembrance, which astonished jane, and revealed him, in his relation to herself three years before, in a new light. his love for her had been so suddenly disclosed, and had at once had to be considered as a thing to be either accepted or put away; so that when she decided to put it away, it seemed not to have had time to become in any sense part of her life. she had viewed it; realised all it might have meant; and put it from her. but now she understood how different it had been for garth. during the week which preceded his declaration, he had realised, to the full, the meaning of their growing intimacy; and, as his certainty increased, he had more and more woven her into his life; his vivid imagination causing her to appear as his beloved from the first; loved and wanted, when as yet they were merely acquaintances; kindred spirits; friends. to find herself thus shrined in his heart and memory was infinitely touching to jane; and seemed to promise, with sweet certainty, that it would not be difficult to come home there to abide, when once all barriers between them were removed. after dinner, garth sat long at the piano, filling the room with harmony. once or twice the theme of the rosary crept in, and jane listened anxiously for its development; but almost immediately it gave way to something else. it seemed rather to haunt the other melodies, than to be actually there itself. when garth left the piano, and, guided by the purple cord, reached his chair, nurse rosemary said gently "mr. dalmain, can you spare me for a few days at the end of this week?" "oh, why?" said garth. "to go where? and for how long? ah, i know i ought to say: 'certainly! delighted!' after all your goodness to me. but i really cannot! you don't know what life was without you, when you week-ended! that week-end seemed months, even though brand was here. it is your own fault for making yourself so indispensable." nurse rosemary smiled. "i daresay i shall not be away for long," she said. "that is, if you want me, i can return. but, mr. dalmain, i intend to-night to write that letter of which i told you. i shall post it to-morrow. i must follow it up almost immediately. i must be with him when he receives it, or soon afterwards. i think--i hope--he will want me at once. this is monday. may i go on thursday?" poor garth looked blankly dismayed. "do nurses, as a rule, leave their patients, and rush off to their young men in order to find out how they have liked their letters?" he inquired, in mock protest. "not as a rule, sir," replied nurse rosemary, demurely. "but this is an exceptional case." "i shall wire to brand." "he will send you a more efficient and more dependable person." "oh you wicked little thing!" cried garth. "if miss champion were here, she would shake you! you, know perfectly well that nobody could fill your place!" "it is good of you to say so, sir," replied nurse rosemary, meekly. "and is miss champion much addicted to shaking people?" "don't call me 'sir'! yes; when people are tiresome she often says she would like to shake them; and one has a mental vision of how their teeth would chatter. there is a certain little lady of our acquaintance whom we always call 'mrs. do-and-don't.' she isn't in our set; but she calls upon it; and sometimes it asks her to lunch, for fun. if you inquire whether she likes a thing, she says: 'well, i do, and i don't.' if you ask whether she is going to a certain function, she says: 'well, i am, and i'm not.' and if you send her a note, imploring a straight answer to a direct question, the answer comes back: 'yes and no.' miss champion used to say she would like to take her up by the scruff of her feather boa, and shake her, asking at intervals: 'shall i stop?' so as to wring from mrs. do-and-don't a definite affirmative, for once." "could miss champion carry out such a threat? is she a very massive person?" "well, she could, you know; but she wouldn't. she is most awfully kind, even to little freaks she laughs at. no, she isn't massive. that word does not describe her at all. but she is large, and very finely developed. do you know the venus of milo? yes; in the louvre. i am glad you know paris. well, just imagine the venus of milo in a tailor-made coat and skirt,--and you have miss champion." nurse rosemary laughed, hysterically. either the venus of milo, or miss champion, or this combination of both, proved too much for her. "little dicky brand summed up mrs. do-and-don't rather well," pursued garth. "she was calling at wimpole street, on lady brand's 'at home' day. and dicky stood talking to me, in his black velvets and white waistcoat, a miniature edition of sir deryck. he indicated mrs. do-and-don't on a distant lounge, and remarked: 'that lady never knows; she always thinks. i asked her if her little girl might come to my party, and she said: "i think so." now if she had asked me if i was coming to her party, i should have said: "thank you; i am." it is very trying when people only think about important things, such as little girls and parties; because their thinking never amounts to much. it does not so much matter what they think about other things--the weather, for instance; because that all happens, whether they think or not. mummie asked that lady whether it was raining when she got here; and she said: "i think not." i can't imagine why mummie always wants to know what her friends think about the weather. i have heard her ask seven ladies this afternoon whether it is raining. now if father or i wanted to know whether it was raining we should just step over to the window, and look out; and then come back and go do with really interesting conversation. but mummie asks them whether it is raining, or whether they think it has been raining, or is going to rain; and when they have told her, she hurries away and asks somebody else. i asked the thinking lady in the feather thing, whether she knew who the father and mother were, of the young lady whom cain married; and she said: "well, i do; and i don't." i said: "if you do, perhaps you will tell me. and if you don't, perhaps you would like to take my hand, and we will walk over together and ask the bishop--the one with the thin legs, and the gold cross, talking to mummie." but she thought she had to go, quite in a hurry. so i saw her off; and then asked the bishop alone. bishops are most satisfactory kind of people; because they are quite sure about everything; and you feel safe in quoting them to nurse. nurse told marsdon that this one is in "sheep's clothing," because he wears a gold cross. i saw the cross; but i saw no sheep's clothing. i was looking out for the kind of woolly thing our new curate wears on his back in church. should you call that "sheep's clothing"? i asked father, and he said: "no. bunny-skin." and mother seemed as shocked as if father and i had spoken in church, instead of just as we came out. and she said: "it is a b.a. hood." possibly she thinks "baa" is spelled with only one "a." anyway father and i felt it best to let the subject drop.'" nurse rosemary laughed. "how exactly like dicky," she said. "i could hear his grave little voice, and almost see him pull down his small waistcoat!" "why, do you know the little chap?" asked garth. "yes," replied nurse rosemary; "i have stayed with them. talking to dicky is an education; and baby blossom is a sweet romp. here comes simpson. how quickly the evening has flown. then may i be off on thursday?" "i am helpless," said garth. "i cannot say 'no.' but suppose you do not come back?" "then you can wire to dr. brand." "i believe you want to leave me," said garth reproachfully. "i do, and i don't!" laughed nurse rosemary; and fled from his outstretched hands. * * * * * when jane had locked the letter-bag earlier that evening, and handed it to simpson, she had slipped in two letters of her own. one was addressed to georgina, duchess of meldrum portland place the other, to sir deryck brand wimpole street both were marked: urgent. if absent, forward immediately. chapter xxxii an interlude tuesday passed uneventfully, to all outward seeming. there was nothing to indicate to garth that his secretary had sat up writing most of the night; only varying that employment by spending long moments in silent contemplation of his pictures, which had found a temporary place of safety, on their way back to the studio, in a deep cupboard in her room, of which she had the key. if nurse rosemary marked, with a pang of tender compunction, the worn look on garth's face, telling how mental suffering had chased away sleep; she made no comment thereupon. thus tuesday passed, in uneventful monotony. two telegrams had arrived for nurse gray in the course of the morning. the first came while she was reading a times leader aloud to garth. simpson brought it in, saying: "a telegram for you, miss." it was always a source of gratification to simpson afterwards, that, almost from the first, he had been led, by what he called his "unhaided hintuhition," to drop the "nurse," and address jane with the conventional "miss." in time he almost convinced himself that he had also discerned in her "a honourable"; but this, margery graem firmly refused to allow. she herself had had her "doots," and kept them to herself; but all mr. simpson's surmisings had been freely expressed and reiterated in the housekeeper's room; and never a word about any honourable lead passed mr. simpson's lips. therefore mrs. graem berated him for being so ready to "go astray and speak lies." but maggie, the housemaid, had always felt sure mr. simpson knew more than he said. "said more than he knew, you mean," prompted old margery. "no," retorted maggie, "i know what i said; and i said what i meant." "you may have said what you meant, but you did not mean what you knew," insisted margery; "and if anybody says another word on the matter, _i_ shall say grace and dismiss the table," continued old margery, exercising the cloture, by virtue of her authority, in a way which simpson and maggie, who both wished for cheese, afterwards described as "mean." but this was long after the uneventful tuesday, when simpson entered, with a salver; and, finding jane enveloped in the times, said: "a telegram for you, miss." nurse rosemary took it; apologised for the interruption, and opened it. it was from the duchess, and ran thus: most inconvenient, as you very well know; but am leaving euston to-night. will await further orders at aberdeen. nurse rosemary smiled, and put the telegram into her pocket. "no answer, thank you, simpson." "not bad news, i hope?" asked garth. "no," replied nurse rosemary; "but it makes my departure on thursday imperative. it is from an old aunt of mine, who is going to my 'young man's' home. i must be with him before she is, or there will be endless complications." "i don't believe he will ever let you go again, when once he gets you back," remarked garth, moodily. "you think not?" said nurse rosemary, with a tender little smile, as she took up the paper, and resumed her reading. the second telegram arrived after luncheon. garth was at the piano, thundering beethoven's funeral march on the death of a hero. the room was being rent asunder by mighty chords; and simpson's smug face and side-whiskers appearing noiselessly in the doorway, were an insupportable anticlimax. nurse rosemary laid her finger on her lips; advanced with her firm noiseless tread, and took the telegram. she returned to her seat and waited until the hero's obsequies were over, and the last roll of the drums had died away. then she opened the orange envelope. and as she opened it, a strange thing happened. garth began to play the rosary. the string of pearls dropped in liquid sound from his fingers; and nurse rosemary read her telegram. it was from the doctor, and said: special license easily obtained. flower and i will come whenever you wish. wire again. the rosary drew to a soft melancholy close. "what shall i play next?" asked garth, suddenly. "veni, creator spiritus," said nurse rosemary; and bowed her head in prayer. chapter xxxiii "something is going to happen!" wednesday dawned; an ideal first of may: garth was in the garden before breakfast. jane heard him singing, as he passed beneath her window. "it is not mine to sing the stately grace, the great soul beaming in my lady's face." she leaned out. he was walking below in the freshest of white flannels; his step so light and elastic; his every movement so lithe and graceful; the only sign of his blindness the malacca cane he held in his hand, with which he occasionally touched the grass border, or the wall of the house. she could only see the top of his dark head. it might have been on the terrace at shenstone, three years before. she longed to call from the window; "darling--my darling! good morning! god bless you to-day." ah what would to-day bring forth;--the day when her full confession, and explanation, and plea for pardon, would reach him? he was such a boy in many ways; so light-hearted, loving, artistic, poetic, irrepressible; ever young, in spite of his great affliction. but where his manhood was concerned; his love; his right of choice and of decision; of maintaining a fairly-formed opinion, and setting aside the less competent judgment of others; she knew him rigid, inflexible. his very pain seemed to cool him, from the molten lover, to the bar of steel. as jane knelt at her window that morning, she had not the least idea whether the evening would find her travelling to aberdeen, to take the night mail south; or at home forever in the heaven of garth's love. and down below he passed again, still singing: "but mine it is to follow in her train; do her behests in pleasure or in pain; burn at her altar love's sweet frankincense, and worship her in distant reverence." "ah, beloved!" whispered jane, "not 'distant.' if you want her, and call her, it will be to the closest closeness love can devise. no more distance between you and me." and then, in the curious way in which inspired words will sometimes occur to the mind quite apart from their inspired context, and bearing a totally different meaning from that which they primarily bear, these words came to jane: "for he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us ... that he might reconcile both ... by the cross." "ah, dear christ!" she whispered. "if thy cross could do this for jew and gentile, may not my boy's heavy cross, so bravely borne, do it for him and for me? so shall we come at last, indeed, to 'kiss the cross.'" the breakfast gong boomed through the house. simpson loved gongs. he considered them "haristocratic." he always gave full measure. nurse rosemary went down to breakfast. garth came in, through the french window, humming "the thousand beauties that i know so well." he was in his gayest, most inconsequent mood. he had picked a golden rosebud in the conservatory and wore it in his buttonhole. he carried a yellow rose in his hand. "good day, miss rosemary," he said. "what a may day! simpson and i were up with the lark; weren't we, simpson? poor simpson felt like a sort of 'queen of the may,' when my electric bell trilled in his room, at a.m. but i couldn't stay in bed. i woke with my something-is-going-to-happen feeling; and when i was a little chap and woke with that, margery used to say: 'get up quickly then, master garth, and it will happen all the sooner.' you ask her if she didn't, simpson. miss gray, did you ever learn: 'if you're waking call me early, call me early, mother dear'? i always hated that young woman! i should think, in her excited state, she would have been waking long before her poor mother, who must have been worn to a perfect rag, making all the hussy's may queen-clothes, overnight." simpson had waited to guide him to his place at the table. then he removed the covers, and left the room. as soon as he had closed the door behind him, garth leaned forward, and with unerring accuracy laid the opening rose upon nurse rosemary's plate. "roses for rosemary," he said. "wear it, if you are sure the young man would not object. i have been thinking about him and the aunt. i wish you could ask them both here, instead of going away on thursday. we would have the 'maddest, merriest time!' i would play with the aunt, while you had it out with the young man. and i could easily keep the aunt away from nooks and corners, because my hearing is sharper than any aunt's eyes could be, and if you gave a gentle cough, i would promptly clutch hold of auntie, and insist upon being guided in the opposite direction. and i would take her out in the motor; and you and the young man could have the gig. and then when all was satisfactorily settled, we could pack them off home, and be by ourselves again. ah, miss gray, do send for them, instead of leaving me on thursday." "mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary, reprovingly, as she leaned forward and touched his right hand with the rim of his saucer, "this may-day morning has gone to your head. i shall send for margery. she may have known the symptoms, of old." "it is not that," said garth. he leaned forward and spoke confidentially. "something is going to happen to-day, little rosemary. whenever i feel like this, something happens. the first time it occurred, about twenty-five years ago, there was a rocking-horse in the hall, when i ran downstairs! i have never forgotten my first ride on that rocking-horse. the fearful joy when he went backward; the awful plunge when he went forward; and the proud moment when it was possible to cease clinging to the leather pommel. i nearly killed the cousin who pulled out his tail. i thrashed him, then and there, with the tail; which was such a silly thing to do; because, though it damaged the cousin, it also spoiled the tail. the next time--ah, but i am boring you!" "not at all," said nurse rosemary, politely; "but i want you to have some breakfast; and the letters will be here in a few minutes." he looked so brown and radiant, this dear delightful boy, with his gold-brown tie, and yellow rose. she was conscious of her pallor, and oppressive earnestness, as she said: "the letters will be here." "oh, bother the letters!" cried garth. "let's have a holiday from letters on may day! you shall be queen of the may; and margery shall be the old mother. i will be robin, with the breaking heart, leaning on the bridge beneath the hazel tree; and simpson can be the 'bolder lad.' and we will all go and 'gather knots of flowers, and buds, and garlands gay.'" "mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary, laughing, in spite of herself, "you really must be sensible, or i shall go and consult margery. i have never seen you in such a mood." "you have never seen me, on a day when something was going to happen," said garth; and nurse rosemary made no further attempt to repress him. after breakfast, he went to the piano, and played two-steps, and rag-time music, so infectiously, that simpson literally tripped as he cleared the table; and nurse rosemary, sitting pale and preoccupied, with a pile of letters before her, had hard work to keep her feet still. simpson had two-stepped to the door with the cloth, and closed it after him. nurse rosemary's remarks about the post-bag, and the letters, had remained unanswered. "shine little glowworm glimmer" was pealing gaily through the room, like silver bells,--when the door opened, and old margery appeared, in a black satin apron, and a blue print sunbonnet. she came straight to the piano, and laid her hand gently on garth's arm. "master garthie," she said, "on this lovely may morning, will you take old margery up into the woods?" garth's hands dropped from the keys. "of course i will, margie," he said. "and, i say margie, something is going to happen." "i know it, laddie," said the old woman, tenderly; and the expression with which she looked into the blind face filled jane's eyes with tears. "i woke with it too, master garthie; and now we will go into the woods, and listen to the earth, and trees, and flowers, and they will tell us whether it is for joy, or for sorrow. come, my own laddie." garth rose, as in a dream. even in his blindness he looked so young, and so beautiful, that jane's watching heart stood still. at the window he paused. "where is that secretary person?" he said, vaguely. "she kept trying to shut me up." "i know she did, laddie," said old margery, curtseying apologetically towards jane. "you see she does not know the 'something-is-going-to-happen-to-day' awakening." "ah, doesn't she?" thought jane, as they disappeared through the window. "but as my garth has gone off his dear head, and been taken away by his nurse, the thing that is going to happen, can't happen just yet." and jane sat down to the piano, and very softly ran through the accompaniment of the rosary. then,--after shading her eyes on the terrace, and making sure that a tall white figure leaning on a short dark one, had almost reached the top of the hill,--still more softly, she sang it. afterwards she went for a tramp on the moors, and steadied her nerve by the rapid swing of her walk, and the deep inbreathing of that glorious air. once or twice she took a telegram from her pocket, stood still and read it; then tramped on, to the wonder of the words: "special license easily obtained." ah, the license might be easy to obtain; but how about his forgiveness? that must be obtained first. if there were only this darling boy to deal with, in his white flannels and yellow roses, with a may-day madness in his veins, the license might come at once; and all he could wish should happen without delay. but this is a passing phase of garth. what she has to deal with is the white-faced man, who calmly said: "i accept the cross," and walked down the village church leaving her--for all these years. loving her, as he loved her; and yet leaving her,--without word or sign, for three long years. to hire, was the confession; his would be the decision; and, somehow, it did not surprise her, when she came down to luncheon, a little late, to find him seated at the table. "miss gray," he said gravely, as he heard her enter, "i must apologise for my behaviour this morning. i was what they call up here 'fey.' margery understands the mood; and together she and i have listened to kind mother earth, laying our hands on her sympathetic softness, and she has told us her secrets. then i lay down under the fir trees and slept; and awakened calm and sane, and ready for what to-day must bring. for it will bring something. that is no delusion. it is a day of great things. that much, margery knows, too." "perhaps," suggested nurse rosemary, tentatively, "there may be news of interest in your letters." "ah," said garth, "i forgot. we have not even opened this morning's letters. let us take time for them immediately after lunch. are there many?" "quite a pile," said nurse rosemary. "good. we will work soberly through them." half an hour later garth was seated in his chair, calm and expectant; his face turned towards his secretary. he had handled his letters, and amongst them he had found one sealed; and the seal was a plumed helmet, with visor closed. nurse rosemary saw him pale, as his fingers touched it. he made no remark; but, as before, slipped it beneath the rest, that it might come up for reading, last of all. when the others were finished, and nurse rosemary took up this letter, the room was very still. they were quite alone. bees hummed in the garden. the scent of flowers stole in at the window. but no one disturbed their solitude. nurse rosemary took up the envelope. "mr. dalmain, here is a letter, sealed with scarlet wax. the seal is a helmet with visor--" "i know," said garth. "you need not describe it further. kindly open it." nurse rosemary opened it. "it is a very long letter, mr. dalmain." "indeed? will you please read it to me, miss gray." a tense moment of silence followed. nurse rosemary lifted the letter; but her voice suddenly refused to respond to her will. garth waited without further word. then nurse rosemary said: "indeed, sir, it seems a most private letter. i find it difficult to read it to you." garth heard the distress in her voice, and turned to her kindly. "never mind, my dear child. it in no way concerns you. it is a private letter to me; but my only means of hearing it is through your eyes, and from your lips. besides, the lady, whose seal is a plumed helmet, can have nothing of a very private nature to say to me." "ah, but she has," said nurse rosemary, brokenly. garth considered this in silence. then: "turn over the page," he said, "and tell me the signature." "there are many pages," said nurse rosemary. "turn over the pages then," said garth, sternly. "do not keep me waiting. how is that letter signed?" "your wife," whispered nurse rosemary. there was a petrifying quality about the silence which followed. it seemed as if those two words, whispered into garth's darkness, had turned him to stone. at last he stretched out his hand. "will you give me that letter, if you please, miss gray? thank you. i wish to be alone for a quarter of an hour. i shall be glad if you will be good enough to sit in the dining-room, and stop any one from coming into this room. i must be undisturbed. at the end of that time kindly return." he spoke so quietly that jane's heart sank within her. some display of agitation would have been reassuring. this was the man who, bowing his dark head towards the crucifixion window, said: "i accept the cross." this was the man, whose footsteps never once faltered as he strode down the aisle, and left her. this was the man, who had had the strength, ever since, to treat that episode between her and himself, as completely closed; no word of entreaty; no sign of remembrance; no hint of reproach. and this was the man to whom she had signed herself: "your wife." in her whole life, jane had never known fear. she knew it now. as she silently rose and left him, she stole one look at his face. he was sitting perfectly still; the letter in his hand. he had not turned his head toward her as he took it. his profile might have been a beautiful carving in white ivory. there was not the faintest tinge of colour in his face; just that ivory pallor, against the ebony lines of his straight brows, and smooth dark hair. jane softly left the room, closing the door behind her. then followed the longest fifteen minutes she had ever known. she realised what a tremendous conflict was in progress in that quiet room. garth was arriving at his decision without having heard any of her arguments. by the strange fatality of his own insistence, he had heard only two words of her letter, and those the crucial words; the two words to which the whole letter carefully led up. they must have revealed to him instantly, what the character of the letter would be; and what was the attitude of mind towards himself, of the woman who wrote them. jane paced the dining-room in desperation, remembering the hours of thought which had gone to the compiling of sentences, cautiously preparing his mind to the revelation of the signature. suddenly, in the midst of her mental perturbation, there came to her the remembrance of a conversation between nurse rosemary and garth over the pictures. the former had said: "is she a wife?" and garth had answered: "yes." jane had instantly understood what that answer revealed and implied. because garth had so felt her his during those wonderful moments on the terrace at shenstone, that he could look up into her face and say, "my wife"--not as an interrogation, but as an absolute statement of fact,--he still held her this, as indissolubly as if priest, and book, and ring, had gone to the wedding of their union. to him, the union of souls came before all else; and if that had taken place, all that might follow was but the outward indorsement of an accomplished fact. owing to her fear, mistrust, and deception, nothing had followed. their lives had been sundered; they had gone different ways. he regarded himself as being no more to her than any other man of her acquaintance. during these years he had believed, that her part in that evening's wedding of souls had existed in his imagination, only; and had no binding effect upon her. but his remained. because those words were true to him then, he had said them; and, because he had said them, he would consider her his wife, through life,--and after. it was the intuitive understanding of this, which had emboldened jane so to sign her letter. but how would he reconcile that signature with the view of her conduct which he had all along taken, without ever having the slightest conception that there could be any other? then jane remembered, with comfort, the irresistible appeal made by truth to the soul of the artist; truth of line; truth of colour; truth of values; and, in the realm of sound, truth of tone, of harmony, of rendering, of conception. and when nurse rosemary had said of his painting of "the wife": "it is a triumph of art"; garth had replied: "it is a triumph of truth." and jane's own verdict on the look he had seen and depicted was: "it is true--yes, it is true!" will he not realise now the truth of that signature; and, if he realises it, will he not be glad in his loneliness, that his wife should come to him; unless the confessions and admissions of the letter cause him to put her away as wholly unworthy? suddenly jane understood the immense advantage of the fact that he would hear every word of the rest of her letter, knowing the conclusion, which she herself could not possibly have put first. she saw a higher hand in this arrangement; and said, as she watched the minutes slowly pass: "he hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us"; and a sense of calm assurance descended, and garrisoned her soul with peace. the quarter of an hour was over. jane crossed the hall with firm, though noiseless, step; stood a moment on the threshold relegating herself completely to the background; then opened the door; and nurse rosemary re-entered the library. chapter xxxiv "love never faileth" garth was standing at the open window, when nurse rosemary re-entered the library; and he did not turn, immediately. she looked anxiously for the letter, and saw it laid ready on her side of the table. it bore signs of having been much crumpled; looking almost as a letter might appear which had been crushed into a ball, flung into the waste-paper basket, and afterwards retrieved. it had, however, been carefully smoothed out; and lay ready to her hand. when garth turned from the window and passed to his chair, his face bore the signs of a great struggle. he looked as one who, sightless, has yet been making frantic efforts to see. the ivory pallor was gone. his face was flushed; and his thick hair, which grew in beautiful curves low upon his forehead and temples, and was usually carefully brushed back in short-cropped neatness, was now ruffled and disordered. but his voice was completely under control, as he turned towards his secretary. "my dear miss gray," he said, "we have a difficult task before us. i have received a letter, which it is essential i should hear. i am obliged to ask you to read it to me, because there is absolutely no one else to whom i can prefer such a request. i cannot but know that it will be a difficult and painful task for you, feeling yourself an intermediary between two wounded and sundered hearts. may i make it easier, my dear little girl, by assuring you that i know of no one in this world from whose lips i could listen to the contents of that letter with less pain; and, failing my own, there are no eyes beneath which i could less grudgingly let it pass, there is no mind i could so unquestioningly trust, to judge kindly, both of myself and of the writer; and to forget faithfully, all which was not intended to come within the knowledge of a third person." "thank you, mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary. garth leaned back in his chair, shielding his face with his hand. "now, if you please," he said. and, very clearly and quietly, nurse rosemary began to read. "dear garth, as you will not let me come to you, so that i could say, between you and me alone, that which must be said, i am compelled to write it. it is your own fault, dal; and we both pay the penalty. for how can i write to you freely when i know, that as you listen, it will seem to you of every word i am writing, that i am dragging a third person into that which ought to be, most sacredly, between you and me alone. and yet, i must write freely; and i must make you fully understand; because the whole of your future life and mine will depend upon your reply to this letter. i must write as if you were able to hold the letter in your own hands, and read it to yourself. therefore, if you cannot completely trust your secretary, with the private history of your heart and mine, bid her give it you back without turning this first page; and let me come myself, garth, and tell you all the rest." "that is the bottom of the page," said nurse rosemary; and waited. garth did not remove his hand. "i do completely trust; and she must not come," he said. nurse rosemary turned the page, and went on reading. "i want you to remember, garth, that every word i write, is the simple unvarnished truth. if you look back over your remembrance of me, you will admit that i am not naturally an untruthful person, nor did i ever take easily to prevarication. but, garth, i told you one lie; and that fatal exception proves the rule of perfect truthfulness, which has always otherwise held, between you and me; and, please god, always will hold. the confession herein contained, concerns that one lie; and i need not ask you to realise how humbling it is to my pride to have to force the hearing of a confession upon the man who has already refused to admit me to a visit of friendship. you will remember that i am not naturally humble; and have a considerable amount of proper pride; and, perhaps, by the greatness of the effort i have had to make, you will be able to gauge the greatness of my love. god help you to do so--my darling; my beloved; my poor desolate boy!" nurse rosemary stopped abruptly; for, at this sudden mention of love, and at these words of unexpected tenderness from jane, garth had risen to his feet, and taken two steps towards the window; as if to escape from something too immense to be faced. but, in a moment he recovered himself, and sat down again, completely hiding his face with his hand. nurse rosemary resumed the reading of the letter. "ah, what a wrong i have done, both to you, and to myself! dear, you remember the evening on the terrace at shenstone, when you asked me to be--when you called me--when i was--your wife? garth, i leave this last sentence as it stands, with its two attempts to reach the truth. i will not cross them out, but leave them to be read to you; for, you see garth, i finally arrived! i was your wife. i did not understand it then. i was intensely surprised; unbelievably inexperienced in matters of feeling; and bewildered by the flood of sensation which swept me off my feet and almost engulfed me. but even then i knew that my soul arose and proclaimed you mate and master. and when you held me, and your dear head lay upon my heart, i knew, for the first time the meaning of the word ecstasy; and i could have asked no kinder gift of heaven, than to prolong those moments into hours." nurse rosemary's quiet voice broke, suddenly; and the reading ceased. garth was leaning forward, his head buried in his hands. a dry sob rose in his throat, just at the very moment when nurse rosemary's voice gave way. garth recovered first. without lifting his head, with a gesture of protective affection and sympathy, he stretched his hand across the table. "poor little girl," he said, "i am so sorry. it is rough on you. if only it had come when brand was here! i am afraid you must go on; but try to read without realising. leave the realising to me." and nurse rosemary read on. "when you lifted your head in the moonlight and gazed long and earnestly at me--ah, those dear eyes!--your look suddenly made me self-conscious. there swept over me a sense of my own exceeding plainness, and of how little there was in what those dear eyes saw, to provide reason, for that adoring look. overwhelmed with a shy shame i pressed your head back to the place where the eyes would be hidden; and i realise now what a different construction you must have put upon that action. garth, i assure you, that when you lifted your head the second time, and said, 'my wife,' it was the first suggestion to my mind that this wonderful thing which was happening meant--marriage. i know it must seem almost incredible, and more like a child of eighteen, than a woman of thirty. but you must remember, all my dealings with men up to that hour had been handshakes, heartiest comradeship, and an occasional clap on the shoulder given and received. and don't forget, dear king of my heart, that, until one short week before, you had been amongst the boys who called me 'good old jane,' and addressed me in intimate conversation as 'my dear fellow'! don't forget that i had always looked upon you as years younger than myself; and though a strangely sweet tie had grown up between us, since the evening of the concert at overdene, i had never realised it as love. well--you will remember how i asked for twelve hours to consider my answer; and you yielded, immediately; (you were so perfect, all the time, garth) and left me, when i asked to be alone; left me, with a gesture i have never forgotten. it was a revelation of the way in which the love of a man such as you exalts the woman upon whom it is outpoured. the hem of that gown has been a sacred thing to me, ever since. it is always with me, though i never wear it.--a detailed account of the hours which followed, i shall hope to give you some day, my dearest. i cannot write it. let me hurl on to paper, in all its crude ugliness, the miserable fact which parted us; turning our dawning joy to disillusion and sadness. garth--it was this. i did not believe your love would stand the test of my plainness. i knew what a worshipper of beauty you were; how you must have it, in one form or another, always around you. i got out my diary in which i had recorded verbatim our conversation about the ugly preacher, whose face became illumined into beauty, by the inspired glory within. and you added that you never thought him ugly again; but he would always be plain. and you said it was not the sort of face one would want to have always before one at meals; but that you were not called upon to undergo that discipline, which would be sheer martyrdom to you." "i was so interested, at the time; and so amused at the unconscious way in which you stood and explained this, to quite the plainest woman of your acquaintance, that i recorded it very fully in my journal.--alas! on that important night, i read the words, over and over, until they took morbid hold upon my brain. then--such is the self-consciousness awakened in a woman by the fact that she is loved and sought--i turned on all the lights around my mirror, and critically and carefully examined the face you would have to see every day behind your coffee-pot at breakfast, for years and years, if i said 'yes,' on the morrow. darling, i did not see myself through your eyes, as, thank god, i have done since. and i did not trust your love to stand the test. it seemed to me, i was saving both of us from future disappointment and misery, by bravely putting away present joy, in order to avoid certain disenchantment. my beloved, it will seem to you so coolly calculating, and so mean; so unworthy of the great love you were even then lavishing upon me. but remember, for years, your remarkable personal grace and beauty had been a source of pleasure to me; and i had pictured you wedded to pauline lister, for instance, in her dazzling whiteness, and soft radiant youth. so my morbid self-consciousness said: 'what! this young apollo, tied to my ponderous plainness; growing handsomer every year, while i grow older and plainer?' ah, darling! it sounds so unworthy, now we know what our love is. but it sounded sensible and right that night; and at last, with a bosom that ached, and arms that hung heavy at the thought of being emptied of all that joy, i made up my mind to say 'no.' ah, believe me, i had no idea what it already meant to you. i thought you would pass on at once to another fancy; and transfer your love to one more able to meet your needs, at every point. honestly, garth, i thought i should be the only one left desolate.--then came the question: how to refuse you. i knew if i gave the true reason, you would argue it away, and prove me wrong, with glowing words, before which i should perforce yield. so--as i really meant not to let you run the risk, and not to run it myself--i lied to you, my beloved. to you, whom my whole being acclaimed king of my heart, master of my will; supreme to me, in love and life,--to you i said: 'i cannot marry a mere boy.' ah, darling! i do not excuse it. i do not defend it. i merely confess it; trusting to your generosity to admit, that no other answer would have sent you away. ah, your poor jane, left desolate! if you could have seen her in the little church, calling you back; retracting and promising; listening for your returning footsteps, in an agony of longing. but my garth is not made of the stuff which stands waiting on the door-mat of a woman's indecision." "the lonely year which followed so broke my nerve, that deryck brand told me i was going all to pieces, and ordered me abroad. i went, as you know; and in other, and more vigorous, surroundings, there came to me a saner view of life. in egypt last march, on the summit of the great pyramid, i made up my mind that i could live without you no longer. i did not see myself wrong; but i yearned so for your love, and to pour mine upon you, my beloved, that i concluded it was worth the risk. i made up my mind to take the next boat home, and send for you. then--oh, my own boy--i heard. i wrote to you; and you would not let me come." "now i know perfectly well, that you might say: 'she did not trust me when i had my sight. now that i cannot see, she is no longer afraid.' garth, you might, say that; but it would not be true. i have had ample proof lately that i was wrong, and ought to have trusted you all through. what it is, i will tell you later. all i can say now is: that, if your dear shining eyes could see, they would see, now, a woman who is, trustfully and unquestioningly, all your own. if she is doubtful of her face and figure, she says quite simply: 'they pleased him; and they are just his. i have no further right to criticise them. if he wants them, they are not mine, but his.' darling, i cannot tell you now, how i have arrived at this assurance. but i have had proofs beyond words of your faithfulness and love." "the question, therefore, simply resolves itself into this: can you forgive me? if you can forgive me, i can come to you at once. if this thing is past forgiveness, i must make up my mind to stay away. but, oh, my own dear,--the bosom on which once you laid your head waits for you with the longing ache of lonely years. if you need it, do not thrust it from you." "write me one word by your own hand: 'forgiven.' it is all i ask. when it reaches me, i will come to you at once. do not dictate a letter to your secretary. i could not bear it. just write--if you can truly write it--'forgiven'; and send it to 'your wife.'" the room was very still, as nurse rosemary finished reading; and, laying down the letter, silently waited. she wondered for a moment whether she could get herself a glass of water, without disturbing him; but decided to do without it. at last garth lifted his head. "she has asked me to do a thing impossible," he said; and a slow smile illumined his drawn face. jane clasped her hands upon her breast. "can you not write 'forgiven'?" asked nurse rosemary, brokenly. "no," said garth. "i cannot. little girl, give me a sheet of paper, and a pencil." nurse rosemary placed them close to his hand. garth took up the pencil. he groped for the paper; felt the edges with his left hand; found the centre with his fingers; and, in large firm letters, wrote one word. "is that legible?" he asked, passing it across to nurse rosemary. "quite legible," she said; for she answered before it was blotted by her tears. instead of "forgiven," garth had written: "loved." "can you post it at once?" garth asked, in a low, eager voice. "and she will come--oh, my god, she will come! if we catch to-night's mail, she may be here the day after to-morrow!" nurse rosemary took up the letter; and, by an almost superhuman effort, spoke steadily. "mr. dalmain," she said; "there is a postscript to this letter. it says: 'write to the palace hotel, aberdeen.'" garth sprang up, his whole face and figure alive with excitement. "in aberdeen?" he cried. "jane, in aberdeen! oh, my god! if she gets this paper to-morrow morning, she may be here any time in the day. jane! jane! dear little rosemary, do you hear? jane will come to-morrow! didn't i tell you something was going to happen? you and simpson were too british to understand; but margery knew; and the woods told us it was joy coming through pain. could that be posted at once, miss gray?" the may-day mood was upon him again. his face shone. his figure was electric with expectation. nurse rosemary sat at the table watching him; her chin in her hands. a tender smile dawned on her lips, out of keeping with her supposed face and figure; so full was it of the glorious expectation of a mature and perfect love. "i will go to the post-office myself, mr. dalmain," she said. "i shall be glad of the walk; and i can be back by tea-time." at the post-office she did not post the word in garth's handwriting. that lay hidden in her bosom. but she sent off two telegrams. the first to the duchess of meldyum, palace hotel, aberdeen. "come here by . train without fail this evening." the second to sir deryck brand, wimpole sheet, london. "all is right." chapter xxxv nurse rosemary has her reward "mr. dalmain," said nurse rosemary, with patient insistence, "i really do want you to sit down, and give your mind to the tea-table. how can you remember where each thing is placed, if you keep jumping up, and moving your chair into different positions? and last time you pounded the table to attract my attention, which was already anxiously fixed upon you, you nearly knocked over your own tea, and sent floods of mine into the saucer. if you cannot behave better, i shall ask margery for a pinafore, and sit you up on a high chair!" garth stretched his legs in front of him, and his arms over his head; and lay back in his chair, laughing joyously. "then i should have to say: 'please, nurse, may i get down?' what a cheeky little thing you are becoming! and you used to be quite oppressively polite. i suppose you would answer: 'if you say your grace nicely, master garth, you may.' do you know the story of 'tommy, you should say your grace'?" "you have told it to me twice in the last forty-eight hours," said nurse rosemary, patiently. "oh, what a pity! i felt so like telling it now. if you had really been the sort of sympathetic person sir deryck described, you would have said: 'no; and i should so love to hear it!'" "no; and i should so love to hear it!" said nurse rosemary. "too late! that sort of thing, to have any value should be spontaneous. it need not be true; but it must be spontaneous. but, talking of a high chair,--when you say those chaffy things in a voice like jane's, and just as jane would have said them--oh, my wig!--do you know, that is the duchess's only original little swear. all the rest are quotations. and when she says: 'my wig!' we all try not to look at it. it is usually slightly awry. the toucan tweaks it. he is so very loving, dear bird!" "now hand me the buttered toast," said nurse rosemary; "and don't tell me any more naughty stories about the duchess. no! that is the thin bread-and-butter. i told you you would lose your bearings. the toast is in a warm plate on your right. now let us make believe i am miss champion, and hand it to me, as nicely as you will be handing it to her, this time to-morrow." "it is easy to make believe you are jane, with that voice," said garth; "and yet--i don't know. i have never really associated you with her. one little sentence of old rob's made all the difference to me. he said you had fluffy floss-silk sort of hair. no one could ever imagine jane with fluffy floss-silk sort of hair! and i believe that one sentence saved the situation. otherwise, your voice would have driven me mad, those first days. as it was, i used to wonder sometimes if i could possibly bear it. you understand why, now; don't you? and yet, in a way, it is not like hers. hers is deeper; and she often speaks with a delicious kind of drawl, and uses heaps of slang; and you are such a very proper little person; and possess what the primers call 'perfectly correct diction.' what fun it would be to hear you and jane talk together! and yet--i don't know. i should be on thorns, all the time." "why?" "i should be so awfully afraid lest you should not like one another. you see, you have really, in a way, been more to me than any one else in the world; and she--well, she is my world," said garth, simply. "and i should be so afraid lest she should not fully appreciate you; and you should not quite understand her. she has a sort of way of standing and looking people up and down, and, women hate it; especially pretty fluffy little women. they feel she spots all the things that come off." "nothing of mine comes off," murmured nurse rosemary, "excepting my patient, when he will not stay on his chair." "once," continued garth, with the gleeful enjoyment in his voice which always presaged a story in which jane figured, "there was a fearfully silly little woman staying at overdene, when a lot of us were there. we never could make out why she was included in one of the duchess's 'best parties,' except that the dear duchess vastly enjoyed taking her off, and telling stories about her; and we could not appreciate the cleverness of the impersonation, unless we had seen the original. she was rather pretty, in a fussy, curling-tongs, wax-doll sort of way; but she never could let her appearance alone, or allow people to forget it. almost every sentence she spoke, drew attention to it. we got very sick of it, and asked jane to make her shut up. but jane said: 'it doesn't hurt you, boys; and it pleases her. let her be.' jane was always extra nice to people, if she suspected they were asked down in order to make sport for the duchess afterwards. jane hated that sort of thing. she couldn't say much to her aunt; but we had to be very careful how we egged the duchess on, if jane was within hearing. well--one evening, after tea, a little group of us were waiting around the fire in the lower hall, to talk to jane. it was christmas time. the logs looked so jolly on the hearth. the red velvet curtains were drawn right across, covering the terrace door and the windows on either side. tommy sat on his perch, in the centre of the group, keeping a keen lookout for cigarette ends. outside, the world was deep in snow; and that wonderful silence reigned; making the talk and laughter within all the more gay by contrast--you know, that penetrating silence; when trees, and fields, and paths, are covered a foot thick in soft sparkling whiteness. i always look forward, just as eagerly, each winter to the first sight--ah, i forgot! ... fancy never seeing snow again! ... never mind. it is something to remember having seen it; and i shall hear the wonderful snow-silence more clearly than ever. perhaps before other people pull up the blinds, i shall be able to say: 'there's been a fall of snow in the night.' what was i telling you? yes, i remember. about little mrs. fussy. well--all the women had gone up to dress for dinner; excepting jane, who never needed more than half an hour; and fussy, who was being sprightly, in a laboured way; and fancied herself the centre of attraction which kept us congregated in the hall. as a matter of fact, we were waiting to tell jane some private news we had just heard about a young chap in the guards, who was in fearful hot water for ragging. his colonel was an old friend of jane's, and we thought she could put in a word, and improve matters for billy. so mrs. fussy was very much de trop, and didn't know it. jane was sitting with her back to all of us, her feet on the fender, and her skirt turned up over her knees. oh, there was another one, underneath; a handsome silk thing, with rows of little frills,--which you would think should have gone on outside. but jane's best things are never paraded; always hidden. i don't mean clothes, now; but her splendid self. well--little fussy was 'chatting'--she never talked--about herself and her conquests; quite unconscious that we all wished her at jericho. jane went on reading the evening paper; but she felt the atmosphere growing restive. presently--ah, but i must not tell you the rest. i have just remembered. jane made us promise never to repeat it. she thought it detrimental to the other woman. but we just had time for our confab; and jane caught the evening post with the letter which got billy off scot-free; and yet came down punctually to dinner, better dressed than any of them. we felt it rather hard luck to have to promise; because we had each counted on being the first to tell the story to the duchess. but, you know, you always have to do as jane says." "why?" "oh, i don't know! i can't explain why. if you knew her, you would not need to ask. cake, miss gray?" "thank you. right, this time." "there! that is exactly as jane would have said: 'right, this time.' is it not strange that after having for weeks thought your voice so like hers, to-morrow i shall be thinking her voice so like yours?" "oh, no, you will not," said nurse rosemary. "when she is with you, you will have no thoughts for other people." "indeed, but i shall!" cried garth. "and, dear little rosemary, i shall miss you, horribly. no one--not even she--can take your place. and, do you know," he leaned forward, and a troubled look clouded the gladness of his face, "i am beginning to feel anxious about it. she has not seen me since the accident. i am afraid it will give her a shock. do you think she will find me much changed?" jane looked at the sightless face turned so anxiously toward her. she remembered that morning in his room, when he thought himself alone with dr. rob; and, leaving the shelter of the wall, sat up to speak, and she saw his face for the first time. she remembered turning to the fireplace, so that dr. rob should not see the tears raining down her cheeks. she looked again at garth--now growing conscious, for the first time, of his disfigurement; and then, only for her sake--and an almost overwhelming tenderness gripped her heart. she glanced at the clock. she could not hold out much longer. "is it very bad?" said garth; and his voice shook. "i cannot answer for another woman," replied nurse rosemary; "but i should think your face, just as it is, will always be her joy." garth flushed; pleased and relieved, but slightly surprised. there was a quality in nurse rosemary's voice, for which he could not altogether account. "but then, she will not be accustomed to my blind ways," he continued. "i am afraid i shall seem so helpless and so blundering. she has not been in sightless land, as you and i have been. she does not know all our plans of cords, and notches, and things. ah, little rosemary! promise not to leave me to-morrow. i want her--only god, knows how i want her; but i begin to be half afraid. it will be so wonderful, for the great essentials; but, for the little every-day happenings, which are so magnified by the darkness, oh, my kind unseen guide, how i shall need you. at first, i thought it lucky you had settled to go, just when she is coming; but now, just because she is coming, i cannot let you go. having her will be wonderful beyond words; but it will not be the same as having you." nurse rosemary was receiving her reward, and she appeared to find it rather overwhelming. as soon as she could speak, she said, gently: "don't excite yourself over it, mr. dalmain. believe me, when you have been with her for five minutes, you will find it just the same as having me. and how do you know she has not also been in sightless land? a nurse would do that sort of thing, because she was very keen on her profession, and on making a success of her case. the woman who loves you would do it for love of you." "it would be like her," said garth; and leaned back, a look of deep contentment gathering on his face. "oh, jane! jane! she is coming! she is coming!" nurse rosemary looked at the clock. "yes; she is coming," she said; and though her voice was steady, her hands trembled. "and, as it is our last evening together under quite the same circumstances as during all these weeks, will you agree to a plan of mine? i must go upstairs now, and do some packing, and make a few arrangements. but will you dress early? i will do the same; and if you could be down in the library by half-past six, we might have some music before dinner." "why certainly," said garth. "it makes no difference to me at what time i dress; and i am always ready for music. but, i say: i wish you were not packing, miss gray." "i am not exactly packing up," replied nurse rosemary. "i am packing things away." "it is all the same, if it means leaving. but you have promised not to go until she comes?" "i will not go--until she comes." "and you will tell her all the things she ought to know?" "she shall know all i know, which could add to your comfort." "and you will not leave me, until i am really--well, getting on all right?" "i will never leave you, while you need me," said nurse rosemary. and again garth detected that peculiar quality in her voice. he rose, and came towards where he heard her to be standing. "do you know, you are no end of a brick," he said, with emotion. then he held out both hands towards her. "put your hands in mine just for once, little rosemary. i want to try to thank you." there was a moment of hesitation. two strong capable hands--strong and capable, though, just then, they trembled--nearly went home to his; but were withdrawn just in time. jane's hour was not yet. this was nurse rosemary's moment of triumph and success. it should not be taken from her. "this evening," she said, softly, "after the music, we will--shake hands. now be careful, sir. you are stranded. wait. here is the garden-cord, just to your left. take a little air on the terrace; and sing again the lovely song i heard under my window this morning. and now that you know what it is that is 'going to happen,' this exquisite may-day evening will fill you with tender expectation. good-bye, sir--for an hour." "what has come to little rosemary?" mused garth, as he felt for his cane, in its corner by the window. "we could not have gone on indefinitely quite as we have been, since she came in from the post-office." he walked on; a troubled look clouding his face: suddenly it lifted, and he stood still, and laughed. "duffer!" he said. "oh, what a conceited duffer! she is thinking of her 'young man.' she is going to him to-morrow; and her mind is full of him; just as mine is full of jane. dear, good, clever, little rosemary! i hope he is worthy of her. no; that he cannot be. i hope he knows he is not worthy of her. that is more to the point. i hope he will receive her as she expects. somehow, i hate letting her go to him. oh, hang the fellow!--as tommy would say." chapter xxxvi the revelation of the rosary simpson was crossing the hall just before half-past six o'clock. he had left his master in the library. he heard a rustle just above him; and, looking up, saw a tall figure descending the wide oak staircase. simpson stood transfixed. the soft black evening-gown, with its trailing folds, and old lace at the bosom, did not impress him so much as the quiet look of certainty and power on the calm face above them. "simpson," said jane, "my aunt, the duchess of meldrum, and her maid, and her footman, and a rather large quantity of luggage, will be arriving from aberdeen, at about half-past seven. mrs. graem knows about preparing rooms; and i have given james orders for meeting the train with the brougham, and the luggage-cart. the duchess dislikes motors. when her grace arrives, you can show her into the library. we will dine in the dining-room at a quarter past eight. meanwhile, mr. dalmain and myself are particularly engaged just now, and must not be disturbed on any account, until the duchess's arrival. you quite understand?" "yes, miss-m'lady," stammered simpson. he had been boot-boy in a ducal household early in his career; and he considered duchesses' nieces to be people before whom one should bow down. jane smiled. "'miss' is quite sufficient, simpson," she said; and swept towards the library. garth heard her enter, and close the door; and his quick ear caught the rustle of a train. "hullo, miss gray," he said. "packed your uniform?" "yes," said jane. "i told you i was packing." she came slowly across the room, and stood on the hearth-rug looking down at him. he was in full evening-dress; just as at shenstone on that memorable night; and, as he sat well back in his deep arm-chair, one knee crossed over the other, she saw the crimson line of his favourite silk socks. jane stood looking down upon him. her hour had come at last. but even now she must, for his sake, be careful and patient. "i did not hear the song," she said. "no," replied garth. "at first, i forgot. and when i remembered, i had been thinking of other things, and somehow--ah, miss gray! i cannot sing to-night. my soul is dumb with longing." "i know," said jane, gently; "and i am going to sing to you." a faint look of surprise crossed garth's face. "do you sing?" he asked. "then why have you not sung before?" "when i arrived," said jane, "dr. rob asked me whether i played. i said: 'a little.' thereupon he concluded i sang a little, too; and he forbade me, most peremptorily, either to play a little; or sing a little, to you. he said he did not want you driven altogether mad." garth burst out laughing. "how like old robbie," he said. "and, in spite of his injunctions, are you going to take the risk, and 'sing a little,' to me, to-night?" "no," said jane. "i take no risks. i am going to sing you one song. here is the purple cord, at your right hand. there is nothing between you and the piano; and you are facing towards it. if you want to stop me--you can come." she walked to the instrument, and sat down. over the top of the grand piano, she could see him, leaning back in his chair; a slightly amused smile playing about his lips. he was evidently still enjoying the humour of dr. rob's prohibition. the rosary has but one opening chord. she struck it; her eyes upon his face. she saw him sit up, instantly; a look of surprise, expectation, bewilderment, gathering there. then she began to sing. the deep rich voice, low and vibrant, as the softest tone of 'cello, thrilled into the startled silence. "the hours i spent with thee, dear heart, are as a string of pearls to me; i count them over, ev'ry one apart, my rosary,--my rosary. each hour a pearl--" jane got no further. garth had risen. he spoke no word; but he was coming blindly over to the piano. she turned on the music-stool, her arms held out to receive him. now he had found the woodwork. his hand crashed down upon the bass. now he had found her. he was on his knees, his arms around her. hers enveloped him--, yearning, tender, hungry with the repressed longing of all those hard weeks. he lifted his sightless face to hers, for one moment. "you?" he said. "you? you--all the time?" then he hid his face in the soft lace at her breast. "oh, my boy, my darling!" said jane, tenderly; holding the dear head close. "yes; i, all the time; all the time near him, in his loss and pain. could i have stopped away? but, oh, garth! what it is, at last to hold you, and touch you, and feel you here! ... yes, it is i. oh, my beloved, are you not quite sure? who else could hold you thus? ... take care, my darling! come over to the couch, just here; and sit beside me." garth rose, and raised her, without loosing her; and she guided herself and him to a safer seat close by. but there again he flung himself upon his knees, and held her; his arms around her waist; his face hidden in the shelter of her bosom. "ah,--darling, darling," said jane softly, and her hands stole up behind his head, with a touch of unspeakable protective tenderness; "it has been so sweet to wait upon my boy; and help him in his darkness; and shield him from unnecessary pain; and be always there, to meet his every need. but i could not come myself--until he knew; and understood; and had forgiven--no, not 'forgiven'; understood, and yet still loved. for he does now understand? and he does forgive? ... oh, garth! ... oh--hush, my darling! ... you frighten me! ... no, i will never leave you; never, never! ... oh, can't you understand, my beloved? ... then i must tell you more plainly. darling,--do be still, and listen. just for a few days we must be as we have been; only my boy will know it is i who am near him. aunt 'gina is coming this evening. she will be here in half an hour. then, as soon as possible we will get a special license; and we will be married, garth; and then--" jane paused; and the man who knelt beside her, held his breath to listen--"and then," continued jane in a low tender voice, which gathered in depth of sacred mystery, yet did not falter--"then it will be my highest joy, to be always with my husband, night and day." a long sweet silence. the tempest of emotion in her arms was hushed to rest. the eternal voice of perfect love had whispered: "peace, be still"; and there was a great calm. at last garth lifted his head. "always? always together?" he said. "ah, that will be 'perpetual light!'" * * * * * when simpson, pale with importance, flung open the library door, and announced: "her grace, the duchess of meldrum," jane was seated at the piano, playing soft dreamy chords; and a slim young man, in evening dress, advanced with eager hospitality to greet his guest. the duchess either did not see, or chose to ignore the guiding cord. she took his outstretched hand warmly in both her own. "goodness gracious, my dear dal! how you surprise me! i expected to find you blind! and here you are striding about, just your old handsome self!" "dear duchess," said garth, and stooping, kissed the kind old hands still holding his; "i cannot see you, i am sorry to say; but i don't feel very blind to-night. my darkness has been lightened by a joy beyond expression." "oh ho! so that's the way the land lies! now which are you going to marry? the nurse,--who, i gather, is a most respectable young person, and highly recommended; or that hussy, jane; who, without the smallest compunction, orders her poor aunt from one end of the kingdom to the other, to suit her own convenience?" jane came over from the piano, and slipped her hand through her lover's arm. "dear aunt 'gina," she said; "you know you loved coming; because you enjoy a mystery, and like being a dear old 'deus ex machina,' at the right moment. and he is going to marry them both; because they both love him far too dearly ever to leave him again; and he seems to think he cannot do without either." the duchess looked at the two radiant faces; one sightless; the other, with glad proud eyes for both; and her own filled with tears. "hoity-toity!" she said. "are we in salt lake city? well, we always thought one girl would not do for dal; he would need the combined perfections of several; and he appears to think he has found them. god bless you both, you absurdly happy people; and i will bless you, too; but not until i have dined. now, ring for that very nervous person, with side-whiskers; and tell him i want my maid, and my room, and i want to know where they have put my toucan. i had to bring him, jane. he is so loving, dear bird! i knew you would think him in the way; but i really could not leave him behind." chapter xxxvii "in the face of this congregation" the society paragraphs would have described it as "a very quiet wedding," when garth and jane, a few days later, were pronounced "man and wife together," in the little episcopal church among the hills. perhaps, to those who were present, it stands out rather as an unusual wedding, than as a quiet one. to garth and jane the essential thing was to be married, and left to themselves, with as little delay as possible. they could not be induced to pay any attention to details as to the manner in which this desired end was to be attained. jane left it entirely to the doctor, in one practical though casual sentence: "just make sure it is valid, dicky; and send us in the bills." the duchess, being a true conservative, early began mentioning veils, orange-blossom, and white satin; but jane said: "my dear aunt! fancy me--in orange-blossom! i should look like a christmas pantomime. and i never wear veils, even in motors; and white satin is a form of clothing i have always had the wisdom to avoid." "then in what do you intend to be married, unnatural girl?" inquired the duchess. "in whatever i happen to put on, that morning," replied jane, knotting the silk of a soft crimson cord she was knitting; and glancing out of the window, to where garth sat smoking, on the terrace. "have you a time-table?" inquired her grace of meldrum, with dangerous calmness. "and can you send me to the station this afternoon?" "we can always send to the station, at a moment's notice," said jane, working in a golden strand, and considering the effect. "but where are you going, dear aunt 'gina? you know deryck and flower arrive this evening." "i am washing my hands of you, and going south," said the duchess, wrathfully. "don't do that, dear," said jane, placidly. "you have washed your hands of me so often; and, like the blood of king duncan of scotland, i am upon them still. 'all the perfumes of arabia will not sweeten this little hand.'" then, raising her voice: "garth, if you want to walk, just give a call. i am here, talking over my trousseau with aunt 'gina." "what is a trousseau?" came back in garth's happy voice. "a thing you get into to be married," said jane. "then let's get into it quickly," shouted garth, with enthusiasm. "dear aunt," said jane, "let us make a compromise. i have some quite nice clothes upstairs, including redfern tailor-mades, and several uniforms. let your maid look through them, and whatever you select, and she puts out in readiness on my wedding morning, i promise to wear." this resulted in jane appearing at the church in a long blue cloth coat and skirt, handsomely embroidered with gold, and suiting her large figure to perfection; a deep yellow vest of brocaded silk; and old lace ruffles at neck and wrists. garth was as anxious about his wedding garments, as jane had been indifferent over hers; but he had so often been in requisition as best-man at town weddings, that simpson had no difficulty in turning him out in the acme of correct bridal attire. and very handsome he looked, as he stood waiting at the chancel steps; not watching for his bride; but obviously listening for her; for, as jane came up the church on deryck's arm, garth slightly turned his head and smiled. the duchess--resplendent in purple satin and ermine, with white plumes in her bonnet, and many jewelled chains depending from her, which rattled and tinkled, in the silence of the church, every time she moved--was in a front pew on the left, ready to give her niece away. in a corresponding seat, on the opposite side, as near as possible to the bridegroom, sat margery graem, in black silk, with a small quilted satin bonnet, and a white lawn kerchief folded over the faithful old heart which had beaten in tenderness for garth since his babyhood. she turned her head anxiously, every time the duchess jingled; but otherwise kept her eyes fixed on the marriage service, in a large-print prayer-book in her lap. margery was not used to the episcopal service, and she had her "doots" as to whether it could possibly be gone through correctly, by all parties concerned. in fact this anxiety of old margery's increased so painfully when the ceremony actually commenced, that it took audible form; and she repeated all the answers of the bridal pair, in an impressive whisper, after them. dr. rob, being the only available bachelor, did duty as best-man; jane having stipulated that he should not be intrusted with the ring; her previous observations leading her to conclude that he would most probably slip it unconsciously on to his finger, and then search through all his own pockets and all garth's; and begin taking up the church matting, before it occurred to him to look at his hand. jane would not have minded the diversion, but she did object to any delay. so the ring went to church in garth's waistcoat pocket, where it had lived since jane brought it out from aberdeen; and, without any fumbling or hesitation, was quietly laid by him upon the open book. dr. rob had charge of the fees for clerk, verger, bell-ringers, and every person, connected with the church, who could possibly have a tip pressed upon them. garth was generous in his gladness, and eager to do all things in a manner worthy of the great gift made fully his that day. so dr. rob was well provided with the wherewithal; and this he jingled in his pockets as soon as the exhortation commenced, and his interest in the proceedings resulted in his fatal habit of unconsciousness of his own actions. thus he and the duchess kept up a tinkling duet, each hearing the other, and not their own sounds. so the duchess glared at dr. rob; and dr. rob frowned at the duchess; and old margery looked tearfully at both. deryck brand, the tallest man in the church, his fine figure showing to advantage in the long frock coat with silk facings, which lady brand had pronounced indispensable to the occasion, retired to a seat beside his wife, just behind old margery, as soon as he had conducted jane to garth's side. as jane removed her hand from his arm, she turned and smiled at him; and a long look passed between them. all the memories, all the comprehension, all the trust and affection of years, seemed to concentrate in that look; and lady brand's eyes dropped to her dainty white and gold prayer-book. she had never known jealousy; the doctor had never given her any possible reason for acquiring that cruel knowledge. his flower bloomed for him; and her fragrance alone made his continual joy. all other lovely women were mere botanical specimens, to be examined and classified. but flower had never quite understood the depth of the friendship between her husband and jane, founded on the associations and aspirations of childhood and early youth, and a certain similarity of character which would not have wedded well, but which worked out into a comradeship, providing a source of strength for both. of late, flower had earnestly tried to share, even while failing to comprehend, it. perhaps she, in her pale primrose gown, with daffodils at her waist, and sunbeams in her golden hair, was the most truly bridal figure in the church. as the doctor turned from the bride, and sought his place beside her in the pew, he looked at the sweet face, bent so demurely over the prayer-book, and thought he had never seen his wife look more entrancingly lovely. unconsciously his hand strayed to the white rosebud she had fastened in his coat as they strolled round the conservatory together that morning. flower, glancing up, surprised his look. she did not think it right to smile in church; but a delicate wave of colour swept over her face, and her cheek leaned as near the doctor's shoulder, as the size of her hat would allow. flower felt quite certain that was a look the doctor had never given jane. the service commenced. the short-sighted clergyman, very nervous, and rather overwhelmed by the unusual facts of a special license, a blind bridegroom, and the reported presence of a duchess, began reading very fast, in an undertone, which old margery could not follow, though her finger, imprisoned in unwonted kid, hurried along the lines. then conscious of his mistake, he slowed down, and became too impressive; making long nerve-straining pauses, fled in by the tinkling of the duchess, and the chinking in dr. rob's trousers-pockets. thus they arrived at the demand upon the congregation, if they could show any just cause why these two persons might not lawfully be joined together, now to speak--and the pause here was so long, and so over-powering, that old margery said "nay"; and then gave a nervous sob. the bridegroom turned and smiled in the direction of the voice; and the doctor, leaning forward, laid his hand on the trembling shoulder, and whispered: "steady, old friend. it is all right." there was no pause whatever after the solemn charge to the couple; so if garth and jane had any secrets to disclose, they had perforce to keep them for after discussion. then jane found her right hand firmly clasped in garth's; and no inadequacy of the church's mouth-piece could destroy the exquisite beauty of the church's words, in which garth was asked if he would take her to be his own. to this, garth, and old margery, said they would; with considerable display of emotion. then the all-comprehensive question was put to jane; the church seeming to remind her gently, that she took him in his blindness, with all which that might entail. jane said: "i will"; and the deep, tender voice, was the voice of the rosary. when the words were uttered, garth lifted the hand he held, and reverently kissed it. this was not in the rubric, and proved disconcerting to the clergyman. he threw up his head suddenly, and inquired: "who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" and as, for the moment, there was no response, he repeated, the question wildly; gazing into distant corners of the church. then the duchess, who up to that time had been feeling a little bored, realised that her moment had come, and rejoiced. she sailed out of her pew, and advanced to the chancel step. "my dear good man," she said; "_i_ give my niece away; having come north at considerable inconvenience for that express purpose. now, go on. what do we do next?" dr. rob broke into an uncontrollable chuckle. the duchess lifted her lorgnette, and surveyed him. margery searched her prayer-book in vain for the duchess's response. it did not appear to be there. flower looked in distressed appeal at the doctor. but the doctor was studying, with grave intentness, a stencilled pattern on the chancel roof; and paid no attention to flower's nudge. the only people completely unconscious of anything unusual in the order of proceedings appeared to be the bride and bridegroom. they were taking each other "in the sight of god, and in the face of this congregation." they were altogether absorbed in each other, standing together in the sight of god; and the deportment of "this congregation" was a matter they scarcely noticed. "people always behave grotesquely at weddings," jane had said to garth, beforehand; "and ours will be no exception to the general rule. but we can close our eyes, and stand together in sightless land; and deryck will take care it is valid." "not in sightless land, my beloved," said garth; "but in the land where they need no candle neither light of the sun. however, and wherever, i take you as my wife, i shall be standing on the summit of god's heaven." so they stood; and in their calmness the church hushed to silence. the service proceeded; and the minister, who had not known how to keep them from clasping hands when the rubric did not require it, found no difficulty in inducing them to do so again. so they took each other--these two, who were so deeply each other's already--solemnly, reverently, tenderly, in the sight of god, they took each other, according to god's holy ordinance; and the wedding ring, type of that eternal love which has neither beginning nor ending, passed from garth's pocket, over the holy book, on to jane's finger. when it was over, she took his arm; and leaning upon it, so that he could feel she leaned, guided him to the vestry. afterwards, in the brougham, for those few precious minutes, when husband and wife find themselves alone for the first time, garth turned to jane with an eager naturalness, which thrilled her heart as no studied speech could have done. he did not say: "my wife." that unique moment had been theirs, three years before. "dearest," he said, "how soon will they all go? how soon shall we be quite alone? oh, why couldn't they drive to the station from the church?" jane looked at her watch. "because we must lunch them, dear," she said. "think how good they have all been. and we could not start our married life by being inhospitable. it is just one o'clock; and we ordered luncheon at half-past. their train leaves the station at half-past four. in three hours, garth, we shall be alone." "shall i be able to behave nicely for three hours?" exclaimed garth, boyishly. "you must," said jane, "or i shall fetch nurse rosemary." "oh hush!" he said. "all that is too precious, to-day, for chaff. jane"--he turned suddenly, and laid his hand on hers--"jane! do you understand that you are now--actually--my wife?" jane took his hand, and held it against her heart, just where she so often had pressed her own, when she feared he would hear it throbbing. "my darling," she said, "i do not understand it. but i know--ah, thank god!--i know it to be true." chapter xxxviii perpetual light moonlight on the terrace--silvery, white, serene. garth and jane had stepped out into the brightness; and, finding the night so warm and still, and the nightingales filling the woods and hills with soft-throated music, they moved their usual fireside chairs close to the parapet, and sat there in restful comfort, listening to the sweet sounds of the quiet night. the solitude was so perfect; the restfulness so complete. garth had removed the cushion seat from his chair, and placed it on the gravel; and sat at his wife's feet leaning against her knees. she stroked his hair and brow softly, as they talked; and every now and then he put up his hand, drew hers to his lips, and kissed the ring he had never seen. long tender silences fell between them. now that they were at last alone, thoughts too deep, joys too sacred for words, trembled about them; and silence seemed to express more than speech. only, garth could not bear jane to be for a moment out of reach of his hand. what to another would have been: "i cannot let her out of my sight," was, to him, "i cannot let her be beyond my touch." and jane fully understood this; and let him feel her every moment within reach. and the bliss of this was hers as well as his; for sometimes it had seemed to her as if the hunger in her heart, caused by those long weeks of waiting, when her arms ached for him, and yet she dared not even touch his hand, would never be appeased. "sweet, sweet, sweet--thrill," sang a nightingale in the wood. and garth whistled an exact imitation. "oh, darling," said jane, "that reminds me; there is something i do so want you to sing to me. i don't know what it is; but i think you will remember. it was on that monday evening, after i had seen the pictures, and nurse rosemary had described them to you. both our poor hearts were on the rack; and i went up early in order to begin my letter of confession; but you told simpson not to come for you until eleven. while i was writing in the room above, i could hear you playing in the library. you played many things i knew--music we had done together, long ago. and then a theme i had never heard crept in, and caught my ear at once, because it was quite new to me, and so marvellously sweet. i put down my pen and listened. you played it several times, with slight variations, as if trying to recall it. and then, to my joy, you began to sing. i crossed the room; softly opened my window, and leaned out. i could hear some of the words; but not all. two lines, however, reached me distinctly, with such penetrating, tender sadness, that i laid my head against the window-frame, feeling as if i could write no more, and wait no longer, but must go straight to you at once." garth drew down the dear hand which had held the pen that night; turned it over, and softly kissed the palm. "what were they, jane?" he said. "'lead us, o christ, when all is gone, safe home at last.'" "and oh, my darling, the pathos of those words, 'when all is gone'! whoever wrote that music, had been through suffering such as ours. then came a theme of such inspiring hopefulness and joy, that i arose, armed with fresh courage; took up my pen, and went on with my letter. again two lines had reached me:" "'where thou, eternal light of light, art lord of all.'" "what is it, garth? and whose? and where did you hear it? and will you sing it to me now, darling? i have a sudden wish that you should sing it, here and now; and i can't wait!" garth sat up, and laughed--a short happy laugh, in which all sorts of emotions were mingled. "jane! i like to hear you say you can't wait. it isn't like you; because you are so strong and patient. and yet it is so deliciously like you, if you feel it, to say it. i found the words in the anthem-book at worcester cathedral, this time last year, at even-song. i copied them into my pocket-book, during the reading of the first lesson, i am ashamed to say; but it was all about what balak said unto balaam, and balaam said unto balak,--so i hope i may be forgiven! they seemed to me some of the most beautiful words i had ever read; and, fortunately, i committed them to memory. of course, i will sing them to you, if you wish, here and now. but i am afraid the air will sound rather poor without the accompaniment. however, not for worlds would i move from here, at this moment." so sitting up; in the moonlight, with his back to jane, his face uplifted, and his hands clasped around one knee, garth sang. much practice had added greatly to the sweetness and flexibility of his voice; and he rendered perfectly the exquisite melody to which the words were set. jane listened with an overflowing heart. "the radiant morn hath passed away, and spent too soon her golden store; the shadows of departing day creep on once more. "our life is but a fading dawn, its glorious noon, how quickly past! lead us, o christ, when all is gone, safe home at last. "where saints are clothed in spotless white, and evening shadows never fall; where thou, eternal light of light, art lord of all." the triumphant worship of the last line rang out into the night, and died away. garth loosed his hands, and leaned back, with a sigh of vast content, against his wife's knees. "beautiful!" she said. "beautiful! garthie--perhaps it is because you sang it; and to-night;--but it seems to me the most beautiful thing i ever heard. ah, and how appropriate for us; on this day, of all days." "oh, i don't know," said garth, stretching his legs in front of him, and crossing his feet the one over the other. "i certainly feel 'safe home at last'--not because 'all is gone'; but because i have all, in having you, jane." jane bent, and laid her cheek upon his head. "my own boy," she said, "you have all i have to give--all, all. but, darling, in those dark days which are past, all seemed gone, for us both. 'lead us, o christ'--it was he who led us safely through the darkness, and has brought us to this. and garth, i love to know that he is lord of all--lord of our joy; lord of our love; lord of our lives--our wedded lives, my husband. we could not be so safely, so blissfully, each other's, were we not one, in him. is this true for you also, garth?" garth felt for her left hand, drew it down, and laid his cheek against it; then gently twisted the wedding ring that he might kiss it all round. "yes, my wife," he said. "i thank god, that i can say in all things: 'thou, eternal light of light, art lord of all.'" a long sweet silence. then jane said, suddenly: "oh, but the music, garthie! that exquisite setting. whose is it? and where did you hear it?" garth laughed again; a laugh of half-shy pleasure. "i am glad you like it, jane," he said, "because i must plead guilty to the fact that it is my own. you see, i knew no music for it; the anthem-book gave the words only. and on that awful night, when little rosemary had mercilessly rubbed it in, about 'the lady portrayed'; and what her love must have been, and would have been, and could have been; and had made me see 'the wife' again, and 'the--' the other picture; i felt so bruised, and sore, and lonely. and then those words came to my mind: 'lead us, o christ, when all is gone, safe home at last.' all seemed gone indeed; and there seemed no home to hope for, in this world." he raised himself a little, and then leaned back again; so that his head rested against her bosom. "safe home at last," he said, and stayed quite still for a moment, in utter content. then remembered what he was telling her, and went on eagerly. "so those words came back to me; and to get away from despairing thoughts, i began reciting them, to an accompaniment of chords." "'the radiant morn hath passed away, and spent too soon her golden store; the shadows of departing day--'" "and then--suddenly, jane--i saw it, pictured in sound! just as i used to see a sunset, in light and shadow, and then transfer it to my canvas in shade and colour,-so i heard a sunset in harmony, and i felt the same kind of tingle in my fingers as i used to feel when inspiration came, and i could catch up my brushes and palette. so i played the sunset. and then i got the theme for life fading, and what one feels when the glorious noon is suddenly plunged into darkness; and then the prayer. and then, i heard a vision of heaven, where evening shadows never fall: and after that came the end; just certainty, and worship, and peace. you see the eventual theme, worked out of all this. it was like making studies for a picture. that was why you heard it over and over. i wasn't trying to remember. i was gathering it into final form. i am awfully glad you like it, jane; because if i show you how the harmonies go, perhaps you could write it down. and it would mean such a lot to me, if you thought it worth singing. i could play the accompaniment--hullo! is it beginning to rain? i felt a drop on my cheek, and another on my hand." no answer. then he felt the heave, with which jane caught her breath; and realised that she was weeping. in a moment he was on his knees in front of her. "jane! why, what is the matter; sweet? what on earth--? have i said anything to trouble you? jane, what is it? o god, why can't i see her!" jane mastered her emotion; controlling her voice, with an immense effort. then drew him down beside her. "hush, darling, hush! it is only a great joy--a wonderful surprise. lean against me again, and i will try to tell you. do you know that you have composed some of the most beautiful music in the world? do you know, my own boy, that not only your proud and happy wife, but all women who can sing, will want to sing your music? garthie, do you realise what it means? the creative faculty is so strong in you, that when one outlet was denied it, it burst forth through another. when you had your sight, you created by the hand and eye. now, you will create by the hand and ear. the power is the same. it merely works through another channel. but oh, think what it means! think! the world lies before you once more!" garth laughed, and put up his hand to the dear face, still wet with thankful tears. "oh, bother the world!" he said. "i don't want the world. i only want my wife." jane put her arms around him. ah, what a boy he was in some ways! how full of light-hearted, irrepressible, essential youth. just then she felt so much older than he; but how little that mattered. the better could she wrap him round with the greatness of her tenderness; shield him from every jar or disillusion; and help him to make the most of his great gifts. "i know, darling," she said. "and you have her. she is just all yours. but think of the wonderful future. thank god, i know enough of the technical part, to write the scores of your compositions. and, garth,--fancy going together to noble cathedrals, and hearing your anthems sung; and to concerts where the most perfect voices in the world will be doing their utmost adequately to render your songs. fancy thrilling hearts with pure harmony, stirring souls with tone-pictures; just as before you used to awaken in us all, by your wonderful paintings, an appreciation and comprehension of beauty." garth raised his head. "is it really as good as that, jane?" he said. "dear," answered jane, earnestly, "i can only tell you, that when you sang it first, and i had not the faintest idea it was yours, i said to myself: 'it is the most beautiful thing i ever heard.'" "i am glad," said garth, simply. "and now, let's talk of something else. oh, i say, jane! the present is too wonderful, to leave any possible room for thoughts about the future. do talk about the present." jane smiled; and it was the smile of "the wife"--mysterious; compassionate; tender; self-surrendering. she leaned over him, and rested her cheek upon his head. "yes, darling. we will talk of this very moment, if you wish. you begin." "look at the house, and describe it to me, as you see it in the moonlight." "very grey, and calm, and restful-looking. and so home-like, garthie." "are there lights in the windows?" "yes. the library lights are just as we left them. the french window is standing wide open. the pedestal lamp, under a crimson silk shade, looks very pretty from here, shedding a warm glow over the interior. then, i can see one candle in the dining-room. i think simpson is putting away silver." "any others, jane?" "yes, darling. there is a light in the oriel chamber. i can see margery moving to and fro. she seems to be arranging my things, and giving final touches. there is also a light in your room, next door. ah, now she has gone through. i see her standing and looking round to make sure all is right. dear faithful old heart! garth, how sweet it is to be at home to-day; served and tended by those who really love us." "i am so glad you feel that," said garth. "i half feared you might regret not having an ordinary honeymoon--and yet, no! i wasn't really afraid of that, or of anything. just, together at last, was all we wanted. wasn't it, my wife?" "all." a clock in the house struck nine. "dear old clock," said garth, softly. "i used to hear it strike nine, when i was a little chap in my crib, trying to keep awake until my mother rustled past; and went into her room. the door between her room and mine used to stand ajar, and i could see her candle appear in a long streak upon my ceiling. when i saw that streak, i fell asleep immediately. it was such a comfort to know she was there; and would not go down again. jane, do you like the oriel chamber?" "yes, dear. it is a lovely room; and very sacred because it was hers. do you know, aunt georgina insisted upon seeing it, garth; and said it ought to be whitened and papered. but i would not hear of that; because the beautiful old ceiling is hand-painted, and so are the walls; and i was certain you had loved those paintings, as a little boy; and would remember them now." "ah, yes," said garth, eagerly. "a french artist stayed here, and did them. water and rushes, and the most lovely flamingoes; those on the walls standing with their feet in the water; and those on the ceiling, flying with wings outspread, into a pale green sky, all over white billowy clouds. jane, i believe i could walk round that room, blindfold--no! i mean, as i am now; and point out the exact spot where each flamingo stands." "you shall," said jane, tenderly. these slips when he talked, momentarily forgetting his blindness, always wrung her heart. "by degrees you must tell me all the things you specially did and loved, as a little boy. i like to know them. had you always that room, next door to your mother's?" "ever since i can remember," said garth. "and the door between was always open. after my mother's death, i kept it locked. but the night before my birthday, i used to open it; and when i woke early and saw it ajar, i would spring up, and go quickly in; and it seemed as if her dear presence was there to greet me, just on that one morning. but i had to go quickly, and immediately i wakened; just as you must go out early to catch the rosy glow of sunrise on the fleeting clouds; or to see the gossamer webs on the gorse, outlined in diamonds, by the sparkling summer dew. but, somehow, margery found out about it; and the third year there was a sheet of writing-paper firmly stuck to the pincushion by a large black-headed pin, saying, in margery's careful caligraphy: 'many happy returns of the day, master garthie.' it was very touching, because it was meant to be so comforting and tactful. but it destroyed the illusion! since then the door has been kept closed." another long sweet silence. two nightingales, in distant trees, sang alternately; answering one another in liquid streams of melody. again garth turned the wedding ring; then spoke, with his lips against it. "you said margery had 'gone through.' is it open to-night?" he asked. jane clasped both hands behind his head--strong, capable hands, though now they trembled a little--and pressed his face against her, as she had done on the terrace at shenstone, three years before. "yes, my own boy," she said; "it is." "jane! oh, jane--" he released himself from the pressure of those restraining hands, and lifted his adoring face to hers. then, suddenly, jane broke down. "ah, darling," she said, "take me away from this horrible white moonlight! i cannot bear it. it reminds me of shenstone. it reminds me of the wrong i did you. it seems a separating thing between you and me--this cruel brightness which you cannot share." her tears fell on his upturned fate. then garth sprang to his feet. the sense of manhood and mastery; the right of control, the joy of possession, arose within him. even in his blindness, he was the stronger. even in his helplessness, for the great essentials, jane must lean on him. he raised her gently, put his arms about her, and stood there, glorified by his great love. "hush, sweetest wife," he said. "neither light nor darkness can separate between you and me: this quiet moonlight cannot take you from me; but in the still, sweet darkness you will feel more completely my own, because it will hold nothing we cannot share. come with me to the library, and we will send away the lamps, and close the curtains; and you shall sit on the couch near the piano, where you sat, on that wonderful evening when i found you, and when i almost frightened my brave jane. but she will not be frightened now, because she is so my own; and i may say what i like; and do what i will; and she must not threaten me with nurse rosemary; because it is jane i want--jane, jane; just only jane! come in, beloved; and i, who see as clearly in the dark as in the light, will sit and play the rosary for you; and then veni, creator spiritus; and i will sing you the verse which has been the secret source of peace, and the sustaining power of my whole inner life, through the long, hard years, apart." "now," whispered jane. "now, as we go." so garth drew her hand through his arm; and, as they walked, sang softly: "enable with perpetual light, the dulness of our blinded sight; anoint and cheer our soiled face with the abundance of thy grace. keep far our foes; give peace at home; where thou art guide, no ill can come." thus, leaning on her husband; yet guiding him as she leaned; jane passed to the perfect happiness of her wedded home. blix by frank norris chapter i it had just struck nine from the cuckoo clock that hung over the mantelpiece in the dining-room, when victorine brought in the halved watermelon and set it in front of mr. bessemer's plate. then she went down to the front door for the damp, twisted roll of the sunday morning's paper, and came back and rang the breakfast-bell for the second time. as the family still hesitated to appear, she went to the bay window at the end of the room, and stood there for a moment looking out. the view was wonderful. the bessemers lived upon the washington street hill, almost at its very summit, in a flat in the third story of the building. the contractor had been clever enough to reverse the position of kitchen and dining-room, so that the latter room was at the rear of the house. from its window one could command a sweep of san francisco bay and the contra costa shore, from mount diablo, along past oakland, berkeley, sausalito, and mount tamalpais, out to the golden gate, the presidio, the ocean, and even--on very clear days--to the farrallone islands. for some time victorine stood looking down at the great expanse of land and sea, then faced about with an impatient exclamation. on sundays all the week-day regime of the family was deranged, and breakfast was a movable feast, to be had any time after seven or before half-past nine. as victorine was pouring the ice-water, mr. bessemer himself came in, and addressed himself at once to his meal, without so much as a thought of waiting for the others. he was a little round man. he wore a skull-cap to keep his bald spot warm, and read his paper through a reading-glass. the expression of his face, wrinkled and bearded, the eyes shadowed by enormous gray eyebrows, was that of an amiable gorilla. bessemer was one of those men who seem entirely disassociated from their families. only on rare and intense occasions did his paternal spirit or instincts assert themselves. at table he talked but little. though devotedly fond of his eldest daughter, she was a puzzle and a stranger to him. his interests and hers were absolutely dissimilar. the children he seldom spoke to but to reprove; while howard, the son, the ten-year-old and terrible infant of the household, he always referred to as "that boy." he was an abstracted, self-centred old man, with but two hobbies--homoeopathy and the mechanism of clocks. but he had a strange way of talking to himself in a low voice, keeping up a running, half-whispered comment upon his own doings and actions; as, for instance, upon this occasion: "nine o'clock--the clock's a little fast. i think i'll wind my watch. no, i've forgotten my watch. watermelon this morning, eh? where's a knife? i'll have a little salt. victorine's forgot the spoons--ha, here's a spoon! no, it's a knife i want." after he had finished his watermelon, and while victorine was pouring his coffee, the two children came in, scrambling to their places, and drumming on the table with their knife-handles. the son and heir, howard, was very much a boy. he played baseball too well to be a very good boy, and for the sake of his own self-respect maintained an attitude of perpetual revolt against his older sister, who, as much as possible, took the place of the mother, long since dead. under her supervision, howard blacked his own shoes every morning before breakfast, changed his underclothes twice a week, and was dissuaded from playing with the dentist's son who lived three doors below and who had st. vitus' dance. his little sister was much more tractable. she had been christened alberta, and was called snooky. she promised to be pretty when she grew up, but was at this time in that distressing transitional stage between twelve and fifteen; was long-legged, and endowed with all the awkwardness of a colt. her shoes were still innocent of heels; but on those occasions when she was allowed to wear her tiny first pair of corsets she was exalted to an almost celestial pitch of silent ecstasy. the clasp of the miniature stays around her small body was like the embrace of a little lover, and awoke in her ideas that were as vague, as immature and unformed as the straight little figure itself. when snooky and howard had seated themselves, but one chair--at the end of the breakfast-table, opposite mr. bessemer--remained vacant. "is your sister--is miss travis going to have her breakfast now? is she got up yet?" inquired victorine of howard and snooky, as she pushed the cream pitcher out of howard's reach. it was significant of mr. bessemer's relations with his family that victorine did not address her question to him. "yes, yes, she's coming," said both the children, speaking together; and howard added: "here she comes now." travis bessemer came in. even in san francisco, where all women are more or less beautiful, travis passed for a beautiful girl. she was young, but tall as most men, and solidly, almost heavily built. her shoulders were broad, her chest was deep, her neck round and firm. she radiated health; there were exuberance and vitality in the very touch of her foot upon the carpet, and there was that cleanliness about her, that freshness, that suggested a recent plunge in the surf and a "constitutional" along the beach. one felt that here was stamina, good physical force, and fine animal vigor. her arms were large, her wrists were large, and her fingers did not taper. her hair was of a brown so light as to be almost yellow. in fact, it would be safer to call it yellow from the start--not golden nor flaxen, but plain, honest yellow. the skin of her face was clean and white, except where it flushed to a most charming pink upon her smooth, cool cheeks. her lips were full and red, her chin very round and a little salient. curiously enough, her eyes were small--small, but of the deepest, deepest brown, and always twinkling and alight, as though she were just ready to smile or had just done smiling, one could not say which. and nothing could have been more delightful than these sloe-brown, glinting little eyes of hers set off by her white skin and yellow hair. she impressed one as being a very normal girl: nothing morbid about her, nothing nervous or false or overwrought. you did not expect to find her introspective. you felt sure that her mental life was not at all the result of thoughts and reflections germinating from within, but rather of impressions and sensations that came to her from without. there was nothing extraordinary about travis. she never had her vagaries, was not moody--depressed one day and exalted the next. she was just a good, sweet, natural, healthy-minded, healthy-bodied girl, honest, strong, self-reliant, and good-tempered. though she was not yet dressed for church, there was style in her to the pointed tips of her patent-leather slippers. she wore a heavy black overskirt that rustled in delicious fashion over the colored silk skirt beneath, and a white shirt-waist, striped black, and starched to a rattling stiffness. her neck was swathed tight and high with a broad ribbon of white satin, while around her waist, in place of a belt, she wore the huge dog-collar of a st. bernard--a chic little idea which was all her own, and of which she was very proud. she was as trig and trim and crisp as a crack yacht: not a pin was loose, not a seam that did not fall in its precise right line; and with every movement there emanated from her a barely perceptible delicious feminine odor--an odor that was in part perfume, but mostly a subtle, vague smell, charming beyond words, that came from her hair, her neck, her arms--her whole sweet personality. she was nineteen years old. she sat down to breakfast and ate heartily, though with her attention divided between howard--who was atrociously bad, as usual of a sunday morning--and her father's plate. mr. bessemer was as like as not to leave the table without any breakfast at all unless his fruit, chops, and coffee were actually thrust under his nose. "papum," she called, speaking clear and distinct, as though to the deaf, "there's your coffee there at your elbow; be careful, you'll tip it over. victorine, push his cup further on the table. is it strong enough for you, papum?" "eh? ah, yes--yes--yes," murmured the old man, looking vaguely about him; "coffee, to be sure"--and he emptied the cup at a single draught, hardly knowing whether it was coffee or tea. "now i'll take a roll," he continued, in a monotonous murmur. "where are the rolls? here they are. hot rolls are bad for my digestion--i ought to eat bread. i think i eat too much. where's my place in the paper?--always lose my place in the paper. clever editorials this fellow eastman writes, unbiassed by party prejudice--unbiassed--unbiassed." his voice died to a whisper. the breakfast proceeded, travis supervising everything that went forward, even giving directions to victorine as to the hour for serving dinner. it was while she was talking to victorine as to this matter that snooky began to whine. "stop!" "and tell maggie," pursued travis, "to fricassee her chicken, and not to have it too well done--" "sto-o-op!" whined snooky again. "and leave the heart out for papum. he likes the heart--" "sto-o-op!" "unbiassed by prejudice," murmured mr. bessemer, "vigorous and to the point. i'll have another roll." "pa, make howard stop!" "howard!" exclaimed travis; "what is it now?" "howard's squirting watermelon-seeds at me," whined snooky, "and pa won't make him stop." "oh, i didn't so!" vociferated howard. "i only held one between my fingers, and it just kind of shot out." "you'll come upstairs with me in just five minutes," announced travis, "and get ready for sunday-school." howard knew that his older sister's decisions were as the laws of the persians, and found means to finish his breakfast within the specified time, though not without protest. once upstairs, however, the usual sunday morning drama of despatching him to sunday-school in presentable condition was enacted. at every moment his voice could be heard uplifted in shrill expostulation and debate. no, his hands were clean enough, and he didn't see why he had to wear that little old pink tie; and, oh! his new shoes were too tight and hurt his sore toe; and he wouldn't, he wouldn't--no, not if he were killed for it, change his shirt. not for a moment did travis lose her temper with him. but "very well," she declared at length, "the next time she saw that little miner girl she would tell her that he had said she was his beau-heart. now would he hold still while she brushed his hair?" at a few minutes before eleven travis and her father went to church. they were episcopalians, and for time out of mind had rented a half-pew in the church of their denomination on california street, not far from chinatown. by noon the family reassembled at dinner-table, where mr. bessemer ate his chicken-heart--after travis had thrice reminded him of it--and expressed himself as to the sermon and the minister's theology: sometimes to his daughter and sometimes to himself. after dinner howard and snooky foregathered in the nursery with their beloved lead soldiers; travis went to her room to write letters; and mr. bessemer sat in the bay window of the dining-room reading the paper from end to end. at five travis bestirred herself. it was victorine's afternoon out. travis set the table, spreading a cover of blue denim edged with white braid, which showed off the silver and the set of delft--her great and never-ending joy--to great effect. then she tied her apron about her, and went into the kitchen to make the mayonnaise dressing for the potato salad, to slice the ham, and to help the cook (a most inefficient irish person, taken on only for that month during the absence of the family's beloved and venerated sing wo) in the matter of preparing the sunday evening tea. tea was had at half-past five. never in the history of the family had its menu varied: cold ham, potato salad, pork and beans, canned fruit, chocolate, and the inevitable pitcher of ice-water. in the absence of victorine, maggie waited on the table, very uncomfortable in her one good dress and stiff white apron. she stood off from the table, making awkward dabs at it from time to time. in her excess of deference she developed a clumsiness that was beyond all expression. she passed the plates upon the wrong side, and remembered herself with a broken apology at inopportune moments. she dropped a spoon, she spilled the ice-water. she handled the delft cups and platters with an exaggerated solicitude, as though they were glass bombs. she brushed the crumbs into their laps instead of into the crumb-tray, and at last, when she had sat even travis' placid nerves in a jangle, was dismissed to the kitchen, and retired with a gasp of unspeakable relief. suddenly there came a prolonged trilling of the electric bell, and howard flashed a grin at travis. snooky jumped up and pushed back, crying out: "i'll go! i'll go!" mr. bessemer glanced nervously at travis. "that's mr. rivers, isn't it, daughter?" travis smiled. "well, i think i'll--i think i'd better--" he began. "no," said travis, "i don't want you to, papum; you sit right where you are. how absurd!" the old man dropped obediently back into his seat. "that's all right, maggie," said travis as the cook reappeared from the pantry. "snooky went." "huh!" exclaimed howard, his grin widening. "huh!" "and remember one thing, howard," remarked travis calmly, "don't you ever again ask mr. rivers for a nickel to put in your bank." mr. bessemer roused up. "did that boy do that?" he inquired sharply of travis. "well, well, he won't do it again," said travis soothingly. the old man glared for an instant at howard, who shifted uneasily in his seat. but meanwhile snooky had clambered down to the outside door, and before anything further could be said young rivers came into the dining-room. chapter ii for some reason, never made sufficiently clear, rivers' parents had handicapped him from the baptismal font with the prenomen of conde, which, however, upon anglo-saxon tongues, had been promptly modified to condy, or even, among his familiar and intimate friends, to conny. asked as to his birthplace--for no californian assumes that his neighbor is born in the state--condy was wont to reply that he was "bawn 'n' rais'" in chicago; "but," he always added, "i couldn't help that, you know." his people had come west in the early eighties, just in time to bury the father in alien soil. condy was an only child. he was educated at the state university, had a finishing year at yale, and a few months after his return home was taken on the staff of the san francisco "daily times" as an associate editor of its sunday supplement. for condy had developed a taste and talent in the matter of writing. short stories were his mania. he had begun by an inoculation of the kipling virus, had suffered an almost fatal attack of harding davis, and had even been affected by maupassant. he "went in" for accuracy of detail; held that if one wrote a story involving firemen one should have, or seem to have, every detail of the department at his fingers' ends, and should "bring in" to the tale all manner of technical names and cant phrases. much of his work on the sunday supplement of "the times" was of the hack order--special articles, write-ups, and interviews. about once a month, however, he wrote a short story, and of late, now that he was convalescing from maupassant and had begun to be somewhat himself, these stories had improved in quality, and one or two had even been copied in the eastern journals. he earned $ a month. when snooky had let him in, rivers dashed up the stairs of the bessemers' flat, two at a time, tossed his stick into a porcelain cane-rack in the hall, wrenched off his overcoat with a single movement, and precipitated himself, panting, into the dining-room, tugging at his gloves. he was twenty-eight years old--nearly ten years older than travis; tall and somewhat lean; his face smooth-shaven and pink all over, as if he had just given it a violent rubbing with a crash towel. unlike most writing folk, he dressed himself according to prevailing custom. but condy overdid the matter. his scarfs and cravats were too bright, his colored shirt-bosoms were too broadly barred, his waistcoats too extreme. even travis, as she rose to his abrupt entrance? told herself that of a sunday evening a pink shirt and scarlet tie were a combination hardly to be forgiven. condy shook her hand in both of his, then rushed over to mr. bessemer, exclaiming between breaths: "don't get up, sir--don't think of it! heavens! i'm disgustingly late. you're all through. my watch--this beastly watch of mine--i can't imagine how i came to be so late. you did quite right not to wait." then as his morbidly keen observation caught a certain look of blankness on travis' face, and his rapid glance noted no vacant chair at table, he gave a quick gasp of dismay. "heavens and earth! didn't you expect me?" he cried. "i thought you said--i thought--i must have forgotten--i must have got it mixed up somehow. what a hideous mistake, what a blunder! what a fool i am!" he dropped into a chair against the wall and mopped his forehead with a blue-bordered handkerchief. "well, what difference does it make, condy?" said travis quietly. "i'll put another place for you." "no, no!" he vociferated, jumping up. "i won't hear of it, i won't permit it! you'll think i did it on purpose!" travis ignored his interference, and made a place for him opposite the children, and had maggie make some more chocolate. condy meanwhile covered himself with opprobrium. "and all this trouble--i always make trouble everywhere i go. always a round man in a square hole, or a square man in a round hole." he got up and sat down again, crossed and recrossed his legs, picked up little ornaments from the mantelpiece, and replaced them without consciousness of what they were, and finally broke the crystal of his watch as he was resetting it by the cuckoo clock. "hello!" he exclaimed suddenly, "where did you get that clock? where did you get that clock? that's new to me. where did that come from?" "that cuckoo clock?" inquired travis, with a stare. "condy rivers, you've been here and in this room at least twice a week for the last year and a half, and that clock, and no other, has always hung there." but already condy had forgotten or lost interest in the clock. "is that so? is that so?" he murmured absent-mindedly, seating himself at the table. mr. bessemer was murmuring: "that clock's a little fast. i can not make that clock keep time. victorine has lost the key. i have to wind it with a monkey-wrench. now i'll try some more beans. maggie has put in too much pepper. i'll have to have a new key made to-morrow." "hey? yes--yes. is that so?" answered condy rivers, bewildered, wishing to be polite, yet unable to follow the old man's mutterings. "he's not talking to you," remarked travis, without lowering her voice. "you know how papum goes on. he won't hear a word you say. well, i read your story in this morning's 'times.'" a few moments later, while travers and condy were still discussing this story, mr. bessemer rose. "well, mr. rivers," he announced, "i guess i'll say good-night. come, snooky." "yes, take her with you, papum," said travis. "she'll go to sleep on the lounge here if you don't. howard, have you got your lessons for to-morrow?" it appeared that he had not. snooky whined to stay up a little longer, but at last consented to go with her father. they all bade condy good-night and took themselves away, howard lingering a moment in the door in the hope of the nickel he dared not ask for. maggie reappeared to clear away the table. "let's go in the parlor," suggested travis, rising. "don't you want to?" the parlor was the front room overlooking the street, and was reached by the long hall that ran the whole length of the flat, passing by the door of each one of its eight rooms in turn. travis preceded condy, and turned up one of the burners in colored globe of the little brass chandelier. the parlor was a small affair, peopled by a family of chairs and sofas robed in white drugget. a gold-and-white effect had been striven for throughout the room. the walls had been tinted instead of papered, and bunches of hand-painted pink flowers tied up with blue ribbons straggled from one corner of the ceiling. across one angle of the room straddled a brass easel upholding a crayon portrait of travis at the age of nine, "enlarged from a photograph." a yellow drape ornamented one corner of the frame, while another drape of blue depended from one end of the mantelpiece. the piano, upon which nobody ever played, balanced the easel in an opposite corner. over the mantelpiece hung in a gilded frame a steel engraving of priscilla and john alden; and on the mantel itself two bisque figures of an italian fisher boy and girl kept company with the clock, a huge timepiece, set in a red plush palette, that never was known to go. but at the right of the fireplace, and balancing the tuft of pampa-grass to the left, was an inverted section of a sewer-pipe painted blue and decorated with daisies. into it was thrust a sheaf of cat-tails, gilded, and tied with a pink ribbon. travis dropped upon the shrouded sofa, and condy set himself carefully down on one of the frail chairs with its spindling golden legs, and they began to talk. condy had taken her to the theatre the monday night of that week, as had been his custom ever since he had known her well, and there was something left for them to say on that subject. but in ten minutes they had exhausted it. an engagement of a girl known to both of them had just been announced. condy brought that up, and kept conversation going for another twenty minutes, and then filled in what threatened to be a gap by telling her stories of the society reporters, and how they got inside news by listening to telephone party wires for days at a time. travis' condemnation of this occupied another five or ten minutes; and so what with this and with that they reached nine o'clock. then decidedly the evening began to drag. it was too early to go. condy could find no good excuse for taking himself away, and, though travis was good-natured enough, and met him more than half-way, their talk lapsed, and lapsed, and lapsed. the breaks became more numerous and lasted longer. condy began to wonder if he was boring her. no sooner had the suspicion entered his head than it hardened into a certainty, and at once what little fluency and freshness he yet retained forsook him on the spot. what made matters worse was his recollection of other evenings that of late he had failed in precisely the same manner. even while he struggled to save the situation condy was wondering if they two were talked out--if they had lost charm for each other. did he not know travis through and through by now--her opinions, her ideas, her convictions? was there any more freshness in her for him? was their little flirtation of the last eighteen months, charming as it had been, about to end? had they played out the play, had they come to the end of each other's resources? he had never considered the possibility of this before, but all at once as he looked at travis--looked fairly into her little brown-black eyes--it was borne in upon him that she was thinking precisely the same thing. condy rivers had met travis at a dance a year and a half before this, and, because she was so very pretty, so unaffected, and so good-natured, had found means to see her three or four times a week ever since. they two "went out" not a little in san francisco society, and had been in a measure identified with what was known as the younger set; though travis was too young to come out, and rivers too old to feel very much at home with girls of twenty and boys of eighteen. they had known each other in the conventional way (as conventionality goes in san francisco); during the season rivers took her to the theatres monday nights, and called regularly wednesdays and sundays. then they met at dances, and managed to be invited to the same houses for teas and dinners. they had flirted rather desperately, and at times condy even told himself that he loved this girl so much younger than he--this girl with the smiling eyes and robust figure and yellow hair, who was so frank, so straightforward, and so wonderfully pretty. but evidently they had come to the last move in the game, and as condy reflected that after all he had never known the real travis, that the girl whom he told himself he knew through and through was only the travis of dinner parties and afternoon functions, he was suddenly surprised to experience a sudden qualm of deep and genuine regret. he had never been near to her, after all. they were as far apart as when they had first met. and yet he knew enough of her to know that she was "worth while." he had had experience--all the experience he wanted--with other older women and girls of society. they were sophisticated, they were all a little tired, they had run the gamut of amusements--in a word, they were jaded. but travis, this girl of nineteen, who was not yet even a debutante, had been fresh and unspoiled, had been new and strong and young. "of course, you may call it what you like. he was nothing more nor less than intoxicated--yes, drunk." "hah! who--what--wh--what are you talking about?" gasped condy sitting bolt upright. "jack carter," answered travis. "no," she added, shaking her head at him helplessly, "he hasn't been listening to a word. i'm talking about jack carter and the 'saturday evening' last night." "no, no, i haven't heard. forgive me; i was thinking--thinking of something else. who was drunk?" travis paused a moment, settling her side-combs in her hair; then: "if you will try to listen, i'll tell it all over again, because it's serious with me, and i'm going to take a very decided stand about it. you know," she went on--"you know what the 'saturday evening' is. plenty of the girls who are not 'out' belong, and a good many of last year's debutantes come, as well as the older girls of three or four seasons' standing. you could call it representative couldn't you? well, they always serve punch; and you know yourself that you have seen men there who have taken more than they should." "yes, yes," admitted condy. "i know carter and the two catlin boys always do." "it gets pretty bad sometimes, doesn't it?" she said. "it does, it does--and it's shameful. but most of the girls--most of them don't seem to mind." miss bessemer stiffened a bit. "there are one or two girls that do," she said quietly. "frank catlin had the decency to go home last night," she continued; "and his brother wasn't any worse than usual. but jack carter must have been drinking before he came. he was very bad indeed--as bad," she said between her teeth, "as he could be and yet walk straight. as you say, most of the girls don't mind. they say, 'it's only johnnie carter; what do you expect?' but one of the girls--you know her, laurie flagg--cut a dance with him last night and told him exactly why. of course, carter was furious. he was sober enough to think he had been insulted; and what do you suppose he did?" "what? what?" exclaimed condy, breathless, leaning toward her. "went about the halls and dressing-rooms circulating some dirty little lie about laurie. actually trying to--to"--travis hesitated--"to make a scandal about her." condy bounded in his seat. "beast, cad, swine!" he exclaimed. "i didn't think," said travis, "that carter would so much as dare to ask me to dance with him--" "did he? did--did--" "wait," she interrupted. "so i wasn't at all prepared for what happened. during the german, before i knew it, there he was in front of me. it was a break, and he wanted it. i hadn't time to think. the only idea i had was that if i refused him he might tell some dirty little lie about me. i was all confused--mixed up. i felt just as though it were a snake that i had to humor to get rid of. i gave him the break." condy sat speechless. suddenly he arose. "well, now, let's see," he began, speaking rapidly, his hands twisting and untwisting till the knuckles cracked. "now, let's see. you leave it to me. i know carter. he's going to be at a stag dinner where i am invited to-morrow night, and i--i--" "no, you won't, condy," said travis placidly. "you'll pay no attention to it, and i'll tell you why. suppose you should make a scene with mr. carter--i don't know how men settle these things. well, it would be told in all the clubs and in all the newspaper offices that two men had quarreled over a girl; and my name is mentioned, discussed, and handed around from one crowd of men to another, from one club to another; and then, of course, the papers take it up. by that time mr. carter will have told his side of the story and invented another dirty little lie, and i'm the one who suffers the most in the end. and remember, condy, that i haven't any mother in such an affair, not even an older sister. no, we'll just let the matter drop. it would be more dignified, anyhow. only i have made up my mind what i am going to do." "what's that?" "i'm not coming out. if that's the sort of thing one has to put up with in society"--travis drew a little line on the sofa at her side with her finger-tip--"i am going to--stop--right--there. it's not"--miss bessemer stiffened again--"that i'm afraid of jack carter and his dirty stories; i simply don't want to know the kind of people who have made jack carter possible. the other girls don't mind it, nor many men besides you, condy; and i'm not going to be associated with people who take it as a joke for a man to come to a function drunk. and as for having a good time, i'll find my amusements somewhere else. i'll ride a wheel, take long walks, study something. but as for leading the life of a society girl--no! and whether i have a good time or not, i'll keep my own self-respect. at least i'll never have to dance with a drunken man. i won't have to humiliate myself like that a second time." "but i presume you will still continue to go out somewhere," protested condy rivers. she shook her head. "i have thought it all over, and i've talked about it with papum. there's no half way about it. the only way to stop is to stop short. just this afternoon i've regretted three functions for next week, and i shall resign from the 'saturday evening.' oh, it's not the jack carter affair alone!" she exclaimed; "the whole thing tires me. mind, condy," she exclaimed, "i'm not going to break with it because i have any 'purpose in life,' or that sort of thing. i want to have a good time, and i'm going to see if i can't have it in my own way. if the kind of thing that makes jack carter possible is conventionality, then i'm done with conventionality for good. i am going to try, from this time on, to be just as true to myself as i can be. i am going to be sincere, and not pretend to like people and things that i don't like; and i'm going to do the things that i like to do--just so long as they are the things a good girl can do. see, condy?" "you're fine," murmured condy breathless. "you're fine as gold, travis, and i--i love you all the better for it." "ah, now!" exclaimed travis, with a brusque movement, "there's mother thing we must talk about. no more foolishness between us. we've had a jolly little flirtation, i know, and it's been good fun while it lasted. i know you like me, and you know that i like you; but as for loving each other, you know we don't. yes, you say that you love me and that i'm the only girl. that's part of the game. i can play it"--her little eyes began to dance--"quite as well as you. but it's playing with something that's quite too serious to be played with--after all, isn't it, now? it's insincere, and, as i tell you, from now on i'm going to be as true and as sincere and as honest as i can." "but i tell you that i do love you," protested condy, trying to make the words ring true. travis looked about the room an instant as if in deliberation; then abruptly: "ah! what am i going to do with such a boy as you are, after all--a great big, overgrown boy? condy rivers, look at me straight in the eye. tell me, do you honestly love me? you know what i mean when i say 'love.' do you love me?" "no, i don't!" he exclaimed blankly, as though he had just discovered the fact. "there!" declared travis--"and i don't love you." they both began to laugh. "now," added travis, "we don't need to have the burden and trouble of keeping up the pretences any more. we understand each other, don't we?" "this is queer enough," said condy drolly. "but isn't it an improvement?" condy scoured his head. "tell me the truth," she insisted; "you be sincere." "i do believe it is. why--why--travis by jingo! travis, i think i'm going to like you better than ever now." "never mind. is it an agreement?" "what is?" "that we don't pretend to love each other any more?" "all right--yes--you're right; because the moment i began to love you i should like you so much less." she put out her hand. "that's an agreement, then." condy took her hand in his. "yes, it's an agreement." but when, as had been his custom, he made as though to kiss her hand, travis drew it quickly away. "no! no!" she said firmly, smiling for all that--"no more foolishness." "but--but," he protested, "it's not so radical as that, is it? you're not going to overturn such time-worn, time-honored customs as that? why, this is a regular rebellion." "no, sire," quoted travis, trying not to laugh, "it is a revolution." chapter iii although monday was practically a holiday for the sunday-supplement staff of "the times," condy rivers made a point to get down to the office betimes the next morning. there were reasons why a certain article descriptive of a great whaleback steamer taking on grain for famine-stricken india should be written that day, and rivers wanted his afternoon free in order to go to laurie flagg's coming-out tea. but as he came into his room at "the times" office, which he shared with the exchange and sporting editors, and settled himself at his desk, he suddenly remembered that, under the new order of things, he need not expect to see travis at the flaggs'. "well," he muttered, "maybe it doesn't make so much difference, after all. she was a corking fine girl, but--might as well admit it--the play is played out. of course, i don't love her--any more than she loves me. i'll see less and less of her now. it's inevitable, and after a while we'll hardly even meet. in a way, it's a pity; but, of course, one has to be sensible about these things. . . . well, this whaleback now." he rang up the chamber of commerce, and found out that the "city of everett," which was the whaleback's name, was at the mission street wharf. this made it possible for him to write the article in two ways. he either could fake his copy from a clipping on the subject which the exchange editor had laid on his desk, or he could go down in person to the wharf, interview the captain, and inspect the craft for himself. the former was the short and easy method. the latter was more troublesome, but would result in a far more interesting article. condy debated the subject a few minutes, then decided to go down to the wharf. san francisco's water-front was always interesting, and he might get hold of a photograph of the whaleback. all at once the "idea" of the article struck him, the certain underlying notion that would give importance and weight to the mere details and descriptions. condy's enthusiasm flared up in an instant. "by jove!" he exclaimed; "by jove!" he clapped on his hat wrong side foremost, crammed a sheaf of copy-paper into his pocket, and was on the street again in another moment. then it occurred to him that he had forgotten to call at his club that morning for his mail, as was his custom, on the way to the office. he looked at his watch. it was early yet, and his club was but two blocks' distance. he decided that he would get his letters at the club, and read them on the way down to the wharf. for condy had joined a certain san francisco club of artists, journalists, musicians, and professional men that is one of the institutions of the city, and, in fact, famous throughout the united states. he was one of the younger members, but was popular and well liked, and on more than one occasion had materially contributed to the fun of the club's "low jinks." in his box this morning he found one letter that he told himself he must read upon the instant. it bore upon the envelope the name of a new york publishing house to whom condy had sent a collection of his short stories about a month before. he took the letter into the "round window" of the club, overlooking the street, and tore it open excitedly. the fact that he had received a letter from the firm without the return of his manuscript seemed a good omen. this was what he read: conde rivers, esq., bohemian club, san francisco, cal. dear sir: we return to you by this mail the manuscript of your stories, which we do not consider as available for publication at the present moment. we would say, however, that we find in several of them indications of a quite unusual order of merit. the best-selling book just now is the short novel--say thirty thousand words--of action and adventure. judging from the stories of your collection, we suspect that your talent lies in this direction, and we would suggest that you write such a novel and submit the same to us. very respectfully, the centennial co., new york. condy shoved the letter into his pocket and collapsed limply into his chair. "what's the good of trying to do anything anyhow!" he muttered, looking gloomily down into the street. "my level is just the hack-work of a local sunday supplement, and i am a fool to think of anything else." his enthusiasm in the matter of the "city of everett" was cold and dead in a moment. he could see no possibilities in the subject whatever. his "idea" of a few minutes previous seemed ridiculous and overwrought. he would go back to the office and grind out his copy from the exchange editor's clipping. just then his eye was caught by a familiar figure in trim, well-fitting black halted on the opposite corner waiting for the passage of a cable car. it was travis bessemer. no one but she could carry off such rigorous simplicity in the matter of dress so well: black skirt, black russian blouse, tiny black bonnet and black veil, white kids with black stitching. simplicity itself. yet the style of her, as condy rivers told himself, flew up and hit you in the face; and her figure--was there anything more perfect? and the soft pretty effect of her yellow hair seen through the veil--could anything be more fetching? and her smart carriage and the fling of her fine broad shoulders, and--no, it was no use; condy had to run down to speak to her. "come, come!" she said as he pretended to jostle against her on the curbstone without noticing her; "you had best go to work. loafing at ten o'clock on the street corners--the idea!" "it is not--it can not be--and yet it is--it is she," he burlesqued; "and after all these years!" then in his natural voice: "hello t.b." "hello, c.r." "where are you going?' "home. i've just run down for half an hour to have the head of my banjo tightened." "if i put you on the car, will you expect me to pay your car-fare?" "condy rivers, i've long since got over the idea of ever expecting you to have any change concealed about your person." "huh! no, it all goes for theatre tickets, and flowers, and boxes of candy for a certain girl i know. but"--and he glared at her significantly--"no more foolishness." she laughed. "what are you 'on' this morning, condy?" condy told her as they started to walk toward kearney street. "but why don't you go to the dock and see the vessel, if you can make a better article that way?" "oh, what's the good! the centennial people have turned down my stories." she commiserated him for this; then suddenly exclaimed: "no, you must go down to the dock! you ought to, condy. oh, i tell you, let me go down with you!" in an instant condy leaped to the notion. "splendid! splendid! no reason why you shouldn't!" he exclaimed. and within fifteen minutes the two were treading the wharves and quays of the city's water-front. ships innumerable nuzzled at the endless line of docks, mast overspiring mast, and bowsprit overlapping bowsprit, till the eye was bewildered, as if by the confusion of branches in a leafless forest. in the distance the mass of rigging resolved itself into a solid gray blur against the sky. the great hulks, green and black and slate gray, laid themselves along the docks, straining leisurely at their mammoth chains, their flanks opened, their cargoes, as it were their entrails, spewed out in a wild disarray of crate and bale and box. sailors and stevedores swarmed them like vermin. trucks rolled along the wharves like peals of ordnance, the horse-hoofs beating the boards like heavy drum-taps. chains clanked, a ship's dog barked incessantly from a companionway, ropes creaked in complaining pulleys, blocks rattled, hoisting-engines coughed and strangled, while all the air was redolent of oakum, of pitch, of paint, of spices, of ripe fruit, of clean cool lumber, of coffee, of tar, of bilge, and the brisk, nimble odor of the sea. travis was delighted, her little brown eyes snapping, her cheeks flushing, as she drank in the scene. "to think," she cried, "where all these ships have come from! look at their names; aren't they perfect? just the names, see: the 'mary baker,' hull; and the 'anandale,' liverpool; and the 'two sisters,' calcutta, and see that one they're calking, the 'montevideo,' callao; and there, look! look! the very one you're looking for, the 'city of everett,' san francisco." the whaleback, an immense tube of steel plates, lay at her wharf, sucking in entire harvests of wheat from the san joaquin valley--harvests that were to feed strangely clad skeletons on the southern slopes of the himalaya foot-hills. travis and condy edged their way among piles of wheat-bags, dodging drays and rumbling trucks, and finally brought up at the after gangplank, where a sailor halted them. condy exhibited his reporter's badge. "i represent 'the times,'" he said, with profound solemnity, "and i want to see the officer in charge." the sailor fell back upon the instant. "power of the press," whispered condy to travis as the two gained the deck. a second sailor directed them to the mate, whom they found in the chart-room, engaged, singularly enough, in trimming the leaves of a scraggly geranium. condy explained his mission with flattering allusions to the whaleback and the novelty of the construction. the mate--an old man with a patriarchal beard--softened at once, asked them into his own cabin aft, and even brought out a camp-stool for travis, brushing it with his sleeve before setting it down. while condy was interviewing the old fellow, travis was examining, with the interest of a child, the details of the cabin: the rack-like bunk, the washstand, ingeniously constructed so as to shut into the bulkhead when not in use, the alarm-clock screwed to the wall, and the array of photographs thrust into the mirror between frame and glass. one, an old daguerreotype, particularly caught her fancy. it was the portrait of a very beautiful girl, wearing the old-fashioned side curls and high comb of a half-century previous. the old mate noticed the attention she paid to it, and, as soon as he had done giving information to condy, turned and nodded to travis, and said quietly: "she was pretty, wasn't she?" "oh, very!" answered travis, without looking away. there was a silence. then the mate, his eyes wide and thoughtful, said with a long breath: "and she was just about your age, miss, when i saw her; and you favor her, too." condy and travis held their breaths in attention. there in the cabin of that curious nondescript whaleback they had come suddenly to the edge of a romance--a romance that had been lived through before they were born. then travis said in a low voice, and sweetly: "she died?" "before i ever set eyes on her, miss. that is, maybe she died. i sometimes think--fact is, i really believe she's alive yet, and waiting for me." he hesitated awkwardly. "i dunno," he said pulling his beard. "i don't usually tell that story to strange folk, but you remind me so of her that i guess i will." condy sat down on the edge of the bunk, and the mate seated himself on the plush settle opposite the door, his elbows on his knees, his eyes fixed on a patch of bright sunlight upon the deck outside. "i began life," he said, "as a deep-sea diver--began pretty young, too. i first put on the armor when i was twenty, nothing but a lad; but i could take the pressure up to seventy pounds even then. one of my very first dives was off trincomalee, on the coast of ceylon. a mail packet had gone down in a squall with all on board. six of the bodies had come up and had been recovered, but the seventh hadn't. it was the body of the daughter of the governor of the island, a beautiful young girl of nineteen, whom everybody loved. i was sent for to go down and bring the body up. well, i went down. the packet lay in a hundred feet of water, and that's a wonder deep dive. i had to go down twice. the first time i couldn't find anything, though i went all through the berth-deck. i came up to the wrecking-float and reported that i had seen nothing. there were a lot of men there belonging to the wrecking gang, and some correspondents of london papers. but they would have it that she was below, and had me go down again. i did, and this time i found her." the mate paused a moment "i'll have to tell you," he went on, "that when a body don't come to the surface it will stand or sit in a perfectly natural position until a current or movement of the water around touches it. when that happens--well, you'd say the body was alive; and old divers have a superstition--no, it ain't just a superstition, i believe it's so--that drowned people really don't die till they come to the surface, and the air touches them. we say that the drowned who don't come up still have some sort of life of their own way down there in all that green water . . . some kind of life . . . surely . . . surely. when i went down the second time, i came across the door of what i thought at first was the linen-closet. but it turned out to be a little stateroom. i opened it. there was the girl. she was sitting on the sofa opposite the door, with a little hat on her head, and holding a satchel in her lap, just as if she was ready to go ashore. her eyes were wide open, and she was looking right at me and smiling. it didn't seem terrible or ghastly in the least. she seemed very sweet. when i opened the door it set the water in motion, and she got up and dropped the satchel, and came toward me smiling and holding out her arms. "i stepped back quick and shut the door, and sat down in one of the saloon chairs to fetch my breath, for it had given me a start. the next thing to do was to send her up. but i began to think. she seemed so pretty as she was. what was the use of bringing her up--up there on the wrecking float with that crowd of men--up where the air would get at her, and where they would put her in the ground along o' the worms? if i left her there she'd always be sweet and pretty--always be nineteen; and i remembered what old divers said about drowned people living just so long as they stayed below. you see, i was only a lad then, and things like that impress you when you're young. well, i signaled to be hauled up. they asked me on the float if i'd seen anything, and i said no. that was all there was to the affair. they never raised the ship, and in a little while it was all forgotten. "but i never forgot it, and i always remembered her, way down there in all that still green water, waiting there in that little state-room for me to come back and open the door. and i've growed to be an old man remembering her; but she's always stayed just as she was the first day i saw her, when she came toward me smiling and holding out her arms. she's always stayed young and fresh and pretty. i never saw her but that once. only afterward i got her picture from a native woman of trincomalee who was house-keeper at the residency where the governor of the island lived. somehow i never could care for other women after that, and i ain't never married for that reason." "no, no, of course not! exclaimed travis, in a low voice as the old fellow paused. "fine, fine; oh, fine as gold!" murmured condy, under his breath. "well," said the mate, getting up and rubbing his knee, "that's the story. now you know all about that picture. will you have a glass of madeira, miss?" he got out a bottle of wine bearing the genuine funchal label and filled three tiny glasses. travis pushed up her veil, and she and condy rose. "this is to her," said travis gravely. "thank you, miss," answered the mate, and the three drank in silence. as travis and condy were going down the gangplank they met the captain of the whaleback coming up. "i saw you in there talking to old mcpherson," he explained. "did you get what you wanted from him?" "more, more!" exclaimed condy. "my hand in the fire, he told you that yarn about the girl who was drowned off trincomalee. of course, i knew it. the old boy's wits are turned on that subject. he will have it that the body hasn't decomposed in all this time. good seaman enough, and a first-class navigator, but he's soft in that one spot." chapter iv "oh, but the story of it!" exclaimed condy as he and travis regained the wharf--"the story of it! isn't it a ripper. isn't it a corker! his leaving her that way, and never caring for any other girl afterward." "and so original," she commented, quite as enthusiastic as he. "original?--why, it's new as paint! it's--it's--travis, i'll make a story out of this that will be copied in every paper between the two oceans." they were so interested in the mate's story that they forgot to take a car, and walked up clay street talking it over, suggesting, rearranging, and embellishing; and condy was astonished and delighted to note that she "caught on" to the idea as quickly as he, and knew the telling points and what details to leave out. "and i'll make a bang-up article out of the whaleback herself," declared condy. the "idea" of the article had returned to him, and all his enthusiasm with it. "and look here," he said, showing her the letter from the centennial company. "they turned down my book, but see what they say. "quite an unusual order of merit!" cried travis. "why, that's fine! why didn't you show this to me before?--and asking you like this to write them a novel of adventure! what more can you want? oh!" she exclaimed impatiently, "that's so like you; you would tell everybody about your reverses, and carry on about them yourself, but never say a word when you get a little boom. have you an idea for a thirty-thousand-word novel? wouldn't that diver's story do?" "no, there's not enough in that for thirty thousand words. i haven't any idea at all--never wrote a story of adventure--never wrote anything longer than six thousand words. but i'll keep my eye open for something that will do. by the way--by jove! travis, where are we?" they looked briskly around them, and the bustling, breezy waterfront faded from their recollections. they were in a world of narrow streets, of galleries and overhanging balconies. craziest structures, riddled and honeycombed with stairways and passages, shut out the sky, though here and there rose a building of extraordinary richness and most elaborate ornamentation. color was everywhere. a thousand little notes of green and yellow, of vermilion and sky blue, assaulted the eye. here it was a doorway, here a vivid glint of cloth or hanging, here a huge scarlet sign lettered with gold, and here a kaleidoscopic effect in the garments of a passer-by. directly opposite, and two stories above their heads, a sort of huge "loggia," one blaze of gilding and crude vermilions, opened in the gray cement of a crumbling facade, like a sudden burst of flame. gigantic pot-bellied lanterns of red and gold swung from its ceiling, while along its railing stood a row of pots--brass, ruddy bronze, and blue porcelain--from which were growing red saffron, purple, pink, and golden tulips without number. the air was vibrant with unfamiliar noises. from one of the balconies near at hand, though unseen, a gong, a pipe, and some kind of stringed instrument wailed and thundered in unison. there was a vast shuffling of padded soles and a continuous interchange of singsong monosyllables, high-pitched and staccato, while from every hand rose the strange aromas of the east--sandalwood, punk, incense, oil, and the smell of mysterious cookery. "chinatown!" exclaimed travis. "i hadn't the faintest idea we had come up so far. condy rivers, do you know what time it is?" she pointed a white kid finger through the doorway of a drug-store, where, amid lacquer boxes and bronze urns of herbs and dried seeds, a round seth thomas marked half-past two. "and your lunch?" cried condy. "great heavens! i never thought." "it's too late to get any at home. never mind; i'll go somewhere and have a cup of tea." "why not get a package of chinese tea, now that you're down here, and take it home with you?" "or drink it here." "where?" "in one of the restaurants. there wouldn't be a soul there at this hour. i know they serve tea any time. condy, let's try it. wouldn't it be fun?" condy smote his thigh. "fun!" he vociferated; "fun! it is--by jove--it would be heavenly! wait a moment. i'll tell you what we will do. tea won't be enough. we'll go down to kearney street, or to the market, and get some crackers to go with it." they hurried back to the california market, a few blocks distant, and bought some crackers and a wedge of new cheese. on the way back to chinatown travis stopped at a music store on kearney street to get her banjo, which she had left to have its head tightened; and thus burdened they regained the "town," condy grieving audibly at having to carry "brown-paper bundles through the street." "first catch your restaurant," said travis as they turned into dupont street with its thronging coolies and swarming, gayly clad children. but they had not far to seek. "here you are!" suddenly exclaimed condy, halting in front of a wholesale tea-house bearing a sign in chinese and english. "come on, travis!" they ascended two flights of a broad, brass-bound staircase leading up from the ground floor, and gained the restaurant on the top story of the building. as travis had foretold, it was deserted. she clasped her gloved hands gayly, crying: "isn't it delightful! we've the whole place to ourselves." the restaurant ran the whole depth of the building, and was finished off at either extremity with a gilded balcony, one overlooking dupont street and the other the old plaza. enormous screens of gilded ebony, intricately carved and set with colored glass panes, divided the room into three, and one of these divisions, in the rear part, from which they could step out upon the balcony that commanded the view of the plaza, they elected as their own. it was charming. at their backs they had the huge, fantastic screen, brave and fine with its coat of gold. in front, through the glass-paned valves of a pair of folding doors, they could see the roofs of the houses beyond the plaza, and beyond these the blue of the bay with its anchored ships, and even beyond this the faint purple of the oakland shore. on either side of these doors, in deep alcoves, were divans with mattings and head-rests for opium smokers. the walls were painted blue and hung with vertical cantonese legends in red and silver, while all around the sides of the room small ebony tables alternated with ebony stools, each inlaid with a slab of mottled marble. a chandelier, all a-glitter with tinsel, swung from the centre of the ceiling over a huge round table of mahogany. and not a soul was there to disturb them. below them, out there around the old plaza, the city drummed through its work with a lazy, soothing rumble. nearer at hand, chinatown sent up the vague murmur of the life of the orient. in the direction of the mexican quarter, the bell of the cathedral knolled at intervals. the sky was without a cloud and the afternoon was warm. condy was inarticulate with the joy of what he called their "discovery." he got up and sat down. he went out into the other room and came back again. he dragged up a couple of the marble-seated stools to the table. he took off his hat, lighted a cigarette, let it go out, lighted it again, and burned his fingers. he opened and closed the folding-doors, pushed the table into a better light, and finally brought travis out upon the balcony to show her the "points of historical interest" in and around the plaza. "there's the stevenson memorial ship in the centre, see; and right there, where the flagstaff is, general baker made the funeral oration over the body of terry. broderick killed him in a duel--or was it terry killed broderick? i forget which. anyhow, right opposite, where that pawnshop is, is where the overland stages used to start in ' . and every other building that fronts on the plaza, even this one we're in now, used to be a gambling-house in bonanza times; and, see, over yonder is the morgue and the city prison." they turned back into the room, and a great, fat chinaman brought them tea on condy's order. but besides tea, he brought dried almonds, pickled watermelon rinds, candied quince, and "china nuts." travis cut the cheese into cubes with condy's penknife, and arranged the cubes in geometric figures upon the crackers. "but, condy," she complained, "why in the world did you get so many crackers? there's hundreds of them here--enough to feed a regiment. why didn't you ask me?" "huh! what? what? i don't know. what's the matter with the crackers? you were dickering with the cheese, and the man said, 'how many crackers?' i didn't know. i said, 'oh, give me a quarter's worth!'" "and we couldn't possibly have eaten ten cents' worth! oh, condy, you are--you are--but never mind, here's your tea. i wonder if this green, pasty stuff is good." they found that it was, but so sweet that it made their tea taste bitter. the watermelon rinds were flat to their western palates, but the dried almonds were a great success. then condy promptly got the hiccoughs from drinking his tea too fast, and fretted up and down the room like a chicken with the pip till travis grew faint and weak with laughter. "oh, well," he exclaimed aggrievedly--"laugh, that's right! i don't laugh. it isn't such fun when you've got 'em yoursel'--hulp." "but sit down, for goodness' sake! you make me so nervous. you can't walk them off. sit down and hold your breath while you count nine. condy, i'm going to take off my gloves and veil. what do you think?" "sure, of course; and i'll have a cigarette. do you mind if i smoke?" "well, what's that in your hand now?" "by jove, i have been smoking! i--i beg your pardon. i'm a regular stable boy. i'll throw it away." travis caught his wrist. "what nonsense! i would have told you before if i'd minded." "but it's gone out!" he exclaimed. "i'll have another." as he reached into his pocket for his case, his hand encountered a paper-covered volume, and he drew it out in some perplexity. "now, how in the wide world did that book come in my pocket?" he muttered, frowning. "what have i been carrying it around for? i've forgotten. i declare i have." "what book is it?" "hey? book? . . . h'm," he murmured, staring. travis pounded on the table. "wake up, condy, i'm talking to you," she called. "it's 'life's handicap,'" he answered, with a start; "but why and but why have i--" "what's it about? i never heard of it," she declared. "you never heard of 'life's handicap'?" he shouted; "you never heard--you never--you mean to say you never heard--but here, this won't do. sit right still, and i'll read you one of these yarns before you're another minute older. any one of them--open the book at random. here we are--'the strange ride of morrowbie jukes'; and it's a stem-winder, too." and then for the first time in her life, there in that airy, golden chinese restaurant, in the city from which he hasted to flee, travis bessemer fell under the charm of the little spectacled colonial, to whose song we all must listen and to whose pipe we all must dance. there was one "point" in the story of jukes' strange ride that condy prided himself upon having discovered. so far as he knew, all critics had overlooked it. it is where jukes is describing the man-trap of the city of the dead who are alive, and mentions that the slope of the inclosing sandhills was "about forty-five degrees." jukes was a civil engineer, and condy held that it was a capital bit of realism on the part of the author to have him speak of the pitch of the hills in just such technical terms. at first he thought he would call travis' attention to this bit of cleverness; but as he read he abruptly changed his mind. he would see if she would find it out for herself. it would be a test of her quickness, he told himself; almost an unfair test, because the point was extremely subtle and could easily be ignored by the most experienced of fiction readers. he read steadily on, working himself into a positive excitement as he approached the passage. he came to it and read it through without any emphasis, almost slurring over it in his eagerness to be perfectly fair. but as he began to read the next paragraph, travis, her little eyes sparkling with interest and attention, exclaimed: "just as an engineer would describe it. isn't that good!" "glory hallelujah!" cried condy, slamming down the book joyfully. "travis, you are one in a thousand!" "what--what is it?' she inquired blankly. "never mind, never mind; you're a wonder, that's all"--and he finished the tale without further explanation. then, while he smoked another cigarette and she drank another cup of tea, he read to her "the return of imri" and the "incarnation of krishna mulvaney." he found her an easy and enrapt convert to the little englishman's creed, and for himself tasted the intense delight of revealing to another an appreciation of a literature hitherto ignored. "isn't he strong!" cried travis. "just a little better than marie corelli and the duchess!" "and to think of having all those stories to read! you haven't read any of them yet?" "not a one. i've been reading only the novels we take up in the wednesday class." "lord!" muttered condy. condy's spirits had been steadily rising since the incident aboard the whaleback. the exhilaration of the water-front, his delight over the story he was to make out of the old mate's yarn, chinatown, the charming unconventionality of their lunch in the chinese restaurant, the sparkling serenity of the afternoon, and the joy of discovering travis' appreciation of his adored and venerated author, had put him into a mood bordering close upon hilarity. "the next event upon our interesting programme," he announced, "will be a banjosephine obligato in a-sia minor, by that justly renowned impresario, signor conde tin-pani rivers, specially engaged for this performance; with a pleasing and pan-hellenic song-and-dance turn by miss travis bessemer, the infant phenomenon, otherwise known as 'babby bessie.'" "you're not going to play that banjo here?" said travis, as he stripped away the canvas covering. "order in the gallery!" cried condy, beginning to tune up. then in a rapid, professional monotone: "ladies-and-gentlemen - with - your - kind - permission - i - will - endeavor - to - give - you - an - imitation - of - a - carolina - coon - song"--and without more ado, singing the words to a rattling, catchy accompaniment, swung off into-- "f--or my gal's a high-born leddy, she's brack, but not too shady." he did not sing loud, and the clack and snarl of the banjo carried hardly further than the adjoining room; but there was no one to hear, and, as he went along, even travis began to hum the words, but at that, condy stopped abruptly, laid the instrument across his knees with exaggerated solicitude, and said deliberately: "travis, you are a good, sweet girl, and what you lack in beauty you make up in amiability, and i've no doubt you are kind to your aged father; but you--can--not--sing." travis was cross in a moment, all the more so because condy had spoken the exact truth. it was quite impossible for her to carry a tune half a dozen bars without entangling herself in as many different keys. what voice she had was not absolutely bad; but as she persisted in singing in spite of condy's guying, he put back his head and began a mournful and lugubrious howling. "ho!" she exclaimed, grabbing the banjo from his knees, "if i can't sing, i can play better than some smart people." "yes, by note," rallied condy, as travis executed a banjo "piece" of no little intricacy. "that's just like a machine--like a hand-piano. "order in the gallery!" she retorted, without pausing in her playing. she finished with a great flourish and gazed at him in triumph, only to find him pretending a profound slumber. "o--o--o!" she remarked between her teeth, "i just hate you, condy rivers." "there are others," he returned airily. "talk about slang." "now what will we do?" he cried. "let's do something. suppose we break something--just for fun." then suddenly the gayety went out of his face, and he started up and clapped his hand to his head with a gasp of dismay. "great heavens!" he exclaimed. "condy," cried travis in alarm, "what is it"' "the tea!" he vociferated. "laurie flagg's tea. i ought to be there--right this minute." travis fetched a sigh of relief. "is that all?" "all!" he retorted. "all! why, it's past four now--and i'd forgotten every last thing." then suddenly falling calm again, and quietly resuming his seat: "i don't see as it makes any difference. i won't go, that's all. push those almonds here, will you, miss lady?--but we aren't doing anything," he exclaimed, with a brusque return of exuberance. "let's do things. what'll we do? think of something. is there anything we can break?" then, without any transition, he vaulted upon the table and began to declaim, with tremendous gestures: "there once was a beast called an ounce, who went with a spring and a bounce. his head was as flat as the head of a cat, this quadrupetantical ounce, ---tical ounce, this quadrupetantical ounce. "you'd think from his name he was small, but that was not like him at all. he weighed, i'll be bound, three or four hundred pound, and he looked most uncommonly tall, --monly tall, and he looked most uncommonly tall." "bravo! bravo!" cried travis, pounding on the table. "hear, hear--none, brutus, none." condy sat down on the table and swung his legs but during the next few moments, while they were eating the last of their cheese, his good spirits fell rapidly away from him. he heaved a sigh, and thrust both hands gloomily into his pockets. "cheese, condy?" asked travis. he shook his head with a dark frown, muttering: "no cheese, no cheese." "what's wrong, condy--what's the matter?" asked travis, with concern. for some time he would not tell her, answering all her inquiries by closing his eyes and putting his chin in the air, nodding his head in knowing fashion. "but what is it?" "you don't respect me," he muttered; and for a long time this was all that could be got from him. no, no, she did not respect him; no, she did not take him seriously. "but of course i do. why don't i? condy rivers, what's got into you now?" "no, no; i know it. i can tell. you don't take me seriously. you don't respect me." "but why?" "make a blooming buffoon of myself," he mumbled tragically. in great distress travis labored to contradict him. why, they had just been having a good time, that was all. why, she had been just as silly as he. condy caught at the word. "silly! there. i knew it. i told you. i'm silly. i'm a buffoon.--but haven't we had a great afternoon?" he added, with a sudden grin. "i never remember," announced travis emphatically, "when i've had a better time than i've had to-day; and i know just why it's been such a success." "why, then?" "because we've had no foolishness. we've just been ourselves, and haven't pretended we were in love with each other when we are not. condy, let's do this lots." "do what?" "go round to queer little, interesting little places. we've had a glorious time to-day, haven't we?--and we haven't been talked out once. "as we were last night, for instance," he hazarded. "i thought you felt it, the same as i did. it was a bit awful wasn't it?" "it was." "from now on, let's make a resolution. i know you've had a good time to-day. haven't you had a better time than if you had gone to the tea?'" "well, rather. i don't know when i've had a better, jollier afternoon." "well, now, we're going to try to have lots more good times, but just as chums. we've tried the other, and it failed. now be sincere; didn't it fail?" "it worked out. it did work out." "now from this time on, no more foolishness. we'll just be chums." "chums it is. no more foolishness." "the moment you begin to pretend you're in love with me, it will spoil everything. it's funny," said travis, drawing on her gloves. "we're doing a funny thing, condy. with ninety-nine people out of one hundred, this little affair would have been all ended after our 'explanation' of last night--confessing, as we did, that we didn't love each other. most couples would have 'drifted apart'; but here we are, planning to be chums, and have good times in our own original, unconventional way--and we can do it, too. there, there, he's a thousand miles away. he's not heard a single word i've said. condy, are you listening to me?" "blix," he murmured, staring at her vaguely. "blix--you look that way; i don't know, look kind of blix. don't you feel sort of blix?" he inquired anxiously. "blix?" he smote the table with his palm. "capital!" he cried; "sounds bully, and snappy, and crisp, and bright, and sort of sudden. sounds--don't you know, this way?"--and he snapped his fingers. "don't you see what i mean? blix, that's who you are. you've always been blix, and i've just found it out. blix," he added, listening to the sound of the name. "blix, blix. yes, yes; that's your name." "blix?" she repeated; "but why blix?" "why not?" "i don't know why not." "well, then," he declared, as though that settled the question. they made ready to go, as it was growing late. "will you tie that for me, condy," she asked, rising and turning the back of her head toward him, the ends of the veil held under her fingers. "not too tight. condy, don't pull it so tight. there, there, that will do. have you everything that belongs to you? i know you'll go away and leave something here. there's your cigarette case, and your book, and of course the banjo." as if warned by a mysterious instinct, the fat chinaman made his appearance in the outer room. condy put his fingers into his vest pocket, then dropped back upon his stool with a suppressed exclamation of horror. "condy!" exclaimed blix in alarm, "are you sick?"--for he had turned a positive white. "i haven't a cent of money," he murmured faintly. "i spent my last quarter for those beastly crackers. what's to be done? what is to be done? i'll--i'll leave him my watch. yes, that's the only thing." blix calmly took out her purse. "i expected it," she said resignedly. "i knew this would happen sooner or later, and i always have been prepared. how much is it, john?" she asked of the chinaman. "hefahdollah." "i'll never be able to look you in the face again," protested condy. "i'll pay you back to-night. i will! i'll send it up by a messenger boy." "then you would be a buffoon." "don't!" he exclaimed. "don't, it humiliates me to the dust." "oh, come along and don't be so absurd. it must be after five." half-way down the brass-bound stairs, he clapped his hand to his head with a start. "and now what is it?" she inquired meekly. "forgotten, forgotten!" he exclaimed. "i knew i would forget something." "i knew it, you mean." he ran back, and returned with the great bag of crackers, and thrust it into her hands. "here, here, take these. we mustn't leave these," he declared earnestly. "it would be a shameful waste of money;" and in spite of all her protests, he insisted upon taking the crackers along. "i wonder," said blix, as the two skirted the plaza, going down to kearney street; "i wonder if i ought to ask him to supper?" "ask who--me?--how funny to--" "i wonder if we are talked out--if it would spoil the day?" "anyhow, i'm going to have supper at the club; and i've got to write my article some time to-night." blix fixed him with a swift glance of genuine concern. "don't play to-night, condy," she said, with a sudden gravity. "fat lot i can play! what money have i got to play with?" "you might get some somewheres. but, anyhow, promise me you won't play." "well, of course i'll promise. how can i, if i haven't any money? and besides, i've got my whaleback stuff to write. i'll have supper at the club, and go up in the library and grind out copy for a while." "condy," said blix, "i think that diver's story is almost too good for 'the times.' why don't you write it and send it east? send it to the centennial company, why don't you? they've paid some attention to you now, and it would keep your name in their minds if you sent the story to them, even if they didn't publish it. why don't you think of that?" "fine--great idea! i'll do that. only i'll have to write it out of business hours. it will be extra work." "never mind, you do it; and," she added, as he put her on the cable car, "keep your mind on that thirty-thousand-word story of adventure. good-by, condy; haven't we had the jolliest day that ever was?" "couldn't have been better. good-by, blix." condy returned to his club., it was about six o'clock. in response to his question, the hall-boy told him that tracy sargeant had arrived a few moments previous, and had been asking for him. the saturday of the week before, condy had made an engagement with young sargeant to have supper together that night, and perhaps go to the theatre afterward. and now at the sight of sargeant in the "round window" of the main room, buried in the file of the "gil blas," condy was pleased to note that neither of them had forgotten the matter. sargeant greeted him with extreme cordiality as he came up, and at once proposed a drink. sargeant was a sleek, well-groomed, well-looking fellow of thirty, just beginning to show the effects of a certain amount of dissipation in the little puffs under the eyes and the faint blueness of the temples. the sudden death of his father for which event sargeant was still mourning, had left him in such position that his monthly income was about five times as large as condy's salary. the two had supper together, and sargeant proposed the theatre. "no, no; i've got to work to-night," asserted condy. after dinner, while they were smoking their cigars in a window of the main room, one of the hall-boys came up and touched condy on the arm. "mr. eckert, and mr. hendricks, and mr. george hands, and several other of those gentlemen are up in the card-room, and are asking for you and mr. sargeant." "why, i didn't know the boys were here! they've got a game going, condy. let's go up and get in. shall we?" condy remembered that he had no money. "i'm flat broke, tracy," he announced, for he knew sargeant well enough to make the confession without wincing. "no, i'll not get in; but i'll go up and watch you a few minutes." they ascended to the card-room, where the air was heavy and acrid with cigar smoke, and where the silence was broken only by the click of poker-chips. at the end of twenty minutes condy was playing, having borrowed enough money of sargeant to start him in the game. unusually talkative and restless, he had suddenly hardened and stiffened to a repressed, tense calm; speechless, almost rigid in his chair. excitable under even ordinary circumstances, his every faculty was now keyed to its highest pitch. the nervous strain upon him was like the stretching and tightening of harp-strings, too taut to quiver. the color left his face, and the moisture fled his lips. his projected article, his promise to blix, all the jollity of the afternoon, all thought of time or place, faded away as the one indomitable, evil passion of the man leaped into life within him, and lashed and roweled him with excitement. his world resolved itself to a round green table, columns of tri-colored chips, and five ever-changing cards that came and went and came again before his tired eyes like the changing, weaving colors of the kaleidoscope. midnight struck, then one o'clock, then two, three, and four. still his passion rode him like a hag, spurring the jaded body, rousing up the wearied brain. finally, at half-past four, at a time when condy was precisely where he had started, neither winner nor loser by so much as a dime, a round of jack-pots was declared, and the game broke up. condy walked home to the uptown hotel where he lived with his mother, and went to bed as the first milk-wagons began to make their appearance and the newsboys to cry the morning papers. then, as his tired eyes closed at last, occurred that strange trick of picture-making that the overtaxed brain plays upon the retina. a swift series of pictures of the day's doings began to whirl through rather than before the pupils of his shut eyes. condy saw again a brief vision of the street, and blix upon the corner waiting to cross; then it was the gay, brisk confusion of the water-front, the old mate's cabin aboard the whaleback, chinatown, and a loop of vermilion cloth over a gallery rail, the golden balcony, the glint of the stevenson ship upon the green plaza, blix playing the banjo, the delightful and picturesque confusion of the deserted chinese restaurant; blix again, turning her head for him to fasten her veil, holding the ends with her white-kid fingers; blix once more, walking at his side with her trim black skirt, her round little turban hat, her yellow hair, and her small dark, dancing eyes. then, suddenly, he remembered the promise he had made her in the matter of playing that night. he winced sharply at this, and the remembrance of his fault harried and harassed him. in spite of himself, he felt contemptible. yet he had broken his promises to her in this very matter of playing before--before that day of their visit to the chinese restaurant--and had felt no great qualm of self-reproach. had their relations changed? rather the reverse for they had done with "foolishness." "never worried me before," muttered condy, as he punched up his pillow--"never worried me before. why should it worry me now--worry me like the devil;--and she caught on to that 'point' about the slope of forty-five degrees." chapter v condy began his week's work for the supplement behindhand. naturally he overslept himself tuesday morning, and, not having any change in his pockets, was obliged to walk down to the office. he arrived late, to find the compositors already fretting for copy. his editor promptly asked for the whaleback stuff, and condy was forced into promising it within a half-hour. it was out of the question to write the article according to his own idea in so short a time; so condy faked the stuff from the exchange clipping, after all. his description of the boat and his comments upon her mission--taken largely at second hand--served only to fill space in the paper. they were lacking both in interest and in point. there were no illustrations. the article was a failure. but condy redeemed himself by a witty interview later in the week with an emotional actress, and by a solemn article compiled after an hour's reading in lafcadio hearn and the encyclopedia--on the "industrial renaissance in japan." but the idea of the diver's story came back to him again and again, and thursday night after supper he went down to his club, and hid himself at a corner desk in the library, and, in a burst of enthusiasm, wrote out some two thousand words of it. in order to get the "technical details," upon which he set such store, he consulted the encyclopedias again, and "worked in" a number of unfamiliar phrases and odd-sounding names. he was so proud of the result that he felt he could not wait until the tale was finished and in print to try its effect. he wanted appreciation and encouragement upon the instant. he thought of blix. "she saw the point in morrowbie jukes' description of the slope of the sandhill," he told himself; and the next moment had resolved to go up and see her the next evening, and read to her what he had written. this was on thursday. all through that week blix had kept much to herself, and for the first time in two years had begun to spend every evening at home. in the morning of each day she helped victorine with the upstairs work, making the beds, putting the rooms to rights; or consulted with the butcher's and grocer's boys at the head of the back stairs, or chaffered with urbane and smiling chinamen with their balanced vegetable baskets. she knew the house and its management at her fingers' ends, and supervised everything that went forward. laurie flagg coming to call upon her, on wednesday afternoon, to remonstrate upon her sudden defection, found her in the act of tacking up a curtain across the pantry window. but blix had the afternoons and evenings almost entirely to herself. these hours, heretofore taken up with functions and the discharge of obligations, dragged not a little during the week that followed upon her declaration of independence. wednesday afternoon, however, was warm and fine, and she went to the park with snooky. without looking for it or even expecting it, blix came across a little japanese tea-house, or rather a tiny japanese garden, set with almost toy japanese houses and pavilions, where tea was served and thin sweetish wafers for five cents. blix and snooky went in. there was nobody about but the japanese serving woman. snooky was in raptures, and blix spent a delightful half-hour there, drinking japanese tea, and feeding the wafers to the carp and gold-fish in the tiny pond immediately below where she sat. a chinaman, evidently of the merchant class, came in, with a chinese woman following. as he took his place and the japanese girl came up to get his order, blix overheard him say in english: "bring tea for-um leddy." "he had to speak in english to her," she whispered; "isn't that splendid! did you notice that, snooky?" on the way home blix was wondering how she should pass her evening. she was to have made one of a theatre party where jack carter was to be present. then she suddenly remembered "morrowbie jukes," "the return of imri," and "krishna mulvaney." she continued on past her home, downtown, and returned late for supper with "plain tales" and "many inventions." toward half-past eight there came a titter of the electric bell. at the moment blix was in the upper chamber of the house of suddhoo, quaking with exquisite horror at the seal-cutter's magic. she looked up quickly as the bell rang. it was not condy rivers' touch. she swiftly reflected that it was wednesday night, and that she might probably expect frank catlin. he was a fair specimen of the younger set, a sort of modified jack carter, and called upon her about once a fortnight. no doubt he would hint darkly as to his riotous living during the past few days and refer to his diet of bromo-seltzers. he would be slangy, familiar, call her by her first name as many times as he dared, discuss the last dance of the saturday cotillion, and try to make her laugh over carter's drunkenness. blix knew the type. catlin was hardly out of college; but the older girls, even the young women of twenty-five or six, encouraged and petted these youngsters, driven to the alternative by the absolute dearth of older men. "i'm not at home, victorine," announced blix, intercepting the maid in the hall. it chanced that it was not frank catlin, but another boy of precisely the same breed; and blix returned to suddhoo, mrs. hawksbee, and mulvaney with a little cuddling movement of satisfaction. "there is only one thing i regret about this," she said to condy rivers on the friday night of that week; "that is, that i never thought of doing it before." then suddenly she put up her hand to shield her eyes, as though from an intense light, turning away her head abruptly. "i say, what is it? what--what's the matter?" he exclaimed. blix peeped at him fearfully from between her fingers. "he's got it on," she whispered--"that awful crimson scarf." "hoh!" said condy, touching his scarf nervously, "it's--it's very swell. is it too loud?" he asked uneasily. blix put her fingers in her ears; then: "condy, you're a nice, amiable young man, and, if you're not brilliant, you're good and kind to your aged mother; but your scarfs and neckties are simply impossible." "well, look at this room!" he shouted--they were in the parlor. "you needn't talk about bad taste. those drapes--oh-h! those drapes!! yellow, s'help me! and those bisque figures that you get with every pound of tea you buy; and this, this, this," he whimpered, waving his hands at the decorated sewer-pipe with its gilded cat-tails. "oh, speak to me of this; speak to me of art; speak to me of aesthetics. cat-tails, gilded. of course, why not gilded!" he wrung his hands. "'somewhere people are happy. somewhere little children are at play--'" "oh, hush!" she interrupted. "i know it's bad; but we've always had it so, and i won't have it abused. let's go into the dining-room, anyway. we'll sit in there after this. we've always been stiff and constrained in here." they went out into the dining-room, and drew up a couple of armchairs into the bay window, and sat there looking out. blix had not yet lighted the gas--it was hardly dark enough for that; and for upward of ten minutes they sat and watched the evening dropping into night. below them the hill fell away so abruptly that the roofs of the nearest houses were almost at their feet; and beyond these the city tumbled raggedly down to meet the bay in a confused, vague mass of roofs, cornices, cupolas, and chimneys, blurred and indistinct in the twilight, but here and there pierced by a new-lighted street lamp. then came the bay. to the east they could see goat island, and the fleet of sailing-ships anchored off the water-front; while directly in their line of vision the island of alcatraz, with its triple crown of forts, started from the surface of the water. beyond was the contra costa shore, a vast streak of purple against the sky. the eye followed its sky-line westward till it climbed, climbed, climbed up a long slope that suddenly leaped heavenward with the crest of tamalpais, purple and still, looking always to the sunset like a great watching sphinx. then, further on, the slope seemed to break like the breaking of an advancing billow, and go tumbling, crumbling downward to meet the golden gate--the narrow inlet of green tide-water with its flanking presidio. but, further than this, the eye was stayed. further than this there was nothing, nothing but a vast, illimitable plain of green--the open pacific. but at this hour the color of the scene was its greatest charm. it glowed with all the sombre radiance of a cathedral. everything was seen through a haze of purple--from the low green hills in the presidio reservation to the faint red mass of mount diablo shrugging its rugged shoulder over the contra costa foot-hills. as the evening faded, the west burned down to a dull red glow that overlaid the blue of the bay with a sheen of ruddy gold. the foot-hills of the opposite shore, diablo, and at last even tamalpais, resolved themselves in the velvet gray of the sky. outlines were lost. only the masses remained, and these soon began to blend into one another. the sky, and land, and the city's huddled roofs were one. only the sheen of dull gold remained, piercing the single vast mass of purple like the blade of a golden sword. "there's a ship!" said blix in a low tone. a four-master was dropping quietly through the golden gate, swimming on that sheen of gold, a mere shadow, specked with lights red and green. in a few moments her bows were shut from sight by the old fort at the gate. then her red light vanished, then the mainmast. she was gone. by midnight she would be out of sight of land, rolling on the swell of the lonely ocean under the moon's white eye. condy and blix sat quiet and without speech, not caring to break the charm of the evening. for quite five minutes they sat thus, watching the stars light one by one, and the immense gray night settle and broaden and widen from mountain-top to horizon. they did not feel the necessity of making conversation. there was no constraint in their silence now. gently, and a little at a time, condy turned his head and looked at blix. there was just light enough to see. she was leaning back in her chair, her hands fallen into her lap, her head back and a little to one side. as usual, she was in black; but now it was some sort of dinner-gown that left her arms and neck bare. the line of the chin and the throat and the sweet round curve of the shoulder had in it something indescribable--something that was related to music, and that eluded speech. her hair was nothing more than a warm colored mist without form or outline. the sloe-brown of her little eyes and the flush of her cheek were mere inferences--like the faintest stars that are never visible when looked at directly; and it seemed to him that there was disengaged from her something for which there was no name; something that appealed to a mysterious sixth sense--a sense that only stirred at such quiet moments as this; something that was now a dim, sweet radiance, now a faint aroma, and now again a mere essence, an influence, an impression--nothing more. it seemed to him as if her sweet, clean purity and womanliness took a form of its own which his accustomed senses were too gross to perceive. only a certain vague tenderness in him went out to meet and receive this impalpable presence; a tenderness not for her only, but for all the good things of the world. often he had experienced the same feeling when listening to music. her sweetness, her goodness, appealed to what he guessed must be the noblest in him. and she was only nineteen. suddenly his heart swelled, the ache came to his throat and the smart to his eyes. "blixy," he said, just above a whisper; "blixy, wish i was a better sort of chap." "that's the beginning of being better, isn't it, condy?" she answered, turning toward him, her chin on her hand. "it does seem a pity," he went on, "that when you want to do the right, straight thing, and be clean and fine, that you can't just be it, and have it over with. it's the keeping it up that's the grind." "but it's the keeping it up, condy, that makes you worth being good when you finally get to be good; don't you think? it's the keeping it up that makes you strong; and then when you get to be good you can make your goodness count. what's a good man if he's weak?--if his goodness is better than he is himself? it's the good man who is strong--as strong as his goodness, and who can make his goodness count--who is the right kind of man. that's what i think." "there's something in that, there's something in that." then, after a pause: "i played monday night, after all, blix, after promising i wouldn't." for a time she did not answer, and when she spoke, she spoke quietly: "well--i'm glad you told me"; and after a little she added, "can't you stop, condy?" "why, yes--yes, of course--i--oh, blix, sometimes i don't know! you can't understand! how could a girl understand the power of it? other things, i don't say; but when it comes to gambling, there seems to be another me that does precisely as he chooses, whether i will or not. but i'm going to do my best. i haven't played since, although there was plenty of chance. you see, this card business is only a part of this club life, this city life--like drinking and--other vices of men. if i didn't have to lead the life, or if i didn't go with that crowd--sargeant and the rest of those men--it would be different; easier, maybe." "but a man ought to be strong enough to be himself and master of himself anywhere. condy, is there anything in the world better or finer than a strong man?" "not unless it is a good woman, blix." "i suppose i look at it from a woman's point of view; but for me a strong man--strong in everything--is the grandest thing in the world. women love strong men, condy. they can forgive a strong man almost anything." condy did not immediately answer, and in the interval an idea occurred to blix that at once hardened into a determination. but she said nothing at the moment. the spell of the sunset was gone and they had evidently reached the end of that subject of their talk. blix rose to light the gas. "will you promise me one thing, condy?" she said. "don't if you don't want to. but will you promise me that you will tell me whenever you do play?" "that i'll promise you!" exclaimed condy; "and i'll keep that, too." "and now, let's hear the story--or what you've done of it." they drew up to the dining-room table with its cover of blue denim edged with white cord, and condy unrolled his manuscript and read through what he had written. she approved, and, as he had foreseen, "caught on" to every one of his points. he was almost ready to burst into cheers when she said: "any one reading that would almost believe you had been a diver yourself, or at least had lived with divers. those little details count, don't they? condy, i've an idea. see what you think of it. instead of having the story end with his leaving her down there and going away, do it this way. let him leave her there, and then go back after a long time when he gets to be an old man. fix it up some way to make it natural. have him go down to see her and never come up again, see? and leave the reader in doubt as to whether it was an accident or whether he did it on purpose." condy choked back a whoop and smote his knee. "blix, you're the eighth wonder! magnificent--glorious! say!"--he fixed her with a glance of curiosity--"you ought to take to story-writing yourself." "no, no," she retorted significantly. "i'll just stay with my singing and be content with that. but remember that story don't go to 'the times' supplement. at least not until you have tried it east--with the centennial company, at any rate." "well, i guess not!" snorted condy. "why, this is going to be one of the best yarns i ever wrote." a little later on he inquired with sudden concern: "have you got anything to eat in the house?" "i never saw such a man!" declared blix; "you are always hungry." "i love to eat," he protested. "well, we'll make some creamed oysters; how would that do?" suggested blix. condy rolled his eyes. "oh, speak to me of creamed oysters!" then, with abrupt solemnity: "blix, i never in my life had as many oysters as i could eat." she made the creamed oysters in the kitchen over the gas-stove, and they ate them there--condy sitting on the washboard of the sink, his plate in his lap. condy had a way of catching up in his hands whatever happened to be nearest him, and, while still continuing to talk, examining it with apparent deep interest. just now it happened to be the morning's paper that victorine had left on the table. for five minutes condy had been picking it up and laying it down, frowning abstractedly at it during the pauses in the conversation. suddenly he became aware of what it was, and instantly read aloud the first item that caught his glance: "'personal.--young woman, thirty-one, good housekeeper, desires acquaintance respectable middle-aged gentleman. object, matrimony. address k. d. b., this office.'--hum!" he commented, "nothing equivocal about k. d. b.; has the heroism to call herself young at thirty-one. i'll bet she is a good housekeeper. right to the point. if k. d. b. don't see what she wants, she asks for it." "i wonder," mused blix, "what kind of people they are who put personals in the papers. k. d. b., for instance; who is she, and what is she like?" "they're not tough," condy assured her. "i see 'em often down at 'the times' office. they are usually a plain, matter-of-fact sort, quite conscientious, you know; generally middle-aged--or thirty-one; outgrown their youthful follies and illusions, and want to settle down." "read some more," urged blix. condy went on. "'bachelor, good habits, twenty-five, affectionate disposition, accomplishments, money, desires acquaintance pretty, refined girl. object, matrimony. mcb., this office.'" "no, i don't like mcb.," said blix. "he's too--ornamental, somehow." "he wouldn't do for k. d. b., would he?" "oh, my, no! he'd make her very unhappy." "'widower, two children, home-loving disposition, desires introduction to good, honest woman to make home for his children. matrimony, if suitable. b. p. t., box a, this office.'" "he's not for k. d. b., that's flat," declared blix; "the idea, 'matrimony if suitable'--patronizing enough! i know just what kind of an old man b. p. t. is. i know he would want k. d. b. to warm his slippers, and would be fretful and grumpy. b. p. t., just an abbreviation of bumptious. no, he can't have her." condy read the next two or three to himself, despite her protests. "condy, don't be mean! read them to--" "ah!" he exclaimed, "here's one for k. d. b. behold, the bridegroom cometh! listen." "'bachelor, thirty-nine, sober and industrious, retired sea captain, desires acquaintance respectable young woman, good housekeeper and manager. object, matrimony. address captain jack, office this paper." "i know he's got a wooden leg!" cried blix. "can't you just see it sticking out between the lines? and he lives all alone somewhere down near the bay with a parrot--" "and makes a glass of grog every night." "and smokes a long clay pipe." "but he chews tobacco." "yes, isn't it a pity he will chew that nasty, smelly tobacco? but k. d. b. will break him of that." "oh, is he for k. d. b.?" "sent by providence!" declared blix. "they were born for each other. just see, k. d. b. is a good housekeeper, and wants a respectable middle-aged gentleman. captain jack is a respectable middle-aged gentleman, and wants a good housekeeper. oh, and besides, i can read between the lines! i just feel they would be congenial. if they know what's best for themselves, they would write to each other right away." "but wouldn't you love to be there and see them meet!" exclaimed condy. "can't we fix it up some way," said blix, "to bring these two together--to help them out in some way?" condy smote the table and jumped to his feet. "write to 'em!" he shouted. "write to k. d. b. and sign it captain jack, and write to captain jack--" "and sign it k. d. b.," she interrupted, catching his idea. "and have him tell her, and her tell him," he added, "to meet at some place; and then we can go to that place and hide, and watch." "but how will we know them? how would they know each other? they've never met." "we'll tell them both to wear a kind of flower. then we can know them, and they can know each other. of course as soon as they began to talk they would find out they hadn't written." "but they wouldn't care." "no--they want to meet each other. they would be thankful to us for bringing them together." "won't it be the greatest fun?" "fun! why, it will be a regular drama. only we are running the show, and everything is real. let's get at it!" blix ran into her room and returned with writing material. condy looked at the note-paper critically. "this kind's too swell. k. d. b. wouldn't use irish linen--never! here, this is better, glazed with blue lines and a flying bird stamped in the corner. now i'll write for the captain, and you write for k. d. b." "but where will we have them meet?" this was a point. they considered the chinese restaurant, the plaza, lotta's fountain, the mechanics' library, and even the cathedral over in the mexican quarter, but arrived at no decision. "did you ever hear of luna's restaurant?" said condy. "by jove, it's just the place! it's the restaurant where you get mexican dinners; right in the heart of the latin quarter; quiet little old-fashioned place, below the level of the street, respectable as a tomb. i was there just once. we'll have 'em meet there at seven in the evening. no one is there at that hour. the place isn't patronized much, and it shuts up at eight. you and i can go there and have dinner at six, say, and watch for them to come." then they set to work at their letters. "now," said condy, "we must have these sound perfectly natural, because if either of these people smell the smallest kind of a rat, you won't catch 'em. you must write not as you would write, but as you think they would. this is an art, a kind of fiction, don't you see? we must imagine a certain character, and write a letter consistent with that character. then it'll sound natural. now, k. d. b. well, k. d. b., she's prim. let's have her prim, and proud of using correct, precise, 'elegant' language. i guess she wears mits, and believes in cremation. let's have her believe in cremation. and captain jack; oh! he's got a terrible voice, like this, row-row-row see? and whiskers, very fierce; and he says, 'belay there!' and 'avast!' and is very grandiloquent and orotund and gallant when it comes to women. oh, he's the devil of a man when it comes to women, is captain jack!" after countless trials and failures, they evolved the two following missives, which condy posted that night: "captain jack. "sir:--i have perused with entire satisfaction your personal in 'the times.' i should like to know more of you. i read between the lines, and my perception ineradicably convinces me that you are honest and respectable. i do not believe i should compromise my self-esteem at all in granting you an interview. i shall be at luna's restaurant at seven precisely, next monday eve, and will bear a bunch of white marguerites. will you likewise, and wear a marguerite in your lapel? "trusting this will find you in health, i am "respectfully yours, "k. d. b." "miss k. d. b. "dear miss:--from the modest and retiring description of your qualities and character, i am led to believe that i will find in you an agreeable life companion. will you not accord me the great favor of a personal interview? i shall esteem it a high honor. i will be at luna's mexican restaurant at seven of the clock p.m. on monday evening next. may i express the fervent hope that you also will be there? i name the locality because it is quiet and respectable. i shall wear a white marguerite in my buttonhole. will you also carry a bunch of the same flower? "yours to command, "captain jack." so great was her interest in the affair that blix even went out with condy while he mailed the letters in the nearest box, for he was quite capable of forgetting the whole matter as soon as he was out of the house. "now let it work!" she exclaimed as the iron flap clanked down upon the disappearing envelopes. but condy was suddenly smitten with nameless misgiving. "now we've done it! now we've done it!" he cried aghast. "i wish we hadn't. we're in a fine fix now." still uneasy, he saw blix back to the flat, and bade her good-by at the door. but before she went to bed that night, blix sought out her father, who was still sitting up tinkering with the cuckoo clock, which he had taken all to pieces under the pretext that it was out of order and went too fast. "papum," said blix, sitting down on the rug before him, "did you ever--when you were a pioneer, when you first came out here in the fifties--did you ever play poker?" "i--oh, well! it was the only amusement the miners had for a long time." "i want you to teach me." the old man let the clock fall into his lap and stared. but blix explained her reasons. chapter vi the next day was saturday, and blix had planned a walk out to the presidio. but at breakfast, while she was debating whether she should take with her howard and snooky, or "many inventions," she received a note from condy, sent by special messenger: "'all our fun is spoiled,' he wrote. 'i've got ptomaine poisoning from eating the creamed oysters last night, and am in for a solid fortnight spent in bed. have passed a horrible night. can't you look in at the hotel this afternoon? my mother will be here at the time.'" "ptomaine poisoning!" the name had an ugly sound, and condy's use of the term inferred the doctor's visit. blix decided that she would put off her walk until the afternoon, and call on mrs. rivers at once, and ask how condy did. she got away from the flat about ten o'clock, but on the steps outside met condy dressed as if for bicycling, and smoking a cigarette. "i've got eleven dollars!" he announced cheerily. "but i thought it was ptomaine poisoning!" she cried with sudden vexation. "pshaw! that's what the doctor says. he's a flapdoodle; nothing but a kind of a sort of a pain. it's all gone now. i'm as fit as a fiddle--and i've got eleven dollars. let's go somewhere and do something." "but your work?" "they don't expect me. when i thought i was going to be sick, i telephoned the office, and they said all right, that they didn't need me. now i've got eleven dollars, and there are three holidays of perfect weather before us: to-day, to-morrow, and monday. what will we do? what must we do to be saved? our matrimonial objects don't materialize till monday night. in the meanwhile, what? shall we go down to chinatown--to the restaurant, or to the water-front again? maybe the mate on the whaleback would invite us to lunch. or," added condy, his eye caught by a fresh-fish peddler who had just turned into the street, "we can go fishing." "for oysters, perhaps." but the idea had caught condy's fancy. "blix!" he exclaimed, "let's go fishing." "where?" "i don't know. where do people fish around here? where there's water, i presume." "no, is it possible?" she asked with deep concern. "i thought they fished in their back yards, or in their front parlors perhaps." "oh, you be quiet! you're all the time guying me," he answered. "let me think--let me think," he went on, frowning heavily, scouring at his hair. suddenly he slapped a thigh. "come on," he cried, "i've an idea!" he was already half-way down the steps, when blix called him back. "leave it all to me," he assured her; "trust me implicitly. don't you want to go?" he demanded with abrupt disappointment. "want to!" she exclaimed. "why, it would be the very best kind of fun, but--" "well, then, come along." they took a downtown car. "i've got a couple of split bamboo rods," he explained as the car slid down the terrific grade of the washington-street hill. "i haven't used 'em in years--not since we lived east; but they're hand-made, and are tip-top. i haven't any other kind of tackle; but it's just as well, because the tackle will all depend upon where we are going to fish." "where's that?" "don't know yet; am going down now to find out." he took her down to the principal dealer in sporting goods on market street. it was a delicious world, whose atmosphere and charm were not to be resisted. there were shot-guns in rows, their gray barrels looking like so many organ-pipes; sheaves of fishing-rods, from the four-ounce whisp of the brook-trout up to the rigid eighteen-ounce lance of the king-salmon and sea-bass; showcases of wicked revolvers, swelling by calibres into the thirty-eight and forty-four man-killers of the plainsmen and arizona cavalry; hunting knives and dirks, and the slender steel whips of the fencers; files of winchesters, sleeping quietly in their racks, waiting patiently for the signal to speak the one grim word they knew; swarms of artificial flies of every conceivable shade, brown, gray, black, gray-brown, gray-black, with here and there a brisk vermilion note; coils of line, from the thickness of a pencil, spun to hold the sullen plunges of a jew-fish off the catalina islands, down to the sea-green gossamers that a vigorous fingerling might snap; hooks, snells, guts, leaders, gaffs, cartridges, shells, and all the entrancing munitions of the sportsman, that savored of lonely canons, deer-licks, mountain streams, quail uplands, and the still reaches of inlet and marsh grounds, gray and cool in the early autumn dawn. condy and blix got the attention of a clerk, and condy explained. "i want to go fishing--we want to go fishing. we want some place where we can go and come in the same day, and we want to catch fair-sized fish--no minnows." the following half-hour was charming. never was there a clerk more delightful. it would appear that his one object in life was that condy and blix should catch fish. the affairs of the nation stood still while he pondered, suggested, advised, and deliberated. he told them where to go, how to get there, what train to take coming back, and who to ask for when they arrived. they would have to wait till monday before going, but could return long before the fated hour of p.m. "ask for richardson," said the clerk; "and here, give him my card. he'll put you on to the good spots; some places are a- to-day, and to-morrow in the same place you can't kill a single fish." condy nudged blix as the mentor turned away to get his card. "notice that," he whispered: "kill a fish. you don't say 'catch,' you say 'kill'--technical detail." then they bought their tackle: a couple of cheap reels, lines, leaders, sinkers, a book of assorted flies that the delightful clerk suggested, and a beautiful little tin box painted green, and stenciled with a gorgeous gold trout upon the lid, in which they were to keep the pint of salted shrimps to be used as bait in addition to the flies. blix would get these shrimps at a little market near her home. "but," said the clerk, "you got to get a permit to fish in that lake. have you got a pull with the water company? are you a stockholder?" condy's face fell, and blix gave a little gasp of dismay. they looked at each other. here was a check, indeed. "well," said the sublime being in shirt sleeves from behind the counter, "see what you can do; and if you can't make it, come back here an' lemmeno, and we'll fix you up in some other place. but lake san andreas has been bang-up this last week--been some great kills there; hope to the deuce you can make it." everything now hinged upon this permit. it was not until their expedition had been in doubt that condy and blix realized how alluring had been its prospects. "oh, i guess you can get a permit," said the clerk soothingly. "an' if you make any good kills, lemmeno and i'll put it in the paper. i'm the editor of the 'sport-with-gun-and-rod' column in 'the press,'" he added with a flush of pride. toward the middle of the afternoon blix, who was waiting at home, in great suspense, for that very purpose, received another telegram from condy: "tension of situation relieved. unconditional permission obtained. don't forget the shrimps." it had been understood that condy was to come to the flat on sunday afternoon to talk over final arrangements with blix. but as it was, saturday evening saw him again at the bessemers. he had been down at his club in the library, writing the last paragraphs of his diver's story, when, just as he finished, sargeant discovered him. "why, conny, old man, all alone here? let's go downstairs and have a cigar. hendricks and george hands are coming around in half an hour. they told me not to let you get away." condy stirred nervously in his chair. he knew what that meant. he had enough money in his pockets to play that night, and in an instant the enemy was all awake. the rowel was in his flank again, and the scourge at his back. sargeant stood there, the well-groomed clubman of thirty; a little cynical perhaps, but a really good fellow for all that, and undeniably fond of condy. but somewhere with the eyes of some second self condy saw the girl of nineteen, part child and part woman; saw her goodness, her fine, sweet feminine strength as it were a dim radiance; "what's a good man worth, condy," she had said, "if he's not a strong man?" "i suppose we'll have a game going before midnight," admitted sargeant resignedly, smiling good-humoredly nevertheless. condy set his teeth. "i'll join you later. wait a few moments," he said. he hurried to the office of the club, and sent a despatch to blix--the third since morning: "can i come up right away? it's urgent. send answer by this messenger." he got his answer within three-quarters of an hour, and left the club as hendricks and george hands arrived by the elevator entrance. sitting in the bay window of the dining-room, he told blix why he had come. "oh, you were right!" she told him. "always, always come, when--when you feel you must." "it gets so bad sometimes, blix," he confessed with abject self-contempt, "that when i can't get some one to play against i'll sit down and deal dummy hands, and bet on them. just the touch of the cards--just the feel of the chips. faugh! it's shameful." the day following, sunday, condy came to tea as usual; and after the meal, as soon as the family and victorine had left the pair alone in the dining-room, they set about preparing for their morrow's excursion. blix put up their lunch--sandwiches of what condy called "devilish" ham, hard-boiled eggs, stuffed olives, and a bottle of claret. condy took off his coat and made a great show of stringing the tackle: winding the lines from the spools on to the reels, and attaching the sinkers and flies to the leaders, smoking the while, and scowling fiercely. he got the lines fearfully and wonderfully snarled, he caught the hooks in the table-cloth, he lost the almost invisible gut leaders on the floor and looped the sinkers on the lines when they should have gone on the leaders. in the end blix had to help him out, disentangling the lines foot by foot with a patience that seemed to condy little short of superhuman. at nine o'clock she said decisively: "do you know what time we must get up in the morning if we are to have breakfast and get the seven-forty train? quarter of six by the latest, and you must get up earlier than that, because you're at the hotel and have further to go. come here for breakfast, and--listen--be here by half-past six--are you listening, condy?--and we'll go down to the depot from here. don't forget to bring the rods." "i'll wear my bicycle suit," he said, "and one of those golf scarfs that wrap around your neck." "no," she declared, "i won't have it. wear the oldest clothes you've got, but look fairly respectable, because we're to go to luna's when we get back, remember. and now go home; you need all the sleep you can get if you are to get up at six o'clock." instead of being late, as blix had feared, condy was absurdly ahead of time the next morning. for a wonder, he had not forgotten the rods; but he was one tremor of nervousness. he would eat no breakfast. "we're going to miss that train," he would announce from time to time; "i just know it. blix, look what time it is. we ought to be on the way to the depot now. come on; you don't want any more coffee. have you got everything? did you put the reels in the lunch-basket?--and the fly-book? lord, if we should forget the fly-book!" he managed to get her to the depot over half an hour ahead of time. the train had not even backed in, nor the ticket office opened. "i told you, condy, i told you," complained blix, sinking helplessly upon a bench in the waiting-room. "no--no--no," he answered vaguely, looking nervously about, his head in the air. "we're none too soon--have more time to rest now. i wonder what track the train leaves from. i wonder if it stops at san bruno. i wonder how far it is from san bruno to lake san andreas. i'm afraid it's going to rain. heavens and earth, blix, we forgot the shrimps!" "no, no! sit down, i've got the shrimps. condy, you make me so nervous i shall scream in a minute." some three-quarters of an hour later the train had set them down at san bruno--nothing more than a road-house, the headquarters for duck-shooters and fishermen from the city. however, blix and condy were the only visitors. everybody seemed to be especially nice to them on that wonderful morning. even the supercilious ticket-seller at the san francisco depot had unbent, and wished them good luck. the conductor of the train had shown himself affable. the very brakeman had gone out of his way to apprise them, quite five minutes ahead of time, that "the next stop was their place." and at san bruno the proprietor of the road-house himself hitched up to drive them over to the lake, announcing that he would call for them at "richardson's" in time for the evening train. "and he only asked me four bits for both trips," whispered condy to blix as they jogged along. the country was beautiful. it was hardly eight o'clock, and the morning still retained much of the brisk effervescence of the early dawn. great bare, rolling hills of gray-green, thinly scattered with live-oak, bore back from the road on either hand. the sky was pale blue. there was a smell of cows in the air, and twice they heard an unseen lark singing. it was very still. the old buggy and complacent horse were embalmed in a pungent aroma of old leather and of stables that was entrancing; and a sweet smell of grass and sap came to them in occasional long whiffs. there was exhilaration in the very thought of being alive on that odorous, still morning. the young blood went spanking in the veins. blix's cheeks were ruddy, her little dark-brown eyes fairly coruscating with pleasure. "condy, isn't it all splendid?" she suddenly burst out. "i feel regularly bigger," he declared solemnly. "i could do anything a morning like this." then they came to the lake, and to richardson's, where the farmer lived who was also the custodian of the lake. the complacent horse jogged back, and condy and blix set about the serious business of the day. condy had no need to show richardson the delightful sporting clerk's card. the old yankee--his twang and dry humor singularly incongruous on that royal morning--was solicitude itself. he picked out the best boat on the beach for them, loaned them his own anchor of railroad iron, indicated minutely the point on the opposite shore off which the last big trout had been "killed," and wetted himself to his ankles as he pushed off the boat. condy took the oars. blix sat in the stern, jointing the rods and running the lines through the guides. she even baited the hooks with the salt shrimp herself, and by nine o'clock they were at anchor some forty feet off shore, and fishing, according to richardson's advice, "a leetle mite off the edge o' the weeds." "if we don't get a bite the whole blessed day," said condy, as he paid out his line to the ratchet music of the reel, "we'll have fun just the same. look around--isn't this great?" they were absolutely alone. the day was young yet. the lake, smooth and still as gray silk, widened to the west and south without so much as a wrinkle to roughen the surface. only to the east, where the sun looked over a shoulder of a higher hill, it flamed up into a blinding diamond iridescence. the surrounding land lay between sky and water, hushed to a sunday stillness. far off across the lake by richardson's they heard a dog bark, and the sound came fine and small and delicate. at long intervals the boat stirred with a gentle clap-clapping of the water along its sides. from the nearby shore in the growth of manzanita bushes quail called and clucked comfortably to each other; a bewildered yellow butterfly danced by over their heads, and slim blue dragon-flies came and poised on their lines and fishing-rods, bowing their backs. from his seat in the bow, condy cast a glance at blix. she was holding her rod in both hands, absorbed, watchful, very intent. she was as trim as ever, even in the old clothes she had worn for the occasion. her round, strong neck was as usual swathed high and tight in white, and the huge dog-collar girdled her waist according to her custom. she had taken off her hat. her yellow hair rolled back from her round forehead and cool pink cheeks like a veritable nimbus, and for the fiftieth time condy remarked the charming contrast of her small, deep-brown eyes in the midst of this white satin, yellow hair, white skin, and exquisite pink cheeks. an hour passed. then two. "no fish," murmured condy, drawing in his line to examine the bait. but, as he was fumbling with the flies he was startled by a sharp exclamation from blix. "oh-condy-i've-got-a-bite!" he looked up just in time to see the tip of her rod twitch, twitch, twitch. then the whole rod arched suddenly, the reel sang, the line tautened and cut diagonally through the water. "you got him! you got him!" he shouted, palpitating with excitement. "and he's a good one!" blix rose, reeling in as rapidly as was possible, the butt of the twitching, living rod braced against her belt. all at once the rod straightened out again, the strain was released, and the line began to slant rapidly away from the boat. "he's off!" she cried. "off, nothing! he's going to jump. look out for him, now!" and then the two watching from the boat, tense and quivering with the drama of the moment, saw that most inspiriting of sights--the "break" of a salmon-trout. up he went, from a brusque explosion of ripples and foam--up into the gray of the morning from out the gray of the water: scales all gleaming, hackles all a-bristle; a sudden flash of silver, a sweep as of a scimitar in gray smoke, with a splash, a turmoil, an abrupt burst of troubled sound that stabbed through the silence of the morning, and in a single instant dissipated all the placid calm of the previous hours. "keep the line taut," whispered condy, gritting his teeth. "when he comes toward you, reel him in; an' if he pulls too hard, give him his head." blix was breathing fast, her cheeks blazing, her eyes all alight. "oh," she gasped, "i'm so afraid i'll lose him! oh, look at that!" she cried, as the trout darted straight for the bottom, bending the rod till the tip was submerged. "condy, i'll lose him--i know i shall; you, you take the rod!" "not for a thousand dollars! steady, there, he's away again! oh, talk about sport!" yard by yard blix reeled in until they began to see the silver glint of the trout's flanks through the green water. she brought him nearer. swimming parallel with the boat, he was plainly visible from his wide-opened mouth--the hook and fly protruding from his lower jaw--to the red, quivering flanges of the tail. his sides were faintly speckled, his belly white as chalk. he was almost as long as condy's forearm. "oh, he's a beauty! oh, isn't he a beauty!" murmured condy. "now, careful, careful; bring him up to the boat where i can reach him; e-easy, blix. if he bolts again, let him run." twice the trout shied from the boat's shadow, and twice, as blix gave him his head, the reel sang and hummed like a watch-man's rattle. but the third time he came to the surface and turned slowly on his side, the white belly and one red fin out of the water, the gills opening and shutting. he was tired out. a third time blix drew him gently to the boat's side. condy reached out and down into the water till his very shoulder was wet, hooked two fingers under the distended gills, and with a long, easy movement of the arm swung him into the boat. their exultation was that of veritable children. condy whooped like an apache, throwing his hat into the air; blix was hardly articulate, her hands clasped, her hair in disarray, her eyes swimming with tears of sheer excitement. they shook each other's hands; they talked wildly at the same time: they pounded on the boat's thwarts with their fists; they laughed at their own absurdity; they looked at the trout again and again, guessed at his weight, and recalled to each other details of the struggle. "when he broke that time, wasn't it grand?" "and when i first felt him bite! it was so sudden--why, it actually frightened me. i never--no, never in my life!" exclaimed blix, "was so happy as i am at this moment. oh, condy, to think--just to think!" "isn't it glory hallelujah?" "isn't it better than teas, and dancing, and functions?" "blix--how old are we?" "i don't care how old we are; i think that trout will weigh two pounds." when they were calm again, they returned to their fishing. the morning passed, and it was noon before they were aware of it. by half-past twelve blix had caught three trout, though the first was by far the heaviest. condy had not had so much as a bite. at one o'clock they rowed ashore and had lunch under a huge live-oak in a little amphitheatre of manzanita. never had a lunch tasted so delicious. what if the wine was warm and the stuffed olives oily? what if the pepper for the hard-boiled eggs had sifted all over the "devilish" ham sandwiches? what if the eggs themselves had not been sufficiently cooked, and the corkscrew forgotten? they could not be anything else but inordinately happy, sublimely gay. nothing short of actual tragedy could have marred the joy of that day. but after they were done eating, and blix had put away the forks and spoons, and while condy was stretched upon his back smoking a cigar, she said to him: "now, condy, what do you say to a little game of cards with me?" the cigar dropped from condy's lips, and he sat suddenly upright, brushing the fallen leaves from his hair. blix had taken a deck of cards from the lunch-basket, and four rolls of chips wrapped in tissue paper. he stared at her in speechless amazement. "what do you say?" she repeated, looking at him and smiling. "why, blix!" he exclaimed in amazement, "what do you mean?" "just what i say. i want you to play cards with me." "i'll not to do it," he declared, almost coldly. "listen to me, condy," answered blix; and for quite five minutes, while he interrupted and protested and pshawed and argued, she talked to him calmly and quietly. "i don't ask you to stop playing, condy," she said, as she finished; "i just ask you that when you feel you must play--or--i mean, when you want to very bad, you will come and play with me, instead of playing at your club." "but it's absurd, it's preposterous. i hate to see a girl gambling--and you of all girls!" "it's no worse for me than it is for you and--well, do you suppose i would play with any one else? maybe you think i can't play well enough to make it interesting for you," she said gayly. "is that it? i can soon show you, condy rivers--never mind when i learned how." "but, blix, you don't know how often we play, those men and i. why, it is almost every--you don't know how often we play." "condy, whenever you want to play, and will play with me, no matter what i've got in hand, i'll stop everything and play with you." "but why?" "because i think, condy, that this way perhaps you won't play quite so often at first; and then little by little perhaps--perhaps--well, never mind that now. i want to play; put it that way. but i want you to promise me never to play with any one else--say for six months." and in the end, whipped by a sense of shame, condy made her the promise. they became very gay upon the instant. "hoh!" exclaimed condy; "what do you know of poker? i think we had best play old sledge or cassino." blix had dealt a hand and partitioned the chips. "straights and flushes before the draw," she announced calmly. condy started and stared; then, looking at her askance, picked up his hand. "it's up to you." "i'll make it five to play." "five? very well. how many cards?" "three." "i'll take two." "bet you five more." blix looked at her hand. then, without trace of expression in her voice or face, said: "there's your five, and i'll raise you five." "five better." "and five better than that." "call you." "full house. aces on tens," said blix, throwing down her cards. "heavens! they're good as gold," muttered condy as blix gathered in the chips. an hour later she had won all the chips but five. "now we'll stop and get to fishing again; don't you want to?" he agreed, and she counted the chips. "condy, you owe me seven dollars and a half," she announced. condy began to smile. "well," he said jocosely, "i'll send you around a check to-morrow." but at this blix was cross upon the instant. "you wouldn't do that--wouldn't talk that way with one of your friends at the club!" she exclaimed; "and it's not right to do it with me. condy, give me seven dollars and a half. when you play cards with me it's just as though it were with another man. i would have paid you if you had won." "but i haven't got more than nine dollars. who'll pay for the supper to-night at luna's, and our railroad fare going home?" "i'll pay." "but i--i can't afford to lose money this way." "shouldn't have played, then. i took the same chances as you. condy, i want my money." "you--you--why you've regularly flimflammed me." "will you give me my money?" "oh, take your money then!" blix shut the money in her purse, and rose, dusting her dress. "now," she said--"now that the pastime of card-playing is over, we will return to the serious business of life, which is the catching--no, 'killing' of lake trout." at five o'clock in the afternoon, condy pulled up the anchor of railroad iron and rowed back to richardson's. blix had six trout to her credit, but condy's ill-luck had been actually ludicrous. "i can hold a string in the water as long as anybody," he complained, "but i'd like to have the satisfaction of merely changing the bait occasionally. i've not had a single bite--not a nibble, y' know, all day. never mind, you got the big trout, blix; that first one. that five minutes was worth the whole day. it's been glorious, the whole thing. we'll come down here once a week right along now." but the one incident that completed the happiness of that wonderful day occurred just as they were getting out of the boat on the shore by richardson's. in a mud-hole between two rocks they discovered a tiny striped snake, hardly bigger than a lead pencil, in the act of swallowing a little green frog, and they passed a rapt ten minutes in witnessing the progress of this miniature drama, which culminated happily in the victim's escape, and triumph of virtue. "that," declared blix as they climbed into the old buggy which was to take them to the train, "was the one thing necessary. that made the day perfect." they reached the city at dusk, and sent their fish, lunch-basket, and rods up to the bessemers' flat by a messenger boy with an explanatory note for blix's father. "now," said condy, "for luna's and the matrimonial objects." chapter vii luna's mexican restaurant has no address. it is on no particular street, at no particular corner; even its habitues, its most enthusiastic devotees, are unable to locate it upon demand. it is "over there in the quarter," "not far from the cathedral there." one could find it if one started out with that intent; but to direct another there--no, that is out of the question. it can be reached by following the alleys of chinatown. you will come out of the last alley--the one where the slave girls are--upon the edge of the mexican quarter, and by going straight forward a block or two and by keeping a sharp lookout to right and left you will hit upon it. it is always to be searched for. always to be discovered. on that particular monday evening blix and condy arrived at luna's some fifteen minutes before seven. condy had lost himself and all sense of direction in the strange streets of the quarter, and they were on the very brink of despair when blix discovered the sign upon an opposite corner. as condy had foretold, they had the place to themselves. they went into the back room with its one mirror, six tables, and astonishing curtains of nottingham lace; and the waiter, whose name was richard or riccardo, according to taste, began to officiate at the solemn rites of the "supper mexican." condy and blix ate with their eyes continually wandering to the door; and as the frijoles were being served, started simultaneously and exchanged glances. a man wearing two marguerites in the lapel of his coat had entered abruptly, and sat down to a table close at hand. condy drew a breath of suppressed excitement. "there he is," he whispered--"captain jack!" they looked at the newcomer with furtive anxiety, and told themselves that they were disappointed. for a retired sea captain he was desperately commonplace. his hair was red, he was younger than they had expected, and, worst of all, he did look tough. "oh, poor k. d. b.!" sighed blix, shaking her head. "he'll never do, i'm afraid. perhaps he has a good heart, though; red-headed people are sometimes affectionate." "they are impulsive," hazarded condy. as he spoke the words, a second man entered the little room. he, too, sat down at a nearby table. he, too, ordered the "supper mexican." he, too, wore marguerites in his buttonhole. "death and destruction!" gasped condy, turning pale. blix collapsed helplessly in her chair, her hands dropping in her lap. they stared at each other in utter confusion. "here's a how-do-you-do," murmured condy, pretending to strip a tamale that richard had just set before him. but blix had pushed hers aside. "what does it mean?" whispered condy across the table. "in heaven's name, what does it mean?" "it can only mean one thing," blix declared; "one of them is the captain, and one is a coincidence. anybody might wear a marguerite; we ought to have thought of that." "but which is which?" "if k. d. b. should come now!" "but the last man looks more like the captain." the last man was a sturdy, broad-shouldered fellow, who might have been forty. his heavy mustache was just touched with gray, and he did have a certain vaguely "sober and industrious" appearance. but the difference between the two men was slight, after all; the red-headed man could easily have been a sea captain, and he certainly was over thirty-five. "which? which? which?--how can we tell? we might think of some way to get rid of the coincidence, if we could only tell which the coincidence was. we owe it to k. d. b. in a way, condy, it's our duty. we brought her here, or we are going to, and we ought to help her all we can; and she may be here at any moment. what time is it now?" "five minutes after seven. but, blix, i should think the right one--the captain--would be all put out himself by seeing another chap here wearing marguerites. does either one of 'em seem put out to you? look. i should think the captain, whichever one he is, would kind of glare at the coincidence." stealthily they studied the two men for a moment. "no, no," murmured blix, "you can't tell. neither of them seems to glare much. oh, condy"--her voice dropped to a faint whisper. "the red-headed one has put his hat on a chair, just behind him, notice? do you suppose if you stood up you could see inside?" "what good would that do?" "he might have his initials inside the crown, or his whole name even; and you could see if he had a 'captain' before it." condy made a pretence of rising to get a match in a ribbed, truncated cone of china that stood upon an adjacent table, and blix held her breath as he glanced down into the depths of the hat. he resumed his seat. "only initials," he breathed--"w. j. a. it might be jack, that j., and it might be joe, or jeremiah, or joshua; and even if he was a captain he might not use the title. we're no better off than we were before." "and k. d. b. may come at any moment. maybe she has come already and looked through the windows, and saw two men with marguerites and went away. she'd be just that timid. what can we do?" "wait a minute, look here," murmured condy. "i've an idea. i'll find out which the captain is. you see that picture, that chromo, on the wall opposite?" blix looked as he indicated. the picture was a gorgeously colored lithograph of a pilot-boat, schooner-rigged, all sails set, dashing bravely through seas of emerald green color. "you mean that schooner?" asked blix. "that schooner, exactly. now, listen. you ask me in a loud voice what kind of a boat that is; and when i answer, you keep your eye on the two men." "why, what are you going to do?" "you'll see. try it now; we've no time to lose." blix shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. then: "what a pretty boat that is up there, that picture on the wall. see over there, on the wall opposite? do you notice it? isn't she pretty? condy, tell me what kind of a boat is that?" condy turned about in his place with great deliberation, fixed the picture with a judicial eye, and announced decisively: "that?--why, that's a barkentine." condy had no need to wait for blix's report. the demonstration came far too quickly for that. the red-headed man at his loud declaration merely glanced in the direction of the chromo and returned to his enchellados. but he of the black mustache followed condy's glance, noted the picture of which he spoke, and snorted contemptuously. they even heard him mutter beneath his mustache: "barkentine your eye!" "no doubt as to which is the captain now," whispered condy so soon as the other had removed from him a glance of withering scorn. they could hardly restrain their gayety; but their gravity promptly returned when blix kicked condy's foot under the table and murmured: "he's looking at his watch, the captain is. k. d. b. isn't here yet, and the red-headed man, the coincidence, is. we must get rid of him. condy, can't you think of something?" "well, he won't go till he's through his supper, you can depend upon that. if he's here when k. d. b. arrives, it will spoil everything. she wouldn't stay a moment. she wouldn't even come in." "isn't it disappointing? and i had so counted upon bringing these two together! and captain jack is a nice man!" "you can see that with one hand tied behind you," whispered condy. "the other chap's tough." "looks just like the kind of man to get into jail sooner or later." "maybe he's into some mischief now; you never can tell. and the mexican quarter of san francisco is just the place for 'affairs.' i'll warrant he's got pals." "well, here he is--that's the main point--just keeping those people apart, spoiling a whole romance. maybe ruining their lives. it's quite possible; really it is. just stop and think. this is a positive crisis we're looking at now." "can't we get rid of him somehow?" "o-oh!" whispered blix, all at once, in a quiver of excitement. "there is a way, if we'd ever have the courage to do it. it might work; and if it didn't, he'd never know the difference, never would suspect us. oh! but we wouldn't dare." "what? what? in heaven's name what is it, blix?" "we wouldn't dare--we couldn't. oh! but it would be such--" "k. d. b. may come in that door at any second." "i'm half afraid, but all the same--condy, let me have a pencil." she dashed off a couple of lines on the back of the bill of fare, and her hand trembled like a leaf as she handed him what she had written. "send him--the red-headed man--that telegram. there's an office just two doors below here, next the drug-store. i saw it as we came by. you know his initials: remember, you saw them in his hat. w. j. a., luna's restaurant. that's all you want." "lord," muttered condy, as he gazed upon what blix had written. "do you dare?" she whispered, with a little hysterical shudder. "if it failed we've nothing to lose." "and k. d. b. is coming nearer every instant!" "but would he go--that is, at once?" "we can only try. you won't be gone a hundred seconds. you can leave me here that length of time. quick, condy; decide one way or the other. it's getting desperate." condy reached for his hat. "give me some money, then," he said. "you won all of mine." a few moments later he was back again and the two sat, pretending to eat their chili peppers, their hearts in their throats, hardly daring to raise their eyes from their plates. condy was actually sick with excitement, and all but tipped the seltzer bottle to the floor when a messenger boy appeared in the outer room. the boy and the proprietor held a conference over the counter. then richard appeared between the portieres of nottingham lace, the telegram in his hand and the boy at his heels. evidently richard knew the red-headed man, for he crossed over to him at once with the words: "i guess this is for you, mr. atkins?" he handed him the despatch and retired. the red-headed man signed the receipt; the boy departed. blix and condy heard the sound of torn paper as the red-headed man opened the telegram. ten seconds passed, then fifteen, then twenty. there was a silence. condy dared to steal a glance at the red-headed man's reflection in the mirror. he was studying the despatch, frowning horribly. he put it away in his pocket, took it out again with a fierce movement of impatience, and consulted it a second time. his "supper mexican" remained untasted before him; condy and blix heard him breathing loud through his nose. that he was profoundly agitated, they could not doubt for a single moment. all at once a little panic terror seemed to take possession of him. he rose, seized his hat, jammed it over his ears, slapped a half-dollar upon the table, and strode from the restaurant. this is what the read-headed man had read in the despatch; this is what blix had written: "all is discovered. fly at once." and never in all their subsequent rambles about the city did blix or condy set eyes upon the red-headed man again, nor did luna's restaurant, where he seemed to have been a habitue, ever afterward know his presence. he disappeared; he was swallowed up. he had left the restaurant, true. had he also left that neighborhood? had he fled the city, the state, the country even? what skeleton in the red-headed man's closet had those six words called to life and the light of day. had they frightened him forth to spend the rest of his days fleeing from an unnamed, unknown avenger--a veritable wandering jew? what mystery had they touched upon there in the bald, bare back room of the quarter's restaurant? what dark door had they opened, what red-headed phantom had they evoked? had they broken up a plot, thwarted a conspiracy, prevented a crime? they never knew. one thing only was certain. the red-headed man had had a past. meanwhile the minutes were passing, and k. d. b. still failed to appear. captain jack was visibly growing impatient, anxious. by now he had come to the fiery liqueur called mescal. he was nearly through his supper. at every moment he consulted his watch and fixed the outside door with a scowl. it was already twenty minutes after seven. "i know the red-headed man spoiled it, after all," murmured blix. "k. d. b. saw the two of them in here and was frightened." "we could send captain jack a telegram from her," suggested condy. "i'm ready for anything now." "what could you say?" "oh, that she couldn't come. make another appointment." "he'd be offended with her. he'd never make another appointment. sea captains are always so punctilious, y' know." richard brought them their coffee and kirsch, and condy showed blix how to burn a lump of sugar and sweeten the coffee with syrup. but they were disappointed. captain jack was getting ready to leave. k. d. b. had evidently broken the appointment. then all at once she appeared. they knew it upon the instant by a brisk opening and shutting of the street door, and by a sudden alertness on the part of captain jack, which he immediately followed by a quite inexplicable move. the street door in the outside room had hardly closed before his hand shot to his coat lapel and tore out the two marguerites. the action was instinctive; blix knew it for such immediately. the retired captain had not premeditated it. he had not seen the face of the newcomer. she had not time to come into the back room, or even to close the street door. but the instant that the captain had recognized a bunch of white marguerites in her belt he had, without knowing why, been moved to conceal his identity. "he's afraid," whispered blix. "positively, i believe he's afraid. how absolutely stupid men are!" but meanwhile, k. d. b., the looked-for, the planned-for and intrigued-for; the object of so much diplomacy, such delicate manoeuvring; the pivot upon which all plans were to turn, the storm-centre round which so many conflicting currents revolved, and for whose benefit the peace of mind of the red-headed man had been forever broken up--had entered the room. "why, she's pretty!" was blix's first smothered exclamation, as if she had expected a harridan. k. d. b. looked like a servant-girl of the better sort, and was really very neatly dressed. she was small, little even. she had snappy black eyes, a resolute mouth, and a general air of being very quiet, very matter-of-fact and complacent. she would be disturbed at nothing, excited at nothing; blix was sure of that. she was placid, but it was the placidity not of the absence of emotion, but of emotion disdained. not the placidity of the mollusk, but that of a mature and contemplative cat. quietly she sat down at a corner table, quietly she removed her veil and gloves, and quietly she took in the room and its three occupants. condy and blix glued their eyes upon their coffee cups like guilty conspirators; but a crash of falling crockery called their attention to the captain's table. captain jack was in a tremor. hitherto he had acted the role of a sane and sensible gentleman of middle age, master of himself and of the situation. the entrance of k. d. b. had evidently reduced him to a semi-idiotic condition. he enlarged himself; he eased his neck in his collar with a rotary movement of head and shoulders. he frowned terribly at trifling objects in corners of the room. he cleared his throat till the glassware jingled. he pulled at his mustache. he perspired, fumed, fretted, and was suddenly seized with an insane desire to laugh. once only he caught the eye of k. d. b., calmly sitting in her corner, picking daintily at her fish, whereupon he immediately overturned the vinegar and pepper casters upon the floor. just so might have behaved an overgrown puppy in the presence of a sleepy, unperturbed chessy-cat, dozing by the fire. "he ought to be shaken," murmured blix at the end of her patience. "does he think she is going to make the first move?" "ha, ah'm!" thundered the captain, clearing his throat for the twentieth time, twirling his mustache, and burying his scarlet face in an enormous pocket handkerchief. five minutes passed and he was still in his place. from time to time k. d. b. fixed him with a quiet, deliberate look, and resumed her delicate picking. "do you think she knows it's he, now that he's taken off his marguerites?" whispered condy. "know it?--of course she does! do you think women are absolutely blind, or so imbecile as men are? and, then, if she didn't think it was he, she'd go away. and she's so really pretty, too. he ought to thank his stars alive. think what a fright she might have been! she doesn't look thirty-one." "huh!" returned condy. "as long as she said she was thirty-one, you can bet everything you have that she is; that's as true as revealed religion." "well, it's something to have seen the kind of people who write the personals," said blix. "i had always imagined that they were kind of tough." "you see they are not," he answered. "i told you they were not. maybe, however, we have been exceptionally fortunate. at any rate, these are respectable enough." "not the least doubt about that. but why don't he do something, that captain?" mourned blix. "why will he act like such a ninny?" "he's waiting for us to go," said condy; "i'm sure of it. they'll never meet so long as we're here. let's go and give 'em a chance. if you leave the two alone here, one or the other will have to speak. the suspense would become too terrible. it would be as though they were on a desert island." "but i wanted to see them meet," she protested. "you wouldn't hear what they said." "but we'd never know if they did meet, and oh--and who spoke first?" "she'll speak first," declared condy. "never!" returned blix, in an indignant whisper. "i tell you what. we could go and then come back in five minutes. i'll forget my stick here. savvy?" "you would probably do it anyhow," she told him. they decided this would be the better course. they got together their things, and condy neglected his stick, hanging upon a hook on the wall. at the counter in the outside room, blix, to the stupefaction of richard, the waiter, paid the bill. but as she was moving toward the door, condy called her back. "remember the waiter," he said severely, while richard grinned and bobbed. "fifty cents is the very least you could tip him." richard actually protested, but condy was firm, and insisted upon a half-dollar tip. "noblesse oblige," he declared with vast solemnity. they walked as far as the cathedral, listened for a moment to the bell striking the hour of eight; then as they remembered that the restaurant closed at that time, hurried back and entered the outside room in feigned perturbation. "did i, could i have possibly left my stick here?" exclaimed condy to richard, who was untying his apron behind the counter. but richard had not noticed. "i think i must have left it back here where we were sitting." condy stepped into the back room, blix following. they got his stick and returned to the outside room. "yes, yes, i did leave it," he said, as he showed it to richard. "i'm always leaving that stick wherever i go." "come again," said richard, as he bowed them out of the door. on the curb outside condy and blix shook hands and congratulated each other on the success of all their labors. in the back room, seated at the same table, a bunch of wilting marguerites between them, they had seen their "matrimonial objects" conferring earnestly together, absorbed in the business of getting acquainted. blix heaved a great sigh of relief and satisfaction, exclaiming: "at last k. d. b. and captain jack have met!" chapter viii "but," she added, as they started to walk, "we will never know which one spoke first." but condy was already worrying. "i don't know, i don't know!" he murmured anxiously. "perhaps we've done an awful thing. suppose they aren't happy together after they're married? i wish we hadn't; i wish we hadn't now. we've been playing a game of checkers with human souls. we've an awful responsibility. suppose he kills her some time?" "fiddlesticks, condy! and, besides, if we've done wrong with our matrimonial objects, we've offset it by doing well with our red-headed coincidence. how do you know, you may have 'foiled a villain' with that telegram--prevented a crime?" condy grinned at the recollection of the incident. "'fly at once,'" he repeated. "i guess he's flying yet. 'all is discovered.' i'd give a dollar and a half--" "if you had it?" "oh, well, if i had it--to know just what it was we have discovered." suddenly blix caught his arm. "condy, here they come!" "who? who?" "our objects, captain jack and k. d. b." "of course, of course. they couldn't stay. the restaurant shuts up at eight." blix and condy had been walking slowly in the direction of pacific street, and k. d. b. and her escort soon overtook them going in the same direction. as they passed, the captain was saying: "--jumped on my hatches, and says we'll make it an international affair. that didn't--" a passing wagon drowned the sound of his voice. "he was telling her of his adventures!" cried blix. "splendid! othello and desdemona. they're getting on." "let's follow them!" exclaimed condy. "should we? wouldn't it be indiscreet?" "no. we are the arbiters of their fate; we must take an interest." they allowed their objects to get ahead some half a block and then fell in behind. there was little danger of their being detected. the captain and k. d. b. were absorbed in each other. she had even taken his arm. "they make a fine-looking couple, really," said blix. "where do you suppose they are going? to another restaurant?" but this was not the case. blix and condy followed them as far as washington square, where the geodetic survey stone stands, and the enormous flagstaff; and there in front of a commonplace little house, two doors above the russian church with its minarets like inverted balloons k. d. b. and the captain halted. for a few moments they conversed in low tones at the gate, then said good-night, k. d. b. entering the house, the captain bowing with great deference, his hat in his hand. then he turned about, glanced once or twice at the house, set his hat at an angle, and disappeared across the square, whistling a tune, his chin in the air. "very good, excellent, highly respectable," approved blix; and condy himself fetched a sigh of relief. "yes, yes, it might have been worse." "we'll never see them again, our 'matrimonial objects,'" said blix, "and they'll never know about us; but we have brought them together. we've started a romance. yes, i think we've done a good day's work. and now, condy, i think we had best be thinking of home ourselves. i'm just beginning to get most awfully sleepy. what a day we've had!" a sea fog, or rather the sea fog--san francisco's old and inseparable companion--had gathered by the time they reached the top of the washington street hill. everything was wet with it. the asphalt was like varnished ebony. indistinct masses and huge dim shadows stood for the houses on either side. from the eucalyptus trees and the palms the water dripped like rain. far off oceanward, the fog-horn was lowing like a lost gigantic bull. the gray bulk of a policeman--the light from the street lamp reflected in his star--loomed up on the corner as they descended from the car. * * * * * * * * * * condy had intended to call his diver's story "a submarine romance," but blix had disapproved. "it's too 'twenty thousand leagues under the sea,'" she had said. "you want something much more dignified. there is that about you, condy, you like to be too showy; you don't know when to stop. but you have left off red-and-white scarfs, and i am very glad to see you wearing white shirt-fronts instead of pink ones." "yes, yes, i thought it would be quieter," he had answered, as though the idea had come from him. blix allowed him to think so. but "a victory over death," as the story was finally called, was a success. condy was too much of a born story-teller not to know when he had done something distinctly good. when the story came back from the typewriter's, with the additional strength that print lends to fiction, and he had read it over, he could not repress a sense of jubilation. the story rang true. "bully, bully!" he muttered between his teeth as he finished the last paragraph. "it's a corker! if it's rejected everywhere, it's an out-of-sight yarn just the same." and there condy's enthusiasm in the matter began to dwindle. the fine fire which had sustained him during the story's composition had died out. he was satisfied with his work. he had written a good story, and that was the end of it. no doubt he would send it east--to the centennial company--to-morrow or the day after--some time that week. to mail the manuscript meant quite half an hour's effort. he would have to buy stamps for return postage; a letter would have to be written, a large envelope procured, the accurate address ascertained. for the moment his supplement work demanded his attention. he put off sending the story from day to day. his interest in it had abated. and for that matter he soon discovered he had other things to think of. it had been easy to promise blix that he would no longer gamble at his club with the other men of his acquaintance; but it was "death and the devil," as he told himself, to abide by that promise. more than once in the fortnight following upon his resolution he had come up to the little flat on the washington street hill as to a place of refuge; and blix, always pretending that it was all a huge joke and part of their good times, had brought out the cards and played with him. but she knew very well the fight he was making against the enemy, and how hard it was for him to keep from the round green tables and group of silent shirt-sleeved men in the card-rooms of his club. she looked forward to the time when condy would cease to play even with her. but she was too sensible and practical a girl to expect him to break a habit of years' standing in a couple of weeks. the thing would have to be accomplished little by little. at times she had misgivings as to the honesty of the course she had adopted. but nowadays, playing as he did with her only, condy gambled but two or three evenings in the week, and then not for more than two hours at a time. heretofore hardly an evening that had not seen him at the round table in his club's card-room, whence he had not risen until long after midnight. condy had told young sargeant that he had "reformed" in the matter of gambling, and intended to swear off for a few months. sargeant, like the thoroughbred he was, never urged him to play after that, and never spoke of the previous night's game when condy was about. the other men of his "set" were no less thoughtful, and, though they rallied him a little at first upon his defection, soon let the matter drop. condy told himself that there were plenty of good people in the world, after all. every one seemed conspiring to make it easy for him, and he swore at himself for a weak-kneed cad. on a certain tuesday, about a week after the fishing excursion and the affair of the "matrimonial objects," toward half-past six in the evening, condy was in his room, dressing for a dinner engagement. young sargeant's sister had invited him to be one of a party who were to dine at the university club, and later on fill a box at a charity play, given by amateurs at one of the downtown theatres. but as he was washing his linen shirt-studs with his tooth-brush his eye fell upon a note, in laurie flagg's handwriting, that lay on his writing-desk, and that he had received some ten days previous. condy turned cold upon the instant, hurled the tooth-brush across the room, and dropped into a chair with a groan of despair. miss flagg was giving a theatre party for the same affair, and he remembered now that he had promised to join her party as well, forgetting all about the engagement he had made with miss sargeant. it was impossible at this late hour to accept either one of the young women's invitations without offending the other. "well, i won't go to either, that's all," he vociferated aloud to the opposite wall. "i'll send 'em each a wire, and say that i'm sick or have got to go down to the office, and--and, by george! i'll go up and see blix, and we'll read and make things to eat." and no sooner had this alternative occurred to him than it appeared too fascinating to be resisted. a weight seemed removed from his mind. when it came to that, what amusement would he have at either affair? "sit up there with your shirt-front starched like a board," he blustered, "and your collar throttling you, and smile till your face is sore, and reel off small talk to a girl whose last name you can't remember! do i have any fun, does it do me any good, do i get ideas for yarns? what do i do it for? i don't know." while speaking he had been kicking off his tight shoes and such of his full dress as he had already put on, and with a feeling of enormous relief turned again to his sack suit of tweed. "lord, these feel better!" he exclaimed, as he substituted the loose business suit for the formal rigidity of his evening dress. it was with a sensation of positive luxury that he put on a "soft" shirt of blue cheviot and his tan walking-shoes. "but no more red scarfs," he declared, as he knotted his black satin "club" before the mirror. "she was right there." he put his cigarettes in his pocket, caught up his gloves and stick, clapped on his hat, and started for the bessemers' flat with a feeling of joyous expectancy he had not known for days. evidently blix had seen him coming, for she opened the door herself; and it suited her humor for the moment to treat him as a peddler or book-agent. "no, no," she said airily, her head in the air as she held the door. "no, we don't want any to-day. we have the biography of abraham lincoln. don't want to subscribe to any home book of art. we're not artistic; we use drapes in our parlors. don't want 'the wives and mothers of great men.'" but condy had noticed a couple of young women on the lower steps of the adjacent flat, quite within ear-shot, and at once he began in a loud, harsh voice: "well, y' know, we can't wait for our rent forever; i'm only the collector, and i've nothing to do with repairs. pay your rent that's three months overdue, and then--" but blix pulled him within the house and clapped to the door. "condy rivers!" she exclaimed, her cheeks flaming, "those are our neighbors. they heard every word. what do you suppose they think?" "huh! i'd rather have 'em think i was a rent-collector than a book-agent. you began it. 'evenin', miss lady." "'evenin', mister man." but condy's visit, begun thus gayly, soon developed along much more serious lines. after supper, while the light still lasted, blix read stories to him while he smoked cigarettes in the bay window of the dining-room. but as soon as the light began to go she put the book aside, and the two took their accustomed places in the window, and watched the evening burning itself out over the golden gate. it was just warm enough to have one of the windows opened, and for a long time after the dusk they sat listening to the vague clamor of the city, lapsing by degrees, till it settled into a measured, soothing murmur, like the breathing of some vast monster asleep. condy's cigarette was a mere red point in the half-darkness. the smoke drifted out of the open window in long, blue strata. at his elbow blix was leaning forward, looking down upon the darkening, drowsing city, her round, strong chin propped upon her hand. she was just close enough for candy to catch the sweet, delicious feminine perfume that came indefinitely from her clothes, her hair, her neck. from where condy sat he could see the silhouette of her head and shoulders against the dull golden blur of the open window; her round, high forehead, with the thick yellow hair rolling back from her temples and ears, her pink, clean cheeks, her little dark-brown, scintillating eyes, and her firm red mouth, made all the firmer by the position of her chin upon her hand. as ever, her round, strong neck was swathed high and tight in white satin; but between the topmost fold of the satin and the rose of one small ear-lobe was a little triangle of white skin, that was partly her neck and partly her cheek, and that condy knew should be softer than down, smoother than satin, warm and sweet and redolent as new apples. condy imagined himself having the right to lean toward her there and kiss that little spot upon her neck or her cheek; and as he fancied it, was surprised to find his breath come suddenly quick, and a barely perceptible qualm, as of a certain faintness, thrill him to his finger-tips; and then, he thought, how would it be if he could, without fear of rebuff, reach out his arm and put it about her trim, firm waist, and draw her very close to him, till he should feel the satiny coolness of her smooth cheek against his; till he could sink his face in the delicious, fragrant confusion of her hair, then turn that face to his--that face with its strong, calm mouth and sweet, full lips-- the face of this dear young girl of nineteen, and then-- "i say--i--shall we--let's read again. let's--let's do something." "condy, how you frightened me!" exclaimed blix, with a great start. "no, listen: i want to talk to you, to tell you something. papum and i have been having some very long and serious talks since you were last here. what do you think, i may go away." "the deuce you say!" exclaimed condy, sitting suddenly upright. "where to, in heaven's name?" he added--"and when? and what for?" "to new york, to study medicine." there was a silence; then condy exclaimed, waving his hands at her: "oh, go right on! don't mind me. little thing like going to new york--to study medicine. of course, that happens every day, a mere detail. i presume you'll go back and forth for your meals?" then blix began to explain. it appeared that she had two aunts, both sisters of her father--one a widow, the other unmarried. the widow, a certain mrs. kihm, lived in new york, and was wealthy, and had views on "women's sphere of usefulness." the other, miss bessemer, a little old maid of fifty, condy had on rare occasions seen at the flat, where every one called her aunt dodd. she lived in that vague region of the city known as the mission, where she owned a little property. from what blix told him that evening, condy learned that mrs. kihm had visited the coast a few winters previous and had taken a great fancy to blix. even then she had proposed to mr. bessemer to take blix back to new york with her, and educate her to some woman's profession; but at that time the old man would not listen to it. now it seemed that the opportunity had again presented itself. "she's a dear old lady," blix said; "not a bit strong-minded, as you would think, and ever so much cleverer than most men. she manages all her property herself. for the last month she's been writing again to papum for me to come on and stay with her three, or four years. she hasn't a chick nor a child, and she don't entertain or go out any, so maybe she feels lonesome. of course if i studied there, papum wouldn't think of aunt kihm--don't you know--paying for it all. i wouldn't go if it was that way. but i could stay with her and she could make a home for me while i was there--if i should study--anything--study medicine." "but why!" he exclaimed. "what do you want to study to be a doctor for? it isn't as though you had to support yourself." "i know, i know i've not got to support myself. but why shouldn't i have a profession just like a man--just like you, condy? you stop and think. it seemed strange to me when i first thought of it; but i got thinking about it and talking it over with papum, and i should love it. i'd do it, not because i would have to do it, but because it would interest me. condy, you know that i'm not a bit strong-minded, and that i hate a masculine, unfeminine girl as much as you do." "but a medical college, blix! you don't know what you are talking about." "yes, i do. there's a college in new york just for women. aunt kihm sent me the prospectus, and it's one of the best in the country. i don't dream of practicing, you know; at least, i don't think about that now. but one must have some occupation; and isn't studying medicine, condy, better than piano-playing, or french courses, or literary classes and browning circles? oh, i've no patience with that kind of girl! and look at the chance i have now; and aunt kihm is such a dear! think, she writes, i could go to and from the college in her coupe every day, and i would see new york; and just being in a big city like that is an education." "you're right, it would be a big thing for you," assented condy, "and i like the idea of you studying something. it would be the making of such a girl as you, blix." and then blix, seeing him thus acquiescent, said: "well, it's all settled; papum and i both wrote last night." "when are you going?" "the first week in january." "well, that's not so awfully soon. but who will take your place here? however in the world would your father get along without you--and snooky and howard?" "aunt dodd is going to come." "sudden enough," said condy, "but it is a great thing for you, blix, and i'm mighty glad for you. your future is all cut out for you now. of course your aunt, if she's so fond of you and hasn't any children, will leave you everything--maybe settle something on you right away; and you'll marry some one of those new york chaps, and be great big people before you know it." "the idea, condy!" she protested. "no; i'm going there to study medicine. oh, you don't know how enthusiastic i am over the idea! i've bought some of the first-year books already, and have been reading them. really, condy, they are even better than 'many inventions.'" "wish i could get east," muttered condy gloomily. blix forgot her own good fortune upon the instant. "i do so wish you could, condy!" she exclaimed. "you are too good for a sunday supplement. i know it and you know it, and i've heard ever so many people who have read your stories say the same thing. you could spend twenty years working as you are now, and at the end what would you be? just an assistant editor of a sunday supplement, and still in the same place; and worse, you'd come to be contented with that, and think you were only good for that and nothing better. you've got it in you, condy, to be a great story-teller. i believe in you, and i've every confidence in you. but just so long as you stay here and are willing to do hack work, just so long you will be a hack writer. you must break from it; you must get away. i know you have a good time here; but there are so many things better than that and more worth while. you ought to make up your mind to get east, and work for that and nothing else. i know you want to go, but wanting isn't enough. enthusiasm without energy isn't enough. you have enthusiasm, condy; but you must have energy. you must be willing to give up things; you must make up your mind that you will go east, and then set your teeth together and do it. oh, i love a man that can do that--make up his mind to a thing and then put it through!" condy watched her as she talked, her brown-black eyes coruscating, her cheeks glowing, her small hands curled into round pink fists. "blix, you're splendid!" he exclaimed; "you're fine! you could put life into a dead man. you're the kind of girl that are the making of men. by jove, you'd back a man up, wouldn't you? you'd stand by him till the last ditch. of course," he went on after a pause--"of course i ought to go to new york. but, blix, suppose i went--well, then what? it isn't as though i had any income of my own, or rich aunt. suppose i didn't find something to do--and the chances are that i wouldn't for three or four months--what would i live on in the meanwhile? 'what would the robin do then, poor thing?' i'm a poor young man, miss bessemer, and i've got to eat. no; my only chance is 'to be discovered' by a magazine or a publishing house or somebody, and get a bid of some kind." "well, there is the centennial company. they have taken an interest in you, condy. you must follow that right up and keep your name before them all the time. have you sent them 'a victory over death' yet?" condy sat down to his eggs and coffee the next morning in the hotel, harried with a certain sense of depression and disappointment for which he could assign no cause. nothing seemed to interest him. the newspaper was dull. he could look forward to no pleasure in his day's work; and what was the matter with the sun that morning? as he walked down to the office he noted no cloud in the sky, but the brightness was gone from the day. he sat down to his desk and attacked his work, but "copy" would not come. the sporting editor and his inane jokes harassed him beyond expression. just the sight of the clipping editor's back was an irritation. the office boy was a mere incentive to profanity. there was no spring in condy that morning, no elasticity, none of his natural buoyancy. as the day wore on, his ennui increased; his luncheon at the club was tasteless, tobacco had lost its charm. he ordered a cocktail in the wine-room, and put it aside with a wry face. the afternoon was one long tedium. at every hour he flung his pencil down, utterly unable to formulate the next sentence of his article, and, his hands in his pockets, gazed gloomily out of the window over the wilderness of roofs--grimy, dirty, ugly roofs that spread out below. he craved diversion, amusement, excitement. something there was that he wanted with all his heart and soul; yet he was quite unable to say what it was. something was gone from him to-day that he had possessed yesterday, and he knew he would not regain it on the morrow, nor the next day, nor the day after that. what was it? he could not say. for half an hour he imagined he was going to be sick. his mother was not to be at home that evening, and condy dined at his club in the hopes of finding some one with whom he could go to the theatre later on in the evening. sargeant joined him over his coffee and cigarette, but declined to go with him to the theatre. "another game on to-night?" asked condy. "i suppose so," admitted the other. "i guess i'll join you to-night," said condy. "i've had the blue devils since morning, and i've got to have something to drive them off." "don't let me urge you, you know," returned sargeant. "oh, that's all right!" condy assured him. "my time's about up, anyways." an hour later, just as he, sargeant, and the other men of their "set" were in the act of going upstairs to the card-rooms, a hall-boy gave condy a note, at that moment brought by a messenger, who was waiting for an answer. it was from blix. she wrote: "don't you want to come up and play cards with me to-night? we haven't had a game in over a week?" "how did she know?" thought condy to himself--"how could she tell?" aloud, he said: "i can't join you fellows, after all. 'despatch from the managing editor.' some special detail or other." for the first time since the previous evening condy felt his spirits rise as he set off toward the washington street hill. but though he and blix spent as merry an evening as they remembered in a long time, his nameless, formless irritation returned upon him almost as soon as he had bidden her good-night. it stayed with him all through the week, and told upon his work. as a result, three of his articles were thrown out by the editor. "we can't run such rot as that in the paper," the chief had said. "can't you give us a story?" "oh, i've got a kind of a yarn you can run if you like," answered condy, his week's depression at its very lowest. "a victory over death" was published in the following sunday's supplement of the "times," with illustrations by one of the staff artists. it attracted not the least attention. just before he went to bed the sunday evening of its appearance, condy read it over again for the last time. "it's a rotten failure," he muttered gloomily as he cast the paper from him. "simple drivel. i wonder what blix will think of it. i wonder if i amount to a hill of beans. i wonder what she wants to go east for, anyway." chapter ix the old-fashioned union street cable car, with its low, comfortable outside seats, put blix and condy down just inside the presidio government reservation. condy asked a direction of a sentry nursing his krag-jorgensen at the terminus of the track, and then with blix set off down the long board walk through the tunnel of overhanging evergreens. the day could not have been more desirable. it was a little after ten of a monday morning, condy's weekly holiday. the air was neither cool nor warm, effervescent merely, brisk and full of the smell of grass and of the sea. the sky was a speckless sheen of pale blue. to their right, and not far off, was the bay, blue as indigo. alcatraz seemed close at hand; beyond was the enormous green, red, and purple pyramid of tamalpais climbing out of the water, head and shoulders above the little foothills, and looking out to the sea and to the west. the reservation itself was delightful. there were rows of the officers' houses, all alike, drawn up in lines like an assembly of the staff; there were huge barracks, most like college dormitories; and on their porches enlisted men in shirt sleeves and overalls were cleaning saddles, and polishing the brass of head-stalls and bridles, whistling the while or smoking corn-cob pipes. here on the parade-ground a soldier, his coat and vest removed, was batting grounders and flies to a half-dozen of his fellows. over by the stables, strings of horses, all of the same color, were being curried and cleaned. a young lieutenant upon a bicycle spun silently past. an officer came from his front gate, his coat unbuttoned and a briar in his teeth. the walks and roads were flanked with lines of black-painted cannon-balls; inverted pieces of abandoned ordnance stood at corners. from a distance came the mellow snarling of a bugle. blix and condy had planned a long walk for that day. they were to go out through the presidio reservation, past the barracks and officers' quarters, and on to the old fort at the golden gate. here they would turn and follow the shore-line for a way, then strike inland across the hills for a short half-mile, and regain the city and the street-car lines by way of the golf-links. condy had insisted upon wearing his bicycle outfit for the occasion, and, moreover, carried a little satchel, which, he said, contained a pair of shoes. but blix was as sweet as a rose that morning, all in tailor-made black but for the inevitable bands of white satin wrapped high and tight about her neck. the st. bernard dog-collar did duty as a belt. she had disdained a veil, and her yellow hair was already blowing about her smooth pink cheeks. she walked at his side, her step as firm and solid as his own, her round, strong arms swinging, her little brown eyes shining with good spirits and vigor, and the pure, clean animal joy of being alive on that fine cool western morning. she talked almost incessantly. she was positively garrulous. she talked about the fine day that it was, about the queer new forage caps of the soldiers, about the bare green hills of the reservation, about the little cemetery they passed just beyond the limits of the barracks, about a rabbit she saw, and about the quail they both heard whistling and calling in the hollows under the bushes. condy walked at her side in silence, yet no less happy than she, smoking his pipe and casting occasional glances at a great ship--a four-master that was being towed out toward the golden gate. at every moment and at every turn they noted things that interested them, and to which they called each other's attention. "look, blix!" "oh, condy, look at that!" they were soon out of the miniature city of the post, and held on down through the low reach of tules and sand-dunes that stretch between the barracks and the old red fort. "look, condy!" said blix. "what's that building down there on the shore of the bay--the one with the flagstaff?" "i think that must be the lifeboat station." "i wonder if we could go down and visit it. i think it would be good fun." "idea!" exclaimed condy. the station was close at hand. to reach it they had but to leave the crazy board walk that led on toward the fort, and cross a few hundred yards of sand-dune. condy opened the gate that broke the line of evergreen hedge around the little two-story house, and promptly unchained a veritable pandemonium of dogs. inside, the place was not without a certain charm of its own. a brick wall, bordered with shells, led to the front of the station, which gave directly upon the bay; a little well-kept lawn opened to right and left, and six or eight gaily-painted old rowboats were set about, half filled with loam in which fuchsias, geraniums, and mignonettes were flowering. a cat or two dozed upon the window-sills in the sun. upon a sort of porch overhead, two of the crew paced up and down in a manner that at once suggested the poop. here and there was a gleam of highly polished red copper or brass trimmings. the bay was within two steps of the front door, while a little further down the beach was the house where the surf-boat was kept, and the long runway leading down from it to the water. condy rapped loudly at the front door. it was opened by captain jack. captain jack, and no other; only now he wore a blue sweater and a leather-visored cap, with the letters u. s. l. b. s. around the band. not an instant was given them for preparation. the thing had happened with the abruptness of a transformation scene at a theatre. condy's knock had evoked a situation. speech was stricken from their mouths. for a moment they were bereft even of action, and stood there on the threshold, staring open-mouthed and open-eyed at the sudden reappearance of their "matrimonial object." condy was literally dumb; in the end it was blix who tided them over the crisis. "we were just going by--just taking a walk," she explained, "and we thought we'd like to see the station. is it all right? can we look around?" "why, of course," assented the captain with great cordiality. "come right in. this is visitors' day. you just happened to hit it--only it's mighty few visitors we ever have," he added. while condy was registering for himself and blix, they managed to exchange a lightning glance. it was evident the captain did not recognize them. the situation readjusted itself, even promised to be of extraordinary interest. and for that matter it made little difference whether the captain remembered them or not. "no, we don't get many visitors," the captain went on, as he led them out of the station and down the small gravel walk to the house where the surf-boat was kept. "this is a quiet station. people don't fetch out this way very often, and we're not called out very often, either. we're an inside post, you see, and usually we don't get a call unless the sea's so high that the cliff house station can't launch their boat. so, you see, we don't go out much, but when we do, it means business with a great big b. now, this here, you see," continued the captain, rolling back the sliding doors of the house, "is the surf-boat. by the way, let's see; i ain't just caught your names yet." "well, my name's rivers," said condy, "and this is miss bessemer. we're both from the city." "happy to know you, sir; happy to know you, miss," he returned, pulling off his cap. "my name's hoskins, but you can just call me captain jack. i'm so used to it that i don't kind of answer to the other. well, now, miss bessemer, this here's the surf-boat; she's self-rightin', self-bailin', she can't capsize, and if i was to tell you how many thousands of dollars she cost, you wouldn't believe me." condy and blix spent a delightful half-hour in the boat-house while captain jack explained and illustrated, and told them anecdotes of wrecks, escapes, and rescues till they held their breaths like ten-year-olds. it did not take condy long to know that he had discovered what the story-teller so often tells of but so seldom finds, and what, for want of a better name, he elects to call "a character." captain jack had been everywhere, had seen everything, and had done most of the things worth doing, including a great many things that he had far better have left undone. but on this latter point the captain seemed to be innocently and completely devoid of a moral sense of right and wrong. it was quite evident that he saw no matter for conscience in the smuggling of chinamen across the canadian border at thirty dollars a head--a venture in which he had had the assistance of the prodigal son of an american divine of international renown. the trade to peruvian insurgents of condemned rifles was to be regretted only because the ring manipulating it was broken up. the appropriation of a schooner in the harbor of callao was a story in itself; while the robbery of thirty thousand dollars' worth of sea-otter skins from a russian trading-post in alaska, accomplished chiefly through the agency of a barrel of rum manufactured from sugar-cane, was a veritable achievement. he had been born, so he told them, in winchester, in england, and-- heaven save the mark!--had been brought up with a view of taking orders. for some time he was a choir boy in the great winchester cathedral; then, while yet a lad, had gone to sea. he had been boat-steerer on a new bedford whaler, and struck his first whale when only sixteen. he had filibustered down to chili; had acted as ice pilot on an arctic relief expedition; had captained a crew of chinamen shark-fishing in magdalena bay, and had been nearly murdered by his men; had been a deep-sea diver, and had burst his ear-drums at the business, so that now he could blow tobacco smoke out of his ears; he had been shipwrecked in the gilberts, fought with the seris on the lower california islands, sold champagne--made from rock candy, effervescent salts, and reisling wine--to the coreans, had dreamed of "holding up" a cunard liner, and had ridden on the strand in a hansom with william ewart gladstone. but the one thing of which he was proud, the one picture of his life he most delighted to recall, was himself as manager of a negro minstrel troupe, in a hired drum-major's uniform, marching down the streets of sacramento at the head of the brass band in burnt cork and regimentals. "the star of the troupe," he told them, "was the lady with the iron jore. we busted in stockton, and she gave me her diamonds to pawn. i pawned 'em, and kept back something in the hand for myself and hooked it to san francisco. strike me straight if she didn't follow me, that iron-jored piece; met me one day in front of the bush street theatre, and horsewhipped me properly. now, just think of that"--and he laughed as though it was the best kind of a joke. "but," hazarded blix, "don't you find it rather dull out here-- lonesome? i should think you would want to have some one with you to keep you company--to--to do your cooking for you?" but condy, ignoring her diplomacy and thinking only of possible stories, blundered off upon another track. "yes," he said, "you've led such a life of action, i should think this station would be pretty dull for you. how did you happen to choose it?" "well, you see," answered the captain, leaning against the smooth white flank of the surf-boat, his hands in his pockets, "i'm lying low just now. i got into a scrape down at libertad, in mexico, that made talk, and i'm waiting for that to die down some. you see, it was this way." mindful of their experience with the mate of the whaleback, condy and blix were all attention in an instant. blix sat down upon an upturned box, her elbows on her knees, leaning forward, her little eyes fixed and shining with interest and expectation; condy, the story-teller all alive and vibrant in him, stood at her elbow, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his fingers dancing with excitement and animation as the captain spoke. and then it was that condy and blix, in that isolated station, the bay lapping at the shore within ear-shot, in that atmosphere redolent of paint and oakum and of seaweed decaying upon the beach outside, first heard the story of "in defiance of authority." captain jack began it with his experience as a restaurant keeper during the boom days in seattle, washington. he told them how he was the cashier of a dining-saloon whose daily net profits exceeded eight hundred dollars; how its proprietor suddenly died, and how he, captain jack, continued the management of the restaurant pending a settlement of the proprietor's affairs and an appearance of heirs; how in the confusion and excitement of the boom no settlement was ever made; and how, no heirs appearing, he assumed charge of the establishment himself, paying bills, making contracts, and signing notes, until he came to consider the business and all its enormous profits as his own; and how at last, when the restaurant was burned, he found himself some forty thousand dollars "ahead of the game." then he told them of the strange club of the place, called "the exiles," made up chiefly of "younger sons" of english and british-canadian families, every member possessed of a "past" more or less disreputable; men who had left their country for their country's good, and for their family's peace of mind--adventurers, wanderers, soldiers of fortune, gentlemen-vagabonds, men of hyphenated names and even noble birth, whose appellations were avowedly aliases. he told them of his meeting with billy isham, one of the club's directors, and of the happy-go-lucky, reckless, unpractical character of the man; of their acquaintance, intimacy, and subsequent partnership; of how the filibustering project was started with captain jack's forty thousand, and the never-to-be-forgotten interview in san francisco with senora estrada, the agent of the insurgents; of the incident of her calling-card--how she tore it in two and gave one-half to isham; of their outfitting, and the broken sextant that was to cause their ultimate discomfiture and disaster, and of the voyage to the rendezvous on a panama liner. "strike me!" continued captain jack, "you should have seen billy isham on that panama dough-dish; a passenger ship she was, and billy was the life of her from stem to stern-post. there was a church pulpit aboard that they were taking down to mazatlan for some chapel or other, and this here pulpit was lashed on deck aft. well, billy had been most kinds of a fool in his life, and among others a play-actor; called himself gaston maundeville, and was clean daft on his knowledge of shakespeare and his own power of interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines. i ain't never going to forgit the day he gave us portia's speech. we were just under the tropic, and the day was a scorcher. there was mostly men folk aboard, and we lay around the deck in our pajamas, while billy--gaston maundeville, dressed in striped red and white pajamas--clum up in that bally pulpit, with the ship's shakespeare in his hands, an' let us have--'the quality o' mercy isn't strained; it droppeth as the genteel dew from heavun.' laugh, i tell you i was sore with it. lord, how we guyed him! an' the more we guyed and the more we laughed, the more serious he got and the madder he grew. he said he was interpretin' the hidden meanin' of the lines." and so the captain ran through that wild, fiery tale--of fighting and loving, buccaneering and conspiring; mandolins tinkling, knives clicking; oaths mingling with sonnets, and spilled wine with spilled blood. he told them of isham's knife duel with the mexican lieutenant, their left wrists lashed together; of the "battle of the thirty" in the pitch dark of the custom house cellar; of senora estrada's love for isham; and all the roll and plunge of action that make up the story of "in defiance of authority." at the end, blix's little eyes were snapping like sparks; condy's face was flaming, his hands were cold, and he was shifting his weight from foot to foot, like an excited thoroughbred horse. "heavens and earth, what a yarn!" he exclaimed almost in a whisper. blix drew a long, tremulous breath and sat back upon the upturned box, looking around her as though she had but that moment been awakened. "yes, sir," said the captain, rolling a cigarette. "yes, sir, those were great days. get down there around the line in those little, out-o'-the-way republics along the south american coast, and things happen to you. you hold a man's life in the crook of your forefinger, an' nothing's done by halves. if you hate a man, you lay awake nights biting your mattress, just thinking how you hate him; an' if you love a woman--good lord, how you do love her!" "but--but!" exclaimed condy, "i don't see how you can want to do anything else. why, you're living sixty to the minute when you're playing a game like that!" "oh, i ain't dead yet!" answered the captain. "i got a few schemes left that i could get fun out of." "how can you wait a minute!" exclaimed blix breathlessly. "why don't you get a ship right away--to-morrow--and go right off on some other adventure?" "well, i can't just now," returned the captain, blowing the smoke from his cigarette through his ears. "there's a good many reasons; one of 'em is that i've just been married." chapter x mum--mar--married! gasped condy, swallowing something in his throat. blix rose to her feet. "just been married!" she repeated, a little frightened. "why--why--why; how delightful!" "yes--yes," mumbled condy. "how delightful. i congratulate you!" "come in--come back to the station," said the captain jovially, "and i'll introduce you to m' wife. we were married only last sunday." "why, yes--yes, of course, we'd be delighted," vociferated the two conspirators a little hysterically. "she's a mighty fine little woman," declared the captain, as he rolled the door of the boat-house to its place and preceded them up the gravel walk to the station. "of course she is," responded blix. behind captain jack's back she fixed condy with a wide-eyed look, and nudged him fiercely with an elbow to recall him to himself; for condy's wits were scattered like a flock of terrified birds, and he was gazing blankly at the captain's coat collar with a vacant, maniacal smile. "for heaven's sake, condy!" she had time to whisper before they arrived in the hallway of the station. but fortunately they were allowed a minute or so to recover themselves and prepare for what was coming. captain jack ushered them into what was either the parlor, office, or sitting-room of the station, and left them with the words: "just make yourselves comfortable here, an' i'll go fetch the little woman." no sooner had he gone than the two turned to each other. "well!" "well!" "we're in for it now." "but we must see it through, condy; act just as natural as you can, and we're all right." "but supposing she recognizes us!" "supposing she does--what then. how are they to know that we wrote the letters?" "sh, blix, not so loud! they know by now that they didn't." "but it seems that it hasn't made any difference to them; they are married. and besides, they wouldn't speak about putting 'personals' in the paper to us. they would never let anybody know that." "do you suppose they could possibly suspect?" "i'm sure they couldn't." "here they come." "keep perfectly calm, and we're saved." "suppose it isn't k. d. b., after all?" but it was, of course, and she recognized them in an instant. she and the captain--the latter all grins--came in from the direction of the kitchen, k. d. b. wearing a neat blue calico gown and an apron that was really a marvel of cleanliness and starch. "kitty!" exclaimed captain jack, seized again with an unexplainable mirth, "here's some young folks come out to see the place an' i want you to know 'em. mr. rivers, this is m' wife, kitty, and--lessee, miss, i don't rightly remember your name." "bessemer!" exclaimed condy and blix in a breath. "oh!" exclaimed k. d. b., "you were in the restaurant the night that the captain and i--i--that is--yes, i'm quite sure i've seen you before." she turned from one to the other, beginning to blush furiously. "yes, yes, in luna's restaurant, wasn't it?" said condy desperately. "it seems to me i do just barely remember." "and wasn't the captain there?" blix ventured. "i forgot my stick, i remember," continued condy. "i came back for it; and just as i was going out it seems to me i saw you two at a table near the door." he thought it best to allow their "matrimonial objects" to believe he had not seen them before. "yes, yes, we were there," answered k. d. b. tactfully. "we dine there almost every monday night." blix guessed that k. d. b. would prefer to have the real facts of the situation ignored, and determined she should have the chance to change the conversation if she wished. "what a delicious supper one has there!" she said. "can't say i like mexican cooking myself," answered k. d. b., forgetting that they dined there every monday night. "plain united states is good enough for me." suddenly captain jack turned abruptly to condy, exclaiming: "oh, you was the chap that called the picture of that schooner a barkentine." "yes; wasn't that a barkentine?" he answered innocently. "barkentine your eye!" spluttered the captain. "why, that was a schooner as plain as a pie plate." but ten minutes later the ordeal was over, and blix and condy, once more breathing easily, were on their walk again. the captain and k. d. b. had even accompanied them to the gate of the station, and had strenuously urged them to "come in and see them again the next time they were out that way." "married!" murmured condy, putting both hands to his head. "we've done it, we've done it now." "well, what of it?" declared blix, a little defiantly. "i think it's all right. you can see the captain is in love with her, and she with him. no, we've nothing to reproach ourselves with." "but--but--but so sudden!" whispered condy, all aghast. "that's what makes me faint--the suddenness of it." "it shows how much they are in love, how--how readily they--adapted themselves to each other. no, it's all right." "they seemed to like us--actually." "well, they had better--if they knew the truth. without us they never would have met." "they both asked us to come out and see them again, did you notice that? let's do it, blix," condy suddenly exclaimed; "let's get to know them!" "of course we must. wouldn't it be fun to call on them--to get regularly acquainted with them!" "they might ask us to dinner some time." "and think of the stories he could tell you!" they enthused immediately upon this subject, both talking excitedly at the same time, going over the details of the captain's yarns, recalling the incidents to each other. "fancy!" exclaimed condy--"fancy billy isham in his pajamas, red and white stripes, reading shakespeare from that pulpit on board the ship, and the other men guying him! isn't that a scene for you? can't you just see it? "i wonder if the captain wasn't making all those things up as he went along. he don't seem to have any sense of right and wrong at all. he might have been lying, condy." "what difference would that make?" and so they went along in that fine, clear, western morning, on the edge of the continent, both of them young and strong and vigorous, the pacific under their eyes, the great clean trades blowing in their faces, the smell of the salt sea coming in long aromatic whiffs to their nostrils. young and strong and fresh, their imaginations thronging with pictures of vigorous action and adventure, buccaneering, filibustering, and all the swing, the leap, the rush and gallop, the exuberant, strong life of the great, uncharted world of romance. and all unknowingly they were a romance in themselves. cynicism, old age, and the weariness of all things done had no place in the world in which they walked. they still had their illusions, all the keenness of their sensations, all the vividness of their impressions. the simple things of the world, the great, broad, primal emotions of the race stirred in them. as they swung along, going toward the ocean, their brains were almost as empty of thought or of reflection as those of two fine, clean animals. they were all for the immediate sensation; they did not think--they felt. the intellect was dormant; they looked at things, they heard things, they smelled the smell of the sea, and of the seaweed, of the fat, rank growth of cresses in the salt marshes; they turned their cheeks to the passing wind, and filled their mouths and breasts with it. their life was sweet to them; every hour was one glad effervescence. the fact that the ocean was blue was a matter for rejoicing. it was good to be alive on that royal morning. just to be young was an exhilaration; and everything was young with them--the day was young, the country was young, and the civilization to which they belonged, teeming there upon the green, western fringe of the continent, was young and heady and tumultuous with the boisterous, red blood of a new race. condy even forgot, or rather disdained on such a morning as that, to piece together and rearrange captain jack's yarns into story form. to look at the sea and the green hills, to watch the pink on blix's cheek and her yellow hair blowing across her eyes and lips, was better than thinking. life was better than literature. to live was better than to read; one live human being was better than ten thousand shakespeares; an act was better than a thought. why, just to love blix, to be with her, to see the sweet, clean flush of her cheek, to know that she was there at his side, and to have the touch of her elbow as they walked, was better than the best story, the greatest novel he could ever hope to write. life was better than literature, and love was the best thing in life. to love blix and to be near her--what else was worth while? could he ever think of finding anything in life sweeter and finer than this dear young girl of nineteen? suddenly condy came to himself with an abrupt start. what was this he was thinking--what was this he was telling himself? love blix! he loved blix! why, of course he loved her--loved her so, that with the thought of it there came a great, sudden clutch at the heart and a strange sense of tenderness, so vague and yet so great that it eluded speech and all expression. love her! of course he loved her! he had, all unknowing, loved her even before this wonderful morning: had loved her that day at the lake, and that never-to-be-forgotten, delicious afternoon in the chinese restaurant; all those long, quiet evenings spent in the window of the little dining-room, looking down upon the darkening city, he had loved her. why, all his days for the last few months had been full of the love of her. how else had he been so happy? how else did it come about that little by little he was withdrawing from the society and influence of his artificial world, as represented by such men as sargeant? how else was he slowly loosening the grip of the one evil and vicious habit that had clutched him so long? how else was his ambition stirring? how else was his hitherto aimless enthusiasm hardening to energy and determination? she had not always so influenced him. in the days when they had just known each other, and met each other in the weekly course of their formal life, it had not been so, even though they pretended a certain amount of affection. he remembered the evening when blix had brought those days to an abrupt end, and how at the moment he had told himself that after all he had never known the real blix. since then, in the charming, unconventional life they had led, everything had been changed. he had come to know her for what she was, to know her genuine goodness, her sincerity, her contempt of affectations, her comradeship, her calm, fine strength and unbroken good nature; and day by day, here a little and there a little, his love for her had grown so quietly, so evenly, that he had never known it, until now, behold! it was suddenly come to flower, full and strong--a flower whose fragrance had suddenly filled all his life and all his world with its sweetness. half an hour after leaving the lifeboat station, condy and blix reached the old, red-brick fort, deserted, abandoned, and rime-incrusted, at the entrance of the golden gate. they turned its angle, and there rolled the pacific, a blue floor of shifting water, stretching out there forever and forever over the curve of the earth, over the shoulder of the world, with never a sail in view and never a break from horizon to horizon. they followed down the shore, sometimes upon the old and broken flume that runs along the seaward face of the hills that rise from the beach, or sometimes upon the beach itself, stepping from bowlder to bowlder, or holding along at the edge of the water upon reaches of white, hard sand. the beach was solitary; not a soul was in sight. close at hand, to landward, great hills, bare and green, shut off the sky; and here and there the land came tumbling down into the sea in great, jagged, craggy rocks, knee-deep in swirling foam, and all black with wet. the air was full of the prolonged thunder of the surf, and at intervals sea-birds passed overhead with an occasional piping cry. wreckage was tumbled about here and there; and innumerable cocoanut shards, huge, brown cups of fuzzy bark, lay underfoot and in the crevices of the rocks. they found a jellyfish--a pulpy translucent mass; and once even caught a sight of a seal in the hollow of a breaker, with sleek and shining head, his barbels bristling, and heard his hoarse croaking bark as he hunted the off-shore fish. blix refused to allow condy to help her in the least. she was quite as active and strong as he, and clambered from rock to rock and over the shattered scantling of the flume with the vigor and agility of a young boy. she muddied her shoes to the very tops scratched her hands, tore her skirt, and even twisted her ankle; but her little eyes were never so bright, nor was the pink flush of her cheeks ever more adorable. and she was never done talking--a veritable chatterbox. she saw everything and talked about everything she saw, quite indifferent as to whether or no condy listened. now it was a queer bit of seaweed, now it was a group of gulls clamoring over a dead fish, now a purple starfish, now a breaker of unusual size. her splendid vitality carried her away. she was excited, alive to her very finger-tips, vibrant to the least sensation, quivering to the least impression. "let's get up here and sit down somewhere," said condy, at length. they left the beach and climbed up the slope of the hills, near a point where a long arm of land thrust out into the sea and shut off the wind; a path was there, and they followed it for a few yards, till they had come to a little amphitheatre surrounded with blackberry bushes. here they sat down, blix settling herself on an old log with a little sigh of contentment, condy stretching himself out, a new-lighted pipe in his teeth, his head resting on the little handbag he had persistently carried ever since morning. then blix fell suddenly silent, and for a long time the two sat there without speaking, absorbed in the enjoyment of looking at the enormous green hills rolling down to the sea, the breakers thundering at the beach, the gashed pinnacles of rock, the vast reach of the pacific, and the distant prospect of the old fort at the entrance of the golden gate. "we might be a thousand miles away from the city, for all the looks of it, mightn't we, condy?" said blix, after a while. "and i'm that hungry! it must be nearly noon." for answer, condy sat up with profound gravity, and with a great air of nonchalance opened the handbag, and, instead of shoes took out, first, a pint bottle of claret, then "devilish" ham sandwiches in oiled paper, a bottle of stuffed olives, a great bag of salted almonds, two little tumblers, a paper-covered novel, and a mouth organ. blix fairly crowed with delight, clasping her hands upon her knees, and rocking to and fro where she sat upon the log. "oh, condy, and you thought of a lunch--you said it was shoes--and you remembered i loved stuffed olives, too; and a book to read. what is it--'the seven seas.' no, i never was so happy. but the mouth organ--what's that for?" "to play on. what did you think--think it was a can-opener?" blix choked with merriment over his foolery, and condy added proudly: "look there! i made those sandwiches!" they looked as though he had--great, fat chunks of bread, the crust still on; the "devilish" ham in thick strata between; and, positively, he had buttered the bread. but it was all one with them; they ate as though at a banquet, and blix even took off her hat and hung it upon one of the nearby bushes. of course condy had forgotten a corkscrew. he tried to dig out the cork of the claret bottle with his knife, until he had broken both blades and was about to give up in despair, when blix, at the end of her patience, took the bottle from him and pushed in the cork with her finger. "wine, music, literature, and feasting," observed condy. "we're getting regularly luxurious, just like sardine-apalus." but condy himself had suddenly entered into an atmosphere of happiness, the like of which he had never known or dreamed of before. he loved blix--he had just discovered it. he loved her because she was so genuine, so radiantly fresh and strong; loved her because she liked the things that he liked, because they two looked at the world from precisely the same point of view, hating shams and affectations, happy in the things that were simple and honest and natural. he loved her because she liked his books, appreciating the things therein that he appreciated, liking what he liked, disapproving of what he condemned. he loved her because she was nineteen, and because she was so young and unspoiled and was happy just because the ocean was blue and the morning fine. he loved her because she was so pretty, because of the softness of her yellow hair, because of her round, white forehead and pink cheeks, because of her little, dark-brown eyes, with that look in them as if she were just done smiling or just about to smile, one could not say which; loved her because of her good, firm mouth and chin, because of her full neck and its high, tight bands of white satin. and he loved her because her arms were strong and round, and because she wore the great dog-collar around her trim, firm-corseted waist, and because there emanated from her with every movement a barely perceptible, delicious, feminine odor, that was in part perfume, but mostly a subtle, vague aroma, charming beyond words, that came from her mouth, her hair, her neck, her arms, her whole sweet personality. and he loved her because she was herself, because she was blix, because of that strange, sweet influence that was disengaged from her in those quiet moments when she seemed so close to him, when some unnamed, mysterious sixth sense in him stirred and woke and told him of her goodness, of her clean purity and womanliness; and that certain, vague tenderness in him went out toward her, a tenderness not for her only, but for all the good things of the world; and he felt his nobler side rousing up and the awakening of the desire to be his better self. covertly he looked at her, as she sat near him, her yellow hair rolling and blowing back from her forehead, her hands clasped over her knee, looking out over the ocean, thoughtful, her eyes wide. she had told him she did not love him. condy remembered that perfectly well. she was sincere in the matter; she did not love him. that subject had been once and for all banished from their intercourse. and it was because of that very reason that their companionship of the last three or four months had been so charming. she looked upon him merely as a chum. she had not changed in the least from that time until now, whereas he--why, all his world was new for him that morning! why, he loved her so, she had become so dear to him, that the very thought of her made his heart swell and leap. but he must keep all this to himself. if he spoke to her, told her of how he loved her, it would spoil and end their companionship upon the instant. they had both agreed upon that; they had tried the other, and it had worked out. as lovers they had wearied of each other; as chums they had been perfectly congenial, thoroughly and completely happy. condy set his teeth. it was a hard situation. he must choose between bringing an end to this charming comradeship of theirs, or else fight back all show of love for her, keep it down and under hand, and that at a time when every nerve of him quivered like a smitten harp-string. it was not in him or in his temperament to love her calmly, quietly, or at a distance; he wanted the touch of her hand, the touch of her cool, smooth cheek, the delicious aroma of her breath in his nostrils her lips against his, her hair and all its fragrance in his face. "condy, what's the matter?" blix was looking at him with an expression of no little concern. "what are you frowning so about, and clinching your fists? and you're pale, too. what's gone wrong?" he shot a glance at her, and bestirred himself sharply. "isn't this a jolly little corner?" he said. "blix, how long is it before you go?" "six weeks from to-morrow." "and you're going to be gone four years--four years! maybe you never will come back. can't tell what will happen in four years. where's the blooming mouth-organ?" but the mouth-organ was full of crumbs. condy could not play on it. to all his efforts it responded only by gasps, mournfulest death-rattles, and lamentable wails. condy hurled it into the sea. "well, where's the blooming book, then?" he demanded. "you're sitting on it, blix. here, read something in it. open it anywhere." "no; you read to me." "i will not. haven't i done enough? didn't i buy the book and get the lunch, and make the sandwiches, and pay the car-fare? i think this expedition will cost me pretty near three dollars before we're through with the day. no; the least you can do is to read to me. here, we'll match for it." condy drew a dime from his pocket, and blix a quarter from her purse. "you're matching me," she said. condy tossed the coin and lost, and blix said, as he picked up the book: "for a man that has such unvarying bad luck as you, gambling is just simple madness. you and i have never played a game of poker yet that i've not won every cent of money you had." "yes; and what are you doing with it all?" "spending it," she returned loftily; "gloves and veils and lace pins--all kinds of things." but condy knew the way she spoke that this was not true. for the next hour or so he read to her from "the seven seas," while the afternoon passed, the wind stirring the chaparral and blackberry bushes in the hollows of the huge, bare hills, the surf rolling and grumbling on the beach below, the sea-birds wheeling overhead. blix listened intently, but condy could not have told of what he was reading. living was better than reading, life was better than literature, and his new-found love for her was poetry enough for him. he read so that he might not talk to her or look at her, for it seemed to him at times as though some second self in him would speak and betray him in spite of his best efforts. never before in all his life had he been so happy; never before had he been so troubled. he began to jumble the lines and words as he read, over-running periods, even turning two pages at once. "what a splendid line!" blix exclaimed. "what line--what--what are you talking about? blix, let's always remember to-day. let's make a promise, no matter what happens or where we are, let's always write to each other on the anniversary of to-day. what do you say?" "yes; i'll promise--and you--" "i'll promise faithfully. oh, i'll never forget to-day nor--yes, yes, i'll promise--why, to-day--blix--where's that damn book gone?" "condy!" "well, i can't find the book. you're sitting on it again. confound the book, anyway! let's walk some more." "we've a long ways to go if we're to get home in time for supper. let's go to luna's for supper." "i never saw such a girl as you to think of ways for spending money. what kind of a purse-proud plutocrat do you think i am? i've only seventy-five cents left. how much have you got?" blix had fifty-five cents in her purse, and they had a grave council over their finances. they had just enough for car-fare and two "suppers mexican," with ten cents left over. "that's for richard's tip," said blix. "that's for my cigar," he retorted. "you made me give him fifty cents. you said it was the least i could offer him--noblesse oblige." "well, then, i couldn't offer him a dime, don't you see? i'll tell him we are broke this time." they started home, not as they had come, but climbing the hill and going across a breezy open down, radiant with blue iris, wild heliotrope, yellow poppies, and even a violet here and there. a little further on they gained one of the roads of the reservation, red earth smooth as a billiard table; and just at an angle where the road made a sharp elbow and trended cityward, they paused for a moment and looked down and back at the superb view of the ocean, the vast half-moon of land, and the rolling hills in the foreground tumbling down toward the beach and all spangled with wild flowers. some fifteen minutes later they reached the golf-links. "we can go across the links," said condy, "and strike any number of car lines on the other side." they left the road and struck across the links, condy smoking his new-lighted pipe. but as they came around the edge of a long line of eucalyptus trees near the teeing ground, a warning voice suddenly called out: "fore!" condy and blix looked up sharply, and there in a group not twenty feet away, in tweeds and "knickers," in smart, short golfing skirts and plaid cloaks, they saw young sargeant and his sister, two other girls whom they knew as members of the fashionable "set," and jack carter in the act of swinging his driving iron. chapter xi as the clock in the library of the club struck midnight, condy laid down his pen, shoved the closely written sheets of paper from him, and leaned back in his chair, his fingers to his tired eyes. he was sitting at a desk in one of the further corners of the room and shut off by a great japanese screen. he was in his shirt-sleeves, his hair was tumbled, his fingers ink-stained, and his face a little pale. since late in the evening he had been steadily writing. three chapters of "in defiance of authority" were done, and he was now at work on the fourth. the day after the excursion to the presidio--that wonderful event which seemed to condy to mark the birthday of some new man within him--the idea had suddenly occurred to him that captain jack's story of the club of the exiles, the boom restaurant, and the filibustering expedition was precisely the novel of adventure of which the centennial company had spoken. at once he had set to work upon it, with an enthusiasm that, with shut teeth, he declared would not be lacking in energy. the story would have to be written out of his business hours. that meant he would have to give up his evenings to it. but he had done this, and for nearly a week had settled himself to his task in the quiet corner of the club at eight o'clock, and held to it resolutely until twelve. the first two chapters had run off his pen with delightful ease. the third came harder; the events and incidents of the story became confused and contradictory; the character of billy isham obstinately refused to take the prominent place which condy had designed for him; and with the beginning of the fourth chapter, condy had finally come to know the enormous difficulties, the exasperating complications, the discouragements that begin anew with every paragraph, the obstacles that refuse to be surmounted, and all the pain, the labor, the downright mental travail and anguish that fall to the lot of the writer of novels. to write a short story with the end in plain sight from the beginning was an easy matter compared to the upbuilding, grain by grain, atom by atom, of the fabric of "in defiance of authority." condy soon found that there was but one way to go about the business. he must shut his eyes to the end of his novel--that far-off, divine event--and take his task chapter by chapter, even paragraph by paragraph; grinding out the tale, as it were, by main strength, driving his pen from line to line, hating the effort, happy only with the termination of each chapter, and working away, hour by hour, minute by minute, with the dogged, sullen, hammer-and-tongs obstinacy of the galley-slave, scourged to his daily toil. at times the tale, apparently out of sheer perversity, would come to a full stop. to write another word seemed beyond the power of human ingenuity, and for an hour or more condy would sit scowling at the half-written page, gnawing his nails, scouring his hair, dipping his pen into the ink-well, and squaring himself to the sheet of paper, all to no purpose. there was no pleasure in it for him. a character once fixed in his mind, a scene once pictured in his imagination, and even before he had written a word the character lost the charm of its novelty, the scene the freshness of its original conception. then, with infinite painstaking and with a patience little short of miraculous, he must slowly build up, brick by brick, the plan his brain had outlined in a single instant. it was all work--hard, disagreeable, laborious work; and no juggling with phrases, no false notions as to the "delight of creation," could make it appear otherwise. "and for what," he muttered as he rose, rolled up his sheaf of manuscript, and put on his coat; "what do i do it for, i don't know." it was beyond question that, had he begun his novel three months before this time, condy would have long since abandoned the hateful task. but blix had changed all that. a sudden male force had begun to develop in condy. a master-emotion had shaken him, and he had commenced to see and to feel the serious, more abiding, and perhaps the sterner side of life. blix had steadied him, there was no denying that. he was not quite the same boyish, hairbrained fellow who had made "a buffoon of himself" in the chinese restaurant, three months before. the cars had stopped running by the time condy reached the street. he walked home and flung himself to bed, his mind tired, his nerves unstrung, and all the blood of his body apparently concentrated in his brain. working at night after writing all day long was telling upon him, and he knew it. what with his work and his companionship with blix, condy soon began to drop out of his wonted place in his "set." he was obliged to decline one invitation after another that would take him out in the evening, and instead of lunching at his club with sargeant or george hands, as he had been accustomed to do at one time, he fell into another habit of lunching with blix at the flat on washington street, and spending the two hours allowed to him in the middle of the day in her company. condy's desertion of them was often spoken of by the men of his club with whom he had been at one time so intimate, and the subject happened to be brought up again one noon when jack carter was in the club as george hands' guest. hands, carter, and eckert were at one of the windows over their after-dinner cigars and liqueurs. "i say," said eckert suddenly, "who's that girl across the street there--the one in black, just going by that furrier's sign? i've seen her somewhere before. know who it is?" "that's miss bessemer, isn't it?" said george hands, leaning forward. "rather a stunning-looking girl." "yes, that's travis bessemer," assented jack carter; adding, a moment later, "it's too bad about that girl." "what's the matter?" asked eckert. carter lifted a shoulder. "isn't anything the matter as far as i know, only somehow the best people have dropped her. she used to be received everywhere." "come to think, i haven't seen her out much this season," said eckert. "but i heard she had bolted from 'society' with the big s, and was going east--going to study medicine, i believe." "i've always noticed," said carter, with a smile, "that so soon as a girl is declassee, she develops a purpose in life and gets earnest, and all that sort of thing. "oh, well, come," growled george hands, "travis bessemer is not declassee." "i didn't say she was," answered carter; "but she has made herself talked about a good deal lately. going around with rivers, as she does, isn't the most discreet thing in the world. of course, it's all right, but it all makes talk, and i came across them by a grove of trees out on the links the other day--" "yes," observed sargeant, leaning on the back of carter's armchair; "yes; and i noticed, too, that she cut you dead. you fellows should have been there," he went on, in perfect good humor, turning to the others. "you missed a good little scene. rivers and miss bessemer had been taking a tramp over the reservation--and, by the way, it's a great place to walk, so my sister tells me; she and dick forsythe take a constitutional out there every saturday morning--well, as i was saying, rivers and miss bessemer came upon our party rather unexpectedly. we were all togged out in our golfing bags, and i presume we looked more like tailor's models, posing for the gallery, than people who were taking an outing; but rivers and miss bessemer had been regularly exercising; looked as though they had done their fifteen miles since morning. they had their old clothes on, and they were dusty and muddy. "you would have thought that a young girl such as miss bessemer is--for she's very young--would have been a little embarrassed at running up against such a spick and span lot as we were. not a bit of it; didn't lose her poise for a moment. she bowed to my sister and to me, as though from the top of a drag, by jove! and as though she were fresh from redfern and virot. you know a girl that can manage herself that way is a thoroughbred. she even remembered to cut little johnnie carter here, because johnnie forced himself upon her one night at a dance when he was drunk; didn't she, johnnie? johnnie came up to her there, out on the links, fresh as a daisy, and put out his hand, with, 'why, how do you do, miss bessemer?' and 'wherever did you come from?' and 'i haven't seen you in so long'; and she says, 'no, not since our last dance, i believe, mr. carter,' and looked at his hand as though it was something funny. "little johnnie mumbled and flushed and stammered and backed off; and it was well that he did, because rivers had begun to get red around the wattles. i say the little girl is a thoroughbred, and my sister wants to give her a dinner as soon as she comes out. but johnnie says she's declassee, so may be my sister had better think it over." "i didn't say she was declassee," exclaimed carter. "i only said she would do well to be more careful." sargeant shifted his cigar to the other corner of his mouth, one eye shut to avoid the smoke. "one might say as much of lots of people," he answered. "i don't like your tone!" carter flared out. "oh, go to the devil, johnnie! shall we all have a drink?" on the friday evening of that week, condy set himself to his work at his accustomed hour. but he had had a hard day on the "times," supplement, and his brain, like an overdriven horse, refused to work. in half an hour he had not written a paragraph. "i thought it would be better, in the end, to loaf for one evening," he explained to blix, some twenty minutes later, as they settled themselves in the little dining-room. "i can go at it better to-morrow. see how you like this last chapter." blix was enthusiastic over "in defiance of authority." condy had told her the outline of the story, and had read to her each chapter as he finished it. "it's the best thing you have ever done, condy, and you know it. i suppose it has faults, but i don't care anything about them. it's the story itself that's so interesting. after that first chapter of the boom restaurant and the exiles' club, nobody would want to lay the book down. you're doing the best work of your life so far, and you stick to it." "it's grinding out copy for the supplement at the same time that takes all the starch out of me. you've no idea what it means to write all day, and then sit down and write all evening." "i wish you could get off the 'times,'" said blix. "you're just giving the best part of your life to hack work, and now it's interfering with your novel. i know you could do better work on your novel if you didn't have to work on the 'times,' couldn't you?" "oh, if you come to that, of course i could," he answered. "but they won't give me a vacation. i was sounding the editor on it day before yesterday. no; i'll have to manage somehow to swing the two together." "well, let's not talk shop now. condy. you need a rest. do you want to play poker?" they played for upward of an hour that evening, and condy, as usual, lost. his ill-luck was positively astonishing. during the last two months he had played poker with blix on an average of three or four evenings in the week, and at the close of every game it was blix who had all the chips. blix had come to know the game quite as well, if not better, than he. she could almost invariably tell when condy held a good hand, but on her part could assume an air of indifference absolutely inscrutable. "cards?" said condy, picking up the deck after the deal. "i'll stand pat, condy." "the deuce you say," he answered, with a stare. "i'll take three." "i'll pass it up to you," continued blix gravely. "well--well, i'll bet you five chips." "raise you twenty." condy studied his hand, laid down the cards, picked them up again, scratched his head, and moved uneasily in his place. then he threw down two high pairs. "no," he said; "i won't see you. what did you have? let's see, just for the fun of it." blix spread her cards on the table. "not a blessed thing!" exclaimed condy. "i might have known it. there's my last dollar gone, too. lend me fifty cents, blix." blix shook her head. "why, what a little niggard!" he exclaimed aggrievedly. "i'll pay them all back to you." "now, why should i lend you money to play against me? i'll not give you a chip; and, besides, i don't want to play any more. let's stop." "i've a mind to stop for good; stop playing even with you." blix gave a little cry of joy. "oh, condy, will you, could you? and never, never touch a card again? never play for money? i'd be so happy--but don't unless you know you would keep your promise. i would much rather have you play every night, down there at your club, than break your promise." condy fell silent, biting thoughtfully at the knuckle of a forefinger. "think twice about it, condy," urged blix; "because this would be for always." condy hesitated; then, abstractedly and as though speaking to himself: "it's different now. before we took that--three months ago, i don't say. it was harder for me to quit then, but now--well, everything is different now; and it would please you, blixy!" "more than anything else i can think of, condy." he gave her his hand. "that settles it," he said quietly. "i'll never gamble again, blix." blix gripped his hand hard, then jumped up, and, with a quick breath of satisfaction, gathered up the cards and chips and flung them into the fireplace. "oh, i'm so glad that's over with," she exclaimed, her little eyes dancing. "i've pretended to like it, but i've hated it all the time. you don't know how i've hated it! what men can see in it to make them sit up all night long is beyond me. and you truly mean, condy, that you never will gamble again? yes, i know you mean it this time. oh, i'm so happy i could sing!" "good heavens, don't do that!" he cried quickly. "you're a nice, amiable girl, blix, even if you're not pretty, and you--" "oh, bother you!" she retorted; "but you promise?" "on my honor." "that's enough," she said quietly. but even when "loafing" as he was this evening, condy could not rid himself of the thought and recollection of his novel; resting or writing, it haunted him. otherwise he would not have been the story-writer that he was. from now on until he should set down the last sentence, the "thing" was never to let him alone, never to allow him a moment's peace. he could think of nothing else, could talk of nothing else; every faculty of his brain, every sense of observation or imagination incessantly concentrated themselves upon this one point. as they sat in the bay window watching the moon rise, his mind was still busy with it, and he suddenly broke out: "i ought to work some kind of a treasure into the yarn. what's a story of adventure without a treasure? by jove, blix, i wish i could give my whole time to this stuff! it's ripping good material, and it ought to be handled as carefully as glass. ought to be worked up, you know." "condy," said blix, looking at him intently, "what is it stands in your way of leaving the 'times'? would they take you back if you left them long enough to write your novel? you could write it in a month, couldn't you, if you had nothing else to do? suppose you left them for a month--would they hold your place for you?" "yes--yes, i think they would; but in the meanwhile, blix--there's the rub. i've never saved a cent out of my salary. when i stop, my pay stops, and wherewithal would i be fed? what are you looking for in that drawer--matches? here, i've got a match." blix faced about at the sideboard, shutting the drawer by leaning against it. in both hands she held one of the delft sugar-bowls. she came up to the table, and emptied its contents upon the blue denim table-cover--two or three gold pieces, some fifteen silver dollars, and a handful of small change. disregarding all condy's inquiries, she counted it, making little piles of the gold and silver and nickel pieces. "thirty-five and seven is forty-two," she murmured, counting off on her fingers, "and six is forty-eight, and ten is fifty-eight, and ten is sixty-eight; and here is ten, twenty, thirty, fifty-five cents in change." she thrust it all toward him, across the table. "there," she said, "is your wherewithal." condy stared. "my wherewithal!" he muttered. "it ought to be enough for over a month." "where did you get all that? whose is it?" "it's your money, condy. you loaned it to me, and now it has come in very handy." "i loaned it to you?" "it's the money i won from you during the time you've been playing poker with me. you didn't know it would amount to so much, did you?" "pshaw, i'll not touch it!" he exclaimed, drawing back from the money as though it was red-hot. "yes, you will," she told him. "i've been saving it up for you, condy, every penny of it, from the first day we played down there at the lake; and i always told myself that the moment you made up your mind to quit playing, i would give it back to you." "why, the very idea!" he vociferated, his hands deep in his pockets, his face scarlet. "it's--it's preposterous, blix! i won't let you talk about it even--i won't touch a nickel of that money. but, blix, you're--you're--the finest woman i ever knew. you're a man's woman, that's what you are." he set his teeth. "if you loved a man, you'd be a regular pal to him; you'd back him up, you'd stand by him till the last gun was fired. i could do anything if a woman like you cared for me. why, blix, i--you haven't any idea--" he cleared his throat, stopping abruptly. "but you must take this money," she answered; "your money. if you didn't, condy, it would make me out nothing more nor less than a gambler. i wouldn't have dreamed of playing cards with you if i had ever intended to keep one penny of your money. from the very start i intended to keep it for you, and give it back to you so soon as you would stop; and now you have a chance to put this money to a good use. you don't have to stay on the 'times' now. you can't do your novel justice while you are doing your hack work at the same time, and i do so want 'in defiance of authority' to be a success. i've faith in you, condy. i know if you got the opportunity you would make a success." "but you and i have played like two men playing," exclaimed condy. "how would it look if sargeant, say, should give me back the money he had won from me? what a cad i would be to take it!" "that's just it--we've not played like two men. then i would have been a gambler. i've played with you because i thought it would make a way for you to break off with the habit; and knowing as i did how fond you were of playing cards and how bad it was for you, how wicked it would have been for me to have played with you in any other spirit! don't you see? and as it has turned out, you've given up playing, and you've enough money to make it possible for you to write your novel. the centennial company have asked you to try a story of adventure for them, you've found one that is splendid, you're just the man who could handle it, and now you've got the money to make it possible. condy," she exclaimed suddenly, "don't you see your chance? aren't you a big enough man to see your chance when it comes? and, besides, do you think i would take money from you? can't you understand? if you don't take this money that belongs to you, you would insult me. that is just the way i would feel about it. you must see that. if you care for me at all, you'll take it." * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * the editor of the sunday supplement put his toothpick behind his ear and fixed condy with his eyeglasses. "well, it's like this, rivers," he said. "of course, you know your own business best. if you stay on here with us, it will be all right. but i may as well tell you that i don't believe i can hold your place for a month. i can't get a man in here to do your work for just a month, and then fire him out at the end of that time. i don't like to lose you, but if you have an opportunity to get in on another paper during this vacation of yours, you're at liberty to do so, for all of me." "then you think my chance of coming back here would be pretty slim if i leave for a month now?" "that's right." there was a silence. condy hesitated; then he rose. "i'll take the chance," he announced. to blix, that evening, as he told her of the affair, he said: "it's neck or nothing now, blix." chapter xii but did blix care for him? in the retired corner of his club, shut off by the japanese screen, or going up and down the city to and from his work, or sitting with her in the bay window of the little dining-room looking down upon the city, blurred in the twilight or radiant with the sunset, condy asked himself the question. a score of times each day he came to a final, definite, negative decision; and a score of times reopened the whole subject. beyond the fact that blix had enjoyed herself in his company during the last months, condy could find no sign or trace of encouragement; and for that matter he told himself that the indications pointed rather in the other direction. she had no compunction in leaving him to go away to new york, perhaps never to return. in less than a month now all their companionship was to end, and he would probably see the last of her. he dared not let her know that at last he had really come to love her--that it was no pretence now; for he knew that with such declaration their "good times" would end even before she should go away. but every day; every hour that they were together made it harder for him to keep himself within bounds. what with this trouble on his mind and the grim determination with which he held to his work, condy changed rapidly. blix had steadied him, and a certain earnestness and seriousness of purpose, a certain strength he had not known before, came swiftly into being. was blix to go away, leave him, perhaps for all time, and not know how much he cared? would he speak before she went? condy did not know. it was a question that circumstances would help him to decide. he would not speak, so he resolved, unless he was sure that she cared herself; and if she did, she herself would give him a cue, a hint whereon to speak. but days went by, the time set for blix's departure drew nearer and nearer, and yet she gave him not the slightest sign. these two interests had now absorbed his entire life for the moment--his love for blix, and his novel. little by little "in defiance of authority" took shape. the boom restaurant and the club of the exiles were disposed of, billy isham began to come to the front, the filibustering expedition and senora estrada (with her torn calling card) had been introduced, and the expedition was ready to put to sea. but here a new difficulty was encountered. "what do i know about ships?" condy confessed to blix. "if billy isham is going to command a filibustering schooner, i've got to know something about a schooner--appear to, anyhow. i've got to know nautical lingo, the real thing, you know. i don't believe a real sailor ever in his life said 'belay there,' or 'avast.' we'll have to go out and see captain jack; get some more technical detail." this move was productive of the most delightful results. captain jack was all on fire with interest the moment that condy and blix told him of the idea. "an' you're going to put billy isham in a book. well, strike me straight, that's a snorkin' good idea. i've always said that all billy needed was a ticket seller an' an advance agent, an' he was a whole show in himself." "we're going to send it east," said blix, "as soon as it's finished, and have it published." "well, it ought to make prime readin', miss; an' that's a good fetchin' title, 'in defiance of authority.'" regularly wednesday and sunday afternoons, blix and condy came out to the lifeboat station. captain jack received them in sweater and visored cap, and ushered them into the front room. "well, how's the yarn getting on?" captain jack would ask. then condy would read the last chapter while the captain paced the floor, frowning heavily, smoking cigars, listening to every word. condy told the story in the first person, as if billy isham's partner were narrating scenes and events in which he himself had moved. condy called this protagonist "burke cassowan," and was rather proud of the name. but the captain would none of it. cassowan, the protagonist, was simply "our mug." "now," condy would say, notebook in hand, "now, cap., we've got down to mazatlan. now i want to sort of organize the expedition in this next chapter." "i see, i see," captain jack would exclaim, interested at once. "wait a bit till i take off my shoes. i can think better with my shoes off"; and having removed his shoes, he would begin to pace the room in his stocking feet, puffing fiercely on his cigar as he warmed to the tale, blowing the smoke out through either ear, gesturing savagely, his face flushed and his eyes kindling. "well, now, lessee. first thing our mug does when he gets to mazatlan is to communicate his arrival to senora estrada--telegraphs, you know; and, by the way, have him use a cipher." "what kind of cipher?" "count three letters on from the right letter, see. if you were spelling 'boat,' for instance, you would begin with an e, the third letter after b; then r for the o, being the third letter from o. so you'd spell 'boat,' erdw; and senora estrada knows when she gets that despatch that she must count three letters back from each letter to get the right ones. take now such a cipher word as ulioh. that means rifle. count three letters back from each letter of ulioh, and it'll spell rifle. you can make up a lot of despatches like that, just to have the thing look natural; savvy?" "out of sight!" muttered condy, making a note. "then our mug and billy isham start getting a crew. and our mug, he buys the sextant there in mazatlan--the sextant, that got out of order and spoiled everything. or, no; don't have it a sextant; have it a quadrant--an old-fashioned, ebony quadrant. have billy isham buy it because it was cheap." "how did it get out of order, captain jack?" inquired blix. "that would be a good technical detail, wouldn't it, condy?" "well, it's like this. our mug an' billy get a schooner that's so bally small that they have to do their cooking in the cabin; quadrant's on a rack over the stove, and the heat warps the joints, so when our mug takes his observation he gets fifty miles off his course and raises the land where the government forces are watching for him." "and here's another point, cap.," said condy. "we ought to work some kind of a treasure into this yarn; can't you think up something new and original in the way of a treasure? i don't want the old game of a buried chest of money. let's have him get track of something that's worth a fortune--something novel." "yes, yes; i see the idea," answered the captain, striding over the floor with great thuds of his stockinged feet. "now, lessee; let me think," he began, rubbing all his hair the wrong way. "we want something new and queer, something that ain't ever been written up before. i tell you what! here it is! have our mug get wind of a little river schooner that sunk fifty years before his time in one of the big south american rivers, during a flood--i heard of this myself. schooner went down and was buried twenty feet under mud and sand; and since that time--you know how the big rivers act--the whole blessed course of the river has changed at that point, and the schooner is on dry land, or rather twenty feet under it, and as sound as the day she was chartered." "well?" "well, have it that when she sank she had aboard of her a cargo of five hundred cases of whiskey, prime stuff, seven thousand quart bottles, sealed up tight as drums. now our mug--nor billy isham either--they ain't born yesterday. no, sir; they're right next to themselves! they figure this way. this here whiskey's been kept fifty years without being moved. now, what do you suppose seven thousand quart bottles of fifty-year-old whiskey would be worth? why, twenty dollars a quart wouldn't be too fancy. so there you are; there's your treasure. our mug and billy isham have only got to dig through twenty feet of sand to pick up a hundred thousand dollars, if they can find the schooner." blix clapped her hands with a little cry of delight, and condy smote a knee, exclaiming: "by jove! that's as good as loudon dodds' opium ship! why, cap., you're a treasure in yourself for a fellow looking for stories." then after the notes were taken and the story talked over, captain jack, especially if the day happened to be sunday, would insist upon their staying to dinner--boiled beef and cabbage, smoking coffee and pickles--that k. d. b. served in the little, brick-paved kitchen in the back of the station. the crew messed in their quarters overhead. k. d. b. herself was not uninteresting. her respectability incased her like armor plate, and she never laughed without putting three fingers to her lips. she told them that she had at one time been a "costume reader." "a costume reader?" "yes; reading extracts from celebrated authors in the appropriate costume of the character. it used to pay very well, and it was very refined. i used to do 'in a balcony,' by mister browning, and 'laska,' the same evening! and it always made a hit. i'd do 'in a balcony' first, and i'd put on a louis-quinze-the-fifteenth gown and wig-to-match over a female cowboy outfit. when i'd finished 'in a balcony,' i'd do an exit, and shunt the gown and wig-to-match, and come on as 'laska,' with thunder noises off. it was one of the strongest effects in my repertoire, and it always got me a curtain call." and captain jack would wag his head and murmur: "extraordinary! extraordinary!" blix and condy soon noted that upon the occasion of each one of their visits, k. d. b. found means to entertain them at great length with long discussions upon certain subjects of curiously diversified character. upon their first visit she elected to talk upon the alps mountains. the sunday following it was bacteriology; on the next wednesday it was crystals; while for two hours during their next visit to the station, condy and blix were obliged to listen to k. d. b.'s interminable discourse on the origin, history, and development of the kingdom of denmark. condy was dumfounded. "i never met such a person, man or woman, in all my life. talk about education! why, i think she knows everything!" "in defiance of authority" soon began to make good progress, but condy, once launched upon technical navigation, must have captain jack at his elbow continually, to keep him from foundering. in some sea novel he remembered to have come across the expression "garboard streak," and from the context guessed it was to be applied to a detail of a vessel's construction. in an unguarded moment he had written that his schooner's name "was painted in showy gilt letters upon her garboard streak." "what's the garboard streak, condy?" blix had asked, when he had read the chapter to her. "that's where they paint her name," he declared promptly. "i don't know exactly, but i like the sound of it." but the next day, when he was reading this same chapter to captain jack, the latter suddenly interrupted with an exclamation as of acute physical anguish. "what's that? read that last over again," he demanded. "'when they had come within a few boat's lengths,'" read condy, "'they were able to read the schooner's name, painted in showy gilt letters upon her garboard streak.'" "my god!" gasped the captain, clasping his head. then, with a shout: "garboard streak! garboard streak? don't you know that the garboard streak is the last plank next the keel? you mean counter, not garboard streak. that regularly graveled me, that did!" they stayed to dinner with the couple that afternoon, and for half an hour afterward k. d. b. told them of the wonders of the caves of elephantis. one would have believed that she had actually been at the place. but when she changed the subject to the science of fortification, blix could no longer restrain herself. "but it is really wonderful that you should know all these things! where did you find time to study so much?" "one must have an education," returned k. d. b. primly. but condy had caught sight of a half-filled book-shelf against the opposite wall, and had been suddenly smitten with an inspiration. on a leaf of his notebook he wrote: "try her on the g's and h's," and found means to show it furtively to blix. but blix was puzzled, and at the earliest opportunity condy himself said to the retired costume reader: "speaking of fortifications, mrs. hoskins, gibraltar now--that's a wonderful rock, isn't it?" "rock!" she queried. "i thought it was an island." "oh, no; it's a fortress. they have a castle there--a castle, something like--well, like the old schloss at heidelberg. did you ever hear about or read about heidelberg university?" but k. d. b. was all abroad now. gibraltar and heidelberg were unknown subjects to her, as were also inoculation, japan, and kosciusko. above the g's she was sound; below that point her ignorance was benighted. "but what is it, condy?" demanded blix, as soon as they were alone. "i've the idea," he answered, chuckling. "wait till after sunday to see if i'm right; then i'll tell you. it's a dollar to a paper dime, k. d. b. will have something for us by sunday, beginning with an i." and she had. it was internal revenue. "right! right!" condy shouted gleefully, as he and blix were on their way home. "i knew it. she's done with ash--bol, bol--car, and all those, and has worked through cod--dem, and dem--eve. she's down to hor--kin now, and she'll go through the whole lot before she's done--kin--mag, mag--mot, mot--pal, and all the rest." "the encyclopaedia?" "don't you see it? no wonder she didn't know beans about gibraltar! she hadn't come to the g's by then." "she's reading the encyclopaedia." "and she gets the volumes on the installment plan, don't you see? reads the leading articles, and then springs 'em on us. to know things and talk about em, that's her idea of being cultured. 'one must have an education.' do you remember her saying that 'oh, our matrimonial objects are panning out beyond all expectation!" what a delicious, never-to-be-forgotten month it was for those two! there in the midst of life they were as much alone as upon a tropic island. blix had deliberately freed herself from a world that had grown distasteful to her; condy little by little had dropped away from his place among the men and the women of his acquaintance, and the two came and went together, living in a little world of their own creation, happy in each other's society, living only in the present, and asking nothing better than to be left alone and to their own devices. they saw each other every day. in the morning from nine till twelve, and in the afternoon until three, condy worked away upon his novel, but not an evening passed that did not see him and blix in the dining-room of the little flat. thursdays and sunday afternoons they visited the life-boat station, and at other times prowled about the unfrequented corners of the city, now passing an afternoon along the water front, watching the departure of a china steamer or the loading of the great, steel wheat ships; now climbing the ladder-like streets of telegraph hill, or revisiting the plaza, chinatown, and the restaurant; or taking long walks in the presidio reservation, watching cavalry and artillery drills; or sitting for hours on the rocks by the seashore, watching the ceaseless roll and plunge of the surf, the wheeling sea-birds, and the sleek-headed seals hunting the offshore fish, happy for a half-hour when they surprised one with his prey in his teeth. one day, some three weeks before the end of the year, toward two in the afternoon, condy sat in his usual corner of the club, behind the screen, writing rapidly. his coat was off and the stump of a cigar was between his teeth. at his elbow was the rectangular block of his manuscript. during the last week the story had run from him with a facility that had surprised and delighted him; words came to him without effort, ranging themselves into line with the promptitude of well-drilled soldiery; sentences and paragraphs marched down the clean-swept spaces of his paper, like companies and platoons defiling upon review; his chapters were brigades that he marshaled at will, falling them in one behind the other, each preceded by its chapter-head, like an officer in the space between two divisions. in the guise of a commander-in-chief sitting his horse upon an eminence that overlooked the field of operations, condy at last took in the entire situation at a glance, and, with the force and precision of a machine, marched his forces straight to the goal he had set for himself so long a time before. then at length he took a fresh penful of ink, squared his elbows, drew closer to the desk, and with a single swift spurt of the pen wrote the last line of his novel, dropping the pen upon the instant and pressing the blotter over the words as though setting a seal of approval upon the completed task. "there!" he muttered, between his teeth; "i've done for you!" that same afternoon he read the last chapter to blix, and she helped him to prepare the manuscript for expressage. she insisted that it should go off that very day, and herself wrote the directions upon the outside wrapper. then the two went down together to the wells fargo office, and "in defiance of authority" was sent on its journey across the continent. "now," she said, as they came out of the express office and stood for a moment upon the steps, "now there's nothing to do but wait for the centennial company. i do so hope we'll get their answer before i go away. they ought to take it. it's just what they asked for. don't you think they'll take it, condy?" "oh, bother that!" answered condy. "i don't care whether they take it or not. how long now is it before you go, blix?" chapter xiii a week passed; then another. the year was coming to a close. in ten days blix would be gone. letters had been received from aunt kihm, and also an exquisite black leather traveling-case, a present to her niece, full of cut-glass bottles, ebony-backed brushes, and shell combs. blix was to leave on the second day of january. in the meanwhile she had been reading far into her first-year text-books, underscoring and annotating, studying for hours upon such subjects as she did not understand, so that she might get hold of her work the readier when it came to class-room routine and lectures. hers was a temperament admirably suited to the study she had chosen--self-reliant, cool, and robust. but it was not easy for her to go. never before had blix been away from her home; never for longer than a week had she been separated from her father, nor from howard and snooky. that huge city upon the atlantic seaboard, with its vast, fierce life, where beat the heart of the nation, and where beyond aunt kihm she knew no friend, filled blix with a vague sense of terror and of oppression. she was going out into a new life, a life of work and of study, a harsher life than she had yet known. her father, her friends, her home--all these were to be left behind. it was not surprising that blix should be daunted at the prospect of so great a change in her life, now so close at hand. but if the tears did start at times, no one ever saw them fall, and with a courage that was all her own blix watched the last days of the year trooping past and the approach of the new year that was to begin the new life. but condy was thoroughly unhappy. those wonderful three months were at an end. blix was going. in less than a week now she would be gone. he would see the last of her. then what? he pictured himself--when he had said good-by to her and the train had lessened to a smoky blur in the distance--facing about, facing the life that must then begin for him, returning to the city alone, picking up the routine again. there would be nothing to look forward to then; he would not see blix in the afternoon; would not sit with her in the evening in the little dining-room of the flat overlooking the city and the bay; would not wake in the morning with the consciousness that before the sun would set he would see her again, be with her, and hear the sound of her voice. the months that were to follow would be one long ache, one long, harsh, colorless grind without her. how was he to get through that first evening that he must pass alone? and she did not care for him. condy at last knew this to be so. even the poor solace of knowing that she, too, was unhappy was denied him. she had never loved him, and never would. he was a chum to her, nothing more. condy was too clear-headed to deceive himself upon this point. the time was come for her to go away, and she had given him no sign, no cue. the last days passed; blix's trunk was packed, her half section engaged, her ticket bought. they said good-by to the old places they had come to know so well--chinatown, the golden balcony, the water-front, the lake of san andreas, telegraph hill, and luna's--and had bade farewell to riccardo and to old richardson. they had left k. d. b. and captain jack until the last day. blix was to go on the second of january. on new year's day she and condy were to take their last walk, were to go out to the lifeboat station, and then on around the shore to the little amphitheatre of blackberry bushes--where they had promised always to write one another on the anniversary of their first visit--and then for the last time climb the hill, and go across the breezy downs to the city. then came the last day of the old year, the last day but one that they would be together. they spent it in a long ramble along the water-front, following the line of the shipping even as far as meiggs's wharf. they had come back to the flat for supper, and afterward, as soon as the family had left them alone, had settled themselves in the bay window to watch the new year in. the little dining-room was dark, but for the indistinct blur of light that came in through the window--a light that was a mingling of the afterglow, the new-risen moon, and the faint haze that the city threw off into the sky from its street lamps and electrics. from where they sat they could look down, almost as from a tower, into the city's streets. here a corner came into view; further on a great puff of green foliage--palms and pines side by side--overlooked a wall. here a street was visible for almost its entire length, like a stream of asphalt flowing down the pitch of the hill, dammed on either side by rows upon rows of houses; while further on the vague confusion of roofs and facades opened out around a patch of green lawn, the garden of some larger residence. as they looked and watched, the afterglow caught window after window, till all that quarter of the city seemed to stare up at them from a thousand ruddy eyes. the windows seemed infinite in number, the streets endless in their complications: yet everything was deserted. at this hour the streets were empty, and would remain so until daylight. not a soul was stirring; no face looked from any of those myriads of glowing windows; no footfall disturbed the silence of those asphalt streets. there, almost within call behind those windows, shut off from those empty streets, a thousand human lives were teeming, each the centre of its own circle of thoughts and words and actions; and yet the solitude was profound, the desolation complete, the stillness unbroken by a single echo. the night--the last night of the old year--was fine; the white, clear light from a moon they could not see grew wide and clear over the city, as the last gleam of the sunset faded. it was just warm enough for the window to be open, and for nearly three hours condy and blix sat looking down upon the city in these last moments of the passing year, feeling upon their faces an occasional touch of the breeze, that carried with it the smell of trees and flowers from the gardens below them, and the faint fine taint of the ocean from far out beyond the heads. but the scene was not in reality silent. at times when they listened intently, especially when they closed their eyes, there came to them a subdued, steady bourdon, profound, unceasing, a vast, numb murmur, like no other sound in all the gamut of nature--the sound of a city at night, the hum of a great, conglomerate life, wrought out there from moment to moment under the stars and under the moon, while the last hours of the old year dropped quietly away. a star fell. sitting in the window, the two noticed it at once, and condy stirred for the first time in fifteen minutes. "that was a very long one," he said, in a low voice. "blix, you must write to me--we must write each other often." "oh, yes," she answered. "we must not forget each other; we have had too good a time for that." "four years is a long time," he went on. "lots can happen in four years. wonder what i'll be doing at the end of four years? we've had a pleasant time while it lasted, blix." "haven't we?" she said, her chin on her hand, the moonlight shining in her little, dark-brown eyes. well, he was going to lose her. he had found out that he loved her only in time to feel the wrench of parting from her all the more keenly. what was he to do with himself after she was gone? what could he turn to in order to fill up the great emptiness that her going would leave in his daily life? and was she never to know how dear she was to him? why not speak to her, why not tell her that he loved her? but condy knew that blix did not love him, and the knowledge of that must keep him silent; he must hug his secret to him, like the spartan boy with his stolen fox, no matter how grievously it hurt him to do so. he and blix had lived through two months of rarest, most untroubled happiness, with hardly more self-consciousness than two young and healthy boys. to bring that troublous, disquieting element of love between them--unrequited love, of all things--would be a folly. she would tell him--must in all honesty tell him that she did not love him, and all their delicious camaraderie would end in a "scene." condy, above everything, wished to look back on those two months, after she had gone, without being able to remember therein one single note that jarred. if the memory of her was all that he was to have, he resolved that at least that memory should be perfect. and the love of her had made a man of him--he could not forget that; had given to him just the strength that made it possible for him to keep that resolute, grim silence now. in those two months he had grown five years; he was more masculine, more virile. the very set of his mouth was different; between the eye-brows the cleft had deepened; his voice itself vibrated to a heavier note. no, no; so long as he should live, he, man grown as he was, could never forget this girl of nineteen who had come into his life so quietly, so unexpectedly, who had influenced it so irresistibly and so unmistakably for its betterment, and who had passed out of it with the passing of the year. for a few moments condy had been absent-mindedly snapping the lid of his cigarette case, while he thought; now he selected a cigarette, returned the case to his pocket, and fumbled for a match. but the little gun-metal case he carried was empty. blix rose and groped for a moment upon the mantel-shelf, then returned and handed him a match, and stood over him while he scraped it under the arm of the chair wherein he sat. even when his cigarette was lighted she still stood there, looking at him, the fingers of her hands clasped in front of her, her hair, one side of her cheek, her chin, and sweet, round neck outlined by the faint blur of light that came from the open window. then quietly she said: "well, condy?" "well, blix?" "just 'well'?" she repeated. "is that all? is that all you have to say to me?" he gave a great start. "blix!" he exclaimed. "is that all? and you are going to let me go away from you for so long, and say nothing more than that to me? you think you have been so careful, think you have kept your secret so close! condy, don't you suppose i know? do you suppose women are so blind? no, you don't need to tell me; i know--i've known it--oh, for weeks!" "you know--know--know what?" he exclaimed, breathless. "that you have been pretending that you did not love me. i know that you do love me--i know you have been trying to keep it from me for fear it would spoil our good times, and because we had made up our minds to be chums, and have 'no more foolishness.' once--in those days when we first knew each other--i knew you did not love me when you said you did; but now, since--oh, since that afternoon in the chinese restaurant, remember?--i've known that you did love me, although you pretended you didn't. it was the pretence i wanted to be rid of; i wanted to be rid of it when you said you loved me and didn't, and i want to be rid of it now when you pretend not to love me and i know you do," and blix leaned back her head as she spoke that "know," looking at him from under her lids, a smile upon her lips. "it's the pretence that i won't have," she added. "we must be sincere with each other, you and i." "blix, do you love me?" condy had risen to his feet, his breath was coming quick, his cigarette was flung away, and his hands opened and shut swiftly. "oh, blixy, little girl, do you love me?" they stood there for a moment in the half dark, facing one another, their hearts beating, their breath failing them in the tension of the instant. there in that room, high above the city, a little climax had come swiftly to a head, a crisis in two lives had suddenly developed. the moment that had been in preparation for the last few months, the last few years, the last few centuries, behold! it had arrived. "blix, do you love me?" suddenly it was the new year. somewhere close at hand a chorus of chiming church bells sang together. far off in the direction of the wharves, where the great ocean steamships lay, came the glad, sonorous shouting of a whistle; from a nearby street a bugle called aloud. and then from point to point, from street to roof top, and from roof to spire, the vague murmur of many sounds grew and spread and widened, slowly, grandly; that profound and steady bourdon, as of an invisible organ swelling, deepening, and expanding to the full male diapason of the city aroused and signaling the advent of another year. and they heard it, they two heard it, standing there face to face, looking into each other's eyes, that unanswered question yet between them, the question that had come to them with the turning of the year. it was the old year yet when condy had asked that question. in that moment's pause, while blix hesitated to answer him, the new year had come. and while the huge, vast note of the city swelled and vibrated, she still kept silent. but only for a moment. then she came closer to him, and put a hand on each of his shoulders. "happy new year, dear," she said. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * on new year's day, the last day they were to be together, blix and condy took "their walk," as they had come to call it--the walk that included the lifeboat station, the golden gate, the ocean beach beyond the old fort, the green, bare, flower-starred hills and downs, and the smooth levels of the golf links. blix had been busy with the last details of her packing, and they did not get started until toward two in the afternoon. "strike me!" exclaimed captain jack, as blix informed him that she had come to say good-by. "why, ain't this very sudden-like, miss bessemer? hey, kitty, come in here. here's miss bessemer come to say good-by; going to new york to-morrow." "we'll regularly be lonesome without you, miss," said k. d. b., as she came into the front room, bringing with her a brisk, pungent odor of boiled vegetables. "new york--such a town as it must be! it was called manhattan at first, you know, and was settled by the dutch." evidently k. d. b. had reached the n's. with such deftness as she possessed, blix tried to turn the conversation upon the first meeting of the retired sea captain and the one-time costume reader, but all to no purpose. the "matrimonial objects" were perhaps a little ashamed of their "personals" by now, and neither blix nor condy were ever to hear their version of the meeting in the back dining-room of luna's mexican restaurant. captain jack was, in fact, anxious to change the subject. "any news of the yarn yet?" he suddenly inquired of condy "what do those eastern publishin' people think of our mug and billy isham and the whiskey schooner?" condy had received the rejected manuscript of "in defiance of authority" that morning, accompanied by a letter from the centennial company. "well," he said in answer, "they're not, as you might say, falling over themselves trying to see who'll be the first to print it. it's been returned." "the devil you say!" responded the captain. "well, that's kind of disappointin' to you, ain't it?" "but," blix hastened to add, "we're not at all discouraged. we're going to send it off again right away." then she said good-by to them. "i dunno as you'll see me here when you come back, miss," said the captain, at the gate, his arm around k. d. b. "i've got to schemin' again. do you know," he added, in a low, confidential tone, "that all the mines in california send their clean-ups and gold bricks down to the selby smeltin' works once every week? they send 'em to san francisco first, and they are taken up to selby's wednesday afternoons on a little stern-wheel steamer called the "monticello." all them bricks are in a box--dumped in like so much coal--and that box sets just under the wheel-house, for'ard. how much money do you suppose them bricks represent? well, i'll tell you; last week they represented seven hundred and eighty thousand dollars. well, now, i got a chart of the bay near vallejo; the channel's all right, but there are mudflats that run out from shore three miles. enough water for a whitehall, but not enough for--well, for the patrol boat, for instance. two or three slick boys, of a foggy night--of course, i'm not in that kind of game, but strike! it would be a deal now, wouldn't it?" "don't you believe him, miss," put in k. d. b. "he's just talking to show off." "i think your scheme of holding up a cunard liner," said condy, with great earnestness, "is more feasible. you could lay across her course and fly a distress signal. she'd have to heave to." "yes, i been thinkin' o' that; but look here--what's to prevent the liner taking right after your schooner after you've got the stuff aboard--just followin' you right around an' findin' out where you land?" "she'd be under contract to carry government mails," contradicted condy. "she couldn't do that. you'd leave her mails aboard for just that reason. you wouldn't rob her of her mails; just so long as she was carrying government mails she couldn't stop." the captain clapped his palm down upon the gate-post. "strike me straight! i never thought of that." chapter xiv blix and condy went on; on along the narrow road upon the edge of the salt marshes and tules that lay between the station and the golden gate; on to the golden gate itself, and around the old grime-incrusted fort to the ocean shore, with its reaches of hard, white sand, where the bowlders lay tumbled and the surf grumbled incessantly. the world seemed very far away from them here on the shores of the pacific, on that first afternoon of the new year. they were supremely happy, and they sufficed to themselves. condy had forgotten all about the next day, when he must say good-by to blix. it did not seem possible, it was not within the bounds of possibility, that she was to go away--that they two were to be separated. and for that matter, to-morrow was to-morrow. it was twenty-four hours away. the present moment was sufficient. the persistence with which they clung to the immediate moment, their happiness in living only in the present, had brought about a rather curious condition of things between them. in their love for each other there was no thought of marriage; they were too much occupied with the joy of being together at that particular instant to think of the future. they loved each other, and that was enough. they did not look ahead further than the following day, and then but furtively, and only in order that their morrow's parting might intensify their happiness of to-day. that new year's day was to be the end of everything. blix was going; she and condy would never see each other again. the thought of marriage--with its certain responsibilities, its duties, its gravity, its vague, troublous seriousness, its inevitable disappointments--was even a little distasteful to them. their romance had been hitherto without a flaw; they had been genuinely happy in little things. it was as well that it should end that day, in all its pristine sweetness, unsullied by a single bitter moment, undimmed by the cloud of a single disillusion or disappointment. whatever chanced to them in later years, they could at least cherish this one memory of a pure, unselfish affection, young and unstained and almost without thought of sex, come and gone on the very threshold of their lives. this was the end, they both understood. they were glad that it was to be so. they did not even speak again of writing to each other. they found once more the little semicircle of blackberry bushes and the fallen log, half-way up the hill above the shore, and sat there a while, looking down upon the long green rollers, marching incessantly toward the beach, and there breaking in a prolonged explosion of solid green water and flying spume. and their glance followed their succeeding ranks further and further out to sea, till the multitude blended into the mass--the vast, green, shifting mass that drew the eye on and on, to the abrupt, fine line of the horizon. there was no detail in the scene. there was nothing but the great reach of the ocean floor, the unbroken plane of blue sky, and the bare green slope of land--three immensities, gigantic, vast, primordial. it was no place for trivial ideas and thoughts of little things. the mind harked back unconsciously to the broad, simpler, basic emotions, the fundamental instincts of the race. the huge spaces of earth and air and water carried with them a feeling of kindly but enormous force--elemental force, fresh, untutored, new, and young. there was buoyancy in it; a fine, breathless sense of uplifting and exhilaration; a sensation as of bigness and a return to the homely, human, natural life, to the primitive old impulses, irresistible, changeless, and unhampered; old as the ocean, stable as the hills, vast as the unplumbed depths of the sky. condy and blix sat still, listening, looking, and watching--the intellect drowsy and numb; the emotions, the senses, all alive and brimming to the surface. vaguely they felt the influence of the moment. something was preparing for them. from the lowest, untouched depths in the hearts of each of them something was rising steadily to consciousness and the light of day. there is no name for such things, no name for the mystery that spans the interval between man and woman--the mystery that bears no relation to their love for each other, but that is something better than love, and whose coming savors of the miraculous. the afternoon had waned and the sun had begun to set when blix rose. "we should be going, condy," she told him. they started up the hill, and condy said: "i feel as though i had been somehow asleep with my eyes wide open. what a glorious sunset! it seems to me as though i were living double every minute; and oh! blix, isn't it the greatest thing in the world to love each other as we do?" they had come to the top of the hill by now, and went on across the open, breezy downs, all starred with blue iris and wild heliotrope. blix drew his arm about her waist, and laid her cheek upon his shoulder with a little caressing motion. "and i do love you, dear," she said--"love you with all my heart. and it's for always, too; i know that. i've been a girl until within the last three or four days--just a girl, dearest; not very serious, i'm afraid, and not caring for anything else beyond, what was happening close around me--don't you understand? but since i've found out how much i loved you and knew that you loved me--why, everything is changed for me. i'm not the same, i enjoy things that i never thought of enjoying before, and i feel so--oh, larger, don't you know?--and stronger, and so much more serious. just a little while ago i was only nineteen, but i think, dear, that by loving you i have become--all of a sudden and without knowing it--a woman." a little trembling ran through her with the words. she stopped and put both arms around his neck, her head tipped back, her eyes half closed, her sweet yellow hair rolling from her forehead. her whole dear being radiated with that sweet, clean perfume that seemed to come alike from her clothes, her neck, her arms, her hair, and mouth--the delicious, almost divine, feminine aroma that was part of herself. "you do love me, condy, don't you, just as i love you?" such words as he could think of seemed pitifully inadequate. for answer he could only hold her the closer. she understood. her eyes closed slowly, and her face drew nearer to his. just above a whisper, she said: "i love you, dear!" "i love you, blix!" and they kissed each other then upon the mouth. meanwhile the sun had been setting. such a sunset! the whole world, the three great spaces of sea and land and sky, were incarnadined with the glory of it. the ocean floor was a blinding red radiance, the hills were amethyst, the sky one gigantic opal, and they two seemed poised in the midst of all the chaotic glory of a primitive world. it was new year's day; the earth was new, the year was new, and their love was new and strong. everything was before them. there was no longer any past, no longer any present. regrets and memories had no place in their new world. it was hope, hope, hope, that sang to them and called to them and smote into life the new keen blood of them. then suddenly came the miracle, like the flashing out of a new star, whose radiance they felt but could not see, like a burst of music whose harmony they felt but could not hear. and as they stood there alone in all that simple glory of sky and earth and sea, they knew all in an instant that they were for each other, forever and forever, for better or for worse, till death should them part. into their romance, into their world of little things, their joys of the moment, their happiness of the hour, had suddenly descended a great and lasting joy, the happiness of the great, grave issues of life--a happiness so deep, so intense, as to thrill them with a sense of solemnity and wonder. instead of being the end, that new year's day was but the beginning--the beginning of their real romance. all the fine, virile, masculine energy of him was aroused and rampant. all her sweet, strong womanliness had been suddenly deepened and broadened. in fine, he had become a man, and she woman. youth, life, and the love of man and woman, the strength of the hills, the depth of the ocean, and the beauty of the sky at sunset; that was what the new year had brought to them. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * "it's good-by, dear, isn't it?" said blix. but condy would not have it so. "no, no," he told her; "no, blix; no matter how often we separate after this wonderful new year's day, no matter how far we are apart, we two shall never, never say good-by." "oh, you're right, you're right!" she answered, the tears beginning to shine in her little dark-brown eyes. "no; so long as we love each other, nothing matters. there's no such thing as distance for us, is there? just think, you will be here on the shores of the pacific, and i on the shores of the atlantic, but the whole continent can't come between us." "and we'll be together again, blix," he said; "and it won't be very long now. just give me time--a few years now." "but so long as we love each other, time won't matter either." "what are the tears for, blixy?" he asked, pressing his handkerchief to her cheek. "because this is the saddest and happiest day of my life," she answered. then she pulled from him with a little laugh, adding: "look, condy, you've dropped your letter. you pulled it out just now with your handkerchief." as condy picked it up, she noted the name of the centennial company upon the corner. "it's the letter i got with the manuscript of the novel when they sent it back," he explained. "what did they say?" "oh, the usual thing. i haven't read it yet. here's what they say." he opened it and read: "we return to you herewith the ms. of your novel, 'in defiance of authority,' and regret that our reader does not recommend it as available for publication at present. we have, however, followed your work with considerable interest, and have read a story by you, copied in one of our exchanges, under the title, 'a victory over death,' which we would have been glad to publish ourselves, had you given us the chance. "would you consider the offer of the assistant editorship of our quarterly, a literary and critical pamphlet, that we publish in new york, and with which we presume you are familiar? we do not believe there would be any difficulty in the matter of financial arrangements. in case you should decide to come on, we inclose r. r. passes via the a. t. & s. f., c. & a., and new york central. "very truly, "the centennial publishing company, "new york." the two exchanged glances. but blix was too excited to speak, and could only give vent to a little, quivering, choking sigh. the letter was a veritable god from the machine, the one thing lacking to complete their happiness. "i don't know how this looks to you," condy began, trying to be calm, "but it seems to me that this is--that this--this--" but what they said then they could never afterward remember. the golden haze of the sunset somehow got into their recollection of the moment, and they could only recall the fact that they had been gayer in that moment than ever before in all their lives. perhaps as gay as they ever were to be again. they began to know the difference between gayety and happiness. that new year's day, that sunset, marked for them an end and a beginning. it was the end of their gay, irresponsible, hour-to-hour life of the past three months; and it was the beginning of a new life, whose possibilities of sorrow and of trouble, of pleasure and of happiness, were greater than aught they had yet experienced. they knew this--they felt it instinctively, as with a common impulse they turned and looked back upon the glowing earth and sea and sky, the breaking surf, the beach, the distant, rime-incrusted, ancient fort--all that scene that to their eyes stood for the dear, free, careless companionship of those last few months. their new-found happiness was not without its sadness already. all was over now; their solitary walks, the long, still evenings in the little dining-room overlooking the sleeping city, their excursions to luna's, their afternoons spent in the golden chinese balcony, their mornings on the lake, calm and still and hot. forever and forever they had said good-by to that life. already the sunset was losing its glory. then, with one last look, they turned about and set their faces from it to the new life, to the east, where lay the nation. out beyond the purple bulwarks of the sierras, far off, the great, grim world went clashing through its grooves--the world that now they were to know, the world that called to them, and woke them, and roused them. their little gayeties were done; the life of little things was all behind. now for the future. the sterner note had struck--work was to be done; that, too, the new year had brought to them--work for each of them, work and the world of men. for a moment they shrank from it, loth to take the first step beyond the confines of the garden wherein they had lived so joyously and learned to love each other; and as they stood there, facing the gray and darkening eastern sky, their backs forever turned to the sunset, blix drew closer to him, putting her hand in his, looking a little timidly into his eyes. but his arm was around her, and the strong young force that looked into her eyes from his gave her courage. "a happy new year, dear," she said. "a very, very happy new year, blix," he answered. [the end] arcadian adventures with the idle rich by stephen leacock, - contents i a little dinner with mr. lucullus fyshe ii the wizard of finance iii the arrested philanthropy of mr. tomlinson iv the yahi-bahi oriental society of mrs. rasselyer-brown v the love story of mr. peter spillikins vi the rival churches of st. asaph and st. osoph vii the ministrations of the rev. uttermust dumfarthing viii the great fight for clean government chapter one: a little dinner with mr. lucullus fyshe the mausoleum club stands on the quietest corner of the best residential street in the city. it is a grecian building of white stone. about it are great elm trees with birds--the most expensive kind of birds--singing in the branches. the street in the softer hours of the morning has an almost reverential quiet. great motors move drowsily along it, with solitary chauffeurs returning at . after conveying the earlier of the millionaires to their downtown offices. the sunlight flickers through the elm trees, illuminating expensive nurse-maids wheeling valuable children in little perambulators. some of the children are worth millions and millions. in europe, no doubt, you may see in the unter den linden avenue or the champs elysees a little prince or princess go past with a clattering military guard of honour. but that is nothing. it is not half so impressive, in the real sense, as what you may observe every morning on plutoria avenue beside the mausoleum club in the quietest part of the city. here you may see a little toddling princess in a rabbit suit who owns fifty distilleries in her own right. there, in a lacquered perambulator, sails past a little hooded head that controls from its cradle an entire new jersey corporation. the united states attorney-general is suing her as she sits, in a vain attempt to make her dissolve herself into constituent companies. near by is a child of four, in a khaki suit, who represents the merger of two trunk-line railways. you may meet in the flickered sunlight any number of little princes and princesses far more real than the poor survivals of europe. incalculable infants wave their fifty-dollar ivory rattles in an inarticulate greeting to one another. a million dollars of preferred stock laughs merrily in recognition of a majority control going past in a go-cart drawn by an imported nurse. and through it all the sunlight falls through the elm trees, and the birds sing and the motors hum, so that the whole world as seen from the boulevard of plutoria avenue is the very pleasantest place imaginable. just below plutoria avenue, and parallel with it, the trees die out and the brick and stone of the city begins in earnest. even from the avenue you see the tops of the sky-scraping buildings in the big commercial streets, and can hear or almost hear the roar of the elevated railway, earning dividends. and beyond that again the city sinks lower, and is choked and crowded with the tangled streets and little houses of the slums. in fact, if you were to mount to the roof of the mausoleum club itself on plutoria avenue you could almost see the slums from there. but why should you? and on the other hand, if you never went up on the roof, but only dined inside among the palm trees, you would never know that the slums existed which is much better. there are broad steps leading up to the club, so broad and so agreeably covered with matting that the physical exertion of lifting oneself from one's motor to the door of the club is reduced to the smallest compass. the richer members are not ashamed to take the steps one at a time, first one foot and then the other; and at tight money periods, when there is a black cloud hanging over the stock exchange, you may see each and every one of the members of the mausoleum club dragging himself up the steps after this fashion, his restless eyes filled with the dumb pathos of a man wondering where he can put his hand on half a million dollars. but at gayer times, when there are gala receptions at the club, its steps are all buried under expensive carpet, soft as moss and covered over with a long pavilion of red and white awning to catch the snowflakes; and beautiful ladies are poured into the club by the motorful. then, indeed, it is turned into a veritable arcadia; and for a beautiful pastoral scene, such as would have gladdened the heart of a poet who understood the cost of things, commend me to the mausoleum club on just such an evening. its broad corridors and deep recesses are filled with shepherdesses such as you never saw, dressed in beautiful shimmering gowns, and wearing feathers in their hair that droop off sideways at every angle known to trigonometry. and there are shepherds, too, with broad white waistcoats and little patent leather shoes and heavy faces and congested cheeks. and there is dancing and conversation among the shepherds and shepherdesses, with such brilliant flashes of wit and repartee about the rise in wabash and the fall in cement that the soul of louis quatorze would leap to hear it. and later there is supper at little tables, when the shepherds and shepherdesses consume preferred stocks and gold-interest bonds in the shape of chilled champagne and iced asparagus, and great platefuls of dividends and special quarterly bonuses are carried to and fro in silver dishes by chinese philosophers dressed up to look like waiters. but on ordinary days there are no ladies in the club, but only the shepherds. you may see them sitting about in little groups of two and three under the palm trees drinking whiskey and soda; though of course the more temperate among them drink nothing but whiskey and lithia water, and those who have important business to do in the afternoon limit themselves to whiskey and radnor, or whiskey and magi water. there are as many kinds of bubbling, gurgling, mineral waters in the caverns of the mausoleum club as ever sparkled from the rocks of homeric greece. and when you have once grown used to them, it is as impossible to go back to plain water as it is to live again in the forgotten house in a side street that you inhabited long before you became a member. thus the members sit and talk in undertones that float to the ear through the haze of havana smoke. you may hear the older men explaining that the country is going to absolute ruin, and the younger ones explaining that the country is forging ahead as it never did before; but chiefly they love to talk of great national questions, such as the protective tariff and the need of raising it, the sad decline of the morality of the working man, the spread of syndicalism and the lack of christianity in the labour class, and the awful growth of selfishness among the mass of the people. so they talk, except for two or three that drop off to directors' meetings; till the afternoon fades and darkens into evening, and the noiseless chinese philosophers turn on soft lights here and there among the palm trees. presently they dine at white tables glittering with cut glass and green and yellow rhine wines; and after dinner they sit again among the palm-trees, half-hidden in the blue smoke, still talking of the tariff and the labour class and trying to wash away the memory and the sadness of it in floods of mineral waters. so the evening passes into night, and one by one the great motors come throbbing to the door, and the mausoleum club empties and darkens till the last member is borne away and the arcadian day ends in well-earned repose. * * * * * "i want you to give me your opinion very, very frankly," said mr. lucullus fyshe on one side of the luncheon table to the rev. fareforth furlong on the other. "by all means," said mr. furlong. mr. fyshe poured out a wineglassful of soda and handed it to the rector to drink. "now tell me very truthfully," he said, "is there too much carbon in it?" "by no means," said mr. furlong. "and--quite frankly--not too much hydrogen?" "oh, decidedly not." "and you would not say that the percentage of sodium bicarbonate was too great for the ordinary taste?" "i certainly should not," said mr. furlong, and in this he spoke the truth. "very good then," said mr. fyshe, "i shall use it for the duke of dulham this afternoon." he uttered the name of the duke with that quiet, democratic carelessness which meant that he didn't care whether half a dozen other members lunching at the club could hear or not. after all, what was a duke to a man who was president of the people's traction and suburban co., and the republican soda and siphon co-operative, and chief director of the people's district loan and savings? if a man with a broad basis of popular support like that was proposing to entertain a duke, surely there could be no doubt about his motives? none at all. naturally, too, if a man manufactures soda himself, he gets a little over-sensitive about the possibility of his guests noticing the existence of too much carbon in it. in fact, ever so many of the members of the mausoleum club manufacture things, or cause them to be manufactured, or--what is the same thing--merge them when they are manufactured. this gives them their peculiar chemical attitude towards their food. one often sees a member suddenly call the head waiter at breakfast to tell him that there is too much ammonia in the bacon; and another one protest at the amount of glucose in the olive oil; and another that there is too high a percentage of nitrogen in the anchovy. a man of distorted imagination might think this tasting of chemicals in the food a sort of nemesis of fate upon the members. but that would be very foolish, for in every case the head waiter, who is the chief of the chinese philosophers mentioned above, says that he'll see to it immediately and have the percentage removed. and as for the members themselves, they are about as much ashamed of manufacturing and merging things as the marquis of salisbury is ashamed of the founders of the cecil family. what more natural, therefore, than that mr. lucullus fyshe, before serving the soda to the duke, should try it on somebody else? and what better person could be found for this than mr. furlong, the saintly young rector of st. asaph's, who had enjoyed the kind of expensive college education calculated to develop all the faculties. moreover, a rector of the anglican church who has been in the foreign mission field is the kind of person from whom one can find out, more or less incidentally, how one should address and converse with a duke, and whether you call him, "your grace," or "his grace," or just "grace," or "duke," or what. all of which things would seem to a director of the people's bank and the president of the republican soda co. so trivial in importance that he would scorn to ask about them. so that was why mr. fyshe had asked mr. furlong to lunch with him, and to dine with him later on in the same day at the mausoleum club to meet the duke of dulham. and mr. furlong, realizing that a clergyman must be all things to all men and not avoid a man merely because he is a duke, had accepted the invitation to lunch, and had promised to come to dinner, even though it meant postponing the willing workers' tango class of st. asaph's until the following friday. thus it had come about that mr. fyshe was seated at lunch, consuming a cutlet and a pint of moselle in the plain downright fashion of a man so democratic that he is practically a revolutionary socialist, and doesn't mind saying so; and the young rector of st. asaph's was sitting opposite to him in a religious ecstasy over a _salmi_ of duck. "the duke arrived this morning, did he not?" said mr. furlong. "from new york," said mr. fyshe. "he is staying at the grand palaver. i sent a telegram through one of our new york directors of the traction, and his grace has very kindly promised to come over here to dine." "is he here for pleasure?" asked the rector. "i understand he is--" mr. fyshe was going to say "about to invest a large part of his fortune in american securities," but he thought better of it. even with the clergy it is well to be careful. so he substituted "is very much interested in studying american conditions." "does he stay long?" asked mr. furlong. had mr. lucullus fyshe replied quite truthfully, he would have said, "not if i can get his money out of him quickly," but he merely answered, "that i don't know." "he will find much to interest him," went on the rector in a musing tone. "the position of the anglican church in america should afford him an object of much consideration. i understand," he added, feeling his way, "that his grace is a man of deep piety." "very deep," said mr. fyshe. "and of great philanthropy?" "very great." "and i presume," said the rector, taking a devout sip of the unfinished soda, "that he is a man of immense wealth?" "i suppose so," answered mr. fyshe quite carelessly. "all these fellows are." (mr. fyshe generally referred to the british aristocracy as "these fellows.") "land, you know, feudal estates; sheer robbery, i call it. how the working-class, the proletariat, stand for such tyranny is more than i can see. mark my words, furlong, some day they'll rise and the whole thing will come to a sudden end." mr. fyshe was here launched upon his favourite topic; but he interrupted himself, just for a moment, to speak to the waiter. "what the devil do you mean," he said, "by serving asparagus half-cold?" "very sorry, sir," said the waiter, "shall i take it out?" "take it out? of course take it out, and see that you don't serve me stuff of that sort again, or i'll report you." "very sorry, sir," said the waiter. mr. fyshe looked at the vanishing waiter with contempt upon his features. "these pampered fellows are getting unbearable." he said. "by gad, if i had my way i'd fire the whole lot of them: lock 'em out, put 'em on the street. that would teach 'em. yes, furlong, you'll live to see it that the whole working-class will one day rise against the tyranny of the upper classes, and society will be overwhelmed." but if mr. fyshe had realized that at that moment, in the kitchen of the mausoleum club, in those sacred precincts themselves, there was a walking delegate of the waiters' international union leaning against a sideboard, with his bowler hat over one corner of his eye, and talking to a little group of the chinese philosophers, he would have known that perhaps the social catastrophe was a little nearer than even he suspected. * * * * * "are you inviting anyone else tonight?" asked mr. furlong. "i should have liked to ask your father," said mr. fyshe, "but unfortunately he is out of town." what mr. fyshe really meant was, "i am extremely glad not to have to ask your father, whom i would not introduce to the duke on any account." indeed, mr. furlong, senior, the father of the rector of st. asaph's, who was president of the new amalgamated hymnal corporation, and director of the hosanna pipe and steam organ, limited, was entirely the wrong man for mr. fyshe's present purpose. in fact, he was reputed to be as smart a man as ever sold a bible. at this moment he was out of town, busied in new york with the preparation of the plates of his new hindu testament (copyright); but had he learned that a duke with several millions to invest was about to visit the city, he would not have left it for the whole of hindustan. "i suppose you are asking mr. boulder," said the rector. "no," answered mr. fyshe very decidedly, dismissing the name absolutely. indeed, there was even better reason not to introduce mr. boulder to the duke. mr. fyshe had made that sort of mistake once, and never intended to make it again. it was only a year ago, on the occasion of the visit of young viscount fitzthistle to the mausoleum club, that mr. fyshe had introduced mr. boulder to the viscount and had suffered grievously thereby. for mr. boulder had no sooner met the viscount than he invited him up to his hunting-lodge in wisconsin, and that was the last thing known of the investment of the fitzthistle fortune. this mr. boulder of whom mr. fyshe spoke might indeed have been seen at that moment at a further table of the lunch room eating a solitary meal, an oldish man with a great frame suggesting broken strength, with a white beard and with falling under-eyelids that made him look as if he were just about to cry. his eyes were blue and far away, and his still, mournful face and his great bent shoulders seemed to suggest all the power and mystery of high finance. gloom indeed hung over him. for, when one heard him talk of listed stocks and cumulative dividends, there was as deep a tone in his quiet voice as if he spoke of eternal punishment and the wages of sin. under his great hands a chattering viscount, or a sturdy duke, or a popinjay italian marquis was as nothing. mr. boulder's methods with titled visitors investing money in america were deep. he never spoke to them of money, not a word. he merely talked of the great american forest--he had been born sixty-five years back, in a lumber state--and, when he spoke of primeval trees and the howl of the wolf at night among the pines, there was the stamp of reality about it that held the visitor spellbound; and when he fell to talking of his hunting-lodge far away in the wisconsin timber, duke, earl, or baron that had ever handled a double-barrelled express rifle listened and was lost. "i have a little place," mr. boulder would say in his deep tones that seemed almost like a sob, "a sort of shooting box, i think you'd call it, up in wisconsin; just a plain place"--he would add, almost crying--"made of logs." "oh, really," the visitor would interject, "made of logs. by jove, how interesting!" all titled people are fascinated at once with logs, and mr. boulder knew it--at least subconsciously. "yes, logs," he would continue, still in deep sorrow; "just the plain cedar, not squared, you know, the old original timber; i had them cut right out of the forest." by this time the visitor's excitement was obvious. "and is there game there?" he would ask. "we have the timber-wolf," said mr. boulder, his voice half choking at the sadness of the thing, "and of course the jack wolf and the lynx." "and are they ferocious?" "oh, extremely so--quite uncontrollable." on which the titled visitor was all excitement to start for wisconsin at once, even before mr. boulder's invitation was put in words. and when he returned a week later, all tanned and wearing bush-whackers' boots, and covered with wolf bites, his whole available fortune was so completely invested in mr. boulder's securities that you couldn't have shaken twenty-five cents out of him upside down. yet the whole thing had been done merely incidentally round a big fire under the wisconsin timber, with a dead wolf or two lying in the snow. so no wonder that mr. fyshe did not propose to invite mr. boulder to his little dinner. no, indeed. in fact, his one aim was to keep mr. boulder and his log house hidden from the duke. and equally no wonder that as soon as mr. boulder read of the duke's arrival in new york, and saw by the _commercial echo and financial undertone_ that he might come to the city looking for investments, he telephoned at once to his little place in wisconsin--which had, of course, a primeval telephone wire running to it--and told his steward to have the place well aired and good fires lighted; and he especially enjoined him to see if any of the shanty men thereabouts could catch a wolf or two, as he might need them. * * * * * "is no one else coming then?" asked the rector. "oh yes. president boomer of the university. we shall be a party of four. i thought the duke might be interested in meeting boomer. he may care to hear something of the archaeological remains of the continent." if the duke did so care, he certainly had a splendid chance in meeting the gigantic dr. boomer, the president of plutoria university. if he wanted to know anything of the exact distinction between the mexican pueblo and the navajo tribal house, he had his opportunity right now. if he was eager to hear a short talk--say half an hour--on the relative antiquity of the neanderthal skull and the gravel deposits of the missouri, his chance had come. he could learn as much about the stone age and the bronze age, in america, from president boomer, as he could about the gold age and the age of paper securities from mr. fyshe and mr. boulder. so what better man to meet a duke than an archaeological president? and if the duke should feel inclined, as a result of his american visit (for dr. boomer, who knew everything, understood what the duke had come for), inclined, let us say, to endow a chair in primitive anthropology, or do any useful little thing of the sort, that was only fair business all round; or if he even was willing to give a moderate sum towards the general fund of plutoria university--enough, let us say, to enable the president to dismiss an old professor and hire a new one--that surely was reasonable enough. the president, therefore, had said yes to mr. fyshe's invitation with alacrity, and had taken a look through the list of his more incompetent professors to refresh his memory. * * * * * the duke of dulham had landed in new york five days before and had looked round eagerly for a field of turnips, but hadn't seen any. he had been driven up fifth avenue and had kept his eyes open for potatoes, but there were none. nor had he seen any shorthorns in central park, nor any southdowns on broadway. for the duke, of course, like all dukes, was agricultural from his norfolk jacket to his hobnailed boots. at his restaurant he had cut a potato in two and sent half of it to the head waiter to know if it was bermudian. it had all the look of an early bermudian, but the duke feared from the shading of it that it might be only a late trinidad. and the head waiter sent it to the chef, mistaking it for a complaint, and the chef sent it back to the duke with a message that it was not a bermudian but a prince edward island. and the duke sent his compliments to the chef, and the chef sent his compliments to the duke. and the duke was so pleased at learning this that he had a similar potato wrapped up for him to take away, and tipped the head waiter twenty-five cents, feeling that in an extravagant country the only thing to do is to go the people one better. so the duke carried the potato round for five days in new york and showed it to everybody. but beyond this he got no sign of agriculture out of the place at all. no one who entertained him seemed to know what the beef that they gave him had been fed on; no one, even in what seemed the best society, could talk rationally about preparing a hog for the breakfast table. people seemed to eat cauliflower without distinguishing the denmark variety from the oldenburg, and few, if any, knew silesian bacon even when they tasted it. and when they took the duke out twenty-five miles into what was called the country, there were still no turnips, but only real estate, and railway embankments, and advertising signs; so that altogether the obvious and visible decline of american agriculture in what should have been its leading centre saddened the duke's heart. thus the duke passed four gloomy days. agriculture vexed him, and still more, of course, the money concerns which had brought him to america. money is a troublesome thing. but it has got to be thought about even by those who were not brought up to it. if, on account of money matters, one has been driven to come over to america in the hope of borrowing money, the awkwardness of how to go about it naturally makes one gloomy and preoccupied. had there been broad fields of turnips to walk in and holstein cattle to punch in the ribs, one might have managed to borrow it in the course of gentlemanly intercourse, as from one cattle-man to another. but in new york, amid piles of masonry and roaring street-traffic and glittering lunches and palatial residences one simply couldn't do it. herein lay the truth about the duke of dulham's visit and the error of mr. lucullus fyshe. mr. fyshe was thinking that the duke had come to _lend_ money. in reality he had come to _borrow_ it. in fact, the duke was reckoning that by putting a second mortgage on dulham towers for twenty thousand sterling, and by selling his scotch shooting and leasing his irish grazing and sub-letting his welsh coal rent he could raise altogether a hundred thousand pounds. this for a duke, is an enormous sum. if he once had it he would be able to pay off the first mortgage on dulham towers, buy in the rights of the present tenant of the scotch shooting and the claim of the present mortgagee of the irish grazing, and in fact be just where he started. this is ducal finance, which moves always in a circle. in other words the duke was really a poor man--not poor in the american sense, where poverty comes as a sudden blighting stringency, taking the form of an inability to get hold of a quarter of a million dollars, no matter how badly one needs it, and where it passes like a storm-cloud and is gone, but poor in that permanent and distressing sense known only to the british aristocracy. the duke's case, of course, was notorious, and mr. fyshe ought to have known of it. the duke was so poor that the duchess was compelled to spend three or four months every year at a fashionable hotel on the riviera simply to save money, and his eldest son, the young marquis of beldoodle, had to put in most of his time shooting big game in uganda, with only twenty or twenty-five beaters, and with so few carriers and couriers and such a dearth of elephant men and hyena boys that the thing was a perfect scandal. the duke indeed was so poor that a younger son, simply to add his efforts to those of the rest, was compelled to pass his days in mountain climbing in the himalayas, and the duke's daughter was obliged to pay long visits to minor german princesses, putting up with all sorts of hardship. and while the ducal family wandered about in this way--climbing mountains, and shooting hyenas, and saving money, the duke's place or seat, dulham towers, was practically shut up, with no one in it but servants and housekeepers and gamekeepers and tourists; and the picture galleries, except for artists and visitors and villagers, were closed; and the town house, except for the presence of servants and tradesmen and secretaries, was absolutely shut. but the duke knew that rigid parsimony of this sort, if kept up for a generation or two, will work wonders, and this sustained him; and the duchess knew it, and it sustained her; in fact, all the ducal family, knowing that it was only a matter of a generation or two, took their misfortune very cheerfully. the only thing that bothered the duke was borrowing money. this was necessary from time to time when loans or mortgages fell in, but he hated it. it was beneath him. his ancestors had often taken money, but had never borrowed it, and the duke chafed under the necessity. there was something about the process that went against the grain. to sit down in pleasant converse with a man, perhaps almost a gentleman, and then lead up to the subject and take his money from him, seemed to the duke's mind essentially low. he could have understood knocking a man over the head with a fire shovel and taking his money, but not borrowing it. so the duke had come to america, where borrowing is notoriously easy. any member of the mausoleum club, for instance, would borrow fifty cents to buy a cigar, or fifty thousand dollars to buy a house, or five millions to buy a railroad with complete indifference, and pay it back, too, if he could, and think nothing of it. in fact, ever so many of the duke's friends were known to have borrowed money in america with magical ease, pledging for it their seats or their pictures, or one of their daughters--anything. so the duke knew it must be easy. and yet, incredible as it may seem, he had spent four days in new york, entertained everywhere, and made much of, and hadn't borrowed a cent. he had been asked to lunch in a riverside palace, and, fool that he was, had come away without so much as a dollar to show for it. he had been asked to a country house on the hudson, and, like an idiot--he admitted it himself--hadn't asked his host for as much as his train fare. he had been driven twice round central park in a motor and had been taken tamely back to his hotel not a dollar the richer. the thing was childish, and he knew it. but to save his life the duke didn't know how to begin. none of the things that he was able to talk about seemed to have the remotest connection with the subject of money. the duke was able to converse reasonably well over such topics as the approaching downfall of england (they had talked of it at dulham towers for sixty years), or over the duty of england towards china, or the duty of england to persia, or its duty to aid the young turk movement, and its duty to check the old servia agitation. the duke became so interested in these topics and in explaining that while he had never been a little englander he had always been a big turk, and that he stood for a small bulgaria and a restricted austria, that he got further and further away from the topic of money, which was what he really wanted to come to; and the duke rose from his conversations with a look of such obvious distress on his face that everybody realized that his anxiety about england was killing him. and then suddenly light had come. it was on his fourth day in new york that he unexpectedly ran into the viscount belstairs (they had been together as young men in nigeria, and as middle-aged men in st. petersburg), and belstairs, who was in abundant spirits and who was returning to england on the _gloritania_ at noon the next day, explained to the duke that he had just borrowed fifty thousand pounds, on security that wouldn't be worth a halfpenny in england. and the duke said with a sigh, "how the deuce do you do it. belstairs?" "do what?" "borrow it," said the duke. "how do you manage to get people to talk about it? here i am wanting to borrow a hundred thousand, and i'm hanged if i can even find an opening." at which the viscount had said, "pooh, pooh! you don't need any opening. just borrow it straight out--ask for it across a dinner table, just as you'd ask for a match; they think nothing of it here." "across the dinner table?" repeated the duke, who was a literal man. "certainly," said the viscount. "not too soon, you know--say after a second glass of wine. i assure you it's absolutely nothing." and it was just at that moment that a telegram was handed to the duke from mr. lucullus fyshe, praying him, as he was reported to be visiting the next day the city where the mausoleum club stands, to make acquaintance with him by dining at that institution. and the duke, being as i say a literal man, decided that just as soon as mr. fyshe should give him a second glass of wine, that second glass should cost mr. fyshe a hundred thousand pounds sterling. and oddly enough, at about the same moment, mr. fyshe was calculating that provided he could make the duke drink a second glass of the mausoleum champagne, that glass would cost the duke about five million dollars. * * * * * so the very morning after that the duke had arrived on the new york express in the city; and being an ordinary, democratic, commercial sort of place, absorbed in its own affairs, it made no fuss over him whatever. the morning edition of the _plutopian citizen_ simply said, "we understand that the duke of dulham arrives at the grand palaver this morning," after which it traced the duke's pedigree back to jock of ealing in the twelfth century and let the matter go at that; and the noon edition of the _people's advocate_ merely wrote, "we learn that duke dulham is in town. he is a relation of jack ealing." but the _commercial echo and financial undertone_, appearing at four o'clock, printed in its stock-market columns the announcement: "we understand that the duke of dulham, who arrives in town today, is proposing to invest a large sum of money in american industrials." and, of course, that announcement reached every member of the mausoleum club within twenty minutes. * * * * * the duke of dulham entered the mausoleum club that evening at exactly seven of the clock. he was a short, thick man with a shaven face, red as a brick, and grizzled hair, and from the look of him he could have got a job at sight in any lumber camp in wisconsin. he wore a dinner jacket, just like an ordinary person, but even without his norfolk coat and his hobnailed boots there was something in the way in which he walked up the long main hall of the mausoleum club that every imported waiter in the place recognized in an instant. the duke cast his eye about the club and approved of it. it seemed to him a modest, quiet place, very different from the staring ostentation that one sees too often in a german hof or an italian palazzo. he liked it. mr. fyshe and mr. furlong were standing in a deep alcove or bay where there was a fire and india-rubber trees and pictures with shaded lights and a whiskey-and-soda table. there the duke joined them. mr. fyshe he had met already that afternoon at the palaver, and he called him "fyshe" as if he had known him forever; and indeed, after a few minutes he called the rector of st. asaph's simply "furlong," for he had been familiar with the anglican clergy in so many parts of the world that he knew that to attribute any peculiar godliness to them, socially, was the worst possible taste. "by jove," said the duke, turning to tap the leaf of a rubber tree with his finger, "that fellow's a nigerian, isn't he?" "i hardly know," said mr. fyshe, "i imagine so"; and he added, "you've been in nigeria, duke?" "oh, some years ago," said the duke, "after big game, you know--fine place for it." "did you get any?" asked mr. fyshe. "not much," said the duke; "a hippo or two." "ah," said mr. fyshe. "and, of course, now and then a giro," the duke went on, and added, "my sister was luckier, though; she potted a rhino one day, straight out of a doolie; i call that rather good." mr. fyshe called it that too. "ah, now here's a good thing," the duke went on, looking at a picture. he carried in his waistcoat pocket an eyeglass that he used for pictures and for tamworth hogs, and he put it to his eye with one hand, keeping the other in the left pocket of his jacket; "and this--this is a very good thing." "i believe so," said mr. fyshe. "you really have some awfully good things here," continued the duke. he had seen far too many pictures in too many places ever to speak of "values" or "compositions" or anything of that sort. the duke merely looked at a picture and said, "now here's a good thing," or "ah! here now is a very good thing," or, "i say, here's a really good thing." no one could get past this sort of criticism. the duke had long since found it bullet-proof. "they showed me some rather good things in new york," he went on, "but really the things you have here seem to be awfully good things." indeed, the duke was truly pleased with the pictures, for something in their composition, or else in the soft, expensive light that shone on them, enabled him to see in the distant background of each a hundred thousand sterling. and that is a very beautiful picture indeed. "when you come to our side of the water, fyshe," said the duke, "i must show you my botticelli." had mr. fyshe, who knew nothing of art, expressed his real thought, he would have said, "show me your which?" but he only answered, "i shall be delighted to see it." in any case there was no time to say more, for at this moment the portly figure and the great face of dr. boomer, president of plutoria university, loomed upon them. and with him came a great burst of conversation that blew all previous topics into fragments. he was introduced to the duke, and shook hands with mr. furlong, and talked to both of them, and named the kind of cocktail that he wanted, all in one breath, and in the very next he was asking the duke about the babylonian hieroglyphic bricks that his grandfather, the thirteenth duke, had brought home from the euphrates, and which every archaeologist knew were preserved in the duke's library at dulham towers. and though the duke hadn't known about the bricks himself, he assured dr. boomer that his grandfather had collected some really good things, quite remarkable. and the duke, having met a man who knew about his grandfather, felt in his own element. in fact, he was so delighted with dr. boomer and the nigerian rubber tree and the shaded pictures and the charm of the whole place and the certainty that half a million dollars was easily findable in it, that he put his eyeglass back in his pocket and said. "a charming club you have here, really most charming." "yes," said mr. fyshe, in a casual tone, "a comfortable place, we like to think." but if he could have seen what was happening below in the kitchens of the mausoleum club, mr. fyshe would have realized that just then it was turning into a most uncomfortable place. for the walking delegate with his hat on sideways, who had haunted it all day, was busy now among the assembled chinese philosophers, writing down names and distributing strikers' cards of the international union and assuring them that the "boys" of the grand palaver had all walked out at seven, and that all the "boys" of the commercial and the union and of every restaurant in town were out an hour ago. and the philosophers were taking their cards and hanging up their waiters' coats and putting on shabby jackets and bowler hats, worn sideways, and changing themselves by a wonderful transformation from respectable chinese to slouching loafers of the lowest type. but mr. fyshe, being in an alcove and not in the kitchens, saw nothing of these things. not even when the head waiter, shaking with apprehension, appeared with cocktails made by himself, in glasses that he himself had had to wipe, did mr. fyshe, absorbed in the easy urbanity of the duke, notice that anything was amiss. neither did his guests. for dr. boomer, having discovered that the duke had visited nigeria, was asking him his opinion of the famous bimbaweh remains of the lower niger. the duke confessed that he really hadn't noticed them, and the doctor assured him that strabo had indubitably mentioned them (he would show the duke the very passage), and that they apparently lay, if his memory served him, about halfway between oohat and ohat; whether above oohat and below ohat or above ohat and below oohat he would not care to say for a certainty; for that the duke must wait till the president had time to consult his library. and the duke was fascinated forthwith with the president's knowledge of nigerian geography, and explained that he had once actually descended from below timbuctoo to oohat in a doolie manned only by four swats. so presently, having drunk the cocktails, the party moved solemnly in a body from the alcove towards the private dining-room upstairs, still busily talking of the bimbaweh remains, and the swats, and whether the doolie was, or was not, the original goatskin boat of the book of genesis. and when they entered the private dining-room with its snow-white table and cut glass and flowers (as arranged by a retreating philosopher now heading towards the gaiety theatre with his hat over his eyes), the duke again exclaimed, "really, you have a most comfortable club--delightful." so they sat down to dinner, over which mr. furlong offered up a grace as short as any that are known even to the anglican clergy. and the head waiter, now in deep distress--for he had been sending out telephone messages in vain to the grand palaver and the continental, like the captain of a sinking ship--served oysters that he had opened himself and poured rhine wine with a trembling hand. for he knew that unless by magic a new chef and a waiter or two could be got from the palaver, all hope was lost. but the guests still knew nothing of his fears. dr. boomer was eating his oysters as a nigerian hippo might eat up the crew of a doolie, in great mouthfuls, and commenting as he did so upon the luxuriousness of modern life. and in the pause that followed the oysters he illustrated for the duke with two pieces of bread the essential difference in structure between the mexican _pueblo_ and the tribal house of the navajos, and lest the duke should confound either or both of them with the adobe hut of the bimbaweh tribes he showed the difference at once with a couple of olives. by this time, of course, the delay in the service was getting noticeable. mr. fyshe was directing angry glances towards the door, looking for the reappearance of the waiter, and growling an apology to his guests. but the president waved the apology aside. "in my college days," he said, "i should have considered a plate of oysters an ample meal. i should have asked for nothing more. we eat," he said, "too much." this, of course, started mr. fyshe on his favourite topic. "luxury!" he exclaimed, "i should think so! it is the curse of the age. the appalling growth of luxury, the piling up of money, the ease with which huge fortunes are made" (good! thought the duke, here we are coming to it), "these are the things that are going to ruin us. mark my words, the whole thing is bound to end in a tremendous crash. i don't mind telling you, duke--my friends here, i am sure, know it already--that i am more or less a revolutionary socialist. i am absolutely convinced, sir, that our modern civilization will end in a great social catastrophe. mark what i say"--and here mr. fyshe became exceedingly impressive--"a great social catastrophe. some of us may not live to see it, perhaps; but you, for instance, furlong, are a younger man; you certainly will." but here mr. fyshe was understating the case. they were all going to live to see it, right on the spot. for it was just at this moment, when mr. fyshe was talking of the social catastrophe and explaining with flashing eyes that it was bound to come, that it came; and when it came it lit, of all places in the world, right there in the private dining-room of the mausoleum club. for the gloomy head waiter re-entered and leaned over the back of mr. fyshe's chair and whispered to him. "eh? what?" said mr. fyshe. the head waiter, his features stricken with inward agony, whispered again. "the infernal, damn scoundrels!" said mr. fyshe, starting back in his chair. "on strike: in this club! it's an outrage!" "i'm very sorry sir. i didn't like to tell you, sir. i'd hoped i might have got help from the outside, but it seems, sir, the hotels are all the same way." "do you mean to say," said mr. fyshe, speaking very slowly, "that there is no dinner?" "i'm sorry, sir," moaned the waiter. "it appears the chef hadn't even cooked it. beyond what's on the table, sir, there's nothing." the social catastrophe had come. mr. fyshe sat silent with his fist clenched. dr. boomer, with his great face transfixed, stared at the empty oyster-shells, thinking perhaps of his college days. the duke, with his hundred thousand dashed from his lips in the second cup of champagne that was never served, thought of his politeness first and murmured something about taking them to his hotel. but there is no need to follow the unhappy details of the unended dinner. mr. fyshe's one idea was to be gone: he was too true an artist to think that finance could be carried on over the table-cloth of a second-rate restaurant, or on an empty stomach in a deserted club. the thing must be done over again; he must wait his time and begin anew. and so it came about that the little dinner party of mr. lucullus fyshe dissolved itself into its constituent elements, like broken pieces of society in the great cataclysm portrayed by mr. fyshe himself. the duke was bowled home in a snorting motor to the brilliant rotunda of the grand palaver, itself waiterless and supperless. the rector of st. asaph's wandered off home to his rectory, musing upon the contents of its pantry. and mr. fyshe and the gigantic doctor walked side by side homewards along plutoria avenue, beneath the elm trees. nor had they gone any great distance before dr. boomer fell to talking of the duke. "a charming man," he said, "delightful. i feel extremely sorry for him." "no worse off, i presume, than any of the rest of us," growled mr. fyshe, who was feeling in the sourest of democratic moods; "a man doesn't need to be a duke to have a stomach." "oh, pooh, pooh!" said the president, waving the topic aside with his hand in the air; "i don't refer to that. oh, not at all. i was thinking of his financial position--an ancient family like the dulhams; it seems too bad altogether." for, of course, to an archaeologist like dr. boomer an intimate acquaintance with the pedigree and fortunes of the greater ducal families from jock of ealing downwards was nothing. it went without saying. as beside the neanderthal skull and the bimbaweh ruins it didn't count. mr. fyshe stopped absolutely still in his tracks. "his financial position?" he questioned, quick as a lynx. "certainly," said dr. boomer; "i had taken it for granted that you knew. the dulham family are practically ruined. the duke, i imagine, is under the necessity of mortgaging his estates; indeed, i should suppose he is here in america to raise money." mr. fyshe was a man of lightning action. any man accustomed to the stock exchange learns to think quickly. "one moment!" he cried; "i see we are right at your door. may i just run in and use your telephone? i want to call up boulder for a moment." two minutes later mr. fyshe was saying into the telephone, "oh, is that you, boulder? i was looking for you in vain today--wanted you to meet the duke of dulham, who came in quite unexpectedly from new york; felt sure you'd like to meet him. wanted you at the club for dinner, and now it turns out that the club's all upset--waiters' strike or some such rascality--and the palaver, so i hear, is in the same fix. could you possibly--" here mr. fyshe paused, listening a moment, and then went on, "yes, yes; an excellent idea--most kind of you. pray do send your motor to the hotel and give the duke a bite of dinner. no, i wouldn't join you, thanks. most kind. good night--" and within a few minutes more the motor of mr. boulder was rolling down from plutoria avenue to the grand palaver hotel. what passed between mr. boulder and the duke that evening is not known. that they must have proved congenial company to one another there is no doubt. in fact, it would seem that, dissimilar as they were in many ways, they found a common bond of interest in sport. and it is quite likely that mr. boulder may have mentioned that he had a hunting-lodge--what the duke would call a shooting-box--in wisconsin woods, and that it was made of logs, rough cedar logs not squared, and that the timber wolves and others which surrounded it were of a ferocity without parallel. those who know the duke best could measure the effect of that upon his temperament. at any rate, it is certain that mr. lucullus fyshe at his breakfast-table next morning chuckled with suppressed joy to read in the _plutopian citizen_ the item: "we learn that the duke of dulham, who has been paying a brief visit to the city, leaves this morning with mr. asmodeus boulder for the wisconsin woods. we understand that mr. boulder intends to show his guest, who is an ardent sportsman, something of the american wolf." * * * * * and so the duke went whirling westwards and northwards with mr. boulder in the drawing-room end of a pullman car, that was all littered up with double-barrelled express rifles and leather game bags and lynx catchers and wolf traps and heaven knows what. and the duke had on his very roughest sporting-suit, made, apparently, of alligator hide; and as he sat there with a rifle across his knees, while the train swept onwards through open fields and broken woods, the real country at last, towards the wisconsin forest, there was such a light of genial happiness in his face that had not been seen there since he had been marooned in the mud jungles of upper burmah. and opposite, mr. boulder looked at him with fixed silent eyes, and murmured from time to time some renewed information of the ferocity of the timber-wolf. but of wolves other than the timber-wolf, and fiercer still into whose hands the duke might fall in america, he spoke never a word. nor is it known in the record what happened in wisconsin, and to the mausoleum club the duke and his visit remained only as a passing and a pleasant memory. chapter two: the wizard of finance down in the city itself, just below the residential street where the mausoleum club is situated, there stands overlooking central square the grand palaver hotel. it is, in truth, at no great distance from the club, not half a minute in one's motor. in fact, one could almost walk it. but in central square the quiet of plutoria avenue is exchanged for another atmosphere. there are fountains that splash unendingly and mingle their music with the sound of the motor-horns and the clatter of the cabs. there are real trees and little green benches, with people reading yesterday's newspaper, and grass cut into plots among the asphalt. there is at one end a statue of the first governor of the state, life-size, cut in stone; and at the other a statue of the last, ever so much larger than life, cast in bronze. and all the people who pass by pause and look at this statue and point at it with walking-sticks, because it is of extraordinary interest; in fact, it is an example of the new electro-chemical process of casting by which you can cast a state governor any size you like, no matter what you start from. those who know about such things explain what an interesting contrast the two statues are; for in the case of the governor of a hundred years ago one had to start from plain, rough material and work patiently for years to get the effect, whereas now the material doesn't matter at all, and with any sort of scrap, treated in the gas furnace under tremendous pressure, one may make a figure of colossal size like the one in central square. so naturally central square with its trees and its fountains and its statues is one of the places of chief interest in the city. but especially because there stands along one side of it the vast pile of the grand palaver hotel. it rises fifteen stories high and fills all one side of the square. it has, overlooking the trees in the square, twelve hundred rooms with three thousand windows, and it would have held all george washington's army. even people in other cities who have never seen it know it well from its advertising; "the most homelike hotel in america," so it is labelled in all the magazines, the expensive ones, on the continent. in fact, the aim of the company that owns the grand palaver--and they do not attempt to conceal it--is to make the place as much a home as possible. therein lies its charm. it is a home. you realize that when you look up at the grand palaver from the square at night when the twelve hundred guests have turned on the lights of the three thousand windows. you realize it at theatre time when the great string of motors come sweeping to the doors of the palaver, to carry the twelve hundred guests to twelve hundred seats in the theatres at four dollars a seat. but most of all do you appreciate the character of the grand palaver when you step into its rotunda. aladdin's enchanted palace was nothing to it. it has a vast ceiling with a hundred glittering lights, and within it night and day is a surging crowd that is never still and a babel of voices that is never hushed, and over all there hangs an enchanted cloud of thin blue tobacco smoke such as might enshroud the conjured vision of a magician of baghdad or damascus. in and through the rotunda there are palm trees to rest the eye and rubber trees in boxes to soothe the mind, and there are great leather lounges and deep armchairs, and here and there huge brass ash-bowls as big as etruscan tear-jugs. along one side is a counter with grated wickets like a bank, and behind it are five clerks with flattened hair and tall collars, dressed in long black frock-coats all day like members of a legislature. they have great books in front of them in which they study unceasingly, and at their lightest thought they strike a bell with the open palm of their hand, and at the sound of it a page boy in a monkey suit, with g.p. stamped all over him in brass, bounds to the desk and off again, shouting a call into the unheeding crowd vociferously. the sound of it fills for a moment the great space of the rotunda; it echoes down the corridors to the side; it floats, softly melodious, through the palm trees of the ladies' palm room; it is heard, fainter and fainter, in the distant grill; and in the depths of the barber shop below the level of the street the barber arrests a moment the drowsy hum of his shampoo brushes to catch the sound--as might a miner in the sunken galleries of a coastal mine cease in his toil a moment to hear the distant murmur of the sea. and the clerks call for the pages, the pages call for the guests, and the guests call for the porters, the bells clang, the elevators rattle, till home itself was never half so homelike. * * * * * "a call for mr. tomlinson! a call for mr. tomlinson!" so went the sound, echoing through the rotunda. and as the page boy found him and handed him on a salver a telegram to read, the eyes of the crowd about him turned for a moment to look upon the figure of tomlinson, the wizard of finance. there he stood in his wide-awake hat and his long black coat, his shoulders slightly bent with his fifty-eight years. anyone who had known him in the olden days on his bush farm beside tomlinson's creek in the country of the great lakes would have recognized him in a moment. there was still on his face that strange, puzzled look that it habitually wore, only now, of course, the financial papers were calling it "unfathomable." there was a certain way in which his eye roved to and fro inquiringly that might have looked like perplexity, were it not that the _financial undertone_ had recognized it as the "searching look of a captain of industry." one might have thought that for all the goodness in it there was something simple in his face, were it not that the _commercial and pictorial review_ had called the face "inscrutable," and had proved it so with an illustration that left no doubt of the matter. indeed, the face of tomlinson of tomlinson's creek, now tomlinson the wizard of finance, was not commonly spoken of as a _face_ by the paragraphers of the saturday magazine sections, but was more usually referred to as a mask; and it would appear that napoleon the first had had one also. the saturday editors were never tired of describing the strange, impressive personality of tomlinson, the great dominating character of the newest and highest finance. from the moment when the interim prospectus of the erie auriferous consolidated had broken like a tidal wave over stock exchange circles, the picture of tomlinson, the sleeping shareholder of uncomputed millions, had filled the imagination of every dreamer in a nation of poets. they all described him. and when each had finished he began again. "the face," so wrote the editor of the "our own men" section of _ourselves monthly_, "is that of a typical american captain of finance, hard, yet with a certain softness, broad but with a certain length, ductile but not without its own firmness." "the mouth," so wrote the editor of the "success" column of _brains_, "is strong but pliable, the jaw firm and yet movable, while there is something in the set of the ear that suggests the swift, eager mind of the born leader of men." so from state to state ran the portrait of tomlinson of tomlinson's creek, drawn by people who had never seen him; so did it reach out and cross the ocean, till the french journals inserted a picture which they used for such occasions, and called it _monsieur tomlinson, nouveau capitaine de la haute finance en amerique_; and the german weeklies, inserting also a suitable picture from their stock, marked it _herr tomlinson, amerikanischer industrie und finanzcapitan_. thus did tomlinson float from tomlinson's creek beside lake erie to the very banks of the danube and the drave. some writers grew lyric about him. what visions, they asked, could one but read them, must lie behind the quiet, dreaming eyes of that inscrutable face? they might have read them easily enough, had they but had the key. anyone who looked upon tomlinson as he stood there in the roar and clatter of the great rotunda of the grand palaver with the telegram in his hand, fumbling at the wrong end to open it, might have read the visions of the master-mind had he but known their nature. they were simple enough. for the visions in the mind of tomlinson, wizard of finance, were for the most part those of a wind-swept hillside farm beside lake erie, where tomlinson's creek runs down to the low edge of the lake, and where the off-shore wind ripples the rushes of the shallow water: that, and the vision of a frame house, and the snake fences of the fourth concession road where it falls to the lakeside. and if the eyes of the man are dreamy and abstracted, it is because there lies over the vision of this vanished farm an infinite regret, greater in its compass than all the shares the erie auriferous consolidated has ever thrown upon the market. * * * * * when tomlinson had opened the telegram he stood with it for a moment in his hand, looking the boy full in the face. his look had in it that peculiar far-away quality that the newspapers were calling "napoleonic abstraction." in reality he was wondering whether to give the boy twenty-five cents or fifty. the message that he had just read was worded, "morning quotations show preferred a. g. falling rapidly recommend instant sale no confidence send instructions." the wizard of finance took from his pocket a pencil (it was a carpenter's pencil) and wrote across the face of the message: "buy me quite a bit more of the same yours truly." this he gave to the boy. "take it over to him," he said, pointing to the telegraph corner of the rotunda. then after another pause he mumbled, "here, sonny," and gave the boy a dollar. with that he turned to walk towards the elevator, and all the people about him who had watched the signing of the message knew that some big financial deal was going through--a _coup_, in fact, they called it. the elevator took the wizard to the second floor. as he went up he felt in his pocket and gripped a quarter, then changed his mind and felt for a fifty-cent piece, and finally gave them both to the elevator boy, after which he walked along the corridor till he reached the corner suite of rooms, a palace in itself, for which he was paying a thousand dollars a month ever since the erie auriferous consolidated company had begun tearing up the bed of tomlinson's creek in cahoga county with its hydraulic dredges. "well, mother," he said as he entered. there was a woman seated near the window, a woman with a plain, homely face such as they wear in the farm kitchens of cahoga county, and a set of fashionable clothes upon her such as they sell to the ladies of plutoria avenue. this was "mother," the wife of the wizard of finance and eight years younger than himself. and she, too, was in the papers and the public eye; and whatsoever the shops had fresh from paris, at fabulous prices, that they sold to mother. they had put a balkan hat upon her with an upright feather, and they had hung gold chains on her, and everything that was most expensive they had hung and tied on mother. you might see her emerging any morning from the grand palaver in her beetle-back jacket and her balkan hat, a figure of infinite pathos. and whatever she wore, the lady editors of _spring notes_ and _causerie du boudoir_ wrote it out in french, and one paper had called her a _belle chatelaine_, and another had spoken of her as a grande dame, which the tomlinsons thought must be a misprint. but in any case, for tomlinson, the wizard of finance, it was a great relief to have as his wife a woman like mother, because he knew that she had taught school in cahoga county and could hold her own in the city with any of them. so mother spent her time sitting in her beetle jacket in the thousand-dollar suite, reading new novels in brilliant paper covers. and the wizard on his trips up and down to the rotunda brought her the very best, the ones that cost a dollar fifty, because he knew that out home she had only been able to read books like nathaniel hawthorne and walter scott, that were only worth ten cents. * * * * * "how's fred?" said the wizard, laying aside his hat, and looking towards the closed door of an inner room. "is he better?" "some," said mother. "he's dressed, but he's lying down." fred was the son of the wizard and mother. in the inner room he lay on a sofa, a great hulking boy of seventeen in a flowered dressing-gown, fancying himself ill. there was a packet of cigarettes and a box of chocolates on a chair beside him, and he had the blind drawn and his eyes half-closed to impress himself. yet this was the same boy that less than a year ago on tomlinson's creek had worn a rough store suit and set his sturdy shoulders to the buck-saw. at present fortune was busy taking from him the golden gifts which the fairies of cahoga county, lake erie, had laid in his cradle seventeen years ago. the wizard tip-toed into the inner room, and from the open door his listening wife could hear the voice of the boy saying, in a tone as of one distraught with suffering. "is there any more of that jelly?" "could he have any, do you suppose?" asked tomlinson coming back. "it's all right," said mother, "if it will sit on his stomach." for this, in the dietetics of cahoga county, is the sole test. all those things can be eaten which will sit on the stomach. anything that won't sit there is not eatable. "do you suppose i could get them to get any?" questioned tomlinson. "would it be all right to telephone down to the office, or do you think it would be better to ring?" "perhaps," said his wife, "it would be better to look out into the hall and see if there isn't someone round that would tell them." this was the kind of problem with which tomlinson and his wife, in their thousand-dollar suite in the grand palaver, grappled all day. and when presently a tall waiter in dress-clothes appeared, and said, "jelly? yes, sir, immediately, sir; would you like, sir, maraschino, sir, or portovino, sir?" tomlinson gazed at him gloomily, wondering if he would take five dollars. "what does the doctor say is wrong with fred?" asked tomlinson, when the waiter had gone. "he don't just say," said mother; "he said he must keep very quiet. he looked in this morning for a minute or two, and he said he'd look in later in the day again. but he said to keep fred very quiet." exactly! in other words fred had pretty much the same complaint as the rest of dr. slyder's patients on plutoria avenue, and was to be treated in the same way. dr. slyder, who was the most fashionable practitioner in the city, spent his entire time moving to and fro in an almost noiseless motor earnestly advising people to keep quiet. "you must keep very quiet for a little while," he would say with a sigh, as he sat beside a sick-bed. as he drew on his gloves in the hall below he would shake his head very impressively and say, "you must keep him very quiet," and so pass out, quite soundlessly. by this means dr. slyder often succeeded in keeping people quiet for weeks. it was all the medicine that he knew. but it was enough. and as his patients always got well--there being nothing wrong with them--his reputation was immense. very naturally the wizard and his wife were impressed with him. they had never seen such therapeutics in cahoga county, where the practice of medicine is carried on with forceps, pumps, squirts, splints, and other instruments of violence. the waiter had hardly gone when a boy appeared at the door. this time he presented to tomlinson not one telegram but a little bundle of them. the wizard read them with a lengthening face. the first ran something like this, "congratulate you on your daring market turned instantly"; and the next, "your opinion justified market rose have sold at points profit"; and a third, "your forecast entirely correct c. p. rose at once send further instructions." these and similar messages were from brokers' offices, and all of them were in the same tone; one told him that c. p. was up, and another t. g. p. had passed , and another that t. c. r. r. had risen ten--all of which things were imputed to the wonderful sagacity of tomlinson. whereas if they had told him that x. y. z. had risen to the moon he would have been just as wise as to what it meant. "well," said the wife of the wizard as her husband finished looking through the reports, "how are things this morning? are they any better?" "no," said tomlinson, and he sighed as he said it; "this is the worst day yet. it's just been a shower of telegrams, and mostly all the same. i can't do the figuring of it like you can, but i reckon i must have made another hundred thousand dollars since yesterday." "you don't say so!" said mother, and they looked at one another gloomily. "and half a million last week, wasn't it?" said tomlinson as he sank into a chair. "i'm afraid, mother," he continued, "it's no good. we don't know how. we weren't brought up to it." all of which meant that if the editor of the _monetary afternoon_ or _financial sunday_ had been able to know what was happening with the two wizards, he could have written up a news story calculated to electrify all america. for the truth was that tomlinson, the wizard of finance, was attempting to carry out a _coup_ greater than any as yet attributed to him by the press. he was trying to lose his money. that, in the sickness of his soul, crushed by the grand palaver, overwhelmed with the burden of high finance, had become his aim, to be done with it, to get rid of his whole fortune. but if you own a fortune that is computed anywhere from fifty millions up, with no limit at the top, if you own one-half of all the preferred stock of an erie auriferous consolidated that is digging gold in hydraulic bucketfuls from a quarter of a mile of river bed, the task of losing it is no easy matter. there are men, no doubt, versed in finance, who might succeed in doing it. but they have a training that tomlinson lacked. invest it as he would in the worst securities that offered, the most rickety of stock, the most fraudulent bonds, back it came to him. when he threw a handful away, back came two in its place. and at every new coup the crowd applauded the incomparable daring, the unparalleled prescience of the wizard. like the touch of midas, his hand turned everything to gold. "mother," he repeated, "it's no use. it's like this here destiny, as the books call it." * * * * * the great fortune that tomlinson, the wizard of finance, was trying his best to lose had come to him with wonderful suddenness. as yet it was hardly six months old. as to how it had originated, there were all sorts of stories afloat in the weekly illustrated press. they agreed mostly on the general basis that tomlinson had made his vast fortune by his own indomitable pluck and dogged industry. some said that he had been at one time a mere farm hand who, by sheer doggedness, had fought his way from the hay-mow to the control of the produce market of seventeen states. others had it that he had been a lumberjack who, by sheer doggedness, had got possession of the whole lumber forest of the lake district. others said that he had been a miner in a lake superior copper mine who had, by the doggedness of his character, got a practical monopoly of the copper supply. these saturday articles, at any rate, made the saturday reader rigid with sympathetic doggedness himself, which was all that the editor (who was doggedly trying to make the paper pay) wanted to effect. but in reality the making of tomlinson's fortune was very simple. the recipe for it is open to anyone. it is only necessary to own a hillside farm beside lake erie where the uncleared bush and the broken fields go straggling down to the lake, and to have running through it a creek, such as that called tomlinson's, brawling among the stones and willows, and to discover in the bed of a creek--a gold mine. that is all. nor is it necessary in these well-ordered days to discover the gold for one's self. one might have lived a lifetime on the farm, as tomlinson's father had, and never discover it for one's self. for that indeed the best medium of destiny is a geologist, let us say the senior professor of geology at plutoria university. that was how it happened. the senior professor, so it chanced, was spending his vacation near by on the shores of the lake, and his time was mostly passed--for how better can a man spend a month of pleasure?--in looking for outcroppings of devonian rock of the post-tertiary period. for which purpose he carried a vacation hammer in his pocket, and made from time to time a note or two as he went along, or filled his pockets with the chippings of vacation rocks. so it chanced that he came to tomlinson's creek at the very point where a great slab of devonian rock bursts through the clay of the bank. when the senior professor of geology saw it and noticed a stripe like a mark on a tiger's back--a fault he called it--that ran over the face of the block, he was at it in an instant, beating off fragments with his little hammer. tomlinson and his boy fred were logging in the underbrush near by with a long chain and yoke of oxen, but the geologist was so excited that he did not see them till the sound of his eager hammer had brought them to his side. they took him up to the frame house in the clearing, where the chatelaine was hoeing a potato patch with a man's hat on her head, and they gave him buttermilk and soda cakes, but his hand shook so that he could hardly eat them. the geologist left cahoga station that night for the city with a newspaper full of specimens inside his suit-case, and he knew that if any person or persons would put up money enough to tear that block of rock away and follow the fissure down, there would be found there something to astonish humanity, geologists and all. * * * * * after that point in the launching of a gold mine the rest is easy. generous, warm-hearted men, interested in geology, were soon found. there was no stint of money. the great rock was torn sideways from its place, and from beneath it the crumbled, glittering rock-dust that sparkled in the sun was sent in little boxes to the testing laboratories of plutoria university. there the senior professor of geology had sat up with it far into the night in a darkened laboratory, with little blue flames playing underneath crucibles, as in a magician's cavern, and with the door locked. and as each sample that he tested was set aside and tied in a cardboard box by itself, he labelled it "aur. p. ," and the pen shook in his hand as he marked it. for to professors of geology those symbols mean "this is seventy-five per cent pure gold." so it was no wonder that the senior professor of geology working far into the night among the blue flames shook with excitement; not, of course, for the gold's sake as money (he had no time to think of that), but because if this thing was true it meant that an auriferous vein had been found in what was devonian rock of the post-tertiary stratification, and if that was so it upset enough geology to spoil a textbook. it would mean that the professor could read a paper at the next pan-geological conference that would turn the whole assembly into a bedlam. it pleased him, too, to know that the men he was dealing with were generous. they had asked him to name his own price or the tests that he made and when he had said two dollars per sample they had told him to go right ahead. the professor was not, i suppose, a mercenary man, but it pleased him to think that he could, clean up sixteen dollars in a single evening in his laboratory. it showed, at any rate, that businessmen put science at its proper value. strangest of all was the fact that the men had told him that even this ore was apparently nothing to what there was; it had all come out of one single spot in the creek, not the hundredth part of the whole claim. lower down, where they had thrown the big dam across to make the bed dry, they were taking out this same stuff and even better, so they said, in cartloads. the hydraulic dredges were tearing it from the bed of the creek all day, and at night a great circuit of arc lights gleamed and sputtered over the roaring labour of the friends of geological research. thus had the erie auriferous consolidated broken in a tidal wave over financial circles. on the stock exchange, in the downtown offices, and among the palm trees of the mausoleum club they talked of nothing else. and so great was the power of the wave that it washed tomlinson and his wife along on the crest of it, and landed them fifty feet up in their thousand-dollar suite in the grand palaver. and as a result of it "mother" wore a beetle-back jacket; and tomlinson received a hundred telegrams a day, and fred quit school and ate chocolates. but in the business world the most amazing thing about it was the wonderful shrewdness of tomlinson. the first sign of it had been that he had utterly refused to allow the erie auriferous consolidated (as the friends of geology called themselves) to take over the top half of the tomlinson farm. for the bottom part he let them give him one-half of the preferred stock in the company in return for their supply of development capital. this was their own proposition; in fact, they reckoned that in doing this they were trading about two hundred thousand dollars' worth of machinery for, say ten million dollars of gold. but it frightened them when tomlinson said "yes" to the offer, and when he said that as to common stock they might keep it, it was no use to him, they were alarmed and uneasy till they made him take a block of it for the sake of market confidence. but the top end of the farm he refused to surrender, and the friends of applied geology knew that there must be something pretty large behind this refusal; the more so as the reason that tomlinson gave was such a simple one. he said that he didn't want to part with the top end of the place because his father was buried on it beside the creek, and so he didn't want the dam higher up, not for any consideration. this was regarded in business circles as a piece of great shrewdness. "says his father is buried there, eh? devilish shrewd that!" it was so long since any of the members of the exchange or the mausoleum club had wandered into such places as cahoga county that they did not know that there was nothing strange in what tomlinson said. his father was buried there, on the farm itself, in a grave overgrown with raspberry bushes, and with a wooden headstone encompassed by a square of cedar rails, and slept as many another pioneer of cahoga is sleeping. "devilish smart idea!" they said; and forthwith half the financial men of the city buried their fathers, or professed to have done so, in likely places--along the prospective right-of-way of a suburban railway, for example; in fact, in any place that marked them out for the joyous resurrection of an expropriation purchase. thus the astounding shrewdness of tomlinson rapidly became a legend, the more so as he turned everything he touched to gold. they narrated little stories of him in the whiskey-and-soda corners of the mausoleum club. "i put it to him in a casual way," related, for example, mr. lucullus fyshe, "casually, but quite frankly. i said, 'see here, this is just a bagatelle to you, no doubt, but to me it might be of some use. t. c. bonds,' i said, 'have risen twenty-two and a half in a week. you know as well as i do that they are only collateral trust, and that the stock underneath never could and never can earn a par dividend. now,' i said, 'mr. tomlinson, tell me what all that means?' would you believe it, the fellow looked me right in the face in that queer way he has and he said, 'i don't know!'" "he said he didn't know!" repeated the listener, in a tone of amazement and respect. "by jove! eh? he said he didn't know! the man's a wizard!" "and he looked as if he didn't!" went on mr. fyshe. "that's the deuce of it. that man when he wants to can put on a look, sir, that simply means nothing, absolutely nothing." in this way tomlinson had earned his name of the wizard of american finance. and meantime tomlinson and his wife, within their suite at the grand palaver, had long since reached their decision. for there was one aspect and only one in which tomlinson was really and truly a wizard. he saw clearly that for himself and his wife the vast fortune that had fallen to them was of no manner of use. what did it bring them? the noise and roar of the city in place of the silence of the farm and the racket of the great rotunda to drown the remembered murmur of the waters of the creek. so tomlinson had decided to rid himself of his new wealth, save only such as might be needed to make his son a different kind of man from himself. "for fred, of course," he said, "it's different. but out of such a lot as that it'll be easy to keep enough for him. it'll be a grand thing for fred, this money. he won't have to grow up like you and me. he'll have opportunities we never got." he was getting them already. the opportunity to wear seven dollar patent leather shoes and a bell-shaped overcoat with a silk collar, to lounge into moving-picture shows and eat chocolates and smoke cigarettes--all these opportunities he was gathering immediately. presently, when he learned his way round a little, he would get still bigger ones. "he's improving fast," said mother. she was thinking of his patent leather shoes. "he's popular," said his father. "i notice it downstairs. he sasses any of them just as he likes; and no matter how busy they are, as soon as they see it's fred they're all ready to have a laugh with him." certainly they were, as any hotel clerk with plastered hair is ready to laugh with the son of a multimillionaire. it's a certain sense of humour that they develop. "but for us, mother," said the wizard, "we'll be rid of it. the gold is there. it's not right to keep it back. but we'll just find a way to pass it on to folks that need it worse than we do." for a time they had thought of giving away the fortune. but how? who did they know that would take it? it had crossed their minds--for who could live in the city a month without observing the imposing buildings of plutoria university, as fine as any departmental store in town?--that they might give it to the college. but there, it seemed, the way was blocked. "you see, mother," said the puzzled wizard, "we're not known. we're strangers. i'd look fine going up there to the college and saying, 'i want to give you people a million dollars.' they'd laugh at me!" "but don't one read it in the papers," his wife had protested, "where mr. carnegie gives ever so much to the colleges, more than all we've got, and they take it?" "that's different," said the wizard. "he's in with them. they all know him. why, he's a sort of chairman of different boards of colleges, and he knows all the heads of the schools, and the professors, so it's no wonder that if he offers to give a pension, or anything, they take it. just think of me going up to one of the professors up there in the middle of his teaching and saying; 'i'd like to give you a pension for life!' imagine it! think what he'd say!" but the tomlinsons couldn't imagine it, which was just as well. so it came about that they had embarked on their system. mother, who knew most arithmetic, was the leading spirit. she tracked out all the stocks and bonds in the front page of the _financial undertone_, and on her recommendation the wizard bought. they knew the stocks only by their letters, but this itself gave a touch of high finance to their deliberations. "i'd buy some of this r.o.p. if i was you," said mother; "it's gone down from to in two days, and i reckon it'll be all gone in ten days or so." "wouldn't 'g.g. deb.' be better? it goes down quicker." "well, it's a quick one," she assented, "but it don't go down so steady. you can't rely on it. you take ones like r.o.p. and t.r.r. pfd.; they go down all the time and you know where you are." as a result of which, tomlinson would send his instructions. he did it all from the rotunda in a way of his own that he had evolved with a telegraph clerk who told him the names of brokers, and he dealt thus through brokers whom he never saw. as a result of this, the sluggish r.o.p. and t.r.r. would take as sudden a leap into the air as might a mule with a galvanic shock applied to its tail. at once the word was whispered that the "tomlinson interests" were after the r.o.p. to reorganize it, and the whole floor of the exchange scrambled for the stock. and so it was that after a month or two of these operations the wizard of finance saw himself beaten. "it's no good, mother," he repeated, "it's just a kind of destiny." destiny perhaps it was. but, if the wizard of finance had known it, at this very moment when he sat with the aladdin's palace of his golden fortune reared so strangely about him, destiny was preparing for him still stranger things. destiny, so it would seem, was devising its own ways and means of dealing with tomlinson's fortune. as one of the ways and means, destiny was sending at this moment as its special emissaries two huge, portly figures, wearing gigantic goloshes, and striding downwards from the halls of plutoria university to the grand palaver hotel. and one of these was the gigantic dr. boomer, the president of the college, and the other was his professor of greek, almost as gigantic as himself. and they carried in their capacious pockets bundles of pamphlets on "archaeological remains of mitylene," and the "use of the greek pluperfect," and little treatises such as "education and philanthropy," by dr. boomer, and "the excavation of mitylene: an estimate of cost," by dr. boyster, "boomer on the foundation and maintenance of chairs," etc. many a man in city finance who had seen dr. boomer enter his office with a bundle of these monographs and a fighting glitter in his eyes had sunk back in his chair in dismay. for it meant that dr. boomer had tracked him out for a benefaction to the university, and that all resistance was hopeless. when dr. boomer once laid upon a capitalist's desk his famous pamphlet on the "use of the greek pluperfect," it was as if an arabian sultan had sent the fatal bow-string to a condemned pasha, or morgan the buccaneer had served the death-sign on a shuddering pirate. so they came nearer and nearer, shouldering the passers-by. the sound of them as they talked was like the roaring of the sea as homer heard it. never did castor and pollux come surging into battle as dr. boomer and dr. boyster bore down upon the grand palaver hotel. tomlinson, the wizard of finance, had hesitated about going to the university. the university was coming to him. as for those millions of his, he could take his choice--dormitories, apparatus, campuses, buildings, endowment, anything he liked but choose he must. and if he feared that, after all, his fortune was too vast even for such a disposal, dr. boomer would show him how he might use it in digging up ancient mitylene, or modern smyrna, or the lost cities of the plain of pactolus. if the size of the fortune troubled him, dr. boomer would dig him up the whole african sahara from alexandria to morocco, and ask for more. but if destiny held all this for tomlinson in its outstretched palm before it, it concealed stranger things still beneath the folds of its toga. there were enough surprises there to turn the faces of the whole directorate of the erie auriferous consolidated as yellow as the gold they mined. for at this very moment, while the president of plutoria university drew nearer and nearer to the grand palaver hotel, the senior professor of geology was working again beside the blue flames in his darkened laboratory. and this time there was no shaking excitement over him. nor were the labels that he marked, as sample followed sample in the tests, the same as those of the previous marking. not by any means. and his grave face as he worked in silence was as still as the stones of the post-tertiary period. chapter three: the arrested philanthropy of mr. tomlinson "this, mr. tomlinson, is our campus," said president boomer as they passed through the iron gates of plutoria university. "for camping?" said the wizard. "not exactly," answered the president, "though it would, of course, suit for that. _nihil humunum alienum_, eh?" and he broke into a loud, explosive laugh, while his spectacles irradiated that peculiar form of glee derived from a latin quotation by those able to enjoy it. dr. boyster, walking on the other side of mr. tomlinson, joined in the laugh in a deep, reverberating chorus. the two had the wizard of finance between them, and they were marching him up to the university. he was taken along much as is an arrested man who has promised to go quietly. they kept their hands off him, but they watched him sideways through their spectacles. at the least sign of restlessness they doused him with latin. the wizard of finance, having been marked out by dr. boomer and dr. boyster as a prospective benefactor, was having latin poured over him to reduce him to the proper degree of plasticity. they had already put him through the first stage. they had, three days ago, called on him at the grand palaver and served him with a pamphlet on "the excavation of mitylene" as a sort of writ. tomlinson and his wife had looked at the pictures of the ruins, and from the appearance of them they judged that mitylene was in mexico, and they said that it was a shame to see it in that state and that the united states ought to intervene. as the second stage on the path of philanthropy, the wizard of finance was now being taken to look at the university. dr. boomer knew by experience that no rich man could look at it without wanting to give it money. and here the president had found that there is no better method of dealing with businessmen than to use latin on them. for other purposes the president used other things. for example at a friendly dinner at the mausoleum club where light conversation was in order, dr. boomer chatted, as has been seen, on the archaeological remains of the navajos. in the same way, at mrs. rasselyer-brown's dante luncheons, he generally talked of the italian _cinquecentisti_ and whether gian gobbo della scala had left a greater name than can grande della spiggiola. but such talk as that was naturally only for women. businessmen are much too shrewd for that kind of thing; in fact, so shrewd are they, as president boomer had long since discovered, that nothing pleases them so much as the quiet, firm assumption that they know latin. it is like writing them up an asset. so it was that dr. boomer would greet a business acquaintance with a roaring salutation of, "_terque quaterque beatus_," or stand wringing his hand off to the tune of "_oh et presidium et dulce decus meum_." this caught them every time. "you don't," said tomlinson the wizard in a hesitating tone as he looked at the smooth grass of the campus, "i suppose, raise anything on it?" "no, no; this is only for field sports," said the president; "_sunt quos curriculo_--" to which dr. boyster on the other side added, like a chorus, "_pulverem olympicum_." this was their favourite quotation. it always gave president boomer a chance to speak of the final letter "m" in latin poetry, and to say that in his opinion the so-called elision of the final "m" was more properly a dropping of the vowel with a repercussion of the two last consonants. he supported this by quoting ammianus, at which dr. boyster exclaimed, "pooh! ammianus: more dog latin!" and appealed to mr. tomlinson as to whether any rational man nowadays cared what ammianus thought? to all of which tomlinson answered never a word, but looked steadily first at one and then at the other. dr. boomer said afterwards that the penetration of tomlinson was wonderful, and that it was excellent to see how boyster tried in vain to draw him; and boyster said afterwards that the way in which tomlinson quietly refused to be led on by boomer was delicious, and that it was a pity that aristophanes was not there to do it justice. all of which was happening as they went in at the iron gates and up the elm avenue of plutoria university. the university, as everyone knows, stands with its great gates on plutoria avenue, and with its largest buildings, those of the faculties of industrial and mechanical science, fronting full upon the street. these buildings are exceptionally fine, standing fifteen stories high and comparing favourably with the best departmental stores or factories in the city. indeed, after nightfall, when they are all lighted up for the evening technical classes and when their testing machinery is in full swing and there are students going in and out in overall suits, people have often mistaken the university, or this newer part of it, for a factory. a foreign visitor once said that the students looked like plumbers, and president boomer was so proud of it that he put the phrase into his next commencement address; and from there the newspapers got it and the associated press took it up and sent it all over the united states with the heading, "have appearance of plumbers; plutoria university congratulated on character of students," and it was a proud day indeed for the heads of the industrial science faculty. but the older part of the university stands so quietly and modestly at the top end of the elm avenue, so hidden by the leaves of it, that no one could mistake it for a factory. this, indeed, was once the whole university, and had stood there since colonial days under the name concordia college. it had been filled with generations of presidents and professors of the older type with long white beards and rusty black clothes, and salaries of fifteen hundred dollars. but the change both of name and of character from concordia college to plutoria university was the work of president boomer. he had changed it from an old-fashioned college of the by-gone type to a university in the true modern sense. at plutoria they now taught everything. concordia college, for example, had no teaching of religion except lectures on the bible. now they had lectures also on confucianism, mohammedanism buddhism, with an optional course on atheism for students in the final year. and, of course, they had long since admitted women, and there were now beautiful creatures with cleo de merode hair studying astronomy at oaken desks and looking up at the teacher with eyes like comets. the university taught everything and did everything. it had whirling machines on the top of it that measured the speed of the wind, and deep in its basements it measured earthquakes with a seismograph; it held classes on forestry and dentistry and palmistry; it sent life classes into the slums, and death classes to the city morgue. it offered such a vast variety of themes, topics and subjects to the students, that there was nothing that a student was compelled to learn, while from its own presses in its own press-building it sent out a shower of bulletins and monographs like driven snow from a rotary plough. in fact, it had become, as president boomer told all the businessmen in town, not merely a university, but a _universitas_ in the true sense, and every one of its faculties was now a _facultas_ in the real acceptance of the word, and its studies properly and truly _studia_; indeed, if the businessmen would only build a few more dormitories and put up enough money to form an adequate _fondatum_ or _fundum_, then the good work might be looked upon as complete. as the three walked up the elm avenue there met them a little stream of students with college books, and female students with winged-victory hats, and professors with last year's overcoats. and some went past with a smile and others with a shiver. "that's professor withers," said the president in a sympathetic voice as one of the shivering figures went past; "poor withers," and he sighed. "what's wrong with him?" said the wizard; "is he sick?" "no, not sick," said the president quietly and sadly, "merely inefficient." "inefficient?" "unfortunately so. mind you, i don't mean 'inefficient' in every sense. by no means. if anyone were to come to me and say, 'boomer, can you put your hand for me on a first-class botanist?' i'd say, 'take withers.' i'd say it in a minute." this was true. he would have. in fact, if anyone had made this kind of rash speech, dr. boomer would have given away half the professoriate. "well, what's wrong with him?" repeated tomlinson, "i suppose he ain't quite up to the mark in some ways, eh?" "precisely," said the president, "not quite up to the mark--a very happy way of putting it. _capax imperii nisi imperasset_, as no doubt you are thinking to yourself. the fact is that withers, though an excellent fellow, can't manage large classes. with small classes he is all right, but with large classes the man is lost. he can't handle them." "he can't, eh?" said the wizard. "no. but what can i do? there he is. i can't dismiss him. i can't pension him. i've no money for it." here the president slackened a little in his walk and looked sideways at the prospective benefactor. but tomlinson gave no sign. a second professorial figure passed them on the other side. "there again," said the president, "that's another case of inefficiency--professor shottat, our senior professor of english." "what's wrong with _him_?" asked the wizard. "he can't handle _small_ classes," said the president. "with large classes he is really excellent, but with small ones the man is simply hopeless." in this fashion, before mr. tomlinson had measured the length of the avenue, he had had ample opportunity to judge of the crying need of money at plutoria university, and of the perplexity of its president. he was shown professors who could handle the first year, but were powerless with the second; others who were all right with the second but broke down with the third, while others could handle the third but collapsed with the fourth. there were professors who were all right in their own subject, but perfectly impossible outside of it; others who were so occupied outside of their own subject that they were useless inside of it; others who knew their subject, but couldn't lecture; and others again who lectured admirably, but didn't know their subject. in short it was clear--as it was meant to be--that the need of the moment was a sum of money sufficient to enable the president to dismiss everybody but himself and dr. boyster. the latter stood in a class all by himself. he had known the president for forty-five years, ever since he was a fat little boy with spectacles in a classical academy, stuffing himself on irregular greek verbs as readily as if on oysters. but it soon appeared that the need for dismissing the professors was only part of the trouble. there were the buildings to consider. "this, i am ashamed to say," said dr. boomer, as they passed the imitation greek portico of the old concordia college building, "is our original home, the _fons et origo_ of our studies, our faculty of arts." it was indeed a dilapidated building, yet there was a certain majesty about it, too, especially when one reflected that it had been standing there looking much the same at the time when its students had trooped off in a flock to join the army of the potomac, and much the same, indeed, three generations before that, when the classes were closed and the students clapped three-cornered hats on their heads and were off to enlist as minute men with flintlock muskets under general washington. but dr. boomer's one idea was to knock the building down and to build on its site a real _facultas_ ten storeys high, with elevators in it. tomlinson looked about him humbly as he stood in the main hall. the atmosphere of the place awed him. there were bulletins and time-tables and notices stuck on the walls that gave evidence of the activity of the place. "professor slithers will be unable to meet his classes today," ran one of them, and another "professor withers will not meet his classes this week," and another, "owing to illness, professor shottat will not lecture this month," while still another announced, "owing to the indisposition of professor podge, all botanical classes are suspended, but professor podge hopes to be able to join in the botanical picnic excursion to loon lake on saturday afternoon." you could judge of the grinding routine of the work from the nature of these notices. anyone familiar with the work of colleges would not heed it, but it shocked tomlinson to think how often the professors of the college were stricken down by overwork. here and there in the hall, set into niches, were bronze busts of men with roman faces and bare necks, and the edge of a toga cast over each shoulder. "who would these be?" asked tomlinson, pointing at them. "some of the chief founders and benefactors of the faculty," answered the president, and at this the hopes of tomlinson sank in his heart. for he realized the class of man one had to belong to in order to be accepted as a university benefactor. "a splendid group of men, are they not?" said the president. "we owe them much. this is the late mr. hogworth, a man of singularly large heart." here he pointed to a bronze figure wearing a wreath of laurel and inscribed guliemus hogworth, litt. doc. "he had made a great fortune in the produce business and wishing to mark his gratitude to the community he erected the anemometer, the wind-measure, on the roof of the building, attaching to it no other condition than that his name should be printed in the weekly reports immediately beside the velocity of the wind. the figure beside him is the late mr. underbugg, who founded our lectures on the four gospels on the sole stipulation that henceforth any reference of ours to the four gospels should be coupled with his name." "what's that after his name?" asked tomlinson. "litt. doc.?" said the president. "doctor of letters, our honorary degree. we are always happy to grant it to our benefactors by a vote of the faculty." here dr. boomer and dr. boyster wheeled half round and looked quietly and steadily at the wizard of finance. to both their minds it was perfectly plain that an honourable bargain was being struck. "yes, mr. tomlinson," said the president, as they emerged from the building, "no doubt you begin to realize our unhappy position. money, money, money," he repeated half-musingly. "if i had the money i'd have that whole building down and dismantled in a fortnight." from the central building the three passed to the museum building, where tomlinson was shown a vast skeleton of a diplodocus maximus, and was specially warned not to confuse it with the dinosaurus perfectus, whose bones, however, could be bought if anyone, any man of large heart; would come to the university and say straight out, "gentlemen, what can i do for you?" better still, it appeared the whole museum which was hopelessly antiquated, being twenty-five years old, could be entirely knocked down if a sufficient sum was forthcoming; and its curator, who was as ancient as the dinosaurus itself, could be dismissed on half-pay if any man had a heart large enough for the dismissal. from the museum they passed to the library, where there were full-length portraits of more founders and benefactors in long red robes, holding scrolls of paper, and others sitting holding pens and writing on parchment, with a greek temple and a thunderstorm in the background. and here again it appeared that the crying need of the moment was for someone to come to the university and say, "gentlemen, what can i do for you?" on which the whole library, for it was twenty years old and out of date, might be blown up with dynamite and carted away. but at all this the hopes of tomlinson sank lower and lower. the red robes and the scrolls were too much for him. from the library they passed to the tall buildings that housed the faculty of industrial and mechanical science. and here again the same pitiful lack of money was everywhere apparent. for example, in the physical science department there was a mass of apparatus for which the university was unable to afford suitable premises, and in the chemical department there were vast premises for which the university was unable to buy apparatus, and so on. indeed it was part of dr. boomer's method to get himself endowed first with premises too big for the apparatus, and then by appealing to public spirit to call for enough apparatus to more than fill the premises, by means of which system industrial science at plutoria university advanced with increasing and gigantic strides. but most of all, the electric department interested the wizard of finance. and this time his voice lost its hesitating tone and he looked straight at dr. boomer as he began, "i have a boy--" "ah!" said dr. boomer, with a huge ejaculation of surprise and relief; "you have a boy!" there were volumes in his tone. what it meant was, "now, indeed, we have got you where we want you," and he exchanged a meaning look with the professor of greek. within five minutes the president and tomlinson and dr. boyster were gravely discussing on what terms and in what way fred might be admitted to study in the faculty of industrial science. the president, on learning that fred had put in four years in cahoga county section no. school, and had been head of his class in ciphering, nodded his head gravely and said it would simply be a matter of a _pro tanto_; that, in fact, he felt sure that fred might be admitted _ad eundem_. but the real condition on which they meant to admit him was, of course, not mentioned. one door only in the faculty of industrial and mechanical science they did not pass, a heavy oak door at the end of a corridor bearing the painted inscription: geological and metallurgical laboratories. stuck in the door was a card with the words (they were conceived in the courteous phrases of mechanical science, which is almost a branch of business in the real sense): busy--keep out. dr. boomer looked at the card. "ah, yes," he said. "gildas is no doubt busy with his tests. we won't disturb him." the president was always proud to find a professor busy; it looked well. but if dr. boomer had known what was going on behind the oaken door of the department of geology and metallurgy, he would have felt considerably disturbed himself. for here again gildas, senior professor of geology, was working among his blue flames at a final test on which depended the fate of the erie auriferous consolidated and all connected with it. before him there were some twenty or thirty packets of crumpled dust and splintered ore that glittered on the testing-table. it had been taken up from the creek along its whole length, at even spaces twenty yards apart, by an expert sent down in haste by the directorate, after gildas's second report, and heavily bribed to keep his mouth shut. and as professor gildas stood and worked at the samples and tied them up after analysis in little white cardboard boxes, he marked each one very carefully and neatly with the words, pyrites: worthless. beside the professor worked a young demonstrator of last year's graduation class. it was he, in fact, who had written the polite notice on the card. "what is the stuff, anyway?" he asked. "a sulphuret of iron," said the professor, "or iron pyrites. in colour and appearance it is practically identical with gold. indeed, in all ages," he went on, dropping at once into the classroom tone and adopting the professional habit of jumping backwards twenty centuries in order to explain anything properly, "it has been readily mistaken for the precious metal. the ancients called it 'fool's gold.' martin frobisher brought back four shiploads of it from baffin land thinking that he had discovered an eldorado. there are large deposits of it in the mines of cornwall, and it is just possible," here the professor measured his words as if speaking of something that he wouldn't promise, "that the cassiterides of the phoenicians contained deposits of the same sulphuret. indeed, i defy anyone," he continued, for he was piqued in his scientific pride, "to distinguish it from gold without a laboratory-test. in large quantities, i concede, its lack of weight would betray it to a trained hand, but without testing its solubility in nitric acid, or the fact of its burning with a blue flame under the blow-pipe, it cannot be detected. in short, when crystallized in dodecahedrons--" "is it any good?" broke in the demonstrator. "good?" said the professor. "oh, you mean commercially? not in the slightest. much less valuable than, let us say, ordinary mud or clay. in fact, it is absolutely good for nothing." they were silent for a moment, watching the blue flames above the brazier. then gildas spoke again. "oddly enough," he said, "the first set of samples were undoubtedly pure gold--not the faintest doubt of that. that is the really interesting part of the matter. these gentlemen concerned in the enterprise will, of course, lose their money, and i shall therefore decline to accept the very handsome fee which they had offered me for my services. but the main feature, the real point of interest in this matter remains. here we have undoubtedly a sporadic deposit--what miners call a pocket--of pure gold in a devonian formation of the post-tertiary period. this once established, we must revise our entire theory of the distribution of igneous and aqueous rocks. in fact, i am already getting notes together for a paper for the pan-geological under the heading, auriferous excretions in the devonian strata: a working hypothesis. i hope to read it at the next meeting." the young demonstrator looked at the professor with one eye half-closed. "i don't think i would if i were you." he said. now this young demonstrator knew nothing or practically nothing, of geology, because he came of one of the richest and best families in town and didn't need to. but he was a smart young man, dressed in the latest fashion with brown boots and a crosswise tie, and he knew more about money and business and the stock exchange in five minutes than professor gildas in his whole existence. "why not?" said the professor. "why, don't you see what's happened?" "eh?" said gildas. "what happened to those first samples? when that bunch got interested and planned to float the company? don't you see? somebody salted them on you." "_salted_ them on me?" repeated the professor, mystified. "yes, salted them. somebody got wise to what they were and swopped them on you for the real thing, so as to get your certified report that the stuff was gold." "i begin to see," muttered the professor. "somebody exchanged the samples, some person no doubt desirous of establishing the theory that a sporadic outcropping of the sort might be found in a post-tertiary formation. i see, i see. no doubt he intended to prepare a paper on it, and prove his thesis by these tests. i see it all!" the demonstrator looked at the professor with a sort of pity. "you're on!" he said, and he laughed softly to himself. * * * * * "well," said dr. boomer, after tomlinson had left the university, "what do you make of him?" the president had taken dr. boyster over to his house beside the campus, and there in his study had given him a cigar as big as a rope and taken another himself. this was a sign that dr. boomer wanted dr. boyster's opinion in plain english, without any latin about it. "remarkable man," said the professor of greek; "wonderful penetration, and a man of very few words. of course his game is clear enough?" "entirely so," asserted dr. boomer. "it's clear enough that he means to give the money on two conditions." "exactly," said the president. "first that we admit his son, who is quite unqualified, to the senior studies in electrical science, and second that we grant him the degree of doctor of letters. those are his terms." "can we meet them?" "oh, certainly. as to the son, there is no difficulty, of course; as to the degree, it's only a question of getting the faculty to vote it. i think we can manage it." * * * * * vote it they did that very afternoon. true, if the members of the faculty had known the things that were being whispered, and more than whispered, in the city about tomlinson and his fortune, no degree would ever have been conferred on him. but it so happened that at that moment the whole professoriate was absorbed in one of those great educational crises which from time to time shake a university to its base. the meeting of the faculty that day bid fair to lose all vestige of decorum in the excitement of the moment. for, as dean elderberry foible, the head of the faculty, said, the motion that they had before them amounted practically to a revolution. the proposal was nothing less than the permission of the use of lead-pencils instead of pen and ink in the sessional examinations of the university. anyone conversant with the inner life of a college will realize that to many of the professoriate this was nothing less than a last wild onslaught of socialistic democracy against the solid bulwarks of society. they must fight it back or die on the walls. to others it was one more step in the splendid progress of democratic education, comparable only to such epoch-making things as the abandonment of the cap and gown, and the omission of the word "sir" in speaking to a professor. no wonder that the fight raged. elderberry foible, his fluffed white hair almost on end, beat in vain with his gavel for order. finally, chang of physiology, who was a perfect dynamo of energy and was known frequently to work for three or four hours at a stretch, proposed that the faculty should adjourn the question and meet for its further discussion on the following saturday morning. this revolutionary suggestion, involving work on saturday, reduced the meeting to a mere turmoil, in the midst of which elderberry foible proposed that the whole question of the use of lead-pencils should be adjourned till that day six months, and that meantime a new special committee of seventeen professors, with power to add to their number, to call witnesses and, if need be, to hear them, should report on the entire matter _de novo_. this motion, after the striking out of the words _de novo_ and the insertion of _ab initio_, was finally carried, after which the faculty sank back completely exhausted into its chair, the need of afternoon tea and toast stamped on every face. and it was at this moment that president boomer, who understood faculties as few men have done, quietly entered the room, laid his silk hat on a volume of demosthenes, and proposed the vote of a degree of doctor of letters for edward tomlinson. he said that there was no need to remind the faculty of tomlinson's services to the nation; they knew them. of the members of the faculty, indeed, some thought that he meant the tomlinson who wrote the famous monologue on the iota subscript, while others supposed that he referred to the celebrated philosopher tomlinson, whose new book on the indivisibility of the inseparable was just then maddening the entire world. in any case, they voted the degree without a word, still faint with exhaustion. * * * * * but while the university was conferring on tomlinson the degree of doctor of letters, all over the city in business circles they were conferring on him far other titles. "idiot," "scoundrel," "swindler," were the least of them. every stock and share with which his name was known to be connected was coming down with a run, wiping out the accumulated profits of the wizard at the rate of a thousand dollars a minute. they not only questioned his honesty, but they went further and questioned his business capacity. "the man," said mr. lucullus fyshe, sitting in the mausoleum club and breathing freely at last after having disposed of all his holdings in the erie auriferous, "is an ignoramus. i asked him only the other day, quite casually, a perfectly simple business question. i said to him. 't.c. bonds have risen twenty-two and a half in a week. you know and i know that they are only collateral trust, and that the stock underneath never could and never would earn a par dividend. now,' i said, for i wanted to test the fellow, 'tell me what that means?' would you believe me, he looked me right in the face in that stupid way of his, and he said, 'i don't know!'" "he said he didn't know!" repeated the listener contemptuously; "the man is a damn fool!" * * * * * the reason of all this was that the results of the researches of the professor of geology were being whispered among the directorate of the erie auriferous. and the directors and chief shareholders were busily performing the interesting process called unloading. nor did ever a farmer of cahoga county in haying time with a thunderstorm threatening, unload with greater rapidity than did the major shareholders of the auriferous. mr. lucullus fyshe traded off a quarter of his stock to an unwary member of the mausoleum club at a drop of thirty per cent, and being too prudent to hold the rest on any terms, he conveyed it at once as a benefaction in trust to the plutorian orphans' and foundlings' home; while the purchaser of mr. fyshe's stock, learning too late of his folly, rushed for his lawyers to have the shares conveyed as a gift to the home for incurables. mr. asmodeus boulder transferred his entire holdings to the imbeciles' relief society, and mr. furlong, senior, passed his over to a chinese mission as fast as pen could traverse paper. down at the office of skinyer and beatem, the lawyers of the company, they were working overtime drawing up deeds and conveyances and trusts in perpetuity, with hardly time to put them into typewriting. within twenty-four hours the entire stock of the company bid fair to be in the hands of idiots, orphans, protestants, foundlings, imbeciles, missionaries, chinese, and other unfinancial people, with tomlinson the wizard of finance as the senior shareholder and majority control. and whether the gentle wizard, as he sat with mother planning his vast benefaction to plutoria university, would have felt more at home with his new group of fellow-shareholders than his old, it were hard to say. but, meantime, at the office of skinyer and beatem all was activity. for not only were they drafting the conveyances of the perpetual trusts as fast as legal brains working overtime could do it, but in another part of the office a section of the firm were busily making their preparations against the expected actions for fraud and warrants of distraint and injunctions against disposal of assets and the whole battery of artillery which might open on them at any moment. and they worked like a corps of military engineers fortifying an escarpment, with the joy of battle in their faces. the storm might break at any moment. already at the office of the _financial undertone_ the type was set for a special extra with a heading three inches high: collapse of the erie consolidated arrest of the man tomlinson expected this afternoon skinyer and beatem had paid the editor, who was crooked, two thousand dollars cash to hold back that extra for twenty-four hours; and the editor had paid the reporting staff, who were crooked, twenty-five dollars each to keep the news quiet, and the compositors, who were also crooked, ten dollars per man to hold their mouths shut till the morning, with the result that from editors and sub-editors and reporters and compositors the news went seething forth in a flood that the erie auriferous consolidated was going to shatter into fragments like the bursting of a dynamite bomb. it rushed with a thousand whispering tongues from street to street till it filled the corridors of the law courts and the lobbies of the offices, and till every honest man that held a share of the stock shivered in his tracks and reached out to give, sell, or destroy it. only the unwinking idiots, and the mild orphans, and the calm deaf mutes and the impassive chinese held tight to what they had. so gathered the storm, till all the town, like the great rotunda of the grand palaver, was filled with a silent "call for mr. tomlinson," voiceless and ominous. and while all this was happening, and while at skinyer and beatem's they worked with frantic pens and clattering type there came a knock at the door, hesitant and uncertain, and before the eyes of the astounded office there stood in his wide-awake hat and long black coat the figure of "the man tomlinson" himself. and skinyer, the senior partner, no sooner heard what tomlinson wanted than he dashed across the outer office to his partner's room with his hyena face all excitement as he said: "beatem, beatem, come over to my room. this man is absolutely the biggest thing in america. for sheer calmness and nerve i never heard of anything to approach him. what do you think he wants to do?" "what?" said beatem. "why, he's giving his entire fortune to the university." "by gad!" ejaculated beatem, and the two lawyers looked at one another, lost in admiration of the marvellous genius and assurance of tomlinson. * * * * * yet what had happened was very simple. tomlinson had come back from the university filled with mingled hope and hesitation. the university, he saw, needed the money and he hoped to give it his entire fortune, to put dr. boomer in a position to practically destroy the whole place. but, like many a modest man, he lacked the assurance to speak out. he felt that up to the present the benefactors of the university had been men of an entirely different class from himself. it was mother who solved the situation for him. "well, father," she said, "there's one thing i've learned already since we've had money. if you want to get a thing done you can always find people to do it for you if you pay them. why not go to those lawyers that manage things for the company and get them to arrange it all for you with the college?" as a result, tomlinson had turned up at the door of the skinyer and beatem office. * * * * * "quite so, mr. tomlinson," said skinyer, with his pen already dipped in the ink, "a perfectly simple matter. i can draw up a draft of conveyance with a few strokes of the pen. in fact, we can do it on the spot." what he meant was, "in fact, we can do it so fast that i can pocket a fee of five hundred dollars right here and now while you have the money to pay me." "now then," he continued, "let us see how it is to run." "well," said tomlinson, "i want you to put it that i give all my stock in the company to the university." "all of it?" said skinyer, with a quiet smile to beatem. "every cent of it, sir," said tomlinson; "just write down that i give all of it to the college." "very good," said skinyer, and he began to write, "i, so-and-so, and so-and-so, of the county of so-and-so--cahoga, i think you said, mr. tomlinson?" "yes, sir," said the wizard, "i was raised there." "--do hereby give, assign, devise, transfer, and the transfer is hereby given, devised and assigned, all those stocks, shares, hereditaments, etc., which i hold in the etc., etc., all, several and whatever--you will observe, mr. tomlinson, i am expressing myself with as great brevity as possible--to that institution, academy, college, school, university, now known and reputed to be plutoria university, of the city of etc., etc." he paused a moment. "now what special objects or purposes shall i indicate?" he asked. whereupon tomlinson explained as best he could, and skinyer, working with great rapidity, indicated that the benefaction was to include a demolition fund for the removal of buildings, a retirement fund for the removal of professors, an apparatus fund for the destruction of apparatus, and a general sinking fund for the obliteration of anything not otherwise mentioned. "and i'd like to do something, if i could, for mr. boomer himself, just as man to man," said tomlinson. "all right," said beatem, and he could hardly keep his face straight. "give him a chunk of the stock--give him half a million." "i will," said tomlinson; "he deserves it." "undoubtedly," said mr. skinyer. and within a few minutes the whole transaction was done, and tomlinson, filled with joy, was wringing the hands of skinyer and beatem, and telling them to name their own fee. they had meant to, anyway. * * * * * "is that legal, do you suppose?" said beatem to skinyer, after the wizard had gone. "will it hold water?" "oh, i don't think so," said skinyer, "not for a minute. in fact, rather the other way. if they make an arrest for fraudulent flotation, this conveyance, i should think, would help to send him to the penitentiary. but i very much doubt if they can arrest him. mind you, the fellow is devilish shrewd. you know, and i know that he planned this whole flotation with a full knowledge of the fraud. _you_ and _i_ know it--very good--but we know it more from our trained instinct in such things than by any proof. the fellow has managed to surround himself with such an air of good faith from start to finish that it will be deuced hard to get at him." "what will he do now?" said beatem. "i tell you what he'll do. mark my words. within twenty-four hours he'll clear out and be out of the state, and if they want to get him they'll have to extradite. i tell you he's a man of extraordinary capacity. the rest of us are nowhere beside him." in which, perhaps, there was some truth. * * * * * "well, mother," said the wizard, when he reached the thousand-dollar suite, after his interview with skinyer and beatem, his face irradiated with simple joy, "it's done. i've put the college now in a position it never was in before, nor any other college; the lawyers say so themselves." "that's good," said mother. "yes, and it's a good thing i didn't lose the money when i tried to. you see, mother, what i hadn't realized was the good that could be done with all that money if a man put his heart into it. they can start in as soon as they like and tear down those buildings. my! but it's just wonderful what you can do with money. i'm glad i didn't lose it!" so they talked far into the evening. that night they slept in an aladdin's palace filled with golden fancies. and in the morning the palace and all its visions fell tumbling about their heads in sudden and awful catastrophe. for with tomlinson's first descent to the rotunda it broke. the whole great space seemed filled with the bulletins and the broadside sheets of the morning papers, the crowd surging to and fro buying the papers, men reading them as they stood, and everywhere in great letters there met his eye: collapse of the erie auriferous the great gold swindle arrest of the man tomlinson expected this morning so stood the wizard of finance beside a pillar, the paper fluttering in his hand, his eyes fixed, while about him a thousand eager eyes and rushing tongues sent shame into his stricken heart. and there his boy fred, sent from upstairs, found him; and at the sight of the seething crowd and his father's stricken face, aged as it seemed all in a moment, the boy's soul woke within him. what had happened he could not tell, only that his father stood there, dazed, beaten, and staring at him on every side in giant letters: arrest of the man tomlinson "come, father come upstairs," he said, and took him by the arm, dragging him through the crowd. in the next half-hour as they sat and waited for the arrest in the false grandeur of the thousand-dollar suite-tomlinson, his wife, and fred-the boy learnt more than all the teaching of the industrial faculty of plutoria university could have taught him in a decade. adversity laid its hand upon him, and at its touch his adolescent heart turned to finer stuff than the salted gold of the erie auriferous. as he looked upon his father's broken figure waiting meekly for arrest, and his mother's blubbered face, a great wrath burned itself into his soul. "when the sheriff comes--" said tomlinson, and his lip trembled as he spoke. he had no other picture of arrest than that. "they can't arrest you, father," broke out the boy. "you've done nothing. you never swindled them. i tell you, if they try to arrest you, i'll--" and his voice broke and stopped upon a sob, and his hands clenched in passion. "you stay here, you and mother. i'll go down. give me your money and i'll go and pay them and we'll get out of this and go home. they can't stop us; there's nothing to arrest you for." nor was there. fred paid the bill unmolested, save for the prying eyes and babbling tongues of the rotunda. and a few hours from that, while the town was still ringing with news of his downfall, the wizard with his wife and son walked down from their thousand-dollar suite into the corridor, their hands burdened with their satchels. a waiter, with something between a sneer and an obsequious smile upon his face, reached out for the valises, wondering if it was still worth while. "you get to hell out of that!" said fred. he had put on again his rough store suit in which he had come from cahoga county, and there was a dangerous look about his big shoulders and his set jaw. and the waiter slunk back. so did they pass, unarrested and unhindered, through corridor and rotunda to the outer portals of the great hotel. beside the door of the palaver as they passed out was a tall official with a uniform and a round hat. he was called by the authorities a _chasseur_ or a _commissionaire_, or some foreign name to mean that he did nothing. at the sight of him the wizard's face flushed for a moment, with a look of his old perplexity. "i wonder," he began to murmur, "how much i ought--" "not a damn cent, father," said fred, as he shouldered past the magnificent _chasseur_; "let him work." with which admirable doctrine the wizard and his son passed from the portals of the grand palaver. * * * * * nor was there any arrest either then or later. in spite of the expectations of the rotunda and the announcements of the _financial undertone_, the "man tomlinson" was _not_ arrested, neither as he left the grand palaver nor as he stood waiting at the railroad station with fred and mother for the outgoing train for cahoga county. there was nothing to arrest him for. that was not the least strange part of the career of the wizard of finance. for when all the affairs of the erie auriferous consolidated were presently calculated up by the labours of skinyer and beatem and the legal representatives of the orphans and the idiots and the deaf-mutes they resolved themselves into the most beautiful and complete cipher conceivable. the salted gold about paid for the cost of the incorporation certificate: the development capital had disappeared, and those who lost most preferred to say the least about it; and as for tomlinson, if one added up his gains on the stock market before the fall and subtracted his bill at the grand palaver and the thousand dollars which he gave to skinyer and beatem to recover his freehold on the lower half of his farm, and the cost of three tickets to cahoga station, the debit and credit account balanced to a hair. thus did the whole fortune of tomlinson vanish in a night, even as the golden palace seen in the mirage of a desert sunset may fade before the eyes of the beholder, and leave no trace behind. * * * * * it was some months after the collapse of the erie auriferous that the university conferred upon tomlinson the degree of doctor of letters _in absentia_. a university must keep its word, and dean elderberry foible, who was honesty itself, had stubbornly maintained that a vote of the faculty of arts once taken and written in the minute book became as irrefragable as the devonian rock itself. so the degree was conferred. and dean elderberry foible, standing in a long red gown before dr. boomer, seated in a long blue gown, read out after the ancient custom of the college the latin statement of the award of the degree of doctor of letters, "eduardus tomlinsonius, vir clarrisimus, doctissimus, praestissimus," and a great many other things all ending in _issimus_. but the recipient was not there to receive. he stood at that moment with his boy fred on a windy hillside beside lake erie, where tomlinson's creek ran again untrammelled to the lake. nor was the scene altered to the eye, for tomlinson and his son had long since broken a hole in the dam with pickaxe and crowbar, and day by day the angry water carried down the vestiges of the embankment till all were gone. the cedar poles of the electric lights had been cut into fence-rails; the wooden shanties of the italian gang of auriferous workers had been torn down and split into fire wood; and where they had stood, the burdocks and the thistles of the luxuriant summer conspired to hide the traces of their shame. nature reached out its hand and drew its coverlet of green over the grave of the vanished eldorado. and as the wizard and his son stood upon the hillside, they saw nothing but the land sloping to the lake and the creek murmuring again to the willows, while the off-shore wind rippled the rushes of the shallow water. chapter four: the yahi-bahi oriental society of mrs. rasselyer-brown mrs. rasselyer-brown lived on plutoria avenue in a vast sandstone palace, in which she held those fashionable entertainments which have made the name of rasselyer-brown what it is. mr. rasselyer-brown lived there also. the exterior of the house was more or less a model of the facade of an italian palazzo of the sixteenth century. if one questioned mrs. rasselyer-brown at dinner in regard to this (which was only a fair return for drinking five dollar champagne), she answered that the facade was _cinquecentisti_, but that it reproduced also the saracenic mullioned window of the siennese school. but if the guest said later in the evening to mr. rasselyer-brown that he understood that his house was _cinquecentisti_, he answered that he guessed it was. after which remark and an interval of silence, mr. rasselyer-brown would probably ask the guest if he was dry. so from that one can tell exactly the sort of people the rasselyer-browns were. in other words, mr. rasselyer-brown was a severe handicap to mrs. rasselyer-brown. he was more than that; the word isn't strong enough. he was, as mrs. rasselyer-brown herself confessed to her confidential circle of three hundred friends, a drag. he was also a tie, and a weight, and a burden, and in mrs. rasselyer-brown's religious moments a crucifix. even in the early years of their married life, some twenty or twenty-five years ago, her husband had been a drag on her by being in the coal and wood business. it is hard for a woman to have to realize that her husband is making a fortune out of coal and wood and that people know it. it ties one down. what a woman wants most of all--this, of course, is merely a quotation from mrs. rasselyer-brown's own thoughts as expressed to her three hundred friends--is room to expand, to grow. the hardest thing in the world is to be stifled: and there is nothing more stifling than a husband who doesn't know a giotto from a carlo dolci, but who can distinguish nut coal from egg and is never asked to dinner without talking about the furnace. these, of course, were early trials. they had passed to some extent, or were, at any rate, garlanded with the roses of time. but the drag remained. even when the retail coal and wood stage was long since over, it was hard to have to put up with a husband who owned a coal mine and who bought pulp forests instead of illuminated missals of the twelfth century. a coal mine is a dreadful thing at a dinner-table. it humbles one so before one's guests. it wouldn't have been so bad--this mrs. rasselyer-brown herself admitted--if mr. rasselyer-brown _did_ anything. this phrase should be clearly understood. it meant if there was any one thing that he _did_. for instance if he had only _collected_ anything. thus, there was mr. lucullus fyshe, who made soda-water, but at the same time everybody knew that he had the best collection of broken italian furniture on the continent; there wasn't a sound piece among the lot. and there was the similar example of old mr. feathertop. he didn't exactly _collect_ things; he repudiated the name. he was wont to say, "don't call me a collector, i'm _not_. i simply pick things up. just where i happen to be, rome, warsaw, bucharest, anywhere"--and it is to be noted what fine places these are to happen to be. and to think that mr. rasselyer-brown would never put his foot outside of the united states! whereas mr. feathertop would come back from what he called a run to europe, and everybody would learn in a week that he had picked up the back of a violin in dresden (actually discovered it in a violin shop), and the lid of an etruscan kettle (he had lighted on it, by pure chance, in a kettle shop in etruria), and mrs. rasselyer-brown would feel faint with despair at the nonentity of her husband. so one can understand how heavy her burden was. "my dear," she often said to her bosom friend, miss snagg, "i shouldn't mind things so much" (the things she wouldn't mind were, let us say, the two million dollars of standing timber which brown limited, the ominous business name of mr. rasselyer-brown, were buying that year) "if mr. rasselyer-brown _did_ anything. but he does _nothing_. every morning after breakfast off to his wretched office, and never back till dinner, and in the evening nothing but his club, or some business meeting. one would think he would have more ambition. how i wish i had been a man." it was certainly a shame. so it came that, in almost everything she undertook mrs. rasselyer-brown had to act without the least help from her husband. every wednesday, for instance, when the dante club met at her house (they selected four lines each week to meditate on, and then discussed them at lunch), mrs. rasselyer-brown had to carry the whole burden of it--her very phrase, "the whole burden"--alone. anyone who has carried four lines of dante through a moselle lunch knows what a weight it is. in all these things her husband was useless, quite useless. it is not right to be ashamed of one's husband. and to do her justice, mrs. rasselyer-brown always explained to her three hundred intimates that she was _not_ ashamed of him; in fact, that she _refused_ to be. but it was hard to see him brought into comparison at their own table with superior men. put him, for instance, beside mr. sikleigh snoop, the sex-poet, and where was he? nowhere. he couldn't even understand what mr. snoop was saying. and when mr. snoop would stand on the hearth-rug with a cup of tea balanced in his hand, and discuss whether sex was or was not the dominant note in botticelli, mrs. rasselyer-brown would be skulking in a corner in his ill-fitting dress suit. his wife would often catch with an agonized ear such scraps of talk as, "when i was first in the coal and wood business," or, "it's a coal that burns quicker than egg, but it hasn't the heating power of nut," or even in a low undertone the words, "if you're feeling _dry_ while he's reading--" and this at a time when everybody in the room ought to have been listening to mr. snoop. nor was even this the whole burden of mrs. rasselyer-brown. there was another part of it which was perhaps more _real_, though mrs. rasselyer-brown herself never put it into words. in fact, of this part of her burden she never spoke, even to her bosom friend miss snagg; nor did she talk about it to the ladies of the dante club, nor did she make speeches on it to the members of the women's afternoon art society, nor to the monday bridge club. but the members of the bridge club and the art society and the dante club all talked about it among themselves. stated very simply, it was this: mr. rasselyer-brown drank. it was not meant that he was a drunkard or that he drank too much, or anything of that sort. he drank. that was all. there was no excess about it. mr. rasselyer-brown, of course, began the day with an eye-opener--and after all, what alert man does not wish his eyes well open in the morning? he followed it usually just before breakfast with a bracer--and what wiser precaution can a businessman take than to brace his breakfast? on his way to business he generally had his motor stopped at the grand palaver for a moment, if it was a raw day, and dropped in and took something to keep out the damp. if it was a cold day he took something to keep out the cold, and if it was one of those clear, sunny days that are so dangerous to the system he took whatever the bartender (a recognized health expert) suggested to tone the system up. after which he could sit down in his office and transact more business, and bigger business, in coal, charcoal, wood, pulp, pulpwood, and woodpulp, in two hours than any other man in the business could in a week. naturally so. for he was braced, and propped, and toned up, and his eyes had been opened, and his brain cleared, till outside of very big business, indeed, few men were on a footing with him. in fact, it was business itself which had compelled mr. rasselyer-brown to drink. it is all very well for a junior clerk on twenty dollars a week to do his work on sandwiches and malted milk. in big business it is not possible. when a man begins to rise in business, as mr. rasselyer-brown had begun twenty-five years ago, he finds that if he wants to succeed he must cut malted milk clear out. in any position of responsibility a man has got to drink. no really big deal can be put through without it. if two keen men, sharp as flint, get together to make a deal in which each intends to outdo the other, the only way to succeed is for them to adjourn to some such place as the luncheon-room of the mausoleum club and both get partially drunk. this is what is called the personal element in business. and, beside it, plodding industry is nowhere. most of all do these principles hold true in such manly out-of-door enterprises as the forest and timber business, where one deals constantly with chief rangers, and pathfinders, and wood-stalkers, whose very names seem to suggest a horn of whiskey under a hemlock tree. but--let it be repeated and carefully understood--there was no excess about mr. rasselyer-brown's drinking. indeed, whatever he might be compelled to take during the day, and at the mausoleum club in the evening, after his return from his club at night mr. rasselyer-brown made it a fixed rule to take nothing. he might, perhaps, as he passed into the house, step into the dining-room and take a very small drink at the sideboard. but this he counted as part of the return itself, and not after it. and he might, if his brain were over-fatigued, drop down later in the night in his pajamas and dressing-gown when the house was quiet, and compose his mind with a brandy and water, or something suitable to the stillness of the hour. but this was not really a drink. mr. rasselyer-brown called it a _nip_; and of course any man may need a _nip_ at a time when he would scorn a drink. * * * * * but after all, a woman may find herself again in her daughter. there, at least, is consolation. for, as mrs. rasselyer-brown herself admitted, her daughter, dulphemia, was herself again. there were, of course, differences, certain differences of face and appearance. mr. snoop had expressed this fact exquisitely when he said that it was the difference between a burne-jones and a dante gabriel rossetti. but even at that the mother and daughter were so alike that people, certain people, were constantly mistaking them on the street. and as everybody that mistook them was apt to be asked to dine on five-dollar champagne there was plenty of temptation towards error. there is no doubt that dulphemia rasselyer-brown was a girl of remarkable character and intellect. so is any girl who has beautiful golden hair parted in thick bands on her forehead, and deep blue eyes soft as an italian sky. even the oldest and most serious men in town admitted that in talking to her they were aware of a grasp, a reach, a depth that surprised them. thus old judge longerstill, who talked to her at dinner for an hour on the jurisdiction of the interstate commerce commission, felt sure from the way in which she looked up in his face at intervals and said, "how interesting!" that she had the mind of a lawyer. and mr. brace, the consulting engineer, who showed her on the table-cloth at dessert with three forks and a spoon the method in which the overflow of the spillway of the gatun dam is regulated, felt assured, from the way she leaned her face on her hand sideways and said, "how extraordinary!" that she had the brain of an engineer. similarly foreign visitors to the social circles of the city were delighted with her. viscount fitzthistle, who explained to dulphemia for half an hour the intricacies of the irish situation, was captivated at the quick grasp she showed by asking him at the end, without a second's hesitation, "and which are the nationalists?" this kind of thing represents female intellect in its best form. every man that is really a man is willing to recognize it at once. as to the young men, of course they flocked to the rasselyer-brown residence in shoals. there were batches of them every sunday afternoon at five o'clock, encased in long black frock-coats, sitting very rigidly in upright chairs, trying to drink tea with one hand. one might see athletic young college men of the football team trying hard to talk about italian music; and italian tenors from the grand opera doing their best to talk about college football. there were young men in business talking about art, and young men in art talking about religion, and young clergymen talking about business. because, of course, the rasselyer-brown residence was the kind of cultivated home where people of education and taste are at liberty to talk about things they don't know, and to utter freely ideas that they haven't got. it was only now and again, when one of the professors from the college across the avenue came booming into the room, that the whole conversation was pulverized into dust under the hammer of accurate knowledge. the whole process was what was called, by those who understood such things, a _salon_. many people said that mrs. rasselyer-brown's afternoons at home were exactly like the delightful _salons_ of the eighteenth century: and whether the gatherings were or were not _salons_ of the eighteenth century, there is no doubt that mr. rasselyer-brown, under whose care certain favoured guests dropped quietly into the back alcove of the dining-room, did his best to put the gathering on a par with the best saloons of the twentieth. now it so happened that there had come a singularly slack moment in the social life of the city. the grand opera had sung itself into a huge deficit and closed. there remained nothing of it except the efforts of a committee of ladies to raise enough money to enable signor puffi to leave town, and the generous attempt of another committee to gather funds in order to keep signor pasti in the city. beyond this, opera was dead, though the fact that the deficit was nearly twice as large as it had been the year before showed that public interest in music was increasing. it was indeed a singularly trying time of the year. it was too early to go to europe; and too late to go to bermuda. it was too warm to go south, and yet still too cold to go north. in fact, one was almost compelled to stay at home--which was dreadful. as a result mrs. rasselyer-brown and her three hundred friends moved backwards and forwards on plutoria avenue, seeking novelty in vain. they washed in waves of silk from tango teas to bridge afternoons. they poured in liquid avalanches of colour into crowded receptions, and they sat in glittering rows and listened to lectures on the enfranchisement of the female sex. but for the moment all was weariness. now it happened, whether by accident or design, that just at this moment of general _ennui_ mrs. rasselyer-brown and her three hundred friends first heard of the presence in the city of mr. yahi-bahi, the celebrated oriental mystic. he was so celebrated that nobody even thought of asking who he was or where he came from. they merely told one another, and repeated it, that he was _the_ celebrated yahi-bahi. they added for those who needed the knowledge that the name was pronounced yahhy-bahhy, and that the doctrine taught by mr. yahi-bahi was boohooism. this latter, if anyone inquired further, was explained to be a form of shoodooism, only rather more intense. in fact, it was esoteric--on receipt of which information everybody remarked at once how infinitely superior the oriental peoples are to ourselves. now as mrs. rasselyer-brown was always a leader in everything that was done in the best circles on plutoria avenue, she was naturally among the first to visit mr. yahi-bahi. "my dear," she said, in describing afterwards her experience to her bosom friend, miss snagg, "it was _most_ interesting. we drove away down to the queerest part of the city, and went to the strangest little house imaginable, up the narrowest stairs one ever saw--quite eastern, in fact, just like a scene out of the koran." "how fascinating!" said miss snagg. but as a matter of fact, if mr. yahi-bahi's house had been inhabited, as it might have been, by a streetcar conductor or a railway brakesman, mrs. rasselyer-brown wouldn't have thought it in any way peculiar or fascinating. "it was all hung with curtains inside," she went on, "with figures of snakes and indian gods, perfectly weird." "and did you see mr. yahi-bahi?" asked miss snagg. "oh no, my dear. i only saw his assistant mr. ram spudd; such a queer little round man, a bengalee, i believe. he put his back against a curtain and spread out his arms sideways and wouldn't let me pass. he said that mr. yahi-bahi was in meditation and mustn't be disturbed." "how delightful!" echoed miss snagg. but in reality mr. yahi-bahi was sitting behind the curtain eating a ten-cent can of pork and beans. "what i like most about eastern people," went on mrs. rasselyer-brown, "is their wonderful delicacy of feeling. after i had explained about my invitation to mr. yahi-bahi to come and speak to us on boohooism, and was going away, i took a dollar bill out of my purse and laid it on the table. you should have seen the way mr. ram spudd took it. he made the deepest salaam and said, 'isis guard you, beautiful lady.' such perfect courtesy, and yet with the air of scorning the money. as i passed out i couldn't help slipping another dollar into his hand, and he took it as if utterly unaware of it, and muttered, 'osiris keep you, o flower of women!' and as i got into the motor i gave him another dollar and he said, 'osis and osiris both prolong your existence, o lily of the ricefield,' and after he had said it he stood beside the door of the motor and waited without moving till i left. he had such a strange, rapt look, as if he were still expecting something!" "how exquisite!" murmured miss snagg. it was her business in life to murmur such things as this for mrs. rasselyer-brown. on the whole, reckoning grand opera tickets and dinners, she did very well out of it. "is it not?" said mrs. rasselyer-brown. "so different from our men. i felt so ashamed of my chauffeur, our new man, you know; he seemed such a contrast beside ram spudd. the rude way in which the opened the door, and the rude way in which he climbed on to his own seat, and the _rudeness_ with which he turned on the power--i felt positively ashamed. and he so managed it--i am sure he did it on purpose--that the car splashed a lot of mud over mr. spudd as it started." yet, oddly enough, the opinion of other people on this new chauffeur, that of miss dulphemia rasselyer-brown herself, for example, to whose service he was specially attached, was very different. the great recommendation of him in the eyes of miss dulphemia and her friends, and the thing that gave him a touch of mystery was--and what higher qualification can a chauffeur want?--that he didn't look like a chauffeur at all. "my dear dulphie," whispered miss philippa furlong, the rector's sister (who was at that moment dulphemia's second self), as they sat behind the new chauffeur, "don't tell me that he is a chauffeur, because he _isn't_. he can chauffe, of course, but that's nothing." for the new chauffeur had a bronzed face, hard as metal, and a stern eye; and when he put on a chauffeur's overcoat some how it seemed to turn into a military greatcoat; and even when he put on the round cloth cap of his profession it was converted straightway into a military shako. and by miss dulphemia and her friends it was presently reported--or was invented?--that he had served in the philippines; which explained at once the scar upon his forehead, which must have been received at iloilo, or huila-huila, or some other suitable place. but what affected miss dulphemia brown herself was the splendid rudeness of the chauffeur's manner. it was so different from that of the young men of the _salon_. thus, when mr. sikleigh snoop handed her into the car at any time he would dance about saying, "allow me," and "permit me," and would dive forward to arrange the robes. but the philippine chauffeur merely swung the door open and said to dulphemia, "get in," and then slammed it. this, of course, sent a thrill up the spine and through the imagination of miss dulphemia rasselyer-brown, because it showed that the chauffeur was a gentleman in disguise. she thought it very probable that he was a british nobleman, a younger son, very wild, of a ducal family; and she had her own theories as to why he had entered the service of the rasselyer-browns. to be quite candid about it, she expected that the philippine chauffeur meant to elope with her, and every time he drove her from a dinner or a dance she sat back luxuriously, wishing and expecting the elopement to begin. * * * * * but for the time being the interest of dulphemia, as of everybody else that was anybody at all, centred round mr. yahi-bahi and the new cult of boohooism. after the visit of mrs. rasselyer-brown a great number of ladies, also in motors, drove down to the house of mr. yahi-bahi. and all of them, whether they saw mr. yahi-bahi himself or his bengalee assistant, mr. ram spudd, came back delighted. "such exquisite tact!" said one. "such delicacy! as i was about to go i laid a five dollar gold piece on the edge of the little table. mr. spudd scarcely seemed to see it. he murmured, 'osiris help you!' and pointed to the ceiling. i raised my eyes instinctively, and when i lowered them the money had disappeared. i think he must have caused it to vanish." "oh, i'm sure he did," said the listener. others came back with wonderful stories of mr. yahi-bahi's occult powers, especially his marvellous gift of reading the future. mrs. buncomhearst, who had just lost her third husband--by divorce--had received from mr. yahi-bahi a glimpse into the future that was almost uncanny in its exactness. she had asked for a divination, and mr. yahi-bahi had effected one by causing her to lay six ten-dollar pieces on the table arranged in the form of a mystic serpent. over these he had bent and peered deeply, as if seeking to unravel their meaning, and finally he had given her the prophecy, "many things are yet to happen before others begin." "how _does_ he do it?" asked everybody. * * * * * as a result of all this it naturally came about that mr. yahi-bahi and mr. ram spudd were invited to appear at the residence of mrs. rasselyer-brown; and it was understood that steps would be taken to form a special society, to be known as the yahi-bahi oriental society. mr. sikleigh snoop, the sex-poet, was the leading spirit in the organization. he had a special fitness for the task: he had actually resided in india. in fact, he had spent six weeks there on a stop-over ticket of a round-the-world dollar steamship pilgrimage; and he knew the whole country from jehumbapore in bhootal to jehumbalabad in the carnatic. so he was looked upon as a great authority on india, china, mongolia, and all such places, by the ladies of plutoria avenue. next in importance was mrs. buncomhearst, who became later, by a perfectly natural process, the president of the society. she was already president of the daughters of the revolution, a society confined exclusively to the descendants of washington's officers and others; she was also president of the sisters of england, an organization limited exclusively to women born in england and elsewhere; of the daughters of kossuth, made up solely of hungarians and friends of hungary and other nations; and of the circle of franz joseph, which was composed exclusively of the partisans, and others, of austria. in fact, ever since she had lost her third husband, mrs. buncomhearst had thrown herself--that was her phrase--into outside activities. her one wish was, on her own statement, to lose herself. so very naturally mrs. rasselyer-brown looked at once to mrs. buncomhearst to preside over the meetings of the new society. * * * * * the large dining-room at the rasselyer-browns' had been cleared out as a sort of auditorium, and in it some fifty or sixty of mrs. rasselyer-brown's more intimate friends had gathered. the whole meeting was composed of ladies, except for the presence of one or two men who represented special cases. there was, of course, little mr. spillikins, with his vacuous face and football hair, who was there, as everybody knew, on account of dulphemia; and there was old judge longerstill, who sat leaning on a gold-headed stick with his head sideways, trying to hear some fraction of what was being said. he came to the gathering in the hope that it would prove a likely place for seconding a vote of thanks and saying a few words--half an hour's talk, perhaps--on the constitution of the united states. failing that, he felt sure that at least someone would call him "this eminent old gentleman," and even that was better than staying at home. but for the most part the audience was composed of women, and they sat in a little buzz of conversation waiting for mr. yahi-bahi. "i wonder," called mrs. buncomhearst from the chair, "if some lady would be good enough to write minutes? miss snagg, i wonder if you would be kind enough to write minutes? could you?" "i shall be delighted," said miss snagg, "but i'm afraid there's hardly time to write them before we begin, is there?" "oh, but it would be all right to write them _afterwards_," chorussed several ladies who understood such things; "it's quite often done that way." "and i should like to move that we vote a constitution," said a stout lady with a double eye-glass. "is that carried?" said mrs. buncomhearst. "all those in favour please signify." nobody stirred. "carried," said the president. "and perhaps you would be good enough, mrs. fyshe," she said, turning towards the stout lady, "to _write_ the constitution." "do you think it necessary to _write_ it?" said mrs. fyshe. "i should like to move, if i may, that i almost wonder whether it is necessary to write the constitution--unless, of course, anybody thinks that we really ought to." "ladies," said the president, "you have heard the motion. all those against it--" there was no sign. "all those in favour of it--" there was still no sign. "lost," she said. then, looking across at the clock on the mantel-piece, and realizing that mr. yahi-bahi must have been delayed and that something must be done, she said: "and now, ladies, as we have in our midst a most eminent gentleman who probably has thought more deeply about constitutions than--" all eyes turned at once towards judge longerstill, but as fortune had it at this very moment mr. sikleigh snoop entered, followed by mr. yahi-bahi and mr. ram spudd. mr. yahi-bahi was tall. his drooping oriental costume made him taller still. he had a long brown face and liquid brown eyes of such depth that when he turned them full upon the ladies before him a shiver of interest and apprehension followed in the track of his glance. "my dear," said miss snagg afterwards, "he seemed simply to see right through us." this was correct. he did. mr. ram spudd presented a contrast to his superior. he was short and round, with a dimpled mahogany face and eyes that twinkled in it like little puddles of molasses. his head was bound in a turban and his body was swathed in so many bands and sashes that he looked almost circular. the clothes of both mr. yahi-bahi and ram spudd were covered with the mystic signs of buddha and the seven serpents of vishnu. it was impossible, of course, for mr. yahi-bahi or mr. ram spudd to address the audience. their knowledge of english was known to be too slight for that. their communications were expressed entirely through the medium of mr. snoop, and even he explained afterwards that it was very difficult. the only languages of india which he was able to speak, he said, with any fluency were gargamic and gumaic both of these being old dravidian dialects with only two hundred and three words in each, and hence in themselves very difficult to converse in. mr. yahi-bahi answered in what mr. snoop understood to be the iramic of the vedas, a very rich language, but one which unfortunately he did not understand. the dilemma is one familiar to all oriental scholars. all of this mr. snoop explained in the opening speech which he proceeded to make. and after this he went on to disclose, amid deep interest, the general nature of the cult of boohooism. he said that they could best understand it if he told them that its central doctrine was that of bahee. indeed, the first aim of all followers of the cult was to attain to bahee. anybody who could spend a certain number of hours each day, say sixteen, in silent meditation on boohooism would find his mind gradually reaching a condition of bahee. the chief aim of bahee itself was sacrifice: a true follower of the cult must be willing to sacrifice his friends, or his relatives, and even strangers, in order to reach bahee. in this way one was able fully to realize oneself and enter into the higher indifference. beyond this, further meditation and fasting--by which was meant living solely on fish, fruit, wine, and meat--one presently attained to complete swaraj or control of self, and might in time pass into the absolute nirvana, or the negation of emptiness, the supreme goal of boohooism. as a first step to all this, mr. snoop explained, each neophyte or candidate for holiness must, after searching his own heart, send ten dollars to mr. yahi-bahi. gold, it appeared, was recognized in the cult of boohooism as typifying the three chief virtues, whereas silver or paper money did not; even national banknotes were only regarded as do or, a halfway palliation; and outside currencies such as canadian or mexican bills were looked upon as entirely boo, or contemptible. the oriental view of money, said mr. snoop, was far superior to our own, but it also might be attained by deep thought, and, as a beginning, by sending ten dollars to mr. yahi-bahi. after this mr. snoop, in conclusion, read a very beautiful hindu poem, translating it as he went along. it began, "o cow, standing beside the ganges, and apparently without visible occupation," and it was voted exquisite by all who heard it. the absence of rhyme and the entire removal of ideas marked it as far beyond anything reached as yet by occidental culture. when mr. snoop had concluded, the president called upon judge longerstill for a few words of thanks, which he gave, followed by a brief talk on the constitution of the united states. after this the society was declared constituted, mr. yahi-bahi made four salaams, one to each point of the compass, and the meeting dispersed. and that evening, over fifty dinner tables, everybody discussed the nature of bahee, and tried in vain to explain it to men too stupid to understand. * * * * * now it so happened that on the very afternoon of this meeting at mrs. rasselyer-brown's, the philippine chauffeur did a strange and peculiar thing. he first asked mr. rasselyer-brown for a few hours' leave of absence to attend the funeral of his mother in-law. this was a request which mr. rasselyer-brown, on principle, never refused to a man-servant. whereupon, the philippine chauffeur, no longer attired as one, visited the residence of mr. yahi-bahi. he let himself in with a marvellous little key which he produced from a very wonderful bunch of such. he was in the house for nearly half an hour, and when he emerged, the notebook in his breast pocket, had there been an eye to read it, would have been seen to be filled with stranger details in regard to oriental mysticism than even mr. yahi-bahi had given to the world. so strange were they that before the philippine chauffeur returned to the rasselyer-brown residence he telegraphed certain and sundry parts of them to new york. but why he should have addressed them to the head of a detective bureau instead of to a college of oriental research it passes the imagination to conceive. but as the chauffeur duly reappeared at motor-time in the evening the incident passed unnoticed. * * * * * it is beyond the scope of the present narrative to trace the progress of boohooism during the splendid but brief career of the yahi-bahi oriental society. there could be no doubt of its success. its principles appealed with great strength to all the more cultivated among the ladies of plutoria avenue. there was something in the oriental mysticism of its doctrines which rendered previous belief stale and puerile. the practice of the sacred rites began at once. the ladies' counters of the plutorian banks were inundated with requests for ten-dollar pieces in exchange for banknotes. at dinner in the best houses nothing was eaten except a thin soup (or bru), followed by fish, succeeded by meat or by game, especially such birds as are particularly pleasing to buddha, as the partridge, the pheasant, and the woodcock. after this, except for fruits and wine, the principle of swaraj, or denial of self, was rigidly imposed. special oriental dinners of this sort were given, followed by listening to the reading of oriental poetry, with closed eyes and with the mind as far as possible in a state of stoj, or negation of thought. by this means the general doctrine of boohooism spread rapidly. indeed, a great many of the members of the society soon attained to a stage of bahee, or the higher indifference, that it would have been hard to equal outside of juggapore or jumbumbabad. for example, when mrs. buncomhearst learned of the remarriage of her second husband--she had lost him three years before, owing to a difference of opinion on the emancipation of women--she showed the most complete bahee possible. and when miss snagg learned that her brother in venezuela had died--a very sudden death brought on by drinking rum for seventeen years--and had left her ten thousand dollars, the bahee which she exhibited almost amounted to nirvana. in fact, the very general dissemination of the oriental idea became more and more noticeable with each week that passed. some members attained to so complete a bahee, or higher indifference, that they even ceased to attend the meetings of the society; others reached a swaraj, or control of self, so great that they no longer read its pamphlets; while others again actually passed into nirvana, to a complete negation of self, so rapidly that they did not even pay their subscriptions. but features of this sort, of course, are familiar wherever a successful occult creed makes its way against the prejudices of the multitude. the really notable part of the whole experience was the marvellous demonstration of occult power which attended the final seance of the society, the true nature of which is still wrapped in mystery. for some weeks it had been rumoured that a very special feat or demonstration of power by mr. yahi-bahi was under contemplation. in fact, the rapid spread of swaraj and of nirvana among the members rendered such a feat highly desirable. just what form the demonstration would take was for some time a matter of doubt. it was whispered at first that mr. yahi-bahi would attempt the mysterious eastern rite of burying ram spudd alive in the garden of the rasselyer-brown residence and leaving him there in a state of stoj, or suspended inanition, for eight days. but this project was abandoned, owing to some doubt, apparently, in the mind of mr. ram spudd as to his astral fitness for the high state of stoj necessitated by the experiment. at last it became known to the members of the poosh, or inner circle, under the seal of confidence, that mr. yahi-bahi would attempt nothing less than the supreme feat of occultism, namely, a reincarnation, or more correctly a reastralization of buddha. the members of the inner circle shivered with a luxurious sense of mystery when they heard of it. "has it ever been done before?" they asked of mr. snoop. "only a few times," he said; "once, i believe, by jam-bum, the famous yogi of the carnatic; once, perhaps twice, by boohoo, the founder of the sect. but it is looked upon as extremely rare. mr. yahi tells me that the great danger is that, if the slightest part of the formula is incorrectly observed, the person attempting the astralization is swallowed up into nothingness. however, he declares himself willing to try." * * * * * the seance was to take place at mrs. rasselyer-brown's residence, and was to be at midnight. "at midnight!" said each member in surprise. and the answer was, "yes, at midnight. you see, midnight here is exactly midday in allahabad in india." this explanation was, of course, ample. "midnight," repeated everybody to everybody else, "is exactly midday in allahabad." that made things perfectly clear. whereas if midnight had been midday in timbuctoo the whole situation would have been different. each of the ladies was requested to bring to the seance some ornament of gold; but it must be plain gold, without any setting of stones. it was known already that, according to the cult of boohooism, gold, plain gold, is the seat of the three virtues--beauty, wisdom and grace. therefore, according to the creed of boohooism, anyone who has enough gold, plain gold, is endowed with these virtues and is all right. all that is needed is to have enough of it; the virtues follow as a consequence. but for the great experiment the gold used must not be set with stones, with the one exception of rubies, which are known to be endowed with the three attributes of hindu worship, modesty, loquacity, and pomposity. in the present case it was found that as a number of ladies had nothing but gold ornaments set with diamonds, a second exception was made; especially as mr. yahi-bahi, on appeal, decided that diamonds, though less pleasing to buddha than rubies, possessed the secondary hindu virtues of divisibility, movability, and disposability. on the evening in question the residence of mrs. rasselyer-brown might have been observed at midnight wrapped in utter darkness. no lights were shown. a single taper, brought by ram spudd from the taj mohal, and resembling in its outer texture those sold at the five-and-ten store near mr. spudd's residence, burned on a small table in the vast dining-room. the servants had been sent upstairs and expressly enjoined to retire at half past ten. moreover, mr. rasselyer-brown had had to attend that evening, at the mausoleum club, a meeting of the trustees of the church of st. asaph, and he had come home at eleven o'clock, as he always did after diocesan work of this sort, quite used up; in fact, so fatigued that he had gone upstairs to his own suite of rooms sideways, his knees bending under him. so utterly used up was he with his church work that, as far as any interest in what might be going on in his own residence, he had attained to a state of bahee, or higher indifference, that even buddha might have envied. the guests, as had been arranged, arrived noiselessly and on foot. all motors were left at least a block away. they made their way up the steps of the darkened house, and were admitted without ringing, the door opening silently in front of them. mr. yahi-bahi and mr. ram spudd, who had arrived on foot carrying a large parcel, were already there, and were behind a screen in the darkened room, reported to be in meditation. at a whispered word from mr. snoop, who did duty at the door, all furs and wraps were discarded in the hall and laid in a pile. then the guests passed silently into the great dining room. there was no light in it except the dim taper which stood on a little table. on this table each guest, as instructed, laid an ornament of gold, and at the same time was uttered in a low voice the word ksvoo. this means, "o buddha, i herewith lay my unworthy offering at thy feet; take it and keep it for ever." it was explained that this was only a form. * * * * * "what is he doing?" whispered the assembled guests as they saw mr. yahi-bahi pass across the darkened room and stand in front of the sideboard. "hush!" said mr. snoop; "he's laying the propitiatory offering for buddha." "it's an indian rite," whispered mrs. rasselyer-brown. mr. yahi-bahi could be seen dimly moving to and fro in front of the sideboard. there was a faint clinking of glass. "he has to set out a glass of burmese brandy, powdered over with nutmeg and aromatics," whispered mrs. rasselyer-brown. "i had the greatest hunt to get it all for him. he said that nothing but burmese brandy would do, because in the hindu religion the god can only be invoked with burmese brandy, or, failing that, hennessy's with three stars, which is not entirely displeasing to buddha." "the aromatics," whispered mr. snoop, "are supposed to waft a perfume or incense to reach the nostrils of the god. the glass of propitiatory wine and the aromatic spices are mentioned in the vishnu-buddayat." mr. yahi-bahi, his preparations completed, was now seen to stand in front of the sideboard bowing deeply four times in an oriental salaam. the light of the single taper had by this time burned so dim that his movements were vague and uncertain. his body cast great flickering shadows on the half-seen wall. from his throat there issued a low wail in which the word wah! wah! could be distinguished. the excitement was intense. "what does wah mean?" whispered mr. spillikins. "hush!" said mr. snoop; "it means, 'o buddha, wherever thou art in thy lofty nirvana, descend yet once in astral form before our eyes!'" mr. yahi-bahi rose. he was seen to place one finger on his lips and then, silently moving across the room, he disappeared behind the screen. of what mr. ram spudd was doing during this period there is no record. it was presumed that he was still praying. the stillness was now absolute. "we must wait in perfect silence," whispered mr. snoop from the extreme tips of his lips. everybody sat in strained intensity, silent, looking towards the vague outline of the sideboard. the minutes passed. no one moved. all were spellbound in expectancy. still the minutes passed. the taper had flickered down till the great room was almost in darkness. could it be that by some neglect in the preparations, the substitution perhaps of the wrong brandy, the astralization could not be effected? but no. quite suddenly, it seemed, everybody in the darkened room was aware of a _presence_. that was the word as afterwards repeated in a hundred confidential discussions. a _presence_. one couldn't call it a body. it wasn't. it was a figure, an astral form, a presence. "buddha!" they gasped as they looked at it. just how the figure entered the room, the spectators could never afterwards agree. some thought it appeared through the wall, deliberately astralizing itself as it passed through the bricks. others seemed to have seen it pass in at the farther door of the room, as if it had astralized itself at the foot of the stairs in the back of the hall outside. be that as it may, there it stood before them, the astralized shape of the indian deity, so that to every lip there rose the half-articulated word, "buddha"; or at least to every lip except that of mrs. rasselyer-brown. from her there came no sound. the figure as afterwards described was attired in a long _shirak_, such as is worn by the grand llama of tibet, and resembling, if the comparison were not profane, a modern dressing-gown. the legs, if one might so call them, of the apparition were enwrapped in loose punjahamas, a word which is said to be the origin of the modern pyjamas; while the feet, if they were feet, were encased in loose slippers. buddha moved slowly across the room. arrived at the sideboard the astral figure paused, and even in the uncertain light buddha was seen to raise and drink the propitiatory offering. that much was perfectly clear. whether buddha spoke or not is doubtful. certain of the spectators thought that he said, 'must a fagotnit', which is hindustanee for "blessings on this house." to mrs. rasselyer-brown's distracted mind it seemed as if buddha said, "i must have forgotten it" but this wild fancy she never breathed to a soul. silently buddha recrossed the room, slowly wiping one arm across his mouth after the hindu gesture of farewell. for perhaps a full minute after the disappearance of buddha not a soul moved. then quite suddenly mrs. rasselyer-brown, unable to stand the tension any longer, pressed an electric switch and the whole room was flooded with light. there sat the affrighted guests staring at one another with pale faces. but, to the amazement and horror of all, the little table in the centre stood empty--not a single gem, not a fraction of the gold that had lain upon it was left. all had disappeared. the truth seemed to burst upon everyone at once. there was no doubt of what had happened. the gold and the jewels had been deastralized. under the occult power of the vision they had been demonetized, engulfed into the astral plane along with the vanishing buddha. filled with the sense of horror still to come, somebody pulled aside the little screen. they fully expected to find the lifeless bodies of mr. yahi-bahi and the faithful ram spudd. what they saw before them was more dreadful still. the outer oriental garments of the two devotees lay strewn upon the floor. the long sash of yahi-bahi and the thick turban of ram spudd were side by side near them; almost sickening in its repulsive realism was the thick black head of hair of the junior devotee, apparently torn from his scalp as if by lightning and bearing a horrible resemblance to the cast-off wig of an actor. the truth was too plain. "they are engulfed!" cried a dozen voices at once. it was realized in a flash that yahi-bahi and ram spudd had paid the penalty of their daring with their lives. through some fatal neglect, against which they had fairly warned the participants of the seance, the two orientals had been carried bodily in the astral plane. "how dreadful!" murmured mr. snoop. "we must have made some awful error." "are they deastralized?" murmured mrs. buncomhearst. "not a doubt of it," said mr. snoop. and then another voice in the group was heard to say, "we must hush it up. we _can't_ have it known!" on which a chorus of voices joined in, everybody urging that it must be hushed up. "couldn't you try to reastralize them?" said somebody to mr. snoop. "no, no," said mr. snoop, still shaking. "better not try to. we must hush it up if we can." and the general assent to this sentiment showed that, after all, the principles of bahee, or indifference to others, had taken a real root in the society. "hush it up," cried everybody, and there was a general move towards the hall. "good heavens!" exclaimed mrs. buncomhearst; "our wraps!" "deastralized!" said the guests. there was a moment of further consternation as everybody gazed at the spot where the ill-fated pile of furs and wraps had lain. "never mind," said everybody, "let's go without them--don't stay. just think if the police should--" and at the word police, all of a sudden there was heard in the street the clanging of a bell and the racing gallop of the horses of the police patrol wagon. "the police!" cried everybody. "hush it up! hush it up!" for of course the principles of bahee are not known to the police. in another moment the doorbell of the house rang with a long and violent peal, and in a second as it seemed, the whole hall was filled with bulky figures uniformed in blue. "it's all right, mrs. rasselyer-brown," cried a loud, firm voice from the sidewalk. "we have them both. everything is here. we got them before they'd gone a block. but if you don't mind, the police must get a couple of names for witnesses in the warrant." it was the philippine chauffeur. but he was no longer attired as such. he wore the uniform of an inspector of police, and there was the metal badge of the detective department now ostentatiously outside his coat. and beside him, one on each side of him, there stood the deastralized forms of yahi-bahi and ram spudd. they wore long overcoats, doubtless the contents of the magic parcels, and the philippine chauffeur had a grip of iron on the neck of each as they stood. mr. spudd had lost his oriental hair, and the face of mr. yahi-bahi, perhaps in the struggle which had taken place, had been scraped white in patches. they were making no attempt to break away. indeed, mr. spudd, with that complete bahee, or submission to fate, which is attained only by long services in state penitentiaries, was smiling and smoking a cigarette. "we were waiting for them," explained a tall police officer to the two or three ladies who now gathered round him with a return of courage. "they had the stuff in a hand-cart and were pushing it away. the chief caught them at the corner, and rang the patrol from there. you'll find everything all right, i think, ladies," he added, as a burly assistant was seen carrying an armload of furs up the steps. somehow many of the ladies realized at the moment what cheery, safe, reliable people policemen in blue are, and what a friendly, familiar shelter they offer against the wiles of oriental occultism. "are they old criminals?" someone asked. "yes, ma'am. they've worked this same thing in four cities already, and both of them have done time, and lots of it. they've only been out six months. no need to worry over them," he concluded with a shrug of the shoulders. so the furs were restored and the gold and the jewels parcelled out among the owners, and in due course mr. yahi-bahi and mr. ram spudd were lifted up into the patrol wagon where they seated themselves with a composure worthy of the best traditions of jehumbabah and bahoolapore. in fact, mr. spudd was heard to address the police as "boys," and to remark that they had "got them good" that time. so the seance ended and the guests vanished, and the yahi-bahi society terminated itself without even a vote of dissolution. and in all the later confidential discussions of the episode only one point of mysticism remained. after they had time really to reflect on it, free from all danger of arrest, the members of the society realized that on one point the police were entirely off the truth of things. for mr. yahi-bahi, whether a thief or not, and whether he came from the orient, or, as the police said, from missouri, had actually succeeded in reastralizing buddha. nor was anyone more emphatic on this point than mrs. rasselyer-brown herself. "for after all," she said, "if it was not buddha, who was it?" and the question was never answered. chapter five: the love story of mr. peter spillikins almost any day, on plutoria avenue or thereabouts, you may see little mr. spillikins out walking with his four tall sons, who are practically as old as himself. to be exact, mr. spillikins is twenty-four, and bob, the oldest of the boys, must be at least twenty. their exact ages are no longer known, because, by a dreadful accident, their mother forgot them. this was at a time when the boys were all at mr. wackem's academy for exceptional youths in the foothills of tennessee, and while their mother, mrs. everleigh, was spending the winter on the riviera and felt that for their own sake she must not allow herself to have the boys with her. but now, of course, since mrs. everleigh has remarried and become mrs. everleigh-spillikins there is no need to keep them at mr. wackem's any longer. mr. spillikins is able to look after them. mr. spillikins generally wears a little top hat and an english morning coat. the boys are in eton jackets and black trousers, which, at their mother's wish, are kept just a little too short for them. this is because mrs. everleigh-spillikins feels that the day will come some day--say fifteen years hence--when the boys will no longer be children, and meantime it is so nice to feel that they are still mere boys. bob is the eldest, but sib the youngest is the tallest, whereas willie the third boy is the dullest, although this has often been denied by those who claim that gib the second boy is just a trifle duller. thus at any rate there is a certain equality and good fellowship all round. mrs. everleigh-spillikins is not to be seen walking with them. she is probably at the race-meet, being taken there by captain cormorant of the united states navy, which mr. spillikins considers very handsome of him. every now and then the captain, being in the navy, is compelled to be at sea for perhaps a whole afternoon or even several days; in which case mrs. everleigh-spillikins is very generally taken to the hunt club or the country club by lieutenant hawk, which mr. spillikins regards as awfully thoughtful of him. or if lieutenant hawk is also out of town for the day, as he sometimes has to be, because he is in the united states army, mrs. everleigh-spillikins is taken out by old colonel shake, who is in the state militia and who is at leisure all the time. during their walks on plutoria avenue one may hear the four boys addressing mr. spillikins as "father" and "dad" in deep bull-frog voices. "say, dad," drawls bob, "couldn't we all go to the ball game?" "no. say, dad," says gib, "let's all go back to the house and play five-cent pool in the billiard-room." "all right, boys," says mr. spillikins. and a few minutes later one may see them all hustling up the steps of the everleigh-spillikins's mansion, quite eager at the prospect, and all talking together. * * * * * now the whole of this daily panorama, to the eye that can read it, represents the outcome of the tangled love story of mr. spillikins, which culminated during the summer houseparty at castel casteggio, the woodland retreat of mr. and mrs. newberry. but to understand the story one must turn back a year or so to the time when mr. peter spillikins used to walk on plutoria avenue alone, or sit in the mausoleum club listening to the advice of people who told him that he really ought to get married. * * * * * in those days the first thing that one noticed about mr. peter spillikins was his exalted view of the other sex. every time he passed a beautiful woman in the street he said to himself, "i say!" even when he met a moderately beautiful one he murmured, "by jove!" when an easter hat went sailing past, or a group of summer parasols stood talking on a leafy corner, mr. spillikins ejaculated, "my word!" at the opera and at tango teas his projecting blue eyes almost popped out of his head. similarly, if he happened to be with one of his friends, he would murmur, "i say, _do_ look at that beautiful girl," or would exclaim, "i say, don't look, but isn't that an awfully pretty girl across the street?" or at the opera, "old man, don't let her see you looking, but do you see that lovely girl in the box opposite?" one must add to this that mr. spillikins, in spite of his large and bulging blue eyes, enjoyed the heavenly gift of short sight. as a consequence he lived in a world of amazingly beautiful women. and as his mind was focused in the same way as his eyes he endowed them with all the virtues and graces which ought to adhere to fifty-dollar flowered hats and cerise parasols with ivory handles. nor, to do him justice, did mr. spillikins confine his attitude to his view of women alone. he brought it to bear on everything. every time he went to the opera he would come away enthusiastic, saying, "by jove, isn't it simply splendid! of course i haven't the ear to appreciate it--i'm not musical, you know--but even with the little that i know, it's great; it absolutely puts me to sleep." and of each new novel that he bought he said, "it's a perfectly wonderful book! of course i haven't the head to understand it, so i didn't finish it, but it's simply thrilling." similarly with painting, "it's one of the most marvellous pictures i ever saw," he would say. "of course i've no eye for pictures, and i couldn't see anything in it, but it's wonderful!" the career of mr. spillikins up to the point of which we are speaking had hitherto not been very satisfactory, or at least not from the point of view of mr. boulder, who was his uncle and trustee. mr. boulder's first idea had been to have mr. spillikins attend the university. dr. boomer, the president, had done his best to spread abroad the idea that a university education was perfectly suitable even for the rich; that it didn't follow that because a man was a university graduate he need either work or pursue his studies any further; that what the university aimed to do was merely to put a certain stamp upon a man. that was all. and this stamp, according to the tenor of the president's convocation addresses, was perfectly harmless. no one ought to be afraid of it. as a result, a great many of the very best young men in the city, who had no need for education at all, were beginning to attend college. "it marked," said dr. boomer, "a revolution." mr. spillikins himself was fascinated with his studies. the professors seemed to him living wonders. "by jove!" he said, "the professor of mathematics is a marvel. you ought to see him explaining trigonometry on the blackboard. you can't understand a word of it." he hardly knew which of his studies he liked best. "physics," he said, "is a wonderful study. i got five per cent in it. but, by jove! i had to work for it. i'd go in for it altogether if they'd let me." but that was just the trouble--they wouldn't. and so in course of time mr. spillikins was compelled, for academic reasons, to abandon his life work. his last words about it were, "gad! i nearly passed in trigonometry!" and he always said afterwards that he had got a tremendous lot out of the university. after that, as he had to leave the university, his trustee, mr. boulder, put mr. spillikins into business. it was, of course, his own business, one of the many enterprises for which mr. spillikins, ever since he was twenty-one, had already been signing documents and countersigning cheques. so mr. spillikins found himself in a mahogany office selling wholesale oil. and he liked it. he said that business sharpened one up tremendously. "i'm afraid, mr. spillikins," a caller in the mahogany office would say, "that we can't meet you at five dollars. four seventy is the best we can do on the present market." "my dear chap," said mr. spillikins, "that's all right. after all, thirty cents isn't much, eh what? dash it, old man, we won't fight about thirty cents. how much do you want?" "well, at four seventy we'll take twenty thousand barrels." "by jove!" said mr. spillikins; "twenty thousand barrels. gad! you want a lot, don't you? pretty big sale, eh, for a beginner like me? i guess uncle'll be tickled to death." so tickled was he that after a few weeks of oil-selling mr. boulder urged mr. spillikins to retire, and wrote off many thousand dollars from the capital value of his estate. so after this there was only one thing for mr. spillikins to do, and everybody told him so--namely to get married. "spillikins," said his friends at the club after they had taken all his loose money over the card table, "you ought to get married." "think so?" said mr. spillikins. goodness knows he was willing enough. in fact, up to this point mr. spillikins's whole existence had been one long aspiring sigh directed towards the joys of matrimony. in his brief college days his timid glances had wandered by an irresistible attraction towards the seats on the right-hand side of the class room, where the girls of the first year sat, with golden pigtails down their backs, doing trigonometry. he would have married any of them. but when a girl can work out trigonometry at sight, what use can she possibly have for marriage? none. mr. spillikins knew this and it kept him silent. and even when the most beautiful girl in the class married the demonstrator and thus terminated her studies in her second year, spillikins realized that it was only because the man was, undeniably, a demonstrator and knew things. later on, when spillikins went into business and into society, the same fate pursued him. he loved, for at least six months, georgiana mcteague, the niece of the presbyterian minister of st. osoph's. he loved her so well that for her sake he temporarily abandoned his pew at st. asaph's, which was episcopalian, and listened to fourteen consecutive sermons on hell. but the affair got no further than that. once or twice, indeed, spillikins walked home with georgiana from church and talked about hell with her; and once her uncle asked him into the manse for cold supper after evening service, and they had a long talk about hell all through the meal and upstairs in the sitting-room afterwards. but somehow spillikins could get no further with it. he read up all he could about hell so as to be able to talk with georgiana, but in the end it failed: a young minister fresh from college came and preached at st. osoph's six special sermons on the absolute certainty of eternal punishment, and he married miss mcteague as a result of it. and, meantime, mr. spillikins had got engaged, or practically so, to adelina lightleigh; not that he had spoken to her, but he considered himself bound to her. for her sake he had given up hell altogether, and was dancing till two in the morning and studying action bridge out of a book. for a time he felt so sure that she meant to have him that he began bringing his greatest friend, edward ruff of the college football team, of whom spillikins was very proud, up to the lightleighs' residence. he specially wanted adelina and edward to be great friends, so that adelina and he might ask edward up to the house after he was married. and they got to be such great friends, and so quickly, that they were married in new york that autumn. after which spillikins used to be invited up to the house by edward and adelina. they both used to tell him how much they owed him; and they, too, used to join in the chorus and say, "you know, peter, you're awfully silly not to get married." now all this had happened and finished at about the time when the yahi-bahi society ran its course. at its first meeting mr. spillikins had met dulphemia rasselyer-brown. at the very sight of her he began reading up the life of buddha and a translation of the upanishads so as to fit himself to aspire to live with her. even when the society ended in disaster mr. spillikins's love only burned the stronger. consequently, as soon as he knew that mr. and mrs. rasselyer-brown were going away for the summer, and that dulphemia was to go to stay with the newberrys at castel casteggio, this latter place, the summer retreat of the newberrys, became the one spot on earth for mr. peter spillikins. naturally, therefore, mr. spillikins was presently transported to the seventh heaven when in due course of time he received a note which said, "we shall be so pleased if you can come out and spend a week or two with us here. we will send the car down to the thursday train to meet you. we live here in the simplest fashion possible; in fact, as mr. newberry says, we are just roughing it, but i am sure you don't mind for a change. dulphemia is with us, but we are quite a small party." the note was signed "margaret newberry" and was written on heavy cream paper with a silver monogram such as people use when roughing it. * * * * * the newberrys, like everybody else, went away from town in the summertime. mr. newberry being still in business, after a fashion, it would not have looked well for him to remain in town throughout the year. it would have created a bad impression on the market as to how much he was making. in fact, in the early summer everybody went out of town. the few who ever revisited the place in august reported that they hadn't seen a soul on the street. it was a sort of longing for the simple life, for nature, that came over everybody. some people sought it at the seaside, where nature had thrown out her broad plank walks and her long piers and her vaudeville shows. others sought it in the heart of the country, where nature had spread her oiled motor roads and her wayside inns. others, like the newberrys, preferred to "rough it" in country residences of their own. some of the people, as already said, went for business reasons, to avoid the suspicion of having to work all the year round. others went to europe to avoid the reproach of living always in america. others, perhaps most people, went for medical reasons, being sent away by their doctors. not that they were ill; but the doctors of plutoria avenue, such as doctor slyder, always preferred to send all their patients out of town during the summer months. no well-to-do doctor cares to be bothered with them. and of course patients, even when they are anxious to go anywhere on their own account, much prefer to be sent there by their doctor. "my dear madam," dr. slyder would say to a lady who, as he knew, was most anxious to go to virginia, "there's really nothing i can do for you." here he spoke the truth. "it's not a case of treatment. it's simply a matter of dropping everything and going away. now why don't you go for a month or two to some quiet place, where you will simply _do nothing?_" (she never, as he knew, did anything, anyway.) "what do you say to hot springs, virginia?--absolute quiet, good golf, not a soul there, plenty of tennis." or else he would say, "my dear madam, you're simply _worn out_. why don't you just drop everything and go to canada?--perfectly quiet, not a soul there, and, i believe, nowadays quite fashionable." thus, after all the patients had been sent away, dr. slyder and his colleagues of plutoria avenue managed to slip away themselves for a month or two, heading straight for paris and vienna. there they were able, so they said, to keep in touch with what continental doctors were doing. they probably were. now it so happened that both the parents of miss dulphemia rasselyer-brown had been sent out of town in this fashion. mrs. rasselyer-brown's distressing experience with yahi-bahi had left her in a condition in which she was utterly fit for nothing, except to go on a mediterranean cruise, with about eighty other people also fit for nothing. mr. rasselyer-brown himself, though never exactly an invalid, had confessed that after all the fuss of the yahi-bahi business he needed bracing up, needed putting into shape, and had put himself into dr. slyder's hands. the doctor had examined him, questioned him searchingly as to what he drank, and ended by prescribing port wine to be taken firmly and unflinchingly during the evening, and for the daytime, at any moment of exhaustion, a light cordial such as rye whiskey, or rum and vichy water. in addition to which dr. slyder had recommended mr. rasselyer-brown to leave town. "why don't you go down to nagahakett on the atlantic?" he said. "is that in maine?" said mr. rasselyer-brown in horror. "oh, dear me, no!" answered the doctor reassuringly. "it's in new brunswick, canada; excellent place, most liberal licence laws; first class cuisine and a bar in the hotel. no tourists, no golf, too cold to swim--just the place to enjoy oneself." so mr. rasselyer-brown had gone away also, and as a result dulphemia rasselyer-brown, at the particular moment of which we speak, was declared by the boudoir and society column of the _plutorian daily dollar_ to be staying with mr. and mrs. newberry at their charming retreat, castel casteggio. the newberrys belonged to the class of people whose one aim in the summer is to lead the simple life. mr. newberry himself said that his one idea of a vacation was to get right out into the bush, and put on old clothes, and just eat when he felt like it. this was why he had built castel casteggio. it stood about forty miles from the city, out among the wooded hills on the shore of a little lake. except for the fifteen or twenty residences like it that dotted the sides of the lake it was entirely isolated. the only way to reach it was by the motor road that wound its way among leafy hills from the railway station fifteen miles away. every foot of the road was private property, as all nature ought to be. the whole country about castel casteggio was absolutely primeval, or at any rate as primeval as scotch gardeners and french landscape artists could make it. the lake itself lay like a sparkling gem from nature's workshop--except that they had raised the level of it ten feet, stone-banked the sides, cleared out the brush, and put a motor road round it. beyond that it was pure nature. castel casteggio itself, a beautiful house of white brick with sweeping piazzas and glittering conservatories, standing among great trees with rolling lawns broken with flower-beds as the ground sloped to the lake, was perhaps the most beautiful house of all; at any rate, it was an ideal spot to wear old clothes in, to dine early (at . ) and, except for tennis parties, motor-boat parties, lawn teas, and golf, to live absolutely to oneself. it should be explained that the house was not called castel casteggio because the newberrys were italian: they were not; nor because they owned estates in italy: they didn't nor had travelled there: they hadn't. indeed, for a time they had thought of giving it a welsh name, or a scotch. but the beautiful country residence of the asterisk-thomsons had stood close by in the same primeval country was already called penny-gw-rydd, and the woodland retreat of the hyphen-joneses just across the little lake was called strathythan-na-clee, and the charming chalet of the wilson-smiths was called yodel-dudel; so it seemed fairer to select an italian name. * * * * * "by jove! miss furlong, how awfully good of you to come down!" the little suburban train--two cars only, both first class, for the train went nowhere except out into the primeval wilderness--had drawn up at the diminutive roadside station. mr. spillikins had alighted, and there was miss philippa furlong sitting behind the chauffeur in the newberrys' motor. she was looking as beautiful as only the younger sister of a high church episcopalian rector can look, dressed in white, the colour of saintliness, on a beautiful morning in july. there was no doubt about philippa furlong. her beauty was of that peculiar and almost sacred kind found only in the immediate neighbourhood of the high church clergy. it was admitted by all who envied or admired her that she could enter a church more gracefully, move more swimmingly up the aisle, and pray better than any girl on plutoria avenue. mr. spillikins, as he gazed at her in her white summer dress and wide picture hat, with her parasol nodding above her head, realized that after all, religion, as embodied in the younger sisters of the high church clergy, fills a great place in the world. "by jove!" he repeated, "how awfully good of you!" "not a bit," said philippa. "hop in. dulphemia was coming, but she couldn't. is that all you have with you?" the last remark was ironical. it referred to the two quite large steamer trunks of mr. spillikins that were being loaded, together with his suit-case, tennis racket, and golf kit, on to the fore part of the motor. mr. spillikins, as a young man of social experience, had roughed it before. he knew what a lot of clothes one needs for it. so the motor sped away, and went bowling noiselessly over the oiled road, and turning corners where the green boughs of the great trees almost swished in their faces, and rounding and twisting among curves of the hills as it carried spillikins and philippa away from the lower domain or ordinary fields and farms up into the enchanted country of private property and the magic castles of casteggio and penny-gw-rydd. mr. spillikins must have assured philippa at least a dozen times in starting off how awfully good it was of her to come down in the motor; and he was so pleased at her coming to meet him that philippa never even hinted that the truth was that she had expected somebody else on the same train. for to a girl brought up in the principles of the high church the truth is a very sacred thing. she keeps it to herself. and naturally, with such a sympathetic listener, it was not long before mr. spillikins had begun to talk of dulphemia and his hopes. "i don't know whether she really cares for me or not," said mr. spillikins, "but i have pretty good hope. the other day, or at least about two months ago, at one of the yahi-bahi meetings--you were not in that, were you?" he said breaking off. "only just at the beginning," said philippa; "we went to bermuda." "oh yes, i remember. do you know, i thought it pretty rough at the end, especially on ram spudd. i liked him. i sent him two pounds of tobacco to the penitentiary last week; you can get it in to them, you know, if you know how." "but what were you going to say?" asked philippa. "oh yes," said mr. spillikins. and he realized that he had actually drifted off the topic of dulphemia, a thing that had never happened to him before. "i was going to say that at one of the meetings, you know, i asked her if i might call her dulphemia." "and what did she say to that?" asked philippa. "she said she didn't care what i called her. so i think that looks pretty good, don't you?" "awfully good," said philippa. "and a little after that i took her slippers home from the charity ball at the grand palaver. archie jones took her home herself in his car, but i took her slippers. she'd forgotten them. i thought that a pretty good sign, wasn't it? you wouldn't let a chap carry round your slippers unless you knew him pretty well, would you, miss philippa?" "oh no, nobody would," said philippa. this of course, was a standing principle of the anglican church. "and a little after that dulphemia and charlie mostyn and i were walking to mrs. buncomhearst's musical, and we'd only just started along the street, when she stopped and sent me back for her music--me, mind you, not charlie. that seems to me awfully significant." "it seems to speak volumes," said philippa. "doesn't it?" said mr. spillikins. "you don't mind my telling you all about this miss philippa?" he added. incidentally mr. spillikins felt that it was all right to call her miss philippa, because she had a sister who was really miss furlong, so it would have been quite wrong, as mr. spillikins realized, to have called miss philippa by her surname. in any case, the beauty of the morning was against it. "i don't mind a bit," said philippa. "i think it's awfully nice of you to tell me about it." she didn't add that she knew all about it already. "you see," said mr. spillikins, "you're so awfully sympathetic. it makes it so easy to talk to you. with other girls, especially with clever ones, even with dulphemia. i often feel a perfect jackass beside them. but i don t feel that way with you at all." "don't you really?" said philippa, but the honest admiration in mr. spillikin's protruding blue eyes forbade a sarcastic answer. "by jove!" said mr. spillikins presently, with complete irrelevance, "i hope you don't mind my saying it, but you look awfully well in white--stunning." he felt that a man who was affianced, or practically so, was allowed the smaller liberty of paying honest compliments. "oh, this old thing," laughed philippa, with a contemptuous shake of her dress. "but up here, you know, we just wear anything." she didn't say that this old thing was only two weeks old and had cost eighty dollars, or the equivalent of one person's pew rent at st. asaph's for six months. and after that they had only time, so it seemed to mr. spillikins, for two or three remarks, and he had scarcely had leisure to reflect what a charming girl philippa had grown to be since she went to bermuda--the effect, no doubt, of the climate of those fortunate islands--when quite suddenly they rounded a curve into an avenue of nodding trees, and there were the great lawn and wide piazzas and the conservatories of castel casteggio right in front of them. "here we are," said philippa, "and there's mr. newberry out on the lawn." * * * * * "now, here," mr. newberry was saying a little later, waving his hand, "is where you get what i think the finest view of the place." he was standing at the corner of the lawn where it sloped, dotted with great trees, to the banks of the little lake, and was showing mr. spillikins the beauties of castel casteggio. mr. newberry wore on his short circular person the summer costume of a man taking his ease and careless of dress: plain white flannel trousers, not worth more than six dollars a leg, an ordinary white silk shirt with a rolled collar, that couldn't have cost more than fifteen dollars, and on his head an ordinary panama hat, say forty dollars. "by jove!" said mr. spillikins, as he looked about him at the house and the beautiful lawn with its great trees, "it's a lovely place." "isn't it?" said mr. newberry. "but you ought to have seen it when i took hold of it. to make the motor road alone i had to dynamite out about a hundred yards of rock, and then i fetched up cement, tons and tons of it, and boulders to buttress the embankment." "did you really!" said mr. spillikins, looking at mr. newberry with great respect. "yes, and even that was nothing to the house itself. do you know, i had to go at least forty feet for the foundations. first i went through about twenty feet of loose clay, after that i struck sand, and i'd no sooner got through that than, by george! i landed in eight feet of water. i had to pump it out; i think i took out a thousand gallons before i got clear down to the rock. then i took my solid steel beams in fifty-foot lengths," here mr. newberry imitated with his arms the action of a man setting up a steel beam, "and set them upright and bolted them on the rock. after that i threw my steel girders across, clapped on my roof rafters, all steel, in sixty-foot pieces, and then just held it easily, just supported it a bit, and let it sink gradually to its place." mr. newberry illustrated with his two arms the action of a huge house being allowed to sink slowly to a firm rest. "you don't say so!" said mr. spillikins, lost in amazement at the wonderful physical strength that mr. newberry must have. "excuse me just a minute," broke off mr. newberry, "while i smooth out the gravel where you're standing. you've rather disturbed it, i'm afraid." "oh, i'm awfully sorry," said mr. spillikins. "oh, not at all, not at all," said his host. "i don't mind in the least. it's only on account of mcalister." "who?" asked mr. spillikins. "my gardener. he doesn't care to have us walk on the gravel paths. it scuffs up the gravel so. but sometimes one forgets." it should be said here, for the sake of clearness, that one of the chief glories of castel casteggio lay in its servants. all of them, it goes without saying, had been brought from great britain. the comfort they gave to mr. and mrs. newberry was unspeakable. in fact, as they themselves admitted, servants of the kind are simply not to be found in america. "our scotch gardener," mrs. newberry always explained "is a perfect character. i don't know how we could get another like him. do you know, my dear, he simply won't allow us to pick the roses; and if any of us walk across the grass he is furious. and he positively refuses to let us use the vegetables. he told me quite plainly that if we took any of his young peas or his early cucumbers he would leave. we are to have them later on when he's finished growing them." "how delightful it is to have servants of that sort," the lady addressed would murmur; "so devoted and so different from servants on this side of the water. just imagine, my dear, my chauffeur, when i was in colorado, actually threatened to leave me merely because i wanted to reduce his wages. i think it's these wretched labour unions." "i'm sure it is. of course we have trouble with mcalister at times, but he's always very reasonable when we put things in the right light. last week, for example, i was afraid that we had gone too far with him. he is always accustomed to have a quart of beer every morning at half-past ten--the maids are told to bring it out to him, and after that he goes to sleep in the little arbour beside the tulip bed. and the other day when he went there he found that one of our guests who hadn't been told, was actually sitting in there reading. of course he was _furious_. i was afraid for the moment that he would give notice on the spot." "what _would_ you have done?" "positively, my dear, i don't know. but we explained to him at once that it was only an accident and that the person hadn't known and that of course it wouldn't occur again. after that he was softened a little, but he went off muttering to himself, and that evening he dug up all the new tulips and threw them over the fence. we saw him do it, but we didn't dare say anything." "oh no," echoed the other lady; "if you had you might have lost him." "exactly. and i don't think we could possibly get another man like him; at least, not on this side of the water." * * * * * "but come," said mr. newberry, after he had finished adjusting the gravel with his foot, "there are mrs. newberry and the girls on the verandah. let's go and join them." a few minutes later mr. spillikins was talking with mrs. newberry and dulphemia rasselyer-brown, and telling mrs. newberry what a beautiful house she had. beside them stood philippa furlong, and she had her arm around dulphemia's waist; and the picture that they thus made, with their heads close together, dulphemia's hair being golden and philippa's chestnut-brown, was such that mr. spillikins had no eyes for mrs. newberry nor for castel casteggio nor for anything. so much so that he practically didn't see at all the little girl in green that stood unobtrusively on the further side of mrs. newberry. indeed, though somebody had murmured her name in introduction, he couldn't have repeated it if asked two minutes afterwards. his eyes and his mind were elsewhere. but hers were not. for the little girl in green looked at mr. spillikins with wide eyes, and when she looked at him she saw all at once such wonderful things about him as nobody had ever seen before. for she could see from the poise of his head how awfully clever he was; and from the way he stood with his hands in his side pockets she could see how manly and brave he must be; and of course there was firmness and strength written all over him. in short, she saw as she looked such a peter spillikins as truly never existed, or could exist--or at least such a peter spillikins as no one else in the world had ever suspected before. all in a moment she was ever so glad that she accepted mrs. newberry's invitation to castel casteggio and hadn't been afraid to come. for the little girl in green, whose christian name was norah, was only what is called a poor relation of mrs. newberry, and her father was a person of no account whatever, who didn't belong to the mausoleum club or to any other club, and who lived, with norah, on a street that nobody who was anybody lived upon. norah had been asked up a few days before out of the city to give her air--which is the only thing that can be safely and freely given to poor relations. thus she had arrived at castel casteggio with one diminutive trunk, so small and shabby that even the servants who carried it upstairs were ashamed of it. in it were a pair of brand new tennis shoes (at ninety cents reduced to seventy-five) and a white dress of the kind that is called "almost evening," and such few other things as poor relations might bring with fear and trembling to join in the simple rusticity of the rich. thus stood norah looking at mr. spillikins. as for him, such is the contrariety of human things, he had no eyes for her at all. "what a perfectly charming house this is," mr. spillikins was saying. he always said this on such occasions, but it seemed to the little girl in green that he spoke with wonderful social ease. "i am so glad you think so," said mrs. newberry (this was what she always answered); "you've no idea what work it has been. this year we put in all this new glass in the east conservatory, over a thousand panes. such a tremendous business!" "i was just telling mr. spillikins," said mr. newberry, "about the work we had blasting out the motor road. you can see the gap where it lies better from here, i think, spillikins. i must have exploded a ton and a half of dynamite on it." "by jove!" said mr. spillikins; "it must be dangerous work eh? i wonder you aren't afraid of it." "one simply gets used to it, that's all," said newberry, shrugging his shoulders; "but of course it is dangerous. i blew up two italians on the last job." he paused a minute and added musingly, "hardy fellows, the italians. i prefer them to any other people for blasting." "did you blow them up yourself?" asked mr. spillikins. "i wasn't here," answered mr. newberry. "in fact, i never care to be here when i'm blasting. we go to town. but i had to foot the bill for them all the same. quite right, too. the risk, of course, was mine, not theirs; that's the law, you know. they cost me two thousand each." "but come," said mrs. newberry, "i think we must go and dress for dinner. franklin will be frightfully put out if we're late. franklin is our butler," she went on, seeing that mr. spillikins didn't understand the reference, "and as we brought him out from england we have to be rather careful. with a good man like franklin one is always so afraid of losing him--and after last night we have to be doubly careful." "why last night?" asked mr. spillikins. "oh, it wasn't much," said mrs. newberry. "in fact, it was merely an accident. only it just chanced that at dinner, quite late in the meal, when we had had nearly everything (we dine very simply here, mr. spillikins), mr. newberry, who was thirsty and who wasn't really thinking what he was saying, asked franklin to give him a glass of hock. franklin said at once, 'i'm very sorry, sir, i don't care to serve hock after the entree!'" "and of course he was right," said dulphemia with emphasis. "exactly; he was perfectly right. they know, you know. we were afraid that there might be trouble, but mr. newberry went and saw franklin afterwards and he behaved very well over it. but suppose we go and dress? it's half-past six already and we've only an hour." * * * * * in this congenial company mr. spillikins spent the next three days. life at castel casteggio, as the newberrys loved to explain, was conducted on the very simplest plan. early breakfast, country fashion, at nine o'clock; after that nothing to eat till lunch, unless one cared to have lemonade or bottled ale sent out with a biscuit or a macaroon to the tennis court. lunch itself was a perfectly plain midday meal, lasting till about . , and consisting simply of cold meats (say four kinds) and salads, with perhaps a made dish or two, and, for anybody who cared for it, a hot steak or a chop, or both. after that one had coffee and cigarettes in the shade of the piazza and waited for afternoon tea. this latter was served at a wicker table in any part of the grounds that the gardener was not at that moment clipping, trimming, or otherwise using. afternoon tea being over, one rested or walked on the lawn till it was time to dress for dinner. this simple routine was broken only by irruptions of people in motors or motor boats from penny-gw-rydd or yodel-dudel chalet. the whole thing, from the point of view of mr. spillikins or dulphemia or philippa, represented rusticity itself. to the little girl in green it seemed as brilliant as the court of versailles; especially evening dinner--a plain home meal as the others thought it--when she had four glasses to drink out of and used to wonder over such problems as whether you were supposed, when franklin poured out wine, to tell him to stop or to wait till he stopped without being told to stop; and other similar mysteries, such as many people before and after have meditated upon. during all this time mr. spillikins was nerving himself to propose to dulphemia rasselyer-brown. in fact, he spent part of his time walking up and down under the trees with philippa furlong and discussing with her the proposal that he meant to make, together with such topics as marriage in general and his own unworthiness. he might have waited indefinitely had he not learned, on the third day of his visit, that dulphemia was to go away in the morning to join her father at nagahakett. that evening he found the necessary nerve to speak, and the proposal in almost every aspect of it was most successful. "by jove!" spillikins said to philippa furlong next morning, in explaining what had happened, "she was awfully nice about it. i think she must have guessed, in a way, don't you, what i was going to say? but at any rate she was awfully nice--let me say everything i wanted, and when i explained what a fool i was, she said she didn't think i was half such a fool as people thought me. but it's all right. it turns out that she isn't thinking of getting married. i asked her if i might always go on thinking of her, and she said i might." and that morning when dulphemia was carried off in the motor to the station, mr. spillikins, without exactly being aware how he had done it, had somehow transferred himself to philippa. "isn't she a splendid girl!" he said at least ten times a day to norah, the little girl in green. and norah always agreed, because she really thought philippa a perfectly wonderful creature. there is no doubt that, but for a slight shift of circumstances, mr. spillikins would have proposed to miss furlong. indeed, he spent a good part of his time rehearsing little speeches that began, "of course i know i'm an awful ass in a way," or, "of course i know that i'm not at all the sort of fellow," and so on. but not one of them ever was delivered. for it so happened that on the thursday, one week after mr. spillikins's arrival, philippa went again to the station in the motor. and when she came back there was another passenger with her, a tall young man in tweed, and they both began calling out to the newberrys from a distance of at least a hundred yards. and both the newberrys suddenly exclaimed, "why, it's tom!" and rushed off to meet the motor. and there was such a laughing and jubilation as the two descended and carried tom's valises to the verandah, that mr. spillikins felt as suddenly and completely out of it as the little girl in green herself--especially as his ear had caught, among the first things said, the words, "congratulate us, mrs. newberry, we're engaged." after which mr. spillikins had the pleasure of sitting and listening while it was explained in wicker chairs on the verandah, that philippa and tom had been engaged already for ever so long--in fact, nearly two weeks, only they had agreed not to say a word to anybody till tom had gone to north carolina and back, to see his people. and as to who tom was, or what was the relation between tom and the newberrys, mr. spillikins neither knew or cared; nor did it interest him in the least that philippa had met tom in bermuda, and that she hadn't known that he even knew the newberry's nor any other of the exuberant disclosures of the moment. in fact, if there was any one period rather than another when mr. spillikins felt corroborated in his private view of himself, it was at this moment. so the next day tom and philippa vanished together. "we shall be quite a small party now," said mrs. newberry; "in fact, quite by ourselves till mrs. everleigh comes, and she won't be here for a fortnight." at which the heart of the little girl in green was glad, because she had been afraid that other girls might be coming, whereas she knew that mrs. everleigh was a widow with four sons and must be ever so old, past forty. the next few days were spent by mr. spillikins almost entirely in the society of norah. he thought them on the whole rather pleasant days, but slow. to her they were an uninterrupted dream of happiness never to be forgotten. the newberrys left them to themselves; not with any intent; it was merely that they were perpetually busy walking about the grounds of castel casteggio, blowing up things with dynamite, throwing steel bridges over gullies, and hoisting heavy timber with derricks. nor were they to blame for it. for it had not always been theirs to command dynamite and control the forces of nature. there had been a time, now long ago, when the two newberrys had lived, both of them, on twenty dollars a week, and mrs. newberry had made her own dresses, and mr. newberry had spent vigorous evenings in making hand-made shelves for their sitting-room. that was long ago, and since then mr. newberry, like many other people of those earlier days, had risen to wealth and castel casteggio, while others, like norah's father, had stayed just where they were. so the newberrys left peter and norah to themselves all day. even after dinner, in the evening, mr. newberry was very apt to call to his wife in the dusk from some distant corner of the lawn: "margaret, come over here and tell me if you don't think we might cut down this elm, tear the stump out by the roots, and throw it into the ravine." and the answer was, "one minute, edward; just wait till i get a wrap." before they came back, the dusk had grown to darkness, and they had redynamited half the estate. during all of which time mr. spillikins sat with norah on the piazza. he talked and she listened. he told her, for instance, all about his terrific experiences in the oil business, and about his exciting career at college; or presently they went indoors and norah played the piano and mr. spillikins sat and smoked and listened. in such a house as the newberry's, where dynamite and the greater explosives were everyday matters, a little thing like the use of tobacco in the drawing-room didn't count. as for the music, "go right ahead," said mr. spillikins; "i'm not musical, but i don't mind music a bit." in the daytime they played tennis. there was a court at one end of the lawn beneath the trees, all chequered with sunlight and mingled shadow; very beautiful, norah thought, though mr. spillikins explained that the spotted light put him off his game. in fact, it was owing entirely to this bad light that mr. spillikins's fast drives, wonderful though they were, somehow never got inside the service court. norah, of course, thought mr. spillikins a wonderful player. she was glad--in fact, it suited them both--when he beat her six to nothing. she didn't know and didn't care that there was no one else in the world that mr. spillikins could beat like that. once he even said to her. "by gad! you don't play half a bad game, you know. i think you know, with practice you'd come on quite a lot." after that the games were understood to be more or less in the form of lessons, which put mr. spillikins on a pedestal of superiority, and allowed any bad strokes on his part to be viewed as a form of indulgence. also, as the tennis was viewed in this light, it was norah's part to pick up the balls at the net and throw them back to mr. spillikins. he let her do this, not from rudeness, for it wasn't in him, but because in such a primeval place as castel casteggio the natural primitive relation of the sexes is bound to reassert itself. but of love mr. spillikins never thought. he had viewed it so eagerly and so often from a distance that when it stood here modestly at his very elbow he did not recognize its presence. his mind had been fashioned, as it were, to connect love with something stunning and sensational, with easter hats and harem skirts and the luxurious consciousness of the unattainable. even at that, there is no knowing what might have happened. tennis, in the chequered light of sun and shadow cast by summer leaves, is a dangerous game. there came a day when they were standing one each side of the net and mr. spillikins was explaining to norah the proper way to hold a racquet so as to be able to give those magnificent backhand sweeps of his, by which he generally drove the ball halfway to the lake; and explaining this involved putting his hand right over norah's on the handle of the racquet, so that for just half a second her hand was clasped tight in his; and if that half-second had been lengthened out into a whole second it is quite possible that what was already subconscious in his mind would have broken its way triumphantly to the surface, and norah's hand would have stayed in his--how willingly--! for the rest of their two lives. but just at that moment mr. spillikins looked up, and he said in quite an altered tone. "by jove! who's that awfully good-looking woman getting out of the motor?" and their hands unclasped. norah looked over towards the house and said: "why, it's mrs. everleigh. i thought she wasn't coming for another week." "i say," said mr. spillikins, straining his short sight to the uttermost, "what perfectly wonderful golden hair, eh?" "why, it's--" norah began, and then she stopped. it didn't seem right to explain that mrs. everleigh's hair was dyed. "and who's that tall chap standing beside her?" said mr. spillikins. "i think it's captain cormorant, but i don't think he's going to stay. he's only brought her up in the motor from town." "by jove, how good of him!" said spillikins; and this sentiment in regard to captain cormorant, though he didn't know it, was to become a keynote of his existence. "i didn't know she was coming so soon," said norah, and there was weariness already in her heart. certainly she didn't know it; still less did she know, or anyone else, that the reason of mrs. everleigh's coming was because mr. spillikins was there. she came with a set purpose, and she sent captain cormorant directly back in the motor because she didn't want him on the premises. "oughtn't we to go up to the house?" said norah. "all right," said mr. spillikins with great alacrity, "let's go." * * * * * now as this story began with the information that mrs. everleigh is at present mrs. everleigh-spillikins, there is no need to pursue in detail the stages of mr. spillikins's wooing. its course was swift and happy. mr. spillikins, having seen the back of mrs. everleigh's head, had decided instantly that she was the most beautiful woman in the world; and that impression is not easily corrected in the half-light of a shaded drawing-room; nor across a dinner-table lighted only with candles with deep red shades; nor even in the daytime through a veil. in any case, it is only fair to state that if mrs. everleigh was not and is not a singularly beautiful woman, mr. spillikins still doesn't know it. and in point of attraction the homage of such experts as captain cormorant and lieutenant hawk speaks for itself. so the course of mr. spillikins's love, for love it must have been, ran swiftly to its goal. each stage of it was duly marked by his comments to norah. "she _is_ a splendid woman," he said, "so sympathetic. she always seems to know just what one's going to say." so she did, for she was making him say it. "by jove!" he said a day later, "mrs. everleigh's an awfully fine woman, isn't she? i was telling her about my having been in the oil business for a little while, and she thinks that i'd really be awfully good in money things. she said she wished she had me to manage her money for her." this also was quite true, except that mrs. everleigh had not made it quite clear that the management of her money was of the form generally known as deficit financing. in fact, her money was, very crudely stated, nonexistent, and it needed a lot of management. a day or two later mr. spillikins was saying, "i think mrs. everleigh must have had great sorrow, don't you? yesterday she was showing me a photograph of her little boy--she has a little boy you know--" "yes, i know," said norah. she didn't add that she knew that mrs. everleigh had four. "--and she was saying how awfully rough it is having him always away from her at dr. something's academy where he is." and very soon after that mr. spillikins was saying, with quite a quaver in his voice, "by jove! yes, i'm awfully lucky; i never thought for a moment that she'd have me, you know--a woman like her, with so much attention and everything. i can't imagine what she sees in me." which was just as well. and then mr. spillikins checked himself, for he noticed--this was on the verandah in the morning--that norah had a hat and jacket on and that the motor was rolling towards the door. "i say," he said, "are you going away?" "yes, didn't you know?" norah said. "i thought you heard them speaking of it at dinner last night. i have to go home; father's alone, you know." "oh, i'm awfully sorry," said mr. spillikins; "we shan't have any more tennis." "goodbye," said norah, and as she said it and put out her hand there were tears brimming up into her eyes. but mr. spillikins, being short of sight, didn't see them. "goodbye," he said. then as the motor carried her away he stood for a moment in a sort of reverie. perhaps certain things that might have been rose unformed and inarticulate before his mind. and then, a voice called from the drawing-room within, in a measured and assured tone, "peter, darling, where are you?" "coming," cried mr. spillikins, and he came. * * * * * on the second day of the engagement mrs. everleigh showed to peter a little photograph in a brooch. "this is gib, my second little boy," she said. mr. spillikins started to say, "i didn't know--" and then checked himself and said, "by gad! what a fine-looking little chap, eh? i'm awfully fond of boys." "dear little fellow, isn't he?" said mrs. everleigh. "he's really rather taller than that now, because this picture was taken a little while ago." and the next day she said, "this is willie, my third boy," and on the day after that she said, "this is sib, my youngest boy; i'm sure you'll love him." "i'm sure i shall," said mr. spillikins. he loved him already for being the youngest. * * * * * and so in the fulness of time--nor was it so very full either, in fact, only about five weeks--peter spillikins and mrs. everleigh were married in st. asaph's church on plutoria avenue. and the wedding was one of the most beautiful and sumptuous of the weddings of the september season. there were flowers, and bridesmaids in long veils, and tall ushers in frock-coats, and awnings at the church door, and strings of motors with wedding-favours on imported chauffeurs, and all that goes to invest marriage on plutoria avenue with its peculiar sacredness. the face of the young rector, mr. fareforth furlong, wore the added saintliness that springs from a five-hundred dollar fee. the whole town was there, or at least everybody that was anybody; and if there was one person absent, one who sat by herself in the darkened drawing-room of a dull little house on a shabby street, who knew or cared? so after the ceremony the happy couple--for were they not so?--left for new york. there they spent their honeymoon. they had thought of going--it was mr. spillikins's idea--to the coast of maine. but mrs. everleigh-spillikins said that new york was much nicer, so restful, whereas, as everyone knows, the coast of maine is frightfully noisy. moreover, it so happened that before the everleigh-spillikinses had been more than four or five days in new york the ship of captain cormorant dropped anchor in the hudson; and when the anchor of that ship was once down it generally stayed there. so the captain was able to take the everleigh-spillikinses about in new york, and to give a tea for mrs. everleigh-spillikins on the deck of his vessel so that she might meet the officers, and another tea in a private room of a restaurant on fifth avenue so that she might meet no one but himself. and at this tea captain cormorant said, among other things, "did he kick up rough at all when you told him about the money?" and mrs. everleigh, now mrs. everleigh-spillikins, said, "not he! i think he is actually pleased to know that i haven't any. do you know, arthur, he's really an awfully good fellow," and as she said it she moved her hand away from under captain cormorant's on the tea-table. "i say," said the captain, "don't get sentimental over him." * * * * * so that is how it is that the everleigh-spillikinses came to reside on plutoria avenue in a beautiful stone house, with a billiard-room in an extension on the second floor. through the windows of it one can almost hear the click of the billiard balls, and a voice saying, "hold on, father, you had your shot." chapter six: the rival churches of st. asaph and st. osoph the church of st. asaph, more properly call st. asaph's in the fields, stands among the elm trees of plutoria avenue opposite the university, its tall spire pointing to the blue sky. its rector is fond of saying that it seems to him to point, as it were, a warning against the sins of a commercial age. more particularly does he say this in his lenten services at noonday, when the businessmen sit in front of him in rows, their bald heads uncovered and their faces stamped with contrition as they think of mergers that they should have made, and real estate that they failed to buy for lack of faith. the ground on which st. asaph's stands is worth seven dollars and a half a foot. the mortgagees, as they kneel in prayer in their long frock-coats, feel that they have built upon a rock. it is a beautifully appointed church. there are windows with priceless stained glass that were imported from normandy, the rector himself swearing out the invoices to save the congregation the grievous burden of the customs duty. there is a pipe organ in the transept that cost ten thousand dollars to install. the debenture-holders, as they join in the morning anthem, love to hear the dulcet notes of the great organ and to reflect that it is as good as new. just behind the church is st. asaph's sunday school, with a ten-thousand dollar mortgage of its own. and below that again on the side street, is the building of the young men's guild with a bowling-alley and a swimming-bath deep enough to drown two young men at a time, and a billiard-room with seven tables. it is the rector's boast that with a guild house such as that there is no need for any young man of the congregation to frequent a saloon. nor is there. and on sunday mornings, when the great organ plays, and the mortgagees and the bond-holders and the debenture-holders and the sunday school teachers and the billiard-markers all lift up their voices together, there is emitted from st. asaph's a volume of praise that is practically as fine and effective as paid professional work. st. asaph's is episcopal. as a consequence it has in it and about it all those things which go to make up the episcopal church--brass tablets let into its walls, blackbirds singing in its elm trees, parishioners who dine at eight o'clock, and a rector who wears a little crucifix and dances the tango. on the other hand, there stands upon the same street, not a hundred yards away, the rival church of st. osoph--presbyterian down to its very foundations in bed-rock, thirty feet below the level of the avenue. it has a short, squat tower--and a low roof, and its narrow windows are glazed with frosted glass. it has dark spruce trees instead of elms, crows instead of blackbirds, and a gloomy minister with a shovel hat who lectures on philosophy on week-days at the university. he loves to think that his congregation are made of the lowly and the meek in spirit, and to reflect that, lowly and meek as they are, there are men among them that could buy out half the congregation of st. asaph's. st. osoph's is only presbyterian in a special sense. it is, in fact, too presbyterian to be any longer connected with any other body whatsoever. it seceded some forty years ago from the original body to which it belonged, and later on, with three other churches, it seceded from the group of seceding congregations. still later it fell into a difference with the three other churches on the question of eternal punishment, the word "eternal" not appearing to the elders of st. osoph's to designate a sufficiently long period. the dispute ended in a secession which left the church of st. osoph practically isolated in a world of sin whose approaching fate it neither denied nor deplored. in one respect the rival churches of plutoria avenue had had a similar history. each of them had moved up by successive stages from the lower and poorer parts of the city. forty years ago st. asaph's had been nothing more than a little frame church with a tin spire, away in the west of the slums, and st. osoph's a square, diminutive building away in the east. but the site of st. asaph's had been bought by a brewing company, and the trustees, shrewd men of business, themselves rising into wealth, had rebuilt it right in the track of the advancing tide of a real estate boom. the elders of st. osoph, quiet men, but illumined by an inner light, had followed suit and moved their church right against the side of an expanding distillery. thus both the churches, as decade followed decade, made their way up the slope of the city till st. asaph's was presently gloriously expropriated by the street railway company, and planted its spire in triumph on plutoria avenue itself. but st. osoph's followed. with each change of site it moved nearer and nearer to st. asaph's. its elders were shrewd men. with each move of their church they took careful thought in the rebuilding. in the manufacturing district it was built with sixteen windows on each side and was converted at a huge profit into a bicycle factory. on the residential street it was made long and deep and was sold to a moving-picture company without the alteration of so much as a pew. as a last step a syndicate, formed among the members of the congregation themselves, bought ground on plutoria avenue, and sublet it to themselves as a site for the church, at a nominal interest of five per cent per annum, payable nominally every three months and secured by a nominal mortgage. as the two churches moved, their congregations, or at least all that was best of them--such members as were sharing in the rising fortunes of the city--moved also, and now for some six or seven years the two churches and the two congregations had confronted one another among the elm trees of the avenue opposite to the university. but at this point the fortunes of the churches had diverged. st. asaph's was a brilliant success; st. osoph's was a failure. even its own trustees couldn't deny it. at a time when st. asaph's was not only paying its interest but showing a handsome surplus on everything it undertook, the church of st. osoph was moving steadily backwards. there was no doubt, of course, as to the cause. everybody knew it. it was simply a question of men, and, as everybody said, one had only to compare the two men conducting the churches to see why one succeeded and the other failed. the reverend edward fareforth furlong of st. asaph's was a man who threw his whole energy into his parish work. the subtleties of theological controversy he left to minds less active than his own. his creed was one of works rather than of words, and whatever he was doing he did it with his whole heart. whether he was lunching at the mausoleum club with one of his church wardens, or playing the flute--which he played as only the episcopal clergy can play it--accompanied on the harp by one of the fairest of the ladies of his choir, or whether he was dancing the new episcopal tango with the younger daughters of the elder parishioners, he threw himself into it with all his might. he could drink tea more gracefully and play tennis better than any clergyman on this side of the atlantic. he could stand beside the white stone font of st. asaph's in his long white surplice holding a white-robed infant, worth half a million dollars, looking as beautifully innocent as the child itself, and drawing from every matron of the congregation with unmarried daughters the despairing cry, "what a pity that he has no children of his own!" equally sound was his theology. no man was known to preach shorter sermons or to explain away the book of genesis more agreeably than the rector of st. asaph's; and if he found it necessary to refer to the deity he did so under the name of jehovah or jah, or even yaweh in a manner calculated not to hurt the sensitiveness of any of the parishioners. people who would shudder at brutal talk of the older fashion about the wrath of god listened with well-bred interest to a sermon on the personal characteristics of jah. in the same way mr. furlong always referred to the devil, not as satan but as su or swa, which took all the sting out of him. beelzebub he spoke of as behel-zawbab, which rendered him perfectly harmless. the garden of eden he spoke of as the paradeisos, which explained it entirely; the flood as the diluvium, which cleared it up completely; and jonah he named, after the correct fashion jon nah, which put the whole situation (his being swallowed by baloo or the great lizard) on a perfectly satisfactory footing. hell itself was spoken of as she-ol, and it appeared that it was not a place of burning, but rather of what one might describe as moral torment. this settled she-ol once and for all: nobody minds moral torment. in short, there was nothing in the theological system of mr. furlong that need have occasioned in any of his congregation a moment's discomfort. there could be no greater contrast with mr. fareforth furlong than the minister of st. osoph's, the rev. dr. mcteague, who was also honorary professor of philosophy at the university. the one was young, the other was old; the one could dance the other could not; the one moved about at church picnics and lawn teas among a bevy of disciples in pink and blue sashes; the other moped around under the trees of the university campus with blinking eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind that had spent fifty years in trying to reconcile hegel with st. paul, and was still busy with it. mr. furlong went forward with the times; dr. mcteague slid quietly backwards with the centuries. dr. mcteague was a failure, and all his congregation knew it. "he is not up to date," they said. that was his crowning sin. "he don't go forward any," said the business members of the congregation. "that old man believes just exactly the same sort of stuff now that he did forty years ago. what's more, he preaches it. you can't run a church that way, can you?" his trustees had done their best to meet the difficulty. they had offered dr. mcteague a two-years' vacation to go and see the holy land. he refused; he said he could picture it. they reduced his salary by fifty per cent; he never noticed it. they offered him an assistant; but he shook his head, saying that he didn't know where he could find a man to do just the work that he was doing. meantime he mooned about among the trees concocting a mixture of st. paul with hegel, three parts to one, for his sunday sermon, and one part to three for his monday lecture. no doubt it was his dual function that was to blame for his failure. and this, perhaps, was the fault of dr. boomer, the president of the university. dr. boomer, like all university presidents of today, belonged to the presbyterian church; or rather, to state it more correctly, he included presbyterianism within himself. he was of course, a member of the board of management of st. osoph's and it was he who had urged, very strongly, the appointment of dr. mcteague, then senior professor of philosophy, as minister. "a saintly man," he said, "the very man for the post. if you should ask me whether he is entirely at home as a professor of philosophy on our staff at the university, i should be compelled to say no. we are forced to admit that as a lecturer he does not meet our views. he appears to find it difficult to keep religion out of his teaching. in fact, his lectures are suffused with a rather dangerous attempt at moral teaching which is apt to contaminate our students. but in the church i should imagine that would be, if anything, an advantage. indeed, if you were to come to me and say, 'boomer, we wish to appoint dr. mcteague as our minister,' i should say, quite frankly, 'take him.'" so dr. mcteague had been appointed. then, to the surprise of everybody he refused to give up his lectures in philosophy. he said he felt a call to give them. the salary, he said, was of no consequence. he wrote to mr. furlong senior (the father of the episcopal rector and honorary treasurer of the plutoria university) and stated that he proposed to give his lectures for nothing. the trustees of the college protested; they urged that the case might set a dangerous precedent which other professors might follow. while fully admitting that dr. mcteague's lectures were well worth giving for nothing, they begged him to reconsider his offer. but he refused; and from that day on, in spite of all offers that he should retire on double his salary, that he should visit the holy land, or syria, or armenia, where the dreadful massacres of christians were taking place, dr. mcteague clung to his post with a tenacity worthy of the best traditions of scotland. his only internal perplexity was that he didn't see how, when the time came for him to die, twenty or thirty years hence, they would ever be able to replace him. such was the situation of the two churches on a certain beautiful morning in june, when an unforeseen event altered entirely the current of their fortunes. * * * * * "no, thank you, juliana," said the young rector to his sister across the breakfast table--and there was something as near to bitterness in his look as his saintly, smooth-shaven face was capable of reflecting--"no, thank you, no more porridge. prunes? no, no, thank you; i don't think i care for any. and, by the way," he added, "don't bother to keep any lunch for me. i have a great deal of business--that is, of work in the parish--to see to, and i must just find time to get a bite of something to eat when and where i can." in his own mind he was resolving that the place should be the mausoleum club and the time just as soon as the head waiter would serve him. after which the reverend edward fareforth furlong bowed his head for a moment in a short, silent blessing--the one prescribed by the episcopal church in america for a breakfast of porridge and prunes. it was their first breakfast together, and it spoke volumes to the rector. he knew what it implied. it stood for his elder sister juliana's views on the need of personal sacrifice as a means of grace. the rector sighed as he rose. he had never missed his younger sister philippa, now married and departed, so keenly. philippa had had opinions of her own on bacon and eggs and on lamb chops with watercress as a means of stimulating the soul. but juliana was different. the rector understood now exactly why it was that his father had exclaimed, on the news of philippa's engagement, without a second's hesitation, "then, of course, juliana must live with you! nonsense, my dear boy, nonsense! it's my duty to spare her to you. after all, i can always eat at the club; they can give me a bite of something or other, surely. to a man of my age, edward, food is really of no consequence. no, no; juliana must move into the rectory at once." the rector's elder sister rose. she looked tall and sallow and forbidding in the plain black dress that contrasted sadly with the charming clerical costumes of white and pink and the broad episcopal hats with flowers in them that philippa used to wear for morning work in the parish. "for what time shall i order dinner?" she asked. "you and philippa used to have it at half-past seven, did you not? don't you think that rather too late?" "a trifle perhaps," said the rector uneasily. he didn't care to explain to juliana that it was impossible to get home any earlier from the kind of _the dansant_ that everybody was giving just now. "but don't trouble about dinner. i may be working very late. if i need anything to eat i shall get a biscuit and some tea at the guild rooms, or--" he didn't finish the sentence, but in his mind he added, "or else a really first-class dinner at the mausoleum club, or at the newberrys' or the rasselyer-browns'--anywhere except here." "if you are going, then," said juliana, "may i have the key of the church." a look of pain passed over the rector's face. he knew perfectly well what juliana wanted the key for. she meant to go into his church and pray in it. the rector of st. asaph's was, he trusted, as broad-minded a man as an anglican clergyman ought to be. he had no objection to any reasonable use of his church--for a thanksgiving festival or for musical recitals for example--but when it came to opening up the church and using it to pray in, the thing was going a little too far. what was more, he had an idea from the look on juliana's face that she meant to pray for _him_. this, for a clergy man, was hard to bear. philippa, like the good girl that she was, had prayed only for herself, and then only at the proper times and places, and in a proper praying costume. the rector began to realize what difficulties it might make for a clergyman to have a religious sister as his house-mate. but he was never a man for unseemly argument. "it is hanging in my study," he said. and with that the rev. fareforth furlong passed into the hall took up the simple silk hat, the stick and gloves of the working clergyman and walked out on to the avenue to begin his day's work in the parish. the rector's parish viewed in its earthly aspect, was a singularly beautiful place. for it extended all along plutoria avenue, where the street is widest and the elm trees are at their leafiest and the motors at their very drowsiest. it lay up and down the shaded side streets of the residential district, darkened with great chestnuts and hushed in a stillness that was almost religion itself. there was not a house in the parish assessed at less than twenty-five thousand, and in very heart of it the mausoleum club, with its smooth white stone and its grecian architecture, carried one back to the ancient world and made one think of athens and of paul preaching on mars hill. it was, all considered, a splendid thing to fight sin in such a parish and to keep it out of it. for kept out it was. one might look the length and breadth of the broad avenue and see no sign of sin all along it. there was certainly none in the smooth faces of the chauffeurs trundling their drowsy motors; no sign of it in the expensive children paraded by imported nursemaids in the chequered light of the shaded street; least of all was there any sign of it in the stock exchange members of the congregation as they walked along side by side to their lunch at the mausoleum club, their silk hats nodding together in earnest colloquy on shares preferred and profits undivided. so might have walked, so must have walked, the very fathers of the church themselves. whatever sin there was in the city was shoved sideways into the roaring streets of commerce where the elevated railway ran, and below that again into the slums. here there must have been any quantity of sin. the rector of st. asaph's was certain of it. many of the richer of his parishioners had been down in parties late at night to look at it, and the ladies of his congregation were joined together into all sorts of guilds and societies and bands of endeavour for stamping it out and driving it under or putting it into jail till it surrendered. but the slums lay outside the rector's parish. he had no right to interfere. they were under the charge of a special mission or auxiliary, a remnant of the st. asaph's of the past, placed under the care of a divinity student, at four hundred dollars per annum. his charge included all the slums and three police courts and two music halls and the city jail. one sunday afternoon in every three months the rector and several ladies went down and sang hymns for him in his mission-house. but his work was really very easy. a funeral, for example, at the mission, was a simple affair, meaning nothing more than the preparation of a plain coffin and a glassless hearse and the distribution of a few artificial everlasting flowers to women crying in their aprons; a thing easily done: whereas in st. asaph's parish, where all the really important souls were, a funeral was a large event, requiring taste and tact, and a nice shading of delicacy in distinguishing mourners from beneficiaries, and private grief from business representation at the ceremony. a funeral with a plain coffin and a hearse was as nothing beside an interment, with a casket smothered in hot-house syringas, borne in a coach and followed by special reporters from the financial papers. it appeared to the rector afterwards as almost a shocking coincidence that the first person whom he met upon the avenue should have been the rev. dr. mcteague himself. mr. furlong gave him the form of amiable "good morning" that the episcopal church always extends to those in error. but he did not hear it. the minister's head was bent low, his eyes gazed into vacancy, and from the movements of his lips and from the fact that he carried a leather case of notes, he was plainly on his way to his philosophical lecture. but the rector had no time to muse upon the abstracted appearance of his rival. for, as always happened to him, he was no sooner upon the street than his parish work of the day began. in fact, he had hardly taken a dozen steps after passing dr. mcteague when he was brought up standing by two beautiful parishioners with pink parasols. "oh, mr. furlong," exclaimed one of them, "so fortunate to happen to catch you; we were just going into the rectory to consult you. should the girls--for the lawn tea for the guild on friday, you know--wear white dresses with light blue sashes all the same, or do you think we might allow them to wear any coloured sashes that they like? what do you think?" this was an important problem. in fact, there was a piece of parish work here that it took the reverend fareforth half an hour to attend to standing the while in earnest colloquy with the two ladies under the shadow of the elm trees. but a clergyman must never be grudging of his time. "goodbye then," they said at last. "are you coming to the browning club this morning? oh, so sorry! but we shall see you at the musicale this afternoon, shall we not?" "oh, i trust so," said the rector. "how dreadfully hard he works," said the ladies to one another as they moved away. thus slowly and with many interruptions the rector made his progress along the avenue. at times he stopped to permit a pink-cheeked infant in a perambulator to beat him with a rattle while he inquired its age of an episcopal nurse, gay with flowing ribbons. he lifted his hat to the bright parasols of his parishioners passing in glistening motors, bowed to episcopalians, nodded amiably to presbyterians, and even acknowledged with his lifted hat the passing of persons of graver forms of error. thus he took his way along the avenue and down a side street towards the business district of the city, until just at the edge of it, where the trees were about to stop and the shops were about to begin, he found himself at the door of the hymnal supply corporation, limited. the premises as seen from the outside combined the idea of an office with an ecclesiastical appearance. the door was as that of a chancel or vestry; there was a large plate-glass window filled with bibles and testaments, all spread open and showing every variety of language in their pages. these were marked, arabic, syriac, coptic, ojibway, irish and so forth. on the window in small white lettering were the words, hymnal supply corporation, and below that, hosanna pipe and steam organ incorporated, and still lower the legend bible society of the good shepherd limited. there was no doubt of the sacred character of the place. here laboured mr. furlong senior, the father of the rev. edward fareforth. he was a man of many activities; president and managing director of the companies just mentioned, trustee and secretary of st. asaph's, honorary treasurer of the university, etc.; and each of his occupations and offices was marked by something of a supramundane character, something higher than ordinary business. his different official positions naturally overlapped and brought him into contact with himself from a variety of angles. thus he sold himself hymn books at a price per thousand, made as a business favour to himself, negotiated with himself the purchase of the ten-thousand-dollar organ (making a price on it to himself that he begged himself to regard as confidential), and as treasurer of the college he sent himself an informal note of enquiry asking if he knew of any sound investment for the annual deficit of the college funds, a matter of some sixty thousand dollars a year, which needed very careful handling. any man--and there are many such--who has been concerned with business dealings of this sort with himself realizes that they are more satisfactory than any other kind. to what better person, then, could the rector of st. asaph's bring the quarterly accounts and statements of his church than to mr. furlong senior. the outer door was opened to the rector by a sanctified boy with such a face as is only found in the choirs of the episcopal church. in an outer office through which the rector passed were two sacred stenographers with hair as golden as the daffodils of sheba, copying confidential letters on absolutely noiseless typewriters. they were making offers of bibles in half-car-load lots at two and a half per cent reduction, offering to reduce st. mark by two cents on condition of immediate export, and to lay down st. john f.o.b. san francisco for seven cents, while regretting that they could deliver fifteen thousand rock of ages in missouri on no other terms than cash. the sacred character of their work lent them a preoccupation beautiful to behold. in the room beyond them was a white-haired confidential clerk, venerable as the song of solomon, and by him mr. fareforth furlong was duly shown into the office of his father. "good morning, edward," said mr. furlong senior, as he shook hands. "i was expecting you. and while i think of it, i have just had a letter from philippa. she and tom will be home in two or three weeks. she writes from egypt. she wishes me to tell you, as no doubt you have already anticipated, that she thinks she can hardly continue to be a member of the congregation when they come back. no doubt you felt this yourself?" "oh, entirely," said the rector. "surely in matters of belief a wife must follow her husband." "exactly; especially as tom's uncles occupy the position they do with regard to--" mr. furlong jerked his head backwards and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder in a way that his son knew was meant to indicate st. osoph's church. the overend brothers, who were tom's uncles (his name being tom overend) were, as everybody knew, among the principal supporters of st. osoph's. not that they were, by origin, presbyterians. but they were self-made men, which put them once and for all out of sympathy with such a place as st. asaph's. "we made ourselves," the two brothers used to repeat in defiance of the catechism of the anglican church. they never wearied of explaining how mr. dick, the senior brother, had worked overtime by day to send mr. george, the junior brother, to school by night, and how mr. george had then worked overtime by night to send mr. dick to school by day. thus they had come up the business ladder hand over hand, landing later on in life on the platform of success like two corpulent acrobats, panting with the strain of it. "for years," mr. george would explain, "we had father and mother to keep as well; then they died, and dick and me saw daylight." by which he meant no harm at all, but only stated a fact, and concealed the virtue of it. and being self-made men they made it a point to do what they could to lessen the importance of such an institution as st. asaph's church. by the same contrariety of nature the two overend brothers (their business name was overend brothers, limited) were supporters of the dissentient young men's guild, and the second or rival university settlement, and of anything or everything that showed a likelihood of making trouble. on this principle they were warm supporters and friends of the rev. dr. mcteague. the minister had even gone so far as to present to the brothers a copy of his philosophical work "mcteague's exposition of the kantian hypothesis." and the two brothers had read it through in the office, devoting each of them a whole morning to it. mr. dick, the senior brother, had said that he had never seen anything like it, and mr. george, the junior, had declared that a man who could write that was capable of anything. on the whole it was evident that the relations between the overend family and the presbyterian religion were too intimate to allow mrs. tom overend, formerly miss philippa furlong, to sit anywhere else of a sunday than under dr. mcteague. "philippa writes," continued mr. furlong "that under the circumstances she and tom would like to do something for your church. she would like--yes, i have the letter here--to give you, as a surprise, of course, either a new font or a carved pulpit; or perhaps a cheque; she wishes me on no account to mention it to you directly, but to ascertain indirectly from you, what would be the better surprise." "oh, a cheque, i think," said the rector; "one can do so much more with it, after all." "precisely," said his father; he was well aware of many things that can be done with a cheque that cannot possibly be done with a font. "that's settled then," resumed mr. furlong; "and now i suppose you want me to run my eye over your quarterly statements, do you not, before we send them in to the trustees? that is what you've come for, is it not?" "yes," said the rector, drawing a bundle of blue and white papers from his pocket. "i have everything with me. our showing is, i believe, excellent, though i fear i fail to present it as clearly as it might be done." mr. furlong senior spread the papers on the table before him and adjusted his spectacles to a more convenient angle. he smiled indulgently as he looked at the documents before him. "i am afraid you would never make an accountant, edward," he said. "i fear not," said the rector. "your items," said his father, "are entered wrongly. here, for example, in the general statement, you put down distribution of coals to the poor to your credit. in the same way, bibles and prizes to the sunday school you again mark to your credit. why? don't you see, my boy, that these things are debits? when you give out bibles or distribute fuel to the poor you give out something for which you get no return. it is a debit. on the other hand, such items as church offertory, scholars' pennies, etc., are pure profit. surely the principle is clear." "i think i see it better now," said the rev. edward. "perfectly plain, isn't it?" his father went on. "and here again. paupers' burial fund, a loss; enter it as such. christmas gift to verger and sexton, an absolute loss--you get nothing in return. widows' mite, fines inflicted in sunday school, etc., these are profit; write them down as such. by this method, you see, in ordinary business we can tell exactly where we stand: anything which we give out without return or reward we count as a debit; all that we take from others without giving in return we count as so much to our credit." "ah, yes," murmured the rector. "i begin to understand." "very good. but after all, edward, i mustn't quarrel with the mere form of your accounts; the statement is really a splendid showing. i see that not only is our mortgage and debenture interest all paid to date, but that a number of our enterprises are making a handsome return. i notice, for example, that the girls' friendly society of the church not only pays for itself, but that you are able to take something out of its funds and transfer it to the men's book club. excellent! and i observe that you have been able to take a large portion of the soup kitchen fund and put it into the rector's picnic account. very good indeed. in this respect your figures are a model for church accounts anywhere." mr. furlong continued his scrutiny of the accounts. "excellent," he murmured, "and on the whole an annual surplus, i see, of several thousands. but stop a bit," he continued, checking himself; "what's this? are you aware, edward, that you are losing money on your foreign missions account?" "i feared as much," said edward. "it's incontestable. look at the figures for yourself: missionary's salary so much, clothes and books to converts so much, voluntary and other offerings of converts so much why, you're losing on it, edward!" exclaimed mr. furlong, and he shook his head dubiously at the accounts before him. "i thought," protested his son, "that in view of the character of the work itself--" "quite so," answered his father, "quite so. i fully admit the force of that. i am only asking you, is it worth it? mind you, i am not speaking now as a christian, but as a businessman. is it worth it?" "i thought that perhaps, in view of the fact of our large surplus in other directions--" "exactly," said his father, "a heavy surplus. it is precisely on that point that i wished to speak to you this morning. you have at present a large annual surplus, and there is every prospect under providence--in fact, i think in any case--of it continuing for years to come. if i may speak very frankly i should say that as long as our reverend friend, dr. mcteague, continues in his charge of st. osoph's--and i trust that he may be spared for many years to come--you are likely to enjoy the present prosperity of your church. very good. the question arises, what disposition are we to make of our accumulating funds?" "yes," said the rector, hesitating. "i am speaking to you now," said his father "not as the secretary of your church, but as president of the hymnal supply company which i represent here. now please understand, edward, i don't want in any way to force or control your judgment. i merely wish to show you certain--shall i say certain opportunities that present themselves for the disposal of our funds? the matter can be taken up later, formally, by yourself and the trustees of the church. as a matter of fact, i have already written to myself as secretary in the matter, and i have received what i consider a quite encouraging answer. let me explain what i propose." mr. furlong senior rose, and opening the door of the office, "everett," he said to the ancient clerk, "kindly give me a bible." it was given to him. mr. furlong stood with the bible poised in his hand. "now we," he went on, "i mean the hymnal supply corporation, have an idea for bringing out an entirely new bible." a look of dismay appeared on the saintly face of the rector. "a new bible!" he gasped. "precisely!" said his father, "a new bible! this one--and we find it every day in our business--is all wrong." "all wrong!" said the rector with horror in his face. "my dear boy," exclaimed his father, "pray, pray, do not misunderstand me. don't imagine for a moment that i mean wrong in a religious sense. such a thought could never, i hope, enter my mind. all that i mean is that this bible is badly made up." "badly made up?" repeated his son, as mystified as ever. "i see that you do not understand me. what i mean is this. let me try to make myself quite clear. for the market of today this bible"--and he poised it again on his hand, as if to test its weight, "is too heavy. the people of today want something lighter, something easier to get hold of. now if--" but what mr. furlong was about to say was lost forever to the world. for just at this juncture something occurred calculated to divert not only mr. furlong's sentence, but the fortunes and the surplus of st. asaph's itself. at the very moment when mr. furlong was speaking a newspaper delivery man in the street outside handed to the sanctified boy the office copy of the noonday paper. and the boy had no sooner looked at its headlines than he said, "how dreadful!" being sanctified, he had no stronger form of speech than that. but he handed the paper forthwith to one of the stenographers with hair like the daffodils of sheba, and when she looked at it she exclaimed, "how awful!" and she knocked at once at the door of the ancient clerk and gave the paper to him; and when he looked at it and saw the headline the ancient clerk murmured, "ah!" in the gentle tone in which very old people greet the news of catastrophe or sudden death. but in his turn he opened mr. furlong's door and put down the paper, laying his finger on the column for a moment without a word. mr. furlong stopped short in his sentence. "dear me!" he said as his eyes caught the item of news. "how very dreadful!" "what is it?" said the rector. "dr. mcteague," answered his father. "he has been stricken with paralysis!" "how shocking!" said the rector, aghast. "but when? i saw him only this morning." "it has just happened," said his father, following down the column of the newspaper as he spoke, "this morning, at the university, in his classroom, at a lecture. dear me, how dreadful! i must go and see the president at once." mr. furlong was about to reach for his hat and stick when at that moment the aged clerk knocked at the door. "dr. boomer," he announced in a tone of solemnity suited to the occasion. dr. boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down. "you have heard our sad news, i suppose?" he said. he used the word "our" as between the university president and his honorary treasurer. "how did it happen?" asked mr. furlong. "most distressing," said the president. "dr. mcteague, it seems, had just entered his ten o'clock class (the hour was about ten-twenty) and was about to open his lecture, when one of his students rose in his seat and asked a question. it is a practice," continued dr. boomer, "which, i need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young man, i believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy class. at any rate, he asked dr. mcteague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral determinism. dr. mcteague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class assert, painfully open. the student repeated the question, and poor mcteague fell forward over his desk, paralysed." "is he dead?" gasped mr. furlong. "no," said the president. "but we expect his death at any moment. dr. slyder, i may say, is with him now and is doing all he can." "in any case, i suppose, he could hardly recover enough to continue his college duties," said the young rector. "out of the question," said the president. "i should not like to state that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. dr. thrum, our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his ears, and mr. slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right eye. but this is a case of paralysis of the brain. i fear it is incompatible with professorial work." "then, i suppose," said mr. furlong senior, "we shall have to think of the question of a successor." they had both _been_ thinking of it for at least three minutes. "we must," said the president. "for the moment i feel too stunned by the sad news to act. i have merely telegraphed to two or three leading colleges for a _locum tenens_ and sent out a few advertisements announcing the chair as vacant. but it will be difficult to replace mcteague. he was a man," added dr. boomer, rehearsing in advance, unconsciously, no doubt, his forthcoming oration over dr. mcteague's death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth of culture, and he was able, as few men are, to instil what i might call a spirit of religion into his teaching. his lectures, indeed, were suffused with moral instruction, and exercised over his students an influence second only to that of the pulpit itself." he paused. "ah yes, the pulpit," said mr. furlong, "there indeed you will miss him." "that," said dr. boomer very reverently, "is our real loss, deep, irreparable. i suppose, indeed i am certain, we shall never again see such a man in the pulpit of st. osoph's. which reminds me," he added more briskly, "i must ask the newspaper people to let it be known that there will be service as usual the day after tomorrow, and that dr. mcteague's death will, of course, make no difference--that is to say--i must see the newspaper people at once." * * * * * that afternoon all the newspaper editors in the city were busy getting their obituary notices ready for the demise of dr. mcteague. "the death of dr. mcteague," wrote the editor of the _commercial and financial undertone_, a paper which had almost openly advocated the minister's dismissal for five years back, "comes upon us as an irreparable loss. his place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to fill. whether as a philosopher or a divine he cannot be replaced." "we have no hesitation in saying," so wrote the editor of the _plutorian times_, a three-cent morning paper, which was able to take a broad or three-cent point of view of men and things, "that the loss of dr. mcteague will be just as much felt in europe as in america. to germany the news that the hand that penned 'mcteague's shorter exposition of the kantian hypothesis' has ceased to write will come with the shock of poignant anguish; while to france--" the editor left the article unfinished at that point. after all, he was a ready writer, and he reflected that there would be time enough before actually going to press to consider from what particular angle the blow of mcteague's death would strike down the people of france. so ran in speech and in writing, during two or three days, the requiem of dr. mcteague. altogether there were more kind things said of him in the three days during which he was taken for dead, than in thirty years of his life--which seemed a pity. and after it all, at the close of the third day, dr. mcteague feebly opened his eyes. but when he opened them the world had already passed on, and left him behind. chapter seven: the ministrations of the rev. uttermust dumfarthing "well, then, gentlemen, i think we have all agreed upon our man?" mr. dick overend looked around the table as he spoke at the managing trustees of st. osoph's church. they were assembled in an upper committee room of the mausoleum club. their official place of meeting was in a board room off the vestry of the church. but they had felt a draught in it, some four years ago, which had wafted them over to the club as their place of assembly. in the club there were no draughts. mr. dick overend sat at the head of the table, his brother george beside him, and dr. boomer at the foot. beside them were mr. boulder, mr. skinyer (of skinyer and beatem) and the rest of the trustees. "you are agreed, then, on the reverend uttermust dumfarthing?" "quite agreed," murmured several trustees together. "a most remarkable man," said dr. boomer. "i heard him preach in his present church. he gave utterance to thoughts that i have myself been thinking for years. i never listened to anything so sound or so scholarly." "i heard him the night he preached in new york," said mr. boulder. "he preached a sermon to the poor. he told them they were no good. i never heard, outside of a scotch pulpit, such splendid invective." "is he scotch?" said one of the trustees. "of scotch parentage," said the university president. "i believe he is one of the dumfarthings of dunfermline, dumfries." everybody said "oh," and there was a pause. "is he married?" asked one of the trustees. "i understand," answered dr. boomer, "that he is a widower with one child, a little girl." "does he make any conditions?" "none whatever," said the chairman, consulting a letter before him, "except that he is to have absolute control, and in regard to salary. these two points settled, he says, he places himself entirely in our hands." "and the salary?" asked someone. "ten thousand dollars," said the chairman, "payable quarterly in advance." a chorus of approval went round the table. "good," "excellent," "a first-class man," muttered the trustees, "just what we want." "i am sure, gentlemen," said mr. dick overend, voicing the sentiments of everybody, "we do _not_ want a cheap man. several of the candidates whose names have been under consideration here have been in many respects--in point of religious qualification, let us say--most desirable men. the name of dr. mcskwirt, for example, has been mentioned with great favour by several of the trustees. but he's a cheap man. i feel we don't want him." "what is mr. dumfarthing getting where he is?" asked mr. boulder. "nine thousand nine hundred," said the chairman. "and dr. mcskwirt?" "fourteen hundred dollars." "well, that settles it!" exclaimed everybody with a burst of enlightenment. and so it was settled. in fact, nothing could have been plainer. "i suppose," said mr. george overend as they were about to rise, "that we are quite justified in taking it for granted that dr. mcteague will never be able to resume work?" "oh, absolutely for granted," said dr. boomer. "poor mcteague! i hear from slyder that he was making desperate efforts this morning to sit up in bed. his nurse with difficulty prevented him." "is his power of speech gone?" asked mr. boulder. "practically so; in any case, dr. slyder insists on his not using it. in fact, poor mcteague's mind is a wreck. his nurse was telling me that this morning he was reaching out his hand for the newspaper, and seemed to want to read one of the editorials. it was quite pathetic," concluded dr. boomer, shaking his head. so the whole matter was settled, and next day all the town knew that st. osoph's church had extended a call to the rev. uttermust dumfarthing, and that he had accepted it. * * * * * within a few weeks of this date the reverend uttermust dumfarthing moved into the manse of st. osoph's and assumed his charge. and forthwith he became the sole topic of conversation on plutoria avenue. "have you seen the new minister of st. osoph's?" everybody asked. "have you been to hear dr. dumfarthing?" "were you at st. osoph's church on sunday morning? ah, you really should go! most striking sermon i ever listened to." the effect of him was absolute and instantaneous; there was no doubt of it. "my dear," said mrs. buncomhearst to one of her friends, in describing how she had met him, "i never saw a more striking man. such power in his face! mr. boulder introduced him to me on the avenue, and he hardly seemed to see me at all, simply scowled! i was never so favourably impressed with any man." on his very first sunday he preached to his congregation on eternal punishment, leaning forward in his black gown and shaking his fist at them. dr. mcteague had never shaken his fist in thirty years, and as for the rev. fareforth furlong, he was incapable of it. but the rev. uttermust dumfarthing told his congregation that he was convinced that at least seventy per cent of them were destined for eternal punishment; and he didn't call it by that name, but labelled it simply and forcibly "hell." the word had not been heard in any church in the better part of the city for a generation. the congregation was so swelled next sunday that the minister raised the percentage to eighty-five, and everybody went away delighted. young and old flocked to st. osoph's. before a month had passed the congregation at the evening service at st. asaph's church was so slender that the offertory, as mr. furlong senior himself calculated, was scarcely sufficient to pay the overhead charge of collecting it. the presence of so many young men sitting in serried files close to the front was the only feature of his congregation that extorted from the rev. mr. dumfarthing something like approval. "it is a joy to me to see," he remarked to several of his trustees, "that there are in the city so many godly young men, whatever the elders may be." but there may have been a secondary cause at work, for among the godly young men of plutoria avenue the topic of conversation had not been, "have you heard the new presbyterian minister?" but, "have you seen his daughter? you haven't? well, say!" for it turned out that the "child" of dr. uttermust dumfarthing, so-called by the trustees, was the kind of child that wears a little round hat, straight from paris, with an upright feather in it, and a silk dress in four sections, and shoes with high heels that would have broken the heart of john calvin. moreover, she had the distinction of being the only person on plutoria avenue who was not one whit afraid of the reverend uttermust dumfarthing. she even amused herself, in violation of all rules, by attending evening service at st. asaph's, where she sat listening to the reverend edward, and feeling that she had never heard anything so sensible in her life. "i'm simply dying to meet your brother," she said to mrs. tom overend, otherwise philippa; "he's such a complete contrast with father." she knew no higher form of praise: "father's sermons are always so frightfully full of religion." and philippa promised that meet him she should. but whatever may have been the effect of the presence of catherine dumfarthing, there is no doubt the greater part of the changed situation was due to dr. dumfarthing himself. everything he did was calculated to please. he preached sermons to the rich and told them they were mere cobwebs, and they liked it; he preached a special sermon to the poor and warned them to be mighty careful; he gave a series of weekly talks to workingmen, and knocked them sideways; and in the sunday school he gave the children so fierce a talk on charity and the need of giving freely and quickly, that such a stream of pennies and nickels poured into catherine dumfarthing's sunday school fund as hadn't been seen in the church in fifty years. nor was mr. dumfarthing different in his private walk of life. he was heard to speak openly of the overend brothers as "men of wrath," and they were so pleased that they repeated it to half the town. it was the best business advertisement they had had for years. dr. boomer was captivated with the man. "true scholarship," he murmured, as dr. dumfarthing poured undiluted greek and hebrew from the pulpit, scorning to translate a word of it. under dr. boomer's charge the minister was taken over the length and breadth of plutoria university, and reviled it from the foundations up. "our library," said the president, "two hundred thousand volumes!" "aye," said the minister, "a powerful heap of rubbish, i'll be bound!" "the photograph of our last year's graduating class," said the president. "a poor lot, to judge by the faces of them," said the minister. "this, dr. dumfarthing, is our new radiographic laboratory; mr. spiff, our demonstrator, is preparing slides which, i believe, actually show the movements of the atom itself, do they not, mr. spiff?" "ah," said the minister, piercing mr. spiff from beneath his dark brows, "it will not avail you, young man." dr. boomer was delighted. "poor mcteague," he said--"and by the way, boyster, i hear that mcteague is trying to walk again; a great error, it shouldn't be allowed!--poor mcteague knew nothing of science." the students themselves shared in the enthusiasm, especially after dr. dumfarthing had given them a sunday afternoon talk in which he showed that their studies were absolutely futile. as soon as they knew this they went to work with a vigour that put new life into the college. * * * * * meantime the handsome face of the reverend edward fareforth furlong began to wear a sad and weary look that had never been seen on it before. he watched the congregation drifting from st. asaph's to st. osoph's and was powerless to prevent it. his sadness reached its climax one bright afternoon in the late summer, when he noticed that even his episcopal blackbirds were leaving his elms and moving westward to the spruce trees of the manse. he stood looking at them with melancholy on his face. "why, edward," cried his sister, philippa, as her motor stopped beside him, "how doleful you look! get into the car and come out into the country for a ride. let the parish teas look after themselves for today." tom, philippa's husband, was driving his own car--he was rich enough to be able to--and seated with philippa in the car was an unknown person, as prettily dressed as philippa herself. to the rector she was presently introduced as miss catherine something--he didn't hear the rest of it. nor did he need to. it was quite plain that her surname, whatever it was, was a very temporary and transitory affair. so they sped rapidly out of the city and away out into the country, mile after mile, through cool, crisp air, and among woods with the touch of autumn bright already upon them, and with blue sky and great still clouds white overhead. and the afternoon was so beautiful and so bright that as they went along there was no talk about religion at all! nor was there any mention of mothers' auxiliaries, or girls' friendly societies, nor any discussion of the poor. it was too glorious a day. but they spoke instead of the new dances, and whether they had come to stay, and of such sensible topics as that. then presently, as they went on still further, philippa leaned forwards and talked to tom over his shoulder and reminded him that this was the very road to castel casteggio, and asked him if he remembered coming up it with her to join the newberry's ever so long ago. whatever it was that tom answered it is not recorded, but it is certain that it took so long in the saying that the reverend edward talked in tete-a-tete with catherine for fifteen measured miles, and was unaware that it was more than five minutes. among other things he said, and she agreed--or she said and he agreed--that for the new dances it was necessary to have always one and the same partner, and to keep that partner all the time. and somehow simple sentiments of that sort, when said direct into a pair of listening blue eyes behind a purple motor veil, acquire an infinite significance. then, not much after that, say three or four minutes, they were all of a sudden back in town again, running along plutoria avenue, and to the rector's surprise the motor was stopping outside the manse, and catherine was saying, "oh, thank you ever so much, philippa; it was just heavenly!" which showed that the afternoon had had its religious features after all. "what!" said the rector's sister, as they moved off again, "didn't you know? that's catherine dumfarthing!" * * * * * when the rev. fareforth furlong arrived home at the rectory he spent an hour or so in the deepest of deep thought in an armchair in his study. nor was it any ordinary parish problem that he was revolving in his mind. he was trying to think out some means by which his sister juliana might be induced to commit the sin of calling on the daughter of a presbyterian minister. the thing had to be represented as in some fashion or other an act of self-denial, a form of mortification of the flesh. otherwise he knew juliana would never do it. but to call on miss catherine dumfarthing seemed to him such an altogether delightful and unspeakably blissful process that he hardly knew how to approach the topic. so when juliana presently came home the rector could find no better way of introducing the subject than by putting it on the ground of philippa's marriage to miss dumfarthing's father's trustee's nephew. "juliana," he said, "don't you think that perhaps, on account of philippa and tom, you ought--or at least it might be best for you to call on miss dumfarthing?" juliana turned to her brother as he laid aside her bonnet and her black gloves. "i've just been there this afternoon," she said. there was something as near to a blush on her face as her brother had ever seen. "but she was not there!" he said. "no," answered juliana, "but mr. dumfarthing was. i stayed and talked some time with him, waiting for her." the rector gave a sort of whistle, or rather that blowing out of air which is the episcopal symbol for it. "didn't you find him pretty solemn?" he said. "solemn!" answered his sister. "surely, edward, a man in such a calling as his ought to be solemn." "i don't mean that exactly," said the rector; "i mean--er--hard, bitter, so to speak." "edward!" exclaimed juliana, "how can you speak so. mr. dumfarthing hard! mr. dumfarthing bitter! why, edward, the man is gentleness and kindness itself. i don't think i ever met anyone so full of sympathy, of compassion with suffering." juliana's face had flushed it was quite plain that she saw things in the reverend uttermust dumfarthing--as some one woman does in every man--that no one else could see. the reverend edward was abashed. "i wasn't thinking of his character," he said. "i was thinking rather of his doctrines. wait till you have heard him preach." juliana flushed more deeply still. "i heard him last sunday evening," she said. the rector was silent, and his sister, as if impelled to speak, went on, "and i don't see, edward, how anyone could think him a hard or bigoted man in his creed. he walked home with me to the gate just now, and he was speaking of all the sin in the world, and of how few, how very few people, can be saved, and how many will have to be burned as worthless; and he spoke so beautifully. he regrets it, edward, regrets it deeply. it is a real grief to him." on which juliana, half in anger, withdrew, and her brother the rector sat back in his chair with smiles rippling all over his saintly face. for he had been wondering whether it would be possible, even remotely possible, to get his sister to invite the dumfarthings to high tea at the rectory some day at six o'clock (evening dinner was out of the question), and now he knew within himself that the thing was as good as done. * * * * * while such things as these were happening and about to happen, there were many others of the congregation of st. asaph's beside the rector to whom the growing situation gave cause for serious perplexities. indeed, all who were interested in the church, the trustees and the mortgagees and the underlying debenture-holders, were feeling anxious. for some of them underlay the sunday school, whose scholars' offerings had declined forty per cent, and others underlay the new organ, not yet paid for, while others were lying deeper still beneath the ground site of the church with seven dollars and a half a square foot resting on them. "i don't like it," said mr. lucullus fyshe to mr. newberry (they were both prominent members of the congregation). "i don't like the look of things. i took up a block of furlong's bonds on his guild building from what seemed at the time the best of motives. the interest appeared absolutely certain. now it's a month overdue on the last quarter. i feel alarmed." "neither do i like it," said mr. newberry, shaking his head; "and i'm sorry for fareforth furlong. an excellent fellow, fyshe, excellent. i keep wondering sunday after sunday, if there isn't something i can do to help him out. one might do something further, perhaps, in the way of new buildings or alterations. i have, in fact, offered--by myself, i mean, and without other aid--to dynamite out the front of his church, underpin it, and put him in a norman gateway; either that, or blast out the back of it where the choir sit, just as he likes. i was thinking about it last sunday as they were singing the anthem, and realizing what a lot one might do there with a few sticks of dynamite." "i doubt it," said mr. fyshe. "in fact, newberry, to speak very frankly, i begin to ask myself, is furlong the man for the post?" "oh, surely," said mr. newberry in protest. "personally a charming fellow," went on mr. fyshe; "but is he, all said and done, quite the man to conduct a church? in the _first_ place, he is _not_ a businessman." "no," said mr. newberry reluctantly, "that i admit." "very good. and, _secondly_, even in the matter of his religion itself, one always feels as if he were too little fixed, too unstable. he simply moves with the times. that, at least, is what people are beginning to say of him, that he is perpetually moving with the times. it doesn't do, newberry, it doesn't do." whereupon mr. newberry went away troubled and wrote to fareforth furlong a confidential letter with a signed cheque in it for the amount of mr. fyshe's interest, and with such further offerings of dynamite, of underpinning and blasting as his conscience prompted. when the rector received and read the note and saw the figures of the cheque, there arose such a thankfulness in his spirit as he hadn't felt for months, and he may well have murmured, for the repose of mr. newberry's soul, a prayer not found in the rubric of king james. all the more cause had he to feel light at heart, for as it chanced, it was on that same evening that the dumfarthings, father and daughter, were to take tea at the rectory. indeed, a few minutes before six o'clock they might have been seen making their way from the manse to the rectory. on their way along the avenue the minister took occasion to reprove his daughter for the worldliness of her hat (it was a little trifle from new york that she had bought out of the sunday school money--a temporary loan); and a little further on he spoke to her severely about the parasol she carried; and further yet about the strange fashion, specially condemned by the old testament, in which she wore her hair. so catherine knew in her heart from this that she must be looking her very prettiest, and went into the rectory radiant. the tea was, of course, an awkward meal at the best. there was an initial difficulty about grace, not easily surmounted. and when the rev. mr. dumfarthing sternly refused tea as a pernicious drink weakening to the system, the anglican rector was too ignorant of the presbyterian system to know enough to give him scotch whiskey. but there were bright spots in the meal as well. the rector was even able to ask catherine, sideways as a personal question, if she played tennis; and she was able to whisper behind her hand, "not allowed," and to make a face in the direction of her father, who was absorbed for the moment in a theological question with juliana. indeed, before the conversation became general again the rector had contrived to make a rapid arrangement with catherine whereby she was to come with him to the newberry's tennis court the day following and learn the game, with or without permission. so the tea was perhaps a success in its way. and it is noteworthy that juliana spent the days that followed it in reading calvin's "institutes" (specially loaned to her) and "dumfarthing on the certainty of damnation" (a gift), and in praying for her brother--a task practically without hope. during which same time the rector in white flannels, and catherine in a white duck skirt and blouse, were flying about on the green grass of the newberrys' court, and calling, "love," "love all," to one another so gaily and so brazenly that even mr. newberry felt that there must be something in it. but all these things came merely as interludes in the moving currents of greater events; for as the summer faded into autumn and autumn into winter the anxieties of the trustees of st. asaph's began to call for action of some sort. * * * * * "edward," said the rector's father on the occasion of their next quarterly discussion, "i cannot conceal from you that the position of things is very serious. your statements show a falling off in every direction. your interest is everywhere in arrears; your current account overdrawn to the limit. at this rate, you know, the end is inevitable. your debenture and bondholders will decide to foreclose; and if they do, you know, there is no power that can stop them. even with your limited knowledge of business you are probably aware that there is no higher power that can influence or control the holder of a first mortgage." "i fear so," said the rev. edward very sadly. "do you not think perhaps that some of the shortcoming lies with yourself?" continued mr. furlong. "is it not possible that as a preacher you fail somewhat, do not, as it were, deal sufficiently with fundamental things as others do? you leave untouched the truly vital issues, such things as the creation, death, and, if i may refer to it, the life beyond the grave." as a result of which the reverend edward preached a series of special sermons on the creation for which he made a special and arduous preparation in the library of plutoria university. he said that it had taken a million, possibly a hundred million years of quite difficult work to accomplish, and that though when we looked at it all was darkness still we could not be far astray if we accepted and held fast to the teachings of sir charles lyell. the book of genesis, he said was not to be taken as meaning a day when it said a day, but rather something other than a mere day; and the word "light" meant not exactly light but possibly some sort of phosphorescence, and that the use of the word "darkness" was to be understood not as meaning darkness, but to be taken as simply indicating obscurity. and when he had quite finished, the congregation declared the whole sermon to be mere milk and water. it insulted their intelligence, they said. after which, a week later, the rev. dr. dumfarthing took up the same subject, and with the aid of seven plain texts pulverized the rector into fragments. one notable result of the controversy was that juliana furlong refused henceforth to attend her brother's church and sat, even at morning service, under the minister of st. osoph's. "the sermon was, i fear, a mistake," said mr. furlong senior; "perhaps you had better not dwell too much on such topics. we must look for aid in another direction. in fact, edward, i may mention to you in confidence that certain of your trustees are already devising ways and means that may help us out of our dilemma." indeed, although the reverend edward did not know it, a certain idea, or plan, was already germinating in the minds of the most influential supporters of st. asaph's. such was the situation of the rival churches of st. asaph and st. osoph as the autumn slowly faded into winter: during which time the elm trees on plutoria avenue shivered and dropped their leaves and the chauffeurs of the motors first turned blue in their faces and then, when the great snows came, were suddenly converted into liveried coachmen with tall bearskins and whiskers like russian horseguards, changing back again to blue-nosed chauffeurs the very moment of a thaw. during this time also the congregation of the reverend fareforth furlong was diminishing month by month, and that of the reverend uttermust dumfarthing was so numerous that they filled up the aisles at the back of the church. here the worshippers stood and froze, for the minister had abandoned the use of steam heat in st. osoph's on the ground that he could find no warrant for it. during the same period other momentous things were happening, such as that juliana furlong was reading, under the immediate guidance of dr. dumfarthing, the history of the progress of disruption in the churches of scotland in ten volumes; such also as that catherine dumfarthing was wearing a green and gold winter suit with russian furs and a balkan hat and a circassian feather, which cut a wide swath of destruction among the young men on plutoria avenue every afternoon as she passed. moreover by the strangest of coincidences she scarcely ever seemed to come along the snow-covered avenue without meeting the reverend edward--a fact which elicited new exclamations of surprise from them both every day: and by an equally strange coincidence they generally seemed, although coming in different directions, to be bound for the same place; towards which they wandered together with such slow steps and in such oblivion of the passers-by that even the children on the avenue knew by instinct whither they were wandering. it was noted also that the broken figure of dr. mcteague had reappeared upon the street, leaning heavily upon a stick and greeting those he met with such a meek and willing affability, as if in apology for his stroke of paralysis, that all who talked with him agreed that mcteague's mind was a wreck. "he stood and spoke to me about the children for at least a quarter of an hour," related one of his former parishioners, "asking after them by name, and whether they were going to school yet and a lot of questions like that. he never used to speak of such things. poor old mcteague, i'm afraid he is getting soft in the head." "i know," said the person addressed. "his mind is no good. he stopped me the other day to say how sorry he was to hear about my brother's illness. i could see from the way he spoke that his brain is getting feeble. he's losing his grip. he was speaking of how kind people had been to him after his accident and there were tears in his eyes. i think he's getting batty." nor were even these things the most momentous happenings of the period. for as winter slowly changed to early spring it became known that something of great portent was under way. it was rumoured that the trustees of st. asaph's church were putting their heads together. this was striking news. the last time that the head of mr. lucullus fyshe, for example, had been placed side by side with that of mr. newberry, there had resulted a merger of four soda-water companies, bringing what was called industrial peace over an area as big as texas and raising the price of soda by three peaceful cents per bottle. and the last time that mr. furlong senior's head had been laid side by side with those of mr. rasselyer-brown and mr. skinyer, they had practically saved the country from the horrors of a coal famine by the simple process of raising the price of nut coal seventy-five cents a ton and thus guaranteeing its abundance. naturally, therefore, when it became known that such redoubtable heads as those of the trustees and the underlying mortgagees of st. asaph's were being put together, it was fully expected that some important development would follow. it was not accurately known from which of the assembled heads first proceeded the great idea which was presently to solve the difficulties of the church. it may well have come from that of mr. lucullus fyshe. certainly a head which had brought peace out of civil war in the hardware business by amalgamating ten rival stores and had saved the very lives of five hundred employees by reducing their wages fourteen per cent, was capable of it. at any rate it was mr. fyshe who first gave the idea a definite utterance. "it's the only thing, furlong," he said, across the lunch table at the mausoleum club. "it's the one solution. the two churches can't live under the present conditions of competition. we have here practically the same situation as we had with two rum distilleries--the output is too large for the demand. one or both of the two concerns must go under. it's their turn just now, but these fellows are business men enough to know that it may be ours tomorrow. we'll offer them a business solution. we'll propose a merger." "i've been thinking of it," said mr. furlong senior, "i suppose it's feasible?" "feasible!" exclaimed mr. fyshe. "why look what's being done every day everywhere, from the standard oil company downwards." "you would hardly, i think," said mr. furlong, with a quiet smile, "compare the standard oil company to a church?" "well, no, i suppose not," said mr. fyshe, and he too smiled--in fact he almost laughed. the notion was too ridiculous. one could hardly compare a mere church to a thing of the magnitude and importance of the standard oil company. "but on a lesser scale," continued mr. fyshe, "it's the same sort of thing. as for the difficulties of it, i needn't remind you of the much greater difficulties we had to grapple with in the rum merger. there, you remember, a number of the women held out as a matter of principle. it was not mere business with them. church union is different. in fact it is one of the ideas of the day and everyone admits that what is needed is the application of the ordinary business principles of harmonious combination, with a proper--er--restriction of output and general economy of operation." "very good," said mr. furlong, "i'm sure if you're willing to try, the rest of us are." "all right," said mr. fyshe. "i thought of setting skinyer, of skinyer and beatem, to work on the form of the organization. as you know he is not only a deeply religious man but he has already handled the tin pot combination and the united hardware and the associated tanneries. he ought to find this quite simple." * * * * * within a day or two mr. skinyer had already commenced his labours. "i must first," he said, "get an accurate idea of the existing legal organization of the two churches." for which purpose he approached the rector of st. asaph's. "i just want to ask you, mr. furlong," said the lawyer, "a question or two as to the exact constitution, the form so to speak, of your church. what is it? is it a single corporate body?" "i suppose," said the rector thoughtfully, "one would define it as an indivisible spiritual unit manifesting itself on earth." "quite so," interrupted mr. skinyer, "but i don't mean what it is in the religious sense: i mean, in the real sense." "i fail to understand," said mr. furlong. "let me put it very clearly," said the lawyer. "where does it get its authority?" "from above." said the rector reverently. "precisely," said mr. skinyer, "no doubt, but i mean its authority in the exact sense of the term." "it was enjoined on st. peter," began the rector, but mr. skinyer interrupted him. "that i am aware of," he said, "but what i mean is--where does your church get its power, for example, to hold property, to collect debts, to use distraint against the property of others, to foreclose its mortgages and to cause judgement to be executed against those who fail to pay their debts to it? you will say at once that it has these powers direct from heaven. no doubt that is true and no religious person would deny it. but we lawyers are compelled to take a narrower, a less elevating point of view. are these powers conferred on you by the state legislature or by some higher authority?" "oh, by a higher authority, i hope," said the rector very fervently. whereupon mr. skinyer left him without further questioning, the rector's brain being evidently unfit for the subject of corporation law. on the other hand he got satisfaction from the rev. dr. dumfarthing at once. "the church of st. osoph," said the minister, "is a perpetual trust, holding property as such under a general law of the state and able as such to be made the object of suit or distraint. i speak with some assurance as i had occasion to enquire into the matter at the time when i was looking for guidance in regard to the call i had received to come here." * * * * * "it's a quite simple matter," mr. skinyer presently reported to mr. fyshe. "one of the churches is a perpetual trust, the other practically a state corporation. each has full control over its property provided nothing is done by either to infringe the purity of its doctrine." "just what does that mean?" asked mr. fyshe. "it must maintain its doctrine absolutely pure. otherwise if certain of its trustees remain pure and the rest do not, those who stay pure are entitled to take the whole of the property. this, i believe, happens every day in scotland where, of course, there is great eagerness to remain pure in doctrine." "and what do you define as _pure_ doctrine?" asked mr. fyshe. "if the trustees are in dispute," said mr. skinyer, "the courts decide, but any doctrine is held to be a pure doctrine if _all_ the trustees regard it as a pure doctrine." "i see," said mr. fyshe thoughtfully, "it's the same thing as what we called 'permissible policy' on the part of directors in the tin pot combination." "exactly," assented mr. skinyer, "and it means that for the merger we need nothing--i state it very frankly--except general consent." * * * * * the preliminary stages of the making of the merger followed along familiar business lines. the trustees of st. asaph's went through the process known as 'approaching' the trustees of st. osoph's. first of all, for example, mr. lucullus fyshe invited mr. asmodeus boulder of st. osoph's to lunch with him at the mausoleum club; the cost of the lunch, as is usual in such cases, was charged to the general expense account of the church. of course nothing whatever was said during the lunch about the churches or their finances or anything concerning them. such discussion would have been a gross business impropriety. a few days later the two brothers overend dined with mr. furlong senior, the dinner being charged directly to the contingencies account of st. asaph's. after which mr. skinyer and his partner, mr. beatem, went to the spring races together on the profit and loss account of st. osoph's, and philippa overend and catherine dumfarthing were taken (by the unforeseen disbursements account) to the grand opera, followed by a midnight supper. all of these things constituted what was called the promotion of the merger and were almost exactly identical with the successive stages of the making of the amalgamated distilleries and the associated tin pot corporation; which was considered a most hopeful sign. * * * * * "do you think they'll go into it?" asked mr. newberry of mr. furlong senior, anxiously. "after all, what inducement have they?" "every inducement," said mr. furlong. "all said and done they've only one large asset--dr. dumfarthing. we're really offering to buy up dr. dumfarthing by pooling our assets with theirs." "and what does dr. dumfarthing himself say to it?" "ah, there i am not so sure," said mr. furlong; "that may be a difficulty. so far there hasn't been a word from him, and his trustees are absolutely silent about his views. however, we shall soon know all about it. skinyer is asking us all to come together one evening next week to draw up the articles of agreement." "has he got the financial basis arranged then?" "i believe so," said mr. furlong. "his idea is to form a new corporation to be known as the united church limited or by some similar name. all the present mortgagees will be converted into unified bondholders, the pew rents will be capitalized into preferred stock and the common stock, drawing its dividend from the offertory, will be distributed among all members in standing. skinyer says that it is really an ideal form of church union, one that he thinks is likely to be widely adopted. it has the advantage of removing all questions of religion, which he says are practically the only remaining obstacle to a union of all the churches. in fact it puts the churches once and for all on a business basis." "but what about the question of doctrine, of belief?" asked mr. newberry. "skinyer says he can settle it," answered mr. furlong. * * * * * about a week after the above conversation the united trustees of st. asaph's and st. osoph's were gathered about a huge egg-shaped table in the board room of the mausoleum club. they were seated in intermingled fashion after the precedent of the recent tin pot amalgamation and were smoking huge black cigars specially kept by the club for the promotion of companies and chargeable to expenses of organization at fifty cents a cigar. there was an air of deep peace brooding over the assembly, as among men who have accomplished a difficult and meritorious task. "well, then," said mr. skinyer, who was in the chair, with a pile of documents in front of him, "i think that our general basis of financial union may be viewed as settled." a murmur of assent went round the meeting. "the terms are set forth in the memorandum before us, which you have already signed. only one other point--a minor one--remains to be considered. i refer to the doctrines or the religious belief of the new amalgamation." "is it necessary to go into that?" asked mr. boulder. "not entirely, perhaps," said mr. skinyer. "still there have been, as you all know, certain points--i won't say of disagreement--but let us say of friendly argument--between the members of the different churches--such things for example," here he consulted his papers, "as the theory of the creation, the salvation of the soul, and so forth, have been mentioned in this connection. i have a memorandum of them here, though the points escape me for the moment. these, you may say, are not matters of first importance, especially as compared with the intricate financial questions which we have already settled in a satisfactory manner. still i think it might be well if i were permitted with your unanimous approval to jot down a memorandum or two to be afterwards embodied in our articles." there was a general murmur of approval. "very good," said mr. skinyer, settling himself back in his chair. "now, first, in regard to the creation," here he looked all round the meeting in a way to command attention--"is it your wish that we should leave that merely to a gentlemen's agreement or do you want an explicit clause?" "i think it might be well," said mr. dick overend, "to leave no doubt about the theory of the creation." "good," said mr. skinyer. "i am going to put it down then something after this fashion: 'on and after, let us say, august st proximo, the process of the creation shall be held, and is hereby held, to be such and such only as is acceptable to a majority of the holders of common and preferred stock voting pro rata.' is that agreed?" "carried," cried several at once. "carried," repeated mr. skinyer. "now let us pass on"--here he consulted his notes--"to item two, eternal punishment. i have made a memorandum as follows, 'should any doubts arise, on or after august first proximo, as to the existence of eternal punishment they shall be settled absolutely and finally by a pro-rata vote of all the holders of common and preferred stock.' is that agreed?" "one moment!" said mr. fyshe, "do you think that quite fair to the bondholders? after all, as the virtual holders of the property, they are the persons most interested. i should like to amend your clause and make it read--i am not phrasing it exactly but merely giving the sense of it--that eternal punishment should be reserved for the mortgagees and bondholders." at this there was an outbreak of mingled approval and dissent, several persons speaking at once. in the opinion of some the stockholders of the company, especially the preferred stockholders, had as good a right to eternal punishment as the bondholders. presently mr. skinyer, who had been busily writing notes, held up his hand for silence. "gentlemen," he said, "will you accept this as a compromise? we will keep the original clause but merely add to it the words, 'but no form of eternal punishment shall be declared valid if displeasing to a three-fifths majority of the holders of bonds.'" "carried, carried," cried everybody. "to which i think we need only add," said mr. skinyer, "a clause to the effect that all other points of doctrine, belief or religious principle may be freely altered, amended, reversed or entirely abolished at any general annual meeting!" there was a renewed chorus of "carried, carried," and the trustees rose from the table shaking hands with one another, and lighting fresh cigars as they passed out of the club into the night air. "the only thing that i don't understand," said mr. newberry to dr. boomer as they went out from the club arm in arm (for they might now walk in that fashion with the same propriety as two of the principals in a distillery merger), "the only thing that i don't understand is why the reverend mr. dumfarthing should be willing to consent to the amalgamation." "do you really not know?" said dr. boomer. "no." "you have heard nothing?" "not a word," said mr. newberry. "ah," rejoined the president, "i see that our men have kept it very quiet--naturally so, in view of the circumstances. the truth is that the reverend mr. dumfarthing is leaving us." "leaving st. osoph's!" exclaimed mr. newberry in utter astonishment. "to our great regret. he has had a call--a most inviting field of work, he says, a splendid opportunity. they offered him ten thousand one hundred; we were only giving him ten thousand here, though of course that feature of the situation would not weigh at all with a man like dumfarthing." "oh no, of course not," said mr. newberry. "as soon as we heard of the call we offered him ten thousand three hundred--not that that would make any difference to a man of his character. indeed dumfarthing was still waiting and looking for guidance when they offered him eleven thousand. we couldn't meet it. it was beyond us, though we had the consolation of knowing that with such a man as dumfarthing the money made no difference." "and he has accepted the call?" "yes. he accepted it today. he sent word to mr. dick overend our chairman, that he would remain in his manse, looking for light, until two-thirty, after which, if we had not communicated with him by that hour, he would cease to look for it." "dear me," said mr. newberry, deep in reflection, "so that when your trustees came to the meeting--" "exactly," said dr. boomer--and something like a smile passed across his features for a moment "dr. dumfarthing had already sent away his telegram of acceptance." "why, then," said mr. newberry, "at the time of our discussion tonight, you were in the position of having no minister." "not at all. we had already appointed a successor." "a successor?" "certainly. it will be in tomorrow morning's papers. the fact is that we decided to ask dr. mcteague to resume his charge." "dr. mcteague!" repeated mr. newberry in amazement. "but surely his mind is understood to be--" "oh not at all," interrupted dr. boomer. "his mind appears if anything, to be clearer and stronger than ever. dr. slyder tells us that paralysis of the brain very frequently has this effect; it soothes the brain--clears it, as it were, so that very often intellectual problems which occasioned the greatest perplexity before present no difficulty whatever afterwards. dr. mcteague, i believe, finds no trouble now in reconciling st. paul's dialectic with hegel as he used to. he says that so far as he can see they both mean the same thing." "well, well," said mr. newberry, "and will dr. mcteague also resume his philosophical lectures at the university?" "we think it wiser not," said the president. "while we feel that dr. mcteague's mind is in admirable condition for clerical work we fear that professorial duties might strain it. in order to get the full value of his remarkable intelligence, we propose to elect him to the governing body of the university. there his brain will be safe from any shock. as a professor there would always be the fear that one of his students might raise a question in his class. this of course is not a difficulty that arises in the pulpit or among the governors of the university." "of course not," said mr. newberry. * * * * * thus was constituted the famous union or merger of the churches of st. asaph and st. osoph, viewed by many of those who made it as the beginning of a new era in the history of the modern church. there is no doubt that it has been in every way an eminent success. rivalry, competition, and controversies over points of dogma have become unknown on plutoria avenue. the parishioners of the two churches may now attend either of them just as they like. as the trustees are fond of explaining it doesn't make the slightest difference. the entire receipts of the churches, being now pooled, are divided without reference to individual attendance. at each half year there is issued a printed statement which is addressed to the shareholders of the united churches limited and is hardly to be distinguished in style or material from the annual and semi-annual reports of the tin pot amalgamation and the united hardware and other quasi-religious bodies of the sort. "your directors," the last of these documents states, "are happy to inform you that in spite of the prevailing industrial depression the gross receipts of the corporation have shown such an increase as to justify the distribution of a stock dividend of special offertory stock cumulative, which will be offered at par to all holders of common or preferred shares. you will also be gratified to learn that the directors have voted unanimously in favour of a special presentation to the rev. uttermust dumfarthing on the occasion of his approaching marriage. it was earnestly debated whether this gift should take the form, as at first suggested, of a cash presentation, or as afterwards suggested, of a written testimonial in the form of an address. the latter course was finally adopted as being more fitting to the circumstances and the address has accordingly been prepared, setting forth to the rev. dr. dumfarthing, in old english lettering and wording, the opinion which is held of him by his former parishioners." the "approaching marriage" referred of course to dr. dumfarthing's betrothal to juliana furlong. it was not known that he had ever exactly proposed to her. but it was understood that before giving up his charge he drew her attention, in very severe terms, to the fact that, as his daughter was now leaving him, he must either have someone else to look after his manse or else be compelled to incur the expense of a paid housekeeper. this latter alternative, he said, was not one that he cared to contemplate. he also reminded her that she was now at a time of life when she could hardly expect to pick and choose and that her spiritual condition was one of, at least, great uncertainty. these combined statements are held, under the law of scotland at any rate, to be equivalent to an offer of marriage. catherine dumfarthing did not join her father in his new manse. she first remained behind him, as the guest of philippa overend for a few weeks while she was occupied in packing up her things. after that she stayed for another two or three weeks to unpack them. this had been rendered necessary by a conversation held with the reverend edward fareforth furlong, in a shaded corner of the overend's garden. after which, in due course of time, catherine and edward were married, the ceremony being performed by the reverend dr. mcteague whose eyes filled with philosophical tears as he gave them his blessing. so the two churches of st. asaph and st. osoph stand side by side united and at peace. their bells call softly back and forward to one another on sunday mornings and such is the harmony between them that even the episcopal rooks in the elm trees of st. asaph's and the presbyterian crows in the spruce trees of st. osoph's are known to exchange perches on alternate sundays. chapter eight: the great fight for clean government "as to the government of this city," said mr. newberry, leaning back in a leather armchair at the mausoleum club and lighting a second cigar, "it's rotten, that's all." "absolutely rotten," assented mr. dick overend, ringing the bell for a second whiskey and soda. "corrupt," said mr. newberry, between two puffs of his cigar. "full of graft," said mr. overend, flicking his ashes into the grate. "crooked aldermen," said mr. newberry. "a bum city solicitor," said mr. overend, "and an infernal grafter for treasurer." "yes," assented mr. newberry, and then, leaning forwards in his chair and looking carefully about the corridors of the club, he spoke behind his hand and said, "and the mayor's the biggest grafter of the lot. and what's more," he added, sinking his voice to a whisper, "the time has come to speak out about it fearlessly." mr. overend nodded. "it's a tyranny," he said. "worse than russia," rejoined mr. newberry. * * * * * they had been sitting in a quiet corner of the club--it was on a sunday evening--and had fallen into talking, first of all, of the present rottenness of the federal politics of the united states--not argumentatively or with any heat, but with the reflective sadness that steals over an elderly man when he sits in the leather armchair of a comfortable club smoking a good cigar and musing on the decadence of the present day. the rottenness of the federal government didn't anger them. it merely grieved them. they could remember--both of them--how different everything was when they were young men just entering on life. when mr. newberry and mr. dick overend were young, men went into congress from pure patriotism; there was no such thing as graft or crookedness, as they both admitted, in those days; and as for the united states senate--here their voices were almost hushed in awe--why, when they were young, the united states senate-- but no, neither of them could find a phrase big enough for their meaning. they merely repeated "as for the united states senate--" and then shook their heads and took long drinks of whiskey and soda. then, naturally, speaking of the rottenness of the federal government had led them to talk of the rottenness of the state legislature. how different from the state legislatures that they remembered as young men! not merely different in the matter of graft, but different, so mr. newberry said, in the calibre of the men. he recalled how he had been taken as a boy of twelve by his father to hear a debate. he would never forget it. giants! he said, that was what they were. in fact, the thing was more like a witenagemot than a legislature. he said he distinctly recalled a man, whose name he didn't recollect, speaking on a question he didn't just remember what, either for or against he just couldn't recall which; it thrilled him. he would never forget it. it stayed in his memory as if it were yesterday. but as for the present legislature--here mr. dick overend sadly nodded assent in advance to what he knew was coming--as for the present legislature--well--mr. newberry had had, he said, occasion to visit the state capital a week before in connection with a railway bill that he was trying to--that is, that he was anxious to--in short in connection with a railway bill, and when he looked about him at the men in the legislature--positively he felt ashamed; he could put it no other way than that--ashamed. after which, from speaking of the crookedness of the state government mr. newberry and mr. dick overend were led to talk of the crookedness of the city government! and they both agreed, as above, that things were worse than in russia. what secretly irritated them both most was that they had lived and done business under this infernal corruption for thirty or forty years and hadn't noticed it. they had been too busy. the fact was that their conversation reflected not so much their own original ideas as a general wave of feeling that was passing over the whole community. there had come a moment--quite suddenly it seemed--when it occurred to everybody at the same time that the whole government of the city was rotten. the word is a strong one. but it is the one that was used. look at the aldermen, they said--rotten! look at the city solicitor, rotten! and as for the mayor himself--phew! the thing came like a wave. everybody felt it at once. people wondered how any sane, intelligent community could tolerate the presence of a set of corrupt scoundrels like the twenty aldermen of the city. their names, it was said, were simply a byword throughout the united states for rank criminal corruption. this was said so widely that everybody started hunting through the daily papers to try to find out who in blazes were aldermen, anyhow. twenty names are hard to remember, and as a matter of fact, at the moment when this wave of feeling struck the city, nobody knew or cared who were aldermen, anyway. to tell the truth, the aldermen had been much the same persons for about fifteen or twenty years. some were in the produce business, others were butchers, two were grocers, and all of them wore blue checkered waistcoats and red ties and got up at seven in the morning to attend the vegetable and other markets. nobody had ever really thought about them--that is to say, nobody on plutoria avenue. sometimes one saw a picture in the paper and wondered for a moment who the person was; but on looking more closely and noticing what was written under it, one said, "oh, i see, an alderman," and turned to something else. "whose funeral is that?" a man would sometimes ask on plutoria avenue. "oh just one of the city aldermen," a passerby would answer hurriedly. "oh i see, i beg your pardon, i thought it might be somebody important." at which both laughed. * * * * * it was not just clear how and where this movement of indignation had started. people said that it was part of a new wave of public morality that was sweeping over the entire united states. certainly it was being remarked in almost every section of the country. chicago newspapers were attributing its origin to the new vigour and the fresh ideals of the middle west. in boston it was said to be due to a revival of the grand old new england spirit. in philadelphia they called it the spirit of william penn. in the south it was said to be the reassertion of southern chivalry making itself felt against the greed and selfishness of the north, while in the north they recognized it at once as a protest against the sluggishness and ignorance of the south. in the west they spoke of it as a revolt against the spirit of the east and in the east they called it a reaction against the lawlessness of the west. but everywhere they hailed it as a new sign of the glorious unity of the country. if therefore mr. newberry and mr. overend were found to be discussing the corrupt state of their city they only shared in the national sentiments of the moment. in fact in the same city hundreds of other citizens, as disinterested as themselves, were waking up to the realization of what was going on. as soon as people began to look into the condition of things in the city they were horrified at what they found. it was discovered, for example, that alderman schwefeldampf was an undertaker! think of it! in a city with a hundred and fifty deaths a week, and sometimes even better, an undertaker sat on the council! a city that was about to expropriate land and to spend four hundred thousand dollars for a new cemetery, had an undertaker on the expropriation committee itself! and worse than that! alderman undercutt was a butcher! in a city that consumed a thousand tons of meat every week! and alderman o'hooligan--it leaked out--was an irishman! imagine it! an irishman sitting on the police committee of the council in a city where thirty-eight and a half out of every hundred policemen were irish, either by birth or parentage! the thing was monstrous. so when mr. newberry said "it's worse than russia!" he meant it, every word. * * * * * now just as mr. newberry and mr. dick overend were finishing their discussion, the huge bulky form of mayor mcgrath came ponderously past them as they sat. he looked at them sideways out of his eyes--he had eyes like plums in a mottled face--and, being a born politician, he knew by the very look of them that they were talking of something that they had no business to be talking about. but,--being a politician--he merely said, "good evening, gentlemen," without a sign of disturbance. "good evening, mr. mayor," said mr. newberry, rubbing his hands feebly together and speaking in an ingratiating tone. there is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest man caught in the act of speaking boldly and fearlessly of the evil-doer. "good evening, mr. mayor," echoed mr. dick overend, also rubbing his hands; "warm evening, is it not?" the mayor gave no other answer than that deep guttural grunt which is technically known in municipal interviews as refusing to commit oneself. "did he hear?" whispered mr. newberry as the mayor passed out of the club. "i don't care if he did," whispered mr. dick overend. half an hour later mayor mcgrath entered the premises of the thomas jefferson club, which was situated in the rear end of a saloon and pool room far down in the town. "boys," he said to alderman o'hooligan and alderman gorfinkel, who were playing freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool tables, "you want to let the boys know to keep pretty dark and go easy. there's a lot of talk i don't like about the elections going round the town. let the boys know that just for a while the darker they keep the better." whereupon the word was passed from the thomas jefferson club to the george washington club and thence to the eureka club (coloured), and to the kossuth club (hungarian), and to various other centres of civic patriotism in the lower parts of the city. and forthwith such a darkness began to spread over them that not even honest diogenes with his lantern could have penetrated their doings. "if them stiffs wants to make trouble," said the president of the george washington club to mayor mcgrath a day or two later, "they won't never know what they've bumped up against." "well," said the heavy mayor, speaking slowly and cautiously and eyeing his henchman with quiet scrutiny, "you want to go pretty easy now, i tell you." the look which the mayor directed at his satellite was much the same glance that morgan the buccaneer might have given to one of his lieutenants before throwing him overboard. * * * * * meantime the wave of civic enthusiasm as reflected in the conversations of plutoria avenue grew stronger with every day. "the thing is a scandal," said mr. lucullus fyshe. "why, these fellows down at the city hall are simply a pack of rogues. i had occasion to do some business there the other day (it was connected with the assessment of our soda factories) and do you know, i actually found that these fellows take money!" "i say!" said mr. peter spillikins, to whom he spoke, "i say! you don't say!" "it's a fact," repeated mr. fyshe. "they take money. i took the assistant treasurer aside and i said, 'i want such and such done,' and i slipped a fifty dollar bill into his hand. and the fellow took it, took it like a shot." "he took it!" gasped mr. spillikins. "he did," said mr. fyshe. "there ought to be a criminal law for that sort of thing." "i say!" exclaimed mr. spillikins, "they ought to go to jail for a thing like that." "and the infernal insolence of them," mr. fyshe continued. "i went down the next day to see the deputy assistant (about a thing connected with the same matter), told him what i wanted and passed a fifty dollar bill across the counter and the fellow fairly threw it back at me, in a perfect rage. he refused it!" "refused it," gasped mr. spillikins, "i say!" conversations such as this filled up the leisure and divided the business time of all the best people in the city. in the general gloomy outlook, however, one bright spot was observable. the "wave" had evidently come just at the opportune moment. for not only were civic elections pending but just at this juncture four or five questions of supreme importance would be settled by the incoming council. there was, for instance, the question of the expropriation of the traction company (a matter involving many millions); there was the decision as to the renewal of the franchise of the citizens' light company--a vital question; there was also the four hundred thousand dollar purchase of land for the new addition to the cemetery, a matter that must be settled. and it was felt, especially on plutoria avenue, to be a splendid thing that the city was waking up, in the moral sense, at the very time when these things were under discussion. all the shareholders of the traction company and the citizens' light--and they included the very best, the most high-minded, people in the city--felt that what was needed now was a great moral effort, to enable them to lift the city up and carry it with them, or, if not all of it, at any rate as much of it as they could. "it's a splendid movement!" said mr. fyshe (he was a leading shareholder and director of the citizens' light), "what a splendid thing to think that we shan't have to deal for our new franchise with a set of corrupt rapscallions like these present aldermen. do you know, furlong, that when we approached them first with a proposition for a renewal for a hundred and fifty years they held us up! said it was too long! imagine that! a hundred and fifty years (only a century and a half) too long for the franchise! they expect us to install all our poles, string our wires, set up our transformers in their streets and then perhaps at the end of a hundred years find ourselves compelled to sell out at a beggarly valuation. of course we knew what they wanted. they meant us to hand them over fifty dollars each to stuff into their rascally pockets." "outrageous!" said mr. furlong. "and the same thing with the cemetery land deal," went on mr. lucullus fyshe. "do you realize that, if the movement hadn't come along and checked them, those scoundrels would have given that rogue schwefeldampf four hundred thousand dollars for his fifty acres! just think of it!" "i don't know," said mr. furlong with a thoughtful look upon his face, "that four hundred thousand dollars is an excessive price, in and of itself, for that amount of land." "certainly not," said mr. fyshe, very quietly and decidedly, looking at mr. furlong in a searching way as he spoke. "it is _not_ a high price. it seems to me, speaking purely as an outsider, a very fair, reasonable price for fifty acres of suburban land, if it were the right land. if, for example, it were a case of making an offer for that very fine stretch of land, about twenty acres, is it not, which i believe your corporation owns on the _other_ side of the cemetery, i should say four hundred thousand is a most modest price." mr. furlong nodded his head reflectively. "you had thought, had you not, of offering it to the city?" said mr. fyshe. "we did," said mr. furlong, "at a more or less nominal sum--four hundred thousand or whatever it might be. we felt that for such a purpose, almost sacred as it were, one would want as little bargaining as possible." "oh, none at all," assented mr. fyshe. "our feeling was," went on mr. furlong, "that if the city wanted our land for the cemetery extension, it might have it at its own figure--four hundred thousand, half a million, in fact at absolutely any price, from four hundred thousand up, that they cared to put on it. we didn't regard it as a commercial transaction at all. our reward lay merely in the fact of selling it to them." "exactly," said mr. fyshe, "and of course your land was more desirable from every point of view. schwefeldampf's ground is encumbered with a growth of cypress and evergreens and weeping willows which make it quite unsuitable for an up-to-date cemetery; whereas yours, as i remember it, is bright and open--a loose sandy soil with no trees and very little grass to overcome." "yes," said mr. furlong. "we thought, too, that our ground, having the tanneries and the chemical factory along the farther side of it, was an ideal place for--" he paused, seeking a mode of expressing his thought. "for the dead," said mr. fyshe, with becoming reverence. and after this conversation mr. fyshe and mr. furlong senior understood one another absolutely in regard to the new movement. it was astonishing in fact how rapidly the light spread. "is rasselyer-brown with us?" asked someone of mr. fyshe a few days later. "heart and soul," answered mr. fyshe. "he's very bitter over the way these rascals have been plundering the city on its coal supply. he says that the city has been buying coal wholesale at the pit mouth at three fifty--utterly worthless stuff, he tells me. he has heard it said that everyone of these scoundrels has been paid from twenty-five to fifty dollars a winter to connive at it." "dear me," said the listener. "abominable, is it not?" said mr. fyshe. "but as i said to rasselyer-brown, what can one do if the citizens themselves take no interest in these things. 'take your own case,' i said to him, 'how is it that you, a coal man, are not helping the city in this matter? why don't you supply the city?' he shook his head, 'i wouldn't do it at three-fifty,' he said. 'no,' i answered, 'but will you at five?' he looked at me for a moment and then he said, 'fyshe, i'll do it; at five, or at anything over that they like to name. if we get a new council in they may name their own figure.' 'good,' i said. 'i hope all the other businessmen will be animated with the same spirit.'" * * * * * thus it was that the light broke and spread and illuminated in all directions. people began to realize the needs of the city as they never had before. mr. boulder, who owned, among other things, a stone quarry and an asphalt company, felt that the paving of the streets was a disgrace. mr. skinyer, of skinyer and beatem, shook his head and said that the whole legal department of the city needed reorganization; it needed, he said, new blood. but he added always in a despairing tone, how could one expect to run a department with the head of it drawing only six thousand dollars; the thing was impossible. if, he argued, they could superannuate the present chief solicitor and get a man, a _good_ man (mr. skinyer laid emphasis on this) at, say, fifteen thousand there might be some hope. "of course," said mr. skinyer to mr. newberry in discussing the topic, "one would need to give him a proper staff of assistants so as to take off his hands all the _routine_ work--the mere appearance in court, the preparation of briefs, the office consultation, the tax revision and the purely legal work. in that case he would have his hands free to devote himself entirely to those things, which--in fact to turn his attention in whatever direction he might feel it was advisable to turn it." * * * * * within a week or two the public movement had found definite expression and embodied itself in the clean government association. this was organized by a group of leading and disinterested citizens who held their first meeting in the largest upstairs room of the mausoleum club. mr. lucullus fyshe, mr. boulder, and others keenly interested in obtaining simply justice for the stockholders of the traction and the citizens' light were prominent from the start. mr. rasselyer-brown, mr. furlong senior and others were there, not from special interest in the light or traction questions, but, as they said themselves, from pure civic spirit. dr. boomer was there to represent the university with three of his most presentable professors, cultivated men who were able to sit in a first-class club and drink whiskey and soda and talk as well as any businessman present. mr. skinyer, mr. beatem and others represented the bar. dr. mcteague, blinking in the blue tobacco smoke, was there to stand for the church. there were all-round enthusiasts as well, such as mr. newberry and the overend brothers and mr. peter spillikins. "isn't it fine," whispered mr. spillikins to mr. newberry, "to see a set of men like these all going into a thing like this, not thinking of their own interests a bit?" * * * * * mr. fyshe, as chairman, addressed the meeting. he told them they were there to initiate a great free voluntary movement of the people. it had been thought wise, he said, to hold it with closed doors and to keep it out of the newspapers. this would guarantee the league against the old underhand control by a clique that had hitherto disgraced every part of the administration of the city. he wanted, he said, to see everything done henceforth in broad daylight: and for this purpose he had summoned them there at night to discuss ways and means of action. after they were once fully assured of exactly what they wanted to do and how they meant to do it, the league he said, would invite the fullest and freest advice from all classes in the city. there were none he said, amid great applause, that were so lowly that they would not be invited--once the platform of the league was settled--to advise and co-operate. all might help, even the poorest. subscription lists would be prepared which would allow any sum at all, from one to five dollars, to be given to the treasurer. the league was to be democratic or nothing. the poorest might contribute as little as one dollar: even the richest would not be allowed to give more than five. moreover he gave notice that he intended to propose that no actual official of the league should be allowed under its by-laws to give anything. he himself--if they did him the honour to make him president as he had heard it hinted was their intention--would be the first to bow to this rule. he would efface himself. he would obliterate himself, content in the interests of all, to give nothing. he was able to announce similar pledges from his friends, mr. boulder, mr. furlong, dr. boomer, and a number of others. quite a storm of applause greeted these remarks by mr. fyshe, who flushed with pride as he heard it. "now, gentlemen," he went on, "this meeting is open for discussion. remember it is quite informal, anyone may speak. i as chairman make no claim to control or monopolize the discussion. let everyone understand--" "well then, mr. chairman," began mr. dick overend. "one minute, mr. overend," said mr. fyshe. "i want everyone to understand that he may speak as--" "may i say then--" began mr. newberry. "pardon me, mr. newberry," said mr. fyshe, "i was wishing first to explain that not only may _all_ participate but that we _invite_--" "in that case--" began mr. newberry. "before you speak," interrupted mr. fyshe, "let me add one word. we must make our discussion as brief and to the point as possible. i have a great number of things which i wish to say to the meeting and it might be well if all of you would speak as briefly and as little as possible. has anybody anything to say?" "well," said mr. newberry, "what about organization and officers?" "we have thought of it," said mr. fyshe. "we were anxious above all things to avoid the objectionable and corrupt methods of a 'slate' and a prepared list of officers which has disgraced every part of our city politics until the present time. mr. boulder, mr. furlong and mr. skinyer and myself have therefore prepared a short list of offices and officers which we wish to submit to your fullest, freest consideration. it runs thus: hon. president mr. l. fyshe, hon. vice-president, mr. a. boulder, hon. secretary mr. furlong, hon. treasurer mr. o. skinyer, et cetera--i needn't read it all. you'll see it posted in the hall later. is that carried? carried! very good," said mr. fyshe. there was a moment's pause while mr. furlong and mr. skinyer moved into seats beside mr. fyshe and while mr. furlong drew from his pocket and arranged the bundle of minutes of the meeting which he had brought with him. as he himself said he was too neat and methodical a writer to trust to jotting them down on the spot. "don't you think," said mr. newberry, "i speak as a practical man, that we ought to do something to get the newspapers with us?" "most important," assented several members. "what do you think, dr. boomer?" asked mr. fyshe of the university president, "will the newspapers be with us?" dr. boomer shook his head doubtfully. "it's an important matter," he said. "there is no doubt that we need, more than anything, the support of a clean, wholesome unbiassed press that can't be bribed and is not subject to money influence. i think on the whole our best plan would be to buy up one of the city newspapers." "might it not be better simply to buy up the editorial staff?" said mr. dick overend. "we might do that," admitted dr. boomer. "there is no doubt that the corruption of the press is one of the worst factors that we have to oppose. but whether we can best fight it by buying the paper itself or buying the staff is hard to say." "suppose we leave it to a committee with full power to act," said mr. fyshe. "let us direct them to take whatever steps may in their opinion be best calculated to elevate the tone of the press, the treasurer being authorized to second them in every way. i for one am heartily sick of old underhand connection between city politics and the city papers. if we can do anything to alter and elevate it, it will be a fine work, gentlemen, well worth whatever it costs us." * * * * * thus after an hour or two of such discussion the clean government league found itself organized and equipped with a treasury and a programme and a platform. the latter was very simple. as mr. fyshe and mr. boulder said there was no need to drag in specific questions or try to define the action to be taken towards this or that particular detail, such as the hundred-and-fifty-year franchise, beforehand. the platform was simply expressed as honesty, purity, integrity. this, as mr. fyshe said, made a straight, flat, clean issue between the league and all who opposed it. this first meeting was, of course, confidential. but all that it did was presently done over again, with wonderful freshness and spontaneity at a large public meeting open to all citizens. there was a splendid impromptu air about everything. for instance when somebody away back in the hall said, "i move that mr. lucullus fyshe be president of the league," mr. fyshe lifted his hand in unavailing protest as if this were the newest idea he had ever heard in his life. after all of which the clean government league set itself to fight the cohorts of darkness. it was not just known where these were. but it was understood that they were there all right, somewhere. in the platform speeches of the epoch they figured as working underground, working in the dark, working behind the scenes, and so forth. but the strange thing was that nobody could state with any exactitude just who or what it was that the league was fighting. it stood for "honesty, purity, and integrity." that was all you could say about it. take, for example, the case of the press. at the inception of the league it has been supposed that such was the venality and corruption of the city newspapers that it would be necessary to buy one of them. but the word "clean government" had been no sooner uttered than it turned out that every one of the papers in the city was in favour of it: in fact had been working for it for years. they vied with one another now in giving publicity to the idea. the _plutorian times_ printed a dotted coupon on the corner of its front sheet with the words, "are you in favour of clean government? if so, send us ten cents with this coupon and your name and address." the _plutorian citizen and home advocate_, went even further. it printed a coupon which said, "are you out for a clean city? if so send us twenty-five cents to this office. we pledge ourselves to use it." the newspapers did more than this. they printed from day to day such pictures as the portrait of mr. fyshe with the legend below, "mr. lucullus fyshe, who says that government ought to be by the people, from the people, for the people and to the people"; and the next day another labelled. "mr. p. spillikins, who says that all men are born free and equal"; and the next day a picture with the words, "tract of ground offered for cemetery by mr. furlong, showing rear of tanneries, with head of mr. furlong inserted." it was, of course, plain enough that certain of the aldermen of the old council were to be reckoned as part of the cohort of darkness. that at least was clear. "we want no more men in control of the stamp of alderman gorfinkel and alderman schwefeldampf," so said practically every paper in the city. "the public sense revolts at these men. they are vultures who have feasted too long on the prostrate corpses of our citizens." and so on. the only trouble was to discover who or what had ever supported alderman gorfinkel and alderman schwefeldampf. the very organizations that might have seemed to be behind them were evidently more eager for clean government than the league itself. "the thomas jefferson club out for clean government," so ran the newspaper headings of one day; and of the next, "will help to clean up city government. eureka club (coloured) endorses the league; is done with darkness"; and the day after that, "sons of hungary share in good work: kossuth club will vote with the league." so strong, indeed, was the feeling against the iniquitous aldermen that the public demand arose to be done with a council of aldermen altogether and to substitute government by a board. the newspapers contained editorials on the topic each day and it was understood that one of the first efforts of the league would be directed towards getting the necessary sanction of the legislature in this direction. to help to enlighten the public on what such government meant professor proaser of the university (he was one of the three already referred to) gave a public lecture on the growth of council government. he traced it from the amphictionic council of greece as far down as the oligarchical council of venice; it was thought that had the evening been longer he would have traced it clean down to modern times. but most amazing of all was the announcement that was presently made, and endorsed by mr. lucullus fyshe in an interview, that mayor mcgrath himself would favour clean government, and would become the official nominee of the league itself. this certainly was strange. but it would perhaps have been less mystifying to the public at large, had they been able to listen to certain of the intimate conversations of mr. fyshe and mr. boulder. "you say then," said mr. boulder, "to let mcgrath's name stand." "we can't do without him," said mr. fyshe, "he has seven of the wards in the hollow of his hand. if we take his offer he absolutely pledges us every one of them." "can you rely on his word?" said mr. boulder. "i think he means to play fair with us," answered mr. fyshe. "i put it to him as a matter of honour, between man and man, a week ago. since then, i have had him carefully dictaphoned and i'm convinced he's playing straight." "how far will he go with us?" said mr. boulder. "he is willing to throw overboard gorfinkel, schwefeldampf and undercutt. he says he must find a place for o'hooligan. the irish, he says, don't care for clean government; they want irish government." "i see," said mr. boulder very thoughtfully, "and in regard to the renewal of the franchise and the expropriation, tell me just exactly what his conditions are." but mr. fyshe's answer to this was said so discreetly and in such a low voice, that not even the birds listening in the elm trees outside the mausoleum club could hear it. no wonder, then, that if even the birds failed to know everything about the clean government league, there were many things which such good people as mr. newberry and mr. peter spillikins never heard at all and never guessed. * * * * * each week and every day brought fresh triumphs to the onward march of the movement. "yes, gentlemen," said mr. fyshe to the assembled committee of the clean government league a few days later, "i am glad to be able to report our first victory. mr. boulder and i have visited the state capital and we are able to tell you definitely that the legislature will consent to change our form of government so as to replace our council by a board." "hear, hear!" cried all the committee men together. "we saw the governor," said mr. fyshe. "indeed he was good enough to lunch with us at the pocahontas club. he tells us that what we are doing is being done in every city and town of the state. he says that the days of the old-fashioned city council are numbered. they are setting up boards everywhere." "excellent!" said mr. newberry. "the governor assures us that what we want will be done. the chairman of the democratic state committee (he was good enough to dine with us at the buchanan club) has given us the same assurance. so also does the chairman of the republican state committee, who was kind enough to be our guest in a box at the lincoln theatre. it is most gratifying," concluded mr. fyshe, "to feel that the legislature will give us such a hearty, such a thoroughly american support." "you are sure of this, are you?" questioned mr. newberry. "you have actually seen the members of the legislature?" "it was not necessary," said mr. fyshe. "the governor and the different chairmen have them so well fixed--that is to say, they have such confidence in the governor and their political organizers that they will all be prepared to give us what i have described as thoroughly american support." "you are quite sure," persisted mr. newberry, "about the governor and the others you mentioned?" mr. fyshe paused a moment and then he said very quietly, "we are quite sure," and he exchanged a look with mr. boulder that meant volumes to those who would read it. * * * * * "i hope you didn't mind my questioning you in that fashion," said mr. newberry, as he and mr. fyshe strolled home from the club. "the truth is i didn't feel sure in my own mind just what was meant by a 'board,' and 'getting them to give us government by a board.' i know i'm speaking like an ignoramus. i've really not paid as much attention in the past to civic politics as i ought to have. but what is the difference between a council and a board?" "the difference between a council and a board?" repeated mr. fyshe. "yes," said mr. newberry, "the difference between a council and a board." "or call it," said mr. fyshe reflectively, "the difference between a board and a council." "precisely," said mr newberry. "it's not altogether easy to explain," said mr. fyshe. "one chief difference is that in the case of a board, sometimes called a commission, the salary is higher. you see the salary of an alderman or councillor in most cities is generally not more than fifteen hundred or two thousand dollars. the salary of a member of a board or commission is at least ten thousand. that gives you at once a very different class of men. as long as you only pay fifteen hundred you get your council filled up with men who will do any kind of crooked work for fifteen hundred dollars; as soon as you pay ten thousand you get men with larger ideas." "i see," said mr. newberry. "if you have a fifteen hundred dollar man," mr. fyshe went on, "you can bribe him at any time with a fifty-dollar bill. on the other hand your ten-thousand-dollar man has a wider outlook. if you offer him fifty dollars for his vote on the board, he'd probably laugh at you." "ah, yes," said mr. newberry, "i see the idea. a fifteen-hundred-dollar salary is so low that it will tempt a lot of men into office merely for what they can get out of it." "that's it exactly," answered mr. fyshe. * * * * * from all sides support came to the new league. the women of the city--there were fifty thousand of them on the municipal voters list--were not behind the men. though not officials of the league they rallied to its cause. "mr. fyshe," said mrs. buncomhearst, who called at the office of the president of the league with offers of support, "tell me what we can do. i represent fifty thousand women voters of this city--" (this was a favourite phrase of mrs. buncomhearst's, though it had never been made quite clear how or why she represented them.) "we want to help, we women. you know we've any amount of initiative, if you'll only tell us what to do. you know, mr. fyshe, we've just as good executive ability as you men, if you'll just tell us what to do. couldn't we hold a meeting of our own, all our own, to help the league along?" "an excellent idea," said mr. fyshe. "and could you not get three or four men to come and address it so as to stir us up?" asked mrs. buncomhearst anxiously. "oh, certainly," said mr. fyshe. so it was known after this that the women were working side by side with the men. the tea rooms of the grand palaver and the other hotels were filled with them every day, busy for the cause. one of them even invented a perfectly charming election scarf to be worn as a sort of badge to show one's allegiance; and its great merit was that it was so fashioned that it would go with anything. "yes," said mr. fyshe to his committee, "one of the finest signs of our movement is that the women of the city are with us. whatever we may think, gentlemen, of the question of woman's rights in general--and i think we know what we _do_ think--there is no doubt that the influence of women makes for purity in civic politics. i am glad to inform the committee that mrs. buncomhearst and her friends have organized all the working women of the city who have votes. they tell me that they have been able to do this at a cost as low as five dollars per woman. some of the women--foreigners of the lower classes whose sense of political morality is as yet imperfectly developed--have been organized at a cost as low as one dollar per vote. but of course with our native american women, with a higher standard of education and morality, we can hardly expect to do it as low as that." * * * * * nor were the women the only element of support added to the league. "gentlemen," reported dr. boomer, the president of the university, at the next committee meeting, "i am glad to say that the spirit which animates us has spread to the students of the university. they have organized, entirely by themselves and on their own account, a students' fair play league which has commenced its activities. i understand that they have already ducked alderman gorfinkel in a pond near the university. i believe they are looking for alderman schwefeldampf tonight. i understand they propose to throw him into the reservoir. the leaders of them--a splendid set of young fellows--have given me a pledge that they will do nothing to bring discredit on the university." "i think i heard them on the street last night," said mr. newberry. "i believe they had a procession," said the president. "yes, i heard them; they were shouting 'rah! rah! rah! clean government! clean government! rah! rah!' it was really inspiring to hear them." "yes," said the president, "they are banded together to put down all the hoodlumism and disturbance on the street that has hitherto disgraced our municipal elections. last night, as a demonstration, they upset two streetcars and a milk wagon." "i heard that two of them were arrested," said mr. dick overend. "only by an error," said the president. "there was a mistake. it was not known that they were students. the two who were arrested were smashing the windows of the car, after it was upset, with their hockey sticks. a squad of police mistook them for rioters. as soon as they were taken to the police station, the mistake was cleared up at once. the chief-of-police telephoned an apology to the university. i believe the league is out again tonight looking for alderman schwefeldampf. but the leaders assure me there will be no breach of the peace whatever. as i say, i think their idea is to throw him into the reservoir." in the face of such efforts as these, opposition itself melted rapidly away. the _plutorian times_ was soon able to announce that various undesirable candidates were abandoning the field. "alderman gorfinkel," it said, "who, it will be recalled, was thrown into a pond last week by the students of the college, was still confined to his bed when interviewed by our representative. mr. gorfinkel stated that he should not offer himself as a candidate in the approaching election. he was, he said, weary of civic honours. he had had enough. he felt it incumbent on him to step out and make way for others who deserved their turn as well as himself: in future he proposed to confine his whole attention to his misfit semi-ready establishment which he was happy to state was offering as nobby a line of early fall suiting as was ever seen at the price." * * * * * there is no need to recount here in detail the glorious triumph of the election day itself. it will always be remembered as the purest, cleanest election ever held in the precincts of the city. the citizens' organization turned out in overwhelming force to guarantee that it should be so. bands of dr. boomer's students, armed with baseball bats, surrounded the polls to guarantee fair play. any man wishing to cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth: all those attempting to introduce any element of brute force or rowdyism into the election were cracked over the head. in the lower part of the town scores of willing workers, recruited often from the humblest classes, kept order with pickaxes. in every part of the city motor cars, supplied by all the leading businessmen, lawyers, and doctors of the city, acted as patrols to see that no unfair use should be made of other vehicles in carrying voters to the polls. it was a foregone victory from the first--overwhelming and complete. the cohorts of darkness were so completely routed that it was practically impossible to find them. as it fell dusk the streets were filled with roaring and surging crowds celebrating the great victory for clean government, while in front of every newspaper office huge lantern pictures of _mayor mcgrath the champion of pure government_, and _o. skinyer, the people's solicitor_, and the other nominees of the league, called forth cheer after cheer of frenzied enthusiasm. * * * * * they held that night in celebration a great reception at the mausoleum club on plutoria avenue, given at its own suggestion by the city. the city, indeed, insisted on it. nor was there ever witnessed even in that home of art and refinement a scene of greater charm. in the spacious corridor of the club a hungarian band wafted viennese music from tyrolese flutes through the rubber trees. there was champagne bubbling at a score of sideboards where noiseless waiters poured it into goblets as broad and flat as floating water-lily leaves. and through it all moved the shepherds and shepherdesses of that beautiful arcadia--the shepherds in their tuxedo jackets, with vast white shirt-fronts broad as the map of africa, with spotless white waistcoats girdling their equators, wearing heavy gold watch-chains and little patent shoes blacker than sin itself--and the shepherdesses in foaming billows of silks of every colour of the kaleidoscope, their hair bound with glittering headbands or coiled with white feathers, the very symbol of municipal purity. one would search in vain the pages of pastoral literature to find the equal of it. and as they talked, the good news spread from group to group that it was already known that the new franchise of the citizens' light was to be made for two centuries so as to give the company a fair chance to see what it could do. at the word of it, the grave faces of manly bondholders flushed with pride, and the soft eyes of listening shareholders laughed back in joy. for they had no doubt or fear, now that clean government had come. they knew what the company could do. thus all night long, outside of the club, the soft note of the motor horns arriving and departing wakened the sleeping leaves of the elm trees with their message of good tidings. and all night long, within its lighted corridors, the bubbling champagne whispered to the listening rubber trees of the new salvation of the city. so the night waxed and waned till the slow day broke, dimming with its cheap prosaic glare the shaded beauty of the artificial light, and the people of the city--the best of them--drove home to their well-earned sleep; and the others--in the lower parts of the city--rose to their daily toil. end the rise of silas lapham by william dean howells jtable i. when bartley hubbard went to interview silas lapham for the "solid men of boston" series, which he undertook to finish up in the events, after he replaced their original projector on that newspaper, lapham received him in his private office by previous appointment. "walk right in!" he called out to the journalist, whom he caught sight of through the door of the counting-room. he did not rise from the desk at which he was writing, but he gave bartley his left hand for welcome, and he rolled his large head in the direction of a vacant chair. "sit down! i'll be with you in just half a minute." "take your time," said bartley, with the ease he instantly felt. "i'm in no hurry." he took a note-book from his pocket, laid it on his knee, and began to sharpen a pencil. "there!" lapham pounded with his great hairy fist on the envelope he had been addressing. "william!" he called out, and he handed the letter to a boy who came to get it. "i want that to go right away. well, sir," he continued, wheeling round in his leather-cushioned swivel-chair, and facing bartley, seated so near that their knees almost touched, "so you want my life, death, and christian sufferings, do you, young man?" "that's what i'm after," said bartley. "your money or your life." "i guess you wouldn't want my life without the money," said lapham, as if he were willing to prolong these moments of preparation. "take 'em both," bartley suggested. "don't want your money without your life, if you come to that. but you're just one million times more interesting to the public than if you hadn't a dollar; and you know that as well as i do, mr. lapham. there's no use beating about the bush." "no," said lapham, somewhat absently. he put out his huge foot and pushed the ground-glass door shut between his little den and the book-keepers, in their larger den outside. "in personal appearance," wrote bartley in the sketch for which he now studied his subject, while he waited patiently for him to continue, "silas lapham is a fine type of the successful american. he has a square, bold chin, only partially concealed by the short reddish-grey beard, growing to the edges of his firmly closing lips. his nose is short and straight; his forehead good, but broad rather than high; his eyes blue, and with a light in them that is kindly or sharp according to his mood. he is of medium height, and fills an average arm-chair with a solid bulk, which on the day of our interview was unpretentiously clad in a business suit of blue serge. his head droops somewhat from a short neck, which does not trouble itself to rise far from a pair of massive shoulders." "i don't know as i know just where you want me to begin," said lapham. "might begin with your birth; that's where most of us begin," replied bartley. a gleam of humorous appreciation shot into lapham's blue eyes. "i didn't know whether you wanted me to go quite so far back as that," he said. "but there's no disgrace in having been born, and i was born in the state of vermont, pretty well up under the canada line--so well up, in fact, that i came very near being an adoptive citizen; for i was bound to be an american of some sort, from the word go! that was about--well, let me see!--pretty near sixty years ago: this is ' , and that was ' . well, say i'm fifty-five years old; and i've lived 'em, too; not an hour of waste time about me, anywheres! i was born on a farm, and----" "worked in the fields summers and went to school winters: regulation thing?" bartley cut in. "regulation thing," said lapham, accepting this irreverent version of his history somewhat dryly. "parents poor, of course," suggested the journalist. "any barefoot business? early deprivations of any kind, that would encourage the youthful reader to go and do likewise? orphan myself, you know," said bartley, with a smile of cynical good-comradery. lapham looked at him silently, and then said with quiet self-respect, "i guess if you see these things as a joke, my life won't interest you." "oh yes, it will," returned bartley, unabashed. "you'll see; it'll come out all right." and in fact it did so, in the interview which bartley printed. "mr. lapham," he wrote, "passed rapidly over the story of his early life, its poverty and its hardships, sweetened, however, by the recollections of a devoted mother, and a father who, if somewhat her inferior in education, was no less ambitious for the advancement of his children. they were quiet, unpretentious people, religious, after the fashion of that time, and of sterling morality, and they taught their children the simple virtues of the old testament and poor richard's almanac." bartley could not deny himself this gibe; but he trusted to lapham's unliterary habit of mind for his security in making it, and most other people would consider it sincere reporter's rhetoric. "you know," he explained to lapham, "that we have to look at all these facts as material, and we get the habit of classifying them. sometimes a leading question will draw out a whole line of facts that a man himself would never think of." he went on to put several queries, and it was from lapham's answers that he generalised the history of his childhood. "mr. lapham, although he did not dwell on his boyish trials and struggles, spoke of them with deep feeling and an abiding sense of their reality." this was what he added in the interview, and by the time he had got lapham past the period where risen americans are all pathetically alike in their narrow circumstances, their sufferings, and their aspirations, he had beguiled him into forgetfulness of the check he had received, and had him talking again in perfect enjoyment of his autobiography. "yes, sir," said lapham, in a strain which bartley was careful not to interrupt again, "a man never sees all that his mother has been to him till it's too late to let her know that he sees it. why, my mother--" he stopped. "it gives me a lump in the throat," he said apologetically, with an attempt at a laugh. then he went on: "she was a little frail thing, not bigger than a good-sized intermediate school-girl; but she did the whole work of a family of boys, and boarded the hired men besides. she cooked, swept, washed, ironed, made and mended from daylight till dark--and from dark till daylight, i was going to say; for i don't know how she got any time for sleep. but i suppose she did. she got time to go to church, and to teach us to read the bible, and to misunderstand it in the old way. she was good. but it ain't her on her knees in church that comes back to me so much like the sight of an angel as her on her knees before me at night, washing my poor, dirty little feet, that i'd run bare in all day, and making me decent for bed. there were six of us boys; it seems to me we were all of a size; and she was just so careful with all of us. i can feel her hands on my feet yet!" bartley looked at lapham's no. boots, and softly whistled through his teeth. "we were patched all over; but we wa'n't ragged. i don't know how she got through it. she didn't seem to think it was anything; and i guess it was no more than my father expected of her. he worked like a horse in doors and out--up at daylight, feeding the stock, and groaning round all day with his rheumatism, but not stopping." bartley hid a yawn over his note-book, and probably, if he could have spoken his mind, he would have suggested to lapham that he was not there for the purpose of interviewing his ancestry. but bartley had learned to practise a patience with his victims which he did not always feel, and to feign an interest in their digressions till he could bring them up with a round turn. "i tell you," said lapham, jabbing the point of his penknife into the writing-pad on the desk before him, "when i hear women complaining nowadays that their lives are stunted and empty, i want to tell 'em about my mother's life. i could paint it out for 'em." bartley saw his opportunity at the word paint, and cut in. "and you say, mr. lapham, that you discovered this mineral paint on the old farm yourself?" lapham acquiesced in the return to business. "i didn't discover it," he said scrupulously. "my father found it one day, in a hole made by a tree blowing down. there it was, lying loose in the pit, and sticking to the roots that had pulled up a big, cake of dirt with 'em. i don't know what give him the idea that there was money in it, but he did think so from the start. i guess, if they'd had the word in those days, they'd considered him pretty much of a crank about it. he was trying as long as he lived to get that paint introduced; but he couldn't make it go. the country was so poor they couldn't paint their houses with anything; and father hadn't any facilities. it got to be a kind of joke with us; and i guess that paint-mine did as much as any one thing to make us boys clear out as soon as we got old enough. all my brothers went west, and took up land; but i hung on to new england and i hung on to the old farm, not because the paint-mine was on it, but because the old house was--and the graves. well," said lapham, as if unwilling to give himself too much credit, "there wouldn't been any market for it, anyway. you can go through that part of the state and buy more farms than you can shake a stick at for less money than it cost to build the barns on 'em. of course, it's turned out a good thing. i keep the old house up in good shape, and we spend a month or so there every summer. m' wife kind of likes it, and the girls. pretty place; sightly all round it. i've got a force of men at work there the whole time, and i've got a man and his wife in the house. had a family meeting there last year; the whole connection from out west. there!" lapham rose from his seat and took down a large warped, unframed photograph from the top of his desk, passing his hand over it, and then blowing vigorously upon it, to clear it of the dust. "there we are, all of us." "i don't need to look twice at you," said bartley, putting his finger on one of the heads. "well, that's bill," said lapham, with a gratified laugh. "he's about as brainy as any of us, i guess. he's one of their leading lawyers, out dubuque way; been judge of the common pleas once or twice. that's his son--just graduated at yale--alongside of my youngest girl. good-looking chap, ain't he?" "she's a good-looking chap," said bartley, with prompt irreverence. he hastened to add, at the frown which gathered between lapham's eyes, "what a beautiful creature she is! what a lovely, refined, sensitive face! and she looks good, too." "she is good," said the father, relenting. "and, after all, that's about the best thing in a woman," said the potential reprobate. "if my wife wasn't good enough to keep both of us straight, i don't know what would become of me." "my other daughter," said lapham, indicating a girl with eyes that showed large, and a face of singular gravity. "mis' lapham," he continued, touching his wife's effigy with his little finger. "my brother willard and his family--farm at kankakee. hazard lapham and his wife--baptist preacher in kansas. jim and his three girls--milling business at minneapolis. ben and his family--practising medicine in fort wayne." the figures were clustered in an irregular group in front of an old farm-house, whose original ugliness had been smartened up with a coat of lapham's own paint, and heightened with an incongruous piazza. the photographer had not been able to conceal the fact that they were all decent, honest-looking, sensible people, with a very fair share of beauty among the young girls; some of these were extremely pretty, in fact. he had put them into awkward and constrained attitudes, of course; and they all looked as if they had the instrument of torture which photographers call a head-rest under their occiputs. here and there an elderly lady's face was a mere blur; and some of the younger children had twitched themselves into wavering shadows, and might have passed for spirit-photographs of their own little ghosts. it was the standard family-group photograph, in which most americans have figured at some time or other; and lapham exhibited a just satisfaction in it. "i presume," he mused aloud, as he put it back on top of his desk, "that we sha'n't soon get together again, all of us." "and you say," suggested bartley, "that you stayed right along on the old place, when the rest cleared out west?" "no o-o-o," said lapham, with a long, loud drawl; "i cleared out west too, first off. went to texas. texas was all the cry in those days. but i got enough of the lone star in about three months, and i come back with the idea that vermont was good enough for me." "fatted calf business?" queried bartley, with his pencil poised above his note-book. "i presume they were glad to see me," said lapham, with dignity. "mother," he added gently, "died that winter, and i stayed on with father. i buried him in the spring; and then i came down to a little place called lumberville, and picked up what jobs i could get. i worked round at the saw-mills, and i was ostler a while at the hotel--i always did like a good horse. well, i wa'n't exactly a college graduate, and i went to school odd times. i got to driving the stage after while, and by and by i bought the stage and run the business myself. then i hired the tavern-stand, and--well to make a long story short, then i got married. yes," said lapham, with pride, "i married the school-teacher. we did pretty well with the hotel, and my wife she was always at me to paint up. well, i put it off, and put it off, as a man will, till one day i give in, and says i, 'well, let's paint up. why, pert,'--m'wife's name's persis,--'i've got a whole paint-mine out on the farm. let's go out and look at it.' so we drove out. i'd let the place for seventy-five dollars a year to a shif'less kind of a kanuck that had come down that way; and i'd hated to see the house with him in it; but we drove out one saturday afternoon, and we brought back about a bushel of the stuff in the buggy-seat, and i tried it crude, and i tried it burnt; and i liked it. m'wife she liked it too. there wa'n't any painter by trade in the village, and i mixed it myself. well, sir, that tavern's got that coat of paint on it yet, and it hain't ever had any other, and i don't know's it ever will. well, you know, i felt as if it was a kind of harumscarum experiment, all the while; and i presume i shouldn't have tried it but i kind of liked to do it because father'd always set so much store by his paint-mine. and when i'd got the first coat on,"--lapham called it cut,--"i presume i must have set as much as half an hour; looking at it and thinking how he would have enjoyed it. i've had my share of luck in this world, and i ain't a-going to complain on my own account, but i've noticed that most things get along too late for most people. it made me feel bad, and it took all the pride out my success with the paint, thinking of father. seemed to me i might 'a taken more interest in it when he was by to see; but we've got to live and learn. well, i called my wife out,--i'd tried it on the back of the house, you know,--and she left her dishes,--i can remember she came out with her sleeves rolled up and set down alongside of me on the trestle,--and says i, 'what do you think, persis?' and says she, 'well, you hain't got a paint-mine, silas lapham; you've got a gold-mine.' she always was just so enthusiastic about things. well, it was just after two or three boats had burnt up out west, and a lot of lives lost, and there was a great cry about non-inflammable paint, and i guess that was what was in her mind. 'well, i guess it ain't any gold-mine, persis,' says i; 'but i guess it is a paint-mine. i'm going to have it analysed, and if it turns out what i think it is, i'm going to work it. and if father hadn't had such a long name, i should call it the nehemiah lapham mineral paint. but, any rate, every barrel of it, and every keg, and every bottle, and every package, big or little, has got to have the initials and figures n.l.f. , s.l.t. , on it. father found it in , and i tried it in .'" "'s.t.-- --x.' business," said bartley. "yes," said lapham, "but i hadn't heard of plantation bitters then, and i hadn't seen any of the fellow's labels. i set to work and i got a man down from boston; and i carried him out to the farm, and he analysed it--made a regular job of it. well, sir, we built a kiln, and we kept a lot of that paint-ore red-hot for forty-eight hours; kept the kanuck and his family up, firing. the presence of iron in the ore showed with the magnet from the start; and when he came to test it, he found out that it contained about seventy-five per cent. of the peroxide of iron." lapham pronounced the scientific phrases with a sort of reverent satisfaction, as if awed through his pride by a little lingering uncertainty as to what peroxide was. he accented it as if it were purr-ox-eyed; and bartley had to get him to spell it. "well, and what then?" he asked, when he had made a note of the percentage. "what then?" echoed lapham. "well, then, the fellow set down and told me, 'you've got a paint here,' says he, 'that's going to drive every other mineral paint out of the market. why' says he, 'it'll drive 'em right into the back bay!' of course, i didn't know what the back bay was then, but i begun to open my eyes; thought i'd had 'em open before, but i guess i hadn't. says he, 'that paint has got hydraulic cement in it, and it can stand fire and water and acids;' he named over a lot of things. says he, 'it'll mix easily with linseed oil, whether you want to use it boiled or raw; and it ain't a-going to crack nor fade any; and it ain't a-going to scale. when you've got your arrangements for burning it properly, you're going to have a paint that will stand like the everlasting hills, in every climate under the sun.' then he went into a lot of particulars, and i begun to think he was drawing a long-bow, and meant to make his bill accordingly. so i kept pretty cool; but the fellow's bill didn't amount to anything hardly--said i might pay him after i got going; young chap, and pretty easy; but every word he said was gospel. well, i ain't a-going to brag up my paint; i don't suppose you came here to hear me blow." "oh yes, i did," said bartley. "that's what i want. tell all there is to tell, and i can boil it down afterward. a man can't make a greater mistake with a reporter than to hold back anything out of modesty. it may be the very thing we want to know. what we want is the whole truth; and more; we've got so much modesty of our own that we can temper almost any statement." lapham looked as if he did not quite like this tone, and he resumed a little more quietly. "oh, there isn't really very much more to say about the paint itself. but you can use it for almost anything where a paint is wanted, inside or out. it'll prevent decay, and it'll stop it, after it's begun, in tin or iron. you can paint the inside of a cistern or a bath-tub with it, and water won't hurt it; and you can paint a steam-boiler with it, and heat won't. you can cover a brick wall with it, or a railroad car, or the deck of a steamboat, and you can't do a better thing for either." "never tried it on the human conscience, i suppose," suggested bartley. "no, sir," replied lapham gravely. "i guess you want to keep that as free from paint as you can, if you want much use of it. i never cared to try any of it on mine." lapham suddenly lifted his bulk up out of his swivel-chair, and led the way out into the wareroom beyond the office partitions, where rows and ranks of casks, barrels, and kegs stretched dimly back to the rear of the building, and diffused an honest, clean, wholesome smell of oil and paint. they were labelled and branded as containing each so many pounds of lapham's mineral paint, and each bore the mystic devices, n.l.f. --s.l.t. . "there!" said lapham, kicking one of the largest casks with the toe of his boot, "that's about our biggest package; and here," he added, laying his hand affectionately on the head of a very small keg, as if it were the head of a child, which it resembled in size, "this is the smallest. we used to put the paint on the market dry, but now we grind every ounce of it in oil--very best quality of linseed oil--and warrant it. we find it gives more satisfaction. now, come back to the office, and i'll show you our fancy brands." it was very cool and pleasant in that dim wareroom, with the rafters showing overhead in a cloudy perspective, and darkening away into the perpetual twilight at the rear of the building; and bartley had found an agreeable seat on the head of a half-barrel of the paint, which he was reluctant to leave. but he rose and followed the vigorous lead of lapham back to the office, where the sun of a long summer afternoon was just beginning to glare in at the window. on shelves opposite lapham's desk were tin cans of various sizes, arranged in tapering cylinders, and showing, in a pattern diminishing toward the top, the same label borne by the casks and barrels in the wareroom. lapham merely waved his hand toward these; but when bartley, after a comprehensive glance at them, gave his whole attention to a row of clean, smooth jars, where different tints of the paint showed through flawless glass, lapham smiled, and waited in pleased expectation. "hello!" said bartley. "that's pretty!" "yes," assented lapham, "it is rather nice. it's our latest thing, and we find it takes with customers first-rate. look here!" he said, taking down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label. bartley read, "the persis brand," and then he looked at lapham and smiled. "after her, of course," said lapham. "got it up and put the first of it on the market her last birthday. she was pleased." "i should think she might have been," said bartley, while he made a note of the appearance of the jars. "i don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said lapham dubiously. "that's going into the interview, mr. lapham, if nothing else does. got a wife myself, and i know just how you feel." it was in the dawn of bartley's prosperity on the boston events, before his troubles with marcia had seriously begun. "is that so?" said lapham, recognising with a smile another of the vast majority of married americans; a few underrate their wives, but the rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability. "well," he added, "we must see about that. where'd you say you lived?" "we don't live; we board. mrs. nash, canary place." "well, we've all got to commence that way," suggested lapham consolingly. "yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. i expect to be under a roof of my own on clover street before long. i suppose," said bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass grow under your feet much after you found out what was in your paint-mine?" "no, sir," answered lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in the first days of his married life. "i went right back to lumberville and sold out everything, and put all i could rake and scrape together into paint. and mis' lapham was with me every time. no hang back about her. i tell you she was a woman!" bartley laughed. "that's the sort most of us marry." "no, we don't," said lapham. "most of us marry silly little girls grown up to look like women." "well, i guess that's about so," assented bartley, as if upon second thought. "if it hadn't been for her," resumed lapham, "the paint wouldn't have come to anything. i used to tell her it wa'n't the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in the ore that made that paint go; it was the seventy-five per cent. of purr-ox-eyed of iron in her." "good!" cried bartley. "i'll tell marcia that." "in less'n six months there wa'n't a board-fence, nor a bridge-girder, nor a dead wall, nor a barn, nor a face of rock in that whole region that didn't have 'lapham's mineral paint--specimen' on it in the three colours we begun by making." bartley had taken his seat on the window-sill, and lapham, standing before him, now put up his huge foot close to bartley's thigh; neither of them minded that. "i've heard a good deal of talk about that s.t.-- --x. man, and the stove-blacking man, and the kidney-cure man, because they advertised in that way; and i've read articles about it in the papers; but i don't see where the joke comes in, exactly. so long as the people that own the barns and fences don't object, i don't see what the public has got to do with it. and i never saw anything so very sacred about a big rock, along a river or in a pasture, that it wouldn't do to put mineral paint on it in three colours. i wish some of the people that talk about the landscape, and write about it, had to bu'st one of them rocks out of the landscape with powder, or dig a hole to bury it in, as we used to have to do up on the farm; i guess they'd sing a little different tune about the profanation of scenery. there ain't any man enjoys a sightly bit of nature--a smooth piece of interval with half a dozen good-sized wine-glass elms in it--more than i do. but i ain't a-going to stand up for every big ugly rock i come across, as if we were all a set of dumn druids. i say the landscape was made for man, and not man for the landscape." "yes," said bartley carelessly; "it was made for the stove-polish man and the kidney-cure man." "it was made for any man that knows how to use it," lapham returned, insensible to bartley's irony. "let 'em go and live with nature in the winter, up there along the canada line, and i guess they'll get enough of her for one while. well--where was i?" "decorating the landscape," said bartley. "yes, sir; i started right there at lumberville, and it give the place a start too. you won't find it on the map now; and you won't find it in the gazetteer. i give a pretty good lump of money to build a town-hall, about five years back, and the first meeting they held in it they voted to change the name,--lumberville wa'n't a name,--and it's lapham now." "isn't it somewhere up in that region that they get the old brandon red?" asked bartley. "we're about ninety miles from brandon. the brandon's a good paint," said lapham conscientiously. "like to show you round up at our place some odd time, if you get off." "thanks. i should like it first-rate. works there?" "yes; works there. well, sir, just about the time i got started, the war broke out; and it knocked my paint higher than a kite. the thing dropped perfectly dead. i presume that if i'd had any sort of influence, i might have got it into government hands, for gun-carriages and army wagons, and may be on board government vessels. but i hadn't, and we had to face the music. i was about broken-hearted, but m'wife she looked at it another way. 'i guess it's a providence,' says she. 'silas, i guess you've got a country that's worth fighting for. any rate, you better go out and give it a chance.' well, sir, i went. i knew she meant business. it might kill her to have me go, but it would kill her sure if i stayed. she was one of that kind. i went. her last words was, 'i'll look after the paint, si.' we hadn't but just one little girl then,--boy'd died,--and mis' lapham's mother was livin' with us; and i knew if times did anyways come up again, m'wife'd know just what to do. so i went. i got through; and you can call me colonel, if you want to. feel there!" lapham took bartley's thumb and forefinger and put them on a bunch in his leg, just above the knee. "anything hard?" "ball?" lapham nodded. "gettysburg. that's my thermometer. if it wa'n't for that, i shouldn't know enough to come in when it rains." bartley laughed at a joke which betrayed some evidences of wear. "and when you came back, you took hold of the paint and rushed it." "i took hold of the paint and rushed it--all i could," said lapham, with less satisfaction than he had hitherto shown in his autobiography. "but i found that i had got back to another world. the day of small things was past, and i don't suppose it will ever come again in this country. my wife was at me all the time to take a partner--somebody with capital; but i couldn't seem to bear the idea. that paint was like my own blood to me. to have anybody else concerned in it was like--well, i don't know what. i saw it was the thing to do; but i tried to fight it off, and i tried to joke it off. i used to say, 'why didn't you take a partner yourself, persis, while i was away?' and she'd say, 'well, if you hadn't come back, i should, si.' always did like a joke about as well as any woman i ever saw. well, i had to come to it. i took a partner." lapham dropped the bold blue eyes with which he had been till now staring into bartley's face, and the reporter knew that here was a place for asterisks in his interview, if interviews were faithful. "he had money enough," continued lapham, with a suppressed sigh; "but he didn't know anything about paint. we hung on together for a year or two. and then we quit." "and he had the experience," suggested bartley, with companionable ease. "i had some of the experience too," said lapham, with a scowl; and bartley divined, through the freemasonry of all who have sore places in their memories, that this was a point which he must not touch again. "and since that, i suppose, you've played it alone." "i've played it alone." "you must ship some of this paint of yours to foreign countries, colonel?" suggested bartley, putting on a professional air. "we ship it to all parts of the world. it goes to south america, lots of it. it goes to australia, and it goes to india, and it goes to china, and it goes to the cape of good hope. it'll stand any climate. of course, we don't export these fancy brands much. they're for home use. but we're introducing them elsewhere. here." lapham pulled open a drawer, and showed bartley a lot of labels in different languages--spanish, french, german, and italian. "we expect to do a good business in all those countries. we've got our agencies in cadiz now, and in paris, and in hamburg, and in leghorn. it's a thing that's bound to make its way. yes, sir. wherever a man has got a ship, or a bridge, or a lock, or a house, or a car, or a fence, or a pig-pen anywhere in god's universe to paint, that's the paint for him, and he's bound to find it out sooner or later. you pass a ton of that paint dry through a blast-furnace, and you'll get a quarter of a ton of pig-iron. i believe in my paint. i believe it's a blessing to the world. when folks come in, and kind of smell round, and ask me what i mix it with, i always say, 'well, in the first place, i mix it with faith, and after that i grind it up with the best quality of boiled linseed oil that money will buy.'" lapham took out his watch and looked at it, and bartley perceived that his audience was drawing to a close. "'f you ever want to run down and take a look at our works, pass you over the road,"--he called it rud--"and it sha'n't cost you a cent." "well, may be i shall, sometime," said bartley. "good afternoon, colonel." "good afternoon. or--hold on! my horse down there yet, william?" he called to the young man in the counting-room who had taken his letter at the beginning of the interview. "oh! all right!" he added, in response to something the young man said. "can't i set you down somewhere, mr. hubbard? i've got my horse at the door, and i can drop you on my way home. i'm going to take mis' lapham to look at a house i'm driving piles for, down on the new land." "don't care if i do," said bartley. lapham put on a straw hat, gathered up some papers lying on his desk, pulled down its rolling cover, turned the key in it, and gave the papers to an extremely handsome young woman at one of the desks in the outer office. she was stylishly dressed, as bartley saw, and her smooth, yellow hair was sculpturesquely waved over a low, white forehead. "here," said lapham, with the same prompt gruff kindness that he had used in addressing the young man, "i want you should put these in shape, and give me a type-writer copy to-morrow." "what an uncommonly pretty girl!" said bartley, as they descended the rough stairway and found their way out to the street, past the dangling rope of a block and tackle wandering up into the cavernous darkness overhead. "she does her work," said lapham shortly. bartley mounted to the left side of the open buggy standing at the curb-stone, and lapham, gathering up the hitching-weight, slid it under the buggy-seat and mounted beside him. "no chance to speed a horse here, of course," said lapham, while the horse with a spirited gentleness picked her way, with a high, long action, over the pavement of the street. the streets were all narrow, and most of them crooked, in that quarter of the town; but at the end of one the spars of a vessel pencilled themselves delicately against the cool blue of the afternoon sky. the air was full of a smell pleasantly compounded of oakum, of leather, and of oil. it was not the busy season, and they met only two or three trucks heavily straggling toward the wharf with their long string teams; but the cobble-stones of the pavement were worn with the dint of ponderous wheels, and discoloured with iron-rust from them; here and there, in wandering streaks over its surface, was the grey stain of the salt water with which the street had been sprinkled. after an interval of some minutes, which both men spent in looking round the dash-board from opposite sides to watch the stride of the horse, bartley said, with a light sigh, "i had a colt once down in maine that stepped just like that mare." "well!" said lapham, sympathetically recognising the bond that this fact created between them. "well, now, i tell you what you do. you let me come for you 'most any afternoon, now, and take you out over the milldam, and speed this mare a little. i'd like to show you what this mare can do. yes, i would." "all right," answered bartley; "i'll let you know my first day off." "good," cried lapham. "kentucky?" queried bartley. "no, sir. i don't ride behind anything but vermont; never did. touch of morgan, of course; but you can't have much morgan in a horse if you want speed. hambletonian mostly. where'd you say you wanted to get out?" "i guess you may put me down at the events office, just round the corner here. i've got to write up this interview while it's fresh." "all right," said lapham, impersonally assenting to bartley's use of him as material. he had not much to complain of in bartley's treatment, unless it was the strain of extravagant compliment which it involved. but the flattery was mainly for the paint, whose virtues lapham did not believe could be overstated, and himself and his history had been treated with as much respect as bartley was capable of showing any one. he made a very picturesque thing of the discovery of the paint-mine. "deep in the heart of the virgin forests of vermont, far up toward the line of the canadian snows, on a desolate mountain-side, where an autumnal storm had done its wild work, and the great trees, strewn hither and thither, bore witness to its violence, nehemiah lapham discovered, just forty years ago, the mineral which the alchemy of his son's enterprise and energy has transmuted into solid ingots of the most precious of metals. the colossal fortune of colonel silas lapham lay at the bottom of a hole which an uprooted tree had dug for him, and which for many years remained a paint-mine of no more appreciable value than a soap-mine." here bartley had not been able to forego another grin; but he compensated for it by the high reverence with which he spoke of colonel lapham's record during the war of the rebellion, and of the motives which impelled him to turn aside from an enterprise in which his whole heart was engaged, and take part in the struggle. "the colonel bears embedded in the muscle of his right leg a little memento of the period in the shape of a minie-ball, which he jocularly referred to as his thermometer, and which relieves him from the necessity of reading 'the probabilities' in his morning paper. this saves him just so much time; and for a man who, as he said, has not a moment of waste time on him anywhere, five minutes a day are something in the course of a year. simple, clear, bold, and straightforward in mind and action, colonel silas lapham, with a prompt comprehensiveness and a never-failing business sagacity, is, in the best sense of that much-abused term, one of nature's noblemen, to the last inch of his five eleven and a half. his life affords an example of single-minded application and unwavering perseverance which our young business men would do well to emulate. there is nothing showy or meretricious about the man. he believes in mineral paint, and he puts his heart and soul into it. he makes it a religion; though we would not imply that it is his religion. colonel lapham is a regular attendant at the rev. dr. langworthy's church. he subscribes liberally to the associated charities, and no good object or worthy public enterprise fails to receive his support. he is not now actively in politics, and his paint is not partisan; but it is an open secret that he is, and always has been, a staunch republican. without violating the sanctities of private life, we cannot speak fully of various details which came out in the free and unembarrassed interview which colonel lapham accorded our representative. but we may say that the success of which he is justly proud he is also proud to attribute in great measure to the sympathy and energy of his wife--one of those women who, in whatever walk of life, seem born to honour the name of american woman, and to redeem it from the national reproach of daisy millerism. of colonel lapham's family, we will simply add that it consists of two young lady daughters. "the subject of this very inadequate sketch is building a house on the water side of beacon street, after designs by one of our leading architectural firms, which, when complete, will be one of the finest ornaments of that exclusive avenue. it will, we believe, be ready for the occupancy of the family sometime in the spring." when bartley had finished his article, which he did with a good deal of inward derision, he went home to marcia, still smiling over the thought of lapham, whose burly simplicity had peculiarly amused him. "he regularly turned himself inside out to me," he said, as he sat describing his interview to marcia. "then i know you could make something nice out of it," said his wife; "and that will please mr. witherby." "oh yes, i've done pretty well; but i couldn't let myself loose on him the way i wanted to. confound the limitations of decency, anyway! i should like to have told just what colonel lapham thought of landscape advertising in colonel lapham's own words. i'll tell you one thing, marsh: he had a girl there at one of the desks that you wouldn't let me have within gunshot of my office. pretty? it ain't any name for it!" marcia's eyes began to blaze, and bartley broke out into a laugh, in which he arrested himself at sight of a formidable parcel in the corner of the room. "hello! what's that?" "why, i don't know what it is," replied marcia tremulously. "a man brought it just before you came in, and i didn't like to open it." "think it was some kind of infernal machine?" asked bartley, getting down on his knees to examine the package. "mrs. b. hubbard, heigh?" he cut the heavy hemp string with his penknife. "we must look into this thing. i should like to know who's sending packages to mrs. hubbard in my absence." he unfolded the wrappings of paper, growing softer and finer inward, and presently pulled out a handsome square glass jar, through which a crimson mass showed richly. "the persis brand!" he yelled. "i knew it!" "oh, what is it, bartley?" quavered marcia. then, courageously drawing a little nearer: "is it some kind of jam?" she implored. "jam? no!" roared bartley. "it's paint! it's mineral paint--lapham's paint!" "paint?" echoed marcia, as she stood over him while he stripped their wrappings from the jars which showed the dark blue, dark green, light brown, dark brown, and black, with the dark crimson, forming the gamut of colour of the lapham paint. "don't tell me it's paint that i can use, bartley!" "well, i shouldn't advise you to use much of it--all at once," replied her husband. "but it's paint that you can use in moderation." marcia cast her arms round his neck and kissed him. "o bartley, i think i'm the happiest girl in the world! i was just wondering what i should do. there are places in that clover street house that need touching up so dreadfully. i shall be very careful. you needn't be afraid i shall overdo. but, this just saves my life. did you buy it, bartley? you know we couldn't afford it, and you oughtn't to have done it! and what does the persis brand mean?" "buy it?" cried bartley. "no! the old fool's sent it to you as a present. you'd better wait for the facts before you pitch into me for extravagance, marcia. persis is the name of his wife; and he named it after her because it's his finest brand. you'll see it in my interview. put it on the market her last birthday for a surprise to her." "what old fool?" faltered marcia. "why, lapham--the mineral paint man." "oh, what a good man!" sighed marcia from the bottom of her soul. "bartley! you won't make fun of him as you do of some of those people? will you?" "nothing that he'll ever find out," said bartley, getting up and brushing off the carpet-lint from his knees. ii. after dropping bartley hubbard at the events building, lapham drove on down washington street to nankeen square at the south end, where he had lived ever since the mistaken movement of society in that direction ceased. he had not built, but had bought very cheap of a terrified gentleman of good extraction who discovered too late that the south end was not the thing, and who in the eagerness of his flight to the back bay threw in his carpets and shades for almost nothing. mrs. lapham was even better satisfied with their bargain than the colonel himself, and they had lived in nankeen square for twelve years. they had seen the saplings planted in the pretty oval round which the houses were built flourish up into sturdy young trees, and their two little girls in the same period had grown into young ladies; the colonel's tough frame had expanded into the bulk which bartley's interview indicated; and mrs. lapham, while keeping a more youthful outline, showed the sharp print of the crow's-foot at the corners of her motherly eyes, and certain slight creases in her wholesome cheeks. the fact that they lived in an unfashionable neighbourhood was something that they had never been made to feel to their personal disadvantage, and they had hardly known it till the summer before this story opens, when mrs. lapham and her daughter irene had met some other bostonians far from boston, who made it memorable. they were people whom chance had brought for the time under a singular obligation to the lapham ladies, and they were gratefully recognisant of it. they had ventured--a mother and two daughters--as far as a rather wild little canadian watering-place on the st. lawrence, below quebec, and had arrived some days before their son and brother was expected to join them. two of their trunks had gone astray, and on the night of their arrival the mother was taken violently ill. mrs. lapham came to their help, with her skill as nurse, and with the abundance of her own and her daughter's wardrobe, and a profuse, single-hearted kindness. when a doctor could be got at, he said that but for mrs. lapham's timely care, the lady would hardly have lived. he was a very effusive little frenchman, and fancied he was saying something very pleasant to everybody. a certain intimacy inevitably followed, and when the son came he was even more grateful than the others. mrs. lapham could not quite understand why he should be as attentive to her as to irene; but she compared him with other young men about the place, and thought him nicer than any of them. she had not the means of a wider comparison; for in boston, with all her husband's prosperity, they had not had a social life. their first years there were given to careful getting on lapham's part, and careful saving on his wife's. suddenly the money began to come so abundantly that she need not save; and then they did not know what to do with it. a certain amount could be spent on horses, and lapham spent it; his wife spent on rich and rather ugly clothes and a luxury of household appointments. lapham had not yet reached the picture-buying stage of the rich man's development, but they decorated their house with the costliest and most abominable frescoes; they went upon journeys, and lavished upon cars and hotels; they gave with both hands to their church and to all the charities it brought them acquainted with; but they did not know how to spend on society. up to a certain period mrs. lapham had the ladies of her neighbourhood in to tea, as her mother had done in the country in her younger days. lapham's idea of hospitality was still to bring a heavy-buying customer home to pot-luck; neither of them imagined dinners. their two girls had gone to the public schools, where they had not got on as fast as some of the other girls; so that they were a year behind in graduating from the grammar-school, where lapham thought that they had got education enough. his wife was of a different mind; she would have liked them to go to some private school for their finishing. but irene did not care for study; she preferred house-keeping, and both the sisters were afraid of being snubbed by the other girls, who were of a different sort from the girls of the grammar-school; these were mostly from the parks and squares, like themselves. it ended in their going part of a year. but the elder had an odd taste of her own for reading, and she took some private lessons, and read books out of the circulating library; the whole family were amazed at the number she read, and rather proud of it. they were not girls who embroidered or abandoned themselves to needle-work. irene spent her abundant leisure in shopping for herself and her mother, of whom both daughters made a kind of idol, buying her caps and laces out of their pin-money, and getting her dresses far beyond her capacity to wear. irene dressed herself very stylishly, and spent hours on her toilet every day. her sister had a simpler taste, and, if she had done altogether as she liked, might even have slighted dress. they all three took long naps every day, and sat hours together minutely discussing what they saw out of the window. in her self-guided search for self-improvement, the elder sister went to many church lectures on a vast variety of secular subjects, and usually came home with a comic account of them, and that made more matter of talk for the whole family. she could make fun of nearly everything; irene complained that she scared away the young men whom they got acquainted with at the dancing-school sociables. they were, perhaps, not the wisest young men. the girls had learned to dance at papanti's; but they had not belonged to the private classes. they did not even know of them, and a great gulf divided them from those who did. their father did not like company, except such as came informally in their way; and their mother had remained too rustic to know how to attract it in the sophisticated city fashion. none of them had grasped the idea of european travel; but they had gone about to mountain and sea-side resorts, the mother and the two girls, where they witnessed the spectacle which such resorts present throughout new england, of multitudes of girls, lovely, accomplished, exquisitely dressed, humbly glad of the presence of any sort of young man; but the laphams had no skill or courage to make themselves noticed, far less courted by the solitary invalid, or clergyman, or artist. they lurked helplessly about in the hotel parlours, looking on and not knowing how to put themselves forward. perhaps they did not care a great deal to do so. they had not a conceit of themselves, but a sort of content in their own ways that one may notice in certain families. the very strength of their mutual affection was a barrier to worldly knowledge; they dressed for one another; they equipped their house for their own satisfaction; they lived richly to themselves, not because they were selfish, but because they did not know how to do otherwise. the elder daughter did not care for society, apparently. the younger, who was but three years younger, was not yet quite old enough to be ambitious of it. with all her wonderful beauty, she had an innocence almost vegetable. when her beauty, which in its immaturity was crude and harsh, suddenly ripened, she bloomed and glowed with the unconsciousness of a flower; she not merely did not feel herself admired, but hardly knew herself discovered. if she dressed well, perhaps too well, it was because she had the instinct of dress; but till she met this young man who was so nice to her at baie st. paul, she had scarcely lived a detached, individual life, so wholly had she depended on her mother and her sister for her opinions, almost her sensations. she took account of everything he did and said, pondering it, and trying to make out exactly what he meant, to the inflection of a syllable, the slightest movement or gesture. in this way she began for the first time to form ideas which she had not derived from her family, and they were none the less her own because they were often mistaken. some of the things that he partly said, partly looked, she reported to her mother, and they talked them over, as they did everything relating to these new acquaintances, and wrought them into the novel point of view which they were acquiring. when mrs. lapham returned home, she submitted all the accumulated facts of the case, and all her own conjectures, to her husband, and canvassed them anew. at first he was disposed to regard the whole affair as of small importance, and she had to insist a little beyond her own convictions in order to counteract his indifference. "well, i can tell you," she said, "that if you think they were not the nicest people you ever saw, you're mightily mistaken. they had about the best manners; and they had been everywhere, and knew everything. i declare it made me feel as if we had always lived in the backwoods. i don't know but the mother and the daughters would have let you feel so a little, if they'd showed out all they thought; but they never did; and the son--well, i can't express it, silas! but that young man had about perfect ways." "seem struck up on irene?" asked the colonel. "how can i tell? he seemed just about as much struck up on me. anyway, he paid me as much attention as he did her. perhaps it's more the way, now, to notice the mother than it used to be." lapham ventured no conjecture, but asked, as he had asked already, who the people were. mrs. lapham repeated their name. lapham nodded his head. "do you know them? what business is he in?" "i guess he ain't in anything," said lapham. "they were very nice," said mrs. lapham impartially. "well, they'd ought to be," returned the colonel. "never done anything else." "they didn't seem stuck up," urged his wife. "they'd no need to--with you. i could buy him and sell him, twice over." this answer satisfied mrs. lapham rather with the fact than with her husband. "well, i guess i wouldn't brag, silas," she said. in the winter the ladies of this family, who returned to town very late, came to call on mrs. lapham. they were again very polite. but the mother let drop, in apology for their calling almost at nightfall, that the coachman had not known the way exactly. "nearly all our friends are on the new land or on the hill." there was a barb in this that rankled after the ladies had gone; and on comparing notes with her daughter, mrs. lapham found that a barb had been left to rankle in her mind also. "they said they had never been in this part of the town before." upon a strict search of her memory, irene could not report that the fact had been stated with anything like insinuation, but it was that which gave it a more penetrating effect. "oh, well, of course," said lapham, to whom these facts were referred. "those sort of people haven't got much business up our way, and they don't come. it's a fair thing all round. we don't trouble the hill or the new land much." "we know where they are," suggested his wife thoughtfully. "yes," assented the colonel. "i know where they are. i've got a lot of land over on the back bay." "you have?" eagerly demanded his wife. "want me to build on it?" he asked in reply, with a quizzical smile. "i guess we can get along here for a while." this was at night. in the morning mrs. lapham said-- "i suppose we ought to do the best we can for the children, in every way." "i supposed we always had," replied her husband. "yes, we have, according to our light." "have you got some new light?" "i don't know as it's light. but if the girls are going to keep on living in boston and marry here, i presume we ought to try to get them into society, some way; or ought to do something." "well, who's ever done more for their children than we have?" demanded lapham, with a pang at the thought that he could possibly have been out-done. "don't they have everything they want? don't they dress just as you say? don't you go everywhere with 'em? is there ever anything going on that's worth while that they don't see it or hear it? i don't know what you mean. why don't you get them into society? there's money enough!" "there's got to be something besides money, i guess," said mrs. lapham, with a hopeless sigh. "i presume we didn't go to work just the right way about their schooling. we ought to have got them into some school where they'd have got acquainted with city girls--girls who could help them along." "nearly everybody at miss smillie's was from some where else." "well, it's pretty late to think about that now," grumbled lapham. "and we've always gone our own way, and not looked out for the future. we ought to have gone out more, and had people come to the house. nobody comes." "well, is that my fault? i guess nobody ever makes people welcomer." "we ought to have invited company more." "why don't you do it now? if it's for the girls, i don't care if you have the house full all the while." mrs. lapham was forced to a confession full of humiliation. "i don't know who to ask." "well, you can't expect me to tell you." "no; we're both country people, and we've kept our country ways, and we don't, either of us, know what to do. you've had to work so hard, and your luck was so long coming, and then it came with such a rush, that we haven't had any chance to learn what to do with it. it's just the same with irene's looks; i didn't expect she was ever going to have any, she was such a plain child, and, all at once, she's blazed out this way. as long as it was pen that didn't seem to care for society, i didn't give much mind to it. but i can see it's going to be different with irene. i don't believe but what we're in the wrong neighbourhood." "well," said the colonel, "there ain't a prettier lot on the back bay than mine. it's on the water side of beacon, and it's twenty-eight feet wide and a hundred and fifty deep. let's build on it." mrs. lapham was silent a while. "no," she said finally; "we've always got along well enough here, and i guess we better stay." at breakfast she said casually: "girls, how would you like to have your father build on the new land?" the girls said they did not know. it was more convenient to the horse-cars where they were. mrs. lapham stole a look of relief at her husband, and nothing more was said of the matter. the mother of the family who had called upon mrs. lapham brought her husband's cards, and when mrs. lapham returned the visit she was in some trouble about the proper form of acknowledging the civility. the colonel had no card but a business card, which advertised the principal depot and the several agencies of the mineral paint; and mrs. lapham doubted, till she wished to goodness that she had never seen nor heard of those people, whether to ignore her husband in the transaction altogether, or to write his name on her own card. she decided finally upon this measure, and she had the relief of not finding the family at home. as far as she could judge, irene seemed to suffer a little disappointment from the fact. for several months there was no communication between the families. then there came to nankeen square a lithographed circular from the people on the hill, signed in ink by the mother, and affording mrs. lapham an opportunity to subscribe for a charity of undeniable merit and acceptability. she submitted it to her husband, who promptly drew a cheque for five hundred dollars. she tore it in two. "i will take a cheque for a hundred, silas," she said. "why?" he asked, looking up guiltily at her. "because a hundred is enough; and i don't want to show off before them." "oh, i thought may be you did. well, pert," he added, having satisfied human nature by the preliminary thrust, "i guess you're about right. when do you want i should begin to build on beacon street?" he handed her the new cheque, where she stood over him, and then leaned back in his chair and looked up at her. "i don't want you should begin at all. what do you mean, silas?" she rested against the side of his desk. "well, i don't know as i mean anything. but shouldn't you like to build? everybody builds, at least once in a lifetime." "where is your lot? they say it's unhealthy, over there." up to a certain point in their prosperity mrs. lapham had kept strict account of all her husband's affairs; but as they expanded, and ceased to be of the retail nature with which women successfully grapple, the intimate knowledge of them made her nervous. there was a period in which she felt that they were being ruined, but the crash had not come; and, since his great success, she had abandoned herself to a blind confidence in her husband's judgment, which she had hitherto felt needed her revision. he came and went, day by day, unquestioned. he bought and sold and got gain. she knew that he would tell her if ever things went wrong, and he knew that she would ask him whenever she was anxious. "it ain't unhealthy where i've bought," said lapham, rather enjoying her insinuation. "i looked after that when i was trading; and i guess it's about as healthy on the back bay as it is here, anyway. i got that lot for you, pert; i thought you'd want to build on the back bay some day." "pshaw!" said mrs. lapham, deeply pleased inwardly, but not going to show it, as she would have said. "i guess you want to build there yourself." she insensibly got a little nearer to her husband. they liked to talk to each other in that blunt way; it is the new england way of expressing perfect confidence and tenderness. "well, i guess i do," said lapham, not insisting upon the unselfish view of the matter. "i always did like the water side of beacon. there ain't a sightlier place in the world for a house. and some day there's bound to be a drive-way all along behind them houses, between them and the water, and then a lot there is going to be worth the gold that will cover it--coin. i've had offers for that lot, pert, twice over what i give for it. yes, i have. don't you want to ride over there some afternoon with me and see it?" "i'm satisfied where we be, si," said mrs. lapham, recurring to the parlance of her youth in her pathos at her husband's kindness. she sighed anxiously, for she felt the trouble a woman knows in view of any great change. they had often talked of altering over the house in which they lived, but they had never come to it; and they had often talked of building, but it had always been a house in the country that they had thought of. "i wish you had sold that lot." "i hain't," said the colonel briefly. "i don't know as i feel much like changing our way of living." "guess we could live there pretty much as we live here. there's all kinds of people on beacon street; you mustn't think they're all big-bugs. i know one party that lives in a house he built to sell, and his wife don't keep any girl. you can have just as much style there as you want, or just as little. i guess we live as well as most of 'em now, and set as good a table. and if you come to style, i don't know as anybody has got more of a right to put it on than what we have." "well, i don't want to build on beacon street, si," said mrs. lapham gently. "just as you please, persis. i ain't in any hurry to leave." mrs. lapham stood flapping the cheque which she held in her right hand against the edge of her left. the colonel still sat looking up at her face, and watching the effect of the poison of ambition which he had artfully instilled into her mind. she sighed again--a yielding sigh. "what are you going to do this afternoon?" "i'm going to take a turn on the brighton road," said the colonel. "i don't believe but what i should like to go along," said his wife. "all right. you hain't ever rode behind that mare yet, pert, and i want you should see me let her out once. they say the snow's all packed down already, and the going is a ." at four o'clock in the afternoon, with a cold, red winter sunset before them, the colonel and his wife were driving slowly down beacon street in the light, high-seated cutter, where, as he said, they were a pretty tight fit. he was holding the mare in till the time came to speed her, and the mare was springily jolting over the snow, looking intelligently from side to side, and cocking this ear and that, while from her nostrils, her head tossing easily, she blew quick, irregular whiffs of steam. "gay, ain't she?" proudly suggested the colonel. "she is gay," assented his wife. they met swiftly dashing sleighs, and let them pass on either hand, down the beautiful avenue narrowing with an admirably even sky-line in the perspective. they were not in a hurry. the mare jounced easily along, and they talked of the different houses on either side of the way. they had a crude taste in architecture, and they admired the worst. there were women's faces at many of the handsome windows, and once in a while a young man on the pavement caught his hat suddenly from his head, and bowed in response to some salutation from within. "i don't think our girls would look very bad behind one of those big panes," said the colonel. "no," said his wife dreamily. "where's the young man? did he come with them?" "no; he was to spend the winter with a friend of his that has a ranch in texas. i guess he's got to do something." "yes; gentlemaning as a profession has got to play out in a generation or two." neither of them spoke of the lot, though lapham knew perfectly well what his wife had come with him for, and she was aware that he knew it. the time came when he brought the mare down to a walk, and then slowed up almost to a stop, while they both turned their heads to the right and looked at the vacant lot, through which showed the frozen stretch of the back bay, a section of the long bridge, and the roofs and smoke-stacks of charlestown. "yes, it's sightly," said mrs. lapham, lifting her hand from the reins, on which she had unconsciously laid it. lapham said nothing, but he let the mare out a little. the sleighs and cutters were thickening round them. on the milldam it became difficult to restrict the mare to the long, slow trot into which he let her break. the beautiful landscape widened to right and left of them, with the sunset redder and redder, over the low, irregular hills before them. they crossed the milldam into longwood; and here, from the crest of the first upland, stretched two endless lines, in which thousands of cutters went and came. some of the drivers were already speeding their horses, and these shot to and fro on inner lines, between the slowly moving vehicles on either side of the road. here and there a burly mounted policeman, bulging over the pommel of his m'clellan saddle, jolted by, silently gesturing and directing the course, and keeping it all under the eye of the law. it was what bartley hubbard called "a carnival of fashion and gaiety on the brighton road," in his account of it. but most of the people in those elegant sleighs and cutters had so little the air of the great world that one knowing it at all must have wondered where they and their money came from; and the gaiety of the men, at least, was expressed, like that of colonel lapham, in a grim almost fierce, alertness; the women wore an air of courageous apprehension. at a certain point the colonel said, "i'm going to let her out, pert," and he lifted and then dropped the reins lightly on the mare's back. she understood the signal, and, as an admirer said, "she laid down to her work." nothing in the immutable iron of lapham's face betrayed his sense of triumph as the mare left everything behind her on the road. mrs. lapham, if she felt fear, was too busy holding her flying wraps about her, and shielding her face from the scud of ice flung from the mare's heels, to betray it; except for the rush of her feet, the mare was as silent as the people behind her; the muscles of her back and thighs worked more and more swiftly, like some mechanism responding to an alien force, and she shot to the end of the course, grazing a hundred encountered and rival sledges in her passage, but unmolested by the policemen, who probably saw that the mare and the colonel knew what they were about, and, at any rate, were not the sort of men to interfere with trotting like that. at the end of the heat lapham drew her in, and turned off on a side street into brookline. "tell you what, pert," he said, as if they had been quietly jogging along, with time for uninterrupted thought since he last spoke, "i've about made up my mind to build on that lot." "all right, silas," said mrs. lapham; "i suppose you know what you're about. don't build on it for me, that's all." when she stood in the hall at home, taking off her things, she said to the girls, who were helping her, "some day your father will get killed with that mare." "did he speed her?" asked penelope, the elder. she was named after her grandmother, who had in her turn inherited from another ancestress the name of the homeric matron whose peculiar merits won her a place even among the puritan faiths, hopes, temperances, and prudences. penelope was the girl whose odd serious face had struck bartley hubbard in the photograph of the family group lapham showed him on the day of the interview. her large eyes, like her hair, were brown; they had the peculiar look of near-sighted eyes which is called mooning; her complexion was of a dark pallor. her mother did not reply to a question which might be considered already answered. "he says he's going to build on that lot of his," she next remarked, unwinding the long veil which she had tied round her neck to hold her bonnet on. she put her hat and cloak on the hall table, to be carried upstairs later, and they all went in to tea: creamed oysters, birds, hot biscuit, two kinds of cake, and dishes of stewed and canned fruit and honey. the women dined alone at one, and the colonel at the same hour down-town. but he liked a good hot meal when he got home in the evening. the house flared with gas; and the colonel, before he sat down, went about shutting the registers, through which a welding heat came voluming up from the furnace. "i'll be the death of that darkey yet," he said, "if he don't stop making on such a fire. the only way to get any comfort out of your furnace is to take care of it yourself." "well," answered his wife from behind the teapot, as he sat down at table with this threat, "there's nothing to prevent you, si. and you can shovel the snow too, if you want to--till you get over to beacon street, anyway." "i guess i can keep my own sidewalk on beacon street clean, if i take the notion." "i should like to see you at it," retorted his wife. "well, you keep a sharp lookout, and may be you will." their taunts were really expressions of affectionate pride in each other. they liked to have it, give and take, that way, as they would have said, right along. "a man can be a man on beacon street as well as anywhere, i guess." "well, i'll do the wash, as i used to in lumberville," said mrs. lapham. "i presume you'll let me have set tubs, si. you know i ain't so young any more." she passed irene a cup of oolong tea,--none of them had a sufficiently cultivated palate for sou-chong,--and the girl handed it to her father. "papa," she asked, "you don't really mean that you're going to build over there?" "don't i? you wait and see," said the colonel, stirring his tea. "i don't believe you do," pursued the girl. "is that so? i presume you'd hate to have me. your mother does." he said doos, of course. penelope took the word. "i go in for it. i don't see any use in not enjoying money, if you've got it to enjoy. that's what it's for, i suppose; though you mightn't always think so." she had a slow, quaint way of talking, that seemed a pleasant personal modification of some ancestral yankee drawl, and her voice was low and cozy, and so far from being nasal that it was a little hoarse. "i guess the ayes has it, pen," said her father. "how would it do to let irene and your mother stick in the old place here, and us go into the new house?" at times the colonel's grammar failed him. the matter dropped, and the laphams lived on as before, with joking recurrences to the house on the water side of beacon. the colonel seemed less in earnest than any of them about it; but that was his way, his girls said; you never could tell when he really meant a thing. iii. toward the end of the winter there came a newspaper, addressed to miss irene lapham; it proved to be a texas newspaper, with a complimentary account of the ranch of the hon. loring g. stanton, which the representative of the journal had visited. "it must be his friend," said mrs. lapham, to whom her daughter brought the paper; "the one he's staying with." the girl did not say anything, but she carried the paper to her room, where she scanned every line of it for another name. she did not find it, but she cut the notice out and stuck it into the side of her mirror, where she could read it every morning when she brushed her hair, and the last thing at night when she looked at herself in the glass just before turning off the gas. her sister often read it aloud, standing behind her and rendering it with elocutionary effects. "the first time i ever heard of a love-letter in the form of a puff to a cattle-ranch. but perhaps that's the style on the hill." mrs. lapham told her husband of the arrival of the paper, treating the fact with an importance that he refused to see in it. "how do you know the fellow sent it, anyway?" he demanded. "oh, i know he did." "i don't see why he couldn't write to 'rene, if he really meant anything." "well, i guess that wouldn't be their way," said mrs. lapham; she did not at all know what their way would be. when the spring opened colonel lapham showed that he had been in earnest about building on the new land. his idea of a house was a brown-stone front, four stories high, and a french roof with an air-chamber above. inside, there was to be a reception-room on the street and a dining-room back. the parlours were to be on the second floor, and finished in black walnut or party-coloured paint. the chambers were to be on the three floors above, front and rear, with side-rooms over the front door. black walnut was to be used everywhere except in the attic, which was to be painted and grained to look like black walnut. the whole was to be very high-studded, and there were to be handsome cornices and elaborate centre-pieces throughout, except, again, in the attic. these ideas he had formed from the inspection of many new buildings which he had seen going up, and which he had a passion for looking into. he was confirmed in his ideas by a master builder who had put up a great many houses on the back bay as a speculation, and who told him that if he wanted to have a house in the style, that was the way to have it. the beginnings of the process by which lapham escaped from the master builder and ended in the hands of an architect are so obscure that it would be almost impossible to trace them. but it all happened, and lapham promptly developed his ideas of black walnut finish, high studding, and cornices. the architect was able to conceal the shudder which they must have sent through him. he was skilful, as nearly all architects are, in playing upon that simple instrument man. he began to touch colonel lapham's stops. "oh, certainly, have the parlours high-studded. but you've seen some of those pretty old-fashioned country-houses, haven't you, where the entrance-story is very low-studded?" "yes," lapham assented. "well, don't you think something of that kind would have a very nice effect? have the entrance-story low-studded, and your parlours on the next floor as high as you please. put your little reception-room here beside the door, and get the whole width of your house frontage for a square hall, and an easy low-tread staircase running up three sides of it. i'm sure mrs. lapham would find it much pleasanter." the architect caught toward him a scrap of paper lying on the table at which they were sitting and sketched his idea. "then have your dining-room behind the hall, looking on the water." he glanced at mrs. lapham, who said, "of course," and the architect went on-- "that gets you rid of one of those long, straight, ugly staircases,"--until that moment lapham had thought a long, straight staircase the chief ornament of a house,--"and gives you an effect of amplitude and space." "that's so!" said mrs. lapham. her husband merely made a noise in his throat. "then, were you thinking of having your parlours together, connected by folding doors?" asked the architect deferentially. "yes, of course," said lapham. "they're always so, ain't they?" "well, nearly," said the architect. "i was wondering how would it do to make one large square room at the front, taking the whole breadth of the house, and, with this hall-space between, have a music-room back for the young ladies?" lapham looked helplessly at his wife, whose quicker apprehension had followed the architect's pencil with instant sympathy. "first-rate!" she cried. the colonel gave way. "i guess that would do. it'll be kind of odd, won't it?" "well, i don't know," said the architect. "not so odd, i hope, as the other thing will be a few years from now." he went on to plan the rest of the house, and he showed himself such a master in regard to all the practical details that mrs. lapham began to feel a motherly affection for the young man, and her husband could not deny in his heart that the fellow seemed to understand his business. he stopped walking about the room, as he had begun to do when the architect and mrs. lapham entered into the particulars of closets, drainage, kitchen arrangements, and all that, and came back to the table. "i presume," he said, "you'll have the drawing-room finished in black walnut?" "well, yes," replied the architect, "if you like. but some less expensive wood can be made just as effective with paint. of course you can paint black walnut too." "paint it?" gasped the colonel. "yes," said the architect quietly. "white, or a little off white." lapham dropped the plan he had picked up from the table. his wife made a little move toward him of consolation or support. "of course," resumed the architect, "i know there has been a great craze for black walnut. but it's an ugly wood; and for a drawing-room there is really nothing like white paint. we should want to introduce a little gold here and there. perhaps we might run a painted frieze round under the cornice--garlands of roses on a gold ground; it would tell wonderfully in a white room." the colonel returned less courageously to the charge. "i presume you'll want eastlake mantel-shelves and tiles?" he meant this for a sarcastic thrust at a prevailing foible of the profession. "well, no," gently answered the architect. "i was thinking perhaps a white marble chimney-piece, treated in the refined empire style, would be the thing for that room." "white marble!" exclaimed the colonel. "i thought that had gone out long ago." "really beautiful things can't go out. they may disappear for a little while, but they must come back. it's only the ugly things that stay out after they've had their day." lapham could only venture very modestly, "hard-wood floors?" "in the music-room, of course," consented the architect. "and in the drawing-room?" "carpet. some sort of moquette, i should say. but i should prefer to consult mrs. lapham's taste in that matter." "and in the other rooms?" "oh, carpets, of course." "and what about the stairs?" "carpet. and i should have the rail and banisters white--banisters turned or twisted." the colonel said under his breath, "well, i'm dumned!" but he gave no utterance to his astonishment in the architect's presence. when he went at last,--the session did not end till eleven o'clock,--lapham said, "well, pert, i guess that fellow's fifty years behind, or ten years ahead. i wonder what the ongpeer style is?" "i don't know. i hated to ask. but he seemed to understand what he was talking about. i declare, he knows what a woman wants in a house better than she does herself." "and a man's simply nowhere in comparison," said lapham. but he respected a fellow who could beat him at every point, and have a reason ready, as this architect had; and when he recovered from the daze into which the complete upheaval of all his preconceived notions had left him, he was in a fit state to swear by the architect. it seemed to him that he had discovered the fellow (as he always called him) and owned him now, and the fellow did nothing to disturb this impression. he entered into that brief but intense intimacy with the laphams which the sympathetic architect holds with his clients. he was privy to all their differences of opinion and all their disputes about the house. he knew just where to insist upon his own ideas, and where to yield. he was really building several other houses, but he gave the laphams the impression that he was doing none but theirs. the work was not begun till the frost was thoroughly out of the ground, which that year was not before the end of april. even then it did not proceed very rapidly. lapham said they might as well take their time to it; if they got the walls up and the thing closed in before the snow flew, they could be working at it all winter. it was found necessary to dig for the kitchen; at that point the original salt-marsh lay near the surface, and before they began to put in the piles for the foundation they had to pump. the neighbourhood smelt like the hold of a ship after a three years' voyage. people who had cast their fortunes with the new land went by professing not to notice it; people who still "hung on to the hill" put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and told each other the old terrible stories of the material used in filling up the back bay. nothing gave lapham so much satisfaction in the whole construction of his house as the pile-driving. when this began, early in the summer, he took mrs. lapham every day in his buggy and drove round to look at it; stopping the mare in front of the lot, and watching the operation with even keener interest than the little loafing irish boys who superintended it in force. it pleased him to hear the portable engine chuckle out a hundred thin whiffs of steam in carrying the big iron weight to the top of the framework above the pile, then seem to hesitate, and cough once or twice in pressing the weight against the detaching apparatus. there was a moment in which the weight had the effect of poising before it fell; then it dropped with a mighty whack on the iron-bound head of the pile, and drove it a foot into the earth. "by gracious!" he would say, "there ain't anything like that in this world for business, persis!" mrs. lapham suffered him to enjoy the sight twenty or thirty times before she said, "well, now drive on, si." by the time the foundation was in and the brick walls had begun to go up, there were so few people left in the neighbourhood that she might indulge with impunity her husband's passion for having her clamber over the floor-timbers and the skeleton stair-cases with him. many of the householders had boarded up their front doors before the buds had begun to swell and the assessor to appear in early may; others had followed soon; and mrs. lapham was as safe from remark as if she had been in the depth of the country. ordinarily she and her girls left town early in july, going to one of the hotels at nantasket, where it was convenient for the colonel to get to and from his business by the boat. but this summer they were all lingering a few weeks later, under the novel fascination of the new house, as they called it, as if there were no other in the world. lapham drove there with his wife after he had set bartley hubbard down at the events office, but on this day something happened that interfered with the solid pleasure they usually took in going over the house. as the colonel turned from casting anchor at the mare's head with the hitching-weight, after helping his wife to alight, he encountered a man to whom he could not help speaking, though the man seemed to share his hesitation if not his reluctance at the necessity. he was a tallish, thin man, with a dust-coloured face, and a dead, clerical air, which somehow suggested at once feebleness and tenacity. mrs. lapham held out her hand to him. "why, mr. rogers!" she exclaimed; and then, turning toward her husband, seemed to refer the two men to each other. they shook hands, but lapham did not speak. "i didn't know you were in boston," pursued mrs. lapham. "is mrs. rogers with you?" "no," said mr. rogers, with a voice which had the flat, succinct sound of two pieces of wood clapped together. "mrs. rogers is still in chicago." a little silence followed, and then mrs lapham said-- "i presume you are quite settled out there." "no; we have left chicago. mrs. rogers has merely remained to finish up a little packing." "oh, indeed! are you coming back to boston?" "i cannot say as yet. we sometimes think of so doing." lapham turned away and looked up at the building. his wife pulled a little at her glove, as if embarrassed, or even pained. she tried to make a diversion. "we are building a house," she said, with a meaningless laugh. "oh, indeed," said mr. rogers, looking up at it. then no one spoke again, and she said helplessly-- "if you come to boston, i hope i shall see mrs. rogers." "she will be happy to have you call," said mr rogers. he touched his hat-brim, and made a bow forward rather than in mrs. lapham's direction. she mounted the planking that led into the shelter of the bare brick walls, and her husband slowly followed. when she turned her face toward him her cheeks were burning, and tears that looked hot stood in her eyes. "you left it all to me!" she cried. "why couldn't you speak a word?" "i hadn't anything to say to him," replied lapham sullenly. they stood a while, without looking at the work which they had come to enjoy, and without speaking to each other. "i suppose we might as well go on," said mrs. lapham at last, as they returned to the buggy. the colonel drove recklessly toward the milldam. his wife kept her veil down and her face turned from him. after a time she put her handkerchief up under her veil and wiped her eyes, and he set his teeth and squared his jaw. "i don't see how he always manages to appear just at the moment when he seems to have gone fairly out of our lives, and blight everything," she whimpered. "i supposed he was dead," said lapham. "oh, don't say such a thing! it sounds as if you wished it." "why do you mind it? what do you let him blight everything for?" "i can't help it, and i don't believe i ever shall. i don't know as his being dead would help it any. i can't ever see him without feeling just as i did at first." "i tell you," said lapham, "it was a perfectly square thing. and i wish, once for all, you would quit bothering about it. my conscience is easy as far as he is concerned, and it always was." "and i can't look at him without feeling as if you'd ruined him, silas." "don't look at him, then," said her husband, with a scowl. "i want you should recollect in the first place, persis, that i never wanted a partner." "if he hadn't put his money in when he did, you'd 'a' broken down." "well, he got his money out again, and more, too," said the colonel, with a sulky weariness. "he didn't want to take it out." "i gave him his choice: buy out or go out." "you know he couldn't buy out then. it was no choice at all." "it was a business chance." "no; you had better face the truth, silas. it was no chance at all. you crowded him out. a man that had saved you! no, you had got greedy, silas. you had made your paint your god, and you couldn't bear to let anybody else share in its blessings." "i tell you he was a drag and a brake on me from the word go. you say he saved me. well, if i hadn't got him out he'd 'a' ruined me sooner or later. so it's an even thing, as far forth as that goes." "no, it ain't an even thing, and you know it, silas. oh, if i could only get you once to acknowledge that you did wrong about it, then i should have some hope. i don't say you meant wrong exactly, but you took an advantage. yes, you took an advantage! you had him where he couldn't help himself, and then you wouldn't show him any mercy." "i'm sick of this," said lapham. "if you'll 'tend to the house, i'll manage my business without your help." "you were very glad of my help once." "well, i'm tired of it now. don't meddle." "i will meddle. when i see you hardening yourself in a wrong thing, it's time for me to meddle, as you call it, and i will. i can't ever get you to own up the least bit about rogers, and i feel as if it was hurting you all the while." "what do you want i should own up about a thing for when i don't feel wrong? i tell you rogers hain't got anything to complain of, and that's what i told you from the start. it's a thing that's done every day. i was loaded up with a partner that didn't know anything, and couldn't do anything, and i unloaded; that's all." "you unloaded just at the time when you knew that your paint was going to be worth about twice what it ever had been; and you wanted all the advantage for yourself." "i had a right to it. i made the success." "yes, you made it with rogers's money; and when you'd made it you took his share of it. i guess you thought of that when you saw him, and that's why you couldn't look him in the face." at these words lapham lost his temper. "i guess you don't want to ride with me any more to-day," he said, turning the mare abruptly round. "i'm as ready to go back as what you are," replied his wife. "and don't you ask me to go to that house with you any more. you can sell it, for all me. i sha'n't live in it. there's blood on it." iv. the silken texture of the marriage tie bears a daily strain of wrong and insult to which no other human relation can be subjected without lesion; and sometimes the strength that knits society together might appear to the eye of faltering faith the curse of those immediately bound by it. two people by no means reckless of each other's rights and feelings, but even tender of them for the most part, may tear at each other's heart-strings in this sacred bond with perfect impunity; though if they were any other two they would not speak or look at each other again after the outrages they exchange. it is certainly a curious spectacle, and doubtless it ought to convince an observer of the divinity of the institution. if the husband and wife are blunt, outspoken people like the laphams, they do not weigh their words; if they are more refined, they weigh them very carefully, and know accurately just how far they will carry, and in what most sensitive spot they may be planted with most effect. lapham was proud of his wife, and when he married her it had been a rise in life for him. for a while he stood in awe of his good fortune, but this could not last, and he simply remained supremely satisfied with it. the girl who had taught school with a clear head and a strong hand was not afraid of work; she encouraged and helped him from the first, and bore her full share of the common burden. she had health, and she did not worry his life out with peevish complaints and vagaries; she had sense and principle, and in their simple lot she did what was wise and right. their marriage was hallowed by an early sorrow: they lost their boy, and it was years before they could look each other in the face and speak of him. no one gave up more than they when they gave up each other and lapham went to the war. when he came back and began to work, her zeal and courage formed the spring of his enterprise. in that affair of the partnership she had tried to be his conscience, but perhaps she would have defended him if he had accused himself; it was one of those things in this life which seem destined to await justice, or at least judgment, in the next. as he said, lapham had dealt fairly by his partner in money; he had let rogers take more money out of the business than he put into it; he had, as he said, simply forced out of it a timid and inefficient participant in advantages which he had created. but lapham had not created them all. he had been dependent at one time on his partner's capital. it was a moment of terrible trial. happy is the man for ever after who can choose the ideal, the unselfish part in such an exigency! lapham could not rise to it. he did what he could maintain to be perfectly fair. the wrong, if any, seemed to be condoned to him, except when from time to time his wife brought it up. then all the question stung and burned anew, and had to be reasoned out and put away once more. it seemed to have an inextinguishable vitality. it slept, but it did not die. his course did not shake mrs. lapham's faith in him. it astonished her at first, and it always grieved her that he could not see that he was acting solely in his own interest. but she found excuses for him, which at times she made reproaches. she vaguely perceived that his paint was something more than business to him; it was a sentiment, almost a passion. he could not share its management and its profit with another without a measure of self-sacrifice far beyond that which he must make with something less personal to him. it was the poetry of that nature, otherwise so intensely prosaic; and she understood this, and for the most part forbore. she knew him good and true and blameless in all his life, except for this wrong, if it were a wrong; and it was only when her nerves tingled intolerably with some chance renewal of the pain she had suffered, that she shared her anguish with him in true wifely fashion. with those two there was never anything like an explicit reconciliation. they simply ignored a quarrel; and mrs. lapham had only to say a few days after at breakfast, "i guess the girls would like to go round with you this afternoon, and look at the new house," in order to make her husband grumble out as he looked down into his coffee-cup. "i guess we better all go, hadn't we?" "well, i'll see," she said. there was not really a great deal to look at when lapham arrived on the ground in his four-seated beach-wagon. but the walls were up, and the studding had already given skeleton shape to the interior. the floors were roughly boarded over, and the stairways were in place, with provisional treads rudely laid. they had not begun to lath and plaster yet, but the clean, fresh smell of the mortar in the walls mingling with the pungent fragrance of the pine shavings neutralised the venetian odour that drew in over the water. it was pleasantly shady there, though for the matter of that the heat of the morning had all been washed out of the atmosphere by a tide of east wind setting in at noon, and the thrilling, delicious cool of a boston summer afternoon bathed every nerve. the foreman went about with mrs. lapham, showing her where the doors were to be; but lapham soon tired of this, and having found a pine stick of perfect grain, he abandoned himself to the pleasure of whittling it in what was to be the reception-room, where he sat looking out on the street from what was to be the bay-window. here he was presently joined by his girls, who, after locating their own room on the water side above the music-room, had no more wish to enter into details than their father. "come and take a seat in the bay-window, ladies," he called out to them, as they looked in at him through the ribs of the wall. he jocosely made room for them on the trestle on which he sat. they came gingerly and vaguely forward, as young ladies do when they wish not to seem to be going to do a thing they have made up their minds to do. when they had taken their places on their trestle, they could not help laughing with scorn, open and acceptable to their father; and irene curled her chin up, in a little way she had, and said, "how ridiculous!" to her sister. "well, i can tell you what," said the colonel, in fond enjoyment of their young ladyishness, "your mother wa'n't ashamed to sit with me on a trestle when i called her out to look at the first coat of my paint that i ever tried on a house." "yes; we've heard that story," said penelope, with easy security of her father's liking what she said. "we were brought up on that story." "well, it's a good story," said her father. at that moment a young man came suddenly in range, who began to look up at the signs of building as he approached. he dropped his eyes in coming abreast of the bay-window, where lapham sat with his girls, and then his face lightened, and he took off his hat and bowed to irene. she rose mechanically from the trestle, and her face lightened too. she was a very pretty figure of a girl, after our fashion of girls, round and slim and flexible, and her face was admirably regular. but her great beauty--and it was very great--was in her colouring. this was of an effect for which there is no word but delicious, as we use it of fruit or flowers. she had red hair, like her father in his earlier days, and the tints of her cheeks and temples were such as suggested may-flowers and apple-blossoms and peaches. instead of the grey that often dulls this complexion, her eyes were of a blue at once intense and tender, and they seemed to burn on what they looked at with a soft, lambent flame. it was well understood by her sister and mother that her eyes always expressed a great deal more than irene ever thought or felt; but this is not saying that she was not a very sensible girl and very honest. the young man faltered perceptibly, and irene came a little forward, and then there gushed from them both a smiling exchange of greeting, of which the sum was that he supposed she was out of town, and that she had not known that he had got back. a pause ensued, and flushing again in her uncertainty as to whether she ought or ought not to do it, she said, "my father, mr. corey; and my sister." the young man took off his hat again, showing his shapely head, with a line of wholesome sunburn ceasing where the recently and closely clipped hair began. he was dressed in a fine summer check, with a blue white-dotted neckerchief, and he had a white hat, in which he looked very well when he put it back on his head. his whole dress seemed very fresh and new, and in fact he had cast aside his texan habiliments only the day before. "how do you do, sir?" said the colonel, stepping to the window, and reaching out of it the hand which the young man advanced to take. "won't you come in? we're at home here. house i'm building." "oh, indeed?" returned the young man; and he came promptly up the steps, and through its ribs into the reception-room. "have a trestle?" asked the colonel, while the girls exchanged little shocks of terror and amusement at the eyes. "thank you," said the young man simply, and sat down. "mrs. lapham is upstairs interviewing the carpenter, but she'll be down in a minute." "i hope she's quite well," said corey. "i supposed--i was afraid she might be out of town." "well, we are off to nantasket next week. the house kept us in town pretty late." "it must be very exciting, building a house," said corey to the elder sister. "yes, it is," she assented, loyally refusing in irene's interest the opportunity of saying anything more. corey turned to the latter. "i suppose you've all helped to plan it?" "oh no; the architect and mamma did that." "but they allowed the rest of us to agree, when we were good," said penelope. corey looked at her, and saw that she was shorter than her sister, and had a dark complexion. "it's very exciting," said irene. "come up," said the colonel, rising, "and look round if you'd like to." "i should like to, very much," said the young man. he helped the young ladies over crevasses of carpentry and along narrow paths of planking, on which they had made their way unassisted before. the elder sister left the younger to profit solely by these offices as much as possible. she walked between them and her father, who went before, lecturing on each apartment, and taking the credit of the whole affair more and more as he talked on. "there!" he said, "we're going to throw out a bay-window here, so as get the water all the way up and down. this is my girls' room," he added, looking proudly at them both. it seemed terribly intimate. irene blushed deeply and turned her head away. but the young man took it all, apparently, as simply as their father. "what a lovely lookout!" he said. the back bay spread its glassy sheet before them, empty but for a few small boats and a large schooner, with her sails close-furled and dripping like snow from her spars, which a tug was rapidly towing toward cambridge. the carpentry of that city, embanked and embowered in foliage, shared the picturesqueness of charlestown in the distance. "yes," said lapham, "i go in for using the best rooms in your house yourself. if people come to stay with you, they can put up with the second best. though we don't intend to have any second best. there ain't going to be an unpleasant room in the whole house, from top to bottom." "oh, i wish papa wouldn't brag so!" breathed irene to her sister, where they stood, a little apart, looking away together. the colonel went on. "no, sir," he swelled out, "i have gone in for making a regular job of it. i've got the best architect in boston, and i'm building a house to suit myself. and if money can do it, guess i'm going to be suited." "it seems very delightful," said corey, "and very original." "yes, sir. that fellow hadn't talked five minutes before i saw that he knew what he was about every time." "i wish mamma would come!" breathed irene again. "i shall certainly go through the floor if papa says anything more." "they are making a great many very pretty houses nowadays," said the young man. "it's very different from the old-fashioned building." "well," said the colonel, with a large toleration of tone and a deep breath that expanded his ample chest, "we spend more on our houses nowadays. i started out to build a forty-thousand-dollar house. well, sir! that fellow has got me in for more than sixty thousand already, and i doubt if i get out of it much under a hundred. you can't have a nice house for nothing. it's just like ordering a picture of a painter. you pay him enough, and he can afford to paint you a first-class picture; and if you don't, he can't. that's all there is of it. why, they tell me that a. t. stewart gave one of those french fellows sixty thousand dollars for a little seven-by-nine picture the other day. yes, sir, give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a nice house every time." "i've heard that they're sharp at getting money to realise their ideas," assented the young man, with a laugh. "well, i should say so!" exclaimed the colonel. "they come to you with an improvement that you can't resist. it has good looks and common-sense and everything in its favour, and it's like throwing money away to refuse. and they always manage to get you when your wife is around, and then you're helpless." the colonel himself set the example of laughing at this joke, and the young man joined him less obstreperously. the girls turned, and he said, "i don't think i ever saw this view to better advantage. it's surprising how well the memorial hall and the cambridge spires work up, over there. and the sunsets must be magnificent." lapham did not wait for them to reply. "yes, sir, it's about the sightliest view i know of. i always did like the water side of beacon. long before i owned property here, or ever expected to, m'wife and i used to ride down this way, and stop the buggy to get this view over the water. when people talk to me about the hill, i can understand 'em. it's snug, and it's old-fashioned, and it's where they've always lived. but when they talk about commonwealth avenue, i don't know what they mean. it don't hold a candle to the water side of beacon. you've got just as much wind over there, and you've got just as much dust, and all the view you've got is the view across the street. no, sir! when you come to the back bay at all, give me the water side of beacon." "oh, i think you're quite right," said the young man. "the view here is everything." irene looked "i wonder what papa is going to say next!" at her sister, when their mother's voice was heard overhead, approaching the opening in the floor where the stairs were to be; and she presently appeared, with one substantial foot a long way ahead. she was followed by the carpenter, with his rule sticking out of his overalls pocket, and she was still talking to him about some measurements they had been taking, when they reached the bottom, so that irene had to say, "mamma, mr. corey," before mrs. lapham was aware of him. he came forward with as much grace and speed as the uncertain footing would allow, and mrs. lapham gave him a stout squeeze of her comfortable hand. "why, mr. corey! when did you get back?" "yesterday. it hardly seems as if i had got back. i didn't expect to find you in a new house." "well, you are our first caller. i presume you won't expect i should make excuses for the state you find it in. has the colonel been doing the honours?" "oh yes. and i've seen more of your house than i ever shall again, i suppose." "well, i hope not," said lapham. "there'll be several chances to see us in the old one yet, before we leave." he probably thought this a neat, off-hand way of making the invitation, for he looked at his woman-kind as if he might expect their admiration. "oh yes, indeed!" said his wife. "we shall be very glad to see mr. corey, any time." "thank you; i shall be glad to come." he and the colonel went before, and helped the ladies down the difficult descent. irene seemed less sure-footed than the others; she clung to the young man's hand an imperceptible moment longer than need be, or else he detained her. he found opportunity of saying, "it's so pleasant seeing you again," adding, "all of you." "thank you," said the girl. "they must all be glad to have you at home again." corey laughed. "well, i suppose they would be, if they were at home to have me. but the fact is, there's nobody in the house but my father and myself, and i'm only on my way to bar harbour." "oh! are they there?" "yes; it seems to be the only place where my mother can get just the combination of sea and mountain air that she wants." "we go to nantasket--it's convenient for papa; and i don't believe we shall go anywhere else this summer, mamma's so taken up with building. we do nothing but talk house; and pen says we eat and sleep house. she says it would be a sort of relief to go and live in tents for a while." "she seems to have a good deal of humour," the young man ventured, upon the slender evidence. the others had gone to the back of the house a moment, to look at some suggested change. irene and corey were left standing in the doorway. a lovely light of happiness played over her face and etherealised its delicious beauty. she had some ado to keep herself from smiling outright, and the effort deepened the dimples in her cheeks; she trembled a little, and the pendants shook in the tips of her pretty ears. the others came back directly, and they all descended the front steps together. the colonel was about to renew his invitation, but he caught his wife's eye, and, without being able to interpret its warning exactly, was able to arrest himself, and went about gathering up the hitching-weight, while the young man handed the ladies into the phaeton. then he lifted his hat, and the ladies all bowed, and the laphams drove off, irene's blue ribbons fluttering backward from her hat, as if they were her clinging thoughts. "so that's young corey, is it?" said the colonel, letting the stately stepping, tall coupe horse make his way homeward at will with the beach-wagon. "well, he ain't a bad-looking fellow, and he's got a good, fair and square, honest eye. but i don't see how a fellow like that, that's had every advantage in this world, can hang round home and let his father support him. seems to me, if i had his health and his education, i should want to strike out and do something for myself." the girls on the back seat had hold of each other's hands, and they exchanged electrical pressures at the different points their father made. "i presume," said mrs. lapham, "that he was down in texas looking after something." "he's come back without finding it, i guess." "well, if his father has the money to support him, and don't complain of the burden, i don't see why we should." "oh, i know it's none of my business, but i don't like the principle. i like to see a man act like a man. i don't like to see him taken care of like a young lady. now, i suppose that fellow belongs to two or three clubs, and hangs around 'em all day, lookin' out the window,--i've seen 'em,--instead of tryin' to hunt up something to do for an honest livin'." "if i was a young man," penelope struck in, "i would belong to twenty clubs, if i could find them and i would hang around them all, and look out the window till i dropped." "oh, you would, would you?" demanded her father, delighted with her defiance, and twisting his fat head around over his shoulder to look at her. "well, you wouldn't do it on my money, if you were a son of mine, young lady." "oh, you wait and see," retorted the girl. this made them all laugh. but the colonel recurred seriously to the subject that night, as he was winding up his watch preparatory to putting it under his pillow. "i could make a man of that fellow, if i had him in the business with me. there's stuff in him. but i spoke up the way i did because i didn't choose irene should think i would stand any kind of a loafer 'round--i don't care who he is, or how well educated or brought up. and i guess, from the way pen spoke up, that 'rene saw what i was driving at." the girl, apparently, was less anxious about her father's ideas and principles than about the impression which he had made upon the young man. she had talked it over and over with her sister before they went to bed, and she asked in despair, as she stood looking at penelope brushing out her hair before the glass-- "do you suppose he'll think papa always talks in that bragging way?" "he'll be right if he does," answered her sister. "it's the way father always does talk. you never noticed it so much, that's all. and i guess if he can't make allowance for father's bragging, he'll be a little too good. i enjoyed hearing the colonel go on." "i know you did," returned irene in distress. then she sighed. "didn't you think he looked very nice?" "who? the colonel?" penelope had caught up the habit of calling her father so from her mother, and she used his title in all her jocose and perverse moods. "you know very well i don't mean papa," pouted irene. "oh! mr. corey! why didn't you say mr. corey if you meant mr. corey? if i meant mr. corey, i should say mr. corey. it isn't swearing! corey, corey, co----" her sister clapped her hand over her mouth "will you hush, you wretched thing?" she whimpered. "the whole house can hear you." "oh yes, they can hear me all over the square. well, i think he looked well enough for a plain youth, who hadn't taken his hair out of curl-papers for some time." "it was clipped pretty close," irene admitted; and they both laughed at the drab effect of mr. corey's skull, as they remembered it. "did you like his nose?" asked irene timorously. "ah, now you're coming to something," said penelope. "i don't know whether, if i had so much of a nose, i should want it all roman." "i don't see how you can expect to have a nose part one kind and part another," argued irene. "oh, i do. look at mine!" she turned aside her face, so as to get a three-quarters view of her nose in the glass, and crossing her hands, with the brush in one of them, before her, regarded it judicially. "now, my nose started grecian, but changed its mind before it got over the bridge, and concluded to be snub the rest of the way." "you've got a very pretty nose, pen," said irene, joining in the contemplation of its reflex in the glass. "don't say that in hopes of getting me to compliment his, mrs."--she stopped, and then added deliberately--"c.!" irene also had her hair-brush in her hand, and now she sprang at her sister and beat her very softly on the shoulder with the flat of it. "you mean thing!" she cried, between her shut teeth, blushing hotly. "well, d., then," said penelope. "you've nothing to say against d.? though i think c. is just as nice an initial." "oh!" cried the younger, for all expression of unspeakable things. "i think he has very good eyes," admitted penelope. "oh, he has! and didn't you like the way his sackcoat set? so close to him, and yet free--kind of peeling away at the lapels?" "yes, i should say he was a young man of great judgment. he knows how to choose his tailor." irene sat down on the edge of a chair. "it was so nice of you, pen, to come in, that way, about clubs." "oh, i didn't mean anything by it except opposition," said penelope. "i couldn't have father swelling on so, without saying something." "how he did swell!" sighed irene. "wasn't it a relief to have mamma come down, even if she did seem to be all stocking at first?" the girls broke into a wild giggle, and hid their faces in each other's necks. "i thought i should die," said irene. "'it's just like ordering a painting,'" said penelope, recalling her father's talk, with an effect of dreamy absent-mindedness. "'you give the painter money enough, and he can afford to paint you a first-class picture. give an architect money enough, and he'll give you a first-class house, every time.'" "oh, wasn't it awful!" moaned her sister. "no one would ever have supposed that he had fought the very idea of an architect for weeks, before he gave in." penelope went on. "'i always did like the water side of beacon,--long before i owned property there. when you come to the back bay at all, give me the water side of beacon.'" "ow-w-w-w!" shrieked irene. "do stop!" the door of their mother's chamber opened below, and the voice of the real colonel called, "what are you doing up there, girls? why don't you go to bed?" this extorted nervous shrieks from both of them. the colonel heard a sound of scurrying feet, whisking drapery, and slamming doors. then he heard one of the doors opened again, and penelope said, "i was only repeating something you said when you talked to mr. corey." "very well, now," answered the colonel. "you postpone the rest of it till to-morrow at breakfast, and see that you're up in time to let me hear it." v. at the same moment young corey let himself in at his own door with his latch-key, and went to the library, where he found his father turning the last leaves of a story in the revue des deux mondes. he was a white-moustached old gentleman, who had never been able to abandon his pince-nez for the superior comfort of spectacles, even in the privacy of his own library. he knocked the glasses off as his son came in and looked up at him with lazy fondness, rubbing the two red marks that they always leave on the side of the nose. "tom," he said, "where did you get such good clothes?" "i stopped over a day in new york," replied the son, finding himself a chair. "i'm glad you like them." "yes, i always do like your clothes, tom," returned the father thoughtfully, swinging his glasses, "but i don't see how you can afford 'em, i can't." "well, sir," said the son, who dropped the "sir" into his speech with his father, now and then, in an old-fashioned way that was rather charming, "you see, i have an indulgent parent." "smoke?" suggested the father, pushing toward his son a box of cigarettes, from which he had taken one. "no, thank you," said the son. "i've dropped that." "ah, is that so?" the father began to feel about on the table for matches, in the purblind fashion of elderly men. his son rose, lighted one, and handed it to him. "well,--oh, thank you, tom!--i believe some statisticians prove that if you will give up smoking you can dress very well on the money your tobacco costs, even if you haven't got an indulgent parent. but i'm too old to try. though, i confess, i should rather like the clothes. whom did you find at the club?" "there were a lot of fellows there," said young corey, watching the accomplished fumigation of his father in an absent way. "it's astonishing what a hardy breed the young club-men are," observed his father. "all summer through, in weather that sends the sturdiest female flying to the sea-shore, you find the clubs filled with young men, who don't seem to mind the heat in the least." "boston isn't a bad place, at the worst, in summer," said the son, declining to take up the matter in its ironical shape. "i dare say it isn't, compared with texas," returned the father, smoking tranquilly on. "but i don't suppose you find many of your friends in town outside of the club." "no; you're requested to ring at the rear door, all the way down beacon street and up commonwealth avenue. it's rather a blank reception for the returning prodigal." "ah, the prodigal must take his chance if he comes back out of season. but i'm glad to have you back, tom, even as it is, and i hope you're not going to hurry away. you must give your energies a rest." "i'm sure you never had to reproach me with abnormal activity," suggested the son, taking his father's jokes in good part. "no, i don't know that i have," admitted the elder. "you've always shown a fair degree of moderation, after all. what do you think of taking up next? i mean after you have embraced your mother and sisters at mount desert. real estate? it seems to me that it is about time for you to open out as a real-estate broker. or did you ever think of matrimony?" "well, not just in that way, sir," said the young man. "i shouldn't quite like to regard it as a career, you know." "no, no. i understand that. and i quite agree with you. but you know i've always contended that the affections could be made to combine pleasure and profit. i wouldn't have a man marry for money,--that would be rather bad,--but i don't see why, when it comes to falling in love, a man shouldn't fall in love with a rich girl as easily as a poor one. some of the rich girls are very nice, and i should say that the chances of a quiet life with them were rather greater. they've always had everything, and they wouldn't be so ambitious and uneasy. don't you think so?" "it would depend," said the son, "upon whether a girl's people had been rich long enough to have given her position before she married. if they hadn't, i don't see how she would be any better than a poor girl in that respect." "yes, there's sense in that. but the suddenly rich are on a level with any of us nowadays. money buys position at once. i don't say that it isn't all right. the world generally knows what it's about, and knows how to drive a bargain. i dare say it makes the new rich pay too much. but there's no doubt but money is to the fore now. it is the romance, the poetry of our age. it's the thing that chiefly strikes the imagination. the englishmen who come here are more curious about the great new millionaires than about any one else, and they respect them more. it's all very well. i don't complain of it." "and you would like a rich daughter-in-law, quite regardless, then?" "oh, not quite so bad as that, tom," said his father. "a little youth, a little beauty, a little good sense and pretty behaviour--one mustn't object to those things; and they go just as often with money as without it. and i suppose i should like her people to be rather grammatical." "it seems to me that you're exacting, sir," said the son. "how can you expect people who have been strictly devoted to business to be grammatical? isn't that rather too much?" "perhaps it is. perhaps you're right. but i understood your mother to say that those benefactors of hers, whom you met last summer, were very passably grammatical." "the father isn't." the elder, who had been smoking with his profile toward his son, now turned his face full upon him. "i didn't know you had seen him?" "i hadn't until to-day," said young corey, with a little heightening of his colour. "but i was walking down street this afternoon, and happened to look round at a new house some one was putting up, and i saw the whole family in the window. it appears that mr. lapham is building the house." the elder corey knocked the ash of his cigarette into the holder at his elbow. "i am more and more convinced, the longer i know you, tom, that we are descended from giles corey. the gift of holding one's tongue seems to have skipped me, but you have it in full force. i can't say just how you would behave under peine forte et dure, but under ordinary pressure you are certainly able to keep your own counsel. why didn't you mention this encounter at dinner? you weren't asked to plead to an accusation of witchcraft." "no, not exactly," said the young man. "but i didn't quite see my way to speaking of it. we had a good many other things before us." "yes, that's true. i suppose you wouldn't have mentioned it now if i hadn't led up to it, would you?" "i don't know, sir. it was rather on my mind to do so. perhaps it was i who led up to it." his father laughed. "perhaps you did, tom; perhaps you did. your mother would have known you were leading up to something, but i'll confess that i didn't. what is it?" "nothing very definite. but do you know that in spite of his syntax i rather liked him?" the father looked keenly at the son; but unless the boy's full confidence was offered, corey was not the man to ask it. "well?" was all that he said. "i suppose that in a new country one gets to looking at people a little out of our tradition; and i dare say that if i hadn't passed a winter in texas i might have found colonel lapham rather too much." "you mean that there are worse things in texas?" "not that exactly. i mean that i saw it wouldn't be quite fair to test him by our standards." "this comes of the error which i have often deprecated," said the elder corey. "in fact i am always saying that the bostonian ought never to leave boston. then he knows--and then only--that there can be no standard but ours. but we are constantly going away, and coming back with our convictions shaken to their foundations. one man goes to england, and returns with the conception of a grander social life; another comes home from germany with the notion of a more searching intellectual activity; a fellow just back from paris has the absurdest ideas of art and literature; and you revert to us from the cowboys of texas, and tell us to our faces that we ought to try papa lapham by a jury of his peers. it ought to be stopped--it ought, really. the bostonian who leaves boston ought to be condemned to perpetual exile." the son suffered the father to reach his climax with smiling patience. when he asked finally, "what are the characteristics of papa lapham that place him beyond our jurisdiction?" the younger corey crossed his long legs, and leaned forward to take one of his knees between his hands. "well, sir, he bragged, rather." "oh, i don't know that bragging should exempt him from the ordinary processes. i've heard other people brag in boston." "ah, not just in that personal way--not about money." "no, that was certainly different." "i don't mean," said the young fellow, with the scrupulosity which people could not help observing and liking in him, "that it was more than an indirect expression of satisfaction in the ability to spend." "no. i should be glad to express something of the kind myself, if the facts would justify me." the son smiled tolerantly again. "but if he was enjoying his money in that way, i didn't see why he shouldn't show his pleasure in it. it might have been vulgar, but it wasn't sordid. and i don't know that it was vulgar. perhaps his successful strokes of business were the romance of his life----" the father interrupted with a laugh. "the girl must be uncommonly pretty. what did she seem to think of her father's brag?" "there were two of them," answered the son evasively. "oh, two! and is the sister pretty too?" "not pretty, but rather interesting. she is like her mother." "then the pretty one isn't the father's pet?" "i can't say, sir. i don't believe," added the young fellow, "that i can make you see colonel lapham just as i did. he struck me as very simple-hearted and rather wholesome. of course he could be tiresome; we all can; and i suppose his range of ideas is limited. but he is a force, and not a bad one. if he hasn't got over being surprised at the effect of rubbing his lamp." "oh, one could make out a case. i suppose you know what you are about, tom. but remember that we are essex county people, and that in savour we are just a little beyond the salt of the earth. i will tell you plainly that i don't like the notion of a man who has rivalled the hues of nature in her wildest haunts with the tints of his mineral paint; but i don't say there are not worse men. he isn't to my taste, though he might be ever so much to my conscience." "i suppose," said the son, "that there is nothing really to be ashamed of in mineral paint. people go into all sorts of things." his father took his cigarette from his mouth and once more looked his son full in the face. "oh, is that it?" "it has crossed my mind," admitted the son. "i must do something. i've wasted time and money enough. i've seen much younger men all through the west and south-west taking care of themselves. i don't think i was particularly fit for anything out there, but i am ashamed to come back and live upon you, sir." his father shook his head with an ironical sigh. "ah, we shall never have a real aristocracy while this plebeian reluctance to live upon a parent or a wife continues the animating spirit of our youth. it strikes at the root of the whole feudal system. i really think you owe me an apology, tom. i supposed you wished to marry the girl's money, and here you are, basely seeking to go into business with her father." young corey laughed again like a son who perceives that his father is a little antiquated, but keeps a filial faith in his wit. "i don't know that it's quite so bad as that; but the thing had certainly crossed my mind. i don't know how it's to be approached, and i don't know that it's at all possible. but i confess that i 'took to' colonel lapham from the moment i saw him. he looked as if he 'meant business,' and i mean business too." the father smoked thoughtfully. "of course people do go into all sorts of things, as you say, and i don't know that one thing is more ignoble than another, if it's decent and large enough. in my time you would have gone into the china trade or the india trade--though i didn't; and a little later cotton would have been your manifest destiny--though it wasn't mine; but now a man may do almost anything. the real-estate business is pretty full. yes, if you have a deep inward vocation for it, i don't see why mineral paint shouldn't do. i fancy it's easy enough approaching the matter. we will invite papa lapham to dinner, and talk it over with him." "oh, i don't think that would be exactly the way, sir," said the son, smiling at his father's patrician unworldliness. "no? why not?" "i'm afraid it would be a bad start. i don't think it would strike him as business-like." "i don't see why he should be punctilious, if we're not." "ah, we might say that if he were making the advances." "well, perhaps you are right, tom. what is your idea?" "i haven't a very clear one. it seems to me i ought to get some business friend of ours, whose judgment he would respect, to speak a good word for me." "give you a character?" "yes. and of course i must go to colonel lapham. my notion would be to inquire pretty thoroughly about him, and then, if i liked the look of things, to go right down to republic street and let him see what he could do with me, if anything." "that sounds tremendously practical to me, tom, though it may be just the wrong way. when are you going down to mount desert?" "to-morrow, i think, sir," said the young man. "i shall turn it over in my mind while i'm off." the father rose, showing something more than his son's height, with a very slight stoop, which the son's figure had not. "well," he said, whimsically, "i admire your spirit, and i don't deny that it is justified by necessity. it's a consolation to think that while i've been spending and enjoying, i have been preparing the noblest future for you--a future of industry and self-reliance. you never could draw, but this scheme of going into the mineral-paint business shows that you have inherited something of my feeling for colour." the son laughed once more, and waiting till his father was well on his way upstairs, turned out the gas and then hurried after him and preceded him into his chamber. he glanced over it to see that everything was there, to his father's hand. then he said, "good night, sir," and the elder responded, "good night, my son," and the son went to his own room. over the mantel in the elder corey's room hung a portrait which he had painted of his own father, and now he stood a moment and looked at this as if struck by something novel in it. the resemblance between his son and the old india merchant, who had followed the trade from salem to boston when the larger city drew it away from the smaller, must have been what struck him. grandfather and grandson had both the roman nose which appears to have flourished chiefly at the formative period of the republic, and which occurs more rarely in the descendants of the conscript fathers, though it still characterises the profiles of a good many boston ladies. bromfield corey had not inherited it, and he had made his straight nose his defence when the old merchant accused him of a want of energy. he said, "what could a man do whose unnatural father had left his own nose away from him?" this amused but did not satisfy the merchant. "you must do something," he said; "and it's for you to choose. if you don't like the india trade, go into something else. or, take up law or medicine. no corey yet ever proposed to do nothing." "ah, then, it's quite time one of us made a beginning," urged the man who was then young, and who was now old, looking into the somewhat fierce eyes of his father's portrait. he had inherited as little of the fierceness as of the nose, and there was nothing predatory in his son either, though the aquiline beak had come down to him in such force. bromfield corey liked his son tom for the gentleness which tempered his energy. "well let us compromise," he seemed to be saying to his father's portrait. "i will travel." "travel? how long?" the keen eyes demanded. "oh, indefinitely. i won't be hard with you, father." he could see the eyes soften, and the smile of yielding come over his father's face; the merchant could not resist a son who was so much like his dead mother. there was some vague understanding between them that bromfield corey was to come back and go into business after a time, but he never did so. he travelled about over europe, and travelled handsomely, frequenting good society everywhere, and getting himself presented at several courts, at a period when it was a distinction to do so. he had always sketched, and with his father's leave he fixed himself at rome, where he remained studying art and rounding the being inherited from his yankee progenitors, till there was very little left of the ancestral angularities. after ten years he came home and painted that portrait of his father. it was very good, if a little amateurish, and he might have made himself a name as a painter of portraits if he had not had so much money. but he had plenty of money, though by this time he was married and beginning to have a family. it was absurd for him to paint portraits for pay, and ridiculous to paint them for nothing; so he did not paint them at all. he continued a dilettante, never quite abandoning his art, but working at it fitfully, and talking more about it than working at it. he had his theory of titian's method; and now and then a bostonian insisted upon buying a picture of him. after a while he hung it more and more inconspicuously, and said apologetically, "oh yes! that's one of bromfield corey's things. it has nice qualities, but it's amateurish." in process of time the money seemed less abundant. there were shrinkages of one kind and another, and living had grown much more expensive and luxurious. for many years he talked about going back to rome, but he never went, and his children grew up in the usual way. before he knew it his son had him out to his class-day spread at harvard, and then he had his son on his hands. the son made various unsuccessful provisions for himself, and still continued upon his father's hands, to their common dissatisfaction, though it was chiefly the younger who repined. he had the roman nose and the energy without the opportunity, and at one of the reversions his father said to him, "you ought not to have that nose, tom; then you would do very well. you would go and travel, as i did." lapham and his wife continued talking after he had quelled the disturbance in his daughters' room overhead; and their talk was not altogether of the new house. "i tell you," he said, "if i had that fellow in the business with me i would make a man of him." "well, silas lapham," returned his wife, "i do believe you've got mineral paint on the brain. do you suppose a fellow like young corey, brought up the way he's been, would touch mineral paint with a ten-foot pole?" "why not?" haughtily asked the colonel. "well, if you don't know already, there's no use trying to tell you." vi. the coreys had always had a house at nahant, but after letting it for a season or two they found they could get on without it, and sold it at the son's instance, who foresaw that if things went on as they were going, the family would be straitened to the point of changing their mode of life altogether. they began to be of the people of whom it was said that they stayed in town very late; and when the ladies did go away, it was for a brief summering in this place and that. the father remained at home altogether; and the son joined them in the intervals of his enterprises, which occurred only too often. at bar harbour, where he now went to find them, after his winter in texas, he confessed to his mother that there seemed no very good opening there for him. he might do as well as loring stanton, but he doubted if stanton was doing very well. then he mentioned the new project which he had been thinking over. she did not deny that there was something in it, but she could not think of any young man who had gone into such a business as that, and it appeared to her that he might as well go into a patent medicine or a stove-polish. "there was one of his hideous advertisements," she said, "painted on a reef that we saw as we came down." corey smiled. "well, i suppose, if it was in a good state of preservation, that is proof positive of the efficacy of the paint on the hulls of vessels." "it's very distasteful to me, tom," said his mother; and if there was something else in her mind, she did not speak more plainly of it than to add: "it's not only the kind of business, but the kind of people you would be mixed up with." "i thought you didn't find them so very bad," suggested corey. "i hadn't seen them in nankeen square then." "you can see them on the water side of beacon street when you go back." then he told of his encounter with the lapham family in their new house. at the end his mother merely said, "it is getting very common down there," and she did not try to oppose anything further to his scheme. the young man went to see colonel lapham shortly after his return to boston. he paid his visit at lapham's office, and if he had studied simplicity in his summer dress he could not have presented himself in a figure more to the mind of a practical man. his hands and neck still kept the brown of the texan suns and winds, and he looked as business-like as lapham himself. he spoke up promptly and briskly in the outer office, and caused the pretty girl to look away from her copying at him. "is mr. lapham in?" he asked; and after that moment for reflection which an array of book-keepers so addressed likes to give the inquirer, a head was lifted from a ledger and nodded toward the inner office. lapham had recognised the voice, and he was standing, in considerable perplexity, to receive corey, when the young man opened his painted glass door. it was a hot afternoon, and lapham was in his shirt sleeves. scarcely a trace of the boastful hospitality with which he had welcomed corey to his house a few days before lingered in his present address. he looked at the young man's face, as if he expected him to despatch whatever unimaginable affair he had come upon. "won't you sit down? how are you? you'll excuse me," he added, in brief allusion to the shirt-sleeves. "i'm about roasted." corey laughed. "i wish you'd let me take off my coat." "why, take it off!" cried the colonel, with instant pleasure. there is something in human nature which causes the man in his shirt-sleeves to wish all other men to appear in the same deshabille. "i will, if you ask me after i've talked with you two minutes," said the young fellow, companionably pulling up the chair offered him toward the desk where lapham had again seated himself. "but perhaps you haven't got two minutes to give me?" "oh yes, i have," said the colonel. "i was just going to knock off. i can give you twenty, and then i shall have fifteen minutes to catch the boat." "all right," said corey. "i want you to take me into the mineral paint business." the colonel sat dumb. he twisted his thick neck, and looked round at the door to see if it was shut. he would not have liked to have any of those fellows outside hear him, but there is no saying what sum of money he would not have given if his wife had been there to hear what corey had just said. "i suppose," continued the young man, "i could have got several people whose names you know to back my industry and sobriety, and say a word for my business capacity. but i thought i wouldn't trouble anybody for certificates till i found whether there was a chance, or the ghost of one, of your wanting me. so i came straight to you." lapham gathered himself together as well as he could. he had not yet forgiven corey for mrs. lapham's insinuation that he would feel himself too good for the mineral paint business; and though he was dispersed by that astounding shot at first, he was not going to let any one even hypothetically despise his paint with impunity. "how do you think i am going to take you on?" they took on hands at the works; and lapham put it as if corey were a hand coming to him for employment. whether he satisfied himself by this or not, he reddened a little after he had said it. corey answered, ignorant of the offence: "i haven't a very clear idea, i'm afraid; but i've been looking a little into the matter from the outside." "i hope you hain't been paying any attention to that fellow's stuff in the events?" lapham interrupted. since bartley's interview had appeared, lapham had regarded it with very mixed feelings. at first it gave him a glow of secret pleasure, blended with doubt as to how his wife would like the use bartley had made of her in it. but she had not seemed to notice it much, and lapham had experienced the gratitude of the man who escapes. then his girls had begun to make fun of it; and though he did not mind penelope's jokes much, he did not like to see that irene's gentility was wounded. business friends met him with the kind of knowing smile about it that implied their sense of the fraudulent character of its praise--the smile of men who had been there and who knew how it was themselves. lapham had his misgivings as to how his clerks and underlings looked at it; he treated them with stately severity for a while after it came out, and he ended by feeling rather sore about it. he took it for granted that everybody had read it. "i don't know what you mean," replied corey, "i don't see the events regularly." "oh, it was nothing. they sent a fellow down here to interview me, and he got everything about as twisted as he could." "i believe they always do," said corey. "i hadn't seen it. perhaps it came out before i got home." "perhaps it did." "my notion of making myself useful to you was based on a hint i got from one of your own circulars." lapham was proud of those circulars; he thought they read very well. "what was that?" "i could put a little capital into the business," said corey, with the tentative accent of a man who chances a thing. "i've got a little money, but i didn't imagine you cared for anything of that kind." "no, sir, i don't," returned the colonel bluntly. "i've had one partner, and one's enough." "yes," assented the young man, who doubtless had his own ideas as to eventualities--or perhaps rather had the vague hopes of youth. "i didn't come to propose a partnership. but i see that you are introducing your paint into the foreign markets, and there i really thought i might be of use to you, and to myself too." "how?" asked the colonel scantly. "well, i know two or three languages pretty well. i know french, and i know german, and i've got a pretty fair sprinkling of spanish." "you mean that you can talk them?" asked the colonel, with the mingled awe and slight that such a man feels for such accomplishments. "yes; and i can write an intelligible letter in either of them." lapham rubbed his nose. "it's easy enough to get all the letters we want translated." "well," pursued corey, not showing his discouragement if he felt any, "i know the countries where you want to introduce this paint of yours. i've been there. i've been in germany and france and i've been in south america and mexico; i've been in italy, of course. i believe i could go to any of those countries and place it to advantage." lapham had listened with a trace of persuasion in his face, but now he shook his head. "it's placing itself as fast as there's any call for it. it wouldn't pay us to send anybody out to look after it. your salary and expenses would eat up about all we should make on it." "yes," returned the young man intrepidly, "if you had to pay me any salary and expenses." "you don't propose to work for nothing?" "i propose to work for a commission." the colonel was beginning to shake his head again, but corey hurried on. "i haven't come to you without making some inquiries about the paint, and i know how it stands with those who know best. i believe in it." lapham lifted his head and looked at the young man, deeply moved. "it's the best paint in god's universe," he said with the solemnity of prayer. "it's the best in the market," said corey; and he repeated, "i believe in it." "you believe in it," began the colonel, and then he stopped. if there had really been any purchasing power in money, a year's income would have bought mrs. lapham's instant presence. he warmed and softened to the young man in every way, not only because he must do so to any one who believed in his paint, but because he had done this innocent person the wrong of listening to a defamation of his instinct and good sense, and had been willing to see him suffer for a purely supposititious offence. corey rose. "you mustn't let me outstay my twenty minutes," he said, taking out his watch. "i don't expect you to give a decided answer on the spot. all that i ask is that you'll consider my proposition." "don't hurry," said lapham. "sit still! i want to tell you about this paint," he added, in a voice husky with the feeling that his hearer could not divine. "i want to tell you all about it." "i could walk with you to the boat," suggested the young man. "never mind the boat! i can take the next one. look here!" the colonel pulled open a drawer, as corey sat down again, and took out a photograph of the locality of the mine. "here's where we get it. this photograph don't half do the place justice," he said, as if the imperfect art had slighted the features of a beloved face. "it's one of the sightliest places in the country, and here's the very spot "--he covered it with his huge forefinger--"where my father found that paint, more than forty--years--ago. yes, sir!" he went on, and told the story in unsparing detail, while his chance for the boat passed unheeded, and the clerks in the outer office hung up their linen office coats and put on their seersucker or flannel street coats. the young lady went too, and nobody was left but the porter, who made from time to time a noisy demonstration of fastening a distant blind, or putting something in place. at last the colonel roused himself from the autobiographical delight of the history of his paint. "well, sir, that's the story." "it's an interesting story," said corey, with a long breath, as they rose together, and lapham put on his coat. "that's what it is," said the colonel. "well!" he added, "i don't see but what we've got to have another talk about this thing. it's a surprise to me, and i don't see exactly how you're going to make it pay." "i'm willing to take the chances," answered corey. "as i said, i believe in it. i should try south america first. i should try chili." "look here!" said lapham, with his watch in his hand. "i like to get things over. we've just got time for the six o'clock boat. why don't you come down with me to nantasket? i can give you a bed as well as not. and then we can finish up." the impatience of youth in corey responded to the impatience of temperament in his elder. "why, i don't see why i shouldn't," he allowed himself to say. "i confess i should like to have it finished up myself, if it could be finished up in the right way." "well, we'll see. dennis!" lapham called to the remote porter, and the man came. "want to send any word home?" he asked corey. "no; my father and i go and come as we like, without keeping account of each other. if i don't come home, he knows that i'm not there. that's all." "well, that's convenient. you'll find you can't do that when you're married. never mind, dennis," said the colonel. he had time to buy two newspapers on the wharf before he jumped on board the steam-boat with corey. "just made it," he said; "and that's what i like to do. i can't stand it to be aboard much more than a minute before she shoves out." he gave one of the newspapers to corey as he spoke, and set him the example of catching up a camp-stool on their way to that point on the boat which his experience had taught him was the best. he opened his paper at once and began to run over its news, while the young man watched the spectacular recession of the city, and was vaguely conscious of the people about him, and of the gay life of the water round the boat. the air freshened; the craft thinned in number; they met larger sail, lagging slowly inward in the afternoon light; the islands of the bay waxed and waned as the steamer approached and left them behind. "i hate to see them stirring up those southern fellows again," said the colonel, speaking into the paper on his lap. "seems to me it's time to let those old issues go." "yes," said the young man. "what are they doing now?" "oh, stirring up the confederate brigadiers in congress. i don't like it. seems to me, if our party hain't got any other stock-in-trade, we better shut up shop altogether." lapham went on, as he scanned his newspaper, to give his ideas of public questions, in a fragmentary way, while corey listened patiently, and waited for him to come back to business. he folded up his paper at last, and stuffed it into his coat pocket. "there's one thing i always make it a rule to do," he said, "and that is to give my mind a complete rest from business while i'm going down on the boat. i like to get the fresh air all through me, soul and body. i believe a man can give his mind a rest, just the same as he can give his legs a rest, or his back. all he's got to do is to use his will-power. why, i suppose, if i hadn't adopted some such rule, with the strain i've had on me for the last ten years, i should 'a' been a dead man long ago. that's the reason i like a horse. you've got to give your mind to the horse; you can't help it, unless you want to break your neck; but a boat's different, and there you got to use your will-power. you got to take your mind right up and put it where you want it. i make it a rule to read the paper on the boat----hold on!" he interrupted himself to prevent corey from paying his fare to the man who had come round for it. "i've got tickets. and when i get through the paper, i try to get somebody to talk to, or i watch the people. it's an astonishing thing to me where they all come from. i've been riding up and down on these boats for six or seven years, and i don't know but very few of the faces i see on board. seems to be a perfectly fresh lot every time. well, of course! town's full of strangers in the summer season, anyway, and folks keep coming down from the country. they think it's a great thing to get down to the beach, and they've all heard of the electric light on the water, and they want to see it. but you take faces now! the astonishing thing to me is not what a face tells, but what it don't tell. when you think of what a man is, or a woman is, and what most of 'em have been through before they get to be thirty, it seems as if their experience would burn right through. but it don't. i like to watch the couples, and try to make out which are engaged, or going to be, and which are married, or better be. but half the time i can't make any sort of guess. of course, where they're young and kittenish, you can tell; but where they're anyways on, you can't. heigh?" "yes, i think you're right," said corey, not perfectly reconciled to philosophy in the place of business, but accepting it as he must. "well," said the colonel, "i don't suppose it was meant we should know what was in each other's minds. it would take a man out of his own hands. as long as he's in his own hands, there's some hopes of his doing something with himself; but if a fellow has been found out--even if he hasn't been found out to be so very bad--it's pretty much all up with him. no, sir. i don't want to know people through and through." the greater part of the crowd on board--and, of course, the boat was crowded--looked as if they might not only be easily but safely known. there was little style and no distinction among them; they were people who were going down to the beach for the fun or the relief of it, and were able to afford it. in face they were commonplace, with nothing but the american poetry of vivid purpose to light them up, where they did not wholly lack fire. but they were nearly all shrewd and friendly-looking, with an apparent readiness for the humorous intimacy native to us all. the women were dandified in dress, according to their means and taste, and the men differed from each other in degrees of indifference to it. to a straw-hatted population, such as ours is in summer, no sort of personal dignity is possible. we have not even the power over observers which comes from the fantasticality of an englishman when he discards the conventional dress. in our straw hats and our serge or flannel sacks we are no more imposing than a crowd of boys. "some day," said lapham, rising as the boat drew near the wharf of the final landing, "there's going to be an awful accident on these boats. just look at that jam." he meant the people thickly packed on the pier, and under strong restraint of locks and gates, to prevent them from rushing on board the boat and possessing her for the return trip before she had landed her nantasket passengers. "overload 'em every time," he continued, with a sort of dry, impersonal concern at the impending calamity, as if it could not possibly include him. "they take about twice as many as they ought to carry, and about ten times as many as they could save if anything happened. yes, sir, it's bound to come. hello! there's my girl!" he took out his folded newspaper and waved it toward a group of phaetons and barouches drawn up on the pier a little apart from the pack of people, and a lady in one of them answered with a flourish of her parasol. when he had made his way with his guest through the crowd, she began to speak to her father before she noticed corey. "well, colonel, you've improved your last chance. we've been coming to every boat since four o'clock,--or jerry has,--and i told mother that i would come myself once, and see if i couldn't fetch you; and if i failed, you could walk next time. you're getting perfectly spoiled." the colonel enjoyed letting her scold him to the end before he said, with a twinkle of pride in his guest and satisfaction in her probably being able to hold her own against any discomfiture, "i've brought mr. corey down for the night with me, and i was showing him things all the way, and it took time." the young fellow was at the side of the open beach-wagon, making a quick bow, and penelope lapham was cozily drawling, "oh, how do you do, mr. corey?" before the colonel had finished his explanation. "get right in there, alongside of miss lapham, mr. corey," he said, pulling himself up into the place beside the driver. "no, no," he had added quickly, at some signs of polite protest in the young man, "i don't give up the best place to anybody. jerry, suppose you let me have hold of the leathers a minute." this was his way of taking the reins from the driver; and in half the time he specified, he had skilfully turned the vehicle on the pier, among the crooked lines and groups of foot-passengers, and was spinning up the road toward the stretch of verandaed hotels and restaurants in the sand along the shore. "pretty gay down here," he said, indicating all this with a turn of his whip, as he left it behind him. "but i've got about sick of hotels; and this summer i made up my mind that i'd take a cottage. well, pen, how are the folks?" he looked half-way round for her answer, and with the eye thus brought to bear upon her he was able to give her a wink of supreme content. the colonel, with no sort of ulterior design, and nothing but his triumph over mrs. lapham definitely in his mind, was feeling, as he would have said, about right. the girl smiled a daughter's amusement at her father's boyishness. "i don't think there's much change since morning. did irene have a headache when you left?" "no," said the colonel. "well, then, there's that to report." "pshaw!" said the colonel with vexation in his tone. "i'm sorry miss irene isn't well," said corey politely. "i think she must have got it from walking too long on the beach. the air is so cool here that you forget how hot the sun is." "yes, that's true," assented corey. "a good night's rest will make it all right," suggested the colonel, without looking round. "but you girls have got to look out." "if you're fond of walking," said corey, "i suppose you find the beach a temptation." "oh, it isn't so much that," returned the girl. "you keep walking on and on because it's so smooth and straight before you. we've been here so often that we know it all by heart--just how it looks at high tide, and how it looks at low tide, and how it looks after a storm. we're as well acquainted with the crabs and stranded jelly-fish as we are with the children digging in the sand and the people sitting under umbrellas. i think they're always the same, all of them." the colonel left the talk to the young people. when he spoke next it was to say, "well, here we are!" and he turned from the highway and drove up in front of a brown cottage with a vermilion roof, and a group of geraniums clutching the rock that cropped up in the loop formed by the road. it was treeless and bare all round, and the ocean, unnecessarily vast, weltered away a little more than a stone's-cast from the cottage. a hospitable smell of supper filled the air, and mrs. lapham was on the veranda, with that demand in her eyes for her belated husband's excuses, which she was obliged to check on her tongue at sight of corey. vii. the exultant colonel swung himself lightly down from his seat. "i've brought mr. corey with me," he nonchalantly explained. mrs. lapham made their guest welcome, and the colonel showed him to his room, briefly assuring himself that there was nothing wanting there. then he went to wash his own hands, carelessly ignoring the eagerness with which his wife pursued him to their chamber. "what gave irene a headache?" he asked, making himself a fine lather for his hairy paws. "never you mind irene," promptly retorted his wife. "how came he to come? did you press him? if you did, i'll never forgive you, silas!" the colonel laughed, and his wife shook him by the shoulder to make him laugh lower. "'sh!" she whispered. "do you want him to hear every thing? did you urge him?" the colonel laughed the more. he was going to get all the good out of this. "no, i didn't urge him. seemed to want to come." "i don't believe it. where did you meet him?" "at the office." "what office?" "mine." "nonsense! what was he doing there?" "oh, nothing much." "what did he come for?" "come for? oh! he said he wanted to go into the mineral paint business." mrs. lapham dropped into a chair, and watched his bulk shaken with smothered laughter. "silas lapham," she gasped, "if you try to get off any more of those things on me----" the colonel applied himself to the towel. "had a notion he could work it in south america. i don't know what he's up to." "never mind!" cried his wife. "i'll get even with you yet." "so i told him he had better come down and talk it over," continued the colonel, in well-affected simplicity. "i knew he wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole." "go on!" threatened mrs. lapham. "right thing to do, wa'n't it?" a tap was heard at the door, and mrs. lapham answered it. a maid announced supper. "very well," she said, "come to tea now. but i'll make you pay for this, silas." penelope had gone to her sister's room as soon as she entered the house. "is your head any better, 'rene?" she asked. "yes, a little," came a voice from the pillows. "but i shall not come to tea. i don't want anything. if i keep still, i shall be all right by morning." "well, i'm sorry," said the elder sister. "he's come down with father." "he hasn't! who?" cried irene, starting up in simultaneous denial and demand. "oh, well, if you say he hasn't, what's the use of my telling you who?" "oh, how can you treat me so!" moaned the sufferer. "what do you mean, pen?" "i guess i'd better not tell you," said penelope, watching her like a cat playing with a mouse. "if you're not coming to tea, it would just excite you for nothing." the mouse moaned and writhed upon the bed. "oh, i wouldn't treat you so!" the cat seated herself across the room, and asked quietly-- "well, what could you do if it was mr. corey? you couldn't come to tea, you say. but he'll excuse you. i've told him you had a headache. why, of course you can't come! it would be too barefaced. but you needn't be troubled, irene; i'll do my best to make the time pass pleasantly for him." here the cat gave a low titter, and the mouse girded itself up with a momentary courage and self-respect. "i should think you would be ashamed to come here and tease me so." "i don't see why you shouldn't believe me," argued penelope. "why shouldn't he come down with father, if father asked him? and he'd be sure to if he thought of it. i don't see any p'ints about that frog that's any better than any other frog." the sense of her sister's helplessness was too much for the tease; she broke down in a fit of smothered laughter, which convinced her victim that it was nothing but an ill-timed joke. "well, pen, i wouldn't use you so," she whimpered. penelope threw herself on the bed beside her. "oh, poor irene! he is here. it's a solemn fact." and she caressed and soothed her sister, while she choked with laughter. "you must get up and come out. i don't know what brought him here, but here he is." "it's too late now," said irene desolately. then she added, with a wilder despair: "what a fool i was to take that walk!" "well," coaxed her sister, "come out and get some tea. the tea will do you good." "no, no; i can't come. but send me a cup here." "yes, and then perhaps you can see him later in the evening." "i shall not see him at all." an hour after penelope came back to her sister's room and found her before her glass. "you might as well have kept still, and been well by morning, 'rene," she said. "as soon as we were done father said, 'well, mr. corey and i have got to talk over a little matter of business, and we'll excuse you, ladies.' he looked at mother in a way that i guess was pretty hard to bear. 'rene, you ought to have heard the colonel swelling at supper. it would have made you feel that all he said the other day was nothing." mrs. lapham suddenly opened the door. "now, see here, pen," she said, as she closed it behind her, "i've had just as much as i can stand from your father, and if you don't tell me this instant what it all means----" she left the consequences to imagination, and penelope replied with her mock soberness-- "well, the colonel does seem to be on his high horse, ma'am. but you mustn't ask me what his business with mr. corey is, for i don't know. all that i know is that i met them at the landing, and that they conversed all the way down--on literary topics." "nonsense! what do you think it is?" "well, if you want my candid opinion, i think this talk about business is nothing but a blind. it seems a pity irene shouldn't have been up to receive him," she added. irene cast a mute look of imploring at her mother, who was too much preoccupied to afford her the protection it asked. "your father said he wanted to go into the business with him." irene's look changed to a stare of astonishment and mystification, but penelope preserved her imperturbability. "well, it's a lucrative business, i believe." "well, i don't believe a word of it!" cried mrs. lapham. "and so i told your father." "did it seem to convince him?" inquired penelope. her mother did not reply. "i know one thing," she said. "he's got to tell me every word, or there'll be no sleep for him this night." "well, ma'am," said penelope, breaking down in one of her queer laughs, "i shouldn't be a bit surprised if you were right." "go on and dress, irene," ordered her mother, "and then you and pen come out into the parlour. they can have just two hours for business, and then we must all be there to receive him. you haven't got headache enough to hurt you." "oh, it's all gone now," said the girl. at the end of the limit she had given the colonel, mrs. lapham looked into the dining-room, which she found blue with his smoke. "i think you gentlemen will find the parlour pleasanter now, and we can give it up to you." "oh no, you needn't," said her husband. "we've got about through." corey was already standing, and lapham rose too. "i guess we can join the ladies now. we can leave that little point till to-morrow." both of the young ladies were in the parlour when corey entered with their father, and both were frankly indifferent to the few books and the many newspapers scattered about on the table where the large lamp was placed. but after corey had greeted irene he glanced at the novel under his eye, and said, in the dearth that sometimes befalls people at such times: "i see you're reading middlemarch. do you like george eliot?" "who?" asked the girl. penelope interposed. "i don't believe irene's read it yet. i've just got it out of the library; i heard so much talk about it. i wish she would let you find out a little about the people for yourself," she added. but here her father struck in-- "i can't get the time for books. it's as much as i can do to keep up with the newspapers; and when night comes, i'm tired, and i'd rather go out to the theatre, or a lecture, if they've got a good stereopticon to give you views of the places. but i guess we all like a play better than 'most anything else. i want something that'll make me laugh. i don't believe in tragedy. i think there's enough of that in real life without putting it on the stage. seen 'joshua whitcomb'?" the whole family joined in the discussion, and it appeared that they all had their opinions of the plays and actors. mrs. lapham brought the talk back to literature. "i guess penelope does most of our reading." "now, mother, you're not going to put it all on me!" said the girl, in comic protest. her mother laughed, and then added, with a sigh: "i used to like to get hold of a good book when i was a girl; but we weren't allowed to read many novels in those days. my mother called them all lies. and i guess she wasn't so very far wrong about some of them." "they're certainly fictions," said corey, smiling. "well, we do buy a good many books, first and last," said the colonel, who probably had in mind the costly volumes which they presented to one another on birthdays and holidays. "but i get about all the reading i want in the newspapers. and when the girls want a novel, i tell 'em to get it out of the library. that's what the library's for. phew!" he panted, blowing away the whole unprofitable subject. "how close you women-folks like to keep a room! you go down to the sea-side or up to the mountains for a change of air, and then you cork yourselves into a room so tight you don't have any air at all. here! you girls get on your bonnets, and go and show mr. corey the view of the hotels from the rocks." corey said that he should be delighted. the girls exchanged looks with each other, and then with their mother. irene curved her pretty chin in comment upon her father's incorrigibility, and penelope made a droll mouth, but the colonel remained serenely content with his finesse. "i got 'em out of the way," he said, as soon as they were gone, and before his wife had time to fall upon him, "because i've got through my talk with him, and now i want to talk with you. it's just as i said, persis; he wants to go into the business with me." "it's lucky for you," said his wife, meaning that now he would not be made to suffer for attempting to hoax her. but she was too intensely interested to pursue that matter further. "what in the world do you suppose he means by it?" "well, i should judge by his talk that he had been trying a good many different things since he left college, and he hain't found just the thing he likes--or the thing that likes him. it ain't so easy. and now he's got an idea that he can take hold of the paint and push it in other countries--push it in mexico and push it in south america. he's a splendid spanish scholar,"--this was lapham's version of corey's modest claim to a smattering of the language,--"and he's been among the natives enough to know their ways. and he believes in the paint," added the colonel. "i guess he believes in something else besides the paint," said mrs. lapham. "what do you mean?" "well, silas lapham, if you can't see now that he's after irene, i don't know what ever can open your eyes. that's all." the colonel pretended to give the idea silent consideration, as if it had not occurred to him before. "well, then, all i've got to say is, that he's going a good way round. i don't say you're wrong, but if it's irene, i don't see why he should want to go off to south america to get her. and that's what he proposes to do. i guess there's some paint about it too, persis. he says he believes in it,"--the colonel devoutly lowered his voice,--"and he's willing to take the agency on his own account down there, and run it for a commission on what he can sell." "of course! he isn't going to take hold of it any way so as to feel beholden to you. he's got too much pride for that." "he ain't going to take hold of it at all, if he don't mean paint in the first place and irene afterward. i don't object to him, as i know, either way, but the two things won't mix; and i don't propose he shall pull the wool over my eyes--or anybody else. but, as far as heard from, up to date, he means paint first, last, and all the time. at any rate, i'm going to take him on that basis. he's got some pretty good ideas about it, and he's been stirred up by this talk, just now, about getting our manufactures into the foreign markets. there's an overstock in everything, and we've got to get rid of it, or we've got to shut down till the home demand begins again. we've had two or three such flurries before now, and they didn't amount to much. they say we can't extend our commerce under the high tariff system we've got now, because there ain't any sort of reciprocity on our side,--we want to have the other fellows show all the reciprocity,--and the english have got the advantage of us every time. i don't know whether it's so or not; but i don't see why it should apply to my paint. anyway, he wants to try it, and i've about made up my mind to let him. of course i ain't going to let him take all the risk. i believe in the paint too, and i shall pay his expenses anyway." "so you want another partner after all?" mrs. lapham could not forbear saying. "yes, if that's your idea of a partner. it isn't mine," returned her husband dryly. "well, if you've made up your mind, si, i suppose you're ready for advice," said mrs. lapham. the colonel enjoyed this. "yes, i am. what have you got to say against it?" "i don't know as i've got anything. i'm satisfied if you are." "well?" "when is he going to start for south america?" "i shall take him into the office a while. he'll get off some time in the winter. but he's got to know the business first." "oh, indeed! are you going to take him to board in the family?" "what are you after, persis?" "oh, nothing! i presume he will feel free to visit in the family, even if he don't board with us." "i presume he will." "and if he don't use his privileges, do you think he'll be a fit person to manage your paint in south america?" the colonel reddened consciously. "i'm not taking him on that basis." "oh yes, you are! you may pretend you ain't to yourself, but you mustn't pretend so to me. because i know you." the colonel laughed. "pshaw!" he said. mrs. lapham continued: "i don't see any harm in hoping that he'll take a fancy to her. but if you really think it won't do to mix the two things, i advise you not to take mr. corey into the business. it will do all very well if he does take a fancy to her; but if he don't, you know how you'll feel about it. and i know you well enough, silas, to know that you can't do him justice if that happens. and i don't think it's right you should take this step unless you're pretty sure. i can see that you've set your heart on this thing." "i haven't set my heart on it at all," protested lapham. "and if you can't bring it about, you're going to feel unhappy over it," pursued his wife, regardless of his protest. "oh, very well," he said. "if you know more about what's in my mind than i do, there's no use arguing, as i can see." he got up, to carry off his consciousness, and sauntered out of the door on to his piazza. he could see the young people down on the rocks, and his heart swelled in his breast. he had always said that he did not care what a man's family was, but the presence of young corey as an applicant to him for employment, as his guest, as the possible suitor of his daughter, was one of the sweetest flavours that he had yet tasted in his success. he knew who the coreys were very well, and, in his simple, brutal way, he had long hated their name as a symbol of splendour which, unless he should live to see at least three generations of his descendants gilded with mineral paint, he could not hope to realise in his own. he was acquainted in a business way with the tradition of old phillips corey, and he had heard a great many things about the corey who had spent his youth abroad and his father's money everywhere, and done nothing but say smart things. lapham could not see the smartness of some of them which had been repeated to him. once he had encountered the fellow, and it seemed to lapham that the tall, slim, white-moustached man, with the slight stoop, was everything that was offensively aristocratic. he had bristled up aggressively at the name when his wife told how she had made the acquaintance of the fellow's family the summer before, and he had treated the notion of young corey's caring for irene with the contempt which such a ridiculous superstition deserved. he had made up his mind about young corey beforehand; yet when he met him he felt an instant liking for him, which he frankly acknowledged, and he had begun to assume the burden of his wife's superstition, of which she seemed now ready to accuse him of being the inventor. nothing had moved his thick imagination like this day's events since the girl who taught him spelling and grammar in the school at lumberville had said she would have him for her husband. the dark figures, stationary on the rocks, began to move, and he could see that they were coming toward the house. he went indoors, so as not to appear to have been watching them. viii. a week after she had parted with her son at bar harbour, mrs. corey suddenly walked in upon her husband in their house in boston. he was at breakfast, and he gave her the patronising welcome with which the husband who has been staying in town all summer receives his wife when she drops down upon him from the mountains or the sea-side. for a little moment she feels herself strange in the house, and suffers herself to be treated like a guest, before envy of his comfort vexes her back into possession and authority. mrs. corey was a lady, and she did not let her envy take the form of open reproach. "well, anna, you find me here in the luxury you left me to. how did you leave the girls?" "the girls were well," said mrs. corey, looking absently at her husband's brown velvet coat, in which he was so handsome. no man had ever grown grey more beautifully. his hair, while not remaining dark enough to form a theatrical contrast with his moustache, was yet some shades darker, and, in becoming a little thinner, it had become a little more gracefully wavy. his skin had the pearly tint which that of elderly men sometimes assumes, and the lines which time had traced upon it were too delicate for the name of wrinkles. he had never had any personal vanity, and there was no consciousness in his good looks now. "i am glad of that. the boy i have with me," he returned; "that is, when he is with me." "why, where is he?" demanded the mother. "probably carousing with the boon lapham somewhere. he left me yesterday afternoon to go and offer his allegiance to the mineral paint king, and i haven't seen him since." "bromfield!" cried mrs. corey. "why didn't you stop him?" "well, my dear, i'm not sure that it isn't a very good thing." "a good thing? it's horrid!" "no, i don't think so. it's decent. tom had found out--without consulting the landscape, which i believe proclaims it everywhere----" "hideous!" "that it's really a good thing; and he thinks that he has some ideas in regard to its dissemination in the parts beyond seas." "why shouldn't he go into something else?" lamented the mother. "i believe he has gone into nearly everything else and come out of it. so there is a chance of his coming out of this. but as i had nothing to suggest in place of it, i thought it best not to interfere. in fact, what good would my telling him that mineral paint was nasty have done? i dare say you told him it was nasty." "yes! i did." "and you see with what effect, though he values your opinion three times as much as he values mine. perhaps you came up to tell him again that it was nasty?" "i feel very unhappy about it. he is throwing himself away. yes, i should like to prevent it if i could!" the father shook his head. "if lapham hasn't prevented it, i fancy it's too late. but there may be some hopes of lapham. as for tom's throwing himself away, i don't know. there's no question but he is one of the best fellows under the sun. he's tremendously energetic, and he has plenty of the kind of sense which we call horse; but he isn't brilliant. no, tom is not brilliant. i don't think he would get on in a profession, and he's instinctively kept out of everything of the kind. but he has got to do something. what shall he do? he says mineral paint, and really i don't see why he shouldn't. if money is fairly and honestly earned, why should we pretend to care what it comes out of, when we don't really care? that superstition is exploded everywhere." "oh, it isn't the paint alone," said mrs. corey; and then she perceptibly arrested herself, and made a diversion in continuing: "i wish he had married some one." "with money?" suggested her husband. "from time to time i have attempted tom's corruption from that side, but i suspect tom has a conscience against it, and i rather like him for it. i married for love myself," said corey, looking across the table at his wife. she returned his look tolerantly, though she felt it right to say, "what nonsense!" "besides," continued her husband, "if you come to money, there is the paint princess. she will have plenty." "ah, that's the worst of it," sighed the mother. "i suppose i could get on with the paint----" "but not with the princess? i thought you said she was a very pretty, well-behaved girl?" "she is very pretty, and she is well-behaved; but there is nothing of her. she is insipid; she is very insipid." "but tom seemed to like her flavour, such as it was?" "how can i tell? we were under a terrible obligation to them, and i naturally wished him to be polite to them. in fact, i asked him to be so." "and he was too polite." "i can't say that he was. but there is no doubt that the child is extremely pretty." "tom says there are two of them. perhaps they will neutralise each other." "yes, there is another daughter," assented mrs. corey. "i don't see how you can joke about such things, bromfield," she added. "well, i don't either, my dear, to tell you the truth. my hardihood surprises me. here is a son of mine whom i see reduced to making his living by a shrinkage in values. it's very odd," interjected corey, "that some values should have this peculiarity of shrinking. you never hear of values in a picture shrinking; but rents, stocks, real estate--all those values shrink abominably. perhaps it might be argued that one should put all his values into pictures; i've got a good many of mine there." "tom needn't earn his living," said mrs. corey, refusing her husband's jest. "there's still enough for all of us." "that is what i have sometimes urged upon tom. i have proved to him that with economy, and strict attention to business, he need do nothing as long as he lives. of course he would be somewhat restricted, and it would cramp the rest of us; but it is a world of sacrifices and compromises. he couldn't agree with me, and he was not in the least moved by the example of persons of quality in europe, which i alleged in support of the life of idleness. it appears that he wishes to do something--to do something for himself. i am afraid that tom is selfish." mrs. corey smiled wanly. thirty years before, she had married the rich young painter in rome, who said so much better things than he painted--charming things, just the things to please the fancy of a girl who was disposed to take life a little too seriously and practically. she saw him in a different light when she got him home to boston; but he had kept on saying the charming things, and he had not done much else. in fact, he had fulfilled the promise of his youth. it was a good trait in him that he was not actively but only passively extravagant. he was not adventurous with his money; his tastes were as simple as an italian's; he had no expensive habits. in the process of time he had grown to lead a more and more secluded life. it was hard to get him out anywhere, even to dinner. his patience with their narrowing circumstances had a pathos which she felt the more the more she came into charge of their joint life. at times it seemed too bad that the children and their education and pleasures should cost so much. she knew, besides, that if it had not been for them she would have gone back to rome with him, and lived princely there for less than it took to live respectably in boston. "tom hasn't consulted me," continued his father, "but he has consulted other people. and he has arrived at the conclusion that mineral paint is a good thing to go into. he has found out all about it, and about its founder or inventor. it's quite impressive to hear him talk. and if he must do something for himself, i don't see why his egotism shouldn't as well take that form as another. combined with the paint princess, it isn't so agreeable; but that's only a remote possibility, for which your principal ground is your motherly solicitude. but even if it were probable and imminent, what could you do? the chief consolation that we american parents have in these matters is that we can do nothing. if we were europeans, even english, we should take some cognisance of our children's love affairs, and in some measure teach their young affections how to shoot. but it is our custom to ignore them until they have shot, and then they ignore us. we are altogether too delicate to arrange the marriages of our children; and when they have arranged them we don't like to say anything, for fear we should only make bad worse. the right way is for us to school ourselves to indifference. that is what the young people have to do elsewhere, and that is the only logical result of our position here. it is absurd for us to have any feeling about what we don't interfere with." "oh, people do interfere with their children's marriages very often," said mrs. corey. "yes, but only in a half-hearted way, so as not to make it disagreeable for themselves if the marriages go on in spite of them, as they're pretty apt to do. now, my idea is that i ought to cut tom off with a shilling. that would be very simple, and it would be economical. but you would never consent, and tom wouldn't mind it." "i think our whole conduct in regard to such things is wrong," said mrs. corey. "oh, very likely. but our whole civilisation is based upon it. and who is going to make a beginning? to which father in our acquaintance shall i go and propose an alliance for tom with his daughter? i should feel like an ass. and will you go to some mother, and ask her sons in marriage for our daughters? you would feel like a goose. no; the only motto for us is, hands off altogether." "i shall certainly speak to tom when the time comes," said mrs. corey. "and i shall ask leave to be absent from your discomfiture, my dear," answered her husband. the son returned that afternoon, and confessed his surprise at finding his mother in boston. he was so frank that she had not quite the courage to confess in turn why she had come, but trumped up an excuse. "well, mother," he said promptly, "i have made an engagement with mr. lapham." "have you, tom?" she asked faintly. "yes. for the present i am going to have charge of his foreign correspondence, and if i see my way to the advantage i expect to find in it, i am going out to manage that side of his business in south america and mexico. he's behaved very handsomely about it. he says that if it appears for our common interest, he shall pay me a salary as well as a commission. i've talked with uncle jim, and he thinks it's a good opening." "your uncle jim does?" queried mrs. corey in amaze. "yes; i consulted him the whole way through, and i've acted on his advice." this seemed an incomprehensible treachery on her brother's part. "yes; i thought you would like to have me. and besides, i couldn't possibly have gone to any one so well fitted to advise me." his mother said nothing. in fact, the mineral paint business, however painful its interest, was, for the moment, superseded by a more poignant anxiety. she began to feel her way cautiously toward this. "have you been talking about your business with mr. lapham all night?" "well, pretty much," said her son, with a guiltless laugh. "i went to see him yesterday afternoon, after i had gone over the whole ground with uncle jim, and mr. lapham asked me to go down with him and finish up." "down?" repeated mrs. corey. "yes, to nantasket. he has a cottage down there." "at nantasket?" mrs. corey knitted her brows a little. "what in the world can a cottage at nantasket be like?" "oh, very much like a 'cottage' anywhere. it has the usual allowance of red roof and veranda. there are the regulation rocks by the sea; and the big hotels on the beach about a mile off, flaring away with electric lights and roman-candles at night. we didn't have them at nahant." "no," said his mother. "is mrs. lapham well? and her daughter?" "yes, i think so," said the young man. "the young ladies walked me down to the rocks in the usual way after dinner, and then i came back and talked paint with mr. lapham till midnight. we didn't settle anything till this morning coming up on the boat." "what sort of people do they seem to be at home?" "what sort? well, i don't know that i noticed." mrs. corey permitted herself the first part of a sigh of relief; and her son laughed, but apparently not at her. "they're just reading middlemarch. they say there's so much talk about it. oh, i suppose they're very good people. they seemed to be on very good terms with each other." "i suppose it's the plain sister who's reading middlemarch." "plain? is she plain?" asked the young man, as if searching his consciousness. "yes, it's the older one who does the reading, apparently. but i don't believe that even she overdoes it. they like to talk better. they reminded me of southern people in that." the young man smiled, as if amused by some of his impressions of the lapham family. "the living, as the country people call it, is tremendously good. the colonel--he's a colonel--talked of the coffee as his wife's coffee, as if she had personally made it in the kitchen, though i believe it was merely inspired by her. and there was everything in the house that money could buy. but money has its limitations." this was a fact which mrs. corey was beginning to realise more and more unpleasantly in her own life; but it seemed to bring her a certain comfort in its application to the laphams. "yes, there is a point where taste has to begin," she said. "they seemed to want to apologise to me for not having more books," said corey. "i don't know why they should. the colonel said they bought a good many books, first and last; but apparently they don't take them to the sea-side." "i dare say they never buy a new book. i've met some of these moneyed people lately, and they lavish on every conceivable luxury, and then borrow books, and get them in the cheap paper editions." "i fancy that's the way with the lapham family," said the young man, smilingly. "but they are very good people. the other daughter is humorous." "humorous?" mrs. corey knitted her brows in some perplexity. "do you mean like mrs. sayre?" she asked, naming the lady whose name must come into every boston mind when humour is mentioned. "oh no; nothing like that. she never says anything that you can remember; nothing in flashes or ripples; nothing the least literary. but it's a sort of droll way of looking at things; or a droll medium through which things present themselves. i don't know. she tells what she's seen, and mimics a little." "oh," said mrs. corey coldly. after a moment she asked: "and is miss irene as pretty as ever?" "she's a wonderful complexion," said the son unsatisfactorily. "i shall want to be by when father and colonel lapham meet," he added, with a smile. "ah, yes, your father!" said the mother, in that way in which a wife at once compassionates and censures her husband to their children. "do you think it's really going to be a trial to him?" asked the young man quickly. "no, no, i can't say it is. but i confess i wish it was some other business, tom." "well, mother, i don't see why. the principal thing looked at now is the amount of money; and while i would rather starve than touch a dollar that was dirty with any sort of dishonesty----" "of course you would, my son!" interposed his mother proudly. "i shouldn't at all mind its having a little mineral paint on it. i'll use my influence with colonel lapham--if i ever have any--to have his paint scraped off the landscape." "i suppose you won't begin till the autumn." "oh yes, i shall," said the son, laughing at his mother's simple ignorance of business. "i shall begin to-morrow morning." "to-morrow morning!" "yes. i've had my desk appointed already, and i shall be down there at nine in the morning to take possession." "tom," cried his mother, "why do you think mr. lapham has taken you into business so readily? i've always heard that it was so hard for young men to get in." "and do you think i found it easy with him? we had about twelve hours' solid talk." "and you don't suppose it was any sort of--personal consideration?" "why, i don't know exactly what you mean, mother. i suppose he likes me." mrs. corey could not say just what she meant. she answered, ineffectually enough-- "yes. you wouldn't like it to be a favour, would you?" "i think he's a man who may be trusted to look after his own interest. but i don't mind his beginning by liking me. it'll be my own fault if i don't make myself essential to him." "yes," said mrs. corey. "well," demanded her husband, at their first meeting after her interview with their son, "what did you say to tom?" "very little, if anything. i found him with his mind made up, and it would only have distressed him if i had tried to change it." "that is precisely what i said, my dear." "besides, he had talked the matter over fully with james, and seems to have been advised by him. i can't understand james." "oh! it's in regard to the paint, and not the princess, that he's made up his mind. well, i think you were wise to let him alone, anna. we represent a faded tradition. we don't really care what business a man is in, so it is large enough, and he doesn't advertise offensively; but we think it fine to affect reluctance." "do you really feel so, bromfield?" asked his wife seriously. "certainly i do. there was a long time in my misguided youth when i supposed myself some sort of porcelain; but it's a relief to be of the common clay, after all, and to know it. if i get broken, i can be easily replaced." "if tom must go into such a business," said mrs. corey, "i'm glad james approves of it." "i'm afraid it wouldn't matter to tom if he didn't; and i don't know that i should care," said corey, betraying the fact that he had perhaps had a good deal of his brother-in-law's judgment in the course of his life. "you had better consult him in regard to tom's marrying the princess." "there is no necessity at present for that," said mrs. corey, with dignity. after a moment, she asked, "should you feel quite so easy if it were a question of that, bromfield?" "it would be a little more personal." "you feel about it as i do. of course, we have both lived too long, and seen too much of the world, to suppose we can control such things. the child is good, i haven't the least doubt, and all those things can be managed so that they wouldn't disgrace us. but she has had a certain sort of bringing up. i should prefer tom to marry a girl with another sort, and this business venture of his increases the chances that he won't. that's all." "''tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door, but 'twill serve.'" "i shouldn't like it." "well, it hasn't happened yet." "ah, you never can realise anything beforehand." "perhaps that has saved me some suffering. but you have at least the consolation of two anxieties at once. i always find that a great advantage. you can play one off against the other." mrs. corey drew a long breath as if she did not experience the suggested consolation; and she arranged to quit, the following afternoon, the scene of her defeat, which she had not had the courage to make a battlefield. her son went down to see her off on the boat, after spending his first day at his desk in lapham's office. he was in a gay humour, and she departed in a reflected gleam of his good spirits. he told her all about it, as he sat talking with her at the stern of the boat, lingering till the last moment, and then stepping ashore, with as little waste of time as lapham himself, on the gang-plank which the deck-hands had laid hold of. he touched his hat to her from the wharf to reassure her of his escape from being carried away with her, and the next moment his smiling face hid itself in the crowd. he walked on smiling up the long wharf, encumbered with trucks and hacks and piles of freight, and, taking his way through the deserted business streets beyond this bustle, made a point of passing the door of lapham's warehouse, on the jambs of which his name and paint were lettered in black on a square ground of white. the door was still open, and corey loitered a moment before it, tempted to go upstairs and fetch away some foreign letters which he had left on his desk, and which he thought he might finish up at home. he was in love with his work, and he felt the enthusiasm for it which nothing but the work we can do well inspires in us. he believed that he had found his place in the world, after a good deal of looking, and he had the relief, the repose, of fitting into it. every little incident of the momentous, uneventful day was a pleasure in his mind, from his sitting down at his desk, to which lapham's boy brought him the foreign letters, till his rising from it an hour ago. lapham had been in view within his own office, but he had given corey no formal reception, and had, in fact, not spoken to him till toward the end of the forenoon, when he suddenly came out of his den with some more letters in his hand, and after a brief "how d'ye do?" had spoken a few words about them, and left them with him. he was in his shirt-sleeves again, and his sanguine person seemed to radiate the heat with which he suffered. he did not go out to lunch, but had it brought to him in his office, where corey saw him eating it before he left his own desk to go out and perch on a swinging seat before the long counter of a down-town restaurant. he observed that all the others lunched at twelve, and he resolved to anticipate his usual hour. when he returned, the pretty girl who had been clicking away at a type-writer all the morning was neatly putting out of sight the evidences of pie from the table where her machine stood, and was preparing to go on with her copying. in his office lapham lay asleep in his arm-chair, with a newspaper over his face. now, while corey lingered at the entrance to the stairway, these two came down the stairs together, and he heard lapham saying, "well, then, you better get a divorce." he looked red and excited, and the girl's face, which she veiled at sight of corey, showed traces of tears. she slipped round him into the street. but lapham stopped, and said, with the show of no feeling but surprise: "hello, corey! did you want to go up?" "yes; there were some letters i hadn't quite got through with." "you'll find dennis up there. but i guess you better let them go till to-morrow. i always make it a rule to stop work when i'm done." "perhaps you're right," said corey, yielding. "come along down as far as the boat with me. there's a little matter i want to talk over with you." it was a business matter, and related to corey's proposed connection with the house. the next day the head book-keeper, who lunched at the long counter of the same restaurant with corey, began to talk with him about lapham. walker had not apparently got his place by seniority; though with his forehead, bald far up toward the crown, and his round smooth face, one might have taken him for a plump elder, if he had not looked equally like a robust infant. the thick drabbish yellow moustache was what arrested decision in either direction, and the prompt vigour of all his movements was that of a young man of thirty, which was really walker's age. he knew, of course, who corey was, and he had waited for a man who might look down on him socially to make the overtures toward something more than business acquaintance; but, these made, he was readily responsive, and drew freely on his philosophy of lapham and his affairs. "i think about the only difference between people in this world is that some know what they want, and some don't. well, now," said walker, beating the bottom of his salt-box to make the salt come out, "the old man knows what he wants every time. and generally he gets it. yes, sir, he generally gets it. he knows what he's about, but i'll be blessed if the rest of us do half the time. anyway, we don't till he's ready to let us. you take my position in most business houses. it's confidential. the head book-keeper knows right along pretty much everything the house has got in hand. i'll give you my word i don't. he may open up to you a little more in your department, but, as far as the rest of us go, he don't open up any more than an oyster on a hot brick. they say he had a partner once; i guess he's dead. i wouldn't like to be the old man's partner. well, you see, this paint of his is like his heart's blood. better not try to joke him about it. i've seen people come in occasionally and try it. they didn't get much fun out of it." while he talked, walker was plucking up morsels from his plate, tearing off pieces of french bread from the long loaf, and feeding them into his mouth in an impersonal way, as if he were firing up an engine. "i suppose he thinks," suggested corey, "that if he doesn't tell, nobody else will." walker took a draught of beer from his glass, and wiped the foam from his moustache. "oh, but he carries it too far! it's a weakness with him. he's just so about everything. look at the way he keeps it up about that type-writer girl of his. you'd think she was some princess travelling incognito. there isn't one of us knows who she is, or where she came from, or who she belongs to. he brought her and her machine into the office one morning, and set 'em down at a table, and that's all there is about it, as far as we're concerned. it's pretty hard on the girl, for i guess she'd like to talk; and to any one that didn't know the old man----" walker broke off and drained his glass of what was left in it. corey thought of the words he had overheard from lapham to the girl. but he said, "she seems to be kept pretty busy." "oh yes," said walker; "there ain't much loafing round the place, in any of the departments, from the old man's down. that's just what i say. he's got to work just twice as hard, if he wants to keep everything in his own mind. but he ain't afraid of work. that's one good thing about him. and miss dewey has to keep step with the rest of us. but she don't look like one that would take to it naturally. such a pretty girl as that generally thinks she does enough when she looks her prettiest." "she's a pretty girl," said corey, non-committally. "but i suppose a great many pretty girls have to earn their living." "don't any of 'em like to do it," returned the book-keeper. "they think it's a hardship, and i don't blame 'em. they have got a right to get married, and they ought to have the chance. and miss dewey's smart, too. she's as bright as a biscuit. i guess she's had trouble. i shouldn't be much more than half surprised if miss dewey wasn't miss dewey, or hadn't always been. yes, sir," continued the book-keeper, who prolonged the talk as they walked back to lapham's warehouse together, "i don't know exactly what it is,--it isn't any one thing in particular,--but i should say that girl had been married. i wouldn't speak so freely to any of the rest, mr. corey,--i want you to understand that,--and it isn't any of my business, anyway; but that's my opinion." corey made no reply, as he walked beside the book-keeper, who continued-- "it's curious what a difference marriage makes in people. now, i know that i don't look any more like a bachelor of my age than i do like the man in the moon, and yet i couldn't say where the difference came in, to save me. and it's just so with a woman. the minute you catch sight of her face, there's something in it that tells you whether she's married or not. what do you suppose it is?" "i'm sure i don't know," said corey, willing to laugh away the topic. "and from what i read occasionally of some people who go about repeating their happiness, i shouldn't say that the intangible evidences were always unmistakable." "oh, of course," admitted walker, easily surrendering his position. "all signs fail in dry weather. hello! what's that?" he caught corey by the arm, and they both stopped. at a corner, half a block ahead of them, the summer noon solitude of the place was broken by a bit of drama. a man and woman issued from the intersecting street, and at the moment of coming into sight the man, who looked like a sailor, caught the woman by the arm, as if to detain her. a brief struggle ensued, the woman trying to free herself, and the man half coaxing, half scolding. the spectators could now see that he was drunk; but before they could decide whether it was a case for their interference or not, the woman suddenly set both hands against the man's breast and gave him a quick push. he lost his footing and tumbled into a heap in the gutter. the woman faltered an instant, as if to see whether he was seriously hurt, and then turned and ran. when corey and the book-keeper re-entered the office, miss dewey had finished her lunch, and was putting a sheet of paper into her type-writer. she looked up at them with her eyes of turquoise blue, under her low white forehead, with the hair neatly rippled over it, and then began to beat the keys of her machine. ix. lapham had the pride which comes of self-making, and he would not openly lower his crest to the young fellow he had taken into his business. he was going to be obviously master in his own place to every one; and during the hours of business he did nothing to distinguish corey from the half-dozen other clerks and book-keepers in the outer office, but he was not silent about the fact that bromfield corey's son had taken a fancy to come to him. "did you notice that fellow at the desk facing my type-writer girl? well, sir, that's the son of bromfield corey--old phillips corey's grandson. and i'll say this for him, that there isn't a man in the office that looks after his work better. there isn't anything he's too good for. he's right here at nine every morning, before the clock gets in the word. i guess it's his grandfather coming out in him. he's got charge of the foreign correspondence. we're pushing the paint everywhere." he flattered himself that he did not lug the matter in. he had been warned against that by his wife, but he had the right to do corey justice, and his brag took the form of illustration. "talk about training for business--i tell you it's all in the man himself! i used to believe in what old horace greeley said about college graduates being the poorest kind of horned cattle; but i've changed my mind a little. you take that fellow corey. he's been through harvard, and he's had about every advantage that a fellow could have. been everywhere, and talks half a dozen languages like english. i suppose he's got money enough to live without lifting a hand, any more than his father does; son of bromfield corey, you know. but the thing was in him. he's a natural-born business man; and i've had many a fellow with me that had come up out of the street, and worked hard all his life, without ever losing his original opposition to the thing. but corey likes it. i believe the fellow would like to stick at that desk of his night and day. i don't know where he got it. i guess it must be his grandfather, old phillips corey; it often skips a generation, you know. but what i say is, a thing has got to be born in a man; and if it ain't born in him, all the privations in the world won't put it there, and if it is, all the college training won't take it out." sometimes lapham advanced these ideas at his own table, to a guest whom he had brought to nantasket for the night. then he suffered exposure and ridicule at the hands of his wife, when opportunity offered. she would not let him bring corey down to nantasket at all. "no, indeed!" she said. "i am not going to have them think we're running after him. if he wants to see irene, he can find out ways of doing it for himself." "who wants him to see irene?" retorted the colonel angrily. "i do," said mrs. lapham. "and i want him to see her without any of your connivance, silas. i'm not going to have it said that i put my girls at anybody. why don't you invite some of your other clerks?" "he ain't just like the other clerks. he's going to take charge of a part of the business. it's quite another thing." "oh, indeed!" said mrs. lapham vexatiously. "then you are going to take a partner." "i shall ask him down if i choose!" returned the colonel, disdaining her insinuation. his wife laughed with the fearlessness of a woman who knows her husband. "but you won't choose when you've thought it over, si." then she applied an emollient to his chafed surface. "don't you suppose i feel as you do about it? i know just how proud you are, and i'm not going to have you do anything that will make you feel meeching afterward. you just let things take their course. if he wants irene, he's going to find out some way of seeing her; and if he don't, all the plotting and planning in the world isn't going to make him." "who's plotting?" again retorted the colonel, shuddering at the utterance of hopes and ambitions which a man hides with shame, but a woman talks over as freely and coolly as if they were items of a milliner's bill. "oh, not you!" exulted his wife. "i understand what you want. you want to get this fellow, who is neither partner nor clerk, down here to talk business with him. well, now, you just talk business with him at the office." the only social attention which lapham succeeded in offering corey was to take him in his buggy, now and then, for a spin out over the mill-dam. he kept the mare in town, and on a pleasant afternoon he liked to knock off early, as he phrased it, and let the mare out a little. corey understood something about horses, though in a passionless way, and he would have preferred to talk business when obliged to talk horse. but he deferred to his business superior with the sense of discipline which is innate in the apparently insubordinate american nature. if corey could hardly have helped feeling the social difference between lapham and himself, in his presence he silenced his traditions, and showed him all the respect that he could have exacted from any of his clerks. he talked horse with him, and when the colonel wished he talked house. besides himself and his paint lapham had not many other topics; and if he had a choice between the mare and the edifice on the water side of beacon street, it was just now the latter. sometimes, in driving in or out, he stopped at the house, and made corey his guest there, if he might not at nantasket; and one day it happened that the young man met irene there again. she had come up with her mother alone, and they were in the house, interviewing the carpenter as before, when the colonel jumped out of his buggy and cast anchor at the pavement. more exactly, mrs. lapham was interviewing the carpenter, and irene was sitting in the bow-window on a trestle, and looking out at the driving. she saw him come up with her father, and bowed and blushed. her father went on up-stairs to find her mother, and corey pulled up another trestle which he found in the back part of the room. the first floorings had been laid throughout the house, and the partitions had been lathed so that one could realise the shape of the interior. "i suppose you will sit at this window a good deal," said the young man. "yes, i think it will be very nice. there's so much more going on than there is in the square." "it must be very interesting to you to see the house grow." "it is. only it doesn't seem to grow so fast as i expected." "why, i'm amazed at the progress your carpenter has made every time i come." the girl looked down, and then lifting her eyes she said, with a sort of timorous appeal-- "i've been reading that book since you were down at nantasket." "book?" repeated corey, while she reddened with disappointment. "oh yes. middlemarch. did you like it?" "i haven't got through with it yet. pen has finished it." "what does she think of it?" "oh, i think she likes it very well. i haven't heard her talk about it much. do you like it?" "yes; i liked it immensely. but it's several years since i read it." "i didn't know it was so old. it's just got into the seaside library," she urged, with a little sense of injury in her tone. "oh, it hasn't been out such a very great while," said corey politely. "it came a little before daniel deronda." the girl was again silent. she followed the curl of a shaving on the floor with the point of her parasol. "do you like that rosamond vincy?" she asked, without looking up. corey smiled in his kind way. "i didn't suppose she was expected to have any friends. i can't say i liked her. but i don't think i disliked her so much as the author does. she's pretty hard on her good-looking"--he was going to say girls, but as if that might have been rather personal, he said--"people." "yes, that's what pen says. she says she doesn't give her any chance to be good. she says she should have been just as bad as rosamond if she had been in her place." the young man laughed. "your sister is very satirical, isn't she?" "i don't know," said irene, still intent upon the convolutions of the shaving. "she keeps us laughing. papa thinks there's nobody that can talk like her." she gave the shaving a little toss from her, and took the parasol up across her lap. the unworldliness of the lapham girls did not extend to their dress; irene's costume was very stylish, and she governed her head and shoulders stylishly. "we are going to have the back room upstairs for a music-room and library," she said abruptly. "yes?" returned corey. "i should think that would be charming." "we expected to have book-cases, but the architect wants to build the shelves in." the fact seemed to be referred to corey for his comment. "it seems to me that would be the best way. they'll look like part of the room then. you can make them low, and hang your pictures above them." "yes, that's what he said." the girl looked out of the window in adding, "i presume with nice bindings it will look very well." "oh, nothing furnishes a room like books." "no. there will have to be a good many of them." "that depends upon the size of your room and the number of your shelves." "oh, of course! i presume," said irene, thoughtfully, "we shall have to have gibbon." "if you want to read him," said corey, with a laugh of sympathy for an imaginable joke. "we had a great deal about him at school. i believe we had one of his books. mine's lost, but pen will remember." the young man looked at her, and then said, seriously, "you'll want greene, of course, and motley, and parkman." "yes. what kind of writers are they?" "they're historians too." "oh yes; i remember now. that's what gibbon was. is it gibbon or gibbons?" the young man decided the point with apparently superfluous delicacy. "gibbon, i think." "there used to be so many of them," said irene gaily. "i used to get them mixed up with each other, and i couldn't tell them from the poets. should you want to have poetry?" "yes; i suppose some edition of the english poets." "we don't any of us like poetry. do you like it?" "i'm afraid i don't very much," corey owned. "but, of course, there was a time when tennyson was a great deal more to me than he is now." "we had something about him at school too. i think i remember the name. i think we ought to have all the american poets." "well, not all. five or six of the best: you want longfellow and bryant and whittier and holmes and emerson and lowell." the girl listened attentively, as if making mental note of the names. "and shakespeare," she added. "don't you like shakespeare's plays?" "oh yes, very much." "i used to be perfectly crazy about his plays. don't you think 'hamlet' is splendid? we had ever so much about shakespeare. weren't you perfectly astonished when you found out how many other plays of his there were? i always thought there was nothing but 'hamlet' and 'romeo and juliet' and 'macbeth' and 'richard iii.' and 'king lear,' and that one that robeson and crane have--oh yes! 'comedy of errors.'" "those are the ones they usually play," said corey. "i presume we shall have to have scott's works," said irene, returning to the question of books. "oh yes." "one of the girls used to think he was great. she was always talking about scott." irene made a pretty little amiably contemptuous mouth. "he isn't american, though?" she suggested. "no," said corey; "he's scotch, i believe." irene passed her glove over her forehead. "i always get him mixed up with cooper. well, papa has got to get them. if we have a library, we have got to have books in it. pen says it's perfectly ridiculous having one. but papa thinks whatever the architect says is right. he fought him hard enough at first. i don't see how any one can keep the poets and the historians and novelists separate in their mind. of course papa will buy them if we say so. but i don't see how i'm ever going to tell him which ones." the joyous light faded out of her face and left it pensive. "why, if you like," said the young man, taking out his pencil, "i'll put down the names we've been talking about." he clapped himself on his breast pockets to detect some lurking scrap of paper. "will you?" she cried delightedly. "here! take one of my cards," and she pulled out her card-case. "the carpenter writes on a three-cornered block and puts it into his pocket, and it's so uncomfortable he can't help remembering it. pen says she's going to adopt the three-cornered-block plan with papa." "thank you," said corey. "i believe i'll use your card." he crossed over to her, and after a moment sat down on the trestle beside her. she looked over the card as he wrote. "those are the ones we mentioned, but perhaps i'd better add a few others." "oh, thank you," she said, when he had written the card full on both sides. "he has got to get them in the nicest binding, too. i shall tell him about their helping to furnish the room, and then he can't object." she remained with the card, looking at it rather wistfully. perhaps corey divined her trouble of mind. "if he will take that to any bookseller, and tell him what bindings he wants, he will fill the order for him." "oh, thank you very much," she said, and put the card back into her card-case with great apparent relief. then she turned her lovely face toward the young man, beaming with the triumph a woman feels in any bit of successful manoeuvring, and began to talk with recovered gaiety of other things, as if, having got rid of a matter annoying out of all proportion to its importance, she was now going to indemnify herself. corey did not return to his own trestle. she found another shaving within reach of her parasol, and began poking that with it, and trying to follow it through its folds. corey watched her a while. "you seem to have a great passion for playing with shavings," he said. "is it a new one?" "new what?" "passion." "i don't know," she said, dropping her eyelids, and keeping on with her effort. she looked shyly aslant at him. "perhaps you don't approve of playing with shavings?" "oh yes, i do. i admire it very much. but it seems rather difficult. i've a great ambition to put my foot on the shaving's tail and hold it for you." "well," said the girl. "thank you," said the young man. he did so, and now she ran her parasol point easily through it. they looked at each other and laughed. "that was wonderful. would you like to try another?" he asked. "no, i thank you," she replied. "i think one will do." they both laughed again, for whatever reason or no reason, and then the young girl became sober. to a girl everything a young man does is of significance; and if he holds a shaving down with his foot while she pokes through it with her parasol, she must ask herself what he means by it. "they seem to be having rather a long interview with the carpenter to-day," said irene, looking vaguely toward the ceiling. she turned with polite ceremony to corey. "i'm afraid you're letting them keep you. you mustn't." "oh no. you're letting me stay," he returned. she bridled and bit her lip for pleasure. "i presume they will be down before a great while. don't you like the smell of the wood and the mortar? it's so fresh." "yes, it's delicious." he bent forward and picked up from the floor the shaving with which they had been playing, and put it to his nose. "it's like a flower. may i offer it to you?" he asked, as if it had been one. "oh, thank you, thank you!" she took it from him and put it into her belt, and then they both laughed once more. steps were heard descending. when the elder people reached the floor where they were sitting, corey rose and presently took his leave. "what makes you so solemn, 'rene?" asked mrs. lapham. "solemn?" echoed the girl. "i'm not a bit solemn. what can you mean?" corey dined at home that evening, and as he sat looking across the table at his father, he said, "i wonder what the average literature of non-cultivated people is." "ah," said the elder, "i suspect the average is pretty low even with cultivated people. you don't read a great many books yourself, tom." "no, i don't," the young man confessed. "i read more books when i was with stanton, last winter, than i had since i was a boy. but i read them because i must--there was nothing else to do. it wasn't because i was fond of reading. still i think i read with some sense of literature and the difference between authors. i don't suppose that people generally do that; i have met people who had read books without troubling themselves to find out even the author's name, much less trying to decide upon his quality. i suppose that's the way the vast majority of people read." "yes. if authors were not almost necessarily recluses, and ignorant of the ignorance about them, i don't see how they could endure it. of course they are fated to be overwhelmed by oblivion at last, poor fellows; but to see it weltering all round them while they are in the very act of achieving immortality must be tremendously discouraging. i don't suppose that we who have the habit of reading, and at least a nodding acquaintance with literature, can imagine the bestial darkness of the great mass of people--even people whose houses are rich and whose linen is purple and fine. but occasionally we get glimpses of it. i suppose you found the latest publications lying all about in lapham cottage when you were down there?" young corey laughed. "it wasn't exactly cumbered with them." "no?" "to tell the truth, i don't suppose they ever buy books. the young ladies get novels that they hear talked of out of the circulating library." "had they knowledge enough to be ashamed of their ignorance?" "yes, in certain ways--to a certain degree." "it's a curious thing, this thing we call civilisation," said the elder musingly. "we think it is an affair of epochs and of nations. it's really an affair of individuals. one brother will be civilised and the other a barbarian. i've occasionally met young girls who were so brutally, insolently, wilfully indifferent to the arts which make civilisation that they ought to have been clothed in the skins of wild beasts and gone about barefoot with clubs over their shoulders. yet they were of polite origin, and their parents were at least respectful of the things that these young animals despised." "i don't think that is exactly the case with the lapham family," said the son, smiling. "the father and mother rather apologised about not getting time to read, and the young ladies by no means scorned it." "they are quite advanced!" "they are going to have a library in their beacon street house." "oh, poor things! how are they ever going to get the books together?" "well, sir," said the son, colouring a little, "i have been indirectly applied to for help." "you, tom!" his father dropped back in his chair and laughed. "i recommended the standard authors," said the son. "oh, i never supposed your prudence would be at fault, tom!" "but seriously," said the young man, generously smiling in sympathy with his father's enjoyment, "they're not unintelligent people. they are very quick, and they are shrewd and sensible." "i have no doubt that some of the sioux are so. but that is not saying that they are civilised. all civilisation comes through literature now, especially in our country. a greek got his civilisation by talking and looking, and in some measure a parisian may still do it. but we, who live remote from history and monuments, we must read or we must barbarise. once we were softened, if not polished, by religion; but i suspect that the pulpit counts for much less now in civilising." "they're enormous devourers of newspapers, and theatre-goers; and they go a great deal to lectures. the colonel prefers them with the stereopticon." "they might get a something in that way," said the elder thoughtfully. "yes, i suppose one must take those things into account--especially the newspapers and the lectures. i doubt if the theatre is a factor in civilisation among us. i dare say it doesn't deprave a great deal, but from what i've seen of it i should say that it was intellectually degrading. perhaps they might get some sort of lift from it; i don't know. tom!" he added, after a moment's reflection. "i really think i ought to see this patron of yours. don't you think it would be rather decent in me to make his acquaintance?" "well, if you have the fancy, sir," said the young man. "but there's no sort of obligation. colonel lapham would be the last man in the world to want to give our relation any sort of social character. the meeting will come about in the natural course of things." "ah, i didn't intend to propose anything immediate," said the father. "one can't do anything in the summer, and i should prefer your mother's superintendence. still, i can't rid myself of the idea of a dinner. it appears to me that there ought to be a dinner." "oh, pray don't feel that there's any necessity." "well," said the elder, with easy resignation, "there's at least no hurry." "there is one thing i don't like," said lapham, in the course of one of those talks which came up between his wife and himself concerning corey, "or at least i don't understand it; and that's the way his father behaves. i don't want to force myself on any man; but it seems to me pretty queer the way he holds off. i should think he would take enough interest in his son to want to know something about his business. what is he afraid of?" demanded lapham angrily. "does he think i'm going to jump at a chance to get in with him, if he gives me one? he's mightily mistaken if he does. i don't want to know him." "silas," said his wife, making a wife's free version of her husband's words, and replying to their spirit rather than their letter, "i hope you never said a word to mr. corey to let him know the way you feel." "i never mentioned his father to him!" roared the colonel. "that's the way i feel about it!" "because it would spoil everything. i wouldn't have them think we cared the least thing in the world for their acquaintance. we shouldn't be a bit better off. we don't know the same people they do, and we don't care for the same kind of things." lapham was breathless with resentment of his wife's implication. "don't i tell you," he gasped, "that i don't want to know them? who began it? they're friends of yours if they're anybody's." "they're distant acquaintances of mine," returned mrs. lapham quietly; "and this young corey is a clerk of yours. and i want we should hold ourselves so that when they get ready to make the advances we can meet them half-way or not, just as we choose." "that's what grinds me," cried her husband. "why should we wait for them to make the advances? why shouldn't we make 'em? are they any better than we are? my note of hand would be worth ten times what bromfield corey's is on the street to-day. and i made my money. i haven't loafed my life away." "oh, it isn't what you've got, and it isn't what you've done exactly. it's what you are." "well, then, what's the difference?" "none that really amounts to anything, or that need give you any trouble, if you don't think of it. but he's been all his life in society, and he knows just what to say and what to do, and he can talk about the things that society people like to talk about, and you--can't." lapham gave a furious snort. "and does that make him any better?" "no. but it puts him where he can make the advances without demeaning himself, and it puts you where you can't. now, look here, silas lapham! you understand this thing as well as i do. you know that i appreciate you, and that i'd sooner die than have you humble yourself to a living soul. but i'm not going to have you coming to me, and pretending that you can meet bromfield corey as an equal on his own ground. you can't. he's got a better education than you, and if he hasn't got more brains than you, he's got different. and he and his wife, and their fathers and grandfathers before 'em, have always had a high position, and you can't help it. if you want to know them, you've got to let them make the advances. if you don't, all well and good." "i guess," said the chafed and vanquished colonel, after a moment for swallowing the pill, "that they'd have been in a pretty fix if you'd waited to let them make the advances last summer." "that was a different thing altogether. i didn't know who they were, or may be i should have waited. but all i say now is that if you've got young corey into business with you, in hopes of our getting into society with his father, you better ship him at once. for i ain't going to have it on that basis." "who wants to have it on that basis?" retorted her husband. "nobody, if you don't," said mrs. lapham tranquilly. irene had come home with the shaving in her belt, unnoticed by her father, and unquestioned by her mother. but her sister saw it at once, and asked her what she was doing with it. "oh, nothing," said irene, with a joyful smile of self-betrayal, taking the shaving carefully out, and laying it among the laces and ribbons in her drawer. "hadn't you better put it in water, 'rene? it'll be all wilted by morning," said pen. "you mean thing!" cried the happy girl. "it isn't a flower!" "oh, i thought it was a whole bouquet. who gave it to you?" "i shan't tell you," said irene saucily. "oh, well, never mind. did you know mr. corey had been down here this afternoon, walking on the beach with me?" "he wasn't--he wasn't at all! he was at the house with me. there! i've caught you fairly." "is that so?" drawled penelope. "then i never could guess who gave you that precious shaving." "no, you couldn't!" said irene, flushing beautifully. "and you may guess, and you may guess, and you may guess!" with her lovely eyes she coaxed her sister to keep on teasing her, and penelope continued the comedy with the patience that women have for such things. "well, i'm not going to try, if it's no use. but i didn't know it had got to be the fashion to give shavings instead of flowers. but there's some sense in it. they can be used for kindlings when they get old, and you can't do anything with old flowers. perhaps he'll get to sending 'em by the barrel." irene laughed for pleasure in this tormenting. "o pen, i want to tell you how it all happened." "oh, he did give it to you, then? well, i guess i don't care to hear." "you shall, and you've got to!" irene ran and caught her sister, who feigned to be going out of the room, and pushed her into a chair. "there, now!" she pulled up another chair, and hemmed her in with it. "he came over, and sat down on the trestle alongside of me----" "what? as close as you are to me now?" "you wretch! i will give it to you! no, at a proper distance. and here was this shaving on the floor, that i'd been poking with my parasol----" "to hide your embarrassment." "pshaw! i wasn't a bit embarrassed. i was just as much at my ease! and then he asked me to let him hold the shaving down with his foot, while i went on with my poking. and i said yes he might----" "what a bold girl! you said he might hold a shaving down for you?" "and then--and then----" continued irene, lifting her eyes absently, and losing herself in the beatific recollection, "and then----oh yes! then i asked him if he didn't like the smell of pine shavings. and then he picked it up, and said it smelt like a flower. and then he asked if he might offer it to me--just for a joke, you know. and i took it, and stuck it in my belt. and we had such a laugh! we got into a regular gale. and o pen, what do you suppose he meant by it?" she suddenly caught herself to her sister's breast, and hid her burning face on her shoulder. "well, there used to be a book about the language of flowers. but i never knew much about the language of shavings, and i can't say exactly----" "oh, don't--don't, pen!" and here irene gave over laughing, and began to sob in her sister's arms. "why, 'rene!" cried the elder girl. "you know he didn't mean anything. he doesn't care a bit about me. he hates me! he despises me! oh, what shall i do?" a trouble passed over the face of the sister as she silently comforted the child in her arms; then the drolling light came back into her eyes. "well, 'rene, you haven't got to do anything. that's one advantage girls have got--if it is an advantage. i'm not always sure." irene's tears turned to laughing again. when she lifted her head it was to look into the mirror confronting them, where her beauty showed all the more brilliant for the shower that had passed over it. she seemed to gather courage from the sight. "it must be awful to have to do," she said, smiling into her own face. "i don't see how they ever can." "some of 'em can't--especially when there's such a tearing beauty around." "oh, pshaw, pen! you know that isn't so. you've got a real pretty mouth, pen," she added thoughtfully, surveying the feature in the glass, and then pouting her own lips for the sake of that effect on them. "it's a useful mouth," penelope admitted; "i don't believe i could get along without it now, i've had it so long." "it's got such a funny expression--just the mate of the look in your eyes; as if you were just going to say something ridiculous. he said, the very first time he saw you, that he knew you were humorous." "is it possible? it must be so, if the grand mogul said it. why didn't you tell me so before, and not let me keep on going round just like a common person?" irene laughed as if she liked to have her sister take his praises in that way rather than another. "i've got such a stiff, prim kind of mouth," she said, drawing it down, and then looking anxiously at it. "i hope you didn't put on that expression when he offered you the shaving. if you did, i don't believe he'll ever give you another splinter." the severe mouth broke into a lovely laugh, and then pressed itself in a kiss against penelope's cheek. "there! be done, you silly thing! i'm not going to have you accepting me before i've offered myself, anyway." she freed herself from her sister's embrace, and ran from her round the room. irene pursued her, in the need of hiding her face against her shoulder again. "o pen! o pen!" she cried. the next day, at the first moment of finding herself alone with her eldest daughter, mrs. lapham asked, as if knowing that penelope must have already made it subject of inquiry: "what was irene doing with that shaving in her belt yesterday?" "oh, just some nonsense of hers with mr. corey. he gave it to her at the new house." penelope did not choose to look up and meet her mother's grave glance. "what do you think he meant by it?" penelope repeated irene's account of the affair, and her mother listened without seeming to derive much encouragement from it. "he doesn't seem like one to flirt with her," she said at last. then, after a thoughtful pause: "irene is as good a girl as ever breathed, and she's a perfect beauty. but i should hate the day when a daughter of mine was married for her beauty." "you're safe as far as i'm concerned, mother." mrs. lapham smiled ruefully. "she isn't really equal to him, pen. i misdoubted that from the first, and it's been borne in upon me more and more ever since. she hasn't mind enough." "i didn't know that a man fell in love with a girl's intellect," said penelope quietly. "oh no. he hasn't fallen in love with irene at all. if he had, it wouldn't matter about the intellect." penelope let the self-contradiction pass. "perhaps he has, after all." "no," said mrs. lapham. "she pleases him when he sees her. but he doesn't try to see her." "he has no chance. you won't let father bring him here." "he would find excuses to come without being brought, if he wished to come," said the mother. "but she isn't in his mind enough to make him. he goes away and doesn't think anything more about her. she's a child. she's a good child, and i shall always say it; but she's nothing but a child. no, she's got to forget him." "perhaps that won't be so easy." "no, i presume not. and now your father has got the notion in his head, and he will move heaven and earth to bring it to pass. i can see that he's always thinking about it." "the colonel has a will of his own," observed the girl, rocking to and fro where she sat looking at her mother. "i wish we had never met them!" cried mrs. lapham. "i wish we had never thought of building! i wish he had kept away from your father's business!" "well, it's too late now, mother," said the girl. "perhaps it isn't so bad as you think." "well, we must stand it, anyway," said mrs. lapham, with the grim antique yankee submission. "oh yes, we've got to stand it," said penelope, with the quaint modern american fatalism. x. it was late june, almost july, when corey took up his life in boston again, where the summer slips away so easily. if you go out of town early, it seems a very long summer when you come back in october; but if you stay, it passes swiftly, and, seen foreshortened in its flight, seems scarcely a month's length. it has its days of heat, when it is very hot, but for the most part it is cool, with baths of the east wind that seem to saturate the soul with delicious freshness. then there are stretches of grey westerly weather, when the air is full of the sentiment of early autumn, and the frying, of the grasshopper in the blossomed weed of the vacant lots on the back bay is intershot with the carol of crickets; and the yellowing leaf on the long slope of mt. vernon street smites the sauntering observer with tender melancholy. the caterpillar, gorged with the spoil of the lindens on chestnut, and weaving his own shroud about him in his lodgment on the brick-work, records the passing of summer by mid-july; and if after that comes august, its breath is thick and short, and september is upon the sojourner before he has fairly had time to philosophise the character of the town out of season. but it must have appeared that its most characteristic feature was the absence of everybody he knew. this was one of the things that commended boston to bromfield corey during the summer; and if his son had any qualms about the life he had entered upon with such vigour, it must have been a relief to him that there was scarcely a soul left to wonder or pity. by the time people got back to town the fact of his connection with the mineral paint man would be an old story, heard afar off with different degrees of surprise, and considered with different degrees of indifference. a man has not reached the age of twenty-six in any community where he was born and reared without having had his capacity pretty well ascertained; and in boston the analysis is conducted with an unsparing thoroughness which may fitly impress the un-bostonian mind, darkened by the popular superstition that the bostonians blindly admire one another. a man's qualities are sifted as closely in boston as they doubtless were in florence or athens; and, if final mercy was shown in those cities because a man was, with all his limitations, an athenian or florentine, some abatement might as justly be made in boston for like reason. corey's powers had been gauged in college, and he had not given his world reason to think very differently of him since he came out of college. he was rated as an energetic fellow, a little indefinite in aim, with the smallest amount of inspiration that can save a man from being commonplace. if he was not commonplace, it was through nothing remarkable in his mind, which was simply clear and practical, but through some combination of qualities of the heart that made men trust him, and women call him sweet--a word of theirs which conveys otherwise indefinable excellences. some of the more nervous and excitable said that tom corey was as sweet as he could live; but this perhaps meant no more than the word alone. no man ever had a son less like him than bromfield corey. if tom corey had ever said a witty thing, no one could remember it; and yet the father had never said a witty thing to a more sympathetic listener than his own son. the clear mind which produced nothing but practical results reflected everything with charming lucidity; and it must have been this which endeared tom corey to every one who spoke ten words with him. in a city where people have good reason for liking to shine, a man who did not care to shine must be little short of universally acceptable without any other effort for popularity; and those who admired and enjoyed bromfield corey loved his son. yet, when it came to accounting for tom corey, as it often did in a community where every one's generation is known to the remotest degrees of cousinship, they could not trace his sweetness to his mother, for neither anna bellingham nor any of her family, though they were so many blocks of wenham ice for purity and rectangularity, had ever had any such savour; and, in fact, it was to his father, whose habit of talk wronged it in himself, that they had to turn for this quality of the son's. they traced to the mother the traits of practicality and common-sense in which he bordered upon the commonplace, and which, when they had dwelt upon them, made him seem hardly worth the close inquiry they had given him. while the summer wore away he came and went methodically about his business, as if it had been the business of his life, sharing his father's bachelor liberty and solitude, and expecting with equal patience the return of his mother and sisters in the autumn. once or twice he found time to run down to mt. desert and see them; and then he heard how the philadelphia and new york people were getting in everywhere, and was given reason to regret the house at nahant which he had urged to be sold. he came back and applied himself to his desk with a devotion that was exemplary rather than necessary; for lapham made no difficulty about the brief absences which he asked, and set no term to the apprenticeship that corey was serving in the office before setting off upon that mission to south america in the early winter, for which no date had yet been fixed. the summer was a dull season for the paint as well as for everything else. till things should brisk up, as lapham said, in the fall, he was letting the new house take a great deal of his time. aesthetic ideas had never been intelligibly presented to him before, and he found a delight in apprehending them that was very grateful to his imaginative architect. at the beginning, the architect had foreboded a series of mortifying defeats and disastrous victories in his encounters with his client; but he had never had a client who could be more reasonably led on from one outlay to another. it appeared that lapham required but to understand or feel the beautiful effect intended, and he was ready to pay for it. his bull-headed pride was concerned in a thing which the architect made him see, and then he believed that he had seen it himself, perhaps conceived it. in some measure the architect seemed to share his delusion, and freely said that lapham was very suggestive. together they blocked out windows here, and bricked them up there; they changed doors and passages; pulled down cornices and replaced them with others of different design; experimented with costly devices of decoration, and went to extravagant lengths in novelties of finish. mrs. lapham, beginning with a woman's adventurousness in the unknown region, took fright at the reckless outlay at last, and refused to let her husband pass a certain limit. he tried to make her believe that a far-seeing economy dictated the expense; and that if he put the money into the house, he could get it out any time by selling it. she would not be persuaded. "i don't want you should sell it. and you've put more money into it now than you'll ever get out again, unless you can find as big a goose to buy it, and that isn't likely. no, sir! you just stop at a hundred thousand, and don't you let him get you a cent beyond. why, you're perfectly bewitched with that fellow! you've lost your head, silas lapham, and if you don't look out you'll lose your money too." the colonel laughed; he liked her to talk that way, and promised he would hold up a while. "but there's no call to feel anxious, pert. it's only a question what to do with the money. i can reinvest it; but i never had so much of it to spend before." "spend it, then," said his wife; "don't throw it away! and how came you to have so much more money than you know what to do with, silas lapham?" she added. "oh, i've made a very good thing in stocks lately." "in stocks? when did you take up gambling for a living?" "gambling? stuff! what gambling? who said it was gambling?" "you have; many a time." "oh yes, buying and selling on a margin. but this was a bona fide transaction. i bought at forty-three for an investment, and i sold at a hundred and seven; and the money passed both times." "well, you better let stocks alone," said his wife, with the conservatism of her sex. "next time you'll buy at a hundred and seven and sell at forty three. then where'll you be?" "left," admitted the colonel. "you better stick to paint a while yet." the colonel enjoyed this too, and laughed again with the ease of a man who knows what he is about. a few days after that he came down to nantasket with the radiant air which he wore when he had done a good thing in business and wanted his wife's sympathy. he did not say anything of what had happened till he was alone with her in their own room; but he was very gay the whole evening, and made several jokes which penelope said nothing but very great prosperity could excuse: they all understood these moods of his. "well, what is it, silas?" asked his wife when the time came. "any more big-bugs wanting to go into the mineral paint business with you?" "something better than that." "i could think of a good many better things," said his wife, with a sigh of latent bitterness. "what's this one?" "i've had a visitor." "who?" "can't you guess?" "i don't want to try. who was it?" "rogers." mrs. lapham sat down with her hands in her lap, and stared at the smile on her husband's face, where he sat facing her. "i guess you wouldn't want to joke on that subject, si," she said, a little hoarsely, "and you wouldn't grin about it unless you had some good news. i don't know what the miracle is, but if you could tell quick----" she stopped like one who can say no more. "i will, persis," said her husband, and with that awed tone in which he rarely spoke of anything but the virtues of his paint. "he came to borrow money of me, and i lent him it. that's the short of it. the long----" "go on," said his wife, with gentle patience. "well, pert, i was never so much astonished in my life as i was to see that man come into my office. you might have knocked me down with--i don't know what." "i don't wonder. go on!" "and he was as much embarrassed as i was. there we stood, gaping at each other, and i hadn't hardly sense enough to ask him to take a chair. i don't know just how we got at it. and i don't remember just how it was that he said he came to come to me. but he had got hold of a patent right that he wanted to go into on a large scale, and there he was wanting me to supply him the funds." "go on!" said mrs. lapham, with her voice further in her throat. "i never felt the way you did about rogers, but i know how you always did feel, and i guess i surprised him with my answer. he had brought along a lot of stock as security----" "you didn't take it, silas!" his wife flashed out. "yes, i did, though," said lapham. "you wait. we settled our business, and then we went into the old thing, from the very start. and we talked it all over. and when we got through we shook hands. well, i don't know when it's done me so much good to shake hands with anybody." "and you told him--you owned up to him that you were in the wrong, silas?" "no, i didn't," returned the colonel promptly; "for i wasn't. and before we got through, i guess he saw it the same as i did." "oh, no matter! so you had the chance to show how you felt." "but i never felt that way," persisted the colonel. "i've lent him the money, and i've kept his stocks. and he got what he wanted out of me." "give him back his stocks!" "no, i shan't. rogers came to borrow. he didn't come to beg. you needn't be troubled about his stocks. they're going to come up in time; but just now they're so low down that no bank would take them as security, and i've got to hold them till they do rise. i hope you're satisfied now, persis," said her husband; and he looked at her with the willingness to receive the reward of a good action which we all feel when we have performed one. "i lent him the money you kept me from spending on the house." "truly, si? well, i'm satisfied," said mrs. lapham, with a deep tremulous breath. "the lord has been good to you, silas," she continued solemnly. "you may laugh if you choose, and i don't know as i believe in his interfering a great deal; but i believe he's interfered this time; and i tell you, silas, it ain't always he gives people a chance to make it up to others in this life. i've been afraid you'd die, silas, before you got the chance; but he's let you live to make it up to rogers." "i'm glad to be let live," said lapham stubbornly, "but i hadn't anything to make up to milton k. rogers. and if god has let me live for that----" "oh, say what you please, si! say what you please, now you've done it! i shan't stop you. you've taken the one spot--the one speck--off you that was ever there, and i'm satisfied." "there wa'n't ever any speck there," lapham held out, lapsing more and more into his vernacular; "and what i done i done for you, persis." "and i thank you for your own soul's sake, silas." "i guess my soul's all right," said lapham. "and i want you should promise me one thing more." "thought you said you were satisfied?" "i am. but i want you should promise me this: that you won't let anything tempt you--anything!--to ever trouble rogers for that money you lent him. no matter what happens--no matter if you lose it all. do you promise?" "why, i don't ever expect to press him for it. that's what i said to myself when i lent it. and of course i'm glad to have that old trouble healed up. i don't think i ever did rogers any wrong, and i never did think so; but if i did do it--if i did--i'm willing to call it square, if i never see a cent of my money back again." "well, that's all," said his wife. they did not celebrate his reconciliation with his old enemy--for such they had always felt him to be since he ceased to be an ally--by any show of joy or affection. it was not in their tradition, as stoical for the woman as for the man, that they should kiss or embrace each other at such a moment. she was content to have told him that he had done his duty, and he was content with her saying that. but before she slept she found words to add that she always feared the selfish part he had acted toward rogers had weakened him, and left him less able to overcome any temptation that might beset him; and that was one reason why she could never be easy about it. now she should never fear for him again. this time he did not explicitly deny her forgiving impeachment. "well, it's all past and gone now, anyway; and i don't want you should think anything more about it." he was man enough to take advantage of the high favour in which he stood when he went up to town, and to abuse it by bringing corey down to supper. his wife could not help condoning the sin of disobedience in him at such a time. penelope said that between the admiration she felt for the colonel's boldness and her mother's forbearance, she was hardly in a state to entertain company that evening; but she did what she could. irene liked being talked to better than talking, and when her sister was by she was always, tacitly or explicitly, referring to her for confirmation of what she said. she was content to sit and look pretty as she looked at the young man and listened to her sister's drolling. she laughed and kept glancing at corey to make sure that he was understanding her. when they went out on the veranda to see the moon on the water, penelope led the way and irene followed. they did not look at the moonlight long. the young man perched on the rail of the veranda, and irene took one of the red-painted rocking-chairs where she could conveniently look at him and at her sister, who sat leaning forward lazily and running on, as the phrase is. that low, crooning note of hers was delicious; her face, glimpsed now and then in the moonlight as she turned it or lifted it a little, had a fascination which kept his eye. her talk was very unliterary, and its effect seemed hardly conscious. she was far from epigram in her funning. she told of this trifle and that; she sketched the characters and looks of people who had interested her, and nothing seemed to have escaped her notice; she mimicked a little, but not much; she suggested, and then the affair represented itself as if without her agency. she did not laugh; when corey stopped she made a soft cluck in her throat, as if she liked his being amused, and went on again. the colonel, left alone with his wife for the first time since he had come from town, made haste to take the word. "well, pert, i've arranged the whole thing with rogers, and i hope you'll be satisfied to know that he owes me twenty thousand dollars, and that i've got security from him to the amount of a fourth of that, if i was to force his stocks to a sale." "how came he to come down with you?" asked mrs. lapham. "who? rogers?" "mr. corey." "corey? oh!" said lapham, affecting not to have thought she could mean corey. "he proposed it." "likely!" jeered his wife, but with perfect amiability. "it's so," protested the colonel. "we got talking about a matter just before i left, and he walked down to the boat with me; and then he said if i didn't mind he guessed he'd come along down and go back on the return boat. of course i couldn't let him do that." "it's well for you you couldn't." "and i couldn't do less than bring him here to tea." "oh, certainly not." "but he ain't going to stay the night--unless," faltered lapham, "you want him to." "oh, of course, i want him to! i guess he'll stay, probably." "well, you know how crowded that last boat always is, and he can't get any other now." mrs. lapham laughed at the simple wile. "i hope you'll be just as well satisfied, si, if it turns out he doesn't want irene after all." "pshaw, persis! what are you always bringing that up for?" pleaded the colonel. then he fell silent, and presently his rude, strong face was clouded with an unconscious frown. "there!" cried his wife, startling him from his abstraction. "i see how you'd feel; and i hope that you'll remember who you've got to blame." "i'll risk it," said lapham, with the confidence of a man used to success. from the veranda the sound of penelope's lazy tone came through the closed windows, with joyous laughter from irene and peals from corey. "listen to that!" said her father within, swelling up with inexpressible satisfaction. "that girl can talk for twenty, right straight along. she's better than a circus any day. i wonder what she's up to now." "oh, she's probably getting off some of those yarns of hers, or telling about some people. she can't step out of the house without coming back with more things to talk about than most folks would bring back from japan. there ain't a ridiculous person she's ever seen but what she's got something from them to make you laugh at; and i don't believe we've ever had anybody in the house since the girl could talk that she hain't got some saying from, or some trick that'll paint 'em out so't you can see 'em and hear 'em. sometimes i want to stop her; but when she gets into one of her gales there ain't any standing up against her. i guess it's lucky for irene that she's got pen there to help entertain her company. i can't ever feel down where pen is." "that's so," said the colonel. "and i guess she's got about as much culture as any of them. don't you?" "she reads a great deal," admitted her mother. "she seems to be at it the whole while. i don't want she should injure her health, and sometimes i feel like snatchin' the books away from her. i don't know as it's good for a girl to read so much, anyway, especially novels. i don't want she should get notions." "oh, i guess pen'll know how to take care of herself," said lapham. "she's got sense enough. but she ain't so practical as irene. she's more up in the clouds--more of what you may call a dreamer. irene's wide-awake every minute; and i declare, any one to see these two together when there's anything to be done, or any lead to be taken, would say irene was the oldest, nine times out of ten. it's only when they get to talking that you can see pen's got twice as much brains." "well," said lapham, tacitly granting this point, and leaning back in his chair in supreme content. "did you ever see much nicer girls anywhere?" his wife laughed at his pride. "i presume they're as much swans as anybody's geese." "no; but honestly, now!" "oh, they'll do; but don't you be silly, if you can help it, si." the young people came in, and corey said it was time for his boat. mrs. lapham pressed him to stay, but he persisted, and he would not let the colonel send him to the boat; he said he would rather walk. outside, he pushed along toward the boat, which presently he could see lying at her landing in the bay, across the sandy tract to the left of the hotels. from time to time he almost stopped in his rapid walk, as a man does whose mind is in a pleasant tumult; and then he went forward at a swifter pace. "she's charming!" he said, and he thought he had spoken aloud. he found himself floundering about in the deep sand, wide of the path; he got back to it, and reached the boat just before she started. the clerk came to take his fare, and corey looked radiantly up at him in his lantern-light, with a smile that he must have been wearing a long time; his cheek was stiff with it. once some people who stood near him edged suddenly and fearfully away, and then he suspected himself of having laughed outright. xi. corey put off his set smile with the help of a frown, of which he first became aware after reaching home, when his father asked-- "anything gone wrong with your department of the fine arts to-day, tom?" "oh no--no, sir," said the son, instantly relieving his brows from the strain upon them, and beaming again. "but i was thinking whether you were not perhaps right in your impression that it might be well for you to make colonel lapham's acquaintance before a great while." "has he been suggesting it in any way?" asked bromfield corey, laying aside his book and taking his lean knee between his clasped hands. "oh, not at all!" the young man hastened to reply. "i was merely thinking whether it might not begin to seem intentional, your not doing it." "well, tom, you know i have been leaving it altogether to you----" "oh, i understand, of course, and i didn't mean to urge anything of the kind----" "you are so very much more of a bostonian than i am, you know, that i've been waiting your motion in entire confidence that you would know just what to do, and when to do it. if i had been left quite to my own lawless impulses, i think i should have called upon your padrone at once. it seems to me that my father would have found some way of showing that he expected as much as that from people placed in the relation to him that we hold to colonel lapham." "do you think so?" asked the young man. "yes. but you know i don't pretend to be an authority in such matters. as far as they go, i am always in the hands of your mother and you children." "i'm very sorry, sir. i had no idea i was over-ruling your judgment. i only wanted to spare you a formality that didn't seem quite a necessity yet. i'm very sorry," he said again, and this time with more comprehensive regret. "i shouldn't like to have seemed remiss with a man who has been so considerate of me. they are all very good-natured." "i dare say," said bromfield corey, with the satisfaction which no elder can help feeling in disabling the judgment of a younger man, "that it won't be too late if i go down to your office with you to-morrow." "no, no. i didn't imagine your doing it at once, sir." "ah, but nothing can prevent me from doing a thing when once i take the bit in my teeth," said the father, with the pleasure which men of weak will sometimes take in recognising their weakness. "how does their new house get on?" "i believe they expect to be in it before new year." "will they be a great addition to society?" asked bromfield corey, with unimpeachable seriousness. "i don't quite know what you mean," returned the son, a little uneasily. "ah, i see that you do, tom." "no one can help feeling that they are all people of good sense and--right ideas." "oh, that won't do. if society took in all the people of right ideas and good sense, it would expand beyond the calling capacity of its most active members. even your mother's social conscientiousness could not compass it. society is a very different sort of thing from good sense and right ideas. it is based upon them, of course, but the airy, graceful, winning superstructure which we all know demands different qualities. have your friends got these qualities,--which may be felt, but not defined?" the son laughed. "to tell you the truth, sir, i don't think they have the most elemental ideas of society, as we understand it. i don't believe mrs. lapham ever gave a dinner." "and with all that money!" sighed the father. "i don't believe they have the habit of wine at table. i suspect that when they don't drink tea and coffee with their dinner, they drink ice-water." "horrible!" said bromfield corey. "it appears to me that this defines them." "oh yes. there are people who give dinners, and who are not cognoscible. but people who have never yet given a dinner, how is society to assimilate them?" "it digests a great many people," suggested the young man. "yes; but they have always brought some sort of sauce piquante with them. now, as i understand you, these friends of yours have no such sauce." "oh, i don't know about that!" cried the son. "oh, rude, native flavours, i dare say. but that isn't what i mean. well, then, they must spend. there is no other way for them to win their way to general regard. we must have the colonel elected to the ten o'clock club, and he must put himself down in the list of those willing to entertain. any one can manage a large supper. yes, i see a gleam of hope for him in that direction." in the morning bromfield corey asked his son whether he should find lapham at his place as early as eleven. "i think you might find him even earlier. i've never been there before him. i doubt if the porter is there much sooner." "well, suppose i go with you, then?" "why, if you like, sir," said the son, with some deprecation. "oh, the question is, will he like?" "i think he will, sir;" and the father could see that his son was very much pleased. lapham was rending an impatient course through the morning's news when they appeared at the door of his inner room. he looked up from the newspaper spread on the desk before him, and then he stood up, making an indifferent feint of not knowing that he knew bromfield corey by sight. "good morning, colonel lapham," said the son, and lapham waited for him to say further, "i wish to introduce my father." then he answered, "good morning," and added rather sternly for the elder corey, "how do you do, sir? will you take a chair?" and he pushed him one. they shook hands and sat down, and lapham said to his subordinate, "have a seat;" but young corey remained standing, watching them in their observance of each other with an amusement which was a little uneasy. lapham made his visitor speak first by waiting for him to do so. "i'm glad to make your acquaintance, colonel lapham, and i ought to have come sooner to do so. my father in your place would have expected it of a man in my place at once, i believe. but i can't feel myself altogether a stranger as it is. i hope mrs. lapham is well? and your daughter?" "thank you," said lapham, "they're quite well." "they were very kind to my wife----" "oh, that was nothing!" cried lapham. "there's nothing mrs. lapham likes better than a chance of that sort. mrs. corey and the young ladies well?" "very well, when i heard from them. they're out of town." "yes, so i understood," said lapham, with a nod toward the son. "i believe mr. corey, here, told mrs. lapham." he leaned back in his chair, stiffly resolute to show that he was not incommoded by the exchange of these civilities. "yes," said bromfield corey. "tom has had the pleasure which i hope for of seeing you all. i hope you're able to make him useful to you here?" corey looked round lapham's room vaguely, and then out at the clerks in their railed enclosure, where his eye finally rested on an extremely pretty girl, who was operating a type-writer. "well, sir," replied lapham, softening for the first time with this approach to business, "i guess it will be our own fault if we don't. by the way, corey," he added, to the younger man, as he gathered up some letters from his desk, "here's something in your line. spanish or french, i guess." "i'll run them over," said corey, taking them to his desk. his father made an offer to rise. "don't go," said lapham, gesturing him down again. "i just wanted to get him away a minute. i don't care to say it to his face,--i don't like the principle,--but since you ask me about it, i'd just as lief say that i've never had any young man take hold here equal to your son. i don't know as you care." "you make me very happy," said bromfield corey. "very happy indeed. i've always had the idea that there was something in my son, if he could only find the way to work it out. and he seems to have gone into your business for the love of it." "he went to work in the right way, sir! he told me about it. he looked into it. and that paint is a thing that will bear looking into." "oh yes. you might think he had invented it, if you heard him celebrating it." "is that so?" demanded lapham, pleased through and through. "well, there ain't any other way. you've got to believe in a thing before you can put any heart in it. why, i had a partner in this thing once, along back just after the war, and he used to be always wanting to tinker with something else. 'why,' says i, 'you've got the best thing in god's universe now. why ain't you satisfied?' i had to get rid of him at last. i stuck to my paint, and that fellow's drifted round pretty much all over the whole country, whittling his capital down all the while, till here the other day i had to lend him some money to start him new. no, sir, you've got to believe in a thing. and i believe in your son. and i don't mind telling you that, so far as he's gone, he's a success." "that's very kind of you." "no kindness about it. as i was saying the other day to a friend of mine, i've had many a fellow right out of the street that had to work hard all his life, and didn't begin to take hold like this son of yours." lapham expanded with profound self-satisfaction. as he probably conceived it, he had succeeded in praising, in a perfectly casual way, the supreme excellence of his paint, and his own sagacity and benevolence; and here he was sitting face to face with bromfield corey, praising his son to him, and receiving his grateful acknowledgments as if he were the father of some office-boy whom lapham had given a place half but of charity. "yes, sir, when your son proposed to take hold here, i didn't have much faith in his ideas, that's the truth. but i had faith in him, and i saw that he meant business from the start. i could see it was born in him. any one could." "i'm afraid he didn't inherit it directly from me," said bromfield corey; "but it's in the blood, on both sides." "well, sir, we can't help those things," said lapham compassionately. "some of us have got it, and some of us haven't. the idea is to make the most of what we have got." "oh yes; that is the idea. by all means." "and you can't ever tell what's in you till you try. why, when i started this thing, i didn't more than half understand my own strength. i wouldn't have said, looking back, that i could have stood the wear and tear of what i've been through. but i developed as i went along. it's just like exercising your muscles in a gymnasium. you can lift twice or three times as much after you've been in training a month as you could before. and i can see that it's going to be just so with your son. his going through college won't hurt him,--he'll soon slough all that off,--and his bringing up won't; don't be anxious about it. i noticed in the army that some of the fellows that had the most go-ahead were fellows that hadn't ever had much more to do than girls before the war broke out. your son will get along." "thank you," said bromfield corey, and smiled--whether because his spirit was safe in the humility he sometimes boasted, or because it was triply armed in pride against anything the colonel's kindness could do. "he'll get along. he's a good business man, and he's a fine fellow. must you go?" asked lapham, as bromfield corey now rose more resolutely. "well, glad to see you. it was natural you should want to come and see what he was about, and i'm glad you did. i should have felt just so about it. here is some of our stuff," he said, pointing out the various packages in his office, including the persis brand. "ah, that's very nice, very nice indeed," said his visitor. "that colour through the jar--very rich--delicious. is persis brand a name?" lapham blushed. "well, persis is. i don't know as you saw an interview that fellow published in the events a while back?" "what is the events?" "well, it's that new paper witherby's started." "no," said bromfield corey, "i haven't seen it. i read the daily," he explained; by which he meant the daily advertiser, the only daily there is in the old-fashioned bostonian sense. "he put a lot of stuff in my mouth that i never said," resumed lapham; "but that's neither here nor there, so long as you haven't seen it. here's the department your son's in," and he showed him the foreign labels. then he took him out into the warehouse to see the large packages. at the head of the stairs, where his guest stopped to nod to his son and say "good-bye, tom," lapham insisted upon going down to the lower door with him "well, call again," he said in hospitable dismissal. "i shall always be glad to see you. there ain't a great deal doing at this season." bromfield corey thanked him, and let his hand remain perforce in lapham's lingering grasp. "if you ever like to ride after a good horse----" the colonel began. "oh, no, no, no; thank you! the better the horse, the more i should be scared. tom has told me of your driving!" "ha, ha, ha!" laughed the colonel. "well! every one to his taste. well, good morning, sir!" and he suffered him to go. "who is the old man blowing to this morning?" asked walker, the book-keeper, making an errand to corey's desk. "my father." "oh! that your father? i thought he must be one of your italian correspondents that you'd been showing round, or spanish." in fact, as bromfield corey found his way at his leisurely pace up through the streets on which the prosperity of his native city was founded, hardly any figure could have looked more alien to its life. he glanced up and down the facades and through the crooked vistas like a stranger, and the swarthy fruiterer of whom he bought an apple, apparently for the pleasure of holding it in his hand, was not surprised that the purchase should be transacted in his own tongue. lapham walked back through the outer office to his own room without looking at corey, and during the day he spoke to him only of business matters. that must have been his way of letting corey see that he was not overcome by the honour of his father's visit. but he presented himself at nantasket with the event so perceptibly on his mind that his wife asked: "well, silas, has rogers been borrowing any more money of you? i don't want you should let that thing go too far. you've done enough." "you needn't be afraid. i've seen the last of rogers for one while." he hesitated, to give the fact an effect of no importance. "corey's father called this morning." "did he?" said mrs. lapham, willing to humour his feint of indifference. "did he want to borrow some money too?" "not as i understood." lapham was smoking at great ease, and his wife had some crocheting on the other side of the lamp from him. the girls were on the piazza looking at the moon on the water again. "there's no man in it to-night," penelope said, and irene laughed forlornly. "what did he want, then?" asked mrs. lapham. "oh, i don't know. seemed to be just a friendly call. said he ought to have come before." mrs. lapham was silent a while. then she said: "well, i hope you're satisfied now." lapham rejected the sympathy too openly offered. "i don't know about being satisfied. i wa'n't in any hurry to see him." his wife permitted him this pretence also. "what sort of a person is he, anyway?" "well, not much like his son. there's no sort of business about him. i don't know just how you'd describe him. he's tall; and he's got white hair and a moustache; and his fingers are very long and limber. i couldn't help noticing them as he sat there with his hands on the top of his cane. didn't seem to be dressed very much, and acted just like anybody. didn't talk much. guess i did most of the talking. said he was glad i seemed to be getting along so well with his son. he asked after you and irene; and he said he couldn't feel just like a stranger. said you had been very kind to his wife. of course i turned it off. yes," said lapham thoughtfully, with his hands resting on his knees, and his cigar between the fingers of his left hand, "i guess he meant to do the right thing, every way. don't know as i ever saw a much pleasanter man. dunno but what he's about the pleasantest man i ever did see." he was not letting his wife see in his averted face the struggle that revealed itself there--the struggle of stalwart achievement not to feel flattered at the notice of sterile elegance, not to be sneakingly glad of its amiability, but to stand up and look at it with eyes on the same level. god, who made us so much like himself, but out of the dust, alone knows when that struggle will end. the time had been when lapham could not have imagined any worldly splendour which his dollars could not buy if he chose to spend them for it; but his wife's half discoveries, taking form again in his ignorance of the world, filled him with helpless misgiving. a cloudy vision of something unpurchasable, where he had supposed there was nothing, had cowed him in spite of the burly resistance of his pride. "i don't see why he shouldn't be pleasant," said mrs. lapham. "he's never done anything else." lapham looked up consciously, with an uneasy laugh. "pshaw, persis! you never forget anything?" "oh, i've got more than that to remember. i suppose you asked him to ride after the mare?" "well," said lapham, reddening guiltily, "he said he was afraid of a good horse." "then, of course, you hadn't asked him." mrs. lapham crocheted in silence, and her husband leaned back in his chair and smoked. at last he said, "i'm going to push that house forward. they're loafing on it. there's no reason why we shouldn't be in it by thanksgiving. i don't believe in moving in the dead of winter." "we can wait till spring. we're very comfortable in the old place," answered his wife. then she broke out on him: "what are you in such a hurry to get into that house for? do you want to invite the coreys to a house-warming?" lapham looked at her without speaking. "don't you suppose i can see through you i declare, silas lapham, if i didn't know different, i should say you were about the biggest fool! don't you know anything? don't you know that it wouldn't do to ask those people to our house before they've asked us to theirs? they'd laugh in our faces!" "i don't believe they'd laugh in our faces. what's the difference between our asking them and their asking us?" demanded the colonel sulkily. "oh, well! if you don t see!" "well, i don't see. but i don't want to ask them to the house. i suppose, if i want to, i can invite him down to a fish dinner at taft's." mrs. lapham fell back in her chair, and let her work drop in her lap with that "tckk!" in which her sex knows how to express utter contempt and despair. "what's the matter?" "well, if you do such a thing, silas, i'll never speak to you again! it's no use! it's no use! i did think, after you'd behaved so well about rogers, i might trust you a little. but i see i can't. i presume as long as you live you'll have to be nosed about like a perfect--i don't know what!" "what are you making such a fuss about?" demanded lapham, terribly crestfallen, but trying to pluck up a spirit. "i haven't done anything yet. i can't ask your advice about anything any more without having you fly out. confound it! i shall do as i please after this." but as if he could not endure that contemptuous atmosphere, he got up, and his wife heard him in the dining-room pouring himself out a glass of ice-water, and then heard him mount the stairs to their room, and slam its door after him. "do you know what your father's wanting to do now?" mrs. lapham asked her eldest daughter, who lounged into the parlour a moment with her wrap stringing from her arm, while the younger went straight to bed. "he wants to invite mr. corey's father to a fish dinner at taft's!" penelope was yawning with her hand on her mouth; she stopped, and, with a laugh of amused expectance, sank into a chair, her shoulders shrugged forward. "why! what in the world has put the colonel up to that?" "put him up to it! there's that fellow, who ought have come to see him long ago, drops into his office this morning, and talks five minutes with him, and your father is flattered out of his five senses. he's crazy to get in with those people, and i shall have a perfect battle to keep him within bounds." "well, persis, ma'am, you can't say but what you began it," said penelope. "oh yes, i began it," confessed mrs. lapham. "pen," she broke out, "what do you suppose he means by it?" "who? mr. corey's father? what does the colonel think?" "oh, the colonel!" cried mrs. lapham. she added tremulously: "perhaps he is right. he did seem to take a fancy to her last summer, and now if he's called in that way . . ." she left her daughter to distribute the pronouns aright, and resumed: "of course, i should have said once that there wasn't any question about it. i should have said so last year; and i don't know what it is keeps me from saying so now. i suppose i know a little more about things than i did; and your father's being so bent on it sets me all in a twitter. he thinks his money can do everything. well, i don't say but what it can, a good many. and 'rene is as good a child as ever there was; and i don't see but what she's pretty-appearing enough to suit any one. she's pretty-behaved, too; and she is the most capable girl. i presume young men don't care very much for such things nowadays; but there ain't a great many girls can go right into the kitchen, and make such a custard as she did yesterday. and look at the way she does, through the whole house! she can't seem to go into a room without the things fly right into their places. and if she had to do it to-morrow, she could make all her own dresses a great deal better than them we pay to do it. i don't say but what he's about as nice a fellow as ever stepped. but there! i'm ashamed of going on so." "well, mother," said the girl after a pause, in which she looked as if a little weary of the subject, "why do you worry about it? if it's to be it'll be, and if it isn't----" "yes, that's what i tell your father. but when it comes to myself, i see how hard it is for him to rest quiet. i'm afraid we shall all do something we'll repent of afterwards." "well, ma'am," said penelope, "i don't intend to do anything wrong; but if i do, i promise not to be sorry for it. i'll go that far. and i think i wouldn't be sorry for it beforehand, if i were in your place, mother. let the colonel go on! he likes to manoeuvre, and he isn't going to hurt any one. the corey family can take care of themselves, i guess." she laughed in her throat, drawing down the corners of her mouth, and enjoying the resolution with which her mother tried to fling off the burden of her anxieties. "pen! i believe you're right. you always do see things in such a light! there! i don't care if he brings him down every day." "well, ma'am," said pen, "i don't believe 'rene would, either. she's just so indifferent!" the colonel slept badly that night, and in the morning mrs. lapham came to breakfast without him. "your father ain't well," she reported. "he's had one of his turns." "i should have thought he had two or three of them," said penelope, "by the stamping round i heard. isn't he coming to breakfast?" "not just yet," said her mother. "he's asleep, and he'll be all right if he gets his nap out. i don't want you girls should make any great noise." "oh, we'll be quiet enough," returned penelope. "well, i'm glad the colonel isn't sojering. at first i thought he might be sojering." she broke into a laugh, and, struggling indolently with it, looked at her sister. "you don't think it'll be necessary for anybody to come down from the office and take orders from him while he's laid up, do you, mother?" she inquired. "pen!" cried irene. "he'll be well enough to go up on the ten o'clock boat," said the mother sharply. "i think papa works too hard all through the summer. why don't you make him take a rest, mamma?" asked irene. "oh, take a rest! the man slaves harder every year. it used to be so that he'd take a little time off now and then; but i declare, he hardly ever seems to breathe now away from his office. and this year he says he doesn't intend to go down to lapham, except to see after the works for a few days. i don't know what to do with the man any more! seems as if the more money he got, the more he wanted to get. it scares me to think what would happen to him if he lost it. i know one thing," concluded mrs. lapham. "he shall not go back to the office to-day." "then he won't go up on the ten o'clock boat," pen reminded her. "no, he won't. you can just drive over to the hotel as soon as you're through, girls, and telegraph that he's not well, and won't be at the office till to-morrow. i'm not going to have them send anybody down here to bother him." "that's a blow," said pen. "i didn't know but they might send----" she looked demurely at her sister--"dennis!" "mamma!" cried irene. "well, i declare, there's no living with this family any more," said penelope. "there, pen, be done!" commanded her mother. but perhaps she did not intend to forbid her teasing. it gave a pleasant sort of reality to the affair that was in her mind, and made what she wished appear not only possible but probable. lapham got up and lounged about, fretting and rebelling as each boat departed without him, through the day; before night he became very cross, in spite of the efforts of the family to soothe him, and grumbled that he had been kept from going up to town. "i might as well have gone as not," he repeated, till his wife lost her patience. "well, you shall go to-morrow, silas, if you have to be carried to the boat." "i declare," said penelope, "the colonel don't pet worth a cent." the six o'clock boat brought corey. the girls were sitting on the piazza, and irene saw him first. "o pen!" she whispered, with her heart in her face; and penelope had no time for mockery before he was at the steps. "i hope colonel lapham isn't ill," he said, and they could hear their mother engaged in a moral contest with their father indoors. "go and put on your coat! i say you shall! it don't matter how he sees you at the office, shirt-sleeves or not. you're in a gentleman's house now--or you ought to be--and you shan't see company in your dressing-gown." penelope hurried in to subdue her mother's anger. "oh, he's very much better, thank you!" said irene, speaking up loudly to drown the noise of the controversy. "i'm glad of that," said corey, and when she led him indoors the vanquished colonel met his visitor in a double-breasted frock-coat, which he was still buttoning up. he could not persuade himself at once that corey had not come upon some urgent business matter, and when he was clear that he had come out of civility, surprise mingled with his gratification that he should be the object of solicitude to the young man. in lapham's circle of acquaintance they complained when they were sick, but they made no womanish inquiries after one another's health, and certainly paid no visits of sympathy till matters were serious. he would have enlarged upon the particulars of his indisposition if he had been allowed to do so; and after tea, which corey took with them, he would have remained to entertain him if his wife had not sent him to bed. she followed him to see that he took some medicine she had prescribed for him, but she went first to penelope's room, where she found the girl with a book in her hand, which she was not reading. "you better go down," said the mother. "i've got to go to your father, and irene is all alone with mr. corey; and i know she'll be on pins and needles without you're there to help make it go off." "she'd better try to get along without me, mother," said penelope soberly. "i can't always be with them." "well," replied mrs. lapham, "then i must. there'll be a perfect quaker meeting down there." "oh, i guess 'rene will find something to say if you leave her to herself. or if she don't, he must. it'll be all right for you to go down when you get ready; but i shan't go till toward the last. if he's coming here to see irene--and i don't believe he's come on father's account--he wants to see her and not me. if she can't interest him alone, perhaps he'd as well find it out now as any time. at any rate, i guess you'd better make the experiment. you'll know whether it's a success if he comes again." "well," said the mother, "may be you're right. i'll go down directly. it does seem as if he did mean something, after all." mrs. lapham did not hasten to return to her guest. in her own girlhood it was supposed that if a young man seemed to be coming to see a girl, it was only common-sense to suppose that he wished to see her alone; and her life in town had left mrs. lapham's simple traditions in this respect unchanged. she did with her daughter as her mother would have done with her. where penelope sat with her book, she heard the continuous murmur of voices below, and after a long interval she heard her mother descend. she did not read the open book that lay in her lap, though she kept her eyes fast on the print. once she rose and almost shut the door, so that she could scarcely hear; then she opened it wide again with a self-disdainful air, and resolutely went back to her book, which again she did not read. but she remained in her room till it was nearly time for corey to return to his boat. when they were alone again, irene made a feint of scolding her for leaving her to entertain mr. corey. "why! didn't you have a pleasant call?" asked penelope. irene threw her arms round her. "oh, it was a splendid call! i didn't suppose i could make it go off so well. we talked nearly the whole time about you!" "i don't think that was a very interesting subject." "he kept asking about you. he asked everything. you don't know how much he thinks of you, pen. o pen! what do you think made him come? do you think he really did come to see how papa was?" irene buried her face in her sister's neck. penelope stood with her arms at her side, submitting. "well," she said, "i don't think he did, altogether." irene, all glowing, released her. "don't you--don't you really? o pen! don't you think he is nice? don't you think he's handsome? don't you think i behaved horridly when we first met him this evening, not thanking him for coming? i know he thinks i've no manners. but it seemed as if it would be thanking him for coming to see me. ought i to have asked him to come again, when he said good-night? i didn't; i couldn't. do you believe he'll think i don't want him to? you don't believe he would keep coming if he didn't--want to----" "he hasn't kept coming a great deal, yet," suggested penelope. "no; i know he hasn't. but if he--if he should?" "then i should think he wanted to." "oh, would you--would you? oh, how good you always are, pen! and you always say what you think. i wish there was some one coming to see you too. that's all that i don't like about it. perhaps----he was telling about his friend there in texas----" "well," said penelope, "his friend couldn't call often from texas. you needn't ask mr. corey to trouble about me, 'rene. i think i can manage to worry along, if you're satisfied." "oh, i am, pen. when do you suppose he'll come again?" irene pushed some of penelope's things aside on the dressing-case, to rest her elbow and talk at ease. penelope came up and put them back. "well, not to-night," she said; "and if that's what you're sitting up for----" irene caught her round the neck again, and ran out of the room. the colonel was packed off on the eight o'clock boat the next morning; but his recovery did not prevent corey from repeating his visit in a week. this time irene came radiantly up to penelope's room, where she had again withdrawn herself. "you must come down, pen," she said. "he's asked if you're not well, and mamma says you've got to come." after that penelope helped irene through with her calls, and talked them over with her far into the night after corey was gone. but when the impatient curiosity of her mother pressed her for some opinion of the affair, she said, "you know as much as i do, mother." "don't he ever say anything to you about her--praise her up, any?" "he's never mentioned irene to me." "he hasn't to me, either," said mrs. lapham, with a sigh of trouble. "then what makes him keep coming?" "i can't tell you. one thing, he says there isn't a house open in boston where he's acquainted. wait till some of his friends get back, and then if he keeps coming, it'll be time to inquire." "well!" said the mother; but as the weeks passed she was less and less able to attribute corey's visits to his loneliness in town, and turned to her husband for comfort. "silas, i don't know as we ought to let young corey keep coming so. i don't quite like it, with all his family away." "he's of age," said the colonel. "he can go where he pleases. it don't matter whether his family's here or not." "yes, but if they don't want he should come? should you feel just right about letting him?" "how're you going to stop him? i swear, persis, i don't know what's got over you! what is it? you didn't use to be so. but to hear you talk, you'd think those coreys were too good for this world, and we wa'n't fit for 'em to walk on." "i'm not going to have 'em say we took an advantage of their being away and tolled him on." "i should like to hear 'em say it!" cried lapham. "or anybody!" "well," said his wife, relinquishing this point of anxiety, "i can't make out whether he cares anything for her or not. and pen can't tell either; or else she won't." "oh, i guess he cares for her, fast enough," said the colonel. "i can't make out that he's said or done the first thing to show it." "well, i was better than a year getting my courage up." "oh, that was different," said mrs. lapham, in contemptuous dismissal of the comparison, and yet with a certain fondness. "i guess, if he cared for her, a fellow in his position wouldn't be long getting up his courage to speak to irene." lapham brought his fist down on the table between them. "look here, persis! once for all, now, don't you ever let me hear you say anything like that again! i'm worth nigh on to a million, and i've made it every cent myself; and my girls are the equals of anybody, i don't care who it is. he ain't the fellow to take on any airs; but if he ever tries it with me, i'll send him to the right about mighty quick. i'll have a talk with him, if----" "no, no; don't do that!" implored his wife. "i didn't mean anything. i don't know as i meant anything. he's just as unassuming as he can be, and i think irene's a match for anybody. you just let things go on. it'll be all right. you never can tell how it is with young people. perhaps she's offish. now you ain't--you ain't going to say anything?" lapham suffered himself to be persuaded, the more easily, no doubt, because after his explosion he must have perceived that his pride itself stood in the way of what his pride had threatened. he contented himself with his wife's promise that she would never again present that offensive view of the case, and she did not remain without a certain support in his sturdy self-assertion. xii. mrs. corey returned with her daughters in the early days of october, having passed three or four weeks at intervale after leaving bar harbour. they were somewhat browner than they were when they left town in june, but they were not otherwise changed. lily, the elder of the girls, had brought back a number of studies of kelp and toadstools, with accessory rocks and rotten logs, which she would never finish up and never show any one, knowing the slightness of their merit. nanny, the younger, had read a great many novels with a keen sense of their inaccuracy as representations of life, and had seen a great deal of life with a sad regret for its difference from fiction. they were both nice girls, accomplished, well-dressed of course, and well enough looking; but they had met no one at the seaside or the mountains whom their taste would allow to influence their fate, and they had come home to the occupations they had left, with no hopes and no fears to distract them. in the absence of these they were fitted to take the more vivid interest in their brother's affairs, which they could see weighed upon their mother's mind after the first hours of greeting. "oh, it seems to have been going on, and your father has never written a word about it," she said, shaking her head. "what good would it have done?" asked nanny, who was little and fair, with rings of light hair that filled a bonnet-front very prettily; she looked best in a bonnet. "it would only have worried you. he could not have stopped tom; you couldn't, when you came home to do it." "i dare say papa didn't know much about it," suggested lily. she was a tall, lean, dark girl, who looked as if she were not quite warm enough, and whom you always associated with wraps of different aesthetic effect after you had once seen her. it is a serious matter always to the women of his family when a young man gives them cause to suspect that he is interested in some other woman. a son-in-law or brother-in-law does not enter the family; he need not be caressed or made anything of; but the son's or brother's wife has a claim upon his mother and sisters which they cannot deny. some convention of their sex obliges them to show her affection, to like or to seem to like her, to take her to their intimacy, however odious she may be to them. with the coreys it was something more than an affair of sentiment. they were by no means poor, and they were not dependent money-wise upon tom corey; but the mother had come, without knowing it, to rely upon his sense, his advice in everything, and the sisters, seeing him hitherto so indifferent to girls, had insensibly grown to regard him as altogether their own till he should be released, not by his marriage, but by theirs, an event which had not approached with the lapse of time. some kinds of girls--they believed that they could readily have chosen a kind--might have taken him without taking him from them; but this generosity could not be hoped for in such a girl as miss lapham. "perhaps," urged their mother, "it would not be so bad. she seemed an affectionate little thing with her mother, without a great deal of character though she was so capable about some things." "oh, she'll be an affectionate little thing with tom too, you may be sure," said nanny. "and that characterless capability becomes the most in tense narrow-mindedness. she'll think we were against her from the beginning." "she has no cause for that," lily interposed, "and we shall not give her any." "yes, we shall," retorted nanny. "we can't help it; and if we can't, her own ignorance would be cause enough." "i can't feel that she's altogether ignorant," said mrs. corey justly. "of course she can read and write," admitted nanny. "i can't imagine what he finds to talk about with her," said lily. "oh, that's very simple," returned her sister. "they talk about themselves, with occasional references to each other. i have heard people 'going on' on the hotel piazzas. she's embroidering, or knitting, or tatting, or something of that kind; and he says she seems quite devoted to needlework, and she says, yes, she has a perfect passion for it, and everybody laughs at her for it; but she can't help it, she always was so from a child, and supposes she always shall be,--with remote and minute particulars. and she ends by saying that perhaps he does not like people to tat, or knit, or embroider, or whatever. and he says, oh, yes, he does; what could make her think such a thing? but for his part he likes boating rather better, or if you're in the woods camping. then she lets him take up one corner of her work, and perhaps touch her fingers; and that encourages him to say that he supposes nothing could induce her to drop her work long enough to go down on the rocks, or out among the huckleberry bushes; and she puts her head on one side, and says she doesn't know really. and then they go, and he lies at her feet on the rocks, or picks huckleberries and drops them in her lap, and they go on talking about themselves, and comparing notes to see how they differ from each other. and----" "that will do, nanny," said her mother. lily smiled autumnally. "oh, disgusting!" "disgusting? not at all!" protested her sister. "it's very amusing when you see it, and when you do it----" "it's always a mystery what people see in each other," observed mrs. corey severely. "yes," nanny admitted, "but i don't know that there is much comfort for us in the application." "no, there isn't," said her mother. "the most that we can do is to hope for the best till we know the worst. of course we shall make the best of the worst when it comes." "yes, and perhaps it would not be so very bad. i was saying to your father when i was here in july that those things can always be managed. you must face them as if they were nothing out of the way, and try not to give any cause for bitterness among ourselves." "that's true. but i don't believe in too much resignation beforehand. it amounts to concession," said nanny. "of course we should oppose it in all proper ways," returned her mother. lily had ceased to discuss the matter. in virtue of her artistic temperament, she was expected not to be very practical. it was her mother and her sister who managed, submitting to the advice and consent of corey what they intended to do. "your father wrote me that he had called on colonel lapham at his place of business," said mrs. corey, seizing her first chance of approaching the subject with her son. "yes," said corey. "a dinner was father's idea, but he came down to a call, at my suggestion." "oh," said mrs. corey, in a tone of relief, as if the statement threw a new light on the fact that corey had suggested the visit. "he said so little about it in his letter that i didn't know just how it came about." "i thought it was right they should meet," explained the son, "and so did father. i was glad that i suggested it, afterward; it was extremely gratifying to colonel lapham." "oh, it was quite right in every way. i suppose you have seen something of the family during the summer." "yes, a good deal. i've been down at nantasket rather often." mrs. corey let her eyes droop. then she asked: "are they well?" "yes, except lapham himself, now and then. i went down once or twice to see him. he hasn't given himself any vacation this summer; he has such a passion for his business that i fancy he finds it hard being away from it at any time, and he's made his new house an excuse for staying." "oh yes, his house! is it to be something fine?" "yes; it's a beautiful house. seymour is doing it." "then, of course, it will be very handsome. i suppose the young ladies are very much taken up with it; and mrs. lapham." "mrs. lapham, yes. i don't think the young ladies care so much about it." "it must be for them. aren't they ambitious?" asked mrs. corey, delicately feeling her way. her son thought a while. then he answered with a smile-- "no, i don't really think they are. they are unambitious, i should say." mrs. corey permitted herself a long breath. but her son added, "it's the parents who are ambitious for them," and her respiration became shorter again. "yes," she said. "they're very simple, nice girls," pursued corey. "i think you'll like the elder, when you come to know her." when you come to know her. the words implied an expectation that the two families were to be better acquainted. "then she is more intellectual than her sister?" mrs. corey ventured. "intellectual?" repeated her son. "no; that isn't the word, quite. though she certainly has more mind." "the younger seemed very sensible." "oh, sensible, yes. and as practical as she's pretty. she can do all sorts of things, and likes to be doing them. don't you think she's an extraordinary beauty?" "yes--yes, she is," said mrs. corey, at some cost. "she's good, too," said corey, "and perfectly innocent and transparent. i think you will like her the better the more you know her." "i thought her very nice from the beginning," said the mother heroically; and then nature asserted itself in her. "but i should be afraid that she might perhaps be a little bit tiresome at last; her range of ideas seemed so extremely limited." "yes, that's what i was afraid of. but, as a matter of fact, she isn't. she interests you by her very limitations. you can see the working of her mind, like that of a child. she isn't at all conscious even of her beauty." "i don't believe young men can tell whether girls are conscious or not," said mrs. corey. "but i am not saying the miss laphams are not----" her son sat musing, with an inattentive smile on his face. "what is it?" "oh! nothing. i was thinking of miss lapham and something she was saying. she's very droll, you know." "the elder sister? yes, you told me that. can you see the workings of her mind too?" "no; she's everything that's unexpected." corey fell into another reverie, and smiled again; but he did not offer to explain what amused him, and his mother would not ask. "i don't know what to make of his admiring the girl so frankly," she said afterward to her husband. "that couldn't come naturally till after he had spoken to her, and i feel sure that he hasn't yet." "you women haven't risen yet--it's an evidence of the backwardness of your sex--to a conception of the bismarck idea in diplomacy. if a man praises one woman, you still think he's in love with another. do you mean that because tom didn't praise the elder sister so much, he has spoken to her?" mrs. corey refused the consequence, saying that it did not follow. "besides, he did praise her." "you ought to be glad that matters are in such good shape, then. at any rate, you can do absolutely nothing." "oh! i know it," sighed mrs. corey. "i wish tom would be a little opener with me." "he's as open as it's in the nature of an american-born son to be with his parents. i dare say if you'd asked him plumply what he meant in regard to the young lady, he would have told you--if he knew." "why, don't you think he does know, bromfield?" "i'm not at all sure he does. you women think that because a young man dangles after a girl, or girls, he's attached to them. it doesn't at all follow. he dangles because he must, and doesn't know what to do with his time, and because they seem to like it. i dare say that tom has dangled a good deal in this instance because there was nobody else in town." "do you really think so?" "i throw out the suggestion. and it strikes me that a young lady couldn't do better than stay in or near boston during the summer. most of the young men are here, kept by business through the week, with evenings available only on the spot, or a few miles off. what was the proportion of the sexes at the seashore and the mountains?" "oh, twenty girls at least for even an excuse of a man. it's shameful." "you see, i am right in one part of my theory. why shouldn't i be right in the rest?" "i wish you were. and yet i can't say that i do. those things are very serious with girls. i shouldn't like tom to have been going to see those people if he meant nothing by it." "and you wouldn't like it if he did. you are difficult, my dear." her husband pulled an open newspaper toward him from the table. "i feel that it wouldn't be at all like him to do so," said mrs. corey, going on to entangle herself in her words, as women often do when their ideas are perfectly clear. "don't go to reading, please, bromfield! i am really worried about this matter i must know how much it means. i can't let it go on so. i don't see how you can rest easy without knowing." "i don't in the least know what's going to become of me when i die; and yet i sleep well," replied bromfield corey, putting his newspaper aside. "ah! but this is a very different thing." "so much more serious? well, what can you do? we had this out when you were here in the summer, and you agreed with me then that we could do nothing. the situation hasn't changed at all." "yes, it has; it has continued the same," said mrs. corey, again expressing the fact by a contradiction in terms. "i think i must ask tom outright." "you know you can't do that, my dear." "then why doesn't he tell us?" "ah, that's what he can't do, if he's making love to miss irene--that's her name, i believe--on the american plan. he will tell us after he has told her. that was the way i did. don't ignore our own youth, anna. it was a long while ago, i'll admit." "it was very different," said mrs. corey, a little shaken. "i don't see how. i dare say mamma lapham knows whether tom is in love with her daughter or not; and no doubt papa lapham knows it at second hand. but we shall not know it until the girl herself does. depend upon that. your mother knew, and she told your father; but my poor father knew nothing about it till we were engaged; and i had been hanging about--dangling, as you call it----" "no, no; you called it that." "was it i?--for a year or more." the wife could not refuse to be a little consoled by the image of her young love which the words conjured up, however little she liked its relation to her son's interest in irene lapham. she smiled pensively. "then you think it hasn't come to an understanding with them yet?" "an understanding? oh, probably." "an explanation, then?" "the only logical inference from what we've been saying is that it hasn't. but i don't ask you to accept it on that account. may i read now, my dear?" "yes, you may read now," said mrs. corey, with one of those sighs which perhaps express a feminine sense of the unsatisfactoriness of husbands in general, rather than a personal discontent with her own. "thank you, my dear; then i think i'll smoke too," said bromfield corey, lighting a cigar. she left him in peace, and she made no further attempt upon her son's confidence. but she was not inactive for that reason. she did not, of course, admit to herself, and far less to others, the motive with which she went to pay an early visit to the laphams, who had now come up from nantasket to nankeen square. she said to her daughters that she had always been a little ashamed of using her acquaintance with them to get money for her charity, and then seeming to drop it. besides, it seemed to her that she ought somehow to recognise the business relation that tom had formed with the father; they must not think that his family disapproved of what he had done. "yes, business is business," said nanny, with a laugh. "do you wish us to go with you again?" "no; i will go alone this time," replied the mother with dignity. her coupe now found its way to nankeen square without difficulty, and she sent up a card, which mrs. lapham received in the presence of her daughter penelope. "i presume i've got to see her," she gasped. "well, don't look so guilty, mother," joked the girl; "you haven't been doing anything so very wrong." "it seems as if i had. i don't know what's come over me. i wasn't afraid of the woman before, but now i don't seem to feel as if i could look her in the face. he's been coming here of his own accord, and i fought against his coming long enough, goodness knows. i didn't want him to come. and as far forth as that goes, we're as respectable as they are; and your father's got twice their money, any day. we've no need to go begging for their favour. i guess they were glad enough to get him in with your father." "yes, those are all good points, mother," said the girl; "and if you keep saying them over, and count a hundred every time before you speak, i guess you'll worry through." mrs. lapham had been fussing distractedly with her hair and ribbons, in preparation for her encounter with mrs. corey. she now drew in a long quivering breath, stared at her daughter without seeing her, and hurried downstairs. it was true that when she met mrs. corey before she had not been awed by her; but since then she had learned at least her own ignorance of the world, and she had talked over the things she had misconceived and the things she had shrewdly guessed so much that she could not meet her on the former footing of equality. in spite of as brave a spirit and as good a conscience as woman need have, mrs. lapham cringed inwardly, and tremulously wondered what her visitor had come for. she turned from pale to red, and was hardly coherent in her greetings; she did not know how they got to where mrs. corey was saying exactly the right things about her son's interest and satisfaction in his new business, and keeping her eyes fixed on mrs. lapham's, reading her uneasiness there, and making her feel, in spite of her indignant innocence, that she had taken a base advantage of her in her absence to get her son away from her and marry him to irene. then, presently, while this was painfully revolving itself in mrs. lapham's mind, she was aware of mrs. corey's asking if she was not to have the pleasure of seeing miss irene. "no; she's out, just now," said mrs. lapham. "i don't know just when she'll be in. she went to get a book." and here she turned red again, knowing that irene had gone to get the book because it was one that corey had spoken of. "oh! i'm sorry," said mrs. corey. "i had hoped to see her. and your other daughter, whom i never met?" "penelope?" asked mrs. lapham, eased a little. "she is at home. i will go and call her." the laphams had not yet thought of spending their superfluity on servants who could be rung for; they kept two girls and a man to look after the furnace, as they had for the last ten years. if mrs. lapham had rung in the parlour, her second girl would have gone to the street door to see who was there. she went upstairs for penelope herself, and the girl, after some rebellious derision, returned with her. mrs. corey took account of her, as penelope withdrew to the other side of the room after their introduction, and sat down, indolently submissive on the surface to the tests to be applied, and following mrs. corey's lead of the conversation in her odd drawl. "you young ladies will be glad to be getting into your new house," she said politely. "i don't know," said penelope. "we're so used to this one." mrs. corey looked a little baffled, but she said sympathetically, "of course, you will be sorry to leave your old home." mrs. lapham could not help putting in on behalf of her daughters: "i guess if it was left to the girls to say, we shouldn't leave it at all." "oh, indeed!" said mrs. corey; "are they so much attached? but i can quite understand it. my children would be heart-broken too if we were to leave the old place." she turned to penelope. "but you must think of the lovely new house, and the beautiful position." "yes, i suppose we shall get used to them too," said penelope, in response to this didactic consolation. "oh, i could even imagine your getting very fond of them," pursued mrs. corey patronisingly. "my son has told me of the lovely outlook you're to have over the water. he thinks you have such a beautiful house. i believe he had the pleasure of meeting you all there when he first came home." "yes, i think he was our first visitor." "he is a great admirer of your house," said mrs. corey, keeping her eyes very sharply, however politely, on penelope's face, as if to surprise there the secret of any other great admiration of her son's that might helplessly show itself. "yes," said the girl, "he's been there several times with father; and he wouldn't be allowed to overlook any of its good points." her mother took a little more courage from her daughter's tranquillity. "the girls make such fun of their father's excitement about his building, and the way he talks it into everybody." "oh, indeed!" said mrs. corey, with civil misunderstanding and inquiry. penelope flushed, and her mother went on: "i tell him he's more of a child about it than any of them." "young people are very philosophical nowadays," remarked mrs. corey. "yes, indeed," said mrs. lapham. "i tell them they've always had everything, so that nothing's a surprise to them. it was different with us in our young days." "yes," said mrs. corey, without assenting. "i mean the colonel and myself," explained mrs. lapham. "oh yes--yes!" said mrs. corey. "i'm sure," the former went on, rather helplessly, "we had to work hard enough for everything we got. and so we appreciated it." "so many things were not done for young people then," said mrs. corey, not recognising the early-hardships standpoint of mrs. lapham. "but i don't know that they are always the better for it now," she added vaguely, but with the satisfaction we all feel in uttering a just commonplace. "it's rather hard living up to blessings that you've always had," said penelope. "yes," replied mrs. corey distractedly, and coming back to her slowly from the virtuous distance to which she had absented herself. she looked at the girl searchingly again, as if to determine whether this were a touch of the drolling her son had spoken of. but she only added: "you will enjoy the sunsets on the back bay so much." "well, not unless they're new ones," said penelope. "i don't believe i could promise to enjoy any sunsets that i was used to, a great deal." mrs. corey looked at her with misgiving, hardening into dislike. "no," she breathed vaguely. "my son spoke of the fine effect of the lights about the hotel from your cottage at nantasket," she said to mrs. lapham. "yes, they're splendid!" exclaimed that lady. "i guess the girls went down every night with him to see them from the rocks." "yes," said mrs. corey, a little dryly; and she permitted herself to add: "he spoke of those rocks. i suppose both you young ladies spend a great deal of your time on them when you're there. at nahant my children were constantly on them." "irene likes the rocks," said penelope. "i don't care much about them,--especially at night." "oh, indeed! i suppose you find it quite as well looking at the lights comfortably from the veranda." "no; you can't see them from the house." "oh," said mrs. corey. after a perceptible pause, she turned to mrs. lapham. "i don't know what my son would have done for a breath of sea air this summer, if you had not allowed him to come to nantasket. he wasn't willing to leave his business long enough to go anywhere else." "yes, he's a born business man," responded mrs. lapham enthusiastically. "if it's born in you, it's bound to come out. that's what the colonel is always saying about mr. corey. he says it's born in him to be a business man, and he can't help it." she recurred to corey gladly because she felt that she had not said enough of him when his mother first spoke of his connection with the business. "i don't believe," she went on excitedly, "that colonel lapham has ever had anybody with him that he thought more of." "you have all been very kind to my son," said mrs. corey in acknowledgment, and stiffly bowing a little, "and we feel greatly indebted to you. very much so." at these grateful expressions mrs. lapham reddened once more, and murmured that it had been very pleasant to them, she was sure. she glanced at her daughter for support, but penelope was looking at mrs. corey, who doubtless saw her from the corner of her eyes, though she went on speaking to her mother. "i was sorry to hear from him that mr.--colonel?--lapham had not been quite well this summer. i hope he's better now?" "oh yes, indeed," replied mrs. lapham; "he's all right now. he's hardly ever been sick, and he don't know how to take care of himself. that's all. we don't any of us; we're all so well." "health is a great blessing," sighed mrs. corey. "yes, so it is. how is your oldest daughter?" inquired mrs. lapham. "is she as delicate as ever?" "she seems to be rather better since we returned." and now mrs. corey, as if forced to the point, said bunglingly that the young ladies had wished to come with her, but had been detained. she based her statement upon nanny's sarcastic demand; and, perhaps seeing it topple a little, she rose hastily, to get away from its fall. "but we shall hope for some--some other occasion," she said vaguely, and she put on a parting smile, and shook hands with mrs. lapham and penelope, and then, after some lingering commonplaces, got herself out of the house. penelope and her mother were still looking at each other, and trying to grapple with the effect or purport of the visit, when irene burst in upon them from the outside. "o mamma! wasn't that mrs. corey's carriage just drove away?" penelope answered with her laugh. "yes! you've just missed the most delightful call, 'rene. so easy and pleasant every way. not a bit stiff! mrs. corey was so friendly! she didn't make one feel at all as if she'd bought me, and thought she'd given too much; and mother held up her head as if she were all wool and a yard wide, and she would just like to have anybody deny it." in a few touches of mimicry she dashed off a sketch of the scene: her mother's trepidation, and mrs. corey's well-bred repose and polite scrutiny of them both. she ended by showing how she herself had sat huddled up in a dark corner, mute with fear. "if she came to make us say and do the wrong thing, she must have gone away happy; and it's a pity you weren't here to help, irene. i don't know that i aimed to make a bad impression, but i guess i succeeded--even beyond my deserts." she laughed; then suddenly she flashed out in fierce earnest. "if i missed doing anything that could make me as hateful to her as she made herself to me----" she checked herself, and began to laugh. her laugh broke, and the tears started into her eyes; she ran out of the room, and up the stairs. "what--what does it mean?" asked irene in a daze. mrs. lapham was still in the chilly torpor to which mrs. corey's call had reduced her. penelope's vehemence did not rouse her. she only shook her head absently, and said, "i don't know." "why should pen care what impression she made? i didn't suppose it would make any difference to her whether mrs. corey liked her or not." "i didn't, either. but i could see that she was just as nervous as she could be, every minute of the time. i guess she didn't like mrs. corey any too well from the start, and she couldn't seem to act like herself." "tell me about it, mamma," said irene, dropping into a chair. mrs. corey described the interview to her husband on her return home. "well, and what are your inferences?" he asked. "they were extremely embarrassed and excited--that is, the mother. i don't wish to do her injustice, but she certainly behaved consciously." "you made her feel so, i dare say, anna. i can imagine how terrible you must have been in the character of an accusing spirit, too lady-like to say anything. what did you hint?" "i hinted nothing," said mrs. corey, descending to the weakness of defending herself. "but i saw quite enough to convince me that the girl is in love with tom, and the mother knows it." "that was very unsatisfactory. i supposed you went to find out whether tom was in love with the girl. was she as pretty as ever?" "i didn't see her; she was not at home; i saw her sister." "i don't know that i follow you quite, anna. but no matter. what was the sister like?" "a thoroughly disagreeable young woman." "what did she do?" "nothing. she's far too sly for that. but that was the impression." "then you didn't find her so amusing as tom does?" "i found her pert. there's no other word for it. she says things to puzzle you and put you out." "ah, that was worse than pert, anna; that was criminal. well, let us thank heaven the younger one is so pretty." mrs. corey did not reply directly. "bromfield," she said, after a moment of troubled silence, "i have been thinking over your plan, and i don't see why it isn't the right thing." "what is my plan?" inquired bromfield corey. "a dinner." her husband began to laugh. "ah, you overdid the accusing-spirit business, and this is reparation." but mrs. corey hurried on, with combined dignity and anxiety-- "we can't ignore tom's intimacy with them--it amounts to that; it will probably continue even if it's merely a fancy, and we must seem to know it; whatever comes of it, we can't disown it. they are very simple, unfashionable people, and unworldly; but i can't say that they are offensive, unless--unless," she added, in propitiation of her husband's smile, "unless the father--how did you find the father?" she implored. "he will be very entertaining," said corey, "if you start him on his paint. what was the disagreeable daughter like? shall you have her?" "she's little and dark. we must have them all," mrs. corey sighed. "then you don't think a dinner would do?" "oh yes, i do. as you say, we can't disown tom's relation to them, whatever it is. we had much better recognise it, and make the best of the inevitable. i think a lapham dinner would be delightful." he looked at her with delicate irony in his voice and smile, and she fetched another sigh, so deep and sore now that he laughed outright. "perhaps," he suggested, "it would be the best way of curing tom of his fancy, if he has one. he has been seeing her with the dangerous advantages which a mother knows how to give her daughter in the family circle, and with no means of comparing her with other girls. you must invite several other very pretty girls." "do you really think so, bromfield?" asked mrs. corey, taking courage a little. "that might do," but her spirits visibly sank again. "i don't know any other girl half so pretty." "well, then, better bred." "she is very lady-like, very modest, and pleasing." "well, more cultivated." "tom doesn't get on with such people." "oh, you wish him to marry her, i see." "no, no." "then you'd better give the dinner to bring them together, to promote the affair." "you know i don't want to do that, bromfield. but i feel that we must do something. if we don't, it has a clandestine appearance. it isn't just to them. a dinner won't leave us in any worse position, and may leave us in a better. yes," said mrs. corey, after another thoughtful interval, "we must have them--have them all. it could be very simple." "ah, you can't give a dinner under a bushel, if i take your meaning, my dear. if we do this at all, we mustn't do it as if we were ashamed of it. we must ask people to meet them." "yes," sighed mrs. corey. "there are not many people in town yet," she added, with relief that caused her husband another smile. "there really seems a sort of fatality about it," she concluded religiously. "then you had better not struggle against it. go and reconcile lily and nanny to it as soon as possible." mrs. corey blanched a little. "but don't you think it will be the best thing, bromfield?" "i do indeed, my dear. the only thing that shakes my faith in the scheme is the fact that i first suggested it. but if you have adopted it, it must be all right, anna. i can't say that i expected it." "no," said his wife, "it wouldn't do." xiii. having distinctly given up the project of asking the laphams to dinner, mrs. corey was able to carry it out with the courage of sinners who have sacrificed to virtue by frankly acknowledging its superiority to their intended transgression. she did not question but the laphams would come; and she only doubted as to the people whom she should invite to meet them. she opened the matter with some trepidation to her daughters, but neither of them opposed her; they rather looked at the scheme from her own point of view, and agreed with her that nothing had really yet been done to wipe out the obligation to the laphams helplessly contracted the summer before, and strengthened by that ill-advised application to mrs. lapham for charity. not only the principal of their debt of gratitude remained, but the accruing interest. they said, what harm could giving the dinner possibly do them? they might ask any or all of their acquaintance without disadvantage to themselves; but it would be perfectly easy to give the dinner just the character they chose, and still flatter the ignorance of the laphams. the trouble would be with tom, if he were really interested in the girl; but he could not say anything if they made it a family dinner; he could not feel anything. they had each turned in her own mind, as it appeared from a comparison of ideas, to one of the most comprehensive of those cousinships which form the admiration and terror of the adventurer in boston society. he finds himself hemmed in and left out at every turn by ramifications that forbid him all hope of safe personality in his comments on people; he is never less secure than when he hears some given bostonian denouncing or ridiculing another. if he will be advised, he will guard himself from concurring in these criticisms, however just they appear, for the probability is that their object is a cousin of not more than one remove from the censor. when the alien hears a group of boston ladies calling one another, and speaking of all their gentlemen friends, by the familiar abbreviations of their christian names, he must feel keenly the exile to which he was born; but he is then, at least, in comparatively little danger; while these latent and tacit cousinships open pitfalls at every step around him, in a society where middlesexes have married essexes and produced suffolks for two hundred and fifty years. these conditions, however, so perilous to the foreigner, are a source of strength and security to those native to them. an uncertain acquaintance may be so effectually involved in the meshes of such a cousinship, as never to be heard of outside of it and tremendous stories are told of people who have spent a whole winter in boston, in a whirl of gaiety, and who, the original guests of the suffolks, discover upon reflection that they have met no one but essexes and middlesexes. mrs. corey's brother james came first into her mind, and she thought with uncommon toleration of the easy-going, uncritical, good-nature of his wife. james bellingham had been the adviser of her son throughout, and might be said to have actively promoted his connection with lapham. she thought next of the widow of her cousin, henry bellingham, who had let her daughter marry that western steamboat man, and was fond of her son-in-law; she might be expected at least to endure the paint-king and his family. the daughters insisted so strongly upon mrs. bellingham's son charles, that mrs. corey put him down--if he were in town; he might be in central america; he got on with all sorts of people. it seemed to her that she might stop at this: four laphams, five coreys, and four bellinghams were enough. "that makes thirteen," said nanny. "you can have mr. and mrs. sewell." "yes, that is a good idea," assented mrs. corey. "he is our minister, and it is very proper." "i don't see why you don't have robert chase. it is a pity he shouldn't see her--for the colour." "i don't quite like the idea of that," said mrs. corey; "but we can have him too, if it won't make too many." the painter had married into a poorer branch of the coreys, and his wife was dead. "is there any one else?" "there is miss kingsbury." "we have had her so much. she will begin to think we are using her." "she won't mind; she's so good-natured." "well, then," the mother summed up, "there are four laphams, five coreys, four bellinghams, one chase, and one kingsbury--fifteen. oh! and two sewells. seventeen. ten ladies and seven gentlemen. it doesn't balance very well, and it's too large." "perhaps some of the ladies won't come," suggested lily. "oh, the ladies always come," said nanny. their mother reflected. "well, i will ask them. the ladies will refuse in time to let us pick up some gentlemen somewhere; some more artists. why! we must have mr. seymour, the architect; he's a bachelor, and he's building their house, tom says." her voice fell a little when she mentioned her son's name, and she told him of her plan, when he came home in the evening, with evident misgiving. "what are you doing it for, mother?" he asked, looking at her with his honest eyes. she dropped her own in a little confusion. "i won't do it at all, my dear," she said, "if you don't approve. but i thought--you know we have never made any proper acknowledgment of their kindness to us at baie st. paul. then in the winter, i'm ashamed to say, i got money from her for a charity i was interested in; and i hate the idea of merely using people in that way. and now your having been at their house this summer--we can't seem to disapprove of that; and your business relations to him----" "yes, i see," said corey. "do you think it amounts to a dinner?" "why, i don't know," returned his mother. "we shall have hardly any one out of our family connection." "well," corey assented, "it might do. i suppose what you wish is to give them a pleasure." "why, certainly. don't you think they'd like to come?" "oh, they'd like to come; but whether it would be a pleasure after they were here is another thing. i should have said that if you wanted to have them, they would enjoy better being simply asked to meet our own immediate family." "that's what i thought of in the first place, but your father seemed to think it implied a social distrust of them; and we couldn't afford to have that appearance, even to ourselves." "perhaps he was right." "and besides, it might seem a little significant." corey seemed inattentive to this consideration. "whom did you think of asking?" his mother repeated the names. "yes, that would do," he said, with a vague dissatisfaction. "i won't have it at all, if you don't wish, tom." "oh yes, have it; perhaps you ought. yes, i dare say it's right. what did you mean by a family dinner seeming significant?" his mother hesitated. when it came to that, she did not like to recognise in his presence the anxieties that had troubled her. but "i don't know," she said, since she must. "i shouldn't want to give that young girl, or her mother, the idea that we wished to make more of the acquaintance than--than you did, tom." he looked at her absent-mindedly, as if he did not take her meaning. but he said, "oh yes, of course," and mrs. corey, in the uncertainty in which she seemed destined to remain concerning this affair, went off and wrote her invitation to mrs. lapham. later in the evening, when they again found themselves alone, her son said, "i don't think i understood you, mother, in regard to the laphams. i think i do now. i certainly don't wish you to make more of the acquaintance than i have done. it wouldn't be right; it might be very unfortunate. don't give the dinner!" "it's too late now, my son," said mrs. corey. "i sent my note to mrs. lapham an hour ago." her courage rose at the trouble which showed in corey's face. "but don't be annoyed by it, tom. it isn't a family dinner, you know, and everything can be managed without embarrassment. if we take up the affair at this point, you will seem to have been merely acting for us; and they can't possibly understand anything more." "well, well! let it go! i dare say it's all right. at any rate, it can't be helped now." "i don't wish to help it, tom," said mrs. corey, with a cheerfullness which the thought of the laphams had never brought her before. "i am sure it is quite fit and proper, and we can make them have a very pleasant time. they are good, inoffensive people, and we owe it to ourselves not to be afraid to show that we have felt their kindness to us, and his appreciation of you." "well," consented corey. the trouble that his mother had suddenly cast off was in his tone; but she was not sorry. it was quite time that he should think seriously of his attitude toward these people if he had not thought of it before, but, according to his father's theory, had been merely dangling. it was a view of her son's character that could hardly have pleased her in different circumstances, yet it was now unquestionably a consolation if not wholly a pleasure. if she considered the laphams at all, it was with the resignation which we feel at the evils of others, even when they have not brought them on themselves. mrs. lapham, for her part, had spent the hours between mrs. corey's visit and her husband's coming home from business in reaching the same conclusion with regard to corey; and her spirits were at the lowest when they sat down to supper. irene was downcast with her; penelope was purposely gay; and the colonel was beginning, after his first plate of the boiled ham,--which, bristling with cloves, rounded its bulk on a wide platter before him,--to take note of the surrounding mood, when the door-bell jingled peremptorily, and the girl left waiting on the table to go and answer it. she returned at once with a note for mrs. lapham, which she read, and then, after a helpless survey of her family, read again. "why, what is it, mamma?" asked irene, while the colonel, who had taken up his carving-knife for another attack on the ham, held it drawn half across it. "why, i don't know what it does mean," answered mrs. lapham tremulously, and she let the girl take the note from her. irene ran it over, and then turned to the name at the end with a joyful cry and a flush that burned to the top of her forehead. then she began to read it once more. the colonel dropped his knife and frowned impatiently, and mrs. lapham said, "you read it out loud, if you know what to make of it, irene." but irene, with a nervous scream of protest, handed it to her father, who performed the office. "dear mrs. lapham: "will you and general lapham----" "i didn't know i was a general," grumbled lapham. "i guess i shall have to be looking up my back pay. who is it writes this, anyway?" he asked, turning the letter over for the signature. "oh, never mind. read it through!" cried his wife, with a kindling glance of triumph at penelope, and he resumed-- "--and your daughters give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on thursday, the th, at half-past six. "yours sincerely, "anna b. corey." the brief invitation had been spread over two pages, and the colonel had difficulties with the signature which he did not instantly surmount. when he had made out the name and pronounced it, he looked across at his wife for an explanation. "i don't know what it all means," she said, shaking her head and speaking with a pleased flutter. "she was here this afternoon, and i should have said she had come to see how bad she could make us feel. i declare i never felt so put down in my life by anybody." "why, what did she do? what did she say?" lapham was ready, in his dense pride, to resent any affront to his blood, but doubtful, with the evidence of this invitation to the contrary, if any affront had been offered. mrs. lapham tried to tell him, but there was really nothing tangible; and when she came to put it into words, she could not make out a case. her husband listened to her excited attempt, and then he said, with judicial superiority, "i guess nobody's been trying to make you feel bad, persis. what would she go right home and invite you to dinner for, if she'd acted the way you say?" in this view it did seem improbable, and mrs. lapham was shaken. she could only say, "penelope felt just the way i did about it." lapham looked at the girl, who said, "oh, i can't prove it! i begin to think it never happened. i guess it didn't." "humph!" said her father, and he sat frowning thoughtfully a while--ignoring her mocking irony, or choosing to take her seriously. "you can't really put your finger on anything," he said to his wife, "and it ain't likely there is anything. anyway, she's done the proper thing by you now." mrs. lapham faltered between her lingering resentment and the appeals of her flattered vanity. she looked from penelope's impassive face to the eager eyes of irene. "well--just as you say, silas. i don't know as she was so very bad. i guess may be she was embarrassed some----" "that's what i told you, mamma, from the start," interrupted irene. "didn't i tell you she didn't mean anything by it? it's just the way she acted at baie st. paul, when she got well enough to realise what you'd done for her!" penelope broke into a laugh. "is that her way of showing her gratitude? i'm sorry i didn't understand that before." irene made no effort to reply. she merely looked from her mother to her father with a grieved face for their protection, and lapham said, "when we've done supper, you answer her, persis. say we'll come." "with one exception," said penelope. "what do you mean?" demanded her father, with a mouth full of ham. "oh, nothing of importance. merely that i'm not going." lapham gave himself time to swallow his morsel, and his rising wrath went down with it. "i guess you'll change your mind when the time comes," he said. "anyway, persis, you say we'll all come, and then, if penelope don't want to go, you can excuse her after we get there. that's the best way." none of them, apparently, saw any reason why the affair should not be left in this way, or had a sense of the awful and binding nature of a dinner engagement. if she believed that penelope would not finally change her mind and go, no doubt mrs. lapham thought that mrs. corey would easily excuse her absence. she did not find it so simple a matter to accept the invitation. mrs. corey had said "dear mrs. lapham," but mrs. lapham had her doubts whether it would not be a servile imitation to say "dear mrs. corey" in return; and she was tormented as to the proper phrasing throughout and the precise temperature which she should impart to her politeness. she wrote an unpractised, uncharacteristic round hand, the same in which she used to set the children's copies at school, and she subscribed herself, after some hesitation between her husband's given name and her own, "yours truly, mrs. s. lapham." penelope had gone to her room, without waiting to be asked to advise or criticise; but irene had decided upon the paper, and on the whole, mrs. lapham's note made a very decent appearance on the page. when the furnace-man came, the colonel sent him out to post it in the box at the corner of the square. he had determined not to say anything more about the matter before the girls, not choosing to let them see that he was elated; he tried to give the effect of its being an everyday sort of thing, abruptly closing the discussion with his order to mrs. lapham to accept; but he had remained swelling behind his newspaper during her prolonged struggle with her note, and he could no longer hide his elation when irene followed her sister upstairs. "well, pers," he demanded, "what do you say now?" mrs. lapham had been sobered into something of her former misgiving by her difficulties with her note. "well, i don't know what to say. i declare, i'm all mixed up about it, and i don't know as we've begun as we can carry out in promising to go. i presume," she sighed, "that we can all send some excuse at the last moment, if we don't want to go." "i guess we can carry out, and i guess we shan't want to send any excuse," bragged the colonel. "if we're ever going to be anybody at all, we've got to go and see how it's done. i presume we've got to give some sort of party when we get into the new house, and this gives the chance to ask 'em back again. you can't complain now but what they've made the advances, persis?" "no," said mrs. lapham lifelessly; "i wonder why they wanted to do it. oh, i suppose it's all right," she added in deprecation of the anger with her humility which she saw rising in her husband's face; "but if it's all going to be as much trouble as that letter, i'd rather be whipped. i don't know what i'm going to wear; or the girls either. i do wonder--i've heard that people go to dinner in low-necks. do you suppose it's the custom?" "how should i know?" demanded the colonel. "i guess you've got clothes enough. any rate, you needn't fret about it. you just go round to white's or jordan & marsh's, and ask for a dinner dress. i guess that'll settle it; they'll know. get some of them imported dresses. i see 'em in the window every time i pass; lots of 'em." "oh, it ain't the dress!" said mrs. lapham. "i don't suppose but what we could get along with that; and i want to do the best we can for the children; but i don't know what we're going to talk about to those people when we get there. we haven't got anything in common with them. oh, i don't say they're any better," she again made haste to say in arrest of her husband's resentment. "i don't believe they are; and i don't see why they should be. and there ain't anybody has got a better right to hold up their head than you have, silas. you've got plenty of money, and you've made every cent of it." "i guess i shouldn't amounted to much without you, persis," interposed lapham, moved to this justice by her praise. "oh, don't talk about me!" protested the wife. "now that you've made it all right about rogers, there ain't a thing in this world against you. but still, for all that, i can see--and i can feel it when i can't see it--that we're different from those people. they're well-meaning enough, and they'd excuse it, i presume, but we're too old to learn to be like them." "the children ain't," said lapham shrewdly. "no, the children ain't," admitted his wife, "and that's the only thing that reconciles me to it." "you see how pleased irene looked when i read it?" "yes, she was pleased." "and i guess penelope'll think better of it before the time comes." "oh yes, we do it for them. but whether we're doing the best thing for 'em, goodness knows. i'm not saying anything against him. irene'll be a lucky girl to get him, if she wants him. but there! i'd ten times rather she was going to marry such a fellow as you were, si, that had to make every inch of his own way, and she had to help him. it's in her!" lapham laughed aloud for pleasure in his wife's fondness; but neither of them wished that he should respond directly to it. "i guess, if it wa'n't for me, he wouldn't have a much easier time. but don't you fret! it's all coming out right. that dinner ain't a thing for you to be uneasy about. it'll pass off perfectly easy and natural." lapham did not keep his courageous mind quite to the end of the week that followed. it was his theory not to let corey see that he was set up about the invitation, and when the young man said politely that his mother was glad they were able to come, lapham was very short with him. he said yes, he believed that mrs. lapham and the girls were going. afterward he was afraid corey might not understand that he was coming too; but he did not know how to approach the subject again, and corey did not, so he let it pass. it worried him to see all the preparation that his wife and irene were making, and he tried to laugh at them for it; and it worried him to find that penelope was making no preparation at all for herself, but only helping the others. he asked her what should she do if she changed her mind at the last moment and concluded to go, and she said she guessed she should not change her mind, but if she did, she would go to white's with him and get him to choose her an imported dress, he seemed to like them so much. he was too proud to mention the subject again to her. finally, all that dress-making in the house began to scare him with vague apprehensions in regard to his own dress. as soon as he had determined to go, an ideal of the figure in which he should go presented itself to his mind. he should not wear any dress-coat, because, for one thing, he considered that a man looked like a fool in a dress-coat, and, for another thing, he had none--had none on principle. he would go in a frock-coat and black pantaloons, and perhaps a white waistcoat, but a black cravat anyway. but as soon as he developed this ideal to his family, which he did in pompous disdain of their anxieties about their own dress, they said he should not go so. irene reminded him that he was the only person without a dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner which he had taken her to some years before, and she remembered feeling awfully about it at the time. mrs. lapham, who would perhaps have agreed of herself, shook her head with misgiving. "i don't see but what you'll have to get you one, si," she said. "i don't believe they ever go without 'em to a private house." he held out openly, but on his way home the next day, in a sudden panic, he cast anchor before his tailor's door and got measured for a dress-coat. after that he began to be afflicted about his waist-coat, concerning which he had hitherto been airily indifferent. he tried to get opinion out of his family, but they were not so clear about it as they were about the frock. it ended in their buying a book of etiquette, which settled the question adversely to a white waistcoat. the author, however, after being very explicit in telling them not to eat with their knives, and above all not to pick their teeth with their forks,--a thing which he said no lady or gentleman ever did,--was still far from decided as to the kind of cravat colonel lapham ought to wear: shaken on other points, lapham had begun to waver also concerning the black cravat. as to the question of gloves for the colonel, which suddenly flashed upon him one evening, it appeared never to have entered the thoughts of the etiquette man, as lapham called him. other authors on the same subject were equally silent, and irene could only remember having heard, in some vague sort of way, that gentlemen did not wear gloves so much any more. drops of perspiration gathered on lapham's forehead in the anxiety of the debate; he groaned, and he swore a little in the compromise profanity which he used. "i declare," said penelope, where she sat purblindly sewing on a bit of dress for irene, "the colonel's clothes are as much trouble as anybody's. why don't you go to jordan & marsh's and order one of the imported dresses for yourself, father?" that gave them all the relief of a laugh over it, the colonel joining in piteously. he had an awful longing to find out from corey how he ought to go. he formulated and repeated over to himself an apparently careless question, such as, "oh, by the way, corey, where do you get your gloves?" this would naturally lead to some talk on the subject, which would, if properly managed, clear up the whole trouble. but lapham found that he would rather die than ask this question, or any question that would bring up the dinner again. corey did not recur to it, and lapham avoided the matter with positive fierceness. he shunned talking with corey at all, and suffered in grim silence. one night, before they fell asleep, his wife said to him, "i was reading in one of those books to-day, and i don't believe but what we've made a mistake if pen holds out that she won't go." "why?" demanded lapham, in the dismay which beset him at every fresh recurrence to the subject. "the book says that it's very impolite not to answer a dinner invitation promptly. well, we've done that all right,--at first i didn't know but what we had been a little too quick, may be,--but then it says if you're not going, that it's the height of rudeness not to let them know at once, so that they can fill your place at the table." the colonel was silent for a while. "well, i'm dumned," he said finally, "if there seems to be any end to this thing. if it was to do over again, i'd say no for all of us." "i've wished a hundred times they hadn't asked us; but it's too late to think about that now. the question is, what are we going to do about penelope?" "oh, i guess she'll go, at the last moment." "she says she won't. she took a prejudice against mrs. corey that day, and she can't seem to get over it." "well, then, hadn't you better write in the morning, as soon as you're up, that she ain't coming?" mrs. lapham sighed helplessly. "i shouldn't know how to get it in. it's so late now; i don't see how i could have the face." "well, then, she's got to go, that's all." "she's set she won't." "and i'm set she shall," said lapham with the loud obstinacy of a man whose women always have their way. mrs. lapham was not supported by the sturdiness of his proclamation. but she did not know how to do what she knew she ought to do about penelope, and she let matters drift. after all, the child had a right to stay at home if she did not wish to go. that was what mrs. lapham felt, and what she said to her husband next morning, bidding him let penelope alone, unless she chose herself to go. she said it was too late now to do anything, and she must make the best excuse she could when she saw mrs. corey. she began to wish that irene and her father would go and excuse her too. she could not help saying this, and then she and lapham had some unpleasant words. "look here!" he cried. "who wanted to go in for these people in the first place? didn't you come home full of 'em last year, and want me to sell out here and move somewheres else because it didn't seem to suit 'em? and now you want to put it all on me! i ain't going to stand it." "hush!" said his wife. "do you want to raise the house? i didn't put it on you, as you say. you took it on yourself. ever since that fellow happened to come into the new house that day, you've been perfectly crazy to get in with them. and now you're so afraid you shall do something wrong before 'em, you don't hardly dare to say your life's your own. i declare, if you pester me any more about those gloves, silas lapham, i won't go." "do you suppose i want to go on my own account?" he demanded furiously. "no," she admitted. "of course i don't. i know very well that you're doing it for irene; but, for goodness gracious' sake, don't worry our lives out, and make yourself a perfect laughing-stock before the children." with this modified concession from her, the quarrel closed in sullen silence on lapham's part. the night before the dinner came, and the question of his gloves was still unsettled, and in a fair way to remain so. he had bought a pair, so as to be on the safe side, perspiring in company with the young lady who sold them, and who helped him try them on at the shop; his nails were still full of the powder which she had plentifully peppered into them in order to overcome the resistance of his blunt fingers. but he was uncertain whether he should wear them. they had found a book at last that said the ladies removed their gloves on sitting down at table, but it said nothing about gentlemen's gloves. he left his wife where she stood half hook-and-eyed at her glass in her new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. before he shut his door he caught a glimpse of irene trailing up and down before the long mirror in her new dress, followed by the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. it made lapham sick, and he despised himself and all his brood for the trouble they were taking. but another glance gave him a sight of the young girl's face in the mirror, beautiful and radiant with happiness, and his heart melted again with paternal tenderness and pride. it was going to be a great pleasure to irene, and lapham felt that she was bound to cut out anything there. he was vexed with penelope that she was not going too; he would have liked to have those people hear her talk. he held his door a little open, and listened to the things she was "getting off" there to irene. he showed that he felt really hurt and disappointed about penelope, and the girl's mother made her console him the next evening before they all drove away without her. "you try to look on the bright side of it, father. i guess you'll see that it's best i didn't go when you get there. irene needn't open her lips, and they can all see how pretty she is; but they wouldn't know how smart i was unless i talked, and maybe then they wouldn't." this thrust at her father's simple vanity in her made him laugh; and then they drove away, and penelope shut the door, and went upstairs with her lips firmly shutting in a sob. xiv. the coreys were one of the few old families who lingered in bellingham place, the handsome, quiet old street which the sympathetic observer must grieve to see abandoned to boarding-houses. the dwellings are stately and tall, and the whole place wears an air of aristocratic seclusion, which mrs. corey's father might well have thought assured when he left her his house there at his death. it is one of two evidently designed by the same architect who built some houses in a characteristic taste on beacon street opposite the common. it has a wooden portico, with slender fluted columns, which have always been painted white, and which, with the delicate mouldings of the cornice, form the sole and sufficient decoration of the street front; nothing could be simpler, and nothing could be better. within, the architect has again indulged his preference for the classic; the roof of the vestibule, wide and low, rests on marble columns, slim and fluted like the wooden columns without, and an ample staircase climbs in a graceful, easy curve from the tesselated pavement. some carved venetian scrigni stretched along the wall; a rug lay at the foot of the stairs; but otherwise the simple adequacy of the architectural intention had been respected, and the place looked bare to the eyes of the laphams when they entered. the coreys had once kept a man, but when young corey began his retrenchments the man had yielded to the neat maid who showed the colonel into the reception-room and asked the ladies to walk up two flights. he had his charges from irene not to enter the drawing-room without her mother, and he spent five minutes in getting on his gloves, for he had desperately resolved to wear them at last. when he had them on, and let his large fists hang down on either side, they looked, in the saffron tint which the shop-girl said his gloves should be of, like canvased hams. he perspired with doubt as he climbed the stairs, and while he waited on the landing for mrs. lapham and irene to come down from above before going into the drawing-room, he stood staring at his hands, now open and now shut, and breathing hard. he heard quiet talking beyond the portiere within, and presently tom corey came out. "ah, colonel lapham! very glad to see you." lapham shook hands with him and gasped, "waiting for mis' lapham," to account for his presence. he had not been able to button his right glove, and he now began, with as much indifference as he could assume, to pull them both off, for he saw that corey wore none. by the time he had stuffed them into the pocket of his coat-skirt his wife and daughter descended. corey welcomed them very cordially too, but looked a little mystified. mrs. lapham knew that he was silently inquiring for penelope, and she did not know whether she ought to excuse her to him first or not. she said nothing, and after a glance toward the regions where penelope might conjecturably be lingering, he held aside the portiere for the laphams to pass, and entered the room with them. mrs. lapham had decided against low-necks on her own responsibility, and had entrenched herself in the safety of a black silk, in which she looked very handsome. irene wore a dress of one of those shades which only a woman or an artist can decide to be green or blue, and which to other eyes looks both or neither, according to their degrees of ignorance. if it was more like a ball dress than a dinner dress, that might be excused to the exquisite effect. she trailed, a delicate splendour, across the carpet in her mother's sombre wake, and the consciousness of success brought a vivid smile to her face. lapham, pallid with anxiety lest he should somehow disgrace himself, giving thanks to god that he should have been spared the shame of wearing gloves where no one else did, but at the same time despairing that corey should have seen him in them, had an unwonted aspect of almost pathetic refinement. mrs. corey exchanged a quick glance of surprise and relief with her husband as she started across the room to meet her guests, and in her gratitude to them for being so irreproachable, she threw into her manner a warmth that people did not always find there. "general lapham?" she said, shaking hands in quick succession with mrs. lapham and irene, and now addressing herself to him. "no, ma'am, only colonel," said the honest man, but the lady did not hear him. she was introducing her husband to lapham's wife and daughter, and bromfield corey was already shaking his hand and saying he was very glad to see him again, while he kept his artistic eye on irene, and apparently could not take it off. lily corey gave the lapham ladies a greeting which was physically rather than socially cold, and nanny stood holding irene's hand in both of hers a moment, and taking in her beauty and her style with a generous admiration which she could afford, for she was herself faultlessly dressed in the quiet taste of her city, and looking very pretty. the interval was long enough to let every man present confide his sense of irene's beauty to every other; and then, as the party was small, mrs. corey made everybody acquainted. when lapham had not quite understood, he held the person's hand, and, leaning urbanely forward, inquired, "what name?" he did that because a great man to whom he had been presented on the platform at a public meeting had done so to him, and he knew it must be right. a little lull ensued upon the introductions, and mrs. corey said quietly to mrs. lapham, "can i send any one to be of use to miss lapham?" as if penelope must be in the dressing-room. mrs. lapham turned fire-red, and the graceful forms in which she had been intending to excuse her daughter's absence went out of her head. "she isn't upstairs," she said, at her bluntest, as country people are when embarrassed. "she didn't feel just like coming to-night. i don't know as she's feeling very well." mrs. corey emitted a very small "o!"--very small, very cold,--which began to grow larger and hotter and to burn into mrs. lapham's soul before mrs. corey could add, "i'm very sorry. it's nothing serious, i hope?" robert chase, the painter, had not come, and mrs. james bellingham was not there, so that the table really balanced better without penelope; but mrs. lapham could not know this, and did not deserve to know it. mrs. corey glanced round the room, as if to take account of her guests, and said to her husband, "i think we are all here, then," and he came forward and gave his arm to mrs. lapham. she perceived then that in their determination not to be the first to come they had been the last, and must have kept the others waiting for them. lapham had never seen people go down to dinner arm-in-arm before, but he knew that his wife was distinguished in being taken out by the host, and he waited in jealous impatience to see if tom corey would offer his arm to irene. he gave it to that big girl they called miss kingsbury, and the handsome old fellow whom mrs. corey had introduced as her cousin took irene out. lapham was startled from the misgiving in which this left him by mrs. corey's passing her hand through his arm, and he made a sudden movement forward, but felt himself gently restrained. they went out the last of all; he did not know why, but he submitted, and when they sat down he saw that irene, although she had come in with that mr. bellingham, was seated beside young corey, after all. he fetched a long sigh of relief when he sank into his chair and felt himself safe from error if he kept a sharp lookout and did only what the others did. bellingham had certain habits which he permitted himself, and one of these was tucking the corner of his napkin into his collar; he confessed himself an uncertain shot with a spoon, and defended his practice on the ground of neatness and common-sense. lapham put his napkin into his collar too, and then, seeing that no one but bellingham did it, became alarmed and took it out again slyly. he never had wine on his table at home, and on principle he was a prohibitionist; but now he did not know just what to do about the glasses at the right of his plate. he had a notion to turn them all down, as he had read of a well-known politician's doing at a public dinner, to show that he did not take wine; but, after twiddling with one of them a moment, he let them be, for it seemed to him that would be a little too conspicuous, and he felt that every one was looking. he let the servant fill them all, and he drank out of each, not to appear odd. later, he observed that the young ladies were not taking wine, and he was glad to see that irene had refused it, and that mrs. lapham was letting it stand untasted. he did not know but he ought to decline some of the dishes, or at least leave most of some on his plate, but he was not able to decide; he took everything and ate everything. he noticed that mrs. corey seemed to take no more trouble about the dinner than anybody, and mr. corey rather less; he was talking busily to mrs. lapham, and lapham caught a word here and there that convinced him she was holding her own. he was getting on famously himself with mrs. corey, who had begun with him about his new house; he was telling her all about it, and giving her his ideas. their conversation naturally included his architect across the table; lapham had been delighted and secretly surprised to find the fellow there; and at something seymour said the talk spread suddenly, and the pretty house he was building for colonel lapham became the general theme. young corey testified to its loveliness, and the architect said laughingly that if he had been able to make a nice thing of it, he owed it to the practical sympathy of his client. "practical sympathy is good," said bromfield corey; and, slanting his head confidentially to mrs. lapham, he added, "does he bleed your husband, mrs. lapham? he's a terrible fellow for appropriations!" mrs. lapham laughed, reddening consciously, and said she guessed the colonel knew how to take care of himself. this struck lapham, then draining his glass of sauterne, as wonderfully discreet in his wife. bromfield corey leaned back in his chair a moment. "well, after all, you can't say, with all your modern fuss about it, that you do much better now than the old fellows who built such houses as this." "ah," said the architect, "nobody can do better than well. your house is in perfect taste; you know i've always admired it; and i don't think it's at all the worse for being old-fashioned. what we've done is largely to go back of the hideous style that raged after they forgot how to make this sort of house. but i think we may claim a better feeling for structure. we use better material, and more wisely; and by and by we shall work out something more characteristic and original." "with your chocolates and olives, and your clutter of bric-a-brac?" "all that's bad, of course, but i don't mean that. i don't wish to make you envious of colonel lapham, and modesty prevents my saying, that his house is prettier,--though i may have my convictions,--but it's better built. all the new houses are better built. now, your house----" "mrs. corey's house," interrupted the host, with a burlesque haste in disclaiming responsibility for it that made them all laugh. "my ancestral halls are in salem, and i'm told you couldn't drive a nail into their timbers; in fact, i don't know that you would want to do it." "i should consider it a species of sacrilege," answered seymour, "and i shall be far from pressing the point i was going to make against a house of mrs. corey's." this won seymour the easy laugh, and lapham silently wondered that the fellow never got off any of those things to him. "well," said corey, "you architects and the musicians are the true and only artistic creators. all the rest of us, sculptors, painters, novelists, and tailors, deal with forms that we have before us; we try to imitate, we try to represent. but you two sorts of artists create form. if you represent, you fail. somehow or other you do evolve the camel out of your inner consciousness." "i will not deny the soft impeachment," said the architect, with a modest air. "i dare say. and you'll own that it's very handsome of me to say this, after your unjustifiable attack on mrs. corey's property." bromfield corey addressed himself again to mrs. lapham, and the talk subdivided itself as before. it lapsed so entirely away from the subject just in hand, that lapham was left with rather a good idea, as he thought it, to perish in his mind, for want of a chance to express it. the only thing like a recurrence to what they had been saying was bromfield corey's warning mrs. lapham, in some connection that lapham lost, against miss kingsbury. "she's worse," he was saying, "when it comes to appropriations than seymour himself. depend upon it, mrs. lapham, she will give you no peace of your mind, now she's met you, from this out. her tender mercies are cruel; and i leave you to supply the content from your own scriptural knowledge. beware of her, and all her works. she calls them works of charity; but heaven knows whether they are. it don't stand to reason that she gives the poor all the money she gets out of people. i have my own belief"--he gave it in a whisper for the whole table to hear--"that she spends it for champagne and cigars." lapham did not know about that kind of talking; but miss kingsbury seemed to enjoy the fun as much as anybody, and he laughed with the rest. "you shall be asked to the very next debauch of the committee, mr. corey; then you won't dare expose us," said miss kingsbury. "i wonder you haven't been down upon corey to go to the chardon street home and talk with your indigent italians in their native tongue," said charles bellingham. "i saw in the transcript the other night that you wanted some one for the work." "we did think of mr. corey," replied miss kingsbury; "but we reflected that he probably wouldn't talk with them at all; he would make them keep still to be sketched, and forget all about their wants." upon the theory that this was a fair return for corey's pleasantry, the others laughed again. "there is one charity," said corey, pretending superiority to miss kingsbury's point, "that is so difficult, i wonder it hasn't occurred to a lady of your courageous invention." "yes?" said miss kingsbury. "what is that?" "the occupation, by deserving poor of neat habits, of all the beautiful, airy, wholesome houses that stand empty the whole summer long, while their owners are away in their lowly cots beside the sea." "yes, that is terrible," replied miss kingsbury, with quick earnestness, while her eyes grew moist. "i have often thought of our great, cool houses standing useless here, and the thousands of poor creatures stifling in their holes and dens, and the little children dying for wholesome shelter. how cruelly selfish we are!" "that is a very comfortable sentiment, miss kingsbury," said corey, "and must make you feel almost as if you had thrown open no. to the whole north end. but i am serious about this matter. i spend my summers in town, and i occupy my own house, so that i can speak impartially and intelligently; and i tell you that in some of my walks on the hill and down on the back bay, nothing but the surveillance of the local policeman prevents my offering personal violence to those long rows of close-shuttered, handsome, brutally insensible houses. if i were a poor man, with a sick child pining in some garret or cellar at the north end, i should break into one of them, and camp out on the grand piano." "surely, bromfield," said his wife, "you don't consider what havoc such people would make with the furniture of a nice house!" "that is true," answered corey, with meek conviction. "i never thought of that." "and if you were a poor man with a sick child, i doubt if you'd have so much heart for burglary as you have now," said james bellingham. "it's wonderful how patient they are," said the minister. "the spectacle of the hopeless comfort the hard-working poor man sees must be hard to bear." lapham wanted to speak up and say that he had been there himself, and knew how such a man felt. he wanted to tell them that generally a poor man was satisfied if he could make both ends meet; that he didn't envy any one his good luck, if he had earned it, so long as he wasn't running under himself. but before he could get the courage to address the whole table, sewell added, "i suppose he don't always think of it." "but some day he will think about it," said corey. "in fact, we rather invite him to think about it, in this country." "my brother-in-law," said charles bellingham, with the pride a man feels in a mentionably remarkable brother-in-law, "has no end of fellows at work under him out there at omaha, and he says it's the fellows from countries where they've been kept from thinking about it that are discontented. the americans never make any trouble. they seem to understand that so long as we give unlimited opportunity, nobody has a right to complain." "what do you hear from leslie?" asked mrs. corey, turning from these profitless abstractions to mrs. bellingham. "you know," said that lady in a lower tone, "that there is another baby?" "no! i hadn't heard of it!" "yes; a boy. they have named him after his uncle." "yes," said charles bellingham, joining in. "he is said to be a noble boy, and to resemble me." "all boys of that tender age are noble," said corey, "and look like anybody you wish them to resemble. is leslie still home-sick for the bean-pots of her native boston?" "she is getting over it, i fancy," replied mrs. bellingham. "she's very much taken up with mr. blake's enterprises, and leads a very exciting life. she says she's like people who have been home from europe three years; she's past the most poignant stage of regret, and hasn't reached the second, when they feel that they must go again." lapham leaned a little toward mrs. corey, and said of a picture which he saw on the wall opposite, "picture of your daughter, i presume?" "no; my daughter's grandmother. it's a stewart newton; he painted a great many salem beauties. she was a miss polly burroughs. my daughter is like her, don't you think?" they both looked at nanny corey and then at the portrait. "those pretty old-fashioned dresses are coming in again. i'm not surprised you took it for her. the others"--she referred to the other portraits more or less darkling on the walls--"are my people; mostly copleys." these names, unknown to lapham, went to his head like the wine he was drinking; they seemed to carry light for the moment, but a film of deeper darkness followed. he heard charles bellingham telling funny stories to irene and trying to amuse the girl; she was laughing, and seemed very happy. from time to time bellingham took part in the general talk between the host and james bellingham and miss kingsbury and that minister, mr. sewell. they talked of people mostly; it astonished lapham to hear with what freedom they talked. they discussed these persons unsparingly; james bellingham spoke of a man known to lapham for his business success and great wealth as not a gentleman; his cousin charles said he was surprised that the fellow had kept from being governor so long. when the latter turned from irene to make one of these excursions into the general talk, young corey talked to her; and lapham caught some words from which it seemed that they were speaking of penelope. it vexed him to think she had not come; she could have talked as well as any of them; she was just as bright; and lapham was aware that irene was not as bright, though when he looked at her face, triumphant in its young beauty and fondness, he said to himself that it did not make any difference. he felt that he was not holding up his end of the line, however. when some one spoke to him he could only summon a few words of reply, that seemed to lead to nothing; things often came into his mind appropriate to what they were saying, but before he could get them out they were off on something else; they jumped about so, he could not keep up; but he felt, all the same, that he was not doing himself justice. at one time the talk ran off upon a subject that lapham had never heard talked of before; but again he was vexed that penelope was not there, to have her say; he believed that her say would have been worth hearing. miss kingsbury leaned forward and asked charles bellingham if he had read tears, idle tears, the novel that was making such a sensation; and when he said no, she said she wondered at him. "it's perfectly heart-breaking, as you'll imagine from the name; but there's such a dear old-fashioned hero and heroine in it, who keep dying for each other all the way through, and making the most wildly satisfactory and unnecessary sacrifices for each other. you feel as if you'd done them yourself." "ah, that's the secret of its success," said bromfield corey. "it flatters the reader by painting the characters colossal, but with his limp and stoop, so that he feels himself of their supernatural proportions. you've read it, nanny?" "yes," said his daughter. "it ought to have been called slop, silly slop." "oh, not quite slop, nanny," pleaded miss kingsbury. "it's astonishing," said charles bellingham, "how we do like the books that go for our heart-strings. and i really suppose that you can't put a more popular thing than self-sacrifice into a novel. we do like to see people suffering sublimely." "there was talk some years ago," said james bellingham, "about novels going out." "they're just coming in!" cried miss kingsbury. "yes," said mr. sewell, the minister. "and i don't think there ever was a time when they formed the whole intellectual experience of more people. they do greater mischief than ever." "don't be envious, parson," said the host. "no," answered sewell. "i should be glad of their help. but those novels with old-fashioned heroes and heroines in them--excuse me, miss kingsbury--are ruinous!" "don't you feel like a moral wreck, miss kingsbury?" asked the host. but sewell went on: "the novelists might be the greatest possible help to us if they painted life as it is, and human feelings in their true proportion and relation, but for the most part they have been and are altogether noxious." this seemed sense to lapham; but bromfield corey asked: "but what if life as it is isn't amusing? aren't we to be amused?" "not to our hurt," sturdily answered the minister. "and the self-sacrifice painted in most novels like this----" "slop, silly slop?" suggested the proud father of the inventor of the phrase. "yes--is nothing but psychical suicide, and is as wholly immoral as the spectacle of a man falling upon his sword." "well, i don't know but you're right, parson," said the host; and the minister, who had apparently got upon a battle-horse of his, careered onward in spite of some tacit attempts of his wife to seize the bridle. "right? to be sure i am right. the whole business of love, and love-making and marrying, is painted by the novelists in a monstrous disproportion to the other relations of life. love is very sweet, very pretty----" "oh, thank you, mr. sewell," said nanny corey, in a way that set them all laughing. "but it's the affair, commonly, of very young people, who have not yet character and experience enough to make them interesting. in novels it's treated, not only as if it were the chief interest of life, but the sole interest of the lives of two ridiculous young persons; and it is taught that love is perpetual, that the glow of a true passion lasts for ever; and that it is sacrilege to think or act otherwise." "well, but isn't that true, mr. sewell?" pleaded miss kingsbury. "i have known some most estimable people who had married a second time," said the minister, and then he had the applause with him. lapham wanted to make some open recognition of his good sense, but could not. "i suppose the passion itself has been a good deal changed," said bromfield corey, "since the poets began to idealise it in the days of chivalry." "yes; and it ought to be changed again," said mr. sewell. "what! back?" "i don't say that. but it ought to be recognised as something natural and mortal, and divine honours, which belong to righteousness alone, ought not to be paid it." "oh, you ask too much, parson," laughed his host, and the talk wandered away to something else. it was not an elaborate dinner; but lapham was used to having everything on the table at once, and this succession of dishes bewildered him; he was afraid perhaps he was eating too much. he now no longer made any pretence of not drinking his wine, for he was thirsty, and there was no more water, and he hated to ask for any. the ice-cream came, and then the fruit. suddenly mrs. corey rose, and said across the table to her husband, "i suppose you will want your coffee here." and he replied, "yes; we'll join you at tea." the ladies all rose, and the gentlemen got up with them. lapham started to follow mrs. corey, but the other men merely stood in their places, except young corey, who ran and opened the door for his mother. lapham thought with shame that it was he who ought to have done that; but no one seemed to notice, and he sat down again gladly, after kicking out one of his legs which had gone to sleep. they brought in cigars with coffee, and bromfield corey advised lapham to take one that he chose for him. lapham confessed that he liked a good cigar about as well as anybody, and corey said: "these are new. i had an englishman here the other day who was smoking old cigars in the superstition that tobacco improved with age, like wine." "ah," said lapham, "anybody who had ever lived off a tobacco country could tell him better than that." with the fuming cigar between his lips he felt more at home than he had before. he turned sidewise in his chair and, resting one arm on the back, intertwined the fingers of both hands, and smoked at large ease. james bellingham came and sat down by him. "colonel lapham, weren't you with the th vermont when they charged across the river in front of pickensburg, and the rebel battery opened fire on them in the water?" lapham slowly shut his eyes and slowly dropped his head for assent, letting out a white volume of smoke from the corner of his mouth. "i thought so," said bellingham. "i was with the th massachusetts, and i sha'n't forget that slaughter. we were all new to it still. perhaps that's why it made such an impression." "i don't know," suggested charles bellingham. "was there anything much more impressive afterward? i read of it out in missouri, where i was stationed at the time, and i recollect the talk of some old army men about it. they said that death-rate couldn't be beaten. i don't know that it ever was." "about one in five of us got out safe," said lapham, breaking his cigar-ash off on the edge of a plate. james bellingham reached him a bottle of apollinaris. he drank a glass, and then went on smoking. they all waited, as if expecting him to speak, and then corey said: "how incredible those things seem already! you gentlemen know that they happened; but are you still able to believe it?" "ah, nobody feels that anything happened," said charles bellingham. "the past of one's experience doesn't differ a great deal from the past of one's knowledge. it isn't much more probable; it's really a great deal less vivid than some scenes in a novel that one read when a boy." "i'm not sure of that," said james bellingham. "well, james, neither am i," consented his cousin, helping himself from lapham's apollinaris bottle. "there would be very little talking at dinner if one only said the things that one was sure of." the others laughed, and bromfield corey remarked thoughtfully, "what astonishes the craven civilian in all these things is the abundance--the superabundance--of heroism. the cowards were the exception; the men that were ready to die, the rule." "the woods were full of them," said lapham, without taking his cigar from his mouth. "that's a nice little touch in school," interposed charles bellingham, "where the girl says to the fellow who was at inkerman, 'i should think you would be so proud of it,' and he reflects a while, and says, 'well, the fact is, you know, there were so many of us.'" "yes, i remember that," said james bellingham, smiling for pleasure in it. "but i don't see why you claim the credit of being a craven civilian, bromfield," he added, with a friendly glance at his brother-in-law, and with the willingness boston men often show to turn one another's good points to the light in company; bred so intimately together at school and college and in society, they all know these points. "a man who was out with garibaldi in ' ," continued james bellingham. "oh, a little amateur red-shirting," corey interrupted in deprecation. "but even if you choose to dispute my claim, what has become of all the heroism? tom, how many club men do you know who would think it sweet and fitting to die for their country?" "i can't think of a great many at the moment, sir," replied the son, with the modesty of his generation. "and i couldn't in ' ," said his uncle. "nevertheless they were there." "then your theory is that it's the occasion that is wanting," said bromfield corey. "but why shouldn't civil service reform, and the resumption of specie payment, and a tariff for revenue only, inspire heroes? they are all good causes." "it's the occasion that's wanting," said james bellingham, ignoring the persiflage. "and i'm very glad of it." "so am i," said lapham, with a depth of feeling that expressed itself in spite of the haze in which his brain seemed to float. there was a great deal of the talk that he could not follow; it was too quick for him; but here was something he was clear of. "i don't want to see any more men killed in my time." something serious, something sombre must lurk behind these words, and they waited for lapham to say more; but the haze closed round him again, and he remained silent, drinking apollinaris. "we non-combatants were notoriously reluctant to give up fighting," said mr. sewell, the minister; "but i incline to think colonel lapham and mr. bellingham may be right. i dare say we shall have the heroism again if we have the occasion. till it comes, we must content ourselves with the every-day generosities and sacrifices. they make up in quantity what they lack in quality, perhaps." "they're not so picturesque," said bromfield corey. "you can paint a man dying for his country, but you can't express on canvas a man fulfilling the duties of a good citizen." "perhaps the novelists will get at him by and by," suggested charles bellingham. "if i were one of these fellows, i shouldn't propose to myself anything short of that." "what? the commonplace?" asked his cousin. "commonplace? the commonplace is just that light, impalpable, aerial essence which they've never got into their confounded books yet. the novelist who could interpret the common feelings of commonplace people would have the answer to 'the riddle of the painful earth' on his tongue." "oh, not so bad as that, i hope," said the host; and lapham looked from one to the other, trying to make out what they were at. he had never been so up a tree before. "i suppose it isn't well for us to see human nature at white heat habitually," continued bromfield corey, after a while. "it would make us vain of our species. many a poor fellow in that war and in many another has gone into battle simply and purely for his country's sake, not knowing whether, if he laid down his life, he should ever find it again, or whether, if he took it up hereafter, he should take it up in heaven or hell. come, parson!" he said, turning to the minister, "what has ever been conceived of omnipotence, of omniscience, so sublime, so divine as that?" "nothing," answered the minister quietly. "god has never been imagined at all. but if you suppose such a man as that was authorised, i think it will help you to imagine what god must be." "there's sense in that," said lapham. he took his cigar out of his mouth, and pulled his chair a little toward the table, on which he placed his ponderous fore-arms. "i want to tell you about a fellow i had in my own company when we first went out. we were all privates to begin with; after a while they elected me captain--i'd had the tavern stand, and most of 'em knew me. but jim millon never got to be anything more than corporal; corporal when he was killed." the others arrested themselves in various attitudes of attention, and remained listening to lapham with an interest that profoundly flattered him. now, at last, he felt that he was holding up his end of the rope. "i can't say he went into the thing from the highest motives, altogether; our motives are always pretty badly mixed, and when there's such a hurrah-boys as there was then, you can't tell which is which. i suppose jim millon's wife was enough to account for his going, herself. she was a pretty bad assortment," said lapham, lowering his voice and glancing round at the door to make sure that it was shut, "and she used to lead jim one kind of life. well, sir," continued lapham, synthetising his auditors in that form of address, "that fellow used to save every cent of his pay and send it to that woman. used to get me to do it for him. i tried to stop him. 'why, jim,' said i, 'you know what she'll do with it.' 'that's so, cap,' says he, 'but i don't know what she'll do without it.' and it did keep her straight--straight as a string--as long as jim lasted. seemed as if there was something mysterious about it. they had a little girl,--about as old as my oldest girl,--and jim used to talk to me about her. guess he done it as much for her as for the mother; and he said to me before the last action we went into, 'i should like to turn tail and run, cap. i ain't comin' out o' this one. but i don't suppose it would do.' 'well, not for you, jim,' said i. 'i want to live,' he says; and he bust out crying right there in my tent. 'i want to live for poor molly and zerrilla'--that's what they called the little one; i dunno where they got the name. 'i ain't ever had half a chance; and now she's doing better, and i believe we should get along after this.' he set there cryin' like a baby. but he wa'n't no baby when he went into action. i hated to look at him after it was over, not so much because he'd got a ball that was meant for me by a sharpshooter--he saw the devil takin' aim, and he jumped to warn me--as because he didn't look like jim; he looked like--fun; all desperate and savage. i guess he died hard." the story made its impression, and lapham saw it. "now i say," he resumed, as if he felt that he was going to do himself justice, and say something to heighten the effect his story had produced. at the same time he was aware of a certain want of clearness. he had the idea, but it floated vague, elusive, in his brain. he looked about as if for something to precipitate it in tangible shape. "apollinaris?" asked charles bellingham, handing the bottle from the other side. he had drawn his chair closer than the rest to lapham's, and was listening with great interest. when mrs. corey asked him to meet lapham, he accepted gladly. "you know i go in for that sort of thing, anna. since leslie's affair we're rather bound to do it. and i think we meet these practical fellows too little. there's always something original about them." he might naturally have believed that the reward of his faith was coming. "thanks, i will take some of this wine," said lapham, pouring himself a glass of madeira from a black and dusty bottle caressed by a label bearing the date of the vintage. he tossed off the wine, unconscious of its preciousness, and waited for the result. that cloudiness in his brain disappeared before it, but a mere blank remained. he not only could not remember what he was going to say, but he could not recall what they had been talking about. they waited, looking at him, and he stared at them in return. after a while he heard the host saying, "shall we join the ladies?" lapham went, trying to think what had happened. it seemed to him a long time since he had drunk that wine. miss corey gave him a cup of tea, where he stood aloof from his wife, who was talking with miss kingsbury and mrs. sewell; irene was with miss nanny corey. he could not hear what they were talking about; but if penelope had come, he knew that she would have done them all credit. he meant to let her know how he felt about her behaviour when he got home. it was a shame for her to miss such a chance. irene was looking beautiful, as pretty as all the rest of them put together, but she was not talking, and lapham perceived that at a dinner-party you ought to talk. he was himself conscious of having, talked very well. he now wore an air of great dignity, and, in conversing with the other gentlemen, he used a grave and weighty deliberation. some of them wanted him to go into the library. there he gave his ideas of books. he said he had not much time for anything but the papers; but he was going to have a complete library in his new place. he made an elaborate acknowledgment to bromfield corey of his son's kindness in suggesting books for his library; he said that he had ordered them all, and that he meant to have pictures. he asked mr. corey who was about the best american painter going now. "i don't set up to be a judge of pictures, but i know what i like," he said. he lost the reserve which he had maintained earlier, and began to boast. he himself introduced the subject of his paint, in a natural transition from pictures; he said mr. corey must take a run up to lapham with him some day, and see the works; they would interest him, and he would drive him round the country; he kept most of his horses up there, and he could show mr. corey some of the finest jersey grades in the country. he told about his brother william, the judge at dubuque; and a farm he had out there that paid for itself every year in wheat. as he cast off all fear, his voice rose, and he hammered his arm-chair with the thick of his hand for emphasis. mr. corey seemed impressed; he sat perfectly quiet, listening, and lapham saw the other gentlemen stop in their talk every now and then to listen. after this proof of his ability to interest them, he would have liked to have mrs. lapham suggest again that he was unequal to their society, or to the society of anybody else. he surprised himself by his ease among men whose names had hitherto overawed him. he got to calling bromfield corey by his surname alone. he did not understand why young corey seemed so preoccupied, and he took occasion to tell the company how he had said to his wife the first time he saw that fellow that he could make a man of him if he had him in the business; and he guessed he was not mistaken. he began to tell stories of the different young men he had had in his employ. at last he had the talk altogether to himself; no one else talked, and he talked unceasingly. it was a great time; it was a triumph. he was in this successful mood when word came to him that mrs. lapham was going; tom corey seemed to have brought it, but he was not sure. anyway, he was not going to hurry. he made cordial invitations to each of the gentlemen to drop in and see him at his office, and would not be satisfied till he had exacted a promise from each. he told charles bellingham that he liked him, and assured james bellingham that it had always been his ambition to know him, and that if any one had said when he first came to boston that in less than ten years he should be hobnobbing with jim bellingham, he should have told that person he lied. he would have told anybody he lied that had told him ten years ago that a son of bromfield corey would have come and asked him to take him into the business. ten years ago he, silas lapham, had come to boston a little worse off than nothing at all, for he was in debt for half the money that he had bought out his partner with, and here he was now worth a million, and meeting you gentlemen like one of you. and every cent of that was honest money,--no speculation,--every copper of it for value received. and here, only the other day, his old partner, who had been going to the dogs ever since he went out of the business, came and borrowed twenty thousand dollars of him! lapham lent it because his wife wanted him to: she had always felt bad about the fellow's having to go out of the business. he took leave of mr. sewell with patronising affection, and bade him come to him if he ever got into a tight place with his parish work; he would let him have all the money he wanted; he had more money than he knew what to do with. "why, when your wife sent to mine last fall," he said, turning to mr. corey, "i drew my cheque for five hundred dollars, but my wife wouldn't take more than one hundred; said she wasn't going to show off before mrs. corey. i call that a pretty good joke on mrs. corey. i must tell her how mrs. lapham done her out of a cool four hundred dollars." he started toward the door of the drawing-room to take leave of the ladies; but tom corey was at his elbow, saying, "i think mrs. lapham is waiting for you below, sir," and in obeying the direction corey gave him toward another door he forgot all about his purpose, and came away without saying good-night to his hostess. mrs. lapham had not known how soon she ought to go, and had no idea that in her quality of chief guest she was keeping the others. she stayed till eleven o'clock, and was a little frightened when she found what time it was; but mrs. corey, without pressing her to stay longer, had said it was not at all late. she and irene had had a perfect time. everybody had been very polite, on the way home they celebrated the amiability of both the miss coreys and of miss kingsbury. mrs. lapham thought that mrs. bellingham was about the pleasantest person she ever saw; she had told her all about her married daughter who had married an inventor and gone to live in omaha--a mrs. blake. "if it's that car-wheel blake," said lapham proudly, "i know all about him. i've sold him tons of the paint." "pooh, papa! how you do smell of smoking!" cried irene. "pretty strong, eh?" laughed lapham, letting down a window of the carriage. his heart was throbbing wildly in the close air, and he was glad of the rush of cold that came in, though it stopped his tongue, and he listened more and more drowsily to the rejoicings that his wife and daughter exchanged. he meant to have them wake penelope up and tell her what she had lost; but when he reached home he was too sleepy to suggest it. he fell asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow, full of supreme triumph. but in the morning his skull was sore with the unconscious, night-long ache; and he rose cross and taciturn. they had a silent breakfast. in the cold grey light of the morning the glories of the night before showed poorer. here and there a painful doubt obtruded itself and marred them with its awkward shadow. penelope sent down word that she was not well, and was not coming to breakfast, and lapham was glad to go to his office without seeing her. he was severe and silent all day with his clerks, and peremptory with customers. of corey he was slyly observant, and as the day wore away he grew more restively conscious. he sent out word by his office-boy that he would like to see mr. corey for a few minutes after closing. the type-writer girl had lingered too, as if she wished to speak with him, and corey stood in abeyance as she went toward lapham's door. "can't see you to-night, zerrilla," he said bluffly, but not unkindly. "perhaps i'll call at the house, if it's important." "it is," said the girl, with a spoiled air of insistence. "well," said lapham, and, nodding to corey to enter, he closed the door upon her. then he turned to the young, man and demanded: "was i drunk last night?" xv. lapham's strenuous face was broken up with the emotions that had forced him to this question: shame, fear of the things that must have been thought of him, mixed with a faint hope that he might be mistaken, which died out at the shocked and pitying look in corey's eyes. "was i drunk?" he repeated. "i ask you, because i was never touched by drink in my life before, and i don't know." he stood with his huge hands trembling on the back of his chair, and his dry lips apart, as he stared at corey. "that is what every one understood, colonel lapham," said the young man. "every one saw how it was. don't----" "did they talk it over after i left?" asked lapham vulgarly. "excuse me," said corey, blushing, "my father doesn't talk his guests over with one another." he added, with youthful superfluity, "you were among gentlemen." "i was the only one that wasn't a gentleman there!" lamented lapham. "i disgraced you! i disgraced my family! i mortified your father before his friends!" his head dropped. "i showed that i wasn't fit to go with you. i'm not fit for any decent place. what did i say? what did i do?" he asked, suddenly lifting his head and confronting corey. "out with it! if you could bear to see it and hear it, i had ought to bear to know it!" "there was nothing--really nothing," said corey. "beyond the fact that you were not quite yourself, there was nothing whatever. my father did speak of it to me," he confessed, "when we were alone. he said that he was afraid we had not been thoughtful of you, if you were in the habit of taking only water; i told him i had not seen wine at your table. the others said nothing about you." "ah, but what did they think?" "probably what we did: that it was purely a misfortune--an accident." "i wasn't fit to be there," persisted lapham. "do you want to leave?" he asked, with savage abruptness. "leave?" faltered the young man. "yes; quit the business? cut the whole connection?" "i haven't the remotest idea of it!" cried corey in amazement. "why in the world should i?" "because you're a gentleman, and i'm not, and it ain't right i should be over you. if you want to go, i know some parties that would be glad to get you. i will give you up if you want to go before anything worse happens, and i shan't blame you. i can help you to something better than i can offer you here, and i will." "there's no question of my going, unless you wish it," said corey. "if you do----" "will you tell your father," interrupted lapham, "that i had a notion all the time that i was acting the drunken blackguard, and that i've suffered for it all day? will you tell him i don't want him to notice me if we ever meet, and that i know i'm not fit to associate with gentlemen in anything but a business way, if i am that?" "certainly i shall do nothing of the kind," retorted corey. "i can't listen to you any longer. what you say is shocking to me--shocking in a way you can't think." "why, man!" exclaimed lapham, with astonishment; "if i can stand it, you can!" "no," said corey, with a sick look, "that doesn't follow. you may denounce yourself, if you will; but i have my reasons for refusing to hear you--my reasons why i can't hear you. if you say another word i must go away." "i don't understand you," faltered lapham, in bewilderment, which absorbed even his shame. "you exaggerate the effect of what has happened," said the young man. "it's enough, more than enough, for you to have mentioned the matter to me, and i think it's unbecoming in me to hear you." he made a movement toward the door, but lapham stopped him with the tragic humility of his appeal. "don't go yet! i can't let you. i've disgusted you,--i see that; but i didn't mean to. i--i take it back." "oh, there's nothing to take back," said corey, with a repressed shudder for the abasement which he had seen. "but let us say no more about it--think no more. there wasn't one of the gentlemen present last night who didn't understand the matter precisely as my father and i did, and that fact must end it between us two." he went out into the larger office beyond, leaving lapham helpless to prevent his going. it had become a vital necessity with him to think the best of lapham, but his mind was in a whirl of whatever thoughts were most injurious. he thought of him the night before in the company of those ladies and gentlemen, and he quivered in resentment of his vulgar, braggart, uncouth nature. he recognised his own allegiance to the exclusiveness to which he was born and bred, as a man perceives his duty to his country when her rights are invaded. his eye fell on the porter going about in his shirt-sleeves to make the place fast for the night, and he said to himself that dennis was not more plebeian than his master; that the gross appetites, the blunt sense, the purblind ambition, the stupid arrogance were the same in both, and the difference was in a brute will that probably left the porter the gentler man of the two. the very innocence of lapham's life in the direction in which he had erred wrought against him in the young man's mood: it contained the insult of clownish inexperience. amidst the stings and flashes of his wounded pride, all the social traditions, all the habits of feeling, which he had silenced more and more by force of will during the past months, asserted their natural sway, and he rioted in his contempt of the offensive boor, who was even more offensive in his shame than in his trespass. he said to himself that he was a corey, as if that were somewhat; yet he knew that at the bottom of his heart all the time was that which must control him at last, and which seemed sweetly to be suffering his rebellion, secure of his submission in the end. it was almost with the girl's voice that it seemed to plead with him, to undo in him, effect by effect, the work of his indignant resentment, to set all things in another and fairer light, to give him hopes, to suggest palliations, to protest against injustices. it was in lapham's favour that he was so guiltless in the past, and now corey asked himself if it were the first time he could have wished a guest at his father's table to have taken less wine; whether lapham was not rather to be honoured for not knowing how to contain his folly where a veteran transgressor might have held his tongue. he asked himself, with a thrill of sudden remorse, whether, when lapham humbled himself in the dust so shockingly, he had shown him the sympathy to which such abandon had the right; and he had to own that he had met him on the gentlemanly ground, sparing himself and asserting the superiority of his sort, and not recognising that lapham's humiliation came from the sense of wrong, which he had helped to accumulate upon him by superfinely standing aloof and refusing to touch him. he shut his desk and hurried out into the early night, not to go anywhere, but to walk up and down, to try to find his way out of the chaos, which now seemed ruin, and now the materials out of which fine actions and a happy life might be shaped. three hours later he stood at lapham's door. at times what he now wished to do had seemed for ever impossible, and again it had seemed as if he could not wait a moment longer. he had not been careless, but very mindful of what he knew must be the feelings of his own family in regard to the laphams, and he had not concealed from himself that his family had great reason and justice on their side in not wishing him to alienate himself from their common life and associations. the most that he could urge to himself was that they had not all the reason and justice; but he had hesitated and delayed because they had so much. often he could not make it appear right that he should merely please himself in what chiefly concerned himself. he perceived how far apart in all their experiences and ideals the lapham girls and his sisters were; how different mrs. lapham was from his mother; how grotesquely unlike were his father and lapham; and the disparity had not always amused him. he had often taken it very seriously, and sometimes he said that he must forego the hope on which his heart was set. there had been many times in the past months when he had said that he must go no further, and as often as he had taken this stand he had yielded it, upon this or that excuse, which he was aware of trumping up. it was part of the complication that he should be unconscious of the injury he might be doing to some one besides his family and himself; this was the defect of his diffidence; and it had come to him in a pang for the first time when his mother said that she would not have the laphams think she wished to make more of the acquaintance than he did; and then it had come too late. since that he had suffered quite as much from the fear that it might not be as that it might be so; and now, in the mood, romantic and exalted, in which he found himself concerning lapham, he was as far as might be from vain confidence. he ended the question in his own mind by affirming to himself that he was there, first of all, to see lapham and give him an ultimate proof of his own perfect faith and unabated respect, and to offer him what reparation this involved for that want of sympathy--of humanity--which he had shown. xvi. the nova scotia second-girl who answered corey's ring said that lapham had not come home yet. "oh," said the young man, hesitating on the outer step. "i guess you better come in," said the girl, "i'll go and see when they're expecting him." corey was in the mood to be swayed by any chance. he obeyed the suggestion of the second-girl's patronising friendliness, and let her shut him into the drawing-room, while she went upstairs to announce him to penelope. "did you tell him father wasn't at home?" "yes. he seemed so kind of disappointed, i told him to come in, and i'd see when he would be in," said the girl, with the human interest which sometimes replaces in the american domestic the servile deference of other countries. a gleam of amusement passed over penelope's face, as she glanced at herself in the glass. "well," she cried finally, dropping from her shoulders the light shawl in which she had been huddled over a book when corey rang, "i will go down." "all right," said the girl, and penelope began hastily to amend the disarray of her hair, which she tumbled into a mass on the top of her little head, setting off the pale dark of her complexion with a flash of crimson ribbon at her throat. she moved across the carpet once or twice with the quaint grace that belonged to her small figure, made a dissatisfied grimace at it in the glass, caught a handkerchief out of a drawer and slid it into her pocket, and then descended to corey. the lapham drawing-room in nankeen square was in the parti-coloured paint which the colonel had hoped to repeat in his new house: the trim of the doors and windows was in light green and the panels in salmon; the walls were a plain tint of french grey paper, divided by gilt mouldings into broad panels with a wide stripe of red velvet paper running up the corners; the chandelier was of massive imitation bronze; the mirror over the mantel rested on a fringed mantel-cover of green reps, and heavy curtains of that stuff hung from gilt lambrequin frames at the window; the carpet was of a small pattern in crude green, which, at the time mrs. lapham bought it, covered half the new floors in boston. in the panelled spaces on the walls were some stone-coloured landscapes, representing the mountains and canyons of the west, which the colonel and his wife had visited on one of the early official railroad excursions. in front of the long windows looking into the square were statues, kneeling figures which turned their backs upon the company within-doors, and represented allegories of faith and prayer to people without. a white marble group of several figures, expressing an italian conception of lincoln freeing the slaves,--a latin negro and his wife,--with our eagle flapping his wings in approval, at lincoln's feet, occupied one corner, and balanced the what-not of an earlier period in another. these phantasms added their chill to that imparted by the tone of the walls, the landscapes, and the carpets, and contributed to the violence of the contrast when the chandelier was lighted up full glare, and the heat of the whole furnace welled up from the registers into the quivering atmosphere on one of the rare occasions when the laphams invited company. corey had not been in this room before; the family had always received him in what they called the sitting-room. penelope looked into this first, and then she looked into the parlour, with a smile that broke into a laugh as she discovered him standing under the single burner which the second-girl had lighted for him in the chandelier. "i don't understand how you came to be put in there," she said, as she led the way to the cozier place, "unless it was because alice thought you were only here on probation, anyway. father hasn't got home yet, but i'm expecting him every moment; i don't know what's keeping him. did the girl tell you that mother and irene were out?" "no, she didn't say. it's very good of you to see me." she had not seen the exaltation which he had been feeling, he perceived with half a sigh; it must all be upon this lower level; perhaps it was best so. "there was something i wished to say to your father----i hope," he broke off, "you're better to-night." "oh yes, thank you," said penelope, remembering that she had not been well enough to go to dinner the night before. "we all missed you very much." "oh, thank you! i'm afraid you wouldn't have missed me if i had been there." "oh yes, we should," said corey, "i assure you." they looked at each other. "i really think i believed i was saying something," said the girl. "and so did i," replied the young man. they laughed rather wildly, and then they both became rather grave. he took the chair she gave him, and looked across at her, where she sat on the other side of the hearth, in a chair lower than his, with her hands dropped in her lap, and the back of her head on her shoulders as she looked up at him. the soft-coal fire in the grate purred and flickered; the drop-light cast a mellow radiance on her face. she let her eyes fall, and then lifted them for an irrelevant glance at the clock on the mantel. "mother and irene have gone to the spanish students' concert." "oh, have they?" asked corey; and he put his hat, which he had been holding in his hand, on the floor beside his chair. she looked down at it for no reason, and then looked up at his face for no other, and turned a little red. corey turned a little red himself. she who had always been so easy with him now became a little constrained. "do you know how warm it is out-of-doors?" he asked. "no, is it warm? i haven't been out all day." "it's like a summer night." she turned her face towards the fire, and then started abruptly. "perhaps it's too warm for you here?" "oh no, it's very comfortable." "i suppose it's the cold of the last few days that's still in the house. i was reading with a shawl on when you came." "i interrupted you." "oh no. i had finished the book. i was just looking over it again." "do you like to read books over?" "yes; books that i like at all." "that was it?" asked corey. the girl hesitated. "it has rather a sentimental name. did you ever read it?--tears, idle tears." "oh yes; they were talking of that last night; it's a famous book with ladies. they break their hearts over it. did it make you cry?" "oh, it's pretty easy to cry over a book," said penelope, laughing; "and that one is very natural till you come to the main point. then the naturalness of all the rest makes that seem natural too; but i guess it's rather forced." "her giving him up to the other one?" "yes; simply because she happened to know that the other one had cared for him first. why should she have done it? what right had she?" "i don't know. i suppose that the self-sacrifice----" "but it wasn't self-sacrifice--or not self-sacrifice alone. she was sacrificing him too; and for some one who couldn't appreciate him half as much as she could. i'm provoked with myself when i think how i cried over that book--for i did cry. it's silly--it's wicked for any one to do what that girl did. why can't they let people have a chance to behave reasonably in stories?" "perhaps they couldn't make it so attractive," suggested corey, with a smile. "it would be novel, at any rate," said the girl. "but so it would in real life, i suppose," she added. "i don't know. why shouldn't people in love behave sensibly?" "that's a very serious question," said penelope gravely. "i couldn't answer it," and she left him the embarrassment of supporting an inquiry which she had certainly instigated herself. she seemed to have finally recovered her own ease in doing this. "do you admire our autumnal display, mr. corey?" "your display?" "the trees in the square. we think it's quite equal to an opening at jordan & marsh's." "ah, i'm afraid you wouldn't let me be serious even about your maples." "oh yes, i should--if you like to be serious." "don't you?" "well not about serious matters. that's the reason that book made me cry." "you make fun of everything. miss irene was telling me last night about you." "then it's no use for me to deny it so soon. i must give irene a talking to." "i hope you won't forbid her to talk about you!" she had taken up a fan from the table, and held it, now between her face and the fire, and now between her face and him. her little visage, with that arch, lazy look in it, topped by its mass of dusky hair, and dwindling from the full cheeks to the small chin, had a japanese effect in the subdued light, and it had the charm which comes to any woman with happiness. it would be hard to say how much of this she perceived that he felt. they talked about other things a while, and then she came back to what he had said. she glanced at him obliquely round her fan, and stopped moving it. "does irene talk about me?" she asked. "i think so--yes. perhaps it's only i who talk about you. you must blame me if it's wrong," he returned. "oh, i didn't say it was wrong," she replied. "but i hope if you said anything very bad of me you'll let me know what it was, so that i can reform----" "no, don't change, please!" cried the young man. penelope caught her breath, but went on resolutely,--"or rebuke you for speaking evil of dignities." she looked down at the fan, now flat in her lap, and tried to govern her head, but it trembled, and she remained looking down. again they let the talk stray, and then it was he who brought it back to themselves, as if it had not left them. "i have to talk of you," said corey, "because i get to talk to you so seldom." "you mean that i do all the talking when we're--together?" she glanced sidewise at him; but she reddened after speaking the last word. "we're so seldom together," he pursued. "i don't know what you mean----" "sometimes i've thought--i've been afraid that you avoided me." "avoided you?" "yes! tried not to be alone with me." she might have told him that there was no reason why she should be alone with him, and that it was very strange he should make this complaint of her. but she did not. she kept looking down at the fan, and then she lifted her burning face and looked at the clock again. "mother and irene will be sorry to miss you," she gasped. he instantly rose and came towards her. she rose too, and mechanically put out her hand. he took it as if to say good-night. "i didn't mean to send you away," she besought him. "oh, i'm not going," he answered simply. "i wanted to say--to say that it's i who make her talk about you. to say i----there is something i want to say to you; i've said it so often to myself that i feel as if you must know it." she stood quite still, letting him keep her hand, and questioning his face with a bewildered gaze. "you must know--she must have told you--she must have guessed----" penelope turned white, but outwardly quelled the panic that sent the blood to her heart. "i--i didn't expect--i hoped to have seen your father--but i must speak now, whatever----i love you!" she freed her hand from both of those he had closed upon it, and went back from him across the room with a sinuous spring. "me!" whatever potential complicity had lurked in her heart, his words brought her only immeasurable dismay. he came towards her again. "yes, you. who else?" she fended him off with an imploring gesture. "i thought--i--it was----" she shut her lips tight, and stood looking at him where he remained in silent amaze. then her words came again, shudderingly. "oh, what have you done?" "upon my soul," he said, with a vague smile, "i don't know. i hope no harm?" "oh, don't laugh!" she cried, laughing hysterically herself. "unless you want me to think you the greatest wretch in the world!" "i?" he responded. "for heaven's sake tell me what you mean!" "you know i can't tell you. can you say--can you put your hand on your heart and say that--you--say you never meant--that you meant me--all along?" "yes!--yes! who else? i came here to see your father, and to tell him that i wished to tell you this--to ask him----but what does it matter? you must have known it--you must have seen--and it's for you to answer me. i've been abrupt, i know, and i've startled you; but if you love me, you can forgive that to my loving you so long before i spoke." she gazed at him with parted lips. "oh, mercy! what shall i do? if it's true--what you say--you must go!" she said. "and you must never come any more. do you promise that?" "certainly not," said the young man. "why should i promise such a thing--so abominably wrong? i could obey if you didn't love me----" "oh, i don't! indeed i don't! now will you obey." "no. i don't believe you." "oh!" he possessed himself of her hand again. "my love--my dearest! what is this trouble, that you can't tell it? it can't be anything about yourself. if it is anything about any one else, it wouldn't make the least difference in the world, no matter what it was. i would be only too glad to show by any act or deed i could that nothing could change me towards you." "oh, you don't understand!" "no, i don't. you must tell me." "i will never do that." "then i will stay here till your mother comes, and ask her what it is." "ask her?" "yes! do you think i will give you up till i know why i must?" "you force me to it! will you go if i tell you, and never let any human creature know what you have said to me?" "not unless you give me leave." "that will be never. well, then----" she stopped, and made two or three ineffectual efforts to begin again. "no, no! i can't. you must go!" "i will not go!" "you said you--loved me. if you do, you will go." he dropped the hands he had stretched towards her, and she hid her face in her own. "there!" she said, turning it suddenly upon him. "sit down there. and will you promise me--on your honour--not to speak--not to try to persuade me--not to--touch me? you won't touch me?" "i will obey you, penelope." "as if you were never to see me again? as if i were dying?" "i will do what you say. but i shall see you again; and don't talk of dying. this is the beginning of life----" "no. it's the end," said the girl, resuming at last something of the hoarse drawl which the tumult of her feeling had broken into those half-articulate appeals. she sat down too, and lifted her face towards him. "it's the end of life for me, because i know now that i must have been playing false from the beginning. you don't know what i mean, and i can never tell you. it isn't my secret--it's some one else's. you--you must never come here again. i can't tell you why, and you must never try to know. do you promise?" "you can forbid me. i must do what you say." "i do forbid you, then. and you shall not think i am cruel----" "how could i think that?" "oh, how hard you make it!" corey laughed for very despair. "can i make it easier by disobeying you?" "i know i am talking crazily. but i'm not crazy." "no, no," he said, with some wild notion of comforting her; "but try to tell me this trouble! there is nothing under heaven--no calamity, no sorrow--that i wouldn't gladly share with you, or take all upon myself if i could!" "i know! but this you can't. oh, my----" "dearest! wait! think! let me ask your mother--your father----" she gave a cry. "no! if you do that, you will make me hate you! will you----" the rattling of a latch-key was heard in the outer door. "promise!" cried penelope. "oh, i promise!" "good-bye!" she suddenly flung her arms round his neck, and, pressing her cheek tight against his, flashed out of the room by one door as her father entered it by another. corey turned to him in a daze. "i--i called to speak with you--about a matter----but it's so late now. i'll--i'll see you to-morrow." "no time like the present," said lapham, with a fierceness that did not seem referable to corey. he had his hat still on, and he glared at the young man out of his blue eyes with a fire that something else must have kindled there. "i really can't now," said corey weakly. "it will do quite as well to-morrow. good night, sir." "good night," answered lapham abruptly, following him to the door, and shutting it after him. "i think the devil must have got into pretty much everybody to-night," he muttered, coming back to the room, where he put down his hat. then he went to the kitchen-stairs and called down, "hello, alice! i want something to eat!" xvii. "what's the reason the girls never get down to breakfast any more?" asked lapham, when he met his wife at the table in the morning. he had been up an hour and a half, and he spoke with the severity of a hungry man. "it seems to me they don't amount to anything. here i am, at my time of life, up the first one in the house. i ring the bell for the cook at quarter-past six every morning, and the breakfast is on the table at half-past seven right along, like clockwork, but i never see anybody but you till i go to the office." "oh yes, you do, si," said his wife soothingly. "the girls are nearly always down. but they're young, and it tires them more than it does us to get up early." "they can rest afterwards. they don't do anything after they are up," grumbled lapham. "well, that's your fault, ain't it? you oughtn't to have made so much money, and then they'd have had to work." she laughed at lapham's spartan mood, and went on to excuse the young people. "irene's been up two nights hand running, and penelope says she ain't well. what makes you so cross about the girls? been doing something you're ashamed of?" "i'll tell you when i've been doing anything to be ashamed of," growled lapham. "oh no, you won't!" said his wife jollily. "you'll only be hard on the rest of us. come now, si; what is it?" lapham frowned into his coffee with sulky dignity, and said, without looking up, "i wonder what that fellow wanted here last night?" "what fellow?" "corey. i found him here when i came home, and he said he wanted to see me; but he wouldn't stop." "where was he?" "in the sitting-room." "was pen there?" "i didn't see her." mrs. lapham paused, with her hand on the cream-jug. "why, what in the land did he want? did he say he wanted you?" "that's what he said." "and then he wouldn't stay?" "well, then, i'll tell you just what it is, silas lapham. he came here"--she looked about the room and lowered her voice--"to see you about irene, and then he hadn't the courage." "i guess he's got courage enough to do pretty much what he wants to," said lapham glumly. "all i know is, he was here. you better ask pen about it, if she ever gets down." "i guess i shan't wait for her," said mrs. lapham; and, as her husband closed the front door after him, she opened that of her daughter's room and entered abruptly. the girl sat at the window, fully dressed, and as if she had been sitting there a long time. without rising, she turned her face towards her mother. it merely showed black against the light, and revealed nothing till her mother came close to her with successive questions. "why, how long have you been up, pen? why don't you come to your breakfast? did you see mr. corey when he called last night? why, what's the matter with you? what have you been crying about?" "have i been crying?" "yes! your cheeks are all wet!" "i thought they were on fire. well, i'll tell you what's happened." she rose, and then fell back in her chair. "lock the door!" she ordered, and her mother mechanically obeyed. "i don't want irene in here. there's nothing the matter. only, mr. corey offered himself to me last night." her mother remained looking at her, helpless, not so much with amaze, perhaps, as dismay. "oh, i'm not a ghost! i wish i was! you had better sit down, mother. you have got to know all about it." mrs. lapham dropped nervelessly into the chair at the other window, and while the girl went slowly but briefly on, touching only the vital points of the story, and breaking at times into a bitter drollery, she sat as if without the power to speak or stir. "well, that's all, mother. i should say i had dreamt, it, if i had slept any last night; but i guess it really happened." the mother glanced round at the bed, and said, glad to occupy herself delayingly with the minor care: "why, you have been sitting up all night! you will kill yourself." "i don't know about killing myself, but i've been sitting up all night," answered the girl. then, seeing that her mother remained blankly silent again, she demanded, "why don't you blame me, mother? why don't you say that i led him on, and tried to get him away from her? don't you believe i did?" her mother made her no answer, as if these ravings of self-accusal needed none. "do you think," she asked simply, "that he got the idea you cared for him?" "he knew it! how could i keep it from him? i said i didn't--at first!" "it was no use," sighed the mother. "you might as well said you did. it couldn't help irene any, if you didn't." "i always tried to help her with him, even when i----" "yes, i know. but she never was equal to him. i saw that from the start; but i tried to blind myself to it. and when he kept coming----" "you never thought of me!" cried the girl, with a bitterness that reached her mother's heart. "i was nobody! i couldn't feel! no one could care for me!" the turmoil of despair, of triumph, of remorse and resentment, which filled her soul, tried to express itself in the words. "no," said the mother humbly. "i didn't think of you. or i didn't think of you enough. it did come across me sometimes that may be----but it didn't seem as if----and your going on so for irene----" "you let me go on. you made me always go and talk with him for her, and you didn't think i would talk to him for myself. well, i didn't!" "i'm punished for it. when did you--begin to care for him!" "how do i know? what difference does it make? it's all over now, no matter when it began. he won't come here any more, unless i let him." she could not help betraying her pride in this authority of hers, but she went on anxiously enough, "what will you say to irene? she's safe as far as i'm concerned; but if he don't care for her, what will you do?" "i don't know what to do," said mrs. lapham. she sat in an apathy from which she apparently could not rouse herself. "i don't see as anything can be done." penelope laughed in a pitying derision. "well, let things go on then. but they won't go on." "no, they won't go on," echoed her mother. "she's pretty enough, and she's capable; and your father's got the money--i don't know what i'm saying! she ain't equal to him, and she never was. i kept feeling it all the time, and yet i kept blinding myself." "if he had ever cared for her," said penelope, "it wouldn't have mattered whether she was equal to him or not. i'm not equal to him either." her mother went on: "i might have thought it was you; but i had got set----well! i can see it all clear enough, now it's too late. i don't know what to do." "and what do you expect me to do?" demanded the girl. "do you want me to go to irene and tell her that i've got him away from her?" "o good lord!" cried mrs. lapham. "what shall i do? what do you want i should do, pen?" "nothing for me," said penelope. "i've had it out with myself. now do the best you can for irene." "i couldn't say you had done wrong, if you was to marry him to-day." "mother!" "no, i couldn't. i couldn't say but what you had been good and faithfull all through, and you had a perfect right to do it. there ain't any one to blame. he's behaved like a gentleman, and i can see now that he never thought of her, and that it was you all the while. well, marry him, then! he's got the right, and so have you." "what about irene? i don't want you to talk about me. i can take care of myself." "she's nothing but a child. it's only a fancy with her. she'll get over it. she hain't really got her heart set on him." "she's got her heart set on him, mother. she's got her whole life set on him. you know that." "yes, that's so," said the mother, as promptly as if she had been arguing to that rather than the contrary effect. "if i could give him to her, i would. but he isn't mine to give." she added in a burst of despair, "he isn't mine to keep!" "well," said mrs. lapham, "she has got to bear it. i don't know what's to come of it all. but she's got to bear her share of it." she rose and went toward the door. penelope ran after her in a sort of terror. "you're not going to tell irene?" she gasped, seizing her mother by either shoulder. "yes, i am," said mrs. lapham. "if she's a woman grown, she can bear a woman's burden." "i can't let you tell irene," said the girl, letting fall her face on her mother's neck. "not irene," she moaned. "i'm afraid to let you. how can i ever look at her again?" "why, you haven't done anything, pen," said her mother soothingly. "i wanted to! yes, i must have done something. how could i help it? i did care for him from the first, and i must have tried to make him like me. do you think i did? no, no! you mustn't tell irene! not-- not--yet! mother! yes! i did try to get him from her!" she cried, lifting her head, and suddenly looking her mother in the face with those large dim eyes of hers. "what do you think? even last night! it was the first time i ever had him all to myself, for myself, and i know now that i tried to make him think that i was pretty and--funny. and i didn't try to make him think of her. i knew that i pleased him, and i tried to please him more. perhaps i could have kept him from saying that he cared for me; but when i saw he did--i must have seen it--i couldn't. i had never had him to myself, and for myself before. i needn't have seen him at all, but i wanted to see him; and when i was sitting there alone with him, how do i know what i did to let him feel that i cared for him? now, will you tell irene? i never thought he did care for me, and never expected him to. but i liked him. yes--i did like him! tell her that! or else i will." "if it was to tell her he was dead," began mrs. lapham absently. "how easy it would be!" cried the girl in self-mockery. "but he's worse than dead to her; and so am i. i've turned it over a million ways, mother; i've looked at it in every light you can put it in, and i can't make anything but misery out of it. you can see the misery at the first glance, and you can't see more or less if you spend your life looking at it." she laughed again, as if the hopelessness of the thing amused her. then she flew to the extreme of self-assertion. "well, i have a right to him, and he has a right to me. if he's never done anything to make her think he cared for her,--and i know he hasn't; it's all been our doing, then he's free and i'm free. we can't make her happy whatever we do; and why shouldn't i----no, that won't do! i reached that point before!" she broke again into her desperate laugh. "you may try now, mother!" "i'd best speak to your father first----" penelope smiled a little more forlornly than she had laughed. "well, yes; the colonel will have to know. it isn't a trouble that i can keep to myself exactly. it seems to belong to too many other people." her mother took a crazy encouragement from her return to her old way of saying things. "perhaps he can think of something." "oh, i don't doubt but the colonel will know just what to do!" "you mustn't be too down-hearted about it. it--it'll all come right----" "you tell irene that, mother." mrs. lapham had put her hand on the door-key; she dropped it, and looked at the girl with a sort of beseeching appeal for the comfort she could not imagine herself. "don't look at me, mother," said penelope, shaking her head. "you know that if irene were to die without knowing it, it wouldn't come right for me." "pen!" "i've read of cases where a girl gives up the man that loves her so as to make some other girl happy that the man doesn't love. that might be done." "your father would think you were a fool," said mrs. lapham, finding a sort of refuge in her strong disgust for the pseudo heroism. "no! if there's to be any giving up, let it be by the one that shan't make anybody but herself suffer. there's trouble and sorrow enough in the world, without making it on purpose!" she unlocked the door, but penelope slipped round and set herself against it. "irene shall not give up!" "i will see your father about it," said the mother. "let me out now----" "don't let irene come here!" "no. i will tell her that you haven't slept. go to bed now, and try to get some rest. she isn't up herself yet. you must have some breakfast." "no; let me sleep if i can. i can get something when i wake up. i'll come down if i can't sleep. life has got to go on. it does when there's a death in the house, and this is only a little worse." "don't you talk nonsense!" cried mrs. lapham, with angry authority. "well, a little better, then," said penelope, with meek concession. mrs. lapham attempted to say something, and could not. she went out and opened irene's door. the girl lifted her head drowsily from her pillow "don't disturb your sister when you get up, irene. she hasn't slept well----" "please don't talk! i'm almost dead with sleep!" returned irene. "do go, mamma! i shan't disturb her." she turned her face down in the pillow, and pulled the covering up over her ears. the mother slowly closed the door and went downstairs, feeling bewildered and baffled almost beyond the power to move. the time had been when she would have tried to find out why this judgment had been sent upon her. but now she could not feel that the innocent suffering of others was inflicted for her fault; she shrank instinctively from that cruel and egotistic misinterpretation of the mystery of pain and loss. she saw her two children, equally if differently dear to her, destined to trouble that nothing could avert, and she could not blame either of them; she could not blame the means of this misery to them; he was as innocent as they, and though her heart was sore against him in this first moment, she could still be just to him in it. she was a woman who had been used to seek the light by striving; she had hitherto literally worked to it. but it is the curse of prosperity that it takes work away from us, and shuts that door to hope and health of spirit. in this house, where everything had come to be done for her, she had no tasks to interpose between her and her despair. she sat down in her own room and let her hands fall in her lap,--the hands that had once been so helpful and busy,--and tried to think it all out. she had never heard of the fate that was once supposed to appoint the sorrows of men irrespective of their blamelessness or blame, before the time when it came to be believed that sorrows were penalties; but in her simple way she recognised something like that mythic power when she rose from her struggle with the problem, and said aloud to herself, "well, the witch is in it." turn which way she would, she saw no escape from the misery to come--the misery which had come already to penelope and herself, and that must come to irene and her father. she started when she definitely thought of her husband, and thought with what violence it would work in every fibre of his rude strength. she feared that, and she feared something worse--the effect which his pride and ambition might seek to give it; and it was with terror of this, as well as the natural trust with which a woman must turn to her husband in any anxiety at last, that she felt she could not wait for evening to take counsel with him. when she considered how wrongly he might take it all, it seemed as if it were already known to him, and she was impatient to prevent his error. she sent out for a messenger, whom she despatched with a note to his place of business: "silas, i should like to ride with you this afternoon. can't you come home early? persis." and she was at dinner with irene, evading her questions about penelope, when answer came that he would be at the house with the buggy at half-past two. it is easy to put off a girl who has but one thing in her head; but though mrs. lapham could escape without telling anything of penelope, she could not escape seeing how wholly irene was engrossed with hopes now turned so vain and impossible. she was still talking of that dinner, of nothing but that dinner, and begging for flattery of herself and praise of him, which her mother had till now been so ready to give. "seems to me you don't take very much interest, mamma!" she said, laughing and blushing at one point. "yes,--yes, i do," protested mrs. lapham, and then the girl prattled on. "i guess i shall get one of those pins that nanny corey had in her hair. i think it would become me, don't you?" "yes; but irene--i don't like to have you go on so, till--unless he's said something to show--you oughtn't to give yourself up to thinking----" but at this the girl turned so white, and looked such reproach at her, that she added frantically: "yes, get the pin. it is just the thing for you! but don't disturb penelope. let her alone till i get back. i'm going out to ride with your father. he'll be here in half an hour. are you through? ring, then. get yourself that fan you saw the other day. your father won't say anything; he likes to have you look well. i could see his eyes on you half the time the other night." "i should have liked to have pen go with me," said irene, restored to her normal state of innocent selfishness by these flatteries. "don't you suppose she'll be up in time? what's the matter with her that she didn't sleep?" "i don't know. better let her alone." "well," submitted irene. xviii. mrs. lapham went away to put on her bonnet and cloak, and she was waiting at the window when her husband drove up. she opened the door and ran down the steps. "don't get out; i can help myself in," and she clambered to his side, while he kept the fidgeting mare still with voice and touch. "where do you want i should go?" he asked, turning the buggy. "oh, i don't care. out brookline way, i guess. i wish you hadn't brought this fool of a horse," she gave way petulantly. "i wanted to have a talk." "when i can't drive this mare and talk too, i'll sell out altogether," said lapham. "she'll be quiet enough when she's had her spin." "well," said his wife; and while they were making their way across the city to the milldam she answered certain questions he asked about some points in the new house. "i should have liked to have you stop there," he began; but she answered so quickly, "not to-day," that he gave it up and turned his horse's head westward when they struck beacon street. he let the mare out, and he did not pull her in till he left the brighton road and struck off under the low boughs that met above one of the quiet streets of brookline, where the stone cottages, with here and there a patch of determined ivy on their northern walls, did what they could to look english amid the glare of the autumnal foliage. the smooth earthen track under the mare's hoofs was scattered with flakes of the red and yellow gold that made the air luminous around them, and the perspective was gay with innumerable tints and tones. "pretty sightly," said lapham, with a long sigh, letting the reins lie loose in his vigilant hand, to which he seemed to relegate the whole charge of the mare. "i want to talk with you about rogers, persis. he's been getting in deeper and deeper with me; and last night he pestered me half to death to go in with him in one of his schemes. i ain't going to blame anybody, but i hain't got very much confidence in rogers. and i told him so last night." "oh, don't talk to me about rogers!" his wife broke in. "there's something a good deal more important than rogers in the world, and more important than your business. it seems as if you couldn't think of anything else--that and the new house. did you suppose i wanted to ride so as to talk rogers with you?" she demanded, yielding to the necessity a wife feels of making her husband pay for her suffering, even if he has not inflicted it. "i declare----" "well, hold on, now!" said lapham. "what do you want to talk about? i'm listening." his wife began, "why, it's just this, silas lapham!" and then she broke off to say, "well, you may wait, now--starting me wrong, when it's hard enough anyway." lapham silently turned his whip over and over in his hand and waited. "did you suppose," she asked at last, "that that young corey had been coming to see irene?" "i don't know what i supposed," replied lapham sullenly. "you always said so." he looked sharply at her under his lowering brows. "well, he hasn't," said mrs. lapham; and she replied to the frown that blackened on her husband's face. "and i can tell you what, if you take it in that way i shan't speak another word." "who's takin' it what way?" retorted lapham savagely. "what are you drivin' at?" "i want you should promise that you'll hear me out quietly." "i'll hear you out if you'll give me a chance. i haven't said a word yet." "well, i'm not going to have you flying into forty furies, and looking like a perfect thunder-cloud at the very start. i've had to bear it, and you've got to bear it too." "well, let me have a chance at it, then." "it's nothing to blame anybody about, as i can see, and the only question is, what's the best thing to do about it. there's only one thing we can do; for if he don't care for the child, nobody wants to make him. if he hasn't been coming to see her, he hasn't, and that's all there is to it." "no, it ain't!" exclaimed lapham. "there!" protested his wife. "if he hasn't been coming to see her, what has he been coming for?" "he's been coming to see pen!" cried the wife. "now are you satisfied?" her tone implied that he had brought it all upon them; but at the sight of the swift passions working in his face to a perfect comprehension of the whole trouble, she fell to trembling, and her broken voice lost all the spurious indignation she had put into it. "o silas! what are we going to do about it? i'm afraid it'll kill irene." lapham pulled off the loose driving-glove from his right hand with the fingers of his left, in which the reins lay. he passed it over his forehead, and then flicked from it the moisture it had gathered there. he caught his breath once or twice, like a man who meditates a struggle with superior force and then remains passive in its grasp. his wife felt the need of comforting him, as she had felt the need of afflicting him. "i don't say but what it can be made to come out all right in the end. all i say is, i don't see my way clear yet." "what makes you think he likes pen?" he asked quietly. "he told her so last night, and she told me this morning. was he at the office to-day?" "yes, he was there. i haven't been there much myself. he didn't say anything to me. does irene know?" "no; i left her getting ready to go out shopping. she wants to get a pin like the one nanny corey had on." "o my lord!" groaned lapham. "it's been pen from the start, i guess, or almost from the start. i don't say but what he was attracted some by irene at the very first; but i guess it's been pen ever since he saw her; and we've taken up with a notion, and blinded ourselves with it. time and again i've had my doubts whether he cared for irene any; but i declare to goodness, when he kept coming, i never hardly thought of pen, and i couldn't help believing at last he did care for irene. did it ever strike you he might be after pen?" "no. i took what you said. i supposed you knew." "do you blame me, silas?" she asked timidly. "no. what's the use of blaming? we don't either of us want anything but the children's good. what's it all of it for, if it ain't for that? that's what we've both slaved for all our lives." "yes, i know. plenty of people lose their children," she suggested. "yes, but that don't comfort me any. i never was one to feel good because another man felt bad. how would you have liked it if some one had taken comfort because his boy lived when ours died? no, i can't do it. and this is worse than death, someways. that comes and it goes; but this looks as if it was one of those things that had come to stay. the way i look at it, there ain't any hope for anybody. suppose we don't want pen to have him; will that help irene any, if he don't want her? suppose we don't want to let him have either; does that help either!" "you talk," exclaimed mrs. lapham, "as if our say was going to settle it. do you suppose that penelope lapham is a girl to take up with a fellow that her sister is in love with, and that she always thought was in love with her sister, and go off and be happy with him? don't you believe but what it would come back to her, as long as she breathed the breath of life, how she'd teased her about him, as i've heard pen tease irene, and helped to make her think he was in love with her, by showing that she thought so herself? it's ridiculous!" lapham seemed quite beaten down by this argument. his huge head hung forward over his breast; the reins lay loose in his moveless hand; the mare took her own way. at last he lifted his face and shut his heavy jaws. "well?" quavered his wife. "well," he answered, "if he wants her, and she wants him, i don't see what that's got to do with it." he looked straight forward, and not at his wife. she laid her hands on the reins. "now, you stop right here, silas lapham! if i thought that--if i really believed you could be willing to break that poor child's heart, and let pen disgrace herself by marrying a man that had as good as killed her sister, just because you wanted bromfield corey's son for a son-in-law----" lapham turned his face now, and gave her a look. "you had better not believe that, persis! get up!" he called to the mare, without glancing at her, and she sprang forward. "i see you've got past being any use to yourself on this subject." "hello!" shouted a voice in front of him. "where the devil you goin' to?" "do you want to kill somebody!" shrieked his wife. there was a light crash, and the mare recoiled her length, and separated their wheels from those of the open buggy in front which lapham had driven into. he made his excuses to the occupant; and the accident relieved the tension of their feelings, and left them far from the point of mutual injury which they had reached in their common trouble and their unselfish will for their children's good. it was lapham who resumed the talk. "i'm afraid we can't either of us see this thing in the right light. we're too near to it. i wish to the lord there was somebody to talk to about it." "yes," said his wife; "but there ain't anybody." "well, i dunno," suggested lapham, after a moment; "why not talk to the minister of your church? may be he could see some way out of it." mrs. lapham shook her head hopelessly. "it wouldn't do. i've never taken up my connection with the church, and i don't feel as if i'd got any claim on him." "if he's anything of a man, or anything of a preacher, you have got a claim on him," urged lapham; and he spoiled his argument by adding, "i've contributed enough money to his church." "oh, that's nothing," said mrs. lapham. "i ain't well enough acquainted with dr. langworthy, or else i'm too well. no; if i was to ask any one, i should want to ask a total stranger. but what's the use, si? nobody could make us see it any different from what it is, and i don't know as i should want they should." it blotted out the tender beauty of the day, and weighed down their hearts ever more heavily within them. they ceased to talk of it a hundred times, and still came back to it. they drove on and on. it began to be late. "i guess we better go back, si," said his wife; and as he turned without speaking, she pulled her veil down and began to cry softly behind it, with low little broken sobs. lapham started the mare up and drove swiftly homeward. at last his wife stopped crying and began trying to find her pocket. "here, take mine, persis," he said kindly, offering her his handkerchief, and she took it and dried her eyes with it. "there was one of those fellows there the other night," he spoke again, when his wife leaned back against the cushions in peaceful despair, "that i liked the looks of about as well as any man i ever saw. i guess he was a pretty good man. it was that mr. sewell." he looked at his wife, but she did not say anything. "persis," he resumed, "i can't bear to go back with nothing settled in our minds. i can't bear to let you." "we must, si," returned his wife, with gentle gratitude. lapham groaned. "where does he live?" she asked. "on bolingbroke street. he gave me his number." "well, it wouldn't do any good. what could he say to us?" "oh, i don't know as he could say anything," said lapham hopelessly; and neither of them said anything more till they crossed the milldam and found themselves between the rows of city houses. "don't drive past the new house, si," pleaded his wife. "i couldn't bear to see it. drive--drive up bolingbroke street. we might as well see where he does live." "well," said lapham. he drove along slowly. "that's the place," he said finally, stopping the mare and pointing with his whip. "it wouldn't do any good," said his wife, in a tone which he understood as well as he understood her words. he turned the mare up to the curbstone. "you take the reins a minute," he said, handing them to his wife. he got down and rang the bell, and waited till the door opened; then he came back and lifted his wife out. "he's in," he said. he got the hitching-weight from under the buggy-seat and made it fast to the mare's bit. "do you think she'll stand with that?" asked mrs. lapham. "i guess so. if she don't, no matter." "ain't you afraid she'll take cold," she persisted, trying to make delay. "let her!" said lapham. he took his wife's trembling hand under his arm, and drew her to the door. "he'll think we're crazy," she murmured in her broken pride. "well, we are," said lapham. "tell him we'd like to see him alone a while," he said to the girl who was holding the door ajar for him, and she showed him into the reception-room, which had been the protestant confessional for many burdened souls before their time, coming, as they did, with the belief that they were bowed down with the only misery like theirs in the universe; for each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world. they were as loath to touch their trouble when the minister came in as if it were their disgrace; but lapham did so at last, and, with a simple dignity which he had wanted in his bungling and apologetic approaches, he laid the affair clearly before the minister's compassionate and reverent eye. he spared corey's name, but he did not pretend that it was not himself and his wife and their daughters who were concerned. "i don't know as i've got any right to trouble you with this thing," he said, in the moment while sewell sat pondering the case, "and i don't know as i've got any warrant for doing it. but, as i told my wife here, there was something about you--i don't know whether it was anything you said exactly--that made me feel as if you could help us. i guess i didn't say so much as that to her; but that's the way i felt. and here we are. and if it ain't all right." "surely," said sewell, "it's all right. i thank you for coming--for trusting your trouble to me. a time comes to every one of us when we can't help ourselves, and then we must get others to help us. if people turn to me at such a time, i feel sure that i was put into the world for something--if nothing more than to give my pity, my sympathy." the brotherly words, so plain, so sincere, had a welcome in them that these poor outcasts of sorrow could not doubt. "yes," said lapham huskily, and his wife began to wipe the tears again under her veil. sewell remained silent, and they waited till he should speak. "we can be of use to one another here, because we can always be wiser for some one else than we can for ourselves. we can see another's sins and errors in a more merciful light--and that is always a fairer light--than we can our own; and we can look more sanely at others' afflictions." he had addressed these words to lapham; now he turned to his wife. "if some one had come to you, mrs. lapham, in just this perplexity, what would you have thought?" "i don't know as i understand you," faltered mrs. lapham. sewell repeated his words, and added, "i mean, what do you think some one else ought to do in your place?" "was there ever any poor creatures in such a strait before?" she asked, with pathetic incredulity. "there's no new trouble under the sun," said the minister. "oh, if it was any one else, i should say--i should say--why, of course! i should say that their duty was to let----" she paused. "one suffer instead of three, if none is to blame?" suggested sewell. "that's sense, and that's justice. it's the economy of pain which naturally suggests itself, and which would insist upon itself, if we were not all perverted by traditions which are the figment of the shallowest sentimentality. tell me, mrs. lapham, didn't this come into your mind when you first learned how matters stood?" "why, yes, it flashed across me. but i didn't think it could be right." "and how was it with you, mr. lapham?" "why, that's what i thought, of course. but i didn't see my way----" "no," cried the minister, "we are all blinded, we are all weakened by a false ideal of self-sacrifice. it wraps us round with its meshes, and we can't fight our way out of it. mrs. lapham, what made you feel that it might be better for three to suffer than one?" "why, she did herself. i know she would die sooner than take him away from her." "i supposed so!" cried the minister bitterly. "and yet she is a sensible girl, your daughter?" "she has more common-sense----" "of course! but in such a case we somehow think it must be wrong to use our common-sense. i don't know where this false ideal comes from, unless it comes from the novels that befool and debauch almost every intelligence in some degree. it certainly doesn't come from christianity, which instantly repudiates it when confronted with it. your daughter believes, in spite of her common-sense, that she ought to make herself and the man who loves her unhappy, in order to assure the life-long wretchedness of her sister, whom he doesn't love, simply because her sister saw him and fancied him first! and i'm sorry to say that ninety-nine young people out of a hundred--oh, nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand!--would consider that noble and beautiful and heroic; whereas you know at the bottom of your hearts that it would be foolish and cruel and revolting. you know what marriage is! and what it must be without love on both sides." the minister had grown quite heated and red in the face. "i lose all patience!" he went on vehemently. "this poor child of yours has somehow been brought to believe that it will kill her sister if her sister does not have what does not belong to her, and what it is not in the power of all the world, or any soul in the world, to give her. her sister will suffer--yes, keenly!--in heart and in pride; but she will not die. you will suffer too, in your tenderness for her; but you must do your duty. you must help her to give up. you would be guilty if you did less. keep clearly in mind that you are doing right, and the only possible good. and god be with you!" xix. "he talked sense, persis," said lapham gently, as he mounted to his wife's side in the buggy and drove slowly homeward through the dusk. "yes, he talked sense," she admitted. but she added bitterly, "i guess, if he had it to do! oh, he's right, and it's got to be done. there ain't any other way for it. it's sense; and, yes, it's justice." they walked to their door after they left the horse at the livery stable around the corner, where lapham kept it. "i want you should send irene up to our room as soon as we get in, silas." "why, ain't you going to have any supper first?" faltered lapham with his latch-key in the lock. "no. i can't lose a minute. if i do, i shan't do it at all." "look here, persis," said her husband tenderly, "let me do this thing." "oh, you!" said his wife, with a woman's compassionate scorn for a man's helplessness in such a case. "send her right up. and i shall feel----" she stopped to spare him. then she opened the door, and ran up to her room without waiting to speak to irene, who had come into the hall at the sound of her father's key in the door. "i guess your mother wants to see you upstairs," said lapham, looking away. her mother turned round and faced the girl's wondering look as irene entered the chamber, so close upon her that she had not yet had time to lay off her bonnet; she stood with her wraps still on her arm. "irene!" she said harshly, "there is something you have got to bear. it's a mistake we've all made. he don't care anything for you. he never did. he told pen so last night. he cares for her." the sentences had fallen like blows. but the girl had taken them without flinching. she stood up immovable, but the delicate rose-light of her complexion went out and left her colourless. she did not offer to speak. "why don't you say something?" cried her mother. "do you want to kill me, irene?" "why should i want to hurt you, mamma?" the girl replied steadily, but in an alien voice. "there's nothing to say. i want to see pen a minute." she turned and left the room. as she mounted the stairs that led to her own and her sister's rooms on the floor above, her mother helplessly followed. irene went first to her own room at the front of the house, and then came out leaving the door open and the gas flaring behind her. the mother could see that she had tumbled many things out of the drawers of her bureau upon the marble top. she passed her mother, where she stood in the entry. "you can come too, if you want to, mamma," she said. she opened penelope's door without knocking, and went in. penelope sat at the window, as in the morning. irene did not go to her; but she went and laid a gold hair-pin on her bureau, and said, without looking at her, "there's a pin that i got to-day, because it was like his sister's. it won't become a dark person so well, but you can have it." she stuck a scrap of paper in the side of penelope's mirror. "there's that account of mr. stanton's ranch. you'll want to read it, i presume." she laid a withered boutonniere on the bureau beside the pin. "there's his button-hole bouquet. he left it by his plate, and i stole it." she had a pine-shaving fantastically tied up with a knot of ribbon, in her hand. she held it a moment; then, looking deliberately at penelope, she went up to her, and dropped it in her lap without a word. she turned, and, advancing a few steps, tottered and seemed about to fall. her mother sprang forward with an imploring cry, "o 'rene, 'rene, 'rene!" irene recovered herself before her mother could reach her. "don't touch me," she said icily. "mamma, i'm going to put on my things. i want papa to walk with me. i'm choking here." "i--i can't let you go out, irene, child," began her mother. "you've got to," replied the girl. "tell papa ta hurry his supper." "o poor soul! he doesn't want any supper. he knows it too." "i don't want to talk about that. tell him to get ready." she left them once more. mrs. lapham turned a hapless glance upon penelope. "go and tell him, mother," said the girl. "i would, if i could. if she can walk, let her. it's the only thing for her." she sat still; she did not even brush to the floor the fantastic thing that lay in her lap, and that sent up faintly the odour of the sachet powder with which irene liked to perfume her boxes. lapham went out with the unhappy child, and began to talk with her, crazily, incoherently, enough. she mercifully stopped him. "don't talk, papa. i don't want any one should talk with me." he obeyed, and they walked silently on and on. in their aimless course they reached the new house on the water side of beacon, and she made him stop, and stood looking up at it. the scaffolding which had so long defaced the front was gone, and in the light of the gas-lamp before it all the architectural beauty of the facade was suggested, and much of the finely felt detail was revealed. seymour had pretty nearly satisfied himself in that rich facade; certainly lapham had not stinted him of the means. "well," said the girl, "i shall never live in it," and she began to walk on. lapham's sore heart went down, as he lumbered heavily after her. "oh yes, you will, irene. you'll have lots of good times there yet." "no," she answered, and said nothing more about it. they had not talked of their trouble at all, and they did not speak of it now. lapham understood that she was trying to walk herself weary, and he was glad to hold his peace and let her have her way. she halted him once more before the red and yellow lights of an apothecary's window. "isn't there something they give you to make you sleep?" she asked vaguely. "i've got to sleep to-night!" lapham trembled. "i guess you don't want anything, irene." "yes, i do! get me something!" she retorted wilfully. "if you don't, i shall die. i must sleep." they went in, and lapham asked for something to make a nervous person sleep. irene stood poring over the show-case full of brushes and trinkets, while the apothecary put up the bromide, which he guessed would be about the best thing. she did not show any emotion; her face was like a stone, while her father's expressed the anguish of his sympathy. he looked as if he had not slept for a week; his fat eyelids drooped over his glassy eyes, and his cheeks and throat hung flaccid. he started as the apothecary's cat stole smoothly up and rubbed itself against his leg; and it was to him that the man said, "you want to take a table-spoonful of that, as long as you're awake. i guess it won't take a great many to fetch you." "all right," said lapham, and paid and went out. "i don't know but i shall want some of it," he said, with a joyless laugh. irene came closer up to him and took his arm. he laid his heavy paw on her gloved fingers. after a while she said, "i want you should let me go up to lapham to-morrow." "to lapham? why, to-morrow's sunday, irene! you can't go to-morrow." "well, monday, then. i can live through one day here." "well," said the father passively. he made no pretence of asking her why she wished to go, nor any attempt to dissuade her. "give me that bottle," she said, when he opened the door at home for her, and she ran up to her own room. the next morning irene came to breakfast with her mother; the colonel and penelope did not appear, and mrs. lapham looked sleep-broken and careworn. the girl glanced at her. "don't you fret about me, mamma," she said. "i shall get along." she seemed herself as steady and strong as rock. "i don't like to see you keeping up so, irene," replied her mother. "it'll be all the worse for you when you do break. better give way a little at the start." "i shan't break, and i've given way all i'm going to. i'm going to lapham to-morrow,--i want you should go with me, mamma,--and i guess i can keep up one day here. all about it is, i don't want you should say anything, or look anything. and, whatever i do, i don't want you should try to stop me. and, the first thing, i'm going to take her breakfast up to her. don't!" she cried, intercepting the protest on her mother's lips. "i shall not let it hurt pen, if i can help it. she's never done a thing nor thought a thing to wrong me. i had to fly out at her last night; but that's all over now, and i know just what i've got to bear." she had her way unmolested. she carried penelope's breakfast to her, and omitted no care or attention that could make the sacrifice complete, with an heroic pretence that she was performing no unusual service. they did not speak, beyond her saying, in a clear dry note, "here's your breakfast, pen," and her sister's answering, hoarsely and tremulously, "oh, thank you, irene." and, though two or three times they turned their faces toward each other while irene remained in the room, mechanically putting its confusion to rights, their eyes did not meet. then irene descended upon the other rooms, which she set in order, and some of which she fiercely swept and dusted. she made the beds; and she sent the two servants away to church as soon as they had eaten their breakfast, telling them that she would wash their dishes. throughout the morning her father and mother heard her about the work of getting dinner, with certain silences which represented the moments when she stopped and stood stock-still, and then, readjusting her burden, forced herself forward under it again. they sat alone in the family room, out of which their two girls seemed to have died. lapham could not read his sunday papers, and she had no heart to go to church, as she would have done earlier in life when in trouble. just then she was obscurely feeling that the church was somehow to blame for that counsel of mr. sewell's on which they had acted. "i should like to know," she said, having brought the matter up, "whether he would have thought it was such a light matter if it had been his own children. do you suppose he'd have been so ready to act on his own advice if it had been?" "he told us the right thing to do, persis,--the only thing. we couldn't let it go on," urged her husband gently. "well, it makes me despise pen! irene's showing twice the character that she is, this very minute." the mother said this so that the father might defend her daughter to her. he did not fail. "irene's got the easiest part, the way i look at it. and you'll see that pen'll know how to behave when the time comes." "what do you want she should do?" "i haven't got so far as that yet. what are we going to do about irene?" "what do you want pen should do," repeated mrs. lapham, "when it comes to it?" "well, i don't want she should take him, for one thing," said lapham. this seemed to satisfy mrs. lapham as to her husband, and she said in defence of corey, "why, i don't see what he's done. it's all been our doing." "never mind that now. what about irene?" "she says she's going to lapham to-morrow. she feels that she's got to get away somewhere. it's natural she should." "yes, and i presume it will be about the best thing for her. shall you go with her?" "yes." "well." he comfortlessly took up a newspaper again, and she rose with a sigh, and went to her room to pack some things for the morrow's journey. after dinner, when irene had cleared away the last trace of it in kitchen and dining-room with unsparing punctilio, she came downstairs, dressed to go out, and bade her father come to walk with her again. it was a repetition of the aimlessness of the last night's wanderings. they came back, and she got tea for them, and after that they heard her stirring about in her own room, as if she were busy about many things; but they did not dare to look in upon her, even after all the noises had ceased, and they knew she had gone to bed. "yes; it's a thing she's got to fight out by herself," said mrs lapham. "i guess she'll get along," said lapham. "but i don't want you should misjudge pen either. she's all right too. she ain't to blame." "yes, i know. but i can't work round to it all at once. i shan't misjudge her, but you can't expect me to get over it right away." "mamma," said irene, when she was hurrying their departure the next morning, "what did she tell him when he asked her?" "tell him?" echoed the mother; and after a while she added, "she didn't tell him anything." "did she say anything, about me?" "she said he mustn't come here any more." irene turned and went into her sister's room. "good-bye, pen," she said, kissing her with an effect of not seeing or touching her. "i want you should tell him all about it. if he's half a man, he won't give up till he knows why you won't have him; and he has a right to know." "it wouldn't make any difference. i couldn't have him after----" "that's for you to say. but if you don't tell him about me, i will." "'rene!" "yes! you needn't say i cared for him. but you can say that you all thought he--cared for--me." "o irene----" "don't!" irene escaped from the arms that tried to cast themselves about her. "you are all right, pen. you haven't done anything. you've helped me all you could. but i can't--yet." she went out of the room and summoned mrs. lapham with a sharp "now, mamma!" and went on putting the last things into her trunks. the colonel went to the station with them, and put them on the train. he got them a little compartment to themselves in the pullman car; and as he stood leaning with his lifted hands against the sides of the doorway, he tried to say something consoling and hopeful: "i guess you'll have an easy ride, irene. i don't believe it'll be dusty, any, after the rain last night." "don't you stay till the train starts, papa," returned the girl, in rigid rejection of his futilities. "get off, now." "well, if you want i should," he said, glad to be able to please her in anything. he remained on the platform till the cars started. he saw irene bustling about in the compartment, making her mother comfortable for the journey; but mrs. lapham did not lift her head. the train moved off, and he went heavily back to his business. from time to time during the day, when he caught a glimpse of him, corey tried to make out from his face whether he knew what had taken place between him and penelope. when rogers came in about time of closing, and shut himself up with lapham in his room, the young man remained till the two came out together and parted in their salutationless fashion. lapham showed no surprise at seeing corey still there, and merely answered, "well!" when the young man said that he wished to speak with him, and led the way back to his room. corey shut the door behind them. "i only wish to speak to you in case you know of the matter already; for otherwise i'm bound by a promise." "i guess i know what you mean. it's about penelope." "yes, it's about miss lapham. i am greatly attached to her--you'll excuse my saying it; i couldn't excuse myself if i were not." "perfectly excusable," said lapham. "it's all right." "oh, i'm glad to hear you say that!" cried the young fellow joyfully. "i want you to believe that this isn't a new thing or an unconsidered thing with me--though it seemed so unexpected to her." lapham fetched a deep sigh. "it's all right as far as i'm concerned--or her mother. we've both liked you first-rate." "yes?" "but there seems to be something in penelope's mind--i don't know--" the colonel consciously dropped his eyes. "she referred to something--i couldn't make out what--but i hoped--i hoped--that with your leave i might overcome it--the barrier--whatever it was. miss lapham--penelope--gave me the hope--that i was--wasn't--indifferent to her----" "yes, i guess that's so," said lapham. he suddenly lifted his head, and confronted the young fellow's honest face with his own face, so different in its honesty. "sure you never made up to any one else at the same time?" "never! who could imagine such a thing? if that's all, i can easily." "i don't say that's all, nor that that's it. i don't want you should go upon that idea. i just thought, may be--you hadn't thought of it." "no, i certainly hadn't thought of it! such a thing would have been so impossible to me that i couldn't have thought of it; and it's so shocking to me now that i don't know what to say to it." "well, don't take it too much to heart," said lapham, alarmed at the feeling he had excited; "i don't say she thought so. i was trying to guess--trying to----" "if there is anything i can say or do to convince you----" "oh, it ain't necessary to say anything. i'm all right." "but miss lapham! i may see her again? i may try to convince her that----" he stopped in distress, and lapham afterwards told his wife that he kept seeing the face of irene as it looked when he parted with her in the car; and whenever he was going to say yes, he could not open his lips. at the same time he could not help feeling that penelope had a right to what was her own, and sewell's words came back to him. besides, they had already put irene to the worst suffering. lapham compromised, as he imagined. "you can come round to-night and see me, if you want to," he said; and he bore grimly the gratitude that the young man poured out upon him. penelope came down to supper and took her mother's place at the head of the table. lapham sat silent in her presence as long as he could bear it. then he asked, "how do you feel to-night, pen?" "oh, like a thief," said the girl. "a thief that hasn't been arrested yet." lapham waited a while before he said, "well, now, your mother and i want you should hold up on that a while." "it isn't for you to say. it's something i can't hold up on." "yes, i guess you can. if i know what's happened, then what's happened is a thing that nobody is to blame for. and we want you should make the best of it and not the worst. heigh? it ain't going to help irene any for you to hurt yourself--or anybody else; and i don't want you should take up with any such crazy notion. as far as heard from, you haven't stolen anything, and whatever you've got belongs to you." "has he been speaking to you, father?" "your mother's been speaking to me." "has he been speaking to you?" "that's neither here nor there." "then he's broken his word, and i will never speak to him again!" "if he was any such fool as to promise that he wouldn't talk to me on a subject"--lapham drew a deep breath, and then made the plunge--"that i brought up----" "did you bring it up?" "the same as brought up--the quicker he broke his word the better; and i want you should act upon that idea. recollect that it's my business, and your mother's business, as well as yours, and we're going to have our say. he hain't done anything wrong, pen, nor anything that he's going to be punished for. understand that. he's got to have a reason, if you're not going to have him. i don't say you've got to have him; i want you should feel perfectly free about that; but i do say you've got to give him a reason." "is he coming here?" "i don't know as you'd call it coming----" "yes, you do, father!" said the girl, in forlorn amusement at his shuffling. "he's coming here to see me----" "when's he coming?" "i don't know but he's coming to-night." "and you want i should see him?" "i don't know but you'd better." "all right. i'll see him." lapham drew a long deep breath of suspicion inspired by this acquiescence. "what you going to do?" he asked presently. "i don't know yet," answered the girl sadly. "it depends a good deal upon what he does." "well," said lapham, with the hungriness of unsatisfied anxiety in his tone. when corey's card was brought into the family-room where he and penelope were sitting, he went into the parlour to find him. "i guess penelope wants to see you," he said; and, indicating the family-room, he added, "she's in there," and did not go back himself. corey made his way to the girl's presence with open trepidation, which was not allayed by her silence and languor. she sat in the chair where she had sat the other night, but she was not playing with a fan now. he came toward her, and then stood faltering. a faint smile quivered over her face at the spectacle of his subjection. "sit down, mr. corey," she said. "there's no reason why we shouldn't talk it over quietly; for i know you will think i'm right." "i'm sure of that," he answered hopefully. "when i saw that your father knew of it to-day, i asked him to let me see you again. i'm afraid that i broke my promise to you--technically----" "it had to be broken." he took more courage at her words. "but i've only come to do whatever you say, and not to be an--annoyance to you----" "yes, you have to know; but i couldn't tell you before. now they all think i should." a tremor of anxiety passed over the young man's face, on which she kept her eyes steadily fixed. "we supposed it--it was--irene----" he remained blank a moment, and then he said with a smile of relief, of deprecation, of protest, of amazement, of compassion-- "oh! never! never for an instant! how could you think such a thing? it was impossible! i never thought of her. but i see--i see! i can explain--no, there's nothing to explain! i have never knowingly done or said a thing from first to last to make you think that. i see how terrible it is!" he said; but he still smiled, as if he could not take it seriously. "i admired her beauty--who could help doing that?--and i thought her very good and sensible. why, last winter in texas, i told stanton about our meeting in canada, and we agreed--i only tell you to show you how far i always was from what you thought--that he must come north and try to see her, and--and--of course, it all sounds very silly!--and he sent her a newspaper with an account of his ranch in it----" "she thought it came from you." "oh, good heavens! he didn't tell me till after he'd done it. but he did it for a part of our foolish joke. and when i met your sister again, i only admired her as before. i can see, now, how i must have seemed to be seeking her out; but it was to talk of you with her--i never talked of anything else if i could help it, except when i changed the subject because i was ashamed to be always talking of you. i see how distressing it is for all of you. but tell me that you believe me!" "yes, i must. it's all been our mistake----" "it has indeed! but there's no mistake about my loving you, penelope," he said; and the old-fashioned name, at which she had often mocked, was sweet to her from his lips. "that only makes it worse!" she answered. "oh no!" he gently protested. "it makes it better. it makes it right. how is it worse? how is it wrong?" "can't you see? you must understand all now! don't you see that if she believed so too, and if she----" she could not go on. "did she--did your sister--think that too?" gasped corey. "she used to talk with me about you; and when you say you care for me now, it makes me feel like the vilest hypocrite in the world. that day you gave her the list of books, and she came down to nantasket, and went on about you, i helped her to flatter herself--oh! i don't see how she can forgive me. but she knows i can never forgive myself! that's the reason she can do it. i can see now," she went on, "how i must have been trying to get you from her. i can't endure it! the only way is for me never to see you or speak to you again!" she laughed forlornly. "that would be pretty hard on you, if you cared." "i do care--all the world!" "well, then, it would if you were going to keep on caring. you won't long, if you stop coming now." "is this all, then? is it the end?" "it's--whatever it is. i can't get over the thought of her. once i thought i could, but now i see that i can't. it seems to grow worse. sometimes i feel as if it would drive me crazy." he sat looking at her with lacklustre eyes. the light suddenly came back into them. "do you think i could love you if you had been false to her? i know you have been true to her, and truer still to yourself. i never tried to see her, except with the hope of seeing you too. i supposed she must know that i was in love with you. from the first time i saw you there that afternoon, you filled my fancy. do you think i was flirting with the child, or--no, you don't think that! we have not done wrong. we have not harmed any one knowingly. we have a right to each other----" "no! no! you must never speak to me of this again. if you do, i shall know that you despise me." "but how will that help her? i don't love her." "don't say that to me! i have said that to myself too much." "if you forbid me to love you, it won't make me love her," he persisted. she was about to speak, but she caught her breath without doing so, and merely stared at him. "i must do what you say," he continued. "but what good will it do her? you can't make her happy by making yourself unhappy." "do you ask me to profit by a wrong?" "not for the world. but there is no wrong!" "there is something--i don't know what. there's a wall between us. i shall dash myself against it as long as i live; but that won't break it." "oh!" he groaned. "we have done no wrong. why should we suffer from another's mistake as if it were our sin?" "i don't know. but we must suffer." "well, then, i will not, for my part, and i will not let you. if you care for me----" "you had no right to know it." "you make it my privilege to keep you from doing wrong for the right's sake. i'm sorry, with all my heart and soul, for this error; but i can't blame myself, and i won't deny myself the happiness i haven't done anything to forfeit. i will never give you up. i will wait as long as you please for the time when you shall feel free from this mistake; but you shall be mine at last. remember that. i might go away for months--a year, even; but that seems a cowardly and guilty thing, and i'm not afraid, and i'm not guilty, and i'm going to stay here and try to see you." she shook her head. "it won't change anything? don't you see that there's no hope for us?" "when is she coming back?" he asked. "i don't know. mother wants father to come and take her out west for a while." "she's up there in the country with your mother yet?" "yes." he was silent; then he said desperately-- "penelope, she is very young; and perhaps--perhaps she might meet----" "it would make no difference. it wouldn't change it for me." "you are cruel--cruel to yourself, if you love me, and cruel to me. don't you remember that night--before i spoke--you were talking of that book; and you said it was foolish and wicked to do as that girl did. why is it different with you, except that you give me nothing, and can never give me anything when you take yourself away? if it were anybody else, i am sure you would say----" "but it isn't anybody else, and that makes it impossible. sometimes i think it might be if i would only say so to myself, and then all that i said to her about you comes up----" "i will wait. it can't always come up. i won't urge you any longer now. but you will see it differently--more clearly. good-bye--no! good night! i shall come again to-morrow. it will surely come right, and, whatever happens, you have done no wrong. try to keep that in mind. i am so happy, in spite of all!" he tried to take her hand, but she put it behind her. "no, no! i can't let you--yet!" xx. after a week mrs. lapham returned, leaving irene alone at the old homestead in vermont. "she's comfortable there--as comfortable as she can be anywheres, i guess," she said to her husband as they drove together from the station, where he had met her in obedience to her telegraphic summons. "she keeps herself busy helping about the house; and she goes round amongst the hands in their houses. there's sickness, and you know how helpful she is where there's sickness. she don't complain any. i don't know as i've heard a word out of her mouth since we left home; but i'm afraid it'll wear on her, silas." "you don't look over and above well yourself, persis," said her husband kindly. "oh, don't talk about me. what i want to know is whether you can't get the time to run off with her somewhere. i wrote to you about dubuque. she'll work herself down, i'm afraid; and then i don't know as she'll be over it. but if she could go off, and be amused--see new people----" "i could make the time," said lapham, "if i had to. but, as it happens, i've got to go out west on business,--i'll tell you about it,--and i'll take irene along." "good!" said his wife. "that's about the best thing i've heard yet. where you going?" "out dubuque way." "anything the matter with bill's folks?" "no. it's business." "how's pen?" "i guess she ain't much better than irene." "he been about any?" "yes. but i can't see as it helps matters much." "tchk!" mrs. lapham fell back against the carriage cushions. "i declare, to see her willing to take the man that we all thought wanted her sister! i can't make it seem right." "it's right," said lapham stoutly; "but i guess she ain't willing; i wish she was. but there don't seem to be any way out of the thing, anywhere. it's a perfect snarl. but i don't want you should be anyways ha'sh with pen." mrs. lapham answered nothing; but when she met penelope she gave the girl's wan face a sharp look, and began to whimper on her neck. penelope's tears were all spent. "well, mother," she said, "you come back almost as cheerful as you went away. i needn't ask if 'rene's in good spirits. we all seem to be overflowing with them. i suppose this is one way of congratulating me. mrs. corey hasn't been round to do it yet." "are you--are you engaged to him, pen?" gasped her mother. "judging by my feelings, i should say not. i feel as if it was a last will and testament. but you'd better ask him when he comes." "i can't bear to look at him." "i guess he's used to that. he don't seem to expect to be looked at. well! we're all just where we started. i wonder how long it will keep up." mrs. lapham reported to her husband when he came home at night--he had left his business to go and meet her, and then, after a desolate dinner at the house, had returned to the office again--that penelope was fully as bad as irene. "and she don't know how to work it off. irene keeps doing; but pen just sits in her room and mopes. she don't even read. i went up this afternoon to scold her about the state the house was in--you can see that irene's away by the perfect mess; but when i saw her through the crack of the door i hadn't the heart. she sat there with her hands in her lap, just staring. and, my goodness! she jumped so when she saw me; and then she fell back, and began to laugh, and said she, 'i thought it was my ghost, mother!' i felt as if i should give way." lapham listened jadedly, and answered far from the point. "i guess i've got to start out there pretty soon, persis." "how soon?" "well, to-morrow morning." mrs. lapham sat silent. then, "all right," she said. "i'll get you ready." "i shall run up to lapham for irene, and then i'll push on through canada. i can get there about as quick." "is it anything you can tell me about, silas?" "yes," said lapham. "but it's a long story, and i guess you've got your hands pretty full as it is. i've been throwing good money after bad,--the usual way,--and now i've got to see if i can save the pieces." after a moment mrs. lapham asked, "is it--rogers?" "it's rogers." "i didn't want you should get in any deeper with him." "no. you didn't want i should press him either; and i had to do one or the other. and so i got in deeper." "silas," said his wife, "i'm afraid i made you!" "it's all right, persis, as far forth as that goes. i was glad to make it up with him--i jumped at the chance. i guess rogers saw that he had a soft thing in me, and he's worked it for all it was worth. but it'll all come out right in the end." lapham said this as if he did not care to talk any more about it. he added casually, "pretty near everybody but the fellows that owe me seem to expect me to do a cash business, all of a sudden." "do you mean that you've got payments to make, and that people are not paying you?" lapham winced a little. "something like that," he said, and he lighted a cigar. "but when i tell you it's all right, i mean it, persis. i ain't going to let the grass grow under my feet, though,--especially while rogers digs the ground away from the roots." "what are you going to do?" "if it has to come to that, i'm going to squeeze him." lapham's countenance lighted up with greater joy than had yet visited it since the day they had driven out to brookline. "milton k. rogers is a rascal, if you want to know; or else all the signs fail. but i guess he'll find he's got his come-uppance." lapham shut his lips so that the short, reddish-grey beard stuck straight out on them. "what's he done?" "what's he done? well, now, i'll tell you what he's done, persis, since you think rogers is such a saint, and that i used him so badly in getting him out of the business. he's been dabbling in every sort of fool thing you can lay your tongue to,--wild-cat stocks, patent-rights, land speculations, oil claims,--till he's run through about everything. but he did have a big milling property out on the line of the p. y. & x.,--saw-mills and grist-mills and lands,--and for the last eight years he's been doing a land-office business with 'em--business that would have made anybody else rich. but you can't make milton k. rogers rich, any more than you can fat a hide-bound colt. it ain't in him. he'd run through vanderbilt, jay gould, and tom scott rolled into one in less than six months, give him a chance, and come out and want to borrow money of you. well, he won't borrow any more money of me; and if he thinks i don't know as much about that milling property as he does he's mistaken. i've taken his mills, but i guess i've got the inside track; bill's kept me posted; and now i'm going out there to see how i can unload; and i shan't mind a great deal if rogers is under the load when it's off once." "i don't understand you, silas." "why, it's just this. the great lacustrine & polar railroad has leased the p. y. & x. for ninety-nine years,--bought it, practically,--and it's going to build car-works right by those mills, and it may want them. and milton k. rogers knew it when he turned 'em in on me." "well, if the road wants them, don't that make the mills valuable? you can get what you ask for them!" "can i? the p. y. & x. is the only road that runs within fifty miles of the mills, and you can't get a foot of lumber nor a pound of flour to market any other way. as long as he had a little local road like the p. y. & x. to deal with, rogers could manage; but when it come to a big through line like the g. l. & p., he couldn't stand any chance at all. if such a road as that took a fancy to his mills, do you think it would pay what he asked? no, sir! he would take what the road offered, or else the road would tell him to carry his flour and lumber to market himself." "and do you suppose he knew the g. l. & p. wanted the mills when he turned them in on you?" asked mrs. lapham aghast, and falling helplessly into his alphabetical parlance. the colonel laughed scoffingly. "well, when milton k. rogers don't know which side his bread's buttered on! i don't understand," he added thoughtfully, "how he's always letting it fall on the buttered side. but such a man as that is sure to have a screw loose in him somewhere." mrs. lapham sat discomfited. all that she could say was, "well, i want you should ask yourself whether rogers would ever have gone wrong, or got into these ways of his, if it hadn't been for your forcing him out of the business when you did. i want you should think whether you're not responsible for everything he's done since." "you go and get that bag of mine ready," said lapham sullenly. "i guess i can take care of myself. and milton k. rogers too," he added. that evening corey spent the time after dinner in his own room, with restless excursions to the library, where his mother sat with his father and sisters, and showed no signs of leaving them. at last, in coming down, he encountered her on the stairs, going up. they both stopped consciously. "i would like to speak with you, mother. i have been waiting to see you alone." "come to my room," she said. "i have a feeling that you know what i want to say," he began there. she looked up at him where he stood by the chimney-piece, and tried to put a cheerful note into her questioning "yes?" "yes; and i have a feeling that you won't like it--that you won't approve of it. i wish you did--i wish you could!" "i'm used to liking and approving everything you do, tom. if i don't like this at once, i shall try to like it--you know that--for your sake, whatever it is." "i'd better be short," he said, with a quick sigh. "it's about miss lapham." he hastened to add, "i hope it isn't surprising to you. i'd have told you before, if i could." "no, it isn't surprising. i was afraid--i suspected something of the kind." they were both silent in a painful silence. "well, mother?" he asked at last. "if it's something you've quite made up mind to----" "it is!" "and if you've already spoken to her----" "i had to do that first, of course." "there would be no use of my saying anything, even if i disliked it." "you do dislike it!" "no--no! i can't say that. of course i should have preferred it if you had chosen some nice girl among those that you had been brought up with--some friend or associate of your sisters, whose people we had known----" "yes, i understand that, and i can assure you that i haven't been indifferent to your feelings. i have tried to consider them from the first, and it kept me hesitating in a way that i'm ashamed to think of; for it wasn't quite right towards--others. but your feelings and my sisters' have been in my mind, and if i couldn't yield to what i supposed they must be, entirely----" even so good a son and brother as this, when it came to his love affair, appeared to think that he had yielded much in considering the feelings of his family at all. his mother hastened to comfort him. "i know--i know. i've seen for some time that this might happen, tom, and i have prepared myself for it. i have talked it over with your father, and we both agreed from the beginning that you were not to be hampered by our feeling. still--it is a surprise. it must be." "i know it. i can understand your feeling. but i'm sure that it's one that will last only while you don't know her well." "oh, i'm sure of that, tom. i'm sure that we shall all be fond of her,--for your sake at first, even--and i hope she'll like us." "i am quite certain of that," said corey, with that confidence which experience does not always confirm in such cases. "and your taking it as you do lifts a tremendous load off me." but he sighed so heavily, and looked so troubled, that his mother said, "well, now, you mustn't think of that any more. we wish what is for your happiness, my son, and we will gladly reconcile ourselves to anything that might have been disagreeable. i suppose we needn't speak of the family. we must both think alike about them. they have their--drawbacks, but they are thoroughly good people, and i satisfied myself the other night that they were not to be dreaded." she rose, and put her arm round his neck. "and i wish you joy, tom! if she's half as good as you are, you will both be very happy." she was going to kiss him, but something in his looks stopped her--an absence, a trouble, which broke out in his words. "i must tell you, mother! there's been a complication--a mistake--that's a blight on me yet, and that it sometimes seems as if we couldn't escape from. i wonder if you can help us! they all thought i meant--the other sister." "o tom! but how could they?" "i don't know. it seemed so glaringly plain--i was ashamed of making it so outright from the beginning. but they did. even she did, herself!" "but where could they have thought your eyes were--your taste? it wouldn't be surprising if any one were taken with that wonderful beauty; and i'm sure she's good too. but i'm astonished at them! to think you could prefer that little, black, odd creature, with her joking and----" "mother!" cried the young man, turning a ghastly face of warning upon her. "what do you mean, tom?" "did you--did--did you think so too--that it was irene i meant?" "why, of course!" he stared at her hopelessly. "o my son!" she said, for all comment on the situation. "don't reproach me, mother! i couldn't stand it." "no. i didn't mean to do that. but how--how could it happen?" "i don't know. when she first told me that they had understood it so, i laughed--almost--it was so far from me. but now when you seem to have had the same idea--did you all think so?" "yes." they remained looking at each other. then mrs. corey began: "it did pass through my mind once--that day i went to call upon them--that it might not be as we thought; but i knew so little of--of----" "penelope," corey mechanically supplied. "is that her name?--i forgot--that i only thought of you in relation to her long enough to reject the idea; and it was natural after our seeing something of the other one last year, that i might suppose you had formed some--attachment----" "yes; that's what they thought too. but i never thought of her as anything but a pretty child. i was civil to her because you wished it; and when i met her here again, i only tried to see her so that i could talk with her about her sister." "you needn't defend yourself to me, tom," said his mother, proud to say it to him in his trouble. "it's a terrible business for them, poor things," she added. "i don't know how they could get over it. but, of course, sensible people must see----" "they haven't got over it. at least she hasn't. since it's happened, there's been nothing that hasn't made me prouder and fonder of her! at first i was charmed with her--my fancy was taken; she delighted me--i don't know how; but she was simply the most fascinating person i ever saw. now i never think of that. i only think how good she is--how patient she is with me, and how unsparing she is of herself. if she were concerned alone--if i were not concerned too--it would soon end. she's never had a thought for anything but her sister's feeling and mine from the beginning. i go there,--i know that i oughtn't, but i can't help it,--and she suffers it, and tries not to let me see that she is suffering it. there never was any one like her--so brave, so true, so noble. i won't give her up--i can't. but it breaks my heart when she accuses herself of what was all my doing. we spend our time trying to reason out of it, but we always come back to it at last, and i have to hear her morbidly blaming herself. oh!" doubtless mrs. corey imagined some reliefs to this suffering, some qualifications of this sublimity in a girl she had disliked so distinctly; but she saw none in her son's behaviour, and she gave him her further sympathy. she tried to praise penelope, and said that it was not to be expected that she could reconcile herself at once to everything. "i shouldn't have liked it in her if she had. but time will bring it all right. and if she really cares for you----" "i extorted that from her." "well, then, you must look at it in the best light you can. there is no blame anywhere, and the mortification and pain is something that must be lived down. that's all. and don't let what i said grieve you, tom. you know i scarcely knew her, and i--i shall be sure to like any one you like, after all." "yes, i know," said the young man drearily. "will you tell father?" "if you wish." "he must know. and i couldn't stand any more of this, just yet--any more mistake." "i will tell him," said mrs. corey; and it was naturally the next thing for a woman who dwelt so much on decencies to propose: "we must go to call on her--your sisters and i. they have never seen her even; and she mustn't be allowed to think we're indifferent to her, especially under the circumstances." "oh no! don't go--not yet," cried corey, with an instinctive perception that nothing could be worse for him. "we must wait--we must be patient. i'm afraid it would be painful to her now." he turned away without speaking further; and his mother's eyes followed him wistfully to the door. there were some questions that she would have liked to ask him; but she had to content herself with trying to answer them when her husband put them to her. there was this comfort for her always in bromfield corey, that he never was much surprised at anything, however shocking or painful. his standpoint in regard to most matters was that of the sympathetic humorist who would be glad to have the victim of circumstance laugh with him, but was not too much vexed when the victim could not. he laughed now when his wife, with careful preparation, got the facts of his son's predicament fully under his eye. "really, bromfield," she said, "i don't see how you can laugh. do you see any way out of it?" "it seems to me that the way has been found already. tom has told his love to the right one, and the wrong one knows it. time will do the rest." "if i had so low an opinion of them all as that, it would make me very unhappy. it's shocking to think of it." "it is upon the theory of ladies and all young people," said her husband, with a shrug, feeling his way to the matches on the mantel, and then dropping them with a sign, as if recollecting that he must not smoke there. "i've no doubt tom feels himself an awful sinner. but apparently he's resigned to his sin; he isn't going to give her up." "i'm glad to say, for the sake of human nature, that she isn't resigned--little as i like her," cried mrs. corey. her husband shrugged again. "oh, there mustn't be any indecent haste. she will instinctively observe the proprieties. but come, now, anna! you mustn't pretend to me here, in the sanctuary of home, that practically the human affections don't reconcile themselves to any situation that the human sentiments condemn. suppose the wrong sister had died: would the right one have had any scruple in marrying tom, after they had both 'waited a proper time,' as the phrase is?" "bromfield, you're shocking!" "not more shocking than reality. you may regard this as a second marriage." he looked at her with twinkling eyes, full of the triumph the spectator of his species feels in signal exhibitions of human nature. "depend upon it, the right sister will be reconciled; the wrong one will be consoled; and all will go merry as a marriage bell--a second marriage bell. why, it's quite like a romance!" here he laughed outright again. "well," sighed the wife, "i could almost wish the right one, as you call her, would reject tom, i dislike her so much." "ah, now you're talking business, anna," said her husband, with his hands spread behind the back he turned comfortably to the fire. "the whole lapham tribe is distasteful to me. as i don't happen to have seen our daughter-in-law elect, i have still the hope--which you're disposed to forbid me--that she may not be quite so unacceptable as the others." "do you really feel so, bromfield?" anxiously inquired his wife. "yes--i think i do;" and he sat down, and stretched out his long legs toward the fire. "but it's very inconsistent of you to oppose the matter now, when you've shown so much indifference up to this time. you've told me, all along, that it was of no use to oppose it." "so i have. i was convinced of that at the beginning, or my reason was. you know very well that i am equal to any trial, any sacrifice, day after to-morrow; but when it comes to-day it's another thing. as long as this crisis decently kept its distance, i could look at it with an impartial eye; but now that it seems at hand, i find that, while my reason is still acquiescent, my nerves are disposed to--excuse the phrase--kick. i ask myself, what have i done nothing for, all my life, and lived as a gentleman should, upon the earnings of somebody else, in the possession of every polite taste and feeling that adorns leisure, if i'm to come to this at last? and i find no satisfactory answer. i say to myself that i might as well have yielded to the pressure all round me, and gone to work, as tom has." mrs. corey looked at him forlornly, divining the core of real repugnance that existed in his self-satire. "i assure you, my dear," he continued, "that the recollection of what i suffered from the laphams at that dinner of yours is an anguish still. it wasn't their behaviour,--they behaved well enough--or ill enough; but their conversation was terrible. mrs. lapham's range was strictly domestic; and when the colonel got me in the library, he poured mineral paint all over me, till i could have been safely warranted not to crack or scale in any climate. i suppose we shall have to see a good deal of them. they will probably come here every sunday night to tea. it's a perspective without a vanishing-point." "it may not be so bad, after all," said his wife; and she suggested for his consolation that he knew very little about the laphams yet. he assented to the fact. "i know very little about them, and about my other fellow-beings. i dare say that i should like the laphams better if i knew them better. but in any case, i resign myself. and we must keep in view the fact that this is mainly tom's affair, and if his affections have regulated it to his satisfaction, we must be content." "oh yes," sighed mrs. corey. "and perhaps it won't turn out so badly. it's a great comfort to know that you feel just as i do about it." "i do," said her husband, "and more too." it was she and her daughters who would be chiefly annoyed by the lapham connection; she knew that. but she had to begin to bear the burden by helping her husband to bear his light share of it. to see him so depressed dismayed her, and she might well have reproached him more sharply than she did for showing so much indifference, when she was so anxious, at first. but that would not have served any good end now. she even answered him patiently when he asked her, "what did you say to tom when he told you it was the other one?" "what could i say? i could do nothing, but try to take back what i had said against her." "yes, you had quite enough to do, i suppose. it's an awkward business. if it had been the pretty one, her beauty would have been our excuse. but the plain one--what do you suppose attracted him in her?" mrs. corey sighed at the futility of the question. "perhaps i did her injustice. i only saw her a few moments. perhaps i got a false impression. i don't think she's lacking in sense, and that's a great thing. she'll be quick to see that we don't mean unkindness, and can't, by anything we say or do, when she's tom's wife." she pronounced the distasteful word with courage, and went on: "the pretty one might not have been able to see that. she might have got it into her head that we were looking down on her; and those insipid people are terribly stubborn. we can come to some understanding with this one; i'm sure of that." she ended by declaring that it was now their duty to help tom out of his terrible predicament. "oh, even the lapham cloud has a silver lining," said corey. "in fact, it seems really to have all turned out for the best, anna; though it's rather curious to find you the champion of the lapham side, at last. confess, now, that the right girl has secretly been your choice all along, and that while you sympathise with the wrong one, you rejoice in the tenacity with which the right one is clinging to her own!" he added with final seriousness, "it's just that she should, and, so far as i understand the case, i respect her for it." "oh yes," sighed mrs. corey. "it's natural, and it's right." but she added, "i suppose they're glad of him on any terms." "that is what i have been taught to believe," said her husband. "when shall we see our daughter-in-law elect? i find myself rather impatient to have that part of it over." mrs. corey hesitated. "tom thinks we had better not call, just yet." "she has told him of your terrible behaviour when you called before?" "no, bromfield! she couldn't be so vulgar as that?" "but anything short of it?" xxi. lapham was gone a fortnight. he was in a sullen humour when he came back, and kept himself shut close within his own den at the office the first day. he entered it in the morning without a word to his clerks as he passed through the outer room, and he made no sign throughout the forenoon, except to strike savagely on his desk-bell from time to time, and send out to walker for some book of accounts or a letter-file. his boy confidentially reported to walker that the old man seemed to have got a lot of papers round; and at lunch the book-keeper said to corey, at the little table which they had taken in a corner together, in default of seats at the counter, "well, sir, i guess there's a cold wave coming." corey looked up innocently, and said, "i haven't read the weather report." "yes, sir," walker continued, "it's coming. areas of rain along the whole coast, and increased pressure in the region of the private office. storm-signals up at the old man's door now." corey perceived that he was speaking figuratively, and that his meteorology was entirely personal to lapham. "what do you mean?" he asked, without vivid interest in the allegory, his mind being full of his own tragi-comedy. "why, just this: i guess the old man's takin' in sail. and i guess he's got to. as i told you the first time we talked about him, there don't any one know one-quarter as much about the old man's business as the old man does himself; and i ain't betraying any confidence when i say that i guess that old partner of his has got pretty deep into his books. i guess he's over head and ears in 'em, and the old man's gone in after him, and he's got a drownin' man's grip round his neck. there seems to be a kind of a lull--kind of a dead calm, i call it--in the paint market just now; and then again a ten-hundred-thousand-dollar man don't build a hundred-thousand-dollar house without feeling the drain, unless there's a regular boom. and just now there ain't any boom at all. oh, i don't say but what the old man's got anchors to windward; guess he has; but if he's goin' to leave me his money, i wish he'd left it six weeks ago. yes, sir, i guess there's a cold wave comin'; but you can't generally 'most always tell, as a usual thing, where the old man's concerned, and it's only a guess." walker began to feed in his breaded chop with the same nervous excitement with which he abandoned himself to the slangy and figurative excesses of his talks. corey had listened with a miserable curiosity and compassion up to a certain moment, when a broad light of hope flashed upon him. it came from lapham's potential ruin; and the way out of the labyrinth that had hitherto seemed so hopeless was clear enough, if another's disaster would befriend him, and give him the opportunity to prove the unselfishness of his constancy. he thought of the sum of money that was his own, and that he might offer to lend, or practically give, if the time came; and with his crude hopes and purposes formlessly exulting in his heart, he kept on listening with an unchanged countenance. walker could not rest till he had developed the whole situation, so far as he knew it. "look at the stock we've got on hand. there's going to be an awful shrinkage on that, now! and when everybody is shutting down, or running half-time, the works up at lapham are going full chip, just the same as ever. well, it's his pride. i don't say but what it's a good sort of pride, but he likes to make his brags that the fire's never been out in the works since they started, and that no man's work or wages has ever been cut down yet at lapham, it don't matter what the times are. of course," explained walker, "i shouldn't talk so to everybody; don't know as i should talk so to anybody but you, mr. corey." "of course," assented corey. "little off your feed to-day," said walker, glancing at corey's plate. "i got up with a headache." "well, sir, if you're like me you'll carry it round all day, then. i don't know a much meaner thing than a headache--unless it's earache, or toothache, or some other kind of ache i'm pretty hard to suit, when it comes to diseases. notice how yellow the old man looked when he came in this morning? i don't like to see a man of his build look yellow--much." about the middle of the afternoon the dust-coloured face of rogers, now familiar to lapham's clerks, showed itself among them. "has colonel lapham returned yet?" he asked, in his dry, wooden tones, of lapham's boy. "yes, he's in his office," said the boy; and as rogers advanced, he rose and added, "i don't know as you can see him to-day. his orders are not to let anybody in." "oh, indeed!" said rogers; "i think he will see me!" and he pressed forward. "well, i'll have to ask," returned the boy; and hastily preceding rogers, he put his head in at lapham's door, and then withdrew it. "please to sit down," he said; "he'll see you pretty soon;" and, with an air of some surprise, rogers obeyed. his sere, dull-brown whiskers and the moustache closing over both lips were incongruously and illogically clerical in effect, and the effect was heightened for no reason by the parchment texture of his skin; the baldness extending to the crown of his head was like a baldness made up for the stage. what his face expressed chiefly was a bland and beneficent caution. here, you must have said to yourself, is a man of just, sober, and prudent views, fixed purposes, and the good citizenship that avoids debt and hazard of every kind. "what do you want?" asked lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair as rogers entered his room, and pushing the door shut with his foot, without rising. rogers took the chair that was not offered him, and sat with his hat-brim on his knees, and its crown pointed towards lapham. "i want to know what you are going to do," he answered with sufficient self-possession. "i'll tell you, first, what i've done," said lapham. "i've been to dubuque, and i've found out all about that milling property you turned in on me. did you know that the g. l. & p. had leased the p. y. & x.?" "i some suspected that it might." "did you know it when you turned the property in on me? did you know that the g. l. & p. wanted to buy the mills?" "i presumed the road would give a fair price for them," said rogers, winking his eyes in outward expression of inwardly blinking the point. "you lie," said lapham, as quietly as if correcting him in a slight error; and rogers took the word with equal sang froid. "you knew the road wouldn't give a fair price for the mills. you knew it would give what it chose, and that i couldn't help myself, when you let me take them. you're a thief, milton k. rogers, and you stole money i lent you." rogers sat listening, as if respectfully considering the statements. "you knew how i felt about that old matter--or my wife did; and that i wanted to make it up to you, if you felt anyway badly used. and you took advantage of it. you've got money out of me, in the first place, on securities that wa'n't worth thirty-five cents on the dollar, and you've let me in for this thing, and that thing, and you've bled me every time. and all i've got to show for it is a milling property on a line of road that can squeeze me, whenever it wants to, as dry as it pleases. and you want to know what i'm going to do? i'm going to squeeze you. i'm going to sell these collaterals of yours,"--he touched a bundle of papers among others that littered his desk,--"and i'm going to let the mills go for what they'll fetch. i ain't going to fight the g. l. & p." lapham wheeled about in his chair and turned his burly back on his visitor, who sat wholly unmoved. "there are some parties," he began, with a dry tranquillity ignoring lapham's words, as if they had been an outburst against some third person, who probably merited them, but in whom he was so little interested that he had been obliged to use patience in listening to his condemnation,--"there are some english parties who have been making inquiries in regard to those mills." "i guess you're lying, rogers," said lapham, without looking round. "well, all that i have to ask is that you will not act hastily." "i see you don't think i'm in earnest!" cried lapham, facing fiercely about. "you think i'm fooling, do you?" he struck his bell, and "william," he ordered the boy who answered it, and who stood waiting while he dashed off a note to the brokers and enclosed it with the bundle of securities in a large envelope, "take these down to gallop & paddock's, in state street, right away. now go!" he said to rogers, when the boy had closed the door after him; and he turned once more to his desk. rogers rose from his chair, and stood with his hat in his hand. he was not merely dispassionate in his attitude and expression, he was impartial. he wore the air of a man who was ready to return to business whenever the wayward mood of his interlocutor permitted. "then i understand," he said, "that you will take no action in regard to the mills till i have seen the parties i speak of." lapham faced about once more, and sat looking up into the visage of rogers in silence. "i wonder what you're up to," he said at last; "i should like to know." but as rogers made no sign of gratifying his curiosity, and treated this last remark of lapham's as of the irrelevance of all the rest, he said, frowning, "you bring me a party that will give me enough for those mills to clear me of you, and i'll talk to you. but don't you come here with any man of straw. and i'll give you just twenty-four hours to prove yourself a swindler again." once more lapham turned his back, and rogers, after looking thoughtfully into his hat a moment, cleared his throat, and quietly withdrew, maintaining to the last his unprejudiced demeanour. lapham was not again heard from, as walker phrased it, during the afternoon, except when the last mail was taken in to him; then the sound of rending envelopes, mixed with that of what seemed suppressed swearing, penetrated to the outer office. somewhat earlier than the usual hour for closing, he appeared there with his hat on and his overcoat buttoned about him. he said briefly to his boy, "william, i shan't be back again this afternoon," and then went to miss dewey and left a number of letters on her table to be copied, and went out. nothing had been said, but a sense of trouble subtly diffused itself through those who saw him go out. that evening as he sat down with his wife alone at tea, he asked, "ain't pen coming to supper?" "no, she ain't," said his wife. "i don't know as i like the way she's going on, any too well. i'm afraid, if she keeps on, she'll be down sick. she's got deeper feelings than irene." lapham said nothing, but having helped himself to the abundance of his table in his usual fashion, he sat and looked at his plate with an indifference that did not escape the notice of his wife. "what's the matter with you?" she asked. "nothing. i haven't got any appetite." "what's the matter?" she persisted. "trouble's the matter; bad luck and lots of it's the matter," said lapham. "i haven't ever hid anything from you, persis, well you asked me, and it's too late to begin now. i'm in a fix. i'll tell you what kind of a fix, if you think it'll do you any good; but i guess you'll be satisfied to know that it's a fix." "how much of a one?" she asked with a look of grave, steady courage in her eyes. "well, i don't know as i can tell, just yet," said lapham, avoiding this look. "things have been dull all the fall, but i thought they'd brisk up come winter. they haven't. there have been a lot of failures, and some of 'em owed me, and some of 'em had me on their paper; and----" lapham stopped. "and what?" prompted his wife. he hesitated before he added, "and then--rogers." "i'm to blame for that," said mrs. lapham. "i forced you to it." "no; i was as willing to go into it as what you were," answered lapham. "i don't want to blame anybody." mrs. lapham had a woman's passion for fixing responsibility; she could not help saying, as soon as acquitted, "i warned you against him, silas. i told you not to let him get in any deeper with you." "oh yes. i had to help him to try to get my money back. i might as well poured water into a sieve. and now--" lapham stopped. "don't be afraid to speak out to me, silas lapham. if it comes to the worst, i want to know it--i've got to know it. what did i ever care for the money? i've had a happy home with you ever since we were married, and i guess i shall have as long as you live, whether we go on to the back bay, or go back to the old house at lapham. i know who's to blame, and i blame myself. it was my forcing rogers on to you." she came back to this with her helpless longing, inbred in all puritan souls, to have some one specifically suffer for the evil in the world, even if it must be herself. "it hasn't come to the worst yet, persis," said her husband. "but i shall have to hold up on the new house a little while, till i can see where i am." "i shouldn't care if we had to sell it," cried his wife, in passionate self-condemnation. "i should be glad if we had to, as far as i'm concerned." "i shouldn't," said lapham. "i know!" said his wife; and she remembered ruefully how his heart was set on it. he sat musing. "well, i guess it's going to come out all right in the end. or, if it ain't," he sighed, "we can't help it. may be pen needn't worry so much about corey, after all," he continued, with a bitter irony new to him. "it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. and there's a chance," he ended, with a still bitterer laugh, "that rogers will come to time, after all." "i don't believe it!" exclaimed mrs. lapham, with a gleam of hope in her eyes. "what chance?" "one in ten million," said lapham; and her face fell again. "he says there are some english parties after him to buy these mills." "well?" "well, i gave him twenty-four hours to prove himself a liar." "you don't believe there are any such parties?" "not in this world." "but if there were?" "well, if there were, persis----but pshaw!" "no, no!" she pleaded eagerly. "it don't seem as if he could be such a villain. what would be the use of his pretending? if he brought the parties to you." "well," said lapham scornfully, "i'd let them have the mills at the price rogers turned 'em in on me at. i don't want to make anything on 'em. but guess i shall hear from the g. l. & p. first. and when they make their offer, i guess i'll have to accept it, whatever it is. i don't think they'll have a great many competitors." mrs. lapham could not give up her hope. "if you could get your price from those english parties before they knew that the g. l. & p. wanted to buy the mills, would it let you out with rogers?" "just about," said lapham. "then i know he'll move heaven and earth to bring it about. i know you won't be allowed to suffer for doing him a kindness, silas. he can't be so ungrateful! why, why should he pretend to have any such parties in view when he hasn't? don't you be down-hearted, si. you'll see that he'll be round with them to-morrow." lapham laughed, but she urged so many reasons for her belief in rogers that lapham began to rekindle his own faith a little. he ended by asking for a hot cup of tea; and mrs. lapham sent the pot out and had a fresh one steeped for him. after that he made a hearty supper in the revulsion from his entire despair; and they fell asleep that night talking hopefully of his affairs, which he laid before her fully, as he used to do when he first started in business. that brought the old times back, and he said: "if this had happened then, i shouldn't have cared much. i was young then, and i wasn't afraid of anything. but i noticed that after i passed fifty i began to get scared easier. i don't believe i could pick up, now, from a regular knock-down." "pshaw! you scared, silas lapham?" cried his wife proudly. "i should like to see the thing that ever scared you; or the knockdown that you couldn't pick up from!" "is that so, persis?" he asked, with the joy her courage gave him. in the middle of the night she called to him, in a voice which the darkness rendered still more deeply troubled: "are you awake, silas?" "yes; i'm awake." "i've been thinking about those english parties, si----" "so've i." "and i can't make it out but what you'd be just as bad as rogers, every bit and grain, if you were to let them have the mills----" "and not tell 'em what the chances were with the g. l. & p.? i thought of that, and you needn't be afraid." she began to bewail herself, and to sob convulsively: "o silas! o silas!" heaven knows in what measure the passion of her soul was mired with pride in her husband's honesty, relief from an apprehended struggle, and pity for him. "hush, hush, persis!" he besought her. "you'll wake pen if you keep on that way. don't cry any more! you mustn't." "oh, let me cry, silas! it'll help me. i shall be all right in a minute. don't you mind." she sobbed herself quiet. "it does seem too hard," she said, when she could speak again, "that you have to give up this chance when providence had fairly raised it up for you." "i guess it wa'n't providence raised it up," said lapham. "any rate, it's got to go. most likely rogers was lyin', and there ain't any such parties; but if there were, they couldn't have the mills from me without the whole story. don't you be troubled, persis. i'm going to pull through all right." "oh, i ain't afraid. i don't suppose but what there's plenty would help you, if they knew you needed it, si." "they would if they knew i didn't need it," said lapham sardonically. "did you tell bill how you stood?" "no, i couldn't bear to. i've been the rich one so long, that i couldn't bring myself to own up that i was in danger." "yes." "besides, it didn't look so ugly till to-day. but i guess we shan't let ugly looks scare us." "no." xxii. the morning postman brought mrs. lapham a letter from irene, which was chiefly significant because it made no reference whatever to the writer or her state of mind. it gave the news of her uncle's family; it told of their kindness to her; her cousin will was going to take her and his sisters ice-boating on the river, when it froze. by the time this letter came, lapham had gone to his business, and the mother carried it to penelope to talk over. "what do you make out of it?" she asked; and without waiting to be answered she said, "i don't know as i believe in cousins marrying, a great deal; but if irene and will were to fix it up between 'em----" she looked vaguely at penelope. "it wouldn't make any difference as far as i was concerned," replied the girl listlessly. mrs. lapham lost her patience. "well, then, i'll tell you what, penelope!" she exclaimed. "perhaps it'll make a difference to you if you know that your father's in real trouble. he's harassed to death, and he was awake half the night, talking about it. that abominable rogers has got a lot of money away from him; and he's lost by others that he's helped,"--mrs. lapham put it in this way because she had no time to be explicit,--"and i want you should come out of your room now, and try to be of some help and comfort to him when he comes home to-night. i guess irene wouldn't mope round much, if she was here," she could not help adding. the girl lifted herself on her elbow. "what's that you say about father?" she demanded eagerly. "is he in trouble? is he going to lose his money? shall we have to stay in this house?" "we may be very glad to stay in this house," said mrs. lapham, half angry with herself for having given cause for the girl's conjectures, and half with the habit of prosperity in her child, which could conceive no better of what adversity was. "and i want you should get up and show that you've got some feeling for somebody in the world besides yourself." "oh, i'll get up!" said the girl promptly, almost cheerfully. "i don't say it's as bad now as it looked a little while ago," said her mother, conscientiously hedging a little from the statement which she had based rather upon her feelings than her facts. "your father thinks he'll pull through all right, and i don't know but what he will. but i want you should see if you can't do something to cheer him up and keep him from getting so perfectly down-hearted as he seems to get, under the load he's got to carry. and stop thinking about yourself a while, and behave yourself like a sensible girl." "yes, yes," said the girl; "i will. you needn't be troubled about me any more." before she left her room she wrote a note, and when she came down she was dressed to go out-of-doors and post it herself. the note was to corey:-- "do not come to see me any more till you hear from me. i have a reason which i cannot give you now; and you must not ask what it is." all day she went about in a buoyant desperation, and she came down to meet her father at supper. "well, persis," he said scornfully, as he sat down, "we might as well saved our good resolutions till they were wanted. i guess those english parties have gone back on rogers." "do you mean he didn't come?" "he hadn't come up to half-past five," said lapham. "tchk!" uttered his wife. "but i guess i shall pull through without mr. rogers," continued lapham. "a firm that i didn't think could weather it is still afloat, and so far forth as the danger goes of being dragged under with it, i'm all right." penelope came in. "hello, pen!" cried her father. "it ain't often i meet you nowadays." he put up his hand as she passed his chair, and pulled her down and kissed her. "no," she said; "but i thought i'd come down to-night and cheer you up a little. i shall not talk; the sight of me will be enough." her father laughed out. "mother been telling you? well, i was pretty blue last night; but i guess i was more scared than hurt. how'd you like to go to the theatre to-night? sellers at the park. heigh?" "well, i don't know. don't you think they could get along without me there?" "no; couldn't work it at all," cried the colonel. "let's all go. unless," he added inquiringly, "there's somebody coming here?" "there's nobody coming," said penelope. "good! then we'll go. mother, don't you be late now." "oh, i shan't keep you waiting," said mrs. lapham. she had thought of telling what a cheerful letter she had got from irene; but upon the whole it seemed better not to speak of irene at all just then. after they returned from the theatre, where the colonel roared through the comedy, with continual reference of his pleasure to penelope, to make sure that she was enjoying it too, his wife said, as if the whole affair had been for the girl's distraction rather than his, "i don't believe but what it's going to come out all right about the children;" and then she told him of the letter, and the hopes she had founded upon it. "well, perhaps you're right, persis," he consented. "i haven't seen pen so much like herself since it happened. i declare, when i see the way she came out to-night, just to please you, i don't know as i want you should get over all your troubles right away." "i guess there'll be enough to keep pen going for a while yet," said the colonel, winding up his watch. but for a time there was a relief, which walker noted, in the atmosphere at the office, and then came another cold wave, slighter than the first, but distinctly felt there, and succeeded by another relief. it was like the winter which was wearing on to the end of the year, with alternations of freezing weather, and mild days stretching to weeks, in which the snow and ice wholly disappeared. it was none the less winter, and none the less harassing for these fluctuations, and lapham showed in his face and temper the effect of like fluctuations in his affairs. he grew thin and old, and both at home and at his office he was irascible to the point of offence. in these days penelope shared with her mother the burden of their troubled home, and united with her in supporting the silence or the petulance of the gloomy, secret man who replaced the presence of jolly prosperity there. lapham had now ceased to talk of his troubles, and savagely resented his wife's interference. "you mind your own business, persis," he said one day, "if you've got any;" and after that she left him mainly to penelope, who did not think of asking him questions. "it's pretty hard on you, pen," she said. "that makes it easier for me," returned the girl, who did not otherwise refer to her own trouble. in her heart she had wondered a little at the absolute obedience of corey, who had made no sign since receiving her note. she would have liked to ask her father if corey was sick; she would have liked him to ask her why corey did not come any more. her mother went on-- "i don't believe your father knows where he stands. he works away at those papers he brings home here at night, as if he didn't half know what he was about. he always did have that close streak in him, and i don't suppose but what he's been going into things he don't want anybody else to know about, and he's kept these accounts of his own." sometimes he gave penelope figures to work at, which he would not submit to his wife's nimbler arithmetic. then she went to bed and left them sitting up till midnight, struggling with problems in which they were both weak. but she could see that the girl was a comfort to her father, and that his troubles were a defence and shelter to her. some nights she could hear them going out together, and then she lay awake for their return from their long walk. when the hour or day of respite came again, the home felt it first. lapham wanted to know what the news from irene was; he joined his wife in all her cheerful speculations, and tried to make her amends for his sullen reticence and irritability. irene was staying on at dubuque. there came a letter from her, saying that her uncle's people wanted her to spend the winter there. "well, let her," said lapham. "it'll be the best thing for her." lapham himself had letters from his brother at frequent intervals. his brother was watching the g. l. & p., which as yet had made no offer for the mills. once, when one of these letters came, he submitted to his wife whether, in the absence of any positive information that the road wanted the property, he might not, with a good conscience, dispose of it to the best advantage to anybody who came along. she looked wistfully at him; it was on the rise from a season of deep depression with him. "no, si," she said; "i don't see how you could do that." he did not assent and submit, as he had done at first, but began to rail at the unpracticality of women; and then he shut some papers he had been looking over into his desk, and flung out of the room. one of the papers had slipped through the crevice of the lid, and lay upon the floor. mrs. lapham kept on at her sewing, but after a while she picked the paper up to lay it on the desk. then she glanced at it, and saw that it was a long column of dates and figures, recording successive sums, never large ones, paid regularly to "wm. m." the dates covered a year, and the sum amounted at least to several hundreds. mrs. lapham laid the paper down on the desk, and then she took it up again and put it into her work-basket, meaning to give it to him. when he came in she saw him looking absent-mindedly about for something, and then going to work upon his papers, apparently without it. she thought she would wait till he missed it definitely, and then give him the scrap she had picked up. it lay in her basket, and after some days it found its way under the work in it, and she forgot it. xxiii. since new year's there had scarcely been a mild day, and the streets were full of snow, growing foul under the city feet and hoofs, and renewing its purity from the skies with repeated falls, which in turn lost their whiteness, beaten down, and beaten black and hard into a solid bed like iron. the sleighing was incomparable, and the air was full of the din of bells; but lapham's turnout was not of those that thronged the brighton road every afternoon; the man at the livery-stable sent him word that the mare's legs were swelling. he and corey had little to do with each other. he did not know how penelope had arranged it with corey; his wife said she knew no more than he did, and he did not like to ask the girl herself, especially as corey no longer came to the house. he saw that she was cheerfuller than she had been, and helpfuller with him and her mother. now and then lapham opened his troubled soul to her a little, letting his thought break into speech without preamble or conclusion. once he said-- "pen, i presume you know i'm in trouble." "we all seem to be there," said the girl. "yes, but there's a difference between being there by your own fault and being there by somebody else's." "i don't call it his fault," she said. "i call it mine," said the colonel. the girl laughed. her thought was of her own care, and her father's wholly of his. she must come to his ground. "what have you been doing wrong?" "i don't know as you'd call it wrong. it's what people do all the time. but i wish i'd let stocks alone. it's what i always promised your mother i would do. but there's no use cryin' over spilt milk; or watered stock, either." "i don't think there's much use crying about anything. if it could have been cried straight, it would have been all right from the start," said the girl, going back to her own affair; and if lapham had not been so deeply engrossed in his, he might have seen how little she cared for all that money could do or undo. he did not observe her enough to see how variable her moods were in those days, and how often she sank from some wild gaiety into abject melancholy; how at times she was fiercely defiant of nothing at all, and at others inexplicably humble and patient. but no doubt none of these signs had passed unnoticed by his wife, to whom lapham said one day, when he came home, "persis, what's the reason pen don't marry corey?" "you know as well as i do, silas," said mrs. lapham, with an inquiring look at him for what lay behind his words. "well, i think it's all tomfoolery, the way she's going on. there ain't any rhyme nor reason to it." he stopped, and his wife waited. "if she said the word, i could have some help from them." he hung his head, and would not meet his wife's eye. "i guess you're in a pretty bad way, si," she said pityingly, "or you wouldn't have come to that." "i'm in a hole," said lapham, "and i don't know where to turn. you won't let me do anything about those mills----" "yes, i'll let you," said his wife sadly. he gave a miserable cry. "you know i can't do anything, if you do. o my lord!" she had not seen him so low as that before. she did not know what to say. she was frightened, and could only ask, "has it come to the worst?" "the new house has got to go," he answered evasively. she did not say anything. she knew that the work on the house had been stopped since the beginning of the year. lapham had told the architect that he preferred to leave it unfinished till the spring, as there was no prospect of their being able to get into it that winter; and the architect had agreed with him that it would not hurt it to stand. her heart was heavy for him, though she could not say so. they sat together at the table, where she had come to be with him at his belated meal. she saw that he did not eat, and she waited for him to speak again, without urging him to take anything. they were past that. "and i've sent orders to shut down at the works," he added. "shut down at the works!" she echoed with dismay. she could not take it in. the fire at the works had never been out before since it was first kindled. she knew how he had prided himself upon that; how he had bragged of it to every listener, and had always lugged the fact in as the last expression of his sense of success. "o silas!" "what's the use?" he retorted. "i saw it was coming a month ago. there are some fellows out in west virginia that have been running the paint as hard as they could. they couldn't do much; they used to put it on the market raw. but lately they got to baking it, and now they've struck a vein of natural gas right by their works, and they pay ten cents for fuel, where i pay a dollar, and they make as good a paint. anybody can see where it's going to end. besides, the market's over-stocked. it's glutted. there wa'n't anything to do but to shut down, and i've shut down." "i don't know what's going to become of the hands in the middle of the winter, this way," said mrs. lapham, laying hold of one definite thought which she could grasp in the turmoil of ruin that whirled before her eyes. "i don't care what becomes of the hands," cried lapham. "they've shared my luck; now let 'em share the other thing. and if you're so very sorry for the hands, i wish you'd keep a little of your pity for me. don't you know what shutting down the works means?" "yes, indeed i do, silas," said his wife tenderly. "well, then!" he rose, leaving his supper untasted, and went into the sitting-room, where she presently found him, with that everlasting confusion of papers before him on the desk. that made her think of the paper in her work-basket, and she decided not to make the careworn, distracted man ask her for it, after all. she brought it to him. he glanced blankly at it and then caught it from her, turning red and looking foolish. "where'd you get that?" "you dropped it on the floor the other night, and i picked it up. who is 'wm. m.'?" "'wm. m.'!" he repeated, looking confusedly at her, and then at the paper. "oh,--it's nothing." he tore the paper into small pieces, and went and dropped them into the fire. when mrs. lapham came into the room in the morning, before he was down, she found a scrap of the paper, which must have fluttered to the hearth; and glancing at it she saw that the words were "mrs. m." she wondered what dealings with a woman her husband could have, and she remembered the confusion he had shown about the paper, and which she had thought was because she had surprised one of his business secrets. she was still thinking of it when he came down to breakfast, heavy-eyed, tremulous, with deep seams and wrinkles in his face. after a silence which he did not seem inclined to break, "silas," she asked, "who is 'mrs. m.'?" he stared at her. "i don't know what you're talking about." "don't you?" she returned mockingly. "when you do, you tell me. do you want any more coffee?" "no." "well, then, you can ring for alice when you've finished. i've got some things to attend to." she rose abruptly, and left the room. lapham looked after her in a dull way, and then went on with his breakfast. while he still sat at his coffee, she flung into the room again, and dashed some papers down beside his plate. "here are some more things of yours, and i'll thank you to lock them up in your desk and not litter my room with them, if you please." now he saw that she was angry, and it must be with him. it enraged him that in such a time of trouble she should fly out at him in that way. he left the house without trying to speak to her. that day corey came just before closing, and, knocking at lapham's door, asked if he could speak with him a few moments. "yes," said lapham, wheeling round in his swivel-chair and kicking another towards corey. "sit down. i want to talk to you. i'd ought to tell you you're wasting your time here. i spoke the other day about your placin' yourself better, and i can help you to do it, yet. there ain't going to be the out-come for the paint in the foreign markets that we expected, and i guess you better give it up." "i don't wish to give it up," said the young fellow, setting his lips. "i've as much faith in it as ever; and i want to propose now what i hinted at in the first place. i want to put some money into the business." "some money!" lapham leaned towards him, and frowned as if he had not quite understood, while he clutched the arms of his chair. "i've got about thirty thousand dollars that i could put in, and if you don't want to consider me a partner--i remember that you objected to a partner--you can let me regard it as an investment. but i think i see the way to doing something at once in mexico, and i should like to feel that i had something more than a drummer's interest in the venture." the men sat looking into each other's eyes. then lapham leaned back in his chair, and rubbed his hand hard and slowly over his face. his features were still twisted with some strong emotion when he took it away. "your family know about this?" "my uncle james knows." "he thinks it would be a good plan for you?" "he thought that by this time i ought to be able to trust my own judgment." "do you suppose i could see your uncle at his office?" "i imagine he's there." "well, i want to have a talk with him, one of these days." he sat pondering a while, and then rose, and went with corey to his door. "i guess i shan't change my mind about taking you into the business in that way," he said coldly. "if there was any reason why i shouldn't at first, there's more now." "very well, sir," answered the young man, and went to close his desk. the outer office was empty; but while corey was putting his papers in order it was suddenly invaded by two women, who pushed by the protesting porter on the stairs and made their way towards lapham's room. one of them was miss dewey, the type-writer girl, and the other was a woman whom she would resemble in face and figure twenty years hence, if she led a life of hard work varied by paroxysms of hard drinking. "that his room, z'rilla?" asked this woman, pointing towards lapham's door with a hand that had not freed itself from the fringe of dirty shawl under which it had hung. she went forward without waiting for the answer, but before she could reach it the door opened, and lapham stood filling its space. "look here, colonel lapham!" began the woman, in a high key of challenge. "i want to know if this is the way you're goin' back on me and z'rilla?" "what do you want?" asked lapham. "what do i want? what do you s'pose i want? i want the money to pay my month's rent; there ain't a bite to eat in the house; and i want some money to market." lapham bent a frown on the woman, under which she shrank back a step. "you've taken the wrong way to get it. clear out!" "i won't clear out!" said the woman, beginning to whimper. "corey!" said lapham, in the peremptory voice of a master,--he had seemed so indifferent to corey's presence that the young man thought he must have forgotten he was there,--"is dennis anywhere round?" "yissor," said dennis, answering for himself from the head of the stairs, and appearing in the ware-room. lapham spoke to the woman again. "do you want i should call a hack, or do you want i should call an officer?" the woman began to cry into an end of her shawl. "i don't know what we're goin' to do." "you're going to clear out," said lapham. "call a hack, dennis. if you ever come here again, i'll have you arrested. mind that! zerrilla, i shall want you early to-morrow morning." "yes, sir," said the girl meekly; she and her mother shrank out after the porter. lapham shut his door without a word. at lunch the next day walker made himself amends for corey's reticence by talking a great deal. he talked about lapham, who seemed to have, more than ever since his apparent difficulties began, the fascination of an enigma for his book-keeper, and he ended by asking, "did you see that little circus last night?" "what little circus?" asked corey in his turn. "those two women and the old man. dennis told me about it. i told him if he liked his place he'd better keep his mouth shut." "that was very good advice," said corey. "oh, all right, if you don't want to talk. don't know as i should in your place," returned walker, in the easy security he had long felt that corey had no intention of putting on airs with him. "but i'll tell you what: the old man can't expect it of everybody. if he keeps this thing up much longer, it's going to be talked about. you can't have a woman walking into your place of business, and trying to bulldoze you before your porter, without setting your porter to thinking. and the last thing you want a porter to do is to think; for when a porter thinks, he thinks wrong." "i don't see why even a porter couldn't think right about that affair," replied corey. "i don't know who the woman was, though i believe she was miss dewey's mother; but i couldn't see that colonel lapham showed anything but a natural resentment of her coming to him in that way. i should have said she was some rather worthless person whom he'd been befriending, and that she had presumed upon his kindness." "is that so? what do you think of his never letting miss dewey's name go on the books?" "that it's another proof it's a sort of charity of his. that's the only way to look at it." "oh, i'm all right." walker lighted a cigar and began to smoke, with his eyes closed to a fine straight line. "it won't do for a book-keeper to think wrong, any more than a porter, i suppose. but i guess you and i don't think very different about this thing." "not if you think as i do," replied corey steadily; "and i know you would do that if you had seen the 'circus' yourself. a man doesn't treat people who have a disgraceful hold upon him as he treated them." "it depends upon who he is," said walker, taking his cigar from his mouth. "i never said the old man was afraid of anything." "and character," continued corey, disdaining to touch the matter further, except in generalities, "must go for something. if it's to be the prey of mere accident and appearance, then it goes for nothing." "accidents will happen in the best regulated families," said walker, with vulgar, good-humoured obtuseness that filled corey with indignation. nothing, perhaps, removed his matter-of-fact nature further from the commonplace than a certain generosity of instinct, which i should not be ready to say was always infallible. that evening it was miss dewey's turn to wait for speech with lapham after the others were gone. he opened his door at her knock, and stood looking at her with a worried air. "well, what do you want, zerrilla?" he asked, with a sort of rough kindness. "i want to know what i'm going to do about hen. he's back again; and he and mother have made it up, and they both got to drinking last night after i went home, and carried on so that the neighbours came in." lapham passed his hand over his red and heated face. "i don't know what i'm going to do. you're twice the trouble that my own family is, now. but i know what i'd do, mighty quick, if it wasn't for you, zerrilla," he went on relentingly. "i'd shut your mother up somewheres, and if i could get that fellow off for a three years' voyage----" "i declare," said miss dewey, beginning to whimper, "it seems as if he came back just so often to spite me. he's never gone more than a year at the furthest, and you can't make it out habitual drunkenness, either, when it's just sprees. i'm at my wit's end." "oh, well, you mustn't cry around here," said lapham soothingly. "i know it," said miss dewey. "if i could get rid of hen, i could manage well enough with mother. mr. wemmel would marry me if i could get the divorce. he's said so over and over again." "i don't know as i like that very well," said lapham, frowning. "i don't know as i want you should get married in any hurry again. i don't know as i like your going with anybody else just yet." "oh, you needn't be afraid but what it'll be all right. it'll be the best thing all round, if i can marry him." "well!" said lapham impatiently; "i can't think about it now. i suppose they've cleaned everything out again?" "yes, they have," said zerrilla; "there isn't a cent left." "you're a pretty expensive lot," said lapham. "well, here!" he took out his pocket-book and gave her a note. "i'll be round to-night and see what can be done." he shut himself into his room again, and zerrilla dried her tears, put the note into her bosom, and went her way. lapham kept the porter nearly an hour later. it was then six o'clock, the hour at which the laphams usually had tea; but all custom had been broken up with him during the past months, and he did not go home now. he determined, perhaps in the extremity in which a man finds relief in combating one care with another, to keep his promise to miss dewey, and at the moment when he might otherwise have been sitting down at his own table he was climbing the stairs to her lodging in the old-fashioned dwelling which had been portioned off into flats. it was in a region of depots, and of the cheap hotels, and "ladies' and gents'" dining-rooms, and restaurants with bars, which abound near depots; and lapham followed to miss dewey's door a waiter from one of these, who bore on a salver before him a supper covered with a napkin. zerrilla had admitted them, and at her greeting a young fellow in the shabby shore-suit of a sailor, buttoning imperfectly over the nautical blue flannel of his shirt, got up from where he had been sitting, on one side of the stove, and stood infirmly on his feet, in token of receiving the visitor. the woman who sat on the other side did not rise, but began a shrill, defiant apology. "well, i don't suppose but what you'll think we're livin' on the fat o' the land, right straight along, all the while. but it's just like this. when that child came in from her work, she didn't seem to have the spirit to go to cookin' anything, and i had such a bad night last night i was feelin' all broke up, and s'd i, what's the use, anyway? by the time the butcher's heaved in a lot o' bone, and made you pay for the suet he cuts away, it comes to the same thing, and why not git it from the rest'rant first off, and save the cost o' your fire? s'd i." "what have you got there under your apron? a bottle?" demanded lapham, who stood with his hat on and his hands in his pockets, indifferent alike to the ineffective reception of the sailor and the chair zerrilla had set him. "well, yes, it's a bottle," said the woman, with an assumption of virtuous frankness. "it's whisky; i got to have something to rub my rheumatism with." "humph!" grumbled lapham. "you've been rubbing his rheumatism too, i see." he twisted his head in the direction of the sailor, now softly and rhythmically waving to and fro on his feet. "he hain't had a drop to-day in this house!" cried the woman. "what are you doing around here?" said lapham, turning fiercely upon him. "you've got no business ashore. where's your ship? do you think i'm going to let you come here and eat your wife out of house and home, and then give money to keep the concern going?" "just the very words i said when he first showed his face here, yist'day. didn't i, z'rilla?" said the woman, eagerly joining in the rebuke of her late boon companion. "you got no business here, hen, s'd i. you can't come here to live on me and z'rilla, s'd i. you want to go back to your ship, s'd i. that's what i said." the sailor mumbled, with a smile of tipsy amiability for lapham, something about the crew being discharged. "yes," the woman broke in, "that's always the way with these coasters. why don't you go off on some them long v'y'ges? s'd i. it's pretty hard when mr. wemmel stands ready to marry z'rilla and provide a comfortable home for us both--i hain't got a great many years more to live, and i should like to get some satisfaction out of 'em, and not be beholden and dependent all my days,--to have hen, here, blockin' the way. i tell him there'd be more money for him in the end; but he can't seem to make up his mind to it." "well, now, look here," said lapham. "i don't care anything about all that. it's your own business, and i'm not going to meddle with it. but it's my business who lives off me; and so i tell you all three, i'm willing to take care of zerrilla, and i'm willing to take care of her mother----" "i guess if it hadn't been for that child's father," the mother interpolated, "you wouldn't been here to tell the tale, colonel lapham." "i know all about that," said lapham. "but i'll tell you what, mr. dewey, i'm not going to support you." "i don't see what hen's done," said the old woman impartially. "he hasn't done anything, and i'm going to stop it. he's got to get a ship, and he's got to get out of this. and zerrilla needn't come back to work till he does. i'm done with you all." "well, i vow," said the mother, "if i ever heard anything like it! didn't that child's father lay down his life for you? hain't you said it yourself a hundred times? and don't she work for her money, and slave for it mornin', noon, and night? you talk as if we was beholden to you for the very bread in our mouths. i guess if it hadn't been for jim, you wouldn't been here crowin' over us." "you mind what i say. i mean business this time," said lapham, turning to the door. the woman rose and followed him, with her bottle in her hand. "say, colonel! what should you advise z'rilla to do about mr. wemmel? i tell her there ain't any use goin' to the trouble to git a divorce without she's sure about him. don't you think we'd ought to git him to sign a paper, or something, that he'll marry her if she gits it? i don't like to have things going at loose ends the way they are. it ain't sense. it ain't right." lapham made no answer to the mother anxious for her child's future, and concerned for the moral questions involved. he went out and down the stairs, and on the pavement at the lower door he almost struck against rogers, who had a bag in his hand, and seemed to be hurrying towards one of the depots. he halted a little, as if to speak to lapham; but lapham turned his back abruptly upon him, and took the other direction. the days were going by in a monotony of adversity to him, from which he could no longer escape, even at home. he attempted once or twice to talk of his troubles to his wife, but she repulsed him sharply; she seemed to despise and hate him; but he set himself doggedly to make a confession to her, and he stopped her one night, as she came into the room where he sat--hastily upon some errand that was to take her directly away again. "persis, there's something i've got to tell you." she stood still, as if fixed against her will, to listen. "i guess you know something about it already, and i guess it set you against me." "oh, i guess not, colonel lapham. you go your way, and i go mine. that's all." she waited for him to speak, listening with a cold, hard smile on her face. "i don't say it to make favour with you, because i don't want you to spare me, and i don't ask you; but i got into it through milton k. rogers." "oh!" said mrs. lapham contemptuously. "i always felt the way i said about it--that it wa'n't any better than gambling, and i say so now. it's like betting on the turn of a card; and i give you my word of honour, persis, that i never was in it at all till that scoundrel began to load me up with those wild-cat securities of his. then it seemed to me as if i ought to try to do something to get somewhere even. i know it's no excuse; but watching the market to see what the infernal things were worth from day to day, and seeing it go up, and seeing it go down, was too much for me; and, to make a long story short, i began to buy and sell on a margin--just what i told you i never would do. i seemed to make something--i did make something; and i'd have stopped, i do believe, if i could have reached the figure i'd set in my own mind to start with; but i couldn't fetch it. i began to lose, and then i began to throw good money after bad, just as i always did with everything that rogers ever came within a mile of. well, what's the use? i lost the money that would have carried me out of this, and i shouldn't have had to shut down the works, or sell the house, or----" lapham stopped. his wife, who at first had listened with mystification, and then dawning incredulity, changing into a look of relief that was almost triumph, lapsed again into severity. "silas lapham, if you was to die the next minute, is this what you started to tell me?" "why, of course it is. what did you suppose i started to tell you?" "and--look me in the eyes!--you haven't got anything else on your mind now?" "no! there's trouble enough, the lord knows; but there's nothing else to tell you. i suppose pen gave you a hint about it. i dropped something to her. i've been feeling bad about it, persis, a good while, but i hain't had the heart to speak of it. i can't expect you to say you like it. i've been a fool, i'll allow, and i've been something worse, if you choose to say so; but that's all. i haven't hurt anybody but myself--and you and the children." mrs. lapham rose and said, with her face from him, as she turned towards the door, "it's all right, silas. i shan't ever bring it up against you." she fled out of the room, but all that evening she was very sweet with him, and seemed to wish in all tacit ways to atone for her past unkindness. she made him talk of his business, and he told her of corey's offer, and what he had done about it. she did not seem to care for his part in it, however; at which lapham was silently disappointed a little, for he would have liked her to praise him. "he did it on account of pen!" "well, he didn't insist upon it, anyway," said lapham, who must have obscurely expected that corey would recognise his own magnanimity by repeating his offer. if the doubt that follows a self-devoted action--the question whether it was not after all a needless folly--is mixed, as it was in lapham's case, with the vague belief that we might have done ourselves a good turn without great risk of hurting any one else by being a little less unselfish, it becomes a regret that is hard to bear. since corey spoke to him, some things had happened that gave lapham hope again. "i'm going to tell her about it," said his wife, and she showed herself impatient to make up for the time she had lost. "why didn't you tell me before, silas?" "i didn't know we were on speaking terms before," said lapham sadly. "yes, that's true," she admitted, with a conscious flush. "i hope he won't think pen's known about it all this while." xxiv. that evening james bellingham came to see corey after dinner, and went to find him in his own room. "i've come at the instance of colonel lapham," said the uncle. "he was at my office to-day, and i had a long talk with him. did you know that he was in difficulties?" "i fancied that he was in some sort of trouble. and i had the book-keeper's conjectures--he doesn't really know much about it." "well, he thinks it time--on all accounts--that you should know how he stands, and why he declined that proposition of yours. i must say he has behaved very well--like a gentleman." "i'm not surprised." "i am. it's hard to behave like a gentleman where your interest is vitally concerned. and lapham doesn't strike me as a man who's in the habit of acting from the best in him always." "do any of us?" asked corey. "not all of us, at any rate," said bellingham. "it must have cost him something to say no to you, for he's just in that state when he believes that this or that chance, however small, would save him." corey was silent. "is he really in such a bad way?" "it's hard to tell just where he stands. i suspect that a hopeful temperament and fondness for round numbers have always caused him to set his figures beyond his actual worth. i don't say that he's been dishonest about it, but he's had a loose way of estimating his assets; he's reckoned his wealth on the basis of his capital, and some of his capital is borrowed. he's lost heavily by some of the recent failures, and there's been a terrible shrinkage in his values. i don't mean merely in the stock of paint on hand, but in a kind of competition which has become very threatening. you know about that west virginian paint?" corey nodded. "well, he tells me that they've struck a vein of natural gas out there which will enable them to make as good a paint as his own at a cost of manufacturing so low that they can undersell him everywhere. if this proves to be the case, it will not only drive his paint out of the market, but will reduce the value of his works--the whole plant--at lapham to a merely nominal figure." "i see," said corey dejectedly. "i've understood that he had put a great deal of money into his works." "yes, and he estimated his mine there at a high figure. of course it will be worth little or nothing if the west virginia paint drives his out. then, besides, lapham has been into several things outside of his own business, and, like a good many other men who try outside things, he's kept account of them himself; and he's all mixed up about them. he's asked me to look into his affairs with him, and i've promised to do so. whether he can be tided over his difficulties remains to be seen. i'm afraid it will take a good deal of money to do it--a great deal more than he thinks, at least. he believes comparatively little would do it. i think differently. i think that anything less than a great deal would be thrown away on him. if it were merely a question of a certain sum--even a large sum--to keep him going, it might be managed; but it's much more complicated. and, as i say, it must have been a trial to him to refuse your offer." this did not seem to be the way in which bellingham had meant to conclude. but he said no more; and corey made him no response. he remained pondering the case, now hopefully, now doubtfully, and wondering, whatever his mood was, whether penelope knew anything of the fact with which her mother went nearly at the same moment to acquaint her. "of course, he's done it on your account," mrs. lapham could not help saying. "then he was very silly. does he think i would let him give father money? and if father lost it for him, does he suppose it would make it any easier for me? i think father acted twice as well. it was very silly." in repeating the censure, her look was not so severe as her tone; she even smiled a little, and her mother reported to her father that she acted more like herself than she had yet since corey's offer. "i think, if he was to repeat his offer, she would have him now," said mrs. lapham. "well, i'll let her know if he does," said the colonel. "i guess he won't do it to you!" she cried. "who else will he do it to?" he demanded. they perceived that they had each been talking of a different offer. after lapham went to his business in the morning the postman brought another letter from irene, which was full of pleasant things that were happening to her; there was a great deal about her cousin will, as she called him. at the end she had written, "tell pen i don't want she should be foolish." "there!" said mrs. lapham. "i guess it's going to come out right, all round;" and it seemed as if even the colonel's difficulties were past. "when your father gets through this, pen," she asked impulsively, "what shall you do?" "what have you been telling irene about me?" "nothing much. what should you do?" "it would be a good deal easier to say what i should do if father didn't," said the girl. "i know you think it was nice in him to make your father that offer," urged the mother. "it was nice, yes; but it was silly," said the girl. "most nice things are silly, i suppose," she added. she went to her room and wrote a letter. it was very long, and very carefully written; and when she read it over, she tore it into small pieces. she wrote another one, short and hurried, and tore that up too. then she went back to her mother, in the family room, and asked to see irene's letter, and read it over to herself. "yes, she seems to be having a good time," she sighed. "mother, do you think i ought to let mr. corey know that i know about it?" "well, i should think it would be a pleasure to him," said mrs. lapham judicially. "i'm not so sure of that the way i should have to tell him. i should begin by giving him a scolding. of course, he meant well by it, but can't you see that it wasn't very flattering! how did he expect it would change me?" "i don't believe he ever thought of that." "don't you? why?" "because you can see that he isn't one of that kind. he might want to please you without wanting to change you by what he did." "yes. he must have known that nothing would change me,--at least, nothing that he could do. i thought of that. i shouldn't like him to feel that i couldn't appreciate it, even if i did think it was silly. should you write to him?" "i don't see why not." "it would be too pointed. no, i shall just let it go. i wish he hadn't done it." "well, he has done it." "and i've tried to write to him about it--two letters: one so humble and grateful that it couldn't stand up on its edge, and the other so pert and flippant. mother, i wish you could have seen those two letters! i wish i had kept them to look at if i ever got to thinking i had any sense again. they would take the conceit out of me." "what's the reason he don't come here any more?" "doesn't he come?" asked penelope in turn, as if it were something she had not noticed particularly. "you'd ought to know." "yes." she sat silent a while. "if he doesn't come, i suppose it's because he's offended at something i did." "what did you do?" "nothing. i--wrote to him--a little while ago. i suppose it was very blunt, but i didn't believe he would be angry at it. but this--this that he's done shows he was angry, and that he wasn't just seizing the first chance to get out of it." "what have you done, pen?" demanded her mother sharply. "oh, i don't know. all the mischief in the world, i suppose. i'll tell you. when you first told me that father was in trouble with his business, i wrote to him not to come any more till i let him. i said i couldn't tell him why, and he hasn't been here since. i'm sure i don't know what it means." her mother looked at her with angry severity. "well, penelope lapham! for a sensible child, you are the greatest goose i ever saw. did you think he would come here and see if you wouldn't let him come?" "he might have written," urged the girl. her mother made that despairing "tchk!" with her tongue, and fell back in her chair. "i should have despised him if he had written. he's acted just exactly right, and you--you've acted--i don't know how you've acted. i'm ashamed of you. a girl that could be so sensible for her sister, and always say and do just the right thing, and then when it comes to herself to be such a disgusting simpleton!" "i thought i ought to break with him at once, and not let him suppose that there was any hope for him or me if father was poor. it was my one chance, in this whole business, to do anything heroic, and i jumped at it. you mustn't think, because i can laugh at it now, that i wasn't in earnest, mother! i was--dead! but the colonel has gone to ruin so gradually, that he's spoilt everything. i expected that he would be bankrupt the next day, and that then he would understand what i meant. but to have it drag along for a fortnight seems to take all the heroism out of it, and leave it as flat!" she looked at her mother with a smile that shone through her tears, and a pathos that quivered round her jesting lips. "it's easy enough to be sensible for other people. but when it comes to myself, there i am! especially, when i want to do what i oughtn't so much that it seems as if doing what i didn't want to do must be doing what i ought! but it's been a great success one way, mother. it's helped me to keep up before the colonel. if it hadn't been for mr. corey's staying away, and my feeling so indignant with him for having been badly treated by me, i shouldn't have been worth anything at all." the tears started down her cheeks, but her mother said, "well, now, go along, and write to him. it don't matter what you say, much; and don't be so very particular." her third attempt at a letter pleased her scarcely better than the rest, but she sent it, though it seemed so blunt and awkward. she wrote:-- dear friend,--i expected when i sent you that note, that you would understand, almost the next day, why i could not see you any more. you must know now, and you must not think that if anything happened to my father, i should wish you to help him. but that is no reason why i should not thank you, and i do thank you, for offering. it was like you, i will say that. yours sincerely, penelope lapham. she posted her letter, and he sent his reply in the evening, by hand:-- dearest,--what i did was nothing, till you praised it. everything i have and am is yours. won't you send a line by the bearer, to say that i may come to see you? i know how you feel; but i am sure that i can make you think differently. you must consider that i loved you without a thought of your father's circumstances, and always shall. t. c. the generous words were blurred to her eyes by the tears that sprang into them. but she could only write in answer:-- "please do not come; i have made up my mind. as long as this trouble is hanging over us, i cannot see you. and if father is unfortunate, all is over between us." she brought his letter to her mother, and told her what she had written in reply. her mother was thoughtful a while before she said, with a sigh, "well, i hope you've begun as you can carry out, pen." "oh, i shall not have to carry out at all. i shall not have to do anything. that's one comfort--the only comfort." she went away to her own room, and when mrs. lapham told her husband of the affair, he was silent at first, as she had been. then he said, "i don't know as i should have wanted her to done differently; i don't know as she could. if i ever come right again, she won't have anything to feel meeching about; and if i don't, i don't want she should be beholden to anybody. and i guess that's the way she feels." the coreys in their turn sat in judgment on the fact which their son felt bound to bring to their knowledge. "she has behaved very well," said mrs. corey, to whom her son had spoken. "my dear," said her husband, with his laugh, "she has behaved too well. if she had studied the whole situation with the most artful eye to its mastery, she could not possibly have behaved better." the process of lapham's financial disintegration was like the course of some chronic disorder, which has fastened itself upon the constitution, but advances with continual reliefs, with apparent amelioration, and at times seems not to advance at all, when it gives hope of final recovery not only to the sufferer, but to the eye of science itself. there were moments when james bellingham, seeing lapham pass this crisis and that, began to fancy that he might pull through altogether; and at these moments, when his adviser could not oppose anything but experience and probability to the evidence of the fact, lapham was buoyant with courage, and imparted his hopefulness to his household. our theory of disaster, of sorrow, of affliction, borrowed from the poets and novelists, is that it is incessant; but every passage in our own lives and in the lives of others, so far as we have witnessed them, teaches us that this is false. the house of mourning is decorously darkened to the world, but within itself it is also the house of laughing. bursts of gaiety, as heartfelt as its grief, relieve the gloom, and the stricken survivors have their jests together, in which the thought of the dead is tenderly involved, and a fond sense, not crazier than many others, of sympathy and enjoyment beyond the silence, justifies the sunnier mood before sorrow rushes back, deploring and despairing, and making it all up again with the conventional fitness of things. lapham's adversity had this quality in common with bereavement. it was not always like the adversity we figure in allegory; it had its moments of being like prosperity, and if upon the whole it was continual, it was not incessant. sometimes there was a week of repeated reverses, when he had to keep his teeth set and to hold on hard to all his hopefulness; and then days came of negative result or slight success, when he was full of his jokes at the tea-table, and wanted to go to the theatre, or to do something to cheer penelope up. in some miraculous way, by some enormous stroke of success which should eclipse the brightest of his past prosperity, he expected to do what would reconcile all difficulties, not only in his own affairs, but in hers too. "you'll see," he said to his wife; "it's going to come out all right. irene'll fix it up with bill's boy, and then she'll be off pen's mind; and if things go on as they've been going for the last two days, i'm going to be in a position to do the favours myself, and pen can feel that she's makin' a sacrifice, and then i guess may be she'll do it. if things turn out as i expect now, and times ever do get any better generally, i can show corey that i appreciate his offer. i can offer him the partnership myself then." even in the other moods, which came when everything had been going wrong, and there seemed no way out of the net, there were points of consolation to lapham and his wife. they rejoiced that irene was safe beyond the range of their anxieties, and they had a proud satisfaction that there had been no engagement between corey and penelope, and that it was she who had forbidden it. in the closeness of interest and sympathy in which their troubles had reunited them, they confessed to each other that nothing would have been more galling to their pride than the idea that lapham should not have been able to do everything for his daughter that the coreys might have expected. whatever happened now, the coreys could not have it to say that the laphams had tried to bring any such thing about. bellingham had lately suggested an assignment to lapham, as the best way out of his difficulties. it was evident that he had not the money to meet his liabilities at present, and that he could not raise it without ruinous sacrifices, that might still end in ruin after all. if he made the assignment, bellingham argued, he could gain time and make terms; the state of things generally would probably improve, since it could not be worse, and the market, which he had glutted with his paint, might recover and he could start again. lapham had not agreed with him. when his reverses first began it had seemed easy for him to give up everything, to let the people he owed take all, so only they would let him go out with clean hands; and he had dramatised this feeling in his talk with his wife, when they spoke together of the mills on the g. l. & p. but ever since then it had been growing harder, and he could not consent even to seem to do it now in the proposed assignment. he had not found other men so very liberal or faithful with him; a good many of them appeared to have combined to hunt him down; a sense of enmity towards all his creditors asserted itself in him; he asked himself why they should not suffer a little too. above all, he shrank from the publicity of the assignment. it was open confession that he had been a fool in some way; he could not bear to have his family--his brother the judge, especially, to whom he had always appeared the soul of business wisdom--think him imprudent or stupid. he would make any sacrifice before it came to that. he determined in parting with bellingham to make the sacrifice which he had oftenest in his mind, because it was the hardest, and to sell his new house. that would cause the least comment. most people would simply think that he had got a splendid offer, and with his usual luck had made a very good thing of it; others who knew a little more about him would say that he was hauling in his horns, but they could not blame him; a great many other men were doing the same in those hard times--the shrewdest and safest men: it might even have a good effect. he went straight from bellingham's office to the real-estate broker in whose hands he meant to put his house, for he was not the sort of man to shilly-shally when he had once made up his mind. but he found it hard to get his voice up out of his throat, when he said he guessed he would get the broker to sell that new house of his on the water side of beacon. the broker answered cheerfully, yes; he supposed colonel lapham knew it was a pretty dull time in real estate? and lapham said yes, he knew that, but he should not sell at a sacrifice, and he did not care to have the broker name him or describe the house definitely unless parties meant business. again the broker said yes; and he added, as a joke lapham would appreciate, that he had half a dozen houses on the water side of beacon, on the same terms; that nobody wanted to be named or to have his property described. it did, in fact, comfort lapham a little to find himself in the same boat with so many others; he smiled grimly, and said in his turn, yes, he guessed that was about the size of it with a good many people. but he had not the heart to tell his wife what he had done, and he sat taciturn that whole evening, without even going over his accounts, and went early to bed, where he lay tossing half the night before he fell asleep. he slept at last only upon the promise he made himself that he would withdraw the house from the broker's hands; but he went heavily to his own business in the morning without doing so. there was no such rush, anyhow, he reflected bitterly; there would be time to do that a month later, probably. it struck him with a sort of dismay when a boy came with a note from a broker, saying that a party who had been over the house in the fall had come to him to know whether it could be bought, and was willing to pay the cost of the house up to the time he had seen it. lapham took refuge in trying to think who the party could be; he concluded that it must have been somebody who had gone over it with the architect, and he did not like that; but he was aware that this was not an answer to the broker, and he wrote that he would give him an answer in the morning. now that it had come to the point, it did not seem to him that he could part with the house. so much of his hope for himself and his children had gone into it that the thought of selling it made him tremulous and sick. he could not keep about his work steadily, and with his nerves shaken by want of sleep, and the shock of this sudden and unexpected question, he left his office early, and went over to look at the house and try to bring himself to some conclusion here. the long procession of lamps on the beautiful street was flaring in the clear red of the sunset towards which it marched, and lapham, with a lump in his throat, stopped in front of his house and looked at their multitude. they were not merely a part of the landscape; they were a part of his pride and glory, his success, his triumphant life's work which was fading into failure in his helpless hands. he ground his teeth to keep down that lump, but the moisture in his eyes blurred the lamps, and the keen pale crimson against which it made them flicker. he turned and looked up, as he had so often done, at the window-spaces, neatly glazed for the winter with white linen, and recalled the night when he had stopped with irene before the house, and she had said that she should never live there, and he had tried to coax her into courage about it. there was no such facade as that on the whole street, to his thinking. through his long talks with the architect, he had come to feel almost as intimately and fondly as the architect himself the satisfying simplicity of the whole design and the delicacy of its detail. it appealed to him as an exquisite bit of harmony appeals to the unlearned ear, and he recognised the difference between this fine work and the obstreperous pretentiousness of the many overloaded house-fronts which seymour had made him notice for his instruction elsewhere on the back bay. now, in the depths of his gloom, he tried to think what italian city it was where seymour said he had first got the notion of treating brick-work in that way. he unlocked the temporary door with the key he always carried, so that he could let himself in and out whenever he liked, and entered the house, dim and very cold with the accumulated frigidity of the whole winter in it, and looking as if the arrest of work upon it had taken place a thousand years before. it smelt of the unpainted woods and the clean, hard surfaces of the plaster, where the experiments in decoration had left it untouched; and mingled with these odours was that of some rank pigments and metallic compositions which seymour had used in trying to realise a certain daring novelty of finish, which had not proved successful. above all, lapham detected the peculiar odour of his own paint, with which the architect had been greatly interested one day, when lapham showed it to him at the office. he had asked lapham to let him try the persis brand in realising a little idea he had for the finish of mrs. lapham's room. if it succeeded they could tell her what it was, for a surprise. lapham glanced at the bay-window in the reception-room, where he sat with his girls on the trestles when corey first came by; and then he explored the whole house to the attic, in the light faintly admitted through the linen sashes. the floors were strewn with shavings and chips which the carpenters had left, and in the music-room these had been blown into long irregular windrows by the draughts through a wide rent in the linen sash. lapham tried to pin it up, but failed, and stood looking out of it over the water. the ice had left the river, and the low tide lay smooth and red in the light of the sunset. the cambridge flats showed the sad, sodden yellow of meadows stripped bare after a long sleep under snow; the hills, the naked trees, the spires and roofs had a black outline, as if they were objects in a landscape of the french school. the whim seized lapham to test the chimney in the music-room; it had been tried in the dining-room below, and in his girls' fireplaces above, but here the hearth was still clean. he gathered some shavings and blocks together, and kindled them, and as the flame mounted gaily from them, he pulled up a nail-keg which he found there and sat down to watch it. nothing could have been better; the chimney was a perfect success; and as lapham glanced out of the torn linen sash he said to himself that that party, whoever he was, who had offered to buy his house might go to the devil; he would never sell it as long as he had a dollar. he said that he should pull through yet; and it suddenly came into his mind that, if he could raise the money to buy out those west virginia fellows, he should be all right, and would have the whole game in his own hand. he slapped himself on the thigh, and wondered that he had never thought of that before; and then, lighting a cigar with a splinter from the fire, he sat down again to work the scheme out in his own mind. he did not hear the feet heavily stamping up the stairs, and coming towards the room where he sat; and the policeman to whom the feet belonged had to call out to him, smoking at his chimney-corner, with his back turned to the door, "hello! what are you doing here?" "what's that to you?" retorted lapham, wheeling half round on his nail-keg. "i'll show you," said the officer, advancing upon him, and then stopping short as he recognised him. "why, colonel lapham! i thought it was some tramp got in here!" "have a cigar?" said lapham hospitably. "sorry there ain't another nail-keg." the officer took the cigar. "i'll smoke it outside. i've just come on, and i can't stop. tryin' your chimney?" "yes, i thought i'd see how it would draw, in here. it seems to go first-rate." the policeman looked about him with an eye of inspection. "you want to get that linen window, there, mended up." "yes, i'll speak to the builder about that. it can go for one night." the policeman went to the window and failed to pin the linen together where lapham had failed before. "i can't fix it." he looked round once more, and saying, "well, good night," went out and down the stairs. lapham remained by the fire till he had smoked his cigar; then he rose and stamped upon the embers that still burned with his heavy boots, and went home. he was very cheerful at supper. he told his wife that he guessed he had a sure thing of it now, and in another twenty-four hours he should tell her just how. he made penelope go to the theatre with him, and when they came out, after the play, the night was so fine that he said they must walk round by the new house and take a look at it in the starlight. he said he had been there before he came home, and tried seymour's chimney in the music-room, and it worked like a charm. as they drew near beacon street they were aware of unwonted stir and tumult, and presently the still air transmitted a turmoil of sound, through which a powerful and incessant throbbing made itself felt. the sky had reddened above them, and turning the corner at the public garden, they saw a black mass of people obstructing the perspective of the brightly-lighted street, and out of this mass a half-dozen engines, whose strong heart-beats had already reached them, sent up volumes of fire-tinged smoke and steam from their funnels. ladders were planted against the facade of a building, from the roof of which a mass of flame burnt smoothly upward, except where here and there it seemed to pull contemptuously away from the heavy streams of water which the firemen, clinging like great beetles to their ladders, poured in upon it. lapham had no need to walk down through the crowd, gazing and gossiping, with shouts and cries and hysterical laughter, before the burning house, to make sure that it was his. "i guess i done it, pen," was all he said. among the people who were looking at it were a party who seemed to have run out from dinner in some neighbouring house; the ladies were fantastically wrapped up, as if they had flung on the first things they could seize. "isn't it perfectly magnificent!" cried a pretty girl. "i wouldn't have missed it on any account. thank you so much, mr. symington, for bringing us out!" "ah, i thought you'd like it," said this mr. symington, who must have been the host; "and you can enjoy it without the least compunction, miss delano, for i happen to know that the house belongs to a man who could afford to burn one up for you once a year." "oh, do you think he would, if i came again?" "i haven't the least doubt of it. we don't do things by halves in boston." "he ought to have had a coat of his noncombustible paint on it," said another gentleman of the party. penelope pulled her father away toward the first carriage she could reach of a number that had driven up. "here, father! get into this." "no, no; i couldn't ride," he answered heavily, and he walked home in silence. he greeted his wife with, "well, persis, our house is gone! and i guess i set it on fire myself;" and while he rummaged among the papers in his desk, still with his coat and hat on, his wife got the facts as she could from penelope. she did not reproach him. here was a case in which his self-reproach must be sufficiently sharp without any edge from her. besides, her mind was full of a terrible thought. "o silas," she faltered, "they'll think you set it on fire to get the insurance!" lapham was staring at a paper which he held in his hand. "i had a builder's risk on it, but it expired last week. it's a dead loss." "oh, thank the merciful lord!" cried his wife. "merciful!" said lapham. "well, it's a queer way of showing it." he went to bed, and fell into the deep sleep which sometimes follows a great moral shock. it was perhaps rather a torpor than a sleep. xxv. lapham awoke confused, and in a kind of remoteness from the loss of the night before, through which it loomed mistily. but before he lifted his head from the pillow, it gathered substance and weight against which it needed all his will to bear up and live. in that moment he wished that he had not wakened, that he might never have wakened; but he rose, and faced the day and its cares. the morning papers brought the report of the fire, and the conjectured loss. the reporters somehow had found out the fact that the loss fell entirely upon lapham; they lighted up the hackneyed character of their statements with the picturesque interest of the coincidence that the policy had expired only the week before; heaven knows how they knew it. they said that nothing remained of the building but the walls; and lapham, on his way to business, walked up past the smoke-stained shell. the windows looked like the eye-sockets of a skull down upon the blackened and trampled snow of the street; the pavement was a sheet of ice, and the water from the engines had frozen, like streams of tears, down the face of the house, and hung in icy tags from the window-sills and copings. he gathered himself up as well as he could, and went on to his office. the chance of retrieval that had flashed upon him, as he sat smoking by that ruined hearth the evening before, stood him in such stead now as a sole hope may; and he said to himself that, having resolved not to sell his house, he was no more crippled by its loss than he would have been by letting his money lie idle in it; what he might have raised by mortgage on it could be made up in some other way; and if they would sell he could still buy out the whole business of that west virginia company, mines, plant, stock on hand, good-will, and everything, and unite it with his own. he went early in the afternoon to see bellingham, whose expressions of condolence for his loss he cut short with as much politeness as he knew how to throw into his impatience. bellingham seemed at first a little dazzled with the splendid courage of his scheme; it was certainly fine in its way; but then he began to have his misgivings. "i happen to know that they haven't got much money behind them," urged lapham. "they'll jump at an offer." bellingham shook his head. "if they can show profit on the old manufacture, and prove they can make their paint still cheaper and better hereafter, they can have all the money they want. and it will be very difficult for you to raise it if you're threatened by them. with that competition, you know what your plant at lapham would be worth, and what the shrinkage on your manufactured stock would be. better sell out to them," he concluded, "if they will buy." "there ain't money enough in this country to buy out my paint," said lapham, buttoning up his coat in a quiver of resentment. "good afternoon, sir." men are but grown-up boys after all. bellingham watched this perversely proud and obstinate child fling petulantly out of his door, and felt a sympathy for him which was as truly kind as it was helpless. but lapham was beginning to see through bellingham, as he believed. bellingham was, in his way, part of that conspiracy by which lapham's creditors were trying to drive him to the wall. more than ever now he was glad that he had nothing to do with that cold-hearted, self-conceited race, and that the favours so far were all from his side. he was more than ever determined to show them, every one of them, high and low, that he and his children could get along without them, and prosper and triumph without them. he said to himself that if penelope were engaged to corey that very minute, he would make her break with him. he knew what he should do now, and he was going to do it without loss of time. he was going on to new york to see those west virginia people; they had their principal office there, and he intended to get at their ideas, and then he intended to make them an offer. he managed this business better than could possibly have been expected of a man in his impassioned mood. but when it came really to business, his practical instincts, alert and wary, came to his aid against the passions that lay in wait to betray after they ceased to dominate him. he found the west virginians full of zeal and hope, but in ten minutes he knew that they had not yet tested their strength in the money market, and had not ascertained how much or how little capital they could command. lapham himself, if he had had so much, would not have hesitated to put a million dollars into their business. he saw, as they did not see, that they had the game in their own hands, and that if they could raise the money to extend their business, they could ruin him. it was only a question of time, and he was on the ground first. he frankly proposed a union of their interests. he admitted that they had a good thing, and that he should have to fight them hard; but he meant to fight them to the death unless they could come to some sort of terms. now, the question was whether they had better go on and make a heavy loss for both sides by competition, or whether they had better form a partnership to run both paints and command the whole market. lapham made them three propositions, each of which was fair and open: to sell out to them altogether; to buy them out altogether; to join facilities and forces with them, and go on in an invulnerable alliance. let them name a figure at which they would buy, a figure at which they would sell, a figure at which they would combine,--or, in other words, the amount of capital they needed. they talked all day, going out to lunch together at the astor house, and sitting with their knees against the counter on a row of stools before it for fifteen minutes of reflection and deglutition, with their hats on, and then returning to the basement from which they emerged. the west virginia company's name was lettered in gilt on the wide low window, and its paint, in the form of ore, burnt, and mixed, formed a display on the window shelf lapham examined it and praised it; from time to time they all recurred to it together; they sent out for some of lapham's paint and compared it, the west virginians admitting its former superiority. they were young fellows, and country persons, like lapham, by origin, and they looked out with the same amused, undaunted provincial eyes at the myriad metropolitan legs passing on the pavement above the level of their window. he got on well with them. at last, they said what they would do. they said it was nonsense to talk of buying lapham out, for they had not the money; and as for selling out, they would not do it, for they knew they had a big thing. but they would as soon use his capital to develop it as anybody else's, and if he could put in a certain sum for this purpose, they would go in with him. he should run the works at lapham and manage the business in boston, and they would run the works at kanawha falls and manage the business in new york. the two brothers with whom lapham talked named their figure, subject to the approval of another brother at kanawha falls, to whom they would write, and who would telegraph his answer, so that lapham could have it inside of three days. but they felt perfectly sure that he would approve; and lapham started back on the eleven o'clock train with an elation that gradually left him as he drew near boston, where the difficulties of raising this sum were to be over come. it seemed to him, then, that those fellows had put it up on him pretty steep, but he owned to himself that they had a sure thing, and that they were right in believing they could raise the same sum elsewhere; it would take all of it, he admitted, to make their paint pay on the scale they had the right to expect. at their age, he would not have done differently; but when he emerged, old, sore, and sleep-broken, from the sleeping-car in the albany depot at boston, he wished with a pathetic self-pity that they knew how a man felt at his age. a year ago, six months ago, he would have laughed at the notion that it would be hard to raise the money. but he thought ruefully of that immense stock of paint on hand, which was now a drug in the market, of his losses by rogers and by the failures of other men, of the fire that had licked up so many thousands in a few hours; he thought with bitterness of the tens of thousands that he had gambled away in stocks, and of the commissions that the brokers had pocketed whether he won or lost; and he could not think of any securities on which he could borrow, except his house in nankeen square, or the mine and works at lapham. he set his teeth in helpless rage when he thought of that property out on the g. l. & p., that ought to be worth so much, and was worth so little if the road chose to say so. he did not go home, but spent most of the day shining round, as he would have expressed it, and trying to see if he could raise the money. but he found that people of whom he hoped to get it were in the conspiracy which had been formed to drive him to the wall. somehow, there seemed a sense of his embarrassments abroad. nobody wanted to lend money on the plant at lapham without taking time to look into the state of the business; but lapham had no time to give, and he knew that the state of the business would not bear looking into. he could raise fifteen thousand on his nankeen square house, and another fifteen on his beacon street lot, and this was all that a man who was worth a million by rights could do! he said a million, and he said it in defiance of bellingham, who had subjected his figures to an analysis which wounded lapham more than he chose to show at the time, for it proved that he was not so rich and not so wise as he had seemed. his hurt vanity forbade him to go to bellingham now for help or advice; and if he could have brought himself to ask his brothers for money, it would have been useless; they were simply well-to-do western people, but not capitalists on the scale he required. lapham stood in the isolation to which adversity so often seems to bring men. when its test was applied, practically or theoretically, to all those who had seemed his friends, there was none who bore it; and he thought with bitter self-contempt of the people whom he had befriended in their time of need. he said to himself that he had been a fool for that; and he scorned himself for certain acts of scrupulosity by which he had lost money in the past. seeing the moral forces all arrayed against him, lapham said that he would like to have the chance offered him to get even with them again; he thought he should know how to look out for himself. as he understood it, he had several days to turn about in, and he did not let one day's failure dishearten him. the morning after his return he had, in fact, a gleam of luck that gave him the greatest encouragement for the moment. a man came in to inquire about one of rogers's wild-cat patents, as lapham called them, and ended by buying it. he got it, of course, for less than lapham took it for, but lapham was glad to be rid of it for something, when he had thought it worth nothing; and when the transaction was closed, he asked the purchaser rather eagerly if he knew where rogers was; it was lapham's secret belief that rogers had found there was money in the thing, and had sent the man to buy it. but it appeared that this was a mistake; the man had not come from rogers, but had heard of the patent in another way; and lapham was astonished in the afternoon, when his boy came to tell him that rogers was in the outer office, and wished to speak with him. "all right," said lapham, and he could not command at once the severity for the reception of rogers which he would have liked to use. he found himself, in fact, so much relaxed towards him by the morning's touch of prosperity that he asked him to sit down, gruffly, of course, but distinctly; and when rogers said in his lifeless way, and with the effect of keeping his appointment of a month before, "those english parties are in town, and would like to talk with you in reference to the mills," lapham did not turn him out-of-doors. he sat looking at him, and trying to make out what rogers was after; for he did not believe that the english parties, if they existed, had any notion of buying his mills. "what if they are not for sale?" he asked. "you know that i've been expecting an offer from the g. l. & p." "i've kept watch of that. they haven't made you any offer," said rogers quietly. "and did you think," demanded lapham, firing up, "that i would turn them in on somebody else as you turned them in on me, when the chances are that they won't be worth ten cents on the dollar six months from now?" "i didn't know what you would do," said rogers non-committally. "i've come here to tell you that these parties stand ready to take the mills off your hands at a fair valuation--at the value i put upon them when i turned them in." "i don't believe you!" cried lapham brutally, but a wild predatory hope made his heart leap so that it seemed to turn over in his breast. "i don't believe there are any such parties to begin with; and in the next place, i don't believe they would buy at any such figure; unless--unless you've lied to them, as you've lied to me. did you tell them about the g. l. & p.?" rogers looked compassionately at him, but he answered, with unvaried dryness, "i did not think that necessary." lapham had expected this answer, and he had expected or intended to break out in furious denunciation of rogers when he got it; but he only found himself saying, in a sort of baffled gasp, "i wonder what your game is!" rogers did not reply categorically, but he answered, with his impartial calm, and as if lapham had said nothing to indicate that he differed at all with him as to disposing of the property in the way he had suggested: "if we should succeed in selling, i should be able to repay you your loans, and should have a little capital for a scheme that i think of going into." "and do you think that i am going to steal these men's money to help you plunder somebody in a new scheme?" answered lapham. the sneer was on behalf of virtue, but it was still a sneer. "i suppose the money would be useful to you too, just now." "why?" "because i know that you have been trying to borrow." at this proof of wicked omniscience in rogers, the question whether he had better not regard the affair as a fatality, and yield to his destiny, flashed upon lapham; but he answered, "i shall want money a great deal worse than i've ever wanted it yet, before i go into such rascally business with you. don't you know that we might as well knock these parties down on the street, and take the money out of their pockets?" "they have come on," answered rogers, "from portland to see you. i expected them some weeks ago, but they disappointed me. they arrived on the circassian last night; they expected to have got in five days ago, but the passage was very stormy." "where are they?" asked lapham, with helpless irrelevance, and feeling himself somehow drifted from his moorings by rogers's shipping intelligence. "they are at young's. i told them we would call upon them after dinner this evening; they dine late." "oh, you did, did you?" asked lapham, trying to drop another anchor for a fresh clutch on his underlying principles. "well, now, you go and tell them that i said i wouldn't come." "their stay is limited," remarked rogers. "i mentioned this evening because they were not certain they could remain over another night. but if to-morrow would suit you better----" "tell 'em i shan't come at all," roared lapham, as much in terror as defiance, for he felt his anchor dragging. "tell 'em i shan't come at all! do you understand that?" "i don't see why you should stickle as to the matter of going to them," said rogers; "but if you think it will be better to have them approach you, i suppose i can bring them to you." "no, you can't! i shan't let you! i shan't see them! i shan't have anything to do with them. now do you understand?" "i inferred from our last interview," persisted rogers, unmoved by all this violent demonstration of lapham's, "that you wished to meet these parties. you told me that you would give me time to produce them; and i have promised them that you would meet them; i have committed myself." it was true that lapham had defied rogers to bring on his men, and had implied his willingness to negotiate with them. that was before he had talked the matter over with his wife, and perceived his moral responsibility in it; even she had not seen this at once. he could not enter into this explanation with rogers; he could only say, "i said i'd give you twenty-four hours to prove yourself a liar, and you did it. i didn't say twenty-four days." "i don't see the difference," returned rogers. "the parties are here now, and that proves that i was acting in good faith at the time. there has been no change in the posture of affairs. you don't know now any more than you knew then that the g. l. & p. is going to want the property. if there's any difference, it's in favour of the road's having changed its mind." there was some sense in this, and lapham felt it--felt it only too eagerly, as he recognised the next instant. rogers went on quietly: "you're not obliged to sell to these parties when you meet them; but you've allowed me to commit myself to them by the promise that you would talk with them." "'twan't a promise," said lapham. "it was the same thing; they have come out from england on my guaranty that there was such and such an opening for their capital; and now what am i to say to them? it places me in a ridiculous position." rogers urged his grievance calmly, almost impersonally, making his appeal to lapham's sense of justice. "i can't go back to those parties and tell them you won't see them. it's no answer to make. they've got a right to know why you won't see them." "very well, then!" cried lapham; "i'll come and tell them why. who shall i ask for? when shall i be there?" "at eight o'clock, please," said rogers, rising, without apparent alarm at his threat, if it was a threat. "and ask for me; i've taken a room at the hotel for the present." "i won't keep you five minutes when i get there," said lapham; but he did not come away till ten o'clock. it appeared to him as if the very devil was in it. the englishmen treated his downright refusal to sell as a piece of bluff, and talked on as though it were merely the opening of the negotiation. when he became plain with them in his anger, and told them why he would not sell, they seemed to have been prepared for this as a stroke of business, and were ready to meet it. "has this fellow," he demanded, twisting his head in the direction of rogers, but disdaining to notice him otherwise, "been telling you that it's part of my game to say this? well, sir, i can tell you, on my side, that there isn't a slipperier rascal unhung in america than milton k. rogers!" the englishmen treated this as a piece of genuine american humour, and returned to the charge with unabated courage. they owned now, that a person interested with them had been out to look at the property, and that they were satisfied with the appearance of things. they developed further the fact that they were not acting solely, or even principally, in their own behalf, but were the agents of people in england who had projected the colonisation of a sort of community on the spot, somewhat after the plan of other english dreamers, and that they were satisfied, from a careful inspection, that the resources and facilities were those best calculated to develop the energy and enterprise of the proposed community. they were prepared to meet mr. lapham--colonel, they begged his pardon, at the instance of rogers--at any reasonable figure, and were quite willing to assume the risks he had pointed out. something in the eyes of these men, something that lurked at an infinite depth below their speech, and was not really in their eyes when lapham looked again, had flashed through him a sense of treachery in them. he had thought them the dupes of rogers; but in that brief instant he had seen them--or thought he had seen them--his accomplices, ready to betray the interests of which they went on to speak with a certain comfortable jocosity, and a certain incredulous slight of his show of integrity. it was a deeper game than lapham was used to, and he sat looking with a sort of admiration from one englishman to the other, and then to rogers, who maintained an exterior of modest neutrality, and whose air said, "i have brought you gentlemen together as the friend of all parties, and i now leave you to settle it among yourselves. i ask nothing, and expect nothing, except the small sum which shall accrue to me after the discharge of my obligations to colonel lapham." while rogers's presence expressed this, one of the englishmen was saying, "and if you have any scruple in allowin' us to assume this risk, colonel lapham, perhaps you can console yourself with the fact that the loss, if there is to be any, will fall upon people who are able to bear it--upon an association of rich and charitable people. but we're quite satisfied there will be no loss," he added savingly. "all you have to do is to name your price, and we will do our best to meet it." there was nothing in the englishman's sophistry very shocking to lapham. it addressed itself in him to that easy-going, not evilly intentioned, potential immorality which regards common property as common prey, and gives us the most corrupt municipal governments under the sun--which makes the poorest voter, when he has tricked into place, as unscrupulous in regard to others' money as an hereditary prince. lapham met the englishman's eye, and with difficulty kept himself from winking. then he looked away, and tried to find out where he stood, or what he wanted to do. he could hardly tell. he had expected to come into that room and unmask rogers, and have it over. but he had unmasked rogers without any effect whatever, and the play had only begun. he had a whimsical and sarcastic sense of its being very different from the plays at the theatre. he could not get up and go away in silent contempt; he could not tell the englishmen that he believed them a pair of scoundrels and should have nothing to do with them; he could no longer treat them as innocent dupes. he remained baffled and perplexed, and the one who had not spoken hitherto remarked-- "of course we shan't 'aggle about a few pound, more or less. if colonel lapham's figure should be a little larger than ours, i've no doubt 'e'll not be too 'ard upon us in the end." lapham appreciated all the intent of this subtle suggestion, and understood as plainly as if it had been said in so many words, that if they paid him a larger price, it was to be expected that a certain portion of the purchase-money was to return to their own hands. still he could not move; and it seemed to him that he could not speak. "ring that bell, mr. rogers," said the englishman who had last spoken, glancing at the annunciator button in the wall near rogers's head, "and 'ave up something 'of, can't you? i should like to wet me w'istle, as you say 'ere, and colonel lapham seems to find it rather dry work." lapham jumped to his feet, and buttoned his overcoat about him. he remembered with terror the dinner at corey's where he had disgraced and betrayed himself, and if he went into this thing at all, he was going into it sober. "i can't stop," he said, "i must be going." "but you haven't given us an answer yet, mr. lapham," said the first englishman with a successful show of dignified surprise. "the only answer i can give you now is, no," said lapham. "if you want another, you must let me have time to think it over." "but 'ow much time?" said the other englishman. "we're pressed for time ourselves, and we hoped for an answer--'oped for a hanswer," he corrected himself, "at once. that was our understandin' with mr. rogers." "i can't let you know till morning, anyway," said lapham, and he went out, as his custom often was, without any parting salutation. he thought rogers might try to detain him; but rogers had remained seated when the others got to their feet, and paid no attention to his departure. he walked out into the night air, every pulse throbbing with the strong temptation. he knew very well those men would wait, and gladly wait, till the morning, and that the whole affair was in his hands. it made him groan in spirit to think that it was. if he had hoped that some chance might take the decision from him, there was no such chance, in the present or future, that he could see. it was for him alone to commit this rascality--if it was a rascality--or not. he walked all the way home, letting one car after another pass him on the street, now so empty of other passing, and it was almost eleven o'clock when he reached home. a carriage stood before his house, and when he let himself in with his key, he heard talking in the family-room. it came into his head that irene had got back unexpectedly, and that the sight of her was somehow going to make it harder for him; then he thought it might be corey, come upon some desperate pretext to see penelope; but when he opened the door he saw, with a certain absence of surprise, that it was rogers. he was standing with his back to the fireplace, talking to mrs. lapham, and he had been shedding tears; dry tears they seemed, and they had left a sort of sandy, glistening trace on his cheeks. apparently he was not ashamed of them, for the expression with which he met lapham was that of a man making a desperate appeal in his own cause, which was identical with that of humanity, if not that of justice. "i some expected," began rogers, "to find you here----" "no, you didn't," interrupted lapham; "you wanted to come here and make a poor mouth to mrs. lapham before i got home." "i knew that mrs. lapham would know what was going on," said rogers more candidly, but not more virtuously, for that he could not, "and i wished her to understand a point that i hadn't put to you at the hotel, and that i want you should consider. and i want you should consider me a little in this business too; you're not the only one that's concerned, i tell you, and i've been telling mrs. lapham that it's my one chance; that if you don't meet me on it, my wife and children will be reduced to beggary." "so will mine," said lapham, "or the next thing to it." "well, then, i want you to give me this chance to get on my feet again. you've no right to deprive me of it; it's unchristian. in our dealings with each other we should be guided by the golden rule, as i was saying to mrs. lapham before you came in. i told her that if i knew myself, i should in your place consider the circumstances of a man in mine, who had honourably endeavoured to discharge his obligations to me, and had patiently borne my undeserved suspicions. i should consider that man's family, i told mrs. lapham." "did you tell her that if i went in with you and those fellows, i should be robbing the people who trusted them?" "i don't see what you've got to do with the people that sent them here. they are rich people, and could bear it if it came to the worst. but there's no likelihood, now, that it will come to the worst; you can see yourself that the road has changed its mind about buying. and here am i without a cent in the world; and my wife is an invalid. she needs comforts, she needs little luxuries, and she hasn't even the necessaries; and you want to sacrifice her to a mere idea! you don't know in the first place that the road will ever want to buy; and if it does, the probability is that with a colony like that planted on its line, it would make very different terms from what it would with you or me. these agents are not afraid, and their principals are rich people; and if there was any loss, it would be divided up amongst them so that they wouldn't any of them feel it." lapham stole a troubled glance at his wife, and saw that there was no help in her. whether she was daunted and confused in her own conscience by the outcome, so evil and disastrous, of the reparation to rogers which she had forced her husband to make, or whether her perceptions had been blunted and darkened by the appeals which rogers had now used, it would be difficult to say. probably there was a mixture of both causes in the effect which her husband felt in her, and from which he turned, girding himself anew, to rogers. "i have no wish to recur to the past," continued rogers, with growing superiority. "you have shown a proper spirit in regard to that, and you have done what you could to wipe it out." "i should think i had," said lapham. "i've used up about a hundred and fifty thousand dollars trying." "some of my enterprises," rogers admitted, "have been unfortunate, seemingly; but i have hopes that they will yet turn out well--in time. i can't understand why you should be so mindful of others now, when you showed so little regard for me then. i had come to your aid at a time when you needed help, and when you got on your feet you kicked me out of the business. i don't complain, but that is the fact; and i had to begin again, after i had supposed myself settled in life, and establish myself elsewhere." lapham glanced again at his wife; her head had fallen; he could see that she was so rooted in her old remorse for that questionable act of his, amply and more than fully atoned for since, that she was helpless, now in the crucial moment, when he had the utmost need of her insight. he had counted upon her; he perceived now that when he had thought it was for him alone to decide, he had counted upon her just spirit to stay his own in its struggle to be just. he had not forgotten how she held out against him only a little while ago, when he asked her whether he might not rightfully sell in some such contingency as this; and it was not now that she said or even looked anything in favour of rogers, but that she was silent against him, which dismayed lapham. he swallowed the lump that rose in his throat, the self-pity, the pity for her, the despair, and said gently, "i guess you better go to bed, persis. it's pretty late." she turned towards the door, when rogers said, with the obvious intention of detaining her through her curiosity-- "but i let that pass. and i don't ask now that you should sell to these men." mrs. lapham paused, irresolute. "what are you making this bother for, then?" demanded lapham. "what do you want?" "what i've been telling your wife here. i want you should sell to me. i don't say what i'm going to do with the property, and you will not have an iota of responsibility, whatever happens." lapham was staggered, and he saw his wife's face light up with eager question. "i want that property," continued rogers, "and i've got the money to buy it. what will you take for it? if it's the price you're standing out for----" "persis," said lapham, "go to bed," and he gave her a look that meant obedience for her. she went out of the door, and left him with his tempter. "if you think i'm going to help you whip the devil round the stump, you're mistaken in your man, milton rogers," said lapham, lighting a cigar. "as soon as i sold to you, you would sell to that other pair of rascals. i smelt 'em out in half a minute." "they are christian gentlemen," said rogers. "but i don't purpose defending them; and i don't purpose telling you what i shall or shall not do with the property when it is in my hands again. the question is, will you sell, and, if so, what is your figure? you have got nothing whatever to do with it after you've sold." it was perfectly true. any lawyer would have told him the same. he could not help admiring rogers for his ingenuity, and every selfish interest of his nature joined with many obvious duties to urge him to consent. he did not see why he should refuse. there was no longer a reason. he was standing out alone for nothing, any one else would say. he smoked on as if rogers were not there, and rogers remained before the fire as patient as the clock ticking behind his head on the mantel, and showing the gleam of its pendulum beyond his face on either side. but at last he said, "well?" "well," answered lapham, "you can't expect me to give you an answer to-night, any more than before. you know that what you've said now hasn't changed the thing a bit. i wish it had. the lord knows, i want to be rid of the property fast enough." "then why don't you sell to me? can't you see that you will not be responsible for what happens after you have sold?" "no, i can't see that; but if i can by morning, i'll sell." "why do you expect to know any better by morning? you're wasting time for nothing!" cried rogers, in his disappointment. "why are you so particular? when you drove me out of the business you were not so very particular." lapham winced. it was certainly ridiculous for man who had once so selfishly consulted his own interests to be stickling now about the rights of others. "i guess nothing's going to happen overnight," he answered sullenly. "anyway, i shan't say what i shall do till morning." "what time can i see you in the morning?" "half-past nine." rogers buttoned his coat, and went out of the room without another word. lapham followed him to close the street-door after him. his wife called down to him from above as he approached the room again, "well?" "i've told him i'd let him know in the morning." "want i should come down and talk with you?" "no," answered lapham, in the proud bitterness which his isolation brought, "you couldn't do any good." he went in and shut the door, and by and by his wife heard him begin walking up and down; and then the rest of the night she lay awake and listened to him walking up and down. but when the first light whitened the window, the words of the scripture came into her mind: "and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day.... and he said, let me go, for the day breaketh. and he said, i will not let thee go, except thou bless me." she could not ask him anything when they met, but he raised his dull eyes after the first silence, and said, "i don't know what i'm going to say to rogers." she could not speak; she did not know what to say, and she saw her husband when she followed him with her eyes from the window, drag heavily down toward the corner, where he was to take, the horse-car. he arrived rather later than usual at his office, and he found his letters already on his table. there was one, long and official-looking, with a printed letter-heading on the outside, and lapham had no need to open it in order to know that it was the offer of the great lacustrine & polar railroad for his mills. but he went mechanically through the verification of his prophetic fear, which was also his sole hope, and then sat looking blankly at it. rogers came promptly at the appointed time, and lapham handed him the letter. he must have taken it all in at a glance, and seen the impossibility of negotiating any further now, even with victims so pliant and willing as those englishmen. "you've ruined me!" rogers broke out. "i haven't a cent left in the world! god help my poor wife!" he went out, and lapham remained staring at the door which closed upon him. this was his reward for standing firm for right and justice to his own destruction: to feel like a thief and a murderer. xxvi. later in the forenoon came the despatch from the west virginians in new york, saying their brother assented to their agreement; and it now remained for lapham to fulfil his part of it. he was ludicrously far from able to do this; and unless he could get some extension of time from them, he must lose this chance, his only chance, to retrieve himself. he spent the time in a desperate endeavour to raise the money, but he had not raised the half of it when the banks closed. with shame in his heart he went to bellingham, from whom he had parted so haughtily, and laid his plan before him. he could not bring himself to ask bellingham's help, but he told him what he proposed to do. bellingham pointed out that the whole thing was an experiment, and that the price asked was enormous, unless a great success were morally certain. he advised delay, he advised prudence; he insisted that lapham ought at least to go out to kanawha falls, and see the mines and works before he put any such sum into the development of the enterprise. "that's all well enough," cried lapham; "but if i don't clinch this offer within twenty-four hours, they'll withdraw it, and go into the market; and then where am i?" "go on and see them again," said bellingham. "they can't be so peremptory as that with you. they must give you time to look at what they want to sell. if it turns out what you hope, then--i'll see what can be done. but look into it thoroughly." "well!" cried lapham, helplessly submitting. he took out his watch, and saw that he had forty minutes to catch the four o'clock train. he hurried back to his office, and put together some papers preparatory to going, and despatched a note by his boy to mrs. lapham saying that he was starting for new york, and did not know just when he should get back. the early spring day was raw and cold. as he went out through the office he saw the clerks at work with their street-coats and hats on; miss dewey had her jacket dragged up on her shoulders, and looked particularly comfortless as she operated her machine with her red fingers. "what's up?" asked lapham, stopping a moment. "seems to be something the matter with the steam," she answered, with the air of unmerited wrong habitual with so many pretty women who have to work for a living. "well, take your writer into my room. there's a fire in the stove there," said lapham, passing out. half an hour later his wife came into the outer office. she had passed the day in a passion of self-reproach, gradually mounting from the mental numbness in which he had left her, and now she could wait no longer to tell him that she saw how she had forsaken him in his hour of trial and left him to bear it alone. she wondered at herself in shame and dismay; she wondered that she could have been so confused as to the real point by that old wretch of a rogers, that she could have let him hoodwink her so, even for a moment. it astounded her that such a thing should have happened, for if there was any virtue upon which this good woman prided herself, in which she thought herself superior to her husband, it was her instant and steadfast perception of right and wrong, and the ability to choose the right to her own hurt. but she had now to confess, as each of us has had likewise to confess in his own case, that the very virtue on which she had prided herself was the thing that had played her false; that she had kept her mind so long upon that old wrong which she believed her husband had done this man that she could not detach it, but clung to the thought of reparation for it when she ought to have seen that he was proposing a piece of roguery as the means. the suffering which lapham must inflict on him if he decided against him had been more to her apprehension than the harm he might do if he decided for him. but now she owned her limitations to herself, and above everything in the world she wished the man whom her conscience had roused and driven on whither her intelligence had not followed, to do right, to do what he felt to be right, and nothing else. she admired and revered him for going beyond her, and she wished to tell him that she did not know what he had determined to do about rogers, but that she knew it was right, and would gladly abide the consequences with him, whatever they were. she had not been near his place of business for nearly a year, and her heart smote her tenderly as she looked about her there, and thought of the early days when she knew as much about the paint as he did; she wished that those days were back again. she saw corey at his desk, and she could not bear to speak to him; she dropped her veil that she need not recognise him, and pushed on to lapham's room, and opening the door without knocking, shut it behind her. then she became aware with intolerable disappointment that her husband was not there. instead, a very pretty girl sat at his desk, operating a typewriter. she seemed quite at home, and she paid mrs. lapham the scant attention which such young women often bestow upon people not personally interesting to them. it vexed the wife that any one else should seem to be helping her husband about business that she had once been so intimate with; and she did not at all like the girl's indifference to her presence. her hat and sack hung on a nail in one corner, and lapham's office coat, looking intensely like him to his wife's familiar eye, hung on a nail in the other corner; and mrs. lapham liked even less than the girl's good looks this domestication of her garments in her husband's office. she began to ask herself excitedly why he should be away from his office when she happened to come; and she had not the strength at the moment to reason herself out of her unreasonableness. "when will colonel lapham be in, do you suppose?" she sharply asked of the girl. "i couldn't say exactly," replied the girl, without looking round. "has he been out long?" "i don't know as i noticed," said the girl, looking up at the clock, without looking at mrs. lapham. she went on working her machine. "well, i can't wait any longer," said the wife abruptly. "when colonel lapham comes in, you please tell him mrs. lapham wants to see him." the girl started to her feet and turned toward mrs. lapham with a red and startled face, which she did not lift to confront her. "yes--yes--i will," she faltered. the wife went home with a sense of defeat mixed with an irritation about this girl which she could not quell or account for. she found her husband's message, and it seemed intolerable that he should have gone to new york without seeing her; she asked herself in vain what the mysterious business could be that took him away so suddenly. she said to herself that he was neglecting her; he was leaving her out a little too much; and in demanding of herself why he had never mentioned that girl there in his office, she forgot how much she had left herself out of his business life. that was another curse of their prosperity. well, she was glad the prosperity was going; it had never been happiness. after this she was going to know everything as she used. she tried to dismiss the whole matter till lapham returned; and if there had been anything for her to do in that miserable house, as she called it in her thought, she might have succeeded. but again the curse was on her; there was nothing to do; and the looks of that girl kept coming back to her vacancy, her disoccupation. she tried to make herself something to do, but that beauty, which she had not liked, followed her amid the work of overhauling the summer clothing, which irene had seen to putting away in the fall. who was the thing, anyway? it was very strange, her being there; why did she jump up in that frightened way when mrs. lapham had named herself? after dark, that evening, when the question had worn away its poignancy from mere iteration, a note for mrs. lapham was left at the door by a messenger who said there was no answer. "a note for me?" she said, staring at the unknown, and somehow artificial-looking, handwriting of the superscription. then she opened it and read: "ask your husband about his lady copying-clerk. a friend and well-wisher," who signed the note, gave no other name. mrs. lapham sat helpless with it in her hand. her brain reeled; she tried to fight the madness off; but before lapham came back the second morning, it had become, with lessening intervals of sanity and release, a demoniacal possession. she passed the night without sleep, without rest, in the frenzy of the cruellest of the passions, which covers with shame the unhappy soul it possesses, and murderously lusts for the misery of its object. if she had known where to find her husband in new york, she would have followed him; she waited his return in an ecstasy of impatience. in the morning he came back, looking spent and haggard. she saw him drive up to the door, and she ran to let him in herself. "who is that girl you've got in your office, silas lapham?" she demanded, when her husband entered. "girl in my office?" "yes! who is she? what is she doing there?" "why, what have you heard about her?" "never you mind what i've heard. who is she? is it mrs. m. that you gave that money to? i want to know who she is! i want to know what a respectable man, with grown-up girls of his own, is doing with such a looking thing as that in his office? i want to know how long she's been there? i want to know what she's there at all for?" he had mechanically pushed her before him into the long, darkened parlour, and he shut himself in there with her now, to keep the household from hearing her lifted voice. for a while he stood bewildered, and could not have answered if he would, and then he would not. he merely asked, "have i ever accused you of anything wrong, persis?" "you no need to!" she answered furiously, placing herself against the closed door. "did you ever know me to do anything out of the way?" "that isn't what i asked you." "well, i guess you may find out about that girl yourself. get away from the door." "i won't get away from the door." she felt herself set lightly aside, and her husband opened the door and went out. "i will find out about her," she screamed after him. "i'll find out, and i'll disgrace you. i'll teach you how to treat me----" the air blackened round her: she reeled to the sofa and then she found herself waking from a faint. she did not know how long she had lain there, she did not care. in a moment her madness came whirling back upon her. she rushed up to his room; it was empty; the closet-doors stood ajar and the drawers were open; he must have packed a bag hastily and fled. she went out and wandered crazily up and down till she found a hack. she gave the driver her husband's business address, and told him to drive there as fast as he could; and three times she lowered the window to put her head out and ask him if he could not hurry. a thousand things thronged into her mind to support her in her evil will. she remembered how glad and proud that man had been to marry her, and how everybody said she was marrying beneath her when she took him. she remembered how good she had always been to him, how perfectly devoted, slaving early and late to advance him, and looking out for his interests in all things, and sparing herself in nothing. if it had not been for her, he might have been driving stage yet; and since their troubles had begun, the troubles which his own folly and imprudence had brought on them, her conduct had been that of a true and faithful wife. was he the sort of man to be allowed to play her false with impunity? she set her teeth and drew her breath sharply through them when she thought how willingly she had let him befool her, and delude her about that memorandum of payments to mrs. m., because she loved him so much, and pitied him for his cares and anxieties. she recalled his confusion, his guilty looks. she plunged out of the carriage so hastily when she reached the office that she did not think of paying the driver; and he had to call after her when she had got half-way up the stairs. then she went straight to lapham's room, with outrage in her heart. there was again no one there but that type-writer girl; she jumped to her feet in a fright, as mrs. lapham dashed the door to behind her and flung up her veil. the two women confronted each other. "why, the good land!" cried mrs. lapham, "ain't you zerrilla millon?" "i--i'm married," faltered the girl "my name's dewey, now." "you're jim millon's daughter, anyway. how long have you been here?" "i haven't been here regularly; i've been here off and on ever since last may." "where's your mother?" "she's here--in boston." mrs. lapham kept her eyes on the girl, but she dropped, trembling, into her husband's chair, and a sort of amaze and curiosity were in her voice instead of the fury she had meant to put there. "the colonel," continued zerrilla, "he's been helping us, and he's got me a type-writer, so that i can help myself a little. mother's doing pretty well now; and when hen isn't around we can get along." "that your husband?" "i never wanted to marry him; but he promised to try to get something to do on shore; and mother was all for it, because he had a little property then, and i thought may be i'd better. but it's turned out just as i said and if he don't stay away long enough this time to let me get the divorce,--he's agreed to it, time and again,--i don't know what we're going to do." zerrilla's voice fell, and the trouble which she could keep out of her face usually, when she was comfortably warmed and fed and prettily dressed, clouded it in the presence of a sympathetic listener. "i saw it was you, when you came in the other day," she went on; "but you didn't seem to know me. i suppose the colonel's told you that there's a gentleman going to marry me--mr. wemmel's his name--as soon as i get the divorce; but sometimes i'm completely discouraged; it don't seem as if i ever could get it." mrs. lapham would not let her know that she was ignorant of the fact attributed to her knowledge. she remained listening to zerrilla, and piecing out the whole history of her presence there from the facts of the past, and the traits of her husband's character. one of the things she had always had to fight him about was that idea of his that he was bound to take care of jim millon's worthless wife and her child because millon had got the bullet that was meant for him. it was a perfect superstition of his; she could not beat it out of him; but she had made him promise the last time he had done anything for that woman that it should be the last time. he had then got her a little house in one of the fishing ports, where she could take the sailors to board and wash for, and earn an honest living if she would keep straight. that was five or six years ago, and mrs. lapham had heard nothing of mrs. millon since; she had heard quite enough of her before; and had known her idle and baddish ever since she was the worst little girl at school in lumberville, and all through her shameful girlhood, and the married days which she had made so miserable to the poor fellow who had given her his decent name and a chance to behave herself. mrs. lapham had no mercy on moll millon, and she had quarrelled often enough with her husband for befriending her. as for the child, if the mother would put zerrilla out with some respectable family, that would be one thing; but as long as she kept zerrilla with her, she was against letting her husband do anything for either of them. he had done ten times as much for them now as he had any need to, and she had made him give her his solemn word that he would do no more. she saw now that she was wrong to make him give it, and that he must have broken it again and again for the reason that he had given when she once scolded him for throwing away his money on that hussy-- "when i think of jim millon, i've got to; that's all." she recalled now that whenever she had brought up the subject of mrs. millon and her daughter, he had seemed shy of it, and had dropped it with some guess that they were getting along now. she wondered that she had not thought at once of mrs. millon when she saw that memorandum about mrs. m.; but the woman had passed so entirely out of her life, that she had never dreamt of her in connection with it. her husband had deceived her, yet her heart was no longer hot against him, but rather tenderly grateful that his deceit was in this sort, and not in that other. all cruel and shameful doubt of him went out of it. she looked at this beautiful girl, who had blossomed out of her knowledge since she saw her last, and she knew that she was only a blossomed weed, of the same worthless root as her mother, and saved, if saved, from the same evil destiny, by the good of her father in her; but so far as the girl and her mother were concerned, mrs. lapham knew that her husband was to blame for nothing but his wilful, wrong-headed, kind-heartedness, which her own exactions had turned into deceit. she remained a while, questioning the girl quietly about herself and her mother, and then, with a better mind towards zerrilla, at least, than she had ever had before, she rose up and went out. there must have been some outer hint of the exhaustion in which the subsidence of her excitement had left her within, for before she had reached the head of the stairs, corey came towards her. "can i be of any use to you, mrs. lapham? the colonel was here just before you came in, on his way to the train." "yes,--yes. i didn't know--i thought perhaps i could catch him here. but it don't matter. i wish you would let some one go with me to get a carriage," she begged feebly. "i'll go with you myself," said the young fellow, ignoring the strangeness in her manner. he offered her his arm in the twilight of the staircase, and she was glad to put her trembling hand through it, and keep it there till he helped her into a hack which he found for her. he gave the driver her direction, and stood looking a little anxiously at her. "i thank you; i am all right now," she said, and he bade the man drive on. when she reached home she went to bed, spent with the tumult of her emotions and sick with shame and self-reproach. she understood now, as clearly as if he had told her in as many words, that if he had befriended those worthless jades--the millons characterised themselves so, even to mrs. lapham's remorse--secretly and in defiance of her, it was because he dreaded her blame, which was so sharp and bitter, for what he could not help doing. it consoled her that he had defied her, deceived her; when he came back she should tell him that; and then it flashed upon her that she did not know where he was gone, or whether he would ever come again. if he never came, it would be no more than she deserved; but she sent for penelope, and tried to give herself hopes of escape from this just penalty. lapham had not told his daughter where he was going; she had heard him packing his bag, and had offered to help him; but he had said he could do it best, and had gone off, as he usually did, without taking leave of any one. "what were you talking about so loud, down in the parlour," she asked her mother, "just before he came up. is there any new trouble?" "no; it was nothing." "i couldn't tell. once i thought you were laughing." she went about, closing the curtains on account of her mother's headache, and doing awkwardly and imperfectly the things that irene would have done so skilfully for her comfort. the day wore away to nightfall, and then mrs. lapham said she must know. penelope said there was no one to ask; the clerks would all be gone home, and her mother said yes, there was mr. corey; they could send and ask him; he would know. the girl hesitated. "very well," she said, then, scarcely above a whisper, and she presently laughed huskily. "mr. corey seems fated to come in, somewhere. i guess it's a providence, mother." she sent off a note, inquiring whether he could tell her just where her father had expected to be that night; and the answer came quickly back that corey did not know, but would look up the book-keeper and inquire. this office brought him in person, an hour later, to tell penelope that the colonel was to be at lapham that night and next day. "he came in from new york, in a great hurry, and rushed off as soon as he could pack his bag," penelope explained, "and we hadn't a chance to ask him where he was to be to-night. and mother wasn't very well, and----" "i thought she wasn't looking well when she was at the office to-day. and so i thought i would come rather than send," corey explained in his turn. "oh, thank you!" "if there is anything i can do--telegraph colonel lapham, or anything?" "oh no, thank you; mother's better now. she merely wanted to be sure where he was." he did not offer to go, upon this conclusion of his business, but hoped he was not keeping her from her mother. she thanked him once again, and said no, that her mother was much better since she had had a cup of tea; and then they looked at each other, and without any apparent exchange of intelligence he remained, and at eleven o'clock he was still there. he was honest in saying he did not know it was so late; but he made no pretence of being sorry, and she took the blame to herself. "i oughtn't to have let you stay," she said. "but with father gone, and all that trouble hanging over us----" she was allowing him to hold her hand a moment at the door, to which she had followed him. "i'm so glad you could let me!" he said, "and i want to ask you now when i may come again. but if you need me, you'll----" a sharp pull at the door-bell outside made them start asunder, and at a sign from penelope, who knew that the maids were abed by this time, he opened it. "why, irene!" shrieked the girl. irene entered with the hackman, who had driven her unheard to the door, following with her small bags, and kissed her sister with resolute composure. "that's all," she said to the hackman. "i gave my checks to the expressman," she explained to penelope. corey stood helpless. irene turned upon him, and gave him her hand. "how do you do, mr. corey?" she said, with a courage that sent a thrill of admiring gratitude through him. "where's mamma, pen? papa gone to bed?" penelope faltered out some reply embodying the facts, and irene ran up the stairs to her mother's room. mrs. lapham started up in bed at her apparition. "irene lapham." "uncle william thought he ought to tell me the trouble papa was in; and did you think i was going to stay off there junketing, while you were going through all this at home, and pen acting so silly, too? you ought to have been ashamed to let me stay so long! i started just as soon as i could pack. did you get my despatch? i telegraphed from springfield. but it don't matter, now. here i am. and i don't think i need have hurried on pen's account," she added, with an accent prophetic of the sort of old maid she would become, if she happened not to marry. "did you see him?" asked her mother. "it's the first time he's been here since she told him he mustn't come." "i guess it isn't the last time, by the looks," said irene, and before she took off her bonnet she began to undo some of penelope's mistaken arrangements of the room. at breakfast, where corey and his mother met the next morning before his father and sisters came down, he told her, with embarrassment which told much more, that he wished now that she would go and call upon the laphams. mrs. corey turned a little pale, but shut her lips tight and mourned in silence whatever hopes she had lately permitted herself. she answered with roman fortitude: "of course, if there's anything between you and miss lapham, your family ought to recognise it." "yes," said corey. "you were reluctant to have me call at first, but now if the affair is going on----" "it is! i hope--yes, it is!" "then i ought to go and see her, with your sisters; and she ought to come here and--we ought all to see her and make the matter public. we can't do so too soon. it will seem as if we were ashamed if we don't." "yes, you are quite right, mother," said the young man gratefully, "and i feel how kind and good you are. i have tried to consider you in this matter, though i don't seem to have done so; i know what your rights are, and i wish with all my heart that i were meeting even your tastes perfectly. but i know you will like her when you come to know her. it's been very hard for her every way--about her sister,--and she's made a great sacrifice for me. she's acted nobly." mrs. corey, whose thoughts cannot always be reported, said she was sure of it, and that all she desired was her son's happiness. "she's been very unwilling to consider it an engagement on that account, and on account of colonel lapham's difficulties. i should like to have you go, now, for that very reason. i don't know just how serious the trouble is; but it isn't a time when we can seem indifferent." the logic of this was not perhaps so apparent to the glasses of fifty as to the eyes of twenty-six; but mrs. corey, however she viewed it, could not allow herself to blench before the son whom she had taught that to want magnanimity was to be less than gentlemanly. she answered, with what composure she could, "i will take your sisters," and then she made some natural inquiries about lapham's affairs. "oh, i hope it will come out all right," corey said, with a lover's vague smile, and left her. when his father came down, rubbing his long hands together, and looking aloof from all the cares of the practical world, in an artistic withdrawal, from which his eye ranged over the breakfast-table before he sat down, mrs. corey told him what she and their son had been saying. he laughed, with a delicate impersonal appreciation of the predicament. "well, anna, you can't say but if you ever were guilty of supposing yourself porcelain, this is a just punishment of your arrogance. here you are bound by the very quality on which you've prided yourself to behave well to a bit of earthenware who is apparently in danger of losing the gilding that rendered her tolerable." "we never cared for the money," said mrs. corey. "you know that." "no; and now we can't seem to care for the loss of it. that would be still worse. either horn of the dilemma gores us. well, we still have the comfort we had in the beginning; we can't help ourselves; and we should only make bad worse by trying. unless we can look to tom's inamorata herself for help." mrs. corey shook her head so gloomily that her husband broke off with another laugh. but at the continued trouble of her face, he said, sympathetically: "my dear, i know it's a very disagreeable affair; and i don't think either of us has failed to see that it was so from the beginning. i have had my way of expressing my sense of it, and you yours, but we have always been of the same mind about it. we would both have preferred to have tom marry in his own set; the laphams are about the last set we could have wished him to marry into. they are uncultivated people, and so far as i have seen them, i'm not able to believe that poverty will improve them. still, it may. let us hope for the best, and let us behave as well as we know how. i'm sure you will behave well, and i shall try. i'm going with you to call on miss lapham. this is a thing that can't be done by halves!" he cut his orange in the neapolitan manner, and ate it in quarters. xxvii. irene did not leave her mother in any illusion concerning her cousin will and herself. she said they had all been as nice to her as they could be, and when mrs. lapham hinted at what had been in her thoughts,--or her hopes, rather,--irene severely snubbed the notion. she said that he was as good as engaged to a girl out there, and that he had never dreamt of her. her mother wondered at her severity; in these few months the girl had toughened and hardened; she had lost all her babyish dependence and pliability; she was like iron; and here and there she was sharpened to a cutting edge. it had been a life and death struggle with her; she had conquered, but she had also necessarily lost much. perhaps what she had lost was not worth keeping; but at any rate she had lost it. she required from her mother a strict and accurate account of her father's affairs, so far as mrs lapham knew them; and she showed a business-like quickness in comprehending them that penelope had never pretended to. with her sister she ignored the past as completely as it was possible to do; and she treated both corey and penelope with the justice which their innocence of voluntary offence deserved. it was a difficult part, and she kept away from them as much as she could. she had been easily excused, on a plea of fatigue from her journey, when mr. and mrs. corey had called the day after her arrival, and mrs. lapham being still unwell, penelope received them alone. the girl had instinctively judged best that they should know the worst at once, and she let them have the full brunt of the drawing-room, while she was screwing her courage up to come down and see them. she was afterwards--months afterwards--able to report to corey that when she entered the room his father was sitting with his hat on his knees, a little tilted away from the emancipation group, as if he expected the lincoln to hit him, with that lifted hand of benediction; and that mrs. corey looked as if she were not sure but the eagle pecked. but for the time being penelope was as nearly crazed as might be by the complications of her position, and received her visitors with a piteous distraction which could not fail of touching bromfield corey's italianised sympatheticism. he was very polite and tender with her at first, and ended by making a joke with her, to which penelope responded, in her sort. he said he hoped they parted friends, if not quite acquaintances; and she said she hoped they would be able to recognise each other if they ever met again. "that is what i meant by her pertness," said mrs corey, when they were driving away. "was it very pert?" he queried. "the child had to answer something." "i would much rather she had answered nothing, under the circumstances," said mrs. corey. "however!" she added hopelessly. "oh, she's a merry little grig, you can see that, and there's no harm in her. i can understand a little why a formal fellow like tom should be taken with her. she hasn't the least reverence, i suppose, and joked with the young man from the beginning. you must remember, anna, that there was a time when you liked my joking." "it was a very different thing!" "but that drawing-room," pursued corey; "really, i don't see how tom stands that. anna, a terrible thought occurs to me! fancy tom being married in front of that group, with a floral horse-shoe in tuberoses coming down on either side of it!" "bromfield!" cried his wife, "you are unmerciful." "no, no, my dear," he argued; "merely imaginative. and i can even imagine that little thing finding tom just the least bit slow, at times, if it were not for his goodness. tom is so kind that i'm convinced he sometimes feels your joke in his heart when his head isn't quite clear about it. well, we will not despond, my dear." "your father seemed actually to like her," mrs. corey reported to her daughters, very much shaken in her own prejudices by the fact. if the girl were not so offensive to his fastidiousness, there might be some hope that she was not so offensive as mrs. corey had thought. "i wonder how she will strike you," she concluded, looking from one daughter to another, as if trying to decide which of them would like penelope least. irene's return and the visit of the coreys formed a distraction for the laphams in which their impending troubles seemed to hang further aloof; but it was only one of those reliefs which mark the course of adversity, and it was not one of the cheerful reliefs. at any other time, either incident would have been an anxiety and care for mrs. lapham which she would have found hard to bear; but now she almost welcomed them. at the end of three days lapham returned, and his wife met him as if nothing unusual had marked their parting; she reserved her atonement for a fitter time; he would know now from the way she acted that she felt all right towards him. he took very little note of her manner, but met his family with an austere quiet that puzzled her, and a sort of pensive dignity that refined his rudeness to an effect that sometimes comes to such natures after long sickness, when the animal strength has been taxed and lowered. he sat silent with her at the table after their girls had left them alone, and seeing that he did not mean to speak, she began to explain why irene had come home, and to praise her. "yes, she done right," said lapham. "it was time for her to come," he added gently. then he was silent again, and his wife told him of corey's having been there, and of his father's and mother's calling. "i guess pen's concluded to make it up," she said. "well, we'll see about that," said lapham; and now she could no longer forbear to ask him about his affairs. "i don't know as i've got any right to know anything about it," she said humbly, with remote allusion to her treatment of him. "but i can't help wanting to know. how are things going, si?" "bad," he said, pushing his plate from him, and tilting himself back in his chair. "or they ain't going at all. they've stopped." "what do you mean, si?" she persisted, tenderly. "i've got to the end of my string. to-morrow i shall call a meeting of my creditors, and put myself in their hands. if there's enough left to satisfy them, i'm satisfied." his voice dropped in his throat; he swallowed once or twice, and then did not speak. "do you mean that it's all over with you?" she asked fearfully. he bowed his big head, wrinkled and grizzled; and after awhile he said, "it's hard to realise it; but i guess there ain't any doubt about it." he drew a long breath, and then he explained to her about the west virginia people, and how he had got an extension of the first time they had given him, and had got a man to go up to lapham with him and look at the works,--a man that had turned up in new york, and wanted to put money in the business. his money would have enabled lapham to close with the west virginians. "the devil was in it, right straight along," said lapham. "all i had to do was to keep quiet about that other company. it was rogers and his property right over again. he liked the look of things, and he wanted to go into the business, and he had the money--plenty; it would have saved me with those west virginia folks. but i had to tell him how i stood. i had to tell him all about it, and what i wanted to do. he began to back water in a minute, and the next morning i saw that it was up with him. he's gone back to new york. i've lost my last chance. now all i've got to do is to save the pieces." "will--will--everything go?" she asked. "i can't tell, yet. but they shall have a chance at everything--every dollar, every cent. i'm sorry for you, persis--and the girls." "oh, don't talk of us!" she was trying to realise that the simple, rude soul to which her heart clove in her youth, but which she had put to such cruel proof, with her unsparing conscience and her unsparing tongue, had been equal to its ordeals, and had come out unscathed and unstained. he was able in his talk to make so little of them; he hardly seemed to see what they were; he was apparently not proud of them, and certainly not glad; if they were victories of any sort, he bore them with the patience of defeat. his wife wished to praise him, but she did not know how; so she offered him a little reproach, in which alone she touched the cause of her behaviour at parting. "silas," she asked, after a long gaze at him, "why didn't you tell me you had jim millon's girl there?" "i didn't suppose you'd like it, persis," he answered. "i did intend to tell you at first, but then i put--i put it off. i thought you'd come round some day, and find it out for yourself." "i'm punished," said his wife, "for not taking enough interest in your business to even come near it. if we're brought back to the day of small things, i guess it's a lesson for me, silas." "oh, i don't know about the lesson," he said wearily. that night she showed him the anonymous scrawl which had kindled her fury against him. he turned it listlessly over in his hand. "i guess i know who it's from," he said, giving it back to her, "and i guess you do too, persis." "but how--how could he----" "mebbe he believed it," said lapham, with patience that cut her more keenly than any reproach. "you did." perhaps because the process of his ruin had been so gradual, perhaps because the excitement of preceding events had exhausted their capacity for emotion, the actual consummation of his bankruptcy brought a relief, a repose to lapham and his family, rather than a fresh sensation of calamity. in the shadow of his disaster they returned to something like their old, united life; they were at least all together again; and it will be intelligible to those whom life has blessed with vicissitude, that lapham should come home the evening after he had given up everything, to his creditors, and should sit down to his supper so cheerful that penelope could joke him in the old way, and tell him that she thought from his looks they had concluded to pay him a hundred cents on every dollar he owed them. as james bellingham had taken so much interest in his troubles from the first, lapham thought he ought to tell him, before taking the final step, just how things stood with him, and what he meant to do. bellingham made some futile inquiries about his negotiations with the west virginians, and lapham told him they had come to nothing. he spoke of the new york man, and the chance that he might have sold out half his business to him. "but, of course, i had to let him know how it was about those fellows." "of course," said bellingham, not seeing till afterwards the full significance of lapham's action. lapham said nothing about rogers and the englishmen. he believed that he had acted right in that matter, and he was satisfied; but he did not care to have bellingham, or anybody, perhaps, think he had been a fool. all those who were concerned in his affairs said he behaved well, and even more than well, when it came to the worst. the prudence, the good sense, which he had shown in the first years of his success, and of which his great prosperity seemed to have bereft him, came back, and these qualities, used in his own behalf, commended him as much to his creditors as the anxiety he showed that no one should suffer by him; this even made some of them doubtful of his sincerity. they gave him time, and there would have been no trouble in his resuming on the old basis, if the ground had not been cut from under him by the competition of the west virginia company. he saw himself that it was useless to try to go on in the old way, and he preferred to go back and begin the world anew where he had first begun it, in the hills at lapham. he put the house at nankeen square, with everything else he had, into the payment of his debts, and mrs. lapham found it easier to leave it for the old farmstead in vermont than it would have been to go from that home of many years to the new house on the water side of beacon. this thing and that is embittered to us, so that we may be willing to relinquish it; the world, life itself, is embittered to most of us, so that we are glad to have done with them at last; and this home was haunted with such memories to each of those who abandoned it that to go was less exile than escape. mrs. lapham could not look into irene's room without seeing the girl there before her glass, tearing the poor little keep-sakes of her hapless fancy from their hiding-places to take them and fling them in passionate renunciation upon her sister; she could not come into the sitting-room, where her little ones had grown up, without starting at the thought of her husband sitting so many weary nights at his desk there, trying to fight his way back to hope out of the ruin into which he was slipping. when she remembered that night when rogers came, she hated the place. irene accepted her release from the house eagerly, and was glad to go before and prepare for the family at lapham. penelope was always ashamed of her engagement there; it must seem better somewhere else and she was glad to go too. no one but lapham in fact, felt the pang of parting in all its keenness. whatever regret the others had was softened to them by the likeness of their flitting to many of those removals for the summer which they made in the late spring when they left nankeen square; they were going directly into the country instead of to the seaside first; but lapham, who usually remained in town long after they had gone, knew all the difference. for his nerves there was no mechanical sense of coming back; this was as much the end of his proud, prosperous life as death itself could have been. he was returning to begin life anew, but he knew as well as he knew that he should not find his vanished youth in his native hills, that it could never again be the triumph that it had been. that was impossible, not only in his stiffened and weakened forces, but in the very nature of things. he was going back, by grace of the man whom he owed money, to make what he could out of the one chance which his successful rivals had left him. in one phase his paint had held its own against bad times and ruinous competition, and it was with the hope of doing still more with the persis brand that he now set himself to work. the west virginia people confessed that they could not produce those fine grades, and they willingly left the field to him. a strange, not ignoble friendliness existed between lapham and the three brothers; they had used him fairly; it was their facilities that had conquered him, not their ill-will; and he recognised in them without enmity the necessity to which he had yielded. if he succeeded in his efforts to develop his paint in this direction, it must be for a long time on a small scale compared with his former business, which it could never equal, and he brought to them the flagging energies of an elderly man. he was more broken than he knew by his failure; it did not kill, as it often does, but it weakened the spring once so strong and elastic. he lapsed more and more into acquiescence with his changed condition, and that bragging note of his was rarely sounded. he worked faithfully enough in his enterprise, but sometimes he failed to seize occasions that in his younger days he would have turned to golden account. his wife saw in him a daunted look that made her heart ache for him. one result of his friendly relations with the west virginia people was that corey went in with them, and the fact that he did so solely upon lapham's advice, and by means of his recommendation, was perhaps the colonel's proudest consolation. corey knew the business thoroughly, and after half a year at kanawha falls and in the office at new york, he went out to mexico and central america, to see what could be done for them upon the ground which he had theoretically studied with lapham. before he went he came up to vermont, and urged penelope to go with him. he was to be first in the city of mexico, and if his mission was successful he was to be kept there and in south america several years, watching the new railroad enterprises and the development of mechanical agriculture and whatever other undertakings offered an opening for the introduction of the paint. they were all young men together, and corey, who had put his money into the company, had a proprietary interest in the success which they were eager to achieve. "there's no more reason now and no less than ever there was," mused penelope, in counsel with her mother, "why i should say yes, or why i should say no. everything else changes, but this is just where it was a year ago. it don't go backward, and it don't go forward. mother, i believe i shall take the bit in my teeth--if anybody will put it there!" "it isn't the same as it was," suggested her mother. "you can see that irene's all over it." "that's no credit to me," said penelope. "i ought to be just as much ashamed as ever." "you no need ever to be ashamed." "that's true, too," said the girl. "and i can sneak off to mexico with a good conscience if i could make up my mind to it." she laughed. "well, if i could be sentenced to be married, or somebody would up and forbid the banns! i don't know what to do about it." her mother left her to carry her hesitation back to corey, and she said now, they had better go all over it and try to reason it out. "and i hope that whatever i do, it won't be for my own sake, but for--others!" corey said he was sure of that, and looked at her with eyes of patient tenderness. "i don't say it is wrong," she proceeded, rather aimlessly, "but i can't make it seem right. i don't know whether i can make you understand, but the idea of being happy, when everybody else is so miserable, is more than i can endure. it makes me wretched." "then perhaps that's your share of the common suffering," suggested corey, smiling. "oh, you know it isn't! you know it's nothing. oh! one of the reasons is what i told you once before, that as long as father is in trouble i can't let you think of me. now that he's lost everything--?" she bent her eyes inquiringly upon him, as if for the effect of this argument. "i don't think that's a very good reason," he answered seriously, but smiling still. "do you believe me when i tell you that i love you?" "why, i suppose i must," she said, dropping her eyes. "then why shouldn't i think all the more of you on account of your father's loss? you didn't suppose i cared for you because he was prosperous?" there was a shade of reproach, ever so delicate and gentle, in his smiling question, which she felt. "no, i couldn't think such a thing of you. i--i don't know what i meant. i meant that----" she could not go on and say that she had felt herself more worthy of him because of her father's money; it would not have been true; yet there was no other explanation. she stopped, and cast a helpless glance at him. he came to her aid. "i understand why you shouldn't wish me to suffer by your father's misfortunes." "yes, that was it; and there is too great a difference every way. we ought to look at that again. you mustn't pretend that you don't know it, for that wouldn't be true. your mother will never like me, and perhaps--perhaps i shall not like her." "well," said corey, a little daunted, "you won't have to marry my family." "ah, that isn't the point!" "i know it," he admitted. "i won't pretend that i don't see what you mean; but i'm sure that all the differences would disappear when you came to know my family better. i'm not afraid but you and my mother will like each other--she can't help it!" he exclaimed, less judicially than he had hitherto spoken, and he went on to urge some points of doubtful tenability. "we have our ways, and you have yours; and while i don't say but what you and my mother and sisters would be a little strange together at first, it would soon wear off, on both sides. there can't be anything hopelessly different in you all, and if there were it wouldn't be any difference to me." "do you think it would be pleasant to have you on my side against your mother?" "there won't be any sides. tell me just what it is you're afraid of." "afraid?" "thinking of, then." "i don't know. it isn't anything they say or do," she explained, with her eyes intent on his. "it's what they are. i couldn't be natural with them, and if i can't be natural with people, i'm disagreeable." "can you be natural with me?" "oh, i'm not afraid of you. i never was. that was the trouble, from the beginning." "well, then, that's all that's necessary. and it never was the least trouble to me!" "it made me untrue to irene." "you mustn't say that! you were always true to her." "she cared for you first." "well, but i never cared for her at all!" he besought her. "she thought you did." "that was nobody's fault, and i can't let you make it yours. my dear----" "wait. we must understand each other," said penelope, rising from her seat to prevent an advance he was making from his; "i want you to realise the whole affair. should you want a girl who hadn't a cent in the world, and felt different in your mother's company, and had cheated and betrayed her own sister?" "i want you!" "very well, then, you can't have me. i should always despise myself. i ought to give you up for all these reasons. yes, i must." she looked at him intently, and there was a tentative quality in her affirmations. "is this your answer?" he said. "i must submit. if i asked too much of you, i was wrong. and--good-bye." he held out his hand, and she put hers in it. "you think i'm capricious and fickle!" she said. "i can't help it--i don't know myself. i can't keep to one thing for half a day at a time. but it's right for us to part--yes, it must be. it must be," she repeated; "and i shall try to remember that. good-bye! i will try to keep that in my mind, and you will too--you won't care, very soon! i didn't mean that--no; i know how true you are; but you will soon look at me differently; and see that even if there hadn't been this about irene, i was not the one for you. you do think so, don't you?" she pleaded, clinging to his hand. "i am not at all what they would like--your family; i felt that. i am little, and black, and homely, and they don't understand my way of talking, and now that we've lost everything--no, i'm not fit. good-bye. you're quite right, not to have patience with me any longer. i've tried you enough. i ought to be willing to marry you against their wishes if you want me to, but i can't make the sacrifice--i'm too selfish for that----" all at once she flung herself on his breast. "i can't even give you up! i shall never dare look any one in the face again. go, go! but take me with you! i tried to do without you! i gave it a fair trial, and it was a dead failure. o poor irene! how could she give you up?" corey went back to boston immediately, and left penelope, as he must, to tell her sister that they were to be married. she was spared from the first advance toward this by an accident or a misunderstanding. irene came straight to her after corey was gone, and demanded, "penelope lapham, have you been such a ninny as to send that man away on my account?" penelope recoiled from this terrible courage; she did not answer directly, and irene went on, "because if you did, i'll thank you to bring him back again. i'm not going to have him thinking that i'm dying for a man that never cared for me. it's insulting, and i'm not going to stand it. now, you just send for him!" "oh, i will, 'rene," gasped penelope. and then she added, shamed out of her prevarication by irene's haughty magnanimity, "i have. that is--he's coming back----" irene looked at her a moment, and then, whatever thought was in her mind, said fiercely, "well!" and left her to her dismay--her dismay and her relief, for they both knew that this was the last time they should ever speak of that again. the marriage came after so much sorrow and trouble, and the fact was received with so much misgiving for the past and future, that it brought lapham none of the triumph in which he had once exulted at the thought of an alliance with the coreys. adversity had so far been his friend that it had taken from him all hope of the social success for which people crawl and truckle, and restored him, through failure and doubt and heartache, the manhood which his prosperity had so nearly stolen from him. neither he nor his wife thought now that their daughter was marrying a corey; they thought only that she was giving herself to the man who loved her, and their acquiescence was sobered still further by the presence of irene. their hearts were far more with her. again and again mrs. lapham said she did not see how she could go through it. "i can't make it seem right," she said. "it is right," steadily answered the colonel. "yes, i know. but it don't seem so." it would be easy to point out traits in penelope's character which finally reconciled all her husband's family and endeared her to them. these things continually happen in novels; and the coreys, as they had always promised themselves to do, made the best, and not the worst of tom's marriage. they were people who could value lapham's behaviour as tom reported it to them. they were proud of him, and bromfield corey, who found a delicate, aesthetic pleasure in the heroism with which lapham had withstood rogers and his temptations--something finely dramatic and unconsciously effective,--wrote him a letter which would once have flattered the rough soul almost to ecstasy, though now he affected to slight it in showing it. "it's all right if it makes it more comfortable for pen," he said to his wife. but the differences remained uneffaced, if not uneffaceable, between the coreys and tom corey's wife. "if he had only married the colonel!" subtly suggested nanny corey. there was a brief season of civility and forbearance on both sides, when he brought her home before starting for mexico, and her father-in-law made a sympathetic feint of liking penelope's way of talking, but it is questionable if even he found it so delightful as her husband did. lily corey made a little, ineffectual sketch of her, which she put by with other studies to finish up, sometime, and found her rather picturesque in some ways. nanny got on with her better than the rest, and saw possibilities for her in the country to which she was going. "as she's quite unformed, socially," she explained to her mother, "there is a chance that she will form herself on the spanish manner, if she stays there long enough, and that when she comes back she will have the charm of, not olives, perhaps, but tortillas, whatever they are: something strange and foreign, even if it's borrowed. i'm glad she's going to mexico. at that distance we can--correspond." her mother sighed, and said bravely that she was sure they all got on very pleasantly as it was, and that she was perfectly satisfied if tom was. there was, in fact, much truth in what she said of their harmony with penelope. having resolved, from the beginning, to make the best of the worst, it might almost be said that they were supported and consoled in their good intentions by a higher power. this marriage had not, thanks to an over-ruling providence, brought the succession of lapham teas upon bromfield corey which he had dreaded; the laphams were far off in their native fastnesses, and neither lily nor nanny corey was obliged to sacrifice herself to the conversation of irene; they were not even called upon to make a social demonstration for penelope at a time when, most people being still out of town, it would have been so easy; she and tom had both begged that there might be nothing of that kind; and though none of the coreys learned to know her very well in the week she spent with them, they did not find it hard to get on with her. there were even moments when nanny corey, like her father, had glimpses of what tom had called her humour, but it was perhaps too unlike their own to be easily recognisable. whether penelope, on her side, found it more difficult to harmonise, i cannot say. she had much more of the harmonising to do, since they were four to one; but then she had gone through so much greater trials before. when the door of their carriage closed and it drove off with her and her husband to the station, she fetched a long sigh. "what is it?" asked corey, who ought to have known better. "oh, nothing. i don't think i shall feel strange amongst the mexicans now." he looked at her with a puzzled smile, which grew a little graver, and then he put his arm round her and drew her closer to him. this made her cry on his shoulder. "i only meant that i should have you all to myself." there is no proof that she meant more, but it is certain that our manners and customs go for more in life than our qualities. the price that we pay for civilisation is the fine yet impassable differentiation of these. perhaps we pay too much; but it will not be possible to persuade those who have the difference in their favour that this is so. they may be right; and at any rate, the blank misgiving, the recurring sense of disappointment to which the young people's departure left the coreys is to be considered. that was the end of their son and brother for them; they felt that; and they were not mean or unamiable people. he remained three years away. some changes took place in that time. one of these was the purchase by the kanawha falls company of the mines and works at lapham. the transfer relieved lapham of the load of debt which he was still labouring under, and gave him an interest in the vaster enterprise of the younger men, which he had once vainly hoped to grasp all in his own hand. he began to tell of this coincidence as something very striking; and pushing on more actively the special branch of the business left to him, he bragged, quite in his old way, of its enormous extension. his son-in-law, he said, was pushing it in mexico and central america: an idea that they had originally had in common. well, young blood was what was wanted in a thing of that kind. now, those fellows out in west virginia: all young, and a perfect team! for himself, he owned that he had made mistakes; he could see just where the mistakes were--put his finger right on them. but one thing he could say: he had been no man's enemy but his own; every dollar, every cent had gone to pay his debts; he had come out with clean hands. he said all this, and much more, to mr. sewell the summer after he sold out, when the minister and his wife stopped at lapham on their way across from the white mountains to lake champlain; lapham had found them on the cars, and pressed them to stop off. there were times when mrs. lapham had as great pride in the clean-handedness with which lapham had come out as he had himself, but her satisfaction was not so constant. at those times, knowing the temptations he had resisted, she thought him the noblest and grandest of men; but no woman could endure to live in the same house with a perfect hero, and there were other times when she reminded him that if he had kept his word to her about speculating in stocks, and had looked after the insurance of his property half as carefully as he had looked after a couple of worthless women who had no earthly claim on him, they would not be where they were now. he humbly admitted it all, and left her to think of rogers herself. she did not fail to do so, and the thought did not fail to restore him to her tenderness again. i do not know how it is that clergymen and physicians keep from telling their wives the secrets confided to them; perhaps they can trust their wives to find them out for themselves whenever they wish. sewell had laid before his wife the case of the laphams after they came to consult with him about corey's proposal to penelope, for he wished to be confirmed in his belief that he had advised them soundly; but he had not given her their names, and he had not known corey's himself. now he had no compunctions in talking the affair over with her without the veil of ignorance which she had hitherto assumed, for she declared that as soon as she heard of corey's engagement to penelope, the whole thing had flashed upon her. "and that night at dinner i could have told the child that he was in love with her sister by the way he talked about her; i heard him; and if she had not been so blindly in love with him herself, she would have known it too. i must say, i can't help feeling a sort of contempt for her sister." "oh, but you must not!" cried sewell. "that is wrong, cruelly wrong. i'm sure that's out of your novel-reading, my dear, and not out of your heart. come! it grieves me to hear you say such a thing as that." "oh, i dare say this pretty thing has got over it--how much character she has got!--and i suppose she'll see somebody else." sewell had to content himself with this partial concession. as a matter of fact, unless it was the young west virginian who had come on to arrange the purchase of the works, irene had not yet seen any one, and whether there was ever anything between them is a fact that would need a separate inquiry. it is certain that at the end of five years after the disappointment which she met so bravely, she was still unmarried. but she was even then still very young, and her life at lapham had been varied by visits to the west. it had also been varied by an invitation, made with the politest resolution by mrs. corey, to visit in boston, which the girl was equal to refusing in the same spirit. sewell was intensely interested in the moral spectacle which lapham presented under his changed conditions. the colonel, who was more the colonel in those hills than he could ever have been on the back bay, kept him and mrs. sewell over night at his house; and he showed the minister minutely round the works and drove him all over his farm. for this expedition he employed a lively colt which had not yet come of age, and an open buggy long past its prime, and was no more ashamed of his turnout than of the finest he had ever driven on the milldam. he was rather shabby and slovenly in dress, and he had fallen unkempt, after the country fashion, as to his hair and beard and boots. the house was plain, and was furnished with the simpler moveables out of the house in nankeen square. there were certainly all the necessaries, but no luxuries unless the statues of prayer and faith might be so considered. the laphams now burned kerosene, of course, and they had no furnace in the winter; these were the only hardships the colonel complained of; but he said that as soon as the company got to paying dividends again,--he was evidently proud of the outlays that for the present prevented this,--he should put in steam heat and naphtha-gas. he spoke freely of his failure, and with a confidence that seemed inspired by his former trust in sewell, whom, indeed, he treated like an intimate friend, rather than an acquaintance of two or three meetings. he went back to his first connection with rogers, and he put before sewell hypothetically his own conclusions in regard to the matter. "sometimes," he said, "i get to thinking it all over, and it seems to me i done wrong about rogers in the first place; that the whole trouble came from that. it was just like starting a row of bricks. i tried to catch up and stop 'em from going, but they all tumbled, one after another. it wa'n't in the nature of things that they could be stopped till the last brick went. i don't talk much with my wife, any more about it; but i should like to know how it strikes you." "we can trace the operation of evil in the physical world," replied the minister, "but i'm more and more puzzled about it in the moral world. there its course is often so very obscure; and often it seems to involve, so far as we can see, no penalty whatever. and in your own case, as i understand, you don't admit--you don't feel sure--that you ever actually did wrong this man----" "well, no; i don't. that is to say----" he did not continue, and after a while sewell said, with that subtle kindness of his, "i should be inclined to think--nothing can be thrown quite away; and it can't be that our sins only weaken us--that your fear of having possibly behaved selfishly toward this man kept you on your guard, and strengthened you when you were brought face to face with a greater"--he was going to say temptation, but he saved lapham's pride, and said--"emergency." "do you think so?" "i think that there may be truth in what i suggest." "well, i don't know what it was," said lapham; "all i know is that when it came to the point, although i could see that i'd got to go under unless i did it--that i couldn't sell out to those englishmen, and i couldn't let that man put his money into my business without i told him just how things stood." as sewell afterwards told his wife, he could see that the loss of his fortune had been a terrible trial to lapham, just because his prosperity had been so gross and palpable; and he had now a burning desire to know exactly how, at the bottom of his heart, lapham still felt. "and do you ever have any regrets?" he delicately inquired of him. "about what i done? well, it don't always seem as if i done it," replied lapham. "seems sometimes as if it was a hole opened for me, and i crept out of it. i don't know," he added thoughtfully, biting the corner of his stiff moustache. "i don't know as i should always say it paid; but if i done it, and the thing was to do over again, right in the same way, i guess i should have to do it." manslaughter by alice duer miller author of come out of the kitchen, etc. illustrated by f. r. gruger and with scenes prom the photoplay a paramount picture grosset & dunlap publishers new york made in the united states of america copyright, , by alice duer miller first printing, oct., second printing, oct., third printing, nov., fourth printing, nov., fifth printing, dec., sixth printing, jan., seventh printing, feb., printed in u. s. a. [illustration: she felt his hand, firm and confident on her shoulder.] list of illustrations she felt his hand, firm and confident on her shoulder. lydia little realizes what a temptation she is placing before evans. o'bannon begins his investigation of the theft. it was a very terrifying moment for lydia. lydia had seen the bracelet and shrunk from it. she flung herself face downward on the sofa and sobbed. manslaughter chapter i whenever she and lydia had a scene miss bennett thought of the first scene she had witnessed in the thorne household. she saw before her a vermillion carpet on a mottled marble stair between high, polished-marble walls. there was gilt in the railing, and tall lanky palms stood about in majolica pots. up this stairway an angry man was carrying an angrier child. miss bennett could see that broad back in its heavy blue overcoat, and his neck, above which the hair was still black, crimsoning with fury and exertion. on one side of him she could see the thin arms and clutching hands of the little girl, and on the other the slender kicking legs, expressing passionate rebellion in every spasmodic motion. the clutching hands caught the tip of a palm in passing, and the china pot went rolling down the stairs and crashed to bits, startling the two immense great dane puppies which had been the occasion of the whole trouble. the two figures, swaying and struggling, went on up; for though the man was strong, a writhing child of ten is no light burden; and the stairs, for all their grandeur, were steep, and the carpet so thick that the foot sank into it as into new-fallen snow. just as they passed out of sight miss bennett saw the hands of the child, now clenched fists, begin to beat on the man's arms, and she heard the clear, defiant young voice repeating, "i will keep them! i will!" the man's "you won't" was not spoken, but was none the less understood. miss bennett knew that when the heads of the stairs was reached the blows would be returned with interest. usually in the long struggle between these two indomitable wills miss bennett had been on joe thorne's side, coarse, violent man though he was, for she was old-fashioned and believed that children ought to obey. but this night he had alienated her sympathy by being rude to her--for the first and last time. he had come home after one of his long absences to the hideous house in fifth avenue in which he took so much pride, and had found these two new pets of lydia's careening about the hall like young calves. he had turned on miss bennett. "what the hell do you let her do such things for?" he had demanded, and miss bennett had answered with unusual spirit. "because she's so badly brought up, mr. thorne, that no one can do anything with her." lydia had stood by defiantly, glancing from one to the other, with a hand in the collar of each of her dogs, her face pale, her jaw set, her head not much above the sleek battleship-gray heads of the great danes, her small body pulled first one way and then the other by their gambols. all the time she was saying over and over, "i will keep them! i will! i will!" she hadn't kept them; she had lost that particular skirmish in the long war. not till some years later did she begin to win; but whether she lost or won, miss bennett was always conscious of a rush of pity for the slim, black-eyed little girl thrusting her iron will so fearlessly against that of the man from whom she had inherited it. and for the lydia of to-day, now engaged in thrusting her will against the will of the world, miss bennett felt the same unreasoning pity--pity which rendered her weak in her own defense when any dispute arose between them. she and lydia had been having a scene now; only a little scene--hardly more than a discussion. morson saw it clearly when he came in after luncheon to get the coffee cups, although a complete and decorous silence greeted his entrance. he saw it in the way in which his young employer was standing, as erect as an indian, looking slantingly down her cheek at her companion. miss bennett was sitting on the sofa with her feet in their high-heeled satin slippers crossed, and she was slipping the rings nervously up and down her fine, thin fingers. she was a small, well-made woman, to whom prettiness had come with her gray hair. the perfection of all her appointments, which might once have been interpreted as the vanity of youth, turned out to be a settled nicety that stood her in good stead in middle life and differentiated her at fifty-five--a neat, elegant little figure among her contemporaries. the knowledge that he was interrupting a discussion did not hurry morson any more than the faintest curiosity delayed him. he brushed up the hearth, turned a displaced chair, collected the cups on his tray and left the room at exactly the same pace at which he had entered it. he had known many scenes in his day. as soon as the door closed behind him miss bennett said: "of course, if you meant you don't want me to ask my friends to your house you are perfectly within your rights, but i could not stay with you, lydia." "you know i don't mean that, benny," said the girl without either anger or apology in her voice. "i'm delighted to have you have anyone at all when i'm not here and anyone amusing when i am. the point is that those old women were tiresome. they bored you and you knew that they were going to bore me. you sacrificed me to make a roman holiday for them." miss bennett could not let this pass. "you should feel it an honor--a woman like mrs. galton, whose work among the female prisoners of this----" "noble women, noble women, i have no doubt, but bores, and it makes me feel sick, literally sick, to be bored." "don't be coarse, lydia." "sick--here," said lydia with a sharp dig of her long fingers on her diaphragm. "let's be clear about this, benny. i can't stand having my own tiresome friends about, and i will not put up with having yours." lydia had come home after a morning of shopping in town. disagreeable things had happened, only benny did not know that. she had bought a hat--a tomato-colored hat--had worn it a block and decided it was a mistake, and had gone back and wanted to change it, and the woman had refused to take it back. there had been little consolation in removing her custom from the shop forever--she had been forced to keep the hat. then motoring back to long island a tire had gone, and she had come in late for luncheon to find benny amiably entertaining the two old ladies. the very fact that they were, as she said, noble women, that their minds moved with the ponderous exactitude characteristic of so many good executives, made their society all the more trying to lydia. she wearied of them, wearied, as mariana in the moated grange. she had so often asked benny not to do this to her and after all it was her house. "you're very hard, my dear," said her companion--"very hard and very ignorant and very young. if you could only find an interest in such work as mrs. galton is doing----" "good heavens, was this a benevolent plot on your part to find me an interest?" miss bennett looked dignified and a little stubborn, as if she were accustomed to being misunderstood, as if lydia ought to have known that she had had a reason for what she did. as a matter of fact, she had no plan; she was not a plotter. that was one of the difficulties between her and lydia. lydia arranged her life, controlled her time and her surroundings. miss bennett amiably drifted, letting events and her friends control. she could never understand why lydia held her responsible for situations which it seemed to her simply happened, and yet she could never resist pretending that she had deliberately brought them about. she began to think now that it had been her idea, not mrs. galton's, to get lydia interested in prison reform. "no one can be happy, lydia, without an unselfish interest, something outside of themselves." lydia smiled. there was something pathetic in poor little ineffective benny trying to arrange her life for her. "i contrive to be fairly happy, thank you, benny. i've got to leave you, because i have an engagement at eleanor's at four, and it's ten minutes before now." "lydia, it's ten miles!" "ten miles--ten minutes." "you'll be killed if you drive so recklessly." "no benny, because i drive very well." "you'll be arrested then." "even less." "how can you be so sure?" that was something that it was better not to tell, so lydia went away laughing, leaving miss bennett to wonder, as she always did after one of these interviews, how it was possible to feel so superior to lydia when they were apart and so ineffectual when they were together. she always came to the same conclusion--that she was betrayed by her own fineness; that she was more aware of shades, of traditions than this little daughter of a workingman. lydia was not little. she was half a foot taller than adeline bennett's own modest five-feet-two, but the adjective expressed a latent wish. miss bennett often introduced it into her descriptions. a nice little man, a clever little woman, a dear little person were some of her favorite tags. they made her bulk larger in her own vision. the little daughter of the workingman ran upstairs for her hat. she found her maid, evans, engaged in polishing her jewels. the rite of polishing miss thorne's jewels took place in the bathroom, which was also a dressing room, containing long mirrors, a dressing table, cupboards with glass doors through which miss thorne's bright hats and beribboned underclothes showed faintly. it was carpeted and curtained and larger than many a hall bedroom. here evans, a pale, wistful english girl, was spreading out the jewelry as she finished each piece, laying them on a white towel where the rays of the afternoon sun fell upon them--the cabochon ruby like a dome of frozen blood, the flat, clear diamond as blue as ice, and the band of emeralds and diamonds for her hair flashing rays of green and orange lights. lydia liked her jewelry for the best of all reasons--she had bought most of it herself. she particularly liked the emerald band, which made her look like an eastern princess in a russian ballet, and in her opinion exactly fitted her type. but her beauty was not so easily classified as she thought. to describe her in words was to describe a picture by cabanel of the star of the harem--such a picture as the galleries of the second half of the nineteenth century were sure to contain--the oval face, the splendid dark eyes, the fine black eyebrows, the raven hair; but lydia's skin was not transparently white, and a slight heightening of her cheek bones and a thrust forward of her jaw suggested something more indian than eastern, something that made her seem more at home on a mountain trail than on the edge of a marble pool. as she entered, evans was brushing the last traces of powder from a little diamond bracelet less modern than the other pieces. lydia took it in her hand. "i almost forgot i had that," she said. three or four years before, when she had first known bobby dorset, when they had been very young, he had given it to her. it had been his mother's, and she had worn it constantly for a year or so. an impulse of tenderness made her slip it on her arm now, and as it clung there like a living pressure the heavy feeling of it faintly revived a whole cycle of old emotions. she thought to herself that she had some human affections after all. "it ought to be reset, miss," said evans. "the gold spoils the diamonds." "you do keep my things beautifully, evans." the girl colored at the praise, not often given by her rapidly moving young mistress, and the muscles twitched in her throat. "a hat--any hat, evans." she pulled it on with one quick, level glance in the glass, and was gone with the bracelet, half forgotten, on her arm. during the few minutes that lydia had been upstairs a conflict had gone on in the mind of miss bennett downstairs. should she be offended or should she be superior? was it more dignified to be angry because she really could not allow herself to be treated like that? or should she forgive because she was obviously so much older and wiser than lydia? she decided--as she always did--in favor of forgiveness, and as she heard lydia's quick light footsteps crossing the hall she called out, "don't drive the little car too fast!" "not over sixty," lydia's voice answered. as she sprang into the gray runabout waiting at the door with its front wheels turned invitingly outward, pressed on the self-starter with her foot, slid the gears in without a sound, it looked as if she intended her reply to be taken literally. but the speedometer registered only thirty on her own drive--thirty-five as she straightened out on the highway. as she said, she never drove fast without a good reason. like most people of her type and situation, lydia was habitually late. the reason she gave to herself was that she crowded a little more activity into the twenty-four hours than those who managed to be on time. but the true reason was that she preferred to be waited for rather than to run any risk of waiting herself. it seemed a distinct humiliation to her that she should await anyone else's convenience. to-day, however, she had a motive for being on time--that is to say, not more than twenty minutes late. they were going to play bridge at eleanor's and bobby would be there; and for some reason she never understood it fussed bobby if she were late and everyone began abusing her behind her back; and if bobby were fussed he lost money, and he couldn't afford to lose it. she hated bobby to lose money--minded it for him more than he minded it for himself. one of the facts that she saw most clearly in regard to her own life was that the man she married must be a man of importance, not only because her friends expected that of her but because she needed a purpose, a heightened interest--a great man in her life. yet strangely enough the only men to whom her heart had ever softened were idle, worthless men, of whom bobby was only a sample. among women she liked the positive qualities--courage, brilliance, achievement; but among men she seemed to have selected those who needed a strong controlling hand upon their destiny. benny said it was the maternal in her, but less friendly critics said it was the boss. perhaps the two are not so dissociated as is generally thought. lydia repudiated the maternal explanation without finding another. only she knew that the very thing that made her fond of men like bobby prevented her falling in love with them; whereas the men with whom it seemed possible to fall in love were men with whom she always quarreled, so that instead of love there was not even friendship. some years before she had been actually engaged to be married--though the engagement had never been announced--to an englishman, a thin, hawk-faced man, the marquis of ilseboro. she was not in love with him, though he was a man with whom women did fall in love. benny had been crazy about him. he was companionable in a silent sort of way, made love to her with extreme assurance and knew a great deal about life and women. but from the very first their two wills had clashed in small matters--in questions of invitations, manners, lydia's dress. again and again ilseboro had yielded, but yielded with a deliberation that gave no suggestion of defeat. these struggles which go on out of sight and below consciousness in most relations are never decided by the actual event but by the strength of position in which the combatants are left. benny, for instance, sometimes did the most rebellious things, but did them in a sort of frenzy of panic, followed by unsought explanations. ilseboro was just the reverse. he yielded because he had a positive wish to adjust himself, as far as possible, to her wishes. lydia began to be not afraid of him, for like caesar she was not liable to fear, but dimly aware that his was a stronger nature than her own. this means either love or hate. there had been a few hours one evening when she had felt grateful, admiring, eager to give up; when if she had loved him at all she could have worshiped him. but she did not love him, and when she saw that what he was looking forward to was fitting her into a niche which he'd been building for centuries for the wives of the ilseboros she really hated him. ever since her childhood the prospect of laying aside her own will had stirred her to revolt. she could still remember waking herself up with a start in terror at the thought that in sleep she would doff her will for so many hours. later her father had wished to send her to a fashionable boarding school; but she had made such wild scenes at the idea of being shut up--of being one of a community--that the plan had been given up. she would have married anyone in order to be free, but being already uncommonly free she rebelled at the idea of giving up her individuality by marriage, particularly by marriage with ilseboro. she broke her engagement. ilseboro had loved her and made himself disagreeable. she never forgot the parting curse he put upon her. "the trouble with being such a damned bully as you are, my dear lydia," he said, "is that you'll always get such second-rate playmates." she answered that no one ought to know better than he did. his manner to her servants had long secretly shocked her. he spoke to them without one shade of humanity in his tone, yet oddly enough they all liked him except the chauffeur, who was an american and couldn't bear him, feeling the very essence of class superiority in that tone. a few months later she showed an english illustrated to miss bennett. "a picture of the girl ilseboro is going to marry." there was a pause while miss bennett read those romantic words: "a marriage has been arranged and will shortly take place between george frederick albert reade, marquis of ilseboro, and----" "she looks like a lady," said miss bennett. "she looks like a rabbit," said lydia. "just think how freddy will order her about!" it was not in her nature to feel remorse for her well-considered actions, and she soon forgot that ilseboro had ever existed, except for certain things she had learned from him--a way of being silent while people explained to you you couldn't do something you intended to do, and then doing it instead of arguing about it, as had been her old habit; and an excellent manner with butlers too. her foot pressed gently on the accelerator, when the road became straight, holding the car now at forty miles. on either side of the road purple cabbages grew like a tufted carpet to the very edge of the macadam, without fences or hedges to protect them. there was enough mist in the autumn air to magnify the low hills along the sound to an imposingly vague bulk, and to turn the cloudless sky to a threatening bluish gray. in every other direction the flat, fertile, sandy plains of long island stretched uninterruptedly. it was really a beautiful afternoon--too beautiful to spend playing bridge in a stuffy room. it might be more sensible, she thought, to break up the party, kidnap bobby and drive him over to sit on the edge of the water and watch the moon rise; only she rather feared the moon was over. of course she was dining at the leonard piers' that evening, but it was a party eminently chuckable--that is to say, she was going to please them rather than herself. anyhow, she would have eleanor move the bridge table out on the terrace. eleanor was so stupid about preferring to play indoors. a minute figure, smaller than a man's hand, flashed into the little mirror at her left. was it--no--yes? a bicycle policeman! well, she would give him a little race for his stupidity in not recognizing her. she loved speed--it made her a little drunk. the needle swung to forty-five--to fifty, and hung there. she passed a governess cart full of children with a sound like "whist" as the wind rushed by. now there was a straight road, and clear. the miniature figure kept growing and growing until it seemed to fill the whole circle of the mirror. the sound of the motorcycle drowned the sound of her own car. a voice shouted "stop!" almost in her ear. turning her head slightly to the left, she saw a khaki figure was abreast of her. she slowed the car down and stopped it. a sunburned young face flushed with anger glared at her. "here, what do you think this is? a race track?" lydia did not answer, staring straight ahead of her. she was thinking that it was a foolish waste of taxpayers' money to keep changing the policemen. just as you reached a satisfactory arrangement with one of them you found yourself confronted by another. she wasn't in the least alarmed, though he was scolding her roughly--scolding, to be candid, very much as her own father had done. she did not object to his words, but she hated the power of the law behind them--hated the idea that she herself was not the final judge of the rate at which she should drive. now he was getting his summons ready. glancing idly into her mirror, she saw far away, like a little moving picture, the governess cart come into view. she intended to settle the matter before those giggling, goggle-eyed children came abreast. she was a person in whom action followed easily and instantly from the decision to act. most people, after making a decision, hesitate like a stream above a waterfall, and then plunging too quickly, end in foam and whirlpools. but lydia's will, for good or evil, flowed with a steady current. she looked down at the seat beside her for her mesh bag, opened it and found that evans, who was a good deal of a goose, had forgotten to put her purse in it, although she knew bridge was to be played. lydia looked up and saw that the officer of the law had followed her gesture with his eyes. she slipped bobby's bracelet off her arm, and holding her hand well over the edge of the car dropped it on the road. she heard it tinkle on the hard surface. "you dropped something," he said. "no." he swung a gaitered leg from the motorcycle and picked up the bracelet. "isn't this yours?" she smiled very slightly and shook her head, once again in complete mastery of the situation. "whose is it then?" "i think it must be yours," she answered with a sort of sweet contempt, and still looking him straight in the eye she leaned over and put her gear in first. he said nothing, and her car began to move forward. presently she heard the sound of a motorcycle going in the opposite direction. she smiled to herself. there was always a way. she found them waiting for her at eleanor's, and she felt at once that the atmosphere was hostile; but when lydia really liked people, and she really liked all the three who were waiting, she had command of a wonderfully friendly coöperative sort of gayety that was hard to resist. she liked eleanor bellington better than any woman she knew. they had been friends since their school days. eleanor had brains and a dry, bitter tongue, usually silent, and she wasn't the least bit afraid of lydia. she was blond, plain, aristocratic, independent and some years lydia's senior. fearless in thought, she was conservative in conduct. all her activity was in the intellectual field, or else vicariously, through the activity of others. there were always two or three interesting men, coming men, men of whom one said on speaking of them "you know, he's the man----" who seemed to be intimately woven into eleanor's everyday life. a never-ending subject of discussion among miss bellington's friends was the exact emotional standing of these intimacies of nellie's. lydia liked tim andrews too--a young man of universal friendships and no emotions; but most necessary of all to her enjoyment was bobby dorset, who came out to meet her, sauntering down the steps with his hands in his pockets. he looked exactly as a young man ought to look--physically fit, masculine. he was young--younger than his twenty-six years. there wasn't a line of any kind in his clean-shaven face, and the time had come--had almost come--when something ought to have been written there. the page was remaining blank too long. that was the only criticism possible of bobby's appearance, and perhaps only an elderly critic would have thought of making it. lydia certainly did not. when he smiled at her, showing his regular, handsome teeth, she thought he was the nicest-looking person she knew. just as she had expected, the bridge table was set inside the house, and while she was protesting and having it moved to the terrace she mentioned that she was late because she had had a fuss with miss bennett. "dear little benny," said andrews. "she's like a nice brown-eyed animal with gray fur, isn't she?" "tim always talks as if he were in love with benny." "she's so gentle, lydia, and you are so ruthless with her," said dorset. "i have to be, bobby," answered lydia, and perhaps to no one else would she have stooped to offer an explanation. "she's gentle, but marvelously persistent. she gets her own way by slow infiltration. i wish you'd all tell me what to do. benny is a person on whom what you say in a critical way makes no impression until you say it so as to hurt her feelings, and then it makes no impression because she's so taken up with her feelings being hurt. that's my problem with her." "it's everybody's problem with everybody," replied eleanor. "she likes to ask her dull friends to the house when i'm there to entertain them." "entertain them with a blackjack," said bobby. "she had two prison reformers there to-day--old women with pear-shaped faces, and i had a perfectly horrid morning in town trying to get some rags to put on my back, and--nell, will you tell me why you recommended lurline to me? i never saw such atrocious clothes." "i didn't recommend her," answered nellie, unstampeded by the attack. "i told you that pale, pearl-like chorus girl dressed there, and your latent desire to dress like a chorus girl----" "oh, lydia doesn't want to dress like a chorus girl!" "thank you, bobby." "she wants to dress like the savages in aïda." "in mauve _maillots_ and chains?" "in tiger skins and beads, and crouch through the jungle." "i was so sulky i didn't give a cent to prison reform. do you think prisons ought to be made too comfortable? i don't want to be cruel, but----" "well, it's something, my dear, that you don't want to be." "you mean i am? that's what benny says. but i'm not. is this ten cents a point?" eleanor, who like many intellectuals found her excitement in fields where chance was eliminated, protested that ten cents a point was too high, but her objections were swept away by lydia. "oh, no, eleanor; play for beans if you want; but if you are going to gamble at all----" tim andrews interrupted. "my dear lydia," he said, "i feel it only right to tell you that the anti-lydia club was being organized when you arrived. its membership consists of all those you have bullied, and its object is to oppose you in all small matters." "whether i'm right or not, tim?" "everybody's worst when they're right," murmured eleanor. "we decided before you came that we all wished to play five cents a point," tim continued firmly. "all right," said lydia briskly. "only you know it bores me, and it bores bobby, too, doesn't it, bobby?" "not particularly," replied dorset; "but i know if it bores you none of us will have a pleasant time." lydia smiled. "is that an insult or a tribute?" bobby smiled back at her. "i think it's an insult, but you rather like it." half an hour later they were playing for ten cents a point. chapter ii lydia had offered to drop bobby at the railroad station on her way home, although she had to go a few miles out of her way to do it. he was going back to town. it was dark by the time they started. she liked the feeling of having him there tucked in beside her while she absolutely controlled his destiny for the next half hour. she liked even to take risks with his life, more precious to her at least for the time than any other, in the hope that he would protest, but he never did. he understood his lydia. after a few minutes she observed, "i suppose you know eleanor has a new young man." "intensely interesting, or absolutely worth while?" he asked. "both, according to her. she's bringing him out at the piers' this evening. she was just asking me to be nice to him." "like asking the boa constrictor to be nice to a newborn lamb, isn't it?" "if i'm nice to her men it gives her a feeling of confidence in them." "if you're nice to them you take them away from her." "no, bobby. it's a funny thing, but it isn't so easy as you think to get eleanor's men away from her." "ah, you've tried?" "she has a funny kind of hold on them. it's her brains. she has brains, and they appreciate it. i don't often want her men. they're apt to be so dreadful. do you remember the biologist with the pearl buttons on his boots? this one is in politics--or something. he has a funny name--o'bannon." "oh, yes--dan o'bannon." "you know him?" "i used to know him in college. lord, he was a wild man in those days!" bobby snickered reminiscently. "and now he's the local district attorney." "what does a district attorney do, bobby?" "why, he's a fellow elected by the county to prosecute----" "look here, bobby, if the emmonses ask you to spend this coming sunday with them, go, because i'm going." she interrupted him because it was the kind of explanation that she had never been able to listen to. in fact she had so completely ceased to listen that she was unaware of having interrupted the answer to her own question, and bobby did not care to bring the matter to her attention for fear her invitation to the emmonses might be lost in the subsequent scuffle. besides he esteemed it his own fault. most people who ask you a question like that really mean to say, "would there be anything interesting to me in the answer to this question? if not, for goodness' sake don't answer it." so he gladly abandoned defining the duties of the district attorney and answered her more important statement. "of course i'll go, only they haven't asked me." "they will--or else i won't go. you'll come out on friday afternoon." "i can't, lydia, until saturday." "now, bobby, don't be absurd. don't let that old man treat you like a slave." lydia's attitude to bobby's work was a trifle confusing. she wished him to attain a commanding position in the financial world but had no patience with his industry when it interfered with her own plans. the attaining of any position at all seemed unlikely in bobby's case. he was a clerk in the great banking house of gordon & co., a firm which in the course of a hundred and twenty-five years had built itself into the very financial existence of the country. in almost any part of the civilized globe to say you were with gordon & co. was a proud boast. but pride was all that a man of bobby's type was likely to get out of it. promotion was slow. lydia talked of a junior partnership some day, but bobby knew that partnerships in gordon & co. went to qualities more positively valuable than his. sometimes he thought of leaving them, but he could not bear to give up the easy honor of the connection. it was better to be a doorkeeper with gordon & co. than a partner with some ephemeral firm. it amused him to hear her talk of peter gordon treating him like a slave. the dignified, middle-aged head of the firm, whose business was like an ancestral religion to him, hardly knew his clerks by sight. "it isn't exactly servile to work half a day on saturday," he said mildly. "they'd respect you more if you asserted yourself. do come on friday, bobby. i shall be so bored if you're not there." he reflected that after all he would rather be dismissed by gordon & co. than by the young lady beside him. "dearest lydia, how nice you can be when you want to--like all tyrants." they had reached the small deserted wooden hut that served as a railroad station, and lydia stopped the car. "i suppose it's silly, but i wish you wouldn't say that--that i'm a tyrant," she said appealingly. "i don't want to be, only so often i know i know better what ought to be done. this afternoon, for instance, wasn't it much better for us all to play outside instead of in that stuffy little room of eleanor's? was that being a tyrant?" "yes, lydia, it was; but i like it. all i ask is a little tyrant in my home." she sighed so deeply that he leaned over and kissed her cool cheek. "good-by, my dear," he said. the kiss did not go badly. he had done it as if, though not sure of success, he was not adventuring on absolutely untried ground. "i think you'd better not do that, bobby." "do you hate it?" "not particularly, only i don't want you to get dependent on it." he laughed as he shut the car door. the light of the engine was visible above the low woods to their left. "i'll take my chances on that," he said. as she drove away she felt the injustice of the world. everyone did ask your advice; they did want you to take an interest, but they complained when this interest led you to exert the slightest pressure on them to do what you saw was best. that was so illogical. you couldn't give a person advice that was any good unless you entered in and made their problem yours, and of course if you did that--only how few people except herself ever did it for their friends--then you were concerned, personally concerned that they should follow your advice. they were all content, too, she thought, when her tyranny worked out for their good. bobby, for instance, had not complained of her having forced the emmonses to ask him for sunday. he thought that commendable. perhaps the emmonses hadn't. and yet how much better to be clear. she did not want to go and spend sunday with anyone unless she could be sure of having someone to amuse her. suppose she had gone there and found that like benny they were using her to entertain some of their dull friends. that would have made her angry. she might have been disagreeable and broken up a friendship. this way it was safe. she did not get home until half past seven, and she was dining at eight, fifteen minutes' drive away. a pleasant smell of roses and wood smoke greeted her as she entered the house. she loved her house, with the broad shingles and classic pilasters of the front still untouched. ten years ago her father had bought it--a nice old farmhouse with an ornamental band running round it below the eaves and a perfect little porch before the door. since then she had been becoming more and more attached to it as it became more and more the work of her own creation. she had added whatever she needed without much regard to the effect of the whole--a large paneled room, english as much as anything, an inner garden suggestive of a spanish patio, a tiled italian hall and a long servant's wing that was nothing at all. she put her head in the dining room, where miss bennett in a stately tea gown was just beginning a solitary dinner. "hello, benny! have a good dinner. i forgot to tell you i'm going to the emmonses for sunday, so if you want to ask someone down to keep you company, do. i'm going to be late for dinner." miss bennett smiled and nodded, recognizing this as a peace demonstration. fourteen years had taught her that lydia was not without generosity. fourteen years ago this coming winter the thornes had entered miss bennett's life. old joe thorne had come by appointment to her little new york apartment. the appointment had been made by a friend of miss bennett's--miss bennett's friends were always looking for something desirable for her in those days. her family, who had been identified with new york for a hundred and fifty years, had gradually declined in fortune until the panic of had almost wiped out the little fortune of adeline and her mother, the last of the family. adeline had been brought up, not in luxury but in a comfortable, unalterable feminine idleness. she had always had all the clothes she needed to go about among the people she knew, and they were the people who had everything. the bennetts had never kept a carriage, but they had never stinted themselves in cabs. the truth was they had never stinted themselves in anything that they really wanted. and adeline, when she found herself alone in the world at thirty, with an income of only a few thousand, continued the family tradition of having what she wanted. she took a small apartment, which she contrived to make charming, and she lived nicely by the aid of her old french nurse, who came and cooked for her and dressed her and turned her out as perfectly as ever. she continued to dine out every night, and though nominally she spent her summers in new york as an economy, she was always on somebody's yacht or in somebody's country house. she paid any number of visits and enjoyed life more than most people. her friends, however, for she had the power of creating real attachments, were not so well satisfied. at first they were persuaded that adeline would marry--it was so obviously the thing for adeline to do--but she was neither designing nor romantic. she lacked both the reckless emotion which may lead one to marry badly and the cold-blooded determination to marry well. she was just past forty the day joe thorne came. she could still see him as he entered in his blue overcoat with a velvet collar. a big powerful man with prominent eyes like bismarck's, and a heavy dark brown mustache bulging over his upper lip. he did not expect to give much time to the interview. he had come to see if miss bennett would do to bring up his daughter, who at ten years was giving him trouble. he wanted her prepared for the social opportunities he intended her to have. it seemed strange to him that a person who lived as simply as miss bennett could really have these social opportunities in her control, but he had been advised by people whom he trusted that such was the fact, and he accepted it. he was the son of a kansas farmer, had left the farm as a boy and settled in a small town, and had learned the trade of bricklaying. by hard work he gradually amassed a few hundred dollars, and this he invested in a gravel bank just outside the town. it was the only gravel bank in the neighborhood and brought him a high return on the money. then just as the gravel was exhausted the town began to spread in that direction, and thorne was arranging to level his property and sell it in building lots, when a still more unexpected development took place. oil was struck in the neighborhood, and beneath thorne's gravel lay a well. if fate had intended him to be poor she should never have allowed him to make his first thousand dollars, for from the moment he had any surplus everything he touched did well. in one of his trips to the louisiana oil district he met and married a local belle, a slim, pale girl with immense dark-circled black eyes and a skin like a gardenia. she followed him meekly about the country from oil wells to financial centers until after the birth of her daughter. then she settled down in kansas city and waited his rare visits. the only inconsiderate thing she had ever done to him was to die and leave him with an eight-year-old daughter. for several stormy years he tried various solutions--foreign governesses who tried to marry him, american college girls who attempted to make him take his fair share of parental responsibility, an old cousin who had been a school teacher and dared to criticize his manner of life. at last his enlarging affairs brought him to new york and he heard of miss bennett. he heard of her through wiley, his lawyer. wiley, a man in the forties, then attaining preëminence at the bar in new york, had been thought by many people to be an ideal husband for adeline. they were old friends. he admired her, wished her well, and thought of her instantly when his new client applied to him for help. the minute thorne saw miss bennett he saw that she would do perfectly. he made her the offer of a good salary. he couldn't believe that she would refuse it. she could hardly believe it herself, for she was unaccustomed to setting up her will against anyone's least of all against a man like joe thorne, who had successfully battled his way up against the will of the world. the contest went on for weeks and weeks. poor miss bennett kept consulting her friends, almost agreeing to go when she saw thorne, and then telephoning him that she had changed her mind, and bringing him round to her apartment--which was just what she didn't want--to argue her into it again. some of her friends opposed her going to the house of a widower whose reputation in regard to women was not spotless. others thought--though they did not say--that if she went, and succeeded in marrying him, she would be doing better than she had any right to expect. perhaps if miss bennett could have fallen in love with lydia she might have yielded, but even at ten, lydia, a black-eyed determined little person, inspired fear more than love. poor adeline grew pale and thin over the struggle. at last she decided, after due consultation with friends, to end the matter by being a little bit rude, by telling thorne that she just didn't like the whole prospect; that she preferred her own little place and her own little life. "like it--like this cramped little place?" he said, looking about at the sunshine and chintz and potted daisies of her cherished home. "but i'd make you comfortable, give you what you ought to have--europe, your friends, your carriage, everything." he went on to argue with her that she was wrong, utterly wrong to like her own life. her last card didn't win. she yielded at last for no better reason than that her powers of resistance were exhausted. thorne was then living in a house on a corner of upper fifth avenue, with a pale-pink brocade ballroom running across the front and taking all the morning sunshine, and a living room and library at the back so dark that you couldn't read in it at mid-day, with marble stairs and huge fire-places that didn't draw--a terrible house. some years later, under miss bennett's influence, he had bought the more modest house in the seventies where lydia now spent her winters. but it was to the fifth avenue house that miss bennett came, and found herself plunged into one of the most desperate struggles in the world. thorne, whose continuous interest was given to business, attempted to rule lydia in crises--by scenes, scenes of a violence that miss bennett had never seen equaled. as it turned out, her coming weakened thorne's power; not that she wasn't usually on his side--she was--but she was an audience, and thorne had some sense of shame before an audience, while lydia had none at all. many a time she had seen him box lydia's ears and, mild as she was, had been glad to see him do it. but it was his violence that undid him. it was then that lydia became suddenly dignified and, unbroken, contrived to make him appear like a brute. there is nothing really more unbreakable than a child who considers neither her physical well-being nor public opinion. an older person, however violent, has learned that he must consider such questions, and it is a weakness in a campaign of violence to consider anything but the desired end. and on the whole thorne lost. he could make lydia do or refrain from doing specific acts--at least he could when he was at home. he had not permitted her at ten to keep her great danes nor at thirteen to drive a high-stepping hackney in a red-wheeled cart which she ordered for herself without consultation with anyone. the evening after that struggle was over he had asked miss bennett to marry him. she knew why he did it. lydia in the course of the row had referred to her as a paid companion. he had long been considering it as a sensible arrangement, particularly in case of his death. miss bennett refused him. she tried to think that she had been tempted by his offer, but she was not. to her he seemed a violent man who had been a bricklayer, and she always breathed a sigh of relief when he was out of the house. she was glad that he did not press the point, but in after years it was a solid comfort to her to remember that she might have been lydia's stepmother if she had chosen. but it was in the long-drawn-out contest that thorne failed. he could not make lydia keep governesses that she didn't like. her method was simple--she made their lives so disagreeable that nothing could make them stay. he never succeeded in getting her to boarding school, though he and miss bennett, after a long conference, decided that that was the thing to do. but that failure was partly due to his failing health. that was their last great struggle. he died in . in his will he left miss bennett ten thousand a year, with the request that she stay with his daughter until her marriage. it touched miss bennett that he should have seen that she could not have stayed if she had been dependent on lydia's capricious will. it was this that made her position possible--the fact that they both knew she could go in an instant if she wanted; not that she ever doubted that lydia was sincerely attached to her. chapter iii when lydia ran upstairs to dress everything was waiting for her--the lights lit, the fires crackling, her bath drawn, her underclothes and stockings folded on a chair, her green-and-gold dress spread out upon the bed, her narrow gold slippers standing exactly parallel on the floor beside it, and in the midst evans, like a priestess waiting to serve the altar of a goddess, was standing with her eyes on the clock. [illustration: lydia little realizes what a temptation she is placing before evans.] lydia snatched off her hat, rumpled her hair with both hands as evans began to undo her blouse. she unfastened the cuff, and then looked up with pale startled eyes. "your bracelet, miss?" "bracelet?" for a second lydia had really forgotten it. "the little diamond bracelet. you were wearing it this afternoon." something panic-stricken and excited in the girl's tone annoyed lydia. "i must have dropped it," she said. the maid gave a little cry as if she herself had suffered a loss. "oh, to lose a valuable bracelet like that!" "if i don't mind i don't see why you should, evans." evans began unhooking her skirt in silence. twenty minutes later she was being driven rapidly toward the piers'. these minutes were among the most contemplative of her life, shut in for a few seconds alone without possibility of interruption. now as she leaned back she thought how lonely her life was--always facing criticism alone. was she a bully, as ilseboro had said? perhaps she was hard. but then how could you get things done if you were soft? there was benny. benny, with many excellent abilities, was soft, and look where she was--a paid companion at fifty-five. lydia suspected that ten years before her father had wanted to marry benny, and benny had refused. lydia thought she knew why--because benny thought old joe thorne a vulgar man whom she didn't love. very high-minded, of course, and yet wasn't there a sort of weakness in not taking your chance and putting through a thing like that? wouldn't benny be more a person from every point of view if she had decided to marry the old man for his money? if she had she'd have been his widow now, and lydia a dependent step-daughter. how she would have hated that! the piers had built a perfect french château, and had been successful in changing the scrubby woods into gardens and terraces and groves. lydia stepped out of the car and paused on the wide marble steps, wrapping her cloak about her with straight arms, as an indian wraps his blanket about him. she turned her head slightly at her chauffeur's inquiry as to the hour of her return. "oh," she said, "eight--ten--bridge. come back at eleven." the mirrors in the piers' dressing room were flattering as she dropped her cloak with one swift motion into the hands of the waiting servant and saw a reflection of her slim gold-and-green figure with the emerald band across her forehead. she saw at a glance on entering the drawing-room that it wasn't a very good party--only eight, and nothing much in the line of bridge players. she listened temperately to fanny piers' explanation that four people had given out since six o'clock. she nodded, admitting the excuse and reserving the opinion that if the piers gave better parties people wouldn't chuck them so often. she looked about. there was tim andrews again. well, she could always amuse herself well enough with tim. may swayne--a soft blond creature whom lydia had known for many years and ignored. indeed, may was as little aware of lydia's methods as a mole of a thunderstorm. then there was hamilton gore, the lean home wrecker of a former generation, not bad--a little elderly, a little too epigrammatic for the taste of this day; but still, once a home wrecker always a home wrecker. he was still stimulating. the last time she had talked to him he had called her a sleek black panther. that always pleases, of course. since then fanny piers, a notable mischief-maker, had repeated something else he said. he had called her a futile barbarian. she disliked the "futile." she would take it up with him; that would amuse her if everything else failed. she would say, "hello, mr. gore! i suppose you hardly expected to meet a barbarian at dinner--especially a futile one." it would make fanny wretched, but then if fanny would repeat things she must expect to get into trouble. and then, of course, there was eleanor's new best bet--the intensely interesting and absolutely worthwhile young man. lydia looked about, and there he was. dear me, she thought, he certainly was interesting and worth while, but not quite from the point of view eleanor had suggested--public service and political power. he was very nice looking, tall and heavy in the shoulders. he was turned three-quarters from her as she made her diagnosis. she could see little more than his mere size, the dark healthy brown of a sunburned anglo-saxon skin, and the deep point at the back of his neck where short thick hair grew in a deep point. eleanor, looking small beside him, was staring idly before her, not attempting to show him off. there was nothing cheap about eleanor. she spoke to him now, preparing to introduce him to her friend. lydia saw him turn, and their eyes met--the queerest eyes she had ever seen. she found herself staring into them longer than good manners allowed; not that lydia cared much about good manners, but she did not wish to give the man the idea she had fallen in love with him at first sight; only it just happened that she had never seen eyes before that flared like torches, grew dark and light and small and large like a cat's, only they weren't the color of a cat's, being gray--a pure light gray in contrast with his dark hair and skin. there was a contrast in expression too. they were a little mad, at least fanatical, whereas his mouth was controlled and legal and humorus. what was it bobby had said about him in college--a wild man? she could well believe it. during these few seconds eleanor was introducing him, and she was casting about for something to say to him. that was the trouble with meeting new people--it was so much easier to chatter to old friends. benny said that was provincial. she made a great effort. "how are you?"--this quite in the ilseboro manner. "are you staying near here?" you might have counted one-two before he betrayed the least sign of having heard her. then he said, "yes, i live about ten miles from here." "oh, of course! you're a judge or something like that, aren't you?" was the man a little deaf? "something like that." she noted that trick of pausing a second or two before answering. ilseboro had had it too. it was rather effective in a way. it made the other person wonder if what he had said was foolish. he wasn't deaf a bit--quite the contrary. "aren't you going to tell me what you are?" she said. he shook his head gravely. then her eye fell on gore standing at her elbow and she couldn't resist the temptation. she turned her back on eleanor's discovery. "hullo, mr. gore! did you expect to meet a barbarian at dinner--especially a futile one?" gore, unabashed, took the whole room in. "now," he said in his high-pitched voice, "could anything be more barbarous than that attack? oh, yes, i said it; and what's worse, i think it, my dear young lady--i think it!" she turned back to o'bannon. "would you think i was a barbarian?" "certainly not a futile one," he answered. they went in to dinner. it was a fixed principle of fanny piers' life to put her women friends next to their own young men, so that eleanor found herself next to o'bannon at dinner. he was on his hostess' right, gore on her left, then lydia and tim and may and piers, and eleanor again. the arrangement suited lydia very well. she went on baiting gore. it suited eleanor even better. she had known noel piers far too long to waste any time talking to him, and as this was the arrangement he preferred, they were almost friends. this left her free to talk to o'bannon. her native ability, joined to her personal interest in him, made her familiar with every aspect of his work. he talked shop to her and loved it. he was telling her of a case in which labor unions, with whose aims he himself as an individual was in sympathy, had made themselves amenable to the law. that was one of the penalties of a position like his. piers caught a few words and leaned over. "well, i'm pretty liberal," he said--that well-known opening of the reactionary--"but i'm not in favor of labor." "not even for others, noel," said eleanor, who did not want to be interrupted. "i mean labor unions," replied piers, who, though not without humor in its proper place, had too much difficulty in expressing an idea to turn aside to laugh about it. "i hope you'll be firm with those fellows, o'bannon. i hope you're not a socialist like eleanor." piers had used the word "socialist" as a hate word, and expected to hear o'bannon repudiate the suggestion as an insult. instead he denied it as a fact. "no," he said, "i'm not a socialist. i think you'll find lawyers conservative as a general thing. i believe in my platform--the equal administration of the present laws. that's radical enough--for the present." piers gave a slight snort. everyone, he said, believed in that. "i don't find they do--it isn't my experience," answered o'bannon. "some fellows broke up a socialist meeting the other evening in new york, and no one was punished, although not only were people injured, but even property was damaged." eleanor was the only person who caught the "even." "you know very well that if the socialists broke in on a meeting of well-to-do citizens they would be sent up the river." piers stared at his guest with his round, bloodshot eyes. he was a sincere man, and stupid. he reached his conclusions by processes which had nothing to do with thought, and when someone talked like this--attacking his belief that it was wrong to break up his meetings and right to break up the other man's--he felt as he did at a conjurer's performance: that it was all very clever, but a sensible person knew it was a trick, even though he could not explain how it was done. "i'm not much good at an argument," he said, "but i know what's right. i know what the country needs, and if you show favoritism to these disloyal fellows i shall vote against you next time, i tell you frankly." lydia, hearing by the tones that the conversation across the table promised more vitality than her waning game with gore about the barbarian epithet, dropped her own sentence and answered, "no one really believes in equality who's on top. i believe in special privilege." o'bannon, who had been contemptuously annoyed with piers, was amused at lydia's frankness as she bent her head to look at him under the candle shades and the light gleamed in her eyes and flashed on the emeralds on her forehead. beauty, after all, is the greatest special privilege of all. "that's what i said," he returned. "no one honestly believes in my platform--the equal administration of the present laws." "i do," said piers. "i do--everyone does." o'bannon glanced at him, and deciding that it wasn't worth while to take him round the circle again let the sentence drop. "do you believe in it yourself, mr. o'bannon?" asked lydia, and she stretched out a slim young arm and moved the candle so that she could look straight at him or he at her. "i mean, if you caught some friend smuggling--me, for example--would you be as implacable as if you caught my dressmaker?" "more so; you would have less excuse." she laughed and shook her head. "you know in your heart it never works like that." "unfortunately," he answered, "my office does not take me into federal customs, or you might find i was right." "the administration of the customs of the united states," piers began, but his wife interrupted. "don't explain it, there's a dear," she said, and oddly enough he didn't. lydia was delighted with o'bannon's challenging tone. "i wish you were," she said, "because i know you would turn out to be just like everyone else. or even if you are a superman, mr. o'bannon, you couldn't be sure all your underlings were equally noble." "what you mean is that you habitually bribe customs inspectors." "no," said lydia, as one surprised at her own moderation--"no, i don't, for i never much mind paying duty; but if i did mind--well, i must own i have bribed other officers of the law with very satisfactory results." o'bannon, looking at her under the shades, thought--and perhaps conveyed his thought to her--that she could bribe him very easily with something more desirable than gold. it was gore who began carefully to point out to her the risk run by the taker of the bribe. "you did not think of him, my dear young lady." "yes, i did," answered lydia. "he wanted the money and i wanted the freedom. it was nice for both of us." she glanced at o'bannon, who was talking to mrs. piers as if lydia didn't exist. she felt no hesitation in interrupting. "you couldn't put me in prison for that, could you, mr. o'bannon?" "no, i'm afraid not," said o'bannon, and turned back to fanny piers. after dinner she told eleanor in strict confidence the story of the bicycle policeman, and made her promise not to tell o'bannon. "i shouldn't dream of telling anyone," said eleanor with her humorous lift of the eyebrows. "i think it's a perfectly disgusting story and represents you at your worst." when they sat down to bridge lydia drew o'bannon, and whatever antagonism had flashed out between them at dinner disappeared in a perfectly adjusted partnership. they found they played very much the same sort of game; they understood one another's makes and leads, and knew as if by magic the cards that the other held. it seemed as if they could not mistake each other. they were both courageous players, ready to take a chance, without overbidding. they knew when to be silent, and, with an occasional bad hand, to wait. but the bad hands were few. they had the luck not only of holding high cards but of holding cards which invariably supported each other. their eyes met when they had triumphantly doubled their opponents' bids; they smiled at each other when they had won a slam by a subtle finesse or by patiently forcing discards. their winnings were large. lydia seemed as steady as a rock--not a trace of excitement in her look. o'bannon thought, after midnight when he was totaling the score, "i could make a terrible fool of myself about this girl." when they were leaving he found himself standing on the steps beside her. the footman had run down the drive to see why her chauffeur, after a wait of more than an hour, wasn't bringing her car round. o'bannon, who was driving himself in an open car, came out, turning up the collar of his overcoat, and found himself alone with her in the pale light of the waning moon, which gave, as the waning moon always does, the effect of being a strange, unfamiliar celestial visitor. o'bannon, like so many strict supporters of law, was subject to invasions of lawless impulses. he thought now how easy it would be to run off with a girl like this one and teach her that civilization was not such a complete protection as she thought it. what an outcry she would make, and yet perhaps she wouldn't really object! he had a theory that men and women were more susceptible to emotion in the first minutes of their meeting than at any subsequent time--at least in such first meetings as this. she was standing wrapping her black-and-silver cloak about her with that straight-armed indian pose. "it's a queer light, isn't it?" she said. he agreed. something certainly was queer--the greenish silver light on the withered leaves or the mist like a frothy flood on the lawn. just as she spoke two brighter lights shone through the mist--her car coming up the drive with the footman standing on the step. "is that yours?" he asked. she nodded, knowing that he was watching her. "why don't you send it away," he went on very quietly, "and let me drive you home? this is no night for a closed car." he hardly knew whether he had a plan or not, but his pulses beat more quickly as she walked down the steps without answering him. he did not know whether she was going to get into her car and drive away or give orders to the man to go home without her. then he saw that the footman was closing the door on an empty car and the chauffeur releasing his brake. when she came up the steps he was looking at the moon. "i never get used to its waning," he said, as if he had been thinking of nothing else. she liked that--his not commenting in any way on her accepting an invitation not entirely conventional from a stranger. perhaps he did not know that it wasn't. oh, if he could only keep on like that--maintaining that remote impersonality until she herself wanted him to be different! but if he wrapped the lap robe about her with too lingering an arm, or else, flying to the other extreme, began to be friendly and chatty, pretending that there was nothing extraordinary in two strangers being alone like this in a sleeping, moonlit world---- he did neither. when he brought the car to the steps the lap robe was folded back on the seat so that she could wrap it about her own knees. she did so with an exclamation. the mist clung in minute drops to its rough surface. "it's wet," she said. he did not answer--did not speak even, when as they left the piers' place it became necessary to choose their road. he chose without consultation. "but do you know where i live?" she asked. "be content for once to be a passenger," he replied. the answer had the good fortune to please. she leaned back, clasping her hands in her lap, relaxing all her muscles. on the highroad she was less aware of the moon, for the headlights made the mist visible like a wall about them. she felt as if she were running through a new element and could detect nothing outside the car. she was detached from all previous experience, content to be, as he had said, for once a passenger. this was a new sensation. she remembered what ilseboro had said about her being a bully. well, she'd try the other thing to-night. she only hoped it wouldn't end in some sort of a scene. she glanced up at her companion's profile. it looked quiet enough, but she decided that she had better not go on much longer without making him speak. her ear was well attuned to human vibrations, and if there were a certain low tremor in his voice--well, then it would be better to go straight home. "this is rather extraordinary, isn't it?" she said. this might be interpreted in a number of ways. "yes, it is," he said, exactly matching her tone. she tried him again. "did you enjoy the evening?" it seemed almost certain that he would answer tenderly, "i'm enjoying this part of it." "it was good bridge," he said. that sounded all right, she thought. his voice was as cool as her own. she could let things go and give herself up to enjoying the night and the moon and the motion and the damp air on her face and arms. she felt utterly at peace. presently he turned from the highroad down a lane so untraveled that the low branches came swishing into her lap; they came out on a headland overlooking the sound. over the water the mist was only a thickening of the atmosphere which made the lights of a city across the water look like globes of yellow light in contrast to the clear red and white of a lighthouse in the foreground. he leaned forward and turned off the engine and lights. lydia found that she was trembling a little, which seemed strange, for she felt unemotional and still. and then all of a sudden she recognized that she was really waiting--waiting to feel her cheek against his rough frieze coat and his lips against hers. it was not exactly that she wanted it, but that it was inevitable--simple--not her choice--something that must be. this was an experience that she had never had before. in the silence she felt their mutual understanding rising like a tide. she had never felt so at one with any human being as with this stranger. suddenly he moved--but not toward her. she saw with astonishment that he was turning the switch, touching the self starter, and the next instant backing the car out. the divine moment was gone. she would never forgive him. they drove back in silence, except for her occasional directions about the road. her jaw was set like a little vise. never again, she was saying to herself, would she allow herself to be a passenger. hereafter she would control. it didn't matter what happened to you, if you were master of your own emotions. she remembered once that the husband of a friend of hers had caught her in his arms in the anteroom of a box at the opera during the darkness of a wagnerian performance. she had felt like frozen steel--so sure of herself that she hardly hated the man--she felt more inclined to laugh at him. but this man who hadn't touched her, left her feeling outraged, humiliated--because she had wanted him to kiss her, to crush her to him---- they were at her door. she stepped out on the broad flat stones, under the trellis on which the grapevines grew so thickly that not even the flood of moonlight could penetrate the thick mass of verdure. the air was full of the smell of grapes. she knew he was following her. suddenly she felt his hand, firm and confident on her shoulder, stopping her, turning her round. she did not resist him--she felt neither resistant nor acquiescent--only that it was all inevitable. he took her head in his two hands, looking in the dark and half drawing her to him, half bending down he pressed his lips hard against hers. she felt herself held closely in his arms; her will dissolved, her head drooped against him. then inside the house the steps of the faithful morson could be heard. he must have been waiting for the sound of an approaching motor. the door opened--letting a great patch of yellow lamp light fall on the misty moonlight. morson peered out; for a moment he thought he must have been mistaken; there appeared to be no one there. then his young mistress, very erect, stepped out from the shadow. a tall gentleman, a stranger to morson, said in a voice noticeably low and vibrant: "at four to-morrow." there was a pause. morson holding the door open thought at first that miss thorne had not heard, and then she shocked him by her answer. "no, don't come," she said. "i don't want you to come." she walked into the house, and indicated that he might shut the door. as he bolted it he could hear the motor moving away down the drive. turning from the door, he saw miss thorne standing still in the middle of the hall, as if she too were listening to the lessening drum of the engine. there was a long pause, and then morson said: "shall i put out the lights, miss?" she nodded and went slowly upstairs, like a person in a trance. she seemed hardly aware of evans waiting to undress her, but stood still in her bedroom, as she had stood in the hall, staring blankly in front of her. evans took her cloak from her shoulder. "it's quite wet, miss," she said, "as if it had been dipped in the sea and your hair, too." miss thorne did not come to life, until in unhooking her dress evans touched her with cold fingers. then she started, exclaiming: "what is the matter with you, evans," she cried. "do go and put your hands in hot water before you touch me. your fingers are like ice." the girl murmured that she had been upset since the loss of the bracelet--she felt responsible for miss thorne's jewels. lydia flung down the roll of bills and cheques that represented her evening's winnings. "i could buy myself another with what i've won to-night. don't worry about it." the idea occurred to her that she would buy herself a sort of memento mori, something to remind her not to be a weak craven female thing again--nestling against men's shoulders like may swayne. evans did not answer, but gathered up the money and the jewels and carried them into the dressing room to lock them in the safe. chapter iv lydia would have been displeased to know how little her curt refusal affected the emotional state of the man driving away from her door. it was the deed rather than the word that he remembered--the fact that he had held a beautiful and eventually unresisting woman in his arms that occupied his attention on his way home. he found his mother sitting up--not for him. it was many years since mrs. o'bannon had gone to bed before two o'clock. she was a large woman, massive rather than fat. she was sitting by the fire in her bedroom, wrapped in a warm, loose white dressing gown, as white as her hair and smooth pale skin. her eyes retained their deep darkness. evidently dan's gray eyes had come from his father's irish ancestry. it was only the other day--after he was grown up--that o'bannon had ceased to be afraid of his mother. she was a woman passionately religious, mentally vigorous and singularly unjust, or at least inconsistent. it was this quality that made her so confusing and, to her subordinates, alarming. she would have gone to the stake--gone with a certain bitter amusement at the folly of her destroyers--for her belief in the right; but her affections could entirely sweep away these beliefs and leave her furiously supporting those she loved against all moral principles. her son had first noticed that trait when she sent him away to boarding school. his mother--his father had died when he was seven--was a most relentless disciplinarian as long as a question of duty lay between him and her; but let an outsider interfere, and she was always on his side. she frequently defended him against the school authorities, and even, it seemed to him, encouraged him in rebellion. in her old age most of her strong passions had died away and left only her god and her son. perhaps it was a trace of this persecutory religion in her that made dan accept his present office. she looked up like a sibyl from the great volume she was reading. "you're late, my son." "i've been gambling, mother." he said it very casually, but it was the last remnant of his fear that made him mention particularly those of his actions of which he knew she would disapprove. in old times he had been a notable poker player, but had abandoned it on his election as district attorney. her brow contracted. "you should not do such things--in your position." "my dear mother, haven't you yet grasped that there is a touch of the criminal in all criminal prosecutors? that's what draws us to the job." she wouldn't listen to any such theory. "have you lost a great deal of money?" she asked severely. "not enough to turn us out of the old home," he smiled. "i won something under four hundred dollars." her brow cleared. she liked her son to be successful, preëminent in anything--right or wrong--which he undertook. "you made a mistake to get mixed up with people like that," she said. she knew where he had been dining. "i can't be said to have got mixed up with them. the only one i expressed any wish to see again slammed the door in my face." the next instant he wished he had not spoken. he hoped his mother had not noticed what he said. she remained silent, but she had understood perfectly, and he had made for lydia an implacable enemy. a woman who slammed the door in the face of dan was deserving of hell-fire, in mrs. o'bannon's opinion. she did not ask who it was, because she knew that in the course of everyday life together secrets between two people are impossible and the name would come out. after an almost sleepless night he woke in the morning with the zest of living extraordinarily renewed within him. every detail in the pattern of life delighted him, from the smell of coffee floating up from the kitchen on the still cold of the november morning to the sight from his window of the village children in knit caps and sweaters hurrying to school--tall, lanky, competent girls bustling their little brothers along, and inattentive boys hoisting small sisters up the school steps by their arms. life was certainly great fun, not because there were lovely women to be held in your arms, but because when young and vigorous you can bully life into being what you want it to be. and yet, good heavens, what a girl! at four that very afternoon he would see her again. he was in court all the morning. the courthouse, which if it had been smaller would have looked like a mausoleum in a cemetery, and if it had been larger would have looked like the madeleine, was set back from the main street. the case he was prosecuting--a case of criminal negligence against a young driver of a delivery wagon who had run over and injured a prominent citizen--went well; that is to say, o'bannon obtained a conviction. it had been one of those cases clear to the layman, for the young man was notoriously careless; but difficult, as lawyers tell you criminal-negligence cases are, from the legal point of view. o'bannon came out of court very well satisfied both with himself and the jury and drove straight to the thorne house. the smell of the grapes started his pulses beating. morson came to the door. no, miss thorne was not at home. "did she leave any message for me?" said o'bannon. "nothing, sir, except that she is not at home." he eyed morson, feeling that he would be within his masculine rights if he swept him out of the way and went on into the house; but tamely enough he turned and drove away. his feelings, however, were not tame. he was furious against her. how did she dare behave like this--driving about the country at midnight, gambling, letting him kiss her, and then ordering her door slammed in his face as if he were a book agent? civilization gave such women too much protection. perhaps the men she was accustomed to associating with put up with that kind of treatment, but not he. he'd see her again if he wanted to--yes, if he had to hold up her car on the highroad. he thought with approval of eleanor, a woman who played no tricks with you but left you cool and braced like a cold shower on a hot day. yet he found that that afternoon he did not want to see eleanor. he drove on and on, steeping himself in the bitterness of his resentment. at dinner his mother noticed his abstraction and feared an important case was going wrong. afterwards, supposing he wanted to think out some tangle of the law, she left him alone--not meditating, but seething. the next morning at half past eight he was in his office. the district attorney's office was in an old brick block opposite the courthouse. it occupied the second story over mr. wooley's hardware shop. as he went in he saw alma wooley, the fragile blond daughter of his landlord, slipping in a little late for her duties as assistant in the shop. she was wrapped in a light-blue cloak the color of her transparent turquoise-blue eyes. she gave o'bannon a pretty little sketch of a smile. she thought his position a great one, and his age extreme--anyone over thirty was ancient in her eyes. she was profoundly grateful to him, for he had given her fiancé a position on the police force and made their marriage a possibility at least. "how are things, alma?" he said. "simply wonderful, thanks to you, mr. o'bannon," she answered. he went upstairs thinking kindly of all gentle blond women. in the office he found his assistant, foster, the son of the local high-school teacher, a keen-minded ambitious boy of twenty-two. "oh," said foster, "the sheriff's been telephoning for you. he's at the thornes'." o'bannon felt as if his ears had deceived him. "where?" he asked sternly. "at the thornes' house--you know, there's a miss thorne who lives there--the daughter of old joe s. thorne." then, seeing the blank look on his chief's face, foster explained further. "it seems there was a jewel robbery there last night--a million dollars' worth, the sheriff says." he smiled, for the sheriff was a well-known exaggerator, but he met no answering smile. "they've been telephoning for you to come over." "who has?" said o'bannon. foster thought him unusually slow of understanding this morning, and answered patiently, "miss thorne has. there's been a robbery there." the district attorney was not slow in action. "i'll go right over," he said, and left the office. there were some advantages in holding public office. you could be sent for in your official capacity--and stick to it, by heaven! this time he asked no questions at the door, but entered. morson said timidly, "who shall i say, sir?" "say the district attorney." morson led the way to the drawing-room and threw open the door. "the district attorney," he announced, making it sound like a title of nobility, and o'bannon and lydia stood face to face again--or rather he stood. she, leaning back in her chair, nodded an adequate enough greeting to a public servant in the performance of his duty. they were not alone--a slim gray-haired lady, miss bennett, was named. "i understood at my office you had sent for me," said he. "i?" there was something wondering in her tone. "oh, yes, the sheriff, i believe, wanted you to come. all my jewels were stolen last night. he seemed to think you might be able to do something about it." her tone indicated that she did not share the sheriff's optimism. miss bennett, with a long habit of counteracting lydia's manners, broke in. "so kind of you to come yourself, mr. o'bannon." "it's my job to come." "yes, of course. i think i know your mother." she was very cordial, partly because she felt something hostile in the air, partly because she thought him an attractive-looking young man. "she's so helpful in the village improvement, only we're all just a little afraid of her. aren't you just a little afraid of her yourself?" "very much," he answered gravely. miss bennett wished he wouldn't just stare at her with those queer eyes of his--a little crazy, she thought. she liked people to smile at her when they spoke. she went on, "not but what we work all the better for her because we are a little afraid----" lydia interrupted. "mr. o'bannon hasn't come to pay us a social visit, benny," she said, and this time there was something unmistakably insolent in her tone. o'bannon decided to settle this whole question on the instant. he turned to miss bennett and said firmly, "i should like to speak to miss thorne alone." "of course," said miss bennett, already on her way to the door, which o'bannon opened for her. "no, benny, benny!" called lydia, but o'bannon had shut the door and leaned his shoulders against it. "listen to me!" he said. "you must be civil to me--that is, if you want me to stay here and try to get your jewels back." lydia wouldn't look at him. "and what guaranty have i that if you do stay you can do anything about it?" "i think i can get them, and i can assure you the sheriff can't." there was a long pause. "well?" he said. "well what?" said lydia, who hadn't been able to think what she was going to do. "will you be civil, or shall i go?" "i thought you just said it was your duty to stay." "make up your mind, please, which shall it be?" lydia longed to tell him to go, but she did want to get her jewels back, particularly as she was setting out for the emmonses' in a few minutes, and it would save a lot of trouble to have everything arranged before she left. she thought it over deliberately, and looking up saw that he was amused at her cold-blooded hesitation. seeing him smile, she found to her surprise that suddenly she smiled back at him. it was not what she had intended. "well," she thought, "let him think he's getting the best of me. as a matter of fact, i'm using him." she hoped he would be content with the smile, but, no, he insisted on the spoken word. she was forced to say definitely that she would be civil. she carried it off, in her own mind at least, by saying it as if it were a childish game he was playing. having received the assurance, he moved from the door and stood opposite her, leaning on the back of a chair. "now tell me what happened?" he said. she told him how she had been waked up just before dawn by the sound of someone moving in her dressing room. at first she had thought it was a window, or a curtain blowing, until she had seen a fine streak of light under the door. then she had sprung up--to find herself locked in. she had rung her bells, pounded on the door--finally succeeded in rousing the household. the dressing room was empty, but her safe had been opened--her jewels and about five hundred dollars gone--her recent winnings at bridge. "you've had good luck lately?" he asked. "good partners," she answered with one of her illuminating smiles. she'd gone all over the house after that. alone? no. morson had tagged on. morson was afraid of burglars, having had experience with them in some former place. besides, she always had a revolver. oh, yes, she knew how to shoot! she'd gone over the whole house--there wasn't a lock undone. he questioned her about the servants. suspicion seemed to point to evans, who had the run of the safe and might so easily have failed to lock it in the evening when she had put her mistress to bed. lydia demurred at the idea of evans' guilt. the girl had been with her for five years. "i don't really think she has the courage to steal," she said. "do you know the circumstances of her life? anything to make her feel in special need of money just now?" he inquired. lydia shook her head. "i never see how servants spend their wages anyhow," she said. "but what makes me feel quite sure it isn't evans is that i'm sure she would have confessed to me when i questioned her. instead of that she's been packing my things for me just as usual." o'bannon cut the interview short by announcing that he'd see the sheriff. lydia had expected--"dreaded" was her own word--that he would say something about the incidents of their last meeting. but he didn't. he left the room, saying as he went: "you'll wait here until i've had a talk with the girl." his tone had a rising inflection of a question in it, but to lydia it sounded like an order. she had had every intention of waiting, but now she began to contemplate the possibility of leaving at once. the car was at the door and her bags were on the car. how it would annoy him, she thought, if when he came back, instead of finding her patiently waiting to be civil, he learned that she had motored away, as much as to say: "it's your duty as an officer of the law to find my jewels, but it isn't my duty to be grateful to you." presently miss bennett and the sheriff came in together, talking--at least the sheriff was talking. "it looks like it was her all right," he was saying, "and if so he'll get a confession out of her. that's why i sent for him. he's a great feller for getting folks to confess." then with natural courtesy he turned to lydia. "i was just saying to your friend, miss thorne, that o'bannon's great on getting confessions." "really?" said lydia. "i wonder why." "well," said the sheriff, ignoring the note of doubt in her wonder, "most criminals want to confess. it's a lonely thing--to have a secret and the whole world against you. he plays on that. and between you and i, miss thorne, there's some of this so-called psychology in it. you see, i prepare the way for him--telling how he always does get a confession, and how a confession last time saved the defendant from the chair, and a lot of stuff like that, and then he comes along, and i guess there's a little hypnotism in it too. did you ever notice his eyes?" "i noticed that he has them," answered lydia. miss bennett said that she had noticed them at once, as soon as he came into the room. perhaps it was remembrance of them that made her add, "he won't be too hard on the poor girl, will he?" [illustration: o'bannon begins his investigation of the theft.] "no, ma'am, he won't be hard at all," said the sheriff. "he'll just talk with her ten or fifteen minutes, and then she'll want to tell him the truth. i couldn't say how it's done." lydia suddenly stamped her foot. "she's a fool if she does!" she said, biting into her words. so this young man went in for being a woman tamer, did he?--the mistress downstairs ordered to be civil and the maid upstairs ordered to confess. if she had time, she thought, it would amuse her to show him that things did not run so smoothly as that. she almost wished that evans wouldn't confess. it would be worth losing her jewels to see his face when he came down to announce his failure. steps overhead, the door opened, a voice called, "sheriff, get your men up here, will you?" the sheriff's face lit up. "didn't i tell you?" he said. "he's done it!" he hurried out of the room. when, a few minutes later, the district attorney came down he found miss bennett alone. he looked about quickly. "where's miss thorne?" he said. miss bennett had not wanted lydia to go--she had urged her not to. what difference did the emmonses make in comparison with the jewels? but now she sprang to her defense. "she was forced to go. she had a train to catch--a long-standing engagement. she was so sorry. she left all sorts of messages." this was not, strictly speaking, true. o'bannon smiled slightly. "she does not seem to take much interest in the recovery of her jewels," he said. "she has every confidence in you," said miss bennett flatteringly. miss bennett herself had. never, she thought, had she seen a man who inspired her with a more comfortable sense of leadership. she saw he was not pleased at lydia's sudden departure. he was not. he was furious at her. his feelings about her had flickered up and down like a flame. the vision of her going over her house alone, her hair down her back and a revolver in her hand, alone--except for morson tagging on behind--moved him with a sense of her courage; and not only her courage but her lack of self-consciousness about it. she had spoken as if anyone would have done the same. her hardness toward the criminal had repelled him, and when he went upstairs to interview evans a new sensation waited for him. the robbery had not released evans from her regular duties. she had just finished packing lydia's things for the visit to the emmonses, and the bedroom where she had been detained had the disheveled look of a room which had just been packed and dressed in. the bed had not been made, though its pink silk cover had been smoothed over it to allow for the folding of dresses on it. lydia's slippers--pink mules with an edging of fur--were kicked off beside it. long trails of tissue paper were on the floor. o'bannon saw it all with an eye trained to observe. he saw the book of verses on the table beside her bed, the picture of the good-looking young man on her dressing table. he smelled in the air the perfume of violets, a scent which his sense remembered as having lingered in her hair. all this he took in almost before he saw the pale, black-clad criminal standing vacantly in the midst of the disorder. "sit down," he said. he spoke neither kindly nor commandingly, but as if to speak were the same thing as to accomplish. evans sat down. it was a curious picture of lydia that emerged from the story she finally told him--a figure kind and generous and careless and cruel, and, it seemed to him above everything else, stupid, blind about life, the lives of those about her. evans had a lover, a young english footman who had served a term for stealing and just lately got out with an advanced case of tuberculosis. evans, who had remained adamant to temptation when everything was going well with him, fell at the sight of his ill health. she had attempted, lonely and inefficient as she was, to do the trick by herself. it was lydia's irritation over evans' regret at the loss of the bracelet that had apparently decided the girl. "if she was so glad to be relieved of the things i thought i'd help her a bit," she said bitterly. what seemed to o'bannon so incomprehensible was that lydia shouldn't have known that the girl was in some sort of trouble. the sight of the room made him vividly aware of the intimacy of daily detail that any maid has in regard to her mistress--two women, and one going through hell. he said to miss bennett after they had gone downstairs again: "didn't miss thorne suspect that something was going wrong with the girl?" miss bennett liked the district attorney so much that she felt a strong temptation, under the mask of discussing the case, to pour out to him all her troubles--the inevitable troubles of those whose lives were bound up with lydia's. but her standards of good manners were too rigorous to allow her to yield. "no, i'm afraid we didn't guess," she answered. "but now that we do know, is there anything we can do for the poor thing?" "not just now," he answered. "the case is clear against her. but when it comes to sentencing her you could do something. anything miss thorne said in her favor would be taken into consideration by the judge." "tell me just what it is you want her to say," answered miss bennett, eager to help. "it isn't what i want," o'bannon replied with some irritation. "my duty is to present the case against her for the state. i'm telling what miss thorne can do if she feels that there are extenuating circumstances; if, for instance, she thinks that she herself has been careless about her valuables." "she will, i'm sure," said miss bennett with more conviction than she felt, "because, between you and me, mr. o'bannon, she is careless. she lost a beautiful little bracelet the other--but when you're as young and lovely and rich as she is----" she was interrupted by the district attorney's rather curt good-by. "do you want to drive back with me, sheriff?" the sheriff did, and jumping in he murmured as they drove down the road: "she is all that. she's easy to look at all right. she's handsome, and yet not--not what i should call womanly. look out at the turn. there's a hole as you get into the main road." "yes, i know about it," said o'bannon. chapter v when lydia came back from the emmonses late monday afternoon she brought bobby dorset with her. miss bennett, who was arranging morson's vases of flowers according to her more fastidious ideas, heard them come in, as noisy and high-spirited, she thought, as a couple of puppies. lydia was so busy giving orders to have bobby's room got ready and to have eleanor telephoned to come over to dinner in case they wanted to play bridge, and sending the car for her, because eleanor was so near-sighted she couldn't drive herself, and always let her chauffeur go home, and he had no telephone--so incompetent of eleanor--that miss bennett had no chance to exchange a word with her. besides, the poor lady was taken up with the horror of the approaching bridge game. she liked a mild rubber now and then, but not with lydia, who scolded her after each hand, remembering every play. lydia, who was almost without physical or moral timidity, was always fighting against a subconscious horror, a repulsion rather than a fear, that life was just a futile, gigantic, patternless confusion, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing, which is the horror of all materialists. when she walked into her bedroom and found her things laid out just as usual, and a new maid--a frenchwoman, brown and middle-aged and competent--waiting for her, just as evans had waited, one of her moods of deep depression engulfed her, just as those who fear death are sometimes brought to a realization of its approach by some everyday symbol. lydia did not fear death, but sometimes she hated life. she never asked if it were her own relation to life that was unsatisfactory. when she came downstairs in a tea gown of orange and brown chiffon no one but bobby noticed that her high spirits had all evaporated. at table, before morson and the footman, no one mentioned the subject of the robbery, but when they were back in the drawing-room miss bennett introduced it by asking: "did the new woman hook you up right? will she do, dear?" lydia shrugged her shoulders, not stopping to think that miss bennett had spent one whole day in intelligence offices and a morning on the telephone in her effort to replace evans. the older woman was silenced by the shrug--not hurt, but disappointed--and in the silence bobby said: "oh, what happened about evans? they took her away?" lydia answered, with a contemptuous raising of her chin, "she confessed--she always was a goose." "that didn't prove it," returned miss bennett with spirit. "it was the wisest thing to do. the district attorney--my dear girls, if i were your age, and that man----" "look out!" said lydia. "he's a great friend of eleanor's." "of eleanor?" exclaimed miss bennett. she was not and never had been a vain woman, but she was always astonished at men caring for a type of femininity different from her own. she liked eleanor, but she thought her dry and unattractive, and she didn't see what a brilliant, handsome creature like o'bannon could see in her. "is he, really?" "yes, he is," said eleanor coolly. experience had taught her an excellent manner in this situation. "i wish you had waited, lydia," miss bennett went on. "it was very impressive the way he managed evans, almost like a hypnotic influence. she told him everything. she seemed to give herself over into his hands. it was almost like a miracle. a moment before she had been so hostile--a miracle taking place right there in lydia's bedroom." lydia, who had been bending over reorganizing the fire, suddenly straightened up with the poker in her hand and said quickly, "where? taking place where?" "in your room, dear. evans was shut up there." "that man in my room!" said lydia, and her whole face seemed to blaze with anger. "it never occurred to me that you would object, my dear. he said he----" "it should have occurred to you. i hate the idea--that drunken attorney in my bedroom. it's not decent!" "lydia!" said miss bennett. eleanor spoke in a voice as cold as steel. "what do you mean by calling mr. o'bannon a drunken attorney?" "he drinks--bobby says so." "i did not say so!" "why, bobby, you did!" "i said he used to drink when he was in college." "oh, well, a reformed drunkard," said lydia, shrugging her shoulders. "i can't imagine your doing such a thing, benny, except that you always do anything that anyone asks you to do." her tone was more insulting than her words, and miss bennett did the most sensible thing she could think of--she got up and left the room. lydia stood on the hearthrug, tapping her foot, breathing quickly, her jaw set. "i think bennett's losing her mind," she said. "i think you are," said eleanor. "what possible difference does it make?" "you say that because you're crazy about this man. perhaps if i were in love with him i'd lose all my sense of delicacy too; but as it is----" eleanor got up. "i think i'll take my lack of delicacy home," she said. "tell morson to send for the motor, will you, bobby? good night lydia. i've had a perfectly horrid evening." "good night," said lydia with a fierce little beck of her head. bobby saw eleanor to the car, and sat with her some time in the hall while it was being brought round. "no one could blame you for being furious; but you're not angry at her, are you, eleanor?" he said. "of course i'm angry!" answered eleanor. "she's too impossible, bobby. you can't keep on with people who let you in for this sort of thing. i could have had a perfectly pleasant evening at home--and to come out for a row like this!" "she doesn't do it often." "often! no, there wouldn't be any question then." "she's been perfectly charming at the emmonses'--gay and friendly, and everyone crazy about her. and by the way, eleanor, i didn't say o'bannon was a drunkard." "of course you didn't," said eleanor. "but he used to go on the most smashing sprees in college, and i told her about one of those and made her promise not to tell." "a lot that would influence lydia." the car was at the door now, and as he put her into it he asked, "oh, don't you feel so sorry for her sometimes that you could almost weep over her?" "i certainly do not!" said eleanor. turning from the front door, bobby ran upstairs and knocked at miss bennett's door. he found her sunk in an enormous chair, looking very pathetic and more like an unhappy child than a middle-aged woman. "it isn't bearable," she said. "life under these conditions is too disagreeable. i don't complain of her never noticing all the little sacrifices one makes--all the trouble one takes for her sake. but when she's absolutely rude--just vulgarly, grossly rude as she was this evening----" "miss bennett," said bobby seriously, "when things go wrong with women they cry, and when things go wrong with men they swear. lydia takes a little from both sexes. these outbursts are her equivalent for feminine tears or masculine profanity." miss bennett looked up at him with her starlike eyes shining with emotion. "but someone must teach her that she can't behave like that. i can't do it. i can only teach by being kind--endlessly kind--and she can't learn from that. so the best thing for both of us is for me to leave her and let someone else try." bobby sat down and took her thin aristocratic hand in both of his. "no one can teach her, dear benny," he said. "but life can--and will. that's my particular nightmare--that people like lydia get broken by life--and it's always such a smash. that's why i'm content to stand by without, as most of my friends think, due regard for my own self-respect. that's why i do hope you'll contrive to. that's why she seems to me the most pathetic person i know. she almost makes me cry." "pathetic!" said miss bennett with something approaching a snort. "yes, like a child playing with a dynamite fuse. even to-night she seemed to me pathetic. she can't afford to alienate the few people who really care for her--you and eleanor and--well, of course, she won't alienate me, whatever she does." "but she takes advantage of our affection," said miss bennett. bobby stood up. "you bet she does!" he said. "she'll have something bitter waiting for me now when i go down, something she'll have forgotten by to-morrow and i'll remember as long as i live." he smiled perfectly gayly and left the room. he found lydia strolling about the drawing-room, softly whistling to herself. "well," she said, "my party seems to have broken up early." "broken's the word," answered bobby. "isn't eleanor absurd?" said lydia. "she loves so to be superior--'order my carriage'--like the virtuous duchess in a melodrama." "she doesn't seem absurd to me," said bobby. "oh, you've been tiptoeing about binding up everybody's wounds, i suppose," she answered. "did you tell them that you knew i didn't mean a word i said? ah, yes, i see you did. well, i did mean every single word, and more. upon my word, i wish you'd mind your own business, bobby." "i will," said bobby, and got up and left the room. he went out and walked quickly up and down the flat stones under the grape arbor. the moon was not up, and the stars twinkled fiercely in the crisp cool air. he thought of other women--lovelier and kinder than lydia. what kept him in this bondage to her? all the time he was asking the question he was aware of her image in her orange tea gown against the dark woodwork of the room, and suddenly, before he knew it--certainly before he had made any resolve to return--he was back in the doorway, saying, "would you like to play a game of piquet?" she nodded, and they sat down at the card table. bobby's faint resentment had gone in ten minutes, but it was longer before lydia, laying down her cards, said, as if they had just been talking about her misdeeds instead of merely thinking about them, "but benny is awfully obstinate, isn't she? i mean the way she goes on doing things the way she thinks i ought to like them instead of finding out the way i do like." "she's very sweet--benny is." "and that's just what makes everyone think me so terrible--the contrast. she's sweet, but she wants her own way just the same. whereas i----" "you don't want your own way, lydia?" they nearly fought it out all over again. this time it was lydia who stopped the discussion with a sudden change of manner. "the truth is, bobby," she said with an unexpected gentleness, "that i feel dreadfully about evans. you don't know how fond you get of a person who's about you all the time like that." "horrid that they'll rob you, isn't it?" "yes." lydia stared thoughtfully before her. "i think what i mind most is that she wouldn't tell me--kept denying it, as if i were her enemy--and then in the first second she confessed to the district attorney." "oh, well, that's his profession." she seemed to think profoundly, and her next sentence surprised him. "do you think there's anything really between him and eleanor? i couldn't bear to have eleanor marry a man like that." bobby, trying to be tactful, answered that he was sure eleanor wouldn't, but as often happens to consciously tactful people, he failed to please. "oh," said lydia, "you mean that you think he's crazy about her?" "mercy, no!" said bobby. "i shouldn't think eleanor was his type at all, except perhaps as a friend. it's the chorus-girl type that really stirs him." "oh, is it?" said lydia, and took up the cards again. they played two hours, and the game calmed her but could not save her from the blackness of her mood. it came upon her, as it always did if it were coming, a few minutes after she had got into bed, turned out her light and had begun to discover that sleep was not close at hand. life seemed to her all effort without purpose. she felt like a martyr at the stake; only she had no vision to bear her company. she felt her loneliness to be not the result of anything she said or did, but inevitable. there seemed to be nothing in the universe but chaos and herself. she turned on her light again and read until almost morning. nights like this were not unusual with lydia. chapter vi joe thorne had been fond of telling a story about lydia in her childhood--in the days before miss bennett came to them. after some tremendous scene of naughtiness and punishment, she had come to him and said: "father, if you're not angry at me any more, i'm not angry at you." it was characteristic of her still. she was not afraid to come forward and make up, but she was shy with the spoken word. she couldn't make an emotional apology, but she managed to convey in all sorts of dumb ways that she wanted to be friends--she contrived to remember some long ungratified wish of benny's, whether it were a present, or a politeness to some old friend, or sometimes only an errand that benny had never been able to get her to do. there was always a definite symbol that lydia was sorry, and she was always forgiven. part of eleanor's sense of her own superiority to the world lay in being more than usually impervious to emotion. besides she had expressed herself satisfactorily at the time by leaving the house, so that she forgave too. only of course a scene like that is never without consequences--everybody's endurance had snapped a few more strands like a fraying rope. and there were consequences, too, in lydia's own nature. she seemed to have become permanently wrong-headed and violent on any subject even remotely connected with the district attorney. this was evident a few days later when a voice proclaiming itself that of judge homans' secretary asked her if she could make it convenient to stop at the judge's chambers that afternoon to give the court some information in regard to a former maid of hers--evans. lydia's tone showed that it was not at all convenient. it seemed at one instant as if she were about to refuse point-blank to go. then she yielded, and from that minute it became clear that her mind was continually occupied with the prospect of the visit. late in the afternoon she appeared before the judge's desk in his little room, lined with shelves of calf-bound volumes. it was a chilly november afternoon, and she had just come from tea at the golf club after eighteen holes. she was wrapped in a bright golden-brown coat, and a tomato-colored hat was pulled down over her brows. the judge, for no reason ascertainable, had imagined miss thorne, the landed proprietor, the owner of jewels of value, as a dignified woman of thirty. he looked up in surprise over his spectacles. his first idea--he lived much out of the world--was that a mistake had been made and that an unruly female offender had been brought to him, not a complaining witness. even after this initial misunderstanding was explained the interview did not go well. the judge was a man of sixty, clean shaven and of a waxy hue. from his high, narrow brow all his lines flowed outward. his chin was heavy and deeply creased, and he had a way at times of drawing it in to meet his heavy, hunched shoulders. a natural interest in the continuity of his own thought, joined to fifteen years of pronouncements from the bench, rendered him impervious to interruption. he now insisted on reviewing the case of evans, while lydia sat tossing back first one side and then the other of her heavy coat and thinking--almost saying, "oh, the tiresome old man! why does he tell me all this? doesn't he know that it was my jewels that were stolen?" she began to tap her foot, a sound which to those who knew lydia well was regarded almost as the rattle of the rattlesnake. the judge began to draw his monologue to a close. "the district attorney tells me that you feel that there was some carelessness on your own part which might be considered in a measure as constituting an extenuating circumstance----" he got no further. "the district attorney says so?" said lydia, and if he had quoted the authority of the janitor's boy her tone could not have expressed more contemptuous surprise. his honor, however, missed it. "yes," he went on, "mr. o'bannon tells me that the charge of your safe, without supervision----" "mr. o'bannon is completely misinformed," said lydia, shutting her eyes and raising her eyebrows. the judge turned his head squarely to look at her. "you mean," he said, "that you do not feel that there was any contributory carelessness which might in part explain, without in any true sense excusing----" "certainly not," said lydia. "and i have never said anything to anyone that would make them think so." "i have been misinformed as to your attitude," said the judge. "evidently," said lydia, and almost at once brought the interview to a close by leaving the room. as she walked down the path to her car a figure came out of the shadow as if it had been waiting for her. it was the same traffic policeman who had stopped her on her way to eleanor's. he took off his brown cap. she saw his round, pugnacious head and the uncertain curve of his mouth. he was a nice-looking man, and younger than she had supposed--quite boyish in fact. she caught a glimpse of some sort of ribbon on his breast--the croix de guerre. she looked straight at him with interest, and saw that he was tense with embarrassment. "i believe i have something of yours," he said. "i want to give it back." he was fumbling in his pocket. she couldn't really permit that. "bribed people," she thought, "must be content to remain bribed." she walked rapidly toward her car without answering. the chauffeur opened the door for her. "home," she said, and drove away. an hour or so later the judge was giving a description of the interview to the district attorney. it began as a general indictment of the irresponsibility of the wealthy young people of to-day, touching on their dress, appearance and manners. then it descended suddenly to the particular case. "she came into this room in a hat the color of a flamingo"--the judge's color sense was not good--"and her skirts almost to her knees; as bold--well, i wouldn't like to tell you what my first idea was on seeing her. she was as hard as--i could have told her that some of her own father's methods were not strictly legal, only the courts were more lenient in those days. a ruthless fellow--joe thorne. do you know this girl?" "i've met her," said o'bannon. "she made a very unfavorable impression on me," said judge homans. "i don't know when a young woman of agreeable appearance--she has considerable beauty--has made such an unfavorable impression." and his honor added, as if the two remarks had nothing to do with each other, "i shall give this unfortunate maid a very light sentence." the district attorney bowed. it was exactly what he had always intended. but a sentence which sounded light to judge homans--not less than three and a half nor more than fifteen years--sounded heavy to lydia. she was horrified. the recent visit which, under mrs. galton's auspices, she had paid to a man's prison was in her mind--the darkness, the crowded cells, the pale abnormal-looking prisoners, the smell, the guards, the silence. she simply would not allow evans to spend fifteen years in such torture. she was all the more determined because she knew, without once admitting it, that she might have prevented it. she read the sentence in the local newspaper at breakfast--she breakfasted in bed--and the next minute she was up and in miss bennett's room. "this is a little too much," she said, walking in so fast that her silk dressing gown stood out like a rose-colored balloon. "fifteen years! those men must be mad! come, benny, put on your things. you must go with me to the district attorney's office and have this arranged. imagine it! after her confessing too! i said she was wrong to confess." but when she reached the office she found no one there but miss finnegan, the stenographer. "where's mr. o'bannon?" she asked as if she had an engagement with him which he had broken. miss finnegan raised her head from her keys and looked at the unexpected visitor in a tomato-colored hat, whose feet had sounded so sharp and quick on the stairs and who had thrown open the door so violently. "mr. o'bannon's in court," she answered in a tone which seemed to suggest that almost anyone would know that. by this time, mounting the stairs with more dignity, miss bennett entered, appealing and conciliatory. "we want so much to see him," she murmured. miss finnegan softened and said that she'd telephone over to the courthouse. he might be able to get over for a minute. she telephoned and hung up the receiver in silence. "when will he be here?" demanded lydia. "when he's at liberty," miss finnegan answered coldly. waiting did not calm lydia nor the atmosphere of the office, which proclaimed o'bannon's power. people kept coming in with the same question--when could they see the district attorney? an old foreigner was there who kept muttering something to miss finnegan in broken english. "yes, but then your son ought to plead," miss finnegan kept saying over and over again, punctuating her sentence with quick roulades on the typewriter. there was a thin young man with shifty eyes, and a local lawyer with a strong flavor of the soil about him. miss bennett watched lydia anxiously. the girl was not accustomed to being kept waiting. her bank, her dentist, the shops where she dealt had long ago learned that it saved everybody trouble to serve miss thorne first. at last o'bannon entered. lydia sprang up. "mr. o'bannon----" she began. he held up his hand. "one minute," he said. he was listening to the story of the old woman, not even glancing in lydia's direction; yet something in the bend of his head, in the strain of his effort to keep his eyes on his interlocutor and his mind on what was being told him made miss bennett believe he was acutely aware of their presence. yet lydia patiently bore even this delay. miss bennett drew a breath of relief. the girl had evidently come resolved to show her better side. the impression was strengthened when he approached them. lydia's manner was gentle and dignified. "mr. o'bannon," said she, "i feel distressed at the sentence of my maid--evans." miss bennett looked on like a person seeing a vision--lydia had never seemed--had never been like this--gentle, feminine, well, there was no other word for it, sweet--poignantly sweet. she did not see how anyone could resist her, and glancing at the district attorney she saw he was not resisting, on the contrary, with bent head, and his queer light eyes fixed softly on lydia's he was drinking in every tone of her voice. their voices sank lower and lower until they were almost whispering to each other, so low that miss bennett thought fantastically that anybody coming in unexpectedly might have thought they were lovers. "she isn't a criminal," lydia was saying. "she was tempted, and she has confessed. won't you help me to save her?" "i can't," he whispered back. "it's too late. she's been sentenced." "too late, perhaps, by the regular methods--but there are always others. you have so much power--you give people the feeling you can do anything." he shook his head, still gazing at her. "you give me that feeling. do this for me." "you could have done it yourself, so easily, before she was sentenced." "i know, i know. that's why i care so. oh, mr. o'bannon, just for a moment, you and i----" her voice sank so that miss bennett could not hear what she said, but she saw her put her hand on his arm like a person taking possession of her own belongings. then there was no use in listening any more, for a complete silence had fallen between them; they did not even seem to be breathing. the district attorney suddenly raised his head with a quick shake, like a dog coming out of water, and stepped back. "it can't be done," he said. "if i were willing to break the law into pieces, i can't do it." lydia's brow darkened. "you mean you won't," she said. "no," he answered quietly. "i mean just what i say. i can't. remember you have had two chances to help the girl--at the first complaint, and in your conversation with the judge. why didn't you do it then?" why hadn't she? she didn't know, but she answered hastily: "i did not understand----" "you wouldn't understand," he returned, in that quiet, terrible tone that made her think somehow of ilseboro. "i tried to tell you and you wouldn't wait to hear, and the judge tried to tell you and you wouldn't listen. people don't often get three chances in this world, miss thorne." his tone maddened her, in combination with her own failure. "are you taking it upon yourself to reprove me, mr. o'bannon?" she asked. "i'm taking it upon myself to tell you how things are," he answered. "i don't believe it is the way they are," she said. angry as she was, she did not mean the phrase to sound as insulting as it did. she meant that there must be some unsuspected avenue of approach; but her quick tone and insolent manner made the words themselves sound like the final insult. o'bannon simply turned from her, and holding up his hand to the shifty-eyed boy said clearly, "i'll see you now, gray." there was nothing for lydia to do but accept her dismissal. she flounced out of the room, and all the way home in the car shocked miss bennett by her epithets. "insolent country lout" was the mildest of them. a few days afterward miss thorne moved back to new york to the house in the east seventies. miss bennett, who hated the country, partly because there she was more under lydia's thumb, rejoiced at being back in new york. she had many friends--was much more personally popular than her charge--and in town she could see them more easily. every morning after she had finished her housekeeping she went out and walked round the reservoir. she liked to walk, planting her little feet as precisely as if she were dancing or skating. then there was usually some necessary shopping for lydia or the house or herself; then luncheon, and afterward for an hour or two her own work. she was a member of endless committees, entertainments for charitable purposes, hospital boards, reform associations. then before five she was at home, behind the tea table, waiting on lydia, engaged in getting rid of people whom lydia didn't want to see and keeping those whom lydia would want to see but had forgotten. and then dinner--at home if lydia was giving a party; but most often both women dined out. the winter was notable for lydia's sudden friendship or flirtation, or affair as it was variously described, with stephen albee, the ex-governor of a great state. it would have seemed more natural if he had been one of eleanor's discoveries, but he was not--he was lydia's own find. eleanor, with all her airs of a young old maid, had never been known to distinguish any man lacking in the physical attractions of youth. albee, though he had been a fine-looking man once and still had a certain magnificent leonine appearance, was over fifty and showed his years. he had come to new york to conduct an important federal investigation, and the masterly manner in which he was doing it led to presidential prophecies. lydia's friends were beginning to murmur that it would be just like lydia to end in the white house. besides, the governor was rich, the owner of silver mines and a widower. it was noticed that lydia was more respectful to him than she had ever been to anyone, followed his lead intellectually, and quoted him to the verge of being comic. "it is painful to me," eleanor said, "to watch the process of lydia's discovering politics. last monday the existence of the federal constitution dawned upon her, and next week states' rights may emerge." it was equally painful to the governor's old friends to watch the even less graceful process of his discovery of social life. the two friends adventured mutually. if lydia sat all day listening to his investigation, he appeared hardly less regularly in her opera box. oddly enough, they had met at a prison-reform luncheon given by the same noble women whose presence at her house had so much irritated lydia. the object of the luncheon was to advertise the cause, to inspire workers, to raise money. albee was the principal speaker, not because he had any special interest in prison reform, but because he was the most conspicuous public figure in new york at the moment, and as he was known not to be an orator, everyone was eager to hear him speak. mrs. galton, the chairman of the meeting, was shocked by his reactionary views on prisons when he expounded them to her in an attempt to evade her invitation; but with the sound worldliness which every reformer must acquire she knew that his name was far more important to her cause than his views, and with a little judicious flattery she roped him into promising he would come and say a few words--not, he specially insisted, a speech. mrs. galton agreed, knowing that no speaker in the world, certainly no masculine speaker, could resist the appeal of a large, warm, admiring audience when once he got to his feet. "the only difficulty will be stopping him," she thought rather sadly. it would be wise, too, she thought, to put someone next to him at luncheon who would please him. flattery from an ugly old woman like herself wouldn't be enough. then she remembered lydia, whom, after their unfortunate meeting at luncheon in the autumn, she had taken through one of the men's prisons in an effort to enlist the girl's coöperation. they had had conferences over evans too, for lydia had not remained utterly indifferent to evans' situation, had indeed permitted, even urged, miss bennett to go to visit the girl and see what could be done for her. miss thorne accepted the invitation to attend the luncheon; and then, as cold-bloodedly as a diplomat might make use of a lovely courtesan, mrs. galton put her next to the great man at the speakers' table, where of course so young, idle and useless a person had no right to be. the governor arrived very late, with his fingers in his waistcoat pocket to indicate to all who saw him hurrying in between the crowded tables that he had been unavoidably detained and had spent the last half hour in agonized contemplation of his watch. as a matter of fact, he had been reading the papers at his club, wishing to cut down the hour of too much food and too much noise which he knew would precede the hour of too much speaking. he knew he would sit next to mrs. galton, whom he esteemed as a wise and good philanthropist but dreaded as a companion. everything began as he feared. he took his place on mrs. galton's right, with an apology for having been detained--unavoidably. it had looked at one time as if he could not get there, but of course his feeling for the great work---- mrs. galton, who had been through all this hundreds of times and knew he had never intended to arrive a minute earlier than he did, smiled warmly, and said how fortunate they counted themselves in having obtained an hour of the time of a man whom all the world---- on the contrary, the governor esteemed it a privilege to speak on behalf of a cause which commanded the sympathy---- it was a turning point, indeed, in the history of any cause, when a man like the governor---- they would have gone on like this through luncheon, but at this moment a sudden rustling at his side made the governor turn, and there--later a good deal than he had contrived to be--was lydia, lydia in a tight plain dress and a small plumed hat that made her look like a crested serpent. mrs. galton introduced them, and with a sigh of relief settled back to eating her lunch and running over her own introductory remarks in the comfortable certainty that the governor would give her no more trouble. he didn't. he looked at lydia, and all his heavy politeness dropped from him. his eyes twinkled, and he said, "come, my dear young lady, let us save time by your telling me who you are and what you do and why you are here." this amused lydia. "i think," she said, "that that is the best conversational opening i ever heard. well, i suppose i ought to say that i am here to listen to you." "yes, yes--perhaps," answered albee, with a somewhat political wave of his hand, "in the same sense in which i came here to meet you--because fate, luck, divine interposition arranged it so. but why, according to your own limited views, are you here?" "oh, in response to a noble impulse. don't you ever have them?" "i did--i did when i was your age," said the governor, and he leaned back and studied her with open admiration, which somehow in a man of his reputation was not offensive. "why are you here yourself?" said lydia, giving him a gentle look to convey that she was very grateful to him for thinking her so handsome. "why, i just told you," answered the governor, "because fate said to herself: 'now here's poor old stephen albee's been having a dull hard time of it. let's have something pleasant happen to him. let's have him meet miss thorne.'" a lady on lydia's other side, who gave her life to the reform of criminals and particularly hated those who remained outside of penal institutions, was horrified by what she considered the flirtatious tone of the conversation. she could hear--in fact she listened--that several meetings had been arranged before the governor's time came to speak. everything worked out exactly as mrs. galton had intended. the governor--who had expected to say that he was heart and soul with this great cause, to rehearse a few historic examples of prison mismanagement, to confide to his audience that a man of national reputation was at that moment waiting to see him about something of international importance, and then to get away in time to play a few holes of golf before dark--rose to his feet, fired with the determination to make a good speech, good enough to impress lydia; and he did. he had a simple direct manner of speaking, so that no one noticed that his sentences themselves were rather oratorical and emotional. most speakers, too many at least, have just the opposite technic--an oratorical manner and no matter behind it. he gave the impression, without actually saying so, that the only reason he had not given his life to prison reform was that the larger duty of the public service called him, and the only reason why he did not swamp his audience with the technical details of the subject was that it was too painful, too shocking. there was great and sincere applause as he sat down. workers were inspired, subscriptions did flow in. before the next speaker rose, lydia, in sight of the whole room, walked out, followed by the great man, who had explained hastily to mrs. galton that he was already late for an engagement with a man of national reputation who was waiting to discuss a matter of international importance. mrs. galton nodded amiably. she had little further use for the governor. the next day lydia went downtown to hear him conducting his investigation, and was impressed by the spectacle of his dominating will and crystalline mind in action. she came every day. her life heretofore had not stimulated her to intellectual endeavor, but now she discovered that she had a good, keen mind. she learned the procedure of the investigation, remembered the evidence, read books--wellman on cross-examination and the adventures of sergeant ballentine. she enjoyed herself immensely. it was the best game she had ever played. the vision of a vicarious career as the wife of a great politician was now always in the back of her mind. eleanor, with her superior intellectual equipment, might laugh at lydia's late discovery of the political field; but lydia's knowledge was not theoretical and remote, like eleanor's. it was alive, vivified by her energy and coined into the daily action of her life. with half eleanor's brains she was twice as effective. she admired albee deeply, almost dangerously, and she wanted to admire him more. she enjoyed all the symbols of his power. she liked the older, more important men of her acquaintance to come suing to her for an opportunity of meeting albee socially. she liked to watch other women trying to draw him away from her. she even liked the way the traffic policemen would let her car through when he was in it. she liked all these things, not from vanity, as many girls would have liked them, but because they constantly held before her eyes the picture of albee as a superman. and if albee were a superman the problem of her life was solved. then everything would be simple--to give her youth and beauty and money, her courage and knowledge of the world to making him supreme. it was true that he had not as yet asked her to marry him--had not even made love to her, unless admiration is love-making--but to lydia that was a secondary consideration. the first thing was to make up her own mind. she had two great problems to face. at first he did not want to go out at all--did not want to enter her field. he appeared to think, as so many americans do, that there was something trivial, almost immoral, in meeting your fellow creatures except in professional relations. the second problem was worse, that having overcome his reluctance, he began to like it too much, to take it too seriously. he had never had time for it before, he said, but actually he must have felt excluded from it, either at college, or as a young man in the legislature of his state. the first time he went to the opera with her--he was genuinely fond of music--she noticed this. lydia's box was next to mrs. little's. the newspapers made her name impressive, but her slim white-haired presence made her more so. lydia herself admired her, and if ever she thought of her own old age she thought she would like to be like mrs. little--a wish very unlikely of realization, for mrs. little had been molded by traditional obligations and sacrifices to duties which lydia had never acknowledged. as they were waiting in the crowded lobby of the thirty-ninth street entrance--all the faces above velvets and furs peering out and all the footmen's faces peering in and everyone chattering and shouting and so little apparently accomplished in the way of clearing the crowd--albee said: "mrs. little has asked me to dine on the sixteenth." lydia caught something complaisant in the tone. the idea that he could be flattered by such an invitation was distasteful to her. "did you accept?" she asked in a cold tone that she tried to make noncommittal. fortunately politics had taught albee caution. he had not accepted. he had said that he would let the great lady know in the morning. "do you think that sort of thing will amuse you?" he answered that it would amuse him if she were going, and against her better judgment she allowed herself to believe that the eagerness in his voice had been occasioned by the promised opportunity of seeing her. the fancy ball was more serious. the pulsifers were giving it in their great ballroom just before lent. lydia and miss bennett were discussing costumes one afternoon at tea time when albee was announced. lydia had been at his investigation that morning, and had never admired him more. "it's the pulsifers we're talking about," said miss bennett as he entered. "lydia wants to be a japanese, but there'll be lots of them. i want her to go as an american indian." with a vivid recollection of him deciding a struggle that morning between two lawyers, lydia felt ashamed, humbled, that she should be presented to him as occupied with such a subject as a fancy costume. his voice cut in. "oh, yes, the pulsifers! i had a card this morning." it was the same complaisant tone--as if it mattered whether he had or not. "oh, do go!" cried miss bennett. she meant to be helpful, and added the first thing that came into her head. "you would make a wonderful roman senator. i'll arrange your costume for you." in a flash lydia saw him before her, bare legged, bare armed, bare throated. she recoiled, though of course it was not his fault. if benny had said a doge or a cardinal; but glancing at her friend she saw he was not suited to either rôle. he was not fine and thin and subtle. he was the type of a roman senator. "it would be a great temptation to go--to see miss thorne as an indian," he answered, smiling his admiration at her. "i don't think i shall go," said lydia, waving her head slightly. "i don't think it's dignified--dressing up like monkeys." miss bennett looked up surprised. lydia had been so interested in the whole subject a few minutes before. she thought the girl was growing uncommonly capricious. albee caught the note at once. "if they would let me go as a spectator----" he began. "that spoils it, you know," miss bennett answered, but lydia interrupted: "of course, they'd be glad to get the governor on any terms." but the question was more simply settled. albee was summoned to washington to testify before a committee of the senate which under the guise of helping him was actually trying to steal the political thunder of his investigation and lydia, with her indian costume just completed--and benny's, too, from a longhi picture--abandoned the whole thing and went off to washington to hear the great man testify carrying the reluctant miss bennett with her. bobby dorset, who had said immediately just what lydia had longed to hear albee say--that parties like that were more trouble than they were worth--had been coerced by lydia into going. she had made him get a greek warrior's costume, in which he was very splendid. he was left with his costume and his party, and no lydia to make it pleasant. he had come in late one afternoon and had stayed on, as he often did to dinner. in the middle of the meal lydia was called away--governor albee wanted to speak to her on the telephone. she sprang up from the table and left the room. miss bennett looked pathetically at bobby. "it's to decide whether we go to washington to-morrow," she said. "to washington?" "the governor is going to testify before a senate committee and has invited us to come. it will be very interesting," miss bennett added loyally. "but the pulsifers?" "oh, i'm surprised lydia cares so little for that. of course, at my age, i'm grateful to escape it." "oh, benny," said bobby, "you're not a bit! you'd much rather go to it than to any old senate committee. you love parties for the same reason that the lamb loved mary." "you make me seem very frivolous--at fifty-five," said miss bennett. then lydia came back from the pantry, her eyes bright, and laid her hand on her companion's shoulder, a rare caress, as she passed. "we're going, benny. it isn't closed to the public." her whole face was softened and lit by her pleasure. bobby thought, "can it be she really cares for that old war horse?" chapter vii it was great fun traveling with albee. he had engaged a drawing-room on the congressional limited, and with a forethought, old-fashioned but agreeable, had provided newspapers and magazines and a box of candy. his secretary was hovering near with letters to be signed. the conductor came and asked whether everything was all right, governor, and people passed the door deliberately, staring in to get a glimpse of the great man; and lydia could see that they were murmuring, "that's albee, you know, he's going down to testify." lydia did not know washington at all. she had been taken there once as a child by one of the energetic young american governesses--had gone to mt. vernon by boat and home by trolley, had whispered in the rotunda and looked at the statues and seen the house and been secretly glad that the senate was in secret session so that she couldn't see that, and there would be time to go up the monument--something that she really had enjoyed--not only on account of the view, but because her governess was afraid of elevators and was terrified in the slow, jerky ascent. then during the period of her engagement to ilseboro she had been at one or two dinners at the british embassy. but that had been long ago, before the days of her discovery of the federal constitution. of governmental washington she knew nothing. the senate committee met at ten the next morning. there was a good deal of interest in the hearing, and the corridors were full of people waiting for the doors to open. miss bennett and lydia were taken in first through a private room to assure their having good seats. lydia found the committee room beautiful--more like a gentleman's library than an office--wide, high windows looking out on the capitol grounds, tall bookcases with glass doors and blue-silk curtains, a huge polished-wood table in the center; with chairs about it for the senators. she recognized them as they came in from albee's description--the neat blue-eyed senator who looked like a little white fox, his enemy; the fat blond young man, full of words and smiles, who was a most ineffective friend; and the large suave chairman, in a tightly fitting plum-colored suit, with a grace of manner that kept you from knowing whether he were friend or foe. not that you would have suspected from anyone's manner that there was such a thing as enmity in the world--they were all so quiet and friendly. indeed, when albee came in he was talking--"chatting" would be a better word--with the little fox-faced senator against whom he had so specially warned lydia. the whole tone was as if eight or ten hard-working men had called in a friend to help them out on the facts. lydia thought it very exciting, knowing as she did how much of hate and party politics lay behind the hearing. she was only dimly aware that her own future depended on the impression albee might now make upon her. in his own investigation in new york he was the chief, but here he would be attacked, ruled against, tripped up if possible. there he was a general, here he was a duelist. she saw several senators glancing at her, asking who she was, and guessed that the answer was that she was the girl albee was in love with, engaged to, making a fool of himself over--something like that. she didn't mind. she felt proud to be identified with him. she looked at him as he sat down at the chairman's right, and tried to think how she would feel if she were saying to herself, "there's my husband." could you marry a man for whom you felt an immovable physical coldness? she thought of dan o'bannon's kiss, and the continuity of her thought broke up in a tangle of emotion--even there in the white morning light of that remote committee room. the hearing was beginning; it was beginning with phrases like, "the committee would be glad, governor, if you would tell us in your own words----" "if i might be permitted, mister senator, my understanding is----" again and again she saw the trap laid for him and thought with alarm that there was no escape, and then saw that with no effort, with just a turn of his easy wrist, he escaped, and what was more remarkable, had told the truth--yes, as she thought it over, it was nearly the truth. he was particularly successful with the fox-faced senator, whose only interest seemed to be to get the governor to say something that would look badly in newspaper headlines. she grasped albee's method after a few instances. it was to make the senator define and redefine his question until whatever odium attached to the subject would fall on the questioner, not the answerer. after fifteen minutes she knew that he was a match for them--his mind was quicker, subtler and more powerful. he made them all seem mentally clumsy and evilly disposed. he could put their questions, even the hostile ones, so much better than they could. again and again, with a gentle, an almost loving smile, he would say, "i think, mister senator, if you will allow me, that what you really mean to ask in that last question is whether----" and a clear exact statement of the confused ideas of the senator would follow, as the senator, with an abashed nod, would be forced to admit. lydia, unused to this sort of thing, thought it little short of a miracle that anyone's mind could work as well as that under such pressure. he seemed to her a superman. after the hearing they lunched downstairs in the airless basement in which the fathers of the senate are provided with excellent southern dishes, served by white-jacketed negroes. lydia met most of the notables, even the fox-faced senator, who, she was told was very much of a ladies' man. she was for the first time a satellite, a part of the suite of a great man, and glad to be. then, after luncheon, benny having tactfully expressed a wish to go back to the hotel and rest, as they were going out to dinner, lydia and the governor took a walk along the banks of the potomac. march is very springlike in washington. the fruit trees were beginning to bud and the air was mild and still, so that the river reflected the monument like a looking-glass. "you seemed to me very wonderful this morning," she said. he turned to her. "if i were thirty years younger you wouldn't say that to me with impunity." "if you were thirty years younger you would seem like an inefficient boy compared to what you are now." her face, her eyes, her whole body expressed the admiration she felt for his powers. there was a little silence; then he said gravely, "if i could only persuade myself that it was possible that a girl of your age could love a man of mine----" lydia caught her underlip in a white tooth--she had not meant love--she had not thought it a question of that. his sensitive egotism understood her thought without any spoken word, and he added, "and i should be content with nothing else--nothing else, lydia." in all her cogitation on the possibility of her marriage with the governor she had somehow never thought of his expecting her to love him--to be in love with him. she walked on a few steps, and then said, "i don't think i shall ever be in love--i never have. i feel for you a more serious respect and admiration than i have ever felt for anyone, man or woman." "and what do you feel for this little blond whippersnapper who is always under your feet?" "for bobby?" her surprise was genuine that his name should be dragged into a serious discussion. "i feel affection for bobby. he is very useful and kind. i could never love him. oh, mercy no!" "do you mean to say," said albee, "you have never felt--you have never had a man take you in his arms, and say to yourself as he did, 'this is living'?" "no, no, no, no! never, never!" said lydia. she lied passionately, so passionately that she never stopped to remember that she was lying. "i don't want to feel like that. you don't understand me, governor. to feel what i feel for you is more, much more than----" she stopped without finishing her sentence. "you make me very proud, very happy when you talk like that," said albee. "i certainly never expected that the happiest time of my life--these last few weeks--would come to me after i was fifty. i wonder," he added, turning and looking her over with a sort of paternal amusement which she had grown to like--"i wonder if there were really girls like you in my own time, if i had had sense enough to find them." lydia, who was under the impression that her whole future was being settled there and then in potomac park, within sight of the white house, on which she kept a metaphysical eye, felt that this was the ideal way for a man and woman to discuss their marriage--not coldly, but without surging waves of emotion to blind their eyes. marriage had not been actually mentioned. nothing definite had been said by either of them when before five they came in to join benny at tea. but lydia had no doubt of the significance of their talk. like most clear-sighted heiresses, she know, rationally, that her fortune was a part of her charms; but like most human beings, she found it easy to believe that she was loved for herself. they were to go back to new york on the midnight train so that the governor might be in time for his morning's work in the investigation, but before going he was having a small dinner party. an extra man for benny, a distinguished member of the house, and the senator from his own state--an old political ally--and his wife. his wife had been a washington woman of an old family, and now with her husband's money and position her house was a place of some political importance. from the moment the framinghams arrived a cloud began to descend on lydia. she liked them both--the fresh-faced, white-haired, clever, wise senator and his pretty, elegant wife--elegant, but a little more elaborate than the same type in new york. mrs. framingham's hair was more carefully curled, her dress a trifle richer and tighter, her jewels more numerous than lydia's or miss bennett's; but still lydia recognized her at once as an equal--a woman who had her own way socially in her own setting. she liked the framinghams--it was albee she liked less well. he was different from the instant of their entrance. to use the language of the nursery, he began to show off, not in connection with his success of the morning--lydia could have forgiven some vanity about that performance--but about social matters, the opera, miss thorne's box, and then--lydia knew it was coming--the pulsifers. he wanted mrs. framingham to know that he had been asked to the pulsifers'. he did it this way: "you may imagine, mrs. framingham, how much flattered i feel that miss thorne should have come on to the hearing, missing one of the most brilliant parties of the season--yes, the pulsifers'. of course, as far as i am concerned, it is a great relief to side-step that sort of thing. oh, i don't wish to appear ungracious. it was very kind of mrs. pulsifer to invite me, but i was glad of an excuse to avoid it. only for miss thorne----" even his voice sounded different--specious, servile--"servile" was the word in lydia's mind. mrs. framingham, if she were impressed by the news that the governor could have gone if he had wanted, betrayed not the least interest. lydia pieced out the story of her attitude to the governor. evidently when she had been last in the capital of her husband's state albee had been only a powerful member of the legislature--useful to her husband, but not invited to her house. all very well, thought lydia--a criticism of mrs. framingham's lack of vision--if only albee would stand by it, resent it, and not be so eager to please. as she grew more and more silent the governor, ably seconded by miss bennett, grew more and more affable. it would have been a very pleasant party if lydia had not been there. miss bennett could not imagine what was wrong; and even albee, with his instinctive knowledge of human beings and his quick egotism to guide him, was too well pleased with his own relation to his party to feel anything wrong. lydia's silence only gave him greater scope. she did not see him alone again. after dinner they went to the theater and then to the train. in the compartment she and benny had the little scene they always had on these occasions. lydia assumed that she as the younger woman would take the upper berth. miss bennett asserted that she infinitely preferred it. lydia ignored the assertion, doubting its accuracy. miss bennett insisted, and lydia yielded--yielded largely for the reason that the dispute seemed to her undignified. she was glad on this occasion that she was in the lower berth, for she did not sleep, and raising the shade she stared out. there was something soothing in lying back on her pillows watching the world flash past you as if you were being dragged along on a magic carpet while everyone else slept. her future was all in chaos again. she could never marry albee. she thought, as she so often did, of ilseboro's parting words about her being such a bully that she would always get second-rate playmates. it seemed to her the real trouble lay in her demand that they should be first-rate. most women would have accepted albee as first-rate, but she knew he wasn't. she felt tragically alone. their train got in at seven, and as soon as lydia had had a bath and breakfast--that is, by nine o'clock--she was calling eleanor on the telephone. consideration of the fact that her friend might have been up late the night before was not characteristic of lydia. tragic or not, she was curious to hear what had happened at the pulsifers'. she wanted eleanor to come and lunch with her. no, miss bellington was going back to the country that morning. it was finally settled that lydia should drive eleanor home in the little runabout and stay for luncheon with her. it was one of those mild days that make you think march is really a spring month. eleanor did not like to drive fast; and lydia, with unusual thoughtfulness, remembered her friend's wishes and drove at a moderate pace. that was one way to tell if lydia was really fond of anyone--if she showed the sort of consideration that most people are brought up to show to all human beings. the two women gossiped like schoolgirls. "was bobby too wonderful in his costume?" "my dear, i wish you could have seen him. may swayne made really rather a goose of herself about him." "yes"--this thoughtfully from lydia--"she always does when i'm not there to protect him. and fanny--was her cleopatra as comic as it sounded?" eleanor wanted to know about lydia's experiences--the hearing, washington. lydia told how magnificently the governor had defended himself, and added nothing at first about the less desirable aspects of his character. she thought this reserve arose from loyalty, but the fact that the governor was generally considered to be her own property made her feel that to criticize him was to cheapen her own assets. but she had great confidence in eleanor, and by the time they had sat down to lunch alone together she found herself launched on the whole story of the impression albee had made upon her. so interested, indeed, was she in the narrative that when toward the end of luncheon eleanor was called to the telephone she hardly noticed the incident, except as it was an interruption. she sat going over it all in her mind during the few minutes that eleanor was away, and the instant eleanor came back she resumed what she was saying. eleanor was a satisfactory listener. she did not begin scolding you, telling you what you ought to have done before you had half finished. she did not allow herself to be reminded of adventures of her own and snatch the narrative away from you. she sat silent but alert, conveying by something neither words nor motion that she followed every intricacy. her comment was, "i feel rather sorry for albee." "you mean you don't think he's a worm?" lydia was genuinely surprised. "oh, yes, i think he is just as you represent him! i feel sorry for people whose faults make them comic and defenseless. after all, albee has great abilities. you don't care a bit for those, because he turns out not to be perfect. and who are you, my dear, to demand perfection?" "i don't! i don't," cried lydia eagerly. "oh, eleanor, men are fortunate! apparently they can fall in love without a bit respecting you--all the more if they don't--but a woman must believe a man has something superior about him, if it is only his wickedness. i don't demand perfection--not a bit--but i do ask that a man's faults should not be contemptible faults; that he should have some force and snap; that he should be at least a man." "that doesn't seem to please you always either." "you're thinking of ilseboro. i did like ilseboro, though he was such a bully." "no, i was thinking of dan." lydia opened her eyes as if she couldn't imagine whom she meant. "of dan?" "dan o'bannon." "oh, it's got as far as being 'dan' now, has it?" "you dislike him for these very qualities you say you demand," eleanor went on--"force and strength----" lydia broke in. "strength and force! what i really dislike about him, eleanor dear, is that you take him so seriously. i can't bear to see you making yourself ridiculous about any man." "i don't feel i make myself ridiculous, thank you." "i don't mean you'd ever be undignified, but it is ridiculous for a woman of your attainment and position to take that young irishman so seriously--a country lawyer. why, i can't bear to name you in the same breath!" eleanor raised her shoulders a little. "he'll be here in a few minutes." "here?" lydia sprang up. "i'm off then!" "i wish you wouldn't go. if you saw more of him you'd change your opinion of him." "if i saw more of him i'd insult him. send for my car, will you? no, no, eleanor! i know i'm right about this--really, i am. some day you'll come to agree with me." "or you with me," answered eleanor, but she rang and ordered lydia's car. a few minutes later lydia was on her way home. it was a day when everything had gone wrong, she thought; but now a cure for the nerves was open to her. the roads were empty at that hour, and her foot pressed the accelerator. she thought that if eleanor married o'bannon she would lose her. she would like to prevent it. with most girls she could poison their minds against a man by representing him as ludicrous, but eleanor was not easily swayed. lydia wondered if after they were married she could be more successful. she had never hated anyone quite the way she hated o'bannon. it was fun, in a way, to hate a person. her spirits began to mount as speed, like a narcotic, soothed her nerves. the road was smooth and new and had stood the winter frosts well. the first spring thaw had deposited on its cement surface a dampness which glistened here and there and made the wheels slip and the car waver like a living thing. this only increased lydia's pleasure and fixed her attention as on the narrow ribbon of cement she passed an occasional car. suddenly as she dashed past a crossroad she caught a glimpse of a motorcycle and a khaki figure already preparing to mount. she turned her head far enough to be sure that it was the same man. she saw him hold up his hand, heard his voice calling to her to stop. "no more bracelets, my friend," she thought, and her car shot forward faster than ever. she fancied that he must be having trouble getting his engine started, for she did not hear the motorcycle behind her. she knew that just before she entered the village about half a mile ahead of her there was an unfrequented little road that ran into the highroad she was on, almost parallel to it. if she could get on that she could let the car out for miles and miles. the only trouble was that she would have to turn almost completely round and, going at this pace, that wouldn't be easy. presently she caught the sound of the quick, regular explosion, and the anticipated speck appeared in her mirror. all her powers were concentrated now on keeping her car straight on the slippery road, but she thought grimly, "worse for him on two wheels than for me on four." she felt a mounting determination not to be caught--a willingness to take any risk. still the man on the motorcycle was gaining on her. at an inequality in the road her front wheels veered sharply. with a quick twist she recovered control and went straight again. she knew how to drive, thank goodness! with the man gaining on her, she welcomed the sight of her back road coming in on the right. even at the pace she could get round it, she thought, by skidding her car; and the motorcycle couldn't but would shoot ahead right into the village of wide plains, scattering children and dogs before him as he came. she felt a wild amusement at the thought, but her face did not relax its tense sternness. she tightened her grip on the wheel, working the car to the left, preparing for the turn, and put on her brakes hard enough to lock the back wheels, expecting to feel the quick sideways slip of a skidding car. instead there was a terrific impact--the crash of steel and glass, a cry. her own car shot out of her control, turning a complete circle, bounded off the road and on again, and came slowly to a standstill, pointing in the same direction as before, but some yards beyond the fork in the road. she looked about her. fragments of the motorcycle were strewn from the corner to where in a ditch at the foot of a telegraph pole the man was lying, a featureless mass. [illustration: it was a very terrifying moment for lydia.] she leaped out of her car. amid the wreckage of the motorcycle the clock stared up at her like a little white face. the world seemed to have become silent; her feet beating on the cement as she ran made the only sound. the man lay motionless. he was bent together and strangely twisted like a boneless scarecrow thrown down by the winds. an arm was under him, his eyes were closed, blood was oozing from his mouth. she stooped over him, trying to lift his body into a more natural position; but he was a large man, and she could do nothing with him. she looked up from the struggle and found to her astonishment that she was no longer alone. people seemed to have sprung from the earth, the air was full of screams and explanations. a large touring car had come to a standstill near by. she vaguely remembered having passed it. a flivver was panting across the road. everyone was asking questions, which she did not stop to answer. the important thing was to get the man into the touring car and take him to the hospital. she was so absorbed in all his that her own connection with the situation did not enter her mind. as she sat in the back of the car supporting his body, the blood stiffening on her own dark clothes, she thought only of her victim. she was not the type of egotist who thinks always, "how terrible that this should have happened to me!" she said to herself: "he probably has a wife and children. it would have been better if i had been the one to be killed." arrived at the hospital, she followed him into the ward where the stretcher carried him, and waited outside the screen while the nurses cut his clothes off. it seemed to her hours before the young house surgeon emerged, shaking his head. "fracture of the base," he said. "if he gets through the next twenty-four hours he'll have a per cent chance," and he hurried away to telephone the details to his chief. as she sat there she realized that her own body was sore and stiff. she must have wrenched herself, or struck the steering wheel in the sudden turn of the car. she felt suddenly exhausted. there seemed no point in waiting. they could telephone her the result of the night. she left her name and address and went home by train. she made a vow to herself that she would never drive a car again. she would not explain it or discuss it, but nothing should ever induce her to touch a steering wheel. it was an inadequate expiation. every time she shut her eyes she saw that heap of blood and steel at the foot of the telegraph pole. oh, if time could only be turned back so that she could be starting a second time from eleanor's door! it never crossed her mind that this terrible personal misfortune which had befallen her made her seriously amenable to the law. chapter viii drummond died late in the evening. an account of the accident was in the headlines of the morning papers. unfortunately for lydia, he was a conspicuous local figure. he had had the early popularity of a good-looking, dissipated boy, and then he had been one of the men who had not waited for the draft but had volunteered and gone into the regular army, and had come home from france unwounded, with a heroic record. moreover, there had been a long boy-and-girl love affair between him and alma wooley, the daughter of the hardware merchant. mr. wooley, who was a native long islander, hard and wise, had been opposed to the engagement until, after the war, the return of drummond as a hero made opposition impossible. it was at this point that o'bannon had come to the rescue, securing the position of traffic policeman for the young man. the marriage was to have taken place in june. before drummond died he recovered consciousness long enough to recognize the pale girl at his beside and to make an ante-mortem statement as to the circumstances of the accident. eleanor heard of the accident in the evening, but did not know of drummond's death until early the following morning. she called up o'bannon, but he had already left his house. at the office she was asked if mr. foster would do. mr. foster would not do. with her clear mind and recently acquired knowledge of criminal law, she knew the situation was serious. she called up fanny piers and found she was spending the day in town. noel came to the telephone. he was very casual. "yes, poor lydia," he said; "uncomfortable sort of thing to have happened to you." "rather more than uncomfortable," answered eleanor. "do you know if she's been arrested?" piers laughed over the telephone. of course she hadn't been. really, his tone seemed to say, eleanor allowed her socialistic ideas to run away with her judgment. poor lydia hadn't meant any harm--it was the sort of thing that might happen to anyone. oh, they might try her--as a matter of form. but what could they do to her? "well," said eleanor, "people have been known to go to prison for killing someone on the highway." piers agreed as if her point was irrelevant. "oh, yes, some of those careless chauffeurs. but a thing like this is always arranged. you'll see. you couldn't get a grand jury to indict a girl like lydia. it will be arranged." "arranged," thought eleanor as she hung up the receiver, "only at the expense of dan o'bannon's honor or career." she did not want that, and yet she did want to help lydia. she felt deeply concerned for the girl, more aware than usual of her warm, honest affection for her. she often thought of lydia as she had appeared on her first day at school. the head mistress had brought her into the study and introduced her to the teacher in charge. all the girls had looked up and stared at the small, black-eyed new pupil with the bobbed hair and slim legs in black silk stockings, one of which she was cleverly twisting about the other. she was shy and monosyllabic, utterly unused to children of her own age; and yet even then she had shown a certain capacity for comradeship, for under the elbows of the two tall teachers she had directed a slow, shy smile at the girls as much as to say, "wait till we get together! we'll fix them!" she was very well turned out, for miss bennett had just taken charge, but not so well equipped mentally, the long succession of her governesses having each spent more time in destroying the teachings of her predecessors than in making progress on her own account. much to lydia's chagrin, she was put in a class of children younger than she. this was shortly before christmas. before the second term she had managed to get herself transferred into a class of her contemporaries. she had never studied before, because in old times it had seemed to her the highest achievement lay in thwarting her governesses. but the instant it became desirable to attain knowledge she found no difficulty in attaining it. it had amused her studying late into the night when miss bennett thought she was asleep. in the same way she had decided to make a friend of eleanor, who was a class above her and prominent in school life. there had been nothing sentimental about the friendship. she had admired eleanor's clear mind and moral courage then, just as she admired them now. it was of that little girl twisting one leg about the other that eleanor thought now with a warm affection that the later lydia had not destroyed. she ordered her car and drove into town to the thorne house. at the door morson betrayed just the proper solemnity--the proper additional solemnity--for he was never gay. yes, miss thorne was in, but he could not be sure that she could see miss bellington at the moment. mr. wiley was in the drawing-room. "mr. wiley?" said eleanor, trying to remember. "the lawyer, madam." eleanor hesitated. "tell her i'm here," she said, and presently morson came back and conducted her to the drawing-room. lydia's drawing-room was brilliant with vermilion lacquer, jade, rock crystal, a chinese painting or two and huge cushioned armchairs and sofas. here she and miss bennett and mr. wiley were sitting--at least mr. wiley and miss bennett were sitting, and lydia was standing, playing with a jade dog from the mantelpiece, pressing its cold surface against her cheek. as eleanor entered, lydia, with hardly a sound, did a thing she had occasionally seen her do before--she suddenly seemed to radiate greeting and love and gratitude. miss bennett introduced mr. wiley. wiley had established his position early in life--early for a lawyer; so now at fifty-eight he had thirty years of crowded practice behind him. in the nineties, a young man of thirty, his slim frock-coated figure, his narrow, fine features and dark, heavy mustache were familiar in most important court cases, and in the published accounts of them his name always had a prominent place. his enemies at one time had been contemptuous of his legal profundity and had said that he was more of an actor than a lawyer; but if so juries seemed to be more swayed by art than law, for wiley had a wonderful record of successes. he was a man of scrupulous financial integrity--universally desired as a trustee--an honorable gentleman, a leader at the bar. it was hard to see how lydia could be in better hands. he might not have been willing to undertake her case but for the fact that he had been her father's lawyer and was her trustee. he had a thorough familiarity, attained through years of conflict over finances, with all the problems of his client's disposition. he knew, for instance, that she would be absolutely truthful with him, a knowledge a lawyer so rarely has in regard to his clients. he knew, too, that she might carry this quality into the witness chair and might ruin her own case with the jury. he was a man accustomed to being listened to, and he was being listened to now. eleanor sat down, saying she was sorry if she interrupted them. she didn't. wiley drew her in and made her feel one of the conference. "i had really finished what i was saying," he added. "i only wanted to know if the situation were serious," said eleanor. "serious, miss bellington?" wiley looked at her seriously. "to kill a human being while violating the law?" "mr. wiley considers it entirely a question of how the case is managed," said lydia. there was not a trace of amusement in her tone or her expression. "to be absolutely candid," wiley continued, "and lydia tells me she wants the facts, i should say that if juries were normal, impartial, unemotional people lydia would be found guilty of manslaughter in the second degree--on her own story. fortunately, however, the collective intelligence of a jury is low; and skillfully managed, the case of a beautiful young orphan may be made very appealing, very pathetic." "pathos has never been my strong point," observed lydia. "the great danger is her own attitude," said miss bennett to eleanor. "she doesn't seem to care whether she's convicted or not." lydia moved her shoulders with a gesture that confirmed miss bennett's impression, and then suddenly turned. "i don't believe you want me for a few minutes, mr. wiley. i want to speak to eleanor." she dragged her friend away with her to her own little sitting room upstairs. here her calm disappeared. "aren't lawyers terrible, eleanor? here i am--i've killed a man! why shouldn't i go to prison? i'm not quixotic. i didn't want to be convicted, but wiley shocks me, assuming that i can't be because i'm a woman and rich and he can play on the jury." "i should not say that he assumed that you were safe, lydia." "oh, yes, he does! don't be like benny. she sees me in stripes at once. what wiley means is that as long as i am fortunate enough to have the benefit of his services i'm perfectly safe, not because i did not mean to kill drummond, but because he, wiley, will make the jury cry over me. isn't that disgusting?" "yes, it is," said eleanor. "oh, eleanor, you are such a comfort!" said lydia, and began to cry. eleanor had never seen her cry before. she did it very gently, without sobs, and after a few minutes controlled herself again, and tucked away her handkerchief and said, "do you think everyone would hate to have a car that had killed someone! i shall never drive again, and yet i couldn't sell it--couldn't take money for it. will you accept it, eleanor? you wouldn't have to drive the way i did, you know." eleanor, pleading the shortness of her sight, declined the car. "you ought to go back and talk to mr. wiley, my dear." lydia shrugged her shoulders. "i don't care much what happens to me," she said. eleanor hesitated. she saw suddenly that what she was about to say was the principal object of her visit. "lydia, i hope that you will come out all right, but you don't know dan o'bannon as i do, and----" "you think he will want to convict me?" "not you personally, of course. but he believes in the law. he wants to believe in its honesty and equality. he suffered last month, i know, in convicting a delivery-wagon driver, and his offense wasn't half as flagrant as yours. oh, lydia, have some imagination! don't you see that his own honor and democracy will make him feel it more his duty to convict you than all the less conspicuous criminals put together?" a strange change had taken place in lydia during this speech. at the beginning of it she had been shrunk into a corner of a deep chair; but as eleanor spoke life seemed to be breathed into her, until she sat erect, grew tense, and finally rose to her feet. "you mean there would be publicity, political advantage, in sending a person in my position to prison?" "don't be perverse, lydia. i mean that, more than most men, he will see his duty is to treat you as he would any criminal. you make it difficult for me to tell you something that i must tell you. mr. o'bannon feels, i'm afraid, a certain amount of antagonism toward you." a staring, insolent silence was lydia's answer. eleanor went on: "do you remember after dinner at the piers' you told me about the policeman you had bribed? you asked me not to tell, but i'm sorry--i can't tell you how sorry--that i did tell. i told dan. i would give a good deal if i hadn't, but----" "my dear," lydia laughed, but without friendliness, "don't distress yourself. what difference does it make? i nearly told him myself." "it makes a great deal of difference. it made him furious against you. he felt you were debauching a young man trying to do his duty." "what a prig you make that man out, eleanor! but what of it?" "i got an impression, lydia--i don't know how--that it turned him against you; that he will be less inclined to be pitiful." "pitiful!" cried lydia. "since when have i asked dan o'bannon for pity? let him do his duty, and my lawyers will do theirs; and let me tell you, eleanor, you and he will be disappointed in the results." eleanor said firmly, "i think you must take back that 'you,' lydia." lydia shrugged her shoulders. "well, you say your friend wants to convict me, and you want your friend to succeed, i suppose. that is success for him, getting people to prison, isn't it?" she began this in one of her most irritating tones; and then she suddenly repented and, putting her hand on eleanor's shoulder, she added, "eleanor, i'm all on edge. thank you a lot for coming. i think i will go back and tell what you've said to old wiley." eleanor waited to telephone to fanny piers and mrs. pulsifer, knowing it would be wise to create a little favorable public opinion. as she went downstairs the drawing-room door opened and miss bennett came softly out, shutting the door carefully behind her. "thank heaven for you, eleanor!" she said. "you have certainly worked a miracle." eleanor looked uncomprehending, and she went on: "at first she was so naughty to poor mr. wiley--would hardly discuss the case at all; but now since you've talked to her she is quite different. she has even consented to send for governor albee--the obvious thing, with his friendship and political power." eleanor's shoulders were rather high anyhow, and when she drew them together she looked like a wooden soldier. she did it now as she said with distaste, "but is this a question of politics?" "my dear, you know the district attorney is a political officer, and they say this young man is extremely ambitious. certainly he would listen--he'd have to--to a man at the head of the party like albee. i feel much easier in my mind. the governor can do anything, and now that lydia has come to her senses she is determined to go into court with the best case possible, and you know how clever she is. thank you, eleanor, for all you have done for us." like many workers of miracles, eleanor went away surprised at her own powers. the idea of o'bannon being coerced or rewarded into letting lydia off gave her exquisite pain. she felt like warning him to do his duty, even if it meant lydia's being found guilty. yet she sincerely wanted lydia saved--meant to go as far as she could to save her. she knew with what a perfect surface of honesty such things could be done; how a district attorney, while from the public's point of view prosecuting a case with the utmost vigor, might leave open some wonderful technical escape for the defense. it could be done without o'bannon losing an atom of public respect. but she, eleanor, would know; would know as she saw him conducting the case; would know when a year or so later, after everyone else had forgotten, he would receive his reward--some political appointment or perhaps a financial chairmanship. albee had great powers in business as well as politics. in her own mind she formulated the words, "i have the utmost confidence in o'bannon." but she knew, too, how all people of passionate, quick temperaments are sometimes swept by their own desires, and how easily most lawyers could find rational grounds for taking the position they desired to take. it would be so natural for any man under the plea of pity for a young woman like lydia to allow himself to be subtly corrupted into letting her off. eleanor's own position was not simple. she faced it clearly. she was for lydia, whatever happened, as far as her conduct went; but in spite of herself her sympathies swung to and fro. when women like fanny piers and may swayne said, with a certain relish they couldn't keep out of their tones and reluctant dimples at the corners of their mouths, "isn't this too dreadful about poor lydia?" then she was whole-heartedly lydia's. but when she detected in all her friends--except bobby, who was frankly frightened--the belief that they were beyond the law, that nothing could happen to any member of their protected group, then she felt she would enjoy nothing so much as seeing one of them prove an exception to the general immunity. the coroner held lydia for the grand jury in ten thousand dollars' bail. this had been considered a foregone conclusion and did not particularly distress or alarm eleanor. what did alarm her was her inability to get in touch with o'bannon. in all the months of their quick, intimate friendship this had never happened before. press of business had never kept him entirely away. now she could not even get him to come to the telephone. she was not the only person who was attempting to see him on lydia's behalf. bobby dorset had made several efforts, and finally caught him between the courthouse and his office. bobby took the tone that the whole thing was fantastic; that o'bannon was too much of a gentleman to send any girl to prison, irritating the man he had come to placate by something frivolous and unreal in his manner--the only manner bobby knew. and then as lydia's case grew darker albee came. o'bannon was in his study at home, the low-ceilinged room opening off the dining room. it had a great flat baize-covered desk, and low open shelves running round the walls, containing not only law books, but novels and early favorites--henty and lorna doone and many records of travel and adventure. here he was sitting, supposed to be at work on the thorne case, about nine o'clock in the evening. certainly his mind was occupied with it and the papers were laid out before him. he was going over and over, the same treadmill that his mind had been chained to ever since he had stood by drummond's bedside with alma wooley clinging, weeping, to his hand. lydia thorne had committed a crime, and his duty was to present the case against the criminal. sometimes of course a district attorney was justified in taking into consideration extenuating circumstances which could not always be brought out in court. but in this case there were no extenuating circumstances. every circumstance he knew was against her. her character was harsh and arrogant. she had already violated the law in bribing drummond. first she had corrupted the poor boy, and then she had killed him. she deserved punishment more than most of the criminals who came into his court, and his duty was to present the case against her. he repeated it over and over to himself. why, he was half a crook to consider this case as different from any other case--and if she did get off she wouldn't be grateful. she'd just assume that there had not been and never could be any question of convicting a woman like herself. he remembered her bending to look at him under the candle shades of the piers' dinner table and announcing her disbelief in the equal administration of the laws. but yet, if she should come to him--if she would only come to him, pleading for herself as she had once for a few minutes pleaded for evans----he could almost see her there in the circle of his reading light, close to him--could almost smell the perfume of violets. "i hope to god she doesn't come," he said to himself, and desired it more than anything in life. at that very moment the doorbell rang. o'bannon's heart began to beat till it hurt him. if she were there he must see her, and if he saw her he must again take her in his arms, and if--it was his duty to present the case against her. there was a knock on his door, and his mother entered ushering in governor albee. great and wise men came from east and west to see her son, her manner seemed to say. "well, o'bannon," said the governor, "i haven't seen you since--let me see--the convention, wasn't it?" the younger man pulled himself together. he was not a politician for nothing, and he had control, almost automatically, of a simple, friendly manner. "but i've seen you, governor," he answered. "i went in the other day to hear your cross-examination on that privileged-communication point. i learned a lot. we're all infants compared with you when it comes to that sort of thing." "oh"--albee gave one of his straight-armed waves of the band--"everyone tells me you have your own method of getting the facts. i hear very fine things of you, o'bannon. there's an impression that princess county will soon be looking for another district attorney." mrs. o'bannon stole reluctantly away, closing the door behind her. the two men went on flattering each other, as each might have flattered a woman. both were now aware that a serious situation was before them. they began to talk of the great party to which they belonged. the governor mentioned his personal responsibility--by which he meant his personal power--as a national committeeman. he spoke of an interview with the leader of the party in new york--the purveyor of great positions. "he's going to put the chairmanship of this new commission up to me. it's not so much financially--seventy-five hundred--but the opportunity, the reputation a fellow might make. it needs a big man, and yet a young one. i'm for putting in a young man." that was all. the governor began after that to speak of his coming campaign for the senate, but o'bannon knew now exactly why he had come. he had come to offer him a bribe. it was not the first time he had been offered a bribe. he remembered a family of italians who had come to him frankly with all their savings in a sincere belief that that was the only way to save a son and brother. they had gone away utterly unable to understand why their offering had been rejected, but with a confused impression that district attorneys in america came too high for them. he had not felt any anger against their simple effort at corruption--only pity; but a sudden furious anger swept him against albee, so smooth, so self-satisfied. unanalytic, like most hot-blooded people--who in the tumult of their emotions are too much occupied to analyze and when the tumult ceases are unable to believe it ever existed--o'bannon did not understand the sequence of his emotions. for an instant he was angry, and then he felt a sort of desperate relief. at least the question of his attitude in the case was settled. now he must prosecute to the utmost of his ability. one couldn't let a sleek, crooked old politician go through the world thinking that he had bribed you--one couldn't be bribed. he leaned his brow on his hand, shielding his whole face from the light, while he drew patterns on the blotting paper with a dry pen. the governor broke off with an appearance of spontaneity. "but i mustn't run on like this about my own affairs," he said. "i came, as perhaps you guessed, about this unfortunate affair of poor miss thorne. i don't know if you know her personally----" he paused. he really could not remember. he believed lydia had mentioned having seen the man somewhere. "i've met her once or twice," said o'bannon. "well, if you've seen her you know that she's a rare and beautiful creature; but if you don't know her you don't know how sensitive she is; sheltered and proud; doesn't show her deep, human feelings." a slight movement of the district attorney's hand brought his mouth and chin into the area of illumination. their expression was not agreeable. "no," he said, "i must own i did not get all that." "this whole thing is almost killing her," albee went on. "really i believe that if she has to go into court--well, of course she must go into court, poor child, and hear it all gone over and over before a jury. imagine how anyone--you or i would feel if we had killed a man, and then add a young woman's natural sensitiveness and pity. you can guess what she is going through. i've sat with her for hours. it's pitiful--simply pitiful. anything you can do, o'bannon, that will make it easier for her i shall take as a personal favor to me, a favor i shall never forget, believe me." the governor smiled his human, all-embracing smile, almost like a priest. there was a moment's silence. albee's experience was that there usually was a moment while the idea sank in. then the younger man asked with great deliberation, "just what is your interest in this case, governor albee?" perfectly calm himself, albee noted with some amusement the strain in the other's tone. he had expected the question--a natural one. it was natural the fellow should wish to be assured that the favor he was about to do was a real one, a substantial one, something that would be remembered. he would be taking a certain chance, considering the newspaper interest and all the local resentment over the case. reëlection might be rendered impossible. albee thought to himself that lydia would forgive a slight exaggeration of the bond between them if that exaggeration served to set her free. "well, that's rather an intimate question, mister district attorney," he said. "to most people i should answer that she is a lady whom i esteem and admire; but to you--in strictest confidence--i don't mind saying that i have every hope and expectation of making her my wife." and he added less solemnly, "what are you young fellows thinking of to let an old man like me get ahead of you, eh?" bending forward he slapped the other man on the shoulder. o'bannon stood up as if a mighty hand had reached from the ceiling and pulled him upright. the action was all that was left of the primitive impulse to wring albee's neck. "there is nothing i can do to help miss thorne," he said. "you know enough about criminal procedure to know that. the case against her is very strong." "oh, very strong--in the newspapers," said the governor with another of his waves of his hand. "but you mustn't let your cases be tried in the newspapers. i always made it a rule never to let the newspapers influence me in a case." "i have a better rule than that," said the other. "i don't let anything influence me except the facts in the case." he was still standing, and albee now rose too. "i see," he said, not quite so suavely as before. "you mean you go ahead your own way and don't mind making enemies." "i sometimes like it," answered o'bannon. "making them is all right." albee looked right at him. "taking the consequences of doing so isn't always so enjoyable. good night." when the sound of the governor's motor had died away o'bannon went back to his desk. his mother had long ago gone upstairs, and the house was quiet. disgust and anger were like a poison in his veins. so that vile, sleek old man was to have her? love was out of the question? she did not even have the excuse of needing money! what a loathsome bargain! what a loathsome woman! to think he had allowed himself to be stirred by her beauty? he wouldn't touch her with his little finger now if she were the last woman in the world. albee? good god! there must be thirty-five years between them. someone ought to stop it. she would be better in prison than giving herself to an old man like that. she was no ignorant child. she knew what she was doing. if he were the girl's brother or father he'd rather see her dead. it was after midnight when he set to work on the papers in the case. he worked all night. the old servant bringing mrs. o'bannon her breakfast in the early morning reported mr. dan as being up and away. he had come into the kitchen at six for a cup of coffee, his face as white as that sheet and his eyes nearly out of his head. this was the afternoon that eleanor selected to take the matter into her own hands and come to his office. she came late in the afternoon. it was after six. she saw his car standing in the street and she knew he was still there. she went in past the side entrance to mr. wooley's shop, up the worn wooden stairs, through the glass door with its gold letters, "office of the district attorney of princess county." the stenographers and secretaries had gone. their desks were empty, their typewriters hooded. o'bannon was standing alone in the middle of the room with his hat and overcoat on, as if he had been caught by some disagreeable thought just in the moment of departure. eleanor's step made no sound on the stairs. he looked up in surprise as she opened the door, and as their eyes met she knew clearly that he did not want to see her. there was something almost brutal in the way that he looked at her and then looked away again, as if he hoped she might be gone when he looked back. if she had come on her own business she would have gone. as it was, she couldn't. she came in, and closing the door behind her she leaned against the handle. "i'm sorry to bother you, dan," she said, "but i must talk to you about lydia thorne." "miss thorne's friends are doing everything they can to prevent the preparation of a case against her. they take all my time in interviews," he answered. "who else has been here?" asked eleanor with a sinking heart. "oh, bobby dorset has been here. that interview was brief." "and governor albee?" o'bannon looked at her with eyes that suddenly flared up like torches. "yes, the old fox," he said. there was a pause during which eleanor did not say a word, but her whole being, body and mind, was a question; and o'bannon, though he had become this strange, hostile creature, was yet enough her old friend to answer it. "if you have any influence with miss thorne tell her to keep politics out of it--to get a good lawyer and to prepare a good case." eleanor saw that albee's mission had failed. she would have rejoiced at this, except that the hostility of o'bannon's manner hurt her beyond the power of rejoicing. she was not like lydia--stimulated by enmity. she felt wounded and chilled by it. she told herself, as women always do in these circumstances, that there was nothing personal about his attitude, but there was something terribly personal in her not being able to change his black mood. "she has a good lawyer--wiley. who can be better than wiley?" she asked. "he's often successful, i believe." he began snapping out the light over the desk--a hint not too subtle. eleanor started twice to say that most people believed that no jury would convict a girl like lydia, but every phrase she thought of sounded like a challenge. they went downstairs. ordinarily he would have offered to drive her home, although her own car was waiting for her. now he took off his soft hat and was actually turning away when she caught him by the sleeve. his arm remained limp, almost humanly sulky, in her grasp. "i've never known you like this before, dan," she said. "you must do me the justice to say," he answered, "that lately i have done my best to keep out of your way." eleanor dropped his arm and he started to move away. "tell me one thing," she said. "the grand jury will indict her?" "it will." she nodded. "that is what mr. wiley thinks." "and he also thinks, i suppose," said o'bannon, "that no jury will convict her?" "and what do you think?" "i think," he answered, so slowly that each word fell clearly, "that a conviction can be had and that i shall get it." eleanor did not answer. the chauffeur was holding open the door of her car, and she walked forward and got into it. she had learned the thing she had come to learn--a knowledge that the stand he took was an honorable one. she was glad that his hands were clean, but in her left side her heart ached like a tooth. he seemed a stranger to her--unfriendly, remote, remote as a man struggling in a whirlpool would be remote from even the friendliest spectator on the bank. a few days later the grand jury found a true bill against lydia. that was no surprise even to her friends. wiley and albee had both prepared her for that. the crime for which she was indicted, however, came as a shock. it was manslaughter in the first degree. albee was, or affected to be, pleased. it proved they were bluffing, he said. "it may cost you a little more on wiley's bill," he said. "it costs a little more, i suppose, to be acquitted of manslaughter than of criminal negligence; but on the other hand it may save you a thousand-dollar fine. a jury might conceivably find you guilty of a crime for which you could be fined, but not of one for which the only punishment is imprisonment." bobby thought the indictment showed conclusively that there was some crooked work going on, and wanted the district attorney's office investigated. most of lydia's friends began to feel that this was really carrying the thing too far. thus new york. in the neighborhood of wide plains it was generally known that o'bannon and foster were working early and late, and that the district attorney's office was out to get a conviction in the thorne case. chapter ix "isaac herrick." "here." "william p. mccaw--i beg your pardon--mccann." "here." "royal b. fisher. mr. fisher, you were not in court yesterday. well, you did not answer the roll. gentlemen, if you do not answer when your names are called i shall give your names to the court officer. grover c. wilbur." "here." the county court room with its faded red carpet and shabby woodwork had the dignity of proportion which marks rooms built a hundred years ago under the solemn georgian tradition. miss bennett and eleanor, guided by judge homans' secretary, came in through a side door, and passing the large american flag which hung above the judge's empty chair, they sat down in some cross seats on the left. beyond the railing the room was already well filled with the new panel of jurors, the witnesses, the reporters and many of lydia's friends, who were already jostling for places. the clerk of the court, immediately in front of the judge's bench, but on a lower level, having finished calling the roll, was busily writing, writing, his well-brushed red-and-silver head bent so low over his great sheets that the small bare spot on top was presented to the court room. for one moment he and a tall attendant had become human and friendly over the fact that the counsel table was not on all fours, and the day before had rocked under the thundering fist of the lawyer in the last case. but as soon as it was stabilized with little wads of paper both men returned to their accustomed solemnity, the clerk to his lists and the attendant, standing erect at the railing, to viewing the unusual crowd and exclaiming at intervals "find seats--sit down--find seats," which was, of course, just what everybody was trying to do. foster came in hurriedly with a stack of large manila envelopes in his hand. he bowed nervously to miss bennett and sat down just in front of her with his eyes fixed on the door. the court stenographer came in and took his place, laid his neatly sharpened pencils beside his open book, yawned and threw his arm over the back of his chair. he seemed indifferent as to what story of human frailty was by means of his incredible facility about to be transferred to the records. yet he was not wholly without human curiosity, for presently he leaned over to the clerk and whispered, "what did the jury find in that abduction case?" "acquitted." "well, well!" the two men exchanged a glance that betrayed that in their opinion jurors and criminals were pretty much on the same level. a faint stir in the court, an anticipatory cry from the attendant of "order, order," and lydia and wiley came in and sat down side by side at the corner of the long table--now perfectly steady. lydia looked pale and severe. she had devoted a great deal of thought to her dress, not through vanity, but because dress was an element in winning her case. she was dressed as simply as possible, without being theatrically simple. she wore a dark serge and a black-winged hat. she nodded to foster, smiled at miss bennett and eleanor. she began looking coolly about her. she had never been in court, and the setting interested her. it was a good deal like a theater, she thought--the railed-off space represented the stage where all action was to take place, the judge's raised bench occupying the dominating position back center, the jury box on her right with its two tiers of seats, the witness chair on its high platform and between the judge and the jury. close to the railing and at right angles to the jury box, the eight-foot-long counsel table, where she and wiley had taken their places with their backs to the spectators outside the railing, were so exactly like a theatrical audience. then a gavel beat sharply. everyone stood up almost before being directed to do so, and judge homans came into court. he came slowly through the side door, his hands folded in front of him, his robes flowing about him, as a priest comes from the sacristy. the judge, like the clerk, immediately became absorbed in writing. foster sprang up and stood at his desk talking to him, but he never raised his head. foster kept glancing over his shoulder at the door. lydia knew for whom he was watching--like a puppy for its supper, she thought. a voice rang out: "the case of the people against lydia thorne. lydia thorne to the bar." to lydia the words suggested an elaborate game. she glanced at miss bennett, suppressing a smile, and saw that her companion's nerves were shaken by the sinister sound of them. wiley rose. "ready--for the defense," he said. foster, with his eyes still on the door, murmured with less conviction, "ready--for the people." the clerk, laying aside his pen, had begun to take the names of the jurors out of the box at his elbow. "josiah howell." "seat number ," echoed the attendant antiphonally. "thomas peck." "seat number ." wiley, bending to lydia's ear, whispered, "i want you to challenge freely--anyone you feel might be antagonistic. i trust to your woman's intuition. the jury is the important----" she ceased to hear him, for she saw foster's face light up and she knew that at last the district attorney was in court. she recognized his step behind her, and almost immediately his tall figure came within range of her vision. he sat down on the left next to foster, crossed his arms, fixed his eyes on each juror who entered the box. it was to lydia like the rising of the curtain on a great play. "william mccann." "seat number ." the jury was complete. o'bannon unfolded his long person and rose. crossing the space in front of lydia, he came and stood in front of the jury, looking from one to another, asking routine questions, but with a grave attention that made them seem spontaneous. did any of them know the defendant or her counsel? had any of them ever been arrested for speeding? had anyone of them ever injured anyone with an automobile? to lydia his whole personality seemed different--more aggressive, more hostile. when, in speaking, he put out his fist she noticed the powerful bulk of his hand, the strength of his wrist. she could not see his face, for he stood with shoulder turned to her, but she could see the upturned faces of the jurors. number was in the automobile business, and was excused. number admitted a slight acquaintance with the defendant, though lydia couldn't remember him and was inclined to think he was merely escaping duty. number , in the midst of the interrogation, suddenly volunteered the information that he was conscientiously opposed to capital punishment. at this the judge looked up from his writing and said loudly, "but this isn't a capital-punishment case." "no, no, i know," said number apologetically. "i just thought i'd mention it." "don't mention anything that has no bearing on the case," said the judge, and went back to his writing. at noon, when the court adjourned, the jury was not yet satisfactory to the prosecution. lydia, miss bennett and wiley drove over to eleanor's for luncheon. of the three women lydia was the gayest. "he really does--that man really does expect to put me behind bars," she said. "the prospect apparently puts you in the highest spirits," said eleanor. lydia laughed, showing her bright, regular little teeth. "i do like a good fight," she answered. that was the way she thought of it--as a personal struggle between the district attorney and herself. since that first interview wiley had no indifference to complain of. on the contrary, he complimented her on her grasp of the case--she ought to have been a lawyer. she had put every fact at his disposal--every fact that had any bearing on the case. she did not consider the exact nature of her former acquaintance with o'bannon among these; that is to say, she mentioned that she had once met him at the piers' and played bridge with him. she added that eleanor felt he had taken a dislike to her. wiley said nothing, but imagined that she might have played queen to a country attorney--irritating, of course. about everything else, however, she went into details--especially about the bribing of drummond, over which she apparently felt no shame at all. both albee and wiley, who were often together in consultation with her, were horrified--not so much at her having done it as at her feeling no remorse. wiley spoke as her lawyer. albee, more human, more amused, shook his head. "really, my dear young lady, bribery of a police officer----" "oh, come, governor," said lydia. "this from you!" "i don't know what you mean. i never offered a man a bribe in all my life," said the governor earnestly. "and exactly what did you say to mr. o'bannon in your recent interview?" wiley and albee protested, more as if she were breaking the rules of a game than as if she were saying anything contrary to fact. albee explained at some length that when a man was behaving wrongly through self-interest--which was, of course, what the district attorney was doing--it was perfectly permissible to show him that self-interest might lie along opposite lines. lydia, unconvinced by this explanation, would do nothing but laugh annoyingly. at this both men turned on her, explaining that if the bracelet could be got in evidence, if it could be shown that she had bribed the man whom she later killed, the case would go against her. "oh, but they can't get it in," said albee, "not unless you fall asleep, counselor, or the district attorney is an out-and-out crook." wiley, more cautious, wasn't so sure. if lydia herself took the stand---- "of course i shall testify in my own behalf," said lydia. "yes," said albee. "exhibit a--a beautiful woman. verdict--not guilty." so the discussion always came back to the sympathy of the jury--the necessity of selecting the right twelve men. nothing else was talked of during luncheon at eleanor's that first day. was number hostile? did all farmers own automobiles nowadays? number was susceptible, miss bennett felt sure. he hadn't taken his eyes off lydia. number , on the contrary, was hypnotized, according to lydia, by "that man." by three o'clock the jury was declared satisfactory to the prosecution. it was wiley's turn. his manner was very different from o'bannon's--more conciliating. he seemed to woo the jury with what lydia described in her own mind as a perfumed voice. number , in answer to wiley's questions, admitted a prejudice against automobiles, since it was now impossible to drive his cows home along the highroad. he was excused. number , who had once owned a flourishing poultry farm, had been obliged to give it up. "on account of motors?" "yes, and because it didn't pay." did he feel his prejudice was such as to prevent his rendering an impartial verdict in this case? number looked blank and sulky, like a little boy stumped in class, and at last said it wouldn't. "excused," said wiley. "but i said it wouldn't," number protested. "excused," said wiley, fluttering his hand. lydia had tapped twice on the table--the agreed signal. by four o'clock the jury was satisfactory to both sides; and then, just as lydia's nerves were tightened for the beginning of the great game, the court adjourned until ten o'clock the next morning. the judge, looking up from his writing, admonished the jury not to discuss the case with anyone, not even among themselves. the jurors produced unexpected hats and coats like a conjuring trick. the court attendant began shouting "keep your seats until the jury has passed out," and the whole picture of the court dissolved. wiley was whispering to lydia, "a very nice jury--a very intelligent, reasonable group of men." he rubbed his hands. lydia's eyes followed o'bannon's back as he left the court with foster trotting by his side. "i wonder if the district attorney is equally pleased with them," she said. bobby dorset drove back with them and stayed to dinner. miss bennett, who had a headache from the hot air and the effort of concentrating her mind, would have been glad to forget the trial, but lydia and bobby talked of nothing else. she kept a pad and pencil at hand to note down points that occurred to her. bobby, with a mind at once acute and trivial, had collected odd bits of information--that the judge was hostile, that the door man said the verdict would be not guilty, and he had never been wrong in twenty-seven years. proceedings began the next morning by o'bannon's opening for the prosecution. lydia saw a new weapon directed against her that her advisers did not seem to appreciate--o'bannon's terrible sincerity. his voice had not an artificial note in it. meaning what he said, he was able to convince the jury. "gentlemen of the jury," he began, "the indictment in this case is manslaughter in the first degree. that is homicide without intent to effect death by a person committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor. the people will show that on the eleventh day of march of this year the defendant, while operating an automobile on the highways of this county in a reckless and lawless manner, killed john drummond, a traffic policeman, who was attempting to arrest her. drummond, whose ante-mortem statement will be put in evidence----" suddenly lydia's attention lapsed. this man who was trying to send her to prison had held her in his arms. she saw again the moon and the mist, and felt his firm hand on her shoulder. memory seemed more real than this incredible reality. then, just as steel doors shut on the red fire of a furnace, so her mind shut out this aspect of the situation, and she found she was listening--after how long a pause she did not know--to o'bannon's words. "----at the entrance to the village the road divides, the right fork turning back at an angle something less than a right angle. round this corner the defendant attempted to go by a device known as skidding a car; that is to say, still going at a high rate of speed, she turned her wheels sharply to the right and put on her brakes hard enough to lock the back wheels." "yes, my friend," thought lydia, "that's the way it's done. i wonder how many times you've skidded your own car to know so much about it." "this procedure," o'bannon's voice continued, "which is always a somewhat reckless performance, was in this case criminal. with the officer known to be overlapping her car on the left, she might as well have picked up her car and struck him with it. her car did so strike him, smashing his motorcycle to bits and causing the hideous injuries of which he died within a few hours." lydia closed her eyes. she saw that mass of bloodstained khaki and steel lying in the road and heard her own footsteps beating on the macadam. "the people will prove that the defendant was committing a misdemeanor at the time. by section of the penal law it is a misdemeanor to render the highways dangerous or to render a considerable number of persons insecure in life. the defendant in approaching the village of wide plains along a highway on which there were buildings and people at a rate of forty miles an hour was so endangering life. gentlemen, there never was a simpler case as to law and fact than this one." lydia glanced at wiley under her lashes. it seemed to her that o'bannon's manner was almost perfect. she believed he had already captured the jury, but she could read nothing of wiley's opinion in his expression. he rose more leisurely, more conversational in manner. the defense would show, he said--and his tone seemed to add "without the least difficulty"--that the motorcycle of the unfortunate young policeman had skidded and struck the automobile of the defendant, causing, to the deep chagrin of the defendant, the death of that gallant young hero. they would show that the defendant was not committing a misdemeanor at the time, for to attain a speed of twenty-five or thirty miles on a lonely road was not even violating the speed law, as everyone who owned a car knew very well. as for the indictment of manslaughter in the first degree, really--wiley's manner seemed to say that he knew a joke was a joke, and that he had as much sense of humor as most men, but when it came to manslaughter in the first degree--"a crime, gentlemen, for which a prison sentence of twenty years may be imposed--twenty years, gentlemen." he had never in a long experience at the bar heard of a bill being found at once so spectacular and so completely at variance with the law. the defense would show them that if they followed the recommendation of his learned young friend, the district attorney, to consider the facts and the law---- his manner to o'bannon was more paternal than patronizing. he seemed to sketch him as an eager, emotional boy intoxicated by headlines in the new york papers. wiley radiated wisdom, pity for his client, grief for the loss of drummond and an encouraging hope that a young man like o'bannon would learn enough in the course of a few years to prevent his making a humiliating sort of mistake like this again. he did not say a word of this, but lydia could see the atmosphere of his speech seeping into the jurors' minds. yes, she thought, it was an able opening--not the sort of ability that she would have connected with legal talent in the days when she knew less of the law; but it seemed to be the kind of magic that worked. she was pleased with her counsel, directed a flattering look at him and began to assume the air he wanted her to assume--the dovelike. the prosecution began at once to call their witnesses--first the doctors and nurses from the hospital, establishing the cause of death. then the exact time was established by the clock on the motorcycle-- : , confirmed by the testimony of many witnesses. then the ante-mortem statement was put in evidence. a long technical argument took place between the lawyers over this. it occupied all the rest of the morning session. the statement was finally admitted, but the discussion had served to impress on the jury the fact that the testimony of a witness whose credibility cannot be judged of by personal inspection, and who is saved by death from the cross-examination of the lawyer of the other side, is evidence which the law admits only under protest. wiley scored his first tangible success in his cross-examination of the two men who had come to lydia's assistance. on direct examination they had testified to the high rate of speed at which lydia had been going. wiley, when they were turned over to him, contrived to put them in a position where they were forced either to confess that they had no knowledge of high rates of speed or else that they themselves frequently broke the law. wiley was polite, almost kind; but he made them look foolish, and the jury enjoyed the spectacle. this success was overshadowed by a small reverse that followed it. the prosecution had a long line of witnesses who had passed or been passed by lydia just before the accident. one of these was a young man who was a washer in a garage about a mile away from the fatal corner. he testified in direct examination that lydia was going forty-five miles an hour when she passed the garage. wiley stood up, severe and cold, his manner seeming to say, "of all things in this world, i hate a liar most!" "and where were you at the time?" "standing outside the garage." "what were you doing there?" "nothing." "nothing?" "smoking a pipe." "at three o'clock in the afternoon--during working hours?" wiley made it sound like a crime. "and during this little siesta, or holiday, you saw the defendant's car going at forty-five miles an hour--is that the idea?" "yes, sir." "and will you tell the jury how it was you were able to judge so exactly of the speed of a car approaching you head-on?" the obvious answer was that he guessed at it, but the young man did not make it. "i do it by means of telegraph poles and counting seconds." it then appeared that the young man was accustomed to timing automobile and motorcycle races. lydia saw foster faintly smile as he glanced at his chief. evidently the defense had fallen into a neatly laid little trap. she glanced at wiley and saw that he was pretending to be delighted. "exactly, exactly!" he was saying, pointing an accusing finger at the witness; "you and drummond used to go to motorcycle races together." he did it very well, but it did not succeed. the jury were left with the impression that the people's witness on speed was one to be believed. chapter x strangely enough, the days of her trial were among the happiest and the most interesting that lydia had ever known. they had a continuity of interest that kept her calm and equable. usually when she woke in the softest of beds and lifted her cheek from the smoothest of pillows she asked herself what she should do that day. choice was open to her--innumerable choices--all unsatisfactory, because her own satisfaction was the only element to be considered. but during her trial she did not ask this question. she had an occupation and an object for living, not so much to save herself as to humiliate o'bannon. the steady, strong interest gave shape and pattern to her days, like the thread of a string of beads. as soon as each session was over she and wiley, on the lawn of the courthouse or at her house if she could detain him, or she and albee or bobby or miss bennett, as the case might be, would go over each point made by the prosecution's witnesses or brought out by wiley's cross-examination of them. the district attorney seemed to be reserving no surprises. he had a strong, straight case with drummond's ante-mortem statement, and a great many witnesses as to lydia's speed. the bracelet had not been admitted in evidence so far, nor had drummond's statement referred to it, and wiley grew more confident that it would not be allowed. the defense had felt some anxiety over the exactitude with which the hour of the accident had been established, but as lydia did not honestly know the hour at which she had left eleanor's nor had eleanor or any of her servants been subpoenaed, there did not seem any danger from this point after all. lydia, who was to be the first witness for the defense, had thought over every point, every implication of her own testimony, until she felt sure that "that man" would not be able to catch her wrong in a single item. she did not dread the moment--she longed for it. wiley had advised her of the danger of remembering too much--a candid "i'm afraid i don't remember that" would often convince a jury better than a too exact memory. "and," wiley added soothingly, "don't be frightened if the district attorney tries to browbeat you. the court will protect you, and if i seem to let it go on it will be because i see it's prejudicing the jury in your favor." lydia's nostrils fluttered with a long indrawn breath. "i don't think he will frighten me," she said. but most of all, wiley advised her as to her bearing. she must be gentle, feminine, appealing, as if she would not voluntarily injure a fly. no matter what happened, she mustn't set her jaw and tap her foot and flash back contemptuous answers. lydia moved her head, looking exactly as wiley did not want her to look. "i cannot be appealing," she said. "then the district attorney will win his case," said wiley. there was a pause, and then lydia said in her good-little-girl manner: "i'll do my best." everybody knew that her best would be good. the people were to close their case that morning. a witness as to lydia's speed just before the accident was on the stand. he testified that, following her as fast as his car would go--he had no speedometer--he had not been able to keep her in sight. his name was yakob ussolof, and he had great difficulty with the english language. his statements were, however, clear and damaging. the jury was almost purely anglo-saxon, and as wiley rose to cross-examine the very effort he made to get the name right--"mr.--er--mr.--u--ussolof"--was an appeal to their americanism. "mr. ussolof, you have driven an automobile for some years?" "yare, yare," said mr. ussolof eagerly, "for ten years now." "how long had you owned the car you were driving on march eleventh?" "since fall now." "ah, a new car. and what was its make?" "flivver." the magic word worked its accustomed miracle. everyone smiled, and wiley, seeing before him a jury of flivver owners, went on: "and do you mean to tell me, mr. ussolof, that in the speediest car built in america you could not keep a foreign-built car going at thirty miles an hour in sight? oh, mr. ussolof, you don't do us justice. we build better cars than that!" the jury smiled, the spectators laughed, the gavel fell for order, and mr. wiley sat down. he had told lydia that a jury, like an audience, loves those who make them laugh, and he sat down with an air of success. but lydia, watching them more closely, was not so sure. as o'bannon rose she noted the extreme gravity of his manner, his look at the jury, which seemed to say, "a man's life--a woman's liberty at stake, and you allow a mountebank to make you laugh!" it was only a look, but lydia saw that they regained their seriousness like a lot of schoolboys when the head master enters. "call alma wooley," said o'bannon. alma wooley, the last witness for the people, was the girl to whom drummond had been engaged. a little figure in the deepest mourning mounted the stand, so pale that she looked as if a strong ray would shine clear through her, and though her eyes were dry, her voice had the liquid sound that comes with much crying. many of the jury had known her when she worked in her father's shop. she testified that her name was alma wooley, her age nineteen, that she lived with her father. "miss wooley," said o'bannon, "you were sent for to go to the hospital on the eleventh of this march, were you not?" an almost inaudible "yes, sir," was the answer. "you saw drummond before he died?" she bent her head. "how long were you with him?" she just breathed the answer, "about an hour." juror number spoke up and said that he could not hear. the judge in a loud roar--offered as an example--said, "you must speak louder. you must speak so that the last juror can hear you. no, don't look at me. look at the jury." thus admonished, miss wooley raised her faint, liquid voice and testified that she had been present while drummond was making his statement. "tell the jury, what took place." "i said----" her voice sank out of bearing. wiley sprang up. "your honor, i must protest. i cannot hear the witness. it is impossible for me to protect my client's interests if i cannot hear." the stenographer was directed to read his notes aloud, and he read rapidly and without the least expression: "question: 'tell the jury what took place.' answer: 'i said, "oh, jack, darling, what did they do to you?" and he said, "it was her, dear. she got me after all."'" wiley was on his feet again, protesting in a voice that drowned all other sounds. a bitter argument between the lawyers took place. they argued with each other, they went and breathed their arguments into the ear of the judge. in the end miss wooley's testimony was not allowed to contain anything in reference to any previous meeting between drummond and lydia, but was limited to a bare confirmation of the details of drummond's own statement. technically the defense had won its point, but the emotional impression the girl had left was not easily effaced, nor the suspicion that the defense had something to conceal. wiley did not cross-examine, knowing that the sooner the pathetic little figure left the stand the better. but he managed to convey that it was his sympathy with the sufferer that made him waive cross-examination. the people's case rested. lydia was called. as she rose and walked behind the jury box toward the waiting bible she realized exactly why it was that o'bannon had put alma on the stand the last of all his witnesses. it was to counteract with tragedy any appeal that youth and wealth and beauty might make to the emotions of the jury. such a trick, it seemed to her, deserved a counter trick, and reconciled her to falsehood, even as she was swearing that her testimony would be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help her god. surely it was persecution for the law to stoop to such methods. she felt as hard as steel. women do not get fair play, she thought. here she was, wanting to fight like a tigress, and her only chance of winning was to appear as gentle and innocuous as the dove. she testified that her name was lydia janetta thorne, her age twenty-four, her residence new york. "miss thorne," said wiley, very businesslike in manner, "for how many years have you driven a car?" "for eight years." "as often as three or four times a week?" "much oftener--constantly--every day." "have you ever been arrested for speeding?" "only once--about seven years ago in new jersey." "were you fined or imprisoned?" "no, the case was dismissed." "have you ever, before march eleventh, had an accident in which you injured yourself or anyone else?" "no." "now tell the jury as nearly as you can remember just what took place from the time you left your house on the morning of march eleventh until the accident that afternoon." lydia turned to the jury--not dovelike, but with a modified beam of candid friendliness that was very winning. she described her day. she had left her house about half past eleven and had run down to miss bellington's, a distance of thirty miles, in an hour and a half. she had expected to spend the afternoon there, but finding that her friend had an engagement she had left earlier than she expected. no, she had no motive whatsoever for getting to town quickly. on the contrary, she had extra time on her hands. no, she had not noticed the hour at which she left miss bellington's, but it was soon after luncheon; about twenty-five minutes before three, she should imagine. was she conscious of driving fast at any time? yes, just after leaving miss bellington's. there was a good piece of road and no traffic. she had run very fast--probably thirty-five miles an hour. did she call that fast? yes, she did. she achieved a very-good-little-girl manner as she said this. for how long had she maintained this high rate of speed? she was afraid she couldn't remember exactly, but for two or three miles. on approaching the village of wide plains she had slowed down to her regular rate of twenty-five miles an hour--slower as she actually entered the village. she could not say how long drummond had been following her--she had not noticed him. she had seen him as she was entering the village--saw him reflected in her mirror. it was difficult to judge distances exactly from such a reflection. she had not been noticing him just at the moment of the accident. yes, her decision to take the right-hand turn had been a sudden one. she had felt the impact. she believed that the policeman ran into her. she was on her own side of the road and turning to the right. why did she take the right-hand road, which was longer than the left? because it was more agreeable, and as she was in no hurry to get home she did not mind the extra distance. after the accident she had remained and rendered every assistance in her power, going to the hospital and remaining there until the preliminary report of drummond's condition. she had left her address and telephone number, so that the hospital could telephone her when the x-ray examination was finished. her friends drew a sigh of relief when her direct testimony was over. it was true, she was not an appealing figure like alma wooley; but she was clear, audible, direct, and her straight glance under her dark level brows was convincingly honest. as she finished her direct testimony she looked down at her hands clasped in her lap. the important moment had come. she heard wiley's smooth voice saying "your witness" as if he were making the people a magnificent present. as she became aware that o'bannon was standing up, looking at her, she raised her eyes as far as the top button of his waistcoat, and then slowly lifting both head and eyes together she stared him straight in the face. he held her eyes for several seconds, trying, she thought, in the silence to take possession of her mind as he had taken possession of the jury's. "not so easy, my friend," she said to herself, and just as she said it she heard his voice saying coolly, "look at the jury, please, not at me." her eyes, as she turned them in the desired direction, had a flash in them. "miss thorne, at what hour did you leave miss bellington's?" "i have no way of fixing it precisely--about : ." "you are quite sure it was not later?" "i cannot be sure within four or five minutes." "what is the distance from miss bellington's to the scene of the accident?" "about fifteen miles, i should think." "your calculation is that as the accident took place at : and you left at twenty-five minutes to three you drove fifteen miles in thirty-seven minutes--that is to say, at the rate of twenty-four miles an hour. is that right?" "yes." "and you never ran faster than thirty-five miles an hour?" "never." "don't look at me. look at the jury, please." she found it hard to be dovelike under this repeated admonition. "as if," she thought, "i couldn't keep my eyes off him, whereas, of course, it's human nature to look at the person who's speaking to you." "you say," he went on, "that you had expected to stay longer at miss bellington's than you actually did." "yes." "and what made you change your plans?" "i found she had an engagement." "did she mention it on your arrival?" "no." "when did she mention it?" "after luncheon." "was she called to the telephone during your visit?" "no." "are you sure of that?" there was a pause. the gates of lydia's memory had suddenly opened. the telephone call, which had made no impression at the time because she had not taken in that it was from o'bannon, suddenly came back to her. she tried hastily to see its bearing on her case, but he gave her no time. "answer my question, please. will you swear there was no telephone call to your knowledge?" "no, i cannot." "in fact there was a telephone call?" "yes." "it was during that telephone call that the engagement was made?" "i cannot say--i do not know." "how long did you stay after that telephone?" "i left at once." "you put on your hat?" "yes." "and your veil?" "yes." "and a coat?" "yes." it was impossible to be dovelike under this interrogation. the jury were allowing themselves to smile. "had your car been left standing at the door?" "no." she felt that her jaw was beginning to set, and she kept her foot quiet only with an effort. "you had to wait while it was sent for?" "yes." "in other words, miss thorne, you must have waited not less than five minutes after the telephone call came?" "probably not." "answer yes or no, please." "no." she flung it at him. "then if that telephone came at thirteen minutes before three you must have left not earlier than eight minutes to three, and the accident took place at : , you ran the distance--it is actually thirteen miles and a half--in twenty minutes; that is, at the rate of forty miles an hour." wiley protested that there was nothing in evidence to show that the telephone call had been made at thirteen minutes before three, and o'bannon replied that with the consent of the court he would put the records of the telephone company in evidence to prove the exact hour. this point settled, a pause followed. lydia half rose, supposing the ordeal over, but o'bannon stopped her. "one moment," he said. "you say you have not been arrested for exceeding the speed law for several years. have you ever been stopped by a policeman?" wiley was up in protest at once. "i object, your honor, on the ground of irrelevancy." the judge said to o'bannon, "what is the purpose of the question?" "credibility, your honor. i wish to show that the defendant is not a competent witness as to her own speed." the judge locked his fingers together, with his elbows on the arms of his chair, and took a ruminative half spin. "the fact that she was once stopped by the police will not determine that. she might have been violating some other ordinance." "i will show, if your honor permits it, that it was for speeding that she was stopped." eventually the question was admitted; and lydia, testifying more and more reluctantly, more and more aware that the impression she was making was bad, was forced to testify that in the autumn drummond himself had stopped her. asked what he had said to her, she answered scornfully that she didn't remember. "did he say: 'what do you think this is--a race track?'" "i don't remember." "did he warn you that if you continued to drive so fast he would arrest you?" "no." if hate could kill, the district attorney would have been struck down by her glance. "you don't remember any of the conversation that took place between you?" "no." "and you cannot explain why a traffic officer stopped you and let you go without even a warning?" "no." "would it refresh your memory, miss thorne, to look at this bracelet which i hold in my hand?" "i protest, your honor!" shouted wiley, but a second too late. lydia had seen the bracelet and shrunk from it--with a quick gesture of repugnance. [illustration: lydia had seen the bracelet and shrunk from it.] the line of inquiry was not permitted, the bracelet was not put in evidence, the question was ordered stricken from the records; but the total effect of her testimony was to leave in the minds of the jurors the impression that she was perfectly capable of the conduct which the prosecution attributed to her. wiley detained her a few moments for redirect examination in the hope of regaining the dove, but in vain. miss bennett was put on the stand to testify to lydia's habitual prudence as a driver; governor albee testified to her excellent record; half a dozen other friends were persuasive, but could not undo the harm she had done her own case. the district attorney put the telephone-company records in evidence, showing that only one call had been made to the bellington house between two and three o'clock march eleventh, and that it had been made at thirteen minutes before three. chapter xi lydia, with the wisdom that comes specially to the courageous, knew that her trial had gone against her as she left the stand. miss bennett was hopeful as they drove home. bobby actually congratulated her on the clearness and weight of what she had said. albee, whose own investigation had closed brilliantly the day before, came that evening to say good-by to her. he was called back to his native state on business and was leaving on a midnight train. since the accident lydia had been seeing albee every day--had used him and consulted him, and yet had almost forgotten his existence. now as she waited for his appearance it came to her with a shock of surprise that she had once come very near to engaging herself to him; that in parting like this for a few weeks he might make the assumption that she intended to be his wife. she thought she could make her trial a good excuse for refusing to consider such a proposal. that would get rid of him without hurting his feelings. she thought of the phrase, "a woman situated as i am cannot enter into an engagement." the mere idea of such a marriage was now intensely repugnant to her. how could she have contemplated it? he entered, leonine yet neat in his double-breasted blue serge with a pearl in his black tie. he took her hand and beamed down upon her as if many things were in his heart that he would not trouble her with at this crisis by uttering. "ah, my dear," he said, "i wish i might be here to-morrow to see your triumph, but i'll be back in a month or so, and then--meantime i leave you in good hands. wiley is capital. his summing up to-morrow will be a masterpiece. and remember, if by any chance--juries are chancy, you know--they do bring in an adverse verdict, on appeal you're safe as a church." he raised a cold, rigid little hand to his lips. with her perfect clear-sightedness she saw he was deserting her and was glad to get him out of her way. she had not even an impulse to punish him for going. the next morning it was raining torrents. it seemed as if the globe itself were spinning in rain rather than ether. rain beat on the streets of new york so that the asphalt ran from curb to curb in black brooks; rain swept across the open spaces of the country, and as they ran through the storm water spouted in long streams from the wheels of the car. in the court room rain ran down the windows on each side of the american flag in liquid patterns. the court room itself had a different air. the electric lights were on, the air smelled of mud and rubber coats, and judge homans, who suffered from rheumatism, was stiff and grim. a blow awaited lydia at the outset. she had not understood that the defense summed up first--that the prosecution had the last word with the jury. what might not "that man" do with the jury by means of his hypnotic sincerity? she dreaded wiley's summing up, too, fearing it would be oratorical--all the more because he kept disclaiming any such intention. "the day has gone by for eloquence," he kept saying. "one doesn't attempt nowadays to be a daniel webster or a rufus choate. but of course it is necessary to touch the hearts of the jury." she thought that o'bannon's appeal was to their heads, and yet wiley might be right. people were such geese they might prefer wiley's method to o'bannon's. as soon as court opened wiley began his summing up, and even his client approved of his simple, leisurely manner. he was very clear and effective with the merely legal points. the crime of manslaughter in the first degree--a crime for which a sentence of twenty years might be imposed--had not been proved. nor was there credible evidence of criminal negligence, without which a verdict of manslaughter in the second degree could not be found. as he reviewed the facts he contrived to present a picture of lydia's youthfulness, her motherlessness, of thorne's early beginnings as a workingman, of his death leaving lydia an orphan. he made her beauty and wealth seem a disadvantage--a terrible temptation to an ambitious young prosecutor with an eye to newspaper headlines. he made it appear as if juries always convicted young ladies of social position, but that this particular jury by a triumph of fair-mindedness were going to be able to overcome this prejudice. one juror who had wept over alma wooley now shed an impartial tear for lydia. "gentlemen of the jury," wiley ended, "i ask you to consider this case on the facts and the facts alone--not to be led away by the emotional appeals of an ambitious and learned young prosecutor who has the ruthlessness that so often goes with young ambition; not to convict an innocent girl whose only crime seems to be that she is the custodian of wealth that her father, an american workingman, won from the conditions of american industry. if you consider the evidence alone you will find that no crime has been committed. i ask you, gentlemen, for a verdict of not guilty." lydia, with her eyes slanted down to the red carpet at a spot a few feet from o'bannon's chair, saw that miss bennett turned joyfully to eleanor, that bobby was trying to catch her eye for a congratulatory nod; but she did not move a muscle until o'bannon rose and crossed over to the jury. her eyes followed him. then she remembered to turn and give her own counsel a mechanical smile--a smile such as a nurse gives a clever child who has just built a fort on the beach which the next wave is certain to sweep away. "gentlemen of the jury," said o'bannon--and he bit off his words sharply; indeed, he and wiley seemed to have changed rôles. he who had been so cool through the trial now showed feeling, a sort of quiet passion--"this is not a personal contest between the distinguished counsel for the defense and myself. neither my youth nor my ambition nor my alleged ruthlessness are in question. the only question is, does the evidence show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime for which she has been indicted?" then without an extra phrase, almost without an adjective, he went on quickly piling up the evidence against her until it reached its climax in the proof of the shortness of time that had elapsed between her leaving eleanor's and the accident. "a particularly serious responsibility rests upon you, gentlemen, in this case. the counsel for the defense seems to assume that the rich fare less well in our courts of law than the poor. that has not been my experience. i should be glad as a believer in democracy if i could believe that justice is more available to the poor than to the rich, but i cannot. last month in this very court a boy, younger than the defendant, who earned his living as a driver of a delivery wagon, was sentenced to three years in prison for a lesser crime, and on evidence not one-tenth as convincing as the evidence now before you. a great many of us felt sorry for that boy, too, but we felt that essential justice was done. if through sentiment or pity essential justice cannot be done in this case, if sex, wealth or conspicuous position is a guarantee of immunity, a blow will be dealt to the respect for law in this country for which you gentlemen must take the responsibility. if you find by the evidence that the defendant has committed the crime for which she is indicted i ask you to face that fact with courage and honesty, and to bring in a verdict of guilty." there was a gentle stir in the court. the attendant announced that anyone who wished to leave the court must do so immediately. no one would be allowed to move while the judge was charging. no one moved. the doors were closed, the attendants leaning against them. wiley bent over and whispered, "that sort of class appeal doesn't succeed nowadays. give yourself no concern." concern was the last emotion lydia felt, or rather she felt no emotion at all. her interest had suddenly collapsed, the game was over. she was aware that the air of the court room was close and that she felt inexpressibly tired, especially in her wrists. the judge wheeled toward the jury and drew in his chin until it seemed to rest upon his spinal column. "gentlemen of the jury," he said, "we have now reached that stage in this trial when it is my duty to present the matter for your deliberation. you know that the law makes a distinction between the duty of the court and the duty of the jury. you are the judge and the only judge of the facts, but you must accept the law from the court. you must not consider whether or not you approve of the law; whether you could or could not make a better law." lydia suppressed a yawn. "the tiresome old man," she thought. "he actually seems to enjoy saying all that." his honor went on defining a reasonable doubt: "it is not a whim or a speculation or a surmise. it is a doubt founded on reason--on a reason which may be stated." lydia thought, "imagine drawing a salary for telling people that a reasonable doubt is a doubt founded on reason." she had not imagined that she would be bored at any moment of her own trial, but she was--bored beyond belief. "i must call your attention to section of the penal law, which says that whenever a crime is distinguished into degrees, the jury, if they convict, must find the degree of the crime of which the prisoner is guilty. manslaughter is a crime distinguished into degrees--namely, the first and the second degree." lydia thought that if by this time the jury did not know the distinction between the two they must be half-witted, but his honor went on to define them: "in the first degree, when committed without design to effect death by a person committing or attempting to commit a misdemeanor." she thought that she knew that phrase now, as when she was a child she had known some of the rules of latin grammar--verbs conjugated with _ad, ante, con, in, inter_--what did they do? how funny that she couldn't remember. her eyes had again fixed themselves on the spot on the carpet so near o'bannon's feet that she was aware of any movement on his part, and yet she was not looking at him. a fly came limply crawling into her vision, and her eyes followed it as it lit on o'bannon's boot. she glanced up to where his hand was resting on his knee, and then wrenched her eyes away--back to the floor again. "if you find that the defendant is not guilty of manslaughter in the first degree you must then consider whether or not she is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree--that is, whether she occasioned the death of drummond by an act of culpable negligence. culpable negligence has been defined by recorder smyth in the case of--in the case of the people against bedenseick as the omission to do something which a reasonable and prudent man would do, or the doing of something which such a man would not do under the circumstances of each particular case. or, what is the same thing----" how incredibly tiresome! she glanced at the jury. they were actually listening, drinking in the judge's words. all of a sudden she knew by his tone that he was coming to an end. "if you find that a killing has taken place, but that it is not manslaughter in either degree, then it is your duty to acquit. if on the other hand you find the defendant guilty in either degree you must not consider the penalty which may be imposed. that is the province of the court; yours is to consider the facts. such, gentlemen, is the law. the evidence is before you. you are at liberty to believe or to disbelieve the testimony of any witness in part or as a whole, according to your common sense. weigh the testimony, giving each fact its due proportion; and then, according to your best judgment, render your verdict." his honor was silent. there were a few requests to charge from both sides, and the jury filed solemnly out. almost without a pause the next case was called, the attendant's voice ringing out as before--"the case of the people against----" lydia felt disinclined to move, as if even her bones were made of some soft dissoluble material. then she saw that she had no choice. the next prisoner was waiting for her place--an unshaven, hollow-eyed italian, with a stout, gray-clad lawyer who looked like caruso at his side. as she left the court she could hear the clerk calling the new jury. "william roberts." "seat number one." judge homans flattered himself particularly on the celerity with which his court moved. chapter xii several of the new york papers the next morning carried editorials commending the verdict. lydia sitting up in bed with a breakfast tray on her knee, read them coolly through. "the safety of the highways"--"the irresponsibility of the younger generation, particularly among those of great wealth"--"pity must not degenerate into sentimentality"--"the equal administration of our laws----" so the public was pleased with the verdict, was it? it little knew. she herself was filled with bitterness. the moment of the delivery of the verdict had been terrible to her. she had not minded the hours of waiting. she had felt deadened, without special interest in what the jury decided. but this had changed the moment word came that the jury had reached a verdict. there was a terrible interval while the familiar roll of their names was called for the last time. then she was told to stand up and face them, or rather to face the foreman, josiah howell, a bearded man with a lined brown face. he looked almost tremulously grave. lydia set her jaw, looking at him and thinking, "what business have you interfering in my fate?" but he was not the figure she was most aware of. it was the district attorney, whose excitement she knew was as great as her own. "how say you?" said a voice. "guilty or not guilty?" "guilty of manslaughter in the second degree," answered the foreman. lydia knew every eye in the court room was turned on her. she had heard of defendants who fainted on hearing an adverse verdict--keeled over like dead people. but one does not faint from anger, and anger was lydia's emotion--anger that "that man" had actually obtained the verdict he wanted. her breath came fast and her nostrils dilated. how sickening that she had nothing to do but stand there and let him triumph! no subsequent reversal would take away this moment from him. the jury was thanked and dismissed. wiley was busy putting in pleas that would enable her to remain at liberty during the appeal of her case. she stood alone, still now as a statue. she was thinking that some day the world should know by what methods that verdict had been obtained. she had behaved well during her trial; had lived a life of retirement, seeing no one but wiley and her immediate friends. but there was no further reason for playing a part. on the contrary she felt it would relieve her spirit to show the world--and o'bannon--that she was not beaten yet. she did not intend to look upon herself as a criminal because he had induced a jury to convict her. she bought herself some new clothes and went out every night, dancing till dawn and sleeping till noon. she began a new flirtation, this time with a good-looking insolent young english actor, ludovic blythe, hardly twenty-one, with a strange combination of wickedness and naïveté that some english boys possess. her friends disapproved of him heartily. at his suggestion she engaged a passage for england for early july. wiley warned her that it was unlikely that the decision in her case would be handed down as soon as that, and if it were not she could not leave the country. "there's no harm in engaging a cabin, is there?" she answered. her plan was to take in the end of the london season, with a few house parties in the english country, to spend september in venice, two weeks in paris buying clothes, and to come home in october. "to long island?" miss bennett asked. "of course. where else?" answered lydia. "do you think i shall allow myself to be driven out of my own home?" but july came without the decision, and lydia was obliged to cancel her passage. she was annoyed. "those lazy old judges," she said, "have actually adjourned for two months, and now i can't get off until september." her tone indicated that she was doing a good deal for the law of her country, changing her plans like this. o'bannon, she heard, was taking a holiday too--going to wyoming for a month. she thought that she would like to see something of the west, but instead she took a house at newport for august--a fevered month. blythe came to spend sunday with her and stayed two weeks, fell in love with may swayne, attempted to use his position as a guest of lydia's to make himself appear a more desirable suitor in the eyes of the swayne family--a solid old-fashioned fortune--and was turned out by lydia after a scene of unusual violence. a feud followed in which many people took--and changed--sides. lydia fought gayly, briskly in the open. her object was not blythe's death, but his social extinction, and her method was not cold steel but ridicule. the war was won when may was made to see him as an impossible figure, comic, on the make--as perhaps he was, but no more so than when lydia herself had received him. after this, though he lingered on a few days at a hotel, his ultimate disappearance was certain. lydia and may remained friends throughout--as much friends as they had ever been. since the day of their first meeting the two women had never permitted any man to be a friend of both of them. albee came and spent a brief twenty-four hours with her between a midnight train and sunday boat. he was in the midst of a campaign as united states senator from his own state--certain of election. lydia was kind and patient with him, but frankly bored. "there's more stuff in bobby," she confided to benny, "who doesn't expect you to tremble at his nod. i hate fake strong men. i always feel tempted to call their bluff. it's a hard rôle they want to play. if they don't break you, you despise them. if they do--why, you're broken, no good to anyone." she asked eleanor to come and spend august with her, but eleanor refused, saying, what was true enough, that she couldn't bear newport. she could bear even less constant association with lydia at this moment. lydia's one preoccupation when they were together was to destroy eleanor's friendship for o'bannon. often in old times eleanor had laughed at the steady persistence that lydia put into this sort of campaign of hate, but she could not laugh now, for as a matter of fact her friendship with o'bannon was already destroyed. she hardly saw him, and if she did there was a veil between them. he was kind, he was open with her, he was everything except interested. eleanor loved o'bannon, but with so intellectual a process that she was not far wrong in considering it was a friendship. she would have married him if he had asked her, but she would have done so principally to insure herself of his company. if anyone could have guaranteed that they would continue all their lives to live within a few yards of each other she would have been content--content even with the knowledge that every now and then some other less reasonable woman would come and sweep him away from her. she knew he was of a temperament susceptible to terrible gusts of emotion, but she considered that that was her hold upon him--she was so safe. the remoteness that came to their relation now indicated another woman, and yet she knew his everyday life well enough to know that he was seeing no one except herself and alma wooley; and though there was some gossip about his attention to the girl, eleanor felt she understood the reason for it. alma made him feel emotionally what he knew rationally--that his prosecution of lydia had been merely an act of justice. alma thought him the greatest of men and was tremulously grateful to him for establishing her dead lover as a hero--a man killed in the performance of his duty. to her imagination lydia was an unbelievable horror, like a wicked princess in a fairy tale. eleanor wondered if she did not seem somewhat the same to o'bannon. he never mentioned her name when she, eleanor, spoke of her. it was like dropping a stone into a bottomless well. she listened and listened, and nothing came back from o'bannon's abysmal silence. he spoke of her only once, and that was when he came to say good-by to eleanor the day he started for wyoming. he was eager to get away--into those mountains, to sleep under the stars and forget everything and everybody in the east. "mercy," eleanor thought, "how ruthless men are! i wouldn't let any friend of mine see i was glad to leave him, even if i were." "it's a rotten job--mine," he said. "i'm always sending people to prison who are either so abnormal they don't seem human or else so human they seem just like myself." presently eleanor mentioned that lydia had asked her to go to newport for a month. o'bannon turned on her sharply. "and are you going?" she said no, but it did not save her from his contempt. "i don't see how you can be a friend of that woman's, eleanor," he said. "lydia has the most attaching qualities when you know her, dan." "attaching!" he broke out with a suppressed irritation she had never seen--a strange hate of her, eleanor, for saying such a thing. "arrogant, inflexible, using all her gifts--her brains and her incredible beauty--just to advance her own selfish ends!" an impulse based partly on pure loyalty but partly on the idea that she could improve her position by showing her friend was not quite a monster made her answer, "you wouldn't believe, dan, how if she really cares for you she can be tender almost clinging." "for god's sake don't let's talk of her!" said o'bannon, and it was on this note that they parted. he wrote to her only once, though his letters to his mother were always at her disposal. she saw a great deal of the old lady, who developed a mild pleurisy as soon as her son's back was turned and didn't want dan told of it. eleanor spent most of that hot august taking care of her. "i want him to have an uninterrupted holiday," said mrs. o'bannon firmly. "he hasn't been well. he doesn't sleep as he ought to, and he's cross, and you know it's not like dan to be cross." on the last day of august he was back, lean and sunburned, announcing himself to be in excellent condition. his first question was about the thorne case. "are you anxious about it?" said his mother. "not a bit. they can't reverse us," he answered. after labor day lydia moved back to her long island house, and she was there when the decision in her case was handed down. the verdict of the lower court was sustained. it was a great blow to her--perhaps the first real blow she had ever received. she had so firmly made up her mind that the former verdict had been the result of undue influence of the district attorney that she had thought it impossible that the higher court would uphold it. another triumph for "that man!" the idea of punishment was horrible to her--to be fined as a criminal. she still did not conceive it a possibility that she could be sent to prison. "i can think of lots of ways in which i'd rather spend a thousand dollars," was her only comment. but day and night she thought of the scene in court when she must present herself for sentence. in secret her courage failed her. it would be the visible symbol of o'bannon's triumph over her. yet her will threw itself in vain against the necessity. nothing but death could save her. it would be short anyhow. she knew how it would be. she and wiley would appear in the midst of some other wretch's trial. there would be whisperings about the judge's desk, and o'bannon would be there--not looking at her, but triumphing in his black heart, and the judge would say "a thousand-dollar fine," or--no, nothing so succinct. he would find it an opportunity to talk about her and her case first. and then she would pay the money and leave court, a convicted criminal. and then the second stage would begin. it would be her turn. she would give her life to getting even with o'bannon. she who had always needed a purpose--a string on which to thread her life--had found it in hate. most people found it in love, but for her part she enjoyed hate. it was exciting and active, and, oh, what a climax it promised! yes, like the adventuress in the melodrama, she would go to him herself and say: "i've waited ten years to ruin you, and now i've done it. have you been wondering all these years what was against you--what held you back and poisoned everything you touched? it was i!" other people, she knew, thought such things and never put them in action. but she had no reason to distrust the power of her own will, and never had she willed anything as she willed this. she began to arrange it. there were three ways in which you could hurt a man--through his love, through his ambitions and through his finances. a crooked politician like o'bannon might suffer most by being ruined politically. she must always keep some hold on albee for that. money probably wouldn't greatly matter to o'bannon. but love--he was an emotional creature. women, she felt sure, played a tremendous rôle in his life. and he was attractive to them--accustomed to success probably. oh, to think that she had been for a few seconds acquiescent in his arms! and yet that meant that she had power over him. she knew she had power. should that be her method--to make him think that she had seen him not as an enemy but as a hero, a crusader, a master, that she was an adoring victim? oh, how easily she could make love to him, and how successfully! she could imagine going down on her knees to him, winding herself about him, only she must have the climax ready so that at the same second she would destroy both his love and career. she must wait, and it would be hard to wait; but she must wait until she and albee had dug a deep pit. then she would call him to her and he would have to come. it was by thinking these thoughts that she managed to come into court calm and cold as steel. "what have you now to say why the judgment of the court should not be pronounced upon you?" the judge beckoned her and wiley to his desk. o'bannon was already there, standing so close that her arm would have touched his if she had not shrunk away. she trembled with hate. it was horrible to be so near him. she heard his own breath unsteadily drawn. across the space that parted them waves of some tangible emotion leaped to and fro. she looked up at him and found that he, with clenched hands and drawn brows, was looking at her. so they remained. "your honor," said wiley in his smooth tones, "i would like to ask that a fine rather than a prison sentence be imposed on this prisoner, not only on account of her youth and previous good record, but because to a woman of her sheltered upbringing a prison sentence is a more severe punishment than the law contemplated." "i entirely disagree with you, counselor," said the judge in a loud ringing tone. "the feature that makes the court so reluctant ordinarily to impose prison sentences is the subsequent difficulty in earning a living. that consideration is entirely absent in the present case. on the other hand, to impose a fine would be palpably ridiculous, constituting for this defendant no punishment whatsoever. i sentence this prisoner"--the judge paused and drew in his chin--"to not less than three nor more than seven years in state's prison." she heard wiley passionately pleading with judge homans. a blue-coated figure was now standing beside her. it was still incredible. "this is your doing," she heard her own voice saying very softly to o'bannon. to her surprise she saw that emotion, what emotion she did not know, made it impossible for him to answer. his eyes stared at her out of a face whiter than her own. it was his emotion that communicated her own situation to her. his hand on the desk was shaking. she knew he could not have done what she proceeded to do. she turned and walked with the policeman to the iron-latticed passageway that led to jail. as the door clanged behind her o'bannon turned and walked out of court, and getting into his car drove away westward. at two in the morning eleanor was waked by a telephone from mrs. o'bannon. dan had not come home. she was afraid something had happened to him. a man in his position had many enemies. did eleanor think that some friend or lover of that thorne girl---- oh, no, eleanor was sure not! the next morning--for a small town holds few secrets--she knew that o'bannon had returned at six o'clock, drunk. "oh, dear heaven," thought eleanor, "must he re-travel that road?" chapter xiii lydia and her guard arrived at the prison early in the evening. she had been travelling all through the hot, bright september day. for the first hour she had been only aware of the proximity of the guard, of the crowded car, the mingled smell of oranges and coal smoke, the newspaper on the floor, trodden by every foot, containing probably an account of her departure for her long imprisonment. then, her eyes wandering to the river, she suddenly remembered that it would be years before she saw mountains and flowing water again. perhaps she would never see them again. during the previous winter she had gone with benny and mrs. galton to visit a prison in a neighboring state--a man's prison. it was considered an unfortunate example. scenes from that visit came back to her in a series of pictures. a giant negro highwayman weaving at an immense loom with a heavy, hopeless regularity. black, airless punishment cells--"never used nowadays," the warden had said lightly, and had been corrected by a low murmur from the keeper; two of them were in use at the moment. the tiers of ordinary cells, not so very much better, with their barred loopholes. and the smells--the terrible prison smells. at their best, disinfectant and stale soap; at worst--lydia never knew that it was possible to remember a smell as she now remembered that one. but most of all she remembered the chalky pallor of some of the prisoners, some obviously tubercular, others twitching with nervous affections. she doubted coolly if many people were strong enough to go through years of that sort of thing. so she would look at the river as if she might never see it again. they were already in the highlands, and the hills on the eastern side--her side of the river--were throwing a morning shadow on the water, while across the way the white marble buildings at west point shone in the sunlight. storm king with its abrupt bulk interposed itself between the two sections of new road--the road which lydia had so much desired to see finished. she and bobby had had a plan to motor along it to the emmonses some day--newburgh. there was a hotel there where she had stopped once for luncheon on her way to tuxedo from somewhere or other. then presently the bridge at poughkeepsie, and then the station at which she had got out when she had spent sunday with the emmonses, the day evans had been arrested and had confessed to that man----there was the very pillar she had waited beside while the chauffeur looked up her bags. now the river began to narrow, there were marshy islands in it, and huge shaky ice houses along the brink. it all unrolled before her like a picture that she was never going to see again. then albany, set on its hills, and the train, turning sharply, rumbled over the bridge into the blackened station. almost everybody in the car got out here, for the train stopped some time; but she and her guard remained sitting silently side by side. then presently they were going on again, through the beautiful wide fertile valley of the mohawk----they were getting near, very near. she felt not frightened but physically sick. she wondered if her hair would be cut short. of course it would. it seemed to her like an indignity committed by o'bannon's own hand. it was dark when they reached the station, so dark that she could not get a definite idea of anything but the great wall of the prison, and the clang of the unbarring of the great gate. later she came to know the doorway with its incongruous beauty--the white door with its fanlight and side windows, and two low stairways curving up to it, and, above, the ironwork porch, supported on square ironwork columns of a leaf pattern, suggestive somehow of an old wistaria vine. but now she knew nothing between the gate and the opening of the front door. she entered what might have been the wide hall of an old-fashioned and extraordinarily bare country house. a wide stairway rose straight before her, and wide, old-fashioned doors opened formally to left and right. she was taken into the room at the right--the matron's room. while her name and age and crime were being registered she stood staring straight before her where bookshelves ran to the ceiling. she could recognise familiar bindings--the works of marion crawford and mrs. humphry ward. calm brown-eyed women seemed to surround her, but she would not even look at them. their impersonal kindness seemed to be founded on the insulting knowledge of her utter helplessness. they chatted a little with the guard who had brought her. was the train late? well, not as bad as last time. she wondered how soon they would cut her hair. after a little while she was taken through a long corridor directly to a spacious bathroom. her clothes, wrapped in a sheet, were borne away. at this lydia gave a short laugh. it pleased her as a sign that the routine in her case was palpably ridiculous--to take away her things as if they were infected. she was given a bath, a nightgown of most unfriendly texture was handed to her, and presently she was locked in her cell--still in possession of her hair. she felt like an animal in a trap--could imagine herself running along the floor smelling at cracks for some hope of escape, with that strange head motion, up and down, up and down, of a newly caged animal. more even than the locks and bolts, she minded the open grille in the door, like an eye through which she might at any moment of the day or night be spied upon. at every footstep she prepared herself to meet with a defiant stare the eyes of an inspector. the cell was hardly a cell, but a room larger than most hall bedrooms. the bed had a white cover; so had the table; and the window, though barred, was large. but this made no impression on lydia. she was conscious of being locked in. only her pride and her hard common sense kept her from beating at the door with her bare hands and making one of those screaming outbreaks so familiar to prison officials. she who had never been coerced was now to be coerced in every action, surrounded everywhere by symbols of coercion. she who had been so intense an individualist that she had discarded a french model if she saw other women wearing it was now to wear a striped gingham dress of universal pattern. she whose competent white hands had never done a piece of useful work was sentenced to not less than three or more than seven years of hard labor. what would that be--hard labor? the vision of that giant negro working hopelessly at his loom was before her all night long. all night long she wandered up and down her cell, now and then laying her hand on the door to assure herself of the incredible fact that it was locked. only for a few minutes at dawn she fell asleep, forgetting the catastrophe, the malignant fate that had overtaken her, and woke imagining herself at home. when her cell door was unlocked she stepped out into the same corridor along which she had passed the night before. she found it a blaze of sunlight. great patches of sunlight fell in barred patterns on the boards of the floor, scrubbed as white as the deck of a man-of-war. remembering the gloomy granite loopholes of her imagination, this sun seemed insolently bright. the law compels every prisoner, unless specially exempted, to spend an hour a day in school. lydia's examination was satisfactory enough to exempt her, but she was set to work in the schoolroom, giving out books, helping with papers, erasing the blackboards, collecting the chalk and erasers. in this way the whole population of the prison--about seventy-five women--passed before her in the different grades. she might have found interest and opportunity, but she was in no humor to be coöperative. she sat there despising them all, feeling her own essential difference--from the bright-eyed italian girl who had known no english eighteen months before and was now so industrious a student, to the large, calm, unbelievably good-tempered teacher. the atmosphere of the room was not that of a prison school but of a kindergarten. that was what annoyed lydia--that these women seemed to like to learn. they spelled with enthusiasm--these grown women. up and down pages they went, spelling "passenger" and "transfer" and "station"--it was evidently a lesson about a trolley car. was she, lydia thorne, expected to join joyfully in some such child-like discipline? in mental arithmetic the competition grew keener. muriel, a soft-voiced colored girl, made eight and seven amount to thirteen. the class laughed gayly. lydia covered her face with her hands. "oh," she thought, "he might better have killed me than this!" it seemed to her that this terrible impersonal routine was turning on her like a great wheel and grinding her into the earth. what incredible perversity it was that no one--no prisoner, no guard, not even the clear-eyed matron--would see the obvious fact that she was not a criminal as these others were. had o'bannon's power reached even into the isolation of prison and dictated that she should be treated like everyone else--she who was so different from these uneducated, emotional, unstable beings about her? it was her former maid, evans, who destroyed this illusion. the different wards of the prison ate separately; and as evans was not in her ward they did not meet during the day. they met in the hour after tea, before the prisoners were locked in their cells for the night; an hour when in the large hall they were allowed to read and talk and sew and tat--tatting was very popular just then. lydia had sunk into a rocking-chair. she could not fix her mind on a book, and she did not know how to sew or tat, and talk for talk's sake had never been one of her amusements. she was thinking "one day has gone by out of perhaps seven years. in seven years i shall be thirty-three," when she felt some one approaching her, and looking up she saw it was evans. evans, in a striped cotton, did not look so different from the lady's maid of the old days, except, as lydia noticed with vague surprise, she had put on weight. she came with the hurried walk that made her skirts flip out at her heels--the same walk with which she used to come when she was late to dress lydia for dinner. she almost expected to hear the familiar, "what will you wear, miss?" a dozen memories flashed into her mind--evans polishing her jewels in the sunlight, evans locked in the disordered bedroom refusing her confidence to everyone, and then collapsing and confessing to "that man." she looked away from the approaching figure, hoping the girl would take the hint; but no, evans was drawing up a chair with something of the manner of a hostess to a new arrival. "oh, evans!" was lydia's greeting, very much in her old manner. "you'd better call me louisa here--i mean, it's first names we use," said evans. the fact had already been called to her former employer's attention by muriel, who had done nothing but call her lydia in a futile effort to be friendly. she steeled herself to hear it from evans, who, however, managed to avoid it. she gossiped of the prison news, and tried to cheer and help this newcomer with whatever wisdom she had acquired. lydia neither moved nor answered nor again looked up. "as the matron says," evans ran on, "the worst is over when you get here. it's the trial and the sentence and the journey that's worst. after a week or so you'll begin to get used to it." lydia's nostrils trembled. "i shall never get used to it," she said. "i don't belong here. what i did was no crime." there was a short pause. lydia waited for evans' cordial agreement to what seemed a self-evident assertion. none came. instead she said gently, as she might have explained to a child, "oh, miss, they all think that!" "think what?" "that what they did was no real harm--that they were unjustly condemned. there isn't one here who won't tell you that. the worse they are the more they think it." lydia had looked up from her contemplation of the gray rag rug. no sermon could have stopped her as short as that--the idea that she was exactly like all the other inmates. she protested, more to herself than to evans. "but it is different! what i did was an accident, not a deliberate crime." evans smiled her old, rare, gentle smile. "but the law says it was a crime." horrible! horrible but true! lydia was to find that every woman there felt exactly as she did; that she was a special case; that she had done nothing wrong; that her conviction had been brought about by an incompetent lawyer, a vindictive district attorney, a bribed jury, a perjured witness. the first thing each of them wanted to explain was that she--like lydia--was a special case. the innocent-looking little girl who had committed bigamy. "isn't it to laugh?" said she. "gee, when you think what men do to us! and i get five years for not knowing he was dead! and what harm did i do him anyway?" and the gaunt elderly stenographer who had run an illicit mail-order business for her employers. one of them had evidently occupied her whole horizon, taking the place of all law, moral and judicial. "he said it was positively legal," she kept repeating, believing evidently that the judge and jury had been pitifully misinformed. and there was the stout middle-aged woman with sandy hair and a bland competent manner--she was competent. she had made a specialty of real-estate frauds. "i was entirely within the law," she said, as one hardly interested to argue the matter. and there were gay young mulatto girls and bright-eyed italians, who all said the same thing--"everyone does it; only the other girl squealed on me"--and there were the egotists, who were never going to get into this mess again. some girls had to steal for a living; they had brains enough to go straight. even the woman who had attempted to kill her husband felt she had been absolutely within her rights and after hearing her story lydia was inclined to agree with her. only evans seemed to feel that her sentence had been just. "no, it wasn't right what i did," she said, and she stood out like a star, superior to her surroundings. she only was learning and growing in the terrible routine. it soon began to seem to lydia that this little fool of a maid of hers was a great person. why? locked in her cell from dark to daylight, lydia spent much of the time in thinking. like a great many people in this world, she had never thought before. she had particularly arranged her life so she should not think. most people who think they think really dream. lydia was no dreamer. she lacked the romantic imagination that makes dreams magical. clear-sighted and pessimistic when she looked at life, the reality had seemed hideous, and she looked away as quickly as possible, looked back to the material beauty with which she had surrounded herself and the pleasant activities always within reach. now, cut off from pleasure and beauty, it seemed to her for the first time as if there were a real adventure in having the courage to examine the whole scheme of life. its pattern could hardly be more hideous than that of every day. what was she? what reason had she for living? what use could life be put to? what was the truth? a verse she could not place kept running through her head: _quand j'ai connu la vérité, j'ai cru que c'était une amie; quand je l'ai comprise et sentie, j'en étais déjà dégoûté._ _et pourtant elle est éternelle, et ceux qui se sont passés d'elle ici-bas ont tout ignoré._ she had been deliberately ignorant of much of life--of everything. she went through a period of despair, all the worse because, like a face in a nightmare, it was featureless. it was despair, not over the fact that she was in prison but over the whole scheme of the universe, the futile hordes of human beings living and hoping and failing and passing away. despair paralyzed her bodily activities. her mind, even her giant will, failed her. she could neither sleep nor eat, and after a week of it was taken to the hospital. the rumor ran through the prison that she was going mad--that was the way it always began. she lay in the hospital two days, hardly moving. her face seemed to have shrunk and her eyes to have grown large and fiery. the doctor came and talked to her. she would not answer him; she would not meet his gaze; she would do nothing but draw long unnatural breaths like sighs. in the room next to her there was a mother with a six-months-old baby. lydia at the best of times had never been much interested in babies, though all young animals made a certain appeal to her. her friends' babies, swaddled and guarded by nurses, lacked the spontaneous charm of a kitten or a puppy. this baby, however--joseph his name was, and he was always so referred to--was different. he spent a great deal of time alone, sitting erect in his white iron crib. in spite of the conditions of his birth, he was calm, pink-cheeked and healthy. the first day that lydia was up she glanced at him as she passed the door. he gave her somehow the impression of leading a life apart. at first she only used to stare at him from the doorway; then she ventured in, leaned on the crib, offered him a finger to which he clung, invented a game of clapping of hands, and was rewarded by a toothless smile and a long complicated gurgle of delight. the sound was too much for lydia--the idea that the baby was glad to be starting out on the tortured adventure of living. she went back to her own room in tears, weeping not for her own griefs but because all human beings were so infinitely pathetic. the next day, anna, the mother, came in while she was bending over the crib. lydia knew her story, the common one--the story of a respectable, sheltered girl falling suddenly, wildly in love with a handsome boy, and finding, when after a few months he wearied of her, that she had never been his wife--that he was already married. lydia looked at the neat, blond, spectacled woman beside her. it was hard to imagine her murdering anyone. she seemed gentle, vague, perhaps a little defective. later in their acquaintance she told lydia how she had done it. she had not minded his perfidy so much, until he told her that she had known all along they weren't married--that she'd done it with her eyes open--that she had been "out for a good time." he was a paperhanger among other things, and a great pair of shears had been lying on the table. the first thing she knew they were buried in his side. lydia could not resist asking her whether she regretted what she had done. the girl considered. "i think it was right for him to die," she said, but she was sorry about joseph. in a little while the baby would be taken from her and put into a state institution. she was maternal--primitively maternal--and her real punishment was not imprisonment but separation from her child. lydia saw this without entirely understanding it. the girl had said to her: "i suppose you can't imagine killing anyone?" lydia assured her that she could--oh, very easily. she went back to her room thinking that she was more a murderess at heart than this girl, who was now nothing but a mother. when she came out of the hospital she was not put back at the schoolroom work but was sent to the kitchen. this was an immense tiled room which gave the impression to those who first entered it of being entirely empty. then the eye fell on a row of copper containers--three of them as tall as she--one for tea, one for coffee, one for hot water, and three smaller pots, round like witches' caldrons, for the cooking of cereals and meats and potatoes. the baking was done in an adjacent alcove. there lydia was put to work. gradually the process began to interest her--the mixing of the dough and the baking of dozens of loaves at a time in a great oven with rotating shelves in it. the oven, like all ovens, had its caprices, dependent upon the amount of heat being used by the rest of the institution. lydia set herself to master the subject. a certain strain of practical competence in her had never before had its expression. chapter xiv as lydia began to emerge from her depression she clung to evans, who had first made her see that she could not think anything human alien to herself. the disciplined little englishwoman, sincere and without self-pity, seemed the purveyor of wisdom. she saw her own mistakes clearly. william--william was the pale young footman, about whom they talked a good deal--had urged her for a long time to pick up a ten-dollar bill now and then or a forgotten bit of jewelry. she had never felt any temptation to do so until lydia had been so indifferent about the loss of the bracelet. what was the use of caring so much about the safety of the jewels if the owner cared so little? "oh, that bracelet!" murmured lydia, remembering how she had last seen it in o'bannon's hand in court. for a moment she did not follow what evans was saying, and came back in the midst of a sentence. "----and made me see that because you were wrong that did not make me right. then i got ready to confess. he made me see that the real harm was done and over when i took a thing that wasn't mine, and that the only way to get back was to obey the law and go to prison and get through with it as quick as i could. i owe a lot to him, lydia--not that he preached at me, but his eyes looked right into me." "of whom are you speaking?" lydia asked sharply. "of mr. o'bannon," answered evans, and a reverent tone came into her voice. this was too much for lydia. she broke out, assuring evans that she had been quite right to take the jewels. she, lydia, now knew what a thoughtless, inconsiderate employer she had always been. but as for "that man," evans must see that he had only tricked her into confessing in order to save himself trouble. it was a feather in his cap--to get a confession. he had not thought about saving her soul. lydia stamped her foot in the old way but without creating any impression on the bewitched girl, who insisted on being grateful to the man who had imprisoned her. "is that what he is looking for from me?" thought lydia. long, long winter nights in prison are excellent periods for thinking out a revenge. she saw it would not be easy to revenge herself on o'bannon. if it were albee it would be simple enough--she would make him publicly ridiculous. to wound that sensitive egotism would be to slay the inner man. if it were bobby--poor dear bobby--she would destroy his self-confidence and starve him to death through his own belief that he was worthless. but what could she do to o'bannon but kill him--or make him love her? perhaps threaten to kill him. she tried to think of him on his knees, pleading for his life. but no, she couldn't give the vision reality. he wouldn't go down on his knees; he wouldn't plead; he'd stand up to her in defiance and she would be forced to shoot to prove that she had meant what she said. she had been in prison about three months when one morning word came to the kitchen that she was wanted in the reception room. this meant a visitor. it was not miss bennett's day. it must be a specially privileged visitor. her guest was albee. prisoners whose conduct was good enough to keep them in the first grade were allowed to see visitors once a week. miss bennett came regularly, and eleanor had come more than once. lydia was very eager to see these two, but was not eager to see anyone else. there was always a terrible moment of shyness with newcomers--an awkward ugly moment. she did not wish to see anyone who did not love her in a simple human way that swept away restraint. she did not want to see albee, and she was equally sure he did not want to see her but had been driven by the politician's fear of leaving behind him in his course onward and upward any smoldering fires of hatred which a little easy kindness might quench. as a matter of fact, she did not hate albee--nor like him. she simply recognized him as a useful person whom all her life she would go on using. this coming interview must serve to attach him to her, so that if in the future she needed a powerful politician to help her destroy o'bannon she would have one ready to her hand. she knew exactly and instinctively how to manage albee--not by being appealing and friendly. if she were nice to him he would go away feeling that that chapter in his life was satisfactorily closed. but if she were hostile, if she made him uncomfortable, he would work to win back her friendship. prisoner as she was, she would be his master. she arranged herself, expression and spirit alike, to meet him sternly. she did not stop to consider the impression she might make on her visitor--in her striped dress and her prison shoes. it was never lydia's habit to think first of the impression she was making. she was brought to the matron's room, and then crossing the hall she entered the bare reception room, with its chill, white mantelpiece, the fireplace blocked by a sheet of metal, its empty center table and stiff straight-backed chairs. she entered without any anticipation of what was in store for her, and saw a tall figure just turning from the window. it was o'bannon. she had just a blurred vision of his gray eyes and the hollows in his cheeks. then her wrists and knees seemed to melt, her heart turned over within her; everything grew yellow, green and black, and she fainted--falling gently full length at the feet of the district attorney. when she came to she was in her own cell. she turned her head slowly to right and left. "where is that man?" she said. she was told he had gone. of course he had gone--gone without waiting for her recovery, without speaking to anyone else. there was the proof that he was vindictive; that he had come to humiliate her, to feast his eyes on her distress. he had hardly dared hope that she would faint at his feet. there was real cruelty for you, she thought--to ruin a woman's life and then to come and enjoy the spectacle. what a story for him to go home with, to remember and smile over, to tell, perhaps, to his mother or eleanor! "the poor girl!" he might say with tones of false pity in his voice. "at the mere sight of me she fainted dead away and lay at my feet in her prison dress, her hands coarsened by hard work----" this last proof of her utter defenselessness infuriated her. she was justified in her revenge, whatever it might be. the thought of it ran through all her dreams like a secret romance. it began to take shape in her mind as political ruin. she knew from eleanor that he had ambitions. he had taken the district attorneyship with the intention of making it lead to higher political office. she had fancies of defeating him in a campaign, using all the tragedy of her own experience to rouse the emotions of audiences. easier to destroy him within his own party by albee's help--easier, but not so spectacular. he might not know who had done it unless she went to him and explained. over that interview her mind often lingered. as her ideas of retribution took shape she became happier in her daily life, as if the thought of o'bannon sucked up all the poison in her nature and left her other relations sweeter. if lydia had but known it, her revenge was complete when she fell at his feet. the months she had spent in prison had been paradise compared to the months he had spent at large. the verdict in the case had hardly been rendered before he had begun to be tortured by doubts as to his own motives. it was no help to him that his reason offered him a perfect defense. the girl was a criminal--reckless, irresponsible and untruthful, more deserving of punishment than most of the defendants who came into court. if there were any personal animus in his prosecution there was an excuse for it in the fact that albee had certainly come to him with the intention of exerting dishonorable pressure in her behalf. everyone he saw--his mother, eleanor, foster, judge homan--all believed that he had followed the path of duty in spite of many shining temptations to be weakly pitiful. but he himself knew--and gradually came to admit--that he had done what he passionately desired to do. even he could not look deeply enough into his own heart to understand his motives, but he began to be aware of a secret growing remorse poisoning his inner life. the thought of her in prison was never out of his mind, and it was a nightmare prison he thought of. in the first warm september days he imagined the leaden, airless heat of cells. when october turned suddenly cold and windy he remembered how she was accustomed to playing golf on the windy links and how he had once seen her driving from a tee near the roadside with her skirts wrapped about her by her vigorous swing. he gave up playing bridge--the memories were too poignant. and after eleanor had once mentioned that lydia was fond of dancing he could not listen to a strain of dance music. christmas was a particularly trying time to him, with all its assumption of rejoicing--a prison christmas! during the holidays he was in new york for a few days. his theory was that lack of exercise was the reason for his not sleeping better. he used to take long walks in the afternoon and evening so as to go to bed tired. one afternoon at twilight he was walking round the reservoir in the park when he recognized something familiar in a trim little figure approaching him--something that changed the beat of his heart. it was miss bennett. he stopped her, uncertain of his reception. "is that mr. o'bannon?" she said, staring up at him in the dim light. the city beyond the bare trees had begun to turn into a sort of universal lilac mist, punctuated with yellow dots of light. it was too dark for miss bennett to see any change in o'bannon's appearance, anything ravaged and worn, anything suggesting an abnormal strain. miss bennett, though kind and gentle, was not imaginative about turbulent, irregular emotions, such as she herself did not experience. she was not on the lookout for danger signals. she did not feel unfriendly to o'bannon. on the contrary she admired him. she could, as she said, see his side of it. she prided herself on seeing both sides of every question. she greeted him cordially as soon as she was sure it was he. he turned and walked with her. they had the reservoir to themselves. miss bennett thought it more tactful not to refer to lydia. she began talking about the beauty of the city. country people always spoke as if all natural beauty were excluded from towns, but for her part---- o'bannon suddenly interrupted her. "have you seen miss thorne lately?" he said in a queer, quick, low tone. when benny felt a thing she could always express it. this was fortunate for her because when she expressed it she relieved the acuteness of her own feeling. she very naturally, therefore, sought the right phrase, even sometimes one of an almost indecent poignancy, because the more poignantly she made the other person feel the more sure she could be of her own relief. then, too, she was not sorry that o'bannon should understand just what it was he had done--his duty, perhaps, but he might as well know the consequences. "have i seen her?" she exclaimed. "oh, mr. o'bannon!" there was a pause as if it were too terrible to go on with, but of course she did go on. "i see her every week. she's like an animal in a trap. perhaps you never saw one--in a trap, i mean. lydia had a gray wolfhound once, and in the woods it strayed away and got caught in a mink trap. it was almost dead when we found it, but so patient and hopeless. she's getting to be like that--each week a little more patient than the week before--she who was never patient. oh, mr. o'bannon, i feel sometimes as if i couldn't bear it--the way they've ground it out of her in a few months! she seems like an old woman in a lovely young woman's body. they haven't spoiled that--at least they haven't yet." she wiped her eyes with a filmy handkerchief, and her step became brisker. she felt better. for a moment she had got rid of the pathos of the situation. o'bannon, she saw, had taken up her burden. he walked along beside her silent for a few steps, and then suddenly took off his hat, murmured something about being late for an engagement and left her, disappearing down the steep slope of the reservoir. he wandered restlessly up and down like a man in physical pain. no reality, he finally decided, could be as terrible as the visions which, with the help of miss bennett, his imagination kept calling before him. that night he took the train, and in the middle of the next morning arrived at the prison gates. there was no difficulty about his seeing the prisoner. his explanation that he was passing by on his way to see the warden about one of the men prisoners was not required. the matron agreed readily to send for lydia. it seemed to him a long time before she came. he stood staring out of the window, stray sentences leaping up in his mind--"not less than three nor more than seven years"--"an animal in a trap"--"an old woman in a lovely young woman's body." he heard steps approaching and his pulses began to beat thickly and heavily. he turned round, and as he did so she fell at his feet. the matron came in, running at the sound of her fall. o'bannon picked her up limp as a rag doll in his arms and carried her back to her cell. under most circumstances he would have noticed that the cell was bright and large, but now he only compared it, with a pang at his heart, to that large, luxurious, deserted bedroom of lydia's in which he had once interviewed evans. the matron drove him away before lydia recovered consciousness. he waited in the outer room, heard that she was perfectly well, and then took his miserable departure. he got back to new york late that night, and the next day he resigned his position as district attorney. eleanor read of his resignation first in the local paper, and came to his mother for an explanation; but mrs. o'bannon was as much surprised as anyone. without acknowledging it, both women were frightened at the prospect of o'bannon's attempting, without backing, to build up a law practice in new york. both dreaded the effect upon him of failure. both would have advised against his resigning his position. perhaps for this very reason neither had been consulted. the two women who loved him parted with specious expressions of confidence. doubtless dan would make a great success of it, they said. he was brilliant, and worked so hard. chapter xv in the spring lydia was transferred from the kitchen to the long, bright workroom. here the women prisoners hemmed the blankets woven in the men's prison. here they themselves wove the rag rugs for the floors, made up the house linen and their own clothes--joseph's too--not only their prison clothes, but the complete outfit with which each prisoner was dismissed. lydia was incredibly awkward with the needle. it surprised the tall, thin assistant in charge of the workroom that anyone who had had what she described as advantages could be so grossly ignorant of the art of sewing. lydia hardly knew on which finger to put her thimble and tied a knot in her thread like a man tying a rope. but it was her very inability that first woke her interest, her will. she did not like to be stupider than anyone else. suddenly one day her little jaw set and she decided to learn how to sew. from that moment she began to adjust herself to prison life. lydia wondered, considering prisoners in the first grade are allowed to receive visits from their families once a week, and from others, with the approval of the warden, once a month, at the small number of visitors who came to the prison. were all these women cast off by their families? evans explained the matter to her, and lydia felt ashamed that she had needed an explanation. "it takes a man a week's salary--at a good job, too--from new york here and back." lydia did what was rare of her--she colored. for the first time in her life she felt ashamed, not so much of the privileges of money but of the ease with which she had always taken them. it came over her that this was one of the objects for which mrs. galton had once asked a subscription. a memory rose of the way in which in old days she used to dispose of her morning's mail when it came in on her flowered breakfast tray. advertisements and financial appeals from unknown sources were twisted together by her vigorous fingers and tossed into the waste-paper basket. mrs. galton's might well have been among these. she was horrified on looking back at her own lack of humanity. she might have guessed without going through the experience that prison life needed some alleviation. it meant a great deal to her to see benny every week. benny stood in the place of her family. she longed to hear of the outside world and her old friends. but she did not crave these visits with such passion as the imprisoned mothers craved a sight of their children. thought leading quickly to action in lydia, she arranged through miss bennett, allowing it to be supposed to be miss bennett's enterprise, to finance the visits of families to the prison. everyone rejoiced, as if it were a common benefit, over the visit of muriel's mother and the beautiful auburn-haired daughter of the middle-aged real-estate operator. lydia felt as if she had been outside the human race all her life and had just been initiated into it. she said something like this to evans. "oh, louisa, rich people don't know anything, do they?" evans tried to console her. "if they want to they always can." it was true, lydia thought; she had not wanted to know. she had not wanted anything but her own way, irrespective of anyone else's. that was being criminal--to want your own way too much. that was all that these people about her had wanted--these forgers and defrauders--their own way, their own way. though she still held her belief that the killing of drummond had been an accident, she saw that the bribing of him had been wrong--the same streak in her, the same determination to have her own way. she thought of her father and all their early struggles, and how when she had believed that she was triumphing most over him she had been at her worst. her poor father! it was from him she had inherited her will, but he had learned in life, as she was now learning in prison, that the strongest will is the will that knows how to bend. she thought a great deal about her father. he must have been terribly lonely sometimes. she had never given him anything in the way of affection. she had not really loved him, and yet she loved him now. her heart ached with a palpable weight of remorse. he had been her only relation, and she had done nothing but fight and oppose and wound him. what a cruel, stupid creature she had been--all her life! and now it was too late. her father was gone, so long ago she had almost forgotten him in one aspect. and then again it would seem as if he must still be somewhere, waiting to order her upstairs as he had when she was a child. only benny was left--benny whom she had so despised. yet benny would not need to go to prison in order to learn to respect other people's rights. benny had been born knowing just what everyone else wanted--eager to get all men their hearts' desire. lydia was not religious by temperament. she had now none of the joy of a great revelation. but she had the courage, unsupported by any sense of a higher power, to look at herself as she was. she saw now that her relation to life had always been ugly, hostile, violent. everyone who had ever loved her had been able to love through something beautiful in their own natures--in spite of all the unloveliness of hers. she thought not only of the relations she had missed, like the relation to her father, but of friendships she had lost, which she had deliberately broken in the hideous daily struggle to get her own way. she would never now renew that struggle. she had come in contact with something stronger than herself, of which the impersonal power of the law was only a visible symbol. she was not sure whether it had broken her or remade her, but it had given her peace--happiness she had never had--a peace which she believed she could preserve even when she went out of the sheltering routine of prison. the only feature of life which terrified and revolted her was the persisting individuality of lydia thorne. if there were only a charm other than death to free you from yourself! sometimes she felt like a maniac chained to a mirror. yet she knew that it was the long months of enforced contemplations that had saved her. on friday evening the inmates were allowed to dance in the assembly room--half theater, half chapel. in her effort to escape from herself lydia went once to watch, and came again and again with increasing interest. it soon began to be rumored that she was a good dancer and knew new steps. the dances became dancing classes. lydia, except for her natural impatience, was a born teacher, clear in her explanations and willing to work for perfection. evans, who had taken lydia to so many balls in past years, smiled to see her laboring over the steps of some heavy grandmother or light-footed--and perhaps light-fingered--mulatto girl. an evening suddenly came back to her. it was in new york. she had come downstairs about eleven o'clock with miss thorne's opera cloak and fan. there had been people to dinner, but they had all gone except mr. dorset, and he was being instructed in some new intricacy of the dance. miss bennett, who belonged to a generation that knew something about playing the piano, was making music for them. evans, if she shut her eyes, could see lydia as she was then, in a short blue brocade, trying to shove her partner into the correct step and literally shaking him when he failed to catch her rhythm. she was being far more patient with muriel, holding her pale coffee-colored hands and repeating, "one-two, one-two; one-two-three-four. there, muriel, you've got it!" her face lit up with pleasure as she turned to evans. "isn't she quick at it, louisa?" lydia's second spring in prison was well advanced when she was sent for by the matron. such a summons was an event lydia racked her brain to think what was coming--for good or evil. the matron's first question was startling. did she know anything about baseball? did she? yes, something. her mind went back to a fourth of july house party she had been to where a baseball game among the guests was a yearly feature. she and the matron discussed the possibilities of getting up two nines among the inmates. she suggested that there were books on the subject. a book would be provided. she felt touched and flattered at the responsibility put upon her, humbly eager to succeed. the whole question began to absorb her. she studied it in the evening and thought about it during the day, considering the possibilities of her material, the relation of character to skill. grace, a forger, was actually a better pitcher, but the woman who had killed her husband had infinitely more staying power. all through that second summer she occupied herself, day and night, with the team, more and more as september drew to a close. for she knew that with the approaching expiration of her minimum sentence the parole board would consider her release. freedom in all probability was near, and freedom is a disorganizing thought to prisoners. the peace she had gained in prison began to flow away as each day brought her nearer to release. she began to dream that she was already free, and to wake dissatisfied, with a trace of the same restless irritation of her first weeks. could it be, she thought, that she had learned nothing after all? could even the idea of returning to the old life change her back into the old detestable thing? prison authorities have learned that the last night in prison is more trying to a prisoner's morale than any other, except perhaps the first. lydia found it so when her last night there came. she knew that she was to be set free early in the morning. miss bennett would be there, and they would take an early train to new york together. it was a certainty, she kept telling herself, a certainty on which she could rely, and yet she spent the entire night in an agony of fear and impatience. she would have been calmer if she had been waiting the hour of a prearranged escape. the darkness of night continued so long that it seemed as if some unheralded eclipse had done away with sunrise, and when at last the dawn began to color the window the hour between it and her release was nothing but a fevered anxiety. she was hardly aware of miss bennett waiting for her in the matron's room--hardly aware of the matron herself, imperturbable as ever, bidding her good-by. only the clang of the gate behind her quieted her. only from outside the bars did she want to pause and look back at the prison as at an old friend. it was a bright autumn morning. the wind was chasing immense white clouds across the sky and scattering the leaves of the endless row of trees that stood like sentinels along the high wall. miss bennett wanted to hurry across the street at once to the railroad station, although their train would not start for some time; she wanted to get away from the menace of that dark wall--a very perfect piece of masonry. but lydia had seen it too long from the inside not to be eager to savor a view of it from without. she stared slowly about her like a tourist before some spectacle of awesome beauty. she looked down the alley between the trees and the wall to where on her left was the sharp clean corner of the stonework. she looked to her right, where as the wall rose higher she could see the little watchtower of the prison guard. then she turned completely round and looked back through the bars at the prison itself. "don't you think it's a pretty old doorway?" she said. miss bennett acknowledged its beauty rather briefly. "will you tell me why it has 'state asylum' on the horse block?" she said. "that's just what it is," said lydia--"an asylum, a real asylum to some of us. it used to be for the insane, benny. that's why." on the all-day journey to new york miss bennett had counted on hearing the full psychological story of the last two years. in her visits to the prison she had found that lydia wanted to hear of the outside world--not to talk of herself; but now that she was free miss bennett hoped this might be changed. she had taken a compartment so they could be by themselves, but the minute the door was shut upon them a funny change came over lydia. she grew absent and tense, and at last she sprang up and opened it. "it's pleasanter open," she said haughtily, and then she suddenly laughed. "oh, benny, to be able to open a closed door!" miss bennett began to cry softly. all these months she had been trying to persuade herself that the change in lydia was due to prison clothes; but now, seeing her dressed as she used to dress, the change was still there. she was thinner, finer--shaped, as it were, by a sharper mold. all her reactions were slower. it took her longer to answer, longer to smile. this gave her--what lydia had never had before--a touch of mystery, as if her real life were going on somewhere else, below the surface, remote from companionship. she wiped her eyes, thinking that she must not let lydia guess she thought her changed. their eyes met. lydia was discovering a curious fact, which she in her turn thought it better to conceal. it was this: that the figures of her prison life had a depth and reality that made all the rest of the world seem like shadows. even while she questioned miss bennett about her friends she felt as if she were asking about characters in a book which she had not had time to finish. would bobby be sure to be at the station? was eleanor coming to town that night to see her? where was albee? miss bennett did not know where albee was, and her tone indicated that she did not greatly care. she did not intend to stir lydia up against anyone but she could not help wishing lydia would punish albee. he had not been really loyal, and he was the only one of the intimate circle who had not been. a man with red blood in his veins, miss bennett thought, would have married lydia the day before she went to prison or would at least be waiting, hat in hand, the day she came out. bobby, gay and affectionate as ever, met them at the station and drove with them to the town house. morson opened the front door and ran down the steps with a blank face and a brisk manner, as if she had been returning from a week-end; but as she stepped out of the motor he attempted a sentence. "glad to see you back, miss," he said, and then his self-control gave way. he turned aside with one hand over his eyes and the other feeling wildly in his tail pocket for a handkerchief. lydia began to cry too. she put her hand on morson's shoulder and said, "i'm so glad to see you, morson. you're almost the oldest friend i have in the world," and she added, without shame, to miss bennett, "isn't it awful the way i cry at anything nowadays?" she went into the house, blowing her nose. the house was full of telegrams and flowers. lydia did not open the telegrams, but the flowers seemed to give her pleasure. she went about breathing in long whiffs of them and touching their petals. morson, in perfect control of himself, but with his eyes as red as fire, came to ask at what hour she would dine. lydia had a great deal to do before dinner. she produced a dirty paper from her pocketbook and began studying it. "is there anything special you'd like to order?" said miss bennett. lydia did not look up but answered that morson remembered what she liked, which drove him out of the room again. her telephoning, it appeared, was to the families and friends of her fellow prisoners. she was very conscientious about it, and very patient, even with those who, unaccustomed to the telephone or unwilling to lose touch with a voice so recently come from their loved ones, would ask the same question over and over again. but finally it was over, and lydia free to bathe and dress and finally to sit down in her own dining room to a wonderful little meal that was the symbol of her freedom. yet all she could think of was the smell of the freshly baked dinner rolls that brought back the large, low kitchen and the revolving oven--revolving at that very moment, perhaps--so far away. "oh, my dear," said miss bennett, "i've found the nicest little maid for you--a swiss girl who can sew--really make your things if you want her to, and----" lydia felt embarrassed. she turned her head from side to side as miss bennett ran on describing the discovery. she simply could never have a maid again. how was she to explain? she did not understand it thoroughly herself, only she knew that she could never again demand that another woman--as young, perhaps, and as fond of amusement as herself--should give a lifetime to taking care of her wardrobe. personal service like that would annoy and embarrass her now. the first thing to do was to make her life less complex in such matters. she put her hand over miss bennett's as it lay on the table. "shouldn't you think she'd wish me back at hard labor?" she said to bobby. "she takes such a lot of trouble for me." miss bennett, emotionally susceptible to praise, wiped her eyes, and presently went away, leaving bobby and lydia alone. she wondered if perhaps that would be the best thing for lydia to do--to rebuild her life on bobby's gay but unwavering devotion. lydia, leaning her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands, listened while bobby gossiped over the empty coffee cups. did lydia know about this western coal man that may swayne was going to marry? bobby set him before her in an instant--"a round-faced man, lydia, with $ , , , and such a vocabulary! he never thinks; he presumes. he doesn't come into a room; he ventures to intrude. may has quite a lot of alterations to do on him." and the piers--had lydia heard about them? fanny had fallen in love with the prophet of a new religion and had made all her arrangements to divorce noel, but before she left him, as a proof of her new powers, she thought she'd cure him of drinking. well, my dear, she did. and the result was she found she liked a nonalcoholic noel better than ever--and she chucked the seer. can you beat it? shadows--they did seem like shadows to lydia. staring before her, she fell into meditation, remembering evans and the pale coffee-colored muriel and the matron--the small, placid-browed matron who knew not fear. suddenly she came back to realize that bobby was asking her to marry him. most of their acquaintances believed that he never did anything else; but as a matter of fact, it was the first time he had ever put it into words. he wasn't sure it was a tactful thing to do now. she might think--bobby was always terribly aware of what people might think--that his suggesting such a mediocre future for her was to admit that he thought her beaten. whereas to him she was as triumphant and desirable as ever. on the other hand, it might be just the right thing to do. with men like albee getting to cover and some people bound to be hateful, she could say to herself, "well, i can always marry bobby and go to live in italy." he put it to her. "lydia, wouldn't you consider marrying me to-morrow and sailing for greece or sicily or grenada--that's a heavenly place. i should be so wildly happy, dear, that i think you'd be pleased in a mild sort of way, too." go away? it was the last thing she wanted to do. "no, no!" she said quickly. "i must stay here!" "well, marry me and stay here." she shook her head, trying to explain to him--she wouldn't ever marry. she had found a new clew to life and wanted to follow it alone. she had interest, intense, vital interest, to give to life and affairs--yes, and even people; but she had not love. human relationships couldn't make or mar life for her any more. she wanted to work--nothing else. she paused, and in the pause the dining-room door opened and eleanor came in. eleanor had been up at dawn to get a train from the adirondacks in time to meet lydia at the station, and of course the train had been late. would lydia put her up for the night? lydia's cry of welcome did not sound like a person to whom all human relationships had become indifferent. indeed eleanor was the person she wanted most to see. eleanor was not emotional, or rather she expressed her emotion by a heightened intellectual sensitiveness. she wouldn't cry, she wouldn't regard lydia as a shorn lamb the way miss bennett did, nor yet would she assume that she was utterly unchanged, as all the rest of her friends might. eleanor's manner was almost commonplace. perhaps it would be fairer to say that she left the introduction of anything dramatic to lydia's choice. bobby soon went away and left the two women together. they went upstairs to lydia's bedroom, and in their dressing gowns, with chairs drawn to the fire, they talked. they talked with long pauses between them. no one but eleanor would have allowed those long silences to pass uninterrupted, but she was wise enough to know they were the very essence of companionship. though eleanor asked several questions about the details of prison life, she was too wise to ask anything about the fundamental change which she felt had taken place in lydia. she did not betray that she felt there was a change. she wondered whether lydia knew it herself. it was hard to say, for the girl, always inexpert with verbal expressions, had become more so in the two years of solitude and contemplation. whatever spontaneity of speech she had had was gone. she was, eleanor thought, like a person using an unfamiliar tongue, aware of the difficulty of putting thought into words. she could not help being touched--and a little amused--at the seriousness with which lydia mentioned her late companions; lydia, who had always been so selective about her own friends and so scornful about everybody else's. she spoke of evans, the pallid little thief, as if light had flowed from her as from an incarnation of the buddha. seeing that lydia had caught some reflection of the thought, eleanor thought it better to put it into words. "now, don't tell me, my dear," she said, "that you, too, have discovered that all criminals are pure white souls." "just the opposite. all pure white souls are criminals--all of us are criminals at heart. the only way not to be is to recognize the fact that you are. it's a terrible idea at first--at least it was to me. it was like going through death and coming out alive." lydia paused, staring before her, and anyone in the world except eleanor would have thought she had finished; but eleanor's fine ear caught the beat of an approaching idea. "but it's such a comfort, nell, to belong to the tribe--such a relief. and i should never have had it if it had not been"--she hesitated, and eleanor's heart contracted with a sudden fear that the name of o'bannon was about to enter--"if it had not been for my accident." eleanor was not sure that lydia had deliberately avoided the name. what, she wondered, was left of that unjust and bitter hatred? she could not detect a trace of bitterness anywhere in lydia's nature to-night. but then she had always had those moments of gentleness. presently miss bennett came in to say in her old, timid, suggestive manner that it was late--she hated to interrupt them, but she really did think that lydia ought to go to bed. lydia got up at once. "i suppose i ought," she said. "it's been an exciting day for me." eleanor noted that such a suggestion from miss bennett in old days would have meant that lydia would have felt it her duty to stay up another hour. "i have to, my dear," she would have said, "or else benny would be trying to coerce me in every detail of my life." chapter xvi the next morning at the regular prison hour lydia woke with a start. she had been aware for some time of a strange unaccountable roaring in her ears. she looked about her, surprised to see that the light of dawn was not falling through a tall barred aperture at the head of her bed, but was coming across a wide carpeted room from two chintz-curtained windows. then she remembered she was at home; the roaring was the habitual sound of a great city; the room was the room she had had since she was a child. it seemed less familiar to her, less homelike, than her cell. she put out her hand to the satin coverlet and the sheets, softer than satin. the physical sensation of the contact was delicious, and yet there was something sad about it too. it was the thought of her late companions that made her sad, as if she had deserted them in trouble. it would be two hours or more before eleanor and benny would be awake. she flung her arms above her head and lay back, thinking. she mustn't let them cherish her as if she were a wounded, stricken creature. she was more to be envied now than in the old fighting days, when all her inner life had been a sort of poisoned turmoil. no one had pitied her then. her plan had been not to be too hasty in arranging her new life, which she knew must include work--work in connection with prisoners. but now she saw she mustn't waste a minute. she must have work at once to take her away from herself. she could hardly face the coming day--everyone considering her and that detestable ego of hers, asking her what she wanted to do. she must have a routine immediately. she was not strong enough yet to live without one. only one thing must take precedence of everything else--a pardon for evans. she could not bear to remain at liberty with evans still serving a sentence. with that accomplished, she could go forward in peace. in peace? as she thought of it she knew that there was one corner of her mind where there was not and never would be peace. only last evening, in the first happiness of being at home, the mention of o'bannon's name had threatened to destroy it. and now he was in her mind, holding it without rivals. the moment had come when her hatred of him could find expression. it needn't be a secret dream, like a child's fairy story. she needn't suppress it--she could act. if she had not been such a coward last evening she would have named him and gone boldly on and found out from eleanor where he was, what he was doing, what was his heart's desire. perhaps if she had put her questions frankly eleanor would not have told her; but it would not be difficult to deceive so doting a friend of his. eleanor could easily be persuaded that his victim had been so tamed and crushed in prison that she had come to admire him, to look differently on the world. suddenly lydia sat straight up in her bed. and hadn't she changed? in the old days she had never felt with more bitter violence than she was feeling now. the excitement of her revenge had wiped out every other interest. the flame of her hatred had destroyed the whole structure of her new philosophy. she sat up in her bed and wrung her hands. what could she do? what could she do? the mere thought of that man changed her back into being the woman she hated to be. she would rather die than live as her old self, but how could she help thinking of him when the idea of injuring him was more vivid, more exciting, than any other idea in the world? she had come out of prison resolved that her first action would be to get a pardon for evans, and here she was forgetting her obligations and her remorse, forgetting everything but a desire to wound and destroy. he had the power to make her what she loathed to be. her room was at the back of the house, and the sun, finding some chink between the houses behind the thorne house, crept in under the shades and began moving slowly across the plain, dark, velvet carpet. it had time to move some distance while she sat there immovable, unaware of her surroundings. gradually she came to see that she must choose between the two. either she must give up forever the idea of revenging herself on o'bannon or she must give up all the peace and wisdom that she had so painfully learned--she had almost lost it already, and she had not been twenty-four hours out of prison. an hour later eleanor was wakened by the opening of her door. lydia was standing at the foot of her bed, grasping the edge of it in her two white hands. it was eleanor's first good look at her in the light of day. she was startled by lydia's beauty--a kind of beauty she had never had before. no one could now have likened her to a picture by cabanel of the star of the harem. everything sleek and hard and smooth had gone. she looked more like the picture of some ravaged, pale spanish saint, still so young that the inner struggle had molded without lining her face. she stood staring at eleanor, her dark hair standing out about her face, and her pale dressing gown defining the beautiful line of her shoulders, as she raised them, pressing her hands down on the foot of the bed. "well, my dear, good morning," was eleanor's greeting, though she was not unaware that something emotional was in the air. "eleanor," began the other, her enormous tragic eyes fixed now, not on her friend's, but on a spot on the pillow about five inches away, "there is something i want to say to you." the best agreement was silence, and lydia went on, "i want you never to talk to me about that man--your friend--i mean o'bannon." "talk of him!" exclaimed eleanor, her first thought being, "am i always talking of him?" "i don't want to hear of him or think of him or speak of him." this time eleanor's hesitation was not entirely acquiescent. "i can understand," she said, "that you might not want to see him, but to speak of him----i have been thinking, lydia, that that is one of the subjects that you and i ought to talk over--to talk out." "no, no!" returned lydia quickly, and eleanor saw with surprise that it was only by leaning on her hands that she kept them from trembling. "i can't explain it to you--i don't want to go into it--but i don't want to remember that he exists. if you would just accept it as a fact, and tell other people--benny and bobby. if you would do that for me, eleanor----" "of course i'll do it," answered eleanor. there really was not anything else to say. the next instant lydia was gone. eleanor lay quite still, trying to understand the meaning of the scene. she was often accused by her friends of coldness, of lack of human imagination, of attempting to substitute mental for emotional processes. aware of a certain amount of justice in these accusations, she tried to atone by putting her reasoning faculty most patiently and gently at work upon the problems of those she loved. her nature was not capable of really understanding turgidity, but she did better than most people inasmuch as she avoided forming wrong judgments about it. she felt about lydia now as she had once felt when o'bannon had described to her his struggle against drinking--wonder that a person so much braver and stronger than she, eleanor, was, could be content to avoid temptation instead of fighting it. at breakfast, which the three women had together, eleanor saw that lydia had regained her calm of the evening before. while they were still at table wiley was shown in. he felt obviously a certain constraint, an embarrassment to know what to say, which he concealed under a formal professional manner. lydia put a stop to this simply enough by getting up and putting her arms round his neck. "i've thought so much of all you've been doing for me since i was a child," she said. he was associated in her mind with her father. wiley felt his eyelids stinging. "why, my dear child, my dear child!" he said. and he held her off to look at her as if uncertain that it was the same girl. "well, i must say prison doesn't seem to have done you much harm." "it's done me good, i hope," said lydia. she made him sit down and drink an extra cup of coffee. there was something quite like a festival in the comradeship that developed among the four of them. she began to question her visitor about the method of getting a pardon for evans. he advised her to go and see mrs. galton. at the name she and benny glanced at each other and smiled. they were both thinking of the day when lydia had so resented the presence of the old lady in her house. she went to mrs. galton's office that same morning. it occupied the second floor of an old building that looked out over union square. lydia had not thought of making an appointment, and when she reached the outer office she was told that mrs. galton was engaged--would be engaged for some time--a member of the parole board was in conference. would miss thorne wait? yes, lydia would wait. she sat down on a hard bench and watched the work of the society go on before her eyes. she had some knowledge of business and finance, and she knew very soon that she was in the presence of an efficient organization; but it was not only the efficiency that charmed her--it was partly the mere business routine, which made her feel like coming home after she had been at sea. the clear impersonal purpose of it all promised forgetfulness of self. at the end of half an hour of waiting she was possessed with the desire to become part of this work. here was the solution of her problem. when at last she was shown into mrs. galton's bleak little office--not half the size of lydia's cell--her first words were not of evans, after all. "mrs. galton," she said, "can you use me in this organization?" without intending the smallest disrespect to mrs. galton, it must be admitted that this question was like asking a lion if it could use a lamb. the organization, like all others of its type, needed devotion, needed workers, needed money, and was not averse to a little discreet publicity. all these lydia offered. mrs. galton smiled. "yes," she said. the monosyllable was expressive. the older woman, with forty years of executive work behind her, divided all workers roughly into two classes: the amiable idealists who created no antagonism and accomplished nothing, and the effective workers who accomplished marvels and stirred up endless quarrels. she--except in her very weakest moments--preferred the latter, though they disrupted her office force and gave her nervous indigestion. she recognized lydia as belonging to this class. and presently, being a wise and experienced woman, she recognized another fact: that she was probably in the presence of her successor. a pang shot through her. she was seventy and keener than ever about the work to which she had given all her life. if she kept this girl out she would hold office longer than if she let her in. if she let her in it would vivify the whole organization. she might become the ideal leader; at least she could be made so--youth, beauty, money, experience of prison conditions and the romance of her story to capture public imagination. lydia, with her acute sense of her own unworthiness, was dimly aware of some hesitation, and supposed that she was being weighed in the balance. she had no suspicion that a struggle, somewhat like her own struggle, was going on in the honest, philanthropic breast before her. a few minutes afterwards mrs. galton offered her the treasurership. lydia was overcome by the honor. "but i thought you had a treasurer, already," she murmured. "if i could be her assistant----" "oh, no doubt she will be glad to resign," said the president with a calmness that suggested that glad or not the resignation would be forthcoming. the two women went out to lunch together. more and more, as they talked, lydia saw that this was just what she wanted. this would be her salvation. after they were back in the office again she spoke of evans. what could she do? what must be done? "let me see," said mrs. galton. "you were the complaining witness against her, i suppose. well, you must see the judge and the district attorney who tried the case." lydia gave a funny little sound, half exclamation, half moan. "o'bannon!" she said. no, mrs. galton thought that wasn't the name of the district attorney of princess county. she rang her bell and told her secretary to look it up, while she went on calmly discussing the details of the procedure. presently the secretary returned with a book. john j. hillyer was district attorney. "are you sure?" lydia asked. "i thought mr. o'bannon was." the secretary said, consulting her book, that he had resigned almost two years before. "but we'd have to have his signature, wouldn't we?" said mrs. galton. she and the secretary talked of it, back and forth, not knowing that they were setting an impossible condition for lydia. she couldn't ask o'bannon. all her interest in the prospect of this new work had withered at the name. she felt a profound discouragement. it was terrible to find she would rather leave evans in prison than ask o'bannon to help get her out; terrible to find that man like a barrier across every path she tried to follow in order to escape from him. she thanked them for the trouble they had taken and rose to go. it was arranged that she was to come and begin work on the following monday. it was almost tea time when she reached home. bobby was there, and the piers, and presently may swayne came in with her coal baron. lydia's first emotion on seeing them was a warm, welcoming gladness, but she soon found to her surprise that she had very little to say to them. the truth was that she had lost the trick of meeting her fellow beings in a purely social relation, and the conscious effort to adapt herself, her words, her attention to them exhausted her. she looked back with wonder to the old days, when she had done nothing else all day long. miss bennett soon began to notice that she was looking like a little piece of carved ivory, with eyes of the blackest jet. when at last her visitors had all gone she went straight to bed. the next day she had herself driven down to wide plains, so that she could see judge homans. court was still in session when she got there, and she was shown to the judge's little book-lined room and left to wait. she had expected her first view of the wide main street, of mr. wooley's shop, of the columned courthouse to be intensely painful to her, but it wasn't. the tall attendant who ushered her in greeted her warmly. she remembered him clearly leaning against the double doors of the court room to prevent anyone leaving during the judge's charge. presently the judge came in, just as he had come in every day to her trial, his hands folded, his robes flowing about him. lydia rose. her name apparently had not been given to him, for he looked at her in surprise. then his face lit up. "my dear miss thorne," he said, "when did you get out?" it was the first perfectly natural, spontaneous reference to her imprisonment that she had heard since she left prison. it did away with all constraint and awkwardness, to be taken as a matter of course. criminals were no novelty in the judge's life. he sat down, waved her into a chair opposite, put his elbows on the arms of his swinging chair and locked his knuckles together. "i'm very glad to see you--very glad indeed," he said. but he wasn't at all surprised that she had come. it was not unusual, evidently, for the first visit of a released convict to be paid to the judge. he began to question her rather as if she were a child home for the holidays. "and what did you learn? baking? now that's interesting, isn't it? and sewing? well, well!" he treated her so simply that lydia found herself speaking to him with more freedom about the whole experience of prison than she had been able to speak to anyone. the reason was, she thought, that she did not need to explain to him that she was not a tragic exception, a special case. to him she was just one of a long series of lawbreakers. they talked for an hour. she noted that the judge still enjoyed talking, still insisted on rounding out his sentences; but she felt now no impatience. his reminiscences interested her. before long she found herself consulting him about a subject that had long preyed on her mind--alma wooley. she wanted to do something for alma wooley, yet she supposed the girl would utterly reject anything coming from the woman who had---- the judge put his hand on her arm. "now don't you worry a mite about alma," he said. "alma married a nice young fellow out of the district attorney's office--named foster--and now they have a baby, a nice little baby. i was saying to her father only yesterday that foster is a much better man for her----" while the judge was launched on his speech to mr. wooley, lydia's mind went back to foster--foster waiting and watching for o'bannon like a puppy for its supper. well, she could forgive him even his admiration for that man since he had made alma wooley happy. a weight was lifted from her conscience. finally, with some embarrassment, she told the judge the object of her visit--a pardon for evans. she was prepared to have him remind her, as o'bannon had once done, that it was a matter which had been in her own hands, in that in this very room in which she was now sitting she had virtually refused to help evans. but judge homans, if he remembered, made no reference to the past. "yes, yes," he said. "now let me see. it must have been o'bannon tried that case, wasn't it?" lydia nodded, and he went on, "poor o'bannon! i miss him very much. he resigned, you know, about the time mrs. o'bannon died." "he was married?" asked lydia, and even in her own ears her voice sounded unnaturally loud. no, the judge said, it was the old lady, his mother; and he went on telling lydia what a fine fellow the former district attorney had been--a good man and a good lawyer. "the two are not always combined," the judge said with a chuckle, feeling something cold in his auditor's attention. lydia rose to her feet. she was sorry, she said, that she really must be going home. the judge found his soft black hat and accompanied her to her car. "don't drive yourself?" he asked. she shook her head. she would never drive a car again. the judge patted her hand--told her to come and see him again--let him know how she was getting on. she promised. she saw that in some way an unbreakable human bond had been established between them by the fact that she had committed a crime and he had sentenced her to state's prison for it. she went home feeling encouraged. not only had she managed to get him to agree to enlist o'bannon's help in the matter of evans' pardon, but she herself had supported the mention of o'bannon's name with something that was almost calm. chapter xvii it was noticeable--though no one noticed it--that a month after lydia went to work in mrs. galton's organization everyone in her immediate circle was doing something for released convicts. bobby, miss bennett, eleanor, wiley, all suddenly began to think that the problem of the criminal was the most important, the most vital, the most interesting problem in the world. the explanation was simple: a will like lydia's, harnessed to a constructive purpose, was far more irresistible than in the old days when it had been selfish, spasmodic and undisciplined. she was given a little office, like miss galton's, and she was in it every morning at nine o'clock. miss bennett, who had worried all her life because lydia led an irregular, aimless, idle existence, now worried even more because her working hours were long. "surely," she protested almost every morning, "mrs. galton will not care if you don't get there until half past nine or even ten. these cold days it isn't good for you----" lydia explained that she was not going to the office early in order to please mrs. galton, who, as a matter of fact, did not arrive there until late in the morning. the organization needed money desperately, there was much to be done. but the truth was she loved the routine--the hard impersonal work. it saved her from herself. she was almost happy. eleanor had evidently done what she had been asked to do, for o'bannon seemed to have dropped out of the world. his name was never mentioned, and as week after week went by it seemed to lydia that she herself was forgetting him. perhaps a time would come when she could even see him without wrecking her peace of soul. her only sorrow was the delay in evans' pardon. it didn't come. lydia could not enjoy her liberty with evans in prison. the forms had all been complied with, but the governor did not act. at last mrs. galton suggested her going to albany; or perhaps she knew someone who would have influence with the governor. yes, lydia knew someone--albee. albee was now senator from his own state, and a busy session in washington had kept him there. he had been among the first to telegraph lydia. she found his message and his flowers in the house when she first came home. the message sounded as if it had come from a friend; but lydia knew that it had not; that albee had escaped from her and her influence, or thought he had. she had known it even in the days of her trial, and looking back on the facts and on herself she wondered that she had not resented it. those were days in which she had awarded punishments readily, and albee had really behaved badly to her. they had been very nearly engaged and yet the instant she was in trouble he had deserted her. he had gone through all the motions of helping her, but in spirit she knew that albee the day she killed drummond had begun to disentangle himself. she felt not the least resentment against him; only she recognized the fact that his remoteness from her made it more difficult to make use of him for evans, unless--the idea suddenly came to her--it might make it easier. he would avoid seeing her if he could; but if she found her way to him he might be eager to atone, to set himself right by doing her a definite favor. the evening of the day that she saw this clearly she took a train to washington. the next morning she was waiting in his outer office before he reached it himself. a new secretary--the old one had been promoted to some position of political prominence at home--did not know her and had not been warned against her by name. so she was sitting there when albee came in with his old cheerful, dominating, leonine look. just for the fraction of a second his face fell at seeing her, and then he hurried to her side, as if out of all the world she was the person he most wanted to see. it must not be supposed that lydia had become so saintly that she had forgotten her knowledge of men. she knew now that if she were cordial to albee she could not depend on his doing what she wanted. if on the other hand she withheld her friendship she was sure he would bid high for it. she ignored all his flustered protestations. she smiled at him, a smile a little sad, a little chilly and infinitely remote. "i want very much to speak to you, stephen," she said, and her tone told him that whatever she wanted to talk about had nothing whatsoever to do with themselves. he led her into the inner office. a curious thing was happening to him. he had never been in love with lydia. he had deliberately allowed her beauty and wealth to dazzle him; he had admired her courage, her sureness of herself, contrasting it with his own terror of giving offense to anyone; but at times he had almost hated her. if she had inspired him with one atom of tenderness he would not have deserted her. she never had. he had cut himself off from her without regret. but now as she sat there, finer and paler and more--much more--than two years older, she did inspire tenderness, tenderness of a most vivid and disturbing sort. he could not take his eyes from her face. he suddenly cut into what she was saying about evans. "lydia, my dear, are you happy? yes, yes, of course i can get from the governor anything you ask me, but tell me about yourself." he leaned over, taking her hands in his. she rose, withdrawing them slowly as she did so. "not now," she answered, and moved toward the door. "you mustn't go like that," he protested. "just think, my dear, i have not seen you for two years--the toughest two years i ever spent! you can't just come and go like this. i must see you, talk to you." "when you have got me evans' pardon, stephen--if you get it." she still spoke gently, but there was a good deal of intention behind lydia at her gentlest. he caught the "if"--almost an insult after his confident assertion, but he did not think of the insult. he was aware of nothing but the desire that she should smile gayly and admiringly at him again as she used to, making him feel jovian. "i'm going to new york on thursday," he said. "on friday evening you shall have the pardon. will you be at the opera friday evening?" she hesitated. she had not been to the opera yet. she could not bear the publicity of that blazing circle, but she had kept her box. after all, she thought, she could sit in the back of it, and music was one of the greatest of her pleasures. "will you join me there?" she said. "it will be like old times." "not quite," she answered. still with his hand on the knob of the door, as if he were just going to open it for her, he detained her, trying to make her talk, asking her about her friends, her work, her health; trying to hit upon the master key to her mind, and at last, for he was a man of long experience, he found it. "and that damned crook who prosecuted your case," he said. "do you ever see him?" she shook her head. "i prefer not even to think of him," she replied, and this time she made a gesture that he should open the door. instead he stepped in front of it. he had waked her; he had her attention at last. "naturally, naturally," he said, "but i wish you would think of him for a minute. i'm in rather a fix about that fellow." she longed to know what the fix was, but she did not dare hear. she said softly, "please don't make me think of him, stephen. i'd really rather not." "but you must listen, lydia. help me. i don't know what i ought to do. i have it in my power to ruin that man. shall i?" there was a pause. albee heard her long breaths trembling as she drew them. he thought to himself that his knowledge of her had not gone astray. she had hated that man, and whatever else had changed in her, that hadn't. she suddenly came to life and tried to open the door for herself. "i must go," she said. he did not move. "you know," he said, speaking quickly, "that after your trial he went to pieces, resigned his position, took to drinking again, tried to make his way in new york. he was nearly down and out for a time there." he watched her. a smile, a terrible smile, began to curve the corners of her mouth. he went on: "i couldn't be exactly sorry for his bad luck. in fact, to be candid, i gave him a kick or two when i had the chance. but now he's pulled himself out. he's worked like a dog, and i hear that a couple of friends of mine, of the firm of simpson, aspinwall & mccarter, are going to offer him a partnership. it's a big firm, particularly in the political world." there was a short silence. "shall i let him have it, lydia?" she raised her shoulders scornfully. "could you stop his getting it, stephen?" "do you doubt it?" she turned on him. her jaw was set and lifted as in the old days. "of course i do! if you could have you certainly would have without consulting me. there is a man who you know lacks all integrity and honor, and who, moreover, goes about saying that you tried to bribe him--and failed. oh, he makes a great point of that--you failed! would you let a man like that go into a firm of your friends if you could stop it? no, no! not unless you have grown a good deal meeker than i remember you, stephen." albee made a sweeping gesture, as expressive as a roman emperor's thumbs down. "he shall not have it," and he added with a smile as cruel as lydia's own: "he believes himself absolutely sure of it." she smiled straight into his eyes. "bring me that friday night," she said. "it's more important than the pardon." he opened the door for her and she went out. this was wednesday. she could hardly wait for friday to come. this was the right way--to destroy the man first and then to forget him. she had been silly and sentimental and weak to fancy that she could have real peace in any other way, to imagine that she could go through life skulking, fearing. she was furious at herself when she remembered that she had asked eleanor to avoid mentioning his name. she could mention his name now herself, and see him too. she would enjoy seeing him. she was hardly aware of the passage of time on her journey back to new york. she was living over a meeting between o'bannon and herself after the partnership had been withdrawn. he must be made aware that it was her doing. she reached home just before dinner, and found that miss bennett was dining out. good! lydia had no objection to being alone. but benny had arranged otherwise. she had telephoned to eleanor, and she was coming to dine. lydia smiled. that was pleasant too. eleanor was an intelligent woman but not a mind reader. she saw some change had taken place in lydia, noticed that she ate no dinner, and came to the conclusion that something had gone wrong about evans' pardon; that albee had been, as usual, a weak friend. when they were alone after dinner was over she prepared herself to hear the story. instead, lydia said, "i'm going to the opera on friday, nell--samson and delilah. will you come with me?" there was a little pause, a slight constraint. then eleanor answered that she couldn't; that she had a box of her own that someone had sent her. lydia sprang up with a sudden, short, wild laugh. "that man's going with you!" she said. "mr. o'bannon? yes, he is." eleanor thought a second. "i'll put him off, lydia. i'll tell him not to come." "you'll do nothing of the kind. it's perfect. i don't know what got into me the other day, eleanor. you must have despised me for such pitiful cowardice." "no, my dear," said eleanor slowly, but obviously relieved that the question had come up again. "but i did feel that you weren't going to work the best way to get the poison of the whole thing out of your soul." lydia laughed the same way again. "oh, don't worry about that! i shall get rid of the poison." "how?" "i shall make him suffer. i shall revenge myself, and then forget he exists. you can tell him so if you want." eleanor stared in front of her, blank and serious. then she said, "i don't have many opportunities any more. i seldom see him." lydia's eyes brightened. "ah, you've found him out!" "on the contrary, the longer i know him the more highly i think of him. i don't see him because he's busy. he has been having a difficult time--in business. he decided to get out of politics and go into straight law. new york is like a ferocious monster to a man beginning any profession. dan--but it doesn't matter. his troubles are over now." "are they indeed?" said lydia. "yes, he's had a wonderful offer of a partnership from an older man who----oh, lydia, you ought to try to see that your point of view about him is a prejudiced--a natural one, but still----" "is it a definite offer, eleanor?" "yes, absolutely, though the papers are not to be signed for a day or so." lydia breathed in thoughtfully "a day or so," and eleanor pressed on. "it isn't that i care what you think of him or he of you. i'm past that with my friends, and, as i say, i don't see nearly as much of him as i used to; but----" "of course you don't," answered lydia. "he's ashamed--or, no, it's more that he can't bear to see himself in contrast with your perfect integrity, eleanor. did you know that he came to prison to see me, to gloat over me? sent in for me to come to him in my prison clothes----" lydia's breath quickened as she spoke of the outrage. "he didn't come to gloat over you." "what did he come for then?" to her own surprise eleanor heard her own voice saying, as if unaided it tapped some source of knowledge never before open to her, "because you know very well, lydia, the man's in love with you." lydia sprang forward like a cat. "never say such a thing as that again!" she said. "you don't understand, but it degrades me, it pollutes me! love me! that man! i'd kill him if i thought he dared!" nothing rendered eleanor so calm as excitement in others. "well," she said, "perhaps i'm mistaken," and appeared to let the matter drop; but the other would not have it. "of course you're mistaken! but you must have had some reason for saying such a thing. you're not the kind of person, eleanor, who goes about having disgusting suspicions like that without a reason." "do you really want me to give you a reason or are you only waiting to tear me to pieces, whatever i say?" lydia sat down and caught her hands between her knees, determined to be good. "i want your reason," she said. reasons were not so easy, eleanor found. she spoke slowly. "i saw all through your trial that dan was not like himself, that he was struggling with something stronger than he. he is a man who has always had terrible weaknesses, temptations----" "he drinks," said lydia, and there was a note of almost boastful triumph in her tone. "no"--eleanor was very firm about it--"in recent years only once." "more than once, eleanor." "only once, in a time of emotional strain. what was the emotion? you had just been sentenced. it came to me suddenly that if he were in love with you--it would explain everything." "if he hated me--that would explain it too." "the two emotions are pretty close, lydia." "close?" lydia exclaimed violently. "it shows that you have never felt either." "have you?" "yes, i've felt hate. it's poisoned and withered me for over two years now, and i don't mean to bear it any more. i mean to get rid of it this way--to hurt that man enough to satisfy myself." eleanor rose slowly, and the two women stood a little apart, looking at each other. then eleanor said, "you'll never get rid of it that way. don't do it, lydia, whatever you mean to do." "you're pleading for that man, nell. don't! it's ignominious." "i'm pleading for you, my dear." "don't! it's impertinent." worse than either, eleanor knew it was useless. her motor was waiting for her and she went away. for the first time she understood something that dorset had once said to her--that lydia in her evil moods was the most pathetic figure in the world. chapter xviii before the lights went up on the first entr'acte lydia retreated to the little red-lined box of an anteroom and sank down on the red-silk sofa. she and miss bennett had come alone to the opera; but dorset and albee, who was committed to some sort of political dinner first, were to join them presently. even while the house was still in darkness lydia had recognized the outline of o'bannon's head in a box across the house. she had seen it before she had seen eleanor. miss bennett had stayed in the front of the box. lydia was glad she had. she wanted to be alone while she waited. she could see her between the curtains, sweeping the house with her opera glasses. the door of the box opened and albee came in. she did not speak, but looking up at him every muscle in her body grew tense with interest. he smiled at her and began to hang up his hat and take off his coat. she couldn't bear the suspense. "well?" she asked sternly. "it's all right. the governor will sign it. it's only been pressure of business----" she interrupted him. "and the other thing? have you failed there?" somehow she had never thought of his failing. what should she do if he had? he made a quick pass with his right hand, indicating that o'bannon had been obliterated. "our friend will never be a partner in that firm," he said. he looked at her eagerly and got his reward. she smiled at him, slowly wagging her head at the same time, as if he were too wonderful for words. "stephen, you are superb," she said, and evidently felt it. "does he know it yet?" "no, he won't know it until he opens his mail to-morrow morning." lydia leaned forward and peered out into the house between the curtains. then she turned back and smiled again, but this time with amusement. "he's over there now with eleanor, pleased to death with himself and thinking the world is his oyster." albee had been standing. now as the lights began to sink for the opening of the second act he gave an exclamation of annoyance. "i have something to show you," he said. he sat down beside her on the narrow little sofa, and lowering his voice to fit the lowered lights he whispered, "what would you give for a copy of simpson's letter withdrawing his partnership offer?" "you have it?" her voice betrayed that she would give anything. "what would you give me for it?" he murmured, and in the darkness he put his arms about her and tried to draw her to him. "i won't give you a thing!" her voice was like steel, and so was her body. albee's heart failed him. it seemed as if his arms were paralyzed. he did not dare do what he had imagined himself doing--crushing her to him whether she consented or not. he suddenly thought to himself that she was capable of making an outcry. "the inhuman, unfeminine creature!" he thought, even as he still held her. he felt her put out her hand and quietly take the letter from him. no, that was a little too much! he caught her wrist and held it firmly. then the door opened, someone came in, bobby's voice said, "are you here, lydia?" "yes," said lydia in her sweetest, most natural tone. "turn on the light, bobby, or you'll fall over something. it's just there on your right." it took bobby a moment to find the switch. when he turned on the light he saw lydia and albee sitting side by side on the sofa. lydia was holding a folded paper in her hand. "what's the point of sitting in here when the act is on?" said bobby. "let's go in and see her vamp the strong man." lydia sprang up, and looking at albee deliberately tucked away the paper in the front of her low dress. "turn out the light again bobby," she said. "it shines between the curtains and disturbs me." all three went back to the box, where miss bennett had been sitting alone. it was a long time since lydia had heard any music, and the music of the second act of samson and delilah, the long sweeping chords on the harp, began to trouble her, as the coming thunderstorm seemed to be troubling delilah. her long abstraction from any artistic impression made her as susceptible as a child. the moonlight flooded her with a primitive glamour, her nerves crept to the music of the incredibly sweet duet; and when at last samson followed delilah into her house lydia felt as if the soprano's triumph were her own. as the storm broke albee rose. he bent over miss bennett and then over lydia. "good night, delilah," he whispered. she did not answer, but she thought, "not to your samson, stephen albee." he was gone and she still had the letter. when the act was over she went back to the anteroom to read it. yes, there it was on simpson, aspinwall & mccarter's heavy, simple stationery--clear and unequivocal. mr. simpson regretted so much that conditions had arisen which made it imperative---- lydia glanced across the house and caught o'bannon laughing at something that eleanor was saying to him. she smiled. whatever the joke was, she thought she knew a better one. "how lovely you look, lydia," said bobby, seeing the smile. "almost like a madonna in that white stuff--like a madonna painted by an apache indian." "have you anything that i could write on bobby--a scrap of paper?" bobby tore out a page from a cherished address book and gave it to her with a gold pencil from his watch chain. she stood under the light, pressing the top of the pencil against her lips. then she wrote rapidly: "i have something of importance to say to you. will you meet me in the lobby on the thirty-ninth street side at the end of the performance and let me drive you home? "lydia thorne." she folded it and held it out. "will you take that to o'bannon and get an answer from him?" "to o'bannon?" said bobby. "has anything happened?" "don't bother me now, bobby, there's a dear. just take it." she half shoved him out of the box. "and be as quick as you can," she called after him. he really was quick. in a few seconds she saw the curtain of the opposite box pushed aside and bobby enter. he spoke a moment to eleanor, and then when no one else was watching she saw him speak to o'bannon and give him her note. the two men rose and went together into the back of the box out of her sight. what was happening? was o'bannon now on his way to her? there was a long delay. miss bennett's voice called, "is somebody knocking?" the noise was lydia's restless feet tapping on the floor. just as the lights began to go down bobby returned--alone. he handed her a note. "dear miss thorne: i cannot drive home with you, but i will stop at your house for a few minutes about half-past eleven or a quarter to twelve, if that is not too late. "d. o'b." lydia smiled again. this was better still. she would have plenty of time in her own drawing-room to reveal the facts in any way she liked. she hardly heard the music of the next theme, hardly enjoyed the spectacle of samson's degradation, so absorbed was she in the anticipation of the coming interview. during the ballet in the last scene she saw eleanor rise and o'bannon follow her. she sprang up at once, though miss bennett faintly protested. "oh, aren't you going to wait to see him pull down the temple? it's such fun." miss bennett liked to see masculine strength conquer. lydia shook her head, but offered no explanation. it was almost half past eleven when they entered the house. miss bennett, who had been yawning on the drive home, walked straight to the staircase. morson had delegated his duties for the evening to the parlor maid, a young swede, and she began industriously drawing the bolts of the front door and preparing to put out the lights. lydia stopped her. "get me a glass of water, will you, frieda?" she said. "there'll be one in your room, dear," miss bennett called back, every inch the housekeeper. she did not stop, however, but went on up and disappeared round the turn in the stairs. when the girl came back lydia said, "frieda, i'm expecting a gentleman in a few minutes. after you've let him in you need not wait up. is the fire lit in the drawing-room? then light it, please." she stood for a moment, sipping at the long, cool glass and listening to hear miss bennett's footsteps growing more and more distant; listening, too, for a footstep in the street. in the drawing-room the firelight was already leaping up, outdoing the light of the shaded lamps. left alone, lydia slipped off her opera cloak very softly, as if she did not want to make the smallest noise that would interfere with her listening. the house was quiet, and even the noise of the city was beginning to die down. the steady roar of traffic returning from the theater was almost over. now and then she could hear a fifth avenue bus rolling along on its heavy rubber tires; now and then the slamming of a motor door as some of her neighbors returned from an evening's amusement. she bent over the fire trying to warm her hands. they were like ice, and it must have been from cold, not excitement, she thought, for her mind felt as calm as a well. she turned the little clock--all lilac enamel and rhinestones--so that she could watch it's tiny face. it was a quarter to twelve. she clenched her hands. did he intend to keep her waiting? she started, for the door had softly opened. miss bennett entered in one of her gorgeous dressing gowns of crimson satin and bright-blue birds. "dear child," she said, "you ought to be in bed." "i'm waiting for someone who's coming to see me, benny; and as he may be here at any minute, and i don't suppose you want to be caught in your present costume----" miss bennett lifted her shoulders. "oh, at my age!" she said. "after all, what is the use of having lovely dressing gowns if no one ever sees them?" "it's dan o'bannon that's coming," said lydia, "and i want to see him alone." "o'bannon coming here! but, lydia, you can't see him alone--at this hour. why, it's midnight!" miss bennett's eyes clung to her. "eleven minutes to," said lydia, with her eyes on the clock. "i wish you'd go, benny." miss bennett hesitated. "i don't think you ought to see him alone. i don't think it's quite--quite nice." "oh, this is going to be very nice!" "no, i mean i don't think it's safe. suppose anything should happen." "should happen?" said lydia, and for a moment she looked like the old haughty lydia. "what could happen?" miss bennett raised both her arms and let them drop with a gesture quite french, expressing that they both knew what men were. "he might try to make love to you," she said. the minute she had spoken she wished she had not, for lydia's fine dark brow contracted. "what disgusting ideas you do have benny! that man!" she stopped herself. "i almost wish he would. if he did i think i should kill him." to miss bennett this seemed just an expression; but to lydia, with her eyes fixed on an enormous pair of steel-and-silver scissors that lay on the writing table, it was something more than a phrase. miss bennett decided to withdraw. "stop in my room when you come up," she said. "i shan't close my eyes till you do." then gathering her shining draperies about her she left the room. even after miss bennett had gone her suggestion remained with lydia. would that man have any such idea? would he think her sending for him at such an hour had any flattering significance? or would he see that it was proof of her utter contempt for him--of her belief that she was his superior, the master mind of the two, whatever their situation? as for love-making--let him try it! her blow would be all the more effective if it could be delivered while he was on his knees. with an absurd, hurried, tingling stroke the little clock struck midnight. strange, she thought, that waiting for something certain stretched the nerves more than uncertainty. she knew o'bannon would come--or did she? would he dare do that? leave her sitting waiting for him and never come at all? undoubtedly he had taken eleanor back to her hotel. were they laughing together over her note? at that instant she heard the distant buzz of the front doorbell. every nerve in her body vibrated at the sound. then the drawing-room door opened and closed behind o'bannon. the fly had walked into the parlor, she said to herself--a great big immaculately attired fly. seeing him there before her all her nervousness passed away, and she was conscious of nothing but joy--a joy as inspiring as if it were founded on something holier than hatred; joy that at last her moment had come. she waited a second for his apology, and then she said quite in the manner of a great lady who without complaining is conscious of what is due to her, "you're late." "i walked up," he said. "it's a lovely night." "you have wondered why i sent for you?" "of course." she sank lazily into a chair by the fire. "sit down," she said graciously, as if she were according the privilege to an old servant who might hesitate otherwise. he shook his head. "no," he answered; "i can't stay but a minute. it's after twelve." he leaned his elbow on the mantelpiece and took up the jade dog that stood there, examining its polished surfaces. lydia was well content with this arrangement. it made her feel more at ease. she let a silence fall, and in the silence he raised his eyes from the dog and looked at her as if he were reluctant to do so. he said, "i'm glad to see you here--back in your normal surroundings." thank heaven she did not have to be dovelike any more. "oh, are you?" she said derisively. "didn't you enjoy your little visit to me in prison?" he shook his head slowly. "then may i ask why you came?" "i don't think i shall tell you that." "do you think i don't know?" she asked with a sudden fierceness. "i really haven't thought whether you knew or not." "you came to get just what you did get--the full savor of the humiliation of my position." "my god," he answered coolly, "and they say women have intuition!" his tone, as much as his words, irritated her, and she did not want to be irritated. she raised her chin. "it doesn't really matter why you came, at least not to me. let me tell you why i sent for you to-night." but he was pursuing his own train of thought and did not seem to hear her. "are you able to come back into life again? are you"--he hesitated--"are you happy?" "no. but then i never was very happy. i can tell you this: i wouldn't exchange my prison experience for anything in my whole life. you gave me something, mr. o'bannon, when you sent me to prison, that no one else was ever able to give me, not even my father, though he tried. i mean a sense of the consequences of my own character. that's the only aspect of punishment that is of use to people." his eyes lit up. "you don't mean you're grateful to me!" he said. "no, not grateful," she answered, and a little smile began to curve the corners of her mouth. "not grateful to you, because, you see, i am going to return the obligation--to do the same kind deed to you." "to me? i don't believe i understand." "i don't believe you do. but be patient. you will. during my trial, i imagine--in fact i was told by your friends--that you took the position that you were treating me as you treated any criminal whose case you prosecuted." "what other stand could i take?" "oh, officially none. but in your mind you must have known you had another motive. some people think it was a young man's natural thirst for headlines, but i know--and i want you to know i know it--that it was your personal vindictiveness toward me." "don't say that!" he interrupted sharply. "i shall say it," lydia went on, "and to you, because you are the only person i can say it to. oh, you knew very well how it would be! i have to sit silent while eleanor tells me how noble your motives were in prosecuting me. you know--oh, you are so safe in knowing--that i will not tell anyone that your hatred of me goes back to that evening when i did not show myself susceptible to your fascinations when you tried to kiss me, and i----" "i did kiss you," said o'bannon. "i believe you did, but----" "you know i did." she sprang up at this. "and is that something you're proud of, something it gives you satisfaction to remember?" "the keenest." she stamped her foot. "that you kissed a woman against her will? held her in your arms because you were physically stronger? you like to remember----" "it was not against your will," he said. "it was!" "it was not!" he repeated. "do you think i haven't been over that moment often enough to be sure of what happened? you were not angry! you were glad i took you in my arms! you would have been glad if i had done it earlier!" "liar!" said lydia. "liar and cad--to say such a thing!" she was shivering so violently that her teeth chattered like a person in an ague. "if you knew--if you could guess the repugnance, the horror of a woman embraced by a man she loathes and despises! her flesh creeps! there are no words for it! and then--then to be told by that man's mad vanity that she liked it, that she wanted it, that she brought it on herself----" "just wait a moment," he said. "i believe that you hate me now all right, whatever you felt then." "i do, i do hate you," she answered, "and i have the power of proving it. i can do you an injury." "you will always have the power of injuring me." "be sure i will use it." "i dare say you will." "i have. i haven't wasted any time at all." "what is all this about? what have you done?" he asked without much interest. she drew the letter out of the front of her dress and handed it to him with a hand that trembled so much it made the folded paper rattle. he took it, unfolded it, read it. watching him, she saw no change in his face until he looked up and smiled. "is this it?" he asked. "a lot i care about that--not to go into the simpson firm! you don't understand your power. the things that would have made me suffer--well, if you had let prison break you, if you had given your love to that crooked politician who came down to bribe me on your behalf----why, when you fell at my feet in the reception room at auburn i suffered more than in all my life before or since, because i love you." "stop!" said lydia. "don't dare say that to me!" "i love you," he said. "you don't have to go about looking for things like this," and he flicked the letter contemptuously into the fire. "you make me suffer just by existing." "i won't listen to you!" said lydia, and she moved away. "of course you'll listen to me," he answered, standing between her and the door. "there isn't one thing you've done since i first saw you that has given me the slightest pleasure or peace or happiness--nothing but unrest and pain. when you're hard and bitter i suffer, and when you're gentle and kind----" she gave a sort of laugh at this. "when have you ever seen me gentle and kind?" she asked. "oh, i know how wonderfully you could give yourself to a man if you loved him." "don't say such things!" she said, actually shuddering. "it sickens me! don't even think them!" "think! good god, the things i think!" "don't even think of me at all except as your relentless enemy. if it were true what you just said now, that you love me----" "it is true." "i hope it is. it gives me more power to hurt you. it must make it worse for you to know how i hate, how i despise you, everything about you; your using your looks and your fine figure to hypnotize simple people like eleanor and miss bennett and poor evans; the vanity that makes you hate me for being free of your charms; and all the petty, underhanded things you did in the trial; all your sentimental buncombe with the poor little wooley girl; and your twisting the law--the law that you are supposed to uphold--in order to get that bracelet before the jury; your mouthing and your cheap arts with the jury; and most of all your coming to auburn to feast your eyes on my humiliation. oh, if i could forgive all the rest i could never forgive you that!" "i'm not particularly eager that you should forgive me," he said. to her horror she found that the breaking down of the barriers which had kept her all these months from rehearsing her grievances to anyone was breaking down her self-control. she knew she was going to cry. "you can go now," she said. she made a sweeping gesture toward the door. already the muscles in her throat were beginning to contract. he stood looking into the fire as if he had not heard her. she stamped her foot. "don't you understand me?" she said. "i want you to go." "i'm going, but there's something i want to say to you." he was evidently trying to think something out in words. "i shall never have anything more to say to you," she replied. she sank down on the sofa and leaned her head back among the cushions. she closed her eyes to keep back her tears, and sat rigid with the struggle. if she did not speak again--and she wouldn't--she might get rid of him before the storm broke. he took a cigarette and lit it. even new york was silent for a minute, and the little clock on the table succeeded in making audible its faint, quick ticking. lydia became aware that tears were slowly forcing their way under her lids, that she was swallowing audibly. she put her hands against her mouth in the effort to keep back a sob. and o'bannon began to speak, without looking at her. "i don't know whether i can make you understand," he said. "i don't know that it matters whether you understand or not, but in your whole case i did exactly what a district attorney ought to do, only it is true that behind my doing it----" he was stopped by a sob. "yes, yes!" she said fiercely, her whole face distorted with emotion, "it's true i'm crying, but if you come near me i'll kill you." "i won't," he answered. "cry in peace." she took him at his word. she cried, not peacefully but wildly. she flung herself face downward on the sofa and sobbed, with her head buried in the cushions, while her whole body shook. she had not cried like this since she was a little child. it was a wild luxurious abandonment of all self-control. once she heard o'bannon move. [illustration: she flung herself face downward on the sofa and sobbed.] "don't touch me!" she repeated without raising her head. "i'm not going to," he answered. he began to walk up and down the room--up and down the room she could hear him going. once he went to the mantelpiece, and leaning his elbows on the shelf he put his hands over his ears. and then without warning he came and sat down beside her on the sofa and gathered her into his arms like a child. "no, no!" she said with what little was left of her voice. "oh, what difference does it make?" he answered. she made no reply. she seemed hardly aware that he had drawn her head and shoulders across his upright body so that her face was hidden in the crook of his arm. he put his hand on her heaving shoulder, looking down at the disordered knot of her black hair. a few minutes before he would have said that he could not have touched her hand without setting fire to his strong desire for her. and here she was, softly in his arms, and his only emotion was a tenderness so comprehensive that all desires beyond that moment were swallowed up in it. he almost smiled to remember the futility of the explanation he had been attempting. this was the real explanation between them. how little difference words made, he thought, and yet how we all cling to them! he took his free hand from her shoulder, and like a careful nurse he slid back a hair-pin, just poised to fall from the crisp mass of her hair. gradually her sobs stopped, she gave a long deep breath, and presently he saw she had fallen asleep. there never was an hour in o'bannon's life that he set beside that hour. he sat like a man in a trance, and yet acutely aware of everything about him; of the logs in the fire that, burning through, fell apart like a blazing drawbridge across the andirons; of an occasional footstep in the street; and finally of the inevitable approach of the rattling milk wagon, of its stopping at the door, of the wire trays, of the raising of the thorne basement window and the slow thump of the delivery of the allotted number of bottles. after a long time a little frightened face stared at him round the door. turning his head slowly, he saw miss bennett, her gray hair brushed straight back from her face and her eyes large and staring. "is she dead?" she whispered. o'bannon shook his head, and hardly making a sound, his lips formed the words, "go away." miss bennett really couldn't do that. "it's almost five o'clock," she said reproachfully. he nodded. "go away," he said. in her bright satin dressing gown she sat down, but he could see that she was nervous and uncertain. he summoned all the powers of will that he possessed; he fixed his eyes on her, compelling her to look at him; and when he felt he had gathered her in he raised his right hand and gently but decisively pointed to the door. she got up and went out. the fire had burned itself completely out now, and the cold of the hours before dawn began to penetrate the room. o'bannon began to apprehend the fact that this night must some time end--that lydia must presently wake up. he dreaded the moment there would be more anger, more repudiation of the obvious bond between them, more torture and separation. he shivered, and leaning forward he softly drew her cloak from a neighboring chair and laid it over her, tucking it in about her shoulders. he was afraid the movement might have waked her, but she seemed to sleep on. again the minutes began to slip enchantedly away, and then far away in the house, in some remote upper story, he heard a footstep. housemaids. inwardly be called down the curse of heaven upon them. he glanced down at lydia, and suddenly knew--how he knew it he could not say--that she had heard it too; that she had been awake a long time, since he put the cloak over her--perhaps since miss bennett had left the room. awake and content! his heart began to beat loudly, violently. "lydia," he said. she did not move or answer, only he felt that her head pressed more closely into the hollow of his arm. the end the novels of mary roberts rinehart dangerous days. a brilliant story of married life. a romance of fine purpose and stirring appeal. the amazing interlude. illustrations by the kinneys. the story of a great love which cannot be pictured--an interlude--amazing, romantic. love stories. this book is exactly what its title indicates, a collection of love affairs--sparkling with humor, tenderness and sweetness. "k." illustrated. k. lemoyne, famous surgeon, goes to live in a little town where beautiful sidney page lives. she is in training to become a nurse. the joys and troubles of their young love are told with keen and sympathetic appreciation. the man in lower ten. illustrated by howard chandler christy. an absorbing detective story woven around the mysterious death of the "man in lower ten." when a man marries. illustrated by harrison fisher and mayo bunker. a young artist, whose wife had recently divorced him, finds that his aunt is soon to visit him. the aunt, who contributes to the family income, knows nothing of the domestic upheaval. how the young man met the situation is entertainingly told. the circular staircase. illustrated by lester ralph. the occupants of "sunnyside" find the dead body of arnold armstrong on the circular staircase. following the murder a bank failure is announced. around these two events is woven a plot of absorbing interest. the street of seven stars. (photoplay edition.) harmony wells, studying in vienna to be a great violinist, suddenly realizes that her money is almost gone. she meets a young ambitious doctor who offers her chivalry and sympathy, and together with world-worn dr. anna and jimmie, the waif, they share their love and slender means. james oliver curwood's stories of adventure the river's end a story of the royal mounted police. the golden snare thrilling adventures in the far northland. nomads of the north the story of a bear-cub and a dog. kazan the tale of a "quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky" torn between the call of the human and his wild mate. baree, son of kazan the story of the son of the blind grey wolf and the gallant part he played in the lives of a man and a woman. the courage of captain plum the story of the king of beaver island, a mormon colony, and his battle with captain plum. the danger trail a tale of love, indian vengeance, and a mystery of the north. the hunted woman a tale of a great fight in the "valley of gold" for a woman. the flower of the north the story of fort o' god, where the wild flavor of the wilderness is blended with the courtly atmosphere of france. the grizzly king the story of thor, the big grizzly. isobel a love story of the far north. the wolf hunters a thrilling tale of adventure in the canadian wilderness. the gold hunters the story of adventure in the hudson bay wilds. the courage of marge o'doone filled with exciting incidents in the land of strong men and women. back to god's country a thrilling story of the far north. the great photoplay was made from this book. edgar rice burrough's novels tarzan the untamed tells of tarzan's return to the life of the ape-man in his search for vengeance on those who took from him his wife and home. jungle tales of tarzan records the many wonderful exploits by which tarzan proves his right to ape kingship. a princess of mars forty-three million miles from the earth--a succession of the weirdest and most astounding adventures in fiction. john carter, american, finds himself on the planet mars, battling for a beautiful woman, with the green men of mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted on horses like dragons. the gods of mars continuing john carter's adventures on the planet mars, in which he does battle against the ferocious "plant men," creatures whose mighty tails swished their victims to instant death, and defies issus, the terrible goddess of death, whom all mars worships and reveres. the warlord of mars old acquaintances, made in the two other stories, reappear, tars tarkas, tardos mors and others. there is a happy ending to the story in the union of the warlord, the title conferred upon john carter, with dejah thoris. thuvia, maid of mars the fourth volume of the series. the story centers around the adventures of carthoris, the son of john carter and thuvia, daughter of a martian emperor. florence l. barclay's novels the white ladies of worcester a novel of the th century. the heroine, believing she had lost her lover, enters a convent. he returns, and interesting developments follow. the upas tree a love story of rare charm. it deals with a successful author and his wife. through the postern gate the story of a seven day courtship, in which the discrepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the convincing demonstration of abiding love. the rosary the story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life's greatest happiness. a rare story of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward. the mistress of shenstone the lovely young lady ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a husband who never understood her, meets a fine, clean young chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall deeply in love with each other. when he learns her real identity a situation of singular power is developed. the broken halo the story of a young man whose religious belief was shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted. the following of the star the story of a young missionary, who, about to start for africa, marries wealthy diana rivers, in order to help her fulfill the conditions of her uncle's will, and how they finally come to love each other and are reunited after experiences that soften and purify. [frontispiece: the amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_"] the sentimental adventures of jimmy bulstrode by marie van vorst with illustrations by alonzo kimball new york hurst & company publishers copyright, , by charles scribner's sons published march, to the memory of h. e. teschemacher contents _the first adventure_ in which he buys a christmas tree _the second adventure_ in which he tries to buy a portrait _the third adventure_ in which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy _the fourth adventure_ in which he makes three people happy _the fifth adventure_ in which he makes nobody happy at all _the sixth adventure_ in which he discards a knave and saves a queen _the seventh adventure_ in which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property _the eighth adventure_ in which he comes into his own illustrations from drawings by alonzo kimball _the amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "pour les enfants"_ . . . . . . frontispiece "_i only like him like a kind, kind friend_" _in the midst of this rabble little simone was dancing_ "_i've had a telegram from my husband_" the first adventure i in which he buys a christmas tree there was never in the world a better fellow than jimmy bulstrode. if he had been poorer his generosities would have ruined him over and over again. he was always being taken in, was the recipient of hundreds of begging letters, which he hired another soft-hearted person to read. he offended charitable organizations by never passing a beggar's outstretched hand without dropping a coin in it. he was altogether a distressingly impracticable rich person, surrounded by people who admired him for what he really was and by those who tried to squeeze him for what he was worth! it was a general wonder to people who knew him slightly why bulstrode had never married. the gentleman himself knew the answer perfectly, but it amused him to discuss the question in spite of the pain, as well as for the pleasure that it caused him to consider--_the reason why_. mary falconer, the woman he loved, was the wife of a man of whom bulstrode could only think in pitiful contempt. but, thanks to an element of chivalry in the character of the hero of this story the years, as time went on, spread back of both the woman and the man in an honorable series, of whose history neither one had any reason to be ashamed. nevertheless, it struck them both as rather humorous, after all, that of the three concerned her husband should be the only renegade and, notwithstanding, profit by the combined good faith of his wife and the man who loved her. oh, there was nothing easy in the task that jimmy set for himself! and it did not facilitate matters that mary falconer scarcely ever helped him in the least! she was a beautiful woman, a tender woman, and there were times when her friend felt that she cleverly and cruelly taunted him with puritanism and with his simple, old-fashioned ideas and crystal clearness of vision, the _culte_ he had regarding marriage and the sacred way in which he held bonds and vows. it was no help at all to think she rebelled and jested at his reserve; that she did her best to break it--and there were times when it was a brilliant siege. but down in her heart she respected him, and as she saw around her the domestic wrecks with which the matrimonial seas are encumbered, and knew that her own craft promised to go safely through the storm, mary falconer more than once had been grateful to the man. as far as bulstrode himself was concerned, each year--there had been ten of them--he found the situation becoming more difficult and dangerous. not only did the future appear to him impossible as things were, but he began to hate his arid past. he was sometimes led to ask, what, after all, was he getting out of his colossal sacrifice? the only reward he wanted was the woman herself, and, unless her husband died, she would never be his. bulstrode had not found that he could solve the problem, and now and then he let it go from sheer weariness of heart. in the face of the window of the drawing-room where bulstrode sat on this afternoon of an especial winter's day the storm cast wreaths of snow that clung and froze, or dropped like feathers down against the sill. the gentleman had his predilections even in new york, and in the open fireplace the logs crumbled and disintegrated to ashen caves wherein the palpitating jewels of the heat were held. except for this old-fashioned warmth, there was none other in the room, whose white wainscoting and pillars, low ceilings and quaint chimney-piece, characterized one of those agreeably proportioned houses still to be found in lower new york around washington square. bulstrode had received about half an hour ago a letter whose qualities and suggestions were something disturbing to him: "there is such a thing, believe me" (mary falconer wrote in the pages which bulstrode opened to read for the twentieth time), "as the _gloom_ of christmas, jimmy. people won't frankly own to it. they're afraid of seeming sour and crabbed. but don't you, who are so exquisitely apt to feelings--to other people's feelings,--at once confess it? it attacks the spinster in the bustling winter streets as she is elbowed by some person, exuberantly a mother, and so arrogantly laden with delicious-looking parcels that she is almost a personal christmas tree herself. i'm confident this 'gloom of christmas' grips the wretched little beings at toy-shop windows as they stand 'choosin'' their never-to-be-realized toys. i'm sure it haunts the vagrant and the homeless in a city fairly redolent of holly and dinners, and where the array of other people's homes is terrifying. and, my dear friend, it is so horribly subtle that no doubt it attacks others whose only grudge is that their hearths are not built for christmas trees or the hanging of stockings. but these unfortunates are not saying anything aloud, therefore we must not pry! "there's a jolly house-party on at the van schoolings'. we're to go down to-morrow to tuxedo and pass christmas night, and you are, of course, asked and wanted. knowing your dread of these family feasts--possibly from just such a ghost of the gloom--i was sure you would refuse. but it's a wonderful place for a talk or two, and i shall hope you will go--will come, not even follow, but go down with me." there was more of the letter--there always is more of women's letters. their minds and pens are so charmingly facile; there is nothing a woman can do better than talk, except to write. bulstrode smoked slowly, the pages between his fingers, his thoughts travelling like wanderers towards a home from which a ban had kept them aliens. his eyes drifted to the beginning of the letter. he wasn't familiar with the homeless vagrant class. his charities to that part of the population consisted in donations to established societies, and haphazard giving called forth by a beggar's extended hand. if anybody may be immune to the melancholy of which his friend mrs. falconer spoke, it should surely be this gentleman, smoking his cigar before the fire. the unopened letters--there was a pile of them--would have offered ample reason why. no one of the lot but bore some testimony to the generous heart which, beneath dinner-jacket and behind the screw-faced watch with the picture in the back of it, beat so healthy and so well. but the bestowal of benefits, whilst it may beautify the giver, does not always transform itself into the one benefit desired and console the bestower! bulstrode had a charming home. he was alone in it. he had his clubs where bachelors like himself, more or less infected with christmas gloom, would be glad to greet him. he had his friends, many of them, and their home circles were complete. his, by force of circumstances, began and ended with himself, and as if triumphant to have found so tempting a victim, the gloom came and possessed bulstrode as he sat and mused. but the decided sadness that stole across his face bore no relation, to the season, to whose white mystery and holy beauty there was something in his boyish, kindly heart that always responded. the sadness mrs. falconer's letter awakened would not sleep. what his christmas _might_ be...! he had only to order his motor, to call for her and drive over the ferry; to sit beside her in the train, to drive with her again across the wintry roads. he had but to see her, watch her, talk with her, share with her the day and evening, to have his christmas as nearly what a feast should be as dreams could ask. the whole festival was there: joy, good-will--peace? no. not peace for him or for her--not that; everything else, but not that. and he had been travelling for five weary months in order to make himself keep for her that peace a little longer. bulstrode sighed here, lifted the letter where there was more of it to his lips--held it out toward the fire as if the red jewels were to set themselves around it, thought differently, and putting it back in its envelope, thrust it in the pocket of his waistcoat. "ruggles," he asked the servant who had come in, "you sent the despatch to tuxedo?" "yes, sir." "there'll be later a note to send. i'll ring. well, what is it?" "there's a person at the door, sir, who insists on seeing you." the servant's tone--one particularly jarring to the ears of a man who had fellowship with more than one class of his kind--made the master look sharply up. ruggles was a new addition to the household, and bulstrode did not like him. "a person," bulstrode repeated, quietly; "what sort of a person?" "a man, sir." "not a gentleman? no," he nodded gently; "i see you do not think him one. yet that he is a man is in his favor. there are some gentlemen who aren't men, you know. let him in." in doing so ruggles seemed to let in the night. bulstrode had, in the warmth of his fragrant room, forgotten that outside was the wintry dark. ruggles, in letting the man in, had the air of thrusting him in, and shut the door behind the visitor with a click. the creature himself let in the cold; he seemed made of it. the snow clung to his shoulders; his shoes, tied up with strings, were encrusted with it. his coat, buttoned to his chin, frayed at the cuffs and edges, was thin and weather-stained. he had a pale face, a royal growth of beard--this was all bulstrode had time to remark. he rose. "my servant says you want to see me. come near the fire, won't you?" the visitor did not stir. bewildered in the warmth of the room, he stood far back on the edge of the thick rug. to all appearances he was a bit of driftwood from the streets, one of the usual vagrant class who haunt the saloons and park and steer from lockup to night-lodging, until they finally steer themselves entirely off the face of history, and the potter's field gathers them in. nothing but his entrance into this conventional room before this well-balanced member of decent society was peculiar. as he still neither moved nor spoke, bulstrode, approaching him, again invited: "come near the fire, won't you? and when you are warm tell me what i can do for you." "it's the storm," murmured the man, and a half-human look came across his face with his words. "i mean to say, it's this hellish storm that's got in my throat and lungs. i can't speak--it's so warm here. it will be better in a second. no, not near the fire; thanks--chilblains." he looked down at his poor feet. the voice which the storm had beaten and thrashed to painful hoarseness was entirely out of keeping with the man's appearance, and in intonation, accent, and language was a shock to the hearer. "don't stand back like that--come into the room." bulstrode wheeled a chair briskly about. "there; sit down and drink this; it's a mild blend." "i'm very wet," said the man. "i'll drip on the rug." "hang the rug!" the tramp drained the glass given him at one swallow merely; it appeared to clear his throat and release his speech. he gathered his rags together. "i beg pardon for forcing myself on you like this, but i fancy i needn't tell you i'm desperate--desperate!" he held out his hand; it shook like a pale ghost's. "i look it, i'm sure. i haven't eaten a meal or slept in a bed for a fortnight. i've begged work and charity. all day i've been shovelling snow, but i'm too weak to work now." he was being led to a chair. he sank in it. "before they sent me to the island i decided to try a ruse. i went into a saloon and opened a directory, and i said, 'the first name i put my finger upon i'll take as good luck, and i'll go and see the person, man or woman. i opened to james thatcher bulstrode, washington square." he half smiled; the pale, trembling hand was waving like a pitiful flag, a signal of distress to catch the sight of some bark that might lend aid. "so i came here. when there seemed actually to be some chance of my getting in, why, my courage failed me. i don't expect you to believe my story or to believe anything, except that i am desperate--desperate. it's below zero to-night out there--infernally cold." he took the pin out of the collar turned up around his neck and let his coat fall back. under it bulstrode saw he wore a thin flannel shirt. the tramp repeated to himself, as it were, "it's a bad storm." he looked up in a dazed fashion at his host as if for acceptance of his remark. in the easy chair, half swathed in rags, pitiful in thinness, dripping from shoes and clothes water that the storm had drenched into him, he was a sorry object in the atmosphere of the well-ordered conventional room. the heat and whiskey, the famine and exposure, cast a film across his eyes and brain. he indistinctly saw his host pass into the next room and shut the door behind him. "by jove!" he murmured under his breath in wonder find dumb thanks for the shelter. "by jove!" the stimulant filtered agreeably through him; more charitable than any element with which he had been lately familiar, the fire's heat began to thaw the ice in his bones. he laid his dripping hat on his knees, his thin hands folded themselves over it, his eyes closed. for hours he had shuffled about the streets to keep from freezing. at the charity organization they gave work he was too weak to do; he had not eaten a substantial meal in so long that he had forgotten the taste of food and had ceased to crave it. in the soft light of lamp and fire he fell into a doze. bulstrode, if he had stolen softly in to look at his visitor, would have seen a man not over thirty years of age, although want and dissipation added ten to his appearance. he would have been quick to take note of the fine, delicately cut face under the disfiguring beard, and of the slender, emaciated body deformed by its rags. possibly he did so noiselessly come in and stand by the unconscious creature, but the sleeping vagabond, dreaming fitful, half-painful things, was ignorant of the visitor. finally across his mind's sharp despair came a sense of warmth and comfort, and in its spell he awoke. a servant, not the one who had thrust him into the drawing-room, but another with a friendly face, stood at his side, and in broken english asked the guest of bulstrode to follow him; and gathering his scattered senses together and picking up his rags and what was left of himself, the creature obeyed a summons which he supposed was to hale him again into the winter streets. it was some three hours later that bulstrode in his dining-room entertained his singular guest. "i have asked you to dine with me," he explained, with a certain graciousness, as if he claimed, not gave, a favor, "as i'm all alone to-night. it's christmas eve, you know--or perhaps you've been more or less glad to forget it?" the young man who took the chair indicated him was unrecognizable as the stranger who had staggered into washington square three or four hours before. turned out in spotless linen and a good suit that fitted him fairly well, shaven face save for a mustache above his lip, bathed, brushed, refreshed by nourishment and sleep and repose, he looked like one who has been in the waters, possibly a long, long time; like one who has drifted, been bruised, shattered, and beaten, but who has nevertheless drifted to shore; and in spite of his borrowed clothes, his scarred, haggard face, he looked like a gentleman, and bulstrode from the moment he spoke had recognized him as one. the food was a feast to the stranger, in spite of nourishment already given him by prosper. he restrained the ferocious hunger that woke at sight and smell of the good things, forced himself not to cry out with eagerness, not to tear and grasp the eatables off the plate, not to devour like a beast. every time he raised his eyes he met those of the butler ruggles, and as quickly the stranger looked away. the face of the servant standing by the sideboard, back of him the white and gleaming array of the bulstrode family silver like piles of snow, was for some reason or other not a pleasant face; the stranger did not think it so. once again seated in the room he had entered in his outcast state, a cup of coffee at his hand, a cigar between his lips, the agreeable atmosphere of the old room and its charming objects, the kindly look on the face of his host, all swam before him. looking frankly at bulstrode, he said, not without grace of manner: "i give it up. i can't--it's not to be made out or understood..." "do you," interrupted the other, "feel equal to talking a little: to telling me how it happens that you are wandering, as you seem to be? for from the moment you first spoke----" the young man nodded. "i'm a gentleman. it's worse somehow--i don't know why, but it is." bulstrode thought out for him: "it's like remembering agreeable places to which you feel you will never return. only," he quickly offered, "in your case you must, you know, go back." "no," said the young man, quietly. there was so much entire renunciation in what he said that the other could not press it. "better still, you can then go on?" the vagrant looked at his companion as if to say: "since i've known you--seen you--i have thought that i might." but he said nothing more, and bulstrode, reading a diffidence which did not displease him, finished: "you shall go on, and i'll help you." the stranger bowed his head, and the wine sent the color up until his cheeks took the flush of health. remaining a little bent over, his eyes on his feet clad in bulstrode's shoes, he said: "i'm an englishman. my family is everything that's decent and all _that_, you know, and proud. we've first-rate traditions. i'm a younger son, and i've always been a thorn in the family's side. i've been a sort of vagabond from the first, but never as bad as they thought or believed." he paused. his recital was painful to him. bulstrode waited, then knocking off the ash from his cigar, urged: "tell me about it, tell me frankly; it will, you see, be a relief. we can do better that way--if i know." the stranger looked up at him quickly, then leaning forward in his chair, talked as it were to the carpet, and rapidly: "it's just a year ago. i'd been going it rather hard and got into trouble more or less--lost at cards and the races, and been running up a lot of bills. my father was awfully down on me. i'd gone home for the holidays and had a talk with my father and asked him to pay up for me just this once more. he refused, and we got very angry, both of us, and separated in a rage. the house was full of people--a christmas ball and a tree. my father had, so it happened, quite a lot of money in the house. i knew where it was--i had seen him count it and put it away. that night for some reason the whole thing sickened me, in the mess i was in, and i left and went up to london without even saying good-by. in the course of the week my brother came and found me drunk in my rooms. it seems that the money had been taken from my father's safe, and they accused me." "but," interrupted bulstrode, eagerly, "it was a simple thing to exculpate yourself." ignoring his remark, the other continued: "i have never seen my father since that night." no amount of former deception can persuade a man that he is a lame judge of character. the young englishman's emaciated face, where eyes spoiled by dissipation looked out at his companion, was to this impulsive reader of humanity a good face. bulstrode, however, saw what he wanted to see in most people. given a chance to study them, or rather further to know them intimately, he might indeed have ended by finding in some cases a few of the imagined qualities. here misery was evident, degradation as well, timidity, and hesitation,--but honesty? bulstrode fancied that its characters were not effaced, and he helped the recital: "since you so left your people?" "the steady go down!" acknowledged the other. "i worked my passage to the states on a liner--i stoked..." "any chap," encouraged the gentleman, "who can do that can pull himself, i should say, out of a worse hole." "there's scarcely a bad habit i haven't had down in the hole with me," confessed the other, "and they've held me there." they both remained for a few seconds without speaking, and the host's eyes wandered to where, over his mantel-shelf, in a great gold frame was the portrait of a lady done by baker. a quaint young lady in her early teens, with bare arms and frilled frock. she had bulstrode's eyes. by her side was the black muzzle of a great hound, on whose head the little hand rested. under the picture, from a silver bowl of roses, came a fragrance that filled the room, and, close by stood a photograph of another lady, very modern, very mocking, and very lovely. bulstrode, delicately drawing inferences from the influences in his life, and, if not consciously grateful, reflecting them charmingly, broke the silence: "you must have formed some plan or other in your mind when you came to my door? what, in the event of your being received, did you intend to ask me to do?" the stranger lifted his head and his response was irrelevant: "it seems a hundred years since i stood there in that storm and your man pulled me in. i haven't seen a place like this for long, not the inside of decent houses. when i left the ship i managed to get down with a chap as far as florida, where he had an orange-plantation, but the venture fell through. i fancy the rest is as well forgotten. when i came in here to-night i intended to ask you for a christmas gift of money, and i should have gone out and drunk myself to hell." "you spoke"--bulstrode fetched him back--"of your father and your brother; was there no one else?" the younger man looked up without reply. "there has been, then, no more kindly influence in your life--no sister--no woman?" bulstrode brought out the words; in his judgment they meant so very much. he saw a change cross the other's face. "i fancy there are not many men who haven't had a woman in their lives for good or bad," he said, with a short laugh. "well," urged the gentleman, gently, "and for what was this woman?" as if he repelled the insistence, the young fellow stammered: "i say, this putting a fellow on the rack----" but bulstrode leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand on his companion's knee and pleaded: "speak out frankly--frankly--i believe i shall understand; it will free your heart to speak. this influence which to a man should be the best--the best--what was it to you?" bulstrode sat back and waited, and the other man seemed quite lost in melancholy meditations for some few seconds. then bulstrode put it: "for a young man, no matter how wild, to leave his home under the misapprehension you claim:--for him to make no effort to reinstate himself: with no attempt at justice: for him to become a wanderer--there must be an extraordinary reason, almost an improbable one----" "i don't ask you to hear," said the vagrant, quickly. "i wish to do so. it would have been a simple matter to exculpate yourself--you had not the funds in your possession, had never had them. you took no means to clear yourself?" "none." bulstrode looked hard at the face his care had revealed to him: the deep eyes, the neck, chin, the sensitive mouth--there was a certain distinction about him in his borrowed clothes. "where is the woman now?" "she married my brother--she is lady waring--my name," tardily introduced the stranger, "is cecil waring." bulstrode bowed. "tell me something of her, in a word--in a word." "well, she is always clever," said the young man, slowly, "always very beautiful, and then very poor." "yes," nodded bulstrode. "she is like the rest of us--one of a fast wild set--a----" "a gambler?" bulstrode helped the description. "she played," acknowledged the young man, "as the rest do--bridge." "were you engaged to her, waring?" "yes," he slowly acknowledged, as if each word hurt him. "and did she believe you guilty?" "i think," said the other, with an inscrutable expression, "she could not have done so." "but she let you go under suspicion?" "yes." "without a word of good faith, of comfort?" "yes." "did she know of your embarrassments?" "too well." "you tell me she was poor and--possibly she had embarrassments of her own?" "possibly." bulstrode came over to him. "was she at the christmas ball that night?" the young man rose as well, his eyes on his questioner's; the color had all left his face--he appeared fascinated--then he shook himself and unexpectedly laughed. "no," he said; "oh no." the older man bowed his head and replied, quite inaptly: "i understand!" he took a turn across the room. the few steps brought him in front of the mantel and the photograph of the modern lady in her furs and close hat. he stood and met the fire of her mocking eyes. "and you _believe_ him, jimmy!" he could hear her say in her delicious voice. "yes," he mentally told her, "i believe him." "you think that to save a woman's name and honor he has become an outcast on the face of the earth ... jimmy!" he still gently replied to her: "men who love, you know, have but one code--the woman and honor." still mocking, but gentle as would have been the touch of the roses in the bowl near the photograph, her voice told him, "then he's worth saving, jimmy." worth saving ... he agreed, and turned to his guest. in doing so he saw that ruggles had come into the drawing-room to remove the coffee-tray. "beg pardon, sir, but you mentioned there would be a letter to send shortly?" "by jove! so i did!" exclaimed bulstrode. "i beg your pardon; will you excuse me while i write a line at the desk?" the line was an order to the florist. for some reason the eyes of the englishman had not quitted the butler's face, and ruggles, with cold insolence, had stared at him in turn. waring, albeit in another man's clothes, fed and seated before a friendly hearth, and once again within the pale of his own class, had regained something of his natural air and feeling of superiority. he resented the servant's insolence, and his face was angrily flushed as bulstrode gave his orders, and the man left the room. "i must go away," he said, rather brusquely. "i can never thank you for what you have done. i feel as if i had been in a dream." "sit down." his companion ignored his words. "sit down." "it's late." "for what, my friend?" "i must find some place to sleep." "you have found it," gently smiled bulstrode. "your room is prepared for you here." then he interrupted: "no thanks--no thanks. if what you tell me is all i think it is, i'm proud to share my roof with you, waring." "don't think well of me--don't!" blurted out the other. "you don't know what a ruined vagabond i am. when you send me out to-morrow i shall begin again; but let me tell you that although i've herded with tramps and thieves, been in the hospital and lock-up, and worked in the hell of a furnace in a ship's hold, nothing hurt me any more, not after i left england--not after those days when i waited in liverpool for a word--for a sign--not after that, all you see the marks of now--nothing hurts now but the memory. i'm immune." "you will feel differently--you will humanize." "never!" exclaimed the tramp. "to-night," said bulstrode, simply. waring looked at him curiously. "what a wonderful man!" he half murmured. "i was led to you by fate: you have forced me to lay my soul bare to you--and now..." "let's look things in the face together," suggested the gentleman, practically. "i have a ranch out west. a good piece of property. it's in the hands of a clever englishman and promises well. how would you like to go out there and start anew? he'll give you a welcome, and he's a first-rate business man. will you go?" waring had with his old habit thrust his hands in his pockets. he stood well on his feet. bulstrode remarked it. he looked meditatively down between the soles of his shoes. "you mean to say you give me a chance--to--to----" "begin anew, waring." "i drink a great deal," said the young man. "you will swear off." "i've gambled away all the money i ever had." "you will be taking care of mine, and it will be a point of honor." "i'm under a cloud---- "not in my eyes," said bulstrode, stoutly. "--which i can never clear." bulstrode made a dismissing gesture. "i should want the chap out there to know the truth." "the truth," caught his hearer, and the other as quickly interrupted: "to know under what circumstances i left my people." "no, that is unnecessary," said bulstrode, firmly. "nobody has any right to your past. i don't know his. that's the beauty of the plains--the freshness of them. it's a new start--a clean page." still the guest hesitated. "i don't believe it's worth while. you see, i've batted about now so much alone, with nobody near me but the lowest sort; i've given in so long, with no care to do better, that i haven't any confidence in myself. i don't want you to see me fail, sir,--i don't want to go back on you." bulstrode had heard very understandingly part of the man's word, part of his excuse for his weakness. "that's it," he said, musingly. "butting about alone. it's that--loneliness--that's responsible for so many things." looking up brightly as his friend whose derelict dangerous vessel, so near to port and repair, was heading for the wide seas again, bulstrode wondered: "if such a thing could be that some friend, not too uncongenial, could be found to go with you and stand as it were by you--some friend who knew--who comprehended----" waring laughed. "i haven't such a one." "yes," said the older gentleman, "you have, and he will stand by you. i'll go west with you myself to-morrow--on christmas day. i need a change. i want to get away for a little time." waring drew back a step, for bulstrode had risen. cold anglo-saxon as he was, the unprecedented miracle this gentleman presented made him seem almost lunatic. he stared blankly. "it's simpler than it looks." bulstrode attempted conventionally to shear it of a little of its eccentricity. "there's every reason why i should look after my property out there. i've never seen it at all." "i'm not worth such a goodness," waring faltered, earnestly,--"not worth it." "you will be." "don't hope it." "i believe it," smiled the gentleman; "and at all events i'll stand by you till you are--if you'll say the word." waring, whose lips were trembling, repeated vaguely, "the _word_?" "well," replied bulstrode, "you might say those--they're as good any--will you stand by _me_----?" making the first hearty spontaneous gesture he had shown, the young man seized the other's outstretched hand. "yes," he breathed; "by heaven! i will!" it was past midnight when bulstrode, pushing open the curtains of his bedroom, looked out on the frozen world of washington square, where of tree and arch not an outline was visible under the disguising snow; and above, in the sky swept clear of clouds by the strongest of winds, rode the round full disk of the christmas moon. the adoption of a vagrant, the quixotic decision he had taken to leave new york on christmas day, the plain facts of the outrageous folly his impulsiveness led him to contemplate, had relegated his more worldly plans to the background. laying aside his waistcoat, he took out the letter in whose contents he had been absorbed when cecil waring crossed the threshold of his drawing-room. well ... as he re-read at leisure her delightful plan for christmas day, he sighed that he could not do for them both better than to go two thousand miles away! "waring thinks himself a vagrant--and so, poor chap, he has been; but there are vagrants of another kind." jimmy reflected he felt himself to be one of these others, and was led to speculate if there were many outcasts like himself, and what ultimately, if their courage was sufficient to keep them banished to the end, would be the reward? "since," he reflected, "there's only one thing i desire--and it's the one thing forbidden--i fail sometimes to quite puzzle it out!" he had finished his preparations for the night and was about to turn out the light, when, with his hand on the electric button, he paused, for he distinctly heard from downstairs what sounded like a call--a cry. taking his revolver from the top drawer, he went into the hall, to feel a draft of icy air blow up the staircase, to see over the balusters the open door of the dining-room and light within it, and to hear more clearly the sounds that had come to him through closed doors declare themselves to be scuffling--struggling--the half-cry of a muffled voice--a fall, then bulstrode started. "i'm coming," he declared, and ran down the stairs like a boy. on the dining-room floor, close to the window wide open to the icy night, lay a man's form, and over him bent another man cruelly, with all the animus of a bird of prey. the under man was ruggles, bulstrode's butler, his eyes starting from their sockets, his mouth open, his color livid; he couldn't have called out, for the other man had seized his necktie, twisted it tight as a tourniquet around the man's gullet, and so kneeling with one knee on his chest, waring held the big man under. "i say," panted the young man, "can you lend a hand, sir? i've got him, but i'm not strong enough to keep him." bulstrode thought his servant's eyes rolled appealingly at him. he cocked his revolver, holding it quietly, and asked coolly: "what's the matter with him that he needs to be kept?" "would you sit on his chest, mr. bulstrode?" "no," said that gentleman. "i'll cover him so. what's the truth?" "i heard a queer noise," panted the englishman, "and came out to see what it was, and this fellow was just getting through the window. there was another chap outside, but he got away. i caught this one from the back, otherwise i could never have thrown him." "you're throttling him." "he deserves it." "let him up." "mr. bulstrode...!" "yes," said that gentleman, decidedly, "let him up." but ruggles, released from the hand whose knuckles had ground themselves into his windpipe, could not at once rise. the breath was out of him, for he had been heavily struck in the stomach by a blow from the fist of a man whose training in sport had delightfully returned at need. ruggles began to breathe like a porpoise, to grunt and pant and roll over. he staggered to his feet, and with a string of imprecations raised his fist at waring, but as bulstrode's revolver was entirely ready to answer at command, he did not venture to leave the spot where he stood. "now," said his master, "when you get your tongue your story will be just the same as mr. waring's. you found him getting away with the silver. the probabilities are all with you, ruggles. the police will be here in just about five minutes. ten to one the guilty man is known to the officers. now there's an overcoat and hat on the hat-rack in the hall. i give both of you time to get away. there's the front door and the window--which, by the way, you would better shut, waring, as it's a cold morning." neither man moved. without removing his eyes from the butler or uncovering him, bulstrode, by means of the messenger-call to the right of the window, summoned the police. the metallic click of the button sounded loud in the room. ruggles shook his great hand high in air. "i'd--i'd----" "never mind _that_," interrupted the householder. "the man who's _going_ had better take his chance. there's one minute lost." during the next half-second the modern philanthropist breathed in suspense. it was so on the cards that he might be obliged to apologize to his antipathetic butler and find himself sentimentally sold by waring! but ruggles it was who with a parting oath stepped to the door--accelerating his pace as the daze began to pass a little from his brain, and snatched the hat and coat, unlocked the front door, opened it, looked quickly up and down the white streets, and then without a word cut down the steps and across washington square, slowly at first, and then on a run. bulstrode turned to his visitor. "come," he said, "let's go up to bed." "but," stammered the young man, "you're never going to let him go like that?" "yes, i am," confessed the unpractical gentleman. "i couldn't send a man to jail on christmas day." "but the police----?" "i shall tell them out of my window that it was a false alarm." bulstrode shut and locked his door, and turning to waring, laughed delightedly. "i must tell you that when he let you in last night ruggles did not think you were a gentleman. he must have found out this morning that you were very much of a man. it's astonishing where you got your strength, though. he'd make two of you, and you're not fit in any way." he looked ghastly enough as bulstrode spoke, and the gentleman put his arm under the englishman's. "i'll ring for the servants and have some coffee made and fetched to your room. lean on me." he helped the vagabond upstairs. the new yorker, whose sentimental follies were certainly a menace to public safety and a premium to begging and vagabondage and crime, slept well and late, and was awakened finally by the keen, bright ringing of the telephone at his side. as he took up the receiver his whole face illumined. "merry christmas, jimmy!" . . . . . . . . "what _wonderful_ roses! thanks a thousand times!" . . . . . . . . "but of course i knew! no other man in new york is sentimental enough to have a woman awakened at eight o'clock by a bunch of flowers!" . . . . . . . . "forgive you!" (it was clear that she did.) . . . . . . . . "jimmy, what a day for tuxedo, and what a shame i can't go!" . . . . . . . . "you weren't going! you mean to say that you had refused?" . . . . . . . . "i don't understand--it's the connection--west?" "why, ranches look after themselves. they always do. they go right on. you don't _mean_ it, on christmas day!" . . . . . . . . "i shouldn't care for your reasons. they're sure to be ridiculous--unpractical--unnecessary--don't tell them to me." there was a pause, and then the voice, which had undergone a slight change said: "jack's ill again ... that's why i couldn't go to tuxedo. i shall pass the day here in town. i called up to tell you this--and to suggest--but since you're going west..." falconer's illnesses! how well bulstrode knew them, and how well he could see her alone in the familiar little drawing-room by a hearth not built for a christmas tree! he had promised waring, "i'll stand by you." it was a kind of vow--a real vow, and the poor tramp had lived up to his. "jimmy." there was a note he had never heard before; if a tone can be a tear, it was one. he interrupted her. . . . . . . . . "how dear of you!" . . . . . . . . "but i haven't any christmas tree!" . . . . . . . . "you'll fetch one? how _dear_ of you! we'll trim it--with your roses--make it bloom. come early and help me dress the tree." two hours later he opened the door into his breakfast-room with the guiltiness of a truant boy. he wore culprit shame written all over his face, and the young man who stood waiting for him in the window might almost have read his friend's dejection in his embarrassed face. but waring came eagerly forward, answered the season's greetings, and said quickly: "are you still in the same mind about the west, mr. bulstrode?" (poor bulstrode!) "i mean to say, sir, if you still feel like giving me this chance, i've a favor to ask. would you let me go _alone_?" bulstrode gasped. "since last night a lot has happened to me, not only since you've befriended me, but since i tussled with that fellow here. i'd like a chance to see what i can do alone. if you, as you so generously plan, go with me, i shall feel watched--protected. it will weaken me more than anything else. i suppose i shall go all to pieces, but i'd like to try my strength. if i could suddenly master that chap with my fists after months of dissipation----" bulstrode finished for him: "you can master the rest." "don't give me any extra money," pleaded the tramp, as if he foresaw his friend's impulse. "pay my ticket out west, if you will, and write to the man who is there, and i'll start in." bulstrode beamed on him. "you're a man," he assured him--"a man." "i may become one." "you're a fine fellow." "you'll trust me, then?" "implicitly." "then let me start to-day. i'm reckless--let me get away. i may get off at the first station and pawn my clothes and drink and drink to a lower hell than before--but let me try alone." "you shall go alone--and go to-day." prosper came in with the coffee; he, too, was beaming, and the servants below-stairs were all agog. waring was a hero. "prosper," said his master, in french, "will you, after you have served breakfast, go out to the market quarters and see if you can discover for me a medium-sized, very well-proportioned little christmas tree? fetch it home with you." waring smiled faintly. bulstrode smiled too, and more comprehendingly, and prosper smiled and said: "mais certainement, monsieur." the second adventure ii in which he tries to buy a portrait bulstrode was extremely fond of travel, and every now and then treated himself to a season in london or paris, and in the may following his adventure with waring he saw, from his apartments in the hôtel ritz, from boulevard, bois, and the champs elysées, as much of the maddeningly delicious parisian springtime "as was good for him at his age," so he said! it gave the feeling that he was a mere boy, and with buoyant sensations astir in him, life had begun over again. any morning between eleven and twelve bulstrode might have been seen in the bois de boulogne briskly walking along the avenue des acacias, his well-filled chest thrown out, his step light and assured; cane in hand, a boutonnière tinging the lapel of his coat; immaculate and fresh as a rose, he exhaled good-humor, kindliness, and well-being. from their traps and motors charming women bowed and smiled, the _fine fleur_ and the _beau monde_ greeted him cordially. "regardez moi ce bon bulstrode qui se promene," if it were a frenchman, or, "there's dear old jimmy bulstrode!" if he were recognized by a compatriot. bulstrode was rather slight of build, yet with an evident strength of body that indicated a familiarity with exercise, a healthful habit of sport and activity. his eyes, clear-sighted and strong, looked through the medium of no glass happily and naïvely on the world. many years before his hair had begun to turn gray, and had not nearly finished the process; it grew thickly, and was quite dark about his ears and on his brow. having gained experience and kept his youth, he was as rare and delightful as fine wine--as inspiring as spring. it was his heart (mrs. falconer said) that made him so, his good, gentle, generous heart!--and she should know. his fastidiousness in point of dress, and his good taste kept him close to elegance of attire. "you turn yourself out, jimmy, on every occasion," she had said, "as if you were on the point of meeting the woman you loved." and bulstrode had replied that such consistent hopefulness should certainly be ultimately rewarded. he gave the impression of a man who in his youth starts out to take a long and pleasant journey and finds the route easy, the taverns agreeable, and the scenes all the guide-book promised. midway--(he had turned the page of forty)--midway, pausing to look back, bulstrode saw the experiences of his travels in their sunny valleys, full of goodly memories, and the future, to his sweet hopefulness, promised to be a pleasant journey to the end. during the time that he spent in paris every pet charity in the american colony took advantage of the philanthropic mr. bulstrode's passing through the city, and came to him to be set upon its feet, and every pretty woman with an interest, hobby, or scheme came as well to this generous millionaire, told him about her fad and went away with a donation. one ravishing may morning bulstrode, taking his usual constitutional in the bois, paused at the end of the avenue des acacias to find it deserted and attractively quiet; he sat down on a little bench the more reposefully to enjoy the day and time. there are, fortunately, certain things which, unlike money, can be shared only with certain people; and bulstrode felt that the pleasure of this spring day, the charm of the opposite wood-glades into which he meditatively looked, the tranquil as well as the buoyant joy of life, were among those personal things so delightful when shared--and which, if too long enjoyed alone, bring (let it be scarcely whispered on this bewildering may morning) something like sadness! before his happier mood changed his attention was attracted by a woman who came rapidly toward the avenue from a little alley at the side. he looked up quickly at the feminine creature who so aptly appeared upon his musings. she was young; her form in its simple dress assured him this. he could not see her face, for it was covered by her hands. abruptly taking the opposite direction, she went over to a farther seat, where she sat down, and when the young girl put her arms on the back of the seat, her head upon her arms, and in the remoteness this part of the avenue offered, cried without restraint, the kind-hearted bulstrode felt that it was too cruel to be true. but soft-hearted though he was, the gentleman was a worldling as well, and that the outburst was a ruse more than suggested itself to him as he went over to the lovely niobe whose abundant fair hair sunned from under her simple straw hat and from beneath whose frayed skirt showed a worn little shoe. he spoke in french. "pardon, madame, but you seem in great distress." the poor thing started violently, and as soon as she displayed her pretty tearful face the american recognized in her a compatriot. she waved him emphatically away. "oh, please don't notice me--don't speak to me--i didn't see that anybody was there." "i am an american, too: can't i do anything for you--won't you let me?" and he saw at once that she wanted to be left alone. she averted her head determinedly. "no, no, please don't notice me. please go away!" he had nothing to do but to obey her, and as he reluctantly did so a smart pony-cart driven by a lady alone came briskly along and drew up, for the occupant had recognized him. "get in!" she rather commanded. "my dear jimmy, how _nice_ to find you here, and how nice to drive you at least as far as the entrance!" as the rebuffed philanthropist accepted he cast a ruthful glance at the solitary figure on the bench. "do you see that poor girl over there? she's an american, and in real trouble." "my _dear_ jimmy!" his companion's tone left him in no doubt as to her scepticism. "oh, i know, i know," he interrupted, "but she's not a fraud. she's the real thing." they were already gayly whirling away from the sad little figure. "did you make her cry?" "i? certainly not." "then let the man who did wipe her tears away!" but bulstrode had seen the face of the girl, and he was haunted by it all day until the bois and its bright atmosphere became only the setting for an unhappy woman, young and lovely, whom it had been impossible for him to help. somebody had said that bulstrode should have his portrait done with his hands in his pockets, and mrs. falconer had replied, "or rather with _other_ people's hands in his pockets!" the next afternoon he found himself part of a group of people who, out of charity and curiosity, patronized the western artists' exhibition in the rue monsieur. having made a ridiculously generous donation to the support of this league at the request of a certain lovely lady, bulstrode followed his generosity by a personal effort, and with not much opposition on his part permitted himself to be taken to the exhibition. he was not, in the ultra sense of the word, a _connaisseur_, but he thought he knew a horror when he saw it! so he said, and on this afternoon his eyes ached and his offended taste cried out before he had patiently travelled half-way down the line of canvases. "my dear lady," he confided _sotto voce_ to his friend, "i feel more inclined to establish a fund for sending all these young women back to the _prairies_, if that's where they come from, than to aid in this slaughter of public time and taste. _why_ don't they stay at home--and marry?" "that's a vulgar and limited point of view to take," his friend reproached him. "don't you acknowledge that a woman has many careers instead of one? _you_ seem to be thoroughly enjoying your liberty! what if i should ask you why _you_ don't stay at home, and marry?" bulstrode looked at his guide comprehensively and smiled gently. his response was irrelevant. "look at this picture! it's too dreadful for words." "hush, you're not a judge. here and there there is evidence of great talent." they had drawn up before a portrait, and poor bulstrode caught his breath with a groan: "it's too awful! it's crime to encourage it." mrs. falconer tried to lead him on. "well, this _is_ an unfortunate place to stop," she confessed. "that portrait represents more tragedy than you can see." "it couldn't," murmured bulstrode. "the poor girl who did it has struggled on here for two years, living sometimes on a franc a day. just fancy! she has been trying to get orders so that she can stay on and study. poor thing! the people who are interested say that she's been near to desperation. she is awfully proud, and won't take any assistance but orders. you can imagine _they're_ not besieging her! she has come to her last cent, i believe, and has to go home to idaho." "let her go, my dear friend." bulstrode was earnest. "it's the best thing she could possibly do!" his companion put her hand on his arm. "please be quiet," she implored. "there she is, standing over by the door. that rather pretty girl with the disorderly blonde hair." bulstrode looked up--saw her--looked again, and exclaimed: "is _that_ the girl? do you know her? present me, will you?" "nonsense." she detained him. "how you go from hot to cold! _why_ should you want to meet her, pray?" "oh," he evaded, "it's a curious study. i want to talk to her about art, and if you don't present me i shall speak to her without an introduction." not many moments later bulstrode was cornered in a dingy little room, where tea that tasted like the infusion of a haystack was being served. he had skilfully disassociated miss laura desprey from her bohemian companions and placed her on a little divan, before which, with a teacup in his hand, he stood. she wore the same dress, the same hat--and he did not doubt the same shoes which characterized her miserable toilet when he had surprised her childlike display of grief on a bench in the bois. he had done quite right in speaking to her, and he thanked his stars that she did not in the least remember him. he thought with kind humor: "no wonder she cries if she paints like that!" but it was not in a spirit of criticism that he bent his friendly eyes on the bohemian. he had the pleasure of seeing her plainly this time, for the window back of her admitted a generous square of light against which her blonde head framed itself, and her untidy hair was like a dusty mesh of gold. she regarded the amiable gentleman out of eyes child-like and purely blue. under her round chin the edges of a black bow tied loosely stood out like the wings of a butterfly. her dress was careless and poor, but she was grace in it and youth--"and what," thought bulstrode, "has one a right to expect more of any woman?" he remembered her boots and shuddered. he remembered the one franc a day and began his campaign. "i want so much to meet the painter of that portrait over there," he began. her face lightened. "oh, did you like it?" "i think it's wonderful, perfectly wonderful!" a slow red crept up the thin contour of her cheek. she leaned forward! "do you really mean that?" he said most seriously: "yes, i can frankly say i haven't seen a portrait in a long time which impressed me so much." his praise was not in latin quarter vernacular, and coming from a philistine, had only a certain value to the artist. but to a lonely stranded girl the words were balm. bulstrode, in his immaculate dress, his conventional manner, was as foreign a person to the bohemian student as if he had been an inhabitant of another planet. her speech was brusque and quick, with a generous burr in her "rs" when she replied. "i've studied at julian's two years now. this was my salon picture, but it didn't get in." "if one can judge by those that _did_"--bulstrode's tact was delightful--"you should feel honorably refused. i suppose you are at work on another portrait?" the face which his interest had brightened clouded. "no, i'm going home--to idaho--i'm not painting any more." all the tragedy to a whole-souled latin quarter art student that this implied was not revealed to bulstrode, but, as it was, his sensitive kindness felt so much already that it ached. he hastened toward his goal with eagerness: "i'm so awfully sorry! because, do you know, i was going to ask you if you couldn't possibly paint my portrait?" it came from him on the spur of the moment. his frank eyes met hers and might have quailed at his hypocrisy, but the expression of joy on her face, eclipsing everything else, dazzled him. she cried out impulsively: "oh--goodness!" so loud that one or two tea-drinkers turned about. after a second, having gained control and half as though she expected some motive she did not understand: "but you never _heard_ of me before to-day! i don't believe you _really_ liked that portrait over there so very much." with a candor that impressed her he assured her: "i give you my word of honor i've never felt quite so about any portrait before." here miss desprey had a cup of tea handed her by a vague-eyed girl who stumbled over bulstrode in her ministrations, much to her confusion. laura desprey drank her tea with avidity, put the cup down on the table near, and leaning over to her patron, exclaimed: "i just _can't_ believe i've got an order!" bulstrode affirmed smiling: "you have, and if you could arrange to stay over for it--if it would," he delicately put, "be worth your while----" she said quietly: "yes, it would be worth my while." a _distrait_ look passed over her face for a second, and bulstrode saw he was forgotten in, as he supposed, a painter's vision of an order and its contingent technicalities. "i can begin at once." he lost no time. "i'm quite free." "but--i have no studio." "there must be studios to rent." yes. she knew of one; she could secure it for a month. it would take that time--she was a slow worker. "but we haven't discussed the price." before so much poverty and struggle--not that it was new to him, but clothed like this in beauty it was rare and appealed to him--he was embarrassed by his riches. "now the price. i want," he meditated, "a full-length portrait, with a great deal of background, just as handsome and expensive looking as you can paint it." he exquisitely sacrificed himself and winced at his own words, and saw her color with amusement and a little scorn, but he went on bravely: "now for a man like me, miss desprey--i am sure you will know what i mean--a man who has never been painted before--this picture will have to cost me a lot of money. you see otherwise my friends would not appreciate it." in the vulgarian he was making himself out to be his friends would not have recognized the unpretentious bulstrode. "get the place, miss desprey, and let me come as soon as you can. all this change of plans will give you extra expenses--i understand about that! every time i change my rooms it costs me a fortune. now if you will let me send you over a check for half payment on the picture, for, let us say"--he made it as large as he dared and a quarter of what he wanted. they were alone in the tea-room, the motley gathering had weeded itself out. miss desprey turned pale. "no," she gasped; "i couldn't take anything like half so much for the whole thing." bulstrode said coldly: "i'm afraid i must insist, miss desprey; i couldn't order less than a fifteen-hundred dollar portrait. it's the sum i have planned to pay when i'm painted." "but a celebrated painter would paint it for that." bulstrode smiled fatuously. "can't a man pay for his fads? i want to be painted by the person who did that portrait over there, miss desprey." in a tiny studio--the dingy chrysalis of a bohemian art student--bulstrode posed for his portrait. each morning saw him set forth from the ritz alert and debonaire in his fastidious toilet---saw him cross the place vendôme, the bridge, and lose his worldly figure in the lax nonchalant crowd of the quarter latin. at the end of an alley as narrow and picturesque as a lane in a colored print he knocked at a green door, and was admitted to the studio by his protégée. in another second he had assumed his prescribed position according to the pose, and miss desprey before her easel began the _séance_. on these may days the glass roof admitted delightful gradations of glory to the commonplace _atelier_. a few cheap casts, a few yards of mustard-toned burlaps, some botticelli and manet photographs, a mangy divan, and a couple of chairs were the furnishings. it had been impossible for bulstrode to pass indifferently the venders of flowers in the festive, brilliant streets, and great bunches of _giroflé_, hyacinths, and narcissi overflowed the earthenware pitchers and vases with which the studio was plentifully supplied. the soft, sharp fragrance rose above the shut-in odor of the _atelier_, and, while miss desprey worked, her patron looked at her across waves of spring perfume. her painting-dress, a garment of _beige_ linen, half belted in at the waist and entirely covering her, made her to bulstrode, from the crown of her fair hair to the tip of her old tan shoes, seem all of one color. he had taken tremendous interest in his pose, in the progress of the work. he would have looked at the portrait every few moments, but miss desprey refused him even a glimpse. he was to wait until all manner of strange things took place on the canvas, till "schemes and composition" were determined, "proper values" arrived at, and he listened to her glib school terms with respect and a sanguine hope that with the aid of such potent technicalities and his interest she might be able to achieve this time something short of atrocious. he posed faithfully for miss desprey, and smiled at her with friendly eyes whenever he caught anything more personal than the squinting glance with which she professionally regarded him, putting him far away or fetching him near, according to her art's requirements. they talked in his rest, and he took pleasure in telling her how he enjoyed his morning walks from his hôtel, how the outdoor life delighted him, and how all the suburban gardens seemed to have been brought to paris to glow and blossom in the venders' carts or in little baskets on the backs of women and boys, and how thoroughly well worth living he thought life in paris was. "there is," he finished, "nothing in the world which compares to the paris spring-time, i believe, but i have never been west. what is spring like in idaho?" miss desprey laughed, touched her ruffled hair with painty fingers, blushed, and mused. "oh, it's all right, i guess. there's a trolley-line in centreville, an electric plant and the oil works--no trees, no flowers, and the people all look alike. so you see"--she had a dazzling way of shaking her head, when her fine white teeth, her sunny dishevelled hair, her bright cheeks and eyes seemed all to flash and chime together--"so you see, spring in centreville and _paris_ isn't the same thing at all! things are beautiful everywhere," she assured him slowly as she painted, "if you're happy--and i was very unhappy in centreville, so i thought i'd come away and try to have a career." she poured out a long stream of _garance_ from the tube on to her palette. bulstrode watched, fascinated. "and here in paris, are you--have you been happy here?" "oh, dear no!" she laughed; "perfectly miserable. and it used to seem as though it was cruel of the city to be so gay and happy when i couldn't join in--" bulstrode, remembering the one franc a day and the very questionable inspiration her poor art could impart, understood; his face was full of feeling--"until," she went slowly on, "lately." she stepped behind the canvas and was lost to sight. "i've been awfully happy in paris for the first time. i do like beautiful things--but i like beautiful people better--and you're beautiful--beautiful." she finished with a blush and a smile. bulstrode grew to think nothing at all about his portrait further than fervently to hope it would not shock him beyond power to disguise. but miss desprey was frightfully in earnest, and worked until her eyes glowed with excitement and her cheeks burned. strong and vigorous and (bulstrode over and over again said) "young, so young!" she never evinced any signs of fatigue, but stood when his limbs trembled under him and looked up radiant when he was ready to cry "_grâce!_" in her enthusiasm she would have given him two sittings a day, but this his worldly relations would not permit. as she painted, painted, her head on one side sometimes, sometimes thrown back, her eyes half closed, he studied her with pleasure and delight. "what a pity she paints so dreadfully ill! what a pity she paints at all! what difference, after all, does it make _what_ she does? she's so pretty and feminine!" she was a clinging, sweet creature, and the walk and the flower debauch he permitted himself, the long quiet hours of companionship with this lovely girl in the _atelier_, illumined, accentuated, and intensified bulstrode's already fatuous appreciation of the spring in paris. during bulstrode's artistic mornings there distilled itself into the studio a magic to which he was not insensitive. whether or not it came with the flowers or with the delicate filtering of the sun through the studio light, who can say, but as he stood in his assumed position of _nonchalance_ he was more and more charmed by his painter. the spell he naturally felt should, and for long indeed did, emanate from the slender figure, lost at times behind her canvas, and at times completely in his view. for years bulstrode had been the victim of hope, or rather in this case of intent, _to love again_--to love anew! neither of these statements is the correct way of putting it. he tried with good faith to prove himself to be what was so generally claimed for him by his friends--susceptible; alas, he knew better! as he meditatively studied the blonde young girl he spun for himself to its end the idea of picking her up, carrying her off, marrying her, shutting idaho away definitely, and opening to her all that his wealth and position could of life and the world. he grew tender at the thought of her poor struggle, her insufficient art, her ambition. it fascinated him to think of playing the good fairy, of touching her gray, hard life to color and beauty, and as the beauty and the holy intimacy of home occurred to him, and marriage, his thoughts wandered as pilgrims whose feet stray back in the worn ways and find their own old footprints there, ... and after a few moments miss desprey was like to be farther away from his meditations than centreville is from paris, and the personality of the dream-woman was another. once miss desprey's voice startled him out of such a reverie by bidding him, "_please_ take the pose, mr. bulstrode!" as he laughed and apologized he caught her eyes fixed on him with, as he thought, a curious expression of affection and sympathy--indeed, tears sprang to them. she reddened and went furiously back to work. she was more personal that day than she had yet been. she seemed, after having surprised his absent-mindedness, to feel that she had a right to him--quite ordered him about, and was almost petulant in her exactions of his positions. her work evidently advanced to her satisfaction. as she stood elated before her easel, her hair in sunny disorder, her eyes like stars, bulstrode was conscious there was a change in her--she was excited and tremulous. in her frayed dress, sagging at the edges, her paint-smeared apron, her slender thumb through the hole in the palette, she came over to him at the close of the sitting, started to speak, faltered, and said: "you don't know what it means to me--all you have done. and i can't ever tell you." "oh, don't," he pleaded, "pray don't speak of it!" miss desprey, half radiant and half troubled, turned away as if she were afraid of his eyes. "no, i won't try to tell you. i couldn't, i don't dare," she whispered, and impulsively caught his hand and kissed it. when he had left the studio finally it was with a bewildering sense of having kissed her hand--no, both of her hands! but one held her palette and he _couldn't_ have kissed that one without having got paint on his nose--perhaps he had! he was not at peace. that same night a telegram brought him news to the effect that miss desprey was ill and would not expect him to pose the following day; and relieved that it was not required of him to resume immediately the over-charged relations, he went back to his old habit, rudely broken into by his artistic escapade, and walked far into the bois. he thought with alarming persistency of miss desprey. he was chivalrous with women, old-fashioned and clean-minded and straight-lived. in the greatest, in the only passion of his life, he had been a chevalier bayard, and he could look back upon no incidents in which he had played the part which men of the world pride themselves on playing well. women were mysterious and wonderful to him. because of one he approached them all with a feeling not far from worship; and he had no intention of doing a dishonorable thing. puzzled, self-accusing--although he did not quite know of what he was guilty--he sat down as he had done several weeks before on the bench in the avenue des acacias. with extraordinary promptness, as if arranged by a scene-setter, a girl's figure came quickly out of a side alley. she was young--her figure betrayed it. she went quickly over to a seat and sat down. she was weeping and covered her face with her hands. bulstrode, this time without hesitation, went directly over to her: "my dear miss desprey----" she sprang up and displayed a face disfigured with weeping. "_you_!" she exclaimed with something like terror. "oh, mr. bulstrode!" her words shuddered in sobs. "don't stay here! why did you come? please go--please." bulstrode sat down beside her and took her hands. "i'm not going away--not until i know what your trouble is. you were in distress when i first saw you here and you wouldn't let me help you then. now you can't refuse me. what is it?" he found she was clinging to his hands as she found voice enough to say: "no, i can't tell you. i couldn't ever tell you. it's not the same trouble, it's a new one and worse. i guess it's the worst thing in the world." bulstrode was pitiless: "one that has come lately to you?" "oh, yes!" she was weeping more quietly now. "please leave me: please go, mr. bulstrode." "a trouble with which i have had anything to do?" she waited a long time, then faintly breathed: "yes." the hand he firmly held was gloveless and cold--before he could say anything further she drew it away from him and cried: "oh, i ought never to have let you guess! you were so good and kind, you meant to help me so, but it's been the worst help of all, only you couldn't know that," she pleaded for him. "please forgive me if i seem ungrateful, but if i had known that i was going to suffer like this i would have wished never to see you in the world." bulstrode was trying to speak, but she wouldn't let him: "i never can see you again. never! you mustn't come any more." but here she half caught her breath and sobbed with what seemed naïve and adorable daring: "unless you can help me through, mr. bulstrode--it is your fault, after all." if this were a virtual throwing of herself into his arms, they were all but open to her and the generous heart was all but ready "to see her through." bulstrode was about to do, and say, the one rash and irrevocable perfect thing when at this minute fate again at the ring of the curtain opportuned. the tap, tapping, of a pony's feet was heard and a gay little cart came brightly along. bulstrode saw it. he sprang to his feet. it was close upon them. "you will let me come to-morrow?" he asked eagerly, "oh, yes," she whispered; "yes, i shall count on you. i beg you will come." "jimmy," said the lady severely as he accepted her invitation to get into the cart, "this is the second wicked rendezvous i have interrupted. i didn't know you were anything like this, and i've seen that girl before, but i can't remember where." "don't try," said bulstrode. "and she was crying. of course you made her cry." "well," said bulstrode desperately, "if i did, it's the first woman that has ever cried for me." as the reason why bulstrode had never married was again in paris, he went up in the late afternoon to see her. the train of visitors who showed their appreciation of her by thronging her doors had been turned away, but bulstrode was admitted. the man told him, "mrs. falconer will see you, sir," by which he had the agreeably flattered feeling that she would see nobody else. when he was opposite her the room at once dwindled, contracted, as invariably did every place in which they found themselves together, into one small circle containing himself and one woman. mrs. falconer said at once to bulstrode: "jimmy, you're in trouble--in one of your quandaries. what useless good have you been doing, and who has been sharper than a serpent's tooth to you?" bulstrode's late companionship with youth had imparted to him a boyish look. his friend narrowly observed him, and her charming face clouded with one of those almost imperceptible _nuances_ that the faces of those women wear who feel everything and by habit reveal nothing. "i'm not a victim." bulstrode's tone was regretful. "one might say, on the contrary, this time that i was possibly overpaid." "yes?" "i haven't," he explained and regretted, "seen you for a long time." "i've been automobiling in touraine." mrs. falconer gave him no opportunity to be delinquent. "and i," he confessed, "have been posing for my portrait. don't," he pleaded, "laugh at me--it isn't for a miniature or a locket; it's life-size, horribly life-size. i've had to stand, off and on with the rests, three hours a day, and i've done so _every day for three weeks_." mrs. falconer regarded him with indulgent amusement. "it's your fault--you took me to see those awful school-girl paintings and pointed out that poor young creature to me." and he was interrupted by her exclamation: "oh, how _dear_ of you, jimmy! how sweet and kind and ridiculous! it won't be fit to be seen." "oh, never mind that," he waved; "no one need see it. i haven't--she won't let me." he had accepted a cup of tea from the lady's hand; he drank it off and sat down, holding the empty cup as if he held his fate. "tell me," she urged, "all about it. it was just like you--any other man would have found means to show charity, but you have shown unselfish goodness, and that's the rarest thing in the world. fancy posing every day! how ghastly and how wonderful of you!" "no," he said slowly, "it wasn't any of these things. i wanted to do it. it amused me at first, you see. but now i am a little annoyed--rather bothered to tell the truth--he met her eyes with almost an appeal in his. mrs. falconer was in kindness bound to help him. "bothered? how, pray? with what part of it? you're not chivalrous about it, are you? you're not by the way of feeling that you have compromised her by posing?" "oh, no, no," he hurried; "but i do feel, and i am frank to acknowledge, that it was a mistake. because--do you know--that for some absurd reason i am afraid she has become fond of me." he blushed like a boy. mrs. falconer said coldly: "yes? well, what of it?" "this--" bulstrode's voice was quiet and determined--"if i am right i shall marry her." mrs. falconer had the advantage over most women of completely understanding the man with whom she dealt. she knew that to attempt to turn from its just and generous source any intent of mr. bulstrode would have been as futile as to attempt to turn a river from its parent fountain. "you're quixotic, i know, but you're not demented, and you won't certainly marry this nobody--whose fancies or love-affairs have not the least importance. you won't ever see her again unless you are in love with her yourself." bulstrode interrupted her hastily: "oh, yes, i shall." he got up and walked over to the window that looked down on mrs. falconer's trim little garden. a couple of iron chairs and a table stood under the trees. early roses had begun to bloom in the beds whose outlines were thick and dark with heart's-ease. beyond the iron rail of the high wall the distant rumble of paris came to his ears. mrs. falconer's voice behind him said: "she's a very pretty girl, and young enough to be your daughter." "no," he said quietly, "not by many years." as he turned about and came back to the lady the room seemed to have grown darker and she to sit in the shadow. she leaned toward him, laughing: "so you have come to announce at last the famous marriage of yours we have so often planned together." bulstrode stood looking down on her. "i feel myself responsible," he said gravely. "she was going home, and by a mistaken impulse i came in and changed her plans. she is perfectly alone and perfectly poor, and i am not going to add to her perplexities. i have no one in the world to care what i do. i have no ties and no duties." "no," said mrs. falconer; "you are wonderfully free." he said vehemently: "i am all of a sudden wonderfully miserable." he had been in the habit for years of suddenly leaving her without any warning, and now he put out his hand and bade her good-by, and before she could detain him had made one of many brusque exits from her presence. on the following day--a sunday, as from his delightful apartments in the ritz he set forth for the studio, bulstrode bade good-by to his bachelor existence. he knew when he should next see the place vendôme it would be with the eyes of an engaged man. his life hereafter was to be shared by a "total stranger." so he pathetically put it, and his sentimental yearning to share everything with a lovely woman had died a sudden death. "there's no one in the world to care a rap what i do--really," he reflected, "and in this case i have run up against it--that's the long and the short of the matter--and i shall see it through." as he set out for miss desprey's along his favorite track he remarked that the gala, festive character of paris had entirely disappeared. the season had gone back on him by several months, and the melancholy of autumn and dreary winter cast a gloom over his boyish spirits. a very slight rain was falling. bulstrode began to feel a twinge of rheumatism in his arm and as he irritably opened his umbrella his spirits dropped beneath it and his brisk, springy walk sagged to something resembling the gait of a middle-aged gentleman. but he urged himself into a better mood, however, at the sight of a flower-shop whose delicate wares huddled appealingly close to the window. he went in and purchased an enormous bunch of--he hesitated--there were certain flowers he _could_ not, would _not_ send! the selection his sentimental reserve imposed therefore consisted of sweet-peas, _giroflés_, and a big cluster of white roses, all very girlish and virginal. his bridal offering in his hand, he took a cab and drove to the other side of the river with lead at his good heart and, he almost fancied, a lump in his throat. he paid the coachman, whose careless spirits he envied, and slowly walked down the picturesque alley of impasse du maine. "there isn't a man i know--not a man in the somerset club--who would be as big a fool as this!" he had more than a mind to leave the flowers on the doorstep and run. bulstrode would have done so now that he was face to face with his quixotic folly, but his cab had been heard as well as his steps on the walk, and the door was opened by miss desprey herself. the girl's colorless face, her eyes spoiled with tears, and a pretty, sad dignity, which became her well, struck her friend with the sincerity and depth of her grief, and as the good gentleman shook hands with her he realized that less than ever in the world could he add a featherweight of grief to the burden of this helpless creature. "my dearest child!" he lifted her hand to his lips. "oh, mr. bulstrode, i'm so glad you've come, i was so afraid you wouldn't--after yesterday!" his arms were still full of white paper, roses, and sweet-peas. "oh, don't give them to me, mr. bulstrode! oh, why, did you bring them? oh, dear, what will you think of me?" she had possessed herself of the flowers and with agitation and distress hastily thrust them, as if she wanted to hide them, behind the draperies of the couch. bulstrode murmured something of whose import he was scarcely conscious. as she came tearfully back to him she let him take her hands. he felt that she clung to him. "it would have spoiled my life if you hadn't come. i would have just gone and jumped in the seine. i may yet. oh, you don't understand! it's been hard to be poor--i've been often hungry--but this last thing was too much. when you found me yesterday i didn't want to live any more." bulstrode's kind clasp warmed the cold little hands. as tenderly as he could he looked at her agitated prettiness. "don't talk like that"--he tried for her first name and found it. "laura, you will let me make it all right, my dear? you will let me, won't you? you shall never know another care if i can prevent it." she interrupted with hasty gratitude: "nobody else can make it all right but you." he tried softly: "did i, then, make it so very wrong?" she murmured, too overcome to trust herself to say much: "yes!" she was standing close to him, and lifted her appealing face to his. her excitement communicated itself to him; he bent toward her about to kiss her, when the door of the studio sharply opened, and before bulstrode could do more than swiftly draw back and leave miss desprey free an exceedingly tall and able-bodied man entered without ceremony. the girl gave a cry, ran from bulstrode, and, so to speak, threw herself against the arms of the stranger, for there were none open to receive her. "oh, here's mr. bulstrode, dan! i knew he'd come; and he'll tell you--won't you, mr. bulstrode? tell him, please, that i don't care anything at all about you and you don't care anything about me.... that you don't want to marry me or anything. oh, please make him believe it!" the poor gentleman's senses and brain whirling together made him giddy. he felt as though he had just been whisked up from the edge of a precipice over which he ridiculously dangled. dan, who represented the rescuer, was not prepossessing. he was the complete and unspoiled type of western youth; the girl herself was an imperfect and exquisite hybrid. "i don't know that this gentleman can explain to me"--the young fellow threw his boyish head back--"or that i care to hear him." she gave a cry, sharp and wounded. the sound touched the now normal, thoroughly grateful patron, who had come out of his ordeal with as much kindly sensibility as he went in. "of course, my dear young lady"--he perfectly understood the situation--"i will tell your friend the facts of our acquaintance. that's what you want me to do, isn't it?" she was weeping and hanging on to the unyielding arm of her cross lover, who glared at the intruding bulstrode with a youthful jealousy at which the older man smiled while he envied it. he pursued impressively: "miss desprey has been painting my portrait for the past few weeks. i gave her the order at the art league; other than painter and sitter we have no possible interest in each other--mr.----" "gregs," snapped the stranger, "daniel gregs!" the slender creature, whose eyes never left the stolid, uncompromising face, repeated eagerly: "_no possible interest_--dan--none! he doesn't care anything about me at all! you heard what he said, didn't you? i only like him like a kind, kind friend." [illustration: "i only like him like a kind, kind friend"] her voice, soft as a flower, caressed and pleaded with the passionate tenderness of a woman who feels that an inadvertent word may keep for her or lose for her the man she adores. "my dear man," exclaimed bulstrode in great irritation, "you ought to be ashamed to let her cry like that! can't you _understand_--don't you see?" "no," shortly caught up the other, "i don't! i've come here from south africa, where i'm prospecting some mines for a company at centreville, and i heard she was poor and unhappy, and i hurried up my things so i could come to paris and marry her and take her with me, and here i find her painting every day alone with a rich man, her place all fixed up with flowers, and a thousand dollars in the bank"--his cheek reddened--"i don't like it! and that's all there is to it!" he finished shortly. "no, my friend," said the other severely, "there's a great deal more. if, from what you say, and the way you speak, you wish me to understand you have a real interest in miss desprey, you can follow me when i say that i came here and found her a lonely, forsaken girl, obliged to return to idaho when she didn't want to go, without any money or any friends. may i ask you why, if there was any one in the world who cared for her, she should be left so deserted?" the girl here turned her face from her lover to her champion. "don't please blame dan for that. he was so poor, too. he didn't have anything when he went to south africa; it was just a chance if he would succeed. and he was working for me, so that he could get married." gregs interrupted: "i don't owe this gentleman any explanation!" "no," accepted the other gently, "perhaps not, but you mustn't, on the other hand, refuse to hear mine. be reasonable. why _shouldn't_ miss desprey have an order for a portrait?" gregs, over the golden head against his arm, looked at bulstrode: "_she_ can't paint!" his tone was gentler. "laura can't paint, and you know it!" "dan!" she whispered; "how cruel you are to me!" and here the desperate bulstrode broke in: "he is, indeed, miss desprey, cruel and unjust, and i frankly ask leave to tell him so. you don't deserve the girl, mr. gregs, if she's yours, as she seems to be." but the girl clung closer, as if she still feared bulstrode might try to rescue her. "that's all right," frowned the miner. "i am no better and no worse than any man about his girl, and i'm going to know _just where i stand_!" the gentleman's reply was caustic. "i should be inclined to say you'd find it hard to be in a better place." laura desprey had wound her arms around mr. gregs. bulstrode held out his hand. she couldn't take it, nor could her lover. with arrogant obstinacy he had folded his arms across his chest. "come, can't we be friends?" urged the amiable gentleman. "i seem to have made trouble when i only wanted to be friendly. let me set it right before i go. i am lunching in versailles, and i have to take the noon train from the gare montparnasse." but daniel gregs did not unbend to the affable proposition. miss desprey said: "when you saw me yesterday in the park, mr. bulstrode, dan had just come back the day before. i was putting the flowers you sent me in fresh water when he came in on me all of a sudden. oh, it was so splendid at first! i was _so_ happy--until he asked all about you, and then he grew so angry and said unless you could explain to him a lot of things he would go away and never see me again, and when you found me i was crying because i thought he had left me forever. i hadn't seen him for two years, and if you hadn't helped me to stay on here i should have had to go to idaho, and i wouldn't have seen him at all. you ought to _thank_ him, dan." bulstrode interrupted: "indeed, mr. gregs, you should, you know!--you should thank me; come, be generous." dan relaxed his grim humor a little. "when i get through with this south african business i'm going back to centreville, and if i ever get her out of this paris _she'll_ never see it again!" "dan," she breathed, "i don't want to. centreville is good enough for me." (centreville! the horrible environment he was to have snatched her from. bulstrode smiled softly.) "but this money," pursued the dogged lover, returning to his grudge. "you've got to take it back, mr. bulstrode. no picture on earth is worth a thousand dollars, and certainly not laura's." "oh, dan!" she exclaimed. but her friend said firmly: "the portrait is mine. come, don't be foolish. if miss desprey is willing to marry you and go out to idaho, take the money and buy her some pretty clothes and things." here the girl herself interrupted excitedly: "no, no! we couldn't take it. i don't want any new clothes. if dan doesn't care how shabby i am, i don't. i don't want anything in the world but just to go with dan." at this sweet tenderness dan's face entirely changed, his arms unfolded; he put them around her. "that's all right, little girl." his tone thrilled through bulstrode more than the woman's tears had done. he understood why she wanted to go to him, and how she could be drawn. he had at times in his life lost money, and sometimes heavily, and he had never felt poor before. in the same words, but in a vastly different tone, dan gregs held out his hand to bulstrode. "that's all right, sir. when a fellow travels thousands and thousands of miles to get his girl and hasn't much more than his car fare and he runs up against another fellow who has got the rocks and all and who he thinks is sweet on his girl, it makes him crazy--just crazy!" "i see"--bulstrode sympathetically understood--"and i don't at all wonder." they were all three shaking hands together and bulstrode said: "would you believe it, i haven't seen my portrait, miss desprey." dan gregs grinned. "don't," he said, "don't look at it. it's what made all the trouble. when i saw it yesterday and laura told me it had drawn a thousand dollars--why i said 'there isn't a man living who would give you fifty cents for it.' that made her mad at first. then she told me you thought she was a great portrait-painter, and i knew you must be sweet on her. i'm fond of her all right, but i decided that you were bound to have her and didn't care how you dealt your cards, and i thought i'd clear out." his face fell and threatened to cloud over, but it cleared again as with the remembrance of his doubts came the actual sense of the woman whose face was hidden on his breast, and he lightly touched the dusty golden hair. when in a few seconds bulstrode took leave of them, miss desprey, in her dingy painting-dress, seemed completely swallowed up in the embrace of the big dan gregs. from where he stood by the door bulstrode could see the white corner of his _fiançailles_ bouquet sticking out from the draperies of the couch. the paper was open and in the heat of the warm little _atelier_ the fresh odor of the pungent flowers came strongly on the air. bulstrode as he said good-by seemed to say it--and to look at the lovers--through a haze of perfume--a perfume that, like the most precious things in the world, pervades and affects, suggests and impresses, while its existence is unseen, unknown to the world. once in his train, he had been able to catch it at the invalides after all, jimmy drew a long breath and settled back into himself, for, he had been, poor dear, during the past three weeks, in another man's shoes and profiting by another man's identity. it was perfectly heavenly to feel that he had been liberated by the merciful providence which takes care to provide the right lover for the right place. he couldn't be too grateful for the miracle which saved him from a sacrifice alongside of which abraham's would have been a jest indeed. the june morning was warm and through the open car window, as the train went comfortably along, the perfume of the country came into him where he sat. opposite, a pair of lovers frankly and naturally showed their annoyance at the third person's intrusion, and bulstrode, sympathetically turned himself about and became absorbed in suburban paris. his heart beat high at the fact of his deliverance. his gratitude was sincere--moreover, his thoughts were of an agreeable trend, and he was able to forget everybody else within twelve miles. secure in his impersonality and in the indifference of his broad unseeing back, the lovers kissed and held hands. bulstrode wandered slowly up from the versailles station to the hôtel des reservoirs, crossed the broad square of the palace court, found the pink and yellow façade more mellow and perfect than ever, and toward twelve-thirty strolled into the yard of the old hostelry. breakfast had been set for twelve-thirty, but his host was not there. "ah--mais, bon jour, monsieur bulstrode!" the proprietor knew and appreciated this client greatly. monsieur falconer, it seemed, had been called suddenly to paris.... yes--well--there were, now and then, in the course of life, bits of news that could be borne with fortitude. "and madame has also been called to paris?" "mais non!" madame had a few minutes since gone out in the park, the proprietor thought she would not be very far away. bulstrode thanked him, and crossed over to the hedge and the gateway and through it to the palace gardens. on all sides the paths stretched broad and inviting toward the various alleys, and upon the terrace to his left there shone a thousand flowers in june abundance. the gentleman chose the first path that opened, and went carelessly down it, and in a few moments the pretty ring of an embowered circle spread before him, but, although there was an inviting marble bench under a big tree at one side, and several eighteenth century marbles on their pedestals, illuminated by the bland eighteenth century smile, there was not a living woman in sight to make him, the visitor, welcome! he went a little further along and found another felicitous, harmonious circle, where a small fountain threw its jets on the june air. at the sound of the water bulstrode remembered that the grands eaux were to play on this afternoon at versailles. "ah, _that_ is why they especially wanted me to come out to-day," he decided. on the other side of the fountain, the vivid white of her summer dress making a flash like moonlight on the obscurity of the woods, a lady was standing looking across at mr. bulstrode. "hush!" she said; "come over softly, jimmy; there is a timid third party here." on a branch at her side, where an oriole sat, his head thrown back, his throat swelling, there was a little stir and flutter of leaves, for although the lady had put her finger to her lips, her voice broke the spell, and a bit of yellow flashed through the trees. "i don't believe _he_ will ever forgive you!" she cried; "you spoiled his solo, but i'll forgive you. what brought you out to versailles to-day?" "the fountains," bulstrode told her; "i have never seen them play. then, too--there are certain places to which, when i am asked to luncheon, i always go." "that's quite true," she accepted; "you _were_ invited!--but, to be perfectly frank, i did not expect you, so your coming on this occasion has only the pleasure of a surprise. as a rule, i hate them. my husband informed me that he would telephone you to meet him in paris, but i think he must have forgotten you, jimmy." she was taking him in from his fresh panama to his boots, and she apparently found an air of festivity about him. "was it," she asked, "in honor of the fountains' playing that you have made yourself so beautiful?" bulstrode took the boutonnière out of his coat lapel and handed it to her. "can't you pin it in somewhere?" mrs. falconer laughed and thrust the carnation into her bodice. "i dressed to-day, more or less," mr. bulstrode confessed, "in order to attend--well, what shall i call it--a betrothal? that's a good old-fashioned word." "oh!" exclaimed the lady, "a _fiançailles_?" "yes." the two had wandered slowly along, out of the bosquet towards the canals. "they make a great deal of these functions in france," mrs. falconer said. her companion agreed. "they made a great deal, rather more than usual, out of this one." and his tone was so suggestive that his companion looked up at him quickly. "who _are_ your mysterious lovers?" she asked, "are they french? do i know them?" "they are not in the least mysterious," bulstrode assured her. "i never saw anything less complex and more simple. they are americans." she seemed now to understand that she was to hear of "one of jimmy's adventures," as she called his dashes in other people's affairs. "i hope, jimmy, in this case, that you have pulled the affair off to your credit, and that if you have made a match the creatures will be grateful to you for once! and, by the way," she bethought; "whatever has happened to the pretty girl whom you were quixotic enough to think you had to marry?" "the last time i saw her she appeared to be in the best of circumstances," bulstrode answered cheerfully. "in point of fact--it was, singularly enough, to _her_ engagement party that i went to-day!" and mrs. falconer now showed real interest and feeling. "no! how delightful. so she is really off your hands, jimmy. well, that is too good to be true. there's one at least whom you don't have to marry, jimmy!" "oh, they grow beautifully less," he agreed. mrs. falconer smiled softly. "they are narrowing down every year," jimmy went on; "when i am about sixty the number will be reduced, i dare say, to the proper quantity." "what a goose you are," she said jestingly. "what a tease and a bother you are, jimmy bulstrode; _i'll_ find you a proper wife!" he accepted warmly. "do, do! i leave myself quite in your hands." his companion extended him her hand as she spoke, and after lifting it to his lips, bulstrode drew it through his arm. it was clothed in a glove of pale coffee-color suede. it was a soft, dear hand, and rested as if it were at home on bulstrode's gray sleeve. side by side the two friends walked slowly out toward the broader avenues leading to the canals. the sky was faintly blue, touched with the edges of some drifting cloud, like dashes of foam. the trees about them lifted dark velvet masses and the air was sweet with the scent of the woods and flowers. "isn't this the most beautiful garden in the world?" murmured mrs. falconer. "isn't it _too_ beautiful!" "very," he incorrectly and vaguely answered. and the lady went on to say how brilliant she found the place with the suggestions and memories of the past royal times, whilst bulstrode said nothing at all, because he did not want to tell her that versailles and the charming alleys, and france, and the great big world, from limit to limit, was full of no ghosts to him, but of just one woman. the third adventure iii in which he finds there are some things which one cannot buy after not a great deal of hesitation, toward the middle of a warm june, bulstrode permitted himself to become the proprietor of a palace: not an inhabitant of the ordinary dwelling modelled after some old-world wonder, wherein american millionaires choose to spend their leisure in their own country--but of a real traditional palace, in whose charming rooms no object was younger than bulstrode's great-grandfather, and where the enchanting women of the fragonards and nattiers almost made him, as he mused upon them, lose sight for a moment of a living lady. on the very first day he went over the hôtel montensier from _grenier_ to _caves_, jimmy bulstrode gave in, and accepted the duc de montensier's proposition to "fetch his traps for a few months to the hôtel and turn parisian." he was in the heart of paris, yet all around him, shut in by high walls, was a garden, to which the terraces of the house gave in flights of marble steps. when his friend suggested that bulstrode turn parisian, jimmy laughed. "do you think," he had asked, "that a chap born in providence, educated in harvard, and, if cosmopolitan, thoroughly american from start to finish, could, _mon cher_, turn parisian?" and the duc had assured him that he did not think bulstrode had a "latin eyelash," and that he needn't be at all afraid to try his luck at what a french house would do for him! "why, your coat alone--the cut of it--" montensier had laughed, "speaks of poole with a boston compromise! the duc had been in the united states--moreover, the frenchman had plans of his own and he wanted very much to go to newport and leave his house in the care of jimmy bulstrode. whether the puritan in him led bulstrode to excuse to himself his enjoyment of so much luxury, at any rate he apologized, saying that nobody could expect a man with a love of the beautiful, and who had more or less a desire to shut himself up and to shut himself away for a time, to refuse. the falconers were off somewhere _en auto_. he had thought they had gone through spain. it was pretty hot to do such a thing, however, and he did not really know. he wanted very much to be able not to let himself follow them, and he knew that there was little chance of his reaching such stoicism unless he began by not finding out where they were going! so he shut himself up with the books which the library offered and gave many charming little dinners and parties on his terraces in the bland summer nights, and tried with all his might and main to forget the flight of a certain motor over the fair white roads and, above all, to nerve himself up to refuse an invitation for the middle of july. directly opposite the white façade of the montensiers' hôtel was a hostelry for beggars, for domestics without places; for poor professors; for actors with no stages but the last; for laborers with no labor; in short, for the riff-raff of the population, for those who no longer hold the dignity of profession or pay rent for a term. sometimes bulstrode would look out at the tenement, whose windows in this season were wide open; and the general aspect indicated that dislocated fortunes flourished. in one window, pirouetting or dancing in it, calling out of it, leaning perilously over the sill of it, was a child--as far as bulstrode could decide, a creature of about six years of age. she was too small to see much of, but all he saw was activity, gesticulation, and perpetual motion. when the day was hot she fanned herself with a bit of paper. she called far out to the wine-merchant's wife, who sat with her family before the shop while her pretty children played in the gutter. in paris, when the weather climbs to eighty, parisians count themselves in the tropics and the people, who lived apparently out of doors altogether, wore a melted, disheartened air. but the de montensier garden, full of roses and heliotrope, watered and refreshed by the fountains' delightful falling, was a retreat not to be surpassed by many suburbs. bulstrode gave little dinners on the terrace; little suppers after the theatre, when rooms and garden were lighted with fairy lanterns, and his chef outdid his traditions to please his american master. one day as the american sat smoking on the terrace with nothing more disturbing than the drip of the fountain and the remote murmur of paris to break his reverie, prosper, his confidential man, made a tentative appearance. "would m'sieu, _who is so good_, see a young lady?" his master smiled as he rose, instinctively at the words "jeune demoiselle," throwing away his cigar. "pardon, m'sieu, i thought it might amuse m'sieu--" and prosper stepped back. bulstrode had been intently thinking of the caravansary opposite him, and he now saw that part of the _hôtel meublé_ had come across the street; he recognized it immediately for the smallest part. before him stood the ridiculous and pathetic figure of a dirty little girl in rags, tatters, and furbelows, her legs clad in red silk stockings evidently intended for fuller, shapelier limbs; her feet slipped about in pattens. she had on a woman's bodice, a long flounced skirt pinned up to keep her from tripping. her head was adorned by a torn straw hat, also contrived and created for the coquetry of maturity. "monsieur is so good," she began in a flute-like voice. "i have come to thank monsieur with all my heart." bulstrode looked toward prosper for enlightenment, but that individual had cleverly disappeared. "to thank me, my child? but for what?" "why, for the eggs and butter and sugar that monsieur was so good as to send me. i have made the cake. it is beautiful! monsieur le cuisinier of this house baked it for me. it is perhaps a little flat--but that was because i got tired stirring. see--it says--" she had, so he now saw, a book under her arm; letting fall a fold of her cumbersome dress with both hands and opening a filthy cook-book, she laid it on the table, bending over it. "it says stir briskly half an hour." (her "rs" rolled in her throat like tiny cannons in a rosy hollow.) "quelle idée! it was _too_ stupid! half an hour! i just mixed it round once or twice and then--voila! it has white on the top and shall have a candle." "so you've made a cake?" he said kindly. "i'm sure it's a good one." she nodded brightly. "it is for that i came to thank monsieur and to ask if he would accept a piece of it." poor bulstrode, with dreadful suspicion, looked to see part of the horror immediately offered for his degustation. "i don't, my dear, understand. why should you thank _me_--what had i to do with it?" her gesture was delightful. "but for monsieur it would not exist; for butter, eggs, and flour. monsieur prosper, when he gave them, said it was of the kindness of '_monsieur balstro_.'" (oh, prosper! "i have corrupted _him_," his master thought. "he is as bad as i am!") "well, i'm very glad indeed," and he said it heartily. "but what did you especially want to make it for--with the one candle? that means one year old. who's birthday may it then be?" "it is the birthday of maman." she shut the book, and as she did so raised her great black eyes, which dirt and neglect could not spoil. there was in her appearance so little suggestion of maternal care that bulstrode nearly incredulously asked, "your mother? and what, then, does your mother do?" "she's a fish," informed the child tranquilly. and bulstrode, although startled, could believe it. it too perfectly accounted for the cold-blooded indifference to this offspring. not even a mermaid could have been guilty of so little care for her child. still, he repeated: "a fish?" "oui, a devil-fish in the aquarium at bostock's. oh, que c'est beau!" she clasped her little hands. "maman wears a costume of red--quite a small, thin dress," she described eagerly. "and it is all spangles, like fire when she dives into the water. i have been; the waiter at the café downstairs took me. i screamed. i thought maman was drowned. but no--she comes up always!" the child threw her head back and lifted her eyes in ecstasy. "c'est magnifique!" "what is your mother's name?" "mademoiselle lascaze." "and yours?" "simone." "what do you do all day, simone?" "i wash and cook and sew and play--i have much to do--oh, much." she assumed an important air. "the bad air of the room makes maman ill, so she's out--'to breathe,' she says--and she locks me safely in. i play bostock and dive like maman. and sometimes"--she lowered her voice, and looking back to see if they were alone--confided, "i cry." "ah!" sympathized bulstrode. "but, yes," she insisted, "when maman forgets to come home, and the night is so black; then the seamstress next door knocks on the wall, and i knock back for company." "i see," he understood gently, "for company." he rang for prosper. "you will conduct mademoiselle home, prosper, and give her everything she needs for her kitchen always." "yes, monsieur; i knew that monsieur would----" at sight of prosper the mite gathered up her voluminous skirts and bade her new friend a cordial good-by. from the corrupted prosper bulstrode extracted what he wished to know concerning the child. "it is of a scandalousness, monsieur! four nights of the seven the poor little object is alone. the mother appears to have money enough, she pays her rent regularly, and there is therefore nothing to do. she sometimes even fetches her companions home with her, and simone, when she is not making sport for them, is tied to a chair to keep her from falling off in her sleep." bulstrode expressed himself strongly, violently for him, went to see a lawyer and a charitable french countess and found out that so long as the mother did not actually ill-treat the child she could not be replaced by any other guardian. "mon cher ami," said the spirituelle lady, "leave the fish to her deviltry, and her child in her care. we are _fin de race_, if you like, and in direct opposition to your american progressive schemes, but we have a tradition that the family is sacred, and that, however bad it may be, a child is better off in its home than elsewhere. you will find it difficult to replace a mother by a _machine_ or an _institution_, believe me." and bulstrode at the words felt a new sense of failure in philanthropies, and his benevolence seemed pure dilletantism. what was he likely to accomplish in the case of this child? nothing more than the momentary pleasure a few toys and a few hours of play could secure. "and yet," as he mused he philosophically put it to himself, "isn't it, after all, about the sum total any of us get out of destiny?" in new york he would have quite known how to proceed in order to help the child, but in the face of french law and strong family prejudice he came up against a stone wall. "i'm no sort of a real benefactor," he remorsefully acceded, "and i don't believe i'm fit to be trusted alone with the poor." nevertheless he did not relinquish his idea entirely, and confided simone to prosper's sympathetic care and that of an emotional maid-servant, with the result that a cleaning woman penetrated by hook or crook into the room of "the fish" and treated it to more _aqua pura_ than the piscatory individual had cognizance of outside of the aquarium. the gentleman in this particular charity was surprised to find how simple it sometimes is to do good. in this case no one had come to him with a petition or a demand; on the contrary, a note of undeserved thanks had, with the strange little creature, been presented to him. it was so pleasantly easy to help a child! there were no _arrières pensées_--not that they would have troubled him, but there were none; there were no wire-pullings, no time infringements, no suggestion or criticism, no--he believed--expectations. everything he could do was so annoyingly little! the charwoman cleaned, simone had a complete wardrobe, the larder was full, and there remained nothing but toys to buy. the little thing was so womanly and capable--he had seen it and marvelled in their interviews at her age and accomplishments--her hands were so apt and almost creative, that toys seemed inadequate. she took her benefits charmingly; rushed over at the least provocation to pour out her gratitude, and bulstrode, who hated thanks, liked these. childhood, if it had been for sale on the boulevard, even that he would have bought simone if he could! as it was, he found himself pausing before a series of shops other than chemisièrs--florists, and jewellers'--shops where diminutive objects were displayed--and one afternoon had been standing ridiculously long in front of a certain window on the rue de rivoli when he was accosted by an agreeable and familiar voice. "jimmy! it isn't possible! don't tell me it has come so cruelly _soon_?" the gentleman gave a violent, but an entirely happy start. well, there were rewards then for people who didn't follow speeding motors through france! she was back and in paris. "what--has come so soon?" he asked. mrs. falconer, on her way from a hat shop in her automobile, stopped by his side. "why, your second childhood, my dear man. do you know what shop you are standing before?" bulstrode seemed to be perfectly aware of his dotage and to delight in it. behind the big window pane there was a bright and very juvenile display. ships sailed there; dolls hung gaudily and smilingly aloft; giant parti-colored balls rounded out their harlequin sides; tiny dishes for pygmy festivals were piled with delicious carrots and artichokes on little white, blue-rimmed platters. "have you a moment to spare?" bulstrode asked her. "i have bought all my hats," she replied; "after that a woman's time hangs heavy on her hands." "ah!" he was as radiant as she had the genius for making him. "come, then, in with me and help me choose a _doll_." it was not the first purchase during the course of a long friendship which bulstrode had made with this charming woman by his side, but for some reason he enjoyed it more than former errands. the bachelor and the childless woman were hard to please and their choice consumed an unconscionable time. as they lingered, the amiable shopman pressed various toys on monsieur and madame "_pour les enfants_," and the lady, finally depositing her friend with his parcels at the door of his hôtel, realized as she drove away that she knew nothing of the child for whom the purchases had been made. on her way up the champs elysées she smiled softly. "it's what you _share_," she mused, "what you give of _yourself--with_ yourself--_that's_ charity! jimmy gives himself. i wonder who his new love is?" bulstrode, in order to share what should be his "new love's" ecstasy at first sight of the miraculous toy, sent for simone. the rue de rivoli doll, on a small chair designed for diminutive ladies of the eighteenth century or for the king's dwarfs, held out stiff but cordial arms and was naturally, to a child, the first and sole object of the drawing-room. "_monsieur!_" "for you, simone." "_monsieur!_" she said nothing else as she clasped her hands, and the color rushed into her face, but she felt the doll, touched reverently its feet, hair, dress, incontinently forgot bulstrode, and quite suddenly, passionately, caught the image of life to her heart. just over its blonde head, for it was nearly as large as herself, she met the gentleman's eyes. "it's my child! i've prayed for it always, always! i've never had a doll, a _bébé_, m'sieu." the tea-table with cakes and chocolate called them all too soon and, as prosper served, the fountains sang, the heat stole through the garden and called up agreeable odors of sod and roses, the late afternoon sky spread its expanse over the terrace of the hôtel, where, perfectly happy both of them, animated by as gentle and harmless pleasure as any two in paris that day, the child of the people and an american gentleman chatted over their tea. bulstrode, being an original, erratic, and reckless giver of alms, quite by this time knew that, more than often, for him to give was, if not to regret, to have at least misgivings whether in the hands of some colder, less poetic person his money would not have accomplished more good. in the case of simone he had, as usual, happily gone on with abandon, relegating any remorse to a future which he hoped would never arrive. but the middle of july did come and with it came poor jimmy's exquisite temptation. a telephone helped it dreadfully. there was something so wonderful in the fact that in a couple of hours he could, if he would, let himself reach the side of the lovely voice which called to him over the wires. and being nothing but a human man, he threw all his good resolves to the wind, and went down and stayed three days at fontainebleau. out under the sky, where the elastic earth sprang softly beneath her feet and the embowered forests were sifted through with gold, mary falconer finally asked him, "and your doll, jimmy? have you broken her yet?" bulstrode felt a guilty twinge, for he had not once thought of the little girl, nor did mrs. falconer's mention of her bring the subject near enough for bulstrode to tell her the pretty story. he had other things to say, and many things not to say, and this, as it always did when he was with his lady, kept him very absorbed and occupied. on this occasion he forgot all about little simone. the night of his return paris was _en fête_ and in no sense impatient to reach his lonely house--for it seemed to him this night the loneliest house in the world--he walked without haste up town along the quays. it was hard to forget that not fifty miles away he had left the cool forests, their tempting roads, their alluring alleys. he had forgotten that it was the annual celebration and that at this late hour the _fête_ would be in full swing, and as he strolled meditating along the seine the spirit of the gay populace--good-humor, reckless pleasure, and the _joie de vivre_--poured itself out around him like cordial, like a generous gift from an over-charged horn of cheer. in his gray clothes, modish panama, a little white rose plucked by a dear hand from the trellis at fontainebleau still in his buttonhole, bulstrode scarcely remarked the crowds or heard the music as he passed outdoor dancing stands and was jostled by a dancing throng. his own street, as he approached it, welcomed him with a strong odor of onions and fried potatoes; it had apparently turned itself out of doors and all of the houses seemed to have emptied themselves into the narrow alley. a hurdy-gurdy playing before the _hôtel meublê_ tinkled and jangled in the centre of a crowd of merry-makers, and the metallic melody and wild ascending octaves were the first sounds bulstrode consciously heard since he left fontainebleau. in the midst of this rabble little simone was dancing like a mad child, hair, arms, and feet flying; her voice, thin and piercing, every now and then above the rattle of the hand-organ, cried out the lines of a popular song whose meaning on her lips was particularly horrifying. the wine-shop family encircled her, encoring her vociferously. as she paused for breath the light from over the shop-door shone on her excited little face. [illustration: in the midst of this rabble little simone was dancing] "i tired! mon dieu, que non! i could dance till morning. play again, monsieur l'organiste. play again." bulstrode, on the crowd's edge, watched her, and for once in his philanthropic history made no attempt to rescue. as prosper let his master in he said: "it's a shame, isn't it, monsieur? the people over there have let her run quite crazy. the poor little thing! heaven knows where the mother is!" of which celestial knowledge bulstrode had his doubts. it was close to twelve, and dismissing prosper for the night, he took his cigar out on the terrace and to what solitude his garden might extend. before long the noise of the music subsided, the people, tired out with hours of festivity, dispersed, and the alley settled into quiet. from the distance now and then came the soft, dull explosion of fireworks, the rumble and roar of paris was a little accelerated; otherwise the silence about bulstrode's garden grew and deepened as the night advanced. it was rare for him to allow himself to be the object of his own personal consideration, or that indeed he at all thought of himself, and when he did the man he had long ignored had his revenge and made him pay up old scores. on the late afternoon of this very day he was to have walked for miles through the fontainebleau woods with mrs. falconer, and instead he had fled. pleading a sudden summons to paris, he left fontainebleau. it was well past four o'clock when he at last threw his cigar away and rose. he had been musing all night in his chair. a sudden gust of noise blew down the quiet little street, the sound of loud singing and the shrill staccato of a woman's laugh. by the time the revellers had passed his house and the hubbub had died away, bulstrode, with an idea at length of going up to his room, walked across the salon and prepared to extinguish the electricity, but the sound of some one tapping without caught his ear, and going over to the window that gave on the street, he looked out. from end to end the alley was deserted except for the figure of a woman. as he saw in the ruddy light of early morning she huddled against the threshold of the _hôtel meublé_--knocking persistently at the door. the tattered gauze of her dress, whose bold _decolletée_ left her neck and shoulders bare, a garland of roses on the bandeaux of her black hair, she epitomized the carnival just come to its end--its exhaustion, its excess, spent at length, surfeited, knocking for entrance at last to rest. bulstrode, as he remarked the sinuous figure that swayed as the woman stood, exclaimed to himself with illumination: "why, she's the _fish_, of course! simone's mother! and this is the state in which she goes to the miserable child!" as, knocking at intervals, the object leaned there a few moments longer, evidently scarcely able to stand, his pity wakened and he slowly left the window, shut in its blinds, and crossed his ante-chamber, where the artificial light of electricity was met by the full sunshine of the breaking day streaming in through the open window of his terrace. not entirely sure of his motive or to what excess of folly it might lead him, he nevertheless opened wide his front door, only to see that the woman on the opposite street had gone. she had been let in. with a glance of relief up and down the street where the _confetti_ in disks of lilac and yellow and red lay in dirty piles or swam on the flushing gutters that sparkled in the light, bulstrode shot to his door on the parisian world and after a _nuit blanche_ went upstairs to his rooms. and there had intensely come to him during the period of his dressing the next morning after a tardy wakening the idea of taking the child, of--he was certain it could be done--buying the mother off. he would, in short, if he could, legally adopt the parisian _gamine_ for his own. it would give him a distinct interest, and life was empty for want of one; this, in a manner, however short of perfect, would supply the need of a loving living creature in his environment and would--his thrill at the idea proved to him how lonely he had been--give him companionship and a responsibility of a tender, personal sort. he could make a home at last for a child. men are more paternal than they are credited with being, and bulstrode directly foresaw delightful _causeries_ in the future with--(he knew many women)--_with one woman_ whose pretty taste, whose wit and humor, should counsel him in his new rôle. mrs. falconer would dress simone--her hand should be wonderfully in it all. bulstrode had let his fancy linger over the scheme. certainly, during the hour in which he spun his fanciful plan, there was not one bar to its execution. nor did there come to him any hint of its intrinsic sterility, or the idea that it was possibly an excuse for the interweaving of another interest more closely with his life--no idea that he was simply strengthening an old bond, or by means of this little tug pushing a mighty vessel nearer port. he almost happily mused until a nursery grew out of thin air, a child's little garments lay on a chair, and festivities, whose charm is of the most mysterious, illuminated his reverie. bulstrode, even without the shudder of the climatician, contemplated the rigors of his own country, for a rosy room grew out of his dream, fire-lit and fragrant with fir and holly, and in the centre shone the tree, whose shiny globes and marvels were reflected till they danced in a child's eyes. there had been an hour earlier the quick, brusque dash of a french thunder-storm, and the cooled air came refreshingly from the garden as bulstrode stood out on the terrace before going into the noonday breakfast. prosper, fetching his master's coffee at nine o'clock, had been informed that they were leaving paris that day and received instructions as to the setting in order of the hôtel before returning it to its proprietor. where his wanderings were to take him bulstrode had not as yet made up his mind. it, after all, mattered so very little what a bachelor did with his leisure! it was the height of the season along the seacoast and a dozen places brilliantly beckoned; there were tri-weekly boats to the country, where he should most properly be. "there is," he with recurrent leeway to his inclinations reflected, "always plenty of time to decide what one does not want to do!" as he glanced at the little breakfast spread temptingly there for him on the terrace he was arrested by the sound of french voices in quick, agitated discussion, and looked up to see the unceremonious entrance of quite a little band of people who had in point of fact penetrated his seclusion. in a second of time a group was before him and he remembered afterward that certain figures in a twinkling assumed familiar shapes: the wine-shop keeper, his wife, one or two other patrons of the hôtel; but in the centre--he was sure of her!--pale and staring, stood little simone, her big doll clasped in her arms. before the gentleman could ask their errand madame branchard, eager to tell it, pushed forward. bulstrode afterward, when he thought of the scene, could always distinctly see her important red face, sleek, oily hair, and in spite of summer heat the crocheted shawl over her cotton gown. "we decided at once to address to monsieur, who is so good"--(he was growing accustomed to the formula) "to monsieur who has been so like a father to the poor little thing. not but that we are ready ourselves to do all we can for her--she is so sweet, so intelligent!" "the sweet, intelligent child" appeared, as bulstrode's pitying gaze, never leaving her, saw, to have shrunk overnight. in their midst she stood of a ridiculous smallness, her big doll nearly hiding her and over its blonde head simone's eyes peered pathetically into, as it were, a vague and terrifying world. bulstrode asked shortly in the face of the theatrical prelude: "what is this all about? what have you come to tell me?" "ah, monsieur!" madame branchard's voice, particularly suited to retailing the tragedies of the streets, quavered. "there has been a _malheur_--it is too horrible--the mother!" "stop!" bulstrode put out his hand. "simone!" the little thing dragged herself to him with a new timidity, as though she believed him in league with the world against her. "come," he encouraged, "come out here on the terrace, where you have so often played with your doll, and don't be frightened, _mon enfant_; everything will be all right." when he had so settled her in the smallest of chairs he went back to the other bit of paris street-life which had seethed in to him. madame branchard, whom his manner had reduced to, for her, marvellous quiet and ease, approached impressively and lowered her voice as deeply as it would fall. "mademoiselle lascaze, whom monsieur knows has been my tenant for months past, is dead--dead, monsieur!" bulstrode echoed, "dead?" and his first thought was: "it was not she, then, whom i saw striving for entrance this morning. ah, poor creature! drowned?" "monsieur then knows?" knows--how should he know? he had thought of the aquarium and her often repeated feat. "monsieur is right, she is drowned; but it is not the aquarium--it is the seine. it appears," the wine-merchant's wife went on, "that last night she made _la fête_ in the streets. we over here lock up, well, at a decent hour, as monsieur will understand. those who are in stay, those who are out--well, monsieur will understand----" yes, he understood. would she go on? "mademoiselle lascaze had evidently lost her key of entry--so it appears. we have this story from her comrades, a bad lot, like herself. she tried to get in about five o'clock--they left her knocking at the door. she must then have wandered the streets for an hour, for it was six when they met her again by chance quite by the pont des arts. they all had something to drink and started across the river, when the poor thing offered to give an exhibition of her circus feat and, before anyone could stop her, had dived off the bridge into the seine." he had, then, seen her knocking there in the dawn, and if he had hastened a little--not held conventionally back---- "it is all _en règle_," assured madame branchard. "as my husband will tell monsieur, he has been to the morgue to identify her." the wine-merchant now at his cue, nodded impressively. "mais oui, i assure monsieur she was quite natural--and she was une belle femme tout le même----" his wife glanced at him scornfully. "she was a bad mother, and all the house will tell you so. many times, monsieur, i have gone in with my pass-key and taken the poor little thing downstairs in my arms to give her all the supper she would have had, and many a time, on cold nights, when there was not a stick of fire in their room, and the woman abroad--many a time i have had her sleep in our bed with us--my husband will tell monsieur." the wine-merchant nodded assent. "she speaks the truth, monsieur." bulstrode found presence of mind to wonder. "i suppose mademoiselle lascaze left debts?" the husband and wife exchanged glances. "_en vérité_, monsieur," confessed madame branchard, "she has left a few, but they are small and not significant; a hundred francs will cover them. it is not for our pockets we are come to monsieur." here the sentimentality having been disposed of by the woman, the husband broke in: "it is like this, monsieur balstro" (bulstrode saw how intimately the _hôtel meublé_ knew him): "in a few moments even the authorities will be here to take charge of the woman's effects and simone will become the property of the state. she has no relatives, as monsieur will understand. thinking, therefore, that monsieur, _who is so good_, might for some reason care to take an interest in the child's future----" branchard coughed and paused. having given mr. bulstrode ample time to speak, to show some signs of life and of his usual quick benevolence, and being greeted with nothing other than quiet, meditative silence, the merchant shrugged and comprehensively relinquished suppositions and hopes in one large gesture. "in which case" (evidently that of taking for granted that bulstrode was less good than they had supposed), "in that case we shall put in a plea ourselves for simone and adopt her." madame's voice, now in full and customary volume, expressed frankly _her_ goodness. "we have five children and our means are modest, but"--and she put it sublimely--"_one is not a mother for nothing_." her tirade, however, was quite lost on bulstrode, who was occupied with his own projects of benevolence. turning to this contingent of the _hôtel meublé_ a back scarcely more imperturbable than his face had been, he went out of the room to the terrace, where simone sat just as he had left her. she was, on her low chair, so tiny that in order more nearly than ever before to approach her little point of view, to come into her little sphere, bulstrode knelt down on one knee. "don't look so frightened, my child. nothing will harm you--i assure you of that; don't you"--he called her loyally to answer--"don't you believe me, simone?" the little thing drew in a struggling breath and whispered: "oui, m'sieu." "good!" he was smiling at her and had taken her ice-cold, dirty, little hands. "you are fond of me, simone--you like a little m'sieu balstro'?" "oh," she caught at her frightened voice and more clearly whispered, "oh, oui, m'sieu!" "bien encore!" he wanted tactfully to break the ice which shock and terror had formed around the poor little heart, and yet not to prolong the moment. "_voyons_," he said to her lightly, as if he were only to bid her come and play in his garden, and not ask her to decide her destiny. "_voyons_, how would you like to come and live with me? to have toys and pretty clothes and good things to eat--to be"--the bachelor put it bravely--"to be _my_ little girl. how, simone, would you like it?" if further startled she was humanized by his warmth, which was melting her; her breast heaved, her lips trembled, and she asked: "et puis--maman?" here madame branchard, in whom all feelings were subordinate to curiosity and motherhood, had approached until she stood directly behind the two on the terrace. tears had sprung to her eyes and she sniffled and wiped them frankly away with her hand. bulstrode, singularly relieved by her appearance, turned and asked her, "what does she then know?" "nothing, m'sieur, nothing at all." simone got up on her feet and her big doll fell with a crash on the marble of the terrace and broke in a dozen pieces, but the catastrophe did not touch her. "and maman?" she repeated. "where is she? she did not come home last night?" bulstrode had descended to one knee in order to approach her, but madame branchard got down on both knees and tenderly put her arms around the child. "look, ma petite--your mother has gone away forever to a beautiful country, and she has left you here to be a good girl and do whatever this kind gentleman says. will you go to be his little girl? he will give you everything in the world." she closed with this magnificent promise, whose breadth and wealth no child-mind could grasp. in order to give her more complete liberty in which to make her decision the wine-merchant's wife, after kissing her, set her free. simone made no audible reflection of wonder at her seeming desertion, no exhibition of distress, no melodramatic outburst of grief or surprise. she stood silent, absorbed, desolate, and ashamed, twisting in and out between her frail little fingers the fringe of madame branchard's black shawl. "or," brightly continued the good woman, "you can come home with me and play with marie and jeannette and have what we have. you can be my little girl, as you will--it is for you to decide--chez moi, or with this bon monsieur." was it fair of them--thus to lay on her six years the burden of her own destiny? simone raised her head; her cheeks had reddened a little at madame branchard's last words. she was unable to grasp the benefits that bulstrode's magnificence offered, but she knew marie and jeannette--she knew the hands of madame branchard could tuck one in at night, and how warm and soft was the bosom on which she had already wept her little griefs. there were many beautiful things in the world, but simone just then only wanted one. madame branchard was not _her_ mother--but she was still _a_ mother! simone whispered so low that only the woman heard: "i will go with you." prosper having embarked on a sea of indiscretion, went through the day consistently. with a love of the melodramatic in his latin temperament he had admitted the _hôtel meublé sans cérémonie_: and late that afternoon he gave entrance to another group of quite a different order, and without formality ushered the lady and her friends to the terrace, where the solitary inhabitant of another man's house was taking a farewell beverage before leaving paris. "we have caught you in time, jimmy!" mrs. falconer made a virtue of it. "if you are absconding with the montensier treasures, then let me show molly and the marquis at least what has been left behind." his bags and boxes in the hall, his automobile at the door, and bulstrode himself in travelling trim, it looked very much like a flight, indeed. miss molly and the marquis, it transpired, were able to explore for themselves and to find in the gallery and salons pictures and objects of interest to excuse a prolonged absence. "they're engaged," mrs. falconer explained to her host. "isn't it ridiculous? as you know, she hasn't a cent in the world, and his family are not in the secret, but molly and de presle-vaulx _are_, and _i_ am, and i brought them off in pity for a spin to paris." the apparition of the lady, whose mocking beauty had a fresh charm every time he saw her--her worldly wisdom and her keen reasonableness--made, as he stood talking with her, his past debauch in philanthropies seem especially grotesque. with a long breath of joy at the sight of her bulstrode also realized how wonderfully separated from her the introduction of another life into his environment would have made him. "your garden is a waste," the lady criticised, "dusty and dull. i don't wonder you're getting away. fontainebleau, too, was only a _faute de mieux_, and i have left it. one should get really far away at this season. it's the time when only the persons who are actually bred in its stones can stay in paris--certainly the birds of passage may now, if ever, fly." "we are going to trouville," she said; "we are all going to motor through normandy. won't you come--won't you come?" he shook his head. mrs. falconer looked across the terrace to where a little chair had been overturned, and on the floor by its side lay a broken doll. "jimmy!" she laughed in triumph at the sight. "you _have_ broken your doll!" bulstrode said: "yes, beyond repair, and i don't want another." then in a few words, briefly, a little impatient, and still smarting under the child's defection, he gave her the story. listening, absorbed, her charming eyes on him or at one moment turned suspiciously away, the lady heard him to the end, and at the end said softly: "jimmy, my poor jimmy! what have you nearly done! what _would_ people have thought? not that it matters in the least--it's what people _do_ that counts--but oh, i tremble for your next folly!" "it might"--he spoke with something like bitterness--"be less harmless and leave me less alone." she had finished a glass of iced tea, put her goblet down on the tray and rose, coming over to where bulstrode stood; she lightly laid her hand on his arm. "you are, then, so very lonely? so lonely that you would be capable of doing this foolish thing? oh, you would have found, as i have found, that it is those things which come into our lives, not those which we by force _take_, which mean all we want them to mean! this wasn't _your child_!" mrs. falconer's face softened as he had never seen it. "nor yet is she the child of some woman you love. believe me, it would have made you far lonelier if it so happened--if you should ever come to love--if you ever had loved----" bulstrode interrupted her abruptly: "yes, in that case i should no doubt be glad that simone had gone back on me." he waited silent for a second, and then continued gently, "i _am_ glad, very glad indeed!" the fourth adventure iv in which he makes three people happy there were times when bulstrode decided that he never could see the woman he loved any more: there were times when he felt he must follow her to the ends of the world, just in order to assure himself that she was alive and serene. such is the gentleman's character and point of view, that she must always be serene, no matter what his own troubled emotions might be. he had the extraordinary idea that he could not himself be happy or make a woman happy over the dishonor of another man. it was old-fashioned and unworldly of bulstrode: still, that was the way he was constituted. it was on one of the imperious occasions when he felt as if he must follow her to the ends of the earth, that he steered his craft toward a little town on the edge of the norman coast, to a very fashionable bit of france--trouville. as soon as he understood that mrs. falconer was to be in normandy for the race week, he packed his things and ran down and put up at the hôtel de paris. on this occasion the gentleman followed so fast that he overleaped his goal, and arrived at the watering-place before the others appeared. bulstrode took his own rooms, and in response to a telegram, engaged the falconers' apartments. he liked the way the little salon gave on the heavenly blue sea, and with a nice fancy to make it something more home-like for his friend to begin with, he filled it with flowers ... ran what lengths he dared in putting a few rare vases and several pieces of old italian damask here and there. "falconer," he consoled himself, "will be too taken up with his horses to notice the _inside_ of anything but a stable! and i shall tell the others that the hôtel proprietor is a collector: most of these norman innkeepers are collectors." and, as his idea grew, he went to greater lengths, with the curiosity shops on either side the rue de paris to tempt him. the result was that when mrs. falconer came, she found the hôtel room wonderfully mellow and harmonious, and as a woman who revels in beauty she responded to its charm. she was delighted, her eyes sparkled, her cheeks glowed. and jimmy bulstrode had a moment of high happiness as she looked at him and touched with her pretty hands the flowers he had himself arranged. it was a delightful moment, a moment that was much to him. the falconers arrived with the usual lot of servants and motors and, moreover, with a racing outfit, for falconer had decided to enter his english filly, bonjour, for the events of august. there was also with them a miss molly malines and a young sprig of nobility, the marquis de presle-vaulx, to whom bulstrode was a trifle paternal. "he can't, at least, be after molly's _millions_," he reflected; "he can't, at any rate, be a _fortune_ hunter, for the girl's face is the only fortune she has!" on a bright and beautiful morning, the first of all the days for many weeks--for bulstrode reckoned his calendar in broken bits, beginning a new year each time he saw his lady again--a bright and beautiful morning he walked out at the fashionable hour of noon and turned into the rue de paris. the eyes of many women followed bulstrode. being an early riser, he had already taken a brisk walk over the cliffs, had swum out beyond the buoys, and now in his flannels, his panama, a gay rose in the lapel of his coat, amongst the many debonnaire and pleasing people who filled the little fishing town, his was a distinguished figure. he trusted very much to instinct to discover his friend, and after a few moments found her at the extreme end of the street which the papers of paris tell you is "the most worldly and fashionable in any part of the continent, during race week at trouville." mary falconer was of course dressed in the very height of the mode. she looked up and saw bulstrode before he saw her, but she could wait until he made his leisurely way down to her side. she waited for him a great deal. he did not know how much, but then her point of view and her feelings have never come into the history. it amused her to make him her many clever little bits of speech, for he was so appreciative of everything she said, and looking up at him now as he approached she said: "these people never seem to have anything to do, do they? leisure is like money: to enjoy thoroughly either money or leisure one should only have a little of each. now for us good-for-nothings who have no occupation it doesn't make much difference what we do or where we do it!" the lady's camp-stool had been set down at the end of the street. those who are not promenading opened little _chaises pliantes_ and watched from their little seats. mrs. falconer sat facing the ocean, or what was visible of it between the bathing tents. pagodas gay with children's shovels and bright pails, striped bonbons and the sea of muslins, ribbons and feathers and sunshades of the midsummer crowd. all the capitals of europe had poured themselves into trouville, and the resort overflowed with beauty and fashion. '"it's perfectly bewitching," bulstrode said to her, "perfectly bewitching, and it makes one feel as though there were nothing but pleasure in the world." she wore a white dress and her hat was bright with flowers. she opened her rose-lined parasol over her head. "jimmy," she said abruptly, and brought his eyes to hers like a flash, for he had been looking over the scene, "do you know i begin to see where the innkeeper found his rare treasures; _there are a great many other things_ that suggest them in this little street!" bulstrode replied, "you don't want him to take them away, do you?" she shook her head. "no," she said slowly, "they have been a great pleasure, but i don't want to _buy_ them from him, either." "i don't _think_ he'd sell them," bulstrode was certain of it, "they're extremely precious in his eyes." "i'm a good judge of works of art, however," she said after a moment, "that is to say, i know a good thing when i see it. there was a little picture in one of the shops back of me that i would have given a lot to own." her friend exclaimed: "are you going to buy it! that is to say, will falconer buy it for you?" "my dear soul--with his horse running to-morrow! at any rate, the bijou is already bought above my head. i went in yesterday to see what was the least they would take for it, and found the prince pollona, the englishman who buys for the wallace collection, and somebody who, they tell me, was the rockefeller of st. petersburg. well, my little picture was what they all wanted, and you can imagine that _i_ retired from the running...! but i tell you this," she said, "only to show you how very good my taste is, and so that you may rely on my selections." bulstrode smiled in a way that said he thought he might rely on her, but still he asked rather quizzically, "well, what are you going to recommend to me _now_?" the lady at the moment, not having anything in mind, looked suddenly up, gave him whimsically: "molly and her marquis." the two young people with jack falconer were coming slowly along the rue de paris toward them. the grace of the girl, her freshness under her wide hat where flowers and ribbons danced and blended; the radiant pleasure she exhaled, the swing of her dress, her youth, expressed so happily the joy of life, recommended themselves easily in a flash.... "oh, _molly_--she's perfect!" "and the marquis?" "he is perfectly in _love_," ... bulstrode allowed him so much. "my dear friend, remember i know my _objets d'art_." "oh, as an _objet d'art_...!" bulstrode took the young man in: his white immaculateness, his boutonnière, his panama--(not less than forty dollars a straw, as jimmy knew) his monocle. "as an _objet d'art_," he further conceded to her, "he's perfect, too!" "as an _homme de race_," said the american lady eagerly, with the true republican appreciation of blood and title, "as an _homme du monde_, as a..." "title?" he finished for her. "oh, the presle-vaulx are all right! i'll grant him a perfect title, sound as a bell, first crusade--_léonce de presle-vaulx main droite, or sur azur--pour toi seule_. it's a good old tradition--a good old name." she scented his lack of sympathy. "oh, i'll stand for him, jimmy. i know the _pâte_, as they say. i know the ring and the tone; and you must, at my valuation, take him." "molly, dear lady, has done the taking." bulstrode lifted his hat as the trio came up. "and what, after all, can we--the rest of us do?" "the rest of them" watched the young couple with mingled emotions: mary falconer with all the romance in her, and in spite of unusual cool reasonableness she had a feminine share--jimmy with the sympathy of a kindly nature, a certain sting of jealousy at the decidedly perfect completeness of young love, and with a singularly wide-awake practical common sense for an impulsive gentleman whose pleasure in life is to pour into people's hands the things they most long for and cannot without him ever hope to enjoy! bulstrode, although owning his share of horse-flesh and a proper number of automobiles and keeping, for the best part of the time, a yacht out of commission, was a sport only in a certain sense of the word. the people who liked him best and who were themselves able to judge, said he was a "dead game sport," but jimmy smiled at this and knew that the human element interested him in life above all, and that he only cared for amusements as they helped others to enjoy. he was backing falconer's horse, although he felt certain the winnings would go to the rothschild's gelding. on the afternoon, however, when de presle-vaulx came up to him in the casino and said: "on what are you going to put your money, monsieur?" bulstrode looked at him thoughtfully. he had stood by the young man the night before at baccarat and seen him lose enough to keep a little family of trouville fisherfolk for a year. "are you going to play the races, marquis?" "but naturally!" ... de presle-vaulx had an attractive frankness, and his smile was--bulstrode understood what a girl would think about it! "... but of course! one doesn't come to trouville in _la grande semaine_ not to play!" he put his hand cordially on bulstrode's arm. "entre nous," he said, "i don't believe falconer's horse has a chance against rothschild's grimace. and you?" "oh, i shall back jack falconer's mare," the older man replied. the marquis played with his moustache. "she doesn't stand a show." bulstrode was walking slowly down the grand staircase by his companion's side. "and you will back grimace?" he ignored the young man's prognostication. de presle-vaulx said ingenuously: "_i_? oh, seriously, i'm not betting. i lost at baccarat last night, and i haven't a sou for the race." he looked boyish and regretful. the american put his hand in his pocket and took out his portefeuille. "let me," he suggested pleasantly, "be your banker." the light dry rustle of french bank-notes came agreeably from between his fingers. the young man hesitated, then put out his hand. "a thousand thanks, monsieur, you are too good--i _will_ back grimace, and after the race----" jimmy handed him the notes to choose from. at the stair foot stood molly and mrs. falconer. "we went this afternoon to see jack's horse," miss malines said to the marquis. whatever she said, no matter how general, she said to him--others might gather what they could. "bon jour's a beauty--a dear, and as fit as possible. oh, she's in great form! jack's crazy about her, and so is the jockey. i know bon jour will win! i'm going to put twenty-five francs on her to-morrow." mary falconer smiled radiantly. "and you, jimmy," she took for granted, "are of course betting on the favorite?" "if you mean grimace--" his tone was indifferent--"no, i shall back your husband's horse." "_jimmy_!" her tone changed, and her expression as well. de presle-vaulx saw it, and he knew what women's voices can mean. he was a frenchman, and he understood what a slow, delicious flush, a darkening of the eyes, a sharp note in the voice can signify of feeling--as well as of gratitude, surprise and a little scorn. there was all this in mary falconer's exclamation and her face. "and maurice!" molly said, "of course, you're doing the same?" the marquis met his fiancée's clear eyes, her girlish enthusiasm and her confidence. he bit his lip, shrugged, hesitated, looked at bulstrode, at molly, and laughed. the presence of the others and the custom of his country made it only a pretty courtesy--he lifted molly's hand to his lips. "of course--_chère mademoiselle_, i am backing bon jour with all my heart, _cela va sans dire_!" miss malines regarded her friend with a pretty grimace and a smile. as they walked along together all four, bulstrode said to himself: "he's a sport, a true sport--that's five thousand francs to the bad. he was game, however, he's a good sport and, better yet, he's a true lover!" whether or not mary falconer really had an exalted idea of the merits of bon jour, or whether she thoroughly understood the situation, how was her friend to know? falconer adored the horse, and the lady showed in the matter, as in everything else, a fine loyalty to her husband, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons why--but this is going too deeply into the domain of bulstrode's feelings, which, since he keeps them honorably sealed, it is unworthy to surprise even in the interest of psychology. bulstrode saw that his friend was pleased: her color, her mounting spirits at dinner, showed it. she spoke with interest of the races, and with confidence greater than she had hitherto evinced in the fortunes of her husband's racer--indeed she talked horse to molly's edification, her husband's delight, and bulstrode's admiration. all this--the sense that the party was, so to speak, with him--put jack falconer in the best of spirits, and the unruffled course of the dinner, and, above all, the humor of the elder of the two ladies, quite repaid jimmy bulstrode for the sure loss of his stakes. "does she really think that i have faith in the horse?" he wondered---meeting her charming eyes over the glass of champagne she was drinking. they did not answer in text his question, but their glow and the light of content in them answered for him other questions which were perhaps of greater interest. she was not unhappy. all his life, since his acquaintance with her, it had been his aim, in so far as he could aid it, that she should not be unhappy. his idea of affection was that in all cases it should bring to the object--joy. in his own life these things which brought him, no matter how pleasant they might be, the after taste of regret and misery he strove with all his manliness to tear out: "and surely," he so argued, "if my presence in her life cause her for one moment anything but peace, it would be better that we had never looked into each other's eyes." there was nothing especially buoyant, in the attitude of the young marquis! his inclination to feminine will had cost him--he was so familiar with the turf and the next day's programme to feel sure--five thousand francs, which he had not the means to pay. later in the evening, very much later, indeed well on to one o'clock, bulstrode, wandering through the baccarat rooms--for no other purpose, it would be said from his indifferent air, than to study types--saw maurice de presle-vaulx just leaving the casino. bulstrode's air was as friendly and as naïve as though he had not a pretty clear idea of just how the tide of events was fluctuating toward misfortune in the case of this young nobleman. "what do you say," he suggested, "to getting something to drink or eat? what do you say to a piece of _perdreau_ and some champagne?" the frenchman followed the older man, who in contrast to his pallor looked the picture of health and spirits. bulstrode cheerily led him to a small table in the corner of the restaurant, where they sat opposite one another, and for a little time applied themselves in silence to the light supper served them. the marquis drank more than he ate, and bulstrode dutifully finished the game and toast, quite glad, in truth, to break the fast of a long evening which he had spent in the close rooms: for no other reason than unseen, to befriend--and unasked, to chaperone molly's lover. finally, when he felt that the right moment to say something had come, he smiled at the young man, and said frankly: "voyons, mon ami, don't you feel that you can talk to me a little more freely than you could possibly to even so kind and charming a friend as mrs. falconer? we are not of the same race, perhaps, but then under certain circumstances such distinctions are not important. how do you"--he handled the words as though in presenting them to the young man he was afraid they might prick him--"how do _you_ now stand?--i mean to say, the luck has been rather against you, i'm afraid." bulstrode would never be so near forty again, and de presle-vaulx was a spoiled child--at all events, all that could be spoiled in him had been taken care of by his mother, and in his own way he had spoiled a large part of what remained. he looked up smartly, for he had been following the pattern of the table-cloth. if the frankness of the other threatened to offend him, as he met the kind eyes of the american he found nothing there that could do otherwise than please him. he shrugged with his national habit, then threw out his hands without making any verbal reply, but his smile and his gesture comprehended so much that bulstrode intelligently exclaimed: "oh, but you don't mean to _say_----?" "i have not, monsieur, much to lose," the scion of an old house replied simply. "we have the reputation of being poor; but to-night and last night have quite 'wiped me out,' as you say in america. je suis ruiné." bulstrode lit his cigar. de presle-vaulx took from his pocket one of his own cigarettes and puffed at it gently. bulstrode smoked silently, and thought of the young man without looking at him. he liked him, and did not understand him at all: not at all! he supposed, that with his different traditions, his puritanism, his new world point of view, he could _never_ understand him, but he would enjoy trying to do so, for aside from the quality of spoiled boy, there was something of the man in de presle-vaulx to which the new englander extremely responded. his next remark was impersonal: "bon jour, then, you think is not likely----?" "_mon cher monsieur_! ... she is not even mentioned for place! even in the event of her winning," de presle-vaulx was gloomy, "i should be able to discharge my debt to you and nothing more." again he looked up quickly. "i shall, of course, be quite able to discharge _that_; i only mean to say that _en somme_, i am _roulé completément roulé_." "what, then, are you going to do?" de presle-vaulx looked at the end of his cigarette as though he took counsel from it, and said measuredly: "there is, in my position, but one thing possible for a man to do." "you mean to say, marry, make a rich marriage?" the marquis flashed at him: "a month ago, yes! that would have been the one way out of my embarrassment: but i am no longer in the market. it is the other alternative." bulstrode in no case caring to hear put in words a tragically disagreeable means of solving the problems of debt and love, and having less faith in this extravagant, explosive alternative than in the _marriage de convenance_, did not urge the frenchman further. he simply brought out--his quiet eyes fixed on the other: "and the little girl?--molly--miss malines?----" he gave him three chances to think of the pretty child, and for the first de presle-vaulx's expression changed. he had with a nonchalance submitted to the discussion of his fortune and his fate, but now he distinctly showed dignity. "don't, i beg of you, _speak_ of mademoiselle malines!" and then he said more gently, "mille pardons, mon cher ami!" bulstrode smoked his garcia meditatively. he had not attempted the solving of other people's questions, had not played the good fairy for a long time. he had the hazy feeling--such as he often experienced just before stepping into the mysterious excitement of doing some good deed, of undergoing the effects of a narcotic which put to sleep reason and practical common-sense, and left alive only a desire to befriend. in this case, determined not again to be the victim of sentimentality, determined for once to unite common sense and common humanity, he forcibly dissipated the haze and said: "your family! i have, as you know, understood from mrs. falconer, the facts of the case. you must not be formal with me." he smiled delightfully. "i am an american; you know we have all sorts of barbarous privileges. we rush in quite where the older races fear to tread ... and molly malines' father is an old friend of mine." (mr. bulstrode did not say what kind of an old friend! or even allow himself to remember the i.o.u.s and loans that his bankers had made to the visionary, good-humored, sanguine, unfortunate stockbroker.) "your family--how do they take the idea of your marriage to a poor american?" de presle-vaulx pushed his coffee cup aside, leaned his arms on the table, bent over, and said with more confidence: "oh, they are entirely opposed to it. that's one reason, to be quite frank with you, why i have been so reckless." he added: "my mother has refused her consent, and i can never hope to alter my father's attitude. i have their letters to-day as well as telegrams from presle-vaulxoron--they bid me 'come home immediately,' and so far as my people are concerned, their refusal puts an end to the affair!" there was a mixture of amusement and reproach in bulstrode's tone--"and you have found nothing better to do than to throw away at baccarat what money you had, and have found no other solution for the future than to...?" he eyed the young man keenly, and a proper severity came into his expression. "nonsense," he said, and repeated the word with more indulgence: "nonsense, _mon ami_!" his reproof was borne: "we are an old race, m. bulstrode----" bulstrode had heard this allocution before. it gave lee-way to so much; permitted so much; excused so much! "... i don't need to tell you our traditions, or recall our customs. you of course know them. if i marry without my parents' consent i shall probably, during my mother's lifetime, never see her again, and i am her only son. it means that i sever all relations with my people." bulstrode knocked the ash off his cigar and said thoughtfully: "it's too bad! a choice, if there _is_ one, is always too bad. there should in real things _be_ no choice. as soon as such a contingent arises, it proves that neither thing is really worth while! when a man loves a woman there can be no choice. my dear friend, when a _man_"--he paused--"loves--there is nothing in the world _but the woman_." the marquis looked at the fine face of the elder man. years had, with their gentle history, and kindly records, touched jimmy bulstrode lightly. every experience made him better to look at; "like a good picture," mrs. falconer had said, "painted by a master, and only growing more splendid." nothing of the worldliness of the roué marked his expression. his memories were clear and honorable, and the frenchman experienced a sensation of surprise and also one of enlightenment as he looked at him and responded to his expression. he had never seen any one quite like this man of the world, could not think of his prototype in france. he repeated: "nothing but the woman in the world--? honor--" bulstrode quickly added, "and the woman--they are synonymous." in watching his companion he wondered in how much of a tangle the frenchman's mind was, and just how deep his feet were sunk in the meshes of conventionality and tradition, and decided: "oh, is it too much to believe that he could----!" as if in answer to his thoughts, de presle-vaulx spoke in the simplest manner possible: "j'aime molly." quite surprised at the simplicity, bulstrode beamed on him and waited. then the other added: "but i can't ask any woman to share poverty and debts, and i have no way of making a living; i'm not bred for it." "you are not an invalid?" "on the contrary." "you can work." de presle-vaulx smiled: "i am afraid not! no de presle-vaulx has done a stroke of work in three hundred years." "it's time, then"--bulstrode was tart--"that you broke the record. why don't you?" he said as though suddenly illumined--"make me your banker, draw on me for whatever sum you will, and since you have faith in her and are so well supported by the public opinion--bet on grimace. i believe, with you, that he is sure to win. you would recoup much of your loss here." de presle-vaulx pushed back his chair and exclaimed: "monsieur!" "oh," shrugged bulstrode, "a woman's caprice, my dear fellow! a foolish little whim of a girl! you can't be expected to mix sport and flirtation to the tune of two or three thousand dollars." he smiled deceptively. the young man laughed bitterly: "so that is something of what you think of me? for i see you are not serious! it's a folly, of course, a sentimental folly," he met bulstrode's eyes that silently accused him of a like--"but only a man in love knows what sentimental follies are worth! there is"--the young man was suddenly serious, "a sort of prodigality in love only understood by certain temperaments, certain races: it may be degenerate: i suppose it is, and to push it quite to the last phase, is, of course, cowardly, certainly very weak, and men like you, monsieur, will deem it so." "you mean--?" and now bulstrode's tone urged him to make himself clear. "i mean," said de presle-vaulx firmly, "rather than renounce this woman i adore i will without doubt--(given the tangle in which the whole matter is!...") and he could not for the life of him put his intention into words. he smiled nevertheless unmistakably. bulstrode leaned across the table and put his hand on the other's arm. "then you don't love her well enough not to break her heart? or well enough to live a commonplace life for her?" "i don't know how to do it." "well," said bulstrode, "i have run upon quite a good many hard moments, perhaps some, in their way, as difficult as this, and i have never thought of getting out of the muddle. perhaps it _is_ a question, as you say, of temperament and race. i am inclined also to think, stubbornly, that it is a question of the quality of the love that one has for the woman. you won't think it impertinent of me, my dear friend,"--and his tone was such that no one could have thought it impertinent--"you won't, i am sure, take it amiss if we talk this over to-morrow, and if i try to show you something that means _life_, instead of what you plan." "you know you as good as stood for de presle-vaulx." bulstrode held mrs. falconer's parasol, her fan, as well as a gold bag purse full of louis, a handkerchief and his own cane and field-glass. for the lady, standing on a chair the better to see the race-track, was applauding with enthusiasm the result of the first handicap. she had placed a bet on a horse called plum-branch "from a feeling of sentiment," as she said, because she had, that day, quite by chance, selected a hat with a decorative plum-branch amongst other garnitures. "i am _standing_, certainly, jimmy," she replied to his remark, "and to the peril of my high heels!-- _there_, i've won! and won't you, like an angel, go and cash my bets?--give me the purse, you might have your hand picked! you can put my winnings in your pocket; they're not so enormous." during his absence she watched the scene around her with animation. the spotless day, if one might so call it, when the sky and the turf and the whole world looked as though washed clean, and nature, seen in the warm sunlight, seemed to palpitate and flutter in the wind that gently stirred ends of ribbon or tips of plumes, and set the fragrance of the country air astir. back of the lady the tribune was like a floral display: here and there a corner red as roses, there a mass of lily-white dresses enlivened by pink and blue parasols, and the green _pesage_ stretched between the spectators and the race-track in bands of emerald, whilst across it promenaded or stood in groups those interested in the races. mrs. falconer acknowledged a friend here and there, glanced affectionately over to where molly and the marquis, seated near, fixed their attention on the race-course, where the winner, flying his blue ribbon, cantered triumphantly around the track. one of a little group falconer, the worse for many cocktails, stood by the railing, talking familiarly with his jockey, whilst bon jour, blanketed to the eyes, was being led up and down the outside track alongside of her rival, rothschild's grimace. bulstrode returning, gave his friend a handful of gold, which she put into her purse, and he repeated: "you remember that you stood, as it were, for de presle-vaulx?" "i do," she said, "if you think the race-course is the place to take me to account for anything so serious, i do remember, and i do stand. what is the trouble that he needs me?" "he needs," bulstrode was serious, "a good many things, it seems to me, in order to get firmly on the plane where he should be!" "and that is----?" "on his feet, my dear friend." "well, he is head over heels in love," she nodded, "but when he finally lands i think you will find maurice perfectly perpendicular." "he won't," returned the other, "at all events, land in the bosom of his family." "no?"--she looked away from the race-course and laughed--"you mean to say, jimmy, has he heard, then?" "i mean to say that _they_ are quite clear in their minds about his marriage! they seem to have all the firmness that the young man lacks. tell me," he asked his friend, "just what do you know about the matter? what happened that you so strongly took up his cause with molly? you have not told me yet." she relinquished the interests of the moment to those of the sentimental question. "it seems," she said, lowering her tone, "that they have been secretly engaged for a year. nothing that an american girl can do would surprise me, but you can imagine that i was overwhelmed at his part in the matter. when molly joined me in fontainebleau, de presle-vaulx promptly followed, and i naturally obliged her to tell me everything. i was dismayed at the lack of _tenue_ he had shown. i had a plain talk with him. he said that he had first met molly at some dance or other in the american colony, i don't know where; that he understood that american girls disposed of their own lives; that he loved her and wanted to marry her, and that he was only waiting to gain the consent of his family before writing to her father. he seemed delighted to talk with me and perfectly conventional in his feelings. he further told me that his parents until now knew nothing, that he had not been able to tear himself away from molly long enough to go down to the country where they were and see them. i forced him to write at once; exacted myself that until he received their answer there should be nothing between molly and him but the merest distant acquaintance. i did not know that he had heard from the marquise or his father. you seemed to have suddenly entirely gained his confidence and taken my place." she looked over at the young couple. "poor molly!" she exclaimed. "he has not, i should say, told her: she looks so happy and so serene! it's of course only a question of _dot_, otherwise there could be no possible objection. she is perfectly beautiful, the sweetest creature in the world; and she is a born marquise!" bulstrode interrupted her impatiently: "it would be more to the purpose if he were a born bread-winner and she were a dairy-maid!" "jimmy, how vulgar you are!" "very--" he was wonderfully sarcastic for him--"money is a very vulgar thing, my dear friend; it's as vulgar as air and bread and butter. it is like all other clean, decent vulgarity, it can be abused, but it's necessary to life." mrs. falconer opened her eyes wide on this new bulstrode. "why, what has happened to you?" he made a comprehensive gesture: "oh, i am always supporting a family!" he said with an amusing attempt at irritability. "i am always supporting a family that is not mine, that does not sit at my hearthstone or at my table. i am always marrying other people to some one else, and dressing other people's children!" he finished with a laugh: "there, no. is up! aren't you interested in this race?" mrs. falconer and bulstrode had walked a little from where the young couple chattered indifferent to everything but each other. "no; i am only interested in what you are saying. what have you planned to do or thought out for them, jimmy? what do your rebellious phrases imply? _are_ you really going to make a home for----?" bulstrode said stubbornly. "no! i am going to show him how to make one for himself." he stopped short where he stood: he had resumed the care of her parasol, her fan, and purse. her face, as she took in his exposition of his plan for the regeneration of a decayed nobility, was inscrutable. instead of exclaiming, she stopped to speak a moment to some people who passed, shook hands with the owner of the favorite, and when they were once again alone said to her friend: "isn't it too delightful! the whole scene? i mean to say, how perfectly they do it all. how thoroughly gay it is, how debonnair, graceful, and _bien compris_. look at the wonderful color of the _pesage_, and the life of the whole thing! these latin most thoroughly understand the art of living. you scarcely ever see a care-worn face in france. look at jack now! did you ever see such anxiety as he represents? if bon jour is beaten i don't know _what_ will become of him. what shall i do with him?" bulstrode's interest on this subject was tepid. "oh, he'll be all right!" he said indifferently. "take him to the dublin horse fair." and then as though she had not capriciously left the other topic, mrs. falconer asked: "just what _is_ your plan for molly and her marquis? may i not know?" and bulstrode who had never in any way thought out a plan or scheduled a scheme for the wise distribution of the good he intended to do, educated now, so he fondly hoped, by his failures, wiser, he was proud to believe, by several sharp lessons--with no little confidence and something of pride, said to his companion: "i have a ranch out west, you know; a little property i took for a bad debt once. it has turned out to be a great and good piece of luck. that time i was fortunate--" (his tone, was congratulatory and mrs. falconer smiled prettily). "i now need a second overseer again--a man of brains, good temper, and physical endurance, who can keep accounts. experience isn't at all necessary. there's my englishman there, my christmas tramp, you recall; he'll show de presle-vaulx his duties. it's a good enough berth for any determined chap who has his way to make and an ideal to work for. i purpose to send this frenchman out on a salary and to see what stuff he's made of. after a year or two, with good sense and push, he will be in a position to ask any girl to be his wife. i'll raise his salary, and if molly is the girl i take her for, she will help him there." "and his family, jimmy?" "damn his family!" risked the aroused bulstrode. mrs. falconer laughed. "really! it is casual of you! but you don't know them and can't! but they can quite spoil the whole thing as far as molly is concerned. his tradition and race, his home and all it means to him--why you can't roughly run against all the old conventions like that, my dear man!" "well," said the ruthless gentleman, "then he can go and feed on their charity, can take to his flesh-pots and give up the girl. she is far too good for any foreign fortune-hunter anyway. you spoil a man, all of you. you'd prefer a disreputable roué to a cowboy with money in his pocket and a heart." "would it then prove to you de presle-vaulx's heart if he threw over his family and went west?" "yes," said the other quickly. "it would prove he loves the girl." "you forget his mother." bulstrode fumed. "i have not the honor to forget her; i don't know the marquise de presle-vaulx." "i do," interrupted his friend. "she is a charming, gentle old dear; narrow, if you call it so, clear-headed and delightful. she adores her only son, and thinks quite properly that his name, his estates, beautiful if mortgaged, are a fair exchange for an american _dot_. maurice de presle-vaulx, after all, does not go poverty-stricken to the woman he marries. there are not so many ways to live after one is twenty-five, and to uproot this scion of an old race, to exact such a sacrifice----" "it would make a man of him." "he is one already. there are all kinds, i need not tell you so." "he is head over heels in debt." mrs. falconer laughed again. "we make him out an acrobat between us." "he gambles on borrowed money." "you mean that you have forced him to borrow from you? he will pay what he owes, i am sure of him." bulstrode wheeled and scrutinized her, and said with the natural asperity of a man who is bored by a woman's too generous championship of another man: "you stand for him warmly." mrs. falconer, reading him, said quickly: "oh, i know him thoroughly! he has the faults of his race, but as an individual he is the right sort." with their pretty habit, her cheeks had grown red in the course of the discussion. "please give me my parasol; it's awfully hot here." he opened it for her and she held its rosy lining against the sun. mr. falconer, who from the rail had been observing, through the haze formed by countless cocktails, the figure of his wife in her white dress, as well as the figure of her faithful squire, here came swaggering up to them both. he was never jealous, but mr. bulstrode's uniform courtesy and attention to the woman neglected by her husband often piqued him to attention. as he drew near, mrs. falconer asked quickly: "and the marquis, jimmy? what do you suppose he will say to your wild west scheme?" bulstrode smiled. "oh, you women understand us even when we are stupid mysteries to ourselves! tell me, how will he take this?" "he will refuse." the lady was quick in her decision. "he cannot in consistence do otherwise. he will consider your plan provincial and yankee, and he will consider, what you ignore, that it will kill his mother. if he cannot marry molly with the family consent in proper french fashion he will naturally give her up. but first of all, my dear jimmy, he will put _you_ in your place!" bulstrode cast a fatherly glance to where the young people sat talking together: the marquis in gray clothes of the latest london make, a white rose in his button-hole, and monocle in his eye, a figure more unlike the traditional cowboy one could scarcely conceive. "your taste is good, ma chere amie," his voice was delighted. "your instinct as a connoisseur is faultless; but you are not quite sure of your _objet d'art_ this time." he nodded kindly at the parisian--"he's all right! he's a true sport, a lover and a man. de presle-vaulx knows my wild west scheme and has accepted." molly had put twenty-five francs on bon jour and expected to win it. the money bulstrode played would have bought a very handsome present for his lady, and he felt as if he were making an anonymous gift to the woman he loved. at the ringing of the bell falconer left his post by the railing and came up and joined the little group of his friends just below the grand stand. he lit a cigar, threw down the match furiously, smoked furiously, and nerved himself for the strain. nodding toward the betting contingent he muttered: "they're sheep. they're all betting on the favorite naturally. bon jour wasn't mentioned for place even, poor little girl!" the ignored little racer had ambled around the field, her jockey in crimson and white, doubled up upon her back after the manner of his profession. bon jour was as golden red as a young chestnut; she had four white feet that twinkled on the fragrant turf whose odors of crushed blades and green blades, of earth and the distant smell of the sea went to her pretty head. she threw it up eagerly as her disputants filled the field. there were nine horses scheduled, but only five qualified. the rothschild gelding, an english gray, and two others named for probable places. "she's cool as a rose," murmured bon jour's owner, "and just look at her form, will you!" it was charming, and already the american's horse was attracting attention. molly, with de presle-vaulx's aid, rose on her chair, from which her excitement threatened at any moment to precipitate her. "oh, maurice--of course she'll win. isn't she a _dear_? how much shall i make on twenty-five francs?" bulstrode smiled. "a frightful amount! there are twenty to one up on her, molly." the girl mentally calculated, exclaimed with pleasure and, with sparkling eyes, watched the lining-up of the racers. neck to neck they stood, a splendid showing of satin and shine from fetlock to forelock, equine beauty enough to gladden a sporting man's heart, and all five were away before miss malines was even sure which one was the great grimace. from the first the favorite's nose was to the good. his shapely body followed, and when the horses came in sight again beyond the right-hand hedge, he had put four lengths between himself and the others. the winner of the grand prix had all the field with him. but the gray gelding who strained at grimace's flanks had no staying powers, although he was backed as strongly for place as was grimace to win; as he fell back bon jour began to attract notice. bulstrode and de presle-vaulx exchanged glances over the absorbed figure of jack falconer. "she may yet win place," murmured the younger man. as they came up the wide turf sweep that lay like an emerald sea crested by the dark waves of the hedges, as the horses rocked like ships over the obstacle--bon jour closely followed the favorite. at the moment miss malines cried: "oh, a jockey's off! oh, jack, it's bon jour! she's _thrown_ her jockey! i see the red and white." but falconer biting his cigar fiercely, laughed in scorn. "she's thrown _them_ all right. she's left them all _behind_ her--see!" he pointed, "there are only three running." and, indeed, as they came again in sight, one of the horses was seen to be wandering loose about the course, and another cantered nonchalantly some hundred yards behind. "she's not even trying," murmured her enchanted owner. "she's cool as a rose." the cries which had named the rothschild gelding from the start were now mingled, and bon jour, flying around the emerald course, might have heard her name for the first on the public lips. she was running gracefully, her head even with the favorite's saddle and the english gray was a far-off third. bon jour was pressing to fame. at the last hurdle as they appeared flying in full sight of the grand stand it was evident the pretty creature had made her better good. the horses leapt simultaneously and came down on all fours, with grimace to the rear, and amongst the frantic acclamation with which the public is always ready to greet the surprise of unlooked-for merit, bon jour passed grimace by half a metre at the goal. jack falconer was an interesting figure on the turf; his horse was worth twenty thousand pounds. several hours later, bulstrode, early in the salon, walked up and down waiting the arrival of the ladies. he had paid downstairs a hundred francs for the privilege of dining in the window of the restaurant, because mrs. falconer chanced to remark that one saw the room better from that point. and the head waiter even after this monstrous tip said if "_ces dames_" were late there would be no possibility to keep this gilt-edged table for them. it was the night of the year at trouville: boldi and his hungarians played to five hundred people in the dining-room. bulstrode looked at the clock; they had yet ten minutes' grace. extremely satisfied with himself, with bon jour, above all with the french marquis--he felt a glow of affection for the whole french nation. "how we misjudge them!" he mused; "how we accuse them of clinging to their families' apron strings, of being bad colonists; call them hearthstone huggers, degenerates; and declare that they lack nerve and force to rescue themselves from degeneration! and here without hesitation this young man----" at this moment the salon door opened, and one of the ladies he had been expecting came in, the youngest one, miss molly malines, in a tulle dress, an enormous white hat, a light scarf over her shoulders, and the remains of recent tears on her face. "oh, mr. bulstrode!" she exclaimed, half putting out her hand and drawing it back again, as she bit her lips: "i thought i should find mary here; i wanted to see her first to _cry_ with! but of course it is you i _should_ see and not cry with!" she gave a little gasp and put her handkerchief to her eyes to his consternation; then to his relief controlled herself. "maurice has just told me _everything_," she repeated the word with much the same desperation that de presle-vaulx had put into a gesture which to bulstrode had signified ruin. "he's too wonderful! too _glorious_, mr. bulstrode, isn't he? i loved him before, but i _adore_ him now! he's glorious. i never heard anything so terrible and so silly!" bright tears sprang to brighter eyes, and she dashed them away. ("she's adorable") he was obliged to acknowledge it. "why, how could you be so cruel; yes, i will say it, so cruel, so hard, so brutal?" "_brutal_?"--he fairly whispered the word in his surprise. "why, fancy maurice in the west, in the dreadful western life, in that climate----!" "why, it is the garden of eden," murmured bulstrode. "oh, i mean to say with cattle and cowboys." "come," interrupted her father's friend, practically, "you don't know what you are talking about, molly. you don't talk like an american girl. they've spoiled de presle-vaulx, and this will make a man of him!" miss malines called out in scorn: "_a man of him_! what do you think he is? he's the finest man i ever saw. you don't know him. just because he has a title and his mother spoils him, and because he has been a little reckless in debts and things, you throw him over as you do all the french race without knowing them!" her tears had dried and her cheeks flamed. "why, maurice has served three years as a common soldier in the madagascar army; and _that's_ no cinch! cuba's a joke to it. he's had the fever and marched with it. he's slept all night with no covering but the clothes he had worn for weeks. he's eaten bread and drunk dirty water. he's been a soldier three years. the way i came to know him was at dinard where he swam out into the sea to save a fisherman who couldn't swim, and all the town was out in the storm to welcome him! they carried him up the streets in their arms--" she waited a minute to steady her voice--"he's been two years exploring in abyssinia with a native caravan--no white man near him, he's the youngest man wearing the legion d'honneur in france. _and you want to send him out to make a cowboy of him in the american west to turn him into a man_!" mr. bulstrode had never heard such impressive youthful scorn. molly threw back her pretty head and laughed. "do you know many cowboys who have been three years a soldier; travelled through unexplored countries; written a book that was crowned by an academy? well, i don't!" she said boldly. "of course i like his title, of course i am proud of his traditions. they're fine! and it is no dishonor to love his château and his paris hôtel, and i'd love his mother, too--if she'd let me. but i adore maurice _as he is_, and he's man enough for me!" the floor seemed to quiver under poor bulstrode, who could scarcely see distinctly the lovely excited face as he ventured timidly: "i didn't know all these things, molly." she was still unpitying. "of course not! americans never do know. they only _judge_. you didn't think maurice would tell you all his good points! he doesn't think they are anything. he only sees the fact that he has debts and that we are both poor and his family won't give their consent." mr. bulstrode smiled and said: "he is naturally forced to see these things, my dear child." the girl softened at his tone and said more gently: "well, they are terrible facts, of course. it only means that my heart is broken, but it doesn't mean that i will consent to your plan, or to his plan, mr. bulstrode. i won't make him break his mother's heart and ruin his career for me." the gentleman came up and took her hands: his voice was very gentle: "what, then, will you do?" "oh, wait," she said with less spirit. "wait until his mother consents, or until she dies...." she began to hang her head. her eulogy of her lover over, only the dry facts of the present remained. she had no more enthusiasm with which to animate her voice. here mrs. falconer and the marquis opened the door, and started back as the animated picture of beauty being consoled by kindness met their view. "oh, come along in!" cried the girl cheerily. "i have just been ballyragging mr. bulstrode!" de presle-vaulx came eagerly forward: "don't listen to her, monsieur! molly's tired out after so much success." the startled benefactor looked doubtfully from her to the young man. "and you?" "oh, i?" shrugged de presle-vaulx, "i'm already half cowboy!" mary falconer put her arm round molly's waist, drew her to her, "and molly is more than half marquise." "mr. bulstrode," again cried the girl impetuously. "_please_ reason with him! he's horribly obstinate. you have put this dreadful idea in his head; now please tell him how _ridiculous_ it is. if he goes west and spoils his career and breaks with his family, i'll never marry him! as it is, i will wait for ever!" "but my dear child!" mary falconer was determined to have the whole thing out before them, "you don't seem to get it into your head that you have neither of you a sou, and maurice can never earn any money in france." miss malines, to whom money meant that she drew on her father, the extravagant stockbroker whose seat even in the stock exchange was mortgaged, and who had not ten thousand dollars' capital in the world--lost countenance here at the cruel and vulgar introduction of the commodity on which life turns. she sighed, her lips trembled, and she capitulated: "oh, if that's really true ... as i suppose it is----" bulstrode watched her, she had grown pale--she drew a deep breath, and, looking up, not at her lover, but at the elder man, said softly: "why, i guess i'll have to give him quite up then." but here de presle-vaulx made an exclamation, and before them all took molly in his arms: "no," he said tenderly, "never, never! _that_ the last of all! mr. bulstrode is right. i must work for you, and i will. we'll both go west together. couldn't you? wouldn't you come with me?" ... "and your mother?" asked the girl. "nothing--" de presle-vaulx whispered, "nothing, counts but _you_." over their heads bulstrode met his friend's eye, and in his were--he could not help it--triumph, keen delight, and in hers there was anger at him and tears. at this moment the waiter put his head in at the door and implored monsieur to come down if he wanted the seat in the window. "oh, we're coming!" mrs. falconer cried impatiently. "molly, there's some eau-de-cologne on the table. put it on your eyes. don't be long or we'll lose our place. the west will keep!" she went out of the door and bulstrode followed her. in the hall she said tartly: "well, i hope you're satisfied! i never saw a more perfect inquisitor. why didn't you live at the time of the spanish persecution?" he ignored her scathing question: "i am satisfied," he said happily, "with both of them; they're bricks." the lady made no reply as she rustled along by his side to the elevator. from the floors below came the clear, bright sound of the hungarian music in an american cake-walk and the odor of cigars and wines and the distinct suggestion of good things to eat came tempting their nostrils. as bulstrode followed the brilliant woman, a sense of defeat came over him and with less conviction he repeated: "i _am_ satisfied, but you, my friend, are not." "oh," shrugged mary falconer desperately, "you know _i've_ no right to think, or feel, or criticise! i never pretend to run people's lives or to act the benefactor or to take the place of fate." the light danced and sparkled on the jet in her black dress, on the jewels on her neck. under her black feather-hat her face, brilliant and glowing, seemed for once to be defiant to him, her handsome eyes were dark with displeasure. the poor fellow could never recall having caused a cloud to ruffle her face before in his life. it was not like her. her tenderness for a second had gone. he could not live without that, he knew it, what ever else he must forego. he said, with some sadness, "i suppose you're right: if one can buy even _a honeymoon_ for another couple he shouldn't lose the opportunity." she looked up at him quickly. they had reached the ground floor--they had left the elevator and they stood side by side in the hall. the lady had a very trifle softened, not very much, still he noticed the change and was duly grateful. "we must wait here," she said, "for the others to come down. i can't let molly go in alone, and i don't know where my husband is; i haven't seen him all day." bulstrode continued spiritlessly: "molly, if you remember, begged me to tell de presle-vaulx how 'perfectly ridiculous' my scheme for the wild west is. i will tell him this--you will coach me,--there'll be some pleasure in that, at least! and then i'll find out for what sum the marquise de presle-vaulx will sell her son. i'll buy him," he said, "for molly, and of course," he brought it out quite simply, "i shall _dot_ the girl." and then the lady stepped back and looked at him. he felt, before that she had merely swept him with her eyes; now she looked at him. she cried his name out--"jimmy!"--that was all. but in the exclamation, in the change of her mobile face, in the lovely gesture that her hand made, as if it would have gone to his, bulstrode was forced to feel himself eminently, gloriously repaid, and it is not too much to say that he did. the fifth adventure v in which he makes nobody happy at all bulstrode stood before the entrance of the hôtel de paris bidding his friends good-night. watching them, at least one of them, enter in under the shelter of the glass pavilion, he considered how much more lonely he was at that special moment than he could remember having been before. of course he had bidden mary falconer good-night a hundred dozen times in the course of his life, but it seemed to come with a more sublime significance than ever how he gave her up every time he said good-by and how he was himself left alone. and yet, had mrs. falconer been asked, she would have said that she never found her friend more cold and more constrained. in his correct evening dress with the flower she herself had given him in his buttonhole, his panama in his hand, he had been absorbed in her beauty, in the grace of her dark dress, bright with scintillating ornaments--her big feathered hat under which her face was more lovely, more alluring than ever; and nothing in his eyes told the woman what he thought and felt. she touched his arm, saying: "look, jimmy." "isn't that the lovely woman we've so often remarked? see, she's all alone, how curious! she's going over to the casino to play, i suppose. _what_ can have happened to the man who has been with her all this time? where is the prince pollona?" as bulstrode turned his head in the direction indicated, through the trees passed along the figure of a slender woman, trailing her thin gown over the pebbles and the grass. she disappeared in the lighted doorway of the casino. "you're quite bearish to-night," mrs. falconer said reproachfully, "quite a bear. i believe you're angry! dear jimmy, you may, i promise, carry out all your philanthropies without my interference; i won't even criticise or tease. i promise you next time you shall go sweetly and serenely on your foolish way!" "oh," he got out with effort, "i believe i've suddenly grown awfully selfish, for i find i'm so ridiculous as only to want things for myself----" (when he stopped she did not help him but, instead, persisted gently with the wicked feminine way she had of urging him, tempting him on.) "what, then, what do you wish? can't you tell me?" he laughed almost roughly and said, "no, it's a secret, and i'm one of those unusual creatures who can keep a secret." the woman's face changed. he saw the shadow that crossed it. "come," she sighed, "you must bid me good-night..." and at this moment he had seen jack falconer emerge from a still more shadowy corner, a cigar between his teeth. drawing his wife's arm through his, falconer nodded to the other man and said they had all better be going up. bulstrode noted bitterly the satisfaction on falconer's bestial, indulgent face and the content that man felt with himself this evening, his triumph at the race's termination. his horse had won the stakes and was famous, his wife had been called to-day the loveliest woman in trouville, and not for the first time bulstrode suffered from it, the proprietorship with which falconer considered his wife. for the smallest part of a second he fancied that the woman drew away, half turned away, looked toward him; and in dread that he might, if he met her eyes, see some look like appeal, bulstrode avoided meeting her glance. he saw them pass under the glass roof of the hôtel leaving him standing alone. the deserted lover waited until they had disappeared; then, turning abruptly, vaguely in search of human beings with whom he might exchange a word should he feel inclined to talk, dreading the deserted gardens ami finding his own rooms the dreariest prospect of all, he went into the casino with the intention of waiting for the frenchman who he thought more than likely would come and join him there. the marquis failing him, bulstrode chose a place not far from the table where the lovely woman, that mrs. falconer and himself had remarked, seated herself before the game. bulstrode's sense of desolation and loneliness would not leave him. if his luck had been bad, the excitement of the sport might have brought him some sensation; but, on the contrary, he won. "only," he said humorously, as he gathered up his winnings, "only unlucky in love!" it was well on in the night when he thrust his last roll of bank notes into his pocket. he had beaten the bank; he had raked up and stuffed away a small fortune. as he wandered out through the deserted rooms, he noted, bent over the table, her head in her hand, the woman who, in spite of his sincere absorption in mary falconer, had, like a temptation, crossed his mind when he first came into the casino. no one disturbed her, and she had remained in this dejected posture for some time. this one amongst the many women in trouville, bulstrode and his friends had remarked for several days. she had first appeared alone; made a discreet _début_ on the beach, passed through the rue de paris and kept away from the more public parts of the town. later she had been joined by a man well known in the world, the prince pollona, who was travelling incognito. the woman's beauty and manner were such that her actual standing was a mooted question; it had even been remarked that she was the princess herself incognita, but that they all knew to be impossible. before the official who waited to see the last players leave the _salle_ could speak to her, she rose of her own accord, gathering her silken cloak about her, and went quickly from the gambling room. once on the stairway, however, her footsteps halted and she went slowly down as if reluctant to leave the shelter of the brightly lighted apartments. bulstrode following her, observed her closely; tall, very slender, with a fine carriage and a lovely blonde head set on the most graceful of necks, older than molly and younger than mrs. falconer, she was quite as _comme il faut_. all along she had worn a collar and rope of pearls which had excited molly's enthusiasm. to-night she was denuded of her jewels; her neck was bare. bulstrode remarked this as he walked behind in full view of the soft adorable _nuque_ below the curls of the girl's fair hair. she trailed her dress slowly through the garden walks, her white figure in the darkness escaping from him a little as the trees made an avenue for her. but bulstrode distinctly felt that he was expected to follow. whether or not he might intrude he did not ask, as he came along, surprised however to see her actually stop short within a few feet of him. under the full light of one of the big lamps, she stood motionless, her arms by her side, her chin raised. now that he was quite near her he found her more lovely than he had even imagined. he went up directly to her and, without asking how she might take his interference, said: "you cannot remain here alone, madame, the gardens are deserted. what can i do for you?" as he so spoke in his kind voice the woman lifted her head and looked full at him; bulstrode was surprised at her words and more particularly at her voice. "you--" she breathed, "you?" taking it for granted that for some reason or other it might be him more than any other man, bulstrode went on. "you seem more or less to be in trouble, if i may say so. won't you please let me be of some service to you--let me at least see you out of these gloomy gardens?" but the woman, whose face had flushed, exclaimed: "oh, no, no! please don't bother; please leave me. i want to be alone." and, as she spoke, she turned and went away from him some few steps. jimmy bulstrode never knew what impulse made him spring forward and with one sudden gesture dash from her hand what it held. but the little object fell some distance away, hard down in the grass, to be found the next morning by the guardians of the place and considered as a relic of the fortunes of casino hazard. "heavens!" exclaimed the gentleman, and he caught in his hand the slender wrist from which he had just dashed the weapon. "my good god! you poor child, why, why----" and he could go no further. the woman's face, although moved, was singularly tranquil for the face of a woman on the verge of self-destruction. "won't you leave me," she whispered and bulstrode, gathering himself together, said firmly: "leave you? not now, certainly, not for anything in the world. and you must let me take you home." after a few moments' silence in which she bit her lip and apparently controlled a burst of hysterical weeping, the young woman accepted his offer and very lightly put her hand on his arm. "you may, if you like," she consented, "take me home, as you call it. i am staying at the hôtel des roches noires." from the casino gardens through the silent town without exchanging one word with her--for he saw she wished to be silent--jimmy took the lady, as he called it, home. once in the big corridor of the vast hôtel, into whose impersonal shelter they entered as the only late comers, he stood for a second before bidding her good-night, whilst the porter eyed them, scarcely with curiosity, so used was he to late entrances of this kind which he imagined he fully understood. "good-night--" bulstrode started and at once cut himself short, for he did not really intend to say it then--he had not spoken to her and he knew he would never leave her until at least he was sure she would not take her life before the next morning. the girl extended her hand, her beautiful face was gray. "will you not," she asked, "come up with me to my drawing-room? i am quite alone." bulstrode bowed and without hesitation followed her up the stairs to the conventional suite of hôtel rooms, where, in the little salon, trunks stood about in the evident indications of hasty packing. the girl threw her gloves, her handkerchief and her soft silken cloak on the table. she then seated herself in a corner of the sofa by an open dressing-bag and bulstrode, at her invitation, took a chair opposite. he scarcely knew how to begin his conversation with her, but he determined at once to go toward what he believed to be the most crying need. "you lost to-night," he said. "i saw it. as it happened, i was lucky. i have no need of money, none." he had drawn from his pocket piles of louis; he took out from his wallet a roll of notes. he saw, too, as well as the look of passion and admiration, that her face was familiar, at least that there was about it something that suggested remembrance. "this," she said, "is a fortune!" her accent was british and her voice very soft and sweet. "it is quite a large fortune, isn't it? my debts here are small. i have not fifty pounds in the world," she said smiling, "i work for my living, too. i have been extravagant, for i had really made a lot of money, but lately i've thrown everything away. yesterday my pearls were sold, and my jewels went last week; the races and the casino did the rest! this would make me quite rich." "work for her living!" bulstrode thought, with a pang as he looked at her. "heavens, poor dear!" a thousand questions came to his lips, but he asked her none. he was mastering the feelings her personality, her trouble, and the night, aroused. he also decided to go at once, while there was still time. "it is very droll that this money should have come from _you;_" she repeated "from you," with the insistence on the pronoun that he had before remarked as strange. "even now you don't know me, do you? don't you know who i am?" "no," bulstrode wondered, "and yet i have certainly seen you before, but save as i have noticed and admired you here, i don't _think_ i know you. should i?" "you _have_ seen me then here?" she caught delighted, "you have actually noticed me? you said 'admire'; did you perhaps find something in me to like?" "who," he said with sincerity, "could help himself! of course i've seen you and remarked you with your friend." here she bit her lip and put up her hand. "oh, please," she frowned, "oh, please!" bulstrode, surprised at her accents of distress, murmured an excuse and said he was much at fault, he should remember. but here the girl smiled. "well, it is not exactly a duty to know me; my name is not quite unknown. i play in 'the shining lights company,' 'the warren company,' i am felicia warren--_now_, haven't you seen me play!" he was sorry, very, very sorry that he had not! oh, but he knew her name and her success; they were famous. he wished he could have assured her that he had admired her before the footlights ...! felicia warren's eyes strayed down at the table on which the money was so alluringly spread. "i've been touring in australia and the colonies, still i go now and then to the continent, though i am almost always in london." she paused, then regarded him fully with her great blue eyes. "don't you remember, mr. bulstrode, a great many years ago when you took a shooting-box in glousceshire? don't you remember...?" staring at her, trying to place the image which was now taking form, he did; he _did_ remember it and she? "there was a mill there on the place. rugby doan was the miller, he is the miller still." didn't mr. bulstrode remember that doan had a daughter? she had been fifteen years old then, she had ambitions, she was altogether a ridiculous and silly little thing; didn't he remember? bulstrode was silent. the gentleman, mr. bulstrode, took a strong liking to doan; he gave him the money to educate his daughter. oh, dear me, such a generous lot of money! then, as the girl was extraordinarily silly (she had ambitions) she went on the stage. her father never forgave her; poor father! she had never seen him since. "mr. bulstrode, don't you remember felicia doan?--i am the miller's daughter." bulstrode extended his hand. he wanted to say: "my poor child, my poor little girl," but miss warren's dignity forbade it. "no wonder your face was familiar," he said quietly; "no wonder! how i wish i might have seen you play, but we must do something to make your father look at things in a reasonable way. what can we do?" the girl shook her head. "nothing" she said absently, "oh, nothing. you know what an english yeoman is! or perhaps you don't! my greatest kindness is to keep away from the mill on the rose" ... but felicia warren was not thinking of glousceshire or of her father. still looking down at the money on the table, not even toward her newly-found friend, she went on, "it is not half as curious, our meeting here, as one might think. i knew you were here when i came and i have watched you every day with--with your friend." a slight expression of amusement crossed her face as, looking up, she caught his puzzled expression. "ah, you wonder about it!" she laughed gently. coming a little nearer to him, she went on: "you see, you have been my benefactor, haven't you?" (bulstrode wondered in just how far he _had_ been beneficent!) "it's natural i should remember you with gratitude, isn't it? thanks to you i have made my name." her pride was touching. "you've made it possible for me to know the world, to know life and to realize my career. and now," she emphasized, "you've come to save my life and afterward give me a little fortune." here she again pointed to the money. "my father took your money for years, mr. bulstrode, but _this, this_ must all go back. you must take it back soon--not that it could really tempt me, but it hurts me to see it there." bulstrode, more wretched than he had yet been in his philanthropic failures stared at her helplessly. this blind beneficence, this gift made to the miller in a moment of enthusiasm had produced--how could he otherwise believe--fatal results? here was this delicate creature in the fastest place in europe, deserted by a man who had brought her here--on the verge of suicide. whilst speaking, felicia warren gathered up the gold and notes and she was thrusting the money into his hand. "please, please be reasonable," he pleaded. "you must let me help you. there isn't any question of delicacy in the situation where you find yourself to-night. if ever a man should be a woman's friend, i should be that friend to you, and you must let me. don't refuse. money is such a little thing, such a stupid little thing." miss warren shook her head obstinately. "oh, that depends! i've worked so hard that money often seems to me everything. indeed, i thought so to-night when i had not a sou! i shall think so to-morrow when they seize my trunks for the hôtel bill." "seize your trunks!" he exclaimed. "why--you don't mean to say----?" the actress blushed crimson. "oh, of course you thought otherwise," she said, throwing up her pretty head. "i pay for my own livelihood, mr. bulstrode," she told him proudly, "i pay for _everything_ i have and wear and eat and do. don't feel badly at misunderstanding," she comforted him sweetly--"you have nothing to apologize for. why should you or anyone think otherwise? but i don't care in the least what people say or think; that is, _i only care what one person says_." with some of his gold in her palm and some of his bills in her hands, felicia warren put both her hands on bulstrode's arm. "no," she said softly, "_i only care what one person thinks_. can't you see that you mustn't give me this?" "no," he persisted doggedly, charmed by her beyond his reason and angry to find that she would not let him help her in the way he wished, "i do _not_ see! you must let me help you, you shall not be driven to desperation." "driven to desperation!" her expression seemed to say. yes, so she had been, but not through financial anxieties. "why, i had rather starve than take your money. i could far sooner have taken it from poor pollona; and he left me so dreadfully angry this morning." for a second neither spoke. he saw the soft mobile face touched to its finest. felicia's eyes were violet and large, and their expression at the moment pierced him with its appeal. "don't you see?" she whispered. her voice broke here. her hands trembled on his arm, some of the gold rattled on the floor and rolled under the divan. she swayed and bulstrode caught her. "... ever since you came to the mill," she whispered, "ever--since--you--came--to--the--mill." before bulstrode had time to realize what she said, or the fact that his arm was about her, she had rushed across the room, thrown open the window and gone out on the balcony. left alone with what her words implied, bulstrode watched her go. the clock on the mantel pointed to three and through the open window came the long, rushing sound of the sea on the beach. the day was breaking and bulstrode could see the white figure of felicia warren between the lighted room and the dawn. he told himself that there was no reason why he should look upon her as anything but an adventuress--and a very clever one--a very dangerous one. but, at all events, there _was_ no doubt that she was felicia doan. she refused his money, and she told him that she loved him. but jimmy bulstrode, man of the world as he was, did not reason at all along those lines. whether because he was vain, as most men are, or because he was susceptible as he always told himself he was, he believed what she said. more than once during the week at trouville, when she should have been absorbed in polonna, bulstrode had caught her eyes fastened upon himself and as soon as she had met his own she had turned hers away. he had no difficulty now in recalling the mill on the rose, or the lovely bit of country where his shooting-box had held him captive for nearly the whole hunting season. nor had he any difficulty in recalling the miller and his pretty daughter. felicia even then had been a wonder of good looks, and very intelligent and mature. he could even see her as a child more plainly than he could recall the woman who had just left him. she had been a pretty, romantic girl and--she had deeply charmed him. he had walked with her under the willows; he had told her many things; he had gone boating with her on the rose; he had tramped with her along the english lanes. of course he had been wrong. he had known it at the time--he had known it. and perhaps one reason why he never reverted willingly to the days spent with the girl was because his conscience had not left him free. the money given to doan, bulstrode had always felt, was a sort of recompense for hours of pleasure to which he had no right. even at the time he had feared that he had disturbed the girl's peace, and because he had not wished to disturb his own, he had given up his lease and left the place. twelve years! well, they had altered her enormously, and her life had altered her and her experiences, and she was a very charming creature. she was, in a measure, his very own work--almost his creation. he had helped her to change her station, to alter her life. what had she become? bulstrode's reflections consumed twenty minutes by the clock. he had smoked a cigarette and walked up and down the deserted room, passing many times the table where his gold lay scattered. finally--he did not dare to trust himself to go out to her--he called her name, felicia warren's name, gently, and she came directly in. whilst alone on the balcony she had wept. bulstrode could see the trace on her cheeks and she was paler even than when he had struck the pistol from her hand in the gardens of the casino. she came over to where he stood and said: "it's not a ruse, mr. bulstrode. girls like me always have ideals. it is fame with some, money with others, dress and a social craze for a lot of them. but with me, ever since you came it has been you--everything you said to me twelve years ago i have remembered. silly as it seems, i could almost tell the very words. i have seen a lot of men since, too many," she said, "and known them too well. but i have never seen anybody like you." bulstrode tried to stop her. "but no," she pleaded, "let me go on. i've dreamed i might grow great, and that some day you would see me play and that i should play so well that you would go crazy about me! i have thought this really, and i have lived for it, really--until--until----" as he did not question her or interrupt, she went on: "i said it was an ideal. thinking of you and what i'd like to grow for you kept me, in spite of everything--and i fancy you know in my profession what that means--good." here felicia warren met his eyes frankly with the same look of entire innocence with which she might have met his eyes under the willows near her father's mill. "i've been so horribly afraid that when you _did_ come there might be heaps of things you would not like that i have been awfully hard on myself, awfully!" she was lacing and unlacing her slender fingers as she talked. "i went to paris this spring because i saw that you were there, and after passing you several times in the bois and seeing that as far as i could judge you were just the same as you had been, i took a new courage hoping, waiting, for you, and being the best i knew. it seems awfully queer to hear a woman talk like this to a man," she understood it herself--"but you see i am used to speaking in public and i suppose it is easier for me than for most women." bulstrode, more eager than anything else to know what her life had really been, surprised and incredulous at everything she said, broke in here: "but this--this man?" "oh, pollona," she replied, "has been there for years, for years. he has loved me ever since i first made my _début_ and he follows me everywhere like a dog. i have never looked at any of them, until this week." with a sigh as if she renounced all her dreams, she said: "i grew tired of my romantic folly. i was ill and nervous and could not play any more, and that was dreadful. so, when pollona came to me in paris this spring, i gave him a sort of promise. i told him that i was going to trouville for the grande semaine, that i would think things over and that i would send him word." she picked up her handkerchief from the table where it lay beside her gloves and her cloak and twisted the delicate object in her hands, whose whiteness and transparency bulstrode remarked. they were clever hands, and showed her temperament and showed also singular breeding for one born in the state of life from which she had come. "well," she said shortly, "as you have seen, i gave in--i gave in at last." "why," bulstrode asked abruptly, "did he leave you?" but instead of answering him, the girl said: "but you don't ask me why i sent for him to come?" he was silent. here she hid her face and through her fingers he could see the red rise all along her cheek. her attitude, and more what she implied than what she said, and what he thought and feared, made the situation too much for him. with a slight exclamation he put his arm about her and drew her to him. as she rested against him he could feel her relax, hear her sigh deeply. but, as he bent over her, she besought him to let her go, to set her free, and he obeyed at once. "there," she said, "don't do that again--don't! pollona left me because he was jealous of you." but at this, in sheer unbelief, her hearer exclaimed: "oh, my dear girl!" "oh, yes," she nodded, "when he found that i did not love him, that i could never love him, he forced me to tell him the truth. oh, don't be afraid," she said, as though she anticipated his anger, "you are in no wise connected with it. he thinks of me as a romantic, foolish girl. he has laughed at me, tried to shake my faith, to destroy my ideal, but at least he was honest enough to believe me; and that is all i asked of him." not for a moment did bulstrode feel that she was weaving a web for him. there was something about her so sincere and simple, she was so fragile and fine and fair, there was so much of distinction in all she did and said that it put her well nigh, one might say touchingly, apart from the class to which she belonged. her art and her knocking about, instead of coarsening her, had refined her. she looked like a bit of ivory, worn by experience, and struggle, to a fine polish; there was a brilliance about her and he understood and felt, he instinctively saw and knew, that she was unspoiled. it took him some half second to pull himself together. then to turn her thoughts from him, his from her, if he might, he questioned: "what sort of a man is prince pollona?" "oh," she cried warmly, "the best! a kind, good, honorable friend. he deserves something better than the horrors i have put him through, poor dear!" "he seemed very devoted to you," bulstrode said, "if one could judge." not without pride she admitted that he was, and that the prince had always wanted to marry her. "i might have married him," she repeated, "easily a score of times. but how it appears to interest you----" she said jealously. "only as he interests you," replied bulstrode, "and what you tell me is a great satisfaction. to be the princess pollona is an honor that many women would be glad to have conferred upon them." felicia warren's good looks were undeniable, her _genre_ was exquisite, and bulstrode, again with no effort, believed all she said. princes had married far less royal-looking women, of far more humble antecedents than felicia warren. "oh, his rank didn't dazzle me," she murmured absently, "they seem all alike, and when they find out that i am not a certain kind they ask me to marry them... but if i could only get back to the mill on the rose, mr. bulstrode! if i might again see it as i used, if i could see you there as i used to see you--walk by your side; row with you on the river; if i could hear the wheel again as i used to hear it, then"--her voice was delicious, a very note of the river of which she spoke. oh, she must act well, there was no doubt about that; no wonder she had been a success: "if i might walk there with you--titles, even my art and all the rest"--she did not apparently dare to look at him as she spoke, but fixed her eyes across the room as if she saw back twelve years into ----shire ... "if i could _only, only_ go back again with you!" in spite of himself, carried away by her voice, bulstrode said: "you shall, you shall go back with me!" "oh, mr. bulstrode," she gave a little cry and caught his hand, steadying herself by the act. "wait," he murmured, "wait, let me think it all out." and, as she had done, bulstrode walked over to the window, to the balcony where the fresh air met his face, where the breath from the sea fanned him, blended with the scent of the meadow. before bulstrode the first reflection of the morning lay like silver on the sea. when he finally went back into the room, felicia warren had not moved. just as he left her, she sat, deep back into the divan, leaning on her hand, with something like the glory of a dream on her face. standing in front of her, he said slowly: "i'm entirely free. no one in the world depends upon me. i have no tie, or bond to my life. i have freedom and money. so far--if what you say is all true, don't start so, for i believe it, every word--so far, i have spoiled your life." but the girl shook her head. "oh, no, _you haven't_," she assured him. "we make our own lives, i expect, and i told you that i could remember everything you ever said to me in the past--you never lied to me, and you were never anything but kind and dear. i've been a fool, a fool!" sitting there in her fragile evening dress, its ruffles torn where they had trailed across the pebbles in the street, the disorder of the room around her, its evidence of a homeless, wandering life, she seemed like a bit of flotsam that, no matter from what ship it had been blown, had at last drifted along the shore to his feet. unhappy and deserted, she reached the very tenderest part of bulstrode's nature. cost him what it would, he must save her. but, as though the girl, with an instinctive fineness divined, she rose and going over to him very gently, laid her hand on his shoulder: "you must go _now_: that is what i ask you to do. i have seemed, and indeed i have thrown myself upon your mercy; but, in reality, i don't do any such thing. you will soon forget me, as you have been able to do all these years. the table is full of your money. i am poor, and yet i don't take it. doesn't _that_ prove a little my good faith? doesn't it? only think of me as the most romantic dreamer you ever saw, and of nothing more. oh, _no_," she breathed softly, "_no_, a thousand times...! "i've answered your question before you've asked it! no, i couldn't; no woman who wants love is content with pity. i would rather starve than take money from you although i have lived on your money for years. i would rather be unhappy than take what you could offer me for love. you mustn't speak; you mustn't ask me. the temptation is very great, you know, and it _might_ wreck me. no, mr. bulstrode, and the reason why i say it is because i've seen." "'i've seen?'" he repeated her words. "you've seen, but what do you mean--what have you seen?" "i'm going to tell you why i sent for prince pollona, although you don't ask me. i came to trouville alone. i saw you; i've watched you with your friends." bulstrode accepted quietly. "the two young people are engaged to be married and the other two are husband and wife--well...?" a spasm of pain crossed felicia warren's face and she put what she had to say with singular delicacy for an actress who had risen from the people. "i know," she said, "i understand, but when i saw you, i knew that there was no hope for any other woman who loved you--and i gave you up then. i sent for pollona." the introduction of even so little into the room as the suggestion of the woman he loved, startled bulstrode as nothing else under the circumstances could have done. it struck him like a lash. he was disenchanted, and he more quietly considered the girl whose confession and whose beauty had made him nearly disloyal. felicia warren, as though she took it in her own hands and, mistress of herself, knew how much she could take and what she could deny herself, laid her hand on his arm. "you can do nothing at all, just as you have always done--and i--i can learn to forget. but i have refused your money to-night," she said piteously, "haven't i? and i am penniless; i have refused more too; perhaps what no woman who loves could refuse as well. don't you think that there is something due me? answer me this? tell me. you _do_ love her, you _do_?" as she leaned against him, the years seemed to fall away and to leave her a girl again, nothing more than a child he had known. he took her face between his hands and looked into it as one might look into a well. he saw nothing but his own reflection there. "god knows," he said deeply, "i could not willingly pain a living creature, and to think that i should have made you suffer, have made a woman suffer for years. let me do all i can, my dear, let me--let me!" "you love her?" she persisted. his hands dropped to his side. "with all my soul," he said, "with all my soul!" he thought she would sink to the floor, but instead she caught fast hold of the table on which his money lay. she leaned on it heavily, refusing his aid. he took one of the girl's cold hands in his. "listen, listen! let me say a word. how do you think it makes a man feel to hear what you have told me to-night? to see you as you are, to grow to know you in such a short--in such a terrible way, and in a few hours to grow to know you so well, to find you dear, desirable, and then to leave you, as you tell me i must leave you. i can't do it; i have never been so miserable in my life, and if i find i am entirely helpless to serve you i can never get over the regret." felicia warren turned a little. "i have found you near disaster," bulstrode urged, "i must and will see you to the shore. if you utterly refuse to let me take care of you as i can and will, will you then," he hesitated, then brought it out--"will _you marry_ prince pollona?" she drew from him with a cry, and by what he said she seemed to have gained sudden strength. "my god!" she breathed, "you ask me _that_? oh, it proves, it proves how less than nothing i am..." bulstrode saw he could not, must not undeceive her. "if you wish me to do _that_," she cried. "oh, how dreadfully, how cruelly, it breaks my dream!" bulstrode said authoritatively, "listen! listen for one moment." the eyes of the girl were dark with defiance; she brushed her hair off her brow with the back of her hand and stared straight before her. "--otherwise," said bulstrode, "i will remain here; i shall not leave these rooms till morning and you will then be forced to marry me, and since you think as you do, since i have told you my secret, ruin perhaps three lives." he had her at bay, and for a brief second, he thought she would accept his menace. but then in a sudden her anger vanished and her face softened. "you know," she said, "that, loving you as i do, whatever you tell me to do, i must. but let me go on with my career. let me work, let me work, and be free!" he said decidedly, "no! you must be protected from yourself; you must have some one with you who will take care of you as i cannot do. you must do this for me. is pollona distasteful to you?" he pursued, "do you _hate_ him?" she made an indifferent shrug of her shoulders. bulstrode was watching her face keenly, and after a second said, "no, you do not hate him. you sent for him to come to you here. he was the one to whom you turned, felicia; turn to him now." as she wavered and hesitated, he insisted, coming close to her: "you have an ideal, you told me--well we can't get on without them. your ideal has helped you, hasn't it? it seems pretty well to have stood by you. i have one too, you must understand that, and i ask you to help me to keep it secret now." "why, what do you mean?" she questioned breathlessly. "i mean," he said gravely, "that i am a very lonely man. my days are absolutely desolate excepting for those things that i can put into them. i have nothing in my life and i am not meant for such a lot. i am not meant for that! such an existence has bitter temptations for every man, and although i have never seen you before, possibly my fate and pollona's rest to-night with you." felicia warren turned her great eyes with a sort of wonder to him. they rested on him with a tenderness that he could not long have borne. "you must not remain unmarried," he said, "you must not." without answering him she went slowly over to her little desk. she wrote a few seconds there and came back and handed to him a little slip of paper. "when the telegraph office opens to-day, will you send this dispatch for me? it will fetch prince pollona to me no matter where he may be. i have asked him to meet me in paris and i will take the morning train from here myself." she turned to the table on which his money lay and taking a roll of notes said, "i will pay up everything i owe here. i think i have given you every proof, every proof." bulstrode made no advance towards her. he saw how she struggled with her emotion. he let her get herself in hand. finally, with more composure, she spoke again: "i play next month in london. will you come to see me play?" "oh, many times." "no," felicia warren murmured, "only once, and after that i shall never see you again." he would have protested, but she repeated, "never again," with such intensity that he bowed his head and he found that her decision brought a pang whose sharpness he wondered would last how long. he had started, with her last words, toward the door and she followed him over to it. there, detaining him by her hand, she asked softly: "does she, too, love you as much as this?" bulstrode hesitated; then said, "i do not know." "not know?" cried the girl, "you don't know?" it was with the greatest difficulty that bulstrode could at any time bring to his lips even the name of the woman he loved. at this moment the vision of her as he had seen her lately on her husband's arm going in under the pavilion of the hôtel crossed his mind with a cruel despair and cruel disgust. a sense of his solitude, of his defrauded life, rushed over him as he looked into the eyes of this woman who loved him. "no," he said intensely, "i do not know, i do not know. i have a code of honor a million years old, but i live up to it. she is a wife, i have never told her that i love her." the girl's incredulity and surprise were great. it showed in the smile which, something like happiness, crossed her lips. she drew a long breath; she held his eyes with hers, then she laid both her arms around his neck and bulstrode bent and kissed her. he held her for one moment and his heart, if it beat for another woman, beat hard and fast and its pulse ran through her own. then felicia heard the door close and the footsteps of the man died away. it was seven o'clock when bulstrode found himself out in the streets. the fresh air in a keen, salt wind poured over him. down on the beach, for a couple of francs he bribed an attendant to open a bath-house for him, and a few moments later, shivering a little in the keen air, he could have been seen running down to the sea, and in a few moments more his strong swift strokes had carried him far out into the waters which the summer sun even at this early hour was fast turning into blue. when jimmy came to himself, he found that without either seeing mrs. falconer again or having even bidden a decent good-bye or godspeed to his fiancée, he was back again in paris. he had run away. well, that wasn't any new thing, he was always at it. paris, in the month of august, gave him a hot, desolate welcome, and it was with difficulty that he could find a lawyer who would help him down to bedrock and put in motion the business of winding up the affairs of molly and her marquis. de presle-vaulx came to town and found his champion there and brought him many messages from the ladies as well as a letter which bulstrode put in his pocket to read down in the country at the château of vaulxgoron in the seclusion of his own room. bulstrode played the part of the "american uncle" to perfection. he let the old marquis beat him at backgammon; he wandered all over the property with the marquise. he bought the young man for molly malines and closed up his beneficent affairs in a very decent manner indeed, but on the night when mrs. falconer and miss malines should have arrived at the château, bulstrode ran away again. from then on he became a wandering jew. he ran up to norway, fished a little, then took a motor and some people, who did not know any one whom he had ever known, and drove them through italy. he continued to travel a little longer, working his way northward until finally--so he put it--dusty as "dusty dog dingo," tired as "tired dog dingo," bulstrode found himself in london, drew a deep breath and capitulated. the sixth adventure vi in which he discards a knave and saves a queen the morning he left for westboro' castle, bulstrode remembers as being the most beautiful of days; it came to him like a golden gift of unrivalled loveliness as it broke and showered sunlight over england. "the very crannies of the island," he smiled at his own conceit, "must filter out this gold to the sea." england lay like a viking's cup full to the brim of sunlight; especially entrancing because unusual in the british calendar, and enchanting to the american gentleman because it absolutely accorded with his own mood. it was middle november, and yet there was not--so it seemed as one looked at yellow and copper luxuriance--a leaf lost from the suave harmony of the trees. farms, tiled and thatched, basked in summery warmth, forest, hedge and copse, full-foliaged and abundant, shone out in copper and bronze, and the air's stillness, the patient tranquillity, enfolding the land, made it seem expectantly to wait for some sudden wind that should ultimately cast devastation through the forests. on leaving his ship at plymouth the day before, bulstrode found amongst other letters in his mail the duke of westboro's invitation for a week's shooting in the west of england: "there were sure to be heaps of people jimmy would know"--and bulstrode eagerly read the subjoined list of names until he saw in a flash the name of the one woman in the world. he at once telegraphed his acceptance. the following afternoon he threw his evening papers and overcoat into a first-class carriage whilst the guard placed his valise and dressing-case in the rack. as there had been several minutes to starting time, he had not immediately taken his seat, but had stood smoking by the side of his carriage. he might, and did, doubtless, pass with others of the well set-up, well-looking men travelling on that day, for an englishman, but closer observation showed his attire to be distinguished by that personal note which marks the cosmopolitan whose taste has been more or less tempted by certain fantasies of other countries. bulstrode's clothes were brown, his gloves, cravat, and boots all in the same color scheme--one mentions a man's dress only on rare occasions, as on this certain day one has been led to mention the weather. that a man is perfectly turned out should, like the weather, be taken for granted. bulstrode on this day, travelling as he was towards a goal, towards the one person he wanted above all to see, had spent some unusual thought on his toilet. at all events, on passing a florist's in piccadilly, after giving his order for flowers to be boxed and expressed to westboro', he had selected a tiny reddish-brown chrysanthemum which now covered the button-hole of his coat's lapel; it created a distinctive scheme of color. in point of fact it caught the eye of the lady who, hurrying from the waiting-room towards the westboro' express, caught sight of the american and started. it appeared as if she would speak to him, half advanced, thought better of it, and said to the guard, who was about to fasten a placard on the window of a carriage: "please---just a second--won't you, guard?" the bell rang, and bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his own compartment. the guard shut the door, which closed with the customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the window the exclusive and forbidding paper--reserved. then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs left behind, that the traveller to westboro' watched the landscape with the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently swelling downs. "england, england," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside. he had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for himself a picture of westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew from photographs, although he had never been there. it was agreeable to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with mrs. falconer in england, in the country they preferred to all the others in the old world. they were in sympathy with english life and manners, and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")--here no doubt they would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them of mutual life. westboro' is elizabethan and of vast proportions. the house would naturally be very full--how much of the time would they discover for themselves? there would decidedly be occasions. mary falconer did not hunt, and although jimmy bulstrode could recall having postulated that "there are only two real occupations for a real man--to kill and to love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the sportsmen of westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there. it was months since he had seen mrs. falconer--months. it had been a long exile. each time that he started out to run away, it was just that--running away--it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his return he should not find a change. time and absence--above all, time, worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. why should they two believe themselves immune? the long months might have altered _her_. the mischief was yet to be seen. but when in the list of noble names he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix--_mrs._--and found it followed by _the name_, if he had not sincerely known before, his pulse at sight of the written words told jimmy that he had not, at all events, changed! thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were alone. as he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape through the window of the compartment. he saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem of her dress. her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. indeed, the lady blended well with the november landscape, and as she apparently was not conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to the full. "what scope," he mused, "what scope they all have--and how prettily they most of them know it! so just to sit and be a thing of beauty; with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and such a perfectly lovely hand...! (it held the half-smoked cigarette, but his taste was not offended.) he thought her a whim too debonnaire for a parisian of the best world, and of _that_ she most distinctly was--austrian more than likely. every woman has her history--only when she is part of several has she a past. what had this woman so to meditate upon? she turned and he met her eyes. "you have naturally waited for me to speak first," she said with a gracious gesture of her bare hand. "and _i_ was waiting till you should have finished your letters! i, too, have wanted to think." her familiar address, perfectly courteous and made in a pleasant voice, with a very slight accent, was a surprise to her companion, who mechanically lifted his hat as he bowed to her across the narrow distance between their seats. "the guard," she smiled, "came very near putting the placard on the other window! but i think we are now quite sure to be alone!" she pointed to the seat opposite. "sit there," she more commanded than permitted, "we can talk better and i can watch your kind face, which always looks as if you understood--and i shall be able to please you better--perhaps to make you not unkind to me." he obeyed, taking the place indicated without hesitation, and as he sat facing her, he saw her to be one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen. there was at once something dazzling about her--and at the same time familiar... he had surely met her, and not long ago. where? and how stupid of him to have forgotten! or had he only seen her photograph and remarked her as a celebrity whose type of looks had pleased him? but no, she knew him: that was clear. he met her friendly eyes, where liking was evident as well as the suggestion of something akin to an appeal. bulstrode was greatly intrigued. "unkind?" he repeated vaguely. "but why should you think that? please me?"--and his graciousness did not fall short of her own--"but why should you...?" "oh, true," she interrupted him, "quite true. there is no reason why--" and she made a rather petulant gesture--"yet every woman wants to please, and none of us relishes being judged. never mind, however, don't think of me as a _person_--just let me talk to you frankly, be myself for once with someone if i can." jimmy bulstrode gathered himself together and sat back in his corner. she was very lovely at it, this being herself. gallantry would not let him bluntly tell her that she had made a mistake. a second more would clear the matter and would be quite soon enough, for him at least, to find that they were total strangers. unless, indeed, he had met her and forgotten it. they had possibly held some conversation together in a london drawing-room. but how could he have been such a boor as to forget her? she was neither a crook nor a mad woman--she might be an adventuress; if so, she was an unusual one. he glanced at her luggage as if it might help him--a dark-covered dressing-case, bundle of furs, and rugs--new, everything new. her left hand was bare of rings, she clasped it with her gloved fellow and said warmly: "i can't believe it possible that you came, actually came, and that we have so smoothly met! i can't believe nothing has hitched or missed, or that everything is so cleverly planned and arranged for me, and least of all i can believe that it should be _you_ who are so sublimely doing this." "ah--" but here bulstrode tardily started up. _he_ doing it all? at least if he was, then he must, if nothing else--know! he smiled at her with a pleasant sense of being in the secret and with indulgent amusement at her mistake. "i think--you made a mistake," he began it with commonplaceness, but his gesture softened the words. but the lady made a little annoyed "tchk" with her tongue against her teeth, and threw up her head with an impatient toss, an intensely foreign way of dismissing his interpolation. "don't, in pity's sake, talk like this," she exclaimed. "_mistake_? who under the blue heavens _doesn't_ make them--certa! haven't you, yourself, in spite of your moral, spotless life, haven't even _you_ made them?" "how," flushed the naïve gentleman, on the sudden betrayed into a mental frankness of self-approval near to conceit, "how does _she_ know me so well?" "who is there," his companion gave him the question in a challenging tone "to tell each other and every one of us what is or will be a mistake in his life? where were everyone's eyes when i married?--why didn't someone tell me then that my marriage was a hideous mistake? as for the rest of it..." she turned away for a second towards the window, and bulstrode saw how the hot blood had mounted and her eyes had changed when after a moment she came back to him again. she put out towards him a beseeching hand: "_you_ above all men, who are faithful to an ideal, must not give me old platitudes!" bulstrode's head reeled. he felt like a man who after a narcotic finds his brain suddenly alight and real things grow strange. he wanted to rub his eyes. she appeared singularly to appreciate his daze. "it is as strange to me as it is to you, to find myself here with a man to whom i have never spoken before--to be under his protection, and to talk with him like this; and yet i have seen you so often, i have watched you in the distance, and long since i singled you out as the one man in whom i could fancy confiding--the one man to whom i could give a sacred trust." with these words the incognita drew herself up, and her manner, with amazing swiftness, changed from a childlike confidence to a dignity not without a certain rigidness, and as bulstrode remarked this, he also noticed that she was very young, and he was conscious in her of a something he had never quite met in a woman before--an extreme dignity, an ultra poise, an assurance.--who was she?--and whom did she take him to be? with every turn of the fast wheels of the express it was growing more difficult to explain. she would more keenly feel the fact that he had not cut her frankness short--he had no right to her confidences even though she took their mutual knowledge of each other for granted. "when," he ventured it delicately--"did you last see me?" it was bold, but it did perfectly. "oh, an age ago, isn't it? you were last on the continent i think in august at trouville, during la grande semaine." ah, he reflected, _of course_! _that_ was where, amongst so many other celebrities and beauties, she had attracted his attention. but his rapid mental calculations of those seven days could reveal to him no woman's face but one. he found himself even in this unique moment recalling the time following hard on molly's formal engagement to her marquis ... and those days were amongst the brightest in his life. no, there had been no foreign element at trouville for him in the dazzle and freedom of that worldly fortnight--for jimmy bulstrode, in all the scene she summoned up, there was but one woman. he came back with a start to the other. "then yesterday, as you passed our table at the carlton, and it seemed as if heaven had sent you to us to help us--at least so we both felt." and bulstrode doubtfully smiled and, now determined, broke in, or would have done so, but she waved him imperiously. "your mind," she spoke indulgently, "is on the wrong side to-day. try to think only of the happiness towards which i am going so rapidly, so rapidly." then, as she with her word glanced out of the window, she cried: "oh, what if something should happen to the train--what if some horrible delay----" and he shook himself to action. "my dear lady," he began gravely, "you must hear me. you have made and are making a great mistake. i am certainly not the man..." "i _command_ you, sir," she flashed out at him--"surely you will not disobey me--you will not make me think as well that i am making a mistake in you." "ah, but that," he gasped, and caught her words gratefully, "is just the point." she smiled. "please...! let me judge! only don't condemn me. only be glad you can so marvellously help a human soul to happiness--can so generously lend yourself for these few hours to aid in my escape." she was escaping! well, he had nearly guessed it! the new luggage alone was an indication. unless her mania was for taking strangers to be intimate friends, she wasn't fleeing a madhouse! from what did she so determinedly run?--and how in heaven's name was he helping her? did she think he was going to marry her? into what tangle had the man he was unwittingly impersonating got himself--and in default of his appearing on the scene in what would his absence involve poor bulstrode? he took off his hat and put it down on the seat--thus his fine head was fully revealed to the lady's view. "i do not know you," he said determinedly. "you do not know me, but you seem bent on not acknowledging this fact or permitting me to state it." but even this plain statement did him no good, for she said, quite agreeing with him: "if i had ever spoken with you--been near you before, i would not be here now. you see it is just your _impersonality_--your _having_ no connection with anything in my life that makes it possible! but why," she exclaimed impatiently, "do you spend these few hours with me in this meaningless warfare? you should, it seems, take the honor more graciously, and since you are here, have consented to be here, show me a little kindness. since, after all, willingly or not, you are in effect nobly helping me to do what i am doing." and this brought him wonderfully up to the question of what was he doing? what was he supposed to be furthering here? it was his expression, no doubt, that made her ask with curious aptness: "just how much _do_ you know?" the poor gentleman threw out his hands desperately. "you can't think how in the dark i am! how beyond words mystified." "how droll!" she laughed sweetly, "and how amusing and all the more beautiful and like you, to be, in spite of yourself, here. you see we have switched off--just as you said we would do." so they had indeed: they had stopped, and the fact fetched him to his feet. he looked out: it was a fast express, a through train--the first stop should have been westboro' abbey. "yes, we're switched off!" she cried delightedly, "as you know: as you arranged so cleverly!--and the westboro' people will go on without us." would they indeed! lucky people, but not if he could prevent it. but his attention to the train's procedure had come too late. he opened the window and looked out. they stood at the side of a switch some three hundred yards above a small squat station, and in the far distance bulstrode could see the end of a disappearing train. he drew in his head and quietly asked his companion: "what has happened to us, do you know?" she laughed deliciously. "know? why, of course, i do. you're delightful! of course i have followed every step of the plan--the special for dover picks us up here in three-quarters of an hour, doesn't it? we make the boat for calais, and there gela meets me and _your_ mission is done!" the gentleman opposite her listened quietly, and before speaking waited a second, staring down at her, his hands in his pockets: there they touched a little coin which he always carried: a coin that opened at a sacred point to discover to his eyes alone a picture of a woman as lovely as this woman, as human, and one whom he had good cause to suppose loved another man than her husband. the woman opposite him was escaping from her husband. _that_ was what she was doing! he who had striven for fifteen years to prevent the like in the life of the one woman of all, now appeared to be helping this poor thing to the same thing. he did not believe he was to be waylaid and robbed, or that any trick had been played upon him. the only thing he did _not_ believe was that the woman knew him! before, however, brushing the delusion aside, he asked, his candid eyes upon her: "and my mission being so done, what then becomes of you?" the shrug of her shoulders was neither an indication of indifference nor a pretty desperation! it rather was a relinquishing of herself wholly to fate--an abandon. "what becomes of a happy woman who goes with the man she loves?" "her fate," said her companion, "has no single history. she is most often disillusioned, many times tragic, and always disgraceful." "ah, hush," she said angrily, "you presume too far. if you only intended to lecture me--to condemn me--why did you come?" at this sincerely humorous challenge bulstrode smiled. "i did not, to be quite accurate, come," he said, "and i assure you i am here against my will. you refuse to listen to me; you turn my efforts to put things straight against me--and now." the handsome creature gave him a flash from angry eyes. "your excellency is scarcely polite. but i understand. even my rank doesn't protect me: and although your old friendship for gela did overcome your scruples, and our letters did touch you--still we should have remembered that you are, above all else, the king's friend." bulstrode fell a step back. before he could take in the curious honors that were being thrust upon him, the lady went hotly on: "you know how indulgent of me the king has been: how he adores me still, how blind he is, and you pity him and have no mercy for me." here, for she, too, had left her seat, she went over to the compartment window and turning her back full on bulstrode, stood looking out, and she thus gave him time and he took it, not to consider his part of the affair, but, as if it had been suddenly revealed to him by her words, the woman's part in it. after all it was scarcely important whom, in error, she believed him to be. in a strange fashion, through some trick of resemblance, he was here and in her confidence in another's stead--impersonating some man who, in spite of the reputation for goodness and honor accredited him by this lady, would scarcely, bulstrode felt confident, be as scrupulous regarding the adventure as he himself was fast becoming. the woman--the woman was all that mattered. she was a queen then? a queen! and he had so naïvely ignored her perquisites, been so innocently guilty of _lèse-majesté_--that she, poor thing, attributed his _sans gêne_ to her fallen state! kings and queens, poor dears, how human they are! what royalty could she be? and what king's friend was he so closely supposed to be? the king's friend--well, so he was--so he must be in spite of his quick pity for the lovely creature--in spite of chivalry and the trust she displayed. but to be practical: what in half an hour could he hope to accomplish--how could he keep a determined woman from wrecking her life? his mind flew to paddington, and his first sight of the lady on the platform. there had been near the hour two trains for westboro', one of them a local which left london some few minutes later than the western express. _that_ later train, no doubt of it, would fetch the real accomplice to the eloping lady. bulstrode argued that, should he declare himself to the queen at this point for a total stranger, the revelation would plunge her in despair, anger and frighten her, and lose him his cause--there was, in view of the cause, he now felt and nerved himself to the deception, nothing to do but to assume his rôle in earnest and play it as well as he might. he had never sat alone in a travelling carriage and hobnobbed with a queen, but he gracefully made his try at the proper address: "your majesty," he began, and she whirled quickly round, pleasure on her face. "oh, gresthaven!" she exclaimed with touching gratitude, extending her hand. "thanks, mon ami! i shall not have my title long, and i shall, i suppose, miss it with other things." bulstrode, with her naming of him, knew at length who he was, and recalled his supposed likeness to a certain lord almouth gresthaven--famous explorer, traveller and diplomat, cosmopolitan in his tastes and a dabbler in the politics of other and less significant countries than his own. in accepting his new personality, the american winced a little as he bowed over the royal little hand and kissed it. "your majesty will miss many things indeed," he said gravely--"your kingdom, your people, and the king--the king," he repeated, dwelling on the word, "who, as you say, loves you." "my good friend," the lady made a little _moue_--"i know everything you would say. you can't suppose i haven't thought of it all? to be so far on my way must i not have carefully considered every step? one is, after all, a woman--and i am a woman in love." "one word then," pleaded her unwilling imposter--"one word. have you also asked yourself: what chance for happiness a woman can possibly hope for with a man who allows her to make the sacrifice you are about to make?" if his words were straws before the wind to the woman, his simplicity was impressive to her. "it has seemed to me," jimmy bulstrode said, "that there is a great distinction between love and passion--and that however great his passion for her, a man should supremely--_supremely love_ the woman he singles out of all the world." the queen of poltavia looked at the gentleman before her, who stood very straight, his head alone bent, his clear fine eyes fixed upon her own. "love!" she repeated softly, "how well you say the word." a slight flush stole up the american's cheek. "supreme love," he ventured to continue, "means protection to the woman...." here the queen made an impatient gesture as though she shook away the impression his tone made. "my dear gresthaven," she exclaimed, "love means above all else happiness! one is happy with one person and miserable with another. it's all a lottery and unless our plans miscarry i am going towards the greatest happiness in the world. but come"--she altered her tone to one of practical command--"let us address ourselves to our flight. you have your train schedule of course? the dover train is due here at : and it only waits for the taking on of our carriage." as she looked up at him she saw the trouble in his face, and a solicitude for her to which she was unaccustomed. "mon cher ami," she said quizzically, "what, may i ask, since your scruples are so great, ever led you to accept this mission....?" "frankly," he eagerly answered, and was honest in it, "the hope, the desire that i might...." "persuade a woman in love against her heart?" she smiled, and so sweetly, so convincingly, and so reasonably, he was for an instant all on her side. "i see my folly, your majesty." "there's nothing but _force majeure_, gresthaven...." "yes" ... he admitted reluctantly. "let me go out now and see to our manoeuvres here." he was able to open the door which a passing guard had unlocked unobserved.... the innocent royalty let him pass, thanking him with a smile, and saw him go down the track toward the little squat station, with the guards. bulstrode, whose mind as he walked along was busy with train schedules, recalled, nevertheless, the duke's letter, which he still had in his letter case, and he took it from his pocket and re-read it. "... we are to have over the week-end a dash of royalty. carmen-magda, the queen of the petty kingdom of poltavia." (this mention of the westboro' guests had quite escaped bulstrode's mind in his contemplation of the last page of the duke's note.... "we are to have a compatriot of your own, a mrs. jack falconer.") and royalty being very relative to the unsnobbish american, he had simply transferred the title (with possibly a possessive pronoun before it) to the other lady! he smiled as he reflected that the westboro' express was destined to arrive at the abbey without either the royal guest or mr. james thatcher bulstrode. but more to the point, more instantly absorbing was the fact, that within ten minutes the slow train from london to westboro' would arrive at radleigh bucks, the little station before which he now stood, and from it, undoubtedly, would descend the real lord gresthaven. if jimmy needed encouragement in his self-imposed rôle of master of fate, if he needed to forget the ardor and the determination of the little queen, if he needed to forget how, in youth, he had cordially hated those interfering people who, on horseback and in chaises, tore after flying lovers to waylay them at gretna green--he found his stimulus in recalling that he was "the king's friend." "it's after all something of a distinction," he mused, entertained by the idea, "a sort of royal _noblesse oblige_--and since the poor dear herself has so made me out to be, given king the precedence, how could i, in the cause of gallantry, have proceeded otherwise! it's this diabolical little brown chrysanthemum," he mentally laid the fault there. "it is evidently a telling mark. people in books are always meeting unknowns who are to wear a red flower in the right lapel of the coat".... and he had unintentionally gone over into a romance--and his _triste_ part in it was that of an unsympathetic spoiler of a romance. as after a prolonged parley with the station officials he walked leisurely back to his carriage, his wallet grown very thin indeed and his honest heart suffering many sincere pangs at the contemplation of his conduct altogether, he argued: "she is absurdly young--she will, after a little, go back to her allegiance (he put it so), and i don't take much stock in that barbaric gela anyway, he probably is a hungarian band-master or a handsome ticket-agent, a plebian creature whose very remoteness from her own life has fascinated her." bulstrode, not quite sure just whom he was supposed to be by the train people, found himself bowed and escorted back to the carriage which had been turned and manipulated and side-tracked--reswitched and displaced, till even its own locomotive and train of cars would have been at a loss to find it. he had the sense of being a traitor, brute, imposter, and providence all in one--which combination of qualities was sufficient to explain his embarrassment and his nervous manner when he at length rejoined the queen. there was a slight transformation in the lady whose dressing bag had aided, evidently, a brisk toilet. under her chin flowered out a snowy bow of tulle, and she had swathed herself in the thick veil she had worn when first boarding the train. indicating her disguise to bulstrode, she said with her pretty accent: "i think it well to be thus." and he agreed that it was well. his own agitation as the other train rushed in, slowed and halted, was scarcely less than hers, indeed perhaps greater, for carmen-magda, pale and quiet, her handsome brown eyes fixed on the window-pane, gave no sign of life, until after a series of jerks, jolts and bumps, they slowly but certainly became part of a moving train, once more undertaking its journey. then bulstrode, who stood determinedly in the window, filled it up on the station side, giving her no chance to look out had she wished to do so, nor did he think it needful to tell the queen what he saw: a distinguished-looking man in rough brown clothes, and oh, the curious coincidence: a reddish-brown chrysanthemum in his buttonhole. his striking resemblance was accompanied by another gentleman--short and stout with military mustaches, and swarthy complexion. the two men were gesticulating wildly together, and as the train pulled away from them, bulstrode turned about and faced the little queen. she had again lifted her veil, and he thought her pallor natural; in the momentary excitement her large eyes were fastened upon him with a touching confidence that nearly made the soft-hearted imposter regret the boldest act of his history. "are you sure," she asked him softly, "that this is the right train?" the coquetry of her bow of snowy tulle, the debonnaire costume of brown and green, her gray hat with its feathers, were pathetic to him--her attire contrasted sadly with her pale face. she was to him like a wilful child. not more, he decided for the sixth time, than twenty years old. she was like a paper queen out of a child's fairy book, all but her anxious face. "she regrets," he joyfully caught at the thought to arm himself and give himself right. "poor little thing, she already regrets." leaning forward, he suggested kindly: "can't your majesty rest a little?" as he spoke the hypocrite knew that in less time than it would take to settle her they would bump into the station at westboro' abbey. but carmen-magda made no sign of recalcitrancy or regret that she was _en route_ for her plebian gela. she leaned over and picked up one of the illustrated papers upon the seat and idly turned over the pages, reverting finally back to the frontispiece where a colored photograph displayed a young woman in hunting dress leaning on the arm of a military-looking gentleman with black mustaches and swarthy skin. she held it out to bulstrode and said: "it's a poor enough picture of me, but excellent, isn't it, of the king?" bulstrode looked at it attentively with an inscrutable illumination on his face. "yes, it is good of the king, very good indeed," he exclaimed with much animation. it was strikingly so, he could with truth say it. gresthaven had proved himself to be the friend of the king par excellence--the king seemed to have many friends---and the poor little woman opposite--with her fetching bow of tulle and her mad confidence in a stranger--her madder confidence in lord almouth gresthaven--where were _her_ friends? jimmy leaned to her, and mrs. falconer could have told that it was his voice of goodness that spoke, the voice "that jimmy seemed able to call at will from some wonderfully dear part of his nature: it was for people in trouble, for people he was determined to help in spite of themselves." "your majesty has done me great honor," bulstrode said. "you have said i was the king's friend, i should like instead to be _your_ friend. women need friends ... even queens. would it be too vast a presumption if i should from henceforth feel myself to be...." he waited and dared--"carmen-magda's friend?" his innocent lèse-majesté, coupled with the tone he used, reached the woman in her---not to speak of his personal charm. "didn't i imply friendship when i chose you for this mission?" she said. he winced. "of course--but i mean from now on----" she nodded sweetly. "_cela va sans dire_, gresthaven." "don't call me so," he interrupted, "say _friend_, to please me." she laughed. "you are too amusing. i will say it for you then in poltavian. it's a sacred word with us," and she called him friend in her own tongue with the prettiest accent and a royal inclination of her head as if she knighted him. it cut him and pleased him at once, and he hurried to ask her: "what would you think of gresthaven if, instead of meeting you, as you had arranged he should do--he should betray you--should have warned your husband and have gone so far _as to fetch the king to waylay you and stop your flight_!" but carmen-magda only laughed, and dismissed the ridiculous supposition with a word of disbelief. "tell me," bulstrode urged, "tell me what would you think?" she drew herself up haughtily at his insistence as if his hypothesis were real to her at last: "he would be the most despicable traitor in the world." bulstrode pursued: "what--would you think of gresthaven--if in order to save you, to give you time, time to think, to reflect, to perhaps alter your decision--he had used other means less cruel possibly, but as surely betraying your good faith?" here she looked keenly through him--read him--then waited a second before intensely exclaiming: "gresthaven--_what have you done_?" his heart came into his throat and his voice nearly failed him. he did not know poltavians nor the queenly temper, nor did he know how all women take any one given thing, but he knew how women the world over admit of no change of caprice saving that variability which arises in their own minds. "oh, dear," he thought, "if for no matter _what_ reason, she had only changed her _own_ mind!" "in five minutes," he said bravely--"your majesty will be at westboro' abbey station, our carriage has been attached to the other train which followed us from london." with a smothered cry the queen sprang to her feet, rushed to the window and stared out where nothing in the golden afternoon beauty revealed to her in what part of england she was. bulstrode had put his hand out before her as if he feared she meditated climbing through the open window. "oh," she cried furiously, shrinking back from him, "how have you dared ... dared?" ... "to save your majesty? well, it _was_ hard!" he acknowledged practically. "harder than you will ever believe. i may say that no decision was ever more difficult to make. to be so trusted by you, and to feel myself a double-dyed villain wasn't agreeable, but the issue was a warrant for any treachery." "great heavens!" she exclaimed. "who made _you_ judge of my actions, who gave _you_ leave to decide my fate, what a fool i was to trust you--what a fool! you have spoiled my life!" she accused him--"you have taken from me everything in the world." if she had been alone he knew she would have wept, and he kept his face turned from her for some few seconds. "i have certainly established a precedent for myself," he mused with humor. "_i_ can never run away with a woman now--never." small as were the limits of the little carriage she found means to walk it up and down several times, her head thrown back, her eyes flashing. she spoke, he supposed, in poltavian, for he could not follow the meaning of her few staccato, angry words, but he did not recognise among the incoherences that she called him friend! as the flying scenes grew farm-like and pastoral, and the lines and sweep of what he took to be park property, caught his eyes he once more ventured to speak. "i am not the cold-blooded traitor i seem, believe me," he tried to plead, "and until we definitely passed the station at redleigh bucks i was miserable to think i had, as it seems, betrayed your majesty. but when as we came up to the station i saw the king on the platform----" she stopped short in front of him: "the king!" she exclaimed incredulously. bulstrode nodded in a matter-of-fact way as if stray kings on mid-country platforms were the common occurrence of his travelling experiences. "he had evidently followed you that far, and if the plan formed to attach your carriage to the dover express had been attempted, you would have been stopped by your husband himself. as it is you are simply going where you are expected to go--to westboro' castle." this dénouement, putting a summary end to her tragic anger, left her no place for ecstatics. she sat down in front of bulstrode and repeated, dazed:-- "the _king_! the king had followed me! he had been warned then, but by whom? you above all did not....?" "oh no!" he was glad to be honestly able to disclaim at least this disloyalty. "i had nothing to do with it. the king had come on with the man who had played your majesty false all along, the man who is indeed more the king's friend than he is carmen-magda's." and sitting there, bewildered and appealing before him, she heard him say: "i mean lord almouth gresthaven." she murmured some words in poltavian, then besought: "why, why do you play with me?" the tears started to her eyes. "lord gresthaven," bulstrode hurried now to his confession--"has plainly betrayed you. either he failed to meet you as planned, or else he came too late and thought better of his connivance against your husband--at all events, both he and the king took the slow train." "but _you_," she interrupted, staring at him--"you are not lord gresthaven?" "no," he said quietly, "no, i am an american, nothing more than a friend and guest of the duke of westboro'. i tried over and over again to tell you this, but you would not hear me and i finally accepted the rôle you gave me with the firm intention of taking you with me to westboro' castle. my name is james thatcher bulstrode, i am from boston, in the united states." bulstrode thus tardily introduced himself. and jimmy, not pretending ever to have counted greatly on the favor of princes, was nevertheless taken aback. not that he had any preconceived notion of what carmen-magda would do--when she eventually knew. he had been too absorbed in his mission, its entanglements, and his climax. he may have been prepared for some exhibition of scorn, but he more than likely looked for a social and commonplace ending to their ride, but for what carmen-magda did he was entirely unprepared. as if in his declaration of himself and his identity he had taken a sponge and quite wiped himself off the slate, the queen, after speechlessly staring at him for a few moments, quietly removed her attention from him altogether. she took from a little bag at her wrist a rouge stick with which she carefully touched her lips; from a tiny gold box she lightly dusted her cheeks with powder; she adjusted her tulle bow and her veil and then sat serenely back waiting until the train should arrive at her forced destination. although, one might say, unused to the manners of royalty, jimmy was dumbfounded; the beautiful woman in forest-brown clothes picked out with hunting green had become as strange to him as in the first moment when she attracted his attention some few miles beyond london. that she should be angry at his interference he could admit, but that she should not be grateful to be saved from her husband's wrath he did not understand. was he too plebeian for her to notice? he, of course, did not speak to her again, nor did she break the singular silence, and for some reason he did not even care to ask her forgiveness. finally, he decided that she was thinking solely of gela, the man at the other end of the route who would wait for her in vain, and when this sentimental view of the case occurred to him, he would have felt _de trop_ had he not seen how completely he was ignored. they flashed past the last miles of wooded valley and hillside. westboro' was very soft in line and very mellow in the evening light. the landscape, through a half-mist, was as brown and green as the dress of the beautiful silent woman in the opposite corner of the travelling carriage. bulstrode, looking at her rather timidly, felt as if he were in a dream. at westboro' abbey the guard unlocked the compartment door and bulstrode, who got out first, helped the queen of poltavia to descend. as she put foot to the ground she said, half leaning on the arm he gave: "i thank you--very much indeed." he caught the few words eagerly, and was fatuous enough to fancy that she meant something more than the common courteous acknowledgment of a man's help from a travelling carriage. the station was deserted. the express having arrived some half hour before without them, there had evidently been no preparation made to meet this train. surrounded by her luggage, her brand new luggage, the queen waited on the side of the station that faced the open country, whilst bulstrode made inquiries about telephoning or getting word to the castle. at this juncture, down the lane, between red thickets and golden hedges, a smart dog-cart tooled along driven by a lady. she waved a welcoming hand. "jimmy," she said as she drove up and leaned out and nodded to him, "i knew you'd miss the express, you're so absent-minded about trains; and who could be expected to distinguish between a . and a . ? so, as you see, i drove down on the chance." he had not greeted her in words. the long afternoon, the romantic extravagant episode, of which he had been unwillingly a part, made this woman seem so real. he felt as if from a burlesque extravaganza he had come out into the fresh air; their eyes had met and mrs. falconer did not miss any other greeting. "that lady," he then said, "whom you see standing on the edge of the platform surrounded by her luggage, like a shipwrecked being on a desert island, is the queen of poltavia." "heavens!" exclaimed mrs. falconer. "yes," he said indifferently, "we came down from london together." "why, the whole castle is in a state about her. a coach and postillion went to fetch her at the express. telegrams are flying all over the country. why did she take a local--and with you--jimmy?" "perhaps she is absent-minded about trains as well," he smiled, "at all events here she certainly is and it will be charming of you to drive her up." "but i don't know her!" "oh," he shrugged, "one doesn't exactly _know_ queens, i don't know her either, but that wouldn't prevent my doing her a service. i am sure she'd rather be driven up to a cup of tea and a fire by an american than stand here waiting for a postilion and four. it will be nice of you to speak to her," he suggested, and stepped back. gathering up her reins, mrs. falconer whisked her horse about and drove up to the lady's side. bulstrode, from a little distance, watched her graceful inclination and heard her lovely voice. he saw carmen-magda lift her disguising veil, displaying her dark, foreign face. slowly going up to the dog-cart's side, together with the groom's help, he bestowed the queen's belongings in the trap. "i will walk on slowly up the road," he suggested, "and most possibly you will send back for me." "oh, i'll drive back myself." she was quite certain about it. as he helped the queen into the dog-cart, as she leaned on his supporting hand, she said: "thank you, thank you very much indeed." and he was so vain as to fancy that into tone and words carmen-magda put more warmth, more of meaning, than a woman usually puts into the phrase of recognition of a man's helping hand. he could not, moreover, have sworn that at the end of the sentence was not murmured a word in a foreign tongue which might in poltavian mean "friend," but as he did not understand the language of the country he could not be sure. as he watched the trap up the hedged lanes out of sight, he rubbed his eyes as if he were not certain whether or not he had not dozed and dreamed in his compartment on the slow train from london.... but at any rate he had the delightful heavenly certainty that this was westboro' of an indian summer afternoon--and that of the two women who had just driven up the lane out of sight, one at least was adorably real. the seventh adventure vii in which he becomes the possessor of a certain piece of property as bulstrode stood in the window of his room at westboro' castle, his face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him. it called him from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave them perfect. with the sweetness of a bell, with the invitingness of a beckoning hand, the english countryside summoned the gentleman to come out to it, to explore and penetrate for himself. he gazed charmed and entranced at the expanse of rippling meadow where, enclosed by the curtains of soft old trees, the thatch of the eaves lifted their breast to the sun and mist, and chimneys black with immemorial fires indicated the farms of westboro', rich, homely and respectable, as they left upon the landscape harmonious color and history of thrift. to the east was the dim suggestion of the little town, and some few miles in a hollow lay the farmlands known as the dials, and each second growing more distinctly visible in the deepening light rose the towers of penhaven abbey. at the duke's urging, bulstrode had been led to stop on at westboro' castle after the house party had dissolved at the end of their week's sojourn; and there had since been many long tramps across country, with the dogs at his heels and by his side the duke, for the time diverted from his semi-melancholy, semi-egotistical cynicism, and transformed into an enthusiastic sport. the duke of westboro' was a _désenchanté_, more truly speaking a victim of other peoples' temperaments. there were, however, not a few little scores in the character of moral delinquencies which at least, so he felt, he had been called upon quite fully to discharge. the american man gave himself over to his host, and from the time westboro' put out a bait of "oh, you're decidedly not turning in at this hour, old man?" he flanked the duke on the opposite side of the fireplace in the east library, there after coffee to wear away half the night. during the following fortnight, bulstrode found that he had tallied up with his friend very closely the scores of the last few miserable years. westboro's friendship with him dated back some ten years. bulstrode had first known the englishman at newport where, then not a young man, he had come obviously and frankly in search of an american wife. the search was unusual in that it was not for money, but, as westboro' put it, for type and race. his mother had been an american. he had adored her, and wanted an american mother for his children. the woman herself--and how bulstrode saw it as he followed the deserted husband's narrative--the woman had been a secondary thing. he recalled easily the summary and conventional courtship and the vulgar brilliance of the wedding. he had been one of westboro's ushers, and his smaller part of the affair left him with the distressing idea that he had assisted at a sacrifice. it would be euphemistic to say that westboro' poured out his heart to bulstrode; englishmen do not have such refreshments. little by little, rather in short curt phrases, a cynical word whose mocking fellow only followed after some moments' silence--little by little, whilst the smoky wreaths of the men's cigars veiled their confidences, the duke slowly told the story of ten years of married life. in this intimacy he disclosed the history of the separation which formed at the moment the subject of general public comment. jimmy was relieved when the moment came that the duke thought opportune to say: "there, old chap, you have the whole story! it's this cursed tradition of marriage, and you're a lucky fellow to be free. i have never spoken to any one before--you know it. i don't need to tell you so, but you were in, as it were, at the start, and what do you think of the finish?" bulstrode reserved his opinion. westboro' castle had been built in the sixteenth century by a lover of the virgin queen. the stones were paved with memories. in the picture hall the ardent gentleman three hundred years before had for one sole hour entertained elizabeth at a feast. she left him, obdurate and unyielding, and he went crazy and followed the royal coach to the park gate, weeping, his hands before his face; and there on the ground, his fair curls torn, and the dust from the departing vehicles alone of the glory that touched him, his people found him. "how they prate of inequality, and of the crime of grafting the american rose on these old stalks," bulstrode mused. the beauty of frances, duchess of westboro', he had himself been one of the first to concede; a portrait of her by lehnbach did not to his eyes do her justice. the fresh purity of her type had not been seized by the german. she would be an ideal duchess, he had said of her when the mission of westboro' to america had been bruited, and westboro' had thought: "she's a strong, fine woman, and will bear me beautiful children." she had borne him two. bulstrode, in passing through the house, had seen the low gates at the doors of two sunny rooms, the toys spread as they had been lain. his own were the only apartments in that wing of the castle, and the silence at the end of the hall was never broken. when westboro' had come to this part of his narrative, he had waited quiet so long that his companion had naturally taken the evening to be at its end. the duke had thrown his cigar away, and lifting from the table near him a leather case, opened it and handed over to bulstrode the photograph of two little bare-legged boys in sailor clothes. they stood hand in hand, a pretty pair. looking at it, and gently turning it over on the other side, bulstrode read: "frederick cecil john edward, marquis of wotherington, three years old. guy perceval, lord feversham, aged two years." westboro's voice had a dull sound as he took the case from his friend's hand. "they are westboro's i think, neck and crop. scarlet fever--in three days, bulstrode--both in three days." and that had been all. bulstrode had left the duke and gone up-stairs. on the other side of his cheerful rooms the empty nurseries in the ghostly moonlight held their doors wide open as if to welcome at the low gates those bright heads if they should come. jimmy, whose sentimentality consisted in his acting immediately when anything was to be done, mixed a whiskey and soda from the array of drinks that always exists at an anglo-saxon's elbow, and after a turn or two in his dressing-room brought practically out: "it's ridiculous! sheer nonsense. there should be children here. the woman is selfish and puritanical, and the man is no lover--_that's_ what's the matter! but westboro' certainly loves her in his big, cold, affectionate way." jimmy smiled at his own fashion of putting it. and how any woman, with a mind and common-sense, could help loving westboro' castle and countryside, as well as cecil, tenth duke of the line, the american visitor failed to see. as the duke of westboro' thought of the members of his recent house party--the women of it passed before his mental mirror. there were several images of an american lady whose frocks and hats, whose wit and grace, whose dark beauty had made her stay at westboro' brilliant and memorable. possibly the remembrance of mrs. falconer, one night at dinner, was what most persistently lingered in the duke's mind. she had sat on his left in a gown he remembered as becoming, and her jewels had shone like fire on her bosom. he had particularly remarked them in thinking of the idle jewels of his own house, left behind by the flight of the duchess. mary falconer had been more brilliant than her ornaments, and westboro' had thoroughly enjoyed his guest. he had asked this woman especially because she charmed him; without forming the reason he had a latent hope that she might do more than charm. he wanted to forget and to be eased from the haunting memory that stung and never soothed. from his first tête-a-tête with mrs. falconer he had at once seen that there was nothing there for him. bulstrode had said that westboro' was not a lover. reserved as far as all feeling was concerned, he had made no advances to the beautiful american, but contented himself with watching her. she could not be in love with her brutish husband who, out of the week spent at westboro' was visible only two days. then bulstrode had come. pictures of the two talking in the long twilights, riding together, walking on the terrace side by side, came vividly to westboro's recollection. "that," he decided, "is a real flesh-and-blood woman, the kind of woman i should have married. bulstrode is a lucky devil." "a chap," westboro' said to jimmy in a mild unpretentious mood of philosophy, "is, of course, a husband; more naturally than people give him credit for, a father; but first of all--and that's what so few women take into consideration--_he is a man_." the duke had fallen into the habit of breaking through the silences when each man, following his own thoughts, would forget the other. and remarks such as these his companion knew, referred in sense and detail to the long talks whose intenser personalities had ceased. this day westboro' brought out his little paragraph as, between the hedges of a lowland lane, the two rode at a walk after a long hard canter from penhaven, some eight miles behind them on the hill. on either side the top of the thorn was veiled with rime. down the hedge's thickness from his seat on his horse, bulstrode could look into the dark tangled interstices of the thicket and its delicious browns and greens. into the thorns here and there dried leaves had fallen, and from the hedge as well as from the country, clouded and gray with mist, came a sharpened sweetness; a blended smell of fields over which early winter had passed; a smell of woods over which the fires cast smoky veils. in the freshness and with the eager exercise, bulstrode's cheeks had reddened. he sat his horse well, and his enjoyment of life, his ease with it, his charming spirit, shone in the face he turned to the duke. for some miles given over to the sympathetic task of managing his horse, he had enjoyed like a boy, and during the ride had thought of nothing but the physical delight of the open air and the motion. "yes," he returned to his friend's remark, "as far as any point of interest goes, we may grant you that we began as men. i mean to say that monkeys aren't useful in one's deductions for emotional hypotheses, at any rate. i'll grant you for our use that we were men to begin with." "damn it all," said his host, "aren't we just as much so to-day, for all our civilization?" "well, we don't primarily knock on the head a woman whose physique has pleased us, and carry her off while she's unconscious." "it might in some cases be a good thing if we did," westboro' growled. bulstrode ran his hand along the silky neck of his horse, from whose nostrils smoke came in little puffs that met the moisture of the air. "oh, we're not, you know, so awfully far away from our instincts in anything, old man! there isn't any cast-iron rule about feelings. they depend on the individual." "oh, you've never married," westboro' tried frankly to irritate him, "and you can't, you know----" the sweet temper of the other accepted the duke's scorn. "i'm not married, or very theoretical about it, either. one can only, after all, have his own point of view." "we're not, i expect, fair to the women," the duke generously acknowledged. "we look for so much in them. we expect them to be so much." "a wife," bulstrode completed for him, "a mother, a friend." and westboro' finished it. "for them and for other men. and a mistress." and here bulstrode took him up for the first time with a note of challenge in his voice. "and what, my dear man, did you intend that the duchess should take you for? no, i mean to say, quite man to man, given that any woman could or does contain all the qualities you so temperately ask?" westboro' smiled at the first curtness he had ever heard in his friend's voice. "oh, you know, we men don't fuss about ourselves." "you married her at eighteen," bulstrode said. "you made her a duchess. you had already lived a life and she was a child beside you in experience. you required motherhood of her, and in return...." "well," westboro' turned about in his saddle and faced his earnest friend. "what then, in your opinion, might i have been?" "you might have been from the start," bulstrode said it shortly, "a lover. it's not a bad rôle. we anglo-saxons have no sentimental education. our puritanism makes us half the time timid at courtship and love." the gentlemen rode a little on with slackened rein. westboro's eyeglass cord was almost motionless as he stared out between his horse's ears down the lane. "perhaps, after all," he fetched it out slowly, "there's something in what you say." whether or not there was any truth in bulstrode's commonplace remark, it lingered in his host's mind all day. it gave him, for the first time, a link to follow--an idea--and the duke, entirely unused to analysis, accustomed to act if not on impulse, certainly according to his will and pleasure without concession, harked back in a groping, touching fashion like an awkward boy looking for a lost treasure, upsetting, as he went, old haunts, turning over things for years not brought to the light of day. and it took him all the afternoon and a good part of the evening to reach the place where he thought he had lost originally his joy. unlike the happier boy, he could not seize his bliss once recovered, and stow it away; it was only remembrance that brought him back, and with a tightening heart as he realized once more the form and quality of his lost happiness--there he must leave it and see it fade again into the past. jimmy gave his host a chance to follow his absorbed reflections. he effaced himself, and behind a book whose lightness of touch made him agreeably forget the heavier hand of current and daily events, he sat in his dressing-room reading "the vicar of wakefield." when westboro' came in to him jimmy looked up and quoted aloud: "when lovely woman stoops to folly and finds at length that men betray...." "oh, they console themselves quickly," westboro' finished. "don't fancy anything else, my dear fellow, they console themselves." "they may pretend to do so." "they succeed." westboro' took the little book from his friend's hand and shut it firmly as if afraid that the rest of the verse might slip out and refute him. "bulstrode, she consoles herself, she is perfectly happy." "how are you then so sure?" "oh, i hear of her in paris." the duke's features contracted. "she's contriving to pass her time--to pass her time." bulstrode leaned over towards his friend and, for westboro' sat opposite him, he put his hand on the duke's knee. "you must certainly go to her." westboro' stroked his moustache before he answered: "not if i never see her again." "you should decidedly go to her." the other shook his head. "not if it meant twice the hell it is now." "why not?" "i went to her once. i may say twice," he slowly said, "since we separated." and as he stopped speaking bulstrode could only imagine what the result had been. "i don't think i'm a westboro' really, for i couldn't follow any woman's carriage puling like a schoolboy as my ancestor did. there's a great deal of my mother's blood in me, and it's a different blend." bulstrode's eyes were on the little book between the duke's aristocratic hands. "she has, i grant you, a lot to forgive; but she quite well knows all the blame i acknowledge, quite well. i don't believe i'm any worse than the run of mankind, and whether i am or not, i've made all the amends i can and i have nothing more to say." his eyeglass had dropped; his face looked worn; he showed his age more than a happier man would have done at his years his mood of thinking it out by himself continued for so long that bulstrode finally asked: "what, if i may be so near you as to question, do you mean, old chap, to do?" westboro' had it all laid out for himself--his ready answer showed it. "you say i'm not a lover," he reminded his friend; "no doubt you're right, but i'm an affectionate chap, at any rate, i can't bear this--" he looked about hopelessly. the words were forced out by the high mark of his unhappiness: "--this infernal solitude. even when a good comrade like yourself is in it, the house seems to speak to me from the empty rooms in this wing." (bulstrode knew he was thinking of the nurseries with the low latches and little gates.) "i can't stand it. when i get out of england and abroad the place fetches me back again like a magnet. i'm a home-keeping sort of man, and i want my home." his friend gently urged in the silence: "well?" "i shall wait," the duke went on with the plan he had been forced to make out for himself. "i shall hold on, keep along a bit, and then--_i shall go to the other woman_." and the duke, as he raised his eyes to his companion, fixed his glass firmly and felt that he challenged in every way bulstrode's disapproval. "the duchess will get her divorce--it goes without saying--will get her divorce. why she has not already done so i can't imagine." as westboro' appeared inclined to leave the subject there, bulstrode pressed him further: "and then?" "i fancy i shall marry the other woman." bulstrode started. the complexion of the idea was so foreign to him that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it. "you will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love another?" the duke nodded. "love," he reflected, "i begin to believe i don't know anything about. it must, of course, suppose some sort of return. if, as you say, i love another woman, i'm not made of the stuff that can go along doing so without anything on her side." the dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour. it was two o'clock. the duke of westboro' rose. "you must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, i dare say that by now i should have already made some sort of fatal blunder." at the door bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though nothing in the conversation apart from the duchess had any real significance, he said simply: "you are then, in sum, simply waiting...?" "oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly. and the other man knew that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind. "she may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my taking any further steps." "oh, i see perfectly," jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his host, he said, almost aloud: "he thinks, then, there is half a chance that the duchess will return." and wondering very much how far a woman is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him, he did not finish his phrase. the next day bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country, went out, as it were, to it as if he said "here i am--what will you do with me?" if glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good thing. therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the direction of penhaven, obeyed its summons at last. westboro' had run up to london for overnight, and bulstrode, at the duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay indefinitely on. it must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst the books whose files had tempted him for days. but the pity of all he had sympathetically been closeted with was great in his mind. whereas his native delicacy and slow judgment had led him to keep silent until now towards his host, it was in no wise because jimmy had not quite made up his mind that he would not spare westboro' at all when the moment, if it ever came, should present itself for him to speak. as he rode along he thought of the duchess naturally in paris, surrounded by a train of ardent admirers; she had them always, everywhere. she was disillusioned, of course, probably angry, piqued, and unfortunately she had been betrayed; and he shrugged with a gentle desperation as he made a mental picture of the last scene: the inevitable divorce, the wrecking of another household, unless--unless--one of them loved sufficiently to save the situation. his thoughts came to a standstill as his horse stopped short before a gate: his riding had fetched him up before it. the mare stretched out her long neck, set free by a relaxing rein; she sniffed the latch and put her head over the wicket, and the rider saw that they had come across fields, and were at the entrance of a deserted property. the gate gave access to a forest road where the thick underbrush was untidy, and on whose walk the piles of leaves lay as they had fallen. he could see no farther in, and thinking to come at the end upon a forsaken garden, the precincts of an untenanted country house, he leaned down, tried the gate which fairly swung into his hand, and the mare passed through. there was the delicious intimacy about the woods which the sense of coming alone and unexpectedly upon the old and forsaken gives the traveller. he is a discoverer of secrets, a legitimate spy upon stories which he flatters himself he is the first to read. he becomes intimate with another man's past, and as he must necessarily, in all ignorance, tell himself his own tales, indiscretion may be said to be a doubtful quantity. a bit back in the bare brown woods he saw the flash of a marble pillar; it shone white and clear in the setting of russet and against the boles of the trees. a little farther away gleamed another figure on its base of fluted marble, and still farther along, leaf-overlaid and thus effaced, he could discern the contour of a sunken garden. the place grew more pretentious as he slowly picked his way, and he was unprepared for coming suddenly onto a gravel path from which he thought the leaves had been blown away. here bulstrode dismounted, and, with the bridle over his arm, walked towards the path's end, pleasantly interested, and now, as he thought it should by this do, the house struck on him through an archway contrived by the training of old trees over a circle of stone. the house broke on him in the shape of an elizabethan manse; long and old with soft rose-color of brick in places, and the color of a faded leaf in others where the dampness had soaked in and had, through countless mid-summer suns, been burned out again. before the windows flashed the red of bright curtains. the house was distinctly, and he thought it seemed happily, occupied. he stopped where he stood by the arch, a little confused and a little balked in his romantic treat, and not the less feeling himself an intruder. but before he could turn his horse and unobtrusively lead her back the way they had come, the house's occupant, no doubt she who gave it the air of being so happily tenanted, had come out with a garden hat on her head, a pair of garden shears in her hands, and with the precision of intention, turned sharply towards the arched forest walk, and in this way squarely upon bulstrode. the surprise to him was, without doubt, the greater, for she knew him at once, and he for a second did not recognize her. her extreme english air--the straw hat tied under her chin and the face it framed, so decidedly altered, bewildered him. his first greeting, mentally, before he spoke aloud to her, was masculine. "why, her beauty! what in heaven's name had she done with it?" "_what_ are you doing here?" they both asked it at once, and the lady having lived so long in an insular country was adept in its possibilities of great hospitality as well as of freezing out an unwelcome visitor. she froze the poor gentleman and then, touched by his utter bewilderment and his innocence of wilful intrusion, she smiled more humanly. "won't you, since you _are_ here, mr. bulstrode, come in and have a cup of tea?" she at once followed their mutual question by saying: "as for being here, you will admit that given the part of the country it is, no one has a better right!" "oh, i'll admit anything you like," he laughed, "if you'll only admit us. you see we are two." the lady came up to him in a more friendly manner; she gave him her hand and she really smiled beautifully. then she put her hand on the nose of the horse, with the touch one has for familiar things. "she's a perfect dear, isn't she--a dear. so you are riding her then? well, you'll find her easy to tie, she stands well. there's nothing she can spoil, that's the charm of such an old, tumble-down place." as bulstrode followed after the trailing dress just touching the gravel with a rustling sound, he had the feeling of being suddenly, willy-nilly, taken and put into the heart of a story book. he smiled. "well, i've done the first chapter and now i've got to go on in the book, i suppose, whether i want to be here or not, to the end." "i thought i was making a voyage of discovery," he told her as they sat in the low room before a fire and before her table and tea cups. "i fancied i was the only person within miles round. i expect no one has a right to be so bold, but i really didn't dream the place was lived in, as, of course, you know." "drink your tea," she bade, "and eat your toast before i make you tell me if you have come to see me as a messenger." "and if i have?" it was delicious tea, and the american of her had somehow found cream for it, which, un-english luxury, the american in him fully appreciated. the liquid in the blue-and-white cups was pale as saffron and the toast was a feather. "at five o'clock there's nothing like it in the world," he breathed. "i didn't hope for this to-day. i had recklessly thrown five o'clock over, for i'm alone at the castle." he drank his tea, finished, and with a sigh. then he said: "i can actually venture to ask you for another cup, for i am nobody's messenger or envoy, my dear, nobody's. i'm just an indiscreet, humdrum individual who has been too charmingly rewarded for an intrusion. you saw my surprise, didn't you? and i'm not very clever at putting on things." the duchess tacitly accepted, it is to be supposed, for she made him a second cup of tea, slowly. "you don't know that i've been thinking about you all day," he said, "and i can frankly say that i've been making a very different picture of you indeed." she took no notice whatsoever of his personality. "you are in england, then," she said rather formally. "i never think of my own country people as being here. i always think of americans as being in the states, men above all, for they fit so badly in the english atmosphere, don't they? it's always incongruous to me to hear their "r's" and "a's" rattling about in this soft language. it's horrid of me to speak so. you, of course, are out of the category. but as you stood there, with banshee's nose over your shoulder you fitted quite beautifully in with everything. i don't believe i should mind you, ever, anywhere, and yet i more naturally think of you at newport, don't you see?" her companion cried: "oh, no, i'm in england, and you can't alter the fact, at least if you can, please don't; for newport on the fifteenth of december, and with no such tea or fire----" "oh," she permitted, "you may stay. i said you fitted--only----" bulstrode interposed: "don't at least for a few moments entertain any 'buts' and 'onlys'--they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling trunks that would transport me to the united states. it is so--let me say--neutral in this place, i should think i might remain. i don't know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep, but it is singularly perfect to have found you." his hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by the fireside where bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor. "you must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen me. otherwise i shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again know where i am." however her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was obliged to give her his word. he had no right not to do so. "and nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, mr. bulstrode. i know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of quixotic funny things, but in this case please--please----" "mind my own business?" he nodded. "i will, duchess, i will." she looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first americanism she had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less perfunctory interest than her words implied: "you are at westboro'?" "yes, since the twenty-fifth." "and you're staying on?" "i seem to be more or less of a fixture--until the holidays, i expect." "lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she half laughed. "oh, i mean as far as the castle goes--isn't it really too delightful?" he was able to say honestly: "quite the most beautiful house i have ever seen." "yes, i think so too," she nodded. "it's not so important as many others but it's more perfect, more like a home." bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him. between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been transformed. she was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no longer existed in the duchess of westboro'. she had refined very much indeed. the aggressive bearing of the american princess had been replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the english duchess. she was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so, and the line of her lips. all her lines were sharper and finer. her color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color was quite gone. her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes--it was in them that bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all; they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their profound and deeply circled gray. "what rooms will they have given you?" she asked after a moment. then--"wait," she commanded, "i know. the south wing, the henry iv. rooms that look into the gardens. i always gave those to the men. there's something extremely homelike about them, don't you think so? and have you ever seen anything like those winter roses in that court? did any bloom this year? the trellis runs up along the terrace balustrade--or possibly you don't care for flowers? of course you wouldn't as a girl does." a _girl_--with that face and those eyes? why, she must have been talking back ten years. bulstrode drew a breath. "i know the roses you mean. it would be difficult to forget them. your gardener takes such pride in them. for some reason they are never gathered; they fall as they hang. the gardener, it so happened, told me so." she was looking at him with an intensity almost painful, but she said nothing further, and after a moment more bulstrode replied to another question. "as it happens i don't occupy the henry iv. rooms. i have mine quite on the other side of the castle. don't they call them the 'west rooms'?" she caught her breath a little, but she was in splendid training with all her years of english life behind her. her face, nevertheless, showed how well she knew those rooms, without the added note in her voice as she said: "oh, those west rooms--you have those." and in the quiet that fell as her eyes sought the fire, he quite knew how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with their waiting gates. whatever were her reasons for being here, bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome. but in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life, she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something like sentiment was short. even as he looked at her she hardened. "you have naturally not asked me anything, mr. bulstrode," she said, coldly enough now, "and more naturally still i have no explanations to give. by to-morrow i may be gone. i may live here for the rest of my life. i never leave my garden, i am quite unknown to the people about. if any one in westboro' learns that i am here i shall leave at once. you will not come again. it is discourteous to say so--to ask it." he had risen from his chair. "oh, but it's quite, quite dark. however will you manage?" "we'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her. "the distance to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey." the duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked abruptly: "is westboro' to be down all winter? i didn't know it. i thought he was out of england or i should not have come here at all." "oh," bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere. i expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it. he's away just now at any rate, and i'm kicking my heels up there quite alone. i'm not to return--ever?" he ventured. "you may so fully trust me that--" and he saw that she hesitated and pursued, "i shall ride up to the little gate again, and if it is unlatched...." "oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't--it's against all my plans." somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate caution and pretended shyness, banshee picked her way to the road, through the woods which bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a deserted garden. "you see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in a way, fair to him--i feel it so at least. it gives me the sensation of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which presumably should be westboro's secret." "you mean to say,"--the duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?" bulstrode had come again faithfully, making the pilgrimage to the forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found the duchess if not waiting for him, distinctly there. during their delightful little talks--and they had been so--not once had the name of bulstrode's host been mentioned; and if the lady had a curiosity concerning her lord and once master, she did not display it to the visitor. "i mean to say," bulstrode replied in answer to her challenge which was fiery, "that i really don't want to play false to westboro', more false than i shall in the course of events be forced to be. of course, your secret--i need not say so--is entirely safe. but the duke comes back in a day or two, and rather than face him with this silence which you have imposed upon me i am going back to london before he returns." the sewing she had chosen to finger--a duchess, and an american one at that, is not expected to do more--lay at her feet. by her side was a basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow. the duchess of westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her guest. and now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its golden thimble, handled her sewing, bulstrode watched her interestedly and found great loveliness in her bending face. "i didn't think any of you knew how to sew," he mused aloud. "any of us!" she smiled. "do you, by that, mean american duchesses? or do you mean women who have left their husbands? or in just what class do you think of me, regarding your last remark?" she folded up her work and dropped her thimble in the nest of snow. bulstrode acknowledged that his conclusion, whatever it had been, was wrong. "when i married," the duchess said, "i was the best four-in-hand whip for a woman in my set. i don't think i am a keen needlewoman, really, and i know then i didn't recognize a needle by sight. when my little boys were born i sent to paris for everything they wore, and i can remember that i didn't even know for what the little clothes were intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette. i have learned to sew since i came here to the dials. i've been three months here, now, and i really must have proved a clever pupil, for i assure you that they tell me i have made some pretty things." as she spoke she held up the seam she ran, and bulstrode, who himself confessed to not knowing a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches. he exclaimed: "three months! you must have been terribly dull!" "no." "you are known," he said, "throughout the countryside--not that i've been making inquiries, but in spite of myself i have heard--as a stranger, presumably a frenchwoman, a widow who will probably buy the dials." "oh, i shall never buy the place," she assured him, and then abruptly: "had you been free to speak of me, what would you have told westboro'?" he waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which she did not mistake: "i should have asked him to come and see you run up that seam." "he would not have come." remembering very clearly how determined westboro's decision had been, he did not affirm to the lady his belief that westboro' would in reality have flown to her. at the door, later, she bade him good-bye and appeared to gather her courage together, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that she seemed only frances denby and to possess no more of title or distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him: "mr. bulstrode, please don't leave the castle." "oh, i couldn't sit opposite my friend at dinner, i couldn't meet his eyes now, my dear child." the duchess touched his arm. "it's sweet of you to call me so. you are really as young as i am, and certainly i feel an age beyond you. please stay." the pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of an animation and interest to her cold face. dressed in a dark and simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along by his side towards the gate. "of all the people in the world one would choose you, i think, to be the friend of..." she caught herself up. "i mean to say, can't you forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?" she put it beautifully. "i, of course, will give up seeing you," she renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are there." as he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point blank: "promise me to stop on." "i at least won't go without letting you know of it." "without my permission?" "i won't say that." "but i'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're _such_ a help." she was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was. was he aiding her to detective poor westboro'? was he adding an air of protection to some feminine treachery? "oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort. but i must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as westboro' should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral than the dials had proved to be. but westboro' showed no intention of coming immediately home. instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact that he had made poor bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm hold on jimmy. westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at a _bureau de poste_ in paris: "don't, for god's sake, go off, old man. keep up your end." (his end!) "stop on at westboro'--use the place as if it were all put up for your amusement. just live there so i may feel it's alive. let me find a human being at home when i turn up. i'll wire in a day or so." "so he is in paris, then." bulstrode had supposed so, and did not doubt that the duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly as well to see madame de bassevigne. poor fellow, if he were searching for the duchess! well, bulstrode would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but to mind other people's business. he put it so to himself. indeed he could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that something could keep him from minding his own. an undefined discretion kept him from going to the moated grange, as to himself he styled the retreat the duchess had made of the dials. and, in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, jimmy found the time at westboro' to drag lamentably. his own affairs, which he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose questions could not be solved by return mail. he became over his own thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "better have a look at things here yourself. can't possibly stop on longer than...." and he set a day. "if westboro', poor devil, has to look forward to a life of this unaccompanied grandeur," he pitied him. the lines and files of soft-footed, impersonal servants, the perfect stilted attention, the silence, and the inhumanness of a man's lonely life, became intolerable to jimmy bulstrode. even though frances, duchess of westboro', had truly said that the castle was a delightful home, bulstrode began to wonder what that word comprised or meant: certainly nothing like his occupation of another man's house or like any life that is lived alone. at the end of the week that the american spent at westboro' he had condensed the castle, as he said to himself, as far as possible, to the proportions of a harlem flat, and he lived in it. in the almost small breakfast room whose windows gave on the terrace, and where all the december sun that was visible came to find him, he took his meals; each of them but dinner, which was determinedly and imperially served by five men in one of the dining-rooms, and at which function, as he expressed it, he shut his eyes and just ate blindly through. he lived out of doors all day, took his tea in his dressing-room, and read and smoked until the august dinner hour called him down to dress and dine alone. for a week he lived "without sight of a human being," so he said, for the domestics were only machines. and, towards the end of the week, he would have gone to see any one: an enemy would have been too easy, and the only person within range was, of course, the duchess of westboro'. westboro' had made a confidant of bulstrode, and the woman had not. bulstrode liked it in her. to be sure, the cases were quite different: there was no reason why the man deserted and bruised in his pride and in his heart, should not have talked to his old friend. westboro' accused himself of weakness. "i've blabbed like a woman," he acknowledged ruefully. the duchess had not spoken nor had she, on the other hand, with the fine courage of the true woman, been in any eager haste to discover what her husband had said of her, nor had she asked if he had spoken at all. on the other hand, aided by an extreme patience and with still greater delicacy, she had waited, understanding that her guest, whose mettle and character she knew would not permit him to betray a trust, might, however naïvely, disclose what he knew without being conscious of it. but if bulstrode gave himself or his host away, the duchess made no sign that she had profited by indiscretions. the impersonality of their conversations was indeed a relief to bulstrode, and it made it possible for him to feel himself less a traitor at the duke's hearth. but she talked very sweetly, too, of her children. she had the second picture to the duke's of the little boys, a picture like the one bulstrode had seen at the castle, and showed it to him as the father had done. "westboro' has the companion to this," he had not minded telling her as they sat together in the small room he had grown to know as well as the larger rooms of the castle. and at the end of a few moments bulstrode quite blurted out: "why, in heaven's name do you women make men suffer so?" the duchess, who had been working, dropped her bit of muslin and looked, with her cherry lips parted and her great serious eyes, for all the world like a lady in a gift book. her face was eighteenth century and child-like. bulstrode nodded. "oh, yes, you've got so easily the upper hand, the very least of you, you know, over the best of us. it's such an unfair supremacy. you've got such a clever knowledge of little things, such a sense of the scale of the feelings, and you certainly make the very most of your power over us all. can't you--" and his eyes, half serious and half reproachful, seemed, as he looked at her, to question all the womankind he knew--"can't you ever love us well enough just quite simply to make us happy?" the duchess had taken up her sewing again, and her eyes were upon it. bulstrode waited for a little, following her stitches through the muslin and the flash of her thimble in the light. "can't you?" he softly repeated. "isn't it, after all, a good sort of way of spending one's life, this making another happy?" "american women aren't taught so, you know," she said. "it isn't taught us that the end and aim of our existence is to make a man happy." her companion didn't seem at all surprised. "and so you see," she went on, "those of us that do learn that after all there may be something in what you say--those of us that learn, only find it out after a lot of hard experiences, and it is sometimes too late!" she seemed to think his direct question called for a distinct answer, for she admitted: "oh, yes, of course there are some of us who would give a great deal to try. and you see, moreover," she went on with her subject as she turned the corner of her square, "you put it well when you said 'love enough.' you see that's the whole thing, mr. bulstrode, to love enough. one can, of course, in that case, do nearly all there is to do, can't one?" "nearly all," he had smiled, and added: "_and a great deal more_." the household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed during the absence of the master of westboro', were unable, however, to give him very much comfort on his return. the duke's motor cut quickly up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the frosty air and let him into the park. the poor man had only a sense of wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it. huddled down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him further home. but the knowledge that the house had been lived in during his absence was not ungrateful. he sniffed the odor of a familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy of the place to its depths, jimmy bulstrode had sunned out of one of the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of the cheerful voice struck a chord in westboro' that shook him. "i've been like a fiend possessed," he said to jimmy, in the evening when they found themselves once more before the fire. "i've scarcely known what i've been doing, or why; but i know one thing, and that is that i'm the most wretched man alive." bulstrode nodded. "you _did_ go to paris, then!" "yes," said the duke, "and what i've found out there has driven me insane." although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery, bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made. "you may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the truth, you know." westboro' raised his hand. "come," he said, "no palliations; you can't smooth over the facts. frances is not in paris. she has not been in paris for several months." he paused. "in itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend. "paris is considered at times a place as well _not_ to be in." but bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative. "she has not been in paris since i saw her twelve months ago, and she has left no sign or trace of where she has gone. there is no address, no way that i can find her. not that a discovery is not of course ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if i should wish to write to her? what if i should need to see her? what if i should die?" "would you, in any of those cases, send for her?" "i don't know," the duke admitted. "but," jimmy asked him, "did you go to paris this time to see the duchess?" "since you ask me frankly," the duke admitted, "i don't think that i did." "at all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her, westboro'?" the duke was silent, then answered quietly: "i should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of something that i feared or suspected. i don't think i should ever seek to find out something she didn't want me to know." bulstrode, at the blindness of a man regarding his own intentions, smiled behind his cigar. "well?" he helped. "i went over to france," said the duke--"and i suppose you'll scarcely believe a man who you say is not a lover to be capable of such sentimentality--simply, if possible, to have a sight of my wife, to see her go out of the door, or to see her go in, to see her possibly get into a carriage; and how did i know that it would not be with another man?" "how did you find out that she had left?" "i asked for her at her hôtel." "the first question, then," jimmy smiled. "a fair one?" "oh, perfectly." "i was told that the duchess had left paris months before." "and then?" the other man's voice was placid as he spoke for the duke. "then you went to her bankers, her bakers and candlestick makers; in short, you asked all over the place, didn't you?" the duke swore gently. "well, what would you have a man do?" "why i would have him do that," nodded jimmy, "by all means. any man would have done so." in the half second of interval whilst the duke was obliged to swallow his friend's sarcasm, bulstrode had time to think: "here i am, once more in the heart of an intrigue. its fetters are all about me and i am wretchedly bound by honor not to do the simple, natural thing." then he asked boldly: "well, what do you think about it, westboro'?" "think?" westboro' repeated, "why, that she has deliberately escaped from me, put herself out of any possible reach; she doesn't want a reconciliation and she has gone away. she may have gone away alone and she may not, that i don't know, and i don't believe i want to know." "oh, you'll find her." it was with the most delightful security and contentment that his friend was able to tell the duke this. but the cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows. "gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'find her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by mistake at your club. of course she can be found. there are not many mysteries that search can't solve in these days. and duchesses don't drop off the face of the earth. i could no doubt have found her in twenty-four hours, but i didn't try to. i don't know that i want to find her. it isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and complete." "then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?" "jove!" the duke turned on him. "you don't know what it is to love a woman! you've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you? can't you?" he met the american's handsome eyes. a flush rose under bulstrode's cheek. westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "i beg your pardon, dear old chap." "oh, that's all right, old chap," bulstrode assured cheerfully. "my dear duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for any one to ignore the inevitable! it's such a prodigal throwing out of the window of riches!" bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its broken stairs of crumbling stone before her. "why, my dear lady, if i kept a diary of daily events i couldn't write down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and westboro' up there, and i a comic go-between, in the secret of both and the confidence of one." "oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?" "of your husband, yes," bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal. she drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and he followed by her side. "i don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear. i shouldn't mind at all if i thought that the confidence were a good one." her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice when the duchess spoke of the duke that there was a tremor under her words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control. "confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les absents ont toujours tort_." "oh, you don't mean...?" jimmy emphasized. "it was a confidence, wasn't it?" "a real one," she was assured. "well then, you'll keep it, of course." she drew the stole up round her long fair neck; her delicate head came out of the soft fur like a flower. but before she could follow up her words bulstrode said: "you, of course, then know how he loves you." he felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent. "you and i put it quite clearly, mr. bulstrode, the other day." her voice was serene again. "if only one cares enough--that's the necessary thing for every question." "well?" she half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this answer said for her: "that is indeed the question, and i haven't solved it." they stopped at the terraced walk. the low stones, dark and black, were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss. on the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon. the duchess put her hand on the warmed stones. "it's a heavenly day," she said, "i don't believe that the riviera is warmer. i never have seen such an english december." her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where the sun fell on the little panes. the duchess remained looking up a few seconds, then she came back to her guest. "i started, you know, to tell you something," bulstrode smiled at her. "i once served on a jury in the west, and although the case was a miserably sad one in every way, i suppose, i couldn't take it as seriously as i should have done, for from the first the whole thing seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been avoided." "i know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong. not from the first." he capitulated. "well, grant it so if you like, only agree with me when i say from my own--" he put his hand down on the dial's edge. "from this lovely noon-time on, every hour you waste is clear loss. the duke loves you as women are rarely loved, and after all," he said with something like passion in his agreeable voice "what _do_ you all expect? love doesn't hang on every tree for a woman to pluck at will, and you have the great luck, my dear duchess, to be loved by your own husband. why don't you go to him?" "go to him?" she echoed. he curtly replied: "why not?" "my dear friend!" "why, didn't you forbid him to go to you?" "ah," she nodded, "the confidence, it was intimate indeed. but since you have got it, won't you agree that any man, if he loved a woman, would disobey her?" "westboro' would not." the duchess said coldly: "pride is not love." "you didn't mean him, then, to keep his vow?" "yes," she slowly thought out, "i did indeed, with all my heart." "and now?" she turned towards the house again, and as she walked back, said: "i don't quite know." and bulstrode asked her: "that is why you are here, to find out?" "partly." her companion's face grew stern. the duchess did not see it for her eyes had again swept the upper window. at her side bulstrode went on: "you have taken ten years to discover that you did not love your husband. you have taken one year to begin to wonder, to doubt, to suspect, to half think that you do; it's an unstable state of heart, duchess, terribly unstable." the woman stopped short at his side, and now as she lifted up her eyes and saw him, was a little startled if not frightened at his expression. "unstable," she repeated, with a world of scorn in her voice. "how can you use that word to me, knowing the facts of the case?" "oh, a man," said bulstrode rather impatiently, "is a worthless, wretched piece of mechanism altogether. i grant you that--utterly unworthy the love and confidence of any good woman. he is capable of all the vagaries and infidelities possible. we'll judge him so. but," he continued, "these wandering, vagrant derelicts have been known to tie fast, to find port, to drop anchor. they have even brought great riches and important treasure into harbor, fetched a world of good luck home. there's only one thing in the universe that can keep a man, duchess, only one." "well?" she encouraged him. "a woman's heart," he said deeply, "a woman's true tenderness; and it needs all that heart, all its love, all its patience and sacrifice to keep that man--all and forever." he saw her bosom heave; she had thrown her fur off, as if its warmth stifled her. vivid color had come into her face. her pallor for the time was destroyed, and as she flashed a rebellious look at him, a look of revolt and selfhood, he seemed to see again the american girl--wilful, egotistical, spoiled--an imperious creature whose caprices had been opposed to the duke's anglo-saxon temperament and national egoism. at this moment, the window the duchess looked towards opened part way: it was under the eaves and there must have been a dovecote near, for there came the soft sound of cooing like the call of a young bird. possibly the gentle note reached the woman's hearing as well, for her face transcendently softened. "i think," she said with evident effort to speak in a commonplace tone, "it would be quite futile to urge cecil to come." "oh, i shan't advise him so." bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that he went on to say: "i would not, in justice to him, in justice to the great love i have been permitted to see, advise him to come." the duchess, during the months of analysis, suffering and experience, had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend. she naïvely asked: "why would you not advise him so?" bulstrode said, still continuing his pleasant sententiousness, "the woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does not know her own mind. he must, on the contrary, find one who has no mind or will or life but his." as he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before. her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her soft gown, was full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered. "westboro'," he said a little confused, "must come back to a woman, duchess, to a woman--to a consoler. i wish i could express myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife." the ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved. she put out her hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished him to bid her good-by and to leave her alone. he heard what she struggled to say: "he must not come, he must not come." "no," he accepted sadly for his friend, "no, he must not come." bulstrode had chosen those times for going to the dials when his host was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened that more than once the duke missed him at just the wrong moment, and more than once had been given the direction in which bulstrode's footsteps had turned. one morning, during a talk with his agent, westboro'--the map of the district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property known as the dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen. it seemed that it had been let for some months to a foreigner, a widow, who lived there, and alone. westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks. it was a little square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested him before. how long did the lease run on? did the agent know? he believed for another year. the duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a view to purchase. and as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to his employer: "the present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, i believe, even been to the abbey. an old gardener who has been kept on says the servants are all foreign." the duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have passed entirely from his mind had it not been for his next meeting with jimmy bulstrode. as much to shake off the impression his last talk with the duchess had left on his mind, as to prolong his exercise, jimmy had gone down out of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields with their rimy furrows and their barren floors. as he made his way towards the bottom hedge, looking for a stile he knew would be there a little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the road, he met westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon the stile. the presence of the duke where bulstrode knew he was least thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune, made jimmy stop short, troubled, and, not for a moment thinking that the fact of his being there _himself_ was singular, he made his way determinedly through the stile. as he greeted his friend, his own demeanor was decidedly one which said: "don't go on in that direction, follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_." and he led his friend rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his arm in westboro's, forced him along with him into the road. "i ran down here to look over these meadows," said westboro.' "you seem yourself, in a way, to be pacing the land off!" "oh, i _love_ cross-country walking," said bulstrode warmly. "you must," smiled the duke, "to have cut off into those barren fields. were you lost?" westboro' stopped and looked back. "you must have come directly down through the dials." "_the dials_?" the american helplessly repeated. "do you mean the old house and garden?" bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares. as the two men sat in the motor which waited for the duke down the road, westboro' fixed his glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend. bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed. "i'm thinking something of buying the dials," westboro', after a moment, said against the wind. poor jimmy. if the house had not sufficiently up till now materialized out of his fancy as a possession, it declared itself at once, without doubt, as something he must look after. it was only a little bit of england, luckily---- "well," he exclaimed, "to be frank, old man, i've, too, been thinking i should like to buy that property. you could surely spare me this little corner of glousceshire." "spare it!" cried westboro', "my dear chap, fancy how ripping to have you a landlord here! to catch and hold you so! we'll go over the whole place together. my agent shall put the matter through for you." "good god, no!" said bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any such a deal. the place would go up like a rocket in price. if you really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most you can do. but for god's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow." behind his long moustaches the duke covered a smile, but he conciliated his agitated friend. "i'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear bulstrode." "thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief. "there," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite perfect. i shall be a landowner in england. at all events, it's lucky the property is sympathetic. i'm glad i didn't get balled up in this affair in, let us say, _new jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase the hackensack meadows. "did the old house look deserted?" asked the duke wickedly. "oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman. "really!" wondered westboro'. "why, they tell me that it is let to a donna incognita--a foreign lady." bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. and the duke, in whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth, and then sat speechless. the suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he credited his suspicions or not. "good heavens! _jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple country village!" he looked at the face of the man by his side, but jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and showed no intention of meeting the duke's eyes. if it were not a vulgar intrigue, what could it be? how difficult it grew to connect such a _liason_ with his friend. but as he thought on, the duke began to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! why should he suppose jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? more scrupulous, more sinless than other men--than himself? he couldn't answer his own question, but he did so think of bulstrode, and since his late house party had believed that jimmy cared for mrs. falconer. the lady at the dials was certainly not she. bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in the mind of the duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, rather consolingly human. in their mutual intercourse the duke had felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed. along by bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be. and although jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes. by the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had stopped at one of the side doors of the castle. "there is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the duke decided. it's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all. perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's jimmy's own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps he's going to marry. why not? ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an affectionate hand on the american's shoulder. "oh, i expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your sleeve! you're going to be married and fetch your bride to the dials." poor bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_married_!" with a world of scorn in his tone. "my poor westboro,' after what i've lately seen and heard here--forgive me if i say that for the time at least i'm not too sharply tempted." "since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live here forever, you'll welcome me when i come back from london. i'm coming back for christmas, but if i don't run in before you'll understand, won't you, that it is because i simply haven't dared. westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place." the duchess interrupted him. "oh, in that case, i shall, of course, be obliged to move away." and to her great surprise bulstrode quickly agreed with her. "i should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you originally came." she looked at him rather quizzically. "you mean to say then that you don't really know?" "oh,"--he was truthful--"i have rather an idea, and i hope a more or less true one." but the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. he went on to say: "your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. as far as your own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the divorce as soon as possible." "oh, mr. bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me." he nodded sagely. "on the contrary, i am translating you from sight, my dear duchess. and you are decidedly in your right regarding the duke." she was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his face. and as bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went on to make out her case for her. "he has quite spoiled your life. he has been a brute, and not in the least worth your----" but the duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the hard-wood floor. she raised a scarlet face to him. "it's a _piége_," she murmured, "an _autodafé_." "no," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. westboro' has told me everything. i must think that he has done so. the man of me naturally condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. but the justice and right, my dear duchess, are all on your side." "oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such words." bulstrode said cooly: "but westboro' has been a criminal!" "if he were," emphasized the duchess, "didn't i forgive him?" "of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. and he is all the more, therefore, dreadfully to be blamed." she said passionately: "what do you mean, mr. bulstrode? how--why do you speak to me like this?" her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind. "i think he is dreadfully to be blamed." "but why should you tell it to me?" "why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest tribute of affection and sympathy--"i've known you for years, i'm fond of you, you've been horribly wronged, and i'm going to see that things are made right for you. i've been very blind. i have longed for a reconciliation, i admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is, loves you still. but i see what a sentimental ass i've been, and how right you are." she put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she had grown very pale indeed. "what," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, mr. bulstrode? i have not told them to you." "but i've been able to guess them," he replied. "you've dared to, then?" she flashed. "oh, don't blame me," he returned. "seeing you as i have all the while, i've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to your living in this isolation. you've wanted, not unnaturally and very cleverly, i acknowledge, to see what's been going on at westboro', what the duke's been up to." her voice was suffocated as she said: "oh, stop, please! whatever has come to you, mr. bulstrode, i don't know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do." seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "my dear child, you're so right in everything you've done, and of course i shall stand by you." she made a dismissing gesture. "oh, i don't need you, i don't want you." he smiled benignly on her. "but i'm here, and i'm going to see you through." "see me through what?" "through your divorce," he said practically. "but you're westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with just a little hesitation in his voice: "oh, not so much as yours. but i'm the friend of both of you in this. it's the best thing all round." the gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he meant what he said. "you talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged. "oh, i've been far too emotional and unpractical. i'm going henceforth to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point." she put out her hand beseechingly. "oh, leave that for the rest of us. it quite spoils you." "i don't pretend to think--" he made his gaze small as he looked past her in an attitude of reflection. "oh, i don't claim that, it's an ideal way of looking at things. but there is not much idealism in the modern divorce, is there?" the duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near him. "are you quite serious?" she asked. "but i know that you are not. let me at least think so. your words shock me horribly"--and she looked piteously at him. "i have felt you to be such a gentle person, and yours is such an understanding atmosphere." bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped himself now to sugar. "oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "one can't live on air, you know. and i have been of the most colorless kind." "well, you've changed terribly," she accused him. "i've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "and the earth's after all where we belong, duchess. stand firm, keep to your own part of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you off your little foothold." "oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion. the gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked at the lady. "you should have married an american husband," he said to her, "a man who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not. a duchess isn't far enough up. an american empress is higher." the lady listening to him, shuddered a little. "as it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop, whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther on, to become more delightful. here you are progressed and civilized, after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child, here you are all alone." she cried out, "oh, mr. bulstrode," with a little gasp. "oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair! you're terribly wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed." but here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp. she shook the arm a little. "don't go on," she said deeply. "i tell you not to go on." after a few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the eaves, the duchess said: "listen to me. i haven't talked at all to you, let me say something now." her companion reflected to himself: "well, at all events, she's not going to malign the duke; that's a foregone conclusion." the duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him. "do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a feminine one? men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new and peculiar brand, i begin to believe. at any rate, when i married, i was an egoist, and i've stayed on being one until a very little time ago. i suppose i must in a way have more or less ornamented my position, as the papers say. i did have two children as well, and in that way fulfilled my duty as a westboro'. but really and truly, i have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother. i was as silly and vain as could be, and i never for a moment valued my husband. i wasn't indifferent to my children, but i was absorbed by my worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, i was on a dahabeah on the nile, and i don't think that cecil ever forgave us for being so far away." she remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when she lifted her face bulstrode saw that she had wept. "that," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when i came home to those empty rooms." he said soothingly, "there, there, my child." "oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak. i shall probably never feel like doing so again. but at that time when i turned to find my husband, i discovered that i had no power over him, and i realized that for years i had not possessed his love. i suppose you'll tell me that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this. perhaps it is. at any rate, just because i did so clearly, i forgave him when he came to me last year, at cannes." "you were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as i said before, westboro' did not deserve you." she did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank: "what then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?" he was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "you really feel that you must ask me, duchess?" "tell me, at all events." "you are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?" after a little pause, she lingeringly said: "yes, quite sure. you must know that he will not be the first to break the ice now." then she pushed: "you would advise my filing my papers for divorce?" held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes with his own, asking her gently: "is there nothing that speaks for westboro' more distinctly than anything i can say? and more appealingly than anything which you in all your pride feel?" the duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant. when some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence in london and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned. "come," she said, "at least to see whether i am here or whether i have pitched my tent and gone away." as bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "i understand there are a lot of people at the castle for christmas, and among them will be mrs. falconer? isn't it so? is she really so very lovely?" "it's a different type of loveliness from yours," bulstrode returned. and the duchess supposed: "a happier type?" "well, she's rather happy i think, take it all together," jimmy said. "has she children?" "none." "is she in love with her husband?" and he was so long searching for a reply that the duchess laughed quietly. "poor man," she said, "don't bother. but then since she's so happy, she must be in love with somebody else's husband." but he put her right immediately. "i don't think she in the least is. and why," he went on, "since happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind, might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?" the duchess looked at her guest rather absently. she was thinking of the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose presence at westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second time. "oh," she answered rather absently, giving jimmy her hand, "she wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side." when the duke had casually asked his guest's plans for christmas week, bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he could not possibly be one of a second house party. "do you, then," westboro' had asked, "_hate_ the holidays?" the genial bulstrode had assured him to the contrary. "nor do i," continued the duke, "even though i'm a miserable man on the verge of a divorce. i expect there's too long a line of jolly christmases back of the westboro's for me to mope through the season. but i don't want to have christmas coming to an empty house, my dear fellow"--he put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place but yourself and myself. we must have a christmas party. the tenants will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but i'm going to ask a lot of people down and make the list out now." and bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really stop on--that he must go away. "there are," he wound up his arguments, "a thousand reasons why i should go." but westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together bring "every reason" down to the country. "and," continued his grace, "we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible. for i shall ask the ravensworths of surrey and their children, there are eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys. we'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man." jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray of light in it as he planned for his celebration. "but you arrange to come back for christmas eve. there _must_ be some one in charge--i mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is too much for me, why i'll bolt and you'll have to stand by." he was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper. bulstrode felt the plan to be rather _triste_ and lifeless, and he knew that he could not and would not keep the duchess' secret much longer, let its revelation cost him what it would. "westboro'," he said, "i shall have to be getting off to-morrow. you know i would stand by you if i could possibly see my way clear." "i know perfectly well," the duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore i've been, and how sick of me you must be." he wrote on: "i shall ask mrs. falconer (her husband is in the states); she is quite alone in town at lady sorgham's." as he quoted this last name the duke folded his list up. he nodded affectionately at jimmy. "you'll arrange perhaps to come down with mrs. falconer on the friday train?" and bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "oh, we'll fetch the toys and things for the tree," he offered. "ripping!" his grace nodded. jimmy, on his way at last to london, stopped once more at the dials, and was hurrying across the forest when the duchess herself appeared to him at the big dial. she wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil. she was not in house or garden trim. the urban air of her toilet was a surprise to bulstrode, and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected, something great, something decisive. "it's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of passing your time, mr. bulstrode," she said, "and i wanted so much to see you again." "again?" "of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times. but i mean i wanted to see you _here_." bulstrode did not want her to tell him a piece of final news. he did not care to learn of an arbitrary departure, and he said, laughing: "then you don't like my property? any repairs you...?" "oh, i adore the dials," she said gravely, "and i can't think why they ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after i'm gone." she smiled. ".... or with whom." before he could speak she added: "where is my husband to-day?" "i left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," bulstrode replied. "looking," he went on, "all about for something or other. i expect he himself didn't quite know what. for something to cheer up the empty rooms." "oh, don't," she murmured. but he seemed pleased with the picture he drew. "i doubt if westboro' stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting." "but he has a house full of people....?" "no one has come, or is coming, after all." "you don't mean to say that they've all refused!" "yes," jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well." the duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "oh, but you don't for a moment think----" "that it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled. "well, that would be a new phase. no, i think on the other hand they would revel, and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that they were really asked too late. christmas week, you know-- "and, of course, then, mrs. falconer," the duchess's face brightened. "she----" "oh, _she_!" bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible. she's sure to be along in good season." "oh!" accepted the duchess, "and with whom does she come?" bulstrode waited. "well, of course, the poor thing expects to find more or less some one to help her bear up her end. and i can't say how she will take the fact of only us two." the duchess interrupted cheerfully: "why, she, of course, will go directly back! you don't think for a second that she would stop on alone like that?" "alone?" bulstrode gave her with a little malice. "but she'll have westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the rector or curate or corral a neighbor." but the duchess shook her head as if she understood. "oh, no, not at this time." bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "christmas time? you see, i know the visiting lady pretty well, and i believe she'll feel me to be more or less of a standby, and i know her spirit and her human kindness. i am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off like a hare; to think that westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be no tree after all, why, i'm tempted, by jove, to think----" the duchess helped him: "that she'll make a charity of it." "yes, if you like," he laughed. "or be a sport," he preferred to put it. "stay on, stand by. it will be perfectly ripping of her, you know." but the duchess had no sympathy for the other woman. her eyes fixed themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the distance she said abruptly: "why, that might be cecil, mightn't it? does he shoot birds on your premises?" bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave the dials or had intended going up to see her husband. "forgive me," he said, "if i seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but i must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off place, i have an engagement." impulsively putting out her hand the duchess exclaimed: "i can't ever, ever thank you." "oh, after your divorce----" but she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "you want me to think then that you do not believe...." "believe!" she ardently repeated, "oh, i don't know what i believe or think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "it's i who am as unstable as the sea, i who am the derelict." he contradicted her gently: "my dear, you're only trying to solve alone a problem which it takes two to answer. when you see westboro' you will know." she turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her display. "why don't you marry mrs. falconer?" he didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner. "i thought you didn't believe in divorces?" "oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!" he laughed. "no one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?" with great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "oh, yes, you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend. if anything good comes to me now, i shall in great measure owe it to you." he protested: "you owe me nothing, nothing." there were tears in her eyes as she said: "but i want to, i like to, and i do. i don't know," she went on, "that i might not have been reconciled ultimately to my husband, but i feel quite sure it would only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away again. did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?" "yes, at methodist meetings." she said gravely: "that's not what i mean. but whatever _has_ happened it's only been since you told me things." her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden, that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find words to say good-by to her. she went on to say, in a tone so low that he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "you told me you could not advise my husband to come to me." ah, had he! it was hard to remember that. _had_ he said so? "i think," she whispered, "you need not keep him away now, if he should want to come." as her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than a great duchess, "you may trust me. i _want_ him to come-- there, i've said it. i _hope_ he'll come. if he doesn't-- "why, then, you'll go away," he finished. "you can't bear it." the duchess shook her head. "i'll go to him, on the contrary." "you were going?" "yes, when you came." he cried out: "oh, i'm off then, i'm off for london, and i shan't be back for the christmas holidays. you may count on me." the duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman, intangible, and impossible to seize. "no, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or to-morrow. it isn't after all the moment, and i want to prove to you that i'm not jealous. i've decided to wait until that lovely woman has gone away." the waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and hereditary title, only added to the duke's melancholy. he had planned the christmas house party too late as it proved, and refusals, one after another, came in during the week. the poor gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when charity would have been sweet. and it was with really tragic melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming: "and they all with one consent began to make excuse." he quite waited for a line from mrs. falconer, which would tell him that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he believed to be jimmy's complications at the dials caused him half to regard the matter with a pity for her. "if jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!" the satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle throughout with their fragrance. setting and decoration suggested a feast, and the duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that the little gates were twisted with green. the day was dampish and the duke, unable to bear the silence of the house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off his unrest. the afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell over the bare nakedness of the land. the little low clumps of neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his hands in his pockets, his grace covered many miles before he at length stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings. coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard. his dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel, skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's indifference. the holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. as the forest edges closed about him and the duke with still no idea of where he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to avoid. there was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and in the season, that penetrated even westboro's melancholy, and every now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. it was winter, however, and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a december quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the festivities of the time. he heard the bird who was persistent and sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had come out for, he paused. his dogs were gone, the beggars! he called them to no purpose, whistled and waited. they were a new brace and young. god knew where they had cut away to. before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood. under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves. there beeches, red as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the mould. westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and green. the sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow fell along the noon. the duke stooped down and through the glass read the inscription: _utere dum licet_. "i'm a trespasser," he thought. "this is bulstrode's property." through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at the end of it a gate. "what the deuce could jimmy have so wanted this old place for? what was he hiding here?" he turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the place as he had made an entrance. he saw his dogs in front of him and called them. before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of his own park. he had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at the enchanting place. as he stood thus, in jimmy's property, he at first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid, peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before. he leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial. he set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it. there was a cordial meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some fifteen minutes, the duke never stirred. finally, and curiously enough it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house. whether or not the duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself. a dense blindness took his senses away from him. he put his hands out to steady himself in vain, and staggered. his dogs were at his feet, he fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken tree went down. in his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot. the scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood. he half picked himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh, he fell back like a dog on his haunches. through his confusion he still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged himself towards it. he pulled along over the leaves and russet paths of ground. his bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road. there was a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell across its threshold. his head lay on his arm, the string of his broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist. the duke proved to be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the grass when elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years before the present duke. after bulstrode had left her, the duchess of westboro' hurried back to the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that was not hers. for the first time since her voluntary exile, since her occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey, dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a deserted nest. it had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it, where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands, where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love. on this christmas eve, the dials was the loneliest corner of england. the scarcely occupied house suggested to the duchess the thought of a stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why st. nicholas should pass. but it was only the very edge of her thoughts that touched anything so fantastic as this picture. the duchess was serious and lonely. with a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made her bedroom. under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place in. "heavens!" thought the duchess, half aloud. "how dreadfully in love jimmy bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" and then she went on to say: "how dreadfully i am myself in love, and no one is hurrying to _me_!" she walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at the cloister effect. she found it too remote, too virgin, and no room for a wife. "i promised," she mused, "to wait until mrs. falconer has gone. i shall break my promise. oh, i can't really wait at all! if things are going to be as bad as this, i want to leave england, i want at least to know. and jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on christmas eve!" the duchess threw open the window to its widest. down in the garden on the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. she could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_utere dum licet_. as she leaned out above her garden, under her window the snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. there were a few winter roses blooming, and the english garden had the beauty of summer in winter time. the duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. it was a rifle shot, and died instantly on the still air. shots were not uncommon in this season, but here in the dials woods they were entirely out of character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. there was no shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more serious. the duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound followed. she nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door into the garden. at the sight of her, down by the other end of the wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady. "mellon," said she, "have you any violets?" the duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden. "a mort, my lady." "pick them all, mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too, every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage." the old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. holding his hand behind his ear, he nodded. "i shall send them," the duchess thought, "up to jimmy bulstrode. i think he will understand, and i will ask him at the same time to take his friend off somewhere in a motor that i may go unobserved to the castle." she said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions, then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she remembered the shot. "did you hear a shot, mellon? they should not be shooting about here, you know." but the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask him to go through the woods for her, the duchess walked toward the gate and in the direction of the brick path. as she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart; the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple blooms at her feet. then the hands that had gone to her heart extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's name. the duke of westboro' had managed to pick himself up. he was a strong man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the mollycoddle about the last duke of the line. the sound of voices had reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale, clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and his balance not all he could wish. before him was a little brick house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself, lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were extended towards him. "cecil!" she cried. "oh, my god! cecil, what has happened to you?" before westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support, and it felt warm and wonderful. "don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. i'm nasty and bloody. it's all right; i'm only a bit scratched, really. a lot of beastly shot has gone off into my shoulder. just call some one to help me, will you?" "cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you can perfectly well get along with only me. come, come!" the duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept him manfully to his feet. with his left hand he very firmly pushed the duchess a little away from him. "come?" he repeated. "come where?" "home," said the duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up. "oh, lean on me! you'll fall, you'll fall! mellon!" she cried. "o mellon!" but the duke put up his hand. "i'm all right," he said. "don't call. what house is that? what home do you mean?" "mine," said the duchess, "my house--that is, i mean to say, mr. bulstrode's." the duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek. "damn bulstrode!" he breathed. "what the devil does he do here? i saw you together--i saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and i fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. if i ever get back to where bulstrode is----" "cecil!" cried the duchess. she again wound her arms around him, and it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the columns of the gate were back of him, for westboro' was swaying like a child that has just learned to walk. "he is fainting!" she cried. "mellon, mellon!" the old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. they hit the big dial with a ring. the duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "i beg your pardon," he said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its formality--"i beg your pardon, but i am _not_ going to bulstrode's house, you know." "_cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are! bulstrode's house! why, it's mine! oh, don't break my heart. he's only bought it, you know, that's all." "break her heart!" it was a new voice that spoke to the duke of westboro'. he had never heard it in all his life. it was warm and struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover. "what was bulstrode doing here?" he persisted. "going to mrs. falconer," breathed the duchess. the duke moved a step forwards: "what are you doing here?" "going to you, cecil--i have _been_ going to you all day. i think i have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the riviera; at any rate, i was on my way to the castle as you came." the duke halted again on his crawling way. mellon, who had really reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried, but ceased to flow. "lean hard on me, your grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word, he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble visitor was. with fine disregard for his help or existence, the duke said crossly: "send this damned gardener away." "oh, cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him." they had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial, round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of the afternoon sun touched its edges. westboro' lurched towards the wall. "send this man away," he commanded. "he is deaf, cecil, as the stones." but at her husband's face she motioned to mellon: "stand away a bit. his grace wants to rest on the wall. i'll call you." with his wife's arms about him, westboro' leaned on the garden wall, his ashen face lifted to her. "i've only one arm," he said. he put it around her and he drew her down as close to him as he could. he felt her face warm against his, wet against his with tears. as the duke, who, bulstrode said, was no lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud. "you _were_ coming to me?" he breathed. "do you forgive me? ... then," said westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "i'm cured. i love you--i love you." the woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. after a few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. mellon and the maids were there, and as the duchess passed in, leading her husband, she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at once for bulstrode at the castle. westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he assured her, "i'll be all right in an hour. i need no one but you; send them all away, all away." he had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been indifferent to her disobedience. but now she did what he bade her, and led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm; led him to the lounge, where he sank down. here, by his side, she gave him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to come; and westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the king's wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of queen elizabeth. the duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and knew that he was hers. and he, more wild with love for her than suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him and that she was his. the house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and the dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately "filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it, filled itself with roses. so, an hour later, it seemed to bulstrode, when he came and found it housing the lovers. the eighth adventure viii in which he comes into his own england, the heart of the countryside, freshened by december and drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives to shine, the english country in december is one thing, london quite another. jimmy wandered across from paddington to his destination, part of the time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog. he fetched up before no. ----, portman square, at mid-day, and rang the door bell of lady sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours. she was at home. an insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten years, meant to him still. in the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a pen in her hand, he found mrs. falconer. he sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were not at his tongue's end. the fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there could be no doubt. the inmates of lady sorgham's thoroughly english and thoroughly comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. but no sooner had they greeted--bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate, than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. bulstrode felt it and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an occasion in america when they had both of them missed a train for some out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. the flies and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled mary falconer, smiling up at him from her hard bench, had said: "jimmy, let's _build_ here!" "no one, jimmy, is old"--mrs. falconer had once said to him on an occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their conversation. noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her hair, bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a line she did not want him to see. "no one is old, jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future towards which he looks! it's only those people whose doors are all shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want to go--only those people are old!" and as for bulstrode, if mrs. falconer's idea were right, he was a very young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led rapidly away. scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again. every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and all followed towards a future whose existence bulstrode never doubted. but there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to endure the _étape_ that lay between self and life. such a little tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he dreamed of sharing with mrs. falconer. he did not, with any degree of anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took existence in his mind. but he knew that he waited for his own. it was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the old property known as the dials. the gray house down in glousceshire in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces, the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own. he wanted very much to tell mrs. falconer all about the lovely english country-seat. in the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung. the odor that stamps england hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a bouquet at mrs. falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the westboro' greeneries. "do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's. if he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long visit he had been making to the duke of westboro' in glousceshire, he did tell his friend all about the dials and dwelt on the fascination that the old place possessed. the dials was, in point of fact, very agreeably described to mrs. falconer, who looked it out on the map of glousceshire, and bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property. "it's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a turner. you're a great artist along your lines, jimmy. don't have it rebuilt by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened by some inebriated adam out of charity. leave it beautifully alone." "oh, i will," he assured her. "it shall tumble away and crush away in peace. you shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really will come down for christmas? you see, poor old fellow, westboro's house is rather empty." "yes," nodded mrs. falconer. "you see, every one else has gone back on him." "poor dear," sympathized the lady. "of course we'll go down." no matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. there was the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in mary falconer. her father had been an irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken generations to perfect. these distinctions her clever father bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her curling hair. bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of wine, they were left alone. bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame. tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et loup_ at length stole up portman square alongside the fog and found bulstrode still staying on.... later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had lighted day--when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to their destinations, a hansom drew up before no. ----, portman square. it was at the hour soft-footed london had ceased to roll its rubber tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by unheard. but a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed wheeled by no. ----, portman square, and stopped directly under the sorghams' window and a man began to sing: "i'll sing thee songs of araby and tales of old cashmere." the creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless, certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable gift and he evidently loved his trade. the silence--wherein all london appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had swung and swung until even bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room--was broken into by the song. and as bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands. the small coffee table had been taken away. mrs. falconer was in a low chair leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap. the distance between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture. the voice of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet. he sang his ballad well. "i'll sing thee songs of araby and tales of old cashmere." mrs. falconer's guest rose. "you'll come down for christmas," he said, "and i'll meet you as we have arranged, to-morrow." "jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock." "i must, however, go." "nonsense. where will you pass the next hour and a half? there's not a cat in town." "nevertheless, i promised a man to meet him at the...." "_jimmy_!" he had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks. "how you hurry from me," she said softly. "oh, i'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because i want to get hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why he isn't on the operatic stage. he's got a jolly voice. good night, good night." he was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew well, adored and hated! during these last years she had done her cruel best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down. the curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat hurried after the street people. the woman's face was tender as she watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane. bulstrode did not go back that night to westboro'. he wired out that mrs. falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from penhaven abbey, as the motor did the next day. as he speeded towards penhaven bulstrode leaned towards the man who drove him. "stop first at the inn, will you, bowles? i'll order tea there, and then drive on to the station at the hants. it's the three o'clock from london we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time." the abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen lovely miles away to the south of them. and bulstrode, who was at length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner. he saw the mist fly by him as his carriage cut out its way rapidly through glousceshire. the air was not too cold in spite of the dampness, for the vapor rose high, and above and below it the atmosphere was clear. mrs. falconer herself had chosen penhaven as a place possible to drive over to as far as bulstrode was concerned, and far enough away to stop over in, for tea. bulstrode carried in his pocket the note of it, she had written out for him. it bore the arrivals of trains, the address of the inn; she had herself written this, recurring to a pretty fallacy she liked to indulge in that jimmy forgot trains, missed them, and forgot rendezvous, and that he never really knew. well, at all events, he was not likely to miss meeting this one. he had thought about nothing else since he left her in london and prepared for her as he was always preparing for her as one makes ready for the dearest guest at a feast. the fact that not only had she divinely consented to the penhaven scheme, but that she had herself arranged the whole thing, made the romance of the idea first appeal to herself and then readily to bulstrode; the fact that she had been the creator of the little excursion that gave them to each other for several hours before what the castle had to offer them of surprise or dulness--did not in any measure rob the occasion of the charm of the _imprévue_ for the lady herself. nor did she in the least feel that it was any the less his because it was so essentially her own plan. it proved either too cold or too late to see the cathedral, to see anything more than the close which, side by side, they had wandered through together a few moments before tea. penhaven's distinguished gloom was not disturbed, and in their subterranean vaults lying all along their stones, the dukes and the abbés and the duchesses remained unlit in their stern crypts by the verger's candle on this christmas eve. at the little vulgar inn (in a stuffy sitting-room a fire had spluttered for some quarter of an hour before the train arrived), mrs. falconer had made jimmy his tea in a vulgar little bowl-like teapot, and as her hands touched the pottery's blue glaze served very well for a halo. as she buttered him slices of toast herself, and spread them with gooseberry jam and herself ate and drank and laughed and chattered, she had been, with the tea things about her and her sleeves turned back as she cut and buttered and spread, she had been with the roundness of her wrists and the suave grace of her capable hands, most adorably a woman, most adorably dear. her furs and coat laid aside, the hat at his asking laid aside in order, although he did not tell her so, that the air of home might be more complete for them. _vis-à-vis_ they had eaten together and laughed together and talked together till it grew later and later, and the motor waited without in the yard amongst the ravens and the ducks who peered from the straw of their winter quarters at the big awkward machine. "jimmy" ... she had started when the crumbs and dishes had been cleared away, and for some seconds did not follow up his name with any other word. it was always bulstrode who took wonderful care of the time. it was he who gave her her hat, its pins, her coat, her furs, her gloves, one by one, her muff last, his eyes on her, as each article slowly went to place, until her big white veil wound and wound and pinned and fastened and hid her. "jimmy," she whispered, as he ruthlessly and definitely opened the door and the cold rushed in, "let's build _here_." still it was she who took all the blame of their tardy departure from the homely hospitality of the inn; she assured him that she could make a wonderful toilet and in an incredibly short time, and that for once she wouldn't be late for dinner at the castle. "not," bulstrode assured her, "that it in the least matters, but the duke, as likely as not, would choose to dine alone; he was a man of moods." "in which case," she had stopped with her foot on the auto step, "penhaven isn't a bad place for tea, and why wouldn't dinner at this perfect inn...." but bulstrode met her words with a shake of his head and a shrug of his shoulders, and helped her firmly into the motor and sat again by her side. "i can't tell you," he said, "what will be going on at the castle. i haven't been back since i left it two days ago, and almost anything can have happened in that time. the duchess of westboro' herself, in the interval, may have gone back to her husband." "heavens!" mrs. falconer exclaimed, "in which case how horribly _de trop_ we shall be." but bulstrode consoled her with the thought that if they were _de trop_ they would at least be _de trop ensemble_. amongst the handful of letters waiting for her in her dressing-room at the castle there had been a despatch from america. even this, and a hasty look at her mail had not succeeded in holding her attention or even carrying it beyond the house. her husband had expected to land in liverpool at the end of the coming week; he was to take her home with him. and until he arrived she was breathing, as she always did in his absence, deeply. there had been no one to greet them as bulstrode and herself came into the castle, and she had hurried to her rooms to begin without loss of time her boasted rapid toilet. the dress, whose harmony had impressed her host, the duke, on a former visit at the castle, had been laid out for her; its sumptuous color overspread the bed. but the lady chose instead a white gown whose art of holding to her, and holding her, in its simple lines and splendid sheen, made its beauty. there was much of the true woman in this entirely lovely creature, as she stood before her glass and saw herself, the best example of the really beautiful american. her naturalness gave her a freedom, a frankness, a grace, a certain imperial set of the head. bulstrode had once said to the duchess of westboro' that a woman should above all "console." mary falconer would have known what he meant. that sex she gloriously represented! the sweetness and dearness of her. well, there were few women no doubt like her. jimmy hoped so for the sake of the race, for the sake of the hearts of other men. she was the ideal fireside of home, and when, as she had twice done, she bade him, as that time she had said, "build here," he knew what she meant and felt, and that she herself was exquisitely home. leaning over her dressing-table she scrutinized not her face, whose ardent beauty seemed to bloom upon the glass, but her hair as it fell and rippled and flowed round her brows. along the edge of one of the lustrous waves was a touch as if her powder puff had brushed her hair. mrs. falconer put up her hand, smoothed the line, then let it lie as it grew. it so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white. a gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like berries. a long green scarf fell over her arm and against the whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long, pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's. as she left the security of her room and fire for the corridors and the publicity of the lower rooms, for the first time in her life she had a sudden feeling of _pruderie_ at the bare beauty of her neck and arms. she felt as if she were coming unclad into the street, and drew her scarf across her breast. but she found herself to be quite alone in the drawing-room, and before she had time to be bewildered at her long desertion, a letter was handed her with a few murmured words by a footman. it perhaps served her right, she reflected, for so blandly coming into a house during a state of domestic upheaval, that she should turn out to be not alone the only guest, but without host or friend! the letter told her, as gently as it could without the satisfaction of any explanation, that both bulstrode and the duke of westboro' were unavoidably absent. she turned the letter over with keen disappointment. her dress, her beauty which the drive from penhaven and the afternoon's happiness had heightened to a point that she might be pardoned for seeing, was then all for nothing! on what extravagant bent could the two men have gone? "both of them," she soliloquized with a shrug, "off on a hunt, i dare say, after a fool of a woman who doesn't know enough to stop at home." before she could further lash at her absent hostess, she found herself a few seconds later taking the scarcely palpable arm of the rector, whom the duke, in a moment of abstraction, had asked to the christmas-tree and whom he had subsequently forgotten to put off. the rector alone, of all the expected, turned up, his smile vacuous and his appetite in order. at the table laid for four, and great enough for forty, the clergyman and the lady faced each other. mrs. falconer smiled kindly, for as her friend had told the duchess on the same afternoon, she was kind; and if she resented the apology for a man her slender _vis-à-vis_ presented, she did not show her scorn; she smiled kindly at him. his cloth and habit, and cut even, wore the air of disapproval. her jewels, the bare splendor of her neck and arms, seemed out of place, and yet she could not but be perfectly sure that even the dull eyes of her _vis-à-vis_ not alone reflected, but confirmed, how lovely she was. the reverend gentleman was new to glouceshire, but it turned out that he already knew its hearsays and its _on dits_ and he knew when she asked him, something of the country and the dials. it may have been that the bright aspect of the lady, her light mockery--for as she would she could not help falling into them even with this half-human creature--wickedly drew him on, gave the man license as he thought, to descend to scandal; at all events, after dinner, over a cigar smoked in her presence, the empty glass of benedictine at his elbow, in his cheeks a muddy red diffused from his wine, the gentleman leaned forward, and tried to adapt his speech and topic to the worldly vein which he imagined was the habitual tenor of a fashionable woman's life. "even this lovely shire," he drawled its beauty--"cannot, so it would seem, be free from scandal. and where a minister would naturally look for help, wretchedly enough for the most part he only finds examples and warnings." the rector lifted his eyes to the fine old ceiling as if in its shields and blazons he was impressed by the blots of recent sins. his hand touched the little liqueur glass. he picked it up and in a second of abstraction tried to drain its oily emptiness. "let me ring," said mrs. falconer, "and send for some more benedictine, or better still, for some _fine_." "no," he refused, and sedately put her right. "no more of anything, i think, unless it might be a bottle of soda. you spoke of lovely glousceshire and then spoke of the dials. do you know the place?" only, she told him, by hearsay. he solemnly supposed so; so he himself chiefly knew it, as indeed all the country side was growing to know it. the eyes of the lady to whom the rector was retailing his little gossip were intently on him. but mrs. falconer in reality was not looking at him, neither did she at once find ready words to refute, to cast down, to blot out, his hideous suggestion that filled the room with it sooty blot. mrs. falconer, who had good-humoredly been amused by his intense britishness thus far, his pale lack of individuality, his perfect type, now looked sharply at her companion. the rector had been more than right, mrs. falconer was used to the indifferent, rather brutal handling by society of human lives. possibly as she adored people, no one of her set was more interested in the comedies and dramas of her _contemporains_. but there are ways and channels: what runs clear in one runs muddy in another. the rector, in his own way, told her that for several weeks a very beautiful lady had been living at the dials. she had, it appeared, never been out of the garden gate, and the servants were foreign, all save a deaf old gardener. but the beautiful lady who sought such peculiar seclusion, had a very constant visitor. of course the rector was not able or sufficiently daring to affirm; with a cleverness worthy a better story he left his hearer to guess, imagine, who the visitor might be. "don't you think," mrs. falconer breathed, after a very short lapse into silence, "that we might let such ghosts alone on christmas eve?" she rose and stood before him in her soft, luminous dress; her eyes were intent on him, but in reality she was not looking at him. he had grown so detestable that she could bear his presence no longer; she found herself, however, wanting to learn all his knowledge to its finest detail. she found that she despised herself for any interest she might take. she got rid of him at length, how, she never knew. but she saw him leave her presence with relief. when the miserable man, as she called him, had taken his leave, the deserted guest looked about her rather defiantly, as if the objects with which the room was filled were hostile. then, with a half-audible exclamation she sank down in a chair, her elbow on the left arm of it, and her chin in her hand. well, the imputation, the character of what she had just heard vulgarly said and to which, for a bewildered second, she had perhaps vulgarly listened--was highly dreadful, highly disordering to her fashion of thinking and believing about jimmy bulstrode! oh, for a moment she had half believed what that creature said, and her eyes had winked fast at the game before them! in the swiftness of the revolutions it had seemed for a sole flash real; but now that the noise had stopped and the carousel as well, she saw how _wooden_ the horses were and that they were as dead as doornails! if she had been disturbed, she came loyally back now, with a glow and a rush of tenderness as she instantly re-instated what could never lose caste. oh, the dials! she couldn't conceive what jimmy had in reality, rashly, delightfully done there; what he had planted or installed, if he had planted or installed anything. but whatever the truth was, it was sure to be essentially right, as far as ethics went--she knew that at least. but jimmy's delicacy and his heart were all too fine for the crude wisdom of the world or for her common-sense, which would have told him no doubt, had he cared to ask, that he was rash and wild. she was prepared to hear that he had made some magdalen a home in this prudish country place. at this possibility jimmy's kindness and charity stood out graciously in strong contrast to the prudish judgment. there were several long mirrors set in the panels of the room like lakes between green shores of old brocade, and they reflected her as she leaned forwards in her chair and looked about her, taking in the brightness of the perfect little room. it had been cut off from the wider, grander spaces for more intimate passages in the social course of events, but there was nothing newly planned in its colors and tapestries, its hangings and furnishings; the effect was sombre rather, the objects had the air of use, of having participated in past existences, and like faithful servants, they seemed to wait to serve perfectly new events. the especial brightness of the room came from the gay festooning that had found its way throughout the castle. the mirrors were dark with the velvet rounds of hemlock from which the miserable face of scandal, the sardonic face of divorce, under the conditions of the present domestic situation might well grin satyr-like from the christmas wreaths. no doubt there were lots of ghosts about, ready to stride, to flutter, or to walk; the american woman put their histories and their legends impatiently by. the facile way in which the duchess of westboro' had slipped out from the chafing of domestic harness, the egotistical _geste_ with which she had so widely thrown over her responsibilities, fetched mrs. falconer up to her own life, from whose problems indeed her husband's absence alone set her free. her affairs had lately rapidly progressed, flying, whirling. the circles the event of her marriage had originally created, touched at last the farthest limit; there was nothing left for them now but to scatter. the vortex had rapidly narrowed down, was narrowing down, and nothing remained but a sole object in the bed of the clear water; and as mary falconer looked at it she knew that the thing was a stone. "we spend," she had once said to bulstrode, "half our lives forging chains, and the other half trying to make ourselves free." hadn't she wrenched with all her might to be rid of hers? materially she still wore her bonds and moved with a ball. as she had driven away from charing cross station, a month ago, after seeing her husband aboard the dover and calais special, she had breathed--breathed--breathed--stretched her arms and hands out to london, felt on her eye and brow a dew that meant the very dawning of liberty broke for her, and that she was for the time at least blessed by it, and free. the sorghams' london house had opened its refuge wide for her, and she had gone into it like a child, to sleep and rest, and there she had grown up again, to begin to think and to plan, project and puzzle as those who grow up must do. she had never thought to such practical purpose as she did in these days, and never come so nearly reaching an end. just before dressing for dinner on this night, at the sensation the touch of her husband's telegram gave her, she realized how near to a not unusual decision she was, and when she put the envelope by with the rest of her mail, the part of her mind which she would not let herself look into was in confusion and doubt. more effectively than falconer's coming could have done, his few telegraphed words brought him to his wife's consideration. and the fantastic story of the dials helped her, ridiculous as it was, burlesque as it was, to think; in the very humor of it, a shock, and helped her more reasonably to consider what otherwise her feelings would have turned to tragedy. jimmy's ecstasies about the place recurred to her with renewed cordiality. he had spent an hour at least describing it, and when he had finished with "a woman must be there, it is made for a woman," mary falconer had only seen herself in the frame that the old place presented. she exclaimed aloud: "oh, no, no," and continued to affirm to herself that it was too fantastically absurd--"jimmy!" "it's only some delightful bit of charity, and he's too afraid of my wretched conservatism and my ironies to have told me frankly about it." having in a very unfeminine way opened a crack for reason, its honest face peered through, and mary falconer glanced at it with a sigh and a half-amused recognition, as if she had not been face to face with anything so cool and eminent for a long time. jimmy had hinted to her of a secret, in london; there was something he said he wished to tell her about, would tell her in full later, something that involved much happiness to others, and could it have been this? could it have been that he was really secretly married? that at last the step of which he had constantly spoken, for which indeed there had been times when together they had half-heartedly planned for it, could it be that the one safeguard for them both had actually been formed by him, and alone? but only a second would she permit this conception of the dials to obtain hold. "ridiculous!" she repeated, "ridiculous! not that i believe a word or any innuendo of the shocking old wizard, but it only shows, it only shows the helplessness of a woman who is not bound to a man, and how entirely the man is free!" nothing a man does counts well for him with a woman but those things he does in accordance with her estimate of what his attitude towards her should be! and bulstrode's high-minded control, the reserve--which since her marriage had been maintained, only counted now against him. wasn't she, in it all, rather counting without her host? their bond was so tacit, so silent, so unworded. indeed, he had made no bond, had asked her for no pledge. she was tied hand and foot, but he was free. and over that freedom what vague right had she? what dominion could she have? isn't it, after all, in the life of a clever, delightful man, something not strictly a burden, the soul-absorbing entire devotion of a woman not too old and more or less not generally disliked? what did it--heavens, but she was analyzing--what did it cost him? hadn't he always gone from her at a moment's warning, and stopped away for months and months? imperious as by nature she was, she had always been wise enough to reserve a summons from her that, she had every reason to believe, would fetch him from any distance to her side. she never tested him, she scarcely ever wrote to him; she had been at the sorghams', and alone for a month, and save for one perfectly delightful day he had not once turned up to keep her company. as the woman's thoughts encompassed the subject they brought it up to this: that as far as things went, at all events, there was no blame: no matter how society had coupled their names, she had at least the conscience of her acts clear. jimmy was to be thanked for it from beginning to end; as far as the conscience of her thoughts went, well, those were her own affair. oh, she could recall skirmishes and narrow impasses! her tactics had more than once been those only permitted by the codes of battle, and of another passion. her chair, which she had left, she passed and repassed as she walked up and down, trailing her soft dress across the floor. she stood before the fire, her foot held out to the fervent flame. her face softened as there came out clearly to her the real picture of jimmy that always kept itself somewhere between her eyes and her brain. ah, there were men of talent and fashion, who did not hesitate to make merry, who were more or less good, more or less anti-pathetic, and for whom society never had a word of reproach--but jimmy! distinguished and charming, with every taste and means to gratify them, with--so to put it--the woman of his heart at his very doors--how did he live? why, for everybody in the world but for himself. and through it all, in spite of the fact that he appeared blindly to shut his eyes against their mutual love, he lived for her. oh, he was the best, the best! she listened as she stood there for the hum of the motor which might tell her he was coming back. she wanted to ask him to tell her the truth about the dials. she wanted, above all else, to see him again. she remembered them, one by one, the happy occasions they had caught and made the most of, and each after the other they became lovely harbors where like ships her thoughts lay at anchor. penhaven was certainly one of the best. she congratulated herself that she had conceived that day, and without any blame she acknowledged it to herself, that if jimmy had only wished it they would have been there together now. she had taken her chair again and sat back deeply in the great fauteuil. the brocade made a dark-hued background against which her head, frankly thrown back, defined its charming lines. her bare arms folded across her breast, her foot swinging gently to and fro, she continued to muse and dream, and as she thought of bulstrode, to love him. some one came in and piled up the fire and slipped out, but no message was brought her to tell her what had become of her host and her friend. the long sympathetic silence beginning at the fireside flowed through the vast rooms and corridors, and out into the night, down the lanes and the road until its completeness and tonelessness were broken by the memory of the bells of penhaven, as she and jimmy had heard them whilst they rang the angelus in the close. and the discordant note of the dials was drowned, confused and lost in her intense listening to the penhaven bells. some chord or other, or some fine spring touched as she so thought on, brought back to her the fact of the despatch upstairs, which if it had any, had an imperative importance. falconer had sent it from palm beach where he had gone to get rid of a troublesome grippe. he did not, in the few lines which told he was seedy and had put off his sailing, suggest that she should go back. but he would not resent her return, she knew that, he would probably treat her decently for at least a fortnight. "i don't know a creature," she praised herself, "who would have stayed on with jack, and nothing but jimmy has helped me to stick it out. if he really loved me would he have let me go on as i have gone on? i don't know. unless he loved me could he have helped me at all? i think not." round the figure of her friend there began to group, as if for some special purpose, the kindnesses and charities she had seen him display. one by one she added up his gifts and benefits until the poor and outcast and forgotten and despised claimed all of them to be his friends; they gathered round him and in place of the categoric histories of self-love and indulgence, of passion that had in more or less degree characterized the men of her set, these things came till the dawn of them and the light of them made his figure shine. how, she thought, could he ever have been what he so wonderfully is, if he had lived for himself or been anything but the best? upstairs, in her room, a few hours before, the mark of silver on her hair had been a whip to urge on her rebellion; to tell her to seize and make the most of the fleeting time, to warn her of the age which when her beauty and her youth were gone, was all that could remain for them both. but now there began to blow across her soul a freshness. she had indeed been drawing long breaths in her husband's absence, but free as they were they left her stifled and panting, as if to get the oxygen she had been obliged to climb too far. now, on the contrary, she was lifted as by wings, and whilst they fluttered about her she breathed evenly yet fully, and the air on the heights was something better than wine. there is an unspoiled enjoyment in the thing which has never given us pain. it may be a sensual and ecstatic prerogative of passion to make the object suffer, but there is a different sense of happiness in that which never does harm or hurt or wrong to the thing it loves. so she could think of bulstrode, without pain, without regret, without reproach. and if the ardor and passion in her became suffused and slowly paled, there was a starry brightness, a beauty in her face and in her eyes such as bulstrode, when he came in to find her waiting, had never seen before. with every mile of the short run from the dials back to the castle, mrs. falconer's friend had been preparing himself for his meeting with the woman he had left some few hours before. all his emotions culminated in a high, swinging excitement. the fact that he was going back alone to find mary falconer there, was the big motif, and as he thought of the dark, charming envelope the castle made, holding the treasure she was, keeping her there for him, his heart beat so high that he knew there was nothing more for him to feel. the ecstasy he had witnessed in the little house his chivalry had purchased, the meeting of the husband and wife, come together there after so much unhappiness, put it poignantly to him that sterile love is a very unsatisfactory thing indeed. and if the highest quality of gallantry is to consider a woman's honor before her love, it at least makes real happiness--so he felt then--impossible in the world. one false swerve of the motor at the pace they were going, and there would not be any more problems to solve. if he died now he might justly say that he had not lived, he had not lived! who would give him back what he had missed? the motto on the dials repeated itself to him: _utere dum licet_. he pushed into the castle on his arrival, hurried to dress, and went downstairs. it seemed to him as he put aside the portières, that these curtains were at last all there was between himself and her, that he was going home, coming home at last; that ways he had for years seen approaching, met at length to-night here. it was with the very clear realization of the culmination of the time that bulstrode went in to find his friend. he had stopped to make himself irreproachable, and expected to find her waiting and friendly and lovely. what, had he found her anything else? but as rising from her chair, the scarf slipping back from her bare shoulders, she put out her hand and greeted him, the dazzling sense that breaks on a man's consciousness when he finds himself alone with the woman he loves, proved for a second that he had need of all his control. he could not speak. "jimmy!" she exclaimed, "you're as white as a ghost! you look as though you'd been to a wake; and i don't believe you've had a mouthful of dinner." he remembered that it might be polite to apologize to her for the entire desertion of the household. "my poor friend, what in heaven's name must you think of us all!" "of you all?" (true enough, there had been another!) she had thought volumes, comedies, tragedies, melodramas, but what she thought didn't so much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he had honored, dined. shouldn't they have something here together before the fire? "i seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host." "my friend westboro' is the happiest man in glousceshire." "which means that he has found his duchess?" "he has found his duchess." when her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, mary falconer saw that for jimmy bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world. in the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood passed. "that's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said. "he told me dreadful scandals but i think now that i see through them all. the duchess of westboro' has been living incognita at the dials, hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?" bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly. and mary falconer laughed. "yes, evidently the duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very romantic, isn't she?" and the man absently exclaimed: "oh, i dare say, i dare say." then turning to her with unusual vehemence: "do, for heaven's sake leave them and everybody. i want to forget them all." he threw up his hand with a sort of supplication. he had seated himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken again. using her christian name for one of the rare times in his life, he pleaded: "can't we leave all other people, mary, can't we?" she looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words, and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain. the cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to transfuse her veins. the changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the terrace like snow. far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost in the mists. bulstrode had followed over and stood by mary falconer's side, and the scene before him seemed full of joy, full of gifts, full of largesse. the ornament on the woman's bosom stirred with her breathing, shot a million fine sparkles, and below it the spray of mistletoe rose and fell, rose and fell. he put his hand out and took the spray and fastened it in his buttonhole, saying that the mistletoe was above her head. his voice, one she had never heard, made her unwisely turn to meet his eyes, to shake with the emotion of the adventurer trembling on the edge of the precipice; just to hang over which, and to shudder, he has climbed high. she put her hand out between them, holding him back. "i've had a telegram from my husband. he's very ill. he's in palm beach and i'm going over to him next week." [illustration: "i've had a telegram from my husband"] falconer's name was sovereign for breaking spells as far as jimmy was concerned, but the wife's phrase this time gave him only a more violent revelation of his cruel hope. she went on: "it's not alarming, but with a heart like jack's, anything might happen. it's only when i'm with him that he keeps up any sort of shape." the fact of his holding in his the hand that she had put out to keep him from her, did not serve to aid in a serene continuation of her plans, and the silence became a burden which if she did not herself lift would crush her. she said hurriedly: "and you will help me to go." and then bulstrode spoke: "no," he said, "oh, no." for the briefest space she yielded to what he meant and was at last wicked enough and human enough to promise to do. but she had on this solemn evening--for it had so been--come too far, gone up too high to drag down all the way with him on a single word. in supremest happiness, however, at what he said and how he said it, she gave a little soft laugh, and although she was under the mistletoe, she felt that she looked down on him, loving him so much more that in adorable weakness he had suddenly grown small and dear. "oh, jimmy," she whispered, "how heavenly of you, but you can't go back on ten years in one week. you can't, you know! you've thrown me like a giant so _far_, i've gone right on up." still looking at her he shook his head as she repeated: "you'll help me, you'll help me! you can't go back!" "i _can_ go back," he said deeply, "_on everything and everybody in the world_." at the frank simple words, and the sense of what they meant, at the sound of his new voice, it was as if all the dykes at last were down; and strong, bright, but most beautiful, the sea came rushing in. as she saw him coming toward her and knew that in a moment more she would be in his arms, and that at his first touch she would let everything go, she found one word to say and it proved only to be his name: "jimmy, jimmy, jimmy!" but there was in it an appeal. she could count the times she had wept in her life, very nearly, she had often said that a woman weeps only when she has nothing else to do, and there had always been so much, every minute in her life; and as if in logical affirmation there seemed now for her nothing to do but to cry. the tears which covered her face and fell into her palms and against the chair on which she leaned, comforted her in a measure and served to loosen the tension of her mind. she had succeeded in miraculously keeping away from him, just within touch of her, held back by a hand whose white gentleness was not so exquisitely strong but that he loved her too well to break the tender barrier. she never afterward knew what appeals she made or how she besought, but it must have been of great force to keep him so transfixed and pale. "oh, you _have_ told me over and over again! do you think i am deaf or blind, or that i have found you dumb? such love, jimmy, such high, sweet perfectness! why, there isn't a woman in a million who has known it or even dreamed what such love could mean. why, there hasn't been a day or an hour for ten years that you have not spoken it to me in the most adorable way, in the most beautiful way; and in every kind thing you have done, in every foolish, dear thing, i have been so vain as to think that i counted for something in it, that you did it a little for me. other women have had their lovers, their scandals, their great passions. but i have had you without flaw, without a change, without regret. hush!" she cried, wiping her tears away, "hush. it's quite safe to let me go on. the only fear is that _you_ may speak." the arm which she had held out to keep him from her had fallen upon his shoulder, lay about his neck as he knelt by her chair. "it's been horrible!" she said, shaking her head, "horrible--the days and the nights, the days and the nights! there have been times when i could have killed him and killed myself as well. but then you've come, and your presence has helped me, and that's the way i've pulled along; because by your silence you told me to pull along, because by the fact that you didn't speak i understood that you thought i should be brave, and i have been--thanks to you, and i shall be--thanks to you! oh!" she cried passionately, "if you think because i am saying it all out that i want to go back, that i don't see what i am running away from, and what you mean, you're cruel, you're cruel!" her other hand had found its fellow and they both lay on his shoulders. "i only think of you," he breathed, "and of how..." she covered his lips. "oh, hush, hush, you have told me, in the only way there was to tell. i'm too stupid to be able to combine a lover and a husband. the day and the hour you spoke i should never have seen my husband again. and that's where it stands; that's how it is, and you know it. you loved me because i was like that, and i love you because you are the bravest of the brave. there you are!" she cried, and drew away from him triumphantly, letting her arms fall. "there we both are!" "have you any vague conception of what this is for me?" bulstrode asked. "oh, i dare say," she exclaimed, with a kind of petulance, "that i am only thinking of my own bewildering happiness. there," she exclaimed at his face, "i see you have a new weapon: pity. oh, don't use that against me, and i warn you that everything in the world will crumble if you speak." her hands, which he was holding closely, she drew from him and laid them both on his breast and met his eyes full with her own. her lips were slightly trembling, and she was as white as a winter day. in the moment of silence they passed like this, she seemed to him like some great precious pearl, some priceless rose fragrant, lustrous, made for him, gathered for him, and yet beyond his right. she seemed, above all, the woman, the mate; her glorious sex, her tenderness, her humanness, drew him and dazzled him; and, nevertheless, through his daze and over his desire, he heard with his finest her cry: "jimmy, jimmy, don't speak, don't speak. ah, if you really love me..." he really loved her. rising from where he knelt by her chair, bulstrode went over, stood a second by the chimneypiece, and then took a few paces up and down the room, came back to her and said the thing the real man says to the woman he really loves: "i want to make you happy, mary. i will do whatever you wish me to do." "ah, then, go!" bulstrode looked wearily about as though of its own accord a door might unclose or a portière lift. "go where, pray, at this time of night, or morning?" "oh, to the dials. ring for a motor; they will take you in again; or go to the rector's." the last of the fire had flared up. the flame went out. sinking back in her chair, she waited in a tranced stillness, her eyes on the ashes of the fire. she had said her say out, perhaps the man knew it, and as she leaned back in the cushions he saw how completely it all lay with him at the end. she thought he came back and waited a second at her side; she thought he bent a moment over her, but she did not stir until the cold wind from an opening door, till the clicking of a latch made her start, and then she turned to see that he had gone. bulstrode came back to the castle christmas day at nine o'clock. but the hour had the effect of being much earlier. the winter morning panoplied with festivity began its life slowly, and not all the day's brightness through which he had speeded his motor had yet come into the house. bulstrode, drawn by it, went directly back to the room he had left several hours before, as though he expected still to find the woman he loved sitting before the extinguished fire. two parlor maids were whisking their skirts and dusters out of the opposite door, a footman at their heels. touches of the inevitable order which reduces an agreeable disarray to the impersonal had already been put to the scene of jimmy's tenderness, and the curtains drawn well away from the long windows let in the morning that entered broadly and fell across the hearth and the fresh-lit fire. clean logs replaced the cold ashes: the match had just finished with the kindlings, and bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the young blaze. the absence of his host, the castle once more handed over to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of westboro's in puffs and velvets, jimmy couldn't find an ancestor! their amours and indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well. they had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time, and were none the less a proud line of pure british blood. the american bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy of history circled, looked up at the dukes of westboro' musingly, and there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at heart a truer lover, although he did not know it. during the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present return, bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like bells, their voice, _utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the place and from her. he had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane, wise project of not seeing her again. nor did he weigh or balance his charge or responsibility. there had been a cessation of vibration of any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she loved him. nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both, could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about him. through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked. "heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical westboro's, "i am not going to be blasé through six paradises just because there happens to be a seventh!" a new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back. the spicy breath of the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet. little by little the sun had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still in the house with him. he had chosen a christmas gift for her in london, and determined to send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the fact that he had come back from the dials and was ready to use the day as she liked. he felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would feel a certain embarrassment. in answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "christmas face," as one of the little westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on one of his few christmas days. "where would mr. bulstrode please to have breakfast?" "why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day. where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would mrs. falconer have it?" "mrs. falconer? why, mr. bulstrode didn't know then that mrs. falconer had gone?" she saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world. why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the abbey station. there had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it and her starting away. a motor had been sent with her and the maid, and mrs. falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only one, it so happened, being christmas day, that connected with the dover and calais special. the matter-of-fact bit of news came to bulstrode so coldly and so ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate. then this gave place to an effulgent hope that it might be _herself_ she couldn't trust! but the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind, and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly than had any blow in his kindly life. he could not suffer in peace before the bland creature in silks and cameos. crises and departures, battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept serenely should any of them chance to occur at westboro', and above all if they were part of the sacred family history. but mrs. falconer and he were not westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it had been imperative to go to calais, with what boat for america a christmas-day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in his mind. he at first believed that there had never been any telegram and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her flight. why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line? she might, he ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a merry christmas! as he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted, he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he granted, he as violently discarded. but the thought was imperious: something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost. it could usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent. a despatch from falconer had certainly come the night before. another might have followed on this morning, hard upon it? to have been sent over from the abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a matter," as the old term went, "of life and death." the phrase began to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change things, and how they would both meet it--his promenade to and fro in the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon it at length with a seeing eye. why not? why not? he was wondering. we are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, _why not in this place_? and since there had been neither shame nor blame, why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality? before him on the table lay mrs. falconer's green scarf, and as bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a despatch. then he knew instantly that mary falconer had left both scarf and telegram there, and that this was her message to him. he seemed, as the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting all his life for just this news. the road, so long in winding home, had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its solemnity. bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope. he lit a cigar and sat down before the fire. he knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had found her this early christmas day, in her room--he knew how she had read it first and borne it well--for she was a brave, strong woman--he knew that his absence had been a relief to her. he knew how she had worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel home alone. oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the first time thought of himself--of themselves. he was too human not to know that there would be a future and that they would build anew. in the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by the sinking ship until it put into port. mrs. shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his breakfast in the little room facing the gardens. then she waited, and as bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and wished her a merry christmas. she thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all of the westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone. she still hesitated. it was a custom with them, she told him, with the westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays. when the duke himself was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the place had already come in. in the absence of the family _would_ mr. bulstrode...? "oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried. "wasn't there some one else?" "well, to be sure, there was portman." the guest was sure that portman would do it quite in the proper way, and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he thanked her. and mrs. shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open on the table the little book which she had brought in with her. bulstrode took it up after she was gone. in a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children singing. their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of reading. as bulstrode opened the book he held, the leaves fell apart at the marriage rite. he hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service. he paused to read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open book in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover.... the beauty _by_ mrs. wilson woodrow _author of_ the silver butterfly, etc. with illustrations by will grefÉ indianapolis the bobbs-merrill company publishers copyright the bobbs-merrill company press of braunworth & co. bookbinders and printers brooklyn, n. y. [illustration: perdita] contents i a bachelor's bride ii a far world of dreaming iii pink and white existence iv our loving friends v perdita's talisman vi sirocco vii the gift of freedom viii fools' laughter ix a telephone call x out of the gilded cage xi a doll or a box of candy xii fuschia fleming xiii shocking the hewstons xiv publicity xv a widow's smile xvi father and daughter xvii do you love me? xviii playing the game xix he calls on his wife xx the magic word xxi two announcements xxii hepworth misunderstands xxiii its ancient charm xxiv waiting for perdita xxv with my heart's love the beauty chapter i a bachelor's bride if the proper statistics of bachelorhood were accurately tabulated they would show that at certain fixed and recurring periods, a confirmed old bachelor, say one in every ten, casts his dearly-bought experience, his hard-won knowledge of the world and women to the four winds of heaven, and chooses for himself a wife; and, as his friends and relatives invariably protest, a bungling job he makes of it. he may, before the world, walk soberly, discreetly, advisedly and in the fear of god in every other respect, but when it comes to selecting a companion for the rest of his life, he follows, apparently, a predestined leading, some errant and tricksy impulse, and from a world of desirable and waiting helpmates, eminently suitable, he will, in nine cases out of ten, fix his heart upon the one inevitable she who can keep the pot of trouble ever boiling for him. this, according to mr. cresswell hepworth's old and intimate friends, was exactly the course which he had followed; nor was even one voice upraised in dissent from this opinion, as they frankly discussed the matter over their champagne and truffled sweetbreads at the breakfast following the wedding. it was but natural that they who were rarely in complete agreement on any subject which commended itself for discussion among them, should hold a unanimous opinion on this matter which involved the happiness of their lifelong friend. but although the opinion was unanimous, it was not unprejudiced. hepworth had had his distinct niche in their homes and hearts for many years, and now as they gazed metaphorically at the empty space, it struck a chill to their affections. nevertheless they did not, could not fail to join in the little gasp of admiration which breathed through the church as the bride swept up the aisle on the arm of mr. willoughby hewston, the well-known banker and intimate friend of the bride-groom. she had been stopping, it was understood, with mrs. wilstead, another friend of hepworth's, for several weeks. there were those in the large audience who saw a certain pathos in the fact that she was given away by one of hepworth's friends, thus exposing the lack of either relatives or friends of her own, but there was nothing in her bearing to indicate that she was conscious of her isolated position as she advanced, leaning lightly on mr. hewston's arm. the world, hepworth's world, and it was a large one, was tingling with curiosity. he was a great figure, looming immense upon the financial horizon; but no one had ever heard of the bride. the invitations to the wedding were the first intimation of his impending marriage, and the bride's name, perdita carey, conveyed nothing to anybody. by dint of careful collection of scraps of information, it gradually became known that she was young, of southern birth and extremely pretty. bare facts. no more. it was also considered rather an odd reading of the customary conventions on hepworth's part, this crowded church wedding exposing the bride's poverty in relatives, the breakfast to follow, at his town house, thus making equally plain her homeless state; but when this view was set before him, sighingly, by isabel hewston, and vivaciously by alice wilstead, he became obstinate in the insistence of his plans. he seemed possessed of some masculine idea of getting things over, of having all his friends meet his wife en masse, so to speak, and having the matter settled. and so it was, "nice customs curtsy to great kings"--or millionaires. the audience then of his friends--there was none of hers present, if indeed she possessed any--sat with heads turned at an aching angle and awaited, with concealed impatience, the choice of cresswell hepworth. the weight of opinion leaned to a sunburst of a woman, darkly splendid, opulently graceful, and instead, when the stately strains of the wedding-march echoed through the church, the guests lifted their astonished eyes to a brown and slender girl; but no matter what the expectation had been, each realized that he gazed on a more poetic loveliness than he had dreamed. another unhesitating mental admission. obscure, unknown she might have been, but she could never be considered ordinary. it had taken generations of cultivation to give that pose of the head and shoulders, that arch of the instep, that taper to her slender wrist. and what intimation of individuality! few women could have borne more regally the weight of heavy and lusterless satin or a diadem of flashing jewels; but this girlish bride of a millionaire had insisted on being married in the white muslin her own scanty purse had furnished; and wore as if it were a crown of diamonds the wreath of white jasmine flowers which held her long tulle veil close about the cloudy masses of her hair. for once the entire interest of any occasion which he happened to grace was not centered on hepworth, who, with his usual invincible composure, awaited the bride at the altar, fortified by his best man, wallace martin. but the owner of millions--unctuous sound--is worth more than a mere dismissing word. let the bride continue to advance, he to await her, while he is presented in a lightning sketch. cresswell hepworth was far from old, not fifty. he had more than three generations of cultivated ancestry behind him. in type he was american, approaching the indian; tall, slightly aquiline of feature, somewhat granitic and imperturbable. his hair, which had been brown, was almost white, his eyes were gray, trained to express nothing, but startlingly penetrating when he chose to lift rather heavy lids with a peculiarly long droop at the corners. emerson says somewhere that "a feeble man can see the farms that are fenced and tilled, the houses that are built. the strong man sees the possible houses and farms. his eye makes estates as fast as the sun breeds clouds." hepworth was a strong man. he saw possible houses and farms, externalized them and became the acquirer of vast and profitable tracts of land--a fair map blackly dotted with mines and scrawled with the angular lines of intersecting railroads. in this yellow triangle, a great wheat farm. here, in this square of living green, irrigated and profitable ranches. he stood, this "colossus of finance"--journalese--with his feet planted firmly on this solid map-basis, and, with a golden rake, drew toward him from countless clutching hands securities, stocks, bonds, curios, pictures (he was an ardent collector), loot of every description, and, it was even whispered through the church, his young and lovely bride. but now he stepped forward to meet her with a smile that enlivened his whole face, even his eyes. the service flowed on. with that air of sulky geniality which represented his most urbane manner, willoughby hewston gave away the bride. the responses were duly made, and mr. and mrs. cresswell hepworth turned to walk through an aisle of smiling and nodding friends. at that moment the mellow october sunlight fell through the stained windows enwrapping perdita in a regal and impalpable vesture of scarlet and gold; and again a murmur of admiration rippled and echoed at this fresh revelation of her beauty. she had been pale as she walked up the aisle, but now her color had risen and the crimson on her brown cheek was the hue of a jacqueminot rose. her hair, a deep chestnut at the temples, flowed into copper, dark in the hollows, gold where it caught the light. her coloring was a harmony of all soft, warm, dusky shades, and one looked to the eyes to focus these tints in light or darkly rich topaz; but perdita's eyes were gray, handed down perhaps from those irish kings to whom her father had laughingly traced his descent. "lucky girl!" murmured alice wilstead an hour later to the group of hepworth's intimate friends who sat together at one table during the breakfast that followed the wedding. "just think of it. he has no family encumbrances. never an 'in-law' will she have to cope with." it never struck her that hepworth's little circle of close friends had gradually assumed about all of the intrusive and proprietary prerogatives of the nearest and most affectionate relatives. alice wilstead was a widow, dark, slender, piquant, versed in the secrets of grace and the art of wearing her jewels so that they accentuated her sparkling eyes and her one precious dimple without eclipsing them. warmly sympathetic and impulsive, she had been overcome by the vision of perdita's isolation as the girl walked up the aisle on the grudging arm of willoughby hewston; and had pressed her handkerchief lightly to her eyes, a moment of emotion viewed with callous interest by a misinterpreting world which regarded it as a last tear shed for a lost opportunity, a shattered hope. "well," said hewston, finishing his sweetbreads and preparing to begin on the next course, "it went off very well. i was all right, wasn't i?" "you were perfect, dear," his wife hastened to assure him, "and it was a beautiful wedding." mrs. hewston was gray and pink and plump like her husband; and this morning her grayness and pinkness and plumpness were underlined, thrown into high relief by a violet gauze gown, heavily spangled in silver. isabel hewston resembled nothing so much as a comfortable, placid, fireside cat, purry and complacent. if she possessed claws, which is doubtful, they were always well concealed. "yes, a beautiful wedding and a beautiful bride," she murmured, with a little sighing inflection habitual to her, "so young, so--" "humph!" interrupted her husband, with as much of a snort as a mouthful of game would permit, "i tell you it's a pretty tough thing for all of us to see old hepworth looking so happy." he thrust out his lower lip and wrinkled up his eyes until he bore a grotesque likeness to a baby about to cry. "hepworth's my best friend, and to see that look of almost boyish joy on his face was pretty hard. there are some things you can do and some you can't; now one of these things that no man can afford to do is to marry outside his own class. i could have told cress so." the other members of this intimate little coterie of friends, five in all, looked at one another and burst into involuntary laughter. wallace martin, an old young man, a magazine writer, who would fain be a playwright, gave the single bark of mirth which served him for an explosion of laughter. it sounded particularly derisive now. "i would give my little all to have the new mrs. hepworth hear you say that," he chuckled. "dear old hewston, she would not in a thousand years consider any of us in her class. she belonged, let me inform you, to one of the oldest of southern families. her mother was a cotton princess of the loveliest and haughtiest variety. one of the famous belles of her day. her father, too, was of the old south." "why, what are you talking about?" growled hewston irascibly. "she hadn't a dime--was a beautiful cloak model or something of that kind." "she painted dinky things for a living, if you mean that," said martin carelessly, "lamp-shades and menu cards and such." "if she only had some friends, even one relative," deplored mrs. hewston, "it would look so much--er--nicer, you know. relatives do add a background." she shook her head regretfully. "we'll have to be her relatives," said maud carmine, a niece of mrs. hewston and a plain rather faded young woman of pale and indefinite tints and many angles. her claim to distinction rested on the fact that she was a drawing-room musician of--strange anomaly--real musical feeling. it was her misfortune always to be explained by those who found her tact, good nature and practical common sense useful, and who drew heavily on them, as, "not attractive looking, you know; but pure gold, and one of the most dependable persons," and this damning tribute of friendship served as an admirable check to further curiosity concerning her. "yes, we must be her background." her glance lingered for a moment on wallace martin, but he returned it briefly and indifferently. "a young woman who has just married millions needs no family group," remarked alice wilstead lightly. "the most effective background is her husband." "gad!" mr. hewston put down his knife and fork to glare at her. "the idea of looking at hepworth as a background. he who has always been in the front of everything. a background! and for a snub-nosed chit of a girl!" "oh, willoughby, dear, not snub-nosed," expostulated his wife mildly. "snub-nosed, i said," insisted willoughby. "didn't i walk up the aisle with her?" "hush, dear, hush," murmured his wife. "here she comes now." the bride was leaving. passing through the handsome, stiff apartments like a white cloud, to make ready for the journey before her, she stopped a moment for a word or two with maud carmine as she paused at that table. hewston rose reluctantly to his feet. "i once heard of a wedding," he said confidentially and hopefully to wallace martin, "where the bride went up to change her gown, and never showed up again." "where did she go?" asked wallace with interest. "dunno," returned willoughby. "old lover. fourth dimension. unexplainable, but fact, i assure you." chapter ii a far world of dreaming the bride had passed through the admiring groups with a smile here, a word there and was already half up the stairway, above the voices, the heavy flower scents, the sentimental melodies which stole from the musicians' bower. on, a white, mystic figure, her veil floating behind her; on, without undue haste, but most eagerly, as if she climbed some mount which led from the world to a desired solitude. on the first landing she paused, leaning for a moment, juliet-like as from a balcony, and looked down on the moving mosaic of color beneath, the gay, light tones of the women's gowns thrown into relief by the dark coats of the men. the gazers paid her the tribute of involuntary "ohs," and barely restrained themselves from applause as if at the appearance of their favorite actress. as usual perdita had made a picture of herself, an involuntary and unpremeditated picture; but in effect beyond the calculations of the most vigilant stage manager. she stood with one arm lightly upraised holding her bouquet of white jasmine above her laughing face. behind her, a stained glass window, before her the marble balustrade. then the bouquet, its white ribbons waving and circling, whirled through the air, over the sea of upturned faces and white clutching hands and straight into alice wilstead's arms. with the laughter and clamor of voices ringing in her ears, perdita, hidden from sight now by a turn of the staircase, followed, with unconcealed haste, the crimson velvet pathway which led to solitude. at the top of the stairs she hesitated briefly, glancing right and left. she had been in the house but twice before, both times under the chaperonage of mrs. hewston, and she was not sure of the exact geographical position of her own suite of apartments. at this moment her maid, engaged from that morning, stepped forward and threw open a door. perdita smiled approval. it would have been difficult to withhold it. olga, a paragon of maids, if references and experience count, showed no signs of the wear and tear of previous mistresses. she was delightful in appearance, rosy-cheeked, amiable, immaculate, with that air of trained capability which invites confidence. perdita paused before entering. "are all my traveling things out?" she asked. "yes, madame." "very well, i shall not need you for a few moments. remain here and when i want you i will ring." "yes, madame." perdita drew a breath of relief as the door was closed gently behind her. at last she was alone, away from eyes, eyes that were everywhere. she had felt all morning as if she were encompassed by them, appraising eyes, envious eyes, unfamiliar, inquisitive eyes. she looked slowly about her. and these were her own apartments, these beautiful, cold, unlived-in rooms, as empty of life or individuality as a shell. yesterday she had walked through them with isabel hewston, pleased, admiring, but a little overawed. she had not realized before what a wizard's wand cresswell wielded. he had but waved it and great architects and decorators, their disciplined and cultivated imaginations stimulated by the prospect of unlimited expenditure had devised for her, penniless perdita carey, all this beauty and luxury. she had only stipulated timidly that she might be environed in her favorite rose color, a mere suggestion for those who had the matter in charge. it was enough. her bed chamber bloomed with the pale but vivid flush of pink roses, la france, accentuated with cool, suave, silver notes, like the delicate, contrasted phrasing of a musical theme. the result of color and arrangement was youthful, joyous, spacious. beyond a softly falling curtain, she caught a glimpse of her sitting-room. american beauty, a radiant spot with delicious water colors on the walls, bowls of roses, the sunshine falling through the windows, and shelves of books, each volume bound in creamy vellum. in one of the long mirrors which reflected her graceful figure from every angle she saw through an opposite door her dressing-room and bath, with its elaborate appointments, more inviting and luxurious than any of which the proudest roman beauty could have dreamed. she looked about her with a faint, strange smile. what a contrast were these cold and splendid rooms, not yet animated by her personality, to that little apartment with its two or three tiny chambers, high up under the roof, where she had lived and worked! then she turned back to her reflection in the mirror. it was extremely becoming to her, all this background of rose and silver. perdita realized that as she unfastened the white flowers from her hair and let her long veil fall like a cloud about her. with a deft movement she caught it and tossed it on a chair for olga to fold later. she slipped out of her wedding-gown next and laid it more carelessly still upon a couch. then she leaned forward, her elbow on the dressing-table, her chin on her hand, and regarded herself steadily, that faint, strange smile still on her lips. well, she had fulfilled her destiny, justified eugene gresham's prophecy. she heard his words to her, spoken the last time she had seen him, three months before, as plainly as if his voice still rang in her ears. "perdita, your destiny is written on your face. it includes marrying a millionaire and having your portrait painted by me." fateful words! she had just married the millionaire, but even here, upon the threshold of this new life, she was constrained to halt a moment and cast one backward glance, "just for the old love's sake." it was the night before eugene gresham sailed for europe to paint the portraits of "princessin, contessin and high altessin." again she awaited him. again she heard his step on the stair without, a quick, light step with an odd halt in it. he was coming, and her heart beat. how it beat as she stood there breathless beside the window! "perdita!" eugene's voice. he was across the room in a flash, both her hands in his. "here, let me see you in the light." he drew her toward a lamp. "two years, two years since we have met, and me wasting time painting in the desert places when i might have been with you. time is not in the far east. ah, my cousin!" (the relationship was remote) he sighed. "why, as i live," with a quick change of tone, "you've got another dimple, and that makes you a new and lovelier perdita." she flushed adorably. "how nice and southern," she cried with an attempt at lightness, "and how exactly like you, just like the old 'gene." "the old 'gene," his eyes still holding hers, "has never changed." "how--how--are the pictures going?" withdrawing her hands from his. "beautifully!" he said carelessly. "the glassy eyes of the millionaires are all turning toward me, and i have more commissions to make beautiful on canvas their pug-nosed, fat-faced wives than i care to accept. those ladies hail me as a great psychological artist. their mirrors are so cruel to them that when my brushes flatter them they say that i paint their souls; strip away the husk of the flesh and reveal enduring loveliness." he struck a match to light a cigarette and then hastily shielded it with his cupped hand from the breeze which blew through the open window. the light flared into his down-bent face, bringing out its dissonances almost grotesquely in that small, momentary flash. pick gresham to pieces and he was incontrovertibly convicted of sheer ugliness, but the fact bothered him not at all. he knew that few ever arrived at the cool, dispassionate frame of mind regarding him where they were capable of that exhaustive analysis known as picking to pieces. he was slender and rather small of stature, not more than medium height. one shoulder was noticeably higher than the other and he walked with a slight limp, the result of an injury received in boyhood. coarse, blue-black hair with a sort of crinkle in it stood out from his head like a cloud. his skin was swarthy, his features irregular, even his eyes, dark eyes, were only occasionally brilliant. but he might have been appreciably uglier, almost as hideous as the yellow dwarf or beauty's beast,--it would have mattered no more than his present lack of beauty, and well he knew it. his was the magic gift of glamour, and all the dissonances and inharmonies of appearance as well as of character seemed but the italics emphasizing his charm. his mind was supple and flexible, his wits nimble, even subtle. he was as vivid, as veering, as fascinating as flame. his match, the third he had struck, blew out before it had lighted his cigarette, and he threw it away with a petulant gesture. he did not answer her, as he was again attempting to light his cigarette, this time with success. then he began to saunter about the room. in spite of her penury perdita had yet managed to invest her little workshop with both daintiness and charm. the walls were hung with pink and white chintz and here and there were bits of fragile china and rare old silver on claw-legged mahogany tables, while from dim canvases in tarnished silver frames smiled the sweet, dark eyes of haughty southern beauties of a generation unused to life's struggles. "you really saved some of the best things from that hideous auction, didn't you?" picking up a bit of china to scrutinize it more carefully. "i was horrified when i heard of it across the world, several months after it was all over. if i'd only been there to buy the whole lot in. plucky little girl you were, perdita, to come on here and manage to keep the gaunt, gray wolf at bay." "what else was there for me to do?" she asked without turning her head. "aunt died, the place had to go. as for the wolf, if you look sharp, eugene, you may see his paws thrusting under this door." in the center of the room was a large table covered with paint brushes, colors, a litter of candle shades, cotillion favors and cards in various stages of completion. eugene carefully cleared a space on that edge of the table nearest perdita's chair, and perched upon it, looking down at her with a smile. "my stars, dita!" he cried with the truest conviction, "you are a beauty! the moment i return, i mean to paint you again. and this time i'll set the world afire. do you remember how many portraits i have made of you? why, just to see you brings back my boyhood,--the hopes, the struggles, the effort, the haunted days, the feverish nights. i used to think, 'if i can just learn how to get this effect, i'll know the whole secret.' i've got past that now. there's always a new and more difficult riddle every day. but dita, dita, the dreams of my youth you recall!" the smile died from her face. her eyes grew wistful. "the dreams of our youth," she repeated. "i'm young yet; but they haunt me. they were beautiful dreams down there on that gray, old river. can't you shut your eyes, eugene, and see the terraces sloping down to the water, the lovely, neglected garden with its tangle of roses and jasmine?" "do i remember?" his eyes looked deep into hers. "i swear i never smell jasmine without thinking of the old place and you. perdita, do you ever think what life might have been for us if it hadn't been for our accursed poverty? if we'd only had just a little between us. it's a question of courage. if we'd only had the courage to face things hand in hand we'd have got along somehow, i dare say. but we didn't have that quality, did we? we didn't believe enough in our dreams. that's the worst of life. she won't let you." "oh, the dreams!" she scoffed. her color remained high, her eyes glittered, but with irritation, not tears. she suffered from an old laceration of the heart, the more wounding in that, for pride's sake, she must ever deny it expression. eugene always took the attitude as if they together had renounced a mutual love, and often implied, without rancor, but with a forgiving, almost understanding tenderness, that the responsibility of their marred lives lay on her shoulders. perdita was of the twentieth century, but she was also a southern woman of many traditions, and she could not say the words which rose to her defensive lips: "eugene, you have never asked me to face life hand in hand with you." he would with a glance, she could see it, feel it, convict her of blunted intuitions, of an inability to discern exquisite shades of emotion; and then he would express his love for her in glowing, passionate phrases, confusingly evasive, elusive beyond definition, committing himself to nothing. and if this shifting of responsibility on her, this ardent skirting of a definite issue were premeditated or his unavoidable, temperamental way of viewing the matter, she could not tell. conjecture was idle. her knowledge of his character, her ready mental accusations and equally ready excuses, these comprising the sole weight of evidence, merely held the scales steady. eugene began to pick up, first one, then another, of the favors on the table, a smile, tender yet humorous, about his lips. "by jove, these are not so bad! they are rather stunning. you always did have a lot of feeling for form and color, dita, but you wouldn't work. you weren't willing to drudge and to starve if necessary. that was because you lacked the clear vision. it wasn't always before you, a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night." none might doubt his sincerity or conviction now. it was mounting as flame. "artistic and appreciative you are, dita. all this trash shows it, but you lack the creative impulse. you were never meant to be a barefooted, tattered follower of the vision, a lodger in a new palace of dreams each night. you should build your house on the rock of substantial things, bread-and-butter facts. "oh, do not toss up your head in that wounded-stag manner. good lord! isn't it enough that you are beautiful? and how beautiful! i'm almost tempted to cancel my passage and, instead of sailing to-morrow morning, stop here and paint you again. really, i am. but what would it profit me? i'd just be sowing the seed for a new harvest of heartaches. perdita, your destiny is written on your face." it was as if he willed to speak lightly. "it includes marrying a millionaire, and having your portrait painted by me. you'll never have an international reputation as a beauty until you do both." but in spite of his smile and his flippant words there was bitterness in his eyes. she did not see that, but the lightness of his words and tone pricked her to an immediate decision, a decision which she had, unconsciously, postponed until she had seen him. her face paled, her lips folded in a tight line. "i am going to marry the millionaire," she said firmly enough, although there was a slight tremor in her voice. "it depends on you whether or not there is a portrait of mrs. cresswell hepworth by gresham." there was triumph in her eyes and voice as thus she lifted her pride from the dust. "cresswell hepworth!" his astonishment was unbounded. "perdita! i throw my hat at your feet. cresswell hepworth! the pick of the bunch. wonderful! but," looking at her curiously, "how on earth did you meet him?" "he heard of my amulet through a man i met at old mrs. huff's, mr. martin. he has a wonderful collection of amulets, and he wanted to buy it of me." "but you didn't sell it?" he said quickly. "no, of course not. h'm-m. that old amulet. you laugh at my superstitions, dita, but you must admit that it's queer the way it's interwoven with the history of our family." he began to roll cigarettes and lay them with neat and exquisite regularity on the table beside him. his eyebrows were raised, his mouth twisted in a sort of rueful yet whimsical grimace. when he had finished rolling the sixth cigarette, he laid it in line with the others, an exact line, his eye was so true. then at last he looked at her, and his cynical, earnest, mocking, enthusiastic face softened. his eyes enveloped her with tenderness. there was a heart-break in his smile. "ah, star-eyed perdita, how shall i give you up? the only woman!" he mused a moment, and then repeated: "the only woman! if we had but had the courage to take the bitter with the sweet, perdita." unwitting goad! it struck too deep for her to conceal the wound. "you do not say 'can,' i observe, eugene," she said laughingly, but there was an edge to her voice like that on finely tempered steel. "no," he returned, his fingers busy with a rearrangement of the cigarettes; "you see it involves you and me. not john jones and jane smith, but you and me. do you know what that means? well, it means that it involves the inheritance and training of a good many generations. do you think i do not know how you loathe all this?" he flicked with his fingers the dainty trifles on the table. "i know well the craving of your nature for splendor and beauty, how necessary they are to you, and how dinkiness and makeshifts irritate and depress you, take the heart out of you. that is one you, one perdita. there is another. i saw her when i came in to-night. god, i wish i hadn't!" his voice dropped on this exclamation and she did not hear it. "she is young. her beautiful, dark eyes ask love and give it. her heart dreams of it. it is in every tone of her voice. these two are at war, the natural woman and the woman with her inherited love of ease and luxury and cultivated, artificial desires. which is the stronger? why, to-night"--he picked up one of the cigarettes and prepared to light it; his hands trembled, his face was white--"the woman who is ready to love. she would listen to me--to-night. i would hold her. oh, what's the use?" he twisted his shoulders impatiently. then he bent forward and tapped the table lightly but emphatically, as if to add weight to his words. "you'd listen to me to-night, i know that; but as sure as to-morrow's dawn i'd get a little note from you saying that the morn had brought wisdom. but, oh, i am glad i'm sailing to-morrow." "so am i," she flashed out. "you think--you take too much for granted, eugene." "i dare say." his voice sounded flat. "no one ever appreciates renunciation. well, it's out into the night in more senses than one." he rose and looked at her as she sat with downcast eyes, and half stretched out his arms toward her. then as she too rose, he clasped his fingers about the back of her head and drew her face toward him, although she strove to avert it from him. "good-by, sweetheart." even she must believe in the ardor and sincerity of his tones. "good-by, perdita of the south." he kissed her lightly on one cheek and then the other. "good-by, my jasmine flower." he hesitated a moment in leaving the room, as if to turn and clasp her to him and bear her away; then he shut the door gently behind him and she heard his halting, hurried step upon the stair. she sat listening until its last echoes had died away, and then, casting her outstretched arms on the table, sending the favors and menus and candle-shades in a shower to the floor, she burst into a storm of tears. there was a low, discreet, respectful knock, olga's knock on the door leading into mrs. cresswell hepworth's splendid apartments. perdita started violently and came back to the present from her far world of dreaming. she had not even begun to dress, but still was sitting, chin on hand, gazing with apparent intentness at her image in the mirror. "it is almost time for madame to start," olga smiled from the doorway, "so i ventured to remind." "yes," perdita spoke hurriedly, rising at the same time. "get me into my gown quickly, please, and tie my shoes." olga was deft and practised, and perdita's dressing was the work of a few minutes. "my veil now," said the new mrs. hepworth, "and--oh, i almost forgot." she turned to lift from her dressing-table an exceedingly quaint and striking ornament, depending from a long, thin chain. it was a square of crystal about an inch and a half in diameter, set curiously in strands of silver and gold, twisted and beaten together, and, as must be apparent to even the casual observer, was of ancient and unique workmanship. this was perdita's amulet, the old charm, which eugene with his superstitious fancies had always longed to possess, and which had excited also the desire of the collector in hepworth; but in spite of many temptations to part with it, dita had always retained possession of it. it was her one link with the past, a personal link, but also a traditional and hereditary one. she wound the chain several times about her neck, and the crystal pendant gleamed dully against the dark blue cloth of her gown. "you also are ready, olga?" she said as she passed through the door. "yes, madame." hepworth was waiting for perdita at the head of the stairs. he was in his heavy motoring coat, his cap in hand. he smiled as he saw her. "just in time," he said. "i'm afraid we will have to make haste, rather. ah," as his eye caught the talisman, "you are wearing the amulet, are you not? blessed old thing. if it had not been for that, i should never have met you." "i believe you only married me to get it," she replied with an answering smile, "you are such an insatiable collector." "do you believe that? do you?" he asked. "because if you do, you are as stupid as you are pretty, and you have no idea what that implies." chapter iii pink and white existence so mr. and mrs. cresswell hepworth whirled away in the big motor and for the next few months wandered about the globe. perdita, who had seen nothing but an old southern plantation and new york, the latter from the curb, as it were, must see everything; so in pursuit of this aim, the hepworths were constantly stepping from huge, magnificent boats to huge, magnificent motors, thence to huge, magnificent hotels. and cities, the open country, villages, mountain peaks, strange peoples, were as debris strewing the pathway of perdita's avid flight through new experiences. it was tremendously stimulating, even heady, she found, to hold the world between one's thumb and finger, and turn it this way and that to catch the light. headier still to discover that to wish is to realize, but proportionately a shock to find that the life of infinite variety may only be lived within circumscribed boundaries. what is more disillusionizing than to learn that money has its limitations? it can merely buy the very best of things, the superlatives of the commonplace, but these, in the last analysis, remain food, lodgings, clothes, conveyances, ornaments, no more. money can not buy stars or dreams, or love or happiness. perdita's soaring youth resented it. but she was adaptable, enormously interested and the ground within the boundaries was new, affording daily opportunities for fresh exploration. and she, quick to observe and compare, had profited by her new experiences. money became to her merely the medium of exchange for any beautiful thing she might want. speedily she lost her first, fresh pleasure in making it flutter its little golden wings and fly; but her love of art deepened and strengthened, and at many famous shrines she offered her heart's homage. she took up the study of designing, and worked at it systematically with an ardor and intensity which at first amused and then puzzled her husband. on their return from their travels perdita occupied herself in altering, refurnishing and redecorating one or two of hepworth's country places and his town house. she worked in consultation with a great firm, and succeeded in changing the weary acquiescence of "our mr. so and so" to interest and an astonishment bordering on enthusiasm. she was not the average rich woman who had gone in for being artistic, with a head full of glaringly impossible ideas and a flow of helpful suggestions which set the professional teeth on edge. on the contrary, this girl, mrs. hepworth, really knew a few things and was willing to learn more. she was a student. "the only woman," murmured dazedly "our mr. smith-jones," "the only woman i ever met who realizes that decoration must conform to architecture, not defy it. you usually have to fracture their skulls to make them understand that pompadour prettinesses are not suitable in a gothic chapel." but when she had finished the houses, and designed more costumes than she could wear, she looked about her for fresh worlds to conquer, and discovered that she was up against the boundaries. walls everywhere! she could do anything she chose, travel, buy clothes, motors, an aëroplane if she wanted it, only she did not. she next went through a phase when she decided that the people with whom she was thrown were intolerable, representing a frivolous and empty-headed society. her imagination dwelt on the class who "did things," "the dreamers," she called them to herself, who adorned a brilliant, picturesque, delightfully haphazard bohemia, where, at feasts, principally of red wine and bloomy, purple grapes, laughter pealed to the rafters, and the conversation sparkled as if sprinkled with stardust. she strove to enter this olympian vagabondia, and found herself entangled in the nets of many fowlers, sycophantic, impecunious, and, unsated of their many banquets, physically hungry. she began to have seasons of ennui and depression, increasing in frequency. what was the matter with her world? nothing, she would hasten to assure herself, it was the best of all possible worlds, and she, a darling of fortune--once, unforgetably, the waif of chance--was the most contented of women. only--what was the matter with this perversely empty and uninteresting world? it was not always so. it was once invested with wonderful things, and such simple things, too. she remembered how she used to stand at the window of her little work-room watching the day fade, marveling at the miracle of the twilight. while the sun was high, she had seen only commonplace, dusty streets, crowded with people, and had heard only a crazy, creaking old piano-organ grinding away on the pavement beneath, but in the soft indefiniteness of twilight these solid houses and buildings would become unsubstantial, mere shadowy arabesques on the spangled gloom of night. there were purple vistas, glittering lights and fairy towers. she would hold her breath, almost expecting to hear a nightingale. it was all mystery and magic, life and romance, that eternal romance her starved youth asked. how she used to dream of the unexpected, the dazzling unexpected! and then cresswell had come, and, as she thought, offered it to her. to do perdita justice, she had not married hepworth merely because of his great wealth. she was incapable of such sordid and callous calculation. but cophetua had met this beggar maid at her most disheartened and despairing moment, and without difficulty had succeeded in first winning her interest and then enchaining her imagination. in her two years of struggle to earn her livelihood eugene had become more or less a memory, and, in spite of the fascination and interest he had always had for her, she did not blind herself to certain erratic tendencies of his. he might appear at any moment, so she judged him, with vows of eternal love, and straightway, if the mood seized him, begin a new picture and forget her. and so she married hepworth largely that life might become a successive series of introductions to an ever varying unexpected. instead, although her quest was feverish, she encountered only the commonplace. she was like a mouse which has discovered the inadequacy of cheese to quench its soul-yearnings. what remained? the truth of the matter was that perdita's world, which seemed so hopelessly askew to her, had an architectural defect. it lacked that sure antidote to ennui--a bluebeard's closet. now perdita was young and healthy. she had great curiosity, and a certain insatiable mental quality which would have successfully riveted her interest to life, but for one fact, her heart was as ardent and insatiable as her intelligence--and her husband bored her. there is no record of bluebeard boring any of his wives. she became more and more conscious of a continual little plaint running always through her consciousness, like the sad, monotonous murmur of an ever-flowing stream, a little unceasing plaint against life in the abstract and life in its personal application. "there must be as many worlds as there are points of view," so ran the stream, "but my life's like a wedding-cake, all white and sparkling and overdecorated, and absolutely insipid. candy! that's what it is ... my rooms are all pink and white, and i'm crusted over with pink sugar." perdita always thought in color. "i'm tired of all this pink and white and baby-blue existence. i'd welcome a little scarlet and black sin for a change. oh, it's just your corsets over again. you're put in them when you're about fifteen and you never get out of them again. we women think in corsets, breathe in them. we live in them mentally, and accept all their constrictions and restrictions as a matter of course. we take in drafts of air, and expand our lungs and say we're emancipated, but we only expand as much as the corsets allow. we've put our world in corsets, to confine us still more ... mine used to be mended, frequently washed, with some of the bones broken; now i have many pairs, brocade, satin--cloth of gold, if i want them--but they are the same thing, corsets, corsets on our bodies and brains and lives. "look at cresswell. he doesn't wear corsets. he has an interesting, absorbing, unfettered life. he's using the muscles of his brain--strengthening them on some resisting substance. he's in the thick of it.... what fun! planning, visioning things in his mind, and seeing them take form in the external. he's a builder. he wears an imperturbable mask. that's for defense; but behind it i sometimes see keen, powerful, calculating gleams in his eyes, and i want to know about them, but i can't.... i can't talk to him about any but surface things. i can't show him what is in my heart.... the corsets are between us. he's one of the great powers, and he's mine, a possession like the kohinoor, but i do not fancy that the kohinoor constitutes the queen's happiness. "what are cresswell and i to each other, anyway? why, he's my kohinoor, a possession of great price which endows me with distinction, and runs my credit up into the millions. he's as brilliant and cold and secretive as his prototype. and i--i'm his doll, a very jewel of a doll. one of the prettiest in the world, wonderfully dressed, exquisitely marceled, faultlessly manicured. i can smile enchantingly, and open and shut my mouth to ask for what i want and what i don't want, particularly the latter, and lisp 'thank you' when he drops a diamond necklace or a ruby tiara into my lap. "i hate a man that puts me on a pedestal. any woman does. he thinks i'm sugar and salt and will melt and break. i wish he'd come to me, just once, with some enthusiasm and hug me breathless. i'm tired of his everlasting chivalry and deference.... when he begins to treat me with reverence and guards my youth and all that, i'd like to swear at him like the disreputable parrot of a drunken sailor.... wouldn't i surprise him? i wonder what he would do if i'd cut loose? oh, dear, i wish he'd come home drunk some night and smash up some of this junk and--what is that phrase of wallace martin's--swipe me one; and then be penitent and remorseful and ashamed and human--instead of always being like a darned old statue of the american statesman with one hand thrust in the bosom of his frock-coat. "i wonder--i wonder--what kind of a husband eugene would have made. not one of the amiable, benign, deferential ones, anyway. what were those lines 'gene used to say? "'each life's unfulfilled, you see, and both hang patchy and scrappy. we have not sighed deep, laughed free, starved, feasted, despaired, been happy!' "that's it--that's it--that's life. to sigh deep--to laugh free; to make your bed in hell, and then soar on the wings of the morning.... i'm young, beautiful. i have everything but experience. i mean to have it.... no wonder eve took the apple the serpent offered, if she was as bored in the garden of eden as i am. i'd have bitten more than one, though. what is the use of living if you don't live?" and while perdita raged in inward rebellion, the world, viewing things from the outside, took an entirely different view of her matter. popular opinion inclined to the belief that the good fairies had too heavily dowered this young woman at her cradle, and consequently a readjustment was inevitable, probably by the gracious means of ennobling tribulation. the dramatic event was rather eagerly anticipated. not that envy had any part in it or that any of perdita's friends or acquaintances wished to see a fellow being punished for the liberality of providence. on the contrary. it was merely a sane desire to mark the balances of the universe in faultless equilibrium and to have the comforting assurance that the mills of the gods still ground with the proverbial exactness. youth, health, wealth, beauty, happiness, all unlimited! an exasperating spectacle! how could all be right with the world as long as hebe continued to pour most of the nectar into one glass, while so many thirsty, deserving souls were denied even a sip? and perdita went her way and smiled alike on those who caviled and those who applauded. she had accepted her husband's friends as her own with a sort of careless, indifferent good nature and the relations existing between herself and the closely cemented little group were sufficiently harmonious under the circumstances. maud carmine and she had struck "leagues of friendship" at once, and maud's prediction that hepworth's friends would have to serve as perdita's relatives would seem to have been verified. and maud, through constant association, appeared to have reflected some of dita's beauty, for there was evidenced the most remarkable change in the plain miss carmine, her name no longer prefaced by that deplorable adjective, however. alice wilstead explained it by frankly giving the credit to perdita. it was she, alice asserted, who had had the faith and the courage to take maud vigorously in hand and make of her a new creature as far as the outward presentment was concerned. the results had been so mutually satisfactory as to rivet the friendship between the two; for dita had proved by her works her belief that there was not the faintest necessity for any such creature as an unattractive woman; and maud, having lost all faith in the willingness of nature to better her original handiwork, had turned hopefully to art, with the result that she was now one of the most talked-of women in town. by men, because she had recently grown attractive enough for them to discover that she was also extremely agreeable and sympathetic. by women, because they ached to discover her secret. they remembered as easily as the men forgot that for twenty-eight years of her life maud had been as a weed by the wall, a lank and sallow weed, oppressed by the sparseness of her leaves and the entire absence of either flowers or fruit, and suddenly she had acquired an art, an air, the trick of dress so subtle that it imparted distinction even to her worst points. but when perdita proceeded to verify, a little tardily, it is true, the hope of mrs. willoughby hewston, sighingly expressed at the wedding breakfast, and furnished herself with a relative, the coterie gasped. it was not perhaps just the selection mrs. hewston would have made for her, but, nevertheless, perdita had produced a relative, although, it must be confessed, of a rather dubious and indefinite nearness. if mrs. hewston had been questioned on the subject she might have confessed that the relative she had in mind, as presenting an admirable background for a young and lovely girl, was either a silver-haired mother with a white lace cap, and a hair brooch fastening the snowy lawn collar of her black gown; or, in lieu of her, a maiden aunt. indeed, had mrs. hewston been given free choice, she would have inclined toward the latter. unquestionably, a maiden aunt is the best possible promoter of that nice sense of the proprieties, those right feelings and carefully graduated moral sentiments which are indispensable to a homeless, penniless young woman scrambling for a living. but perdita, in presenting her relative, had almost flippantly disregarded these considerations involving a sense of universal fitness. it was a far cry, really an almost revolutionary distance, one felt, from the silver-haired mother or rather acid maiden aunt to eugene gresham. eugene gresham! fancy! for eugene had returned to his native land with the recognition of paris and london, even their acclaim--golden bay leaves and purple cloaks. therefore was he thrice welcomed of new york. therefore, the next presumption followed as naturally as the first. it was out of the question that mrs. hepworth, whose beauty was a matter of international comment, should lack a gresham portrait, a distinction now unattainable save to those upon the mountain peaks of noble birth, enormous wealth, great achievement, remarkable beauty or superlative notoriety. as alice wilstead pointed out, no one could cavil at any relative mrs. hepworth chose to set up, however regretable might be perdita carey's claim of kinship with this particular person, and she had certainly, as far as one knew, been discreet enough not to flaunt him during her scrambles. now, as mrs. hepworth's cousin (how many times removed, dear?) he was one more jewel in her crown. mrs. hewston sighingly acquiesced. "yes, really. as mrs. hepworth's relative, yes. but hardly as the guide, philosopher and friend of youth, feminine youth, anyway." only the happily married might safely claim him, for gresham, with his fame as a painter of beautiful women and his almost equal reputation as a fascinating person, would not have been commended by any maiden aunt for either right feelings, nice moral sentiments or a discriminating taste for the proprieties. as for cresswell hepworth, he looked after his vast and varied interests, kept up his collections, especially his collection of amulets, in which he was greatly interested, and occupied his leisure in seeing that his wife was sufficiently entertained and amused to gratify the requirements even of her eager youth. did she hint a longing for the roc's egg? it was cabled for within the hour. did she breathe a desire for the moon? orders were given that an aëronautic expedition capable of securing it be manned at once. and yet in spite of all this obvious contentment and happiness, mr. willoughby hewston in the rôle of raven had never ceased to flap his wings and croak. he was particularly in this favorite vein of his one afternoon when he shuffled into his wife's sitting-room, where she and alice wilstead sat over their tea-cups. they heard him sighing heavily as he came. "no, i don't want any tea," he said, letting himself down slowly into an easy chair, "you know i never touch it. "poor old cress!" he shook his head gloomily at a spot in the carpet. "well, it's just as i predicted. that wife of his is the talk of the town!" "oh, my dear!" exclaimed his wife. she, loyal soul, never failed him as audience. a quick glance passed between mrs. wilstead and herself, as if he had mentioned the subject uppermost in their minds, and, no doubt, in their conversation. "oh, come now, willoughby," said alice, instinctively choosing the best method of drawing him out, "you know it's nothing like so bad as that." hewston scowled heavily and laid one hand gingerly upon his rheumatic knee, which gave him an especially sharp twinge at the moment. "it's probably worse," he replied with even more than his customary acerbity, "worse than we, any of us, know. didn't i see them walking up fifth avenue together this afternoon, and didn't a fellow speak of it to me? and cress out of town!" "well, let me tell something, dear," said his wife soothingly. "cress will very soon be in town again, for here are invitations to a dinner the hepworths are having next week. quite an informal affair. perdita writes me, 'just the little group of cresswell's best friends, which i hope i may also claim as mine,'" reading from the note she had picked up from the table. "very sweet of her." "a dinner, eh," growled hewston, "with all of us, and i suppose that painter fellow. well, i only hope it will not fall to me to open poor cresswell's eyes." "oh, willoughby!" "i'll not shirk my duty if it does. you can understand that. what evening is this dinner? next thursday! humph! who is that?" as the curtain before the door was pushed aside and some one entered. "i!" said wallace martin, "only poor little me. they told me to come up. what's happening next thursday?" "the hepworths' dinner. there is probably an invitation awaiting you at home." "no, there is not," he said. "it's in my pocket now. i picked it up as i was leaving. from what maud carmine has just told me, i imagine it's a touching family group composed of ourselves and eugene gresham." "dear me," deplored mrs. hewston, "i do wish she would consider willoughby more. she must know that he can not endure the sight of mr. gresham." "it is not her fault," said martin quickly, "as far as i can make out from what maud told me. cress became imbued with the idea that he wanted his dear old friends clustering about the board, and made out the list himself." "how like a man!" remarked alice wilstead gloomily. "but why, just now?" "oh, he's been adding to that pet collection of amulets of his, and he wanted to show us his new acquisitions. that's the root of it, i fancy. i don't imagine the lovely perdita pined for us. she has been a creature of moods lately. very hotty-like with me." "she was actually almost impertinent to willoughby the other day." mrs. hewston spoke with a hushed mournfulness. "i'm afraid all this luxury and adulation has turned her head, and willoughby spoke so gently to her, too, did you not, dear?" "ugh! humph!" quoth willoughby. chapter iv our loving friends as it chanced the hepworths were not particularly fortunate in their choice of an evening for the dinner so gloomily anticipated by their guests. the weather was unpropitious. all day rain had threatened, and the air had been almost sultry, a parting word flung over her shoulder to autumn by a mischievous july who should long ago have vanished. as the evening wore on clouds banked more densely upon the horizon, occasionally muttering thunder, and this electric hint of storm in the air had in some way communicated itself to the mental atmosphere. a sense of foreboding, a consciousness of discord, seemed to swell ominously now and again beneath the smooth and colorful surface of the dinner. even the dullest of the guests felt that, and to the intuitive, the stately progress of the meal was nerve-racking. when the hostess rose, every individual sigh of relief involuntarily exhaled became a chorus, shocking in volume. they winced nervously, but in spite of it, each guest stood by his guns. they had, apparently with one mind, and certainly with one voice, decided against bridge. the ordeal of dinner bravely borne, licensed them, they felt, even bestowed the accolade of privilege on them, to escape the prevalent atmosphere of unrest as quickly as possible. in the brief time they had allotted themselves to remain, barely skirting the limits of conventional decency, alice wilstead, isabel and willoughby hewston and wallace martin had elected to take their coffee and cigarettes on a small balcony opening from the drawing-room by long french windows and giving upon a garden, quite half of a city block, with thick, close-cropped lawn, and black masses of dense shrubbery permeating the damp and sultry air with the mingled fragrance of earth and leaves and some late-blooming flowers. maud carmine, good-natured as usual, had seated herself at the piano, across the length of the room from the balcony, to play a ballad of chaminade's at her host's request. hepworth, who alone appeared to be oblivious of the sinister atmospheric influences, leaned his elbows on the piano and listened, occasionally unhesitatingly breaking the flow of the music with conversation. with their friend and host thus comfortably within sight, yet out of earshot, the group on the balcony felt at liberty to speak with freedom; no danger of sudden appearances, consequent jumps and hot wonder at what might have been overheard. "gad!" said mr. hewston, more gray and pink, puffy and heavily financial than ever, "when will people learn to eat and drink without flowers on the table?" "no flowers!" repeated alice wilstead. "it would look dull, would it not?" from her tone it was evident that she had paid little heed to his words. "what difference does that make?" he argued irritably. "you don't go to dinner to look at the table decorations. but if they must have 'em, why can't they have the artificial kind or those paper things. anything but the beastly, smelly, live ones." "don't you really care for them?" she asked, laughing. "i thought every one loved flowers. to tell the truth, they were about all that made that unending dinner bearable to me. they were so exquisitely arranged." "oh, that," in grudging admission, "goes without saying in this house, but," fretfully, "they were all the loud smelling kind." "she always arranges them herself," said mrs. wilstead, "she has wonderful taste, wonderful. her house, her clothes, even down to the smallest detail of the table. marvelous!" "humph! she doesn't show the same taste in men," grunted hewston. "no brains at all." mrs. wilstead leaned forward to tap his arm with her fan. "do not make any mistake on that score," her voice was emphatic, "she has plenty of brains." "humph!" more scornfully than before. "then i wish they'd keep her from making the fool of herself that she is doing now." "hs-s-sh," alice looked as if she would like to thrust a handkerchief into his mouth. "ah!" glancing up with relief as isabel and wallace martin turned from their contemplation of the garden over the balcony railing. "sit down here," she motioned to two chairs beside her. "dear me, alice," said martin, "isn't your face tired with the effort of keeping the corners of your mouth turned up and the sparkle in your eyes? the only person who seems calm and serene this evening is dear old hepworth. what do you think it is on his part, the quintessence of pose or simple, uncomprehending, fatuous ignorance?" "my god!" growled hewston explosively. his wife started nervously. "oh willoughby dear, not so loud! wallace," in what was as near a tone of reproof as she could achieve, "i do wish you wouldn't say those reckless things before willoughby. you know how emotional he is." alice also shook her head impatiently. "don't you think we are a lot of old gossips magnifying matters enormously? you may expect so beautiful a young woman as dita hepworth to be more or less talked about; but there is probably a perfect understanding between herself and cress. lord help her if there isn't," she added almost under her breath, "i've known him many a year." "'when an old bachelor marries a young wife, what is he to expect?'" quoted martin impressively. as a would-be playwright he had the dramatists at his finger-tips. "wallace, you are too bad," expostulated mrs. wilstead. "no wonder you quote from _the school for scandal_. here we are a lot of old wreckers doing our best to shatter a reputation. why dita hepworth and eugene gresham have known each other ever since they were children. naturally, she shows her pleasure in his society." "oh pish!" scoffed wallace martin, "those unconcealed glances she bestowed on him at dinner spoke not of sisterly affection, and how we all squirmed under them and wondered miserably if hepworth was seeing them too." "he always did see everything without appearing to," murmured mrs. wilstead gloomily. "now merely as a sporting chance, which would you bet on," said martin, drawing his chair a bit nearer, "the rich, middle-aged husband, or the fascinating artist, the painter of beautiful women, in the zenith of his fame? it is the same old plot you know, and the oft-told tale may have just two endings. first, she goes off with the artist, lives a squalid and miserable life abroad, falls ill, and dies, holding the hand and imploring the forgiveness of her husband, who conveniently and miraculously appears. in the second ending, she makes all preparations to flee and then something occurs which causes her to see the sculpturesque nobility of her husband's character and the curtain descends to slow sweet music while they stand heart to heart in the calcium light of a grand reconciliation scene." "oh, wallace, do forget for once that you are trying to be a playwright. forget the shop." mrs. wilstead was irritable. "i do wish she would join us," looking about her nervously, "i want to go home. is she utterly careless?" "only absorbed," returned martin calmly. "didn't you hear her ask him before they left the room, to come and look at the picture gallery where he is to paint her portrait? she wanted him to judge of the lighting--a night like this. i thought i saw the flutter of her white gown in the garden yonder a bit ago." "oh do, for goodness sake, change the subject," said alice wilstead hurriedly. "i am sure cresswell must think it queer the way we are all sitting out here with our heads together, in the teeth of that approaching storm." "not at all," martin reassured her. "don't you see that maud is doing her duty heroically? maud isn't the wife's confidante and dearest friend for nothing." "isn't it perfectly wonderful about maud?" commented mrs. hewston. "you all know what a plain, angular creature she was, nothing really to recommend her but her music and she always spoiled that by playing with her shoulder blades." "she's an extremely stunning woman," said wallace martin shortly. "and all due to dita hepworth," announced mrs. wilstead. "wonderful! i never saw a woman with such a genius for dress and decoration. if her beauty wasn't such an obvious quality, i should think it was due to her almost uncanny knowledge of what is becoming and--ah, thank heaven, here she is!" chapter v perdita's talisman perdita hepworth had entered the room, with eugene gresham just a step or two behind her, and, after a glance in the direction of maud carmine and her husband, had moved toward the little group on the balcony. gresham was used to any amount of attention and admiration, but the adulatory interest which he may have merited and had, in fact, grown to regard as his due, was always conspicuously lacking when he appeared with perdita. "the picture gallery is the chosen spot," she announced as if bearing some intelligence for which they had long been waiting, "and the sittings are to be begun at once. i remember when i first knew maud carmine, she said to me, 'fancy what it must be like to have your portrait painted by eugene gresham!'" her low laughter rang with a sort of triumphant amusement. "'dear child,' i answered, 'i have had my portrait painted by him so many times that there would be no novelty whatever in the experience.' you know," to mrs. hewston, who looked faintly puzzled, "'gene and i have always known each other." she looked over at gresham who was seated on the arm of a chair talking to maud carmine and hepworth. "has maud been playing for cresswell?" she asked suddenly. "he is so fond of her music." "yes, she has been playing delightfully," answered mrs. wilstead, "and she looks charming to-night. maud who was always regarded as an ugly duckling has suddenly become a swan." "ah, why not?" said perdita carelessly. "maud hadn't the faintest idea how to make the most of herself. she gave the effect of hard lines and angles, and hair and eyes and skin all cut from the same piece, a dingy dust color. like every other woman of that type she has a perfect passion for mustard colors and hard grays. ugh!" she shivered. "the only thing to do with maud was to make her realize that she must look odd and mysterious, you know. that was all. oh, she is beckoning to me. they want something." she crossed the room with that grace of bearing which nature had bestowed upon her and with the added poise and assurance gained within the last two years. she still gave the effect of extreme simplicity in dress but it was retained as by a miracle, for although she wore no jewels her white gown was of the most exquisite and costly lace. but her head was undeniably carried a trifle higher than usual, and a very close observer might have read boredom in her eyes, defiance in her chin, rebellion in her shoulders. as she turned from the little group on the balcony, she bit her lip irritably, before she again composed her features to the conventional smile of hostess-like cordiality. alice wilstead followed her with puzzled eyes. "it is very difficult to understand a beauty," she said plaintively to martin. "put it more correctly," as he blew a cloud of smoke. "say, it's difficult to understand a woman." "but i do not find it so," she smiled. "i'm one myself. i'm on to all our various vagaries, but dita hepworth puzzles me. look at this house. there are effects here in decoration, so beautiful and unusual that every one says eugene gresham directed them. i know he did not. look at maud carmine, and yet dita herself usually wears the plainest of gowns." "i must confess," said martin, "that i do not follow you." "perhaps not," she mused, then with more animation. "come, wallace, tell me exactly how she impresses you." "that is easy," he replied. "she is one of the prettiest women i ever saw in my life." "ah, of course," in annoyance, "but i didn't mean that. that is no impression of character." "mm," he pondered. "it isn't much of one, no." alice leaned back in her chair. "i seem to discern depths in her that the rest of you refuse to see. you stop at her beauty and are content with never a peep beneath the surface." martin tossed his cigarette over the railing into the garden. "frankly, i think that you are searching for something that isn't there," he said abruptly. "the gods never bestow all their gifts on one person. since you profess to know your own self so well you should realize that women so very pretty as mrs. hepworth are rarely clever. why should they be? it is enough of an excuse for existence that they are beautiful." "it is indeed," growled hewston, who had been absorbed in sulky meditation for some time. "i'd be contented if i thought she had enough head on her shoulders to keep straight and not involve good old hepworth in god knows what." wallace laughed. "i'll lay you a wager, mrs. wilstead," he whispered, tapping her fan with his finger-tips, "that the way things are going now there will be a split in the hepworth household within three months." "do not say it," she cried quickly. "i can not bear to think of such a thing." "i'll give you heavy odds, too," he went on cynically, leaning forward to regard the group at the piano. "i'll make it a bracelet against a box of cigars, provided i'm allowed to choose the brand of cigars." "you might as well put in another provision then," she retorted, "provided i am allowed to choose the bracelet. my taste in ornaments, dear wallace, is both unique and expensive. i like only odd jewelry." "odd jewelry! that is an old fad of yours, alice," said hepworth's voice behind her. she started slightly, she had not noticed his approach. "and your own," she smiled up at him. "have you secured any new amulets lately, cresswell?" "yes, one. it is a beauty, a scarab. i must show it to you; also another, a carved bloodstone set in very curiously wrought iron. i got that from a gipsy woman. it is an old romany talisman." "do let us see them," pleaded mrs. hewston. "certainly, i shall be delighted to. excuse me a few moments. i will get the box myself. naturally i would not trust it to the servants." he smiled at his weakness. "naturally," said hewston. "come, let us all get into the drawing-room to look at them. it is beginning to rain anyway." it was only a few moments before hepworth returned bearing a large, black leather box. he placed it on a table just under the light and then choosing a key from a ring, fitted it into the lock. "i hold one key," he said to the group pressing about him as he lifted the lid, "and perdita the other. that is in case she may want to wear any of these trinkets." alice wilstead had been looking at mrs. hepworth at the moment her husband entered the room and she alone had noticed that dita started violently when her eyes had fallen on the box and that all the rich color had fled her cheek, leaving her, for a second or two, white as a ghost. the box held a series of trays, each padded and velvet lined and upon these were fastened cresswell hepworth's noted collection of amulets. most of these talismans were very ancient, many of them revealed the most beautiful workmanship. all of them were distinctive. each one, almost without exception, had a history, strange, romantic or sinister, and these were all duly catalogued, but it was never necessary for hepworth to refer to this written history. he had not only the symbolic significance of his favorite toys, but also the vicissitudes through which they had passed, at his finger ends. the top trays held scarabs, one of the most remarkable collections of them extant, commemorating certain mighty and fallen dynasties; or this reign or that of remote egyptian rulers long crumbled to dust, and hepworth lifted them lovingly from their trays and turning them deftly in his fingers explained their histories and expatiated on their beauty. beneath the scarabs lay the jade talismans exquisitely carved and handed down from distant centuries. the hearts that had once beat beneath them had long been dust, but the talismans, with no stain of time upon them to dim their luster, would still serve as emblems of good luck to future generations. then there were quaint amber charms preserving the warmth and flooding radiance of the sunlight that sparkles on sea foam in their depths, and opals delicately clouded with mystery, their "hearts of fire bedreamed in haze," carbuncles, jasper and hyacinth, all in their time the almost priceless possessions of their owners because of the mystic significance attaching to them. and then there were trays containing a somewhat heterogeneous collection of old pieces of beaten silver and iron with odd characters on them, representing periods of even greater antiquity than scarab or jade. these amulets were in many instances the memorials of bitter feuds and hot duels, fought on the moment, at the gleam of a talisman which both contestants claimed. more than one had been hastily rifled from the dead, and more than one had been bestowed by a great lady on an untitled lover of empty purse to aid him in winning fame and fortune. "by the way, alice," said hepworth suddenly, "you have seen dita's amulet, have you not? it is almost, if not quite the gem of the collection." "no, i have never seen it," mrs. wilstead's whole piquant face was alive with interest. "but i have heard of it. it was through it that you met, was it not?" dita nodded. the color had come back to her face. "it was that old talisman he was really interested in," she said. "i always tell him he married me to get it." hepworth laughed. "it is well worth any one's interest. it has been in her family for generations, and there are all sorts of legends and traditions connected with it. it is said to give his heart's desire to whomever possesses it, isn't it, dita?" "more than that," she replied, a little strangely, or at least so it seemed to alice wilstead. "he to whom it is given--and it can not be bought or bartered, it must always be bestowed--must sooner or later reveal himself in his true character, either his baseness or his nobility." "fascinating!" cried the women in chorus. "what is it like?" "it is a square of crystal set in silver and gold. about the silver is twined one of those old celtic chains which can only be seen with a microscope, where the links are so tiny that we have no instruments delicate enough to fasten them together and which were believed to have been made by the fairies. and now for a sight of it." he was about to lift the next tray, when dita laid a detaining hand on his arm. "it isn't there, cresswell," she said in a quick, low voice. as if he had not heard her or had not taken in the full import of her words, he laid the tray carefully upon the table, disclosing the one beneath. like the others, it too was full of curious amulets, but one space was empty. perdita's talisman was indeed missing. "why, dita!" he exclaimed. "you did not mention to me--" she shot a quick, unmistakable glance at gresham. "didn't i?" she interrupted before he could go further. "it's being mended." "ah, those antique bits, they are always coming to pieces, at least i know mine are," said mrs. wilstead with hasty fluency. "but, cresswell, there is still another tray, and i must see its contents before i go home." "make it a month," said martin in her ear. "i said three, didn't i?" chapter vi sirocco "good night, hewston, good night, alice. don't go yet, gresham." hepworth laid a detaining hand on the artist's arm. "sit down and smoke. we haven't had a moment to discuss this portrait matter yet." "i think," said dita, moving toward the door, "that i shall leave you two to discuss it and go to bed." "oh, my dear," her husband detained her with the same light touch with which he had held gresham. he pushed an easy chair forward so that she should be seated between eugene and himself. "we are going to get all the details of the portrait settled to-night. a portrait of you and painted by gresham is sure to bloom and be admired for a century or two at any rate." dita looked at him quickly as if suspecting him of some intention beyond the discussion of the contemplated portrait, but meeting the smiling blankness of his expression, turned away, not in the least reassured, but more puzzled than ever, and sinking listlessly into the chair sat staring moodily before her with veiled eyes and compressed lips. eugene glanced at her uneasily, a frown between his brows. he knew her like a book. she had always, always from childhood, been a creature of moods. he was perfectly familiar with the various stages of the sirocco, as he had long ago named her outbursts. she would become restless, abstracted, absent, and then she would sit and brood as she was doing now, until finally the sullen and threatening atmosphere would be cleared by a burst of storm, a swift cyclone of anger. gresham gave the faintest of sighs and an almost imperceptible shrug of the shoulders. this was a situation which he foresaw would require all his tact and ingenuity. "is the picture gallery all right? did you find it satisfactory?" asked hepworth. "excellent!" eugene's brow cleared. he spoke with enthusiasm. "yes, i told perdita that the lighting there will be perfect. i've about decided to paint her in white. yes," scrutinizing the indifferent object of the discussion narrowly and yet remotely, as if he were visualizing his finished portrait of her, "white velvet, i think, and rather a blare of jewels. you see i want to bring out the dominating quality of her beauty, harp on it, you know, so i want to present her eclipsing and reducing to their proper places all the splendid accessories with which we can surround her." her husband nodded approvingly. "what do you think, dita?" "oh, by all means," she roused herself to answer, but making no effort to conceal the irony of her tones. "let eugene give me all the distinction and grace he is noted for bestowing on, you observe i do not say perceiving in, his clients, or patients, or patrons, whatever he may call them. make the stones of my tiara and necklace even bigger and whiter and more sparkling than they are, eugene. or better still, i'll wear my diamond collar and my string of rubies and my rope of sapphires, all shouting hurrah at once, three cheers for the red, white and blue! make me all glittery, eugene, throw my sables over my shoulders." "by jove!" cried gresham, interrupting her, a white flash of enthusiasm across his face, "you may not dream it, dita, but that's it exactly. you've hit it." "yes," she went on satirically, "and present me in the middle of all this splendor, overcome by the 'burden of an honor into which i was not born.'" "but you were born to it," interposed her husband quickly, "no one more so." "perhaps," she sighed a little, her eyes and voice grew softer, "but at a time when the outward manifestation had vanished." the glow had lingered, even become intensified in gresham's face. "by jove!" he cried again, "you were trying to be sarcastic and all that, dita, but it was a great idea of yours just the same. i will paint your portrait and it shall be hung side by side with my working girl. they shall be companions of contrast. you see," explaining his idea to hepworth, "i am going to paint my working girl in the city streets just at twilight on a winter evening, hastening home after the day's long toil. the lights and colors of the shop windows dance and glitter about her, blurred by the falling snow. everything, lights, buildings, passers-by, are all in that blurred, indistinct atmosphere, and she, herself, is a part of the blur, looking through it, with her young, worn face and wistful eyes, craving the beauty and the joy of life." "no, no!" cried dita suddenly. rising, she moved rapidly up and down the room, her head bent, her finger at her lip. "no!" she cried again, her voice deeply vibrating. "i reckon you've just missed it, eugene, it's too--too conventional. i can imagine something truer than that. my working girl, if i were painting her, should not be born to toil, not always have regarded it as the great fact of existence, an inevitable portion of her days and years from which she has never dreamed of escape. no, i would picture her delicate, highly nurtured, with traditions of race and breeding behind her; but poor, oh, very poor. and she shouldn't look out on life with resigned, wistful eyes, but with passionate, demanding ones, rebelling that her youth, her wonderful, beautiful, dreaming youth was passing in a tomb of tradition, a green and flowery tomb perhaps, maybe an old southern garden, but nevertheless a place of dead lives, dead memories, dead customs. and she, this girl, hates it, the dust and must of it. she hears always in her ears the surges of that mighty ocean of life. and she can't resist it. she can't. then because her heart is set on it, she comes to a great city like this, comes with all her high hopes and her untarnished confidence in herself; and all this magnificent swirling tide of life, with its mingled and mingling streams, seems to bear her onward to the highest crest of the highest wave. then she begins to hear, at first faintly and then ever louder and more menacing, the voice of new york, with its ceaseless reiteration of one theme, 'pay, pay, pay.' she turns desperately to her little accomplishments, those little, untrained, unskilful things that she can do, straws on that ocean; and expects them to save her. "ah!" she drew her hand across her brow, her face contracting a moment. "then comes the grind between the millstones, the continual disappointments, the terror by day and night, the rent, that rolls like a snowball, the dreary evenings which she must spend alone in the dreary little room, while all the time she hears the mocking invitation of the great, glittering city to partake of her many feasts. "and she," again dita sighed deeply, "she begins to believe herself doomed to dash her youth and beauty against the walls of a tomb. and she has to learn so many things, among them the hideous accomplishment of making both ends meet. what does she know of the use and value of money? oh, of course all kinds of cheap, left-handed pleasures are offered her, because people consider her pretty, but it is an impossibility for her to accept them. she has been born in the traditions of real lace and real jewels. and the panic-fear! ah!--" she broke off abruptly. "dear me, dita. you should have been an orator." for the past five minutes eugene had been scarcely able to conceal his irritation, frowning, biting his lips, twisting in his chair and casting furtive glances at hepworth. "i remember you used to be given to those bursts of eloquence now and then." "and what finally becomes of her?" asked hepworth of his wife, ignoring eugene's interruption. his voice was low, expressing nothing more than a polite interest. "i don't know," said dita wearily. "a number of things. she may comfortably die, or marry, poor thing, any one who will have her." "very dramatic," said gresham dryly. "you always did have histrionic talent, dita. i've often wondered that you did not attempt the stage." perdita opened and closed her eyes once or twice as if she had just returned from a far country. "i certainly wasn't much of a success at painting lamp-shades and menus, was i, eugene, in spite of your early training?" he shrugged his shoulders without answering, made a slight, disclaiming gesture with one hand and rose to his feet. "what!" listening intently as a clock chimed somewhere. "i had no idea it was so late." his face cleared. he was evidently relieved at his chance of escape. he shook hands with hepworth and then turned to dita. "remember that the first sitting will be at twelve o'clock wednesday morning, and please don't keep me waiting. that is a fact that i have to impress on these charming women," he turned laughingly to hepworth, "that i am neither their manicure nor hair-dresser. i am accustomed to keep them waiting if i choose." "i'll be ready," she said indifferently, but eugene noticed with apprehension, even alarm, that those deep vibrations which spoke of barely controlled emotion were still existent in her tones. "i'll be ready, velvet, diamonds, hurrah of jewels, if you wish, sables and all." again a gust of wind swept through the room and hepworth went over to close a window. eugene took quick advantage of the occasion. "for heaven's sake," he whispered, "pull yourself together." his words were too late. too late by half an hour. the sirocco had done its work. chapter vii the gift of freedom with the departure of a third person the situation immediately changed complexion. it became more intimate and therefore more embarrassing. with eugene had departed the audience and the stimulus of playing to it. the star and the stage manager were left alone. untrammeled emotional expression no longer seemed an heroic necessity. under the calm, unreadable, steady regard of her husband's eyes it held its elements of banality and of sensationalism, of pseudo-emotion. dita became sullen. "i think i shall go to bed," she said abruptly and for the second time and then turned to the door. "wait a moment." his voice was courteous, pleasant, but it would have been a dull ear which could not have discerned the tone of command beneath its even modulations. it was new to dita and arresting, and she paused, wavered a moment and came back to the chair she had left and folding her arms upon its high cushioned back, stood with still, sullen mouth and downcast eyes, exhaling reluctance. she was feeling the reaction from her late mood of exaltation, of dramatic visioning of poignant past experiences. he waited a second or so, and then said, "your working girl was a far more dramatic conception than gresham's. it might not lend itself so much to pictorial representation. it might be more literary." he appeared to give this question some consideration. "however," he dismissed it with a wave of the hand, "that is neither here nor there. what counts is this, were you the girl whose life you described so feelingly and dramatically?" there was silence between them for a moment. dita's first impulse was to maintain it indefinitely; ignore this question with barely suggested contempt; with a faint gesture of dissent, signify that she considered it a crudity, almost a vulgarity, and lightly, languidly, indifferently dismiss the whole subject and leave the room. she knew how, intuitively. behind her were generations who understood how to flick an unpleasant situation from the tips of their fingers, who would ignore and dismiss with amused disdain an invitation to exculpate themselves or explain, when to explain meant practically to retract. but false as she felt, with waves of shame, she had been to her traditions and upbringing in revealing her emotion, she was no coward. she lifted her head and met his eyes. gray eyes faced gray eyes--but with a difference. hers were the passionate, emotional irish gray--with black beneath them, and the long curling black lashes, but his were like mountain lakes, reflecting a gray and steely sky. hers revealed all the secrets she might wish to hide; his concealed all his secrets admirably--discreet windows, revealing nothing but what their owner desired they should reveal. "yes," she said with defiant brevity. he appeared again to give this reply due consideration. he had risen now and was walking up and down the floor. "what an impression it must have made on you!" he said at last, very gently. she plaited the lace of her sleeve. "you knew about me before we were married," she said. "why--?" "quite true, but sometimes something is said, it may be only a word, and one's eyes become, as it were, unsealed. one sees a perfectly familiar object or situation in an entirely new light. your attitude now," he turned to her rather sharply, "is that i am about to blame you, to take you to task. far from it. why should i blame you for what has been beyond your power? your words to-night have made me realize that it has been quite impossible for you to care for me, and that i have not been able to make you happy. ah," lifting his hand as she was about to speak, "do not disclaim it. i know. you see, that very fact sends the whole house of cards tumbling. the bitterness with which you have spoken to-night would not have been in your mind, rankling, rankling all this time, if you had been a happy woman. it was bound to burst into flame sooner or later." "oh!" she broke out. "you have always won. you do not know what it is like to lose; but i--i missed every mark i aimed at. i came up from the south, so dead sure that i was a very gifted and accomplished person, and that all i had to do was to hold out my apron and all the beautiful and delightful things would tumble into it. but this great city surely taught me a lesson, and she's no very gentle teacher, either. and i used to sit up there in that tiresome little apartment among those candle-shades and cotillion favors and think how--how pretty i was," she flushed under his smile, "and rage, and get sick with disgust when i thought how i would look after about twenty years of that kind of life. i knew exactly how i'd look. i'd be one of those peaked, wistful-eyed old maids, with rusty black clothes turning green and brown, and a general air of apology for living. i could just see myself ironing out the ribbons of my winter bonnet with which to trim my summer hat, and then laundering my handkerchiefs and pasting them on the window-panes to dry. and life, life was like a great, wonderful river, flowing by and leaving me stranded on the shore. and then you came." hepworth laughed. "i don't wonder that you took the alternative. i'm conceited enough to think it better than those ugly pictures your young eyes were gazing at." "yes, they were ugly," she agreed. "life just seemed like a dark, dreary, cobwebby passageway, but i always felt as if i might come to a door any minute and step through it into a beautiful garden. you seemed the door." she spoke the last words a little shyly. he glanced at her again, inscrutable, unfathomable things in that gaze. "ah, youth, youth and the waste of it!" there were tones in his voice that brought the tears to her eyes, but he did not see them. he was musing on the accident of her life, this flower of the dust, which he had taken from the dingy environment she loathed. he had lavished all the beauty and experience within his power upon her, and taken away perhaps the one thing that had redeemed her life. he had seen only the limitations and the makeshifts and how they had oppressed her dainty and fastidious spirit; but it had never struck him before that in lifting her away from them, above them, he had taken from her the one thing that might have glorified her life, that the sordidness and the scrimpiness were for her for ever haunted by the unexpected. that because she was young and beautiful and free, the dreariness must have been irradiated always by the rainbow tints of romance; and he had given her all the beauty and glitter his money could buy in exchange for the joy of a dream, and fancied that he had actually done something for her. "dita, forgive me," he murmured, a curiously bitter smile about his mouth. "forgive you!" she looked at him a little cautiously. she didn't understand the workings of his mind. he never gave her a hint either in eyes or expression that would seem as a clue for her to follow. "yes. you should." again he smiled at her. "you didn't get a fair exchange. i see that very plainly now." "you must not speak like that," she said quickly. "believe me, it was a great deal more than a fair exchange and i have always regarded it so. why do you think i have not been happy?" "because you have never really loved me." "but i--i have always liked you," she cried quickly. "but," forlornly, "you knew the truth at the time. even if i had not, i should have had to marry you anyway. i was so deep in debt i couldn't help it. i could not manage any more than i can speak sanscrit. so you see that there is nothing to forgive. believe me, i am always grateful, for before i married you, i thought and thought, but i could see no other way." he laughed again. he couldn't help it. he had a sense of humor and he seemed to see, in a flashlight of vision, shocked romance gather up her skirts and shake the dust of dita's threshold from her winged shoes. "you are so really fearless and honest, dita, that i venture to ask the question." he put it with a rather diffident gentleness. "you have found it quite impossible to care for me?" "oh, no," impulsively. "i have always liked you. i am really very fond of you. but i am always tongue-tied before you. i never can think of anything to say to you and i always say foolish things." she regarded him with a wistful timidity. he laughed ruefully. it was sorry mirth. "that is a proof of my stupidity, my child, not yours." he opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. up and down the room he walked twice, three times, engrossed. then having arrived at a decision, he put it into words. "dita," he stopped before her and looked at her earnestly, "perhaps i am utterly rash and foolish, but will you answer me one question? but first get all melodramatic ideas of the state of my feelings out of your head." his smile was faintly cynical, obscurely so. "and believe me, that what really concerns me is your happiness. are you in love with eugene gresham?" she started, cast one quick glance at him, and then stared frowningly before her, but he noticed that her hand trembled on the back of the chair. "why do you ask me that? i--i am married to you--i--" her voice faltered, broke. "oh, no conventional utterances, please," he cried quickly. "that is not worthy of you, not like you. there should be, there must be absolute sincerity between us now. tell me, perdita, are you in love with eugene gresham?" "ah, that i do not know." she looked beyond him and, still gazing, shook her head. "i do not know. i never have known, never been sure. we were boy and girl together, he a few years older. he is associated in my mind with the life of green old gardens and the smell of jasmine flowers. he lives in a wonderful world, a world of color that something in me always yearns toward. it seems to me sometimes as if i would rise to it, and my heart would blossom in purple and red. i seem doomed to talk foolishly to you," she exclaimed rather piteously, "but most people's hidden thoughts would sound foolish to others, would they not?" "go on, my dear." then his controlled utterance gave way. "for heaven's sake, why should you not feel that you can say anything to me? what kind of an idea have i given you of myself? but tell me," quickly subduing his emotion, "what is it you feel?" "as if--as if my heart were a flower which had never really bloomed--a cold, tightly folded bud, that yet held within the colorless outer leaves wonderful red and purple petals. all there, awaiting a sesame, and i sometimes dream that only eugene can give me that sesame. but," the glow left her eyes, her head drooped, "i don't know, i don't know. i thought i was sure once that i loved him. i do not know now." "where was gresham during the time you were struggling here?" he asked presently. and it struck her irrelevantly. "in the east somewhere, i think. doing his desert pictures. i used to hear from him once in a great while." he said nothing. then he came nearer and took both her hands in his. "dita, my clear, i'm going to be egotistical and talk about myself for a minute. let me see if i can explain." again that worn and flashing smile, with a deeper touch of cynicism, flitted over his arrogant face. "'king canute was weary-hearted, he had reigned for years a score, pushing, struggling, battling, fighting, killing much and robbing more.' "let us hope that it is not quite so bad as the last line infers; but it gives the idea, the picture. well, dita, i saw you, a beautiful flower, purple and red, if you will, although i do not think the combination of colors appropriate. and you were blooming in a tin can in a tenement window. it was insupportable, so i dreamed of transplanting the flower into its fitting surroundings, a marble court. that was what i crudely thought would mean your happiness. but i never secured the flower to adorn the marble court. believe that. above all, i wanted and i want its happiness. dita, i'm weary-hearted, but i long--i long above all things--to make you happy. take the poor surroundings that i can give you; but let your beauty have its meed, let your heart flower as it will. feel free to meet, with outstretched hands, the romance your youth has dreamed of, for, dita, i, who have only fettered you with jewels, am going to give you something really worth while, thanking god very humbly that it is in my power to do so, and the gift is freedom. you are free from now on." she started back, looking at him in frowning bewilderment and yet he saw deep within her eyes a wild gleam of hope, of joy. "free!" she repeated uncertainly, "free! how can i be free when i am married to you?" [illustration: "free! how can i be free?"] he laughed once more, and the dreariness of that laughter rang suddenly hours afterward in her ears. "those things can always be arranged," he said. "but i am going to ask you a favor." although he said "favor" her quick ear caught the ring of authority in his tone. "since you are not sure that you love gresham, i am going to ask that you wait a year before securing your legal freedom. you shall have it, whether you decide on him or not. oh, believe that. ah, one more request. let me urge you not to have your portrait painted just now. in view of possible future events, it is much wiser, much safer to let that go for the present. i think you will have to trust my judgment here. there is no danger of your beauty waning." again his worn and flashing smile. "and now, it is very late and i think you had better get some sleep. good night." he smiled again, but she noticed how dreadfully tired he looked. she winced a bit in soul. "i am sorry that it has been such a fizzle," she turned to him with a sort of shy, girlish friendliness and impulsiveness. he smiled again and lightly touched her cheek with his finger. "give no more thought to that." he turned abruptly away. "ah, dita," his voice arrested her from the threshold, "one more request i am going to make and that is that you get your amulet to-morrow. if not i shall have to see about it myself and i am really too busy to bother with it at present." again that iron ring of authority was in his voice, but authority masked in velvet. "will you very kindly attend to this, my dear?" she nodded mutely from the doorway, but did not lift her down-bent head, nor raise her eyes to his. chapter viii fools' laughter when dita wakened the next morning, it was very late, almost noon. she came slowly to waking consciousness over wastes of apprehension, oppressed by some heavy sense of disaster. what had happened? ah, she remembered it, it was last night. she squirmed uncomfortably and then lay gazing with somber and introspective eyes about the beautiful room. slowly, the chaotic and uncomfortable thoughts which thronged confusingly in her mind resolved themselves into two or three distinct facts as scorching to her sensitiveness as if written in letters of fire. first, she had let herself go unwarrantably. an electric storm always exerted a sinister effect upon her, inducing a wildness, a recklessness at first, eventually followed by melancholy and culminating either in tears or temper. and she had yielded weakly to every phase of this storm-induced mood. why did events have to take the bits in their teeth and gallop madly along the road to ruin at the most placid and unexpected moments? why should an electric storm have blotted the sky and flashed its jagged lightning over her nerves that especial evening? why had she not mastered the sirocco, driven it off in its first stealthy approaches? but she melted to self-pity; cresswell should not have taken her so seriously. he might have realized that the storm, and that tiresome dinner, and those tiresome people had goaded her unendurably. grant them every virtue, every grace, admit that there might have been an attraction between herself and them in ordinary circumstances, but the fact that they were old friends of her husband changed the whole chemical situation. attraction became repulsion, attempt to conceal the fact as she would. but self-pity ultimately merged into self-accusation. no matter what the causes, she had made a melodramatic scene. she had told a lot of bare truths, which, like all bare truths, were only half truths; about eugene, for instance, practically admitting that she loved him. well, did she? she sat up suddenly in bed and pushed the hair back from her brow with both hands. she pondered intensely a moment. she didn't know. she really didn't know. was it love, this feeling she had for him, had had for him ever since she had been a girl of fifteen? it was a powerful attraction anyway--a sympathy, an understanding. and cresswell had offered her freedom, freedom! what did it mean? her heart began to beat quickly, excitedly. it meant the great adventure ... if one had the courage ... one need "mourn no joy untasted, envy no bliss gone by." she would throw off this ennui, this apathy which afflicted her. she was free, free to seek and meet the unexpected. the great adventure, a thousand adventures were before her. at last, she would live. suddenly she remembered her amulet. she must get it. she gave this a moment's consideration, and then, before summoning her maid, she went quickly to the telephone in her sitting-room, and rang up eugene gresham's studio. to her relief, he was there and answered the ring almost immediately. "are you there, 'gene. i want to see you to-day, as soon as possible, within an hour or so. will it be convenient for you?" "oh, perfectly. but," there was anxiety in his voice, "nothing is wrong, i hope." "oh, nothing much," she replied evasively, "only i want to talk to you--but not here." "why not take luncheon with me," he replied, "at half-past one and where?" "oh, not in any crowded restaurant," she answered a little impatiently. "at some quiet place. a tea-room--the wistaria?" "very well. then within an hour and a half." "and, oh, eugene," her voice detaining him, "i want the talisman. do not fail to bring it. do you understand?" if dita wore as a protecting disguise the simple and conventional dark gown which has been prescribed by certain unalterable rules of fiction as the proper costume for a lady hastening to a rendezvous, it failed of its effect, but served instead to accentuate her beauty; nor detracted in the least from her as an object of interest and comment. and eugene, with his fame, and his air, and his eyes, his lifted shoulder and his limp, the pointed laurel leaves seeming to gleam through his cloud of hair, handed her from her motor-car with the manner of courts, his hat in hand, to the admiration of the passers-by. the whisper ran: "eugene gresham and the beautiful mrs. hepworth." they passed through a gaping aisle. they entered the tea-room to the craning of necks. poor souls! this was their measure of seclusion. beauty and genius! fame and wealth! it is a combination new york loves. she serves them up to her multitudes on a salver. they were successful, however, in finding a remote table beneath swaying purple clusters of artificial wistaria and a dimly mellow light. and while eugene ordered the luncheon, dita glanced about her with a sensation of relief; new surroundings always seem to hold out the alluring if frequently vain promise of new thoughts and this was the beginning of adventure, of that new life of infinite variety she meant to live at last. eugene turned from the waiter, and leaning across the table narrowly observed her. "a trifle pale," he remarked. "mad dita!" reproachfully and yet tenderly. "i hope all that atmospheric unpleasantness--mental, i mean, did not come boiling and seething to the surface after i left last night. i hoped the sirocco had spent itself before i left. but doubtless hepworth understands how you are affected by a storm." "i'm afraid i did make rather a scene," she admitted, her lashes on her cheek. "however, that is neither here nor there." he drew a breath of relief. "then it is all over, the atmosphere cleared and we are to begin our sittings to-morrow." he smiled in anticipation and laughingly drew her picture upon the air. "no," she shook her head, and spoke more reluctantly than before, "cresswell has requested me not to have my portrait painted just now. he is kind enough," her smile was shadowy, "to think that there is no particular danger of an immediate waning of my beauty and he desires me to wait a few months." "but that is impossible! incredible!" he scowled with irritation and threw himself back in the chair. "oh, what a sirocco, what a sirocco it must have been!" he shook his head back and forth and then dropped it in his hands, studying the pattern of the table-cloth as though it were the map of the situation. "to pass over my disappointment"--he lifted his head and mechanically pushed about some of the dishes the waiter placed before him on the table--"ignore it, let it go. i'm not going to press that now; but there are other things to be considered. it is known that i am to do your portrait. it was openly discussed last night. all this must be taken into account. that is for appearances as far as you are concerned. then regarding me. i am not a paper-hanger or house painter to be engaged and then dismissed at the whim of a millionaire. i can not accept a commission from hepworth and permit him to cancel it by a negligent message, sent through a third person. absurd!" he frowningly bit a finger. "my plans and arrangements must be concluded for months ahead. they can not be thrown askew like this. oh, dita, what did you do, what did you say that brought this about? i worked like a trojan last night to avert anything of the kind." she did not answer, but sipped her tea with downcast eyes and he saw that the lashes on her cheeks were wet. "ah, dita," his voice fell to a charming note of tenderness, a note to stir any woman's heart, with the purple and white of the wistaria clusters swaying above their heads and the mellow light reflected in his eyes, his eager eyes which pierced life's stained and sordid curtain and saw the wonder and miracle of beauty; and it was this power to discern the eternal vision which illuminated his ugly, irregular, fascinating face upon which work and dreams and experience had stamped their impress. "you can not fancy what it means to me to paint your portrait now. i've painted it before, crudely, in boyhood, and experienced then a casual delight in the effort to portray a beautiful thing, and wrest a few new secrets of art from the portrayal. that was all. but now," his voice without being raised, yet lifted exultantly, "but now--my heart is swept with insurgent seas at the thought of what it means. i am lover and artist, fused in a fire of white enthusiasm. the lover sees, divines what the artist can only guess at, and the artist offers to the lover a perfected technique. i feel the stirring of this power to catch your loveliness, dita, and fix it on canvas imperishably. it would be the great achievement. that is in the background of every artist's thoughts. it is his pillar of cloud by day and his pillar of fire by night. the great achievement!" he dreamed over it a moment. "i would paint the south in you, dita, 'warm and sweet and fickle is the south.' ah! i thought i loved you then. i thought i loved you the evening we parted, but i know now that i have never really loved you before or i could not have given you up." they were almost alone, nearly every one had left the room. a long trail of wistaria blew before her eyes. the light glowed through the silken, yellow shades. the south! she smelled roses and jasmine. it seemed to her for one bewildering moment as if her heart had indeed blossomed in purple and red. she smiled lingeringly, sweetly into his eyes. "the portrait's only postponed, eugene, look at it in that way." the words recalled her to herself with a start. this was paper wistaria and electric light. she was no longer a girl in a flower-scented, green old garden about to pose for a boyish and impatient artist. here she was, in spite of all her vows to the contrary, yielding to eugene's spell without a struggle. she was quite sure of his charm and magnetism, but what she doubted now was her own heart. "'ah, the little more and how much it is. and the little less, and what worlds away,'" she murmured beneath her breath, wondering unhappily if she were born to doubt everything. "but i can't and i won't submit to a postponement." he was now both impatient and impassioned. "it is not final," she explained. "do take it as a postponement, nothing more. he has his reasons--oh, they are not what you suspect. he is not jealous. he is too big for that. it is something i can not go into now." her sentences were disjointed. she seemed almost incoherent to him. "let it be so for the present. i implore, no, i insist, that there be no explanations. but i must go, it is getting late," she started as if to rise; then sank back in her chair and held out her hand. "oh, the amulet, eugene." "i haven't got it," he threw out both empty hands and looked up at her from under his brows with the expression of a naughty child. "now listen, dita, before you get angry, although you're so wonderful when you're angry that any one might be forgiven for tempting you into that state; but after you called me up, the nasmyths, those english people you know, mother and daughter, were at the studio, and i was so intent on getting them away in time to meet you, the mother is the most interminable talker, that i finally bundled them out of the door and came with them, with never a thought of the amulet." "'gene, how like you!" her face was full of dismay. "cresswell especially asked me to get it to-day, and i don't think he believed for one moment that clumsy fib i told about having it mended." "i'll go at once and get it, and bring it to the house," he said contritely. "you can make any explanation--" "no, no more explanations," she said decisively. "they are perfect spider-webs, the most involving things any poor fly can tangle himself up in. they are, to mix metaphors, the quicksands of any situation. they make of the simplest matter a problem of complexities." "what does that go for?" gresham tilted his head on one side and studied her. "does it mean that you and hepworth quarreled about me, last night?" she looked back at him in inscrutable pondering, as if considering the point, wondering, in fact, whether she and her husband really had quarreled about him. "no explanations, eugene, that's fixed." "as you will," in careless assent. "but, dita," again that ardent note of tenderness, warming his voice, and stirring her heart with all those intimations of romance which she had never known. "we might as well accept the inevitable, accept it with joy, face the light quite fearlessly. we might as well see clearly at last, what for years we should have known and believed and welcomed with all our hearts--that we belong to each other." her quickly lowered eyelids veiled the sudden glow of her eyes. "perhaps," she whispered, "only i want time to think it out, to be sure of myself. i--i've grown cautious." he looked at her with the smile that could say so many things and to her said but one. "take time then, dita, but permit me to pray that it will not be long. and i--i shall await with what patience i may that dazzling morning when you will open your beautiful, dreaming eyes, and know at once and for ever that you are at last awake. when you will say, 'this is my day of love, this is my hour and eugene's! the world may go.' take your days or months, dita. i give them to you, for i know that every hour that passes will bring you nearer to me." famous artist, famous lover! men saw his irregular, swarthy face, his lifted shoulder, his limp, and wondered. but women saw the experiences and aspirations and dreams that that face held, they saw the smiles which said so many things exquisitely, they felt the subtle, intuitive comprehension of every word, an understanding which held no condemnation, but was as warming and stimulating as sunshine. his love-making was as delightful and perfect as his art. but again she threw off the sweet, poignantly sweet influence and strove to think clearly. "you had your chance, eugene, before i was married. i would have listened to you then, the night before you sailed for europe, but you didn't believe in me, you showed it plainly." angry tears glittered in her eyes at the remembrance. "ah, how could i?" his smile was at once cynical and tender. "i knew your temperament, that craving, artistic temperament. it is much like my own. we spring from the same stock, remember. you had all the inherited love of luxury and beauty as i told you then and you were starved, starved, dita, and in a state of revolt. your imagination was aflame with what hepworth offered. and i--" he threw out his hands with a disclaiming gesture, "where was i? my feet on shifting sands, i hadn't touched bedrock then. ah, well, what's the use? the past is past. it's the future we face. my heaven, perdita, what a future!" his eyes held her, drew her. involuntarily, she swayed toward him. then, impatiently, as if resenting her own attitude, she rose to her feet. dita drove home, with the faint smile still lingering about her lips, still dreaming in her eyes. she drove through the park, green still in spite of frost. a mist palely irradiated by the sunshine it obscured enveloped the landscape in a sort of opaline enchantment and unsubstantiality. it was with a sigh of regret that she entered her own house. she felt as if she had wilfully shut the door on the wooing and pensive autumn without and gone into the bleak and wintry atmosphere of regret and puzzle and doubt. but as she moved listlessly across the hall a servant handed her a note from her husband. she tore it open and read it. then she read it again. it seemed to her that the rustle of the paper was like the crackle of thorns, and the fool's laughter associated with it. she had meant to manage this situation in her own way, to keep her hand well on the lever, and behold it was all arranged for her. very briefly the letter informed her that hepworth's western interests would require his personal supervision for several months. that he hoped she would endeavor to make herself as comfortable and happy as possible and arrange her time in any way that best suited her. that was all. but as she walked to her own apartments it seemed to her that the air echoed and rang with the arid and mirthless laughter of fools. chapter ix a telephone call maud carmine was slowly pulling off her gloves before the fire in the old-fashioned drawing-room of the old-fashioned down-town house where she and her mother lived alone. it was not five o'clock, but the evenings were so short now that she hesitated whether or not to turn on the lights, but the firelight was brilliant and so much more attractive than electricity, no matter how softly shaded that might be. yes, the firelight was so bright that in its radiance she could see her figure reflected in the long mirror between the windows with its ornate and early victorian frame. she walked forward and standing before it gazed at herself with a little smile. she was not a pretty woman, but she was certainly a striking and attractive one and quite beautifully gowned. that was the most noticeable thing about her, the _dernier cri_ worn with style and distinction. her heart went out in gratitude to perdita. while she stood there still surveying herself wallace martin was announced. "and no tea here for you," said maud. "i've been out all afternoon. mother is gadding somewhere at this unconscionable hour, so i suppose they thought i didn't want any. i'll send for some and it will be here in a jiffy." "i do want some, and some solid substantial bread and butter," confessed martin. "i'm hungry. i'm dining out to-night, but the dinner is set for some unholy late hour, and i've been at a rehearsal all afternoon." "a rehearsal of your own play?" he nodded. "my very own," he said. "one of the million or two i've written has actually been accepted." "oh, wallace!" she held out her hands, her interest and pleasure showing plainly in her voice. "i am more than delighted. it seems too good to be true." "don't be too enthusiastic yet," he strove to speak dryly. "it may be accepted by the managers, it is still a question whether it will be accepted by the public. it's run one gantlet, but whether it will run two remains to be seen." "oh, wallace," she cried again. "how can you be so pessimistic and calm and calculating and all that? why, i should be off my head with joy." "i am," he said tersely. "maud, don't tell any one, but i feel like a wright aëroplane." "i won't breathe it," she promised gaily, "but please don't add to the fame i'm sure you're going to get from that play, by flying over the housetops to rehearsals. oh, here is tea, muffins, bread and butter, cake. anything else you'll have?" he sank back contentedly. "nothing but to insist that you tell that butler of yours that you're not at home to any one else. it's too deliciously cosy to be spoiled by women simpering and rustling and men lounging and clattering in. just the firelight--it's a little early for fire, but this evening is quite chilly--and the tea-kettle singing in that nice homey way, and even a big persian cat on the hearthrug. it's 'ome and 'eaven. and what a contrast to last night! better a dinner of herbs like this, where love is, than the stalled ox of yestere'en." a faint blush seemed to tinge maud's cheek, but it may have been, after all, but the flickering firelight. "last night wasn't awfully pleasant, was it?" she said with a little sigh. "pleasant! it was deadly. poor maud!" helping himself to more bread and butter. "how hard you worked!" "how silly you are!" she cried indignantly. "perfectly absurd the way you all acted. horrid-minded creatures, bored and trying to make a situation out of nothing. eugene gresham and dita have known each other for years. there is even some kind of a southern relationship between them, quite near, i believe." "la, la!" said wallace, again helping himself generously this time to cake, "your loyalty is beautiful, but don't let it drive you to take a stand you may have to abandon." "wallace!" she turned from him indignantly and the firelight showed that her eyes were full of tears. "i mean it just the same." he placed his tea-cup on the table and bent toward her. "look here, maud, your friend, mrs. hepworth, is a very pretty woman, but she isn't a very bright one." "that is just where you are mistaken," she returned. "she is extremely clever but you don't seem to understand how much training and environment have to do with those things. take a woman as pretty as dita, a woman who has been beautiful and admired from her babyhood--she has always been the center of attraction, she has never had to observe people closely, to study their moods and characteristics, never has had to try to please." there was a depth of mournful experience in maud's tone. "therefore she seems to carry things with a high hand, seems to lack subtlety and finesse and deference to the opinions of others. therefore, you, seeing this, immediately put it down to lack of brains. it is a stupidity unworthy of you, at least it is a snap-shot judgment, a lack of that careful, sympathetic study and analysis of character which i should fancy would be necessary to you as a playwright." he sat for a moment or two, with hands loosely clasped between his knees, gazing into the bed of glowing coals. this attitude and silence on his part continued for some minutes. "there!" he turned around so suddenly that she jumped, "i've given due and careful consideration to all you have to say and i will repeat my original statement. mrs. hepworth is a very pretty woman, but she isn't a very bright one, not bright enough to be ordinarily discreet." her shoulders twitched petulantly. "wallace! the blot on your character is that you are a bit of a gossip, yes you are, and you mingle with a lot of idle people who have nothing better to do than to spend time that might be put to valuable uses in making mountains out of mole hills. truly, it's an idiotic mental employment that is not worthy of you." "maud, you rouse me to argument; you do, really. i am not talking about mrs. hepworth's very manifestly displayed interest in gresham last night. that might be attributed to half a dozen different causes. she might have had a row with her husband or dressmaker, or have been so bored by the happy family group gathered about her that she was ready for anything. any one could see that she was rather out-of-sorts, excited and reckless and all that. i am not even thinking of last night, and i will immediately withdraw any aspersions i may seem to have cast on mrs. hepworth's brain power, if you will tell me why she gave eugene gresham that old trinket, amulet, talisman or whatever it is?" maud began to laugh, quite naturally at first, and then she stopped suddenly. she remembered the scene of the night before, the empty space in the tray. she remembered cresswell hepworth's surprise, and dita's sullenness. "but you heard dita last night say that it was broken and that it was being mended," she protested, but some way her protestations sounded flat and unconvincing in her own ears. "yes, and you remember that she glanced quickly at eugene gresham before she answered. you also remember that hepworth, in the innocence of his heart, explained that the old legend or tradition which had been connected with the charm for centuries had been that it could neither be bought nor sold, but that it could only be given away, given away with the heart's love of the possessor, and in that case it would prove a blessing to both him who gave and him who took." martin stooped and lifted the persian cat upon his knees. "well, my dear maud, the end of that story is that gresham has the amulet." "if that is true," she flashed back, "he took it to be mended for her." "the circumstances do not seem to point that way," he said mildly. "really, maud, it's the deuce of a mix-up, and i'm simply trying to prepare you for the worst. you know those english people, the nasmyths, in draggled tweeds and velveteens; the mother wears an india shawl, and the daughter a hat which looks as if it were made of carpet. well, they were at the hewstons' to luncheon to-day and they had just come from eugene gresham's studio where they had been pottering about the best part of the morning, although alice wilstead said their boots and their faces looked as if they had been chasing over plowed fields. well, they were yelping about gresham like all other women, and raving about the beautiful things he had, and mrs. nasmyth told how she got to poking about on a table and found your friend's amulet; and she, of course, made an awful scream about it, and gresham, who, she naïvely remarked, didn't seem any too pleased at her discovery, explained that it was a good-luck charm, of very ancient workmanship, which had been given to him by a dear friend, and then he gently and firmly locked it up before her eyes in a little cabinet." "horrid creature!" murmured maud. "who?" said wallace eagerly. "you can't possibly mean gresham, do you, maud? what!" his tones expressed a wondering delight as she mutely but emphatically nodded her head. "to hear a woman speak thus of that hero of romance! never has such a grateful sound saluted my ears. never! maud, i am really afraid i am going to hug you." "you are going to do nothing of the kind." she could not help laughing, although she was seriously worried. "well, we'll waive it for the present," he conceded, again sinking languidly back in his chair, "but that isn't the worst. i told you that it was the deuce of a mix-up, and so it is. to continue now on page eight hundred and ninety-nine, the nasmyths babbled all this out at luncheon, and old hewston got perfectly apoplectic. he swelled up and became purple and emitted the most dreadful snorts and whiffles, and grunts and groans, until finally just as his wife and alice wilstead thought he was going to fall down in a fit, he got up and puffed away from the table, and alice and mrs. hewston rushed after him, leaving the poor nasmyths to take care of themselves. and not one thing could those two women do with him. you know what an obstinate, pig-headed, meddlesome old thing he is--and his head was set on jumping into his car and off to tell hepworth as quickly as possible and, my dear maud, that is what he did. alice wilstead said that she and mrs. hewston hung on to his coat-tails up to the very moment he entered the car, begging, praying, beseeching, imploring. she said he dragged them all the way across the sidewalk and literally kicked himself free from them." martin threw back his head in a great burst of laughter in which maud very feebly joined. "i wish i'd been there," she said regretfully. "he'd only have got in that motor over my dead body; but, wallace, when did you hear all this?" "i met alice wilstead limping up the avenue, on her way home, and she told me about it." "i wish--" began maud, but she was interrupted by a summons to the telephone. when she returned to the room a few moments later, her face was graver than ever. "i'll have to leave you, wallace," she said. "you can stay here with the cat and the fire and the tea-kettle if you want to. perhaps mother will come in, but dita wishes me to come to her at once." chapter x out of the gilded cage prompt as maud was in responding to dita's plea for her immediate presence, dita was equally prompt in hurling herself upon her friend's sympathetic bosom. maud had been shown at once to the sitting-room of mrs. hepworth's personal suite of apartments, and there dita sat in the dim and depressing gloaming of the unlighted chamber, a figure of dejection. she had not even removed her hat, but sat brooding in the twilight until maud's entrance roused her and she flung herself across the room and into the latter's arms with the impetuous rush of a cyclone. dita was temperamentally far more given to anger than to tears, but the strain of the last two days had culminated now in a burst of wild weeping, and maud found it necessary to soothe and calm her before she could venture to inquire into the immediate cause of her friend's very poignant and unfeigned distress; so she applied herself to the task of consolation with only vague conjectures as to the cause for grief. she was able, however, from dita's almost incoherent statements, to patch together a fairly accurate idea of what had occurred. "just read this letter," dita thrust the sheets into maud's hand. "oh, you can not, not in this light. wait a moment," she touched a button and the room was flooded with a rose-colored radiance. maud stepped nearer one of the lamps and gave her most earnest attention to the words cresswell hepworth had written. his utterance through the medium of the pen, was brief, self-controlled, restrained and to the point. and as maud read his well-considered words, something like a feeling of despair swept over her. "he has gone, actually gone," cried dita, as maud handed the letter back to her without comment. "gone," she repeated the words as if the fact in itself were quite unbelievable. she crushed the letter in her hand and threw it on the floor. "he will be gone months, looking after his mines and railroads and i'm to stay here. he never even said good-by to me, and this," she touched the crumpled ball of paper contemptuously with her foot, "gives me very plainly to understand that it is a virtual separation. oh," she jerked the pins out of her hat and sent that plumey velvet head-covering spinning across the room, then turned to her calm and sympathetic friend with a real fear and a real appeal in her eyes. "what am i going to do? for a few months it will be all right, and then people will begin to talk like everything. and you know how it will appear. every one will say that cresswell discovered that i was having an affair with some one, eugene, of course, and that he, cresswell, and i had a row and that he refused to live with me longer, but that he nevertheless was so chivalrous that he turned over this house and the country places to me. oh, dear, why did i have to have a sirocco?" "heaven knows," said maud. "let it be a lesson to you. never have another one. there, there, dear, i didn't mean any reproaches or i told-you-sos. so stop howling or you'll mar your beauty permanently. oh, now, don't lift your head and glare at me indignantly and say you hope you will, that it's never been anything but a curse to you. i've been too plain all my life to listen with patience to anything of the kind. now, let me think." she sat with finger on lip deeply considering, while dita still punctured the silence with loud occasional sobs. "you will have to travel," she said decisively. "yup will have to travel until people begin to talk and then you will have to keep on traveling until they stop talking. but oh, dita, can't you try and patch it up?" her words gave fresh impetus to perdita's gradually decreasing sobs. "you do not know him," she wept, "and to tell the truth, neither do i; but i have enough of an understanding of him to know that he always considers a step very thoroughly before he takes it, looks well into the chasm before he leaps, and it's no use trying to get him to change his mind when he has decided what course he means to pursue. anyway, i do not wish it. i want to be free, but not this way. oh, was ever a woman placed in such a position as i? i believe cresswell would forgive anything but the sin of not knowing one's own mind and i had to confess to him last night that i wasn't sure of mine or of my heart either. he has a contempt for me, of course, and," rising restlessly and moving about, "i can't and won't accept his contempt, and i can't and won't continue to live on his money and potter about his old houses. i feel as if i would rather die." "but, dearest," cried maud bewildered. "what else is there for you to do? what else can you do?" "nothing apparently," she said. her dark gown fell about her in the long lines of perfect grace. as she stood there, beautiful as the tragic muse, her great eyes transfixed maud with her scorn, but the scorn was not for her friend, but for herself. "what can i do? i am about the most useless creature on all this green earth. i sit and cry at a situation which tortures my pride, instead of coming to a decision. i made a beggardly pittance trying to earn my own living, and i won't go back to that kind of life, a disgusting, sordid, scrimpy life, which stifled every generous impulse or spontaneous action. i will not go back, i will not give up all the things i love and have become accustomed to. i was born to this. i love it, and will have it, but not on these terms. "i haven't been utterly futile here, as i was in those other circumstances. i have made cresswell hepworth's upholstery, stiff houses, 'decorated and furnished by the most expensive and artistic firms,' look really livable and lovely. truly, haven't i? great artists have raved over them. oh, i'm not afraid of velvets and tapestries and embroideries. i have no burgeois reverence for them. color was always like clay to me. i always long to take it and mold it into new combinations. why, i couldn't keep my hands off a rainbow if i got a chance at it, even the angels couldn't shoo me away." she was in one of her swift, mercurial changes of mood, her mouth dimpling, her eyes sparkling. "i'm not afraid of all the splendor of color or of all the gorgeously rich materials that god or man ever devised. i ache to take them and combine them and melt them together and contrast them. i'll dare any combination to get an effect i want, an effect that haunts me, and is like music in my consciousness. isn't it strange that i can do anything i like with great heavy draperies? i wave my hand at them and they fall into just the lines i want. i can get all kinds of effects in a room, but give me a little palette with little gobs of paint on it, and little, little brushes and i can't do even a decent lamp mat. that is one reason eugene and i have always understood each other so well. he, too, knows the call of color. oh, stop looking that way, as if i were going straight to shipwreck just because i mention eugene. the important thing to consider now is what i am going to do." "i've told you once," said maud, with settled conviction; "travel." "on cresswell's money?" bitterly. "well, i suppose you think it's either that or huddling into some black hole and attempting to earn my living again--a phrase that's the synonym for me of a cheap and nasty experience, but there must be some way out. no, i am utterly wasted, futile, ineffective. i do not believe, i solemnly do not believe, that i have one single, solitary gift in this world except being pretty." "look at me!" said maud with a rather whimsical, cynical little smile. "i think that i'm the living proof of one of your especial gifts. why, dita, my dear, i'm a creation of yours. i'm considered one of the most stunning women in town and about the best dressed and," maud's really soft and attractive smile transfixed her face, "i've won, i am really beginning to dare to believe it, the interest and i hope the affection of the only man i ever cared for and who never gave me a glance when i was just 'that plain maud carmine, who is musical, you know.' oh, i mean wallace, of course," blushing. "i haven't got over the wonder of it yet, i assure you. i'm still mentally pinching myself and saying, 'if this be i.' think of it, dita! i know the treasures of the socially humble, if any one does. i always had position, but that amounts to very little in these days, unless one has other things to back it up. it has been gradually losing importance, pushed to the wall by money, the ability to entertain, personal charm and good clothes, an air, a flare, a wit; until now the poor, solemn, superannuated thing, so long unduly revered, is really trotted back into the corner. yes, i had position, but not recognition. the back seats for me, so i rubbed along on my music and conversation as best i could, poor fool! and then you came, and waved your magic wand over me, took me in hand, and the world began to appraise me at your valuation." "that was nothing," said dita carelessly. "i just have the knack of seeing people as they ought to be. i could do what i did for you with anybody, if they would only let me. you were nice and plastic and put yourself entirely in my hands." "plastic!" echoed maud. "you mean hopeless! but turn about is fair play. take the advice i offer you, and travel. if you say the word we'll start for japan to-morrow. and you needn't touch a penny of your husband's money either, my child. i have enough for both of us." "maud, you're a darling." dita smiled in warm appreciation. "but--" "but, dita," maud's voice held both fear and appeal, "if you do stay here, you will not, you must not see eugene gresham." dita smiled at her again, inscrutably. "an idea has come to me," she said, quite irrelevantly, "a dazzling idea. i really believe that it is the solution of the whole matter." she considered this dazzling idea, her eyes growing brighter every moment. "oh, maud, maud!" she cried, clasping her hands, "what an inspiration! i'm going on my own again. yes, i am. don't look so horrified. i know i've grouched and fussed a lot over my past efforts in that direction, but you see i tried to do things in a small way, cotillion favors and such, and it didn't suit me. it wasn't my _métier_, not my way. i loathe detail. i can do things on a big scale or not at all. you know that. and my present idea means the big scale. when i first came to new york i regarded it as the great adventure, but then i didn't know how to go about anything. i was as ignorant as a baby of everything--everything. the tremendous professional skill required, my own ineptitude, the utter inadequacy of my poor, amateur accomplishments, my entire ignorance of business methods, all frightened, dazed, stupefied me, but now, now, i just believe i'll have another try." "oh, what _have_ you got in your head now?" cried maud in frightened resignation. "you see it's like this," dita ignored the question and continued to follow her own train of thought. "new york demands one of two things of the stranger who comes knocking at her gates, either training or a new idea. she can take care of any trained person, but if she has to conduct the educational process, she does it with a club. now i'm going back to her with my new idea. oh, i was crushed a bit ago, but now i am really enjoying myself as i have not done since the first dazzle of marrying cresswell and seeing his money turn itself so easily into the beautiful things i had longed for all my life. but i've been getting tireder and tireder of being the twittering canary in the gilded cage. cresswell opened the door last night and now i'm going to fly put, but in a totally different direction from the one he expects me to take." she laughed delightedly. "oh, do you think new york will listen to my new idea?" "she'll listen to mrs. cresswell hepworth," said maud dryly. "it won't make much difference about the idea, whether it's new or old." she thought of a conversation hepworth's friends had held at the wedding breakfast and sighed reminiscently. "i'm afraid you're making cress rather a background." "why not?" said dita cheerfully and defiantly. "serves him right, going away in the fashion he did and putting me in such a position. 'moses an' aaron,' as my old mammy used to say, you needn't try to dissuade me. you'll be as crazy about the idea as i am when i unfold it to you. the twittering canary is going to hop out of the gilded cage, and build her own nest. it's the great adventure. it is to live. won't cresswell open those sleepy eyes of his when he sees this move of mine on the chessboard? i'm done with failure, this venture of ours is a success before it's begun." chapter xi a doll or a box of candy perdita, being one of those ardent, mercurial creatures who run with winged feet to meet every event in life, whether it be joyous or disastrous, had encountered her bad quarter of an hour the morning after the dinner party. hepworth's, however, was postponed for a later and more lingering occasion. we euphemistically limit these seasons of judgment to quarters of an hour in speaking of them, but they are quite independent of time, and may continue through days. perdita had a temperamental advantage. hers were those swift changes of mood so disconcerting to the devils of ennui and depression; but her husband's period of reaction lasted, with but little mitigation, all the way across the continent. a most lusty and persistent demon of doubt and self-accusation boarded his car within a few hours after the train left the station, invaded his luxurious solitude and, indifferent to a chilling reception, there remained. to hepworth, the demon's most searing insinuation was that, instead of a masterly retreat in good order, this departure of his for the other side of the continent was a virtual renunciation of all that he cared most to win and to hold. fool and coward, the demon whispered, to quit the game just at the moment when his presence was an imperative necessity. but, although the demon was eloquent--it is an attribute of demons--and his suggestions were like red-hot pincers, it never entered hepworth's head to turn back. on the contrary, it was characteristic that having decided on a certain course, he was not to be swayed by the demon's most subtle and ingenious arguments. he was merely rendered supremely uncomfortable by them. he had offered perdita her freedom and he meant it without any reservations. she should decide on her own course, follow her own leadings according to the limits of her own folly or discretion, but free she should be, and free even from any shadowy influence that his mere presence might exert. quixotic, scrupulously so: but then that was hepworth's way. the demon laughed at this obstinately maintained, unalterable decision. what chance, it sardonically suggested, had any mere average man against a rival like eugene gresham? women love glamour. perdita especially adored it blindly. most women, certainly perdita, would rather follow the alluring, brilliant gleam of the will-o'-the-wisp, any time, than the smoky but dependable light of the useful household lantern. these gloomy reflections served to goad and stab like so many tormenting banderillos, but hepworth's resolution to absent himself for a time, and thus insure perdita a free hand, remained unalterable, in fact it hardened, became like iron. the journey over, his spirits improved; the demon was far less persistent and only occasionally showed himself. there were a number of business matters of varying importance requiring his attention, and these very fully occupied his mind. he had made his headquarters for a time at santa barbara. then, suddenly, his busy, if rather monotonous and routine existence became diversified by a series of peculiar events which, in his most wildly imaginative moments, he would never have conjectured. one afternoon, as he sat before an open window in the villa he had taken, looking out over a wonderful garden, all fragrance and color, at the blue channel, the mountains, the distant islands gleaming fairy-like through their golden haze, the name of mr. james fleming was brought to him and served very effectually to rouse him from his spiritless daydreaming, on whose confines hovered the demon. hepworth sat up, care vanished from his brow, the depressed droop of his mouth changed to a smile. "fleming! jim fleming!" he exclaimed. "show him in at once," to the waiting servant. mr. fleming wasted no time in appearing and hepworth pushed back his chair and rose, meeting him with a hearty hand-clasp and one of his most brilliant smiles. this was the effect the arrival of fleming invariably produced. one might have thought from the way men greeted him that he was some great public benefactor. quite the opposite. hepworth, and no doubt many others, had, through him, lost thousands of dollars, but this did not in the least affect their pleasure in his society nor tarnish their confidence in his good intentions. fleming was about hepworth's age, rather tall and rather stout. he had a broad, clean-shaven face, and the mouth of an orator, large, mobile, stretching across his face in a straight line and turning up sharply at the corners. his eyes, which were blue-gray, had a most ingratiating and irresistible expression of camaraderie. during the course of his life many unkind names had been applied to fleming, but by women, mark you, never by men. there were quantities of good wives and mothers who regarded him very much as the devil is supposed to regard holy water. had they not reason? at the very mention of his name they had seen a certain wild, primitive gleam light the eyes of even their most staid and house-broken men, and at the sound of his voice the most tractable and responsible husbands would seem to hear again the pipes of pan, and forgetful of duty, daily bread and family obligations would follow eagerly whither those wild notes led. beyond question fleming possessed that magnetic quality which opens all doors. he was at home in any society and where he was laughter flowed as wine. he had neither profession nor settled business, but always referred to himself as a "prospector--a prospector of the old school." the first gay greetings over, mr. fleming established himself in a comfortable chair, and said without preamble, but with his usual devil-may-care nonchalance, "i've come to ask a favor of you, cress, a mighty big favor." hepworth mechanically stretched his hand out toward his check book. "oh, it's not money i want this time," said fleming easily. "it's no favor to me to lend me money. that's always spent on others. anyway, i've got more than i can handle for once. you see, it's this way. i've got to go over to idaho. i've just got wind of a big thing there, a big thing. two boys i know want me to go over and look at it and i'm off to-day. biggest thing that's been struck in years, they tell me. both of them stone broke. didn't have enough money to pay railway fare. stole rides, practically no food for a week. if there's anything in it, i may be good enough to allow you to finance it." "let me see," said hepworth reflectively, "according to the invariable law of ratio, i'm about due to win on some of these ventures of yours i've so obligingly financed." mr. fleming solemnly and sadly shook his head. "set a beggar on horseback and sooner or later he'll show his rags. the born millionaire! you show all the degenerate earmarks." he pointed the finger of scorn at hepworth. "even if i hadn't come along you would still have been a millionaire, climbed to it on some one else's shoulders. entirely forgotten the old days, haven't you? why who," explosively, "laid the foundation of your soul-deadening fortune? me. myself. well, that's what a man has to expect in this world. but seriously, cress, i do want you to do something for me." "don't frighten me in this way then," said hepworth. "if it isn't money, i'm getting apprehensive. you're in some scrape and i've got to take off my coat and work like a nigger to get you out." "honest to god, no," said mr. fleming fervently. "it's just this. you see my little girl is here to spend her vacation with me--jumped across three states and got here day before yesterday, and under the circumstances it's kind of rough on her for me to go skating off this way leaving her all alone in a barracks of a hotel and in this place where she don't know a soul. sure's i'm sitting here, cress, i did my best not to listen to the boys," fleming spoke earnestly. he always had the virtue of believing profoundly in himself. "it didn't seem fair to her, you know. but, oh lord! what's the use? you know how it is when a new property swims into my ken. i get the fever so's i can't eat and i can't sleep, and it's 'my heart in the highlands' so's i'm like to die unless i'm up and away to that little old new mine that's just been found, seeing what's to her, anyway. and you may believe it or not," in solemn asseveration, "but all the time i'm holding back and trying not to go. i've got the cramp in my feet so that i can't hobble, but the moment i yield, and take to the path again, it's gone. that's a fact. now," the musical note of persuasion was strong in mr. fleming's voice, "now all i'm asking of you, cress, is to look in on my little girl now and then and see that she has everything she wants. she's got a sort of vinegar-faced sue with her that she calls her maid, so she's not entirely alone; but i want to be easy in my mind about her, to know that she's got some one to fall back on if anything unpleasant comes up. "she's pretty cute, you know. about on to everything that's going. can take the best kind of care of herself. has had to, poor kid. her mother died, and you know, cress, she might just as well have had a grasshopper for a father as me. although i've tried, she'd tell you herself, i've tried, that is, as far as the limitations of my artistic temperament would permit. but when i feel the _wanderlust_ and the _weltschmerz_ and all that in my blood and hear the siren voices of new properties calling, why, the fireside fetters have got to fall, the white, clinging arms have got to unloosen their grip. that's all there is to it. you know in books how the father of a motherless daughter is always father and mother and brothers and sisters and grandmother, uncles and aunts to her? well, i haven't been all those to fuschia. i wouldn't have known how and she wouldn't have stood for it. she's got no particular use for fireside fetters, herself. oh," optimistically, "i guess she'll be all right here. i'm leaving her all the money she can spend. but i just want you to keep an eye on her. kind of see that the wheels are running all right and that she's amused and don't mope. you'll like her, you know. it's a funny thing, but everybody's just crazy and always has been about that kid." hepworth was not proof against the appeal in his old friend's eyes, neither was he capable of shattering fleming's simple faith that he, hepworth, a jaded and middle-aged person, would find fleming's daughter a delightful and interesting charge. fleming's mind still ran on his child. "she's about the only thing in petticoats that has any real confidence in me," he said, with pride. "it's only been once or twice in my career that i've seen a look of real friendship in a woman's eyes. the first sight of me brings that wary, on-guard gleam way back in their blue or brown windows of the soul. you can't fool a woman. they've got those intuitions, you know, and they know instinctively that i'm a born missionary to the henpecked, that it's my mission in life to bring a little cheer into the lives of those poor shut-ins, the married men; scatter a little sunshine on their path. "by the way," as if struck by a sudden thought, "you've married since i last saw you. some slip of a girl, i'll be bound. that's what the middle-aged millionaire's sure to do. well, hold on to your money, cress. don't trust to your own fascinations. and you keep an eye on my little fuschia, won't you?" manfully concealing his apprehensions, hepworth promised to do all that lay in his power to be a father to fleming's daughter and had the consolation of seeing his old friend depart most jauntily and evidently with a weight off his mind. but when the door had finally closed on him hepworth let his perfunctorily smiling face relax. but it did not remain merely grave and preoccupied, for as he continued to gaze fixedly, but unseeingly, at a large paper weight before him, his eyes narrowed and his brow contracted in a frown. he had neither the heart, time nor inclination to spend his leisure moments amusing such an utterly spoiled, untrained, undisciplined child as he was sure fleming's daughter must be. allowed to choose her own path from babyhood, wilful, headstrong--oh, well, what was the use of anticipating? he'd promised to look after her, and disagreeable duty as it was sure to be, he had to see it through, and that was all there was about it. he decided to look her up the next afternoon. take her a doll or a box of candy. perhaps, though, she was too old for a doll. how old was she, anyway? he had forgotten to ask jim. probably about twelve or fifteen years. yes, certainly, the box of candy was safer. that was always acceptable and agreeable to any of the seven ages of women. he sighed again, and then, as if seeking distraction, he picked up the new york newspaper he was about to open when fleming's card had been brought to him. he surveyed it languidly, his eye roving with indifference up and down the columns. suddenly his attention was vividly arrested. his whole gaze, even further, his whole heart hung on a paragraph stating that eugene gresham had just sailed on the _mauritania_. it was known among mr. gresham's friends that he had recently received a commission to paint the portrait of a princess of the royal house of austria and that upon completing this he would go to england to finish a portrait, already begun, on a previous occasion, of the beautiful lady heppelwynd. mr. gresham, when seen on board ship a moment before sailing, would neither confirm nor deny these rumors. the frown disappeared from hepworth's face. what commendable discretion! whether the credit were due dita or gresham mattered little. it was the admirable restraint, this delicate and unexpected regard for appearances, which hepworth applauded. to do him justice, that was his first thought, the sober second one was profound relief that the fascinating will-o'-the-wisp was as far away from the impulsive and curious dita as was the smoky lantern. he put the paper down and rose to his feet. fleming's little girl should have a box of candy that was a box of candy. chapter xii fuschia fleming procrastination was a thief that had never succeeded in wresting much time from hepworth. he was one of those rare and exemplary natures who never put off until to-morrow what they can do to-day. never did he stand shivering on the edge of his cold bath, but plunged in immediately without pause for consideration. obnoxious virtues these--prejudicial to any popularity among his fellow-beings, therefore it speaks volumes for him that he was able to overlive them. this all goes to show that although the duty of keeping an eye on fleming's daughter became more repugnant to him the longer it remained in contemplation, he yet lost no time in looking her up, as he expressed it to himself. neither did he waver in his promise to himself fitly to celebrate eugene gresham's departure for other shores, but kept his vow by selecting the most gaudily decorated and wastefully beribboned box of sweets he could secure, and armed with it, as a hostage to impertinent childhood, took himself to the big hotel where miss fuschia fleming was stopping. he sent up his name to her and was very shortly informed that miss fleming was in the garden and would be delighted to have him join her there. hepworth curled his lip. what grown-up airs! naturally, she had lost no time in turning up her hair and having her gowns lengthened since her father's departure, and he, hepworth, would have to play up to this phase of missishness. he was dazzled for the moment by the bright sunshine, the brilliant flowers, and mechanically followed the page, threading his way through various groups of people. before a table among the roses sat a young woman reading. the page stopped; hepworth stopped; the young woman cast aside her book and rose. [illustration: before a table sat a young woman reading.] "how do you do, mr. hepworth?" she stretched out her hand with a boyish gesture, smiling into his eyes, and the sunshine grew dim. "won't you sit down? i've just ordered some tea. if you don't drink it, won't you tell the man to bring you something else when he comes? father said--" "but father is surely not fleming, jim fleming," he said, firmly determined to get this absurd mistake straightened out at once. "but father just is," she asserted as firmly. "and since you asked for miss fleming, i am she, fuschia fleming. that is my ridiculous name." but hepworth had so far lost his mental equilibrium that he could not immediately recover himself. "fuschia fleming is a little girl," he insisted, although this time not half so positively, "and great heavens," with one of his quick smiles, "i've brought you a box of candy and just barely escaped buying you a doll." "i wish you had," she said. "i love dolls, especially the kind that you would bring me." there was undeniably something heady about fuschia fleming's glance. "and as for sweets, they're grateful and comforting to any age. you'd better give me that box at once, and i'll give you a practical demonstration of my appreciation." fuschia had the curliest mouth. there is no other way to describe it. it was all in ripples, not small, but looking smaller than it really was because it turned up quite sharply at the corners, like her father's. and the lashes that lay on her pale, smooth cheeks were the curliest and longest hepworth had ever seen. her eyes were blue, blue as the sea, and very cool and gay and inclusive. without being sharp or speculative or inquisitive, they yet took in all the details of whatever they rested upon. but hepworth was a keen observer, and he noticed at once that although her pale face was for the most part alive with laughter, there was yet a certain worn look about it, as if she had been recently over-taxed and fatigued. there were faint but undeniable lines about the mouth and eyes that time had never etched there; and that blythe assured bearing, her detached, yet ready manner, were not suggestive of the ease of confident youth. they bespoke training. hepworth's eyes, their droop rather more pronounced than usual, were fastened on an adjacent palm, as if he demanded from it the answer to this riddle. getting no response there, he turned his speculating eye on a tree of magnificent crimson roses as if hoping for some enlightenment from that quarter. "why do you not tell me all about it?" urged fuschia gently. "what's the use of trying to puzzle me out unaided? father has evidently told you a lot of conflicting things. i really can throw more light on the subject than any one else." her voice was beautiful, soft and full and creamy, with all exquisite modulations and inflections, and its music cleared hepworth's befogged brain. he released the palm and the rose tree from the third degree to which he had been subjecting them, and leaned back in his chair as if he relaxed his mind as well as his body, smiling back at her, as confident now, and as assured as herself. "i don't have to," he said. "i know. it's just come to me. you see your father didn't happen to mention that you are studying for the stage." "studying for the stage!" she cried, as if to refute him, considered, and then nodded emphatically. "of course i am, and expect to be until i die; but hardly in the sense you mean. my field of study at the present time includes a good deal of practical experience. i've been on the stage now for three years, ever since i left school." "on the stage!" he exclaimed. "but my dear child, under what name?" "my own," she answered. "oh, do not look so puzzled. it is the most unlikely thing in the world that you should ever have heard of me. i'm far from a star, just one of the humble members of first this and then that western stock company. you see, my idea was to get my training and experience before i burst upon new york. but new york is beginning to seem too iridescent a dream ever to be realized." there was a fall in her voice, a touch of wistfulness, which hepworth found rather touching because its pathos was both uncalculated and unconscious. "why?" he asked in surprise. this note of resignation in her tones, of acceptance of a disappointing, inevitable circumstance, struck him as singularly out of character and aroused his curiosity. "it's been the same thing several times in succession now," said fuschia, a touch of superstitious gravity in her expression. "just as father is preparing to stake me, and i'm getting a company together to take new york by storm as rosalind, why, father loses his last dime on a dead-sure thing. there's a law about it. the biggest winning proposition in years, always comes along just as i am ready to cross the alps and storm italy. uncanny, isn't it?" "what nonsense!" hepworth clipped off the end of a cigar as if it were fleming's head. "do not let yourself be affected by such an absurdity. the only law, and i admit it's a strong and binding one, is jim's selfishness and irresponsibility. now my dear child," hepworth was beginning to fancy himself enormously in the rôle of paternal adviser, "you make him give you as much as possible." "i do," she interrupted softly. "and you lay it all aside, very securely, never touching a penny of it--" "what about my clothes?" another interruption. "never touching a penny of it," went on hepworth firmly, ignoring these asides on her part, "until you have saved enough to finance yourself. isn't that reasonable?" "ye-s," admitted fuschia. "it is a very reasonable and sensible suggestion, mr. hepworth, that is," thoughtfully, "if you leave out father and me. but just get it into your head that at the moment i'd save a nice little heap, father would be hit with an overwhelming impulse to back the wrong horse, and, here's something awfully queer psychologically, mr. hepworth, i'd know as sure as i'm fuschia fleming that it was the wrong horse, and yet, i'd get inoculated with the mental virus before i'd know it, and beg him to let me in on it. and you know that father is incapable of staking half or even two thirds of his little all against any proposition he believes in. the only thing that can satisfy him and make his blood tingle is to stake the whole. no limit but the blue canopy of heaven. limits do fret father." mr. hepworth slightly lifted his shoulders. then he dropped another lump of sugar into a cup of hot tea she had given him. "i wish to seem neither irrelevant nor impertinent," he said at last, "but can you act?" miss fuschia fleming threw up her white chin and laughter bubbled unquenchable from her throat, not vain-glorious mirth, as if the fact of her superlative achievement mocked his crude question, but the unrestrained laughter of genuine amusement. "the idea of asking an actress such a question," she said at last, touching each eye lightly and deftly with a delicate handkerchief. "you may thank your lucky stars that i don't nearly drown you with picturesque and highly colored tales of my triumphs and then hurl the full scrap-book at you. my, but you are a rash man! to ask a professional if she can act!" again her full-throated laughter rang out delightfully and so heartily that it shook the petals from the cluster of pale golden roses she wore on her breast. "but look here, seriously now," her laughter died quickly away, her face assumed a gravity he had not dreamed her mobile features could express, her gaze fastened upon him with a sort of hungry, passionate eagerness. "that was a horrible question of yours," she shivered, as if the breeze blowing over the gardens from the elysian sea chilled her. "one should know intuitively, instinctively whether an actress can act or not. good lord!" she brought her hand down on the table. "if you don't feel it, know it, beyond all argument, why it isn't there, that's all. "unless i set you dreaming, unless i suggest in this or that varying pose or expression, the whole world of women, i'm not a born actress. training, study can make a good mechanical nightingale of me, a clever imitation of the real thing. that's all. but unless i have the chameleon quality of reflecting my part, the unerring understanding of any type of woman i may be called upon to represent, how can i be an actress? what does it profit me to give the public a carefully studied, intellectual representation of portia or nora, or juliet or candida, wide apart as the poles as they may be? i must not only apprehend them, i must be them in every fibre of my being, in every cell of my brain, in every beat of my heart, or i'm nothing. unless i can convince you that camille and i are one in emotion and view of life, and then obliterate that impression when i speak to you as rosalind, why i'm not an actress, not the kind i care to be, anyway." "by jove, my dear," cried hepworth, "you need have no doubts on that score." he had not felt the thrill of such genuine enthusiasm for many a long day. he forgot the delicate and uncertain state of his marital affairs, forgot the censorious world, his ennui and doubt and regret. "i have a conviction," he said, "that jim is going to win a lot on this new proposition of his. if he doesn't, it's all the same anyway. why should you waste your youth and your genius in twentieth rate stock companies?" in spite of these cheering words, her head continued to droop. her face had grown paler, and sad were the eyes she lifted to his. "but you asked me if i could act. you weren't sure. you didn't see me as camille or rosalind. you just saw fuschia fleming all the time." "of course i did." his smile was most comfortingly reassuring. "but i saw fuschia fleming as juliet and portia and all the others. i merely asked you if you could act to see what you would say. no, no, my dear, your future is written so plainly that he who runs may read. no more one-night stands in dreary little towns, miss fuschia fleming, but long engagements, crowded houses, enormous box-office receipts, wildly enthusiastic audiences. can't you hear and see them? new york, london, paris for you!" "oh-h!" fuschia was herself again. she exhaled rapture in an ecstatic sigh. she rose. it is impossible to sit in moments of such high exultation. she positively seemed to soar, to tread on clouds. it was growing late and chill. almost every one had left the garden, only a few absorbed groups remained. fuschia was an actress. self-expression was a necessity to her. she rested her hand, a snowflake, gratefully on his arm, she floated against him, a thistledown, and before he knew it had lightly, enthusiastically, unconcernedly kissed him on the cheek. "you dear," she cried, "i'll repay you by showing you what i can do. to tread the forest of arden in new york! oh-h! but you are not going. no, no, no!" that was what hepworth, rather overcome by the unconventional and unexpected expression of her thanks, was preparing to do. he thought it best, but his decision was not adamantine, far from it. he always prided himself upon the open mind, and an ability to see all sides of a question, so when fuschia suggested that he return later and dine with her, it struck him as a possible, even admirable solution of his daily puzzle how to put in the evening and he accepted without more debate, with an alacrity, in fact, bordering on gratitude. he was therefore on time to the minute and miss fleming was equally punctual. as they sat through a dinner, not elaborate, but as prolonged as if it were composed of all the courses on the menu, hepworth was struck by the positive quality of fuschia's beauty. it was not always so, evidently. she was as changeful as the chameleon she had spoken of. in the garden that afternoon, in her white serge frock, she had at first impressed him as a pale, rather attractive looking young woman whose charm was greater than her prettiness; but viewed in the rose-colored lights, and across the pink blossoms on their small table, she was a very wonderful creature. she was, in truth, wild with joy and her expression of it was delightful. her eyes were blue as the sea when the sun is one vast sparkle over it, her mouth, made for laughter, grew curlier every moment. her white evening gown was a dream. in addition to her admirable outward appearance, miss fuschia fleming was a comédienne of unsurpassed gifts. she was also witty, well-read and sweet-natured, and when she chose to exert herself she could make sixty minutes seem sixty seconds by any one's watch, even that of the grimmest old curmudgeon, and hepworth certainly was not the grimmest old curmudgeon. he was only a very lonely and sad-hearted man whose days had been hanging heavily on his hands. "good old jim," he soliloquized as he took his way homeward that evening. "he believed sufficiently in my friendship to come right to me when he was in a hole. made no bones about it. asked me to keep an eye on his daughter, sure enough of my affection for him to know i'd do it. i shouldn't wonder if this idaho proposition is a good thing if it's properly financed. jim's judgment is pretty sound. well, we'll see, we'll see." chapter xiii shocking the hewstons as the winter wore on the weather in new york offered daily a more violent and odious comparison to the blue seas and balmy airs of california. the cold, sullen skies, dull, damp days and piercing winds set more than one dreaming of sunshine and summer, and among the many was alice wilstead. she was pondering thus, looking about her with surprise, one especially snowy, dreary winter afternoon as she took her way to mrs. hewston's. it was one of those thoroughly depressing days when nothing could really raise one's spirits but the inspiring glow of firelight. mrs. wilstead certainly looked as if she needed that and all positively cheering if not inebriating things as she entered mrs. hewston's drawing-room. her piquant dark face was meant for smiles and gaiety, all of her features apparently designed to that end, for the corners of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the slant of her eyes, all inclined upward. it is a tragedy when a person of such countenance is in an introspective or melancholy mood. sober meditations have an aging and blighting effect on the features of those born to look out upon the world with an arch and piquant interest. isabel hewston roused herself a little reluctantly. she was sitting alone most comfortably in a delightfully easy chair, she had on a becoming and loose paris tea-gown. she had resolutely put behind her the haunting specter of increasing flesh, had taken an afternoon off from the persistent and continued battle she had been forced to wage with it, and now lay, a box of sweets on the table beside her, a new novel in her hand, enjoying to the full her temporary respite. it is to her credit that she put aside her book at the most nerve-tingling paragraph without a sigh. "dear alice," she exclaimed, lifting herself on one elbow, "you have a bad-news look all over you, the very rustle of your skirt proclaims it. what can be the matter?" "give me some tea," said mrs. wilstead gloomily, "and let me sit down and rest." she slowly removed her furs. "my dear isabel, do you mean to say you do not know?" "know what?" asked mrs. hewston in bewilderment, ringing and mechanically ordering tea. "how could i possibly know anything after just getting off the steamer this morning? what has happened? you haven't been speculating, alice, and losing all your money?" mrs. wilstead hastily disclaimed any such unforgivable crime and inconsolable grief as losing money. "then really you have not heard," she exclaimed. "isabel, i am more worried than i can say. lemon, please. it is stupid of you, isabel, never to get into your head the fact that i couldn't be guilty of taking cream. to think of such a thing occurring! i had hoped that with eugene gresham out of the way, having the decency to go to england and france, and the papers full of his spectacular stunts, that all talk would cease and that when cresswell hepworth came back from that western trip that everything would be all right." "what are you talking about?" asked isabel hewston with the calmness of despair. "if it isn't too much trouble, would you mind making a few explanations? just one might suffice." "it is that absurd, undisciplined perdita hepworth. she has had her head completely turned by the success of maud carmine and now she and maud have gone into business together." "into business?" mrs. hewston made a tremendous clatter among the tea-cups. "business! what can you mean? cresswell has not failed?" "good heavens, no! but that is the reason he has been so long in the west. at least that is what every one says. dita and maud informed him of this scheme, and he, of course, expressed his opinion of the whole matter, refused to countenance it; but he couldn't do anything with such a headstrong creature as dita, and so he simply cleared out; went west and has stayed there, while those two girls have gone stubbornly on and carried out their plans." "business!" isabel still rolled her eyes in dazed speculation. "but what kind of business? what could they possibly do? lamp-shades, menu-cards? i'm sure i've always heard that perdita didn't make such a brilliant success when she tried that sort of thing before!" "menu-cards! lamp-shades!" alice laughed scornfully. "that's mere paper dolls to this venture. this is a business of their own invention, although dita does take orders for house decoration also; but the main purpose is dressing the wealthy, telling the plain little daughters of the rich what to wear." "for pity's sake!" gasped isabel. "what sort of place is it, beauty parlors or dressmaking?" "oh, dear me, neither! nothing so commonplace. they have taken a house just on the avenue (they say it is a dream within), and you have to write for an appointment, and then if they will consider you at all they write back and set a time, and you go exactly as if you were calling, you know, and you are received by either maud or dita or both. then you come again whenever they tell you, and all the time dita is studying you just as a portrait painter would. finally, when she feels that she has you thoroughly in mind, and is quite decided about the way you shall be clothed, she has designs made for you of hats and gowns, little water colors, you know, and sends you to her dressmaker. she also has your maid come and dress your hair before her, according to her directions. and it costs you!" alice wilstead pursed her mouth and lifted her brows, "it costs you! oh, like the dickens!" "who is that?" said mrs. hewston turning. "only me," wallace martin replied modestly and ungrammatically, entering, as usual, unannounced, a privileged friend of the family, and greeting the two women with his usual barking cheerfulness. "i just walked up home with that pretty little lolita withers, and, as you were only a block or two farther, i came on here." the two women gazed at each other with a long, wondering stare. "lolita withers!" they exclaimed simultaneously. "pretty!" nothing could have been more eloquent than their tones. "my dear wallace," said mrs. hewston, finding her voice, "is this some new joke? are you quite sane?" "he means it for a joke," said mrs. wilstead, who had been peering at him curiously. "he is going in for eccentricity, or else the success of his play has gone to his head." "not a bit of it," replied martin with unmoved smiles. "lolita withers is at present an obviously pretty girl. any one would so consider her." "obviously pretty." mrs. wilstead had found her tongue by this time, and acrid and scoffing it proved. "that skinny, ineffective little lolita withers! dull-eyed, anæmic, with stooping shoulders and wispy light hair." "she looks like a dream of spring," said wallace, helping himself lavishly to tea and cakes. "a sort of an evanescent beauty. truly, yes," he affirmed, "she's been to maud carmine and perdita hepworth." he gave a great burst of laughter. "if they can make any one believe that lolita withers is pretty," said mrs. hewston dazedly, "they are indeed benefactors of the race." "perdita hepworth is a genius, a wizard. i always said so." alice announced this with a sort of triumphant conviction. "she could make aaron's rod blossom like the rose." "but where did they get the money?" mrs. hewston's mind turned always to practical things. "if dita really quarreled with cress, would he--?" "maud's money." martin spoke with the assurance of one possessing authoritative knowledge. "cresswell hepworth! oh, no, he went off in a terrible huff because the girls laid their plans before him and told him what they were going to do. at least," he amended, "that is the idea i got from the little that maud has occasionally told me. yes, it's maud's money; but they'll lose nothing, plucky girls! double and treble it, more likely. they've already had an overwhelming success." "i'm going to them," cried isabel hewston excitedly. "if they are so wonderful they ought to be able to make me look slender without my having to go to all the bother of being really slender." "you'll have to stand in line then; that old mrs. peter huff is jumping for joy and calling down blessings on their heads because they've literally transformed her three ugly daughters. maud said they were splendid material, and dita did wonders with them. the old lady hopes to get them married off now." "alice! when can we go to them?" mrs. hewston's voice was trembling with excitement. "i can't go now." there was a distinct fall of disappointment in alice wilstead's voice. "the truth is, i'm going to california with the warrens the first of next week. why, what is that?" there was a sound of some one wheezing, puffing, muttering without the door, and then the curtain was violently jerked aside and mr. hewston entered. his hair stood up white and ruffled about his head, his face was of a much livelier crimson than usual, and he was puffing out his lips as if blowing fire and smoke from his mouth. in one hand he was tightly clasping a newspaper. "willoughby! my dear!" his wife rose in consternation. "what is it, what has happened?" for answer mr. hewston spread open the paper and struck it with his hand. "read that," he cried tragically, "read that! my poor friend, driven from his home by the vagaries of a mad, irresponsible girl, his life ruined by the foolish, frivolous creature he married! turned from his home, he was driven to this." wallace had seized the paper, and the two women hung over his shoulder to scan the sheet before them. what met their eyes were huge, black head-lines above and below the pictures of cresswell hepworth and a very pretty woman. the head-lines announced that the two had been in an accident in mr. hepworth's motor-car at santa barbara. both were thrown out, but neither sustained any serious injuries. the article went on to say that mr. hepworth had, during his stay in the west, evinced great interest in the career of this beautiful and gifted young woman, an actress of reputation in her part of the world, but unknown in the east. it was understood, however, that she was to play a new york engagement during the coming spring, making her first bow to a metropolitan audience as rosalind in a superb stage presentation of _as you like it_. there was no question of the beauty of the mounting of this famous comedy, nor the strength of the company with which the young star would be surrounded, as the capital behind her was practically unlimited. chapter xiv publicity when the beautiful, young wife of a multi-millionaire takes advantage of her husband's absence on a prolonged and unavoidable business trip to embark upon a rather bizarre and eccentric venture of her own, it is to be expected the situation will be hugely discussed, especially in its three-fold phases--the lady first, the exact relations existing between husband and wife next, and third, the business itself. perhaps in this case the business should be put first, above the lady, and above any sentimental interest in marital misunderstandings, for perdita's skill in "bedecking and bedraping" was well known among her sisters, whose ideals in bedecking were those of paris, and who had no greek longings to be "noble and nude and antique." and had they not for the past two years enviously regarded maud carmine--who had been as a walking _mannequin_ among them, the living, breathing advertisement of perdita's abilities. therefore from the very first business bade fair to engulf the new firm and sweep the two partners off their feet, and if the list of those who daily assembled in "hepworth and carmine's" reception-rooms were to be published, it would look like a social registry or a page from _who's who_; that is, a page with all of the masculine names carefully culled. there were elderly ladies and young girls, and ladies in all the waning stages between the two. the elderly and waning ones all hoped before mrs. hepworth got through with them to look like the young girls, and the young girls, with all the enthusiasm of youth, hoped to look like perdita hepworth. there arrived then, one morning, at this palace of hope, mrs. willoughby hewston, who, as she stepped from her motor, glanced nervously right and left and ascended the steps of the house perdita and maud had taken just off the avenue with an agility of which her best friends would not have considered her capable. this nervousness, this hurry was due to the fact that only the day before she had mentioned her intention to her husband, with the result that she was thunderously ordered not to go near the place, under penalty of his worse than censure. he gave her to understand that this would be something too terrible for her imagination even to apprehend. consequently, mrs. hewston wasted no time in getting to hepworth and carmine's as early as possible the next morning. she would have been less than woman had she not done so. the reception-room was spacious, sunny and restful, depending for its effect upon beautiful woods and long, unbroken lines; for color, there was the hint of ivory and tea-green, ineffably serene, and there mrs. hewston awaited dita, her agitation subsiding somewhat under the calm influence of the place. but when dita appeared it returned in full force. "oh, my dear," she exclaimed, "what a charming spot this is! how original! how daring of you and maud! oh, my dear, if willoughby knew i was here!" she raised her hands with a gesture full of meaning. "you know that he is in such a state anyway over those newspaper articles." "what newspaper articles?" asked perdita. "do you mean those that have appeared about all this?" she waved her hand comprehensively about her. "haven't you seen them?" mrs. hewston looked frightened. "oh, my dear child, how very stupid of me. why, why did i mention them? i supposed, of course, that you knew. but if you do not, please do not ask me anything more, for i never, never will be the bearer of bad news." dita stared at her in puzzled amazement for a moment and then she took her firmly by the shoulders. "look here, mrs. hewston, you are frightening me dreadfully. i haven't an idea what you are talking about. now you must tell me, indeed you must. do you not see the state of mind in which you leave me unless you do?" "oh, my dear," mrs. hewston shook her handkerchief out of her bag, evidently preparing for its possible use. "i didn't mean to frighten you, and you shouldn't allow yourself to be so easily upset. now, understand, no one was hurt, but those dreadful papers yesterday were full of a motor accident which occurred in california." "cresswell's car?" interrupted dita quickly. "was he--" she was about to say "injured," but mrs. hewston took the word from her mouth, or rather, substituted another for it. "alone? no, dear," shaking her head a little as at the regrettable, but to be expected frailties of men. "he was not alone. he was driving the car, it seems, with a beautiful young actress by his side. she must be a very--er--persuasive person, too, because the papers said that she is to appear here this spring in some superb production or other, and they strongly insinuated that cress' money is behind the whole thing. but you see, that, as i said, there's nothing in it all, nothing really to worry over." "i see," said dita, but slowly and without enthusiasm. "and now, my dear," mrs. hewston had suddenly grown quite brisk, "let's forget all this and talk of something that is more interesting to you, because it's in your line. perdita," in her most wheedling and cooing tones, "i want you to make me lovely." "you are lovely, mrs. hewston." "oh, in a middle-aged, broad, pink kind of way, but i want you to make me look slender and lissome and girlish without all this awful dieting and exercise and these dreadfully tight corsets that make one feel as if one were nothing more nor less than blanc-mange in a tin mold. and you know you do come out of them with your flesh all fluted, just like the blanc-mange when it's set." "you shall be quite lissome, i promise you that," said dita consolingly, if rather absently. "come to me again early next week and i shall have some designs for you to consider, beautiful, long folds and all that. but i can't perform miracles, you know, and you'll have to diet a little and exercise; yes, and wear the boned corset; you don't want to look like a--" "do not say it!" cried mrs. hewston nervously. "i am sure you are going to say either 'whale' or 'tub,' and i can't stand it. that's what those awful corsettières always say when i protest the least bit against their tortures. "and perdita, one thing more--my chin. i always say the chin is the greatest give-away a woman's got. she can get around anything else, but, no matter what she does, that chin sticks out like a cliff and reveals every year she's lived. of course, you may try to draw off attention with a diamond dog collar or jeweled black velvets, but at the best they're only poor, miserable makeshifts; and one must wear evening dress no matter whether one has rolls of flesh or a gridiron of bones. if you don't, people either think you come from the woods or have something worse than bones or superfluous flesh to conceal. just look at willoughby!" mrs. hewston's emotions overcame her here and she dabbed her eyes carefully with her handkerchief. "he is fat as a pig. he shuffles and hobbles about with the gout. he eats anything he pleases, and never thinks of cultivating a pleasant expression. yet if i should die, he could marry again without difficulty. oh, it's a hard world for us women! but really, i must go, dear. just look out and see if you see willoughby by chance, either up or down the street." as soon as she was assured of safety and had departed, perdita, who, fortunately for herself and her customers, had no other appointments for the morning, sent for the papers of the day before and carefully considered the incident of mr. hepworth, miss fuschia fleming and the motor-car as set forth in the various journals. "and so," said perdita to herself with glooming eyes, when she had finished an exhausting perusal, "he is going to back this deserving young adventuress, who has, no doubt, played upon his sympathies, in a great spectacular presentation this spring, and in new york. well, there will be something else spectacular. i will make this venture of ours a stupendous success now or i will know the reason why. where on earth is maud? she is never about when i really need her." she frowned a moment over maud's delinquency and then happened to remember that miss carmine had expressed an intention of being present at a rehearsal of one of wallace martin's plays. dita then decided on the moment to drive to the theater and consult with her partner at once on the new and spectacular policy of their house which she was mentally outlining. but first, before starting, she thoughtfully selected some of a number of photographs of herself and also of maud. "i suppose i shall have a dreadful time persuading her," she reflected as she drove through the streets. "she has bred in the bone those old-fashioned ideals of new york when it lived in bleecker and houston streets." but curiously enough, while events of one character had led perdita strongly to consider the adoption of a certain line of action, circumstances of a widely differing nature had impelled maud practically to the same conclusion. which only goes to show how clever a weaver is fate and how wonderfully she contrasts and combines all her various threads. for two or three hours maud had been sitting in a dimly-lighted, empty playhouse, watching the rather dreary and disillusionizing progress of martin's latest play. it was an odd thing, she mournfully reflected, that wallace never got himself, his own, bubbling, merry, joyous self, full of quirks and quips, into his plays. they would seem to have been written by a secondary personality, for they were all, without exception, intensely serious and depressing, dealing with problems of the most complex and dun-colored character. maud was extremely practical. she never dreamed of buoying up her spirits with any ambrosial reflections that this latest offering was "a distinct contribution to the more serious drama." neither did she attempt to convince herself that there were enough high-browed folk in the town to keep the play on for, peradventure, three nights. no, she simply, and with her usual common sense, reserved judgment until the third act, and then after a moment of wonder that wallace had found a firm of managers willing to undertake the production, with all the expense entailed, when they had just one chance in a million to win (in her opinion, at least), she turned to more practical issues. "dita and i," she remarked mentally, "have got to make a stupendous success if i want to marry wallace, which i do, and he is going to continue to write plays, which he is. but i'll have a frightful time persuading dita to run her business along the lines of twentieth century advertising. she has all sorts of ante-bellum ideas about stately procedure and measured methods, derived, of course, from those generations of lazy southern aristocrats." while she mused, amid the terrific racket of moving things about the stage in preparation for the fourth act, she felt a light touch upon her shoulder, and looked up to see perdita, pale but determined, standing beside her. "i'll just slip into this seat beside you," said mrs. hepworth, suiting the action to the word. "i want to talk to you a few minutes. now, maudie, i know that you will not like it, but we've been doing awfully well lately, and i think it would be a good idea to put what we've made in advertisement. of course, there's a lot we can get without paying for it. the sunday newspapers will print pages about us, especially--especially if we let them have some of our most stunning pictures and allow those interviews where the artists sit and make sketches of you." maud looked at her business partner as one who, bidden to rub a magic ring on his finger and wish, sees his wish come true. here was perdita approaching her tactfully, and timidly entreating her to do the very thing that was in her mind to accomplish. she could not grasp it, but sat staring at her companion in an amazement so profound that it bereft her of speech. perdita misinterpreted the silence. "i've got to make a red-and-yellow success," she exclaimed with emotion. "i've--i've just got to be in the newspapers. don't take it in this cold, reproving way." "my dear perdita," maud spoke with crisp distinctness. "i'm not! it's your attitude of mind, not your sentiments, that surprises me. the latter are my own. you," she continued virtuously, "are probably actuated by your vanity; i, by my heart. look at that!" she waved one hand toward the stage, "or rather don't look at it. now let us come to an understanding. you know that i have always loved wallace. you know that he has lately loved me. you also know what it costs me a year to be one of the best-dressed women in new york and maintain my newly acquired reputation for good looks; consequently the business has to make handsome returns. we live in the twentieth century under artificial conditions, and it's no use pretending it's arcadia and the simple life. it's not. we're hothouse blossoms, perdita, products of this great forcing bed, new york, and we might just as well adapt ourselves to conservatory conditions. wallace wouldn't look at me if i were a hardy annual. he didn't when i was what god and nature made me. but wallace suits me, child though he is, in many ways, and i can do a great deal with him. i may even," but maud's tone had lost its high confidence and was a trifle dubious now, "i may even make a playwright of him." "why, here he is now with--with eugene gresham," interrupted perdita. this was but the second time perdita had seen eugene since his return a few days before. out from the wings stepped the two men and then clambered over the footlights and the orchestra space, and hastened down the aisle to join mrs. hepworth and miss carmine, who had now a number of large photographs spread over their knees, intently studying them. "good morning," wallace shook hands exuberantly with both women. "went splendidly, didn't it? we're going to have the first act over again." "very impressive, very," said gresham, who looked in the best of health and spirits. maud cast one withering look at him, but it glanced lightly off, turned aside by his smile. he saw it, however, and as quickly as possible got into a seat on the other side of perdita. "have you seen the papers?" he asked happily. "blessings on miss fuschia fleming. i shall do my humble best to keep the ball rolling. as soon as she appears in new york, i'm going to put in a request to do her portrait. something bizarre, weird and splotchily thrilling, you know. quite violent. that will keep a crowd around it from dawn to dark as soon as it's exhibited. it doesn't make the least difference whether she has any ability or not. she may be, and probably is, the most awkward, scrawny and nasal of western actresses; what of it? with hepworth for her angel and gresham for her painter, her vogue is secure. and perdita, rosita, your freedom is that much nearer." "eugene," perdita's eyes flashed, "i think it extremely bad taste, even vulgar, of you to talk in that vein." and eugene hastened to retrieve his blunder, and soon perdita, who was never long impervious to his spell, was smiling once more. miss carmine, however, was of sterner stuff. she did not wince, although she saw that there was no remedy for wallace's malady but the knife, and he, unwittingly, wasted no time in precipitating his destiny. "what are you doing with all those photographs of yourself and mrs. hepworth?" he asked. "we are going to give them to some reporters, who are getting up stories for the sunday papers." "maud!" martin spoke in the deep, pained tones of his leading man. "maud, i have said nothing. in fact i admired and approved when you and mrs. hepworth went into this business venture. but such methods for you, for her! do you not feel that you owe something to yourselves, and that she at least owes something to hepworth? oh, of what are you thinking?" "money," said maud succinctly. "something you evidently are not thinking of." she glanced toward the stage. "i hope not," he answered stiffly. "art--" "art, art! don't prate about art." maud did not intend to spare the knife. "art must be an individual expression and your play is simply hash seasoned with reminiscences. oh, dear, dear wallace, you can write a good play. i know you can, when you will write as wallace martin, and not after sudermann, ibsen, hauptmann, shaw. look at this act. wallace, tell me, is there no other way of picturing the gay, irresponsible life than by a costume ball in an artist's studio? must the _vie de bohème_ always be thus presented? then why does the lover in a problem play usually have to be a russian prince in moujik costume? and the heroine's midnight visit to his apartments! couldn't you, wouldn't they allow you, to write just one play without it? and need the lady, after her past has been discovered and fully discussed, always go out into the tempest in search of her better self, and slam the door behind her?" "maud! maud! you--you are pulling down the pillars of the temple," gasped martin. "it's blasphemous! every one says the play is good. you can not judge from a rehearsal. let us change the subject," with dignity. "since you have not hesitated to criticize me, i feel that i am justified in again urging you not to go into these gaudy advertising methods. willoughby hewston seems to feel that cresswell was terribly chagrined at his wife's going into business. and truly, you should urge her to show some consideration for him." "a fig for willoughby hewston." maud fumbled in her bag and drew forth an envelope. "here is a letter i got from cresswell yesterday. he congratulates me on the enterprise we have shown, and says that he is delighted that dita's interests have found so congenial and healthful a channel in which to flow." chapter xv a widow's smile one morning, a california morning, all sea-breezes and flower-scents and golden sunshine, mr. hepworth read, as he ate his breakfast, a letter from willoughby hewston. the letter, in itself, was a long one, and it also contained a bulky enclosure. this enclosure was the full page of a sensational new york newspaper. this exhibited enormous, black head-lines, screaming innuendo of the most blasting character. in the center of the page were pictures of hepworth and a dark, heavy-browed young woman, with large eyes and strongly-marked hebraic features. the page was further embellished by pen sketches surrounding these photographic reproductions, sketches of a startling and romantic nature, a wrecked automobile, a picturesque young woman in very high heels and a very long coat, fainting into the arms of a tall, rather elderly man, presumably hepworth. hepworth had scowled and reddened at the first sight of this dreadful page, and his expression did not improve as he continued his perusal of it. finally, however, his face cleared. he folded it neatly together and placed it carefully in his pocket-book. not a pleasant incident, but closed. no use in crying over spilled milk. this newspaper account of an adventure had occurred nearly nine days ago and therefore any wonder it may have excited was practically over. he turned again to hewston's letter and re-read it with mixed expressions in which amusement predominated. when hewston set out to be profoundly serious, hepworth always found him intensely funny. finishing his friend's admonitory epistle, hepworth next picked up one addressed to him in a smart feminine hand, alice wilstead's. he ran his eye over several pages, and then paused at a paragraph which he read over two or three times, his rather worried look changing the while to one of profound dismay, for mrs. wilstead not only stated that she was carrying out a long-cherished intention of visiting california with her friends, the warrens, but, what was more, she was staying not upon the order of her coming, but coming at once. she digressed at this point to express her pleasure at the thought of seeing him so soon again. he bestowed upon these protestations of friendship one bare, ungrateful glance and rustled over the various sheets of her letter, hoping to gain, if possible, some more definite information; and there it was before his incredulous and resentful eyes. she was, she explained, writing this "hasty note" (it was eight pages) within an hour of leaving. she expected to arrive in santa barbara on the thursday afternoon train. why, great heavens! he clattered his coffee-cup impatiently in the saucer. this was thursday morning and he had made all arrangements to spend a rather diversified day, including golf and a luncheon at monticito with fuschia and her father, a little fête in honor of jim's triumphant return, with "the earth, by george, the earth and nothing less in my vest pocket." "and alice," hepworth clattered his cup again, he knew her of old. she was quite as inquisitive as her delicately-pointed tip-tilted nose indicated, and if he wasn't on hand to greet her, she would make life a burden to him until she discovered why. hepworth, however, was used to coping with difficult situations. he took what odds fortune offered him and coldly, nonchalantly played to win. he sat for a few moments in deep thought. he had no intention whatever of giving up his day's pleasuring. the only problem which occupied him was what to do with alice. inspiration followed thought. he rang the bell and despatched a hasty request that mr. hayward preston come to him at once. mr. preston was a favorite with all mothers, especially those with daughters. they spoke of him in an almost lyric strain. naturally, one might expect to find him an egregious ass, and avoided of all men. the wonder is that he was not. he had an agreeable appearance, admirable manners, excellent business abilities. his virtues were all a little obvious and robust, and if one insisted on a flaw, it might be said that he lacked subtlety. so much the better. subtlety destroys a healthy interest in the commonplace and makes of the straight and narrow way a tame and monotonous pathway too rocky for speed. "preston," said hepworth with his usual courteous charm when this younger associate in certain business enterprises appeared, "i wish to ask you a favor, or, to put it more correctly, i am going to do you a favor. i have just received a letter from an old friend of mine, mrs. wilstead, saying that she will arrive this afternoon on the three-thirty train. unfortunately i have another engagement and can not meet her at the station, as, under other circumstances, i should very much wish to do; so," with another cordial smile, "i am hoping that you will be free to act as my proxy." mr. preston was not free. he had something else on hand, but this fact he did not hint by so much as a flicker of an eyelash, relegated it to the background of his thoughts to be settled later. he was not letting any opportunities to do "the chief" a favor slip lightly by him. "i shall be very glad to meet mrs. wilstead, if you can assure me that she will accept me as your proxy," he said with a frank smile. "let me see. the afternoon train. and how shall i know the lady?" "i will send my chauffeur with you. he knows her. you are sure, preston," solicitously, "that this does not interfere with any of your plans?" "quite sure," returned preston with convincing sincerity. "thank you," said mr. hepworth devoutly; he made a mental vow to the effect that preston should never rue this day. thus, it happened that alice wilstead, on stepping from the train at the conclusion of her trip across the continent, found, instead of her old friend, a good-looking young man awaiting her, a young man after her own heart, with that gravity and stability of mien, and the dependable smile, which, being in strong contrast to her own volatile self, always impressed her pleasantly. hayward preston, on his part, gazed at the most attractive woman he had ever seen, of the type he particularly admired. tall, graceful, her vivacious irregular face lighted by the gleam of white teeth and the sparkle of dark eyes, the air of the great world clinging about her as lightly as a perfume. to her joy, this delightful, wholesome-looking, grave man stopped before her. "mrs. wilstead?" he asked. she looked at him and smiled. it was the most effective smile in her whole arsenal reserved only for very special occasions. "mr. hepworth was at the last moment detained by certain business matters which are holding him a prisoner at his office and he asked me to act as his proxy. this ought to identify me, ought it not?" with a smile, and he gave her the card upon which hepworth had written a few lines. she barely glanced at it and then smiled again, the same smile, only a little diluted. she had seen at once that it was strong wine for preston. "you must meet mr. and mrs. warren," she turned to the two who were fussing over their luggage. warren was a tall, good-looking man and his wife an amiable, attractive little person. preston left the question open to them whether they wished to go to their hotel at once or would prefer to drive about, and see something of this new world, into which they had just stepped, and they decided in favor of the latter suggestion. through the town they drove, exclaiming over the roses, along the palm-lined boulevard by the shore and then in a rash moment at alice's request, they turned toward the mountains. a rash suggestion and one that preston had cause to rue, for presently they passed a carriage being rapidly driven in another direction and all apparently in the highest spirits. it was a party of three, two men and a girl, a slender, tanned, laughing girl, who caught alice's eye at once. the next glance revealed the man who sat beside her, and who was leaning toward her explaining something, to be cresswell hepworth. as alice bent forward, doubting the evidence of her senses, this girl lifted a bonbon from a box on her knees and held it out toward hepworth with a pair of tiny gilt tongs. he snatched it deftly in one bite, to the accompaniment of immoderate laughter from his friends, in which he joined. oh, dignity! oh, austere grief! what crimes are committed in thy name! in these days one might well paraphrase the famous lines from _the school for scandal_ and render them: "when a young girl marries a middle-aged man, what is she to expect?" the situation was graver than even willoughby hewston could have predicted. in the first surprise alice had exclaimed, "why, that's cress!" and then to relieve preston of embarrassment before the warrens, an embarrassment which was manifesting itself in the deep flush which overspread his face, "he probably got through sooner than he expected," she said in a matter-of-fact tone and dropped the subject. but she thanked fortune that both mr. and mrs. warren were talkative people given volubly to voice their enthusiasm over the beauty about them, and thus her rather stunned preoccupation passed unnoticed. she had upon her journey, and even before she started, pictured herself as a sort of missionary, with the not altogether unpleasant task before her of cheering up poor cresswell. she knew the strength of his few affections, his devotion to perdita and therefore she had some idea of how deeply this breach between them had affected him. but like most women, even the experienced ones, she had never realized that the masculine and feminine attitude toward grief is as wide apart as the poles. they may both wear rue, but with a difference. woman seeks a cloister that she may brood over her sorrow, commune with it, hug it to her heart in solitude, but man does his best to shake that black, haunting shape, tries to lose it in a crowd, and willingly sips any kind of a nepenthes which seems to offer him forgetfulness. alice wilstead had not expected that hepworth would make any unmanly exhibition of his woes, weep on her shoulder or be excitingly dramatic; she knew him too well. but she had expected to see him a little older, perhaps; a little grayer, sadder, more quiet, with a hint of melancholy in his eyes. he might--occasionally she pictured the scene--open his heart to her now and then in a grave and reticent way and disclose a strong man's grief; but instead she had seen him sitting up in a very smartly appointed carriage beside a correspondingly smart young woman in a white serge gown, who was in the very act of popping an enormous _marron glacé_ between his willing teeth. "men," said mrs. wilstead to herself, with cynical humor, "are all alike." a nugget of wisdom, by the way, which frequently falls from the lips of a sex prone to generalize from a personal experience. on arriving at the hotel, mrs. warren professed herself a bit weary and retired to her rooms, followed by her dutiful husband, but alice wilstead, afire with repressed curiosity, suggested, with another of those smiles, full strength now, that mr. preston take a cup of tea with her. she was more tired than she had thought. for a few moments, mrs. wilstead spent herself in enthusiasm for the beauty and charm of the place. such air! such scenery! such flowers! then she was solicitous about preston's tea; two lumps of sugar and two slices of lemon? what mathematical exactness! she took a sip of her own. just the right strength and of excellent flavor. what interesting looking people at the table over there; she believed, no, she was quite sure that she had seen them, perhaps met them before. yes, she remembered the daughter distinctly. it was in switzerland, a year ago. she was completely absorbed in the scene before her. "look at that absurd man yonder, mr. preston." preston eagerly fell in with her mood, lulled to a false sense of security. then without a minute's warning she opened fire. "a charming young woman," she began, "is a much more plausible, less hackneyed and convincing excuse than a 'pressing business engagement.' i'm surprised cresswell did not think of it. but that would be telling the truth, and you men avoid that as much as possible in dealing with women, do you not?" "you have taught us that you prefer the other thing," he returned with some spirit, although his soul quaked within him. "who is she?" asked mrs. wilstead, without preamble. "i don't know," said mr. preston miserably. he knew perfectly well that mrs. wilstead was too experienced to believe him, and would scorn his clumsy subterfuge. this confused him frightfully, but he hadn't the faintest idea what else to say, so he stumbled on with what he felt was yokel-like stupidity. "really, i do not know." "no, of course you would not know under the circumstances." mrs. wilstead's tone was sweet and sincere, but beneath the sugar-coating of innocence he discerned the bitter pill of her complete understanding. his ears burned and felt the size of an elephant's. he was very unhappy. he stirred his tea round and round, as if his spoon were an egg-beater. "now that you are here," he said awkwardly, "she will be heard of no more." although he never knew it, that speech advanced him leagues in alice wilstead's favor. the genuine sincerity of his tone would have warmed the heart of any woman standing with reluctant feet where the brook of _passé_ joins the river of middle-age. alice regarded the opals on her fingers (she was born in october) with a pleased yet humorous smile. "accepting your inference, what chance has an elderly widow against a young and lovely actress?" preston started. she had played trumps when he was least expecting them. "then you know--" he said. "that miss fuschia fleming is a star that will shoot madly from her sphere to brighten the firmament of new york this spring." "i supposed, of course, that was her game," he said soberly. but he was thinking not so much of fuschia fleming as of that after revelation which this delightful woman had made. a widow of charm, of sparkle, of money. one felt the latter. she unconsciously exhaled it. and best asset of all, the old and valued friend of cresswell hepworth. preston was no cold-blooded schemer, neither was he an ardent, impetuous hotspur. he merely calculated chances, not only by virtue of temperament but training, and when this jewel of a chance flashed its dazzling rays, he instinctively estimated its weight, the accuracy of the cutting and possible value. therefore mr. hayward preston made such hay in the next few minutes, that when he left, or rather when mrs. wilstead dismissed him, he received another of that particular brand of smiles and walked home with his head among the stars. chapter xvi father and daughter one morning, shortly before she left for new york, miss fuschia fleming and her father sat in the sitting-room of their suite in the hotel at santa barbara. the sunshine without lay broad and white and dazzling. within it seemed to be reflected, although through many tonal shadings in subdued, but still golden points of emphasis. there were bowls of yellow roses, there were baskets of oranges and lemons, there was fuschia herself in a morning gown as pale as the gold of her hair which looked paler than ever in contrast to a great tawny, orange-colored flower, which she had leaned from her window and plucked a short while before and thrust carelessly above one ear. her chair was completely surrounded by newspapers, colored supplements, sunday magazine sections. they billowed about her like waves. whoever would reach her must cross a crackling sea. on the opposite side of the room, her father reclined comfortably in a large easy chair, smoking an excellent cigar and poring intently over a page of "past performances," with pencil in hand poised above it. "goodness!" said fuschia suddenly, "she's a dream!" "who?" asked her father, looking up. "mrs. hepworth." fuschia was gazing at a page which presented many pictures of the same lady. "put down that dope sheet, papa; it's time wasted studying it. all your money is needed to back just one favorite, and copper just one bet, and that's me." "in common with my brothers, men, the workers and the shirkers, i am always ready with advice," obediently laying aside his paper. "save it for the weak brother then. i want to talk to you, to clear out my own thoughts. now mrs. hepworth--" "cress' wife?" her father interrupted with a show of interest. "what's the matter there, fuschia? why isn't she here?" "she's got a mission in life, just like you and me," fuschia showed her beautiful even teeth in one of her widest, curliest smiles. "yours, with the great motto inscribed upon your banner, 'home-keeping youths have ever homely wits,' is to rescue your brother from the deadly thraldom of the home; mine is to reform the stage; mrs. hepworth's is to redeem women's clothes. she has all kinds of theories about color and design and she wanted to put them in practice. that nice mrs. wilstead says that she's an odd, capricious, undisciplined creature, but a genius in her line. oh, i've learned a lot about her from what mrs. wilstead and all these newspapers have told me, and what mr. hepworth hasn't told me. papa, dear, i never admired any one in my life as i do that man. i've tried every way but using a drag-net to get him to tell me the whole story, but he's stood every test. he'll talk freely on any other subject." "didn't happen to give you any inside talk about those arizona properties, did he?" "he did not. you see he married the poor but beautiful girl, and then she got playing too gaily with eugene gresham, the great artist. you've heard of him surely. it was the triangle, you see. same old dramatic motive. then suddenly, just as every one was standing on their tiptoes to enjoy the view, why the triangle flew to pieces. the cresswell hepworth part landed out here, the eugene gresham part went to europe, the mrs. hepworth part went into business with a miss carmine, and opened a big establishment in new york, and every one came down on their heels with a thud, and are still staring at each other wondering what's doing." "if cress really wants her," remarked fleming, flicking the ashes from his cigar, "he surely wouldn't be such a fool as to leave the field. he'd stay and fight for her." "that's man-talk," said fuschia lightly contemptuous. "a crazy idea you all have, that you can make women love you. don't you know how the leading man always walks about the stage clenching and unclenching his hands, and muttering, 'by heaven, i'll make her love me; i'll win her against all the wir-r-rld.' poor souls, they think they can dazzle us into loving them; and many feel that if they only talk enough about themselves, and their great achievements, what they've done and what they're going to do, that they can't fail to fascinate us; and it often suits us to let them think so. awfully funny, isn't it?" "i never succeeded in fascinating 'em, no matter what line i took," said her father with feeling. "women don't care much for you, do they? well, cheer up, daddy, dear. they've never loved me. once in a while, they're very nice to me, and we purr and purr and rub noses, but all the time we are watching each other out of our green eyes, and then one day there's the swift stroke of the velvet paw and the deep mark of claws." "mighty little purr and velvet for me," fleming's petticoat reminiscences were invariably gloomy, "mostly claws." fuschia's unfeeling smile curved nearly up to her eyes. "how is that idaho property anyway?" she asked with apparent irrelevance. "fine, my dear, fine. i think cress may really make something on it himself, but in any event, he'll have no difficulty in unloading it." "i'll need a pile of money for my campaign." she took an orange from the basket and began tossing it from one hand to the other. "i've brought a good deal of study to bear on the arrangement of this checker-board. i always like to get on to the game just as much as possible. why have i been traveling about with those miserable little stock companies putting up with all kinds of hardships? just to get experience. now i'm ready for new york!" she mused a moment, and then took up the subject with fresh enthusiasm. "it's helped me a lot, all this newspaper notoriety about myself and mr. hepworth. puts me before the public as nothing else could. just look at these pictures!" she plunged her hand down into the rustling sea, and held out a sunday supplement to him. "there's a lovely picture of the auto tumbling over a cliff and me landing in a tree. simply great! now just as soon as i get to new york, mrs. hepworth's got to be a sister to me." "how do you know she'll cotton to you?" asked fleming. "what's that got to do with it?" his daughter opened her eyes in surprise. "i need her, for through her, i mean to have my portrait painted by gresham. and his prices! la, la! sure, you can put your hands on real money and plenty of it?" "fuschia, my child," her father laid aside his "dope sheet" and bent impressively toward her, "this new proposition has more in it than even you can spend, and you know what that means. it's one of those spectacular properties that make a poet of a man. you can talk it beautifully, splash on the color, you know, and it writes as well as it talks. shows up superbly in a prospectus, photographs like an artist's dream. just the thing to capture the eastern imagination. you see, it matters very little whether the property is intrinsically all right or not. that is always problematical, and to be left in the hands of providence. the great thing is to know what is going to capture the eastern imagination. that's what you're really dealing with, not the proposition itself, by jingo, but the eastern imagination." "that's just what i tried to tell that unborn babe of a press agent this morning," cried fuschia, nodding her head in emphatic agreement. "i got him because he was a mayflower yankee, just out of harvard, and yet he's got no more idea of how to deal with his own people than a new-laid kitten. he came bounding to me an hour or two ago with a lot of stuff he'd been working over nights with wet towels around his head and a pot of black coffee at his elbow. "'i think i've struck it,' said he. 'it is both true and new!' pop, it was like this. 'miss fuschia fleming can really do things, therefore she does not waste time talking about them. one of the most competent of stage managers, she never loses her temper. admirable self-control a striking characteristic. thoroughly systematic and methodical.' "lord, papa! i felt sorry for the kid. it like to killed me, you know. well, i waited a bit till the daze wore off and then i said, 'i'm sorry, honey, but it won't do. if i'd made good in new york and had 'em all rooting for me, it would be different, but they're effete easterners, boy, used to ruts and routine, and you can't change their breakfast food on 'em like that. they won't stand for it. give 'em the same good old press notices that mother used to make back in . don't talk about my "trim neatness." you won't believe it, daddy, but the poor kid actually did that! i said, 'say that my favorite house costume is a mexican riding-suit hung with silver dollars, and that, in cold weather, i always wear a navajo blanket over my shoulders. have a sketch of me rolling a cigarette between the thumb and second finger of one hand and throwing the lariat with the other. describe me, when only fifteen, playing rosalind in the redwoods of the yosemite before a wildly enthusiastic audience of miners and cowboys. then say that once before, when appearing before the most brilliant audience ever assembled in a san francisco theater, i became so overwrought that i began to shoot holes through the drop curtain.' do you think that was all right, papa?" her father gazed at her with an almost awed admiration. "honest to god, fuschia," he said at last, "i don't know what to think of you. here i've spent my life handling those easterners, singly and in bunches, and here are you, without either experience or training, on to the game intuitively. fuschia, this is a proud day for me. i've never told you, little girl, but sometimes i've had my doubts about your bringing up. i tell you after your mother ran away with my best friend and then divorced me for desertion and shortly died, leaving you, a two-year-old girl baby to me as a last bequest, it was a black hour. like one of those bible boys--peter, wasn't it?--i went out and crew bitterly. 'if she was only a boy!' i said. 'what can jim fleming do with a she thing like this?' then i took another look at you, in your white dress and blue shoes, smiling at me with your mouth all over your face, and, true as i stand here, fuschia, you were the first thing in skirts that didn't seem to be looking at me across a great gulf. "and then i talked to myself a while. you see, if your mother had come to me as man to man and said, 'jim, i'm tired of you and i want to marry henry,' i'd have said, hard as it might have hit me, you know that, fuschia, 'kate, i don't blame you, and i'll do what i can to help you.' but she preferred the feminine route, a note on the pincushion and she gone with all her jewels and ten thousand i'd given her to buy a diamond necklace. but as i say, i looked at you in your white dress and blue shoes and that friendly grin on your little mug, and i said, 'god knows how it'll work, but this girl thing here ain't going to grow up thinking that there's fences built all around her and that she's got to coax and sneak and pretend to get her way. poor kate! with great price she obtained her freedom, but my little fuschia, here, she's born free.'" "good old poppy-doppy!" fuschia's tone was fondly approving and something like a tear glimmered in the depths of her turquoise eyes. "i'm glad you never tried the snaffle bit of parental training and home influences on me, because i'd sure have kicked myself free, and it mightn't have been pleasant. but to come back to the present, mr. hepworth is so splendid, that unless his wife is really in love with this boy-raphael or whatever he is, i'm going to get into the game and make home happy for the hepworths." "cautiously, cautiously, daughter," admonished fleming, looking a trifle alarmed. "that's all right on the stage; but in real life when an outsider tries to join the parted hands of husband and wife, he's likely to get a cuff on the ear." "oh, men are crude," sighed fuschia. "you didn't suppose i was going to do the child at christmas act, did you? no, what i mean to do, that is, if it's just her imagination and not really her heart that's captured, is to take her boy-raphael away from her." fleming gasped, and, lowering his head slightly, looked at his daughter from under his eyebrows. "fuschia," he said, "there are few things that can feaze me. 'no limitations and no limits' has always been my motto, but you do, child, you really do take my breath away sometimes. why, if report is true, cress' wife is one of the most beautiful women in the world." "um-huh," fuschia yawned indifferently. "what has that got to do with it? i've usually," she continued thoughtfully, "succeeded in getting anything i wanted; that is, men. the wildest of them will trot right up to me, and eat out of my hand." "you're your father's own little girl, fuschia," said jim with emotion. "yes, and it's a good thing i inherited father's constitution as well as his spell-binding abilities, considering that i have to be practically my own press agent, stage manager and all the rest of it; the management of fuschia fleming and fuschia fleming herself and then take up the task of reuniting families besides. but mr. hepworth is a good, good man, papa, and we're going to make him happy, even if we have to do it on his money." chapter xvii do you love me? the warrens and mrs. wilstead had remained in santa barbara a week, time enough for alice to discover that hepworth was in no apparent need of the consolatory offices of his old friends, that fuschia fleming was a most entertaining young woman, and that hayward preston's attentions were persistent and his intentions manifest and purposeful. during the next month, no matter in what part of the state they were and in what hotel alice and her friends registered, preston was sure to turn up before the day was over; and to begin at the earliest possible moment his unending argument. along palm-shaded boulevards, under avenues of pepper trees, in orange groves, on lonely mountain trails, in the shadow of old missions, on surf-pounded beaches, in secluded nooks of great hotels, everywhere and at all times he told his plain, unvarnished tale. he had now asked mrs. wilstead to marry him in every resort in california; and had not yet succeeded in winning her consent, and the day of her departure was drawing near. within two days she would be leaving for new york. it was at pasadena that mr. preston made his last desperate stand. he and alice were strolling about the gardens of the hotel; she had not wished to get too far away from the sheltering warrens, and there preston was making what he assured her was his last appeal. she, however, preferred to view his condition of mind and heart in a psychological rather than a sentimental way. "it is a habit, an obsession," she asseverated, tilting her rose-lined parasol toward the sun so that charming pink reflections fell upon her face. "you have lost sight of the object in the zest of pursuit. it is the game which absorbs you, believe me. the winning would disconcert you. yes, it's the game. i am convinced that you have lost sight of the goal and all that it entails." mr. preston merely looked at her. "it entails you," he replied simply. "it entails a great deal more," her speech was as quick as his was slow. "you are, you tell me, exactly thirty-three years old. i, alice wilstead," she shut her lips and breathed hard a moment and then gallantly took the fence, "am just thirty-eight." not by even the flicker of an eyelash did he show either surprise or dismay. alice's heart went out to him. she really adored his impassivity; it was so unlike anything she was capable of. "what has that got to do with my loving you and your loving me?" asked preston stolidly. "everything," she answered deeply, regarding with drooping eyes and wistful mouth a great, fragrant rose which she held between her fingers. "if we could but hold this moment, if neither of us would know further change, why--" "then you admit that you could care for me, that you do care for me," he exclaimed with brightening eyes. "let it remain at 'could' and 'might,'" with one of her swift smiles. "but under any circumstances, i do not wish to marry any one. look at my admirable position, rich, free, supposedly attractive, young--a widow, you know, is always a good five or six years younger than either a married or an unmarried woman. one is regarded as a young widow until one is quite an elderly person. now, really, why should i marry?" "there isn't any possible reason," agreed mr. preston unhappily, "unless you love me, and then there is every reason. but are you not tired walking up and down, up and down these paths? shall we not sit down on this seat a few minutes?" she acquiesced. it was a glorious morning and the spot was enchanting with all this fragrant, almost tropical plant life blooming and blowing about them, and alice, impelled by the softness and sweetness of the air and scene, forgot her adamantine resolutions and lifted her eyes to his in one long and too-revealing glance. "alice, alice"--there were all manner of tender inflections in his usually colorless and unemotional tones--"you can not now deny--" "yes, i can," she cried quickly; "i can and i do. hayward, believe me, it will never, never do. you are looking at the matter from the man's viewpoint, i, from the woman's, and, in cases of this kind, the woman's is the surer, the more safely intuitive." "bosh!" preston's exclamation was calm, but pregnant. "but consider, consider," she besought him. "look at us, you are the robust, ruddy, phlegmatic type that will not change in twenty years, and i am exactly your opposite in every respect and that's the reason you like me and therein lies the whole tragedy. i'm nervous, mercurial, emotional, and nothing, nothing brings wrinkles so quickly as vivacity and expression." "but you haven't any wrinkles." "not yet. care, massage, a good maid and a light heart have kept them at bay. and, oh! gray hair!" "but you haven't any gray hair," he said, with the same patient obstinacy. "not yet, but when they do begin to come, they come all at once. hayward, i do not deny that i could care for you if i would let myself, but when i realize that for a woman to marry a man younger than herself makes life one long, hideous effort to keep the same age as her husband; oh, it is too frightening! just think! no matter how much one may long for repose to have to be always up and exercising to keep one's figure; to have to hold on to one's complexion by always sleeping in stifling masks and slippery cold cream; to be always watching the roots of one's hair to see if it doesn't need retouching, and, worst of all, to have to be gay and vivacious and conceal, heaven knows, what twinges of rheumatism under a smiling face." "you're just talking," said preston calmly. "keep on if it amuses you. it doesn't mean anything at all to me. not at all." his success in life was largely due to the fact that he always kept the main object in view and never permitted himself to be diverted by side issues. "your personal appearance ten years from now has nothing to do with the matter. we may both be dead ten years from now. there is only one question to be discussed and that is, 'do you love me?'" the petals fell from the red, red rose as alice twisted it nervously in her fingers. "i think i have given you ample proof of my liking for you," she said at last, "but the _loving_ is obscured in doubts." "forget them, for my sake," he murmured. "can't you, won't you, alice?" "if i could only get away from those mental pictures," she confessed. "they stand between us like a barrier. just think of arriving at the point where you want to doze after dinner and dream over some nice, slow, old book, with your head comfortably nodding now and then. and the fire flickering and the cat purring on the rug. lovely, isn't it? and instead, think of realizing wearily that you've got to spend the evening at the opera or playing bridge. and that, of course, means turning yourself at an early hour into the hands of your maid for repairs and decoration. and then you've got to sit upright the whole evening because your stays, which are guaranteed to give you the lithe and willowy figure of youth, will not let you lean back. and you do not dare to smile, because you will crack the kalsomining on your face; neither may you move your head, you are so afraid that the curls and puffs and braids may not be pinned on tight. oh, it's a dog's life!" she sighed heavily. "and it's not for you," preston spoke firmly. "there is nothing coltish about me." alice laughed, it was so true. "business is all that very deeply interests me, and amusements bore me very much. i like the after-dinner doze and the fire and cat already. you will probably have more of that kind of thing than you like, if you marry me. alice, will you not consider?" "mrs. wilstead, mrs. wilstead," a page's voice rang through the shrubbery and came nearer and nearer and alice took from him a thick letter addressed to her in isabel hewston's hand and adorned with a special delivery stamp. "from a dear friend," alice exclaimed. "will you excuse me while i look at it? there may be some matter of importance, you know." in preston's manner there was no hint of his annoyance. he behaved as well as a man could when interrupted in the most fervent declarations of affection which the limitations of his nature permitted him. he even suggested that he withdraw, and rose, hat in hand. could complaisance, consideration go further? there were only two days before him, and she had never been so near yielding before. "oh, no, no," almost possessively, she stretched forth a hand to detain him. "you have nothing to do but wait, and i shall run through this," touching the letter, "in a moment." preston sat down beside her again and lighting a cigarette, smoked and looked out over the brilliant garden before him while she read. it was evident, alice discovered this before she had finished the first page, that isabel hewston was actuated by no deeper motive than pure, erratic impulse when she placed that special stamp upon the letter. at least so alice and preston probably would have agreed and isabel reluctantly would have admitted it. but the fates who sit in the background and transmit wireless messages to mortals would have smiled inscrutably and shaken their heads. if isabel hadn't stuck that stamp on for no reason whatever, and if the page hadn't sought alice through the breeze-caressed, rose-scented garden and given her the missive at the exact moment he did--but, as eugene gresham would say, "what's the use? why conjecture?" what really occurred was this: "dearest alice," wrote mrs. hewston, "how i envy you in that southern paradise while here the weather merely changes from sleet and snow to rain and then back again." there was a page or two of this and of willoughby's various ailments and symptoms, and then a long and glowing account of her visit to perdita hepworth, and a great deal of minute, enthusiastic description of the gowns that dita was designing for her. this alice read with interest, but greater interest still did she bestow upon the statement that there appeared to be a coldness between wallace martin and maud carmine, owing, it was said, to the fact that she had ruthlessly criticized his last play, and prophesied accurately its speedy failure. "it does seem too bad, dear," isabel wrote next, "that you, away off in california, should have to come in for your share of the gossip which seems so sadly rife this season." here alice clutched the pages and, bending over, bestowed upon them an almost breathless attention. what could isabel mean? "it is perfectly stupid, of course," the letter ran, "and i would not think of mentioning it to you except that we have always been frank about such things, and, anyway, you ought to know. there is a rumor about that you went to california hoping to catch cresswell's heart in the rebound. people now believe that he and perdita have definitely separated and that you knew this, and, as some one put it to me, so vulgarly too, dear, camped down on his trail. they say now that the incident of the actress was merely to make things easier for perdita in gaining her freedom, but that soon after that is granted her, willoughby says that, as those coarse men express it, you will lead cress to the altar." "darn willoughby!" alice breathed hard as she muttered the words between her clenched teeth, the vivid scarlet of hot anger suffusing her face. preston turned quickly to her, throwing away his cigarette, and ceasing to regard the brilliant garden through meditative, half-closed eyes. "what is it?" he asked. "something has worried you." "no," she smiled, with an effort, and shrugged the matter lightly off her shoulders, "some mistake about a very trifling matter. it annoyed me for a second, that is all." for a moment or two neither spoke. alice was watching the flight of a butterfly that soared in the air until almost out of sight and then came back to drift about a group of tall, white yuccas. "hayward, do you still love me as much as you did ten minutes ago?" she smiled charmingly at him, that very, very especial smile of hers, and he, with his rather slow perceptions quickened by love, read capitulation and a real affection in her softened eyes. [illustration: "hayward, do you love me?"] "alice!" and the depth and fervor of his love will be appreciated when it is recorded that he, hayward preston, the most conventional of men, deliberately tilted her rose-lined parasol and in the face of the world and before the very eyes of an advancing couple, kissed her. chapter xviii playing the game it was only a day or two after her arrival in new york that fuschia fleming, who had been rehearsing the greater part of the night, opened her sleepy eyes in the hotel chamber to find her maid bending above her with a visiting card in one hand and a perplexed expression upon her face. "i hated to waken you, miss fuschia," she said, "but when i saw the name--" "what is the name?" fuschia's voice was drowsily indifferent. "mrs. cresswell hepworth." "_mrs._ cresswell hepworth!" both indifference and sleepiness were things of the past. miss fleming sat up in bed with a spring. "she's in the parlor, isn't she? here, martha mary, hustle about. get me out my gold-colored kimono with the silver wistaria on it, and some yellow stockings and slippers. tell her i regret having to keep her waiting, late at rehearsal last night. you know the proper thing. now, go ahead and do your prettiest and then dance back here and help me get into things." "certainly no time wasted," reflected the actress standing before her mirror, winding her long ash blonde hair round and round her head. "i dare say it's a case of 'gur-rl, what have you done with me husband?' there is only one reply to that. i shall draw myself up haughtily and say, 'pardon, madame, it was you who first carelessly mislaid him, not i.' where the deuce are my hair-pins? she'd never come to my apartments with a cat-o'-nine-tails under her golf cape, or a bottle of acid in her shopping bag. sure-ly not. they always choose the foyer of the theater for such stunts. oh, martha mary," as that person whom jim fleming had once designated as a "vinegar-faced-sue" returned to the bedchamber. "i can find nothing. everything has crawled under the bed or the bureau. how is the lady dressed for the part? handsome, dark garments, rich, dark furs, black veil over face, handkerchief handy?" "the lady is wearing rose-colored cloth and chinchilla," replied martha mary literally. "rose color and chinchilla. that is a note out, positively frivolous. oh, dear me! i am only half put together. you get more worthless every day, martha mary. put on all my moonstone rings, for luck. they may save my life." when fuschia entered her temporary drawing-room, perdita hepworth was standing with her back to her, gazing from the window out upon the bleak wind-swept streets. march was departing with lion-like roars and buffets and striving bravely but vainly to obscure his ugly countenance in clouds of dust. hearing a slight sound, she turned and saw advancing down the pleasantly warmed, flower-scented room, a young woman whom she instantly likened to a pale but radiant ray of spring sunshine. this sunshine, yellow kimono, pale yellow hair, a cheek like the heart of a tea-rose, gold-colored silk stockings and slippers, paused between a jar of white lilacs and a basket of hyacinths. the lion-like roars without seemed suddenly all hollow pretense. spring had come to new york and involuntarily perdita smiled in greeting. "miss fleming, please forgive this unseemly early call; but you see it is important, this matter i wish to see you about." perdita thus opened the conversation. "she can chew up the scenery about me husband all she wishes," said fuschia to herself, "if she just lets me look at her. her pictures give no idea of her. she's red roses and music and emotion. she's poetry and romance. my lord!" in spite of perdita's brave attempt, conversation languished. she appeared to be weighing some matter which lay on her mind. at last she looked up with a slightly ironical smile. "you will think i have come on some affair of state, miss fleming, the way i am hesitating--" fuschia here made a violent mental protest. "now don't you begin by telling me that i broke up your home, because i didn't. you broke it yourself." mrs. hepworth made an impatient gesture as if at her own unusual lack of adequate expression. "do you play cards at all?" she asked, "bridge or--" fuschia could not suppress one stare of surprise. "play bridge!" she murmured, wondering what that had to do with the matter. "no, i have no card sense. strange, too, for papa has a lot." "the reason i asked was this," in rather diffident explanation; "i was wondering if you could appreciate what it means to make an unexpected play which takes several tricks--to play trumps in such a way as to make the other players gasp with surprise, to--" "oh, i know what you mean," said fuschia comprehendingly, a light dawning in her puzzled eyes. "you are talking about playing the game. why, of course, i understand. that's all there is; that's what i'm on this dizzy old planet for." but although a basis of mutual agreement and understanding was thus established, dita seemed still to struggle with an unwonted embarrassment. it was not, however, within fuschia to prolong a situation of this kind. she bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her fingers covered with moonstone rings clasped lightly in front of her, her eyes full of a thousand twinkles and the upturned corners of her mouth curving almost to her eyes. "let's get down to cases, mrs. hepworth, man to man. is it a go?" perdita drew a breath of relief and smiled back. she certainly was not one of the few, the very few, who could resist the twinkles in fuschia's eyes. "it's a go," she answered; "then man to man, it is this way. you have made it easy, you see, for me to say the things i wanted to, although i did not know in what feminine phrases i might have to clothe them. but you and i are, at present, very much in the public eye. now every one is waiting to see what our attitude toward each other will be. it is assumed openly by the newspapers, as you probably know, that there is a sort of woman's war on between us. now, miss fleming, i want--" "your husband," supplemented fuschia mentally. "well, i haven't got him; never did have him; don't want him." "--to design your stage costumes and to have it so announced," concluded perdita. then she saw a remarkable change come over the dainty, thistledown miss fleming. her mouth became an almost straight line, the gleam in her eyes was almost uncannily shrewd. she gave perdita's words a concentrated consideration for a few moments and then nodded two or three times, brief, quick, clean-cut little nods. "great!" she said succinctly. then her mouth curled again, the twinkles, like splintered diamonds, came back to her eyes. she flew across the room and threw her arms about perdita, enveloping her in a momentary and rose-scented embrace. her enthusiasm was unrestrained. "the advertisement is above rubies," she cried. "no wonder you are such a success." "oh, that is no credit to me," replied dita carelessly. "i have a sort of sixth sense about clothes, you know. it is my one gift. i know the moment i put eyes on any one exactly how she, it is always she, of course, ought to look. i see colors when i look at people. women often say to me, 'oh, i can not wear this or that color,' when it is just the one thing they should wear, it is their mental correspondence." "and how are you going to dress me?" asked fuschia with intense interest. "principally in gold and silver," dita answered without hesitation. "you have on the right thing now. most designers would put you in black, because you are so very fair. they would try to make you striking by force of contrast, but not i. you see very few women of your coloring could stand the dazzle of gold and silver. it would completely eclipse them; but you are mentally dazzling. your personality is strong enough to reduce anything you wear to its proper place. one must take all those things into account in designing, you know. now you are quicksilver, sunlight, glimmer of day on speeding waters, and we must accentuate that fact; not ignore it and slur it over." "it sounds fascinating," said fuschia. "how sweet of you to do this for me." "for myself, you mean." perdita rose. "you'll do, my dear. you're new, you're different. new york will be yours whether you can act or not." a flame went over fuschia's face and seemed to pass as swiftly as it had come; but instead, it remained, focused in her eyes. "i can act," she said briefly, "and, look here, new york may accept me on the magnificent advertising i've had and will continue to have; or new york may accept me on the strength of my wonderful gowns designed by perdita hepworth. that's all right, that's as it should be. but i'm going to make new york forget my press notices, and your gowns and fuschia fleming, and i'm going to make it sit tight and still in its boxes and orchestra chairs and balcony seats and laugh and cry with the heroine on the stage who shall be the realest thing on earth to them for the time. that's the game for me, mrs. hepworth. that's all the game i care a hang about." * * * * * "maudie," said perdita to miss carmine, an hour or two later, "i have just secured a new commission, a big one." "what?" asked maud with interest. "hepworth and carmine are to design the costumes that miss fuschia fleming will wear in the repertoire of society dramas in which she will appear after two weeks of shakespearean rôles. paula tangueray, mrs. dane, you know the lot of them." "perdita! the cheek of her. to make such a request under the circumstances." "maudie! the cheek of _me_," mocked dita softly. "you!" astonishment was beyond all bounds now. "you!" "yes. did you fancy--" there were those deep vibrations in dita's voice which always bespoke some strong emotion, "that i was going to endure the spectacle of miss fleming triumphant 'in our midst,' and every one watching to see how i would take it, and predicting that only one course remained open for me and that was with dignity to ignore the incident? not so. the world will see, and this, amusingly enough, happens to be a fact, that miss fleming and mrs. hepworth are excellent friends, that mrs. hepworth is one of miss fleming's warmest admirers, and that she, still speaking of myself, has assisted in miss fleming's unparalleled success in new york by designing for her some of the most wonderful costumes ever seen on the stage." "unparalleled success!" scoffed maud. "it is rather early to predict that. new york is like a cat. you never know which way it will jump." "it will jump fuschia fleming's way," replied dita confidently. "you haven't met her." "is she so beautiful then? as beautiful as you?" "oh, no," perdita was smoothing out her gloves on her knee. she shook her head decidedly. "nothing like. she isn't beautiful at all. she's just a slender creature with rather colorless _blonde cendre_ hair and blue eyes." "oh," maud was plainly puzzled. "then what do you mean?" but perdita only smiled. "have you and wallace made up yet?" she asked with what appeared to the other woman striking irrelevance. "impertinent, i know; but there's a reason?" "no-o-o," said maud reluctantly and evidently wondering if dita had suddenly lost her mind. "then do so at once," advised her business associate. "do so before he meets fuschia fleming." "from what you say." miss carmine's chin was high and haughty. "i see no cause for alarm." "no?" perdita tapped the table with her finger-tips, still inscrutably smiling. maud rarely permitted herself to become angry, but she did so now. she had never imagined that perdita could be so aggravating. "just because cresswell lost his head about her, you think--" she flashed out. "he didn't," cried perdita not with bravado, but with a confidence which maud realized with surprise was genuine. "i hadn't been with her three minutes before i knew that. but take my advice," again her voice fell to that teasing note. "if you really love wallace make up your differences with him to-day, to-day, before he, a playwright, meets the actress. then get a new steel chain, one that he can't chew through, and fasten it securely to his collar." chapter xix he calls on his wife early in april hepworth returned to new york. it was a gentle, smiling april, inclining more to laughter than to tears and striving to obliterate the memories of march. he arrived one evening and wasted no time in communicating with perdita. the next day in fact was marked by the passage of notes between them, severely businesslike, and yet models of courtesy. the result of these diplomatic negotiations was that mr. cresswell hepworth, at a suitable hour the following morning, wended his way to his wife's business establishment. it was a deliciously balmy morning, the rare sort of a day that slips in now and then between april showers and sets one dreaming of the glory of the spring in the silent woody places. the great, roaring canyons of brick and stone floated in a silvery, sparkling mist, and in that atmospheric alembic dreary perspectives assumed an unsubstantial and fairy-like beauty. the little leaves on the trees fluttered in the soft breeze and were so young, so green, so gay that they lifted the heart like tiny wings of joy. in spite of himself there was the hint of a smile about the corners of hepworth's mouth and this deepened and deepened until as he rang the bell of his wife's door, he suddenly became conscious of it, and carefully suppressed it. the sphinx, past mistress of inscrutability of expression, would have paid him the tribute of a flicker of admiration as he entered the reception-room. it was without a suggestion of curiosity or even interest in his eyes that he glanced absently about him; perhaps the long droop of the lids at the corners, which appeared to accentuate his rather weary and listless gaze, was more marked than usual, but this was always so when he was making mental notes and registering his observations with the rapidity and accuracy of a ticker. he awaited perdita in her reception-room, that charming apartment, and here, in view of certain events which occurred later, it would be well to give the plan of the first floor. this room opened from the hall and ran the length of the house with windows at the front looking out upon the street while those in the rear opened upon a strip of garden. there was another door at the lower end of the room, which, with the long room, formed an ell, and terminated the hall. dita kept hepworth waiting a bare moment. her approach was unkindly noiseless, but nevertheless he heard her, and was on his feet, his eyes meeting hers full as she appeared in the doorway. the conventional banalities of greeting were gone through with ease on his part, grace on hers. merciful banalities! they gave him time to consider the change in her, a change which was to him sufficiently striking almost to have trapped him into an expressed surprise, and this change was so subtle that he wondered that it should yet be so apparent. it was not a matter of outward appearance, that remained the same in effect. it was a mental change so animating and vital that cresswell felt all former estimates of her crumble. had she always been so, and had he never really seen her until now? had time and absence in some way cleared his obscured vision? he felt a momentary sense of confusion, a brief mental giddiness, and then he pulled himself together. the first impression was the correct one. she had changed, and thereby had gained, gained tremendously in poise. but there was no time now in which to analyze impressions. "so this is the magic parlor where all the ugly women are transformed into beauties." he looked about him as if he had not thought to glance at her surroundings before. "the presence of mere man here seems rather profane, do you not think so? ah, well, my stay is brief. you have proved, haven't you, that it is not an impossibility after all, to paint the lily and gild refined gold?" "so few women have any taste," she said carelessly. "and oh, their houses! you should see them when i go over their hideous houses like a devouring flame and ruthlessly order out all their dreadful junk. and the most awful objects are always the most precious in their eyes. i feel so sorry for them. i have always a guilty sense of being a naughty boy robbing a bird's nest, and the poor mother birds stand around and flap their wings and hop and shriek. it's very mournful, but they needn't have me if they don't want me." he laughed. "and maud? is she, too, well and happy?" dita lifted her hands and eyes. "that is a very tame way of describing her. her gowns are dreams this spring, she is considered almost a beauty; people, you see, are gradually forgetting that she was ever 'that plain maud carmine who plays nicely,' and wallace martin and herself are engaged to be married." a faint, amused smile crept around her mouth at this announcement. hepworth looked up with sudden interest. "indeed! well, that might have been expected, i dare say, but will it not rather seriously interfere with the business?" "no," she shook her head. "no, i think not, maud has no intention of quitting. wallace's plays are more or less problematical and maud has invested a good deal of her money in this. it is really paying remarkably well, you know." "dita," his voice was low, and he could not conceal the chagrin, the touch of pain in it. "why have you never touched a cent of your own money, since my departure? i only learned a few days ago that you had not. i can not begin to tell you how it made me feel. it not only distressed but deeply wounded me." she twisted a little in her chair. "it--it has never been necessary," she said. "we began to make money at once. really, cresswell, maud and i have prospered beyond our wildest dreams." "but suppose you had not. is your prosperity the only reason you have not touched it? would you have done so under any circumstances? that is what i have been asking myself for the past week, and am now asking you." she flushed uncertainly. "ah," she said. "i can not answer you that. i can not tell. one never knows what one will do when the pinch comes." he smiled faintly. "i'll not put any more embarrassing questions to you, but confine myself to perfectly safe topics. you are looking very well." "i am well." "and happy? but there, that is hardly a safe topic, is it?" a sudden light came into her eyes, making them warm and softly bright. she smiled at him with a fresh, almost childlike enthusiasm. "yes, i'm happy," she said, "happier than i've ever been in all my life. why, cresswell, it's been fun, fun. there's been lots of work, and lots of planning, but nevertheless, i've never enjoyed anything so much in my life. often i go to bed at night tired out, but it's always with a comforting sense of satisfaction. it's all so varied and interesting, you know, but it isn't that that makes me happy." she clasped her hands and looked up at him with an unconscious appeal for sympathy and understanding in her eyes. "it's better than that, better than anything else. it's meant success, think of it, success. not a horrid, little picayune one either, but a nice, big one." he leaned forward and looked at her curiously as if he really saw her for the first time. "why, dita," he exclaimed, "has it meant so much to you as that?" "indeed, yes." there was ardor, fervor in her answering exclamation. "i can not tell you how much. i believe i was really morbid on the subject. i believed in failure as a real atmosphere always encompassing me. i had all manner of superstitions, beliefs about it. i believed that with all my strength and youth and energy, i was yet doomed by fate to a tomb of inaction. i seemed so futile, so ineffective. with a restless, active brain i accomplished nothing. you see that was such a dreadful experience, my attempt to earn my living before i married you, and i was so ignorant and inexperienced of every condition of life in which i found myself, that it prevented me from striking out boldly, from believing in myself. so i made the fatal mistake of beginning small, and began to paint all those wretched little articles, and it wasn't my _métier_ at all, cresswell, really it wasn't, so, naturally, i failed. and," as if it had suddenly occurred to her, "i have found it so interesting to dress miss fleming. designing her costumes has been fascinating." "that was a very wonderful and a very clever thing of you to do, perdita." there was a tone in his voice she did not understand. she began to praise fuschia and he leaned back in his chair listening. she could see the mere gleam of his eyes between his almost closed lids. she wondered if he had really heard one word she had said. in reality he was bestowing upon her such attention and study as he had never dreamed of giving her before. she felt, however, in spite of his apparent indifference, that he was so far in sympathy with her, that she was impelled in spite of herself to continue her confidences. "do you know, cresswell, it's a horrible thing to be considered a beauty. oh, you may laugh," he could not help his mirth. "i know beauty is supposed to be the heart's desire of every woman; but there are many drawbacks. every one, without exception, takes it for granted that you are a fool. your sense is always considered in reverse ratio to your good looks, and then, it's such an uncertain thing. just when you need it most to console you for the disappointments and disillusions of life, it departs, and horrid things, wrinkles and gray hairs, take its place." "perdita! what an absurd creature you are!" "ah, cresswell," her tone was pensive. "you have always been successful. you can not imagine what failure feels like, that deadening, hopeless sensation." she was vehement enough now. "can i not?" at last he lifted his drooping lids and looked straight at her. "my dear dita, i can give you cards and spades on every emotion of failure you have ever felt. i recall one case in particular, where i failed so conspicuously and brilliantly, that i am overcome with surprise at my own stupidity every time i think of it. but as you have been talking that case has reverted again and again to my mind, and it has struck me that there is still a chance that i pursued the wrong tactics." she drew back wounded. he had then, as she had once or twice suspected, not been listening to a word she said, and how his cold face had glowed at the mere thought of retrieving a business blunder. hepworth got up and began walking about the room. "and gresham, what of him?" he asked presently, breaking the silence which had fallen between them. "he is quite well, i believe," she was furious at the conscious note which crept into her voice, at the scarlet which flew to her cheek, but one thing she had never been able to endure and that was any evidence of cowardice in herself. she lifted her eyes bravely to his and held them there. "he has been in town since january," she said. "i have seen him very often." "ah, painting as brilliantly as ever, i dare say? a genius, eugene! unquestionably." again silence fell between them, and lasted until she broke it with the constrained question: "are you--are you going to be here for some time now?" "no, i shall have to be in london more or less during the summer, but i have some matters which must be attended to first. by the way," as if struck by a sudden thought, "what are your plans for the summer?" "i have made none. i have not even thought of such things yet. i dare say i shall go somewhere for a bit of a change, but," with a smile, "business is so very brisk." he laughed and took one or two more turns up and down the room. "dita, do you remember that i told you once that you were a remarkably clever woman? well, i merely wish to call that fact to your attention, and reiterate my statement. oh, i must tell you, i have a new amulet, a wonder. i will tell you the history of it when you have more time. you have the case in your keeping have you not? and the tray with the one empty space?" the blood rushed to her face. "i have the case," she said coldly. "it is locked in my safe here. do you wish it now?" "no," he shook his head. "wait until i bring the amulet. may i bring it late wednesday afternoon? and why not dine with me then? say you will, dita. give the world something to talk of, something to puzzle over." she had never seen him so eager. she hesitated a bare second. "i will. yes, i will be very glad to," but lifting her eyes to his: "are you so sure that one of those amulet trays has an empty space?" "it had when i last saw it." his voice was unreadable. "but that is months ago; perhaps you will think differently when you see it wednesday evening." there was a flash over his face, which vanished as quickly as it had appeared. he drew nearer to her as if about to speak, then apparently reconsidered the intention. "i really must not keep you longer," he picked up his hat. "of course, there are a number of matters to be discussed, but they can wait. we will reserve them for wednesday evening. good-by." he held out his hand. she placed hers in it. "good-by," she returned. chapter xx the magic word "maud," said dita, walking in upon that young woman, a package of letters in her hand, "a lot of things are happening. here is a letter, among other things, from mrs. wilstead. she says that she is just back from california, and that she needs stacks and stacks of new clothes, and wants our designs. it will be fun dressing her. she is so extremely good looking." maud stirred restlessly, frowned, bit her lip, but did not speak. "just back from california," went on dita. "i wonder--i wonder, maud, if she could possibly have come on with cresswell?" "very probably," said maud. "in fact, i think nothing could be more likely." "why, what do you mean by speaking so mysteriously?" dita widened her eyes. "suppose they had? nothing, after all, could be more natural." "nothing, i suppose." maud was trying hard to be non-committal. "but let her go to some one else. if we take any more people, we shan't get away this summer. we have more on our hands now than we can manage. yes, let her go to some one else." "but, maud," dita hesitated, "i really think we should refuse some one else and take her. she is an old friend." "old fiddlesticks!" cried maud impatiently. "maud! what is the matter with you? a touch of spring fever? really, i think we must consider her." "but if i ask you not, dita"--there were almost tears in maud's voice. "but why should you ask me not? this is too bewildering." "ah, well," maud spoke now with the calmness of despair, "since you force me to tell you, i ask you not because mrs. wilstead has been constantly with mr. hepworth in the west this winter, and the current gossip is that he is only waiting for a divorce to be arranged between you and himself, to marry her." there was silence for a moment on dita's part. her eyes were downcast, mechanically she sorted the letters in her hand. "then what of the talk about fuschia fleming and himself?" "oh, they say that she took a back seat when alice wilstead appeared on the scene. but really, dita, this move on alice's part makes me furious. the idea of her being guilty of such wretchedly bad taste. i have always liked her, been really fond of her, in fact, but this crass exhibition of bad breeding disgusts me. i dare say that she doesn't care so long as she gets results; that is, the benefit of your taste and skill to enhance her waning beauty; but look at the position it is going to place you in, dita. for number one to design the trousseau for number two is really too absurd. it simply goes beyond all belief. dita, you must, indeed you must, write her the curtest, coldest of polite notes and tell her that we are entirely too busy to consider her." "very well. i'll humor you so far," returned perdita. "what is it?" turning to a maid who entered with a visiting card. "ah, eugene! i asked him to come this morning. i particularly wanted to see him and i don't want you present. there, don't get that stony look of despair on your face, maudie; think how good i have been all winter, only seeing eugene once in a blue moon, and then in your company." "but i want you to keep on being good," pleaded maud; "especially now." "i am gooder than you can possibly imagine," laughed perdita, "but, all the same, i do not wish you tagging about this morning." she smiled teasingly at her puzzled business partner as she left the room. she went down to meet eugene in the same room at the same hour she had talked with her husband the day before. but eugene was not one to endure for one moment a situation dominated by the shadowy third person. no woman should gaze at him with the remembrance of yesterday in her eyes, the smile of wistful reminiscence on her lips. an hour with him must be a dazzling and kaleidoscopic episode. he would hold it in his hand, and at the bidding of his will, the moments, like bits of colored glass, should revolve and melt and mingle--rainbow arabesques on the background of time. "your meditations, remembrances and regrets for your oratories, my dear," his challenging eyes seemed to say, "but with me you live, you laugh, you thrill responsive to the harp of life; the yesterdays forgotten, the to-morrows unborn." "dita!" he caught her hands in his as she entered. his eyes were shining, his head thrown back. he was more vivid than the spring sunshine which fell through the open windows. "eugene! you look as if you had just received some wonderful new commission." "so i have, a commission to love you. that is right, blush. dita, why do you not always wear rose color? but no, don't listen to me. if it were blue or green, i would be making the same request. dearest, my eyes drink in, drink up your loveliness. you never, never were so beautiful as you are this morning." "eugene, you are mad; too foolish for anything. what is the matter with you?" "mad doesn't half express it. may i smoke?" he took her consent for granted, for he was already rolling cigarettes in his deft, supple fingers. "yes? no? i am delirious with joy. hepworth is back as, of course, you know. that can only mean one thing; every one says that just as soon as a divorce can be decently arranged, he and alice wilstead will be married. the verdict of the world is that he was so angry at your going into business that he flung off to the west. it was the most spectacular of your many caprices and it proved the last straw for him. blessed last straw!" lifting his eyes devoutly. "and then alice wilstead cleverly appeared on the scene and the consoling offices of friendship did the trick." "three months ago it was fuschia fleming, according to gossip." her eyes were downcast, her tone expressionless. "oh, that," he blew rings of smoke lightly through the air and followed them with gay eyes; "that is a part of the game. that was making evidence for you. it is all arranged that i am to paint her portrait, you know. i have not met her yet, either." he threw his cigarette through the window. "dita, dita, how can you sit there so cool and still? when i think that you are actually on the very eve of freedom, i become delirious with joy." "so sure of the winning, eugene?" "dita!" his face clouded, there was a world of reproach in his voice. "that is a terrible trait in your character, that teasing desire of yours always to fling a little dash of cold water on one's mounting enthusiasms." "there is another dash coming," she laughed. "i want my amulet, and i want it at once, to-day. i know," anticipating his protestations, "that you returned it to me the afternoon hepworth left for the west, and i would not see you to receive it in person. then, my mind was so perturbed and occupied that i didn't think of it again before you sailed, and since your return," a little smile creeping about her mouth, "i haven't thought about it either; but now that the matter has come up between us, please see that i have it to-day, eugene." he had looked slightly annoyed while she was speaking, but now he bent toward her with his most charming manner, his most winning smile. "you know my greatest weakness, dita? i try to overcome it, really i do," in laughing excuse, "but in spite of will or reason those superstitions of mine persist. alas! they do." he admitted it as a naughty little boy might admit a passion for stealing jam. "and i have tremendous faith in that old charm of yours." he picked up another cigarette from his skilfully rolled little heap, placed as orderly on the table beside him as if they were his paint brushes. "ever since i have had it," he went on, "the luck of the high gods has been mine. princessin, contessin and high altessin still clamoring to have their portraits painted. the critics amiable and almost intelligent, money pouring into my coffers and pouring out faster than it comes in--i wish there were such a thing as a money-tight purse--and best of all, ah, best of all, the love of my heart so near, so near." his eyes held the warm glow which changed, irradiated them. "the star of my life comes slipping, wavering through the spaces of the sky and down the purple pathways of heaven to my arms." he leaned forward quickly and almost enfolded her. "eugene!" she stood haughty and tall before him. "you assume entirely too much. you have from the beginning. more, much more, than i have ever given you any reason to assume. according to the tradition the amulet can only bring one luck when it is given with the heart's love; and i never gave it to you, eugene, never. you laughingly filched it one day when i took it off the chain about my neck, that you might look at it more closely. and you are so sure, so sure of me, when i am anything but sure of myself. i have never deceived you as to the state of my feelings. how would that have been possible when i am still so doubtful myself? ah, those doubts!" "they are nothing, dearest, nothing. i shall brush them away as i brush cobwebs." he put his hands upon her shoulders and stood gazing deeply into her eyes. "ah," she shook her head, and, at the same time, stepped away from him, "i am no more sure that i love you than i was six months ago." "never any more sure?" his voice deep and rich as a low-toned bell. her black eyelashes lay long on her cheek, where the crimson, the hue of a jacqueminot rose petal, was spreading. "there are moments," she admitted, "times when i am with you that i believe that the magic word has been spoken and that my heart has blossomed in purple and red, that i truly love you, but," she shook her head sighingly, "the moment i am away from you, i know that that is not so; that you haven't said the magic word yet, 'gene." "but i know it, that magic word," he whispered, "and i shall awake you, just as the prince did the sleeping beauty. not with a word at all, dear, but with a kiss." he bent forward, but she had slipped away from him, and before he knew it had put almost the length of the room between them. "you--you must not talk so to me now, 'gene," the words were barely breathed, "and," with a desperate clutch at a safe topic, "my amulet. i must have it by to-morrow morning." there was a flash like fire in gresham's eyes. a quick scowling change darkened his whole face. he picked up the five or six beautifully rolled cigarettes which yet remained of his neat heap and tossed them out of the window. "i see it," he cried harshly. "you probably have hepworth's box of amulets in your keeping. you wish to return it to him, and show him when you do so that your old charm is safe in its place. oh, i can see the whole scene. he will courteously hand it to you and say, 'your property, i believe, my dear perdita.' i can hear his frigid, formal utterance. and you will accept it with that grand, ancestral manner of yours, murmuring, 'thank you, yes, i regret that i can not ask you to accept it as a small contribution to your collection, but that being out of the question on account of certain traditions which adhere to it, i feel that i must continue to hold it in my possession.' why not be honest, dita, and tell him that you have given it to me?" "eugene, you are impossible. you go entirely too far." there was no mistaking the displeasure in her voice, and his immediate recognition that it was cold, not hot anger, brought him to himself at once. "flower of magnolia!" his voice fell to all those exquisite and heart-touching modulations of which he was master. "i was only teasing. forgive me. you shall have your bit of glass early to-morrow morning. and until i see you again i shall dream only of the wonderful, beautiful years we shall have together. we shall wander about the world, here, there and everywhere, and i shall paint the glory and color of the universe and you, always you, perdita, the focus, the center, the heart of all beauty." chapter xxi two announcements dita had barely finished her breakfast the next morning when the message was brought to her that a lady who refused to give her name but insisted on seeing her at once upon important business awaited her in the reception-room. dita hesitated a moment, debating whether or not to rebuke the maid, who must have yielded to the lure of gold so readily to forget her orders, and send back a peremptory request for the lady's name and her business, or whether to yield to her natural and feminine curiosity and grant an interview to this visitor who appeared so desirous of maintaining an incognito. this brief hesitation proved a loss, however, to the waiting lady, whose method of being announced showed that she hoped to take perdita by surprise, for maud carmine entered at the moment and with some show of indignation in both voice and expression informed dita that mrs. wilstead was the person guilty of strategic entrance. "such impertinence!" breathed maud. "scrawl a note in pencil, dita, to the effect that it will be impossible for mrs. hepworth to see mrs. wilstead. that will show her that her ruse and her bribes have been quite unsuccessful." in her ardor for mrs. wilstead's demolition maud had forgotten that the last thing dita could endure was dictation. now, no sooner had the words of admonition left her lips than, to her chagrin, she saw dita's chin lifted, dita's nostrils quiver, dita's shoulders flung back ever so slightly. "i think i shall see her." mrs. hepworth was on her feet, her voice cool, firm, pleasant, with just that little warning vibration which always meant danger. "you may tell mrs. wilstead that i will see her immediately." her eyes scorched the maid, who hastened to obey, with the impression of an x-ray having been turned on her immaculate white waist, and exposing with startling vividness the crisp, green bill hastily thrust within. "come, maudie," perdita touched her on the shoulder in passing. "do not look so downcast. why do you wish to deprive me of a little legitimate amusement?" maud, strong now in tardy wisdom, said nothing, and perdita's light, quick step might be heard a moment later descending the stairs. alice wilstead turned hastily from her contemplation of the small green yard without the window. "my dear perdita!" she came forward with dita's note of the day before in her hand. "i just received this in the morning's mail, and i lost no time in getting here, i assure you, and making the attempt to see you by hook or crook. i know it's outrageous of me, but i don't understand, and i want to understand. why is it, my dear, that you have refused to take me? surely i'm not a hopeless case." she smiled ingratiatingly, and dita was bound to admit that never had she appeared more attractive. her piquant face was radiant with happiness, the whole effect of her was of a sort of buoyant joyousness. dita's chin was just half an inch higher than when she had left maud, her smile was sweet and cold and faint, as remote as if it had been bestowed upon a passing acquaintance in mars, and she remained standing. mrs. wilstead's mental recoil was but momentary. her cause was good, her motives pure, her courage high. above everything, she desired the benefits of perdita hepworth's genius. they were on sale, to the high bidders, and she did not purpose to be excluded merely because it was to be supposed that she would espouse the cause of her old friend, cresswell hepworth, in the event of open differences between himself and his wife. "i regret, mrs. wilstead," dita's voice matched her smile, "that it will be quite impossible for us to take any one else now. the summer is almost upon us, you see." mrs. wilstead should not be blamed for not seeing. april, as wind and sky portended, was about to burst, not into tears, but into a snowstorm. alice shivered in her furs. "oh, but, my dear child," she begged, "do have some mercy on me. here am i getting my trousseau. oh, no wonder you start. i've always said that i never, never either would or could do anything so idiotic as to get married again, and yet here i am not only considering it, but actually committed to a wedding-day. and that is to be so appallingly soon. i tried and tried to put it off a little longer, but he is so impatient." dita's mouth had frozen, and the haughty and incredulous gaze which she cast for a brief, indignant moment on alice would have turned one less bubblingly gay into a pillar of salt. this interview seemed incredible. she had always regarded alice wilstead as an especially well-bred woman, but this greed to attain an object at the sacrifice of her self-respect, even decency of feeling, and regardless of the position in which she would place the woman with whom she pleaded, was, to dita, shocking, insulting, unforgivable. while she waited the fraction of a second to command her voice, alice spoke again. "but you seem angry." she was obviously both hurt and bewildered. "what have i done? surely, you will not fail me now at this most crucial moment of my life. why, consider, i am going to marry a man five years younger than myself." dita caught at a chair, and sat down, the room seemed to whirl about her, she pressed her hand to her brow. "alice wilstead," she said, "what on earth do _you_ mean?" "i mean what i say," returned alice with a touch of acerbity. "i am going to be married. what do you mean?" "but to whom, to whom?" dita was all impatience. "to whom? why, to hayward preston, of course. one of your husband's business associates in the west. surely you knew that?" "i wish i had maud by the throat," muttered dita irrelevantly. it was twenty minutes later when maud put her shocked and disgusted head within the door. "dita," coldly surveying the two enthusiasts before her, who sat together in jocund amity, "mrs. hewston is out here in a state of great perturbation. do you wish--" but she got no further, for mrs. hewston, in the superiority of her greater bulk, pushed maud into the room before her and now stood, the picture of pink and white and plump tragedy, on the threshold. "oh, alice, i am glad to find you here," she wailed, advancing further into the room, while maud discreetly closed the door, not upon herself, oh, no, but behind both of them. "you are always such a support." she sank into the chair dita pushed toward her. "it's willoughby, of course." she drew her handkerchief from her bag and mopped her eyes. "perdita hepworth," she abandoned her spineless attitude and sat upright, speaking with vehemence. "i am more ashamed of being here than i can ever make you understand. but willoughby!" there was resignation in her uplifted eyes, acidity in the purse of her mouth. "he is the dearest, most lovable fellow in the world," she looked at her listeners suspiciously, but meeting no correction, permitted her irritation a natural outlet, "but he is the most obstinate, stupid mule the lord ever made." "what is it now, dear?" asked alice sympathetically. "this, and it's quite enough," returned mrs. hewston bitterly. "cresswell hepworth, your husband," accusingly to dita, "and may heaven forgive him, for i never can! dined with us last night and just before he left, willoughby got to asking him about his plans and cresswell was telling him that he was due in london before long. 'but how much longer will you be in new york?' asked willoughby, and cresswell said, with a queer little smile, 'i can't quite say. there are a number of things to be looked after, among others a duel i may have to fight.'" the women looked at each other in pale horror. dita herself ghastly, half rose from her chair. "i told willoughby," sobbed mrs. hewston, "that it was just one of cresswell's jokes. you know that odd, dry humor he sometimes shows, but," despairingly, "you also know willoughby. he tore and snorted and raved and routed all night long. i would rather have had a hippopotamus in my room. and he excoriated you, perdita. called her the most dreadful names, really," this to alice and maud, confidentially and quite as if dita were not present. "he said that cresswell's life was ruined because of the caprices of an ungodly, wanton girl. yes, dita, i don't blame you for being angry, but it was worse than that, too. you see, he's got the idea firmly into his head that cresswell is going to fight a duel with eugene gresham and--" "for goodness sake, let us keep our common sense," said mrs. wilstead, laying a detaining hand on dita's shoulder, noting that mrs. hepworth's eyes were turned longingly toward the telephone. "you know perfectly well, isabel, you know, maud, and you, also, dita, that cresswell hepworth does not for one moment contemplate anything so crazy. nothing could induce him to put either himself or you, dita, into such a position. such a thing would be entirely against his nature. he would regard it as farcical melodrama, turn from it even in thought with infinite contempt and scorn. the idea of willoughby thinking such a thing. just like him. meddlesome idiot. ah, i don't care, isabel, you know he is one. i wish i had him here now." "he's out there in the motor," wept his wife. "he was afraid i wouldn't come and tell perdita unless he came with me. but, alice, you shan't speak of him so, he's the best--" "he's still there," interrupted maud, who had gone to peer from the window at mrs. hewston's announcement that this watch-dog of dita's morals waited without, "with his head out of the window looking up at the house. and, oh, heavens!" falling back against the lintel, "here is eugene gresham coming up the steps, and mr. hewston is glaring at him until his eyes are standing out of his head. he is purple in the face. now he is speaking to the chauffeur. why, they are off, gone like the wind." mrs. hewston fell back limply in her chair. she seemed incapable of speech for a moment. "alice," she said at last, in awe-stricken tones, "he has gone to tell cress that eugene gresham is here." "well, what of it?" snapped mrs. wilstead. "cresswell will only laugh at him and smooth him down. you know that." "i hope so," breathed mrs. hewston. "he seems to amuse cresswell. fancy. but then," more understandingly, "he doesn't have to live with him." chapter xxii hepworth misunderstands dita's fears calmed by mrs. wilstead's essentially common-sense point of view, her confidence was further restored by eugene's evident ignorance of any plots and plans on mr. cresswell hepworth's part of bringing this triangular situation, involving himself, his wife and the other man, to a fiction-hallowed and moss-grown conclusion. it was therefore without particular apprehension, at any rate apprehensions of the kind nourished by mr. hewston, that she dressed for the dinner _en tête-à-tête_ with her husband. it was rather with a sense of mounting interest, even excitement. she wavered in her choice of a gown, scanning with hypercritical eye a dozen or more. white savored of a school-girl simplicity and disarmed her if she chose to be subtle. blue was unbecoming; sufficient taboo. "green's forsaken and yellow's forsworn," she murmured ruefully. black remained, thin, soft-falling gauze, distinguished, distinctive, exquisite in design and effect; above its shadow rose her neck of cream, her hair was the dusk shadow of copper, her eyes were darkly brilliant. she hesitated at jewels. he had given her so many. which would go best with her gown? then she turned away from even the mental contemplation of them with a feeling of distaste. she could not, even to please him, wear his jewels when he and she were almost strangers, when but the details of their final parting remained to be settled. and yet would it not look a bit odd to appear without any ornaments whatever? she considered the matter a moment, and then smiling a little, she opened the box which gresham had given into her hands that morning, and which lay upon her dressing-table. she turned over this old trinket in her hand, and gazed at it, forgetful of the passing time. how impressive eugene had been when he had returned it to her! [illustration: she gazed at the old trinket.] "i am only lending it to you, remember that, for you will give it to me with your heart's love, dita, and soon." she was roused from her reverie by the sound of a motor stopping without. her maid waited to place a black and gold wrap about her shoulders. "one moment," said dita. quickly she slipped the amulet on a thin, old-fashioned gold chain and fastened it about her throat. then she went downstairs to greet her husband. commonplaces of the most conventional and banal order they talked. nothing else on the drive to the restaurant, nothing else on first taking their seats at the table on one side of the great garish room. there were many curious eyes on them, necks craned, the incredulous whisper ran: "mr. and mrs. cresswell hepworth actually together! what does it mean!" the stereotyped babbling went on intermittently, until dinner had been ordered and the earlier courses come and gone, and then dita suddenly awoke to the fact that her husband had taken the conversation into his own hands and was actually talking to her. oh, of course, he had often talked to her before, arranged new amusements for her, discussed what jewels she would like, what plays she would care to see, what people interested her most, what journey she would enjoy. but now, she almost caught her breath at the surprise of it, he was talking to her as if she were a man, or at least an intelligent human being and not just merely--a pretty woman. he was talking straight ahead, discussing business matters, several interesting problems which had come up in his affairs during his recent western sojourn. he did not pause to explain anything to her, quite took it for granted that she would understand. he did not apparently stop to consider whether she was interested or amused, and that pleased her enormously. she began to ask questions, and he answered them fully, even pondering some of them carefully before replying. one he considered for a moment or so and then said: "do you know, i had not thought of that before, that puts a new phase upon the whole situation." her strand of rubies had never given dita such a glow of pride and pleasure. "ah, why have you never talked to me like this before?" she asked naïvely. "think of all the stupid dinners we've eaten together when you treated me like a tiresome little girl who had to be continually amused, and i was one, too; as tongue-tied and missish as anything, because you took it for granted that i was." "no one could accuse you of being either tongue-tied or missish to-night. you are quite matronly in that black gown." "oh, i love to hear about the big things that go on," she said enthusiastically, if irrelevantly, "but men will never talk to me about them. all my life, whenever i'd try really to talk sense to a man, he'd say, 'what wonderful eyes you have,' showing that he hadn't heard one word i'd been saying. they always seem to think that i expect them to tell me how lovely i am. it's the curse of the pretty woman." "oh, well, console yourself," he said carelessly. "there are prettier women in the world than you, quantities of them!" "i--i--suppose so." dita had rarely been so taken aback. she looked at him a moment like some insulted queen. his eyes, however, were discreetly downcast. "oh, of course," she said as quickly as she could recover her breath, "of course," her laugh was forced and rang hollowly. "oh, yes, don't let your beauty get on your nerves. the world is full of beautiful women. my new amulet--i told you that i had a new one, did i not?--was given me by one of the most beautiful women i ever saw. i have her picture somewhere. i must show it to you." mr. cresswell hepworth was entirely without design in his choice of topics. he had spoken of some of his great western enterprises because his mind had been more or less occupied with them during the day, and had been so surprised and pleased that these subjects had gained his wife's interests that he had continued the discussion of them. again, in his seeming disparagement of her beauty, he had merely thought to console her for what she regarded as the constant belittling of her mental endowment, evidently a sore spot in her consciousness. dita played with her fork a moment without answering his last remark. she had no right to feel either resentment or irritation. her sense of justice assured her of that, but she suffered a twinge of both emotions, nevertheless. "wallace martin tells me that good old hewston made an awful scene when those distorted pictures of fuschia fleming and myself appeared in the paper." hepworth laughed more heartily than usual. "oh, do not mention that unspeakable old creature!" she cried petulantly. "tell me of more interesting things." "dita," he spoke to her more earnestly, more self-revealingly she felt than he had ever done before, "i am going to tell you something. when i went west last winter, it was not alone because i was called thither by various business affairs, but because, after thinking the matter all over, i definitely decided that the only thing for me to do was to relieve you of my presence. i was convinced that, although you might not be fully conscious of it, still in the depths of your heart you really loved gresham. i was also convinced that i loved you infinitely, and that it was quite beyond my power to interest you. but since my return i find myself at sea. the moment i saw you i saw the difference in you, the change that made me revise my former crude, stupid estimates of you. i realize that you are the sort of woman who must have an object, a purpose in life, an expression; in fact, that you set little store by the beauty others praise extravagantly, because it has always been yours. you value it no more than one values the sun and wind. it is achievement that fascinates you, isn't it?" "ah, yes, but i had failed, you know, and i was afraid to try again. i knew that you were doing big things, but you never would talk of them to me, and i thought that you considered me too stupid to understand them." "dita, how blindly we have misunderstood each other. is it too late?" he whispered the words as he put her wrap about her shoulders, his voice ardent, impassioned as she had never heard it. she cast one astonished, almost frightened glance upon him. then, as in a daze, a dream, walked down the room, never seeing the admiring eyes that everywhere met her. she might have been in the desert, as far as they were concerned. as the door of the motor closed on them a panic of shyness seized her. "you, you spoke of your new amulet," she said, snatching at a topic. "have you it with you?" "yes. but i do not know whether you can get a very good idea of it in these shifting lights." he took the case from his pocket and, lifting out the ornament, gave it into her hands. it was fashioned of half a dozen uncut diamonds in a setting of the most delicate and exquisite filigree. "old spanish, you see," he said. "beautiful!" she exclaimed, turning it over and looking at it more closely. but the attention she was bestowing upon it was a mere seeming. she was thinking, or rather attempting to think, but her heart was fluttering wildly, her whole impulsive nature seemed to impel her to the action she was meditating. "cresswell," she lifted a face white as a snowdrop to his, "will you make an exchange with me? will you give me this amulet and take mine?" "perdita!" he cried, "you do not--" his voice broke. "yes, i do," she exclaimed, "it is not a wild whim, a caprice on my part. i have been thinking about it all day, ever since this morning." "this morning!" sharply; looking at her keenly, quickly. "ah," with a long breath, "it was this morning that hewston drove poor isabel to your house to prevent the duel between gresham and myself." he laughed, but it was dreary mirth. "hewston is a most imaginative fellow. i have a railway deal on which i spoke of to him as a duel. and so, you were going to sacrifice yourself in order to make quite sure that i would spare eugene. oh, rest content, perdita. he is quite safe from my poignard or pistol. never fear." it seemed to her that the satire in his voice bit into her soul. with a great gasp of relief she realized that the car had stopped before her door. "oh, take your amulet," she cried, "since you will not have mine." she almost threw it at him. he thought that she was angry and sullen as she walked up the steps and into the house without a word to him, and with the barest inclination of the head. in reality, she was striving hard to control her sobs. chapter xxiii its ancient charm the hour which dita had set for her appointment with cresswell hepworth was twelve the next morning, consequently she was not only surprised but perturbed when eugene's name was brought to her a little after eleven. he looked haggard, she thought, as if he had not slept, but his eyes were brighter than usual. "good morning, queen of the may," he cried, coming forward to take both her hands in his as she came through the doorway. "did you know, by the way, that this is may day? ah," his eyes fastening themselves on the crystal amulet gleaming against her white gown, "you have it still. that was what disturbed me and drove slumber from my eyelids during the long night. he is a strong man, a very able and masterful man and he wants that amulet and you, dita, and i feared--oh, you know how things appear in the dead of night, what monstrous and fantastic ideas come to one." "you might have saved your fears and your fancies," she answered with a delicately ironical smile. "he does not want me. he would, i think, like the amulet. nevertheless, he declined it." "then you offered it to him? really!" "yes," the irony still in her voice. "you were a better prophet than you dreamed, eugene, you predicted exactly what happened. i offered it to him and he declined." her voice faltered. "naturally," laughing, "what else could he do under the circumstances? even he, with all a collector's greed, would hardly care for a gift which is supposed to be invariably accompanied by the heart's love of the donor. he knew, poor wretch, that all he was getting was the bit of glass, while the heart's love was mine, for ever and ever mine." his voice sank to those musical cadences which ever prove so enthralling to the ear. and dita, who loved music and beauty and romance, smiled dreamily. but doubt, like a shadow, lay in her eyes and about her mouth. "no," she cried, "oh, i do not know, eugene. when i am with you, you throw a glamour over me. i believe that i am just on the eve of loving you--that any minute you will say the word which will make me fully realize that i do, but as soon as you leave me, eugene, the moment passes." "it is because you are perplexed, worried about this other matter, that is all, dearest. when that is settled and you are free, then i will sweep away at once and for ever all these doubts in your mind, sweep them away as if they were cobwebs." "will you? perhaps," but she shook her head as if only half convinced. "hush! what is that! i think it was the bell of the outer door. you must go at once, eugene. cresswell was to be here at twelve o'clock. it must be quite that now." "and i have no desire to meet him." he picked up his hat. "i will step through the little back room into the hall, and thence out. i dare say you and he have some final arrangements to make. is that it, eh?" she nodded, but without looking at him. her face had grown very pale and the hand which she placed on the tall back of a chair to steady herself trembled a little. her ears had not deceived her, it was hepworth's ring--and the echo of eugene's retreating footsteps had barely died away before a maid drew a curtain and hepworth crossed the threshold. if he upon his arrival had at once noticed a subtle but marked change in perdita, she now was struck by an equally vital and informing alteration in him. he had always seemed to her before as one who leaned back in an automobile and merely dictated the directions the chauffeur was to take, but now he was the man who was driving his car himself, at unlawful speed, and keeping quite cool and collected during the performance. he took the chair opposite the one in which she had seated herself, and she noticed a flicker of a smile across his face as his eye caught the amulet hung about her neck, a tender, humorous, sad little smile. "yes, i am still wearing it," she said, as if in answer to some question of his, "and i have had the box containing the others brought down here. it is there on that table in the corner." she spoke with a bravado which only half concealed her embarrassment. he glanced toward it indifferently. "then we will fasten my new one in the space left vacant by yours," his swift, delightful smile came and went, transforming his face for the moment like a gleam of sunlight, but although brilliant, it was sad, sad as all regret, and dita, seeing it, felt some wild, momentary impulse to beseech forgiveness, she could not tell exactly for what. the amulet, her old bit of crystal, was swinging at the end of a long chain, and, a little embarrassed, she lifted it in her hand and gazed at it mechanically, turning it this way and that to catch the different reflections of light. "did you know that we are lawbreakers, you and i, dita?" asked hepworth with another smile, "meeting to discuss the details of a properly arranged divorce? well, my dear, it will not rest particularly heavy on my conscience if it makes things easier for you in the least degree. your lawyers will instruct you just what to do, but there is one matter which i wish to discuss with you personally, and that is some settlements. "why, dita," breaking off sharply and starting to his feet, "what is the matter? are you ill?" indeed he was justified in thinking so. she had grown white as snow. the color had left even her lips. "no," she spoke with an effort, but she lifted her head, as if by main strength of will. "no," and he was infinitely relieved to see a bit of color creep back into her lips, but the eyes she courageously raised to his were dark with an emotion which he could only translate as fear or horror, he could not tell which. "have i offended you, then?" he murmured. "believe me--" "no, no," she insisted so definitely that he was forced to believe her. "it was something quite different. something, something i just remembered." she was manifestly so confused and disturbed that he did not press the point. it would have seemed both unkind and unwise to do so, and then, although her eyes still retained that curiously shocked, almost horror-stricken expression, the color had returned to her cheek. "you were saying?" she began, her voice steady enough now. "oh, yes, i remember, about the money." those deep vibrations of emotion thrilled her tones. "well, i won't have it. won't touch it. i will not hear of settlements. i can make enough for my needs." he lifted his eyes and looked at her quickly and then the eyelids almost closed. perdita was under very close observation. "naturally, i do not for a moment dispute that. it is a fact already proven, but it is my wish to remove the necessity from you. your occupation will then continue to be a source of amusement, of interest to you, but you will not feel that it is your sole dependence." she shook her head with a sort of irrevocable gentleness with which he could not fail to be struck. "no," she said, "it is really quite useless to discuss the matter. truly, cresswell, i will not even consider it." "but, dita," he began, then paused a moment as if to make a choice of arguments, desirous of using at once the most potent and evidently preparing to undermine and break down the barriers of her decision if it took a month. she forestalled him, however, with a quick flank movement. she rose to her feet. "cresswell," she said, "i promised you last night that i would discuss this matter with you this morning, but now," there was the least hesitation in her voice, "i am going to ask a favor. i dined with you last night, now will you dine with me to-night? will you? there will only be miss fleming and her father, and she will just sit at the table a few minutes, she never dines before playing; wallace martin and maud, and they are going somewhere, so you and i will have the leisure of a long evening to discuss all the pros and cons of this question, your side and mine. will you come?" she was looking at him so earnestly, there was something so strange in the depths of her dark eyes, that he felt tempted on the moment to beg an explanation of this postponement. then, as quickly he relinquished it. "i shall be delighted to come," he said heartily. "and if to-night you are in no mood to talk over dry details, we will put it off again until a more convenient season." "no." her tone was positive. "i am quite sure that we will come to one decision or another this evening. good-by." when the curtain at the door had fallen behind him, dita sat down again. she did not seem to be thinking or mentally engaged in any way whatever. on the contrary, she seemed to be waiting, two or three minutes passed, five. still she waited. ah, a bitter smile hovered for one moment around her lips. her whole tense figure relaxed a little as if the moment which she had so confidently expected had come. there was the sound of the shutting of the outer door in the small room to the left, then a halting step across the bare and polished floor. eugene's step. he paused a moment in the doorway leading into the larger room, but as dita did not turn nor give any sign whatever of having heard him, he came on. "back again, you see," he said. "i saw hepworth leaving the house just as i came about the corner up here, so i knew the coast was clear. may i sit down?" for the first time dita looked at him. he was unmistakably not of the same temper in which he had left her an hour before. the buoyancy and spring of him had vanished. his eyes were clouded, his mouth depressed, certain lines on his brow and about his mouth stood out more markedly than usual. in fact, he seemed to have halted midway in some mood between dismay and anger. and as dita observed this, there again played about her mouth for one instant that same, sad, bitter, secretive smile. she had leaned back in her chair as if prepared to remain some time, but she made no effort whatever to carry on a conversation or even to embark on one. the frown deepened on eugene's brow. this attitude on her part was evidently irritating to him. "everything settled, dita, and satisfactorily?" "what do you mean by satisfactorily?" she asked, letting a moment or two lapse between his question and her answer. "i mean everything arranged in your favor," he replied with a short laugh. "he is rather sure to do that, you know. he likes to do things with the grand air." "oh, no, eugene, it is you who like to affect the grand air. with him it is natural." he looked up at her quickly. "it sounds, it sounds," he said, "as if you might possibly be on the verge of a sirocco. don't dita, i implore you. i am off the key myself." "why?" she asked. he lifted his shoulders. "ah, that i do not know." "i refused any alimony, eugene," she said abruptly. "what! oh, dita, you must not! why, it is the height of folly! my dear child, it is quixotic to the verge of idiocy." all his moodiness had vanished. he was arguing her case fervently enough now. "you have had your head turned by the success you and maud have enjoyed in this venture this winter, but that is purely ephemeral. you were a fad, a novelty. how long do such things last in new york? and here is hepworth willing and anxious to endow you with houses and lands. dita," and never had she heard him plead his love with such fervor, "dita, you must not ruin your whole life by a blind whim. you must listen to advice. you must be guided by your friends in this matter. "it is true, of course," he continued, "that i make a very large income, but i lay nothing by. it is impossible. i must keep up an appearance--the painter prince, and all that sort of thing. it is expected of me. it is a part of my stock in trade." "then you consider, 'gene," her voice was calmly, reassuringly reasonable now, "you consider that fully to enjoy life we must both possess more than an ordinarily large income?" "dearest dita," he bent forward with his tenderest, most ingratiating smile, "do not for one moment mistake me. i think, i know we could be happy without a centime between us, but viewing life as it is lived and considering your tastes and my tastes, the mode of existence to which we have accustomed ourselves and all that, i think we, like most other people, would do well to avoid the perilous experiment of comparative poverty. whether we wish to believe it or not, really to invest life with romance and interest and charm requires more than mere imagination, of which you and i possess an abundant store, dita. it also requires money." "it would require a great deal more than that for me, eugene," she rose to her feet now and stood looking at him as if from mountain heights, so remote and distant she seemed. "remember the old legend of my amulet,"--she lifted it and swung it to and fro as she talked,--"that sooner or later it would force the one who possessed it to reveal himself in his true character? well, it has proved its ancient claim. you apparently possessed it long enough for it to force you to reveal your true self; or perhaps that was inevitable under any circumstances." "what do you mean, dita?" he, too, had sprung to his feet, and stood facing her, both fear and chagrin in his eyes. "this," she flung out her hand with the amulet in it; "while i sat here talking to cresswell, i was turning this square bit of crystal this way and that, watching it catch the light. suddenly, as i held it between my thumb and forefinger, i saw you, it reflected you quite clearly. you thrust your head a little forward from the door, down there," indicating by a gesture the door at the lower end of the room, "anxious to hear the better what cresswell was saying and quite sure from the position of our chairs that we could not see you. then i sent him away and waited. i knew, i knew instinctively, that you would do just as you did, eugene, and--so i waited. i knew that i should hear that outer door close, that i should hear you walk across the floor, i knew it." the moments pulsed like heartbeats between them. "i shall not deny it," he said at last, "but dita, dita, i did it for you. i felt that you would follow some quixotic course, which you would regret for a lifetime. i know so well your mad, impulsive recklessness. oh, dita," he stretched out his arms to her. there was no responsive movement on her part. she stood mute, immovable, eyes downcast, as if she could not bear to look upon his humiliation. the long chain had slipped through her fingers, and the amulet swung at the end of it, to and fro between herself and him, like the pendulum of an inflexible fate. "dita," his voice was irresistibly appealing, "you will not thrust me thus out of your heart, oh, not for this!" "you never had a place in my heart, eugene, i know that now." she swept across the floor, but as she put up her hand to pull aside the curtain before the door, she paused. "i--i'm sorry, eugene," she faltered and by an effort of will lifted her eyes to him at last. but they fell neither on the shamed nor the conquered. his head was thrown back, his eyes met hers. he was smiling, and his smile held unfathomable things. it spoke of a spirit eternally young and yet which had felt the weary weight of all dead and crumbling centuries. it was sad, disillusioned, yet eagerly joyous. it had tasted all things and found them vanity, yet pursued an unending quest with infinite zest. "dear dita," he murmured, "never doubt that i loved you, love you still, but as the artist loves, not the plodder. you or any woman can only be to him the 'shadow of the idol of his thought,' the mere symbol of beauty, but what he really loves, dita, is beauty's self." [illustration: before she knew it, his arms were about her.] he spoke now with a sincerity almost stern. "you or all the world may think me false," his head lifted lightly, "it is nothing to me. to the one thing i know as truth i am eternally true. i really, fundamentally do not care that," he snapped his fingers, "for the rest of the show. i have always the dream and before me lies the great achievement. so out of your house, out of your life, out of your heart i go." he came near her as he spoke, his voice was like music. before she knew it, his arms were about her and he was kissing her hair, where the copper shadows rippled into gold above her temple. "beautiful and still loved perdita! good-by." chapter xxiv waiting for perdita perdita committed an unpardonable social sin that evening. she, the hostess, was late in her own house. in fact she had sent down word that they were to begin dinner without her. the three of them then, maud, wallace martin and hepworth were sitting gazing at one another in a rather mournful and embarrassed fashion, when mr. and miss fleming were announced. fuschia had stipulated that she was only to remain with them until the appearance of the roast. that was the signal for her departure, the definite limit of her stay. she was due at the theater before eight and it was her custom never to eat anything before the evening performance. this was the first time any of the group had seen her since her tremendous success of a few evenings before. "hands up!" she called from the doorway, her gay, delicious voice pealing through the room, "hands up, i say," making an imaginary pistol of her thumb and forefinger and covering the three. "i don't want either your money or your life, but i do insist upon seeing who has blisters on his hands. i shall accept no other proof of friendship." hepworth and martin promptly held up their hands. "i'm entitled to first honors," said hepworth, "i've sprained both wrists, can't write my signature and have to have my food cut up for me." "my hands," said wallace martin proudly, "are trained. they no longer show wear and tear. you could drive a dagger against them and it would splinter harmlessly. from long practice in trying to make my own plays go by virtue of my own applause they have acquired the substance and fiber of hickory." "but dear miss fleming," cried maud, "i deserve more credit than they, for i recklessly sacrificed my most beautiful fan. when the curtain went down for the last time and we climbed off our seats and stopped howling, i held in my hand a limp shred of something and discovered that i had beaten my poor, exquisite, fragile fan to bits." fuschia's eyes were full of starry twinkles, her smile was a revelation of joyousness. she drew a long, ecstatic breath, "boys and girls, it was nice, wasn't it?" "nice!" exclaimed hepworth pushing a chair forward for her, "nice! is that the only word you can find to express your pleasure in the fact that the curtain rose thirty times amid continuous cheers, and new york simply took you to her heart and hugged you?" "good old new york! she knew her own little fuschia by the strawberry mark on her left arm, didn't she? i heard caruso sing for the first time the other afternoon, and when they asked me afterward how i liked it, i said i only knew of one thing more heavenly and that was the sound of a great audience clapping and shouting. there's no music like that." dinner was announced, and maud, with a slightly worried expression, began explaining to fuschia that perdita had been detained; but as they moved toward the door, hepworth noticed that fleming had not stirred from the remote corner he had sought upon entering the room. "jim, what is the matter?" said hepworth with some concern; "you haven't interrupted fuschia once since she came in and you know it's always a neck and neck race between you to see which can talk the faster?" "he's been asleep," said fuschia, taking her seat at the table. "poor papa! the gay life, you know!" fleming eyed her indignantly across the bank of primroses in the center of the board. "the gay life! i've had no sleep since i struck new york, that's true. i've had to keep going, and take these poor little pick-me-ups of cat-naps whenever i can get them; but why? for a week before this great first night, i had to sit up with fuschia and hold her hand and tell her what an unparalleled success she was going to have and then that night, after all the excitement and anxiety i suffered as her father, and the exhaustion incident upon being first _claqueur_, why she drove me out into the cold, damp, rainy streets with one of your new york blizzards just setting in, to buy her the first morning papers, and since then i've had to celebrate her triumph. i'll tell you what it is, friends, i'm a raveled sleeve of care and no kind sleep to knit me up." "do you know what has really happened?" said fuschia, in calm explanation. "dear papa can't help putting in those dumas and poe touches, but come to me for the straight truth. it's really the funniest thing about papa. his luck always comes right along with mine. now what do you think?" "he's made a million since he came to new york," said wallace martin. "lost the other fellow's million, you mean," said hepworth with feeling. "wrong. it's the most unexpected thing you ever dreamed of," fuschia's voice was triumphant, "papa's got a social success. yes," nodding impressively, "just look at him closely and you'll see that he's lost his natural, unconscious man-look. he now has a drawing-room-pet expression and he's wearing his hair differently, and throwing out his chest. oh, you needn't laugh, mr. hepworth, it's true. 'hyperion curls, the front of jove himself.' when we were coming on i determined that i would always be very kind to papa. i'd never neglect nor ignore him, no matter how famous i became; but, of course, he'd just be fuschia fleming's father. but what are the real facts of the case? father sits in the seats of the mighty, flattered by great ladies and avoids mention of his humble actress daughter. king cophetua and the chorus girl!" "i had to come to new york to find out that the feminine boycott against me wasn't complete," said mr. fleming with emotion. "i tell you, hep, it's a wonderful experience suddenly to realize that the entire crew of petticoats the world over don't look at you as if they all had glass eyes in their heads instead of real ones." "how do you account for it, jim?" asked hepworth. "from camp to court, my boy, has ever been but a step, although sometimes it's a mighty long one," returned fleming oratorically. "now this is the way i've explained it to myself. you see, i've got that wild, free, above-timber-line flavor about me that simply locos the type of woman that keeps husband hobbled to a stake under the big tree by the back porch where she can keep an eye on him from the kitchen windows. now, personally, the catnip and parsley kind of woman never did appeal to me; but these new york orchids are different. they know how to appreciate the rocky mountain edelweiss, and seem grateful to me for taking their husbands off their hands now and then. and they're so interested, too, in the little every-day incidents of an old prospector's life." "you just ought to hear papa othelloize those ophelias," said fuschia, deftly seizing the first opportunity to get into the conversation. "he'll tell them about being carried down a thousand feet in a mighty snowslide and escaping unhurt, and of the fabulous properties he's discovered, and of frequent encounters with enormous grizzlies, where he'll tap them lightly on the jaw and advise them to hasten home and then if they get too familiar, he gives them a twist of the wrist that sends them howling back to the woods." "fuschia," said her father sternly, "you talk entirely too much, and there's a day of reckoning coming for you. just wait till you get to london. there you'll be sneaking in at the back door and eating a cold biscuit in the pantry while you're waiting to do a few recitations for the ladies and gentlemen; while i'll be sailing in to dinner with a belted earless on one arm and a tiaraed duchess on the other." "i'm afraid i see your finish, jim," sighed hepworth. "you'll end as a leader of cotillions. your head is badly turned." "there's no denying, hep, that we are apt to set and undue value on what we've never had, and these late-blooming feminine smiles are like a bottle of champagne in the desert." "oh, dear, here is the roast," cried fuschia disconsolately, "and cinderella must run away. is there no hope of seeing mrs. hepworth this evening?" turning to maud. maud hesitated a moment, then, "i really do not know," she confessed frankly, "she--she has not been particularly well all day." she simply could not plead for perdita the conventional bad headache while hepworth's steady eyes were fixed upon her. fuschia, who happened to be looking at him, saw a quick shade of disappointment pass over his face, and her impulsive sympathy was roused by the depth and poignancy of that immediately suppressed emotion. she threw herself into the breach. "oh, i want dreadfully to see her to-night about the gown i am to wear when i play the scheming adventuress next week. we were to have decided it to-night. she is thinking of putting me in green instead of the usual black with touches of scarlet, and the accustomed badge of the adventuress, high-heeled scarlet slippers. and i am so anxious to know if mrs. hepworth has decided upon green, a wonderful, wicked, dazzling green, with strange blue lights in the shadows. oh, may i send a message and ask her to see me just a moment?" but before maud could answer, perdita entered the room. she pleaded the usual headache, which maud had so carefully avoided, and that threadbare social fiction was for once upheld and substantiated. dita's appearance fully bore it out. her face was pale, her eyes heavy. she promised, however, to give a full consideration to the question of fuschia's green gown the next morning, and the actress who had already overstayed the limits of the time she had allotted herself prepared to take her departure. "oh," she cried from the door, "i forgot to announce my two important bits of good news. mr. martin is going to write me a comedy and eugene gresham is going to paint my portrait." a faint smile hovered for one moment about perdita's lips. "when did eugene make his request?" she asked in her usual low tones, although her head lifted suddenly. "this afternoon," replied fuschia, and dita's smile deepened. "and he is going to give me a fête in his studio." "the usual ball in the artist's studio?" laughed maud looking at martin. "don't you dream it," fuschia laughed irrepressibly, also; "not the stage kind with its crowd of maskers. this is to be patterned after an afternoon among the great artists in japan. you wear japanese things and crawl through a little door into a room with nothing in it but just one perfect flower in a perfect vase, and we will all sit on the floor and drink tea." "it sounds very much like him," said maud, "but is it true wallace that you are really going to do a play for miss fleming?" "it happily is," said martin, "a comedy." "not a problem play?" the light of hope dawned in miss carmine's eyes. "oh, dear me, no," cried fuschia; "and he's going to write it just as he talks." "i'd very much prefer to have you talk it as i write," said martin, but she had already vanished. in a very few minutes the others followed her example, fleming leaving the house with maud and wallace. chapter xxv with my heart's love scarcely had the hall door closed behind them when hepworth turned to dita inquiringly. "would you not very much prefer that i left you?" he asked. "i can see that you are not well, and we can discuss anything that remains to be talked over at any other time." "no," she shook her head, "i am quite well. i have not even the headache i claimed, and i must, indeed i must, talk to you to-night." "but if our conversation this morning so upset and unnerved you," he urged, "would it not be wise to defer this?" "our conversation didn't," she replied with emphasis. "it was another conversation. cresswell, will you answer me a question or two?" "anything you wish to know," he replied. she got up, and, after a fashion she sometimes showed, perhaps unconsciously copied from him, began to walk restlessly up and down, occasionally stopping to pick up and examine some ornament quite as if she had never happened to notice it before. she had picked up a small jade vase from the mantelpiece and was now bestowing upon it what appeared to be an exhaustive observation. in reality she was hardly conscious that she held it in her hand. "cresswell, why did you marry me?" he started ever so slightly and then answered unhesitatingly, "because i loved you, dita." a little spasm of some emotion he could not fathom passed over her face. "it was not because you wished to see how the flower blooming in a tin can in a tenement window would bloom in a wonderful lacquered vase in a marble court? it was not from curiosity or pity, cresswell?" "it was love, dita." again that wave of emotion over her face, and then she looked about her with sad, tear-wet eyes and a trembling mouth. "and my caprices, my stupidity, my inadequacy, soon destroyed that?" "never," he repeated. "believe that. i was no gardener trying experiments. it was the flower i loved, dita; the flower whose happiness i longed for, whose happiness i still long for. you do not need my love, do not care for it, why should you? but give me the happiness of still being able to assure for you the marble courts and the lacquered vases." the little jade vase dropped from her fingers and fell unheeded to the rug at her feet. the tears were pouring now, down her white face. she made no effort either to conceal or to staunch them. "ah, blind and wasteful creature that i am!" she cried. "why, why should you have chosen to love me?" she stepped toward him and with both hands unwound the slender old-fashioned gold chain from her throat. she lifted her face, quivering, broken with feeling, and still streaming with tears, to his. she held out the amulet toward him. "cresswell," poignantly, "will you take this now, my old talisman, with my heart's love?" he made one quick movement as if to take her in his arms and hold her close, close to his heart for ever. his face was irradiated, his cold eyes glowed with a warmth and fire that more mercurial and mutable natures can never know. then the light went out of his eyes and face. it did not fade, it was as if it were extinguished by some strong effort of will. his arms fell to his sides. "my dear, my dear," his voice trembled, "how like your sweet, generous, prodigal nature! i see it all now, the reason for your pallor and heavy eyes. you have spent the day, since i left you this morning, in accusing and denouncing yourself until you have reached the frame of mind where you can only appease your offended and tyrannical conscience by some act of high sacrifice. and do you think i would accept it, poor, heroic, overwrought dita? all day," that swift, flashing, heart-breaking smile of his gleamed a moment, "you have been convicting yourself of ingratitude, merely because i was offering you some of my money with the entirely selfish motive of securing my own happiness." "you are wrong, wrong," she cried vehemently, passionately. "what can i do to convince you? oh, of course, you think that i am a creature of moods; you have every reason to think so; but what can i do, what can i say to convince you that i am not speaking from one of them now?" "say nothing, dearest," he murmured deeply, soothingly; "say no more. i shall always remember the sweetness of this moment." "but i will not have it so," she cried. "you must, you must listen to me. you think that i love eugene, that i have always loved eugene. and i did not know, i did not know what love was. eugene is charming and famous, and there was a sympathy between us, on one side of our natures. we have the same love of color. it is a passion with us. it spells music and poetry and all sorts of untranslatable things. it is something instinctive with us, something we were born with and we see shades and harmonies and values that other people do not. but this absolute understanding between us was only on one side of our natures, and yet sometimes it was so--so encompassing that i thought it embraced them all. so i did not know my own mind. i was puzzled, confused, always in doubt. and then, when i began really to--to flirt with eugene, or so people construed it, it was when i was beginning to be bored with my marble court and my lacquered vase. i got so bored with being amused, just amused all the time." "ah, that was where i made my great, my unforgivable mistake," he interrupted. "yes, you made a mistake, in not letting me know you as you really are," she conceded, "but then, with all the boredom, i had that sense of futility, of failure behind me. failure behind and nothing to look forward to but an endless succession of marble courts. no beautiful, dazzling unexpected. just the same thing over and over and over. and then you went away and for a time i was frightened and forlorn, so maud and i started our venture. ah!" she clasped her hands together, the amulet dangling on its chain, "i have told you what work and success meant to me. you understand that; but gradually, as i got used to it, i began to see that it wasn't enough. no," she shook her head sadly, "it wasn't enough--there must be love. but i had got the idea into my head that it was eugene who would speak the magic word, that magic word that i believed in and waited for. yet all, all the time, from the moment you left me, you were in my thoughts. you see," with a faint smile, "i understood eugene, but you were the unsolvable problem. i was always thinking about you, trying to understand you, and last night," her face glowed with a lovely light, "when you talked to me of the big, wonderful things, when you made me feel that i was an intelligent human being and not merely a pretty woman, why, my whole heart went out to you and i knew it was you, you alone that i loved. it is not the man who can conquer a city, many cities, with his grace and charm and genius. not he who can win my poor heart, but the man who can conquer his own spirit. ah, cresswell," she held out the amulet again to him, "will you not take this now?" "perdita!" he cried deeply and held her close. the end note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations in color. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) thirty by howard vincent o'brien author of "new men for old." illustrated by robert w. amick new york dodd, mead and company copyright. by dodd mead & company to my mother who sought always to make me love the truth, though knowing that my truth would not, in the nature of things, be hers. [illustration: "what right have you to put such impudent questions to us, anyway?" he demanded hotly] contents i an uninvited guest ii a blow--and a resolution iii "you don't know mr. imrie" iv oil and water v a sleeper wakes vi dead idols vii "if people only _knew_!" viii the greatest game in the world ix burned bridges x a bluff called xi "tears ... and then ice" xii only a woman xiii the pilot goes overboard xiv a secret revealed xv "thirty"--and another story illustrations "what right have you to put such impudent questions to us, anyway?" he demanded hotly. it was hard to refuse imrie--a million times harder than all the rest "i say, you know," he said between puffs, "business is the--greatest--game--in the world" the air was surcharged with expectancy thirty chapter i an uninvited guest roger wynrod was the first down to breakfast, and he was feeling far from well. but a glass of bitters, followed by half a grapefruit and a large cup of coffee, made him more nearly his usual cheerful self. he had a word and a smile for each one of the houseparty, as they straggled in, albeit the memory of last night's disastrous game haunted him uncomfortably. the fact was that once again he faced the necessity of appealing to his sister for further funds, and he had his doubts as to how she would take it. the meal lacked something of the cheer usually characteristic of judith wynrod's gatherings. perhaps it was due to the lateness of the hour and the feverishly high stakes of the night before, or perhaps it was only the sultriness of the morning. at any rate, a certain constraint was in evidence, and no one showed any desire to linger longer than was necessary. as one by one her guests withdrew, with more or less perfunctory excuses, judith remained sprightliness itself, laughingly protesting at the desertion of faxon, suddenly called to town on private business, and threatening dire things to vivacious little mrs. baker if her dentist detained her too long to catch the late afternoon train. but when they were all gone, little lines of weariness crept into her face, and she arose irresolutely and stood for a while watching her brother who, deeply sunk in the columns of baseball news, was unconscious of her scrutiny. she studied him thoughtfully, the corners of her mouth drooping. it was that feature which modified her otherwise complete resemblance to her brother. she had the same undulant black hair, the same oval face and olive complexion, the same snapping eyes. but where his mouth was merely handsome, or, perhaps, better, affectionate, hers was firm and determined. one might say, in comparing the two, that if roger wanted anything he would ask for it, whereas judith would demand it. she herself was not conscious of anything approaching such masterfulness or determination in her character. she had never experienced the sensation of breaking down opposition. but that was merely because there had never been any opposition offered her. orphaned when scarce out of childhood, with an incredible fortune and no near relatives, she, like her brother, had had only to ask; it had never been necessary to demand. but of the latent strength of her will there were not lacking evidences. be that as it may, her time for action had not yet come. how deeply worried she had grown about roger, no one guessed, least of all the boy himself. there was no escaping the knowledge that she was in a sense responsible for him; the terms of their father's will had made her trustee of her brother's half until he should reach the age of thirty. of course, she ought to do something, she had often told herself, something radical and decisive; but she was too indolent, too definitely in a groove, too bored with herself and her surroundings, to take that keen interest essential to decisive action. so, with another sigh, she passed through the long window opening on the piazza, and thence to the lawn beyond. roger awoke just a minute too late to the fact that they had been alone together and that he had missed the opportunity he had been waiting for. he always preferred to approach judith on money matters casually, and not as though the occasion were of his own seeking. it certainly was absurd for a man of his years and income to be kept in leading-strings by his own sister. however, there was no help for it, and judith had always been a good sort, he would say that for her. he needed a cheque, and he might as well get it over with at once. he found her in the garden, examining some flowers which had just been set out. flowers were her one hobby, and he knew that a resort to them usually indicated a certain degree of boredom with those around her. but he went straight to the point. "say, sis, i'm running into town presently. can you come in and draw me a cheque? better make it five hundred this time, to keep me going a while." "you lost again last night, roger?" "lost?" he laughed mirthlessly. "lord! yes, i lost all right. the family resources can stand it, can't they?" "how much?" "oh, don't ask me to figure now. my head's like a ship in a storm this morning. i don't know--lots." "how much, roger?" "oh, come on, sis, i'm in a hurry. draw the cheque like a good girl ... let's talk about it to-morrow." suddenly he caught the expression on his sister's face. it was an expression he seldom saw; one that he did not like. "well, if you have got to have the horrible truth," he snapped petulantly, "i'm cleaned out ... absolute bust ... i still owe a few hundred to faxon," he added reluctantly. she sighed. "again." "nothing's broken right for me. absolutely nothing. you saw yourself the way the cards treated me last night." her eyes flashed. "you've got to be fairly sober to play a decent game of cards, roger." he looked aggrieved. "i was sober--almost. sober enough, anyway. it was luck, i tell you--just the beastly rotten luck i always have. i never did have any luck, from the day i was born. why, any other chap, with my chances ..." "roger," interrupted his sister shortly, as if she had not heard him at all. "why do you find it necessary to throw away every cent you get? what's your idea?" "my idea?" "yes. what's in your head about the future? what are you going to do with yourself? what do you think about--about--oh, things in general?" he looked his bewilderment. "i'm afraid i don't quite connect, sis ..." "i want to know if you've--well--i'd like to know ... just how you stand with yourself." her brother eyed her curiously. "what's struck you anyway?" he demanded. "what's happened to make you take on like this all of a sudden?" "nothing. it's not sudden. i've wanted to have this talk with you for a long time--not that it does any good ... we'll probably drag along the same old way." she sat thoughtfully silent for a moment. "i'll draw you a cheque, of course," she added listlessly. "you must pay up your debts at once. but you do worry me ..." "miss wynrod?" "what is it, huldah?" roger stopped his discourse and the maid advanced with a card. judith took it and knitted her brows as she read. "who is it, sis?" "'brent good,'" she read, "_'the workman's world'_" "well, he has got nerve," cried roger. "that's that socialist sheet, isn't it? why, they take a crack at us once a week regular. and now they've got the gall to send a man out here. tell him to go to the devil." judith turned to the maid. "tell him that i am not at home, please, huldah." "i thought that would be the message," said a cheerful voice beyond the hedge, "so i didn't wait for it." a moment later a tall figure of a man emerged and took off his hat with an awkward bow. "good morning, miss wynrod." his bronzed, angular face, with its deep-set eyes and wide mouth, softened in a smile which was undeniably pleasing. judith surveyed his shabby figure, compounded of all manner of curious depressions and protuberances, and half smiled herself. his cheerfulness was infectious. also, his appearance was almost comic, which was paradoxical in a representative of so savage an organ as _the workman's world_. then she recalled the circumstances of his intrusion, and when she spoke her voice was chill. "i believe you heard my message." "clearly. but if you had known that i had come all the way out from the city on a very hot morning, merely to do you a favour, i don't think you would have given it." he surveyed her reproachfully. then his lips parted again in a smile. "won't you give me five minutes, miss wynrod--please." judith was no exception to the rule that curiosity is a dominant motive in human conduct. besides, she had already succumbed to the curious stranger's magnetic geniality. she hesitated. "well ..." he took it to be acquiescence. "thanks very much. now could i have this five minutes with you--alone?" roger frowned at the request, and winked at his sister. "this is my brother. anything that concerns me will concern him." the stranger's demeanour was unruffled. "i see. and i am very glad. what i have to say does concern your brother quite as much as it concerns yourself." "fire away!" interrupted roger. curiosity is by no means a distinctively feminine weakness. the occupant of the shabby brown suit removed his almost equally brown straw hat and laid it on the grass. "it's hot, isn't it," he smiled. it was difficult to resist that smile. judith invited him to be seated. and although she herself remained standing, he accepted the invitation with alacrity. she marked that against him, although his next remark appeased her somewhat. "it's a long walk up from the station," he said, carefully removing the abundant perspiration from his craggy forehead. "pretty road, though," he added. judith was content to let him take his own time. but roger was more impatient. "you have something to say to us?" "yes," he admitted, "i have." "well...?" mr. good looked from brother to sister. an expression of half-humorous dismay crossed his face, an expression which both of them caught, but neither understood. then he drew a long breath and carefully folded his handkerchief. one long, lean forefinger shot out suddenly toward judith, and the quizzical little smile vanished from his lips. "you know, miss wynrod, of the terrible situation down in the algoma mines. you know of the bloodshed, the pitched battles between strikers and mine-guards. and worst of all,"--with a rapid gesture, contrasting strongly with the languorous slowness of his movements before, he drew a folded newspaper from one of his bulging pockets--"you must have read this morning of the burning to death of twenty-two women and children--the families of the striking miners." judith had read the story. that is, she had glanced at the headlines, and realising the horror of their import, and at the same time feeling that there was no particular interest for her, had passed on to closer and less unpleasant interests. she remained silent before the tall stranger's accusing finger. her curiosity was more piqued than ever. but roger was angered. "well--and what of it?" he demanded with ill-concealed truculence. the tall man turned his serious gaze on roger. "i suppose you are familiar with this terrible situation, too," he said, half interrogatively. "suppose i am. what of it. i say?" roger knew nothing whatever about it, of course, and from the other man's sudden, half-veiled smile, it was perfectly obvious that he knew that he did not. he turned suddenly from roger with a faint gesture of his long hand that seemed to sweep that young man totally out of the discussion. then judith, offended, although roger himself was hardly conscious of the rebuff, spoke for him. "yes," she said with deliberate coldness. "we know all about it. but what of it?" "simply this, miss wynrod," said good crisply, and with a hint of hostility in his manner. "you are a large stockholder in several of the algoma mines. the blood of those murdered miners is on your head--and those innocent women and children burned to death by your hirelings. whether you know it or not, you have a responsibility for the situation, and i have come here to-day to find out what you are going to do about it all?" "do about it?" cried judith, amazed by the suddenness of his attack. "i'm afraid i don't understand." the stranger's mood softened and his voice became quieter. "i want to find out what you think about things--things in general--what you are going to do with the great wealth which is yours, what part you are going to play in the changing world. this business at algoma--that's only a part of the whole. i want to find out what--well--what you really _are_?" judith could have laughed aloud at the irony of the question which this uncouth stranger was putting to her. it was, almost to the words, the same question she had put to her brother not half an hour before. what did she think about things? why were people suddenly so interested in what other people thought? but the similarity was not apparent to roger. the question caused him no introspection: only anger. "what right have you to put such impudent questions to us, anyway," he demanded hotly. "who the devil are you to intrude on us in this fashion? you'd best get out before i have you put out." the tall man made no move to rise from his chair as roger stood threateningly above him. he merely turned his hands up in a quaint gesture of deprecation. "bless your heart, young chap, _i'm_ not putting any questions. if you'll glance at my card, you'll notice that my business comes before my name. i'm simply the spokesman of a newspaper ..." "newspaper!" sneered roger. "do you call that anarchist rag a newspaper?" but the other man refused to be interrupted. he proceeded equably. "and that newspaper, in turn, is simply the spokesman of the public. it's the public that wants to know _who_ you are--and _what_ you are--not i. personally, to be quite candid, i don't care a farthing. but ..." "well, and what right has the public to come prying into our private affairs?" interrupted roger again. "it's none of their business. this is supposed to be a free country. why don't you give law-abiding private citizens a little freedom and privacy? you force your way in where you aren't wanted and insult us and then say it's because the public wants to know. what business is it of the public's what we do and what we think?" the stranger smiled benignly. "my dear young man," he said calmly, as he folded up his newspaper and fitted it into his pocket. "that's old, old stuff. you're 'way behind the times. that rode into the discard on the tumbrels of the revolution. as an individual, nobody cares a rap about you. as the possessor of a great fortune, the public is very keenly interested in your lightest thought. but i'm not going to attempt to give you a lesson in elementary history. your sister can, i am sure, do that for me." he turned to her with the same galling indifference that had so offended roger before. she could not but admire the assurance of his manner in the face of such open hostility. "miss wynrod," he went on calmly, "i do hope you will talk to me frankly. won't you tell me what you honestly think of your relations, first to this business at algoma, and then ..." "don't say a word," interrupted roger. "remember the sheet he represents." judith did remember, and the recollection made her angry. she smarted still at the cartoons and denunciatory editorials in which she had so frequently been singled out for attack. "don't you think it's just a little curious, mr. good," she asked quietly, "that you should come to me in this way when you must know how your own paper has treated me?" a pained expression crossed his eyes. "it is a little queer," he admitted. "and honestly i don't like the roasts they give you any better than you do. but don't you see that in a way you're responsible for them? you never come back. you just hide. people don't know what you think. all they see is the results--what you do--or what they think you do ... and that amounts to the same thing, doesn't it? now if you'd just discuss the algoma situation, and give me some idea of what you think its causes are, and what part you think you ought to play in making things better, it'll go a long way toward making the public understand you better and sympathise with you. they think that life's a rose garden to you, you know. they never dream that you have troubles, too. you never tell them. all you show is the contented side of your life, the luxury, the pleasure, the idleness. why not take them into your confidence?" of the shabby stranger's earnestness there could be no doubt. his long arms waved and the perspiration welled out on his cheeks as he strove to present his arguments. at intervals roger sneered audibly, though judith listened attentively. but when he paused for breath, she shook her head. "i sympathise with your point of view," she said with an effort at finality. "but i have nothing to say." but he refused to be put off. "but miss wynrod, can't you see what an opportunity i'm giving? here's a chance for you to set yourself right with the people. they think you live for nothing but money. they think you could fix everything up into an imitation of heaven if you only weren't greedy. why don't you show them that you are doing all you can, that you're thinking about things, that you're not the heartless, selfish, narrow, stupid creature they think you are. this is an opportunity to make yourself loved instead of hated. why, miss wynrod, if you'll make a statement, i'll bring the proofs to you to correct. i won't put a comma in that you don't want. wouldn't that be better than to go back and write a story and say that when i asked you what you thought about the burning to death of twenty-two women and children in one of your own mines, by your own hirelings, you replied that you had nothing to say?" roger was speechless with wrath at this torrent of what he thought was abuse, failing to distinguish between the general and the specific. it was only by an effort of will that he restrained himself from laying violent hands on this threadbare creature with the eloquent tongue, who, it appeared to him, was deliberately insulting his sister. but judith herself felt no rancour. indeed she felt the magnetism of the reporter more strongly with each word, and it never occurred to impugn the sincerity of his outburst--nor its justice. her face struggled painfully in an effort to be cold and impassive as she barely whispered again her refusal to speak. good studied her for a moment. then he smiled, quite cheerfully. all his hot tensity vanished suddenly. "i think i understand," he said quietly. "it isn't that you won't talk to me--but you can't. you can't tell me what you think about these things--because you haven't thought about them. but you're going to, miss wynrod, you're going to. some day i shall come back, and then you will talk to me. perhaps you will even ask me to come back." roger laughed at that, but judith was silent. she had a curious and not at all pleasant sense that this curious, contradictory, talkative stranger, with his grotesque form and clothes, and bad manners, not to say impudence, knew her better than she knew herself. he was perfectly right. she tried to tell herself that her refusal to talk to him was dictated by a finely conscious dignity. but she knew very well that such was not the case. he had indeed spoken truly when he said that she could not talk because she had not thought. she had not. and she was not at all incredulous at his prophecy that she might one day call him back. she would think more about these matters--she had begun, perforce but none the less certainly, to think about them already. the reporter, still studying her quizzically, and so intently as to make her consciously uncomfortable, rose slowly. "i'm sorry, miss wynrod. i've had a wasted trip--and yet i haven't. you're beginning to think. some day you will talk. perhaps i shall be present. i am glad we have become friends--you, too, mr. wynrod. good morning." in spite of his awkwardness, his movements were rapid. it seemed almost like a fairy disappearance, so quickly was he out of sight behind the hedge. only his dilapidated straw hat could be seen bobbing rhythmically out of view. "well, of all cranks," laughed roger. "and the nerve of him. did you hear his calm assumption that we have now become fast friends? can you beat it?" but judith said: "it's a long road to the station. i should have sent the car." and then, suddenly feeling an unaccountable distaste for her brother's society, she went thoughtfully into the house. in the hall she encountered faxon, in search of her. he had to make the . , and had none too much time to get to the station. "joris will take you down," she said mechanically, when he had explained. "he's taken alder and some of the others up to the golf club." "and picard?" "he's off somewhere, too." "how stupid. well, i'll take you down myself. let's see. oh, we can make it easily. it's only a quarter past now. i'll have the electric around in a moment." while she waited for the car to be brought around, she found herself responding perfunctorily to mr. faxon's running comment on all sorts of things in general, conscious that for the first time he was rather tiresome. she had never taken his attentions to herself seriously. she knew that he had a certain interest in pretty della baker rather warmer than was permissible in the case of a married woman, and she shut her eyes to the fact that her house gave them opportunities to meet that they would not otherwise have had. yet she believed there was no real harm in della, and as for faxon,--well, he had flirted with so many women in his time that she could not take him altogether seriously either with herself or with others. and he usually succeeded in being amusing. but to-day she had no desire to be amused. she was thinking earnestly for perhaps the first time in her life ... wondering what she really did think about things in general. as she seated herself in the car and faxon climbed in beside her, she grew more silent, and her thoughts strayed very far away from braeburn. in spite of a very considerable reluctance on her part, they persisted in wandering to an ugly little collection of shanties, piled helter-skelter in the midst of lowering hills, where men went down into the earth and came up--something less than men--where twenty-two ... over and over again that wretched phrase persisted in repeating itself, until she wanted to scream. why had she ever allowed that disagreeable stranger to spoil her day? suddenly, as if to punctuate her thoughts, she caught sight of a familiar figure marching jerkily along the dusty road in front of her. he was even more grotesque from behind, but there was something pathetic in the weary droop of his shoulders. she felt acutely conscious of the comfort of her vehicle. two or three times as she neared the angular pedestrian, she rang her bell. but he either did not hear it or he did not notice it; for he kept on in his uneven stride, with his head bent well forward, and his bedraggled straw almost over his ears. she was almost upon him, and the narrowness of the road showed little clearance between him and the machine, when she rang again. the sound seemed to startle and confuse him. his head rose with a jerk and he stopped short. then he stepped, with the utmost deliberateness, directly in the path of the approaching car. with all the power in her lithe body, judith jammed on both brakes. but it was too late. there was a crash of glass as faxon's cane went through the window. on her knees where she had been thrown by the suddenness of the stop she heard his "damned ass!" gritted through his teeth. she remembered afterward that she had wondered whether the epithet was for herself or for the stranger in the road. but at the time she heard only the horrible crunch of steel against flesh, the muffled snap as of a broken twig, and a low groan, twice repeated. faxon was out of the car in an instant, and standing in the road, his face white as chalk, frantically motioning to her to reverse. in a daze she put on the power, and when she had moved back a few feet, followed him outside. but her daze was only momentary. for just an instant she stood stupidly watching faxon struggle with a dreadfully inanimate brown mass. then she became herself. "here," she cried. "in the car--quick." and when faxon seemed indecisive, she laid hold of the unconscious figure herself and helped to lift it into the machine. as she climbed in after it, faxon made as if to follow her. but she waved him off. "you can make that train if you hurry," she said sharply. "it's only a little way to the station." and with that she tossed his cane to him, and all but kicked his bag after it. faxon expostulated, but she was too occupied in turning her car around to heed him. the sudden sharp hum of the motor as she jumped from speed to speed made him realise the futility of his protests, and so, philosophically, but not a little shaken by the suddenness of it all, he picked up his bag and stick and made for the station. judith, as she sped homeward, did not trust herself to glance at the crumpled figure on the floor beside her. and over and over again, as she urged the car to its utmost, she kept repeating an almost wordless prayer-- "i mustn't faint ... i mustn't faint ... i mustn't...." she was almost home when the brown bundle stirred faintly, and she caught a weak groan. still she dared not look. it was only when she was forced to, that she turned her eyes in answer to a weakly whispered question. "what's up?" "oh, i'm so glad!" she breathed, more to herself than to him, "so glad ... i thought...." then, a little louder--"where are you hurt?" "my leg, i think," said the injured man, in a voice that was a pitiful travesty of the one that had talked to her so earnestly in her garden, only a few minutes before. "it--it hurts like the dickens." she rang her bell frantically all the way up the drive to the house, and there were half a dozen excited people to meet her. she was far calmer than they and she superintended the removal of good from the car with perfect impassiveness. but he had lost consciousness again, and the sight of his bloodless face, deathly pallid save for the crimson splash on one cheek, almost unnerved her. "take him to the grey room, portis," she said quietly. "and tell somebody to get dr. ruetter. he's staying at mrs. craven's. please hurry." it was very hard to keep her voice calm, but she managed to accomplish it. finally, when she could think of nothing else to do, and to the very great amazement of everyone, she suddenly collapsed in a dead faint. when she came to herself again, dr. ruetter was standing over her. "well, young lady," he said cheerfully. "you've made quite a morning of it." her first thought was of good. "tell me," she cried anxiously. "how is he? is he very badly hurt? will he die?" "unquestionably," smiled the doctor. but when she sank back with a groan, he added, "just like we all will." "oh. then he isn't fatally hurt?" "bless you, no! broken leg, that's all. bad break, i'll admit--compound fracture--but nothing to cause alarm." "but he's got to go to a hospital," spoke up roger, whom she had not noticed before. "the hospital? who said so?" "the doctor. he says ..." "oh, by all means," said the doctor, quite as if the prospect gave him personal pleasure. "this isn't a bruised finger, you know. that chap won't be up and around for three weeks or a month at least. the hospital's the place for him." "what hospital?" asked judith thoughtfully. "judging by his clothes, i should say the county." judith sat bolt upright at that. "he will not go to the county hospital," she said with finality. "he won't go to any hospital." "don't get excited, sis," said roger with soothing intent. but his words had the opposite effect. "he's going to stay right where he is," she continued. "it's the least i can do, after nearly killing him." "that's very kind and good, of course," said the doctor in obedience to a glance from roger. "but i'm afraid you don't quite understand. he'll be laid up for a long time--six weeks, perhaps. and really, he'd be better off in a hospital." "don't talk nonsense," said judith sharply. "is he going to need treatment?" "well, no," admitted the doctor in some confusion. "it's purely a matter of convalescence. he'll be far more comfortable here. he'll stay here. now please go away and let me alone. i'm all fagged out." the doctor pleaded and cajoled, even, in obedience to further glances from roger, ventured to order. but judith merely closed her eyes and refused to listen to him at all. finally, being something of a philosopher, he wished her a very pleasant good morning, and went on his way. roger continued to storm, though quite ineffectually. "why, confound it, sis," he cried in exasperation, "what's the sense in playing lady bountiful to a fellow who'll make use of his first day of health to enter a whopping big suit for damages against you?" "does he strike you as that sort of a chap?" she asked mildly. "you know how he feels toward people like us. he told you, himself. he'd think it a sin to let a chance go by to soak us. he'd probably feel justified by the way we treated him this morning." "we weren't very cordial, were we?" "cordial! i told him to get out before i threw him out. why, he's as full of grievances as a cat is fleas. mark my words, the only gratitude you'll get will be a good fat damage suit. and you know how much of a chance you'd have against him." "well, he'd deserve something, wouldn't he?" asked judith. "he'll probably lose his position if he's going to be laid up for six weeks." roger looked at her in amazement. "say, are you going daffy?" then he reflected for a moment. "that's not a bad idea, sis. i might give him a couple of hundred in exchange for a quit claim. that's what the railroads do in their accidents. a hundred or two will look bigger to him right now than a thousand next year. i'll get him before any shyster lawyer does. i'll fix it up, all right. don't you worry, sis. that crazy anarchist won't trouble you ..." but judith was not worrying. her eyes had closed again in a perfectly obvious simulation of sleep. for a moment roger looked a little hurt by this indifferent reception of his idea. then he tiptoed quietly out of the room. full of his plan, he hastened to the grey room, where the tall stranger lay, all his cheerful smile lost in the twisted grin of pain. but he managed somehow to smile, after a fashion at least, when roger came in. "hello," he said, with something of his characteristic buoyancy. "hello," said roger, trying to be casual. "how you feeling?" "ever see a hog skinned?" grinned the tall man. "that's how." roger's sympathies were stirred. he was really a very tender-hearted lad. but he was not to be swerved from his purpose. he had a duty to perform. "bad business," he said seriously, seating himself beside the bed. then he nodded to the maid, who had been detailed to act as nurse, to leave the room. when she had closed the door, he turned confidentially to good. "i say, old man," he said with something of embarrassment in his manner, "you're going to be laid up for a good stretch, you know, and you may lose your job and all that--" "tweedledee," said the tall man. "you can't lose what you haven't got." roger was at a loss just how to answer that sally, so he decided to overlook it. "you're bound to be considerably put out," he went on. "considerably is right," chuckled good. roger found it very difficult, much more so than he had expected, to talk to this curious creature. but he was persistent. "well, we don't intend that you shall lose anything," he said in as friendly a way as he could. but it was a little too friendly. it was the tone with which one offers a tip. "i'll give you a cheque for two hundred dollars--all the doctor's bills paid--and--" he drew a cheque book from his pocket and unscrewed his fountain pen. "how shall i make it out?" good raised his hand. "cut that," he said shortly. roger misconstrued the gesture. it irritated him. "don't you think it's--enough?" he asked bluntly. but the tall man only smiled. "oh, forget it," he said. "why should you give me any money. you can pay the bills if you want to. guess you'll have to if the medico's going to get anything. that'll call it square, i guess." "how about the six weeks' lay-up?" "i'll get a good rest and plenty to eat--at the county's expense. why should i worry?" smiled good. "then you refuse to accept a cheque?" demanded roger. "of course." roger was so full of his own suspicions that it never occurred to him to question their justice. and the blithe and offhand way in which this ragamuffin declined his cheque only seemed to confirm his belief that he was playing for higher stakes. he lost his patience entirely. "you'd rather wait till you can get some quack lawyer," he sneered, "and then try to bleed us for a big wad, eh?" the man on the bed opened his eyes in amazement. "good lord," he cried, "what kind of people have you been brought up with?" "well, just let me tell you, my friend," went on roger hotly, "that you won't get a cent by that game. my sister has a witness to prove that the accident was all your own fault...." "well," interrupted the stranger, a little wearily, "that's right. what are you fussing about?" it was roger's turn to open his eyes in amazement. "you mean--you admit--it was your fault?" he stammered. "of course. i was thinking about--something else--usually am--when your sister rang her bell. i didn't hear it, at first. when i did, i--well--i don't know--guess i just stepped the wrong way. it's my own fault for getting chewed up. don't worry, my boy, there won't be any damage suit. i haven't any claim--besides i'm a good sight more afraid of lawyers than you are." roger stared in silent astonishment. "you are a queer one," he ejaculated finally. the injured man smiled, a little sadly. "you're awfully young to be so suspicious of your fellow man," he said almost to himself. then, more briskly and cheerfully, he addressed himself to the very surprised and humiliated roger. "now that we've got that settled, let's tackle the next question. when are you going to ship me into town?" "we're not going to ship you in," answered roger, very chastened. good lifted his eyebrows. "not going to? what's the answer?" "my sister intends to have you stay where you are." then he added in a more friendly tone, "it's the least we can do for you, you know." "well, well!" good's face was illumined with smiles. "i say, that's fine," he cried. "most extraordinary, too," he added, under his breath. then he surveyed the neatness and harmonious quiet of the room. his eyes, with a little gleam in them, roamed comfortably into every corner. "it's worth being laid up to get a taste of this," he cried naïvely. "you see, i've never seen anything just like this," he added, almost apologetically, with the little deprecatory lift of his hands that had already fastened itself upon roger as characteristic. "it's too good to be true!" for a moment roger was silent at this display of ingenuousness. then he spoke as he would have expected to be spoken to, had their positions been reversed. "i'll send in for your clothes--and things--if you'll give me your address...." the tall man's expression of content faded. it was succeeded by a look of what might be taken for pain, or embarrassment,--or both. "they're all here," he said quietly. "it wouldn't be worth while to send after a toothbrush and a comb, would it. that's all there is--home." "oh--i beg your pardon," said roger, reddening. then he cursed himself for the tactlessness of the apology. "nothing to blush at, my boy," cried good. "lend me a suit of pajamas, instead." roger rose hastily. he welcomed the opportunity to escape from this curious creature, who said such curious things, and who possessed but one suit of clothes. as very rarely happened, he found himself at a loss for words. "can i do anything else?" he asked from the doorway. "yes--you can thank your sister--from the bottom of my heart--for having introduced me to her motor-car ... and _this_--" he waved his hand around comprehensively, and smiled. "anything else?" "well, you might call up _the world_ and tell them that i won't be down to-morrow. you might add that i fell down on the wynrod story ... that i'm in the camps of the persians." then, when roger looked puzzled, he yawned luxuriously and stretched his arms over his head. and after another yawn, he closed his eyes. "that's all, thanks. tell 'em not to wake me--for a week...." chapter ii a blow--and a resolution i it was after ten o'clock on the evening of the same day. judith was thankful when a change at one of the tables gave her an opportunity to steal away. it was the same old routine, the same interminable bridge, the same familiar group, even including faxon and della baker who, by a coincidence that had called forth little veiled ironies, had returned by the same late afternoon train. judith wondered at herself. the life she led, the people she called her friends, had never seemed quite so shallow before. she stole upstairs and listened for a moment at the door of her patient's room. all was quite soundless. returning to the floor below, she stepped out into the grateful coolness of the evening, seeking that part of the piazza at the opposite end of the house from the parlours. pausing outside the smoking-room, she heard voices and the tinkle of ice. she looked through the glass door; there were two men in the room, della baker's husband and faxon. the latter was stirring his high-ball thoughtfully. his words arrested her as she was on the point of turning back. "if roger keeps on at his present gait he'll make a neat little hole even in the wynrod pile." baker lighted a fresh cigar. "yes?" his tone was noncommittal. "got any for himself, d'ye think--or does judith hold the bag?" such imprudent garrulity was not characteristic of faxon, but more whisky than was good for him had dulled discretion and loosened his tongue. "it's hard to say." baker leaned back and blew smoke rings toward the ceiling. he was an extraordinarily taciturn man, even for a lawyer. "the old man had a lot of confidence in her." faxon gave the impression of soliloquy. "shouldn't wonder if she kept the kid on an allowance. he's strapped pretty tight sometimes. queer girl, judith." "think so?" "yes. sometimes i don't just know how to take her." "so?" "charming, fine character and all that--but difficult. don't you think so?" "um--well...." "roger's different." "is he?" "oh, my, yes. i don't mean when he's carrying a package--i want to dodge then--but when he's sober, he's a nice kid. awfully young and simple, of course. still...." "alarums without--and enter the king!" came a thick voice from the doorway, a voice that arrested judith a second time and held her spellbound. she was already tingling with mortification. how dared her friends calmly analyse her and roger in their own house, speculate on their private money matters, condescendingly, almost sneeringly foot up their account of good and bad? then, even in the dark, she felt her cheeks grow hot. was she herself much better than they, playing the eavesdropper on her own guests? somehow, oddly, the thought flashed upon her that the quiet man upstairs would not have done so, that his code of ethics was a cleaner one than hers and that of her friends. but when she heard her brother's voice, with that telltale thickening in it, sheer dread of what he might do banished all thought of social niceties. roger was not often like this, but when he was it meant trouble. "hello, roger." faxon's manner underwent a subtle change. "thought you were playin' bridge with the crowd." "bridge? me? not on your life! i've cut that out. i'm sick of givin' the whole party, i am. i'm sick of bein' a christmas-tree for blind babies. put your han's in my pockets, boys. ev'body's doin' it! no, sir, i've quit f' good. where's the scotch?" "really, roger," protested baker somewhat anxiously, "don't you think you'd better...." "jus' one toast," insisted roger obstinately, "jus' one." he drew himself unsteadily erect. "i wanta drink--i wanta drink--to the mos' beautiful, mos' 'ttractive, mos' heartless...." as he raised the glass with a flourish, it slipped from his fingers and crashed on the table, its golden contents trickling over baker's knees. there was momentary silence; then a single short laugh. it sobered wynrod like a dash of cold water. "you think i'm funny?" he demanded. faxon reddened. "oh, come now, roger, why so peevish? you've got things to be thankful about. i hear that vera is leaving you, without even the threat of a breach of promise suit--" the blood surged up into roger's cheeks and his features sharpened. when he finally spoke it was very slowly. "i'll thank you to keep your mouth shut on matters that don't concern you," he said icily. faxon's eyes gleamed angrily, and his lips parted; but he did not speak. he passed his hand across his mouth and laughed nervously. baker put his hand on the younger man's shoulder. "let's see how the cards are going, roger...." but wynrod shook him off. "would you mind beating it, john--just a moment. i want to talk to faxon--there's a good fellow--" baker surveyed the pair--and hesitated. then, with a cold and meaning glance at faxon, he shrugged his shoulders and went out. when the curtains had closed, wynrod turned to faxon. he drew in his breath and his teeth clicked sharply. "i may run the risk of breach of promise suits," he said, after a long pause, "but i stay away from married women." "well, that's noble of you to be sure, but--what of it?" "you don't." faxon's features tightened. "i'm afraid i don't understand...." "that's a lie," said wynrod in an ugly, deliberate way. "now see here...." faxon tried to bluster, but it was patently forced. "either you or the bakers have got to get out of this house." the words were said quietly enough, but the determination behind them was plain. faxon realised that, and tried equivocation. "why?" "because i won't have this sort of thing going on in my house." "your house?" there was just the faintest suggestion of an emphasis upon the pronoun. "my house," repeated roger coldly. "i saw you and della last night. and i know you met in town to-day. if she wants to make that kind of an ass of herself outside, that's her business. but she can't do it here. john baker's my friend." for an instant faxon's jaw was set with curled lips, and his eyes blazed. then the whole expression changed, and he shrugged his shoulders and laughed--though not very easily. "why, roger old boy, you're all wrong. you're quite mistaken about della baker. she and i are good friends--nothing more. she's an unhappy little woman, that's all. she--oh well, she's taken my friendship for something more. she...." "let's not discuss her." "as you like. but you've got to get things straight. just because i was decent to her when her husband wasn't, and she fancied me in love with her, doesn't make me the sort of chap you seem to think me, does it?" roger was silent. faxon assumed that the silence meant an acceptance of his explanation, and his apparent success made him careless. his voice softened and his manner became almost feline. he put his hand on the other's shoulder. "you've got it all dead wrong, my boy. della's spoiled the party for me. she's stuck to me like a barnacle. i didn't come out here for her. i wanted to see judith. why...." roger seemed suddenly to grow a head taller. his eyes flamed like banked fires, and his nostrils dilated. his fists clenched fiercely. "cut that--cut it, i tell you," he ground thickly through his set teeth. "don't you ever speak of my sister like that. by god, i won't stand it, you hear." his voice was low but clear and vibrant with suppressed passion. faxon recoiled, and his suavity left him. "your sister is of age, i believe," he said with a steely evenness. "she needs no protector." "you keep away, i tell you. you keep away." roger's breath came shortly, and his fists clenched and unclenched themselves spasmodically. "if i'm not good enough to look at your sister, how about you--and molly wolcott? i can't see that little vera's any better than della baker." "cut it, faxon. you're going too far!" "is that so?" sneered the older man harshly. "well, what if i go farther. i won't take much nonsense from you, my cock." "you'll get out of this house and stay out...." roger's eyes were ablaze and his features worked convulsively. the other, much larger of frame, glared down at him with a gaze as hot as his own. the atmosphere was tense. then, almost simultaneously the curtains parted and the two sections of the piazza window swung inward. baker who had left the two men very reluctantly, and had returned as soon as he decently could, was present at the climax. he jumped forward as he saw the two men facing each other over the narrow table, and comprehended the situation. but he was too late. he caught an ugly word from wynrod. then, with a savage oath, faxon's arm shot out. there was the dull crunch of flesh against flesh, and the younger man staggered back from the impact; then blind with rage, he sprang forward again; a crash of shattered glass followed, as the mis-aimed whisky bottle splintered against the sideboard. then, simultaneously the three men became aware of judith standing white and statuesque in the window, her eyes ablaze with scorn and repulsion. of what was said she had no clear memory afterwards. roger, belligerent still, attempted a hot defence, but she silenced him with a cutting word. faxon for the first time on record, found his suavity forsake him. he had been caught by his hostess in a disorderly broil, and his dapperness was marred with spattered liquor. his rhetoric quite broke down and he was conscious of making the most awkward exit of his career. * * * * * it was fully an hour later, when the house was quiet for the night, that judith found roger nursing a slight but smarting cut on his cheek, where faxon's seal ring had grazed it. "roger," she said, "that's enough 'first aid,' isn't it? i want to talk with you." "oh, cut it out, judith. go to bed. i've had all a fellow can stand for one evening, without being lectured by you!" "it can't wait, roger. i have some things that i must say to you now, to-night, and you have got to listen. i couldn't sleep if i didn't. i have waited too long already. if i hadn't, this wretched, vulgar thing wouldn't have happened.... and with one of your own guests, too." he straightened at that and lost his sheepish look. "one of my guests? not by a million! i wouldn't have that damned bounder in my kennels. why, hang it all, judith, i can't see what you have the chap around for at all. he...." "you know perfectly well why i have him. he's here so that della baker can have a good time--poor girl." "poor girl! rats! just because her husband doesn't play tag with her all day, she's 'poor girl.' instead of behaving like a halfway decent sort, she's making several different kinds of a fool of herself over joe faxon. 'poor girl?'--don't make me laugh!" "oh, i heard what you said to mr. faxon. but it doesn't follow, roger, just because you have a nasty mind that everybody is as horrid as you choose to think. maybe there are some sides of a man's life that i'm not supposed to know about. but just escaping a breach of promise suit,--oh, roger, shame on you!" for a moment the young man lost some of his assurance. "you aren't fair," he protested aggrievedly. "you're bound to put me in the wrong every time. admitted that i have made all sorts of a fool of myself,--a fellow has to learn somehow, hasn't he? but you'll believe the worst of me any time, and you won't believe anything against your precious friends. you're biased, that's what you are, biased." judith sighed and took a cigarette from the table and lighted it. she smoked thoughtfully for a moment. "roger, i'm sure i don't know what to do with you. it's just one scrape after another. it won't be long before this one will be out. but i don't mean to be unfair. if as you say, you have been all kinds of a fool, it isn't any more your fault than it is mine. i had no right to make it possible for you to be all kinds of a fool. and as a matter of fact, you are not a bit ashamed of yourself, roger. on the contrary, you're altogether too satisfied with yourself." her brother smiled uneasily. "i don't know that i'm really in need of condolence," he rejoined with an attempt at sarcasm. "that's just the trouble," she said earnestly. "you've been feeling altogether too well--with altogether too little reason." she tossed her cigarette in the fireplace, and then turned and faced him with lips compressed. "i overheard some people discussing you the other night, roger. one called you 'no account,' the other, 'a bad egg,' and both agreed that the cause was 'too much money.'" his eyes flashed. "who were they?" he demanded belligerently. "that makes no difference." "why doesn't it?" "because what they said is true." roger was silent at that, but judith went on relentlessly. "you _are_ no account, roger. by the standards of men who do things in the world, you're good for nothing. you're a good dancer. you can drive a motor car. you know enough about horses to play polo. and when you put your mind to it, you play a good game of cards. beyond that, what can you do--what _are_ you?" he eyed her narrowly, and a faint flush rose in his cheeks. "what do you want me to do--give a catalogue of virtues?" he inquired sarcastically. "what's all this leading to, anyway. granted that i'm all kinds of a waster, what's the answer?" judith was thoughtfully silent for a little while after his question, and when she spoke it was to answer it with another question. "have you ever done a single stroke of useful work in your life?" "probably not." his tone was a little flippant. "why not?" "never had to." the flippancy was quite obvious. "no, you never had to--never _had_ to do anything." there was another long silence, broken only by the nervous drumming of roger's finger-tips on the edge of his chair. when judith spoke again, her tone was tender, but with a vibrant note of determination which communicated itself fully even to her brother's apathetic faculties. "well, from now on, you're going to play the man. you're going to take care of yourself. you're going to _have_ to do things." "what do you mean?" all roger's flippancy had vanished, and in its place was an almost comic anxiety. "just what i said, roger lad. i shall support you no longer." "you mean ... you're going to stop my allowance?" he was aghast at the possibility, and he made no effort to conceal his feelings. "surely you can't be thinking of anything so--so--outrageous?" he demanded. "but i am!" she tossed her head with a suggestion of defiance, and smiled. "you've done as you pleased for all your twenty-four years. well, you can go on doing as you please--only you'll do it on your own money." "but this money--my allowance--it isn't yours, you know," he expostulated, almost tearfully. "it's merely an idiotic will that gives you the disposal of it. what right have you got to get on your high horse and tell me what i must and mustn't do? answer me that." "no _right_, roger," she said sadly. "half of what we have is yours of course. but it's not yours till you're thirty--you know that. i couldn't give it to you now even if i wanted to. i'm not even obliged to give you an allowance. the two thousand, of course, you'll continue to get. i can't control that. but beyond...." "two thousand! what good will that do me? do you think i can live on that?" "some people do," she murmured faintly. judith was not without a certain quiet irony when she chose to employ it. "don't be silly, judith. you know mighty well i can't get along on that. why, good heavens, i can't possibly do it!" his voice rose shrilly as the enormity of the thought struck him with all its force. but judith refused to be troubled. "perhaps you'll know more about it after you've tried," she said gently. roger jumped to his feet and paced rapidly to and fro for a moment. then he faced his sister, and his eyes blazed like those of an angry cat. "do you really mean that you're going to play this rotten trick on me?" he demanded hotly. "are you going to take advantage of a perfectly insane will and cheat me out of what's honestly mine? or are you kidding me? if you are, i've had about enough of it." "i mean every word," she returned, with not a little asperity. "and i'm not cheating you. you've made a mess of your life, left to yourself. now i'm going to help you. i'm tired of suffering for your sins!" suddenly the quality of her voice changed completely and her eyes glistened suggestively. "oh, roger lad, can't you understand? can't you see that i do so want you to make something of yourself? you're the only thing i have in the world. can't you see how it hurts me to have people feel a contempt for you? i'm the only mother you've ever had. i know i haven't done a millionth part of what i should have done for you. i've failed--miserably. i know that. all your weaknesses are due to me. you aren't to blame. this is my last chance. you're slipping, roger--slipping down. this is my last chance to catch you--before--before ... it's too late. judge wolcott agrees: i talked it over with him. oh, i'm sorry, lad. you haven't an idea how sorry! it breaks my heart to be cruel to you this way--but i've got to be, roger. i've got to be--can't you understand? please say you do." she put her arms around his neck and laid her cheek against his. but he shook her off roughly. "that's all very fine talk," he snapped savagely, "but it doesn't mean anything. who the devil is old wolcott to worry about my morals...?" "as molly's father he...." "molly can take care of herself. but that isn't the point. what i want to know is where wolcott gets the right to monkey with my affairs. and as for you--if you're going to cheat me out of what's mine--for the love of heaven, do it, but don't make it worse with all this high and mighty talk. it makes me tired." "please, roger...." the tears in her eyes were plain now. "maybe i am all the pleasant things you say i am. maybe i haven't got sense enough to take care of my own money. but what are you? i never noticed any wings on your shoulders." "you don't understand. i...." "understand? of course i don't understand. that's why i'm asking the question. if i'm what you say i am--what are you? where'd you get your preaching card?" "what difference does it make what i am?" "it makes a lot of difference. if you're so hot on reforming me, why don't you take a crack at yourself? i don't see that you're so almighty angelic. what have _you_ ever done in the world? you can play the piano after a fashion and sing, and talk a little french, and play cards and smoke cigarettes and drink cocktails and ... well, what else can you do? you spend twice as much money as i do, and i'll be hanged if i can see that you spend it to much better advantage. if i'm a waster and no account and a bad egg, you're one too. the only difference is that you wear skirts and i don't. well--why don't you answer me?" he towered over her, white with his rising rage. "i say, why don't you answer me?" he repeated hotly. "you don't need to be rude," she answered, her voice trembling. "i'm not rude. i'm simply putting the same question to you that you put to me. you held the mirror up to me. you can't squeal if i do the same by you. you wanted to know what i had ahead, what i thought about things, where i stood, and all that. well, what do _you_ think about things? where do you stand? what are you? turn about's fair, isn't it?" judith sought shelter in dignity. she raised her head coldly. "i think there is nothing more to be said. i think you had better go to bed." "no," he sneered bitterly; "there isn't anything more. you're dealing the cards. but it's a darned rotten deal, just the same. if you've got a clear conscience you've got a devil of a lot more than i'd have if i was in your shoes." with which bit of self-depreciation roger stalked dignifiedly, if a trifle unsteadily, out of the room. judith remained as he left her, with her chin in her hand, staring into the empty fireplace. once or twice she brought her handkerchief to her eyes. her brother's angry words had stung her far more cruelly than she was willing to admit. his counter arraignment of her had struck home. what was she, what did she think about things? in her zeal for him, had she not overlooked herself? she cast her eyes around the room, reeking with the sweet sickliness of dead cigarettes. she thought of the high stakes that had passed at her tables, she saw again the wan, tired, hard faces of the players, their feverish, greedy fingers; and she heard, as in an echo, their blithe cruelties, their empty blandishments. and these people, she reflected bitterly, were her friends--the only ones she had. roger had put the question to her squarely. what was she? the words struck her like a blow in the face. and what did she think--about anything? and the weight of the question was none the lighter for being asked for the second time in the same day. roger the immature boy over whom she had allowed herself to stand in judgment, and brent good, the pitiful vagabond, had both weighed her in the balance and found her wanting. she shuddered at the arid uselessness of what she called her mind. the grotesque procession of her daily thoughts passed before her in review. she tried to close her eyes and shut the ghastly picture out, but could not. riches, health, intelligence of a sort--these things were hers. what had she done with them? the answer hurt, almost physically. emptiness, idleness, futility ... was there anything else in herself, her friends, her whole life? had she justified existence? suddenly she realised that it was cold. she shivered, and turned out the light. ii roger awoke the following morning in a repentant mood. slowly and painfully he marshalled the facts of the preceding evening, dim and hazy some of them, while others stood out with humiliating and alarming distinctness. and the more he analysed them, the more unpleasantly he became aware that judith had been in deadly earnest. in his first hopelessness, he caught illogically at one faint chance. his sister's great fear seemed to be that this latest escapade might leak out. the fight had been the starting point of all her amazing change of front. well, he could prevent it from leaking out, by swallowing his pride. perhaps after all he had been over-hasty. accordingly, acting on this new resolution, roger caught faxon's eye as they were rising from table, and nodded. the latter waited. roger reddened slightly, and was silent until the others were out of earshot. then he held out his hand. "i'm sorry, joe," he said manfully. "i'm a damn fool when i've got a load. i hope you'll forget anything i may have said or done." faxon took the extended hand a little surprisedly. "surest thing you know, roger. and i'm sorry too. i struck at a sober man--you understand, don't you? i was too hasty. one forgets. he hears things--and acts before he thinks. bad business--but it's over and we'll bury it." "that's particularly what i want," said wynrod, with what seemed to faxon rather unnecessary earnestness. "absolutely buried. i don't want it to get out at all. i can depend upon baker...." "and you can depend upon me," said faxon heartily. "i won't breathe a whisper." "thanks." they shook hands gravely, and after an embarrassed little pause, roger excused himself and went to hunt up his sister. "about that stuff last night--are you still in earnest?" he asked doggedly, but not unpleasantly. she looked at him with a curiously tender expression in her eyes, but with her jaw firmly set. "absolutely, roger," she said quietly. but the outburst she expected did not come. instead, he looked at her quizzically and smiled. "well, sister, maybe there's something in what you say. i've been thinking about it. but you've set me up against an almighty hard proposition. i'm willing--but what on earth can i do?" judith was tremendously surprised, although she should not have been, knowing her brother's customary acquiescence in whatever she dictated. but she concealed her amazement and answered him in as matter-of-fact a way as she could muster. and judith was by no means an inferior actress. "why don't you see judge wolcott?" "he's a lawyer." "i know. but he's interested in all sorts of business matters. and before he went on the bench he was a corporation lawyer. at least he could tell you who to see." "the idea is not without merit, sister. i think i'll see the judge on monday. and then watch little roger proceed to climb the dizzy heights of industry. i'll show you a thing or two about him you never guessed." judith's eyes filled with tears and she threw her arms about his neck. "oh, roger--you're fine. and i _am_ cruel to you. i haven't any business to treat you this way. you're so much bigger than i am. you'll make a success--a great success. i know you will. and i will be so proud of you!" the possibility was a novel one. roger considered it carefully, for a moment. "by jove, you will!" he cried finally. "i'll be hanged if you won't," he added with enthusiasm. he wondered why the tears seemed to well the faster in his sister's eyes. chapter iii "you don't know mr. imrie" the news of judith's "mad whim" spread rapidly through braeburn, and various were the comments it evoked. for the most part they savoured of condolence, although there was some sentimental approbation for what was characterised by one enthusiast as the "nobility" of her course. this had its effect upon roger, and in time, he also came to feel admiration for her, and then, as a natural consequence of his own participation in the affair, he came to feel an admiration for himself. from out and out hostility to the idea, therefore, he changed insensibly to ardent and voluble sympathy. at first judith had admitted to herself quite frankly that the situation bore possibilities of annoyance. aside from her guest's potentially dangerous familiarity with her daily life, she sensed in him a certain lack of knowledge--or at least of observance--of those social amenities upon which her training, more than her instinct, led her to place considerable emphasis. it was with this feeling of an unbridgeable gulf between them, that she approached their first meeting after the accident. and it was with no little embarrassment, therefore, that she entered his room. the lines of pain had disappeared from his face, and the removal of the stubble which had covered his chin when they had had their first encounter, together with his rest, and--though she did not suspect that--several meals much more bounteous than those to which he was accustomed, had improved his appearance surprisingly. he greeted her unaffectedly. "hello," he said. "i've been waiting to see you. i can't begin to tell you how grateful i am for--all this." "and i," she cried, "can't begin to tell you how sorry i am that it all happened. i...." "well, then," he said with a smile which revealed two rows of strong, even and very white teeth, "let's not either of us try." that seemed to break the ice, and because he appeared to feel no embarrassment, she found that hers had quite left her. before she realised it, the morning was well advanced, and when she left him it was with a curious feeling that they had known each other for years and years ... very well. and that was only the beginning of the very odd, but very real, friendship which sprang up between them. it would have surprised--perhaps shocked--her friends to know how much time she spent with him; but it would have shocked them still more to know the topics of the conversations between them. she herself was amazed every time she left him; not at the range and depth of his interests and his knowledge--but at her own. he seemed to evoke ideas and words that she had never dreamed were there. it struck her as little short of sorcery. but the situation was not wholly pleasant. there were little rifts to mar the lute. the first came after several weeks. it was roger who introduced it. "say, judith," he said suddenly, one night at dinner, "good's going to be up and around pretty soon. you can't keep him cooped up there forever, you know. when are you going to have him down to meals?" he voiced a question which had been occurring with troublesome frequency in her own mind. she was silent for a moment, as she struggled with a decision she could no longer evade. it was a curious predicament in which events had placed her--not easy to understand readily. it was indisputable that good was ignorant of either the theory or practice of those conventions of the table upon which, against her will, she set much store. it was equally certain that he was quite conscious of his deficiencies in that respect. were she in his place, she told herself, she would prefer not to suffer the embarrassments which the contrasts between themselves and him must entail. but on the other hand, did she not perhaps over-emphasise his sensitiveness, and was it not more than probable that to his sense of proportion her conception of the _manner_ of human intercourse was absurd, if not pitiful? she found herself in a situation where, in an effort to be kind, she might be cruel. and what was to her merely tact, might be to him pure snobbishness. that settled the problem. she could not risk even the appearance of pettiness. the decision made her realise, as nothing else had, how much his judgments had come to mean to her. "you're right, roger," she said finally; "we'll have him down to-morrow." roger looked at her quizzically. "where?" he asked. "where?" she affected bewilderment. "yes. here ... or alone ... or...?" she struggled momentarily. "why, here--of course--with us," she said firmly. then very quickly, and with finality, she changed the subject. it was a trifling incident; but had she settled all later problems as she settled that one, the course of her life would have been changed completely. these were agreeable days, on the whole, for judith and her guest, but not for roger. pursuant to his sister's ultimatum and his own high resolution taken thereon, he had fared forth, paladin-like, to conquer that mysterious world wherein men bought and sold all manner of things, not excluding themselves. but it had proven anything but the high road to glory that he had secretly anticipated; he shivered lances daily with an intangible enemy which neither showed its face nor gave its name, but before which he seemed quite powerless. he had gone first, as he said he would, to judge wolcott, and had, with perhaps less humility than he himself thought he was displaying, but with more than might naturally have been expected, announced his readiness to consider any satisfactory (emphasised) "position" to which he might be directed. to his resentment, not to say surprise, the judge had first laughed unrestrainedly. but on realising the offence he was giving, which roger was at no pains to conceal, he had become quite serious, and had directed the young man to a number of gentlemen, whose names he wrote out on a bit of cardboard. these gentlemen, however, had proved to have their habitat behind corps of more or less impertinent menials. it had required very explicit answers to what he considered a great number of entirely unnecessary questions before he earned even the privilege of having his card presented. once in the inner sancta, however, he had been treated most courteously, the objects of his calls being impressed with the name of wynrod no less than with that of wolcott. but after the exchange of sundry pleasantries and compliments, he had invariably been shunted, though with exquisite tact and delicacy, on to someone else. he had found this process of education in the ways of the business world excessively tiresome; but there was in his character a powerful, if inconspicuous, vein of obstinacy, and he stuck grimly to the task in hand. but he was nothing if not human, and his constant failure gradually wore down his courage. to advance slowly would be hard enough, he told himself; but not to move at all was altogether disheartening. the natural consequence of it all was that he went into town later and later, and came out earlier and earlier. there even came days when he did not go in at all. and the consequence of that was that he saw more and more of good, with the result that he fell under the stranger's spell even more completely than his sister had. in that fact, curiously enough, judith found something to reconcile her with the lad's failure to consummate the task she had set for him. he might spend his time with worse men, she told herself, than with brent good. but she saw to it that the latter's hours were not wholly spent with roger. as the stranger grew in strength, she procured him a pair of crutches, and with their aid, and that of the motor-car, they were able to take little jaunts off into the surrounding country-side. on these trips it almost brought the tears to her eyes to perceive the exquisite pleasure the sight and the smell of growing things seemed to give him. "i've never known anyone who enjoyed the country as much as you do," she said one day, after he had waxed particularly enthusiastic over a view from one of the near-by hills. "i've never seen anything but city," he answered. then he added very simply: "i was pretty nearly a man before i saw my first cow." his brow clouded reminiscently, and although she ached to draw him out on his past, his evident unwillingness to speak of it further made her hesitate. only once did he make any other reference to his childhood. she had been saying how difficult it was to make people spell her name correctly. "you don't have any difficulty there," she added. "not much," he admitted. "queer name, isn't it," he said after a pause. "queer the way i got it, too. like to hear about that?" she smiled at the innocence of the query, but forced herself merely to nod her head. he smiled, and a curious expression of tenderness came into his eyes. "you see, i was born without a name. that is, i never had any parents--or never knew who they were, which amounts to the same thing. i was just one of those nameless little scraps of a city's flotsam that get found on people's doorsteps every now and then. that is, i think i was. i guess i was about five when i began to be conscious of self. as far back as i can remember, i was selling chewing gum and getting food by begging from restaurants at night and sleeping in doorways and packing-boxes. then i sold newspapers, and got prosperous, and when i was about ten--i guess it was ten--you see, i don't really know even how old i am--i got into the hands, somehow or other, of an old jew rags-old-iron man." he was silent for a moment, and the expression of tenderness spread over his whole face. "he was a good sort--that old kike. he fed me as well as he could--which wasn't very well--and taught me to write and figure and read--good books too. i knew the public library better than you know your own house. he didn't just make me read books--he made me like them. he'd come from russia where he couldn't get them, and he knew what books were. what your church and brother and friends and home are to you, books were to old zbysko. he taught me to love them, too. he did lots of things for me when doing things wasn't easy. and he gave me the only name i ever had." "your name? i don't understand." "yes, the old chap was a great believer in patent medicines. he honestly thought the men who made them were philanthropists. he gave me the name of one of them." he laughed reminiscently. "i suppose i have one of the best known names in the world! i see it everywhere." "and the old man...?" "they didn't _call_ it starvation--doctors never do name things right. i think i was about thirteen then. they tried to send me to an institution, but i ran away. i've shifted for myself since." he lapsed into silence, and judith could get no more out of him that day. he was too obviously busy with his memories. one sunday morning, about a month or so after the accident, judith was struck by a whimsical idea. she broached it to her guest immediately. "mr. good," she said at breakfast, "i have a favour to ask of you...." "it's granted already," he said gallantly. "wait--it may not prove so easy. i know you don't care for church-going, but i want you to go with me--this morning." he looked dejected. "i should be delighted--honestly. but look--" he indicated his old brown suit, which in spite of the constant and earnest endeavours of roger's valet, still looked indisputably shabby. "no matter. we'll go late and sit in the back and nobody will see us. but here's the real favour. there's to be a clergyman out from the city, this morning, who is a friend of mine. arnold imrie is to preach, and ..." "is arnold coming?" broke in roger. "by george, i'll go myself. he's a wonder." "that's what i wanted to find out," said judith. "that is, i want to find out if _you_ think so, mr. good. the people here think just that. i want to get your opinion." "that's hardly fair, is it, miss wynrod? he's a personal friend of yours, and you know already what i think of church--yet you want my opinion of both." "no--not both; just the man." good shook his head. "i doubt if they can be separated," he said dubiously. "well, we'll worry about that later. it's settled that you'll come?" "of course, but--" "thank you. i'll be ready in a minute." all the way to the church good protested that she was taking an unfair advantage of him. but judith refused to heed his protests. they paused for a moment on the low rise overlooking the church, to survey it. judith was very fond of its weathered grey stones, almost buried in the luxuriant ivy. she had been christened and confirmed in it, and the stained glass windows at opposite ends of the transept--masterpieces they were, too--were gifts of hers, in memory of her long-dead father and mother. it was an exquisite little edifice, a genuine bit of tudor, without a particle of "adaptation," looking as if it had been transplanted bodily from some english vale, together with the soil upon which it stood, and the well trimmed trees which surrounded it. she felt a little catch in her throat, as the memories clustered before her. "pretty, isn't it?" "yes," said good slowly. "it's pretty...." she did not like the hesitant qualification implied in his tone. "is there a reservation?" "well,"--he cocked his head on one side, and knitted his brows. "yes. it's too beautiful. it's beauty in the wrong place. the people out here have beauty enough without it. i'd like it better if it was in the city--in the heart of the city--with its trees and its vines and its grass. it's needed more there." then he laughed. "oh, miss wynrod, you must be careful what you ask me. i'm a queer fellow. most of the things you think are all right, i think are all wrong. you'd have to have lived my life to see things the way i see them." she was vaguely disappointed and hurt, and she made no attempt to reply. every now and then he did bewilder her by flights of thought which she found herself incapable of following. usually she tried to argue, but the little church was too intimate a thing for that. she said nothing, and silently they went on into it. she had timed their arrival carefully so as to get there just before the sermon, and unobtrusively they slipped into one of the side pews in the rear. but the building was so small that they had a very good view of the reverend arnold imrie, sometime stroke of the yale crew, fellow of oxford, and one of the strongest heads that ever succumbed to a heidelberg _kneipe_. he was a well-built, good-looking young man, with close cropped curly blonde hair, and a clear skin and eyes. his complexion was ruddy, but bronzed, as if he were still not unused to out-of-doors. yet there were two lines between his eyes, and a stoop to his shoulders that seemed to betoken an equal familiarity with the study. indeed his whole manner and appearance gave the same paradoxical impression. it seemed to good, as he studied him, that doctor imrie was the product of a victory of the mind over the body. he was the conscious ascetic, triumphing over the instinctive sensualist. it was not hard to imagine that the clergyman was very fond of the good things of the world, however much he might neglect them in favour of the things of the spirit. and in that estimate he was substantially correct. imrie had gone into the ministry, not really from choice, but from a painfully acute sense of duty inherited from his knoxian forbears. contradicting an abounding vitality was an overwhelming consciousness of sin, based, it must be confessed, on a fair modicum of actuality, impelling him, irresistibly, toward a fear and a hatred of the flesh. some men enter the church positively, out of love for their god and their fellow men: but imrie had entered it negatively, from a fear and a distrust of the devil in himself. of his fellow men, in the mass, at least, he never thought at all. all these things good sensed very clearly. but, he thought to himself, imrie was a young man, whose life had progressed in one channel ... and there were a great many channels in the world. if anything should ever occur to move him from his channel, a great many things might happen. there were more imries than the congregation, gazing respectfully with tranquil eyes, saw. it was quite characteristic of imrie's neglect for the human equation in life, that he should choose for his text that morning, the evils of idleness--when fully two-thirds of his auditors represented the very apotheosis of idleness. but it was equally explanatory of his popularity among them. he had the faculty, wholly unconscious though it was, of being able to castigate them eloquently for their sins, but in such an abstract and impersonal fashion as to leave them quite untroubled at its close. his words, now, uttered with unquestioned sincerity, were hot and forceful, his logic clear, his conclusions inescapable. he spoke eloquently, his manner was impressive, and his delivery beyond criticism. his hearers gave him their closest attention. many of them heard so well that later they would recall graphic bits, to quote, and to use as explanation of their admiration of him. but not a brow clouded. not a soul was pained. he never perturbed his congregation. judge wolcott expressed its feelings when he said, "i like to hear arnold preach because it brightens the day for me." imrie was hardly a savonarola. they had had disagreeable preachers at braeburn, once or twice. one was a particular disappointment. he was a missionary bishop from somewhere in africa, and the renown of his exploits had filled every seat. but he proved to be an unattractive little man, with a falsetto voice and shabby clothes, who not only spoke very badly, but who said some very unnecessary and unpleasant things. arnold imrie was different. he spoke their language, and they understood him. he was one of them. he had grown up in their midst. many of them called him by his first name. he was perhaps a trifle too serious to people who found life rather more amusing than otherwise, but on the whole they thought him more than satisfactory. he was a gentleman. he was good. he was sincere. he was orthodox. he never failed to point out the error of their ways--but he never failed to do it with subtlety. and in a day when so many clergymen were allowing themselves to wander into undesirable, if not absolutely forbidden fields, he stuck to religion, where he belonged. and he was not only delightful in the pulpit, but one could ask him to dine, with perfect confidence in the result. as good listened he turned to survey the congregation. there was unqualified approval on every face. he listened for a moment or two longer. then he smiled faintly, as one might at a play he has seen several times, and fell to counting the ticking of his watch, wondering how much longer the sermon would last. nor was his impatience lost on judith. but imrie never preached long sermons. in a very few minutes he had wound up with his usual stirring peroration, and left the pulpit. good had an almost irresistible impulse to clap, not as expressing approbation, but admiration for a difficult task well done. he smiled--not wholly pleasantly--at the look of devout complacency on the faces of all the well dressed men and women about him. not one, he reflected, who had listened so attentively to this stirring denunciation of idleness, knew what real _toil_ was--or had any desire to know. he wanted to rush to the pulpit himself--and tell them what it was. but he followed judith out quietly enough. she had planned their exit so as to be well in advance of the crowd, but she could not miss them all. she was irritated at the curious glances flung at her and her companion, though she tried not to notice them. it was only when a bow was quite unavoidable that she acknowledged it. she was angry with herself for her self-consciousness. but when she glanced at her companion, with his spotted, weather-beaten, shapeless suit, and his antiquated, sun-burned hat, not to speak of his lean and angular figure; and then at her own trim presence, she had to smile. they did present a curious spectacle, and the covert smiles were justified. still--she was honest enough to admit it--it would please her more to see good somewhat better dressed. it did not occur to her that it would please him too. they walked along slowly for a little while, in silence. good was the first to speak. "the inside was beautiful, too. that carved oak was fine. just enough carving. not too much. usually there is. and the windows--the sunlight filtering in through that one on the left was like the organ when the vox humana pedal is on--all shimmering. it was very beautiful. so restful. all churches should be like that. the catholics have the right idea. it...." "and the sermon?" she broke in quizzically. he stopped short and looked at her narrowly. her faint smile was not lost on him. "now, miss wynrod--that isn't fair," he expostulated. "i told you not to do that. really...." "but that's what i brought you for," she said. "of course you like the church. anyone would. but i want to know about the rest of it. you promised, you know." he studied her thoughtfully. "well," he said finally, "let's wait till we get to that bosky dell up there. then we can sit down and have it out." when they were seated, good fell to toying with a stick, and making little circles in the sand. she waited patiently for him to begin. finally he raised his head and looked at her half timorously from under his bushy eyebrows. "you won't be angry or disgusted if i tell you what's on my mind?" he inquired. "have i ever been?" "no--you've been quite remarkable in that respect," he admitted. "but this is different." "go on--don't excuse yourself any more." "well, his text ... they nearly lynched a priest out in colorado for that. you see, he was preaching to strikers, and when he told them that idleness was the root of all evil ... you couldn't hardly blame them, now could you?" she laughed at that. "but there aren't any strikers here," she persisted. "no, but to talk about idleness is almost as pointless here as there. why didn't he say something that would get under their hides? look at them coming up the street. do they look as if they had been filled with a fear of the lord?" "do you think people go to church to be frightened?" "i'm sure i don't know why they go," he said cheerfully. "i never could. i'd rather do almost anything. church-going always irritates me. the preachers are so spineless--like this mr. imrie. he had a good theme. but he didn't carry it out. maybe he didn't know how. maybe he didn't dare...." "you don't know mr. imrie," she said. "he'd dare--anything." "all right. but that doesn't change what would happen if he did dare, or did know. i've read the bible quite a bit. suppose jesus came back and got up in the pulpit and lit into his congregation the way he lit into the money changers--'vipers' and all that? why, the vestry would have his scalp before the sun set, wouldn't they?" "you seem to be rather hostile to religion, mr. good," said judith, vaguely offended. he shrugged his shoulders in a manner indicative of helpless annoyance. "oh, miss wynrod--i didn't expect that of you. that's what they all say. roast the established church and they call you an atheist or worse. i'm not opposed to religion--why should i be? i can't say i dislike the air i breathe, can i? but i haven't much use for an organisation that doesn't live up to its confession of faith. here are your christian churches, founded on a rebellion against hypocrisy and privilege and materialism, deliberately encouraging complacency and selfishness and peace and quiet and oh--everything that its founder got crucified for. i've come to know jesus pretty well. i like him. he's the kind of leader men want to follow. if he was alive to-day i'd be one of his lesser disciples. and i'll bet a dollar that all your eloquent, dogmatic, spiritual, irrelevant imries would be running to the local pilate to have us jugged!" "what makes you think you know jesus better than--our imries?" she asked softly. "i don't," he answered earnestly. "knowing people is a subjective affair. i know you as one person. your brother knows you as another. you may know yourself as very different from either of the two. it's the same way with jesus. we both made his acquaintance in the same way, so we are both entitled to our opinion. but look here. you think imrie's nearer to jesus than i am, don't you?" "why, really, i...." she stammered and coloured slightly. "of course you do. well, i ask you this. do you honestly think that imrie's jesus--the jesus he serves up to you on sundays,--the cold, logical, snobbish abstraction--would ever have gotten anybody so sore that they'd crucify him? of course you don't. well what do you think that congregation would do to me if i got up in the pulpit and gave _my_ jesus--the fiery, human, uninspired, blood-red revolutionary that i conceive him to be? you know without my telling you. why, they'd have me arrested if i used his own thoughts expressed in modern language--yes, if i used his actual words--and _applied_ them. suppose imrie took that stuff about the millstone, and applied it to corey's cash girls and delivery boys. do you think the old man would be anxious to hear imrie again?" "you seem to have thought a great deal about jesus," said judith, with a faintly veiled sarcasm. but he did not sense that. "yes," he said naïvely. "haven't you?" she was silent at the unconscious rebuke, profoundly stirred by the paradoxicality of the situation. she wanted to answer him in the affirmative, wanted to very, very much. but she knew that she could not. jesus was not the living, breathing companion of every day that he seemed to be to this irreverent infidel. he was far more sacred to her, but far less a vital factor in the commonplaces of existence. she was honest enough to admit it. but he appeared not to notice her tacit confession. "you see," he went on patiently, as if expounding a very simple problem to a rather young and stupid child, "your stained-glass faith isn't founded on jesus at all. you're a paulist. like him, you're a roman citizen, an aristocrat, a mystic. jesus wasn't any of those things. he was the next thing to a slave, a man of the common people, and for all purposes of comparison, a thorough-going materialist. he had no dogma to preach, other than that the kingdom of the earth should belong to the dwellers therein. but paul was a different sort of chap. he changed the propaganda so that it read 'kingdom of heaven,' which was a very different thing, and much more comfortable for the shaking seats of the mighty. then the greek philosophers got interested in that strange abortion called christianity, added eleusinian mysteries and what not, devised the doctrine of the immaculate conception to cover the illegitimacy of jesus, adapted the idea of the trinity from egyptian theology and...." "you must study a great deal, too?" she asked, breaking in on the fluent rush of his words. "yes," he said, almost apologetically; "it's great stuff. i like it." again she was silenced by the ingenuousness of his reply. she was puzzled. she had thought she possessed a religion of conviction, but she realised, in a sudden panic, that she had not. she had been born to her faith as she had been born to her wealth and her position in society. she did not dodge the consequent thought--it could be taken from her as easily as the other things. this vagabond before her had been born with nothing--not even a name--but what he had was his own. his very impudence before sacred matters, the freedom with which he disregarded the eminence of people and ideas, betokened his superiority to her. she wanted to be disdainful, angry, displeased with him. she could not be. she was humbled before the power of his faith, as she had never in her life been humbled before the faith of imrie. though good did not suspect it, she was, in a way, at a crisis. she was silent for a little while. then she rose with a smile. "well, mr. good, i'm not a match for you in these matters, but mr. imrie is coming to supper to-night and you can have it out with him face to face." "i'd be glad to," said good as he scrambled to his feet, very awkwardly. "but it wouldn't be any use. that's another reason for my dislike of clergymen. you can't argue with them. the major premise, though it isn't expressed of course, when you start off, is that they are right and you are wrong. they are trying to convince you--always--never to learn. they can go back to supernatural inspiration and i can't--so the argument stops before it starts. you can't do much, you know, with a man who's absolutely convinced that he's got a pipe line direct to eternity. but i'll be polite to him. i'll try to forget that he's a parson and only remember that he's your friend." judith smiled furtively at this magnanimous offer. it was so characteristic of the man. if there was a drop of sycophantic blood in his veins, he had yet to reveal it. and it was this sublime confidence in himself which formed one of his most potent charms for her. from birth she had been waited upon, with varying degrees of servility, depending upon the station and the hopes of those who waited. there were servants. there were young men, of varying degrees of attractiveness, station, and impecuniousness, who wanted to marry her. there were beggars, of varying degrees of honesty, who wanted her to aid them. there were the proponents of various charitable schemes, with varying degrees of sincerity and intelligence, who wanted her to sign the cheques. and in addition to those who merely wanted money, were the great swarm of both sexes, who sought the smile of her social favour, who delighted to be seen with her, to have her accept their attentions, to be invited to her functions. there had been very few people in her life who were there with a wholly disinterested purpose. and even the individuals who were disinterested--or whom she thought disinterested--had relatives who were not. in spite of her temperament, the circumstances of her birth and wealth had forced her to surround herself with a well-defined armour of suspicion. in good's lack of reverence, of tact, of taste, of manners, of anything approaching the conventions which made up her life, she found what she had craved. of his utter clarity of soul there could be no doubt. she never once even suspected that he had a thought which he considered worth uttering, which, from motives of expediency, he did not utter. she had given him food and lodging. he had given her--all he had to give--his open heart. it was clear that he thought they were quits. and she was glad that he did. it was her first experience of such an exchange. she smiled again as she recalled his promise not to enter into debate with imrie. he would treat imrie kindly--for her sake. how arnold would fume if he knew of such forbearance. and if good only knew what he was saying ... well, she reflected, he would doubtless say it just the same! at supper, true to his promise, good was extremely taciturn. he appeared respectfully interested in all that imrie had to say, joked pleasantly with roger, was politely intimate with judith, and to her very great astonishment, even went so far as to tell several very entertaining anecdotes of his experiences in the diamond mines of south africa. "why," she cried, "i never knew you had been there." "no," he said, with a twinkle in his eye and a dry little twist to his lips, "i never told you." but after that he relapsed into comparative silence, and shortly after the meal, excused himself rather deftly, though none the less certainly, and went to his room. roger, as usual, had an engagement elsewhere, and presently he, too, departed. judith and imrie were left alone. "that was a splendid sermon, arnold," she said, with an effort at enthusiasm, and a subconscious question as to whether she really meant what she said. imrie was thoughtful. "i did my best. the congregation seemed to like it. but it could be done much better." "so could most things." "perfection is no trifle, is it," he smiled. "but let's not talk of such dreadful things as sermons. i haven't seen you for ages...." "six weeks, to be exact," she interrupted. "exactly!" he thanked her with his eyes for the implication, and woman-like, she took away his pleasure deliberately. "the accident happened the day after you left." "oh." he was silent for a moment. "that was a splendid thing, judith--your taking that fellow in. just like you. but hasn't he been something of a--well, a care?" "on the contrary. i've enjoyed him intensely." "but don't you find him--a little uncouth?" he persisted. "yes--very. but a little roughness is a relief after too much polish, isn't it?" "yes, of course," he admitted. "but you wouldn't confess even if you had been put out. and that's like you, too." he looked at her with an expression in his eyes, the meaning of which there could be no doubt. "let's go out on the porch," she said abruptly. "it's so stuffy in here." the moon was full and it shone over a picture of loveliness. below them, as they sat on the stone balustrade of the terrace, stretched judith's immaculate gardens, redolent with the soft perfume of sweet pea and mignonette. as the breeze faintly stirred the leaves, the shadows danced fantastically on the sod. over in the velvet depths of the sunken tennis courts, the fireflies flashed their lanterns incessantly. somewhere in the distance a guitar sounded now and again, and a woman's voice rose and fell softly. it was very peaceful and pleasant, and imrie, thinking of the hot city and the morrow, drew a deep sigh. no power on earth could prevent him from going back--but he did not pretend to think that he wanted to go. "don't you ever wonder what those crickets are saying?" asked judith, conscious instinctively that her companion's eyes still burned with the same light. "just listen to them." "i'd rather have you listen to me," said imrie in a choking voice, as if struggling to control himself. suddenly his hand shot out and caught hers in a grip like iron. "i want to tell you how much i love you!" he whispered passionately. she looked at him for a long time without replying, and he could see by the movement of the shadows on her face, that her lip quivered. her eyes glistened, too. then, very slowly and thoughtfully, she withdrew her hand. "it isn't fair, it isn't fair," she repeated dully. "you promised not to." "i know, i know--but i can't help it, my darling. i love you so much. nothing else matters. i can't help telling you. i looked for you in church this morning and when i couldn't find you, it was so hard to go on. i didn't care, after that. it's that way always. with you beside me--it would be so different. can't you ... don't you feel ... any different?" she shook her head sadly. it was hard to refuse imrie--a million times harder than all the rest. that he loved her truly, there was no doubt in her mind. of the others, she was not so sure. but she did not love him, and it hurt tremendously to tell him so. she could not tell why. he always begged her to give a reason, and she never could. he was a good man, and an attractive man. there was nothing lacking. as candid old mrs. waring had told her, "don't be a silly, my dear. you could not possibly do better." she believed that, too. imrie was as near her ideal as she had ever ventured to formulate one. and yet.... [illustration: it was hard to refuse imrie--a million times harder than all the rest] "but i thought ... the last time ..." he was saying. "it seemed as if ... there was more hope. and now ... it seems as if there was less. why, my dearest? have you changed? what have i done? what haven't i done? you seem further away from me now than ever ... won't you ever come to me ... is it always to be 'the desire of the moth for the star' ... please speak to me, darling ... please...." his voice broke under the stress of his emotion. never had she seen him so moved. she marvelled at it. she had a turbulent wish to ask him why he never lost himself like that in his pulpit--and immediately afterwards wondered where such an outrageous, irreverent thought could have come from. that was not like her. but she knew very well who it was like. "is there--someone else?" the question made her start guiltily. she was glad that her face was in shadow. "was there?" she asked herself. then the absurdity of the thought made her smile to herself. "no," she said firmly. "there is no one else." "then perhaps...?" his voice trailed off. "yes," she said mechanically, as one who answered a question without hearing it, "perhaps." they were silent, then, for a long time. finally imrie held out his hand. his face, clear in the moonlight, was drawn and seemed pallid. he was visibly affected. "i'm sorry, judith," he said, with a perceptible tremor in his voice, "but i can't help it. sometime--perhaps...." "yes." her eyes filled with tears again, and she dared not trust herself to speak. she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and comfort him. but she would do it as she would comfort roger--and he would know that. so she held out her hand. "i'm sorry, too, arnold. but let us be the good friends we have always been, anyway." she regretted that, as she saw him wince. it was not friendship that he wanted. but she forced herself to finish in that key. it was safest. "i hope the plans for the new church are getting on famously?" "yes," he said apathetically. "it's doing very well." "you must bring out the sketches and let me see them. i'm tremendously interested." "i will--mail them to you," he said heavily. slowly, as if reluctant, he took her hand again, held it just a moment, and then, with a suddenness that overwhelmed her, seized her in his arms and kissed her hotly on the lips. then, like a shadow, he fled. for a long time after he had gone judith sat on the balustrade, listening to the myriad noises of the night, and pondering on what had befallen her. it had been a very eventful day. she smiled as she pondered on its contrasts. but she sobered as she thought of imrie. she felt her cheek grow warm as she recalled his kiss. then a faint smile widened her lips at the impetuosity of it. it was so unlike him. he had never shown such--she knew he would call it disrespect--but that was not the word she would use. she hoped he would not apologise. that would spoil it all. perhaps--if he were a little less respectful.... she could love imrie the man, she reflected, as she walked slowly into the house. but imrie the clergyman--she knew for a certainty that that was impossible. chapter iv oil and water i "you see, miss wynrod, i'm as sound as a nut. i can gambol like a lamb. i am ready again to dance to the world's piping." it was just six weeks to a day after his introduction to her that good made this announcement, and executed a lumbering step of his own devising, to prove its truth. "it's now the season of the sere and yellow leaf. there's work to be done. i must be about it," he added more seriously. "if you work as you gambol, i shouldn't think you'd be much in demand," laughed judith. "quite so," admitted good, blithely. "but if my feet are clumsy my wits are nimble. i guess i can find someone to hire them at twelve dollars per week." "twelve dollars a week! you don't mean to say...." good raised his eyebrows. "why, surely. does that surprise you? of course," he added half apologetically, "that doesn't represent my own valuation, by any means. but _the world_ is a poor paper for poor people. it couldn't pay much." "that's all very well," she cried, "but why did you work for it?" "it needed me," he said simply, and she was silenced. there were stranger things in this man revealed at every conversation. she had never known anyone before who toiled because someone "needed" him. she was shamed by her own amazement. "i guess i'll go on the . ," he said. "no," she cried. "you won't." he looked up at her in some surprise. "that is, you won't," she added more mildly, "if you care to do me a favour." "what an absurd 'if.' give your orders." "well, i have some people coming to dinner on wednesday. i--i--want them to know you." "what a treat!" he said sarcastically. "i want you to know them, too. you see, they're all rich people. and you've hated them without knowing what very ordinary human beings they really are. i think you owe it to your own sense of fairness to see some of the oppressors of the poor in the flesh." "it's quite impossible," he declared firmly. she chose to ignore the finality of his tone. "it isn't quite just, is it, to write articles about the feelings and the motives of people you don't really know?" he strove to divert the argument. "there's something in perspective, you know." "before chance threw us together you thought me distinctly wicked. you don't think that now, do you?" "i told the paper i was in the camps of the persians," he said sententiously. "they fired me then. why tarry with the flesh-pots further?" "i've often heard you say that men couldn't preach heaven until they knew life." he threw up his hands in exasperation. "it isn't fair for a woman to be logical--it takes a man unawares." "then you admit i am logical?" "even if i wanted to stay, i couldn't." "why not?" his head drooped and a faint colour showed under the bronze of his skin. but he remained silent. "what's lacking?" his discomfort was apparent. "i'd like to fix up a bit--get a hair-cut--and things," he stammered. "well, why don't you? you've got two whole days." suddenly he straightened, and a smile broke over his reddened features, "there's no use being silly about it, i guess. the fact is--i'm broke." "oh, is that all. well, that's easily fixed. why didn't you say so before?" she said with a smile. "you ought to take lessons from my brother." "i don't need all this," he stammered, fingering the bill she held out to him. "it's the smallest i have. but why didn't you tell me?" "one doesn't like to beg." "you're hardly consistent, are you?" "no, i'm too human." "will you be human enough to forsake your principles and come to my party?" "i'd rather not." "that's understood. it makes the favour greater. but you will come?" "if i must." "i'll be very grateful." "then i will." the words came from him with such obvious reluctance that she could not resist a smile. "do be back in plenty of time." "i'd rather break my leg again," he said gloomily. then declining her offer of the motor-car to take him to the station, he left her. "you're stealing my class-consciousness from me," he called from the gate way. she laughed, not quite understanding what he meant, and watched his ungainly figure until it was out of sight. would he return? or had she seen the last of brent good? finally she shrugged her shoulders and tried to dismiss him from her mind. but when wednesday came, and no good, nor word from him, she was more keenly disappointed than she cared to admit. the two o'clock train brought a party which had arranged for some golf with roger. "anyone come out with you?" she asked, as if the question were of no consequence. "only joe faxon," said one of the men. "he was bound for the warings'." at three molly wolcott came, only to disappear promptly in the direction of the golf course. at five-thirty all had arrived with the exception of della baker, her taciturn husband,--and good. but on the next train, which was the last, the first two came. she greeted them as gaily as she could, with studied carelessness inquiring if anyone had been left at the station, and when they assured her that no one had, she abandoned hope definitely. "you have the darkest, lonesomest woods out here i ever saw," cried della. "i had all sorts of thrills. every time i saw a man my heart came up in my mouth!" "that," said her husband cryptically, "is quite as usual." but judith heard him only vaguely. she had caught sight of a familiarly angular figure striding briskly up the drive way, looming grotesquely tall in the dusk. she did not follow the others as they went into the house. she remained on the porch, a prey to conflicting emotions. it was with some difficulty that she restrained the laugh which sprang to her lips as good came into the light from the hall. his hair had been trimmed, his face was newly shaven, and his finger-nails, she noted, as he held out his hand, were cleaner than she had ever seen them. that was enough to amaze her. but when he flung back his long rain-coat, worn in spite of the continued drought of days, and revealed evening dress--her head swam. he was quite conscious of the effect he had made. indeed, though she made a strong effort, she could not possibly conceal it. but it did not appear to displease him. he smiled like a child, and turned around twice for her inspection. "some rags, eh?" he cried, smoothing out the wrinkles. "sorry the coat doesn't match, but it was the best i could get." almost tearfully she joined in his enthusiasm. she shut her eyes to the antiquated cut of the garment, its unmistakable shininess at the elbows, and what must have been apparent even to himself, the fact that it fitted him only, as one might say, intermittently. but he was too pleased to care, if he had noticed such trifles. "that's really what i needed the money for," he explained. "i wanted to bloom like a green bay tree before your friends. pretty cute, eh?" he turned around again, and catching sight of himself in the mirror, stood preening like a peacock. "makes me feel half dressed, though," he admitted somewhat ruefully. "this open-work front ... i've been trying to hook it together all the way out--but there aren't any hooks! first time i ever wore one of these. look at the buttons on the vest. ever seen anything glitter so? i tell you, solomon in all his glory had nothing on me!" she had not dressed roger for nothing, and her keen eye did not miss the numerous minute lapses from perfection in good's attire. the general effect just missed being what it should be. but his naïve pride was contagious. she found herself forgetting the essential absurdity of his costume in his own unqualified delight. his collar was prodigiously high, and being so much taller than she, it was impossible for their eyes to meet. he looked for all the world like some grotesque bird, fitted with a more or less painful and wholly unaccustomed harness. she dropped her handkerchief and as he stooped to pick it up a subdued groan came from him. "i wonder what maniac ever devised such a shirt," he grumbled. "it's correct--the man told me so--showed me pictures to prove it ... but it proves that civilisation isn't civilised. catch a savage in a straight jacket like this--i guess not." there was a dreadful pause as she entered the library with good. for a fleeting instant which seemed minutes to her, everyone stared at the newcomer. then breeding reasserted itself and judith was able to go through the introductions without further embarrassment. good stumbled cheerfully over ladies' trains, shook hands vigorously, was uniformly "pleased to meet" everyone, and appeared quite unconscious of the interested, not to say amused gazes which followed him. but judith could see plainly that he was not sorry when the process of acquainting him with the other guests was over and he could slip out of the conversational maelstrom into the quiet backwaters formed by the space between the piano and the wall, to stand alone in a contemplative and awkward silence. she was relieved, too, when dinner was announced. she had been in doubt as to just where to place him at the table, but had finally decided on molly wolcott. she was a very animated girl, if the companion and the topic interested her, and extraordinarily taciturn if they did not. her range of interests was not large, being chiefly concerned with the various ramifications of sport. she had once been known to turn with deliberation from a distinguished british novelist, to a callow youth whose sole claim to distinction lay in having kicked a winning goal. judith felt confident that good would prove quite without attraction for her. but she would, for that very reason, leave him severely alone, and she could, herself, take care of him. with that in view, she had left her own avenues open, by seating at her left a young man whose concerns were almost exclusively gastronomic. but, as usual, good surprised her. molly began, as was to be expected, by giving her partner a cursory examination, and then plunging unceremoniously into a heated discussion of the afternoon's golf, with roger who sat across the table. "that was the most inexcusable putt i ever hope to see," she declared. "i was afraid of it," confessed roger dejectedly. "that hole looked like the eye of a needle." "you can't hole short putts without confidence," observed ned alder, who was a notoriously bad golfer. "now i always...." "why don't you take a course of lessons in confidence?" asked molly rudely. "putting," began good interrogatively, when the laugh at the allusion to the extent and fruitlessness of alder's golf education had subsided, "is...." "the act of putting the ball in the hole," said molly with a mixture of surprise and impatience in her tone. a sudden silence fell around the board as the entire company listened. the tall stranger, such an object of curiosity to all of them, had spoken for the first time. "and you call that 'holing,' i believe?" he went on imperturbably. "yes," said roger, sympathetic with good's isolation. "and you have to have confidence to do it successfully?" "lord, yes," said alder, under his breath. "golf must be a very ancient game," mused good seriously. the painful silence continued. judith ached to say something that would rescue him from the clumsy predicament into which he had thrust himself, and she wanted to slap molly for the expression of supercilious disdain on her face. but no words came for the one and she was not quite atavistic enough for the other. "yes, it's mentioned in scripture," continued good finally, when the pause had become almost unbearable. "you recall the injunction--something like this--'have faith and it will make thee--hole'?" the atrocious pun was uttered amid a silence which needed only a little less tact on the part of those present to make it derisive, and with the speaker looking down at his plate, seemingly oblivious to all his surroundings. for a moment even the quiet noises of service seemed to be stilled. then, with first a half-intimated gasp of amazement, there was a burst of almost hysteric laughter. it was a gay and intimate gathering, and good's contribution to the wit of the evening, served to make him, temporarily at least, part of it. molly wolcott's coolness quite deserted her, and with characteristic animation she turned her attention to this curious-looking individual who had the audacity to make bad jokes. nor was it a temporary interest. with increasing frequency she laughed aloud. the man on her right joined her. judith was amazed. she studied good constantly, not overlooking the fact that his cocktail was untasted. she strained her ears to catch something of what he was saying, but his voice was low, and he seemed to be talking to molly almost confidentially. finally, at a particularly uproarious bit of hilarity, she gave way to her curiosity. "what on earth are you talking about?" she demanded, when a lull in the conversation enabled her to be heard. "oh," he said, "i was just telling miss wolcott about a ball game i pitched in the philippines. we were playing the th infantry and they got me full of _nepal_. i did some curious things," he added reflectively. "were you ever in the army?" she asked in amazement. "seven years," he answered. "enough to be a corporal." then he turned back to molly, and judith was silent. would she ever get to the end of his life and the things into which it had led him? she wanted to ask him more, but he was too obviously engrossed in his companion, and as the duties of her own position required attention, she had no further conversation with him. but as the meal progressed, and the sherry followed the cocktails, and the claret followed the sherry, and the champagne followed the claret, the conversation began to centre more and more around good. it became almost a monologue, as he talked and they listened. judith was mostly silent, in sheer amazement, although occasionally she could not resist a smile at his drolleries. and when he told stories, she laughed with the rest. he possessed a remarkable faculty for imitation, and the characters in his stories required no "he said" to identify them. his voice and manner changed for each one. once, in a pause, she interrupted him. "you ought to be on the stage," she cried admiringly. "never again," he said shortly, leaving her once more in dumfounded silence. never had she sensed this social side to her strange guest. her interest in him had been primarily intellectual. he had seemed all serious. she had never forgotten the guise in which he had first appeared to her. but this was so utterly different. she found it impossible to understand. as she scanned the laughing faces about the board, another curious thing struck her. the array of glasses in front of good was quite untouched. but the same phenomenon was to be observed in front of her brother. it was the first time she had ever seen that, and as she rejoiced, she marvelled. it was an unusually effective party, she reflected, as they rose, leaving the men to their cigars and coffee, and the cause of its success was plain. she smiled to herself at the fears with which she had decided upon his presence. she wondered if he guessed how surprised she was. but later, when the gathering began to disintegrate into little groups of two's and three's, good became strangely silent. the sparkle had gone out of his eyes, she thought, and with it, the sparkle from his mind. the bursts of laughter became less frequent, and finally ceased altogether. the lines of his face appeared to droop, as she had rarely seen them, and he stood to one side, rather moodily, as if in contemplation of his companions. his behaviour was singular. but the others appeared to notice nothing untoward. indeed, many of them had ceased to notice him at all. he was a novelty, and like all novelties and new sensations, with them, he had begun to pall. if he was acting deliberately, she reflected, he was acting not unwisely. he was withdrawing at the apex of his hour. very quickly conversation flagged, as she knew it inevitably must. these friends of hers had little to say, she knew, nor said that little long. bridge was proposed and accepted. tables were quickly formed, and in a very few moments everyone was engrossed in the play. that is, every one but della baker, who had disappeared, pleading a headache, and her silent husband, who loathed cards; and good, who did not play. judith saw the two men stroll silently together out onto the terrace; and then, a moment later, through a door on the other side of the room, molly wolcott and roger. it must be something momentous she reflected, that could entice molly wolcott from a game of any sort--particularly if the stakes were likely to be high. and it was. the momentum in this case was furnished by roger with his determined insistence that she have a word with him. they strolled silently through the garden until they came to one of the stone benches by the tennis courts. roger made a gallant pretence of dusting it off with his handkerchief. then he sat down beside her. "well," she said, after waiting for him to speak. "what do you want to tell me about?" roger lit a cigarette and threw the match away with a truculent gesture. "you don't need to be so cold-blooded about it," he said irritably. "about what?" she asked calmly. "oh, you know." "i haven't an idea," she said artlessly. "oh, about everything," he stumbled helplessly. "everything?" there was an excellent imitation of astonishment in her voice. it brought him sharply to his feet, and he thrust his hands into his pockets with a snort of impatience. "yes, of course, my loving you--and all that." "oh...." her noncommittal intonation was perfectly calculated. "well, i want an answer," he demanded belligerently. "you haven't any right to keep me dangling this way." "but i gave you an answer." "not a definite one." "i don't know how to make it any more definite. i told you i ... liked you better than anybody else, and some day, perhaps--" "well, that's not definite. why don't you like me well enough to marry me?" "oh, but i do," she insisted warmly. "you do...?" he was nonplussed by that example of logic. "yes, indeed i do." "well, why don't you?" there was more than a hint of exasperation in his voice. he was fast losing his temper. "because...." "because why? for goodness' sake, can't you give me a real reason ... something i can use my teeth on?" he was striding rapidly up and down in front of her, and his growing wrath was so ill concealed under a very obvious effort at patience, that she could not resist a faint chuckle. he caught it and stopped short. "you're laughing at me?" he declared, half interrogatively. "oh, roger," she cried, "how could you think that." "you were ... i heard you." "i wasn't." "now what's the use of saying that?" he demanded. "don't you dare talk to me like that!" she was bolt upright herself, and wrath flamed in her own eyes. "don't you ever dare use that tone to me, roger wynrod." "i'm sorry," he said humbly, as if he really had committed a crime of incredible enormity. then with one last gasp of justification, he added a timid "but you did...." she would not allow him to finish. quite illogically, but quite completely, she had changed the positions. from being the defence she had managed to make herself the prosecution, and roger, being thoroughly masculine, was utterly dumfounded at the shift. and she, being as equally feminine, took up her new position with renewed vigour. her voice was full of a most righteous scorn when she spoke. "i didn't laugh at you. but suppose i did. i'd be justified. why should i want to marry you? you're not even a man yet. you're just a boy. you've never done anything a man should. you even let that kid jenkins beat you this afternoon. you're just a good-for-nothing lazybones, that's what you are, and you want me to marry you." roger tried unsuccessfully to interrupt her, each time she paused for breath, but it only seemed to intensify the flow of her condemnation. he grew more and more uncomfortable, because part, at least, of what she said, he knew to be true. "i didn't mean to start anything like this," he put in mournfully. "i don't know how it ever started." she did not know either, but she managed to convey to him the conviction that it was most deliberate. and that, as she knew it would, only made him more mournful still. it was in a very chastened voice and manner that he acquiesced in her suggestion that they return to the house. he would have been astonished, as they walked silently in, had he known the very intense desire that consumed her, to kiss him. from the funereal aspect of roger's countenance, and the contented cheerfulness of molly's, as they entered the room, judith was able to surmise very shrewdly something of what had taken place. she ached to tell her doleful brother what, with true masculine obtuseness, he never in the world would guess. indoors, the evening dragged along, uneventful to the point of stupidity. there was a little excitement, not unmixed with acerbity, when ned alder, contrary to his usual habit, proved clever enough with the cards to add a not inconsiderable sum to his already swollen fortune. but his amazed joy was more than offset by roger's patent depression and molly's inexplicable apathy. altogether it was not as successful a party, as it had given promise of being, and it broke up early. as the adieus were being said, judith realised that good was missing. in the early part of the evening, he had wandered in and out, now watching the play, now chatting momentarily with someone who was free; but had finally disappeared. she could not believe that his unceremonious absence was permanent, although she knew that that was not impossible. so as soon as she could, after attending to the comfort of those who were to spend the night with her, she went in search of him. ii but while she dallied, tragedy was stalking in the wynrod gardens, where only comedy was meant to play. good, after those restless efforts to behave as a gentleman should behave, which judith had noted, had betaken himself with his musings to the peaceful solitude of the garden. what was a commonplace to the others still bore a singular charm for him. he was content to smoke and dream and watch the shadows at their endless dance. he was vaguely tired, and it was very quiet. but his peace was short. the sound of whispering voices came to him through the trees. at first he thought it only the rustling of the leaves. then the sudden, strangled cry of a woman brought him to his feet, his heart pounding. for a moment he stood listening, every muscle in a tremble. the voices could be heard more clearly now, and they seemed to come from a small summer-house just behind him. he moved slowly toward it. "i think we'll end this right here." he recognised the voice as baker's, though unbelievably changed. the words seemed to come through clenched teeth. another voice--a man's--made some reply, but the chatter of the crickets and the plashing of a fountain prevented him from catching what it was. he relaxed and was about to turn around, when that same agonised choking call smote his ears again. he hesitated no longer. as he plunged into the little building a branch swayed in the breeze and the moonlight broke through. it revealed two men facing each other. one was baker. his fist was raised and clenched. the other he could not place for a moment. then it flashed upon him. he had seen him once before. it was faxon. "now then--" good's lean wrist shot forward. "wait a bit." baker struggled momentarily but futilely. good was a powerful man when he chose to exert himself. "fine business, this," said good as coolly as if he were inspecting a company on dress parade. "what's the excitement?" as he spoke he was conscious that there was a third person in the shelter, beside the two men--a woman. then a gleam of light entered momentarily and he realised that it was baker's wife. with a low whistle he turned to faxon. "i guess you'd better scoot," he said calmly, more as an order than as a suggestion. with a not very successful effort at nonchalance faxon shrugged his shoulders and went out. as he passed baker the latter moved convulsively, but good's hand tightened on his arm. when faxon had gone and was out of earshot, good released his hold and sat down. baker stood staring stonily at the figure disappearing in the hydrangeas. his wife, looking very frail and pitiful, had collapsed on the bench, her face buried in her arms. there was complete silence, save for her slow, painful sobbing. "well--" began good hesitatingly. the other man turned sharply at the sound, his face a curious compound of wrath and weariness. "right on the job, aren't you?" he said, quietly enough, though his manner was coldly insulting. and when good made no reply, he added, with a brutal sneer, "you ought to make a hit with this. scandal in high life--with all the details. i suppose it'll be what you call a 'scoop,' won't it?" "you think i'm that sort, do you?" "why shouldn't you? it's your business. i suppose you'd like my photograph and a signed statement?" "let it go at that," sighed good. "that's my business. but to-night i'm off duty. i'm one of your fellow guests. i'm playing gentleman. give me credit for being a good actor. i'll stay in the part." "have you anything else to say?" the question was put icily. "oh, cut the tragedy," said good with a wave of his long hand. "i'm told you're a scrapper, my friend. well, you're not going to show the yellow now, are you? it looks to me as if you had a first-class scrap on your hands now. what are you going to do--snivel--or get sore--or lie down--or ... what?" when baker made no answer, good rose and stood looking thoughtfully at the pair, almost obliterated in the shadows, only the high-lights showing. "i guess i'll go now," he said quietly. "this doesn't seem to be my party." then he laughed cheerfully. "lucky my being here, wasn't it? you were staging great drama when i came in." he turned from the doorway and looked back. a smile crept over his craggy features, tender, a little wistful. with a shrug he straightened his shoulders, and he was whistling as he walked away, his jerky movements casting grotesque shadows on the grass. iii judith did not press her search for good very rapidly. the night, with the soft and pungent haze of indian summer filling the air, and the drowsy moon bathing the gardens in argent mystery, cast their spell about her, and she lingered frequently. the crickets chirped like mad, snatches of distant music came faintly to her ears, and the gentle fragrance of the flowers filled her nostrils. it was on such a night, she reflected, that imrie.... she found good finally, more by accident than design, in a distant corner of the garden. he was hunched forward in his seat, and his head was on his chest. at first she thought him asleep. then she heard him scratch a match. the momentary glow showed his brows drawn close together. it was a way he had, she knew, when his thoughts were troublesome. "it's late, mr. good," she said. "hello," he cried, with a start. then he recognised her. "oh--everybody gone?" "yes--and sorry to miss you." "poppycock," he said succinctly. "don't you believe they were?" his only reply was a short laugh--not pleasant. she changed the subject quickly. "i never dreamed you could be so entertaining. you were the life of the party." "a parakeet could do as well," he snapped. "this is a rather old pipe--mind it?" "of course not." his abrupt manner, so different from his former amiability, kept her silent. nor did he make any effort to speak. he managed to make her feel that she was intruding. he seemed to want to be alone. that annoyed her. "mr. good," she said sharply. "just what is the matter with you?" he made no attempt to deny or evade. that was not like him. but his reply was a little disconcerting, none the less. "there's nothing the matter with me," he said slowly. "it's you--and they--and the whole darned system of things." "i don't understand." "i didn't think you would," he said ungraciously. "if you did you wouldn't wonder why i was out here with my old pipe." "won't you explain it to me then?" she asked gently. she realised that he was greatly perturbed about something. his very ungraciousness--so unlike him--betrayed him. "i can't explain it. i don't think anybody can." "won't you try ... please?" he smoked furiously for a moment, without replying. then, with a sudden gesture, he emptied the ashes, with a sharp knock on his heel. "oh, don't bother about me, miss wynrod," he said, more softly. "i'm just sore because i ... oh, i should never have come out to-night." "but you were so clever--you made such a hit...." she tried hard to follow him, but found it difficult. "that isn't the point. you see, i didn't fit in. i was an outsider. i thought i was a picture when i left the city in--this." she noticed for the first time that his collar was unbuttoned, and his waistcoat thrown open. "but when i saw myself beside those other fellows... and then, the things at table. i was scared to death--all the time. you people can eat with a dozen forks and enjoy it. i can't. i'm not used to it. i...." "but those things aren't important. you've told me so yourself." "that's just it," he cried hotly. "they're not. but you--" "i?" "oh, i don't mean you, personally--you--your class, your friends--make me feel as if they were important. why should such little things make such a part of life? you and i are miles apart because of trifles. the big things, the real things, where are they? i'm your inferior because--because--i can't use an oyster fork. and yet i'm your equal in things that matter. i'm beneath--those--emptyheads, your friends. i used words they couldn't understand ... but i'm 'common.' they made me hate them--those nice people--hate the ground they tread...." she was amazed at the intensity with which he spoke. she wanted to say something to calm him, but there seemed nothing to say. he sucked moodily for a moment on his empty pipe. then his voice softened again. "i oughtn't to talk this way about your friends--but it's hard for me not to be candid ... with you," he said quietly. "i've said my mind to you so uniformly, you know." "please do--always," she said seriously. "i don't want you to feel that i'm bitter against these people personally--it's all for what they signify. why should they be handsome and strong and well dressed and--have good manners ... and i have none of those things? they've had everything, and i--usually i'm a philosopher ... funny, isn't it, that a perfectly sound philosophy should get drowned in such a little thing as a finger-bowl." "why _should_ we have all those things?" she asked thoughtfully, more to herself than to him. he turned around at that, and studied her. "i've often wondered if you'd ever say that?" he said. she shrugged her shoulders. "i've said it often--lately." "and what is the answer?" "i don't know." "and that's the right one. nobody does." "it _is_ unjust and wrong. i can't get away from that. but what to do--i don't know that." "go sell what thou hast ... and come follow me," said good slowly, as if merely repeating a formula, and not caring whether she heard or not. it struck her as curious that that should have been the text of the first sermon she had ever heard imrie preach. "suppose i did--give up all?" she asked. he refilled and lighted his pipe before he replied. "i've never wondered much about the young man who went away sad because he had great possessions," he said gently. "but i've wondered a lot what he did--afterwards. the book doesn't tell us that." "i don't understand." "it isn't being rich that counts, miss wynrod," he said with a passionate earnestness that she seldom saw in him, "it's what you do with your riches. that's the question you've got to ask yourself." "don't most rich people do that?" she asked. "some--yes. most? umm--i'm inclined to think--not." "you think even those that do, get the wrong answer, don't you?" "mostly--yes." his assurance vaguely irritated her. she put her question rather sharply. "mr. good, if you were wealthy--oh, very wealthy--what would you do?" "you think i've never thought of that?" he asked quizzically. "have you?" "indeed, yes. all my life, i guess. but am i suddenly made rich--or born with it?" "suddenly? no. you've had it always--and your father had it before you." "then i'd build fine homes and have many servants. i'd have automobiles and yachts and pictures and first editions. i'd contribute to political campaign funds, and give scholarships to my college, and build libraries and hospitals, and install rest rooms and gymnasiums and summer camps in my stores and factories. i'd be generous and upright, and when i died i would be very much respected and not a little loved." there was an indefinable feeling of banter in his tone, which she found hard to explain. but she went on, hoping that he would explain it himself. "and if it came to you suddenly?" "i wouldn't give a cent to charity nor to hospitals nor libraries. and i'd lose all my friends, and probably be shot like a mad dog." she was stunned with the vehemence of his curious words. but before she could speak he added suddenly, even more fervently. "i'd live and die hated by those closest to me. but i'd buy the greatest jewel in the world, and i'd leave it to those who wouldn't possibly appreciate it." "and what is that?" she asked in amazement. "the truth," he said simply. for a little while he sat smoking moodily, gazing off into space, busy with his dream. she sensed that she had struck the major chord in his heart, and she was silent too, out of a curious feeling of awe, as if she were in some innermost sanctuary. it was a moment vibrant with emotion. then, with a rush, but in a tone that was very firm and business-like, he began to pour out his soul to her. "what the world needs, miss wynrod, is not charity, not the kind of altruism that polishes off effects, but a force that will remove and eliminate causes. money causes most of the evil in the world. money can cure it. but it won't do to fill stomachs or even heads. when they die the job has to be done all over again. we've got to sweep the old world off the boards, and build a new one in its place. and the new world must be for _all_. the people must rule and be ruled. there are lots of panaceas on the market. there's the single tax--giving the land back to its owners--the people. that will help. but it's not enough. then there's socialism. i worked for a socialist paper, but i wasn't a socialist. socialism isn't enough. it's too narrow, too material, too bigoted. it isn't spiritual enough. it isn't elastic enough. we don't want dogma, we want light. we don't want to stop exploitation. we want to tell the people _how_ they're exploited. they'll stop it for themselves, when they know--when they know their own power. they've got to know what is going on in the world. germs can't live in sunlight and oxygen. and the germs that cause poverty and disease and misery of all kinds can't live in the sunlight and the oxygen of publicity. publicity, publicity, what magic would it wreak!" there was almost ecstasy in his voice, in the flicker of his eyes, fixed in space. "but don't we have publicity--now?" she asked timidly, not wholly grasping the significance of his talk. "of a sort, yes," he admitted, "but not the kind i mean. most of the avenues of publicity are the avenues for special pleaders. the owners of newspapers and magazines have axes to grind, they have policies--some good, some bad--always policies. they present what happens so as to bolster up some preconceived theory. that's not truth--it's propaganda." "is the press all dishonest?" she asked in surprise, somewhat tinged with irritation at what seemed like a crude generality. "not dishonest, no. the average newspaper would rather be honest than not. and those who wouldn't, find that honesty pays better than dishonesty. but they're honest about things that don't matter and silent about those that do." "for instance--" "well, you remember our first meeting--how i came to interview you about the algoma mine trouble?" "i'm not likely to forget it," she said a little sadly. "well, what do you know about the situation there?" "there was a little in the papers a month or so ago." "and--" "and?" "yes, isn't there something else?" "oh, you mean the letters from the directors?" "exactly. your sources of information are first from those interested only in a 'story,' without much regard for getting to the disagreeable bottom, and second from those interested in getting a verdict for their own side." "is there any other source?" "there is. congress sent a special investigating committee out there--" "what did it find?" "the question proves my point. the findings of that committee are buried away in bulky volumes that nobody sees, while the world is fed half on fiction and half on lies." "why don't the newspapers tell us what's in those bulky volumes?" "because," he said, with ineffable dejection, as if trying to answer a question that he knew he could not answer, "it wouldn't be interesting--and it wouldn't pay." "must everything in a newspaper _pay_?" she demanded. "that's what newspapers are run for," he said sadly. "they've got to pay--pay--always to pay...." his voice trailed off into a whisper, and he sat silent. she tried to win him back to the theme upon which he had talked so earnestly, and which had stirred her more than she realised. but as if fearful that he had not been understood, he proved obdurate. finally he rose and held out his hand. "i must say good night and good-bye, miss wynrod. i will not see you in the morning. i must take the early train. it was good of you to ask me out to-night. i'm sorry i couldn't seem more--more--appreciative." a thought flashed across her mind as they walked slowly back to the house. "you will come and see me--occasionally?" she asked, as they stood on the terrace. "why should you want me to?" he said quizzically, looking at her in a curiously searching way. "because--because--well...." she floundered, unable to put in words precisely what she felt. "because i tell you things?" he put in for her. that clarified her answer. "no," she said thoughtfully. "because you say things i've only thought. you see, i've read more than most people give me credit for," she added somewhat irrelevantly. he studied her from beneath his heavy eyebrows. "keep on, my friend," he said very slowly. "keep on thinking. and then ... act. there are great deeds before you--noble, shining deeds ... if you'll only do them. yes, some day i shall come again, and we shall talk further upon these matters ... and then--perhaps--who knows what may come of it?" he finished dreamily. as he took her hand and held it, she sensed a tender smile upon his lips, and a half uttered question in his eyes. but he said no word. he was almost out of sight in the darkness when a thought flashed across her mind. she called him back. "mr. good ... why didn't roger drink anything to-night? have you any idea?" "yes," he said simply. "i told him ... what it did to me." chapter v a sleeper wakes with the first frost judith closed her house at braeburn and returned to the city. for a little while she rested quietly, recovering from the strenuous gaieties of the summer. her friends--particularly the men--smiled when she said that she never had a vacation: but that was literally true. the demands upon her time were far more rigorous than were those of any business man of her acquaintance. in the conventional significance of the word her life was hardly toilsome, but it was none the less most arduously occupied. there was the management of her huge house--in itself a task of no mean proportions. there were the board meetings of the various civic, religious and charitable organisations, to which she devoted a very conscientious interest. there were the inescapable appointments with her hairdresser, her manicurist, her masseuse, and the small army of personal attendants who joined their efforts in the conservation and embellishment of her body beautiful. there were the "courses" she must take, the books that must be read, and the plays that must be seen. and finally, as an end or as a cause--she never could determine which--were the luncheons, the receptions, the dinners, the calls, and the balls, which followed one another in never ending course and in never ending monotony. after a few weeks of what was as near to inaction as she ever attained, judith plunged anew into the rapid course she had swum since childhood. but for the first time in her life, she was consciously dissatisfied. for the first time she knew, and admitted that she knew, that her multifarious activities were not enough. there was something lacking. it was in such a mood that imrie found her when he came up to see her one evening. for the first time in the years he had known her, there were little lines of discontent and ennui about her mouth. her usual vivacity, her cheerful wit, seemed to have vanished, and in their place was a seriousness that was almost sullen, a conversational reserve that was almost hostile. but he was not wholly sorry that he found her so. he had come on a mission of business, and he was rather glad that her attitude seemed to preclude anything savouring of the personal. he still felt somewhat sensitive at the recollection of the circumstances of their last meeting. he broached his topic quickly. "i've brought the plans," he said briskly, "and some sketches. they are wonderful, i think. mckee has spent a lot of time on them. it won't be a westminster, of course, but there will be nothing in this part of the country to compare with it." he spread the prints out before her with a curious mixture of pride and enthusiasm and complacency; pride in this long-cherished darling of his heart, a st. viateur's which should rival the most splendid temples of the old world; enthusiasm for the co-operation accorded by architects and designers; complacency for the magnitude of his own achievement. he was not aggressively self-satisfied: but he was far from insensible to the fact that he was extraordinarily young to be the rector of as rich and powerful a congregation as that of st. viateur's. and a chance remark, overheard one day in the university club, spoken by his bishop to one of his vestrymen, sounded not unreasonably in his ears--"he will go far--young imrie." but he was disappointed at judith's reception. she fingered the drawings listlessly, and admired them without enthusiasm. his own eagerness cooled before her unexpressed indifference. he had come fired with his dream. before her it paled and died to grey ashes. its beauty faded, leaving only a question and dull pain. it was very dear to him. it represented achievement, success, glory--and all three won in the service of man and to the greater honour and glory of god: but judith was dearer still. for her not to rejoice with him was to take all joy out of it. he sat wounded and silent, unable to go on, almost not caring. "it will cost ... a great deal...." she said, more meditatively than interrogatively. he nodded, wondering at her tone. "do you think it's the best way to spend that much money?" she shot at him suddenly, her brows knitted. it surprised him, but he answered promptly: "i know of none better." she stared at him and through him for a moment. then her mood seemed to change. she laughed metallically, and reaching lazily toward a silver box at her elbow, selected a cigarette and lighted it. it was a deliberate thrust. always hitherto she had refrained from such indulgence before him. "come, arnold," she said cruelly. "you don't honestly believe that, do you?" the insolence of her pose, one knee over the other, the cigarette in her hand, the challenging note in her voice, hurt him more than her previous indifference. "i don't think i can discuss that," he said, rather loftily. her smile faded. "well, you ought to discuss it. you've got to defend it. you've got to prove it. don't be absurd, arnold." he was dumfounded. it was so unlike her. he had never seen her in such a mood. but he ascribed it to the incomprehensible nature of womankind. he knew from the fiction he had read that women do very irrational things, frequently, if not as a general rule, saying the precise opposite of their meaning. he tried to change the subject. but to his surprise she refused to change with him. "don't people make you defend your position?" she persisted. "no one has." she was silent momentarily. then she returned to the attack, almost doggedly. "well, then, let me be the first. this church will cost...." "six hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars," he supplied coldly. he regretted that circumstances had forced him into what was beyond dispute a refined form of beggary. but he had realised from the start that success of this sort was quite essential to eminence in the clergy, and he had resolutely fought down his distaste. but it angered him to be so brutally reminded of his status, particularly by a creature whom he sedulously deified. she seemed deliberately intent upon leaving the pedestal he had constructed for her. again she was silent, surveying him with a smile that he thought was unpleasantly cynical. it seemed also that there was a noticeable admixture of contempt for him. his anger gave way to pain. he racked his brain for an explanation of her attitude. "that's a great deal of money," she said unpleasantly. "and with it you're going to build a marble palace on our finest street. do you know what i think, arnold?" she added, not unkindly. "i think you've gotten art and religion mixed." he shrugged his shoulders at that, not knowing how to reply, and she went on, her tone changing imperceptibly, as she spoke, from a scarcely concealed bitterness, to one that was almost argumentative. "in theory, of course, the church is for the lame and the halt and blind, the poor and the sick and the friendless, isn't it?" he nodded, feeling curiously uncomfortable. he did not like to have his mission in life subjected to such matter-of-fact analysis, and besides, it filled him with a vague interrogation. "well, what will this wonderful church do for the poor and the...." "we are to have a gymnasium and a library and...." "what nonsense," she snapped. "you're going to have them all miles from the nearest poor. that's an absurd answer." "judith, what _is_ the matter?" he pleaded. "you were never like this before." she ignored the question. "why aren't you honest?" she countered. "why don't you admit that it's all for the wynrods, and the wolcotts and the warings and the ... why don't you admit that it's just a monument to pride, pure and simple?" he was aghast. also he was offended, to the depths of his soul. she had trampled deliberately on what was dear to him, and subtly, but no less certainly, she had made an implication which roused in him all the resentment of which he was capable. but the very thought of resentment brought with it the recollection of all his professional training. arnold imrie was perilously close to a very human display of temper, but the reverend arnold saved him. "for some reason," he said slowly, in a manner that to her savoured of the pulpit, "you seem unwilling to discuss this matter reasonably. i don't think you are fair to it--or to me--which is unlike you. some other time, when you are in a different mood, we will perhaps talk about it again." he rolled up his plans and rose. "i will bid you good evening, judith." "very properly rebuked," laughed judith insolently. "i admire your self control. but you're so proper, arnold. if you were only a little more ... oh, well--but i haven't been condemning _you_--entirely. it's what you stand for. it isn't that you're a snob--but you're being--doing--oh, i'd like to put things as clearly as you can. i'd make you understand me, if i only knew how to. but i...." "i think i understand very well," he interrupted sharply. a thought, a half-formulated suspicion, had flitted across his mind. "no, you don't. you think i'm poking fun at you--just to be nasty. it isn't that. i'm serious--really. only somehow--you don't impress me as much as you used to. you--your ideas--what you stand for--oh, they don't seem to very much matter. your kind of religion seems to me--i've thought it more and more--it seems to me a sort of hobby. it's just for sundays." he stared at her aghast, seeming to waver between grief and righteous anger. but he said nothing. she went on coolly. "i guess the trouble with you, arnold, is that you're too much of a clergyman--not enough of an ordinary sinful man." he wavered no longer. his suspicion crystallised into certainty. his words came through his teeth as if shot from a cannon. the reverend arnold imrie, for the first time in years, lost his temper, and lost it with a completeness and animation that was magnificent. he turned suddenly and glared at judith, his face pale. then he shot a trembling finger at her. "so," he snapped. "six weeks of this--this--anarchist--can shatter the faith of a lifetime. such a faith. a wynrod, too.... it is--i dare not say what it is." but he did dare. he launched into a passionate diatribe, which to judith, listening patiently, sounded very much like a funeral oration over the body of a notorious scoundrel, so compounded it was of scorn and pity and utter certainty of ultimate damnation and complacent self-satisfaction that he was not as such. it was accompanied by familiar pulpit gesticulations, used so long that they had become unconscious. as he talked he paced back and forth, pausing now and again to emphasise a point with a resounding thump on his hand. it was excellent--oratory. but all through she had the feeling that it was only a sermon, that the recital of her iniquities, so vividly phrased, was only academic. and as he made his peroration, more from a lack of breath than a lack of ideas, she laughed--mirthfully, unrestrainedly. he stopped as if shot. he stared at her as if he could not believe his ears. "very wonderful, arnold," said judith lazily, "but very absurd." flouted to the depths of his soul, imrie gathered up his papers anew. it was as if a priest, praying passionately to his idols, had suddenly raised his eyes to find them with their thumbs to their noses. it was a ghastly dream. he was like a ship that has dragged its anchor. he was drifting in uncharted waters. the most dependable of his flock, the dearest of his friends, the star of the best that was in him, had deliberately, thoroughly, and without any effort at concealment, held up all that he held sacred, to ridicule. his chagrin showed in his face, and judith was a little appalled by what she had done. but she would not have recalled a word or a glance. she was sorry to see his pain, but for all its harshness, she felt that he would emerge better for the treatment. the mind needs an occasional physic, no less than the body. she had rocked the ponderous bulk of the reverend arnold imrie on its foundations. if it settled back into its original place, none the worse for the rocking, so much the better for the foundations. if it did not, ... well, the new position could not be less satisfying than the old. and there was a possibility that it might be better. she smiled back at his frigid bow with the feeling of a mother who has spanked an obstreperous child. "for the good of your soul, arnold," she whispered under her breath, "and the greater honour and glory of god." for a long time after imrie had left, she pondered, trying to put in a phrase the exact idea she had meant to give him. finally it came to her, in a single word--honesty. and then, as an inevitable corollary, came the thought of the man who exemplified honesty as did no one else she knew. she thought of that deprecating little lift of his hands--so characteristic, so significant. with a smile that was not without tears, she picked up a book and made an effort to read. the next day was sunday. as she dressed she tried to decide whether she would go to church or not, and concluded that she would not. there were a number of books, she thought rebelliously, which would prove more profitable than arnold's sermon. so, after breakfast, she made herself comfortable by the window in the library, and began one--one of the many, incidentally, which good had sent to her. she saw him infrequently, but his books came constantly, and she often wondered if he appreciated the subtle compliment he paid her with each one of what she knew must be a slender treasure. they came spasmodically, as if he rushed them to her when some fancy was hot in his mind. there would be a poem, with characteristic comment all around the margins of the page, and an injunction on the fly leaf to "skip the rest"; or a ponderous volume of economics, with the information that it was poppycock, save for a paragraph on page . sometimes it would be only a pencilled scrap of paper, with an amusing anecdote thereon, or just an illuminating epigram. he seemed to wish to share with her the pleasures of his mind. no one had ever shown that wish to her before. the volume in her hand had come from him only a day or two before. it was thick and heavy and very austerely bound. it surprised her to see that it was new. he seldom sent her new books. she glanced idly through the pages before she happened to note the title. then her whole manner changed. it was as if someone had spoken to her sharply. the words burned themselves into her consciousness. the small gilt letters shouted like live things. "proceedings of the congressional committee of inquiry into the conditions obtaining in the algoma mine fields." as she went on from the title to the contents, her indolent apathy changed rapidly to intent immersion. occasionally her fingers clinched involuntarily and her eyebrows knitted. once she even dropped the book and covered her eyes with her hands. it was a terrible narrative which unfolded itself before her, made more terrible by the emotionless dispassion of the telling. it was a story of bribery and corruption, of murder begetting murder, with the stupid folly of more murder as its cure, of the weakest and most helpless paying the price, of race hatred, of greed,--the whole nauseous catalogue of human frailties was laid before her, with less feeling than the homeric catalogue of ships. as her imagination took fire, it seemed to her that the poison of selfishness, festering in a far-away hole in the ground, had oozed out and over the land, marking its slimy trail in legislatures, in churches, in the homes of the highest, until, finally, it had reached her own library. she grew sick and faint as the pestilential tale expanded, and horror was piled upon horror. the indictment made one thing clear. algoma was not a mere morbid growth, to be extirpated by force, but an evidence of disease: and a disease, not of individuals or of classes, but of a civilisation. the roots of that disease were not, as a circular from a mine manager had said, in the "tyrannous labour unions." they went far deeper than that. they were in her own heart and brain. they were in the hearts and brains of every man and woman in the world. it was the explanation of the mine owners, she knew, that they fought for "the right of the american workman to work for whom, what and when he pleased." it was the defence of the miners that they fought for the power of organisation. both quarrels were just, she felt with a terrible sense of hopelessness: both demanded the right to rule. both would fight to the death for that right. it was folly to hope for an equal division of power. the line was too fine, too fluctuating. one or the other must lose. talk of concessions, of improvement of conditions, only obscured the issue. she put herself momentarily in the place of the employers, the men of her class, the men she knew: and her jaw hardened. freedom was the essence of american life. she would never permit those who took her bread to dictate what and how she should give it. she would fight to the end for her freedom. then, resolutely, she put herself in the place of those who demanded that she yield that freedom. unconsciously her fingers clenched. she saw quite clearly that "freedom" took on a different meaning then. it became "tyranny." these creatures who came up out of the earth to burn and destroy, who flouted law and the rights of property, were but fragments of mankind's never-ending fight for liberty. though, in their groping progress toward the goal, they wallowed in blood and folly, destroying the good with the bad, murdering the saints with the sinners, none the less were they a part of the blundering march of democracy. algoma was but an outpost of a struggle that was universal. the crust of convention and pretence had burst through momentarily, and the seething cauldron, full of the molten future, was exposed to frightened eyes. as the hours passed, a new point of view took form in judith's mind, and things which had always been quite clear now seemed not clear at all. she had never been more thoroughly muddled in her life, but she realised with a sense of satisfaction that the very confusion of her mind indicated the wiping away of those specious answers to all questions which had been an absolute preventive against any real speculation. her slate was blank. there was room for new writing. but over and over again recurred the question, "why don't people think about these things?" she wanted to rush out and wipe the slates of her friends clear of their comfortable sophistries. she wanted to make them understand that because a man preached change he was not as dangerous as the man who preached inaction when there was a volcano under their feet. why must they always destroy their cassandras? she was at a pitch of exaltation which she had seldom attained before when john baker, the most phlegmatic person she knew, was announced. he greeted her seriously, as he greeted everyone, and accomplished the conversational preliminaries in the fewest possible words. then he made clear the purpose of his visit. "i have bad news for you," he said calmly. "yes?" judith's manner was as placid as his own, though a thousand questions flashed across her mind. he cleared his throat. "it is a fact that even the shrewdest men make bad investments--indefensible investments," he said profoundly, as if the discovery were his own. "oh...." her fears vanished. he was the harbinger only of financial trouble. "your father," he went on without haste, "was an extraordinarily shrewd man. but even he...." "... made bad investments?" "exactly." "well ... tell me the worst--i am brave," she laughed. "for some reason, impossible to explain, he became possessed of a majority of the bonds of _the dispatch_. it is a curious thing. he must have known that a newspaper presents the worst possible field for inactive investment. no property changes more rapidly in transition from a going condition to a forced sale." "what about the bonds?" "that is my bad news. _the dispatch_ has not been financially successful for years. the present owners have resolved to give up the losing struggle." "i see. but where does that affect me?" "you hold their bonds. they intend to default on the payment of further interest--and, of course, principal as well." "oh...." judith felt that she should evidence dismay at least sufficient to match baker's gravity. but there were too many unpleasant things in the world for her to furrow her brow over the loss of a few thousands from her annual income. an admission of that, she knew, however, would shock him: so she contented herself with a noncommittal monosyllable. "you will lose heavily," he continued. "the bonds constitute a first lien on the property, to be sure, but most of the property consists of good-will, which is not very good, so i'm told. really all you can hope for is the proceeds from the sale of the machinery and furniture. they'll sell for only a fraction of their value, too. really, it's quite too bad." the genuine regret in his voice almost made her smile. it was so incongruous that he, who lost nothing, should be so much more affected than she, who lost everything. "what will become of the paper?" she asked. "following foreclosure proceedings a receiver will be appointed, and in the course of time it will be sold at auction--that is, a sale will be held." "but you don't think anyone will buy it?" "it is hardly likely." "then the paper will be on my hands?" "yes--on yours and on those of the other bondholders," he admitted regretfully. "a nice white elephant!" she cried. his face brightened ever so slightly. "there's just a bare possibility that we can sell it. even if we got only a fraction of its worth it would be better than nothing at all." "of course," she agreed. her manner seemed to indicate that her thoughts were far away. "there is a group of men," he continued, "wealthy men, who have talked more or less seriously of purchasing a newspaper that would give voice to the conservative element. they feel that they would be doing a public service in offsetting the demagoguery and sensationalism of most of the popular press. i don't know how serious they are, or how much they are prepared to spend. it's just a possibility. still...." "who are these men?" asked judith sharply. "well, there's parker ralston, and anderson legore, and henry waring and...." "i see." there was a curious note in judith's voice which baker was unable to explain, and she seemed to stare at something beyond and behind him. the suggestion of someone else in the room was so strong that he turned around. but all he saw was a pile of books on a chair. they were too far away for him to note that one of them was severely labelled "proceedings of the congressional committee of inquiry into the conditions obtaining in the algoma mine fields." "if i was unwilling to sell out to those men," she said suddenly, "what then?" "you couldn't refuse. the sale would be held by the receiver, for the benefit of the other bondholders as well as yourself. besides, why should you refuse even two cents on the dollar, when refusal would mean nothing?" she ignored his question. "suppose i wanted to get possession of the paper myself?" "what in the world would you want it for?" "well, just for fun, let's suppose i did want it. how could i get it?" "you could purchase the other bonds, and at the termination of the receivership the paper would revert to you, unless you chose to sell." "how long would that take?" "about eighteen months." "and if i wanted it immediately?" "what are you talking about, my dear child?" "never mind that," she cried impatiently, "we're just supposing, you know. the point is, how could i get it right away?" "well, you might purchase the paper from the present owners for a nominal sum--merely assume their obligations. that would mean that if you wanted to keep it you'd have to meet the interest on the bonds and ultimately, the principal too." she was thoughtful for a moment, her chin on her hand. then her question came sharply. "what would that cost?" "the bonds?" "no, immediate possession." "that depends. it's hard to say, offhand." "well, approximately?" "oh, comparatively little. just a nominal sum. it's really nothing more than a consideration to make the transaction legal. the expense wouldn't come until later. but why, my dear girl...." "this is all just supposing, you know," she interrupted with a smile. "very well, just supposing--but why should you even suppose such a plan? why should you want to take over a proposition which has been demonstrably unprofitable, even in skilled hands?" "how about mr. waring, and this man ralston, and anderson legore?" "but they're very wealthy." "yes, but so am i wealthy," she said ingenuously. he was momentarily nonplussed. "but they would manage it for a purpose, rather than for profit," he cried. "well, suppose i wanted to manage it for a purpose rather than for profit?" baker rose and put his hand on her shoulder, as a suspicion took form in his mind. "judith--you're not ... serious?" she tossed her head and smiled enigmatically. "and if i were?" he had no reply ready for that elfish question, so obviously, it seemed to him, designed for the purpose of arousing him to argument. and when he was silent, that guess seemed to be confirmed, for judith's momentary animation faded. she put her question quite indifferently. "i suppose there's nothing for me to do, is there?" "oh, no. i just dropped in to prepare you for anything you might read and wonder about. things will take their course. just don't worry." judith concealed a smile as she assured him that she would not. "when will they officially default?" she asked. "oh, in a week or two." "well, let's hope for the best." "yes, i have great hopes of this waring-legore-ralston combination. it is quite possible that something may come of it. but don't be too sanguine," he added, as if fearful that he had raised her hopes unduly. judith wandered about restlessly after he left her. john baker would have been shocked indeed had he known the thoughts coursing in her brain. but she was not permitted even to muse for very long. in a few moments roger came in, looking very tired and depressed. but at her solicitous inquiries he was noncommittal. he picked up a newspaper and read for a moment, listlessly. then he threw it down. "where were you last night?" she inquired, with a suspicion born of long experience. "molly's," he replied shortly. "that all?" "yes." "why so solemn, then?" he lit a cigarette and flicked the match deftly into the fireplace. "oh, we had it out, and she--said things." "what things?" "the same line you get off. about my not doing anything--and all that." "about not working, you mean?" "yes." "well--you have been a little slow at getting started, haven't you?" he fired up hotly at that. "and what if i have? it hasn't been for lack of trying, let me tell you. i've been doing my best to get a job ever since i said i would." "and you can't get one?" judith smiled incredulously. "no. oh, of course there's plenty of chance to invest some money and be treasurer and all that, but i mean a regular job. i've tried everywhere." he hung his head dejectedly. "what seems to be the trouble?" "those who know me know me too well. and those who don't know me--don't know me," he answered cryptically. "and i don't know anything, myself." "i'm so sorry," she said helplessly. "how do you suppose." he switched the topic suddenly. "how do you suppose a chap without any pull or any friends--a fellow like good, for instance--gets jobs?" before the echo of roger's words had died from the air, a maid stood in the doorway, announcing the presence of good himself. "why not ask him?" said judith obviously. and when the tall man came in, still dressed in his familiarly shabby brown suit, roger put the question. "how did i get my first job," he repeated slowly, with a twinkle in his eye. "well--i asked for one--and i kept on asking for one until i got it." "but that's just what i've done," protested roger. "perhaps you're more particular than i was." "i'm not a bit particular," cried the younger man earnestly. "i'd do anything. i've gotten over being particular." "no, my boy, you haven't," smiled good. then a faint shadow crossed his face, and he added softly, "you've never been hungry." judith hoped that he would amplify the intimation. but as so often happened, he began a theme only to dismiss it. his tone changed and he turned briskly to her. "well, miss wynrod, why don't you do something to help the lad?" "me?" she echoed in surprise. "what can i do?" "would you be willing to spend some money--quite a large sum, too, as such things go? not very large for you, though," he added with the reflective candour that never failed to astonish and delight her. "would you invest something--to see him well started in an enterprise of the utmost--value?" roger's curiosity was plain on his face. but good seemed only to watch judith narrowly. she looked wonderingly up at him, as he stood, half-smiling, before her. "have you a definite opening?" "perhaps," he said quizzically. "on what does it depend?" she asked, fencing with him. "on you!" "oh, please don't be absurd," she cried, as her interest got the better of her. "do tell me what this is all about." "and where do i figure?" asked roger, with a touch of annoyance in his voice. "as far as i can see you're talking to judith. where do i get off?" "it concerns her as much as it does you," said good shortly, his smile fading and the vertical lines deepening between his eyes, a plain sign to judith that he was far from badinage. "in fact," he added seriously, "i think it concerns her even more." "then perhaps my absence would be preferable to my company?" demanded roger with considerable asperity. good's reply surprised both him and his sister. "yes," he said, "i think it would. if you'll leave us for a bit, i'll tell your sister what's on my mind. then, if she likes, she can tell you." roger jumped to his feet. "well," he cried, "it strikes me that you're disposing of me pretty easily. i'm of age, you know." "if you say much more," said good mildly, "i'll be tempted to clear out and try an interview with your sister some other time. now--if you please." as soon as the sound of roger's grumbling had died away, good burst abruptly into speech. "miss wynrod," he said curtly, "before i put my proposition to you, i want to know whether you are prepared to spend some money for that boy's future--not to speak of your own?" "how much money?" she asked, principally to regain the poise that his inexplicable earnestness had driven from her. "a good deal." she smiled faintly. would she spend "a good deal" for roger? the thought almost made her laugh aloud. but she controlled herself, and her reply was almost indifferent in tone. "yes--if i thought the plan promised well." "i knew it, of course," cried good. then he drew his chair closer to hers, and emphasising his points with his long forefinger against the palm of his hand, began. "to begin with, miss wynrod, you know how i feel toward the press. we've talked it over often. you know i believe that to turn this old world over and set it on its feet where it belongs, all clean and sound and sweet, the first thing we've got to have is truth--truth, truth, always truth and more truth--nothing whatever but truth, nothing evaded or concealed. in a word, we've got to have a free and a candid press. you understand all that, don't you?" his eyes clouded and a look of anxiety came into them. but it was dispelled at her answer. "i'm not deaf, mr. good." "well...." he stopped and scratched his head as if something eluded him. "i'm so full of it all--all the time--that i don't know where to begin. it's my great dream. every dreamer has one particular dream. this is mine. i've been on the hunt for my chance. now when it seems to be here i don't know how to seize it. i'm afraid of saying the wrong thing and spoiling it all. for years i've been looking for a millionaire--some one to endow my dream. you're the one i've picked. you understand, i think. i don't seem so crazy to you. and you've got the stuff in you to stand the gaff when things go hard. it's not so hard to get money, but sympathy ... faith ... people stop when the light goes out. you're different. you'd go on. you ... do you follow me?" he stopped and surveyed her anxiously. the deep creases over his nose, his short sentences, the sharp nervous movements of his hands, all betrayed the stress under which he spoke. it would disappoint him, perhaps stop him altogether, if she said that she did not follow. but as she assured him that she did, she wondered how much of his meaning she really missed. nevertheless her manner seemed to satisfy him. "if i went to you and asked for money to build a hospital or a school, or a church--" she looked up sharply at that. but it was plain that there was no covert meaning in his words. he went on intently. "you'd think that understandable enough. you'd probably hand it over. but, miss wynrod, i want your money for something of greater value to society than all the churches and hospitals put together. i want you to put your money to work clearing up this muddled old world of ours by bringing sunshine and oxygen and hope and understanding into men's minds. i want you--how can i possibly make clear to you how much i want it--i want you to--to--buy ... a _newspaper_!" he stopped and waited for her to speak. but she could only echo the word stupidly. then she managed to convey to him that she wanted him to go on. he did, but his voice seemed to have lost something of its intensity, and his words came with more confidence. "yes. i've told you so indirectly many times. but i never made it personal, partly because i hated to put my hopes to the test, partly because there seemed no opening. now i have the opening. the divinity that shapes our ends is doing its best for me, it seems. i learned yesterday that _the dispatch_ would sell out at a ridiculous figure. that made me screw my courage up to the testing point. i came up this morning to tell you about it. then your brother--why, it couldn't have worked out better for me! the opportunity his future offers as a lever to move you ... well, miss wynrod, what do you think?" she laughed unaffectedly at that. "what do i think? heavens. how _can_ i think. you fire an entirely novel idea at me and expect me to answer at once. you've stunned me." "but it's not new," cried good. "we've talked the idea of this over a hundred times." "the oldest thing in the world is new when it's applied to one's self for the first time," said judith sententiously. "still, it isn't really new, is it?" he persisted. "well--not entirely," she admitted. "of course not. it's roger's part in it that's new. that bewilders you, of course." "what _is_ his part?" she interrupted. "running a newspaper is exactly like running any other kind of a business--only harder. he'd be the manager--with assistance of course--with a chance to make all out of himself that he can. he'd be your representative." "i see," she said thoughtfully. "that seems to dispose of him. now where does brent good fit into the scheme of things?" "wherever he fits. give him $ a week and he'd fit anywhere. that would be enough of a raise over his present honorarium to justify him in changing." "you're joking," she cried. "about the salary? not a bit. it's enough. besides, it leaves room for promotion. as a matter of fact i've been told by potential employers that it was too much." good was silent then, and judith also, each waiting for the other to speak. but it happened that the silence was finally broken by roger, whose impatience had become too much to bear any longer. "well," he said from the doorway, with a most elaborate attempt at casuality. "is the great mystery about to be revealed?" good looked inquiringly at judith, and she motioned to roger. "sit down, roger," she said quietly. "mr. good has a plan to offer." then she hesitated momentarily. "if the idea appeals to you--i am prepared to back you." good turned a startled but grateful gaze upon her. but she affected not to see him. he turned quickly to roger. eloquently and passionately he described the opportunity he offered. judith, entranced in spite of herself, followed him intently, while roger, from derision, went successively into interest, to close attention, and finally to unbounded enthusiasm. judith divined the subtle flattery with which good concealed his profounder motives: to the young man he was only opening up an alluring vista of personal glory. "well, roger," said good finally, "what's your verdict?" roger turned to his sister, his eyes shining. "it's great!" he whispered. "will you go through with it, sis?" judith heard him only vaguely. her thoughts, strangely enough, were with imrie and his church. but she nodded affirmatively. she seemed only to be granting another of the endless string of permissions that had marked her maternal care of him through the years. and the way in which he ran to her and threw his arms about her and hugged her, was very familiar. his part in it all seemed curiously unreal. but good's calm voice brought home to her the magnitude of the step upon which she was so blithely deciding. "one thing, miss wynrod. _the dispatch_ can be bought for very little. but the kind of paper you are going to make out of it won't make much money--not for a while. it may cost--quite a little. do you understand?" he added sharply, his eyes seeming to speak to her alone. she caught their message. "yes," she said calmly; "i understand perfectly." good rose, and pulled a pair of well-worn gloves from his pocket. "you'll have to act quickly." "why?" "there's a syndicate of reactionaries ready to take it, i'm told. talk it over, you two--discuss the bad parts mostly. i'll call you up in the morning. then, if you want to go through it, get your lawyer and we'll settle it up. good-bye." "oh, wait," cried roger. "there's a million questions i want to ask you." "no. you two talk it over. i'm out of it--till to-morrow." and with that he seized his hat, and in a moment was striding down the avenue. judith watched him from the window until he was out of sight. then she turned to roger. "does it really appeal to you, lad?" she asked wistfully. "it certainly does," he cried with enthusiasm. "and besides i don't see how i'll ever get into business unless i buy my way in. this is a chance in a million. there's money in newspapers. look at _the press_. why, you couldn't buy its stock--not at any price." tears forced themselves into judith's eyes. she wondered if she ought to let roger deceive himself. she knew all too clearly that good's ambitions lay not along the route of money. she wondered fearfully if he could transform roger's ideals from the conventional worship of profit-taking to something less substantial and less understood. but as she thought what he had already accomplished with the boy, her fears vanished, giving place to a feeling of awe. what was the secret of this man's fascination, that he could force her to yield implicit faith to his lightest word? what caused him to be able, not merely to convert her to the most amazing ideas, but actually to make her join him in the propaganda? she had a premonition of what john baker would say when she told him her decision. then the recollection of the salary which good had proposed for himself came to her, and she smiled. all that day and until far into the night, she and roger discussed the great idea. or rather, roger talked and planned and dreamed, and she listened. and as she listened to his enthusiasm, the first of his life over anything really worth while, her resolution crystallised. if she could give money toward the building of a church in which her interest was undeniably decreasing, she could give money toward the building of her brother into manhood. and she was far from overlooking the opportunity for herself. she had never heard of a woman going into the publishing of newspapers, but good's enthusiasm for the high ends to be attained had fired her more than she realised, and as the hours passed, she flamed higher with real enthusiasm for what had, at first thought, seemed the wildest of wild projects. before she retired, her mind was quite made up. she, idler and parasite, would play a part in the world of affairs. the next morning, calm but determined, and speaking her thoughts in few words, she was in john baker's office. briefly and clearly, she made known to him the resolution she had taken. his jaw dropped as he listened, and his usual immobility of countenance quite deserted him. he tried to smile. "so you want to buy it, eh?" to conceal his amazement, he walked to the window. "why don't you throw your money out here?" he asked. "you can lose it that way with less trouble." judith had no answering smile. her eyes narrowed and her lips formed a little straighter line. "will you draw up the papers for me, john? i've phoned mr. good, and he will be here any minute." "mr. good, eh? you have a good deal of faith in him, haven't you? so he's the nigger in the pile, is he?" "have _you_ any reason not to have faith in him?" baker was silent, and a curious expression, which she could not fathom, formed on his face. "no," he murmured finally, with what seemed like an effort, "i have not." "personally i have the utmost confidence in him," said judith with a shortness which brooked no further discussion of the topic. baker looked at her thoughtfully for a moment. then he pressed a button on his desk. "it's your funeral, judith. i never thought you were a fool...." "before?" she interrupted, with her first smile. it was significant that he made no reply. in due course good arrived, accompanied by another lawyer, a tall, thin man, with a prodigious moustache, who said absolutely nothing that was intelligible to her. while he and baker were conferring, good drew her into an ante-room and closed the door. he was greatly agitated, and the perspiration kept coming out on his forehead in spite of his constant efforts to wipe it away. he presented a curious contrast to her perfect calm. "miss wynrod--before we go into this thing--you must know what it means--absolutely. i mustn't hide anything." "don't i know all?" she lifted her eyebrows. she smiled inwardly as she thought how much more she knew about it than good did. he paced nervously in front of her. "i hope so. i don't know. but you must." "what is lacking?" "it's going to cost--more than the purchase price--" "i know that." "it's going to cost more than you guess--incalculably more." "i don't understand." "i know--but you must. we're going to dedicate this paper to one thing--the truth. sometimes the truth isn't easy to tell. the telling of it may bring you--it may--oh, don't you see--those closest to you--dearest to you--they may be the least able to stand the truth. you don't know what it means. you can't. are you ready to forsake--all? ... i mean that literally, miss wynrod." she had never seen him so utterly excited, so moved to the depths. "are you ready to give up everything that has been dear to you in the days that are gone, for this crazy ideal? for if you are not," he finished with a solemnity that brought a queer lump to her throat, "i had much rather that you stopped before you began." she rose and faced him, and her eyes looked steadily into his. they gleamed dull grey, like the hulls of battleships on the fighting line, and her chin was grimly firm. the stock from which she sprang had been a pioneering stock, and none who bore the name of wynrod, in days when life was simple but hard, had turned back when once their hands were on the plough. their sturdy courage was in her blood, and the echo of that hugh wynrod who had defied his king and left all that life had held dear for him, to seek a new life in a new world, for the sake of an ideal, sounded in her vibrant voice. "i understand, mr. good. i am ready--for anything." "it means--fight--always," he said softly. "i have played always. i _want_--fight." "then shake," he cried. "we'll go through--to the end!" "to the end," she echoed, as she seized his outstretched hand. then the tension snapped suddenly. "how absurd," she laughed. "we're behaving like pirates in a melodrama. let's go in the other room and be rational people." but good did not even attempt to smile. chapter vi dead idols arnold imrie was of clear scotch descent. and among his forebears had been those grim covenanters to whom compromise was anathema. he had a strong body and a strong intellect, but stronger than both combined was the resistless overlord he called his conscience. sydney smith's aspersions upon the impenetrability of the scotch skull are well known, though their justice may be questioned. but it is indisputable that nothing short of the heroic measures he recommended would suffice to separate imrie from a resolve, once firmly made. being human, he saw many things dimly, and some quite falsely. but as he saw he lived, and there was no power in the earth or out of it to make him evade or equivocate. sometimes this sturdy candour made him noble: sometimes it made him tiresome: and once in a way it merely made him ridiculous. but though for long periods it might remain dormant, it was none the less the prime impetus in his life. judith's derision, her more or less obvious contempt, had wounded him more than he would have believed possible; and her touch, though light, had found spots that were sorer than he had suspected. her calm disdain was like an acid, dissolving away the crust of unimportant occupation and meticulous conformity which had protected his ideals from the corruptive action of reality. he shivered, figuratively, at the revelation. one of her mordant phrases was poignantly clear. again and again it recurred to him, always with a question attached. he tried to dismiss it, and could not. she had called him "too much of a clergyman--not enough of a man." as he walked home, he analysed its meaning, and tried to disguise it in sophistries. but the intellectual honesty which was his at base, forbade. the meaning was far too manifest. and at intervals through the week, he strove to force his thoughts into an effective answer. but always there was failure at the end. of course such charges as she had made to him were not new. the literature of the day was full of them. but hitherto he had been able to keep his defences intact. when his own logic failed him, there was always the logic of his schooling and of his contemporaries upon which to fall back. but for such heresies to spring from judith--that was treachery within the gates. he resented it bitterly, and he was appalled as the weapons so strong in the past now crumpled in his hands. a whisper grew louder and louder in his soul, a question sounded more and more relentlessly. and when it would brook no more delay, reluctantly, sick at heart, and filled with fear at the outcome, he hauled down his flag of truce and gave the devil battle. it was well after midnight of saturday when the last gun was fired, and the struggle was over. with lips compressed, and brow furrowed, and with his tongue parched by the pipes he had smoked, imrie capitulated. on the morrow he would put his life to the test. but when he stood in the pulpit and faced his congregation, awaiting him with courteous expectancy, as it had waited so often, his heart well-nigh failed him. slowly he let his eyes rove over the throng, brilliant in costume, exuding the indefinable aroma of power and luxury. these men and women of st. viateur's were the cream of the community. it was no small thing to be the shepherd of such a flock. the silence grew oppressive, while he hesitated. he seemed to look for someone. finally he found what he sought. his face hardened and his teeth clicked so sharply that those in the pews near at hand could almost hear the sound. judith was in a seat well back in the church. good was beside her. imrie's task had suddenly become far harder, yet even more imperative. he hesitated no longer. he cleared his throat and his eyes wandered, raptly, as of old, into the dim vastness of the rafters. "_think not that i am come to send peace on earth: i came not to send peace, but a sword_," he said impressively. "text taken from the gospel according to st. matthew, tenth chapter, thirty-fourth verse." he paused at that point, as he had paused sundays without end, and the congregation, as if at a signal, seemed to settle back and make itself resignedly comfortable against the duty it faced. there was a subdued but general coughing, and the whispering rustle of silks: then a calm hush. but the preacher had not uttered a dozen words before the expectant quiet changed sensibly. it was not his words which caused the change, but his tone. and it was not that his tone was dramatic, but that it was not. the very fact that he spoke with a complete freedom from anything histrionic presented a contrast which amazed. but as the significance of the lesson he was drawing from the text became clear to them, astonishment gave place to an almost ominous, certainly an unsympathetic, attention. never in his career had he had more heedful listeners. as if magically, the news seemed to have percolated to the most obtuse intelligences that grave matters were transpiring. once or twice there was a sibilant inrush of breath from some auditor too dumfounded for control. but for the rest there was utter silence. there was not a rustle nor a cough. the congregation of st. viateur's had changed its character. it was playing a different rôle. it was as if an epicure had bitten caviar and tasted quinine. it waited. meanwhile, the reverend arnold imrie was recording his new-found belief that the peace of christ was not a complacent acceptance of earthly misery, but a dynamic struggle against the few who dispossessed--or would dispossess--the many; that the man of sorrows was a rebel, seeking, not to bring men to heaven, but heaven to men; that he brought a sword, sharp-pointed for the blood of injustice, for which, injustice, terrified, crucified him; and he was asking, very simply but very clearly, whether the charge of heretics that time had brought about a change between preaching christ and preaching dogma, was true. he went calmly on, opening, though they never suspected it, the innermost chambers of his heart to them, taking them into his confidence as he had never before taken even himself. for the first time, he did not preach: it was rather a mutual inventory before the god they worshipped, a dispassionate analysis of the institutions they revered, to see if, since they had become idols, they had deteriorated or no. only once did his emotionless manner desert him. then without euphemism, he lashed them for their luxuries, for the repletion of their bellies, for the ideals of the spirit that they had allowed to die of starvation. for a few minutes he waxed eloquent and bitter and cruel. with a crash of his fist on the pulpit rail he repeated the words, "_let him take up his cross and follow me_," and hammered home to them, with brutal logic and remorseless clarity, what they meant. it was a new jesus which he painted for them, in bold sharp strokes. the lamb of god, the doe-eyed martyr to vicarious atonement, vanished, and in his place stood a virile battler for human rights. the strongest sentiment in the minds of the listeners was one of bewilderment. they watched, with something approaching admiration, the portrait as it grew more vivid before their eyes, and a few even admitted in it a specious fidelity. but none could comprehend at all clearly the reason for their rector's complete and sudden estrangement from the conceptions which he had worshipped hitherto with an orthodoxy beyond suspicion. and yet the explanation was profoundly simple. in the first place he had come away from his talk with judith to study scripture with new eyes. in words so familiar that he could quote them he had found new meaning. he had realised, with a shock, that always until then he had given a superficial acceptance to the interpretations of others, and in natural consequence he had set himself to the business of interpretation assisted by nothing but his own powers of logic and analysis. once the new keystone was placed, the change in the entire arch was inevitable and immediate. he had only to secure a new postulate: the rest of the syllogism followed as a matter of course. the second part of the explanation was simpler still. from the time that man emerged from his female origin, man has been doing things, both sublime and foolish, to win the regard of woman. in the little boy who jumps off a high place because a little girl "dared" him to jump, may be found the key to imrie's puzzling transformation. judith had dared him to be more man than clergyman. his eyes were fixed on her as he jumped. there can be no doubt that he went further than he had intended when he entered the pulpit. but as speech clarifies thought, the very course of maintaining his new argument strengthened him in it, and his fears and hesitancies vanished. he left no doubt in other minds, as to his meaning, as he cleared away the doubts in his own. judith, listening in amazement with the rest, realised, as did few, how characteristic of him it all was. she felt that she could almost trace the steps which had brought him to this point. her own attitude had played a large share, she felt certain. her doubts had set up doubts in him. he had tried to dissipate them, and had failed. so far he was quite like other men. but then he had resolved to tell his congregation that he had failed. in that he was different. other men would have waited longer, have hesitated and put off and pondered, some to the end of their lives. not so with imrie. a resolution once made was turned into action without delay, be the consequences what they might. the one outstanding distinction of his nature was his unfailing courage. the whole procedure, involved and incomprehensible and distressing as she knew it must appear to most minds, was perfectly clear to her. she had put questions to him that he could not answer. so he had resolved to put them, without equivocation or delay, to his congregation. that to them these questions did not betoken honest doubt, but downright heresy, was no concern of his. they had to hear, and having heard, they had to decide what their significance was for him and for them, and for the relations between them. that he realised quite clearly that he was jeopardising his professional future, she did not for a moment doubt. but that realisation, she knew very well, would only confirm him the more strongly in his purpose. suddenly she realised that he was bringing his remarkable sermon to a close. his voice sank, becoming almost conversational, though it penetrated to the furthest corner of the church. it was the closing plea of a lawyer before a jury of his peers. he had shown what he believed to be the fallacies in their relations to the lord jesus, and the fallacies in his own; he had shown the failure of the church, which meant them as well as himself, to live up to its social significance; he had demonstrated with vivid brutality, the inconsistency between their professions of faith and their daily lives; he had humbled himself before his ideals and sought to make them do likewise; and now, very gently, he was asking for the verdict. he paused for a moment before his last words, and swept the congregation with his eyes. they saw far more than was there to see. they saw his seminary days, when the world looked so simple and so enticing. they saw the early days of his charge of st. viateur's, when the knowledge of actual achievement was not troubled by spiritual doubts. they saw the sundays, innumerable, when his words, received by the great ones of the community with admiration and approval, had been followed by the little flatteries to which no human heart is immune. then a lump rose in his throat, and his gaze came nearer. something like tears came into his eyes as he surveyed these friends whom he was deliberately transforming into something perilously like enemies--for no reason save that he must. they would never understand--never. and yet he must go on--to the end if need be. that was his destiny. quietly he put his last question to them, "what are you going to do about it?" then he closed his eyes for a moment, opened them to stare unseeing at judge and jury, sighed softly, and abruptly left the pulpit. the answer was not long in coming. he knew that it would not be, and he dallied in the vestry, purposely. judge wolcott, kindly and genial, approached him with outstretched hand. "arnold, it was magnificent," he said, with a paternal clap on his shoulder, adding, in an undertone, though no one was near, "but i don't think i would repeat it." "why?" asked imrie coldly. the judge tugged at his white beard nervously. then he patted the younger man again with what seemed like a somewhat exaggerated friendliness. "oh, come now, arnold, don't get on your high horse. you know what i mean. that sort of thing's all right--occasionally. but it's juvenile...." "juvenile?" "well, perhaps not that. but it's young, sophomoric, journalistic, sentimental--you understand, i'm sure." "quite." "we have some pretty conservative members here, you know. as laymen go, they're powerful." he stopped and watched imrie, waiting for the effect of his words to sink in. "for a young man, practically at the outset of his career, to offend them--would be unwise." imrie's coldness dissolved, and he smiled broadly. "we know each other too well to fence, judge. let's be frank with each other." "but i am frank," cried the older man. "not entirely. you're trying to reprimand me without seeming to do it." "not at all. i'm merely--ah--advising you." "i see. and if i don't choose to heed the--ah--advice ... what then?" the judge lifted his finely manicured fingers and shrugged his shoulders. "you're not a boy, arnold. you have eyes--and ears." imrie laughed again, but not pleasantly. "is this official?" "i don't understand." "i mean, are you talking to me as a friend--or as a vestryman?" "my dear boy, the vestrymen are your friends." "please don't quibble. there's the same dual personality in you that there is in me talking among friends and preaching in this pulpit. aren't you preparing me now--as a friend--for what you might have to say--as a vestryman?" "if you insist--yes," the judge admitted, rather testily. it nettled him to be put on the defensive, his subtleness openly contemned. "in other words," imrie rose from his chair and walked over to the window, where he paused for a moment. "in other words, you bear unofficial orders." "not orders." "advice then--advice for me to preach what the people want--and let what they need go hang?" "arnold--my dear boy," cried the judge pacifically, following him to the window. but imrie edged away. "as the spanish poet put it, 'since the public pay 'tis just, methinks, we by their compass steer, and write the nonsense that they love to hear';" he murmured gently. "really, i--" the judge was at a loss for words. he had anticipated no such reception as this. imrie's voice changed and his lips narrowed. "you may tell the--er--powerful laymen--judge wolcott, that i take my orders in these matters from my conscience, not from them." the older man stared at him in amazement. "are you crazy?" he demanded, and a light flickered in his own eyes. "obviously," said imrie shortly. "do you realise what this means?" "perfectly." "are you prepared to abide by the consequences?" that the judge was thoroughly aroused was plain. he did not like to have subordinates treat him in such fashion, and any notion that imrie was not a subordinate was of course only a polite fiction. it was incredible that this young fool should think it anything else. "my resignation will be in your hands this afternoon," said imrie quietly. "come, arnold my lad," cried the judge, honestly dismayed by the course their conversation had taken. "you mustn't be offended--really you mustn't. let's get together and discuss this like men. we...." "there is nothing to discuss," said imrie with a shortness which brooked no further opening. "you have stated your case with perfect clearness. i hope i have stated mine equally so. i think that ends it." "my dear young friend," said the older man with an effort at patience which only partially concealed his increasing exasperation. "i had no intention of stirring up all this excitement. i come to you with a friendly word of advice and you treat me like--like a policeman! egad, one would think i was your worst enemy." "i'm sorry--really--i...." "then forget it. come--we'll take a stroll and talk about the weather. there's a good fellow. no sense in letting a little difference of opinion make us lose our tempers." but behind the judge's conciliatory words was a secret resolve merely to wait for a more propitious moment and then to reopen the discussion--with a tact, of course, acquired by experience. so, after a desultory discourse, in which he touched upon a number of obviously unimportant matters, and during which the younger man was uniformly silent, he renewed his circuitous attack. he tried very hard to be calm and judicial, but imrie's taciturn antagonism quite overthrew his poise. and when the clergyman remained obdurate to all his subtlest questions and cajoleries and indisputable logic, the judge lost his temper. "you're an obstinate ass," he almost shouted. "there's no doubt of it," said imrie quietly. there was of course nothing more to be said after that, so they parted, the judge to spread the news of the incredible stubbornness of the clergyman, and imrie to a miserable walk, alone. he was wretched, of course. he knew perfectly well what the outcome of his folly might be. but counteracting his regret at that, was a glorious feeling of achievement, of having conquered the devil in a pitched battle, and of having emerged with no stain on his shield. to all the world, _don quixote_, slaying windmills, was an "obstinate ass," but to _don quixote_ he was a hero. imrie's feelings, as he battled with the wind, were a curious complex of dejection and triumph. when he returned to his rooms, he found a message from judith, insisting upon his presence at supper that evening. for a little he debated the acceptance of the invitation. he felt reluctant at facing her. he wondered what she would think of him. he feared that she might doubt his sincerity. but he also had a powerful curiosity as to what she would say, and her verdict was of more importance to him than that of all the vestries in the land. he decided to go. she greeted him with greater enthusiasm than she had ever before manifested toward him. "it was wonderful, arnold, wonderful. i never guessed it was in you. i can't tell you how proud i was of you. it was a splendid sermon--it was splendid courage. it was--if only i had the words...." "you don't need words," he said softly, taking her hands into his, and looking tenderly into her eyes. she continued to pour oil on his troubled soul, but she withdrew her hands, and not again did she allow herself to come so close to him. he felt vaguely disappointed, even in the midst of her praise. "i am so humiliated for what i said to you last week," she cried. "it was what made--this," he said simply. suddenly her gaze went beyond him, and he followed it to the doorway. his face clouded. a gust of annoyance swept him for judith, for this trick she had played him. it was unfair of her thus to force him to meet a man she knew he detested. but his irritation changed to surprise, when good, with his long awkward stride, hurried toward him, and seized his hand. "mr. imrie," he said genuinely, "i was in your church this morning. i want to tell you that that was one of the biggest things i ever saw. my congratulations probably don't mean much to you, but they're yours without a shadow of a reservation. that was the noblest sermon i ever heard." the man's enthusiasm was so deep and so obviously sincere that imrie's instinctive antipathy was banished. after all, he told himself on reflection, his dislike for good was based on his antagonism for the smug hypocrisy, the senseless irreligion that he had himself attacked only that morning. in a way they were brothers in a common cause. it was with a very different feeling than he had expected that he accepted the tall man's congratulations and with the utmost sincerity that he thanked him. supper proved a gay function. judith was at her happiest, and good's anecdotes followed one another in merry succession. imrie found himself insensibly warming to the man he had disliked so intensely, and rather grateful than otherwise to judith for having arranged so pleasant a meeting. but when the meal was finished and they were in the library with their coffee, mirth seemed to leave the gathering, and a certain constraint fell upon them all. each of the men wanted to talk to judith of matters which were too intimate to share with the other. their remarks diminished rapidly in frequency and extent, and presently there was complete silence. it was necessary for judith to break it. she thought it best to get to the heart of things immediately. she addressed herself first to good. "shall i tell him what we have done?" she asked, as if not quite sure of herself. the tall man nodded, not very enthusiastically, it seemed to imrie. "well...." again she hesitated. "i suppose it's best to break the news without any preliminaries?" good nodded his assent. "still, it's so _very_ surprising--however, the fact is ... we've bought a newspaper--_the dispatch_!" "yes?" imrie refused to show any surprise at all. obviously he thought it was some subtle jest they were playing upon him. "you don't understand," cried judith, "i'm the owner of a newspaper." "well--what for?" "to tell the truth," she said solemnly. imrie smiled indulgently. "that's praiseworthy, i'm sure," he said ironically. that was too much for good. obviously the clergyman did not understand. he must be made to understand. his timidity slipped from him and he plunged into an explanation of the great plans they were making. imrie listened attentively, and as he caught the significance of the idea his manner changed from scepticism to something approaching enthusiasm. then his face slowly hardened and a semblance of a sneer formed on his lips. "telling the truth may get you into trouble," he said half to himself. "of course," cried good, "it not only may--it's certain to." imrie turned to judith. "are you as optimistic as mr. good?" her lips narrowed ever so slightly and a faint suggestion of a gleam came into her eyes. then she shrugged her shoulders and laughed lightly. "if trouble comes--i shall be ready." "but you're not sure that it will come?" "i'm not experienced in such things. were you sure of trouble when you delivered your sermon this morning?" "quite." "did it come?" "it did." imrie smiled pleasantly enough but the bitterness of his tone was not lost on judith. "arnold--what do you mean--what trouble?" "what would you expect? i have resigned." "the devil!" cried good. judith's amazement was not feigned. it struck imrie that it would have been more pleasant to him had she shown less astonishment at the course he had taken. "but it isn't final?" she cried. "as far as i am concerned, it is. it is not at all unlikely that the vestry will find it final too." more than ever imrie resented the presence of good. he wanted to explain to judith the part she had played in his resolution. that made him tell the story of his interview with judge wolcott very perfunctorily, and dismiss the subject as quickly as he could. but good was not easily put off, although judith seemed to sense the purpose in his reticence. "what will you do if you resign?" he asked bluntly. "not 'if,'" said imrie coldly, "i have already resigned." good ignored the snub. "what'll you do next?" he persisted. "i have no idea," said imrie, turning away. a moment later he rose to leave. good eyed him quizzically as they shook hands, and smiled, half wistfully, half amusedly. "you don't understand me, mr. imrie," he said with characteristic candour; "you don't think i understand. i'm older than you. i have been through things. some day--perhaps--oh, well, we'll wait for the day, won't we?" imrie was puzzled. he was vaguely grateful, too, though he could find no words to express his gratitude. he stared perplexedly at good, who had picked up a magazine and appeared deeply engrossed. then he shrugged his shoulders helplessly and turned to go. "some time," he said to judith, who had followed him to the door, "i should like to see you and tell you all about it." he looked at her longingly as he spoke. he seemed very tired, she thought. "i understand," said judith. he wondered if she really did. a cold rain had been falling steadily all evening. the street lamps flickered dismally through the mist and the trees dripped soddenly. it was a fitting end, he thought, to the dreariest day he had ever known. the morning had seen the ruin of his flowering career, cut down by his own ruthless hand, under no compulsion save that of his own senseless conscience. and the evening, as a bitter crown to the day, had seen the salt of jealousy ground into his wounds. the contrast between himself standing on the brink of indecision, wandering aimlessly from disgust to humiliation, without satisfaction in the past or hope for the future; and that other man--who had no indecision, whose hopes were half realised--made his heart heavy within him. it was a saddened and chaotic imrie who plodded on through the lonely streets striving to regain some fragment of the philosophy which had deserted him so utterly. chapter vii "if people only _knew_!" a little after three o'clock on the afternoon of the day which first saw judith wynrod a newspaper proprietor, good walked into the office of _the dispatch_ and asked to see mr. bassett, the managing editor. "will you be good enough to indicate the purpose of your visit on this slip," said the old pensioner at the information desk. good took the pencil held out to him and in a bold hand wrote: "mr. good wishes to see mr. bassett." cerberus smiled faintly, as if courtesy alone prevented him from totally ignoring so feeble a jest. "that will hardly suffice, mr. good. we have our rules, you know," he said firmly. "of course," admitted good patiently. "but all rules have exceptions." "we know none here, sir," said the old man pompously, while loungers in the ante-room smiled their enjoyment of the scene. "but, my dear man," cried good in exasperation, "i don't want to write him a letter. i want to talk to him. will you take this in, or will i have to take it myself?" he seemed so capable of carrying out the latter alternative that after some further protestation the disgusted warder disappeared into the private offices. almost immediately he reappeared, a faint but plainly triumphant smile curling the corners of his lips. "mr. bassett says--" he paused significantly. then he added suavely, "he regrets that he is very busy and is unable to see you." good smiled. "that's old stuff," he said placidly, with his hand on the wicket. without further parley he opened it and marched in. a small man in his shirt sleeves, his thin lips grimly compressed, sat at a desk piled high in disorderly confusion, chewing an unlighted cigar. he did not look up as good entered. but at the latter's deprecating cough he wheeled around in his chair and glared savagely. "how the hell did you get in here?" he demanded. "through the doorway," replied good mildly. "that door says 'private'--and i'm busy." good sat down and leisurely drawing his pipe from his pocket filled it. "i suppose you didn't see that sign outside?" inquired the small man sarcastically. "it said 'no smoking.'" "that was outside," said good shortly, without looking up. "i'm in now. but look here, mr. bassett," he continued with a quizzical smile, "don't irritate me. it ..." "don't irritate you?" bassett stared blankly. "who the ..." "no--it might cost you your job." the editor laughed harshly. "hell, you must want a story suppressed." "what makes you think so?" "they all begin by threatening to get my scalp." "well, that's a bum guess this time." good drew his chair up beside the desk and pushed a cleared place among the papers. "now see here, mr. bassett, i have something to tell you." "it's about time you began telling it," said bassett dryly. "i had to get you in a receptive mood before i could begin. now i'm ready." "fire away." the editor lit his cigar and waved his hand resignedly. "quick is quick. to get to the point, this paper has changed hands." the expression on bassett's face changed immediately. "you mean--it's sold?" "just so." "who got it--the le gore crowd?" it was bassett's profession always to be prepared for the unusual, but it was manifest from his knitted eyebrows and his nervous drumming on the desk that he was astonished. "no, miss judith wynrod." "the millionaire kid!" cried bassett. "what the devil does she want a newspaper for? is she going to run it?" "no," said good calmly, "i am." "_you?_ who in thunder are _you_?" good leaned back and put his thumbs in his waistcoat. "i," he said without smiling, "am the crafty bunco-steerer. with misguided confidence the boss is going to let me run her paper for her. in future, my profane friend, you're going to take your orders from me." "do you know anything about newspapering?" "quite a bit, yes." bassett rose and clasping his hands behind his back, strode rapidly back and forth, without speaking, for several moments. finally he stopped and shifting his cigar savagely from one side of his mouth to the other, stared vacantly into space. "well," he said slowly, "the first thing a new owner usually does is to fire the staff. i suppose i might as well begin getting ready and packing up my things. that's one of the beauties in this newspaper game. there's no monotony in your job." good laughed cheerfully. "i wouldn't be in any hurry about it," he said; "nobody's slated for the blue envelope yet." "what's the policy going to be?" asked bassett after a pause. "none," said good shortly. "i don't get you." "you will." "the orders'll come from downstairs as usual, i suppose?" good betrayed himself for the first time during the interview. "no," he cried, bringing his fist down on the desk so that the papers fluttered, "that's one place they won't come from." bassett laughed, not very pleasantly. "good stuff, old top. i love to hear that line of talk. it's inspiring. but they all start that way. i've been in the game a long time. i've pulled the washington on tank town weeklies, trimmed boiler plate on all-home-print, and attained the eminence of space writer on county seat dailies. i've done time in the newspaper game from soup to nuts, and i've yet to see the sheet that isn't run from the business office." "you've got something to live for then, haven't you?" said good sweetly. "i've always said that there weren't any surprises in a newspaper man's life," continued bassett thoughtfully. "maybe i'm wrong." "life's full of surprises. that's what makes it interesting. but that butters no turnips. i didn't come here to give you some new ideas about life. what i want is for you to get your staff together in the city room, say about five o'clock, for fifteen minutes. i want to talk to the boys. can you arrange it?" "i guess the world won't stop moving." "all right. see you later." good put his hand on the door. "say," said bassett, sharply biting his lip, "have you been stringing me?" good laughed. "call up john baker, miss wynrod's lawyer, and get it straight. don't be so suspicious." "that's my business," said bassett, sourly. as the door closed on his strange visitor, he sighed heavily. "it's a great business ... sold up the river--damned slave!" then he sighed again and fell to sharpening a pencil. promptly at five good returned. "got them all here?" he demanded. "nearly all." "that's fine. let's break the news." bassett led the way to the city room, and with a clap of his hands achieved silence. "boys," he said in a tone which was curiously unfamiliar to them, "you probably all know by now, being good news-hounds, that the paper has been sold. mr. brent good, the new managing editor, wishes to say a few words." good rose and stood looking thoughtfully at the crowd for a moment before he spoke. "gentlemen, the habit of a lifetime is hard to break. mr. bassett proves it by the way he's coloured the facts. i'm not to be managing editor. mr. bassett will continue in that capacity as long as his editing and managing seems to be satisfactory. i am merely to be the personal representative of the owner of the paper. now i have one or two things to say to you. "to begin with, i want to say that nobody is going to get fired, with the possible exception of several men from the advertising department, the reason for which will appear later. the first question that mr. bassett put to me was about the policy of the new paper, and i replied that there wouldn't be any policy. all we have is a purpose, and that purpose is, in one single word, to tell all the truth all the time. "we haven't any axes to grind. and there's only one boss. for the first time in your lives, i guess, you can write the truth without being afraid of stepping on somebody's toes. from now on, the business office gives no orders. and if the advertising department can't sell space without editorial influence thrown in, then we'll get a new advertising department or do without advertising. instead of looking at every story with your mind on 'who will it hurt,' from now on i want you to look at every story with your mind on 'who will it help--or _what_.' you boys have a chance to run the kind of a newspaper that every newspaper man wants to run. it's up to you to make it or break it." good's voice broke a little and he turned away. there was silence for a moment. then a cheer shook the room. when it subsided, bassett's dry voice was heard. "kindly don't overlook the fact, gentlemen, that we put the paper to bed to-night as usual. you can celebrate when that's done." then he turned to good. "come back in my office, will you, mr. good. there are a few questions i want to ask you." "cut out the 'mister,' bassett. i'm just one of the staff. i don't own anything, you know." "that goes with me," said bassett, "but look out i don't call you something worse. i've got a bad temper." "well," laughed good, "i'm bigger than you." they went into bassett's private office. "what i want to get at," said the latter perplexedly, after they were seated, "is what line of thought you intend to follow. what angles do you mean to push?" "you don't understand," said good patiently, "all we want is the truth." "oh, fiddlesticks," cried bassett impatiently. "that's fine for a rights-of-man declaration, but we're running a newspaper. you've got to have balance. what's true and interesting and desirable to one class of people isn't to another. what kind of people do you intend to cater to?" "i see," said good. he was silent for a moment. "i guess we want to print," he said finally, "what's true to _most_ people. anything that gives the greatest good to the greatest number, ought to be our field." "that's what i'm getting at. now look at this." the managing editor fumbled in his desk and produced a mass of paper. "you probably know that the girls in the department stores are trying to stage a strike. it doesn't amount to much--yet--but the police have pulled some pretty raw work. now from the girls' standpoint this stuff ought to get publicity. but from the standpoint of those who own the newspapers it shouldn't--and it hasn't had a line except in _the world_, which, of course, only goes to the working people. incidentally, _the world_ has been running some pretty good sob-stuff lately." "yes," said good quietly, "i wrote it." bassett looked up quickly. "oh--are you one of that socialist outfit?" "no more socialist than you are plutocrat. i'm just a newspaper man--like yourself." "conscienceless, eh?" "consciences are expensive." "yes," said bassett pensively, "most of us have to let the little darlings starve to death. i bet if we slipped into the next life with a murderer and a thief, st. peter'd give 'em both a golden harp and ..." "oh, cheer up," laughed good, "let's not worry about preferred positions in the next edition. we've got plenty to do with this one." "well, then," said the small man, "how about playing up this working girl stuff as a starter on the new idea? that ought to appeal to you." "i'm afraid you don't quite understand," explained good patiently. "this isn't going to be an organ of the working classes." "that's all right, too, but in your talk out there to the boys you said you were going to print all the truth all the time. well, this is true and people certainly ought to know about it. those girls are getting a hell of a rotten deal. what about it?" good was silent. "frankly, i don't know," he murmured. "i know what you're thinking," said bassett with a suggestion of a sneer. "we're carrying full pages for corey's and the rest. but i thought you weren't going to take orders from the business office." "we're not," said good. "but we have to take our orders from miss wynrod." "that's right," agreed bassett. "i hadn't thought of that. well, why don't you put it up to her?" "by jove," cried good, "i will! i'll do just that. you get your stuff together. i'll see her to-night and get her o.k.--if i can." "here's a suggestion," said the managing editor; "it may help to get her interested. the girls are going to hold a meeting out on dempsey street. why don't you take miss wynrod out there and let her see for herself? if she's any kind of a girl she'll hear some yarns that'll wilt her collar, i'll bet." good was thoughtful. "that's not a bad idea. i'll see what i can do." he turned to go. then he looked back from the doorway. "by the way, bassett, i forgot to tell you--miss wynrod has a young brother. he's been a waster so far, but i think he's got some good stuff in him. anyway, he's coming into the paper too. of course he doesn't know anything about newspapers--he doesn't know anything about anything--but he can learn. i thought it would be best to start him in the business office. what do you think?" "that's the most important place to him," said bassett sourly. "keep him out of this end of it, for the love of mike! jenkins loves cubs; i don't." "i think you're right; anyway we'll start him with jenkins. and i'll let you hear from me to-night in plenty of time about this story." "the bull-dog closes at eleven." "i'll let you know by ten." as good ate his frugal dinner in a cheap restaurant, he debated seriously as to the best method of attaining his end. if he went straight to judith and boldly requested her acquiescence in the course planned, he felt quite confident of securing it. but that did not appear to him sufficient. her sympathies, thus gained, would be superficial. to be of lasting value they must be spontaneous. finally he took his resolution and went to the telephone. "miss wynrod," he said immediately when she answered, "there is to be a meeting on the west side to-night that i'd like very much to have you attend. i am sure it will interest you. will you come?" and when she hesitated momentarily he added, "i am quite sure you won't regret it." to his great delight she assented readily enough, and half an hour later he found himself in her limousine with her, bound for a section of the city that was probably as unfamiliar to her as the heart of china. briefly he explained the character of the meeting, but diplomatically he held back his real purpose in taking her to it. she was frankly interested, nevertheless, and plied him with questions regarding its circumstances and causes, to which he was not slow in making reply. "if all these dreadful things are true, how does it happen that i have never heard about them? there has never been anything in the papers." "no," he assented, smiling in triumph under cover of darkness, "there hasn't been anything in the papers. that is," he added, "not in any of the papers you would be likely to read. _the world_ has had some stuff." but before they had had time to discuss the question further the car had reached its destination. good led the way to a place in the balcony where they not only had a good view of the platform but could see the crowd below as well. a red-headed girl was playing a very much out-of-tune piano and playing it very badly. but over the music, and almost drowning it was the steady shuffle of feet, and a rising wave of whispers and laughter as the hall rapidly filled. the air was heavily odorous and the gas lights flared garishly, thrusting the stark shabbiness of the hall and its occupants into high relief. but all that was forgotten in the indefinable emotion which surcharged the atmosphere. without knowing exactly why, judith felt her throat tighten and her heart thrill. but it was an old story to good and he spent his time surreptitiously watching the effect of the scene upon his companion. presently the speakers of the evening filed onto the platform, and one of them, stepping up to the table, rapped sharply with her gavel. she was a woman just approaching middle age, very plainly but neatly dressed, with a face not handsome, but so full of quiet determination as to make one look twice. "that's myra horgan," whispered good, "president of the women's trade union league. she's a wonder." miss horgan, with a few words, introduced the first speaker, one casper, of the building trades council. he was a little man with a beaming red face, and stiff, close-cropped white hair. "when they talk about women and the right to vote," he began, surveying the audience with twinkling eyes, "i think of you and what fools you be. but you're no worse than unorganized men. do they work us brick-layers and masons twelve hours a day, nights too? they do not. do they pay us six dollars a week? they do not. do they fire us for having opinions of our own? they do not. do they treat us as human beings entitled to the same respect as themselves? they do, and why? because we ain't one but many. if we deal with them as individuals they smash us as you'd smash a toothpick. but they can't deal with us as individuals. they've got to deal with us altogether. but one thing remember, my girls. it's a fine thing to have a union but a hard thing to get it. you've got to suffer. you've got to give up things. i guess you know that already. but you've got to keep at it. it's great when you have it, but it's hell getting it. and don't forget this. you've got to stick by the other fellow if the other fellow is going to stick to you. if one goes out, you've all got to go out, and stay out if you starve." he sat down, wiping his brow carefully, amid a thunder of applause from the audience. suddenly a thought seemed to strike him and he jumped up with hand uplifted. the crowd silenced at once. "i forgot to tell you the main thing for why i came here to-night," he said sheepishly. "i'm no orator, as you all can see. your handsome young faces drove the thought clean out of my mind. but this i will say, i am here to-night to tell you that we of the federation will back you to the limit with money and influence and all we've got. go to it!" again he sat down, amid a repeated burst of clapping and cheers. "no," said good. "he's no orator. but he's a big man. they'll get somewhere if they follow him." speaker after speaker followed one another in rapid succession, each with her message of fear, or hope, or encouragement. there was surprisingly little denunciation, thought judith, of the powers against whom they were in revolt. all the speakers were too intent upon means and methods to waste breath in idle denunciation. she expressed her astonishment. "their feeling for their employers goes without saying," said good shortly. suddenly judith gave a little cry. "why, there's mrs. dodson." a woman, inconspicuously dressed and well on in years, but with such a spirit of youth and kindliness in her face as to belie her grey hairs, had begun to speak. her first words were the signal for such a storm of applause that she had to halt momentarily. "what a favourite she is!" exclaimed judith. "she has cause to be," said good. "these girls have no better friend." "isn't it strange," said judith in amazement. "i've known her all my life. i had no idea she was so interested in this sort of thing." good smiled. "she doesn't talk much about it, does she?" mrs. dodson, speaking with trained eloquence, was laying out a plan of campaign so bold in conception that judith, acquainted only with the more obvious side of her life, was dumfounded. "if the people who know her uptown could hear her now," she cried, "they'd be stupefied. they'd call her a traitor to her class." "she is a paradox," admitted good, "but i think this is her truest side." and the prolonged cheering which accompanied the conclusion of her words seemed to indicate that her auditors thought so too. there was a little pause after mrs. dodson had finished, and the red-headed young person at the piano resumed her activities. but the delay was only momentary. a slender girl, plainly dressed, apparently not over nineteen years of age, with her arm in a sling, made her way to the front of the platform. "i'm no speaker," she began in a low voice but which penetrated to the farthest part of the hall, "and there ain't many of you as knows me. i'm only a picket. i can't give you union backing like mr. casper, and i can't give you money like mrs. dodson, and i can't give you ideas like miss horgan. all i've got is my two feet and my two hands and my tongue--though my tongue ain't as good as my legs, as the cop that pinched me will tell you. but you've all been thinking and talking about what you was going to do. now i want to tell you what's being done while you're talking. look at this--" she pointed to the arm that was in the sling. "this is what the police do. the copper that twisted my arm gets his pay from the taxpayers, but he gets his orders from our bosses. i got this for talkin' to girls as they came out of the stores. i was lucky not to get anythin' worse, as some of the other girls can tell you. i want to tell you girls," she clenched her fist and her voice shrilled, "that the only way you'll get respect out of these capitalists is to _force_ it out of 'em, and a good many of you is goin' to get hurt in the job." "how horrible!" exclaimed judith softly. "is that really true?" "yes," said good, "it is. i happen to know the case. the doctors say that her arm will probably never be of much use to her again. a detective twisted her wrist for not moving on when she was ordered to. he claimed she kicked him." "and i hope she did!" snapped judith vindictively. good smiled quizzically, but before he could say anything the girl on the platform had resumed speaking. "i wish i could tell you what's in my mind," she said slowly. "i ain't no speaker, but this is the principal thing i want to say to you girls. if i can stick it out i guess you can. that's about all i've got to say." she turned and fled precipitately. there was not much handclapping after her exit, not because she had not aroused sympathy but because exaltation had given place to a grim determination better expressed in silence. there was a momentary pause in the proceedings. then a girl stood up in the crowd. "i want to tell you that that girl is right," she declared fiercely. "my sister was knocked down by a copper and kicked and broke one of her ribs. if you're going into this thing you want to go with your eyes open." as she sat down, another rose, and another and another, until half a dozen girls had given their experiences, each one of which brought a gasp of horror to judith's lips. "why, this is dreadful," she cried. "i never dreamed ..." but good merely smiled to himself. "they've only told one side of it," he said. "there are things--much worse." judith shuddered understandingly but said nothing further until they were in the motor on the way home. "i never heard anything more terrible," she cried, "or more surprising. if people only _knew_, such things couldn't take place. decent people wouldn't countenance such brutality." "no," admitted good, "but decent people don't know anything about it." "and why don't they?" she demanded. "why aren't they told? why aren't they _forced_ to know about it?" "would you suggest a house-to-house canvass?" he asked ironically. "don't be silly. why don't the newspapers take it up?" "it isn't news to them." then the obvious thought struck her. "why," she laughed, "i almost forgot. we have a newspaper of our own. why can't we tell the story those girls told, in _the dispatch_?" "for the same reason that the other papers can't," he said softly. "and what is that?" "they don't dare." "don't dare? i'm afraid i don't understand." "who has the keenest interest in keeping wrist-twisting out of sight?" "the police?" "no. who loses if the girls win? who suffers if they organise, raise wages and improve conditions?" "their employers, i suppose." "just so. and who are their employers?" "the department stores?" "well, then, isn't it perfectly clear? who are the newspapers' heaviest advertisers?" "oh,--" "miss wynrod," said good seriously, "to champion the cause of those girls and to tell the truth about what they are suffering might cost _the dispatch_--a great deal of money." judith was silent for a moment. "in other words, we are hired by the department stores to be neutral." "precisely," said good. "suppose we snapped our fingers at them?" "i've already told you what would happen." "but i thought you wanted a free newspaper?" "i did and do, miss wynrod." "how many curious things i'm learning," said judith. then, with a shudder, she added, "what a dreadful neighbourhood this is. did you ever see so many children?" "do children make neighbourhoods dreadful?" he asked sarcastically, nettled by her irrelevance. but she was silent, remaining so until they reached downtown. "i think,--if you'll let me off at _the dispatch_ office ..." said good stiffly. mechanically she gave the order to the chauffeur but made no reply. he wondered what was going through her mind. her silence seemed to indicate that his great dream had been shattered before it had been well launched. she had broken at the first pressure. he might have expected as much. environment and training could not be so quickly counteracted. but none the less it was bitterly disappointing. he dreaded the word he would have to give to bassett. "good night, miss wynrod," he said quietly as the car stopped and he got out. "i hope you found the evening not unprofitable." "mr. good," said judith slowly, looking at him steadily, "i want everybody who reads _the dispatch_ to-morrow to read--about that girl and her broken arm. do you understand?" his eyes widened. "and you know the consequences?" he whispered huskily. "i think you have made them quite clear." "you have friends among the department store owners, miss wynrod." judith smiled, but it was a grim smile. "i think i can venture where mrs. dodson has ventured," she said. good seized her hand and his voice trembled. "i was afraid--for a moment, but--you're a wonder! good night." his emotion communicated itself to her and she did not venture to say anything in reply. she merely shook his hand firmly and sank back in the cushions. he turned and sped for the office. "bassett," he said, with simulated indifference a minute later, "let's see that stuff you've got on the girls." "you mean," cried bassett, "you're going to run it?" "double leaded," said good shortly. "got any pictures?" "say," said bassett, "i've got some stuff that would make dynamite look like lemon candy. we'll make _the world_ look like a gospel messenger. i'll make you a bet, good." "yes?" "i'll bet you a stein of imported muenchen that there'll be hell let loose to-morrow in several advertising offices we know of." "why not ask me for it outright?" asked good with a smile. chapter viii the greatest game in the world on the day set for the beginning of roger wynrod's business career, good introduced him to the more important members of the staff, all of whom expressed their profound pleasure at making his acquaintance, and without further conversation departed to more pressing duties. their indifference rather nettled him, but he consoled himself by ascribing it to the high pressure under which newspaper offices notoriously laboured. he was quite mollified, however, when he reached the door of the office he was to occupy, and found his name prominently engrossed upon it in letters of gilt. he was also much pleased with the furniture, particularly the desk, a tremendous affair of mahogany, filled with all manner of alluring receptacles. the office, he was gratified to note, while not large, appeared more or less private. "now then," said good, "here's your shop. get to work. i'll be around the building somewhere if you need me." jenkins, the business manager, had suggested, rather diffidently, that a good way to begin to work would be to acquire familiarity with the files of the paper. so, after making a cursory examination of his more material surroundings, he attacked the huge volumes which he found on his table, containing, he was sure, copies of _the dispatch_ for at least a century back. he pursued the task diligently enough, at first, but it was not long before his interest flagged. one issue seemed painfully like another. it was very quiet in the little room, and as he sat wearily fingering the dusty sheets he felt curiously isolated and futile. the conviction gradually settled upon him that business was hardly as entertaining as it had been described. by eleven o'clock his patience was exhausted. with a word or two, more vigorous than elegant, he swept the bulky tomes upon the floor, and went in search of jenkins. the business manager ran his hand through his hair helplessly when roger stated his grievance. "i've been awful busy, mr. wynrod," he said apologetically. "if you'll only be patient. just a day or two--rushed to death just now, don't you know." "in a day or two?" cried roger. "good lord, man--two _hours_ have been too much for me. something's simply got to happen or i'll go nutty!" jenkins laughed, though not very mirthfully. inwardly he was a seething cauldron of wrath at the fate which had afflicted him with so useless an appendage as mr. wynrod. he had been harassed enough by the change in ownership, without that. but fate has a queer way of settling knotty problems very suddenly and very surprisingly. as jenkins laughed and cursed behind the laugh, a boy put a card on his desk. "maybe good ... he might have something ..." he said to roger abstractedly, as he picked up the card. "ask mr. good to step down here," he called after the retreating boy. "awful rush these days," he murmured. suddenly his whole manner and expression changed completely. his resigned annoyance was transformed into patent excitement. he fingered the card nervously for a moment. then he looked up at roger, his brows knitted. "would you mind excusing me for just a moment, mr. wynrod? there's a gentleman here to see me ... very important...." roger resisted an impulse to ask who the gentleman might be who had created such manifest consternation, and turned to leave. but as he put his hand to the door, it opened, and good entered. "hello," said the tall man, "making trouble around here already? what's the...?" before he could finish, jenkins had him by the arm and was drawing him toward the window, whispering excitedly. roger was as effectually excluded from the conversation as if he had not existed. as he watched the animated gestures of the business manager the strange thought struck him that he himself was the subject of the conference. his suspicions were confirmed when good whistled softly, and, turning suddenly, intimated, in a voice more authoritative than apologetic, that his prompt withdrawal would be appreciated. roger, deeply offended, was about to comply, when the door opened again, and a man stood on the threshold, twirling his mustache. jenkins rushed forward to greet him. "oh, mr. faxon," he cried, "how are you? glad to see you. sit down, won't you? i ..." faxon ignored the proffered chair. "hello, roger," he said abruptly, "the boy said you were here. thought i'd butt in." "hello, joe," said roger, striving to understand the tense atmosphere which seemed to pervade the room. "i'm just bound for my office. come on up." he noticed with surprise that jenkins frowned and shook his head savagely at the invitation. "come on, joe," he repeated, resentful at jenkins' behaviour. but as he put his hand on the doorknob, good rushed into the breach. "one moment, if you please, mr. faxon," he said smoothly. "mr. wynrod is hardly familiar enough yet with things here to be of use to you in--er--matters of business." faxon wheeled sharply and stared as if he had not before realised the tall man's presence. "you'll doubtless leave that to me to discover, won't you?" he inquired with studied insolence. abruptly he turned again to roger. "now then, may i see you--alone?" roger's eyes wandered from one to the other helplessly. but before he could speak, good came to the fore again. his jaw was set firmly and his eyes were cold. "see here, mr. faxon," he said, with characteristic disdain of subtlety, "let's not mince matters. jenkins and i know perfectly well what you're here for. wynrod doesn't. i'd suggest that we talk things over together." "thanks awfully for the advice," snapped faxon sarcastically. "but i'm not here to see you or mr. jenkins. i'm here to see mr. wynrod. and i'm here to see him privately--you hear--_privately_. if such a visit is not contrary to the rules of the office, or if mr. wynrod is allowed to decide such matters for himself...." good had kept his gaze fastened on roger as faxon spoke, and the flood of colour in the young man's face at the latter's innuendo, had not been lost on him. "you need say no more, mr. faxon," he interrupted suddenly. then he turned to roger. "wynrod," he said slowly, as if measuring his words, "you know, i believe, who's boss of this paper. act accordingly." with a low bow to faxon and a nod to jenkins, who followed him, he left the room. "if you know who's boss," said faxon with a sneer as the door closed, "they apparently don't." "appearances are frequently deceiving," said roger shortly. "i hope so," snapped faxon, his face hardening, as he drew a folded newspaper from his pocket and threw it on the desk. "now then, my boy, i'd like to know the meaning of this?" "of what?" asked roger quietly. "oh, don't stall." "i'm not stalling." "you mean to say you don't know?" demanded faxon with honest astonishment. "you haven't seen fit as yet to tell me." "this sentimental poppycock you've been running in _the dispatch_ about our strike." "and what about it?" faxon's manner changed and he smiled indulgently. "you haven't been in business very long, roger. there are some things you don't understand very clearly." "very probably." "but there are some things, my boy, so elementary that a child could understand them." "in other words," said roger coldly, "even i." "yes," snapped faxon brutally, "even you." "well, go on." "in the paper this morning there is a mess of stuff, probably cooked up by that damn fool, good, taking the side of those girls against us. now what i want to know is the meaning of it." "the meaning?" "yes. are you on our side or on theirs?" "my dear faxon," said roger, "you have already told me how little i know about such things. how can you expect me to answer such a question as that? mr. good has my sister's confidence and mine. if he ran this article, i believe it to be a good article. and anyway, who the hell are you to come here asking me questions like that?" the young man's temper had suddenly ignited. his face paled and his lips became set in a thin straight line. faxon raised his hand. "now don't get sore, roger," he said more affably. "i simply want to come to an understanding with you, so we know where each other stands, that's all. were these articles printed with your sanction or not?" he asked slowly, tapping on the desk with his pencil. "i wasn't consulted," said roger simply; "that's not my business." "well, damn it," roared faxon, losing his temper, "it ought to be your business! isn't it your business to prevent a lot of crack-brained idiots from making a fool out of you?" "i don't see that they are." "well, everybody else sees it. now look here, roger. we'll overlook it this time because it wasn't done with your knowledge or consent and you naturally don't understand matters very clearly yet. but it can't happen again, you hear. we won't stand for it." "and who is supposed to be talking?" asked roger mildly. "who's talking? _i'm_ talking! and i'm a vice-president of corey & company. that's who's talking." roger shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigarette. "honestly, joe, i don't get you at all. what's all the fuss about anyway?" "good god, man," cried faxon in exasperation. he drew a long breath, and, drawing his chair up closer to roger's, began an elementary explanation of certain business relationships. in the meanwhile bassett and jenkins and good sat staring moodily at one another. "it's a shame!" exclaimed bassett, savagely chewing on his unlighted cigar. "he'll twist that kid around his finger. he'll pull the wool over his eyes forty different ways." "faxon's a clever fellow," mused jenkins mournfully. good filled his pipe and lighted it. he smoked in silence for a little while. "the lord's got to be trusted some time," he sighed finally; "i suppose it might just as well be now--but a little more priming would have helped. just a little more." "oh, the kid will knuckle under, that's certain," snarled bassett. "there's no doubt of _that_. this whole proposition is doomed to failure. it's too good to be true, altogether too good. i tell you, good, you're asking too much of these people. you're trying to make water rise higher than its source. you're trying to make them prove superior to their whole history, their environment, their friends, everything they've got." "people prove superior to those things every day," said good mildly. "not when they have to pay as big a price as you're asking." "don't you know there are people who have to be made to pay a big price before they think a thing's worth anything?" bassett snorted and bit his cigar clear through. "you're the damnedest, most idiotic optimist i ever hope to see!" he cried. then they all laughed cheerlessly and relapsed into their moody, waiting silence. at that very moment, in jenkins' private office, roger wynrod leaned back in his chair and lit another cigarette. he puffed thoughtfully for a moment or two without speaking. "see if i've got this straight, joe," he said finally. "as i understand your proposition, it's this: as long as we lie down and play good dog, we're a _good_ advertising medium. when we get up and bark at something we think ought to be barked at, then we're a _bad_ advertising medium." "that's one way of expressing it, roger," laughed faxon. suddenly the young man's quiet, thoughtful demeanour changed. he leaned forward and his jaw hardened. "in other words, when you spend money in advertising with us it's merely a figure of speech. your advertising appropriation is a sort of slush fund. it's the price you pay for keeping us silent on things you want kept silent. is that straight?" "i wouldn't put it just that way. but ..." "well, then, suppose,--just suppose, mind you,--suppose we continue on the line of thought expressed in this article that irritated you people so much this morning, what then?" faxon leaned forward and his fist came down on the desk with a smash. "wynrod," he said sharply, "corey & company has less than six thousand lines of its contract with _the dispatch_ remaining. if you continue to attack us in this way, i can inform you that that contract will not be renewed." "i see," said roger quietly. "furthermore," added faxon in the same hard tone, "the contract you now hold with brooks, carpenter, weinstein, levigne and all the other members of the department store association, will not be renewed as they expire." "i see. and if orders are given not to run anything more along this line, what then?" faxon smiled. "in that case i can inform you that the pleasant relations that have hitherto existed between _the dispatch_ and the large stores of this city, will continue as before." "you tempt me, joe," said wynrod in what was little more than a whisper, but with an inscrutable look in his eyes. then he turned and walked to the window. a faint smile of triumph flitted over faxon's features as he watched the young man's back. suddenly wynrod turned around. "joe," he said, very calmly but very firmly, "you've been frank with me, and now i'll be the same with you. there are at least half a dozen reasons why i would like to tell you to go to hell, but there's only one necessary. if there was anything needed to stiffen my backbone, it's supplied by the fact that you can come here attempting to give me orders. that won't go, joe. you came here this morning and insisted on seeing me because you thought you could bully me. that's why you wouldn't talk to jenkins or good. but you haven't sized me up right, joe, and you'd better run back to corey just as fast as you can and tell him so." the triumphant smile faded from faxon's face and it slowly reddened. "that means ..." "anything you choose to make it," said roger quietly. unexpectedly faxon changed his tactics. with a friendly smile he jumped to his feet. "i say, roger, you don't understand what you're saying. there's no threatening about it. this is just a plain business talk, pure and simple. we're friends. what's the use of getting up on your ear and talking like that? do you realise what it'll mean to your paper? you can't afford to do it. i'm not talking to you, personally, you understand. i'm talking to you as a disinterested outsider. i'm giving you a straight tip. i'm trying to save you from making a fool of yourself, don't you understand?" "i understand perfectly," said roger. "there's nothing to be said further, is there?" "come now," insisted faxon. "don't be a clam, roger. let's discuss this thing quietly and get to the bottom of it." "i have nothing further to say," said roger coldly. "have you?" faxon looked at him helplessly for a moment and when he saw the determination plainly evident in the young man's face and realised that there was no further purpose in discussion, he took his hat. "you're a fine young demigod now, roger," he sneered. "but wait. bigger men than you have tried this game before. they've broken--every one of them." faxon paused in the doorway as if he would say more, but roger had already turned his back upon him. with an oath he slammed the door. "i wonder what he takes me for," murmured roger. "thinks i'm a child does he ... got another think, i guess." then he went in search of good and jenkins. his sense of isolation and futility seemed to have deserted him utterly. for the first time in his life he felt himself at grips with a man's reality. disdaining the elevator he skipped up the stairs to bassett's office with his heart full of a curious exaltation such as he had never experienced before. like a boy, but feeling very much a man, he burst into the editor's office. "good lord," he cried, as he saw their sombre countenances, "who's dead?" "well, what happened?" asked jenkins perfunctorily, as if he knew the answer already. "oh, we fixed things up beautifully," said roger, lightly. "of course," muttered bassett under his breath, "i knew you would." though good did not speak, the question was in his expression. roger saw it, and a light came into his eyes which none of them had ever seen there before. "i hope you've got some more of that stuff on the girls for to-morrow," he said quietly. "go after 'em strong." then, while the others sat thunderstruck, he drew a cigarette from his case and lighted it, deliberately. [illustration: "i say, you know," he said between puffs, "business is the--greatest--game--in the world."] "i say, you know," he said, between puffs, "business is the--greatest--game--in the world." chapter ix burned bridges imrie's impulsive resignation from st. viateur's was not treated at all seriously by the vestry. "the natural impetuousness of youth," observed mr. corey, not a little virtuously; for mr. corey had never been impetuous in his life. the other gentlemen quite agreed with him. judge wolcott was magnanimous. "for my part, i believe in letting bygones be bygones." mr. aishton, who was very thin and dry, giving the curious impression of never having experienced youth, was more explicit. "it's new ideas--unassimilated," he declared. "his years make him restive. a little guidance--that is all--merely guidance!" mr. podgers was the only hesitant one. he was very large and rubicund, with a resonant voice and a gusty dominant manner. he was extremely rich and entirely self made, with the process still somewhat incomplete. most of his life had been devoted to the single-handed task of besting his fellow men, and, until success, with its automobiles and ten servants and social responsibilities, had arrived, matters theological had been of absolute unimportance. now, however, he was quite the most orthodox member of the vestry, which, to be sure, was very desirable in one whose contributions were so large. there was really nothing illogical or surprising in the fact that faith and a set of ancestors came to mr. podgers simultaneously with his distinction as a manufacturer of therapeutic alcohol. "i am not at all in favour," he said with profound conviction, "of permitting even slightly lax doctrine to gain currency. the faith must be kept pure. the church must be preserved. otherwise ..." mr. podgers did not deign to indicate what shocking things might eventuate. that the others shared his apprehension was evident from their knitted brows and shaking heads. but mr. podgers, having expressed his opinion and made clear his unimpeachable conservatism, was anxious to get back to business, where conservatism, a little of which, after all, went a very long way, was not so necessary. so he rose. "i think mr. imrie can be informed that his resignation will not be accepted." "undoubtedly," echoed mr. campbell, who was mr. podgers' legal adviser, though he took more advice than he gave. "i think no one questions that." he surveyed the others as if daring anyone to question it. no one did. "i will talk to him again," said judge wolcott. "like a father," he added benevolently. the other gentlemen accepted his suggestion with alacrity. aside from a reluctance at wasting valuable time in such a comparatively unimportant matter, there was a natural distaste for the possibility of unpleasantness. it was quickly decided, therefore, that the judge should be the vestry's vehicle of "guidance." filled with confidence and the best of intentions, he visited the clergyman without delay. remembering his former discomfiture, he began very tactfully. imrie listened quietly while he dilated upon the generosity and tolerance of the vestry ... and then, instead of being grateful and humiliated, as might reasonably have been expected, said that he "would see." to cover his surprise and irritation, the judge went all over it again, and this time imrie "hoped for the best." it was very unsatisfactory. it was with considerable asperity that he advised the young man "not to be impossible." so far from being properly impressed by the generosity and tolerance of the vestry, and therefore reverting to his former eloquent innocuousness, imrie improved the following sunday with a more or less dispassionate analysis of the relations existing between a clergyman and what he had the extreme bad taste to call his "employers." he drew analogies which were extraordinarily tactless and unpleasant, and, as mrs. aishton, a very refined woman, said afterward, made her regret that her daughter was present. mr. podgers shook his head, but said nothing. therefore mr. campbell also said nothing. but judge wolcott talked a great deal. and the rest of the vestry talked a great deal too, though there was no meeting. but when on the next sunday dr. imrie cast all decent discretion aside and said things concerning "hypocrisy" so crudely that even the stupidest of his congregation could understand, and even the most tolerant could not evade; and when that dreadful sermon was followed by one on "charity" in which absolutely all the bonds of good taste were shattered, mr. podgers ceased shaking his head and spoke. then mr. campbell spoke, and a meeting was held. "he is insane," said mr. podgers with a finality which indicated a profound familiarity with all forms of mental aberration. "quite," agreed mr. campbell, as if it was almost too obvious for comment. "it is outrageous," declared mr. corey with a vindictiveness which contrasted strangely with his white hair and pink cheeks and twinkling little blue eyes. but it must be remembered that the barbs of the clergyman's inexcusable tactlessness had lodged rather definitely in mr. corey's bosom. a verdict was passed of greater or less severity, according to individual temperament. mr. podgers was quite impersonal, but positive, as befitted an upholder of pure faith. mr. campbell, for obvious reasons, was even more positive. mr. corey was frankly personal. judge wolcott was the most regretful. yet even he could not overlook what he termed imrie's "ingratitude." he felt that the young man should be "disciplined," though he was vague as to the method. it was finally decided, upon the suggestion of mr. campbell, that mr. podgers should write the clergyman a note. mr. podgers honestly intended his note to be a sort of premonitory reprimand. but his life had unfitted him for delicate intimations. the words which left him as carefully wrought subtleties reached imrie, in some occult fashion, as bald commands. the answer was made accordingly. its effect, of course, was to remove any lingering tolerance on the part of the vestry, and his second resignation was solemnly accepted. the young man was called in, after the decision, in order to hear their "deep regret" that he was "going to leave them." he listened patiently to their assurances of admiration, shook hands punctiliously with each one, handed over all his accounts and plans, and went back to his room to think about it. he was not sorry that the break had come. it had been inevitable, he realised, from the moment that judith's contempt had driven him to put himself to the test. to prove her wrong he had proven himself wrong, and his whole life was upset thereby. the smoothly running engine had stopped short. but characteristically he put all thought of its previous smooth running out of his mind and devoted himself to a consideration of its present inaction. at this crisis he felt neither need nor desire for friends. none, he realised clearly, could possibly understand or assist. he did not yet entirely understand himself. but he knew that whether he wanted friends or not, he could not well avoid them. the more candid would upbraid him and attempt conciliation: the more tactful would be sympathetic. both he dreaded. so, after a day of meditation, in which his thoughts merely moved in a circle, he put a few essentials into a bag, stored the rest of his belongings, and disappeared, with a rod and a gun, into the north woods. there, while his memory in st. viateur's grew more vague and less fragrant, in contrast to the ductile genius of his successor, and with only an indian guide for company, he spread out the map of his soul and planned his campaign. the first possibility was the most obvious. but it was the least attractive. to be true to what he now conceived to be his real self would involve merely a repetition of his experience at st. viateur's. he was young and comparatively inexperienced, and it never occurred to him that all churches were not alike. the result would be one living after another, all in a constantly descending scale, until he either capitulated or died. neither prospect appealed to him. night after night was spent with his pipe and the unwinking stars, but he came no nearer to a decision. finally he despaired of finding salvation in solitude, and went back to the city. he established himself in a hotel, preferring to avoid friends and relatives, few of whom, he felt, could possibly sympathise with him. it is said that every criminal sooner or later visits the scene of his crime. some such spirit actuated imrie. the day after his arrival in the city was sunday, and late in the morning, at an hour when he knew that the congregation would be settling back in resignation preparatory to the sermon, he strolled up to st. viateur's. but he did not enter. he preferred to stand across the street, and muse. it was not a beautiful building. squat, massive, in places heavily ornate, in others dingily bare, it was a mere surface replica of pristine architecture, at best, a caricature. it was a pretence even if a candid one. it struck him with shocking force that its grim insincerity was symbolic. within its counterfeit solidity, wood and tin masquerading as stone, machine-made carving strutting in fancied kinship to the inspired craftsmanship of mediæval ornament, dwelt a faith equally false, equally dead. superficially it had not changed through the centuries: but the soul, the true life had gone from it. as the building was but the grinning skull of art, so the faith within its walls was but the dry and rattling bones of truth. those days in the changeless solitude of the forest, where the god in the brown mists and the everlasting purple hills, was too near to be worshipped, where pan was more divine than jehovah, had expanded imrie's soul more than he realised. a veil he knew then, had covered his eyes. he had seen truth with others' eyes. he had preached a truth which was his only by reflection. now, for the first time in his life, he was exultantly conscious of seeing things with his own eyes. st. viateur's, which had once been so inspiring, was now only pitiful. even its successor, more vital as a work of art, would still house but a ghost of truth. he stared with a new wonder at the motor-cars, hurrying past, at a wireless telegraph station in the distance, thrusting its antennæ into the illimitable skies. how could he have ever been so blind! in all the world--and on it and over it--man was ever seeking truth and finding it. always, like the wireless, he was pushing his antennæ into uncharted space, never resting content with the achievements of yesterday. it was only in the st. viateur's that men still sat mumbling forgotten ritual, praying to shattered idols, rotting in the darkness. outside, in the sunshine, the world forged ahead, living always in struggle, dying only in content. his had been death in life, thought imrie with something between a thrill and a shudder. but there were years left to him yet. he threw back his shoulders and set his jaws as he turned homeward. for the first time he felt that he had a key to the great mystery of life. paradox vanished, conflict dissolved. it seemed amazingly simple. his call to the ministry was a phenomenon, an aberration of adolescence. he still looked upon it with tenderness, but no longer with seriousness. beside this new call now sounding bell-like in his heart, that other was but a beating of pans to drive the ghosts away, an empty relic of childhood. to expound creeds was a petty matter of business. he had been no nobler than the barrister who seeks to make right the wrong of his client for a consideration of sundry pieces of silver. he had been a mere tradesman in the things of the soul. it had seemed enough. now, crystal-clear, stretched the true road toward which he was summoned. he had dallied long and comfortably in the well-tilled fields of the past: he was called now to the hard, never-ending conquest of the future. he would learn the truth, and it would set him free ... and then, mayhap, he would set others free. he was restless that evening, after dinner. the self-imposed solitude of the hotel had begun to be irksome. forgetting momentarily that it was sunday, he decided to visit a theatre. but as he ran through the blatant announcements of plays, an inconspicuous little advertisement caught his eye. half an hour later, in consequence of what he felt was a veritably inspired accident, he was in a theatre, listening to a sermon by a man who repeatedly assured his audience that he was not a clergyman. imrie noticed with surprise that the congregation was largely of men, and the thought struck him with unpleasant force that they were present quite entirely of their own volition. he wondered ironically how many people would attend st. viateur's if there were no social ends to be achieved. the man who sat next to him answered some of the questions which rose in his mind. he was about his own age, keen-featured, nervously alert, very fashionably dressed, a type more often found on the golf links than in church on sunday mornings. often, thought imrie with a kind of shame, he had himself preached against the "agnosticism," the "irreligion," the "spiritual indifference," of such men. but this man's obviously profound attention to a mere _sermon_ was a little bewildering. from him imrie learned that the speaker was a jew, formerly a rabbi, who had established a "church" in a distant city, which, though without wealth or machinery of any sort, even to a home of its own, never had a vacant seat, and had become a powerful factor in civic affairs. the stranger's familiarity with the speaker's history, and his manifest enthusiasm, were as surprising as they were significant, and as imrie cast his eyes around the hall, he saw many like him. it struck him unpleasantly that men of this sort had not been numerous in his own congregation. after the service, moved by an impulse which he did not stop to analyse, he made his way to the platform, introduced himself to the speaker, and asked permission to call upon him at his hotel. it was an act very foreign, he realised, to what he had always thought his natural reserve. but the spirit which impelled him was as strong as it was novel. perhaps, he reflected, it was only necessity. he needed aid. something told him that dr. weis could give it. the next afternoon he presented himself before the former rabbi, and without hesitation told him everything of the quandary in which he found himself, omitting nothing of the circumstances which had brought it about. weis, a compact little man, with snapping black eyes and a combative mouth, listened attentively, never taking his half-smiling gaze from imrie's face. "the similarity is--remarkable," he said softly when the recital was finished. then he added crisply: "well, young man, what do you propose doing--next?" "i came to ask you that question," said imrie briefly. the little rabbi pursed his lips thoughtfully. "so--you came to ask me. well, i have answered it. i moved on--yes. but it is a hard answer--oh, quite hard." he was silent for a moment, snapping his finger-nails one against another. suddenly he looked up. "do you wish," he demanded, "to be a preacher?" he paused and bored imrie with his sharp little eyes. "do you wish to sway the multitudes with your eloquence? it is applause--yes--you seek? you want _your_ church--or the _people's_ church ... what?" "i'm afraid i don't quite...." "you must understand," said weis bluntly. "it's quite essential. you wish to free yourself from dogmatic vestries. very well--will you substitute for dogmatic vestries, your dogmatic self--yes?" and, when imrie looked a little crestfallen, he added with a smile, "we're _all_ dogmatic, my young friend. to all of us freedom is the right to rule others." "what is the alternative?" "there is a plan--i've thought of it often. you want to avoid a bureaucratic church. you must not founder in the charybdis of an autocratic one. you have means of your own?" imrie nodded. "that's excellent--for you. but do not finance the church on your money. it must be self-supporting. and don't have 'patrons.' you'll soon have another vestry." "but the control?" "trustees. build a democratic church. let the congregation elect the trustees. let the regular attendants vote. give out tickets at each meeting and redeem three--five--a dozen, as you determine, for a ballot. then let your trustees choose the speakers. you may be the chief servant. you must not be master. you may preach occasionally--there must be many--all types--even jews. to live, it must be free. you must seek men with messages. anarchists, devils, catholics, free-masons, republicans, single-taxers, socialists, aristocrats. as milton put it, you must let truth battle in a free and open encounter. then you will have something big, vital, valuable. is it not so?" he paused for breath, and imrie sat silent in amazement at the enthusiasm, the breadth of vision, the fertile ingenuity of the little man. then the self-consciousness which had shackled him hitherto in the interview, fell away, and he took up the thread where weis had momentarily laid it down. gradually, as proposals were made and rejected and remade, with not a little healthy acrimony, and a very great deal of humour on the part of the older man, which imrie needed most of all, the idea took shape. "ho--yes," cried weis, as a crushing echo to one of imrie's most rhetorical flights. "that is fine--yes. fine words--yes. but words--pouf--what are they? you are young--you wish to reform the world. that is excellent--ambition--yes. but no more. if you succeed beyond your dreams, you will do little, very little. hitch your wagon to a star--yes. but don't try to ride it. on the ground all the time. save a soul or two if you can, not neglecting the bodies--and be glad. most of us cannot save our own. think of the little bug who makes coral islands. be a good little bug. be an earnest, god-fearing bug. help your fellow bugs along the narrow way. but don't forget--you are only a bug--yes--only a bug--oh, so trifling!" it was long after dark when they parted. "it is a field worth tilling," said the older man as they shook hands. "your hand is on the plough. keep your eyes ahead." "i feel an inspiration," cried imrie. "ho--yes," said weis dryly. "but that will pass. then it will be work. but i will help you. i am older. i know--some things. you are a christian. i am only a jew. still--i can help. ho--yes. i will be with you when the inspiration goes. i am more useful than inspiration. yes--i will be with you--until you turn back. then i will not be with you." "i will not turn back," cried imrie firmly. "yes--i have known young men before--who would not turn back. we shall see--yes." imrie felt, as he walked toward the elevator, that there was nothing in the world he would not suffer rather than have those snapping black eyes look upon him with scorn, and hear that crisp voice, with its indefinable accent, say-- "ho--yes. i have seen--_another_ young man." chapter x a bluff called furniss, the oldest reporter on _the dispatch_, in point of service, was the one man with whom good would have liked to part company. but he was so distinctly capable, and there was such an utter absence of tangible reason for his dismissal that he remained in his place, a constant, though impalpable, source of irritation. he was the only member of the staff whose distrust of good's motives remained fixed and unconcealed. it was perhaps not wholly his fault. temperamentally saturnine, years of service covering "police" had sapped his faith in human nature. to him there was no such thing as altruism. at best it was but a cloak to some subtle form of personal exploitation. just what good's "game" was, he did not know. but that he had no confidence in his superior was perfectly evident. good did everything he could to disarm this hostility, but the only result was to confirm furniss in the belief that an effort was being made to blind him. finally good gave up the task, although he never ceased to regret his subordinate's unconquerable attitude. he was so completely without suspicion himself that distrust of himself in others was peculiarly painful. he and bassett were in conference one afternoon when furniss came in. "i've got a tip," he said directly to bassett, pointedly ignoring good. "maybe a story." "shoot," said bassett, moving his cigar to the other side of his mouth, which was his method of indicating interest. "the railroads have brought their scrap on the constitutionality of the liability law up to the appellate court. hennessy of the b. & f. got drunk down state the other night and shot off his face about what was going to happen. he said more than he meant to." "well." the cigar went back to its former corner. that signified as near excitement as bassett ever got. "according to him they've gotten one of the court, and they're going to get another--up here." "yes." bassett's cigar was only half its former length and disappearing rapidly. "hennessy's in town to-day. so's harper of the m. t., lloyd, of the western, and several others." "go on." bassett had begun on a fresh cigar. "they're all hanging out at the wellesley--room . if anything stirs, it ought to be there." "yes." "i sized up the place this morning when nobody was there. also i hired the next room to it. there's a doorway that commands the whole room. it struck me that if we could put a camera covering , by way of that doorway, and have another fellow watching through a hole in the wall, the minute they start anything, we'd yank open the door and touch off the flash. i guess we'd have something, what?" "you're not without brains, furniss," said bassett unemotionally. "thanks," said furniss in a similar tone. neither tone expressed the feelings of its owner. bassett never wasted time in praise or blame--until after the matter was concluded. then he excelled in either capacity. but the present moment called for action, not words. "you and good with sato for the pictures ought to cover it," he said crisply. a curious expression twisted furniss' lips. it was not a smile. it might rather be called a premonition of one. "if they pull off anything it'll be to-night," he said, as bassett turned back from his insistent telephone. "both hennessy and lloyd i happen to know are going south to-morrow." "i'll save the first column for you," said bassett with as near a chuckle as he ever permitted himself. "it'll break early, if at all," said furniss. then he turned insolently to good. "pardon me," he said not at all pleasantly, "may i have a word with bassett, _mister_ good?" there was nothing for it, but for good to leave. but his face paled and his teeth clicked. as the door closed behind him, bassett swung around in his chair. "that was a hell of a thing to do," he snapped. "if he doesn't tie a can to you, i'll do it myself. who the devil do you think you are, anyway?" furniss only laughed. "better ask that four-flusher who _he_ is. his game's going up in smoke to-night, or i miss my guess. i'll show him up--you watch." bassett took the cigar out of his mouth and laid it on the desk. "what's the answer?" furniss' eyes narrowed. "who's the only judge of the appellate court in this town?" bassett hummed softly. "the hell you say!" "exactly. now you can figure it out. what do you think the virtuous good will do when he finds out? want a double-leaded three column head, won't he,--with pictures?" furniss sneered and rolled a cigarette. bassett looked out of the window and whistled thoughtfully. "this is just an ordinary newspaper," said furniss with significance, as he went out. bassett did not turn around. he remained silent and motionless for a long time. the pile of papers on his desk grew higher and higher, but he paid no heed. the telephone rang and rang unanswered. he still sat staring into vacancy, the slow movement of his jaws as they chewed the cigar, the only sign of life. one of the office boys expressed it perhaps as well as it could be expressed. "gee," he whispered to his companions, "the old man's awful tired." then the buzzer rang, and the boy who answered it concluded that it was a short-lived weariness, or that he had been sadly misinformed. in the meantime good had gone to his own office. he was puzzled by the curious behaviour of furniss and vaguely apprehensive. the atmosphere was tense: it bade fair to be a stormy night. he was not given to credence in signs and portents, but the sullen muttering of the thunder and the frequent flashes of lightning in the darkening sky filled him with inexplicable dread. he lit his pipe and tried to tell himself that it was merely a case of nerves, aggravated by the weather. but the attempt was a failure. then the door opened and roger wynrod entered, his face such a picture of health and contentment that even the hardiest devils could tarry no longer in the room. "i've been hunting you all day," he cried. "i've got news." "a beat?" "hardly," he laughed. "all the papers have it. that ought to give you a clue. can't you guess?" "not possibly." "well--she'll have me." "obviously you're imparting news of great moment," said good severely. "i've seldom seen you look more completely idiotic. but i don't get you." "why, you wooden-head--molly wolcott--me--we're engaged!" "oh--i thought you had _news_. that's as stale as last year's election." good laughed as he bantered, but the light shining in his eyes showed the tenderness of his feeling for the younger man. "you're a lucky kid." "rather. but i earned it. she's had me over the hurdles more than once. i never had a swelled head with molly in the neighbourhood. she always swore i'd never do." "what made her change?" "no idea. woman's way, i guess." good put his hand on roger's shoulder, and his voice softened. "poppycock," he said slowly. "she never changed. she was only waiting--" "what for?" "for you to grow up. you've been growing fast of late, my boy. the way you've taken hold here--it's been splendid. it's tickled your sister beyond words. and i guess--it's tickled someone else, eh?" "i guess you're about right," he said seriously. "i never was much of a fellow. but i never realised what a useless ass i was until i tried being useful. i came in here more on a lark than anything else. i never dreamed what a mess i could make of things. i thought i was pretty much of a man. i was going to look the ship over and then take up quarters on the bridge. i was going to give you and sis orders in no time. but it didn't take long to wake up. why, i'm not even a decently capable boy. i tell you, good, this thing has taught me--lots. it's been mighty hard--harder than you have any idea of. i've wanted to lie down and quit lots of times. why, i--" "why didn't you?" asked good quietly. "well--there was molly. i knew it was good-bye roger if i did. if there's one thing she hates, it's a yellow streak. why, she--" "that wasn't the only reason, was it?" good's eyes were very bright and keen. for a moment roger looked puzzled. then he hung his head and smiled. "no--it wasn't. i--oh, hang it--i don't want to seem a conceited ass--but--well--i'm not much for the yellow myself. i've never been a quitter in useless things--and--and--well, i just couldn't quit on this job. i just had to go through with it. don't you understand?" "yes--i understand." good smiled, very tenderly. "there's one thing more. i...." roger hesitated, and reddened slightly. "i don't know just how to put it into words, but i want to tell you that i feel i owe molly and oh--everything--to you. i--oh, hang it--i--i...." he stammered and was silent, but he gripped good's hand again and held it fast. the older man's eyes winked with suspicious rapidity, and he swallowed several times before he spoke. when he did there was a little tremble in his voice. "we anglo-saxons," he began. then his voice broke, and he added in a hurried whisper, "we can't talk--such fools...." but as they held each other's hands and looked into each other's eyes, both knew that the other understood. then furniss and the japanese photographer came in, and the tension snapped. roger, who shared good's dislike for the reporter, having even in private characterised him as a "buzzard," quickly withdrew, and good was left to complete the details of the evening's work. furniss plunged into the business at hand, without preliminaries. "there are two doors between our room and . i'll keep watch through the keyhole of one, and when i see anything and give the word, you pull open the other and sato snaps the flash--" "but," interposed good, "suppose something happens--and happens in another part of the room. the camera will have to be far enough away to give clearance for the door, and then it won't cover much--" "perhaps you'd like to have them stage the show outdoors and let us film it for the movies," said furniss sarcastically. the photographer laughed furtively but good affected not to hear him. the reporter seemed to regret his insolence a little. "it's only a hundred to one shot, of course," he explained more amicably. "nothing may happen. it may happen where we can't get it. we can only hope for the best. but there's a table in the centre, and the light's in the centre, and if anything happens that's the most likely place for it. if we get it, we get it, and if we don't, we don't, that's all." "i see," said good, admiring, in spite of himself, the undeniable ability of the man, however displeasing his personality. "one thing more," continued furniss. "the minute they hear the flash they'll break for it. most of 'em will run for the hall, because they're cowards and fools. but hennessy's neither one nor the other, and he'll make straight for us. he's a big guy and ready for rough work. furthermore he's keen. he'll see our game right off. now while sato and i make a getaway, it'll be up to you to stop hennessy. i say you, because you're bigger than i am. can you use your hands--fight?" "i have." "i thought so. well, i'd suggest your pasting him if you can, before he pastes you, and then beating it, too." "how will you leave the hotel?" "glad you asked that. when you leave, don't go for the elevators, but take the stairs. on the third floor you'll find the freight elevator waiting for you. now, is there anything else?" the photographer had a few questions to ask, and good studied furniss while he answered them. the little reporter was like an animal on the trail of its prey. his thin nostrils contracted and expanded as he talked, and there was a lithe, nervous tenseness about every feature of his face. good thought with half a shudder that he would not care to have furniss on his trail. and yet, even as the thought struck him, he was conscious of the little man's eyes upon him, boring him through, as if that were precisely what he was about. he tried to rid himself of the absurd notion, but it persisted. one of the characteristics of furniss was his complete impersonality. he might, almost unaided, devote months of single-handed, implacable effort, as in the famous varney case, to tracking down and placing a whole company of men in the penitentiary; but never with the slightest hint of vindictiveness. he sought out corruption and punished its authors always for the solitary reason that thereby he made news. he was like the bloodhound, which pursues its quarry as long as it has breath in its body--only to overwhelm it with caresses. but now, good fancied, the impersonal note was gone. it seemed to him, why, he could not say, that furniss had a purpose other than to unearth news. there seemed more mastiff than bloodhound in him, more lust for blood than love of the chase. again and again he told himself how silly it was, but he could not rid himself of the suggestion that _he_ was the goal at which the reporter aimed. by eight o'clock the three had begun their vigil. at intervals furniss fixed his eye to the keyhole, turning to stare, with what good thought a very slightly concealed malevolence, at himself. the air was surcharged with expectancy. [illustration: the air was surcharged with expectancy] good smoked his pipe and wondered what it all meant. the photographer lit one cigarette on the end of another, but otherwise appeared as indifferent as a graven image. increasingly furniss kept his eye to the keyhole. suddenly a jerk of his arm brought the others to attention. good emptied his pipe and took up his position by the other door. the photographer crushed out his cigarette on his heel and examined, for the hundredth time, the mechanism of his flash pistol. for a little while they stood tense and watchful, but when nothing happened, they relaxed a trifle. the photographer lit another cigarette. good sat down, but at a glare from the reporter, stood up again. the muffled sound of voices came to them from the other room, occasionally rising in pitch, as if in argument, though no words could be distinguished. they remained thus for what seemed an eternity. once good looked at his watch. it was half past nine. the voices still rose and fell on the other side of the door. once sato yawned, and changed his flash pistol from one hand to the other. suddenly furniss turned from the keyhole, his eyes ablaze, and his lips silently formed the warning. good, his heart thumping uncontrollably, the sense of something terrible impending, more acute than ever, put his hand on the doorknob. the photographer fingered his shutter release.... good never afterward could tell exactly how it all happened. he never could see in his mind's eye the signal from furniss. yet he must have seen it, else the door would never have been opened. all he knew at the moment, and all he could ever remember, was a sudden blinding flash of light, with a dull roar, and he was staring past a roomful of men straight into the eyes of--judge wolcott. they were wide with recognition and helpless terror. then he was conscious of a rush of scurrying feet, and a large man pushing over a chair in front--making for him. it flashed over him that this was hennessy, acting as if the whole thing had been planned and rehearsed. he laughed unconsciously, as if in a dream. it _had_ been rehearsed. as the big man reached the threshold, his eyes flaming, his nostrils dilated, his jaw open, like some mad bull, good's arm straightened mechanically. the blazing eyes and red nostrils vanished, and his knuckles hurt him vaguely. then the lights went out in the other room, and he made for the door. he felt sick to his stomach when he reached the street, and something seemed to press on his temples till he wanted to scream. but the horrible feeling of dread had vanished. he knew now what he had feared. and he understood the light in furniss' eyes. for a moment he stood on the street-corner, swaying like a drunken man, before his shoulders straightened and his jaw set, and he made for a taxi. the office was filled with suppressed excitement when he reached it. bassett was chewing one of his interminable cigars, but the gleam in his eyes betokened the fires in his soul. bassett wanted very much to get on the table and howl, but had anyone even so much as suspected that he was not ice, he would never have recovered from the humiliation. "great stuff," he said with exaggerated passiveness. "first galleys will be up soon. furniss had most of the story written before he pulled the thing off. great lad, furniss." but good, his face grey, the skin, like old parchment, drawn tight to bursting over his high cheek bones, said never a word. he sank into a chair, staring straight before him. "but the picture's the thing," went on bassett, in a tone he might have employed in discussing a press-drive. "it ought to set this town by the ears. wolcott's a big fish to land. church pillar and all that. wonder what made him fall. never had anything on him before. shouldn't wonder if he shot himself," he added, quite indifferently. presently a boy brought in the first batch of proofs. bassett leaped to his desk and buried himself in them. as his pencil moved, fragmentary sentences slipped from his mouth. "great stuff!"--"holy eliza, what a shock to the silk-stockings!"--"st. viateur's'll need a new vestryman."--"furniss--you're a bear!"-- good rose and read listlessly over his shoulder. then he fell to pacing slowly back and forth. "plate developed?" he asked finally, in a forced, dead tone. "bully--bully--" muttered bassett. "what? the plate--oh--guess so. why?" "i want it." bassett turned to his telephone. in a few moments a boy arrived with the negative in his hand. the editor reached for it, but good anticipated him. he took the plate and stood staring at it stupidly. in the meantime furniss had entered. "it's all in," he said, with a heavy sigh. "not bad--eh?" "best ever," said bassett shortly. "you're some kid, furniss." the reporter smiled happily. he wanted no more. then he turned to good, and studied him narrowly. but the tall man, his eyes still fixed on the plate, and his face drawn as if in physical pain, took no notice of him. there was silence in the room, broken only by the rustle as bassett mulled over the proofs. then there was a crash. the negative lay on the desk ... in fragments. "good god!" furniss' hand was poised in mid-air, as if he had been turned to stone. bassett's eyes were staring like a madman's. good leaned over and picking up the proofs on the desk, fell to tearing them slowly to bits. at each tear a spasm of pain crossed furniss' face. but he remained transfixed. "i guess--we won't--run this," said good dully, as if speaking to himself. the words brought bassett to life. like an avalanche, prayers, threats, entreaties, oaths, poured from his lips. he stormed up and down the office, his fists clenched, his clothes awry, his hair tousled. suddenly he subsided, and in a tone like a girl's, and with a manner which one might use with insanity, he made his entreaties. then, as suddenly, he burst into frenzy again. good, staring straight before him, still tearing the proofs into shreds, made no sign. furniss was silent too. he stared at good unwinking, as lifeless as if carved from ivory, but with such a look of horror in his face as even bassett, well-nigh mad with surprise and disappointment, never afterwards forgot. then, without warning, the look of horror faded. he laughed--bitterly, but easily. "you see, bassett--i told you--it's just an ordinary newspaper." he laughed again. the sound sent a shiver down good's spine. he seemed to hear it echoing and re-echoing in his ears as furniss went out, the door slamming behind him. when he had gone, good turned and faced bassett, who ceased alike to storm and to plead. the editor was sitting in his chair, chewing his cigar, already regretting that he had so far lost control of himself. "you don't understand, do you?" asked good with ineffable sadness in his voice. "yes," said bassett, half bitterly, half sadly, "i understand." the tall man smiled--if the pitiful, hopeless expression that came into his face could be called a smile, and put his hand on the other's shoulder. "no," he said softly, "you don't." as he went quietly out, from what seemed like a death-chamber, and felt bassett's hard eyes following him, he knew that in truth something very precious had died that night. in his own office he sat with his head in his hands. "i'm not a machine--i'm only a man," he repeated over and over again, until he heard the refrain without speaking. "if i could only make them understand." his voice was helpless. he knew that he only half understood himself. how long he sat thus puzzling the mystery of his own nature, he never knew. but presently he became aware that he was not alone. the room was in only partial darkness, a street lamp filling it with a sickly glow. he raised his eyes, and for a second time that night, met those of judge wolcott. but they were different. the sharp terror had given place to heavy pain. "hello," said good, as if this was quite what he had expected. "mr. good, i...." the judge's voice was a pitiful travesty of its former masterful assurance. never before had the judge been obliged so to humble himself. "i don't know what i can say--only--i--i...." "you want mercy," said good brutally. he marvelled at the phrase. that was not what he had meant to say. it seemed to come from lips quite beyond his control. "not for myself." the old man's tone was inexpressibly sad, yet not without a certain dignity. "there are my daughters. i--i--would spare them." "belated, eh--a bit, don't you think?" again good was amazed at his cruelty. he seemed to be in the grasp of devils. the judge hung his head. "i don't know what to say," he sighed brokenly. "i only hoped--" "that you could come snivelling to me and beg off, for the sake of your daughters, eh? well--look here, my friend. you've given us the greatest scoop of the year." good's tone was as hard as adamant, though there were tears in his heart. "to save your daughters from disgrace, you'd have us give up the thing we live for." "i know--i know--but is it so much?" "it's everything. but let that pass. here's a thing that counts. has it occurred to you what would happen to _me_ if i listened to you?" "to you?" "yes. if i kill this story, my work here ends. by the standards of those about me i'd be a traitor. i've preached truth without fear or favour--you understand--without fear or favour. i've fought pull with everything i've got. and now you'd have me ... man, it's a test--can't you see--it's a test!" good's voice changed suddenly. from the court, passing sentence, he had become the condemned, pleading for clemency. the old man drew himself up. "i see. i did not--wholly understand. it is--inevitable." there was indescribable pathos in the resignation with which he spoke. "it is inevitable," he repeated softly. then he turned to go. "why don't you see wynrod?" asked good with sudden harshness. the other man laughed mirthlessly. "he is the one person from whom i'd keep--this," he said shortly. "he--he--cares for me--now...." good's voice changed again, and grew soft. "judge," he asked quietly, almost indifferently, "what caused it all?" the old man's fine white head fell on his chest, and good felt glad, for him, in his bitter shame, that it was dark. "i had rather not speak of that," he said wearily. "what is done is done." he rose to go. good waited until his hand was on the doorknob. "wait," he whispered chokingly. his voice was lifeless. "i was joking, you know. it's all right. it's all right," he repeated, as if the words were forced from him. "the story's dead." "i don't understand...." "the story's killed, i tell you. you can read to-morrow's _dispatch_ without a tremble." "you mean...?" the old man was clutching at his collar as if it hurt him. "you mean...?" "for the third time--the story's dead." "did roger--?" "he knows nothing about it." "then you--it _was_ you?" "yes--it was i." the judge never forgot the unutterable hopelessness of good's tone as those four words crept slowly from him. "how can i ever...." the old man made for good, his hand outstretched. but the latter recoiled. "i'd rather you wouldn't. you owe me--nothing." the judge hesitated, not knowing what to do or say. good was the first to speak, a subtle note in his voice, not easy to analyse. "that liability law," he said abruptly. "it's constitutional?" "i--er--think so." "you're certain of it?" good's voice had suddenly become like steel, and the old man seemed to grow visibly smaller before the keen eyes penetrating to the innermost recesses of his soul. "yes--i--i'm quite sure of it." "your mind is fully made up, of course." the meaning behind the words was unmistakable. the judge took his cue at once. "absolutely." "good night," said good. "but i--" the judge hesitated. "good night," repeated the tall man with a finality which brooked no question. the old man stood embarrassedly looking at him for a moment. then he went out, softly closing the door behind him. good sat staring after him, a crooked little smile twisting his lips, his body looking oddly shrunken and weak. and there he sat unmoving, until he heard the rumble of the trucks in the street below and knew that the first edition was on its way to the world. then he went out. from his office he went down to the sub-basement, where the presses ground spruce forests into newspapers. for a little while he stood watching the great machines with the virgin white rolling smoothly through them like threads in a loom. he had never lost his fascination for this alchemy of power, and now, at his darkest hour, the wonder of it filled him as never before, and the roaring song seemed the sweetest sound he had ever heard. he was buried in his dream and the man in overalls who approached him seemed but a corporeal manifestation of an idea. when he spoke it was not to a man, but to a wizard who bore the keys of truth. his soul whispered to the soul of the machines. his words stumbled far behind. "what a marvel! what power! what magic! what possibilities unthought of ... oh, the press...." but it was only a pressman, rather more than usually tired, who answered. "yes, she's a pretty good old girl. but say, you oughta see the new tubular duplex they're gettin' out! it's got this skinned a mile. why say...." good's revery faded. reality obtruded. this poor prometheus, dabbling boastfully with the fire of the gods--ah, well ... who that read _the dispatch_ on the morrow, with his toast and coffee, would know the magic, the wonder, the poetry in his hands? would it be ought but a newspaper to a single one? blind world! "what drives the presses?" he asked dreamily. "well, this one has a g. e. polyphase, monitor control, with ..." began the pressman. but the words fell on empty air. the other man had gone. chapter xi "tears ... and then ice" the next afternoon good got together an account of his stewardship and went to see judith, who was at braeburn. he took the four o'clock train. several stations out, a roughly dressed man entered the car and took the seat next to him. presently he asked for a match, and with that as an opening, requested what, with delicate euphemism, he characterised as a "loan" of a pipeful of tobacco. "when were you discharged?" asked good quietly, as he handed over his pouch. the man changed colour and seemed to shrink visibly into the corner of his seat. "who the ... i haven't been discharged," he stammered. "deserter, then?" "i don't get ye." "what's the use of stalling," said good. "i've served myself." the man looked over his shoulder furtively. "how did ye know?" he whispered. "it takes a long time to lose that set to your shoulders, my friend." "well--what ye goin' to do about it?" the question was put more with resignation than defiance. good raised his eyebrows. "do about it? why--what is there to do?" "there's a bounty up," muttered the deserter savagely. "of course--but what of it?" "aw, cut that stuff! call the con and cash in. might as well be now as later." the words were uttered wearily, as if the speaker's strength were at a low ebb. "i'm sick o' chasin' round an' starvin'. at least i'll get my belly full in stir. nothin' to this game. i been on the jump ever since i ... left. i knew one o' you dicks 'd get me some time. go on--make the pinch." "you think i'm a dick?" "well--ain't ye?" "hardly." "hell--i thought you was." there was no particular regret in the man's voice. he seemed to have lost any very keen interest in what fate might do with him further. "out of work?" asked good, after a pause. "most o' the time. can't stay in one place long." "where you bound for now?" "country. got a chance on a farm." "that's the safest place. got any money?" "two bits. i'm flush to-day." "here's two more. four's luck." the man eyed his benefactor narrowly. "say," he ventured, "you look's if you was kind o' up against it yerself." "more or less," said good shortly. a moment later braeburn was reached, and he rose. "here's luck, bo," said the deserter. "got a job?" good's only reply was a faint smile. but it was such a curious smile that the other man thought about it for a long time afterward. he concluded that its owner had no job. he almost regretted that he had accepted the quarter. it was well on in november, though summer seemed to have returned for a fleeting visit. but in spite of the warmth good's heart was heavy as he trudged up the winding road, where death had almost overtaken him, and where the happiest chapter of his life had begun. he almost wished he were going again to interview the rich miss wynrod for _the workman's world_. but although, for the most part, his gaze was introspective, he was not wholly blind to the splendour of the world about him. beside the road the oaks and maples seemed to bow and scrape to one another, garbed, like the assyrian, in purple and gold, with here and there a flash of poignant scarlet. the distant hills, glowing warmly in the soft haze, were great strips of scotch tweed. now and again, borne on the breeze, came the pungent odour of burning leaves. he halted, more than once, to draw a long breath and marvel at the glories of the scene. it was peaceful but not quiet. the fallen leaves rustled incessantly, and the squirrels, not at all deceived by this pretence of summer, went busily on with their preparations for what was coming, chattering volubly the while. the sound of a whistle drifted faintly from the distant railroad, that man and his works should not be forgotten, even here. good's clouded brow cleared, and the heaviness dropped from his heart. he had come from the clamorous city, with its strife, its falsities, its bitter disappointments; and presently he would return. but now, for one brief moment, in the midst of sweet, mysterious odours, and sweeter memories, he was very happy. he kicked the leaves around his feet exultantly, like a boy, and tried to persuade every squirrel he saw to come and taste the mythical peanut he held in his fingers. the squirrels were wary, but a little dog limped up to him wagging a fragmentary tail and whining faintly. he stopped to analyse the whine, and as a result a troublesome burr ceased longer to trouble. the animal followed him the rest of the way to the wynrod house. the man turned at the gate. "good-bye, friend," he said gravely. the dog wagged his whole body and barked twice. it was indisputable that he understood. good found judith waiting for him in the library. as they shook hands he thought that he had never seen so lovely a creature. she was dressed in a riding costume of hunter green, which toned perfectly with the autumnal warmth of her skin. there was a wine-like sparkle in her eyes and her teeth gleamed in an unaffected smile as she greeted him. apparently his presence was pleasing to her. but as he caught a glimpse of their reflections in the mirror over the fireplace, he wondered, a little dismally, how that were possible. she was so fresh and sound and glowing, and yet, withal, so dainty, so delicate, so thoroughly feminine: while he ... never, he thought, had he realised quite how awkward and grotesque a thing he was. the mirror was brutally candid. beside her face, with its colouring of frost-ripened apple, his own stared back, telling its sordid tale of stuffy rooms and gas-light and greasy food and lack of exercise. with its seams and wrinkles it looked like a coat of white paint, yellowed and broken by over-long exposure to the elements. he was suddenly conscious that his suit was very old and ill-fitting, and that his hair needed cutting badly. for the first time in his life he suffered a pang of regret that the configuration of his neck prevented his wearing a collar which fit him. as he looked down at her hand in his, smooth, well-formed, the fingers tapering delicately, yet with a flow of muscle under the integument revealing bridle-strength--for horse or man--he sighed. his own seemed so huge and formless, with its mountainous purple veins, its coarse black hair, like forests, and the spatulate nails--clumsy, broken, yellow where hers were pink ... hastily his hand sought his pocket. "well," she said, when the silence threatened to become embarrassing, "what's the news from the scene of action?" he drew a bulky envelope from his coat, and tried to forget her physical presence. but to the familiar smell of burning leaves clung a faint scent of jaqueminot. his hand trembled a little as he turned the pages of the documents. "you'll be disappointed," he whispered huskily. "why?" "it's a poor showing." "wasn't that to be expected?" "in a way, yes, but...." "is it as bad as it might be?" "well, no, but...." "tell me about it, then." she had seated herself and was busy with the tea things which a maid had brought in. good found it necessary to read words several times before he caught their meaning. it was difficult to keep his eyes upon the paper. "shall i give the inventory first?" he asked. "oh, don't bother with the details. i can read all that later. just give a summary--and tell me what it all means." he cleared his throat. "well--advertising fell off fast at first. then some of it came back. mostly small stuff, though. the big stores have never come back. and all the heavy advertisers, like the telephone and the electric light companies, seem gone for good. advertising revenue has been cut in half--maybe a little more." "but you expected that." "oh, yes. it's quite natural. we've hammered the telephone company pretty hard on its purchase of the independents. and of course you know what we did to the department stores. oh, i knew we'd lose advertising. but the circulation--that's been more disappointing." "has it fallen off?" "pretty badly. i knew we'd lose at first. but i thought we'd gain later. we haven't, though--not as we should. people don't seem to want the truth--unless it's sensational. they want excitement and partisanship. sometimes i think they'd rather be lied to than not. and they don't like to hear so much about misery and evil. we expose too much. we're unpleasant. they'd rather ignore unpleasant things. of course i knew your class would hate us and fight us--and they have. but the ordinary people--i felt sure--i thought--they'd support us. but they haven't--not as they should. it hurts ... i can't tell you how much!" his voice broke, and he looked pathetically old and worn. the tears came into judith's eyes as she recalled the enthusiasm with which he had first broached the plan of purchasing _the dispatch_. "i'm disappointed, too," she said slowly, after a pause. he recoiled as if she had struck him. "not in the paper--in you," she added hastily, seeing the pain in his eyes. "i thought your faith was stronger. have you forgotten what you said to me--'serve, not for them, for yourself'? is it popularity you're after? has truth ever been popular?" "a newspaper, to succeed, must be popular," he murmured. "did you persuade me to buy _the dispatch_ in order to be successful? come, mr. good, this is unlike you. didn't you warn me i would lose friends as well as money? well--i have. didn't you show me quite candidly that whatever success might come would be very small? you hated charity because it was only temporary and expedient. but charity is popular, and the results show. truly i am surprised at you." she paused, waiting, but good only sighed. "come, if you were in my place--if _you_ owned _the dispatch_--would you be down like this?" she was surprised and taken aback a little at his reply. "yes," he said heavily, "i would." she was not to understand his meaning for a long time. she laughed, not because she was amused, but because she could think of nothing to say. the sound seemed to brighten him a little. "of course you understand," he said, "that when i speak of the failure of _the dispatch_ i mean comparative failure. it's losing now ... but not so much as it lost at first. next year it should do better. i don't mean that it will be profitable. i doubt if you'll ever take out much more than you put in. still...." "mr. good," she interrupted severely, "you annoy me. here you are talking about _profit_. did you ever talk profit before? did i go into it for profit? has any of the money i've given to the church ever paid any dividends? is charity profitable? you're utterly absurd. let's have no more of this sorry pessimism. profit! really, you amaze me." "you amaze me more," said good with a quizzical smile. suddenly his voice changed and his eyes closed. "the whole problem of life," he murmured dreamily, "is to reconcile the soul and the body. part of us is kin to the angels. we get very near to heaven, sometimes. we all have our moments of strength. we leave the clay--but we fall back. hell is only the burden of flesh. ah well--i've had my moment. some day i may have another. perhaps here. perhaps not. perhaps what i have seen of heaven will come to someone else. maybe that's the true reincarnation. we die and our light goes out. perhaps we weaken and put it out ourselves. but maybe it does not really go out at all. who knows? it may have been taken from us and placed in fresh hands--and so, on and on, through struggle and failure, and success and treachery and cowardice and courage ... until the great purpose of it all is realised. we're only woodpeckers on a tree. and igdrasil is mighty. some peck more, some peck less--none does much. but perhaps it's only how we peck that counts. maybe so--maybe so...." his voice died away and he covered his face with his hands. it seemed to judith that a veil had been momentarily raised, permitting a glimpse into a heart which was bruised and weary, but in which courage--the courage which has known defeat, the noblest of all--still reigned. the walls of the familiar room faded into illimitable distance, the breeze rustling the leaves outside sank suddenly, and out of the silence came a sweet, mysterious song filling her heart with exaltation, a sense of grace which hurt. then the light declined quickly, and there was a crimson glow in the west, gradually purpling. "i must go," he said abruptly. "it's late." "oh--won't you stay to dinner?" "no." his negative was too final for her to press that topic further. she chose another. "let's see the sunset first. we may have no more days like this." "i am quite sure of that." the words were murmured under his breath. they seemed to judith, still under the mysterious spell which had been cast about her, to be fraught with solemn significance. suddenly she realised that it was cold. she shivered even when she had donned her coat. quite silently they walked into the garden, and without either speaking, went straight to the spot where their lines of life had first crossed. he looked about him, a twisted little smile on his lips. "here is where roger wanted to have me thrown out," he said thoughtfully. "shouldn't wonder if he regretted now that he didn't." "roger cares for you more than any other man in the world," she cried. there was a catch in her voice, why, she did not know. "you've done wonders--you've made that boy a man. you're his mainstay. i can't ever...." she attributed the lump which persisted in rising in her throat to her affection for her brother. that is, she tried to attribute it to that. "i'm his mainstay no longer," he corrected her gravely. "i did what i could for him. now it's up to molly. but her task is easy. the boy's under his own steam now." "you think so?" the pride and joy in her eyes were unmistakable. but there was something else there which one less obtuse than good would have seen even more clearly. "no question about it. he took hold from the start. he's proved his ability. he's the actual business head of the organisation now--truly he is. when jenkins left, roger stepped right into his place and the ranks never wavered. the lad's been slow in finding himself--no doubt of that. but that's all over. his girl's wise--she knows. the world will know it soon, too. why, if i wasn't there to prevent it, he'd make _the dispatch_ into a money-maker in no time!" the last words were said with a twinkle in his eyes, but it seemed to judith that a certain sadness lay behind the jest. "i'm so glad," she cried. "he's meant so much to me." "doesn't he now?" he smiled. "of course. but i don't see much of him now. he's at the wolcotts' constantly. he's almost as fond of the judge, you know, as he is of molly." "so i've heard," said good with a curious little laugh which she did not understand. "he has good stuff in him--and bad. i never knew which would triumph." "and you never will," he said simply. "he's human, you know. but the odds are on your side now." "i'm so glad--so glad--and so grateful...." they were silent again. suddenly the darkness fell, blotting out everything around them. lights began to twinkle through the trees. a dog barked mournfully. it was much colder. as the daylight passed, the world passed with it. they were isolated, judith's beauty and her home and the polish of her finger-nails as buried in oblivion as the gaunt ugliness of the man beside her. all the horde of little things, which in the day mattered so much, now seemed to matter not at all. they stood, naked of all trappings, soul to soul. "i've got to go," muttered good in a constrained, choked voice. "it's late." but he made no move. they continued to stare at each other. "it's turning cold," she said--because she had to say something. the man sighed heavily. "there will be no more days like this," he said, more to himself than to her. "what do you mean?" she was conscious of a look in his eyes and a sound in his voice which she had never experienced before. "you know well what i mean!" without warning his lean hand shot out and seized hers with a grasp which almost made her wince. "you know well that i love you, judith wynrod." the words rushed through his clenched teeth and struck her ears like bullets. "you know it well," he added fiercely. she stood very still, looking into eyes which smouldered before her like banked fires. "you're hurting my hand," she whispered. instantly she wished she had not said that. his voice changed. "i'm sorry," he said softly. "i wasn't thinking--of your hand." slowly she withdrew her fingers from his. he made no move to retake them. for a little while he was silent. when he spoke again his tone was different. the fierceness had departed. instead, it was wistful, and it struck her that he was repeating something which he had memorised a long time ago. she had a curious feeling that he would be saying it even if she were not there to listen. the words came slowly, as if each one had been weighed and tested. "i've always been a lonely chap. i never had any friends--except dogs and drunks and beggars and bad boys. women always laughed at me. i was too sentimental. men shouldn't be that, you know. after zbysko went out there wasn't anybody. about all i had--more than other men--was imagination. when i went down, that made me go further than most. there were times ... i'm not ashamed nor sorry ... they just happened--like starvation. some men are decent because they have to get on. i couldn't seem to get on. for a while i gave up trying. imagination and an empty stomach and no one to care ... well, life never had much in it for me--until i knew you. you were the first good woman who had ever remembered me from one day to another. i fancied ... i mattered to you. i liked to think that i was a part of your life--even such a small part. it was gratitude at first. then it grew and grew until--you see what a curse imagination can be! if i'd been an ordinary, sensible person, i'd never have let myself go. but i dallied with the idea. i gave myself up to it. and then it got too strong for me. i don't know why i burst out like this to-day. i should have kept it to myself. there was no need for you to know. i was a fool ... oh, a dreadful fool!" he sighed heavily and was silent. "i never dreamed...." she breathed. "that's not true," he said gravely. "you thought of it often. you're too wise not to. i could see it in your eyes. you didn't want to--you had to. you're a woman." "mr. good, i can't tell you how much this means to me. i do care for you ... very much--more--more--" she hesitated and stopped. the inadequacy and stiffness of her words were distressingly evident. even in the dusk she could see the dull pain in his eyes. they had the expression of some wounded, helpless animal. "please don't," he begged. "i understand. when i hurt your hand ... that was enough. it's quite impossible, of course." never, to the end of her days, would she forget the dreary hopelessness in his voice, the bent shoulders, the hand uplifted in deprecation. she wanted to throw her arms about him, as she would with roger. something held her--she could not move. the tears blinded her.... "but you didn't finish," he shot at her suddenly. "more--more--than any other man ... was that what you were going to say?" and when she made no reply, he laughed, a little bitterly, a little tenderly--quite mirthlessly. "i thought not. well ... i used to hate him. i used to hate him very much--for other reasons, too. but he's not the man now that he was. he's been through the fire. he's better metal now. he's tempered. the dross is gone. he's not worthy of you ... who is?" suddenly judith's tongue was loosed. "you don't understand," she cried, with an earnestness of which there could be no question. "there is no other man. i care for you ... very much. oh, i do--i do...." "then ... would you marry me--will _you_?" there was a subtle note of irony in his voice which was not lost upon her. but she did not reply and he too was silent for a moment. when he spoke again the irony was less subtle. "you care enough to marry me if--if ... things were different?" "i don't understand." her voice sounded very far away, as if it did not belong to her at all. "oh, yes, you do, judith wynrod," he said harshly, like a magistrate passing sentence. she thought she had never heard a voice so cold and terrible, so cruelly impersonal. but, without warning, it changed, and she knew that she had never heard such infinite tenderness. "oh, yes, you do...." it seemed to come from a great distance, like the soughing of the wind in the trees, sad, mysterious, supernatural. it was not good's voice, but something vast, inchoate, nameless. she shivered and drew her coat more closely about her. "but you're human," the voice went on. "you have more angel in you than most--but you're not an angel. you're wise--very wise, judith wynrod--too wise to be an angel. heaven is for the fools. the wise have the earth. it's the little things--like table manners and polished shoes--that keep us out of heaven. i'm fool enough to brave these little things. but you're wise. you know that they would increase and multiply and crush us both, because they are stronger than we. if we were souls--merely souls--it would be different. but i'm a man. you're human, too. if we were souls alone--less human--less wise--the little things--would not matter. but we aren't just souls. no, we are not--we are not...." the tender, wistful voice died away. the world seemed very distant to judith for a moment, and only this man, who talked like a god--or an idiot--mattered. there was a tense, fleeting moment, when, had good known it, the course of both their lives might have been changed. but he did not know it. the moment passed. the wind sighed in the trees again. the myriad noises of the night were loosed. a locomotive whistled dismally. a thousand tentacles seemed to come down on judith and overwhelm her and bind her fast; and with the sound of the whistle she knew that the world was with her once more. she had been an angel for a moment. she was one no longer. the tears fell unchecked. "it's funny, isn't it," good was saying in a matter-of-fact tone, "that the trifles--things we really don't value at all--should keep people from the one thing that counts. queer world, this. but it's one of the rules of the game. it's silly to complain. as well mock the stars." his voice broke miserably and he covered his face with his hands. as she stared miserably at the stooped, shabby figure of the truest friend she had ever known, she felt very small and mean and ineffective, wishing that she might say something which would comfort him, knowing that anything she could say would hurt him more than silence. she was shamed by her impotency. but when she thought of the bright camaraderie which had been between them, and would be no more, she was angry. why had he spoiled it all? why had he not let things be? she was aroused from her reverie by the sound of his desolate voice. "truly, it is the last day. tears ... and then ice." he paused. "it will rain presently, i think--with snow," he added quite calmly. almost as he spoke the rain began. they parted hurriedly. there was a quick hand-shake, a murmured word, and she was fleeing from him with the print of his lips still hot on her fingers. it was an utterly wretched woman who sat staring for hours afterward at the blank wall before her. and it was a hopeless, beaten man who trudged through the dripping trees toward the station. fate had had its pleasure with both. tired of the sport, it had crushed them like eggshells. chapter xii only a woman the next day judith returned to the city. winter had arrived in earnest and there were other reasons why braeburn had become impossible. she drove to the station in a storm of blinding sleet, while the wind, howling through trees suddenly become gaunt, seemed to shriek and gibber with derision at her going. but the city house had its memories, too. recollections clustered everywhere, mocking her. she made up her mind impulsively that she would go to florida. it was out of season of course, but it would be the more restful for that. she felt very tired. she even consulted time tables. but one afternoon, when she was in her motor, she saw imrie. she followed him with her eyes until he disappeared. she had not seen him for months, though she knew in a vague sort of way, what he was doing. he was perfectly justified, of course, in neglecting her. she had surely done nothing to encourage his attentions. in fact she had done not a little to discourage them completely. nevertheless his indifference piqued her. she decided not to go to florida,--at least not until january. the real reason for the postponement, she managed to convince herself, was her talk with mrs. dodson. it occurred at a little dinner party given by mrs. weidely, a lady of the most unimpeachable conventionality, who satisfied an unsuspected craving of her nature by gathering about her the most thoroughly unconventional people she could find. had her husband, now deceased, not been the upright president of a very large bank, and were her house not, in consequence, situated in a location of indisputable respectability, these dynamic assemblies would have been held with the attentive co-operation of the police, a condition with which some of her guests as a matter of fact were not at all unfamiliar. mrs. dodson, who went out very little, was present chiefly because mrs. weidely was a friend of long standing, whose almost tearful assurance that her absence would ruin the evening, had been too touching for resistance. mrs. dodson was a kind-hearted, if not particularly credulous, woman. when judith arrived, having been invited, she suspected, chiefly to give "balance" to the affair, a young man with a narrow, equine face and a great deal of coarse black hair, who she afterwards learned was named klemm, was standing in front of the fireplace, his legs wide apart, and talking very rapidly, in a high, thin voice, punctuating his sentences with rapier-like movements of his long, sharp fingers. he was a poet, whose ready flow of language, with its glowing flights of hyperbole, had once reacted unfavourably upon a too literal-minded policeman, with a consequent very actual fortnight in jail. it had been a distinctly unpleasant experience, but one which he would not have escaped for worlds. its immediate effect was a volume of lurid verse, which had a very wide sale. and ever afterward he was able to denounce things as they were, with the assurance of one who knew whereof he spoke. he was young in years, but--he had lived--he had suffered.... "charity--pah!" he declared with finality. "it is futile, childish, debasing--both to them that give and them that receive. it is abomination--the more organised, the worse it becomes. it is like all--reform." the fine scorn with which he spoke would have made the word shrivel up and disappear, had it been a material organism. "and for reform you would substitute--revolution?" judith was conscious of mrs. dodson's firm, level voice, contrasting rather unexpectedly with the uncertain falsetto of mr. klemm. "revolution--yes!" the accompanying gesture was splendidly dramatic. "a man's word," he added, sternly, but unfortunately in a tone which was somewhat feminine. "so far as i know," said mrs. dodson, quietly, without any dramatic effect, but in a way which carried conviction, "the real progress of the world has been by evolution. revolution has usually been followed by reaction, the net advantage being no greater than is secured day after day, year after year, by the despised reformers. most of the revolutionists i know--talk. the world needs--work!" it was a stinging rebuke. mr. klemm, not easily silenced, had no more to say. he seemed relieved when dinner was announced. judith, herself, felt vaguely shamed. the past year, begun with such hopes, such fine purpose--what had it all amounted to--but talk? what had she _done_? what was she but good's cheque-book? what would she do were he removed? what was she--herself--alone--? she was silent at dinner, dimly conscious that the man beside her was talking very earnestly about a certain philosophy of painting. she knew only that what he said was of no interest to her. somehow, in her awakening conception of the bigness and yet the simplicity of life, and of the part she wanted to play in it, the æsthetic arts seemed irrelevant. she had always been ignorant of painting and music, caring for them only as pretty pictures or melodious diversion. now, she no longer cared even to pretend that she was not indifferent. hitherto she had lumped such culture with dress and servants and fine houses--only one among the many "little things." art had been in no way vital to her: she knew no one, not even the "collectors," to whom it was. art, to them, as well as to her, was merely one, and a comparatively unimportant one, of the conventions which went to make up the life of the "upper classes." though she herself owned some of the finest paintings in america, she frankly admitted that they really meant no more to her than the silver plate from which she dined. she smiled as portions of the argot the painter beside her was using, filtered into her consciousness. the poor creature doubtless thought he was flattering her. she wanted to tell him candidly how little his silly chatter interested her. why did he not tell her something of real value, something which would help her find herself, something which would make her matter in the real world of real things, so that when she was gone there would be a vacancy to fill? art! she turned away in disgust she could not conceal. mrs. weidely's was a large house, with countless little nooks and crannies where one desirous of solitude might steal away and find it. mrs. dodson, judith suspected, was as bored as she. it was a simple matter to suggest an escape with her into one of these refuges. the older woman was frankly grateful for the idea. when they were seated, with the chatter of the company drifting faintly to them like the far-off rattle of musketry, judith voiced her problem. mrs. dodson heard her to the end in silence, with a faint suggestion of a smile on her finely-cut lips. "you are just where i was," she said when judith had finished the recital, "many years ago. only i was not so conscious of things as you are--and i had not done what you have done." "you mean--_the dispatch_?" "yes. that is doing a splendid work--it is waking people up." "but i haven't done it. it's no credit to me, really." "i know. but you made it possible. perhaps you haven't done as much for it as it has done for you. but in either case, much has been accomplished." "oh, mrs. dodson--if i could only do what you have done--be what you are...." there was no pretence in judith's admiration as she looked up into the quiet, kindly face of one of the most misunderstood women of her community. it was not a beautiful face. nature had not been kind to it. but it was a face which, once looked upon, could never afterward be forgotten. it had the beauty which comes of strength and courage and travail, the beauty with which one is never born, but which must be made. it was the face of one who has grasped life firmly with both hands, and through pain and discouragement, has hewn something which must endure always. mrs. dodson was silent at judith's honest, if girlish, outburst. she smiled sadly, and her eyes clouded. "i have done little," she said softly. "and i am--little. i saw my road, long ago. i see it more clearly every day. but i'm not big enough to follow it--very far. i'm too timid. to go on that road, where i know i should go--where i know better and better as the years come--i should have had to leave everything behind. i wasn't equal to that. those little things--they didn't mean much--they don't now ... but i can't shake them off--quite. i can't follow the road and take them too. and i can't rest with them and forget the road. so i've--tried to do both. i can't, of course--but i try. i try very hard. it makes me enemies. it makes me unhappy. even my children--i've stayed partly for them--the road led to such a wild and desolate country--even they don't understand. perhaps that's why i was so cruel to that young man to-night. he said things that i wanted to say--and couldn't." mrs. dodson, suddenly looking very old and tired and weak, faded away, and in her place judith saw good. "if we were angels," he was saying. "if ... but we're not. we're only humans...." then good vanished, and mrs. dodson, again her quiet, efficient self, reappeared. her voice had changed, too. it was the calm, business-like tone which the world knew. "you have wealth, my dear. the pleasures of society no longer appeal. you have made a start. i see no reason for discouragement." "but i want to _start_," cried judith. "i want to feel my hands on something." "there are a number of committees and boards on which you might serve--" "oh, but that's the ordinary thing. i've done _that_." "not exactly." mrs. dodson's voice was a trifle grim. "you were a sociological dilettante. you were an amateur, so to speak." "but it's so cut-and-dried." "you must first learn the ropes. you have to know your tools before you can use them. it will be dry and tedious, of course, and there will be no sense of accomplishment. it will be educational. the accomplishment--such as it is--will come later." "and then--when it comes--it will be reform?" she wondered why the implication was so distasteful. "yes, my dear. you have too much to be a revolutionary. you remember the story of the rich young man. it was always so. he was asked to give up _everything_. he could not. i could not. you cannot. you may give more than i--in some ways you already have. but you will not give _all_. you will always be a--" "--reformer," interrupted judith bitterly. "yes," continued mrs. dodson, gently, "only a reformer. your influence will die with you. you will pass very little on. the radicals will hate and ridicule you. even those you help will distrust you. and what is worse--you will some day come to distrust them." "then why go forward?" cried judith. "why not stay where i am and be comfortable?" mrs. dodson smiled wisely. "because you can't. i remember hearing a gushing young thing ask a great novelist if he didn't just love to write. his reply was, 'i loathe it.' when she looked her amazement--as we all did--he added, 'i'm miserable when i write, but i'm more miserable when i don't.' we thought he was just posing, but i know now what he meant. i understand perfectly. i loathe the wretched futility of the work i do, with its everlasting cowardice and compromise. i wish i could go back to the life for which i was born and bred, which even those dearest to me, lead now. but i can't do that. life as it is, is unsatisfying. but any other would be worse." "why, i always thought you so happy--one of the happiest women i knew," cried judith in amazement. "oh, well--" mrs. dodson's sigh defied analysis. "such things are relative." she was silent for a moment. then her voice reverted to its tone of business. "but come--that's enough philosophy. if you talk too much it interferes with doing. now, if you care to come, i'll have you to lunch with me to-morrow. i'll have some work waiting for you. and when that is finished, there will be more to follow. will you come?" judith looked into the kindly grey eyes, so plainly studying her, and was ashamed of the reluctance and disappointment she felt. she nodded her head affirmatively. was life always a compromise like this? must noble aspirations forever fade away in the cold light of fact? the older woman seemed to sense her thought, for she smiled and patted her shoulder gently. "my dear little girl--i understand. and so will you--when you find yourself. the world's made up of doers and dreamers. the doers dream a little and the dreamers do a little--it is not given to many to be both. dream a little, always, my dear, for the good of your soul. and listen always to the dreamers, even when their dreams seem nonsense. but you mustn't be sad because you are only an agent. we are not less human because we are not gods. we have our place in the scheme of things: we must fill it--awkwardly, incompletely, stupidly--still, as best we may." they parted then, and as soon as she decently could, judith assured mrs. weidely of the "perfectly delightful" evening she had had, and went home. it was a long time before she could sleep. she spent the morning wandering restlessly through the house. was she always, she asked herself again and again, to be subject to the influence of others? was she never to act for herself? of the influence of good upon her, she was quite conscious. but that, she sensed, could never be again as it was before that afternoon at braeburn. when the snow began to fall, it had ended his call, the call of the dreamer. he had given her all he had. it was not enough. now came the call of the doer. would that end in time, as the other had ended, and would she then go ahead for herself, not the puppet of brent good nor the aid of mrs. dodson, but judith wynrod, free agent? she wondered, and wondered. there was no answer. at length, when she could endure the house no longer, she went out for a walk in the frosty air. she had an hour or two before going to mrs. dodson's. the sun was shining brightly, but it was cold, and she had to walk rapidly. before she knew it, she was well into the park, and a little tired. a bench, in the sun and sheltered from the wind, attracted her, and still in a reverie, she sat down. presently she became conscious that she was being addressed. a young man had seated himself beside her. "arnold," she cried. "why--i'd never know you...." "yes," he said placidly. "i have changed, haven't i?" as he spoke she realised that he no longer wore the clerical collar, and that he was garbed in a grey suit of distinctly fashionable cut and colour, instead of the sombre black she had always seen him in before. also, to her amazement, she noted that he wore a red tie. perhaps it was merely the change of costume, but he seemed years younger than he had ever seemed before. his face was ruddier, his eyes had more sparkle, his smile was easier. "but why--what is the cause--what's happened--what's the meaning of all this?" she stammered. "i've moved fast since we last met. as a matter of fact, judith, you're looking on a perfect stranger!" "that's obvious--but why--what--i don't understand." "in the first place i'm not a clergyman any more--for which there is no rejoicing: but in the second, i'm not a prig any more--for which there is...." "arnold--you've really left the church?" "or it's left me--the result's the same," he said quite cheerfully. "but what caused it? i heard you had resigned--everybody talked about it--but why?" "i don't suppose you ever saw a 'slide' at panama?" she shook her head, wondering. "well, first a piece of rock, perhaps no bigger than your fist, slips out of place. that moves another and another and another, until before you can whistle twice, a pile of earth that has seemed as fixed as time is as flat as the back of your hand. "that's the way it was with me. a few months ago i thought my convictions were as fixed as the everlasting hills. i looked solid--but i wasn't. really, i was made up of very small pieces. then, when you poked fun at me, you jarred one of those pieces out of place. that moved another--and another--and another ... until with a rush, the whole thing came tumbling about my ears. when the noise was over and the dust settled, it was up to me to set about putting the pieces together again as best i could. i don't know what kind of a mess i'd have made of it if i hadn't had the luck to fall in with dr. weis--perhaps you've heard of him?" "only vaguely," admitted judith. "well, he's a jew and a free thinker and an anarchist and a human fire-brand--and the most all around fine character i've ever known! anyway, he took an interest in me as i floundered about--he seems to think he can make something out of me." his mingled pride and humility was indescribably boyish and lovable to judith. he sounded a new note, quite free from the cant with which, in her mind, he had never been quite disassociated. "and are you happier now?" she asked when he paused. "much," he said thoughtfully. "i was successful at st. viateur's and i was popular, and i thought i was doing good work. but i'm happier now--really i am--consciously happy, i mean. in a way i'm a failure, of course, and i've lost most of my old friends, but the newer ones seem truer--and what i've lost in the respect of others, i've gained in the respect of myself. yes, i'm happier now." "but what are you doing?" "well, we've established a sort of peoples' church, with meetings in one of the downtown theatres. it's for those who haven't any creed, or even much faith. we seem to have some kind of a hold. there's rarely an empty seat." "do you preach?" "once in a while. but i wouldn't call it preaching. i've come to dislike that word. this is something different. you can't _preach_, you know, to our kind of people. that's what made lots of them leave their churches. jesus never preached. but oh, judith--" his eyes flashed and she thought his enthusiasm in keeping with his red tie. he had always been so reserved, hitherto. "i've never experienced anything like talking to those people. when i was in the pulpit at st. viateur's, with all you comfortable, smug, well-fed, contented people before me, talking to you seemed only a form, and what i said, merely a formula. you didn't care _what_ i said, and i didn't--it was _how_ i said it. but now--i tell you there's an intoxication in talking to people who've come because they get something, not because they ought to, or because it's the thing. it's no wonder that the biggest men in the land are glad to appear on our stage." "do you do any welfare work?" judith found his enthusiasm infectious. "in a way--mostly getting people jobs and things like that. we're not very well organised yet, but we're working all the time." "i suppose--you lack money?" "of course. that handicaps us tremendously. but...." "would a cheque--be of use?" he looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, as if not quite sure of her meaning. then he smiled and shook his head. "you don't understand. one of the principles of our plan is to be beholden to no one. we can't accept gifts. you see--we want no vestries." there was a note of bitterness in his voice. "but i--surely--" he sensed that she was a little hurt. "we take up a collection. you might drop in some night, and then--if you cared to...." "yes," she said thoughtfully, "i'll come." they were silent for a little while, but it was a silence in which there was no consciousness of the flight of time. "who are your speakers?" asked judith finally, already feeling that she had a personal share in the enterprise. "clergymen?" "sometimes. but that's not essential. it's the man we seek--not the creed. we want anyone with a message. we've had all kinds. you see, we're not engaged in propaganda--rather we're spreading the truth--as all kinds of men see it. we're committed to nothing. it's a good deal like _the dispatch_--no policy but the truth. by the way, how's that going?" "as well as could be expected, i suppose," said judith with an apathy which did not escape him. "i really have very little to do with it." "that's natural." "i suppose so. anyway, mr. good and roger need no assistance from me." "is roger really active?" "indeed he is. he used to be rather submissive to me, but now he acts as if i really knew very little about it. i'm glad he does, too. it shows he's grown up. the best thing about _the dispatch_ is what it's done for roger." "no, it isn't," said imrie soberly. "that's a good thing, of course. i'm delighted. but it's not the best thing--not by a long way. frankly i was sceptical about _the dispatch_ at first. i thought your friend good was just a crank. but the paper's gone ahead so splendidly. it's done such a really wonderful work--and then, you see, when i waked up, i saw things differently. the people i've been in contact with lately have made me understand good. i used rather to dislike him. i honestly admire him now." "yes," said judith quietly, "he is rather admirable." something in her voice made imrie study her narrowly. a wistful look crept into his eyes, and he was silent. judith, subconsciously, realised the change in him and she hastened to shift the topic. "but this work doesn't take all your time, does it? what else are you doing?" she rather expected a denial, and his reply surprised her. "no, it doesn't," he said, with something of his former enthusiasm gone. "or rather i haven't told you all of our work. you see weis has gone into politics rather more or less in his own city, and we're drifting that way, too. they want me to run for alderman. i live downtown now, you see. it's a bad ward. the decent people have never had a chance in it. of course it sounds silly--but really--i think seriously of it." "i don't think it sounds silly at all," she cried. "i think it's splendid. you can count on _the dispatch_." "but _the dispatch_ isn't partisan," he said with a smile. "it never takes sides." "well, it will this time," she declared truculently. he laughed. "you're still a woman, judith." then his expression changed, and his voice was tender. "i guess that's all you ever will be--to me." the wind had shifted, making their refuge no longer comfortable, and judith suddenly became conscious of the hour. "goodness--i've only ten minutes to get to mrs. dodson's. coming that way?" he nodded, and fell in beside her. they walked all the way in silence. when they reached the magnificent building in which mrs. dodson slept, but which seldom saw her when awake, judith held out her hand. "you haven't been near me for ages. won't you come--occasionally--as you used to?" "do you really want me to?" his eyes seemed extraordinarily bright as he put the question. "of course." "then i will." he kept his gaze on her for a moment. with a wave of his hand he turned sharply on his heel, and was on his way as if time were precious. never, she thought, as she went into the house, had imrie looked quite so handsome, quite so virile. and never, certainly had she extended an invitation to him which was more sincere, nor with the prospect of its acceptance more wholly appealing. yet she could not rid herself of an inexplicable sadness. it was some time, as she tried to listen attentively to mrs. dodson's level voice, before the picture of a pair of glistening blue eyes and a head of close-cropped, curly, blonde hair, and ruddy cheeks, and a set of firm white teeth, parted in a smile, half wistful, half enthusiastic, ceased dancing before her. she was, she concluded, only a woman. chapter xiii the pilot goes overboard good and roger wynrod sat in the latter's office one afternoon, about a week later, discussing, as was their regular habit, the day's paper. this conference had always been a one-sided one, but of late the balance had shifted. at first good had done the talking and roger had listened. now it was the other way around. that the change was not displeasing to good was manifest from the faint smile which played around his lips. he smoked his pipe gravely and had very little to say. he acquiesced in everything and made no suggestions. when matters of a routine nature had been disposed of, roger leaned back in his chair and lighted a cigarette. "i had lunch the other day with dick menefee, corey's new advertising manager," he said with a reminiscent chuckle. "he was in my class in college--same society and all that. first thing he asked me was why _the dispatch_ was on their blacklist." "i suppose you told him?" "with variations. also i told him one or two things they probably don't know at corey's." "about--?" "yes. it interested him because he doesn't cotton to joe much better than we do." "what happened?" "well, dick's an independent sort of a chap, with some fancy ideas of his own. he couldn't see why they should pass up a chance to sell goods to our readers just for spite. i tried to explain it to him, but he didn't seem impressed. he said he was going to stir things up." "did he?" roger smiled. "rather! i saw him again yesterday. it seems they had a most beautiful row. dick resigned and faxon threatened to, and corey couldn't make up his mind whether he'd fire 'em before they had a chance to resign. oh, it was a jolly mess ... but we'll have a contract like the old one in a day or two!" "not really?" "big as life. menefee pointed out to them that while they could use their advertising appropriation as a club, it was only a stuffed club. if any paper had sense enough to call the bluff all they could do was to crawl as gracefully as possible. he raked up a lot of old records and showed corey where he was losing cold dollars by staying out of _the dispatch_. he said he didn't know what the rest of them were but he was a business man, and he didn't give a damn what sort of stuff a paper ran if it sold goods for him. that struck the old man as pretty good sense, and he refused to accept dick's resignation. faxon saw which way the wind had shifted and reefed his canvas. anyway ... they're coming back." "the other stores will follow, i suppose." "they're bound to," cried roger. "they're bluffed to a standstill, and they know it. with corey's backing down they've got to follow suit--pride or no pride." "i suppose you're pretty pleased," said good with a smile. "pleased? honest, i'm tickled pink! i feel as if i'd been sitting in on a sky-the-limit game boosting the ante with a pair of shoe-strings. i've felt like passing lots of times. without you at my elbow i guess i'd have done it." "you think that's--unusual?" "maybe not that. but i do feel--well--like a burglar." "my dear boy," laughed good, "i'm not much of a business man, but i think a general show-down would reveal a lot of jokers in front of chaps who are playing like royal flushes. a good face with an empty hand wins in other games besides poker. you can't bank nerve--but you can draw checks on it." as he finished speaking, a boy entered and handed him a card. he glanced at it, hesitated a moment, scratching his head thoughtfully, and then, with an inscrutable smile, passed it to roger. "it's for you, lad." "but didn't he ask for you?" said roger surprisedly. "yes--but he made a mistake." "all right--show him in." a moment later a round little man, with bulging eyes which peered near-sightedly and with a curiously worried expression from beneath a deeply furrowed forehead, seated himself at the desk behind which roger was seated. "mr. good," he began, "i ..." good, who had withdrawn his chair unobtrusively into a corner, spoke quietly. "you're addressing mr. wynrod. he's the man you want to see." the little man did not hesitate. "i see. well, mr. wynrod, i am mr. burdick--philemon p. burdick. possibly you've heard of me?" he paused, and when there was no response, proceeded, apparently neither surprised nor disappointed. "evidently you have not. however, that is immaterial quite immaterial. the purpose of my call is not to acquaint you with myself, but with my work." he paused again. "yes?" "i have come, sir, to seek your assistance--the assistance of your excellent publication, i should say." roger stirred a trifle uneasily, and mr. burdick, the worried expression in his eyes deepening, hurried on, as if fearful of interruption. "first i wish to congratulate you upon _the dispatch_. it is doing a noble work. the community owes you a debt of gratitude, sir, a very great debt." "thank you," murmured the young man at the desk. "but there is one thing--a little thing, and yet a great thing--which you have left undone. it is my purpose now to ascertain your position in the matter." "yes?" roger looked puzzled. "if you knew me better you would know that i am very deeply interested in what is rather unfortunately called the single-tax. now..." again roger stirred, but this time mr. burdick, his eyes shining with zeal, and little drops of perspiration standing out all over his forehead, appeared not to notice the fact. he continued as if he were conscious of no interruption. "... the theory of the single-tax is so absolutely in accord with common sense that one needs only to become familiar with it to become enthusiastic. all that is necessary to make the single, or land tax, an accomplished fact, and to bring about immediately the complete abolition of poverty, sir, is publicity. but there's the rub--" he halted a moment to mop his glistening brow. his sincerity was indisputable, but his countenance was so incongruously droll that even good, sitting quietly in the shadow, and not feeling at all like laughter, found it difficult to repress a smile. "yes, sir," continued mr. burdick, "there's the rub. we need publicity. but most avenues, i regret to say, are closed to us. most mediums are afraid of us. they look upon us as dangerous radicals. of course that's absurd. look at me--do _i_ look like a dangerous radical?" it would have required a bigot indeed to so characterise the stout little gentleman who looked as if harsh words would bring tears to his eyes. roger made a sound in his throat which was meant to signify derision at the thought, but which, to good, sounded suspiciously like an abortive chuckle. "yes, it is absurd. but the fact remains. most newspapers are unwilling to advance the cause. instead of getting down on their knees to the memory of henry george, they deride it--yes, sir, they deride it!" roger tried to look his horror, and mr. burdick went on vigorously. "i say _most_ newspapers. and i say it with a purpose, sir. i don't suppose you can guess what it is?" he smiled archly, and when roger could not guess, he added, with profound conviction, "_the dispatch_, thank god, is not like most papers. it is free, daring, original. i ask you, sir, to use it in a cause worthy of all its freedom, its daring, its originality. i ask you--yes, i _command_ you--to put its tremendous and growing power behind the greatest movement of the age, that..." "you mean..." "i mean," said mr. burdick with solemnity, as if he were conferring an accolade, "i mean that i seek the enlistment of _the dispatch_ under the glowing banner of the single-tax." he folded his arms and waited for a reply. roger cast a troubled glance at good, and turned away helplessly from the blank countenance which met him. it seemed to the tall man, studying his protégé narrowly through half-closed lids, that he was indecisive. but he waited hopefully. he was not certain. presently roger bit off the end of a cigar, and chewed it thoughtfully. then he squared his shoulders and the light of resolution came into his eyes. good sighed contentedly. he had been mistaken. "i guess you don't quite understand _the dispatch_, mr. burdick," said roger quietly, but none the less firmly. "it doesn't take sides." "but the single-tax...." "it makes no difference what the side is. we're not partisan." "but, my dear sir," cried mr. burdick, a quite unsuspected temper manifesting itself. "it's not a political party. it's not a religion. it's not--dogmatic in any sense. it's just--an _idea_. you seem to favour advanced ideas. you give space ... why, you had two columns about a socialist meeting that was raided by the police!" "i know," said roger gently. "but--that was news." the subtle distinctions implied in that sentence appeared to halt the little man for a moment. but he was not long daunted. "well," he cried triumphantly, "wasn't the abolition of slavery _news_? wouldn't the abolition of poverty be _news_? my dear young man--" his tone became unmistakably patronising. "it would be the most tremendous piece of news you could possibly print. everything else would pale into insignificance beside it. why...." "mr. burdick," roger's voice was a trifle cold. the intimation of patronage had annoyed him. "personally i might have all kinds of sympathy with the idea you represent. but that has nothing to do with it. we're running a _news_paper--nothing else. we print news--not opinions. the distinction must be clear to you, i'm sure." his momentary irritation had vanished, and he finished with a friendly smile. but mr. burdick's wrath was not to be thus easily assuaged. "then you decline to take any interest in our cause?" he demanded belligerently, his sudden truculence contrasting very curiously with his peaceful face. as a matter of fact, no one could be more keenly conscious of his inadequate appearance than he was himself. more than once he had stood before his mirror and cursed the image which blinked timidly back at him. a man of less will would have yielded and become resignedly subject to the body which nature had imposed upon him. but mr. burdick was a man of rare spirit. "you don't believe in it, do you?" he continued, in a voice which had become shrill. "you're opposed to it?" "on the contrary--" "then why...." obviously mr. burdick was exasperated. "my dear mr. burdick," said roger patiently, "i've already told you. your cause is a good one--sure. but so's the y. m. c. a. so are foreign missions. so's the republican party--now and then. but causes aren't news. you talk about the abolition of slavery. sure--that was news ... _after_ the abolition. go ahead and abolish poverty--i don't care how little--and we'll give you the run of the paper. but you've got to _break out_. you've got to make news. if you can't make it by abolishing poverty, hire a hall and get pinched ... we'll give you two columns too." "if you are endeavouring to be flippant ..." began mr. burdick, rising, and drawing himself up to his full height--which was not very impressive, as none knew better than himself. "no," said roger very earnestly. "i'm not. i never was more serious in my life. only you won't understand. people with axes to grind never do. they always get sore when we won't help the job. you see...." "i shall wish you a very good afternoon," said mr. burdick stiffly. roger shrugged his shoulders. "as you please. i hope the wish comes true." the little man ignored the persiflage. he clapped his hat down on his head savagely, and beat what was intended for a very dignified retreat, but which, for reasons over which the poor man had no control, fell short of the intention in several essential particulars. "and say," called roger, as his visitor reached the doorway, "don't get sore. drop in occasionally and have a chat." the slamming door was the only response. roger laughed and turned to good who had sat like a graven image all through the interview. "well--how did it go?" for reply good rose and stretched himself and yawned prodigiously--all of which procedure was an elaborate simulation of emotions which he did not in the least feel. he then walked over to the desk and carefully emptied his pipe. and finally, with sustained deliberateness, he held out his great hand. "put it there, my boy," he said gravely. but roger had hardly complied, eyeing him curiously the while, when good's hand dropped and he walked to the window. it was several minutes before he turned and met the younger man's gaze with his own. "i guess i can go now," he said in a voice which seemed at once triumphant and inexpressibly sad. "i don't understand...." "you've learned all i have to teach you, lad." good's deep voice was low, but it reverberated sonorously in the little room. "you're on the bridge now. you're in deep water. you can drop the pilot." "what the dickens are you driving at, anyway?" "i'm quitting, roger." the words were said almost in a whisper, and the deep-set, wistful eyes gleamed very tenderly. "my work's done. it's up to you now." "you don't mean ... you're not leaving the paper? why, that's nonsense! it can't be. what's upset you, anyhow? oh, come, this won't do, you know. i won't have it. i simply won't. why, good lord, man--i'd be lost!" "no." good shook his head and his voice vibrated as if he found it difficult to hold it in check. "you're free now. this talk proved it. you don't need me any longer. i've done my work. it's time to wander." "but w-w-_why_?" stammered roger. "can't you give any reason? what's the trouble at the bottom of it? you haven't had a fuss with sis, have you? surely you're not doing this just because i'm more on my feet than i was? i'm far from not needing you, god knows. aren't there other reasons?" "yes," said good dully, "there are other reasons." "well, good lord," cried roger in exasperation mingled with alarm. "won't you tell them?" "no," said good shortly, "i won't." then, abruptly, he held out his hand. "good-bye, lad. here's luck." his voice broke, and he turned. before roger could get around the desk to him, the door had closed and he was gone. the young man stood with his jaw hanging. he was utterly nonplussed. good had gone out of his life as suddenly, as unreasonably, as amazingly as he had come into it. he racked his brains futilely for an explanation. had he been a trifle younger it is probable that he would have wept. it was the end of the day, and darkness had fallen. but even if it had been the first hour of the morning he would have gone home at once. the office had become unendurable. he found judith having tea with imrie. though of a thoroughly objective nature, not given to unnecessary straying into imaginative by-paths, particularly those with unpleasant endings, roger was far from insensible to the grim irony of the situation. he almost laughed as he told his news. judith received the tidings more calmly than he had anticipated. indeed, he could not recall, subsequently, that she said anything at all. it is possible, however, that she said more than he heard. the fact was that rather more instinctively than consciously, he watched, most closely, the effect of the intelligence upon imrie. but whatever imrie's emotions, he concealed them well. he said very little, managing to express his surprise and regret with an apparently quite genuine sincerity. in a few moments he recalled a forgotten engagement, and left. it was not lost upon roger that his tea was untasted.... judith, however, recalled him to less recondite speculation. "it's absurd, of course," she said in a voice which struck him as very strange and mechanical. "he can't leave us like this. it's too ridiculous." for a moment he thought her feeling was one of resentment. "where can i reach him?" she asked abruptly. he concluded that it was something quite different. "god knows," he said. "but don't worry. it's just a tantrum. he'll be back." "did you ever know him to have a tantrum?" demanded judith, almost fiercely. roger was startled. he had never seen his sister look or act just like that before. he tried, unsuccessfully, to guess what it all signified. "call up the office and see if you can get his address," she ordered. obediently he went to the telephone. when he returned, she was pacing slowly to and fro before the fireplace. her mouth was curiously set, with what sentiments he could not tell, and her eyebrows were drawn together in two deep incisions. at her unspoken question he shook his head. "but i must find him--i simply must, you know," she cried petulantly, like a child. he could only shrug his shoulders. "it's so utterly silly," she murmured. suddenly she ceased pacing the floor, to stand staring, glassy-eyed, at him ... and then, like a pricked balloon, she collapsed inertly on the lounge, her face buried in her arms. her heaving back and the sound from the cushions, needed no explanation. roger stole softly from the room. he wondered, uncomfortably, as he went upstairs, if he would ever understand women. being about to marry one, it struck him that some sort of understanding was rather important. chapter xiv a secret revealed i but more pressing matters drove the curious problem presented by his sister and good temporarily out of roger's mind. he was dining with molly wolcott that evening, and, as he dressed, his thoughts, quite properly, centred exclusively in her. it was she herself, however, who recalled the distressing situation. "how's mr. good?" she asked. somewhat to his surprise her father echoed the question, with what seemed like more than a mere polite interest. briefly he told the simple facts as they had occurred, refraining from any attempt at explanation. "but didn't he give any reason?" asked mollie incredulously, when he had finished. "not a one." "did he say there was a reason?" roger thought it a little odd that the judge should manifest such concern for a person with whom he could have had only the slightest acquaintance. "yes," he admitted, "he did." "but he wouldn't give it?" "no. and he skipped so fast i didn't have time to press him much." "have you any hypothesis?" the judge fingered his watch chain nervously. it occurred to roger that he was making an effort to seem only mildly interested. "well ... yes, i have." roger hesitated for a moment. the theory he had formulated was not one which he cared to present. it would be scornfully rejected, he felt, before he had an opportunity to elaborate it. and, as a matter of fact, he was forced to admit, it was not a very explanatory theory at best. it needed explanation in itself. "go on," said molly. she had noted his pause and was the more expectant in consequence. "well ... it's a funny thing--but this business has been in the air. i've noticed a different spirit around the office for a couple of weeks. you know good was the idol of the boys on the staff. they were a little suspicious of him at first, i guess. he was too good to be true. bassett has hinted as much. but that wore off. he proved he was no fake. they came to trust him absolutely. then, all of a sudden, the whole thing seemed to change. i've noticed lots of queer little things lately. the boys have been pretty cool toward him. i've taxed several of them with it, but i couldn't get anything out of them. he's lost his hold on them. there isn't any doubt of that. he isn't the leader any more. he's done something--i don't know what--but it must have made the boys pretty sore. anyway, they seem to have sent him to coventry for it. i guess the poor chap got so discouraged he just had to quit. that's the way i figure it out." "isn't that a shame," cried molly. "do you think he's to blame--has he really done something awful?" "blessed if i know." roger shook his head helplessly. "knowing the man as i've known him, i can't believe it. but bassett's one of the coldest of them all--and i'd trust bassett to the limit. it certainly is a puzzle." he was silent for a moment. then he added slowly, as if he were reluctant to put his thought into speech: "of course good's led a pretty hard life, you know. maybe some of it came back on him--maybe he had a relapse. liquor had him once. maybe...." "has judith any explanation?" asked the judge suddenly. "none that i know of." "was she--surprised?" "honestly, judge, i don't know," said roger candidly. "she acted mighty queer. first she seemed surprised, and then she didn't. for a minute i kind of thought she was--well--sore. but...." a picture flashed across his memory of judith on the lounge, with the sobs shaking her shoulders. "... i guess it was disappointment. she thought the world of good, you know." "indeed, yes!" cried molly. "i've often thought...." but she never finished saying what it was she thought. her father rose abruptly. "i think if you young people will--er--excuse me...." his voice was strangely tremulous. "i'm a trifle tired." "your father looks kind of knocked up over something," said roger when the old man had left them. "anything wrong?" her face clouded. "i--don't know. he's been awfully busy. he's not very well. that attack last winter--he's never shaken it off, quite. sometimes--i'm afraid! oh, roger--if anything should happen...." suddenly she burst into wholly unexpected tears. roger, comforting her, experienced a vague satisfaction, for which he knew he should be ashamed--but was not. molly was such a sturdy soul, so self-sufficient and self-contained, it delighted him to know that she could cry ... just like any ordinary protectible woman. upstairs, in his study, the judge had seated himself before his desk, the tips of his long white fingers clasped together. for a long time he remained immobile, staring blankly at the wall before him. the single green-shaded lamp at his elbow cast grotesque shadows at his infrequent movements. finally he sighed, as if he were very tired, and put out the light. ii when the maid went up with the judge's coffee next morning, she found him already fully dressed. "tell o'neil i'll have the car at once," he said quietly. "but miss wolcott, sir, she's...." "at once, please." in relaying the order to the chauffeur the maid volunteered the interesting information that she had left the judge swallowing his breakfast with unprecedented haste, and that the newspaper had not been unfolded. the chauffeur, having designs of a serious nature upon her, was obliged to conceal his natural repugnance to haste, disassociated from a motor: but he consoled himself with the other part of her message. it was not unpleasant to discover in the lady of one's choice such evidence of keen perception. he went to his task whistling. iii as roger came down to breakfast he fancied he heard the front door slam. judith was just leaving the library. "having callers?" he asked cheerfully. "no," she said shortly. he noticed suddenly that her face seemed bloodless. fired with a vague suspicion that matters were not as they should be, he strolled over to the window. "whose car is that outside? say--that looks for all the world like the judge. what's he doing out at this hour d'ye suppose?" "i'm sure i can't guess." judith's voice seemed curiously dry and husky. she was gazing sightlessly straight before her. roger ached to voice the questions which rose in his mind, but the expression on his sister's face deterred him. he contented himself with studying her narrowly. it was judith who broke the silence first. "roger," she said suddenly, "i want you to arrange at once with a detective agency to find mr. good." "oh, see here, sis," he protested. "that's foolish, you know. he'll come back--give him time." "i can wait no longer," said judith coldly. "please do as i ask--this morning." "that was the judge who was here. he told you something?" demanded roger accusingly. there was no reply. he finished his meal before questioning her again. there was still no reply. then he shrugged his shoulders and left her. when his sister's lips formed a line like the cut of a razor, roger knew the futility of interrogation or argument. within an hour the machinery of one of the greatest systems of espionage in the world was set in motion for the trifling purpose of locating the present whereabouts of one brent good, described as well over six feet tall, with hazel eyes, thin hair, a large mouth and nose, heavy eyebrows, a deep and not unmusical voice, a marked stoop to the shoulders, and wearing a suit, as roger expressed it, "rather brown." chapter xv "thirty"--and another story but the weeks rolled away, and although the reports from the detective agency were frequent and voluminous--as were the bills--good remained as elusive as ever. even roger, with his dogged insistence that "he'd come back all right," grew perceptibly less and less optimistic. yet through it all judith came and went with her head high, and a smile always ready. since that mysterious morning she seemed to have undergone a subtle change. certainly there was no further evidence of the sullen resentment which roger had thought he had detected at first. but there remained an abstractedness about her which was hard to fathom. when he thought her listening, she seemed always to be waiting for something. indeed, he grew quite worried about her, and would, in all probability have aroused her violent wrath by consulting a physician, had not the fact of his approaching wedding driven all such comparatively unimportant matters out of his head. imrie came increasingly to see her, and although he never said anything about it, it was perfectly clear that judith's detachment had not escaped him. only once did he go so far as to voice his thoughts. "what the dickens is judith waiting for, roger?" he demanded one evening, after a particularly unsatisfactory dinner, at which she had made no effort even to appear attentive. but roger could only shake his head and wonder too ... and in two minutes forget everything in the world save molly wolcott. the end came one morning, when he and judith were at breakfast. he was aroused from his newspaper by a whispered "at last" from his sister. her colour was strangely high, and her eyes sparkled. she was opening a letter. he watched her closely, wondering what had happened. suddenly her face blanched, and her hand went to her throat in a gesture which recalled to him the day he had apprised her of good's resignation. a faint little cry escaped her lips. for a moment she laid down the letter and closed her eyes. then she picked it up again, and read it, apparently, to the end. "what's the news?" he asked, willing no longer to let her inexplicable demeanour go unprobed. "it's a letter from good," she said mechanically. "what's he say?" "he says he's been ill. that's why he hasn't been to see us. he'll come as soon as he's about." "i see." roger's tone was lofty. his disgust was profound if unspoken. he was offended by her manifest reluctance to confide in him, and he did not scruple to show the fact. although consumed with curiosity to know what good actually had written--and, indeed, _why_ he had written at all--he was too proud to question her. with a muttered grunt, expressive of anything which one might choose to read into it, he buried himself anew in his paper, and presently, without again referring to the subject, left the table. his manner, meant to show a consciousness of injury, and at the same time, readiness for conciliation, produced no apparent effect. it is doubtful if judith was aware of his departure. he left, therefore, with his chagrin redoubled, full of suspicion, and utterly bewildered at the tortuous mental processes of all women, and his sister in particular. judith was still immersed in the letter. its bold, uneven scrawl was familiar, but with an indefinable touch of weakness, never before apparent. the paper was of the cheapest, a trifle soiled, and torn in several places. it had been written with a soft pencil, it began, characteristically, without salutation. * * * * * "some time in the pleistocene age, journalists formed the habit of ending their news despatches with the mystic symbol, . it signifies--the end. "i write to tell you that it looks as if it was time to write to the tedious narrative of yours truly. in a word--i'm not the man i was. which is a cryptic way of saying that i'm more ghost than flesh now, and shifting rapidly. the medico, who is a poor liar, also has a loud voice and doesn't know how thin boarding-house walls are. i heard him tell the landlady that money for medicine was a case of economic folly. i was a gone goose--or words to that effect. "it's been a long road and mostly a hard one. i'm not sorry to reach the end. you see, i never really learned how to walk. now and then i thought i had. but the thought was always followed by a tumble. the last was the hardest. i don't want to try any more. and when a man gets too tired to _try_--well, there's nothing left but crêpe, is there? "really, the doctor's information is quite the cheerfullest thing i could hear. all i ask is that they ring down the curtain on the delectable comedy of 'brent good, misfit,' as expeditiously as possible. from what he said, i judge they will. "i've tried more things in my allotted span than ten men ordinarily try. and i've failed, with perfect uniformity, in every one. i counted much on _the dispatch_. i stubbed my spiritual toe there, too...." * * * * * at that point judith had to pause, because a mist formed over her eyes and would not let her see. and the next words brought a lump into her throat, which choked and hurt. * * * * * "... i hoped much--no, _hope_ is hardly the word for what i wanted--from you. and of course--as i never for an instant doubted i would--i failed there. now there's nothing left. i wonder what the next instalment of the yarn will bring. do the gods, think you, punish failure as men do? "but i wander. (my speculations to the landlady regarding reincarnation have resulted in her frantic appeal to the doctor, with a bottle of something, in consequence, by my side. that's the scientific way of solving the problem of immortality.) however, i'm not writing you now to oblige you to join with me in conjecturing as to what lies in the other room. it's this one, and your place in it that troubles me now. "i just want to express a sixty-first second sort of a hope that you won't lose interest in _the dispatch_. but even as i write, i know that you, being quite human, in all probability will. strangely enough i have a feeling that roger will be more likely to carry it through than you will. men can play baseball all their lives, when six weeks of crusading is more than plenty. he'll go through with it because it's a sporting proposition. "but you--well, i guess one has to starve before he becomes a real revolutionary. you'll have to pay the price the gods demand for a full stomach, by being a trimmer all your days. that doesn't mean you won't do big things. you will, and _the dispatch_ will be only one of them. but you won't do them quite as i--being more or less insane--would have you do them. still, if you were poor, and therefore understood life as i understand it, you couldn't do anything at all. so i'm satisfied. "this is all queer stuff and hard to understand. but remember, to the natural eccentricities of my nature are added the hallucinations of approaching dissolution. "keep on with the paper as long as you can, and as bravely as you can. don't yield to the discouragement which will always be just over your shoulder, because it accomplishes little. never forget that you're only a link in a chain. if you keep your link sound you've done about all you can do. to you life is long, and the world putty in your hands. but after all, you're only an atom on the everlasting shore. "_the dispatch_ is the paper of truth. all reformers--most hypocrites--sing the same song. it seems the easiest thing in the world to tell the truth. but i know there is nothing harder. and it's not because truth frequently clashes with the human side of our lives--though god knows that is hard enough--but because no one knows what truth is. "it's a struggle worthy of fine souls to _tell_ the truth. but it's a far greater struggle to know what the truth is. "it is that struggle, being the only precious thing i have, that i bequeath to you. "there is nothing more to say, i guess, save to wish you well. you will doubtless marry the dominie. i used to hate him, very largely for that fact. but now, as i lie here, on a cool, high mountain, far from the blinding heat of passion (that's a good line, don't you think?) things look differently. when he stood between you and me, he cast a monstrous shadow. now i see him for what he is. he's just a fellow-traveller on the road i have tried to walk--on your side of it. may god give you both all that i would have him give me. "as my final request (this has been full of 'final requests,' hasn't it!) i ask that you forget me as promptly and as thoroughly as you can. my rôle in your life has been played. let me get off the stage now, and stay off for keeps. "forget me--the fool. remember, please, only the things i groped for--the angel. good-bye." * * * * * for a long time judith sat staring stonily at the irregular black lines, wandering stormily, like the life of their author, over the tattered paper. she fingered the envelope listlessly. it bore no address. when the maid came to remove the breakfast things, she was dumfounded to discover her mistress with her head in her hands, but quite silent. frightened, she withdrew quickly, to convey the strange intelligence below stairs. upon her return, in obedience to the disgusted promptings of the cook, who thought she was foolish ever to have left so interesting a scene, she found judith just rising from the table, very pale, but otherwise as calm and self-contained as usual. "i want the car at once," she said, a little huskily. and when the maid hesitated stupidly, she added in a tone which was almost fierce, "at once--do you hear?" "i've never seen her look like that--never!" declared the maid when she was safe below stairs again. "there's things the likes o' you can't understand," said the cook darkly. "what d'ye mean?" cried the kitchen in chorus. "i believe i'm able to keep the secrets as are intrusted to me," said the cook very haughtily, and with a finality which encouraged no further interrogation. safely concealed behind the day-old newspaper--useful shield in time of distress--she concluded that her prestige had been rather strengthened than otherwise by the incident. the chauffeur's eldest boy chuckled furtively, to be sure, but then, he was an impertinent brat, whose opinion was of no consequence whatever. while the kitchen buzzed with suppressed speculation, judith was closeted with a placid little man whose business was the disclosure of other peoples' secrets. "i have a clue, i think," she cried breathlessly. "yes?" his tone was quite noncommittal. years of disillusionment had robbed him of all enthusiasm. "i have a letter--this...." she drew good's tattered scrawl from her bag. the detective held out his hand--and drew it back empty. it was his business to see things which were not intended for him to see, and her sudden flush was not lost upon him. nor did the involuntary movement of her hand, with the letter, toward the bag, escape him. but by not so much as the flutter of an eyelid did his countenance change. "no address given, i suppose?" "no." "may i see ... the envelope?" he noticed that her blush was more pronounced as she handed it to him. and as he held it up to the light and seemed to be studying it intently, he was really considering the different features of what was, even to him, a distinctly unusual case. why was this young woman so tremendously desirous of locating an obscure journalist that she employed detectives for the purpose? and why did she colour and hold so tenaciously to a note from him? on the face of it it looked like a typical bit of soiled linen in high place--cases of which sort he was familiar with to the point of ennui. but his professional eminence had not been attained merely through industry: he was possessed of considerably more than a normal share of intuition--and intuition made the natural hypothesis untenable. he shrugged his shoulders. to find good--as he studied the postmark on the envelope, he dismissed that problem as unworthy of his ability. but to explain why miss judith wynrod wanted to find him--that, he admitted quite frankly to himself, was another matter. matters which he did not understand were nevertheless an inevitable part of his daily routine. he had long since ceased to allow any diversion from the hard business in hand by even the most fascinating of speculation. and obstacles did not halt him long. like the ant, he never stopped to scale them: he went around. it was very much quicker--and time was of importance. as if it were of trifling consequence, he handed back the letter from good. "i'll phone you when we learn anything," he said indifferently. "you think--you can find him?" the detective raised his palms. "that is hard to say." "but you will do your best?" "that goes without saying." he smiled quizzically as he spoke. for the first time he noticed how attractive his client was. a vague regret flitted across his mind that if he disappeared there would be no one to seek him with such eagerness. he dismissed the thought quickly, however. one in his position had no time for such nonsense. time was too valuable to be wasted in dreaming. the woman faded: only the case remained. he fell to drumming on the desk with his pencil, and judith realised that he asked nothing further of her. she thanked him and rose. silently he opened a private door leading to the hallway, bowed courteously as she passed him, and went back to his desk as if he had already forgotten her. judith went home at once, and all through the morning, she saw to it that she was not very far from the telephone. every time it rang her heart pounded a little harder, and each time that the call was not what she hoped it would be, disappointment became a little more keen, the fear of failure a little more pronounced. the maid who served luncheon reported to the kitchen that her mistress had tasted nothing. "what did i tell ye?" said the cook with profound mysteriousness, and even the chauffeur's boy, who could not recall that she had told anything, was silenced. "there's things goin' on in this house," she declared impressively, when she observed that the silence about her was respectful, "as how none of ye understand." there was no denial. at about three o'clock, judith heard the first news. "the postmark, of course, told us the general locality," said the placid voice over the telephone, speaking very slowly and distinctly. "i have just heard from one of my operatives who has been investigating the drug-stores in the neighbourhood, that he expects to locate a doctor at any time, who will be able to supply the rest of the information we seek. it may be an hour--perhaps two--perhaps not to-day. but i think i can assure you of ultimate success." judith thanked him so calmly that the detective wondered. had he seen the expression of her face as she hung up the receiver, he would have wondered still more. but as three o'clock merged into four, and four rolled away into five, with no further report, judith's restlessness gave place to resignation. and when, just as it was turning dark, the maid announced imrie, she was able to welcome him as unaffectedly as if not a care clouded her sky. it was merely a reaction, of course, quite inevitable after the strain of anxiety and suspense under which she had laboured for days: but he was not aware of that. all he knew was that judith was again the person he had known and loved so long ago. back upon him rushed the passion which had been quiescent before her detached indifference. as she stood before him, her eyes sparkling, her teeth gleaming, in smiles the like of which he had not seen, it seemed, since they were children together, all the hopes and dreams, so long dormant, sprang to his lips. "ah, judith, girl!" he cried, as he jumped to his feet and faced her. "it's got to come out again. i can't help it--i don't _want_ to help it. i..." a look of something akin to terror flashed into judith's eyes. "don't, arnold--please--you mustn't..." she drew away, almost as if she feared him. the movement, slight though it was, hurt him infinitely. "i suppose it's foolish," he said wistfully. "you made that pretty clear once. but i can't help thinking that things are different now. i'm not better than i was then--but i know myself better. i was a prig--full of pride--conceited. at least i'm not that any more. i'm only..." suddenly he stopped and eyed her narrowly. "tell me, judith," he demanded, "is it because--there's someone else?" he was not sure whether she had shaken her head or not. it had become very dark. he waited a moment, and when she said nothing, he moved a step nearer again. they were almost touching each other, and the faint fragrance of her hair in his nostrils, the soft roundness of her shoulders, overwhelmed him. he trembled violently, and his voice shook. "judith..." the words came low but strongly. "i've--i love you. do you hear--i love you. i want you--can't you see it? i've loved you ever since i knew what the word meant. i love you more now than i ever did before. i've forced myself to wait, to hope, to be patient. i thought that perhaps ... judith, my dearest, i can't do that any longer. i can't trust myself near you any more. the strain of appearing calm and contented when i'm here leaves me wretched afterward. i've tried hard to feel it as well as seem it. but it's no use. i can't. even my work's no help. you're between me and it all the time. i hoped it would bring me nearer to you. but something--someone--it simply can't go on. i can't stand it. either you marry me--or we've got to separate for good. i..." "arnold--what nonsense!" cried judith. "why..." as she lifted her eyes and felt his hot gaze upon her, she caught her breath and was silent. neither spoke for what seemed hours, the only sound the ticking of the great clock in the hall. then, with a suddenness that stunned, imrie's strong arms were around her. "i guess you need to be taken, my girl!" the words seemed driven through his teeth. "i've been too ... polite. the last time i kissed you i was ashamed of myself. i think if i'd kissed you twice i'd have you now. but it's never too late..." imrie had a powerful frame. she was impotent to prevent the eager kisses he showered upon her. "too polite!" he ground from between set jaws, "not enough--sheer _man_..." and then, with the force of a blow, the gust of passion vanished, as he realised that she was not struggling. she lay in his arms, her eyes closed, as if she had swooned, but with the faintest of smiles playing around her lips. he felt suddenly sheepish and awkward. he had seized her with the force of desperation, bent upon having his will with her, whether she would or no. he had half expected her to scream or scratch, to play the primal woman to his primal man. yet here she was, lying quiet in his arms, as if--as if ... she liked it! it was incredible. it was like stooping to pick up a great weight, only to find it tissue paper. he was thrown back upon himself, all weak and trembling and amazed and delighted ... a complex of more emotions than he could possibly enumerate. but as he strove to articulate, to say something, however banal, he became aware that judith's eyes had opened. it was an absurd thought, he told himself, but she seemed to be listening--and not to him. then he became conscious of a bell ringing somewhere in the house, and suddenly judith sprang from him like an arrow from a bow. he sat down helplessly. all his tired brain could formulate was a question without words. his arms seemed strangely weary ... as if he had been carrying a dead weight. in a very few minutes judith reappeared. "i've found it," she said, with an air of imparting information for which he had long been waiting. "i'm going over at once." "you've found it?" he echoed stupidly. "you're going over? what? where? i don't understand." "brent good's," she said quietly, already pulling on her gloves. "he's ill." "oh." the words were enough to galvanise imrie into action. he jumped to his feet, his jaw set. "i shall go with you," he said. it was not uttered as a threat, nor yet as an offer. judith divined it for what it was--a statement of fact. but she tried to protest. "it's not at all necessary." "i shall go with you," he repeated, with an air of believing that no human power could possibly prevent it. and judith, with a recollection of his recent amazing outburst of masterfulness, said no more. he seized her hand when they were in the automobile, and she made no effort to withdraw it. but something told him that she was not even conscious that he held it. after a little, he released it. she had gone very far away from him again, he thought sadly, as he watched her staring wide-eyed out into the darkness. it seemed clear enough now where she had gone, but there was no less grief at the going, for the knowledge. the swing of imrie's hope had reached its amplitude in those brief moments he had held her unresisting in his arms. it reached its lowest ebb on that silent ride to the home of his rival. he noticed, as he turned also to stare out of the window, that boulevards were giving place to meaner streets. car-tracks were more in evidence, and people, particularly children, more numerous. from the increased jolting, the change in the character of the pavements was obvious. for a little while they rolled down a very brightly lighted thoroughfare, lined with shops and moving-picture theatres, and crowded with vehicles and humanity. then they turned into a street which was hardly lighted at all, lined with tall, narrow buildings, entered through steep, high porches. a few minutes later the car stopped. imrie followed judith up the precipitous ascent to one of the tall, narrow buildings. vaguely unpleasant odours assailed him even before the front door was opened. "i would like to see mr. good," said judith to the round-shouldered slattern who answered the bell. the latter nodded dubiously for a moment, before she disappeared down the dark and narrow hall. imrie noticed that she limped as she walked, and that her underskirt showed on one side. from somewhere below a nauseous odour of stale cooking drifted up. it was reminiscent to him of schoolday cabbage and boiled things. he watched judith in the huge mirror which hung to one side. it was cracked rather badly, and one of the corners of its finger-marked black frame had separated. presently a stout, red-faced woman with untidy hair, appeared from the passageway where the young girl had disappeared. she was using her apron to wipe alternately her hands and the perspiration which exuded copiously from her forehead. one of her eyes was slightly crossed, giving her a curious aspect, half comic, half malevolent. "i would like to see mr. good, if i may," repeated judith pleasantly, as she approached. the stout woman raised her hand with a gesture of regret. "pshaw now--you're too late." "too late?" echoed judith, her voice trembling. "yiss, it's too bad, surely," said the woman calmly. "he died goin' on two days, it is." for an instant imrie thought that judith was going to faint. all the colour left her face. as she stood there, trembling and swallowing hard, her pallor showing green in the dim and flickering gas-light, he thought he had never seen anything more pitiful. "was you a friend of his'n?" asked the stout woman, apparently rather surprised at the reception of her intelligence. "yes," whispered judith, drawing the words in through compressed lips, "i was a--friend." then she removed her hand from the newel post, which had steadied her, and drew herself erect with what seemed like a physical effort. "i wonder if it would be possible to ... has his room--been changed? could i ... see it?" "bless yer heart, child, that ye may," said the landlady sympathetically, as if she had solved the problem. imrie hated her violently for her solution. "jist step this way," she added soothingly. she led the way up interminable flights of stairs, which creaked and groaned no matter how lightly they tried to walk. finally they stopped climbing, and proceeded down a narrow hall, lighted, after a fashion, by a single gas lamp. every now and then a draft from somewhere set it quivering gustily. judith was walking as if in a dream. imrie felt certain that she saw none of the sights which he saw, nor heard the sounds, nor smelled the odours. but he was wrong. she felt them all with ten times the keenness that he did. at length their guide halted, breathing heavily, and after fumbling with a bunch of rusty keys, swung open a door which creaked dismally. a breath of air, faintly pungent with the odour of drugs, came from the room beyond. judith and imrie stood silently waiting in the hall. the only sound was a muttered imprecation from the landlady as she stumbled into something in her search for the light. when she found it, the jet was clogged, and it whistled and danced as if animate, piping a march to their entrance. the room was incredibly small, one wall being reduced to less than the height of a man by the sharp slope of the roof: and there was only one window. it was a vivid moment, even to the stout woman, who did not understand it at all. to imrie, who thought he understood it, but did not, the background of the play was burned into his memory never to be erased. he was keenly cognisant of the places where the wood floor showed through the dingy carpet, and the black spots on the iron bedstead from which the paint had chipped off. he saw, too, the serrated edges of the water pitcher, and the discoloured marble top of the rickety wash basin. the poverty of the little room, intensified by its very neatness, struck him with a clarity which hurt. but most of all, he noticed the books. they were everywhere, for the most part ancient in appearance, but with the subtle difference between the age of use and that merely of years. there was a set of shelves, with its flimsy boards bending under them. they were piled under the bed, in corners, on the mantel ... he stopped when he reached the mantel, partly from judith's half-uttered cry, partly from what he saw. it was a photograph, in a cheap gilt frame, of judith herself, apparently cut from some newspaper. it was the only picture in the room. aside from the books, it was the only thing which did not belong to the boarding-house. imrie felt a lump rise in his throat. he heard judith's voice faintly. she was asking matter-of-fact questions quite calmly, but the effort it was costing her was manifest. the landlady, who was superstitious, was very glad that the silence had been broken. she talked volubly. "yiss, he was buried all right and reg'lar. no, there was no fun'ral. he said as how 'twas needless expense. no, there was no friends, 'cept, o' course, a few of us here-abouts. he wouldn't 'ave nobody notified. he said as how nobody cared. i think m'self 'e wandered a bit. he talked wild, it seemed to me. no, 'e didn't suffer none--not as i could see. his books? oh, 'e sold 'em. they're comin' for 'em to-morrer. he wanted the money given to a jew boy that's sick downstairs. he was queer, mr. good was, but 'e was allus free with 'is money, that 'e was." "what about the picture?" judith's voice was strained and hoarse. "oh, that? he told me to send it to some lady. funny name, it was. i got it downstairs. i been too busy to attend to it. what with the dyin' and the buryin' an' all, not to mention the cookin'--and two parties moved out to-day, an'...." "was it wynrod--the name?" asked judith gently. a light broke over the stout woman's face. "sure now, that was it. but how did ye know?" her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "i am miss wynrod." "oh, so that's it, is it. well then, ye can be takin' it an' save me the trouble. an' by the way--there's a letter, too. i fergot about that. one moment an' i'll have it fer ye...." she disappeared noisily. judith stood staring out of the window. imrie tried to fix his attention upon the books, but his eyes kept wandering miserably to judith's unresponsive back, drooping like a wilted flower. neither spoke. the stout woman returned in a surprisingly short time, considering her bulk. "here 'tis," she cried cheerfully, puffing like some inadequate engine. "i spilt a little cranberry on it, but that won't hurt the inside." she handed the envelope to judith and stood waiting expectantly. but judith turned and accepted it without a word, her grey face as immobile as if made of stone. quietly she moved nearer the whistling gas-light, and after a pause, as though she were girding herself for a struggle, she tore the flap quickly. it was a short note: * * * * * "dearest of friends: "this is my 'thirty.' my story's done--the candle's out. "but after all, each one of us is only a page--perhaps only a letter--in the great book. we're blotted out or torn away, but the story goes on--always. "the forms are closed on my tale. the wires are dead. but there's 'more to follow' in _your_ story. and the big yarn isn't finished because my take's all set. even when the foreman puts the blue envelope in _your_ box, even then--there will be 'more to follow.' "i have loved you well." * * * * * still moving like an automaton, she folded the scrap of paper and placed it carefully in her bag. then, as if she could not speak, she bowed to the landlady, who surveyed her in patent disappointment, and walked slowly from the room. imrie followed, understanding something of her suffering, impotent to help. but once in the automobile, he could stand it no longer. "oh, judith, judith," he cried brokenly, "won't you let me...." he put his arm around her and drew her to him. she freed herself mechanically. "no, arnold," she said very gently. "not--not now...." then the tears came. [illustration: frontispiece: the girl in her norse glow and blondness would have been a marked figure any where.] the stingy receiver by eleanor hallowell abbott author of "molly make believe," "the white linen nurse," etc. with illustrations by fanny munsell new york the century co. copyright, , by the century co. copyright, , by the crowell publishing company published, february, to katherine k. abbott a generous giver this book is affectionately dedicated list of illustrations the girl in her norse glow and blondness would have been a marked figure any where . . . frontispiece "oh, drat you women!" he grinned sheepishly. "well, go ahead! one--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten!". . . by craning his neck around the corner of the piano, he noted with increasing astonishment that the rivulet sprang from the black ferule of an umbrella . . . "excuse me, miss kjelland," he said; "but this is not a picnic--it is a clinic" . . . as coolly as if she had been appraising a new dog or pussy, mrs. tome gallien narrowed her eyes to both the vision and the announcement . . . the stingy receiver i "if i were fifty years old," said the young doctor quite bluntly, "and found myself suddenly stripped of practically all my motor powers except my pocketbook and my sense of humor; and was told that i could make one wish----" "but i am fifty years old," admitted the sick woman. "and i do find myself stripped of practically all my motor powers, except my pocketbook and my sense of humor!" "then for heaven's sake--wish!" snapped the young doctor. "oh, my goodness!" mocked the sick woman. "you're not by any chance a--a fairy god-doctor, are you?" "fairy god-doctor?" bristled the young man. "the phrase is an unfamiliar one to me," he confided with some hauteur. quizzically then for a moment among her hotel pillows the woman lay staring out through the open window into the indefinite slate-roofed vista of beyond--and beyond--and beyond. then so furtively that the whites of her eyes showed suddenly like a snarling dog's she glanced back at the young doctor's grimly inscrutable face. "you're quite sure that it isn't a will you want me to make? not a wish?" she asked. "quite sure," said the young doctor, without emotion. as two antagonists searching desperately for some weak spot in each other's mental armor, the patient's eyes narrowed to the doctor's, the doctor's to the patient's. it was the patient who fled first from the probe. "how many years can you give me?" she surrendered dully. "i can't give you any! i can't afford it!" slapped the young doctor's brisk, cool voice. "how many years can you sell me, then?" roused the woman with the first faint red flare of vigor across her cheek bones. "oh, i don't know," admitted the young doctor. sagging back a little wearily against the edge of the bureau, with his long arms folded loosely across his breast he stood staring tensely down through the woman's question into the actual case itself. "oh, i don't know," he admitted. "oh, of course, if you had some one brand-new interest to revitalize you? if the matter of congenial climate could be properly adjusted? with all your abundant financial resources? and all the extra serenities and safeguards that financial resources can wrap a sick person in? oh, i suppose one could almost positively guarantee you--guarantee you,--oh, years and years," he finished a trifle vaguely. "only that?" winced the woman. "years and years?" she quoted mockingly. "it isn't enough! not nearly enough!" she flared with sudden passion. "even so," smiled the young doctor. "that is a more definite estimate than i could, equally honestly, make for the youngest, friskiest child who prances to work or play every day through the tortuous traffic of our city streets." "oh," said the woman with a flicker of humor in her tears. "oh," smiled the doctor without an atom of humor in the smile. with her handsome gray head cocked ever so slightly to one side, the woman's eyes seemed rather oddly intent on the young doctor for an instant. "how--how thin you are--and how hungry-looking," she commented suddenly with quite irrelevant impudence. "thank you," bowed the young doctor. "ha!" chuckled the woman. "and i? 'how satiate-looking she is!' is that what you'd like to say?" "you are perfectly welcome to look any way you wish," said the young doctor with distinct coldness. indifferently then for a moment both doctor and patient seemed to relax into the centric personal hush of the sick-room itself, with its far outlying murmur of thudding feet, its occasional sharp, self-conscious click of remote elevator machinery. then the doctor snatched out his watch. "well, what is it you want me to do first?" roused the sick woman instantly. "make your wish!" said the doctor. "yes, i know," parried the woman. "but what do you want me to wish? what kind of a wish, i mean, do you want me to make?" as though personally affronted by the question, the young doctor stepped suddenly forward. "what kind of a wish do i want you to make?" he demanded. "why, what kind of a wish should i want you to make except an honest wish? not the second-hand, sanctimonious, reconsidered sort of wish that you think you ought to make. but the first glad, self-concerned, self-revitalizing whim that gushes up into your mind when anybody springs the word 'wish' at you!" "oh!" brightened the woman. "that ought to be easy enough." the sudden smile flooding into the very faintly distorted facial muscles gave a certain shrewd, waggish sort of humor to the assertion. "why not?" she persisted speculatively. "long life and happiness having been logically eliminated from my impulses, and both faith and fact having reasonably convinced me that all my loved ones are perfectly well provided for in either this world or the next, why shouldn't i wish for the one thing that will add most to my own personal diversion? oh, very well," she began to consider. whitely her eyelids drooped down across her turbid eyes. "now you count ten, doctor," she murmured quite casually. "and when you say ten i'll tell you the wish." "this isn't a game, mrs. gallien!" bristled the young doctor. very languidly the woman opened her eyes wide. "oh, isn't it?" she asked. "then i won't wish, thank you." "what are you talking about?" scolded the young doctor. "about getting well," conceded the woman. languidly the white eyelids closed again. "and if getting well isn't a game--i won't get well, either," affirmed the woman. with a gasp of irritation the young doctor snatched up his hat and left the room. but outside the door, neither up the hall nor down the hall, nor across the hall, was the nurse waiting where he had told her to wait. [illustration: "oh, drat you women!" he grinned sheepishly. "well, go ahead one-two-three-four-five-six-seven-eight-nine-ten"] with an audible imprecation he stalked back into the sick-room and threw himself down into the first chair he could reach. "oh, drat you women!" he grinned sheepishly. "well, go ahead! one--two--three--four--five--six--seven--eight--nine--ten!" as automatically almost as a mechanical doll the sick woman opened her eyes. "oh, all right!" she smiled. "now i will tell you the wish. but first i must tell you that the thing i hate most in the world is an empty twilight. and the thing i love best is a crowded shop. oh, the joy of shopping!" she quickened. "the fun, the fury of it! buy, buy, buy, while the light lasts and the money shines! but as for the empty twilight?" she wilted again. "i wish--" her voice caught suddenly, "i wish that the last mail of the day may never leave me utterly letterless. and that i may always be expecting a package by express!" "do you really mean it?" asked the young doctor without the slightest trace of perturbance. "why, of course i mean it!" smiled the woman. "but do you dream for a moment that you can guarantee that?" "i can at least prescribe it," said the young doctor. "you have more subtlety than i thought," drawled the woman. "you have more simplicity than i had dared to hope," bowed the young doctor. again, in shrewd half-mocking appraisement, the two measured each other. then with a great, busy frown the young doctor turned to his notebook. "let me see," he estimated. "it was four weeks ago yesterday--that you fell on the street." "was it?" said the woman indifferently. "mrs. gallien," asked the young doctor with some abruptness, "just exactly where is your home?" "i have no home," said the woman. "yes, but you must live somewhere," bristled the young doctor. "only in my pocketbook and my sense of humor," quoted the woman with frank mockery. "but why make such a mystery about your domicile?" persisted the young doctor. "that's just it," said the woman. "i haven't any domicile to make a mystery of! it's seventeen years since i've lived in what you call a domicile. "where have you lived?" demanded the young doctor. "oh, on steamers mostly," conceded the woman. very faintly the pallid nostrils dilated. "i've been to australia five times," she acknowledged. "and china twice. and japan,--" she quickened. "all the little vague outlying islands, all the great jostling eager seaports! by steam, by paddle wheels, by lax, loose-flapping rainbow-colored sails!" in sudden listlessness she turned her cheek to the pillow again. "wherever the sea is salt," she murmured. "wherever the sea is salt! hunting, always and forever hunting,--yes, that's it,--always and forever hunting for lights and laughter and----" "pardon me," said the young doctor, quite abruptly. "but is your husband living?" "no," said the woman. "he died two years ago." inquisitively for a moment the young doctor studied the nerve-ravaged face before him. "pardon me," he stammered. "but--but was it a great shock to you?" "it was a great relief," said the woman, without emotion. "he had been hopelessly insane for seventeen years." "oh!" jumped the young doctor, as though the thought fairly tortured his senses. "oh!" speculated the woman quizzically, with the merciful outer callousness which the brain provides for those who are obliged to carry some one scorching thought for an indeterminate period of years. as though in sheer nervous outlet the young doctor began almost at once to pace the room. "seeing that there are no--no personal ties, apparently, to hold you here--or drive you there," he said, "the matter of congenial climate ought to be one that we can easily arrange." with half ironic amusement the sick woman lay and watched his worried, fluctuating face. "the question of climate is all arranged!" she said. "the speed that was stripped from my body last week, has at least been put back into my brain. just where i am going, just whom i am going to take with me, just what i am going to do to amuse me, every last infinitesimal detail of all the rest of my life," she smiled, "i have planned it all out while you have been dawdling there between the wardrobe and the bureau." "dawdling?" snapped the young doctor. quite abruptly he stopped his nervous pacing. "well, where is it that you want to go?" he asked. musingly the woman's eyes stared off again into the window-framed vista of the city roofs. "on an island," she said. "off the coast of south carolina there is a house. it is really rather a dreadful old place. i have not seen it since i was a girl. it was old then. it must be almost a wreck now. and the island is not very large. and there is no other house on the island. just this great rambling deserted shack. and six battered old live-oak trees half strangled with dangly gray moss. and there are blue jays always in the gray moss, and cardinal birds, and unestimable squirrels. and there is a bedroom in the house forty feet long. and in that bedroom there is a four-poster seven feet wide, and most weirdly devised of old ships' figureheads, a smirking, faded siren at one corner, a broken-nosed sailor at another,--i forget the others--but altogether in memory i see it as a rather unusually broad and amusing shelf to be laid aside on. and there, in the middle of that great ship-figured bed, in the middle of that great dingy sunken-cabin sort of room with its every ancient windowpane blearing grayly into the sea, through deck-like porches so broad, so dark, so glowering that no streak of cloud or sky will ever reach my eyes again, nor any strip of gray-brown earth--i shall lie, i say, in unutterable peace and tranquillity as other ghosts have lain before me, 'forty fathoms deep' below all their troubles. and always as i lie thus, there will be the sigh of the surf in my ears. and the swell of the tide in my eyes. eternally across my windows fin-like wings shall soar and pass and gray mosses float and flare." "cheerful!" snapped the young doctor. "yes. isn't it?" beamed the woman. with a gasp of surprise the young doctor turned and stared at her. "why, i really believe that you think so!" he stammered. "why, of course i think so!" said the woman. "why not?" she queried. "a dimming candle glows brightest in a dark room!" not a trace of morbidness was in her voice, not a flicker of sentimentality. "and besides," she smiled. "it is also my desire to remove myself as far as possible from the main thoroughfares of life." "i don't see why!" protested the young doctor. "this is the 'why,'" said the woman. "just as i fell that day," she smiled. "in my last conscious moment, i mean,--a hurrying child stumbled and stepped on me." once again the smile twisted ever so slightly to one side. "and never any more while i live," said the woman, "do i care to repeat the sensation of being an impediment to traffic." very idly for a moment she seemed to focus her entire interest on the flapping window curtain. "and i shall name my house--name my house--" she mused. with sudden impetuous conviction every lax muscle of her face tightened into action. "once--once in new england," she hurried, "i saw a scarlet-gold tulip named 'glare of the garden'! for absolute antithesis i shall call my house 'gloom of the sea!'" "do you wish to take your present young nurse with you?" asked the doctor a bit abruptly. the crooked smile on the woman's face straightened instantly into thin-lipped positiveness. "i do not!" said the woman. "i detest novices! their professional affectations drive me mad! i am born, weaned, educated, courted, married, widowed,--crippled, in the moppish time it takes them to wash my face, to straighten the simplest fork on my breakfast tray! every gesture of their bodies, every impulse of their minds, fairly creak with the laborious, studied arrogance of an immature nature thrust suddenly into authority! if i've got to have personal service all the rest of my days for goodness' sake give me a big, experienced nature reduced by some untoward reason to the utmost terms of simplicity!" as quickly as it had come, the irritation vanished from her face. "there is a chambermaid here in this hotel--i love her!" said the woman. "she was a hospital superintendent somewhere, once, until her deafness smashed it." as ingenuously as a child's the tired, worldly-wise eyes lifted to the young doctor's face. "i like deaf people," said the woman. "they never chatter, i have noticed. nor insist upon reading the newspapers to you. being themselves protected from every vocal noise that does not directly concern them, they seem instinctively to accord you the same sacristy. and besides," smiled the woman, "this ex-superintendent's hair is as gray as mine. and i adore women whose hair is just exactly as gray as mine. and also," smiled the woman, "her name happens to be 'martha'--and i have always craved the personal devotion of someone named 'martha'. and i shall pay her an extra hundred dollars a month," smiled the woman, "to call me 'elizabeth'. never in my life," said the woman, "have i ever had any food cooked for my first name. martha will do everything for me, you understand?" she added quickly. "yes, but how do you know that she'll go with you?" asked the young doctor dryly. "how do i know that she'll go with me?" flared the woman. the imperious consciousness of money was in the flare, but also the subtler surety of a temperamental conviction. "why, of course she'll go!" said the woman. as definitely as though she had assumed that sunshine would be sunshine, she dismissed the whole topic from their conversation. "oh, all right," smiled the young doctor a bit ironically. "i am to infer then that climate, locality, care, companionship, everything has been arranged except your wish for a chronic package by express?" "oh, that is all arranged too!" boasted the woman. "i don't see it," said the young doctor. "i saw it," said the woman, "while you were straightening your necktie! oh, of course, the shops can never happen again." she winced with real emotion. "all the gay, covetous fingering of silk or bronze, the shrewd explorative sallies through aisles of treasure and tiers of tantalization! but just the package part?" she rallied instantly. "oh, the package part i assure you is perfectly easy, as long as memory lasts and imagination holds. with a check book on one side of me and a few dollars worth of postage stamps on the other, all i'll have to do," she laughed, "is just to lie there on my back and study the advertising pages of all the magazines. every fascinating gown that cries for help from a fashion catalogue! every irresistible lawn mower that brags of its prowess from the columns of an agricultural journal! ten cent packages of floral miracles, or ten dollar lotions from the beauty shops! certainly never again till the end of time ought there to dawn a day when i haven't a reasonable right to expect that something will arrive! "and i shall have a wrangle boat, of course," babbled the woman impishly. "what is it? oh, 'motor boat' you call it? oh, any old kind of an engine,--i don't care, so long as it serves its purpose of keeping a man and a boy busy all day long quarreling as they always do just how to run it. and once a day, every late afternoon, i shall send the wrangle boat to the mainland--way--way out beyond the sky line of my piazza. and the instant that boat swings back into vision again, just between the droop of the roof and the lift of the railing, they will hoist a flag if there is anything for me. and if there isn't--if there isn't?" across her whimsical prophecy indescribable irritation settled suddenly. "and if there isn't anything, they need never return!" snapped the woman. "oh, of course, that's all right at first," mocked the young doctor. "but in your original description of your island i remember no mention of large storehouses or empty warerooms. after a while you know, with things arriving every day or so. and the house, i infer, except for the one big room you speak of, sustains no special acreage." "stupid!" rallied the woman. "oh, i see," puzzled the young doctor. "you--you mean that you're going to give the things away? hordes of young nieces, and poor relations and all that sort of thing? why--why, of course!" "oh, no!" said the woman. with suddenly narrowing eyes her whole face turned incalculably shrewd and cold. "oh, no! i am all through giving anything away!" defiantly for an instant she challenged the young doctor's silence, then sank back with frank indifference into her pillows again. "worldly as i am," she smiled very faintly, "and worldly as my father and mother were before me, and their father and mother, doubtless, before them, there is one little prayer that i shall never forget,--and i found it, if the fact interests you, inscribed painstakingly in faded violet ink in the back of my grandfather's first check book, before, evidently, either wealth or worldliness had quite begun to set in. and this is the little prayer: "if fortune and finance should so ordain that i may never be any kind of a giver, heaven grant that at least i may not be a stingy receiver but share unstintedly with such benefactor as may favor me the exceeding happiness which his benefaction has most surely conferred upon me!" once more the faint smile twisted into cynicism. "that's it," said the woman. "i'm tired of _stingy receivers_!" "i--i'm afraid i don't get you," said the young doctor. "don't you ever get anything?" snapped the woman explosively. it was the young doctor's turn to flare now. "oh, yes," he said. "sometimes i get awfully tired of the vagaries of women!" out of her nerves rather than her mirth the woman burst out laughing. "you are so young!" she said. "not as juvenile as your vagaries," protested the young doctor. "but my vagaries are not juvenile!" insisted the woman. "they are as old and ingrained as time itself. for seventeen years," quickened the woman, "i have been 'gathering gifts' from all over the world, ripping things out of impersonal wholesale, as it were, to apply them as best i might to this person's, or the other's, individual need. say, if you want to, that i have had nothing else to do on my travels except to spend money, yet the fact remains that as far as my own personal satisfactions are concerned in the matter of giving, i have been pouring presents for seventeen years into a bottomless pit. never once, i mean," smiled the woman, "never once, yearning over the abyss as the gift went down, have i ever heard the entrancing thud that a gift ought to make when it lands on real appreciation. never!" "well, you are a cynic!" conceded the young doctor. "i admit it," said the woman. "yet even a cynic may be fair-minded." for the first time in her tired, sophisticated face, shrewdness and irony were equally routed by sheer perplexity. "i've thought it all out as decently as i could from the other person's point of view," she puzzled. "i see his side, i think. i have no legal, constitutional right, of course, to demand a person's gratitude for any gift which is purely voluntary on my part. lots of people in all probability would infinitely rather not have a gift than be obliged thereby to write a 'thank you' for it. against such a person's wish and inclination, i mean, i've no right to pry 'thank you's' out of him, even with gold-mounted golf sticks or first editions. i've no right to be a highwayman, i mean. even if i'm literally dying for a 'thank you' i've no more right, i mean, to hold up a person with a gift than i'd have to hold him up with a gun." "then what are you fussing about?" asked the young doctor. "i'm fussing about the hatefulness of it," said the woman. all the shrewdness came suddenly back to her face. "this is what i mean!" she cried sharply. "when i stay in paris three months, for instance, to collect a trousseau for the daughter of a man who meant something to me once in my youth, and receive in due time from that girl a single page of gothic handwriting thanking me no matter how gushingly for my 'magnificent gift,' i tell you i could fairly kill her for her stingy receiving! not a word from her about hats, you understand? not a comment on shoes! not the vaguest, remotest mention of chiffon veils, silk stockings, evening gowns, street suits, mink furs, anything! just the whole outfit, trunk after trunk of 'em, all lumped in together and dismissed perfectly casually under the lump word 'gift!' and it wasn't just a 'gift' that i gave her, you understand?" said the woman with a sudden real twinge of emotion. "almost nobody, you know, ever gives just a 'gift.' what i really gave her, of course, was three whole months of my taste, time, temperament! three whole months of my wanting-to-give! three whole months of a woman's dreams for a young girl! what i really gave her, of course, was the plaudits of her elders, the envies of all her girl chums, the new, unduplicatable pride and dignity of a consciously perfect equipment! what i really gave her, of course, was the light in her bridegroom's eyes when he first saw her merge a throb of mist and pearls through the gray gloom of the cathedral chancel! what i really gave her of course was the----" "yes, but you surely know that she appreciated the gift," deprecated the young doctor. "why, of course she appreciated the gift!" snapped the woman. "but what i'm trying to find is some one who'd appreciate the giver! anybody can appreciate a gift," she added with unprecedented scorn. "pleased?" snapped the woman. "why, of course, she was pleased! the only thing i'm fussing about is that she was too stingy to share her pleasure with me! the fire i worked so hard to light, lit all right, but simply refused to warm me! that's it! why! did she note by one single extra flourish of her pen that the lining of her opera cloak was like the petalling of a pink killarney rose? or that the texture of her traveling suit would have made a princess strut with pride? when she lumped a dozen paris hats into the one word 'nice' did she dream for one single instant that she had lulled my perfectly human hunger to know whether it was the red one or the green one or the gold which most became her ecstatic little face? did it ever occur to her to tell me what her lover said about the gay little brown leather hunting suit? six months hence, freezing to death in some half-heated palace on the riviera, is there one chance in ten thousand, do you think, that she will write me to say, 'oh, you darling, how did you ever happen to think of a moleskin breakfast coat and footies?' and again!" scolded the woman. "when a stodgy old missionary on his way back to africa relaxes enough on a mid-ocean moonlight night so that it's fun a month later to send him a mule and cart just to keep his faithful, clumsy old feet off the african sands, do you think it's fun for him to send me eight smug laborious pages complimenting me--without a moon in them,--on 'the great opportunities for doing good which my enormous wealth must give me,' and commending me specially 'for this most recent account of my stewardship which i have just evidenced in my noble gift'?" for one single illuminating flash humor twitched back into the woman's eyebrow. "stewardship--bosh!" she confided. "on a picture post card--with stubby, broken-nosed pencil--i would so infinitely rather he had scribbled, 'bully for you, old girl! this is some mule!'" with a little sigh of fatigue she sank back into her pillows. "'more blessed to give than to receive?' quite evidently!" she said. "everywhere it's the same! people love pictures and never note who painted them! people love stories and never remember who wrote them! why, in any shop in this city," she roused, "i wager you could go in and present a hundred dollar bill to the seediest old clerk you saw--and go back in an hour and he wouldn't know you by sight! 'the gift without the giver is bare?'" she quoted savagely. "ha! what they really meant was 'the giver added to the gift is a bore?'" "well, what do you propose to do about it?" quizzed the young doctor a bit impatiently. "i propose to do this about it!" said the woman. "i propose to become a reformer!" "a reformer?" jeered the young doctor. "well, then--an avenger! if you like the word better," conceded the woman. "oh, i shall keep right on buying things, of course," she hastened mockingly to assure him. "and giving things, of course. one could hardly break so suddenly the habit and vice of a life time. only i shan't scatter my shots all over the lot any more. but concentrate my deadliest aim on one single individual. indeed, i think i shall advertise," mocked the woman. "in that amazing column of all daily papers so misleadingly labeled 'wants' instead of able-to-haves i shall insert some sort of a statement to the effect that: "an eccentric middle-aged woman of fabulous wealth, lavish generosity, and no common sense whatsoever, will receive into her 'lovely southern home' one stingy receiver. strictest reference required. object: reformation or--annihilation." "it would be interesting to see the answers you'd get!" rallied the young doctor with unwonted playfulness. almost imperceptibly the woman twisted her eyebrows. "oh, of course, i admit that most of them would be from asylums," she said. "offering me special rates. but there's always a chance, of course, that--that--" straight as a pencil-ruling both eyebrows dropped suddenly into line. "but i'm quite used to taking chances, thank you!" she finished with exaggerated bruskness. "what else do you propose to take?" asked the young doctor a bit dryly. "_you!_" said the woman. at the edge of the bureau the young doctor wheeled abruptly in his tracks. "well, you won t!" he said. his face was quite white with anger. "why not?" drawled the woman. as ruthlessly as a child she seemed to be estimating suddenly the faintly perceptible shine of the man's shoulder seams. only the frankness of the stare relieved it of its insolence. "why not?" she said. "is your practice here so huge that you can totally afford to ignore a salary such as i would give you?" "nevertheless," winced the young doctor, "even _you_ cannot buy everything!" "can't i?" smiled the woman. in passionate willfulness and pride her smile straightened out again into its thin-lipped line. "but i need you!" she asserted arrogantly. "i like you! if i had had my choice of every practitioner in the city, i--i!" with a precipitous whimper of nerves the tears began suddenly to stream down her cheeks. "there is--there is something about you," she stammered. "in a--in a trolley car accident, in a steamer panic, out of a--out of a thousand," she sobbed, "i instinctively would have turned to you!" as abruptly as it had come, the flood of tears vanished from her face, leaving instead a gray-streaked flicker of incredulity. "why, i don't even know how i did happen to get you!" she admitted aghast. "out of all the doctors in the city--it must have been intended! it must! if there's any providence at all it must arrange such details! how did i happen to get you?" she demanded imperiously. for the first time across the young doctor's lean, ascetic face an expression of relaxation quickened. "well if you really want to know," he said. "as you were being lifted out of your carriage at the hotel door, i was just coming out of the free lunch----" "hunger or thirst?" scoffed the woman. "none of your business," smiled the young doctor. "oh, and besides," rallied the woman instantly. "i thought, likely as not, that there might be some girl. somebody you could coach! about my passion for shopping, i mean! i don't care who gets the things! if there's anybody you like, she might just as well be the one!" "thank you," rebristled the young doctor. "but i don't happen to know any girls!" "good enough!" said the woman. "then there's nothing at all to complicate your coming!" "but i'm not coming!" stared the young doctor. the pupils of his eyes were dilated like a deer's jacked suddenly with an infuriating light. "but you are coming," said the woman without a flicker of emotion. "day after tomorrow it is. at three-thirty from the pennsylvania station." "i'm not!" said the young doctor. "you are!" said the woman. when it comes right down to the matter of statistics, just how many times in your life you've had your own way and just how many times you haven't, mrs. tome gallien was not exaggerating when she boasted to the young doctor that she was quite in the habit of having her own way. she certainly was! in the majority of incidents she had, indeed, always had her own way. and in the majority of incidents she had her own way now. that is to say, that the south carolina train did leave the pennsylvania station at just exactly the time she said it would. and martha the deaf was on that train. and she, herself, was on that train. but the young doctor was not. "not much! _not much!_" was the way the young doctor said it, if you really want to know. but he said very little else that afternoon. to be perfectly frank his luncheon had been very poor, and his breakfast, before that, and his dinner, before that. further reiteration would be purely monotonous. moreover, on this particular february day the weather was extravagantly northern, his office, as cold and dark and bleak as some untenanted back alley, and his general professional prospects as dull as, if not indeed duller than, the last puff of ashes in his pipe. yet even so he counted his situation ecstasy compared to the thought of being dragged south by the wrapper-strings of a gray-haired invalid-woman as headstrong as she was body-weak. "not much!" long after there was no tugging warm taste left in his pipe he was still tugging at the phrase. "not much!" but mrs. tome gallien on her fine train scudding south was even more chary of words than he when it came to her own comment on his defection. "idjot!" she telegraphed back from washington. the operator who repeated the message over the telephone was frankly apologetic. "yes, doctor," explained the metallic voice. "that's just exactly the way we received it. it isn't even 'idiot'" argued the voice. "because we wired back for verification. 'i-d-j-o-t!' that's what it is. maybe it's a--a code word," condoned the voice amiably. it certainly was a "code" word. and the message that it sought to convey was plainly this: "how any young struggling practitioner in a strange city, with not only his future to make but even his present, how such a one has got the nerve, the nerve, i say, to refuse a regular salaried position and all expenses, all expenses, mind you, in a salubrious climate, and with a lady,--well, with a lady whom other men infinitely wiser and more sophisticated than he have not found utterly devoid perhaps of interest and charm?" talk about being packed "cram-jam?" surely no week-end suitcase could ever have bulged more with significance than did this one tiny telegram "idjot!" and equally surely its context "dressed" the young doctor's mind quite completely for almost a week. but the great square white envelope that arrived in due time from mrs. tome gallien had nothing in it at all except a check. no reproaches, i mean, no upbraidings, no convalescent rhapsodies of gratitude even. just a plain straightforward unsentimental black and white check covering so many professional visits at so much a visit. a man might have sent it. a perfectly well man, i mean. "and so the episode ends," mused the young doctor with distinct satisfaction. but it didn't end so, of course. women like mrs. tome gallien were not created to end things but to start 'em. of such is the kingdom of leaven. it was on the following thursday that the grand piano arrived at the young doctor's office. now the young doctor's office might easily have accommodated more patients than it did. but piano movers are almost always so fat. puffing, blowing, swearing, tugging,--the whole dingy room seemed suddenly packed with brawn. "but it isn't my piano!" protested the young doctor from every chair, desk, table, of his ultimate retreat. "it _isn't_ my piano!" he yelled from the doorway. "it isn't my piano!" he scolded through the window. but it was his piano, of course! the piano movers swore that it was. the piano warerooms telephoned that it was. . . worst of all, the piano itself on one plump ankle flaunted a tag which proclaimed that it was. and the proclamation was most distinctly in mrs. tome gallien's handwriting. "for dr. sam kendrue," it said. "as a slight token of my appreciation and esteem." "'appreciation?'" groaned the young doctor. "'esteem?'" in the first venom of his emotion he sat right down and wrote mrs. gallien just exactly what he thought of her. and of it. "it" being of course the piano. "whatever in the world," he demanded, "would i do with a piano? oh, of course it's very kind of you and all that," he conceded with crass sarcasm. "but i have no possible floor space, you understand, beyond my office and the very meager bedroom adjoining it. and with a quarter of a ton's worth of wood and wire plunked down thus in the exact center of my office it leaves me, i assure you, an extraordinarily limited amount of elbow-space unless it be a sort of running track that still survives around the extreme edges of the room. and moreover the piano is of rosewood, as you doubtless already know, and all inlaid with cherubim and seraphim snarled up in wreaths of lavender roses. now botany i admit, is distinctly out of my line. but the cherubim and seraphim are certainly very weird anatomically. "and not knowing one note from another,--as indeed i remember telling you quite plainly at an earlier date, well,--excuse me if i seem harsh," he exploded all over again, "but whatever in the world would i do with a piano?" as ingenuously insolent as a child's retort came mrs. tome gallien's almost immediate reply. "yes! what would you do? that's just exactly it! i thought i'd get a rise out of you!" said mrs. tome gallien. "across my dulled horizon a whole heap of most diverting speculations have suddenly begun to flash and brighten. 'whatever in the world' _would_ you do with a piano?" "i can at least return it to the warerooms," wrote the young doctor with significant brevity. "oh, no, you can't!" telegraphed mrs. tome gallien. "apropos slight defect and large mark-down merchandise rated non-returnable." while he was yet fuming over this message mrs. tome gallien's special delivery letter overtook her telegram. "don't struggle," urged mrs. tome gallien. "after all, my dear young antagonist, when it comes right down to brass tacks, it isn't so much a question of just what you are going to do with the piano as it is of--just what the piano is going to do with you. because of course, do something it certainly will! and the madder you get of course the more it will do! and the madder you get of course the sooner it will do it! and---- "oh, lying here flat on my back in all this damp, salty, sea-green stillness,--tides coming, tides going,--sands shifting,--sea-weeds floating,--my whole wild heedless past resolves itself into one single illuminating conviction. it's the giving people appropriate gifts that stultifies their characters so, pampering their vanities, and clogging alike both their impulses and their ink! yes, sir! "why, goodness, man! if i had crocheted you slippers would it have joggled you one iota out of the rut of your daily life? or would even the latest design in operating tables have quickened one single heart-beat of your snug, self-sufficient young body? or for forty stethoscopes do you imagine for one tiny instant that you would have written me twice in five days? "but if one can only make a person mad instead of glad! now that's the real kindness! so invigorating! so educative! so poignantly reconstructive! because if there's one shining mark in the world that adventure loves it's a--shining mad person. even you, for instance! having made no place in your particular rut for 'quarter of a ton of wood and wire' the advent of such a weightage is just plain naturally bound to crowd you out of your rut. and whoever side-steps his rut for even an instant? well, truly, i think you deserved just a wee bit of crowding. "so heigho, cross laddie! and rustle round as fast as you can to get yourself a new necktie or a hair-cut or a shine! 'cause something certainly is going to happen to you! happen right off, i mean! even now perhaps! even----" with a grunt of disgust the young doctor jumped up and began to pace his office,--what was left of his office, i mean, around the extreme edges of the room. and the faster he paced the madder he grew. "oh, the fantasia of women!" he stormed. "the--the exaggeration!" he was perfectly right--mrs. tome gallien was often fantastic, and certainly quite exaggerative anent the present situation. the threatened "adventure" did not happen at once! it didn't happen indeed for at least two hours! yet the fact remains, of course, that the big piano was at the bottom of the adventure. science no doubt would have refuted the connection. but fancy is no such fool. surely if there hadn't been a big piano the young doctor would never have worked himself up into such a bad temper on that particular afternoon. and if he hadn't worked himself up into such a bad temper he never would have flounced himself out into the dreary february streets to try and "walk it off." and if he hadn't tried so hard to "walk it off" he never would have developed such a perfectly ravenous hunger. and if he hadn't developed such a perfectly ravenous hunger he never would have bolted at just exactly six o'clock for the brightest lighted restaurant in sight. and it was on the street right in front of the brightest lighted restaurant that the adventure happened. even fancy, though, would never have boasted that it was anything except a very little adventure. skies didn't fall, i mean, nor walls topple, nor bags of gold roll gaily to the young doctor's feet. just a car stopped,--a great plain, clumsy everyday electric car, and from the front platform of it a girl with a suitcase in one hand, a hat box in the other, and goodness-knows-what tucked under one elbow, jumped down into the mud. even so the adventure would never have started if the goodness-knows-what hadn't slipped suddenly from the girl's elbow and exploded all over the street into a goodness-knows-how-many! it would have been funny of course if it hadn't been so clumsy. but even while deprecating the digital clumsiness of women, the young doctor leaped instinctively to the rescue. there were certainly enough things that needed rescuing! toys they proved to be. and such a scattering! a brown plush coon under the wheels of a stalled automobile! a flamboyant red-paper rose bush trampled to pulp beneath a cart horse's hoofs! a tin steam engine cackling across a hobbly brick sidewalk! a green-feathered parrot disappearing all too quickly in a fox terrier's mouth! a doll here! a paint box there! and the girl herself standing perfectly helpless in the midst of it all blushing twenty shades of pink and still hanging desperately tight to the leather suitcase in one hand and the big hat box in the other. "and it isn't at all that i am so--so stupid!" she kept explaining hectically. "but it is that when an accident occurs so in english i cannot think in english what to do! if i put down my suitcase!" she screamed, "a dog will bite it! and if i drop my box a trample might get it!" it was not until the young doctor had succeeded in reassembling owner and articles on the safe edge of the curbing that he noticed for the first time how tall the girl was and how shiningly blonde. "altogether too tall and too blonde to behave like such an idiot!" he argued perfectly illogically. with a last flare of courtesy he sought to end the incident. "were you going to take another car?" he gestured toward her crowded hands. "oh, no," said the girl with a wave of her hat box. "i was going to that restaurant over there." "why so was i," said the young doctor very formally. "so if you wish i will take your suitcase for you. that will at least help a little." without further parleying they crossed the snowy street and still all a-blow and a-glow with the wintry night bore down upon the snug little restaurant like two young guests of the north wind. in fact as well as effect the room was brightly crowded and seemed to flare up like a furnace blast into their own chilled faces. a trifle dazzled by the glare perhaps they faltered suddenly in their tracks. for one single conspicuous instant,--blonde as the moon, swarth as a pine tree's shadow,--they stood staring helplessly here, there, everywhere into a blur of frankly upturned faces. then without an atom's warning a lone woman at the small table just in front of them jumped to her feet. "why, of course, you poor dears!" she beamed. "you want to get seats together!" and fled, still beaming, to the one remaining vacant seat at a far table in the corner. a graven image could scarcely have helped grinning at the absurdity of the incident. and the young doctor was by no means a graven image. as for the girl, she giggled out right, and with an impulse scarcely american pulled out the young doctor's chair for him before she, herself, darted down into the more crumpled place which the other woman had just vacated. "after all," she conceded shruggingly, "it is not of such a consequence!" only the flaming color in her cheeks belied her nonchalance. with his left hand reaching for the menu and his right hand exploring his pockets, the young doctor sought to show that he also was perfectly nonchalant. "it--it's been a--a very cold day, hasn't it?" he essayed experimentally. from her own frowning contemplation of the card before her the girl lifted her amazingly blue eyes. "no-o," she said. "i think the chicken soup would be more of a taste than the bouillon." "what i remarked," persisted the young doctor, "was that the weather--the weather--" with his right hand still in his pocket, a most curious expression of shock passed suddenly over his face. his pocketbook was gone! quite desperately he studied the distance to the telephone booth, the quickest path to the door,--any direction, any excuse that would snatch him soonest out of the horrid predicament of finding himself penniless at a perfectly strange restaurant in the company of a perfectly strange girl. yet if he did bolt thus without explanation, as was certainly his most immediate impulse, what possible inference could the girl draw, except something crudely harsh and derogatory to her own frankly guileless personality. with a quite unwonted flush at his cheek bones he decided to make explanations. "excuse me," he grinned with a sharp edging back of his chair, "but it will not be my pleasure after all to--to sample the chicken soup with you. some mutt back there--while i was picking up those cursed toys--" quite frantically again he began to rummage through all his pockets. "some mutt has pinched my pocketbook," he finished perfectly simply. "what?" cried the girl. "what?" with her eyes still staring blue and wide, she reached out a slim, strong detaining hand to his sleeve. "you mean that you cannot thus have any supper?" she frowned. "and the night also so dark and so cold? why, what nonsense!" she beamed suddenly. "i have moneys to drown! no? is it 'to burn' that you say?" she corrected herself. and thrust her own purse at him. chucklingly like a child she began to rock herself to and fro. "certainly it is all of a very great fatedness!" she reveled. "first you pick up my shoppings for me! and now it is that i pick up your supper for you! what? no?" she stammered as the young doctor quite curtly refused the purse and rose very definitely to his feet. across the translucent blondness of her upturned face astonishment, incredulity, glowered suddenly like a dark shadow. "what? no? is it then so correct?" she protested. "is it kind? is it senselike? that for so small a trifle you should--'snub' is it that you say, a stranger in a strange land? certainly it was not of my boldness," she quickened. "but of the boldness of that demented woman yonder, that i sit here!" then as suddenly as it had come all the shadow vanished from her face leaving just laughter again and a vaguely provocative sort of challenge. "oh, go if it seems most best to be of such a silliness!" she said. "but if you go i shall certainly laugh! laugh with loudness, i mean! right out! and like this, with the handles of my knife and fork," she threatened to illustrate, "i will beat upon the table while i laugh! bah!" she gesticulated encouragingly towards the deserted chair, "what is the price of a supper between two gentlemans?" "oh, of course, if you feel like that!" conceded the young doctor as he slipped back into his seat. "quite frankly," he admitted, "i should hate to be even the innocent cause of your beating upon the table with the handles of your knife and fork. so if you really and truly think i look honest," he confided with an exaggerated resumption of interest in the bill of fare. "let me see. sixty cents, is it? and the tip? and two cents for a postage stamp? yes, i surely ought to be able to return that much by at least noon to-morrow." without a flicker of expression he lifted his dark eyes to hers. without a flicker of expression she resumed the conversation at the exact point apparently where she had been most reluctant to leave it off. "and so," she brightened. "after the chicken soup, would it not seem to you, for instance, that turkey would be infinitely more chic than--than corned beef?" quite regardless of his possible negative she turned quickly and summoned a heavy-faced waitress to her. "behold it is now a dinner party!" she confided blithely to the perfectly indifferent woman. "the soup, the turkey, the best of your salads, the blackest of your coffee! everything very chic!" "very what?" queried the waitress. "very quick!" interposed the young doctor. once again without a flicker of expression the dark eyes and the blue challenged each other across the narrow width of white table cloth. then the owner of the blue eyes reached out and drained her glass of ice water at a single draught. "ah!" she shivered. "i also am in more hurry than you. but it would not seem to me polite to nag about it." "oh, i beg your pardon," stammered the young doctor, and retreated in turn to his own glass of ice water. it was not until the soup course was almost over that he succumbed to any further conversational impulse, and even then indeed it was formality rather than sociability that drove him to the effort. "seeing that you are so kind," he succeeded in enunciating. "and so--so trusting," he relaxed ever so slightly, "the least i can do certainly is to identify myself. my name is sam kendrue. and i am a doctor." "so-o?" conceded the girl without enthusiasm. quite frankly she made it clear that the waitress approaching with the turkey was the only fact in the world that concerned her at that immediate moment. yet as one who would conscientiously acknowledge on second thought that no honest bit of information was ever really to be scoffed at, she laid down her knife and fork presently and surveyed the young doctor with a slightly reviving interest. "sam? sam kendrue?" she repeated painstakingly. "my name is solvei kjelland!" she announced with brisk matter-of-factness, and resumed her eating. "your name is--what?" puzzled the young doctor. "solvei kjelland," she smiled ever so faintly. "s-o-l-v-e-i," she spelled out as one quite familiarly accustomed to such a task. "k-j-e-l-l-a-n-d. i am a norwegian!" she flared up suddenly with the ecstatic breathlessness of one who confides a really significant surprise. "a norwegian?" rallied the young doctor. for the first time, behind the quick shield of his hand, a little teasing smile began to twitch. "really, you--you surprise me!" he recovered with an almost instantly forced gravity. "from your accent now, i had supposed all along that you were--er--celtic!" "celtic?" queried the girl. then with one shrewd glance at the young doctor's immobile face she burst out laughing. it was not a loud laugh. it was indeed a very little laugh, and most distinctly musical. but in that instant the whole attention of the room seemed to focus itself suddenly on that one helpless little table. "is there anything specially peculiar looking about us, i wonder?" bristled the young doctor. "or rather, about me, i should say?" he corrected himself quickly. "even that--that philanthropic woman," he fumed, "who vacated this table for us! well, of course i wouldn't say exactly that she was climbing up on the rungs of her chair, but----" "oh, that's nothing," said the girl with unruffled nonchalance. "she's been staring at us all of the evening. everybody's been staring at us all of the evening," she added amiably. very daintily, but none the less expeditiously, as she spoke, she began to turn her attention to the crisp green salad at her plate. "it is because we are both so tall and fine," she confided without an atom of self-consciousness. "oh, well, really, speak for yourself!" flushed the young doctor. "for myself?" she repeated a bit speculatively. once again, in a moment of temporary arrestment, she laid down her knife and fork to scrutinize the young doctor's face. "oh, no," she reassured him almost at once. "you are most tall and fine too! and so brune to my blonde!" she confided as she took up her fork again. "certainly it is most striking of us," she mused at last more to the lettuce than to the young doctor. "but that poor womans over there?" she rallied transiently. "everywhere one goes it is the same. 'old--old maid' is it that you call her? so sad! so neglected! so 'romanticks' is it that you say? everybodys she sees she thinks it is young lovers! but personally," said the girl, "i am still very hungry. let us take what dessert is proffered." "oh, of course," acquiesced the young doctor. "if i've got to be--if we've got to be--stared at, i mean, it would certainly be quite as comfortable to have something to do." "perfectly," smiled the girl. "so as we wait for the ices and the pies let us see what is survived of the toys." and before the young doctor could dissuade her she had lifted her awkwardly retied bundle to the level of the table, and was earnestly studying out the relative damages of the green-feathered parrot and the tiny tin railroad train. to confirm apparently what was her own suspicion in the matter she handed the railroad train to the young doctor for investigation. and because the young doctor was naturally and sincerely inquisitive about anything that was broken he bent his dark head to the task with a sudden real gasp of relief, and for the next five minutes at least all possible awkwardness between them seemed merged, then and there, into the easy give-and-take argument of a thoroughly familiar and accustomed association. once again their small table became the cynosure of all eyes. the dark young doctor alone was quite sufficiently striking looking. and the girl in her norse glow and blondness would have been a marked figure anywhere. but together? and now? at this very minute? so anxious, so painstaking, so brooding? if the room had thought them shy "young lovers" a scant half hour before, goodness knows what it thought them now! the woman in the corner had most certainly reconstructed her original impressions. on the way out from her own unsocial supper she stopped impulsively just behind the young doctor's chair to watch his rather surprising manipulation of the fractured toy engine wheel. her face was by no means unpleasant, but almost exaggeratedly friendly in a plaintive, deprecating sort of way. from their focus on the young doctor's hands her pale eyes lifted suddenly to the girl's glowing face, and she held out a small paper bagful of pink-frosted cakes. "take those home," she said, "instead of the poor broken toys!" "why--why, thank you!" laughed the girl. "how--how old are your little ones?" asked the woman quite irrelevantly. "eh?" jerked the young doctor. from his joggled hands the little tin railroad train crashed down into his plate. with her hands clapped playfully to her ears the girl looked thoughtfully up at her accoster. "why, lisa is four," she said quite simply. "and jonathan is six, and----" "oh, have you got a 'jonathan'?" kindled the woman. her sallow face was suddenly quite transfigured with light. "and does he look like you?" she cried. "or," sweeping the table with another deprecating glance, "or does he take after his father?" "take after his father?" repeated the girl in frank perplexity. her own sweeping glance of her companion's face did not seem somehow to elucidate the mystery. "'take?' 'take after his father?'" she flamed. "i do not know the idiot--the idio--the--idiom!" she corrected herself triumphantly. a little bit perplexed herself, the amiable stranger began suddenly to button up her coat. "well, good night!" she beamed. "good night! good night! i hope you may both live to enjoy to the uttermost the full merits of your little family!" "eh?" jumped the young doctor. white as a sheet he was suddenly on his feet, and for the first time that evening a real-looking smile had twisted itself across at least one side of his thin-lipped mouth. "madam!" he bowed, "neither this young lady here nor i have ever laid eyes on each other before! nor is it remotely probable indeed that in the normal course of events we should ever lay eyes on each other again! but if you persist so," he bowed, with a purely nervous glance at his watch, "but if you persist so--in your--in your--" he floundered futilely. "we shall doubtless be lying in the same grave by midnight!" without even a gasp then he snatched up the girl's purse, her suitcase, her hat box, his own coat and hat, and bolted for the cashier's desk. close behind him, clasping her scattered toys as best she might to her breast, followed the blonde norse girl. even when they had finally reached the electric light post on the farthest corner of the street, the color was only just beginning to flush back into the young doctor's cheek bones. "if you will now give me the address," he said tersely, "to which i can forward the supper money, i will put you on a street car." "oh, the address of course is of perfect simplicity," conceded the girl. "but i do not care for you to put me on a street car, thank you!" "why, certainly i shall put you on a street car!" insisted the young doctor. he was really quite sharp about it. "almost everything goes by here--if you only wait long enough," he shifted a bit uneasily, as he set down both box and suitcase with a most decided thump. silently then for what seemed to him an interminable time they stood there on the icy, wind-swept curbstone staring out into the passing green, red, yellow, lights. "pretty, is it not!" commented the girl at last. "'pretty?'" shivered the young doctor. "why, yes, of course, suppose so. but which car?" he laughed impatiently. "for heaven's sake, don't you know where you want to go?" "of course i know where i want to go!" flared the girl. with a little light touch on his sleeve she pointed off to another electric light post on a side street. "there!" she said. "that little pleasant fifth house from the end! that is where i am at boarding!" "well, why didn't you say so!" flushed the young doctor. very vehemently once more he snatched up her suitcase and her hat box. with a shrug of her fine athletic shoulders the girl laughed right out loud into his frowning eyes. "when a man is of such a positiveness as you are," she confided impishly, "it is a privilege to reduce his national characteristics. ever for one single instant do you ask me, 'have you finish your food?' or, 'do you want to be put on a car?' but always at your first wish you hurry out and scoot, crying, 'i put you on a car! i put you on a car!'" with a little sniff of scorn she turned on her heel and started off at a fine stride toward the house to which she had just pointed. it was the young doctor now who followed precipitously after. the street was certainly a quaint, old-fashioned one, and the boarding house in question by no means lacking in a fine though dingy sort of dignity. but the doorbell that the girl rang and rang brought no reassuring answer. fumbling anxiously in her purse for a moment, she threw out her hands with a little gesture of dismay. "it is that i must also have mislaid my key," she frowned. then like a flash of pale sunshine her smile seemed to drive every possible shadow from her mind. "oh, well," she cried. "it is after all only a scarce seven o'clock. some one in not many minutes will surely come. and meanwhile," she glowed. "of such a fine night! i will just sit down here very happy and take the air!" "take the air?" gasped the young doctor. quite unconsciously as he spoke he reached up and drew his fur collar a little bit closer about his neck. but already the girl had dropped casually down on the top step and opened the throat of her own dark-fur red coat as one who was fairly thirsting for air. "good night!" she said briskly. "good-by!" said the young doctor. before he had even reached the lower step he was congratulating himself that the incident was now safely ended,--"comfortably ended," he meant, instead of awkwardly, as it might so easily have been. "foreigners were often so irrational," he considered. even as he considered, he turned in spite of himself to investigate the sudden unmistakable rustle of a paper bag. his suspicion was frankly confirmed. "see!" brandished the girl triumphantly. "the little pink cake of the foolish woman!" with an unmistakable chuckle of joy her white teeth met through the treasure. in the flash of a second, the perfectly idiotic impulse of a joke, the young doctor lifted a warning finger at her. "you realize of course that you are eating a--a misapprehension?" he admonished her with really terrifying severity. "a misapprehension?" jumped the girl. very painstakingly then and there she began to explore the remaining piece of cake in her hand, tugging at its sponginess, peering under its frostedness. then suddenly with a little quick gasp of relief she popped the sweet morsel into her mouth and smacked her lips upon it "oh, no," she beamed. "it tastes perfectly all right to me!" like a word slipping hopelessly down a poem toward whatever chosen rhyme its poet has already in mind, the young doctor suddenly found himself bumping rather perilously close to the one big wild hoot of laughter that had evidently been lurking for him in the situation even from the very first. in a really desperate effort to fend himself as long as possible from such an undignified disaster he hastened in all sincerity to rewrap himself in his stiffest professional manner. "well, what about this 'lisa' and 'jonathan' business?" he questioned with unmistakable reproach. "oh, shucks!" shrugged the girl. "this tiresome lisa and jonathan, their whole parents are bakers! but as for me," she lowered her voice, and thrust out her hands with a soft, appealing gesture. "but as for me, until to-night, for four whole weeks i cry such salt into my food i cannot eat! homesickness, yes!" she nodded with a quick little catch of her breath. "in all the world no one to speak with except one fat lady and one thin lady and lisa and jonathan and peter, and--" in an extra impulse of confidence not unmixed evidently with a certain flare of pride she slid forward a little on the step. "i am montessori!" she said. "what?" snapped the young doctor. "why, what nonsense!" he said. "why, what are you talking about? 'montessori' is a--a system! and she's an italian, too, i mean." "yes, truly so," conceded the girl. "and in time if the homeache can be assuaged i shall then learn the system--and remain yet a norwegian." "oh, you mean you are a montessori student?" brightened the young doctor. "even so," said the girl. "i cannot wait to learn everything. from here, after i have duly studied little lisa, little peter, and all the others, whose minds most happily are of a perfect brightness, i must then go on to the sadder schools, and to that most wonderful place in your massachusetts where such first brain work of all was made on the little children. it is that in norway," she winced, "i have a little brother. our father makes much money," she added with apparent irrelevance. "and spends much and gives much. and once he married him a new wife, and there are many new children. and one of them, this little little brother, so gold, so blue, so pinky, all day long he sits and--isn't," she finished perfectly simply. "why--why, that's too bad," said the young doctor. "yes, very bad," mused the girl. "but some of these ideas here are of a great cleverness. i do not of course get any of it right yet," she acknowledged. "but some of it is quite sporting like a game. with these toys, now," she pointed, "and all glad things like industries, and the live cat, and the dog, and grasses and the flowers, you leave the little child quite loose, it seems, only watching him, watching him very close, one day, two days, a hundred if it seems best. and wherever he shall in finality--in finality--'gravitate,' is it that you say? to the sweet flowers, or the wood blocks, or the gay, smoothen cat, _there_ it is that the one big chance of his salvation will most surely be found. but the engine, or the blocks or the smoothen cat must not be forced on him, it is so you understand? of such there would make no message to his development. but out of _everything_, it is, that he himself must gravitate to it!" in the tense sweet earnestness of her up turned face, the eager, unconscious nearness of her occasional gesture, the far remoteness of her subject, the sting of the winter night, the glare of electric light over all, it dawned on the young doctor a bit startlingly that he was frowning down into the eyes of a particularly beautiful woman, and for some quite unreasonable reason his cheeks began suddenly to burn like fire. it was as though having all his life long for one conscientious reason or another denied himself "wine when it was red," he found himself now, most humiliatingly, with _ice_ itself going to his head. and just because he was so thoroughly unaccustomed to having anything go to his head, it went quite uproariously in fact, changing for that one moment his whole facial expression. and the instant his facial expression was changed of course he looked like a different man. and the instant he looked like a different man of course he began to act like a different man. "and does this wonderful theory of yours apply only to poor little children?" he asked with slightly narrowing eyes. "or am i to infer?" he laughed. "or am i to infer that after a whole year of flaunting city, a whole year of barren indifference to it, my amazing gravitation to you this evening is positive montessori proof that with you and you only rests my life's best salvation?" then without the slightest intent of doing it, without even the slightest warning to himself that he was going to do it, he swooped down suddenly and kissed her on her lips. with a little gasp of dismay the girl stumbled to her feet. there was nothing blonde now about her. towering up on the step just above him she was like a young storm-cloud all flame and shadow! "oh, what have i done that you should act thus?" she demanded. with the tears streaming down her face she lashed him with furious accusations. "you are one of these devils!" she cried. "you are a wild persons! was it my fault?" she demanded, "that my bundles burst from the car? was it my fault," she demanded, "that restaurants cannot block foolish women from their food? was it my fault that i paid for your stupid supper?" neither defending himself nor seeking relief in flight, but with a face fully if not indeed more shocked than hers the young doctor sank down on the step at her feet, and with his head in his hands sat rocking himself to and fro. "no, it isn't your fault!" he assured her and reassured her. "nor is it exactly my fault!" he insisted. "but the fault of that damned piano!" "the fault of that damned what?" quoted the girl a bit stridently. but the face that lifted to hers was frankly the face of a stricken man. only a chill added to repentance could have altered so any human countenance. "on the honor of a man freezing to death!" he attested. "there is no blame to be attached to anything in the world--except to a grand piano." "what is it that you mean?" puzzled the girl. "i am more furious with you than devils. but i must hear everything." "i mean," sneezed the poor young doctor, "that i am looking for a kind home for a grand piano!" even to himself his words sounded far away and altogether the words of a stranger. it was indeed as though he had been thrust quite unrehearsed into the leading part of a roaring farce which was already halfway through its evening performance. a fearful spirit of bravado seemed really his one chance of making any possible "get-away" with the whole mad situation. but even an irate audience could not have misjudged for a moment the acute distress and anxiety behind the bravado. "it is just this way," he began all over again. "a perfectly dreadful woman drove me out of my office to-night--with a grand piano!" from the stony expression, however, in the girl's face this did not seem to be just the cue that she was looking for. in the wisest impulse of his life he decided suddenly to throw himself upon her sense of mercy rather than upon her sense of humor. "truly it is this way!" he jumped up and implored her to believe him. "i am as new as you almost, in this big city. equally with you perhaps i suffer what you call homeacheness! it is very hard to get a good start in a strange place. lots of charity chances and all that. but very little money. i had a real patient once, though!" he bragged ironically. "a very rich woman, awfully nice and all that. but i hate her. every chance that she gets she torments me. she has a sort of theory, i think, that tormenting is very stimulating to the nervous system. it certainly is. we fight like young cats and dogs! and yet as i say she is awfully nice. and when she went away she paid me not only justly but mighty generously for my brief services. it cancelled almost a year's debts. but she was horridly mad because i wouldn't go with her,--as a kind of a trained, tame attendant you know. but i told her i couldn't leave my office. so she sent me a grand piano, the wretch!" he finished with flaming anger. to the step just below him the girl tripped down and turning about stood peering up into his face with a rather disconcerting intensity. "here am i," she gasped, "who suffer and languish for a 'grand piano' as you call it. and you?" as though in real pain she began to wring her slim hands together. "and you? a lady gives you a grand piano and you curse her as a wretchedness!" "yes, i know," deprecated the young doctor. "but you see there isn't room in my office for both the piano and myself! my office is too small, you see. and with the piano filling up the whole center of the room? why, it's absurd!" he quickened. "it's rotten! patients who come don't know whether they've come for a music lesson or to be lanced! and besides," he added as his most culminative grievance, "i don't know one note from another! and the woman knew that i didn't! and worse than anything there are hordes of the most indecent little cupids appliqued or something all over the front of the thing!" "surely, something could be done," suggested the girl with a vague sort of farawayness in her blue eyes. "yes, that's just it!" remarked the young doctor, flushing. "i've already done it!" abjectly with his bared head bowed before her he stood as one awaiting just sentence. "of a personally," said the girl with her own cheeks spotting bright red. "of a personally--i do not quite see the connection." "why the connection is perfectly clear!" insisted the young doctor. "she sent me the piano on purpose to crowd me out of my office! she wanted to crowd me out of my own office! she dared to affirm even that i needed to be crowded out of my own office! she tried to make me mad! she wanted to make me mad! she had the cheek to suggest, i mean, that nothing really interesting ever would happen to me until i once did get good and mad!" as though temporarily exhausted by his tirade he sagged back for a moment against the railing of the steps. his face did look a bit white and his teeth were almost chattering. "well, i certainly did get good and mad this afternoon," he affirmed with a wry sort of apology. "and because i was so blooming mad i dashed out for a tremendous walk. and because i took such a tremendous walk i developed an appetite like forty tigers. and because i developed an appetite like forty tigers i rushed for the first restaurant i could find. and because i rushed for the first restaurant i could find i happened to see you at the exact moment when----" "oh, stop, stop, stop!" laughed the girl with her hands clapped suddenly over her ears. "it is all too much like the--like 'the house that the jack-man built!'" "well, at least," grinned the young doctor, "it seems to be 'the adventure that the grand piano threatened.'" "the--the adventure?" puzzled the girl. "why, yes," insisted the young doctor. "that's what this mrs. tome gallien prophesied you know, that the piano would bring me an adventure! so you, very evidently, are the----" "what? i?" stammered the girl. a flush of real pleasure glowed suddenly in her face and faded again as quickly as it had come. "oh, no!" she said with some hauteur, "you--you----" "oh, truly!" begged the young doctor. "i'm most awfully sorry for what i did! i can't think what possessed me! i must have gone quite mad for the moment! why, really," he flushed, "i don't know whether you'll believe me or not--and maybe it's something anyway to be more ashamed of than to brag about,--but truly now," he floundered, "i haven't kissed a girl before since--since i was very little!" with a sudden quick jerk of sheer awkwardness he snatched a card from his pocket and handed it to her. "there! there's my address!" he cried. "and to-morrow if you'll only send me the word i'll jump off the bridge or throw myself under a truck, or make any other sort of reparation whatever that happens to occur to you. but to-night," he grinned, "i've simply got to get warm!" and started down the steps. but before he had quite reached the sidewalk the girl had overtaken him and placed a detaining hand on his coat sleeve. "how old is she?" questioned the girl. "who?" said the young doctor. "oh, the woman? she's old enough to be your mother." "i'm twenty-one," conceded the girl. "well, she's fifty," affirmed the young doctor. across the girl's translucent face a dozen conflicting emotions seemed surging suddenly. "so?" she laughed. "so?" she repeated experimentally, "if only you had not been so--so _bad_," she sighed. "well, about that piano," she ventured with a certain unwonted shyness. "in a world of so much racket is it not a pity that any harmonies should lie dumb? is it--is it a good piano?" she asked quite abruptly. "why, for heaven's sake, how do i know?" demanded the young doctor. "it may be a--a stradivarius!" he floundered wildly. "but it looks to me like the--like the devil!" "if i could only see it," whispered the girl, "i could tell in a minute of course." "if you could only see it?" scoffed the young doctor. then, "well--well--why not?" he acknowledged a trifle tardily, but with indisputable common sense. "i have an aunt here," mused the girl, "who has a rheumatism in her elbow, i think it is. on friday afternoon next--if the rheumatism perhaps should be sufficiently bad?" flushed with the anticipatory ardor of a musician she lifted her eyes to his. "why, capital!" acquiesced the young doctor. for the instant the whole suggestion struck him as being extraordinarily apt. "well, good-by then," he laughed, "until friday afternoon!" and vanished into the night. he was still a long, cold distance from home. but by the time he had finally reached there his pulses were ringing with fire rather than with frost. and as soon as he had started a bright roaring flame in his stove, and concocted for himself a most luscious and steamsome drink, and driven his frosted toes into the farthest corners of some moth-eaten old fur slippers, he sat right down in a great spirit of diablerie to tell mrs. tome gallien just what he thought of her. "i hope you're satisfied!" he began quite abruptly in a firm and emphatic black hand writing. "driven out into the winter streets by your most charming gift, i have in four short hours walked eleven miles; supped in a conspicuous restaurant with a perfectly strange girl and at her expense; been branded publicly for all time, first as the girl's beau and later as her husband and the father of certain imaginary children; and have also in due time, still included in the original four hours, you understand, kissed said girl 'good-night' on her own doorstep in the full glare of a city electric light,--and am now at ten-thirty p. m. of the aforesaid monday evening waiting patiently in my room until friday afternoon next when, heavily chaperoned by some kind of a relative with rheumatism, the said adventure will appear to investigate the piano--and myself. "once again, in the language of my opening sentence, and with all due respects, i repeat, 'i hope you're satisfied'!" then quite contented both in fancy and in fact he settled down to kill time and cure patients until friday. but the intervening days it seemed were not to be bereft entirely of sensations either confusing or bizarre. on wednesday night he heard from mrs. tome gallien. and by telegram. "bungler!" wired mrs. tome gallien. "what in creation have you done? the adventure intended for you does not arrive till saturday, office, four o'clock." the message happened to be delivered in writing this time, a flaunting yellow page, and, still clutching it tight by one twittering corner, the young doctor dropped down into the first chair he could reach, and with his chin dropped low like an old man's on his breast sat staring for an interminable time into his glowing fire. then quite suddenly at nine o'clock, with the funny new smile that he seemed to have acquired somewhere recently, he walked over to his telephone, fumbled a minute with the directory, experimented at least two minutes with central's temper, located miss solvei kjelland, and addressed her in his most formal manner. "miss solvei kjelland?" he questioned. "s-o," said the familiar voice at the other end of the wire. "this is doctor kendrue," he growled. "dr. sam kendrue." "so?" conceded the voice without a vestige of affright. "it seems, miss kjelland," he stammered, "that there has been some sort of a--of a--well, misunderstanding about friday afternoon. it is all a mistake, it seems, about your being the adventure! mrs. gallien indeed has just telegraphed to that effect. the 'real adventure,' it appears, is not due at my office until four o'clock on saturday!" "s-o?" conceded miss solvei kjelland. if she seemed to be swallowing rather extra hard once or twice the sound was not sharply discernible certainly from the little fluttering swallow of the telephone instrument. "so?" she repeated blithely. "well, that is all right. the piano keeps! and the saturday afternoon is just as good to me as the friday! and i am all as curious with joy as you to see what it is, this adventure that is more nice than me! good night!" "good--night!" admitted the young doctor. ii that the young doctor bought himself a new blue serge suit for saturday was no indication whatsoever that he looked forward to that day with any pleasurable anticipation. lots of people "doll-up" for disaster who couldn't even be hired to brush their hair for joy. quite frankly if anybody had asked him about it, the young doctor would have rated mrs. tome gallien as a disaster. if pressed further for justification of such a rating he would have argued that any rich woman who couldn't sleep was a disaster! "oh, it's all well enough for poor people," he would have admitted, "to put in the long night watches mulling over the weird things that they'd like to do. but when a person is actually able to leap up at the first gay crack of dawn and finance the weirdest fancy of his night! "oh, of course," he was honest enough to acknowledge. "poor mrs. tome gallien would never again while life lasted be able to 'leap up' at _any_ hour of the day or night! and she doubtless in her fifty eccentric years _had_ given extravagantly to no end of people who had proved themselves the stingiest sort of receivers! and her sense of humor even in her remotest, happiest youth must have been of course essentially caustic! "but how any woman could reach a point so sick, so vindictive, so caustic, so rich, that still unable to strip herself of her lifelong passion for giving she should evolve the perfectly diabolic idea of giving people only the things that they didn't want--only the things, indeed, that she was absolutely positive they didn't want? such as pianos! grand pianos! huge rosewood chunks of intricate mechanism and ornate decoration and heaven knows what expense--crammed down into the meager crowded office of some poor struggling young doctor who didn't know a note from a gnat! himself of course being the young doctor! "thought it was funny, did she? thought it would really drive him outdoors for sheer rage into some sort of an enlivening adventure? that was her theory, was it? well it _was_ funny. and it _had_ driven him out to meet a rather particularly enlivening sort of adventure! which adventure in the person of a miss solvei kjelland was now due at his office by her own insistent appointment, on saturday afternoon at four o'clock. but this miss solvei kjelland, it seems, was not the adventure which mrs. tome gallien had already arranged for him for saturday afternoon, same hour, same place?" into his muddled mind flashed transiently a half-forgotten line of a novel to the effect: "heaven help the day when the mate you made for yourself and the mate god made for you happen to meet!" "well, if it really came to a show-down between his adventure and mrs. tome gallien's?" quite unexpectedly his mouth began suddenly to twitch at one corner. speaking of "caustic humor" it was barely possible that the young doctor had just a tiny bit of caustic humor himself. when a man smiles suddenly on one side of his mouth it is proof at least that he sees the joke. nobody ought to be expected to smile on both sides till he feels the joke as well as sees it. certainly the poor young doctor was not feeling very much of anything at just this time except a sense of impending doom. but in this sense of impending doom flickered the one ray of light that at least he knew what his own adventure was: she was young, lithe, blonde, why as tall as himself, almost! a trifle unconventional, perhaps? yes, even a good bit amazing! but thoroughly wholesome! and human? yes that was just it, so deliciously and indisputably human! but mrs. tome gallien's adventure? a woman like mrs. tome gallien wouldn't stop at anything! it might be a pair of llamas from peru! or a greasy witchy-gypsy to tell his fortune! or a homeless little jet-black pickaninny with a banjo and--consumption! or--or an invitation even to lecture on physiology at a girls school! but whatever it proved to be he might just as well realize now that it would be something that he hated. mrs. tome gallien in her present mood would certainly never seek to lull him with a "glad" as long as she saw any possible chance to rouse him with a "mad"! "well, he wouldn't get mad yet, anyway!" he promised himself with unwonted whimsicality. "and if it _was_ llamas--which perhaps on the whole would be his preference out of the various possibilities anticipated--they would at least, judging from the woolly pictures in the geographies, be free from any possible danger of barking their shins against the sharper edges of the piano. whereas a committee of any size come to request a series of lectures on----" thus with one form or another of light mental exercise did he try to keep his brain clear and his pulse normal for the approaching saturday. but saturday itself dawned neither clear nor normal. rain, snow, slush, wind, had changed the whole outdoor world into a blizzard. it was one of those days when anything might blow in. but how in the world would it ever blow out again? with this threat of eternity added to uncertainty the young doctor decided quite impulsively to dust his desk, and investigate his ice-chest. to his infinite relief he found at least very little food in the ice-chest. whatever happened it could not possibly prove a very long siege! a half pound of butter, a box of rusks, a can of coffee, six or seven eggs, divided up among any kind of a committee, or even between two llamas? at the increasing excitability of his fancies he determined very suddenly to sober himself with hard reading. with this intent, as soon as he had finished his breakfast he took down from his bookcase a very erudite treatise on "the bony ankylosis of the temporomandibular joint" and proceeded to devote himself to it. "now here was something serious. thoroughly serious. science! heaven be praised for science!" by noon, indeed, he was so absorbed in "the bony ankylosis of the temporomandibular joint" that he quite forgot about luncheon. and at three o'clock he looked down with a glance of surprise to see that the toes of his boots were dipping into a tiny rivulet which seemed flowing to him from the farther side of the room. by craning his neck around the corner of the piano he noted with increasing astonishment that the rivulet sprang essentially from the black ferule of an umbrella, and that just beyond the dripping black ferule of that umbrella was the dripping black ferule of another umbrella, and beyond that, still an other! jumping joyously to his feet he made three apologies in one to the group that loomed up before him. "why, i beg your pardon," he began to the wheezy old man who sat nearest him. "really i--i--had no idea," he explained painstakingly to the small freckled boy just beyond. "with all this wind and everything--and the way the rain rattles against the window," he stammered to the crape-swathed woman in the far corner. none of these was presumably mrs. tome gallien's adventure, but it was surely adventure enough of itself on the old oak settle, where almost no one ever sat even on pleasant days, to behold three patients sitting crowded--and in a blizzard! "i was so absorbed in my book!" he boasted with sudden nonchalance. "oh, that's all right, sir," wheezed the old man. "i was just waitin' for a car. and it looked drier in here than where i was standin' outdoors." [illustration: by craning his neck around the corner of the piano, he noted with increasing astonishment that the rivulet sprang from the black ferule of an umbrella.] and "say, mister, do you pull teeth?" questioned the small freckled boy. but the crape-swathed lady was a real patient. though goodness knows the young doctor would gladly have drawn either the old man or the small boy in her place. all his life long he had particularly disapproved of "mourning." it was false, spiritually, he thought. it was bad, psychologically. everybody knew of course that it was unwise hygienically. but worst of anything perhaps the woman before him now made him think of a damp black cat. it was perfectly evident, however, that the lady herself cherished no such unpleasant self-consciousness. with perfect complacency at his request she came forward to the light, or at least to such light as the storm-lashed window allowed and, still swathed as blackly from view as any harem lady, stated her case. "i have such a pain--here," she pointed with black-gloved hand toward her black-veiled face. did she also take him for a tooth puller? mused the young doctor. with all haste he sought to settle the matter at once. "if you will kindly remove your--er--bonnet--is it that you call it?" he asked. compliantly the unpleasant black-gloved hands busied themselves for a moment with pin or knot until emerging slowly from its dank black draperies there lifted at last to the young doctor's gasping stare the most exquisitely-featured, dreamy-eyed young brunette face that he had ever seen outside a salon catalogue. "here! just here is the pain!" pointed the black-gloved finger to a spot right in front of the most absurd little ear. "bony ankylosis of the temporomandibular joint!" gasped the young doctor just like a swear. even as scientifically as he touched the pain-spot he felt his own wrist wobble most unscientifically with the contact. it was no wonder perhaps that the dark eyes before him dilated with a vague sort of alarm. "is it--is it as bad as that?" faltered his patient. "why, it isn't that at all!" hastened the young doctor with a sudden resumption of sagacity. "it's probably just a sort of rheumatism. what made me cry out so was just a mere funny coincidence. this particular kind of pain being a subject that i--that i--if i may say so--have been giving rather special attention to lately." "oh, then i trust that i have come to just the right person," smiled the dark eyes with a kindling surface-sweetness that seemed nevertheless quite frankly bereft of any special inner enthusiasm. "we will certainly hope so!" flushed the young doctor. "how about this pain--?" he began quite abruptly. "it hurts me when i eat," said the girl. her voice was very low and soft and drawling. "and when i drink. and when i talk," she confided. "but especially when i sing." "oh, you sing?" questioned the young doctor. "yes!" said the girl. for the first time her classic, immobile little face was quick with a very modern emotion. "personally," confessed the young doctor, "i should like very much to try a little experiment on you if you don't mind. it will help me, even if it hurts you." "as you wish," acquiesced the girl with the same imperturbable little smile. from his precipitous retreat into the other room he returned after due delay with a plate of rusks and a steaming hot cup of coffee. "it's such a horrid day," he said. "and you look so wet and cold, perhaps a taste of coffee wouldn't come in altogether amiss. but it's these rusks that i'm really interested in. i want you to bite down hard on them. and then presently perhaps i will ask you to sing so that i may watch the--oh, by the way," he interrupted himself irrelevantly. "i neglected, i think, to ask your name." "my name," said the girl, "is kendrue." "what?" questioned the young doctor. "why that is my name," he smiled. "yes, i know," murmured the girl. "coincidences of that sort are certainly very strange. it was one of the first things my aunt spoke of when i asked her advice about what physician to go to. i am a comparative stranger in the city," she added a bit shiveringly. "but didn't my aunt tell you i was coming?" she quickened suddenly. "didn't my aunt, mrs. tome gallien, write you--or something--that i was coming?" "mrs. tome gallien?" jumped the young doctor. chaotically through his senses quickened a dozen new angers, a dozen new resentments. a girl? so this was mrs. tome gallien's threatened "adventure," was it? of all the spiteful possibilities in the world, now wasn't this just like the amiable lady in question to foist another girl into a situation quite sufficiently embarrassed with "girl" as it was! "is--is mrs. tome gallien your--aunt?" he demanded with such sudden stentorious sternness that even the most bona fide blood-relation would hardly have acquiesced without pausing an instant to reconsider the matter. "well, not of course, not exactly a real aunt," admitted the girl. "but i have always called her my aunt. we have always been very intimate. or rather perhaps i should say she had always been very, very kind to me. and now, since my father--" with the unmistakable air of one who strives suddenly to suppress an almost overwhelming emotion she pointed irrelevantly to the piano and waved off the plate of rusks and the cup of coffee which the young doctor still stood proffering. "you must excuse me if i--if i--seem distrait," she stammered. "but in addition to the very real annoyance that this little pain in my jaw is giving me i am--i am so bewildered about that piano! where did you get it?" she asked quite bluntly. "why it came from such-and-such warerooms i believe," admitted the young doctor with as much frankness as he could summon at the moment. with a little soft sigh the girl reached out and touched the dark, gleaming woodwork. "i thought so," she whispered. "and--oh, how you must love it! it is certainly the most beautiful instrument that i ever saw in my life! the most melodious, i mean! the most nearly perfect sounding-board! an utter miracle of tone and flexibility as an accompanist to the human voice!" "u--m--mmmm," said the young doctor. "for two months," persisted the girl, "i have been haunting the warerooms you speak of! for two months i have been moving heaven and earth in an effort to possess it! but my means being temporarily tied up," she shivered again ever so slightly, "i was not able immediately to--" with that odd, inert little smile she reached out for the plate of rusks and took one as the young doctor had requested. "yes, here is the pain," she explained conscientiously. "but only last week," she winced, "on my birthday it was! i had every reason in the world to believe that mrs. tome gallien was going to give the piano to me! she has given me so many wonderful things! but she sent me instead the deed to a duck blind down somewhere on the south carolina coast,--shooting, you know? and dreadful guns! and dogs! and all that! i, who wouldn't even hurt a sparrow, or scare a kitten!" with his hands clapped to his head the young doctor swung around suddenly and started for the window. "was this a comic opera? a farce? a phantasy of not enough work and too much worry? was every mention of mrs. tome gallien's name to be a _scream_? as long as life lasted? as long as--?" startled by a tiny gasp he turned to find his little visitor convulsed with tears but still struggling bravely to regain her self-possession. "oh, please don't think i'm always as--as weak as this," she pleaded through her sobs. "but with pain and disappointment and everything happening so all at once. and with my big loss so recent----" "how long ago did you lose your father?" asked the young doctor, very gently. "my father?" stammered the girl. white now as the death she mourned she lifted her stricken face to his. "why it wasn't father i was talking about," she gasped. "it was my husband." "your husband?" cried the young doctor. two minutes ago was _this_ the situation that he had cursed out as a farce, a comic opera? this poor, stricken, exquisite, heartbroken little widow, tagged out by mrs. tome gallien as an "adventure" and foisted on his attention like some gay new kind of a practical joke? it was outrageous! he fumed. "inexcusably brutal!" "colorado--is where it happened," he had to bend his head to hear. "almost a year and a half ago," strangled the poor little voice, "and we hadn't been married a year. lung trouble it was, something dreadfully acute. mrs. tome gallien did everything. she's always done everything. it's something about my father i think. oh, ages and ages ago they were lovers it seems. but--but she chose to make a worldier marriage. and later, my father--why she bought my whole trousseau for me!" suffered the sweet voice afresh. "went to paris herself for it, i mean!" across the young doctor's memory a single chance sentence came flashing back "the daughter of a man who once meant something to me in my youth." so this was the girl? the little "stingy receiver"? among all mrs. tome gallien's so-called "stingy receivers" the one unquenchable pang in an otherwise reasonably callous side? precious undoubtedly, poignant, eternally significant, yet always and forever the flesh that was not of her flesh nor the spirit quite of her spirit. familiar eyes--perhaps? an alien mouth? a dimple that had no right, possibly, haunting a lean, loved cheek line? fire, flame, ice, ashes? a torch to memory, a scorch to hope! but whose smile was it, anyway? that maddeningly casual and inconsequent little "thank you" smile searing its way apparently with equal impartiality across chiffon or crape,--a proffered chair, or eagerest promise of relief from pain? had mrs. tome gallien's life, by chance, gone a-wreck on just that smile? and why in heaven's name, if people loved each other, did they let anything wreck them? and back of that--what did people want to love each other for anyway? what good was it? all this old loving-and-parting-and-marrying-some-one-else fretting its new path now all over again into chiffon-and-crape! "bony-ankylosis-of-the-temporomandibular-joint!" at the very taste of the phrase his mind jumped out of its reverie and back to the one real question at hand. "if you please, now!" he implored his visitor. "just a little of the coffee! just a crunch or two of the rusk!" urgently as he spoke he began proffering first one and then the other. "and this crying?" he persisted. "does this also hurt you?" from the doorway beyond him he sensed suddenly the low sound of footsteps and looked up into solvei kjelland's laughing face. blue as a larkspur in a summer hail-storm, crisp, shimmery, sparkling with frost, even her blonde hair tucked into a larkspur-blue storm hat, she stood there shaking a reproachful finger at both the young doctor and his patient. "oh, ho! for what a pity!" she laughed. "if you had but told me that mrs. tome gallien's adventure was to be a picnic then i also could have brought the food!" [illustration: "excuse me, miss kjelland," he said; "but this is not a picnic--it is a clinic."] "picnic?" frowned the young doctor. before the plaintive bewilderment in the dark eyes that lifted at just that instant to his an unwonted severity crisped into his voice. "excuse me, miss kjelland," he said; "but this is not a picnic--it is a clinic." "so? who is a clinic?" cried solvei kjelland perfectly undaunted, and swished bluely forward to join them. "it is not of course of a propriety, doctor kendrue," she laughed, "that i should come thus without the sick aunt! but in a storm so unwholesome for aunt is it not best that i buy some good medicine?" in a shimmer of melting snowflakes she perched herself on the arm of the first chair she could reach, and extracting the familiar little purse from her big blue pocket handed the young doctor a one-dollar bill. "medicine for the sick aunt!" she commandeered gaily. then with only the most casual glance at the piano she whirled around to scrutinize the desolate little figure before her. if she noticed the tears she certainly gave no sign of it. "ah! it is as i thought!" she triumphed. "most surely in my mind did i say that you would be a girl!" in one sweeping blue-eyed glance she seemed to be appraising suddenly every individual tone and feature of the dark, exquisite little face that lifted so bewilderedly to hers. then quite unexpectedly a most twinkling smile flickered across her own sharply contrasted blondeness and like a fine friendly child she held out her hand in greeting. "most certainly," she conceded, "you are more cute than i! but also in some ways," she beamed, "i am of course more cute than you!" while the young doctor waited for the skies to fall, he saw instead, to his infinite amazement, that the little brunette though still bewildered was returning the handshake with unquestionable cordiality. "awfully well-bred women were like that," he reasoned quickly. "no matter how totally disorganized they might be by silly things like mice or toads you simply couldn't faze them when it came to a purely social emergency." and in a situation which had thus precipitously reached a point so hopelessly non-professional there seemed after all but one thing left for him to do. "miss kjelland!" he essayed with a really terrifying formality, "this is mrs. kendrue!" the instant the phrase had left his lips his very ears were crimsoning with the one possible implication which miss solvei kjelland would draw from such an announcement, and more panic-stricken than any woman would have been with a mouse he turned and fled for his medicine cabinet in the very farthest corner of the room. "your wife?" faltered solvei kjelland in frank astonishment. "s-o?" she laughed. "and i have only just come! mix me a quarter's worth more of the good medicine, mr. doctor!" she called back over her shoulder, and dropped down on the low stool at the other girl's feet. "now about this piano!" she began precipitously. "i am not doctor kendrue's wife!" protested the little black figure bewilderedly. "why--why i thought you were his wife," she confided with increasing confusion. from the direction of the medicine cabinet the sound of some one choking was distinctly audible. both girls rose instinctively to meet--only the young doctor's perfectly inscrutable face. "who now is eating a miss--mis-apprehension?" beamed solvei. "mrs. kendrue is a patient of mine," affirmed the young doctor with some coldness. "o-h," conceded the norse girl with equal coldness. "a patient? that is most nice. but--" as though suddenly muddled all over again by this latest biographical announcement she threw out her hands with a frank gesture of despair. "if this should be a patient," she implored, "who then is the 'other adventure'?" behind the little black figure's back the young doctor lifted a quick warning finger to his lips. "s-s-h!" he signaled beseechingly to her. on solvei kjelland's forehead the incongruous frown deepened from perplexity into something very like impatience. "well certainly," she attested. "you are of a great sobriety in your office, but most wild on the doorstep. as for me," she confided, "it is of the piano and the piano only that i care!" "that's just it," said the young doctor, "it is of the piano and the piano only that mrs. kendrue cares!" with her finger-tips already touching the ivory keys the norse girl swung sharply around. "what is that?" she demanded. with a sudden impish conviction that mrs. tome gallien, being already responsible for so many awkward situations in the world, might just as well now be responsible for everything, the young doctor gathered breath for his latest announcement. "mrs. kendrue," he smiled with studied calm, "is the niece,--as it were, of the lady who gave me the piano." "what," stammered both girls in a single breath. but it was the little widow's turn this time to be the most dumfounded. "what," she repeated with a vague new sort of pain. "what? you mean that mrs. tome gallien gave _you_ the piano--when--when she knew how i had been longing for it all these months? been haunting the warerooms day after day!" she explained plaintively over her black shoulder to the other girl. "why--why do _you_ love music so?" she demanded with sudden vehement passion of the young doctor. "are you a real musician, i mean?" "on the contrary," bowed the young doctor, "i am as tender-hearted about pianos as you are about ducks. nothing under heaven would induce me to lay my rough, desecrating hand upon a piano." in an impulse of common humanity he turned to allay the new bewilderment in solvei kjelland's face. "this allusion about ducks," he explained, "concerns another little idiosyncrasy of mrs. tome gallien's." "yes!" quickened the little widow. "when she sent doctor kendrue this wonderful piano she sent me a--a dreadful duck blind--way down somewhere in south carolina!" "what is that?" puzzled solvei kjelland. "why a place to shoot!" snapped the young doctor. "wild ducks, you know! 'quack-quack!' a--a sporting camp!" his whole face was suddenly alight. "o-h! and this little mrs. kendrue does not sport," reflected solvei. in another instant her own face was all alight too. "oh, of what a nonsense!" she laughed. "of what a silliness! it is of course a mistake, most funny, most conflictable! in some way it is that the gifts should get mixed in the mails!" "oh, no!" wagged the young doctor's head. "oh, no!" he reiterated with some emphasis. "careless as i assure you many of the post-offices are there is very little likelihood of a grand piano and a duck blind getting mixed in the mails." "o-h," subsided the norse girl, but only for an instant. "what my idea should be," she resumed cheerfully, "and what the idea of my aunt should be, is that if you would let us take the piano--one month, two months, three, we would in return give you some lessons in this music, either in the piano or of the vocal." "u-m-m," said the young doctor, "yes--yes, of course that would undoubtedly be very humanizing and all that, but with so much unexpected competition, as it were, one must move very,--er--slowly in the matter. just what--just what would be your idea, mrs. kendrue?" he turned and asked quite abruptly. "my idea?" flushed the little widow. "why--why, of course i didn't have any idea because i didn't even know that you possessed the piano until just now. but if you are still willing to part with it after--after the estate is settled," she hurried with evident emotion, "why, then--perhaps--i--" yearningly as she spoke she stepped forward to the piano and fingered out one chord after another, soft, vibrant, experimental, achingly minor, a timid, delicate nature's whole unconscious appeal to life for help, love, tenderness. "dear me!" mused the young doctor. "oh! do you play?" cried solvei kjelland ecstatically. "oh, no," deprecated the little widow. "i just sing. do _you_ sing?" she in turn demanded as though her very heart jumped with the question. "oh, no," said solvei kjelland, "i just play." yearningly she in turn stepped forward and struck a single chord. but there was nothing soft or minor about this one chord. sharp, clear, stirring as a clarion call it rang out through the dingy room. "oh, dear!" thought the young doctor. and as though flaming then and there with the musical fervor so long suppressed the norse girl swung impetuously round upon her companion. "you do not play! and i do not sing! so let us!" she cried excitedly and dropping down on the piano stool seemed literally melting her fluent finger-tips into ivory-key and melody. indefinitely for a brilliant, chaotic moment or two, chord heaped upon chord and harmony upon harmony, and then suddenly to the young doctor's musically untutored mind it seemed as though the crashing waves of sound were literally parting on either side to let a little tune come through. and such a "pleasant familiar tune" he rated it delightedly. he didn't remember that verdi wrote it. he didn't stop to consider that it was from trovatore. all he cared was that it was a tune, and a tune that said things, and a tune that always said the same things whether you heard it chopped through a hurdy-gurdy on an asphalt pavement or roared stentoriously by a band at the beach. "home to our mountains!" was what it said, and oh, other things too, undoubtedly, but that was all that really mattered, "home to our mountains!" it was perfectly evident, though, that the little widow cared who wrote it, and what it was from, and where it was going to! with thrilling sweetness, astonishing technique, and most amazing volume, her rich contralto voice rang suddenly through the room. and in the precipitous jump of his heart was it any wonder that the poor young doctor couldn't have told for the life of him whether the mischief was all in one girl's voice or another girl's finger-tips, or partly in the voice and partly in the finger-tips--or--? "home to our mountains," soared the lovely voice, then quivered suddenly, like some wounded thing, and with her hands pressed tightly to her cheek, the little singer sank weakly down in the first chair she could reach. "why, what is it!" jumped the young doctor. through a haze of tears the dark eyes lifted to his. "oh, nothing special," faltered the little singer. "just everything!" with an irrelevant crash of chords solvei kjelland swung sharply round from the piano. "who is this mrs. tome gallien, anyways?" she demanded fiercely. "and where is her habit? and what good is she? to hold back from people thus the things they want and stuff them all choke-up with what they don't want,--it is a scandal i say! it is a monstrosity!" with a quick, jerky sort of defiance she rose to her feet and commenced straightening her blue hat and tightening up her blue collar. "i am a failure as one adventure," she laughed. "and i also get nothing! neither the piano, nor the medicine for the sick aunt. give me the address of this woman," she demanded. "and i will write to her in my leisure and tell her what my thoughts of her should be!" "do!" urged the young doctor. "nothing would please her more! when a woman has the ego that mrs. tome gallien has there's nothing in the world that tickles her vanity so as to hear just what people think of her, be it good, bad, or indifferent." with deliberate malice he tore a leaf from his notebook, scribbled the desired address on it and handed it to the norse girl. "if it doesn't do anything else," he commended her with mock gravity, "it may at least draw the fire!" "'draw the fire'?" repeated the norse girl a bit perplexedly. then as though to shrug all perplexity aside she turned suddenly to the young widow. "as for you--" she beamed. "you are a cunning little thing! and i loves you!" with unmistakable tenderness she stooped and kissed the astonished little singer on the forehead. "and i hope you will soon be of a perfect wellness," she coaxed. "and sing the perfectly whole songs to whatever piano it is that you should love the best! as for me?" she called briskly to the young doctor. "it is that you understand i am perfectly resigned?" "resigned to what?" frowned the young doctor. "oh, this language!" laughed solvei. "do you know your own words? to? of? it is the _from_ that i would say! complete _from_ the adventure i am resigned!" "s-s-h! s-sh!" warned the young doctor's frowning face once more. almost anxiously he accompanied her to the door. "s-sh--s-s-h!" he implored her. "the poor little girl must never know of mrs. tome gallien's audacity in sending her here as an 'adventure.' with all the sorrow she's in just now, and the pain--" "yes, quite so," acquiesced solvei kjelland with perfect docility. then all of a blue-blonde flutter in the open doorway she turned to call back her blithe "good-by." "good-by, doctor and mrs. kendrue!" she called. "what? _no_?" she flushed at the very evident consternation in both uplifted faces. "good-by then, mrs. and doctor kendrue!" she revised her adieus hastily. "_what_? _n-o_?" she flared with her first real sign of impatience. "well then, good-by, mrs. and _not_ doctor kendrue!" she finished triumphantly, and vanished into the snowstorm. turning back to his somber office and his sad little patient it seemed suddenly to the young doctor as though the first blue bird had fled, leaving only a single black iris bud to presage spring for the garden. "blue birds were darlings!" quickened the young doctor. "and yet?" poignantly to his memory revived a misty may time years and years ago when he had sat cross-legged in the grass a whole day through--to watch the unfolding miracle of a black iris bud! in consideration of the particular speed and energy which solvei kjelland applied that afternoon to her homeward plunge through jostling traffic and resonant subways it is of interest to note that the first thing she did on reaching her room was to sit right down in her larkspur-blue coat and hat and investigate the word "leisure" in her english dictionary. out of all the various definitions given, "vacancy of mind" seemed to suit her fancy best. "in the vacancy of my mind is it that i have promised for this writing?" she questioned. "of a very good wellness then! when else should my mind or my heart be more vacated than now?" true to this impulse she sat down that very evening to tell mrs. tome gallien just exactly what she thought of her. on some very pale, pale yellow note paper, with the blue ink which she adored, and in the spirited handwriting so characteristic of her nationality, the very page was a blonde flare of personality. mrs. tome gallien, dearest madam (she wrote): how do you do's, and i know all! do not do it, i say. do not do it. they do not like it and if you so persist in thus teasing of them you will most certainly defeat the one object which i am of an inclination to suspect that you have tucked away in one side of the mind. is it not so? you are of course very clever and of much wealthiness and some pain. and, it is of course very diverting and most droll lying thus to plan how one may yet motivate the destinies, is it, that you say? and it is doubtless as you well think--the little widow lady has mourned too long, and is too delicate of the indoors, and moons too much over the singing-voice. and this young doctor in his own turn he also is a mistake, so sarcasms, so severe, and hates all womans and all pianos both, except for minutes. and you have thought that if thus across the little pain in the lady's bone these two could be brought to scold about the pianos and the blind ducks much good might yet come and of a most loving adjustingment? but no, madam it is a great mistake! these people are not at all as bright as you think. and also in their hearts is there none of that most happy greed which makes all comical things as they come one joke! no! it is only that they see in your gifts one great make-them-mad which if you persist in so doing with other comics will make them cold with hate and humiliation for each other. and when you tag the poor little lady as an adventure you have yet outraged complete the chivalries of the young doctor so that he cannot even see in his sense that even so little a widow may yet be a very great adventure. do not do it, i say! do not do it! it is cruel. and there is no law but your own honor that can stop it. if the malice is so formed that you cannot stop it but must persist in this most foolish custom of giving people the things what they do not want i would respectfully suggest that you send them to me. i am young. i am strong. and very laughing. if you can find anything in the world at just this time that i do not want _i dare you to send it to me!_ yours very truly, solvei kjelland. being satiate then with justice and the english language solvei reverted once more to the pursuit of juvenile pedagogics and the general discussion of human events with her own aunt and in her own tongue. sunday, monday, tuesday, wednesday, nothing except pedagogics and the aunt even remotely threatened her horizon. and by thursday every gesture of her fine young body, every changing expression of her fine young face, seemed frankly indicative of some seething inner triumph that as yet remained unspoken. by friday night, however, even this self-control slipped its leash, and she closed her eyes for sleep with a very distinct and definite expression of emotion. "ah!" she laughed, "that gallien lady down yonder is good and fixed! yes!" it was not until saturday night, late, by special delivery, that mrs. tome gallien's answer came. stumbling sleepily down the stairs just be fore midnight to answer the doorbell that no one else seemed awake to answer, solvei kjelland received the insignificant looking envelope into her own hands. small as it was, heavily overshadowed by special delivery postage, and almost quaveringly directed in a pale, fine writing it might well have suggested to anybody a suppliant for mercy, or at least for pity. with a first faint twinge of remorse solvei tore it open to discover no contents whatever--except a railroad ticket to the little mainland town in south carolina where mrs. tome gallien had established her official address. scowlingly for a moment and in dumb perplexity the girl stood shifting from one slippered foot to another in a really desperate effort to decipher each word, phrase, comma, asterisk, in the momentous little document be fore her. then quite suddenly a smile that was by no means mirthful flashed brilliantly across her blue eyes and her gleaming teeth. "_stinged_!" said solvei kjelland, and gathering her big gray blanket wrapper a little bit closer around her fled back precipitously to her bed. with the first faint ray of morning light perhaps she might have waked to an instant's reassuring conviction that the whole ticket episode was a dream if only her subconscious deductions from that episode had not waked first on her lips like a wry taste. "the one things in the world that i did not want--at just this time? that lady is a witchess!" was the phrase that waked on her lips. it was not until early the following week, however, that she called up the young doctor to tell him the news. "how do you do?" she telephoned. "this is solvei kjelland. and i am to say good-by." "good-by? why, what do you mean?" questioned the young doctor's frankly surprised voice. "it is that i am going away," said solvei, "on a little--what it is you would call a trip." "oh," said the young doctor. "where?" if the statement could ever be made that a person "shrugged" his voice solvei certainly "shrugged" hers. "oh, through the tunnel!" she said. "and then off!" "yes, but where?" persisted the young doctor. "oh, to the southern carolines to visit this mrs. tome gallien," sing-songed the girl as one who had rehearsed the line even to the point of monotony. "what?" cried the young doctor. "why--why, what do you mean?" "mean?" bridled solvei instantly. "for why should it be a meanness? is not this mrs. tome gallien as fine a lady as i? am i not as fine a lady as mrs. tome gallien? for why if two ladies like to visit it should not be so? have i not explain it all to the sick aunt?" "yes, but do you really mean that you wrote to mrs. tome gallien?" stammered the young doctor. "what did you say? for heaven's sake what did you say?" "what i did say should be sealed in my own heart," affirmed solvei with some coldness. "yes, but my dear child!" protested the young doctor. "you don't seem to have any idea of just what you're going to! it's not at all a cheerful sort of place you understand. why even its name you know is 'gloom of the sea.'" "even so," said solvei, "there is no special pain in that. in my time have i not already seen several glooms of the land? why then should i not, for sheer geography, start out to investigate a 'gloom of the sea'?" "yes, but it's a--it's a desert island, you know!" persisted the young doctor. "so-o?" brightened solvei. "and will there then be camels? n-o?" with a soft sigh of regret her whole personality seemed to fade for a moment into the indeterminate blur and buzz of crossed telephone wires. then clear as a bell her voice rang out again. "and have you seen the little sad lady once more?" she asked. "why she's here in my office now," said the young doctor. "she has to come almost every day." "so?" mused the norse girl. "and will it take the long time perhaps to mend the little pain in the bone?" "i certainly hope so!" laughed the young doctor. and for the first time since she had heard it there was no irony in the laugh but sheer boyish happiness. "you do not seem quite to get the ideas of this little trip that i should make," she reproached him briskly. "it is not just that i go! but that i stay! it is not just for the once it would seem but for the all time that this lady so desires me! the ticket that she so kindly sends is but one-sided. it does not return." "ticket?" exclaimed the young doctor. "why, this is preposterous! you don't really mean it, surely? there's nothing that can make you go, you know!" "so?" said solvei. "did i not make the dare to her? should i not pay? is it not then as you say? i have drawn the fire!" across the astonishing gravity of her tone a most joyous laugh broke suddenly. "your words are of such a mixedness," she laughed. "drawn? drawn? is it not rather as the strong banks would say, miss solvei kjelland by one lady from the south has been withdrawn from the circulations? but i adore this america!" she confided blithely. "always around every corner there is something that you did not first expect when you curled that corner." "yes, i know," admitted the young doctor. "but what about all this montessori study and everything? are you going to chuck it? and the little brother? the little lad who isn't?" he asked with real regret. "it will all keep," said solvei. "it is only what is, it would seem, that should pass." "oh, but miss kjelland," insisted the young doctor, "this whole thing is absurd! i--i believe you're making it all up, just for a joke! if you're going to be home next sunday afternoon couldn't i come around and--and laugh the thing out with you?" "next sunday afternoon?" mused solvei, with the manner of one who pauses for an instant to count the days on the fingers. "and this now, this minute, is a tuesday?" she questioned, still speculatively. "yes," agreed the young doctor. "no! it will not be possible!" said solvei. "i leave!" "yes, but when?" asked the young doctor. "now," said solvei. "already it is that i can hear the taxicab adding at the door." "what?" cried the young doctor. "under the river!" waved solvei's clear young voice. "under the river, dr. sam kendrue!" like a gigantic gray-brown wonder bulb the northern winter is dumped down thus at will into the sunny, plushy forcing frame of a new york pullman to bloom in perfect scent and glory only one day, two days, three days later in some welcoming southland. if solvei kjelland was astonished, however, at the first bland sights that met her blizzard-habituated eyes it is only fair to say that mrs. tome gallien in all her years of experience in every kind of a southland had never seen any thing that astonished her as much as the sight of solvei kjelland. fuming helplessly in her great mahogany bed with its weird-carven bed-posts of pirate and sailor and siren, the sick woman lay staring blankly from the ceiling to the piazza railing and from the piazza railing to the dull gray sea when the vision first burst upon her. "why--why--martha!" she screamed to her deaf woman. "there is a bright blue girl in the wrangle boat! and nobody is wrangling! they are coming right along, i mean! scudding! and the girl is running the engine!" from her own quick glance at the scene the deaf woman's answering voice came back as calm, as remote, as de-magnetized as the voice of an old letter. "you sent for a girl to come, i believe," said the deaf woman. "yes, i know," fumed mrs. tome gallien. "but i hardly dreamed for a moment that she really would!" "what?" said the deaf woman. "never--dreamed--that--she--would!" repeated mrs. tome gallien as economically as she could. "most things that you send for--seem to come," monotoned the deaf woman by no means unamiably. "there's no room left in the storeroom now for the last box of japanese bric-a-brac, or the french wedding gown or the new-fangled fireless cooker. where shall we put the girl?" "in the fireless cooker!" snapped mrs. tome gallien. from the vague acquiescent smile on martha's face it was evident that she sensed the spirit if not the words of the suggestion. the next direction however was startlingly clear. with a quite unmistakable gesture mrs. tome gallien pointed toward the stairs. "martha! go to it!" she screamed. to a person lying in bed voices travel so much quicker than do the owners of the voices. through what seemed an eternity then of time and noise, boat-keels grounding, men grumbling, boys shouting, women chattering, the sick woman waited in the lonely hush of her immediate surroundings with a very perceptible shiver of nervousness flashing from moment to moment across her spine. [illustration: as coolly as if she had been appraising a new dog or pussy, mrs. tome gallien narrowed her eyes to both the vision and the announcement.] then all a-glow and a-blow and theatrically incongruous like some splendid young viking of old rigged out in a girl's blue and ultramodern rain-coat, the stranger loomed up suddenly at the foot of the bed with martha's portly white figure backgrounding every radiant flutter and line of the blue and gold silhouette. "i am come!" said solvei kjelland. as coolly as if she had been appraising a new dog or pussy mrs. tome gallien narrowed her eyes to both the vision and the announcement. "certainly you are a very good-looking young person!" she conceded at last. "but of such an ungodly name! is there no way to overcome it?" "over--come it?" puzzled solvei for a single shadowed instant. "oh, that is most easy," she brightened, almost at once. "solway it is as though it was. and ch-chelland." "you may call me 'elizabeth,'" said mrs. tome gallien without the flicker of an eyelash. "e-lee-sa-buth?" repeated the girl painstakingly. "oh, i suppose that will do," sighed mrs. tome gallien, struggling up a little bit higher on her pillows. "but whatever in the world made you come?" she demanded tartly. but if the question was like a dash of cold water, solvei's reaction to it was at least the reaction of a duck's back. "you mean you did not really want me?" she preened and fluttered. her voice was ecstasy, her eyes like stars. "i certainly did not," sliced mrs. tome gallien's clear incisive voice. "oh, of what a joyousness and retribution!" beamed solvei. "of what a gloriosity! as the shooting camping is to the sad little lady, and the piano to the young doctor,--so thus am i to you! what then shall happen to everyone of us is yet on the lap of the gods! let us kiss!" she suggested as one prize fighter might proffer his hand to another. "i am not a kisser, thank you," said mrs. tome gallien with some coldness. "so-o?" acquiesced the girl softly. if her spirit faltered for an instant, her blue eyes fortunately faltered no lower than the great clutter of boxes that flanked mrs. gallien's bed in every direction. "for why are there so many boxes?" she looked up suddenly to ask with a smile that would have disarmed a tartar. "why--why those are just some things i've been buying lately," relaxed mrs. tome gallien ever so slightly. "there isn't so very much to do here, some days, except just to read the advertisements in the back of the magazines--and send for things. martha hates it!" she added with a sudden wry glance at martha's impassive face. "o-h!" said solvei. and the word was divided absolutely evenly between praise of the boxes and disparagement of martha. the boxes seemed to have heard their part of it anyway. the string on a huge brown paper package burst suddenly as though for sheer excitement. "martha will show you to your room," said mrs. tome gallien quite imperviously. "and whatever else you try to jar, pray don't waste your energies trying to jar martha. by a most merciful dispensation of providence her sensibilities have been wrapped in a cotton batting silence for the past twenty years. you may in time learn to understand me," she smiled faintly with her first kindness. "but you will never understand martha. come back to me after supper, if you wish. and wear something blue if you have it. i like you in blue." it was long after supper when solvei returned. but at least she was in blue, and a very neat and trim blue it was and essentially boyish with its soft collar rolling back sailor-wise from her slender throat. like one fairly consumed with the winter novelty of boats and beaches, too full of a hundred new excitements to speak, she dropped down on the low footstool by mrs. tome gallien's pungent, smoky, lightwood fire, and with her blue elbows on her blue knees and her white chin cupped in her white hands, sat staring wide-eyed at her hostess. the whole breathless significance of youth was in her face. youth struggled eternally for its own best self-expression. but when she spoke, a single sentence only burst from her lips. "what was in that big brown bundle-box that should burst so?" she asked with a sudden elfish impudence. but instead of being annoyed by the question, mrs. tome gallien seemed on the contrary to be rather amused with it. "you like boxes?" she asked with a faintly quizzical lift of her eyebrows. "boxes?" flamed solvei. "it is like the new day! when the string breaks--it is the dawn! 'what should there then be in it?' jumps the heart. what is there yet that will come?" "oh, dear me," smiled mrs. tome gallien. "if you feel like that about it by all means come and open it. i forget myself what is in it, there are so many. nuts maybe," she laughed, "or a new carpet sweeper. or a sable muff even!" with all the frank eagerness of a child solvei kjelland jumped up to investigate the mystery, and like a kitten snarling itself into worsteds disappeared for the moment into interminable pale-colored tissue papers, only to emerge at last brandishing on high the plumpest, gaudiest, altogether most hideous hand-embroidered sofa pillow that human eyes were ever forced to contemplate. "it is not nuts," said solvei kjelland. in another moment she had clasped the pillow to her breast. "oh, of what a horror!" she laughed. "and how beloved! is it the work then," she demanded, "of a blind one? or of one crazy? or of one both blind and crazy?" back of the laughter and the question was a sincere and unmistakable concern. "a clergyman's widow makes them," confided mrs. tome gallien. "somebody over in alabama,--i saw the advertisement in a country newspaper. i take a whole lot of country newspapers for just that sort of amusement," she added a bit drily. "there seems to be such an everlasting number of bunglers in the world who are trying so desperately hard to make a little money. this woman i believe is trying to send her boy to college." with the pillow extended precipitously to full arm's length solvei sat for a moment staring from the chaotic embroidery to mrs. tome gallien's perfectly composed face. "could a boy come to any of the good that should go to college on a pillow like that?" she demanded uproariously, while all the laughing curves of her mouth seemed reaching suddenly up to fend off the threat of tears in her eyes. once again she clasped the pillow to her breast. "oh, the bridge that it does make into the other's life!" she cried. "can you not see all at once, the house, the desolation, the no store anywhere with fine goods to compare with! the boy so thin, so white, so eager perhaps, so watching of every stitch! that most dreadful magenta? will there be by the grace of the good god a chance perhaps for the latin? that screaming oranges? should it be humanly possible that so much joys as histories and boots might yet be in the same world with the latin. and the mother? so pricked with needles? so consumed with hopings----" "you--you see it, do you?" drawled mrs. tome gallien. "see it?" flamed solvei. "i _am_ it!" with the gesture of one who sought suddenly to hide her emotion she swung around abruptly toward the other side of the room. "what else is there then?" she asked, all laughter and mischief again. "that box so wooden, so busted at the top? is that also a bridge to some other livings?" "if you choose to call it so," nodded mrs. tome gallien. a frankly quizzical invitation to explore was in the nod. solvei certainly needed no urging. in another instant down on her knees before the great wooden box, she was slowly extracting from wads of excelsior, piece after piece of the most exquisitely delicate and transparent turquoise blue china beaded in gold and airily overwrought with soaring sea gulls. there was a big breakfast cup, and a middle-sized breakfast cup, and a big plate, and a middle-sized plate, and a cereal saucer and another cereal saucer, and a most stately little coffee pot and all the other attendants and attendants to attendants which fashion assigns to just that sort of a service. "oh, it is for the fairies then?" gasped solvei. "or a princess?" deftly as she spoke she pulled a great white sheet of paper to her and spread it on the floor as a cloth. "no!" she quickened. "it is for lovers! see? the first breakfast of the new home?" as cautiously as though she had been handling butterfly wings she began to dramatize the scene, the big plate there, the middle-sized plate here, a man's elbow-room, thus, a woman's daintiness, so! in the ingenuousness of her own visualization she lifted the bride's cup to her lips and sipped an ecstatic draught from it. "mocha or java?" mocked mrs. tome gallien. "joy!" said solvei kjelland. in a sudden fit of abstraction then the girl struggled slowly to her knees and knelt thus staring very thoughtfully all around her. "so is it then with all these boxes?" she asked. "that from this desert island lying so you would make constantly such little bridges across to other people's livings? in time, it is, i mean, as soon as you should bear to part with them you would build even these most heavenish dishes across to some young happiness? but will such a young happiness ever take the troubles to cross back to you?" she demanded with sudden fierceness. "that is it, i say! that is it! a prattling note perhaps? a praise-you for being so rich? but do they ever yet write more late to tell that the gift is still well, that it has made new joy that very morning perhaps, that even yet after one month, six months, twenty, it is still so dear?" "they never have," admitted mrs. tome gallien. in utter irrelevance the girl sank back on her heels and crossing her arms on her breast began to rock herself joyously to and fro. "oh, i do love this place so!" she confided. "i do love it so! and if you should then keep me," she beamed. "and i should be quite pleasant,--there is a lawn mower i read in yesterday's paper! most wonderful it is, and runs by the gasolene, so that all one needs to do is to follow singing gaily. could you send for such?" "a lawn mower?" sniffed mrs. tome gallien. "you noticed, i trust, that there was no nice grass whatsoever on this island?" "yes, that is most so," admitted solvei. "neither equally is there any young happinesses or bare-toed boys making for latin. but if we were possessed of such a lawn mower and its wonderfulness we could at least make the fine green lawns in the mind." "solvei!" snapped mrs. tome gallien, "i am dreadfully afraid that i am going to like you! but before i actually commit myself," she frowned, "i want to ask you one question. are you in the habit of letting strange young men kiss you?" "what?" jumped solvei. very significantly mrs. tome gallien repeated the question. "strange young men?" she revised it. "are you in the habit of letting strange young men kiss you?" "oh!" flushed solvei. "it is then the young doctor that you mean? was it so that he thus confessed it to you?" she questioned a bit bewilderedly. "so shamed he was, so worried, i had not just thought that he should tell. yes, it is as you say he is one most strange young man." "yes, but you?" persisted mrs. tome gallien. "how did you feel about it? that's what i want to know!" "how should i feel?" laughed solvei. "why it was so mad i was, so strong, i could have crushed him on the steps! and then suddenly i see his face! bah!" shrugged solvei. "i have one father and nine brothers and all the world is most full of men! it is not from such a face as the young doctor's that any evil should come. it is just as i have said, one very sad accident!" "it does not seem to be just the sadness of the accident that lingers longest in your mind," drawled mrs. tome gallien. with her chin tip-tilted and her eyes like stars the girl met the sarcasm without a flicker of resentment. "no!" she laughed. "it is not the sadness of the accident that remains longest in the mind!" "u-m-mmmm," mused mrs. tome gallien. "all the same," she resumed with sharpness, "i certainly think it was most cruel, most brutal of him, not to make the trip down here with me! it would have done him good," she insisted. "just the mere balmy change of it! he is so grim!" "oh, but he cannot help the being grim," flared solvei. "he is so poor and so wanting things! how should he yet achieve them except by sticking close to that most saddest of all truths that the only ways to get ahead is to stay behind and attend to one's business?" "solvei!" asked mrs. tome gallien quite abruptly. "have you gotten the impression in any way that the young doctor was--was attracted at all to my little widow friend?" "oh, of a surety!" attested solvei. "he is i think what one would say 'crazy' of her." "oh, i hardly dare to hope that," mused mrs. tome gallien. "but of course--" in some far-away speculation the sentence faded suddenly off into silence. "she will of course be very rich some day, i suppose," she resumed a bit haughtily. "i shall, i suppose, make her my heir." "s-o?" said solvei kjelland. "solvei!" snapped mrs. tome gallien with another spurt of abruptness. "speaking of 'attending to one's business,' if _you_ should decide to stay here and make _me_ your business, what do you think you could do for me?" "oh, i could do the reading aloud," brightened solvei instantly. "and i could thus open the boxes! and i could run the wrangle boat!" she quickened and glowed. "and also if it should so seem best i could scrub the blue flannel crockings from the wrangle boy's neck!" "on the whole--as a really steady employment," conceded mrs. tome gallien, "suppose we begin on the reading aloud. i adore being read to." "oh, i am very fine on this reading aloud!" preened solvei. "so dramatic is it that you say? so intensed?" with absolute self-assurance she picked up the only book in reach, it happened to be the "golden treasury," and just out of sheer temperamental eagerness selected the biggest-looking poem she could find. "it should be an 'ode,' is it that you call it?" she confided. "and it is about--about--? i do not know such words," she faltered for a single second only and passed the page to mrs. tome gallien. "oh," said mrs. tome gallien, "wordsworth, you mean. 'ode on intimations of immortality from recollections of early childhood.'" "s-o?" conceded solvei. "all that? it is not certainly of a poetry sound but more--later perhaps it will tell. all the rest is most easy looking. "there was--some time" (she began) "when--when meadows, groves, also streams, "the earth and all things perfectly--ordinary "to me did--did seems "ap-pareled--" i do not know that word and here is another-- "in ce--les--tial lightings, "the----" "yes--anybody could see at once that you are a remarkable reader!" slashed mrs. tome gallien's coolest, thinnest voice. "the picture it suggests of our long spring evenings together is----" with a startled glance upward solvei detected for the first time the actual glinting mockery in the older woman's eyes. "what is it?" she stammered. "what?" still like some one more bewildered than hurt she struggled to her feet. "even as from the first," she questioned, "is it that you are making the sport of me when i wish so hard to do the things that would please you? through and through, is your heart then so cruel?" she demanded, "that it must make mockerings of the confused and the far-from-homes?" "oh, solvei!" cried the older woman suddenly. "smile again! laugh again! i can't bear it! it's as though the sun had died! it's as though the moon had gone! if you are angry and leave me, i shall be left all alone again with just the fog and the sea! i am a brute, and i know it! but oh, if you will only just smile again! even just once, i mean! oh, my poor dear little girl," she implored her. "oh, my poor dear touchy little blonde girl!" "i am not a 'poor--poor little blonde girl,'" asserted solvei with some spirit. "i am indeed as i said, very young, very strong. and very laughing," she insisted without even the remotest flicker of a smile. "are you young enough and strong enough and laughing enough to come over here and sit on my bed?" rallied mrs. tome gallien. "i am young enough and strong enough and laughing enough to do anything!" said solvei kjelland. stiff and stern as a ramrod she went over and sat on the side of the sick woman's bed. without an atom of self-consciousness or embarrassment both women began all over again to study each other's faces. "could i put my hand on your yellow hair?" asked mrs. gallien at last quite surprisingly. "you could put your hand on my yellow hair," said solvei. "if i should apologize fairly decently for existing at all," experimented mrs. tome gallien a little further, "would you be willing to kiss now? "i should never be willing," sighed solvei, "to kiss any lips that tasted of mockerings." "what would you be willing to do?" ventured mrs. tome gallien. "what would you want me to do?" relaxed solvei ever so slightly. through mrs. tome gallien's busy brain a dozen possible answers tested themselves one against the other. "well, would you be willing to--to tell me a little story?" she chose as the most promising one. "tell you a little story?" queried solvei. once again her whole face darkened with suspicion. "yes, about my little island," hurried mrs. tome gallien. "it was dark when i came and they put me right into this bed. i do not leave my bed, you know." "what?" quivered solvei. "this most beautiful little island, you have not seen it--since you came?" in the very tensity of the question all the blue seemed to surge back suddenly to her eyes, all the pink to her cheeks. "why of a sureness," she cried, "will i tell you about this little island!" softly then for a moment she patted her skirts and recrossed her slippered feet and fumbled with the big silk tie that closed her collar. then quite geographically she began her narrative. "first of all," she explained, "it is a round little island." "really, you surprise me," said mrs. tome gallien purely automatically. "so many islands are square." "and there are fish upon it!" glowed the narrator. "oh, surely not upon it?" shivered mrs. tome gallien. "and there are seven monstrous what you call 'live-oak' trees dripping with gray beards,--it is most terrible," gloated the narrator. "and in one tree alone have i seen with my own eyes seven most scarlet birds and two blue birds. and in yet another tree there is a fine snake.--and all along by what you should call the edge of the porch blue violets are coming. and on the roof where the wrangle boat sleeps there is an green vine that shall yet be yellow and sweet, martha tells. and--and--" around the corners of the girl's red lips a faint little smile showed suddenly. "and there is one little black pig, so grunting!" she announced with rapture. "and--and----" so the sweet, eager, revitalizing young voice ran on till martha herself appeared to announce sleeping time, and mrs. tome gallien whose "sleeping time" for years had been a farce of ghost and specter dozed off before she was even half undressed to dream like a child of budding violets and flitting birds and a glow that should be of jessamine instead of gold. hours fall so easily out of a day, days out of a week, weeks out of a month! the jessamine glow did come in its own good time as did also various other things which nature had ordained, march winds, march rains, march tides, march sunshine. other wonders came too that were of course mrs. tome gallien's ordaining rather than nature's fabulous shoppings from all the big marts of the world, and little pitiful, home made products from backwoods settlement or lonely prairie. once and for all time relieved of the hazardous task of reading aloud to a capricious invalid, solvei came and went like a young sea breeze, whistling through the halls, singing through the rooms, sweeping across the island, frolicking on the water. if it was fair to rate her as a rather exceptionally clever and daring young navigator on the sea of fact it was only fair to acknowledge her equally clever, equally daring in the realms of fancy. smiling knowingly into martha's silences, laughing at the wrangle boat man or boy, waving a slim hand in and out of mrs. tome gallien's narrow sea-blue vista, scudding to and from the mainland on interminable errands, or curled up for long cozy evenings on the foot of mrs. tome gallien's bed to visualize their mutual magic path across one new box or another into "other people's livings," solvei kjelland as a companion was frankly a success. then one day very late in march, or even the first of april, something came which was partly of nature's ordaining and partly of mrs. tome gallien's, though most thoroughly a surprise to the latter one concerned. it was a letter from dr. sam kendrue. and very northern. whatever the new york winter had been it was plainly evident that the new york spring was still exceedingly cold. mrs. tome gallien, dear madam (said the letter): as it seems best to me at just this time that mrs. kendrue should supplement her treatment with a trip south, it is my intention to accompany her. in view of this fact i will take the liberty of calling upon you on tuesday next. trusting that your island experience has proved beneficial to your health, i am, yours truly, etc., etc. "u-m-mmmm," smiled mrs. tome gallien. but before the dull, fretted bewilderment in solvei kjelland's face, her smile sharpened suddenly into impatience. "why surely, solvei," she scolded. "with all your english you might at least understand that." "n-o," shifted solvei from one slim ankle to the other. "it does not seem to me of any understanding whatever--whether it should be dr. sam kendrue's mrs. kendrue who comes or just mrs. kendrue's mrs. kendrue?" "o-h, of course," rallied mrs. tome gallien's good nature. "one could hardly expect them to be married by now, or even engaged perhaps. but at least they must be awfully interested! how about your poor hardworking young doctor _now_?" she gloated; "couldn't take the tiniest holiday for a poor old gray-haired, crippled creature like me! but has got time to burn when it comes to some little soft dark-eyed thing with a creak in her singing-voice!" "love is sure some pranks," admitted solvei. "_a_ prank," corrected mrs. tome gallien. "a prank," repeated solvei with perfect docility. from the increasing sweetness of her day dreams mrs. tome gallien turned idly to the calendar on the table by her bedside. the week's page had not been torn off, nor the week before that, if the whole truth must be known. "why, good lack!" she jerked suddenly. "to-day is tuesday!" "so?" jumped solvei. both women turned simultaneously toward the clock. "it will take you half an hour to make the mainland and that train!" cried mrs. tome gallien. "and for goodness sake, brush your hair! and change those old sea-faring clothes." "i will not brush the hair," tossed solvei's bright wind-blown head. "always it is my preference to wear it thus hither-and-hang! nor will i part ever from my friend this old blue jersey! and even so--if the sun does not fade between the here and the mainland i may yet achieve three new freckles on my nose!" "don't argue!" fumed mrs. tome gallien. "just hurry!" "it is only when one hurries that one has time to argue," persisted the girl. "oh, stop your nonsense!" ordered mrs. tome gallien. "whose nonsense will then be left to us?" flared solvei. "but do not thus make all this extra worrisome," she admonished with sudden gentleness. "time is always more fat than you think! but for two such fancy fine packages as i go now to fetch," she flared again ever so slightly, "there will not be room also in the boat for the face of the wrangle boat man nor yet for the legs of the boy. it is alone i insist that i should go!" "for mercy's sake!" fretted mrs. tome gallien. "i don't care how you go, if you'll only go!" without further parleying, solvei started for the stairs. in another minute with a few jumps and slides she had reached the front door. once outside, it took but a fraction more of time to settle the wrangle boat man and boy. "sitting here in perfect peace on the shore," she admonished them, "watch thus how one isolated person with no words but oil can make a boat prance on the waves! all aboard!" she called back exultantly to them. with a chug like a great, pounding heartthrob the wrangle boat sprang for the sea. just for a moment then at the last signaling point solvei lifted her hand in unfailing cheeriness to the sick woman and the deaf woman left behind, and turned her own inordinately sharpened young senses toward the mainland. but when the ructious little wrangle boat drew up a half hour later alongside the dilapidated mainland wharf before an admiring audience of jet black pickaninnies and mangy hounds there was only one passenger waiting impatiently there, and that passenger was dr. sam kendrue. "how do you do, dr. sam kendrue?" said solvei. "how do _you_ do, miss solvei kjelland?" grinned doctor kendrue. with more agility than one might have dared to hope for from one who boasted so much winter in his blood, the young doctor snatched up his valise, jumped down into the wrangle boat and pushed off. to avoid running into a sunken rowboat and a floating snag, solvei was compelled to start her engine, and turn sharply out to sea. "where then is your mrs. kendrue?" she called a bit breathlessly above the lap of wind and water. "it is my mrs. kendrue that i have come to get!" said the young doctor. with a little oil can poised abruptly in midair, solvei opened the same old bewildered blue eyes at him. "oh, no," she hastened to disillusion him. "your mrs. kendrue is not yet on our island." "no, of course she isn't," laughed the young doctor. "and there's a jolly good reason why, and the reason is--because she's right here in the boat!" "what?" stammered solvei. with frenzied haste she began very suddenly to oil everything in reach. "what?" she repeated vaguely. "i mean just what i say," said the young doctor, and made a slight move as of one who would cross one cramped knee over the other. with all the joy of a foreigner easing his dictional panic with an idiom, solvei snatched out at the first phrase she could think of that had a familiar word in it. "sit down! you're rocking the boat!" she screamed. "silly!" said the young doctor. "i was once in a boat before!" quite wretchedly he began then and there to try and recover his old manner, the irony, the mocking. "really, miss kjelland," he ducked as a great cloud of spray went by him. "really miss kjelland, you're awfully rough with boats! oh, but solvei," he broke through again in spite of himself. "you understand what i'm trying to say, now don't you?" "no, i don't," said solvei kjelland with her great blue eyes staring straight ahead through the veil of her windblown hair at some far focal point just over the wrangle boat's prancing bow. once again a great cloud of spray missed the young doctor by the width only of his dodge. "and how is it then about mrs. kendrue's mrs. kendrue?" asked solvei quite suddenly out of the gusty sky. "oh!" said the young doctor with the most surprising revival of cheerfulness. "why--why she's gone on down to investigate her new duck blind with the rest of her party. there's a tenor, it seems, who is rather,--well, contenting. you could hardly use any other word with her, she's so awfully inexpressive. anyway it's a diverting friendship for her, though whether the tenor can hit a high duck as niftily as he can hit a high note, remains of course to be seen." "s-o?" said solvei with indifferent interest. "and is the piano well?" "oh, fairly well," conceded the young doctor. "but if ever i saw a piano that needed a mother's care! i had to board it out, you know?" "s-o?" crooned solvei's sweet low voice. it was astonishing though how soon the sea calmed down after that. at least there was no more spray. skirting round at last along the sunny sheltered side of the little island instead of splashing boldly up to the regular landing as was her usual custom, it seemed indeed as though solvei was suddenly trying to feed out serenity to the man before her. the floating gray moss of the live-oak trees was certainly serene, the twitter of birds, the soft, warm drone of insect. without an interrupting word she drove the boat's nose into a roughly improvised harbor of floating logs and a raft, jumped out upon the raft and beckoned the young doctor to follow her. but at the first soft-padded thud of his foot on the turf it was the young doctor himself who broke the vocal silence. "oh, but solvei!" he protested. "you've got to know that you are the only mrs. kendrue that i want!" "s-o?" queried solvei, glancing back with a vaguely skeptical smile across her blue jersey shoulder. "oh, of course," admitted the young doc tor, "just right away at the very first i didn't know it perhaps. you were so--so,--well, so sort of unusual," he flushed, "and so awfully independent! about the adventure and the little widow and everything, you made it so perfectly plain you didn't need me that it wasn't till you'd actually gone that i half woke up to the fact how much i needed you! why, solvei, after you ran away the city was like a gray fog with no light in it, no laughter, no anything! the days were a week long, the nights, a month! is it any wonder that i should feel as though i'd loved you for almost ever and ever? why, if it hadn't been for my work, and the knowledge that work and work only could bring me to you--? oh, i know it's awfully sudden and everything!" he persisted desperately. "but why people prate so everlastingly about 'love at first sight' and never make any talk at all about 'love at first absence'! solvei you've simply got to understand!" he cried out. in her few steps lead of him the girl stopped suddenly and turned around. "but of what good is it that i should understand?" she asked with a little appealing gesture of her hands. "in my far norway is it not that i have still the cause of the little brother? and here?" she puzzled, "how could i yet leave elizabeth?" "elizabeth?" questioned the young doctor. "mrs. tome gallien," explained the girl. "elizabeth?" repeated the young doctor with increasing astonishment. "you mean you are such friends as that?" "yes," nodded the girl. "i am such friends as that." across the lovely earnestness of her face sun and shadow flickered intermittently. softly her blue eyes brooded. her bright gold hair was like a flame. in all that sunny, singing island there was no radiance like her unless perhaps it was the blue bird who flashed through the gray moss just beyond her. "i cannot leave the little brother," she said. "nor can i leave the elizabeth." as though kindled by the spring's own sweet her whole musing face flamed suddenly with joy. "nor yet.--i am so greedy!" she cried, "_nor yet can i leave you_!" all unbeknown then to mrs. tome gallien or even to martha, they crept up the stairs at last to mrs. tome gallien's room, where with the poor young doctor relegated ignominiously behind her, solvei chose for her own whimsical purposes to make her dramatic entrance. "good afternoon to you, then, elizabeth!" she hailed casually to the impatient sick woman on the bed. "this of a surety is 'one time when meadows, groves, also streams, to me--did seems a--apparelled in celestial lightings!'" "what?" gasped mrs. tome gallien. "why, what makes your cheeks so red?" she demanded suddenly. "i got kissed again," said solvei. "what?" snapped mrs. tom gallien. "they did not come," said solvei. "no such kendrues combination as you suggested. nothing came!" said solvei. "except just one big package for me!" "for you?" frowned mrs. tome gallien. "for me!" shrugged solvei. "and though it should be hard yet to tell just what livings it shall lead to--it shall at least lead to much lovings." "what?" puzzled mrs. tome gallien. "this is it!" said solvei, and dragged the young doctor into the room. "_what_?" screamed mrs. tome gallien. "it is for _me_! you understand?" beamed the girl. in the convulsive laughter that overtook the young doctor he did not at the moment notice mrs. tome gallien's face. but there was no laughter of any kind in mrs. tome gallien's face, only shock, and a most furious rage. "so it is thus you have been deceiving me?" she cried out to solvei. "all this time that you knew what my heart was fixed on, my hopes, my everything! all this time that you have been here a guest in my house! and quite safe i supposed from any such----" "oh, now really, mrs. gallien!" interposed the young doctor's grimmest, sternest voice. "oh, of what a nonsense!" laughed solvei. "there is no blames anywhere--unless it should be to this montessori theory! out of the whole wide world is it not that a child must gravitate to his own wantings? it cannot be chosen for him?" then with all the young laughter gone from her face she reached out her slim brown hand to the young doctor's reassuring clasp and led him to the bed. "elizabeth," she said. "you are rich and you are sick and you are sometimes very cross. but you cannot buy the loving! here then are two children who would love you all your life long--all their lives long. if you thus furiously so refuse the gift, who then is the stingy receiver?" "what?" stammered mrs. tome gallien. "what?" across her haggard, rage-stricken face a smile of incredulous enlightenment flickered suddenly. "what?" she surrendered. "you--you--_rascals_!" and held out her aching arms to them. _he was worse than dillinger, the james boys, captain kidd and benedict arnold put together--all because he was_ filthy rich by fred sheinbaum [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, april . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the thursday morning executive meeting of the general products corporation was adjourned, as usual, with the consumer's pledge. the same pledge recited each morning by children in schools across the nation. j.l. spender, assistant vice-president of cotter pin production for plant five was proud to put in these extra thursday mornings. let the common herd work their three day, twenty-one hour week. he was part of the management team, working behind the scenes, constantly raising the standard of living of the american consumer. a silent elevator whisked j.l. to the roof of the administration building where the heliport attendant rolled out his new helicopter, a june, buick skymaster. it was a sculpture in chrome and plexiglass; a suitable vehicle for the assistant vice-president as prescribed by _consumer's guide_. a loyal consumer, he bought the new model every six months. once in the air and on course, j.l. set the ultramatic autopilot--a new feature on the ' model--and pushed the chrome seat control lever to semi-reclining. scarcely a cloud marred the pristine blue, and below nestled the neat, colorful homes of happy american consumers, but his problem was not to be soothed by sinking back to enjoy the crisp spring air. life, j.l. felt, would be all sweetness and light were it not for the unaccountable affection his pretty young daughter, glory, bore for an ascetic looking young man of doubtful integrity as a consumer. there had been a parade of acceptable young men through his front door, none of whom had excited more in him than apathy. but this one. he wore spectacles with heavy black frames when almost everyone used disposable contact lenses. his suits were at least a month behind the current style. and with all those young men to choose from, glory picked him to ask to dinner that evening. glory had been taught to respect the might of the dollar and the disaster that comes of not spending it. she was a credit to her family; a sound, patriotic consumer. she could spend money faster, more sensibly than any of her frivolous friends. one fortunate young man would find her an excellent wife. no dollar-hoarder would fill her mind with subversive notions if he could prevent it. much as j.l. disliked having that particular young man to dinner, it did afford the opportunity to spend some of the extra money that always collected if you didn't watch very carefully. being forced to pay a savings tax wouldn't do his career or social position any good, and he certainly wouldn't think of putting it into a secret bank account. the hudson river was beneath him. he would soon be home. the thought reminded him that though the family had already passed the five year mark in this house, he had still not made an appointment with his architect. just before landing j.l. took the controls. the autopilot was supposed to land itself, but somehow he felt better doing it himself. a control on the dash opened the garage, another retracted the overhead rotors. he drove in, closed the garage door, and got out. he paused in the hall only long enough to throw his hat and top-coat into the waste receptacle. from the kitchen he heard the familiar crackling of packages being unwrapped. "home at last," he sighed, pecking marge, his wife, on the cheek. "what did you buy today, honey?" it was a treat to watch the pleasure with which marge unwrapped packages. j.l. bought most things out of a sense of duty, but marge and glory really enjoyed spending money, god bless them. "oh, lots of things," marge answered. she held a cut crystal goblet to the light watching it sparkle. "a new set of china, this exquisite stemware, and the loveliest linen tablecloth, and ... oh, and they're sending a genuine oak table for the dining room. the shop i bought it in has the cleverest service. the man who delivers the table cuts up the old one so it can be used in the fireplace. isn't that practical?" "that _is_ clever," j.l. said. "it's a pity to waste it all on that good-for-nothing, whatever his name is." "stringer." "what?" "that's his name, ernest stringer. why is he a good-for-nothing? he does dress oddly, i admit, but glory seems to like him." "that's exactly why i'm worried. if she asked him for dinner there's no telling what's going on. a person like that is a bad influence." j.l. said, punctuating by jabbing the air with his index finger. "now really, dear. you hardly know him." "i know him well enough. you are the one who claims to be such a good judge of character. look at those glasses he wears. why doesn't he wear disposable contact lenses like everyone else. it's positively unsanitary. and did you see that suit? i'll say he dresses oddly. that thing hasn't been in style for a month. i bet he doesn't spend half his salary." "oh, i don't know." marge said, abstractedly. she was admiring the floral pattern on her new china. "but do be nice to him. don't say anything to embarrass glory." "oh, i'll be nice all right. i guess i know how to act. you and your daughter have trained me. and there are worse things than being embarrassed." he would have gone on, but at that moment glory sauntered into the room. "hi, dad. back from the grind, i see." her hair was the color of lemon and in her blue eyes was reflected a youthful zest for life. "do you like the new dress? it comes in seventeen colors. i bought them all. and hats and shoes and gloves and bags to match." she said, walking as she had seen professional models walk, with arms akimbo and swinging hips. "very pretty," he said, "but shouldn't there be a little more to it? style is style, but leave something to the imagination. they can't be using up much fabric with a number like that." "see, mom. didn't i tell you exactly what he'd say? daddy is so mid-century. aren't you, darling?" "glory, at the risk of seeming ... ah ... mid-century, i think you owe your mother and myself some information about this person you've asked to dinner." "what kind of information? you've met him," she said. her eyes narrowed slightly. "yes, i've met him. what is his background? what does he work at? what kind of a consumer is he?" "dad, you are not being fair." "not fair? why not? are you ashamed of him?" "no, i'm not ashamed of him. ernie is a dear sweet boy. he lost both of his parents when he was very young. bringing himself up has made him different from most people, i guess. but he has done very well. and all by himself, too. he's an oe, you know." this only added heat to j.l.'s burning suspicion. "i don't want to sound narrow minded, glory, but i've met a good many opinion engineers in business and darned few of them are fit company for a young girl. they picture themselves as independent thinkers. they don't spend their money as they should." glory's lips whitened as she pressed them together. j.l. saw the gathering storm in her eyes. "that's not fair," she said. "ernie is perfectly all right. he just needs looking after. mother, help me." marge smiled calmly, and said, "your father is just acting like a father, that's all. he is trying to protect you." "well, i'm twenty years old, almost. and it's practically the twenty-first century, but it looks like the middle ages around here. i'm sorry i asked him to come. i'll never ask anyone again." she threw her head back and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead. "now don't start getting dramatic. i only want what's best for you, j.l. said. but it was only bluff. he knew when he was licked. "all right, all right," he said, trying to prevent her tears from brimming over. "i promise to be good tonight." it was time for him to retreat, as gracefully as possible, to his study and the latest issue of _consumer's guide_. which he did. * * * * * at a quarter of seven j.l. tottered into his living room. he was fully dressed except for a bright red sash hanging slack, like a sail in the doldrums, just brushing the tops of his patent leather shoes. dressing was a nerve-jarring, thirst-making business. he was in full sympathy with the need for changing men's styles so frequently, but those overpaid designers could surely dream up easier outfits to get into. he separated a decanter of bourbon from its fellows on the mirror-backed shelves and from it poured a lavish helping. using the tip of his index finger, he twirled the ice cubes and, with a sigh, lifted the golden fluid to his lips. over the rim of the glass he saw glory come floating into view. she was dressed, mostly below the waist, in yards of a light gauzy fabric that seemed to have life of its own. she stopped at the door while her eyes slowly swept the room. j.l. was reminded of a spider making sure the web would be cosy. her glance came to rest on the portly figure of her father. she exhaled a sigh of controlled exasperation. "daddy, your sash is hanging. it looks like a flag at half mast." "i am perfectly aware that my sash is hanging." he wasn't sure he approved of the tone of her voice. "well tuck it up then. ernie will be here any minute." "it refuses to stay up. how do you know? maybe it is supposed to hang. those designers should be forced to dress themselves in these things before they loose them on an unsuspecting public." she glided towards him and, with a few deft touches, the sash was neatly in place. "dad, promise you'll be nice to him." j.l. smiled. much as he protested, he liked being fussed over. "of course, i'll be nice. when am i not nice? i just said those things about him because ... well, i wanted you to be wary." "don't worry about ernie. he's a dear. and, please, no economics lectures. that business about thrift being a menace to prosperity may have been a new idea when you were young, but now every kid in school is taught it. so spare us. it makes you sound like an old fuddy duddy." fuddy duddy? j.l. was about to make a stunning rejoinder when he heard the whirring of helicopter rotors overhead. "there he is." glory said, excitedly, "let him in." "where are you running?" he asked, surprised. she was as fully dressed as she was likely to be. "you know i can't be here when he comes in," she said. "can't be here? where else should you be?" j.l. asked. the situation was getting out of hand. "strategy, my dear parent. i can't just be sitting here waiting when he walks in. he is supposed to be waiting for me ... with bated breath. it makes my entrance more effective. ta ta for now." she was gone. the prospect of dining at the same table with the young man was repellent enough. now he would have to provide entertaining conversation until glory chose to appear. the door chimes sounded. j.l. drained his glass, stiffened his spine, and strode to the door pulling it open with a jerk, like a doctor removing adhesive tape. any hope j.l. might have had was dashed when the door opened to reveal ernest stringer, his piercing brown eyes, a tight lipped smile, and the traditional gift of candy under his arm. "good evening, mr. spender," he said. "you are, i believe, expecting me." he was so thin that the current, tight fitting style made him look very like a figure constructed with pipe cleaners. j.l. did his best to appear gracious. "come in, come in," he said, taking his hat and coat. "glory will be in soon." the suit was up to date, but j.l. spotted other telling details. his heels were slightly lighter in color than the rest of the shoes, indicating they had been reheeled. it was also evident, to a trained eye, that the collar and cuffs of his shirt had been resized, proof that the shirt had been laundered; perhaps, even more than once. "what can i get you to drink?" j.l. asked, leading the way into the living room. "nothing, thank you. i seldom take alcohol," the young man said. "is that right? a young fellow like you. it certainly is fortunate that the rest of your generation doesn't share your prejudice. alcoholic beverages account for more than five percent of total consumer purchases." "five percent. as much as that? well, in that case i should have something. ah ... a glass of sherry, i think," he said, smiling with lips unparted. "sherry? sure you don't want something more ... more substantial?" "sherry will do nicely, thank you." a sherry drinker is capable of anything, j.l. thought. he poured the wine into a high stemmed glass and mixed another bourbon for himself; this time going a little easier on the ice. the young man held the stem between spidery fingers, turning it slowly, delicately sniffing the bouquet. j.l. wished glory or marge would rescue him. he couldn't think of a thing to say. what could one say to a male sherry drinker? "what do you think of the international situation?" j.l. asked, just to break the uncomfortable silence. "what international situation?" "i mean do you think we are headed for war?" j.l. was sorry he had asked the harmless question. the young man laughed derisively. "what an idea. of course there won't be a war," he said. "why do you say that?" he wanted to see how far stringer would go. "it's quite evident isn't it? war has been threatening for more than fifty years. it will probably continue to threaten for fifty more. it gives our government and that of our enemies the excuse to build enough munitions to take up the slack in the economy between production and the ability to consume what we produce." "that's ridiculous. i've never heard such nonsense." the young idiot, he thought, anyone with sense knew that to be true, but no one made a fuss about it for fear of upsetting a system that worked so well. it was an accepted fact of life, certainly preferable to actual war, and never mentioned in polite society. stringer continued, speaking slowly, as if explaining to a very small child. he clasped his long fingers over his left knee hugging it almost to his chest, and rocked himself slightly. "don't you see? if there was a real war millions of consumers would be taken out of the market for the duration, and many permanently. but this way governments can spend as much as they need to on war goods, to balance the economy, without disturbing the consumers at all. "the politicians love it, too. it supplies them with political issues, not easily come by these days," stringer concluded. he seemed pleased with himself. j.l.'s glass was again empty. he rose to fill it saying, "that is a very interesting theory. have you told it to many people?" stringer did not answer. j.l. turned to see what had caused this sudden reticence. the young man sat with wide-eyed stare and loosely hanging jaw; obviously incapable of speech. glory had made her strategic entrance. "ah, there you are, dear," j.l. said. "mr. stringer, here, has just been explaining international politics to me." "doesn't he have a fine mind, daddy?" she said, catching the young man's hand and favoring him with a smile that set his adam's apple to dancing. fine? j.l. thought, narrow would be more accurate. he was about to make an audible comment along those lines when marge called them in to dinner. all through the meal marge fawned upon the young man, indulging the predatory instinct of a mother with a marriageable daughter. with the clam bisque she told of glory's childhood; the prettiest child in the neighborhood. with the pressed duckling she told of an army of suitors, each more desirable than the last, that glory had discarded like week-old overcoats. and with the fresh tropical fruit supreme she praised the condition of matrimony with such fervor that j.l. could feel the warmth of a blush on his cheek. when the young people left for the evening marge sighed and said, "don't they make a nice couple?" "have you lost your mind?" j.l. replied, with almost saintly restraint. "is something the matter, dear?" j.l. threw up his hands in despair. "is something the matter, she asks. why did you butter him up like that? did you see his face? he looked like a dog being scratched behind the ear. if he proposes to glory tonight it's your fault." "well, i think he'd make a fine son-in-law." "that non-consumer? i'd sooner drop him from the helicopter," he said. he noticed she was smiling. "don't laugh, marge. this is serious. i'm going to have a good long talk with glory when she gets home. i'll put a stop to this." "be careful what you say, dear," she said. "don't worry. i guess i know how to talk to my own daughter. i'm as modern as the next parent, you know that. but there comes a time when every child needs guidance, and i...." "don't stay up too late, dear," marge interrupted, squelching a yawn. she kissed his cheek and left the room. j.l. poured another drink and settled in a comfortable chair to wait and to plan. perhaps he should be imperious. on the screen of his imagination he saw himself. he was taller. his arms were folded high on his chest; his legs were spread wide like two sturdy trees. he had grown a full handle bar mustache. "glory," he could hear himself say, "i forbid you ever to see that man again." unfortunately the screen showed the probable result. she salaamed before him, touching her forehead to the carpet, "i hear and obey o magnificent one." sarcasm was more than he could bear. if only he had some proof. if only marge hadn't been so approving. the slam of the front door dragged him from a nightmare in which glory, having married ernest stringer, was drowning in a roomful of coin and currency. the level of money had just reached her frightened eyes. in the dim light of the hall he saw her leaning against the door she had slammed. her shoulders were hunched with sobbing. "glory, what's the matter?" she looked up, saw her father, and ran to her room. j.l. heaved out of the chair and followed, slowly. her door was open a crack. he hesitated, then knocked lightly. no answer. he pushed the door wide enough to see in. she was perched on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees, crying silently in the darkened room. "mind if i come in?" still no answer. he stepped in and sat gingerly on the bed beside her. several minutes passed. "want to tell me?" he said gently. she shook her head violently without looking up. suddenly, she turned and pressed her face to his chest. the sobbing subsided a little and her words came haltingly. "it was awful. he's a subversive--a criminal--and i didn't even guess." she caught her breath. "we flew over to staten island. he parked near the water. then he said, 'i want you to marry me.' just like that. i liked him a lot--but i didn't know what to say. then he said--oh daddy, it was horrible--" her sobs increased again and she fumbled for his pocket kerchief. "he--he said, 'look at this'. and daddy it was one of those secret bankbooks! he has one hundred thousand dollars--and he's only twenty-five--and he's proud of it! he's worse than the old time gangsters, worse than--oh, daddy--he's a non-consumer...." the last word trailed off in a wail and she was sobbing again. j.l. tightened his grip on her shoulders. "be thankful, baby," he murmured. "be thankful you found the dirty so-and-so out in time." scanned images of public domain material from the google print archive. [illustration: book cover] the business of life novels by robert w. chambers the business of life blue-bird weather japonette the adventures of a modest man the danger mark special messenger the firing line the younger set the fighting chance some ladies in haste the tree of heaven the tracer of lost persons a young man in a hurry lorraine maids of paradise ashes of empire the red republic outsiders the gay rebellion the streets of ascalon the common law ailsa paige the green mouse iole the reckoning the maid-at-arms cardigan the haunts of men the mystery of choice the cambric mask the maker of moons the king in yellow in search of the unknown the conspirators a king and a few dukes in the quarter [illustration: "'i--yes. yes--i'll be ready----'" [page ]] _the_ business of life by robert w. chambers [illustration] with illustrations by charles dana gibson new york and london d. appleton and company copyright, , by robert w. chambers copyright, , by the international magazine company to elsie chambers "il est des noeuds secrets, il est des sympathies dont par le doux rapport les ames assorties s'attachent l'une à l'autre et se laissent piquer par ces je ne sais quoi qu'on ne peut expliquer." rodogune. list of illustrations page "'i--yes. yes--i'll be ready----'" _frontispiece_ "a lady to see you, sir'" "now and then she ... halted on tip-toe to lift some slitted visor" "she took it ... then read aloud the device in verse" "'are business and friendship incompatible?'" "'there are nice men, too'" "and he sat thinking of jacqueline nevers" "she turned leisurely.... 'did you say anything recently, mr. desboro?'" "desboro stood staring down at the magic picture. mrs. clydesdale, too, had risen" "'which is the real pleasure?' she asked" "'the thing to do,' he said ... 'is for us both to keep very busy'" "'i--i beg your pardon,' said jacqueline" "there was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner" "all the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her" "in all the curious eyes turned toward her he saw admiration, willing or conceded" "she lost herself in a dreamy bavarian folk-song" "cheer after cheer rang through the hallway" "'business is kinder to men than women sometimes believe'" "'be careful,' he said ... 'people are watching us'" "mr. waudle gaped at her like a fat and expiring fish; the poet ... said not a word" "'my dear!' she exclaimed. 'what a perfectly charming office!'" "she turned ... looked back, hesitated" "'_that's_ how hungry i am, jim. i warned you'" "'it was rather odd, wasn't it, jim?'" "'why don't you ask your--wife?'" "'i do not believe you,' she said between her teeth" "what was she to do? she had gone half mad with fear" "'jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a different training'" "in the rose dusk of the drawn curtains he stood beside it" "'now,' she said, leaning forward ... 'what is the meaning of this?'" "'you have no further interest in me, have you?'" "'i--i have never thought mercilessly'" "and, as she rose, he was still figuring" the business of life chapter i [illustration: "'a lady to see you, sir'"] "a lady to see you, sir," said farris. desboro, lying on the sofa, glanced up over his book. "a _lady_?" "yes, sir." "well, who is she, farris?" "she refused her name, mr. james." desboro swung his legs to the carpet and sat up. "what kind of lady is she?" he asked; "a perfect one, or the real thing?" "i don't know, sir. it's hard to tell these days; one dresses like t'other." desboro laid aside his book and arose leisurely. "where is she?" "in the reception room, sir." "did you ever before see her?" "i don't know, mr. james--what with her veil and furs----" "how did she come?" "in one of ransom's hacks from the station. there's a trunk outside, too." "what the devil----" "yes, sir. that's what made me go to the door. nobody rang. i heard the stompin' and the noise; and i went out, and she just kind of walked in. yes, sir." "is the hack out there yet?" "no, sir. ransom's man he left the trunk and drove off. i heard her tell him he could go." desboro remained silent for a few moments, looking hard at the fireplace; then he tossed his cigarette onto the embers, dropped the amber mouthpiece into the pocket of his dinner jacket, dismissed farris with a pleasant nod, and walked very slowly along the hall, as though in no haste to meet his visitor before he could come to some conclusion concerning her identity. for among all the women he had known, intimately or otherwise, he could remember very few reckless enough, or brainless enough, or sufficiently self-assured, to pay him an impromptu visit in the country at such an hour of the night. the reception room, with its early victorian furniture, appeared to be empty, at first glance; but the next instant he saw somebody in the curtained embrasure of a window--a shadowy figure which did not seem inclined to leave obscurity--the figure of a woman in veil and furs, her face half hidden in her muff. he hesitated a second, then walked toward her; and she lifted her head. "elena!" he said, astonished. "are you angry, jim?" "what are you doing here?" "i didn't know what to do," said mrs. clydesdale, wearily, "and it came over me all at once that i couldn't stand him any longer." "what has he done?" "nothing. he's just the same--never quite sober--always following me about, always under foot, always grinning--and buying sixteenth century enamels--and--i can't stand it! i----" her voice broke. "come into the library," he said curtly. she found her handkerchief, held it tightly against her eyes, and reached out toward him to be guided. in the library fireplace a few embers were still alive. he laid a log across the coals and used the bellows until the flames started. after that he dusted his hands, lighted a cigarette, and stood for a moment watching the mounting blaze. she had cast aside her furs and was resting on one elbow, twisting her handkerchief to rags between her gloved hands, and staring at the fire. one or two tears gathered and fell. "he'll divorce me now, won't he?" she asked unsteadily. "why?" "because nobody would believe the truth--after this." she rested her pretty cheek against the cushion and gazed at the fire with wide eyes still tearfully brilliant. "you have me on your hands," she said. "what are you going to do with me?" "send you home." "you can't. i've disgraced myself. won't you stand by me, jim?" "i can't stand by you if i let you stay here." "why not?" "because that would be destroying you." "are you going to send me away?" "certainly." "where are you going to send me?" "home." "home!" she repeated, beginning to cry again. "why do you call his house 'home'? it's no more my home than he is my husband----" "he _is_ your husband! what do you mean by talking this way?" "he _isn't_ my husband. i told him i didn't care for him when he asked me to marry him. he only grinned. it was a perfectly cold-blooded bargain. i didn't sell him _everything_!" "you married him." "partly." "what!" she flushed crimson. "i sold him the right to call me his wife and to--to make me so if i ever came to--care for him. that was the bargain--if you've got to know. the clergy did their part----" "do you mean----" "yes!" she said, exasperated. "i mean that it is no marriage, in spite of law and clergy. and it never will be, because i hate him!" desboro looked at her in utter contempt. "do you know," he said, "what a rotten thing you have done?" "rotten!" "do you think it admirable?" "i didn't sell myself wholesale. it might have been worse." "you are wrong. nothing worse could have happened." "then i don't care what else happens to me," she said, drawing off her gloves and unpinning her hat. "i shall not go back to him." "you can't stay here." "i will," she said excitedly. "i'm going to break with him--whether or not i can count on your loyalty to me----" her voice broke childishly, and she bowed her head. he caught his lip between his teeth for a moment. then he said savagely: "you ought not to have come here. there isn't one single thing to excuse it. besides, you have just reminded me of my loyalty to you. can't you understand that that includes your husband? also, it isn't in me to forget that i once asked you to be my wife. do you think i'd let you stand for anything less after that? do you think i'm going to blacken my own face? i never asked any other woman to marry me, and this settles it--i never will! you've finished yourself and your sex for me!" she was crying now, her head in her hands, and the bronze-red hair dishevelled, sagging between her long, white fingers. he remained aloof, knowing her, and always afraid of her and of himself together--a very deadly combination for mischief. and she remained bowed in the attitude of despair, her lithe young body shaken. his was naturally a lightly irresponsible disposition, and it came very easily for him to console beauty in distress--or out of it, for that matter. why he was now so fastidious with his conscience in regard to mrs. clydesdale he himself scarcely understood, except that he had once asked her to marry him; and that he knew her husband. these two facts seemed to keep him steady. also, he rather liked her burly husband; and he had almost recovered from the very real pangs which had pierced him when she suddenly flung him over and married clydesdale's millions. one of the logs had burned out. he rose to replace it with another. when he returned to the sofa, she looked up at him so pitifully that he bent over and caressed her hair. and she put one arm around his neck, crying, uncomforted. "it won't do," he said; "it won't do. and you know it won't, don't you? this whole business is dead wrong--dead rotten. but you mustn't cry, do you hear? don't be frightened. if there's trouble, i'll stand by you, of course. hush, dear, the house is full of servants. loosen your arms, elena! it isn't a square deal to your husband--or to you, or even to me. unless people have an even chance with me--men or women--there's nothing dangerous about me. i never dealt with any man whose eyes were not wide open--nor with any woman, either. cary's are shut; yours are blinded." she sprang up and walked to the fire and stood there, her hands nervously clenching and unclenching. "when i tell you that my eyes _are_ wide open--that i don't care what i do----" "but your husband's eyes are not open!" "they ought to be. i left a note saying where i was going--that rather than be his wife i'd prefer to be your----" "stop! you don't know what you're talking about--you little idiot!" he broke out, furious. "the very words you use don't mean anything to you--except that you've read them in some fool's novel, or heard them on a degenerate stage----" "my words will mean something to _him_, if i can make them!" she retorted hysterically, "--and if you really care for me----" through the throbbing silence desboro seemed to see clydesdale, bulky, partly sober, with his eternal grin and permanently-flushed skin, rambling about among his porcelains and enamels and jades and ivories, like a drugged elephant in a bric-a-brac shop. and yet, there had always been a certain kindly harmlessness and good nature about him that had always appealed to men. he said, incredulously: "did you write to him what you have just said to me?" "yes." "you actually left such a note for him?" "yes, i did." the silence lasted long enough for her to become uneasy. again and again she lifted her tear-swollen face to look at him, where he stood before the fire, but he did not even glance at her; and at last she murmured his name, and he turned. "i guess you've done for us both," he said. "you're probably right; nobody would believe the truth after this." she began to cry again silently. he said: "you never gave your husband a chance. he was in love with you and you never gave him a chance. and you're giving yourself none, now. and as for me"--he laughed unpleasantly--"well, i'll leave it to you, elena." "i--i thought--if i burned my bridges and came to you----" "what _did_ you think?" "that you'd stand by me, jim." "have i any other choice?" he asked, with a laugh. "we seem to be a properly damned couple." "do--do you care for any other woman?" "no." "then--then----" "oh, i am quite free to stand the consequences with you." "will you?" "can we escape them?" "_you_ could." "i'm not in the habit of leaving a sinking ship," he said curtly. "then--you will marry me--when----" she stopped short and turned very white. after a moment the doorbell rang again. desboro glanced at the clock, then shrugged. "wh--who is it?" she faltered. "it's probably somebody after you, elena." "it _can't_ be. he wouldn't come, would he?" the bell sounded again. "what are you going to do?" she breathed. "do? let him in." "who do you think it is?" "your husband, of course." "then--why are you going to let him in?" "to talk it over with him." "but--but i don't know what he'll do. i don't know him, i tell you. what do i know about him--except that he's big and red? how do i know what might be hidden behind that fixed grin of his?" "well, we'll find out in a minute or two," said desboro coolly. "jim! you _must_ stand by me now!" "i've done it so far, haven't i? you needn't worry." "you won't let him take me back! he can't, can he?" "not if you refuse to go. but you won't refuse--if he's man enough to ask you to return." "but--suppose he won't ask me to go back?" "in that case i'll stand for what you've done. i'll marry you if he means to disgrace you. now let's see what he does mean." she caught his sleeve as he passed her, then let it go. the steady ringing of the bell was confusing and terrifying her, and she glanced about her like a trapped creature, listening to the distant jingling of chains and the click of bolts as desboro undid the outer door. silence, then a far sound in the hall, footsteps coming nearer, nearer; and she dropped stiffly on the sofa as desboro entered, followed by cary clydesdale in fur motor cap, coat and steaming goggles. desboro motioned her husband to a chair, but the man stood looking at his wife through his goggles, with a silly, fixed grin stamped on his features. then he drew off the goggles and one fur gauntlet, fumbled in his overcoat, produced the crumpled note which she had left for him, laid it on the table between them, and sat down heavily, filling the leather armchair with his bulk. his bare red hand steamed. after a moment's silence, he pointed at the note. "well," she said, with an effort, "what of it! it's true--what this letter says." "it isn't true yet, is it?" asked clydesdale simply. "what do you mean?" but desboro understood him, and answered for her with a calm shake of his head. then the wife understood, too, and the deep colour dyed her skin from throat to brow. "why do you come here--after reading that?" she pointed at the letter. "didn't you read it?" clydesdale passed his hand slowly over his perplexed eyes. "i came to take you home. the car is here." "didn't you understand what i wrote? isn't it plain enough?" she demanded excitedly. "no. you'd better get ready, elena." "is that as much of a man as you are--when i tell you i'd rather be mr. desboro's----" something behind the fixed grin on her husband's face made her hesitate and falter. then he swung heavily around and looked at desboro. "how much are you in this, anyway?" he asked, still grinning. "do you expect an answer?" "i think i'll get one." "i think you won't get one out of me." "oh. so you're at the bottom of it all, are you?" "no doubt. a woman doesn't do such a thing unpersuaded. if you don't know enough to look after your own wife, there are plenty of men who'll apply for the job--as i did." "you're a very rotten scoundrel, aren't you?" said clydesdale, grinning. "oh, so-so." clydesdale sat very still, his grin unchanged, and desboro looked him over coolly. "now, what do you want to do? you and mrs. clydesdale can remain here to-night if you wish. there are plenty of bedrooms----" clydesdale rose, bulking huge and menacing in his furs; but desboro, sitting on the edge of the table, continued to swing one foot gently, smiling at danger. and clydesdale hesitated, then veered around toward his wife, with the heavy movement of a perplexed and tortured bear. "get your furs on," he said, in a dull voice. "do you wish me to go home?" "get your furs on!" "do you wish me to go home, cary?" "yes. good god! what do you suppose i came here for?" she walked over to desboro and held out her hand: "no wonder women like you. good-bye--and if i come again--may i remain?" "don't come," he said, smiling, and holding her coat for her. clydesdale strode forward, took the fur garment from desboro's hands, and held it open. his wife looked up at him, shrugged her shoulders, and suffered him to invest her with the coat. after a moment desboro said: "clydesdale, i am not your enemy. i wish you good luck." "you go to hell," said clydesdale thickly. mrs. clydesdale moved toward the door, her husband on one side, desboro on the other, and so, along the hall in silence, and out to the porch, where the glare of the acetylenes lighted up the frozen drive. "it feels like rain," observed desboro. "not a very gay outlook for christmas. all the same, i wish you a happy one, elena. and, really, i believe you could have it if you cared to." "thank you, jim. you have been mistakenly kind to me. i am afraid you will have to be crueller some day. good-bye--till then." clydesdale had descended to the drive and was conferring with the chauffeur. now he turned and looked up at his wife. she went down the steps beside desboro, and he nodded good-night. clydesdale put her into the limousine and then got in after her. a few moments later the red tail-lamp of the motor disappeared among the trees bordering the drive, and desboro turned and walked back into the house. "that," he said aloud to himself, "settles the damned species for me! let the next one look out for herself!" he sauntered back into the library. the letter that she had left for her husband still lay on the table, apparently forgotten. "a fine specimen of logic," he said. "she doesn't get on with him, so she decides to use jim to jimmy the lock of wedlock! a white man can understand the orientals better." he glanced at the clock, and decided that there was no sense in going to bed, so he composed himself on the haircloth sofa once more, lighted a cigarette, and began to read, coolly using the note she had left, as a bookmark. it was dawn before he closed the book and went away to bathe and change his attire. while breakfasting he glanced out and saw that it had begun to rain. a green christmas for day after to-morrow! and, thinking of christmas, he thought of a girl he knew who usually wore blue, and what sort of a gift he had better send her when he went to the city that morning. but he didn't go. he called up a jeweler and gave directions what to send and where to send it. then, listless, depressed, he idled about the great house, putting off instinctively the paramount issue--the necessary investigation of his finances. but he had evaded it too long to attempt it lightly now. it was only a question of days before he'd have to take up in deadly earnest the question of how to pay his debts. he knew it; and it made him yawn with disgust. after luncheon he wrote a letter to one jean louis nevers, a new york dealer in antiques, saying that he would drop in some day after christmas to consult mr. nevers on a matter of private business. and that is as far as he got with his very vague plan for paying off an accumulation of debts which, at last, were seriously annoying him. the remainder of the day he spent tramping about the woods of westchester with a pack of nondescript dogs belonging to him. he liked to walk in the rain; he liked his mongrels. in the evening he resumed his attitude of unstudied elegance on the sofa, also his book, using mrs. clydesdale's note again to mark his place. mrs. quant ventured to knock, bringing some "magic drops," which he smilingly refused. farris announced dinner, and he dined as usual, surrounded by dogs and cats, all very cordial toward the master of silverwood, who was unvaryingly so just and so kind to them. after dinner he lighted a pipe, thought idly of the girl in blue, hoped she'd like his gift of aquamarines, and picked up his book again, yawning. he had had about enough of silverwood, and he was realising it. he had had more than enough of women, too. the next day, riding one of his weedy hunters over silverwood estate, he encountered the daughter of a neighbor, an old playmate of his when summer days were half a year long, and yesterdays immediately became embedded in the middle of the middle ages. she was riding a fretful, handsome kentucky three-year-old, and sitting nonchalantly to his exasperating and jiggling gait. the girl was one daisy hammerton--the sort men call "square" and "white," and a "good fellow"; but she was softly rounded and dark, and very feminine. she bade him good morning in a friendly voice; and her voice and manner might well have been different, for desboro had not behaved very civilly toward her or toward her family, or to any of his westchester neighbors for that matter; and the rumours of his behaviour in new york were anything but pleasant to a young girl's ears. so her cordiality was the more to her credit. he made rather shame-faced inquiries about her and her parents, but she lightly put him at his ease, and they turned into the woods together on the old and unembarrassed terms of comradeship. "captain herrendene is back. did you know it?" she asked. "nice old bird," commented desboro. "i must look him up. where did he come from--luzon?" "yes. he wrote us. why don't you ask him up for the skating, jim?" "what skating?" said desboro, with a laugh. "it will be a green christmas, daisy--it's going to rain again. besides," he added, "i shan't be here much longer." "oh, i'm sorry." he reddened. "you always were the sweetest thing in westchester. fancy your being sorry that i'm going back to town when i've never once ridden over to see you as long as i've been here!" she laughed. "we've known each other too long to let such things make any real difference. but you _have_ been a trifle negligent." "daisy, dear, i'm that way in everything. if anybody asked me to name the one person i would not neglect, i'd name you. but you see what happens--even to you! i don't know--i don't seem to have any character. i don't know what's the matter with me----" "i'm afraid that you have no beliefs, jim." "how can i have any when the world is so rotten after nineteen hundred years of christianity?" "i have not found it rotten." "no, because you live in a clean and wholesome circle." "why don't you, too? you can live where you please, can't you?" he laughed and waved his hand toward the horizon. "you know what the desboros have always been. you needn't pretend you don't. all westchester has it in for us. but relief is in sight," he added, with mock seriousness. "i'm the last of 'em, and your children, daisy, won't have to endure the morally painful necessity of tolerating anybody of my name in the county." she smiled: "jim, you could be so nice if you only would." "what! with no beliefs?" "they're so easily acquired." "not in new york town, daisy." "perhaps not among the people you affect. but such people really count for so little--they are only a small but noisy section of a vast and quiet and wholesome community. and the noise and cynicism are both based on idleness, jim. nobody who is busy is destitute of beliefs. nobody who is responsible can avoid ideals." "quite right," he said. "i am idle and irresponsible. but, daisy, it's as much part of me as are my legs and arms, and head and body. i am not stupid; i have plenty of mental resources; i am never bored; i enjoy my drift through life in an empty tub as much as the man who pulls furiously through it in a rowboat loaded with ambitions, ballasted with brightly moral resolves, and buffeted by the cross seas of duty and conscience. that's rather neat, isn't it?" "you can't drift safely very long without ballast," said the girl, smiling. "watch me." she did not answer that she had been watching him for the last few years, or tell him how it had hurt her to hear his name linked with the gossip of fashionably vapid doings among idle and vapid people. for his had been an inheritance of ability and culture, and the leisure to develop both. out of idleness and easy virtue had at last emerged three generations of desboros full of energy and almost ruthless ability--his great-grandfather, grandfather and father--but he, the fourth generation, was throwing back into the melting pot all that his father and grandfathers had carried from it--even the material part of it. land and fortune, were beginning to disappear, together with the sturdy mental and moral qualities of a race that had almost overcome its vicious origin under the vicious stuarts. only the physical stamina as yet seemed to remain intact; for desboro was good to look upon. "an odd thing happened the other night--or, rather, early in the morning," she said. "we were awakened by a hammering at the door and a horn blowing--and guess who it was?" "not gabriel--though you look immortally angelic to-day----" "thank you, jim. no; it was cary and elena clydesdale, saying that their car had broken down. what a ridiculous hour to be motoring! elena was half dead with the cold, too. it seems they'd been to a party somewhere and were foolish enough to try to motor back to town. they stopped with us and took the noon train to town. elena told me to give you her love; that's what reminded me." "give her mine when you see her," he said pleasantly. * * * * * when he returned to his house he sat down with a notion of trying to bring order out of the chaos into which his affairs had tumbled. but the mere sight of his desk, choked with unanswered letters and unpaid bills, sickened him, and he threw himself on the sofa and picked up his book, determined to rid himself of silverwood house and all its curious, astonishing and costly contents. "tell riley to be on hand monday," he said to mrs. quant that evening. "i want the cases in the wing rooms and the stuff in the armoury cleaned up, because i expect a mr. nevers to come here and recatalogue the entire collection next week." "will you be at home, mr. james?" she asked anxiously. "no. i'm going south, duck-shooting. see that mr. nevers is comfortable if he chooses to remain here; for it will take him a week or two to do his work in the armoury, i suppose. so you'll have to start both furnaces to-morrow, and keep open fires going, or the man will freeze solid. you understand, don't you?" "yes, sir. and if you are going away, mr. james, i could pack a little bottle of 'magic drops'----" "by all means," he said, with good-humoured resignation. he spent the evening fussing over his guns and ammunition, determined to go to new york in the morning. but he didn't; indecision had become a habit; he knew it, wondered a little at himself for his lack of decision. he was deadly weary of silverwood, but too lazy to leave; and it made him think of the laziest dog on record, who yelped all day because he had sat down on a tack and was too lazy to get up. so it was not until the middle of christmas week that desboro summoned up sufficient energy to start for new york. and when at last he was on the train, he made up his mind that he wouldn't return to silverwood in a hurry. but that plan was one of the mice-like plans men make so confidently under the eternal skies. chapter ii desboro arrived in town on a late train. it was raining, so he drove to his rooms, exchanged his overcoat for a raincoat, and went out into the downpour again, undisturbed, disdaining an umbrella. in a quarter of an hour's vigorous walking he came to the celebrated antique shop of louis nevers, and entered, letting in a gust of wind and rain at his heels. everywhere in the semi-gloom of the place objects loomed mysteriously, their outlines lost in shadow except where, here and there, a gleam of wintry daylight touched a jewel or fell across some gilded god, lotus-throned, brooding alone. when desboro's eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, he saw that there was armour there, complete suits, spanish and milanese, and an odd morion or two; and there were jewels in old-time settings, tapestries, silver, ivories, hispano-moresque lustre, jades, crystals. the subdued splendour of chinese and japanese armour, lacquered in turquoise, and scarlet and gold, glimmered on lay figures masked by grotesque helmets; an ispahan rug, softly luminous, trailed across a table beside him, and on it lay a dead sultan's scimitar, curved like the new moon, its slim blade inset with magic characters, the hilt wrought as delicately as the folded frond of a fern, graceful, exquisite, gem-incrusted. there were a few people about the shop, customers and clerks, moving shapes in the dull light. presently a little old salesman wearing a skull cap approached him. "rainy weather for christmas week, sir. can i be of service?" "thanks," said desboro. "i came here by appointment on a matter of private business." "certainly, sir. i think miss nevers is not engaged. kindly give me your card and i will find out." "but i wish to see mr. nevers himself." "mr. nevers is dead, sir." "oh! i didn't know----" "yes, sir. mr. nevers died two years ago." and, as desboro remained silent and thoughtful: "perhaps you might wish to see miss nevers? she has charge of everything now, including all our confidential affairs." "no doubt," said desboro pleasantly, "but this is an affair requiring personal judgment and expert advice----" "i understand, sir. the gentlemen who came to see mr. nevers about matters requiring expert opinions now consult miss nevers personally." "who is _miss_ nevers?" "his daughter, sir." he added, with quaint pride: "the great jewelers of fifth avenue consult her; experts in our business often seek her advice. the museum authorities have been pleased to speak highly of her monograph on hurtado de mendoza." desboro hesitated for a moment, then gave his card to the old salesman, who trotted away with it down the unlighted vista of the shop. the young man's pleasantly indifferent glance rested on one object after another, not unintelligently, but without particular interest. yet there were some very wonderful and very rare and beautiful things to be seen in the celebrated shop of the late jean louis nevers. so he stood, leaning on his walking stick, the upturned collar of his raincoat framing a face which was too colourless and worn for a man of his age; and presently the little old salesman came trotting back, the tassel on his neat silk cap bobbing with every step. "miss nevers will be very glad to see you in her private office. this way, if you please, sir." desboro followed to the rear of the long, dusky shop, turned to the left through two more rooms full of shadowy objects dimly discerned, then traversed a tiled passage to where electric lights burned over a doorway. the old man opened the door; desboro entered and found himself in a square picture gallery, lighted from above, and hung all around with dark velvet curtains to protect the pictures on sale. as he closed the door behind him a woman at a distant desk turned her head, but remained seated, pen poised, looking across the room at him as he advanced. her black gown blended so deceptively with the hangings that at first he could distinguish only the white face and throat and hands against the shadows behind her. "will you kindly announce me to miss nevers?" he said, looking around for a chair. "i am miss nevers." she closed the ledger in which she had been writing, laid aside her pen and rose. as she came forward he found himself looking at a tall girl, slim to thinness, except for the rounded oval of her face under a loose crown of yellow hair, from which a stray lock sagged untidily, curling across her cheek. he thought: "a blue-stocking prodigy of learning, with her hair in a mess, and painted at that." but he said politely, yet with that hint of idle amusement in his voice which often sounded through his speech with women: "are you the miss nevers who has taken over this antique business, and who writes monographs on hurtado de mendoza?" "yes." "you appear to be very young to succeed such a distinguished authority as your father, miss nevers." his observation did not seem to disturb her, nor did the faintest hint of mockery in his pleasant voice. she waited quietly for him to state his business. he said: "i came here to ask somebody's advice about engaging an expert to appraise and catalogue my collection." and even while he was speaking he was conscious that never before had he seen such a white skin and such red lips--if they were natural. and he began to think that they might be. he said, noticing the bright lock astray on her cheek once more: "i suppose that i may speak to you in confidence--just as i would have spoken to your father." she was still looking at him with the charm of youthful inquiry in her eyes. "certainly," she said. she glanced down at his card which still lay on her blotter, stood a moment with her hand resting on the desk, then indicated a chair at her elbow and seated herself. he took the chair. "i wrote you that i'd drop in sometime this week. the note was directed to your father. i did not know he was not living." "you are the mr. desboro who owns the collection of armour?" she asked. "i am that james philip desboro who lives at silverwood," he said. "evidently you have heard of the desboro collection of arms and armour." "everybody has, i think." he said, carelessly: "museums, amateur collectors, and students know it, and i suppose most dealers in antiques have heard of it." "yes, all of them, i believe." "my house," he went on, "silverwood, is in darkest westchester, and my recent grandfather, who made the collection, built a wing to contain it. it's there as he left it. my father made no additions to it. nor," he added, "have i. now i want to ask you whether a lot of those things have not increased in value since my grandfather's day?" "no doubt." "and the collection is valuable?" "i think it must be--very." "and to determine its value i ought to have an expert go there and catalogue it and appraise it?" "certainly." "who? that's what i've come here to find out." "perhaps you might wish us to do it." "is that still part of your business?" "it is." "well," he said, after a moment's thought, "i am going to sell the desboro collection." "oh, i'm sorry!" she exclaimed, under her breath; and looked up to find him surprised and beginning to be amused again. "your attitude is not very professional--for a dealer in antiques," he said quizzically. "i am something else, too, mr. desboro." she had flushed a little, not responding to his lighter tone. "i am very sure you are," he said. "those who really know about and care for such collections must feel sorry to see them dispersed." "i had hoped that the museum might have the desboro collection some day," she said, in a low voice. he said: "i am sorry it is not to be so," and had the grace to redden a trifle. she played with her pen, waiting for him to continue; and she was so young, and fresh, and pretty that he was in no hurry to finish. besides, there was something about her face that had been interesting him--an expression which made him think sometimes that she was smiling, or on the verge of it. but the slightly upcurled corners of her mouth had been fashioned so by her maker, or perhaps had become so from some inborn gaiety of heart, leaving a faint, sweet imprint on her lips. to watch her was becoming a pleasure. he wondered what her smile might be like--all the while pretending an absent-minded air which cloaked his idle curiosity. she waited, undisturbed, for him to come to some conclusion. and all the while he was thinking that her lips were perhaps just a trifle too full--that there was more of aphrodite in her face than of any saint he remembered; but her figure was thin enough for any saint. perhaps a course of banquets--perhaps a régime under a diet list warranted to improve---- "did you ever see the desboro collection, miss nevers?" he asked vaguely. "no." "what expert will you send to catalogue and appraise it?" "_i_ could go." "you!" he said, surprised and smiling. "that is my profession." "i knew, of course, that it was your father's. but i never supposed that you----" "did you wish to have an appraisement made, mr. desboro?" she interrupted dryly. "why, yes, i suppose so. otherwise, i wouldn't know what to ask for anything." "have you really decided to sell that superb collection?" she demanded. "what else can i do?" he inquired gayly. "i suppose the museum ought to have it, but i can't afford to give it away or to keep it. in other words--and brutal ones--i need money." she said gravely: "i am sorry." and he knew she didn't mean that she was sorry because he needed money, but because the museum was not to have the arms, armour, jades, and ivories. yet, somehow, her "i am sorry" sounded rather sweet to him. for a while he sat silent, one knee crossed over the other, twisting the silver crook of his stick. from moment to moment she raised her eyes from the blotter to let them rest inquiringly on him, then went on tracing arabesques over her blotter with an inkless pen. one slender hand was bracketed on her hip, and he noticed the fingers, smooth and rounded as a child's. nor could he keep his eyes from her profile, with its delicate, short nose, ever so slightly arched, and its lips, just a trifle too sensuous--and that soft lock astray again against her cheek. no, her hair was not dyed, either. and it was as though she divined his thought, for she looked up suddenly from her blotter and he instantly gazed elsewhere, feeling guilty and impertinent--sentiments not often experienced by that young man. "i'll tell you what i'll do, miss nevers," he concluded, "i'll write you a letter to my housekeeper, mrs. quant. shall i? and you'll go up and look over the collection and let me know what you think of it!" "do you not expect to be there?" "ought i to be?" "i really can't answer you, but it seems to me rather important that the owner of a collection should be present when the appraiser begins work." "the fact is," he said, "i'm booked for a silly shooting trip. i'm supposed to start to-morrow." "then perhaps you had better write the letter. my full name is jacqueline nevers--if you require it. you may use my desk." she rose; he thanked her, seated himself, and began a letter to mrs. quant, charging her to admit, entertain, and otherwise particularly cherish one miss jacqueline nevers, and give her the keys to the armoury. while he was busy, jacqueline nevers paced the room backward and forward, her pretty head thoughtfully bent, hands clasped behind her, moving leisurely, absorbed in her cogitations. desboro ended his letter and sat for a moment watching her until, happening to glance at him, she discovered his idleness. "have you finished?" she asked. a trifle out of countenance he rose and explained that he had, and laid the letter on her blotter. realising that she was expecting him to take his leave, he also realised that he didn't want to. and he began to spar with destiny for time. "i suppose this matter will require several visits from you," he inquired. "yes, several." "it takes some time to catalogue and appraise such a collection, doesn't it?" "yes." she answered him very sweetly but impersonally, and there seemed to be in her brief replies no encouragement for him to linger. so he started to pick up his hat, thinking as fast as he could all the while; and his facile wits saved him at the last moment. "well, upon my word!" he exclaimed. "do you know that you and i have not yet discussed terms?" "we make our usual charges," she said. "and what are those?" she explained briefly. "that is for cataloguing and appraising only?" "yes." "and if you sell the collection?" "we take our usual commission." "and you think you _can_ sell it for me?" "i'll have to--won't i?" he laughed. "but _can_ you?" "yes." as the curt affirmative fell from her lips, suddenly, under all her delicate, youthful charm, desboro divined the note of hidden strength, the self-confidence of capability--oddly at variance with her allure of lovely immaturity. yet he might have surmised it, for though her figure was that of a girl, her face, for all its soft, fresh beauty, was a woman's, and already firmly moulded in noble lines which even the scarlet fulness of the lips could not deny. for if she had the mouth of aphrodite, she had her brow, also. he had not been able to make her smile, although the upcurled corners of her mouth seemed always to promise something. he wondered what her expression might be like when animated--even annoyed. and his idle curiosity led him on to the edges of impertinence. "may i say something that i have in mind and not offend you?" he asked. "yes--if you wish." she lifted her eyes. "do you think you are old enough and experienced enough to catalogue and appraise such an important collection as this one? i thought perhaps you might prefer not to take such a responsibility upon yourself, but would rather choose to employ some veteran expert." she was silent. "have i offended you?" she walked slowly to the end of the room, turned, and, passing him a third time, looked up at him and laughed--a most enchanting little laugh--a revelation as delightful as it was unexpected. "i believe you really _want_ to do it yourself!" he exclaimed. "_want_ to? i'm dying to! i don't think there is anything in the world i had rather try!" she said, with a sudden flush and sparkle of recklessness that transfigured her. "do you suppose anybody in my business would willingly miss the chance of personally handling such a transaction? of _course_ i want to. not only because it would be a most creditable transaction for this house--not only because it would be a profitable business undertaking, but"--and the swift, engaging smile parted her lips once more--"in a way i feel as though my own ability had been questioned----" "by me?" he protested. "did i actually dare question your ability?" "something very like it. so, naturally, i would seize an opportunity to vindicate myself--if you offer it----" "i do offer it," he said. "i accept." there was a moment's indecisive silence. he picked up his hat and stick, lingering still; then: "good-bye, miss nevers. when are you going up to silverwood?" "to-morrow, if it is quite convenient." "entirely. i may be there. perhaps i can fix it--put off that shooting party for a day or two." "i hope so." "i hope so, too." he walked reluctantly toward the door, turned and came all the way back. "perhaps you had rather i remained away from silverwood." "why?" "but, of course," he said, "there is a nice old housekeeper there, and a lot of servants----" she laughed. "thank you very much, mr. desboro. it is very nice of you, but i had not considered that at all. business women must disregard such conventions, if they're to compete with men. i'd like you to be there, because i may have questions to ask." "certainly--it's very good of you. i--i'll try to be there----" "because i might have some very important questions to ask you," she repeated. "of course. i've got to be there. haven't i?" "it might be better for your interests." "then i'll be there. well, good-bye, miss nevers." "good-bye, mr. desboro." "and thank you for undertaking it," he said cordially. "thank _you_ for asking me." "oh, i'm--i'm really delighted. it's most kind of _you_. _good_-bye, miss nevers." "_good_-bye, mr. desboro." he had to go that time; and he went still retaining a confused vision of blue eyes and vivid lips, and of a single lock of hair astray once more across a smooth, white cheek. when he had gone, jacqueline seated herself at her desk and picked up her pen. she remained so for a while, then emerged abruptly from a fit of abstraction and sorted some papers unnecessarily. when she had arranged them to her fancy, she rearranged them. then the little louis xvi desk interested her, and she examined the inset placques of flowered sèvres in detail, as though the little desk of tulip, satinwood and walnut had not stood there since she was a child. later she noticed his card on her blotter; and, face framed in her hands, she studied it so long that the card became a glimmering white patch and vanished; and before her remote gaze his phantom grew out of space, seated there in the empty chair beside her--the loosened collar of his raincoat revealing to her the most attractive face of any man she had ever looked upon in her twenty-two years of life. toward evening the electric lamps were lighted in the shop; rain fell more heavily outside; few people entered. she was busy with ledgers and files of old catalogues recording auction sales, the name of the purchaser and the prices pencilled on the margins in her father's curious handwriting. also her card index aided her. under the head of "desboro" she was able to note what objects of interest or of art her father had bought for her recent visitor's grandfather, and the prices paid--little, indeed, in those days, compared with what the same objects would now bring. and, continuing her search, she finally came upon an uncompleted catalogue of the desboro collection. it was in manuscript--her father's peculiar french chirography--neat and accurate as far as it went. everything bearing upon the desboro collection she bundled together and strapped with rubber bands; then, one by one, the clerks and salesmen came to report to her before closing up. she locked the safe, shut her desk, and went out to the shop, where she remained until the shutters were clamped and the last salesman had bade her a cheery good night. then, bolting the door and double-locking it, she went back along the passage and up the stairs, where she had the two upper floors to herself, and a cook and chambermaid to keep house for her. in the gaslight of the upper apartment she seemed even more slender than by daylight--her eyes bluer, her lips more scarlet. she glanced into the mirror of her dresser as she passed, pausing to twist up the unruly lock that had defied her since childhood. everywhere in the room christmas was still in evidence--a tiny tree, with frivolous, glittering things still twisted and suspended among the branches, calendars, sachets, handkerchiefs still gaily tied in ribbons, flowering shrubs swathed in tissue and bows of tulle--these from her salesmen, and she had carefully but pleasantly maintained the line of demarcation by presenting each with a gold piece. but there were other gifts--gloves and stockings, and bon-bons, and books, from the friends who were girls when she too was a child at school; and a set of volumes from cary clydesdale whose collection of jades she was cataloguing. the volumes were very beautiful and expensive. the gift had surprised her. among her childhood friends was her social niche; the circumference of their circle the limits of her social environment. they came to her and she went to them; their pastimes and pleasures were hers; and if there was not, perhaps, among them her intellectual equal, she had not yet felt the need of such companionship, but had been satisfied to have them hold her as a good companion who otherwise possessed much strange and perhaps useless knowledge quite beyond their compass. and she was shyly content with her intellectual isolation. so, amid these people, she had found a place prepared for her when she emerged from childhood. what lay outside of this circle she surmised with the intermittent curiosity of ignorance, or of a bystander who watches a pageant for a moment and hastens on, preoccupied with matters more familiar. all young girls think of pleasures; she had thought of them always when the day's task was ended, and she had sought them with all the ardour of youth, with a desire unwearied, and a thirst unquenched. in her, mental and physical pleasure were wholesomely balanced; the keen delight of intellectual experience, the happiness of research and attainment, went hand in hand with a rather fastidious appetite for having the best time that circumstances permitted. she danced when she had a chance, went to theatres and restaurants with her friends, bathed at manhattan in summer, when gay parties were organised, and did the thousand innocent things that thousands of young business girls do whose lines are cast in the metropolis. since her father's death she had been intensely lonely; only a desperate and steady application to business had pulled her through the first year without a breakdown. the second year she rejoined her friends and went about again with them. now, the third year since her father's death was already dawning; and her last prayer as the old year died had been that the new one would bring her friends and happiness. seated before the wood fire in her bedroom, leisurely undressing, she thought of desboro and the business that concerned him. he was so very good looking--in the out-world manner--the manner of those who dwelt outside her orbit. she had not been very friendly with him at first. she had wanted to be; instinct counselled reserve, and she had listened--until the very last. he had a way of laughing at her in every word--in even an ordinary business conversation. she had been conscious all the while of his half-listless interest in her, of an idle curiosity, which, before it had grown offensive, had become friendly and at times almost boyish in its naïve self-disclosure. and it made her smile to remember how very long it took him to take his leave. but--a man of that kind--a man of the out-world--with the _something_ in his face that betrays shadows which she had never seen cast--and never would see--_he_ was no boy. for in his face was the faint imprint of that pallid wisdom which warned. women in his own world might ignore the warning; perhaps it did not menace them. but instinct told her that it might be different outside that world. she nestled into her fire-warmed bath-robe and sat pensively fitting and refitting her bare feet into her slippers. men were odd; alike and unalike. since her father's death, she had had to be careful. wealthy gentlemen, old and young, amateurs of armour, ivories, porcelains, jewels, all clients of her father, had sometimes sent for her too many times on too many pretexts; and sometimes their paternal manner toward her had made her uncomfortable. desboro was of that same caste. perhaps he was not like them otherwise. * * * * * when she had bathed and dressed, she dined alone, not having any invitation for the evening. after dinner she talked on the telephone to her little friend, cynthia lessler, whose late father's business had been to set jewels and repair antique watches and clocks. incidentally, he drank and chased his daughter about with a hatchet until she fled for good one evening, which afforded him an opportunity to drink himself very comfortably to death in six months. "hello, cynthia!" called jacqueline, softly. "hello! is it you, jacqueline, dear?" "yes. don't you want to come over and eat chocolates and gossip?" "can't do it. i'm just starting for the hall." "i thought you'd finished rehearsing." "i've got to be on hand all the same. how are you, sweetness, anyway?" "blooming, my dear. i'm crazy to tell you about my good luck. i have a splendid commission with which to begin the new year." "good for you! what is it?" "i can't tell you yet"--laughingly--"it's confidential business----" "oh, i know. some old, fat man wants you to catalogue his collection." "no! he isn't fat, either. you _are_ the limit, cynthia!" "all the same, look out for him," retorted cynthia. "_i_ know man and his kind. office experience is a liberal education; the theatre a post-graduate course. are you coming to the dance to-morrow night?" "yes. i suppose the usual people will be there?" "some new ones. there's an awfully good-looking newspaper man from yonkers. he has a car in town, too." something--some new and unaccustomed impatience--she did not understand exactly what--prompted jacqueline to say scornfully: "his name is eddie, isn't it?" "no. why do you ask?" a sudden vision of desboro, laughing at her under every word of an unsmiling and commonplace conversation, annoyed her. "oh, cynthia, dear, every good-looking man we meet is usually named ed and comes from places like yonkers." cynthia, slightly perplexed, said slangily that she didn't "get" her; and jacqueline admitted that she herself didn't know what she had meant. they gossiped for a while, then cynthia ended: "i'll see you to-morrow night, won't i? and listen, you little white mouse, i get what you mean by 'eddie'." "do you?" "yes. shall i see you at the dance?" "yes, and 'eddie,' too. good-bye." jacqueline laughed again, then shivered slightly and hung up the receiver. back before her bedroom fire once more, grenville's volume on ancient armour across her knees, she turned the illuminated pages absently, and gazed into the flames. what she saw among them apparently did not amuse her, for after a while she frowned, shrugged her shoulders, and resumed her reading. but the xv century knights, in their gilded or silvered harness, had desboro's lithe figure, and the lifted vizors of their helmets always disclosed his face. shields emblazoned with quarterings, plumed armets, the golden morions, banner, pennon, embroidered surtout, and the brilliant trappings of battle horse and palfry, became only a confused blur of colour under her eyes, framing a face that looked back at her out of youthful eyes, marred by the shadow of a wisdom she knew about--alas--but did not know. * * * * * the man of whom she was thinking had walked back to the club through a driving rain, still under the fascination of the interview, still excited by its novelty and by her unusual beauty. he could not quite account for his exhilaration either, because, in new york, beauty is anything but unusual among the hundreds of thousands of young women who work for a living--for that is one of the seven wonders of the city--and it is the rule rather than the exception that, in this new race which is evolving itself out of an unknown amalgam, there is scarcely a young face in which some trace of it is not apparent at a glance. which is why, perhaps, he regarded his present exhilaration humorously, or meant to; perhaps why he chose to think of her as "stray lock," instead of miss nevers, and why he repeated confidently to himself: "she's thin as a virgin by the 'master of the death of mary'." and yet that haunting expression of her face--the sweetness of the lips upcurled at the corners--the surprising and lovely revelation of her laughter--these impressions persisted as he swung on through the rain, through the hurrying throngs just released from shops and great department stores, and onward up the wet and glimmering avenue to his destination, which was the olympian club. in the cloak room there were men he knew, being divested of wet hats and coats; in reading room, card room, lounge, billiard hall, squash court, and gymnasium, men greeted him with that friendly punctiliousness which indicates popularity; from the splashed edge of the great swimming pool men hailed him; clerks and club servants saluted him smilingly as he sauntered about through the place, still driven into motion by an inexplicable and unaccustomed restlessness. cairns discovered him coming out of the billiard room: "have a snifter?" he suggested affably. "i'll find ledyard and play you 'nigger' or 'rabbit' afterward, if you like." desboro laid a hand on his friend's shoulder: "jack, i've a business engagement at silverwood to-morrow, and i believe i'd better go home to-night." "heavens! you've just been there! and what about the shooting trip?" "i can join you day after to-morrow." "oh, come, jim, are you going to spoil our card quartette on the train? reggie ledyard will kill you." "he might, at that," said desboro pleasantly. "but i've got to be at silverwood to-morrow. it's a matter of business, jack." "_you_ and business! lord! the amazing alliance! what are you going to do--sell a few superannuated westchester hens at auction? by heck! you're a fake farmer and a pitiable piker, that's what _you_ are. and stuyve van alstyne had a wire to-night that the ducks and geese are coming in to the guns by millions----" "go ahead and shoot 'em, then! i'll probably be along in time to pick up the game for you." "you won't go with us?" "not to-morrow. a man can't neglect his own business _every_ day in the year." "then you won't be in baltimore for the assembly, and you won't go to georgia, and you won't do a thing that you expected to. oh, you're the gay, quick-change artist! and don't tell me it's business, either," he added suspiciously. "i _do_ tell you exactly that." "you mean to say that nothing except sheer, dry business keeps you here?" the colour slowly settled under desboro's cheek bones: "it's a matter with enough serious business in it to keep me busy to-morrow----" "selecting pearls? in which show and which row does she cavort, dear friend--speaking in an exquisitely colloquial metaphor!" desboro shrugged: "i'll play you a dozen games of rabbit before we dress for dinner. come on, you suspicious sport!" "which show?" repeated cairns obstinately. he did not mean it literally, footlight affairs being unfashionable. but desboro's easy popularity with women originated continual gossip, friendly and otherwise; and his name was often connected harmlessly with that of some attractive woman in his own class--like mrs. clydesdale, for instance--and sometimes with some pretty unknown in some class not specified. but the surmise was idle, and the gossip vague, and neither the one nor the other disturbed desboro, who continued to saunter through life keeping his personal affairs pleasantly to himself. he linked his arm in cairns's and guided him toward the billiard room. but there were no tables vacant for rabbit, which absurd game, being hard on the cloth, was limited to two decrepit pool tables. so cairns again suggested his celebrated "snifter," and then the young men separated, desboro to go across the street to his elaborate rooms and dress, already a little less interested in his business trip to silverwood, already regretting the gay party bound south for two weeks of pleasure. and when he had emerged from a cold shower which, with the exception of sleep, is the wisest counsellor in the world, now that he stood in fresh linen and evening dress on the threshold of another night, he began to wonder at his late exhilaration. to him the approach of every night was always fraught with mysterious possibilities, and with a belief in chance forever new. adventure dawned with the electric lights; opportunity awoke with the evening whistles warning all labourers to rest. opportunity for what? he did not know; he had not even surmised; but perhaps it was that _something_, that subtle, evanescent, volatile _something_ for which the world itself waits instinctively, and has been waiting since the first day dawned. maybe it is happiness for which the world has waited with patient instinct uneradicated; maybe it is death; and after all, the two may be inseparable. * * * * * desboro, looking into the coals of a dying fire, heard the clock striking the hour. the night was before him--those strange hours in which anything could happen before another sun gilded the sky pinnacles of the earth. another hour sounded and found him listless, absent-eyed, still gazing into a dying fire. chapter iii at eleven o'clock the next morning miss nevers had not arrived at silverwood. it was still raining hard, the brown westchester fields, the leafless trees, hedges, paths, roads, were soaked; pools stood in hollows with the dead grass awash; ditches brimmed, river and brook ran amber riot, and alder swamps widened into lakes. the chances were now that she would not come at all. desboro had met both morning trains, but she was not visible, and all the passengers had departed leaving him wandering alone along the dripping platform. for a while he stood moodily on the village bridge beyond, listening to the noisy racket of the swollen brook; and after a little it occurred to him that there was laughter in the noises of the water, like the mirth of the gods mocking him. "laugh on, high ones!" he said. "i begin to believe myself the ass that i appear to you." presently he wandered back to the station platform, where he idled about, playing with a stray and nondescript dog or two, and caressing the station-master's cat; then, when he had about decided to get into his car and go home, it suddenly occurred to him that he might telephone to new york for information. and he did so, and learned that miss nevers had departed that morning on business, for a destination unknown, and would not return before evening. also, the station-master informed him that the morning express now deposited passengers at silverwood station, on request--an innovation of which he had not before heard; and this put him into excellent spirits. "aha!" he said to himself, considerably elated. "perhaps i'm not such an ass as i appear. let the high gods laugh!" so he lighted a cigarette, played with the wastrel dogs some more, flattered the cat till she nearly rubbed her head off against his legs, took a small and solemn child onto his knee and presented it with a silver dollar, while its overburdened german mother publicly nourished another. "you are really a remarkable child," he gravely assured the infant on his knee. "you possess a most extraordinary mind!"--the child not having uttered a word or betrayed a vestige of human expression upon its slightly soiled features. presently the near whistle of the connecticut express brought him to his feet. he lifted the astonishingly gifted infant and walked out; and when the express rolled past and stopped, he set it on the day-coach platform beside its stolid parent, and waved to it an impressive adieu. at the same moment, descending from the train, a tall young girl, in waterproofs, witnessed the proceedings, recognised desboro, and smiled at the little ceremony taking place. "yours?" she inquired, as, hat off, hand extended, he came forward to welcome her--and the next moment blushed at her impulsive informality. "oh, all kids seem to be mine, somehow or other," he said. "i'm awfully glad you came. i was afraid you wouldn't." "why?" "because i didn't believe you really existed, for one thing. and then the weather----" "do you suppose mere _weather_ could keep me from the desboro collection? you have much to learn about me." "i'll begin lessons at once," he said gaily, "if you don't mind giving them. do you?" she smiled non-committally, and looked around her at the departing vehicles. "we have a limousine waiting for us behind the station," he said. "it's five muddy miles." "i had been wondering all the way up in the train just how i was to get to silverwood----" "you didn't suppose i'd leave you to find your way, did you?" "business people don't expect limousines," she said, with an unmistakable accent that sounded priggish even to herself--so prim, indeed, that he laughed outright; and she finally laughed, too. "this is very jolly, isn't it?" he remarked, as they sped away through the rain. she conceded that it was. "it's going to be a most delightful day," he predicted. she thought it was likely to be a _busy_ day. "and delightful, too," he insisted politely. "why particularly delightful, mr. desboro?" "i thought you were looking forward with keen pleasure to your work in the desboro collection!" she caught a latent glimmer of mischief in his eye, and remained silent, not yet quite certain that she liked this constant running fire of words that always seemed to conceal a hint of laughter at her expense. had they been longer acquainted, and on a different footing, she knew that whatever he said would have provoked a response in kind from her. but friendship is not usually born from a single business interview; nor is it born perfect, like a fairy ring, over night. and it was only last night, she made herself remember, that she first laid eyes on desboro. yet it seemed curious that whatever he said seemed to awaken in her its echo; and, though she knew it was an absurd idea, the idea persisted that she already began to understand this young man better than she had ever understood any other of his sex. he was talking now at random, idly but agreeably, about nothing in particular. she, muffled in the fur robe, looked out through the limousine windows into the rain, and saw brown fields set with pools in every furrow, and squares of winter wheat, intensely green. and now the silver birch woods, which had given the house its name, began to appear as outlying clumps across the hills; and in a few moments the car swung into a gateway under groves of solemnly-dripping norway spruces, then up a wide avenue, lined with ranks of leafless, hardwood trees and thickets of laurel and rhododendron, and finally stopped before a house made of grayish-brown stone, in the rather inoffensive architecture of early eighteen hundred. mrs. quant, in best bib and tucker, received them in the hallway, having been instructed by desboro concerning her attitude toward the expected guest. but when she became aware of the slender youth of the girl, she forgot her sniffs and misgivings, and she waddled, and bobbed, and curtsied, overflowing with a desire to fondle, and cherish, and instruct, which only fear of desboro choked off. but as soon as jacqueline had followed her to the room assigned, and had been divested of wet outer-clothing, and served with hot tea, mrs. quant became loquacious and confidential concerning her own personal ailments and sorrows, and the history and misfortunes of the desboro family. jacqueline wished to decline the cup of tea, but mrs. quant insisted; and the girl yielded. "air you sure you feel well, miss nevers?" she asked anxiously. "why, of course." "don't be _too_ sure," said mrs. quant ominously. "sometimes them that feels bestest is sickest. i've seen a sight of sickness in my day, dearie--typod, mostly. you ain't never had typod, now, hev you?" "typhoid?" "yes'm, typod!" "no, i never did." "then you take an old woman's advice, miss nevers, and don't you go and git it!" jacqueline promised gravely; but mrs. quant was now fairly launched on her favourite topic. "i've been forty-two years in this place--and quant--my man--he was head farmer here when he was took. typod, it was, dearie--and you won't never git it if you'll listen to me--and quant, a man that never quarreled with his vittles, but he was for going off without 'em that morning. sez he, 'cassie, i don't feel good this mornin'!'--and a piece of pie and a pork chop layin' there onto his plate. 'my vittles don't set right,' sez he; 'i ain't a mite peckish.' sez i, 'quant, you lay right down, and don't you stir a inch! you've gone and got a mild form of typod,' sez i, knowing about sickness as i allus had a gift, my father bein' a natural bone-setter. and those was my very words, dearie, 'a mild form of typod.' and i was right and he was took. and when folks ain't well, it's mostly that they've got a mild form of typod which some call malairy----" there was no stopping her; jacqueline tasted her hot tea and listened sympathetically to that woman of many sorrows. and, sipping her tea, she was obliged to assist at the obsequies of quant, the nativity of young desboro, the dissolution of his grandparents and parents, and many, many minor details, such as the freezing of water-pipes in , the menace of the chestnut blight, mysterious maladies which had affected cattle and chickens on the farm--every variety of death, destruction, dissolution, and despondency that had been mrs. quant's portion to witness. and how she gloried in detailing her dismal career; and presently pessimistic prophecies for the future became plainer as her undammed eloquence flowed on: "and mr. james, _he_ ain't well, neither," she said in a hoarse whisper. "he don't know it, and he won't listen to _me_, dearie, but i _know_ he's got a mild form of typod--he's that unwell the mornings when he's been out late in the city. say what you're a mind to, typod is typod! and if you h'ain't got it you're likely to git it most any minute; but he won't swaller the teas and broths and suffusions i bring him, and he'll be took like everybody else one of these days, dearie--which he wouldn't if he'd listen to me----" "mrs. quant," came desboro's voice from the landing. "y--yes, sir," stammered that guilty and agitated cassandra. jacqueline set aside her teacup and came to the stairs; their glances met in the suppressed amusement of mutual comprehension, and he conducted her to the hallway below, where a big log fire was blazing. "what was it--death, destruction, and general woe, as usual?" he asked. "and typod," she whispered. "it appears that _you_ have it!" "poor old soul! she means all right; but imagine me here with her all day, dodging infusions and broths and red flannel! warm your hands at the blaze, miss nevers, and i'll find the armoury keys. it will be a little colder in there." she spread her hands to the flames, conscious of his subtle change of manner toward her, now that she was actually under his roof--and liked him for it--not in the least surprised that she was comprehending still another phase of this young man's most interesting personality. for, without reasoning, her slight misgivings concerning him were vanishing; instinct told her she might even permit herself a friendlier manner, and she looked up smilingly when he came back swinging a bunch of keys. "these belong to the quant," he explained, "--honest old soul! every gem and ivory and lump of jade in the collection is at her mercy, for here are the keys to every case. now, miss nevers, what do you require? pencil and pad?" "i have my note-book, thanks--a new one in your honour." he said he was flattered and led the way through a wide corridor to the eastern wing; unlocked a pair of massive doors, and swung them wide. and, beside him, she walked into the armoury of the famous desboro collection. straight ahead of her, paved with black marble, lay a lane through a double rank of armed and mounted men in complete armour; and she could scarcely suppress a little cry of surprise and admiration. "this is magnificent!" she exclaimed; and he saw her cheeks brighten, and her breath coming faster. "it _is_ fine," he said soberly. "it is, indeed, mr. desboro! that is a noble array of armour. i feel like some legendary princess of long ago, passing her chivalry in review as i move between these double ranks. what a _wonderful_ collection! all spanish and milanese mail, isn't it? your grandfather specialised?" "i believe he did. i don't know very much about the collection, technically." "don't you care for it?" "why, yes--more, perhaps, than i realised--now that you are actually here to take it away." "but i'm not going to put it into a magic pocket and flee to new york with it!" she spoke gaily, and his face, which had become a little grave, relaxed into its habitual expression of careless good humour. they had slowly traversed the long lane, and now, turning, came back through groups of men-at-arms, pikemen, billmen, arquebussiers, crossbowmen, archers, halbardiers, slingers--all the multitudinous arms of a polyglot service, each apparently equipped with his proper weapon and properly accoutred for trouble. once or twice she glanced at the trophies aloft on the walls, every group bunched behind its shield and radiating from it under the drooping remnants of banners emblazoned with arms, crests, insignia, devices, and quarterings long since forgotten, except by such people as herself. [illustration: "now and then she ... halted on tip-toe to lift some slitted visor"] she moved gracefully, leisurely, pausing now and then before some panoplied manikin, desboro sauntering beside her. now and then she stopped to inspect an ancient piece of ordnance, wonderfully wrought and chased, now and then halted on tip-toe to lift some slitted visor and peer into the dusky cavern of the helmet, where a painted face stared back at her out of painted eyes. "who scours all this mail?" she asked. "our old armourer. my grandfather trained him. but he's very old and rheumatic now, and i don't let him exert himself. i think he sleeps all winter, like a woodchuck, and fishes all summer." "you ought to have another armourer." "i can't turn michael out to starve, can i?" she swung around swiftly: "i didn't mean _that_!" and saw he was laughing at her. "i know you didn't," he said. "but i can't afford two armourers. that's the reason i'm disposing of these tin-clothed tenants of mine--to economise and cut expenses." she moved on, evidently desiring to obtain a general impression of the task before her, now and then examining the glass-encased labels at the feet of the figures, and occasionally shaking her head. already the errant lock curled across her cheek. "what's the trouble?" he inquired. "aren't these gentlemen correctly ticketed?" "some are not. that suit of gilded mail is not spanish; it's german. it is not very difficult to make such a mistake sometimes." steam heat had been put in, but the vast hall was chilly except close to the long ranks of oxidised pipes lining the walls. they stood a moment, leaning against them and looking out across the place, all glittering with the mail-clad figures. "i've easily three weeks' work before me among these mounted figures alone, to say nothing of the men on foot and the trophies and artillery," she said. "do you know it is going to be rather expensive for you, mr. desboro?" this did not appear to disturb him. "because," she went on, "a great many mistakes have been made in labelling, and some mistakes in assembling the complete suits of mail and in assigning weapons. for example, that mounted man in front of you is wearing tilting armour and a helmet that doesn't belong to it. that's a childish mistake." "we'll put the proper lid on _him_," said desboro. "show it to me and i'll put it all over him now." "it's up there aloft with the trophies, i think--the fifth group." "there's a ladder on wheels for a closer view of the weapons. shall i trundle it in?" he went out into the hallway and presently came back pushing a clanking extension ladder with a railed top to it. then he affixed the crank and began to grind until it rose to the desired height. "all i ask of you is not to tumble off it," he said. "do you promise?" she promised with mock seriousness: "because i need _all_ my brains, you see." "you've a lot of 'em, haven't you, miss nevers?" "no, not many." he shrugged: "i wonder, then, what a quantitative analysis of _mine_ might produce." she said: "you are as clever as you take the trouble to be--" and stopped herself short, unwilling to drift into personalities. "it's the interest that is lacking in me," he said, "--or perhaps the incentive." she made no comment. "don't you think so?" "i don't know." "--and don't care," he added. she flushed, half turned in protest, but remained silent. "i beg your pardon," he said, "i didn't mean to force your interest in myself. tell me, is there anything i can do for your comfort before i go? and shall i go and leave you to abstruse and intellectual meditation, or do i disturb you by tagging about at your heels?" his easy, light tone relieved her. she looked around her at the armed figures: "you don't disturb me. i was trying to think where to begin. to-morrow i'll bring up some reference books----" "perhaps you can find what you want in my grandfather's library. i'll show you where it is when you are ready." "i wonder if he has grenville's monograph on spanish and milanese mail?" "i'll see." he went away and remained for ten minutes. she was minutely examining the sword belonging to a rather battered suit of armour when he returned with the book. "you see," she said, "you _are_ useful. i did well to suggest that you remain here. now, look, mr. desboro. this is german armour, and here is a spanish sword of a different century along with it! that's all wrong, you know. antonius was the sword-maker; here is his name on the hexagonal, gilded iron hilt--'_antonius me fecit_'." "you'll put that all right," he said confidently. "won't you?" "that's why you asked me here, isn't it?" he may have been on the point of an indiscreet rejoinder, for he closed his lips suddenly and began to examine another sword. it belonged to the only female equestrian figure in the collection--a beautifully shaped suit of woman's armour, astride a painted war-horse, the cuirass of milan plates. "the countess of oroposa," he said. "it was her peculiar privilege, after the count's death, to ride in full armour and carry a naked sword across her knees when the spanish court made a solemn entry into cities. which will be about all from me," he added with a laugh. "are you ready for luncheon?" "quite, thank you. but you _said_ that you didn't know much about this collection. let me see that sword, please." [illustration: "she took it ... then read aloud the device in verse"] he drew it from its scabbard and presented the hilt. she took it, studied it, then read aloud the device in verse: "'paz comigo nunca veo y siempre guera dese.'" ("there is never peace with me; my desire is always war!") her clear young voice repeating the old sword's motto seemed to ring a little through the silence--as though it were the clean-cut voice of the blade itself. "what a fine motto," he said guilelessly. "and you interpret it as though it were your own." "i like the sound of it. there is no compromise in it." "why not assume it for your own? 'there is never peace with me; my desire is always war!' why not adopt it?" "do you mean that such a militant motto suits me?" she asked, amused, and caught the half-laughing, half malicious glimmer in his eyes, and knew in an instant he had divined her attitude toward himself, and toward to her own self, too--war on them both, lest they succumb to the friendship that threatened. silent, preoccupied, she went back with him through the armoury, through the hallway, into a rather commonplace dining-room, where a table had already been laid for two. desboro jingled a small silver bell, and presently luncheon was announced. she ate with the healthy appetite of the young, and he pretended to. several cats and dogs of unaristocratic degree came purring and wagging about the table, and he indulged them with an impartiality that interested her, playing no favourites, but allotting to each its portion, and serenely chastising the greedy. "what wonderful impartiality!" she ventured. "i couldn't do it; i'd be sure to prefer one of them." "why entertain preference for anything or anybody?" "that's nonsense." "no; it's sense. because, if anything happens to one, there are the others to console you. it's pleasanter to like impartially." she was occupied with her fruit cup; presently she glanced up at him: "is that your policy?" "isn't it a safe one?" "yes. is it yours?" "wisdom suggests it to me--has always urged it. i'm not sure that it always works. for example, i prefer champagne to milk, but i try not to." "you always contrive to twist sense into nonsense." "you don't mind, do you?" "no; but don't you ever take anything seriously?" "myself." "i'm afraid you don't." "indeed, i do! see how my financial mishaps sent me flying to you for help!" she said: "you don't even take seriously what you call your financial mishaps." "but i take the remedy for them most reverently and most thankfully." "the remedy?" "you." a slight colour stained her cheeks; for she did not see just how to avoid the footing they had almost reached--the understanding which, somehow, had been impending from the moment they met. intuition had warned her against it. and now here it was. how could she have avoided it, when it was perfectly evident from the first that he found her interesting--that his voice and intonation and bearing were always subtly offering friendship, no matter what he said to her, whether in jest or earnest, in light-hearted idleness or in all the decorum of the perfunctory and commonplace. to have made more out of it than was in it would have been no sillier than to priggishly discountenance his harmless good humour. to be prim would have been ridiculous. besides, everything innocent in her found an instinctive pleasure, even in her own misgivings concerning this man and the unsettled problem of her personal relations with him--unsolved with her, at least; but he appeared to have settled it for himself. as they walked back to the armoury together, she was trying to think it out; and she concluded that she might dare be toward him as unconcernedly friendly as he would ever think of being toward her. and it gave her a little thrill of pride to feel that she was equipped to carry through her part in a light, gay, ephemeral friendship with one belonging to a world about which she knew nothing at all. that ought to be her attitude--friendly, spirited, pretending to a _savoir faire_ only surmised by her own good taste--lest he find her stupid and narrow, ignorant and dull. and it occurred to her very forcibly that she would not like that. so--let him admire her. his motives, perhaps, were as innocent as hers. let him say the unexpected and disconcerting things it amused him to say. she knew well enough how to parry them, once her mind was made up not to entirely ignore them; and that would be much better. that, no doubt, was the manner in which women of his own world met the easy badinage of men; and she determined to let him discover that she was interesting if she chose to be. she had produced her note-book and pencil when they entered the armoury. he carried grenville's celebrated monograph, and she consulted it from time to time, bending her dainty head beside his shoulder, and turning the pages of the volume with a smooth and narrow hand that fascinated him. from time to time, too, she made entries in her note-book, such as: "armet, spanish, late xv century. tilting harness probably made by helmschmid; espaliers, manteau d'armes, coude, left cuisse and colleret missing. war armour, milanese, xiv century; probably made by the negrolis; rere-brace, gorget, rondel missing; sword made probably by martinez, toledo. armour made in germany, middle of xvi century, probably designed by diego de arroyo; cuisses laminated." they stopped before a horseman, clad from head to spurs in superb mail. on a ground of blackened steel the pieces were embossed with gold grotesqueries; the cuirass was formed by overlapping horizontal plates, the three upper ones composing a gorget of solid gold. nymphs, satyrs, gods, goddesses and cupids in exquisite design and composition framed the "lorica"; cuisses and tassettes carried out the lorica pattern; coudes, arm-guards, and genouillères were dolphin masks, gilded. "parade armour," she said under her breath, "not war armour, as it has been labelled. it is armour de luxe, and probably royal, too. do you see the collar of the golden fleece on the gorget? and there hangs the fleece itself, borne by two cupids as a canopy for venus rising from the sea. that is probably sigman's xvi century work. is it not royally magnificent!" "lord! what a lot of lore you seem to have acquired!" he said. "but i was trained to this profession by the ablest teacher in america--" her voice fell charmingly, "--by my father. do you wonder that i know a little about it?" they moved on in silence to where a man-at-arms stood leaning both clasped hands over the gilded pommel of a sword. she said quickly: "that sword belongs to parade armour! how stupid to give it to this pikeman! don't you see? the blade is diamond sectioned; horn of solingen's mark is on the ricasse. and, oh, what a wonderful hilt! it is a miracle!" the hilt was really a miracle; carved in gold relief, italian renaissance style, the guard centre was decorated with black arabesques on a gold ground; quillons curved down, ending in cupid's heads of exquisite beauty. the guard was engraved with a cartouche enclosing the three graces; and from it sprang a beautiful counter-guard formed out of two lovely caryatids united. the grip was made of heliotrope amethyst inset with gold; the pommel constructed by two volutes which encompassed a tiny naked nymph with emeralds for her eyes. "what a masterpiece!" she breathed. "it can be matched only in the royal armoury of madrid." "have you been abroad, miss nevers?" "yes, several times with my father. it was part of my education in business." he said: "yours is a french name?" "father was french." "he must have been a very cultivated man." "self-cultivated." "perhaps," he said, "there once was a _de_ written before 'nevers.'" she laughed: "no. father's family were always bourgeois shopkeepers--as i am." he looked at the dainty girl beside him, with her features and slender limbs and bearing of an aristocrat. "too bad," he said, pretending disillusion. "i expected you'd tell me how your ancestors died on the scaffold, remarking in laudable chorus, '_vive le roi!_'" she laughed and sparkled deliciously: "alas, no, monsieur. but, _ma foi!_ some among them may have worked the guillotine for sanson or drummed for santerre. "you seem to me to symbolise all the grace and charm that perished on the place de grève." she laughed: "look again, and see if it is not their nemesis i more closely resemble." and as she said it so gaily, an odd idea struck him that she _did_ embody something less obvious, something more vital, than the symbol of an aristocratic régime perishing en masse against the blood-red sky of paris. he did not know what it was about her that seemed to symbolise all that is forever young and fresh and imperishable. perhaps it was only the evolution of the real world he saw in her opening into blossom and disclosing such as she to justify the darkness and woe of the long travail. she had left him standing alone with grenville's book open in his hands, and was now examining a figure wearing a coat of fine steel mail, with a black corselet protecting back and breast decorated with _horizontal_ bands. "do you notice the difference?" she asked. "in german armour the bands are vertical. this is milanese, and i think the negrolis made it. see how exquisitely the morion is decorated with these lions' heads in gold for cheek pieces, and these bands of gold damascene over the skull-piece, that meet to form minerva's face above the brow! i'm sure it's the negrolis work. wait! ah, here is the inscription! 'p. iacobi et fratr negroli faciebant mdxxxix.' bring me grenville's book, please." she took it, ran over the pages rapidly, found what she wanted, and then stepped forward and laid her white hand on the shoulder of another grim, mailed figure. "this is foot-armour," she said, "and does not belong with that morion. it's neither milanese nor yet of augsburg make; it's italian, but who made it i don't know. you see it's a superb combination of parade armour and war mail, with all the gorgeous design of the former and the smoothness and toughness of the latter. really, mr. desboro, this investigation is becoming exciting. i never before saw such a suit of foot-armour." "perhaps it belonged to the catcher of some ancient baseball club," he suggested. she turned, laughing, but exasperated: "i'm not going to let you remain near me," she said. "you annihilate every atom of romance; you are an anachronism here, anyway." "i know it; but you fit in delightfully with tournaments and pageants and things----" "go up on that ladder and sit!" resolutely pointing. he went. perched aloft, he lighted a cigarette and surveyed the prospect. "mark twain killed all this sort of thing for me," he observed. she said indignantly: "it's the only thing i never have forgiven him." "he told the truth." "i know it--i know it. but, oh, how could he write what he did about king arthur's court! and what is the use of truth, anyway, unless it leaves us ennobling illusions?" ennobling illusions! she did not know it; but except for them she never would have existed, nor others like her that are yet to come in myriads. desboro waved his cigarette gracefully and declaimed: "the knights are dust, their good swords bust; their souls are up the spout we trust--" "mr. desboro!" "mademoiselle?" "that silly parody on a noble verse is not humorous." "truth seldom is. the men who wore those suits of mail were everything that nobody now admires--brutal, selfish, ruthless----" "mr. desboro!" "mademoiselle?" "are there not a number of such gentlemen still existing on earth?" "new york's full of them," he admitted cheerfully, "but they conceal what they really are on account of the police." "is that all that five hundred years has taught men--concealment?" "yes, and five thousand," he muttered; but said aloud: "it hasn't anything to do with admiring the iron hats and clothes they wore. if you'll let me come down i'll admire 'em----" "no." "i want to carry your book for you." "no." "--and listen to everything you say about the vertical stripes on their dutch trousers----" "very well," she consented, laughing; "you may descend and examine these gold inlaid and checkered trousers. they were probably made for a fashionable dandy by alonso garcia, five hundred years ago; and you will observe that they are still beautifully creased." so they passed on, side by side, while she sketched out her preliminary work. and sometimes he was idly flippant and irresponsible, and sometimes she thrilled unexpectedly at his quick, warm response to some impulsive appeal that he share her admiration. under the careless surface, she divined a sort of perverse intelligence; she was certain that what appealed to her he, also, understood when he chose to; because he understood so much--much that she had not even imagined--much of life, and of the world, and of the men and women in it. but, having lived a life so full, so different from her own, perhaps his interest was less easily aroused; perhaps it might be even a little fatigued by the endless pageant moving with him amid scenes of brightness and happiness which seemed to her as far away from herself and as unreal as scenes in the painted arras hanging on the walls. they had been speaking of operas in which armour, incorrectly designed and worn, was tolerated by public ignorance; and, thinking of the "horseshoe," where all that is wealthy, and intelligent, and wonderful, and aristocratic in new york is supposed to congregate, she had mentally placed him there among those elegant and distant young men who are to be seen sauntering from one gilded box to another, or, gracefully posed, decorating and further embellishing boxes already replete with jeweled and feminine beauty; or in the curtained depths, mysterious silhouettes motionless against the dull red glow. and, if those gold-encrusted boxes had been celestial balconies, full of blessed damosels leaning over heaven's edge, they would have seemed no farther away, no more accessible to her, than they seemed from where she sometimes sat or stood, all alone, to listen to farrar and caruso. * * * * * the light in the armoury was growing a little dim. she bent more closely over her note-book, the printed pages of mr. grenville, and the shimmering, inlaid, and embossed armour. "shall we have tea?" he suggested. "tea? oh, thank you, mr. desboro; but when the light fails, i'll have to go." it was failing fast. she used the delicate tips of her fingers more often in examining engraved, inlaid, and embossed surfaces. "i never had electricity put into the armoury," he said. "i'm sorry now--for your sake." "i'm sorry, too. i could have worked until six." "there!" he said, laughing. "you have admitted it! what are you going to do for nearly two hours if you don't take tea? your train doesn't leave until six. did you propose to go to the station and sit there?" her confused laughter was very sweet, and she admitted that she had nothing to do after the light failed except to fold her hands and wait for the train. "then won't you have tea?" "i'd--rather not!" he said: "you could take it alone in your room if you liked--and rest a little. mrs. quant will call you." she looked up at him after a moment, and her cheeks were very pink and her eyes brilliant. "i'd rather take it with you, mr. desboro. why shouldn't i say so?" no words came to him, and not much breath, so totally unexpected was her reply. still looking at him, the faint smile fading into seriousness, she repeated: "why shouldn't i say so? is there any reason? you know better than i what a girl alone may do. and i really would like to have some tea--and have it with you." he didn't smile; he was too clever--perhaps too decent. "it's quite all right," he said. "we'll have it served in the library where there's a fine fire." so they slowly crossed the armoury and traversed the hallway, where she left him for a moment and ran up stairs to her room. when she rejoined him in the library, he noticed that the insurgent lock of hair had been deftly tucked in among its lustrous comrades; but the first shake of her head dislodged it again, and there it was, threatening him, as usual, from its soft, warm ambush against her cheek. "can't you do anything with it?" he asked, sympathetically, as she seated herself and poured the tea. "do anything with what?" "that lock of hair. it's loose again, and it will do murder some day." she laughed with scarcely a trace of confusion, and handed him his cup. "that's the first thing i noticed about you," he added. "that lock of hair? i can't do anything with it. isn't it horribly messy?" "it's dangerous." "how absurd!" "are you ever known as 'stray lock' among your intimates?" "i should think not," she said scornfully. "it sounds like a children's picture-book story." "but you look like one." "mr. desboro!" she protested. "haven't you any common sense?" "you look," he said reflectively, "as though you came from the same bookshelf as 'gold locks,' 'the robber kitten,' and 'a princess far away,' and all those immortal volumes of the 'days that are no more.' would you mind if i label you 'stray lock,' and put you on the shelf among the other immortals?" her frank laughter rang out sweetly: "i very _much_ object to being labeled and shelved--particularly shelved." "i'll promise to read you every day----" "no, thank you!" "i'll promise to take you everywhere with me----" "in your pocket? no, thank you. i object to being either shelved or pocketed--to be consulted at pleasure--or when you're bored." they both had been laughing a good deal, and were slightly excited by their game of harmless _double entendre_. but now, perhaps it was becoming a trifle too obvious, and jacqueline checked herself to glance back mentally and see how far she had gone along the path of friendship. she could not determine; for the path has many twists and turnings, and she had sped forward lightly and swiftly, and was still conscious of the exhilaration of the pace in his gay and irresponsible company. her smile changed and died out; she leaned back in her leather chair, gazing absently at the fiery reflections crimsoning the andirons on the hearth, and hearing afar, on some distant roof, the steady downpour of the winter rain. subtly the quiet and warmth of the room invaded her with a sense of content, not due, perhaps, to them alone. and dreamily conscious that this might be so, she lifted her eyes and looked across the table at him. "i wonder," she said, "if this _is_ all right?" "what?" "our--situation--here." "situations are what we make them." "but," she asked candidly, "could you call this a business situation?" he laughed unrestrainedly, and finally she ventured to smile, secretly reassured. [illustration: "'are business and friendship incompatible?'"] "are business and friendship incompatible?" he inquired. "i don't know. are they? i have to be careful in the shop, with younger customers and clerks. to treat them with more than pleasant civility would spoil them for business. my father taught me that. he served in the french army." "do you think," he said gravely, "that you are spoiling me for business purposes?" she smiled: "i was thinking--wondering whether you did not more accurately represent the corps of officers and i the line. i am only a temporary employee of yours, mr. desboro, and some day you may be angry at what i do and you may say, 'tonnerre de dieu!' to me--which i wouldn't like if we were friends, but which i'd otherwise endure." "we're friends already; what are you going to do about it?" she knew it was so now, for better or worse, and she looked at him shyly, a little troubled by what the end of this day had brought her. silent, absent-eyed, she began to wonder what such men as he really thought of a girl of her sort. it could happen that his attitude toward her might become like that of the only men of his kind she had ever encountered--wealthy clients of her father, young and old, and all of them inclined to offer her attentions which instinct warned her to ignore. as for desboro, even from the beginning she felt that his attitude toward her depended upon herself; and, warranted or not, this sense of security with him now, left her leisure to study him. and she concluded that probably he was like the other men of his class whom she had known--a receptive opportunist, inevitably her antagonist at heart, but not to be feared except under deliberate provocation from her. and that excuse he would never have. aware of his admiration almost from the very first, perplexed, curious, uncertain, and disturbed by turns, she was finally convinced that the matter lay entirely with her; that she might accept a little, venture a little in safety; and, perfectly certain of herself, enjoy as much of what his friendship offered as her own clear wits and common sense permitted. for she had found, so far, no metal in any man unalloyed. two years' experience alone with men had educated her; and whatever the alloy in desboro might be that lowered his value, she thought it less objectionable than the similar amalgam out of which were fashioned the harmless youths in whose noisy company she danced, and dined, and bathed, and witnessed broadway "shows"; the eddies and joes of the metropolis, replicas in mind and body of clothing advertisements in street cars. her blue eyes, wandering from the ruddy andirons, were arrested by the clock. what had happened? was the clock still going? she listened, and heard it ticking. "is _that_ the right time?" she demanded incredulously. he said, so low she could scarcely hear him: "yes, stray lock. must i close the story book and lay it away until another day?" she rose, brushing the bright strand from her cheek; he stood up, pulled the tassel of an old-time bell rope, and, when the butler came, ordered the car. she went away to her room, where mrs. quant swathed her in rain garments and veils, and secretly pressed into her hand a bottle containing "a suffusion" warranted to discourage any insidious advances of typod. "a spoonful before meals, dearie," she whispered hoarsely; "and don't tell mr. james--he'd be that disgusted with me for doin' of a christian duty. i'll have some of my magic drops ready when you come to-morrow, and you can just lock the door and set and rock and enj'y them onto a lump of sugar." a little dismayed, but contriving to look serious, jacqueline thanked her and fled. desboro put her into the car and climbed in beside her. "you needn't, you know," she protested. "there are no highwaymen, are there?" "none more to be dreaded than myself." "then why do you go to the station with me?" he did not answer. she presently settled into her corner, and he wrapped her in the fur robe. neither spoke; the lamplight flashed ahead through the falling rain; all else was darkness--the widest world of darkness, it seemed to her fancy, that she ever looked out upon, for it seemed to leave this man and herself alone in the centre of things. conscious of him beside her, she was curiously content not to look at him or to disturb the silence encompassing them. the sense of speed, the rush through obscurity, seemed part of it--part of a confused and pleasurable irresponsibility. later, standing under the dripping eaves of the station platform with him, watching the approaching headlight of the distant locomotive, she said: "you have made it a very delightful day for me. i wanted to thank you." he was silent; the distant locomotive whistled, and the vista of wet rails began to glisten red in the swift approach. "i don't want you to go to town alone on that train," he said abruptly. "what?" in utter surprise. "will you let me go with you, miss nevers?" "nonsense! i wander about everywhere alone. please don't spoil it all. don't even go aboard to find a seat for me." the long train thundered by, brakes gripping, slowed, stopped. she sprang aboard, turned on the steps and offered her hand: "good-bye, mr. desboro." "to-morrow?" he asked. "yes." they exchanged no further words; she stood a moment on the platform, as the cars glided slowly past him and on into the rainy night. all the way to new york she remained motionless in the corner of the seat, her cheek resting against her gloved palm, thinking of what had happened--closing her blue eyes, sometimes, to bring it nearer and make more real a day of life already ended. chapter iv when the doorbell rang the maid of all work pushed the button and stood waiting at the top of the stairs. there was a pause, a moment's whispering, then light footsteps flying through the corridor, and: "where on earth have you been for a week?" asked cynthia lessler, coming into jacqueline's little parlour, where the latter sat knitting a white wool skating jacket for herself. jacqueline laid aside the knitting and greeted her visitor with a warm, quick embrace. "oh, i've been everywhere," she said. "out in westchester, mostly. to-day being sunday, i'm at home." "what were you doing in the country, sweetness?" "business." "what kind?" "oh, cataloguing a collection. take the armchair and sit near the stove, dear. and here are the chocolates. put your feet on the fender as i do. it was frightfully cold in westchester yesterday--everything frozen solid--and we--i skated all over the flooded fields and swamps. it was simply glorious, cynthia----" "i thought you were out there on business," remarked cynthia dryly. "i was. i merely took an hour at noon for luncheon." "did you?" "certainly. even a bricklayer has an hour at noon to himself." "whose collection are you cataloguing?" "it belongs to a mr. desboro," said jacqueline carelessly. "where is it?" "in his house--a big, old house about five miles from the station----" "how do you get there?" "they send a car for me----" "who?" "they--mr. desboro." "they? is he plural?" "don't be foolish," said jacqueline. "it is his car and his collection, and i'm having a perfectly good time with both." "and with him, too? yes?" "if you knew him you wouldn't talk that way." "i know who he is." "do you?" said jacqueline calmly. "yes, i do. he's the 'jim' desboro whose name you see in the fashionable columns. i know something about _that_ young man," she added emphatically. jacqueline looked up at her with dawning displeasure. cynthia, undisturbed, bit into a chocolate and waved one pretty hand: "read the _tattler_, as i do, and you'll see what sort of a man your young man is." "i don't care to read such a----" "i do. it tells you funny things about society. every week or two there's something about him. you can't exactly understand it--they put it in a funny way--but you can guess. besides, he's always going around town with reggie ledyard, and stuyve van alstyne, and--jack cairns----" "_don't_ speak that way--as though you usually lunched with them. i hate it." "how do you know i don't lunch with some of them? besides everybody calls them reggie, and stuyve, and jack----" "everybody except their mothers, probably. i don't want to hear about them, anyway." "why not, darling?" "because you and i don't know them and never will----" cynthia said maliciously: "you may meet them through your friend, jimmy desboro----" "_that_ is the limit!" exclaimed jacqueline, flushing; and her pretty companion leaned back in her armchair and laughed until jacqueline's unwilling smile began to glimmer in her wrath-darkened eyes. "don't torment me, cynthia," she said. "you know quite well that it's a business matter with me entirely." "was it a business matter with that dawley man? you had to get me to go with you into that den of his whenever you went at all." jacqueline shrugged and resumed her knitting: "what a horrid thing he was," she murmured. cynthia assented philosophically: "but most men bother a girl sooner or later," she concluded. "you don't read about it in novels, but it's true. go down town and take dictation for a living. it's an education in how to look out for yourself." "it's a rotten state of things," said jacqueline under her breath. "yes. it's funny, too. so many men _are_ that way. what do they care? do you suppose we'd be that way, too, if we were men?" [illustration: "'there are nice men, too'"] "no. there are nice men, too." "yes--dead ones." "nonsense!" "with very few exceptions, jacqueline. there are horrid, _horrid_ ones, and _nice_, horrid ones, and dead ones and _dead_ ones--but only a few nice, _nice_ ones. i've known some. you think your mr. desboro is one, don't you?" "i haven't thought about him----" "honestly, jacqueline?" "i tell you i haven't! he's nice to _me_. that's all i know." "is he _too_ nice?" "no. besides, he's under his own roof. and it depends on a girl, anyway." "not always. if we behave ourselves we're dead ones; if we don't we'd better be. isn't it a rotten deal, jacqueline! just one fresh man after another dropped into the discards because he gets too gay. and being employed by the kind who'd never marry us spoils us for the others. _you_ could marry one of your clients, i suppose, but i never could in a million years." "you and i will never marry such men," said jacqueline coolly. "perhaps we wouldn't if they asked us." "_you_ might. you're educated and bright, and--you _look_ the part, with all the things you know--and your trips to europe--and the kind of beauty yours is. why not? if i were you," she added, "i'd kill a man who thought me good enough to hold hands with, but not good enough to marry." "i don't hold hands," observed jacqueline scornfully. "i do. i've done it when it was all right; and i've done it when i had no business to; and the chances are i'll do it again without getting hurt. and then i'll finally marry the sort of man you call ed," she added disgustedly. jacqueline laughed, and looked intently at her: "you're _so_ pretty, cynthia--and so silly sometimes." cynthia stretched her young figure full length in the chair, yawning and crooking both arms back under her curly brown head. her eyes, too, were brown, and had in them always a half-veiled languor that few men could encounter undisturbed. "a week ago," she said, "you told me over the telephone that you would be at the dance. _i_ never laid eyes on you." "i came home too tired. it was my first day at silverwood. i overdid it, i suppose." "silverwood?" "where i go to business in westchester," she explained patiently. "oh, mr. desboro's place!" with laughing malice. "yes, mr. desboro's place." the hint of latent impatience in jacqueline's voice was not lost on cynthia; and she resumed her tormenting inquisition: "how long is it going to take you to catalogue mr. desboro's collection?" "i have several weeks' work, i think--i don't know exactly." "all winter, perhaps?" "possibly." "is _he_ always there, darling?" jacqueline was visibly annoyed: "he has happened to be, so far. i believe he is going south very soon--if that interests you." "'phone me when he goes," retorted cynthia, unbelievingly. "what makes you say such things!" exclaimed jacqueline. "i tell you he isn't that kind of a man." "read the _tattler_, dearest!" "i won't." "don't you ever read it?" "no. why should i?" "curiosity." "i haven't any." cynthia laughed incredulously: "people who have no curiosity are either idiots or they have already found out. now, you are not an idiot." jacqueline smiled: "and i haven't found out, either." "then you're just as full of curiosity as the rest of us." "not of unworthy curiosity----" "i never knew a good person who wasn't. i'm good, am i not, jacqueline?" "of course." "well, then, i'm full of all kinds of curiosities--worthy and unworthy. i want to know about everything!" "everything good." "good and bad. god lets both exist. i want to know about them." "why be curious about what is bad? it doesn't concern us." "if you know what concerns you only, you'll never know anything. now, when i read a newspaper i read about fashionable weddings, millionaires, shows, murders--i read everything--not because i'm going to be fashionably married, or become a millionaire or a murderer, but because all these things exist and happen, and i want to know all about them because i'm not an idiot, and i haven't already found out. and so that's why i buy the _tattler_ whenever i have five cents to spend on it!" "it's a pity you're not more curious about things worth while," commented jacqueline serenely. cynthia reddened: "dear, i haven't the education or brain to be interested in the things that occupy you." "i didn't mean that," protested jacqueline, embarrassed. "i only----" "i know, dear. you are too sweet to say it; but it's true. the bunch you play with knows it. we all realise that you are way ahead of us--that you're different----" "please don't say that--or think it." "but it's true. you really belong with the others--" she made a gay little gesture--"over there in the fifth avenue district, where art gets gay with fashion; where lady highbrows wear tiaras; where the jims and jacks and reggies float about and hand each other new ones between quarts; where you belong, darling--wherever you finally land!" jacqueline was laughing: "but i don't wish to land _there_! i never wanted to." "all girls do! we all dream about it!" "here is one girl who really doesn't. of course, i'd like to have a few friends of that kind. i'd rather like to visit houses where nobody has to think of money, and where young people are jolly, and educated, and dress well, and talk about interesting things----" "dear, we all would like it. that's what i'm saying. only there's a chance for you because you know something--but none for us. we understand that perfectly well--and we dream on all the same. we'd miss a lot if we didn't dream." jacqueline said mockingly: "i'll invite you to my fifth avenue residence the minute i marry what you call a reggie." "i'll come if you'll stand for me. i'm not afraid of any reggie in the bench show!" they laughed; cynthia stretched out a lazy hand for another chocolate; jacqueline knitted, the smile still hovering on her scarlet lips. bending over her work, she said: "you won't misunderstand when i tell you how much i enjoy being at silverwood, and how nice mr. desboro has been." "_has_ been." "is, and surely will continue to be," insisted jacqueline tranquilly. "shall i tell you about silverwood?" cynthia nodded. "well, then, mr. desboro has such a funny old housekeeper there, who gives me 'magic drops' on lumps of sugar. the drops are aromatic and harmless, so i take them to please her. and he has an old, old butler, who is too feeble to be very useful; and an old, old armourer, who comes once a week and potters about with a bit of chamois; and a parlour maid who is sixty and wears glasses; and a laundress still older. and a whole troop of dogs and cats come to luncheon with us. sometimes the butler goes to sleep in the pantry, and mr. desboro and i sit and talk. and if he doesn't wake up, mr. desboro hunts about for somebody to wait on us. of course there are other servants there, and farmers and gardeners, too. mr. desboro has a great deal of land. and so," she chattered on quite happily and irrelevantly, "we go skating for half an hour after lunch before i resume my cataloguing. he skates very well; we are learning to waltz on skates----" "who does the teaching?" "he does. i don't skate very well; and unless it were for him i'd have _such_ tumbles! and once we went sleighing--that is, he drove me to the station--in rather a roundabout way. and the country was _so_ beautiful! and the stars--oh, millions and millions, cynthia! it was as cold as the north pole, but i loved it--and i had on his other fur coat and gloves. he is very nice to me. i wanted you to understand the sort of man he is." "perhaps he is the original hundredth man," remarked cynthia skeptically. "most men are hundredth men when the nine and ninety girls behave themselves. it's the hundredth girl who makes the nine and ninety men horrid." "that's what you believe, is it?" "i do." "dream on, dear." she went to a glass, pinned her pretty hat, slipped into the smart fur coat that jacqueline held for her, and began to draw on her gloves. "can't you stay to dinner," asked jacqueline. "thank you, sweetness, but i'm dining at the beaux arts." "with any people i know?" "you don't know that particular 'people'," said cynthia, smiling, "but you know a friend of his." "who?" "mr. desboro." "really!" she said, colouring. cynthia frowned at her: "don't become sentimental over that young man!" "no, of course not." "because i don't think he's very much good." "he _is_--but i _won't_," explained jacqueline laughing. "i know quite well how to take care of myself." "do you?" "yes; don't you?" "i--don't--know." "cynthia! of course you know!" "do i? well, perhaps i do. perhaps all girls know how to take care of themselves. but sometimes--especially when their home life is the limit----" she hesitated, slowly twisting a hairpin through the buttonhole of one glove. then she buttoned it decisively. "when things got so bad at home two years ago, and i went with that show--you didn't see it--you were in mourning--but it ran on broadway all winter. and i met one or two reggies at suppers, and another man--the same sort--only his name happened to be jack--and i want to tell you it was hard work not to like him." jacqueline stood, slim and straight, and silent, listening unsmilingly. cynthia went on leisurely: "he was a friend of mr. desboro--the same kind of man, i suppose. _that's_ why i read the _tattler_--to see what they say about him." "wh-what do they say?" "oh, things--funny sorts of things, about his being attentive to this girl, and being seen frequently with that girl. i don't know what they mean exactly--they always make it sound queer--as though all the men and women in society are fast. and this man, too--perhaps he is." "but what do you care, dear?" "nothing. it was hard work not to like him. you don't understand how it was; you've always lived at home. but home was hell for me; and i was getting fifteen per; and it grew horribly cold that winter. i had no fire. besides--it was so hard not to like him. i used to come to see you. do you remember how i used to come here and cry?" "i--i thought it was because you had been so unhappy at home." "partly. the rest was--the other thing." "you _did_ like him, then!" "not--too much." "i understand that. but it's over now, isn't it?" cynthia stood idly turning her muff between her white-gloved hands. "oh, yes," she said, after a moment, "it's over. but i'm thinking how nearly over it was with me, once or twice that winter. i thought i knew how to take care of myself. but a girl never knows, jacqueline. cold, hunger, debt, shabby clothes are bad enough; loneliness is worse. yet, these are not enough, by themselves. but if we like a man, with all that to worry over--then it's pretty hard on us." "how _could_ you care for a bad man?" "bad? did i say he was? i meant he was like other men. a girl becomes accustomed to men." "and likes them, notwithstanding?" "some of them. it depends. if you like a man you seem to like him anyhow. you may get angry, too, and still like him. there's so much of the child in them. i've learned that. they're bad; but when you like one of them, he seems to belong to you, somehow--badness and all. i must be going, dear." still, neither moved; cynthia idly twirled her muff; jacqueline, her slender hands clasped behind her, stood gazing silently at the floor. cynthia said: "that's the trouble with us all. i'm afraid you like this man, desboro. i tell you that he isn't much good; but if you already like him, you'll go on liking him, no matter what i say or what he does. for it's that way with us, jacqueline. and where in the world would men find a living soul to excuse them if it were not for us? that seems to be about all we're for--to forgive men what they are--and what they do." "_i_ don't forgive them," said jacqueline fiercely; "--or women, either." "oh, nobody forgives women! but you will find excuses for some man some day--if you like him. i guess even the best of them require it. but the general run of them have got to have excuses made for them, or no woman would stand for her own honeymoon, and marriages would last about a week. good-bye, dear." they kissed. at the head of the stairs outside, jacqueline kissed her again. "how is the play going?" she inquired. "oh, it's going." "is there any chance for you to get a better part?" "no chance i care to take. max schindler is like all the rest of them." jacqueline's features betrayed her wonder and disgust, but she said nothing; and presently cynthia turned and started down the stairs. "good-night, dear," she called back, with a gay little flourish of her muff. "they're all alike--only we always forgive the one we care for!" chapter v on monday, desboro waited all the morning for her, meeting every train. at noon, she had not arrived. finally, he called up her office and was informed that miss nevers had been detained in town on business, and that their mr. kirk had telephoned him that morning to that effect. he asked to speak to miss nevers personally; she had gone out, it appeared, and might not return until the middle of the afternoon. so desboro went home in his car and summoned farris, the aged butler, who was pottering about in the greenhouses, which he much preferred to attending to his own business. "did anybody telephone this morning?" asked the master. farris had forgotten to mention it--was very sorry--and stood like an aged hound, head partly lowered and averted, already blinking under the awaited reprimand. but all desboro said was: "don't do it again, farris; there are some things i won't overlook." he sat for a while in the library where a sheaf of her notes lay on the table beside a pile of books--grenville, vanderdyne, herrara's splendid folios--just as she had left them on saturday afternoon for the long, happy sleigh-ride that ended just in time for him to swing her aboard her train. he had plenty to do beside sitting there with keen, gray eyes fixed on the pile of manuscript she had left unfinished; he always had plenty to do, and seldom did it. his first impulse had been to go to town. her absence was making the place irksome. he went to the long windows and stood there, hands in his pockets, smoking and looking out over the familiar landscape--a rolling country, white with snow, naked branches glittering with ice under the gilded blue of a cloudless sky, and to the north and west, low, wooded mountains--really nothing more than hills, but impressively steep and blue in the distance. a woodpecker, one of the few feathered winter residents, flickered through the trees, flashed past, and clung to an oak, sticking motionless to the bark for a minute or two, bright eyes inspecting desboro, before beginning a rapid, jerky exploration for sustenance. the master of silverwood watched him, then, hands driven deeper into his pockets, strolled away, glancing aimlessly at familiar objects--the stiff and rather picturesque portraits of his grandparents in the dress of ; the atrocious portraits of his parents in the awful costume of ; his own portrait, life size, mounted on a pony. he stood looking at the funny little boy, with the half contemptuous, half curious interest which a man in the pride of his strength and youth sometimes feels for the absurdly clothed innocence of what he was. and, as usual when noticing the picture, he made a slight, involuntary effort to comprehend that he had been once like that; and could not. at the end of the library, better portraits hung--his great-grandmother, by gilbert stuart, still fresh-coloured and clear under the dim yellow varnish which veiled but could not wither the delicate complexion and ardent mouth, and the pink rosebud set where the folds of her white kerchief crossed on her breast. and there was her husband, too, by an unknown or forgotten painter--the sturdy member of the provincial assembly, and major in colonel thomas's westchester regiment--a fine old fellow in his queue-ribbon and powdered hair standing in the conventional fortress port-hole, framed by it, and looking straight out of the picture with eyes so much like desboro's that it amused people. his easy attitude, too, the idle grace of the posture, irresistibly recalled desboro, and at the moment more than ever. but he had been a man of vigour and of wit and action; and he was lying out there in the snow, under an old brown headstone embellished with cherubim; and the last of his name lounged here, in sight, from the windows, of the spot where the first house of desboro in america had stood, and had collapsed amid the flames started by tarleton's blood-maddened troopers. to and fro sauntered desboro, passing, unnoticed, old-time framed engravings of the desboros in charles the second's time, elegant, idle, handsome men in periwigs and half-armour, and all looking out at the world through port-holes with a hint of the race's bodily grace in their half insolent attitudes. but office and preferment, peace and war, intrigue and plot, vigour and idleness, had narrowed down through the generations into a last inheritance for this young man; and the very last of all the desboros now idled aimlessly among the phantoms of a race that perhaps had better be extinguished. he could not make up his mind to go to town or to remain in the vague hope that she might come in the afternoon. he had plenty to do--if he could make up his mind to begin--accounts to go over, household expenses, farm expenses, stable reports, agents' memoranda concerning tenants and leases, endless lists of necessary repairs. and there was business concerning the estate neglected, taxes, loans, improvements to attend to--the thousand and one details which irritated him to consider; but which, although he maintained an agent in town, must ultimately come to himself for the final verdict. what he wanted was to be rid of it all--sell everything, pension his father's servants, and be rid of the entire complex business which, he pretended to himself, was slowly ruining him. but he knew in his heart where the trouble lay, and that the carelessness, extravagance, the disinclination for self-denial, the impatient and good-humoured aversion to economy, the profound distaste for financial detail, were steadily wrecking one of the best and one of the last of the old-time westchester estates. in his heart he knew, too, that all he wanted was to concentrate sufficient capital to give him the income he thought he needed. no man ever had the income he thought he needed. and why desboro required it, he himself didn't know exactly; but he wanted sufficient to keep him comfortable--enough so that he could feel he might do anything he chose, when, how, and where he chose, without fear or care for the future. and no man ever lived to enjoy such a state of mind, or to do these things with impunity. but desboro's mind was bent on it; he seated himself at the library table and began to figure it out. land in westchester brought high prices--not exactly in that section, but near enough to make his acreage valuable. then, the house, stable, garage, greenhouses, the three farms, barns, cattle houses, water supply, the timber, power sites, meadow, pasture--all these ought to make a pretty figure. and he jotted it down for the hundredth time in the last two years. then there was the desboro collection. that ought to bring---- [illustration: "and he sat thinking of jacqueline nevers"] he hesitated, his pencil finally fell on the table, rolled to the edge and dropped; and he sat thinking of jacqueline nevers, and of the week that had ended as the lights of her train faded far away into the winter night. he sat so still and so long that old farris came twice to announce luncheon. after a silent meal in company with the dogs and cats of low degree, he lighted a cigarette and went back into the library to resume his meditations. whatever they were, they ceased abruptly whenever the distant telephone rang, and he waited almost breathlessly for somebody to come and say that he was wanted on the wire. but the messages must have been to the cook or butler, from butcher, baker, and gentlemen of similar professions, for nobody disturbed him, and he was left free to sink back into the leather corner of the lounge and continue his meditations. once the furtive apparition of mrs. quant disturbed him, hovering ominously at the library door, bearing tumbler and spoon. "i won't take it," he said decisively. there was a silence, then: "isn't the young lady coming, mr. james?" "i don't know. no, probably not to-day." "is--is the child sick?" she stammered. "no, of course not. i expect she'll be here in the morning." * * * * * she was not there in the morning. mr. mirk, the little old salesman in the silk skull-cap, telephoned to farris that miss nevers was again detained in town on business at mr. clydesdale's, and that she might employ a mr. sissly to continue her work at silverwood, if mr. desboro did not object. mr. desboro was to call her up at three o'clock if he desired further information. desboro went into the library and sat down. for a while his idle reflections, uncontrolled, wandered around the main issue, errant satellites circling a central thought which was slowly emerging from chaos and taking definite weight and shape. and the thought was of jacqueline nevers. why was he waiting here until noon to talk to this girl? why was he here at all? why had he not gone south with the others? a passing fancy might be enough to arouse his curiosity; but why did not the fancy pass? what did he want to say to her? what did he want of her? why was he spending time thinking about her--disarranging his routine and habits to be here when she came? _what_ did he want of her? she was agreeable to talk to, interesting to watch, pretty, attractive. did he want her friendship? to what end? he'd never see her anywhere unless he sought her out; he would never meet her in any circle to which he had been accustomed, respectable or otherwise. besides, for conversation he preferred men to women. what did he want with her or her friendship--or her blue eyes and bright hair--or the slim, girlish grace of her? what was there to do? how many more weeks did he intend to idle about at her heels, follow her, look at her, converse with her, make a habit of her until, now, he found that to suddenly break the habit of only a week's indulgence was annoying him! and suppose the habit were to grow. into what would it grow? and how unpleasant would it be to break when, in the natural course of events, circumstances made the habit inconvenient? and, always, the main, central thought was growing, persisting. _what_ did he want of her? he was not in love with her any more than he was always lightly in love with feminine beauty. besides, if he were, what would it mean? another affair, with all its initial charm and gaiety, its moments of frivolity, its moments of seriousness, its sudden crisis, its combats, perplexities, irresolution, the faint thrill of its deeper significance startling both to clearer vision; and then the end, whatever it might be, light or solemn, irresponsible or care-ridden, gay or sombre, for one or the other. what did he want? did he wish to disturb her tranquility? was he trying to awaken her to some response? and what did he offer her to respond to? the flattery of his meaningless attentions, or the honour of falling in love with a desboro, whose left hand only would be offered to support both slim white hands of hers? he ought to have gone south, and he knew it, now. last week he had told himself--and her occasionally--that he was going south in a week. and here he was, his head on his hands and his elbows on the table, looking vacantly at the pile of manuscript she had left there, and thinking of the things that should not happen to them both. and who the devil was this fellow sissly? why had she suddenly changed her mind and suggested a creature named sissly? why didn't she finish the cataloguing herself? she had been enthusiastic about it. besides, she had enjoyed the skating and sleighing, and the luncheons and teas, and the cats and dogs--and even mrs. quant. she had said so, too. and now she was too busy to come any more. had he done anything? had he been remiss, or had he ventured too many attentions? he couldn't recall having done anything except to show her plainly enough that he enjoyed being with her. nor had she concealed her bright pleasure in his companionship. and they had become such good comrades, understanding each other's moods so instinctively now--and they had really found such unfeigned amusement in each other that it seemed a pity--a pity---- "damn it," he said, "if she cares no more about it than that, she can send sissly, and i'll go south!" but the impatience of hurt vanity died away; the desire to see her grew; the habit of a single week was already unpleasant to break. and it would be unpleasant to try to forget her, even among his own friends, even in the south, or in drawing-rooms, or at the opera, or at dances, or in any of his haunts and in any sort of company. he might forget her if he had only known her better, discovered more of her real self, unveiled a little of her deeper nature. there was so much unexplored--so much that interested him, mainly, perhaps, because he had not discovered it. for theirs had been the lightest and gayest of friendships, with nothing visible to threaten a deeper entente; merely, on her part, a happy enjoyment and a laughing parrying in the eternal combat that never entirely ends, even when it means nothing. and on his side it had been the effortless attentions of a man aware of her young and unspoiled charm--conscious of an unusual situation which always fascinates all men. he had had no intention, no idea, no policy except to drift as far as the tides of destiny carried him in her company. the situation was agreeable; if it became less so, he could take to the oars and row where he liked. but the tides had carried him to the edge of waters less clear; he was vaguely aware of it now, aware, too, that troubled seas lay somewhere behind the veil. the library clock struck three times. he got up and went to the telephone booth. miss nevers was there; would speak to him if he could wait a moment. he waited. finally, a far voice called, greeting him pleasantly, and explaining that matters which antedated her business at silverwood had demanded her personal attention in town. to his request for particulars, she said that she had work to do among the jades and chinese porcelains belonging to a mr. clydesdale. "i know him," said desboro curtly. "when do you finish?" "i have finished for the present. later there is further work to be done at mr. clydesdale's. i had to make certain arrangements before i went to you--being already under contract to mr. clydesdale, and at his service when he wanted me." there was a silence. then he asked her when she was coming to silverwood. "did you not receive my message?" she asked. "about--what's his name? sissly? yes, i did, but i don't want him. i want you or nobody!" "you are unreasonable, mr. desboro. lionel sissly is a very celebrated connoisseur." "don't you want to come?" "i have so many matters here----" "don't you _want_ to?" he persisted. "why, of course, i'd like to. it is most interesting work. but mr. sissly----" "oh, hang mr. sissly! do you suppose he interests me? you said that this work might take you weeks. you said you loved it. you apparently expected to be busy with it until it was finished. now, you propose to send a man called sissly! why?" "don't you know that i have other things----" "what have i done, miss nevers?" "i don't understand you." "what have i done to drive you away?" "how absurd! nothing! and you've been so kind to me----" "you've been kind to me. why are you no longer?" "i--it's a question--of business--matters which demand----" "will you come once more?" no reply. "will you?" he repeated. "is there any reason----" "yes." another pause, then: "yes, i'll come--if there's a reason----" "when?" "to-morrow?" "do you promise?" "yes." "then i'll meet you as usual." "thank you." he said: "how is your skating jacket coming along?" "i have--stopped work on it." "why?" "i do not expect to--have time--for skating." "didn't you ever expect to come up here again?" he asked with a slight shiver. "i thought that mr. sissly could do what was necessary." "didn't it occur to you that you were ending a friendship rather abruptly?" she was silent. "don't you think it was a trifle brusque, miss nevers?" "does the acquaintanceship of a week count so much with you, mr. desboro?" "you know it does." "no. i did not know it. if i had supposed so, i would have written a polite letter regretting that i could no longer personally attend to the business in hand." "doesn't it count at all with you?" he asked. "what?" "our friendship." "our acquaintanceship of a single week? why, yes. i remember it with pleasure--your kindness, and mrs. quant's----" "how on earth can you talk to me that way?" "i don't understand you." "then i'll say, bluntly, that it meant a lot to me, and that the place is intolerable when you're not here. that is specific, isn't it?" "very. you mean that, being accustomed to having somebody to amuse you, your own resources are insufficient." "are you serious?" "perfectly. that is why you are kind enough to miss my coming and going--because i amuse you." "do you think that way about me?" "i do when i think of you. you know sometimes i'm thinking of other things, too, mr. desboro." he bit his lip, waited for a moment, then: "if you feel that way, you'll scarcely care to come up to-morrow. whatever arrangement you make about cataloguing the collection will be all right. if i am not here, communications addressed to the olympian club will be forwarded----" "mr. desboro!" "yes?" "forgive me--won't you?" there was a moment's interval, fraught heavily with the possibilities of chance, then the silent currents of fate flowed on toward her appointed destiny and his--whatever it was to be, wherever it lay, behind the unstirring, inviolable veil. "have you forgiven me?" "and you me?" he asked. "i have nothing to forgive; truly, i haven't. why did you think i had? because i have been talking flippantly? you have been so uniformly considerate and kind to me--you _must_ know that it was nothing you said or did that made me think--wonder--whether--perhaps----" "what?" he insisted. but she declined further explanation in a voice so different, so much gayer and happier than it had sounded before, that he was content to let matters rest--perhaps dimly surmising something approaching the truth. she, too, noticed the difference in his voice as he said: "then may i have the car there as usual to-morrow morning?" "please." he drew an unconscious sigh of relief. she said something more that he could scarcely hear, so low and distant sounded her voice, and he asked her to repeat it. "i only said that i would be happy to go back," came the far voice. quick, unconsidered words trembled on his lips for utterance; perhaps fear of undoing what had been done restrained him. "not as happy as i will be to see you," he said, with an effort. "thank you. good-bye, mr. desboro." "good-bye." * * * * * the sudden accession of high spirits filled him with delightful impatience. he ranged the house restlessly, traversing the hallway and silent rooms. a happy inclination for miscellaneous conversation impelled him to long-deferred interviews with people on the place. he talked business to mrs. quant, to michael, the armourer; he put on snow-shoes and went cross lots to talk to his deaf head-farmer, vail. then he came back and set himself resolutely to his accounts; and after dinner he wrote letters, a yellow pup dozing on his lap, a cat purring on his desk, and occasionally patting with tentative paw the letter-paper when it rustled. a mania for cleaning up matters which had accumulated took possession of him--and it all seemed to concern, in some occult fashion, the coming of jacqueline on the morrow--as though he wished to begin again with a clean slate and a conscience undisturbed. but what he was to begin he did not specify to himself. bills--heavy ones--he paid lightly, drawing check after check to cover necessities or extravagances, going straight through the long list of liabilities incurred from top to bottom. later, the total troubled him, and he made himself do a thing to which he was averse--balance his check-book. the result dismayed him, and he sat for a while eyeing the sheets of carelessly scratched figures, and stroking the yellow pup on his knees. "what do i want with all these clubs and things?" he said impatiently. "i never use 'em." on the spur of impulse, he began to write resignations, wholesale, ridding himself of all kinds of incumbrances--shooting clubs in virginia and georgia and north carolina, to which he had paid dues and assessments for years, and to which he had never been; fishing clubs in maine and canada and nova scotia and california; new york clubs, including the cataract, the old fort, the palisades, the cap and bells, keeping only the three clubs to which men of his sort are supposed to belong--the patroons, the olympian, and his college club. but everything else went--yacht clubs, riding clubs, golf clubs, country clubs of every sort--everything except his membership in those civic, educational, artistic, and charitable associations to which such new york families as his owed a moral and perpetual tribute. it was nearly midnight when the last envelope was sealed and stamped, and he leaned back with a long, deep breath of relief. to-morrow he would apply the axe again and lop off such extravagances as saddle-horses in town, and the two cars he kept there. they should go to the auction rooms; he'd sell his long island bungalow, too, and the schooner and the power boats, and his hunters down at cedar valley; and with them would go groom and chauffeur, captain and mechanic, and the thousand maddening expenses that were adding daily to a total debt that had begun secretly to appal him. in his desk he knew there was an accumulated mass of unpaid bills. he remembered them now and decided he didn't want to think about them. besides, he'd clear them away pretty soon--settle accounts with tailor, bootmaker, haberdasher--with furrier, modiste and jeweler--and a dull red settled under his cheek bones as he remembered these latter bills, which he would scarcely care to exhibit to the world at large. "ass that i've been," he muttered, absently stroking the yellow pup. which reflection started another train of thought, and he went to a desk, unlocked it, pulled out the large drawer, and carried it with its contents to the fireplace. the ashes were still alive and the first packet of letters presently caught fire. on them he laid a silken slipper of mrs. clydesdale's and watched it shrivel and burn. next, he tossed handfuls of unassorted trifles, letters, fans, one or two other slippers, gloves of different sizes, dried remnants of flowers, programmes scribbled over; and when the rubbish burned hotly, he added photographs and more letters without even glancing at them, except where, amid the flames, he caught a momentary glimpse of some familiar signature, or saw some pretty, laughing phantom of the past glow, whiten to ashes, and evaporate. fire is a great purifier; he felt as though the flames had washed his hands. much edified by the moral toilet, and not concerned that all such ablutions are entirely superficial, he watched with satisfaction the last bit of ribbon shrivel, the last envelope flash into flame. then he replaced the desk drawer, leaving the key in it--because there was now no reason why all the world and its relatives should not rummage if they liked. he remembered some letters and photographs and odds and ends scattered about his rooms in town, and made a mental note to clear them out of his life, too. mentally detached, he stood aloof in spirit and viewed with interest the spectacle of his own regeneration, and calmly admired it. "i'll cut out all kinds of things," he said to himself. "a devout girl in lent will have nothing on me. nix for the bowl! nix for the fat pat hand! throw up the sponge! drop the asbestos curtain!" he made pretence to open an imaginary door: "ladies, pass out quietly, please; the show is over." the cat woke up and regarded him gravely; he said to her: "you don't even need a pocket-book, do you? and you are quite right; having things is a nuisance. the less one owns the happier one is. do you think i'll have sense enough to remember this to-morrow, and not be ass enough to acquire more--a responsibility, for example? do you think i can be trusted to mind my business when _she_ comes to-morrow? and not say something that i'll be surely sorry for some day--or something she'll be sorry for? because she's so pretty, pussy--so disturbingly pretty--and so sweet. and i ought to know by this time that intelligence and beauty are a deadly combination i had better let alone until i find them in the other sort of girl. that's the trouble, pussy." he lifted the sleepy cat and held it at arm's length, where it dangled, purring all the while. "that's the trouble, kitty. i haven't the slightest intentions; and as for friends, men prefer men. and that's the truth, between you and me. it's rather rotten, isn't it, pussy? but i'll be careful, and if i see that she is capable of caring for me, i'll go south before it hurts either of us. that will be the square thing to do, i suppose--and neither of us the worse for another week together." he placed the cat on the floor, where it marched to and fro with tail erect, inviting further attentions. but desboro walked about, turning out the electric lights, and presently took himself off to bed, fixed in a resolution that the coming week should be his last with this unusual girl. for, after all, he concluded she had not moved his facile imagination very much more than had other girls of various sorts, whose souvenirs lay now in cinders on his hearth, and long since had turned to ashes in his heart. what was the use? such affairs ended one way or another--but they always ended. all he wanted to find out, all he was curious about, was whether such an unusual girl could be moved to response--he merely wanted to know, and then he would let her alone, and no harm done--nothing to disturb the faint fragrance of a pretty souvenir that he and she might carry for a while--a week or two--perhaps a month--before they both forgot. and, conscious of his good intentions, feeling tranquil, complacent, and slightly noble, he composed himself to slumber, thinking how much happier this world would be if men invariably behaved with the self-control that occasionally characterised himself. * * * * * in the city, jacqueline lay awake on her pillow, unable to find a refuge in sleep from the doubts, questions, misgivings assailing her. wearied, impatient, vexed, by turns, that her impulse and decision should keep her sleepless--that the thought of going back to silverwood should so excite her, she turned restlessly in her bed, unwilling to understand, humiliated in heart, ashamed, vaguely afraid. why should she have responded to an appeal from such a man as desboro? her own calm judgment had been that they had seen enough of each other--for the present, anyway. because she knew, in her scared soul, that she had not meant it to be final--that some obscure idea remained of seeing him again, somewhere. yet, something in his voice over the wire--and something more disturbing still when he spoke so coolly about going south--had swayed her in her purpose to remain aloof for a while. but there was no reason, after all, for her to take it so absurdly. she would go once more, and then permit a long interval to elapse before she saw him again. if she actually had, as she began to believe, an inclination for his society, she would show herself that she could control that inclination perfectly. why should any man venture to summon her--for it was a virtual summons over the wire--and there had been arrogance in it, too. his curt acquiescence in her decision, and his own arbitrary decision to go south had startled her out of her calmly prepared rôle of business woman. she was trying to recall exactly what she had said to him afterward to make his voice change once more, and her own respond so happily. why should seeing him be any unusual happiness to her--knowing who and what he had been and was--a man of the out-world with which she had not one thing in common--a man who could mean nothing to her--could not even remain a friend because their two lives would never even run within sight of each other. she would never know anybody he knew. they would never meet anywhere except at silverwood. how could they, once the business between them was transacted? she couldn't go to silverwood except on business; he would never think of coming here to see her. could she ask him--venture, perhaps, to invite him to dinner with some of her friends? which friends? cynthia and--who else? the girls she knew would bore him; he'd have only contempt for the men. then what did all this perplexity mean that was keeping her awake? and why was she going back to silverwood? why! why! was it to see with her own eyes the admiration for herself in his? she had seen it more than once. was it to learn more about this man and his liking for her--to venture a guess, perhaps, as to how far that liking might carry him with a little encouragement--which she would not offer, of course? she began to wonder how much he really did like her--how greatly he might care if she never were to see him again. her mind answered her, but her heart appealed wistfully from the clear decision. lying there, blue eyes open in the darkness, head cradled on her crossed arms, she ventured to recall his features, summoning them shyly out of space; and she smiled, feeling the tension subtly relaxing. then she drifted for a while, watching his expression, a little dreading lest even his phantom laugh at her out of those eyes too wise. visions came to her awake to reassure her; he and she in a sleigh together under the winter stars--he and she in the sunlight, their skates flashing over the frozen meadows--he and she in the armoury, heads together over some wonder of ancient craftsmanship--he and she at luncheon--in the library--always he and she together in happy companionship. her eyelids fluttered and drooped; and sleep came, and dreams--wonderful, exquisite, past belief--and still of him and of herself together, always together in a magic world that could not be except for such as they. chapter vi when the sombre morning broke at last, jacqueline awoke, sprang from her bed, and fluttered away about her dressing as blithely as an april linnet in a hurry. she had just time to breakfast and catch her train, with the help of heaven and a taxicab, and she managed to do it about the same moment that desboro, half a hundred miles away, glanced out of his dressing-room window and saw the tall trees standing like spectres in the winter fog, and the gravel on the drive shining wet and muddy through melting snow. but he turned to the mirror again, whistling a gay air, and twisted his necktie into a smarter knot. then he went out to the greenhouses and snipped off enough carnations to make a great sheaf of clove-scented blossoms for jacqueline's room; and after that he proceeded through the other sections of the fragrant glass galleries, cutting, right and left, whatever he considered beautiful enough to do her fresh, young beauty honour. at the station, he saw her standing on the platform of the drawing-room car as the train thundered in, veil and raincoat blowing, just as he had seen her there the first time she arrived at silverwood station. the car steps were sheathed in ice; she had already ventured down a little way when he reached her and offered aid; and she permitted him to swing her to the cinder-strewn ground. "are you really here!" he exclaimed, oblivious of interested glances from trainmen and passengers. they exchanged an impulsive hand-clasp. both were unusually animated. "are you well?" she asked, as though she had been away for months. "yes. are you? it's perfectly fine of you to come"--still retaining her hand--"i wonder if you know how glad i am to see you! i wonder if you really do!" she started to say something, hesitated, blushed, then their hands parted, and she answered lightly: "what a very cordial welcome for a business girl on a horrid day! you mustn't spoil me, mr. desboro." "i was afraid you might not come," he said; and indiscreet impulse prompted her to answer, as she had first answered him there on the platform two weeks ago: "do you suppose that mere weather could have kept me away from the famous desboro collection?" the charming malice in her voice, the delightful impertinence of her reply, so obviously at variance with fact, enchanted him. she was conscious of its effect on him, and, already slightly excited, ventured to laugh at her own thrust as though challenging his self-conceit to believe that she had even grazed herself with the two-edged weapon. "do i count for absolutely nothing?" he said. "do you flatter yourself that i returned to see _you_?" "let me believe it for just one second." "i don't doubt that you will secretly and triumphantly believe it all the time." "if i dared----" "is that sort of courage lacking in you, mr. desboro? i have heard otherwise. and how long are we going to remain here on this foggy platform?" here was an entirely new footing; but in the delightful glow of youthful indiscretion she still maintained her balance lightly, mockingly. "please tell me," she said, as they entered the car, and he drew the big fur robe around her, "just how easily you believe in your own overpowering attractions. do women encourage you in such modest faith in yourself? or are you merely created that way?" "the house has been a howling wilderness without you," he said. "i admit _my_ loneliness, anyway." "_i_ admit nothing. besides, i wasn't." "is that true?" she laughed tormentingly, eyes and cheeks brilliant, now undisguisedly on guard--her first acknowledgment that in this man she condescended to divine the hereditary adversary. "i mean to punish," said her eyes. "what an attack from a clear sky on a harmless young man," he said, at last. "no, an attack from the fog on an insufferable egoist--an ambush, mr. desboro. and i thought a little sword-play might do your complacent wits a service. has it?" "but you begin by a dozen thrusts, then beat down my guard, and cuff me about with blade and pommel----" "i had to. now, does your vanity believe that my return to silverwood was influenced by your piteous appeal over the wire--and your bad temper, too?" "no," he said solemnly. "well, then! i came here partly to put my notes in better shape for mr. sissly, partly to clear up odds and ends and leave him a clear field to plow--in your persistent company," she added, with such engaging malice that even the name of sissly, which he hated, made him laugh. "you won't do that," he said confidently. "do what, mr. desboro?" "turn me over to anything named sissly." "indeed, i will--you and your celebrated collection! of course you _could_ go south, but, judging from your devotion to the study of ancient armour----" "you don't mean it, do you?" "what? about your devotion?" "no, about sissly." "yes, i do. listen to me, mr. desboro. i made up my mind that sleighing, and skating, and luncheon and tea, and--_you_, are not good for a busy girl's business career. i'm going to be very practical and very frank with you. i don't belong here except on business, and you make it so pleasant and unbusinesslike for me that my conscience protests. you see, if the time i now take to lunch with you, tea with you, skate, sleigh, talk, listen, in your very engaging company is properly employed, i can attend to yards and yards of business in town. and i'm going to. i mean it, please," as he began to smile. his smile died out. he said, quietly: "doesn't our friendship count for anything?" she looked at him; shrugged her shoulders: "oh, mr. desboro," she said pleasantly, "does it, _really_?" the blue eyes were clear and beautiful, and a little grave; only the upcurled corners of her mouth promised anything. the car drew up at the house; she sprang out and ran upstairs to her room. he heard her in animated confab with mrs. quant for a few minutes, then she came down in her black business gown, with narrow edges of lawn at collar and cuffs, and the bright lock already astray on her cheek. a white carnation was tucked into her waist; the severe black of her dress, as always, made her cheeks and lips and golden hair more brilliant by contrast. "now," she said, "for my notes. and what are you going to do while i'm busy?" "watch you, if i may. you've heard about the proverbial cat?" "care killed it, didn't it?" "yes; but it had a good look at the queen first." a smile touched her eyes and lips--a little wistfully. "you know, mr. desboro, that i like to waste time with you. flatter your vanity with that confession. and even if things were--different--but they couldn't ever be--and i must work very hard if i'm ever going to have any leisure in my old age. but come to the library for this last day, and smoke as usual. and you may talk to amuse me, if you wish. don't mind if i'm too busy to answer your folly in kind." they went together to the library; she placed the mass of notes in front of her and began to sort them--turned for a second and looked around at him with adorable malice, then bent again to the task before her. "miss nevers!" "yes?" "you will come to silverwood again, won't you?" she wrote busily with a pencil. "won't you?" she made some marginal notes and he looked at the charming profile in troubled silence. [illustration: "she turned leisurely.... 'did you say anything recently, mr. desboro?'"] about ten minutes later she turned leisurely, tucking up the errant strand of hair with her pencil: "did you say anything recently, mr. desboro?" "out of the depths, yes. the voice in the wilderness as usual went unheeded. i wished to explain to you how we might give up our skating and sleighing and everything except the bare necessities--and you could still come to silverwood on business----" "what are the 'bare necessities'?" "your being here is one----" "answer me seriously, please." "food, then. we must eat." she conceded that much. "we've got to motor to and from the station!" she admitted that, too. "those," he pointed out, "are the bare necessities. we can give up everything else." she sat looking at him, playing absently with her pencil. after a while, she turned to her desk again, and, bending over it, began to make meaningless marks with her pencil on the yellow pad. "what is the object," she said, "of trying to make me forget that i wouldn't be here at all except on business?" "do you think of that every minute?" "i--must." "it isn't necessary." "it is imperative, mr. desboro--and you know it." she wrote steadily for a while, strapped a bundle of notes with an elastic band, laid it aside, and turned around, resting her arm on the back of the chair. blue eyes level with his, she inspected him curiously. and, if the tension of excitement still remained, all her high spirits and the indiscreet impulses of a gay self-confidence had vanished. but curiosity remained--the eternal, insatiable curiosity of the young. how much did this man really mean of what he said to her? what did his liking for her signify other than the natural instinct of an idle young man for any pretty girl? what was he going to do about it? for she seemed to be conscious that, sooner or later, somewhere, sometime, he would do something further about it. did he mean to make love to her sometime? was he doing it now? it resembled the preliminaries; she recognised them--had been aware of them almost from the very first. men had made love to her before--men in her own world, men in his world. she had learned something since her father died--not a great deal; perhaps more from hearsay than from experience. but some unpleasant knowledge had been acquired at first hand; two clients of her father's had contributed, and a student, named harroun, and an amateur of soft paste statuettes, the rev. bertie dawley. innocently and wholesomely equipped to encounter evil, cool and clear eyed mistress of herself so far, she had felt, with happy contempt, that her fate was her own to control, and had wondered what the word "temptation" could mean to any woman. what cynthia had admitted made her a little wiser, but still incredulous. cold, hunger, debts, loneliness--these were not enough, as cynthia herself had said. nor, after all, was cynthia's liking for cairns. which proved conclusively that woman is the arbiter of her own destiny. desboro, one knee crossed over the other, sat looking into the fire, which burned in the same fireplace where he had recently immolated the frivolous souvenirs of the past. perhaps some gay ghost of that scented sacrifice took shape for a moment in the curling smoke, for he suddenly frowned and passed his hand over his eyes in boyish impatience. something--the turn of his head and shoulders--the shape of them--she did not know what--seemed to set her heart beating loudly, ridiculously, without any apparent reason on earth. too much surprised to be disturbed, she laid her slim hand on her breast, then against her throat, till her pulses grew calmer. resting her chin on her arm, she gazed over her shoulder into the fire. he had laid another log across the flames; she watched the bark catch fire, dully conscious, now, that her ideas were becoming as irresponsible and as reasonless as the sudden stirring of her heart had been. for she was thinking how odd it would be if, like cynthia, she too, ever came to care about a man of desboro's sort. she'd see to it that she didn't; that was all. there were other men. better still, there were to be no men; for her mind fastidiously refused to consider the only sort with whom she felt secure--her intellectual inferiors whose moral worthiness bored her to extinction. musing there, half turned on her chair, she saw desboro rise, still looking intently into the fire, and stand so, his well-made, graceful figure, in silhouette, edged with the crimson glow. "what do you see in it, mr. desboro?" he turned instantly and came over to her: "a bath of flames would be very popular," he said, "if burning didn't hurt. i was just thinking about it--how to invent----" she quoted: "'but i was thinking of a plan to dye one's whiskers green.'" he said: "i suppose you think me as futile as that old man 'a-settin' on a gate.'" "your pursuits seem to be about as useful as his." "why should i pursue things? i don't want 'em." "you are hopeless. there is pleasure even in pursuit of anything, no matter whether you ever attain it or not. i will never attain wisdom, but it's a pleasure to pursue it." "it's a pleasure even to pursue pleasure--and it's the only pleasure in pleasure," he said, so gravely that for a moment she thought with horror that he was trying to be precious. then the latent glimmer in his eyes set them laughing, and she rose and went over to the sofa and curled up in one corner, abandoning all pretense of industry. "once," she said, "i knew a poet who emitted such precious thoughts. he was the funniest thing; he had the round, pale, ancient eyes of an african parrot, a pasty countenance, and a derby hat resting on top of a great bunch of colourless curly hair. and that's the way _he_ talked, mr. desboro!" he seated himself on the other arm of the sofa: "did you adore him?" "at first. he was a celebrity. he did write some pretty things." "what woke you up?" she blushed. "i thought so," observed desboro. "thought what?" "that he came out of his trance and made love to you." "how did you know? wasn't it dreadful! and he'd always told me that he had never experienced an emotion except when adoring the moon. he was a very dreadful young man--perfectly horrid in his ideas--and i sent him about his business very quickly; and i remember being a little frightened and watching him from the window as he walked off down the street in his soiled drab overcoat and the derby hat on his frizzly hair, and his trousers too high on his ankles----" desboro was so immensely amused at the picture she drew that her pretty brows unbent and she smiled, too. "what did he want of you?" he asked. "i didn't fully understand at the time----" she hesitated, then, with an angry blush: "he asked me to go to italy with him. and he said he couldn't marry me because he had already espoused the moon!" desboro's laughter rang through the old library; and jacqueline was not quite certain whether she liked the way he took the matter or not. "i know him," said desboro. "i've seen him about town kissing women's hands, in company with a larger and fatter one. isn't his name munger?" "yes," she said. "certainly. and the fat one's name is waudle. they were a hot team at fashionable literary stunts--the back alley club, you know." "no, i don't know." "oh, it's just silly; a number of fashionable and wealthy young men and women pin on aprons, now and then, and paint and model lumps of wet clay in several severely bare studios over some unfragrant stables. they proudly call it the back alley club." "why do you sneer at it?" "because it isn't the real thing. it's a strutting ground for things like munger and waudle, and all the rag-tag that is always sniffing and snuffling at the back doors of the fine arts." "at least," she said, "they sniff." he said, good-humouredly: "yes, and i don't even do that. is that what you mean?" she considered him: "haven't you any profession?" "i'm a farmer." "why aren't you busy with it, then?" "i have been, disastrously. there was a sickening deficit this autumn." she said, with pretty scorn: "i'll wager i could make your farm pay." he smiled lazily, and indulgently. after a moment he said: "so the spouse of the moon wanted you to go to italy with him?" she nodded absently: "a girl meets queer men in the world." "did you ever meet any others?" she looked up listlessly: "yes, several." "as funny as the poet?" "if you call him funny." "i wonder who they were," he mused. "did you ever hear of the reverend bertie dawley?" "no." "he was one." "_that_ kind?" "oh, yes. he collects soft paste figurines; he was a client of father's; but i found very soon that i couldn't go near him. he has a wife and children, too, and he keeps sending his wife to call on me. you know he's a good-looking young man, too, and i liked him; but i never dreamed----" "sure," he said, disgusted at his own sex--with the exception of himself. "that seems to be the way of it," she said thoughtfully. "you can't be friends with men; they all annoy you sooner or later in one way or another!" "annoy you? do you mean make love to you?" "yes." "_i_ don't; do i?" she bent her head and sat playing with the petals of the white carnation drooping on her breast. "no," she said calmly. "you don't annoy me." "would it seriously annoy you if i did make love to you some day?" he asked, lightly. instinct was whispering hurriedly to her: "here it is at last. do something about it, and do it quick!" she waited until her heart beat more regularly, then: "you couldn't annoy--make love--to a girl you really don't care for. that is very simple, isn't it?" "suppose i did care for you." she looked up at him with troubled eyes, then lowered them to the blossom from which her fingers were detaching petal after petal. "if you did really care, you wouldn't tell me, mr. desboro." "why not?" "because it would not be fair to me." a flush of anger--or she thought it was, brightened her cheeks. "this is nonsense," she said abruptly. "and i'll tell you another thing; i can't come here again. you know i can't. we talk foolishness--don't you know it? and there's another reason, anyway." "what reason?" "the _real_ reason," she said, clenching both hands. "you know what it is and so do i--and--and i'm tired of pretending that the truth isn't true." "what is the truth?" she had turned her back on him and was staring out of the windows into the mist. "the truth is," she answered deliberately, "that you and i can not be friends." "why?" "because we can't be! because--men are always men. there isn't any way for men and women to be friends. forgive me for saying it. but it is quite true. a business woman in your employment--can't forget that a real friendship with you is impossible. that is why, from the very beginning, i wanted it to be purely a matter of business between us. i didn't really wish to skate with you, or do anything of that kind with you. i'd rather not lunch with you; i--i had rather you drew the line--and let me draw it clearly, cleanly, and without mistake--as i draw it between myself and my employees. if you wish, i can continue to come here on that basis until my work is finished. otherwise, i shall not come again." her back was still toward him. "very well," he said, bluntly. she heard him rise and walk toward the door; sat listening without turning her head, already regretting what she had said. and now she became conscious that her honesty with herself and with him had been a mistake, entailing humiliation for her--the humiliation of letting him understand that she couldn't afford to care for him, and that she did already. she had thought of him first, and of herself last--had conceded a hopeless situation in order that her decision might not hurt his vanity. it had been a bad mistake. and now he might be thinking that she had tried to force him into an attitude toward herself which she could not expect, or--god knew what he might be thinking. dismayed and uncertain, she stood up nervously as he reëntered the room and came toward her, holding out his hand. "i'm going to town," he said pleasantly. "i won't bother you any more. remain; come and go as you like without further fear of my annoying you. the servants are properly instructed. they will be at your orders. i'm sorry--i meant to be more agreeable. good-bye, miss nevers." she laid her hand in his, lifelessly, then withdrew it. dumb, dreadfully confused, she looked up at him; then, as he turned coolly away, an inarticulate sound of protest escaped her lips. he halted and turned around. "it isn't fair--what you are doing--mr. desboro." "what else is there to do?" "why do you ask me? why must the burden of decision always rest with me?" "but my decision is that i had better go. i can't remain here without--annoying you." "why can't you remain here as my employer? why can't we enjoy matter-of-fact business relations? i ask no more than that--i want no more. i am afraid you think i do expect more--that i expect friendship. it is impossible, unsuitable--and i don't even wish for it----" "i do," he said. "how can we be friends, from a social standpoint? there is nothing to build on, no foundation--nothing for friendship to subsist on----" "could you and i meet anywhere in the world and become _less_ than friends?" he asked. "tell me honestly. it is impossible, and you and i both know it." and, as she made no reply: "friends--more than friends, possibly; never less. and you know it, and so do i," he said under his breath. she turned sharply toward the window and looked out across the foggy hills. "if that is what you believe, mr. desboro, perhaps you had better go." "do you send me?" "always the decision seems to lie with me. why do you not decide for yourself?" "i will; and for you, too, if you will let me relieve you of the burden." "i can carry my own burdens." her back was still toward him. after a moment she rested her head against the curtained embrasure, as though tired. he hesitated; there were good impulses in him, but he went over to her, and scarcely meaning to, put one arm lightly around her waist. she laid her hands over her face, standing so, golden head lowered and her heart so violent that she could scarcely breathe. "jacqueline." a scarcely perceptible movement of her head, in sign that she listened. "are we going to let anything frighten us?" he had not meant to say that, either. he was adrift, knew it, and meant to drop anchor in a moment. "tell me honestly," he added, "don't you want us to be friends?" she said, her hands still over her face: "i didn't know how much i wanted it. i don't see, even now, how it can be. your own friends are different. but i'll try--if you wish it." "i do wish it. why do you think my friends are so different from you? because some happen to be fashionable and wealthy and idle? besides, a man has many different kinds of friends----" she thought to herself: "but he never forgets to distinguish between them. and here it is at last--almost. and i--i do care for him! and here i am--like cynthia--asking myself to pardon him." she looked up at him out of her hands, a little pale, then down at his arm, resting loosely around her waist. "don't hold me so, please," she said, in a low voice. "of course not." but instead he merely took her slender hands between his own, which were not very steady, and looked her straight in the eyes. such men can do it, somehow. besides, he really meant to control himself and cast anchor in a moment or two. "will you trust me with your friendship?" he said. "i--seem to be doing it. i don't exactly understand what i am doing. would you answer me one question?" "if i can, jacqueline." "then, friendship _is_ possible between a man and a woman, isn't it?" she insisted wistfully. "i don't know." "what! why don't you know? it's merely a matter of mutual interest and respect, isn't it?" "i've heard so." "then isn't a friendship between us possible without anything threatening to spoil it? isn't it to be just a matter of enjoying together what interests each? isn't it? because i don't mind waiving social conditions that can't be helped, and conventions that we simply can't observe." "yes, you wonderful girl," he said under his breath, meaning to anchor at once. but he drifted on. "you know," she said, forcing a little laugh, "i _am_ rather wonderful, to be so honest with a man like you. there's so much about you that i don't care for." he laughed, enchanted, still retaining her hands between his own, the palms joined together, flat. "you're so wonderful," he said, "that you make the most wonderful masterpiece in the desboro collection look like a forgery." she strove to speak lightly again: "even the gilding on my hair is real. you didn't think so once, did you?" "you're all real. you are the most real thing i've ever seen in the world!" she tried to laugh: "you mustn't believe that i've never before been real when i've been with you. and i may not be real again, for a long time. make the most of this moment of expansive honesty, mr. desboro. i'll remember presently that you are an hereditary enemy." "have i ever acted that part?" "not toward me." he reddened: "toward whom?" "oh," she said, with sudden impatience, "do you suppose i have any illusions concerning the sort of man you are? but what do i care, as long as you are nice to me?" she laughed, more confidently. "men!" she repeated. "i know something about them! and, knowing them, also, i nevertheless mean to make a friend of one of them. do you think i'll succeed?" he smiled, then bent lightly and kissed her joined hands. "luncheon is served," came the emotionless voice of farris from the doorway. their hands fell apart; jacqueline blushed to her hair and gave desboro a lovely, abashed look. she need not have been disturbed. farris had seen such things before. * * * * * that evening, desboro went back to new york with her and took her to her own door in a taxicab. "are you quite sure you can't dine with me?" he asked again, as they lingered on her doorstep. "i could--but----" "but you won't!" one of her hands lay lightly on the knob of the partly open door, and she stood so, resting and looking down the dark street toward the distant glare of electricity where broadway crossed at right angles. "we have been together all day, mr. desboro. i'd rather not dine with you--yet." "are you going to dine all alone up there?" glancing aloft at the lighted windows above the dusky old shop. "yes. besides, you and i have wasted so much time to-day that i shall go down stairs to the office and do a little work after dinner. you see a girl always has to pay for her transgressions." "i'm terribly sorry," he said contritely. "don't work to-night!" "don't be sorry. i've really enjoyed to-day's laziness. only it mustn't be like this to-morrow. and anyway, i knew i'd have to make it up to-night." "i'm terribly sorry," he said again, almost tenderly. "but you mustn't be, mr. desboro. it was worth it----" he looked up, surprised, flushing with emotion; and the quick colour in her cheeks responded. they remained very still, and confused, and silent, as fire answered fire; suddenly aware how fast they had been drifting. she turned, nervously, pushed open the door, and entered the vestibule; he held the door ajar for her while she fitted her key with unsteady fingers. "so--thank you," she said, half turning around, "but i won't dine with you--to-night." "then, perhaps, to-morrow----" "don't come into town with me to-morrow, mr. desboro." "i'm coming in anyway." "why?" "there's an affair--a kind of a dance. there are always plenty of things to take me into town in the evenings." "is that why you came in to-night?" she knew she should not have said it. he hesitated, then, with a laugh: "i came in to town because it gave me an hour longer with you. are you going to send me away now?" and her folly was answered in kind. she said, confused and trying to smile: "you say things that you don't mean. evening, for us, must always mean 'good-night.'" "why, jacqueline?" "because. also, it is my hour of freedom. you wouldn't take that away from me, would you?" "what do you do in the evenings?" "sew, read, study, attend to the thousand wretched little details which concern my small household. and, sometimes, when i have wasted the day, i make it up at night. because, whether i have enjoyed it or not, this day _has_ been wasted." "but sometimes you dine out and go to the theatre and to dances and things?" "yes," she said gravely. "but you know there is no meeting ground there for us, don't you?" "couldn't you ask me to something?" "yes--i could. but you wouldn't care for the people. you know it. they are not like the people to whom you are accustomed. they would only bore you." "so do many people i know." "not in the same way. why do you ask me? you know it is better not." she added smilingly: "there is neither wealth nor fashion nor intellectual nor social distinction to be expected among my friends----" she hesitated, and added quietly: "you understand that i am not criticising them. i am merely explaining them to you. otherwise, i'd ask you to dinner with a few people--i can only have four at a time, my dining room is so small----" "ask me, jacqueline!" he insisted. she shook her head; but he continued to coax and argue until she had half promised. and now she stood, facing him irresolutely, conscious of the steady drift that was forcing her into uncharted channels with this persuasive pilot who seemed to know no more of what lay ahead of them than did she. but there was to be no common destination; she understood that. sooner or later she must turn back toward the harbour they had left so irresponsibly together, her brief voyage over, her last adventure with this man ended for all time. and now, as the burden of decision still seemed to rest upon her, she offered him her hand, saying good-night; and he took it once more and held it between both of his. instantly the impending constraint closed in upon them; his face became grave, hers serious, almost apprehensive. "you have--have made me very happy," he said. "do you know it, jacqueline?" "yes." a curious lassitude was invading her; she leaned sideways against the door frame, as though tired, and stood so, one hand abandoned to him, gazing into the lamp-lit street. "good-night, dear," he whispered. "good-night." she still gazed into the lamp-lit darkness beyond him, her hand limp in his; and he saw her blue eyes, heavy lidded and dreamy, and the strand of hair curling gold against her cheek. when he kissed her, she dropped her head, covering her face with her forearm, not otherwise stirring--as though the magic pageant of her fate which had been gathering for two weeks had begun to move at last, passing vision-like through her mind with a muffled uproar--sweeping on, on, brilliant, disarrayed, timed by the deafening beating of her heart. dully she realised that it was here at last--all that she had dreaded--if dread be partly made of hope! "are you crying?" he said, unsteadily. she lifted her face from her arm, like a dazed child awaking. "you darling," he whispered. eyes remote, she stood watching unseen things in the darkness beyond him. "must i go, jacqueline?" "yes." "you are very tired, aren't you?" "yes." "you won't sit up and work, will you?" "no." "will you go straight to bed?" she nodded slowly, yielding to him as he drew her into his arms. "to-morrow, then?" he asked under his breath. "yes." "and the next day, and the next, and next, and--always, jacqueline?" he demanded, almost fiercely. after a moment she slowly turned her head and looked at him. there was no answer, and no question in her gaze, only the still, expressionless clairvoyance of a soul that sees but does not heed. there was no misunderstanding in her eyes, nothing wistful, nothing afraid or hurt--nothing of doubt. what had happened to others in the world was happening now to her. she understood it; that was all--as though the millions of her sisters who had passed that way had left to her the dread legacy of familiarity with the smooth, wide path they had trodden since time began on earth. and here it was, at last! her own calmness surprised her. he detained her for another moment in a swift embrace; inert, unresponsive, she stood looking down at the crushed gardenia in his buttonhole, dully conscious of being bruised. then he let her go; her hand fell from his arm; she turned and faced the familiar stairs and mounted them. dinner waited for her; whether she ate or not, she could not afterward remember. about eleven o'clock, she rose wearily from the bed where she had been lying, and began to undress. * * * * * as for desboro, he had gone straight to his rooms very much excited and unbalanced by the emotions of the moment. he was a man not easily moved to genuine expression. having acquired certain sorts of worldly wisdom in a career more or less erratic, experience had left him unconvinced and even cynical--or he thought it had. but now, for the moment, all that lay latent in him of that impetuous and heedless vigour which may become strength, if properly directed, was awakening. every recurring memory of her had already begun to tamper with his self-control; for the emotions of the moments just ended had been confusingly real; and, whatever they were arousing in him, now clamoured for some sort of expression. the very thought of her, now, began to act on him like some freshening perfume alternately stimulating and enervating. he made the effort again and again, and could not put her from his mind, could not forget the lowered head and the slender, yielding grace of her, and her fragrance, and her silence. dressing in his rooms, growing more restless every moment, he began to walk the floor like some tormented thing that seeks alleviation in purposeless activity. he said, half aloud, to himself: "i can't go on this way. this is damn foolish! i've got to find out where it's landing me. it will land her, too--somewhere. i'd better keep away from her, go off somewhere, get out, stop seeing her, stop remembering her!--if she's what i think she is." scowling, he went to the window and jerked aside the curtain. across the street, the olympian club sparkled with electricity. "good lord!" he muttered. "what a tempest in a teapot! what the devil's the matter with me? can't i kiss a girl now and then and keep my senses?" it seemed that he couldn't, in the present instance, for after he had bitten the amber stem of his pipe clean through, he threw the bowl into the fireplace. it had taken him two years to colour it. "idiot!" he said aloud. "what are you sorry about? you know damn well there are only two kinds of women, and it's up to them what sort they are--not up to any man who ever lived! what are you sorry for? for her?" he stared across the street at the olympian club. he was expected there. "if she only wasn't so--so expressionless and--silent about it. it's like killing something that lets you do it. that's a crazy thing to think of!" suddenly he found he had a fight on his hands. he had never had one like it; didn't know exactly what to do, except to repeat over and over: "it isn't square--it isn't square. she knows it, too. she's frightened. she knows it isn't square. there's nothing ahead but hell to pay! she knows it. and she doesn't defend herself. there _are_ only two kinds of women. it _is_ up to them, too. but it's like killing something that lets you kill it. good god! what a damn fool i am!" later he repeated it. later still he found himself leaning over his desk, groping blindly about for a pen, and cursing breathlessly as though he had not a moment to lose. he wrote: "dear little jacqueline: i'm not going to see you again. where the fool courage to write this comes from i don't know. but you will now learn that there is nothing to me after all--not even enough of positive and negative to make me worth forgiveness. and so i let it go at that. good-bye. "desboro." in the same half blind, half dazed way, cursing something all the while, he managed to seal, stamp, and direct the letter, and get himself out of the house with it. a club servant at the olympian mailed it; he continued on his way to the dining room, and stumbled into a chair between cairns and reggie ledyard, who were feasting noisily and unwisely with stuyvesant van alstyne; and the racket and confusion seemed to help him. he was conscious of laughing and talking and drinking a great deal--conscious, too, of the annoyance of other men at other tables. finally, one of the governors came over and very pleasantly told him to shut up or go elsewhere. they all went, with cheerfulness unimpaired by gubernatorial admonition. there was a large dinner dance for debutantes at the barkley's. this function they deigned to decorate with their presence for a while, cairns and van alstyne behaving well enough, considering the manners of the times; desboro, a dull fire smouldering in his veins, wandered about, haunted by a ghost whose soft breath touched his cheek. his manners were good when he chose; they were always faultless when he was drunk. perfectly steady on his legs, very pale, and a trifle over polite, the drunker he was the more courtly he invariably became, measuredly graceful, in speech reticent. only his pallor and the lines about his mouth betrayed the tension. later, one or two men familiar with the house strolled into the distant billiard room and discovered him standing there looking blankly into space. ledyard, bad tempered when he had dined too well, announced that he had had enough of that debutante party: "look at 'em," he said to desboro. "horrible little fluffs just out of the incubator--with their silly brains and rotten manners, and their 'bunny hugs' and 'turkey trots' and 'dying chickens,' and the champagne flaming in their baby cheeks! why, their mothers are letting 'em dance like _filles de brasserie_! men used to know where to go for that sort of thing----" cairns, balancing gravely on heels and toes, waved one hand comprehensively. "problem was," he said, "how to keep the young at home. bunny hug solves it. see? all the comforts of the tenderloin at home. tha's 'splaination." "come on to supper," said ledyard. "your blue girl will be there, jim." "by all means," said desboro courteously. "my car is entirely at your disposal." but he made no movement. "come to supper," insisted ledyard. "commer supper," echoed cairns gravely. "whazzer mazzer? commer supper!" "nothing," said desboro, "could give me greater pleasure." he rose, bowed courteously to ledyard, included cairns in a graceful salute, and reseated himself. ledyard lost his temper and began to shout at him. "i beg your pardon for my inexcusable absent-mindedness," said desboro, getting slowly onto his feet once more. with graceful precision, he made his way to his hostess and took faultless leave of her, cairns and ledyard attempting vainly to imitate his poise, urbanity and self-possession. the icy air of the street did cairns good and aided ledyard. so they got themselves out across the sidewalk and ultimately into desboro's town car, which was waiting, as usual. "little bunny-hugging, bread-and-butter beasts," muttered ledyard to himself. "lord! don't they want us to draw the line between them and the sort we're to meet at supper?" "they're jus' fools," said cairns. "no harm in 'em! and i'm not going to supper. i'll take you there an' go'me!" "what's the matter with _you_?" demanded ledyard. "no--i'm through, that's all. you 'sult nice li'l debutantes. rotten bad taste. nice li'l debbys." "come on, you jinx!" "that girl in blue. will she be there--the one who does the lute solo in 'the maid of shiraz'?" "yes, but she's crazy about desboro." "i waive all pretension to the charming condescension of that very lovely young lady, and cheerfully concede your claims," said desboro, raising his hat and wrecking it against the roof of the automobile. "as you wish, dear friend. but why so suddenly the solitary recluse?" "a personal reason, i assure you." "i see," remarked ledyard. "and what may be the name and quality of this personal reason? and is she a blonde?" desboro shrugged his polite impatience. but when the others got out at the santa regina he followed. cairns was inclined to shed a few tears over ledyard's insults to the "debbys." "sure," said the latter, soothingly. "the brimming beaker for you, dear friend, and it will pass away. hark! i hear the fairy feetsteps of a houri!" as they landed from the elevator and encountered a group of laughing, bright-eyed young girls in the hallway, seeking the private supper room. one of them was certainly the girl in blue. the others appeared to desboro as merely numerous and, later, exceedingly noisy. but noise and movement seemed to make endurable the dull pain thudding ceaselessly in his heart. music and roses, flushed faces, the ringing harmony of crystal and silver, and the gaiety _à diable_ of the girl beside him would ease it--_must_ ease it, somehow. for it had to be first eased, then killed. there was no sense, no reason, no excuse for going on this way--enduring such a hurt. and just at present the remedy seemed to lie in a gay uproar and many brilliant lights, and in the tinted lips of the girl beside him, babbling nonsense while her dark eyes laughed, promising all they laughed at--if he cared to ask an answer to the riddle. but he never asked it. later somebody offered a toast to desboro, but when they looked around for him in the uproar, glasses aloft, he had disappeared. chapter vii there was no acknowledgment of his note to jacqueline the day following; none the next day, or the next. it was only when telephoning to silverwood he learned by chance from mrs. quant that jacqueline had been at the house every day as usual, busy in the armoury with the work that took her there. he had fully expected that she would send a substitute; had assumed that she would not wish to return and take the chance of his being there. what she had thought of his note to her, what she might be thinking of him, had made him so miserable that even the unwisdom of excess could not dull the pain of it or subdue the restless passion ever menacing him with a shameful repudiation of the words he had written her. he had fought one weakness with another, and there was no strength in him now. he knew it, but stood on guard. for he knew, too, in his heart that he had nothing to offer her except a sentiment which, in the history of man, has never been anything except temporary. with it, of course, and part of it, was a gentler inclination--love, probably, of one sort or another--with it went also genuine admiration and intellectual interest, and sympathy, and tenderness of some unanalysed kind. but he knew that he had no intention of marrying anybody--never, at least, of marrying out of his own social environment. that he understood fully; had wit and honesty enough to admit to himself. and so there was no way--nothing, now, anyway. he had settled that definitely--settled it for her and for himself, unrequested; settled, in fact, everything except how to escape the aftermath of restless pain for which there seemed to be no remedy so far--not even the professional services of old doctor time. however, it had been only three days--three sedative pills from the old gentleman's inexhaustible supply. it is the regularity of taking it, more than the medicine itself which cures. on the fourth day, he emerged from the unhappy seclusion of his rooms and ventured into the olympian club, where he deliberately attempted to anæsthetise his badly battered senses. but he couldn't. cairns found him there, sitting alone in the library--it was not an intellectual club--and saw what desboro had been doing to himself by the white tensity of his features. "look here," he said. "if there's really anything the matter with you, why don't you go into business and forget it? you can't fool real trouble with what you buy in bottles!" "what business shall i go into?" asked desboro, unoffended. "stocks or literature. all the ginks who can't do anything else go into stocks or literature." desboro waved away the alternatives with amiable urbanity. "then run for your farms and grow things for market. you could do that, couldn't you? even a dutchess county millionaire can run a milk-route." "i don't desire to grow milk," explained desboro pleasantly. cairns regarded him with a grin of anxiety. "you're jingled," he concluded. "that is, you are as jingled as _you_ ever get. why?" "no reason, thanks." "it isn't some girl, is it? _you_ never take them seriously. all the same, _is_ it?" desboro smiled: "do you think it's likely, dear friend?" "no, i don't. but whatever you're worrying about isn't improving your personal beauty. since you hit this hamlet you've been on one continuous tootlebat. why don't you go back to westchester and hoe potatoes?" "one doesn't hoe them in january, you know," said desboro, always deprecatingly polite. "please cease to trouble yourself about me. i'm quite all right, thanks." "you've resigned from a lot of clubs and things, i hear." "admirably reported, dear friend, and perfectly true." "why?" "motives of economy; nothing more serious, john." "you're not in any financial trouble, are you?" "i--ah--possibly have been a trifle indiscreet in my expenditures--a little unfortunate in my investments, perhaps. you are very kind to ask me. it may afford you some gratification to learn that eventually i anticipate an agreeable return to affluence." cairns laughed: "you _are_ jingled all right," he said. "i recognise the urbane symptoms of your desboro ancestors." "you flatter them and me," said desboro, bowing. "they were the limit, and i'm nearing it." "pardon! you have arrived, sir," said cairns, returning the salute with exaggerated gravity. they parted with pomp and circumstance, desboro to saunter back to his rooms and lie limply in his arm chair beside an empty fireplace until sleep overcame him where he sat. and he looked very young, and white, and somewhat battered as he lay there in the fading winter daylight. the ringing racket of his telephone bell aroused him in total darkness. still confused by sleep, he groped for the electric light switch, could not find it; but presently his unsteady hand encountered the telephone, and he unhooked the receiver and set it to his ear. at first his imagination lied to him, and he thought it was jacqueline's distant voice, though he knew in his heart it could not be. "jim," repeated the voice, "what are you doing this evening?" "nothing. i was asleep. it's you, elena, isn't it?" "of course. to whom are you in the habit of talking every evening at seven by special request?" "i didn't know it was seven." "that's flattering to me. listen, jim, i'm coming to see you." "i've told you a thousand times it can't be done----" "do you mean that no woman has ever been in your apartments?" "you can't come," he repeated obstinately. "if you do, it ends my interest in your various sorrows. i mean it, elena." she laughed: "i only wanted to be sure that you are still afraid of caring too much for me. somebody told me a very horrid thing about you. it was probably a lie--as long as you are still afraid of me." he closed his eyes patiently and leaned his elbow on the desk, waiting for her to go on or to ring off. "was it a lie, jim?" "was what a lie?" "that you are entertaining a very pretty girl at silverwood house--unchaperoned?" "do you think it likely?" "why not? they say you've done it before." "nobody has been there except on business. and, after all, you know, it doesn't----" "yes, it does concern me! oh, jim, _are_ you being horrid--when i'm so unhappy and helpless----" "be careful what you say over the wire!" "i don't care who hears me. if you mean anybody in your apartment house, they know my voice already. i want to see you, jim----" "no!" "you said you'd be friendly to me!" "i am--by keeping away from you." "do you mean that i am never to see you at all?" "you know well enough that it isn't best, under the circumstances." "you could come here if you only would. he is not in town to-night----" "confound it, do you think i'm that sort?" "i think you are very absurd and not very consistent, considering the things that they say you are not too fastidious to do----" "will you please be a little more reticent over the telephone!" "then take me out to dinner somewhere, where we _can_ talk!" "i'm sorry, but it won't do." "i thought you'd say that. very well, then, listen: they are singing _ariane_ to-night; it's an : curtain. i'll be in the barkley's box very early; nobody else will arrive before nine. will you come to me at eight?" "yes, i'll do that for a moment." "thank you, dear. i just want to be happy for a few minutes. you don't mind, do you?" "it will be very jolly," he said vaguely. * * * * * the galleries were already filling, but there were very few people in the orchestra and nobody at all to be seen in the boxes when desboro paused before a door marked with the barkleys' name. after a second's hesitation, he turned the knob, stepped in, and found mrs. clydesdale already seated in the tiny foyer, under the hanging shadow of her ermine coat--a charming and youthful figure, eyes and cheeks bright with trepidation and excitement. "what the dickens do you suppose prompted mrs. hammerton to arrive at such an hour?" she said, extending her hand to desboro. "that very wicked old cat got out of somebody's car just as i did, and i could feel her beady eyes boring into my back all the way up the staircase." "do you mean aunt hannah?" "yes, i do! what does she mean by coming here at such an unearthly hour? don't go out into the box, jim. she can see you from the orchestra. i'll wager that her opera glasses have been sweeping the house every second since she saw me!" "if she sees me she won't talk," he said, coolly. "i'm one of her exempts----" "wait, jim! what are you going to do?" "let her see us both. i tell you she never talks about me, or anybody with whom i happen to be. it's the best way to avoid gossip, elena----" "i don't want to risk it, jim! please don't! i'm in abject terror of that woman----" but desboro had already stepped out to the box, and his keen, amused eyes very soon discovered the levelled glasses of mrs. hammerton. "come here, elena!" "had i better?" "certainly. i want her to see you. that's it! that's enough. she won't say a word about you now." mrs. clydesdale shrank back into the dim, rosy half-light of the box; desboro looked down at mrs. hammerton and smiled; then rejoined his flushed companion. "don't worry; aunt hannah's fangs are extracted for this evening. elena, you are looking pretty enough to endanger the record of an aged saint! there goes that meaningless overture! what is it you have to say to me?" "why are you so brusque with me, jim?" "i'm not. but i don't want the barkleys and their guests to find us here together." "betty knows i care for you----" "oh, lord!" he said impatiently. "you always did care for anything that is just out of reach when you stand on tip-toe. you always were that way, elena. when we were free to see each other you would have none of me." she was looking down while he spoke, smoothing one silken knee with her white-gloved hand. after a moment, she lifted her head. to his surprise, her eyes were brilliant with unshed tears. "you don't love me any more, do you, jim?" "i--i have--it is about as it always will be with me. circumstances have altered things." "_is_ that all?" he thought for a moment, and his eyes grew sombre. "jim! are you going to marry somebody?" she said suddenly. he looked up with a startled laugh, not entirely agreeable. "marry? no." "is there any girl you want to marry?" "no. god forbid!" "why do you say that? is it because of what you know about marriages--like mine?" "probably. and then some." "there are happy ones." "yes, i've read about them." "but there really are, jim." "mention one." she mentioned several among people both knew. he smiled. then she said, wearily: "there are plenty of decent people and decent marriages in the world. the people we play with are no good. it's only restlessness, idleness, and discontent that kills everything among people of our sort. i know i'm that way, too. but i don't believe i would be if i had married you." "you are mistaken." "why? don't you believe any marriage can be happy?" "elena, have you ever heard of a honeymoon that lasts? do you know how long any two people can endure each other without merciful assistance from a third? don't you know that, sooner or later, any two people ever born are certain to talk each other out--pump each other dry--love each other to satiation--and ultimately recoil, each into the mysterious seclusion of its own individuality, from whence it emerged temporarily in order that the human race might not perish from the earth!" "what miserable lesson have you learned to teach you such a creed?" she asked. "i tell you the world is full of happy marriages--full of honoured husbands and beloved wives, and children worshipped and adored----" "children, yes, they come the nearest to making the conventional contract endurable. i wish to god you had some!" "jim!" he said, almost savagely: "if you _can_, and _don't_, you'll make a hell for yourself with any man, sooner or later--mark my words! and it isn't worth while to enact the hypocrisy of marriage with nothing more than legal license in view! why bother with priest or clergyman? that contract won't last. and it's less trouble not to make one at all than to go west and break one." "do you know you are talking very horridly to me?" she said. "yes--i suppose i am. i've got to be going now, anyway----" as he spoke, the glittering house became dark; the curtain opened upon a dim scene of shadowy splendour, into which, exquisite and bewitchingly immortal as any goddess in the heavenly galaxy, glided farrar, in the shimmering panoply of _ariane_. [illustration: "desboro stood staring down at the magic picture. mrs. clydesdale, too, had risen"] desboro stood staring down at the magic picture. mrs. clydesdale, too, had risen. below them the beauty of farrar's matchless voice possessed the vast obscurity, searching the darkness like a ray of crystal light. one by one the stone crypts opened, disclosing their tinted waterfalls of jewels. "i've got to go," he whispered. "your people will be arriving." they moved silently to the door. "jim?" "yes." "there _is_ no other woman; is there?" "not now." "oh! _was_ there?" "there might have been." "you mean--to--to marry?" "no." "then--i suppose i can't help _that_ sort. men are--that way. was it that girl at silverwood?" "no," he said, lying. "oh! who was that girl at silverwood?" "a business acquaintance." "i hear she is unusually pretty." "yes, very." "you found it necessary to be at silverwood when she was there?" "once or twice." "it is no longer necessary?" "no longer necessary." "so you won't see her again?" "no." "i'm glad. it hurt, jim. some people i know at willow lake saw her. they said she was unusually beautiful." "elena," he said, "will you kindly come to your senses? i'm not going to marry anybody; but that doesn't concern you. i advise you to attend to your own life's business--which is to have children and bring them up more decently than the present generation are being brought up in this fool of a town! if nothing else will make your husband endurable, children will come nearest to it----" "jim--please----" "for heaven's sake, don't cry!" he whispered. "i--won't. dear, don't you realise that you are all i have in the world----" "we haven't got each other, i tell you, and we're not going to have each other----" "yes--but don't take anybody else--marry anyone----" "i won't. control yourself!" "promise me!" "yes, i do. go forward into the box; those people will be arriving----" "do you promise?" "yes, if you want me to. go forward; nobody can see you in the dark. good-bye----" "good-bye, dear. and thank you----" he coolly ignored the upturned face; she caught his hand in a flash of impatient passion, then, with a whispered word, turned and went forward, mistress of herself again, to sit there for an hour or two and witness a mystery that has haunted the human heart for aeons, unexpressed. on the fifth day, desboro remained indoors and wrote business letters until late in the afternoon. toward evening he telephoned to mrs. quant to find out whether everything was being done to render miss nevers's daily sojourn at silverwood house agreeable. he learned that everything was being done, that the young lady in question had just departed for new york, and, furthermore, that she had inquired of mrs. quant whether mr. desboro was not coming soon to silverwood, desiring to be informed because she had one or two business matters on which to consult him. "hold the wire," he said, and left it for a few moments' swift pacing to and fro. then he came again to the telephone. "ask miss nevers to be kind enough to write me about the matters she has in mind, because i can not leave town at present." "yes, mr. james. are you well, sir?" "perfectly." "thank you, sir. if you feel chilly like at night----" "but i don't. good-night!" he dressed, dined at the club, and remained there reading the papers until he had enough of their complacent ignorance. then he went home, still doggedly refusing to attempt to analyse the indirect message from jacqueline. if it had any significance other than its apparent purport, he grimly refused to consider even such a possibility. and, deadly weary at last, he fell asleep and slept until late in the morning. it was snowing hard when he awoke. his ablutions ended, he rang for breakfast. on his tray was a note from the girl in blue; he read it and dropped it into his pocket, remembering the fireplace sacrifice of a few days ago at silverwood, and realising that such frivolous souvenirs were beginning to accumulate again. he breakfasted without interest, unfolded the morning paper, glanced over the headlines, and saw that there was a little more murder, divorce, and boot-licking than he cared for, laid it aside, and lighted a cigarette. as he dropped the burnt match on the tray, he noticed under it another letter which he had overlooked among the bills and advertisements composing the bulk of the morning mail. for a little while he held the envelope in his hand, not looking at it; then, with careless deliberation, he cut it open, using a paper knife, and drew out the letter. as he slowly opened it his hands shook in spite of him. "my dear mr. desboro: i telephoned mrs. quant last night and learned that she had given you my message over the wire only a few minutes before; and that you had sent word you could not come to silverwood, but that i might communicate with you by letter. "this is what i had to say to you: there is a suit of armour here which is in a very bad condition. it will be expensive to have it repaired by a good armourer. did you wish to include it in the sale as it is, or have it repaired? it is no. in the old list; no. in my catalogue, now almost completed and ready for the printer. it is that rather unusual suit of black plate-mail, called 'brigandine armour,' a xv century suit from aragon; and the quilted under-jacket has been ruined by moths and has gone completely to pieces. it is a very valuable suit. "would you tell me what to do? "very sincerely yours, "jacqueline nevers." an hour later he still sat there with the letter in his hand, gazing at nothing. and until the telephone beside him rang twice he had not stirred. "who is it?" he asked finally. at the reply his face altered subtly, and he bowed his head to listen. the distant voice spoke again, and: "silverwood?" he asked. "yes, here's your party." an interval filled with a vague whirring, then: "mr. desboro?" "yes. good-morning, miss nevers." "good-morning. have you a note from me?" "yes, thank you. it came this morning. i was just reading it--again." "i thought i ought to consult you in such a matter." "certainly." "then--what are your wishes?" "my wishes are yours." "i cannot decide such a matter. it will be very expensive----" "if it is worth the cost to you, it is worth it to me." "i don't know what you mean. the burden of decision lies with you this time, doesn't it?" "with us both. unless you wish me to assume it." "but it _is_ yours to assume!" "if you wish, then. but i may ask your opinion, may i not?" there was a silence, then: "whatever you do i approve. i have no--opinion." "you do not approve _all_ i do." the rejoinder came faintly: "how do you know?" "i--wrote to you. do you approve my writing to you?" "yes. if _you_ do." "and do you approve of what i wrote?" "not of _all_ that you wrote." "i wrote that i would not see you again." "yes." "do you think that is best?" "i--do not think about it." he said: "that, also, is best. don't think of it at all. and about the armour, do exactly what you would do if you were in my place. good-bye." "mr. desboro----" "yes." "could you wait a moment? i am trying to think----" "don't try, jacqueline!" "please wait--for me!" there was a silence; a tiny spot of blood reddened his bitten lip before she spoke again; then: "i wished to tell you something. i knew why you wrote. is it right for me to tell you that i understood you? i wanted to write and say so, and--say something else--about how i felt--but it seems i can't. only--we could be friends more easily now--if you wish." "you have not understood!" he said. "yes, i have, mr. desboro. but we _can_ be friends?" "could you be _mine_, after what i have written?" "i thought i couldn't, at first. but that day was a--long one. and when a girl is much alone she becomes very honest with herself. and it all was entirely new to me. i didn't know what i ought to have done about it--only what i wished to do." "and--what is that, jacqueline?" "make things as they were--before----" "before i wrote?" "yes." "all up to that time you wish might be again as it was? _all?_" no answer. "all?" he repeated. "don't ask me. i don't know--i don't know what i think any more." "how deeply do you suppose i feel about it?" "i did not know you felt anything very deeply." there was a long pause, then her voice again: "you know--you need not be afraid. i did not know enough to be until you wrote. but i understand, now." he said: "it will be all right, then. it will be quite all right, jacqueline. i'll come up on the noon train." * * * * * his car met him at the station. the snow had melted and the wet macadam road glittered under a declining winter sun, as the car rolled smoothly away through the still valleys of westchester. mrs. quant, in best bib and tucker and lilac ribbons, welcomed him, and almost wept at his pallor; but he shrugged impatiently and sprang up the low steps. here the necessity for self-control stopped him short on his way to the armoury. he turned to mrs. quant with an effort: "is everything all right?" "no, mr. james. phibby broke a cup and saucer saturday, and there is new kittens in the laundry--which makes nine cats----" "oh, all right! miss nevers is here?" "yes, sir--in the liberry--which ain't been dusted right by that phibby minx----" "tell phoebe to dust it!" he said sternly. "do you suppose miss nevers cares to handle dirty books!" his restless glance fell on the clock: "tell farris i'm here and that miss nevers and i will lunch as soon as it's served. and say to miss nevers that i'll be down in a few minutes." he turned and mounted the stairs to his room, and found it full of white, clove-scented carnations. mrs. quant came panting after him: "miss nevers, she cut them in the greenhouse, and told me to put 'em in your room, sayin' as how clove pinks is sanitary. would you--would you try a few m-m-magic drops, mr. james, sir? miss nevers takes 'em regular." "oh, lord!" he exclaimed, laughing in sheer exuberance of spirits. "i'll swallow anything you like, only hurry!" she dosed him with great content, he, both hands in soap-suds, turning his head to receive the potion. and at last, ablutions finished, he ran down the stairs, checked himself, and managed to stroll leisurely through the hall and into the library. she was writing; looked up, suddenly pale under her golden crown of hair; and the red lips quivered, but her eyes were steady. she bent her head again, both hands abandoned to him, sitting in silence while his lips rested against her fingers. "is all well with you, jacqueline?" "yes. and with you?" "all is well with me. i missed you--if you know what that really means." "did you?" "yes. won't you even look at me?" "in a moment. do you see all these piles of manuscript? all that is your new catalogue--and mine," she added, with a faint smile; but her head remained averted. "you wonderful girl!" he said softly. "you wonderful girl!" "thank you. it was a labor of--pleasure." colour stole to the tips of her ears. "i have worked--worked--every minute since----" "yes." "really, i have--every minute. but somehow, it didn't seem to tire me. to-day--now--i begin to feel a little tired." she rested her cheek on one hand, still looking away from him. "i took a peep into the porcelain and jade rooms," she said, "just a glance over what lies before me. mrs. quant very kindly gave me the keys. did you mind?" "do i mind anything that it pleases you to do? what did you find in the jade room?" she smiled: "jadeite, of course; and lapis and crystals--the usual." "any good ones?" "some are miracles. i don't really know, yet; i gave just one swift glance and fled--because you see i haven't finished in the armoury, and i ought not to permit myself the pleasures of curiosity." "the pleasures of curiosity and of anticipation are the only real ones. sages have said it." she shook her head. "isn't it true?" he insisted. she looked up at him at last, frank-eyed but flushed: [illustration: "'which is the real pleasure?' she asked"] "which is the real pleasure," she asked, "seeing each other, or anticipating the--the resumption of the entente cordial?" "you've smashed the sages and their philosophy," he nodded, studying the exquisite, upturned features unsmilingly. "to be with you is the greater--content. it's been a long time, hasn't it?" she nodded thoughtfully: "five days and a half." "you--counted them, too?" "yes." this wouldn't do. he rose and walked over to the fire, which needed a log or two; she turned and looked after him with little expression in her face except that the blue of her eyes had deepened to a lilac tint, and the flush on her cheeks still remained. "you know," she said, "i didn't mean to take you from any business in new york--or pleasures----" he shuddered slightly. "did i?" she asked. "no." "i only wished you to come--when you had time----" "i know, jacqueline. don't show me your soul in every word you utter." "what?" he turned on his heel and came back to her, and she shrank a little, not knowing why; but he came no nearer than her desk. [illustration: "'the thing to do,' he said ... 'is for us both to keep very busy'"] "the thing to do," he said, speaking with forced animation and at random, "is for us both to keep very busy. i think i'll go into farming--raise some dinky thing or other--that's what i'll do. i'll go in for the country squire business--that's what i'll do. and i'll have my neighbours in. i'm never here long enough to ask 'em. they're a funny lot; they're all right, though--deadly respectable. i'll give a few parties--ask some people from town, too. betty barkley could run the conventional end of it. and you'd come floating in with other unattached girls----" "you want _me_!" he said, astonished: "well, why on earth do you suppose i'm taking the trouble to ask the others?" "you want _me_--to come--where your friends----" "don't you care to?" "i--don't know." the surprise of it still widened her eyes and parted her lips a little. she looked up at him, perplexed, encountered something in his eyes which made her cheeks redden again. "what would they think?" she asked. "is there anything to think?" "n-no. but they don't know who i am. and i have nobody to vouch for me." "you ought to have a companion." "i don't want any----" "of course; but you ought to have one. can you afford one?" "i don't know. i don't know what they--they cost----" "let me fix that up," he said, with animation. "let me think it out. i know a lot of people--i know some indigent and respectable old terrors who ought to fill the bill and hold their tongues as long as their salary is paid----" "oh, please don't, mr. desboro!" he seated himself on the arm of her chair: "jacqueline, dear, it's only for your sake----" "but i _did_ understand your letter!" "i know--i know. i just want to see you with other people. i just want to have them see you----" "but i don't need a chaperon. business women are understood, aren't they? even women whom you know go in for house decoration, and cigarette manufacturing, and tea rooms, and hats and gowns." "but they were socially known before they went in for these things. it's the way of the world, jacqueline--nothing but suspicion when intelligence and beauty step forward from the ranks. and what do you suppose would happen if a man of my sort attempts to vouch for any woman?" "then don't--please don't try! i don't care for it--truly i don't. it was nice of you to wish it, mr. desboro, but--i'd rather be just what i am and--your friend." "it can't be," he said, under his breath. but she heard him, looked up dismayed, and remained mute, crimsoning to the temples. "this oughtn't to go on," he said, doggedly. she said: "you have not understood me. i am different from you. you are not to blame for thinking that we are alike at heart; but, nevertheless, it is a mistake. i can be what i will--not what i once seemed to be--for a moment--with you--" her head sank lower and remained bowed; and he saw her slender hands tightening on the arm of the chair. "i--i've got to be honest," she said under her breath. "i've got to be--in every way. i know it perfectly well, mr. desboro. men seem to be different--i don't know why. but they seem to be, usually. and all i want is to remain friends with you--and to remember that we are friends when i am at work somewhere. i just want to be what i am, a business woman with sufficient character and intelligence to be your friend quietly--not even for one evening in competition with women belonging to a different life--women with wit and beauty and charm and savoir faire----" "jacqueline!" he broke out impulsively. "i want you to be my guest here. won't you let me arrange with some old gorgon to chaperon you? i can do it! and with the gorgon's head on your moral shield you can silence anybody!" he began to laugh; she sat twisting her fingers on her lap and looking up at him in a lovely, distressed sort of way, so adorably perplexed and yet so pliable, so soft and so apprehensive, that his laughter died on his lips, and he sat looking down at her in silence. after a while he spoke again, almost mechanically: "i'm trying to think how we can best be on equal terms, jacqueline. that is all. after your work is done here, i want to see you here and elsewhere--i want you to come back at intervals, as my guest. other people will ask you. other people must be here, too, when you are. i know some who will accept you on your merits--if you are properly chaperoned. that is all i am thinking about. it's fairer to you." but even to himself his motive was not clear--only the rather confused idea persisted that women in his own world knew how to take care of themselves, whatever they chose to do about it--that jacqueline would stand a fairer chance with herself, and with him, whatever his intentions might really be. it would be a squarer deal, that was all. she sat thinking, one slim forefinger crook'd under her chin; and he saw her blue eyes deep in thought, and the errant lock curling against her cheek. then she raised her head and looked at him: "do you think it best?" "yes--you adorable little thing!" she managed to sustain his gaze: "could you find a lady gorgon?" "i'm sure i can. shall i?" "yes." a moment later farris announced luncheon. a swarm of cats greeted them at the door, purring and waiving multi-coloured tails, and escorted them to the table, from whence they knew came the delectable things calculated to satisfy the inner cat. chapter viii the countryside adjacent to silverwood was eminently and self-consciously respectable. the fat, substantial estates still belonged to families whose forefathers had first taken title to them. there were, of course, a number of "colonial" houses, also a "colonial" inn, the desboro arms, built to look as genuine as possible, although only two years old, steam heated, and electric lighted. but things "colonial" were the traditional capital of silverwood, and its thrifty and respectable inhabitants meant to maintain the "atmosphere." to that end they had solemnly subscribed a very small sum for an inn sign to swing in front of the desboro arms; the wheelwright painted it; somebody fired a shotgunful of antiquity into it, and american weather was rapidly doing the rest, with a gratifying result which no degenerate european weather could have accomplished in half a century of rain and sunshine. the majority of the mansions in silverwood township were as inoffensively commonplace as the desboro house. few pre-revolutionary structures survived; the british had burned the countryside from major lockwood's mansion at pound ridge all the way to bedford village and across to the connecticut line. with few exceptions, silverwood houses had shared the common fate when tarleton and delancy galloped amuck among the westchester hills; but here and there some sad old mansion still remained and was reverently cherished, as was also the graveyard, straggling up the hill, set with odd old headstones, upon which most remarkable cherubim smirked under a gladly permitted accumulation of lichen. age, thrift, substance, respectability--these were the ideals of silverwood; and desboro and his doings would never have been tolerated there had it not been that a forbear of his, a certain dissolute half-pay captain, had founded the community in . this sacred colonial fact had been desboro's social salvation, for which, however, he did not seem to care very much. good women continued to be acidly civil to him on this account, and also because silverwood house and its estates could no more be dropped from the revered galaxy of the county than could a star be cast out of their country's flag for frivolous behavior. so worthy men endured him, and irreproachable women grieved for him, although it was rumoured that he gave parties now and then which real actresses had actually attended. also, though he always maintained the desboro pew in church, he never decorated it with his person. nor could the countryside count on him socially, except at eccentric intervals when his careless, graceful presence made the westchester gaiety seem rather stiff and pallid, and gave the thin, sour claret an unwonted edge. and another and radical incompatibility; the desboros were the only family of cavalier descent in the township. and deep in the hearts of silverwood folk the desboros had ever seemed a godless race. now, there had been already some gossip among the westchester hills concerning recent doings at silverwood house. even when it became known that the pretty girl who sped to and fro in desboro's limousine, between house and station, was a celebrated art expert, and was engaged in cataloguing the famous desboro collection, god-fearing people asked each other why desboro should find it necessary to meet her at the station in the morning, and escort her back in the evening; and whether it were actually obligatory for him to be present while the cataloguing was in progress. westchester womanhood was beginning to look wan and worried; substantial gentlemen gazed inquiringly at each other over the evening chess-board; several flippant young men almost winked at each other. but these latter had been accustomed to new york, and were always under suspicion in their own families. therefore, it was with relief and surprise that silverwood began to observe desboro in furs, driving a rakish runabout, and careering about westchester with vail, his head farmer, seated beside him, evidently intent on committing future agriculture--palpably planning for two grass-blades where only one, or a mullein, had hitherto flourished within the memory of living man. fertiliser in large loads was driven into the fallow fields of the desboros; brush and hedges and fences were being put in order. people beheld these radical preliminaries during afternoon drives in their automobiles; local tradesmen reported purchases of chemicals for soil enriching, and the sale of all sorts of farm utensils to desboro's agent. at the country club all this was gravely discussed; patriarchs mentioned it over their checkers; maidens at bowls or squash or billiards listened to the exciting tale, wide-eyed; hockey, ski, or skating parties gossiped recklessly about it. the conclusion was that desboro had already sowed his wilder oats; and the worthy community stood watching for the prodigal's return, intending to meet him while yet he was far off. he dropped in at the country club one day, causing a little less flutter than a hawk in a hen-yard. within a week he had drifted casually into the drawing-rooms of almost all his father's old friends for a cup of tea or an informal chat--or for nothing in particular except to saunter into his proper place among them with all of the desboro grace and amiable insouciance which they had learned to tolerate but never entirely to approve or understand. it was not quite so casually that he stopped at the hammerton's. and he was given tea and buns by mrs. hammerton, perfectly unsuspicious of his motives. her husband came rambling in from the hothouses, presently, where he spent most of his serious life in pinching back roses and chrysanthemums; and he extended to desboro a large, flat and placid hand. "aunt hannah and daisy are out--somewhere--" he explained vaguely. "you must have passed them on the way." "yes, i saw daisy in the distance, exercising an old lady," said desboro carelessly. he did not add that the sight of aunt hannah marching across the westchester horizon had inspired him with an idea. from her lair in town, she had come hither, for no love of her nephew and his family, nor yet for westchester, but solely for economy's bitter sake. she made such pilgrimages at intervals every year, upsetting the hammerton household with her sarcasms, her harsh, high-keyed laughter, her hardened ways of defining the word "spade"--for aunt hannah was a terror that westchester dreaded but never dreamed of ignoring, she being a wayward daughter of the sacred soil, strangely and weirdly warped from long transplanting among the gay and godless of gotham town. and though her means, after her husband's scared soul had taken flight, were painfully attenuated, the high priests and captains among the gay and godless feared her, and she bullied them; and she and they continued to foregather from sheer tradition, but with mutual and sincere dislike. for aunt hannah's name would always figure among the names of certain metropolitan dowagers, dragons, gorgons, and holy harridans; always be connected with certain traditional social events as long as the old lady lived. and she meant to survive indefinitely, if she had anything to say about it. she came in presently with daisy hammerton. the latter gave her hand frankly to her childhood's comrade; the former said: "hah! james desboro!" very disagreeably, and started to nourish herself at once with tea and muffins. "james desboro," she repeated scornfully, darting a wicked glance at him where he stood smiling at her, "james desboro, turning plow-boy in westchester! what's the real motive? that's what interests me. i'm a bad old woman--i know it! all over paint and powder, and with too small a foot and too trim a figger to be anything except wicked. lindley knows it; it makes his fingers tremble when he pinches crysanthemums; susan knows it; so does daisy. and i admit it. and that's why i'm suspicious of you, james; i'm so wicked myself. come, now; why play the honest yokel? eh? you good-looking good-for-nothing!" "my motive," he said amiably, "is to make a living and learn what it feels like." "been stock-gambling again?" "yes, dear lady." "lose much?" she sniffed. "not a very great deal." "hah! and now you've got to raise the wind, somehow?" he repeated, good-humouredly: "i want to make a living." the trim little old lady darted another glance at him. "ha--ha!" she laughed, without giving any reason for the disagreeable burst of mirth; and started in on another muffin. "i think," said mr. hammerton, vaguely, "that james will make an excellent agriculturist----" "excellent fiddlesticks!" observed aunt hannah. "he'd make a good three-card man." daisy hammerton said aside to desboro: "isn't she a terror!" "oh, she likes me!" he said, amused. "i know she does, immensely. she makes me take her for an hour's walk every day--and i'm so tired of exercising her and listening to her--unconventional stories--about you." "she's a bad old thing," said desboro affectionately, and, in his natural voice: "aren't you, aunt hannah? but there isn't a smarter foot, or a prettier hand, or a trimmer waist in all gotham, is there?" "philanderer!" she retorted, in a high-pitched voice. "what about that van alstyne supper at the santa regina?" "which one?" he asked coolly. "stuyve is always giving 'em." "read the _tattler_!" said the old lady, seizing more muffins. mrs. hammerton closed her tight lips and glanced uneasily at her daughter. daisy sipped her tea demurely. she had read all about it, and burned the paper in her bedroom grate. desboro gracefully ignored the subject; the old lady laughed shrilly once or twice, and the conversation drifted toward the more decorous themes of pinching back roses and mixing plant-food, and preparing nourishment for various precocious horticultural prodigies now developing in lindley hammerton's hothouses. daisy hammerton, a dark young girl, with superb eyes and figure, chatted unconcernedly with desboro, making a charming winter picture in her scarlet felt hat and jacket, from which the black furs had fallen back. she went in for things violent and vigorous, and no nonsense; rode as hard as she could in such a country, played every game that demanded quick eye and flexible muscle--and, in secret, alas, wrote verses and short stories unanimously rejected by even the stodgier periodicals. but nobody suspected her of such weakness--not even her own mother. desboro swallowed his tea and took leave of his rose-pinching host and hostess, and their sole and lovely progeny, also, perhaps, the result of scientific concentration. aunt hannah retained his hand: "where are you going now, james?" "nowhere--home," he said, pretending embarrassment, which was enough to interest aunt hannah in the trap. "oh! nowhere--home!" she mimicked him. "where is 'nowhere home'? somewhere out? i've a mind to go with you. what do you say to that, young man?" "come along," he said, a shade too promptly; and the little, bright, mink-like eyes sparkled with malice. the trap was sprung, and aunt hannah was in it. but she didn't yet suspect it. "slip on my fur coat for me," she said. "i'll take a spin with you in your runabout." "you overwhelm me," he protested, holding up the fur coat. "i may do that yet, my clever friend! come on! no shilly-shallying! susan! tell your maid to lay out that paquin gown which broke my financial backbone last month! i'll bring james back to dinner--or know the reason why!" "i'll tell you why not, now," said desboro. "i'm going to town early this evening." "home, nowhere, and then to town," commented aunt hannah loudly. "a multi-nefarious destination. james, if you run into the _ewigkeit_ by way of a wire fence or a tree, i'll come every night and haunt you! but don't poke along as lindley pokes, or i'll take the wheel myself." the deaf head-farmer, vail, who had kept the engine going for fear of freezing, left the wheel and crawled resignedly into the tonneau. aunt hannah and desboro stowed themselves aboard; the swift car went off like a firecracker, then sped away into the darkness at such a pace that presently aunt hannah put her marmot-like face close to desboro's ear and swore at him. "didn't you want speed?" he asked, slowing down. "where are you going, james--home, or nowhere?" "nowhere." "well, we arrived there long ago. now, go home--_your_ home." "sure, but i've got to catch that train----" "oh, you'll catch it--or something else. james?" "madame?" "some day i want to take a look at that young woman who is cataloguing your collection." "that's just what i want you to do now," he said cheerfully. "i'm taking her to new york this evening." aunt hannah, astonished and out of countenance, remained mute, her sharp nose buried in her furs. she had been trapped, and she knew it. then her eyes glittered: "you're being talked about," she said with satisfaction. "so is she! ha!" "much?" he asked coolly. "no. the good folk are only asking each other why you meet her at the station with your car. they think she carries antique gems in her satchel. later they'll suspect who the real jewel is. ha!" "i like her; that's why i meet her," he said coolly. "you _like_ her?" "i sure do. she is some girl, dear lady." "do you think your pretense of guileless candour is disarming me, young man?" "i haven't the slightest hope of disarming you or of concealing anything from you." "follows," she rejoined ironically, "that there's nothing to conceal. bah!" "quite right; there is nothing to conceal." "what do you want with her, then?" "initially, i want her to catalogue my collection; subsequently, i wish to remain friends with her. the latter wish is becoming a problem. i've an idea that you might solve it." "_friends_ with her," repeated aunt hannah. "oh, my! "'and angels whisper lo! the pretty pair!' "i suppose! is that the hymn-tune, james?" "precisely." "what does she resemble--venus, or rosa bonheur?" "look at her and make up your mind." "is she _very_ pretty?" "_i_ think so. she's thin." "then what do you see unusual about her?" "everything, i think." "everything--he thinks! oh, my sense of humour!" "that," said desboro, "is partly what i count on." "have you any remote and asinine notions of educating her and marrying her, and foisting her on your friends? there are a few fools still alive on earth, you know." "so i've heard. i haven't the remotest idea of marrying her; she is better fitted to educate me than i am her. not guilty on these two counts. but i had thought of foisting some of my friends on her. you, for example." aunt hannah glared at him--that is, her tiny eyes became almost luminous, like the eyes of small animals at night, surprised by a sudden light. "i know what you're meditating!" she snapped. "i suppose you do, by this time." "you're very impudent. do you know it?" "lord, aunt hannah, so are you!" he drawled. "but it takes genius to get away with it." the old lady was highly delighted, but she concealed it and began such a rapid-fire tirade against him that he was almost afraid it might bewilder him enough to affect his steering. "talk to _me_ of disinterested friendship between you and a girl of that sort!" she ended. "not that i'd care, if i found material in her to amuse me, and a monthly insult drawn to my order against a solvent bank balance! what is she, james; a pretty blue-stocking whom nobody 'understands' except you?" "make up your own mind," he repeated, as he brought around the car and stopped before his own doorstep. "i'm not trying to tell _you_ anything. she is here. look at her. if you like her, be her friend--and mine." jacqueline had waited tea for him; the table was in the library, kettle simmering over the silver lamp; and the girl was standing before the fire, one foot on the fender, her hands loosely linked behind her back. she glanced up with unfeigned pleasure as his step sounded outside along the stone hallway; and the smile still remained, curving her lips, but died out in her eyes, as mrs. hammerton marched in, halted, and stared at her unwinkingly. desboro presented them; jacqueline came forward, offering a shy hand to aunt hannah, and, bending her superb young head, looked down into the beady eyes which were now fairly electric with intelligence. desboro began, easily: "i asked mrs. hammerton to have tea with----" "i asked myself," remarked aunt hannah, laying her other hand over jacqueline's--she did not know just why--perhaps because she was vain of her hands, as well as of her feet and "figger." she seated herself on the sofa and drew jacqueline down beside her. "this young man tells me that you are cataloguing his grandfather's accumulation of ancient tin-ware." "yes," said jacqueline, already afraid of her. and the old lady divined it, too, with not quite as much pleasure as it usually gave her to inspire trepidation in others. her shrill voice was a little modified when she said: "where did you learn to do such things? it's not usual, you know." "you have heard of jean louis nevers," suggested desboro. "yes--" mrs. hammerton turned and looked at the girl again. "oh!" she said. "i've heard cary clydesdale speak of you, haven't i?" jacqueline made a slight, very slight, but instinctive movement away from the old lady, on whom nothing that happened was lost. "mr. clydesdale," said mrs. hammerton, "told several people where i was present that you knew more about antiquities in art than anybody else in new york since your father died. that's what he said about you." jacqueline said: "mr. clydesdale has been very kind to me." "kindness to people is also a clydesdale tradition--isn't it, james?" said the old lady. "how kind elena has always been to you!" the covert impudence of aunt hannah, and her innocent countenance, had no significance for jacqueline--would have had no meaning at all except for the dark flush of anger that mounted so suddenly to desboro's forehead. he said steadily: "the clydesdales are very old friends, and are naturally kind. why you don't like them i never understood." "perhaps you can understand why one of them doesn't like me, james." "oh! i can understand why many people are not crazy about you, aunt hannah," he said, composedly. "which is going some," said the old lady, with a brisk and unabashed employment of the vernacular. then, turning to jacqueline: "are you going to give this young man some tea, my child? he requires a tonic." jacqueline rose and seated herself at the table, thankful to escape. tea was soon ready; aunt hannah, whose capacity for browsing was infinite, began on jam and biscuits without apology. and jacqueline and desboro exchanged their first furtive glances--dismayed and questioning on the girl's part, smilingly reassuring on desboro's. aunt hannah, looking intently into her teacup, missed nothing. "come to see me!" she said so abruptly that even desboro started. [illustration: "'i--i beg your pardon,' said jacqueline"] "i--i beg your pardon," said jacqueline, not understanding. "come to see me in town. i've a rotten little place in a fashionable apartment house--one of the park avenue kind, which they number instead of calling it the 'buena vista' or the 'hiawatha.' will you come?" "thank you." the old lady looked at her grimly: "what does 'thank you' mean? yes or no? because i really want you. don't you wish to come?" "i would be very glad to come--only, you know, i am in business--and go out very little----" "except on business," added desboro, looking aunt hannah unblushingly in the eye until she wanted to pinch him. instead, she seized another biscuit, which farris presented on a tray, smoking hot, and applied jam to it vigorously. after she had consumed it, she rose and marched around the room, passing the portraits and book shelves in review. half turning toward jacqueline: "i haven't been in the musty old mansion for years; that young man never asks me. but i used to know the house. it was this sort of house that drove me out of westchester, and i vowed i'd marry a new york man or nobody. do you know, child, that there is a sort of simpering smugness about a house like this that makes me inclined to kick dents in the furniture?" jacqueline ventured to smile; desboro's smile responded in sympathy. "i'm going home," announced aunt hannah. "good-bye, miss nevers. i don't want you to drive me, james; i'd rather have your man take me back. besides, you've a train to catch, i understand----" she turned and looked at jacqueline, who had risen, and they stood silently inspecting each other. then, with a grim nod, as though partly of comprehension, partly in adieu, aunt hannah sailed out. desboro tucked her in beside vail. the latter being quite deaf, they talked freely under his very nose. "james!" "yes, dear lady." "you gave _yourself_ away about elena clydesdale. haven't you any control over your countenance?" "sometimes. but don't do that again before _her_! the story is a lie, anyway." "so i've heard--from you. tell me, james, do you think this little nevers girl dislikes me?" "do you want her to?" "no. you're a very clever young one, aren't you? really quite an expert! do you know, i don't think that girl would care for what i might have to offer her. there's more to her than to most people." "how do you know? she scarcely spoke a word." the old lady laughed scornfully: "i know people by what they _don't_ say. that's why i know you so much better than you think i do--you and elena clydesdale. and _i_ don't think you're much good, james--or some of your married friends, either." she settled down among the robes, with a bright, impertinent glance at him. he shrugged, standing bareheaded by the mud-guard, a lithe, handsome young fellow. "--a desboro all over," she thought, with a mental sniff of admiration. "are you going to speak to miss nevers?" she asked, abruptly. "about what!" "about employing me, you idiot!" "yes, if you like. if she comes up here as my guest, she'll need a gorgon." "i'll gorgon you," she retorted, wrathfully. "thanks. so you'll accept the--er--job?" "of course, if she wishes. i need the money. it's purely mercenary on my part." "that's understood." "are you going to tell her i'm mercenary?" "naturally." "well, then--_don't_--if you don't mind. do you think i want _every_ living creature to detest me?" "_i_ don't detest you. and you have an unterrified tabby-cat at home, haven't you?" she could have boxed his ears as he leaned over and deliberately kissed her cheek. "i love you because you're so bad," he whispered; and, stepping lightly aside, nodded to vail to go ahead. the limousine, acetylenes shining, rolled up as the other car departed. he went back to the library and found jacqueline pinning on her hat. "well?" he inquired gaily. "why did you bring her, mr. desboro?" "didn't you like her?" "who is she?" "a mrs. hannah hammerton. she knows everybody. most people are afraid of her. she's poor as a guinea-pig." "she was beautifully gowned." "she always is. poor aunt hannah!" "is she your aunt?" "no, she's lindley hammerton's aunt--a neighbour of mine. i call her that; it made her very mad in the beginning, but she rather likes it now. you'll go to call on her, won't you?" jacqueline turned to him, drawing on her gloves: "mr. desboro, i don't wish to be rude; and, anyway, she will forget that she asked me in another half-hour. why should i go to see her?" "because she's one species of gorgon. now, do you understand?" "what!" "of course. it isn't a case of pin-money with her; it's a case of clothing, rent, and nourishment. a microscopic income, supplemented by gifts, commissions, and odd social jobs, keeps her going. what you and i want of her is for her to be seen at various times with you. she'll do the rest in talking about you--'my unusually talented young friend, miss nevers,' and that sort of thing. it will deceive nobody; but you'll eventually meet some people--she knows all kinds. the main point is that when i ask you here she'll bring you. people will understand that you are another of her social enterprises, for which she's paid. but it won't count against you. it will depend on yourself entirely how you are received. and not a soul will be able to say a word--" he laughed, "--except that i am very devoted to the beautiful miss nevers--as everybody else will be." jacqueline remained motionless for a few moments, an incomprehensible expression on her face; then she went over to him and took one of his hands in her gloved ones, and stood looking down at it in silence. "well," he asked, smiling. she said, still looking down at his hand lying between her own: "you have behaved in the sweetest way to me--" her voice grew unsteady, and she turned her head sharply away. "jacqueline!" he exclaimed under his breath. "it's a broken reed you're trusting. don't, dear. i'm like all the others." she shook her head slightly, still looking away from him. after a short silence, her voice returned to her control again. "you are very kind to me, mr. desboro. when a man sees that a girl likes him--and is kind to her--it is wonderful to her." he tried to take a lighter tone. "it's the case of the beast born in captivity, jacqueline. i'm only going through the tricks convention has taught me. but every instinct remains unaltered." "that _is_ civilisation, isn't it?" "oh, i don't know what it is--you wonderful little thing!" he caught her hand, then encircled her waist, drawing her close. after a moment, she dropped her big, fluffy muff on his shoulder and hid her flushed face in the fur. "don't trust me, will you?" he said, bluntly. "no." "because i--i'm an unaccountable beast." "we--both have to account--sometime--to somebody. don't we?" she said in a muffled voice. "that would never check me." "it would--me." "spiritual responsibility?" "yes." "is that _all_?" "what else is there to remember--when a girl--cares for a man." "do you really care very much?" perhaps she considered the question superfluous, for she remained silent until his nerveless arm released her. then she lifted her face from the muff. it was pale but smiling when he met her eyes. "i'll go to see mrs. hammerton, some day," she said, "because it would hurt too much not to be able to come here when you ask me--and other people--like the--the clydesdales. you _were_ thinking of me when you thought of this, weren't you?" "in a way. a girl has got to reckon with what people say." she nodded, pale and expressionless, slowly brushing up the violets fastened to her muff. farris appeared, announced the time, and held desboro's coat. they had just margin enough to make their train. chapter ix the following morning, aunt hannah returned to her tiny apartment on park avenue, financially benefitted by her westchester sojourn, having extracted a bolt of chinese loot-silk for a gown from her nephew's dismayed wife, and the usual check from her nephew. lindley, a slow, pallid, and thrifty soul, had always viewed aunt hannah's event with unfeigned alarm, because, somehow or other, at the close of every visit he found himself presenting her with a check. and it almost killed him. years ago he had done it for the first time. he had never intended to; certainly never meant to continue. every time she appeared he vowed to himself that he wouldn't. but before her visit ended, the pressure of custom became too much for him; a deadly sense of obligation toward this dreadful woman--of personal responsibility for her indigence--possessed him, became gradually an obsession, until he exorcised it by the present of a check. she never spoke of it--never seemed to hint at it--always seemed surprised and doubtful of accepting; but some devilish spell certainly permeated the atmosphere in her immediate vicinity, drawing perfectly good money out of his innermost and tightly buttoned breast-pockets and leaving it certified and carelessly crumpled in her velvet reticule. it happened with a sickening regularity which now he had come to view with the modified internal fury of resignation. it had simply become a terrible custom, and, with all his respectable inertia and thrifty caution, adherence to custom ruled lindley hammerton. for years he had pinched roses; for years he had drawn checks for aunt hannah. nothing but corporeal dissolution could terminate these customs. as for aunt hannah, she banked her check and had her bolt of silk made into a gown, and trotted briskly about her business with perennial self-confidence in her own ability to get on. once or twice during the following fortnight she remembered jacqueline, and mentally tabulated her case as a possible source of future income; but social duties were many and acridly agreeable, and pecuniary pickings plenty. up to her small, thin ears in intrigue, harmless and not quite so harmless, she made hay busily while the social sun shone; and it was near the end of february before a stagnation in pleasure and business brought jacqueline's existence into her mind again. she called up silverwood, and eventually got desboro on the wire. "do you know," she said, "that your golden-headed and rather attenuated inamorata has never had the civility to call on me!" "she has been too busy." "too busy gadding about silverwood with you!" "she hasn't been here since you saw her." "what!" "it's quite true. an important collection is to be sold under the hammer on the premises; she had the contract to engineer that matter before she undertook to catalogue my stuff." "oh! haven't you seen her since?" "yes." "_not_ at silverwood?" "no, only at her office." he could hear her sniff and mutter something, then: "i thought you were going to give some parties at silverwood, and ask me to bring your pretty friend," she said. "i am. she has the jades and crystals to catalogue. what i want, as soon as she gets rid of clydesdale, is for her to resume work here--come up and remain as my guest until the cataloguing is finished. so you see i'll have to have you, too." "that's a cordial and disinterested invitation, james!" "will you come? i'll ask half a dozen people. you can kill a few at cards, too." "when?" "the first thursday in march. it's a business proposition, but it's between you and me, and she is not to suspect it." "very well," said aunt hannah cheerfully. "i'll arrange my engagements accordingly. and do try to have a gay party, james; and don't ask the clydesdales. you know how westchester gets on my nerves. and i always hated her." "you are very unjust to her and to him----" "you can't tell me anything about cary clydesdale, or about his wife, either," she interrupted tartly, and rang off in a temper. and desboro went back to his interrupted business with vail. since jacqueline had been compelled to suspend temporarily her inventory at silverwood in favor of prior engagements, desboro had been to the city only twice, and both times to see her. he had seen her in her office, remained on both occasions for an hour only, and had then taken the evening train back to silverwood. but every evening he had written her of the day just ended--told her about the plans for farming, now maturing, of the quiet life at silverwood, how gradually he was reëstablishing neighbourly relations with the countryside, how much of a country squire he was becoming. "--and the whole thing with malice aforethought," he wrote. "--every blessed move only a strategy in order that, to do you honour, i may stand soberly and well before the community when you are among my guests. "in tow of aunt hannah; engaged for part of the day in your business among the jades, crystals, and porcelains of a celebrated collection; one of a house party; and the guest of a young man who has returned very seriously to till the soil of his forefathers; all that anybody can possibly think of it will be that your host is quite as captivated by your grace, wisdom, and beauty as everybody else will be. "and what do you think of that, jacqueline?" * * * * * "i think," she wrote, "that no other man has ever been as nice to me. i do not really care about the other people, but i quite understand that you and i could not see each other as freely as we have been doing, without detriment to me. i like you--superfluous admission! and i should miss seeing you--humble confession! and so i suppose it is best that everybody should know who and what i am--a business woman well-bred enough to sit at table with your friends, with sufficient self-confidence to enter and leave a room properly, to maintain my grasp on the conversational ball, and to toss it lightly to my vis-à-vis when the time comes. "all this is worth doing and enduring for the sake of being your guest. without conscientious scruples, apprehensions, perplexities, and fears i could never again come to silverwood and be there alone with you as i have been. always i have been secretly unhappy and afraid after a day with you at silverwood. sooner or later it would have had to end. it can not go on--as it has been going. i know it. the plea of business is soon worn threadbare if carelessly used. "and so--caring for your friendship as i do--and it having become such a factor in my life--i find it easy to do what you ask me; and i have arranged to go with mrs. hammerton to silverwood on the first thursday in march, to practice my profession, enjoy the guests at your house party, and cultivate our friendship with a clear conscience and a tranquil and happy mind. "it was just that little element of protection i needed to make me more happy than i have ever been. somehow, i _couldn't_ care for you as frankly and freely as i wanted to. and some things have happened--you know what i mean. i didn't reproach you, or pretend surprise or anger. i felt neither--only a confused sense of unhappiness. but--i cared for you enough to submit. "now i go to you with a sense of security that is delightful. you don't understand how a girl situated as i am feels when she knows that she is in a position where any woman has the right to regard her with suspicion. skating, motoring, with you, i could not bear to pass people you knew and to whom you bowed--women--even farmers' wives. "but now it will be different; i feel so warmly confident at heart, so secure, that i shall perhaps dare to say and do and be much that you never suspected was in me. the warm sun of approval makes a very different person of me. a girl, who, in her heart, does not approve of what she is doing, and who is always expecting to encounter other women who would not approve, is never at her best--isn't even herself--and isn't really happy, even with a man she likes exceedingly. you will, i think, see a somewhat different girl on thursday." * * * * * "if your words are sometimes a little misty," he wrote, "your soul shines through everything you say, with a directness entirely heavenly. life, for us, begins on thursday, under cover no longer, but in the open. and the field will be as fair for you as for me. that is as it should be; that is as far as i care to look. but somehow, after all is done and said that ever will be said and done between you and me, i am conscious that when we two emerge from the dream called 'living,' you will lead and direct us both--even if you never do so here on earth. "i am not given to this sort of stuff. "jacqueline, dear, i'd like to amuse my guests with something unusual. could you help me out?" * * * * * she answered: "i'll do anything in the world i can to make your house party pleasant for you and your guests. so i've asked mr. sissly to give a recital. it is quite the oddest thing; you don't _listen_ to a symphony which he plays on the organ; you _see_ it. he will send the organ, electrical attachments, lights, portable stage and screen, to silverwood; and his men will install everything in the armoury. "then, if it would amuse your guests, i could tell them a little about your jades and crystals, and do it in a rather unusual way. i think you'd rather like it. shall i?" * * * * * he wrote some days later: "what a darling you are! anything you do will be charming. sissly's men have arrived and are raising a racket in the armoury with hammer and saw. "the stage will look quite wonderful between the wide double rank of equestrian figures in armour. "aunt hannah writes that you called on her and that you and she are coming up on the train together, which is delightfully sensible, and exactly as it should be. heaven alone knows how long you are going to be able to endure her. it's rather odd, you know, but i like her and always have, though she's made things disagreeable for me more than once in my life. "your room is ready; aunt hannah's adjoins. quarters for other guests are ready also. have you any idea how i look forward to your coming?" * * * * * three days later his guests arrived on the first three morning trains--a jolly crowd of young people--nineteen of them--who filled his automobiles and horse-drawn vehicles. their luggage followed in vans, from which protruded skis and hockey sticks. there being no porter, the butler of silverwood house received them in front of the lodge at the outer gates, offering the "guest cup," a desboro custom of many generations, originating in england, although the lodge had stood empty and the gates open since his grandfather's time. [illustration: "there was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner"] desboro welcomed them on his own doorstep; and there was, for a moment, an unconscious and unwonted grace in his manner and bearing--an undefined echo in his voice of other and more courtly times, as he gave his arm to aunt hannah and led her inside the hall. there it exhaled and vanished as mrs. quant and the maids smilingly conducted the guests to their various quarters--vanished with the smiling formality of his greeting to jacqueline. the men returned first, clad in their knickerbockers and skating jackets. cocktails awaited them in the billiard-room, and they gathered there in noisy curiosity over this celebrated house not often opened to anybody except its owner. "who is the dream, jim?" demanded reginald ledyard. "i mean the wonder with the gold hair, that mrs. hammerton has in tow?" "a friend of aunt hannah's--an expert in antique art--and as clever and charming as she is pretty," said desboro pleasantly. "high-brow! oh, help!" muttered ledyard. "where's your library? i want to read up." "she can talk like other people," remarked van alstyne. "i got next on the train--old lady hammerton stood for me. she can flirt some, i'll tell you those." bertie barkley extracted the olive from a bronx and considered it seriously. "the old lady is on a salary, of course. nobody ever heard of anybody named nevers," he remarked. "they'll hear of somebody named nevers now," observed captain herrendene with emphasis, "or," he added in modest self-depreciation, "i am all kinds of a liar." "where did you know her, jim?" inquired ledyard curiously. "oh, miss nevers's firm has charge of cataloguing my armour and jades. they're at it still. that's how i first met her--in a business way. and when i found her to be a friend of aunt hannah's, i asked them both up here as my guests." "you always had an eye for beauty," said cairns. "what do you suppose mrs. hammerton's game is?" "why, to make miss nevers known where she really ought to belong," replied desboro frankly. "how high does she plan to climb?" asked barkley. "above the vegetating line?" "probably not as far as the line of perpetual stupidity," said desboro. "miss nevers appears to be a very busy, and very intelligent, and self-sufficient young lady, and i imagine she would have neither time nor inclination to decorate any of the restless, gilt-encrusted sets." van alstyne said: "she's got the goods to deliver almost anywhere mrs. hammerton chooses--f. o. b. what?" "she's some dream," admitted ledyard as they all moved toward the library. there were a lot of gay young girls there in skating costumes; ledyard's sister marie, with her large figure and pretty but slightly stupid face; helsa steyr, blonde, athletic, and red-haired; athalie vannis, with her handsome, dark face, so often shadowed by discontent; barkley's animated little wife, elizabeth, grey-eyed and freckled and brimming with mischief of the schoolboy quality; the stately katharine frere; aunt hannah; and jacqueline. all except the latter two had been doing something to cocktails of various species; jacqueline took nothing; aunt hannah, scotch whiskey with relish. "it's about the last of the skating," said desboro, "so we'd better take what we can get as soon as luncheon is over. pick your partners and don't squabble. me for mrs. hammerton!" and he led her out. at table he noticed that captain herrendene had secured jacqueline, and that reggie ledyard, on the other side, was already neglecting his own partner in his eager, good-looking and slightly loutish fashion of paying court to the newest and prettiest girl. aunt hannah's glance continually flickered sideways at desboro, but when she discovered that he was aware of her covert scrutiny, she said under her breath: "i've been shopping with her; the little thing didn't know how to clothe herself luxuriously in the more intimate details. i'd like to see anybody's maid patronise her now! yours don't know enough--but she'll go where there are those who do know, sooner or later. what do you think of her?" "what i always think," he said coolly. "she is the most interesting girl i ever met." "she's too clever to care very much for what i can offer her," said mrs. hammerton drily. "glitter and tinsel would never dazzle her, james; pretense, complacency, bluff, bragg, she'd devilish soon see through it all with those clear, intelligent eyes--see at the bottom what lies squirming there--anxiety, self-distrust, eternal dread, undying envy, the secret insecurity of those who imitate the real--which does not exist in america--and who know in their hopeless hearts that they are only shams, like that two-year-old antique tavern yonder, made quaint to order." he said smilingly: "she'll soon have enough of your particular familiars. but, little by little, she'll find herself in accord with people who seek her as frankly as she seeks them. natural selection, you know. your only usefulness is to give her the opportunity, and you've begun to do it, bless your heart." she flashed a malicious glance at him; under cover of the gay hubbub she said: "i may do more than that, james." "really." "yes; i may open her eyes to men of your sort." "her eyes are open already, i suppose." "not very wide. for example--you'd never marry her. would you?" "don't talk that way," he said coldly. "no, i don't have to talk at all. i _know_. if you ever marry, i know what deadly species of female it will be. you're probably right; you're that kind, too--no real substance to you, james. and so i think i'll have to look after my intellectual protégée, and be very sure that her pretty eyes are wide open." he turned toward her; their glances met level and hard: "let matters alone," he said. "i have myself in hand." "you have in hand a horse with a runaway record, james." cairns, on her left, spoke to her; she turned and answered, then presented her well-shaped back to that young gentleman and again crossed glances with desboro, who was waiting, cool as steel. "come, james," she said in a low voice, "what do you mean to do? a man always means something or nothing; and the latter is the more dangerous." as that was exactly what desboro told himself he had always meant, he winced and remained silent. "oh, you--the lot of you!" she said with smiling contempt. "i'll equip that girl to take care of herself before i'm through with her. watch me." "it is part of your business. equip her to take care of herself as thoroughly as anybody you know. then it will be up to her--as it is up to all women, after all--and to all men." "oh, is it? you've all the irresponsibility and moral rottenness of your cavalier ancestors in you; do you know it, james? the puritan, at least, never doubted that he was his brother's keeper." desboro said doggedly: "with the individual alone rests what that individual will be." "is that your mature belief?" she asked ironically. "it is, dear lady." "lord! to think of a world full of loosened creatures like you! a civilised society swarming with callow and irresponsible opportunists, amateur jesuits, idle intelligences reinfected with the toxins of their own philosophy! but," she shrugged, "i am indicting man himself--nations and nations of him. besides, we women have always known this. and hybrids are hybrids. if there's any claret in the house, tell farris to fetch some. don't be angry, james. man and woman once were different species, and the world has teemed with their hybrids since the first mating." mrs. barkley leaned across the table toward him: "what's the matter, james? you look dangerous." his face cleared and he smiled: "nobody is really dangerous except to themselves, betty." she quoted saucily: "il n'y a personne qui ne soit dangereux pour quelqu'un!" mrs. hammerton added: "il faut tout attendre et tout craindre du temps et des hommes." reggie ledyard, much flattered, admitted the wholesale indictment against his sex: "how can we help it? man, possessing always dual personality, is naturally inclined toward a double life." "man's chief study has been man for so long," observed mrs. hammerton, "that the world has passed by, leaving him behind, still engrossed in counting his thumbs. name your french philosopher who can beat that reflection," she added to desboro, who smiled absently. [illustration: "all the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her"] from moment to moment he had been watching jacqueline and the men always leaning toward her--reggie ledyard persistently bringing to bear on her the full splendour of his straw-blond and slightly coarse beauty; cairns, receptive and débonnaire as usual; herrendene, with his keen smile and sallow visage lined with the memory of things that had left their marks--all the men there had yielded to the delicate attraction of her. desboro said to mrs. hammerton: "now you realise where she really belongs." "better than you do," she retorted drily. after luncheon there were vehicles to convey them to the pond, a small sheet of water down in the desboro woods. and while a declining sun glittered through the trees, the wooded shores echoed with the clatter and scrape of skates and the rattle of hockey-sticks crossed in lively combat. but inshore the ice had rotted; the end of such sport was already in sight. along the gravelly inlet, where water rippled, a dozen fingerling trout lay half hidden among the pebbles; over a bank of soft, sun-warmed snow, gnats danced in the sunset light; a few tree-buds had turned sticky. later, vail came and built a bonfire; farris arrived with tea baskets full of old-fashioned things, such as turnovers and flip in stone jugs of a century ago. except for a word or two at intervals, desboro had found no chance to talk to jacqueline. now and then their glances encountered, lingered, shifted, with scarcely a ghost of a smile in forced response to importunities. so he had played an impartial game of hockey, skated with any girl who seemed to be receptive, cut intricate figures with mrs. hammerton in a cove covered with velvet-smooth black ice, superintended the bonfire construction, directed farris with the tea. now, absently executing a "grape-vine," he was gliding along the outer ranks of his guests with the mechanical patrolling instinct of a collie, when jacqueline detached herself from a fire-lit group and made him a gay little sign to halt. picking her way through the soft snow on the points of her skates, she took to the ice and joined him. they linked hands and swung out into the starlight. "are you enjoying it?" he asked. "that's why i signalled you. i never have had such a good time. i wanted you to know it." "you like my friends?" she looked up: "they are all so charming to me! i didn't expect people to be cordial." "you need expect nothing else wherever you go and whomever you meet--barring the inevitable which no attractive girl can avoid arousing. do you get on with aunt hannah?" she laughed: "isn't it odd? _i_ call her that, too. she asked me to. and do you know, she has been a perfect dear about everything. we shopped together; i never had quite ventured to buy certain fascinating things to wear. and we had such a good time lunching at the ritz, where i had never dared go. such beautiful women! such gowns! such jewels!" they halted and looked back across the ice at the distant fire and the dark forms moving about it. "you've bowled over every man here, as a matter of course," he said lightly. "if you'll tell me how you like the women i'll know whether they like you." "oh, i like them; they are as nice to me as they are to each other!" she exclaimed, "--except, perhaps, one or two----" "marie ledyard is hopelessly spoiled; athalie vannis is usually discontented," he said philosophically. "don't expect either of them to give three cheers for another girl's popularity." they crossed hands and swept toward the centre of the pond on the "outer edge." jacqueline's skating skirt was short enough for her to manage a "dutch roll," steadied and guided by desboro; then they exchanged it for other figures, not intricate. "your friend, mr. sissly, is dining with us," he observed. "he's really very nice," she said. "just a little too--artistic--for you, perhaps, and for the men here--except captain herrendene----" "herrendene is a fine fellow," he said. "i like him so much," she admitted. he was silent for a moment, turned toward her as though to speak, but evidently reconsidered the impulse. "he is not very young, is he?" she asked. "herrendene? no." "i thought not. sometimes in repose his face seems sad. but what kind eyes he has!" "he's a fine fellow," said desboro without emphasis. before they came within the firelight, he asked her whether she had really decided to give them a little lecture on jades and crystals; and she said that she had. "it won't be too technical or too dry, i hope," she added laughingly. "i told captain herrendene what i was going to say and do, and he liked the idea." "won't you tell me, too, jacqueline?" "no, i want _you_ to be surprised. besides, i haven't time; we've been together too long already. doesn't one's host have to be impartially attentive? and i think that pretty little miss steyr is signalling you." herrendene came out on the ice toward them: "the cars are here," he said, "and mrs. hammerton is cold." dinner was an uproariously lively function, served amid a perfect eruption of bewildering gowns and jewels and flowers. desboro had never before seen jacqueline in a dinner gown, or even attempted to visualise her beauty amid such surroundings in contrast with other women. she fitted exquisitely into the charming mosaic; from crown to toe she was part of it, an essential factor that, once realised, became indispensable to the harmony. perhaps, he told himself, she did not really dominate with the fresh delicacy of her beauty; perhaps it was only what he saw in her and what he knew of her that made the others shadowy and commonplace to him. [illustration: "in all the curious eyes turned toward her, he saw admiration, willing or conceded."] yet, in all the curious eyes repeatedly turned toward her, he saw admiration, willing or conceded, recognised every unspoken tribute of her own sex as well as the less reserved surrender of his; saw her suddenly developed into a blossom of unabashed and youthful loveliness under what she had once called "the warm sun of approval"; and sat in vague and uneasy wonder, witnessing the transfiguration. sissly was there, allotted to katharine frere; and that stately girl, usually credited among her friends with artistic aspirations, apparently found him interesting. so all went well enough, whether gaily or seriously, even with aunt hannah, who had discovered under desboro's smiling composure all kinds of food for reflection and malicious diversion. for such a small party it was certainly a gay one--at least people were beginning to think so half way through dinner--which merely meant that everybody was being properly appreciated by everybody's neighbours, and that made everybody feel unusually witty, and irrepressible, and a little inclined to be silly toward the end. but then the after-dinner guests began to arrive--calm, perfectly poised and substantial westchester propositions who had been bidden to assist at an unusual programme, and to dance afterward. the stodgy old house rang with chatter and laughter; hall, stairs, library, and billiard-room resounded delightfully; you could scare up a pretty girl from almost any cover--if you were gunning for that variety of girl. reggie ledyard had managed to corner jacqueline on the stairs, but couldn't monopolise her nor protect himself against the shameless intrusion of cairns, who spoiled the game until herrendene raided the trio and carried her off to the billiard-room on a most flimsy pretext. here, very properly, a westchester youth of sterling worth got her away and was making toward the library with her when desboro unhooked a hunting horn from the wall and filled the house with deafening blasts as signal that the show was about to begin in the armoury. the armoury had been strung with incandescent lights, which played over the huge mounted figures in mail, and glanced in a million reflections from the weapons on the wall. a curtained and raised stage faced seats for a hundred people, which filled the long, wide aisle between the equestrian shapes; and into these the audience was pouring, excited and mystified by the odd-looking and elaborate electrical attachments flanking the stage in front of the curtained dressing-rooms. jacqueline, passing desboro, whispered: "i'm so thrilled and excited. i know people will find mr. sissly's lecture interesting, but do you think they'll like mine?" "how do i know, you little villain? you've told herrendene what you are going to do, but you haven't given me even a hint!" "i know it; i wanted to--to please you--" her light hand fell for a moment on his sleeve, and he saw the blue eyes a little wistful. "you darling," he whispered. "thank you. it isn't the proper thing to say to me--but i've quite recovered my courage." "have you quite recovered all the scattered fragments of your heart? i am afraid some of these men may carry portions of it away with them." "i don't think so, monsieur. really, i must hurry and dress----" "dress?" "certainly; also make up!" "but i thought you were to give us a little talk on chinese jades." "but i must do it in my own way, mr. des----" "wait!" they were in the rear of the dressing-room and he took her hand. "i call you jacqueline, unreproved. is my name more difficult for you?" "do you wish me to? in cold blood?" "not in cold blood." he took her into his arms; she bent her head gravely, but he felt her restless fingers worrying his sleeve. "jacqueline?" "yes--jim." the swift fire in his face answered the flush in hers; he drew her nearer, but she averted her dainty head in silence and stood so, her hand always restless on his arm. "you haven't changed toward me in these few weeks, have you, jacqueline?" "do you think i have?" he was silent. after a moment she glanced up at him with adorable shyness. he kissed her, but her lips were cold and unresponsive, and she bent her head, still picking nervously at the cloth of his sleeve. "i _must_ go," she said. "i know it." he released her waist. she drew a quick, short breath and looked up smiling; then sighed again, and once more her blue eyes became aloof and thoughtful. he stood leaning against the side of the dressing-room, watching her. finally she said with composure: "i _must_ go. please like what i shall do. it will be done to please you--jim." he opened the dressing-room door for her; she entered, turned to look back at him for an instant, then closed the door. he went back to his place among the audience. a moment later a temple gong struck three times; the green curtains parted, revealing a white screen, and mr. lionel sissly advancing with a skip to the footlights. the audience looked again at its programme cards and again read: "no. : a soundless symphony ... lionel sissly." "colour," lisped mr. sissly, "is not only precious for its own sake, but also because it is the blessed transmogrification of sound. and sound is sacred because all vibrations, audible or inaudible, are in miraculous harmony with that holiest of all phenomena, silence!" "help!" whispered ledyard to cairns, with resignation. "any audible rate of regular air vibrations is a musical note," continued mr. sissly. "if you double that vibratory speed, you have the first note of the octave above it. now, the spectrum band is the colour counterpart of the musical octave; the ether vibrates with double the speed at the _violet_ end of the spectrum band that it does at the opposite extremity, or _red_ end. let me show you the chromatic scales in colour and music--the latter the equivalent of the former, revealing how the intervals correspond when c represents red." and he flashed upon the screen a series of brilliant colours. "remember," he said, "that it is with colour as it is with sound--there is a long range of vibrations below and above the first and last visible colour and the first and last audible note--a long, long range beyond compass of the human eye and ear. probably the music of the spheres is composed of such harmonies," he simpered. "modern occidental music is evolved in conformity with an arbitrary scale," he resumed earnestly. "an octave consists of seven whole tones and five half-tones. combinations and sequences of notes or tints affect us emotionally--pleasurably when harmonious, painfully when discordant. but," and his voice shook with soulful emotion, "the holiest and the most precious alliance ever dreamed of beyond the gates of heaven lies in the sacred intermingling of harmonious colour and harmonious silence. let me play for you, upon my colour organ, my soundless symphony which i call 'weather.' always in the world there will be weather. we have it constantly; there is so much of it that nobody knows how much there is; and i do not see very clearly how there ever could be any less than there is. weather, then, being the only earthly condition which is eternal, becomes precious beyond human comprehension; and i have tried to interpret it as a symphony of silence and of colour divinely intermingled." ledyard whispered to betty barkley: "i'll go mad and bite if he says another word!" she cautioned him with a light touch of her gloved hand, and strove very hard to remain serious as mr. sissly minced over to his "organ," seated himself, and gazed upward. all at once every light in the house went out. for a while the great screen remained invisible, then a faint sheen possessed its surface, blotted out at eccentric intervals by a deep and thunderous tint which finally absorbed it and slowly became a coldly profound and depthless blue. the blue was not permanent; almost imperceptible pulsations were stirring and modifying it toward a warmer and less decisive hue, and through it throbbed and ebbed elusive sensations of palest turquoise, primrose and shell-pink. this waned and deepened into a yellow which threatened to become orange. suddenly all was washed out in unaccented grey; the grey gradually became instinct with rose and gold; the gold was split by a violet streak; then virile scarlet tumbled through crashing scales of green, amethyst, crimson, into a chaos of chromatic dissonance, and vanished engulfed in shimmering darkness. the lights flashed up, disclosing mr. sissly, very pale and damp of features, facing the footlights again. "that," he faltered, amid a stillness so profound that it seemed to fill the ear like a hollow roar,--"that is weather. if you approve it, the most precious expression of your sympathy will be absolute silence." fortunately, not even reggie ledyard dropped. mr. sissly passed a lank and lily hand across his large pale eyes. "like the japanese," he lisped, "i bring to you my most precious thought-treasures one at a time--and never more than two between the rising of the orb of day and the veiling of it at eventide. i offer you, on the altar of my colour organ, a transposition of von schwiggle's symphony in a minor; and i can only say that it is replete with a meaning so exquisitely precious that no human intelligence has yet penetrated it." out went the lights. presently the screen became visible. upon it there seemed to be no colour, no hint of any tint, no quality, no value. it was merely visible, and remained so for three mortal minutes. then the lights broke out, revealing mr. sissly half fainting at his organ, and two young women in greek robes waving bunches of violets at him. and the curtain fell. "there only remains," whispered ledyard, "the funny-house for me." "if you make me laugh i'll never forgive you," mrs. barkley warned him under her breath. "but--oh, do look at mrs. hammerton!" aunt hannah's visage resembled that of a cornered and enraged mink surrounded by enemies. "if that man comes near me," she said to desboro, "i shall destroy him with hatpins. you'd better keep him away. i'm morally and nervously disorganised." sissly had come off the stage and now stood in the wide aisle, surrounded by the earnest and intellectual womanhood of westchester, eagerly seeking more light. but there was little in mr. sissly's large and washed-out eyes; even less, perhaps, than illuminated his intellect. he gazed wanly upon adoration, edging his way toward miss frere, who, at dinner, had rashly admitted that she understood him. "was it satisfying?" he lisped, when he had attained to her vicinity. "it was most--remarkable," she said, bewildered. "so absolutely new to me that i can find nothing as yet to say to you, except thank you." "why say it? why not merely look it? your silence would be very, very precious to me," he said in a low voice. and the stately miss frere blushed. the audience, under the stimulus of the lights, recovered very quickly from its semi-stupor, and everybody was now discussing with animation the unique experience of the past half-hour. new york chattered; westchester discussed; that was the difference. both had expected a new kind of cabaret show; neither had found the weird performance disappointing. flippant and unintellectual young men felt safe in the certainty that neither their pretty partners nor the more serious representatives of the substantial county knew one whit more about soundless symphonies than did they. [illustration: "she lost herself in a dreamy bavarian folk-song"] so laughter and noise filled the armoury with a gaily subdued uproar, silenced only when katharine frere's harp was brought in, and the tall, handsome girl, without any preliminaries, went forward and seated herself, drew the gilded instrument back against her right shoulder, set her feet to the pedals, her fingers to the strings, and wandered capriciously from _le donne curiose_ and the far, brief echoes of its barcarolle, into _koenigskinder_, and on through _versiegelt_, till she lost herself in a dreamy bavarian folk-song which died out as sunset dies on the far alms of the red valepp. great applause; no cabaret yet. the audience looked at the programme and read: "a thousand years b.c. ... miss nevers." and reggie ledyard was becoming restless, thinking perhaps that a little ragtime of the spheres might melt the rapidly forming intellectual ice, and was saying so to anybody who'd listen, when ding-dong-dang! ding-dong! echoed the oriental gong. out went the lights, the curtain split open and was gathered at the wings; a shimmering radiance grew upon the stage disclosing a huge gold and green dragon of porcelain on its faïence pedestal. and there, high cradled between the forepaws of the ancient mongolian monster, sat a slim figure in silken robes of turquoise, rose, and scarlet, a chinese lute across her knees, slim feet pendant below the rainbow skirt. her head-dress was wrought fantastically of open-work gold, inlaid with a thousand tiny metallic blue feathers, accented by fiery gems; across the silky folds of her slitted tunic were embroidered in iris tints the single-winged birds whirling around each other between floating clouds; little clog-like shoes of silk and gold, embroidered with moss-green arabesques inset with orange and scarlet, shod the feet. ancient cathay, exquisitely, immortally young, sat in jewelled silks and flowers under the huge and snarling dragon. and presently, string by string, her idle lute awoke, picked with the plectrum, note after note in strange and unfamiliar intervals; and, looking straight in front of her, she sang at random, to "the sorrows of her lute," verses from "the maker of moons," sung by chinese lovers a thousand years ago: "like to a dragon in the sky the fierce sun flames from east to west; the flower of love within my breast blooms only when the moon is high and thou art nigh." the dropping notes of her lute answered her, rippled on, and were lost like a little rill trickling into darkness. "the day burns like a dragon's flight until thou comest in the night with thy cool moon of gold-- then i unfold." a faint stirring of the strings, silence; then she struck with her plectrum the weird opening chord of that sixth century song called "the night revel"; and sang to the end the ancient verses set to modern music by an unknown composer: "along the river scarlet lanterns glimmer, where gilded boats and darkling waters shimmer; laughter with singing blends; but love begins and ends forever with a sigh-- a whispered sigh. "in fire-lit pools the crimson carp are swirling; the painted peacocks shining plumes are furling; now in the torch-light by the gate a thousand lutes begin the fête with one triumphant cry! why should love sigh?" the curtain slowly closed on the echoes of her lute; there came an interval of absolute silence, then an uproar of cries and of people getting to their feet, calling out: "go on! go on! don't stop!" no applause except this excited clamour for more, and the racket of moving chairs. "good lord!" muttered captain herrendene. "did you ever see anything as beautiful as that girl?" and: "where did she learn such things?" demanded people excitedly of one another. "it must be the real business! how does she know?" the noise became louder and more emphatic; calls for her reappearance redoubled and persisted until the gong again sounded, the lights went out, and the curtains twitched once more and parted. she slid down from her cradled perch between the forelegs of the shadowy dragon and came to the edge of the footlights. "i was going to show you one or two jades from the desboro collection, and tell you a little about them," she began, "but my lute and i will say for you another song of ancient china, if you like. it was made by kao-shih about seven hundred years after the birth of christ. he was one of the t'ang poets--and not a very cheerful one. this is his song." and she recited for them: "there was a king of liang." after that she stepped back; but they would not have it, to the point of enthusiastic rudeness. she recited for them mêng hao-jan's "a friend expected," from "the maker of moons," and the quatrains of the lovely, naïve little "spring dream," written by ts'en-ts'an in the eighth century. but they demanded still more. she laid aside her lute and intoned for them the noble lines of china's most famous writer: "thou that hast seen six kingdoms pass away----" then, warming to her audience, and herself thrilled with the spirit of the ancient splendour, she moved forward in her whispering silks, and, slightly bending, her finger lifted like one who hushes children with a magic tale, she spoke to them of fei-yen, mistress of the emperor; and told them how t'ai-chên became an empress; sang for them the song of yu lao, the "song of the moon moth": "the great night moth that bears her name is winged in green, pale as the june moon's silver flame her silken sheen: no other flame they know, these twain where dark dews rain-- this great night moth that bears her name and my sweet queen; so let me light my lantern flame and breathe her name." she held her audience in the palm of her smooth little hand; she knew it, and tasted power. she told them of the blue mongol's song, reciting: "from the gray plains i ride, where the gray hawks wheel, in armour of lacquered hide, sabre and shield of steel; the lance in my stirrup rattles, and the quiver and bow at my back clatter! i sing of battles, of cities put to the sack! where is the lord of the west, the golden emperor's son? i swung my mongol sabre;-- he and the dead are one. for the tawny lion of the iort and the sun of the world are one!" then she told them the old chinese tale called "the never-ending wrong"--the immortal tragedy of that immortal maid, "a reed in motion and a rose in flame," from where she alights "in the white hibiscus bower" to where "death is drumming at the door" and "ten thousand battle-chariots on the wing" come clashing to a halt; and the trapped king, her lover, sends her forth "lily pale, between tall avenues of spears, to die." and so, amid "the sullen soldiery," white as a flower, and all alone in soul, she "shines through tall avenues of spears, to die." "the king has sought the darkness of his hands," standing in stricken grief, then turns and gazes at what lies there at his feet amid its scattered "--_ornaments of gold,_ _one with the dust; and none to gather them;--_ _hair-pins of jade and many a costly gem,_ _kingfishers' wings and golden beads scarce cold._" lingering a moment in the faint reflection of the low-turned footlights, she stood looking out over the silent audience; and perhaps her eyes found what they had been seeking, for she smiled and stepped back as the curtain closed. and no uproar of applause could lure her forth again until the lights had been long blazing and the dancers were whirling over the armoury floor, and she had washed the paint from lid and lip and cheek, and put off her rustling antique silken splendour to bewitch another century scarce begun. desboro, waiting at her dressing-room door for her, led her forth. "you have done so much for me," he whispered. "is there anything in all the world i can do for you, jacqueline?" she was laughing, flushed by the flattery and compliments from every side, but she heard him; and after a moment her face altered subtly. but she answered lightly: "can i ask for more than a dance or two with you? is not that honour enough?" her voice was gay and mocking, but the smile had faded from eye and lip; only the curved sweetness of the mouth remained. they caught the music's beat and swung away together among the other dancers, he piloting her with great adroitness between the avenues of armoured figures. when he had the opportunity, he said: "what may i send you that you would care for?" "send me?" she laughed lightly again. "let me see! well, then, perhaps you may one day send me--send me forth 'between tall avenues of spears, to die.'" "what!" he said sharply. "the song is still ringing in my head--that's all. send me any inexpensive thing you wish--a white carnation--i don't really care--" she looked away from him--"as long as it comes from you." chapter x desboro's guests were determined to turn the house out of the windows; its stodgy respectability incited them; every smug, smooth portrait goaded them to unusual effort, and they racked their brains to invent novelties. on one day they opened all the windows in the disused west wing, flooded the ground floor, hung the great stone room with paper lanterns, and held an ice carnival. as masks and costumes had been made entirely out of paper, there were several startling effects and abrupt retirements to repair damages; but the dancing on skates in the lantern light was very pretty, and even the youth and pride of westchester found the pace not unsuitably rapid. on another day, desboro's feminine guests sent to town for enough green flannel to construct caricatures of hunting coats for everybody. the remains of a stagnant pack of harriers vegetated on a neighbouring estate; desboro managed to mount his guests on his own live-stock, including mules, farm horses, polo ponies, and a yoke of oxen; and the county saw a hunting that they were not likely to forget. reggie ledyard was magnificent astride an ox, with a paper megaphone for a hunting horn, rubber boots, and his hastily basted coat split from skirt to collar. the harriers ran wherever they pleased, and the astonished farm mules wouldn't run at all. there was hysterical excitement when one cotton-tail rabbit was started behind a barn and instantly lost under it. the hunt dinner was a weird and deafening affair, and the weber-field ball costumes unbelievable. owing to reaction and exhaustion, repentant girls came to jacqueline requesting an interim of intellectual recuperation; so she obligingly announced a lecture in the jade room, and talked to them very prettily about jades and porcelains, suiting her words to their intellectual capacity, which could grasp kang-he porcelains and celedon and sang-de-boeuf, but balked at the "three religions," and found _blanc de chine_ uninspiring. so she told them about the _famille vert_ and the _famille rose_; about the k'ang hsi period, which they liked, and how the imperial kilns at kiangsi developed the wonderful _clair de lune_ "turquoise blue" and "peach bloom," for which some of their friends or relatives had paid through their various and assorted noses. all of this her audience found interesting because they recognised in the exquisite examples from desboro's collection, with which jacqueline illustrated her impromptu lecture, objects both fashionable and expensive; and what is both fashionable and expensive appeals very forcibly to mediocrity. "i saw a jar like that one at the clydesdales'," said reggie ledyard, a trifle excited at his own unexpected intelligence. "how much is it worth, miss nevers?" she laughed and looked at the vase between her slender fingers. "really," she said, "it isn't worth very much. but wealthy people have established fictitious values for many rather crude and commonplace things. if people had the courage to buy only what appealed to them personally, there would be a mighty crash in tumbling values." "we'd all wake up and find ourselves stuck," remarked van alstyne, who possessed some pictures which he had come to loathe, but for which he had paid terrific prices. "jim, do you want to buy any primitives, guaranteed genuine?" "there's the thrifty dutch trader for you," said reggie. "i'm loaded with rickety old furniture, too. they got me to furnish my place with antiques! but you don't see me trying to sell 'em to my host at a house party!" "stop your disputing," said desboro pleasantly, "and ask miss nevers for her professional opinion later. the chances are that you both have been properly stuck, and i never had any sympathy for wealthy ignorance, anyway." but ledyard and van alstyne, being very wealthy, became frightfully depressed over the unfeeling jibes of desboro; and jacqueline seemed to be by way of acquiring a pair of new clients. in fact, both young men at various moments approached her on the subject, but desboro informed them that they might with equal propriety ask a physician to prescribe for them at a dance, and that miss nevers' office was open from nine until five. "gad," remarked ledyard to van alstyne, with increasing respect, "she is some girl, believe _me_, stuyve. only if she ever married up with a man of our kind--good-night! she'd quit him in a week." van alstyne touched his forehead significantly. "sure," he said. "nothing doing _inside_ our conks. but why the lord made her such a peach outside as well as inside is driving me to jersey! most of 'em are so awful to look at, don't y'know. come on, anyway. _i_ can't keep away from her." "she's somewhere with the others playing baseball golf," said reggie, gloomily, following his friend. "isn't it terrible to see a girl in the world like that--apparently created to make some good gink happy--and suddenly find out that she has even more brains than beauty! my god, stuyve, it's hard on a man like me." "are you really hard hit?" "_am_ i? and how about you?" "it's the real thing here," admitted van alstyne. "but what's the use?" they agreed that there was no use; but during the dance that evening both young men managed to make their intentions clear to jacqueline. reggie ledyard had persuaded her to a few minutes' promenade in the greenhouse; and there, standing amid thickets of spicy carnations, the girl listened to her first proposal from a man of that outer world about which, until a few days ago, she had known nothing. the boy was not eloquent; he made a clumsy attempt to kiss her and was defeated. he seemed to her very big, and blond, and handsome as he stood there; and she felt a little pity for him, too, partly because his ideas were so few and his vocabulary so limited. perplexed, silent, sorry for him, yet still conscious of a little thrill of wonder and content that a man of the outer world had found her eligible, she debated within herself how best to spare him. and, as usual, the truth presented itself to her as the only explanation. "you see," she said, lifting her troubled eyes, "i am in love with some one else." "good god!" he muttered. after a silence he said humbly: "would it be unpardonable if i--_would_ you tell me whether you are engaged?" she blushed with surprise at the idea. "oh, no," she said, startled. "i--don't expect to be." "what?" he exclaimed incredulously. "is there a man on earth ass enough not to fall in love with you if you ever condescended to smile at him twice?" but the ideas which he was evoking seemed to distress her, and she averted her face and stood twisting a long-stemmed carnation with nervous fingers. not even to herself, either before or since desboro's letter which had revealed him so unmistakably, had the girl ventured in her inmost thoughts to think the things which this big, blond, loutish boy had babbled. what desboro was, she understood. she had had the choice of dismissing him from her mind, with scorn and outraged pride as aids to help the sacrifice, or of accepting him as he was--as she knew him to be--for the sake of something about him as yet inexplicable even to herself. and she had chosen. but now a man of desboro's world had asked her to be his wife. more than that; he had assumed that she was fitted to be the wife of anybody. * * * * * they walked back together. she was adorable with him, kind, timidly sympathetic and smilingly silent by turns, venturing even to rally him a little, console him a little, moved by an impulse toward friendship wholly unfeigned. "all i have to say is," he muttered, "that you're a peach and a corker; and i'm going to invent some way of marrying you, even if it lands me in an east side night-school." even he joined in her gay laughter; and presently van alstyne, who had been glowering at them, managed to get her away. but she would have nothing further to do with greenhouses, or dark landings, or libraries; so he asked her bluntly while they were dancing; and she shook her head, and very soon dropped his arm. there was a bay-window near them; she made a slight gesture of irritation; and there, in the partly curtained seclusion, he learned that she was grateful and happy that he liked her so much; that she liked him very much, but that she loved somebody else. he took it rather badly at first; she began to understand that few girls would have lightly declined a van alstyne; and he was inclined to be patronising, sulky and dignified--an impossible combination--for it ditched him finally, and left him kissing her hands and declaring constancy eternal. that night, at parting, desboro retained her offered hand a trifle longer than convention required, and looked at her more curiously than usual. "are you enjoying the party, jacqueline?" "every minute of it. i have never been as happy." "i suppose you realise that everybody is quite mad about you." "everybody is nice to me! people are so much kinder than i imagined." "are they? how do you get on with the gorgon?" "mrs. hammerton? do you know she is perfectly sweet? i never dreamed she could be so gentle and thoughtful and considerate. why--and it seems almost ridiculous to say it--she seems to have the ideas of a mother about whatever concerns me. she actually fusses over me sometimes--and--it is--agreeable." an inexplicable shyness suddenly overcame her, and she said good-night hastily, and mounted the stairs to her room. later, when she was prepared for bed, mrs. hammerton knocked and came in. "jacqueline," she said bluntly, "what was reggie ledyard saying to you this evening? i'll box his ears if he proposed to you. did he?" "i--i am afraid he did." "you didn't take him?" "no." "i should think not! i'd as soon expect you to marry a stable groom. he has all the beauty and healthy colour of one. also the distinguished mental capacity. you don't want that kind." "i don't want any kind." "i'm glad of it. did any other fool hint anything more of that sort?" "mr. van alstyne." "oho! stuyvesant, too? well, what did you say to _him_?" asked the old lady, with animation. "i said no." "what?" "of course, i said no. i am not in love with mr. van alstyne." "child! do you realise that you had the opportunity of your life!" jacqueline's smile was confused and deprecating. "but when a girl doesn't care for a man----" "do you mean to marry for _love_?" the girl sat silent a moment, then shook her head. "i shall not marry," she said. "nonsense! and if you feel that way, what am i good for? what earthly use am i to you? will you kindly inform me?" she had seated herself on the bed's edge, leaning over the girl where she lay on her pillows. "answer me," she insisted. "of what use am i to you?" for a full minute the girl lay there looking up at her without stirring. then a smile glimmered in her eyes; she lifted both arms and laid them on the older woman's shoulders. "you are useful--this way," she said; and kissed her lightly on the forehead. the effect on aunt hannah was abrupt; she caught the girl to her breast and held her there fiercely and in silence for a moment; then, releasing her, tucked her in with mute violence, turned off the light and marched out without a word. * * * * * day after day desboro's guests continued to turn the house inside out, ransacking it from garret to cellar. "we don't intend to do anything in this house that anybody has ever done here, or at any house party," explained reggie ledyard to jacqueline. "so if any lady cares to walk down stairs on her head the incident will be quite in order." "can she slide down the banisters instead?" asked helsa steyr. "oh, you'll have to slide up to be original," said betty barkley. "how can anybody slide _up_ the banisters?" demanded reggie hotly. "you've the intellect of a terrapin," said betty scornfully. "it's because nobody has ever done it that it ought to be done here." desboro, seated on the pool table, told her she could do whatever she desired, including arson, as long as she didn't disturb the aqueduct police. katharine frere said to jacqueline: "everything you do is so original. can't you invent something new for us to do?" "she might suggest that you all try to think," said mrs. hammerton tartly. "that would be novelty enough." cairns seized the megaphone and shouted: "help! help! aunt hannah is after us!" captain herrendene, seated beside desboro with a half smile on his face, glanced across at jacqueline who stood in the embrasure of a window, a billiard cue resting across her shoulders. "please invent something for us, miss nevers," he said. "why don't you play hide and seek?" sneered mrs. hammerton, busily knitting a tie. "it's suited to your intellects." "let miss nevers suggest a new way of playing the oldest game ever invented," added betty barkley. "there is no possibility of inventing anything new; everything was first done in the year one. even protoplasmic cells played hide-and-seek together." "what rot!" said reggie. "you can't play that in a new way." "you could play it in a sporting way," said cairns. "how's that, old top?" "well, for example, you conceal yourself, and whatever girl finds you has got to marry you. how's that for a reckless suggestion?" but it had given reggie something resembling an idea. "let us be hot sports," he said, with animation; "draw lots to see which girl will hide somewhere in the house; make a time-limit of one hour; and if any man finds her she'll marry him. there isn't a girl here," he added, jeeringly, "who has the sporting nerve to try it!" a chorus of protests greeted the challenge. athalie vannis declared that she was crazy to marry somebody; but she insisted that the men would only pretend to search, and were really too cowardly to hunt in earnest. cairns retorted that the girl in concealment would never permit a real live man to miss her hiding place while she possessed lungs to reveal it. "there isn't," repeated reggie, "a girl who has the nerve! not one!" he inspected them scornfully through the wrong end of the megaphone. "phony sports," he added. "no nerves and all fidgets. look at me; _i_ don't want to get married; but i'm game for an hour. there isn't a girl here to call my bluff!" and he ventured to glance at jacqueline. "they've had a chance to look at you by daylight, reggie, and that is fatal," said cairns. "now, if they were only sure that i'd discover 'em, or the god-like captain yonder, or the beautiful mr. desboro----" "i've half a mind to do it," said helsa steyr. "marie, will you draw lots to see who hides?" "why doesn't a man hide?" drawled miss ledyard. "i'm very sure i could drag him to the altar in ten minutes." cairns had found a sheet of paper, torn it into slips, and written down every woman's name, including aunt hannah's. "she's retired to her room in disgust," said jacqueline, laughing. "is _she_ included?" faltered reggie. "you've brought it on yourself," said cairns. "are you going to renig just because aunt hannah is a possible prize? are you really a tin sport?" "no, by heck! come on, katharine!" to miss frere. "but betty barkley can't figure in this, or there may be bigamy done." "that makes it a better sporting proposition," said betty coolly. "i insist on figuring; bertie can take his chances." "then i'm jingled if i don't play, too," said barkley. "and i'm not sure i'll hunt very hard if it's betty who hides." the pretty little woman turned up her nose at her husband and sent a dazzling smile at desboro. "i'll whistle three times, like the daughter in the poem," she said. "please beat my husband to it." cairns waved the pool basket aloft: "come ladies!" he cried. "somebody reach up and draw; and may heaven smile upon your wedding day!" betty barkley, standing on tip-toe, reached up, stirred the folded ballots with tentative fingers, grasped one, drew it forth, and flourished it. "goodness! how my heart really beats!" she said. "i don't know whether i want to open it or not. i hadn't contemplated bigamy." "if it's my name, i'm done for," said katharine frere calmly. "i'm nearly six feet, and i can't conceal them all." "open it," said athalie vannis, with a shiver. "after all there's the divorce court!" and she looked defiantly at cairns. betty turned over the ballot between forefinger and thumb and regarded it with dainty aversion. "well," she said, "if i'm in for a scandal, i might as well know it. will you be kind to me, jim, and not flirt with my maid?" she opened the ballot, examined the name written there, turned and passed it to jacqueline, who flushed brightly as a delighted shout greeted her. "the question is," said reggie ledyard excitedly, "are you a sport, miss nevers, or are you not? kindly answer with appropriate gestures." the girl stood with her golden head drooping, staring at the bit of paper in her hand; then, as desboro watched her, she glanced up with that sudden, reckless smile which he had seen once before--the first day he met her--and made a gay little gesture of acceptance. "you're not really going to do it, are you?" said betty, incredulously. "you don't have to; they're every one of them short sports themselves!" "_i_ am not," said jacqueline, smiling. "but," argued katharine frere, "suppose reggie should find you. you'd never marry _him_, would you?" "great heavens!" shouted ledyard. "she might have a worse fate. there's desboro!" "you don't really mean it, do you, miss nevers?" asked captain herrendene. "yes, i do," said jacqueline. "i always was a gambler by nature." the tint of excitement was bright on her cheeks; she shot a daring glance at ledyard, looked at van alstyne and laughed, but her back remained turned toward desboro. he said: "if the papers ever get wind of this they'll print it as a serious item." "i _am_ perfectly serious," she said, looking coolly at him over her shoulder. "if there is a man here clever enough to find me, i'll marry him in a minute. but"--and she laughed in desboro's face--"there isn't. so nobody need really lose one moment in anxiety. and if a girl finds me it's all off, of course. may i have twenty minutes? and will you time me, mr. ledyard? and will you all remain in this room with the door closed?" "if nobody finds you," cried cairns, as she crossed the threshold, "we each forfeit whatever you ask of us?" she paused at the door, looking back: "is that understood?" everybody cried: "yes! certainly!" she nodded and disappeared. for twenty minutes they waited; then, as reggie closed his watch, a general stampede ensued. amazed servants shrank aside as cairns, blowing fearful blasts on the megaphone, cheered on the excited human pack; everywhere desboro's cats and dogs fled before the invasion; room after room was ransacked, maids routed, butler and valet defied. even aunt hannah's sanctuary was menaced until that lady sat up on her bed and swore steadily at ledyard, who had scaled the transom. desboro, hunting by himself, entered the armoury, looked suspiciously at the armoured figures, shook a few, opened the vizors of others, and peered at the painted faces inside the helmets. others joined him, prying curiously, gathering in groups amid the motionless army of mailed men. then, as more than half of the allotted hour had already expired, ledyard suggested an attic party, where trunks full of early xixth century clothing might be rifled with pleasing results. "we may find her up there in a chest, like the celebrated bride," remarked aunt hannah, who had reappeared from her retreat. "it's the lesser of several tragedies that might happen," she added insolently, to desboro. "to the attic!" thundered cairns through his megaphone; and they started. but desboro still lingered at the armoury door, looking back. the noise of the chase died away in the interior of the main house; the armoury became very still under the flood of pale winter sunshine. he glanced along the steel ranks of men-at-arms; he looked up at the stately mounted figures; dazzling sunlight glittered over helmet and cuirass and across the armoured flanks of horses. could it be possible that she was seated up there, hidden inside some suit of blazing mail, astride a battle-horse? cautiously he came back, skirting the magnificent and motionless ranks, hesitated and halted. of course the whole thing had been proposed and accepted in jest; he told himself that. and yet--if some other man did discover her--the foundation of the jest might serve for a more permanent understanding. he didn't want her to have any intimate understanding with anybody until he and she understood each other, and he understood himself. he didn't want another man to find and claim the forfeit, even in jest, because he didn't know what might happen. no man was ever qualified to foretell what another man might do; and men already were behaving toward her with a persistency and seriousness unmistakable--men like herrendene, who meant what he looked and said; and young hammerton, daisy's brother, eager, inexperienced and susceptible; and bertie barkley, a little, hard-faced snob, with an unerring instinct for anybody who promised to be popular among desirable people, was beginning to test her metal with the acid of his experience. desboro stood quite still, looking almost warily about him and thinking faster and faster, trying to recollect who it was who had dragged in the silly subject of marriage. that blond and hulking ass ledyard, wasn't it? he began to walk, slowly passing the horsemen in review. suppose a blond animal like reggie ledyard offered himself in earnest. was she the kind of girl who would nail the worldly opportunity? and herrendene--that quiet, self-contained, keen-eyed man of forty-five. you could never tell what herrendene was thinking about anything, or what he was capable of doing. and his admiration for jacqueline was undisguised, and his attentions frankly persistent. last night, too, when they were coasting under the new moon, there was half an hour's disappearance for which neither herrendene nor jacqueline had even pretended to account, though bantered and challenged--to desboro's vague discomfort. and the incident had left desboro a trifle cool toward her that morning; and she had pretended not to be aware of the slight constraint between them, which made him sulky. * * * * * he had reached the end of the double lane of horsemen. now he pivoted and retraced his steps, hands clasped behind his back, absently scanning the men-at-arms, preoccupied with his own reflections. how seriously had she taken the rôle she was playing somewhere at that moment? only fools accepted actual hazards when dared. he himself was apt to be that kind of a fool. was _she_? would she really have abided by the terms if discovered by herrendene, for example, or dicky hammerton--if they were mad enough to take it seriously? he thought of that sudden and delicious flash of recklessness in her eyes. he had seen it twice now. "by god!" he thought. "i believe she would! she is the sort that sees a thing through to the bitter end." he glanced up, startled, as though something, somewhere in the vast, silent place, had moved. but he heard nothing, and there was no movement anywhere among the armoured effigies. suppose she were here hidden somewhere within a hollow suit of steel. she must be! else why was he lingering? why was he not hunting her with the pack? and still, if she actually were here, why was he not searching for her under every suit of sunlit mail? could it be because he did not really _want_ to find her--with this silly jest of marriage dragged in--a thing not to be mentioned between her and him even in jest? was it that he had become convinced in his heart that she must be here, and was he merely standing guard like a jealous, sullen dog, watching lest some other fool come blundering back from a false trail to discover the right one--and perhaps her? suddenly, without reason, he became certain that she and he were there in the armoury alone together. he knew it somehow, felt it, divined it in every quickening pulse beat. he heard the preliminary click of the armoury clock, indicating five minutes' grace before the hour struck. he looked up at the old dial, where it was set against the wall--an ancient piece in azure and gold under a foliated crest borne by some long dead dignitary. four more minutes now. and suppose she should stir in her place, setting her harness clashing? had the thought of marrying him ever entered her head? was it in such a girl to challenge the possibility, make it as near a serious question as it ever could be? it had never existed for them, even as a question. it was not a dead issue, because it had never lived. if she made one movement now, if she so much as lifted her finger, this occult thing would be alive. he knew it--knew that it lay with her; and stood silent, unstirring, listening for the slightest sound. there was no sound. it lacked now only a minute to the hour. he looked at the face of the lofty clock; and, looking, all in a moment it flashed upon him where she was concealed. wheeling in his tracks, on the impulse of the moment he walked straight back to the great painted wooden charger, sheathed in steel and cloth of gold, bearing on high a slender, mounted figure in full armour--the dainty milanese mail of the countess of oroposa. the superb young figure sat its saddle, hollow backed, graceful, both delicate gauntlets resting easily over the war-bridle on the gem-set pommel. sunbeams turned the long spurs to two golden flames, and splintered into fire across the helmet's splendid crest. he could not pierce the dusk behind the closed vizor; but in every heart-beat, every nerve, he felt her living presence within that hollow shell of inlaid steel and gold. for a moment he stood staring up at her, then glanced mechanically toward the high clock. thirty seconds! time to speak if he would; time for her to move, if in her heart there ever had been the thought which he had never uttered, never meant to voice. twenty seconds! through that slitted vizor, also, the clock was in full view. she could read the flight of time as well as he. now she must move--if ever she meant to challenge in him that to which he never would respond. he waited now, looking at the clock, now at the still figure above him. ten seconds! five! "jacqueline!" he cried impulsively. there was no movement, no answer from the slitted helmet. "jacqueline! are you there?" no sound. then the lofty gold and azure clock struck. and when the last of the twelve resounding strokes rang echoing through the sunlit armoury, the mailed figure stirred in its saddle, stretched both stirrups, raised its arms and flexed them. "you nearly caught me," she said calmly. "i was afraid you'd see my eyes through the helmet slits. was it your lack of enterprise that saved me--or your prudence?" "i spoke to you before the hour was up. it seems to me that i _have_ won." "not at all. you might just as well have stood in the cellar and howled my name. that isn't discovering me, you know." "i felt in my heart that you were there," he said, in a low voice. she laughed. "what a man feels in his heart doesn't count. do you realise that i'm nearly dead sitting for an hour here? this helmet is abominably hot! how in the world could that poor countess have stood it?" "shall i climb up beside you and unlace your helmet?" he asked. "no, thank you. mrs. quant will get me out of it." she rose in the stirrups, swung one steel-shod leg over, and leaped to the floor beside him, clashing from crest to spur. "what a silly game it was, anyway!" she commented, lifting her vizor and lowering the beaver. her face was deliciously flushed, and the gold hair straggled across her cheeks. "it's quite wonderful how the armour of the countess fits me," she said. "i wonder what she looked like. i'll wager, anyway, that she never played as risky a game in her armour as i have played this morning." "you didn't really mean to abide by the decision, did you?" he asked. "do you think i did?" "no, of course not." she smiled. "perhaps you are correct. but i've always been afraid i'd do something radical and irrevocable, and live out life in misery to pay for it. probably i wouldn't. i _must_ take off these gauntlets, anyway. thank you"--as he relieved her of them and tossed them under the feet of the wooden horse. "last thursday," he said, "you fascinated everybody with your lute and your chinese robes. heaven help the men when they see you in armour! i'll perform my act of fealty now." and he lifted her hands and kissed them lightly where the gauntlets had left pink imprints on the smooth white skin. as always when he touched her, she became silent; and, as always, he seemed to divine the instant change in her to unresponsiveness under physical contact. it was not resistance, it was a sort of inertia--an endurance which seemed to stir in him a subtle brutality, awaking depths which must not be troubled--unless he meant to cut his cables once for all and drift headlong toward the rocks of chance. "you and herrendene behaved shockingly last night," he said lightly. "where on earth did you go?" "is it to you that i must whisper 'je m'accuse'?" she asked smilingly. "to whom if not to me, jacqueline?" "please--and what exactly then may be your status? don't answer," she added, flushing scarlet. "i didn't mean to say that. because i know what is your status with me." "how do you know?" "you once made it clear to me, and i decided that your friendship was worth everything to me--whatever you yourself might be." "whatever _i_ might be?" he repeated, reddening. "yes. you are what you are--what you wrote me you were. i understood you. but--do you notice that it has made any difference in my friendship? because it has not." the dull colour deepened over his face. they were standing near the closed door now; she laid one hand on the knob, then ventured to raise her eyes. "it has made no difference," she repeated. "please don't think it has." his arms had imprisoned her waist; she dropped her head and her hand slipped from the knob of the great oak door as he drew her toward him. "in armour!" she protested, trying to speak lightly, but avoiding his eyes. "is that anything new?" he said. "you are always instantly in armour when my lightest touch falls on you. why?" he lifted her drooping head until it rested against his arm. "isn't it anything at all to you when i kiss you?" he asked unsteadily. she did not answer. "isn't it, jacqueline?" but she only closed her eyes, and her lips remained coldly unresponsive to his. after a moment he said: "can't you care for me at all--in this way? answer me!" "i--care for you." "_this_ way?" over her closed lids a tremor passed, scarcely perceptible. "don't you know how--how deeply i--care for you?" he managed to say, feeling prudence and discretion violently tugging at their cables. "don't you _know_ it, jacqueline?" "yes. i know you--care for me." "good god!" he said, trying to choke back the very words he uttered. "can't you respond--when you know i find you so adorable! when--when you must know that i love you! isn't there anything in you to respond?" "i--care for you. if i did not, could i endure--what you do?" a sort of blind passion seized and possessed him; he kissed again and again the fragrant, unresponsive lips. presently she lifted her head, loosened his clasp at her waist, stepped clear of the circle of his arms. "you see," she managed to say calmly, "that i do care for you. so--may i go now?" he opened the door for her and they moved slowly out into the hall. "you do not show that you care very much, jacqueline." "how can a girl show it more honestly? could you tell me?" "i have never stirred you to any tenderness--never!" she moved beside him with head lowered, hands resting on her plated hips, the bright hair in disorder across her cheeks. presently she said in a low voice: "i wish you could see into my heart." "i wish i could! and i wish you could see into mine. that would settle it one way or another!" "no," she said, "because i _can_ see into your heart. and it settles nothing for me--except that i would like to--remain." "remain? where?" "there--in your heart." he strove to speak coolly: "then you _can_ see into it?" "yes." "and you know that you are there alone?" "yes--i think so." "and now that you have looked into it and know what is there, do you care to remain in the heart of--of such a man as i am?" "yes. what you are i--forgive." an outburst of merriment came from the library, and several figures clad in the finery of the early nineteenth century came bustling out into the hall. [illustration: "cheer after cheer rang through the hallway"] evidently his guests had rifled the chests and trunks in the attic and had attired themselves to their heart's content. at sight of desboro approaching accompanied by a slim figure in complete armour, they set up a shout of apprehension and then cheer after cheer rang through the hallway. "do you know," cried betty barkley, "you are the most darling thing in armour that ever happened! i want to get into some steel trousers like yours immediately! are there any in the armoury that will fit me, jim?" "did _you_ discover her?" demanded reggie ledyard, aghast. "not within the time limit, old chap," said desboro, pretending deep chagrin. "then you don't have to marry him, do you, miss nevers?" exclaimed cairns, gleefully. "i don't have to marry anybody, mr. cairns. and _isn't_ it humiliating?" she returned, laughingly, edging her way toward the stairs amid the noisy and admiring group surrounding her. "no! no!" cried katharine frere. "you can't escape! you are too lovely that way, and you certainly must come to lunch in your armour!" "i'd perish!" protested jacqueline. "no christian martyr was ever more absolutely cooked than am i in this suit of mail." helsa steyr started for her, but jacqueline sprang to the stairs and ran up, pursued by helsa and betty. "_isn't_ she the cunningest, sweetest thing!" sighed athalie vannis, looking after her. "i'm simply and sentimentally mad over her. why _didn't_ you have brains enough to discover her, jim, and make her marry you?" "i'd have knocked 'em out if he had had enough brains for that," muttered ledyard. "but the horrible thing is that i haven't any brains, either, and miss nevers has nothing but!" "a girl like that marries diplomats and dukes, and discoverers and artists and things," commented betty. "you're just a good-looking simp, reggie. so is jim." ledyard retorted wrathfully; desboro, who had been summoned to the telephone, glanced at aunt hannah as he walked away, and was rather disturbed at the malice in the old lady's menacing smile. but what daisy hammerton said to him over the telephone disturbed him still more. "jim! elena and cary clydesdale are stopping with us. may i bring them to dinner this evening?" for a moment he was at a loss, then he said, with forced cordiality: "why, of course, daisy. but have you spoken to them about it? i've an idea that they might find my party a bore." "oh, no! elena wished me to ask you to invite them. and cary was listening." "did _he_ care to come?" "i suppose so." "what did he say?" "he grinned. he always does what elena asks him to do." "oh! then bring them by all means." "thank you, jim." and that was all; and desboro, astonished and troubled for a few moments, began to see in the incident not only the dawn of an understanding between clydesdale and his wife, but something resembling a vindication for himself in this offer to renew a friendship so abruptly terminated. more than that, he saw in it a return of elena to her senses, and it pleased him so much that when he passed aunt hannah in the hall he was almost smiling. "what pleases you so thoroughly, james--yourself?" she asked grimly. but he only smiled at her and sauntered on, exchanging friendly body-blows with reggie ledyard as he passed. "reggie," said mrs. hammerton, with misleading mildness, "come and exercise me for a few moments--there's a dear." and she linked arms with him and began to march up and down the hall vigorously. "she's very charming, isn't she?" observed aunt hannah blandly. "who?" "miss nevers." "she's a dream," said reggie, with emphasis. "such a thoroughbred air," commented the old lady. "rather!" "and yet--she's only a shop-keeper." "eh?" "didn't you know that miss nevers keeps an antique shop?" "what of it?" he said, turning red. "i peddle stocks. my grandfather made snuff. what do i care what miss nevers does?" "of course. only--would _you_ marry her?" "huh! like a shot! but i see her letting me! once i was even ass enough to think i could kiss her, but it seems she won't even stand for that! and herrendene makes me sick--the old owl--sneaking off with her whenever he can get the chance! they all make me sick!" he added, lighting a cigarette. "i wish to goodness i had a teaspoonful of intellect, and i'd give 'em a run for her. because i have the looks, if i do say it," he added, modestly. "looks never counted seriously with a woman yet," said mrs. hammerton maliciously. "also, i've seen better looking coachmen than you." "thanks. what are you going to do with her anyway?" "i don't have to do anything. she'll do whatever is necessary." "that's right, too. lord, but she'll cut a swathe! even that dissipated creature cairns sits up and takes notice. i should think desboro would, too--more than he does." "i understand there's a girl in blue, somewhere," observed mrs. hammerton. "that's a different kind of girl," said the young man, with contempt, and quite oblivious to his own naïve self-revelation. mrs. hammerton shrugged her trim shoulders. "also," he said, "there is elena clydesdale--speaking of scandal and james desboro in the same breath." "do you believe that story?" "yes. but that sort of affair never counts seriously with a man who wants to marry." "really? how charming! but perhaps it might count against him with the girl he wants to marry. young girls are sometimes fastidious, you know." "they never hear about such things until somebody tells 'em, after they're married. then it's rather too late to throw any pre-nuptial fits," he added, with a grin. "reginald," said mrs. hammerton, "day by day i am humbly learning how to appreciate the innate delicacy, chivalry, and honourable sentiments of your sex. you yourself are a wonderful example. for instance, when rumour couples elena clydesdale's name with james desboro's, does it occur to you to question the scandal? no; you take it for granted, and very kindly explain to me how easily mrs. clydesdale can be thrown over if her alleged lover decides he'd like to marry somebody." "that's what's done," he said sulkily. "when a man----" "you don't have to tell _me_!" she fairly hissed, turning on him so suddenly that he almost fell backward. "don't you think i know what is the code among your sort--among the species of men you find sympathetic? you and jack cairns and james desboro--and cary clydesdale, too? let him reproach himself if his wife misbehaves! and i don't blame her if she does, and i don't believe she does! do you hear me, you yellow-haired, blue-eyed little beast?" ledyard stood open-mouthed, red to the roots of his blond hair, and the tiny, baleful black eyes of mrs. hammerton seemed to hypnotise him. "you're all alike," she said with withering contempt. "real men are out in the world, doing things, not crawling around over the carpet under foot, or sitting in clubs, or dancing with a pack of women, or idling from polo field to tennis court, from stable to steam-yacht. you've no real blood in you; it's only scotch and soda gone flat. you've the passions of overfed lap dogs with atrophied appetites. there's not a real man here--except captain herrendene--and he's going back to his post in a week. you others have no posts. and do you think that men of your sort are fitted to talk about marrying such a girl as miss nevers? let me catch one of you trying it! she's in my charge. but that doesn't count. she'll recognise a real man when she sees one, and glittering counterfeits won't attract her." "great heavens!" faltered reggie. "what a horrible lambasting! i--i've heard you could do it; but this is going some--really, you know, it's going some! and i'm not all those things that you say, either!" he added, in naïve resentment. "i may be no good, but i'm not as rotten as all that." he stood with lips pursed up into a half-angry, half-injured pout, like a big, blond, blue-eyed yokel facing school-room punishment. mrs. hammerton's harsh face relaxed; and finally a smile wrinkled her eyes. "i suppose men can't help being what they are--a mixture of precocious child and trained beast. the best of 'em have both of these in 'em. and you are far from the best. reggie, come here to me!" he came, after a moment's hesitation, doubtfully. "lord!" she said. "how we cherish the worst of you! i sometimes think we don't know enough to appreciate the best. otherwise, perhaps they'd give us more of their society. but, generally, all we draw is your sort; and we cast our nets in vain into the real world--where captain herrendene is going on monday. reggie, dear?" "what?" he said suspiciously. "was i severe with you and your friends?" "great heavens! there isn't another woman i'd take such a drubbing from!" "but you _do_ take it," she said, with one of her rare and generous smiles which few people ever saw, and of which few could believe her facially capable. and she slipped her arm through his and led him slowly toward the library where already farris was announcing luncheon. "by heck!" he repeated later, in the billiard room, to a group of interested listeners. "aunt hannah is all that they say she is. she suddenly let out into me, and i give y'm'word she had me over the ropes in one punch--tellin' me what beasts men are--and how we're not fit to associate with nice girls--no b'jinks--nor fit to marry 'em, either." cairns laughed unfeelingly. "oh, you can laugh!" muttered ledyard. "but to be lit into that way hurts a man's self-respect. you'd better be careful or you'll be in for a dose of aunt hannah, too. she evidently has no use for any of us--barrin' the captain, perhaps." that gentleman smiled and picked up his hockey stick. "there's enough ice left--if you don't mind a wetting," he said. "shall we start?" desboro rose, saying carelessly: "the hammertons and clydesdales are coming over. i'll have to wait for them." bertie barkley turned his hard little smooth-shaven face toward him. "where are the clydesdales?" "i believe they're stopping with the hammertons for a week or two--i really don't know. you can ask them, as they'll be here to dinner." cairns laid aside a cue with which he had been punching pool-balls; van alstyne unhooked his skate-bag, and the others followed his example in silence. nobody said anything further about the clydesdales to desboro. out in the hall a gay group of young girls in their skating skirts were gathering, among them jacqueline, now under the spell of happiness in their companionship. truly, even in these few days, the "warm sunlight of approval" had done wonders for her. she had blossomed out deliriously and exquisitely in her half-shy friendships with these young girls, responding diffidently at first to their overtures, then frankly and with a charming self-possession based on the confidence that she was really quite all right if everybody only thought so. everybody seemed to think so; athalie vannis's friendship for her verged on the sentimental, for the young girl was enraptured at the idea that jacqueline actually earned her own living. marie ledyard lazily admired and envied her slight but exceedingly fashionable figure; helsa steyr passionately adored her; katharine frere was profoundly impressed by her intellectual attainments; betty barkley saw in her a social success, with aunt hannah to pilot her--that is, every opportunity for wealth or position, or even both, through the marriage to which, betty cheerfully conceded, her beauty entitled her. so everybody of her own sex was exceedingly nice to her; and the men already were only too anxious to be. and what more could a young girl want? as the jolly party started out across the snow, in random and chattering groups made up by hazard, jacqueline turned from captain herrendene, with whom she found herself walking, and looked back at desboro, who had remained standing bareheaded on the steps. "aren't you coming?" she called out to him, in her clear young voice. he shook his head, smiling. "please excuse me a moment," she murmured to herrendene, and ran back along the middle drive. desboro started forward to meet her at the same moment, and they met under the dripping spruces. "why aren't you coming with us?" she asked. "i can't very well. i have to wait here for some people who might arrive early." "you are going to remain here all alone?" "yes, until they come. you see they are dining here, and i can't let them arrive and find the house empty." "do you want me to stay with you? mrs. hammerton is in her room, and it would be perfectly proper." he said, reddening with surprise and pleasure: "it's very sweet of you. i--had no idea you'd offer to do such a thing----" "why shouldn't i? besides, i'd rather be where you are than anywhere else." "with _me_, jacqueline?" "are you really surprised to hear me admit it?" "a little." "why, if you please?" "because you never before have been demonstrative, even in speech." she blushed: "not as demonstrative as you are. but you know that i might learn to be." he looked at her curiously, but with more or less self-control. "do you really care for me that way, jacqueline?" "i know of no way in which i don't care for you," she said quickly. "does your caring for me amount to--love?" he asked deliberately. "i--think so--yes." the emotion in his face was now palely reflected in hers; their voices were no longer quite steady under the sudden strain of self-repression. "say it, jacqueline, if it is true," he whispered. his face was tense and white, but not as pale as hers. "say it!" he whispered again. "i can't--in words. but it is true--what you asked me." "that you love me?" "yes. i thought you knew it long ago." they stood very still, facing each other, breathing more rapidly. her fate was upon her, and she knew it. captain herrendene, who had waited, watched them for a moment more, then, lighting a cigarette, sauntered on carelessly, swinging his hockey-stick in circles. desboro said in a low, distinct voice, and without a tremor: "i am more in love with you than ever, jacqueline. but that is as much as i shall ever say to you--nothing more than that." "i know it." "yes, i know you do. shall i leave you in peace? it can still be done. or--shall i tell you again that i love you?" "yes--if you wish, tell me--that." "is love _enough_ for you, jacqueline?" "ask yourself, jim. with what you give i must be content--or starve." "do you realise--what it means for us?" he could scarcely speak now. "yes--i know." she turned and looked back. herrendene was now a long way off, walking slowly and alone. then she turned once more to desboro, absently, as though absorbed in her own reflections. herrendene had asked her to marry him that morning. she was thinking of it now. then, in her remote gaze the brief dream faded, her eyes cleared, and she looked up at the silent man beside her. "shall i remain here with you?" she asked. he made an effort to speak, but his voice was no longer under command. she waited, watching him; then they both turned and slowly entered the house together. her hand had fallen into his, and when they reached the library he lifted it to his lips and noticed that her fingers were trembling. he laid his other hand over them, as though to quiet the tremor; and looked into her face and saw how colourless it had become. "my darling!" but the time had not yet come when he could tolerate his own words; contempt for them choked him for a moment, and he only took her into his arms in silence. she strove to think, to speak, to master her emotion; but for a moment his mounting passion subdued her and she remained silent, quivering in his embrace. then, with an effort, she found her voice and loosened his arms. "listen," she whispered. "you must listen. i know what you are--how you love me. but you are wrong! if i could only make you see it! if you would not think me selfish, self-seeking--believe unworthy motives of me----" "what do you mean?" he asked, suddenly chilled. "i mean that i am worth more to you than--than to be--what you wish me to be to you. you won't misunderstand, will you? i am not bargaining, not begging, not trading. i love you! i couldn't bargain; i could only take your terms--or leave them. and i have not decided. but--may i say something--for your sake more than for my own?" "yes," he said, coolly. "then--for your sake--far more than for mine--if you do really love me--make more of me than you have thought of doing! i know i shall be worth it to you. could you consider it?" after a terrible silence, he said: "i can--get out of your life--dog that i am! i can leave you in peace. and that is all." "if that is all you can do--don't leave me--in peace. i--i will take the chances of remaining--honest----" the hint of fear in her eyes and in her voice startled him. "there is a martyrdom," she said, "which i might not be able to endure forever. i don't know. i shall never love another man. and all my life i have wanted love. it is here; and i may not be brave enough to deny it and live my life out in ignorance of it. but, jim, if you only could understand--if you only knew what i can be to you--to the world for your sake--what i can become merely because i love you--what i am capable of for the sake of your pride in--in me--and----" she turned very white. "because it is better for your sake, jim. i am not thinking of myself, and how wonderful it would be for me--truly i am not. don't you believe me? only--there is so much to me--i am really so much of a woman--that it would begin to trouble you if ever i became anything--anything less than your--wife. and you would feel sorry for me--and i couldn't truthfully console you because all the while i'd know in my heart what you had thrown away that might have belonged to us both." "your life?" he said, with dry lips. "oh, jim! i mean more than your life and mine! for our lives--yours and mine--would not be all you would throw away and deny. before we die we would want children. ought i not to say it?" she turned away, blind with tears, and dropped onto the sofa. "i'm wondering if i'm in my right mind," she sobbed, "for yesterday i did not even dare think of these things i am saying to you now! but--somehow--even while captain herrendene was speaking--it all flashed into my mind. i don't know how i knew it, but i suddenly understood that you belonged to me--just as you are, jim--all the good, all the evil in you--everything--even your intentions toward me--how you may deal with me--all, all belonged to me! and so i went back to you, to help you. and now i have said this thing--for your sake alone, not for my own--only so that in years to come you may not have me on your conscience. for if you do not marry me--and i let myself really love you--you will wish that the beginning was to be begun again, and that we had loved each other--otherwise." he came over and stood looking down at her for a moment. his lips were twitching. "would you marry me now," he managed to say, "_now_, after you know what a contemptible cad i am?" "you are only a man. i love you, jim. i will marry you--if you'll let me----" suddenly she covered her eyes with her hands. he seated himself beside her, sick with self-contempt, dumb, not daring to touch her where she crouched, trembling in every limb. for a long while they remained so, in utter silence; then the doorbell startled them. jacqueline fled to her room; desboro composed himself with a desperate effort and went out into the hall. he welcomed his guests on the steps when farris opened the door, outwardly master of himself once more. "we came over early, jim," explained daisy, "because uncle john is giving a dinner and father and mother need the car. do you mind?" he laughed and shook hands with her and elena, who looked intently and unsmilingly into his face, and then let her expressionless glance linger for a moment on her husband, who was holding out a huge hand to desboro. "i'm glad to see you, clydesdale," said desboro pleasantly, and took that bulky gentleman's outstretched hand, who mumbled something incoherent; but the fixed grin remained. and that was the discomforting--yes, the dismaying--characteristic of the man--his grin never seemed to be affected by his emotions. mrs. quant bobbed away upstairs, piloting daisy and elena. clydesdale followed desboro to the library--the same room where he had discovered his wife that evening, and had learned in what esteem she held the law that bound her to him. both men thought of it now--could not avoid remembering it. also, by accident, they were seated very nearly as they had been seated that night, clydesdale filling the armchair with his massive figure, desboro sitting on the edge of the table, one foot resting on the floor. farris brought whiskey; both men shook their heads. "will you have a cigar, clydesdale?" asked the younger man. "thanks." they smoked in silence for a few moments, then: "i'm glad you came," said desboro simply. "yes. men don't usually raise that sort of hell with each other unless a woman starts it." "don't talk that way about your wife," said desboro sharply. "see here, young man, i have no illusions concerning my wife. what happened here was her doing, not yours. i knew it at the time--if i didn't admit it. you behaved well--and you've behaved well ever since--only it hurt me too much to tell you so before to-day." "that's all right, clydesdale----" "yes, it is going to be all right now, i guess." a curious expression flitted across his red features, softening the grin for a moment. "i always liked you, desboro; and elena and i were staying with the hammertons, so she told that daisy girl to ask you to invite us. that's all there is to it." "good business!" said desboro, smiling. "i'm glad it's all clear between us." "yes, it's clear sailing now, i guess." again the curiously softening expression made his heavy red features almost attractive, and he remained silent for a while, occupied with thoughts that seemed to be pleasant ones. then, abruptly emerging from his revery, he grinned at desboro: "so mrs. hammerton has our pretty friend miss nevers in tow," he said. "fine girl, desboro. she's been at my collection, you know, fixing it up for the hammer." "so you are really going to sell?" inquired desboro. "i don't know. i _was_ going to. but i'm taking a new interest in my hobby since----" he reddened, then added very simply, "since elena and i have been getting on better together." "sure," nodded desboro, gravely understanding him. "yes--it's about like that, desboro. things were rotten bad up to that night. and afterward, too, for a while. they're clearing up a little better, i think. we're going to get on together, i believe. i don't know much about women; never liked 'em much--except elena. it's funny about miss nevers, isn't it?" "what do you mean?" "mrs. hammerton's being so crazy about her. she's a good girl, and a pretty one. elena is wild to meet her." "didn't your wife ever meet her at your house?" asked desboro dryly. "when she was there appraising my jim-cracks? no. elena has no use for my gallery or anybody who goes into it. besides, until this morning she didn't even know that miss nevers was the same expert you employed. now she wants to meet her." desboro slowly raised his eyes and looked at clydesdale. the unvaried grin baffled him, and presently he glanced elsewhere. clydesdale, smoking, slowly crossed one ponderous leg over the other. desboro continued to gaze out of the window. neither spoke again until daisy hammerton came in with elena. if the young wife remembered the somewhat lurid circumstances of her last appearance in that room, her animated and smiling face betrayed no indication of embarrassment. "when is that gay company of yours going to return, jim?" she demanded. "i am devoured by curiosity to meet this beautiful miss nevers. fancy her coming to my house half a dozen times this winter and i never suspecting that my husband's porcelain gallery concealed such a combination of genius and beauty! i could have bitten somebody's head off in vexation," she rattled on, "when i found out who she was. so i made daisy ask you to invite us to meet her. _is_ she so unusually wonderful, jim?" "i believe so," he said drily. "they say every man who meets her falls in love with her immediately--and that most of the women do, too," appealing to daisy, who nodded smiling corroboration. "she is very lovely and very clever, elena. i think i never saw anything more charming than that rainbow dance she did for us last night in chinese costume," turning to desboro, "'the rainbow skirt,' i think it is called?" "a dance some centuries old," said desboro, and let his careless glance rest on elena for a moment. "she looked," said daisy, "like some exquisite chinese figure made of rose-quartz, crystal and green jade." "jade?" said clydesdale, immediately interested. "that girl knows jades, i can tell you. by gad! the first thing she did when she walked into my gallery was to saw into a few glass ones with a file; and good-night to about a thousand dollars in japanese phony!" "that was pleasant," said desboro, laughing. "wasn't it! and my rose-quartz fêng-huang! the chia-ching period of the ming dynasty! do you get me, desboro? it was jap!" "really?" clydesdale brought down his huge fist with a thump on the table: "i wouldn't believe it! i told miss nevers she didn't know her business! i asked her to consider the fact that the crystallisation was rhombohedral, the prisms six-sided, hardness , specific gravity . , no trace of cleavage, immune to the three acids or the blow-pipe alone, and reacted with soda in the flame. i thought i knew it all, you see. first she called my attention to the colour. 'sure,' i said, 'it's a little faded; but rose-quartz fades when exposed to light!' 'yes,' said she, 'but moisture restores it.' so we tried it. nix doing! only a faint rusty stain becoming visible and infecting that delicious rose colour. 'help!' said i. 'what the devil is it?' 'jap funny business,' said she. 'your rose-quartz phoenix of the ming dynasty is common yellow crystal carved in japan and dyed that beautiful rose tint with something, the composition of which my chemist is investigating!' wasn't it horrible, desboro?" daisy's brown eyes were very wide open, and she exclaimed softly: "what a beautiful knowledge she has of a beautiful profession!" and to desboro: "can you imagine anything in the world more fascinating than to use such knowledge? and how in the world did she acquire it? she is so very young to know so much!" "her father began her training as a child," said desboro. there was a slight burning sensation in his face, and a hotter pride within him. after a second or two he felt elena's gaze; but did not choose to encounter it at the moment, and was turning to speak to daisy hammerton when jacqueline entered the library. clydesdale lumbered to his feet and tramped over to shake hands with her; daisy greeted her cordially; she and elena were presented, and stood smiling at each other for a second's silence. then mrs. clydesdale moved a single step forward, and jacqueline crossed to her and offered her hand, looking straight into her eyes so frankly and intently that elena's colour rose and for once in her life her tongue remained silent. "your husband and i are already business acquaintances," said jacqueline. "i know your very beautiful gallery, too, and have had the privilege of identifying and classifying many of the jades and porcelains." elena's eyes were level and cool as she said: "if i had known who you were i would have received you myself. you must not think me rude. mr. desboro's unnecessary reticence concerning you is to blame; not i." jacqueline's smile became mechanical: "mr. desboro's reticence concerning a business acquaintance was very natural. a busy woman neither expects nor even thinks about social amenities under business circumstances." [illustration: "'business is kinder to men than women sometimes believe'"] elena's flush deepened: "business is kinder to men than women sometimes believe--if it permits acquaintance with such delightful people as yourself." jacqueline said calmly: "all business has its compensations,"--she smiled and made a friendly little salute with her head to clydesdale and desboro,--"as you will witness for me. and i am employed by other clients who also are considerate and kind. so you see the woman who works has scarcely any time to suffer from social isolation." daisy said lightly: "nobody who is happily employed worries over social matters. intelligence and sweet temper bring more friends than a busy girl knows what to do with. isn't that so, miss nevers?" jacqueline turned to elena with a little laugh: "it's an axiom that nobody can have too many friends. i want all i can have, mrs. clydesdale, and am most grateful when people like me." "and when they don't," asked elena, smiling, "what do you do then, miss nevers?" "what is there to do, mrs. clydesdale?" she said gaily. "what would you do about it?" but elena seemed not to have heard her, for she was already turning to desboro, flushed, almost feverish in her animation: "so many things have happened since i saw you, jim----" she hesitated, then added daringly, "at the opera. do you remember _ariane_?" "i think you were in the barkley's box," he said coolly. "your memory is marvellous! in point of fact, i was there. and since then so many, many things have happened that i'd like to compare notes with you--sometime." "i'm quite ready now," he said. "do you think your daily record fit for public scrutiny, jim?" she laughed. "i don't mind sharing it with anybody here," he retorted gaily, "if you have no objection." his voice and hers, and their laughter seemed so perfectly frank that thrust and parry passed as without significance. she and desboro were still lightly rallying each other; clydesdale was explaining to daisy that lapis lazuli was the sapphire of the ancients, while jacqueline was showing her a bit under a magnifying glass, when the noise of sleighs and motors outside signalled the return of the skating party. as desboro passed her, elena said under her breath: "i want a moment alone with you this evening." "it's impossible," he motioned with his lips; and passed on with a smile of welcome for his returning guests. later, in the billiard room, where they all had gathered before the impromptu dance which usually terminated the evening, elena found another chance for a word aside: "jim, i must speak to you alone, please." "it can't be done. you see that for yourself, don't you?" "it can be done. go to your room and i'll come----" "are you mad?" "almost. i tell you you'd better find some way----" "what has happened?" "i mean to have _you_ tell _me_, jim." a dull flush came into his face: "oh! well, i'll tell you now, if you like." her heart seemed to stop for a second, then almost suffocated her, and she instinctively put her hand to her throat. he was leaning over the pool table, idly spinning the ivory balls; she, seated on the edge, one pretty, bare arm propping her body, appeared to be watching him as idly. all around them rang the laughter and animated chatter of his guests, sipping their after-dinner coffee and cordial around the huge fireplace. "don't say--that you are going to--jim----" she breathed. "it isn't true--it mustn't be----" he interrupted deliberately: "what are you trying to do to me? make a servant out of me? chain me up while you pass your life deciding at leisure whether to live with your husband or involve yourself and me in scandal?" "are you in love with that girl--after what you have promised me?" "are you sane or crazy?" "you once told me you would never marry. i have rested secure in the knowledge that when the inevitable crash came you would be free to stand by me!" "you have a perfectly good husband. you and he are on better terms--you are getting on all right together. do you expect to keep me tied to the table-leg in case of eventualities?" he said, in a savage whisper. "how many men do you wish to control?" "one! i thought a desboro never lied." "have i lied to you?" "if you marry miss nevers you will have lied to me, jim." "very well. then you'll release me from that fool of a promise. i remember i did say that i would never marry. i've changed my mind, that's all. i've changed otherwise, too--please god! the cad you knew as james desboro is not exactly what you're looking at now. it's in me to be something remotely resembling a man. i learned how to try from her, if you want to know. what i was can't be helped. what i'm to make of the débris of what i am concerns myself. if you ever had a shred of real liking for me you'll show it now." "jim! is this how you betray me--after persuading me to continue a shameful and ghastly farce with cary clydesdale! you _have_ betrayed me--for your own ends! you have made my life a living lie again--so that you could evade responsibility----" "was i ever responsible for you?" "you asked me to marry you----" "before you married cary. good god! does that entail hard labour for life?" "you promised not to marry----" "what is it to you what i do--if you treat your husband decently?" "i have tried----" she crimsoned. "i--i endured degradation to which i will never again submit--whatever the law may be--whatever marriage is supposed to include! do you think you can force me to--to that--for your own selfish ends--with your silly and unsolicited advice on domesticity and--and children--when my heart is elsewhere--when you have it, and you know you possess it--and all that i am--every bit of me. jim! don't be cruel to me who have been trying to live as you wished, merely to satisfy a moral notion of your own! don't betray me now--at such a time--when it's a matter of days, hours, before i tell cary that the farce is ended. are you going to leave me to face things alone? you can't! i won't let you! i am----" [illustration: "'be careful,' he said.... 'people are watching us'"] "be careful," he said, spinning the ball into a pocket. "people are watching us. toss that cue-ball back to me, please. laugh a little when you do it." for a second she balanced the white ivory ball in a hand which matched it; then the mad impulse to dash it into his smiling face passed with a shudder, and she laughed and sent it caroming swiftly from cushion to cushion, until it darted into his hand. "jim," she said, "you are not really serious. i know it, too; and because i do know it, i have been able to endure the things you have done--your idle fancies for a pretty face and figure--your indiscretions, ephemeral courtships, passing inclinations. but this is different----" "yes, it is different," he said. "and so am i, elena. let us be about the honest business of life, in god's name, and clear our hearts and souls of the morbid and unwholesome mess that lately entangled us." "is _that_ how you speak of what we have been to each other?" she asked, very pale. he was silent. "jim, dear," she said timidly, "won't you give me ten minutes alone with you?" he scarcely heard her. he spun the last parti-coloured ball into a corner pocket, straightened his shoulders, and looked at jacqueline where she sat in the corner of the fireplace. herrendene, cross-legged on the rug at her feet, was doing malay card tricks to amuse her; but from moment to moment her blue eyes stole across the room toward desboro and mrs. clydesdale where they leaned together over the distant pool table. suddenly she caught his eye and smiled a pale response to the message in his gaze. after a moment he said quietly to elena: "i am deeply and reverently in love--for the first and only time in my life. it is proper that you should know it. and now you do know it. there is absolutely nothing further to be said between us." "there is--more than you think," she whispered, white to the lips. chapter xi nobody, apparently, was yet astir; not a breakfast tray had yet tinkled along the dusky corridors when desboro, descending the stairs in the dim morning light, encountered jacqueline coming from the general direction of the east wing, her arms loaded with freshly cut white carnations. "good morning," he whispered, in smiling surprise, taking her and her carnations into his arms very reverently, almost timidly. she endured the contact shyly and seriously, as usual, bending her head aside to avoid his lips. "do you suppose," he said laughingly, "that you could ever bring yourself to kiss me, jacqueline?" she did not answer, and presently he released her, saying: "you never have yet; and now that we're engaged----" "engaged!" "you _know_ we are!" "is that what you think, jim?" "certainly! i asked you to marry me----" "no, dear, _i_ asked _you_. but i wasn't certain you had quite accepted me----" "are you laughing at me?" "i don't know--i don't know what i am doing any more; laughter and tears seem so close to each other--sometimes--and i can never be certain which it is going to be any more." her eyes remained grave, but her lips were sweet and humourous as she stood there on the stairs, her chin resting on the sheaf of carnations clasped to her breast. "what is troubling you, jacqueline?" he asked, after a moment's silence. "nothing. if you will hold these flowers a moment i'll decorate you." he took the fragrant sheaf from her; she selected a magnificent white blossom, drew the stem through the lapel of his coat, patted the flower into a position which suited her, regarded the effect critically, then glanced up out of her winning blue eyes and found him watching her dreamily. "i try to realise it, and i can't," he said vaguely. "can you, dear?" "realise what?" she asked, in a low voice. "that we are engaged." "are you so sure of me, jim?" "do you suppose i could live life through without you _now_?" "i don't know. try it for two minutes anyway; these flowers must stand in water. will you wait here for me?" he stepped forward to aid her, but she passed him lightly, avoiding his touch, and sped across the corridor. in a few minutes she returned and they descended the stairs together, and entered the empty library. she leaned back against the table, both slender hands resting on the edge behind her, and gazed out at the sparrows in the snow. and she did not even appear to notice his arm, which ventured around her waist, or his lips resting against the lock of bright hair curling on her cheek, so absorbed she seemed to be in her silent reflections. after a few moments she said, still looking out of the window: "i must tell you something now." "are you going to tell me that you love me?" "yes--perhaps i had better begin that way." "then begin, dearest." "i--i love you." his arm tightened around her, but she gently released herself. "there is a--a little more to say, jim. i love you enough to give you back your promise." "my promise!" "to marry me," she said steadily. "i scarcely knew what i was saying yesterday--i was so excited, so much in love with you--so fearful that you might sometime be unhappy if things continued with us as they threatened to continue. i'm afraid i overvalued myself--made you suspect that i am more than i really am--or can ever be. besides, i frightened you--and myself--unnecessarily. i never could be in any danger of--of loving you--unwisely. it was not perfectly fair to you to hint such a thing--because, after all, there is a third choice for you. a worthy one. for you _could_ let me go my way out of your life, which is already so full, and which would fill again very easily, even if my absence left a little void for a while. and if it was any kind of pity you felt for me--for what i said to you--that stirred you to--ask of me what i begged you to ask--then i give you back your promise. i have not slept for thinking over it. i must give it back." he remained silent for a while, then his arms slipped down around her body and he dropped on one knee beside her and laid his face close against her. she had to bend over to hear what he was saying, he spoke so low and with such difficulty. "how can you care for me?" he said. "how _can_ you? don't you understand what a beast i was--what lesser impulse possessed me----" "hush, jim! am i different?" "good god! yes!" "no, dear." "you don't know what you're saying!" "_you_ don't know. do you suppose i am immune to--to the--lesser love--at moments----" he lifted his head and looked up at her, dismayed. "you!" "i. how else could i understand _you_?" "because you are so far above everything unworthy." "no, dear. if i were, you would only have angered and frightened me--not made me sorry for us both. because women and men are something alike at moments; only, somehow, women seem to realise that--somehow--they are guardians of--of something--of civilisation, perhaps. and it is their instinct to curb and silence and ignore whatever unworthy threatens it or them. it is that way with us, jim." she looked out of the window at the sky and the trees, and stood thinking for a while. then: "did you suppose it is always easy for a girl in love--whose instinct is to love--and to give? especially such a girl as i am, especially when she is so dreadfully afraid that her lover may think her cold-blooded--self-seeking--perhaps a--a schemer----" she covered her face with her hand--the quick, adorable gesture he knew so well. "i--_did_ ask you to marry me," she said, in a stifled voice, "but i am not a schemer; my motive was not self-interest. it was for you i asked it, jim, far more than for myself--or i never could have found the courage--perhaps not even the wish. because, somehow, i am too proud to wish for anything that is not offered." as he said nothing, she broke out suddenly with a little sob of protest in her voice: "i am _not_ a self-seeking, calculating woman! i am not naturally cold and unresponsive! i am--inclined to be--otherwise. and you had better know it. but you won't believe it, i am afraid, because i--i have never responded to--to you." tears fell between her fingers over the flushed cheeks. she spoke with increasing effort: "you don't understand; and i can't explain--except to say that to be demonstrative seemed unworthy in me." he put his arms around her shoulders very gently; she rested her forehead against his shoulder. "don't think me calculating and cold-blooded--or a fool," she whispered. "probably everybody kisses or is kissed. i know it as well as you do. but i haven't the--effrontery--to permit myself--such emotions. i couldn't, jim. i'd hate myself. and i thought of that, too, when i asked you to marry me. because if you had refused--and--matters had gone on--you would have been sorry for me sooner or later--or perhaps hated me. because i would have been--been too much ashamed of myself to have--loved you--unwisely." he stood with head bent, listening; and, as he listened, the comparison between this young girl and himself forced itself into his unwilling mind--how that all she believed and desired ennobled her, and how what had always governed him had made of him nothing more admirable than what he was born, a human animal. for what he began as he still was--only cleverer. what else was he--except a trained animal, sufficiently educated to keep out of jail? what had he done with his inheritance? his body was sane and healthy; he had been at pains to cultivate that. how was it with his mind? how was it with his spiritual beliefs? had he cultivated and added to either? he had been endowed with a brain. had he made of it anything except an instrument for idle caprice and indolent passions to play upon? "do you understand me now?" she whispered, touching wet lashes with her handkerchief. he replied impetuously, hotly; her hands dropped from her face and she looked up at him with sweet, confused eyes, blushing vividly under his praise of her. he spoke of himself, too, with all the quick, impassioned impulse of youthful emotion, not sparing himself, promising better things, vowing them before the shrine of her innocence. yet, a stronger character might have registered such vows in silence. and his fervour and incoherence left her mute; and after he had ceased to protest too much she stood quiet for a while, striving to search herself so that nothing unworthy should remain--so that heart and soul should be clean under the magic veil of happiness descending before her enraptured eyes. gently his arms encircled her; her clasped hands rested on his shoulder, and she gazed out at the blue sky and sun-warmed snow as at a corner of paradise revealed. later, when the household was astir, she went out with him into the greenhouse, where the enchanted stillness of growing things thrilled her, and the fragrance and sunlight made the mystery of love and its miracle even more exquisitely unreal to her. at first they did not speak; her hand lay loosely in his, her blue eyes remained remote; and together they slowly paced the long, glass-sheeted galleries between misty, scented mounds of bloom, to and fro, under the flood of pallid winter sunshine, pale as the yellow jasmine flowers overhead. after a while a fat gardener came into one of the further wings. presently the sound of shovelled coal from the furnace-pit aroused them from their dream; and they looked at each other gravely. after a moment, he said: "does it make a difference to you, jacqueline, what i was before i knew you?" "no." "i was only wondering what you really think of me." "you know already, jim." he shook his head slowly. "jim! of course you know!" she insisted hotly. "what you may have been before i knew you i refuse to consider. anyway, it was _you_--part of you--and belongs to me now! because i choose to make it mine--all that you were and are--good and evil! for i won't give up one atom of you--even to the devil himself!" he tried to laugh: "what a fierce little partisan you are," he said. "very--where it concerns you," she said, unsmiling. "dear--i had better tell you now; you may hear things about me----" "i won't listen to them!" "no; but one sometimes hears without listening. people may say things. they _will_ say things. i wish i could spare you. if i had known--if i had only known--that you were in the world----" "don't, jim! it--it isn't best for me to hear. it doesn't concern me," she insisted excitedly. "and if anybody dares say one word to me----" "wait, dear. all i want to be sure of is that you _do_ love me enough to--to go on loving me. i want to be certain, and i want you to be certain before you are a bride----" she was growing very much excited, and suddenly near to tears, for the one thing that endangered her self-control seemed to be his doubt of her. "there is nothing that i haven't forgiven you," she said. "nothing! there is nothing i won't forgive--except--one thing----" "what?" "i can't say it. i can't even think it. all i know is that _now_ i couldn't forgive it." suddenly she became perfectly quiet. "i know what you mean," he said. "yes. it is what no wife can forgive." she looked at him, clear eyed, intelligent, calm; for the moment without any illusion; and he seemed to feel that, in the light of what she knew of him, she was coolly weighing the danger of the experiment. never had he seen so cold and lustrous a brow, such limpid clarity of eye, searching, fearless, direct. then, in an instant, it all seemed to melt into flushed and winsome loveliness; and she was murmuring that she loved him, and asking pardon for even one second's hesitation. "it never could be; it is unthinkable," she whispered. "and it is too late anyway for me--i would love you now, whatever you killed in me. because i must go on loving you, jim; for that is the way it is with me, and i know it now. as long as there is life in me i'll strive for you in my own fashion--even against yourself--to keep you for mine, to please you, to be to you and to the world what you wish me to be--for your honour and your happiness--which also must be my own--the only happiness, now, that i can ever understand." he held her in his arms, smoothing the bright hair, touching the white brow with his lips at moments, happy because he was so deeply in love, fearful because of it--and, deep in his soul, miserable, afraid lest aught out of his past life return again to mock her--lest some echo of folly offend her ears--some shadow fall--some phantom of dead days rise from their future hearth to stand between them. it is that way with a man who has lived idly and irresponsibly, and who has gone lightly about the pleasure of life and not its business. for sometimes there arrives an hour of unbidden clairvoyance--not necessarily a spiritual awakening--but a moment of balanced intelligence and sanity and clear vision. and when it arrives, the road to yesterday suddenly becomes visible for its entire length; and when a man looks back he sees it stretching away behind him, peopled with every shape that has ever traversed it, and every spectre that ever has haunted it. sorrow for what need not have been, regret and shame for what had been--and the bitterness of the folly--the knowledge, too late, of what he could have been to the girl he held now in his arms--how he could have met her on more equal terms had he saved his youth and strength and innocence and pride for her alone--how he could have given it unsullied into her keeping. all this desboro was beginning to realise now. and many men have realised it when the tardy understanding came too late. for what has been is still and will be always; and shall appear here or hereafter, or after that--somewhere, sometime, inevitably, inexorably. there is no such thing as expunging what has been, or of erasing what is to be. all records stand; hope lies only in lengthening the endless chapters--chapters which will not be finished when the sun dies, and the moon fails, and the stars go out forever. * * * * * walking slowly back together, they passed herrendene in the wing hall, and his fine and somewhat melancholy face lighted up at the encounter. "i'm _so_ sorry you are going to-day," said jacqueline, with all her impulsive and sweet sincerity. "everybody will miss you and wish you here again." "to be regretted is one of the few real pleasures in life," he said, smiling. his quick eye had rested on desboro and then reverted to her, and his intuition was warning him with all the brutality and finality of reason that his last hope of her must end. desboro said: "i hate to have you go, herrendene, but i suppose you must." "must you?" echoed jacqueline, wistful for the moment. but the irresistible radiance of happiness had subtly transfigured her, and herrendene looked into her eyes and saw the new-born beauty in them, shyly apparent. "yes," he said, "i must be about the business of life--the business of life, miss nevers. everybody is engaged in it; it has many names, but it's all the same business. you, for example, pass judgment on beautiful things; desboro, here, is a farmer, and i play soldier with sword and drum. but it's all the same business--the business of life; and one can work at it or idle through it, but never escape it, because, at the last, every soul in the world must die in harness. and the idlest are the heaviest laden." he laughed. "that's quite a sermon, isn't it, miss nevers? and shall i make my adieux now? were you going anywhere? you see i am leaving silverwood directly after breakfast----" "as though mr. desboro and i would go off anywhere and not say good-bye to _you_!" she exclaimed indignantly, quite unconscious of being too obvious. so they all three returned to the breakfast room together, where clydesdale, who had come over from the hammertons' for breakfast, was already tramping hungrily around the covered dishes on the sideboard, hot plate in hand, evidently meditating a wholesale assault. he grinned affably as jacqueline and desboro came in, and they all helped themselves from the warmers, returning laden to the table with whatever suited their fancy. other guests, to whom no trays had been sent, arrived one after another to prowl around the browse and join in the conversation if they chose, or sulk, as is the fashion with some perfectly worthy souls at breakfast-tide. "this thaw settles the skating for good and all," remarked reggie ledyard. "will you go fishing with me, miss nevers? it's our last day, you know." cairns growled over his grape-fruit: "you can't make dates with miss nevers at the breakfast table. it isn't done. i was going to ask her to do something with me, anyway." "i hate breakfast," said van alstyne. "when i see it i always wish i were dead or that everybody else was. zooks! this cocktail helps some! try one, miss nevers." "there's reason in your grouch," remarked bertie barkley, with his hard-eyed smile, "considering what aunt hannah and i did to you and helsa at auction last night." "aunt hannah will live in luxury for a year on it," added cairns maliciously. "doesn't it make you happy, stuyve?" "oh--blub!" muttered van alstyne, hating everybody and himself--and most of all hating to think of his losses and of the lady who caused them. only the really rich know how card losses rankle. cairns glanced banteringly across at jacqueline. it was his form of wit to quiz her because she neither indulged in cocktails nor cigarettes, nor played cards for stakes. he lifted his eyebrows and tapped the frosted shaker beside him significantly. "i've a new kind of mountain dew, warranted to wake the dead, miss nevers. i call it the 'aunt hannah,' in her honour--honour to whom honour is dew," he added impudently. "won't you let me make you a cocktail?" "wait until aunt hannah hears how you have honoured her and tempted me," laughed jacqueline. "i never tempted maid or wife or suffragette in all my life----" sang ledyard, beating time on van alstyne, who silently scowled his displeasure. presently ledyard selected a grape-fruit, with a sour smile at one of desboro's cats which had confidently leaped into his lap. "is this a zoo den in the bronx, or a breakfast room, desboro? i only ask because i'm all over cats." bertie barkley snapped his napkin at an intrusive yellow pup who was sniffing and wagging at his elbow. jacqueline comforted the retreating animal, bending over and crooning in his floppy ear: "they gotta stop kickin' my dawg aroun'." "what do _you_ care what they do to jim's live stock, miss nevers?" demanded ledyard suspiciously. she laughed, but to her annoyance a warmer colour brightened her cheeks. "heaven help us!" exclaimed reggie. "miss nevers is blushing at the breakfast table. gentlemen, _are_ we done for without even suspecting it? and by that--that"--pointing a furious finger at desboro--"_that_!" "certainly," said desboro, smiling. "did you imagine i'd ever let miss nevers escape from silverwood?" ledyard heaved a sigh of relief: "gad," he muttered, "i suspected you both for a moment. anyway, it doesn't matter. every man here would have murdered you in turn. come on, miss nevers; you've made a big splash with me, and i'll play you a game of rabbit--or anything on earth, if you'll let me run along beside you." "no, i'm driving with captain herrendene to the station," she said; and that melancholy soldier looked up in grateful surprise. and she did go with him; and everybody came out on the front steps to wish him _bon voyage_. "are you coming back, miss nevers?" asked ledyard, in pretended alarm. "i don't know. is manila worth seeing, captain herrendene?" she asked, laughingly. "if you sail for manila with that tin soldier i'll go after you in a hydroplane!" called reggie after them, as the car rolled away. he added frankly, for everybody's benefit: "i hate any man who even looks at her, and i don't care who knows it. but what's the use? going to night-school might help me, but i doubt it. no; she's for a better line of goods than the samples at silverwood. she shines too far above us. mark that, james desboro! and take what comfort you can in your reflected glory. for had she not been the spotlight, you'd look exactly like the rest of us. and that isn't flattering anybody, i'm thinking." it was to be the last day of the party. everybody was leaving directly after luncheon, and now everybody seemed inclined to do nothing in particular. mrs. clydesdale came over from the hammerton's. the air was soft and springlike; the snow in the fields was melting and full of golden pools. people seemed to be inclined to stroll about outdoors without their hats; a lively snowball battle began between cary clydesdale on one side and cairns and reggie ledyard on the other--and gradually was participated in by everybody except aunt hannah, who grimly watched it from the library window. but her weather eye never left mrs. clydesdale. she was still standing at the window when somebody entered the library behind her, and somebody else followed. she knew who they were; the curtains screened her. for one second the temptation to listen beset her, but she put it away with a sniff, and had already turned to disclose herself when she heard mrs. clydesdale say something that stiffened her into a rigid silence. what followed stiffened her still more--and there were only a few words, too--only: "for god's sake, what are you thinking of?" from desboro; and from elena clydesdale: "this has got to end--i can't stand it, jim----" "stand what?" "him! and what you are doing!" "be careful! do you want people to overhear us?" he said, in a low voice of concentrated anger. "then where----" "i don't know. wait until these people leave----" "to-night?" "how can we see each other to-night!" "cary is going to new york----" voices approaching through the hall warned him: "all right, to-night," he said, desperately. "go out into the hall." "to-night, jim?" "yes." she turned and walked out into the hall. he heard her voice calmly joining in the chatter now approaching, and, without any reason, he walked to the window. and found mrs. hammerton there. astonishment and anger left him dumb and scarlet to the roots of his hair. "it isn't my fault," she hissed. "you and that other fool had already committed yourselves before i could stir to warn you. what do i care for your vile little intrigues, anyway! i don't have to listen behind curtains to learn what anybody could have seen at the metropolitan opera----" "you are absolutely mistaken----" "no doubt, james. but whether i am or not makes absolutely no difference to me--or to jacqueline nevers----" "what do you mean by that?" "what i say, exactly. it will make no difference to jacqueline, because you are going to keep your distance." "do you think so?" "if you don't keep away from her i'll tell her a few things. listen to me very carefully, james. you think i'm fond of you, don't you? well, i am. but i've taken a fancy to jacqueline nevers that--well, if i were not childless i might feel it less deeply. i've put my arms around her once and for all. now do you understand?" "i tell you," he said steadily, "you are mistaken in believing----" "very well. granted. what of it? one dirty little intrigue more or less doesn't alter what you are and have been. the plain point of the matter is this, james: you are not fit to aspire seriously to jacqueline nevers. are you? i ask you, now, honestly; are you?" "does that concern you?" she fairly snapped her teeth and her eyes sparkled: "yes; it concerns me! keep away! i warn you--you and the rest of the jacks and reggies and similar assorted pups. your hunting ground is elsewhere." a sort of cold fury possessed him: "you had better not say anything to miss nevers about what you overheard in this room," he said in a colourless voice. "i'll use my own judgment," she retorted tartly. "use mine. it is perhaps better. don't interfere." "don't be a fool, james." "will you listen to me----" "about elena clydesdale?" she asked maliciously. "there is nothing to tell about her." "naturally. i never heard the desboros were blackguards--only a trifle airy, james--a trifle gallant! dear child, don't anger me. you know it wouldn't be well for you." "i ask you merely to mind your business." "that i shall do. my life's business is jacqueline. you yourself made her so----" malice indescribable snapped in her tiny black eyes, and she laughed harshly. "you made that motherless girl my business. ask yourself if you've ever, inadvertently, done as decent a thing?" "do you understand that i wish to marry her?" he asked, white with passion. "_you!_ what do i care what your patronising intentions may be? and, james, if you drive me to it----" she fairly glared at him, "--i'll destroy even your acquaintanceship with her. and i possess the means to do it!" "try it!" he motioned with dry lips. a moment later the animated chatter of young people filled the room, and among them sounded jacqueline's voice. "oh!" she said, laughing, when she saw mrs. hammerton and desboro coming from the embrasure of the window. "have you been flirting again, aunt hannah!" "yes," said the old lady grimly, "and i think i've taken him into camp." "then it's my turn," said jacqueline. "come on, mr. desboro, you can't escape me. i'm going to beat you a game of rabbit!" everybody drifted into the billiard-room at their heels, and found them already at their stations on either side of the pool table, each one covering the side pocket with left hand spread wide. jacqueline had the cue-ball; it lay on the cloth in front of her, and her slim right hand covered it. "ready?" she asked of desboro. "ready," he said, watching her. she made a feint; he sprang to the left; she shot the ball toward the right corner pocket, missed, carromed, and tried to recover it; but desboro's arm shot out across the cloth and he seized it and shot it at her left corner pocket. it went in with a plunk! "one for jim!" said reggie gravely, and, picking up a cue, scored with a button overhead. "plunk!" went the ball again into the same pocket; and jacqueline gave a little cry of dismay as desboro leaned far over the table, threatening, feinting, moving the ball so fast she could scarcely follow his hand. then she thought she saw the crisis coming, sprang toward the left corner pocket, gave a cry of terror, and plunk! went the ball into her side pocket. flushed, golden hair in pretty disorder, she sprang back on guard again, and the onlookers watched the movement of her hands, fascinated by their grace and beauty as she defended her side of the table and, finally, snatched the ball from the very jaws of the right corner. it was a breathless, exciting game, even for rabbit, and was fought to a furious finish; but she went down to defeat, and desboro came around the table to condole with her, and together they stepped aside to leave the arena free for katharine frere and reggie. "i'm so sorry, dear," he said under his breath. "it's what i want, jim. never let me take the lead again--in anything." his laugh was not genuine. he glanced across the room and saw aunt hannah pretending not to watch him. near her stood elena clydesdale beside her husband, making no such pretence. he said in a low voice: "jacqueline, would you marry me as soon as i can get a license--if i asked you to do it?" she blushed furiously; then walked over to the window and gazed out, dismayed and astounded. he followed. "will you, dear? i have the very best of reasons for asking you." "could you tell me the reasons, jim?" she asked, still dazed. "i had rather not--if you don't mind. will you trust me when i say it is better for us to marry quietly and at once?" she looked up at him dumbly, the scarlet slowly fading from brow and cheek. "do you trust me?" he repeated. "yes--i trust you." "will you marry me, then, as soon as i can arrange for it?" she was silent. "will you?" he urged. "jim--darling--i wanted to be equipped--i wanted to have some pretty things, in order to--to be at my very best--for you. a girl is a bride only once in her life; a man remembers her as she came to him first." "dearest, as i saw you first, so i will always think of you." "oh, jim! in that black gown and cuffs and collar!" "you don't understand men, dear. no coronation robe ever could compete with that dress in my affections. you always are perfect; i never saw you when you weren't bewitching----" "but, dear, there are other things----" "we'll buy them together!" "jim, _must_ we do it this way? i don't mean that i wished for any ostentation----" "i did! i would have wished for a ceremony suited to your beauty and----" "no, no! i didn't expect----" "but i did--damn it!" he said between his teeth. "i wished it; i expected it. don't you think i know what a girl ought to have? indeed i do, jacqueline. and in new york town another century will never see a bride to compare with you! but, my darling, i cannot risk it!" "risk it?" "don't ask me any more." "no." "and--will you do it--for my sake?" "yes." there was a silence between them; he lighted a cigarette, turned coolly around, and glanced across the room. elena instantly averted her gaze. mrs. hammerton sustained his pleasant inspection with an unchanging stare almost insolent. after a moment he smiled at her. it was a mistake to do it. * * * * * after luncheon, elena clydesdale found an opportunity for a word with him. "will you remember that you have an engagement to-night?" she said in a guarded voice. "i shall break it," he replied. "what!" "this is going to end here and now! your business is with your husband. he's a decent fellow; he's devoted to you. i won't even discuss it with you. break with him if you want to, but don't count on me!" "i can't break with him unless i can count on you. are you going to lie to me, jim?" "you can call it what you like. but if you break with him it will end our friendship." "i tell you i've _got_ to break with him. i've got to do it now--at once!" "why?" "because--because i've got to. i can't go on fencing with him." "oh!" she crimsoned and set her little white teeth. "i've got to leave him or be what--i won't be!" "then break with him," he said contemptuously, "and give a decent man another chance in life!" "i can't--unless you----" "good god! i'd sooner cut my throat. my sympathy is for your husband. you're convicting yourself, i tell you! i've always had a dim idea that he was all right. now i know it--and my obligations to you are ended." "then--you leave me--to him? answer me, jim. you refuse to stand between me and my--my degradation? is that what you mean to do? knowing i have no other means of escaping it except through you--except by defying the world with you!" she broke off with a sob. "elena," he said, "your one salvation in this world is to have children! it will mean happiness and honour for you both--mutual respect, and, if not romantic love, at least a cordial understanding and mutual toleration. if you have such a chance, don't throw it away. your husband is a slow, intelligent, kind, and patient man, who has borne much from you because he is honestly in love with you. don't mistake his consideration for weakness, his patience for acquiescence. what kindness you have pretended to show him recently has given him courage. he is trying to make good because he believes that he can win you. this is clear reason; it is logic, elena." she turned on him in a flash of tears and exasperation. "logic! do you think a woman wants that?" she stammered. "do you think a woman arrives at any conclusion through the kind of reasoning that satisfies men? what difference does what you say make to me, when i hate _him_ and i love _you_? how does your logic help me to escape what is--is abhorrent to me! do you suppose your reasoning makes it more endurable? oh, jim! for heaven's sake don't leave me to that--that man! let me come here this evening after he has gone, and try to explain to you how i----" "no." "you won't!" "no. i am going to town with mrs. hammerton and miss nevers on the evening train. and some day i am going to marry miss nevers." chapter xii during her week's absence from town jacqueline's mail had accumulated; a number of business matters had come into the office, the disposal of which now awaited her decision--requests from wealthy connoisseurs for expert opinion, offers to dispose of collections entire or in part, invitations to dealers' secret conferences, urgent demands for appraisers, questions concerning origin or authenticity, commissions to buy, sell, advertise, or send searchers throughout the markets at home or abroad for anything from a tiny shrine of limoges enamel to a complete suit of equestrian armour to fill a gap in a series belonging to some rich man's museum. on the evening of her arrival at the office, she was beset by her clerks and salesmen, bringing to her hundreds of petty routine details requiring her personal examination. also, it appeared that one of her clients had been outrageously swindled by a precious pair of fly-by-nights; and the matter required immediate investigation. so she was obliged to telephone to mrs. hammerton that she could not dine with her at the ritz, and to desboro that she could not see him for a day or two. in desboro's case, a postscript added: "except for a minute, dearest, whenever you come." she did not even take the time to dine that evening, but settled down at her office desk as soon as the retail shop below was closed; and, with the tea urn and a rack of toast at her elbow, plunged straight into the delightfully interesting chaos confronting her. as far as the shop was concerned, the new year, as usual, had brought to that part of the business a lull in activity. it always happened so after new years; and the stagnation steadily increased as spring approached, until by summer time the retail business was practically dead. but a quiet market did not mean that there was nothing for her to do. warehouse sales must be watched, auctions, public and private, in town and country, must be attended by one or more of her representatives; private clients inclined to sell always required tactful handling and careful consideration; her confidential agents must always be alert. also, always her people were continually searching for various objects ardently desired by all species of acquisitive clients; she must keep in constant touch with everything that was happening in her business abroad; she must keep abreast of her times at home, which required much cleverness, intuition, and current reading, and much study in the museum and among private collections to which she had access. she was a very, very busy girl, almost too busy at moments to remember that she had fallen in love. that night she worked alone in her office until long after midnight; and all the next day until noon she was busy listening to or instructing salesmen, clerks, dealers, experts, auctioneers, and clients. also, the swindle and the swindlers were worrying her extremely. luncheon had been served on a tray beside her desk, and she was still absent-mindedly going over the carbon files of business letters, which she had dictated and dispatched that morning, when desboro's card was brought to her. she sent word that she would receive him. "will you lunch with me, jim?" she asked demurely, when he had appeared and shaken hands vigorously. "i've a fruit salad and some perfectly delicious sherbet! please sit on the desk top and help me consume the banquet." "do you call that a banquet, darling?" he demanded. "come out to the ritz with me this instant----" "dearest! i can't! oh, you don't know what an exciting and interesting mess my business affairs are in! a girl always has to pay for her pleasure. but in this case it's a pleasure to pay. bring up that chair and share my luncheon like a good fellow, so we can chat together for a few minutes. it's all the time i can give you to-day, dearest." he pulled up a chair and seated himself, experiencing somewhat mixed emotions in the presence of such bewildering business capability. "you make me feel embarrassed and ashamed," he said. "rotten loafer that i am! and you so energetic and industrious--you darling thing!" "but, dear, your farmer can't plow frozen ground, you know; all your men can do just now is to mend fences and dump fertiliser and lime and gypsum over everything. and i believe they were doing that when i left." "if," he said, "i were a real instead of a phony farmer, i'd read catalogues about wire fences; i'd find plenty to do if i were not a wretched sham. it's only, i hope, because you're in town that i can't drive myself back where i belong. i ought to be sitting in a wood-shed, in overalls, whittling sticks and yelling bucolic wisdom at ezra vail---- oh, you needn't laugh, darling, but that's where i ought to be, and what i ought to be doing if i'm ever going to support a wife!" "jim! you're _not_ going to support a wife! you absurd boy!" "what!" he demanded, losing countenance. "did you think you were obliged to support me? how ridiculous! i'd be perfectly miserable----" "jacqueline! what on earth do you mean? we are going to live on my income." "indeed we are not! what use would i be to you if i brought you nothing except an idle, useless, lazy girl to support! it's unthinkable!" "do you expect to _remain_ in business?" he asked, incredulously. "certainly i expect it!" "but--darling----" "jim! i _love_ my business. it was father's business; it represents my childhood, my girlhood, my maturity. every detail of it is inextricably linked with memories of him--the dearest memories, the tenderest associations of my life! do you wish me to give them up?" "how can you be my wife, jacqueline, and still remain a business woman?" "dear, i am certainly going to marry you. permit me to arrange the rest. it will not interfere with my being your devoted and happy wife. it wouldn't ever interfere with--with my being a--a perfectly good mother--if that's what you fear. if it did, do you suppose i'd hesitate to choose?" "no," he said, adoring her. "indeed, i wouldn't! but remaining in business will give me what every girl should have as a right--an object in life apart from her love for her husband--and children--apart from her proper domestic duties. it is her right to engage in the business of life; it makes the contract between you and me fairer. i love you more than anything in the world, but i simply couldn't keep my self-respect and depend on you for everything i have." "but, my darling, everything i have is already yours." "yes, i know. we can pretend it is. i know i _could_ have it--just as you could have this rather complicated business of mine--if you want it." "oh, lord!" he exclaimed. "imagine the fury of a connoisseur who engaged me to identify his priceless penates!" he was laughing, too, now. they had finished their fruit salad and sherbet; she lighted a cigarette for him, taking a dainty puff and handing it to him with an adorable shudder. "i _don't_ like it! i don't like any vices! how women can enjoy what men enjoy is a mystery to me. smoke slowly, darling, because when that cigarette is finished you must make a very graceful bow and say good-bye to me until to-morrow." "this is simply devilish, jacqueline! i never see you any more." "nonsense! you have plenty to do to amuse you--haven't you, dear?" but the things that once occupied his leisure so casually and so agreeably no longer attracted him. "i don't want to read seed catalogues," he protested. "couldn't i be of use to you, jacqueline? i'll do anything you say--take off my coat and sweep out your office, or go behind the counter in the shop and sell gilded gods----" "imagine the elegant mr. desboro selling antiquities to the dangerous monomaniacs who haunt such shops as mine! dear, they'd either drive you crazy or have you arrested for fraud inside of ten minutes. no; you will make a perfectly good husband, jim, but you were never created to decorate an antique shop." he tried to smile, but only flushed rather painfully. a sudden and wholly inexplicable sense of inferiority possessed him. "you know," he said, "i'm not going to stand around idle while you run a prosperous business concern. and anyway, i can't see it, jacqueline. you and i are going to have a lot of social obligations to----" "we are likely to have all kinds of obligations," she interrupted serenely, "and our lives are certain to be very full, and you and i are going to be equal to every opportunity, every demand, every responsibility--and still have leisure to love each other, and to be to each other everything that either could desire." "after all," he said, serious and unconvinced, "there are only twenty-four hours in a day for us to be together." "yes, darling, but there will be no wasted time in those twenty-four hours. that is where we save a sufficient number of minutes to attend to the business of life." "do you mean that you intend to come into this office every day?" "for a while, yes. less frequently when i have trained my people a little longer. what do you suppose my father was doing all his life? what do you suppose i have been doing these last three years? why, jim, except that hitherto i have loved to fuss over details, this office and this business could almost run itself for six months at a time. some day, except for special clients here and there, lionel sissly will do what expert work i now am doing; and this desk will be his; and his present position will be filled by mr. mirk. that is how it is planned. and if you had given me two or three months, i might have been able to go on a bridal trip with you!" "we _are_ going, aren't we?" he asked, appalled. "if i've got to marry you offhand," she said seriously, "our wedding trip will have to wait. don't you know, dear, that it always costs heavily to do anything in a hurry? at this time of year, and under the present conditions of business, and considering my contracts and obligations, it would be utterly impossible for me to go away again until summer." he sprang up irritated, yet feeling utterly helpless under her friendly but level gaze. already he began to realise the true significance of her position and his own in the world; how utterly at a moral disadvantage he stood before this young girl--moral, intellectual, spiritual--he was beginning to comprehend it all now. a dull flush of anger made his face hot and altered his expression to sullenness. where was all this leading them, anyway--this reversal of rôles, this self-dependent attitude of hers--this calm self-reliance--this freedom of decision? once he had supposed there was something in her to protect, to guide, advise, make allowance for--perhaps to persuade, possibly, even, to instruct. such has been the immemorial attitude of man; it had been instinctively, and more or less unconsciously, his. and now, in spite of her youth, her soft pliability, her almost childish grace and beauty, he was experiencing a half-dazed sensation as though, in full and confident career, he had come, slap! into collision with an occult barrier. and the impact was confusing him and even beginning to hurt him. he looked around him uneasily. everything in the office, somehow, seemed to be in subtle league with her to irritate him--her desk, her loaded letter-files, her stacks of ledgers--all these accused and offended him. but most of all his own helpless inferiority made him angry and ashamed--the inferiority of idleness confronted by industry; of aimlessness face to face with purpose; of irresolution and degeneracy scrutinised by fearlessness, confidence, and happy and innocent aspiration. and the combination silenced him. and every mute second that he stood there, he felt as though something imperceptible, intangible, was slipping away from him--perhaps his man's immemorial right to lead, to decide, to direct the common destiny of this slim, sweet-lipped young girl and himself. for it was she who was serenely deciding--who had already laid out the business of life for herself without hesitation, without resort to him, to his man's wisdom, experience, prejudices, wishes, desires. moreover, she was leaving him absolutely free to decide his own business in life for himself; and that made her position unassailable. for if she had presumed to advise him, to suggest, even hint at anything interfering with his own personal liberty to decide for himself, he might have found some foothold, some niche, something to sustain him, to justify him, in assuming man's immemorial right to leadership. "dear," she said wistfully, "you look at me with such very troubled eyes. is there anything i have said that you disapprove?" "i had not expected you to remain in business," was all he found to say. "if my remaining in business ever interferes with your happiness or with my duty to you, i will give it up. you know that, don't you?" he reddened again. "it looks queer," he muttered, "--your being in business and i--playing farmer--like one of those loafing husbands of celebrated actresses." "jim!" she exclaimed, scarlet to the ears. "what a horrid simile!" "it's myself i'm cursing out," he said, almost angrily. "i can't cut such a figure. don't you understand, jacqueline? i haven't anything to occupy me! do you expect me to hang around somewhere while you work? i tell you, i've got to find something to do as soon as we're married--or i couldn't look you in the face." "that is for you to decide. isn't it?" she asked sweetly. "yes, but on what am i to decide?" "whatever you decide, don't do it in a hurry, dear," she said, smiling. the sullen sense of resentment returned, reddening his face again: "i wouldn't have to hurry if you'd give up this business and live on our income and be free to travel and knock about with me----" "can't you understand that i _will_ be free to be with you--free in mind, in conscience, in body, to travel with you, be with you, be to you whatever you desire--but only if i keep my self-respect! and i can't keep that if i neglect the business of life, which, in my case, lies partly here in this office." she rose and laid one slim, pretty hand on his shoulder. she rarely permitted herself to touch him voluntarily. "don't you wish me to be happy?" she asked gently. "it's all i wish in the world, jacqueline." "but i couldn't be happy and remain idle; remain dependent on you for anything--except love. life to the full--every moment filled--that is what living means to me. and only one single thing never can fill one's life--not intellectual research alone; not spiritual remoteness; nor yet the pursuit of pleasure; nor the swift and endless hunt for happiness; nor even love, dearest among men! only the business of life can quite fill life to the brimming for me; and that business is made up of everything worthy--of the pleasures of effort, duty, aspiration, and noble repose, but never of the pleasures of idleness. jim, have i bored you with a sermon? forgive me; i am preaching only to instruct myself." he took her hand from his shoulder and stood holding it and looking at her with a strange expression. so dazed, yet so terribly intent he seemed at moments that she laid her other hand over his, pressing it in smiling anxiety. "what is it, dearest?" she murmured. "don't you approve of me as much as you thought you did? am i disappointing you already?" "good god!" he muttered to himself. "if there is a heaven, and your sort inhabit it, hell was reformed long ago." "what are you muttering all to yourself, jim?" she insisted. "what troubles you?" "i'll tell you. you've picked the wrong man. i'm absolutely unfit for you. i know about all those decent things you believe in--all the things you _are_! but i don't know about them from personal experience; i never did anything decent because it was my duty to do it--except by accident. i never took a spiritual interest in anything or anybody, including myself! i never made a worthy effort; i never earned one second's worth of noble repose. and now--if there's anything in me to begin on--it's probably my duty to release you until i have made something of myself, before i come whining around asking you to marry a man not fit to marry----" "my darling!" she protested, half laughing, half in tears, and closing his angry lips with both her hands. "i want _you_, not a saint or a holy man, or an archangel fresh from paradise! i want you as you _are_--as you have been--as you are going to be dear! did any girl who ever lived find pleasure in perfection? even in art it is undesirable. that's the beauty of aspiration; the pleasures of effort never pall. i don't know whether i'm laughing or crying, jim! you look so solemn and miserable, and--and funny! but if you try to look dignified now, i'll certainly laugh! you dear, blessed, overgrown boy--just as bad as you possibly can be! just as funny and unreasonable and perverse as are all boys! but jacqueline loves you dearly--oh, dearly--and she trusts you with her heart and her happiness and with every beauty yet undreamed and unrevealed that a girl could learn to desire on earth! are you contented? oh, jim! jim! if you knew how i adore you! you must go, dear. it will mean a long night's work for me if you don't. but it's so hard to let you go--when i--love you so! when i love you so! good-bye. yes, to-morrow. don't call at noon; mrs. hammerton is coming for a five-minute chat. and i do want you to myself for the few moments we may have together. come about five and we can have tea here beside my desk." * * * * * he came next day at five. the day after that he arrived at the same hour, bringing with him her ring; and, as he slipped it over her finger, for the first time her self-control slipped, too, and she bent swiftly and kissed the jewel that he was holding. then, flushed and abashed, she shrank away, an exquisite picture of confusion, and stood turning and turning the ring around, her head obstinately lowered, absolutely unresponsive again to his arm around her and his cheek resting close against hers. "what a beauty of a ring, jim!" she managed to say at last. "no other engagement ring ever existed half as lovely and splendid as my betrothal ring. i am sorry for all the empresses and queens and princesses who can never hope to possess a ring to equal the ring of jacqueline nevers, dealer in antiquities." "nor can they hope to possess such a hand to adorn it," he said, "--the most beautiful, the purest, whitest, softest, most innocent hand in the world! the magic hand of jacqueline!" "do you like it?" she asked, shyly conscious of its beauty. "it is matchless, darling. let empresses shriek with envy." "i'm listening very intently, but i don't hear them. jim. also, i've seen a shop-girl with far lovelier hands. but please go on thinking so and hearing crowned heads shriek. i rather like your imagination." he laughed from sheer happiness: "i've got something to whisper to you. shall i?" "what?" "shall i whisper it?" she inclined her small head daintily, then: "oh!" she exclaimed, startled and blushing to the tips of her ears. "will you be ready?" "i--yes. yes--i'll be ready----" "does it make you happy?" "i can't realise--i didn't know it was to be so soon--so immediate----" "we'll go to silverwood. we can catch the evening express----" "dearest!" "you can go away with me for _one_ week, can't you?" "i can't go now!" she faltered. "for how long can you go, jacqueline?" "i--i've got to be back on tuesday morning." "tuesday!" "isn't it dreadful, jim. but i can't avoid it if we are to be married on monday next. i must deal honourably by my clients who trust me. i warned you that our wedding trip would have to be postponed if you married me this way--didn't i, dear?" "yes." she stood looking at him timidly, almost fearfully, as he took two or three quick, nervous steps across the floor, turned and came back to her. "all right," he said. "our wedding trip will have to wait, then; but our wedding won't. we'll be married monday, go to silverwood, and come back tuesday--if it's a matter of honour. i never again mean to interfere with your life's business, jacqueline. you know what is best; you are free and entitled to the right of decision." "yes. but because i _must_ decide about things that concern myself alone, you don't think i adore you any the less, do you, jim?" "nor do i love you the less, jacqueline, because i can decide nothing for you, do nothing for you." "jim! you _can_ decide everything for me--do everything! and you _have_ done everything for me--by giving me my freedom to decide for myself!" "_i_ gave it to you, jacqueline?" "did you think i would have taken it if you had refused it?" "but you said your happiness depended on it." "which is why you gave it to me, isn't it?" she asked seriously. he laughed. "you wonderful girl, to make me believe that any generosity of mine is responsible for your freedom!" "but it is! otherwise, i would have obeyed you and been disgraced in my own estimation." "do you mean that mine is to be the final decision always?" "why, of course, jim." he laughed again. "empty authority, dear--a shadowy symbol of traditional but obsolete prerogative." "you are wrong. your decision is final. but--as i know it will always be for my happiness, i can always appeal from your prejudice to your intelligence," she added naïvely. and for a moment was surprised at his unrestrained laughter. "what does it matter?" she admitted, laughing, too. "between you and me the right thing always will be done sooner or later." his laughter died out; he said soberly: "always, god willing. it may be a little hard for me to learn--as it's hard, now, for example, to say good-bye." "jim!" "you know i must, darling." "but i don't mind sitting up a few minutes later to-night----" "i know you don't. but here's where i exercise my harmlessly arbitrary authority for your happiness and for the sake of your good digestion." "what a brute you are!" "i know it. back to your desk, darling! and go to bed early." "i wanted you to stay----" "ha! so you begin to feel the tyranny of man! i'm going! i've got a job, too, if you want to know." "what!" "certainly! how long did you suppose i could stand it to see you at that desk and then go and sit in a silly club?" "what do you mean, darling?" she asked, radiant. "i mean that jack cairns, who is a broker, has offered me a job at a small but perfectly proper salary, with the usual commission on all business i bring in to the office. and i've taken it!" "but, dear----" "oh, vail can run my farm without any advice from me. i'm going to give him more authority and hold him responsible. if the place can pay for itself and let us keep the armour and jades, that's all i ask of it. but i am asking more of myself--since i have begun to really know you. and i'm going to work for our bread and butter, and earn enough to support us both and lay something aside. you know we've got to think of that, because----" he looked very serious, hesitated, bent and whispered something that sent the bright colour flying in her cheeks; then he caught her hand and kissed the ring-finger. "good-bye," she murmured, clinging for an instant to his hand. the next moment he was gone; and she stood alone for a while by her desk, his ring resting against her lips, her eyes closed. * * * * * sunday she spent with him. they went together to st. john's cathedral in the morning--the first time he had been inside a church in years. and he was in considerable awe of the place and of her until they finally emerged into the sunshine of morningside park. under a magnificent and cloudless sky, they walked together, silent or loquacious by turns, bold and shy, confident and timid. and she was a little surprised to find that, in the imminence of marriage, her trepidation was composure itself compared to the anxiety which seemed to assail him. all he had thought of was the license and the clergyman; and they had attended to those matters together. but she had wished him to have jack cairns present, and had told him that she desired to ask some friend of her girlhood to be her bridesmaid. "have you done so?" he inquired, as they descended the heights of morningside, the beautiful weather tempting them to a long homeward stroll through central park. "yes, jim, i must tell you about her. she, like myself, is not a girl that men of your sort might expect to meet----" "the loss is ours, jacqueline." "that is very sweet of you. only i had better tell you about cynthia lessler----" "who?" he asked, astonished. "cynthia lessler, my girlhood friend." "she is an actress, isn't she?" "yes. her home life was very unhappy. but i think she has much talent, too." "she has." "i am glad you think so. anyway, she is my oldest friend, and i have asked her to be my bridesmaid to-morrow." he continued silent beside her so long that she said timidly: "do you mind, jim?" "i was only thinking--how it might look in the papers--and there are other girls you already know whose names would mean a lot----" "yes, i know. but i don't want to pretend to be what i am not, even in the papers. i suppose i do need all the social corroboration i can have. i know what you mean, dear. but there were reasons. i thought it all over. cynthia is an old friend, not very happy, not the fortunate and blessed girl that your love is making of me. but she is good and sweet and loyal to me, and i can't abandon old friends, especially one who is not very fortunate--and i--i thought perhaps it might help her a little--in various ways--to be my bridesmaid." "that is like you," he said, reddening. "you never say or do anything but there lies in it some primary lesson in decency to me." "you goose! isn't it natural for a girl to wish for her oldest friend at such a time? that's really all there is to the matter. and i do hope you will like cynthia." he nodded, preoccupied. after a few moments he said: "did you know that jack cairns had met her?" "yes." "oh!" his troubled eyes sought hers, then shifted. "that was another reason i wish to ask her," she said in a low voice. "what reason?" "because mr. cairns knew her only as a very young, very lonely, very unhappy girl, inexperienced, friendless, poor, almost shelterless; and engaged in a profession upon which it is almost traditional for men to prey. and i wish him to know her again as a girl who is slowly advancing in an honest profession--as a modest, sweet, self-respecting woman--and as my friend." "and mine," he said. "you--darling!" she whispered. chapter xiii they were married in the morning at st. george's in stuyvesant square. gay little flurries of snow, like wind-blown petals from an apple bough, were turning golden in the warm outbreak of brilliant sunshine; and there was blue sky overhead and shining wet pavements under foot as jacqueline and desboro came out of the shadows of the old-time church into the fresh splendour of the early morning. the solemn beauty of the service still possessed and enthralled them. except for a low word or two, they were inclined to silence. but the mating sparrows were not; everywhere the little things, brown wings a-quiver, chattered and chirped in the throes of courtship; now and then, from some high façade rang out the clear, sweet whistle of a starling; and along the warm, wet streets ragged children were selling violets and narcissus, and yellow tulips tinted as delicately as the pale spring sunshine. a ragged little girl came to stare at jacqueline, the last unsold bunch of wilted violets lying on her tray; and jacqueline laid the cluster over the prayer-book which she was carrying, while desboro slipped a golden coin into the child's soiled hand. down the street his chauffeur was cranking the car; and while they waited for it to draw up along the curb, jacqueline separated a few violets from the faintly fragrant cluster and placed them between the leaves of her prayer-book. after a few moments he said, under his breath: "do you realise that we are married, jacqueline?" "no. do you?" "i'm trying to comprehend it, but i can't seem to. how soft the breeze blows! it is already spring in stuyvesant square." "the square is lovely! they will be setting out hyacinths soon, i think." she shivered. "it's strange," she said, "but i feel rather cold. am i horridly pale, jim?" "you are a trifle colourless--but even prettier than i ever saw you," he whispered, turning up the collar of her fur coat around her throat. "you haven't taken cold, have you?" "no; it is--natural--i suppose. miracles frighten one at first." their eyes met; she tried to smile. after a moment he said nervously: "i sent out the announcements. the evening papers will have them." "i want to see them, jim." "you shall. i have ordered all this evening's and to-morrow morning's papers. they will be sent to silverwood." the car rolled up along the curb and stopped. "can't i take you to your office?" he whispered. "no, dear." she laid one slim hand on his arm and stood for a moment looking at him. "how pale you are!" he said again, under his breath. "brides are apt to be. it's only a swift and confused dream to me yet--all that has happened to us to-day; and even this sunshine seems unreal--like the first day of spring in paradise!" she bent her proud little head and stood in silence as though unseen hands still hovered above her, and unseen lips were still pronouncing her his wife. then, lifting her eyes, winningly and divinely beautiful, she looked again on this man whom the world was to call her husband. "will you be ready at five?" he whispered. "yes." they lingered a moment longer; he said: "i don't know how i am going to endure life without you until five o'clock." she said seriously: "i can't bear to leave you, jim. but you know you have almost as many things to do as i have." "as though a man could attend to _things_ on his wedding day!" "this girl _has_ to. i don't know how i am ever going to go through the last odds and ends of business--but it's got to be managed somehow. do you really think we had better go up to silverwood in the car? won't this snow make the roads bad? it may not have melted in the country." "oh, it's all right! and i'll have you to myself in the car----" "suppose we are ditched?" she shivered again, then forced a little laugh. "do you know, it doesn't seem possible to me that i am going to be your wife to-morrow, too, and the next day, and the next, and always, year after year. somehow, it seems as though our dream were already ending--that i shall not see you at five o'clock--that it is all unreal----" the smile faded, and into her blue eyes came something resembling fear--gone instantly--but the hint of it had been there, whatever it was; and the ghost of it still lingered in her white, flower-like face. she whispered, forcing the smile again: "happiness sometimes frightens; and it is making me a little afraid, i think. come for me at five, jim, and try to make me comprehend that nothing in the world can ever harm us. tell your man where to take me--but only to the corner of my street, please." he opened the limousine door; she stepped in, and he wrapped the robe around her. a cloud over the sun had turned the world grey for a moment. again she seemed to feel the sudden chill in the air, and tried to shake it off. "look at mr. cairns and cynthia," she whispered, leaning forward from her seat and looking toward the church. he turned. cairns and miss lessler had emerged from the portico and were lingering there in earnest consultation, quite oblivious of them. "do you like her, jim?" she asked. he smiled. "i didn't notice her very much--or jack either. a man isn't likely to notice anybody at such a time--except the girl he is marrying----" "look at her now. don't you think her expression is very sweet?" "it's all right. dear, do you suppose i can fix my attention on----" "you absurd boy! are you really as much in love with me as that? please be nice to her. would you mind going back and speaking to her when i drive away?" "all right," he said. their glances lingered for a moment more; then he drew a quick, sharp breath, closed the limousine door, and spoke briefly to the chauffeur. as long as the car remained in sight across the square, he watched it; then, when it had disappeared, he turned toward the church. but cairns and cynthia were already far down the street, walking side by side, very leisurely, apparently absorbed in conversation. they must have seen him. perhaps they had something more interesting to say to each other than to him. he followed them irresolutely for a few steps, then, as the idea persisted that they might not desire his company, he turned and started west across the sunny, wet pavement. * * * * * it was quite true that cairns and cynthia had seen him; also it was a fact that neither had particularly wanted him to join them at that exact moment. meeting at st. george's for the first time in two years, and although prepared for the encounter, these two, who had once known each other so well, experienced a slight shock when they met. the momentary contact of her outstretched hand and his hand left them both very silent; even the formal commonplaces had failed them after the first swift, curious glance had been exchanged. cairns noticed that she had grown taller and slenderer. and though there seemed to be no more of maturity to her than to the young girl he had once known, her poise and self-control were now in marked contrast to the impulsive and slightly nervous cynthia he had found so amusing in callower days. once or twice during the ceremony he had ventured to glance sideways at her. in the golden half-light of the altar there seemed to be an unfamiliar dignity and sweetness about the girl that became her. and in the delicate oval of her face he thought he discerned those finer, nobler contours made by endurance, by self-denial, and by sorrow. later, when he saw her kiss jacqueline, something in the sweet sincerity of the salute suddenly set a hidden chord vibrating within him; and, to his surprise, he found speech difficult for a moment, checked by emotions for which there seemed no reason. and at last jacqueline and desboro went away, and cynthia slowly turned to him, offering her hand in adieu. "mr. cairns," she said quietly, "this is the last place on earth that you and i ever thought to meet. perhaps it is to be our last meeting place. so--i will say good-bye----" "may i not walk home with you? or, if you prefer to drive, my car is here----" he began. "thank you; it's only to the theatre--if you care to walk with me----" "are you rehearsing?" "there is a rehearsal called for eleven." "shall we drive or walk, cynthia?" "i prefer to walk. please don't feel that you ought to go back with me." he said, reddening: "i do not remember that my sense of duty toward you has ever been persistent enough to embarrass either of us." "of course not. why should you ever have felt that you owed any duty to me?" "i did not say that i ever felt it." "of course not. you owed me none." "that is a different matter. obligations once sat very lightly on my shoulders." "you owe me none," she repeated smilingly, as they emerged from the church into the warm march sunshine. he was saying: "but isn't friendship an obligation, cynthia?" she laughed: "friendship is merely an imaginary creation, and exists only until the imagination wearies. that is not original," she added. "it is in the new barrie comedy we are rehearsing." she turned her pretty head and glanced down the street where jacqueline and desboro still stood beside the car. cairn's car was also waiting, and its owner made a signal to the chauffeur that he did not need him. looking at jacqueline, cynthia said: "long ago i knew that she was fitted for a marriage such as this--or a better one," she added in a lower voice. "a better one?" he repeated, surprised. "yes," she nodded calmly. "can you not imagine a more desirable marriage for a girl?" "don't you _like_ desboro?" he demanded. "i like him--considering the fact that i scarcely know him. he has very handsome and very reckless eyes, but a good mouth. to look at him for the first time a woman would be inclined to like him--but he might hesitate to trust him. i had hoped jacqueline might marry a professional man--considerably older than mr. desboro. that is all i meant." he said, looking at her smilingly but curiously: "have you any idea, cynthia, how entirely you have changed in two years?" she shook her head: "i haven't changed." "indeed you have----" "only superficially. what i was born i shall always be. years teach endurance and self-control--if they teach anything. all one can learn is how to control and direct what one already is." "the years have taught you a lot," he murmured, astonished. "i have been to school to many masters, mr. cairns; i have studied under sorrow; graduated under poverty and loneliness; and i am now taking a finishing course with experience. truly enough, i should have learned _something_, as you say, by this time. besides, _you_, also, once were kind enough to be interested in my education. why should i not have learned something?" he winced and bit his lip, watching desboro and jacqueline below. and, after a moment: "shall we walk?" she suggested, smilingly. he fell into step beside her. half way down the block she glanced back. desboro was already crossing the square; the limousine had disappeared. "i wonder sometimes," she remarked, "what has become of all those amusing people we once knew so well--marianne valdez, jessie dain, reggie ledyard, van alstyne. do you ever see them any more?" "yes." "and are they quite as gay and crazy as ever?" "they're a bit wild--sometimes." "do they ever speak of me? i--wonder," she mused, aloud. "yes. they know, of course, what a clever girl you have turned into. it isn't usual, you know, to graduate from a girlie show into the legit. and i was talking to schindler the other evening; and he had to admit that he had seen nothing extraordinary in you when you were with his noisy shows. it's funny, isn't it?" "slightly." "besides, you were such a wild little thing--don't you remember what crazy things we used to do, you and i----" "did i? yes, i remember. in those days a good dinner acted on me like champagne. you see i was very often hungry, and when i wasn't starved it went to my head." "you need not have wanted for anything!" he said sharply. "oh, no! but i preferred the pangs of hunger to the pangs of conscience," she retorted gaily. "i didn't mean that. there was no string to what i offered you, and you know it! and you know it now!" "certainly i do," she said calmly. "you mean to be very kind, jack." "then why the devil didn't----" "why didn't i accept food and warmth and raiment and lodging from a generous and harebrained young man? i'll tell you now, if you wish. it was because my conscience forbade me to accept all and offer nothing in return." "nonsense! i didn't ask----" "i know you didn't. but i couldn't give, so i wouldn't take. besides, we were together too much. i knew it. i think even you began to realise it, too. the situation was impossible. so i went on the road." "you never answered any of those letters of mine." "mentally i answered every one." "a lot of good that did me!" "it did us both a lot of good. i meant to write to you some day--when my life had become busy enough to make it difficult for me to find time to write." he looked up at her sharply, and she laughed and swung her muff. "i suppose," he said, "now that the town talks about you a little, you will have no time to waste on mere johnnies." "well, i don't know. when a mere johnnie is also a jack, it makes a difference--doesn't it? do you think that you would care to see me again?" "of course i do." "the tickets," she said demurely, "are three dollars--two weeks in advance----" "i know that by experience." "oh! then you _have_ seen 'the better way'?" "certainly." "do you like--the show?" "you are the best of it. yes, i like it." "it's my first chance. did you know that? if poor little graham hadn't been so ill, i'd never have had a look in. they wouldn't give me anything--except in a way i couldn't accept it. i tell you, jack, i was desperate. there seemed to be absolutely no chance unless i--paid." "why didn't you write me and let me----" "you know why." "it would have been reward enough to see you make good--and put it all over that bald-headed, dog-faced----" "my employer, please remember," she said, pretending to reprove him. "and, jack, he's amusingly decent to me now. men are really beginning to be kind. walbaum's people have written to me, and o'rourke sent for me, and i'm just beginning to make professional enemies, too, which is the surest sign that i'm almost out of the ranks. if i could only study! now is the time! i know it; i feel it keenly--i realise how much i lack in education! you see i only went to high-school. it's a mercy that my english isn't hopeless----" "it's good! it's better than i ever supposed it would be----" "i know. i used to be careless. but what can you expect? after i left home you know the sort of girls i was thrown among. fortunately, father was educated--if he was nothing else. my degeneracy wasn't permanent. also, i had been thrown with jacqueline, and with you----" "fine educational model i am!" "and," she continued, not heeding him, "when i met you, and men like you, i was determined that whatever else happened to me my english should not degenerate. jacqueline helped me so much. i tried to study, too, when i was not on the road with the show. but if only i could study now--study seriously for a year or two!" "what do you wish to study, cynthia?" he asked carelessly. "english! also french and german and italian. i would like to study what girls in college study. then i'd like to learn stage dancing thoroughly. and, of course, i'm simply crazy to take a course in dramatic art----" "but you already know a lot! every paper spoke well of you----" "oh, jack! does that mean anything--when i know that i don't know anything!" "rot! can you beat professional experience as an educator?" "i'm not quite ready for it----" "very well. if you feel that way, will you be a good sort, cynthia, and let me----" "no!" "i ask you merely to let me take a flyer!" "no, jack." "why can't i take a flyer? why can't i have the pleasure of speculating on a perfectly sure thing? it's a million to nothing that you'll make good. for the love of mike, cynthia, borrow the needful and----" "from _you_?" "naturally." "no, jack!" "why not? why cut off your nose to spite your face? what difference does it make where you get it as long as it's a decent deal? you can't afford to take two or three years off to complete your education----" "begin it, you mean." "i mean finish it! you can't afford to; but if you'll borrow the money you'll make good in exactly one-tenth of the time you'd otherwise take to arrive----" "jack, i won't discuss it with you. i know you are generous and kind----" "i'm _not_! i'm anything _but_! for heaven's sake let a man indulge his vanity, cynthia. imagine my pride when you are famous! picture my bursting vanity as i sit in front and tell everybody near me that the credit is all mine; that if it were not for me you would be nowhere!" "it's so like you," she said sweetly. "you always were an inordinate boaster, so i am not going to encourage you." "can't you let me make you a business loan at exorbitant interest without expiring of mortification?" they had reached the theatre; a few loafers sunning themselves by the stage entrance leered at them. "hush, jack! i can't discuss it with you. but you know how grateful i am, don't you?" "no, i don't----" he said sulkily. "you are cross now, but you'll see it as i do half an hour hence." "no, i won't!" he insisted. she laughed: "_you_ haven't changed, at all events, have you? it takes me back years to see that rather becoming scowl gather over the bridge of your ornamental nose. but it is very nice to know that you haven't entirely forgotten me; that we are still friends." "where are you living, cynthia?" she told him, adding: "do you really mean to come?" "watch me!" he said, almost savagely, took off his hat, shook her hand until her fingers ached, and marched off still scowling. the stage loafers shifted quids and looked after him with sneers. "trun out!" observed one. "all off!" nodded another. the third merely spat and slowly closed his disillusioned and leisure-weary eyes. * * * * * cairns' energetic pace soon brought him to the olympian club, where he was accustomed to lunch, it being convenient to his office, which was on forty-sixth street. desboro, who, at jacqueline's request, had gone back to business, appeared presently and joined cairns at a small table. "anything doing at the office?" inquired the latter. "i suppose you were too nervous and upset to notice the market though." "well, ask yourself how much _you'd_ feel like business after marrying the most glorious and wonderful----" "ring off! i concede everything. it is going to make some splash in the papers. yes? lord! i wish you could have had a ripping big wedding though! wouldn't she have looked the part? oh, no!" "it couldn't be helped," said desboro in a low, chagrined voice. "i'd have given the head off my shoulders to have had the sort of a wedding to which she was entitled. but--i couldn't." cairns nodded, not, however, understanding; and as desboro offered no explanation, he remained unenlightened. "rather odd," he remarked, "that she didn't wish to have aunt hannah with her at the fatal moment. they're such desperate chums these days." "she did want her. i wouldn't have her." "is that so?" "it is. i'll tell you why some day. in fact, i don't mind telling you now. aunt hannah has it in for me. she's a devil sometimes. you know it and i do. she has it in for me just now. she's wrong; she's made a mistake; but i couldn't tell her anything. you can't tell that sort of a woman anything, once she's made up her mind. and the fact is, jack, she's already made up her mind that i was not to marry jacqueline. and i was afraid of her. and _that's_ why i married jacqueline this way." cairns stared. "so now," added desboro, "you know how it happened." "quite so. rotten of her, wasn't it?" "she didn't mean it that way. she got a fool idea into her head, that's all. only i was afraid she'd tell it to jacqueline." "i see." "that's what scared me. i didn't know what she might tell jacqueline. she threatened to tell her--things. and it would have involved a perfectly innocent woman and myself--put me in a corner where i couldn't decently explain the real facts to jacqueline. now, thank god, it's too late for aunt hannah to make mischief." cairns nodded, thinking of mrs. clydesdale. and whatever he personally was inclined to believe, he knew that gossip was not dealing very leniently with that young wife and the man who sat on the other side of the table, nervously pulling to pieces his unlighted cigarette. * * * * * but it needed no rumour, no hearsay evidence, no lifted eyebrows, no shrugs, no dubious smiles, no half-hearted defence of elena clydesdale, to thoroughly convince mrs. hammerton of desboro's utter unfitness as a husband for the motherless girl she had begun to love with a devotion so fierce that at present it could brook no rival at all of either sex. for mrs. hammerton had never before loved. she had once supposed that she loved her late husband, but soon came to regard him as a poor sort of thing. she had been extremely fond of desboro, too, in her own way, but in the vivid fire of this new devotion to jacqueline, any tenderness she ever might have cherished for that young man was already consumed and sacrificed to a cinder in the fiercer flame. into her loneliness, into her childless solitude, into the hardness, cynicism, and barren emptiness of her latter years, a young girl had stepped from nowhere, and she had suddenly filled her whole life with the swift enchantment of love. a word or two, a smile, the magic of two arms upon her bony shoulders, the shy touch of youthful lips--these were the very simple ingredients which apparently had transmuted the brass and tinsel and moral squalor of aunt hannah's life into charming reality. from sudden tenderness to grim love, to jealous, watchful, passionate adoration--these were the steps mrs. hammerton had taken in the brief interval of time that had elapsed since she had first seen jacqueline. into the clear, truthful eyes she had looked, and had seen within only an honest mind and a clean young soul. wisdom, too, only lacking in experience, she divined there; and less of wisdom than of intelligence; and less of that than of courage. and it all was so clear, so perfectly apparent to the cold and experienced scrutiny of the woman of the world, that, for a while, she could not entirely believe what she understood at the first glance. when she _was_ convinced, she surrendered. and never before in all her unbelieving, ironical, and material career had she experienced such a thrill of overwhelming delight as when, that evening at silverwood, jacqueline had drawn her head down and had touched her dry forehead with warm, young lips. everything about the girl fascinated her--her independence and courage; her adorable bashfulness in matters where experience had made others callous--in such little things, for example, as the response to an invitation, the meeting with fashionable strangers--but it was only the nice, friendly, and thoroughbred shyness of inexperience, not the awkwardness of under-breeding or of that meaner vanity called self-consciousness. poor herself, predatory, clever, hard as nails, her beady eyes ever alert for the main chance, she felt for the first time in her life the real bitterness of comparative poverty--which is the inability to give where one loves. she had no illusions; she knew that what she had to offer the girl would soon pall; that jacqueline would choose her own friends among the sane and simple and sincere, irrespective of social and worldly considerations; that no glitter, no sham, no tinsel could permanently hold her attention; no lesser ambition seduce her; no folly ever awake her laughter more than once. what the girl saw she would understand; and, in future, she would choose for herself what she cared to see and know of a new world now gradually opening before her. but in the meantime jacqueline must see before she could learn, and before she could make up her mind what to discard and what to retain. so mrs. hammerton had planned that jacqueline should be very busy during march and april; and her patience was sorely tried when she found that, for a week or two, the girl could give her only a very few minutes every other day. at first it was a grim consolation to her that jacqueline still remained too busy to see anybody, because that meant that desboro, too, would be obliged to keep his distance. for at first mrs. hammerton did not believe that the girl could be seriously interested in desboro; in fact, she had an idea that, so far, all the sentiment was on desboro's side. and both jacqueline's reticence and her calm cordiality in speaking of desboro were at first mistaken by aunt hannah for the symptoms of a friendship not sentimentally significant. but the old lady's doubts soon became aroused; she began to watch jacqueline askance--began to test her, using all her sly cleverness and skill. slowly her uncertainty, uneasiness, and suspicion changed to anger and alarm. if she had been more than angry and suspicious--if she had been positive, she would not have hesitated an instant. for on one matter she was coldly determined; the girl should not marry desboro, or any such man as desboro. it made no difference to her whether desboro might be really in love with her. he was not fit for her; he was a man of weak character, idle, useless, without purpose or ability, who would never amount to anything or be anything except what he already was--an agreeable, graceful, amusing, acceptable item in the sort of society which he decorated. she knew and despised that breed of youth; new york was full of them, and they were even less endurable to her than the similar species extant in england and on the continent; for the new york sort were destitute of the traditions which had created the real kind--and there was no excuse for them, not even the sanction of custom. they were merely imitation of a more genuine degeneracy. and she held them in contempt. she told jacqueline this, as she was saying good-night on saturday, and was alarmed and silenced by the girl's deep flush of colour; and she went home in her scrubby brougham, scared and furious by turns, and determined to settle desboro's business for him without further hesitation. sunday jacqueline could not see her; and the suspicion that the girl might be with desboro almost drove the old lady crazy. monday, too, jacqueline told her over the telephone would be a very busy day; and aunt hannah acquiesced grimly, determined to waste no further time at the telephone and take no more chances, but go straight to jacqueline and take her into her arms and tell her what a mother would tell her about desboro, and how, at that very hour perhaps, he was with mrs. clydesdale; and what the world suspected, and what she herself knew of an intrigue that had been shamelessly carried into the very house which had sheltered jacqueline within a day or two. so on monday morning mrs. hammerton went to see jacqueline; and, learning that the girl had gone out early, marched home again, sat down at her desk, and wrote her a letter. when she had finished she honestly believed that she had also finished desboro; and, grimly persuaded that she had done a mother's duty by the motherless, she summoned a messenger and sent off the letter to a girl, who, at that very moment, had returned to her desk, a wife. the rapid reaction from the thrilling experience of the morning had made jacqueline nervous and unfit for business, even before she arrived at her office. but she entered the office resolutely and seated herself at her desk, summoning all her reserve of self-control to aid her in concentrating her mind on the business in hand. first she read her morning's mail and dictated her answers to a red-headed stenographer. next she received lionel sissly, disposed of his ladylike business with her; sent for mr. mirk, went over with him his report of the shop sales, revised and approved the list of prices to be ticketed on new acquisitions, re-read the sheaf of dictated letters laid before her by the red-headed stenographer, signed them, and sent down for the first client on the appointment-list. the first on the list was a mr. hyman dobky; and his three months' note had gone to protest, and mr. dobky wept. she was not very severe with him, because he was a lexington avenue dealer just beginning in a small way, and she believed him to be honest at heart. he retired comforted, swabbing his eyes with his cuff. then came a furtive pair, orrin munger, the "cubist" poet, and his loud-voiced, swaggering confrère, adalbert waudle, author of "black roses" and other phenomena which, some people whispered, resembled blackmail. it had been with greatest reluctance, and only because it was a matter concerning a client, that she had consented to receive the dubious pair. she had not forgotten her experience with the "cubist," and his suggestion for an informal italian trip, and had never again desired or expected to see him. he now offered her an abnormally flat and damp hand; and hers went behind her back and remained there clasped together, as she stood inspecting mr. munger with level eyes that harboured lightning. she said quietly: "my client, mr. clydesdale, recently requested my opinion concerning certain jades, crystals and chinese porcelains purchased by him from you and from mr. waudle. i have, so far, examined some twenty specimens. every specimen examined by me is a forgery." [illustration: "mr. waudle gaped at her like a fat and expiring fish; the poet ... said not a word"] mr. waudle, taken completely by surprise, gaped at her like a fat and expiring fish; the poet turned a dull and muddy red, and said not a word. "so," added jacqueline coldly, "at mr. clydesdale's request i have asked you to come here and explain the situation to me." waudle, writer of "pithy points" for the infamous _tattler_, recovered his wits first. "miss nevers," he said menacingly, "do you mean to insinuate that i am a swindler?" "_are_ you, mr. waudle?" "that's actionable. do you understand?" "perfectly. please explain the forgeries." the poet, who had sunk down upon a chair, now arose and began to make elaborate gestures preliminary to a fluency of speech which had never yet deserted him in any crisis where a lady was involved. "my dear child----" he began. "_what!_" cut in jacqueline crisply. "my--my dear and--and honored, but very youthful and inexperienced young lady," he stammered, a trifle out of countenance under the fierce glimmer in her eyes, "do you, for one moment, suppose that such a writer as mr. waudle would imperil his social and literary reputation for the sake of a few wretched dollars!" "fifteen thousand," commented jacqueline quietly. "exactly. fifteen thousand contemptible dollars--inartistically designed," he added, betraying a tendency to wander from the main point; and was generously proceeding to instruct her in the art of coin design when she brought him back to the point with a shock. "_you_, also, are involved in this questionable transaction," she said coldly. "can you explain these forgeries?" "f-forgeries!" he repeated, forcibly injecting indignation into the exclamation; but his eyes grew very round, as though frightened, and a spinal limpness appeared which threatened the stability of his knees. but the poet's fluency had not yet deserted him; he opened both arms in a gesture suggesting absolute confidence in a suspicious and inartistic world. "i am quite guiltless of deception," he said, using a slight tremolo. "permit me to protest against your inexperienced judgment in the matter of these ancient and precious specimens of chinese art; i protest!" he exclaimed earnestly. "i protest in the name of that symbol of mystery and beauty--that occult lunar _something_, my dear young lady, which we both worship, and which the world calls the moon----" "i beg your pardon----" she interrupted; but the poet was launched and she could not check him. "i protest," he continued shrilly, "in the name of art! in the name of all that is worth while, all that matters, all that counts, all that is meaningful, sacred, precious beyond price----" "mr. munger!" "i protest in the name of----" "_mr. munger!_" "eh!" he said, coming to and rolling his round, washed-out eyes toward her. "be kind enough to listen," she said curtly. "i am compelled to interrupt you because to-day i am a very busy person. so i am going to be as brief with you as possible. this, then, is the situation as i understand it. a month or so ago you and your friend, mr. waudle, notified mr. clydesdale that you had just returned from pekin with a very unusual collection of ancient chinese art, purchased by you, as you stated, from a certain chinese prince." the faint note of scorn in her voice did not escape the poet, who turned redder and muddier and made a picturesque gesture of world-wide appeal; but no words came from either manufacturer of literary phrases; waudle only closed his cod-like mouth, and the eyes set in his fat face became small and cunning like something in the farthest corner of a trap. jacqueline continued gravely: "at your solicitation, i understand, and depending upon your representations, my client, mr. clydesdale, purchased from you this collection----" "we offered no guarantees with it," interrupted waudle thickly. "besides, his wife advised him to buy the collection. i am an old and valued friend of mrs. clydesdale. she would never dream of demanding a guarantee from _me_! ask her if----" "what _is_ a guarantee?" inquired jacqueline. "i'm quite certain that you don't know, mr. waudle. and did you and mr. munger regard your statement concerning the chinese prince as poetic license? or as diverting fiction? or what? you were not writing romance, you know. you were engaged in business. so i must ask you again who is this prince?" "there was a prince," retorted waudle sullenly. "can you prove there wasn't?" "there are several princes in china. and now i am obliged to ask you to state distinctly exactly how many of these porcelains, jades and crystals which you sold to mr. clydesdale were actually purchased by you from this particular chinese prince?" "most of them," said waudle, defiantly. "prove the contrary if you can!" "not _all_ of them, then--as you assured mr. clydesdale?" "i didn't say all." "i am afraid you did, mr. waudle. i am afraid you even _wrote_ it--over your own signature." "very well," said waudle, with a large and careless sweep of his hand, "if any doubt remains in mr. clydesdale's mind, i am fully prepared to take back whatever specimens may not actually have come from the prince----" "there were _some_, then, which did not?" "one or two, i believe." "and who is this chinese prince, mr. waudle?" she repeated, not smiling. "what is his name?" munger answered; he knew exactly what answer to make, and how to deliver it with flowing gestures. he had practised it long enough: "when i was travelling with his excellency t'ang-k'ai-sun by rail from szechuan to pekin to visit prince----" "the railroad is not built," interrupted the girl drily. "you could not have travelled that way." both men regarded her as though paralysed by her effrontery. "continue, please," she nodded. the poet swallowed nothing very fast and hard, and waved his damp hand at her: "tuan-fang, viceroy of wuchang----" "he happens to be viceroy of nanking," observed the girl. waudle, frightened, lost his temper and turned on her, exasperated: "be careful! your insinuations involve our honour and are actionable! do you realise what you are saying?" "perfectly." "i fear not. do you imagine you are competent to speak with authority about china and its people and its complex and mysterious art when you have never been in the country?" "i have seen a little of china, mr. waudle. but i do not pretend to speak with undue authority about it." "you say you've been in china?" his tone of disbelief was loud and bullying. "i was in china with my father when i was a girl of sixteen." "oh! perhaps you speak chinese!" he sneered. she looked at him gravely, not answering. he laughed: "now, miss nevers, you have intimated that we are liars and swindlers. let's see how much you know for an expert! you pretend to be an authority on things chinese. you will then understand me when i say: 'jen chih ch'u, hsing pen shan----'" "i do understand you, mr. waudle," she cut in contemptuously. "you are repeating the 'three-word-classic,' which every school-child in china knows, and it merely means 'men when born are naturally good.' i think i may qualify in chinese as far as san tzu ching and his nursery rhymes. and i think we have had enough of this dodging----" the author flushed hotly. "do you speak wenli?" he demanded, completely flustered. "do _you_?" she retorted impatiently. "i do," he asserted boldly. "indeed!" "i may even say that i speak very fluently the--the literary language of china--or wenli, as it is commonly called." "that is odd," she said, "because the literary language of china, commonly called wenli, is not and never has been spoken. it is only a written language, mr. waudle." the cubist had now gone quite to pieces. from his colourless mop of bushy hair to the fringe on his ankle-high trousers, he presented a study in deep dejection. only his round, pale, parrot-like eyes remained on duty, staring unwinkingly at her. "were _you_ ever actually in china?" she asked, looking around at him. the terrified poet feebly pointed to the author of "black roses." "oh!" she said. "were _you_ in china, mr. waudle, or only in japan?" but mr. waudle found nothing further to say. "because," she said, "in japan sometimes one is deceived into buying alleged chinese jades and crystals and porcelains. i am afraid that you were deceived. i hope you were honestly deceived. what you have sold to mr. clydesdale as jade is not jade. and the porcelains are not what you represented them to be." "that's where _you_ make a mistake!" shouted waudle loudly. "i've had the inscription on every vase translated, and i can prove it! how much of an expert are you? hey?" "if _you_ were an expert," she explained wearily, "you would understand that inscriptions on chinese porcelains are not trustworthy. even hundreds of years ago forgeries were perpetrated by the chinese who desired to have their works of art mistaken for still more ancient masterpieces; and so the ancient and modern makers of porcelains inscribed them accordingly. only when an antique porcelain itself conforms to the inscription it bears do we venture to accept that inscription. never otherwise." waudle, hypnotised, stood blinking at her, bereft of speech, almost of reason. the poet piped feebly: "it was not our fault! we were brutally deceived in japan. and, oh! the bitter deception to me! the cruelty of the awakening!" he got up out of his chair; words and gestures were once again at his command; tears streaked his pasty cheeks. "miss nevers! my dear and honoured young lady! you know--_you_ among all women must realise how precious to me is the moon! sacred, worshipped, adored--desired far more than the desire for gold--yea, than much fine gold! sweeter, also, than honey in the honeycomb!" he sobbed. "and it was a pair of moon vases, black as midnight, pearl-orbed, lacquered, mystic, wonderful, that lured me----" "a damned japanese in tokio worked them off on us!" broke out the author of "black roses," hoarsely. "that was the beginning. what are you going to do about it? you've got us all right, miss nevers. the jap did us. we did the next man. if you want to send us up, i suppose you can! i don't care. i can't keep soul and body together by selling what i write. i tell you i've starved half my life--and when i hear about the stuff that sells--all these damned best sellers--all this cheap fiction that people buy--while they neglect me--it breaks my heart----" he turned sharply and passed his hand over his face. it was not an attitude; for a fraction of a second it was the real thing. yet, even while the astonished poet was peeping sideways at his guilty companion, a verse suggested itself to him; and, quite unconsciously, he began to fumble in his pockets for a pencil, while the tears still glistened on his cheeks. "mr. waudle," said jacqueline, "i am really sorry for you. because this is a very serious affair." there was a silence; then she reseated herself at her desk. "my client, mr. clydesdale, is not vindictive. he has no desire to humiliate you publicly. but he is justly indignant. and i know he will insist that you return to him what money he paid you for your collection." waudle started dramatically, forgetting his genuine emotion of the moment before. "does this rich man mean to ruin me!" he demanded, making his resonant voice tremble. "on the contrary," she explained gently, "all he wants is the money he paid you." as that was the only sort of ruin which mr. waudle had been fearing, he pressed his clenched fists into his eyes. he had never before possessed so much money. the mere idea of relinquishing it infuriated him; and he turned savagely on jacqueline, hesitated, saw it was useless. for there remained nothing further to say to such a she-devil of an expert. he had always detested women anyway; whenever he had any money they had gotten it in one way or another. the seven thousand, his share, would have gone the same way. now it was going back into a fat, rich man's capacious pockets--unless mrs. clydesdale might be persuaded to intervene. she could say that _she_ wanted the collection. why not? she had aided him before in emergencies--unwillingly, it is true--but what of that? no doubt she'd do it again--if he scared her sufficiently. jacqueline waited a moment longer; then rose from her desk in signal that the interview was at an end. waudle slouched out first, his oblong, evil head hanging in a picturesque attitude of noble sorrow. the cubist shambled after him, wrapped in abstraction, his round, pale, bird-like eyes partly sheathed under bluish eyelids that seemed ancient and wrinkled. he was already quite oblivious to his own moral degradation; his mind was completely obsessed by the dramatic spectacle which the despair of his friend had afforded him, and by the idea for a poem with which the episode had inspired him. he was still absently fishing for a pencil and bit of paper when his companion jogged his elbow: "if we fight this business, and if that damn girl sets clydesdale after us, we'll have to get out. but i don't think it will come to that." "can you stop her, adalbert--and retain the money?" "by god! i'm beginning to think i can. i believe i'll drop in to see mrs. clydesdale about it now. she is a very faithful friend of mine," he added gently. "and sometimes a woman will rush in to help a fellow where angels fear to tread." the poet looked at him, then looked away, frightened. "be careful," he said, nervously. "don't worry. i know women. and i have an idea." the poet of the cubists shrugged; then, with a vague gesture: "my mistress, the moon," he said, dreamily, "is more to me than any idea on earth or in heaven." "very fine," sneered waudle, "but why don't you make her keep you in pin money?" "adalbert," retorted the poet, "if you wish to prostitute your art, do so. anybody can make a mistress of his art and then live off her. but the inviolable moon----" "oh, hell!" snapped the author of "black roses." and they wandered on into the busy avenue, side by side, waudle savagely biting his heavy under-lip, both fists rammed deep into his overcoat pockets; the cubist wandering along beside him, a little derby hat crowning the bunch of frizzled hair on his head, his soiled drab trousers, ankle high, flapping in the wind. jacqueline glanced at them as they passed the window at the end of the corridor, and turned hastily away, remembering the old, unhappy days after her father's death, and how once from a window she had seen the poet as she saw him now, frizzled, soiled, drab, disappearing into murky perspective. she turned wearily to her desk again. a sense of depression had been impending--but she knew it was only the reaction from excitement and fought it nervously. they brought luncheon to her desk, but she sent away the tray untouched. people came by appointment and departed, only to give place to others, all equally persistent and wholly absorbed in their own affairs; and she listened patiently, forcing her tired mind to sympathise and comprehend. and, in time, everybody went away satisfied or otherwise, but in no doubt concerning the answer she had given, favourable or unfavourable to their desires. for that was her way in the business of life. at last, once more looking over her appointment list, she found that only clydesdale remained; and almost at the same moment, and greatly to her surprise, mrs. clydesdale was announced. "is mr. clydesdale with her?" she asked the clerk, who had also handed her a letter with the visiting card of mrs. clydesdale. "the lady is alone," he said. jacqueline glanced at the card again. then, thoughtfully: "please say to mrs. clydesdale that i will receive her," she said; laid the card on the desk and picked up the letter. it was a very thick letter and had arrived by messenger. the address on the envelope was in mrs. hammerton's familiar and vigorous back-stroke writing, and she had marked it "_private! personal! important!_" as almost every letter from her to jacqueline bore similar emphatic warnings, the girl smiled to herself and leisurely split the envelope with a paper knife. she was still intent on the letter, and was still seated at her desk when mrs. clydesdale entered. and jacqueline slowly looked up, dazed and deathly white, as the woman about whom she had at that moment been reading came forward to greet her. then, with a supreme effort, she rose from her chair, managing to find the ghost of a voice to welcome elena, who seemed unusually vivacious, and voluble to the verge of excitement. [illustration: "'my dear!' she exclaimed. 'what a perfectly charming office!'"] "my dear!" she exclaimed. "what a perfectly charming office! it's really too sweet for words, miss nevers! it's enough to drive us all into trade! are you very much surprised to see me here?" "a--little." "it's odd--the coincidence that brought me," said elena gaily, "--and just a trifle embarrassing to me. and as it is rather a confidential matter----" she drew her chair closer to the desk. "_may_ i speak to you in fullest candour and--and implicit confidence, miss nevers?" "yes." "then--there is a friend of mine in very serious trouble--a man i knew slightly before i was married. since then i--have come to know him--better. and i am here now to ask you to help him." "yes." "shall i tell you his name at once?" "if you wish." "then--his name is adalbert waudle." jacqueline looked up at her in weary surprise. elena laughed feverishly: "adalbert is only a boy--a bad one, perhaps, but--you know that genius is queer--always unbalanced. he came to see me at noon to-day. it's a horrid mess, isn't it--what he did to my husband? i know all about it; and i know that cary is wild, and that it was an outrageous thing for adalbert to do. but----" her voice trembled a little and she forced a laugh to conceal it: "adalbert is an old friend, miss nevers. i knew him as a boy. but even so, cary couldn't understand if i pleaded for him. my husband means to send him to jail if he does not return the money. and--and i am sorry for mrs. waudle. besides, i like the porcelains. and i want you to persuade cary to keep them." through the whirling chaos of her thoughts, jacqueline still strove to understand what this excited woman was saying; made a desperate effort to fix her attention on the words and not on the flushed and restless young wife who was uttering them. "will you persuade cary to keep the collection, miss nevers?" "that is for you to do, mrs. clydesdale." "i tried. i called him up at his office and asked him to keep the jades and porcelains because i liked them. but he was very obstinate. what you have told him about--about being swindled has made him furious. that is why i came here. something must be done." "i don't think i understand you." "there is nothing to understand. i want to keep the collection. i ask you to convince my husband----" "how?" "i d--don't know," stammered elena, crimson again. "you ought to know how to--to do it." "if mr. waudle returns your husband's money, no further action will be taken." "he can not," said elena, in a low voice. "why?" "he has spent it." "did he tell you that?" "yes." "then i am afraid that mr. clydesdale will have him arrested." there was an ominous silence. jacqueline forced her eyes away from the terrible fascination of elena's ghastly face, and said: "i am sorry. but i can do nothing for you, mrs. clydesdale. the decision rests with your husband." "you _must_ help me!" "i cannot." "you _must_!" repeated elena. "how?" "i--i don't care how you do it! but you must prevent my husband from prosecuting mr. waudle! it--it has got to be done--somehow." "what do you mean?" elena's face was burning and her lips quivered: "it has got to be done! i can't tell you why." "can you not tell your husband?" "no." jacqueline was quivering, too, clinging desperately to her self-control under the menace of an impending horror which had already partly stunned her. "are you--_afraid_ of this man?" she asked, with stiffening lips. elena bowed her head in desperation. "what is it? blackmail?" "yes. he once learned something. i have paid him--not to--to write it for the--the _tattler_. and to-day he came to me straight from your office and made me understand that i would have to stop my husband from--taking any action--even to recover the money----" jacqueline sat nervously clenching and unclenching her hands over the letter which lay under them on the blotter. "what scandal is it you fear, mrs. clydesdale?" she asked, in an icy voice. elena coloured furiously: "is it necessary for me to incriminate myself before you help me? i thought you more generous!" "i can not help you. there is no way to do so." "yes, there is!" "how?" "by--by telling my husband that the--the jades are _not_ forgeries!" jacqueline's ashy cheeks blazed into colour. "mrs. clydesdale," she said, "i would not do it to save myself--not even to save the dearest friend i have! and do you think i will lie to spare _you_?" in the excitement and terror of what now was instantly impending, the girl had risen, clutching mrs. hammerton's letter in her hand. "you need not tell me why you--you are afraid," she stammered, her lovely lips already distorted with fear and horror, "because i--i _know_! do you understand? i know what you are--what you have done--what you are doing!" she fumbled in the pages of mrs. hammerton's letter, found an enclosure, and held it out to elena with shaking fingers. it was elena's note to her husband, written on the night she left him, brought by her husband to silverwood, left on the library table, used as a bookmark by desboro, discovered and kept by its finder, mrs. hammerton, for future emergencies. elena re-read it now with sickened senses, and knew that in the eyes of this young girl she was utterly and irretrievably damned. "did you write that?" whispered jacqueline, with lips scarcely under control. "i--you do not understand----" "did you know that when i was a guest under mr. desboro's roof everything that he and you said in the library was overheard? do you know that you have been watched--not by me--but even long before i knew you--watched even at the opera----" elena drew a quick, terrified breath; then the surging shame mantled her from brow to throat. "that was mrs. hammerton!" she murmured. "i warned jim--but he trusted her." jacqueline turned cold all over. "he is your--lover," she said mechanically. elena looked at her, hesitated, came a step nearer, still staring. her visage and her bearing altered subtly. for a moment they gazed at each other. then elena said, in a soft, but deadly, voice: "suppose he is my lover! does that concern _you_?" and, as the girl made no stir or sound: "however, if you think it does, you will scarcely care to know either of us any longer. i am quite satisfied. do what you please about the man who has blackmailed me. i don't care now. i was frightened for a moment--but i don't care any longer. because the end of all this nightmare is in sight; and i think mr. desboro and i are beginning to awake at last." * * * * * until a few minutes before five jacqueline remained seated at her desk, motionless, her head buried in her arms. then she got to her feet somehow, and to her room, where, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, she bathed her face and arranged her hair, and strove to pinch and rub a little colour into her ghastly cheeks. chapter xiv desboro came for her in his car at five and found her standing alone in her office, dressed in a blue travelling dress, hatted and closely veiled. he partly lifted the veil, kissed the cold, unresponsive lips, the pallid cheek, the white-gloved fingers. "is her royal shyness ready?" he whispered. "yes, jim." "all her affairs of state accomplished?" he asked laughingly. "yes--the day's work is done." "was it a hard day for you, sweetheart?" "yes--hard." "i am so sorry," he murmured. she rearranged her veil in silence. * * * * * again, as the big car rolled away northward, and they were alone once more in the comfortable limousine, he took possession of her unresisting hand, whispering: "i am so sorry you have had a hard day, dear. you really look very pale and tired." "it was a--tiresome day." he lifted her hand to his lips: "do you love me, jacqueline?" "yes." "above everything?" "yes." "and you know that i love you above everything in the world?" she was silent. "jacqueline!" he urged. "don't you _know_ it?" "i--think you--care for me." he laughed: "will your royal shyness never unbend! is _that_ all the credit you give me for my worship and adoration?" she said, after a silence: "if it lies with me, you really will love me some day." "dearest!" he protested, laughing but perplexed. "don't you know that i love you _now_--that i am absolutely mad about you?" she did not answer, and he waited, striving to see her expression through the veil. but when he offered to lift it, she gently avoided him. "did you go to business?" she asked quietly. "i? oh, yes, i went back to the office. but lord! jacqueline, i couldn't keep my attention on the tape or on the silly orders people fired at me over the wire. so i left young seely in charge and went to lunch with jack cairns; and then he and i returned to the office, where i've been fidgeting about ever since. i think it's been the longest day i ever lived." "it has been a long day," she assented gravely. "did mr. cairns speak to you of cynthia?" "he mentioned her, i believe." "do you remember what he said about her?" "well, yes. i think he spoke about her very nicely--about her being interesting and ambitious and talented--something of that sort--but how could i keep my mind on what he was saying about another girl?" jacqueline looked out of the window across a waste of swamp and trestle and squalid buildings toward university heights. she said presently, without turning: "some day, may i ask cynthia to visit me?" "dearest girl! of course! isn't it your house----" "silverwood?" "certainly----" "no, jim." "what on earth do you mean?" "what i say. silverwood is not yet even partly mine. it must remain entirely yours--until i know you--better." "why on earth do you say such silly----" "what is yours must remain yours," she repeated, in a low voice, "just as my shop, and office, and my apartment must remain mine--for a time." "for how long?" "i can not tell." "do you mean for always?" "i don't know." "and i don't understand you, dear," he said impatiently. "you will, jim." he smiled uneasily: "for how long must we twain, who are now one, maintain solitary sovereignty over our separate domains?" "until i know you better." "and how long is that going to take?" he asked, smilingly apprehensive and deeply perplexed by her quiet and serious attitude toward him. "i don't know how long, i wish i did." "jacqueline, dear, has anything unpleasant happened to disturb you since i last saw you?" she made no reply. "won't you tell me, dear," he insisted uneasily. "i will tell you this, jim. whatever may have occurred to disturb me is already a matter of the past. life and its business lie before us; that is all i know. this is our beginning, jim; and happiness depends on what we make of our lives from now on--from now on." the stray lock of golden hair had fallen across her cheek, accenting the skin's pallor through the veil. she rested her elbow on the window ledge, her tired head on her hand, and gazed at the sunset behind the palisades. far below, over the grey and wrinkled river, smoke from a steamboat drifted, a streak of bronze and purple, in the sunset light. "_what_ has happened?" he muttered under his breath. and, turning toward her: "you must tell me, jacqueline. it is now my right to know." "don't ask me." his face hardened; for a moment the lean muscles of the jaw worked visibly. "has anybody said anything about me to you?" no reply. "has--has mrs. hammerton been to see you?" "no." he was silent for a moment, then: "i'll tell you now, jacqueline; she did not wish me to marry you. did you know it?" "i know it." "i believe," he said, "that she has been capable of warning you against me. did she?" no reply. "and yet you married me?" he said, after a silence. she said nothing. "so you could not have believed her, whatever she may have said," he concluded calmly. "jim?" "yes, dear." "i married you because i loved you. i love you still. remember it when you are impatient with me--when you are hurt--perhaps angry----" "angry with _you_, my darling!" "you are going to be--very often--i am afraid." "angry?" "i--don't know. i don't know how it will be with us. if only you will remember that i love you--no matter how i seem----" "dear, if you tell me that you do love me, i will know that it must be so!" "i tell you that i do. i could never love anybody else. you are all that i have in the world; all i care for. you are absolutely everything to me. i loved you and married you; i took you for mine just as you were and are. and if i didn't quite understand all that--that you are--i took you, nevertheless--for better or for worse--and i mean to hold you. and i know now that, knowing more about you, i would do the same thing if it were to be done again. i would marry you to-morrow--knowing what i know." "what more do you know about me than you did this morning, jacqueline?" he asked, terribly troubled. but she refused to answer. he said, reddening: "if you have heard any gossip concerning mrs. clydesdale, it is false. was _that_ what you heard? because it is an absolute lie." but she had learned from mrs. clydesdale's reckless lips the contrary, and she rested her aching head on her hand and stared out at the endless lines of houses along broadway, as the car swung into yonkers, veered to the west past the ancient manor house, then rolled northward again toward hastings. "don't you believe me?" he asked at length. "that gossip is a lie--if that is what you heard." she thought: "this is how gentlemen are supposed to behave under such circumstances." and she shivered. "are you cold?" he asked, with an effort. "a little." he drew the fur robe closer around her, and leaned back in his corner, deeply worried, impatient, but helpless in the face of her evident weariness and reticence, which he could not seem to penetrate or comprehend. only that something ominous had happened--that something was dreadfully wrong--he now thoroughly understood. in the purposeless career of a man of his sort, there is much that it is well to forget. and in desboro's brief career there were many things that he would not care to have such a girl as jacqueline hear about--so much, alas! of folly and stupidity, so much of idleness, so much unworthy, that now in his increasing chagrin and mortification, in the painful reaction from happy pride to alarm and self-contempt, he could not even guess what had occurred, or for which particular folly he was beginning to pay. long since, both in his rooms in town, and at silverwood, he had destroyed the silly souvenirs of idleness and folly. he thought now of the burning sacrifice he had so carelessly made that day in the library--and how the flames had shrivelled up letter and fan, photograph and slipper. and he could not remember that he had left a rag of lace or a perfumed envelope unburned. had the ghosts of their owners risen to confront him on his own hearthstone, standing already between him and this young girl he had married? what whisper had reached her guiltless ears? what rumour, what breath of innuendo? must a man still be harassed who has done with folly for all time--who aspires to better things--who strives to change his whole mode of life merely for the sake of the woman he loves--merely to be more worthy of her? as he sat there so silently in the car beside her, his dark thoughts travelled back again along the weary, endless road to yesterday. since he had known and loved her, his thoughts had often and unwillingly sought that shadowy road where the only company were ghosts--phantoms of dead years that sometimes smiled, sometimes reproached, sometimes menaced him with suddenly remembered eyes and voiceless but familiar words forever printed on his memory. out of that grey vista, out of that immaterial waste where only impalpable shapes peopled the void, vanished, grew out of nothing only to reappear, _something_ had come to trouble the peace of mind of the woman he loved--some spectre of folly had arisen and had whispered in her ear, so that, at the mockery, the light had died out in her fearless eyes and her pure mind was clouded and her tender heart was weighted with this thing--whatever it might be--this echo of folly which had returned to mock them both. "dearest," he said, drawing her to him so that her cold cheek rested against his, "whatever i was, i am no longer. you said you could forgive." "i do--forgive." "can you not forget, too?" "i will try--with your help." "how can i help you? tell me." "by letting me love you--as wisely as i can--in my own fashion. by letting me learn more of you--more about men. i don't understand men. i thought i did--but i don't. by letting me find out what is the wisest and the best and the most unselfish way to love you. for i don't know yet. i don't know. all i know is that i am married to the man i loved--the man i still love. but how i am going to love him i--i don't yet know." he was silent; the hot flush on his face did not seem to warm her cheek where it rested so coldly against his. "i want to hold you because it is best for us both," she said, as though speaking to herself. "but--you need make no effort to hold me, jacqueline!" e protested, amazed. "i want to hold you, jim," she repeated. "you are my husband. i--i must hold you. and i don't know how i am to do it. i don't know how." "my darling! who has been talking to you? what have they said?" "it has _got_ to be done, somehow," she interrupted, wearily. "i must learn how to hold you; and you must give me time, jim----" "give you time!" he repeated, exasperated. "yes--to learn how to love you best--so i can serve you best. that is why i married you--not selfishly, jim--and i thought i knew--i thought i knew----" her cheek slipped from his and rested on his shoulder. he put his arm around her and she covered her face with her gloved hands. "i love you dearly, dearly," he whispered brokenly. "if the whisper of any past stupidity of mine has hurt you, god knows best what punishment he visits on me at this moment! if there were any torture i could endure to spare you, jacqueline, i would beg for it--welcome it! it is a bitter and a hopeless and a ridiculous thing to say; but if i had only known there was such a woman as you in the world i would have understood better how to live. i suppose many a man understands it when it is too late. i realise now, for the first time, how changeless, how irrevocably fixed, are the truths youth learns to smile at--the immutable laws youth scoffs at----" he choked, controlled his voice, and went on: "if youth could only understand it, the truths of childhood are the only truths. the first laws we learn are the eternal ones. and their only meaning is self-discipline. but youth is restive and mistakes curiosity for intelligence, insubordination for the courage of independence. the stupidity of orthodoxy incites revolt. to disregard becomes less difficult; to forget becomes a habit. to think for one's self seems admirable; but when youth attempts that, it thinks only what it pleases or does not think at all. i am not trying to find excuses or to evade my responsibility, dear. i had every chance, no excuse for what i have--sometimes--been. and now--on this day--this most blessed and most solemn day of my life--i can only say to you i am sorry, and that i mean so to live--always--that no man or woman can reproach me." she lay very silent against his shoulder. blindly striving to understand him, and men--blindly searching for some clue to the path of duty--the path she must find somehow and follow for his sake--through the obscurity and mental confusion she seemed to hear at moments elena clydesdale's shameless and merciless words, and the deadly repetition seemed to stun her. vainly she strove against the recurring horror; once or twice, unconsciously, her hands crept upward and closed her ears, as though she could shut out what was dinning in her brain. with every reserve atom of mental strength and self-control she battled against this thing which was stupefying her, fought it off, held it, drove it back--not very far, but far enough to give her breathing room. but no sooner did she attempt to fix her mind on the man beside her, and begin once more to grope for the clue to duty--how most unselfishly she might serve him for his salvation and her own--than the horror she had driven back stirred stealthily and crawled nearer. and the battle was on once more. twilight had fallen over the westchester hills; a familiar country lay along the road they travelled. in the early darkness, glancing from the windows he divined unseen landmarks, counted the miles unconsciously as the car sped across invisible bridges that clattered or resounded under the heavy wheels. the stars came out; against them woodlands and hills took shadowy shape, marking for him remembered haunts. and at last, far across the hills the lighted windows of silverwood glimmered all a-row; the wet gravel crunched under the slowing wheels, tall norway spruces towered phantomlike on every side; the car stopped. "home," he whispered to her; and she rested her arm on his shoulder and drew herself erect. every servant and employee on the desboro estate was there to receive them; she offered her slim hand and spoke to every one. then, on her husband's arm, and her proud little head held high, she entered the house of desboro for the first time bearing the family name--entered smiling, with death in her heart. * * * * * at last the dinner was at an end. farris served the coffee and set the silver lamp and cigarettes on the library table, and retired. luminous red shadows from the fireplace played over wall and ceiling--the same fireplace where desboro had made his offering--as though flame could purify and ashes end the things that men have done! in her frail dinner gown of lace, she lay in a great chair before the blaze, gazing at nothing. he, seated on the rug beside her chair, held her limp hand and rested his face against it, staring at the ashes on the hearth. and this was marriage! thus he was beginning his wedded life--here in the house of his fathers, here at the same hearthstone where the dead brides of dead forebears had sat as his bride was sitting now. but had any bride ever before faced that hearth so silent, so motionless, so pale as was this young girl whose fingers rested so limply in his and whose cold palm grew no warmer against his cheek? what had he done to her? what had he done to himself--that the joy of things had died out in her eyes--that speech had died on her lips--that nothing in her seemed alive, nothing responded, nothing stirred. now, all the bitterness that life and its unwisdom had stored up for him through the swift and reckless years, he tasted. for that cup may not pass. somewhere, sooner or later, the same lips that have so lightly emptied sweeter draughts must drain this one. none may refuse it, none wave it away until the cup be empty. "jacqueline?" she moved slightly in her chair. "tell me," he said, "what is it that can make amends?" "they--are made." "but the hurt is still there. what can heal it, dear?" "i--don't know." "time?" "perhaps." "love?" "yes--in time." "how long?" "i do not know, jim." "then--what is there for me to do?" she was silent. "could you tell me, jacqueline?" "yes. have patience--with me." "with _you_?" "it will be necessary." "how do you mean, dear?" "i mean you must have patience with me--in many ways. and still be in love with me. and still be loyal to me--and--faithful. i don't know whether a man can do these things. i don't know men. but i know myself--and what i require of men--and of you." "what you require of me i can be if you love me." "then never doubt it. and when i know that you have become what i require you to be, you could not doubt my loving you even if you wished to. _then_ you will know; _until_ then--you must _believe_." he sat thinking before the hearth, the slow flush rising to his temples and remaining. "what is it you mean to do, jacqueline?" he asked, in a low voice. "nothing, except what i have always done. the business of life remains unchanged; it is always there to be done." "i mean--are you going to--change--toward me?" "i have not changed." "your confidence in me has gone." "i have recovered it." "you believe in me still?" "oh, yes--yes!" her little hand inside his clenched convulsively and her voice broke. kneeling beside her, he drew her into his arms and felt her breath suddenly hot and feverish against his shoulder. but if there had been tears in her eyes they dried unshed, for he saw no traces of them when he kissed her. "in god's name," he whispered, "let the past bury its accursed dead and give me a chance. i love you, worship you, adore you. give me my chance in life again, jacqueline!" "i--i give it to you--as far as in me lies. but it rests with you, jim, what you will be." his own philosophy returned to mock him out of the stainless mouth of this young girl! but he said passionately: "how can i be arbiter of my own fate unless i have all you can give me of love and faith and unswerving loyalty?" "i give you these." "then--as a sign--return the kiss i give you--now." there was no response. "can you not, jacqueline?" "not--yet." "you--you can not respond!" "not--that way--yet." "is--have i--has what you know of me killed all feeling, all tenderness in you?" "no." "then--why can you not respond----" "i can not, jim--i can not." he flushed hotly: "do you--do i inspire you with--do i repel you--physically?" she caught his hand, cheeks afire, dismayed, striving to check him: "please--don't say such--it is--not--true----" "it seems to be----" "no! i--i ask you--not to say it--think it----" "how can i help thinking it--thinking that you only care for me--that the only attraction on your part is--is intellectual----" she disengaged her hand from his and shrank away into the velvet depths of her chair. "i can't help it," he said. "i've got to say what i think. never since i have told you i loved you have you ever hinted at any response, even to the lightest caress. we are married. whatever--however foolish i may have been--god knows you have made me pay for it this day. how long am i to continue paying? i tell you a man can't remain repentant too long under the stern and chilling eyes of retribution. if you are going to treat me as though i were physically unfit to touch, i can make no further protest. but, jacqueline, no man was ever aided by a punishment that wounds his self-respect." "i must consider mine, too," she said, in a ghost of a voice. "very well," he said, "if you think you must maintain it at the expense of mine----" "jim!" the low cry left her lips trembling. "what?" he said, angrily. "have--have you already forgotten what i said?" "what did you say?" "i asked--i asked you to be patient with me--because--i love you----" but the words halted; she bowed her head in her hands, quivering, scarcely conscious that he was on his knees again at her feet, scarcely hearing his broken words of repentance and shame for the sorry and contemptible rôle he had been playing. no tears came to help her even then, only a dry, still agony possessed her. but the crisis passed and wore away; sight and hearing and the sense of touch returned to her. she saw his head bowed in contrition on her knees, heard his voice, bitter in self-accusation, felt his hands crisping over hers, crushing them till her new rings cut her. for a while she looked down at him as though dazed; then the real pain from her wedding ring aroused her and she gently withdrew that hand and rested it on his thick, short, curly hair. for a long while they remained so. he had ceased to speak; her brooding gaze rested on him, unchanged save for the subtle tenderness of the lips, which still quivered at moments. clocks somewhere in the house were striking midnight. a little later a log fell from the dying fire, breaking in ashes. he felt her stir, change her position slightly; and he lifted his head. after a moment she laid her hand on his arm, and he aided her to rise. as they moved slowly, side by side, through the house, they saw that it was filled with flowers everywhere, twisted ropes of them on the banisters, too, where they ascended. her own maid, who had arrived by train, rose from a seat in the upper corridor to meet her. the two rooms, which were connected by a sitting room, disclosed themselves, almost smothered in flowers. jacqueline stood in the sitting room for a moment, gazing vaguely around her at the flowers and steadying herself by one hand on the centre-table, which a great bowlful of white carnations almost covered. then, as her maid reappeared at the door of her room, she turned and looked at desboro. there was a silence; his face was very white, hers was deathly. he said: "shall we say good-night?" "it is--for you--to say." "then--good-night, jacqueline." "good-night." [illustration: "she turned ... looked back, hesitated"] she turned, took a step or two--looked back, hesitated, then slowly retraced her steps to where he was standing by the flower-covered table. from the mass of blossoms she drew a white carnation, touched it to her lips, and, eyes still lowered, offered it to him. in her palm, beside it, lay a key. but he took only the blossom, touching it to his lips as she had done. she looked at the key, lying in her trembling hand, then lifted her confused eyes to his once more, whispering: "good-night--and thank you." "good-night," he said, "until to-morrow." and they went their separate ways. chapter xv une nuit blanche--and the young seem less able to withstand its corroding alchemy than the old. it had left its terrible and pallid mark on desboro; and on jacqueline it had set its phantom sign. that youthfully flushed and bright-eyed loveliness which always characterised the girl had whitened to ashes over night. and now, as she entered the sunny breakfast room in her delicate chinese morning robes, the change in her was startlingly apparent; for the dead-gold lustre of her hair accented the pallor of a new and strange and transparent beauty; the eyes, tinted by the deeper shadows under them, looked larger and more violet; and she seemed smaller and more slender; and there was a snowy quality to the skin that made the vivid lips appear painted. desboro came forward from the recess of the window; and whether in his haggard and altered features she read of his long night's vigil, or whether in his eyes she learned again how she herself had changed, was not plain to either of them; but her eyes suddenly filled and she turned sharply and stood with the back of one slender hand across her eyes. neither had spoken; neither spoke for a full minute. then she walked to the window and looked out. the mating sparrows were very noisy. not a tear fell; she touched her eyes with a bit of lace, drew a long, deep, steady breath and turned toward him. "it is all over--forgive me, jim. i did not mean to greet you this way. i won't do it again----" she offered her hand with a faint smile, and he lifted it and touched it to his lips. "it's all over, all ended," she repeated. "such a curious phenomenon happened to me at sunrise this morning." "what?" "i was born," she said, laughing. "isn't it odd to be born at my age? so as soon as i realised what had happened, i went and looked out of the window; and there was the world, jim--a big, round, wonderful planet, all over hills and trees and valleys and brooks! i don't know how i recognised it, having just been born into it, but somehow i did. and i knew the sun, too, the minute i saw it shining on my window and felt it on my face and throat. isn't that a wonderful way to begin life?" there was not a tremor in her voice, nothing tremulous in the sweet humour of the lips; and, to his surprise, in her eyes little demons of gaiety seemed to be dancing all at once till they sparkled almost mockingly. "dear," he said, under his breath, "i wondered whether you would ever speak to me again." "_speak_ to you! you silly boy, i expect to do little else for the rest of my life! i intend to converse and argue and importune and insist and nag and nag. oh, jim! _please_ ring for breakfast. i had no luncheon yesterday and less dinner." a slight colour glowed under the white skin of her cheeks as farris entered with the fruit; she lifted a translucent cluster of grapes from the dish, snipped it in half with the silver scissors, glanced at her husband and laughed. [illustration: "'_that's_ how hungry i am, jim. i warned you'"] "_that's_ how hungry i am, jim. i warned you. of what are you thinking--with that slight and rather fascinating smile crinkling your eyes?" she bit into grape after grape, watching him across the table. "share with me whatever amuses you, please!" she insisted. "never with my consent shall you ever again laugh alone." "you haven't seen last evening's and this morning's papers," he said, amused. "have they arrived? oh, jim! i wish to see them, please!" he went into his room and brought out a sheaf of clippings. "isn't this all of the papers that you cared to see, jacqueline?" "of course! what _do_ they say about us? are they brief or redundant, laconic or diffuse? and are they nice to us?" she was already immersed in a quarter column account of "a romantic wedding" at "old st. george's"; and she read with dilated eyes all about the "wealthy, fashionable, and well-known clubman," which she understood must mean her youthful husband, and all about silverwood and the celebrated collections, and about his lineage and his social activities. and by and by she read about herself, and her charm and beauty and personal accomplishments, and was amazed to learn that she, too, was not only wealthy and fashionable, but that she was a descendant of an ancient and noble family in france, entirely extinguished by the guillotine during the revolution, except for her immediate progenitors. clipping after clipping she read to the end; then the simple notices under "weddings." then she looked at desboro. "i--i didn't realise what a very grand young man i had married," she said, with a shy smile. "but i am very willing to admit it. why do they say such foolish and untrue things about _me_?" "they meant to honour you by lying about you when the truth about you is far more noble and more wonderful," he said. "do you think so?" "do you doubt it?" she remained silent, turning over the clippings in her hand; then, glancing up, found him smiling again. "please share with me--because i know your thoughts are pleasant." "it was seeing you in these pretty chinese robes," he smiled, "which made me think of that evening in the armoury." "oh--when i sat under the dragon, with my lute, and said for your guests some legends of old cathay?" "yes. seeing you here--in your chinese robes--made me think of their astonishment when you first dawned on their mental and social horizon. they are worthy people," he added, with a shrug. "they are as god made them," she said, demurely. "only they have always forgotten, as i have, that god merely begins us--and we are expected to do the rest. for, once made, he merely winds us up, sets our hearts ticking, and places us on top of the world. where we walk to, and how, is our own funeral henceforward. is that your idea of divine responsibility?" "i think he continues to protect us after we start to toddle; and after that, too, if we ask him," she answered, in a low voice. "do you believe in prayer, dear?" "yes--in unselfish prayer. not in the acquisitive variety. such petitions seem ignoble to me." "i understand." she said, gravely: "to pray--not for one's self--except that one cause no sorrow--that seems to me a logical petition. but i don't know. and after all, what one does, not what one talks about, counts." she was occupied with her grapes, glancing up at him from moment to moment with sweet, sincere eyes, sometimes curious, sometimes shy, but always intent on this tall, boyish young fellow who, she vainly tried to realise, belonged to her. in his morning jacket, somehow, he had become entirely another person; his thick, closely brushed hair, the occult air of freshness from ablutions that left a faint fragrance about him, accented their new intimacy, the strangeness of which threatened at moments to silence her. nor could she realise that she belonged there at all--there, in her frail morning draperies, at breakfast with him in a house which belonged to him. yet, one thing she was becoming vaguely aware of; this tall, young fellow, in his man's intimate attire, was quietly and unvaryingly considerate of her; had entirely changed from the man she seemed to have known; had suddenly changed yesterday at midnight. and now she was aware that he still remained what he had been when he took the white blossom from her hand the night before, and left in her trembling palm, untouched, the symbol of authority which now was his forever. even in the fatigue of body and the deadlier mental weariness--in the confused chaos of her very soul, that moment was clearly imprinted on her mind--must remain forever recorded while life lasted. she divided another grape; there were no seeds; the skin melted in her mouth. "men," she said absently, "_are_ good." when he laughed, she came to herself and looked at him with shy, humourous eyes. "they _are_ good, jim. even the chinese knew it thousands of years ago. have you never heard me recite the three-word-classic of san tzu ching? then listen, white man! "jen chih ch'u hsing pen shan hsing hsiang chin hsi hsiang yuan kou pu chiao hsing nai ch'ien chiao chih tao kuei i chuan----" she sat swaying slightly to the rhythm, like a smiling child who recites a rhyme of the nursery, accenting the termination of every line by softly striking her palms together; and the silken chinese sleeves slipped back, revealing her white arms to the shoulder. softly she smote her smooth little palms together, gracefully she swayed; her silks rustled like the sound of slender reeds in a summer wind, and her cadenced voice was softer. never had he seen her so exquisite. she stopped capriciously. "all that is chinese to me," he said. "you make me feel solitary and ignorant." and she laughed and tossed the lustrous hair from her cheeks. "this is all it means, dear: "men at their birth are naturally good. their natures are much the same; their habits become widely different. if they are not taught, their natures will deteriorate. the right way in teaching is to attach the utmost importance to thoroughness---- "and so forth, and so forth," she ended gaily. "where on earth did you learn chinese?" he remonstrated. "you know enough without that to scare me to death! slowly but surely you are overwhelming me, jacqueline, and some day i shall leave the house, dig a woodchuck hole out on the hill, and crawl into it permanently." "then i'll have to crawl in, too, won't i? but, alas, jim! the three-word-classic is my limit. when father took me to shanghai, i learned it--three hundred and fifty-six lines of it! but it's all the chinese i know--except a stray phrase or two. cheer up, dear; we won't have to look for our shadows on that hill." breakfast was soon accomplished; she looked shyly across at him; he nodded, and they rose. "the question is," she said, "when am i going to find time to read the remainder of the morning paper, and keep myself properly informed from day to day, if you make breakfast so agreeable for me?" "have i done that?" "you know you have," she said lightly. "suppose you read the paper aloud to me, while i stroll about for the sake of my figure." they laughed; he picked up the paper and began to read the headlines, and she walked about the room, her hands bracketed on her hips, listening sometimes, sometimes absorbed in her own reflections, now and then glancing out of the window or pausing to rearrange a bowl of flowers. little by little, however, her leisurely progress from one point of interest to another became more haphazard, and she moved restlessly, with a tendency to drift in his direction. perhaps she realised that, for she halted suddenly. "jim, i have enough of politics, thank you. and it's almost time to put on more conventional apparel, isn't it? i have a long and hard day before me at the office." "as hard as yesterday?" he asked, unthinkingly; then reddened. she had moved to the window as she spoke; but he had seen the quick, unconscious gesture of pain as her hand flew to her breast; and her smiling courage when she turned toward him did not deceive him. "that _was_ a hard day, jim. but i think the worst is over. and you may read your paper if you wish until i am ready. you have only to put on your business coat, haven't you?" so he tried to fix his mind on the paper, and, failing, laid it aside and went to his room to make ready. when he was prepared, he returned to their sitting room. she was not there, and the door of her bedroom was open and the window-curtains fluttering. so he descended to the library, where he found her playing with his assortment of animals, a cat tucked under either arm and a yellow pup on her knees. "they all came to say good-morning," she explained, "and how could i think of my clothing? would you ask farris to fetch a whisk-broom?" desboro rang: "a whisk-broom for--for mrs. desboro," he said. _mrs. desboro!_ she had looked up startled; it was the first time she had heard it from his lips, and even the reiteration of her maid had not accustomed her to hear herself so named. both had blushed before farris, both had thrilled as the words had fallen from desboro's unaccustomed lips; but both attempted to appear perfectly tranquil and undisturbed by what had shocked them as no bomb explosion possibly could. and the old man came back with the whisk-broom, and desboro dusted the cat fur and puppy hairs from jacqueline's brand-new gown. they were going to town by train, not having time to spare. "it will be full of commuters," he said, teasingly. "you don't know what a godsend a bride is to commuters. i pity _you_." "i shall point my nose particularly high, monsieur. do you suppose i'll know anybody aboard?" "what if you don't! they'll know who _you_ are! and they'll all read their papers and stare at you from time to time, comparing you with what the papers say about you----" "jim! stop tormenting me. do i look sallow and horrid? i believe i'll run up to my room and do a little friction on my cheeks----" "with nail polish?" "how do _you_ know? please, jim, it isn't nice to know so much about the makeshifts indulged in by my sex." she stood pinching her cheeks and the tiny lobes of her close-set ears, regarding him with beautiful but hostile eyes. "you know too much, young man. you don't wish to make me afraid of you, do you? anyway, you are no expert! once you thought my hair was painted, and my lips, too. if i'd known what you were thinking i'd have made short work of you that rainy afternoon----" "you _did_." she laughed: "you _can_ say nice things, too. did you really begin to--to care for me that actual afternoon?" "that actual afternoon." "a--about what time--if you happen to remember," she asked carelessly. "about the same second that i first set eyes on you." "oh, jim, you _couldn't_!" "couldn't what?" "care for me the actual second you first set eyes on me. could you?" "i _did_." "was it _that_ very second?" "absolutely." "you didn't show it." "well, you know i couldn't very well kneel down and make you a declaration before i knew your name, could i, dear?" "you did it altogether too soon as it was. jim, what _did_ you think of me?" "you ought to know by this time." "i don't. i suppose you took one look at me and decided that i was all ready to fall into your arms. didn't you?" "you haven't done it yet," he said lightly. there was a pause; the colour came into her face, and his own reddened. but she pretended to be pleasantly unconscious of the significance, and only interested in reminiscence. "do you know what i thought of you, jim, when you first came in?" "not much, i fancy," he conceded. "will it spoil you if i tell you?" "have you spoiled me very much, jacqueline?" "of course i have," she said hastily. "listen, and i'll tell you what i thought of you when you first came in. i looked up, and of course i knew at a glance that you were nice; and i was very much impressed----" "the deuce you were!" he laughed, unbelievingly. "i was!" "you didn't show it." "only an idiot of a girl would. but i was--very--greatly--impressed," she continued, with a delightfully pompous emphasis on every word, "very--greatly--impressed by the tall and fashionable and elegant and agreeably symmetrical mr. desboro, owner of the celebrated collection of arms and armour----" "i knew it!" "knew what?" "you never even took the trouble to look at me until you found out that the armour belonged to me----" "that is what _ought_ to have been true. but it wasn't." "did you actually----" "yes, i did. not the very second i laid eyes on you----" she added, blushing slightly, "but--when you went away--and afterward--that evening when i was trying to read grenville on armour." "you thought of me, jacqueline?" [illustration: "'it was rather odd, wasn't it, jim?'"] "yes--and tried not to. but it was no use; i seemed to see you laughing at me under every helmet in grenville's plates. it was rather odd, wasn't it, jim? and to think--to think that now----" her smile grew vaguer; she dropped her head thoughtfully and rested one hand on the library table, where once her catalogue notes had been piled up--where once elena's letter to her husband had fallen from clydesdale's heavy hand. then, gradually into her remote gaze came something else, something desboro had learned to dread; and she raised her head abruptly and gazed straight at him with steady, questioning eyes in which there was a hint of trouble of some kind--perhaps unbelief. "i suppose you are going to your office," she said. "after i have taken you to yours, dear." "you will be at leisure before i am, won't you?" "unless you knock off work at four o'clock. can you?" "i can not. what will you do until five, jim?" "there will be nothing for me to do except wait for you." "where will you wait?" he shrugged: "at the club, i suppose." the car rolled up past the library windows. "i suppose," she said carelessly, "that it would be too stupid for you to wait _chez moi_." "in your office? no, indeed----" "i meant in my apartment. you could smoke and read--but perhaps you wouldn't care to." they went out into the hall, where her maid held her ulster for her and farris put desboro into his coat. then they entered the car which swung around the oval and glided away toward silverwood station. "to tell you the truth, dear," he said, "it _would_ be rather slow for me to sit in an empty room until you were ready to join me." "of course. you'd find it more amusing at your club." "i'd rather be with you at your office." "thank you. but some of my clients stipulate that no third person shall be present when their business is discussed." "all right," he said, shortly. the faint warmth of their morning's _rapprochement_ seemed somehow to have turned colder, now that they were about to separate for the day. both felt it; neither understood it. but the constraint which perhaps they thought too indefinite to analyse persisted. she did not fully understand it, except that, in the aftermath of the storm which had nigh devastated her young heart, her physical nearness to him seemed to help the tiny seed of faith which she had replanted in agony and tears the night before. to see him, hear his voice, somehow aided her; and the charm of his personality for a while had reawakened and encouraged in her the courage to love him. the winning smile in his eyes had, for the time, laid the phantoms of doubt; memory had become less sensitive; the demon of distrust which she had fought off so gallantly lay somewhere inert and almost forgotten in the dim chamber of her mind. but not dead--no; for somewhere in obscurity she had been conscious for an instant that her enemy was stirring. must this always be so? was faith in this man really dead? was it only the image of faith which her loyalty and courage had set up once more for an altar amid the ruins of her young heart? and always, always, even when she seemed unaware, even when she had unconsciously deceived herself, her consciousness of the _other woman_ remained alive, like a spark, whitened at moments by its own ashes, yet burning terribly when touched. slowly she began to understand that her supposed new belief in this man would endure only while he was within her sight; that the morning's warmth had slowly chilled as the hour of their separation approached; that her mind was becoming troubled and confused, and her heart uncertain and apprehensive. and as she thought of the future--years and years of it--there seemed no rest for her, only endless effort and strife, only the external exercise of mental and spiritual courage to fight back the creeping shadow which must always threaten her--the shadow that doubt casts, and which men call fear. "shall we go to town in the car?" he said, looking at his watch. "we have time; the train won't be in for twenty minutes." "if you like." he picked up the speaking tube and gave his orders, then lay back again to watch the familiar landscape with worried eyes that saw other things than hills and trees and wintry fields and the meaningless abodes of men. so this was what fate had done to him--_this_! and every unconsidered act of his had been slyly, blandly, maliciously leading him into this valley of humiliation. he had sometimes thought of marrying, never very definitely, except that, if love were to be the motive, he would have ample time, after that happened, to reform before his wedding day. also, he had expected to remain in a laudable and permanent state of regeneration, marital treachery not happening to suit his fastidious taste. that was what he had intended in the improbable event of marriage. and now, suddenly, from a clear sky, the bolt had found him; love, courtship, marriage, had followed with a rapidity he could scarcely realise; and had left him stranded on the shores of yesterday, discredited, distrusted, deeply, wretchedly in love; not only unable to meet on equal terms the young girl who had become his wife, but the involuntary executioner of her tender faith in him! to this condition the laws of compensation consigned him. the man-made laws which made his complaisance possible could not help him now; the unwritten social law which acknowledges a double standard of purity for man and woman he must invoke in vain. before the tribunal of her clear, sweet eyes, and before the chastity of her heart and mind, the ignoble beliefs, the lying precedents, the false standards must fall. there had been no shelter there for him, and he had known it. reticence, repentance, humble vows for the future--these had been left to him, he supposed. but the long, dim road to yesterday was thronged with ghosts, and his destiny came swiftly upon him. tortured, humiliated, helpless, he saw the lash that cut him fall also upon her. sooner or later, all that is secret of good or of evil shall be made manifest, here or elsewhere; and the suffering may not be abated. and he began to understand that reticence can not forever hide what has been; that no silence can screen it; no secrecy conceal it; that reaction invariably succeeds action; and not a finger is ever lifted that the universe does not experience the effect. how he or fate might have spared her, he did not know. what she had learned about him he could not surmise. as far as elena was concerned, he had been no worse than a fastidious fool dangling about a weaker and less fastidious one. if gossip of that nature had brought this grief upon her, it was damnable. all he could do was to deny it. he _had_ denied it. but denial, alas, was limited to that particular episode. he could not make it more sweeping; he _was not on equal ground with her_; he was at a disadvantage. only spiritual equality dare face its peer, fearless, serene, and of its secrets unafraid. yet--she had surmised what he had been; she had known. and, insensibly, he began to feel a vague resentment toward her, almost a bitterness. because she had accepted him without any illusion concerning him. that had been understood between them. she knew he loved her; she loved him. already better things had been in sight for him, loftier aspirations, the stirring of ambition. and suddenly, almost at the altar itself, this thing had happened--whatever it was! and all her confidence in him, all her acquiescence in what had been, all her brave words and promises--all except the mere naked love in her breast had crashed earthward under its occult impact, leaving their altar on their wedding night shattered, fireless, and desolate. he set his teeth and the muscles in his cheeks hardened. "by god!" he thought. "i'll find out what this thing is, and who has done it. she knew what i was. there is a limit to humiliation. either she shall again accept me and believe in me, or--or----" but there seemed to present itself no alternative which he could tolerate; and the thread of thought snapped short. they were entering the city limits now, and he began to realise that neither had spoken for nearly an hour. he ventured to glance sideways at her. the exquisitely sad profile against the window thrilled him painfully, almost to the verge of anger. unwedded, she had been nearer to him. even in his arms, shy and utterly unresponsive, she had been closer, a more vital thing, than ever she had been since the law had made her his wife. for a moment the brutality in him stirred, and he felt the heat of blood in his face, and his heart grew restless and beat faster. all that is latent in man of impatience with pain, of intolerance, of passion, of violence, throbbed in every vein. then she turned and looked at him. and it was ended as suddenly as it began. only his sense of helplessness and his resentment remained--resentment against fate, against the unknown people who had done this thing to him and to her; against himself and his folly; even subtly, yet illogically, against her. "i was thinking," she said, "that we might at least lunch together--if you would care to." "would _you_?" he asked coldly. "if you would." his lip began to tremble and he caught it between his teeth; then his anger flared, and before he meant to he had said: "a jolly luncheon it would be, wouldn't it?" "what?" "i said it would be a jolly affair--considering the situation." "what is the situation, jim?" she asked, very pale. "oh, what i've made of it, i suppose--a failure!" "i--i thought we were trying to remake it into a success." "can we?" "we must, jim." "how?" she was silent. "i'll tell you how we can _not_ make a success out of it," he said hotly, "and that's by doing what we have been doing." "we have--have had scarcely time yet to do anything very much." "we've done enough to widen the breach between us--however we've managed to accomplish it. that's all i know, jacqueline." "i thought the breach was closing." "i thought so, too, this morning." "wounds can not heal over night," she said, in a low voice. "wounds can not heal at all if continually irritated." "i know it. give me a little time, jim. it is all so new to me, and there is no precedent to follow--and i haven't very much wisdom. i am only trying to find myself so i shall know how best to serve you----" "i don't want to be served, jacqueline! i want you to love me----" "i do." "you do in a hurt, reproachful, frightened, don't-touch-me sort of way----" "jim!" "i'm sorry; i don't know what i'm saying. there isn't anything for me to say, i suppose. but i don't seem to have the spirit of endurance in me--humble submission isn't my line; delay makes me impatient. i want things to be settled, no matter what the cost. when i repent, i repent like the devil--just as hard and as fast as i can. then it's over and done with. but nobody else seems to notice my regeneration." for a moment her face was a study in mixed emotions, then a troubled smile curved her lips, but her eyes were unconvinced. "you are only a boy, aren't you?" she said gently. "i know it, somehow, but there is still a little awe of you left in me, and i can't quite understand. won't you be patient with me, jim?" he bent over and caught her hand. "only love me, jacqueline----" "oh, i do! i do! and i don't know what to do about it! all my thoughts are concentrated on it, how best to make it strong, enduring, noble! how best to shelter it, bind up its wounds, guard it, defend it. i--i know in my heart that i've got to defend it----" "what do you mean, my darling?" "i don't know--i don't know, jim. only--if i knew--if i could always know----" she turned her head swiftly and stared out of the window. on the glass, vaguely, elena's shadowy features seemed to smile at her. was _that_ what tortured her? was that what she wished to know when she and this man separated for the day--_where the woman was_? had her confidence in him been so utterly, so shamefully destroyed that it had lowered her to an ignoble level--hurled down her dignity and self-respect to grovel amid unworthy and contemptible emotions? was it the vulgar vice of jealousy that was beginning to fasten itself upon her? sickened, she closed her eyes a moment; but on the lids was still imprinted the face of the woman; and her words began to ring in her brain. and thought began to gallop again, uncurbed, frantic, stampeding. how could he have done it? how could he have carried on this terrible affair after he had met her, after he had known her, loved her, won her? how could he have received that woman as a guest under the same roof that sheltered her? how could he have made a secret rendezvous with the woman scarcely an hour after he had asked her to marry him? even if anybody had come to her and told her of these things she could have found it in her heart to find excuses, to forgive him; she could have believed that he had received elena and arranged a secret meeting with her merely to tell her that their intrigue was at an end. she could have accustomed herself to endure the knowledge of this concrete instance. and, whatever else he might have done in the past she could endure; because, to her, it was something too abstract, too vague and foreign to her to seem real. but the attitude and words of elena clydesdale--the unmistakable impression she coolly conveyed that this thing was not yet ended, had poisoned the very spring of her faith in him. and the welling waters were still as bitter as death to her. what did faith matter to her in the world if she could not trust this man? of what use was it other than to believe in him? and now she could not. she had tried, and she could not. only when he was near her--only when she might see him, hear him, could she ever again feel sure of him. and now they were to separate for the day. and--where was he going? and where was the other woman? and her heart almost stopped in her breast as she thought of the days and days and years and years to come in which she must continue to ask herself these questions. yet, in the same quick, agonised breath, she knew she was going to fight for him--do battle in behalf of that broken and fireless altar where love lay wounded. there were many ways of doing battle, but only one right way. and she had thought of many--confused, frightened, unknowing, praying for unselfishness and for light to guide her. but there were so many ways; and the easiest had been to forgive him, surrender utterly, cling to him, love him with every tenderness and grace and accomplishment and art and instinct that was hers--with all of her ardent youth, all of her dawning emotion, all of her undeveloped passion. that had been the easier way in the crisis which stunned and terrified her--to seek shelter, not give it; to surrender, not to withhold. but whether through wisdom or instinct, she seemed to see farther than the moment--to divine, somehow, that his salvation and hers lay not only in forgiveness and love, but in her power to give or withhold; her freedom to exact what justly was her due; in the preservation of her individuality with all its prerogative, its liberty of choice, its self-respect unshaken, its authority unweakened and undiminished. to yield when he was not qualified to receive such supreme surrender boded ill for her, and ultimately for him; for it made of her merely an instrument. somehow she seemed to know that sometime, for her, would come a moment of final victory; and in that moment only her utter surrender could make the victory eternal and complete. and until that moment came she would not surrender prematurely. she had a fight on her hands; she knew it; she must do her best, though her own heart were a sword that pierced her with every throb. for his sake she would deny; for his sake remain aloof from the lesser love, inviolate, powerful, mistress of herself and of her destiny. and yet--she _was_ his wife. and, after all was said and done, she understood that no dual sovereignty ever is possible; that one or the other must have the final decision; and that if, when it came to that, his ultimate authority failed him, then their spiritual union was a failure, though the material one might endure for a while. and so, believing this, honest with herself and with him, she had offered him her fealty--a white blossom and her key lying beside it in the palm of her hand--in acknowledgment that the supreme decision lay with him. he had not failed her; the final authority still lay with him. only that knowledge had sustained her during the long night. the car stopped at her establishment; she came out of her painful abstraction with a slight start, flushed, and looked at him. "will you lunch with me, jim?" "i think i'll lunch at the club," he said, coolly. "very well. will you bring the car around at five?" "the car will be here for you." "and--you?" she tried to smile. "probably." "oh! if you have any engagements----" "i might make one between now and five," he said carelessly. "if i do, i'll come up on the train." she had not been prepared for this attitude. but there was nothing to say. he got out and aided her to descend, and took her to the door. his manners were always faultless. "i hope you will come for me," she said, almost timidly. "i hope so," he said. and that was all; she offered her hand; he took it, smiled, and replaced his hat after the shop door closed behind her. then he went back to the car. "drive me to mrs. hammerton's," he said curtly; got in, and slammed the door. chapter xvi a surprised and very doubtful maid admitted him to mrs. hammerton's tiny reception room and took his card; and he fidgeted there impatiently until the maid returned to conduct him. mrs. hammerton sat at coffee in the combination breakfast and dining room of her pretty little apartment. he had never seen her wear glasses, but a pair, presumably hers, was lying across the morning paper on the edge of the table. windows behind her threw her face into shadow against the sunlight, and he could not clearly distinguish her features. a canary sang persistently in the sunshine; a friendly cat yawned on the window sill. "have some coffee, james?" she asked, without greeting him. "thanks, i've breakfasted." "very well. there's a chair." she motioned dismissal to the maid. "and close the door!" she added curtly. the maid vanished, closing the door. aunt hannah poured more coffee for herself; now she began to browse on toast and bacon. "have you seen the papers?" he asked bluntly. her eyes snapped fire: "that was a brave thing _you_ did! i never knew any of the desboros were cowards." he looked at her in angry astonishment. "well, what do _you_ call it if it isn't cowardice--to slink off and marry a defenseless girl like that!" "did you expect me to give you a chance to destroy me and poison jacqueline's mind? if i _had_ been guilty of the thing with which you charge me, what i have done _would_ have been cowardly. otherwise, it is justified." "you have been guilty of enough without that particular thing to rule you out." "if," he said, controlling his anger, "you really were appointed god's deputy on earth, you'd have to rule out the majority of men who attempt to marry." "i'd do it, too," she remarked. "fortunately," he went on, "your authority for meddling is only self delegated. you once threatened me. you gave me warning like a fair adversary. but even rattlesnakes do that!" he could see her features more plainly now, having become accustomed to the light; and her scornful expression and the brilliant danger in her beady eyes did not escape him. she darted at a bit of toast and swallowed it. "so," he ended calmly, "i merely accepted the warning and acted accordingly--if you call that cowardly." "i see. you were much too clever for me. in other words, you forestalled me, didn't you?" "ask yourself, aunt hannah." "no, i ask you. you _did_ forestall me, didn't you, jim?" "i think it amounts to that." "oh! then why are you here at this hour of the morning, after your wedding night?" there was a silence. presently she put on her glasses and glanced at the paper. when he had his temper and his voice under absolute control again, he said very quietly: "somebody is trying to make my wife unhappy. may i ask if it is you?" "certainly you may ask, james. ask as many times as you like." she continued to scan the paper. "i do ask," he insisted. [illustration: "'why don't you ask your--wife?'"] she laid aside the paper and took off her glasses: "very well; failing to obtain the desired information from me, why don't you ask your--wife?" "i have asked her," he said, in a low voice. "oh, i see! jacqueline also refuses the desired information. so you come to inquire of me. is that it?" "yes, that is it." "you go behind your wife's back----" "don't talk that way, please." "indeed! now, listen very attentively, james, because that is exactly the way i am going to talk to you. and i'll begin by telling you plainly just what you have done. _you_--and you know what _you_ are--have married clandestinely a young, innocent, inexperienced girl. you, who are not fit to decide the fate of a new-born yellow pup, have assumed the irrevocable responsibility of this girl's future--arranged it yourself in the teeth of the eternal fitness and decency of things! _you_, james desboro, a good-for-nothing idler, irresponsible spendthrift, half bankrupt, without ambition, without a profession, without distinction except that you have good looks and misleading manners and a line of ancestors which would make an englishman laugh. "when you did this thing you knew you were not fit to tie her shoes. you knew, too, that those who really love her and who might have shielded her except for this--this treachery, had warned you to keep your distance. you knew more than that; you knew that our little jacqueline had all her life before her; that for the first time in her brief career the world was opening its arms to her; that she was certain to be popular, sure to be welcomed, respected, liked, loved. you knew that now she was going to have her chance; that men of distinction, of attainment, of lofty ideals and irreproachable private lives--men well to do materially, too--men of wealth, ambitious men, forceful men who count, certainly would seek her, surround her, prefer her, give her what she had a right to have--the society of her intellectual peers--the exercise of a free, untrammeled judgment, and, ultimately, the opportunity to select from among real men the man most worthy of such a woman as she is." mrs. hammerton laid one shapely hand on the table, fingers clenched, and, half rising, fairly glared at desboro. "you have cheated her out of what was her due! you have stolen her future! you have robbed her of a happy and worthy career to link her life with your career--_your_ career--or whatever you call the futile parody on life which men of your sort enact, disgracing god that he knew no more than to create you! and my righteous anger against you is not wholly personal--not because you have swindled me alone--taken from me the only person i have really ever cared for--killed her confidence in me, her tenderness--but because you have cheated _her_, and the world, too! for she is a rare woman--a rare, sweet woman, james. and _that_ is what you have done to the civilisation that has tolerated you!" he had risen, astounded; but as her denunciation of him became fiercer, and the concentrated fury in her eyes more deadly, a slightly dazed feeling began to dull his own rage, and he found himself listening as though a mere spectator at the terrible arraignment of another man. he remained standing. but she had finished; and she was shaking a little when she resumed her chair; and still he stood there, pallid, staring at space. for several minutes neither of them stirred. finally she said, in a harsh but modified voice: "i will tell you this much. since i have known that she is married i have not interfered. on the contrary, i have written her offering her my love, my sympathy, and my devotion as long as i live. but it is a terrible and wicked thing that you have done. and i can see little chance for her, little hope, and less of happiness--when she fully realises what she has done, and what you have done to her--when she really understands how low she has stooped and to what level she has descended to find the man she has married." he merely gazed at her without expression. she shook her head. "hers will become a solitary life, intellectually and spiritually. there is nothing in you to mate with it. only materially are you of the slightest use--and i think i am not mistaken when i say your usefulness even there is pitiably limited, and that what you have to offer her will not particularly attract her. for she is a rare woman, james--a species of being absolutely different from you. and it had been well for you, also, if you had been wise enough to let her alone. high altitudes don't agree with you; and not even the merry company on mount olympus--let alone the graver gathering higher up--are suitable for such as you and your mundane kind." he nodded, scarcely conscious of his mechanical acquiescence in what she said. hat and stick in hand, he moved slowly toward the door. she, watching his departure, said in a lower voice: "you and i are of the same species. i am no better than you, james. but--she is different. and you and i are capable of recognising that there _is_ a difference. it seems odd, almost ridiculous to find out at this late date that it is not an alliance with fashion, wealth, family, social connections, that can do honour to jacqueline nevers, bourgeoise daughter of a french shop-keeper; it is jacqueline who honours the caste to which, alas, she has not risen, but into which she has descended. god knows how far such a sour and soggy loaf can be leavened by such as she--or what she can do for you! perhaps----" she checked herself and shook her head. he walked back to her, made his adieux mechanically, then went out slowly, like a man in a trance. down in the sunny street the car was waiting; he entered and sat there, giving no orders, until the chauffeur, leaning wide from his seat and still holding open the door, ventured to remind him. "oh, yes! then--you may drive me to mrs. clydesdale's." * * * * * but the woman whose big and handsome house was now his destination, had forbidden her servants to disturb her that morning; so when desboro presented himself, only his card was received at the door. elena, in the drawing-room, hearing the bell, had sprung to her feet and stepped into the upper hall to listen. she heard desboro's voice and shivered, heard her butler say that she was not at home, heard the bronze doors clash behind him. then, with death in her heart, she went back noiselessly into the drawing-room where mr. waudle, who was squatting on a delicate french chair, retaining his seat, coolly awaited a resumption of the interrupted conference. as a matter of fact, he resumed it himself before she was seated on the sofa at his elbow. "as i was telling you," he continued, "i've got to make a living. why shouldn't you help me? we were friends once. you found me amusing enough in the old days----" "until you became impudent!" "who provoked me? women need never fear familiarity unless they encourage it!" "it was absolutely innocent on my part----" "oh, hell!" he said, disgustedly. "it's always the man's fault! when you pull a cat's tail and the animal scratches, it's the cat's fault. all right, then; granted! but the fact remains that if you hadn't looked sideways at me it never would have entered my head to make any advances to you." which was a lie. all men made advances to elena. "leave it so," she said, with the angry flush deepening in her cheeks. "sure, i'll leave it; but i'm not going to leave _you_. not yet, elena. you owe me something for what you've done to me." "oh! is _that_ the excuse?" she nodded scornfully; but her heart was palpitating with fear, and her lips had become dry again. he surveyed her insolently under his heavy eyelids. "come," he said, "what are you going to do about it? you are the fortunate one; you have everything--i nothing. and, plainly, i'm sick of it. what are you going to do?" "suppose," she said, steadily, "that i tell my husband what you are doing? had you considered _that_ possibility?" "tell him if you like." she shrugged. "what you are doing is blackmail, isn't it?" she asked disdainfully. "call it what you please," he said. "suit yourself, elena. but there is a bunch of manuscript in the _tattler's_ office which goes into print the moment you play any of your catty games on me. understand?" she said, very pale: "will you not tell me--give me some hint about what you have written?" he laughed: "better question your own memory, little lady. maybe it isn't about you and desboro at all; maybe it's something else." "there was nothing else." "there was--_me_!" "you?" "sure," he said cheerfully. "what happened in philadelphia, if put skillfully before any jury, would finish _you_." "_nothing_ happened! and you know it!" she exclaimed, revolted. "but juries--and the public--don't know. all they can do is to hear the story and then make up their minds. if you choose to let them hear _your_ story----" "there was nothing! i did nothing! _nothing_----" she faltered. "but god knows the facts look ugly," he retorted, with smirking composure. "you're a clever girl; ask yourself what you'd think if the facts about you and young desboro--you and me--were skillfully brought out?" she sat dumb, frightened, twisting her fingers; then, in the sudden anger born of torture: "if i am disgraced, what will happen to _you_!" she flashed out--and knew in the same breath that the woman invariably perishes where the man usually survives; and sat silent and pallid again, her wide eyes restlessly roaming about her as though seeking refuge. "also," he said, "if you sue the _tattler_ for slander, there's munger, you know. he saw us in philadelphia that night----" "what!" "certainly. and if a jury learned that you and i were in the same----" "i did not dream you were to be in the same hotel--in those rooms--you miserable----" "easy, little lady! easy, now! never mind what you did or didn't dream. you're up against reality, now. so never mind about me at all. let that philadelphia business go; it isn't essential. i've enough to work on without _that_!" [illustration: "'i do not believe you,' she said between her teeth"] "i do not believe you," she said, between her teeth. "oh! are you really going to defy me?" "perhaps." "i see," he said, thoughtfully, rising and looking instinctively around. he had the quick, alert side-glance which often characterises lesser adepts in his profession. then, half way to the door, he turned on her again: "look here, elena, i'm tired of this! you fix it so that your husband keeps those porcelains, or i'll go down town now and turn in that manuscript! come on! which is it?" "go, if you like!" there ensued a breathless silence; his fat hand was on the door, pushing it already, when a stifled exclamation from her halted him. after a moment he turned warily. "i'm desperate," he said. "pay, or i show you up. which is it to be?" "i--how do i know? what proof have i that you can damage me----" he came all the way back, moistening his thick lips, for he had played his last card at the door; and, for a second, he supposed that he was beaten. "now, see here," he said, "i don't want to do this. i don't want to smash anybody, let alone a woman. but, by god! i'll do it if you don't come across. so make up your mind, elena." she strove to sustain his gaze and he leered at her. finally he sat down beside her: "i said i wouldn't give you any proofs. but i guess i will. i'll prove to you that i've got you good and plenty, little lady. will that satisfy you?" "prove it!" she strove to say; but her lips scarcely obeyed her. "all right. do you remember one evening, just before christmas, when you and your husband had been on the outs?" she bit her lip in silence. "_do_ you?" he insisted. "perhaps." "all right, so far," he sneered. "did he perhaps tell you that he had an appointment at the kiln club with a man who was interested in porcelains and jades?" "no." "well, he did. he had an appointment for that night. i was the man." she understood nothing. "so," he said, "i waited three hours at the kiln club and your husband didn't show up. then i telephoned his house. you and he were probably having your family row just then, for the maid said he was there, but was too busy to come to the telephone. so i said that i'd come up to the house in half an hour." still she did not comprehend. "wait a bit, little lady," he continued, with sly enjoyment of his own literary methods. "the climax comes where it belongs, not where you expect it. so now we'll read you a chapter in which a bitter wind blows heavily, and a solitary taxicab might have been seen outward bound across the wintry wastes of gotham town. get me?" she merely looked at him. "in that low, black, rakish taxi," he went on, "sat an enterprising man bent upon selling to your husband the very porcelains which he subsequently bought. in other words, _i_ sat in that taxi. _i_ stopped in front of this house; _i_ saw _you_ leave the house and go scurrying away like a scared rabbit. and then i went up the steps, rang, was admitted, told to wait in the library. i waited." "where?" the word burst from her involuntarily. "in the library," he repeated. "it's a nice, cosy, comfortable place, isn't it? fine fat sofas, soft cushions, fire in the grate--oh, a very comfortable place, indeed! i thought so, anyway, while i was waiting for your husband to come down stairs." "it appeared that he had finally received my telephone message--presumably after you and he had finished your row--and had left word that i was to be admitted. that's why they let me in. so i waited very, v--ery comfortably in the library; and somebody had thoughtfully set out cigars, and whisky, and lemon, and sugar, _and_ a jug of hot water. it _was_ a cold night, if you remember." he paused long enough to leer at her. "odd," he remarked, "how pleasantly things happen sometimes. and, as i sat there in that big leather chair--you must know which one i mean, elena--it is the fattest and most comforting--i smoked my cigar and sipped my hot grog, and gazed innocently around. and _what_ do you suppose my innocent eyes encountered--just like that?" "w--what?" she breathed. "why, a letter!" he said, jovially slapping his fat thigh, "a real letter lying right in the middle of the table--badly sealed, elena--very carelessly sealed--just the gummed point of the envelope clinging to the body of it. now, wasn't that a peculiar thing for an enterprising young man to discover, i ask you?" he leered and leered into her white face; then, satisfied, he went on: "the writing was _yours_, dearie. i recognised it. it was addressed to your own husband, who lived under the same roof. _and_ i had seen you creep out, close the front door softly, and scurry away into the night." he made a wide gesture with his fat hands. "naturally," he said, "i thought i ought to summon a servant to call your husband, so i could tell him what i had seen you do. but--there was a quicker way to learn what your departure meant--whether you were at that moment making for the river or for maxim's--anyway, i knew there was no time to be lost. so----" she shrank away and half rose, strangling a cry of protest. "sure i did!" he said coolly. "i read your note very carefully, then licked the envelope and resealed it, and put it into my pocket. after all, mr. desboro is a man. it was none of my business to interfere. so i let him have what was coming to him--and you, too." he shrugged and waved his hand. "your husband came down later; we talked jades and porcelains and prices until i nearly yawned my head off. and when it was time to go, i slipped the letter back on the table. after all, you and desboro had had your fling; why shouldn't hubby have an inning?" he lay back in his chair and laughed at the cowering woman, who had dropped her arms on the back of her chair and buried her face in them. something about the situation struck him as being very funny. he regarded her for a few moments, then rose and walked to the door. there he turned. "fix it for me! understand?" he said sharply; and went out. as the bronze doors closed behind mr. waudle, elena started and lifted her frightened face from her arms. for a second or two she sat there, listening, then rose and walked swiftly and noiselessly to the bay window. mr. waudle was waddling down the street. across the way, keeping a parallel course, walked the cubist poet, his ankle-high trousers flapping. they did not even glance at each other until they reached the corner of madison avenue. here they both boarded the same car going south. mr. waudle was laughing. she came back into the drawing-room and stood, clasped hands twisting in sheer agony. to whom could she turn now? what was there to do? since january she had given this man so much money that almost nothing remained of her allowance. how could she go to her husband again? never had she betrayed the slightest sympathy for him or any interest in his hobby until his anger was awakened by the swindle of which he had been a victim. then, for the first time, under the menacing pressure from waudle, she had attempted finesse--manoeuvred as skillfully as possible in the short space of time allotted her, cleverly betrayed an awakening interest in her husband's collection, pretended to a sudden caprice for the forgeries recently acquired, and carried off very well her astonishment when informed that the jades and porcelains were swindling imitations made in japan. it had been useless for her to declare that, whatever they were, she liked them. her husband would have none of them in spite of his evident delight in her sudden interest. he promised to undertake her schooling in the proper appreciation of all things chinese--promised to be her devoted mentor and companion in the eternal hunt for specimens. which was scarcely what she wanted. but he flatly refused to encourage her in her admiration for these forgeries or to tolerate such junk under his roof. [illustration: "what was she to do? she had gone half mad with fear"] what was she to do? she had gone, half mad with fear, to throw herself upon the sympathy and mercy of jacqueline nevers. terrified, tortured, desperate, she had even thought to bribe the girl to pronounce the forgeries genuine. then, suddenly, at the mere mention of desboro, she had gone all to pieces. and when it became clear to her that there was already an understanding between this girl and the man she had counted on as her last resort, fear and anger completed her demoralisation. she remembered the terrible scene now, remembered what she had said--her shameless attitude--the shameful lie which her words and her attitude had forced jacqueline to understand. why she had acted such a monstrous falsehood she scarcely knew; whether it had been done to cut the suspected bond between desboro and jacqueline before it grew too strong to sever--whether it had been sheer hysteria under the new shock--whether it was reckless despair that had hardened her to a point where she meant to take the final plunge and trust to desboro's chivalry, she did not know then; she did not know now. but the avalanche she had loosened that night in december, when she wrote her note and went to silverwood, was still thundering along behind her, gathering new force every day, until the menacing roar of it never ceased in her ears. and now it had swept her last possible resource away--desboro. all her humiliation, all her shame, the lie she had acted, had not availed. this girl had married him after all. like a lightning stroke the news of their wedding had fallen on her. and on the very heels of it slunk the blackmailer with his terrifying bag of secrets. where was she to go? to her husband? it was useless. to desboro? it was too late. even now, perhaps, he was listening scornfully to his young wife's account of that last interview. she could see the contempt in his face--contempt for her--for the woman who had lied to avow her own dishonour. why had he come to see her then? to threaten her? to warn her? to spurn her? yet, that was not like desboro. why had he come? what she had said and intimated to jacqueline was done _after_ the girl was a wife. could it be possible that jacqueline was visiting her anger on desboro, having learned too late that which would have prevented her from marrying him at all? elena crept to the sofa and sank down in a heap, cowering there in one corner, striving to think. what would come of it? would this proud and chaste young girl, accepting the acted lie as truth, resent it? by leaving desboro? by beginning a suit for divorce--and naming---- elena cringed, stifling a cry of terror. what had she done? every force she had evoked was concentrating into one black cloud over her head, threatening her utter destruction. everything she had done since that december night was helping the forces gathering to annihilate her. even desboro, once a refuge, was now part of this tempest about to be unloosened. truly she had sowed the wind, and the work of her small white hands was already established upon her. never in her life had she really ever cared for any man. her caprice for desboro, founded on the lesser motives, had been the nearest approach. it had cost her all her self-control, all her courage, to play the diplomat with her husband for the sake of obtaining his consent to keep the forged porcelains. and after all it had been in vain. in spite of her white misery and wretchedness, now, as she sat there in the drawing-room alone, her cheeks crimsoned hotly at the memory of her arts and wiles and calineries; of her new shyness with the man she had never before spared; of her clever attitude toward him, the apparent dawn of tenderness, the faint provocation in her lifted eyes--god! it should have been her profession, for she had taken to it like a woman of the streets--had submitted like one, earning her pay. and, like many, had been cheated in the end. she rose unsteadily, cooling her cheeks in her hands and gazing vacantly in front of her. she had not been well for a few days; had meant to see her physician. but in the rush of events enveloping her there had been no moment to think of mere bodily ills. now, dizzy, trembling, and faintly nauseated, she stood supporting her weight on a gilded chair, closing her eyes for a moment to let the swimming wretchedness pass. it passed after a while, leaving her so utterly miserable that she leaned over and rang for a maid. "order the car--the sphex limousine," she said. "and bring me my hat and furs." "yes, madame." "and--my jewel box. here is the key----" detaching a tiny gold one from its chain in her bosom. "and if mr. clydesdale comes in, say to him that i have gone to the doctor's." "yes, madame." "and--i shall take some jewels to--the safe deposit--one or two pieces which i don't wear." the maid was silent. "do you understand about the--jewels?" "yes, madame." she went away. presently she returned with elena's hat and furs and jewel box. the private garage adjoined the house; the car rolled out before she was ready. on the way down town she was afraid she would faint--almost wished she would. the chauffeur's instructions landed her at a jeweler's where she was not known. a few moments later, in a private office, a grey old gentleman very gently refused to consider the purchase of any jewelry from her unless he knew her name, residence, and other essentials which she flatly declined to give. so a polite clerk put her into her car and she directed the chauffeur to dr. allen's office, because she felt really too ill for the moment to continue her search. later she would manage to find somebody who would buy sufficient of her jewelry to give her--and mr. waudle--the seven thousand dollars necessary to avoid exposure. dr. allen was in--just returned. only one patient was ahead of her. presently she was summoned, rose with an effort, and went in. the physician was a very old man; and after he had questioned her for a few moments he smiled. and at the same instant she began to understand; got to her feet blindly, stood swaying for a moment, then dropped as he caught her. neither the physician nor the trained nurse who came in at his summons seemed to be very greatly worried. as they eased the young wife and quietly set about reviving her, they chatted carelessly. later elena opened her eyes. later still the nurse went home with her in her limousine. chapter xvii about midday clydesdale, who had returned to his house from a morning visit to his attorney in liberty street, was summoned to the telephone. "is that you, desboro?" he asked. "yes. i stopped this morning to speak to your wife a moment, but very naturally she was not at home to me at such an hour in the morning. i have just called her on the telephone, but her maid says she has gone out." "yes. she is not very well. i understand she has gone to see dr. allen. but she ought to be back pretty soon. won't you come up to the house, desboro?" there was a short pause, then desboro's voice again, in reply: "i believe i will come up, clydesdale. and i think i'll talk to you instead of to your wife." "just as it suits you. very glad to see you anyway. i'll be in the rear extension fussing about among the porcelains." "i'll be with you in ten minutes." * * * * * in less time than that desboro arrived, and was piloted through the house and into the gallery by an active maid. at the end of one of the aisles lined by glass cases, the huge bulk of cary clydesdale loomed, his red face creased with his eternal grin. "hello, desboro!" he called. "come this way. i've one or two things here which will match any of yours at silverwood, i think." and, as desboro approached, clydesdale strode forward, offering him an enormous hand. "glad to see you," he grinned. "congratulations on your marriage! fine girl, that! i don't know any to match her." he waved a comprehensive arm. "all this stuff is her arrangement. gad! but i had it rottenly displayed. and the collection was full of fakes, too. but she came floating in here one morning, and what she did to my junk-heap was a plenty, believe _me_!" and the huge fellow grinned and grinned until desboro's sombre face altered and became less rigid. a maid appeared with a table and a frosted cocktail shaker. "you'll stop and lunch with us," said clydesdale, filling two glasses. "elena won't be very long. don't know just what ails her, but she's nervous and run down. i guess it's the spring that's coming. well, here's to all bad men; they need the boost and we don't. prosit!" he emptied his glass, set it aside, and from the open case beside him extracted an exquisite jar of the kang-he, _famille noire_, done in five colours during the best period of the work. "god knows i'm not proud," he said, "but can you beat it, desboro?" desboro took the beautiful jar, and, carefully guarding the cover, turned it slowly. birds, roses, pear blossoms, lilies, exquisite in composition and colour, passed under his troubled eyes. he caressed the paste mechanically. "it is very fine," he said. "have you anything to beat it?" "i don't think so." "how are yours marked?" inquired the big man, taking the jar into his own enormous paws as lovingly as a kadiak bear embraces her progeny. "this magnificent damn thing is a forgery. look! here's the mark of the emperor ching-hwa! isn't that the limit? and the forgery is every bit as fine as the originals made before --only it happened to be the fashion in china in to collect ching-hwa jars, so the maker of this piece deliberately forged an earlier date. can you beat it?" desboro smiled as though he were listening; and clydesdale gingerly replaced the jar and as carefully produced another. "ming!" he said. "seventeenth century manchu tartar. i've some earlier ming ranging between a.d. and ; but it can't touch this, desboro. in fact, i think the eighteenth century ming is even finer; and, as far as that goes, there is magnificent work being done now--although the occidental markets seldom see it. but--ming for mine, every time! how do _you_ feel about it, old top?" desboro looked at the vase. the soft beauty of the blue underglaze, the silvery thickets of magnolia bloom amid which a magnificent, pheasant-hued phoenix stepped daintily, meant at the moment absolutely nothing to him. nor did the _poudre-bleu_ jar, triumphantly exhibited by the infatuated owner--a splendid specimen painted on the overglaze. and the weeds and shells and fiery golden fishes swimming had been dimmed a little by rubbing, so that the dusky aquatic depths loomed more convincingly. "clydesdale," said desboro in a low voice, "i want to say one or two things to you. another time it would give me pleasure to go over these porcelains with you. do you mind my interrupting you?" the big man grinned. "shoot," he said, replacing the "powder-blue" and carefully closing and locking the case. then, dropping the keys into his pocket, he came over to where desboro was seated beside the flimsy folding card-table, shook the cocktail shaker, offered to fill desboro's glass, and at a gesture of refusal refilled his own. "this won't do a thing to my appetite," he remarked genially. "go ahead, desboro." and he settled himself to listen, with occasional furtive, sidelong glances at his beloved porcelains. desboro said: "clydesdale, you and i have known each other for a number of years. we haven't seen much of each other, except at the club, or meeting casually here and there. it merely happened so; if accident had thrown us together, the chances are that we would have liked each other--perhaps sought each other's company now and then--as much as men do in this haphazard town, anyway. don't you think so?" clydesdale nodded. "but we have been on perfectly friendly terms, always--with one exception," said desboro. "yes--with one exception. but that is all over now----" "i am afraid it isn't." clydesdale's grin remained unaltered when he said: "well, what the hell----" and stopped abruptly. "it's about that one exception of which i wish to speak," continued desboro, after a moment's thought. "i don't want to say very much--just one or two things which i hope you already know and believe. and all i have to say is this, clydesdale; whatever i may have been--whatever i may be now, that sort of treachery is not in me. i make no merit of it--it may be mere fastidiousness on my part which would prevent me from meditating treachery toward an acquaintance or a friend." clydesdale scrutinised him in silence. "never, since elena was your wife, have i thought of her except as your wife." clydesdale only grinned. "i want to be as clear as i can on this subject," continued the other, "because--and i must say it to you--there have been rumours concerning--me." "and concerning _her_," said clydesdale simply. "don't blink matters, desboro." "no, i won't. the rumours have included her, of course. but what those rumours hint, clydesdale, is an absolute lie. i blame myself in a measure; i should not have come here so often--should not have continued to see elena so informally. i _was_ in love with her once; i did ask her to marry me. she took you. try to believe me, clydesdale, when i tell you that though for me there did still linger about her that inexplicable charm which attracted me, which makes your wife so attractive to everybody, never for a moment did it occur to me not to acquiesce in the finality of her choice. never did i meditate any wrong toward you or toward her. i _did_ dangle. that was where i blame myself. because where a better man might have done it uncriticised, i was, it seems, open to suspicion." "you're no worse than the next," said clydesdale in a deep growl. "hell's bells! i don't blame _you_! and there would have been nothing to it anyway if elena had not lost her head that night and bolted. i was rough with you all right; but you behaved handsomely; and i knew where the trouble was. because, desboro, my wife dislikes me." "i thought----" "no! let's have the truth, damn it! _that's_ the truth! my wife dislikes me. it may be that she is crazy about you; i don't know. but i am inclined to think--after these months of hell, desboro--that she really is not crazy about you, or about any man; that it is only her dislike of me that possesses her to--to deal with me as she has done." he was still grinning, but his heavy lower lip twitched, and suddenly the horror of it broke on desboro--that this great, gross, red-faced creature was suffering in every atom of his unwieldy bulk; that the fixed grin was covering anguish; that the man's heart was breaking there, now, where he sat, the _rictus mortis_ stamped on his quivering face. "clydesdale," he said, unsteadily, "i came here meaning to say only what i have said--that you never had anything to doubt in me--but that rumours still coupled my name with elena's. that was all i meant to say. but i'll say more. i'm sorry that things are not going well with you and elena. i would do anything in the world that lay within my power to help make yours a happy marriage. but--marriages all seem to go wrong. for years--witnessing what i have--what everybody among our sort of people cannot choose but witness--i made up my mind that marriage was no good." he passed his hand slowly over his eyes; waited a moment, then: "but i was wrong. that's what the matter is--that is how the matter lies between the sort of people we are and marriage. it is _we_ who are wrong; there's nothing wrong about marriage, absolutely nothing. only many of us are not fit for it. and some of us take it as a preventive, as a moral medicine--as though anybody could endure an eternal dosing! and some of us seek it as a refuge--a refuge from every ill, every discomfort, every annoyance and apprehension that assails the human race--as though the institution of marriage were a vast and fortified storehouse in which everything we have ever lacked and desired were lying about loose for us to pick up and pocket." he bent forward across the table and began to play absently with his empty glass. "marriage is all right," he said. "but only those fit to enter possess the keys to the magic institution. and they find there what they expected. the rest of us jimmy our way in, and find ourselves in an empty mansion, clydesdale." for a long while they sat there in silence; desboro fiddling with his empty glass, the other, motionless, his ponderous hands clasped on his knees. at length, desboro spoke again: "i do not know how it is with you, but i am not escaping anything that i have ever done." "i'm getting mine," said clydesdale heavily. after a few moments, what desboro had said filtered into his brain; and he turned and looked at the younger man. "have these rumours----" he began. and desboro nodded: "these rumours--or others. _these_ happen not to have been true." "that's tough on _her_," said clydesdale gravely. "that's where it is toughest on us. i think we could stand anything except that _they_ should suffer through us. and the horrible part of it is that we never meant to--never dreamed that we should ever be held responsible for the days we lived so lightly--gay, careless, irresponsible days--god! is there any punishment to compare with it, clydesdale?" "none." desboro rose and stood with his hand across his forehead, as though it ached. [illustration: "'jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a different training'"] "you and elena and i are products of the same kind of civilisation. jacqueline--my wife--is the result of a different training in a very different civilisation." "and the rottenness of ours is making her ill." desboro nodded. after a moment he stirred restlessly. "well," he said, "i must go to the office. i haven't been there yet." clydesdale got onto his feet. "won't you stay?" "no." "as you wish. and--i'm sorry, desboro. however, you have a better chance than i--to make good. my wife--dislikes me." he went as far as the door with his guest, and when desboro had departed he wandered aimlessly back into the house and ultimately found himself among his porcelains once more--his only refuge from a grief and care that never ceased, never even for a moment eased those massive shoulders of their dreadful weight. from where he stood, he heard the doorbell sounding distantly. doubtless his wife had returned. doubtless, too, as long as there was no guest, elena would prefer to lunch alone in her own quarters, unless she had an engagement to lunch at the ritz or elsewhere. he had no illusion that she desired to see him, or that she cared whether or not he inquired what her physician had said; but he closed and locked his glass cases once more and walked heavily into the main body of the house and descended to the door. to the man on duty there he said: "did mrs. clydesdale come in?" "yes, sir." "thank you." he hesitated, turned irresolutely, and remounted the stairs. to a maid passing he said: "is mrs. clydesdale lunching at home?" "yes, sir. mrs. clydesdale is not well, sir." "has she gone to her room?" "yes, sir." "please go to her and say that i am sorry and--and inquire if there is anything i can do." the maid departed and the master of the house wandered into the music-room--perhaps because elena's tall, gilded harp was there--the only thing in the place that ever reminded him of her, or held for him anything of her personality. [illustration: "in the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood beside it"] now, in the rose dusk of the drawn curtains, he stood beside it, not touching it--never dreaming of touching it without permission, any more than he would have touched his wife. somebody knocked; he turned, and the maid came forward. "mrs. clydesdale desires to see you, sir." he stared for a second, then his heart beat heavily with alarm. "where is mrs. clydesdale?" "in her bedroom, sir." "unwell?" "yes, sir." "in _bed_?" "i think so, sir. mrs. clydesdale's maid spoke to me." "very well. thank you." he went out and mounted the stairs, striding up silently to the hall above, where his wife's maid quietly opened the door for him, then went away to her own little chintz-lined den. elena was lying on her bed in a frilly, lacy, clinging thing of rose tint. the silk curtains had been drawn, but squares of sunlight quartered them, turning the dusk of the pretty room to a golden gloom. she opened her eyes and looked up at him as he advanced. "i'm terribly sorry," he said; and his heavy voice shook in spite of him. she motioned toward the only armchair--an ivory-covered affair, the cane bottom covered by a rose cushion. "bring it here--nearer," she said. he did so, and seated himself beside the bed cautiously. she lay silent after that; once or twice she pressed the palms of both hands over her eyes as though they pained her, but when he ventured to inquire, she shook her head. it was only when he spoke of calling up dr. allen again that she detained him in his chair with a gesture: "wait! i've got to tell you something! i don't know what you will do about it. you've had trouble enough--with me. but this is--is--unspeakable----" "what on earth is the matter? aren't you ill?" he began. "yes; that, too. but--there is something else. i thought it had made me ill--but----" she began to shiver, and he laid his hand on hers and found it burning. "i tell you allen ought to come at once----" he began again. "no, no, no! you don't know what you're talking about. i--i'm frightened--that's what is the matter! that's one of the things that's the matter. wait a moment. i'll tell you. i'll _have_ to tell you, now. i suppose you'll--divorce me." there was a silence; then: "go on," he said, in his heavy, hopeless voice. she moistened her lips with her tongue: "it's--my fault. i--i did not care for you--that is how it--began. no; it began before that--before i knew you. and there were two men. you remember them. they were the rage with our sort--like other fads, for a while--such as marmosets, and--things. one of these things was the poet, orrin munger. he called himself a cubist--whatever that may be. the other was the writer, adalbert waudle." clydesdale's grin was terrible. "no," she said wearily, "i was only a more venturesome fool than other women who petted them--nothing worse. they went about kissing women's hands and reading verses to them. some women let them have the run of their boudoirs--like any poodle. then there came that literary and semi-bohemian bal-masque in philadelphia. it was the day before the assembly. i was going on for that, but mother wouldn't let me go on away earlier for the bal-masque. so--i went." "what?" "i lied. i pretended to be stopping with the hammertons in westchester. and i bribed my maid to lie, too. but i went." "alone?" "no. waudle went with me." "good god, elena!" "i know. i was simply insane. i went with him to that ball and left before the unmasking. nobody knew me. so i went to the bellevue-stratford for the night. i--i never dreamed that _he_ would go there, too." "did he?" "yes. he had the rooms adjoining. i only knew it when--when i awoke in the dark and heard him tapping on the door and calling in that thick, soft voice----" she shuddered and clenched her hands, closing her feverish eyes for a moment. her husband stared at her, motionless in his chair. she unclosed her eyes wearily: "that was all--except--the other one--the little one with the frizzy hair--munger. he saw me there. he knew that waudle had the adjoining rooms. so then, very early, i came back to new york, badly scared, and met my maid at the station and pretended to mother that i had just arrived from westchester. and that night i went back to the assembly. but--ever since that night i--i have been--paying money to adalbert waudle. not much before i married you, because i had very little to pay. but all my allowance has gone that way--and now--now he wants more. and i haven't it. and i'm sick----" the terrible expression on her husband's face frightened her, and, for a moment, she faltered. but there was more to tell, and she must tell it though his unchained wrath destroy her. "you'll have to wait until i finish," she muttered. "there's more--and worse. because he came here the night i--went to silverwood. he saw me leave the house; he unsealed and read the note i left on the library table for you. he knows what i said--about jim desboro. he knows i went to him. and he is trying to make me pay him--to keep it out of the--the _tattler_." clydesdale's congested face was awful; she looked into it, thought that she read her doom. but the courage of despair forced her on. "there is worse--far worse," she said with dry lips. "i had no money to give; he wished to keep the seven thousand which was his share of what you paid for the forged porcelains. he came to me and made me understand that if you insisted on his returning that money he would write me up for the _tattler_ and disgrace me so that you would divorce me. i--i must be honest with you at such a time as this, cary. i wouldn't have cared if--if jim desboro would have married me afterward. but he had ceased to care for me. he--was in love with--miss nevers; or she was with him. and i disliked her. but--i was low enough to go to her in my dire extremity and--and ask her to pronounce those forged porcelains genuine--so that you would keep them. and i did it--meaning to bribe her." clydesdale's expression was frightful. "yes--i did this thing. and worse. i--i wish you'd kill me after i tell you! i--something she said--in the midst of my anguish and terror--something about jim desboro, i think--i am not sure--seemed to drive me insane. and she was married to him all the while, and i didn't know it. and--to drive her away from him, i--i made her understand that--that i was--his--mistress----" "good god!" "wait--for god's sake, wait! i don't care what you do to me afterward. only--only tell that woman i wasn't--tell her i never was. promise me that, whatever you are going to do to me--promise me you'll tell her that i never was any man's mistress! because--because--i am--ill. and they say--dr. allen says i--i am going to--to have a baby." the man reared upright and stood swaying there, ashy faced, his visage distorted. suddenly the features were flooded with rushing crimson; he dropped on his knees and caught her in his arms with a groan; and she shut her eyes, thinking the world was ending. after a long while she opened them, still half stunned with terror; saw his quivering lips resting on her tightly locked hands; stared for a while, striving to comprehend his wet face and his caress. and, after a while, timidly, uncertainly, wondering, she ventured to withdraw one hand, still watching him with fascinated eyes. she had always feared him physically--feared his bulk, and his massive strength, and his grin. otherwise, she had held him in intellectual contempt. very cautiously, very gently, she withdrew her hand, watching him all the while. he had not annihilated her. what did he mean to do with this woman who had hated him and who now was about to disgrace him? what did he mean to do? what was he doing now--with his lips quivering against her other hand, all wet with his tears? "cary?" she said. he lifted a passion-marred visage; and there seemed for a moment something noble in the high poise of his ugly head. and, without knowing what she was doing, or why, she slowly lifted her free hand and let it rest lightly on his massive shoulder. and, as she looked into his eyes, a strange expression began to dawn in her own--and it became stranger and stranger--something he had never before seen there--something so bewildering, so wonderful, that his heart seemed to cease. suddenly her eyes filled and her face flushed from throat to hair and the next instant she swayed forward, was caught, and crushed to his breast. "oh!" she wept ceaselessly. "oh, oh, cary! i didn't know--i didn't know. i--i want to be a--a good mother. i'll try to be better; i'll try to be better. you are so good--you are so good to me--so kind--so kind--to protect me--after what i've done--after what i've done!" chapter xviii desboro passed a miserable afternoon at the office. if there had been any business to take his mind off himself it might have been easier for him; but for a long time now there had been nothing stirring in wall street; the public kept away; business was dead. after hours he went to the club, feeling physically wretched. man after man came up and congratulated him on his marriage--some whom he knew scarcely more intimately than to bow to, spoke to him. he was a very great favourite. in the beginning, it was merely a stimulant that he thought he needed; later he declined no suggestion, and even made a few, with an eye on the clock. for at five he was to meet jacqueline. toward five his demeanour had altered to that gravely urbane and too courteous manner indicative of excess; and his flushed face had become white and tense. cairns found him in the card room at six, saw at a glance how matters stood with him, and drew him into a corner of the window with scant ceremony. "what's the matter with you?" he said sharply. "you told me that you were to meet your wife at five!" desboro's manner became impressively courteous. "inadvertently," he said, "i have somehow or other mislaid the clock. once it stood somewhere in this vicinity, but----" "damn it! there it is! look at it!" desboro looked gravely in the direction where cairns was pointing. "that undoubtedly _is_ a clock," he said. "but now a far more serious problem confronts us, john. having located a clock with a certain amount of accuracy, what is the next step to take in finding out the exact time?" "don't you know how to tell the time?" demanded cairns, furious. "pardon. i know how to _tell_ it, provided i once know what it is----" "are you drunk?" "i have never," said desboro, courteously, "experienced intoxication. at present i am perfectly cognisant of contemporary events now passing in my immediate vicinity----" "where were you to meet your wife?" "at the depository of her multitudinous and intricate affairs of business--in other words, at her office, dear friend." "you can't go to her this way." "it were unwise, perhaps," said desboro, pleasantly. cairns gripped his arm: "you go to the baths; do you hear? tell louis to massage the edge off you. i'm going to speak to your wife." so desboro sauntered off toward the elevator and cairns called up jacqueline's office. it appeared that jacqueline had left. should they switch him on to her private apartments above? in a moment his call was answered. "is this mrs. desboro?" he asked. and at the same instant recognised cynthia lessler's voice. she returned his greeting briefly. "jacqueline thought that perhaps she had misunderstood mr. desboro, so she has gone to the station. did he go there?" "n--no. he had an appointment and----" "where?" "at the club--the olympian club----" "is he there?" "yes----" "then tell him to go at once to the station, or he will miss his wife and the : train, too!" "i--he--jim isn't feeling very well----" "is he _ill_!" "n--no. oh, no! he's merely tired--over-worked----" "what!" "oh, he's just taking a cold plunge and a rub-down----" "mr. cairns!" "yes." "take a taxi and come here before jacqueline returns." "did you wish----" "yes. how soon can you get here?" "five minutes." "i'll wait." "a rotten piece of business," muttered cairns, taking hat and stick from the cloak room. the starter had a taxi ready. except for the usual block on fifth avenue, they would have made it in four minutes. it took them ten. cynthia met him on the landing and silently ushered him into jacqueline's pretty little parlour. she still wore her hat and coat; a fur boa lay on a sofa. [illustration: "'now,' she said, leaning forward ... 'what is the meaning of this?'"] "now," she said, leaning forward in her chair as soon as he was seated, "what is the meaning of this?" "of what?" he asked, pretending mild surprise. "of mr. desboro's behaviour! he was married yesterday to the dearest, sweetest, loveliest girl in the world. to-day, i stop at her office to see her--and i find that she is unhappy. she couldn't hide it from _me_! i _love_ her! and all her smiles and forced gaiety and clever maneuvering were terrible to me--heart-breaking. she is dreadfully unhappy. why?" "i didn't know it," said cairns honestly. "is that true?" "absolutely." "very well. but you know why he didn't meet jacqueline at five, don't you?" he looked at her miserably: "yes, i know. i wouldn't let him." "is he intoxicated?" "no. he has had more than he should have." "what a cur!" she said between her teeth. cairns bit his lip and nervously twirled his walking stick. "see here, cynthia, jim isn't a cur, you know." "what do _you_ call a man who has done what he's done?" "i--i tell you it has me guessing. because it isn't like jim desboro. he's never that way--not once in years. only when he's up against it does he ever do that. and he's perfectly mad about his wife. don't make any mistake there; he's dead in love with her--crazy about her. but--he came into the office about one to-day, looking like the deuce--so changed, so white, so 'all in,' that i thought he had the grippe or something." cynthia said: "they've had a quarrel. oh, what is it--what could it be, jack? you know it will break her heart. it's breaking mine now. i can't bear it--i simply can't----" "haven't the least idea what's wrong," said cairns, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, and beating the hearth with his walking stick. "can't mr. desboro come here pretty soon?" "oh, yes, i think so. i'll go back and look him over----" cynthia's eyes suddenly glistened with tears, and she bowed her head. "my dear child," expostulated cairns, "it's nothing to weep over. it's a--one of those things likely to happen to any man----" "but i can't bear to have it happen to jacqueline's husband. oh, i wish she had never seen him, never heard of him! he is a thousand, thousand miles beneath her. he isn't worth----" "for heaven's sake, cynthia, don't think that!" "_think_ it! i _know_ it! of what value is that sort of man compared to a girl like jacqueline! of what use is that sort of man anyway! i know them," she said bitterly, "i've had my lesson in that school. one and all, young and old, rich or poor--_comparatively_ poor--they are the same. the same ideas haunt their idle and selfish minds, the same motives move them, the same impulses rule them, and they reason with their emotions, not with their brains. arrogant, insolent, condescending, self-centred, self-indulgent, and utterly predatory! that is the type! and they _belong_ where people prey upon one another, not among the clean and sweet and innocent. they belong where there is no question of marriage or of home or of duty; they belong where lights are many and brilliant, where there is money, and plenty of it! where there is noise, and too much of it! that is where that sort of man belongs. and nobody knows it as well as such a girl as i! nobody, _nobody_!" her lip quivered and she choked back the tears. "and--and now--such a man has taken my little friend--my little girl--jacqueline----" "do you think he's as rotten as what you say?" "yes. _yes!_" "then--what must you think of me?" she glanced up, blotting her wet lashes with her handkerchief. "what do you mean, jack?" "i suppose i'm included among the sort of men you have been so graphically describing?" she did not answer. "am i not included?" she shook her head slightly. "why not? if your description fits jim desboro and reggie ledyard, and that set, it must naturally fit me, also." but she shook her head almost imperceptibly. "why do you exclude me, cynthia?" but she had nothing to say about him. long ago--long, long since, she had made excuses for all that he should have been and was not. it was not a matter for discussion; she and her heart had settled it between them without calling in logic as umpire, and without recourse to reason for an opinion. "the worst of it is," he said, rising and picking up his hat, "some of your general description does fit me." "i--did not mean it that way----" "but it does fit, cynthia; doesn't it?" "no." "what!" incredulously. she said in a low voice: "you were very kind to me, jack; and--not like other men. do you think i can ever forget that?" he forced a laugh: "great actresses are expected to forget things. besides, there isn't anything to remember--except that--we were friends." "_real_ friends. i know it now. because the world is full of the other kind. but a _real_ friend does not--destroy. good-bye." "shall i see you again?" he asked, troubled. "if you wish. i gave you my address yesterday." "will you really be at home to me, cynthia?" "try," she said, unsmiling. she went to the landing with him. "will you see that mr. desboro comes here as soon as he is--fit?" "yes." "very well. i'll tell jacqueline he was not feeling well and fell asleep at the club. it's one of those lies that may be forgiven--" she shrugged "--but anyway i'll risk it." so he went away, and she watched his departure, standing by the old-time stair-well until she heard the lower door clang. then, grieved and angry, she seated herself and nervously awaited jacqueline's reappearance. the girl returned ten minutes later, pale and plainly worried, but carrying it off lightly enough. "cynthia!" she exclaimed, smilingly. "_where_ do you suppose that husband of mine can be! he isn't at the station. i boarded the train, but he was not on it! isn't it odd? i--i don't suppose anything could have happened to him--any accident--because the motor drivers are so reckless----" "you darling thing!" laughed cynthia. "your young man is perfectly safe----" "oh, of course i--i believe so----" "he _is_! he's at his club." "what!" "it's perfectly simple," said cynthia coolly, "he went there from his office, feeling a bit under the weather----" "is he _ill_?" "no, no! he was merely tired, i believe. and he stretched out and fell asleep and failed to wake up. that's all." jacqueline looked at her in relieved astonishment for a moment. "did he telephone?" "yes--or rather, mr. cairns did----" "mr. cairns! why did mr. cairns telephone? why didn't my husband telephone? cynthia--look at me!" cynthia met her eye undaunted. "why," repeated jacqueline, "didn't my husband telephone to me? is he too ill? is _that_ it? are you concealing it? _are_ you, cynthia?" cynthia smiled: "he's a casual young man, darling. i believe he's taking a cold plunge or something. he'll probably be here in a few minutes. so i'll say good-night." she picked up her fur neckpiece, glanced at the mirror, fluffed a curl or two, and turned to jacqueline. "don't spoil him, ducky," she whispered, putting her hands on the young wife's shoulders and looking her deep in the eyes. jacqueline flushed painfully. "how do you mean, cynthia?" the latter said: "there are a million ways of spoiling a man beside giving up to him." "i don't give up to him," said jacqueline in a colourless voice. cynthia looked at her gravely: "it's hard to know what to do, dear. when a girl gives up to a man she spoils him sometimes; when she doesn't she sometimes spoils him. it's hard to know what to do--very hard." jacqueline's gaze grew troubled and remote. "how to love a man wisely--that's a very hard thing for a girl to learn," murmured cynthia. "but--the main thing--the important thing, is to love him, i think. and i suppose we have to take our chances of spoiling him." "the main thing," said jacqueline slowly, "is that he should know you _do_ love him; isn't it?" "yes. but the problem is, how best to show it. and that requires wisdom, dear. and where is a girl to acquire that kind of wisdom? what experience has she? what does she know? ah, we _don't_ know. there lies the trouble. by instinct, disposition, natural reticence, and training, we are disposed to offer too little, perhaps; but often, in fear that our reticence may not be understood, we offer too much." "i--am afraid of that." "of offering too much?" "yes." they stood, thoughtful a moment, not looking at each other. cynthia said in a low voice: "be careful of him, ducky. his is not the stronger character. perhaps he needs more than you give." "what!" "i--i think that perhaps he is not the kind of man to be spoiled by giving. and--it is possible to starve some men by the well-meant kindness of reserve." "all women--modest women--are reserved." "is a mother's reserve praiseworthy when her child comes to her for intimate companionship--for tenderness perhaps--and puts its little arms around her neck?" jacqueline stared, then blushed furiously. "why do you suppose that i am likely to be lacking in sympathy, cynthia?" "you are not. i know you too well, ducky. but you might easily be exquisitely undemonstrative." "all women--are--undemonstrative." "not always." "an honest, chaste----" "no." jacqueline, deeply flushed, began in a low voice: "to discourage the lesser emotions----" "no! to separate them, class them as lesser, makes them so. they are merely atoms in the molecule--a tiny fragment of perfection. to be too conscious of them makes them too important; to accept them with the rest as part of the ensemble is the only way." "cynthia!" "yes, dear." "who has been educating you to talk this way?" "necessity. there is no real room for ignorance in my profession. so i don't go to parties any more; i try to educate myself. there are cultivated people in the company. they have been very kind to me. and my carelessness in english--my lack of polish--these were not inherited. my father was an educated man, if he was nothing else. you know that. your father knew it. all i needed was to be awakened. and i am awake." she looked honestly into the honest eyes that met hers, and shook her head. "no self-deception can aid us to lie down to pleasant dreams, jacqueline. and the most terrible of all deceptions is self-righteousness. let me know myself, and i can help myself. and i know now how it would be with me if the happiness of marriage ever came to me. i would give--give everything good in me, everything needed--strip myself of my best! because, dear, we always have more to give than they; and they need it all--all we can give them--every one." after a silence they kissed each other; and, when cynthia had departed, jacqueline closed the door and returned to her chair. seated there in deep and unhappy thought, while the slow minutes passed without him, little by little her uneasiness returned. eight o'clock rang from her little mantel clock. she started up and went to the window. the street lamps were shining over pavements and sidewalks deserted. very far in the west she could catch the low roar of broadway, endless, accentless, monotonous, interrupted only by the whiz of motors on fifth avenue. now and then a wayfarer passed through the silent street below; rarely a taxicab; but neither wayfarer nor vehicle stopped at her door. she did not realise how long she had been standing there, when from behind the mantel clock startled her again, ringing out nine. she came back into the centre of the room, and, hands clasped, stared at the dial. she had not eaten since morning; there had been no opportunity in the press of accumulated business. she felt a trifle faint, mostly from a vague anxiety. she did not wish to call up the club; instinct forbade it; but at a quarter to ten she went to the telephone, and learned that desboro had gone out between eight and nine. then she asked for cairns, and found that he also had gone away. sick at heart she hung up the receiver, turned aimlessly into the room again, and stood there, staring at the clock. what had happened to her husband? what did it mean? had she anything to do with his strange conduct? in her deep trouble and perplexity--still bewildered by the terrible hurt she had received--had her aloofness, her sadness, impossible to disguise, wounded him so deeply that he had already turned away from her? she had meant only kindness to him--was seeking only her own convalescence, desperately determined to love and to hold this man. hadn't he understood it? could he not give her time to recover? how could he expect more of her--a bride, confronted in the very first hours of her wedded life by her husband's self-avowed mistress! she stood, hesitating, clenching and unclenching her white and slender hands, striving to think, succeeding only in enduring, until endurance itself was rapidly becoming impossible. why was he hurting her so? why? _why?_ yet, never once was her anger aroused against this man. somehow, he was not responsible. he was a man as god made him--one in the endless universe of men--the _only_ one in that limitless host existing for her. he was hers--the best of him and the worst. and the worst was to be forgiven and protected, and the best was to thank god for. she knew fear--the anxious solicitude that mothers know, awaiting the return of an errant child. she knew pain--the hurt dismay of a soul, deep wounded by its fellow, feeling a fresher and newer wound with every dragging second. her servant came, asking in an awed whisper whether her mistress would not eat something. jacqueline's proud little head went up. "mr. desboro has been detained unexpectedly. i will ring for you when he comes." but at midnight she rang, saying that she required nothing further, and that the maid could retire after unhooking her gown. now, in her loosened chamber-robe, she sat before the dresser combing out the thick, lustrous hair clustering in masses of gold around her white face and shoulders. she scarcely knew what she was about--knew not at all what she was going to do with the rest of the night. her hair done, she lay back limply in her chintz armchair, haunted eyes fixed on the clock; and, after staring became unendurable, she picked up a book and opened it mechanically. it was grenville, on spanish armour. suddenly she remembered sitting here before with this same volume on her knees, the rain beating against the windows, a bright fire in the grate--and fate at her elbow, bending in the firelight beside her as one by one she turned the illuminated pages, only to encounter under every jeweled helmet desboro's smiling eyes. and, as her fingers crisped on the pages at the memory, it seemed to her at one moment that it had all taken place many, many years ago; and, in the next moment, that it had happened only yesterday. how young she had been then--never having known sorrow except when her father died. and that sorrow was different; there was nothing in it hopeless or terrifying, believing, as she believed, in the soul's survival; nothing to pain, wound, menace her, or to awake in depths unsounded a hell of dreadful apprehension. how young she had been when last she sat here with this well-worn volume on her knees! nothing of love had she ever known, only the affection of a child for her father. but--now she knew. the torture of every throbbing minute was enlightening her. her hands, tightly clasped together, rested on the pages of the open book; and she was staring at nothing when, without warning, the doorbell rang. she rose straight up and pressed her left hand to her side, pale lips parted, listening; then she sprang to the door, opened it, pulled the handle controlling the wire which lifted the street-door latch. far below in the darkness she heard the click, click, click of the latch, the opening and closing of the door, steps across the hall on the stairs, mounting nearer and nearer. and when she knew that it was he she left the door open and returned to her armchair and lay back almost stifled by the beating of her heart. but when the shaft of light across the corridor fell on him and he stood on her threshold, her heart almost stopped beating. his face was drawn and pinched and colourless; his eyes were strange, his very presence seemed curiously unfamiliar--more so still when he forced a smile and bent over her, lifting her limp fingers to his lips. "what has been the matter, jim?" she tried to say, but her voice almost broke. he closed the door and stood looking around him for a moment. then, with a glance at her, and with just that shade of deference toward her which he never lost, he seated himself. "the matter is," he said quietly, "that i drank to excess at the club and was not fit to keep my appointment with you." "what!" she said faintly. "that was it, jacqueline. cairns did his best for us both. but--i knew it would be for the last time; i knew you would never again have to endure such things from me." "what do you mean?" "just what i have said, jacqueline. you won't have it to endure again. but i had to have time to recover my senses and think it out. that is why i didn't come before. so i let cairns believe i was coming here." "where did you go?" "to my rooms. i had to face it; i had to think it all over before i came here. i would have telephoned you, but you could not have understood. what time is it?" "two o'clock." "i'm sorry. i won't keep you long----" "what do you mean? where are you going?" "to my rooms, i suppose. i merely came here to tell you what is the only thing for us to do. you know it already. i have just realised it." "i don't understand what----" "oh, yes, you do, jacqueline. you now have no illusions left concerning me. nor have i any left concerning what i am and what i have done. curious," he added very quietly, "that people had to tell me what i am and what i have done to you before i could understand it." "what have you--done--to me?" "married you. and within that very hour, almost, brought sorrow and shame on you. oh, the magic mirror has been held up to me to-day, jacqueline; and in it everything i have done to you since the moment i first saw you has been reflected there in its real colours. "i stepped across the straight, clean pathway of your life, telling myself the lie that i had no intentions of any sort concerning you. and, as time passed, however indefinite my motives, they became at least vaguely sinister. you were aware of this; i pretended not to be. and at last you--you saved me the infamy of self-revelation by speaking as you did. you engaged yourself to marry me. and i let you. and, not daring to let you stand the test which an announcement of our engagement would surely mean, and fearing to lose you, dreading to see you turn against me, i was cowardly enough to marry you as i did, and trust that love and devotion would hold you." he leaned forward in his chair and shook his head. "no use," he said quietly. "love and devotion never become a coward. both mean nothing unless based on honesty. and i was dishonest with you. i should have told you i was afraid that what might be said to you about me would alter you toward me. i should have told you that i dared not stand the test. but all i said to you was that it was better for us to marry as we did. and you trusted me." her pale, fascinated face never moved, nor did her eyes leave his for a second. he sustained her gaze gravely, and with a drawn composure that seemed akin to dignity. "i came here to tell you this," he said, "to admit that i cheated you, cheated the world out of you, robbed you of your independence under false pretenses, married you as i did because i was afraid i'd lose you otherwise. my justification was that i loved you--as though that could excuse anything. only could i be excused for marrying you if our engagement had been openly announced and you had found it in you to withstand and forgive whatever ill you heard of me. but i did not give you that chance. i married you. and within that very hour you learned something--whatever it was--that changed you utterly toward me, and is threatening to ruin your happiness--to annihilate within you the very joy of living." he shook his head again, slowly. "that won't do, jacqueline. happiness is as much your right as is life itself. the world has a right to you, too; because you have lived nobly, and your work has been for the betterment of things. whoever knows you honours you and loves you. it is such a woman as you who is of importance in the world. men and women are better for you. you are needed. while i----" he made a quick gesture; his lip trembled, but he smiled. "so," he said, "i have thought it all out--there alone in my rooms to-night. there will be no more trouble, no anxiety for you. i'll step out of your life very quietly, jacqueline, without any stir or fuss or any inconvenience to you, more than waiting for my continued absence to become flagrant and permanent enough to satisfy the legal requirements. and in a little while you will have your liberty again; the liberty and, very soon, the tranquillity of mind and the happiness out of which i have managed to swindle you." she had been seated motionless, leaning forward in her chair to listen. after a few moments of silence which followed, the constraint of her attitude suddenly weakened her, and she slowly sank back into the depths of her big chair. "and that," she said aloud to herself, "is what he has come here to tell me." "yes, jacqueline." she turned her head toward him, her cheek resting flat against the upholstered chintz back. "one thing you have not told me, jim." "what is that?" he asked in a strained voice. "how i am to live without you." there was a silence. when his self-control seemed assured once more, he said: "do you mean that the damage i have done is irreparable?" "what you have done cannot be undone. you have made me--love you." her lip trembled in a pitiful attempt to smile. "are you, after all, about to send me forth 'between tall avenues of spears, to die?'" "do you still think you care for such a man as i am?" he said hoarsely. she nodded: "and if you leave me it will be the same, jim. wherever you are--living alone or married to another woman--or whether you are living at all, or dead, it will always be the same with me. love is love. nothing you say now can alter it. words--yours or the words of others--merely wound _me_, and do not cripple my love for you. nor can deeds do so. i know that, now. they can slay only me, not my love, jim--for i think, with me, it is really and truly immortal." his head dropped between his hands. she saw his body trembling at moments. after a little while she rose, and, stepping to his side, bent over him, letting her hand rest lightly on his hair. "all i ask of you is to be patient," she whispered. "and you don't understand--you don't seem to understand me, dear. i am learning very fast--much faster and more thoroughly than i believed possible. cynthia was here this evening. she helped me so much. she taught me a great deal--a very great deal. and your goodness--your unselfishness in coming to me this way--with your boyish amends, your unconsidered and impulsive offers of restitution--restitution of single blessedness----" she smiled; and, deep within her breast, a faint thrill stirred her like a far premonition. timidly, scarcely daring, she ventured by degrees to encircle his head with her arm, letting her cool fingers rest over the tense, and feverish hands that covered his face. "what a boy is this grown man!" she whispered. "what a foolish, emotional, impulsive boy! and such an unhappy one; and _such_ a tired one!" and, once more hesitating, and with infinite precaution, lest he become suddenly too conscious of this new and shy demonstration, she ventured to seat herself on the arm of his chair and bend closer to him. "you must go back to your rooms, dear," she murmured. "it is morning, and we both are in need of sleep, i think. so you must say good-night to me and go back to--to pleasant dreams. and to-morrow we will go to silverwood for over sunday. two whole days together, dear----" her soft cheek rested against his; her voice died out. slowly, guided by the most delicate pressure, his head moved toward her shoulder, resisted, fell forward on her breast. for one instant's ecstasy she drew his face against her, tightly, almost fearfully, then sprang to her feet, breathless, blushing from throat to brow, and stepped back. he was on his feet, too, flushed, dazed, moving toward her. she stretched out both hands swiftly. "good-night, dearest--dearest of men. you have made me happy again. you are making me happier every moment. only--be patient with me. and it will all come true--what we have dreamed." her fragrant hands were crushed against his lips, and her heart was beating faster and faster, and she was saying she scarcely knew what. "all will be well with us. _i_ no longer doubt it. _you_ must not. i--i _am_ the girl you desire. i will be, always--always. only be gentle and patient with me--only that--only that." "how can i take you this way--and keep you--after what i have done?" he stammered. "how can i let your generosity and mercy rob you of what is your due----" "love is my due, i think. but only you can give it. and if you withhold it, jim, i am robbed indeed." "your pity--your sweetness----" "my pity is for myself if you prove unkind." "i? unkind! good god----" "oh! he _is_ good, jim! and he will be. never doubt it again. and lie down to pleasant dreams. will you come for me to-morrow at five?" "yes." "and never again distrust yourself or me?" he drew a deep, unsteady breath. "good-night," she whispered. chapter xix jacqueline had been half an hour late at her office and the routine business was not yet quite finished when captain herrendene was announced at the telephone. "i thought you had sailed!" she exclaimed in surprise, as he greeted her over the wire. he laughed: "i'm ordered to governor's island. jolly, isn't it?" "fine!" she said cordially. "we shall see you sometimes, i suppose." "i'm asked to the lindley hammertons for the week-end. are you to be at silverwood by any happy chance?" "indeed we are. we are going up to-night." "good business!" he said. "and--may i wish you happiness, mrs. desboro? your husband is a perfectly bully fellow--lots of quality in that young man--loads of reserve and driving force! tell him i congratulate him with all my heart. you know what i think of _you_!" "it's very sweet of you to speak this way about us," she said. "you may surmise what i think of my husband. so thank you for wishing us happiness. and you will come over with daisy, won't you? we are going to be at home until monday." "indeed i _will_ come!" he said heartily. she hung up the receiver, smiling but a trifle flushed; and in her blue eyes there lingered something resembling tenderness as she turned once more to the pile of typewritten letters awaiting her signature. she had cared a great deal for this man's devotion; and since she had refused him she cared for his friendship even more than before. and, being feminine, capable, and very tender-hearted, she already was experiencing the characteristic and ominous solicitude of her sex for the future consolation and ultimate happiness of this young and unmarried man. might it not be accomplished through daisy hammerton? what could be more suitable, more perfect? her sensitive lips were edged with a faint smile as she signed her name to the first business letter. it began to look dark for captain herrendene. no doubt, somewhere aloft, the cherubim were already giggling. when a nice girl refuses a man, his business with her has only just begun. she continued to sign her letters, the ominous smile always hovering on her upcurled lips. and, pursuing that train of thought, she came, unwittingly, upon another, so impossible, yet so delightful and exciting that every feminine fibre in her responded to the invitation to meddle. she could scarcely wait to begin, so possessed was she by the alluringly hopeless proposition evolved from her inner consciousness; and, as soon as the last letter had been signed, and her stenographer had taken away the correspondence, she flew to the telephone and called up cynthia lessler. "is it you, dear?" she asked excitedly; and cynthia, at the other end of the wire, caught the happy ring in her voice, for she answered: "you sound very gay this morning. _are_ you, dear?" "yes, darling. tell me, what are you doing over sunday?" cynthia hesitated, then she answered calmly: "mr. cairns is coming in the morning to take me to the metropolitan museum." "what a funny idea!" "why is it funny? he suggested that we go and look at the chinese porcelains so that we could listen more intelligently to you." "as though i were accustomed to lecture my friends! how absurd, cynthia. you can't go. i want you at silverwood." "thank you, dear, but i've promised him----" "then come up on the noon train!" "in the afternoon," explained cynthia, still more calmly, "mr. cairns and i are to read together a new play which has not yet been put in rehearsal." "but, darling! i do want you for sunday! why can't you come up for this week-end, and postpone the museum meanderings? please ask him to let you off." there was a pause, then cynthia said in a still, small voice: "mr. cairns is here. you may ask him." cairns came to the telephone and said that he would consult the wishes and the convenience of miss lessler. there ensued another pause, ostensibly for consultation, during which jacqueline experienced a wicked and almost overwhelming desire to laugh. presently cynthia called her: "_we_ think," she said with pretty emphasis, "that it would be very jolly to visit you. we can go to the museum any other sunday, mr. cairns says." but the spirit of mischief still possessed jacqueline, and she refused to respond to the hint. "so you are coming?" she exclaimed with enthusiasm. "if you want _us_, darling." "that's delightful! you know jim and i haven't had a chance yet to entertain our bridesmaid. we want her to be our very first guest. thank you so much, darling, for coming. and please say to mr. cairns that it is perfectly dear of him to let you off----" "but _he_ is coming, too, isn't he?" exclaimed cynthia anxiously. "you are asking us both, aren't you. _what_ are you laughing at, you little wretch!" but jacqueline's laughter died out and she said hastily: "bring him with you, dear," and turned to confront mrs. hammerton, who arrived by appointment and exactly on the minute. the clerk who, under orders, had brought the old lady directly to the office, retired, closing the door behind him. jacqueline hung up the telephone receiver, rose from her chair and gazed silently at the woman whose letter to her had first shattered her dream of happiness. then, with a little gesture: "won't you please be seated?" she said quietly. aunt hannah's face was grim as she sat down on the chair indicated. [illustration: "'you have no further interest in me, have you?'"] "you have no further interest in me, have you?" she demanded. jacqueline did not answer. "i ought to have come here before," said aunt hannah. "i ought to have come here immediately and explained to you that when i wrote that letter i hadn't the vaguest notion that you were already married. do you think i'd have been such a fool if i'd known it, jacqueline?" jacqueline lifted her troubled eyes: "i do not think you should have interfered at all." "good heavens! i know that! i knew it when i did it. it's the one hopelessly idiotic act of my life. never, _never_ was anything gained or anything altered by interfering where real love is. i knew it, child. it's an axiom--a perfectly self-evident proposition--an absolutely hopeless effort. but i chanced it. your mother, if she were alive, would have chanced it. don't blame me too much; be a little sorry for me. because i loved you when i did it. and many, many of the most terrible mistakes in life are made because of love, jacqueline. the mistakes of hate are fewer." aunt hannah's folded hands tightened on the gun-metal reticule across her knees. "it's too late to say i'm sorry," she said. "besides, i'd do it again." "what!" "yes, i would. so would your mother. i _am_ sorry; but i _would_ do it again! i love you enough to do it again--and--and suffer what i _am_ suffering in consequence." jacqueline looked at her in angry bewilderment, and the spark in the little black eyes died out. "child," she said wearily, "we childless women who love are capable of the same self-sacrifice that mothers understand. i wrote you to save you, practically certain that i was giving you up by doing it--and that with every word of warning i was signing my own death warrant in your affections. but i _couldn't_ sit still and let you go to the altar unwarned. had i cared less for you, yes! i could have let you take your chances undisturbed by me. but--you took them anyway--took them before my warning could do anything except anger you. otherwise, it would have hurt and angered you, too. i have no illusions; what i said would have availed nothing. only--it was my duty to say it. i never was crazy about doing my duty. but i did it this time." she found a fresh handkerchief in her reticule and rolled it nervously into a wad. "so--that is all, jacqueline. i've made a bad mess of it. i've made a far worse one than i supposed possible. you are unhappy. james is perfectly wretched. the boy came to me furious, bewildered, almost exasperated, to find out what had been said about him and who had said it. and--and i told him what i thought of him. i _did_! and when he had gone, i--cried myself sick--_sick_, i tell you. "and that's why i'm here. it has given me courage to come here. i know i am discredited; that what i say will be condemned in advance; that you are too hurt, too hostile to me to be influenced. but--i must say my say before i go out of your life--and his--forever. and what i came to say to you is this. forgive that boy! pardon absolutely everything he has done; eliminate it; annihilate the memory of it if you can! memory _can_ be stunned, if not destroyed. i know; i've had to do it often. so i say to you, begin again with him. give that boy his chance to grow up to your stature. in all the world i believe you are the only woman who can ennoble him and make of him something fine--if not your peer, at least its masculine equivalent. i do not mean to be bitter. but i cannot help my opinion of things masculine. forgive him, jacqueline. many men are better than he; many, many are worse. but the best among them are not so very much better than your boy jim. forgive him and help him to grow up. and--that is all--i think----" she rose and turned sharply away. jacqueline rose and crossed the room to open the door for her. they met there. aunt hannah's ugly little face remained averted while she waited for the open door to free her. "mr. desboro and i are going to be happy," said jacqueline in a strained voice. "it lies with you," snapped aunt hannah. "yes--a great deal seems to lie with me. the burden of decision seems to lie with me very often. somehow i can't escape it. and i am not wise, not experienced enough----" "you are _good_. that's wisdom enough for decision." "but--do you know--i am _not_ very good." "why not?" "because i understand much that is evil. how can real innocence be so unworthily wise?" "innocence isn't goodness by a long shot!" said aunt hannah bluntly. "the good _know_--and refrain." there was a silence; the elder woman in her black gown stood waiting, her head still obstinately averted. suddenly she felt the girl's soft arms around her neck, quivered, caught her in a fierce embrace. "i--i want you to care for jim," faltered the girl. "i want you to know what he really is--the dearest and most generous of men. i want you to discover the real nobility in him. he _is_ only a boy, as yet, aunt hannah. and he--he must not be--cruelly--punished." when aunt hannah had marched out, still inclined to dab at her eyes, but deeply and thankfully happy, jacqueline called up her husband at his office. "jim, dear," she said, "i have had a visit from aunt hannah. and she's terribly unhappy because she thinks you and i are; so i told her that we are not unhappy, and i scolded her for saying those outrageous things to you. and she took it so meekly, and--and she does really care for us--and--and i've made up with her. was it disloyal to you to forgive her?" "no," he said quietly. "what she said to me was the truth." "i don't know what she said to you, dear. she didn't tell me. but i gathered from her that it was something intensely disagreeable. so don't ever tell me--because i might begin to dislike her again. and--it wasn't true, anyway. she knows that now. so--we will be friendly to her, won't we?" "of course. she adores you anyway----" "if she doesn't adore you, too, i won't care for her!" said the girl hotly. he laughed; she could hear him distinctly; and she realised with a little thrill that it was the same engaging laugh which she had first associated with the delightful, graceful, charming young fellow who was now her husband. "what are you doing, jim?" she asked, smiling in sympathy. "there's absolutely nothing doing in the office, dear." "then--could you come over here?" "oh, jacqueline! do _you_ tempt me?" "no," she said hastily. "i suppose you ought to be there in the office, whether there's anything to do or not. listen, jim. i've invited cynthia and jack cairns for the week-end. was it all right?" "of course." "you don't really mind, do you?" "not a bit, dear." "we can be by ourselves if we wish. they're going to read a play together," she explained naïvely, "and they won't bother us----" she checked herself, blushing furiously. he, at his end of the wire, could scarcely speak for the quick tumult of his heart, but he managed to say calmly enough: "we've got the entire estate to roam over if they bore us." "will you take me for a walk on sunday?" "yes, if you would care to go." "haven't i invited you to take me?" "have you really, jacqueline?" "yes. good-bye. i will be waiting for you at five." she returned to her desk, the flush slowly cooling in her cheeks; and she was just resuming her seat when a clerk brought clydesdale's card. "i could see mr. clydesdale now," she said, glancing over the appointment list on her desk. her smile had died out with the colour in her cheeks, and her beautiful eyes grew serious and stern. for the name that this man bore was associated in her mind with terrible and unspeakable things. never again could she hear that name with equanimity; never recall it unmoved. yet, now, she made an effort to put from her all that menaced her composure at the mere mention of that name--strove to think only of the client and kindly amateur who had treated her always with unvarying courtesy and consideration. he came in grinning, as usual, and she took his extended and highly-coloured paw, smiling her greeting. "is it a little social visit, mr. clydesdale, or have you discovered some miracle of ancient cathay which you covet?" "it's--my wife." her smile fled and her features altered to an expressionless and colourless mask. for a second there was a gleam of fear in her eyes, then they grew cold and clear and blue as arctic ice. he remained standing, the grin stamped on his sanguine features. presently he said, heavily: "i have come to you to make what reparation i can--in my wife's name--in her behalf. our deep humiliation, deeper contrition, are the only reparation we can offer you. it is hard for me to speak. my wife is at home, ill. and she can not rest until she has told you, through me, that--that what she said to you the last time she saw you--here, in this office--was an untruth." jacqueline, dazed, merely stared at him. he bent his head and seemed to be searching in his mind for words. he found them after a while. "yes," he said in a low voice, "what my wife said, and what she permitted you to infer--concerning herself and--mr. desboro--was utterly untrue. god alone knows why she said it. but she did. i could plead extenuation for her--if your patience permits. she is naturally very nervous; she _did_ care a great deal for mr. desboro; she did, at that time, really dislike me," he added with a quiet dignity which made every word he uttered ring out clear as a shot. and jacqueline seemed to feel their impact on her very heart. he said: "there are other circumstances--painful ones. she had been for months--even years--in fear of blackmail--terrorised by it until she became morbid. i did not know this. i was not aware that an indiscreet but wholly innocent escapade of her youth had furnished this blackmailer with a weapon. i understand now, why, caring as she did for mr. desboro, and excited, harassed, terrified, exasperated, she was willing to make an end of it with him rather than face possible disgrace with me for whom she did not care. it is no excuse. she offers none. i offer none for her. nothing--no mental, no physical state could excuse what she has done. only--i wish--and she wishes you to know that she has been guilty of permitting you to believe a monstrous untruth which would have consigned her to infamy had it been true, and absolutely damned the man you have married." she strove to comprehend this thing that he was saying--tried to realise that he was absolutely clearing her husband of the terrible and nameless shadow which, she knew now, never could have entirely fled away, except for the mercy of god and the words of humiliation now sounding in her ears. she stared at him. and the terrible thing was that he was grinning still--grinning through all the agony of his shame and dreadful abasement. and she longed to turn away--to shut out his face from her sight. but dared not. "that is all," he said heavily. "perhaps there is a little more to say--but it will leave you indifferent, very naturally. yet, may i say that this--this heart-breaking crisis in her life, and--in mine--has--brought us together? and--a little more. my wife is to become a mother. which is why i venture to hope that you will be merciful to us both in your thoughts. i do not ask for your pardon, which you could never give----" "mr. clydesdale!" she had risen, trembling, both little hands flat on the desk top to steady her, and was looking straight at him. [illustration: "'i--i have never thought mercilessly'"] "i--my thoughts----" she stammered "are not cruel. say so to your wife. i--i have never thought mercilessly. every instinct within me is otherwise. and i know what suffering is. and i do not wish it for anybody. say so to your wife, and that i wish her--happiness--with her baby." she was trembling so that he could scarcely control between his two huge fists the little hand that he saluted in wordless gratitude and grief. then, without looking at her again, or speaking, he went his way. and she dropped back into her chair, the tears of sheer happiness and excitement flowing unchecked. but she was permitted no time to collect her thoughts, no solitude for happy tears, and, at the clerk's sharp knocking, she dried her eyes hastily and bade him enter. the card he laid on her desk seemed to amaze her. "_that_ man!" she said slowly. "is he _here_, mr. mirk?" "yes, madam. he asks for one minute only, saying that it is a matter of most desperate importance to you----" "to _me_?" "yes, madam." again she looked at mr. waudle's card. "bring him," she said crisply. and the blue lightning flashed in her eyes. when mr. waudle came in and the clerk had gone and closed the door, jacqueline said quietly: "i'll give you one minute, mr. waudle. proceed." "i think," he said, looking at her out of his inflamed eyes, "that you'll feel inclined to give me more than that when you understand what i've got in this packet." and he drew from his overcoat pocket a roll of galley proofs. "what is it?" she asked, looking calmly into his dangerous red eyes. "it's a story, set up and in type--as you see. and it's about your husband and mrs. clydesdale--if you want to know." a shaft of fear struck straight through her. then, in an instant the blanched cheeks flushed and the blue eyes cleared and sparkled. "what is it you wish?" she asked in a curiously still voice. "i'll tell you; don't worry. i want you to stop this man clydesdale, and stop him short. i don't care how you do it; _do_ it, that's all. he's bought and paid for certain goods delivered to him by me. now he's squealing. he wants his money back. and--if he gets it back this story goes in. want me to read it to you?" "no. what is it you wish me to do--deceive mr. clydesdale? make him believe that the remainder of the jades and rose-quartz carvings are genuine?" "it looks good to me," said mr. waudle more cheerfully. "it sounds all right. you threw us down; it's up to you to pick us up." "i see," she said pleasantly. "and unless i do you are intending to publish that--story?" "sure as hell!" he nodded. she remained silent and thoughtful so long that he began to hitch about in his chair and cast furtive, sidelong glances at her and at the curtained walls around the room. suddenly his face grew ghastly. "look here!" he whispered hoarsely. "is this a plant?" "what?" "is there anybody else in this room?" he lurched to his feet and waddled hastily around the four walls, flinging aside the green velvet curtains. only the concealed pictures were revealed; and he went back to his chair, removing the cold sweat from his forehead and face with his sleeve. "by god!" he said. "for a moment i thought you had done me good and plenty. but it wouldn't have helped _you_! they've got this story in the office, and the minute i'm pinched, in it goes! understand?" "no," she said serenely, "but it doesn't really matter. you may go now, mr. waudle." "hey?" "must i ring for a clerk to put you out?" "oh! so that's the game, is it? well, i tell you that you can't bluff me, little lady! let's settle it now." "no," she said. "i must have time to consider." "how long?" "an hour or two." "you'll make up your mind in two hours?" "yes." "all right," he said, almost jovially. "that suits me. call me up on the 'phone and tell me what you decide. my number is on my card." she looked at the card. it bore his telephone number and his house address. he seemed inclined to linger, evidently with the idea of tightening his grip on her by either persuasion or bullying, as her attitude might warrant. but she touched the bell and mr. mirk appeared; and the author of "black roses" took himself off perforce, with many a knowing leer, both threatening and blandishing. as soon as he had gone, she called up her husband. very quietly, but guardedly, she conversed with him for a few moments. when she hung up the receiver she was laughing. but it was otherwise with desboro. "cairns," he said, turning from the telephone to his associate, "there's a silly fellow bothering my wife. if you don't mind my leaving the office for a few minutes i'll step around and speak to him." his usually agreeable features had grown colourless and ugly, but his voice sounded casual enough. "what are you going to do, jim? murder?" desboro laughed. "i'll be gone only a few minutes," he said. "it _could_ be done in a few minutes," mused cairns. "do you want me to go with you?" "no, thanks." he picked up his hat, nodded curtly, and went out. mr. waudle and mr. munger maintained a "den," literary and otherwise, in one of the new studio buildings just east of lexington avenue. this was the address mr. waudle had left for jacqueline; to this destination desboro now addressed himself. thither an itinerant taxicab bore him on shaky springs. he paid the predatory chauffeur, turned to enter the building, and met clydesdale face to face, entering the same doorway. "hello!" said the latter with a cheerful grin. "where are you bound?" "oh, there's a man hereabouts with whom i have a few moments' business." "same here," observed clydesdale. they entered the building together, and both walked straight through to the elevator. "mr. waudle," said clydesdale briefly to the youth in charge. "you need not announce me." desboro looked at him curiously, and caught clydesdale's eyes furtively measuring him. "odd," he said pleasantly, "but my business is with the same man." "i was wondering." they exchanged perfectly inexpressive glances. "couldn't your business wait?" inquired desboro politely. "sorry, desboro, but i was a little ahead of you in the entry, i think." the car stopped. "studio twenty," said the boy; slammed the gates, and shot down into dimly lighted depths again, leaving the two men together. "i am wondering," mused clydesdale gently, "whether by any chance your business with this--ah--mr. waudle resembles my business with him." they looked at each other. desboro nodded: "very probably," he said in a low voice. "oh! then perhaps you might care to be present at the business meeting," said clydesdale, "as a spectator, merely, of course." "thanks, awfully. but might i not persuade _you_ to remain as a spectator----" "very good of you, desboro, but i need the--ah--exercise. really, i've gone quite stale this winter. don't even keep up my squash." "mistake," said desboro gravely. "'fraid you'll overdo it, old chap." "oh, i'll have a shy at it," said clydesdale cheerfully. "very glad to have you score, if you like." "if you insist," replied the younger man courteously. there was a bell outside studio no. . desboro punched it with the ferrule of his walking stick; and when the door opened, somewhat cautiously, clydesdale inserted his huge foot between the door and the sill. there was a brief and frantic scuffle; then the poet fled, his bunch of frizzled hair on end, and the two men entered the apartment. to the left a big studio loomed, set with artistic furniture and bric-a-brac and mr. waudle--the latter in motion. in fact, he was at that moment in the process of rushing at mr. clydesdale, and under full head-way. whenever mr. waudle finally obtained sufficient momentum to rush, he appeared to be a rather serious proposition; for he was as tall as clydesdale and very much fatter, and his initial velocity, combined with his impact force per square inch might have rivalled the dynamic problems of the proving ground. clydesdale took one step forward to welcome him, and waudle went down, like thunder. then he got up, went down immediately; got up, went down, stayed down for an appreciable moment; arose, smote the air, was smitten with a smack so terrific that the poet, who was running round and round the four walls, squeaked in sympathy. waudle sat up on the floor, his features now an unrecognisable mess. he was crying. "i say, desboro, catch that poet for me--there's a good chap," said clydesdale, breathing rather hard. the cubist, who had been running round and round like a frantic rabbit, screamed and ran the faster. "oh, just shy some bric-a-brac at him and come home," said desboro in disgust. but clydesdale caught him, seated himself, jerked the devotee of the moon across his ponderous knees, and, grinning, hoisted on high the heavy hand of justice. and the post-impressionistic literature of the future shrieked. "very precious, isn't it?" panted clydesdale. "you dirty little mop of hair, i think i'll spank _you_ into the future. want a try at this moon-pup, desboro? no? quite right; you don't need the exercise. whew!" and he rolled the writhing poet off his knees and onto the floor, sat up breathing hard and grinning around him. "now for the club and a cold plunge--eh, desboro? i tell you it puts life into a man, doesn't it? perhaps, while i'm about it, i might as well beat up the other one a little more----" "my god!" blubbered waudle. "oh, very well--if you feel that way about it," grinned clydesdale. "but you understand that you won't have any sensation to feel with at all if you ever again even think of the name of mrs. clydesdale." he got up, still panting jovially, pleased as a great dane puppy who has shaken an old shoe to fragments. at the door he paused and glanced back. "take it from me," he said genially, "if we ever come back, we'll kill." * * * * * in the street once more, they lingered on the sidewalk for a moment or two before separating. clydesdale drew off his split and ruined gloves, rolled them together and tossed them into the passing handcart of a street sweeper. "unpleasant job," he commented. "i don't think you'll have it to do over again," smiled desboro. "no, i think not. and thank you for yielding so gracefully to me. it was my job. but you didn't miss anything; it was like hitting a feather bed. no sport in it--but had to be done. well, glad to have seen you again, desboro." they exchanged grips; both flushed a trifle, hesitated, nodded pleasantly to each other, and separated. at the office cairns inspected him curiously as he entered, but, as desboro said nothing, he asked no questions. a client or two sauntered in and out. at one o'clock they lunched together. "i understand you're coming up for the week-end," said desboro. "your wife was good enough to ask me." "glad you're coming. old herrendene has been ordered to governor's island. he expects to stop with the lindley hammertons over sunday." "that daisy girl's a corker," remarked cairns, "--only i've always been rather afraid of her." "she's a fine girl." "rather in herrendene's class--lots of character," nodded cairns thoughtfully. "having none myself, she always had me backed up against the rail." after a silence, desboro said: "that was a ghastly break of mine last night." "rotten," said cairns bluntly. the painful colour rose to desboro's temples. "it will be the last, jack. i lived a thousand years last night." "i lived a few hundred myself," said cairns reproachfully. "and _what_ a thoroughbred your wife is!" desboro nodded and drew a deep, unsteady breath. "well," he said, after a few moments, "it is a terrible thing for a man to learn what he really is. but if he doesn't learn it he's lost." cairns assented with a jerk of his head. "but who's to hold up the mirror to a man?" he asked. "when his father and mother shove it under his nose he won't look; when clergy or laymen offer him a looking-glass he shuts his eyes and tries to kick them. that's the modern youngster--the product of this modern town with its modern modes of thought." "the old order of things was the best," said desboro. "has anybody given us anything better than what they reasoned us into discarding--the old gentleness of manners, the quaint, stiff formalisms now out of date, the shyness and reticence of former days, the serenity, the faith which is now unfashionable, the old-time reverence?" "i don't know," said cairns, "what we've gained in the discard. i look now at the cards they offer us to take up, and there is nothing on them. and the game has forced us to throw away what we had." he caressed his chin thoughtfully. "the only way to do is to return to first principles, cut a fresh pack, never mind new rules and innovations, but play the game according to the decalogue. and nobody can call you down." he reddened, and added honestly: "that's not entirely my own, jim. there are some similar lines in a new play which miss lessler and i were reading this morning." "reading? where?" "oh, we walked through the park together rather early--took it easy, you know. she read aloud as we walked." "she is coming for the week-end," said desboro. "i believe so." desboro, lighting a cigarette, permitted his very expressionless glance to rest on his friend for the briefest fraction of a second. "the papers," he said, "speak of her work with respect." "miss lessler," said cairns, "is a most unusual girl." neither men referred to the early days of their acquaintance with cynthia lessler. as though by tacit agreement those days seemed to have been entirely forgotten. "a rarely intelligent and lovely comedienne," mused cairns, poking the cigar ashes on the tray and finally laying aside his cigar. "well, jim, i suppose the office yawns for us. but it won't have anything on my yawn when i get there!" they went back across fifth avenue in the brilliant afternoon sunshine, to dawdle about the office and fuss away the afternoon in pretense that the awakening of the street from its long lethargy was imminent. at half past three cairns took himself off, leaving desboro studying the sunshine on the ceiling. at five the latter awoke from his day dream, stood up, shook himself, drew a deep breath, and straightened his shoulders. before him, now delicately blurred and charmingly indistinct, still floated the vision of his day-dream; and, with a slight effort, he could still visualise, as he moved out into the city and through its noise and glitter, south, into that quieter street where his day-dream's vision lived and moved and had her earthly being. mr. mirk came smiling and bowing from the dim interior. there was no particular reason for the demonstration, but desboro shook his hand cordially. "mrs. desboro is in her office," said mr. mirk. "you know the way, sir--if you please----" he knew the way. it was not likely that he would ever forget the path that he had followed that winter day. at his knock she opened the door herself. "i don't know how i knew it was your knock," she said, giving ground as he entered. there was an expression in his face that made her own brighten, as though perhaps she had not been entirely certain in what humour he might arrive. "the car will be here in a few minutes," he said. "that's a tremendously pretty hat of yours." "do you like it? i saw it the other day. and somehow i felt extravagant this afternoon and telephoned for it. do you really like it, jim?" "it's a beauty." "i'm so glad--so relieved. sometimes i catch you looking at me, jim, and i wonder how critical you really are. i _want_ you to like what i wear. you'll always tell me when you don't, won't you?" "no fear of my not agreeing with your taste," he said cheerfully. "by the way--and apropos of nothing--waudle won't bother you any more." "oh!" "i believe clydesdale interviewed him--and the other one--the poet." he laughed. "afterward there was not enough remaining for me to interview." jacqueline's serious eyes, intensely blue, were lifted to his. "we won't speak of them again, ever," she said in a low voice. "right, as always," he rejoined gaily. she still stood looking at him out of grave and beautiful eyes, which seemed strangely shy and tender to him. then, slowly shaking her head she said, half to herself: "i have much to answer for--more than you must ever know. but i shall answer for it; never fear." "what are you murmuring there all by yourself, jacqueline?" he said smilingly; and ventured to take her gloved hand into his. she, too, smiled, faintly, and stood silent, pretty head bent, absorbed in her own thoughts. a moment later a clerk tapped and announced their car. she looked up at her husband, and the confused colour in her face responded to the quick pressure of his hands. "are you quite ready to go?" he asked. "yes--ready always--to go where--you lead." her flushed face reflected the emotion in his as they went out together into the last rays of the setting sun. "have we time to motor to silverwood?" she asked. "would you care to?" "i'd love to." so he spoke to the chauffeur and entered the car after her. it was a strange journey for them both, with the memory of their last journey together still so fresh, so pitilessly clear, in their minds. in this car, over this road, beside this man, she had travelled with a breaking heart and a mind haunted by horror unspeakable. to him the memory of that journey was no less terrible. they spoke to each other tranquilly but seriously, and in voices unconsciously lowered. and there were many lapses into stillness--many long intervals of silence. but during the longest of these, when the westchester hills loomed duskily ahead, she slipped her hand into his and left it there until the lights of silverwood glimmered low on the hill and the gate lanterns flashed in their eyes as the car swung into the fir-bordered drive and rolled up to the house. "home," she said, partly to herself; and he turned toward her in quick gratitude. once more the threatened emotion confused her, but she evaded it, forcing a gaiety not in accord with her mood, as he aided her to descend. "certainly it's my home, monsieur, as well as yours," she repeated, "and you'll feel the steel under the velvet hand of femininity as soon as i assume the reins of government. for example, you can _not_ entertain your cats and dogs in the red drawing-room any more. now do you feel the steel?" they went to their sitting-room laughing. about midnight she rose from the sofa. they had been discussing plans for the future, repairs, alterations, improvements for silverwood house--and how to do many, many wonderful things at vast expense; and how to practice rigid economy and do nothing at all. [illustration: "and, as she rose, he was still figuring"] it had been agreed that he was to give up his rooms in town and use hers whenever they remained in new york over night. and, as she rose, he was still figuring out, with pencil and pad, how much they would save by this arrangement. now he looked up, saw her standing, and rose too. she looked at him with sweet, sleepy, humourous eyes. "isn't it disgraceful and absurd?" she said. "but if i don't have my sleep i simply become stupid and dreary and useless beyond words." "why did you let me keep you up?" he said gently. "because i wanted to stay up with you," she said. she had moved to the centre table where the white carnations, as usual, filled the bowl. her slender hand touched them caressingly, lingered, and presently detached a blossom. she lifted it dreamily, inhaling the fragrance and looking over its scented chalice at him. "good-night, jim," she said. "good-night, dearest." he came over to her, hesitated, reddening; then bent and kissed her hand and the white flower it held. at her own door she lingered, turning to look after him as he crossed his threshold; then slowly entered her room, her lips resting on the blossom which he had kissed. chapter xx on saturday afternoon cynthia arrived at silverwood house, with cairns in tow; and they were welcomed under the trees by their host and hostess. which was all very delightful until cynthia and jacqueline paired off with each other and disappeared, calmly abandoning cairns and desboro to their own devices, leaving them to gaze at each other in the library with bored and increasing indifference. "you know, jim," explained the former, in unfeigned disgust, "i have quite enough of you every day, and i haven't come sixty miles to see more of you." "i sympathise with your sentiments," said desboro, laughing, "but miss lessler has never before seen the place, and, of course, jacqueline is dying to show it to her. and, jack--did you _ever_ see two more engaging young girls than the two who have just deserted us? really, partiality aside, does any house in town contain two more dignified, intelligent, charming----" "no, it doesn't!" said cairns bluntly. "nor any two women more upright and chaste. it's a fine text, isn't it, though?" he added morosely. "how do you mean?" "that their goodness is due to their characters, not to environment or to any material advantages. has it ever occurred to you how doubly disgraceful it is for people, with every chance in the world, not to make good?" "yes." "it has to me frequently of late. and i wonder what i'd have turned into, given cynthia's worldly chances." he shook his head, muttering to himself: "it's fine, _fine_--to be what she is after what she has had to stack up against!" desboro winced. presently he said in a low voice: "the worst she had to encounter were men of our sort. that's a truth we can't blink. it wasn't loneliness or poverty or hunger that were dangerous; it was men." "don't," said cairns, rising impatiently and striding about the room. "i know all about _that_. but it's over, god be praised. and i'm seeing things differently now--very, very differently. you are, too, i take it. so, for the love of mike, let's be pleasant about it. i hate gloom. can't a fellow regenerate himself and remain cheerful?" desboro laughed uncertainly, listening to the gay voices on the stairs, where jacqueline and cynthia were garrulously exploring the house together. * * * * * "darling, it's too lovely!" exclaimed cynthia, every few minutes, while jacqueline was conducting her from one room to another, upstairs, down again, through the hall and corridor, accompanied by an adoring multitude of low-born dogs and nondescript cats, all running beside her with tails stuck upright. and so, very happily together, they visited the kitchen, laundry, storeroom, drying room, engine room, cellars; made the fragrant tour of the greenhouses and a less fragrant visit to the garage; inspected the water supply; gingerly traversed the gravel paths of the kitchen garden, peeped into tool houses, carpenters' quarters; gravely surveyed compost heaps, manure pits, and cold frames. jacqueline pointed out the distant farm, with its barns, stables, dairy, and chicken runs, from the lantern of the windmill, whither they had climbed; and cynthia looked out over the rolling country to the blue hills edging the hudson, and down into gray woodlands where patches of fire signalled the swelling maple buds; and edging willows were palely green. over brown earth and new grass robins were running; and bluebirds fluttered from tree to fencepost. cynthia's arm stole around jacqueline's waist. "i am so glad for you--so glad, so proud," she whispered. "do you remember, once, long ago, i prophesied this for you? that you would one day take your proper place in the world?" "do you know," mused jacqueline, "i don't really believe that the _place_ matters so much--as long as one is all right. that sounds horribly priggish--but isn't it so, cynthia?" "few ever attain that self-sufficient philosophy," said cynthia, laughing. "you can spoil a gem by cheap setting." "but it remains a gem. oh, cynthia! _am_ i such a prig as i sound?" they were both laughing so gaily that the flock of pigeons on the roof were startled into flight and swung around them in whimpering circles. as they started to descend the steep stairs, jacqueline said casually: "do you continue to find mr. cairns as agreeable and interesting as ever?" "oh, yes," nodded the girl carelessly. "jim likes him immensely." "he is a very pleasant companion," said cynthia. when they were strolling toward the house, she added: "he thinks you are very wonderful, jacqueline. but then everybody does." the girl blushed: "the only thing wonderful about me is my happiness," she said. cynthia looked up into her eyes. "_are_ you?" "happy? of course." "is that quite true, dear?" "yes," said jacqueline under her breath. "and--there is no flaw?" "none--now." cynthia impulsively caught up one of her hands and kissed it. in the library they found beside their deserted swains two visitors, daisy hammerton and captain herrendene. "fine treatment!" protested cairns, looking at cynthia, as jacqueline came forward with charming friendliness and greeted her guests and made cynthia known to them. "fine treatment!" he repeated scornfully, "--leaving jim and me to yawn at each other until daisy and the captain yonder----" "jack," interrupted his pretty hostess, "if you push that button somebody will bring tea." "twice means that scotch is to be included," remarked desboro. "you didn't know that, did you, dear?" "the only thing i know about your house, monsieur, is that your cats and dogs must _not_ pervade the red drawing-room," she said laughing. "_look_ at captain herrendene's beautiful cutaway coat! it's all covered with fur and puppy hair! and now _he_ can't go into the drawing-room, either!" cairns looked ruefully at a black and white cat which had jumped onto his knees and was purring herself to sleep there. "if enough of 'em climb on me i'll have a motor coat for next winter," he said with resignation. tea was served; the chatter and laughter became general. daisy hammerton, always enamoured of literature, and secretly addicted to its creation, spoke of orrin munger's new volume which herrendene had been reading to her that morning under the trees. "such a queer book," she said, turning to jacqueline, "--and i'm not yet quite certain whether it's silly or profound. captain herrendene makes fun of it--but it seems as though there _must_ be _some_ meaning in it." "there isn't," said herrendene. "it consists of a wad of verse, blank, inverted, and symbolic. carbolic is what it requires." "isn't that the moon-youth who writes over the heads of the public and far ahead of 'em into the next century?" inquired cairns. "when an author," said herrendene, "thinks he is writing ahead of his readers, the chances are that he hasn't yet caught up with them." the only flaw in daisy hammerton's good sense was a mistaken respect for printed pages. she said, reverently: "when a poet like orrin munger refers to himself as a cubist and a futurist, it _must_ have some occult significance. besides, he went about a good deal last winter, and i met him." "what did you think of him?" asked desboro drily. "i scarcely knew. he _is_ odd. he kissed everybody's hand and spoke with such obscurity about his work--referred to it in such veiled terms that, somehow, it all seemed a wonderful mystery to me." desboro smiled: "the man who is preëminent in his profession," he said quietly, "never makes a mystery of it. he may be too tired to talk about it, too saturated with it, after the day's work, to discuss it; but never fool enough to pretend that there is anything occult in it or in the success he has made of it. only incompetency is self-conscious and secretive; only the ass strikes attitudes." jacqueline looked at him with pride unutterable. she thought as he did. he smiled at her, encouraged, and went on: "the complacent tickler of phrases, the pseudo-intellectual scrambler after subtleties that do not exist, the smirking creators of the tortuous, the writhing explorers of the obvious, who pretend to find depths where there are shallows, the unusual where only the commonplace and wholesome exist--these will always parody real effort, and ape real talent in all creative professions, and do more damage than mere ignorance or even mere viciousness could ever accomplish. and, to my mind, that is all there is and all there ever will be to men like munger." daisy laughed and looked at herrendene. "then i've wasted your morning!" she said, pretending contrition. he looked her straight in the eye. "i hadn't thought of it that way," he said pleasantly. cairns, tired of feigning an interest in matters literary, tinkled the ice in his glass and looked appealingly at cynthia. and his eyes said very plainly: "shall we go for a walk?" but she only smiled, affecting not to understand; and the discussion of things literary continued. it was very pleasant there in the house; late sunshine slanted across the hall; a springlike breeze fluttered the curtains, and the evening song of the robins had begun, ringing cheerily among the norway spruces and over the fresh green lawns. "it's a shame to sit indoors on a day like this," said desboro lazily. everybody agreed, but nobody stirred, except cairns, who fidgeted and looked at cynthia. perhaps that maiden's heart softened, for she rose presently, and drifted off into the music room. cairns followed. the others listened to her piano playing, conversing, too, at intervals, until daisy gave the signal to go, and herrendene rose. so the adieux were said, and a wood ramble for the morrow suggested. then daisy and her captain went away across the fields on foot, and cynthia returned to the piano, cairns following at heel, as usual. jacqueline and desboro, lingering by the open door, saw the distant hills turn to purest cobalt, and the girdling woodlands clothe themselves in purple haze. dusk came stealing across the meadows, and her frail ghosts floated already over the alder-hidden brook. a near robin sang loudly. a star came out between naked branches and looked at them. "how still the world has grown," breathed jacqueline. "except for its silence, night with all its beauties would be unendurable." "i believe we both need quiet," he said. "yes, quiet--and each other." her voice had fallen so exquisitely low that he bent his head to catch her words. but when he understood what she had said, he turned and looked at her; and, still gazing on the coming night, she leaned a little nearer to him, resting her cheek lightly against his shoulder. "that is what we need," she whispered, "--silence, and each other. don't you think so, jim?" "i need _you_--your love and faith and--forgiveness," he said huskily. "you have them all. now give me yours, jim." "i give you all--except forgiveness. i have nothing to forgive." "you dear boy--you don't know--you will never know how much you have to forgive me. but if i told you, i know you'd do it. so--let it rest--forgotten forever. how fragrant the night is growing! and i can hear the brook at intervals when the wind changes--very far away--very far--as far as fairyland--as far as the abode of the maker of moons." "who was he, dear?" "yu lao. it's chinese--and remote--lost in mystery eternal--where the white soul of her abides who went forth 'between tall avenues of spears, to die.' and that is where all things go at last, jim--even the world and the moon and stars--all things--even love--returning to the source of all." his arm had fallen around her waist. presently, in the dusk, he felt her cool, fresh hand seeking for his, drawing his arm imperceptibly closer. in the unlighted music room cynthia's piano was silent. presently jacqueline's cheek touched his, rested against it. "i never knew i could feel so safe," she murmured. "i am--absolutely--contented." "do you love me?" "yes." "you have no fear of me now?" "no. but don't kiss me--yet," she whispered, tightening his arm around her. he laughed softly: "your royal shyness is so wonderful--so wonderful--so worshipful and adorable! when may i kiss you?" "when--we are alone." "will you respond--when we are alone?" but she only pressed her flushed cheek against his shoulder, clinging there in silence, eyes closed. a few seconds later they started guiltily apart, as cairns came striding excitedly out of the darkness: "i'm going to get married! i'm going to get married!" he repeated breathlessly. "i've asked her, but she is crying! isn't it wonderful! isn't it wonderful! isn't it won----" "_you!_" exclaimed jacqueline, "and cynthia! the _darling_!" "i _said_ she was one! i called her that, too!" said cairns, excitedly. "and she began to cry. so i came out here--and i _think_ she's going to accept me in a minute or two! isn't it wonderful! isn't it won----" "you lunatic!" cried desboro, seizing and shaking him, "--you incoherent idiot! if that girl is in there crying all alone, _what_ are you doing out here?" "i don't know," said cairns vacantly. "i don't know what i'm doing. all this is too wonderful for me. i thought she knew me too well to care for me. but she only began to cry. and i am going----" he bolted back into the dark music room. desboro and jacqueline gazed at each other. "that man is mad!" snapped her husband. "but--i believe she means to take him. don't you?" "why--i suppose so," she managed to answer, stifling a violent inclination to laugh. they listened shamelessly. they stood there for a long while, listening. and at last two shadowy figures appeared coming toward them very slowly. one walked quietly into jacqueline's arms; the other attempted it with desboro, and was repulsed. "you're not french, you know," said the master of the house, shaking hands with him viciously. "never did i see such a blooming idiot as you can be--but if cynthia can stand you, i'll have to try." jacqueline whispered: "cynthia and i want to be alone for a little while. take him away, jim." so desboro lugged off the happy but demoralised suitor and planted him in a library chair vigorously. "now," he said, "how about it? has she accepted you?" "she hasn't said a word yet. i've done nothing but talk and she's done nothing but listen. it knocked me galley west, too. but it happened before i realised it. she was playing on the piano, and suddenly i knew that i wanted to marry her. and i said 'you darling!' and she grew white and began to cry." "did you ask her to marry you?" "about a thousand times." "didn't she say anything?" "not a word." "that's odd," said desboro, troubled. a few minutes later the clock struck. "come on, anyway," he said, "we've scarcely time to dress." in his room later, tying his tie, cairns' uncertainty clouded his own happiness a little; and when he emerged to wait in the sitting-room for jacqueline, he was still worrying over it. when jacqueline opened her door and saw his perplexed and anxious face, she came forward in her pretty dinner gown, startled, wondering. "what is it, jim?" she asked, her heart, still sensitive from the old, healed wounds, sinking again in spite of her. "i'm worried about that girl----" "_what_ girl!" "cynthia----" "oh! _that!_ jim, you frightened me!" she laid one hand on her heart for a moment, breathed deeply her relief, then looked at him and laughed. "silly! of course she loves him." "jack says that she didn't utter a word----" "she uttered several to me. rather foolish ones, jim--about her life's business--the stage--and love. as though love and the business of life were incompatible! anyway, she'd choose him." "is she going to accept him?" "of course she is. i--i don't mean it in criticism--and i love cynthia--but i think she is a trifle temperamental--as well as being the dearest, sweetest girl in the world----" she took his arm with a pretty confidence of ownership that secretly thrilled him, and they went down stairs together, she talking all the while. "didn't i tell you?" she whispered, as they caught a glimpse of the library in passing, where cairns stood holding cynthia's hands between his own and kissing them. "wait, jim, darling! you mustn't interrupt them----" "i'm going to!" he said, exasperated. "i want to know what they're going to do----" "jim!" "oh, all right, dear. only they gave me a good scare when i wanted to be alone with you." she pressed his arm slightly: "you haven't noticed my gown." "it's a dream!" he kissed her shoulder lace, and she flushed and caught his arm, then laughed, disconcerted by her own shyness. farris presented himself with a tray of cocktails. "jack! come on!" called desboro; and, as that gentleman sauntered into view with cynthia on his arm, something in the girl's delicious and abashed beauty convinced her host. he stretched out his hand; she took it, looking at him out of confused but sincere eyes. "is it all right to wish you happiness, cynthia?" "it is quite all right--thank you." "and to drink this h. p. w. to your health and happiness?" "that," she said laughingly, "is far more serious. but--you may do so, please." the ceremony ended, desboro said to jacqueline, deprecatingly: "this promises to be a jolly, but a rather noisy, dinner. do you mind?" and it was both--an exceedingly jolly and unusually noisy dinner for four. jacqueline and cynthia both consented to taste the champagne in honour of this occasion only; then set aside their glasses, inflexible in their prejudice. which boded well for everybody concerned, especially to two young men to whom any countenance of that sort might ultimately have proved no kindness. and jacqueline was as wise as she was beautiful; and cynthia's intuition matched her youthful loveliness, making logic superfluous. feeling desperately frivolous after coffee, they lugged out an old-time card table and played an old-time game of cards--piquet--gambling so recklessly that desboro lost several cents to cairns before the evening was over, and jacqueline felt that she had been dreadfully and rather delightfully imprudent. then midnight sounded from the distant stable clock, and every timepiece in the house echoed the far westminster chimes. good-nights were said; jacqueline went away with cynthia to the latter's room; desboro accompanied cairns, and endured the latter's rhapsodies as long as he could, ultimately escaping. in their sitting-room jacqueline was standing beside the bowl of white carnations, looking down at them. when he entered she did not raise her head until he took her into his arms. then she looked up into his eyes and lifted her face. and for the first time her warm lips responded to his kiss. she trembled a little as he held her, and laid her cheek against his breast, both hands resting on his shoulders. after a while he was aware that her heart was beating as though she were frightened. "dearest," he whispered. there was no answer. "dearest?" he could feel her trembling. after a long while he said, very gently: "come back and say good-night to me when you are ready, dear." and quietly released her. and she went away slowly to her room, not looking at him. and did not return. so at one o'clock he turned off the lights and went into his own room. it was bright with moonlight. on his dresser lay a white carnation and a key. but he did not see them. far away in the woods he heard the stream rushing, bank full, through the darkness, and he listened as he moved about in the moonlight. tranquil, he looked out at the night for a moment, then quietly composed himself to slumber, not doubting, serene, happy, convinced that her love was his. for a long while he thought of her; and, thinking, dreamed of her at last--so vividly that into his vision stole the perfume of her hair and the faint fresh scent of her hands, as when he had kissed the slender fingers. and the warmth of her, too, seemed real, and the sweetness of her breath. his eyes unclosed. she lay there, in her frail chinese robe, curled up beside him in the moonlight, her splendid hair framing a face as pale as the flower that had fallen from her half-closed hand. and at first he thought she was asleep. then, in the moonlight, her eyes opened divinely, met his, lingered unafraid, and were slowly veiled again. neither stirred until, at last, her arms stole up around his neck and her lips whispered his name as though it were a holy name, loved, honoured, and adored. the end [frontispiece: her lover was beside her and was suggesting that he escort her home.] the undercurrent by robert grant with illustrations by _f. c. yohn_ charles scribner's sons new york :::::::::::::: copyright, , by charles scribner's sons published, october, to my wife list of illustrations her lover was beside her and was suggesting that he escort her home . . . . . . _frontispiece_ "i have missed you two young people at church lately" "oh, emil, my husband, how could you!" she moaned "give it to me, paul," demanded the young woman imperiously "i am sure that this woman will tell me her story" there were moments, even from the first, when he let her perceive that he regarded her as a social companion constance would find her in possession at lincoln chambers "i should like to marry because i am in love" "refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you!" the flowers were the bright, shining milestone "i have surrendered" the undercurrent "those whom god has joined together let no man put asunder." it seemed to the bride that the rev. george prentiss laid especially solemn stress on these words, and as she listened to the announcement that, forasmuch as emil stuart and constance forbes had consented together in holy matrimony, he pronounced them to be man and wife, her nerves quivered with satisfaction at the thought that she was emil's forever. the deed was done, and she was joyous that the doubt which had harassed her in her weak moments--whether she was ready to renounce her ambition to help in the great work of education for the sake of any man--was solved and merged in the ocean of their love. doubtless emil was not perfect, but she adored him. no one had even hinted that he was not perfect, but she had made up her mind not to be ridiculous in her rapture, and to look the probable truth squarely in the face as became an intelligent woman. she knew that until recently he had been only a clerk with toler & company, lumber merchants, and that he had just started in business on his own account. he was dependent for support on his individual labors, but she had in her own name the nice little nest-egg of five thousand dollars, realized from the sale of the family homestead at colton, the country town, ten miles distant, from which, an orphan, she had come to benham a year previous. she was marrying for love a young man who had his own way to make, just as hundreds of others were doing every day, and she was proud of her part in the compact. a great happiness had come into her life, almost against her will, but now that it had come she recognized that it was nature working in the ordinary way, and that she would not remain single for all the kindergartens in creation. she had known emil only a year; still that year had been one of courtship, and no one had ever spoken ill of him, though she had been told that mr. prentiss, as a rector charged with overseeing the destinies of friendless girls who were members of his parish, had made inquiries. moreover, mr. prentiss had agreed that two young people, situated as they were, whose hearts were united, did well to marry on a small income and trust somewhat to the future. how otherwise, as he sagely remarked, was ideal love to flourish, and were mercenary considerations to be kept at bay? emil was twenty-five, and she just twenty. youthful, but still of a proper age, and they were growing older every day. decidedly it was a prudent love-match, and she had a right to be joyful, for there was nothing to reproach herself with or to regret. it will thus be observed that constance forbes was no happy-go-lucky sort of girl, and that though she was marrying younger than she had expected, she was marrying with her eyes open. she had scrutinized severely the romantic episode which had made her and her lover acquainted, and had even refused him the first time he asked her in order to counterbalance the glamour resulting from that meeting. the episode was a sequel to an accident to the train on which she was travelling from colton to benham. the engine ran into the rear of some freight cars, owing to a misplaced switch, and the tracks were strewed with splintered merchandise, so that the train was delayed four hours. the natural thing for passengers with time to kill was to inspect the wreckage, which, besides the dilapidated railroad apparatus, consisted of mangled chairs and tables, and bursted bags of grain, a medley of freight impressive in its disorder. constance found herself presently discussing with a young man the injuries to the cow-catcher of the engine, which had been twisted ludicrously awry. a moment before two other persons, one of them a woman, had been on the spot, and the conversation had been innocuously general, but they had drifted off. constance was conscious of having noticed the young man in her car, and of having casually observed that he had an alert expression, and that his hair rose perpendicularly from his brow, suggesting the assertiveness of a king-bird. to allow a young man to scrape acquaintance with her in cold blood would ordinarily have been entirely repugnant to her ideas of maidenly propriety, but she resisted her first impulse to turn her back on him and abruptly close the interview as needlessly harsh. it would surely be prudish to abstain from examining the battered locomotive, which lay on one side, with its nose in the air, as though it had fallen in the act of rearing, merely because a respectable-looking male passenger happened to be equally interested in the results of the catastrophe. so it chanced that after they had exchanged observations concerning the injuries to the overthrown "vulcan" and speculated as to how long they were likely to be delayed, their conversation became less impersonal. that is, the young man informed her that he was in the employ of toler & company, lumber merchants, and was returning to benham after having made some collections for them in the neighboring country. then he was familiar with benham? familiar? he should say so. he had been settled there for three years, and--(so he gave constance to understand)--there was absolutely nothing regarding the place which he could not tell her. first of all, benham was a growing, thriving city. its population had quadrupled in fifteen years. think of that! so that now (in ) there were upward of three hundred and fifty thousand souls in the city's limits. it was a hustling place. a shrewd, energetic man, who kept his wits active, ought to make his fortune there in ten years, if he were given a proper chance. was she going to live in benham? constance admitted that she was, and, helped along by friendly inquiries, she told him briefly her story. that she had lost her father and mother within a few months of each other, and that she had decided to come to benham, of which, of course, she had heard as a progressive city, in order to learn the kindergarten methods of teaching. subsequently she hoped to obtain an appointment as a school-teacher, and so earn her own living. "when you've finished your lessons and are ready to teach, let me know. i may be able to help you. i'm a little in politics myself, and a word to the school committee from a free and independent constituent might get you a place." he spoke jauntily though respectfully; but the offer reminded constance that the conversation was taking a more intimate turn than she had bargained for. she thanked him, and began to move slowly away, not with any definite idea of direction, but as a maidenly interruption. mr. stuart--for he had told her his name--kept pace with her and seemed quite unconscious of her purpose. in the few minutes during which they had been chatting she had observed that he was somewhat above the average height and rather spare, with a short mustache which curled up at the ends and was becoming. also, that he had small, dark eyes, which he moved rapidly and which gave him, in conjunction with his rising brow and hair, a restless, nervous expression. as they walked along the track the conductor was coming toward them. he had been to the telegraph office and was returning with a telegram in his hands. "well, what are our chances of getting away from here?" emil asked, with the manner of a man to whom time is precious. "it'll be a good three hours before the wrecking train arrives and the road is clear." the youth and the maid looked at each other and laughed at the gloominess of the situation. "in that case," said constance, glancing at the sloping banks bordering the railroad tracks, which were bright with white weed and other flora of the early summer time, "we shall have to dine on wild flowers." "i have some chocolate in my bag." constance flushed slightly with embarrassment. her random remark seemed almost to amount to a premeditated invitation to share his resources. emil's gaze had followed hers in her allusion to the wild flowers. "i'll tell you what," he exclaimed, impulsively, "since we have three hours to wait, why shouldn't we escape from this culvert and see what there is to be seen from the top of the bank? i shall be able to show you benham," he added, noticing, perhaps, that she looked doubtful, "for we are only nine or ten miles away." this was tempting. besides it would surely be ridiculous to remain where she was rather than explore the country merely because he was a casual acquaintance and had some chocolate in his travelling bag. the circumstances were harmless and unavoidable, unless she wished to write herself down a prude. the result was the logic of common-sense prevailed, and constance gave her consent to the proposal. so they climbed the bank presently, pausing on the way to gather some posies, with which the party of the second part proceeded to adorn her hat, after they had established themselves on an eligible fallen tree commanding a pleasing view. the fallen tree was at the edge of a copse of pine wood some two hundred yards from the bank. thus they were sheltered from the sun. out of the copse, almost at their feet, ran a bubbling brook, which added a touch of romance to the landscape rolling away in undulating and occasionally wooded farming land, as far as the eye could reach, until it terminated in a stretch of steeples and towers surmounted by a murky cloud. there was benham. although they were too distant to discern more than a confused panorama, emil essayed a few topographical details. he explained that twenty-five years earlier benham had comprised merely a cluster of frame houses in the valley of the peaceful river nye, which still served as an aid to description. primarily a village on the south side of the stream, it had first developed in a southerly direction, spreading like a bursting seed also laterally to east and west. its original main street, once bordered by old-fashioned frame houses with grass-plots and shade trees, had evolved into central avenue, at first the desirable street for residences, but now, and considerably prior to his advent, the leading retail shopping artery, alive with dry-goods shops, into which the women swarmed like flies. to the west of central avenue lay the tide of social fashion culminating two miles distant in the river drive, a wide avenue of stately private houses, situated where the nye made a broad bend to the north, and the new district beyond the river, where the mansion of carleton howard, the railroad magnate, stood a pioneer among elysian fields of real estate enterprise, sanctified by immaculate road surfaces and liberal electric light. constance listened eagerly. she was interested to know particulars concerning the city where she was to live, and she enjoyed the lively sardonic touches which relieved his description. though possessing an essentially earnest soul, she was susceptible to humor, and had an aversion for lack of appreciation of true conditions. to the east of central avenue, stuart further explained, lay first the shops and the business centre, and then the polyglot army of citizens who worked in the mills, oil yards, and pork factories. across the river to the south, approached by seven bridges of iron, replacing two frail wooden bridges of former days, were the mills and other industrial establishments. beyond these still further to the north was poland, so called, a settlement of the poles, favorite resort of the young ladies of benham's first families eager to offer the benefits of religion and civilization to the ignorant poor. following the nye in its sweep to the north, until it deflected again to the east, so as to run almost parallel to its first course, but in the opposite direction, were the public park, the land bonded for an art museum, wetmore college (the woman's academy of learning), and the other more or less ornamental institutions. this region of embryo public buildings, garnished with august spaces, was a sort of boundary line on the north, turning the current of industrial population more to the east. just as the tide to the west of central avenue was one of increasing comfort and fashion, this to the southeast, stretching out as the city spread, and forced constantly forward by the encroachments of trade, was one of common workaday conditions, punctuated (as he phrased it) now and again by poverty and distress. "i tell you, miss----" "forbes, constance forbes is my name." "thank you. i tell you, miss forbes, benham is a wideawake city. we have all the modern improvements. but the rich man gets the cream every time. i heard millionaire carleton howard, the railroad magnate, say the other day from the platform, that there is no country in the world where the poor man is so well off as in this. yet it's equally true that the rich are all the time getting richer and the poor poorer. he neglected to state that." he laughed scornfully, and his eyes sought constance's face for approval. she knew little concerning millionaires or the truth of the proposition he was advancing, but it interested her to perceive that he was evidently on the side of the unfortunate, for she cherished a keen pity for the ignorant poor almost as a heritage. her father had been a country physician--an energetic, sympathetic man, whose large vitality had been spent in relieving the sufferings of a clientage of small tillers of the soil over an area of fifteen miles. he had often spoken to her with pathos of the patient struggles of the common people. her own susceptibility to human suffering had been early quickened by the destiny of her mother, who had been thrown from a sleigh shortly after constance's birth, and had remained a paralytic invalid to the day of her death, requiring incessant care. "when i run for congress," he resumed, scowling slightly as he fixed his gaze on the murky cloud surmounting benham, "it'll be on a platform advocating government ownership of railroads, telegraphs, water-works, electric street cars, and all the other fat things out of which our modern philanthropists with capital squeeze enormous profits at the expense of their fellow-citizens. i'm against all that sort of thing. buy a gas plant to-day and consolidate it with another to-morrow. profit to the promoter two hundred per cent., without leaving the office. what does the consumer get? cheaper gas and greater efficiency. that's the fine-sounding tag; and some of the horny-handed multitude are guileless enough to believe it. it won't be long though now before i make my own pile," he added, not quite relevantly. "i'd have made it before this if they hadn't hindered me." constance perceived that he expected her to inquire what this meant, and she was curious to know. so she asked. "my employers, toler & company. if i had had the capital and the opportunities of those people, i should be wearing diamonds. i've tried to point out to them more than once that they were throwing big chances away by being so conservative and old-fashioned in their methods instead of branching out boldly and making a ten strike. one thing is certain, i'm not going to invent ideas for them for a pitiful one thousand dollars a year much longer. if they think they can afford not to raise my salary and give me a chance to show what i can do, i'm going to let them try after january first. it isn't very pleasant, miss forbes, to be doing most of the work and see someone else reaping all the profits. they can't help making money, old fogies as they are." it was certainly a galling situation. constance, who was young herself, felt that she sympathized with his desire to compel recognition. "it doesn't seem right at all," she said, "that you should be kept down." "i've made up my mind to give them notice that i must have an interest in the business after the first of the year, or i quit and start on my own account. i've my eye on a man with five thousand dollars who will go into partnership with me i hope." constance thought of her own five thousand dollars. she would almost like to lend it to him, though, of course, that was out of the question. still, there would be no harm in offering moral support. "if i were a man," she said, "and had faith in my own abilities, i wouldn't remain in a subordinate position a moment longer than was really necessary." in response to this note of sympathy emil opened his bag and produced two sticks of chocolate. he broke them apart and presented one to his companion. he also exhibited a compressible metal drinking-cup, which he filled from the bubbling brook. a crow cawed in the pine copse as though to call attention to the idyl, but only the two philosophers on the fallen tree-trunk were within hearing of his note of irony, and they regarded it merely as an added rural charm. "would you object to my smoking my pipe?" "not in the least. my father was devoted to his pipe." another bond of sympathy. or at least an indication to the swain that here was a maiden who was no spoil-sport and who would not have to be wooed by the sacrifice of personal comfort. moreover, it was not lost on him that she was an attractive-looking maiden, and that her voice was well modulated and refined. yet he was not thinking of her, but merely of her sex in general, when he said, "besides, i hope to be married some day. how could i support a wife in benham on one thousand dollars a year in the manner in which i should wish her to live?" constance could not answer this question, and did not try. it belonged to the category of remarks which were to be treated by a single woman as monologues. but she was keenly interested. one thousand dollars a year did not seem to her a very pitiful sum for a young couple just starting in life. she had heard her father say that when he married her mother he had only a hundred dollars in the world, and no assurance of practice. but that was not in benham. she had already divined that benham was to be a land of surprises. at all events she could not help admiring mr. stuart's chivalric attitude toward his future wife. his ambition was obviously quickened by the thought of his future sweetheart, whoever she might be; which was an agreeable tribute to her own sex, suggesting susceptibility to sentiment. "yes, i'd have been married before this if toler & company had not, as you say, kept me down," he continued, pensively, blowing a ring of smoke to emphasize his mood. "when after working hard all day i go to my room at night and take up my violin, i often think that if i could play to the woman i loved, instead of to the blank wall, how much happier i should be. but i suppose some of my friends would declare that i was a fool to desire a yoke around my neck before fate placed it there." his own readiness to relieve the stress of his confession by a sardonic turn counteracted the constraint which his intimate avowal had aroused. incredible as it is that a man in his sober senses should offer himself to a woman the first time he beholds her, no woman is altogether unaware that he is liable to do so. a modest and thoughtful young girl shrinks from precipitate progress in affairs of the heart. obviously the ground was less dangerous than it had for a moment appeared, but constance sought the avenue of escape which his allusion to music offered. besides it pleased her to hear that he was æsthetic in his interests. "you play on the violin, then?" she asked. "i envy anybody who has the talent and the opportunity for anything of that sort. i sing a little, but my voice is uncultivated, for in colton there was no one to tell us our faults." the earnest gleam in her fine dark eyes seemed to second the fresh enthusiasm of her tone. the warning scream of the whistle, not the voice of the crow, broke in at this point on their preoccupation with each other. this was the romantic episode from which their acquaintance dated--an episode which might readily have signified nothing. but on the other hand, it naturally supplied to the party of the second part a fair field of memory in which her imagination might wander when stirred by the subsequent attentions of this young knight with sympathy for the unfortunate, resolute confidence in his own abilities, generous views in regard to matrimony and a sensitive, æsthetic soul. for emil stuart sought her out at once, visited her at her lodgings and gave unmistakable signs that his purpose was both honorable and definite. within six months she knew from his own lips that he wished to make her his wife. she took another three in which to conquer her scruples and maidenly disinclination to be won too easily. why should she not yield? he was her first lover, and she loved him, and he declared with fervor that he adored her. contact with the conditions of a large city had shown her unmistakably that only after years of struggle could she hope to be more than a mere hand-maiden in the work of education, and that during the early period of her employment, if not indeed for life, the hours of work would be long and confining and her pleasures few. here was a companion who would provide her with a home, and upon whom the tenderness of her woman's nature could be freely bestowed. it was the old, old story, she said to herself, but was there a better one? ii the young couple bought a small house on the outskirts of the city, some distance beyond the nye, where it flows at right angles with its original course, and in the general region of fastidious growth, but in a settlement of inexpensive villas to one side of the trend of fashion. the bridegroom had not forgotten his liberal intention to begin housekeeping on a somewhat more ambitious scale than his salary as a clerk had warranted. he was now the senior partner in the firm of stuart & robinson, lumber dealers, which had been in existence six months. he had parted from his employers, toler & company, on the first of january, because of their refusal to accede to his demands, and had been able to persuade the comrade with five thousand dollars, to whom he had referred at his first meeting with constance to enter into a business alliance. robinson was three years his junior, and without commercial experience, but eager to turn the windfall, which had come to him through the death of an aunt into a cool million. what could be more natural than to take advantage of the experience which stuart offered him--an experience which gave promise of swift and lucrative operations in the near future? it was a very modest establishment, from the standpoint of affluence. a neat little house of eight rooms supplied with modern improvements, and, though one of a builder's batch, designed with some regard for artistic effect, which indicated that a preference for harmonious beauty was working in the popular mind of benham against the idols, colorless uniformity and bedizened ugliness. to the bride, whose experience of housekeeping was limited to a country town where colorless uniformity ruled undisturbed and modern improvements were unknown, the expenditure of her nest-egg of five thousand dollars in this complete little home seemed an investment no less enchanting than wise. five thousand for the house, with a subsequent mortgage upon it of one thousand for the purchase of the furniture and to provide a small bank balance for emergencies. this was her contribution to the domestic partnership, and she rejoiced to think that her ability to help to this extent would leave emil a free hand for the display of his business talent. the basis of a newly married woman's peace of soul is trust. she feels that the responsibility is on her husband to make good the manly qualities with which she has endowed him, and because of which she has consented to become his mate. occasionally during the first few months of her married life constance laughed to think that all her maidenly eagerness to solve the riddle of life brilliantly, and all her profound searching of the mysteries of the universe should have ended in her becoming an every-day housewife with dustpan and brush, and the wife of one who, to all outward appearances, was an every-day young man. but her laugh savored of gladness. she had given herself to him because she had faith that his energy, self-reliance, fearless humor and sympathetic hatred of shams would distinguish him presently from the common herd of men, and vindicate her infatuation. she had given herself to him, besides, because he loved her--a delightful consciousness. accordingly, she enclosed herself in the web of happiness which her confidence in him had spun about her, and took up her domestic duties with light-hearted devotion. nevertheless, no woman emerges from her honeymoon with exactly the same estimate of her lover as before. if nothing else, she has seen his mental and moral characteristics in their undress, so to speak, and become habituated to their sublimity. we may be no less fond of a person whose anecdotes have grown familiar to us, and analogously a wife does not weary of her husband's qualities merely because they have lost the glamor of novelty. on the contrary she is apt to continue to adore them because they are his. still she feels free to scrutinize them closely and--unconsciously at least--to submit them to the test of her own silent judgment. she discovers, too, of course, that he has sides and idiosyncrasies the existence of which she never suspected. ordinarily she finds to her surprise that his attitude in regard to this or that matter has shifted perceptibly since marriage, so that, instead of being lukewarm or ardent, as the case may be, he has become almost strenuous or indifferent in his attitude. hence she divines that during their courtship some of his real opinions and tendencies have been kept in retreat. constance sensibly had decided in advance that emil was not perfect, so she was prepared to discover a blemish here and there. in spite of her happiness it became obvious to her during the first six months of their married life that the self-confidence which had attracted her verged at times on braggadocio, and moreover that opposition or disappointment made him sour and morose. if his affairs were prospering, his spirits rose, his wits scintillated, and he spoke of the world with a gay, if sardonic, forbearance, which suggested that it was soon to be his foot-ball. but if matters went wrong, he not only became depressed, but was prone to dwell upon his own ill-luck, and inveigh bitterly against the existing conditions of society. she had noticed from the first days of their acquaintance that there appeared to be an inconsistency between his eagerness to grow rich and his enmity toward the capitalists of benham; but she had gathered that he was merely eager to put himself in a position where his sympathy for the toiling mass could be fortified by the opportunities which wealth would afford. but now that his feverish absorption in business had apparently banished all interest in philanthropic undertakings from his thoughts, the inconsistency was more conspicuous. constance spoke to emil about this at last. naturally, she broached the topic when he was in one of his sanguine moods. in response he took out his pocket-book and asked her how much she required, having jumped to the conclusion that she was beating around the bush and had some particular object of charity in view. "you don't understand, exactly, emil," she answered. "i'm not asking for money; i was merely hoping that having me to provide for isn't going to cut you off from your former associations--to lessen your sympathy with political movements for the protection of the people such as you used to take part in before we were married." stuart frowned, and thrust his hands deep into his pockets as he was apt to do when he felt his oats. "you don't seem to realize, constance, that a man starting in business needs all his energy and watchfulness to avoid having his head thrust under water by the fellows who are on the surface of the commercial whirlpool and who don't want company. when i've got the sharks in my line of trade where i want them, which is, metaphorically speaking, at the bottom of the pond, it'll be time enough to take up politics. you'd like to see me in congress some day, wouldn't you? well, that will be plain sailing for me in this district as soon as i control the lumber business of benham, little saint." this sounded plausible, and did not seem to admit of argument, provided the consummation of the business supremacy indicated by her husband was not deferred too long. she dismissed the matter from her mind for the time being. it was less easy to dispose of another tendency which had revealed itself in unmistakable guise since their marriage, and this was emil's indifferent attitude, not merely toward her form of religious faith, but toward all religion. within a short time after their acquaintance began she had discovered that he was not an episcopalian, and that his views regarding the spiritual problems of the universe were not those of orthodox christians. but on the other hand, although he was fond even then of blowing down her card-houses, as he called them, with an occasional blast of scientific truth, he had been ready to accompany her to church and had never seemed lacking in reverence. she had asked herself the question why she should stifle her love for him merely because his conception of the eternal mysteries did not coincide with her own, and she had answered it by the independent assurance that his attitude toward life was the important consideration. she had even been fascinated by his broad outlook on the universe, with his flashing eyes and his righteous contempt for some of the dogmas of the sects. he had seemed to her imagination at such times almost as a reforming archangel purging away the dross of superstition and convention from the essentials of religious faith. he did not believe in the miracles, it is true, because he regarded them as violations of the laws of the universe; but was he not a firm believer in the spirit of christian conduct? she had reasoned thus as a maiden, and had never doubted the soundness of her self-justification. but the sequel was disturbing to her peace of mind and to her hopes. it was not emil's refusal to go to church, nor his dedication of the sabbath to mere rest and recreation which distressed her, but his scornful tone in regard to any form of religious ceremonial; his scornful tone toward her own reverence for the faith in which she had been educated. even the term of endearment which he coined for her, "little saint," was a jocose and condescending appellation reflecting on her susceptibility to ideas which clever people had discarded as fatuous. she could have borne without complaint going to church alone had he been willing to respect her opinions as she respected his. but on her return from service he was sure to greet her with some ironical jest which made painfully clear that he regarded her habit of worship as a sign of mental inferiority. his own habit on sunday was to remain in bed until after the church hour. then he would establish himself in a loose-fitting woolen garment, which he called his smoking-jacket, on the porch or in the sitting-room and read the sunday papers, with a pipe in his mouth. sometimes he played on his violin, and by the time constance returned he was ready for a short walk, ostensibly for the sake of exercising a small black and white terrier. his wife could not accompany him on this stroll, for she could not neglect their mid-day dinner, and when he sat down at table he was apt, if the weather was fine, to refer pathetically to the sin of having wasted it in the city. "if only you were content, little saint, to worship nature with me," he would say, "we would get away into the country with a luncheon basket the first thing in the morning and make a day of it in the woods." there was something winsome in this proposition, especially as the inability to enjoy an outing because of her reluctance to renounce church worship seemed to spoil his day in a double sense. for, as a consequence, he ate a huge sunday dinner, including two bottles of beer, smoked more than his wont, and after a tirade against the evils of monopoly or some kindred topic invariably fell into a heavy slumber on the lounge, from which he did not awaken until nearly sunset. "another sunday wasted," he more than once remarked by way of melancholy comment on this state of affairs. no wonder that constance was perplexed as to her duty. since coming to benham she had been a member of rev. george prentiss's parish. her mother was of english descent, and constance had been brought up in the episcopal faith. at colton there had been no church of that denomination, and to attend the episcopal service one had to drive or walk two miles to a neighboring village. it had often seemed to constance more important to remain at home with her invalid mother than to take this excursion. consequently, during her girlhood, she had been irregular in her attendance at church. frequently, in order to be able to return home more speedily, she had worshipped at the methodist or unitarian meeting-house in the village. sometimes she had stayed away altogether; therefore she understood the fascination of communion with books or with spring buds or autumn leaves as a substitute for worship in the sanctuary. her untrammelled experience had made her open-minded and independent, but on the other hand the difficulty of kneeling at her own shrine had nourished her sentiment for the episcopal faith, so that she had rejoiced spiritually in the opportunity, which her residence in benham afforded, to become a regular and devoted member of mr. prentiss's flock. moreover, the vital character of st. stephen's as a religious body had appealed to her. the little church near colton had been a peaceful and poetic, but poor and unenterprising establishment. contrasted with it, st. stephen's appeared a splendid and powerful influence for righteousness, stirring deeply her æsthetic sensibilities, and at the same time proving its living, practical grasp on human character through its able pastor and active organization. st. stephen's never slumbered; st. stephen's prided itself on its ardent faith and essentially modern spirit; and st. stephen's, by common acceptance, was synonymous with its rector, rev. george prentiss. mr. prentiss had grown up with the church. that is, he had been curate to the rev. henry glynn, an englishman who had selected benham as a promising pasture for the propagation of the episcopal faith beyond the pale of the mother country, who had gone forth into the wilderness and had lived to see a goodly flock of sheep browsing beneath his ministrations. mr. glynn was a pioneer, and had gone forth in the early seventies when benham was in the throes of rapid progress and extraordinary development from month to month. his mission had been to spread the tenets of his sect by the zeal and eloquence of his testimony, and to provide a suitable edifice for the human souls attracted by his teachings. in his time the congregation forsook the small and primitive structure, erected in hot haste within a year of his arrival, for a commodious and sufficiently æsthetic building. before his death, which occurred prematurely, benham had become a large and important municipality. his successor found himself not only the pastor of the leading episcopal church of the city--which had also in the process of social evolution become the most fashionable and probably the richest church in the city--but a shepherd in a wilderness of a different sort. in other words, he was brought suddenly face to face with the problems which confront earnest spirits eager to redeem human nature in a huge industrial community. the former wilderness had blossomed, even with the rose, but the thistles, tares, and rank grass which fought for mastery with the wholesome vegetation had revolutionized the soil. there were scores of saloons in benham; there was a herd of immoral women on the streets of benham; and, most perplexing problem of all, perhaps, there were, only a mile apart, the picturesque neighborhood of the riverside drive with its imposing, princely, private mansions, and smith street, boulevard of unwholesome tenement-houses, garnished with rumshops and squalid lives--contrast repugnant and disconcerting to american ideals, and to him as an american. but rev. george prentiss was not the man to shrink from deep and important responsibilities. on the contrary, it might be said of him that he revelled in them. the consciousness that, in spite of benham's mushroom-like growth as a proud testimonial to the sacredness of institutions established by the free-born, the city had begun closely to resemble large cities everywhere was sobering, but on the whole, inspiriting to him as a worker. his mission was clearly disclosed to him--a mission worthy of the energies of a clergyman eager to bring his church into closer touch with everyday life and common human conditions. for mr. prentiss as an american and a churchman was ambitious for the future of the episcopal faith. his predecessor and friend had seen in their pastorate only a glorious continuation of english orthodoxy--a spiritual revolt from dissent, transcendentalism and cold, intellectual independence, which would, in the end, gather sixty million people into a protestant fold, national in its title and dimensions. mr. prentiss shared this delectable vision, but he would not have american episcopacy a mere blind imitation of the mother church or a colonial dependency. he felt that it behooved those of his faith on this side of the atlantic to gird their loins zealously, and to guide their sheep fearlessly, receiving with respectful attention the interpretations of the spiritual lords of great britain regarding dogma, but exercising intelligent discretion in regard to their adoption. this attitude, which might be called patriotism, in some sense reflected the pride which dante, that stern censor of prelates, condemns. was the church of england to prescribe doctrine to the thriving, hardy child of its loins forever? surely not, now that that child, waxing in size and resources and dignified with power, promised soon to rival its parent. it was agreeable to the rector of st. stephen's to reflect that the tide of fashion was bearing the children of unitarian and other indeterminate faiths into the fold of the true and living church of christ. it was also agreeable to behold in his mind's eye that church--the american church--taking advantage of this splendid opportunity and accepting with fearless and uncompromising zeal the challenge of infidelity and materialism. the people were tired, he believed, of intellectual, spiritual dissipation, in which each soul formed its own conception of god, and defined the terms of its own compact with him. they were welcoming fervor, passion, color and all the symbols of a faith which beholds in man a miserable sinner redeemed through the blood of christ. if the people of his nationality had been reluctant in the days of their early history, when population was sparse and sin was kept at bay by primitive economic conditions, to admit that man was a sinner, could they doubt it now? was not benham with its bustling, seething, human forces an eloquent testimonial to the reality of evil and the intensity of the struggle between the powers of darkness? the church's mission--his mission--was to take an active part, in a modern spirit, in the great work of regeneration by bringing light to the blind, sympathy and relief to the down-trodden and protection to the oppressed. mr. prentiss had carried his theories energetically into practice. he had striven to make st. stephen's a tabernacle for the prosperous and the fortunate and also for the desolate and the friendless. his wish would have been to see them intermingled at morning service without regard to vested rights, but his wardens assured him that the finances of the church could not be conducted successfully except on the basis of inviolable pew ownership until after the morning service had begun. but he was able to throw the church open in the afternoon to the general public, and to reserve in the morning certain gallery and less desirable benches for the accommodation of young men and women students who wished to worship regularly and could not afford to hire seats. if it was at first a tribulation to him that his congregation was rich and fashionable and a little stolid, their liberality on collection days was a great compensation, for it gave him scope for extending his influence along the line of his ambition by the establishment of the mission church, known as the church of the redeemer, in the heart of benham's arid social quarter, as an adjunct to st. stephen's, and to be maintained by the generosity of that body of christians. when this undertaking was in full operation, under the direction of a competent curate, mr. prentiss experienced fewer qualms as he looked down from his reading-desk at the gay bonnets and costly toilets of his own parishioners. he had been assured by several women active in church work that the independent poor were not fond of worshipping where their clothes would show at a disadvantage. as a christian who was an american, he deplored the formation of classes in the sheep-fold of the church; yet he reasoned that the preferences of human nature could not be ignored altogether in a matter of this kind, and it was evident that his parishioners preferred to worship god in full possession of their property rights, surrounded by their social acquaintance. there was a zest, too, in the knowledge that he was the rector of the important and powerful people of the city, and that he had the opportunity to denounce the commercial spirit of the age in the presence of men like carleton howard, the millionaire, and women like his sister, mrs. randolph wilson, and their friends. if he could reach their hearts, what might he not hope for? obviously by the support of this class the church could not fail to increase its revenues and extend its power. the triumph of the church was after all, for him, the essential thing--the illumination of the souls of men through faith in the christian ideal. so with this end constantly in view, rev. george prentiss ministered to his well-favored congregation in st. stephen's, and vicariously, and often by personal service, conducted a crusade against ignorance and sin in the church of the redeemer and its neighborhood. iii constance forbes had been one of the students who found a haven on the free benches at st. stephen's. almost at once mr. prentiss noticed her and, struck by her interesting face, he sent the church deaconess, mrs. hammond, to visit her at her lodgings. she was invited to join a bible class of young women of her own age, and welcomed to the social parlor in the vestry provided for girls who, like herself, were strangers in benham. here there were magazines, writing materials, and afternoon tea. while availing herself of these privileges, constance frequently met her rector. he inquired sympathetically concerning her work and aspirations, and showed afterward that he kept her distinctly in mind. she felt that she could freely consult him if she were in need of advice; once or twice she did consult him about her reading; and she was gratified by the interest which he took in her marriage. consequently, the idea of not attending morning service was distressing to her. she felt sure that mr. prentiss would notice it and be disappointed. yet, what were mr. prentiss and his feelings in comparison with her obligation to her husband? emil's sundays were spoiled because she would not accompany him to the country instead of going to church. his attitude was unreasonable and absurd, but the fact remained that he did not go alone, and lounged at home instead. after all, she was no longer a girl, and her religious faith would not be imperilled were she to miss church now and then. moreover, though she held fast to her creed and deplored emil's radical views, she knew in her heart that she was more critical than formerly of what she heard in church, and that she was sometimes driven by her doubts as to the possibility of supernatural happenings to seek refuge behind the impenetrable fortress of a righteous life. there she was safe and happy, and free, it seemed to her, from the responsibility of harassing her young housewife's brains with non-essentials. might it not be for her own advantage to take a respite from religious functions? certainly her companionship to emil seemed more important at the moment than her own habit of public worship. she began by staying away from church occasionally. emil expressed delight at her reasonableness and carried out with zest his plan of a sunday outing. it was a simple matter on their bicycles, or by a few minutes in the train, to reach country air and sylvan scenes, and he was entirely satisfied to spend the day in tramping through the woods and fields, stopping to fish or to lie in the sun as the humor seized him. the working-man's sabbath, he termed it. the programme was restful and alluring to constance also. her husband on these occasions seemed less at odds with the world, and willing to enjoy himself without rancor or argument. after their luncheon he would smoke complacently for awhile and then take up his fiddle and practise upon it with genuine content for an hour or more, while she sat with her back against a tree or a bank, reading. he still drank his bottles of beer, but if he slumbered, it was only for a brief period. he never neglected his fiddle, and its influence appeared, as it were, to soothe his savage breast, and to make him good-humored and agreeably philosophic. he was too fond of theorizing to neglect altogether these opportunities for the enunciation of his grievances against civilization, but he was lively instead of bitter, a distinction which meant much to his wife. when their first baby was born, these sunday excursions were temporarily discontinued; but constance was eager to renew them, for emil, after going alone a few times, relapsed into his old habits. accordingly, as soon as the little one was able to toddle, a child's wagon was procured, which emil was ready to draw, and by avoiding fences and other barriers, the difficulties presented by this new tie were overcome. by the time the child was a year and a half old, constance realized that she had been to church but once in the last twelve months. this had been partly due to the action of the rector of st. stephen's, for constance knew within a few weeks of her first absences from church that her conduct had been noticed. the curate, mr. starkworth, inquired at the door if there had been illness in the family. later the deaconess made a call of friendly observation, in the course of which it transpired that mr. prentiss had observed that mrs. stuart no longer occupied her seat. the culprit did not attempt to explain, and within a fortnight she received a visit from the rector himself. no one could have been more affable and reassuring. he established himself in an easy chair and accepted graciously the cigar which emil proffered him. he was a large man of dignified mien and commanding person, clerical as to his dress and visage, but with a manner of conversation approximating that of men of the world--an individual manifestation which was intended to reveal a modern spirit. he was clearly a person with whom liberties could not be taken, and yet evidently one who desired to divest his point of view of cant, and to put religion on a man to man, business basis so far as was consistent with his sacred calling. he asked genial questions concerning their domestic welfare, and the progress of the new lumber firm, spoke shrewdly of local politics in which he supposed that stuart was engaged, and sought obviously to give the impression that he was an all-round man in his sympathies, and that he took an active interest in temporal matters. when at last there was a favorable pause in the current of this secular conversation, mr. prentiss laid his hands on his knees, and, bending forward and looking from one to the other in a friendly way, said with decision: "i have missed you two young people at church lately." [illustration: "i have missed you two young people at church lately."] constance winced at the inquiry, and her eyes fell beneath the clergyman's searching gaze. she could not deny the impeachment, which was embarrassing. at the same time the color had scarcely mounted to her cheeks before she felt the force of her defence rising to her support, and she looked up. she appreciated that it was incumbent on her, as the active church member, to respond, and she became suddenly solicitous lest emil might, and so make matters worse. in truth, emil's first impulse had been toward anger. it was one of his maxims not to submit to browbeating. but what he regarded as the humor of the proceeding changed his wrath into scorn, and he closed his teeth on his pipe with the dogged air of a master of the situation willing to be amused withal. mr. prentiss divined in a flash, from the insolence of this expression, that he had to deal with a hopeless case--so far as the human soul can ever seem hopeless to the missionary--a contemptuous materialist, and his own countenance grew grave as he turned back to the wife. "yes, we have been very little, mr. prentiss. my husband, you know, does not belong to your church. he went with me while we were engaged, but--but now i think i can help him best by staying away for the present." "you go elsewhere, then?" "no. we do not go to church. we spend our sundays in the country--in the fresh air, walking and resting. we take our luncheon, and my husband brings his fiddle and his fishing rod." constance marvelled at her own boldness, and at the ardor with which she delivered her plea of justification. "i understand," said mr. prentiss. his tone was sober, but not impatient. the argument for a day of rest and recreation for the tired man of affairs was nothing new to him. nor was mr. prentiss ignorant of its plausible value. he wished to meet it without temper, as one rational being discussing with another, notwithstanding eternal verities were concerned. "supposing, mrs. stuart, that everyone were to reason in the same way, what would become of our churches?" "they would have to go out of commission," muttered emil with delighted brusqueness. the rector saw fit to bear this brutality without offence. he ignored the commentator with his eyes, as though to indicate that his mission was solely to the wife, but he answered, "they would, and the christian faith would perish in the process. are you, mrs. stuart," he continued, "prepared to do without the offices of religion, and to substitute for them a pagan holiday?" "we pass the day very quietly and simply," said constance. "we disturb no one and interfere with no one." "but you become pagans, utterly." "i try to think that god hears my prayers in the open air no less than in church, while i am keeping my husband company." it wounded her to oppose her rector, yet the need of a champion for her husband's cause supplied her with speech, and gave to her countenance quiet determination. constance possessed one of those lithe, nervous personalities, so frequently to be met with in american women of every class, the signal attribute of which is bodily and mental refinement. her hair was dark, her face thin, her eyes brown and wistful, her figure tall and elastic; her pretty countenance had the charm of temperament rather than mere flesh and blood, and its sympathetic, intelligent comeliness suggested spiritual vigor. mr. prentiss was not blind to these qualities. they had attracted him at the beginning of their acquaintance, and he was the more solicitous on account of them to reclaim her from error. "god hears your prayers wherever you utter them, be assured of that. but i ask you to consider whether the habit of neglecting public worship is not a failure in reverence to the christ who listens to our supplications and without whose aid we are helpless to overcome sin." emil had been delighted by his wife's sturdy attitude. now that a question of doctrine was brought into the discussion, he felt that the time had come for him to intervene again. "we who worship in the presence of nature are not hampered by dogmas of that kind," he said. "temptation is temptation, and i for one have never been able to understand why the man who gets the better of it isn't entitled to the credit of his strength and sense. my wife looks at such things very much as i do." "not altogether, emil. you know i miss not going to church." "i have never prevented you from going." "but you have discountenanced it, man. it is to please you, and to humor your views that your wife is sacrificing her most sacred convictions," mr. prentiss exclaimed with a touch of sternness. "you think church-going of the utmost importance; i do not. there's where we differ. everyone must decide those questions for himself--or herself." the rector resented the smug assurance of the retort by a frown and a twist of his shoulders, as though he were sorry that he had condescended to bandy words with this irreverent person. "yes, we all must," he said, addressing constance. "'he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.'" he regretted the next instant having indulged in this clerical formula, which was foreign to his usual method. constance flushed at the words of scripture, then she drew herself up slightly and said: "i am very sorry, indeed, to disappoint you, mr. prentiss, but i can't promise to attend church regularly at present. perhaps it is true, as my husband says, that my opinions have changed somewhat in regard to points of faith. i hope--i shall pray that after a time we may both come back to you." there was no mistaking the finality of this unequivocal but gently uttered speech, and mr. prentiss knew that one of the signs of a man of the world is the capacity to take a hint. though it galled him to leave this attractive member of his flock in the clutches of one so apparently unfit to appreciate her bodily or spiritual graces, he recognized that to press the situation at this point could result only in separating her still further from the influence of the church. "you shall have my prayers, too--both of you," he said, fervently. then he arose and resumed the demeanor of a friendly caller. but emil, now that he had shown clearly that he had the courage of his convictions, felt the need of vindicating his character as a host. he said jauntily, "i hope there's no offence in standing up for what one believes to be true. it's one of the greatest poets, you know, who wrote there lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." "you young whipper snapper!" was mr. prentiss's unuttered comment, but he did not relax his lay serenity of manner save by the slight vein of sarcasm which his words contained. "no offence, certainly. but you should also bear in mind, young man, that others no less mentally qualified than yourself have pondered the problems of the universe and come to very different conclusions. a man takes large responsibilities upon himself in deciding to deprive his wife and children of the comforts of religion." "i am anxious that my children when they grow up may not be obliged, as i was, to unlearn what they were taught to believe in their youth," emil retorted with smiling effrontery. he was pleased with his wife and with himself and he was glad to get in a final body blow on the person of this officious slummer, as he subsequently described their visitor. "i am not unfamiliar with that line of argument," said mr. prentiss, in the act of departure. "but i invite you to consider whether your children, when they are old enough to think for themselves, will be grateful for the substitute which you offer for doctrine. they ask for bread, and what do you give them? a stone." emil laughed. he was content to let the parson have the last word. he stood for a moment on the door-step watching him march down the street. he felt that he had turned the tables on him completely and had thereby won a victory for clear thinking and freedom of thought. he exclaimed exultantly as he re-entered the parlor, "i guess that'll teach the old duck to stay in his own barn-yard and not come waddling down here to try to get us to believe that the world was made in seven days and jonah was swallowed by the whale." constance, who had fallen into troubled reverie, looked up and exclaimed with emphasis, "mr. prentiss is a very reasonable man about such matters, emil. he used particularly to tell his bible class that the language of the old testament is sometimes metaphorical." "yes, i know how the clergy jump and change feet to avoid being cornered. i'm aware they explain that the seven days were not our days of twenty-four hours, but were symbolic terms for geological stretches of time. do you call that ingenuous?" constance winced. it happened that mr. prentiss had offered just this explanation of holy writ, and somehow, now that emil held it up to scorn, the rector's commentary appeared flimsy. she sighed, then with emotion said, "emil, i wish you would tell me what you really do believe." "believe?" he smiled indulgently as he echoed his wife's inquiry, but his eyes snapped and his shock of hair seemed to stand up straighter. his manner expressed a mixture of amused condescension and the tartness of a dogged spirit suspicious of attack. "i believe, for one thing, that the laws of nature are never violated, and that their integrity is a grander attribute of divinity than the various sensational devices which the orthodox maintain that an all-wise god employs to attract the attention of men to himself. i believe also that you in your secret soul entirely agree with me." constance was silent a moment. "and yet you haven't answered my question, emil. you haven't told me what you do believe. why isn't religion just as real and true a part of man as any other instinct of his being? it has been a constantly growing attribute." "and the nonsense is being gradually squeezed out of it. why should i accept the dogma of that reverend father in god that a man can do nothing by his own efforts? isn't it a finer thought that we grow by virtue of our struggles and that the free and independent soul wins the battle of life by making the most of itself?" emil spoke with fierce rhetoric. to his wife's ear he seemed to be pointing out besides that his own soul was fighting this battle and that he was willing to be judged by the results regardless of doctrine. constance had long ago convinced herself that his bark was worse than his bite; that he believed more than he really admitted of the essentials of religion; that he acknowledged his responsibility to god and was devoting his days to advancing the useful work of the world, and incidentally providing for her happiness at the same time. his plea for credit to the independent soul which overcame temptation and obstacles was, at least, manly, and a sign of courage. she scarcely heeded the quotation from the "rubaiyat," which he was murmuring as a corollary to his apostrophe to free and noble endeavor. o thou who didst with pitfall and with gin beset the path i was to wander in, thou wilt not with predestined evil round enmesh and then impute my fall to sin? she had heard him quote these lines and others of like import before, and she had learned some of them by rote. she recognized their charm and cleverness and to a certain extent their plausibility; but she had not the slightest impulse to revolutionize her own faith. her absorbing thought, for the moment, was how to be true to her husband without being false to the church. mr. prentiss, in spite of his appeal, had left her conscience unconvinced, and now her clear-headed, fearless emil had suddenly given her soul the cue to expression. her brown eyes kindled rapturously and trustfully as she said: "it's the life after all which counts, isn't it? everything else is of secondary importance." "of course," said emil. "and when it comes to that," he added, "there's no one in the world who can pick a flaw in yours, you little saint." "you mustn't say things like that," constance murmured. nevertheless, so far as it was a manifestation of confidence from the man she loved, it was pleasant to hear. from this time her attendance at church was very infrequent. she did not cease to go altogether, but almost every sunday was spent in expeditions in the open air. the cares resulting from the birth of two children necessarily interfered with her going regularly to service while they were infants, and as soon as they were able to walk, the sunday outings were resumed with the little boy and girl as companions. mr. prentiss did not revisit the house, but on each of the two or three occasions when constance occupied her old seat in st. stephen's, she felt that the rector had noticed her. he had apparently left her to her devices, but his glance told her that she was not forgotten. iv it is fitting and fortunate that a young woman in a large city, who has given her happiness into the keeping of a man with his own way to make, should be ignorant of her peril, and that charmed by love she should take for granted that he will succeed. but the rest of the world has no excuse for being equally blind, since the rest of the world is aware that there is no recipe by which a girl of twenty can secure a guaranty either of domestic happiness or ability on the part of her lover to hold his own in the competition for a livelihood. it is easy for the moralist of society, writing at his desk, to utter the solemn truth that young people should not rush hastily into matrimony. assuredly they should not. but after all, is it to be wondered at that so many of them do? love is the law of life. the renewal of the race through the union of the sexes is an instinct which asserts itself in spite of code and thesis, and the institution of lawful wedlock is the bit by which civilization regulates it. let us, says the modern scientist, isolate the degenerate members of society, the diseased, the vicious, and the improvident, and prevent them from having offspring. but still the priest of rome, eager for fresh converts, but wise, too, in his knowledge of the law of sex, whispers to his flock "marry early," and adds under his breath, "lest ye sin." it is a part of religion, perhaps, for the daughters of the well-to-do, who have been screened from contact with the rough world, and who sit in judgment on several lovers in the paternal drawing-room, to weigh and ponder and to call in the brain to assist, or if needs be, silence the heart. yet even they sometimes elope instead with the wrong man against whom they have been warned, and are unhappy--or happy--ever afterward. but when we turn from these privileged young persons--the pretty, daintily dressed young women in their easter bonnets, who worship at our fashionable churches--and from some height look out over wide stretches of streets with every house alike, the homes of the average working population, and reflect that every house shelters the consequences of a marriage, shall we ask pitilessly, "how came ye so?" and if the answer of some be "we met and loved and married, and now we are miserable," shall we draw ourselves up and tell them that the fault is theirs, that marriages are (or should be) made in heaven, and that they ought to have discovered before they plighted their troth that john would be a rascal or mary a slattern? is it not the privilege and the blessing of the young to trust? shall we blame them if, in the ignorance of youth and under the spell of the law of their beings, they mistake unworthy souls for their ideals? the firm of stuart & robinson, dealers in lumber, had started with a small capital, but the senior partner had confidence in his capacity to do a large business. his late employers, toler & company, according to his opinion, had been old fogies in their methods. to adopt his own metaphor, instead of getting up early and shaking the trees, they expected to have ripe peaches served to them on sevrès china, or, in other words, they let great opportunities slip through their fingers. he proceeded during the first year to carry out several enterprises which he had vainly called to their attention while in their service, and he had the satisfaction of proving his wisdom and of doubling the firm's assets at the same time. emil's plans were essentially on a large scale, and he was confessedly cramped even after this success. he explained to his wife that if only he had the necessary capital, he would be able at one fell swoop to control the lumber yards and lumber market of benham. as it was, he must wait and probably see others appropriate ideas which he had suggested by his novel and brilliant operations. the prophecy indeed proved true, and emil saw with a morose eye what he called his harvest gleaned by others. this vindictive attitude toward the successful was the invariable frame of mind into which he relapsed when he was not carrying everything before him, and as a result those in the trade presently began to speak of him as a crank. his quick comprehension was admitted, but his associates shook their heads when his name was mentioned, and hinted that he was a dangerous man, who would bear watching. it was almost inevitable that a lean period should follow emil's series of clever undertakings. toward the end of the second year, he found himself in a position where he had not the means to enlarge the scope of his operations. his working capital was locked up in sundry purchases which he had expected would show quick profits, but which hung fire. if he liquidated, it must be at a loss, and the idea of a loss was always bitter to him. during a number of months he was obliged to renounce certain plans which he had in view and to remain inactive. a falling lumber market added to his complications. prompt to act when he was convinced of error, he sold out at last his accumulated stock at a loss, which would have been much greater had he delayed a week longer. but he was left almost in the same position as when he started; the previous profits had been cut in two. this was wormwood to his restless soul. it made him moody and cynical at home, where one child and the near advent of another foreshadowed increasing expenses. he had expected by this time to be on the high road to fortune, and to be imitating the swift progress of certain individuals in benham, who even in the short period since he had been a citizen, had risen by their superior wits from poverty to affluence and power. but emil's fits of depression were invariably succeeded by intervals of buoyancy. though he still talked bitterly at home of the methods by which cold-hearted capital squeezed the small man to the wall and robbed him of his gains, he began to scheme anew, and to argue that the assets in his control were still ample for a great success if shrewdly handled. the lumber market was in the doldrums, dull and drooping. it began to look as though some of the industries of benham had been developed too rapidly, and as though a halt, or what financiers call a healthy reaction in values, were in order. could it be possible that all prices in benham were inflated? the idea occurred to emil one day, and he jumped at it eagerly. it took possession of him. he feverishly began to examine statistics, and found that benham had experienced only one period of depression since its birth as a city at the close of the civil war. it was time for another, and the men who were clever enough to anticipate it would reap the reward of their sagacity. what were the staples of benham? oil, pork, and manufactured iron. these were the industries which had given the chief impetus to the city's growth, and were its great source of wealth. emil pondered the situation and decided to sell pork short. if a general shrinkage in values was impending, the price of pork was certain to decline. he had hitherto felt so confident of making money in his own line of business that he had never done more than cast sheep's eyes at the stock market or the markets in grain, oil, and pork futures. it had been his expectation to try ventures of this sort as soon as his capital was large enough for important transactions. it was a favorite notion of his that after he had acquired the first one hundred thousand dollars, he would be able to quadruple it in a very short time by bold dealings in stocks or commodities. he knew now that he had merely to step into a broker's office and sell pork in chicago by wire. it was a simple thing to do and the shrewd thing, considering his own business offered no opportunity at the moment for brilliancy. to speak to his partner seemed to emil unnecessary. he promised himself that after he had put the firm on its feet again he would deal generously with robinson. since their late reverses the partnership was not borrowing much money, so its credit was not exhausted. emil obtained from his bank as large a loan as he dared to ask for, and began to sell pork short on the strength of the proceeds. it was a process which requires small capital at the outset. that is, he had simply to keep his margin good in case the pork which he sold rose in value. to begin with he sold only a few hundred barrels, and within a fortnight the price fell smartly. not only the price of pork, but of stocks, grain, and merchandise. emil congratulated himself. evidently he was correct in his judgment that a period of lower speculative values was at hand. the proper thing would be to sell everything and reap a huge fortune before the dull general public awoke to the truth. his own limited resources forbade this, which was irritating. still, he could go on selling pork short, and this he continued to do. the proceeding elated him, for the sudden and large profit was in a sense a revelation. he regretted that he had never before tried this method of demonstrating his business shrewdness. he felt that it suited him admirably. he would be no rash-headed fool; he would sell boldly, but intelligently; he would keep his eye on the general market, and not cover his shorts until the general situation changed. if a serious decline in the prices of everything were in store for benham--and the indications of this were multiplying from week to week--the price of pork might drop out of sight, so to speak, and he win a fortune as a consequence. it was the chance of a lifetime. he reasoned that he would keep cool and make a big thing of it; that a small fellow would be content with a few thousands and run to cover, but he intended to be one of the big fellows. why take his profit when the whole financial horizon was ominous with clouds, and money was becoming tighter every day? emil's reasoning was perfect. the course of prices was exactly as he had predicted; that is, the price of everything except pork. the unexpected happened there, and this from a cause which no shrewd person could have foreseen. one day when, in the parlance of trade, the bottom seemed to be dropping out of all the markets, a despatch appeared in the newspapers stating that a peculiar disease had broken out among the hogs in western illinois. the pork market stiffened, but became flat at the advance after somebody declared the story to be a canard invented by the bulls to bolster up their holdings. emil, adopting this explanation, and certain that this cunning stratagem to check the decline would prove unavailing, sold more pork. a week later--one saturday preceding a monday which was to be a holiday--there were rumors in chicago, just before the close of the exchange, that the disease among the hogs was no mere local manifestation; that it was spreading rapidly, and had already shown itself in indiana and ohio. pork in the last fifteen minutes bounded upward and closed ominously strong. before the market opened on the following tuesday it was definitely known that the hogs of the country were in the grasp of an epidemic, the precise character of which, to quote the press, was not yet determined, but which, in the opinion of those most competent to judge, would render the flesh of the animals attacked by the dread disease unfit for food, and their lard unwholesome. when the market opened, the price of pork was so high that emil's margin of protection was wiped out as thoroughly as the tide wipes out the sand dyke which a child erects upon the beach. he was unable to respond to the demand made on him for money to keep his account with his broker good, and was sold out before night at a loss--a loss which left him in debt. he went home knowing that he was bankrupt, and that his firm must fail the moment his note at the bank became due, even if the broker to whom he owed five thousand dollars over and above his margins did not press him. there was no escape from ruin and humiliation. he disclosed the truth to constance with the repressed bitterness of a prometheus. he explained to her with the mien of a wounded animal at bay the cruelty of the trick of destiny which had crushed him. how had he been at fault? he had been shrewd, far-seeing and prompt to act. the wisdom of his course had been demonstrated by the fall in prices. he was on the high road to fortune, and fate had stabbed him in the back. could any intelligent man have foreseen that the hogs of the country would be stricken with disease? and more galling still, why had luck played him false by singling out the only possible combination of events which could have done him harm? "an all-wise providence!" he ejaculated with a scornful laugh. "a man looks the ground over, uses his wits and is reaping the benefit of his intelligence when he is struck in the head with a brick from behind a hedge, and is then expected to glorify the hand which smote him. how could it have been helped? how was i to blame?" he reiterated with a fierce look at his wife. constance could not answer the question. the details of business were a sealed book to her. the brief account of the disaster in pork, which he had just given, was confusing to her, and had left her with no conviction save pity for her husband. she was ready to take his word, and to believe that this overwhelming misfortune was the result of ill-luck which could not have been guarded against. what was uppermost in her mind was the impulse to help and comfort him. it pained her that he should inveigh against fate, though she recognized that the provocation was severe. but he needed her now more than ever. she would be brave and let him see that her love was at his command. "you mustn't mind too much, emil," she said. "we have to start again, that's all. i can economize in lots of ways, and we shall manage somehow, i'm sure. we have the house, you know. if it's necessary--in order to set you up in business--we can mortgage that. we've always had that to fall back on." she knew as she spoke that from the standpoint of prudence the offer of the house was unwise. if that were gone, what would become of her children? yet she felt a joy in tendering it. why did her husband look at her with that malevolent gaze as though she had contributed to his distress? "if you had put a mortgage on the house when i first started in business, and had given me the benefit of a larger capital, then we shouldn't be where we are to-day. i wanted it at the time, but you didn't offer it." "oh, emil. i never dreamt that you wished it. to mortgage our home then would have been rash, surely. besides, if i had given it to you, wouldn't it have been lost with the rest now?" "don't you understand," he said, roughly, "that if i had not been hampered at the start by my small capital, i should never have been forced to go outside the lumber business in order to support my family? another five thousand dollars would have made all the difference." his glowering look seemed to suggest that he had persuaded himself that she was partly to blame for what had happened. constance was ready to make every allowance for him, but his mood offered fresh evidence of the crankiness of his disposition, a revelation to which her devotion could not altogether blind her. "i don't understand anything about the business part," she answered, putting her arm around his neck. "oh, emil, emil, i'm so sorry for you! i wish to do everything i can to help you and show my love for you. this is a dreadful sorrow for you to bear--for us both to bear. but it has come to us, and we mustn't be discouraged. god will give us strength to bear it if we let him." "god?" he blurted. "you may leave god out of the question so far as i am concerned." "oh, emil, it grieves me to hear you talk like that." "and it grieves me that you should aggravate my trouble by cant which i thought you had outgrown." "i shall never outgrow that," she murmured, appreciating suddenly that the substitute which he offered her for spiritual resignation was a cell bounded by four stone walls. she had reached the limit of her apostacy, and she shrank irrevocably from the final step. "of course the rich and the powerful and the fortunate," he was saying, "encourage the delusion that if a man's knocked out as i am he ought to believe it's for the best, because rubbish of that sort keeps together the social system on which they fatten. do the poor in the tenements in smith street over there," he asked with a wave of his hand, "believe it's for the best that they should go hungry and in rags while carleton howard and his peers imitate antony and cleopatra? ask the operatives in the factories across the river what they think of the justice of the millionaire's god? the time has passed when you can fool the self-respecting workingman with a basket of coals and a tract on the kingdom of heaven. they may have their heaven, if they'll give us a fair share of this earth." emil folded his arms as one issuing an ultimatum. constance realized that he was in no mood to be reasoned with. she had made clear that she could not subscribe to his doctrine of despair, and save in that respect she was eager to be sympathetic. she could not deny the inequalities and apparent injustice of civilization, and emil's plea that he had been crushed by an accident which he could not have avoided not only wrung her heart, but filled it with a sense of hostility to an industrial system which permitted its deserving members to be crushed without fault of their own. but she felt instinctively that the best sort of succor which she could bring was of the practical kind. to-morrow was before them, god or no god, and they must adjust themselves to their altered circumstances, take thought and build their hopes anew. she put her arm around his neck again and kissed him silently. then she began with quiet briskness to make preparations for the evening meal. it was the maid's afternoon out, and constance moved as though she were glorying in the occupation. presently she said: "of course i'll dismiss sophy to-morrow. i am proud to be a workingman's wife, emil. we'll soon be on our feet again, never fear." the suggestion of the servant's dismissal deepened the gloom on emil's face. "i've half a mind to pull up stakes and move to new york," he muttered. "and give up our home?" he frowned at the involuntary concern in her voice. "what use is a home in a place where a man is cramped and circumvented in every big thing he attempts? i ought to have moved long ago." "i am ready to live wherever you think best, emil. and you mustn't forget, dear, that my trust and faith in you are as great as ever." despondent as he was, his habit of buoyancy was already groping for some clue to a brighter vision, to which his wife's words of encouragement now helped him. he was sitting with his elbows resting on the table and his head clasped between his hands. "i'll make a fresh start--here," he said. "they've got me down, but, damn them, i'll show them that they can't keep me there." presently he arose, and walking out to the kitchen reappeared with a goblet and two bottles of beer. one of these he uncorked and poured the contents ostentatiously so that the froth gathered. raising the glass he buried his mouth in the beer and eagerly drank it off. he set down the goblet with a sigh of satisfaction. "and what's more," he said, "they can't deprive me of that." constance watched him with a troubled look. she shrank at this time of his distress from intimating that she regarded the indulgence of this appetite as a poor sort of solace. besides, a glass of beer was in itself nothing, and he might well take offence at her solicitude as an invasion of his reasonable comfort. yet observation had taught her that he was becoming more and more fond of seeking a respite from care in liberal potations of this sort. she restrained her inclination to interfere, but she saw him with concern consume four bottles in the course of the evening. the serenity of temper which this produced--the almost indifferent calm following the storm--was by no means encouraging. to be sure his ugly side seemed entirely in abeyance. indeed, he took down his fiddle and played on it seductively until he went to bed, as though there were no such things as business troubles. but somehow the very mildness of his mood, gratifying as it was to her from the momentary personal standpoint, disturbed her. was this good nature the manly, christian resignation of the victim of misfortune putting aside his grief until the morrow? it suggested to her rather the relaxation of a baffled soul exchanging ambition for a nepenthe of forgetfulness--a fuddled agitator's paradise--and her heart was wrung with dread. v the firm of stuart & robinson, lumber dealers, was hopelessly insolvent and did not attempt to resume business. the partners separated with sentiments of mutual disdain. to the junior--the dummy--the failure had come as a cruel surprise. he refused to regard emil's conduct as reasonable or honorable, despite the assurance that the speculation in pork had been for their common benefit, and that, but for an untoward accident, the result would have been a fortune for the firm. on the other hand, emil expressed scorn for a nature so pusillanimous that it saw only the outcome and failed utterly to appreciate the brilliancy of his undertaking. as emil explained to his wife, the decision of the partners in regard to the future was typical of their respective dispositions; robinson, having lost his money, was soliciting a clerkship--a return to servitude; whereas emil intended to strike out for himself again. in what field of energy were his talents to be exercised next? this was for emil the first and most important consideration. his new employment must be of a kind which would provide him with bread and butter until he was on his feet again, but would not deprive him of scope and independence. it must be something which would not require capital. yet this did not mean that his talent for speculation was to be neglected, but merely to be kept in abeyance until he saw just the opportunity to use to advantage the three thousand dollars which he promptly raised by a second mortgage on his wife's house. his failure had left him more than ever confident of his ability to achieve success by bold and comprehensive methods. but in the meantime, while he was spinning the web of fresh enterprises which were to make him prosperous, he must support his family somehow. he concluded to become a newspaper reporter and writer of articles for the press. this would provide an immediate income and would not interfere unduly with other projects. besides it would enable him to give public expression to some of his opinions, which would be an æsthetic satisfaction. he also engaged desk-room in an office shared by four men independent of one another and interchangeably petty lawyers, traders and dealers in mortgages and land. on the glass door one read "real estate and mortgages--investments--collections--loans--notary public." below were the names of the occupants, followed by the titles of several wildcat companies, the dregs of oil and mining ventures in the neighborhood of benham, of which one of them was the promoter and treasurer. it seemed to emil a location where he, hampered by circumstances from jostling elbows with men of means, might use his wits profitably until he could see his way to more imposing quarters. here he would be unobserved and yet not wholly out of touch with what was going on. on the same floor of the building, which was a hive of small concerns, there was a broker's office which had a wire to chicago and knowing correspondents in new york. that it was described as a "bucket shop" by more prosperous banking firms prejudiced emil in its favor; he ascribed the stigma to capitalistic envy and social ostracism. he became friendly with the proprietor, discussed with him the merits of the wares on his counter, and presently, acting on "tips" obtained from this source, captured on several occasions sums ranging from ten to fifty dollars by the purchase of ten shares of stock or an equivalent amount of grain, requiring an advance on his own part of not more than three per cent. of the purchase price--a mere bagatelle. this as a beginning was satisfactory. it eked out his journalistic income; and the skill with which he plied the process, contrasted with the folly displayed by most of the customers, flattered the faith which he had in his sound judgment. this broker's shop was the resort of scores of people of small means, trades-folk, clerks, salaried dependents and some women, keen to acquire from the fluctuations of the speculative markets a few crumbs of the huge gains garnered by the magnates of wall street, of which they read emulously in the newspapers. to put up one's thirty dollars, and to have one's margin of venture or profit wiped out within twenty-four hours, was the normal experience, sooner or later, of ninety per cent. of these unfortunates. the remainder were shrewder and longer lived, and to this remnant emil indisputably belonged. he obtained a position on the _star_, a sensational, popular one-cent paper. the _star_ was read both by the workingmen in the manufacturing plants, of whose interests it was a zealous champion, and by a large class of business men and trades-people, who found its crisp paragraphs and exaggerated, inaccurate reports of current horrors and scandals an agreeable form of excitement. emil's employment was to make the round of the dealers in grain, lumber, wool and other staples and report trade prices and gossip, which under the control of the financial editor he was allowed to expand into commercial prognostications or advice. to the sunday edition he began to contribute special articles exploiting the grievances of the proletariat, which the management of the _star_ accepted and presently invited as a weekly feature. they were written with a sardonic acerbity of touch, which afforded him an outlet for his disgruntled frame of mind and free scope for his favorite theories. he also renewed his attendance at the socialistic club which he had frequented before his marriage, and became one of the orators there. it occurred to him that a political office would be acceptable while he was husbanding his resources. why not become alderman on the workingman's ticket? there was a salary of five hundred dollars attached, and as a city father he would have opportunities to know what was going on in municipal affairs, and to get an inkling of some of the big schemes projected by capitalists, for the furtherance of which his vote would be required. he would be able also--and this was an exhilarating consideration--to hold the whip-hand over the arrogant moneyed men seeking franchises for next to nothing, by which to extort millions from the guileless common people. while emil, with recovered buoyancy, readjusted his plans to meet his circumstances and set his wits to work, his wife met the necessity of strict economy with absorbed devotion. she signed the mortgage with a pang, but without hesitancy. she appreciated the necessity of the contribution. without ready money emil would be powerless--must become a mere clerk or subordinate, and his ambition would be crushed. she would have preferred perhaps that he should resign himself to the situation, and without imperilling their home, support his family on a modest footing by a salary or by the journalistic work for which he had an aptitude. but she recognized that his heart was set on independent success on a large scale, and that emil thwarted or repressed would become an irritable and despondent malcontent. his shrewdness had nearly gained him a fortune, and apparently a cruel freak of chance had been solely responsible for his discomfiture. she did not pretend to criticise the nature of his business dealings. he had explained to her that capital was indispensable to the realization of his aims. she must trust him. she did suggest that he should use the proceeds of the mortgage for the payment of his debts. the thought of doing so was bitter, and she was thankful when emil assured her with a protesting scoff that such a proceeding would be utopian. "what," he asked, "was the sense of insolvent laws, if, when a man failed in business, his wife was to cast her little all, her own patrimony, into the common pot for the enrichment of his creditors? business people understood that they were taking business chances, and did not expect to gobble up the home of a wife bought with her own genuine means. if she were rich, generosity might be honesty, but in the present instance, it would be sentimental folly." this was convincing to constance, for she felt instinctively that her children must have rights as well as the creditors. a woman's whimsical conception of business honor might well be at fault. she had made her offer, and she was glad to abide by her husband's superior knowledge. her duty obviously was to reduce the scale of family living without interfering with emil's reasonable comfort or wounding his self-respect. she gave herself up to her work of domestic economy with fresh zeal, doing the manual labor of the household with enthusiasm. by steady industry and thoughtful care, she was able not only to minimize expenses, but to produce presentable results from a small outlay. her heart was in it; for was not emil at work again and hopeful? she was proud of his newspaper articles and regarded his small gains from shrewd speculations as new proof of his capacity for financial undertakings. the end of a year found emil rather more than holding his own pecuniarily. he had obtained commissions as a broker from the successful negotiation of a few small real-estate transactions, his ventures on a cautious scale in the stock market had been almost invariably fortunate, and his earnings as a newspaper writer had been sufficient with these accretions to cover his household expenses, pay the interest on the mortgage, and add slightly to his capital. he felt that he was on his feet again, and was correspondingly bumptious; yet he realized that his recuperation regarded as progress was a snail's pace, which must be greatly accelerated if he would attain wealth and importance. in this connection the idea of becoming an alderman kept recurring to him with increasing attraction. at present he was nobody. his name was unfamiliar and his position obscure. this irritated him, for he craved recognition and publicity. to be sure, while capital was at his disposal, he had seen fit to address his efforts solely to the accumulation of a fortune as the passport to power, but even then he had been at heart a sworn enemy of the moneyed class. and now that he had resumed his old associations, his theories had developed fresh vitality and aroused in him the desire to vindicate them by action. since fate had condemned him to attain financial prominence slowly, why should he not secure recognition in the best way he could? as an alderman he would be a local power, and once in the arena of politics and given the opportunity to make himself felt, why might he not aspire to political prosperity? he proceeded to seek the nomination. but he found that there were other aspirants, and that he must be stirring. in benham the district system of election was in vogue. that is, the city was divided into municipal districts, and each district chose its own alderman. in that where emil lived the workingman's candidate, so called, was almost invariably successful against the representative of the more conservative element of the two wards concerned, and a nomination was regarded as equivalent to election. now there were two factions of voters belonging to the dominant party in the district, one in each ward, and for three successive years the alderman had come from the ward other than that in which emil dwelt. this was a plausible argument why the next candidate should be selected from his ward. the faction which emil hoped to represent contained a considerable number of germans with socialistic affiliations, and it was agreed by a conference of the rival cliques on the eve of the canvass that their turn had come to nominate a candidate. this was fortunate for emil, as some of the members of the social debating club to which he belonged were of this body. he had already been prominent at the meetings of the club, prompt and aggressive in the expression of his opinions on his feet, and prone to linger over his beer until late at night agitating the grievances of the under dogs of industrial competition. the suggestion of his name, backed by a vote of his associates, received respectful consideration from the political managers, and he at once became a prominent candidate. the last three aldermen from the district had been of irish extraction, and he was an american. his grandfather on his mother's side had been a german; hence his name emil. he was an undoubted advocate of the rights of the laboring class, and a foe of capitalistic jobbing. these were signal points in his favor. but the victory would remain to the aspirant who could obtain a majority of the delegates to the aldermanic convention, and the battle would be fought out at the preliminary caucus where the delegates were chosen by the voters of the two wards. accordingly the contest became a house-to-house canvass of the district by the respective candidates, each of whom had an organization and lieutenants. there was speech-making at halls hired for the occasion, and some treating incident to these rallies. poster pictures of the candidates were requisite for use in saloons and on bill-boards. all this demanded expenditure. emil realized presently that, if he wished to succeed, he could not be niggardly with his money. men would not work for nothing, and spontaneous enthusiasm was only to be had for remuneration. he drew upon his funds, exhausting the little he had saved the previous year, and trenching slightly on the mortgage money. he hoped to win. the contest practically was between him and a german beer manufacturer, who happened also to be the president of a small bank. the third candidate was already out of the running. emil in his capacity as tribune of the people made the most of his opponent's connection with the moneyed interests. his satire on this score offset the advantage which his rival received from his trade as a brewer, and turned the scale. on the night of the caucus, the voting booths were crowded to repletion. a stream of excited citizens struggled to the rail to deposit their ballots. there was imprecation and several resorts to fisticuffs. not until after midnight was the result known. emil won by a liberal margin in both wards, and his nomination was assured. he was escorted home jubilant and beery by a detachment of his followers, whose cat-calls of triumph thrilled the listening ears of constance. she met him at the door, and when he was safely inside she threw her arms about his neck and exclaimed, "oh, emil. i'm so glad!" his small dark eyes were scintillating, his hair stood up from his brow like a bird's crest, the curl of his short mustache, odorous of malt, bristled awry, his speech was thick. "didn't i tell you they couldn't keep me down? i shall get now where i belong," he exclaimed as he strode into the sitting-room and dropped into a chair with the air of a fuddled but victorious field-marshal. constance recognized that he was exhilarated by drink. the associations of the last few weeks had awakened in her vague doubts as to the sort of influence which the career of an alderman was likely to exercise upon him. but she shrank from harboring criticism. she yearned to be happy, and her happiness was to see her husband successful and prosperous. so she put away the consciousness that his breath was tainted, his manner boastful and jarring, and gave herself up to the joy which sprang from beholding him a self-satisfied victor. emil's self-satisfaction was short lived. it chanced that some of the wealthy citizens of benham were interested in the establishment of an electric street-car system for the city and its suburbs, and were laying their wires to secure the co-operation of the board of aldermen. the project had been kept concealed, and not until the campaign for the city election was well under way were the machinations of those interested apparent. first as an underground rumor, then as a well-credited report from diverse sources, the news reached emil that the nominee of the other party had the backing of a powerful syndicate. the true explanation of this mystery followed, and with it the statement that emil's radical utterances had drawn upon his head the ire of the capitalists with a mission, who were giving their moral and financial support in every district to the one of the two candidates best suited to their necessities regardless of party. in place of the walk-over he had expected, emil found himself in the midst of a contest of the fiercest description. he was furious, and his exultation was turned to gall. why had he not discovered the street-car company projects in advance and made friends with the promoters? this was his first and secret reflection, which added rancor to his public declaration that he would bury at the polls the candidate of these plunderers. but how? where were his funds to come from? there had been plenty of offers of ready money when it was supposed that his election was assured. but now the tone of his supporters was less confident, and ugly rumors reached him of defections among the irish in the other ward. he was in the fight to stay. so he declared on the stump and in his home. he could not afford to be defeated. it was a case of hit or miss, win or lose. maddened, desperate, and excited, he threw prudence to the winds and scattered dollars freely for proselytizing expenses until the morning of the election. each side claimed the victory until the polls were closed. the result was close--a matter of one hundred and fifty ballots--but emil proved to be the loser, and at a cost of over three thousand dollars. the fund which he had borrowed from his wife was exhausted, and he had incurred, besides, a batch of unpaid bills for refreshments, carriages, and other incidental expenses. he awoke at dawn from a nap at a table in a saloon from which the last of his followers had slipped away. slouching into his kitchen, where his wife was kindling the fire, he tossed his hat on the table and said with a malignant sneer: "the jig's up." constance was pale. she had been watching for him all night, and had heard from a neighbor the dismal result. her heart was wrung with pity and distress, but she perceived that it was no time for consolatory words. she busied herself in preparing a cup of coffee, which presently she placed before him, stooping as she did so to kiss him softly on the forehead. he was sitting by the table with his legs thrust out and his hands sunk in his trousers pockets, chewing an unlighted cigar, one of those left from the supply he had bought for political hospitality. his wife's action seemed to remind him of her presence. he looked up at her viciously, showing the white of his eye like a surly dog. "what do you want?" "your coffee, emil." he glared at the smoking cup, then with a sweep of his arm dashed it away: "to hell with you and your messes, you--you fool!" the crash of the crockery was followed by silence. it seemed to constance that she had been struck by a bullet, so confounding were his words. her husband address her like that? what did it mean? "emil," she gasped--"you are ill!" "not ill, but tired of you." "of me? your wife? what have i done?" "why didn't you consent to move to new york when i wished to go?" he snapped. "if you had, i wouldn't be in this fix, sold out by a pack of filthy hibernian cut-throats." "i was ready to go if you wished it, emil. we will go now--if only you do not speak to me so unkindly." "it's too late," he replied with a sneer. "what use would it be, anyway? we look at everything differently. we always have." "you do not realize what you are saying. you do not know what you are saying." "crazy, am i? the best thing for you to do is to ask some of your church philanthropists to supply you with laundry work. you're likely to need it. the jig's up, i tell you. we haven't a dollar left." "very well." "the mortgage money with the rest." he threw the chewed cigar on the floor and ground it with his foot. "very well. i can bear anything except that you should speak to me so cruelly. have i been afraid of work? whatever has happened we mustn't forget the children, emil. we must keep up our courage on their account at least." he scowled at the reference. "i'll look out for the children. is there any beer in the house?" "no." then after a moment's hesitation she added, "may i ask you something, emil? won't you give up beer? it is hurting your life. i am sure of it. i have felt so for some time, and you have known that i have hated your fondness for it. give it up altogether and--and we will go to new york or anywhere you wish and make a fresh start." in her dismay at his brutality she was eager and thankful to throw the responsibility for his conduct on his propensity for drink. she felt the obligation to speak fearlessly on this score, even though she irritated him. her gentle remonstrances had been of no avail, and she must struggle with him now against himself or lose him altogether. emil heard her appeal with a deepening scowl. for a moment it seemed as though he were about to strike her. then, as what he evidently considered the audacity of her expostulation worked on his mind, self-pity was mingled with his anger. "you'd deprive me of my beer, would you? the only solace i've got. why don't you go smash my fiddle, too? that's the way with you pious women; a man gets down on his luck and you stop his comforts and drive him into the street. very well, then, if i can't get beer in this house, little saint, there's lots of places i can. this is the last straw." thereupon he strode out of the house, closing the kitchen door behind him with a vicious bang. vi constance did not see her husband again for twenty-four hours. he returned at supper-time and took his place at the table without a word of apology or explanation. he was in a state of great depression, morose and uncommunicative. on previous occasions when misfortune had befallen him, he had taken his wife into his confidence, but now it seemed either that he had lost his grip on life so completely that words failed him, or that the resentment which he had expressed toward her was still dominant. when the meal was over, he went out and did not return until late. he was boozy with drink, and threw himself on his bed with the air of a man who would fain dispel consciousness by the luxury of sleep. emil's mode of life for the next few weeks was substantially a repetition of this programme. glum, sour, and listless he went his way in the morning; fuddled, indifferent, and sleepy he returned at night. concerning his circumstances and plans he said nothing to constance. she was left totally in the dark as to the extent and the effect of his reverses. he had told her that they were ruined, yet he continued to go down-town as though nothing had happened. trusting that he would enlighten her of his own accord, at first she asked no questions. then as he did not speak, she requested him one morning to tell her how his affairs stood, urging her solicitude and affection. he listened frowningly and put her off with the disconcerting utterance "you'll know soon enough. it's just as well to let a drowning man grasp at straws while there are any to grasp at." his half-scornful, half-desperate manner forbade further inquiry at the moment if she did not wish to widen the breach between them. constance was in deep distress. she yearned to comfort and help him, but this wifely, loving impulse was haunted by the consciousness now forced upon her with painful clearness that she had misjudged his nature and was mated to a crank. how otherwise could she interpret his hostile attitude toward herself? to what but a cross-grained perversity of soul could she ascribe his disposition to blame her for his misfortunes? her duty was plain, to make the best of the situation, and to ignore, so far as self-respect would permit, his laceration of her feelings, trusting to time to restore his sense of justice and renew concord between them. but what hope was there for the future? hope for the realization of that blissful, ennobling married state to which she had looked forward as a bride and had believed in store for her? here was the thought which tormented her and gave poignancy to the dismay and anxiety of the moment. even if their immediate circumstances were less serious than emil had declared, was there any reason to believe that his next experiment would be more successful? she had accepted hitherto without question his declaration that ill-luck had been responsible for all his troubles, but that consolation was hers no longer. she found herself listening to the voice of criticism to which until now she had turned a deaf ear. in a new spirit, without bitterness, but in the assertion of her right as a wife to judge the man to whom she had committed her happiness, she recalled the incidents of their married life--his theories, arguments, and point of view. he had declared her to blame for his misfortunes. surely if she had failed in her duty it had not been toward him. she had sacrificed her opinions to his, and for his sake abnegated her most precious predilections in order to make the union of their lives sweeter and more complete. if she were guilty, was it not of treason to her own instincts and her own conscience? emil indeed had persuaded himself not merely that fortune had betrayed him, and the hand of the prosperous world was against him, but that his wife was partly to blame for it. looking back on his last fiasco, he conjured up the circumstance that she had not fallen in with his suggestion of an exodus to new york, and this he had promptly distorted into a grievance, which grew the more he nursed it. to the notion that she had thwarted him in everything and that their relations as husband and wife had been wholly unsympathetic was only another step. it suited him to feel that he was the injured party, for he was face to face with the responsibility of supporting his family, which must be met or avoided. the question of immediate funds was already pressing. his last reverse had discouraged and angered him, but it had not diminished his confidence that he would succeed in the right place. it had only convinced him that benham was not the right place; that benham was too small and provincial; too unappreciative of real ability. he was unpleasantly in debt, but the bills which he had contracted for political expenses could be disregarded for the present. he had no property with which to meet them, and if he were pressed, he had merely to go into insolvency in order to rid himself of them altogether. nor need he worry about the mortgage for the present. it would not be due for two years, and, provided the interest were paid, they could not be molested. these redeeming features of his plight were clear to him after the first days of mental agitation, but his spirit did not reassert its wonted elasticity. analyzing the cause, he perceived that his whole surroundings were repugnant to him, and that he shrank from recommencing life at the foot of the ladder under the conditions in which he found himself. he was determined to leave benham, and he was determined that his family, if they came with him, should toe the mark. what this phrase meant precisely he did not formulate, but it suited his mood. "toe the mark." he kept repeating it to himself, as though it promised relief from domestic insubordination. yes, if his wife did not choose to adopt his theories and abet him in his undertakings, she could go her own way for all he cared. it was only on account of the children that he did not put an end to their contract of marriage to-morrow by leaving her. except for them it were surely folly for a man and woman whose ideas were utterly at variance to continue a partnership the only fruit of which could be discord and recriminations. so he argued, and it was only the thought of his children which restrained him from precipitate action and caused him to continue to go down-town every day seeking a bare livelihood. since the night of his defeat at the polls, constance had not asked him for money. presumably she had some laid by, and was living on that, but by the first of the month she must have recourse to him or starve, and then would be the time for his ultimatum. the terms of this, beyond a declaration of general discontent, were still hazy in his brain, befogged by malt liquor and inflamed by hatred of the world, but a glowing conviction that their marriage had been a failure through her fault was a satisfactory substitute for definiteness. brooding like a spider in its web, secretive, hoping that something would turn up to put him on his feet again, yet almost reckless in his attitude, and drinking assiduously, he drifted on without aim. his evenings were spent at his workingmen's club, where he continued as an outlet to his feelings to deliver virulent philippics, which he realized as he uttered them were a sorry equivalent for personal success. while thus limp and embittered, a final mishap impelled emil to action. it happened that the broker on the same floor as the office where he had desk-room, and with whom he was on familiar terms, let him in for a disastrous tip and put the screws on when the market went the other way. the sum involved was three hundred dollars, the total residue of emil's capital, which he had allowed to remain untouched with this false friend in order not to be entirely without the means to speculate. the advice offered had seemed to be friendly and disinterested. when the result proved disastrous the victim promptly suspected guile. certainly he encountered a flinty demeanor, as though the proprietor of the "bucket-shop" were cognizant of the impecuniosity of his customer and had decided to squeeze him dry and break with him. this from the man whose social status on the street he had championed seemed to emil rank ingratitude. yet the broker was making no more than ordinary business demands upon him. his margin was exhausted, and the transaction would be closed unless he supplied additional security. this was business-like, but not friendly, as it seemed to emil, especially as the ingrate, who had been so confident of the value of the tip, chose now to be sphinx-like as to what the next day's price of the stock would be. all he would vouchsafe was that it would go up sooner or later. since it was necessary to act at once, and to sell meant the loss of the remnant of his capital, emil concluded to give himself a chance by making use of five hundred dollars which had just been paid over to him for a client in redemption of a mortgage. he argued that the stock, having fallen in price contrary to expectation, was not likely to decline further at once, and that if he protected his account, he would be able to make inquiries and form a more intelligent opinion by the end of a few days as to what he had best do. besides, there was lurking in his mind the bitter argument, which he chose to believe sound, that the world owed every man a living, and assuredly owed it to a man like himself. since the hand of society seemed to be against him, why should he not take advantage of the resources at his disposal and save himself? he was simply borrowing; if he were not able to return the money at once, he would do so later with interest. the consequences of this performance were disastrous. as emil had predicted, the stock in question remained stationary for three days, but by the end of them he felt no clearer regarding which course to pursue. estimates as to its value were contradictory; yet since a sale at the market price meant the safety of the five hundred dollars at the cost of his own financial obliteration, he remained hopeful. on the fourth day the stock broke sharply, and again on the day after. his holding was only one hundred shares--a paltry transaction from a capitalistic point of view--yet it was rashness for him. adversity and his pressing needs had tempted him to disregard his meditated prudence and to venture on thin ice. he perceived himself ruined and a defaulter. the obliquity of his peculation was mitigated in his mind by the conviction that fortune had been signally cruel to him. as for the borrowed money, he would give his note and pay it presently when he was on his feet again. yet he appreciated that his opportunities for making a living in benham were at an end, and that if he remained, he might find difficulty in inducing the owner of the five hundred dollars to accept him as a creditor without demur. clearly the simplest course was to come to terms by post. to shake the dust of benham from his feet was his dearest wish, and the time had arrived for its fulfilment. there was still one hundred dollars belonging to his client in his hands which he had not used. this he drew to provide himself with travelling expenses, arguing that the sooner he were able to reach new york, the quicker the loan would be repaid, and slipped from the city without a word to anyone. he had decided to cut adrift from all his past associations, and an indispensable portion of his plan was to sever forever his relations with his wife. a week later he wrote this letter to her from new york: constance: this is to let you know what has become of me. you may have guessed the truth, but it's woman's way to worry, weep, and raise a hue and cry, though she knows in her heart that she's mismated, and that it would be a godsend to her if "hubby" had really blown his brains out or were safely at the bottom of a well. i'm not dead yet, nor am i contemplating suicide at present. though if the time ever does come when i think the game is played out, it will be one-two-three-go! without any pause between the numbers. but i'm as good as dead now, so far as you are concerned. you won't be troubled by me further. you've seen the last of me. i told you i was strapped. i'm cleaned out to the last dollar. but that doesn't phaze me except for the moment. i'm going to make a fresh start and a clean sweep at the same time. you know as well as i that our marriage has not been a glittering success. in short, we've made a mess of it. we thought we were suited to each other, and we find we're not. that's all. i don't approve of you any more than you do of me, and what's the use of making each other miserable by protracting the relation until death do us part? it's up to me to undo the gordian-knot, and i've cut it. you'll shed some tears, i suppose, over the situation, and your friends will call me a brute. but when the shock is past and sentimental considerations have evaporated, just ask yourself if i'm not doing the sensible thing for us both. we don't look at life in the same way and never will. i'm a radical, and you're a conservative, and we were misled before marriage by the affinities of flesh to suppose that oil and water would harmonize. from the point of view of law i'm the offending party, and you'll be a free woman to sue for divorce on the ground of desertion, by the end of three years. in the meantime, you can go back to your kindergarten work or whatever you see fit. you have your health, and your philanthropic church friends will enable you to support yourself. the only hitch is the children. if you had been ready to follow me to new york when i first suggested it, we might not be separating now. i expect and am anxious to provide for them. if you will send them on to me, they shall want for nothing. but if you are bent on keeping them, as i foresee may be the case, the responsibility is yours. i should like one at least--preferably the boy. if you insist on keeping them both, i can't help myself. there's where you have the whip-hand over me. but don't delude yourself with the notion that i don't love my own flesh and blood because i'm not willing to live with their mother. there will be no use in your coming on here or trying to find me. i have made up my mind. we could never be happy together, so the fewer words said about parting the better. send your answer regarding the children to the new york post-office. i shall expect it for a week. the money you loaned me is gone with the rest, but they can't turn you out of your house until the mortgage is due, if you pay the interest. some day i shall pay it back to you. i wish you well, and consider i'm doing us both a service in cutting loose from you. good-by, emil. it seemed to constance when she had finished this letter as though her heart would stop. was this reality? could it be that her husband was abandoning her and her children in cold blood, treating the sacred ties of marriage as lightly as though they were straws? alas! his cruel words stared her in the face, freezing her soul, which had been sick for days over his unexplained absence; sick from dread. yes, she had guessed; but she had put the horror from her as impossible, despite his hints. unbalanced and embittered as he was, he could not be so unkind. now she was face to face with certainty; there was no room for hope. it was true; so cruelly inhumanly true that her brain felt dazed and numb. she gazed at his writing stony-eyed and appalled, limp with dismay and forlornness. to avoid falling she put out her hand to the table, and the contact of her own flesh served to readjust her consciousness. seating herself she swept her fingers across her brow to rally her senses, and read the letter again slowly. then mortification succeeded dismay, and resentment followed close on mortification. the wounded pride of the wife, the indignation of the mother protesting for her children asserted themselves, causing her to flush to the roots of her hair and her pulses to tingle. coward! unnatural father! what had she done to deserve this? what had they done, helpless innocents? give them up to him? her children, now the only joy of her life? never. they could not both have them. why should he who had left them in the lurch have either? she could hear their prattle in the adjoining room, poor little souls, unconscious of their misery. then her sense of wounded pride and her anger were forgotten in the agony of a possible separation from her offspring, and in the loss of her husband's love, and her tense nerves gave way. "oh, emil, my husband, how could you?" she moaned, and burying her face in her hands she let sorrow have full sway. [illustration: "oh, emil, my husband, how could you?" she moaned] when she had dried her eyes she was prepared to face the situation and to think more calmly. certain points were now clear. emil was right; since he had ceased to love her, they could never be happy together. so far as she could see, she had not been at fault, though he had persuaded himself that she was to blame. she would never have left him; but now that he had deserted her, she could dare to admit that their souls were not in accord, and that her love and respect for him had been waning in spite of herself for many months. she would not attempt to follow him, and she desired to retain both the children. was it her duty to let emil have one of them? here was the only harassing point in the plans for the future which she was formulating. would it be fair to the children to separate them? would she be justified in keeping them both, in view of the affection which their father had professed for his own flesh and blood? as emil had declared, he and she had made a mess of their marriage, and they were to separate. was it fair to him to keep both the boy and the girl? ah, but she could not bear the thought of giving up either. she felt the need of counsel. to whom could she turn? who were her friends? she thought of mr. prentiss, and she remembered her husband's taunt concerning her philanthropic church friends with a sense of shrinking. the church offered itself as a refuge to all in the hour of distress, but it seemed to her as though she would rather starve than apply to mr. prentiss. not that she was afraid of starving. that side of the situation had no terrors for her. she was almost glad at the idea of supporting herself and her darlings, and she had entire confidence in her ability to do so, even though she were forced to scrub floors. but she yearned for the sympathy and advice of a friend. how lonely she had suddenly become in this large, busy city! emil had evinced little desire, especially of late, to make friends in the neighborhood, and she had been so absorbed in her home and her husband's interest that she had disregarded her social opportunities. he had been apt to speak slightingly of their acquaintances as people whom he would soon outstrip in the struggle of life. and now she was the poorest of the poor, the saddest of the sad, one of the lowly common people for whom her doctor father's heart had ever cherished fond and patient sympathy. she was one of them now herself. how different had been her dreams and her ambition. to think that she, constance forbes, had come to this--a wife abandoned by her husband, alone and friendless, with only the semblance of a roof to shelter her and her children. but all this was nothing if only she need not part with either of her babies. she would be able to support them, never fear, and with them to support she could be brave, even happy. but without them? no, no, emil had forsaken her, she had lost her faith in him, he was not worthy of the sacrifice; she dared not trust him; he had no right to either. she could not, she would not let either go. when the morning came she was more firmly of the same opinion, and she composed this reply to her husband: emil: i have your letter and my heart is filled with sorrow. i cannot compel you to live with me against your will. god knows i have tried to be a loving, dutiful, and sympathetic wife, but it seems i have failed to please you. it is true that our ideas of how to live and what is right are very different. i have been aware of that in my secret soul, but for your sake i did my best to adopt your point of view. now i shall be free to follow my own. since you no longer love me, i am not sorry that we are to live apart, for i can see now that i have suffered much on your account. but i do not choose to reproach you. what good would it do? besides you are the father of my children--poor little things. i do not think that i should have written to you at all if it were not for the question what is to become of them. i am trying to do what is best for them and to be just; just to you and to myself. i have decided to keep both the children. they are babies still, and need a mother's love. a father's too, but it seems they cannot have both. let god judge between us, emil. they are my flesh and blood too, and it is you who are forsaking us, not we you. as you say, i have my health and we shall not starve. i am not afraid. there is nothing more to say, is there? it has all been a dreadful mistake--and we thought we should be so happy. good-by. in spite of everything i shall always think of you kindly. constance. having despatched this she felt as though she would be glad to die. life seemed so flat, and her condition so humiliating. her love for emil was dead; the union of their souls was broken; what was there to look forward to? yet she knew that she must not stop to repine or to indulge in self-pity. the stern necessity of winning bread for her children confronted her and must be faced at once and resolutely. in this she must find happiness and fresh inspiration. it was her duty to close the ears and eyes of her soul to the voices and visions of the past. hard work would save her brain from giving way, and hard work only. what should that work be? what was she to do? in the first glow of her pride, revolting at the slight which her husband had put upon her, the way had seemed easy, but viewed in the sober light of reality it bristled with difficulties. yet now, as she pondered and realized what failure would mean, her spirit rose to meet them, and immediate needs forced sorrow to the background. where was she to find work? since the receipt of her husband's letter everything outside her own emotions had been a blank to her; her gaze had been solely introspective. conscious now of the need of action and of renewing her contact with the world, she took up the newspaper, yesterday's issue of which lay unopened on the table, and began to examine the page of advertisements for employment. she must find at once something which would provide her with ready money. only through friends and only after delay could she hope to obtain a kindergarten position; it would take time and instruction to learn typewriting; she was not sufficiently proficient in languages or music to offer herself as a teacher. she could become a domestic servant or a shopgirl. in the former case it would be necessary to board out her children, to give them to some institution, perhaps, a prospect which wrung her heart; in the latter she could be with them at night, but who would look after and guard them during the day? what did other women do whose husbands ran away and left them? the long list of people out of work was appalling, and few of the opportunities offered seemed to fit her circumstances. someone was seeking employment as a seamstress. she might take in sewing. this perhaps was the most feasible suggestion. she was handy at plain sewing, and a little practice would doubtless render her skilful. yes, she would try this, and in order to obtain a start would solicit work from some of the neighbors, if needs be. the neighbors? they did not know as yet of her misfortune--her disgrace, for it was a disgrace to be forsaken by her husband. it would be necessary to tell them. what should she say? entertaining sadly this necessity of an avowal, she glanced over the rest of the newspaper, and came suddenly upon a paragraph which informed her that her misfortune was already public. prefaced by offensive headlines, "emil stuart disappears from benham! what has become of mrs. morgan's mortgage money?" the wretched story stood exploited to the world. constance read and the cup of her distress and humiliation overflowed. it needed only this insinuation of dishonesty to complete her misery. her husband an embezzler? where should she hide her head? nor was there comfort in the reporter's closing effort at euphemism: "one or two acquaintances of the late candidate for aldermanic honors, when apprised of his mysterious disappearance, expressed the belief that his seeming irregularities would be explained to the satisfaction of all concerned; but a gentleman, whose name we are not at liberty to disclose, hazards an opinion, based on personal observation, that mr. stuart has been premeditating this step for several weeks, and is a fugitive from justice. the circumstance that his wife and two children have been left behind in benham invites the further inquiry whether he has also abandoned his family. there are rumors that mr. stuart's domestic relations were not altogether harmonious." constance let the newspaper slip from her hands. her cheeks burned with shame. this was the last straw. her husband a defaulter, and her relations with him the subject of common newspaper gossip. as she stood spell-bound by this new phase of misfortune the door-bell rang. a visitor. who could it be? some sympathetic or curious neighbor who had read of her calamities. or more probably the writer of the newspaper article coming to probe into her misery in search of fresh copy. for a moment she thought that she would not answer the call, and she waited hoping that whoever it was would go away. again the bell rang, this time sharply. it might be something important, even a telegram from emil to clear himself. picking up the newspaper she concealed it hastily, then stepped into the passage and opened the door slightly. "may i come in?" asked a strong, friendly voice. "oh yes, mr. prentiss; excuse me," she faltered. she had recognized at once who her visitor was, but so many bewildering things had happened that she stood for a moment irresolute, refusing to credit her own senses. as she opened wide the door, the clergyman strode in fearlessly as though he realized that the situation must be carried by storm. entering the parlor, he put out his hand and said with manly effusion: "i have come to ask you to let me help you, mrs. stuart." "sit down, please. you are very kind. i----" her words choked her, and she stopped. "i saw by the newspaper yesterday that you were in trouble. i do not wish to pry into your affairs, but i thought that you might be glad of the counsel of a friend." his visit was precious balm to her spirit, but, despite her gratitude, the knowledge that he was heaping the traditional coals of fire on her head made her uncomfortable. she had choked from mingled relief and mortification. but now her finer instinct responded to the kindness of his words and she said with simple directness: "i should like to tell you everything, mr. prentiss. my husband left a week ago. he does not intend to return. i have a letter from him, and he--he does not wish to live with me any longer. he was willing to support the children, but i could not make up my mind to let them go. our money is all gone and this house is mortgaged. if you will help me to find work so that i can support them and myself, i shall be very grateful. it was very good of you to come to see me." the children, attracted by the voice of a stranger, had run in and stood one on either side of their mother staring at him shyly with cherubic eyes. the clergyman said to himself that here was a veritable madonna of distress--this lithe, nervous-looking woman with her slim figure and soulful face. how pretty and neat she looked in spite of her misery! how engaging were the tones in which she had set forth her calamity! he had always admired her, and it had been a disappointment to him that she had strayed. there was almost jubilation in his heart as he heard that she was free from the wretch who had pulled her down; and though he intended to temper the ardor of the priest by the tact of a man of the world, he could not entirely restrain his impulse to stigmatize her husband. "i see," he said. "you are much to be pitied. it is a cruel wrong; the act of a coward. but you must not take your trouble too much to heart, mrs. stuart, for the man who will leave a sweet wife and tender children from mere caprice is no real husband and father." "mr. stuart has had much to worry him of late. he has lost money, and been unfortunate in politics." her impulse was to apologize for her husband even then. "i cannot understand though how he could leave us," she added. after all why should she a second time on emil's account set her face against the truth in the presence of this true friend? emil was a coward, and his act was a cruel wrong. but mr. prentiss had recovered his aplomb. "i will not distress you by talking about him; he has gone. the matter with which i am concerned is how to help you. we must find you employment at once." constance regarded him gratefully. "that is my great requirement just now, mr. prentiss. i need work to keep my children from starving and to help me to forget. i am not afraid of work. i shall be glad to do anything for which i am fit." "i understand, i understand. it is the pride of my church to help just such women as you to help themselves. you need give yourself no concern as to your immediate pecuniary needs. they will be provided for. i will send the deaconess to you at once." the directness of his bounty, the plain intimation that she was a subject for charity brought a flush to her cheeks. but she knew in an instant that it would be false pride to protest. there was no food or money in the house. "thank you," she said simply. mr. prentiss divined her reluctance and appreciated the delicacy of her submission. he recognized that this woman with wistful brown eyes and nervous, intelligent face was no ordinary person--was even more deserving than he had supposed, and his thoughts were already busy with the problem of her future. he must find just the right thing for her. "i know, of course, that you wish to become self-supporting as soon as possible," he said. "will you tell me a little more about yourself and your capabilities? you came to benham a few months before your marriage to fit yourself to be a kindergarten teacher, if i remember aright?" during the momentary pause which preceded this inquiry her conscience had been reasserting itself. she had longed for counsel and here it was. if she had erred, there was yet time to repair her fault. "before we talk of that, may i ask you one question, mr. prentiss? i wish to know if you think it was selfish of me to keep both the children. i desire to do what is right this time, whatever it cost me." she clasped her hands resolutely in her lap as though she were nerving herself for a sacrifice. "i hope you will tell me exactly what you think." the clergyman's heart warmed at this revelation of spiritual vigor. "here is a soul worth helping," he reflected. then, in answer to her appeal, he exclaimed with righteous emphasis: "ask your own heart, my dear woman. would you dare trust these babies to your husband's keeping? this is a problem of right and wrong, and demands a severing of the sheep from the goats. you may banish that doubt forever." constance dropped her eyes to hide the tears of satisfaction which had sprung into them at his words. her children were safe. the counsel given was the very echo of the test by which she had justified herself toward emil. "excuse me," she said in apology for her emotion. then looking up she added with tremulous brightness, "i felt that i must be sure before anything else was decided. and now to answer your question as to my own capabilities: i have none. i am eager to learn, and i have had some education--my father was fond of books and had a library--but i tell you frankly that there is nothing but the simplest manual work for which i am fitted at the present time. i have thought that all over." "so far so good. much of the trouble of this world proceeds from the inability of people to discern for what they are not fitted. can you sew?" "i can do plain sewing satisfactorily." "we will begin with that then. it will keep you busy for the time being. meanwhile i shall have an opportunity to consider what you had best undertake." he rose and put out his hand with spontaneous friendliness. "good-by. god bless you. you are a brave soul, and he will not desert you or leave you comfortless." constance quickened at the firm pressure, and her own fingers acknowledged the interest which it expressed. she looked into his eyes with frank confidence. "you have come to me at a time when i needed someone more than ever before in my life. i shall never forget it." mr. prentiss nodded and turned to go as though he would disclaim this expression of everlasting obligation. he felt that he was about his master's business, and was seeking neither thanks nor praise. yet, while he deprecated her gratitude, her entire mental attitude caused him ethical and æsthetic satisfaction. the conviction that this ward of the church was worth saving and helping gave elasticity to his step and erectness to his large figure as he strode up the street, knocking now and again some bit of orange peel or other refuse from the sidewalk with a sweep of his cane, which suggested a spirit eager to do battle in behalf of righteousness. vii two days later the rev. george prentiss dined at the house of another of his parishioners, mrs. randolph wilson. she was a widow of about forty-five, the sister of carleton howard, reputedly the wealthiest and most sagacious of benham's financial magnates, and a generous benefactress of st. stephen's. her bounty had enabled the rector from time to time to carry out his cherished plans for the æsthetic adornment of the church property. the reredos, two stained-glass windows, and the baptismal font in the enlarged edifice had been provided by her; and in the matter of charity she never failed to respond by munificent subscriptions to the various causes in aid of which he appealed to his congregation. they were friends and allies; interested mutually in st. stephen's, and interested also, as they both liked to feel, in promoting american civilization outside of church work. her house, or palace, as it should more properly be termed, a counterpart to that of her brother's which adjoined it, stood in the van of progress, in benham's fashionable new quarter beyond the river drive. no pains or expense had been spared to make these mansions impressive and magnificent. architects of repute had been employed to superintend their construction, and their decorations and furnishings had been chosen in consultation with persons whose business it was to know the whereabouts of admirable objects of art, and to tempt impecunious noble families abroad to exchange their unique treasures for dazzling round sums of american gold. mrs. wilson could fairly be termed the leader of social activity in benham, if such a term be compatible with the institutions of a country where every women is supposed to be a law unto herself. fashions, in the narrow sense of clothes, are in america set by the dressmakers, but what mrs. wilson wore was always a matter of moment to women who wished to be in style. she dressed elegantly, and she was able to take liberties with the dressmakers, doing daring things with colors and materials which justified themselves, yet were so individual that they were liable to make guys of those who copied her. consequently, her wardrobe had a distinction of its own which proclaimed fashion yet defied it. yet her clothes, striking and superb as they often were, constituted only a small part of her social effectiveness. her gracious finished manners, and quick, tactful intelligence were the agents of a spirit perpetually eager to be occupied and to lead, and which had found a labor of love in directing what may well be called benham's æsthetic renaissance. for benham's evolution had been no mere growth of bricks and mortar, and no mere triumph in census figures over other centres of population. even more remarkable and swift than its physical changes had been the transformation in the point of view of its citizens. twenty years earlier--in , when mr. prentiss was a young man just starting in the ministry--he had been one of a small group of earnest souls interested in awakening the public to a consciousness of the paucity of their æsthetic interests, and to the value of color as a stimulating factor in the every-day life of the community, and as such he had often deplored the aridity of benham's point of view. in those days the city was virtually a hot-bed of republican simplicity and contempt for social refinements so far as all but a very small percentage of the inhabitants was concerned. those who built houses larger and finer than their neighbors were few in number and were stigmatized, if not as enemies of the institutions of the country, as purse-proud and frivolous. hotels were conducted on the theory that what was good enough for the landlord was good enough for the guest, and that malcontents could go elsewhere. in matters appertaining to art, hygiene, education or municipal management, one man's opinion was regarded as equal to any other's, provided he could get the job. special knowledge was sneered at, and the best patriots in the public estimation were those who did not distrust the ability of the average citizen to produce masterpieces in the line of his or her employment by dint of raw genius untrammelled or unpolluted by the experience of older civilizations. though solid business men wore solemn-looking black frock-coats and black wisp ties in business hours, to dress again in the evening was looked at askance as undemocratic. it would have been considered an invasion of the rights of the free-born citizen to forbid expectoration in the street cars. suggestions that the vicious and unregenerate adult pauper poor should not be herded with the young, that busy physicians should cleanse a lancet before probing a wound, and that sewage should not be emptied into a river used as a source of water supply, were still sniffed at by those in charge of public affairs as aristocratic innovations unworthy the attention of a sovereign people. architectural beauty both within and without the house was disregarded in favor of monotonous sober hues and solid effects, which were deemed to be suggestive of the seriousness of the national character. while deploring some of these civic manifestations, mr. prentiss had appreciated that the basis of this æsthetic sterility was ethical. when less discerning persons had attributed it solely to ignorance and self-righteous superficiality he had maintained that a puritanical, yet moral and sincere, hostility to extravagance and display was responsible for the preference for ugly architecture and homely upholstery and decoration, and that conscience was the most formidable obstacle to progress. as a priest of a church which fostered beauty and favored rational enjoyment of the fruits of the earth, he had never sympathized with this public attitude, but he had understood and, as an american, respected it. now, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, all was changed, and benham was in the throes of a revival; a revival which during the last ten years had revolutionized benham's architecture and benham's point of view. the public had become possessed by the conviction that they had outgrown their associations and that the standards hitherto revered were out of date and unworthy of a nation and a city pledged to enlighten the world, upon whom prosperity had been bestowed in large measure. the group of earnest souls who had dared to criticise seemed suddenly to have become a phalanx--numerically unimportant, still, when compared with the whole population, that seething army of industrial wage-earners--but assertive and energetic out of proportion to their numbers. the city had become a hive of reforming activities. specialists in the arts and humanities were no longer classed as traitors, but were welcomed by a growing clientage as safeguards against bumptious individualism. though a cheerful optimism in regard to the city's architectural merits still prevailed at large, a silent censorship was at work; substituting, in the business quarter, new mammoth structures adapted to modern industrial needs, erecting in the fashionable quarter, by the aid of american architects trained in paris, well-built and individual-looking residences. instead of three or four cheerless, barrack-like caravansaries with sodden cookery, there was a score of modern hotels, the proprietors of which vied with one another in their endeavors to lure patronage by costly and sumptuous innovations. there were comfortable and inviting restaurants. the slap-dash luncheon counter, with its display of pallid pie and one cadaverous chicken, was waning in the popular esteem, in favor of neat spas, at which the rush of patronage was alleviated by clean service and wholesome fare. there were eight theatres, each more spacious and splendid than its predecessor. a frowsy black coat, worn in the forenoon, had ceased to be a badge of patriotism or moral worth, and the community had become alive to the values of spruceness, color, and comfort in matters of dress. not only this, but on the streets of benham there were many stylish equipages with liveried grooms, and in the superb homes which the wealthy citizens had established, there were grand entertainments, where rivalry was rampant and money flowed like champagne. and last, but not least, there was mrs. randolph wilson, the quintessence in her own person of all that was best in this revival in favor of the beautiful things of life, the living embodiment of this newly directed and freshly inspired energy. for well-to-do benham and mr. prentiss liked to believe that the impulse behind these materialistic manifestations was conscience and aspiration, a reaching out for a greater human happiness and a wider human usefulness than had been possible under the old dispensation. this access of lavish philanthropy and study of charitable methods, this zeal of committees promoting new and more thorough methods in hygiene and education, and all the phases of this new awakening in quest of christian beauty signified to him benham's--and hence american--originality and fervor refined and spiritualized; benham's enterprise and independence informed, chastened, and fortified. and yet there was another side to this whole matter which had haunted mr. prentiss much of late, and which was in his thoughts to-night as he sat smoking his cigar after dinner. he had dined sumptuously. cool oysters, soup of mushrooms, fish smothered in a luscious sauce, cutlets of venison with french beans, little pyramids of _paté de foie gras_ encased in jelly, butter-ball ducks with a salad richly dressed, and a confection of fruit, cream, and pastry, which was evidently a gastronomic specialty of mrs. wilson's french cook. he had tasted everything; he had drunk two glasses of champagne, and been pleasantly aware that the cup of black coffee, served after dinner, was an entrancing concoction which his own kitchen did not afford; and he felt that his repast had done him good. it was for him an occasion. obviously it was for mrs. wilson an every-day affair. moreover, this rich, delicious dinner, served by noiseless servants on choice china, was in harmony with the rest of the magnificent establishment, in harmony with the artistic scheme of color, the soft lustrous draperies, the striking pictures and other masterpieces of art purchased for large sums abroad, and mrs. wilson's beautiful toilette and exquisite personality. here was luxury triumphant and compelling, yet unappeased and seeking fresh opportunities for æsthetic delight; as witness a millet, an inlaid table, and a japanese idol in the room in which he sat, all new since he had dined there last. what a vivid contrast all this to the cheerless often squalid homes which he was accustomed to visit as a rector of christ's church! the thought which haunted him was that one result of the city's marvellous growth and development had been the accentuation of the distinctions between rich and poor, between class and class in a community where, until lately, there had been theoretically no classes. to be sure he had mr. carleton howard's assertion that there was no country in the world where the poor man was so well off. this was very likely true, but it did not affect the proposition that the rich were daily growing richer and more self-indulgent. what was to be the limit--the outcome of this renaissance of beauty and comfort, which he had welcomed? had not the æsthetic reaction almost reached the point where, both as a priest of god and as a good american, it behooved him to cry halt against luxury and extravagance? he frowned at this last reflection for the reason that he was painfully aware that he had fulminated against this sort of thing from the pulpit for years, formerly as part of the clerical formula championing the cause of the spirit against the flesh, and latterly because the aladdin-like growth of great fortunes all over the land, and conspicuously in his own community, had often suggested the comparison between the passage of a camel through the eye of a needle and the rich man's entrance into the kingdom of heaven as an appropriate text. he had spoken with fervor and sincerity concerning the responsibilities of those having great possessions, and sometimes with living pictures in his mind. neither mrs. wilson nor her brother had ever been among those for whom these admonitions were intended. they had opened their purse-strings liberally to every meritorious cause. the goodly size of their cheques was to him a constant source both of satisfaction and astonishment--astonishment at the new possibilities open to those interested in god's kingdom. yet, though he put from him as ungenerous and unnecessary any positive criticism of his hostess, in the teeth of her many benefactions and her personal activity in social undertakings, he could not help realizing that, in spite of his utterances, the evil which he deprecated was proceeding at a pace which suggested the course of wild-fire. and the worst of it was that he--the church--was so helpless. great fortunes had been accumulated with a zeal which suggested the inevitable march of destiny--a law which seemed almost to mock the spirit of christ--and, even while he was musing, the city had become a theatre of industrial contrasts, with the pomp and pride of life in the centre of the stage and poverty and distress in the ample background. there recurred to him the traditional image of the curate of his faith--the church of england--cringing before or patronized by the titled worshippers of mammon. this, at least, he could resent as impossible in his case--he had never hesitated to speak his mind to any of his parishioners, however important--still, the reminder was disconcerting and a challenge to his conscience. nor was the reflection that this wave of luxury, this more and more exacting reverence for material comforts, was a part of the movement of the century, and was common to all civilized countries, a solace. he was an american, but first of all, he was a servant of the church, and the church was the beacon of civilization. was she doing her work, if these terrible inequalities were to continue? what was to be the outcome of this zest for luxurious personal comfort? to what extent the church ought to take part in the economic regeneration of the world was one of the questions which mr. prentiss had always found perplexing. he was well aware that his parishioners as a body were not fond of hearing him preach on what they called secular subjects. so long as he confined himself to enumerating spiritual truths, they were not averse to his illustrating his stigmas upon sin by generalizations from current worldly abuses; but he knew that many shook their heads and declared that the cobbler should stick to his last when he ventured to discourse on political topics or the relations of labor and capital. mr. prentiss was not aware, however, that some of this prejudice proceeded from the circumstance that he was apt to lose his head on such occasions; but, on the other hand, much of it was genuine disinclination for advice from the pulpit on subjects which, to quote the women parishioners, were not spiritual, and, to quote the men, were none of his business. his congregation was almost entirely composed of pew owners, people with vested rights, among which appeared to be the right not to be harrowed by socialistic doctrines. they were ready to help the poor in any way which he would suggest, and they had supplied him with a mission church where he could reach the ignorant and needy more effectively, but they argued that he had better leave to the politicians all suggestions tending to disturb the existing industrial order. mr. prentiss sometimes sighed over these limitations, but he had become used to them, and in a measure, with advancing years, he had, in his endeavor to be a man of the world in order to remain a more useful christian, accepted the doctrine that he had no plan to substitute for the present economic system, and that he must make the best of the existing situation. so, in practical, daily life, he exhorted the rich to give their money and themselves to the advancement of their fellow men, and the poor to shun vice and bear their privations with patience, while he held forth the promise of the church of an existence hereafter for the pure in heart where all the seeming inconsistencies of this mortal life would be explained and justified. not being endowed with much sense of humor, mr. prentiss, as he waxed in years, and st. stephen's became the fashionable church of the city, had found less and less difficulty in accommodating himself to this point of view, and in devoting all his ardor to reclaiming souls for christ. after all, was not his mission to help men and women as he found them? first of all to minister to their souls, and in the name of christianity to lift them from the slough of human suffering and misfortune that he might expound to them the loving mercies of the lord? the things of the earth were not the things of the spirit, and he was more tenacious than in his youth of the prerogatives of the church as an institution controlling human consciences by standards of its own, founded on the teachings of the prince of peace. nevertheless, being reasonably clear-headed and fearless, he was not without the suspicion at times that this reasoning was mystical, and in the face of facts he had every now and then his unpleasant quarters of an hour. this was one of them to-night. his hostess, when the dinner was over, had left him to a cigar and his own devices in the library. he was to join her presently and be shown her daughter's wedding presents. he had been invited to dine in order that he might see them, but mrs. wilson and he both knew that this was an excuse for a quiet evening together in which they might compare notes concerning their mutual interests. reaching out to knock off the ash of his cigar into a dainty porcelain wheelbarrow, he noticed a new photograph on the mantel-piece and rose to examine it. he recognized it as one of clarence waldo, the new yorker to whom miss lucille wilson was betrothed. the sight of this young man's countenance did not serve to restore mr. prentiss's serenity. on the contrary, he stood gazing at the photograph with an expression which suggested that his soul was still perturbed. the face was that of a man of twenty-seven or eight with delicate features--thin lips, a long nose and an indefinable haughtiness of expression which was made up of weariness and disdain. he had large eyes which lacked lustre, and his sparse hair gave the effect of having been carefully brushed. the clergyman had met him only a few times, and mr. prentiss had never forgotten the first occasion, which was at lucille's coming-out ball three years before. he had happened to find himself in mr. waldo's path when the young man was in the act of carrying everything before him with a plate of salad for his partner, and he had never forgotten the cold impertinence of the new yorker's stare. paul howard, lucille's cousin, who witnessed the encounter, said afterward that clarence had given mr. prentiss the dead eye, which was a telling description of the stoniness of the fashionable new yorker's gaze. mr. prentiss had never heard this diagnosis, but he had remembered the episode. he regarded it, however, merely as additional evidence of the lack of reverence on the part of the young men of the day--and the young women, too, for the matter of that--not merely for sacred things, but for everything and everybody which were in their way or did not happen to appeal to their fancy. but though he considered this absence of social politeness as one of the cardinal failings of the age, his present thoughts regarding lucille's future husband were not concerned with it. since the engagement had been announced four months ago he had been making inquiries, and the information which he had received was in his mind and troubled his soul as a corollary of the other problems which had just been haunting him. it was not of a character to justify him in forbidding the bans--not even in remonstrating with mrs. wilson, unless she were to ask his advice or provide him with an opportunity. but he deplored sincerely that this young man was to marry his friend's daughter. was this to be the outcome, the crowning of the wealth of love and solicitude which had been lavished on this only child--a child brought up in his church? was it for this that lucille had been made the central figure of costly entertainments for the last three years, in the hope that she might make a brilliant match? decidedly, it was a puzzling world, and circumstances seemed to be conspiring to cloud his horizon and disturb his digestion at a time when he ought to be enjoying himself and taking his ease. "what does he offer her?" he said to himself. "twelve months of sporting life--american sporting life. a superb stable, a four-in-hand coach and steam yacht, polo, golf, the horse show, cards, six months every third year in europe, their summers at newport, their winters at palm beach. the fortune which she will bring him will enable them to live in the lap of luxury all the year round, and he will teach her to regard those who are not rich and who do not imitate their manner of life as beneath their notice. i know the kind--i know the kind." soft footsteps interrupted his mental soliloquy. "no, thank you," he exclaimed in a tone which was almost militant to the waiters who approached him with a tray. mr. prentiss supposed that another form of stimulant was being offered him, for madeira, liqueurs and coffee had been successively brought in and solemnly presented to him by the two men servants, one of whom seemed to him as superfluous as a plumber's helper. then as his gaze, which had been inward, appreciated that the silver gilt tumbler contained apollinaris water, he called them back and emptied the glass. he had finished his cigar and it was time to rejoin his hostess. viii mr. prentiss continued his monologue on his way to the drawing-room. he imagined himself saying to mrs. wilson, "you know that i believe in toleration, and that i would not set or preach an ascetic standard of life. i believe--my church believes--that it is not profitable to the human soul to mortify the flesh in every-day life or refuse to enjoy the comforts of civilization. but the set of people to which this young man belongs are cumberers of the soil and a menace to society. it is not merely a question of taste, but of christian morals. we have nothing to do with other nations; our concern is with the social life of this nation and whether we are to foster and encourage a pleasure-loving, self-indulgent, and purposeless leisure class." yet though his thoughts thus shaped themselves in fervent words, he was conscious that in the absence of a cue his lips must remain sealed. there was a limit imposed by society on the priestly office which he could not overstep without appearing officious, and thus weakening his influence. were it a case of notorious dissipation or some palpable fault or blemish, it would be his duty to speak. but he had no such data at his command. clarence waldo was simply a fastidious idler, pretentious, and indifferent to the vital interests of life. it could not even be charged that he was marrying lucille for her money, as he had a competency of his own. they would be able to buy all the dogs and horses in the country if they saw fit. but his own tongue was tied. to all appearances mrs. wilson was content. at the time she had announced her daughter's engagement to him, she had said, in response to his earnest inquiry if she were satisfied--said it with a blithe smile, as though, on the whole, the best had happened--"i should have been glad of course, if lucille had chosen a man of conspicuous talent, a future united states senator or successful artist or author. if she had loved her lord, i should not have objected to a title, because, after all, even to a free-born american, there is a certain compensation in becoming the mother of dukes and regenerating an ancient line. but clarence is well connected, and the child is in love with him. so long as she is happy, that is the essential thing." since then he had become better informed as to the young man's tendencies. but if lucille was in love with him and her mother acquiescent, what was there to do? the church could not interfere beyond a certain point without giving offence. mrs. wilson was not in the drawing-room, but mr. prentiss caught a glimpse of her at her desk in a smaller room which led out of it. she called to him that she was answering a note and would join him presently. the clergyman seated himself and picking up from a low teak table beside him a paper-cutter fashioned on a japanese sword hilt he compressed his fingers on the handle as an outlet to his perplexity. had he been walking in the fields, he would have cut off the heads of the dandelions with his cane. marriage was a sacrament, the most solemn undertaking in life, yet how impossible it was to regulate matrimony for others. he glanced around the room admiringly. already the musical notes of his hostess's voice had served to dissipate partially the miasma of doubt which had been assailing him. this main apartment was one of a series of drawing-rooms, each furnished with an exquisite magnificence suggestive of the salons of france in the days of louis xiv, save that there was a superabundance of artistic furnishings; hence the sight was confused by the array of costly tapestries, marbles, bronzes, china, and gilt or otherwise illuminated ornaments which almost contended for space with one another, though the rooms were of large proportions. one feature of benham's renaissance was the ambition to outdo the past in size and gorgeousness, but mrs. wilson's advisers had been animated also by the desire for artistic success, and it was only in its wealth of material that their and her--for she had been the leading spirit after all--performance was open to criticism. here in benham, where twenty years before the horse-hair sofa was still an object of admiring regard in the homes of the well-to-do, the desert had blossomed with the rose, and a veritable palace had been established. and, as mr. prentiss reflected, joining his finger-tips across his waist-band, all this lavish expenditure meant the return by the rich of accumulated wealth into circulation for the benefit of those who labored for their bread, which was another of mr. carleton howard's telling truths. the swift, animated, but noiseless glide of mrs. wilson into the room and onto a sofa, from which she flashed at him a gracious, electric look of attention with the words, "and now, my friend, i am entirely at your disposal. it was a note which had to be answered at once"--restored mr. prentiss's serenity. she was one of those pleasant persons in whose presence the world seems justified. when she entered a room people were apt to pay tribute by a pause in whatever they were doing, and she became the focus of attention. the effect of her graceful energy was largely responsible for this, suggesting the forceful but silent sweep of a ship. she had lost the figure and the countenance of youth, but though her abundant crinkly hair was grizzled no one ever thought of her age except to observe that she was handsomer than as a younger woman. she had never been a beauty; she was now a distinguished looking, comely, and effective matron. she was tall and rather willowy, but not thin, with a proud, resolutely carried head, an agreeable straight nose, short rather than long (her best feature) a spirited, sympathetic smile, eyes fundamentally gray, which changed as her thoughts changed, and ingratiating but elegant manners. her face, notably the cheeks and lips, was a trifle full, suggesting dimples, and possibly to the critical a too-manifest desire to please. her obvious pose--which, though deliberate was entirely genuine--was to be exquisite, sympathetic, and intellectual, and for the expression of this range of qualities she had serviceable allies in her musical voice, a bewitching way of showing just enough of her teeth, when she became vivacious, and her ornamental clothes, which always suited her. on this evening she wore an old-gold gown with jet and lace accompaniments, an aigrette of crimson gauze with which the plumage of her fan was in harmony, a band of magnificent pearls around her neck, and on her breast, though such ornaments were not strictly in fashion, a large brooch of fine workmanship containing a miniature of two children of tender age. of these children one had died shortly after the miniature was painted, the other was her daughter lucille. her soul was dedicated to two interests, her joy and ambition as a mother, and to the cause of social human progress. mrs. wilson had been for fifteen years a widow, and, though her husband held a hallowed place in her heart, even she was conscious that the broad scope of her present life dated from the period when, seeking a refuge from her own grief and loneliness, she had welcomed diverse social employment. her husband, randolph, a hero and a colonel of the civil war, had claimed her on his return as a bride. they were ardent lovers, and they had never ceased to be so, certainly not in theory. some of mrs. wilson's knowing friends were fond of insinuating, when the humor for gossip prevailed, that he had died just in time, which was their way of intimating that she had outgrown him. but these dissectors of hearts did not perhaps sufficiently remember that her own blossoming forth into the woman she now was had been subsequent to her husband's death. nor did they take sufficiently into account the bewildering course of events which had attended her progress. colonel wilson, a man of small means at the time of their marriage, had become her brother's partner. the properties in which he was interested at the time of his death had subsequently proved so valuable that she had found herself presently the possessor of a million, a sum which had quadrupled in the keeping of her brother, carleton howard, one of the most powerful financiers in the country. opportunity surely had waited on her widening aspirations, enabling her finally to establish herself in this magnificent home surrounded by all the æsthetic attractions and many of the treasures of modern civilization. probably mrs. wilson herself had never sought to analyze the past by the light of the present, realizing, as we all do, that life unbeknown to us has halting-places which become, as we look back, the dividing lines between what are almost separate existences. though at her husband's death she had made no resolutions regarding the future, she had never felt the impulse to marry again, so engrossing were the concerns of motherhood and social responsibility. "you spoke at dinner of wishing my assistance in some case in which you are interested. will you tell me about it now before we look at the presents?" mrs. wilson continued with smiling interest. "ah, yes." mr. prentiss was glad to have this recalled to his mind. there was no chance here for doubt or perplexity. "it is rather out of the usual run of charity cases. the personality of the woman, i mean. the circumstance that her husband has run away and left her penniless, with two young children to support is, alas! only too common." "poor thing! how can i be of service?" "the woman--her name is mrs. stuart--notwithstanding her disastrous marriage, seems to me distinctly superior. she came to benham some six or seven years ago, and i knew her a little at st. stephen's before she was a wife. indeed, i married them, and made some inquiries at the time concerning the husband's circumstances, but learned nothing to his discredit. she has found him to be a godless, unscrupulous person with drinking habits, and recently he has deserted her on the grandiose plea that they would be happier apart. she will be happier; i am sure of that; but i have been exercised as to how to enable her to become self-supporting. she is called to higher usefulness than scrubbing or plain sewing, but though i have discerned in her capabilities and refinement, she is not at present equipped for any active employment." "which only tends to show, my friend, that every woman"--mrs. wilson paused an instant--"every woman who has not independent means of her own, i mean, should be educated to be self-supporting--should have some definite bread-winning occupation which would render her independent of the man she marries in case he dies or misbehaves. i was thinking the other day that a society formed to advocate this doctrine before clubs of girls as a condition of marriage would prove efficacious." mr. prentiss nodded. "it is certainly the duty of christian society to provide additional safeguards against the consequences of improvident wedlock. in this particular instance, the young woman plighted her troth while she was studying to become a kindergarten teacher. she was a country doctor's daughter, and is gentle and refined, as well as intelligent in appearance--one of those lithe, tense american personalities in which the spirit appears to burn at the expense of the body, but which, like the willow, bend but do not break under the stress of life." "she sounds interesting, and i do not see that she has been to blame. we must raise a fund for her. with how large a subscription shall i head the list?" though mrs. wilson gave freely on merely charitable grounds, she gave with more enthusiasm when the objects of her bounty had not offended her sense of the social fitness of things. the clergyman put out his hand. "that wouldn't do exactly, i think. she is not too proud to let us help her for a few weeks with coal and groceries until she can earn for herself. she realizes that she must be sensible, if only for the children's sake. she has an independent simplicity of nature and clearness of perception which would stand in the way, i fear, of her accepting a donation such as you have in mind; though i should dearly love to allow you to pay off the encumbrances on their house, which, owing to her husband's rascalities have eaten up her little home--her patrimony. but i am sure she would refuse." "i see. we should think less of her if she allowed herself to be pauperized, much as i should enjoy giving her a deed of her home free and clear--the mere thought of it causes me a thrill of pleasure. but the worst of such tragedies is that we are most powerless to aid those who are most deserving." mrs. wilson leaned back among her cushions, and, drawing a pale pink rose from a bunch in a vase at her elbow, laid it along her cheek and inhaled its fragrance. "if she were an undiscerning, common spirit with workaday sensibilities, as so many of them are, she would not refuse, but--half the pleasure of giving would be lost. it is a privilege and the fashion to be charitable, but so much of our charity consists in filling the mouths and clothing the bodies of the wretched who will never be appreciably different or strive to be different from what they are." "the poor we have always with us," murmured the clergyman. "always. the shiftless, dirty, unaspiring, unæsthetic poor. the dregs and lees of human endeavor. we must feed and clothe them, of course, and help them to help themselves, but sometimes i forget the pathos of it all in the ugliness and squalor. consequently, when the chance to do real good comes, it is a pity not to be able to lift the burden completely. what, then, can i do for this young person?" "i have thought over her case for the last forty-eight hours, and have come to the conclusion that, as she has no special training, her best chance for employment is to learn short-hand and to use the typewriter. i understand that women proficient in this vocation can usually secure steady work at a fair wage. though mrs. stuart would be unwilling to accept a direct gift of money, i feel confident that she would not refuse to let us put her in the position to become self-supporting--that is, defray the cost of the lessons necessary to make her a competent stenographer or office clerk. and i thought you might be glad to pay for these lessons--a matter of six months or so." mr. prentiss had taken up the paper-cutter again, and he passed the flat of the metal blade across his palm as though he were smoothing out his plan as well as the creases. "gladly," she responded. "for as long as you desire. and, perhaps, when she has learned what is necessary, my brother may know of some opening for her down-town." "very likely," answered mr. prentiss, with resonant acquiescence. "the same thought had occurred to me." "and, in the meantime, since you tell me that she is competent and refined, my secretary, who will have her hands full with the details of the wedding, may be able to give her occasional errands to do. you may tell her to call when her plans are adjusted and to ask for me." "excellent. and we shall both be your debtors." mrs. wilson smiled graciously, showing the dimples in her cheeks. the demands made upon her for pecuniary aid were of daily, it might be said hourly, occurrence. whoever in benham was in search of money applied to her, and the post brought her solicitations from all sorts of people, among whom were the undeserving or importunate, as well as the needy or humanitarian. as lady bountiful, she purposed to exercise intelligent discrimination in her charities, and she accepted thanks as a tribute to that quality. "come," she said, rising, "i will show you the presents. only think, four hundred of them, and so many beautiful things! people have been so kind. several of my brother's friends in new york have sent most exquisite tokens--a necklace of diamonds and pearls from mr. fenton the banker, a gold dessert service from his railroad ally, mr. kennard." she led the way from the drawing-room suite into the hall, where electricity in artistic guises illuminated the broad panellings, a splendid terriers and three or four bronze or marble statuaries of rare merit, and up the stair-case to the next floor into what was known as the morning-room--an apartment where mrs. wilson conducted her affairs and did her reading and thinking. this was a combination of study and æsthetic boudoir. there were seductive sofas and quaint capacious chairs supplied with brightly colored cushions, and dainty draperies, all in silken stuffs of patterns reminiscent of the orient. art, in its most delicate and spiritual forms, breathed from every object of furniture or decoration; from the small pictures--some in oils, some in water-colors--which merited and often demanded the closest scrutiny; from the few vases of entrancing shape and hue, from the interesting photographs in beautiful frames, from the curious and rare memorials of travel and wise choice of what cunning fingers had wrought with infinite labor. as in the rest of the house, there was still too much wealth of material, too much scintillation and conglomeration of color, but the intent had been--and not without success--to produce a more subtle atmosphere than prevailed outside, as of an inner temple. prominent in one angle stood mrs. wilson's desk, rose-wood, inlaid with poetic gilt tracery, and littered with the correspondence of a busy woman. books and other articles of daily use lying here and there without effort at order gave to the room the air of being the intimate abode of a human soul. opening out of this was a private music-room, which was used by mrs. wilson and her daughter in preference to the large music-room on the street floor intended for musical parties and dances. here were the wedding presents, a dazzling array of gold, silver, jewels, glass, china, and ornamental knick-knacks, tastefully arranged on tables introduced for the purpose. as they entered an attendant withdrew into the hall. "we have thought it more prudent to have a watchman on guard by night and day," explained mrs. wilson; "for i suppose it is true, as one of those ridiculous newspaper items asserts, that these gifts represent at least one hundred thousand dollars. by the way," she continued, with a gentle sigh, "it is so difficult to know what attitude to adopt with the newspaper people. if one refuses them the house, their sensibilities are hurt and they are liable to invent falsehoods or write disagreeable paragraphs. if they are allowed to inspect everything, they publish details which make one's heart sick, and make one appear a vain fool. how is a person in my position to be courteous toward the power of the press and yet to maintain the right to privacy? is not this superb?" she added, holding up a crest of diamonds in the form of a tiara. "my brother's present to lucille." "beautiful--beautiful, indeed," murmured the clergyman. the sight of all these costly things was bewildering to his mind as well as to his eyes. "ah, the press--the press, it is a problem, indeed. we would seem to have the right to individual privacy, would we not? and yet in this age of ours, pressure is so often used upon us to thrust our wares into the shop-windows--as in my case, sermons for newspapers of the most sensational class--on the plea of a wider usefulness, a closer touch with the wilderness of souls, that it is difficult to know where the rights of the public end as to what one has. what would seem to be vanity may often be only another form of philanthropy. and yet----" "and yet," interposed mrs. wilson, as she singled out an enchanting fan of gold and ivory and the most exquisite lace and spread it for his inspection, "why should i pander to the vulgar curiosity of the public? it is none of their business." "in a matter of this kind i quite agree with you. if they could see all these beautiful things, there might be some sense in it; but that would be out of the question, of course." "that will be the next step; our houses thrown open to the madding crowd. six newspapers--two from new york--applied recently for leave to see the presents. i intended to refuse firmly, but to my astonishment lucille seemed disappointed. it never occurred to me that she would not hate the publicity. she gave a little shriek and said, 'mamma, how dreadful!' and then added in the next breath, 'everybody does it, and, as something is sure to be printed, might it not be better to make certain that it's correct?' a day or two later she was photographed in her tiara, and from what has transpired since i fear that the idea of publicity was not foreign to her thought. my child, mr. prentiss! only think of it! one can never quite understand the point of view of the rising generation. i consulted carleton, and he grew successively irate, contemplative, philosophical, and weak-kneed. in short, a week ago a reportorial woman, with the social appetite of a hyena and the keen-eyed industry of a ferret, passed the forenoon in the house and went away with a photograph of lucille in the tiara. and what is worst of all, in spite of my humiliation at the whole proceeding, i am decidedly curious to see what she has written." the sound of voices in the morning-room broke in upon this confession. "ah, here you are, aunt miriam! i have brought you an artistic masterpiece with a felicitous biography of the distinguished heroine. behold and admire!" the speaker was paul howard, mrs. wilson's nephew. he advanced from the doorway with radiant, teasing face, holding out a newspaper at which he pointed delightedly. at his heels followed lucille and clarence waldo, she protesting, yet betraying by her laughing confusion that her indignation was half-hearted; he stalking with self-important gravity save for a thin smile, the limit of his deliberate contributions to the gayety of nations unless under the influence of alcoholic conviviality. at men's gatherings there was a stage in the proceedings when clarence waldo became decorously mellow and condescended--indeed, expected to be asked--to sing one of three or four quasi-humorous ditties at his command, a function which he seemed to regard as an important social contribution and for which he practised in secret. also, after luncheon or dinner, he was liable to lay down the law in loud tones in regard to current sporting affairs. but his habitual manner was languid and his expression cold, as though he feared to compromise himself by interest or enthusiasm. he was very tall. in the centre of his crown was a bald spot. he stooped slightly, and, except among his intimates, looked straight before him lest he might see someone whom he did not wish to know. in the rear of this family party came carleton howard, stepping firmly yet deliberately, as he always did, as though he walked abreast of time, not tagging at her skirts like so many of his contemporaries--a fine figure of a man approaching sixty, with a large body, but not corpulent, a broad brow, a strong, defiant nose, iron-gray hair and a closely cut iron-gray mustache, clear, fearless, yet reflective eyes, and a mouth the pleasant tension of which indicated both determination and tact. he was smoking a cigar, and had come in from his own library to enjoy the bearding of his sister by the young people. ix before mrs. wilson could ascertain what it was, lucille made a dash at the newspaper. paul thrust it behind his back. "give it to me, paul," demanded the young woman, imperiously. "i order you to give it to me," she reiterated, tapping her foot. "you are a hateful tease." [illustration: "give it to me, paul," demanded the young woman imperiously] "surely, my fair cousin, you're not going to deprive your mother of the satisfaction of gazing on this work of art, and reading this appreciative description of your personal charms? can you not see how impatient she is to have it all to herself?" "you have certainly whetted my curiosity, paul," said mrs. wilson. "i forbid you to show it to her." "why?" "it is too ridiculous and foolish, and the picture--" her criticism on that score instead of seeking words culminated in another spring, which paul evaded by wheeling spryly about so that he still faced her. paul howard was an ornamental, attractive specimen of athletic, optimistic american youth; a fine animal of manly, well-knit proportions with no sign of physical weakness or of effeminacy in his person or his face. his countenance was open and ruddy; his eyes clear blue, his hair light brown. his lip was scrupulously clean-shaven, exposing the full, pleasant strength of his father's mouth. indeed, in conformity with the prevailing fashion among his contemporaries, he wore neither mustache, beard, nor whiskers, as though in immaculate protest against every style of hirsute ornamentation, from the goat-like beard of methodistical statesmanship to the spruce mustache and well-trimmed whiskers of men of the world of fifteen years earlier. he was a harvard graduate; he had been on the foot-ball team, and a leading spirit in the social life of the college; had been around the globe since graduation, and spent nearly a year shooting big game in the rockies and getting near to nature, as he called it, by living on a ranch. all this as preliminary to taking advantage of the golden spoon which was in his mouth at his birth. at twenty-three he had signified that he was ready to buckle down to the responsibilities of guarding and increasing the family possessions, an announcement delighting his father's heart, who had feared, perhaps, lest his only son might conclude to become merely a clubman or a poet. this was the fourth year of his novitiate, much of which had been spent in new york, where mr. howard, though his home was in benham, had established a branch of his banking-house, at the head of which he intended presently to place paul. on the young man's twenty-fifth birthday the magnate had made him a present of a million dollars so as to put him on his feet and permit him to support a wife. if this were a hint, paul had taken it. though absorbed in financial undertakings of magnitude (which had included the electric street-car combination hostile to the aspirations of emil stuart), he had wooed and wed one of the prettiest girls in benham, and he possessed, not many blocks away, a stately establishment of his own. he was accustomed to walk hand in hand with prosperity, and this habit was reflected in the gay and slightly self-satisfied quality of his manliness. after foiling his cousin for a few moments, with a tantalizing smile, a new idea occurred to him. he held out the newspaper, saying, "very well then, here it is. i dare you, lucille, to destroy it. nothing would induce you to part with it." lucille snatched the sheet from his hand, and her ruffled hesitation indicated that to destroy it was the last thing she had intended. in another instant she tore the newspaper into strips with an air of disdain and cast them on the floor. delighted at the success of his taunt, paul stooped and gathering the fragments began to piece them together. "that is only a blind. she knows she can buy a dozen copies to-morrow. listen, aunt miriam, to this gem which i have rescued: 'the fair bride has a complexion of cream of alabaster, with beautiful almond-shaped eyes, and hair of black lustre, which, rising from her forehead in queenly bands, seems the natural throne of the glittering diadem in the picture, one of her choicest bridal gifts.' could anything be more exquisite and fetching?" he gave a laugh which was almost a whoop of exultation. "no matter, lucille," said mrs. wilson, coming to her daughter's rescue. "it is only envy on paul's part. the newspapers did not make half so much of his wedding." in her own heart she did not approve of the publicity, but the sense of importance which it conveyed was not without its effect even on her. besides, the personal description, though florid in style, was to her maternal eyes not an exaggerated estimate of her daughter's charms. "the writer was evidently under the spell of her subject," said mr. prentiss, gallantly. though tolerant of banter, especially at clerical gatherings, and partial to paul howard as one of the young men whom he desired to draw into closer union with the church, the idea of the possibilities of the newspaper as a dispenser of benefits was still in his mind, and served to minimize the vanity, if any, of his friend's daughter. "quite naturally, mr. prentiss," retorted the tormenting paul, "for the subject gave a private audience to the writer only a few days ago." paul spoke from the desire to tease, not because he objected actively to the connivance of his cousin with the designs of the press. if the opportunity to do away with the whole practice of prying into and advertising private social matters had been presented to him, he would gladly have embraced it, and welcomed at the same time the further opportunity to tar and feather or duck the race of social reporters. but as an astute and easy-going american he recognized the prevalence of the habit, and though personally he tried to dodge with good humor the impertinent inquiries of press agents, he was not disposed to censure those who yielded to their importunities. indeed, paul howard was so bubbling over with health prosperity, and a generally roseate conception of life as he saw it, that he shrank from active criticism of existing social conditions. he was a strong patriot, and it pleased him to believe that americans were world-conquerors and world-teachers. hence that it was the part of good americans to join hands all round and, avoiding nice strictures, to put their shoulders to the wheel of progress. "how absurd you are, paul," answered lucille. "that woman badgered me with questions, and was positively pathetic into the bargain, for she confided to me that she hated the whole business, but that her bread and butter depended on it. she was certain to write something, and so rather than have everything wrong, i told her a few things." "and gave her your photograph in the tiara." "she asked for it. she saw it lying on the table. wasn't that better than to be caricatured by some snap-shot with a camera?" the dire results of what would have ensued had she been less accommodating seemed so convincing to lucille as she recited them that her tone changed from defence to conviction. "i know a woman," said clarence waldo, "who told her servants not to let any of those newspaper beggars inside the house, and what do you suppose happened? on the day of the wedding there appeared an insulting account of the affair with everything turned topsy-turvy and disparaging remarks about both families. it's an awful bore, but when people of our sort are married the public doesn't like to be kept in the dark, you know." "there! you see!" exclaimed lucille, triumphantly. the description of this young lady which her cousin had read was fundamentally correct. her eyes could scarcely be called almond-shaped, but their curves were more gradual than those of most american women, a feature which, in conjunction with her thin lips and thin, pointed nose, gave to her countenance an expression of fastidiousness, which was characteristic. she was an example of the so-called gibson girl, with a tall and springy, yet slight, figure, and a race-horse air which suggested both mettle and disdain. she had been brought up on the theory of free development--a theory for which not her mother but the tendency of the day was responsible. parents, when it comes to a choice in educational methods, are apt at heart to recognize their own personal ignorance, and those with the highest aims for their offspring are most likely to adopt the newest fashionable graft on human experience. we are perpetually on the look-out for discoveries which will enable our children to become the bright particular stars which we are not. so what more natural than that mrs. wilson, with her ardent bent for improving social conditions, should swallow--hook, bait, and sinker--the theory that the budding intelligence should be cajoled and humored, not thwarted and coerced? the idea thus pursued at kindergarten, that everything should be made easy and agreeable for the infant mind, had been steadily adhered to, and lucille could fairly be said to have had her own way all her life. this own way had been at times bewildering, not to say disheartening, to her mother. mrs. wilson had expected and yearned for a soulful, aspiring, poetic daughter with an ambition for culture--herself, but reincarnated and much improved. instead, lucille had showed herself to be utterly indifferent to poetry, lukewarm in regard to culture, almost matter of fact in her mental attitude, and sedulously enamoured of athletic pursuits. she had a fancy for dogs. from fifteen to eighteen she had followed golf, tennis, and boating, hatless and with her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a free and easy and rather mannerless maiden, amazon-like in her bearing, but unlike an amazon in that she was a jolly companion to the boys, who called her promiscuously by her christian name, as she did them by theirs. does such a process of familiarity dull the edge of romance? we do not yet know. each rising generation provides new problems for the wise elders, and this was one of those which had kept mrs. wilson uneasy. she had looked forward to lucille's formal introduction to society as a social corrective, and argued that, as soon as her daughter met the world face to face, there would be a modification both of lucille's tastes and point of view. so strong is the emphasis laid by american mothers in fashionable society on what is called "the coming out" of their daughters that the concern engendered by the approach of the ordeal could fitly be described as a phase of hysteria. the true perspective of life becomes utterly and absurdly distorted by apprehension lest the dear child should not have "a good time" and by a fierce ambition that she should have a better "time" than her mates. as a consequence, competition--that absorbing passion of american character--is prone to take advantage of all the opportunities at its command, not merely to decorate the unprepossessing or provide the duck with the environment of the swan, but to make princesses out of goose girls by sheer gorgeous manifestations of the power of the almighty dollar. we all know that every woman in the world would prefer at heart to be called wicked rather than common, unless she were common--one of those extraordinary results of the tyranny of the social instinct which plays havoc with religious codes; and there is probably no country where the most socially adept are more intolerant of commonness than in democratic america--a fact which should be disconcerting to that form of socialism which yearns for a dead-level. yet the tendency to exploit one's daughters by means of money and to exploit them even with barbaric splendor is current among our most socially sophisticated people. mr. carleton howard's "coming-out" ball for his niece was the most splendid function which benham had ever known, and for the next three years lucille's life had been one round of social gayety, emphasized by the character of the things done in her behalf by her family, which were severally executed, if not conceived, in a spirit of emulation, though mrs. wilson would doubtless have resented the impeachment. mrs. wilson would have put the blame on the tendency of the age, arguing that american society was becoming more and more exacting in its esthetic demands, and that one must conform to existing usage in order to lead. but an examination of the facts would reveal that whatever form of entertainment was given by her for lucille, as, for instance, the four colored luncheons, when the food and the table ornaments were successively red, orange, blue, and heliotrope, and four sets of twelve young girls stuffed themselves through eight courses at mid-day, was carried out with a lavish accentuation of new and costly effects. it was currently recognized that at her house the cotillion favors and the prizes at games were worth having--silver ornaments, pretty fans, things of price--always a step beyond the last fashion, as though the world would not be content to stand still, but must be kept moving by more and more expensive social novelties. though three years of this life had served to transform the mannerless amazon into a socially correct and fastidious young woman, the result, nevertheless, was a secret disappointment to her mother, who had hoped that lucille would develop intellectual or æsthetic tastes under the influence of these many advantages. but what can a mother whose daughter prefers athletics to art, and fox terriers to philanthropy, do but make the best of it? lucille had a will of her own and seemed to know exactly what she wished, which included marrying clarence waldo. to thwart her would be useless, to quarrel with her was out of the question. the only thing was to give her as brilliant a wedding as possible and hope for the best. and after all, the best was by no means out of the question. lucille was young and was going to new york. there was no telling what a girl of twenty-one, with large means and the best social opportunities, might not become by the time she was thirty-five. mrs. wilson had herself cast sheep's eyes at new york as a residence before building her new house, but she had decided to remain dominant in a small puddle. there were compensations in doing so. she flattered herself that in this age of telephones and telepathy she was able to keep in touch with the metropolis and to get her social cues accordingly. but to have a daughter there would be interesting, provided all went well. the proviso should not be overlooked; for mrs. wilson had not lowered her own standards. she was merely trying to extract all the maternal comfort and pride she could out of the existing situation. "but, my dear lucille," said paul, intending a crushing blow to his cousin's returning assurance, "if you were really so anxious to escape notoriety, you had merely to mention it to father. a word from him would have silenced every newspaper in town." "scarcely that--scarcely that, young man," interposed mr. howard in a tone of friendly authority. "very possibly, had i expressed a preference, my wishes would have been respected by one or two newspapers where i happen to have some influence. but your statement is altogether too sweeping." he spoke incisively, as though he desired to deprecate the suggestion of the power attributed to him by his more impulsive son. "the press is jealous of its privileges and must be humored as a popular institution. and, after all, what does a little publicity matter? you mustn't mind what paul says, lucille. there's no reason to feel abashed because the public has been given a chance to see the most charming bride of the year." "abashed? she is tickled to death," retorted paul. mr. howard put his arm around his niece's shoulder in the guise of a champion. when controversy had reached the stage where adjustment was no longer possible, he was an uncompromising antagonist. but, as a successful man content with existing conditions, he deplored friction in all the relations of life, and to use an industrial phrase, liked to see everything running smoothly. he laughed incredulously, and patting lucille's arm exclaimed, "nonsense!" then, accosting the clergyman, he added, "now that this momentous matter has been disposed of, mr. prentiss, will you join me in a cigar in my own library?" mr. prentiss excused himself. he had work to do, and knew that if he remained he would be apt to stay late. but he was interested from a theoretic stand-point in the discussion to which he had been listening. "you evidently feel as i do, mr. howard," he said, "that there are two sides to the question of newspaper publicity, and that as good citizens we are not always at liberty to insist on privacy." mr. howard answered with the suave force and clearness which gave to all his utterances the effect of deliberate conviction. "mr. prentiss, i accept the institutions of my country as i find them, and try to make the best of them. there are those whose only pleasure seems to be to carp at what they do not wholly admire in our civic system. the press is one of the most powerful and useful forces of modern life. as such i value and support it, though i'm keenly alive to the flagrant evils and the cruel vulgarities for which it is daily responsible. but one can't afford as an american citizen to condemn as worthless and ill-begotten the things of which the people as a whole approve. we must compromise here as in so many matters in our complex civilization, and where trifles are concerned, be complacent even against our convictions." "indisputably," said the clergyman. "in the constant faith that our tolerance will work for improvement." "ah, but the newspapers are worse than ever," exclaimed mrs. wilson, with a sigh. "one has to wade through so much for so little. i read them scrupulously, because, if i do not, i'm sure to miss something which i would like to see. that sounds inconsistent. but why doesn't somebody establish a really first-class newspaper?" "because a newspaper must be first of all a successful business enterprise in order to be able to exist," responded her brother. "it is a question of dollars and cents. all that will come presently. and we are really improving all the time. just think of what a large and complicated industry a modern newspaper establishment has grown to be." he spoke as though he saw and wished to bring before his hearers' eyes the towering, mammoth homes of the press in all our large cities, the enforced outcome of the ever-increasing popular demand for the world's news. "come, paul," he said, putting his arm through his son's, "since mr. prentiss will not join us in a cigar we will leave these good people to their own devices, and go back to our work." paul, with a pocket full of documents and with the obnoxious newspaper in his hand, had reached the door of his father's house just as lucille and her betrothed were alighting from a carriage. lured by his goading remarks they had followed him within and into his father's library, where at a safe distance he had vouchsafed his cousin glimpses of her tiara-crowned figure and read aloud choice extracts until the spirit had moved him to pass through the dividing door between the two establishments in search of his aunt. he had left home with the idea of an hour's confabulation with his father over certain schemes in which they were jointly interested--a frequent habit of his late in the evening. mr. carleton howard never went to bed before one, and was invariably to be found after eleven in his library reading or cogitating, and always prepared at that quiet time to give his keenest intelligence to the issues presented to him. father and son passed along through the secret passageway until they found themselves in mr. howard's capacious library. this superb room was the result of an architect's conscientious ambition to see what could be accomplished where his client was obviously willing to obtain excellence and had imposed on him no limits either in respect to space or expense. as regards size, it bore the same relation to the ordinary library of the civilized citizen that the auditorium in chicago bears to every-day hotels, or the steamship _great eastern_ bore to other ocean carriers. consequently it was a little vast for strict cosiness. the huge stamped leather chairs and sofas, though inviting, seemed designed for persons of elephantine figure, in order perhaps to avoid being dwarfed. but the shelves upon shelves of books which covered completely from floor to ceiling two of the walls--choice editions in fine bindings--gained dignity from the superfluous dimensions. if it be said in this connection that, to one familiar with mr. howard's associations, the idea of many storied office buildings might occur, the answer is that he was responsible for nothing which the room contained except its large and admirable display of etchings, which, owing to almost weekly accretions, had begun to disarrange the original æsthetic scheme of the designer. mr. howard had left everything else to his architect, but etchings were his hobby--one which had attracted his fancy years before by accident, and had retained its hold upon him. he was familiar now, as a man of sagacity and method, with the many bibliographical and ethnological treasures by which he was surrounded, and could exhibit them becomingly, but when the conversation turned on the etcher's art he was on firm ground and could talk as clearly and authoritatively as about his railroads. the banker chose his favorite seat, within comfortable distance of one of the fire-places, facing a beautiful polar bear-skin rug of extraordinary size. close at hand was a large table with writing materials and such magazine literature or documents as he might wish to examine. adjustable lights were at either elbow, and in the direct line of his vision as he ordinarily sat were two of his favorite works of art, an albert dürer and a wenceslaus hollar. he lighted another cigar and, after a few puffs, said: "that clergyman is decidedly a useful man. he has common sense and he has discretion." "he isn't at all a bad sort," responded paul. though guarded in form, this was intended as an encomium, just as when paul meant that he had enjoyed himself thoroughly, he was apt to state that he had had a pretty good time. anglo-saxon youth is proverbially shy of enthusiasm of the lips lest it be suspected of freshness, as the current phrase is. "i wonder," he added a moment later as he stood with his back to the wood fire, straightening his sturdy shoulders against the mantel-piece, "if he really believes all the things he preaches. i'd just like to know for curiosity. i suppose he has to preach them even if he doesn't or else be fired out, and he compromises with himself for the mental reservation by the argument that if he were out of it altogether, his usefulness and occupation, like othello's, would be gone. that's the way clergymen must have to argue nowadays, or there wouldn't be many of them left at the old stands." though he spoke colloquially, and with an assurance which dispensed with reverence of treatment, paul intended to express genuine interest and even sympathy. knowing that his father's ideas on religious subjects were fundamentally liberal, perhaps he was not averse to shocking him in a mere matter of form. mr. howard was silent a moment, then replied: "in every walk of life it is necessary, from time to time, to sacrifice non-essentials for the sake of the essentials. as in everything else, so in religion. the world moves; opinions change. human society cannot prosper without religion, and human society never needed its influence more than to-day. sensible religion, of course." "all sensible men have the same religion. what is that? a sensible man never tells." paul was quoting. he had heard his father more than once in his comments on the mysteries of life utter this delphic observation. he laughed sweetly and fearlessly. mr. howard understood his son. they were good comrades. he was aware that though paul felt free to jest at his remarks, his boy respected his intellect and would ponder what he said. "we agree about these things in the main, my dear paul. if one were to go out on the housetops and proclaim one's scepticism concerning some of the supernatural dogmas which the mass of the people find comfort in, how would it benefit religion? the world will find out soon enough that it has been mistaken. but we can neither of us afford to forget that the security of human society is dependent on religion. one always comes back to that in the end." "it is good for the masses," said paul, with a chuckle. "we, as the present lords of creation--captains of industry--should encourage it for the protection of our railroads, mines, and other glorious monopolies. that is one of the arguments with which the truly great salved their consciences before the french revolution." mr. howard frowned slightly. he knew that paul was only half in earnest, but the reference to socialism was repellent to him, even though it was rhetorical. why was he the possessor of twenty millions? because he had been wiser and more long-sighted than his competitors, because he had used his clear brains to better advantage than other men year after year, planning boldly and executing thoroughly, making few mistakes and taking advantage of every opportunity. because he had fostered his powers, and controlled his weaknesses. he was rich because, like a true american, he had conquered circumstances and moulded them for his own and the world's profit. inequalities? must there not always be inequalities so long as some men were strong and others weak, some courageous and others shiftless? and as for charity, god knew he was willing to do--was trying to do his part to help those who could not or would not help themselves, and to encourage all meritorious undertakings for the relief of human society. "yes, we must humor the masses in this as in a thousand matters, and our protection is their protection. i am not disturbed by your insinuation, paul. ignorance and sloth and folly and false sentiment would bankrupt mankind in three generations if it were not for the modern captains of industry, as you call them." mr. howard spoke somewhat sternly, as one stating a proposition which was irrefutable and yet was sometimes overlooked by an ungrateful world. "similarly," he continued, "it is one thing to be unorthodox in one's opinions and to discard as childish articles of faith to which the multitude adhere, another to deny the reality and force of religion. so, though i am a free thinker, if you will, i regard it as no inconsistency to uphold the hands of the church. on the contrary, every thoughtful man must realize that without religion of some sort the human race would become brutes again." "and your form is to present fifty or a hundred thousand to a hospital or a college whenever you happen to feel like it, which every clergyman will admit to be practical christianity. you certainly give away barrels of money, father." "i can afford to." mr. howard was pleasantly but not vain-gloriously aware that he had given away a million dollars in the last three years. "in what better way can i share my profits with the public than by entrusting it to trained educators and philanthropists to spend for the common good? a great improvement, young man, on the theory that every man jack of us should be limited to the same wage, and originality, grit, and enterprise be pushed off the face of the earth." "nevertheless it is tolerably pleasant to be your son," said paul, smiling brightly from his post against the mantel-piece. "yes. but you have responsibilities as my son, and pray do not imagine that i am blind to them. i have made the money." he paused a moment, for he was looking back along the vista of the years and recalling the succession of shrewd undertakings by which his property had grown from a few thousand dollars to imposing wealth. "i have made the money, and it is for you to keep and increase it--yes, increase it, remember--but to spend it freely and wisely. and if you ask me what is wisely, i can only answer that this is a problem for your generation. if you will only use the same pains in trying to solve it as i have in accumulating the money, you will succeed. you are fond, paul, of exploiting radical propositions, of which you at heart disapprove, in order to test my self-control. here is something, young man, to chasten your spirit and keep your imagination busy." "you see through me, father, don't you? but you'll admit that my familiarity with radical doctrines is a good sign, especially since i recognize their fallacies, for it shows that i sometimes think. yes, it is a great responsibility, but i wouldn't exchange--not even with gordon perry." "with whom? ah, yes, i remember; the attorney who was on the foot-ball team with you at harvard. and why should you consider changing places with him?" "because the mere question of dollars and cents interests him so little." "ah! you have been employing him lately, i believe?" "yes. i like to throw what i can in his way. he understands his business. we lunched together this morning. i enjoy his humor, his independence and his common sense, and at the same time his enthusiasm." "concerning what?" "most things except the price of railroad shares and the condition of the money market. we didn't refer to them once." paul paused with a serio-comic sigh. mr. howard knocked the white ash from his cigar and responded: "one of the reasons for sending you to college was that you need not be confined in your conversation to the money market. another that you should be free in life to do as you chose." "don't be alarmed, father. you know well enough that nothing would induce me not to follow your lead. give up business? i couldn't. i love the power and excitement of it. it's bred in the bone, i suppose." the banker's eyes kindled with pride in the son of his heart. "and it's because i know i'm myself that a fellow like don perry fascinates me," pursued paul. "there's no nonsense in him. he objects to cranks and mere psalm-singers as much as i do. but he's absorbed in the social problems of the day--legislative questions, philanthropic questions, all the burning questions. 'and your young men shall see visions.' he is one of them. you will notice that i have not forgotten my bible altogether, father." "we have, and to burn, reformers who see visions and proclaim them from platforms which have no underpinnings. what we need are reformers who will study and think before they speak, and not seek to destroy the existing structure of society before they have provided a serviceable substitute." "in other words, you are prepared to part with a portion of your worldly possessions, but you object to wholesale confiscation?" having indulged in this pleasantry paul took from the table a packet of papers which he had brought with him, as though to show that he had not forgotten business concerns. "speaking of the existing structure of society," he continued, "don and i got into a religious discussion. that is, i found myself holding a brief for the proposition, which i had read somewhere or other, that religion and capital are in alliance against every-day men and women, in order to preserve existing social conditions. don't look so shocked, father. there are two sides to every question, and i was curious to see how don would look at this." "and how did he look at it?" inquired mr. howard, coldly, seeing that he was expected to display interest. "he wouldn't deny that there was some truth in the proposition, but he agreed with you, father, that whatever else is true or false, the world will never be able to dispense with religion. but he says, too, that it must be sensible religion. just what you said, isn't it? and when two such intelligent individuals come to the same conclusion, it is time for a sceptic like myself to take off his hat to the church. you heard me just now concede that the rev. mr. prentiss is not at all a bad lot." "paul, you are sometimes incorrigible. you have common sense when it comes to action, i admit, but you have a perverse fondness for harboring all the philosophical sewage of the age. i trust that your friend perry brought you up with a round turn." "oh, he did," said paul, with mock meekness, as he sorted his documents. "we must get to work or else i'd tell you about it. he was very interesting. as to aggregations of capital, don was highly conservative too. he recognizes that they will last far beyond our time. for a seeker after ultimate truth, i thought that extremely reasonable." whereupon paul indulged in a laugh of bubbling, melodious mirth. mr. howard made no comment, but threw the butt of his cigar into the fire-place with the emphasis of one expelling folly by the scruff of the neck, and composed his features for business. x constance consented to be taught typewriting and stenography at the expense of mrs. randolph wilson. she decided that to refuse an offer which would enable her presently to become self-supporting would be false pride. she acknowledged as sound, under her present circumstances, mr. prentiss's assertion that it was no less the duty of the unfortunate to accept bounty within proper limits than of the prosperous to give. she consented also at his instance to call upon her benefactress. any encouragement on the part of constance would have induced mr. prentiss to raise a subscription to pay off the second mortgage on the house incurred by emil, and thus provide her with a home. but at the first hint of such a thing she shook her head decisively. a very different thought was in her mind. emil was still alive and liable for the bills which he had incurred for the expenses of the canvass, but she felt that the six hundred dollars which he had withheld from his client as an enforced loan must be paid at once or the good name of her children would be tarnished. his appropriation of this money on the eve of his disappearance was damning in its suggestion; but she had thankfully adopted and was clinging tenaciously to the explanation proffered by one of the easy-going and good-natured co-tenants of the office occupied by her husband, that the money had been borrowed to carry out a speculation, and that emil had meant to return it. did not the broker's report of the purchase and sale, found among the papers in emil's desk, support this? she realized fully that from the mere stand-point of legal responsibility his motive was immaterial. but with her knowledge of his characteristics and of the past she felt that she had the right to insist on the theory that he had been led astray by sanguine anticipations which, as usual, had been disappointed. his conduct had been weak and miserable, and exposed him to obloquy, but it was not the same as deliberate theft. as a mother, she was solicitous to treat the transaction as a loan and to repay it without delay. the world might not discriminate, but for herself and for the children the distinction was essential. having been informed how matters stood, and that there was probably still some small value left in the house over and above the two mortgages, she thought she saw an opportunity to discharge this vital obligation. accordingly, when she found that the clergyman was still considering means for rescuing her home, she disclosed her theory and her purpose. "my husband borrowed that money, mr. prentiss. he expected to be able to return it. i am sure of this. it was just like him. people think it was something worse because of what was in the newspapers. but, guilty as he was, he would not have done that. this being so, i am anxious to have the mortgages foreclosed, or whatever is necessary done, and to have what is left returned to the woman whose money he borrowed. it was six hundred dollars, and there is the interest. you told me you thought there would be over five hundred left, if the mortgagee was disposed to be reasonable." although mr. prentiss may have had doubts whether emil stuart was entitled to the distinction drawn by his wife, he understood and admired her solicitude. "i see," he said. "i am told that the value of real estate in the neighborhood of your house has improved somewhat, and that you ought to get at least five hundred dollars. but in any event the money which your husband borrowed shall be returned. you need give yourself no further concern as to this; i will see that it is done." constance shook her head again. "it wouldn't be the same if anyone else were to pay it," she said directly. "so it would not. you are right," he replied with equal promptness, admitting the accuracy of her perception, which had confounded his too glib generosity. "unless you paid it, you would feel that you had no right to consider that the money had been borrowed." "though i am certain of it." "precisely--precisely. i understood what you desired, and it was unintelligent of me to bungle." a confession of lack of intelligence by mr. prentiss signified not merely deliberate self-mortification, but was offered as a tribute to the mental quality of his visitor. he had chosen a word which would have been wasted on or misinterpreted by the ordinary applicant for counsel, that he might let her perceive that he was alive to the nicety of her spiritual intuitions. they were at his house--in his comfortable, attractive library--and he understood now that the object of her call had been conscientious eagerness to discharge this debt. there was nothing for him to do but acquiesce in her requirements, and to thank god for this manifestation of grace. this quiet, simple directness, which separated the right from the wrong with unswerving precision, proceeding from the lips and eyes of this pale but interesting woman in faded garb, was fresh and invigorating testimony to the vitality of the human soul exposed to the stress of sordid, workaday realities and unassisted by the choicer blessings of civilization. mr. prentiss pressed her hand with a new warmth as he bade her good-by. "you must come to see me often," he said. "not for your needs only, but for mine. it helps me to talk with you. and i shall keep my eye on you and see that you get work." as the upshot of this conversation, constance surrendered her house to the mortgagee and received six hundred and fifty dollars for her interest in the equity. the small sum remaining after the claim of emil's client had been satisfied was supplemented presently by the sale of that portion of the furniture unavailable in the tenement into which she moved, so that she had about a hundred dollars saved from the wreck of her former fortunes. the tenement consisted of two sunny rooms in a new apartment house for people of humble means, built by a real estate investor with progressive business instincts from plans suggested by the home beautifying society of benham, an aggregation of philanthropic spirits, of which mrs. wilson was one of the vice-presidents. here light, the opportunity for cleanliness, and some modern fixtures, including a fire-escape, were obtainable at a moderate rental; and while the small suites were monotonous from their number and uniformity, their occupants could fitly regard them as a paradise compared with the old-fashioned homes for the poor supervised solely by the dull mercy of unenlightened landlords. though this was a business enterprise, the owner had felt at liberty even to give some artistic touches to the exterior, and altogether it could be said that the investment represented a model hive of modern workingmen's homes from the point of view of benham's, and hence american philanthropic commercial aspiration. the structure--lincoln chambers, it was called--was on the confines of the poorer section of the city where, owing to the spread of trade, the expansion of the homes of the people was forced further to the south. from two of her windows constance looked out on vacant lands but half redeemed from the grasp of nature, a prospect littered with the unsightly disorder of a neighborhood in the throes of confiscation by a metropolis; but the mongrel character of the vicinity was to her more than atoned for by the fresh air and the wide expanse of horizon. her home was on the eighth story--there were ten stories in all--and on the roof there was an arrangement of space for drying clothes which seemed to bring her much closer to the impenetrable blue of the sky. as under the influence of this communion she gave rein to introspection and fancy, her thoughts harbored for the moment chiefly thankfulness. the stress of her plight had been relieved. discriminating kindness had enabled her to get a fresh hold on life without loss of her self-respect. what mattered it that her social lot must be obscure, and that she had become one of the undistinguishable many whose identity was lost in this towering combination of small and uniform tenements? she had still a roof over her children's heads and a legitimate prospect of being able to support them without accepting the bitter bread of charity. yes, she had become one of the humblest of human strugglers, but her abounding interest in these two dear possessions made not only her duty plain but her opportunity inspiring and almost golden. the mortification and anguish of the past she would never be able to forget entirely, but she would make the most of this new chance for world-service and happiness. it had been necessary to sign some papers in order to convey her interest in the equity of her house, and she went for the purpose to the office of the mortgagee's lawyer. he was a young man, somewhat over thirty, with a noticeably frank face and lucid utterance and kind, intelligent eyes. as he handed her the six hundred and fifty dollars it occurred to her that she would like to employ him to satisfy emil's obligation. she preferred not to have a personal interview with the creditor lest she be obliged to listen to recriminations against her husband, and she was loth to bother mr. prentiss. so she broached the matter, stating briefly that it was a debt which her husband had intended to pay before his departure. she had already discovered when the papers were signed that the attorney was aware that she had been deserted, and neither did she supply nor did he seek enlightenment beyond the bare explanation offered. nevertheless, it was obvious to constance, despite his professional reserve, that he was alive to the import of the transaction for which she was employing him, and that it had inspired in him more than a mere business interest. there was a gentle deference in his manner which seemed to suggest that he knew he was charged with a delicate mission and that he would fulfil it scrupulously. she liked the straightforward simplicity of his address, which was both emphasized and illuminated by the intelligent, amiable glint of his eyes which indicated independence and humor, as well as probity. as she rose to go, constance realized that she had forgotten his name, and was on the point of opening the receipt for the money which he had given her, in order to ascertain it, when he reached out and taking some cards from one of the pigeon-holes of his desk handed them to her. "i shall write to you the result of my interview, mrs. stuart, and send you a written discharge. here are a few of my business cards. i hope that none of your neighbors will need the assistance of a lawyer, but if they do, that is my profession, and i intend to do the best i can for my clients." there was a pleasant earnestness in his tone which saved his speech from the effect of mere solicitation. it seemed to constance as though he had said not merely that he was eager to get on, but that he stood ready to help those who like herself had need to bring their small affairs to a sympathetic and upright counsellor. she had asked him previously what his charge would be for securing a release of the claim against emil. he had hesitated for a moment and she had been apprehensive lest he might say that it would be nothing, but he had replied that it would be three dollars. she glanced at the cards and read the name--gordon perry, attorney and counsellor-at-law, baker st. their interview had been in an inner office--a room of moderate size, near the roof of a modern building, with a fine view, eclipsing that of her own flat, and furnished, besides a couple of chairs, with rows of law books and a few large photographs of legal celebrities. on the way out she passed through the general office, where there were more chairs, several of them occupied by visitors who had been waiting for her interview to come to an end, more shelves of books, and two or three desks, at one of which a woman type-writer was sitting at work. the click of the machine sounded melodiously in constance's ears, and she turned her glance in that direction, in wistful anticipation of the time when she would have similar employment. on her arrival her gaze had been introspective, but now that her errand was over she felt the inclination to observe external things. as she closed the outer door she saw that the glass panel bore a painted inscription similar to that of the card--gordon perry, attorney and counsellor-at-law. she reflected that he had been courteous and sympathetic to her, and she felt sure that he was to be trusted, notwithstanding the rude shock which emil's perfidy had given to her faith in her own powers of discrimination. there are some dispositions which are turned to gall and forever charged with suspicion by a great shock to love and faith as sweet milk turns to vinegar at the clap of a thunder-storm. there are others whose horizon is cleared by the bitterness of the blow, and who, partly from humility, partly from an instinctive revolt against the doctrine of despair, readjust their perspectives and harbor still the god-like belief that they can know good from evil. preliminary to beginning her lessons, constance had still her call to make on mrs. wilson. the new fashionable quarter of benham, beyond the river nye, was scarcely more than a name to her, though, especially in the early days of her marriage, she had from time to time included this in her sabbath saunterings with her husband, and she remembered emil's having pointed out in terms of irony the twin mansions of mr. carleton howard and his sister in process of erection. she had not felt envious, but when emil, after inveighing against the extravagance of millionaires, had with characteristic inconsistency, as they stood gazing at the walls of these modern palaces, asserted that he intended some day to have a house of this kind, she had wondered what it would be like, and had contrasted for a moment the lives of the dwellers in this locality with her own, with a sudden appreciation of the power of material circumstances and a wistful curiosity to be translated into an experience which should include white-aproned maids, drawing-room draperies, and a private equipage as daily accessories. she had silently wondered, too, pondering without abetting her husband's caustic cue, how this contrast was to be reconciled with what she had been taught of american notions of social uniformity and the subordination of the unnecessary vanities and splendor of life to spiritual considerations. it was puzzling, and yet the manifestations of these discrepancies were apparently in good repute and becoming more obvious as the city grew in population and importance. it is the personal equation in this world which forces truths most clearly upon our attention. so it was that constance on her way to mrs. wilson's was fully alive to the fact--not bitterly, but philosophically and equably--that, despite the theory of democratic social institutions which she had imbibed, actual conditions in benham were repeating the old-world distinctions between the powerful and the lowly, the rich and the impecunious. there was no blinking the knowledge that she was living obscurely in a flat on the lookout for the bare necessaries of existence, while the woman she was going to see was a woman of wealth and importance, to whom she was beholden for the opportunity of a new start. obviously, the american experiment had not succeeded in doing away with the distinctions between rich and poor, though patriotic school-books had given her to understand that there were none, or rather that such as existed were spiritual and in favor of people of humble means. constance could be sardonic if she chose, but like most women she had little taste for irony. on the other hand, she had a yearning to see things clearly which her misfortunes had only served to intensify. as she entered mrs. wilson's house a new emotion superseded this consciousness of contrast. she had expected to be somewhat edified by the decorations and upholsteries, and had felt a mild curiosity regarding them. but she was wholly unprepared for the superb and spacious surroundings in which she found herself. she walked bewildered through the august hall behind the solemn, fastidious man-servant, who, when she had disclosed her name and errand, ushered her into the reception-room, which served as an ante-chamber to the vista of elegant connecting drawing-rooms. while she waited for mrs. wilson she sat gazing with surprise and admiration at the costly and elaborate furnishings and ornaments. it was not that such things were beyond the experience of her imagination at least, for, though she had never been abroad, she felt familiar, through books, with the appearance of splendid houses. she had seen pictures of them, and was not without definite impressions of grandeur. but she had not expected to behold them realized in the social life of benham. if the discovery was, spiritually speaking, a slight shock, it was a far greater source of delight. neat as wax herself, but confined both by poverty and early associations to sober hues, she found in the close presence of these bright, seductive, and artistic effects a sort of revelation of the power of beauty which thrilled her deliciously. here was the culmination of the movement in æsthetic expression of which, as revealed in shop windows and on women's backs, she had for some time been vaguely aware, but in which she had been forbidden by the rigor of her life to participate. the full meaning of this as an ally to human happiness now burst upon her, and gave her a new joy, though it emphasized the lowliness of her own station. the aspect and greeting of mrs. wilson gave the crowning touch to her pleasure by adding the human complement to the situation. she was facing a smiling, gracious personality whose features, bearing, and gown alike were fascinating and distinguished. constance felt no inclination to be obsequious. her native birthright of unconscious ease stood her in good stead. at the same time she desired to appear grateful. she had come to thank the lady of the house, and it was obvious that the lady of the house was a superior individual. what a melodious voice she had, and what a pretty dress! how becoming her crinkly, grizzled hair! what an interesting expression, what a sympathetic light in her eyes! constance noted these points with womanlike avidity during their interchange of greetings. mrs. wilson asked her to sit down. "i have heard all about you from mr. prentiss, mrs. stuart," she said, evidently intending by this comprehensive remark to obviate for her visitor the necessity of recurring to a painful past. "he tells me that you have shown great courage. he tells me also that you have left your house and moved into lincoln chambers--the new dormitory built under the supervision of our home beautifying society." "yes; it is very comfortable. we get a glimpse of the country from our windows." "i know. that is a conspicuous factor in its favor. light and fresh air, good plumbing, pure milk, a regular, even though small, supply of ice--these are some of the invaluable aids to health and happiness for all of us, and especially for those upon whom the stress of life falls most heavily. you can command all of these where you are. you have two children, i believe?" "yes. a boy of seven and a girl of six." "they will be a great comfort to you." "i do not know what i should have done without them." the pride of maternity encouraged by courtesy drew from constance this simple avowal of the heart. though she was not unconscious that mrs. wilson's friendliness was imbued with patronage, it was sweet to open her heart for a moment to another woman--and to a woman like this. "and you have planned to pursue type-writing as an occupation?" "yes; i begin my lessons to-morrow, owing to you. i came to thank you for your generosity. it was----" "i understand. i am very glad that there was something i could do for you. i was interested when mr. prentiss spoke to me concerning your necessities and your zeal; i am even more interested now that we have met. i am told by those best informed that there is steady employment for accomplished stenographers. it may be that my own private secretary--a woman who, like yourself, had her own way to make--will be able to send for you presently. my daughter is to be married before long, and there will be errands to be run and things to be done down-town and in the house, if you would not object to making yourself generally useful." "i shall be grateful for any employment which you can give me." "i shall remember." mrs. wilson smiled sweetly. she had felt her way decorously, but was pleased to find an absence of false pride in her visitor, who was obviously a gentle woman, though lacking the advantages of wardrobe and social prestige--as she reflected, a sort of burne-jones type of severe æstheticism, with a common-sense individuality of her own, and an agreeable voice. "it will be a little discouraging at first, i dare say, until you acquire facility in your work; but i feel certain that in a short time you will be not only self-supporting but happy. a woman with two young children can really live on very little if she is provident and discerning. it is the man who eats. have you ever studied the comparative nutritive properties of foods?" constance shook her head. "i will send you a little pamphlet in regard to this. many americans eat more meat than they require; more americans are wasteful, and ignorant of food values. housewives of moderate means who approach this subject in a serious spirit can learn how to nourish adequately the human body at a far less cost than their unenlightened sisters. cereals, macaroni, milk, bread and butter, cheese--they are all nutritive and easy to prepare. if i may say so, you appear to me just the woman to appreciate these modern scientific truths, and to make the most of them." it seemed to constance that she had never heard anyone speak more alluringly. what was said interested her, and she was pleased by the flattering personal allusion at the close, but every other effect was subordinated for her at the moment to the charm of expression, or, indeed, to mrs. wilson's whole magnetic personality as shown in looks and words. she had never before come in personal contact with anything just like it, and it fascinated her. an admiration of this sort would have promptly generated envy and dislike in some women, but in constance it awoke interest and ambition. although she felt that she had stayed long enough, she was loth to go, so absorbed was she by the consummate graciousness and sympathetic fluency, by the effective gown and elegant personal details of her hostess. she rose at last, and, impelled to make some acknowledgment of her emotions, said, wistfully, yet in nowise abashed: "what a beautiful house this is! i have never seen anything like it before. it must be a great pleasure to live here." the frank artlessness of this tribute was grateful to mrs. wilson. "yes, we think it beautiful. we have tried to make it so. would you like to walk through some of the other rooms?" constance was glad to accept this invitation. as they proceeded mrs. wilson let the apartments speak for themselves, adding only an occasional phrase of enlightenment. she was pleased with her visitor, and divined that words were not needful to produce the proper impression. constance walked as in a trance, admiring unreservedly in thought the splendor, elegance, and diversity of the upholsteries and decoration, admiring also the graceful magnetic woman beside her whose every gesture and intonation seemed attuned to the exquisite surroundings. as they parted constance said: "this has been a great pleasure to me." she added, "i had no idea that people here--in this country--had such beautiful homes, such beautiful things." there was no repugnance in the confession, but a mere statement of fact which suggested satisfaction rather than umbrage at the discovery, although the ethical doubt of the relevancy of these splendors to american ideals was a part of her sub-consciousness. mrs. wilson's response gave the finishing touch to this passive doubt. that lady had recognized that she was not dealing with dross but a sensitive human soul, and had refrained from didactic utterances. yet she felt it her duty, or rather her duty and her mission combined, to take advantage of this opportunity to sow the seed of culture in this rich but unploughed soil by a deft and genuine illustration. "the spirit which has accomplished what you see here can be introduced into any home, mrs. stuart, and work marvels in the cause of beauty, health, and decency," she said with incisive sweetness, her head a little on one side. "because one is poor it is not necessary to have or foster ugly, inartistic, and sordid surroundings. a little thought, a little reverence for æsthetic truth will not enable those of restricted means to live in luxury, but it will serve to keep beauty enshrined in the hearts of the humblest household--beauty and her hand-maidens, cleanliness, hygiene, and that subtle sense of the eternal fitness of things which neither neglects to use nor irreligiously mismates god's glorious colors. we as a people have been loth to recognize the value of artistic merit as an element of the highest civilization. until recently we have been content to cultivate morality at the expense of æsthetic feeling, and have only just begun to realize that that type of virtue which disdains or is indifferent to beauty is like salt without savor. there is no reason why in its way your home--your apartment--should not be as faithful to the spirit of beauty as mine. do you understand me? do i make myself clear?" her mobile face was vibrant with the ardor of proselytism. constance looked at her eagerly. "i think i understand," she said. "but," she added, "i might not have understood unless i had seen this house--unless i had seen and talked with you." she paused an instant, for the vision of her own tenement as a thing of beauty, alluring as was the opportunity, had to run the gauntlet of her common sense. then she asked a practical question. "if one had aptitude and experience, i can see that much might be accomplished. but how is one with neither to be sure of being right?" conscious of these honest, thoughtful eyes--eyes, too, in which she felt that she discerned latent charming possibilities--mrs. wilson had an inspiration which satisfied herself fully as she thought of it later. "there is often the great difficulty--also the obstacle to those who labor in that vineyard. but in your case i am sure that you have only to search your own heart in order to find the spirit of beauty. after all, the artistic sense is fundamentally largely a matter of character." constance went on her way with winged feet. she felt uplifted by the interview. her starved senses had been refreshed, and her imagination imbued with a new outlook on life, which though foreign, if not inimical, to some of her past associations, she already perceived to be vital and stimulating. xi three months later, on a rare day in early june, miss lucille wilson was made mrs. clarence waldo, in the presence of a fashionable company. journalistic social tittle-tattle had engendered such lively public interest that the neighborhood of st. stephen's was beset by a throng of sight-seers--chiefly random women--who for two hours previous to the ceremony occupied the adjacent sidewalks and every spot which would command a glimpse of the bride and guests. a force of policemen guarded the church against the incursion of the multitude. yet perhaps the patient waiters felt rewarded for their pains, inasmuch as the heroine of the occasion, after alighting from her carriage, stood for an instant at the entrance to the canopy before proceeding, as though she were willing to give the world a brief opportunity to behold her loveliness and grandeur. for those with pocket cameras there was time enough for a snap-shot before she was lost to sight. within the church were gay silks and nodding bonnet plumes and imposing formalities. six maids, each wearing as a memento an exquisite locket encrusted with diamonds, and six ushers with scarf-pins of a pearl set in a circle of tiny rubies, escorted the bride to the altar, where the rev. mr. prentiss and two assistant priests were in attendance. when the happy pair had been made man and wife a choir of expensive voices chanted melodiously "o perfect love," and the procession streamed down the aisle on its way to the wedding-breakfast. this was served by a new york caterer on little tables with all the gorgeous nicety of which he was capable. though june is a month when most delicious things are to be had, an effort had evidently been made to procure delicacies which were not in season. the effect of a jam of guests elbowing for their food, as is usual on such occasions, would have lacerated mrs. wilson's sensibilities. her house was large, so she had been able to invite her entire social acquaintance without crowding her rooms, and her instructions had been that there should be numerous deft waiters in order that each guest might come under the benign influence of personal supervision. accordingly everyone was pleased and in good spirits unless it were the bridegroom, and the doubt in his case was suggested only by the impassiveness of his countenance at a time when it should properly have been the mirror of his heart's joy. perhaps he had not fully recovered from the farewell dinner given him by his stag friends, as newspaper women are apt to designate a bachelor's intimates, where he had seen fit to express his emotion by drinking champagne to the point when he became musically mellow, a curious and singularly anglo-saxon prelude to the holy rite of matrimony. nevertheless, he was dignified if unemotional; and his frock coat, built for the occasion, his creased trousers, and mouse-colored spats were irreproachable. when the hour came for the bride and groom to depart there were so many sight-seers about the door that the police had to keep the public at bay in order to afford the happy pair a clear passage to the carriage; and also to give the blithe young men and women ample scope for the discharge of the rice and slippers which convention prescribes shall be hurled at those who set forth on their honeymoon in the blaze of social distinction. for a moment the fun was furious, and, the contagion spreading to the spectators, a cheer partly of sympathy, partly of derision broke forth as the spirited horses, bewildered by the shower of missiles, bounded away toward the station. two hatless, exhilarated youths chased the retreating victims down the street, one of whom skilfully threw an old shoe so that it remained on the top of the vehicle. when the young couple entered the special pullman car reserved for them the newsboys were already offering papers containing full accounts of the wedding ceremony, including a list of the guests and of the presents with their donors, large pictures of the bride and groom, and diverse cuts reproductive of the salient features of what one of the scribes designated as the most imposing nuptials in benham's social history. and so they were married. and sorry as she was to lose her daughter, mrs. wilson was thankful to have it all over, and to be able to settle down once more and unreservedly to the schemes for social regeneration which had shared with maternal affection the energies of her adult mind. to a certain extent these interests had been rivals, unconsciously and involuntarily so, but it has already been intimated that lucille was not the kind of girl her mother had intended her to be, and lacked the sympathies which might have made mrs. wilson's interests virtually one. to give lucille all which a modern parent could give and to see her happily married had been her paramount thought. this was now accomplished. the child had received every advantage which wealth could supply, and every stimulus which her own intelligence could suggest. lucille had not chosen the husband she would have picked out for her. still lucille loved him, and since fate had so ordained it, and they had become husband and wife, she was determined to be pleased, and she felt in a measure relieved. the main responsibility was at an end, and she could now enjoy her daughter's married state, and was free to give almost undivided thought to her social responsibilities. accordingly on the days which followed the wedding mrs. wilson shut herself up in her study, and with the aid of her private secretary proceeded to dispose of her accumulated correspondence, and to put her personal affairs to rights. june was the fag end of the social year. many of those who had been energetic in social enterprises since the autumn were now a little jaded and on the eve of departure for the country, the lakes, the atlantic coast or europe, in search of that respite from the full pressure of modern life which all who can afford it in our large cities now endeavor to procure for themselves. nevertheless it was the best time to look the field over and to sow the seeds of new undertakings by broaching them to those whose support she desired by a short note of suggestion which could be mulled over during the summer. it was not the season to extract definite promises from allies or to enlist new recruits, but essentially that for exploiting ideas which might bear fruit later when the brains and sensibilities of benham's best element had been rested and refreshed. mrs. wilson had numerous charities, clubs in furtherance of knowledge and classes promoting hygienic or æsthetic development to be pondered. for some of these--the struggling annual charities--methods like a fair or theatricals must be devised in order to raise fresh annual funds. the progressive courses of the past winter, such as the practical talks to young mothers, with live babies as object-lessons, and lectures on the relaxation of the muscles, must be superseded by others no less instructive and alluring. then again new blood must be introduced into the various coteries which worked for the regeneration and enlightenment of the poor to make good the losses caused by matrimony or fickleness, and new schemes originated for retaining the attention of the meritorious persons to be benefited. in this last connection the idea of a course which should emphasize the importance to every woman of learning something on which she could fall back for self-support, suggested by mrs. stuart's plight, now recurred to her as timely. and besides these public interests there were the--perhaps more absorbing because more flattering--numerous personal demands on her sympathies and time made by other women--women largely of her own, but of every walk. here it seemed to her was her most precious vineyard, for here the opportunity was given for soul to compass soul in an affinity which blessed both the giver and the receiver of spiritual benefits. sometimes the need which sought her was that of the sinful woman, eager to rehabilitate herself. sometimes that of the friendless, aspiring student seeking recognition or guidance; but oftener than any that of the blossoming maid or wife of her own class whose yearning nature, reaching out to hers as the flower to the sun and breeze, received the mysterious quickening which is the essence of the higher life, and gave to her in return a love which was like sexual passion in its ardor, but savoring only of the spirit. if she were thus able by the unconscious gifts or grace which were in her to relieve the necessities and attune the aspirations of these choice--and it seemed to her that often the neediest were the choicest--natures, was it strange that she should cherish and even cultivate this involuntary power? mrs. wilson's theory in regard to this personal influence was that it was the grateful product of her allegiance to, and passion for, beauty so far as she could lay claim to any merit in the matter. she accepted it as a heaven-sent and heaven-kissing gift which was to be rejoiced in and administered as a trust. since her talent had turned out to be that of a leader to point the way by virtue of sympathetic intelligence--or, to quote her own mental simile, the electric medium which opened to eager, groping souls the realm of spirit--was not the mission the most congenial which could have been offered her, and in the direct line of her tastes and ambitions? consequently her private correspondence with those who sought counsel and inspiration in return for adoring fealty was a labor of care as well as of love. just the right words must be written, and the individual personal touch imparted to each message of criticism, revelation, homely advice, or mere greeting. to be true to beauty and to maintain her individuality by the free outpouring of herself from day to day in felicitous speech of tongue and pen was her glowing task. in the pursuance of it she had acquired mannerisms which were now a part of herself. her phrases of endearment, her chirography, her note-paper, her method of signing herself, had severally a distinction or peculiarity of their own. all this was now a second nature; but at the outset she had been conscious of it, and, though never challenged, she had once written in vindication in one of her heart-to-heart missives that the mysterious forces of the universe through which god talks with man wear not the garb of conforming plainness, but have each its special exquisiteness; witness the moon-bathed summer night, the mountain peak at sunrise, the lightening glare among the forest pines, the lordly ocean in its many moods. she had a memory for birthdays and anniversaries. in the hour of bereavement her unique words of consolation were the first to arrive. she was prodigal of flowers, and her proselytes, knowing her affection for the rose and the lily, were apt to transform her study into a bower on the slightest excuse. she never wrote without flowers within her range of vision. in the evening of one of these days following her daughter's wedding, mrs. wilson was interrupted in her correspondence by the entrance of her maid with the bewildering news that a baby had been left on the doorsteps, and that a woman, presumably its mother, had, in the act of stealing away after ringing the bell, run into the arms of one of the servants, and was now a prisoner below stairs. the maid was agitated. should they send for a policeman, or what was to be done? the course to adopt had not been clear to those in authority in the kitchen, and the solution had been left to the mistress whose eleemosynary tendencies had to be taken into account. an infant, a waif of destiny, left on her doorsteps at dead of night! there was only one thing to do, to see the baby, and to talk to the mother, and for this purpose mrs. wilson had both brought before her in the ante-room where she had received constance stuart. rumor flies fast, and by this time a burly, belted policeman had arrived on the scene and stood towering in the background behind the quartette of servants, the butler, the second-man, who had apprehended the woman, a housemaid who had taken the custody of the child, and mrs. wilson's own maid. mrs. wilson surveyed the group for an instant with the air of a photographer in search of a correct setting. then, with a smile of divination, she said, authoritatively, "now, mary, give the child to its mother, and when i need anyone, i will ring. you, too, mr. officer, please wait outside. i am sure that this woman will tell me her story more freely if we are alone. and, james, bring some tea--the regular tea-service." [illustration: "i am sure that this woman will tell me her story"] as the servants took their departure, mrs. wilson looked again at the woman, whom she had already perceived to be young and good looking. she stood holding her baby securely but not tenderly, with a half-defiant, half-bewildered air, as of a cat at bay in strange surroundings. but though her mien expressed a feline dismay, mrs. wilson perceived that she was no desperate creature of the slums. nor was she flauntily dressed like the courtesan of tradition. her attire--a neat straw sailor hat, a well-fitting dark blue serge skirt and serge jacket over a white shirt, and decent boots indicated some social aptness; and her features, especially her clever and sensitive, though somewhat hard, mouth gave the challenge of intelligence. it was a smart face, one which suggested quick-wittedness and the habit of self-reliance, if not self-satisfaction, to the detriment of sentiment and delicacy. she appeared to mrs. wilson to be about twenty-three, and slightly shorter than mrs. stuart, with a sturdier, less flexible figure. her hair was light brown, and her complexion fair, but she had roving dark eyes which gave a touch of picturesqueness to what might be called the matter-of-fact modernness of her aspect. they were curious eyes, almost italian in their hue and calibre, yet in repose coldly scrutinizing and impassive. mrs. wilson appreciated with a sense of relief that here was no case of sodden ignorance and degradation; for though in such instances the remedy was more obvious, she preferred to be brought in contact with natures which drew upon her intellectual faculties. she believed herself modern in her sympathies, and in her capacity as a philanthropic worker was partial to the problems with which modern conditions and modern thought confront struggling human nature. "won't you sit down? and perhaps you would like to lay your baby on the sofa while we talk and i make you some tea." the girl, who was prepared probably for a sterner method, yielded, after a quiver of uncertainty, to the fascination of this gracious appeal; pausing for a brief instant to examine the tiny face peering from the folds of the knit shawl in which the child was wrapped, but with a gaze scientific rather than maternal, as though she were seeking to trace a likeness or some law of heredity. then she sat down and raised her eyes to meet her entertainer's with a glance bordering on irony, and which seemed to ask, "well, what are you going to do about it?" mrs. wilson noticed that her hands, which lay in her lap, lightly crossed, with the palms down, were long and efficient-looking, and that she wore no wedding-ring. "is it a boy or a girl?" mrs. wilson resumed, with disarming gentleness. "a girl." with a contraction of her mouth which began in a bitter smile and ended against her will in a gulp, she added, "i didn't intend to have it. i didn't want to have it. i suppose you've guessed i'm not a married woman." "yes, i guessed that. i see, too, that you are in trouble, and my sole object in detaining you here to-night is to give you all the aid in my power. i'm not seeking to judge or to lecture you, but to help you." the girl regarded her with a matter-of-fact stare, then said, bluntly, "i'd have been all right now if your servant hadn't nabbed me." "you mean if you had succeeded in abandoning your child?" "yes. i was earning my living before, and i could go on. i guess i could have got back my old place." "but-- do you mind telling me why you wished to abandon your baby?" "that's why. i've just told you. to make a fresh start." "i see. and it was chance, i suppose, that you left it on my door-steps rather than elsewhere?" "you're mrs. randolph wilson, aren't you?" "yes." "i had read about you in the newspapers, and all about the wedding, and that you were tremendously rich. when my child was born i hoped she'd die; but, as she didn't, i made up my mind that the best thing i could do was to let you look after her. but the luck was against me a second time. i was caught again." she laughed as though her only concern was to let fate perceive that she had some sense of humor. mrs. wilson frowned involuntarily. yet, though her taste was offended her curiosity was whetted. "but wasn't your--wasn't he man enough to look after you and provide for the child?" "i didn't tell him. he doesn't know. it wasn't his fault. that is"--she paused for a moment, but her expression suggested solicitude lest the naked truth should be disconcerting rather than shame--"i took the chance. neither of us intended to be married. he travels mostly, and is here only two or three times a year. what would he do with a baby anyway?" the entrance of the butler with the tea things was opportune. it gave mrs. wilson time to think. her experience of women of this class had been considerable. if not invariably penitent, they had always shown shame or humble-mindedness. here was a new specimen, degenerate and appalling, but interesting to the imagination. while the servant set the glittering, dainty silver service on the table at his mistress's side the girl watched her and him with obvious curiosity and a mixture of disdain and fascination. now and again her roving eyes took in the exquisite surroundings, then reverted to the face of her would-be benefactress as to a magnet. it seemed to be the triumph of a desire not to appear worse than she really was which made her speak when they were alone, and mrs. wilson, still in search of inspiration, was busy with the tea-caddy. "i wasn't going to let her out of my sight until i knew she was safe." she nervously compressed the back of one of her hands with the long fingers of the other in the apparent effort to justify her course, a consideration to which she was evidently not accustomed. "wouldn't she have had a better home at the expense of the state than any i could have given her? and there was the chance you might take a fancy to her and adopt her. she's less homely than the average new-born young one. you see i thought everything over, lady. and next to its dying that seemed to me the best chance it had for happiness in a best possible world." "ah, but you mustn't talk like that. it's hard, i know, egregiously hard. but you mustn't be bitter," said mrs. wilson, with mandatory kindness. the girl smiled in a superior fashion; it was almost a sneer. her desire to justify herself had been an involuntary expression. now vanity intervened, vanity and the pride of smouldering opinion. "i'm not bitter; i'm only telling you the plain truth. i'm ignorant, i dare say, compared to you; but i'm not so ignorant as you think. i've thought for myself some; and--and all i say is that this isn't any too good a world for a girl like me anyway, and when a girl like me goes wrong, as you call it, and has a kid, instead of crying her eyes out the sensible thing for her to do is to find someone to look after it for her." "which only proves, my child, that such a thing ought never to happen to her." "no--not if she has luck." there was a brief pause; then with an impulsive glide mrs. wilson swept across the room and transferred a cup of tea to the hands of this wanderer from the fold of grace and ethics. the girl, taken off her guard, tried to rise to receive it, and looked at her with the half-fascinated expression of a bird struggling against the fowler. sitting down beside her, mrs. wilson took one of her hands and said, "do you not understand, my dear, that society must insist for its own preservation that a woman shouldn't go wrong? the whole safety of the family is based on that. that's the reason the world has to seem a little cruel to those of our sex who sin against purity. children must know who their fathers are." she had these precepts in their modern guise at the tip of her tongue; she hastened to add, benignly, "but though the world in self-defence turns a cold shoulder on the unchaste woman, for her who seeks forgiveness and a fresh start there are helping hands and loving words which offer forbearance and counsel and friendship." "but supposing i'm not seeking forgiveness? that's the trouble, lady. if only now i were a shame-faced, contrite sinner down in the dust at the foot of the cross asking permission to lead a new life, how much simpler it would be for both of us!" mrs. wilson gasped. the coolness of the sacrilege disturbed her intellectual poise. the girl might have been speaking of an invitation to dinner instead of the redemption of her soul so casual was her regret. "that is where you belong; that is where you must come in order to find grace and peace," she said, in an intense whisper. "i've shocked you." "yes, you've shocked me. but that doesn't matter. you don't realize what you're saying. the important thing is to save you from yourself, to cleanse the windows of your soul so that the blessed light of truth may enter." the girl regarded her curiously, nervously abashed at the impetuous kindness of this proselytism. "that's what i meant by saying i'd thought some. if it's church doctrine you mean, you'd only be disappointed. it may help people like you. but for the working people--well, some of us who use our wits don't think much of it." though mrs. wilson looked profoundly grieved, the spiritual melancholy emanating from her willowy figure and mobile countenance was charged with resolution as well as pity. "it isn't merely church doctrine that you lack. you lack the spirit of christian civilization. your entire point of view is distorted. you are blind, child, utterly blind to the eternal verities." the girl's dark eyes grew luminous in response to this indictment, but a deprecating smile trembled on her lip in protest at her own susceptibility. "what is it you want me to do?" she said at last. "to begin with, i wish you to support your child as a woman should. you brought it into the world, and you owe to the helpless little thing a mother's love and care. will you tell me your name?" "loretta davis." "and what has been your employment?" "they don't know. i don't want them to know. i gave them as an excuse that i was tired of the place." "i'm not asking your employer's name. what kind of work was it?" "i was assistant cashier in a drug store." "and before that?" "i answered the bell for a doctor." "i see. i don't wish to pry into your affairs; but do you belong here? are your parents living?" "i don't mind telling. there's not much to tell. my father and mother are dead. i was born about a hundred miles from here and attended the public school. i had my living to make, so i came to benham about two years ago. i had acquaintances, and was crazy to go into a store. but a girl who came from the same town as i was going to be married, and got me her place to look after the doctor's bell and tidy up. he was a dentist. he lost his health and had to go to colorado for his lungs, and then i went to the drug store. that's all there is to tell, lady--that is, except one thing, which doesn't count much now." "you might as well tell me that also." "oh, well, i'd been thinking of training to be a nurse when i got into trouble. i'd got used to doctors and medicine, and they told me i had the sort of hands for it." she exhibited her strong, flexible fingers. "if i had got rid of my baby, i was going to apply to a hospital. so you see i've got some ambition, lady. i wanted to be of some use. i'm not altogether bad." "no, no, i'm sure you're not. i understand perfectly. and the baby shan't stand in the way of your making the most of yourself. i will arrange all that." mrs. wilson spoke with fluent enthusiasm. she felt that she had discovered the secret of, if not the excuse for, the girl's callousness. unwelcome maternity had interrupted the free play of her individuality at the moment when she was formulating a career, and as a modern woman herself, mrs. wilson understood the bitterness of the disappointment. it gave her a cue to loretta's perversion, so that she no longer felt out of touch with her. she refrained from the obvious temptation of pointing out that a nurse's best usefulness would be to guard her tender child, and broached instead the project which swiftly suggested itself the moment she felt that she had fathomed the cause of the culprit's waywardness. "i know just the home for you; a little tenement in the lincoln chambers. the rooms are savory, convenient, and attractive, and on the opposite side of your entry lives an earnest, interesting spirit, a woman whose husband has deserted her, left her with two children to provide for. she will be glad to befriend you, and you will like her. i happen to know that the tenement is vacant, and it is the very place for you." loretta had listened with sphinx-like attention. when mrs. wilson paused her eyes began to make another tour of her surroundings, and at the close of her remark ignored the theme of conversation. "i never was inside a multi-millionaire's house before. that's what you are, ain't it?" the query was queer, but not to be evaded. "i'm a rich woman certainly, which makes it all the easier for me to help you." if this savored of a pauperizing line, which was contrary to mrs. wilson's philanthropic principles, she felt that she must not at all hazards let the girl slip through her fingers. "if i'm willing that you should." "of course. but you are, i'm sure you are. you're going to trust me and to put yourself into my hands." the confidence and charm of this fervor suddenly met with their reward. loretta had held back from genuine scruples, such as they were. instinctive independence and a preconceived distrust of fine ladies had kept her muscles stiff and her face set, though she felt thrilled by a strange and delicious music. no one could have guessed that it was only the habit of awkwardness which restrained her from falling on her knees in an ecstasy of self-abasement, not from an access of shame, but as a tribute to the woman whose personality had captivated her against her will. "you seem to take a heap of interest in me, don't you?" the words by themselves suggested chiefly surprise, but the sign of her surrender showed itself in her eyes. they were lit suddenly with an intensity which overspread her countenance, bathing its matter-of-fact smartness in the soft light of emotion. "i'm willing to do whatever you like," she said. xii if it be said of gordon perry, attorney and counsellor-at-law, that he was loth to incur the modern epithet, "crank," it was equally true that he had ideals and cherished them. he believed in living up to his convictions. at the same time his sense of humor made him aware that to dwell unduly on premeditated virtue is the prerogative of a prig, and that it is often wise in a workaday world to yield an inch if one would gain an ell. his form of yielding was apt to be genial, thoughtful consideration of the other man's point of view, a virtual admission that there were two sides to the case, instead of flying in the face of his opponent. the modern american regards this tactful moderation as essential to the despatch of business, and prides himself on its possession. it is the oil of the social industrial machine. also it is slippery stuff. one is liable to slide yards away from one's point of view unless one plants one's feet firmly. it is so much easier to follow the trend than to resist it. the natural tendency of those not very much in earnest is to woo success by dancing attendance on the powers which are, both movements and men. so convictions become palsied, and their owners mere puppets in the whirl of human activity. for the sake of fortune, fame, or oftenest for the sake of our bread and butter, we subscribe to theories and support standards which we suspect at heart to be unsound, lest we fail to keep step with the class to which we belong. how to preserve his poise as an independent character and at the same time avoid antagonism with some of his new friends had become interesting to gordon perry. he had reached a point where he had only to be quiescent in order to reap presently a rich harvest. his clear-headedness, his quickness, and his common sense had been recognized, and it was in the air that he was a rising man in his profession. people of importance had taken him up. it was known that he had attended to certain matters for paul howard, from whom it was only one step to the source of many gigantic undertakings productive of fat fees. to the eye of shrewd observers in benham he had only to go on as he had been going, and attend strictly to business, in order to emerge from the ranks of his brother lawyers, and become one of the small group which controlled the cream of the legal business of the city. instead of bringing accident cases he would defend them for powerful corporations. instead of conducting many small proceedings at an expense of vitality for which his clients could not afford and did not expect to pay adequately, he would be employed by banks and trust companies, would organize and reorganize railroads, be made the executor of large estates and the legal adviser of capitalists in financial schemes from which profits would accrue to him in the tens of thousands. it ought to be comparatively plain sailing. this was obvious to the man in question as well as to his contemporaries. he knew that his business was growing, and sundry rumors had reached him that he had been spoken of in inner circles as skilful and level-headed. to indicate the current which ran counter in gordon perry's thoughts to his appreciation of these possibilities it will be necessary to refer briefly to his past and to his mental perspective. he was the son of a widow. also a soldier's son. his father, a volunteer, had survived the civil war, and, attracted by the rising destinies of benham, had made his home there, only to fall victim to a fever within a year of his coming. gordon was then eleven years old. a policy of life insurance kept the wolf from the door for the afflicted widow so far as a bare subsistence was concerned. she had a small roof over her head, and was able by means of boarders and needlework to present a decent front to the world while she watched over her sole treasure, her only child. her ambition was to give him an education, and her ambition in this respect was neither niggardly nor ignorant. he was to have the best--a college training--and to give him this it delighted her to pinch and to slave. when a woman's duty is squarely determined by responsibility for a fatherless son, it is comparatively easy for her to be true to her trust to the extent of complete devotion and unselfishness. but devotion and unselfishness do not include wisdom. happy for him whose mother is a victim neither to superstition nor to silliness, but sees life with a clear, sane outlook. mrs. perry was one of those american women educated in the days of emersonian spirituality, when society walked in the lightest marching order as regards material comforts and embellishments, who were austere and sometimes narrow in their judgments, but who set before them as the one purpose of life the development of character. she was simple, pious, brisk, and direct; setting great store on acting and speaking to the point, and abhorring compromise or evasions. in her religious faith she believed, as a unitarian, about what liberal episcopalians and presbyterians believe to-day. doctrine, however, appeared to her of minor importance compared to the pursuit of noble aims and the practice of self-control. she wished her son to care for the highest things, those of the spirit and the intellect, because she regarded them with sincerity as the passports to human progress; and, though her æsthetic aims were dwarfed, and human color and grandeur may have seemed to her to smack of degeneracy, the white light of her aspirations had a convincing beauty of its own. under the influence of this training and this point of view, gordon went to harvard. there he encountered a new atmosphere. the old gods were not dead, but they seemed moribund, for there were others. the college motto, "veritas," still spoke the watchword of faith, yet the language of his class-mates led him to perceive that what was the truth was again in controversy. the civil war was over, but the martial spirit which had sprung into being at the call of duty and love of country was seething in the veins of a new generation eager to rival in activity the heroism of its fathers. it was no longer enough to walk in contemplation beneath the college elms and develop character by introspective struggle. truth--the whole truth, lay not there. was not useful, skilful action in the world of affairs the true test of human efficiency? a great continent lay open to ingenious youth trained to unearth and master its secrets. how was it to be conquered unless the spirit of energy was nourished by robust frames, unless men were practical and competent as well as soulful? gordon listened to this new note with a receptive ear, and recognized its value. hitherto he had thought little of his body, which, like an excellent machine, had performed its work without calling itself to his attention. now he took part in college athletics, and realized the exhilaration which proceeds from healthful competitive exercise. through contact with his mates, and active participation in the affairs of the college world, he experienced also the still more satisfactory glow, best described as the joy of life, which, partly physical, partly athletic, had never been a portion of his consciousness. he was drafted for the football team, and by his prowess and his pleasant, manly style acquired popularity in the college societies, that fillip to self-reliance and proper self-appreciation. if, as a consequence, he relaxed somewhat his efforts to lead his class in scholarship, which had been his sole ambition at the start, he did not forget that he was a pensioner on his mother's self-sacrifice; and though his rank at graduation was not in the first half-dozen, it was in the first twenty-five, and it could be said of him that he looked fit for the struggle of life, the possessor of a healthy mind in a well-developed body. he was sophisticated, but his soul was untarnished by dissipation, and the edge of his enthusiasm for enterprise and endeavor was not dulled. then followed three years at the law school, where in common with nearly everyone he worked like a beaver to equip himself for his profession. there all interests--it might be said all emotions--were absorbed in contemplation of technical training. but he was still under the shadow of the harvard elms, and the great world lay beyond, a land of mysterious promise to his eager vision. however clear-sighted and philosophical a college graduate, his first actual contact with the great world is apt to be depressing. society seems so large and so indifferent; he is so insignificant and so helpless--he who six months ago was a hero in the eyes of his companions. especially is this apt to be the case when one is translated from the dizzy democratic heights of college renown to a humble, humdrum social station. it was no revelation to gordon perry to find himself the son of a hard-working, inconspicuous boarding-house keeper, but it sobered him. he was neither ashamed of the fact nor dismayed by it. on the contrary, the sight of his mother's tired face and figure subordinated every ambition to his loving determination to conquer the world for her sake. it seemed, however, a less simple matter to conquer the world now that he was an unknown student in a law office in a large city, with no family influence or powerful friends to abet his endeavors. for the first few years his lot was so obscure that the contrasts of life arrested his attention as they had never done before, though as a subconsciousness, for he never outwardly paused in his efforts to become indispensable to the firm of lawyers in whose office he was. he beheld acquaintances in various employments, whose mental superior he believed himself to be, put in the direct line of preferment through pecuniary or social influence, and had to solace himself with the doctrine--also the american doctrine--that it was every man's privilege to make the most of his own advantages, and his duty to acknowledge the same privilege in others. some young men are made cynical by the perception of the workings of free competition; others simply thoughtful. gordon was among the latter. life presented itself to him from a new perspective, and if it suddenly appeared both perplexing and distressing, it appeared none the less interesting. his personal dismay, if this passing reaction deserves so harsh a term, was transient, but it was the precursor to graver, disinterested musings. his attention once arrested by the inequalities of life turned further afield and became riveted by concern and by pity. why in this city, established under free institutions, was it necessary that thousands should be living in poverty, ignorance, and social ineffectiveness if not degradation? it ought not to be. it must not be. how could it be averted? this outburst of his protesting spirit encountered the query of his dispassionate mind--what remedy do you suggest? it was like a douche of cold water. instinctively he reached out for help. he knew that he was in search of truth this time, but he abhorred an _ignis fatuus_. he began to ask questions and to read. there were various answers on the lips of those whom he consulted, for the question seemed to be in the air. many, and there were among them some whose broad shoulders, free carriage, and prosperously self-reliant air told of that joy in living and practical, world-conquering serenity typical of the successful man of the present generation, who assured him, often in a whisper, as though it were a confidence, that these inequalities must always exist. were not men's abilities different, and would they not always be so? was it just that one man's energy and skill should be curtailed to keep pace with another's incapacity? what would become of human individuality and brilliancy if everyone's earning and owning were to be circumscribed by metes and bounds, and we were all to become commonplace, unimaginative slaves of socialism? it was right, of course, that existing abuses in the way of long hours and insufficient pay should be rectified. that was on the cards. in many cases it had been already consummated. and what had malcontents or critics of the existing industrial system to say to the long list of splendid benefactions--free libraries, free hospitals, free parks, and free museums--given to the community by rich men--men who had been abler and more progressive than their fellows? surely the world would be a dull place without competition. there were others who declared that the destruction of the poor was their poverty, and that the poor man was at fault. that if he would let liquor alone, have fewer children, and brush his teeth regularly, he would be happy and prosperous. they called gordon's attention to the many schemes for the uplifting of the industrial masses which were already in operation in benham, homes for abandoned children, evening classes where instruction and diversion were skilfully blended, model tenements, and, most modern of all, college settlements, the voluntary transplanting of individual educated lives into social saharas. the books which he read were of two classes. their writers were either optimistic apologists for the current ills of civilization, deploring and deprecating their existence, and suggesting the gradual elimination of social distress by education and intelligent humanity--"the giving of self unreservedly," as many put it--without serious modification of the structure of society; or they were outspoken enemies of the present industrial status, alleging that poverty and degradation were an inseparable incident of unchecked human competition, and that these evils would never be eradicated until the axe was applied to the fundamental cause. these latter critics had diverse preliminary crucial remedies at heart, such as the capitalization of land, government control of railroads, mines, and other sources of power, or the appropriation to the use of the community of a slice of abnormal profits. most of this presentation, whether through men or from books, was not new to gordon; but it had been hitherto unheeded by him and had the full effect of novelty. he found himself staring at a condition of affairs which he had patriotically if carelessly supposed could not exist in the land of the free and the home of the brave until he suddenly opened his eyes and beheld in full operation in his native city, of which he was becomingly proud, those grave contrasts of station common to older civilizations. these included on the one hand not only the uneducated army of workers in benham's pork factories, oil-yards, and iron mills, but an impecunious, shiftless lower class; and on the other what was, relatively speaking, a corporal's guard of wealthy, wideawake, luxurious, ambitious masters of the situation, to whom he hoped presently to commend himself as a legal adviser. but what was the remedy? what was his remedy? in the coolness of second thoughts, after months of ferment, he had to confess that he had none--at least none at the moment. simultaneously he had reached the further conclusion, which was both a relief and a distress, that whatever could be done must be gradual, so gradual as to be almost imperceptible when measured by the span of a single life. he recalled, with a new appreciation of the truth, the saying that the mills of god grind slowly. from the vanguard hope of a complete change in current conditions, by a series of telling blows of his own conception, he was forced back to a modest stand behind the breast-works. modest because he began to examine with a new respect the philanthropic and economic apparatus for attack already in position, which he had at first glance been disposed to regard as too cumbersome and dilatory. here was where his purpose not to be quixotic and visionary came to his support. he realized that it was necessary for him to wait and to study before he could hope to be of service; that he must take his position in the ranks and observe the tactics of others before attempting to assume leadership or to initiate reforms. one effect of this check to his soaring aspirations at the dictate of his common sense was to give a fresh impetus to his resolve to succeed in his profession. for a brief period the shock of his discoveries had been so stunning that he almost felt as though it were his duty and his mission to devote his life to finding a remedy for the ills of civilization. his mother's necessities stood as a bar to this. but with the ebbing of his vision he found himself no longer beset with doubts as to the legitimacy of his apprenticeship. it seemed to him clearly his duty, not only on his mother's account but his own, to throw himself into his work unreservedly with the intention of hitting the mark. he had his bread to earn, his way to make. how would it profit him or anyone that he should forsake his calling and stand musing by the wayside merely because he was distressed by the inequalities of the industrial system? inequalities which existed all over the world and were as old as human nature. he had no comprehensive cure to suggest, so for the time being his lips were sealed and his hands tied by his own ignorance. and if conscience, borrowing from some of the books which he had read, argued that the prosperous lawyer was the agent of the rich against the poor, the strong against the weak, his answer was that the taunt was not true, and his retort by way of a counter-sally was that in no country in the world did the laboring man receive so high wages as in this. this at least was a step forward, and so he felt justified to follow precedent and to bide his time. in order to succeed a young lawyer must be ceaselessly vigilant. it is not enough to perform faithfully what he is told. there are many who will do this. the man who gets ahead is he who does more than the letter of his employment demands, who anticipates instructions and disregards time and comfort in order to follow a clue of evidence or elucidate a principle. so he becomes indispensable, and by and by the opportunity presents itself which the shiftless ascribe to luck. gordon perry revealed this faculty of indefatigable initiative. the firm in whose office he was a student had a large business, chiefly in the line of commercial law. the transit of the various commodities to which benham owed her prosperity was necessarily productive of considerable litigation against the railroads as common carriers and between the shippers and consignees of wares and merchandise. besides, there were constant suits for personal injuries to be prosecuted or defended, involving nice distinctions as to what is negligence, and bringing in their train much practice for the juniors in the investigation of testimony. from the outset gordon worked with unsparing enthusiasm, seeking to do the work entrusted to him so thoroughly that those who tried the cases would find the situation clearly defined and everything at their fingers' ends. when it was perceived that he was not only diligent but discerning and accurate, they began to rely on him, and by the end of three years the responsibility of trying as well as of preparing the less important proceedings in the lower courts became his. also, by showing himself solicitous regarding the affairs of the clients of the office, he was able now and again to supply information or tide matters over when the member of the firm inquired for was out; and it was not long before some of them formed the habit of consulting him directly in minor matters. when at the end of five years the senior partner, who had independent means, retired in order to go to congress, his two associates came to the conclusion that it would be good policy, as well as just, to give perry, as the most promising young man in the office, a small interest in the business. this promotion naturally gave him a new status with the clients, and most of those who had been in the habit of consulting him offhand, now laid their serious troubles before him. so by the time he was twenty-nine he was well started in his profession, and able to extract a promise from his mother that if he continued to prosper for another year, she would yield to his solicitations to give up her boarders and move into a brighter neighborhood. although absorbed in his profession, gordon's genial charm soon brought him invitations of a social nature. he became a member of a law club of men of his own age, which met once a month to compare impressions and banish dull care over a good dinner. still eager for exercise he joined a rowing club on the river nye, and a gymnasium. after he was admitted to the firm he had his name put up for election at one of the social clubs, the university, so called because its members were college graduates. here he met the educated young men of the city, and though his mother had an old-fashioned prejudice against clubs, as aristocratic resorts where men gambled and drank more than was good for them, gordon felt that he needed some place where he could play a game of whist or billiards with congenial spirits or look at magazines in a cosey library as an antidote to his sterner pursuits. mrs. perry was more than willing to trust her son, so she sighed and set down to the changed temper of the day the spread of benham's club fever. for, like other progressive cities, benham was fairly honeycombed with clubs. the american social instinct had become almost daft on the subject, and no two or three men or women could come together for any purpose without organizing. from a constitution and by-laws the road was apt to be short to rooms or a clubhouse. the university was one of half a dozen of the purely social clubs of the city, a spacious establishment, modelled on european traditions with american plumbing and other modern comforts. gordon was prompted to join by paul howard, who declared that he preferred it for genuine enjoyment to the eagle club, the favorite resort of the very rich and fashionable--the spread eagle, as the malicious termed it. at the university there was secular instrumental music on sunday afternoons, a custom copied from boston, that former hotbed of ascetic sabbath life, and on saturday nights a cold supper was provided, about which stood in pleasant groups the active professional and business men of the city and those who followed the arts--musicians, painters, and literary men. "exclusive and aristocratic all the same," said hall collins, contemptuously, one day when gordon vouchsafed to him a glowing account of these saturday nights. hall was one of the moving spirits in the only other club of which gordon was a member, the citizens' club, the somewhat ambitious title of an organization conducted by young men interested in civic and industrial reform, not unlike that to which the unhappy emil stuart had belonged. "which only shows how little you understand what we are after," was the prompt answer. "there isn't a more truly democratic place in the world--only we insist that a man should win his spurs before he is entitled to consideration. a clod, while he is a clod, isn't a gentleman, and it isn't good american doctrine to regard him as one. no logic will make him so. you're talking through your hat, hall, and you know it." hall grinned. it was true he was not more than half in earnest, but he was more than half suspicious of gordon. he could not make him out, which nettled him, for hall collins liked to have men docketed in his mind. "to gehenna with your gentlemen!" he retorted. "what use are spurs to a man who has no boots to wear them on?" "hear, hear!" interjected two or three bystanders whose attention was caught by the metaphor. "it strikes me, young man," pursued collins, who had his chair tipped back, his feet on the table and was smoking a fat cigar which one of the aldermen had given him, appropriated by the wholesale at a city banquet, "that you're trying to ride two horses." he was glad to have an audience to the discussion, for he could not make up his mind that gordon was sincere in his interest in the citizens' club, and he feared some ulterior motive, political or quasi-philanthropic. "yes, that's just what i'm doing," answered gordon. "half of the lack of sympathy between the educated and the uneducated, between capital and labor, as you like to call it, lies in the imagination. what is there incompatible in being a member of a club like this and wearing patent-leather shoes and the latest thing in collars?" "it smacks too much of college settlements. it doesn't go to the root of things." "but it helps just as they help, unless in the ideal democracy you are aiming at there's to be no place for the refinements of life, for soft speech, gentle manners, and the arts. in the millennium are we all to be uncouth and unimaginative?" "score one for the man with the patent-leather shoes, only he hasn't got them on," exclaimed one of the listeners. "you're beginning at the wrong end. you put the cart before the horse; that's the trouble with you. what's the use of decorating a house that's going to be struck by lightning?" with all his prejudice and homely exterior hall collins was at heart no demagogue or charlatan. he was dead in earnest himself and he wished others to be. he was conversant with the history of the development of trades-unions over the world. he was a student of humanitarian reforms, and gave all the time which he could spare from his occupation as a master-mason to the furtherance of what he considered legislative progress. "struck by lightning, and then there's no house, only ruins. that's not what you desire, hall collins, you, i, nor anyone here. we're all seeking the same thing, and we're all groping more or less in the dark--putting the cart before the horse, may be. but you haven't any panacea for what's wrong more than i have. all we can hope to do is to make a few trifling alterations on the premises--paper a wall or enlarge a flue--before our lease expires. the chief reason i joined this club was that i might stop theorizing and wringing my hands and get down to business. we all recognize there's plenty of practical work waiting for us, so what's the use of distrusting each other's theories or motives? i've no congressional bee in my bonnet. i'm not trying to climb to political prominence on the shoulders of the horny-handed citizens' club." hall colored slightly. he had been harboring just that suspicion. "good talk." "come off your perch, hall. this man perry's all right," was the response of several listeners. the group was now a dozen. hall took his feet from the table, stood up and put out his hand. "it isn't because the boys say so," he said. "i'm taking you on your own word, perry, and you'll never hear me peep again. you've the right idea; it's no time for speculating, for there's lots of business to be done right here in benham. and if i had a notion you might be masquerading--well, there have been cases where men in patent leathers and dandy collars showed up strong in working-men's clubs, and the only business they ever did was to lay and pull wires." "some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them," said ernest bent. "hall was born great, but if don perry wants to go to the legislature why shouldn't the citizens' club send him there?" "that's so," said a second. "not until he wins those spurs he spoke of--not if he's the man i take him to be," exclaimed collins, doughtily. "not under any circumstances. i have no wish for office. i don't desire to be a politician." gordon spoke eagerly. the only thought in his mind was to deprecate the suggestion. it was true that in looking over the field there had seemed to him almost a glut of philanthropists, and he had chosen the citizens' club as a more promising opening than charitable work. but his ambition was only to be a private in the ranks. "and yet," commented hall, "what should we do without politicians? they are the only persons who put things through, and laws on the statute books are what we need. look at this cigar." he exhibited the butt end, which was all that was left. "the man who gave it to me helped himself to a box, and the only thing he wouldn't help himself to is a red-hot stove, but i didn't spit in his face and i smoked his cigar, and i dare say he'll vote for some of our batch of bills because i told him a good story. it's disgusting." he threw down the butt and trod it under foot. "the cardinal sin of the sovereign people is their ignorance. will they never learn not to send dishonest men to represent them?" "you see that hall is both an idealist and practical," said ernest bent to gordon. it was through bent that gordon had joined the citizens' club. he was his next-door neighbor, the son of an apothecary, and had, while following his trade behind the counter, read books on the science of government, and the rights and wrongs of man, with excursions to darwin and huxley. as the result of bandying opinions from time to time he had taken gordon one evening to a meeting of the club, and subsequently invited him to become a member. gordon did not need persuasion to join. it seemed to him just the opportunity he had been looking for to espouse the cause which he had at heart, by focussing his sympathies on practical measures. he recognized that the club was not only a debating body, but aimed to be a political force, and that many of its members were expert and not entirely scrupulous politicians. but, on the other hand, in spite of the jaundiced views of some of those who harangued the meetings, gordon discerned that a half-dozen men were really in control--among them collins and bent--and that they were guided by a sincere and reasonably cautious ambition to procure scientific reforms. a little consideration convinced him that he was glad they were seeking to wield political influence. it gave the effect of reality, of battle. academic discussion was a vital prelude to well-considered action, but, after all, as hall collins said, the only thing which really counted was law on the statute books. it suited his manhood to feel that he was about to fight for definite issues. xiii after eighteen months of prosperity the law firm into which gordon perry had been admitted was crippled by the death of one of the two other partners. the survivor, who was the junior of the two, and decidedly the inferior in mental calibre and energy, proposed to gordon to continue the firm on the footing of two-thirds of the profits for himself, and appeared pompously grieved when his former student demurred to the terms. before he could make up his mind to a more equable division gordon had made up his to separate and to practise alone. while gordon did not have a very high opinion of his partner's talents, he was grateful for his own recent promotion, and was aware that his associate's wise countenance and seniority combined would probably avail to control the cream of the business--that brought by managers of corporations and successful merchants, both prone to distrust youth. but the plan of setting up for himself was tempting, especially as he disliked the alternative of the lion's share going to a lawyer of mediocre ability, and when paul howard asked why he did not take the step in question, and intimated that he would befriend him in case he did, gordon resolved to burn his bridges and make the plunge, or in more correct metaphor to hang out his own shingle. as he had expected, there was at first a slight lull in his fortunes; but, on the other hand, he was able to pocket the whole income, and even from the outset he was reasonably busy. paul howard's promise was fulfilled. all his personal and presently some of the firm matters were placed in gordon's hands, and the two men met not infrequently as a consequence. at harvard they had been acquaintances rather than friends. their contact on the foot-ball team had inspired respect for each other's grit, but they were not intimate. as the possessor of a liberal allowance, paul had belonged to a rather frivolous set, notorious in college circles through lavish expenditures, which included boxes at the theatres and suppers and flowers for the chorus girls. though gordon was partial to comic opera himself, he had regarded paul as a high flyer, and paul in his turn had pitied gordon as a good fellow spoiled by being obliged to "grind." when they met again in their native city after a lapse of years, each was impressed by the other's improvement and found him much more interesting than he had expected. paul had toned down. his spirits were less flamboyant; he was gay-hearted instead of noisy, and his manner had lost its condescension. on his part, gordon had mellowed through contact with the world and was more easy-going in his address, and no longer wore the new england conscience in his nostrils. they met first by chance at a restaurant at noon, and, habit bringing them to the same resort, they lunched together from time to time, and the favorable impression was strengthened on each side. gordon interested paul because the former was so different from most of the men with whom he was in the habit of associating, and yet was, so to speak, a good fellow. the true creed of most of paul's friends when reduced to terms, was substantially this, that the important thing in life is to be on top, that in america every one has a chance and the best men come to the front, that success means money, that money ensures enjoyment, and that no one is supposed to be enjoying himself or herself who does not keep feeding the dynamo of conscious existence with fresh sensations and run the human machine at full pressure. there were necessary corollaries to this, such as "the devil take the hindmost," uttered considerately but firmly; "we shall be a long time dead," murmured jocosely but shrewdly; and "the cranks may prevail and the crash come, but we shall be under the sod," spoken philosophically, with a shake of the head or a sigh; the moral of it all being that the position of the successful--that is, the rich--is delectable and intoxicating, and the rank and file are expected to comport themselves with patriotic and christian resignation, and not interfere with the free workings of the millionairium, an ingenious american substitute for the millennium. the stock market, athletic sports, and cocktails were the tutelary saints of this section of society. they were habitually long or short of the market from one or two hundred to several thousand shares, according to their means. they followed feverishly the prevailing fads in sport, yachting, tennis, polo, rowing, golf, rackets, hunting, horse shows (as now, a few years later, "bridge," ping-pong, and the deadly automobile). and after exercise, before lunch and dinner, and on every other excuse, they imbibed a cocktail or a whiskey and soda as a fillip to the nervous system. they were dashing, manly-looking fellows, these companions of paul, ingenious and daring in their business enterprises, or, if men of leisure, keen and brilliant at their games. they set great store by physical courage and unflinching endurance of peril and pain, and they would have responded promptly to a national demand for troops in case of war; but when anything arose on the political or social horizon which threatened to disturb prices on the stock exchange they set their teeth as one man and howled maledictions at it and its author, though it bore the sign manual of true progress. in short, life for them meant a bull market, a galaxy of competitive sports, and perpetual novelty. in turning from this comradeship and point of view to gordon perry, paul did so guardedly. that is, although he was not altogether satisfied to follow the current in which he found himself, he had no intention of being drawn into the eddies by false sentiment or of rowing up-stream at the dictates of envy and demagogism. he was ready to admit that the policy of high-pressure enjoyment and acquisition might be ethically defective, but he did not propose to exchange his birthright for a mess of pottage and become pious or philanthropic on sing-song lines. as he once expressed it to gordon, some two years after the latter had set up for himself, between the hypocrites and the fools it was a comparatively simple matter to charm an audience with a psalm tune compounded of the rock of ages and the star-spangled banner until it passed resolutions against the rich and in favor of the poor, which not merely confounded common sense and subverted justice, but gave a sort of moral sanction to the small lies, the sand in the sugar, the dirt, the superstition and the slipshod ways which distinguished the people without brains and imagination from those with. "we might divide all round," paul continued, "but what good would that do? i might move into a smaller house, sell my steam yacht and all my stable, except a horse and buggy, and play the puritan, but what good would that do? people would laugh and my wife would think me crazy. i tell you what, don, we--i mean the crowd i run with--may be a grasping, extravagant, gambling, sporting, strenuous lot, but we trot square. there's no sand in our sugar, and when there's music to be faced we don't run away, squeal or delude ourselves. but i've sworn off cocktails for good. i began yesterday. and i'm going to keep my eye on you, don. i don't promise to follow you, but i'm interested. when you get your plans in working order let me look at them. i may be able to syndicate them for you, even though i have to shock my conservative father in the process. by the way, do you happen to need a stenographer? she's said to know her business. and this one is in your line, too." gordon had been conscious lately that his work required another clerk. "in my line?" "yes. a tale of woe. she's a protegée of my aunt's, and needs a helping hand. a widow with two small children. good looking, too, i believe. mrs. wilson has had her taught until she can play the type-writer like a learned pig, and take down your innermost thoughts in shorthand. and now the woman insists on being thrown down hard on her own resources, like a good american. we haven't a vacancy, unless i invent one; and it occurred to me that you must have work enough for a second stenographer by this time." "i'll try her." "thanks. one good turn deserves another. i'll tell my aunt that she ought to ask you to dine; and then if you don't give her to understand that her will is all wrong and should be drawn over again the fault will be yours." "bankers may advertise their wares in the shop windows, but a self-respecting lawyer may only look wise. he must hold his tongue until he is consulted." "squat in his office, eh, like a spider waiting for flies? but you ought to know my aunt all the same." "i should like to immensely," said gordon. "she's not like the rest of the family; she belongs to a different flight. my father has brains and force. it's not easy to equal him in those. he hasn't had time though to sort his ideas and tie them up in nice white packages with crimson bows or to polish anything except his wits. but aunt miriam goes in for the perfect life. that's what she has in her mind's eye. you would suit her to death, don. you ought to be pals. she's absorbed in reforms and æsthetic mission work, and she has a fine scent for national tendencies, and there's no telling but you might each get points from the other." gordon laughed. "you flatter me, paul." "no, i don't. you're not alike. you're both aiming at the same thing, i suppose; but your ways are different. and you can't very well both be right. you may not be pals after all. you may disagree and fight. come to think of it, i shouldn't be in the least surprised if you did. a pitched battle between gordon perry and mrs. randolph wilson would be worth watching." paul chuckled mirthfully at the conception. "i'm not quite sure which of you i would back." "and now you're enigmatic, not to say absurd." "wait until you get to know her; then you'll understand. i should only tie myself up in a bow-knot trying to explain. her daughter's marriage gave aunt miriam her head. if ever there was a case of disappointment, lucille was one. aunt miriam had intended her to be a model of æsthetic sweetness and light, a sort of matthew arnold girl with american patent electrical improvements, but she must have been changed at birth. lucille has her good points--i'm fond of her--but it's a matter of utter indifference to her whether the world improves or not provided she has what she likes. she must have been a constant jar to her mother. yet i never heard a whimper from mrs. wilson. my aunt had no particular use for clarence waldo; yet when the thing was settled one could never have guessed from her manner that she was not to be the mother-in-law of lord rosebery or of the author of the great american novel. but now that her mission as a mother is fulfilled, look out for storm centres in the upper lake region of high ideas and fresh winds in reform circles. by the way, the waldos are in this country again, and are to pass the summer at newport. my wife says that we are to go there too, with a new steam yacht and all the latest appliances for cutting ice. so you see, i couldn't play the puritan and the american husband in the same act." as a result of this conversation, constance stuart obtained employment in gordon perry's office. when she presented herself he recognized her with surprise as the client whose scrupulous purpose he believed he had divined, though she had given no clue to her instructions. he realized that he was predisposed in her favor, so that she scarcely needed the letter of encomium from mrs. wilson, which he paused to read, chiefly because of its chirography and diction. he observed that both her face and figure were a little fuller than when he had seen her last, which was becoming, and that she was more trigly, though simply, dressed. it was clear that she had risen from the ashes of her adversity, and was determined to put her best foot forward. and what an attractive voice and fine eyes she had. as he looked at her he said to himself that she was qualified for the position as one in a thousand; the sort of woman who would understand without becoming obtrusive, who would be neither a machine nor a coquette; and though she was a novice, the endorsement was explicit on the score of her capacity. gordon felt that she would give a new atmosphere to his office. constance, on her part, was pleased to encounter one not wholly a stranger. though she had acquired deftness in her work, she felt nervous at actual responsibility, and the memory of the lawyer's kind eyes and frank smile gave her assurance. as she saw him again she was sure that he would be considerate and reasonable. mrs. wilson had spoken of an opening in mr. howard's office, where she would be one of a roomful of typewriters, but she was glad now that this opportunity had been offered her instead. there would be less excitement and less contact with the hurly-burly of large events, and less chance for promotion and for better pay in case she proved proficient. but, on the other hand, she believed that she would find here a secure and agreeable haven where she could do her best with self-respecting faithfulness and support her children suitably. as she arranged her small effects in the desk provided for her, she concluded already that she was very fortunate. just a year had passed since constance had begun her new life in lincoln chambers, and the impulse of that new life may be said to have dated from her visit to mrs. randolph wilson. from that interview and that house she had brought away encouragement and inspiration. the text of the value of the spirit of beauty possessed her soul with the ardor of a new faith. suddenly and with captivating clearness it had been revealed to her that the external fitness of things is a fact and not to be ignored, and that the purely introspective, subjective vision sees only half the truth of existence. she perceived that she had been content with rectitude, and unadorned plainness; that she had been indifferent and blind to color, variety, and artistic excellence. it was as though she had been nourished on skimmed milk instead of cream, as though her diet had been a monotonous simple regimen without a luscious ingredient. to begin with, she had turned her thought to her own home, where cleanliness and order ruled, but where she had hitherto refrained from other than haphazard efforts at pleasing effects. her idea had been to be comfortable and decent, and to let the rest take care of itself, but now the ambition was awakened to impart taste to her surroundings. to her satisfaction she found that this was not difficult to accomplish even with her modest resources, as her mentor had predicted. her woman's intelligence and native refinement reinforced her aroused interest, and by altering the angles and position of her furniture, and by introducing a few spots of color to enliven the monotony of her rooms she was able to effect a modest transformation delightful to her own eyes. to plant flowers in boxes for her windows and to arrange the few pictures she owned to advantage was the next step. the modern design of her apartment lent itself to her efforts, as though its newness, its modern tiles and its wall-papers were in league against dull commonplaceness, and it seemed to her presently almost horrible that she had remained indifferent for so long to the necessity of external appearances, absorbed in the processes of introspection. when she and emil had married her predominant impulse had been to be a good, loving wife to him, and to make his home inviting by her cheerfulness and tact. the new, clean house had seemed to her pretty in itself, and she had taken for granted that the sets of furniture, the carpets, and other household goods, bought hastily, could not fail to set it forth to advantage. they were substantial, fresh, and paid for, and in her happiness it had not occurred to her to bother further. to do so would have seemed to savor of undue worldliness. now how far away appeared that time of joyful ignorance, and how foreign to her present sophistication its artless outlook. she had deemed herself cultivated then, and later, in the stress of her misfortunes, had cherished thoughtful simplicity as the essence of personal refinement, the life-buoy to which she clung amid the waste of waters. by the light of experience it was plain that she had starved herself and eschewed as effete or unimportant that which was wholesome and stimulating. the same impulse led her to take a new interest in her own personal appearance, to arrange her hair tastefully, to consider a little what colors suited her best, and in various simple ways to make the most of her own personal advantages for the first time in her life. not in the spirit of vanity, but in acknowledgment that she had too much neglected the temple of the body. and not only in respect to beauty in the outward manifestations of everyday life did she feel that she had been blind to what existence offered, but where art touched religion. she was able to approach faith from a new point of view; to wrap her naked intellectual communion with the garment of the church properties--to yield herself to the spell of the solemn architecture, the new stained-glass windows, the artistic reredos, and the vested choir of st. stephen's--without suspicion or doubt. her life had lacked the impulse of art, and in finding it she believed that she had discovered the secret of a closer approach to god. she sought by zeal to make atonement to mr. prentiss for her past deficiencies. it did not appear to her essential to recant her errors formally; indeed, she did not do so to herself, for in respect to certain dogmas and supernatural claims of the creed she had not disowned her independence of thought. that which she wished to disown unmistakably was the coldness of her attitude toward spiritual things; she wished her rector to realize that heart was predominating over mind, and that trusting, ardent worship had taken the place of speculative lip service. a sermon by mr. prentiss came in the nick of time to further this attitude. it was on the essentials of the religious faith, and he defined them as the spirit of christian brotherhood and love through man to god. although he did not in terms disparage the importance of the dogmas and traditions of the church, the impression left on constance was that he had passed them by as embodying the antiquated letter, but not the modern temper of christian doctrine. to her eager imagination the doubts which had harassed her in the past concerning the truth of the miracles, and kindred scriptural deviation, from the natural order of the universe were reduced to trivial importance. instead of stumbling-blocks to faith, they had become objects of secondary interest, to one side of the high-road along which the christ-life was leading mankind. how better could she manifest this change of mood to mr. prentiss than by devotion to church work? she became a teacher in the sunday-school in the church of the redeemer, the mission church connected with st. stephen's, joined once more a bible-class under her rector's instruction, and undertook to befriend some poor families less fortunate than herself on the parish lists. but her dearest service was to help to deck the church for the great christian festivals, christmas and easter. to arrange the evergreen and mistletoe, the profusion of lilies and roses, humbly and under the guidance of those versed in such matters, but with devoted hands, gave her a chance to ventilate the new poetry of her soul. she had become enamored of the charm of flowers; she delighted in the swell of the organ and the melodious chants of the rejoicing choir. her willing fingers quickly became skilful. at the second easter she was even appealed to on minor points of taste by some of her fellow-workers, so that loretta davis, who was standing by holding smilax, nudged her as a sign of congratulation, for she had represented herself to loretta as a complete novice in such matters. very grateful and inspiriting to constance was mrs. wilson's voluntary tribute on the same evening that she had been of notable service. mrs. wilson was the presiding genius and lady bountiful of these festivals, especially on easter day. it was she who said yearly to mr. prentiss, "date plenis lilia," and, acting on that cue, gave orders to the florists to exhaust the green-houses of the neighborhood, and to spare neither expense nor pains to make st. stephen's the most beautiful sanctuary in benham. it was she who organized and tactfully controlled the large committee of ladies whose annual labor of love it was to dress the church. it was she who oversaw and checkmated the commonplace intentions of the professional decorators employed to fasten festoons and clusters beyond the reach of ladylike gymnastics; and it was she who originated or set the seal of approval on the artistic scheme of design adopted by the committee. mrs. wilson had had several triumphs as a consequence of the freedom afforded her by her daughter's marriage, but nothing had given her more satisfaction than the progress of loretta davis's redemption through association with constance. she had jumped at the idea of placing the wayward girl in the opposite tenement, feeling that the experience would be a blessing to both women; that it would provide loretta with a sympathetic fellow struggler and example, and give mrs. stuart the self-respecting occasion to help as well as to be helped. still it was an experiment until tried, the success of which could not be taken for granted. that their relations had become sympathetic was due mainly to constance. in her present mood the unfortunate girl seemed to have been sent to her as an opportunity for christian usefulness, as a test of her own spiritual regeneration. here was the best chance of all to show her changed heart to her rector. her recognition from the outset that loretta was distasteful to her, and her shrinking not only from the girl's attitude toward sin but from her smart matter-of-fact personality served merely as a spur to her own zeal. she would win her over and be won over herself; she would unearth the palpitating soul of which mrs. wilson had confided to her that she had caught a glimpse, and teach her to reassert and develop her womanhood. help came unexpectedly from loretta herself after the ice of acquaintance was broken and the two women found themselves close neighbors. constance was attracted by the keenness of her intelligence which, though loretta was ignorant and undisciplined, was apt to go straight to the mark on the wings of rough but pungent speech. it conciliated constance to discover this trait, for she shrank from self-deception as a moral blemish and one more typical of women than of men. the girl's directness awoke an answering chord. a clear head removed half the difficulty of the situation, and held out the hope that wise counsel would not be lost. loretta made no mystery of her circumstances. she told the story of her shame with matter-of-fact glibness as an every-day incident in human life, lamentable possibly on conventional grounds, but not to be judged harshly by the discerning, among whom she chose to place constance. the thing had happened, and there was nothing to be said or done but make the best of it--which now included the baby. "she wanted me to keep it, and i said i would, and that i'd come and live here and see how i liked it. i shocked her and--well, i had never talked with anyone just like her before. she seemed set on my living here, so i thought i'd try." "she" was always mrs. wilson. this was loretta's invariable way of referring to her, as if there could be no question who was meant. she talked of her constantly, with an eager yet shy interest, which promptly revealed to constance how matters stood. loretta had taken up her duties as a mother and subordinated her own wanton theories to please mrs. wilson. this was the bond which held her, not religion or the qualms of self-respect. yet it was a bond, and constance recognized it as one to be cherished. to hear this woman, so bold and indelicate in every-day speech, ask questions concerning her divinity with a shyness not unlike that of a bashful lover was interesting. was not she herself under the influence of the same charm? was not this infatuation another tribute to the power of the spirit of beauty? thus constance felt that she had a clue to her new companion's nature, which she did her best to utilize. so it happened that loretta went to church because she could catch a glimpse of mrs. wilson from where they sat; and loretta took a new interest in her baby from the hour when mrs. wilson sent her, tied up with a pretty ribbon, a little embroidered infant's jacket bought at a fair; and loretta helped to deck st. stephen's at easter because of the chance that mrs. wilson would speak to her, as of course she did. constance found herself a silent but zealous conniver and accomplice; and it impressed her that the object of devotion seemed instinctively aware both of it and the girl's need, for every now and then mrs. wilson would make the occasion by a few words, a note, a visit or a gift to lift loretta above the level of her own devices. for just as antæus gained strength by contact with the earth, loretta's spirit seemed to crave the inspiration of mrs. wilson's gracious patronage. though slap-dash and over-confident in her ways, loretta was capable and quick to adopt and to perform skilfully whatever appealed to her. her experience as a cashier in a drug store had given her a lingo and a certain familiarity concerning modern remedies, and she had a natural aptitude with her hands. some of the maternal hygienic niceties practised by constance appeared to amuse her at first, but as she became more interested in her baby, she outdid her neighbor in pharmaceutical experiments with powder, oil, perfume, and whatever she thought likely to make her child a savory specimen of babyhood. when the child was a year old, mrs. wilson made good her promise that loretta should be instructed in nursing by securing her admission to a hospital. at the same time she engaged another of her wards, a responsible, elderly woman, to take up her abode in loretta's tenement, and it was arranged that this custodian should also tend constance's children during their mother's absence down-town. how to guard her children properly after their return from school had been agitating constance, and this plan was exactly to her liking. she paid a small sum weekly from her earnings for the supervision, and it was understood that loretta should have the same privilege after her apprenticeship was over and she had become self-supporting. so it was that mrs. wilson felt she had reason to be gratified by her philanthropic experiment in lincoln chambers. xiv the zest of existence must be largely ethical and subjective for the majority of us or we should speedily become despondent or bored. contact with life is necessarily so commonplace for the mass of humanity, that, were we dependent on personal participation in large events and dramatic, splendid experiences for inspiration and content, few would not find themselves restless and in the mental doldrums. fortunately for our peace of mind, most of us not only appreciate that pictorial and world-stirring, or even exciting, affairs can be the lot of only a fraction of mankind, but, by virtue of the imagination, manage to impart to our more or less humble vicissitudes the aspect of an engrossing situation. we recognize the relative insignificance of the individual drama, but its reality holds us. its characters may be few, its scenery bare, its action trite and simple to other eyes, yet each of us, as the leading actor, finds in the development of a human soul a part which fascinates him, and lends itself to the finest shades of expression. whether it be a king on his throne, or a cripple in his cot, the essential matter to the world is the nice interpretation. so, as the true artist in a subordinate rôle forgets for the time that he is not the leading actor, we refuse to be depressed by the unimportance of our theatricals and are absorbed by the unfolding perplexities of our own soul play. it is every american woman's privilege, according to her tastes, to dream that she may become the wife of the president of the united states, or wield a powerful influence as a poetess, humanitarian educator, or other exponent of modern feminine usefulness. in marrying emil stuart, constance had renounced the latter in favor of the former possibility. she had sacrificed all hopes of personal public distinction, but there still had remained the vision of becoming famous by proxy, through her husband. if this had never appeared to her happy eyes as a bride more than an iridescent dream, the idea that she would presently be working in a lawyer's office would have seemed utterly inconsistent with her scheme of life, and a violation of her horoscope. yet, now that she was established in this position, she found the experience not only satisfactory, as a means of subsistence, but interesting. in the first place, it stirred her to be down-town in the swift current of affairs and a part of the busy crowd which peopled the huge office-buildings and swept to and from its work with the regularity and rhythmic force of the tide. through this daily contact she discerned, as never before, the dignity and the pathos of labor, and gained both courage and exhilaration from the thought that, though there were generals and captains, and she was in the rear rank of privates, the real strength of the army lay in the faithful performance by the individual of that portion of the world's toil entrusted to himself or herself. there was attraction, too, in her employment, though her task was but to register and reproduce with despatch the thoughts of others. the occupation tested her accuracy, patience, tact, and diligence. she must avoid blunders and be swift to comprehend. there were secrets in her keeping; affairs upon the issue of which hinged large sums of money, and often the happiness of leading citizens, who were clients of the office; close legal battles between mind and mind; domestic difficulties settled out of court; and suits for injuries, where the price of a life or of a limb were at stake. her lips must be sealed, and she must seem unaware of the tragedies which passed beneath her observation. yet the human element became a constant, vivid interest to her, and now and then it happened, as, for instance, when a forlorn hope brought liberal damages to the wronged or the afflicted, that she was taken into the secret by the exultant plaintiff, and was able to rejoice openly. there was, finally, her association with her employer. from this she had not expected much. she was there to execute his instructions without superfluous words or the obtrusion of her own personality. she knew, instinctively, that he would not treat her merely as a machine, but she took for granted that their relations would be formal. it pleased her that, though this was the case, there were moments, even from the first, when he let her perceive that he regarded her as a social companion. to evince a kindly interest in her personal affairs was simply human; anyone might show this; but to talk with her on the topics of the day, to call her attention to a book or an article, or, as presently happened, to invite her opinion on a question of legal ethics, was a flattering indication that he considered their point of view the same. a difference in point of view is the most insurmountable, because the most intangible, barrier to the free play of human sympathy and the social instinct. it is the last great fortress in the pathway of democracy; one which the besiegers will be able to carry only by learning the password. a free-masonry exists, from the cut of the mind to that of the hair and coat, between those who recognize each other, and not to speak the same language palsies the best intentions. modest as her introduction to mrs. randolph wilson had made her, constance in her heart believed that she spoke the same mental language as mr. perry. but would he recognize it? that he did so not only increased her interest in serving him, but held out the promise of a new friend. he might so easily have passed her over, he who was so busy and had so many acquaintances. yet it was plain that he liked to talk to her, and that he availed himself of opportunities for conversation. at the end of a year it happened that the other stenographer, her predecessor, left mr. perry's employment in order to marry. as a consequence, constance became the senior clerk, and was given formal charge of the office with a slight increase in pay. [illustration: there were moments, even from the first, when he let her perceive that he regarded her as a social companion] she would scarcely have been human had gordon perry's complimentary interest failed to inspire her with some degree of hero-worship. yet, though she was presently aware that she had set him on a pedestal, she felt that she had excellent reasons for her partiality. was he not a clear-headed, astute reasoner, as well as kind? a thorough, conscientious worker, who went to the root of whatever he undertook, and prosecuted it vigorously, as well as a gracious spirit with a sense of humor? if she did not reveal much of the last quality herself, she appreciated and enjoyed it in others, especially when it was the sort of humor which championed truth against error and could be playful or caustic, as the occasion demanded. he was simple and approachable, yet he had influential and fashionable friends. recently he had made the acquaintance of mrs. randolph wilson, and was on pleasant terms with her. constance had recognized her handwriting, and had been apprised by loretta of his presence at mrs. wilson's entertainments. loretta had, what seemed to constance, almost a mania for the social department of newspapers. she knew by rote the names of the society leaders, and was familiar through reportorial photography with many of their faces. mrs. wilson was the bright, particular star in this galaxy of interest. loretta searched with avidity for every item of gossip which concerned her divinity, and took a hectic pleasure in retailing her information. thus it happened that every now and then she would exclaim: "i see that your boss was at her last entertainment," the fact of which was more agreeable to constance than the phraseology. loretta's diction was always clear, but constance, who wished to feel that they spoke the same language, had often to bite her lips as a reproof to her sensibilities; and, especially, when she heard her hero spoken of as her boss. it was so wide of the truth regarding him. then there was his mother, and here again constance had cause to feel gratified. quite unexpectedly mrs. perry had called upon her, seeking her at lincoln chambers in the late afternoon when she was likely to be at home. while serving her five o'clock tea, constance had observed, with interest in her personality, marked resemblances to her son. he had inherited her naturalness and mental vigor. her cheerful directness, too, but in his case the straightforward attitude was softened by the habit of deliberation and garnished by a more tolerant gaiety. it was obvious that mrs. perry maintained the integrity of her convictions until they ran counter in daily life to his, and in capitulating reserved always the privilege to be of the same opinion still, which she exercised with her tongue in her cheek, thereby betraying her great pride in her son, and in her son's superior wisdom. she professed, for instance, to regard his ideas concerning the new home in which he had just installed her, and where she was keeping house for him, as extravagant. what was the use of spending so much on mere creature comforts? she did not need them. she had sat on straight-backed chairs all her days and preferred them, and she did not require a telephone to order her marketing. "when i was young," she said to constance, "there was only one set bath-tub in a house, if any, and no modern plumbing. we carried hot water upstairs in pails, and those who drew water from the boiler poured in as much as they took. but there are so many labor-saving machines to-day, that sheer laziness is at a premium. gordon declares that i'm all wrong, and that more people are clean and comfortable as a consequence. then, as to the wall-papers and carpets and upholstery, well, they're pretty, i can't deny that. but, somehow, it goes against my grain to see so many bright colors. yet when i say it looks frivolous, gordon simply laughs. so i've promised to hold my tongue until everything is finished, and to let him have his way. he likes to have his way almost as much as i do mine, mrs. stuart, and the strangest part is that, though he doesn't always convince me, i have a secret feeling that he must be right." constance was taken to see the new house in one of the outlying and more fashionable wards of the city, which, as mrs. perry had declared, was supplied with all the modern improvements and was being furnished with an eye to artistic taste. it became evident that the old lady, despite her misgivings, was very proud at heart of the whole establishment, but that her satisfaction centred in the library--her son's room--a cosey, spacious apartment with tall shelves for his books and various conveniences adapted to a bachelor and a student. as standing on the threshold, she exhibited it to her guest with a shy pride, which almost seemed to gasp at the effects disclosed, she murmured: "it sometimes seems to me a wicked waste of money; but i'm glad to think he's going to be so comfortable." constance replied, "it's a delightful room. just the place, restful to the body and stimulating to the spirit, which a busy man like mr. perry ought to have." "there can be nothing too good for him, if that's what you mean." "i heartily assent," said constance, smiling. "and i agree with your son that it is sensible and right to surround oneself with pretty things if one has the means." "i guess that he must have talked it over with you," said the old lady, with a keen glance. "no." "well, it's a wonder he hasn't, for he sets store by your opinion on lots of things. in my day, compliments weren't considered good for young people, but i don't believe from your looks that you'll work any the less well because i let you know what he thinks of you. he was saying the other day that he feared you must find thumping on that machine of yours, week in and week out, and taking down letters in double-quick time, dull work, and i told him that a woman of the right sort, with two children to support, had no time to feel dull or to think about her feelings, but was thankful for the chance of steady employment. you see i know something about that myself. you have your boy and girl to keep your thoughts busy, just as i had him." "yes, indeed. but it is a pleasure to work for mr. perry. no man is a hero to his valet, and need not be, i suppose, to his stenographer. you won't think it presumptuous of me to say that he has been very considerate, and that i enjoy taking down his words because he is so intelligent and so thorough?" "there's no one who likes to hear nice things said about him so well as his mother. there's only one fault about him, so far as i know, and that may be cured any day. he's a bachelor. i would move straight out of this house to-morrow in order to see him well married." "that wouldn't be necessary, i imagine, mrs. perry." "yes, it would. i should make a detestable mother-in-law. gordon gets his clear-headedness from me, and i know my own faults. i shouldn't be jealous, but i should wish her to do things in my way, and she would wish to do them in hers, so we should clash. i wouldn't risk it. but i'd be willing to die to-morrow and never to kiss my grandchildren if only he had a good wife. i should be very particular, though." "i should think so. i hope with all my heart that he may meet a woman worthy of him." constance was a little surprised by her own fervor. expressed in sound it seemed to her almost familiar. then, without knowing why, she sighed. was it because she painfully recalled that marriage was a lottery? mrs. perry evidently ascribed the sigh to that source, for after regarding her a moment, she said softly, "it was easier for me than it is for you. when i lost my husband we were very happy. you are left alone. you see my son has told me your story." "i am glad that you should know." "but you are young, my dear. young and a charming looking, lovable woman. the right man may come along. who knows?" constance stared at her in astonishment. "my husband is not dead," she said, a little formally. "yes, i know. he deserted you." "but he is alive." "gordon told me that you had not been divorced." "i have never thought of such a thing." "you know where he is?" "i have not seen him or heard from him since the day he left me nearly three years ago." "precisely." "he is the father of my children, however." for a moment mrs. perry seemed to be pondering the thesis contained in her single word of deduction, and her visitor's reply. then she bent her shrewd eyes on constance, and said with a quiet pithiness of utterance, which reminded the latter of her employer. "i was not tempted to marry again because i loved my husband, and could not forget him. but i've never been able to convince my common sense that it is fair to asperse the woman who marries again after the law has separated her forever from the man who has done her a grievous wrong, but to think it only right and fitting for a widow to take a second husband when the first whom she has loved, and who has loved her, is in the grave. if i were a young woman on my death-bed, i expect i couldn't make up my mind to beg my husband to marry again. but i couldn't blame him if he did. it's the way of human nature, often as not. it's hateful to be lonely. and why shouldn't the girl marry again, who has been left in the lurch by a cruel man, who has been false to the vow he took to support and protect her? only the other day a rich merchant whom my son knows, a man of over sixty, who had lived with his wife for thirty years, married again before she had been dead twelve months, and they had a solemn church wedding. it was your clergyman, mrs. stuart, who married them. i'd call it disgusting, except that some people said he was solitary, although he had daughters. but to make fish of one and flesh of the other, isn't just. i'm an old woman, and the longer i live the more i dote on justice." "i remember now. i know whom you mean. loretta insisted on reading me the account of it from the newspaper. i've seen him in church. he is one of the vestrymen." "yes, it was a society function. but i don't judge him," said mrs. perry, sitting up straight to emphasize her intention to be dispassionate. "men are queer. his wife was dead, and he had the right to ask another woman to fill her place. but why, then, should anyone criticise you?" "have you heard anyone criticise me?" constance asked, hoping to extricate the conversation from the depths of this argument by a ripple on the surface. "some of them would. you did yourself, you know." "it was a new idea to me. i have never thought of marrying." after a moment's silence, she added, simply: "how would you like your son to marry a divorced woman, mrs. perry?" her mind had picked out, instinctively, the crucial question. the old lady gave a little gasp and start. "a divorced woman? gordon?" then she laughed. "the way you said 'divorced woman' had a formidable sound." the personal application was evidently a surprise to her; evidently, too, it interested her, and she wrestled with it sitting erect and bright-eyed. in another moment she had worked out the answer to her own satisfaction. "it would depend upon her--what she was like. if she were innocent--if she had been grossly wronged, and had sought the relief from her distress which the laws allow, and i liked her and he loved her, i shouldn't object. or, put it in this way: i should prefer that gordon did not marry a widow, but a girl with all the freshness of her life before her." "yes, indeed," murmured constance. "but plenty of young men fall in love with widows and marry, and no one thinks any the worse of the widows, or of them. i'd fully as lief gordon married a divorced woman as one who had buried her husband. and if i were sure she was a fine woman, i can imagine my sentiment vanishing like moonshine, and my not minding a bit." constance shook her head thoughtfully. "he must marry some fine, sweet girl without a past," she said with gentle positiveness. "amen to that, my dear. and the sooner the better." one day early in september, in the summer following the date of this conversation, paul howard entered the office. as he passed into gordon's private room, omitting the gay greeting which he was wont to exchange with her, constance noticed that his expression was grave and tense, and that he looked tired. she said to herself that his summer at newport could not have rested him. it was paul's second season at newport. in accordance with his half-humorous prediction, he had hired there, the previous summer, one of the most desirable villas, a spacious establishment with a superb outlook to sea. he had maintained a large steam yacht, and an elaborate stable, and had entertained lavishly. all to please his wife. at least so he regarded it, and this was in a large measure the truth. ever since his marriage, five years back, paul had been thinking that he would like to spend his vacation in some cool, picturesque spot, far from scenes of social display, where with his wife he could enjoy the beauties of nature unreservedly, and recuperate from the fatigues of the winter. but, though he had hankered after this in theory, and had broached the project to mrs. howard, somehow it had never come to pass, and he had been secretly aware for some time that it never would, unless one of them had nervous prostration and were ordered away by a physician. for when one is a millionaire and has an ambitious wife, one gets into the way of doing what other millionaires do, and becomes acclimated to the amusements proper to millionaires, until presently the necessity of having luxuries at one's fingers' ends makes any other programme seem insipid and a bore. those who neglect to follow their own tastes cannot fail to be moulded by the tastes which they adopt. we readily habituate ourselves to our surroundings, whether it be too few baths, or too many. paul delighted in the plumbing facilities of his establishment. he was perpetually taking baths and changing his underclothes, and the apprehension lest this orgie be interfered with had taken the edge off his desire for closer contact with the beauties of nature. he recognized the change in himself, but charged it to the account of the spirit of the age, that convenient depository of modern philosophers. so, by the end of that first summer, he had found himself content rather than otherwise with the experience and disposed to return. to begin with, his wife was enthusiastic. as she expressed it, she had had the time of her life, which was comforting. although from monday morning to thursday night had been spent by him in new york (he had arranged to be absent from benham during the summer months and take temporary charge of the new york office), the rest of the week was passed at newport, and for the trip he had his own comfortable yacht. besides, he took a fortnight in august, during the time of the new york yacht club cruise, with its opportunities to meet familiarly men of importance in the financial world. there was golf and riding and driving, his baths and cocktails. if he found the widely advertised, and rather foolish, extravagant entertainments in dog-day august, to which his wife dragged him, tedious, he could generally slip away early if she wished to stay to dance, and often he could manage to be in new york when they occurred. besides, since to be present at them seemed to be regarded as social recognition, he was gratified to be treated as a millionaire would wish to be treated in the society of millionaires. to go, or at least to be represented by his wife, who made his excuses most charmingly he was told, showed that he had not been left out, which is the controlling reason why people go to festivities at newport, except to those where trinkets of real value are given away in the course of the evening. paul had fully intended to renounce cocktails. in fact, he had sworn off at benham; but since they appeared to take the place of a grace before meat at every gathering of newport's fashionable male contingent, he had yielded again like a good fellow to the spirit of the age just for one summer. one swallow does not make a summer, as we all know, and similarly, destiny often requires more than one summer to carry the spirit of the age to its logical conclusions. this is true of the effect of cocktails on the coats of the stomach, according to the best medical authorities. but we are not considering that here. indeed, the working out process which paul now found confronting him was outside of himself and concerned him chiefly as a victim. if his first summer at newport had been propitious, taking all things, including the spirit of the age, into consideration, the second had been productive of momentous issues. it was in relation to these that paul had come to consult gordon perry, his friend and legal adviser. xv gordon perry looked up from his desk with an air of surprise. "why, paul, i thought you'd shaken the dust of benham from your feet until the last of the month." then noticing his client's face as they joined hands, he added, "i hope nothing has gone wrong." "everything is wrong." paul seated himself with grave deliberation. "are you at leisure? what i have to consult you about will take some time." "no one shall disturb us." "it isn't business." then, after a moment's silence, "it's my wife. she has betrayed me." "your wife betrayed you?" gordon, as in his bewilderment he echoed the words, recalled a woman with a dainty figure, a small, sphinx-like mouth, full cheeks devoid of color, and black hair. he had never been at paul's house, but he had been introduced to her, and he had frequently seen her and her little girl driving in her victoria, a picture of up-to-date fastidiousness. at the time of her marriage she had been called the prettiest girl in benham. she was the daughter of a st. louis contractor with a reputation for executive ability, who had moved to benham in her childhood to become the president of a car-building company. paul's friends had intimated that he had gone rather out of his way to marry her. certainly it had been considered a brilliant match for her. "yes. it's a pretty kettle of fish, as you'll appreciate when you hear the story; a hopeless case so far as our living together is concerned. i've come to you for advice and to talk it over, though she and i threshed out the situation four days ago. "may i smoke? thanks. you don't here, i know; but i go from cigar to cigar to keep my nerves straight, for i'm still dazed, and i haven't slept much." "it's ghastly," murmured gordon. "now that i look back i suppose i ought to have realized that she never really cared for me. perhaps the gradual, unconscious perception of that reacted on me. i fell dead in love with her looks, and would have worshipped the ground she trod on had she proved what i thought her to be. as it is, i'm humiliated, angry, disgusted, all at sea. but i can see that we should never be happy together again. love in the true sense is over on both sides. i tell you this, gordon, to begin with. you haven't heard anything?" "not a word." "i thought it likely they had copied the item from the newport into the benham newspapers. five nights ago i popped at a man in my house with a revolver--a long shot--just as he was escaping over the balcony outside my wife's apartment, and missed. at the moment i would have given half my fortune to kill him. i dare say, it's just as well i didn't. there would have been a bigger scandal. it was one o'clock, and someone who heard the noise--servants, i know not who--talked, and two days later there appeared in one of the newspapers an allusion to the mysterious midnight pistol shot on the howard place. a reporter called on me; i declined to see him, but my butler, who can be trusted, had instructions to say i was shooting cats. that's all the public knows as yet. here's a nice problem for the women's debating clubs: a man discovers his wife's lover in his place; ought he to shoot him like a rat on the spot, or accept the situation for what it is worth, just as he has to accept a death in the family, a fire, or any other visitation of providence? eh?" paul gave a short laugh. "of course the primitive man shot every time. but we can remember one husband who did shoot and who killed, and that all the exquisite people and some of the wise people shook their heads and declared he ought to have thought of his daughters. there was a world-wide scandal, and after the funeral we were told that the husband had always been a crank, in proof of which he died later in an insane asylum, while his wife has hovered on the outskirts of the smart set ever since as a sort of blessed martyr to the rigor of conventions. no, my dear fellow, the only decent thing for me to do now is to compromise myself deliberately with some common woman, so as to give my wife the chance to obtain a divorce from me. that is the duty of the gallant modern husband, according to the nicest and latest fashionable code." "you will do nothing of the kind, paul." "wait until you have mulled over it as i have, for the sake of my little girl her mother's reputation must be sacred." "i see. then her misconduct is not known?" "it's a profound secret. that is, no one has seen her in the act, but it seems that all newport except myself has taken it for granted and been whispering about it all summer. it began last summer, dolt that i was. but it's not known officially. that is, the newspapers have not got on to it." paul made a movement of impatience and, rising, took a turn or two across the office. he stopped in front of gordon and said: "mind you, the temptation to kill him like a rat was not presented to me. i don't say i would have done it. i don't know what i would have done under all the circumstances--the gruesome circumstances--had we been face to face and he unarmed. he heard me and fled by the window. i was in the ante-room and stepped out on the balcony, and running round merely saw a disappearing figure. i did not know who he was, but i surmised; and on the spur of the moment i felt it was almost a hopeless shot. who do you suppose he was?" "i have no idea, of course." "guess." "it would be useless. i know no one at newport except yourself, paul." "oh, yes, you do. here's situation number two in the tragedy. it was my cousin lucille's husband, clarence waldo." "for heaven's sake!" gordon ejaculated. "it can't be possible." paul's laugh broke forth again. "stunning, isn't it? no dramatist can improve on that. but i can. i know what you're thinking," he said, folding his arms, as he stood before gordon with a saturnine glee, as though he were enjoying the other's consternation. "you're wondering what mrs. wilson will say?" gordon shook his head. "it is terrible for her, of course. but i was thinking of your poor cousin." "spare your pity in that quarter, man, until you know the truth. situation number three! lucille and her husband have fallen out, agreed to differ, ceased to love each other, never have loved each other, and are to be divorced as soon as circumstances will permit. waldo is to marry my wife, and she--lucille--has plighted her troth to bradbury nicholson, of new york, a son of the president of the chemical trust, of whom she is enamoured, and with whom, it seems, she has been carrying on clandestinely for months. didn't i tell you i could improve on myself? the curtain now to red fire and the strains of tschaikowsky!" paul flung himself into his chair, and squared his jaw. for a moment he looked like his father. gordon gazed at him with a brow of dismay. "how do you know this?" "from my wife. she made a clean breast of their affairs, and seemed to be rather surprised that i didn't know. it's all cut and dried. that is, it is to work out that way in the end, and soon, if i'm accommodating. and i am expected to be. after the first flare-up, which was all on my part, and did not take place until next morning, we talked in our ordinary voices, as we are talking now." since the climax of his narration, paul's sensational tone had ceased. he seemed simply tired, as though he had been suddenly let down. "she set me the example. you know her face. she looked whiter than ever, but was perfectly clear and explicit. she said it was evident we were not suited to each other. although i agreed with her, i was fool enough to ask her why, and she intimated politely, but clearly, that i bored her--said we did not care for the same things. she admitted that i was not to blame for that, and that i had been very generous in money matters. then we talked and we talked and we talked, at that time and again in the evening, until the small hours. the upshot is, we're to be divorced as soon as it can be arranged. she is to desert me, or i her. she seemed to be posted as to the law. or, whatever way you suggest. i've given in. she appealed to my common sense, as she called it. she told me that we had made a mistake, that we both knew it, and that the sooner we recognized it, the better. that there need be no disagreeable publicity beyond the fact that we were no longer to be husband and wife. i couldn't deny that my love for her was dead. the only difficult question was the child. neither of us wished to give her up, and each of us would like to have her all the time. "poor little thing!" "yes, indeed. when i thought of helen, i told my wife at first that i was ready to preserve the outward forms of living together, in the teeth of her unfaithfulness, for the sake of our child. but she told me that i was old-fashioned. she asked whether i thought it would be worse for helen, or whether helen would be less happy to live as we should mutually arrange than to grow up in a wretched household, where the father and mother were utterly at variance. that was a poser. it's the devil either way. what do you think?" "it's the devil, as you say. amen, to that! but if it's got to be--got to be," gordon reiterated, "i'm inclined to think your wife was right in terming your protest old-fashioned. where a marriage is utterly blasted, to retain the husk merely for the sake of the children must fail, it seems to me, in nine cases out of ten, to accomplish its purpose--to preserve what society is pleased to call the sanctity of the home." "there would not be much sanctity left in mine," paul murmured. "however, when she saw that i was determined to have my full share of helen, or fight, we came to terms. helen is to spend her winters with me, her summer vacations with her mother; or some such arrangement; and, of course, i am to provide for the child." paul paused reflectively. "i don't think it ever occurred to my wife that we do not stand on an equal footing, and that she would not be the best of moral influences for a daughter. it seems to be an answer to everything that we were not sympathetic, and that she has met somebody who is; her affinity, as they say. i had observed her intimacy with waldo, and was aware of some cases at newport where women had compromised themselves with other women's husbands; and, though i didn't exactly fancy waldo's attentions, and had hinted to her twice my disapproval--to which the first time she pleaded surprise, and the second, shrugged her shoulders--i never divined the truth until i received this." he drew a letter from his pocket and handed it to gordon. "even then, i couldn't believe the worst." gordon perused the contents of the envelope, a single sheet of paper on which were the words: "when the cat's away, the mice will play." "humph! anonymous!" he said. "she asked me what brought matters to a crisis, and i told her. she thinks it must have been sent by a maid whom she discharged. i received it at my new york office in the middle of the week, and the following sunday night, instead of leaving newport in my yacht, as usual, i pretended to do so, and returned late to my house on foot. the rest you know. it may be i was too much absorbed in my business. however, it's all over now, and it's best it should be over. what i wish is advice as to the necessary steps; that you should tell me what i ought to do." "as to a divorce?" "yes. she is to follow my instructions in regard to it." "and what as to the others--the waldos?" "no wonder you ask. i put the same question to her, and she told me that i needn't concern myself about them; that they would find a way." "there are certainly various ways if people choose to connive at divorce. there are certain states where the residence essential to give the court jurisdiction can be obtained in a pitifully short time--even as short as three months, and where an agreement to live apart is allowed, through lack of scrutiny, to pass for genuine desertion. if mrs. waldo and her husband have both been guilty of infidelity, neither is entitled to a decree of divorce in any court of justice. but that concerns them, not you. i was merely voicing the regret which every decent man feels that there shouldn't be a uniform law in all our states. but here one runs up against the vested rights of sovereign peoples. it's a far cry from south carolina, where no divorce is granted for any cause whatever, to wisconsin or colorado, where desertion for one year is sufficient. yet, if one had to choose between the two, there is less injustice and more regard for the welfare of society in the latter extreme, radical as it is, than in the former. whatever happens, the world will never go back to marital chains and slavery." turning to the book-case at his elbow, gordon selected a law book and opened it. "i don't hanker after divorce cases, but i'm very glad you have come to me, paul. i was simply shocked, at first; let me tell you now how heartily sorry i am for you." "thank you, don. i knew you would be. as to my cousin, lucille, i cannot say, positively, that she has taken the final step--actually sinned. my wife admitted that she had no real knowledge, though she took the worst for granted. but it is certain that the marriage is at an end, that she and her husband are hopelessly alienated, and that at the first opportunity she will marry this young nicholson. as to myself, you agree with me, don't you, that a divorce is the only possible, the only sensible, course to adopt?" gordon paused a moment before replying. "the only possible, no; the only sensible--since you ask me as a friend as well as a client--in my opinion, yes. it's a point which every man must decide for himself, if it confronts him. some people would say to you that you should stick to your wife, not live with her necessarily, but refuse to break the bond; that she might repent and return to you. it seems to me, though, that if my wife had been false to me and my love for her were dead, i would not allow such a sentiment--and it is only sentiment--to tie me forever to a woman who was no longer my wife, except in name. your life is before you. why should a vitiated contract be a bar between you and happiness? you may wish to marry again." paul shook his head. "naturally you don't think so, now. but why not?" "as george the second said, '_j'aurai des maitresses_,'" paul answered, a little bitterly. "exactly!" exclaimed gordon, with eagerness. "the continuance of such a bond would be a premium on immorality. that's a point which sentimentalists do not take sufficiently into account. why is it necessary to marry again, they ask. for one thing, because a man's a man, as you and i know. it's a new question to me, paul, because, though it's one of the questions ever on the surface, i have never had to deal with it squarely until now. the more i think of it the more sure i am that a divorce would be sensible, and more than that, sensible in the highest sense, without a jot or a tittle of deprecation. i know; you don't wish to have to apologize. all i can say is, if i were in your shoes, i would do the same. you have a right to your freedom." "i couldn't see it in any other light. besides, my wife is bent on being free, herself. if i do not apply for a divorce, she will--and in the shortest way." "as to the method," continued gordon, after a moment's scrutiny of the volume before him, "it is simple enough--a mere question of time. in this state where a party is guilty of a cause for divorce--as in this case, infidelity--the injured party is justified in leaving the home, and after such separation has continued for the statutory period, the injured party may obtain a divorce for desertion. or, simpler still, your wife can desert you, and after the necessary time has elapsed, the same result would follow. the statutory period is three years." "my wife will not like that." "it is the only course, if she desires to preserve her reputation. if she prefers to have you bring a libel for divorce on the ground of infidelity, she can be free in a much shorter time. also she could obtain her liberty somewhat sooner by changing her residence to a more accommodating jurisdiction and asking a divorce from you. provided you offered no opposition, she might succeed, but that would be a back-handed method discreditable to you both, and an evasion of the laws of this state, which might, hereafter, be productive of unpleasant complications. it's a sad business, but you should have a clean job." "assuredly. we could separate at once?" "yes. but one of you must actually desert the other. an agreement to live apart does not constitute legal desertion. on the other hand, if she were to leave your house, the court would not inquire what was going on in your mind, provided you did not show by any overt sign that you wished to get rid of her. you can be glad, but you must not say so." "i understand. she need not be burdened with my presence from the outset. as for marrying waldo, she must wait her three years." "and she may be thankful that she will be able to marry as soon as the divorce is absolute. in some states the person against whom a divorce is granted, is forbidden to marry altogether, or for a period of years as a punishment. to forbid marriage altogether, in such cases, appears to me another premium on immorality. to forbid it for a time, may sometimes prevent indecent haste on the part of the guilty, but it is a good deal like keeping after school children who have been naughty. besides, the party forbidden to marry, as in new york, for instance, has merely to step into new jersey and be married, and the second marriage will be held legal by the new york courts and everywhere else." paul was silent for a few moments. "that seems to me a decent programme. my wife can go to europe, and--and when the time is up, marry waldo. it's easy as rolling off a log." he clapped his strong hand on the wooden arm of his chair, so that it resounded. "my father will be terribly cut up. my aunt--god knows what she will say or do. as for myself"--he paused while he lit a fresh cigar--"i shall have to go into politics." "politics?" "yes. i'd like to go to congress." paul sat back in his chair with the air of one taking a fresh brace on life. "i've always intended to, sooner or later. had it at the back of my mind. but now--well, if i were sent to washington, and presently got a foreign mission, my wife might feel sorry for a few minutes that i bored her. yet i wouldn't have her back. waldo is welcome to her. the real reason," he added, suddenly, after another pause, "is that i've been asked. one of the republican state committee spoke to me about it in june, just before i went to newport. the election isn't until a year from this autumn. i told him i'd think it over. i've got to do something to counteract this disgrace, and to forget it. well, i must be going. i'll see you again as soon as i hear from my wife." gordon detained him. "you mustn't take too despondent a view of it. after all, it's not your fault, it's your misfortune. all your friends will recognize that; and no one will be able to understand how any woman could weary of the love of a man like you, and prefer a listless, pleasure-seeker, such as clarence waldo." paul shrugged his shoulders. "it's the spirit of the age, i suppose. i'm not sorry, i tell you, but i'm piqued. we are shells upon the beach. the tide sweeps us along even though we know it is the tide, and can say of the next man, 'what a fool he is, to drift like that!' but what is a fellow to do? how is he to escape? i'm a millionaire--i'm likely to be several times that if nothing breaks. i didn't wish to go to newport, but i went. i don't care for half the things i do, but they have to be done; that is, i do them of my own accord, when the time comes, and, though i kick, i know i should regret not doing them merely because they seem to be the proper things for people of my kind. there you are. i have a sort of double self, as you know. it isn't that i'm weak, it's--what do you call it?--the force of my environment. and a millionaire's environment has a pressure of two hundred pounds to the square inch. it's the same with the women. what with rich food, splendid apparel, perpetual self-indulgence, and the power which money gives them to gratify every whim, is it any wonder that they don't let a little thing like the marriage vow stand in the way of their individual preferences? who is to hold them to account? the church? some of them go to church, but in their hearts they are satisfied that this is the only world. and as to loss of social position--of which they really would be afraid--the tide is with them. there are too many sympathizers. or at least, it is inconvenient to be obliged to hurt other people's feelings in a free country." "rather a formidable indictment against newport," said gordon. "it isn't against newport. it's against the plutocracy all over the country. newport merely happens to be the place where very rich men with social instincts most do congregate in summer. my domestic tragedy is typical, yet sporadic. every season has its crop, but, numerically, it is small. infidelity is only one of the phases of the spirit--but the spirit is rampant. money-money-money, luxury-luxury-luxury, self-self-self (individualism, they call it), and in the process everything is thrown overboard, except the american flag, and life becomes one grand hurrah, boys, with no limitations, save murder and lack of physical cleanliness. and i belong to the procession, my dear fellow. i'm disgusted with it at the moment, that's why i rail. but in six months i shall be in it again. see if i'm not." "you're simply depressed, paul, and no wonder," said gordon, with genial solicitude. "but we mustn't judge our plutocracy--aristocracy, or whatever you choose to call the personal representatives of the prosperity of the country--by the antics of a few, disgusting as they are. i agree that their behavior apes the frivolity and license of the old french court without its elegance, and i don't suppose that the founders of our institutions ever included a leisure class as a part of their scheme. absorbed in ideals, they neglected to take poor human nature sufficiently into account. we have lost the buffalo, but we have acquired a leisure class, and we must make the best of it, not the worst. we can't cut their heads off; this is a free country. it would be dreadful--dreadful, wouldn't it, if our institutions, of which we are so proud, were to produce merely the same old thing over again--a leisure class of voluptuaries?" gordon paused for a moment and his smile died away at the vision which his words evoked. "i don't intend to believe it; you don't. there are students of destiny who maintain that nations rise, reach maturity and decline by regular economic laws, but that human nature never really improves. that's fatalism. the free play of human individualism is having its last grand chance here in these united states. if our aristocracy proves no better than any other--if the rich and powerful are to sneer at morals and wallow in licentiousness, we couldn't blame society if it should try a strong dose of socialism, with its repressing, monotonous dead level, rather than accept the doctrine that the law of supply and demand is the sole ruler of the universe. but as good americans we can't afford to judge our plutocracy, as yet, by the vices of a few people at newport." "they sin in such a cold-blooded way," said paul. "if they really cared, as some of the foreigners do, one could understand; but they don't." "i know. it's one of the canons of old-world traditions that adultery is almost redeemed by the possession of an artistic sense. to commit the one without possessing the other, may be no worse morally, yet it seems much more vulgar. but we mustn't take them too seriously, even though they are our countrymen and women. they are the exceptions--the excrescences. look at your father, for instance. he belongs to them--but he is not of them. the same is true of yourself; and it is a privilege, with all its responsibilities, a privilege i envy you. who wouldn't be a multi-millionaire if he could? what is more alluring than power?" paul returned the pressure of his friend's hand. "you're a good fellow, don. i suppose i'm hipped. that's not my way, as you know. usually everything with me is rose color; i'm too good an american, if anything." he buttoned his well-fitting coat with a dignified air, as though the pride of the suggestion had stirred his pulses like a brass band. "the trouble is, that when i'm feeling well, everything goes, and the only thing which seems of importance is to come out ahead of the other fellow. so we kick over standards and degenerate. this time i've been struck with a club, and--and i don't see that it's my fault. well, good-bye. as soon as i hear, i'll let you know." xvi there was only one shadow on constance's present happiness, for she was happy in her independence and her work. she had demonstrated her ability to support herself and to defy the blow of fate which had deprived her of a husband's aid and protection. it was the growing perception that she might not be able to do all she desired for her children. this sprang from her own keener appreciation of the value not only of the best educational advantages, but of refined personal surroundings in the development of character. she could inculcate noble morals; she could teach her children to be truthful, brave, and simple; she could provide them with public school instruction, and she was resolved to give them, if her health remained good, the opportunity to continue their education longer than was the wont with parents whose offspring had their own way to make in life unaided. but her ambition, or rather her perception of what she desired for them, did not stop here. there were present demands which must be neglected solely because of her straitened circumstances; and she beheld ahead a long and widening vista of privileges from which, perforce, they would be debarred during the formative years for a similar reason. henrietta's teeth were disconcertingly crooked, and should have the continuous attention of a skilful dentist, and her voice had already that nasal twang which, if unchecked, is sure to result in feminine inelegance of speech. she wished that both the children, especially the girl, might have thorough instruction in french and music, and be sent to dancing school. little emil was giving signs of marked talent for drawing, and the thought of how that gift could be developed, was already causing her concern. it was obvious to her that each of the next ten years had more insistent instances in store for her. she knew that she could give her children what the democratic world delights to call a solid foundation, but she was eager to equip them with stimulating mental ideals and bodily graces, to put them within reach of excellence and culture. she was too grateful to repine or to allow this shadow to oppress her spirit. its sole effect was to stimulate her energies, to make her fertile in resources to counteract this disability, and painstaking in attention to her duties in the hope of a small increase in salary. she kept a close watch on henrietta's voice, and put her on her own guard against its piercing quality; she organized a small dancing class from among the children in lincoln chambers for one evening in the week, and from her own past experience essayed their instruction in waltzing and social decorum. also, on sunday afternoons, she would often lure emil and henrietta to the new art museum and give them the opportunity which her own youth had lacked to discern artistic form and color, and to acquire inspiration from world-famous or exemplary paintings and sculpture. then there suddenly came to her as treasure-trove a new fund to be drawn on for such purposes. her employer, scanning the field of philanthropy by the light of his own professional experience, had realized that there was need in benham of a legal aid society--that is, of an organization which would defray the charges of a firm of attorneys to whom people in utter distress, without means, and with petty but desperate grievances in which busy lawyers could not afford to interest themselves, could apply for succor. when it appeared that the clerical duties incident to the fund collected for this charity must be performed by some suitable person, it occurred to gordon perry--he had been seeking some such occasion--that mrs. stuart would make an admirable secretary and treasurer, especially as he intended that the society should pay two hundred dollars for the annual service. constance's heart throbbed with delight at the announcement, and the first fifty dollars was devoted by her to the treatment of henrietta's irregular front teeth. would she be able some day to send emil to college? might she hope that her daughter would grow to be thoroughly a lady, not merely a smart, self-sufficient woman, but a gracious, refined, exquisite spirit like mrs. randolph wilson? in her outlook for her children's future, she had become aware that she had set up two individuals for emulation: the woman whose æsthetic christianity had enriched her life, and the man whose unaffected intelligence and vigor offered to her daily observation an example of honorable modern living. to lift her own flesh and blood above the rut of mediocre aims and attainments was now the ambition of her soul, and she was ready to strain every nerve to bring this to pass. [illustration: constance would find her in possession at lincoln chambers] her acquaintance with mrs. perry had ripened into intimacy. the old lady had taken a strong fancy to her, and the liking was cordially reciprocated. this meant increasing friendliness on both sides. not infrequently, on her return from the office, constance would find her in possession at lincoln chambers with the room warm, five o'clock tea ready, henrietta in her lap and emil beside her, listening to absorbing reading or stories, each of which had a pungent, personal flavor, with a not too obtrusive moral. on the other hand, constance was asked to dine every now and then in the new house, and after dinner, sometimes it happened that they went to the theatre with mr. perry, or on evenings when he was busy, the two women would sit cosily with their work, and conversation never flagged. women, when sympathetically attached to each other, seem to be inexhaustible reservoirs of speech, which flow with a bubbling copiousness bewildering to masculine ears. in their case, the hands of the clock set the only limit to their mutual enjoyment. the hour of departure brought the single uncomfortable moments of the evening for constance--that is, for the first two evenings. her apartment was a full mile distant, but her friends' house was not more than two hundred yards from a line of electric cars which passed within a block from her own door. until gordon perry, who came out of his library to say good-night, announced his intention of accompanying her home, the idea had never occurred to her that it was necessary, or that he would offer his escort. yet such are the inconsistencies of the feminine mind that the moment he did so she became aware that, if he had not offered it, she would have felt a trifle hurt. at the same time she did not wish him to accompany her. it would be obviously a superfluous piece of politeness; there was no risk of any kind in going home in the cars alone. she told him this in a few words of clear remonstrance. but he smilingly put on his overcoat, said it was a beautiful moonlight night, and assured her that he was anxious for a walk before going to bed. the idea of his walking only made the situation worse. constance turned to his mother for support, but mrs. perry cordially seconded his assertion that it would do him good, so there was no escape from acceptance. the thought of having dragged a busy man--and her employer--out of his house at night disturbed her equinamity all the way home, so that although she delighted in having him as a companion in the exhilarating autumn air, under a glorious moon, she determined to prevent its recurrence. yet, as she approached her destination, the fear of seeming ungracious supervened, and she had almost decided to postpone her protest until the next time, when he unwittingly gave her an opportunity to speak by remarking that he hoped that this was only one of many evenings which she would spend with them during the winter. "you must know," he added, "that my mother has taken a great fancy to you, and that it will not suit her at all if you are niggardly in your visits." constance smiled acquiescingly. "i love your mother," she said, "and it will be a pleasure to me to come as often as she wishes." at the same instant she said to herself, "now for it!" whereupon she began sturdily, "only, mr. perry----" why did she pause? she was at a loss to know. it was the reverse of her custom to begin a sentence and leave it dangling in this unfinished manner. she accused herself of being a goose, and, simultaneously she took a new breath to go on, only to be met by her companion's blithe sally: "only what, mrs. stuart?" she could see that his eyes were laughing. did he divine what was choking her? "only this: if i come to your mother, you must let me go home by myself. the electric cars are a stone's throw from your house, and run close to mine, so there is not the slightest necessity for your incommoding yourself." she paused, troubled. the last turn of the sentence, though it expressed her meaning, had not the felicitous sound she desired. "i came because i knew it would give me pleasure," he answered, quickly, still with a laughing light in his eyes, under which she let her own fall quite unnecessarily, as it seemed to her. she was provoked with herself. the dialogue had acquired the aspect of social give and take, which was entirely remote from her intention. "i have enjoyed it, too." she felt that this was the least she could say. "but there is no need; besides, mr. perry, you are my employer, and--and--" (she was halting again, but she bit her lip and plunged forward, seeking only to make herself clear) "that does make a difference--it should make a difference. if i were--if i were not your stenographer, i should probably go home in a carriage, but i can't afford one, and--and the cars are perfectly safe and comfortable. i am used to looking after myself." her cheeks were burning. she had said what she meant to say, but it sounded crude and almost harsh. she wondered now why it had seemed necessary to her to make such a pother. as no immediate answer came from mr. perry, she stole a glance at his face. it had grown almost grave, and there was a different light in his eyes--a curious expression which puzzled her. "i hope you understand," she said, "and that i do not seem ungracious." "i understand perfectly. i was admiring your sense--your sanity. such things do make a difference--must make a difference, so long as human nature is constituted as it is; but every woman has not the hardihood to accept the limitations of her social lot. as you say, you are used to looking after yourself. i should not have been guilty of a breach of manners, had i allowed you to go home in a car as you came--put you into one, perhaps, at the street corner, if i were not occupied. that would have been the natural course under all the circumstances, although it might have been equally natural to treat another woman with more ceremony. i came with you to-night because it gave me pleasure, as i told you, and because i wished you to understand that the relations between us are not those of employer and employee, but social in every sense. you are my mother's friend and mine." constance's nerves tingled pleasantly at the apostrophe. "you are very good. you have always been kindness itself to me. i have felt that you both were my friends." she put out her hand shyly and gratefully to bid him good-night, and at the same time to indicate the warmth in her heart. "but now that i do understand," she added, "you must be sensible, too, and realize that i do not need an escort." she was rather appalled by her own boldness. his plea had only strengthened her feeling that his politeness was superfluous. "do you forbid it?" he asked, with an inflection of gayety. she could not help smiling. "i cannot do that, you know. but if you wish to make me feel entirely at home, you will limit yourself at most to seeing me safely on a car at your street corner." she felt that she had touched firmer ground--that she was making her claim as a friend of the family, not being forced against her will into the pose of a coquette. "a compromise!" he ejaculated. "and what a one-sided one." "life is made up of compromises, is it not? i thought i was being very generous." there was a gentle, plaintive cadence to her words which both charmed his ear and touched his sensibilities. was she about to strike her flag in the last ditch out of sheer weariness at his bravado? "my only wish would be to please you," he said with sudden earnestness. constance looked at him wonderingly, a little appalled at the change in his manner and speech. what had called forth their intensity? she became conscious that the blood was rising to her cheeks again, and that she had lost her composure a second time. for an instant gordon gazed at her eagerly, as though he enjoyed her bewilderment, then with a return of gayety, he exclaimed: "but i promise nothing--nothing." he raised his hat and constance, who had already entered the vestibule of her apartment-house, stood irresolute before ascending the stairs as one in a trance. she was displeased with herself; for the first time in her life it had seemed to her that her tongue and her wits were not under the control of her will. presently she reflected that she might be working too hard and was run down, which on the whole, was comforting, until she looked in her mirror and saw there the refutation of this theory in her own hue of health. no, it could not be this, for there was no blinking the fact that she had improved notably in her appearance of late, which was comforting in a different way. she was so struck by the fact that she stood for a moment surveying her face and figure with contemplative surprise. but why had mr. perry been so queer? she asked herself that question more than once before she fell asleep, and in the morning ascribed it to her own social inaptness. the next occasion when she spent the evening with mrs. perry was a fortnight later. when she was ready to go home gordon put on his overcoat without a word and confronted her tantalizingly. she was conscious of a little disappointment, for, in spite of his declaration of independence, she had believed that he would not persist, but as he opened the front door she heard the welcome words: "to-night i am going to comply with your wish by putting you on a car at the next corner." "thank you, very much." she forebore to add what was in her mind, that it was the only sensible way. but her little triumph gave elasticity to her steps. for the first few moments the night seemed to set a seal upon his lips as he walked beside her, so that his response had the effect of being pondered. "my desire is to please you. but i shall reserve the right of pleasing myself now and then as i did the other day." "it pleased me, too," constance said, amiably. "what i feared was that it might become a custom--an unnecessary burden." gordon signalled an approaching car. "a burden? mrs. stuart, the burden of walking home by moonlight with the wrong woman is one which men generally manage to shift." constance laughed. "perhaps i should have thought of that. but now you will be protected at all events." from her seat in the electric car she beheld him standing at the street corner until his figure was lost in the shadows of the night. she felt complacent. she had gained her point, and since it was on terms need she feel otherwise than happy at the prospect of having him sometimes as a companion on her journeys home? the more she could see of him rightfully, without encroaching on his time, surely the better for her. the discretion rested with him, not with her; she was simply the fortunate beneficiary. so it came to pass that once in three or four times gordon would exercise his privilege; and as another year slipped away and the spring brought milder nights and more inviting sidewalks, the occasions became more frequent, so that before either seemed to be aware of it, the custom of riding was more honored in the breach than the observance, and this without further discussion. they would simply start as though she were to take an electric car, and before reaching the corner he would casually interrupt their discourse to say, "it is a fine night; shall we walk?" to which constance would reply, "if you like." after a while even this formula was dispensed with, and she was ready to take for granted that they both preferred the exercise. one day he asked permission to accompany her and her children on one of their sunday afternoon strolls into the country, a proposal which startled her, but which she had no obvious excuse for refusing. on their return home from the excursion henrietta and little emil were so enthusiastic over this addition to the party that she felt reluctant on their account to prevent its repetition. so the experience was renewed every now and then, and, since he seemed to enjoy it, she accepted it as one of the pleasures which providence had thrown in her way. intimacy naturally resulted from this increasing association. it was a constant comfort to constance that mr. perry was such a natural person; that he obviously liked her for herself, but did not affect to ignore or gloss over the fact that her life was circumscribed and straitened by her necessities; that, while assuming that she was interested in and able to appreciate the finer aspirations and concerns of existence, he let her perceive that he understood her predicament. consequently she felt at liberty and encouraged to speak to him from time to time on the subject nearest her heart--the advancement of her children--and to ask advice in relation thereto. on one of their evenings--a moonlight night, which rivalled in beauty that when he had first accompanied her--she had been consulting him as to the conditions of a free art school recently started in the new art museum, having little emil in mind. after a short silence she suddenly said, "i admire your mother greatly, as you know. but sometimes i am doubtful whether she does not discourage me even more than she gives me hope; her example, i mean. she brought you up. she was almost as friendless as i. i dare say she did not have so many friends. yet--yet you are you. she managed to give you everything." "god bless her, yes, brave heart that she is." "but----" he cut her pensive conjunctive short. "i can guess what you are going to say. excuse me; go on." "i cannot give my children everything. but everything, then, would not be everything now." "i divined your thought." the sympathy radiating from his sturdy tone brought a pleasant light to her eyes. "yet you are you," she reasserted. he laughed. "logician and flatterer! but you are right. my mother would have had a far harder struggle had she begun to-day. she might not have been able to give me everything, for everything then was not everything now, as you have said." "yet you have everything," she persisted, doughtily. "even if that were true, it would not signify. you are facing a condition, not a theory. flour and sugar and standard oil may be cheaper to-day, but the demands of civilization on the individual are so much greater--of civilization everywhere, but especially in this country, where the growth of prosperity has been so prodigious and the stress of competition has become so fierce." "oh, yes; oh, yes. you understand," she said, eagerly. "there are so many things which i should like to give my children which i cannot--which i know are beyond my reach, but which would be of infinite service to them in the struggle to make the most of life. you spoke to me once of the limitation of my social lot. that is nothing. what is hard for a mother to bear is the consciousness that her children will fall short of what she would wish them to become because she has not the power to secure for them the best. yet it must be borne, and borne bravely." "yes, it is lamentably hard. the chief blot on the triumph of individualism--on the american principle of the development of self--is that the choicest privileges of civilization should hang beyond the reach of those who are handicapped merely because they are handicapped. the destruction of the poor is their poverty, as my old school-master used to state, though i didn't know then what he meant. and it must be borne, as you say. even here, where everything is possible to the individual, renunciation still stares the majority in the face as the inexorable virtue." "surely," she answered, with simple pathos. "thank you for understanding me. i knew you would. if i struggle, it is because i am so ambitious for my children to rise. i would not have them remain mere hewers of wood and drawers of water--one of the majority you speak of--as i have been." he turned his face toward her. "you are far more than that, you are a sweet woman. you must not underestimate character in your recognition of the power of things. you can give your children that, and it is no cant to say that character remains everlastingly the backbone of human progress." "things!" she echoed, ignoring apparently both the tribute and the consolation proffered. "that is the word." she hugged her thought in silence for a moment as though fascinated. "when i was a girl there were no things to speak of; now--" she paused and sighed; evidently the vision which her spirit entertained disconcerted her powers of speech. "it is not that i wish my children to be rich--merely rich, mr. perry. you know that. it is that i wish them to be able to appreciate, to feel, to enjoy what is best in life. you spoke of the power of character just now. there is mrs. randolph wilson. she has all the virtues of plain character and so much more besides. compare her with a woman like me." "mrs. randolph wilson!" his tone revealed his surprise at the antithesis. "i see. i see," he repeated, interested by the completeness of the contrast. "i owe so much to her," constance murmured. "before i knew her my outlook was so narrow and colorless. she has taught me to enrich my life, poor as it still is." "she is a fine woman. and yet, in my opinion, you need not fear comparison with mrs. wilson." "oh, mr. perry!" she stopped short for an instant in recoil. the protesting astonishment of her exclamation showed him not only that he had violated a temple by his words, but that, as a consequence, she believed him insincere, which in her eyes would be a more grievous fault. "it is quite true," he said with decision. "you are very different; but it is quite true. your outlook was narrow, perhaps, but it was clear and straight." "oh, no. you do not know her, then, nor me. i tried to see clearly according to my lights, but that is just it--my lights were defective, and i saw only half the truth until she revealed it to me." "mrs. wilson has had great opportunities." "yes, indeed. and she has taken advantage of them. great opportunities!" she repeated with an exultant sigh. "they are what i had in mind a few minutes ago; not for myself, you know, but for my children. i envy--yes, i envy opportunities for them." her voice had a quiver as though she were daring a confession to the sphinx-like stars. she had changed the emphasis of the dialogue, but gordon pursued his tenor. "her daughter has had every opportunity, yet her mother can scarcely regard her with pride." "i barely know mrs. waldo. it was just before her wedding that her mother was so kind to to me. i saw her once or twice at the house, but only for a moment." "at least she has made a mess of her marriage." constance started. "it is true, then, what was in the newspapers?" "it is true that she and her husband have agreed to separate. it is an open secret that she has gone to sioux falls in order to obtain a divorce on a colorless ground in the shortest possible time. they will both be free in less than a year." "how terrible! loretta davis read me a paragraph last week to the effect that mr. and mrs. waldo were not happy. i set it down as baseless gossip. it seemed to me impossible that mrs. wilson's daughter--ah, i am so sorry for mrs. wilson." "she was in the office last week." "i remember." "she came to consult me; to see if anything could be done. she has reasoned with her daughter--used every argument in her arsenal--but without avail. mrs. waldo's one idea is to be free. and yet she has had every opportunity." "but that proves nothing, mr. perry, surely." they had reached the threshold of lincoln chambers. there was the courage of conviction in the frank gaze she bent on him. "only that the power to have everything may numb the spirit and make individual self-will the sole arbiter of conduct." "agreed. but there can be no doubt that civilization offers us more to-day than it ever did if we can only be put within reach of it. the thought sometimes haunts me that i may die and henrietta grow up to be like--like loretta davis; never know what life may mean, because she has not had the chance." he looked at her admiringly. "i am more than half teasing you," he said. "while it is true that the general standard of living is higher than ever before, it remains true as ever that only the attuned spirit can grasp and utilize the best. to argue otherwise would be cant." "so it seems to me," she said, with her air of direct simplicity. "as for this tragedy--for it is a tragedy almost sophoclean in its scope, as you will presently learn, my lips are sealed for the moment beyond what i have told you. but you are right in your enthusiasm for mrs. wilson. she is in touch with the temper of the world's progress--according to her lights." she smiled faintly. "i still wish i were more like her." gordon seemed for a moment to be pondering this assertion, then fixing her with his eyes, said: "i believe you have never heard anything from your husband since he deserted you?" "nothing." "you do not know his whereabouts, nor whether he is alive or dead?" she shook her head. "more than three years have elapsed. so you are entitled to a divorce in this state, if you see fit to claim it." constance had listened in astonishment. his tone was so respectful that she could not take offence. he seemed to be merely informing her as to her rights; and though the topic had never been broached up to this time between them, was he not her intimate friend? nevertheless she felt agitated. "it has never occurred to me that a divorce would be desirable," she answered with as much formality as her dislike of artifice allowed her to adopt. then, yielding to curiosity or the inclination to break another lance with him, she added: "of what benefit would it be to me to seek a divorce?" "merely that the bond is already broken; what remains is a husk." "my husband may return." the response struck her as futile; still it had risen to her lips as a convenient possibility. "that is true. but if he did return after what has happened, i should think--i have no right to invade your privacy--" he stopped short, evidently appalled by the sound of his own presumption. there was a brief silence. it would have been easy for constance to leave his inquiry where he had left it, but her love for the truth caused her first to face the issue thus presented, and having solved it by one full glance, to bear testimony to what was in her heart. why she felt this frankness necessary, she did not know, unless it were that he was such a friend she did not wish him to think he had offended. the interval was only momentary, but she appeared to herself to have been standing speechless in the presence of the ashes of her past for an awkward period before she said: "my husband said when he went away that we could never be happy together. i do not wish him to return." she realized she was telling him her love was dead. it was the truth; why should he not know? she heard him draw a deep breath. suddenly remembering the argument which had provoked his question, her mind flew to it for refuge and sheltered itself behind it as a bulwark. "but that is no reason why i should seek a divorce. a divorce could not alter the situation." he hesitated a moment as though he were about to continue the discussion, then evidently thought better of it. "i simply wished you to know your rights. good-night." xvii as she reached the landing upon which her own apartment opened, constance noticed that there was a light in loretta davis's room. loretta was now a full-fledged nurse. that is, she had completed her course at the hospital, and was taking cases of her own. she had already obtained two or three through the patronage of mrs. wilson, but she happened to be out of work at the moment. it occurred to constance that she would impart her information to her neighbor. loretta was deeply interested in everything which concerned their benefactress. loretta had seen what was in the newspapers, and, since it was true, why should not she know? this was a plausible excuse for gratifying that strong desire to share her knowledge which assails every woman who has something to tell. had it been a real secret, constance would have been adamant. as it was, she did not appreciate until too late that this was just the sort of subject which she and loretta could not discuss sympathetically. she was sorry for her; she did her best to befriend and encourage her, and tried to like her; but though they got on pleasantly, their point of view was apt to be radically different. loretta opened the door. "oh, it's you, constance. i'd made up my mind that someone had sent for me." "i'm sorry to disappoint you, loretta. but i've something to tell you--something you'll be distressed to hear. what you read in the newspaper about mrs. wilson's daughter--the waldos--is true." then she repeated briefly what she knew, omitting reference to mrs. wilson's visit to the office. loretta listened with parted lips and an expression in her usually matter-of-fact face curiously compounded of solicitude and knowingness, as though commiseration and the glamor of the scandal were contending forces. "i knew it was true; the newspapers wouldn't have printed it unless there'd been something in it. my! but she'll feel bad, won't she?" "it will wound her terribly." "how did your boss find out?" constance winced. somehow the epithet jarred worse than usual, and she felt that she could not stand it. the experiences of the evening were on her nerves, though sympathy for mrs. wilson had thrust her personal emotions to the back of her mind for more leisurely inspection. "you mustn't call him that, loretta. it doesn't express him at all." loretta looked surprised and laughed. "what's the matter? he is your boss, isn't he?" she asserted. "oh, well--your employer, mr. gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law, if that'll suit you. my! but you're getting red." constance was annoyed with herself for having protested. indeed, she was biting her tongue for having brought on the interview. now that she had told the facts she shrank from further discussion. yet it was patent that loretta had every intention of discussing the episode with her. "there's no doubt about the truth of the matter, unfortunately," she said, by way of answer to the original question. loretta's large eyes began to rove. then they suddenly fixed constance with the gleam of a transporting idea. "i'm going to see her, right off--to-morrow, i mean," she added, noting the swift, barometric sign of disapproval which her words evoked, though it was no more than a contraction of the eyelids. but, suspicious as she was, she assumed that the only criticism had been that she was going forthwith. from the moment gordon perry had spoken, constance had been yearning to hasten to mrs. wilson's side and offer the sympathy which she felt. this had been her first impulse too, but a moment's reflection had proved to her that to do so was out of the question; that it would be an intrusion--a violation of that subtle code of nicety which governed her benefactress's life. mrs. wilson was the last woman to betray to the every-day world that she was sorely wounded. was not endurance of suffering without plaint and with an unruffled countenance one of the tenets of her friend's æsthetic creed? so what right had a person like herself to invade her privacy? no, she must remain dumb until mrs. wilson gave her the opportunity to speak or publicity offered an excuse for flowers or some token of affection. thus she had reasoned, and hence her involuntary challenge to loretta's confident announcement. "she'll expect me to be sorry for her, and i am," pursued loretta, complacent over her project. "i'll ask her all about it. won't it make a stir in the newspapers! there'll be a new picture of her, sure." thus reminded, she opened a table drawer and produced a large scrap-book, which she exhibited to constance with an air of satisfaction. it was made up of newspaper illustrations and clippings relative to the object of adoration--pictures of mrs. wilson in a variety of poses, of her house, of her equipages, and of everything which the reportorial artist had been able to reproduce; also scores of allusions to her in print culled from the social columns. it was a current, but a thorough collection, for loretta had purchased back issues in order to possess the newspaper features of the wedding ceremonies. it was to these she now turned, staying her hand at a page where the bride and her mother looked forth, ranged side by side in festal attire. loretta surveyed them contemplatively. "i never laid eyes on the daughter. they're not much alike, are they? perhaps she'll be at home when i go. i'd give anything to see her." the scrap-book was not new to constance, but it had been considerably amplified since she had seen it last. she had never been able to understand why loretta had undertaken or prized it. nevertheless, it was a symptom of hero-worship in line with collections of the photographs of adored actors by matinee girls, and was not to be despised too heartily if she wished to remain sympathetic. but just now constance's mind was otherwise busy. she, too, adored mrs. wilson, and she painfully depicted to herself the annoyance which this visit with its threatened frankness would cause her divinity. "don't you think, loretta, that it would be better to wait a little before you call?" she said, in gentle appeal. "better? why better?" "more appropriate. mrs. wilson will not feel like discussing the matter just yet. if her daughter is with her, so much the more reason. she must be very unhappy, and, if either of us were to visit her now to offer sympathy, i'm sure she would regard it as an intrusion." loretta bridled. "if i were unhappy, she'd come to see me. if my baby were to die, wouldn't she come gliding down here to make me feel resigned? two can play at that game. she's been nice to me; why shouldn't i let her know that i'm sorry for her? besides," she added, with a shrug of her shoulders and a bold look, "i'd like to see how she'd behave--how she'd take it. i want to see the house again, too." appalled as constance was, she said to herself that she must not let the shock of this lack of taste palsy her own effectiveness. to upbraid loretta would only confirm her in her intention. "let us hope that there will be no publicity; that the matter will be kept very quiet. if mrs. wilson is desirous of concealing it, surely she would not be pleased to know that we had heard of it. i told you because i know how fond you are of her, and that her secret would be safe in your hands." "publicity? of course there'll be publicity." the suggestion of concealment was obviously distasteful to her. "why, i read it to you in the newspaper. the reporters are certain to get wind of it in a few days, see if they don't. and when they do, look out for head-lines and half-page illustrations. the public have a right to know what's going on, haven't they?" she asked in the assertive tone of one vindicating a vested privilege. "not things of this kind--private concerns, surely." constance sighed, realizing that it was only too probable that the newspapers, alert as bloodhounds for the trail of a new social scandal, would come upon this shortly and blazon it to the world. "private concerns! suppose a multi-millionaire's daughter tires of her husband and runs away to south dakota to get a divorce as quick as the law allows, do you call that a private concern? i guess not, constance. the public--meaning such as you and me--naturally take an interest, and object to its being hushed up. the multi-millionaires have the money; we have the newspapers. we don't get any too much that's interesting in our lives." "we don't know any of the facts; we mustn't prejudge mrs. waldo until we hear what they are," said constance, ignoring the philosophy of this tirade in her dismay at the assumption. "that's why i'm going to see her. i want to find out the facts," said loretta, triumphantly. "i was only supposing. like as not her daughter has been ill-treated, and is running away because she has to. if so, there's not much to worry about. she'll get her divorce, and be able to marry again as soon as she has the chance." "but even so, loretta, her mother must necessarily regard it as a family misfortune, which she would not like to talk about. as to marrying again, that would only make the matter worse for mrs. wilson." "worse? why worse?" "it would distress her, i'm certain. it would be contrary to her ideas of the eternal fitness of things." constance recognized her own sententiousness, which was due to the perception that she had allowed herself to speak by the card without sufficient authority. she had never discussed the subject or anything analogous to it with mrs. wilson, and to put arguments in her mouth would be surely a liberty. yet her heart told her that the conclusion which she had uttered, both in its substance and phraseology, stated correctly mrs. wilson's position. what suddenly interested her was the wonder whether it expressed her own convictions. loretta lost no time in bringing this to an issue. "supposing mrs. waldo has been miserable and without fault, do you mean to tell me she'd object to her daughter marrying the right man if he came along? why, wouldn't you be glad, after all you've been through, if the right person came along--some decent man with a little money who could look after your children?" "i?" to the ears of constance the sound of her own voice resembled a wail. why should loretta be so unfeeling as to make her personal experiences the test of such a text? "yes, you." constance gathered her forces for a display of proper dignity. she wished to be kind still, but conclusive. "mine is not a case at all in point. i am not divorced from my husband." loretta plainly regarded this argument as flimsy, for she snapped her fingers. "pooh!" she said. "you could get a divorce any day you like." she stared at constance a moment, then rose from her chair, planted her palms on the table and bent forward by way of emphasis with an air both determined and a little diabolical. "supposing your--your employer, gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law, was to make you an offer of his hand and heart to-morrow, do you mean to tell me, constance stuart, that you wouldn't snap him up in a jiffy?" "it isn't a supposable case," replied poor constance. one can slam a door in an intruder's face; there is no such buffer for impertinent speeches. "but supposing costs nothing. of course it's supposable, why not? you're the sort of woman who's twice as good looking now that you've filled out as you were at nineteen. you know well enough you're growing handsomer and more fetching every day. only a blind man couldn't see that." "that would have nothing to do with it even if it were true." "you may bet a man like that wouldn't marry you if you were plain. but just supposing? i do believe you're getting red again." the victim, conscious of the fact, sought relief in merriment. she jumped at the impulse to treat this indelicate effrontery jocosely as the only possible attitude. "it's because you're so absurd, loretta. but since you seem to wish an answer to your ridiculous question----" the sharp note of the electric bell broke in upon the slight pause which she made to weigh her words. "someone for me!" cried loretta, and she ran to the tube. but she looked over her shoulder to say "continued in our next! the offer is good for a week." constance felt the inclination to throw the scrapbook at her head. the next moment she was vexed with herself for allowing her equanimity to be disturbed, and began to rehabilitate the interrupted sentence. what had she been going to say? it dawned upon her that, curiously enough, she had not formulated the conclusion. meantime loretta was going through the functions of whistling down the tube and receiving the message. the surprising import of her next words roused constance from a brown study. "talk of the devil! it's a messenger from mr. perry's. somebody's ill and i'm wanted. the boy's coming up." somebody ill! it must be mrs. perry. the few moments of suspense which elapsed before the district messenger-boy arrived seemed interminable to constance. loretta had opened the door and the tramp of his ascent sounded leisurely. when he appeared he thrust his hand into his breast-pocket and produced a letter. "it's for mrs. stuart," he said, guardedly. "i'm mrs. stuart," said constance. "i was told to ring at your bell first, and if you was asleep or didn't answer the tube to try the other lady." constance read the brief contents of the note with perturbation. it was from mr. perry, informing her that on his return home he had found his mother stricken with paralysis, that the doctor was in attendance, and that a trained nurse was necessary. he had thought of loretta; would constance send her if disengaged? "oh, loretta, dear mrs. perry is seriously ill--a stroke of paralysis. mr. perry asks you to come to her at once." "i'll be ready to start in a few minutes," answered loretta, briskly. "we will both go," added constance, as though to herself. "there may be something i can do." she turned to the messenger: "return as quickly as you can, and tell the gentleman that we--wait a moment." she tore the sheet of note-paper apart and seating herself at the table wrote hastily on the blank half in pencil: "loretta will come at once, and i shall accompany her. my heart grieves for you, my dear friend." she folded it and bent down one corner. "give him this," she said, "and please make haste." at this time in benham the doctrine that sewage must be diverted from the sources of water supply used for drinking purposes was firmly established, and the doctrine that not every woman able to read and write is qualified to teach school was being gradually, if grudgingly, admitted to be not altogether un-american. so swift had been the change of attitude toward special knowledge that there had even been a revolution in regard to the theory advocated by the original board of trustees of the silas s. parsons free hospital that every woman is a born nurse, and is competent, after a fortnight's training at the utmost, to take charge of the sickest patients. those familiar with affairs in benham will recall that the original ruling spirit of that institution was mrs. selma lyons, wife of united states senator lyons. she disapproved of special training and was a strong champion of the principle that an american woman with aspirations is more likely to be fettered than helped by conventional standards, and that individuality should be given free play in order to attain brilliant results. yet though this principle was reverenced at first in the employment of nurses for the hospital, progress, that stern derider even of the american woman, gradually set it at naught during the period when mrs. lyons was resident in washington and unable to give that close personal attention to the affairs of the institution which she desired. it so happened that after her husband's defeat at the end of his first term through the hostility of horace elton, one of the financial magnates of that section of the country, who harbored a grudge against him for alleged duplicity when governor, the president of the united states threw a sop to the defeated candidate in the form of the spanish mission. selma, who was still engaged in the effort to chastise her enemies and to reëstablish what she regarded as true american social principles, was sorry to leave washington, but she found some consolation in the thought of introducing american ethical standards at a foreign court, especially of dealing a death-blow to bull-fights by her personal influence. she was obliged, however, to relax considerably her vigilance in regard to the hospital; even, to consent to an enlargement of the board of trustees. this in its new form presently adopted what the members regarded as modern methods. mrs. wilson had been one of the recent additions to the body. yet, under her regimen, though every applicant for a nurse's diploma was obliged to serve a rigorous apprenticeship of two years at the hospital, the idea of scrutinizing the antecedents and previous education of the young women offering themselves was still novel. selma would have regarded an inquiry of this kind as aristocratic and hostile to the free development of the individual. now--but a few years later--such a system of scrutiny is in vogue in benham; but at the date of loretta davis's admittance to the silas s. parsons free hospital, though it doubtless occurred to mrs. wilson that her candidate was not ideal, she had not demurred. on the contrary, she had welcomed the opportunity of giving the girl a chance to redeem herself in this field of usefulness. similarly, though constance might not have picked out her neighbor for this particular service, she felt only thankfulness that loretta was disengaged, and that they were able to betake themselves at once to mrs. perry's bedside. the old dame employed to look after the baby in loretta's absence was still available. constance waked her, and requested her to keep an eye on her own children in case she were away all night. after their arrival at their destination, however, it was soon clear to constance that there was nothing she could do. mrs. perry had not regained consciousness, and the physician in attendance was non-committal as to the outcome. so gordon informed them; briefly, and constance was left in the library to her own reflections while he showed loretta to her post. she was not sorry that she had come; but much as she wished to remain, plainly she would be in the way. loretta was trained, and was the proper person to be in the sick-room. yet she would not go until mr. perry returned. he might have instructions for the morrow concerning the changes in his plans consequent upon his mother's illness. besides, she wished to express more specifically her desire to be of any possible service. gordon returned before long. he put out his hand as though they had not met already. "i thank you heartily for your message of sympathy," he said. "there is no change?" "none. it is the beginning of the end." "yet----" "oh, yes, she may recover, thanks to the tireless methods of modern science; but what would the only possible recovery mean to a woman like her? merely durance vile. no--one's natural impulse, of course, is to hold on to one we love--to delay the parting at any price. the doctors must have their way. but when i allow myself to think, i know it would be best for her not to wake again. she would prefer it. you know that." "yes, she would prefer it," constance murmured. "i must not keep you from her," she added. "please stay a little. i can do nothing. it hurts me to see her so unlike herself, though the doctor says she is not suffering." he glanced at the clock apprehensively. "it is getting late, i know; but you must not go quite yet. i will telephone for a carriage presently. i must give you directions as to what to do at the office to-morrow in case i should not be there." then, as though he divined what was in her thoughts, he said, "i was glad when i knew you were coming. i said to myself, 'if my mother should recover consciousness, the sight of constance at her bedside would do her more good than any medicine.'" he had never before employed her christian name in her presence. the use of it now seemed to her to put a seal upon the bond of their friendship. he was become, indeed, a wise older brother whom it delighted her to serve. "but you will come to-morrow?" he said. "if i may. i should like to be near her. i hate to feel helpless where she is concerned." "we are both helpless. what a mother she has been to me! i owe everything to her. truth has been her divinity, truth--truth--and she has had the courage to live up to what she believed." he paused. evidently his spirit quailed before the impending future. "and now she is slipping away from me. the common destiny. but she is my mother. i wonder where she is going--what is to become of all that energy and clear-headedness. modern science tells us that force never perishes. it is as difficult to imagine my mother's individuality at an end as it is to convince one's self in the presence of death that the grave is not master." he sighed and turned to hide a tear. "i know not where his islands lift their fronded palms in air, i only know i cannot drift beyond his love and care." the lines rose to constance's lips and she repeated them. they were not symbolic of her church; rather they were a text from the universal hope of mankind. she felt instinctively that any more orthodox definition would have jarred upon him. "thank you," he said, softly. "it is so easy in this age of conscientious investigation to reject everything which will not bear the test of human reason. death is no greater a mystery than birth. we know not whence we came, nor whither we go. but when the world ceases to believe that there is some answer to it all worthy of our aspirations, it will be time for this planet to become a frozen pole again. you women are apt to bear that in mind more faithfully than we," he added, lifting his eyes to hers. "come," he said, "we must not forget to-morrow; you have work to do. i must not be selfish." a few minutes later he put her in a carriage. in the morning constance, imbued with his speech, half hoped that she might hear that mrs. perry was dead. but gordon appeared at the office about ten o'clock, announcing that the night had brought a change for the better. his mother had smiled at him recognizingly, and faintly pressed his hand. though she was unable to speak, the doctor had encouraged him to believe that she would do so. constance perceived that he was in better spirits, showing that, despite his words, he was rejoicing that the parting had been delayed. the improvement in mrs. perry's condition continued for nearly three weeks. one side of her body was completely paralyzed, but she regained presently the power to utter a few occasional words, though her enunciation was difficult to understand. at the end of the fourth day from her seizure she was permitted to see constance for a few minutes. soon after daily visits increasing gradually in length were sanctioned, and constance, after her duties at the office were over, was enabled to spend an hour or more at the bedside of her friend before returning to her own home. this was an agreeable arrangement to loretta, for it gave that young woman a breathing spell--the opportunity to take the fresh air or to do whatever she pleased. mrs. perry evidently delighted in constance's attendance. she listened to reading with satisfaction for a time, but later it seemed to suit her better to lie quietly, her unmaimed hand resting in or near one of constance's, while the latter now and then broke the twilight silence by recounting the news of the day. "i like the sound of your voice, my dear," she said to constance. "it is refreshing and musical as a brook." occasionally gordon joined them, but he would never permit constance to relinquish her seat beside the bed in his favor. "my turn comes later," he said. "i tuck my mother up for the night." mrs. perry seemed to enjoy especially the days when they were there together. she would turn her eyes from one to the other as though she delighted in them equally. but only once did she make any reference to what may have been in her thoughts concerning their joint presence. it was in the third week of her illness, and what she said was spoken low to constance, though evidently intended to be audible to them both. "you must take good care of him, dear, when i am gone." it was one of her best days as regards articulation, so there was no room for misunderstanding. the words were harmless enough and constance took them in the only sense in which they were applicable. "i shall stay with him as long as he will keep me, you may rely on that, mrs. perry," she responded, brightly. a pleasant smile came over the old lady's face and she looked in the direction of her son. her mouth twitched. "do you hear what she says, gordon?" there was a humorous twinkle in her voice, which doubtless was not lost on him. his back was to the light, so that he had the advantage of shadow to cover his mental processes. "i regard it as impossible that constance and i should ever drift apart," he said. his sphinx-like reply seemed to be reassuring to the invalid. she lay like one serenely satisfied, and did not pursue the subject further. as for constance, she noticed the use by mr. perry of her christian name again, but it seemed to her only fitting and friendly. she did not need his assurance to feel that they were not likely to drift apart, but it was delightful to hear it from his lips. when mrs. perry's seeming convalescence had reached a stage at which the doctor was on the point of sending her out to drive, a second attack of her malady occurred and brought the end. she became unconscious at once, and passed away within a few hours. on the afternoon after the funeral constance returned to the house with loretta in order that the latter might collect and bring away her belongings. gordon was closeted in his library alone with his sorrow, and the two women moving noiselessly through the silent house made but a brief stay. while they were on their way to lincoln chambers a newsboy entered the street-car crying the evening papers. loretta having bought one made an ejaculation. absorbed in what she had discovered, she paid no heed at first to constance's glance of interrogation, but read with an avidity which seemed breathless. then she thrust the sheet under her companion's eyes, and pointing to a column bristling with large headlines, exclaimed: "here it is at last; a full account of the divorce proceedings with their pictures, and a picture of her. it's a worse affair than anyone imagined. it says paul howard and his wife are mixed up in it, and there's something about a pistol going off at newport. i haven't read it all yet. but look--look!" loretta's demeanor suggested not merely excitement, but a sort of saturnine glee, so that constance turned from the printed page toward her as though seeking to fathom its cause, then back to the newspaper, the capitals of which told their sensational story with flaring offensiveness. "i won't read it now, loretta. i'll wait until we get home. what a cruel shame it is that the press has got hold of it." loretta gave a questioning jerk to her shoulders. "i don't know about that. i knew she wouldn't be able to hush it up. how could she expect to? besides--" she did not finish her sentence. instead, she wagged her head, as one in possession of a secret and grinned knowingly. "i'll tell you something, some day. but not now--not now." then she reassumed control of the newspaper, saying, "well, if you don't care to read it, i do. there are three columns." she uttered the last words as though she were announcing treasure-trove. but the ellipsis had left no doubt as to her attitude, which led constance to remark on the spur of the moment, "neither of us would like to have our misfortunes paraded before the world. i know what it means; how it cuts and stings." loretta looked up admiringly. "when your husband ran away?" "yes." "and your picture appeared?" "no, not that, thank heavens!" loretta laughed indulgently. "you're queer, constance. you're so scared of publicity. i shouldn't mind a bit having my picture in the papers. what's more, i don't believe she does. this divorce had to come out, sooner or later. i shouldn't wonder in the least," she added, boldly, "if she lets the reporters know when she has a new photograph taken. by the way, i went to see her." constance knew at once what she meant, and the dismay and curiosity inspired by the announcement rose paramount to her other feelings of protest. "when?" "it surprises you, doesn't it? i went on two of those afternoons when you sat with mrs. perry. and i saw her, too. the first time the butler said she was engaged. he tried to shunt me off the same way again, but i was too smart for him. 'tell her loretta davis is very anxious to talk with her on business,' i said, and the message came back that she'd be down presently. between my baby and my nurse's work it wasn't hard to find the business, and then i told her plump i was sorry to hear about her daughter. at that she colored up--you ought to have seen her, and looked as though she had swallowed a steel rod. said she, 'i appreciate your desire to be sympathetic, loretta, but that is a subject i cannot discuss with anyone, please.'" loretta spoke mincingly, evidently aiming to reproduce mrs. wilson's exquisiteness of manner and speech. "said i 'i thought it might make you feel better to talk it over with someone. it would me, i know.' but it wasn't any use. she wouldn't, and she sort of froze me; and pretty soon we both got up, i to go, and she to have me go. however, now it's all out, and everyone will be talking about it." "but not with her. i warned you that she wouldn't like it." "yes, you warned me. and i don't mind saying i think she needn't have been so stiff, seeing i told her everything when i was in trouble. anyhow, i saw the house again and her, and now there's a new picture of her in the paper, and the thing is going to make a big sensation, if what's printed here is true, and i guess it is." she nodded her head with a repetition of her air of mystery. "there are the facts you said we ought to wait for." "but you seem almost glad," constance could not refrain from remarking. "you stated you went to see mrs. wilson because you were sorry for her." "so i did; so i am. i'm dreadfully sorry for her. i'd do anything to help her, but i can't; and she won't let me show my sympathy. but since the thing has happened, i'm glad it's exciting." constance looked puzzled. "i don't think i understand." "i enjoy sensations, and big head-lines. they tone me up. you're different, i guess." a sudden thought seemed to occur to her, for she regarded constance for a moment as a doctor might look at a patient, then she thrust her hand into the pocket of her jacket and produced a small bottle which contained white tablets. "when i feel low in my mind--done up--i take one of these." "what are they?" "something a friend of mine at the hospital recommended. they do the work." while delivering this not altogether candid response, loretta unscrewed the stopper and emptying a tablet on to her palm swallowed it, then offered the bottle to her companion. "have one?" constance shook her head. "well, the next time you feel fagged, ask me for one." an instant later she sprang to her feet, exclaiming, "why, here we are! we ought to get out." it was even so. the interest of their conversation had been such that they had neglected to notice the flight of time or to observe where they were. as the car was virtually at the point where they wished it to stop, loretta hurried toward the door, signalling to the conductor as she did so; but she failed to catch his eye, for he happened to be absorbed by an organ-grinder on the other side of the car from that on which they were to get off. the car was moving slowly, and, though she had her hand-bag, it was a simple matter to spring to the ground without further ado. she did so successfully, landing a few feet beyond the crossing. constance, who was following close behind, heard the voice of the conductor, "wait, lady, until the car stops," and the jingle of the bell, but she disdained to heed it. she jumped lightly, but somehow the heel of her boot caught on the edge of the platform or she slipped. at all events her impetus was thwarted, and instead of landing on her feet, she pitched forward, striking her forehead on the pavement. xviii when constance came to herself she was in her own bed. it appeared that she had been carried insensible into a drug store, and thence to lincoln chambers, which were close at hand. a doctor presently restored her to consciousness, but he gave imperative instructions that she was to be kept absolutely quiet or he would not answer for the consequences of the nervous shock. it was the second day before her countenance expressed recognition of mrs. harrity, the pensioner who looked after the children, and who sat sewing at her bedside. even then her senses shrank from every effort, and having learned by a question or two that she had fallen, and that the children were well, she lapsed into a comatose state. when she emerged from this she was very weak, but her mind was clear. she could not bear the light, however. her eyes burned with a stinging pain whenever they encountered it, and she was forced to submit to the physician's orders that she remain in a dark room for a week. her first inquiry after her mind was able to focus itself was whether word had been sent to the office. she was told that loretta had done this by telephone; that mr. perry had called promptly, and that the roses on the table were from him. mrs. harrity seemed proud of the visit and the gift. "he told me to say you weren't to worry, and to take all the time you need to get well. he's a pleasant-spoken gentleman, mrs. stuart, and wanted to know everything the doctor had said." mrs. harrity was proud also of the fact that loretta had been summoned to attend a new patient. she was proudest of all of a piece of intelligence, or rather prophecy, which loretta had let fall the day after the accident, which she hastened to impart to constance the first moment the latter appeared able to take it in. "she says as how you ought to get big damages from the railroad." "but i'm not much hurt, am i?" asked constance. the dame perceived that she had not lived up to the doctor's orders. yet now she could conscientiously relieve her patient's natural solicitude. "mercy, no. you've broken nothing. you're only shook up. and it hasn't hurt your good looks a mite. but," she added, still conscientious, "the doctor says it's your nerves, and nerves are most as good as bones before a jury, especially if one has a smart lawyer handy as you have." constance sat up in bed. instead of being a comfort, as was intended, the broad hint distressed her. "i don't wish any damages. it was my own fault. i jumped before the car stopped. it was very silly. i only want to get well." the dread of a tedious convalescence was already haunting her reviving faculties. her absence from the office would be very inconvenient to mr. perry, and confinement at home for more than a few days would prove a disastrous inroad on her resources. she must hasten to recover. meantime mrs. harrity was looking blank at the reception accorded to what she had supposed would be a nerve tonic to the sufferer. she replied stanchly: "she says different. she's ready to go on the stand and swear against the company. you're all right, darling. smell them flowers, and lie down like a good girl. the doctor says you must keep still and not talk." so saying, she pushed a little nearer the vase of roses, one of which constance had reached with her outstretched hand in the dark. constance's impulse had been to detach it from its fellows so as to enjoy its fragrance at close range. but the larger opportunity afforded her, or else the jogging of her purpose, changed her mind. she bent forward and burying her face in the cool rose leaves inhaled their rich perfume. "it was very kind of him to send them," she murmured, as though in monologue. then appreciating for the first time her weakness she sank back upon her pillow. she said to herself that he was such a friend that he would make the best of her absence for a week and by the end of that time she would be herself again. but what a fool she had been to jump; to take such a risk, she a grown woman with children! she ought to have known better; she was getting middle-aged, and she must be more staid. still it was some consolation to know she had not broken her nose. a note received from mr. perry twenty-four hours later and read to her by her little daughter reassured her as to his indulgence in respect to her absence. all her interest now became centred on a rapid recovery, and she made sundry attempts to bring the doctor to book as to the date when she would be able to resume work again, which he smilingly evaded. she was conscious, however, of increasing bodily vigor, which was comforting. the inability of her eyes to endure the light was her chief discomfort, a condition which her physician appeared to her to ignore, until he arrived one morning with a brother practitioner, who proved to be an oculist, and who had brought with him some of the apparatus of his specialty for the purpose of a diagnosis. constance could not bear the sphinx-like urbanities which followed the examination. she felt possessed by a desire to have the exact condition of affairs revealed to her. she lifted her head, and addressing her own doctor, said: "i should like to know the truth, please. do not conceal anything. it will be much worse for me to find out later that something has been kept back." the family physician looked at the specialist as much as to say that he proposed to throw the burden on him, but he answered, "so far as your general physical condition is concerned, you are practically well, mrs. stuart. all the brain symptoms have disappeared, and there are no lesions of any kind. it is now simply a question of nerves--and your eyes. dr. dale can speak more authoritatively about the latter." dr. dale, the oculist, a man in the prime of life, with precise methods and a closely cut van dyke beard, hesitated briefly, as though he were analyzing his patient, then said with courteous incisiveness--"it is a question of nerves, as dr. baldwin has explained. the nerves affected in your case are those of the eyes. since you have expressed a wish to know the exact state of affairs, i take you at your word, mrs. stuart. i agree with you that it is more satisfactory to know the truth, and i am glad to be able to assure you that by the end of six months, if you give your eyes entire rest, their weakness will be cured, and you will be able to use them as freely as before." he had rather the air of conferring a benefit than of pronouncing a sentence, and constance received his statement in that spirit. "thank you," she said. "i will be as careful as i can." "the condition of your cure," the specialist continued with polite relentlessness, "is that you abstain from using them altogether." constance experienced a thrill of concern. "which means?" "it means, mrs. stuart, that you must not sew, read, write, or undertake any form of application where the eyes are a factor." she could not believe her ears. "i am a clerk in a law-office. my employment is stenography and type-writing," she said, tentatively. he nodded. evidently he had been informed. "it will be impossible for you to continue it." "but i must. i must do my work. my children are dependent on it." her tone suggested that there could be no answer to such a plea. "you cannot. if you do, you will become blind. i am very sorry for you." the truth was out. she lay dumfounded. "blind? blind?" she echoed. "but there is not the least danger of your becoming blind if you obey my instructions. you will be entirely cured, as i have said." there was a painful silence. her sentence was too appalling to grasp. there must be some escape from it. "six months? half a year?" "knowing your necessities, i have given you the shortest period that i dared consistent with perfect recovery. you will have to wear colored glasses at first," he continued, seeking a business-like basis, "and accustom yourself to do without them by degrees. i will bring them to-morrow." she leaned back on her pillow bewildered. the trickling of a tear into her mouth reminded her that she could not afford to cry, though but for the presence of the doctors she knew that she would have burst into sobs. her plight demanded thought, not sorrow. but what could she do? what, indeed? yet, even as she asked herself the dreadful question, she began to nerve herself not only against breaking down at the moment, but against the threat of the future. she would keep a stiff upper lip in the teeth of all the odds, and be able to manage somehow. as thus she reasoned, swallowing the salt of her single moment of weakness, she heard dr. baldwin saying: "you have had a very fortunate escape, all things considered. it might have been much worse. you might have disfigured yourself permanently, which for you," he added with a gallant bow, "would have been a serious matter, indeed. as it is, you will be able to do everything as formerly in another week, except use your eyes. your friends will look after you, mrs. stuart, and six months will pass much more quickly than you expect." "i don't suppose they'll let me starve," she found herself saying, though the notion of a return to alms almost strangled her effort at buoyancy, so that the sprightliness of her tone competed with the water in her eyes, as the sun struggles with the rain-pour just before it clears up. but she remembered that the room was dark, and that they could not see her tears. "wasn't i a fool to jump off that car?" "you were unlucky, that's all. you mustn't be too hard on yourself. it is the privilege of the young to jump, and you will jump again." it was dr. dale who spoke. his enunciation imparted a cleansing value to his note of sympathy, just as it had ruthlessly epitomized her tragedy a few minutes before. "but i am not young; that is the folly of it," she protested. the oculist smiled. "excuse me if i differ with you," said he. "you have the best years of your life before you." they left her under the spell of this assertion, which lingered in her mind on account of its absurdity, until in sheer self-defence she said to herself under her breath that she was only thirty-one. the best years of her life! and yet he knew that she was to be deprived during half of one of them of the joy of seeing and the source of her livelihood. what could he mean? in taking his departure, dr. baldwin, by way of showing his friendliness, had volunteered to write to her employer. "i know mr. perry," he said, "and i will explain to him the situation. perhaps he will be able to keep your place for you." constance had interposed no objection. it would obviate the necessity of an elaborate explanation on her part, and would, moreover, be a guaranty of her later usefulness. the future would take care of itself; it was the present which stared her in the face and demanded an immediate answer. one solution of her quandary was offered to her a few days later. dr. baldwin had given her permission to get up and resume her ordinary household duties as soon as her glasses arrived, which proved to be the next morning, as the oculist had promised. consequently, she dressed herself and sat with her children in the parlor that afternoon, and on the following day rose, bent on facing the new problem of existence with a clear brain and resigned spirit. if mr. perry would save her place for her, so much the better. but obviously there was nothing for her to do in the office until she was cured. she must, either through her own energies or the advice of others, discover some employment compatible with her infirmity. she might have to accept help at first, for the money she had on hand would be needed to pay the bills of the two physicians, which would necessarily be considerable; but with the aid of her friends she would surely be able to find some handiwork which would yield her enough to keep her treasures well fed and decently clothed. humiliating as it would be to have recourse to others, it was clearly her duty to inform her friends of her predicament, and invite their counsel. they would only thank her, she knew, and she certainly was fortunate in having three persons, to whom she felt at liberty to apply, so pleasantly interested in her welfare as her employer, mrs. wilson, and the reverend george prentiss. mr. perry was to be made aware of what had befallen her, without further action on her part; but she would write to the two others, and soon, for the thought was harassing her that her employer, in a spirit of benevolence, might try to invent duties for her at the office, and give her some sinecure in order that she might retain her salary. this would be galling to her self-respect, and was not to be entertained for a moment. as the possibility of it grew upon her she became quite agitated; so much so that in the hope of heading off any such attempt by him, she dictated to her daughter, that afternoon, letters to mrs. wilson and the clergyman, informing them briefly what had occurred. just after the little girl had returned from putting these in the letter-box, and constance was musing over a cup of tea, a messenger with a note arrived. it was from gordon perry, and read by henrietta it ran as follows: might he not call that evening? he had the doctor's permission to do so; and she was to send a simple "yes" or "no" by the bearer. now for it, she thought; he was coming to overwhelm her with his cunning schemes for continuing her salary. her first impulse was to protect herself by delay; to ask him to wait a day or two until she felt stronger. but this would be a subterfuge, and, excepting that she dreaded his philanthropy, she yearned to see him. he would put her in touch with the world again, from which she had been shut off too long. "no" trembled on her lips, but the fear of hurting his feelings occurred to her in the nick of time as a counterbalance to her dread of being pauperized by him, and her natural inclinations found utterance. "tell mr. perry, yes," she answered, and her spirits rose from that moment, though she resolved to be as firm as a rock on the threatened issue. she ascribed his coming in the evening rather than the afternoon to his being busy at the office, and as she put the children to bed she reflected that it would be pleasant to have an uninterrupted visit. she made her toilette as best she could with mrs. harrity's aid, and she inwardly rejoiced again that she had not broken her nose. gordon arrived about half-past eight. the cheer which his manner expressed did not detract from its sympathy. it seemed to say that he recognized and deplored her misfortune, but took for granted her preference to face it smilingly, and not to waste time in superfluous lamentation. at the same time, she could not but notice his eager solicitude and the ardor of his bearing, which was slightly disconcerting. yet he made her tell him the details of the accident, listening with the ear of a lawyer. at the close his brow clouded slightly as though her story failed to coincide with his prepossessions. "you see i haven't any case, have i?" she said, divining what was passing in his mind. she cherished a half hope that his cleverness might still extract a just cause of action from her delinquency. "not on your evidence." "so i supposed. those are the real facts. i jumped before the car stopped, though the conductor warned me, and i heard the bell." "that settles it; contributory negligence. but the trained nurse who was with you tells a different story." "loretta has been to see you?" "yes. she came ostensibly for her pay night before last. but she seemed very anxious to testify in court in your favor. she says the conductor wasn't looking at first, and that he pushed you off the car just as you were jumping." constance shook her head. "she is entirely mistaken as to the last part." "there is nothing to be said. it struck me that miss davis, unlike most women, enjoyed the prospect of being a witness. it was a great event to her, and she would be able to do you a good turn." he sat for a moment pondering this diagnosis, then with a start, as though he had been surprised in a trivial occupation, exclaimed: "but what does it matter whether you can get paltry damages or not? i did not come here to consider that. i came to talk with you about your future." he spoke the last words with a tender cadence which was partly lost on constance, for she sprang to the conclusion that the moment for her to display firmness had arrived, and that he was about to broach a scheme for retaining her in his employment. "i must find some other occupation for the next six months, of course. i am forbidden to use my eyes for any purpose. i have written to mrs. wilson and my rector, thinking they may know of some opening or vacancy where i could work with my hands or do errands until my eyes are well." then noticing the curious smile with which he received this rather impetuous announcement, and apprehensive lest he might be hurt by her avowed reliance on others, she added: "and you, too, must be on the lookout for me. you may hear of something which would suit me." "as for that, do you suppose that because your service to me is interrupted i would not stand in the breach? that i would not insist on continuing your salary until you were able to return to your post?" "i knew it would be just like you to wish to," she said, quickly, "but i could not possibly allow it. that's why i wrote to mrs. wilson and mr. prentiss," she added, not averse to having him know the real reason now that it could serve her as a shield. her naïve admission was evidently an agreeable piece of intelligence. "i took for granted that your salary would continue. that was a matter i did not have in mind in the least." "it can't, i assure you." he appeared entertained by her adamantine air. "why not?" "it isn't an absence of a week or two," she said, trying to show herself reasonable. "it will be six months before i am able to work again." "a whole six months?" she met the mockery in his tone with quiet determination. "i could not allow anyone to support me for that period. do you not see that i must find something to do in order to remain happy?" "happy? you do not consider my side. do you not see that a haggling calendar account of weeks and months is not applicable to such service as you render me? how would the satisfaction of saving the modest sum i pay you compare with that i should derive from enabling you to get well as rapidly as possible, untormented by painful necessities?" there was a strange gleam in his eyes. she looked at him wonderingly. his rhetoric troubled her, and by dint of it he had managed to make her scruples seem ungenerous. but she was unconvinced. "you would be obliged to pay someone else," she replied with cruel practicality. "enough of this," he said, impetuously. "it is absurd. i have something very different at heart. when i spoke of your future just now, constance, it was to tell you that i have come here, to-night, to ask you to be my wife--to say to you that i love you devotedly and cannot live without you. this is my errand. it is not friendship i offer, it is not pity, it is not esteem for your gentle, strong soul, it is passionate human love." he paused and there was profound silence in the darkened room where they could scarcely see each other's faces. constance trembled like a leaf. in a moment the whole card-board house of sisterly affection fell about her ears, and she knew the truth. these were the sweetest words she had ever listened to, though they stabbed her like a knife. "oh!" she whispered, "oh!" "is it such a surprise, constance?" he murmured, ascribing her accents of dismay to that source. "you must have known you were very dear to me." the dimness gave her time to consider how she should deal with this startling certainty, the music of which was dancing in her brain. the meaning of his devotion was now so clear. yet she had never guessed either his purpose or the secret of her own disconcerting heart-beats. "i knew you were fond of me, but it never occurred to me that you could think of me as a wife." "why not? you are beautiful and charming as well as sweet and wise, and i adore you." "i liked to feel that we should go on being dear friends for the rest of our lives," she answered, tingling with the thrill which this avowal caused her. from the tremor of her speech he was emboldened to regard the sigh which followed this simple voicing of the exact truth as an ellipsis hiding a precious secret. "then you love me, constance?" whatever happened, why should he not know? why should she deny herself that ecstasy? "oh, yes, gordon, i love you dearly." "and you will be my wife?" "how can i, gordon? you know i must not." there was gentle pleading in her tone and a tinge of renunciating sadness. "i mean presently. as soon as you obtain a divorce?" the ugly word brought back reality. "oh, no, we must put it from us. it is a delightful vision, but we must dismiss it forever." "why?" he asked, with the resonance of vigorous manhood. "because it would be an offence." "against what?" "the eternal fitness of things." this phrase of mrs. wilson's rose to her lips again as a shibboleth. "i have made my mistake," she murmured. "i must suffer the penalty of it." "never!" he ejaculated. "it would be monstrous--monstrous." there was a momentary silence. while he gazed at her ardently he was seeking command of himself so as to plead his cause with discriminating lucidity. to her darkened sight imagination pictured a swift river of fire flowing between them, across which they could touch their finger-tips, but no more. "do not think," he said, "that i have not considered this question from your side. it has been in my thoughts night and day for months. the idea of divorce is repugnant to you--though you have ceased to love the husband who deeply wronged you. you shrink even more from marrying again because your children's father is still alive. if he were dead, the bar would be removed, and you would not hesitate. i appeal to your common sense, constance. what sound reason is there why you should sacrifice your happiness--the happiness of us both?" "it is not a question of common sense--is it?" it was a faltering query which followed the assertion. "the question is, what is right?" "amen to that!" he cried. "yes, right, right. and who says it is not right?" she had been so sure she would never marry again that she had never sought exact knowledge of her church's attitude in this regard, and yet now she had her fears. she knew that no roman catholic could marry again during the life of a divorced husband or wife, except by special dispensation, and she was aware of the increasing reluctance of the officials of her own church in this country to give the sanction of the marriage service to the remarriage of divorced persons; but she had never examined the church canon on the subject, for she had flattered herself that she would never need to. discussions of the topic which she had listened to or read had played like lightnings around her oblivious head, but had served merely to intensify her repugnance to the blatant divorces and double-quick marriages, which she had seen heralded from time to time in the daily press, and which had recently been brought home to her with peculiar force by the events in mrs. wilson's family circle. now the flare of the lightning was in her own eyes, and her brain was numb with the emotion of the personal shock. "would mr. prentiss marry me to you?" she asked, seeking as usual the vital issue. "your clergyman?" his query was merely to gain time. but he loved directness, too. "suppose that he would not, there are plenty of clergymen who would." "but he is my clergyman." gordon moved his chair nearer, and bending forward, took her hand in both of his. "dearest, this question is for you and me to settle, not for any outsider. it must bear the test of right and wrong, as you say, but i ask you to look at it as an intelligent human being, as the sane, noble-hearted american woman you are. the state--the considered law of the community in which we live--gives you the right to a divorce and freedom to marry again. who stands in the way? your clergyman--the representative of your church. the church erects a standard of conduct of its own and asks you to sacrifice your life to it. it is the church against the state--against the people. it is superstition and privilege against common sense and justice. i should like to prove to you by arguments how truly this is so." "but i would rather not listen to your arguments now," she interposed. "i am on your side already. my heart is, and--i think my common sense." his pulses gave a bound. "then nothing can keep us apart!" he cried, pressing his lips upon her hands and kissing them again and again. "you are mine, we belong to one another. why should a young and beautiful woman starve her being on such a plea, and reject such happiness as this?" she drew her hands gently away, and herself beyond his reach. "ah, you mustn't. if my church objects, it must have a reason, and i must hear that reason, gordon. i must consult with mr. prentiss--with him and others. he is not an outsider. he was my friend and helper in the bitterest hours of my life." "he will do his best to take you from me." she shivered. "how do you know?" "he cannot help himself. the canon of the episcopal church forbids a clergyman to marry one who has been divorced for any cause except adultery. the catholic church goes one step further and forbids altogether the remarriage of divorced persons. it does not recognize divorce. a large number of the clergy of your church are fiercely agitating the adoption of a similar absolute restriction. the two churches--and their attitude has stirred up other denominations--are seeking to fasten upon the american conscience an ideal inconsistent with the free development of human society." she caught at the phrase. "yet it is an ideal." gordon took a long breath. in the ardor of his mental independence he seemed to be seeking some fit word to epitomize his deduction. "it is a fetish!" he said, earnestly. "it represents the past--privilege--superstition--injustice, as i have already told you." "oh, no," she murmured, "it cannot be simply that. you forget that i am a woman. you do not realize what the church means to me." "i remember that you are an american woman." the remark evidently impressed her. she pondered it briefly before she said, "i am, and i know how much that ought to mean. i wish to be worthy of it." she appeared troubled; then putting her hand to her head she rose, seeking instinctively an end of the interview. "i must think it over. you must not talk to me any more to-night. i did not realize how weak i am." suddenly she exclaimed, "ah, gordon, you do not understand all! i forsook the church once in the pride of my heart. i wandered among false gods, and it took me back without a word of rebuke for my independence. i must do what is right this time--what is really right--at any cost." as she stood in the shadow, erect and piteous, but with the aspect of spiritual aspiration in her voice and figure, stalwart as he was in his sense of righteousness, he thought of marguerite in the prison scene when faust implores her to fly with him. "forgive me," he said, "for having tired and harassed you. it was my love for you that led me on." he spoke with tenderness, and under the spell of his mood dropped on one knee beside her and looked up in her face. "you may tell me about that before you go," she whispered, like one spellbound. "it is not much to tell--except that it means everything to me. it has grown from a tiny seed, little by little, until it has become the harvest and the glory of my manhood. ah, constance, we love each other. how much that means. it sets the seal of beauty on this commonplace world. it will transfigure life for both of us." she started. "the seal of beauty?" she murmured, as to herself. "if i were but sure of that! what i fear is lest i mar the beauty of the world, and so sin." "it was my mother's hope that we should marry," he said, reverting to concrete ground. "i think so," she answered, faintly, pressing his hand. "and her idea was to do right." "i know." she sighed, then whispered, "you must go now." rising from his posture beside her he prepared to obey. they stood for an instant, irresolute, then, as by a common impulse, his arms opened and she suffered herself to be clasped in his strong embrace. it seemed to him as he felt her head upon his breast and her nervous, wistful face looked up into his that his happiness was assured. but she was thinking that come what might--and she was conscious of a dreadful uncertainty in her heart--she would not deny herself this single draught of the cup of happiness. it was a precious, sentient joy to be thought beautiful, and to feel that she was desired for herself alone by this hero of her ripe womanhood. so she let herself go as one who snatches at escaping joy, and their lips met in the full rapture of a lover's kiss. xix the news of the tragedy in her daughter's life--of the double domestic tragedy, which included her nephew--came to mrs. wilson as an appalling surprise. she had gathered from the tenor of lucille's letters that her daughter was not entirely happy; but her appreciation of this was derived rather from what she read between the lines than from actual admissions. it had never entered her head that there was danger of a rupture between lucille and her husband until the dreadful truth was disclosed to her by her brother. from him she learned that paul and his wife had separated and were to be divorced because of the relations between paul's wife and clarence waldo. carleton howard added that his son had not the heart to tell her himself before his departure for new york, and had delegated him to break the intelligence. when the first wholesale mutual commiserations had been exchanged between the brother and sister, mrs. wilson realized that she was practically in the dark regarding lucille. paul's calamity was so completely the controlling thought in her brother's mind that, though he occasionally deplored the plight in which his niece appeared to be left, he was evidently bent on working his way through the labyrinth of his personal dismay until he could find a clue which would lead his mind to daylight. after various ebullitions of anger and disgust, he found this at last in the assertion that it was best for paul to be rid of such a wife; that he had never really fancied his daughter-in-law, and that the only course was to obliterate her from their memory. she had disgraced the family, and her name was never to be mentioned again in his presence. this was an eminently masculine method of disposing of the matter. after mr. howard had accepted it as a solution, he was able to compose himself in his chair and to smoke. for the past two days, ever since paul had talked to him, he had been walking up and down his library, champing an unlighted cigar, with the measured stalk of a grim lion. now his brow lifted appreciably. but his sister's eyes fell before his aspect of dignified relief. his solution was of no avail to her. it could not answer the distressing questions which were haunting her. why had not lucille written? what did the silence mean? she resolved that if she did not hear something in the morning she would take the first train east, for might not the child be sobbing her heart out, too mortified even to confide in her mother? thus speculating, mrs. wilson looked up to inquire once again whether paul had not said something more definite regarding his cousin. she had asked this twice already, and on each occasion mr. howard had suspended his cogitations in order to ransack his memory, but only in vain; which was not strange, for paul had taken pains in his conversation with his father to avoid unnecessary allusion to lucille, letting her appear, like himself, an innocent victim of the family disaster. mr. howard was now equally unsuccessful in his recollection. yet while he was speaking, the tension of mrs. wilson's mind was relieved by the receipt of a telegram. lucille was on her way from newport, and would reach benham the following evening. mrs. wilson met her at the station. the mother and daughter embraced with emotion, thus betraying what was uppermost in the thought of each. but lucille promptly recovered her composure, chatting briskly in the carriage as though she were bent on avoiding for the time being the crucial topic. on reaching the house she evinced a lively interest in the supper which had been prepared for her, eating with appetite and leading the conversation to matters of secondary import. mrs. wilson, though burning to ask and to hear everything, held her peace and bridled her impatience. it seemed to her that lucille was looking well, and had gained in social dignity, which might partly be accounted for by the fact that she was a matron and a mother, partly by a slight access of flesh; but the impression produced on mrs. wilson's mind was that she appeared less spiritually heedless than formerly--a consummation devoutly to be desired in this hour of stress. as she watched her at table she noted with a mother's pride the tastefulness of her attire, and the sophistication of her speech. for the first time--much as she had longed for it in the past--the hope took root in her heart that their tastes might yet some day coincide, and each find in allegiance to the fit development of the human race the true zest of life. yet how could lucille be so calm? how could she appear so unconcerned? lucille's mask, such as it was, was not lifted until she had been shown to her room. "i will come to you presently, mamma," she said, and mrs. wilson understood what was meant. when she came--it was to her mother's boudoir and study--she had loosened her hair, and was wrapped in a dainty pink and white wrapper. she established herself comfortably on a lounge, and crossed her hands on her breast. mrs. wilson was sitting at her desk obliquely in the line of vision, so she had merely to turn her head on her supported elbow in order to command her daughter's expression. so they sat for a moment, until lucille said: "well, mamma, i suppose paul has told you everything. clarence and i have separated for good, and i am on the way to south dakota." there was a profound silence. in spite of the introduction the import of the last words was lost on mrs. wilson. she was simply puzzled. "south dakota?" she queried. "paul told me nothing. your uncle----" "you know surely what has happened?" it was lucille's turn to look surprised. "i know, my child, that your husband has been false to you with your cousin paul's wife." "and both paul and i are to obtain a divorce." mrs. wilson winced. "your uncle intimated as much in the case of paul. i had hoped you might not think it obligatory to break absolutely with your husband. or, rather, lucille, my mind was so full of distress for you that i did not look beyond the dreadful present. you do not know how my heart bleeds for you, dear." as she spoke, mrs. wilson left her seat, and kneeling beside the lounge, put her arms around her daughter's neck. lucille, grateful for the sympathy, raised herself to receive and return the embrace, but her speech was calm. "it is a mortification, of course; it would be to any woman. if he had been faithful to me, i would never have left him. but we were mismated from the first. we found out six months after our marriage that we bored each other; and then we drifted apart. so there would be no use trying to patch it up. we should only lead a dog and cat life. besides---" she paused an instant, then interjected, "i hoped paul had broken this to you, mamma--i want to be free because i am going to marry again." mrs. wilson sprang back as though she had been buffeted. "marry again?" she gasped. lucille spoke softly but with firmness. "i am going to marry mr. bradbury nicholson of new york." she added a few words as to his identity, then with an emphasis intended to express the ardor of a soul which has come to its own at last, exclaimed: "i'm deeply in love with him, mamma; and i never was with clarence. i thought i was, but i wasn't. this time it's the real thing." mrs. wilson rose and returning to her desk rested her head again upon her supported elbow. she was stunned. the shock of the announcement was such that she did not attempt to speak. but lucille, having begun, was evidently bent on making a clean breast of her affairs. "so i am on my way to sioux falls to obtain a divorce." "why do you go there?" "because it is one of the quickest places. residence is necessary to enable me to sue, and residence can be acquired by living there ninety days. then, too, the courts don't insist on very strict proof, so i can obtain a divorce for neglect or cruelty, and avoid the unpleasantness of alleging anything worse. i thought of connecticut, where the law allows a divorce for any such misconduct as permanently destroys one's happiness and defeats the marriage relation, but my lawyer said it would be simpler and quicker to go to south dakota. clarence knows all about it, and is only too glad, and he has agreed to give up all claim on baby." the reference to her grandchild plunged a fresh dagger into mrs. wilson's heart. "where is your baby?" she asked, sternly. she had already in the carriage inquired for its welfare, taking for granted that its mother had been unwilling to bring it on what had appeared to be a flying journey. "at newport. two of my maids and baby are to join me here. i don't wish to start for a week, if you will keep me, and, as there was packing still to be done, and the newport air is fresher so early in the autumn, i told them to follow. you may keep baby here until i send for her, if it would make you feel any happier, mamma." mrs. wilson made no response to this self-sacrificing offer. she was asking herself whether it were not her duty as an outraged parent to rise in her agony and, pointing to the door, bid lucille choose between her lover and herself. but would not this be old-fashioned? could she endure to quarrel with her own and only flesh and blood? overwhelmed as she was by her daughter's absolute indifference to considerations which she reverenced as the laws of her being, mrs. wilson prided herself on being equally a leader of spiritual progress, a woman of the world, and an american. she recognized that it behooved her to display no less acumen and tact in dealing with her personal problem than in confronting the quandaries of others. she knew instinctively that violent opposition would simply alienate lucille and confirm her in her purpose. it was obvious that their point of view was as divergent as the poles. how could lucille take the affair so philosophically? how could she calmly regard the neglect and sin of her husband merely as the logical sequence of the discovery that they were mismated, and find a sufficient explanation for everything in the announcement that they had bored each other? yet mrs. wilson appreciated in those moments of horror that it would be worse than futile to give bitter utterance to her emotions. by so doing she would alienate her daughter and fail to alter the situation. though protesting with the full vigor of her being, she must be reasonable or she could accomplish nothing. so she put a curb upon her lips. there were so many things she wished to say that for a spell she could not formulate her thoughts. she was reminded that she appeared tongue-tied by hearing lucille remark: "i was afraid that you would be distressed, mamma. that's why i didn't write or consult you. you don't approve of divorce, i know. it's opposed to your ideas of things. but i've thought over everything thoroughly, and it's the only possible course for me." this complacency was disconcerting as a stone wall, and made still plainer to mrs. wilson that the offender indulgently regretted the necessity of explaining and vindicating such common-sense principles. "it is true, lucille, that i disapprove of divorce on æsthetic if not religious grounds. it is an unsavory institution." she paused a moment to give complete effect to the phrase. "it seems to me to diminish spiritual self-respect, and to impair that feminine delicacy which is an essential ornament of civilization. at the same time, if you had told me that, on account of your husband's sin, you had decided not merely to leave him, but to dissolve the bond, i should have demurred, perhaps, but i should have acquiesced. i should have counselled you to live apart without divorce, as i regard marriage as a sacrament of the christian church, but i should have accepted your decision to the contrary without a serious pang. but you have just told me, my child, that you are seeking a divorce from your husband because you are mismated, in order to become as quickly as possible the wife of another man, whom you profess to love. i cannot prevent you from doing this if you insist, but as your mother, i cannot let you commit what seems to me, from the most lenient standpoint, a gross indelicacy, without seeking to dissuade you." in conjunction with her ambition to reason in a triple capacity, mrs. wilson was well aware that the world demands promptness of decision no less than wisdom from its busy leaders; that the public relies on the past equipment of the lawyer or the physician for correct advice on the spur of the moment. it was her custom to face confidently the problems of life which others invited her to solve, as a surgeon confronts the operating table, ready to do her best on the spot. she knew that the consciousness of being rushed is part of the penalty of success, and that half the effectiveness of a busy person consists in the ability to think and act quickly. so now, face to face with her own dire problem, her mind centred on the fit solution of her daughter's tragedy, she relied on the same method, yearning to apply the knife, tie up the ligaments and cauterize the heart-sorrow in summary fashion by virtue of her past equipment. so she spoke with conviction, yet aware that the problem presented had been hitherto for her mainly academic, and now for the first time loomed up on the horizon of life as an immediate practical issue. pursuing her theme mrs. wilson singled out for urgent protest the one point which stood out like an excrescence on the surface of the sorry story, and put all else in the background--the projected hasty marriage. its precipitancy offended her most cherished sensibilities. with all the sentiment and mental suppleness at her command she endeavored to point out the vulgarity of the proceeding. how was it to be reconciled with true womanly refinement? was the holy state of matrimony to be shuffled off and on as though it were a misfit glove? she appealed to the claims of good taste and family pride. but, though lucille listened decorously, it was obvious that the effect of the scandal of mutual prompt remarriages had no terrors for her. or, rather, when her mother paused, she disputed it, claiming that the affair would be a seven days' wonder; that the world would speedily forget, or, at least, forgive, if the new ventures proved successful; that precipitancy in such cases was not novel, and that the people whose social approbation she desired would consider her sensible for putting an end to an intolerable relation and claiming her happiness at the earliest possible date. from a wholesale plea of what she referred to as spiritual decency directed against unseemly haste, mrs. wilson, sick at heart, began to particularize, and at the same time enlarged her attitude so as to disclose her innate feeling against divorce in general. she spoke of the plight of the children concerned, and in alluding to her grandchild, her tone was piteous. the thought seemed to give her courage, so that when lucille, who evidently had a pat response to this contention ready, sought to interrupt, mrs. wilson raised a warning hand to signify that she must insist on being heard to the end. she dwelt upon the value of the home to human society, and in this appeal she gave free utterance to her religious convictions, defending the sacredness of the marriage tie from the point of view of christian orthodoxy. she spoke with emotion and at some length, though she had never thought the matter out hitherto as a personal issue, she found that she had in reserve a whole set of argumentative principles to back her æsthetic eloquence. she urged upon her daughter that if neither good taste, family pride, nor maternal solicitude would restrain her, she heed the teachings of the church, which had prescribed the law of strict domestic ties as essential to the righteous development of human civilization, and which regarded the family as the corner-stone of social order and social beauty. was her only child prepared to fly so flagrantly in the face of this teaching? would she refuse to reverence this standard? as she evolved this final plea, mrs. wilson felt herself on firmer ground. it seemed to her that she had welded all her protesting instincts into a comprehensive claim which could not be resisted, for, though emphasizing the obligations of the soul, she had tried to be both broad and modern. she had not quoted the language of scripture--the words of christ imposing close limitations, if not an absolute bar on divorce. she felt that there was more chance in influencing lucille through an intellectual appeal to her sense of social wisdom based on present conditions, though to the speaker's own mind the modern argument was simply a vindication of the precious inspired truth. but she dismissed the thought that her daughter was regarding her as old-fashioned, and she spoke from the depths of her being, so that when she ceased, there were tears upon her cheeks. lucille had listened indulgently with downcast eyes. she was unmoved; nevertheless, with nervous inappropriateness, she turned slowly round and round the wedding-ring on her finger as she revolved her mother's appeal. when the end came she remained respectfully silent for a moment, but there was matter-of-fact definiteness in her reply. "you know, mamma, that you and i never did agree on things like that. i don't recognize the right of the church to interfere, so i put religion put of the question. as to injury to civilization, it seems to me of no advantage to society, and preposterous besides, that two persons utterly mismated, like clarence and me, should continue wretched all our lives when the law of the land will set us free. what good would it do if i remained single?" "live apart, if you like; but to marry again--and so quickly, lucille, is an offence both against the flesh and the spirit," said mrs. wilson, tensely. "good? it would help to maintain the integrity of the home upon which progressive civilization rests." lucille pursed her lips. "i shall have a home when i marry again. a far happier home than before; and baby will be far happier than if she grew up in a discordant household where there was no love and mutual indifference. besides, supposing i didn't marry again--supposing paul's wife did not marry again, what would happen? we should lead immoral lives, as people similarly situated do in the latin countries, where the church forbids the marriage of divorced persons. it ought to satisfy you, mamma, that there is not a word of truth in the story of too intimate relations between me and mr. nicholson circulated at newport. i told him i should keep him at arm's length until i was divorced and at liberty to marry him. i let him kiss me once, and that was all. what would a woman in paris or london have done? the church there doesn't seem to mind what goes on behind the scenes, provided the mass of the people is kept in ignorance." mrs. wilson had colored at the reference to calumniating rumors. it was clear, now, why paul had preferred to speak by proxy. could it be her own daughter who was claiming credit for such forbearance? her first impulse was to inquire what conduct had given rise to the more serious imputation, but she shrank from the question. it was lucille who spoke first. "i assure you, i expect to have a very charming home, and, if i have more children, to bring them up well. in a year or two the hateful past will seem only a nightmare. why should you or the church seek to deprive me of happiness? in my individual case our--your church would marry me because my husband had been unfaithful, provided i procured a divorce on that ground--which i do not intend to do. but i am defending myself on general principles. as your daughter you would wish me to have the courage of my convictions." mrs. wilson sighed. this appeal to her independence was discouragingly genuine. "then, where do you draw the line?" she asked, repeating a formula. "as to divorce?" lucille shrugged her shoulders. "the courts decide that, i suppose. i asked what the law was, and the lawyer told me." mrs. wilson groaned. "the courts! and, accordingly, you apply to the court which will grant you a divorce most speedily." "and with the least possible unpleasant procedure. certainly, i wish to be married as soon as possible." "the law must be changed." mrs. wilson clasped her hands energetically. "very likely, mamma. now we are on sensible ground. but if the law were made more strict the church would still object. so it wouldn't make much difference from your point of view." there was a touch of complacent paganism in the tone of this last remark which fused mrs. wilson's poignant emotions to a fever point. "it crucifies renunciation. it is individualism run mad. child, child!" she exclaimed, "do not be too sure that easy-going rationalism is the answer to all the problems of the universe. the time will yet come when you will recognize what ideals mean--when your eyes will be opened to the unseen things of the spirit. before you take this step i beg of you to talk with mr. prentiss." lucille shook her head, but her reply was unexpectedly humble. she avoided an opinion regarding the prophecy, but her words disclosed that she wished her mother to perceive that her soul had its own troubles, and was not altogether self-congratulatory in its processes. "of course i would give anything if clarence and i had not fallen out, and our marriage proved a failure. i can see that such an experience takes the freshness from any woman's life. it would be of no use, however, for me to see mr. prentiss. we should differ fundamentally. i do not regard marriage as a sacrament, he does. you see i have considered the question from all sides, mamma." "you regard it as a contract, i suppose," said mrs. wilson, pensively. "yes; the most solemn, the most important of contracts, if you like, but a contract." lucille was trying to be reasonable, but her sense of humor suddenly getting the better of her filial discretion, she added: "why, of course, it is simply a contract. everyone except clergymen regards it so nowadays. if clarence had died, i could marry again; why shouldn't i be just as free, when he has been untrue to me, to regard our marriage at an end--and----" mrs. wilson put up her hand. "i am familiar with the argument. for adultery, perhaps, yes; but for everything else, no. and the roman church forbids it absolutely." she reflected a moment, then, as one who has worked out vindication for an ancient principle by the light of modern ideas, she added, impressively, "it may well be, that from the standpoint of the welfare of the home--the protection of human society against rampant selfish individualism--the oldest church of all was wise, and is wise, in insisting on adherence to the letter of the words of christ as best adapted to the safety of civilization. and that, too," she continued, significantly, "even though the souls affected sin in secret, because they cannot override the law. i do not say," she added, noticing the surprise in her daughter's face, "that this winking of the church is defensible; but i submit that the consequences can be no worse than those resulting from the flood-tide of easy divorce, the fruit of unbridled caprice." "and what do you say to the attitude of the church of england, of which our episcopal church is an offshoot. an english woman in newport told me the other day that a wife cannot obtain a divorce from her husband unless infidelity be coupled with cruel and abusive treatment, though the contrary is true in case of a man. a husband can have his affairs, provided he does not make them public or beat his wife, but she must toe the mark. and in england the law of the church is the law of the land." mrs. wilson pondered a moment. "our episcopal church sanctions no such distinction. but, after all, woman is not quite the same as man. her standard is different; she still expects to be held to a subtler sense of beauty and duty in matters which involve the perpetuation of the race. the english rule seems old-fashioned to us, for we insist on equal purity for the husband and the wife as essential to domestic unity. yet the framers of that law were wise in their day; wise, surely, if the doctrine of loose marital bonds is to imperil the permanence of the institution we call the family." "but i fail to see the advantage to human society of any family the two chief members of which are at daggers drawn, and mutually unhappy." mrs. wilson recognized that the gulf of contradiction which yawned between them was bottomless, and not to be bridged. we learn with reluctance that each generation is a law unto itself. yet she said, as a swan song, "the episcopal church and also the roman catholic church stand for, and reverence, the ideals of beauty, of imagination, of aspiration. they abhor spiritual commonness. they forget not the words of the proverb: 'keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.' divorce is a device of mediocrity and dwarfed vision. it is a perquisite of commonness." the phrase made lucille start, and she sat troubled for a moment. to be adjudged common was the most disconcerting indictment which could have been framed. but reflection was reassuring. she answered presently. "i'm sure it won't make any difference in my case; everybody i care about will call on me just the same." meanwhile, under the shock to her convictions, mrs. wilson had bowed her face on her hands on her desk, and hot tears moistened her palms. lucille watched her nervously, then rose and went to her, and put her arm about her. "you mustn't feel so badly, mamma. it will come out all right: i know it will. i am certain to be happy--and though you may not think it, i am much more serious than i used to be. of course, i wouldn't belong to any other church than the episcopal; all the nicest people one knows are episcopalians now. as you say, that and the roman catholic are the only ones which appeal to the imagination." mrs. wilson's tears flowed faster at this demonstration of sympathy. she accepted and was soothed by the caresses, but she was ashamed of and stunned by her defeat, and could not reconcile herself to it. she would make one effort more. "since you will not permit mr. prentiss to remonstrate with you," she said, "you will, at least, talk with your uncle?" lucille reflected. she had not forgotten the diamond tiara with which her uncle had presented her as a wedding present, the crowning act of many splendid donations, though to have only one tiara had already become a sign of relative impecuniosity in the social circle in which she aspired to move. the wife of a genuine multi-millionaire was expected to have as many tiaras as she had evening dresses. lucille was fond of her uncle, and she still wished to appear what she considered reasonable. "he could not alter my determination, mamma. but if uncle carleton wishes to talk with me, i shall feel bound to listen," she responded. mrs. wilson felt encouraged by the first effect on her brother of the announcement of lucille's plans. from paul's report, mr. howard had assumed that his niece, like his son, was simply a victim of the distressing double-tragedy, and the news of lucille's projected hasty divorce with a view to immediate remarriage offended his sense of propriety and evoked at once a fiat no less explicit than his earlier declaration that the sooner paul's nuptial knot was cut, and the wretched business terminated, the better. his present words--that such indecorous proceedings were not to be tolerated for a moment--were uttered with the deliberate emphasis which marked his important verdicts--his railroad manner, some people called it--and conveyed the impression of a reserve force not to be resisted with impunity. the interview between him and lucille took place in the evening, and lasted nearly an hour. mrs. wilson was not present. at its close she heard her daughter re-enter the house through the private passageway and go up-stairs. shortly after, her brother joined her. he sat for a few moments without speaking, as though reviewing what had occurred, then said, with the plausible air of one claiming the right to revise a judgment in the light of having heard the other side of the issue: "apparently we have to decide whether we prefer that lucille should marry young nicholson as soon as the law allows, or that she should continue to receive his marked attentions, which have already inspired compromising rumors, happily baseless. it seems that the object of her infatuation--a circumstance which she did not state to you--is anxious--in fact, hopes, to obtain one of the minor diplomatic appointments. his father, as you know, is president of the chemical trust and intimate with some of the influential senators. should i intervene in his behalf with the authorities at washington, the probabilities of his obtaining the position, already excellent, will be improved, provided, of course, there is no scandal. if we could shut lucille up--confine her by summary process for six months, until she had time to reflect--she might change her attitude. at any rate, we should avoid the precipitancy which is the most objectionable feature of the affair. but the girl is a free agent. we cannot prevent her from going to south dakota if she insists, and she does insist. she refuses to wait the three years requisite to obtain a divorce for desertion here; and were she to allege what the newspapers are pleased to call the statutory offence, the proof required by our court would be exceedingly painful. she prefers a more accommodating jurisdiction, where fewer questions are asked, and the tie is promptly dissolved. so on the whole----" he paused to choose his phraseology, and his sister, guessing its substance, interposed: "then you sided with her?" "on the contrary, i opposed her strenuously. i expressed my disapproval in positive terms. but it became evident to me that she is in love with this young man and determined to marry him, and from every point of view i prefer the sanction of the law to clandestine illicit relations. would you prefer to have her abstain from a divorce and live abroad with bradbury nicholson? that is what she intimated would happen if she followed our wishes." mrs. wilson groaned. "and to think that this is the reasoning of my daughter!" "i will do her the justice to say," continued mr. howard, joining the points of his fingers, "that she talked quietly and with some discrimination. it troubles her greatly that you are distressed. i disapprove of her conduct, but i was pleased on the whole with her mental powers." "yes. she is cleverer than i supposed," murmured mrs. wilson. "so you gave in?" "not at all. we agreed to differ. i presume you did not wish me to quarrel with her?" "oh, no. we must never do that." "exactly. in the course of our discussion she asked me if i thought she ought to remain a widow all her days, and, as a reasonable human being, i was obliged to admit that there was much to be said on her side." "a widow! she is not a widow." "she chose the word, not i. she tells me that you have already discussed with her the religious--the sentimental side of the question." "and failed utterly." there was a silence, which was broken by the banker. "i advise you, miriam, to make the best of a painful situation. there are only two courses open: to disown her, or to let her follow her own course, and put the best front on it we can. after all, she is only doing what thousands of other women in this country----" "ah, yes!" cried mrs. wilson. "and with that argument what becomes of noble standards--of fine ideals of life? i almost wish i had the moral courage to show myself the spartan mother, and to disown her." "oh, no, you don't. you would only make yourself miserable." having discovered that he had been checkmated, it was a business maxim with mr. howard to accept the inevitable and clear the board of vain regrets. he set himself to counteract these hysterical manifestations of his sister. "besides, it would do no good in this case to cut off the revenue, for nicholson has plenty for them both. to disinherit one's children is an antiquated method of self-torture." "i had no reference to money," answered mrs. wilson with a gesture to express disdain for the consideration. "i was thinking of my love as a mother." "you cannot help loving her, whatever happens," answered her brother significantly. mrs. wilson acknowledged the force of this comment by a piteous stare. she forsook the personal for the philosophic attitude. "but if this loose view of the marriage tie is to obtain, where is it to end? how long will it be before we imitate the degeneracy of rome? we are imitating it already." "i made a similar remark to lucille. i reminded her that the ease and frequency of divorce were among the causes of the decline of rome. her reply was that we are americans, not romans. of course, there is something in what she says. our point of view is very different from theirs." mr. howard felt of his strong chin meditatively. "but where is it to end?" repeated mrs. wilson in a tragic tone. he shook his head. "it is an abuse, i admit; especially as administered in some of our states. presently, when we get time, we americans will take the question up and go into it thoroughly." the hopeless incongruity of this reply from mrs. wilson's point of view put the finishing touch to their conversation. it was obvious to her that she could not expect true sympathy or comprehension from her brother. it was clear that he was satisfied with opportunist methods, and that the precise truth had no immediate charms for him. rebuffed in respect to the support of both her champions, mrs. wilson felt strangely powerless; almost limp. she made no further appeal to her daughter; the discussion was not resumed, but when the baby arrived, she reminded lucille of the proposal that she keep possession of her grandchild during its mother's sojourn in south dakota, and accepted it. this was some comfort, and mrs. wilson remained in a trance, as it were, seeking neither sympathy nor outside suggestion until after the evil day of mrs. waldo's departure. not until then did she send for mr. prentiss. that the rector could do nothing to thwart the programme outlined by lucille was clear, and she had dreaded the possibility of his advising an attitude on her part which would induce complete estrangement from her daughter. when he came she was relieved that he made no such suggestion. he seemed, like herself, overwhelmed with dismay, and, after he had heard her story, equally conscious of helplessness in the premises. indeed it resulted that mr. prentiss, having realized that he could be of no avail in the particular emergency, turned from the shocking present to the future. lucille was beyond the pale of influence (though he declared his intention of writing to her), but this painful example would be a fresh spur to the church to take strong ground against the deadly peril to christian civilization involved in playing fast and loose with the marriage tie. mr. prentiss glowed with the thought of what he could and would put into a sermon. consciousness of the abuse had for some time been smouldering in his mind, and he reflected that it was time for him to imitate the example of other leaders of his sect by undertaking a crusade against indiscriminate divorce. appalled as he was by the behavior of his friend's daughter, he reverted--but not aloud--to his previous opinion that it had been a godless marriage. hence there was less occasion for surprise, and the instance in question lost some of its pathos as a consequence. but it provided him with a terrible incentive for saving others from the pitfall which had engulfed this self-sufficient and worldly minded young woman. his zeal communicated itself to mrs. wilson--for he did not fail in due manifestation of personal sympathy--and when he left her at the end of a visit of two hours her favorite impulse toward social reform was already acting as a palliative to her anguish and disappointment as a mother. a few days later her brother informed her that paul's wife had refused to wait the three years necessary to entitle the one or other of them to institute dignified divorce proceedings, on the ground of desertion, in the state where her husband had his domicile, and that she had gone to nebraska to pursue her own remedy. mr. howard, though obviously disgusted, finally dismissed the matter with a sweep of his hand, and the utterance, "i guess, on the whole, the sooner he is rid of her the better." but this apothegm, which for a second time did him service, only increased his sister's dejection. the disgrace of the family seemed to stare her in the face more potently than ever. following within a few weeks of this information came the disclosures in the newspapers of the double divorce with their sensational innuendoes as to what had occurred at newport. for three days she kept the house, too sick at heart to attempt to simulate in public the veneer of an unruffled countenance. then she visited gordon perry's office, and consulted him as to the feasibility of putting some legal obstacle in the way of her daughter's procedure; but learned from him, as she had feared, that she was powerless. when she resumed her ordinary avocations she feared lest the shame she felt should mantle her cheek and impair the varnish of well-bred serenity. it was while she was in this frame of mind that she was accosted by loretta, and the effect of the bald remarks was as though someone had invaded her bosom with a rude cold hand. they froze her to the marrow, and while, on second thought, she ascribed the liberty to ignorance, she felt disappointed at the evolution of her ward. such lack of delicacy, such inability to appreciate the vested rights of the soul argued ill for loretta's progress in refinement. there was no second invasion of mrs. wilson's privacy. it seemed to her, as the days passed, that she had been through a crushing illness, and she felt the mental lassitude of slow convalescence. the receipt of mrs. stuart's brief letter informing her that she had been injured and was in need of counsel was a sudden reminder that she had allowed her personal sorrow to render her selfishly heedless of all else. it served as the needed tonic to her system. she swept away the cobwebs of depression from her brain, and with a firm purpose to resume her place in the world despatched forthwith a sympathetic note and two bunches of choice grapes to the invalid, and on the following morning gave orders to her coachman to drive her to lincoln chambers. xx the sight of constance's colored glasses stirred mrs. wilson's sensibilities, already on edge. "you poor child!" she exclaimed, advancing with emotional eagerness, as the culmination of which she drew the young woman toward her and kissed her. this was a touch of bounty beyond mrs. wilson's ordinary reserve, but in bestowing it she was conscious that the recipient had deserved it, and consequently she was pleased at having yielded to the impulse. besides having noticed with satisfaction the gradual change in constance's appearance--both her increasing comeliness and tasteful adaptiveness in respect to dress--it distressed her that her ward's charm should be marred by so unæsthetic an accompaniment. "what does this mean? what grisly thing has happened?" constance was touched by the embrace. she had passed a sleepless night confronting her exciting problem. already this morning she had listened to the passages in those chapters of the first three gospels, matthew xix, mark x and luke xvi, in which are set forth christ's doctrine concerning divorce and remarriage. as soon as the children had gone to school, she had taken her concordance of the bible from the shelf, and heedless of mrs. harrity's wonder, had pressed the old woman into service to find and read to her the texts in question. constance had not considered these for years, and had only a general remembrance of their phraseology, but in the watches of the night her thoughts had turned to them as traditional spiritual sign-posts with which she must familiarize herself forthwith. just before mrs. wilson's entrance she had taken up her broom, hoping that, while she performed her necessary housework, she might thresh out the truth from her bundle of doubts. what if the truth meant the sacrifice of bright, alluring prospects for her children, and of her own new, great happiness? could it then be the truth? more than ever did she feel the need of counsel and sympathy. at the appearance of her benefactress her pulses bounded, and the appeal in her glad greeting doubtless gave a cue to the visitor's initiative. the gracious kiss on her cheek, so unexpected and so grateful, added the finishing touch to her overstrained nerves, and she burst into tears. mrs. wilson folded her in her arms and encouraged her to sob. such philanthropy seemed to bless the giver no less than the receiver. she had arrived in the nick of time to be of service. "there, there," she said, "you are suffering; you should be in bed. you must tell me presently everything, and i will send my own doctor to prescribe for you." so, presuming the cause of this distress, she stroked the back of constance's hair and held her soothingly. for some moments constance made no attempt to check her convulsive mood, but with her head bowed on the friendly shoulder wept hysterically. when the reaction came she drew back dismayed at having lost her self-control, and as she wiped away her tears and hastily regained her ordinary dignity of spirit, exclaimed, "it isn't that. i have been in bed--i had a fall in the street; but i am quite strong again except for my eyes. i am forbidden to use them for six months. but otherwise i am as well as ever. and i have had a competent doctor." "not use your eyes for six months?" there was incredulity no less than horror in mrs. wilson's tone. constance was herself again by this time. she made her visitor sit down, and she succinctly described the circumstances of the accident and the specialist's examination, so that the authenticity of his verdict and the reality of her predicament were patent. mrs. wilson rose gladly and promptly to what seemed to her the occasion. "you poor child. it is cruel--disastrous. but give yourself no concern. i shall claim my prerogative as a warm friend to see that you and yours do not suffer until the time when you are able to resume your regular work. your employer, mr. perry, what has he said to this? his necessities oblige him to let you go, i dare say." "on the contrary, he has been kindness itself. he wished me to remain; he would have invented occupation for me. then i wrote to you and mr. prentiss. it occurred to me that you might think of something genuine which i could do for a living until i could use my eyes." constance paused. her heart was in her mouth again at the approach of the impending revelation. "leave it all to me. there will not be the slightest difficulty. i will find just the thing." then, suspecting that constance's troubled look was due to suspicion of this blithe generality, mrs. wilson bent forward and added beseechingly, "you will let me help you this time, won't you?" "indeed i will--if--if you wish," answered constance with a sweet smile. so at this heart-to-heart appeal she stripped herself of her pride as of a superfluous garment and cast it from her. then she said, "you don't understand. everything has changed since i wrote to you yesterday afternoon. i need your help, your advice, mrs. wilson, more than i ever needed it before. you do not know how thankful i was when i saw you at the door. i have been trying to bring myself to the point ever since. i think i can talk composedly now. last evening my employer, mr. gordon perry, asked me to become his wife." the instinctive thrill which the disclosure of unsuspected romance inspires in every woman seized mrs. wilson, and with it swift realization of what a piece of good fortune from every point of view had befallen her deserving ward. constance's tears and need for counsel suggested but one thing, a situation old as the hills, but like them always interesting. jumping at this hypothesis, mrs. wilson, eager to show that she had comprehended in a flash, responded, "and you do not love him?" "that is the pity of it; i love him with all my heart." then mrs. wilson remembered. she had been so accustomed to think of constance as alone in the world, that in the first glow of interest she had overlooked the crucial fact in the case. the recollection of it was disconcerting in a double sense, for she suddenly found herself confronting the same dire problem from the haunting consideration of which she had just emerged. but though her first resulting emotion was similar to that which one feels at re-encountering an obnoxious acquaintance, from whom one has escaped, that which followed was a sense of contrast between the two points of view presented by the separate situations, which culminated in the animating thought that here at last was a soul alive to its own responsibilities. meanwhile she heard constance say by way of interpretation: "my husband is still living so far as i know, and i have never been divorced from him." mrs. wilson put up her hand. "i know, i know, my dear. pardon the momentary lapse. i am entirely aware of your circumstances. and there is no need, constance, to explain anything. believe me, i appreciate all; i understand the meaning of your agitation, i recognize the luminous reality of the issue with which you have been brought face to face." constance drew a deep breath. it was a relief to her to be spared preliminaries and to pass directly to the vital question. "it would mean so much for my children." to mrs. wilson's ear the simple words were imbued with a plaintive but courageous sadness, suggesting that the speaker was already conscious that this plea for her own flesh and blood, although the most convincing she could utter, fell short of justification. "it would." constance ignored if she observed the laconic intensity of the acquiescence. she was bent on setting forth the argument with more color, so she continued: "if i become mr. perry's wife, my children's future is assured. my son will be able to acquire a thorough education in art; my daughter, instead of being obliged to earn her living before she is mature, will have leisure to cultivate refinement. they would become members of a different social class. i need not explain to you, mrs. wilson, for it is from you that i have learned the value and the power of beauty. i covet for them the chance to gain appreciation of what is inspiring and beautiful in life, so that they need not be handicapped by ignorance as i have been." no other appeal so well adapted to engage her listener's sympathies could have been devised by a practical schemer. and the obvious ingenuousness of the almost naïve statement increased the force of it, for like the woman herself the plea stood out in simple relief impressive through its very lack of circumlocution and sophistry. except for the church's ban a new marriage seemed the most desirable--the most natural thing for this sympathetic woman in the heyday of feminine maturity and usefulness. mrs. wilson felt the blood rush to her face as the currents of religious and æsthetic interest collided. her brain was staggered for a moment. "oh, yes. i am sure you do," she murmured. "but----" her utterance was largely mechanical and the pause betrayed the temporary equilibrium of contending forces. but constance received the qualifying conjunction as a warning note. "there is a 'but,' an unequivocal 'but.' that is why i wish to consult you. i need your help. there is something more to add, though, first. marriage with gordon perry would freshen, sweeten my life, and make a new woman of me. he is the finest man i have ever known." she spoke the last sentence with heightened emphasis, plainly glorying in the avowal. "the simple question is, must i--is it my duty, to renounce all this? i ask you to tell me the truth." "the truth?" mrs. wilson echoed the words still in a maze. yet the clew was already in her grasp, and she delayed following it only because the greatness of the responsibility, precious as it was to her, kept her senses vibrant. at length she said with emotion: "this is a strange coincidence, constance. i have been face to face with this same issue for the past fortnight. my daughter has begun divorce proceedings against her husband in order to marry again. they simply were tired of each other; that is the true, flippant reason they are separating. each is to marry someone else. her light view of the marriage relation has almost broken my heart. and what is to blame? the low standard of society in respect to the sacredness of the marriage tie. i endeavored with all my soul to dissuade her, but in vain. i come from her to you. the circumstances of your two lives are very different, but is not the principle involved the same? my dear, if lucille--my daughter--could have seen the question as you see it, i should have been a happy mother. you ask my opinion. i recognize the solemnity of the trust. a blissful future is before you if you marry, welfare for your children and yourself. but in the other scale of the balance are the eternal verities, the duty one owes to society, the fealty one owes to christ. you spoke of beauty. the most beautiful life of all is that which embraces renunciation for a great cause, even at the cost of the most alluring human joys and privileges." gaining in fluency as she proceeded, because more and more enamoured of the cruel necessity of the sacrifice, mrs. wilson poured into these concluding words all the intensity of her nature. she would gladly have fallen on her knees and joined in ecstatic prayer with the victim had the demeanor of the latter given her the chance. her heart was full of admiration and of pity for constance and also of solicitude for the triumph of a human soul in behalf of an ideality which was at the same time the highest social wisdom. if for a moment her modern mind had revolted at the sternness of the sacrifice demanded, she was now spellbound by the shibboleth which meditation on her late experience had reaffirmed on her lips as a rallying cry, the safety of the home. "you cannot be ignorant," she exclaimed in another burst of expression, "that the stability of the family--the greatest safeguard of civilization--is threatened. what is the happiness of the individual compared with the welfare of all? in this day of easy divorces and quick remarriages is it not your duty to heed the teaching of the christian church, which stands as the champion of the sacrament of marriage?" constance's mien during the delivery of this exhortation suggested that of a prisoner of war listening to sentence of death, one who yearned to live, but who was trying already to derive comfort from the consequent glory; yet a prisoner, too, who clung to life and who was not prepared to accept his doom, however splendid, without exhausting every possibility of escape. though her face reflected spiritual appreciation of the great opportunity for service held out to her, and her nostrils quivered, her almost dauntless and obviously critical brow offered no encouragement to mrs. wilson's hope of a tumultuous quick surrender. she listened, weighing impartially the value of every word. but suddenly at the final sentences she quivered, as though they had pierced the armor of her suspended judgment, and inflicted a mortal wound. "would the church demand it absolutely?" she asked after a moment. "our church forbids remarriage except in case of divorce for adultery granted to the innocent party. the language of christ in the gospel of matthew seems to sanction this exception, contrary to his teaching as expressed in the other gospels. but there are many who maintain with the roman catholic church that the marriage tie can be dissolved only by death." "i know. i had them read to me this morning." though mrs. wilson regarded herself as a liberal constructionist of scriptural texts, and as in sympathy with the priests of her faith who glossed over or ignored biblical language justifying out-worn philosophy, she was glad now of the support of the letter of the christian law for the great social principal involved. divining by intuition what was working in the struggler's mind, and ever on the watch to satisfy her own standard as regards modern progressiveness of vision, she ventured this: "though the words of christ seem far away--though his world was very different from ours, as perhaps you were thinking, the human needs of to-day are a grand and unanswerable vindication of his teachings and of the church's canon." constance looked up wonderingly. was she dealing with a seer? "i was thinking that very thing, that the saviour's words seem so far away, perhaps he did not anticipate such a case as mine." "he invites you to suffer for his sake even as he did for yours." mrs. wilson had heard the doctrine of the atonement criticised as outworn, and she was by no means sure in her heart that it would survive the processes of religious evolution; yet she felt no scruples in proffering this cup of inspiration to a thirsty and not altogether sophisticated spirit. constance's lip trembled. "i neglected once to heed the voice of the church. i strayed away from christ. when i was in trouble the church sought me out, helped me and took me back." "i remember. mr. prentiss has told me." "would mr. prentiss consent to marry me?" "he could not perform the service; he is forbidden. you could be married only by some clergyman of another sect, if one would consent, or before a justice of the peace." it was evident from her tone that mrs. wilson classed the civil ceremony with the ugly things of life. "i see," said constance. "i feared that he would not--that he could not." she sat for some moments with her hands clasped before her staring at destiny. then spurred by one of the voices of protest she cried like one deploring an inevitable deed, "gordon will not understand. he will deem that i am flying in the face of reason and sacrificing our and the children's happiness to a delusion. he is a sane and conscientious man. he strives to do what is right. is it common sense that i must give him up?" she asked almost fiercely. mrs. wilson recognized the cry as the fluttering of a spirit resolved to conquer temptation. "to satisfy common sense would not satisfy you, constance," she answered with gentle fervor. "what you desire would be selfish; what the church invites you to do for the sake of the world, of the family, would be spiritual." "i wish to do what is right this time at any cost." as constance spoke there was a knock, and a moment later the rector of st. stephen's appeared in the doorway, a large, impressive figure. for an instant he stood looking to right and left, taking in the surroundings while the two women rose to greet him, and mrs. wilson uttered an eager aside to constance: "here is someone who will tell you what is right." perhaps she did not intend to smother the remark. at all events it was overheard by mr. prentiss, and it suggested to him an appropriate greeting. "i know of few better qualified to decide for herself what is right than mrs. stuart," he exclaimed with sonorous geniality, advancing. "i received your letter, and here i am. i am glad to see that another friend has been even more prompt," he added, shaking hands with mrs. wilson. "yes, i wrote to you both that i had been ill because i felt sure that you would be willing to advise with me as to my future," said constance. she endeavored to take the clergyman's silk hat, but he urbanely waved her back, and, depositing it on the table, threw open his long coat, and squaring himself in the chair offered him glanced around the somewhat darkened room. "well," he said, with cheery solicitude, "you must tell me your story." "let me explain, my dear," interposed mrs. wilson, and thereupon she glided from her chair, and seating herself on the sofa beside constance, proceeded to enlighten him. "our young friend has had a painful accident," she began, and in half a dozen graphic sentences she informed mr. prentiss of the details of the catastrophe and the scope of the injury. meanwhile she possessed herself of constance's hand, and from time to time patted it softly during the narration, in the course of which the rector on his part expressed appropriate concern for the victim. "when mrs. stuart wrote," she continued, "it was in order to consult us as to how she might best earn her livelihood until such time as her eyesight is restored. this was a pressing and delicate consideration for the reason that she suspected her employer of a design to invent occupation for her relief, which under all the circumstances was distasteful to her pride. the particular matter of providing her with suitable means of support i have taken upon myself, and the question is no longer perplexing her. it has been put in the shade by another and far more momentous problem, the solution of which we have been discussing for the last half hour. you come just in time to give her the benefit of your abundant insight and experience. since she wrote to you an unexpected and appealing event has come to pass. mrs. stuart has received an offer of marriage from mr. perry, her employer, who of course is aware that she still has a husband living from whom she has never been divorced." mrs. wilson designedly threw this searchlight upon the past history of her ward in order to save her rector from the possibility of finding himself in the same slough into which she had slipped as a result of inadvertence, and also to place the precise situation before him in one vivid flash. presumably what he had heard was a stirring surprise to mr. prentiss, but versed in receiving confessions he gave no sign of perturbation beyond compressing his lips and settling himself further back in his chair like one seeking to get his grip on an interesting theme. when mrs. wilson in bright-eyed consciousness of having sprung a sensation waited to enjoy its effect, he nodded, as much as to inform her that he had grasped the facts and that she might proceed. she fondled constance's hand for a little before doing so. she wished to come to the point directly, yet exhaustively; to avoid non-essentials, yet to present the theme with picturesqueness. "this little woman's heart is deeply engaged," she resumed. "she loves dearly the man who has offered himself to her. his wish to make her his wife is not only a precious compliment, but it holds forth interesting opportunities for happiness and advancement for her and for her two children. he is, as you know, a man of high standing in the community with prospects of distinction. from the point of view of worldly blessedness the offer is exceptionally alluring. moreover she would be a wife of whom he could be justly proud. you see what i mean. i have given you, i think, all the vital data which bear on the case." as she paused she noticed that constance stirred beside her. it had not been her intention to proceed further, but she made this clear by saying, "i leave the rest for you, my dear." the next moment the rector responded with grave, solicitous emphasis. "i believe that i recognize precisely the circumstances with all the inseparable perplexities and pathos." by an involuntary restless movement constance had indeed revealed her dread that mrs. wilson was about to state the arguments as well as the point at issue, and her spirit had risen in protest. for sitting there intent on every word she had had time to realize that a crucial moment in her life had arrived, and that no one else however clever could fitly express what was working in her mind in defence of her lover's cause. when now the desired chance to speak was afforded her there was no hesitation; the necessary burning question was on her lips--the one question which demanded an unequivocal answer. "mrs. wilson has stated all the facts. i ask you, mr. prentiss, to tell me truly if it is possible for me to marry mr. perry without doing wrong, without doing what you--the church--would not have me do. i am ready to renounce this great happiness if it would not be right in the highest sense for me to become his wife." it was the rector's turn to stir uneasily. his soul was rampant over the horrors of the divorce evil, but his humanity was momentarily touched by the rigor of this particular case. he, too, had had time to think, and his opinion was already formed. it had indeed arisen spontaneously from the depths of his inner consciousness as the only possible answer. yet as a wrestler with modern social problems he was disturbed to perceive that this sacrifice on this petitioner's part would have the surface effect of a hardship which, however salutary as a tenet of christian doctrine, was not altogether satisfactory from the practical standpoint. consequently his reply was a trifle militant. have you as a woman considered whether remarriage while your husband is alive would be consistent with the highest feminine purity? it was a specious attack, but for a moment constance did not comprehend. then when it came over her that he was imposing chastity upon her, and expressing surprise at her restlessness, she lowered her eyes instinctively. that phase of the case had occurred to her many times already. was it an impurity that she, with a husband living, should love another man? was the implied reproach sound? her feminine self-respect was dearer to her than life. yet she had not discussed the point with mrs. wilson, as exploration with the plummet of conscience of the recesses of her womanly self had left her without a qualm. she had even faced the repugnant possibility that, as the wife of gordon, she might hereafter be brought in contact with emil, and decided that it could not become a controlling bugbear. yet now when she raised her eyes again she looked first at her mentor. that lady had hers turned toward the ceiling in rapt meditation, but becoming conscious of constance's glance, she lowered them to meet it, and constance gathered from their troubled appeal that she agreed with the clergyman that remarriage for her would be incompatible with the highest personal delicacy and a breach of the law of beauty. this was almost a shock, and increased her trouble. her reason was still unconvinced that the objection was other than an affectation, but the joint disapproval was a challenge to her confidence. still she answered with the courage of her convictions: "i should like to marry because i am in love. if my husband were dead, it would not seem inappropriate that i should wed another." [illustration: "i should like to marry because i am in love."] "you are well provided for; you have employment and are earning a decent livelihood. you have friends who will see that your children do not lack opportunities for advancement. is not that enough?" he paused and quoted rhetorically: "wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh." constance broke the silence by completing the passage with reverence, "what therefore god hath joined together let not man put asunder." "precisely," murmured the rector. constance slipped her hand from mrs. wilson's and rose to her feet. why, she scarcely knew. she felt the impulse to stand before her judges, even as a petitioner at a court of final resort. though her heart was hungry for permission to enter the land of promise, she already guessed what the verdict would be. if her rector's hint that the project ought to have jarred upon her finer feminine instincts had left her unconvicted before the tribunal of her own wits, it had set her thinking. it had brought before her a retrospective vision of the long fealty of her sex to the voice of carnal purity, and its twin sister, woman's long fealty to the church. she must be true to her birthright as a woman; she must obey the higher law whatever the cost. no happiness could be comparable to that which obedience would bring. yet another thought held her, and a little doggedly. whatever her penitence for past error, she had never abdicated her heritage as an american woman--her right to the exercise of free judgment where the interests of her soul were concerned. her intelligence must be satisfied before she yielded. yet even as she rallied her energies for a second bout, it seemed to her that the memory of her late forgiveness by the church stood in the guise of an angel at the rector's side with grieving eyes, and the charge of ingratitude on its lips. but constance said sturdily and carefully: "i have reread the bible texts, mr. prentiss, and mrs. wilson has explained to me that as a priest of the episcopal church you could not marry me. i understand that. what i wish you to tell me is whether it would be a sin, a real sin, were i to be married elsewhere. the law allows it, only the church forbids. has the church no discretion, could no exception be made in a case like mine? in this age of the world it would seem as though justice and the demands which religion makes on the conscience ought to tally. you know the circumstances of my first marriage. because i made a dreadful mistake, is it my highest duty to renounce this happiness as a forbidden thing? it is for you to tell me. i must trust in you; i cannot decide for myself. my reason whispers to me that it would not be wrong for me to consent, but i am prepared to put this seeming blessing from me if by accepting it i should be guilty of a genuine weakness, should be helping to push society down instead of helping to maintain the standards of the world." mr. prentiss beamed upon her with pitying, gracious approval. now that he had recovered from his momentary access of temper he beheld in a clear light the reality of the sacrifice, her touching sincerity and his own opportunity. from the standpoint of righteousness there was no room in his mind for doubt or evasion; yet he felt that it behooved him to meet this spiritual conflict with all the tenderness of his priestly office. he had learned to admire this lithe, dark-haired woman, nor was her greater physical attraction lost on him. he realized as she stood before him that under the new dispensation she had waxed in charm and social effectiveness; and once more she was showing herself worthy of his enthusiasm. his ear had noticed the felicity of her last thought, and he was musing on the sophisticated scope of it when mrs. wilson's dulcet voice broke the silence. "i have made clear to mrs. stuart, mr. prentiss, that the advanced thought of the church finds in the words of christ not merely an inspired utterance concerning divorce, but the rallying cry in behalf of a profound, practical, social reform." the rector bent on his ally a discerning glance of satisfaction. he perceived gratefully that she had made the most of her opportunities to till the soil from which he looked for a rich harvest. "my dear friend," he said to constance, "you have put upon me a great responsibility from which i must not shrink. but however uncompromising my duty as a servant of christ may cause me to appear, believe me that my understanding is not blind to the human distress under which you labor. you are asked to renounce what is for woman the greatest of temporal joys, the love of a deserving man." he paused a moment to mark the fervor of his sympathy. "were i willing to palter with the truth, and did i deem you to be common clay unable to appreciate and live up to it, i might say to you 'go and be married elsewhere. it will be an offence; it will not have the sanction of the church; but others have done the same, and you will have the protection of the secular law.' although the roman catholic priest has but one answer under all circumstances however pitiful, 'who, having a husband or wife living, marries again, cannot remain a member of the church,' it might seem permissible to some of my cloth not to condemn remarriage in the case of a dense soul as a grievous sin. but such palliation would sear my lips were i to utter it for your relief. you have asked me what is the vital truth--your highest christian duty. there can be but one answer. to respect the marriage bond and, keeping yourself unspotted from the world, hold to one husband for your mortal life so long as you both do live. to yield would not be a crime as the ignorant know crime, but it would be a sapping carnal weakness, inconsistent with the spiritual wisdom which has hitherto led you. it would indeed help to lower the standards of human society. i may not equivocate, my dear friend. this is the ideal of the christian church in respect to marriage and divorce. invoke the human law for your protection against your husband if you will, but he is still your husband in the eyes of god, and if you wed another you commit adultery." constance, seeming like a breathing statue, save for her odd disfigurement, her arms before her at full length, her hands folded one upon the other, heard her sentence and love's banishment. already she felt the thrill of a solemn impulse to bear this cross laid upon her, not as a cross but as a fresh opportunity for service, yet she said: "then the law of the church and the law of the state stand opposed to each other!" she spoke in soliloquy as it were, phrasing an existing condition for the explanation of which her intelligence still lacked the key. mr. prentiss drew himself up. "yes, they stand opposed, as in so many other instances. the law of the state is for the weak; the law of the church--of christ--is for the strong. verily the church has been magnanimous and forbearing. it has resigned to the state little by little control of the social machinery. but here, where the foundations of society are at stake, it behooves her to stand firm. the law of spirit is at war with the law of flesh. monogamy is the corner-stone of christian civilization." "and hence it is that marriage is a sacrament; that the marriage bond bears the seal of heaven," added mrs. wilson ardently, as the rector, contented with his metaphor, stopped short in his righteous foray. "if my marriage was made in heaven, we were ill-mated," retorted constance. the thought seemed so repugnant to her that she revolted at it. but mr. prentiss, like a true physician of the soul, was equal to the emergency. "the choice was yours, and you made a dreadful mistake. have you yourself not said so? shall you not pay the penalty, my daughter? you thought you knew him whom you married." "oh, yes, indeed; but i was very young." "may they not all say the same? and yet," pursued the rector, in a tone of proselytizing triumph, "the demon of divorce lurks at our firesides and, stalking through every walk of life, makes light of the holy tie as though it were of straw, mocking the solemn associations of the family, and taking from the innocent child the refining and safe-guarding influence of a stable, unsullied home. yet the state stands by and winks at--aye, connives at and promotes the foul programme, rehabilitating shallowness and vice through the respectable red seal of the law. yes, there are two standards. as a modern priest i am aware of the sophistry of the criticism, for who, if the church does not, will stand as the protector of the home? and if it sometimes happens, as it must happen," he concluded in an exalted whisper, "that the apparent earthly happiness of one must be sacrificed for the good of the many, i know that you are not the woman to falter." "oh, no--oh, no," answered constance, shaking her head. "it is a terrible condition of affairs, is it not? i see; i understand." she resumed her seat on the sofa and covered her face with her hands. for a few moments there was silence. mrs. wilson restrained a melting impulse to put her arm around her ward's shoulder in pitying encouragement. she felt that it was wiser to wait. "terrible," repeated constance, as though she had been dwelling on the thought, and she looked up. her manner was calm and sweetly determined. "thank you, mr. prentiss--thank you both so much. there is only one thing to do--one thing i wish to do, now that my duty has been made entirely plain. i shall tell mr. perry that though i love him i cannot marry him." "there is no reason that you should come to a decision on the spot," said mr. prentiss, reluctant to take undue advantage of an emotional frame of mind. "take time to consider the matter." but constance shook her head. "that would not help me. i have thought it out already. i could not consent to sin, and you have explained, to me that it would be a sin." "a sin surely; a carnal sin for you, mrs. stuart," said the clergyman with doughty firmness. constance gave a little nervous laugh--or was it the echo of a shiver? "i had a conviction that it could never be. it was a pleasant dream." the pathos of the simple utterance reawoke mrs. wilson's strained sensibilities. she bent and kissed constance on the forehead. then turning to her rector she murmured with reverent ecstasy: "will you not pray with us, mr. prentiss?" it was a grateful, benignant suggestion to the sufferer; the tonic which her yearning, baffled spirit needed. divining as by telepathy that the moment had arrived for just this spiritual communion, the clergyman set the example to the two women by falling on his knees, and presently his voice was raised in fervent prayer. it was the prayer of praise and victory, not of consolation and distress. he thanked god--as he could do with an overflowing heart--for this triumph of intelligent spiritual discernment over the lures of easygoing and numbing materialism. the outcome of the occasion was indeed for him an oasis, one of those green, fruitful passages in the more or less general dryness of heart-to-heart contact with his parishioners, the occurrence of which made him surer both of his own professional capacity and of the eternal truths of his religion. his invocation of his god was alike a pæan of thanksgiving and an acknowledgment of rekindled faith. as for constance, his words were so many cups of water to a thirsty soul. scorched by his exaltation, the cloud mists of doubt no longer perplexed her, and she beheld with radiant eyes her cross, her privilege to renounce what reason and human passion urged, for the sake of an ideal--the higher, vital needs of the human race. when mr. prentiss had finished mrs. wilson did not for a moment trust herself to speak. her eyes were full of tears. she had knelt as close to constance as she felt to be harmonious. it was a glorious hour also for her. the steadfastness of this woman of the people was not only a subtle personal tribute, but it had refreshed the tired arteries of her being. when her daughter had left her house, secure and cold in the pride of a revolting scheme of life, it had almost seemed that god mocked her. but now the glories of his grace were manifest. "constance," she said, "i will call for you to-morrow, to sit in my pew. it is sunday, you know." xxi in saying to constance that he had pondered the question of their marriage from her standpoint, gordon perry felt that he had given indeed the fullest weight to every legitimate scruple, and believed that, provided he was beloved, there was no substance in any one of them. he knew that constance had shrunk from a divorce. what more natural so long as she was undisturbed by her deserting husband? but now that the element of a new, strong affection was introduced the necessary legal proceedings seemed a paltry bar to her happiness. he had expected that she would demur to the step at first, but he had felt confident that her acute sense would shortly convince her that she was divorced to all intents and purposes already, and that the mere formal abdication of the fact, however unpleasant sentimentally was not a valid obstacle. he had also appreciated that this repugnance to a legal dissolution of the marriage tie for the purpose of becoming a second time a wife would be accompanied by an instinctive feminine aversion to giving her person to another man while it was still possible to encounter the original husband in the flesh. he did not pride himself on his knowledge of women, but the attitude suggested itself to him as possible, even probable, in the case of one whose sensibilities were so delicate as hers, for the reason that there lingered in his mind the remembrance of shrinking words both in books and in real life by other women when the same topic had been broached in the past. consequently it was a relief to him that constance did not openly manifest this form of repugnance, and he radiantly jumped to the conclusion that her love for him was so reciprocal and mastering that false delicacy had been shrivelled up as in a furnace. was not such a process in keeping with her sterling sanity and intelligence? for a moment he had jubilantly assumed that all was won, since, after conscientious if somewhat scornful analysis of the church's claim, he had already decided that the pure religious objection would never in the end avail to keep them apart. nor did the foreboding definiteness of her opposition discourage him appreciably. it merely cast a damper on his hopes for an immediate surrender, and indicated to him that he had been premature in supposing that she had been able to purge herself of superstitions and conventional prejudices forthwith. it could simply be a question of time when so human and discerning a bride would come to his arms without a qualm. nevertheless he felt that he must convince her. now that he was sure she loved him, the possibility of losing her was not even to be entertained; but he wished her to succumb as the result of agreement, and not in spite of herself, both because he realized that she would not be happy otherwise, and because the doctrine which she had invoked as a binding obligation jarred not only with his desires, but with his deepest opinions. therefore, at the conclusion of their interview, he took up straightway the cudgels of thought in defence of his convictions against what seemed to him the essential injustice and unreasonableness of the church's claim. this necessarily involved fresh consideration of that claim itself. that night before he went to bed he rehearsed the arguments by which he purposed to appeal to her. did she not appreciate that they were influenced by no base motives? that neither lust nor undue haste, nor covetous trifling with the feelings of others tarnished their mutual passion. theirs was no case of putting off the old bonds of matrimony in order to be on with the new, but one where love had been starved to death, and been born again by gradual and chaste processes in a lonely, forsaken heart. what could be wrong in such a union? and were not their own consciences and their own intelligences the only fit judges of the eternal merits? gordon perry's attitude toward religion--toward churches and toward churchmen--was abstractly respectful and friendly. he had been brought up by his mother in her faith, and the period of stress through which most young men pass in early life had been productive of a frame of mind which was reverent as well as critical. not a small portion of mankind in benham accepted their religious doctrine on trust, as they did their drinking water. either they were too busy to question what seemed authority, or that particular compartment of the brain where absorbing interest in the unseen germinates was empty. some of the most pious never reasoned, and their docile worship constituted the cement in the walls of dogma. again, there was a class--a growing class in benham as elsewhere--composed of well-equipped, active-minded men who were polite to religion if they met her in the street, and would even go to church now and again to oblige a wife or preserve outward appearances, for they were still of the opinion that religion is good for the masses. but in their secret souls what did they believe? gordon belonged to still another class. religious truth had an absorbing interest for him, but what was religious truth? different sects--and they were manifold in benham--told him different things, and each sect proclaimed its doctrine insistently as vital, if not to salvation, to the highest spiritual development. like many a young man before him, he argued that all could not be right, and as a result he presently found himself a member of that secret society of able-bodied, able-minded male citizens--the largest class of all--who reasoned about religious doctrine somewhat in this way: that they were hopefully looking forward to the time when the controversial differences which divided the sects into rival camps should disappear; and that until then they and their successors, whose number was sure to be legion, would turn deaf ears to the clashing of the divines, and attend church in order to gain strength and inspiration to play their parts well in complex modern human society, ignoring all else but the spirit of christian love. if it be said that they and gordon were not strong on dogma, denied that the laws of the universe had ever been suspended to produce fear or admiration in man, because to believe the contrary seemed to be an insult to god, and looked askance at certain other extraordinary phenomena to which the orthodox cling, it should also be stated that they and he were heartily in sympathy with every effort of all the clergy to improve human nature along intelligent lines, to help the poor to help themselves, to prevent the rich from misappropriating the earth and to foster truth, courage, unselfishness and refinement in the name of religion. therefore it happened that gordon was apt to take with a grain of salt what he heard in the pulpit; and now and then he would play golf on sunday if he were in need of fresh air for his soul; but although he was slightly impatient of clerical sophistries up town, down town he lent a ready hand in the active reforms of the city, in the furtherance of which he had learned to know well, and to admire as good fellows, half a dozen energetic, enthusiastic clergymen. was not religion one of the great forces of the world? because one could not believe everything, and revolted at mystical or puerile superstitions, were the highest cravings of one's nature to be allowed to atrophy? so, just as in his social perplexities, he had sought refuge in practical service from the conflict of theories, and on more than one occasion he had been agreeably surprised by the confidential admission of the divines with whom he was co-operating that their and his views were not essentially far apart. gordon was glad on their account to hear so, and was only the more convinced as a consequence that it was difficult to reconcile most of the strict tenets of theology with the modern ideas of wide-awake, enlightened laymen concerning the workings of the universe or the best social development of the creature man. gordon made no attempt to see constance on the day following his proposal. impatient as he was to renew his suit, he concluded to let her muse for twenty-four hours on the situation. it occurred to him that he would ask leave to accompany her to church on sunday morning, but reflecting that it would not be fair to disturb her meditations, he decided instead to attend the service at st. stephen's and walk home with her after it. whatever the new testament language on the subject, would she be able to convince herself that the sundering of such love as theirs would be in keeping with the true spirit of christianity? it seemed to him that there could be but one answer to this proposition, and as he walked along in the beautiful bracing atmosphere of the autumn day his step was buoyant, for he believed that his happiness would be sealed within a few short hours. ecstasy ruled his thoughts. was not the woman of his heart an entrancing prize? fortune and station she had none, but far more important for him, she was lovable and she was lovely; she was intelligent and she was good. he had attended service at st. stephen's once or twice before, and had a bowing acquaintance with mr. prentiss; but he knew well and entertained a cordial liking for the latter's assistant, the rector of the church of the redeemer, the mission church in the squalid section of the city supported by the larger establishment. st. stephen's, as the fashionable episcopalian church of the community, was apt to draw a large congregation, especially when the pew owners were not confronted by wet skies or sidewalks. this brilliant sunday at the beginning of the social season had drawn most of the regular congregation and also a large contingent of strangers--chiefly women--some of them visitors in benham, but the majority students and other temporary residents who found the æsthetic music and devotional ritual of st. stephen's stimulating. gordon, who was a little late, obtained a seat in the gallery. it had occurred to him that he would be more likely to catch sight of his ladylove from this eminence than if he remained below. his eyes sought at once the so-called free benches where she was accustomed to sit, but she was not in her usual place. after repeated scrutiny of the rows of faces had convinced him of this, he concluded dejectedly that she had not come. perhaps she had stayed at home hoping he would call. or had she been loth to display her glasses in public before she had become accustomed to the disfigurement? his glance wandered over the rich flower garden of autumn bonnets, but to no purpose. while in perplexity he reviewed the probable causes of her absence he became aware that the music of the processional had ceased and that mr. prentiss was speaking. ten minutes later, when the congregation rose to take part in the selection from the psalms, his glance fell on mrs. randolph wilson in one of the front pews. her profile was almost in a line with his vision. while he looked his heart gave a bound, for he suddenly recognized that the young woman next to her in the gay, attractive bonnet was she for the sight of whom his soul was yearning. after leaving constance on the day of their eventful interview, mrs. wilson had conceived the plan of presenting her with a new bonnet and jacket. these she brought with her to lincoln chambers a little before church time, and placed with her own hands on the surprised recipient. pleased at the æsthetic progress of her ward, she seized this opportunity to promote it, and also to cater to her own generous instincts at a time when to indulge them was not likely to cause offence. though astonished, constance accepted without demur these welcome additions to her toilet, and the donor had the satisfaction of beholding how admirably they became her. besides, mrs. wilson had on the tip of her tongue and was eager to communicate the plan which she had been working out since they separated, and which she imparted to constance as soon as they were in her brougham on the way to church. "i have been carefully considering your affairs, my dear, and, in the first place, you are to do nothing for the next six months but get well. i shall insist upon looking after you. you promised me, remember." she paused as though she half expected to encounter opposition to this project, and, though her ward revealed no insubordination, she added the argument which she held in reserve: "for, having deprived you by its counsel of the means of support, it is the church's duty, and my privilege as a disciple of the church's cause, to watch over you until you are able to provide for yourself. at the end of the six months, when your eyes are strong again, i wish you to become my private secretary." on the way from her house she had pictured to herself the astonishment and delight which such an unexpected and splendid proposition must necessarily inspire, and she could not refrain from stealing a sidelong glance at constance in order to observe the effect it would have on her. "your private secretary?" mrs. wilson felt rewarded by the incredulous bewilderment conveyed by the interrogatory, and hastened to explain her benefaction. "it seems almost the interposition of providence in your behalf," she added. "last evening--and i was thinking of your noble resolution at the time--my secretary came in to inform me that she was engaged to be married, and to ask me to be on the lookout for someone else. 'the very place for constance stuart,' i said to myself at once. 'what could suit her better? and what an admirable arrangement it will be for me!' for, after refusing mr. perry's offer, i take for granted that, even when your eyesight is restored, the continuance of your present business relations would be out of the question." "oh, yes; entirely so," answered constance with rueful promptness. "i could not continue in his employment; we should both be unhappy." she was making a confession of what she had been saying to herself all the morning. "exactly." mrs. wilson beamed over the success of her divination. "then we will consider it settled. and i wish to tell you besides that i shall take it upon myself to see that your boy's artistic gift is given full opportunity for expression, and your daughter thoroughly educated. your salary, i mean, will be sufficient to enable you to give them proper advantages, for i can see that you will be very useful to me." she was determined to make plain that virtue in this case was to be its own reward, and that the material losses in the wake of renunciation were rapidly being eliminated. at the same time she wished to conceal a too obviously eleemosynary intent. "i don't see how anything could be nicer for me. and if you think that i should suit--that i could perform the duties properly--i shall be thankful for the position," answered poor constance. she had passed another sleepless night. fixed as was her conviction that separation from her lover was inevitable, she felt deeply sorry for him if not for herself, and dreaded the impending final interview between them. despite her spiritual exaltation the consciousness that she was letting slip a great chance for her children still haunted her, in that the future by comparison seemed vague and forbidding. for it had been clear to her from the moment of her decision that under no consideration could she remain in gordon's office. therefore, though doubtless her friends would help her, the struggle for a livelihood must be begun again. mrs. wilson's amazing, timely offer lifted a great weight from her heart; by it the question of her future employment was disposed of, and disposed of in a way more congenial to her than any she could have imagined possible. it did indeed seem providential that the vacancy should have occurred at this time, and she realized that the certainty that her children would be protected would nerve her for the necessary ordeal of parting, for now there was only selfishness in her desire for marriage. she longed for it to be over with that she might put away once and forever this great temptation. the thought that gordon would probably come for his answer that afternoon was uppermost in her mind during the service; but she was in a mood to respond to the beautiful music, and before mr. prentiss gave out the text of the sermon she was already thrilling with the joy of her sacrifice on the altar of faith. she prayed that she might be granted strength to renounce this seeming blessing ungrudgingly and to close her ears to the whispers of regret, and as she joined in the jubilant anthem of rejoicing for a risen lord it seemed to her that the angel of peace brushed her forehead with the wings of heaven's love. the text was "except a man be born again he shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." it was a sermon of immortality and hope, and a sermon of the triumph of the spirit over the flesh for the sake of a christ who had set the great example and conquered self through suffering. it was one of mr. prentiss's most happy efforts from the standpoint of orthodoxy, graphic, eloquent, and practical. he set no narrow limits of a creed as the arbiter of truth, but declared that the opportunity to choose between the path of righteousness and the path of self-sufficiency or self-indulgence was offered to every one in the great struggle of modern life; that he who would follow the blessed lord and master must shun as evil that which was injurious to the highest interests of human society and thus hateful to god. as she listened constance could not doubt that he had her in mind. it seemed to her that more than once his glance rested on her encouragingly and fondly. her brain was transported with ecstasy and zeal. her opportunity was at hand, and she would serve christ and mankind faithfully. leaving the church under the spell of the sermon, she became suddenly aware that her lover was beside her and was suggesting that he escort her home. at sight of him her chaperone, scenting danger, led the way sedulously toward the brougham, but in the interval constance decided to take him at his word. would it not be the simplest course to explain to him quietly on the street that what he asked her was impossible, and thus avoid the pain of a more intimate parting? therefore she made her excuses to mrs. wilson, pleading the radiance of the day and her need of fresh air. she felt so sure of herself that, though she noticed her friend seemed disappointed, it did not occur to her that it was from concern as to the result of the interview until she heard a whispered "be firm." constance turned a resolute face toward her, and by a close pressure of the hand gave the desired assurance, then as the stylish equipage rolled away from the church door, she stepped to gordon's side, sadly conscious that this was to be their last walk together. three days later, in the evening, gordon perry rang at the house of the rev. george prentiss, the comfortable looking and architecturally pleasing rectory in the neighborhood of st. stephen's. a trim maid ushered him into an ante-room where all parochial visitors were first shown, and asked for his name. there was a nondescript elderly woman in black ahead of him. in his capacity as rector of a large parish, mr. prentiss followed the modern methods of other busy professional men. an electric bell at his desk notified the servant that the interview with the last comer was at an end and that the next in order was to be introduced. gordon had not long to wait. his remaining predecessor's stay was brief. the rector's heartiness was almost apologetic as he strode a pace or two forward to greet his visitor. "mr. perry, i am very glad to see you. i am sorry that you should have been kept waiting. but the clergy cannot afford to be unbusiness-like, can they? we intend to live down that taunt. so my rule is 'first come, first served.'" "the only proper rule, i am sure." it was a spacious, well-filled room, the manifest workshop of an industrious man, but furnished with an eye to æsthetic appropriateness as well as utility. red leather chairs and lounges of goodly proportions, two symmetrical, carved tables covered with documents, books, and pamphlets, warm curtains, an open wood fire, a globe, sundry busts and framed photographs of celebrities, mainly clerical, including a large one of phillips brooks and another of abraham lincoln, were its distinguishing characteristics. mr. prentiss stepped to one of the tables and opening an oblong japanese box drew out a handful of cigars. "will you smoke, mr. perry?" he asked, cheerily. gordon took one, and the clergyman, who reserved his use of tobacco for occasions when by so doing he might hope to make clearer that he was human, did the same. as soon as they were lit, mr. prentiss with a sweep of his hand indicated two easy chairs on either side of the fire, but after his guest was seated he himself stood with his back to the mantel-piece, his hands behind him, the commanding affable figure of a good fellow. still he chose to show at the same time what was in his heart at the moment coincident with his manifestations of secular hospitality. "that woman who just went out has recently buried her only son, the joy and prop of her old age. she came to thank me for a trifling donation i had sent her. her courage and her trust were beautiful to witness. these humble lives often furnish the most eloquent testimonials of the eternal realities." he spoke with the enthusiasm of his calling, as a doctor or a lawyer might have set before an acquaintance an interesting case. he liked to feel that he was on the same footing with the world of men as they, with respect to privileges no less than responsibilities. for an instant he seemed to muse on the experience, then briskly recurring to the immediate situation said: "but what can i do for you, mr. perry? my assistant, mr. starkworth, tells me that you take an active personal interest in the social problems of our community." this bland presumption of ignorance as to the cause of his visit made gordon smile. he could not but suspect that it was artificial. yet the inquiry was by no means hypocritical; for though mr. prentiss was fully conscious of his caller's identity, and had given him a correspondingly genial reception, he regarded the episode of the proposed marriage as so completely closed by constance's decision that he did not choose to believe that gordon had come for the unseemly purpose of reviving it. it seemed to him far more probable that his advice or assistance was sought in some humanitarian or civic cause. "yes," said gordon slowly, enjoying the development of the opening which occurred to him, "mr. starkworth and i have co-operated from time to time, with mutual liking, i think. it is in regard to a social problem that i have come to consult you this evening." "ah," said the rector, relieved in spite of his belief, and thereupon he settled himself in the other capacious easy chair and turned a cordially attentive countenance to his guest. "you may feel assured of my interest in anything of that kind." "it concerns my own marriage," said gordon. the challenge was so unmistakable, like a gauntlet thrown at his feet, that mr. prentiss was for an instant disconcerted, then irritated. but the pleasant manner of his opponent negatived the aroused suspicion that effrontery lurked behind this slightly sardonic introduction, and he met the attack with a grave but supple dignity. "indeed," he said. "i shall be very glad to hear what you have to say, mr. perry." xxii gordon drew deeply several times at his cigar, then laid it on the bronze tray for ashes within reach, as though he felt that it might profane his thought. "i come to you to-night, mr. prentiss, as man to man, knowing that you wish truth and justice to prevail, and asking you to believe that i desire the same. we are both of us men of affairs in the modern sense." the rector bowed. "then you as the rector of one of the most influential churches in the city will doubtless agree that religion must be sane and reasonable in its demands to-day or it will lose more followers among the educated--and education is constantly spreading--than it gains from the ignorant and superstitious?" "assuredly." "i, on my side, as a layman--whatever our differences of precise faith and dogma--am glad to bear witness that the present social world could do without true religion less than ever before." the summary pleased mr. prentiss. it was reasonable and progressive. "we are entirely in accord there," he answered heartily. "as i supposed. then it obviates the necessity of feeling my way. with some clergymen i should not venture to take anything unorthodox for granted, but i believed that we should readily find a common ground of agreement." the assertion was regarded by mr. prentiss as a compliment. nevertheless he perceived that it behooved him to mark the limits of his liberality. "the essence of christianity has nothing to fear either from the higher criticism or the modern world's lack of interest in moribund dogma. may i not say with paul 'but this one thing i do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth to those things which are before'?" "and from that point of view may i ask why you have felt constrained to separate mrs. stuart and me?" there was a brief pause. the rector had not the remotest intention of shirking responsibility, but he wished the precise truth to appear. "it was mrs. stuart's own decision." "i asked her in good faith, after an attachment of several years, to become my wife. she loves me fondly, as i do her. she would have married me had you not convinced her that to do so would be a sin." "i told mrs. stuart that from the standpoint of her highest duty as a christian woman, it would be a sin. not unpardonable sin, if finite intelligence may venture to distinguish the grades of human error, but conduct incompatible with the highest spirituality--and modern spirituality, mr. perry." there was a doughty ring to the rector's tone, betokening that he was not averse to crossing swords with his visitor. "why would it be a sin?" mr. prentiss knocked the ash from his cigar and held up the glowing tip. "do you not know?" he asked, fixing his gaze squarely on his antagonist, so that he seemed to attack instead of defend. "because she has a husband living--a brute of a husband who, after dragging her down, deserted her shamefully; a husband whom she has ceased to love and from whom the law of this community would grant her a divorce." "proceed." "because the church has seen fit to stigmatize as evil that which the state sanctions in a matter vitally affecting the earthly happiness of the human sexes." waiting briefly to make sure that the indictment was complete, mr. prentiss rejoined dryly: "you state the case accurately. my answer is that the church is merely inculcating the precepts of the saviour of mankind." gordon drew a deep breath. he rejoiced in his opportunity. "mr. prentiss," he said, "you referred just now to the world's lack of interest in moribund dogma; we agreed that the demands of religion to-day must be sane and reasonable. i speak with entire reverence, but i ask whether you honestly believe that the few casual sentences which christ is reported to have uttered thousands of years ago in palestine in regard to man's putting away his wife should control complicated modern human society--the christian civilization of to-day--so as to preclude a pure woman like mrs. stuart, under the existing circumstances, from obtaining happiness for herself and her children by becoming my wife? i ask you as an intelligent human being and a just man if this is your opinion?" there was no hesitation on the rector's part; on the contrary, firm alacrity. "it is." "and yet you know that a large portion of the civilized world ignores the doctrine," answered gordon, curbing his disappointment. he had not expected to encounter this stone wall. "i do, to its shame and detriment. the church is not responsible for that." "then your argument rests on the letter of christ's words?" "it does and it does not." there was triumph in the rector's voice as he laid emphasis on the qualifying negation. he had hoped to lead his censor to this very point. "nor does the spiritual objection of the woman who has refused to marry you rest solely on that ground. she is an intelligent person, mr. perry. she perceives, as i perceive, that what you ask her to consent to do would be evil for the human race as well as contrary to the teachings of our lord. there is nothing moribund in that attitude. it is vital, timely righteousness. mrs. stuart must have set this double reason before you." gordon remembered that she had. in his agitation during their final interview, believing that she was laboring under a neurotic delusion, he had given little heed to her argument. now, as a lawyer, he perceived the ingenuity of the plea, though he still regarded her as the victim of clerical sophistry. yet he made no immediate response, and mr. prentiss took advantage of the opportunity to elucidate the situation. "mr. perry, you are led away by the special merits of your own case. i acknowledge the hardship; i grant the pathos of the circumstances. they present the strongest instance which could be cited in justification of remarriage by a divorced person. but there must be more or less innocent victims on the altar of every great principle. the lord has demanded this service of his handmaid, and, though her heart is wrung, she rejoices in it." "i see," said gordon, "and that presents the real issue. why should the church usurp the functions of the state? why in this age of the world should it decide what is best for the human race in a temporal matter, and substitute an arbitrary and inflexible ethical standard of its own for the judgment of organized society?" mr. prentiss's nostrils dilated from the intensity of his kindled zeal. "why? for two reasons. first, because the church declines to regard as a temporal matter an abuse which threatens the existence of the family, the corner-stone of christian civilization; and second, because the state has flagrantly neglected its duty, allowing divorce to run riot through the nation without uniform system or decent limitations. is the church to remain tongue-tied when the stability of the holy bond of matrimony has become dependent on the mere whims of either party?" "i see the force of your position. i will answer you categorically. as to the first reason, it seems to me untenable. as to the second, you accused me just now of seeing only my side. let me retaliate, and at the same time suggest that, though you may seem to have a strong case, you do not know the real facts." gordon, having reached a more dispassionate stage of the argument, remembered his cigar, which he proceeded to relight. but the rector, not accustomed to such colloquial dissent, threw his own in the fireplace and crossed his arms. "regarding your first plea in behalf of the church's interference that the church does not look on marriage as a temporal concern, let me remind you," continued gordon, "that marriage is the only matter in the realm of human social affairs where the church undertakes to nullify by positive ordinance the law of the state--where there is divided authority. in all other social affairs the law of the state is paramount. the church forbids abstract vices--malice, uncharitableness, lust, selfishness, intemperance, but it does not attempt to define these in terms of human conduct, or to substitute canons for the secular statute book." "the church regards marriage as a sacrament." "the roman catholic and the episcopal. if i may say so, the attitude of both these churches is a foreign influence." the clergyman drew himself up. "foreign?" "yes, foreign to native american ideas, and i might add foreign to the claims of the first followers of christianity, for the early christian church did not assert the right to perform the marriage ceremony, or to regulate marriage. its protectorate dates from a later period. but what i had in mind was that it is antagonistic to the spirit both of our forefathers and their descendants. in the early days of new england the service of marriage was performed not by the minister, but by the magistrate, and marriages by clergymen were forbidden. it was the authority of the state, the commonwealth, the considered judgment of the community which was recognized." mr. prentiss nodded. "you are a unitarian, i judge." "i was brought up in the unitarian faith. like most american men, i believe in the power of the individual to work out his own salvation." "but what message have you for a world of sinners?" asked the rector, trenchantly. "i appreciate the force of your criticism. i am conscious that the weakness of unitarianism--of individual liberty of conscience--is its coldness, that it does not constantly hold out to the degenerate soul the lure of a new spiritual birth. it is for this reason largely that your church and the catholic church have gained fresh converts in this country and this city. moreover, those churches have promoted among us picturesqueness, color, and sentiment. but, on the other hand, their spirit is autocratic if not aristocratic, and in their love for the pomp of the ages, in their fealty to the so-called vested rights of civilization, they have little sympathy with the rational, every-day reasoning of republican democracy." mr. prentiss pursed his lips. there was no offence in the speaker's manner or tone which would justify a rebuke; on the contrary, they both suggested that he was trying to speak dispassionately. but the conclusions stirred the rector's blood, and he tightened his folded arms. "you seem to forget that the spirit of christian philanthropy, of the loving brotherhood of man, is the controlling emotional force in the episcopal--yes, in the roman church to-day. you yourself are familiar, for example, with the work of my mr. starkworth in the church of the redeemer." "yes. but neither church has compassion on the misery of common humanity when to relieve it would conflict with the hard and fast letter of church law. that is where--and notably in this matter of recognizing divorce--the other protestant churches, the presbyterian, the methodist and the baptist, have been more tolerant. they have refused to insist that it is for the benefit of mankind that, under all circumstances, men and women unhappily married should remain in durance vile without the possibility of escape, or, having escaped, should be condemned by precept to celibacy for the rest of their lives. and these are sects whose creed is based on the essential sinfulness of human nature." the rector glowered at gordon for a moment from under his brows. "then where will you draw the line?" this was mr. prentiss's trump card. it expressed his utter weariness with what he regarded as the foul system of conflicting and irresponsible legislation, unceasingly and scandalously availed of. "that brings us to your second proposition!" exclaimed gordon. "as to whether the state is faithless to its duty. have you a copy of the public laws, mr. prentiss?" "assuredly." the rector strode across the room and taking down two large volumes from the book-shelf presented them to his visitor. it gratified him to demonstrate by this practical test the broadness of his humanity. "do you happen to know the causes for which divorce is granted in this state?" mr. prentiss hesitated. evidently he had no exact information on the subject, which at this juncture was disconcerting. "for far too many causes; i am sure of that," he replied, stoutly. "i will read them to you. 'impotence; adultery; desertion for three years; sentence for felony for two years; confirmed habits of intoxication; extreme cruelty; grossly and wantonly refusing to support wife.'" the rector listened alertly, hoping to be able to pounce on some conspicuously insufficient provision. since this did not appear he made a sweeping assertion. "they are all inadequate in my opinion except unfaithfulness to the marriage vow, and i often doubt the wisdom of making an exception there. i am by no means sure that the roman church is not right in its refusal to admit the validity of divorce for any cause whatever." "but what has been the course of history since the roman church promulgated its canon at the council of trent more than three hundred years ago? the cause of common sense and justice as represented by the state has, in spite of the fierce opposition of the clergy, won victory after victory, until the institution of marriage has been placed under the control of the secular law on most of the continent of europe, and the right to divorce and the right to remarry widely recognized--for instance in france, germany, switzerland, norway, denmark. in france it's a criminal offence for a priest to perform the religious ceremony of marriage until after the civil ceremony." "yes, and it was france which during the days of the revolution permitted divorce at the mere option of either party. and there are signs that we are rapidly imitating that same barbaric laxity in the united states, and in this community." "and if it were, would it be so much more barbarous a condition than the conservatism of the english law of church and state, which grants divorce to the man whose wife has been guilty of adultery, but withholds it from a woman unless her husband has been guilty of cruel and abusive treatment into the bargain?" the rector was touched on another sensitive point. he put out the palm of his hand. "i fail to see the relevancy of your comparison, mr. perry. however, the american episcopal church is not responsible for the flaws in the details of the english establishment. the two are harmonious and their aims are identical, but we do not follow blindly." "yet the american episcopal church follows its english parent and the roman catholic in maintaining that the woman whose husband is an inveterate drunkard, is convicted of murder or embezzlement, kicks and beats her shamefully, or deserts her utterly in cold blood, is guilty of a crime against heaven and against society if she breaks the bond and marries again. progressive democracy in the person of the state is more lenient, more merciful. it refuses to believe that one relentless, arbitrary rule is adapted to the exigencies of human society. it insists that each case should be judged on its merits, and both relief afforded and fresh happiness permitted when justice so demands. think of the many poor creatures in the lower ranks condemned by your inexorable doctrine to miserable, lonely lives, who might otherwise be happy!" mr. prentiss's brow contracted as though he were a little troubled by the appeal to his sympathy with the toiling mass. "one wearies of this ever-lasting demand for happiness in this life," he murmured. "was christ happy? they are free to disregard the authority of the church if they see fit," he added. "i for one should not feel justified in refusing the communion to a divorced woman who had remarried." "but the catholic church would and does uniformly; and the high church party in your own church would disapprove of your leniency. the vital point is that both churches and you yourself brand those who disobey as spiritually impure, or at least inferior, a stigma which appalls the best women. and so they are held as in a cruel vice, so you have held her who was to be my wife." the reversion to the personal equation reminded the rector that this was no academic discussion. "you have not answered my question yet. where will you draw the line? granting for the moment--which i by no means agree to--that gross habits of intoxication, felony, or absolute desertion are valid grounds for breaking the nuptial bond, let me cite the law to you in turn, mr. perry." thereupon mr. prentiss stepped to the shelves again, and running through the pages of a book, discovered presently the data of which he was in search. "what do you think of these reasons?" he asked in a scorching tone. "american grounds of divorce: 'when it shall be made to appear, to the satisfaction and conviction of the court, that the parties cannot live in peace and union together, and that their welfare requires a separation,' utah; 'voluntarily living separate for one year,' wisconsin; 'for any cause that permanently destroys the happiness of the petitioner and defeats the purposes of the marriage relation,' connecticut; 'for any cause in the discretion of the court,' kentucky; 'whenever the judge who hears the cause decrees the case to be within the reason of the law, within the general mischief the law intended to remedy, or within what it may be presumed would have been provided against by the legislature establishing the foregoing cause of divorce, had it foreseen the specific case and found language to meet it without including cases not within the same reason, he shall grant the divorce,' arizona; and in a host of states, 'one year's absence without reasonable cause.'" "i told you that you seemed to have a good case," said gordon, smiling. "but i do not think that you understand the facts, understand the real nature of the abuse, for i heartily agree that an abuse exists even from the standpoint of those who maintain that divorce should be granted on the slenderest grounds. as to the extracts which you have just read, i judge that the book is not a recent publication." "i have reason to believe that it is authoritative." "undoubtedly it was so at the time. but several of the provisions in question have been repealed and are no longer law." "ah," said the rector. "but you cannot deny that it is still the law that a man and woman may be married in one jurisdiction and adjudged guilty of adultery or bigamy in another; that the marriage tie is broken daily on the most frivolous grounds and with the most indecent haste; and that there is wide and revolting discrepancy between the statutes of the several united states." gordon nodded. "i cannot deny the substantial accuracy of the indictment." "well, sir, how do you justify it? is not civil society neglecting its duty?" "i do not justify the defects in some of the legal machinery, and to this extent i agree that society is derelict. but what i wish to make clear is that nearly all the legal grounds for divorce in the several states are just and reasonable--substantially the same as in this state--and that the abuses against which they afford relief are such as render the relation of husband and wife intolerable. there are a few vague and lax exceptions such as you have cited, but they are fast disappearing. the real and the salient evil lies in the looseness of administration sanctioned in some jurisdictions, by means of which collusive divorces are obtained by pretended residents, and close scrutiny of the facts is avoided by the courts. to permit legal domicile to be acquired by a residence of three months, as in dakota, is a flagrant invitation to fraud; but that and kindred abuses are defects in the police power, and have only a collateral bearing on the main issue between us, which is whether democracy can ever be induced to reconsider its decision that it is for the best interests of human nature that the innocent wife or husband, to whom a cruel wrong has been done, should be free to break the bond and marry again. there is the real question, mr. prentiss. you as a churchman--a foreign churchman i still claim--demand that the woman whose life has been blighted by a husband's brutality, sentenced for heinous crime, abandonment, or degrading abuse of liquor should remain his wife to the end, though he has killed every spark of love in her soul. the church will never be able to convince the american people or modern democracy that this is spiritual or just." "and yet a man who has been prohibited by the courts of new york from marrying again has merely to step into new jersey and his marriage there will be recognized and upheld by the courts of new york. but that you will probably describe as another instance of defect in the police power. the line which you draw is evidently that which any particular body of people--sovereign states i believe they call them--sees fit to establish. the logical outcome of such a theory can only be social chaos. the sanctity of the home is fundamentally imperilled thereby." "and yet," said gordon, "the family life of the american people compares favorably with that of any nation in affection, morality, and happiness. more than three-fourths of the applicants for divorce in the united states are women. they have thrown off the yoke of docile suffering which the convention of the centuries has fastened upon them." "some of them," interposed the rector with spirited incisiveness. "the shallow, the self-indulgent, the indelicate, the earthly minded. there are many who are still true to the behests of the spirit," he added significantly. it was doubtless an agreeable reflection to him that the one woman in the world for his antagonist was among the faithful. "on the contrary, i believe that their number is made up largely of the intelligent, the earnest, and the vitally endowed. democracy maintains that it is no worse for children to be educated where love or legal freedom exists than where there is thinly concealed hate, contempt, or indifference." it was obvious that neither had been or would be convinced by the other's argument. probably each had been well aware of this from the first. gordon had come warm with what he regarded as the unwarranted injustice of the clergyman's successful interference, unable to credit the belief that it would not be withdrawn when the case was coolly laid before him. on his part mr. prentiss had listened indulgently, certain of the deep-rooted quality of his convictions, but willing to hear the opposite side stated by a trained antagonist. he had been glad of an opportunity to elucidate the church's attitude, and had not been without hopes of making cogent to this censor of different faith the civilizing righteousness of the ecclesiastical stand, or at any rate--which would be in the line of progress--the demoralizing insufficiency of the current secular reasons for divorce. apparently he had failed in both, and moreover had encountered a disposition toward obnoxious radicalism which was disturbing. "then i am to presume that you, and so far as you are at liberty to speak for them, the american people" (mr. prentiss could be subtly biting when the occasion demanded), "sanction practically indiscriminate divorce?" gordon disregarded the sarcastic note. the bare question itself was sufficiently interesting. "it is true, as you suggested just now, that the american people have gone further in that direction than any other except the french. in france, after the latitude of optional divorce palled, divorce was abolished and was never authorized again, as you may remember, until very recently-- . in the exuberance of our enthusiasm for personal liberty the legislators in some of our states--especially those of the most recent origin, have shown an inclination to pass laws which justify your conclusion. but there is at present a reaction. the people have become disgusted with the licentious shuffling on and off of the marriage tie by the profligate element of the fashionable rich through temporary residence and collusive proceedings in other states. you and i have a recent flagrant instance in this city in mind. every good citizen abhors such behavior, mr. prentiss. but the public conscience has become aroused, and steps are being taken to reform what i termed the defects in the police power, partly by amendment of the loose provisions by some of the offending states, and partly by provisions in other states, challenging the jurisdictional validity of foreign divorces granted to their own citizens on paltry grounds. it is a misfortune that a national divorce law is only among the remote possibilities. and yet, can there be any doubt that any uniform law which the american people would consent to adopt would necessarily include every one of the grounds already law in this state, and which the church labels as inadequate?" mr. prentiss twisted in his chair. "if the church were satisfied that the state was sincere, a reasonable compromise might not be impossible. some of our thoughtful clergy have been feeling their way toward this." gordon shook his head. "but even your church would yield so little; and the roman catholic nothing at all. would you consent to divorce for gross drunkenness or conviction for felony?" "if so, what becomes of the spiritual obligation that one takes the other for better or for worse? shall a woman desert her husband in misery? is long-suffering devotion to become antiquated?" "as an obligation, yes. if she loves him still, she will cling to him. but if their natures are totally at variance, if she has been cruelly wronged and disappointed by his conduct, she should have the right to leave him and to wed again. the world of men and women has ceased to believe that individual happiness should be sacrificed until death to the cruel or degenerate vices of another." "the doctrine of selfish individualism," murmured the rector. "mrs. stuart informed me that you made that cry the basis of your objection. i agree with you that individualism has in many directions been given too free scope, and that modern social science is right in demanding that it should be curbed for the common good. but only when it is for the common good, mr. prentiss. divorce and remarriage are in many instances necessary for the welfare of humanity, for the protection and relief of the suffering and virtuous and the joyous refreshment of maimed, tired lives." "and how liable they are to become tired with such easy avenues of escape!" mr. prentiss hastened to exclaim. "so long as remarriage is stigmatized as a lapse from spiritual grace, young couples will be patient and long-suffering. the truest love is often the fruit of mutual forbearance during the early years of wedlock. it is only one step from what you demand to divorce for general incompatibility. i have yet to hear you disclaim belief that this would be for the common good, mr. perry." mr. prentiss rolled out the phrase "general incompatibility" with fierce gusto, as though he were scornfully revelling in its felicity as an epitome of his opponent's theory carried to its logical conclusion. he had been sparring for wind, waiting for an opening as it were, and feeling that he had found it, he forced the fighting. "it is difficult to forecast what is to be the future evolution of the divorce problem," answered gordon, reflectively. "on one side is the security of the home, as you have indicated, on the other the claims of justice and happiness. just now respectable society stands a little aghast--and no wonder--at the scandalous lack of reverence for the marriage tie shown by our new plutocracy----" "godless people!" interjected the rector. "and will doubtless mend its fences for the time being so as to refuse divorce except for genuine tangible wrongs, such as those we have discussed. but if you ask me whether i believe that in the end general incompatibility--meaning thereby total lack of sympathy between husband and wife--will be recognized by human society as a valid and beneficial ground, my answer is that the social drift is that way. it will depend on the attitude of the women. they constitute by far the majority of the applicants for divorce, as you know. if they become convinced that it will not be for the welfare and happiness of themselves and their children to remain tied to men utterly uncongenial, the state probably will give them their liberty. but one thing is certain," he added, "the church will never be able to fasten again upon the world its arbitrary standard." gordon rose as he finished. he felt that the interview was at an end, a drawn battle so far as change of opinion was concerned. but he had chosen to complete his bird's-eye glimpse of the possible future with a definite and pointed prediction. mr. prentiss had listened with astonishment to the speculative suggestion. he had expected a disavowal of the license embodied in his taunt, and a floundering attempt at limitation which he hoped would involve his adversary in an intellectual quicksand. up to this point he had fancied gordon, though he had disagreed with him. but now, as he also rose, he manifested a shade of haughtiness, as though he were dismissing someone who had come perilously near landing himself outside the pale of the respect which one man owes another of the same class. ignoring the assertion as to the decay of the church's power, he said: "such an evolution as you predict, sir, would undermine the structure of human society." "it would be more or less revolutionary, certainly," answered gordon, blandly. the possibility seemed not to have proper terrors for him, which was puzzling to the clergyman, who was loth to regard this well-appearing young man as a sympathizer with radical social doctrines. he stared at gordon a moment. "so long as women are as pure and spiritual minded as mrs. stuart the laxity which you seem to invite will be out of the question." here was an unequivocal reminder to gordon of the real fruitlessness of his interview. it was in effect a challenge; and he accepted it as such. "she will yet become my wife." mr. prentiss shook his head. "i have known her longer than you," he asserted proudly. for a moment there was silence. issue had been joined in these two sentences, and further speech was superfluous. it was gordon who relieved the tension, which seemed almost hostile, by putting out his hand. "mr. prentiss," he said, "we disagree utterly, but that is no reason surely why we should not part with amicable respect for each other's differences of opinion? i know you are actuated solely by the desire to accomplish what you believe to be right." the manly appeal was instantly reciprocated. the clergyman grasped the outstretched hand and shook it firmly. to agree to disagree gracefully was in keeping with his theories as to the proper attitude of men of affairs. "mr. perry," he said, "i am glad to have made your acquaintance. believe me, i grieve that the church in my person must stand between you and happiness. if any matter at any time arises where you think i could be of public service, do not hesitate to consult me. i am well aware that we both are laborers in the same vineyard." considering that their theological views were nearly as divergent as the poles, and that they were battling for a woman's soul, this was eminently conciliatory and rational on either side. xxiii the parting with gordon had been exceedingly painful for constance, but she had not wavered. the circumstance that they were in the street had been a serviceable protection, for it forced upon the interview a restraint which must have been lacking had they been indoors. she was enabled to keep her lover at bay, and to meet his protestations of devotion and dismay with the answer that she had made up her mind. at the outset she had explained to him in a few words that she had become convinced that marriage would be inconsistent with her highest spiritual duty and hence must be renounced. her responses to his arguments and impetuous questions were brief and substantially a repetition of her plea that it was incumbent on them for the good of civilization to stifle their love. he did most of the talking, she listened, and under the influence of her resolution rebuffed him gently from time to time, trying to make plain to him that separation was inevitable. when they had reached lincoln chambers she felt it advisable for both their sakes that he should not enter, but that they should part with as little excitement as possible. of what avail an emotional scene such as would be sure to take place were she to let him in? so she had bidden him good-by then and there, informing him that she was to become mrs. wilson's secretary. she had permitted herself finally one last hand clasp and the luxury of saying, "may god bless you, gordon. you have been the truest friend a woman ever had. i wish you might be more. good-by." then she had fled, leaving him standing aghast and still refusing to believe that she could be in earnest. after she was alone she was free to weep, and weep she did, divining, perhaps, that the surest way to drown her grief was to let sorrow have sway for the moment. when she faced life on the morrow, quiet and resolute, she could not help thinking of the catholic sisters of charity whom she was in the habit of seeing on the street, whose faces so constantly suggested that they had dispensed with earthly happiness. but her elastic nature demanded that she should seek earthly happiness still, and she found herself protesting against the thought that her renunciation might sadden the remainder of her life. was not her sacrifice for the welfare of society? if so, it behooved her to behold in it a real blessing over which she should rejoice. if it were not a cause for congratulation, a real escape from evil, she was simply worshipping a fetich as gordon had declared. it was no case of preference for spiritual over mundane things, but of a choice of what was best for her as a human being. hence she ought to find fresh zest in life itself, not wait for future rewards. so she sought to deaden her senses to every thought or memory of gordon, and to take up her new life as a quickening privilege. the first thing to do was to regain the complete use of her eyes, and for this patient idleness during several months would be necessary. therefore, without demur, she lived up to her promise to mrs. wilson by accepting the funds necessary for her support until such time as she should be able to assume the full duties of her position. mrs. wilson made this easier for her by sending her to investigate diverse philanthropic and sociological appeals and employing her on a variety of errands. the present secretary had agreed to remain until constance could take her place, and was glad to delegate such duties as the latter could perform. accordingly constance reported daily for instructions and had the run of the office appropriated to the secretary's use, a pretty room furnished with a convenient but artistic desk, a typewriter and all the paraphernalia for the despatch of a large correspondence. she longed for the day to arrive when this room would be hers, and she could devote herself unreservedly to the furtherance of mrs. wilson's wide interests. one evening, some fortnight after the parting between constance and gordon, loretta came bouncing into constance's apartment. she had been employed in one place as a nurse during that period, but had completed her engagement the day before. she appeared to be in good spirits, and constance noticed that she had on a new hat and jacket more gaudy than was her custom, as though she had spent her earnings promptly and freely. moreover she looked knowing. the cause of this last manifestation was disclosed when, after a few preliminary greetings, she exclaimed: "and so you've left gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law!" "yes. it wouldn't have been fair to mr. perry to ask him to wait. besides, mrs. wilson has invited me to become her private secretary. miss perkins is going to be married." loretta cocked her head on one side and winked an eye. she appeared amused by this plausible explanation, which apparently was not news to her. "i guess somebody else is going to be married too." constance felt uncomfortable; she scented mischief. but there was nothing to do but look innocent. "a little bird told me to-day that you had only to nod your head to become mrs. gordon perry, esq." enjoying the look of confusion which this bold sally evoked, loretta approached constance and peered mockingly into her face. "it's so, isn't it? you're engaged and you can't deny it. i knew it!" "nothing of the kind, loretta," she managed to articulate with decision. the little bird was evidently mrs. harrity. but the charwoman's gossip could only have been conjecture, and of course her inquisitor knew nothing definite. "well, it's your own fault if it isn't. from what i hear he's just crazy to get you." loretta paused a moment; she was ferreting for information. she seized constance by the shoulders and fixed her again with her shrewd gaze. "you can't fool me, constance stuart. there's something in the wind. i shan't rest until i find out." constance noticed that her cheeks were slightly flushed, and her eyes unnaturally bright. could she have been drinking? surely not, or her breath would have betrayed her. doubtless it was only the excitement of deviltry awakened by feminine curiosity. then it occurred to constance to tell her. was it not best to tell her? loretta would make her life miserable, so she had intimated, if she concealed the truth. and then again, as she was sacrificing her love for a principle, why conceal from this other struggler the vital conclusion she had reached? it might help, or at least stimulate loretta. she shrank from disclosing her precious secret, but now that she was interrogated, was it not the simplest, the most straightforward course to confess what had happened and explain her reason? "sit down, loretta, and i will tell you." the girl obeyed, surveying her with an exultant mien. constance hesitated a moment. it was not easy to begin. "mr. perry and i have talked things over. yes, loretta, he did ask me to marry him." loretta uttered what resembled a whoop of triumph, partly to celebrate her own perspicacity, partly by way of congratulation. "i felt sure of it. i knew he loved you by the way he was carrying on." "and i loved him, but i'm not going to marry him. we are to see no more of each other for the present. it would be wrong for me to become his wife." loretta stared as though she could not believe her ears. "wrong? who says so? you don't mean to tell me you've refused him?" "yes," said constance a little sadly, for the genuineness of the surprise expressed recalled her own perplexity in discerning an adequate reason for the sacrifice. loretta gasped. "well, you are a fool, and no mistake! refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you and whom you love! wrong? what's wrong about it?" [illustration: "refuse a man like that who's crazy to marry you!"] "it's contrary to the law of my church, which forbids a woman who has a husband living from marrying again." "but he's as good as dead so far as you're concerned," interjected loretta. without heeding this pertinent remark constance proceeded to state the so-called spiritual objections with succinct fervor. she felt the desire to reiterate aloud their complete potency. loretta listened closely, but with obvious bewilderment and disdain. even now she seemed unable to credit her companion's announcement as genuine. "if your clergyman won't marry you, get a justice of the peace. that's just as good." constance shook her head. "from my point of view remarriage would be sinful--impure." loretta leaned back on the lounge where she was sitting and clasped her hands behind her head. she appeared to be at a loss to find words to express her feelings. "and you mean to tell me that you've let that man go--the man you love and who'd give you a fine home and be a fond husband to you--for such a reason as that?" "yes," answered constance, stanchly. "then all i can say is you didn't deserve such luck. he's too good for you." loretta's conviction went so deep that she had become grave, and, so to speak, dignified in her language. "he's too good for any woman i know," constance felt impelled to assert. "but for both our sakes, all the same, it was my duty not to marry him. mr. perry knows my reasons and--and respects them." constance had wondered many times what her lover's present emotions were, but she chose to take no less than this for granted. "if he loves you as much as i guess he does, he must just hate you, constance stuart. my! think of throwing up a chance like that." then suddenly a thought occurred to loretta, and leaning forward she asked tensely, "does _she_ know?" the suggestion of resentment on gordon's part had been to constance like a dash of scalding water. the question just put served as a restorative. "mrs. wilson? it was she who advised me to let him go. she agrees with me entirely." loretta looked astonished and disappointed; then she frowned. "just because you've been married once? not if you got a divorce?" "never, so long as my husband is alive and we are liable to meet in the flesh." constance realized that her phraseology had a clerical sound; still she felt that she had a right to the entire arsenal of the church. "and she believes that too, does she? believes that it would be wicked for a good looking, hard-working girl, whose husband had left her in the lurch, and may be dead for all she knows or cares, to get a divorce and marry again? and that's the church? my! but it's the crankiest thing i ever heard. that's the sort of thing which sets the common folk who use their wits against religion. there's no sense in it. she's a widow; would she refuse to marry again if the right man came along?" "that's different," said constance, perceiving that an answer was expected. "and what's the difference? it's all right to be spliced to another man in three months after the breath is out of the first one's body, as some of them do, but impure to marry again so long as the husband who has dragged you round by the hair of your head is liable to drop in. if it comes to that, and marriages are made in heaven, as the clergy say, what do the dead husbands and wives think about second marriages anyway? i'd be real jealous if i were dead." "the church has thought it all out and come to the conclusion that it is the best rule for human society." constance spoke with hurried emphasis, hoping to terminate the discussion. she did not desire to argue the matter with loretta; at the same time she recognized the familiar pertinency of the allusions to dead husbands and wives. loretta detected constance's nervous agitation. "i hate to think it of her," she cried with sudden illumination, "but i believe she has badgered you into it!" "nothing of the kind, loretta. it's my own free choice. mrs. wilson simply made clear to me the church's side." loretta sneered. "it's downright cruel, that's what i call it. the church's side! the church doesn't recognize divorce, but there's always been ways for the rich--the folk with pull, kings and such--to get the marriages they were tired of pronounced void from the beginning. it was only necessary to show that they had been god-parents to the same child, or were twenty-fifth cousins by affinity, as it's called, or some such tomfoolery. it didn't take napoleon long when he wished to get rid of josephine to induce the catholic church to declare that they never had been married, though it was a good church wedding before a cardinal. pshaw! the church has fooled the people long enough. what we want is justice and common sense." that same cry for justice, that same appeal to common sense; and from what very different lips! yet though constance shrank from the coarseness of the exposition, somehow the naked saliency of the argument was more persuasive than gordon's subtler plea. her instinctive compassion for the masses asserted itself. the fact that loretta should have touched at once the crucial point which gordon's trained intelligence had emphasized struck her forcibly. and after all, what was she herself but one of the common people? but she said: "the scandal in mrs. wilson's own family has been the greatest grief and mortification to her." loretta bridled. "yes, and when mrs. waldo gets her divorce in south dakota and comes back married again, won't everybody she cares about receive her just the same? in six months she'll be staying in benham and her mother'll be inviting all the other multi-millionaires to meet her at a big blow-out; see if she don't." she paused, and her eyes took on a crafty look. "what do you suppose she'd say if i were to go back to my man?" constance sat bolt upright from apprehension. loretta's air of mystery, which was accentuated by a whispering tone, conveyed to her the true import of the intimation. yet she would not seem to understand. "what do you mean, loretta?" "my man; the father of my child. he was in town the other day. he has found out where i am and has been plaguing me to go back to him." "did he ask you to marry him?" asked constance, seeking that solution. "that's not what he meant. but i've thought of that too--on baby's account. i guess he would if i were set on it. but we're both doing well single, and--" she stopped and laughed sarcastically--"and supposing we didn't like each other and got divorced, i could never marry anyone else." "no matter about that now, loretta. do you love him still?" "it's love that makes the world go round. there isn't much else worth living for, i guess." she pursed her lips after this enigmatical answer, then suddenly relaxed them in an impetuous outburst. "one thing's sure, constance stuart, you don't know what love is or you'd never have sent away gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law." "don't, loretta," said constance, imploringly. "it's true." "i love him with all my heart. you don't understand." "pish! if you'd loved him as a woman loves a man when she does love him, you'd have been married before this. why, there's times when i feel like going right back to my man, and i'm not what you'd call more than moderately fond of him. if it hadn't been that i didn't want to disappoint her--and you--i'd have done it before this. now the next time he comes back, i shouldn't wonder if i did." she leaned back again on the sofa with her hands behind her head nodding doggedly, and nursing her intention. constance, appalled, went over and sat down beside her. "oh, but you mustn't, you mustn't! go to-morrow to see mrs. wilson and talk with her. she will give you strength and convince you that unless you marry him such a course would be suicide, a cruel wrong to yourself, dear--you who have done so well." "i've kept straight chiefly to suit her; but i don't like what she has done to you." "please leave me and my affairs out of the question, loretta. they have nothing to do with your preserving your own self-respect." "i don't know about that. if she's just like the rest; if that's a sample of the religion and the beauty she prides herself on, i've been fooled, you've been fooled. what's the use of being respectable if, when true love does come, a poor, deserted woman is robbed of it for such a reason as that?" it surprised constance that loretta should take sides so strongly, and she perceived that the girl must have a tenderer feeling for her than she had supposed. this made her all the more anxious to protect her. "i value your sympathy very much, dear, but it won't help me--it'll only make me dreadfully unhappy if you do wrong." loretta looked at her keenly. then she took out a small phial, similar to that which constance had observed on another occasion, and swallowed a pellet ostentatiously. "if you are troubled with the blues these are the things to take. they brace one splendid." "what are they, loretta?" "if you promise to take some right along, i'll tell you." but she evidently was not eager to disclose her secret, for she promptly replaced the phial in her pocket and said, "i'll make a bargain with you, constance. if you'll marry gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law, i'll keep straight." constance flushed. "but i can't, dear. it's all settled." "he will come back if you only whistle. you know that." constance let her eyes fall. she feared that it was too true. but she could not afford to be pensive. she must be both resolute and resourceful, for the future of this erring sister seemed to be hanging in the balance. "i can never marry mr. perry, loretta. but----" "i thought better things of you, constance. oh! well then i'll go back to my man." "if you should do such a thing it would break mrs. wilson's heart." this seemed to constance in her perplexity the most hopeful appeal, and she was right, for loretta was obviously impressed by the remark. "would it?" she asked. she looked down at her large hands and let them rise and fall in her lap like one nervously touched by sentiment. "i do not know of anything which would distress her more," continued constance. after a moment loretta said, "he's away now. he won't be on this route again for another four months. so there isn't any danger just yet." she shrugged her shoulders. then she rose, adding, "i guess i'll go to bed," which was plainly an intimation that this was to be the limit of her present concession. constance was relieved, not only that immediate danger was averted, but that the tie which bound loretta to mrs. wilson, however temporarily strained, was still strong and compelling. she rejoiced to think that they were warned, so that they could now keep a closer watch and leave nothing undone to save her from further degeneration. she dismissed the subject by making some inquiries in regard to loretta's last case. the girl's responses were to the point and brisk, but she did not resume her seat, and evidently had no intention of remaining. presently she got as far as the door, where she stood discussing for a few moments with her hand on the knob. when at last she opened it and was in the act of departing, she turned her head and uttered this parting shot, which indicated what was still uppermost in her thoughts: "i guess that you never really loved gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law, or you couldn't have done it." this taunt lingered in constance's mind, though she denied the impeachment to herself. was it not indeed true, as loretta said, that it is love which makes the world go round? only for the sake of righteousness was she justified as a healthy, breathing woman in stifling this instinct. if loretta in the future were to marry some one other than the father of her child both the church and mrs. wilson would rejoice because the mere ceremony of marriage had been lacking in the first relation; yet she herself was forbidden to marry the man she loved because she was tied to a faithless husband by the mere husk of marriage. she saw loretta but two or three times before her convalescence was complete and she had assumed her duties as mrs. wilson's secretary, for loretta was sent for again shortly, and was only at home in the interval between her engagements. but constance gave mrs. wilson forthwith an inkling of loretta's state of mind, though she tried to believe that the girl's wanton threat was a mere passing ebullition due to resentment of her reason for refusing gordon. nevertheless she did not altogether like the expression of her eyes; it suggested excitement, and predominance of that boldness which, though typical, had been much in abeyance during the period of her regeneration. she remembered, too, the bottle of pellets, which indicated that she was taking some drug. so, though she could not believe that she was seriously considering such an abhorrent proceeding, she felt it her duty to put mrs. wilson on her guard. they both agreed, however, that the culprit must be handled gingerly and not too much made of the occurrence. accordingly mrs. wilson straightway wrote to loretta, but her letter was a missive of interest and encouragement, not of reproach or alarm. she deplored in it that she had lately seen but little of her ward, owing to the latter's popularity as a nurse, and urged her to call on her at the first opportunity. she sent her also one or two pretty toilet articles for herself and some new frocks for her baby. constance said nothing, however, to mrs. wilson as to loretta's attitude toward the church regarding remarriage after divorce, for she could not bear to renew the subject with her patroness. it was settled forever, and her spirit craved peace. xxiv it was a great relief to constance when at last she was once more self-supporting. her eyes appeared to be as strong as ever, and she found her new work congenial and absorbing. she was not merely mrs. wilson's stenographer, but her factotum, expected to exercise a general superintendence over her employer's philanthropic and social concerns, to attend to details, and, through tactful personal interviews, to act as a domestic buffer. the change from the practical severity of a law office, with its dusty shelves of volumes uniformly bound in sheep, its plain furniture and heterogeneous clientage, to her present surroundings was both stimulating and startling. stimulating because it catered to her yearning for contact with æsthetic influences to have the run of this superb house and to be brought into daily familiar association with all sorts of lavish expenditure in aid of beautiful effects and beneficent purposes. startling because the true quality of the luxury aimed at was unknown to her until she became a constant eye-witness. in both mrs. wilson's and her brother carleton howard's establishments a major-domo presided over the purely domestic relations, engaging the numerous servants, and endeavoring to maintain such a competent staff below stairs as to ensure delicious, superabundant food and neat, noiseless service which should emulate as far as possible the automatic impersonality of male and female graven images. all the appointments of the house were captivating; the pantry closets bristled with beautiful cut glass and delicate, superbly decorated china; flowers in great profusion and variety were brought three times a week from carleton howard's private nurseries to be tastefully arranged by a maid whose special duty it was to attend to this and to see that those not needed for the decoration of the house should be sent to the destinations indicated by mrs. wilson through her secretary--hospitals, friends in affliction or with birthdays, and the like. the spacious bathrooms were lined with artistic tiles; electric lights had been adjusted in the chambers so as to provide perfect facilities for reading in bed; once a week an attendant called to wind all the clocks in the house. mrs. wilson's personal appetite was not keen, yet exacting. her breakfast was served in her own room, and, unless she had company, her other meals were apt to be slight in substance, but were invariably of a delicate, distinguished character as regards appearance if not ingredients. her steward had instructions that the dinner table should be garnished with flowers and the most luscious specimens of the fruits of the season, though she were alone. when she had guests these effects were amplified, and her mind was constantly on the alert to provide novelty for her entertainments. during the first season of constance's employment, music between the courses--a harpist, a quartette of violinists, an orchestra--happened to be the favorite special feature of her dinner parties. that first winter mrs. wilson had the influenza and went to florida for a month for recuperation, carrying her secretary with her. the journey was made in mr. howard's private car, and the suite which they occupied at the elaborate modern hotel where they stopped was the most select to be obtained. the spectacle at this winter resort for restless multi-millionaires was another bewildering experience for constance. the display of toilets and diamonds at night in the vast ornate dining-room was dazzling and almost grotesque in its competitive features. mrs. wilson preserved her distinction by a rich simplicity of costume. she had left her most striking gowns at home, and she let constance perceive that her sensibilities took umbrage at this public cockatoo emulation of wealth. she was even conspicuously simple in regard to her food, as though she wished to shun unmistakably being confounded with the conglomeration of socially aspiring patrons, whose antics jarred on her conceptions of beauty. but constance could not avoid the reflection that profuse, if not prodigal, expenditure was typical of her companion no less than of them, and that the distinction was simply one of taste. what impressed her was that so many people in the land had merely to sign a check to command what they desired, and that the mania for novel and special comforts, and unique or gorgeous possessions was in the air. on their way home mrs. wilson spent a few days in new york shopping, having directed constance to communicate in advance with several dealers whose business it was to dispose of artistic masterpieces. she bought two pictures at a cost of twenty-five thousand dollars apiece, an antique collar of pearls, and several minor treasures. at the same time she took advantage of the occasion to grant an interview to two persons, a man and a woman, who had solicited her aid in behalf of separate educational charities. to each of these enterprises, after proper consideration, she sent her subscription for five thousand dollars. undoubtedly the chief purpose of mrs. wilson's stay in new york was to see her daughter. after a three months' residence in south dakota, lucille had obtained a divorce on the ground of cruelty, and had promptly married her admirer, bradbury nicholson, son of the president of the chemical trust. mrs. wilson had declined to attend the wedding, which took place in sioux city three days after the final decree had been entered--a very quiet affair. lucille had notified her mother that it was to occur, but was not surprised that she did not take the journey. she and her husband had spent four months in europe to let people get accustomed to the idea that she was no longer mrs. clarence waldo, and recently they had taken up their residence in new york. her new husband had three millions of his own, and, as lucille complacently expressed the situation to her mother, society had received them exactly as if nothing had happened. "i told you how it would be, mamma," she said. "everybody understands that clarence and i were mismated. i am radiantly happy, and, as for your granddaughter, she could not be fonder of bradbury if he were her own father. he has bought a thousand dollar pony for her. all the nicholson connection and my old friends have been giving us dinners, which shows that we can't be disapproved of very strongly." lucille certainly looked in the best spirits when she came to see her mother. she was exquisitely dressed, and her equipage, which stood at the door during her visit, was in the height of fastidious fashion. so far as externals were concerned, it was manifest that she was making good her promise to be more conservative and decorous. mrs. wilson saw fit to mark her abhorrence of her daughter's course by going to a hotel instead of to lucille's large house on fifth avenue. she was not willing to stay under her new son-in-law's roof, but how could she avoid making his acquaintance and dining with him? a definite breach with her only child was out of the question, as she had previously realized; besides her grand-daughter demanded now more than ever her oversight and affection. consequently on the second day she dined at the new establishment, and consented later to attend a dinner party which was given in her honor, though lucille kept that compliment from her mother's knowledge until the evening arrived. she had taken pains to secure the most socially distinguished and interesting people of her acquaintance, and the affair was alluded to in the newspapers as one of the most brilliant festivities of the winter. a leopard cannot altogether change its spots, and lucille's ruling passion was still horses, but she desired to show her mother that she had genuinely improved; so it happened that after the guests had returned to the drawing-room an organ-grinder accompanied by a pleasing black-eyed young woman, both in fresh, picturesque italian attire, were ushered in. they proved to be no less than two high-priced artists from the grand opera, who, after a few preliminary capers to keep up the illusion, sang thrilling duets and solos. when they had finished came an additional surprise in that the organ was shown to be partially hollow and to contain a collection of enamelled bonbonières which were passed on trays by the servants among the delighted guests. after the company had gone mother and daughter had an intimate talk, in the course of which lucille, though making no apologies, volunteered the statement that she in common with half a dozen other women of her acquaintance had decided to go into retirement in one of the church sisterhoods during the period of lent. she explained that the sisters of her new husband, who had high church sympathies, were preparing to do the same and that the project appealed to her. mrs. wilson was electrified. it was on her lips to ask lucille how she could reconcile this new departure with her hasty second marriage, but she shrank from seeming to discourage what might be an awakening of faith or even of æsthetic vitality in her daughter's heart. still, though she rejoiced in lucille's apparent happiness and prosperity, she felt stunned at the failure of providence to vindicate its own just workings. much as she desired in the abstract that her daughter should be blessed, how was it that so flagrant a violation of the eternal proprieties could result not merely in worldly advancement, but an attractive home? for there was no denying that bradbury nicholson was a far more engaging man than his predecessor, and that he and lucille were at present highly sympathetic in their relations. would the harmony last? it ought not to, according to spiritual reasoning. and yet on the surface the dire experiment had proved a success and there were indications that permanent domestic joys and stability were likely to be the outcome of what she considered disgrace. mrs. wilson did not condescend to refer to her daughter's immediate past, but when she found that lucille was brimming over with fresh tidings concerning the other offenders, clarence waldo and paul's wife, she suffered her to unbosom herself. this news was consoling to her from the standpoint of ethical justice. as she already was aware, mrs. paul howard, obdurate in her impatience of delay, had obtained a divorce on the ground of cruelty in nebraska after six months, the statutory period necessary to acquire residence, and had then married clarence waldo. now rumor reported that the newly wedded couple, who had been spending the present winter in southern california for the benefit of the second mrs. waldo's bronchial tubes, had not hit it off well together, to quote lucille, and were likely to try again. for according to the stories of people just from los angeles she was permitting a congressman from california, the owner of large silver mines, to dance constant attendance on her, and her husband, quite out of conceit of her to all appearances, was solacing himself with a pretty widow from connecticut. "of course," added lucille, contemplatively, "if they really intend to obtain a divorce in order to marry again, it will be convenient for them that they happen to be in california, as that is another of the states where one can acquire a legal residence in six months." mrs. wilson's disgust was tempered by a fierce sense of triumph. she was glad to know the facts, but she did not wish to talk about them, especially as she was far from clear in her mind that there was any logical distinction to be drawn between the conduct of these voluptuaries and that of her own child. she tossed her head as much as to say that she desired to drop the unsavory topic. but lucille was so far blind to any similarity between the cases, or else so far content with the contrast in results between the two remarriages, that she continued in the same vein, which was pensive rather than critical. "i am thankful that paul insisted on keeping helen as a condition of not opposing his wife's nebraska libel, for it would have been rather trying for the poor child to get used to three fathers in less than three years." mrs. wilson felt like choking. the unpleasant picture intensified her repulsion; yet she knew that speech would be no relief for she would not find lucille properly sympathetic. just at that moment her granddaughter came prancing into the room, and ran to her. mrs. wilson clasped her to her breast as a mute outlet for her emotions, for she could not help remembering that this child also had two fathers, and what was the difference but one of degree? yet here was its mother smiling in her face, seemingly without qualms and perfectly happy. how was this peace of mind to be reconciled with the eternal fitness of things? meanwhile lucille was saying, "tell me about paul, mamma. how does he take it? what is he doing?" mrs. wilson sighed. "he was terribly cut up, of course," she answered, gravely. "he feels keenly the family disgrace." she paused intentionally to let the words sink in. "fortunately for him, he has been invited to run for congress--that is, if he can get the nomination. it seems there are several candidates, but your uncle tells me paul has the party organization behind him. the caucuses for delegates do not meet until the early autumn, and in the meantime he hopes to make sufficient friends in the district, which includes some of the small outlying country towns as well as certain wards in benham." "it would be nice to have paul at washington, for he might be able to get the duties taken off so that our trunks wouldn't be examined when we come from europe. i suppose it will cost him a lot of money to be elected." "i have not heard so," said her mother, stiffly. though mrs. wilson's statement was true, certain allusions in her presence by paul and his father had aroused the suspicion in her mind that elaborate plans to secure the necessary number of delegates were already being laid. the use of money to carry elections was a public evil which she heartily deplored, and which she was loth to believe would be tolerated in her own family. "he can afford it anyway," continued lucille, disregarding the disclaimer. mrs. wilson changed the subject. "he was also much absorbed when i left in his new automobile." lucille clapped her hands. "a red devil?" "that name describes its appearance admirably. it is the first one of the kind in benham, and naturally has excited much attention." "bradbury has promised me one for a birthday present." "i have not ridden with paul yet," said mrs. wilson a little wearily, for the enthusiasm elicited appeared to her disproportionate to the theme. "he has invited me once or twice, but somehow the spirit has failed me." lucille gasped. "it's the greatest fun on earth, mamma. they annihilate time and distance, and you feel with the rush and the wind in your face as though you were queen of the earth. if mine runs well we intend to tour through the continent this summer. fancy speeding from one capital of europe to another in a few hours!" she paused, then after a moment's reverie continued, as though stating a really interesting sociological conclusion, "i think it possible, mamma, that if automobiles had been invented earlier, clarence and i might not have bored each other. which wouldn't have suited me at all," she added, "for bradbury is a thousand times nicer." mrs. wilson was painfully conscious that bradbury was infinitely nicer, which increased the difficulties in the way of replying to this incongruous observation. she decided to ignore it as essentially flippant, and she rose to go. it was the nearest approach to a review of the past which either had made during her stay in new york. she hoped that constance would not appreciate how completely lucille had rehabilitated herself in a worldly sense, and she tried to counteract the effect of the evidence by letting fall a remark now and again to show that the memory of her daughter's conduct was still a thorn in her side. as a mother she could not but be thankful that her daughter was far happier as mrs. bradbury nicholson than she had been as mrs. clarence waldo. at the same time her being so was a blow to the theory that the exchange of one husband for another ought to end and ordinarily does end in misery; or, in other words, that divorced people who marry again should be and are apt to be unhappy. to be sure, it was early to judge, and the happiness might not last; and at best it should be regarded as a sporadic case of contradiction, a merciful exception to the general rule; but she was glad when the day arrived for removing constance from the sphere of this influence, fearing perhaps some pointed question from her secretary which would invite her to explain how it was that a person who had deserved so little to be happy as lucille should have found divorce and remarriage a blessing, if the whole proceeding in deserving cases was fundamentally opposed to the social well-being of civilization. as an antidote, mrs. wilson took pains to enlighten her as to the rumored depravity of clarence waldo and the late mrs. howard. but constance asked aloud no such question. yet necessarily she perceived that lucille was in the best of spirits, and apparently had suffered no loss of position by her conduct. constance did not need, however, any reminder from mrs. wilson that the late mrs. waldo was not a person of the finest sensibilities; moreover she considered the point as definitely settled for herself. nevertheless as a spectator, if no more, she noted the circumstance that lucille was already a different woman in consequence of her second marriage, and she detected her reason challenging her conscience with the inquiry which mrs. wilson had dreaded, how it appeared that the world would have been better off if lucille had simply left the husband who had been faithless to her, and remained single instead of marrying. constance was merely collecting evidence, as it were. all was over between her and gordon, but as an intelligent, sentient human being she had no intention of playing the ostrich, but insisted on maintaining an open mind. it was now nearly a year since she had conversed with gordon. her sentence had been perpetual banishment from his presence since the fateful sunday when they had parted. he had written to her that he could not bear to resume the old relation, for now that they knew they had been lovers in disguise, it could not be the old relation. he had declared that the best thing for them both was never to meet, and she had been forced to accept his decision, for he had not been to see her since. yet he had mitigated the rigor of her punishment, for she chose to regard it as such, by occasional letters, written at irregular intervals, letters which let her know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the love he cherished for her was strong and deep as ever. he sent her beautiful flowers on christmas and her birthday, and in writing to her he told her briefly whatever of special interest he had been doing. precious as these communications were to constance, she was of several minds as to whether to answer them. her impulse always was to reply at once, if only that she might draw forth another letter; but sometimes her scruples forced her not to let him see how much she cared and to feign indifference by silence. she knew, as loretta said, that she had only to whistle and he would come to her, and she felt that it would be cruel to give him the smallest encouragement to believe that she could ever alter her decision. this being so, she argued that he ought to marry; he must forget her and chose someone else. she tried to believe that she would rejoice to hear that he was engaged to another woman, but when her thoughts got running in this channel she was apt to break down and realize that she had been trying to deceive herself. in such moments of revulsion she now and then would throw her scruples to the winds and write him about herself and her doings. on two occasions she had suddenly decided that it was necessary for her to see him again; see him without his seeing her. consequently she had frequented a spot down-town where she knew he would pass, and each time had been rewarded by a close and unobserved glimpse of his dear features. these glimpses, the letters, and the flowers were the bright shining milestones along the itinerary of her much occupied life. busy and interested as she was in her employment, it sometimes seemed to her that she walked in a trance in the intervals between some word or sign from him. [illustration: the flowers were the bright, shining milestone.] delighted as she had been to travel, to see such a diverse panorama of national life as her trip to florida and new york afforded, she was glad to find herself again at home. she had not heard from gordon during her absence, and she was eager to see the benham newspapers again in order to ascertain what he had been doing in his new capacity as a legislator. he had written to her the preceding autumn that he had decided to allow the use of his name as a candidate for the state assembly, and subsequently he had been elected. before her departure in the early days of the session, she had kept her eyes and ears on the alert for public mention of him, but had been informed that this was the period for committee conferences and that the opportunity for debate would come after the bills had been framed and were before the house. constance knew that gordon had the strong support of the citizens' club in his canvass, that hall collins, ernest bent and others affiliated with that organization had conducted rallies in his behalf, and that he was expected to favor progressive legislation. there were certain philanthropic measures in which mrs. wilson was interested also before the assembly, and constance had twice already prepared letters from her employer to gordon in reference to these, which was another slight opportunity for keeping in touch with him. shortly after mrs. wilson's return from her vacation it happened that paul invited her again to ride in his automobile. recalling lucille's enthusiasm, and having been partial all her life to new æsthetic sensations, she concluded to test the exhilaration described by those who doted on these machines. the afternoon chosen was one of those days in the early spring when sky and wind combine to simulate the balminess of summer. it was a satisfaction for paul to have his aunt beside him both because he admired her and because, seeing that he regarded her as what he called a true sport at bottom, he felt confident that she had only to experience the sensation of speed to become an enthusiast like himself. therefore, he let his red devil show what it could do, in the hope of carrying her by storm. equipped with suitable wraps and a pair of goggles, mrs. wilson found the process of whirling through the country at a breakneck pace, by the mere compression of a lever, a weird and rather magnetic ordeal. these were the adjectives which she employed to express her gratification to her nephew. she was glad to have tried it, but in her secret soul she had grave doubts if it were the sort of thing she liked. nevertheless she did her best to appear delighted, for she had in mind to drop a few words of warning in paul's ear to the effect that it was incumbent on men of his class in the community to preserve their self-respect in the matter of electioneering as an example to the country at large. in the intervals when paul moderated the speed she endeavored to convey to him clearly but not too concretely the substance of her solicitude. she let him realize that she had him and his campaign in mind, but that she did not intend to meddle beyond the limit of emphasizing a principle unless he were to ask her advice. paul listened to what she had to say with evident interest, and without interruption. he even let his machine crawl along so as to get the complete benefit of her exposition. when she had set forth her views she turned toward him and said in conclusion, by way of showing that she made no charges but simply desired to put him on his guard: "very likely you have thought this all out for yourself and intend to see that every dollar you may use is expended legitimately." paul let the automobile come to a halt, and removing his goggles proceeded to wipe off the dust and moisture. "aunt miriam, every word which you've said is gospel truth; but--and it is a large but--if i were to follow your advice to the letter there would not be the slightest possibility of my securing the nomination. i've thought it all out, as you say, and i'd give gladly to charity twice the sum i shall be compelled to spend, if i could only confine my outlay to legitimate expenses, stationery, printing and the hiring of a few halls. i've no objection to explaining to you why i can't, provided i wish to keep in the running. there are three men including myself in this district," he continued, starting the lever, "who are bidding for the nomination. each of us has a machine, a machine the function of which is to create enthusiasm. ninety per cent. of the candidates for public office do not inspire enthusiasm; they have to manufacture it. and there are all sorts of ways of doing so; by paying club assessments and equipping torch-light paraders with uniforms; by invading the homes of horny-handed proletarians and sending tennis or ping-pong sets to their progeny; or by the solider, subtler method of large direct cash payments, which can never be detected, to a certain number of local vampires as expenses for influence, and whose _quid pro quo_ is the delivery of the goods at the polls. i have engaged a smooth and highly recommended patriot at a high salary to conduct my canvass. he has told me there will be large expenses. when he asks for money i draw a check and ask no questions--a rank coward's way i admit. i know nothing as to what he does with the money, and so i salve my conscience after a fashion." paul shrugged his shoulders and applied a little more power to the automobile, while he chanted: "some naturalists observe the flea has smaller fleas on him to prey, and these have smaller still to bite 'em, and so proceed _ad infinitum_. "which means, my dear aunt," he continued, "that when a rich man runs for office a certain proportion of the free-born consider that they are entitled to direct or indirect pickings in return for a vote." mrs. wilson sighed. "but is not the price too high for a free-born citizen to pay? why exchange private life and the herbs of personal respect for publicity and a stalled ox which is tainted?" "i've thought occasionally of getting out, but father would be disappointed. i wish to go to congress myself and the party wishes me to go. and what would be the result if i retired? one of the other two would win, and i don't throw any large bouquet at myself in stating that i shall make a much more useful and disinterested congressman than either of them." mrs. wilson shook her head, but at the same time she appreciated the difficulties of the situation. for she herself desired to see her nephew go to washington. it was one thing to tell him to take a brave stand and refuse to swerve from the path of highest political probity, another to advise him in the midst of the canvass to dismiss his manager and thus invite certain defeat. it sometimes seemed to her that the ways of the world of men were past understanding. she wondered whether, if human affairs were in the hands of women, the rivalry of politics and the competition of commercialism would tolerate the same army of highwaymen who held up would-be decent citizens as successfully and appallingly as dick turpin and claude duval. she liked to believe that complete purity would reign, and yet the memory of what some women to her knowledge were capable of in the bitterness of club politics served as a caveat to that deduction. discouraging as paul's observations were, as bearing on the ethical progress of human nature, and deeply as she deplored the fact that he appeared to be winking at bribery, she recognized that she had shot her bolt, for she was not sufficiently conversant with the different grades of electioneering impropriety to be willing to take on herself the responsibility of imploring him to retire, even if he would consent to do so. but the confession had robbed the day of much of its beauty for her. she glanced at the little clock in the dashboard, and remembering that she desired to leave a message for her secretary, to whom she had given an afternoon off, she asked paul if he would return home by way of lincoln chambers. it happened that in turning something went wrong, so that the automobile came to a stop. paul was obliged to potter over the mechanism a quarter of an hour before he was able to get the better of the infirmity. somewhat nettled, and eager to make up for lost time and to demonstrate to his companion that in spite of this mishap a red devil was the peer of all vehicles, he forced the pace toward benham. by the time he was within the city limits his blood was coursing in his veins as the result of the impetus, and he felt on his mettle to amaze the onlookers as he sped swiftly and dexterously through the streets. gliding from avenue to avenue without misadventure he applied a little extra power as they flew down that street around one corner of which stood lincoln chambers, in order to make an impressive finish. in turning he described an accurate but short circle, so that the automobile careened slightly, causing mrs. wilson to utter an involuntary murmur. paul, amused at her nervousness, suffered his attention to be diverted for an instant; the next he realized that a young child, darting from the sidewalk, was in the direct path of the rapidly moving machine. he strained every nerve to prevent a collision, shutting off the power and endeavoring to deflect the vehicle's course so that it might strike the curbstone to their own peril rather than the child's; but the catastrophe was complete almost before he realized that it was inevitable. there was a sickening bump, accompanied by the screams of women; the red devil had overwhelmed and crushed the little victim, and stood panting and shaking like a rudely curbed dragon. paul jumped from his seat and lifted the child from the gutter into which it had been hurled and where it lay ominously still with its head against the curbstone. he found himself face to face with two women, in one of whom he recognized his aunt's secretary. the other with an assertive agony which made plain her right to interfere, sought to take the child from him--a flaxen-haired girl of about four--exclaiming: "oh, what have you done? you've killed her. you've killed her." meanwhile mrs. wilson, utterly shocked, sought to keep her head as the only possible amelioration of the horror. she whispered in paul's ear: "there's a drug store opposite. we'll take her there first and send for a doctor." at the same time she put her arm around the mother's shoulder, and said, "let him carry her, loretta, dear. it is best so." loretta davis desisted, though she stared wildly in her patron's face. "the blood--the blood," she cried, pointing to the tell-tale streaks on the child's head. "i'm sure she's dead." acting on his aunt's suggestion, paul bounded across the way with the limp form clasped in his arms. while those immediately concerned endeavored with the aid of the apothecary to ascertain that the injuries were not grave, a curious crowd began to gather in the store. by the time that the trial of the ordinary restoratives had made clear that the child was already beyond the aid of medicine, though mrs. wilson and constance wrung their hands and counted the seconds in hope that the physician telephoned for would arrive, a reporter, a policeman, and a doctor appeared on the scene. the physician, who happened to be passing, was dr. dale, the oculist with the closely cut beard and incisive manner who had attended constance. a moment's inspection sufficed him for a verdict. "there is nothing to be done," he said. at the fell words a wave of anguish passed through the group. paul allowed mrs. wilson to take the baby from him; and, overwhelmed beyond the point of control, he bowed his head in his hands, and burst into tears. his aunt reverently clasped the stiffening form to her bosom regardless of the oozing blood which mottled her cloak. "we must get loretta home as quickly as possible," she whispered to constance, and she started to lead the way so as to save the situation from further publicity. but now that the doctor's usefulness was at an end, the two other representatives of social authority advanced their claims for recognition. the police officer, having relegated the gaping spectators to a respectful distance, began to inquire into the circumstances of the accident, in which he was ably surpassed by the agent of the press, who, note-book in hand, had already been collecting material from the bystanders and composing a sketch of the surroundings before interviewing the principals. paul gave his name and address, and made no attempt to disguise his responsibility for the tragedy. mrs. wilson, finding her way barred by the two functionaries, grudgingly gave similar information in the hope that they would be allowed to escape. as she bore the victim in her arms, this would have been the result had not loretta, who was following close behind under the supervision of constance, and who up to this point had seemed dazed by the proceedings, suddenly realized what was taking place. she clutched constance's arm. "will it be in the newspapers?" she inquired with feverish interest. the reporter overheard her inquiry. "you are the mother of the little girl, madam?" he asked, addressing her, pencil in hand. "yes. she is my only child." "your name is?" "loretta davis." "and the child's?" "tottie. she would have been five in a few weeks." the reporter perceived that he had found a responsive subject. "i lost a little girl of just that age two years ago," he volunteered sympathetically. "is there a photograph of tottie which you could let me have for the press? the public would like to see what she looked like." loretta's eyes sparkled. she thrust her hand in her pocket and drew forth a photographer's envelope. "isn't it lucky," she cried, "i got these proofs only yesterday, and they're the living image of my baby." as she hastily removed the package from her pocket, together with her handkerchief, loretta let a small bottle slip to the floor. constance, who was spellbound with dismay at the turn of affairs, stooped mechanically to pick it up. she recognized the pellets lauded by loretta. in doing so her head nearly bumped against that of dr. dale, who was intent on a similar purpose. he got possession of the bottle, and instinctively he glanced at the label before transferring it to constance. she observed that he shrugged his shoulders. as she put out her hand to take it from him, she said in a low, resolute tone: "will you tell me what those are?" then as the physician regarded her searchingly, she added, "i have a special reason for asking. i wish to befriend her." "cocaine tablets," answered dr. dale. "the woman has the appearance of a drug habitué." xxv in parting with the rev. mr. prentiss without personal rancor and yet with an open avowal of his conviction that constance would marry him in the end, gordon perry both made an admission and issued a challenge. his admission on the surface was simply that he recognized the rector's sincerity. in his own consciousness it went further; he recognized the validity of the conflict between them to an extent which he had up to this time failed to perceive, or at least to acknowledge. the effect of this was to intensify the ardor of his convictions, but at the same time to cause him as a lawyer to respect his opponent's position, though he believed it to be utterly false. the interview had been absorbing to him sociologically, for it had crystallized in his own mind as concrete realities certain drifts or tendencies of which he had been aware, but which he had hitherto never formulated in words. now that the occasion was come for doing so, the indictment--for it was that--had risen spontaneously to his lips. it was clear to him, as he had informed mr. prentiss, that there was a direct strife in american social evolution between those who sought eternal truth through the free processes of the human spirit and those who accepted it distilled through an hierarchy. just as in his sociological perplexities gordon, yearning to be a sane spirit, had abstained from radicalism and had sought relief in concrete practical activities, he had watched the theological firmament and had felt his way. if he realized that the christian organizations which saw in the human soul a dignity which rejected mediation were merely holding their own as formal bodies, he comforted himself with the knowledge that the thousands of men and women who rarely entered the churches--among them many of the most thoughtful and busiest workers in the land--were to a unit sympathizers with the creed of soul-freedom and soul-development. not merely this; he knew that among orthodox worshippers the secret belief of the majority of the educated already rejected as superfluous or antiquated most of the old dogmas. but with his reverence for religion as an institution, gordon had no ambition to outstrip his generation; simply to be in the van of it. there was no attraction for him in iconoclasm; he craved illumination, yet not at the expense of rationalism. now suddenly the practical issue of the church's interference with the state, of the church's imposition on mankind of a cruel, inflexible ideal, labelled as superior purity, had become both an immediate and a personal concern. his soul felt seared as by an iron; all his instincts of sympathy with common humanity, the helpless victims of an arbitrary aim to preserve the family at the expense of the blameless individual, were aroused and intensified. viewed as a general issue, gordon felt no question as to the outcome. was it not already decided? the church had never ceased to deplore as usurpation society's constantly louder claim the world over of the right to regulate marriage, but without avail. it was only abuse by the state which had produced a reaction and given sacerdotalism another chance. but the particular, the personal issue, was a very different matter. for him it meant everything, and his whole being revolted at the possibility of losing the great joy of life through such a misapprehension of spiritual duty on the part of her who, so far as he was concerned, was the one woman in existence. yet during the next weeks following the interview with the clergyman he experienced a sense of flatness which was almost despondency, for he realized that he had exhausted his resources. mr. prentiss had refused to aid him; on the contrary, had virtually defied him by expressing a triumphant conviction that constance's decision was final. could it be that she, whose lucidity of mind he had been wont to admire, would refuse to understand that the barrier which seemed to separate them was but an illusion? surely it was not for the good of the world that true love--its most vital force--should be starved because the marriage tie was played fast and loose with by others. and yet he appreciated apprehensively the subtlety of this plea for the world's good; how modern it was, and how attractive to woman when made the motive for the exercise of renunciation. truly, the priest had argued shrewdly, yet gordon refused to admit that constance could be deceived for long. that seemed too incompatible with her previous outlook and their delightful comradeship which had held love in disguise. he concluded forthwith that his best hope lay in terminating that comradeship. to resume it would make them brother and sister, a relation tantalizing to him, and which might be better than nothing to her, and thus strengthen her resolve. accordingly, with spartan courage, he never visited her. but he chose by his letters and his gifts to let her know unequivocally that he was waiting for her to relent--would wait until the end of time. he wrote to her that her dear image was the constant inspiration of his thoughts, and that he sighed for the sound of her voice. while thus he chafed within, and yet endeavored to pursue his work as earnestly as though he had been able to forget, he received and accepted an invitation from the citizens' club to become a candidate for the state assembly. he saw in this both relief and an incentive; public service would tend to divert and refresh his thoughts, and opportunity would be afforded him to promote legislation. it would suit him to become a member of the free parliament of men where, whatever its abuses and shortcomings, the needs of ordinary humanity were threshed out, and where true, practical reforms were piece by piece won from the vested traditions of the past. at the same time he declared to the members of the committee which waited on him that in accepting their nomination he was not to be understood as offering himself to the voters as a denunciatory radical or as advocating all the so-called grievances aired at the citizens' club. his words were, "i agree to support every measure which i believe would be an immediate benefit to the community from the standpoint of justice and public usefulness. if you are content with that guarded generalization, i shall be proud to serve you; but if you insist on my playing the demagogue or wearing the livery of the enemies of constituted society, i must decline the nomination." "that's all right," asserted hall collins, who was the spokesman. "what we want this trip are two or three new pieces of timber in the ship of state, repairs we'll call them if you like it so, and we've chosen you as carpenter for the job. side with us when you can, and when you can't we'll know you're honest." this voiced the sentiment of the citizens' club, and it was no disparagement to the sincerity of its action that those who directed the club's affairs cherished hopes that the nominee, through his standing, would gain support from other quarters than the radical element and thus be more likely to win. their hopes were justified. gordon had a comfortable majority in his district, though it was understood that he had affiliations with so-called socialists and labor reformers. during the first year of his service as a legislator he made no effort to fix public attention on himself by forensic readiness. he was studying the methods of procedure and familiarizing himself with the personnel of the assembly. but though his name did not appear conspicuously in the press notices--which was a disappointment to a certain lady constantly on the watch for it--this did not mean that he failed to attract the attention of his associates. on the contrary, his thoroughness, patience, and fairness were soon recognized, and when he rose to speak--which he did more frequently in the later weeks of the session in relation to bills of importance where the vote was likely to be close--the members paid attention as though they were glad to know his reasons. it was perceived that he inclined to the party of progress rather than to the conservatives, but that he did not hesitate to turn a cold shoulder towards or to rebuke mere blatherskite or visionary measures. a modern legislature has to deal with questions which vitally affect the development of the body politic; the relations of powerful corporations to the public and it to them; the demands of toiling bread-winners for shorter hours of labor and hygienic safeguards, and the newly fermented strife between the right to hold and the obligation to share the fruits of the earth and the profits of superior ability and industry. these were problems which particularly interested gordon, and, as one by one they arose for action, he sought to solve each on its merits without prejudice and with an eye to justice. it was understood that he would be a candidate for the next assembly, and in making their forecast the sophisticated referred to him as a coming leader, one of the men who would control the balance of power by force of his intelligence and independence. the citizens' club was content with the part which he had played. several measures in which it was interested had become law through his advocacy; others, though defeated, had gained ground; two notable bills conferring valuable franchises for next to nothing upon plausible capitalists had been exposed and given their quietus in spite of a persistent lobby; and the candidate had promised during the next session to press the bill for a progressive legacy tax, an amendment to the existing legacy tax law, which would increase the sum levied in progressive ratio with the size of every estate transferred by death. this was a reform which hall collins and his intimates had at heart, and they had won gordon to their side as an enthusiastic supporter of its essential reasonableness. the bill had been killed in committee for the past two years; yet the present year the adverse report had been challenged in the house and had been sustained by a comparatively small majority after strenuous and excited appeals to what was termed the sober, conservative sense of the american people. gordon's speech in behalf of the measure was listened to with a silence which suggested a desire for enlightenment. after the debate was over there had been prophecies that another year it would stand a good chance of passing. it was toward the close of gordon's first session in the assembly that the harrowing death of loretta's child occurred, and, owing to the prominence of the parties concerned in the homicide, which was the first automobile accident in benham, became town talk. the newspaper artists illustrated the tragedy with drawings of the red devil in the act of striking the victim, portraits of everybody concerned, from tottie to the apothecary into whose shop she had been carried, and camera cuts of the obsequies. there were appropriate editorials on the iniquity of allowing furious engines to be propelled at a rapid rate through the streets; and sensational conflicting rumors were rife in the news columns as to the amount by which the repentant multi-millionaire had sought to idemnify the mother for his carelessness. conjecture fixed it at various sums from one thousand to fifty thousand dollars, and one imaginative scribe conjured up the information that tottie was to be replaced as far as possible by the most beautiful baby which the howard family could procure by search or advertisement. in his genuine distress for the irreparable evil he had wrought paul howard had gone straightway to loretta to pour out his contrition and to express a willingness to make such amends as were possible for the catastrophe. he saw her twice; the first time on the day following the accident, when she appeared excited but dazed; the second on the morning after the funeral. then her condition of mind bordered closely on exaltation as the result of being the temporary focus of public attention. she was surrounded by newspapers, and she insisted on calling paul's notice to all the reportorial features. with special pride she made him note a cut which showed that the coffin had been piled high with the most exquisite flowers--a joint contribution from mrs. wilson and himself. loretta's own apartment was also a bower of roses from the same sympathizing source, and the young woman was in her best dress-festal mourning--as though she were expecting visitors. paul found some difficulty in broaching the question of indemnity. he was in the mood to draw his check for any sum in reason which the bereaved mother should declare to be satisfactory compensation for her loss even though it were excessive, so that he might adjust the matter then and there. he had every intention of being generous; moreover he knew that all this publicity concerning the accident was injuring his canvass for the congressional nomination, and he hoped to create a reaction in his favor by behaving handsomely. but loretta, though she obviously understood what he was driving at, evaded the topic, and when, in order to clinch matters, he told her in plain terms that he wished to make her a present and asked her to name the sum, she looked knowing and suspicious, as much as to say that she knew her rights and had no intention of committing herself. paul, who mistook her contrariness for diffidence, was on the point of naming an amount which would have made her open her eyes when she suddenly said with a leer intended to convey the impression of shrewdness: "i'm going to talk with my lawyer first. people say it was all your fault, and that i ought to get a fortune. i've witnesses for my side." paul was taken aback. "it was all my fault. i've told you already that i was entirely to blame. and i'm anxious for you to tell me how much i ought to pay as damages. so there won't be any need of a lawyer on either side." loretta argued to herself that she was not to be caught by any such smooth words. she tossed her head. "i don't know about that. i'm going to get one of the smartest attorneys in benham to attend to my case." she waited a moment, then added triumphantly, believing that her announcement would carry dismay to her crafty visitor, "it's gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law." "gordon perry?" loretta construed his inflection of astonishment as consternation. "yes," she said, "i'm going to consult him this afternoon." it was on paul's lips to inform her that gordon was his lawyer too, but her uncompromising attitude had produced its natural effect, and he felt at liberty to practise a little craft in his turn. if he were to disclose the truth, she would be likely to consult someone else; whereas gordon and he could come to terms speedily. so he merely responded that he knew mr. perry to be an excellent attorney, and that he would be content to abide by his decision. the final settlement required some diplomacy on gordon's part on account of the difference in point of view between the contracting parties. loretta had definitely fixed on ten thousand dollars as the mecca of her hopes, than which, as she declared to gordon at their first interview, she would not accept a cent less; whereas paul was disposed to make her comfortable for life by a donation of twenty-five thousand. he naturally had discussed the subject with his aunt, and this was the sum which had been agreed on between them as fitting. mrs. wilson was overwhelmed by the disaster; it haunted her thoughts; and, though she remembered loretta's original indifference regarding the child, it seemed to her that the only possible expiation would be a princely benefaction, such as would thrill the bereaved recipient. but when she in her turn mentioned the matter to constance, the latter, who had been mulling over the insinuation uttered by dr. dale, informed her what he had said. the effect of this intelligence was to strengthen the purpose which mrs. wilson and paul had already formed to have the gift tied up so that loretta could use only the income, and thus be protected indefinitely against designing companions and herself. but when gordon, who had abstained from revealing the extent of paul's intended liberality, suggested this arrangement, he encountered sour opposition from his client. it was manifest that loretta had set her heart on being complete mistress of the ten thousand dollars, and that any curtailment of her power to exhibit it and spend it as she saw fit would be a bitter disappointment. either she did not understand, or declined to understand what was meant by a trust, and plainly she regarded the proposition as a subterfuge on the part of the donor to keep his clutch on the money. gordon endeavored to reason with her and to show her the disinterested wisdom of the plan, but she shook her head no less resolutely after he had finished. when her repugnance was stated to paul, he bade gordon pay her the ten thousand dollars in cash and say nothing about the remainder. he added good-naturedly: "i suppose it's natural enough that she should like to finger the money. let her blow it in as she chooses, and when it's gone i'll settle an annuity on her." loretta came to constance on the following day with glittering eyes and exhibited her treasure-trove--a bank book and a roll of bills. "it's all there," she said. "my lawyer went with me and he saw me hand it all over except this hundred dollars to the man in the cage. my lawyer made me count it first. he's smart--gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law. i'm rich now." "but you will go on nursing just the same, won't you, loretta? it's your profession, you know." loretta looked non-committal. "perhaps. but i'm going to take a rest first and--and buy a few things." she spread out proudly the new crisp bank bills like a pack of cards. "i've never been able to buy anything before." solicitous as she felt regarding the future, constance had not the heart to repress sympathy with this radiant mood. blood money as it was, it would, nevertheless, mean many pleasures and comforts to the pensioner. it was no time for advice or for extracting promises of good behavior. so in a few words she showed the approach to envy which was expected of her. by way of recompense, or because she had been waiting for congratulations to be paid first, loretta presently paused, looked knowing, and giving constance a nudge whispered oracularly, as one whose views were now entitled to respectful consideration, "i sounded him about you, constance, and it's all right. i could see it is, though i guess he didn't like much my speaking. and what do you suppose i told him? that he mustn't get discouraged, for one had only to look at you to know that you were perfectly miserable without him." "how dare you tell him such a thing? what right had you to meddle?" cried constance, beside herself with anger and humiliation. she clenched her hands; she wished that she might throw herself upon this arch, complacent busybody and box her ears. "this is too much! besides, it is not true--it is not true." "true? of course it's true. and why should you mind its being true if you love him? i was trying to help you, constance, so there's no use in getting mad." obviously loretta on her side was surprised at the reception accorded her good offices, and at a loss to explain such an abnormal outburst on the part of her habitually gentle comrade. perception of this swiftly checked the current of constance's wrath, but, as her equanimity returned, the eyes of her mind became pitilessly fixed on herself. perfectly miserable! was not that indeed the real truth? and true not only of her but of him? of him, who had told her that she was sacrificing the joy of both their lives to a fetich. loretta's rude probing had made one thing clear--that it was futile to try longer to persuade herself that she was happy. yet her reply was, "i take you at your word, loretta, that you meant no harm. please remember, however, hereafter that my relations with mr. perry are a subject not to be spoken of to either of us, if you do not wish to be unkind." loretta stared, and laughed as though she suspected that this appeal was designed to put her off the scent. but she was too much absorbed in her own altered status to care to bandy words on the matter. two days later she disappeared from lincoln chambers. but the fact of her absence awakened no concern in the mind of constance for several weeks inasmuch as she had gathered from mrs. harrity that loretta had gone to another patient. but presently it transpired that she had taken all her belongings with her, and had made the charwoman promise to make no mention of that mysterious fact for the time being. mrs. harrity could throw no further light on the lodger's exodus, but admitted that under the spell of one of the crisp new bills she had asked no questions and subsequently held her tongue. constance immediately imparted her fears to mrs. wilson, who instituted promptly a search through the police authorities. investigation disclosed that a woman answering to the description of loretta had been seen at some of the restaurants and entertainment resorts of flashy character in the company of a man with whom there was reason to believe she had left town. it was found also on inquiry at the bank where here funds had been placed that the entire deposit had been withdrawn some three weeks subsequent to the date when the account was opened. confronted with this disagreeable intelligence mrs. wilson felt aghast. it occasioned her grievous personal distress that her ward should have fallen so signally from grace at the very moment when the spirit of righteousness should have triumphed, and she was displeased to think that her philanthropic acumen had been at fault. but the elasticity of her spirit presently prevailed, and it was with an exculpating sense of recovery and of illumination which was almost breathless that she said to constance: "i fear that we must face the fact that she is a degenerate; one of those unhappy beings whom the helping hands of society are powerless to uplift because of their inherent preference for evil." upon her lips the word "degenerate" had the sound of the ring of fate and of modern scientific sophistication withal. xxvi a year later, in the early days of spring and the closing weeks of the next state assembly, carlton howard and his son paul sat conversing in mrs. wilson's study. they had been dining with her, and on rising from the table she had invited them to keep her company in her private apartment while she busied herself with matters incident to the entertainment she was to give in a little more than a week to the members of the american society for the discussion of social problems, as the crowning festivity to its four days' meeting in benham. mrs. wilson was elated over the opportunity to mingle the thoughtful people of the country--some of whom, as seen at annual meetings of the society elsewhere, appeared to her to have cultivated intellectual aptness at the expense of the graces of life--and benham's fashionable coterie. she reasoned that the experience would be stimulating for both, and with her secretary at her elbow she was absorbed in planning various features to give distinction to the event. her hospitality, from one point of view, would not be the first of its kind in the annals of the society, for at each of the last two meetings--the one in chicago, the other in st. louis--there had been an attempt to entertain the members more lavishly than hitherto. so in a sense she felt herself on her mettle to set before her visitors the best which benham afforded, and so effectively as to eclipse the past and at the same time bring a little nearer that appropriate blending between beauty and wisdom to which she looked forward as an ultimate social aim. she had been of many minds as to what form her entertainment should take, and had finally settled on this programme: dinner was to be served at her house to the seventy-five visiting and resident members and a sprinkling of benham's most socially gifted spirits, at little tables holding six or eight. a reception was to follow, to which the rest of her acquaintance was invited to meet the investigators of social problems. at this there was to be a vaudeville performance by artists from new york, after which, before supper, six of benham's prettiest and most fashionable girls were to pass around, as keepsakes for the visitors, silver ornaments reminiscent of benham in their shape or design. mrs. wilson was not wholly satisfied with this programme; she was conscious that it lacked complete novelty and was not æsthetically so convincing as some of her previous efforts; but considering the numbers to be fed--and she was determined that these thoughtful pilgrims should taste delicious food faultlessly served for once in their lives--she could think of no more subtle form of hospitality which would give them the opportunity to realize the artistic significance of her establishment. there were so many things to be attended to, a portion of which occurred to her on the spur of the moment, that mrs. wilson had requested her secretary to make long working hours, and occasionally, as on this day, to protract them through the evening. constance was at her desk in the room appropriated to her use, which led out of mrs. wilson's study. the door was open, and where she sat it was easy to distinguish the conversation which went on there. when mrs. wilson needed her she touched a silver bell far more melodious in its tone that the squeak of electric communication. constance had already exchanged greetings with her employer's brother and nephew, whose random dialogue, broken by the digestive pauses which are apt to occur after a good dinner, provided a cosey stimulus to mrs. wilson's musings. mrs. wilson enjoyed the feeling that she was in the bosom of her family, and that, at the same time, absorbed in her cogitations, she need give no more than a careless ear to the talk of railroad earnings and other purely masculine concerns. she was pleased too by the knowledge that lucille was coming in a few days to pay her a visit, bringing her granddaughter and the new nicholson baby, a boy. her new son-in-law also was coming, and she could not help feeling elated at the prospect of letting benham see that the marriage which ought to have been a failure had turned out surprisingly well, and that her daughter was a reputable and somewhat elegant figure in society--not exactly the woman she had meant her to be, but immeasurably superior to what she had at one time feared. she was aware in her heart that logically, according to her standards, lucille was not a person to be made much of socially, and yet she intended her and her husband to be a feature of her entertainment, and she felt sure that her acquaintance would regard them as such. though the inconsistency troubled her, inducing, if she stopped to think, spiritual qualms, maternal instinct jealously stifled reflection, and, furthermore, pursuing its natural bent, was rejoicing in the opportunity. once, when interrogated sharply by conscience, in the watches of the night, she had satisfied her intelligence by answering back that her behavior was ostrich-like but human. since the rest of her world failed to turn a cold shoulder on lucille, was it for her to withhold the welcome befitting an only child? paul howard was now a congressman-elect. his canvass for the nomination the previous autumn had been successful, and the rumors in circulation as to the sum which he had paid over to his manager to accomplish this result by methods more or less savoring of bribery, were still rife. these had reached paul's ears, and he was unable to deny that the most sensational figures were far in excess of the actual truth. concerning the rest of the indictment, he could say literally that he knew nothing definite. he had drawn checks and asked no questions. but in his secret soul he had no doubts as to its substantial accuracy, and after the first flush of victory was over the edge of his self-satisfaction had been dulled by regret at the moral price which he had been obliged to pay in order to become a congressman. yet he had comforted himself with the thought that otherwise he could not have won the nomination, and that he intended to become an exemplary and useful member. so by this time he had ceased to dwell on the irretrievable and was enjoying the consciousness that he was to go to washington, where he hoped to make his mark. who could tell? with his means and popularity he might eventually become a united states senator, or secure some desirable diplomatic appointment. paul had been spending a few days in new york, and personal business matters formed at first the topic of conversation between the two men. when presently the younger inquired if anything of general interest had happened in benham during his absence, his father frowned and said: "that man perry is pressing his socialistic legacy tax bill." paul looked interested. he understood the allusion, for shortly previous to his departure for new york, in consequence of his father's animadversions, he had taken occasion to see gordon and to discuss the question with him. "i object to the principle; it's an entering wedge," continued mr. howard. "when you say that because i leave a larger estate than you, my estate shall pay a larger proportionate tax than yours, you confiscate property. it is only another step to make the ratio of increase such that after a certain sum all will be appropriated by the state. it would be a blow at individual enterprise, and so at the stability of the family. if you deprive men of the right to accumulate and to leave to their children the full fruits of their industry and brains, you take away the great incentive to surmount obstacles and to excel." the banker in broaching the subject had uttered gordon's name with denunciatory clearness, so that constance heard it distinctly. her spirit rose in protest at the condemning tone, and she paused in her occupation to listen. as mr. howard proceeded she recognized the character of his grievance. in the last letter gordon had written her, now more than a month previous, he had mentioned the fact that he was interested in the success of what he termed the progressive legacy tax bill, and she had closely followed its course in the legislature. she knew that the committee to which it was referred had reported in its favor by a majority of one; she had also gathered, from what she read in the newspapers, that it was regarded as the most important public measure of the session, and was to be hotly debated. while she sought to smother her personal feelings, so that she might give due consideration to mr. howard's argument, he paused, and paul's voice retorted: "i mentioned the one hundred per cent. argument to gordon perry, and he smiled at it. he said that so unreasonable and oppressive an extreme was out of the question, and a mere bogy." "will he guarantee it?" demanded the banker sternly. "he cannot; he can answer only for the legislative body of which he is a member. if the present bill passes, why may not an assembly twenty-five years hence declare that the public good--meaning the necessary tax levy for the expenses of an extravagant socialistic republic--demands that all which any man dies possessed of in excess of half a million dollars should, by the operation of a sliding scale of percentage, be confiscated by the state?" "but on the other hand is it really unjust to tax the estate of one, who dies possessed of a fortune larger than is sufficient to satisfy every craving of his heirs, considerably more in proportion than that of the citizen of moderate means whose children need every dollar? that is what don perry would answer. moreover, this bill is tolerably easy on the children of the rich, is rather more severe on brothers and sisters than on lineal descendants, and so on through the family tree. the people who inherit millions from a cousin are scarcely to be pitied if the state steps in and takes a respectable slice." "to hear you talk one would imagine you were a supporter of the measure," said his father haughtily, recognizing paul's proclivity to take the opposite side of an argument, but evidently regarding the subject as too serious for economic philandering. paul laughed. "i suppose i should vote against it on general principles--meaning that it's best to hold on to what one has as long as possible. but it's one of the sanest attempts to get at the surplus accumulations of the prosperous for the benefit of everybody else which has thus far been devised. indeed, we're not pioneers in this--in fact, rather behind the times as a democratic nation. it has been introduced already with success, for instance, in the republic of switzerland, and in australia and new zealand." mr. howard made a gesture of impatience. "very likely. the two last-named countries are the hot-bed of socialistic experiments. will you tell me," he added, with slow emphasis, "what society is to gain by disintegrating large fortunes acquired by energy and thrift? i myself have given away three million dollars for hospitals, libraries, and educational endowments in the last ten years. will the state make a better use of the surplus, as you call it?" "the trouble is, father, that some multi-millionaires are less generous than you. evidently the state is of the opinion that the returns would foot up larger under a compulsory law than under the present voluntary system." "up to this time personal individuality has been the distinguishing trait of the american people. i believe that the nation has too much sense to sacrifice the rights of the individual to----" he paused, seeking the fit phrase to express his meaning, and was glibly anticipated by paul. "to the envious demands of the mob. that is one way of putting it. gordon perry's statement would be that society has reached the point where the so-called vested rights of the individual must now and again be sacrificed on the altar of the common good, and that a moderate bill like this is the modern scientific method of rehabilitating the meaning of the word justice." unable to see the disputants, but listening with all her ears, constance recognized the argument. the common good! here was the same issue between the individual on one side and the community on the other; and this time gordon was the champion of the state against the individual. clearly he acknowledged the obligation--the soundness of the principle provided that the sacrifice would redound to the benefit of civilization. yet the same mind which demanded a progressive legacy tax bill in the name of human justice rejected an inflexible mandate against remarriage as a cruel infringement on the rights of two souls as against the world. there could be only one explanation of the inconsistency; namely, that he believed profoundly that such a mandate was not for the common good. she knew this already, yet somehow its presentation in this parallel form struck her imagination. while thus she mused constance heard mr. howard say in response to paul's last sally: "i request that you will not entrust to that young man any more of the firm's business. i prefer an attorney with less speculative ambitions." paul laughed again. "as you will, father. gordon perry has all the practice he can attend to without ours. he is hopelessly on his feet so far as our disapproval--or even a boycott--is concerned." "and his bill will not pass," said the banker, with the concise assurance of one who knows whereof he is speaking, and is conscious of reserve power. "i have sent for the chairman of our state committee." "if the party is against it, you know i am a good party man, father." "it isn't a question of party. it goes deeper than that; it's fundamental. i've arranged for a conference----" at this point mr. howard saw fit to lower his voice. it was evident to constance that he was imparting secrets, and revealing the machinations by which he expected to defeat or side-track the obnoxious measure. if only she could hear and warn gordon! but what they said was no longer audible. the men's talk had dropped to an inarticulate murmur, which continued for a few moments, and then was interrupted by mrs. wilson's dulcet tones. the change of key had attracted her attention, which already in subconsciousness had followed the thread of the dialogue, though her deliberate thoughts were far away. "i have been listening to you two people," she said aloud, "and it is an interesting theme. i agree with you, my dear paul, academically; as an eventual sociological development the surplus should be appropriated for the public good. but i wonder if we are quite ready for it yet. in other words, can the community--the state--the mass be trusted to administer the revenues thus acquired so as to produce more wholesome and beneficent results for the general weal than are now being fostered by the wealthy and enlightened humanitarian few under the existing laws? in the present stage of our civilization might not the standards of efficiency be lowered by such a policy, and the true development of art and beauty be arrested? there is my doubt." her brother's response had the ring of an epigram. "to the end of time, miriam, human affairs must be managed by the capable few, or the many will suffer. if you deprive able men of the power of accumulation, the price of bread will soon be dearer." "and what the many hope for sooner or later is free champagne," remarked paul. neither of his elders replied to this quizzical utterance, and there was a brief silence. then mrs. wilson stepped to the doorway of the anteroom and told constance that she did not require her services further that evening. she had suddenly remembered the former intimacy between her secretary and the protagonist of the bill. for the next week constance diligently studied the newspapers for information in regard to the mooted measure. the entire community seemed suddenly aroused to the significance of the issue, and the daily press teemed with reading matter in relation thereto. the debate on the occasion of the second reading of the bill was the most protracted and earnest of the session. as mr. howard had intimated, it was not strictly a party measure; that is, it found advocates and opponents among the members of each of the two great political parties; only the so-called socialistic contingent gave it undivided support. but developments soon revealed that nearly all the conservative, eminently respectable members of the party to which mr. carleton howard belonged were lining up in opposition to the bill on one plea or another. it was denounced by some as dangerous, by others, as unconstitutional; numerous amendments were offered in order to kill it by exaggerating its radical features or to render it innocuous. constance imagined that she could discern the master hand of the banker in the fluctuations of sentiment, in some of the editorials, and in the solemn resolutions of certain commercial bodies. it was at the third reading of the bill that gordon made his great speech--great from the point of view of the friends of the measure, because it set forth without undue excitement and superfluous oratory the essential soundness and justice of their cause. a packed house listened in absorbed silence to the forceful, concise presentation. on the morrow the rival merits of the controversy were still more eagerly bruited throughout the state. constance could restrain herself no longer. her lover was being stigmatized by the lips of many as an enemy of established society, yet she must not go to him and show her admiration and her faith. but she would write--just a line to let him know that she understood what he was attempting, and that she was on his side in the struggle for the common good against individualism and the pride of wealth. by way of answer there came next day merely a bunch of forget-me-nots addressed to her in his handwriting. she pressed the dainty yet humble flowers to her lips, then placed them in her breast. they seemed to express better than the pomp of roses his steadfast allegiance to her and to humanity. the days of the debate were those just preceding the coming of the pilgrims belonging to the society for the discussion of social problems. constance's most formal duties in connection therewith had already been performed, but mrs. wilson kept her constantly at hand lest new ideas should occur to her or emergencies arise. besides there were numerous minor details relating to the august entertainment on the final evening which demanded supervision. constance was very busy, but in her heart the query was ever rising, will he win? she had learned that the bill had been put over for three days, and that the vote on its passage was to be taken on the date of mrs. wilson's festivity, probably in the late afternoon, as there was certain to be further discussion before the roll was called. the four days' exercises of the society consisted of the reading of papers on current national problems, one series in the morning, another in the evening, with opportunities for general comment. the afternoons were devoted to recreation and the visiting of points of local interest, such as the oil yards, pork factories, and other commercial plants across the nye to which benham owed its growth and vitality; to wetmore college, the institution of learning for the higher education of women; and to the new public library and silas s. parsons free hospital. mrs. wilson was an absorbed and prominent figure at all the meetings. she had no paper of her own to read, but on two occasions she made a few remarks on the topic before the society when the moment for discussion arrived. on the third day, moreover, at the end of the paper on "the development of art in the united states," the president rose and made the announcement of a gift of five hundred thousand dollars from mrs. randolph wilson and her brother for the erection of a free art museum for benham on the land already bonded by the city. constance had the satisfaction of hearing the applause which greeted the declaration of this splendid endowment. mrs. wilson had made it possible for her to attend several of the meetings as educational opportunities, but she had received no inkling of this interesting secret. late in the afternoon of the next day, that fixed for the entertainment and for the ballot on gordon's bill, constance was informed by the butler that there was a woman below who desired to see her. the man's manner prompted her to make some inquiry, and she learned that the visitor was loretta davis; that she had asked first for mrs. wilson, and on being told that she was out had asked for herself. the servant volunteered the further information that she appeared to be in a disorderly condition, and that, but for his mistress's special interest in her, he would not have admitted her to the house. constance went downstairs excited that the wanderer had returned, yet reflecting that she had chosen a most untimely date for her reappearance. she said to herself that she would take a cab, bundle loretta off to lincoln chambers, and conceal the fact of her presence in benham from mrs. wilson until the following day. as she entered the small reception-room, she was shocked by loretta's appearance. she looked as though she had lived ten years in one. her cheeks were sunken, her eyes unnaturally bright, and her face wore the aspect of degenerate dissipation. she was more conspicuously dressed than her circumstances warranted, and her clothes appeared crumpled. but her air was jaunty, and she met constance's solicitous greeting with an appalling gaiety. "well, i'm back again. i hear you've been hunting for me. i suppose you'll want to know all about it, so i might as well tell you my money's gone. some of it i lent to my friend--him i went back to--and the rest is spent. we've been in chicago and new york, and--and i've had the time of my life." she evidently hoped to shock constance by this bravado; but distressed as the latter was by the painful levity, she took for granted that loretta was not herself, and that though her speech was fluent she was under the influence of some stimulant, presumably the drug which dr. dale had specified. while she was wondering how to deal with the situation and what could be the object of loretta's visit, the latter supplied the solution to her second quandary. "i've seen all about the big party she's giving to-night. that's why i've come." she paused a moment, then continued in a cunning whisper, as though she were afraid of unfriendly ears: "i want to get a chance to see it--the folk, i mean, and the smart dresses. lord sake," she added, noticing doubtless the consternation in her hearer's face, "i do believe you thought i was asking to come as one of the four hundred myself. thanks, but i've left my new ball dress at home. they can tuck me in somewhere behind a curtain; i'd be quiet; or i'd dress as a maid. manage it for me, constance, like a decent woman." her voice cracked a little, and her eyes filled with tears, suggesting a tipsy person. then suddenly her manner changed; she squared her shoulders and said malevolently, "i'm going to see it anyway. it's a small thing to ask of her who helped to kill my only child." it was a small thing to ask certainly, absurd as the request seemed. constance reflected that, inopportune as the application was, the decision, as loretta had intimated, did not rest with her. "i will ask mrs. wilson, loretta," she said, to gain time to think. "she will be home before long." at that moment the lady named entered the room. the butler had told her who her visitor was, and she had not avoided the interview. she had just come from an afternoon tea given in honor of the visiting pilgrims, and was attired in her most elegant costume. loretta's eyes, as they took in the exquisite details of her appearance, dilated with the interest of fascination, yet their gleam was envious rather than friendly. beholding the two women face to face, constance, struck by the contrast, realized that they represented the two poles of the social system; that the one embodied aspiration, the graces of christian civilization and glittering success, the other self-indulgence, moral decay, and hideous failure. such were the prizes of deference to, and the penalties of revolt against, the mandates of society! yet even as she thus reasoned her heart was wrung with intense pity, and it was she who offered herself as a spokesman and laid loretta's petition before mrs. wilson. that lady's face was a study during the brief recital. bewilderment, horrified repugnance, toleration, and finally hesitating acquiescence succeeded one another as she listened to the strange request and to her secretary's willingness to take charge of her discreditable ward if the permission to remain were granted. obnoxious as the idea of having such a person in the house at this time of all others appeared to her at first blush, mrs. wilson's philanthropic instincts speedily responded to the demand upon them in spite of its obvious and vulgar sensationalism. she, like constance, found herself asking why she need refuse such a small favor to this unfortunate creature merely because the supplication was so distasteful to her. if constance were ready to see that she did not make a spectacle of herself, and would keep an eye on her, why, after all, should she not remain? might not the sight of the brilliant, refined spectacle even serve to reinspire her with respect for the decencies of life? mrs. wilson's imagination snatched at the hope. consent could not possibly do harm to anyone, and it might be a means of reclaiming this erring creature. constance perceived how her employer's mind was working, and she made the course of acquiescence smooth by saying: "we will sit together, mrs. wilson, where we can see and no one can see us. and in return for your consideration," she added meaningly, "loretta agrees to conduct herself as a lady--in such a manner as not to offend anyone by her behavior so long as she is in this house." "very well," said mrs. wilson. "i am very glad to give my permission. you know what constance means, loretta?" loretta nodded feverishly. "i shall be all right," she said. she understood that they referred to her habits, and she was willing enough to guarantee good behavior, for she knew that she had the assurance of it in her own pocket--a small hypodermic syringe, the use of which would steady her nerves for the time being. it was with an exultant intention of enjoying herself to the uttermost, and of fooling her hostess to the top of her bent, that after constance had shown her to a room that she might put herself to rights, loretta jabbed herself with the needle again and again in pursuit of forbidden transport. an hour later when loretta was asleep under the eye of a maid, constance found time to consider how she could ascertain the result of the ballot, the haunting suspense as to which had kept her heart in her mouth all day. she lay in wait for the evening newspaper, but she ransacked its columns in vain, as she had feared would be the case. evidently the vote had been taken too late for publication. while she stood in the hall trying to muster courage to call up one of the newspaper offices on the telephone and ask the question--which would assuredly be a piece of impertinence on the part of an unimportant person like herself--she heard the ring of the front door bell. when the butler answered it the commanding figure of mr. carleton howard appeared in the vestibule and from the shadow of the staircase she heard him say with jubilant distinctness, "you will tell mrs. wilson, james, that the progressive legacy tax bill was killed this afternoon by a majority of three votes. reconsideration was asked for and refused; consequently the measure is dead for this session." constance experienced that sinking feeling which a great and sudden disappointment is apt to bring. she had taken for granted that gordon would win; that he would get the better of his opponents in the end, despite their endeavors, and gain a glorious victory for humanity and himself. instead he had been crushed by his enemies, and was tasting the bitterness of defeat. he would bear it bravely, she did not question that, but how depressing to see the cause in behalf of which all his energies had been enlisted defeated by the narrowest margin on the very verge of success. she remained for some moments as though rooted to the spot. as poor loretta had once said, it is love which makes the world go round, and the world had suddenly stopped for her. she ascended the stairs like one in a trance and closed the door of her room. what would her sympathy profit him? how would it help him to know that her heart bled for him? such condolence would be only tantalization. what he desired was herself--to possess and cherish in the soul and in the flesh--as the partner of his joys and sorrows, his helpmate and his companion. from where she sat she could behold herself in her mirror the comely embodiment of a woman in her prime, alive with energy and health. he sighed to hold her in his arms, and she would fain kiss away the disappointment of his defeat. anything short of this would be mockery for him--yes, for her. they were natural mates, for they loved each other with the enthusiasm of mature sympathy. yet they must go their ways apart, because the church forbade in the name of christ for the so-called common good. how could it be for the common good to resist nature, when she knew in her heart that in obeying the law of her being she would feel no sense of shame or blame? on the one side was the fiat of the church, and on the other the sanction of the people--of human society struggling for light and liberty against superstition and authority. that was gordon's claim; yet he was no demagogue, no irreverent materialist. what would her own father have said--the country doctor whose sympathy with humanity was so profound? she felt sure that he would have swept aside the church's argument in such a case as this as untenable. what was it held her back? the taunt that in obeying the law of her being she would be letting go her hold on the highest spiritual life, that most precious ambition of her soul, and forsaking the christ whose followers had comforted her and lifted her up. as thus she mused she heard loretta stirring. she had arranged as a precaution that they should occupy chambers which opened into each other, and it behooved her now to pay attention to her--to see that she was suitably attired and to supervise her movements. when they were dressed she exhibited to her the large dining-room set with little tables, and afforded her a peep at the guests as they swept in. later loretta and she looked down from a small balcony filled with plants on the splendid company assembling in the music-room. her charge was completely absorbed by the pageant, asking at first eager questions, which constance answered with mechanical scrupulousness, for to her in spite of the brilliant scene the world seemed far away, and she still dwelt as in a trance. as soon as loretta recognized lucille, who in the most stunning of parisian gowns was assisting her mother to receive, she became nervously agitated, and after surveying her for a few moments she nudged her companion and said, "what did i tell you? hasn't her marriage turned out all right, and isn't everybody at her feet? you might be down there with the rest of them to-night, if you'd only taken my advice." the words brought constance back to her immediate surroundings, but as she became aware that loretta was thrusting in her face the fact of lucille's triumphant presence, she realized that it had already been a significant item in her nebulous consciousness. but she laid her hand gently on the offender's arm and said, "sh! no matter about that now. remember your promise." loretta grunted. she paid heed to the extent of changing her tone to a whisper, but murmured by way of having the last word, "it's unjust that you shouldn't be there; it's unjust." then she became silent; but every little while during the evening she repeated under her breath the same phrase, as though it were a formula. constance remembered subsequently that as the evening advanced loretta ceased to ask questions and grew strangely silent, seeming to follow with her eyes every movement of mrs. wilson, who in a costume of maroon-colored velvet set off by superb jewels and a tiara of large diamonds, swept with easy grace hither and thither in her endeavor as hostess to make the blending between the pilgrims and benham's social leaders an agreeable experience for all. it was in truth a notable entertainment; the guests appeared pleased and appreciative; there were no hitches; the music evoked enthusiasm, the supper was delicious, and the closing distribution of trinkets by benham's fairest daughters came as a delightful surprise to the departing seekers after truth. but all save the consciousness that she was facing a gay scene and was fulfilling her responsibilities was lost on constance. she did not know until the next day that the entertainment had been a great success, for, oblivious to the music, the lights, and the brilliantly dressed assembly, her soul was wrestling once more with the problem which she had supposed solved forever. it was nearly one o'clock when the murmur of voices died away, and she conducted loretta to their mutual apartment. she was glad that her charge showed no disposition to talk over the events of the evening, but on the contrary undressed in silence, busy with her own reflections. having seen her safely in bed, constance straightway sat down at her desk and wrote. it was a short, hasty note, for she was bent on posting it that night before the lights in the house were extinguished. throwing a cloak about her, she glided downstairs, and, with a word of warning to the butler that he might not lock her out, sought the letter-box which was less than a hundred yards distant. she had not chosen to trust her epistle to any other hands. as she lifted the iron shutter she paused for a moment, then with a joyful little sigh she dropped it in and let go. fifteen minutes later, like a happy, tired child, and wondering what the morrow would bring, she escaped from reality into the waiting arms of sleep. but mrs. randolph wilson was in no haste to go to bed. she was in a complacent mood. everything had gone off as she intended, and it suited her to dwell in retrospect on the incidents of the festivity, and to muse fancy free. lucille had kissed her good-night and had retired. she had let her maid loosen her dress and had dismissed her for the night. she was inclined to dally; she liked the silence and the sense of calm after the activities of the day. seated at her toilet table and looking into her mirror with her cheeks resting upon her hands, she gazed introspectively at herself and destiny. her tiara of diamonds still crested her forehead. somehow it pleased her to leave it undisturbed until she was ready to let down her hair. she was conscious that she had reached the age when she preferred to see herself at her best rather than in the garb of nature's disorder. it had been one of the eventful evenings of her life; she felt that by her efforts mind and matter had been drawn closer together without detriment to either. and everybody had been extremely civil to lucille, at which she could not help rejoicing. certainly, too, lucille was acquiring more social charm and was more anxious to please people of cultivation. then, too, her brother had appeared in his most engaging mood as a consequence of the defeat of the legacy tax bill. no reason for doubting her conclusion that the passage of the measure would have been premature under existing conditions had occurred to her; so it seemed that society had been saved from a mistake. altogether the immediate present was marred by no unpleasant memory but one. as to that, she felt that she had acted indulgently, and that on the morrow she would make a last effort to rescue the unhappy degenerate. as she surveyed herself in the glass she appreciated that she was well preserved and that her grizzled hair was becoming, but that the romance of life was over. she would never marry again; she was unequivocally middle-aged. ideas were what she had left; but for this great interest she had many years of strength and activity ahead of her. ideas! how absorbing they were, and yet how little the most disinterested individual could accomplish! truth looked so near, and yet ever seemed to recede as one approached it. men and women came and went, generations lived and died, but progress, like the march of the glaciers, was to be measured by the centuries. the inequalities of life--how hideous were they still; how far from rectification, in spite of priests and charity! what was the key to the riddle? where was the open sesame to the social truth which should be universal beauty? she was seeking it with all her soul, but she would never find it. deep in the womb of time it lay, a magnet, yet inscrutable. who would unearth it? would it baffle mankind forever? or would centuries hence some searcher--perhaps a woman like herself--discern and reveal it? pensive with her speculation, she turned her eyes, wistful with their yearning to pierce the mysteries of time, full upon the mirror, and started. an apparition, a woman's face, cunning, resentful, demon-like, was there beside her own; a woman's figure crouching, stealthy, about to spring was stealing toward her. was it a vision, an uncanny creature of the brain? instinctively she turned, and as she did so a large pair of hands gleamed in her face and reached for her neck. springing up with a cry of horror, she recoiled from the threatening fingers, but in another instant she was bent backward so that her head pressed against the glass and she felt a powerful clutch upon her throat which took away the power to scream, and made her eyes feel as though they were bursting from their sockets. a voice, exultant, cruel, yet like a revivalist's chant, rang in her ears. "i've come for you. we'll go together, down to eternity. there you will scrub dirty marble floors for ever and ever." in the face in the mirror mrs. wilson had recognized loretta, and she divined, as the wild figure threw itself upon her and the strong hands gripped her windpipe, that she was contending with a mad-woman. the import of the strange, accusing words was unmistakable; it was a struggle for life. powerless to give the alarm save by inarticulate gasps, she realized that only her own strength could avail her, and that this must fail owing to the superior hold which her assailant had established. she strove with all her might to wrench herself free, but in vain. the long hands squeezed like a vise, and she was choking. she felt her senses swim, and that she was about to faint. then with a rush a third figure intervened; someone else's hands were battling on her side, and in an instant she was free. awaking suddenly, as one who is sleeping on guard often will, constance had felt an instinct that something was wrong. the turning on of the electric light revealed that loretta's bed was empty. where had she gone? it seemed improbable that she had sought to escape from the house at that hour. puzzled, she stepped into the hall and half-way down the staircase. there as she paused the light shining from under mrs. wilson's apartment on the landing below caught her eye. the next moment she heard a muffled scream. it had required all her strength and weight to tear loretta from her victim. having succeeded in separating them, constance hastily put herself on the defensive, expecting a fresh attack; but loretta, panting from her exertions, stood facing them for a moment, then burst into a strident, gleeful laugh. "you've saved her," she cried. "i'm crazy--stark crazy, i guess. what was it i said? i was going to take her where she'd have to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. i'd like to save her soul, she tried so hard to save mine. but it was time thrown away from the start. i was born bad--a moral pervert, as the doctors call it. christianity was wasted on me." she shook her head, and looked from one to the other. they, horrified but spellbound, waited, uncertain what course to pursue. mrs. wilson, now that she had partially recovered her poise, felt the impulse to elucidate this horrifying mystery. but though she wished to speak, the proper language did not suggest itself. how could one discuss causes with a mad woman? she raised her hands to put in place the tiara which had been crushed down on her brow. "look at her," cried loretta, commandingly, addressing constance and pointing. "isn't she beautiful? she's civilization." she made a low obeisance. "i was in love with her once; i love her still. you saved her." she frowned and passed her hand across her forehead as though to clear her brain. then she laughed again; she had recovered her clew. "you were the sort she could help, constance stuart; you were good. but how has she--her church--paid you back? cheated you with a gold brick. ha! made you believe that it was your christian duty to let gordon perry, esq., counsellor-at-law, go. that's the way the aristocrats still try to fool the common people. but isn't she beautiful? my compliments to both of you." she swept a low courtesy in exaggeration of those she had witnessed a few hours earlier. "it is pitiful--pitiful and perplexing," murmured mrs. wilson in agonized dismay. for a moment loretta stood irresolute, then of a sudden she began to shiver like one seized with an ague. she regarded them distractedly with staring eyes, and throwing up her hands, fell forward on her face in convulsive delirium. constance rushed to her side; the two women raised her and laid her on the bed. mrs. wilson's maid was aroused, and a physician communicated with by telephone. he came within an hour and prescribed the necessary treatment. he said that the patient's system was saturated with cocaine, but intimated that she would probably recover from this attack. after the doctor had gone and loretta had been removed to her own room, mrs. wilson and constance watched by the side of the sufferer, whose low moaning was the sole disturber of the stillness of the breaking dawn. each was lost in her own secret thoughts. the cruel finger-marks on mrs. wilson's neck burned painfully, but the words of her mad critic had seared her soul. for the moment social truth seemed sadly remote. she reflected mournfully but humbly that ever and anon proud man and his systems are held up to derision by the silent forces of nature. when the darkness had faded so that they could discern each other's faces, she arose, and sitting down beside constance on the sofa drew her toward her and kissed her. was it in acknowledgment that she had saved her life, or as a symbol of a broader faith? "kiss me too, constance," she whispered. the embrace was fondly returned, and at this loosening of the tension of their strained spirits they wept gently in each other's arms. then mrs. wilson added, "come, let us go where we can talk. we could do nothing at present which my maid cannot do." she led the way to her boudoir. the idea of seeking sleep had never occurred to either of them. although mrs. wilson had felt the need of speech, it was some minutes after they had established themselves before she broke the silence. when she did so she spoke suddenly and with emotion, like one beset by a repugnant conviction yet loath to acknowledge it. "can i have deserved this, constance?" the vivid protest in her companion's face made clear that constance did not penetrate her subtler meaning, and she hastened to answer her own question. "not to be strangled by a violent lunatic," she said, raising a hand involuntarily to her neck. "but her words were a judgment--a lacerating judgment. how i should loathe it--to scrub dirty marble floors forever and ever. it is just that--the dirt, the disorder, the common reek, which i shrink from and shun in spite of myself. how did she ever find out? i love too much the lusciousness of life. 'it is the little rift within the lute that by and by will make the music mute, and ever widening slowly silence all.' do you not see, constance?" leaning forward with clasped hands and speaking with melodious pathos while the morning light rested on her tired but interesting face, her confession had the effect of a monologue save for its final question. and constance, listening understood. in truth, this cry of the soul at bay came as a quickener to her own surging emotions, and she realized that the walls of the temple of beauty had fallen like those of jericho at the trumpets of israel. yet though she understood and saw starkly revealed the limit of the gospel of the splendor of things, with all the purging of perplexities which that meant for her, the claims of gratitude and of unabated admiration no less than pity caused her to shrink from immediate acquiescence in her patron's self-censure. and as she hesitated for the proper antidote, mrs. wilson pursued her confession relentlessly--pursued it, however, as one who recites the weakness of a cause to which she is hopelessly committed. "one is spurred to refine and refine and refine,--does not even religion--my religion--so teach us?--the spirit ostensibly, and, in order to reach the spirit, the body; and in this age of things and of great possessions one reaches greedily after the quintessence of comfort until--until one needs some shock like this to perceive that one might become--perhaps is, an intellectual sybarite. nay, more; though we crave almost by instinct individual lustre and personal safety, reaching out for luxury that we may grow superfine, must not we--we american women with ideals--mistrust the social beauty of a universe which still produces the masses and all the horrors of life? can it fundamentally avail that a few should be exquisite and have radiant thoughts, if the rest are condemned to a coarse, unlovely heritage?" not only did gratitude reassert itself as constance listened to this speculative plaint, but protesting common sense as well, which recognized the morbidness of the thought without ignoring its cogency. "ah, you exaggerate; you are unjust to yourself," she exclaimed fervidly. "you must not overlook what your influence and example have been to me and many others. i owe you so much! more than i can ever repay. it was you who opened the garden of life to me." mrs. wilson started at the tense, spontaneous apostrophe, and the color mounted to her cheeks. never had so grateful a tribute been laid at her feet as this in the hour of tribulation. and as she gazed she felt that she had a right to be proud of the noble-looking, the sophisticated woman who held out to her these refreshing laurels. "and it is not that i do not comprehend--that i do not share your qualms," constance continued, ignoring the gracious look that she might express herself completely in this crucial hour. the time had come to utter her own secret, which she felt to be the most eloquent of revolts against the mystic superfineness she had just heard deprecated. "within the last twelve hours the scales have fallen from my eyes also, and what seemed to me truth is no longer truth. there is something i wish to tell you, mrs. wilson. yesterday afternoon i heard that the legacy tax bill had been defeated; last night before i went to bed i posted a letter to gordon perry informing him that i would be his wife. i have asked him to come to see me at lincoln chambers this morning." mrs. wilson's lip trembled. genuine as was her probing of self, this flank attack from one who just now had brought balm to her wounds and cheer to her soul was a fresh and vivid shock. to feel that this other ward, whom she had deemed so safe, was about to slip from her fingers was more than she could bear. then instinctively constance went to her and put her arm around her. "i am sorry to hurt you," she said tenderly, "but this is a time to speak plainly. i love him, and i feel that i have been trifling with love. i am sure at last of this: that it is better for the world that two people like him and me should be happy than live apart out of deference to a bond which is a mere husk. i prefer to be natural and free rather than exquisite and artificial. as gordon said, the ban of the church when the law gives one freedom is nothing but a fetich. i cannot follow the church in this. to do so would be to starve my soul for the sake of a false ideal--a false beauty cultivated for the few alone, as you have intimated, at the expense of the great heart of humanity. i can no longer be a party to such an injustice; i must not sacrifice to it the man i love." there was a brief silence. mrs. wilson, as her question presently showed, was trying to piece together cause and effect. "you wrote to him last night, constance? then this--horror had nothing to do with your decision?" "nothing; i had been on the verge of it for some time: i can see that now. and when the news of his defeat came, i felt that i must go to him if he would let me." "he will let you, constance." "i think so," she answered with a happy thrill. mrs. wilson looked up at her, and observing the serenity of her countenance, knew that the issue was settled beyond peradventure. yet she was in the mood to be generous as well as humble; moreover, her inquiring mind had not failed to notice the plea for humanity and to feel its force. she sighed gently, then patted the hand that held hers, and said: "perhaps, dear, you are right. at all events, go now and get some sleep. you must look your own sweet self when he comes to you." a few hours later constance, refreshed by slumber, was on her way to lincoln chambers. she walked as though on wings, for she knew in her heart that her lover would not fail her. arriving a little before the appointed time, she dismissed the children to school, and, smiling at fate, waited for what was to be. at the stroke of the trysting hour she heard his knock. she bade him enter, and as their eyes met he folded her in his arms. "gordon!" "constance!" "i have surrendered." she looked up into his face, bewitching in her happiness. [illustration: "i have surrendered."] "thank god for that!" "but i come to you conscience free, gordon," she said, drawing back her radiant face so that he must hear her avowal before his title was complete. "i would not have you think that i have compromised or juggled with myself. if i believed that i should be a whit less pure and spiritual a woman by becoming your wife, i would never have sent for you, dearly as i love you." "and i would not have had you, darling. the love which is conscious of a stain is a menace to the world." the end * * * * * by the same author the undercurrent. unleavened bread. search-light letters. the art of living. the bachelor's christmas, and other stories. with full-page illustrations. reflections of a married man. the opinions of a philosopher. illustrated. face to face. nor dust corrupt by james mc connell _burial on earth was the dream of every person in the galaxy. and krieg was certainly rich enough to buy his way in. valhalla was his. but he changed his mind...._ [transcriber's note: this etext was produced from worlds of if science fiction, february . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed.] the room seemed more a mausoleum than an office, but that was as had been intended. perhaps thirty feet high, fifty feet wide, it stretched a good hundred feet in length. it was paneled entirely in jet black onyx, which gave a sense of infinity to it. the floor was a thick lawn of heavy black pile carpeting. only two areas of the room offered mitigation to this oppressive gloom. just past the middle, bathed in a haze of light, was placed a large black desk, and behind it sat a man. at the far end of the room, slightly elevated, was an alabaster statue, an abstraction of incredible beauty and poignancy. the statue too was wrapped in a soft nimbus. few visitors to this room ever had to be told the title of this work of art, for its meaning was apparent in its every line--_bereavement_. the man behind the big black desk belonged to the room as much as did the onyx walls, the thick carpet or the alabaster statue. without the presence of this man the chamber seemed strangely empty, strangely morbid, and few of the man's associates cared to remain in the room when he was not there. somehow the warm air of benevolence to be found in his fair, pinkish face softened the harsh somberness of the appointments, while the gentle strength in his dark and mournful eyes gave amelioration to the atmosphere of despair. his job was to be a janus, looking from the cheery rubric of today towards the unknown but dimmer colors of tomorrow--to be a bridge between present pleasures and future fears. there was no better man for the task in all the galaxy than consolator steen. at the moment consolator steen sat waiting, thinking, planning. soon through the huge doors facing him would come a man, one joseph krieg by name, who sought steen's assistance. the fact that krieg was one of the richest men in all the known universe made the impending interview a most important one, for consolator steen's assistance depended entirely upon the price that could be paid. steen's fingers flicked over the set of hidden controls on his desk. everything was in readiness. "and another innocent fish gets hooked," he muttered to himself. he sighed once, shortly, then touched an invisible button. "i will see joseph krieg now." in the outer office steen's aide-de-camp, assistant consolator braun, sprang to an attitude of proper deference as the huge bronze doors swung open. braun bowed slightly as joseph krieg strode past him and into the onyx chamber. * * * * * steen's eyes narrowed in admiration as he examined the man walking towards him. joseph krieg was a huge person, just past middle age but still retaining the hardened appearance of late youth. his face had a chiseled squareness to it, and his manner indicated not so much wealth as it did an obvious determination to succeed. this would be an interesting fish to play with indeed, steen thought. about half-way to the desk krieg stumbled slightly, but recovered his pace with the cumbersome grace of some massive animal. a smile flickered briefly over steen's face. the thickness of the carpet had more purposes than one. when krieg was almost upon him, steen stood up. krieg stopped in front of the desk, facing steen, as if waiting for some signal. steen, who knew the value of silence, remained absolutely still. after a few seconds, obviously perplexed, krieg smiled nervously. "consolator steen?" "welcome to earth, joseph krieg. welcome to the heart of the galaxy." steen's voice was rich, mellifluous, and the words fell from his mouth like benedictions. he extended a hand. "won't you please be seated?" the chair received krieg's body as if it were the most precious burden it had ever held. its soft contours almost demanded that he relax, yield the tenseness of his muscles to its smooth and welcoming shape. its surface closed around him as if it were a second skin, then began to tingle in gentle caress. joseph krieg had never felt so comforted in his life. consolator steen seated himself behind his desk, then waited until his assistant, braun, had taken a chair some feet away. he smiled paternally. "may i ask you one favor? would it seem presumptuous if i called you joseph? perhaps you would feel it an impertinence on my part, but...." consolator steen gestured slightly with both his hands, as if to implore forgiveness. joseph krieg smiled, nodded his head. "of course i won't mind if you use my first name. it would be an honor, sir." the smile continued on his face, but his eyes narrowed as if he were attempting to puzzle out the figure behind the desk. "you will excuse me too if i say that you've come too soon, joseph," the consolator said. "too soon?" krieg replied quizzically. "i don't think i...." steen smiled warmly. "i only mean that you look still so young, so strong and vibrant with life. and yet, perhaps you are the wiser to come now, still in the vigor of living. it shows an honesty with yourself, an ability to face the facts, which is much to be admired." "thank you, sir," krieg replied. he continued to stare at the consolator. steen knew full well the turmoil that was stirring within the man. the entire interview had been psychologically planned to evoke dark and dormant emotions which, when released, would destroy krieg's normal ability to judge situations impassively. proof that things were going as intended came from krieg's continual use of the word "sir." krieg's commercial empires spanned the universe; from perfume to starships, from food to fertilizers, he was king. and yet he would never understand that it was steen's quiet paternal power, the fact that he wore wise sorrow wrapped around him the way some men wear a cloak, that called forth this unfamiliar reverence. the psychological survey done on krieg had cost the consolator a small fortune, and he didn't intend to waste it. "you must realize, joseph, that the things which you have come to discuss are matters of the deepest concern for all of us here on earth." steen gesticulated towards braun as if braun represented somehow all the other billions on earth. "the problem is one that touches deep within all of us, and we are anxious to be of whatever service possible. but more than anything else, we want you to know that we _understand_." "thank you, sir," krieg repeated. he frowned for a moment, then seemed to smile. "but if you don't mind, maybe we could begin our discussion of terms." steen raised one eyebrow slightly. the man showed a remarkable lack of sentimentality. corrections would have to be made in the approach.... "of course. i am delighted to get on with things. and i must say, i find your attitude extraordinarily sane. the problem is, really, a simple one best met head on. you are here because you know that as it come to all men, death must come to you too. and you feel the necessity to make certain that when your time comes, you will be brought to earth to your final rest. you are a son of earth. this is your great ancestral home." krieg started slightly, then relaxed almost in reverie. steen smiled inwardly at the power of words, repeated, to invoke long forgotten memories. for steen knew that when krieg had been no more than a toddling child, learning to read, learning to respond to affection, his simple-syllabled books had spoken in reverent tones of "the great ancestral home." in later years, all of krieg's studies had had hidden at their core an emotional dependence upon earth. no place was finer, more beautiful, more important. no, not all the rest of the stars put together. he had been told it a million times until it had become an inseparable part of his very personality, just so the words would have the desired effect at this moment. _the great ancestral home._ "you are so fortunate, my son," the consolator continued. "so very few of earth's teeming children will ever have the opportunity that lies within your grasp. you must make the most of it." as steen watched, krieg seemed to shake some of the feeling of awe from him. "i intend to make the most of it, sir," he said, offering steen his most charming smile. "it just depends on how hard a bargain you want to drive." consolator steen gave krieg a look of mild reproach. "there is no 'bargaining' to be done, joseph. the monetary considerations are set by law, and we have no choice in the matter. all that we can do is to explain the services which we are prepared to extend to you, and then help you as best we can to arrive at the most suitable decision. our position is simply that of catering to your individual wants as best we can." "my wants are simple," krieg replied, and it seemed to steen that far too much of the man's usual forcefulness was returning to his voice. "i wish to be buried on earth when i die, and i want you to arrange this for me." "of course, of course, my son," steen said, letting just a glint of steel appear in his eyes. "but what do we mean by burial? we have such different problems here on earth than you do elsewhere in the galaxy. you must understand that. we are forced to such strange solutions to these problems. but perhaps if i merely show you the various types of burial which we undertake, then you will understand." steen laughed to himself. the fish appeared fat and hungry, and now it was time to drop in the bait. * * * * * the consolator touched a hidden switch atop his desk and one of the black onyx walls rippled and seemed to dissolve in mist. a replica of earth swam through the haze and into view. "earth. such an incredibly small planet, joseph. but the heart of the galaxy none the less." the replica seemed to swell in size and geographical details became apparent. "earth. once a world of gentle, rolling plains, winding rivers, thick forests, wide oceans and soaring mountains. just like any other habitable planet. and now look at it. one solid mass of buildings and machines, joseph. we've drained the oceans and filled in their beds with metal. we've destroyed the forests and the rolling plains and planted the land for miles above and below with throbbing inorganic monsters. we've hollowed out the very mountains to make more space. space for nine hundred billion people, joseph. and still we are cramped almost beyond belief. we need to expand a hundredfold. but we cannot. there simply is no room left. "no room for the living, joseph, and this means no more room for the dead, either. here, let me show you." the scene changed, showing first a huge building, and then, the bottom floor of the edifice. "this is one of our larger buildings, joseph. it is more than fifty miles long and one hundred miles wide. the bottom floor alone is more than one quarter mile high. this huge space is completely filled with cubes two inches square. each cube holds the ashes of one human being who wished to find his final resting place on earth." consolator steen made a motion of resignation. "notice that i said 'on earth,' joseph, and not 'in earth.' this is our 'pauper's field,' the burial ground of those devoted souls who could not afford to be buried _in_ the earth itself." joseph krieg frowned. "but surely underneath the building...." "underneath the bottom floor of that building are the bodies of many millions more, joseph, just as there are bodies under all of our buildings. bodies of those wealthy few who could afford to escape cremation and find surcease of life in the loamy substance of the earth itself. i shudder to tell you how tightly packed they are, of the skin-tight coffins which we had to devise, of the geometrical tricks involved in jamming as many bodies as possible in the least amount of space. and yet, it _is_ burial, and it is _in_ the earth itself. no granite monuments, of course, no vases of flowers, no green grass. just a perpetual flame burning in the main lobby of the building, and a micro-film file available somewhere listing the vital statistics of all those souls whose remains lie in the basement--or below." krieg's face was furrowed with a heavy frown. steen's words had been as shocking to the man as steen had hoped they would be. "but the parks...." "ah, yes, joseph. the parks...." consolator steen leaned forward slightly. the fish was sniffing at the bait quite properly now. "our parks, which are the one remaining link with the past. those green and grassy meadows in the midst of our metallic forests. the last places on earth where you can be buried out in the open, with flowers over your head and birds singing above. you want to be buried in one of the parks, don't you joseph?" when the man nodded briefly, steen continued. "which park, joseph?" "manhattan...." steen drew himself up with a sudden, silent movement. the fish had taken a good look at the bait. now to remove it from sight for a while. steen closed his eyes briefly, then raised a hand as if to brush away a sudden tear. "i'm sorry, joe. very sorry indeed. i was afraid that was what you wanted, and yet, there was always...." he blinked his eyes. "manhattan park is impossible, joe. confucius park in hong kong, perhaps. i think there are still same plots available in frogner park in oslo. i'm certain that we could get you into amundsen park at the south pole. but manhattan.... no, joe. that's one dream i'm afraid you'll just have to give up." "why?" joseph krieg asked quietly but determinedly. "have you ever seen it, joe? i thought not. it's perhaps the most beautiful part of this most beautiful planet in the galaxy. would you like to see manhattan?" _manhattan._ steen was quite aware that to joseph krieg this was a word of a hundred thousand associations, each of them connected with love, security, devotion and repose. it was like asking a starving man if he would care for something to eat. steen did not even wait for a reply. "i think it could be managed, as a special favor. permission to enter manhattan park is difficult to get, you know, but i think this once...." steen turned to braun. "put a call through to the president's office...." * * * * * atop grassy knolls, supple willows trailed languid branches to the ground. silver-throated birds sang secret melodies while bees hummed a scarcely audible background. narrow graveled paths wound through this gentle landscape, now hugging the edge of a tinkling stream, now plunging through carpets of gorgeous flowers. the three men sat silent on a rough stone bench observing the pastoral scene. finally consolator steen spoke softly. "i understand how you feel, joe. the first time any of us sees it, we are afflicted with silence. its beauty is almost painful, the memories it invokes almost beyond bearing. lincoln is buried there, just beyond that hillock; landowski not far from him. shakespeare's grave is there to the right, and close by is the body of sharon, the poet of the galaxy. einstein's final resting place is a mile or so away, and near to it you'll find chi wan, who gave us stardrive. humanity's valhalla, joe." joseph krieg had not cried openly since childhood, and yet now there were tears in his eyes. "this has always been my dream...." consolator steen placed a friendly arm around the man's shoulders. "yes, now you have seen it. your dream has come true." he paused for just a moment, then said, "and now, joe, perhaps we had better go." joseph krieg turned towards the man with an abrupt motion. "go? why should we go? we've been here scarcely ten minutes." "because the longer you stay, the harder it will be for you to leave, joe. and the less attractive the other parks will seem to you. so, i'd like for us to leave at once." his voice became businesslike. "first, i'd like to show you hong kong, and then...." "i don't want to see hong kong, or any place else. this is where i want to be buried, steen. whatever the price is, i'll pay." consolator steen sighed deeply. "i don't think you understand, joe. it isn't a matter of price. manhattan is simply not available to you, for the reason that it is not for sale. i know that you have heard otherwise; i am sure that rumors have reached your ears that burial in manhattan could be effected for a mere trillion credits. but these fantastic tales are incorrect--for two reasons. "the first reason, joe, is a financial one. to the average man, a mere million credits is such a gigantic, unobtainable sum that he is sure anything in the galaxy could be obtained for a trillion. this is not so, as you and i both know. why, a million credits will scarcely get you a burial in a two-inch-square cube in the bottom floor of one of our huge buildings. remember? i called those huge bargain basements 'pauper's fields.' and that they are--available to those poor people throughout the universe who have only a few millions to their names. incredible, isn't it? "a trillion credits? why, it takes a hundred billion to make you eligible for burial _under_ one of the buildings, where you're packed in like a sardine with millions of other bodies. and how many people in the galaxy can lay their hands on a hundred billion credits? the answer, joe, is too many people indeed. some of them have so much more money than that, they can actually afford to be buried in one of the parks. "a trillion credits? yes, that will get you buried in hong kong park, or in frogner, or amundsen. but not for long. you can rent a temporary grave in hong kong, for example, for a mere billion credits a day. at that rate, for a trillion credits, you'd stay buried on earth for less than three years, and then your body would have to be moved elsewhere. very few people can afford to purchase a permanent plot in one of these parks. but they are available--at a cost of something like one quadrillion credits. and just how many men in the galaxy _have_ a quadrillion credits or so?" consolator steen knew the answer to this question exactly--he also knew that joseph krieg was one of these men. krieg could have afforded a quadrillion credits, but it would have exhausted his fortune. steen waited until he was sure that the other man was deep in mental turmoil and then he continued, his voice now softer, less commercial sounding. "and having given you 'the prices,' so to speak, of the lesser treasures, i will now surprise you by saying that the entry ticket to manhattan park is free." joseph krieg looked at the man intently, a curious fire of hope in his eyes. "free?" steen nodded. "and because it is free, it is unobtainable. it is not generally known, joe, but the only way one can be buried in manhattan park is by permission of the galactic congress. only certified heroes are so honored, and they are few and far between. remember the great bacteriologist manuel de artega? it took the galactic congress more than fifty years of debate after he died to decide to let him in--but after all, the only claim to fame he had was that he saved a few trillion lives from the green plague. he was buried here some thirteen years ago. there has been no one since, and no one in sight." steen patted the man on the shoulder. "now, come along, joe. i want you to take a look at amundsen park before you make up your mind. it's not at all cold at the pole these days--lovely flowers, trees...." "no!" joseph krieg cried, standing up. steen and braun both rose too. "there must be a way!" the consolator smiled inwardly. _the fish was responding magnificently. now to push the bait just a little closer...._ "now, now, joe. you mustn't get upset about this. the other parks are just as fine, i assure you," steen murmured in consolation. krieg shook his head. "you can't tell me that sometime or other someone didn't buy his way into manhattan. it stands to reason...." "now, joe. you're taking this much too hard...." "i tell you, i know people. and that's all the galactic congress is made up of--people. tell me the truth, steen. has anyone ever bribed his way into this park?" steen frowned and turned his head slightly away from the man. _just a flick or two more of the line...._ * * * * * "i wish you wouldn't ask me questions like that, joe. when i say that it's impossible, i mean just that. you'll just excite yourself needlessly by listening to foolish rumors...." krieg pounced on the word jubilantly. "what do you mean, rumors? then there _has_ been someone who bought his way in! who was it, steen? i swear, if you don't tell me, i'll move heaven and earth to find out." consolator steen seemed to consider for a moment, then sighed. _hooked._ "all right, joe. but believe me, you'll wish you hadn't asked. for what happened to ... to this other person is unattainable to you." "who was it?" krieg asked excitedly. "who was the richest man who ever lived, joe?" "you mean...." "who was it that founded the university you went to, the hospital in which you were born? who gave a magnificent library to every city in the known universe, who was it...." krieg interrupted. "old c. t. himself...." steen nodded. "yes, old c. t. anderman himself. years ago, joe, he faced the same problem you face now, and he reacted the same way you have. so he set out on a campaign to get into manhattan the only way he knew how--with money. there was one difference, joe. where you are fabulously wealthy, c. t. anderman was wealthy beyond all dreams. do you know that he gave away more than one quintillion credits--_gave it away!_ just to make his name universally known. 'the philanthropist of the galaxy,' they called him. one quintillion credits! no wonder they voted him a hero's grave. but what the press and the public never knew is that it cost him more than twice that much--for he had to spend another one quintillion credits for bribes and influence. it took him fifty years, joe, to pack the galactic congress with enough of his men to swing the trick. but he finally did it." there was a short silence, then steen continued. "now you see why i didn't want to tell you, joe--to raise false hopes. only one man in the galaxy was ever wealthy enough to buy his way into manhattan. and he had to give up his entire fortune to do it. i'm afraid that you'll never make the grade, joe." krieg stood stunned. steen was aware that two quintillion credits was beyond krieg's wildest dreams, for steen knew that joseph krieg had come to earth determined to purchase his burial lot and then retire from the business world. steen pulled lightly at krieg's arm. "now, come along, joe. let's go take a look at hong kong." the three men started off down the path, but before they had gone ten feet, a robot scurried out of the bushes and dashed over to the bench they had been sitting on. it clucked softly to itself, put forth several arms, and in a matter of seconds had completely washed and disinfected the bench. joseph krieg, an empty and numb look on his face, stopped to watch the process. he stared for a few seconds, then asked hoarsely, "what's that?" consolator steen smiled. "one of the guardians, joe. superb--and completely incorruptible. within minutes after we leave, every vestige of our visit will be gone--each piece of gravel we tread on will be scrubbed clean or replaced, each piece of grass we touch uprooted and destroyed, even the very air we breathe will be sterilized to remove our traces. we have our problem of vandals too, you know," steen said, a wisp of a smile playing about the corners of his mouth. "but these are vandals who want to get in and leave something, not like those of ancient times on earth who broke into burial grounds to loot and destroy. yes, joe, we found long ago that the only safe method was to employ mechanical devices to guard against clandestine burials. so even the gardeners who keep this park in blossom are mechanical. see, there's another one over there, hard at work." joseph krieg turned and saw to one side, by a large bed of red flowers, another robot with dozens of visible appendages. it purred an almost silent tune as it clipped and pruned, dug and spaded, trimmed and cleaned the beds, occasionally sprinkling a rich fertilizer dust here and there. "the guardians of valhalla, joe. they were set into motion centuries ago, and not even the president knows how to change their orders. they can't be bribed, even if their human masters can be." joseph krieg stooped down beside the bed of flowers. he reached out and picked up a handful of the fine dirt and let it slip pensively through his fingers. "dust unto dust," he said slowly. "man was created from the soil of earth, and to dust he returneth." there was a long silence as steen let the emotion run its course. then he touched krieg lightly on the arm and the man stood up again. they started off down the path, ignoring the machine that skittered along behind them, cleansing each bit of gravel they stepped upon. to steen, this was always the most important part of the interview. while the fish was masticating the bait, he had to prattle on to keep the hook from becoming too visible. "some day i must tell you of all the ways people have tried to get themselves buried on earth without paying for the privilege, joe. it makes a fascinating story. we're in a difficult position here, you know, for we have to import every single bit of food we eat, every machine we use, each piece of clothing that we wear. but every single item that we import is carefully scanned to make sure that no one has concealed so much as a single human hair in the process." steen watched krieg's face closely as they walked. the man should be going through hell just now, but not too much of it showed on his face. steen continued his prattle, a little puzzled. "oh, it's incredible the ways that people have tried to cheat. some of the methods used are too ugly to relate, some of them humorous beyond belief. but this is why we've resorted to mechanical guards all the way round--to maintain our incorruptibility. even anderman with all of his quintillions could not have bribed his way past our machines." steen's voice betrayed none of the anxiety that he felt. for joseph krieg was almost smiling now, was apparently feeling none of the great confusion that steen had counted upon. they reached the gates. "well, joe. i think we'll head straight for hong kong, if you don't mind. it will be early morning there by now, and that's the best time...." joseph krieg turned to face the man. "thank you very much, consolator, but i don't think that will be necessary. you see, i've changed my mind." steen repressed a frown. "changed your mind?" he asked blandly. "yes. after giving it due consideration, i think that it would be foolish to squander all of my fortune on a burial on earth. my family would be cheated out of its inheritance if i did, and after all, if my sons carry on in their father's tradition, that's enough for me." krieg extended his hand. "i wish to thank you, steen, for your kindness. i regret that i have troubled you for nothing." steen shook the man's hand warmly, using his free hand to grasp krieg's arm in friendly fashion. "it was no trouble at all, i assure you. but please understand, joseph, if i can ever be of service to you in _any_ way, if i can ever be of assistance in any manner whatsoever, please do not hesitate to call upon me. after all, even anderman had certain problems which...." steen smiled knowingly. krieg returned the smile. "i think i understand. and i appreciate your offer, although i must tell you that there is little likelihood that i will be forced to take it up. again my thanks. and now, good-bye." krieg turned and strode through the gates. * * * * * consolator steen and his assistant, braun, stood watching the man as he disappeared into the distance. then steen turned and walked over to one of the benches in the park near to the gates. he sat down wearily. "braun," he said. "i don't like it. not at all. he should have been beside himself with worry, he should have pumped me for more information, he should have done a thousand other things. but he didn't. he just turned and left. i tell you, i don't like it at all." braun frowned. "he seemed to take the bait, sir." "and then, after sniffing it over carefully, he turned and spat it right back in our faces. we can't afford mistakes like this, braun. earth needs the money too badly. it's our only means of support, and we can't let a fish like krieg get off the hook." "there are other fish around, sir." steen's face took on an angry look. "of course there are. but none with the potentialities that krieg showed. don't you realize that ever since that sad day when earth realized that she was a has-been, she's had to take advantage of every single opportunity offered her, just to keep alive? oh, they were clever, those ancient ones who realized that if a civilization is to be kept together, it must have a myth. and so they gave our civilization its myth--that of earth, the great ancestral home. just accidentally, it also offered earth a means of retaining at least a part of her power." steen waved his hands in the air. "from an economic viewpoint it was nice too. only the very wealthy could afford an earth burial, and so it became a means of hidden, graduated taxation--earth soaked the rich and ignored the poor, and cut her overt taxes while doing so. burial became so costly that it helped break up the huge estates, it helped leaven out the wealth. our propaganda was sharpened to the point where we could take a man like anderman and drive him all of his life towards an almost unattainable goal, force him to expend his tremendous energies in the accumulation of great wealth, extending the frontiers of the galaxy as he did so, building up our civilization's strength in the process, and then, in the end, make him turn all of his wealth over to earth in one form or another. oh, i tell you, braun, those ancient ones were clever." the tirade halted. the air hung silent for a moment, and the twittering of a nearby bird could be heard. "they were very, very clever. they gave us all the tools, and somehow we've failed to use them correctly. what was it, braun? what did we do, or fail to do, that let krieg get away from us?" braun frowned. "i don't know, sir. perhaps he just changed his mind about earth." steen snorted. "impossible! he's had too many years' exposure to our propaganda for that. he can no more give up his dream of burial in manhattan than he can give up his very personality. no, braun, i think we just underestimated the man. somewhere along the line he had an idea, he saw something that we failed to see." braun shrugged his shoulders. "but what are we going to do about it?" consolator steen pursed his lips. "i tell you what i'm going to do about it. i'm going straight back to the office and sit and think, and think, and then think some more. krieg's got a good fifty years ahead of him yet, and that means i've got exactly that long to guess what's on his mind. i'll get that quintillion credits if it's the last thing i do." * * * * * they had no more than reached the gate when one of the mechanical guardians appeared from behind a bush, chortled to itself and scurried over to the bench. it cleansed the rough-hewn stone, then washed the path the two men had taken. then, its exceptional chores accomplished, it went back to its normal pursuits. it approached a bed of begonias nearby. one appendage extended itself and began digging up the dirt around the plants. meanwhile, inside the machine, other appendages ripped open a small bag and spilled the fine dust inside the bag into a small trough. the empty bag was rolled up and stuck in a disposal bin along with several other bags, all with identical markings: joseph krieg and sons, by appointment, purveyors of fine fertilizers to the galactic government on earth the machine clucked quietly to itself as it sprinkled the dust evenly over the black, yielding earth. it patted the fertilizer gently into the rich soil, making sure that each plant got its fair share. then it scurried off silently to tend to a bed of calla lilies nearby. the orchid by robert grant illustrated by alonzo kimball charles scribner's sons new york copyright, , by charles scribner's sons _published, april, _ trow directory printing and bookbinding company new york [illustration: "i ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation."] illustrations "_i ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation_" frontispiece facing page _the smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment also_ _"i should not permit it!" he thundered. "i should go to law; i should appeal to the courts"_ _a huge machine of bridal white ... tore around the corner_ the orchid i it was generally recognized that lydia arnold's perceptions were quicker than those of most other people. she was alert in grasping the significance of what was said to her; her face clearly revealed this. she had the habit of deliberating just an instant before responding, which marked her thought; and when she spoke, her words had a succinct definiteness of their own. the quality of her voice arrested attention. the intonation was finished yet dry: finished in that it was well modulated; dry in that it was void of enthusiasm. yet lydia was far from a grave person. she laughed readily and freely, but in a minor key, which was only in keeping with her other attributes of fastidiousness. her mental acuteness and conversational poise were accounted for at westfield--the town within the limits of which dwelt the colony of which she was a member--by the tradition that she had read everything, or, more accurately, that she had been permitted to read everything while still a school-girl. her mother, a beautiful, nervous invalid--one of those mysterious persons whose peculiarities are pigeon-holed in the memories of their immediate families--had died in lydia's infancy. her amiable but self-indulgent father had been too easy-going or too obtuse to follow the details of her home-training. he had taken refuge from qualms or perplexities by providing a governess, a well-equipped, matronly foreigner, from whom she acquired a correct french accent and composed deportment, both of which were now marks of distinction. mlle. demorest would have been the last woman to permit a _jeune fille_ to browse unreservedly in a collection of miscellaneous french novels. but lydia saw no reason why she should inform her preceptress that, having entered her father's library in search of "ivanhoe" and the "dutch republic," she had gone there later to peruse the works of flaubert, octave feuillet, and guy de maupassant. why, indeed? for, to begin with, was she not an american girl, and free to do as she chose? and then again the evolution was gradual; she had reached this stage of culture by degrees. she read everything which the library contained--poetry, history, philosophy, fiction--and having exhausted these resources, she turned her attention outside, and became an omnivorous devourer of current literature. before her "coming-out" party she was familiar with all the "up-to-date" books, and had opinions on many problems, sexual and otherwise, though be it said she was an eminently proper young person in her language and behavior, and her knowingness, so far as appeared, was merely intellectual. early in the day her father's scrutiny was forever dazzled by the assuring discovery that she was immersed in scott. mr. arnold had been told by some of his contemporaries that the rising generation did not read sir walter, a heresy so damnable that when he found his daughter pale with interest over the sorrows of the "bride of lammermoor," he jumped to the conclusion that her literary taste was conservative, and gave no more thought to this feature of her education. presently he did what he considered the essentially paternal thing--introduced her to the social world through the medium of a magnificent ball, which taxed his income though he had been preparing for it for a year or two. as one of a bevy of pretty, innocent-looking maidens in white tulle, lydia attracted favorable comment from the outset by her piquant expression and stylish figure. but shortly after the close of her first season she was driven into retirement by her father's death, and when next she appeared on the horizon, sixteen months later, it was as a spirited follower of the hounds belonging to the westfield hunt club. on the crisp autumn day when this story opens, the members of that energetic body were eagerly discussing the interesting proposition whether or not miss lydia arnold was going to accept herbert maxwell as a husband. this was the universal query, and the point had been agitated for the past six weeks with increasing curiosity. the hunting season was now nearing its close, and the lover was still setting a tremendous pace, but none of the closest feminine friends of the young woman in question appeared to have inside information. even her bosom friend, mrs. walter cole, as she joined the meet that morning, could only say in answer to inquiries that lydia was mum as an oyster. "i suppose the reflection that the offspring might resemble grandma maxwell tends to counteract the glamour of the four millions," remarked one of the group, gerald marcy, a middle-aged bachelor with a partiality for cynical sallies--also an ex-master of the hounds and one of the veterans of the colony. he was mounted on a solid roan hunter slightly but becomingly grizzled like himself. thereupon he gave a twist to his mustache, as he was apt to do after uttering what he thought was a good thing. most of the westfield hunt club were clean-shaven young men who regarded a mustache as a hirsute superfluity. the nucleus of the club had been formed twenty years previous--in the late seventies--at which time it was the fashion to wear hair on the face, but of the small band of original members some had grown too stout or too shaky to hunt, most had families which forbade them to run the risk of breaking their necks, and others were dead. mrs. cole's reply was uttered so that only marcy heard it. perhaps she feared to shock the smooth-shaven younger men, for, though she prided herself on her complete sophistication in regard to the world and its ways, one evidence of it was that she suited her conversation to the person with whom she was talking. there are points of view which a young matron can discuss with a middle-aged bachelor which might embarrass or be misinterpreted by less experienced males. so she caused her pony to bound a little apart before she said to marcy, who followed her: "i doubt very much if children of her own are included in lydia's scheme of life." mrs. cole was a bright-eyed, vivacious woman, who talked fast and cleverly. she was fond of making paradoxical remarks, and of defending her theses stoutly. she glanced sideways at her companion to observe the effect of this animadversion, then, bending, patted the neck of her palfrey caressingly. she was herself the mother of two chubby infants, and, out of deference to domestic claims, she no longer followed the hounds, but simply took a morning spin to the meets on a safe hack. marcy smiled appreciatively. as a man of the world he felt bound to do this, yet as a man of the world he felt shocked at the hypothesis. race suicide was in his eyes a cardinal sin compared with which youthful indiscretions resulting from hot blood appeared trifling and normal. besides, it was deliberate rebellion against the vested rights of man. this latter consideration gave the cue to his slightly dogged answer. "i rather think that herbert maxwell would have something to say about that." mrs. cole surveyed him archly, meditating a convincing retort, when suddenly a new group of riders appeared over the crest of an intervening hill. "here they are!" she cried with a gusto which proclaimed that the opportunity for subtle confabulation on the point at issue was at an end. the newcomers, all ardent hunting spirits--mr. and mrs. andrew cunningham, miss peggy blake, miss lydia arnold, guy perry and herbert maxwell--came speeding forward at a brisk gallop. mrs. cunningham--may cunningham--was a short, dumpy woman, amiable and popular, but hard featured, as though she had burned the candle in social comings and goings in her youth, which indeed was the case. but since her marriage she had by way of settling down fixed her energies on cross-country riding, and was familiarly known as the mother of the hunt. she had an excellent seat. she and her husband, a burly sportsman whose ruling passion was to reduce his weight below two hundred pounds, and whose predilection for gaudy effects in waistcoats and stocks always pushed the prevailing fashion hard, were prime movers in the westfield set. they had no children, and, as mrs. cole once said, it sometimes seemed as though the hounds took the place of them. miss peggy blake was a breezy amazon, comely, long-limbed and enthusiastic, of many adjectives but simple soul, whose hair was apt to tumble down at inopportune moments, but who stuck at nothing which promised fresh physical exhilaration. guy perry, a young broker who had made a fortune in copper stocks, was one of her devoted swains. but dashingly as she rode, her carriage lacked lydia arnold's distinction and witchery. indeed, that slight, dainty young person seemed a part of the animal, so gracefully and jauntily did she follow the movements of her rangy, spirited thoroughbred. when gerald marcy exclaimed fervently, "by jove, but she rides well!" no one of the awaiting group was doubtful as to whom he meant. keeping as close to his dulcinea as he could, but not quite abreast, came herbert maxwell, a rather lumbering equestrian. fashion had led him, the previous season, as a young man with great possessions, to follow the hounds, but sedately, as became a somewhat sober novice. love now spurred him to take the highest stone walls, and for the purpose he had bought a couple of famous hunters. he had long ago dismissed both fear and caution, and had eyes only for the nape of miss arnold's neck as they sped over hill and dale. twice in the last six weeks he had come a cropper, as the phrase is, and been cut up a bit, but he still rode valiantly, bent on running the risk of a final tumble which would break not his ribs but his heart. in every-day life he appeared large and above the average height, with reddish-brown hair and eyebrows and a somewhat grave countenance--rather a nondescript young man, but entirely unobjectionable; the sort of personality which, as lydia's friends were saying, a clever woman could mould into a solid if not ornamental social pillar. for herbert maxwell was a new man. that is, the parents of the members of the westfield hunt club remembered his father as a dealer in furniture, selling goods in his own store, a red-visaged round-faced, stubby looking citizen with a huge standing collar gaping at the front. though he had grown rich in the process, settled in the fashionable quarter of the city and sent his boy to college in order to make desirable friends and get a good education, it could not be denied that he smelt of varnish metaphorically if not actually, and that herbert was, so to speak, on the defensive from a social point of view. everybody's eye was on him to see that he did not make some "break," and inasmuch as he was commonly, if patronizingly, spoken of as "a very decent sort of chap," it may be taken for granted that he had managed to escape serious criticism. his sober manner was partly to be accounted for by his determination to keep himself well in hand, which had been formed ten years previous, during his freshman year, when one of his classmates, to the manner born, informed him in a moment of frankness that he was too loud-mouthed for success. this had been the turning-point in his career; he had been toning down ever since; he had been cultivating reserve, checking all temptations toward extravagance of speech, deportment or dress, and, in short, had become convincingly repressed--that is, up to the hour of his infatuation for lydia arnold. since then he had let himself go, yet not indecorously, and with due regard to the proprieties. all the world loves a lover, and to the westfield hunt club herbert maxwell's kicking over the bars of colorless conventionality appeared both pardonable and refreshing, especially as it was recognized that the manifestations of his ardor, though unmistakable, had not been lacking in taste. the sternest censors of society had not the heart to sneer at the possessor of four millions because the entertainments which he gave in his lady love's honor were more sumptuous than the occasion demanded, and that in his solicitude to keep up with her on the hunting field he was an easy victim to the horse-dealers. before the bar of nice judgment it was tacitly admitted that he appeared to better advantage than if he had ambled after his goddess with the lacklustre indifference which some of his betters were apt to affect. it takes one to the manner born to be listless in love and yet prevail; and so it was that maxwell's reversion to breakneck manners had given a pleasant thrill to this fastidious colony. gay greetings and felicitations on the beauty of the day for hunting purposes were exchanged between the new-comers and their friends. the men in their red coats had a word of gallantry or chaff for every woman. new equestrians appeared approaching from diverse directions, while suddenly from the kennels a few rods distant issued a barking, snuffing pack of eager hounds, conducted by kenneth post, the master, whose expansive high white stock and shining black leather boots proclaimed that he took his functions seriously. this was a red-letter day for him, as he had invited the hunt to breakfast with him at the club-house after the run. lydia, on her arrival, had guided her thoroughbred to the other side of mrs. cole so deftly that her admirer was shut out from immediate pursuit. at a glance from her the two women's heads bent close together in scrutiny of some disarrangement in her riding-habit. "fanny," she whispered, "i've done it." "lydia! when did it happen?" "last evening. i've given him permission to announce it at the breakfast." "my dear, i'm just thrilled. you've kept us all guessing." "i've heard that the betting was even," answered lydia with dry complacency. the intimation that she had kept the world in the dark was evidently agreeable. "i wished you to know first of all." "that was lovely of you. and how clever to escape the bore of writing all those hateful notes! that was just like you, lydia." "i know a girl who wrote two hundred, and the day they were ready to be sent out changed her mind. i don't wish to run the risk. here comes mr. marcy." fannie cole gave her hand an ecstatic squeeze and they lifted their heads to meet the common enemy, man. it was time to start, and he was solicitous lest something were wrong with miss arnold's saddle girths. "beauty in distress?" he murmured with a tug at his mustache. marcy had his commonplace saws, like most of us. mrs. cole was opening her mouth to reassure him on that score when she was forestalled by lydia. "that's a question, mr. marcy, which can be more easily answered a year or two hence." marcy bowed low in his saddle. "at your pleasure, of course. i did not come to pry." at his best marcy had quick perceptions and could put two and two together. he was assisted to the divination that something was in the wind by catching sight at the moment of herbert maxwell's countenance. that worthy had been blocked in his progress by pretty mrs. baxter, who, having resented his attempt to squeeze past her by the following remark, had barred his way with her horse's flank. "we all know where you are heading, mr. maxwell, but as a punishment for endeavoring to shove me aside you must pay toll by talking to me for a little." the culprit had started and stared like one awakened in his sleep, and stammered his apologies to his laughing tormentor. but while she kept him at bay, his eyes could not help straying beyond her toward the woman of his heart, and it was their peculiar expression which drew from marcy the remark which he referred to later as an inspiration. "it's not exactly pertinent to the subject, miss arnold, but herbert maxwell has the look this morning of having seen the holy grail." lydia calmly turned her graceful head in the direction indicated, then facing her interrogator, said oracularly after a pause: "the wisest men are liable to see false visions. but provided they are happy, does it really matter, mr. marcy?" whereupon, without waiting for a response to this delphic utterance, she tapped her thoroughbred with her hunting crop and cantered forward to take her place in the van of those about to follow the hounds. ii mrs. walter cole was glad to find herself alone after the hounds were off. without waiting to be joined by any women, who, like herself, had come to see the start and intended to jog on the flank, cut corners and so be in at the finish, she put her hack at a brisk canter in the direction of a neighboring copse, seeking a bridle-path through the woods which would bring her out not far from the club-house after a pleasant circuit. she was indeed thrilled, and, inasmuch as she must remain tongue-tied, she could not bear the society of her sex, and sought solitude and reverie. and so lydia had done it. intimate as they were, she had been kept guessing like the rest, and up to the moment of the disclosure of the absorbing confidence she had never been able to feel sure whether lydia would or not. lydia married! and if so? she would have been sure to marry some day; and to marry an entirely reputable and presentable man with four millions was, after all, an eminently normal proceeding. yet somehow it was one thing to think of her as liable to marry, another to recognize that she was actually engaged. it was the concrete reality of lydia arnold married and settled which set mrs. cole's nimble brain spinning with speculative, sympathetic interest as the dry autumn leaves cracked under the hoofs of her walking horse, to which she had given a loose rein. lydia had such highly evolved ideas of her own; and how would they accord with the connubial relation? not that she knew these ideas in specific detail, for lydia had never hinted at a system; but from time to time in the relaxations of spirit intimacy there had been droppings--flashes--innuendoes, which had set the world in a new light, blazed the path as it were for a new feminine philosophy, and which to a clever woman like herself, fastened securely by domestic ties to the existing order of things, were alike entertaining and suggestive. mrs. cole drew a deep breath, as once more recurred to her sundry remarks which had provided her already that morning with material for causing no less experienced a person than mr. gerald marcy to prick up his ears. she and her husband had set up housekeeping on a humble scale--almost poverty from the westfield point of view--and she remembered the contemplative silence more eloquent than words when, three years previous, hungry for enthusiasm, she had taken lydia into the nursery to admire her first-born. all her other unmarried friends had gone into ecstasies over baby, as became true daughters of eve. lydia, after long scrutiny, had simply said: "well, dear, i suppose you think it's worth while." thus wondering how lydia would deal with the problems of matrimony, and almost bursting with her secret, mrs. cole walked her horse until the novelty of the revelation had worn off a little. when she left the covert at a point suggested by the baying of the dogs, she caught a glimpse of the hunt on the opposite side of the horizon to that where it had disappeared from view. assuming that the finish was likely to occur in the meadow lands in the rear of the club-house, she proceeded to gallop briskly across the intervening valley in the hope of anticipating the hounds. time, however, had slipped away faster than she supposed. at all events, when she was still some little distance from the field which was her destination she beheld the hounds scampering down the slope from the woodlands beyond. a moment later the air resounded with their yelpings as they attacked the raw meat provided as a reward for the deceit imposed on them by the anise-seed scent. close on their heels came the master and the leading spirits of the chase, and by the time mrs. cole arrived the entire hunt had put in an appearance or been accounted for, and was proceeding leisurely toward the club, gayly comparing notes on the incidents of the run. there had been amusing casualties. douglas hale's horse, having failed to clear a ditch, had tossed its ponderous rider over its head--happily without serious consequences--and in the act of floundering out had planted a shower of mud on the person of guy perry, so that the ordinarily spruce young broker was a sight to behold. the westfield hunt club was one of a number of social colonies in the eastern section of the country which in the course of the last twenty-five years have come into being and flourished. three principal causes have contributed to their evolution: the increase in wealth and in the number of people with comfortable means, the growing partiality for outdoor athletic sports, and the tendency on the part of those who could afford two homes to escape the stuffy air of the cities during as many months as possible, and on the part of young couples with only one home to set up their household gods in the country. our ancestors of consideration were apt to hug the cities and towns. their summer excursions to the seaside rarely began before july, and fathers of families preferred to be safe at home before the brewing of the equinoxial storm. but the towering bricks and mortar and increasing pressure of urban life have little by little prolonged the season of emancipation in the fresh air, and spacious modern villas, with many bath-rooms and all the modern improvements, have supplanted the primitive cottages of the former generation, just as the rank fields of gay butter-cups and daisies have given place to velvety lawns, extensive stables, and terraced italian gardens. the westfield hunt club was primarily a sporting colony--that is, outdoor sport was its ruling passion. cross-country riding had been its first love, at a time when the free-born farmers of the neighborhood looked askance at the introduction of what they considered dudish british innovations. yet it promptly offered hospitality to the rising interest in sports of every kind, and the devotees of tennis, polo and golf found there ample accommodation for the pursuit of their favorite pastimes. at the date of our narrative the interest in tennis was at a minimum; polo, always a sport in which none but the prosperous few can afford to shine, had only a small following; but golf was at the height of its fashionable ascendency. everybody was playing golf, not only the young and supple, the middle-aged and persevering, but every man however clumsy and every woman however feeble or gawky who felt constrained to follow the latest social fad as a law of his or her being. every links in the country was crowded with agitated followers of the royal and ancient game, who bought clubs galore in the constant hope of acquiring distance and escaping bunkers, and who were alternately pitied and bullied by the attendant army of caddies, sons of the small farmers whose views regarding british innovations had been substantially modified by the accompanying shower of american quarters and dimes. indeed, it may be said that the attitude of the country-side regarding all the doings of the colony had undergone a gradual but complete change. this was due to the largess and social tact of the new-comers. to begin with, they were eager to pay roundly for the privilege of trampling down crops and riding through fences. having thus put matters on a liberal pecuniary basis, they endeavored to translate grim forbearance for business reasons into a more genial frame of mind by horse shows with popular features, and country fairs where fat prizes for large vegetables and free dinners bore testimony to the good-will of the promoters. a ball at which the pink-coated male members of the club danced with the farmers' wives and daughters, and mrs. andrew cunningham, with a corps of fair assistants, stood up with the country swains while they cut pigeon-wings in utter gravity, was an annual sop to local sensibilities and a bid for popular regard. little by little the neighborhood had thawed. surely the new-comers must be good fellows, if westfield's tax receipts were growing in volume without demur, and there was constantly increasing employment for the people not only on the public roads, but in carpentry, plumbing, and all sorts of jobs on the new places, besides a splendid market for their sheep and chickens and garden produce. from westfield's standpoint the ways of some of these individuals with "money to burn" were puzzling, but if grown-up folk could find amusement in chasing a little white ball across country, the common sense of westfield could afford to be indulgent under existing circumstances. the quarters to which the hunting party now repaired in gay spirits was, as its appearance indicated, a farm-house of ancient aspect, which had been altered over to begin with, and been amplified later to suit the greater requirements of the club. the rambling effect of the low-studded rooms had been enhanced by sundry wings and annexes, the result of which was far from convincing architecturally, but which suggested a quaint cosiness very satisfying and precious to the original members. progress, reform, innovation--call it what you will--was already rife in the colony itself, a case, it would seem, of refining gold or painting the lily. one had only to observe the more elaborate character of the new houses to be convinced of this. the pioneers had been content to leave the original structures standing, and to do them over with new plumbing and new wall-papers. then it occurred to some one richer than his fellows, or whose wife remembered the scriptural admonition against putting new wine into old bottles, to pull down an ancient farm-house and replace it with a comely modern villa. the villa was simple and an ornament to the landscape, and though the wiseacres shook their heads and described it as an entering wedge, the general consensus of the colony declared it an improvement. others followed suit, and within two years there was a dozen of these pleasant-looking homes in the vicinity. but latterly a new tendency had manifested itself. three sportsmen of large possessions, who had decided to spend most of the year in the country, had erected establishments on an imposing scale, very spacious, very stately, with extensive stables and all the appurtenances befitting a magnificent country-seat. as the owners were building simultaneously, there had naturally been some rivalry to produce the most imposing result. the effect of these splendors was already perceptible. others with large possessions were talking of invading westfield, land was rising in value, and it cost the colony more to entertain. most terrible of all to the pioneers, there was unconcealed whispering that the club-house must come down and be replaced by a convenient modern structure; that more commodious stables were needed; that the golf links should be materially lengthened, and that both the annual dues and the membership must be increased to help provide for these improvements. as a consequence most of the old members were irate on the subject, and gerald marcy was quoted as having said that to do away with the original quarters would be an act of sacrilege. "are not the rafters sacred from time-honored association?" he had inquired in a voice trembling with emotion. "principally with champagne," had been guy perry's comment on this fervent apostrophe. youth is fickle and partial to change. guy voiced the sentiment of the younger element in craving modern comfort and conveniences, which could be obtained by demolishing the old rattle-trap, as the less conservative styled it, and putting up a clean, commodious, attractive-looking club-house. guy himself had given out that his firm was ready to underwrite the bonds necessary to finance all the proposed changes. thus it will be seen that at this period social conditions at westfield were in a condition of ferment and change, although the colony was still youthful. yet differences of opinion were merged on this particular morning in the enjoyment of sport and the crisp autumn weather. the returning members of the hunt found at the club-house some of the golf players of both sexes, who had been invited by the master of the hounds to join them at breakfast, and it was not long before the company was seated at table. everyone was hungry, and everyone seemed in good spirits. conversation flowed spontaneously, or, in other words, everyone seemed to be talking at once. the host, kenneth post, finding himself free for a moment from all responsibilities save to see that the waiters did their duty, inasmuch as the woman on either side of him was exchanging voluble pleasantries with someone else, cast a contented glance around the mahogany. personal badinage, as he well knew, was the current coin of his set. the occasion on which it was absent or flagged was regarded as dull. subjects, ideas, theories bored his companions--especially the women--as a social pastime. what they liked was to talk about people, to gossip of one another's affairs or failings when separated, to discharge at one another keen but good-humored chaff when they met. naturally the host was gratified by the universal chatter, for obviously his friends were enjoying themselves. nevertheless there seemed to be something in the air not to be explained by the exhilaration resulting from the run or by cocktails before luncheon. as he mused, his eyes fell on herbert maxwell and he wondered. that faithful but solid equestrian was commonly reticent and rather inert in speech, but now, with face aglow, he was bandying words with miss peggy blake and another young woman at the same time. post remembered that he had seen him take three drinks at the bar, which for him was an innovation. the master felt knowing, and instinctively his eyes sought the countenance of miss arnold. it was demure and furnished no clue to her admirer's mood, unless a faint smile which suggested momentary content was to be regarded as an indication. while kenneth post was thus observing his guests he was recalled to more active duties by mrs. andrew cunningham, who, in her capacity of mother of the hunt, had been placed at his right hand. having finished her soft-shell crab and emptied her quiver of timely shafts upon the young man at her other elbow, she had turned to her host for a familiar chat on the topic at that time nearest her heart. "i hope you're on our side, mr. post--that you are opposed to the new order of things which would drive every one except millionaires out of westfield? tell me that you intend to vote against pulling down this dear old sanctuary. it's a rookery, if you like, but that's its charm. will anything they build take the place of it in our affections?" "we've had lots of good times here, of course, and i'm as fond of the old place as anyone, but--the fact is, mrs. cunningham, i'm in a difficult position. the younger men count on me in a way; it was they who chose me master, and in a sense i'm their representative; so----" he paused, and allowed the ellipsis to convey an intimation of what he might be driven to by the rising generation, to which he was more nearly allied by age than to the older faction. mrs. cunningham looked up in his face in doughty expostulation. her round cheeks reminded him of ruddy but slightly withered crab-apples. "the time has come for andrew and me to pull up stakes, i fear. the life here'll be spoiled. everything is going up in price--land, servants, marketing, horses, assessments." "that's the case everywhere, isn't it?" kenneth was an easy-going fellow, and preferred smiling acquiescence, but when taken squarely to task he had the courage of his convictions. "the fellows wish more comforts and facilities. there are next to no bathing accommodations at present, and everything is cramped, and--and really it's so, if one looks dispassionately--fusty." "i adore the fustiness." "wait until you see the improvements. mark my words, six months after they are finished nothing would induce you to return to the old order of things. we're sure of the money; the loan has been underwritten by a syndicate." mrs. cunningham groaned. "exactly. so has everything in westfield, to judge by appearances. the palaces erected by the douglas hales, the marburys, and mr. gordon wallace have given the death-blow to simple ways, and we shall soon be in the grip of a plutocracy. the original band of gentlemen farmers who came here to get close to nature and to one another are undone, have become back numbers, and"--she lowered her voice to suit the exigencies--"in case lydia arnold accepts herbert maxwell, she will not rest until she has something more imposing and gorgeous than anything yet." kenneth eagerly took advantage of the opportunity to divert the emphasis to that ever-interesting speculation. "have you any light to throw on the burning problem?" he asked. the mother of the hunt shook her head. "mrs. cole said to me only yesterday, 'i've tried to make up my mind for her by putting myself in her place and endeavoring to decide what conclusion i, with her characteristics, would come to, and i find myself still wobbling, because she's lydia, and he's what he is, which would be eminently desirable for some women, but----'" a sudden hush around the table prevented the conclusion of this philosophic utterance. the sportsman of whom she was speaking had risen with a brimming glass of champagne in one hand and was accosting the master of the hounds. a general thrill of expectancy succeeded the hush. what was he going to say? speeches were not altogether unknown at westfield hunt breakfasts, but they were not apt to be so impromptu, nor the contribution of such a negative soul as herbert maxwell. gerald marcy, sitting next to mrs. cole, was prompted to repeat his observation of the morning. "i was right," he whispered. "he has seen the holy grail." "wait--just wait," she answered tensely. _she_ knew what was going to happen, and as her dark eyes vibrated deftly from herbert's face to lydia's and back again, she longed for two pairs that she might not for an instant lose the expression on either. meanwhile the host had rapped on the table and was saying encouragingly: "our friend mr. herbert maxwell desires to make a few remarks." "hear--hear!" cried douglas hale raucously. his fall had obviously dulled the nicety of his instincts, for everyone else was too curious to utter a word--too rapt to invade the interesting silence. maxwell had worn the air of a demi-god when he rose. a wave of self-consciousness doubtless obliterated the introductory phrases which he had learned by heart, for after a moment's painful silence he suddenly blurted out: "i'm the happiest man in the world, and i want you all to know it." here was the kernel of the whole matter. what better could he have said? what more was there left to say? the riddle was solved, and the suspense which had hung over westfield like a cloud for many months was dissolved in a rainbow of romance. there was no need of names; everybody understood, and a shout of delight followed. every woman in the room shrieked her congratulations to the bride-to-be, and those nearest her got possession of her person. miss peggy blake was the nearest and hence the first. "you dear thing! it's just splendid; the most intensely exciting thing which ever happened!" she cried, throwing her arms around lydia's neck. in the embrace her hair, which had become loose during the run, fell about her ears, and guy perry had to get down on his knees to find the gilt hair-pins. there was a babel of superlatives, and delirious feminine laughter; the men wrung the happy lover's hands or patted him on the back. when the turmoil subsided maxwell was still standing. like st. michael over the prostrate dragon, he had planted his feet securely for once in his life on the necks of the serpents diffidence and repression. he put out his hand to invite silence. "i ask you to drink to the happiness of the loveliest woman in creation. when a man worships a woman as i do her, and she has done him the honor to plight him her troth, why shouldn't he bear witness to his love and blazon her charms and virtues to the stars? god knows i'm going to make her happy, if i can! to the happiness of my future wife, miss lydia arnold!" "all up!" cried the master, and as the company rose under the spell of love's fervid invocation, he added authoritatively, "no heel taps!" as they drained their glasses and were in the act of sitting down, guy perry conveyed the cordial sentiment of all present toward the proposer of the toast and lover-elect by beginning to troll, for he's a jolly good fellow-- for he's a jolly good fellow. under cover of the swelling song mrs. walter cole, fluttering in her seat, and with her eyes fastened on lydia's countenance, felt the need of taking gerald marcy into her confidence. "i just wonder what she thinks of it. his letting himself go like that is rather nice; but it isn't at all in her style. if she is truly in love with him, it doesn't matter. but there she sits with that inscrutable smile, perfectly serene, but not in the least worked up, apparently. our embraces didn't even ruffle her hair." "he has been repressing himself--been on his good behavior for years, poor fellow," murmured marcy. "i tell you i like his calling her the loveliest woman in creation and thinking it. such guileless fervor is much too rare nowadays. but what effect will it have on lydia, who knows she isn't? that is what is troubling me. unless she is deeply smitten, won't it bore her?" the question was but the echo of her spirit's wonder; she did not expect a categorical response. whatever good thing gerald marcy was meditating in reply was nipped in the bud by an appeal to him for "aunt dinah's quilting party" as a continuation of the outburst of song. he felt obliged to comply, and yet was nothing loth, as it was one of the most popular in his repertory, and was adapted to his sweet if somewhat spavined tenor voice. in the skies the bright stars glittered, on the bank the pale moon shone, and 'twas from aunt dinah's quilting party i was seeing nellie home. so he sang with melodious precision, accompanying his performance with that slight exaggeration of chivalric manner which distinguished the rendering of his ditties. the words just suited the sensibilities of the company, combining feeling with banter, and in full-voiced unison they caught up the refrain: i was seeing nellie ho-o-me-- i was seeing nellie ho-o-me, and 'twas from aunt dinah's quilting party i was seeing nellie home. laughing feminine eyes shot merry glances in the direction of lydia, and the red-coated sportsmen lifted their glasses in grandiloquent apostrophe of the affianced pair. andrew cunningham, resplendent in a canary-colored waistcoat with fine red bars, was heard to remark confidentially, after ordering another whiskey and soda, that the festivities which were certain to follow in the wake of this engagement would add five pounds to his weight, which it had taken him two months of spartan abstemiousness to reduce three. erect and sportsmanlike, gerald continued, after an impressive sweep of his hand to promote silence: on my arm her light hand rested, rested light as o-o-cean's foam, and 'twas from aunt dinah's quilting party i was seeing nellie home. it was a red-letter day not only for the master of the hounds but for westfield's entire colony. conjecture was at an end; the love-god had triumphed; the announcement was a fitting wind-up to the exhilarating hunting season. yet amid the general congratulation and optimism some philosophic souls like mrs. walter cole did not forbear to wonder what was to be the sequel. iii precise consideration by lydia of her feelings for her betrothed--and presently her husband, as they were married in the following january--were rendered superfluous for the time being by the worship which he lavished upon her. there were so many other things to think of: first her engagement ring, which called forth ejaculations of envious admiration from her contemporaries; then her trousseau, the costumes of her bridesmaids, the details of the ceremony and the wedding breakfast, and the important question whether the honeymoon was to be spent in europe. there was never any doubt as to this in lydia's mind. after deliberation she had decided on a winter passage by the mediterranean route to nice and cannes, followed by a summer in the tyrol and switzerland, with a fortnight in paris to repair the ravages in her wardrobe made by changing fashion. it must not be understood that maxwell demurred to this attractive programme. he merely intimated that if he remained at home and demonstrated what he called his serious side, he would probably receive a nomination for the legislature in the autumn; that the party managers had predicted as much; and that the favorable introduction into politics thus obtained might lead to congress or a foreign mission, as he had the means to live up to either position worthily. lydia listened alertly. "i should like you to go as ambassador to paris or london some day, of course, but to serve in the legislature now would scarcely conduce to that, herbert. i've set my heart on going abroad--i've never been but once, you know--and it's just the time to go when we are building our two houses. where should we live if we stayed at home? the sensible plan is to store our presents, buy some tapestries and old furniture on the other side, and come back in time to get the autumn hunting at westfield and inaugurate our two establishments." this settled the matter. the only real uncertainty had been whether she did not prefer a trip around the world instead. but that would take too long. she was eager to figure as the mistress of the most stately modern mansion and the most consummate country house which money and architectural genius could erect. these two houses were perhaps the most engrossing of all among the many concerns which led her to postpone precise analysis of her feelings to a period of greater leisure. that is the exact quality of her love--whether it were eighteen carat or not, to adopt a simile suggested to her by her wedding-ring. that she loved herbert sufficiently well to marry him was the essential point; and it seemed futile to play hide-and-seek with her own consciousness over the abstract proposition whether she could have loved someone else better, especially as there were so many immediately pressing matters to consider that both her physician and herbert had warned her she was liable, if not prudent, to fall a victim to that lurking ailment, nervous prostration. it was certainly no slight responsibility to select the lot in town which seemed to combine most advantages as the site for a residence. the matter of the country house was much simpler, for who could doubt that the ideal location was an expanse of undulating country, higher than the rest of the neighborhood, known as norrey's farm? these fifty acres, with woods appurtenant, were reputed to be out of the market unless to a single purchaser. many a pioneer had picked out norrey's knoll as his choice, only to be thwarted by the owner with the assertion that he must buy the whole farm or could have none. later would-be purchasers had recoiled before the price, which had kept not merely abreast but had galloped ahead of current valuations, until it had become a by-word in the colony that farmer norrey would bite his own nose off if he were not careful. but the shrewd rustic was more than vindicated by the upshot. lydia, from the moment when she first seriously thought of herbert maxwell as a husband, had cast sheeps' eyes at this stately property, and within a short period after the engagement was announced the title deeds passed. rumor declared that the canny grantor had divined that the opportunity of his life was at hand and had held out successfully for still higher figures. but, as everybody cheerfully remarked, ten thousand dollars more or less was but a flea-bite to herbert maxwell. then came the selection of the architects and divers inspections of plans for the two establishments, which, to the joy of the bridegroom, were interrupted by the wedding ceremony. they sailed, and their honeymoon was somewhat of a social parade. special quarters--the most expensive and exclusive to be had--were engaged for them in advance on steamships and in railroad trains, in hotels and wherever they appeared. maxwell's manifest tender purpose was to gratify his bride's slightest whim, and in regard to the choice of the objects on which his ready money was to be lavished he avoided taking the initiative except when an occasional mania seized him to buy her costly gems on the sly. otherwise he danced attendance on her taste, which was discriminating and perspicuous. lydia yearned for distinction, not extravagance; for superlative effects, not garishness. her eye was on the lookout in regard to all the affairs of life, from food to the manifestations of art, for the note which accurately expressed elegant and fastidious comfort and gave the rebuff to every-day results or the antics of vulgarity. consequently the wedding trip after the first surprises was but a change of scene. there were still too many absorptions for retrospective thought and nice balancing of soul accounts. at nice and cannes they found themselves in a vortex of small gayeties. while travelling, lydia was on the alert to pick up old tapestries, porcelain, and other works of art; in paris, shopping and the dressmakers left no time for anything but a daily lesson to put the finishing touch to her french. she had said to herself that she would draw a trial balance of her precise emotions when she was at rest on the steamer--for lydia by instinct was a methodical person; but a batch of letters reciting complications in regard to the last details on the new houses was a fresh distraction, and the society of several engaging men on the ship another. nevertheless the thought that she was nearing home struck her fancy favorably, and on the evening before they landed she eluded everybody else to seize her husband's arm for a promenade on deck. there was elasticity in her step as she said, "won't it be fun to be at westfield again, herbert? i long for a good run with the hounds, and i'm beginning to pine for the autumn colors and smells." "yes, indeed. and we shall be settled at our own fireside at last," he answered with a lover's animation. the remark recalled bothersome considerations to lydia's mind. she felt sure from the contents of the last packet of correspondence that the architect had failed to carry out her instructions in several instances. "settled?" she echoed. "if we are settled a year from now we may consider ourselves very fortunate." lydia's immediate plans met with interruption from an unexpected source. before the hunting season had fairly begun it was privately whispered in westfield circles that a stork would presently visit the new establishment on norrey's farm. open inquiries from tactless interrogators, why the maxwells did not follow the hounds, were answered by the explanation that the young people had so many matters to attend to in connection with their two houses that they had decided to postpone hunting to another year. later it was known that they would pass the winter in the country, and not furnish the town house until spring. when the baby was actually born, in february, everyone knew that it was expected; but the advent of the infant in the flesh caused a flutter among lydia's immediate feminine acquaintances. as soon as the mother was able to receive visitors, mrs. walter cole came down from town to offer her warm felicitations and incidentally to satisfy the curiosity of those who took an interest. she had arranged to lunch after the interview with the andrew cunninghams, who lived all the year round at westfield, and thither at the close of the visit to her intimate friend she repaired, replete with information. it happened to be saturday, and the master of the house had brought down gerald marcy by an early train for a winter's afternoon tramp across country, so that the two women had only a few minutes of unreserved conversation. "well, she was just as one would have expected--lydia all over," mrs. cole began with the intensity of a pent-up stream which has regained its freedom. "she looked sweet, and everything in her room and in the nursery was bewitching, as though she had been preparing for the event for years and doted on it. that's just like her, of course. she bemoaned her fate at losing the hunting season, and she has decided not to nurse the baby. as an experienced mother," continued mrs. cole contemplatively, "i felt bound to remind her that there are two sides to that question, and that i had nursed toto and jim not only because walter insisted on it, but to give the children the benefit of the doubt as to any possible effect on character from being suckled by a stranger. but she had thought it all out, and had her arguments at her fingers' ends. she declared it a case of anglo-saxon prejudice, and that every frenchwoman of position sends her babies to a foster-mother. of course it _is_ a bother, and frightfully confining, but my husband wouldn't hear of it, though half the mamas can't satisfy their babies anyway." mrs. cunningham nodded understandingly. "i daresay it's just as well. and of course she regards the rest of us as old-fashioned. but tell me about the baby." mrs. cole laughed. "you ought to have heard lydia on the subject. she talks of it in the most impersonal way, as though it belonged to someone else or were a wedding present. i never cared much for babies before i was married, but could not endure anyone who wouldn't make flattering speeches about mine. lydia's is a dear little thing as they go, and has a fascinating wardrobe already, and i think she is rather devoted to it in her secret soul, but one of the first things she said to me--before i could get in a single compliment--was, 'she's the living image of grandma maxwell, fannie. she has her mouth and nose.' and the embarrassing part was that it's true. the moment lydia called my attention to it i saw. her eagle maternal eye had detected what the ordinary mother would have failed to perceive. but it's grandma maxwell to the life. 'why evade the truth?' remarked lydia after one of her deliberate pauses. 'i shall name her for her, and i can discern in advance that she will never be a social success.'" "poor little thing!" murmured mrs. cunningham. such an anathema so early in life was certainly heart-rending. mrs. cole put her head on one side like an arch bird by way of reflective protest. "it sounds dreadful, of course, but remember she's lydia. what she will really do will be to metamorphose her, body and soul, so that by the time she is eighteen there will not be one trace of maxwell visible to the naked eye. see if i'm not right," she said with the gusto of a brilliant inspiration which seemed to her a logical defence of her friend. the arrival of the men interrupted the dialogue, but the general topic was presently resumed from another point of view. not many minutes had elapsed after they sat down to luncheon before gerald marcy hazarded the observation that, prophecies and innuendoes to the contrary notwithstanding, events in the maxwell household appeared to have followed the course of nature. mrs. cole, to whom this remark was directly addressed, ignored the sly impeachment of her abilities as a seer, and, having finished her piece of buttered toast, said blandly: "i think lydia is very happy." "i felt sure she would be tamed," continued marcy with a tug at his mustache. "i look to see her become a model of the domestic virtues." "don't be too sure that she is tamed, gerald," said mrs. cunningham. "lydia is lydia." perhaps the knowledge that she had been longing in vain for years for a child of her own gave the cue to this slightly brusk comment. "lydia will never be exactly like the rest of us; that's her peculiarity--virtue--what shall i call it?" interposed mrs. cole, looking round the table with a philosophic air. "the rest of us demur at conventions, but accept them in the end. she follows what she deems the truth. i don't say that she is always right or that she doesn't do queer things," she added by way of conservative qualification of her bubbling encomium. "and how about maxwell?" asked andrew cunningham, who had seemed temporarily lost in the contemplation of his lobster salad so long as any of that lusciously prepared viand remained on his plate. "infatuated as ever, i suppose," he added, sitting back in his chair and exposing benignly his broad expanse of neckcloth and fancy check waistcoat. "yes, and he ought to be, surely. but lydia has a rival in the daughter of the house," answered mrs. cole, reinspired by the inquiry. "he came in just as i was leaving, and is almost daft on the subject of the baby. if lydia's ecstasy is somewhat below the normal, he more than makes up for the deficiency. there never was such a proud parent. he just 'chortled in his joy.' he discerns in her already all the graces and virtues, and would like to do something at once--he doesn't know exactly what--to bring them to the attention of an unappreciative world. if it were a boy, he could put his name down on the waiting lists at the clubs, but as she is only a girl, he must content himself with hanging over her crib for the present." "only a girl!" echoed marcy. "born with a golden spoon in her mouth, an heiress to all the virtues and graces, and predestined doubtless, like her mother, to rest her dainty foot upon the neck of man. nevertheless, as i have already prophesied, i am inclined to think that the yoke--now a double yoke--will not bear too severely on maxwell, though it may not yield him the bliss which we unregenerate bachelors are wont to associate with the ideal marital relation." "hear--hear!" exclaimed andrew cunningham. "you need some further liquid refreshment after that silver-tongued sophistry, gerald.--mary," he said to the maid, "pass the whiskey and soda to mr. marcy." mrs. cole put her head on one side. "i have my doubts whether the ideal marital relation is a modern social possibility--the strictly ideal such as you bachelors mean," she added, feeling, doubtless, as the wife of a man to whom she had described herself in heart-to-heart talks with other women--not many, for she eschewed the subject ordinarily as sacred--as deeply attached, that this homily on wedlock needed a qualifying tag. but may cunningham was not in the mood to become a party to even so tempered an imputation on connubial happiness. "speak for yourself, fannie," she said sturdily. "ideals or no ideals, andrew and i trot in double harness better than any single animal of my acquaintance." "listen to the old woman, god bless her!" exclaimed the master of the house, raising his tumbler and smiling at his better-half with chivalrous expansiveness. mrs. cole was a little nettled at mrs. cunningham's obtuseness--wilful obtuseness, it seemed to her. as though the subtle social problem suggested by her was to be solved by a reference to the homely affection of this amiable but limited couple! she sighed and murmured, "everyone knows, my dear, that you and andrew are as happy as the day is long. but i'm afraid that you don't understand exactly what i meant." mrs. cunningham compressed her lips ominously. she felt that she understood perfectly well, and that it was simply another case of fannie cole's nonsense. but any retort she may have been meditating was averted by the timely and genial inspiration of her husband. "one thing is certain," he said: "we all know that our gerald is the ideal bachelor." this assertion called forth cordial acquiescence from both the ladies, and turned the current of the conversation into a smoother channel. the subject of the remark bowed decorously. "in this company i am free to admit that i sometimes sigh in secret for a happy home. yet even venerable bachelorhood has its compensations. by the way," he added, "our colony at westfield is likely to have an addition to its stud of bachelors. i hear that harry spencer is coming home." "harry spencer? how interesting," cried the two women in the same breath. "the fascinator," continued mrs. cole with slow, sardonic articulation. "to break some other woman's heart, i suppose," said mrs. cunningham. "and yet it is safe to say that he will be received with open arms by your entire sex, including the present company," remarked gerald with a tug at his mustache. the sally was received with pensive silence as a deduction apparently not to be gainsaid. "he is very agreeable," said mrs. cunningham flatly. "and extremely handsome," said mrs. cole. "not the type of manly beauty which would cause my mature heart to flutter, but dangerous to the youthful imagination. he used to look like a handsome pirate, and if he had whispered honeyed words to me instead of to laura--who knows?" "poor laura!" "they had neither of them a cent; there was nothing for him to do but withdraw. and yet there is no doubt he broke her heart, though there is consumption in her family." mrs. cole knit her brows over this attempt on her part to formulate complete justice. "he's a woman's man," said andrew cunningham. he had stepped to the mantel-piece to fill his pipe, and having uttered this fell speech, he lit it and smoked for some moments in silence with his back to the cheerful wood fire before proceeding. no one had seen fit to contradict him. the gaps between his assertions and the subsequent explanations thereof were expected and rarely interrupted. "he does everything well--rides, shoots, plays rackets, golf, cards--is infernally good-looking, as you say, has a pat speech and a flattering eye for every woman he looks at, and yet somehow he has always struck me as a _poseur_. i wouldn't trust him in a tight place, though he prides himself on his sporting blood. it may be prejudice on my part. gerald likes him, i believe, because he is a keen rider and always has a good mount. he always has the best of everything going, but what does he live on anyway?" "wild oats, perhaps," suggested marcy. but he hastened to atone for this levity by adding, "he had a little money from his mother, while it lasted, and just after he and miss wilford drifted apart, i am told that he followed a tip from guy perry on copper stocks and cleaned up enough to enable him to travel round the world." "poor laura!" interjected mrs. cole. "what a pity he didn't get a tip earlier!" "it wasn't enough to marry on," said marcy, "and it's probably mostly gone by this time." "that's the sort of thing i complain of," exclaimed cunningham. "i'm no martinet in morals, heaven knows, but i always feel a little on my guard with fellows who live by their wits and spend like princes. confound it, you know it isn't quite respectable even in a free country." andrew spoke with a wag of his head as though he expected to be adjudged an old fogy for this conservative utterance. "he's an attractive fellow on the surface anyway," answered marcy after a pause, "and will be an addition from the hunting standpoint. and--give the devil his due, andrew--if he was looking for money only, there were several heiresses he might have married. that would have made him irreproachable at once." mrs. cole drew a long breath. "perfectly true, mr. marcy. i never thought of it before. harry spencer doesn't look at a woman twice unless he admires her, no matter how rich she is. he could have married several, of course, if he had tried." "dozens. that's the humiliating part of it," assented mrs. cunningham. "when he is ready to settle down that's what he'll do--pick out some woman with barrels of money," said andrew. having once got a proposition in his head he was wont to stick to it tenaciously, like a puppy to a root. "you misjudge him--you misjudge him!" cried mrs. cole eagerly. "he won't do anything of the kind. he will never marry any woman unless she has money--or he has; that i'm ready to admit. but, on the other hand, he'll never ask anyone to marry him unless he loves her for herself alone, and--and," she continued with a gasp born of the thrill which the definiteness of her insight caused her, "there are very few women in the world whom he is liable to fall in love with. that's what makes him so interesting. he is polite to us all, but the majority of women bore him at heart." marcy laughed. "a masterly diagnosis," he said. "and now that he has seen the world and is returning heart-free, so far as we know, there will naturally be curiosity as to how he will bear the ordeal of a fresh contact with native loveliness." "exactly," said the two women together, and with an engaging frankness which quite overshadowed the grunt by which the master of the house indicated his suspicious dissent from this exposition of character. iv harry spencer had been travelling nearly three years. naturally, he found some changes and some new faces at westfield. concerning the former he was becomingly appreciative. he promptly ranged himself on the side of progress, admired the new club-house and the new establishments in the neighborhood, and evinced a willingness to take an active part in the enlarged energies of the club. during his peregrinations in foreign lands he had visited the st. andrew's golf links, and he had views regarding bunkers and other features of the game which he was prepared to advocate. when he had left home the bicycle was all the rage, and some portion of his journeyings had been on an up-to-date machine. but he found now that the fashionable portion of the community had dropped this craze, and that to ride a "wheel" was beginning to be considered a bore except as a means of getting from one place to another. the fever of golf was rampant instead, and had reached the stage where its votaries were almost delirious in their devotion, notably the people most unfitted to play the game, and who had taken it up in order to be in fashion. during the spring and summer following his return the improved links at westfield was crowded with players of every grade whose proficiency was generally in reverse proportion to the number of clubs they carried. soon after the season had fairly opened and the greens were in good order the lately returned wanderer found himself one morning engaged in giving a lesson in the royal and ancient game to miss peggy blake, who had a severe attack of the disease and promised to be a proficient pupil, for dobson, the professional at the hunt club, had declared that she had a free swing and could follow through as well as most men. the trouble at the moment was that, after taking a free swing, she either failed to hit the ball altogether or hit it off at some distressing angle. as she explained volubly to everybody, until within a week she had been making screaming brassie shots which carried a hundred and fifty yards, but had suddenly lost her game completely. harry had kindly offered himself as a coach, a delightful proposition to the blithe young woman, especially as dobson was engaged for the time being in superintending the primary and elephantine efforts of miss ella marbury, the stout maiden sister of wagner marbury, the western multi-millionnaire and proprietor of one of the new neighboring palaces so obnoxious to mrs. cunningham. miss peggy was more than pleased to have for an hour or two the uninterrupted companionship of this good-looking and redoubtable gallant, whose attentions were to be regarded as a feather in her cap, and who would doubtless be able to tell her what she was doing wrong. hers was one of the new faces, and harry had given his following to understand that he admired her spirited and comely personality. "miss west wind" he had christened her genially, and the epithet had spread with the rumor that he had noticed her. yet it was tacitly understood that he had no intention of interfering with the suit of his friend guy perry, who was supposed to be well in the lead of the other pursuers of the breezy maiden. yet, though he sought to give the impression that his favor in this case was merely an artistic tribute and that he still walked scatheless in the world of women, he was glad of an opportunity to stroll over the links in her society. she would entertain him. besides, she was a fluent talker, and he could count on her retailing for his edification more or less of the current history of westfield written between the lines, which was only to be picked up gradually by one who had been prevented by absence from personal observation. it was a very simple matter to detect the trouble with his companion's stroke. "you don't keep your eye on the ball, miss blake. that's the whole trouble with you. anyone can see that." peggy looked incredulous. "if there is one special thing more than another which i try to bear constantly in mind, it is to keep my eye on the ball. do i really take it off, mr. spencer? of course you must know. there are so many other things to remember, but i did think i was completely disciplined on that point. watch me now." thereupon she proceeded to execute a dashing stroke, her evident standard being to carry her club through with such velocity as to bring the head round her left shoulder and cause her to execute a pirouette like the pictures of the golfing girls in the magazines. the ball flew off at a tangent and narrowly missed her own caddy. "how rotten!" she murmured. "i had both my eyes glued on the ball, and you see what happened. and only a week ago i was driving like a streak." her expletive was merely the popular phrase of the day by which golden youth of both sexes was apt to express even trivial dissatisfaction. she was a pathetic figure of distress. her exertions had heightened her color so that it suggested the poppy rather than the rose, and was not unlike the hue of her trig golfing garment. she swept back a stray ringlet which had escaped from under her hat. "you see i have lost my game utterly, mr. spencer." harry laughed. "you were looking at me out of the corners of your eyes that time. lower your lids until you exaggerate the modest maiden and don't move your head." it was a half-deferential, half-sardonic voice with a caressing touch, indicating temporary devotion to the subject-matter in hand which was flattering. "swing more easily," he added, "and don't try to rival the gibson girl until you recover confidence." then he corrected slightly her stance and the position of her hands--all with a deft yet bantering grace of manner which soothed and attracted her. he went through the correct motions of the stroke for her enlightenment, and as he stood erect and supple peggy did not forbear to reflect that he was very handsome. how dark his hair and eyes were! it was a bold sort of beauty, and, though he wore neither mustache nor beard, the faintly bluish tinge of his complexion betrayed that, but for the barber, he would have been what mrs. herbert cole might have termed an incarnate symphony in black. he appeared harmoniously muscular. he executed the necessary movements with lithe, nervous energy, focusing his attention tensely for the brief occasion. the moment he lowered his club he regained his leisurely and rather indolent demeanor. his pupil essayed to follow his instructions. at the third attempt the ball sailed straight as an arrow to a moderate distance, which comforted the performer, but she felt too nervously excited to exult. it might be only an accident. "try again," he said confidentially. "you've almost got it." once more the ball shot correctly from the club. harry stooped and placed another on the tee. peggy swung, then followed through with a little of her old elasticity. it flew like a rifle bullet low and long across the distant bunker. she rose on the tips of her toes as she followed its entrancing flight. "i've got back my game," she cried jubilantly. "you've saved my life, mr. spencer." she looked as though she would have been glad, had convention permitted, to throw her arms around her benefactor's neck. and to the true golfer it would not seem an exaggerated reward. "i've been in the slough of despond for nearly a week, and playing worse every day. now i'm in the seventh heaven, and it's all your doing." he acknowledged the exuberant gratitude with a graceful mock heroic bow. "i shall consider my terms. the charge should be considerable." just then by the sheerest chance a white carnation which peggy was wearing at her throat became detached from her dress and fell to the ground. he picked it up, and, holding it before him and looking into her eyes, said with melodious assurance: "i will keep this, if i may, as my tuition fee." peggy looked embarrassed and let fall her eyes, albeit not easily disconcerted. the carnation was one from a bunch which guy perry had sent her the day before, and to hand it over seemed almost an act of treason, though they were not yet actually engaged. yet she was conscious that she thought this new acquaintance charming. silence gives consent where lovely woman is concerned. at any rate, when she looked up he was in the act of placing it in his buttonhole. but his fingers had paused in their work as a consequence of his arrested glance. a feminine figure outlined on the crest of adjacent rising ground had suddenly caught his eye. she was addressing her ball for a brassie shot, and as he gazed it was performed with a sweeping grace of which the lack of effort was the salient charm. peggy, whose eyes had promptly followed the direction of his, vouchsafed the desired information. "mrs. herbert maxwell." "really!" there was a shade of interest in the monosyllable, as though the identity of some one whom he had been rather curious to meet had been revealed to him. "you haven't met her?" "not yet." "oh, you'd like her immensely." the words were uttered with such naive confidence that harry spencer turned away his gaze from the new attraction to survey the old. "how do you know?" he inquired jauntily. peggy spluttered a little at this flank attack. "oh, well, you know, she's so awfully clever. she's different. she'd pique your curiosity anyway," she concluded, recovering her aplomb. "am i so difficult to please?" he asked sententiously. he answered the question himself. "yes, i admit that i am." his look of admiration, which peggy divined was constitutional with him on such occasions, was best to be met by diversion. "i shall never be able to play golf as lydia maxwell does, and i've been at it twice as long. she has only played this spring, and dobson says that she has a better idea of the game than any other woman. it's just knack with her, for her balls go farther than mine and yet she makes scarcely an exertion. you couldn't help admire her in all sorts of ways. it has been a dreadfully quiet season for her, though, for when her baby was six weeks old and she had sent out cards for two musical parties in their new town house, her husband's mother, old mrs. maxwell, died suddenly, and she had to go into mourning. so they went to southern california for february and march, and moved down here as soon as they returned. she took lessons in golf at los angeles, and she beat me four up the first time we played, even though i supposed i could give her half a stroke." while he listened to this monologue, spencer followed the progress of the subject of it. she was playing with pretty mrs. baxter, but, though her opponent was an ordinarily graceful woman, there was a deft harmony in her movements which made mrs. baxter appear an unfinished person by comparison. "they say the real secret is that she has an artistic temperament." the speech was peggy's by way of reading his thoughts and providing a condensed and comprehensive key. "and her husband--what is he like? you know he has come to the surface during my absence." "he hasn't it at all--i mean an artistic temperament. but he's an awfully good sort--awfully; a true sport, and kind as can be." peggy's vocabulary of enthusiasm, though fundamentally native, sometimes made reprisals on the kindred jargon of great britain. "i see. and you infer that i have an artistic temperament?" a tendency toward challenging unexpectedness was one of spencer's prime manifestations with women. peggy looked embarrassed. she had not bargained for such an unequivocal piece of teasing. she put up her hand to her head to secure her escaping comb. "i don't know you very well, of course, but i had supposed so. yet i'm not clever, and i dote on lydia," she added archly. harry spencer did not have to go out of his way for an opportunity to satisfy his curiosity by personal acquaintance with mrs. herbert maxwell. when he and his fair partner had finished the last hole and approached the piazza of the new club-house, they found her sitting there--one of a group of both sexes waiting for luncheon. peggy, radiant and prodigal of superlatives, proclaimed to one after another that her game had come back. wasn't it perfectly glorious?--the loveliest thing which had ever happened. and mr. spencer had detected at once what was wrong. "just think of it, i was pressing and took my eye off the ball," she kept reiterating, "and i never knew it. wasn't it dear of him?" one of the most characteristic features of golf is that it is not an altruistic pastime. everyone is feverishly absorbed by the state of his own game, and does not care at heart a picayune for his neighbor's. at the moment of peggy's vociferous advent the assembled company were talking in pairs, and each member of each pair was endeavoring to excite the interest of his or her partner in the dialogue by glowing or dejected narration of why his or her score was lower or higher than the speaker's average. in some cases both were talking at once and neither listened. oftener, perhaps, each had asserted an innings, and the strongest or most persistent lungs held the mastery. miss marbury, who under the tutelage of dobson had done the longest hole in and the eighteen holes in --five better than ever before--was bubbling over with ecstasy and soliciting congratulations. douglas hale, who had failed by one stroke to surpass his previous record of , was telling hoarsely and pathetically to everyone whom he could buttonhole how it happened. "at the fourteenth hole i was on the green in two and took seven for the hole. seven! just think of that, seven! five strokes on the green." as he uttered the words with excruciating precision, he would hold up the five fingers of his hand and shake them at his auditor. it was an experience which would last him all day and as far into the evening as he could find new listeners, especially if he could endeavor to take the edge off his disappointment by scotch and soda. consequently, though everybody heard that miss peggy blake had recovered her game, and her breezy invasion caused a stir, the fact that she had done so was of interest only because of the means by which this had been brought to pass. it was harry spencer, not she, who became the cynosure of numerous feminine eyes. if he had put peggy onto her game, why not them onto theirs? peggy, mistaking the reason for the pause in the general chatter for interest in her improvement, proceeded to rehearse gleefully the details of her triumph for the benefit of the company. but douglas hale, in no mood to be side-tracked by any such interruption, stepped forward, and hooking his arm in harry spencer's, led him apart with a mysterious "a word with you, old man." having thus enforced an audience, he held forth in the low tone appropriate to an interesting confidence. "just now i was at the end of the thirteenth hole, and was on the green of the fourteenth in two, and i took seven for the hole. five puts on the green! think of that, five!" he whispered hoarsely, and shook his five fingers in harry's face. "seven for the hole. and i finished in . tied my own record. wasn't that the meanest streak of luck a man ever had? five puts, and two of them rimmed the cup." his victim listened indulgently. the firm grip on his arm precluded escape. "you must learn to put, my dear fellow." "that's the most sickening part of it. i made every other put. let me tell you--you remember the slope of the fourteenth green? well, i----" realizing what he was in for, harry took advantage of a momentary pause on the part of his torturer for the purpose of lighting a cigarette. his observing eyes had noticed that mrs. maxwell was standing apart from the other women who were within range of miss blake's jubilant reiteration. he wrenched himself free from douglas's clutch. "it was a case of downright hard luck, and now, in return for my heart-felt sympathy and for listening to your tale of woe, introduce me to mrs. herbert maxwell." puffing at his half-lighted cigarette, douglas hale reached out to recover his lost grip. "wait a minute. you haven't heard half. i will show you just how it happened." spencer intercepted the reaching fingers and grabbed the offender's wrist, and said, with jocund firmness, "i don't care a tinker's dam how it happened, douglas, and i tell you you can't put. introduce me to mrs. maxwell." this quip caused the egotist to draw himself up stiffly. he was proof against hints and ordinary recalcitration, but such an unmistakable rebuff was not to be ignored; that is, he could not with proper self-respect continue the harangue on which he was bent. "of course if you don't care to hear how it happened, i won't tell you." so saying, douglas suffered himself to be conveyed the necessary few steps, and performed the ceremony of introduction. lydia let her eyes rest with keen but interested scrutiny on this new-comer. he was a boon at the moment, for she had taken the gauge of everybody at westfield, and was conscious that neither her heart nor her brain was satisfied. she craved novelty and true aesthetic appreciation. did anyone really understand her? not even fannie cole, who came the nearest to divining her hatred of the commonplace and her dread of being bored. but fannie, though discerning, chose to remain a slave to the canons of conformity. that morning, in her looking-glass she had asked herself the question, "why did i ever marry herbert maxwell?" but she had asked it with no malice aforethought, merely as one who, with leisure to take account of stock, foots up his assets and puts the question, "am i solvent?" the interrogation was simply searching and contemplative. the answer had been prompt, and in a measure assuring. "because it gave me everything i need." yet, somehow, there remained a cloud upon her spirit. was this all? did life offer nothing further? "we make a fuss and circumstance about our sports," she said. "they do creak." it was agreeable to be comprehended so promptly. "it isn't sport for sport's sake, but for the sake of the cups and because it's the thing." "and above all to beat the other fellow. that's the national creed. it's so in everything--competition. we are brought up from childhood to consider that winning is the thing which counts. we must win at any cost at foot-ball or trade, in affairs or in love." she made one of her little pauses. decidedly he was a kindred spirit and to be cultivated. "i am an exotic then." "how so?" "competition--the national creed--does not interest me." "because you win so easily. i watched you play this morning. you will have no rival of your own sex here." she ignored the tribute; she knew that already; it was the thesis which interested her. "it bores me--winning, i mean. golf, for the time being, is a delight." he gave her a pirate glance, as though to search her soul, and uttered one of his bold sallies: "that is, your doll is stuffed with----" she checked him, shaking her head. "oh, no. that is, i think not. i have never cut her open. i had in mind something quite different." her dainty face grew pensive as she sought the exact phrase to interpret her psychology. "i have never had to struggle for anything. it has always come to me." "exactly." his note of emphasis reminded her that her words were, after all, merely an indirect echo of his diagnosis. "but your time is sure to come," he asserted confidently. the smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment also. "in what field?" she inquired. spencer shrugged his shoulders. "i am a student of character, not a soothsayer." "and then?" she queried. "you will be like the rest of us--only more so. you could not bear to lose at any cost." what might have seemed effrontery in some men was but a piquant challenge in his mouth, so speciously was it uttered. lydia was not unaccustomed to men whose current coin was sardonic sallies, as witness the veteran gerald marcy. but this was something different. her soul had been suddenly pitchforked by a professor of anatomy and held up under her nose with the caveat that she was ignorant of the mainsprings of her own behavior. it was impudence, but novel, and she forgave it with the reflection that he would live to eat his gratuitous deductions, which would be the neatest form of vengeance. [illustration: the smile of incredulity which curved her lips betrayed entertainment also.] v before many weeks had elapsed it began to be whispered at westfield that harry spencer and mrs. herbert maxwell were seeing more or less of each other. they appeared together not infrequently on the golf links; it was known that he was giving her lessons at her own house in bridge whist, the new game of cards; they had been met walking in the lanes; and--most significant item, which caused the colony to prick up its ears and ask, "what does this mean?"--two youthful anglers had encountered them strolling in the lonely woods skirting distant duck pond. this last discovery, which was early in september, led to the conclusion that, under cover of her mourning, lydia must have been seeing more of him than anyone had imagined. yet, even then, though alert brains indulged in knowing innuendoes, mrs. cole's epigrammatic estimate of the matter was generally accepted as sound: "a woman in mourning for her mother-in-law requires diversion." it seemed probable that lydia was amusing herself, and that harry spencer was playing the tame cat for their mutual edification. the possibility that he had been caught at last and that she was luring him on that she might lead him like a bear with a ring through his nose, and thus avenge her sex for his past indifference, was regarded as unlikely but delightful. that lydia was enamored of her admirer, and that they both cared, was not seriously entertained until many circumstances seemed to point to such a deduction. westfield was not wholly without experience in intimacies between husbands or wives and a third party. but only rarely had there been fire as well as smoke in these cases. and even then there had never been up to this time an open scandal. matters had been patched up or the veil of diplomatic convention had been drawn so skilfully over them that most people were left in the dark as to the real truth. almost invariably the intimacies in question reminded one of the antics of horses with too high action who had all the show but little of the quality of runaways; and the preferences manifested were not always inconsistent with conjugal devotion. consequently, everyone took for granted that this was only another "fake" instance of family disarrangement, entered on to pass the time and to provide that appearance of evil which the american woman seems to find a satisfying substitute for the real article. as mrs. cole once remarked in defending the propensity to gerald marcy, if one's vanity is flattered, why should one go farther? the buzz of curiosity was stimulated during the ensuing autumn by a variety of fresh and compromising rumors. consequently, when at a golfing luncheon party given at the club by mrs. gordon wallace in october, mrs. baxter, whose blue eyes always suggested innocence, asked in her demure way what the latest news was from "the knoll," every tongue had something new to impart. the most sensational as well as the latest piece of information was provided by mrs. cunningham, who repeated it with the air of one whose faith had at last received a serious shock. "she sat with him on the piazza at 'the knoll' until three o'clock night before last. her husband came home at eleven and requested her to go to bed, but there they stayed without him. i call that pretty bad, even if she is lydia. i wonder how long herbert maxwell will permit this sort of thing to go on. even the worm will turn." there was an eloquent silence, which was broken by a repetition of mrs. cole's whitewashing epigram as to lydia's need of diversion. its cleverness and value as a generalization caused a ripple of amusement, but it fell flat as a specific. old mrs. maxwell had been dead many months, yet matters were more disconcerting than ever. stout miss marbury's question was regarded as much more to the point: "who saw them, mrs. cunningham?" may cunningham would have preferred to remain silent on this score, but she perceived that the authenticity of her story was dependent on direct testimony. it was a luncheon of eight. she glanced around the table in an appealing manner as much as to say, "this really is not to be spoken of," and said laconically, "there was another couple present." then, as though she feared on second thought that the wrong persons might be fixed on, she continued: "neither of them were married. they are supposed to be engaged, and lydia acted as their chaperone on the piazza while they took a moonlight ride together." "who can they have been?" murmured some one sweetly, and there was a general giggle. "you wormed it out of me," said mrs. cunningham doggedly. "you demanded my credentials. but it doesn't matter about those two, of course, for they're in love." "how about the others?" ventured mrs. baxter. "truly, rachel, you shock me," answered mrs. cunningham sternly. "it's no joking matter. it's a very serious situation for this colony, in my opinion. people who don't know us do not think any too well of us already because some of us smoke cigarettes and go in for hunting and an open-air life instead of trying to reform somebody. but this will give the gossips a real handle. besides, it's disreputable." "but i really wished to know," murmured mrs. baxter. "does either of them care? and if so, which?" "my own belief," interjected mrs. cole, "as i said just now, is that there's nothing in it--nothing serious. lydia is simply catering to her æsthetic side, and everyone knows harry spencer. it seems to me personally that she has gone too far, but that is a question of taste, and, provided her husband doesn't complain, why need we?" thereupon she popped into her mouth a luscious-looking coffee cream confection and munched it ruminantly. "it has become a question of morals," asserted mrs. cunningham. "if their relations are what we don't believe them to be, it's a disgrace to westfield. if they are simply amusing themselves, it's heartless, and i know what i would do if i were herbert maxwell." "so do i," exclaimed mrs. reynolds, a spirited young matron with the breath of life in her nostrils, yet, as someone once remarked of her, notoriously devoted to her lord and master. "just what my husband said," added mrs. miller, a bride of a year's standing, which, considering nothing whatever had been said, provoked a smile and brought a blush to the countenance of the speaker, which deepened as mrs. baxter with her accustomed innocence asked: "what would you do?" "pick out the most seductive-looking woman i could set my eyes on, rachel dear, and"--blurted out mrs. reynolds pungently. as she paused an instant seeking her phrase, mrs. cunningham interjected: "sh! we understand. that might bring her to her senses." "but herbert maxwell never would," said mrs. cole, reaching for another sweetmeat. "i'm not so sure about that," retorted mrs. cunningham. "he's faithful as a mastiff, but goad him too far and he may prove to be a slumbering lion, in my opinion." "that wouldn't suit lydia at all," responded mrs. cole. the thesis interested her. "she takes for granted, i presume, his unswerving fidelity. besides, he would consider it morally wrong. i shall be very much surprised, my dear, if you are not mistaken." "i'm not a married woman," suggested miss marbury, "but i think he ought to put a stop in some way or other to the present condition of things, and that it is his fault if he doesn't." a murmur of acquiescence showed that this was the general sentiment, at which point the discussion of the topic was brought to a close by the hostess's rising from the table--that is, discussion by the party as a whole. after they had repaired to the general sitting-room--that neutral apartment in the club which was appropriated to the use of both sexes--the subject still claimed the attention of the groups into which the company subdivided itself. here mrs. baxter found an opportunity to repeat her inquiry whether either, neither, or both cared, which really was the most interesting uncertainty of the situation, and one which elicited a variety of opinion. some, like mrs. cole, were still incredulous, or chose to be, that either of them was in earnest. but several of the more knowing women wagged their heads in concert with mrs. cunningham, who, seated where her vision could rest on the full-length portrait of her husband swathed in pink as the first master of the westfield hounds--one of the new decorative features--repeated data to the effect that herbert maxwell was looking glum and was drinking a little--much more than ever before in his life. "poor fellow!" sighed miss marbury, and she added, as though in self-congratulatory monologue, that there were some compensations in being single. "nothing of the kind; you know nothing about it," said mrs. cunningham tartly. she did not choose to hear the institution of holy matrimony traduced by a mere spinster; moreover, her nerves were on edge because of her solicitude lest the most appalling possibility of all were true--that lydia really cared. for, granting the hypothesis, what might not lydia do? what would lydia do? and as yet, though conjecture ran riot and all westfield was holding its breath, no one could speak with authority as to what the truth was. nevertheless, mrs. cunningham, as an observer, was disposed to take a pessimistic view as to what the future had in store for the colony, the good repute of which was precious to her. on the other hand, many of the younger spirits among the women were inclined to regard the mother of the hunt as a croaker, and as they chatted apart from her on this occasion they cited her late opposition to the recent innovations at the club as typical of her mental attitude. "yet to-day, if a vote were taken whether we should go back to the old primitive order of things," added mrs. miller, "she would be one of the most strenuous defenders of the extra space and improved service which we now enjoy. she can't keep her eyes off that portrait of her husband. look at her now." the stricture, so far as it related to mrs. cunningham's change of front regarding the alterations, was just. yet her frank acceptance and enjoyment of the more decorative rooms and ampler creature-comforts, even though they wore a radiance reflected from her husband's full-length figure, revealed a broad and accommodating mind. there are some persons who will continue to glorify the superseded past even in the face of a manifestly more charming present. these are the real old fogies, and there is no help for us, or them, but to ignore them. but mrs. cunningham was of the sort which, though conservative, is ready to be convinced even against its will; and, having been convinced, she was able to draw her husband after her. a week's occupation of the new quarters having made clear to her that, though more luxurious, they were vastly more convenient, she had sighed and given in. now there were no two more resolute defenders of the results of the radical policy than she and andrew. nevertheless she drew the line there, and still, suspicious of what others defined as the march of progress, she was prepared like a faithful sentinel to challenge developments which aroused her distrust. because the new club-house was a success, and the inroad of multi-millionnaires had not been so subversive of the best interests of the colony as she had feared, there was no occasion to relax her vigilance. thus she argued, and hence her genuine and somewhat foreboding solicitude as to lydia's behavior. but though harry spencer continued to dog the footsteps of mrs. maxwell, so that he appeared in her society on all occasions, and people wondered more and more how the husband could permit this triangular household to continue without open demur, there were no new developments during the late autumn and winter. rumors of every description were rife, but no one of the three interested parties deigned to provide a solution of the enigma. maxwell's demeanor on the surface was so far unruffled that certain observers continued to maintain that his wife's state of mind was entirely platonic; in other words, that he trusted lydia, and, though he might have preferred more of her society, was willing she should amuse herself in her own way--which was not apt to be the conventional way. and if he did not object, why should anyone else, especially as the maxwells were now in their town house and local censorship by westfield was suspended? but the majority shook their heads, and repeated that though maxwell held his peace, he was out of sorts and still drinking more than his wont. then, just as the community was getting a little weary of the whole subject because nothing did happen, the breaking out of the war with spain drove it out of everyone's mind. for the westfield hunt club was up in arms at the first suggestion of powder. all the small talk that spring bore on the matter of enlisting, or on the men who had enlisted. everyone wished to be a rough rider, and if a commission in that favorite corps had been the certain prerogative of an offer of service, all the able-bodied bachelors in the colony would have enrolled themselves. as it was, there were numerous applicants for this particular aggregation of fighters, but only kenneth post, the master of the hounds, succeeded in joining it. half a dozen obtained billets elsewhere: guy perry on one of the war vessels despatched to cuban waters, young joe marbury in another of the volunteer regiments, and dick weston, pretty mrs. baxter's brother, on one of the yachts converted into a coast guard for the protection of our atlantic cities against bombardment by the battle-ships of spain. harry spencer was also one of the half dozen. when he promptly proffered his services to the government, it was somehow taken for granted that he would get a good post; and presently he justified his reputation by receiving an invitation to join the staff of a brigade on the eve of embarking for cuba. no one at westfield impugned his courage or questioned his patriotism, but some of the women in discussing the matter later agreed that he had to go. mrs. cole put it in a nutshell when she said: "if by any chance lydia cares for him, she would never have spoken to him again had he remained at home." but there were cases, too, of disappointment. andrew cunningham, who, in spite of conjugal bonds, was eager to go to the front, was rejected on account of his age and weight, much to his chagrin and to the secret satisfaction of his better-half. douglas hale was discarded on the plea of color-blindness, though, as he pathetically informed his acquaintance, the doctor who examined him declared that he had never seen a finer physical specimen in other respects. hence it will be perceived that there was a nucleus left for the maintenance of a steady fire of conversation at the club-house for the benefit of the stay-at-homes. at first, in keeping with the course of events, it centred on the possibilities of the destruction of new york, boston, or portland by the enemy's fleet; and after that bogy was laid, and the phantom fleet located, it reverted to that ever-fresh topic for controversy, the cause of the blowing up of the maine. then it turned to manila, and when the events of that splendid victory had been threshed threadbare, scented trouble with germany. the victory at santiago set every tongue a-wagging and raised enthusiasm to fever pitch; but presently the struggles of our poorly rationed troops prompted an inquiry into the merits of general shafter as a commander, and one heard the hum of speculation as to what would have happened if cervera had not come out when he did. some of the members showed themselves positive arsenals of statistics and secret information from the scene of action. instead of dwelling on his misfortunes at golf, douglas hale's shibboleth all summer was the letter which he carried in his pocket from guy perry, who had the good fortune to be in the van of the battle of santiago. this he read to every man or woman of his acquaintance who would let him, and cherished as an historical document which put him in close touch with the authorities at washington. andrew cunningham tried to make the best of his disappointment by showing himself an audible authority on the size and equipment, identity and immediate location of every battle-ship, cruiser, and torpedo-boat in the navy, and as to our future needs to fit us to cope with the naval armaments of the other great powers of the world. as to the women, they were utterly absorbed in making bandages and comfort bags. such were the diversions of the spring and early summer. by august the heroes returned from the front and began to reappear on their native heath. other sporting garb gave place to regimental attire, and, to be in fashion, both men and women wore army slouch hats and suits akin to khaki. one of the first of the westfield colony to reach home was guy perry, looking brown as an indian from his long exposure to the sun outside the harbor at santiago. on the day after his return his engagement to miss peggy blake was formally announced, much to the delight of everybody, but to no one's surprise--a fact which slightly dismayed the radiant couple, who were apparently under the delusion that their tryst had been kept a profound secret. they were certainly an attractive-looking pair as they dashed about the country on guy's dog-cart, proclaiming their good fortune to the world. peggy's rough rider hat, perched on the back of her head, suited her style of beauty; and as they bubbled over with health and happiness, more than one camera fiend took a shot at them as a charming epitome of the strenuous life. on the other hand, kenneth post returned on a litter, almost a skeleton from fever; and gerald marcy, who against his own doctor's advice had finally succeeded in getting stalled in camp in florida, was limping with rheumatism. nevertheless, he was able to be about, and, though on ordinary occasions a socially tactful spirit, he did not attempt to conceal his pride at being the only one of the middle-aged men who had succeeded in dodging the authorities and serving his country. but the hero who brought back the stateliest palm of glory from cuba was harry spencer, for he had his arm in a sling from a flesh wound caused by a spanish bullet at san juan hill, and had been subsequently in the hospital, threatened with blood poisoning. he was emaciated and interesting-looking, so mrs. cole, who had a glimpse of him, declared, and he went straight to the small cottage at westfield where he had spent the previous summer. two days subsequent to his return the spirit moved mrs. cole to call on lydia, and on the afternoon of the day she paid this visit it was noticed that she sat pensive and silent while the other women at the club were drinking tea. it was mrs. barker who called attention to the circumstance by asking: "what are you incubating on, fannie?" mrs. cole hesitated for a moment, then she said tragically, "i am afraid she cares for him." no one had to ask who was meant. "what did i tell you?" exclaimed mrs. cunningham. "what makes you think so?" asked the practical miss marbury. fannie cole shook her head. "not from anything she said. she didn't mention the subject. it was from what she didn't say. she made me think of a pent-up volcano." proceeding from the intimate source it did, this testimony, though metaphorical, was felt to be most interesting. "and if the volcano bursts, what will become of poor herbert?" murmured mrs. baxter. "that's it, of course. yet it isn't the only thing," responded mrs. cole. "what will become of lydia? what will become of all three of them?" the sociological vista which opened before her was evidently so appalling that she leaned back limply in the straw chair on which she was sitting. but the attitude was productive of philosophy, for she suddenly said with the air of one rhapsodizing, but who nevertheless utters an indictment against providence: "if the divinity which shapes our ends really intended lydia to be happy, why was harry spencer allowed to return when he did?" warming to the vividness of her imagination, she continued briskly, "the ideal course of events would have been this: first, the baby should never have been born; secondly, herbert maxwell should have felt an uncontrollable patriotic call to go to the war; he should have fought with distinguished valor and brilliancy--sufficient to inscribe his name on the pages of history--and he should have been shot dead. that would have satisfied him. then would have been the time for harry spencer to come home. with him and herbert's fortune lydia might have been radiantly happy. as it is--" mrs. cole paused, palsied by the perplexities of reality, and unwilling to venture on prophecy. but mrs. baxter saw fit to finish the sentence for her by a not altogether logical utterance: "as it is, it was mr. spencer who went to the war and has come back alive and a hero. if lydia liked him before, it is of course all the harder for her not to like him now." mrs. cunningham uttered a sort of groan. then she said emphatically, "there can be but one end to it, in my opinion. sooner or later she will leave her husband and run away with him." there was a general nodding of heads--all but mrs. cole's. "and what will they do with that poor baby?" interjected miss marbury. fannie cole sat up by way of protest. "my dears," she said with gasping alertness, "that would be comparatively normal, and it cannot be the correct solution. don't you see it's impossible? neither of them has any money. if she would, he wouldn't, and neither of them would." she looked around the circle with a smile of triumph, knowing that her stricture was unanswerable. "i never thought of that," said mrs. baxter, voicing the general perplexity. vi late one afternoon, about a month after, lydia maxwell was sitting in her drawing-room at westfield. an exquisite tea service stood on a table close at hand. but tea had been served. at least the visitor who had been spending the afternoon with her had drunk his and had been gone about ten minutes. her baby, left by the nurse on the way to her own evening meal, was cooing on the sofa at her side, fended by pillows from toppling over on its head, and provided with the latest novelties in costly toys. the child was now nearly two, and her wardrobe was a credit to her mother's decorative instincts. lydia enjoyed the combination of the infant and herself and spared no pains to produce an effective picture on all occasions, whether the setting were the drawing-room, a victoria, or a village cart. she counted on mounting guendolen at the earliest possible day on the tiniest of ponies as a picturesque hunting attendant. nor had her husband failed to appreciate what an opportunity was here afforded for the artist. six months earlier he had threatened--the phrase was lydia's--to have her and baby done by sargent on his next visit; in fact, herbert had written to him. the offer had been tempting from the point of view of immortality, but left alone with the child, she had shaken her head and said: "it would be lovely if it were just right, guen, but he might take it into his head to form a vicious conception of mamma. and as for you, he couldn't help making you the speaking image of grandma maxwell. living pictures are safest for us, dear, for we can control the canvas." now she sat pensive and tense, her hands clasped in her lap. "why do i love him so?" she murmured under her breath, rebelling against the consciousness which gripped her. yet in another moment she asserted with the abandonment of one defending his faith against all comers, "but how i do love him!" a jocund, inarticulate effort at conversation by the child reminded her of its presence. reaching out her hand, she felt the silky softness of the delicate infantile locks, and then the dainty texture of the frilled dress. again she said, talking to herself: "the problem is, what will become of you, cherub? you must go with me, of course--if i go." her baby cooed by way of response. there was a noise in the hall as of someone arriving. "a visitor for you, guen," she said. hurriedly leaning over, she raised her finger as one would to hold the attention of a dancing dog, and gave this cue for imitation. "say pa-a-pa--pa-a-pa." the earlier lessons had been fairly learned, for after a brief struggle the dawning intelligence freed itself in an unequivocal if throaty reproduction of the pious salutation. "you little pet! now again." "pa-a-pa." "at last. a sop to cerberus," lydia murmured. the door opened and the master of the house entered. he had just come back from an afternoon ride, and in the few minutes which had elapsed since his return lydia knew that he had been to the sideboard in the dining-room--a man's way of alleviating despondency. his glance, avoiding or ignoring his wife, sought eagerly the object which he expected to find--his infant daughter. this was the bright spot in his day. the baby acknowledged his advent by a crow and by shaking a solid silver rattle. maxwell, walking across to the other side of the room, sat down and held out his arms invitingly. but lydia intervened to defer the customary toddling journey in order to exhibit her pupil's latest accomplishment. "listen to her now, herbert," she said, and gave the necessary signal. "pa-a-pa." the verisimilitude was undeniable. something very like a groan escaped maxwell, though his countenance lighted up. was he thinking how happy he might have been had fate so willed? the performance was repeated successfully a second time; then the child was despatched on her travels across the carpet. when she ran staggering into her father's arms he folded her to his breast and pressed his lips against the fair, silky tresses. she was accustomed to be thus cuddled by him, though to-night there was an added fervor in his endearments, owing to her efforts at speech. meanwhile lydia from her angle of the sofa observed them in demure silence. she had given him an entrancing quarter of an hour, for which she was thankful. besides, it might put off the evil day--the day of rupture, decision, breaking up of the present anomalous domestic relations--which was impending. he had been devoted, forbearing, unselfish, he had lavished on her every luxury, but he was impassible. he did not divert or interest her; his serious side lacked originality; his gayer moods were noisy and deficient in subtlety; the reddish inelegance of his physique repelled her. but what was to be the end? this was the riddle which for diverse reasons she had yet failed to solve. its solution must depend on the future words of both of them, and she had had no final explanation with either. for the present she would fain have things remain as they were, until she could find the key. the return of the nurse interrupted maxwell's happiness. grudgingly he gave up his treasure. as soon as the child had been carried off, he rose, and standing with his back to the blaze of the wood-fire, which the first sharpness of autumn made agreeable, he faced his wife. "i met spencer coming from here." "he stayed to tea." "and was here all the afternoon?" "you know he comes every afternoon." "and nearly every morning?" "yes." "what is to be the end of this, lydia?" she was preparing his tea, which he was accustomed to take after the departure of guendolen. "how do you wish to have it end?" she asked presently. "i would have you promise me never to see him again, and to go abroad with me for two years. let us change the scene entirely. you owe it to me, lydia, and to our child." this was no new discussion, but he was making one last determined effort to counteract the influences working against him. "but you know i love him." "so you have informed me. you have informed me also that it has stopped there." "it is true. why, i scarcely know. perhaps it would have been juster to you if i had left you and gone to him." "i do not understand." "no matter, then." "but you loved me once," he exclaimed resolutely. "that is, you told me so." "yes, i told you so. and i did love you as i understood loving then. i liked you, that's what it really was, and i liked the things which a marriage with you brought me." "you mean you married me for my money?" "i did not know it at the time." "what do you mean, then?" lydia clasped her hands behind her head and leaned back in her seat. "i am trying to be frank with you," she said. "i am trying to make you the only reparation in my power--to let you see me just as i am, just as i see myself. we are what we are. i discovered that long ago." he caught up this appeal to fatalism with a quicker appreciation of her significance than he was wont to show. "you need never see this man again unless you choose. you are my wife; i am your husband. does that stand for nothing?" "i should choose to see him," she answered with low precision, ignoring the rest. "there is the trouble." he winced as though from a buffet. "good god, lydia, what have i done? is there anything within my power which you desired which i haven't given you?" "you have been very generous." "generous!" the word evidently galled him. "do you realize that to regain your love i would gladly sacrifice every dollar of the five million i own?" for a moment she made no response. the idea of living with a penniless maxwell was one which she had never entertained, and it made clearer to her the hopelessness of her plight. "i am not worth it, herbert," she said gently. he, too, paused, baffled and at a loss how to proceed. "you are so cold," he asserted with an access of indignation. "cold?" the quality of the interrogation expressed the incredulity of newly discovered self-knowledge. "to me." "yes, to you, herbert." he bent his brow upon her. "i suppose if i had devoted myself to some other woman i might not have lost you. i had hints enough from our kind friends, which i ignored because i did not choose to soil our wedlock by such a foul pretense." his conclusion betrayed the loyalty of his emotions, but there was the sneer of gathering temper in his tone. lydia shook her head with a fastidious smile. "with some women that might have been the remedy. it could have made no difference with me." "it is not too late yet," he cried with loud-mouthed menace. "you forget that i am human--that i am a man." she raised the pages of a book beside her and let them fall gradually. "you must do as you choose about that." "then what is the remedy?" he shouted. "i used an inappropriate word. there is no remedy in our case." "lydia, you are goading me to ruin." striding up and down the room, he struck his leather breeches smartly with his riding-crop--which he had brought from the hall because the baby liked to play with it--so that they resounded. he halted before his wife and exclaimed hoarsely: "what are we to do, then?" she had been warned by feminine innuendoes before marriage of the maxwell vehemence below the surface, and she perceived that their affairs had reached a crisis. "sit down, herbert, please. i cannot bear noise. if we are to arrange matters, we must talk quietly in order to decide what is really best under all the circumstances." he gave an impatient twist to his head. "i wish you to know that i am master here after this," he announced. nevertheless, he walked to the chair near the fireplace, which he had first occupied, and sitting down, folded his arms. "well, what have you to say?" "to begin with, herbert, there is no escape for either of us from this calamity. and you must not suppose that i do not realize how dreadful it is for us both. so far as there is fault, it is mine. i ought never to have married you. but the past is the past; i do not love you now; i can never love you again." "one way out of it," he said between his teeth, "would be to kill the man you do love." "how would that avail?" "i have thought more than once of shooting him down like a dog," he blurted. lydia shook her head. "you never could do that when it came to the point. and in case of a duel, he is more handy than you. besides, who fights duels nowadays? and think of the newspapers! you know as well as i that such a thing is out of the question--on guen's account if for no other reason. it would be blazoned all over the country." "on guen's account! why did you not think of her before you sacrificed us both?" she looked back at him unruffled. "i am thinking of her now," she replied with her finished modulation. "i have told you i am what i am." "do not repeat that shallow sophistry," he exclaimed fiercely. "you are what you choose to be." but in the same breath he fell back in his seat with the air of one confounded. then, resting his elbow on the arm of the chair and his cheek on his hand, he gazed at her from under his reddish, beetling brows as one might gaze at the sphinx. "what, then, do you suggest?" he asked wearily. lydia had shrugged her shoulders at his last stricture. now raising again the cover of the book beside her and letting the leaves slip through her fingers, she replied slowly, "i suppose if you were a foreign husband you would accept the inevitable and console yourself as best you could. we should go our respective ways and ask no questions. i should be discreet and--and things would remain as they are so far as guen is concerned." "i see. but i am an american husband, and, though they have the reputation of being the most accommodating in the world, they draw the line at such an arrangement as you suggest." "i thought very likely that you would. then we must separate. sooner or later, i suppose, you will be entitled to a divorce, if you wish it." there was a pause. "where will you go?" he asked in a hollow tone. "i have not thought," she answered. it was the truth. clever and discerning as she was, she had put off the inevitable from day to day, basking in the glamour of the present. what would her lover say? would he be ready to venture all for her sake? to throw convention to the winds and glory in their passion? she did not know; she had never asked him. they had never discussed the future. she needed time--time to think and time to ascertain. then a sudden thought seized her, and she spoke: "i shall take guen." "guen?" there were agony and revolting consternation in his exclamation. "i am her mother. she is a mere baby. am i not her natural guardian?" he sprang to his feet. "i should not permit it!" he thundered. "i should go to law; i should appeal to the courts." [illustration: "i should not permit it!" he thundered. "i should go to law; i should appeal to the courts."] her wits showed themselves her allies. "but if you drive me from this house, the courts will give her to me," she said triumphantly. "what, after all, have i done? you are jealous, and you dismiss me. they will let me have my baby." the horror inspired by her cool, confident declaration choked his utterance. he raised his riding crop in his clenched fist as though he were impelled to strike her. "you--you--" he articulated, but no suitable stigma was evolved by his seething brain. his arm fell, but he stood with set teeth and bristling mien, like a wild boar at bay. his fury had the effect of enhancing lydia's appearance of calm. "there is no use in getting excited. i'm only telling you what is likely to happen if we have recourse to desperate measures. she's a girl, and i brought her into the world--had all the stress of doing so. why shouldn't i have her? i've heard lawyers say that when parents separate the courts consider what is for the best good of the children. surely it is for the best good of a baby girl of two that she should go with her mother. that's the modern social view, herbert, and a man has to make the best of it." as she proceeded lydia had warmed to the plausible justice of her argument. recognizing that she had put herself in the best possible position for the time being, she rose to go. maxwell, gnawing at his lips, stood pondering her dire words. the appalling intimation that he might lose his precious child had numbed his senses with dread. he knew his wife's cleverness, and that there must be some truth in her statement. might she not even at the moment be premeditating an attempt to carry her away? every other thought became at once subordinate to his resolve to safeguard his treasure. as though he suspected that his wife had risen under a crafty impulse to get the start of him, he blocked her pathway by stepping between her and the door. "i forbid you to touch her," he said frowningly. "she shall never leave this house. i am going to give my orders now and they will be obeyed." maxwell stood for a moment as though waiting to see what response this challenge would elicit, then, with a forbidding nod, he strode from the room and shut the door after him. his departure was a relief to lydia. all she had desired was to be alone. she dropped again upon the sofa and sat looking into space. there was only one course: she must have an understanding with harry spencer. what would he say? what was he prepared to do for her sake? she thought to herself, "he said once that my time would come. it has come, and, as he prophesied, i am just like the others--only more so. more so because they might be ready to give him up; they might not have the courage to persevere and sacrifice everything else for the one thing which is worth while--love. and i thought it would never come--that i was cold, as herbert says, and likely to be bored all my life. now, against my creed, against my will it has come, and i cannot do without him." for a moment she sat in reverie, then murmuring, "i must know--and the sooner the better," she stepped to the desk with an impulsive movement and wrote. vii lydia's note was a summons to spencer to go to drive with her on the following morning. when he arrived she was ready with her village cart and a fast cob. regardless of appearances, her project was to seek some distant spot where they would not be interrupted. the woods near duck pond--in which they had passed pleasant hours together twice already--commended themselves to her, and thither she directed their course under the mellow october sunshine. she spoke of their jaunt as a picnic, the edible manifestations of which she disclosed to him stowed in neat packages behind. but she vouchsafed no immediate explanation of the true purpose of this impromptu expedition. she was biding her time until they should walk together in the sylvan paths, free from all danger of interference. since matters were approaching a climax, she was glad also to give herself up for the moment to the glamour of sitting at his side and realizing their affinity. of all the men of her acquaintance he was the only one who had never bored her; who seemed to divine and cater to her moods; who amused her when she craved entertainment, and was alive to the precious value of opportune silence. he seemed to her possessed of infinite tact--and lydia experienced an increasing repugnance when her social sensibilities were jarred. that had been one great trouble with maxwell; he was forever doing the right thing in the wrong way. his very endearments were awkward, whereas her present companion's slightest gallantry gave a pleasant fillip to her blood. spencer, on his part, was quite content to ask no questions. he was with the woman who exercised a subtler and more permanent fascination over him than anyone he had hitherto met, not excepting miss wilford, and this drive was only cumulative proof of favor on her part, one more sign that their relations were approaching a crisis. what the precise and ultimate result of their growing intimacy was to be he had not felt the need to consider. for the moment it sufficed to know that, though both her partiality for him and his influence over her were unmistakable, she had up to this point kept him at bay--eluded him when she seemed on the point of throwing herself into his arms. this skilful restraint on her part had served to heighten the interest of his pursuit, and also to deepen the ardor of his attachment. before they had gone beyond the limits of westfield several of their mutual acquaintance were encountered, all of whom were too well-bred to betray the vivid interest which the meeting aroused. mrs. cole, on her way to play golf at the club, nodded to them blithely from her phaeton, as though it were the most natural thing in the world they should be together, and so concealed from them her dire suspicions which were thus afforded fresh material to batten on. gerald marcy, sportsman-like and dignified on his grizzled hunter, saluted them with the off-hand decorum of a man of the world. "glorious weather for man and beast," he asserted, as much as to say that he knew how to mind his own business. when they had passed him, however, he tugged nervously at his mustache and wagged his head like a soothsayer. the newly engaged couple, sitting side by side in a village cart of similar pattern to theirs, managed to conceal that they did not know which way to look, and sustained the ordeal creditably, though the girl was conscious that her cheeks were flushing. as they left the culprits behind, peggy clutched her lover's arm and whispered hoarsely, "did you see that?" "it's too bad," said guy, who, being neither blind nor imbecile, had not failed to take in the full import of the situation. "i for one am all in the dark as to how this thing is going to end." "i knew they would be great friends, but i never supposed for a minute that it would come to anything like this," mused the maiden sadly. "even when she chaperoned us that night i took for granted it was nothing really serious." mrs. gordon wallace, who, being a new-comer from the west, was less of an adept, perhaps, in disguising her real feelings, put up her eye-glass a little feverishly as she bowed. whereupon it pleased lydia to whisk her head round a moment later. "she was staring after us with all her eyes!" she exclaimed. "i knew she would; she couldn't resist the temptation. she will report that i have a guilty conscience, whereas i was merely studying human nature in violation of my own social instincts." "what did she see, after all?" queried spencer, supposing that his companion stood in need of a little soothing. "everyone is talking about us, as you know," lydia answered, ignoring the query. "we have been for months the burning topic at westfield, and the fame of our misdeeds has spread abroad. everything considered, people have been wonderfully forbearing to our faces--perfect moles, in fact--but behind our backs they are chattering like magpies. fannie cole intimated as much, though i had guessed it." "why need we care what they say?" he asked sedulously. what better opportunity would he have than this for feeling his way? "we know that there have been no misdeeds." she touched the horse with the tip of her whip, and he bounded forward. "is it not the prince of misdeeds that we love one another?" she said after a moment. "we cannot help that." "but since it is true, what are we going to do about it, my friend?" "do? lydia," he whispered eagerly and bent his cheek toward hers, "it is for you to say." she recoiled chastely from his endearment, though she thrilled at the proximity. "is it? i am not sure. i asked you to come with me this morning in order to find out. it appears that we have reached the parting of the ways." "the parting?" he queried apprehensively. "not for us, unless we choose." "ah." it was the sigh of an ardent lover. "wait. i will tell you by and by when we can talk it out freely." she turned and smiled on him with an effulgent grace such as she had never in her life lavished on maxwell. therein she threw wide open for a moment the casement of her soul and let him perceive the completeness of the havoc he had wrought. "you angel!" he answered, breathing softly, and he pressed her hand. he divined that her dainty spirit was in the mood when all it asked of him was his presence, and that speech would be a discord. they were passing now beyond the confines of westfield and the influence of its colony into a more distinctly rural country--stretches of wilder uplands, now pastures, now woods, alternating with small farm buildings around which the fields lay stubbly with the party-colored remains of the harvest, and redolent of autumn odors. presently they reached a village with a shady main street and old-fashioned white-faced houses, most of the treasures of which, quaint andirons and other picturesque relics of a simpler past, had been sent to market owing to the lure of fancy prices. then more fields, and at length they branched off from the main road along a winding lane, on either side of which the view was partially shut off by clusters of bushes gay with the colors of the changing season. the perfume of the wild flowers was in the air, and everywhere the blazon of the golden-rod was visible. they had exchanged an occasional word of comment on the sights and sounds of the varying landscape, yet wholly impersonal. now once more she turned toward him with the same lustrous smile, and said, like one exalted: "love and the world are mine to-day." thrilled by this confession of faith, he looked into her eyes ardently, and encircling her waist sought to draw her toward him. "and they will be mine when you are mine. you must be mine; you shall be mine." she freed herself from his grasp. "patience, my friend." her voice had the tantalizing exultation of an elusive fay. "what should i gain by that? would you love me any more than you do now?" "yes, yes indeed," he answered, disregarding logic. "i doubt it much," she asserted archly. "but wait." on they went, and finally the bushes along the winding lane became trees and the sky above their heads was obscured by patches of foliage. they were in an expanse of woods which, in spite of the proximity of civilization, still smacked of luxuriant and elfish nature. the road, though yet wide enough for a vehicle, wound gracefully between oaks and pines stately with age. some reverent hand had protected them. their trunks were scarred with weird growths, and on the carpet of the soil big fungi flourished unmolested. it was a wild region to the imaginative and uninitiated, yet there were evidences now and again of the nearness of man and his devices, such as an occasional sign-post or rustic seat. after half a mile of travel over a soft brown carpet sprinkled with fragrant pine needles they brought up at their destination, a sort of sylvan camp--a picnic-ground in reality, a favorite resort of the masses in midsummer. now it was deserted for the season. bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang, though the simile was applicable to the dismantled wooden buildings rather than to the face of nature. the band-stand and eating pavilion stood like starving ghosts amid the forest mysteries. but there was a hitching-post at hand. lydia knew her locality, and after the willing cob had been secured and blanketed, she led the way down a short vista to an arbor or summer house, to which clustering vines still imparted some semblance of vernal cosiness. the view from it commanded through a narrow clearing a picturesque outlook on the glistening waters of duck pond, while the crackling underbrush furnished a cordon of alert sentinels. on the rustic bench, where many inelegant predecessors had carved their initials, there was ample room for two. nor was it the first time this pair had made use of it. settling herself in her corner with folded arms so as to face her companion, lydia broke the silence. "herbert says we cannot go on as we are." "he has intimated as much several times before." "but this time he is in earnest. he has put down his foot. he introduced the subject yesterday after you had gone. i told him again the truth--the truth he already knew--that i love you, and not him, and that i can never love him." she paused. was it to pique his curiosity, or was she feeling her way while she revelled for the moment in her declaration? he accepted her avowal complacently as a twice-told tale, but he was interested obviously in what was to follow. "well?" "he declines absolutely to be accommodating and resign himself to the situation. the customary foreign point of view in such a case does not appeal to him. when it came to the point i never supposed it would." "we were getting along so nicely, too. what brought this on?" spencer remarked parenthetically. the triangular footing had been submitted to by maxwell for so many months without an outbreak that the logic of events seemed to him to demand some special incident as a justification for this sudden revolt. "one can never tell when a volcano will assert itself. he simply exploded, that's all," she answered. "the wonder is that he has put up with it so long." "and what is it that he requires?" "he implored me never to see you again and to go abroad with him for two years. when i declined, he said that he and i must separate." "a divorce?" "we did not discuss precise terms. the idea uppermost in his mind was much less complex than that. he invited me to leave the house." spencer made an ejaculation of astonishment. "at once?" "that was his meaning." "and what did you reply?" under the spur of her disclosure he had risen. resting his arm on one of the spiky knobs of the rustic pillar in front of him, he looked down at her inquiringly. yet his long, athletic, indolent figure still shrank from the conclusion that the status of their affairs had been permanently disturbed. "i managed not to commit myself at the moment." she paused briefly. "i desired to talk with you first, harry. i felt that i must know what you would like me to do." he straightened himself as from surprise. "i could not like you to do that--leave the house." "it would only be possible provided i went to you." for a moment he seemed dumfounded. "from his house to me? but, lydia"--the boldness of the proposition was so staggering to spencer, he felt that he must have misunderstood her, and was groping for her meaning. his consternation was evidently not unexpected, nor did it elicit reproach. "no one would call on me, of course," she said dryly. then she added with cumulating tenseness, as one pleading a cause which she suspects to be hopeless, "it would mean the end of everything else in the world which i care for except one--my love for you. we could leave this place forever, harry, go to australia, the world's end, wherever you will, and be happy." a scampering squirrel with a nut in its mouth hopped into view on the path, scanned them for an instant, then bounded into the underbrush. but only just in time. it seemed to spencer that the little animal was grinning at him, and he had reached for a missile as an outlet for his doubly harassed feelings. "my dear girl, you are crazy." "very likely, harry." "i love you to distraction, god knows, but that sort of thing is out of date. why, lydia, you would be the first to tire of it. happy? we should neither of us be happy, for what would we have to live on?" the final inflection of his voice was veritable triumph, so irrefutable appeared his logic. lydia gave a profound sigh. "i knew you would say that," she answered quickly. "but it was our only chance. suppose i get my divorce and we marry here, what have we to live on? i have three thousand a year of my own. and you?" "not quite so much--assured." "exactly. and there you are!--as henry james's characters are so fond of saying." they gazed at each other mutely. "we should be beggars with our tastes," she resumed. "it would never do, would it, dear? you see, i have considered the subject." "i perceive that you have." the pensiveness of his tone was a virtual admission that he had failed to recognize how subtle she had been. "the other was our only chance," she repeated. "i would have gone with you, probably, if you had consented." "but i do consent, if you wish it," he asserted eagerly; and falling on his knee he reached for her hand and pressed it to his lips. for the first time in his life he had yielded to the intoxication of love against his reason. the charm of this elusive, chameleon-like being had got the better for the moment both of his discretion and his inherent selfishness. though the capitulation entranced lydia, it had come too slowly and too late. she shook her head. "it is you who have convinced _me_. you are perfectly right. i should tire without things--of living on next to nothing. it would be impossible. you knew me better than i did myself." she freed her hand gently from his blandishments and smiled in his face. he rose and looked down at her again from the rustic pillar. "we might manage somehow. i should be ready to try." he was nerved for the sacrifice. "on six thousand? oh, no, you wouldn't. at any rate, i should not." it was futile to pretend that it would be adequate. "we might live abroad. things are cheaper there," he suggested. "but i don't wish to live abroad. i wish to remain here, and i could not hold up my head on much less than i have now, for, under the circumstances, no one would call on us if we were poor." he showed that he saw the point, but it suited her to enlarge upon it. "if one has millions and good manners one can do anything in america; everything else is forgiven. but i would never put myself in the position where i might be snubbed or pitied. that's why i must be rich. and as for you, harry," she continued, "unless you had a stable, steam yacht, and at least two establishments, you would feel, after you had cooled off, that you had thrown yourself away, and, consequently, we should both be miserable." he laughed a little sceptically, but he did not deny the impeachment. "what a clever woman you are, lydia! that's one reason i love you so. the thing to do," he said in his caressing voice, "is to prevent matters from reaching the desperate stage. you must patch it up somehow with maxwell, and--and we shall find ways to see each other," he added meaningly. she appeared not to hear his suggestion. "one million is the very least that you and i could marry on--and be perfectly happy. and, if we had it, we might be very happy." her sigh of regret encouraged his alert warmth. he leaned toward her and whispered, "let us, then, be happy in the only way which is possible." she raised a warning hand. it was clear that she had understood his previous innuendo. "to be happy under the rose is respectable abroad, but here it may mean social ostracism," she replied demurely. "i tell you that herbert is dreadfully in earnest. besides," she added after one of her deliberate pauses, "do you not love me? that is what i crave. that is the essential thing for me." "you are mocking me," he said with choler. "no; only showing myself conservative and sensible like yourself. neither of us can afford to sacrifice everything, yet it would be infinitely preferable to live together. you must find our million." spencer shrugged his shoulders. "where? in the stock-market? one plunge, and drink wormwood if i lost? i will make you listen to me yet," he said with the rising energy of one who feels himself at bay. his eyes gleamed ardently, and the lines of his dark countenance, little accustomed to brook opposition, grew rigid as they did in the moments when he concentrated all his nerves on accomplishment. the charm of his mastering mood was not lost on lydia, but its effect was to fix her wits still more closely on the problem of their future. where was the necessary escape or remedy to be found? she lifted her eyes to meet her lover's gaze, but they stared beyond him into the realm of speculation. suddenly she started as one who sees a spectre--something weird and forbidden. yet her stricken vision seemed to gather fascination from a longer look, and she moved her lips as though she were bandying words with doubts which fell like nine-pins before her intelligence. then, with a transport which revealed that she had taken the intruder, however terrible, to her breast as the bringer of a dispensation, she exclaimed: "harry, i have found a way." "a way?" he ejaculated, for to him there now seemed only one course open consistent with their necessities, and he feared some radical proposal as the outcome of her trance. "for us to marry. we shall have enough." "where is the gold mine?" he asked indulgently. she looked at him musingly with bright, searching eyes. in that moment she concluded not to reveal her secret. "yes, a gold mine," she answered. "we shall have our million--perhaps two. why not two?" she asked the question of herself, and it was plain that she saw no stable obstacle to her now widening ambition. meanwhile spencer surveyed her with scrutinizing wonder. evidently her transport was genuine. he knew her too well to doubt that there was some basis for her specific statement as to the money. "two would be better than one, lydia. let it be two, by all means," he said jauntily. "it shall be two," she replied with the assurance of a necromancer confident of compelling respect for his magic wand by the performance of the marvels he has foretold. "you may kiss me, harry--once." viii the nuptials between guy perry and miss peggy blake took place the following summer--midway in june, the month of brides. they were married in the little episcopal church at westfield, which since the advent of the colony and of millionnaires had thriven like the traditional bay tree, for most of the sporting element belonged, nominally at least, to that fashionable persuasion. hence the rector, the rev. percy ward, who had assumed this cure of souls with modest expectations regarding numbers and revenues, had been pleasantly astonished by the rapid increase in both. this had not made him proud, but appropriately ambitious. it had allowed him to keep the appearance and properties of the church up to the mark, æsthetically speaking, by vines, flowers and fresh paint, and at the proper moment it had encouraged him to ask for a new house of worship adapted to the needs of his growing congregation. success had crowned his efforts. plans were being drawn for an artistic and sufficiently spacious building to take the place of the rustic quarters in use. but the bride had expressed herself as devoutly thankful that she could be married in the original building, for she had pious associations with it, and its smaller proportions seemed to her more in keeping with a country wedding. for peggy desired that the ceremony should be an out-of-door affair. she had even thought at first of being married under a bell of roses on her father's lawn. yet, when it came to the point she adhered to a ceremony in church. she wished to be wedded to her true love as securely as possible, consequently she invoked for the purpose full religious rites at the altar, but her energies respecting the other features of the occasion were bent on the production of open-air effects. they were to be simple and rurally picturesque. the guests of the happy pair endeavored to comply with the wishes of the bride consistently with regard for their own personal appearance. that is, the women came in light summer attire, but with frocks of fascinating shades, and straw hats of the latest dainty design with gay feathers. the little church was packed to the doors, and on the green fronting the vestibule stood those of the men for whom there was no room inside. the leading members of the hunt were in pink, at peggy's suggestion; among them andrew cunningham with an immaculate stock and a new waistcoat of festal pattern. it was a radiant, rare june day; not a cloud was in the sky. the ceremony went off without a hitch save the momentary hesitation occasioned by the bridegroom's diving into the wrong pocket for the ring. all peggy's family had expressed fears lest her veil should fall off in keeping with her tendencies, so it had been more than securely pinned to forestall such a calamity. she walked, on her father's arm, modestly yet firmly up the aisle as became a strenuous spirit; her responses were agreeably audible; and on her way down, though she obeyed the instructions given her to keep her eyes straight ahead--on the ball, as one of her friends had cautioned her--it was clear from her blissful, confident expression that she found difficulty in not nodding to her friends right and left by way of letting them know how happy she was. she was dressed as nearly like a village maiden as prevailing fashions in wedding garments would allow, and the simplicity of her garb set off her fine physique and hue of health, which not even the conventional pallor of brides was able wholly to dispel. four bridesmaids tripped behind her, the picture of dainty shepherdesses. on reaching the portal, however, mrs. peggy was unable to repress her exuberance; and, before jumping into the carriage which was to carry them to the breakfast at "valley farm," her father's residence, she grasped and shook ecstatically a half dozen of the nearest hands. then as the vehicle containing the happy pair rolled away, while the bride threw a kiss to the group of friends at the door, the swell of a horn rose melodiously above other sounds, and along the meadow flanking one side of the foreground the pack of hounds belonging to the westfield hunt came into view headed by the master, and every hound wore a wedding favor. this feature had been devised as a surprise to the couple and a tribute to their devotion to equestrian sport. besides, it had a special touch of interest for the women in that everyone knew that kenneth post, the master, would fain have been in the shoes of the fortunate bridegroom. yet he played his part with so much dignity and spirit, as he led the way toward their destination, that the contagion of his demeanor spread to the entire retinue of guests which followed in their various equipages and the omnibuses or so-called "barges" provided, and the procession swept along on the wings of gayety. in the midst of the confusion of getting away, the pole of pretty mrs. baxter's village cart was broken through collision with the champing steeds bearing the phaeton containing mr. and mrs. gordon wallace. among the many proffers of succor the first and most acceptable emanated from mrs. walter cole, who had obviously a spare seat in her neat oak station wagon. the fact was that mrs. cole's husband, having been detained in town by pressing business, had telephoned his wife at the last moment to go without him to the ceremony, and that he would follow by the next train. consequently she had arrived only barely in time to get a seat, and that by dint of crowding the pew a little. she had sat there as in a trance, unable to fasten her attention on the charming spectacle as fixedly as it deserved. her mind kept wandering elsewhere; reverting to certain amazing news of which she had become possessed only the afternoon before, and which she had had no opportunity to impart to the many who would be thrilled by it. she was revelling in the thought of the sensation it would produce, and her own intelligence was agreeably busy with the clever novelty of the procedure and with trying to decide whether, in spite of the heartlessness displayed, the solution devised was not perhaps the best under the peculiar circumstances. she had felt that she should burst if she could not tell some kindred soul soon; but such an astounding piece of information was not to be wasted on people whose faculties were already fully occupied; it merited a single mind. therefore the moment she became aware of mrs. baxter's mishap, she exclaimed with almost hysterical eagerness: "rachel, there's a seat for you here. do come with me; i'm all alone." when the invitation was accepted, mrs. cole pressed her hand and leaned back with a happy mien. there was no use in speaking until they were free from the concourse and were sweeping along the road toward "valley farm." that auspicious moment having arrived, she turned to her friend and said: "well, dear, the mystery is solved." "about lydia?" asked mrs. baxter with breathless animation. "yes. she sent for me as soon as she returned. i went to town to see her yesterday." "where has she been all this time?" "nominally, as we were told, travelling in mexico for two months with her cousins; in reality coming to terms with maxwell in regard to a divorce." "then they are really to be divorced? how pitiful! but i suppose it was the only solution. do go on, dear," she added, fearing lest this crude philosophic digression might be the reason for the pause on mrs. cole's part. but the narrator, though she regarded the comment as superficial, was merely arranging her material with a view to dramatic effect. "we had a heart-to-heart talk. she told me everything. she wishes people to know--and to try to understand her point of view. yes, rachel, they are to be divorced. the papers are already filed. the lawyers say that it is simple enough, if both the parties are agreed, and it seems they are--all three of the parties rather. the court proceedings will be as secret as possible. herbert is to let her obtain it from him--for cruel and abusive treatment or gross and confirmed habits of intoxication--to save lydia's reputation on the child's account. then lydia is to marry harry spencer and live happily ever after--if she can." "she never would have been happy with maxwell," remarked mrs. baxter pensively. "poor fellow! when one reflects that he probably was never cruel or abused her in his life, and that his confirmed habits, if he has them, are due to her neglect! what is to become of him?" mrs. cole had been waiting for some such question. "the law is queer, you know," she said, by way of disposing of the rest of the plaint. then she added, with significant emphasis, "he is to have guen." "altogether?" "altogether. that is the way lydia got him to consent to a divorce." not being so clever as some women, mrs. baxter looked puzzled. "i don't think i quite understand." mrs. cole, who was enjoying thoroughly the gradual climax, sat upright, and facing her companion laid her hand on mrs. baxter's arm. "rachel," she said, "lydia has sold guendolen to her husband for two million dollars!" mrs. baxter gave a gasp and a smothered shriek. "two million dollars! the poor, dear child!" the two ejaculations were not entirely consistent, for they revealed a divided interest. mrs. cole proceeded to face the second first. "i've thought it all over and over,--i did not sleep until four, i was so excited--and there can't be any doubt that, under the circumstances, it's the best thing for the child. her father dotes on her, and lydia never has been able to forget that she is the living image of his mother. it was probably a struggle--she intimated as much--for it sounds so revolting, and a woman is supposed to be a lioness where her own flesh and blood are concerned. but when it came to a choice between guen and harry spencer, she chose the one she cared for most." "and she really gets two millions? why, she will be as rich as before." "exactly. that's one of the interesting phases of the case. you see, they couldn't afford to marry, for neither of them had any money to speak of, though they were dead in love with each other. on the other hand, they had never done anything--so lydia swears, and i believe her--which would entitle herbert maxwell to a divorce; so when herbert invited her to leave the house, she replied that she would, and that she would take guendolen with her. it just happened to occur to her, but the effect was marvellous. it enabled her to hold over herbert's head the menace that, when parents who can't get on agree to separate, the courts are likely to give a baby girl to the mother, and oblige the father to be content with occasional reasonable visits. that frightened herbert nearly to death. it seems he raged like a bull--poor man!--and threatened to shoot anyone who laid a finger on the child. now comes the really clever part," continued mrs. cole, with an appreciative sigh. "lydia had threatened to take guen merely to gain time to think, but when she realized that she and harry spencer could never be happy unless she were willing to lead what the newspapers call a double life, she was at her wits' end. then the idea suddenly occurred to her, and--horrible as it was at the first glance--it seemed the solution of everything. so she engaged a lawyer to open negotiations with her husband, and she went away to mexico to give herbert a chance to think over the proposal. she lived in terror of centipedes while she was gone, but there were lots of interesting old relics there, and one day she got a telegram from her lawyer announcing that the whole thing was settled. the necessary papers have been drawn, and as soon as the divorce is granted she will get the money. what do you think of that? isn't it original and revolting, and yet, seeing that she is lydia, comprehensible? and the most extraordinary thing of all is that, when one considers the matter dispassionately, it is not clear that it isn't the most sensible arrangement all round." rachel baxter, being of a less philosophical turn of mind, was still aghast. "what will people say?" she added naively, as one in monologue. "of course, they have their money." "they have their money, and lydia proposes to come back here as soon as she has--er--changed husbands. that's just like her, too. she intends that westfield shall treat her precisely as though nothing had happened." "really!" mrs. baxter's surprise showed a touch of consternation. "it will be very awkward, won't it? though, after all," she murmured, "it isn't anything criminal, like--" she found difficulty in hitting on an appropriate simile. meanwhile mrs. cole added, dispassionately: "she would have come to-day, but she felt that she might be thought indelicate, considering that it is a wedding, and that her own affairs are still at sixes and sevens so far as appearances go. but she sent her love to peggy." at the moment they were dashing up the driveway of "valley farm." mrs. baxter, who had been nursing her emotions as one whose ethical sensibilities had received a blow in the solar plexus, made this attempt at a summary: "it is diabolical, but interesting. i wonder what people will say." no time was lost by either of them in spreading the abnormal news. but it suited pretty mrs. baxter's temperament better to follow in her companion's wake, supplementing the narrative by ingenuous cooing speeches rather than by an independent excursion. they joined at first the procession of guests making snail-like progress toward the bride and groom, who were holding court in the drawing-room of the decorative modern mansion built for occupation from may to december. as chance would have it, they found themselves next in line behind mrs. andrew cunningham, into whose ear fannie cole, bending forward, whispered simply the fell words: "lydia has sold guendolen to her husband for two million dollars, and is to marry harry spencer on the proceeds as soon as the divorce is granted." the mother of the hunt made no sign for a moment, like one stunned. then, as comprehension of the facts dawned upon her, the blood mounted to her face so that the crab-apples in her cheeks were very much in evidence, and she bounced completely round. "that caps the climax! that is the most up-to-date, highly evolved performance yet. who told you?" the sardonic ire in her voice was formidable. "lydia--yesterday." incredulity snatching at the chance of exaggeration was thus baffled. "it's monstrous! i shall never speak to her again." appalled by the bluntness of the threat, mrs. baxter interposed naively, "but she is going to live here after she is married." "so much the better." whereupon mrs. cunningham turned her back upon them, in search of her husband, to whom she felt the urgent need of imparting the information. mrs. cole nodded her head, as much as to say that she understood the point of view, but her perspicuous philosophy prompted her to take a much broader view of the situation. "it's dreadful, may, of course, and disconcerting to maternal notions," she began; "but--" then realizing that for the moment the indignant censor was otherwise occupied, she decided to reserve her ameliorating comments for a more favorable opportunity than the promiscuous line afforded. after all, the episode was not meat for babes, and undeniably deserved more than flippant treatment. the news thus unbosomed spread like wildfire. after kissing the bride, mrs. cole, during her progress to the piazza and lawn, where many of the guests were beginning to partake of refreshments appropriate to the occasion, had the satisfaction of throwing it like a bombshell into successive groups; while the cunninghams lost no time in revealing what they had heard. wherever it was uttered it took the place of every other topic, so that presently all the adults and many of the minors of the company were feverishly discussing the social drama presented. the course of the wedding breakfast, thus enlivened, proceeded according to programme. it was a felicitous scene, what with the balmy, brilliant day, the brightly dressed assembly, and the picturesque addition of the pack of hounds, which danced attendance at a respectful distance within proper limits previously prepared for them. after everybody had congratulated the happy pair, they showed themselves at an angle of the piazza to cut the wedding-cake which stood festal and massive on an adjacent table. then at the proper moment the bride's health was proposed by gerald marcy with dignity and grace, in pledge of which everybody's glass of champagne was lifted and drained. the bridegroom, goaded into speech, made a few halting remarks expressive of his own happiness and good fortune, ending in a serious tag of chivalrous, if slightly involved, sentiment, which evoked fresh enthusiasm. toasts were drunk to the bridesmaids, the parents of the bride, and the hunt club. in response to the last of these mrs. baxter's brother, dick weston, who possessed a deep-toned voice, started the club-song, the words of which had been composed by andrew cunningham in his salad days under the inspiration of five scotches and soda, and been adopted on the occasion of its first delivery as the property of the colony: across the uplands brown we ride, and our pulses bound with life's ruddy tide, as we follow the hounds o'er the country-side in the brisk october morning. so he sang, and everybody joined in the refrain with genial gusto, not excepting the bride--"miss west wind" still, in spite of her veil and satin attire--who waved her glass and carolled with the rest, until even the hounds seemed to catch the infection and added their notes to the general jubilation. then it transpired that stout miss marbury had found the ring in her piece of wedding-cake. this was the source of some merriment, amid which the bride slipped away to change her dress, and the guests, left to their own devices, returned to their discussion of the half-digested news. gerald marcy, who had heard it, like everybody else, with mingled revolt and bewilderment, passed from his functions as toast-master to what might be called the storm-centre of the animadversion, a small summer-house or arbor on the trellis of which june roses were blowing, and where the andrew cunninghams, mrs. cole, the rev. percy ward, and several others were congregated. he arrived just as the rector was exclaiming, with pained fervor: "we have here the logical fruits of the present-day degenerate readiness to put off one husband or wife in order to marry another. if every clergyman in the land were to bind himself never to perform the marriage service in the case of any recently divorced person, some headway might be made against this social pest--the canker-worm of modern family life." the symbolic allusion to canker-worms caused nimble-minded mrs. cole to glance up involuntarily at the vines to meet some impending danger to her summer finery at the same moment that she replied: "i don't think it would make much difference, if you'll pardon my saying so, mr. ward--with lydia, i mean. she would be content with a justice of the peace if a clergyman were not forthcoming. but," she continued, with increasing volubility, "what, of course, you wish to know is whether there is anything which will keep people of our sort--not the wives of the toiling masses whose husbands beat them and who feel that they ought to be allowed to solace themselves with a second, but the four hundred, so to speak, and their friends--from trifling with the marriage relation. there's only one remedy, in my opinion, though i don't wish to be understood as advocating it in lydia's case, for i'm her closest friend, and she isn't here to defend herself. but if, as appearances indicate, she has overstepped the limit--though you all admit that the situation was a tremendous one--the only thing which would cut her to the quick would be if the people whose friendship she values were to turn the cold shoulder on her. that's the only criticism she would really care for, mr. ward," she concluded alertly, with her head poised on one side. mrs. cole's interest in philosophical discussion was not to be repressed even by her loyalty. "ah!" exclaimed the clergyman approvingly. "the force of public opinion! the church is merely trying to lead public opinion. if public opinion will act of its own accord, so much the better." mr. ward, though faithful to his principles, was not averse to let this section of his flock perceive that he welcomed righteousness from whatever source it proceeded, as became a liberal-minded christian. "what constitutes public opinion in this country?" asked gerald marcy. "one of the evils of universal liberty is that there are no recognized standards of behavior. it is all go-as-you-please." "amen," ejaculated the rector. "consequently," continued gerald, pursuing the thread of his contemplation, "a social boycott, such as mrs. cole suggests, becomes effective only when the particular set to which an offender belongs chooses to take the initiative--which is awkward, for where exactly is one to draw the line?" "i, for one, feel as though i never wished to speak to her again," said mrs. cunningham. "she certainly deserves to be cut," said her husband, doughtily. yet he added, "it would be precious hard to manage, though--not to mention inconvenient--if she comes to live at norrey's knoll and everything is patched up according to law." "there you are, you see!" exclaimed gerald. "i tell you," he said, with a tug at his mustache, "that it's very difficult to cut people whom one has known all one's life, unless they've committed murder or embezzled." "it isn't as though she were a bigamist or living in--in violation of the seventh commandment," remarked mrs. baxter dreamily, remembering just in time to round out her sentence with decorum for the benefit of mr. ward. the rector jumped at the opportunity offered. "isn't that just what she is doing? it is precisely that from the church's point of view." "if the church would only pass a canon forbidding us to call on women who get divorced in order to marry someone else, it would be easier to take such a stand," remarked mrs. cole. "but it isn't the divorce i mind so much. it's her selling guendolen," exclaimed mrs. cunningham, with the honesty of her temperament. "we couldn't ostracize her simply because she has got a divorce and married again, for there are so many others." her tone showed that she realized the impracticability of a social crusade based solely on the existence in the flesh of a previous wife or husband. yet she yearned for action in this particular case. but what could one woman do alone? "on the contrary, it seems to me a grand opportunity, ladies," said the clergyman stoutly. "the conduct of the offending parties in this instance represents individual selfishness and license carried to the culminating point. because you may have neglected to do your duty in respect to the others is no justification for flinching now. it's the whole degraded system, root and branch, which i am fulminating against; but here we have a concrete, monstrous instance which invites action. is ostracism never to be invoked, as mr. marcy intimates, except in the case of the taking of life or where the pocket is affected?" there was a painful silence. for a wedding reception the discussion was becoming decidedly forensic. "we must think it over," said mrs. cunningham. "if none of us women were to invite her to our houses or go to hers--" she paused without completing her sentence, evidently appalled by the vista of social complications which it opened up. "there's nothing else in the wide world which lydia would mind," said mrs. cole ruminantly. "but it would break her heart." "even a stone can break," gerald could not refrain from whispering in the speaker's shell-like ear. "that's not fair. you do not understand her, my friend. she sold guen to make sure of harry spencer." mrs. cole answered in the same undertone, "when he is concerned she is a perfect volcano." "theoretically," continued the grizzled satirist aloud, with a bow of deference in the direction of the clergyman, "i should like, as a censor of modern social degeneracy, to see it tried, but--but practically it seems to me to be out of the question." "one woman alone couldn't do it, anyway," blurted out mrs. cunningham, in the accents of dogged distress. just then the murmurs of a small commotion broke in upon their dialogue, and all eyes were turned in the direction of the front door. "the bride is going to start, and she has dropped a comb. if she isn't careful, her hair will come down after all!" exclaimed mrs. baxter by way of elucidation. * * * * * * one forenoon in the month of july, a year later, the lawn-tennis courts of the westfield hunt club were all occupied. the reason was clear; tennis had become the fashionable sport. some of the younger spirits, who found golf too gentle a form of exercise, had rebelled successfully against the predominance of that pastime. consequently all the people of every age who try to do what the rest of the world is doing had consigned their golf clubs to the recesses of their hall closets and bought rackets. until the present year two courts, both of dirt, had amply supplied the needs of the members; indeed, they had often remained vacant for days at a time. now even four additional courts failed to meet current demands, and everybody wished to play on those made of grass, of which there were but two. on this particular morning these were in the possession of two pairs of women players, who might be said to represent the antipodes of feminine skill at the game. a couple of the younger matrons, mrs. reynolds and mrs. miller, both adepts, were engaged in a close, fast contest. their balls flew low and swiftly, and their long rallies called forth frequent applause from the spectators, chiefly women, sitting on benches along the side lines or on the piazza, as one or the other of the lithe young women, whose restricted, dainty, diaphanous white skirts seemed almost glued to their figures, would pick up the ball when it appeared to be out of reach by dint of a brilliant dash. the other pair of opponents were miss marbury, looking stouter than ever in flannels, and mrs. gordon wallace. they were tossing slow, high lobs and getting very warm in the process. they puffed and panted audibly, although the ball struck the net or flew out of bounds much of the time. yet they had the satisfaction of knowing that they were in fashion; moreover, they had the sanction of their physicians, who advised the exercise as an antidote against corpulency and rheumatism. most of the men had gone to the city. douglas hale and gerald marcy were on one of the dirt courts, and walter cole, who was taking his vacation, was playing golf with kenneth post. one solitary woman, mrs. cunningham, was on the links with her husband. she had demurred stoutly at the contagion of the new fever, and still remained faithful to the fascination of the royal and ancient game. the centre of club life was undeniably the tennis courts, and thither all those who arrived directed their footsteps. mrs. reynolds and mrs. miller having finished three sets, repaired to an isolated bench to enjoy a soda-lemonade and to cool off under the influences of a friendly chat. mrs. reynolds, who, as has been intimated, wore the breath of life in her nostrils, had got slightly the better of her adversary, and was inclined therefore to be on the alert, if not perky. her ears were the first to detect the whir of an automobile, and she pricked them up. then the toot of a horn fixed everyone's attention on the approaching monster, for automobiles were still more or less of a novelty, and engendered curiosity. in another instant a huge machine, of bridal white, as mrs. baxter subsequently described it, tore around the corner of the road, and, dashing past the occupants of the tennis courts, swept up to the ladies' entrance of the club-house, where it paused, snorting like a huge dragon. it was the largest and most imposing "bubble" which westfield had gazed upon. many of the spectators left their places to examine it, and everyone's head was turned in that direction. [illustration: a huge machine of bridal white ... tore around the corner.] "it is they!" said mrs. reynolds with emphasis; then, after a pause, she asked: "are you going to-morrow afternoon?" "i suppose so. as it was a 'request the pleasure,' i had to answer, and we didn't have an engagement. besides, she has brought home some lovely new tapestries, and we are asked to meet an eastern soothsayer, who is said to be a marvel at mind-reading. mrs. charles haviland and half a dozen women, who are supposed to be fastidious, are coming from town, so my husband seemed to think we had better go." "it's because she's artistic that she is forgiven, so my husband says, and of course if everyone else is going to 'norrey's knoll' there is no sense in our turning up our noses at the new master and mistress." "is mrs. cunningham going?" asked mrs. miller. "i hear that dick weston has bet mr. douglas hale fifty dollars to twenty-five that she does." "i suppose lydia and her husband have come to lunch and play bridge," said mrs. miller musingly. "they say she plays wonderfully--almost as well as he does. my husband objects to my playing for money." "so does mine. he says it is bad form--vulgar for women--and that it is bringing american society down to the level of the four georges. but how about men? i obey him, because i am of the dutiful kind. but how about men?" she reiterated trenchantly. mrs. miller dodged the question. "i should fall in a fit if i lost seventy-five dollars in an afternoon, as some of them do." "they say one gets used to it. i have made alfred promise to give me an automobile as an indemnity for refusing to play. i must be in fashion to that extent anyway." mrs. miller laughed. they were now practically alone. the occupants of the tennis courts, both women and men, had drifted toward the club entrance, where they stood admiring the new machine and exchanging greetings with the newly married owners. the spencers had been in possession of "norrey's knoll"--which herbert maxwell had sold to lydia--about three weeks, and on the morrow were to hold an afternoon reception for the latest social novelty, an eastern sorceress. from where they sat the two young women were able to perceive what was going on, and presumably it was the sight of the grizzled gerald marcy bandying persiflage with mrs. spencer which furnished the cue to mrs. miller's next remark: "mr. marcy says that 'bridge' is essentially a gambling game," she responded a little mournfully, "and that to play it properly one should play for money, if at all." "mr. marcy says also, my dears, that there are no recognized standards of behavior in this country. it is all go-as-you-please," said a sardonic voice close behind them. they turned in surprise. so absorbed had they been in their dialogue and in watching the arrival of the spencers that they had failed to notice the approach of mrs. andrew cunningham. "and he is right," continued that lady, tossing her golf clubs on the grass with a somewhat dejected air. "i am going to surrender." thereupon she accepted the space which the others made for her on the bench, and folding her arms turned her gaze in the direction of the white monster and its satellites. the elder matron vouchsafed no immediate key to the riddle she had just enunciated. mrs. reynolds stooped, and picking up the bag of golf clubs examined them with an air of one who scans ancient, fusty relics. "i can't imagine," she said, "how you can keep on playing golf now that everyone is crazy about tennis." mrs. cunningham smiled wanly. "that's what i meant," she answered. "i'm going to begin tennis to-morrow--and i'm also going to lydia spencer's reception. my spirit of opposition is broken." "yes," continued the mother of the hunt, in an apostrophizing tone, as though she still felt herself on the defensive, "every one is going, and most of the nice people are coming from town. so why should i be stuffy and bite my own nose off? which goes far to prove, my dears," she added, sententiously, "that the only unpardonable social sin in this country is to lose one's money. nothing else really counts." "oh!" exclaimed the two young women together with animation, as each reflected that dick weston had won his bet. books by robert grant "as an observer of american men and women and things judge grant is without a rival."--_the critic._ "he has proved himself a domestic and social philosopher, happily commingling sharp vision with a good deal of rational philosophy touching practical matters and every-day relationships."--_the outlook._ the undercurrent illustrated by f. c. yohn. mo. $ . "first of all a novel, and an excellent one."--_review of reviews._ "it is a novel in that it has a simple and sympathetic romance for a basis; it is a great novel in that it presents each typical phase of modern life as a master would paint it, seizing the supreme moment and interpreting its significance."--_new york sun._ "into it has gone so much thought, so much keen observation, so much ripe reflection, that one lays it down with a feeling of respect amounting almost to reverence for the man who has brought to the complicated problems of our modern living such earnestness and such ability."--_interior, chicago._ "the discriminating reader cannot fail to find a keen pleasure in the fine literary art which the book displays, as well as the masterly fashion in which the story is developed."--_brooklyn eagle._ search-light letters mo. $ . 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"no american writer for many years has wrought out a work of fiction so full of meaning, so admirable in its literary quality, and so large and comprehensive as this book of mr. grant's."--_the bookman._ "the author has elaborated with perfect and convincing clearness a subtile problem in social evolution. and yet he gets into no intricate and fine-spun webs of theory. he sums up the whole case with judicial fairness and gives the devil his dues. the satire in it springs from abundant knowledge of actual social conditions. it is cutting, but it is not flippant or cynical. the book is written in dead earnest."--_life._ "in depicting selma mr. grant has produced a work of art so symmetrical and sincere that it deserves also to be called a work of science."--_london academy._ "it would be difficult to find a modern novel cleverer than 'unleavened bread.' it is impossible within the narrow limits of a short paragraph to give any idea of the extreme cleverness with which selma's character is drawn. an interesting study of american life, with a subtilely painted portrait of a delicate and virtuous female pecksniff. the book is a great deal more than readable."--_london spectator._ "a very remarkable novel, rich in ideas, strong in high appeal, of great interest to all students of life and character, and, especially, to every american who loves his country and desires the best things for her."--_boston advertiser._ the bachelor's christmas illustrated. mo. $ . "mr. grant's short stories are models in their way. he always writes well and simply, with no affectations and with much humor."--_new york times._ "clever and interesting. mr. grant has a happy turn of words, with much appreciation of humor."--_philadelphia public ledger._ "a most agreeable volume."--_new york sun._ "mr. grant's humor is kindly, loving, pure, innocent."--_new york tribune._ reflections of a married man mo. $ . "a quiet and extremely pleasant social satire."--_providence journal._ "writers of renown have drawn many true and vivid pictures of different phases of american life, but none has succeeded in presenting anything more typically american than that which is given us in this small book."--_chicago evening post._ the opinions of a philosopher mo. $ . "he at least is a laughing philosopher, and discusses the ups and downs of married and business and social life with a hopeful spirit. he is amusing and ranges from lively to severe in his running commentary."--_springfield (mass.) republican._ "the book is altogether a delightful one and its freshness and sincerity are beyond all praise."--_charleston (s. c.) news and courier._ charles scribner's sons new york flaming youth warner fabian [illustration: logo] boni and liveright publishers new york copyright - , by boni & liveright, inc. _printed in the united states of america_ first printing, january, second printing, february, third printing, february, fourth printing, march, fifth printing, march, a word from the writer to the reader: "those who know will not tell; those who tell do not know." the old saying applies to woman in to-day's literature. women writers when they write of women, evade and conceal and palliate. ancestral reticences, sex loyalties, dissuade the pen. men writers when they write of women, do so without comprehension. men understand women only as women choose to have them, with one exception, the family physician. he knows. he sees through the body to the soul. but he may not tell what he sees. professional honour binds him. only through the unaccustomed medium of fiction and out of the vatic incense-cloud of pseudonymity may he speak the truth. being a physician, i must conceal my identity, and, not less securely, the identity of those whom i picture. there is no such suburb as dorrisdale ... and there are a score of dorrisdales. there is no such family as the fentrisses ... and there are a thousand fentriss families. for the delineation which i have striven to present, honestly and unreservedly, of the twentieth century woman of the luxury-class i beg only the indulgence permissible to a neophyte's pen. i have no other apologia to offer. to the woman of the period thus set forth, restless, seductive, greedy, discontented, craving sensation, unrestrained, a little morbid, more than a little selfish, intelligent, uneducated, sybaritic, following blind instincts and perverse fancies, slack of mind as she is trim of body, neurotic and vigorous, a worshipper of tinsel gods at perfumed altars, fit mate for the hurried, reckless and cynical man of the age, predestined mother of--what manner of being?: to her i dedicate this study of herself. w. f. flaming youth part i chapter i the room was vital with air and fresh with the scent of many flowers. it was a happy room, a loved room, even a petted room. there was about it a sense of stir, of life, of habitual holiday. some rooms retain these echoes. people say of them that they have character or express individuality. but this one's character was composite, possessing attributes of the many who had come and gone and laughed and played and perhaps loved there, at the behest of its mistress. a captious critic might have complained that it was over-crowded. the same critic might have said the same of mona fentriss's life. though a chiefly contributory part of the room's atmosphere, mona fentriss's personality was not fully reflected in her immediate environment. the room was not a married room. it suggested none of the staidness, the habitude, the even acceptances of conjugal life. the bed stood outside, on the sleeping porch. it was a single bed. unfriendly commentators upon the fentriss ménage had been known to express the conviction that marriage was not a specially important element in mrs. fentriss's joyous existence. nevertheless there were the three children, all girls. there was also fentriss. the mistress of the room lolled on a cushioned chaise longue near the side window. she was a golden-brown, strong, delicately rounded woman, glowing with an effect of triumphant and imperishable youth. not one of her features but was faulty by strict artistic tenets; even the lustrous eyes were set at slightly different levels. yet the total effect was that of loveliness; yes, more, of compelling charm. one would have guessed her to be still short of thirty. "this is final, is it?" she asked evenly of a man who was standing near the door. "it's final enough," he answered. he shambled across the room to her side, moving like a bear. like a bear's his exterior was rough, shaggy, and seemed not to fit him well. his face was irregularly square, homely, thoughtful, and humorous. "want to cry?" he asked. "no. i want to swear." "go ahead." downstairs a door opened and closed. there followed the rhythmic crepitation of ice against metal. "there's ralph home," interpreted the wife. "call down and tell him to shake up one for me." "better not." "oh, you be damned!" she retorted, twinkling at him. "you've finished your day's job as a physician. i need one." as he obediently went out she mused, with the instinct of the competent housekeeper: "gin's gone to twenty-five dollars a gallon. that'll rasp poor old ralph. i wonder how much this will jar him." by "this" she meant the news which she had just forced from the reluctant lips of dr. robert osterhout. she pursued her line of thought. "who'll take over the house? the girls know nothing about running it. perhaps he'll marry again. he's very young for fifty." the two men entered, fentriss carrying the shaker. he set it down, crossed the room and kissed his wife. there was an effect of habitual and well-bred gallantry in the act. he was a slender, alert, companionable looking man with a quizzical expression. dr. osterhout poured out a cocktail which he offered to mrs. fentriss. she regarded it contemptuously. "bob, you devil! that's only half a drink." "it's more than you ought to have." "pour me a real one. at once! ralph; _you_ do it. come on." with a shrug and a deprecatory smile at the physician, ralph fentriss filled the glass to the brim. the fentriss cocktails were famous far beyond the suburban limits of dorrisdale for length as well as flavour. "here's to prohibition," said their concoctor in his suave voice, before drinking; "and to your better health, my dear." "a toi," she responded carelessly. "leave the shaker, will you, ralph? bob and i are talking." fentriss nodded and went. a moment later the concert grand in the big living room below stairs responded to a touch at once delicate, strong and distinctive. "how i used to love his music!" said mona fentriss half to herself; "and still do," she added. "bob." she turned upon her physician with laughing reproach in her eyes. "don't you know better, after all these years, than to try to keep me from doing anything i want to do? i always get what i want." "if you don't, it's not for lack of trying." "i don't even have to try very hard. life has been a generous godfather to me. but i've always wanted more. like oliver twist, wasn't it? or jephthah's daughter?" dr. osterhout grinned. "it was the horse leech's daughters that were always crying 'give! give!'" "why cry for it? reach out and help yourself," she said gaily. "them's my principles. and now the fairy godfather is going to cut me off with a shilling. or a year. or less." "unless you obey orders it'll be considerably less." "let it! i'd rather do as i please while it lasts. "'i've taken my fun where i found it, i've rogued and i've ranged in my time,'" sang ralph fentriss at the piano below to music of his own composing. "so have i," murmured his wife. her eyes grew brilliant, craving, excited as they wandered to the flower-decked mantel upon which stood half a dozen photographs. all were of men. though they varied in age and indications of character, they presented a typical similarity in being well-groomed and attractive. they might all have belonged to the same club. "bob, do many women confess to their doctors?" "lots." "to you?" "no. i don't let 'em." "why not? i should think it would be interesting." "it's only a trick to gratify the senses through recollection," said the blunt physician. "reflected lechery." "you know too much, bob. then you won't be my father confessor?" "i doubt if you could tell me much," he said slowly. a smile, unabashed and mischievous, played upon her lips. "that's an ambiguous sort of answer. sometimes i suspect that very little gets past you." "i'm trained to observation," he remarked. "and to silence. so you're safe. i think it would do me good to confess to you." she grew still and pensive. "bob, if i'd been a roman catholic do you suppose i'd have been--different?" "doubted. would you want to be?" "i don't really know that i would. anyway i'm what i had to be. we all are." "fatalism is a convenient excuse." "no; but i am," she insisted. "it's temperament. temperament is fate. for a woman, anyway," she added with a flash of insight. "you don't blame me, do you? i couldn't help it, could i?" he smiled down at her, tolerant but uncompromising. "oh, don't stand there looking like god," she fretted. "do you know what i'd resolved to do? will you laugh at me if i tell you?" "probably. therefore tell me." "i was going to be a pattern of all the proprieties after i turned forty." "too early," he pronounced judicially. "why? what do you mean?" "make it fifty." she knit her smooth forehead. "because i wouldn't be pretty then?" "oh, you'd charm and attract men at seventy. but you wouldn't have such a--well, such an urgent temperament. that passes, usually." "bob! you beast!" but she laughed. "you're very much the medical man, aren't you?" "it's my business in life." "well, the whole discussion is what you call an academic question, anyhow. if you and your hateful medical science are right, i'll never see thirty-eight, let alone forty. i don't feel thirty-seven. there's so much life in me. too much, i suppose." "no. not too much." "no more flutters for pretty mona," she mused. "at least she's had her share. do you think ralph cares?" "you're the one to know that." "if he does, he's never given any sign. but then, it's years since he's been true to me." her companion made a slight, uninterpretable gesture. "shall i tell him? your verdict, i mean." "great judas, no! why stir him up? it's going to be hard enough on him anyway." "is it?" she said wistfully. "he'll miss me in a way, won't he? i _am_ fond of him, too, you know." "yes. i understand that." "but you don't understand why i've gone trouble-hunting, out of bounds." "yes. i understand that, too." "perhaps you do. you understand lots more than one would think from your dear, old, stupid face." she paused. "tell me something, honestly, bob. has there been much talk about me?" "oh, there's always talk and always will be about anyone as brilliant and vivid as you." "don't evade. some of the older crowd look at me as if they thought i was the scarlet woman come back to life. i'm _not_ the scarlet woman, bob. only a dash of pink." he smiled indulgently. "it's strange," she mused, "how the tradition of behaviour clings in the blood, in that set. your set, bob. ah, well! discretion is the better part of virtue, as someone said. and i haven't been discreet, even if i have been virtuous. you believe i've been, don't you, bob?" "what, discreet?" again she laughed, showing little, even, animal-like teeth. "no; the other thing." "i believe whatever you want me to." "meaning that you reserve your own opinion. but you're a staunch friend, anyway.... the trouble with me is that i was born too soon. i really belong with this wild young age that's coming on the stage just as i'm going off; with the girls. listen!" below stairs fentriss, still at the piano, had swung into the rhythms of the second rhapsody, wild and broken as white water seething through a rock-beset gorge. "that's the measure they dance to, the new generation. doesn't it get into your torpid blood, bob? don't you wish you were young again? to be a desperado of twenty! they're all desperadoes, these kids, all of them with any life in their veins; the girls as well as the boys; maybe more than the boys. even connie with her eyes of a vestal. ah!" a new note had merged with the music, a hoarse, childish croon, following the mad measure with an interwoven recitative. "that's patricia. she's dancing to it." "how can you tell?" asked the physician. "by the way she's singing. little devil! i wonder what it'll be like by the time she's grown up," mused the mother. "which won't be so long, now." "so it won't. i keep forgetting that. she seems such a baby. what a queer little creature it is, bob!" "she's a terror. but there's something lovable about her, too. a touch of you in her, mona." "of me? she's no more like me than i'm like my namesake of the well-known lisa family. nor like the older girls, either. well, why shouldn't she be different from them? coming five years after i'd supposed all that sort of thing was over. she was pure accident. how i tried to get out of having her! perhaps that's why she's such a strange little elf. but ralph's crazy about her--as much as he can be crazy about anything. i thought for a time she'd bring us together again." "but you found variety more amusing than pure domesticity," suggested the physician. "i? it wasn't i that began it; it was ralph. you know i never went in for even the mildest flirtation until long after pat was born; until i began to get bored with the sameness of life." "boredom leads more women astray than passion," pronounced the other oracularly; "in our set, anyway." "oh, astray," she fretted. "don't use mid-victorian pulpit language." "i was only philosophising about our lot in general." "we're a pretty rotten lot, aren't we! though i suppose the people you don't know, the people that nobody knows, are just as rotten. ah, well, so long as one preserves appearances! and ralph has no kick coming. he'd gone on the loose before i ever looked sidewise at any other man. they say he's got a floozie now, tucked away in a cozy corner somewhere." "do they?" "has he?" "ask him." "too good a sport," she retorted. "i shouldn't be asking you if i thought you'd tell me. very likely you don't know. _he_ hasn't been boring you with confessions, i'll bet! men don't, do they?" "only of their symptoms." "but they confess to women." "the more fools they!" "can't i wring a confession out of you?" she teased. "why haven't you ever made love to me, bob?" "too much afraid of losing what little i've got of you," he returned sombrely. "how do you know you wouldn't have got more? how do you know that i wouldn't have given you--everything?" "everything you could give wouldn't be enough." "pig! you don't want much, do you!" "have you ever really cared for any of your partners in flirtation?" "you speak as if i'd had dozens," she pouted. "it isn't a question of the quantity but of the quality of your attachments. if i'd ever asked anything of you it would have been--well, romance." he laughed quietly at himself. "something you haven't got to give. you see, i'm a romantic and you're not. you've sought excitement, admiration, change. but not 'the light that never was on land or sea.' you're adventurous and passionate, but not romantic. it's quite a different order of thing." "and you're brutal. besides, you're wrong; quite wrong." "am i?" his glance ranged the faces on the mantel. "which one?" she gave him a swift smile. "he isn't there. you never saw him. his name was cary scott." "was? is he dead?" "he's out of my life; or almost. he's married. he was hardly more than a boy when i knew him. nine years ago in paris. he was studying at the polytechnique, doing his post-graduate work and doing it brilliantly, i believe. he went mad over me. my fault; i meant him to; it amused me. i was attracted, too. there was a vividness of youth about him. i didn't realise how much i was going to miss him out of my life, though, until we came back. i did miss him. like hell!" "he was the one to whom you really gave?" "hardly so much as a kiss. i wanted to keep it that way, and he was slave to me. he was an innocent sort of soul, i think. every year he sends me a card on my birthday--that was the date of our first meeting--to remind me that sometime we are to take up our friendship again. i never answer but i never quite forget." "ah, that's the sort of thing that i'd have asked but never expected of you." "no; you never could have had it. that's the sort of thing that one gives but once." suddenly she shot out her white, strong hand and gripped his wrist. "if you'd ever been really in love with me," she said fiercely, "you wouldn't let me die. you'd find some way to save me." his rugged face softened with pain. "my dear," he said, "don't you know that if there were any way in the world, any sacrifice----" "yes; i know; i know! i'm sorry. that was a rotten thing to say." "you've taken it all like such a good sport." "i'm trying. let's not talk of it any more. let's talk of the girls. bob, how much is there to heredity?" "oh, lord! ask me to square the circle. or make the fifth hole in one. or something easy." "i was just thinking. who's going to look after them? ralph won't be of much use. he's too detached." "well, the family physician can be of service in some ways," he said slowly. "particularly if he chances to be a family friend, too." "would you?" she cried eagerly. "they'll be a handful. any modern girl is. but i'd rest easier, knowing you were on the job. speaking of resting, i had rather a rotten night last night." "what were you doing in the evening?" "we had a little poker party here in the room." he shrugged his heavy shoulders. "if you won't pay any heed to your doctor's orders----" "you know i won't." "then you've got to pay the piper." "haven't you got anything that will make me sleep?" "were the pains bad?" "pretty stiff. will they get worse?" "i'm afraid so, my dear." "more dope, then, please." "dangerous." "well?" she smiled up into his face, pleadingly, temptingly. "well, bob?" her voice dropped. "what's the difference? since it's a hopeless case. don't be an inquisitor and sentence me to torture in the name of your god, science," she whispered. he yielded. "all right. but you'll stand it as long as you can?" "good old bob!" she murmured. she reached for his hand, twined her fingers around it, nestled it into her firm and rounded neck. then she laughed. "well?" he queried. "association of ideas," she answered. "i was thinking of cary scott." he winced and drew his hand away. "what of cary scott?" "if he doesn't come back pretty soon, what a joke it will be on him!" chapter ii the fentriss house stood high on a knoll overlooking the country club which constituted dorrisdale's chief attraction as a suburb. mona fentriss had built it with a legacy of $ , left to her just before patricia's birth, and ralph had put in the $ , necessary to complete the work after the architect's original estimate had been exhausted, leaving the place still unfinished by one wing, all the decorations, and most of the plumbing. the extra cost was due largely to the constantly altering schemes of mona. she wished her house "just so," and just so she finally had it from the little conservatory off the side hallway to the comfortable servants' suite on the third floor. if the result was, architecturally, a plate of hash, as ralph called it, nevertheless the house was particularly easy to live in. to mona fentriss belonged the credit for this. what she had of conscience was enlisted in her domestic economy. as ralph fentriss's wife she might be casually unfaithful. as mistress of his household she was impeccable. the effortless seductiveness of her personality established its special atmosphere throughout the place. it made the servants her devoted and unwearying aids, and broadly speaking, a household is much what the servants make it. people gravitate naturally to a well-run place. life seems so suave and easy there. guests of all ages came and went at holiday knoll, mostly men. mona cared little for women, and her own strong magnetism for men had been inherited by her two grown daughters. there was no special selectiveness about the company. all that was required of them was that they should be superficially presentable and contribute something of amusement or entertainment to the composite life of the ménage. at least nine-tenths of them were making love to constance or mary delia or mona herself, openly or surreptitiously as the case might be. it made a pleasantly restless and stimulating atmosphere. in the city itself there would have been criticism of the easy standards; indeed there was more or less which drifted out to the knoll. but judgments in the suburbs are kindlier. and dorrisdale is quite fashionable enough to establish its own standards. any week-end would find half a dozen or more cars bunched on the driveway, having brought their quota of pleasure-seeking youth out from new york or from philadelphia or baltimore or princeton. the girls had carte blanche, within reasonable limits, for invitations, which they were careful not to abuse. a few errors in judgment had reacted unpleasantly not only upon themselves but upon their undesirable guests. mona fentriss could act with decision and dignity within her own walls. her social discrimination was keen if not rigid, and she possessed a blighting gift of sarcasm, mainly imitative, the most deadly kind used against the young. neither of the girls was likely ever to forget her imitation of connie's friend from minneapolis whose method of handling a fork, according to mrs. fentriss's theory, had been derived from bayonet practice in camp; nor her presentation of a steamship acquaintance of dee's who had too pathetically bewailed his losses at bridge. partly from theory, partly as a trouble-saving device, the mother seldom attempted any exercise of direct authority upon the children. a system of self-government was established, or, rather, encouraged to grow into being. it was ordained that each of the girls should have her own room to hold like a castle, into which not even the parents might intrude unbidden, and for which the occupant was held responsible. constance's room was luxurious, lazy, filled with photographs mainly of groups in which her charming face was always central. the special mark of mary delia's was its white and airy kemptness. patricia's was a mess of clothing and odds and ends, tossed hither and thither and left to lie as they fell until a temporary access of orderliness inspired the child to clean up. it suggested a room in which no window was opened at night. fentriss called it the hurrah's nest. through this feminine environment he moved like a tolerant but semi-detached presiding genius. his profession as consulting engineer took him early to the city and that, or something else, often kept him late. being a considerate though rather selfish person, he invariably telephoned when detained over dinner time, which made the less difference in that there were always two or three men dropping in after golf, hopeful of an invitation to stay: harry mercer or the grant twins, or sam gracie, or one of the selfridges, father or son. envious mothers whispered that mrs. fentriss was trying to catch emslie selfridge for constance, and that it might not be as good a match as she supposed; things weren't going any too well at the selfridge factory since the strike. they also wondered acidly that ralph fentriss was so easy as to let his pretty wife go about so much with steve selfridge, who was almost old enough to be her father, it was true, but whose reputation was that of a decidedly unwithered age. it would no more have occurred to fentriss to raise objections over mona's going where she pleased, with whom she pleased than it would have occurred to her to ask his permission. all that was past long ago. the outside member of the family was robert osterhout. he lived near by in a small studio-bungalow where he conducted delicate and obscure experiments in the therapy of the ductless glands. thrice a week he lectured at the university, for he had already won a reputation in his own specialty. having inherited a sufficient fortune, he was letting his private practice dwindle to a point where presently the fentriss family would be about all there was left of it. into and out of the house on the knoll he wandered, casual, unobtrusive, never in the way, always welcome, contributing a quiet, solid background to the kaleidoscopic pattern of its existence. in the most innocent of senses he was _l'ami du maison_. if he was and had for years been in love with mona, the fact never made a ripple in the affectionate friendliness of their relations nor in the outward placidity of his life. it was accepted as part of the natural scheme of things. fentriss recognized it, quite without resentment. mona wondered at times whether constance and mary delia were not aware of it--not that it would have made any difference. she herself made little account of it, yet she would sorely have missed the stable, enduring, inexpressive devotion had it lapsed. bob was the intellectual outlet for her restless, fervent, exigent nature, too complex to be satisfied with physical and emotional gratifications alone. one could talk to bob; god knows, there were few enough others in her set with any understanding beyond the current chatter of the day! after her sentence was pronounced she talked to him even more frankly than theretofore. "if ralph had died, bob, i'd probably have married you." "would you?" "what do you mean by that? that you wouldn't have married me?" "i'd probably have done as you wished. i always do." "so you do, old dear! that's the reason i'd have married you. that, and to keep you in the family, where you belong." "i'll keep myself in the family, mona, if you want me there." "but ralph didn't die," she pursued. "i'm going to, instead. you can't marry ralph." "not very well." "but you might marry the girls." "all of 'em?" "connie, i think. she's most like me." "she isn't nearly as pretty as you." mona blew him a kiss. "she's much, much prettier. don't be so prejudiced. and she's very intelligent, for twenty-two." "about half my age." "oh, she'd catch up fast enough. she's quite mature." "much too attractive for an old husband, thank you. that way trouble lies--as you know!" "thanks, yourself!" she thrust out her tongue at him in an impudent, childish grimace. "perhaps you'd prefer mary delia." "i understand dee better than i do connie." "do you? it's more than i do. she's devilish frank about other people but she never gives herself away." "that's what i like about her." "you really are quite chummy with her, aren't you?" said the mother, looking at him curiously. "but that's because you're so much older. she doesn't care much about men really." "she's unawakened. there's hot blood under that cool skin." "i wonder what makes you think that?" "oh, a medically trained man notices little things." "so does a woman. but i haven't seen---- has dee begun to awake?" "oh, no! she's quite unaware of herself in that way. very likely she won't until after she's married." "after? won't that be a little late?" "it's the first awakening a lot of women have. and a harsh one for some." "what a lot of unpleasant things doctors know about life!" "life's got its unpleasant phases." "particularly for women.... yet i'm glad i've been a woman." a little, sensuous quiver passed over her tenderly modelled lips. she smiled, sighed, and reverted to her other thought. "but you're going to have your hands full with the fentrisses. really, you'd do better if you married one." "perhaps i shouldn't do as well. i might be too taken up with the one." she darted a glance at him, full of shrewd questioning with a touch of suspicion. "you _could_ care for dee," she interpreted. "i'd be more flattered if it were connie." she pressed an electric button. to the trim maid who appeared she said, "send miss dee here, please, mollie." "what are you going to do, mona?" demanded osterhout in some alarm, for he knew the devastating frankness with which she was wont to deal with those nearest her. "wait and see." there was a rhythmic, swift footfall on the stairs, the door was thrown open, and mary delia fentriss swung in upon them. "hello, mother!" she said. "hail, lord roberts! what's the summons?" her bearing attested poise, careless self-confidence, and a brusque and ready good humour. she was tall, rounded, supple, browned, redolent of physical expression. at first sight one knew that here was a girl whose body would exhale freshness, whose lips would be cool, whose breath would be sweet, whose voice would be even, whose senses and nerves would be controlled. a student of humankind might have appreciated in her the unafraid honesty and directness which so often go with the consciousness of physical strength, in women as well as men. her nickname in the family was candida. she was not beautiful; not even pretty, by strict standards. but there was about her a sort of careless splendour. "been playing golf?" asked her mother. "yes. cantered in with a forty-seven." "nice going! how would you like to marry bob?" neither the expression nor the attitude of the girl altered, but her cool and thoughtful eyes turned upon osterhout. "has his lordship been making proposals for me?" "no; i haven't!" barked the gentleman in the case. "watson, the strait-jacket! he's growing violent." "it was wholly my idea," proffered mona. "i thought bobs was your special property. why mark him down? it isn't bargain day." "he's a fairly good bargain, though," pointed out her mother. "don't mind me if you want to discuss my good points," said osterhout, lighting a cigarette and seating himself upon the window sill. "i don't," said mary delia. "let's consider him as a market proposition. his age is against him. you're forty, aren't you, bobs?... he doesn't squirm, mother. that's a bad sign; shows he's reached the age where he doesn't care. or is it a good sign, showing his self-control?" "dee, i'd beat you if i married you." her eyes lightened. "would you? i believe you'd try." with a bound she was upon him. one arm crooked under his shoulder, the heel of the other fist was thrust under his chin. "improved jit," she panted. "you'd have your work cut out." there was a quick shift, a blending of the two figures, and the slighter was bent backward almost to the floor. "give up?" demanded osterhout, his face close above the laughing lips. "yes. lord, you're quick! thought i had you. take your penalty and let me up." ignoring the invitation he set her in a chair and restored his deranged necktie. "i'll apologise for the forty," said dee. "you're not so old and feeble! to resume, as we say when serious; you're homely as a scalded pup----" "thank you!" "--but it's a nice homely. you've got a lamb of a disposition. _and_ money enough. haven't you?" "enough for me." "how passionately he pleads his cause! you play a nasty round of golf, too; i mustn't forget that. but--no. i don't think i would. not even if you asked me." "what's the obstacle, dee?" "well, for one thing, there's jimmy james." "what!" "quite so," said the girl sedately. "you're engaged to james?" "we haven't got that far yet. but i've got him on the run." "dee!" expostulated her mother, laughing. "does he know of your honourable intentions?" queried osterhout. "he hasn't expressed his own yet. but he will." "when?" "next time i kiss him." "next time, eh? how many times will that make?" "haven't counted, grandpa," mocked the girl. "we haven't pulled many petting parties, though." "well, i'm good-and-be-damned," muttered osterhout. "modern stuff, bob," remarked mona. "being an ancient fossil, i'd say dangerous stuff with a fellow like jameson james." "not with a girl like me," returned dee with superb assurance. "bee-lieve muh, i've got a hand on the emergency brake every minute." osterhout, who had returned to his window seat, gave a sharp exclamation. "what's the matter now?" he rubbed his cheek, growling. a hoarse, childish voice from below, which had in it some echo of mona fentriss's lyric and alluring tones, served to answer the question: "where did i hit you, old bobs?" "it's the scrub," said dee. "don't you call me 'bobs,' you young devil." "oh, _all_ right! _doctor_ bobs. come down. i've got a fer-rightful gash in my knee." "well, don't show it to the world. i'll be there immediately." "if you want to be the family benefactor," said mary delia as he was leaving, "marry pat. nobody else ever will." "you're a liar!" came the hoarse voice from outside. there was a pause as for consideration. "a stinkin' liar," it concluded with conviction. "pat!" called her mother. "oh, very well! but i bet i'm married before i'm dee's age. and to a better man than jimmy james. he's a chaser." "we've got to send that child away to school," said mona fentriss in amused dismay as the door closed behind osterhout. "she's growing up any old way, and she seems to know everything that's going on.... dee, are you really going to marry jimmy james?" "i think so. any objections?" "well, ada clare, you know." "he's through with her." "she's the kind that men don't get through with so readily. it's gone pretty far." "it's gone the limit probably. well, i never thought jimmy was president of the purity league, mother." "do you really care for him, dee?" "of course i do. i don't mean that he gives me an awful thrill. nobody does." "perhaps the right man would." "then i haven't seen him yet. mother," she turned her cool regard upon mona, "tell me about it." "about what?" "the thrill. the real thrill. you know." mona's colour deepened. "you're a queer child, dee. there are some things a woman has to find out for herself." "or get some man to teach her," supplied the girl thoughtfully. "the whole thing's mostly bluff, _i_ think. men are queer things. i could laugh my head off at jimmy sometimes." "that's a good safeguard." "yes; but i don't need it.... mother, aren't we going to pull a big party this spring?" "of course. and we ought to do it pretty soon, too." "what makes you say that so queerly?" "nothing," answered mona hastily. "i was just thinking." for though she was up and about again, she knew that she was weakening under the heart attacks which she endured with silent fortitude, due partly to natural pride, partly to her belief that a complaining woman lost all charm for those about her, winning only the poor substitute of pity instead of admiration. upon dr. osterhout she had imposed silence; she was determined that her household should know nothing so long as concealment was possible. in her way she was an unselfish woman. she was quite aware that this would be the last of her parties in the house on the knoll. pat's voice floated upward in tones of lamentation. "oh, damn it, bobs! go easy, can't you? that stuff's like fire." "patricia's fifteen," reflected the mother. "i'll enter her at the sisterhood school next fall." chapter iii the party was a bingo. before midnight that had been settled to the satisfaction of everyone. the music, good at the outset, soon become irresistible. (a drink all around every seven numbers was the fentriss prescription for the musicians; expensive but worth it.) the punch was very special. several of its masculine devotees had already faded, and one girl had been quietly spirited to an upper room, there to be disrobed and de-spirited. there was much drifting in and out of the french windows to the darkness of the lawn, and plaintive inquiries for missing partners were prevalent. lovely, flushed, youthful, regnant in her own special queendom, mona fentriss sat in the midst of a circle of the older men, bandying stories with them in voices which were discreetly lowered when any of the youngsters drew near. it was the top of the time. upstairs in her remote bed patricia sat with her pillows banked behind her, her knees propping her chin, her angry eyes staring into the dark. the strong rhythms of the music, barbaric, excitant, harshly sensuous, throbbed upward, stirring her to dim and uninterpretable hungers. "damn! damn! damn!" she whispered in shivering wrath. she had been banished from even the earliest part of the festivities. it was mean. it was rotten. it was stinkin' rotten. why should she be treated so? she wasn't a baby. she wouldn't stand it! leaping from bed she ran to her tumbled clothes, began feverishly to put them on. in undergarments and stockings she crept across to dee's room, listened and entered. this was gross violation of the law of the household. but pat was desperate. selecting a pink dinner dress rather high-cut for dee, she held it against her half-developed body, decided that it would do, ran back with her booty to her own den. putting it on before the glass she became unpleasantly conscious of several pimples on her face. she was always having pimples! the others never had them. she wondered why, resentfully. should she pick the one at the side of her nose? or would that only make it the more unsightly? she decided for the heroic method, performed a clumsy operation with a pin, and perceived at once that she must have some powder. this time it was connie's room that she invaded, and while she was about it she found and added a touch of colour. it was by no means the height of artistry, but pat approved it as eminently satisfactory. she did not wholly approve dee's dress. there was too much of it in important spots. she meditated padding, but did not know how it was done. or--dared she go back and get a scantier frock? contemplating her boyish contours she realised that it would not do. "flat like a board," she muttered disparagingly. "i'm bunched all in the wrong places." that the gown which fitted dee's slender strength to perfection should oppress pat across her round little stomach, struck her as an unjust infliction of fate, instead of the proper penalty of gluttony, which it was. the maltreated pimple--another sign and symbol of her unrestrained appetite--still bled a little and was obviously angry. she staunched it impatiently. the others, she decided, would do as they were. not unskillfully she touched the area around them with little dabs of mme. lablanche's rose-skin. "i'm going to have one dance," she decided, "if they send me to jail." the back stairs and a side window gave her unobserved exit to the odorous shelter of a syringa. "i'll wait until i can catch bobs," she ruminated. "he'll dance with me--old bear! but first i'll do a little scouting." she peeked into the big living room where most of the dancing was in progress. as was invariably the rule at holiday knoll, men held the superiority of numbers, and therefore, girls that of position. every girl had a partner. to the ungrown waif outside of fairyland the dancers seemed ethereal beings, moving in a radiant and unattainable world. how beautifully the girls were dressed! how attractive the men looked! "i wish i was pretty," mourned pat. she thought forlornly of her blotchy skin. "i never will be, though." then she recalled the deep, eager lustre of her eyes as seen in the glass, and how one of the boys at school had once made awkward and admiring phrases about them. she had not liked that particular boy, but she was grateful for the phrases. maybe if she paid more attention to herself she might come to be attractive like her lovely mother. no; that was too much to hope; never like her mother, nor like constance, who was just then whirled by in the arms of one of the new york guests, all aglow with languorous triumph, easily the beauty of the party. perhaps like dee. lots of men were crazy about dee. would any man ever be crazy about her, wondered pat.... wouldn't she look a smear if she did venture on the floor among all those human flowers? she left her window to prowl further. the glass door of the breakfast room gave her a view of the proceedings within. sprawled upon the tiles five of the youthful local element were intent upon the dice which one of them had just rolled toward a central heap of silver and bills. "seven! i lose again," said the thrower cheerily. "who'll stand for hiking the limit to a dollar?" opposite pat's vantage point sprawled selden thorpe, son of the local rector. pat knew they had not much means and, marking the pale, strained face of the boy, wished with misgivings that he wouldn't. the misgivings vanished when she heard him say: "i'm an easy hundred ahead so i can't kick. let 'er go." she stepped back into the darkness to round the conservatory wing and brushed the mudguard of a lightless limousine. a girl's voice strained, tremulous, and laughing lent caution to her retreating steps; but she stopped within listening distance. "don't, freddie! i'll have to go in if you----" "oh, come, ada! be a sport." "do behave yourself. get me another drink." "all right." as the man stepped out, pat shrank behind the car. she had recognized the girl's voice as that of ada clare, who had the reputation of being an indiscriminate "necker." pat passed on. but that whisper from within the limousine, with its defensive, nervous, eager, stimulated effect, troubled the eavesdropper with strange, disturbing surmises. she wanted, yet feared to return and wait until fred browning, a man of thirty, well-liked in the neighbourhood, not the less perhaps because of his reputation as a "goer," came back with the desired drink. what would be the next step in the unseen drama? a little stir of fear drove pat onward. she stopped abruptly at the end of the conservatory as she heard her mother's voice within. "oh, sid, dear! i almost wish i hadn't told you." sid! that was sidney rathbone, a baltimorean, much given to running over for week-ends. to pat's mind he was stricken in years, being nearly forty, but the _most_ distinguished looking (thus her mentally italicised characterisation) person she had ever seen and distantly adored. furthermore there was a quietly knightly devotion in his attitude toward the beautiful mrs. fentriss which enlisted the submerged romanticism of the child's mind. now she hardly recognised the usually smooth and gentle tones characteristic of him as he replied: "my god, mona! i can't believe it. i won't believe it." "poor boy! it's true, though." "what does osterhout know about it! he's no diagnostician. you must come to baltimore and see finney or earle----" "it's no use." what rathbone next said the listener could not make out, but mona answered very gently: "no, sid, dear. not again. that's all over. i couldn't now. you understand." and then the man's broken voice: "yes; i understand, dearest. but----" "oh, sid! please don't cry. i can't bear it." pat blundered on into the darkness, rather appalled. what in the name of bewilderment did _that_ mean? mr. rathbone crying! and her mother's voice was so sad. though she did not care much for her mother beyond a lively admiration of her charm and beauty, pat experienced a distinct chill. it was followed by a surge of exultation; she was certainly seeing life to-night! and then came the climax. a blithe voice at her elbow said: "hello! who are you?" "sh--sh-sh-sh!" she warned in startled sibilance. "shush goes if you say so. not dancing?" "no. they wouldn't let me," said pat mournfully. "who wouldn't?" "the family." "snoutrage," declared the stranger economically. "you're one of the family, are you?" "yes. i'm the kid. i hate it." "cinderella; yes? the lovely but wicked sisters--they're peaches, too." he spoke clearly but a little disjointedly. "but you're not rigged for the part. you've got your regal rags on." "they're not mine. they're my sister's. i sneaked 'em." "snappy child!" he laughed. "let's have a look." he moved closer to her. a wale of light fell across his face. he was short and fair with a winsome, laughing mouth, and candid eyes. drooping her chin pat studied him covertly and decided that he was a winner. she herself was in the shadow; he could see little but contour. but the rich hoarseness of the voice pleased him. "i'm glad i found you," he murmured. thrilling to his tone, all that she could find to say was: "don't speak so loud." naturally he took this as an invitation, and, moving still closer, felt for her hand in the darkness. her fingers twined willingly within his. instead of alarming her, his touch gave her confidence. "what are you doing out here?" she asked. "cooling off. the family brew's got quite a kick in it." "has it? get me some." "you're too young." "don't be hateful." "what'll you give me for it?" he teased. it was the first spur that her instinct of conscious seductiveness had ever known. she replied instantly: "anything." "you're on. wait for me right there." while he was gone, a long time as it seemed to her, she stood surging with an exultant inner turmoil. a man and a girl passed close to her, unseeing in the bar of light. the girl's eyes wore a strange, sleepy expression as if the lids were almost too heavy to hold open. the man's shoulder was pressed close upon her. they disappeared. strange scents of the night crept into pat's brain; made her remember things she had never known. the music, softened through intervening walls, was pleading sensuously, urging upon her something mysterious and desirable. she felt her nerves like strung wires already tingling with electric forces but awaiting the supreme shock. "drink, pretty creature!" the gay, insinuating, mirthful voice was close to her. "you've only half filled it," she complained, taking the glass. "must have spilled some. in such a hurry to get back to you," he explained. "there's plenty more where it came from if you like it." "i don't," she gasped. the liquid, of which she had taken a generous swallow, stung in her throat. she poured the rest out upon the ground. "here," she said holding out the glass to him. his fingers met hers again. the glass fell and crunched beneath his foot as he stepped to her. she was hardly cognisant of his arm drawing her. rather what she felt was some irresistible power compelling her to itself. the face of the youth, still gay with laughter, drew down upon hers, closer, closer, changed, seemed to become dimly luminous. her arms, without volition, crept upward to his shoulders. she was incongruously and painfully conscious of something pressing into her bosom, one of his pearl shirt-studs, and drew away from it slightly. he bent his head after her. and then, as their lips met and merged--the shock! she went limp under it. after a long, long minute in which were blended the pulsations of the music, the undermining odours of the night, the look of the passing girl's eyes (how heavy were her own now!), the memory of that broken whisper overheard in the limousine, and the surge of the blood in her veins, she heard him say: "let's go." "where?" "i've got my car here." she was silent, deeply, passively acquiescent to his will. misconstruing her speechlessness, he urged: "come on, sweetie! we'll take a fifty-mile-an-hour dip into the landscape. the little boat can go some." "i'll have to get a wrap." "take my coat." his arm tightened, guiding her. she lifted a hungry face. he bent again when a door opened shedding a broad ray of light upon them. against the glaring background moved constance, a vision of witchery in her filmy gown, followed by emslie selfridge. "pat!" she exclaimed. "what are you doing here?" before the confused girl could reply, her escort came briskly to her rescue. "i caught it peeking behind a bush," he explained, "and it wasn't a bur-gu-lar after all. so i'm taking it in to see what it is and whether it can dance." "it's my kid sister," said constance. "mother _will_ be pleased!" "are you going to tell her?" demanded pat. "i certainly am." "then i may as well have my dance before you find her," declared the culprit calmly. "the fourteenth, a foxy little trot; with mr. warren graves," put in her escort cheerily. he drew her arm through his own where it nestled gratefully. armoured though he was in the careless self-confidence of youth, young mr. graves winced as his partner stood revealed under the full glare of the lights. she looked so awfully and awkwardly young! her hair was so awry, her gown so ill-fitted, her skin so splotchy. but there was magic in the long, slanted, shy, trustful eyes looking into his own, and the tingling excitation of her kiss was still in his blood. moreover he had had a steady succession of drinks. "how old are you?" he asked in her ear as her cheek pressed close to his. "seventeen," she lied glibly. "sub-deb stuff," he laughed. "i love 'em young. you can dance, too. can i have the next?" "there won't be any next," said pat tragically. "here's mother." "oh, lord!" said warren graves. "let me do the talking." but no talking was called for. mona fentriss swept down upon her truant daughter, caught her in a laughing embrace, slapped one hot cheek, kissed the other, and delivered her verdict! "back to bed with you! quick! how did you ever get out?" "can't i have just one more turn," pleaded pat. "not a step. where did this roost-robber"--she indicated graves--"find you?" "i was looking on and wanting in," replied the dismal and thwarted pat. "wait three years, until you're seventeen. away!" "let me escort you to your--er--baby-carriage," said the youth with an elaborate bow. the feeble witticism, meant only to cover his own sense of being at a loss, stabbed pat. she averted her angry and tearful eyes as they crossed the floor together. "i hate you," she muttered. "i'm crazy about you," he retorted close to her ear. instantly she was radiant again. "good-night," she said softly and ran up the stairs. the turn of the landing hid her from view. but, after a moment's struggle with herself against doubt, she stopped and leaned out over the rail. there he stood with the blithe expectancy of his face upturned. queer looking, unkempt, ill-dressed she might be, and hardly more than a child at that, but the glamour of her youth and her passion held him. "don't forget me," he pleaded under his breath. she nodded. forget him! with the fervent assurance of the neophyte she was sure that she never would, never could forget him and the moment which he had deified for her. and herein her inexperience was a true mentor. for, whatever else may pass from her crowded memories, a girl does not forget her first kiss. pat had been mulcted of that dance which she had rebelliously promised herself. but there was compensation in overflowing measure. she had had her taste of life. chapter iv vagrant airs from the window of the small library playfully stirred the bright tendrils on constance fentriss's neck. the girl was a picture of unconscious grace and delight as she sat, with her great, heavy-lashed eyes fixed in speculation, her curving lips a little drawn down, her gracious, girlish figure relaxed in the deep chair. across the room mary delia was skimming hopefully the pages of _town topics_ for scandals about people she knew. she lifted her head and asked carelessly: "what doing, con?" "figuring out a letter." "who to?" (mary delia's higher education, inclusive of "correct" english, had cost something more than ten thousand dollars.) "a certain party." this was formula, current in their set and deemed to possess a mildly satiric flavour. "oh, verra well!" (meaning "don't tell if you don't want to.") "it's to warren graves, if you want to know." "your princeton paragon? have you got something going there?" "i'm going to give him hell." "what for? i thought he was one of your best bets." "for acting like a mick saturday night." "what did he pull? a pickle?" "a petting party with pat." "no! did he?" dee cast aside the professional organ of scandal in favour of a more immediate interest. "how do you know?" "trapped 'em. he put up a good front. acted like he expected to get away with it." (constance's school, also highly expensive, had specialised in "finish of speech and manner.") dee laughed. "that bratling! he must have been lit." "emslie said so. he was with me when we walked into 'em." "as per usual. what was _his_ view?" "he said the scrub ought to be spanked and sent to bed." "some job!" opined her sister. "she's starting in early. when did you have your first real flutter, con?" "not at that age," returned the elder. "and not with that kind of a face." dee reflected shrewdly that connie was a little sore over the young man's defection. "it must have been dark for graves to take her on," she agreed. "it was, till we opened the door on 'em. they were clinched all right. dam' little fool!" "better go easy with the letter," advised dee carelessly. "he'll think it's green-eyed stuff." "not from what i'm going to give him. he tried the half-nelson on me earlier in the evening and got turned down." "well, i had to tell him the strangle hold was barred, myself," remarked dee. "he must have had a busy evening." "thinks he's a boa-constrictor, does he?" commented the beauty viciously. "he'll think he's an apple-worm when he reads my few well-chosen words." "cordially invited not to come back?" "something of that sort." "that was a pretty husky punch, though," mused dee. "con, you don't suppose he fed the scrub any of it?" "yes, he did." "dirty work!" lighting a cigarette dee took a few puffs, but without inhaling. "going to tell mona?" the two older girls habitually spoke of their mother and sometimes to her by her given name. "i don't know. what do you think?" "i think she'd laugh." "dad wouldn't." "dad's old. mona's one of our kind. she's as modern as jazz." "dad may be old but it hasn't slowed him up so much, yet. he was the life of the party." "oh, dad's all right. i'm for him, myself. but he's all for pat. there might be fireworks if he knew she was starting in this early." "there were never any about mona." "meaning?" "well, sid rathbone. and tom merrill. and a few others." "she doesn't interfere with his little amusements, either, if you come to that. have you noticed anything about her lately?" "yes. she looks like a ghost in the mornings." "bobs has been trying to get her to put on the brakes." "funny old bobs! he's pippy on you, isn't he, dee?" "me! i should say not. it's mona." "can you blame him? with her war paint on she's got us both faded." "sometimes when i catch him looking at her with that poodle dog expression of his, i wonder whether there's something really wrong with her." "probably it's just the pace. what'll we be like at her age, if we last that long?" constance's soft mouth hardened as she seated herself at the desk and scratched off the letter which she had been meditating. "there!" she observed at the close. "that will tell mr. warren graves where he gets off." "what about pat? someone ought to tell her where she gets off." "i don't know why they keep her around anyway," said constance discontentedly. "she ought to have been sent away to school last year." "god help the school! she'll give it an education." "going to the club to-night?" asked the elder after a pause. "no." "i thought you had a date with jimmy james for all the saturday dances." "so did he," replied dee calmly. "he was getting too proprietary. so i turned him down." "war is hell," observed her sister with apparent irrelevance. "besides, de severin is coming over from washington for an early round of golf." "so that's it. paul de severin could give me quite a thrill if he went at it right." "not me. i've never seen the man that could, either. something must have been left out of my make-up when i was built." "sometimes i wish it had been left out of mine," said the beauty. "and other times," she added gaily, "i don't. by the way, i'm likely to be in pretty late. so don't let dad lock me out, will you?" "i thought they still pulled the midnight rule for the saturday night dances." "so they do. but the grants are having a small-and-early afterward. somebody slipped will grant a case of bacardi." she sealed her letter with a thump and tossed it into a silver-wicker basket. "keep your rum," said dee with an effect of disdainful connoisseurship. "it gets me nothing but perspiration and a bum eye next day! not even the right kind of kick.... so your princeton laddie fed pat some of the party fluid. did it make her sick?" "no; it didn't make her sick," answered a resentful voice, all on one level tone. pat entered by the rear door. "been listening in?" inquired constance amiably. "i have not. wouldn't waste my time," declared the infant of the family. she cast an eye upon the journal which her sister had laid aside. "what's in t.t. this week? anything rich?" "rapidly growing to womanhood," observed constance to dee in a tone of mock admiration. "talk-party, i suppose," said the intruder. "don't let me interrupt." she strolled purposelessly over to the desk, glanced in the letter box and picked up the letter. "what are you writing to warren graves about?" she demanded. "put that letter back," said constance. "i'm going to look," declared pat uncertainly. her statement was followed by a yell of pain. the letter fell, inviolate, to the floor as dee, who had leapt upon her with the swiftness and precision of a young panther, tortured her arms backward. "if you try to kick i'll break you in two," muttered the athlete. "let go! i won't," wailed pat, who knew and dreaded the other's strength. released, she massaged her aching elbows. "dirty you, though!" she said, scowling at constance. "sneaking a letter off to him that way." "i suppose you'd like to censor it," taunted the writer. "well, if you want to know what's in it, i told him just how old you are and what kind of a silly little ass. i don't think he'll come back for any more baby-kisses." at this pat grinned inwardly. whatever else it may have been, that was no baby-kiss that had passed between them. with her equanimity quite restored she remarked: "you lie." "tasty manners!" commented dee. "i don't know what you've got to say about it," said pat venomously. "i noticed a sedan with all the curtains pulled down just after you disappeared from the house with jimmy james." this was a random shot. it went wide of the target. "cut it, scrubby! cut it!" admonished her sister calmly. "i don't put on any snuggling sketches where everybody can see me." "don't call me scrubby!" choked the girl. "look at yourself," suggested constance, "and see what else you can expect to be called. did you brush your teeth this morning?" "oh, _mind_ your business." "then go and brush them now," said mona's voice from the stairway in its clear and singing cadence. whatever mona said took on the sound and form of music. pat's hoarse and unformed speech had an echo of the same seductive sweetness. the mother entered, adjusting her hat. "i'm lunching in town, kiddies. what's the row?" pat cast a sullenly appealing glance at constance. in vain. "the scrub's been doing a hug with warren graves," announced the elder sister. "i have _not_." mona regarded the flaming face with amused pity. she did not take the news seriously. "did you like him, bambina?" she asked with careless sympathy. a quick, half-suppressed sob answered and surprised her. "he fed her up on the punch," began constance. "and then----" "a very enterprising young man," broke in mrs. fentriss. "i don't think we'll urge him to repeat his visit, connie." "exactly what i'm writing to tell him." "because i pinched him from you," declared pat in a vicious undertone. constance laughed, but not without annoyance. "it's likely, isn't it!" "i made him give me the punch," continued the accused one. "i hated it. i only took one swallow. it wasn't his fault. he told me to go easy on it." the defence of her possession by the girl moved mona; it was so naïvely, primitively feminine. at the same time the look in the childish eyes, dreamy, remembering, unconsciously sensuous, stirred misgivings in the mother's mind. conscious womanhood was perhaps going to burst upon the child explosively; was already in process of realisation, very likely. mona recalled certain developments of her own roused and startled emotions twenty years before. could it be as long ago as that? how vivid to her memory it still was! "never mind," she said in her equable tones. "i dare say the punch was too strong. and the graves boy had more than one swallow. _he_ didn't hate it." "i wrote to him," said pat suddenly. "_you_ did?" the three incredulous voices blended. "yes, i did. he wrote to me. he asked me to answer. he was terribly sorry." "sorry for what?" asked dee. "for--for acting that way. he seemed to think he'd hurt my feelings or something. i told him it was just as much my fault as his." "did you, little pat?" her mother leaned forward to look into the queer, defiant, chivalrous little face. "perhaps you're older than i thought. but i shouldn't write any more, if i were you." "i won't." mona went out, followed by her youngest. in the hallway, pat gave her mother a light, familiar, shy pat on the shoulder. "thanks for standing by me," she said awkwardly. "did i stand by you?" returned mona. "i wonder if i stand by you enough." inside the room, dee mused with a thoughtful, frowning face. "think of the scrub!" she muttered. "what of her?" asked constance. "feeling that way. already." there was a hint of unconscious envy in her manner. "about a man!" she sighed and shook her head incredulously. "it gets me," she confessed. "don't you like to have a man you like kiss you?" inquired constance curiously. dee meditated. "i don't mind it," she answered. "but i'd rather run down a long putt, any day." to dr. robert osterhout, whom she sought out after her return from luncheon (with stevens selfridge) mona detailed the conversation with and about pat. "yes; i know," said he. "how could you know?" "pat told me about young graves." "what! the whole thing?" "so far as i could judge, she didn't leave out much." "why did she tell you? confession? remorse?" "not in the least. she enjoyed the telling. she's very feminine, that child. and very curious about herself." "i hope to god she isn't developing my temperament," reflected the downright mona after a pause. "it would be a dismal joke if the ugly duckling of the flock had that wished on her. poor, pimply little gnome." "ugly? i wouldn't be too sure. the fairy prince from princeton seems to have been quite captivated with her." "and she with him." "that, of course. it was a very awakening kiss for her." "does she realise----" "she said, 'bobs, it made me go weak all over. is chloroform like that?'" "diverting notion! what did you tell her?" "i told her that it wasn't, precisely. then she said, 'what does it mean?' and i said that it might mean danger." "she wouldn't understand that. i've never talked to her." mona, like many women of broad and easy attitude toward sex relations in so far as went her own life, had a reticence in discussing them with other women. "yes; she would. pat's over twelve, you know." "yes; _i_ know. but does she?" "perfectly." "why? she didn't say anything----" "no; she didn't go into the physico-psycho-analysis of her emotions, if that's what you mean, mona. i shouldn't have let her. there's a touch of the morbid in her, anyway. that's the irish strain from her father. but there's a lot of your saving grace, too--your most saving grace." "and what may that be?" "the habit of facing facts squarely; even facts about oneself." "is that a gift or a detriment, bob?" "it's a saving grace, i tell you. little pat is going to look right clean through the petty illusions of life, clear-eyed." "but illusions are the bloom and happiness of life," said mona wistfully. "to play with; not to trust in. oh, she'll have her illusions about others; she's begun already. she's a romantic, as you are not. but her dreams about herself will all be subject to her own detached scrutiny. if ever she comes to dream about a man----" "well? you're being very subtle and analytical, doctor." "--she'll make heaven or hell for him." "bob! men aren't going to waste time over her with pretty dee and lovely connie around." "aren't they! ask young graves. she'll make 'em dream. wait and see." "just what i can't do," said mona quietly. "ah, i didn't mean to say that, bob," she added quickly, catching the contraction of pain that altered his face. "well," she mused, brushing her hair back from her broad brow, "i can't quite see it in pat myself. but perhaps you're right. you ought to know. you're a man." chapter v dawn was tinting the high clouds when mary delia awoke. she had the gift of coming forth from sleep in full and instant possession of her faculties. now she felt that something was amiss; something insistent and troublesome going on below her window. she jumped from bed, crossed the room, and looked out upon the shrubbery-encircled driveway. voices came up to her, restrained and cautious, a man's and a woman's. she recognised the latter. "hush, you two!" she called, low but imperiously. the man stepped into view. to her surprise it was not emslie selfridge but fred browning. he was in evening dress, a little wilted, and his eyes looked hot and anxious; but he retained evident command of himself. "that you, dee?" he whispered loudly, peering up. "yes. what's the matter? anything wrong?" "no. connie can't get in." dee smothered an exclamation. with dismay she recalled her sister's request that she leave the door unlocked. but she had not dreamed that the party at the grants' would last as late as this. "i'll be right down," she promised. turning the dim corner from the stairway she stumbled upon a smoking-stand and overturned it with a din which made her heart stand still. expectant and fearful she halted, poised and listening. no sound or stir came from above. cautiously she felt her way forward and unlocked the door. constance was standing at the corner of the porch. her hair was dishevelled and luminous, her eyes softly heavy. there was a stain across the bodice of her evening dress. as the door opened she was releasing her lips from the man's kiss. "take care of her, dee," said browning, and was gone. "and what do you think of _that_?" challenged constance as she paused by the threshold. dee's answer might have seemed inconsecutive. "you _are_ a beautiful thing, con." "am i? perhaps it's just as well that i am." there was a grimness in the sweet voice. "why that?" "i'd be out of luck if i weren't." "the grants' party must have been a hurrah." "not so much. it got too slow for me before two o'clock." "did it? where have you been all night?" "motoring." "you don't look very dusty," observed the shrewd dee. "perhaps you think i'm not telling you the truth." "it's no affair of mine," returned dee easily. "well, i'm not," continued the elder sister. "come into the conservatory." she led the way across the living room, dragging her feet a little as she walked. "now, if you want to know," she continued defiantly, "i'll tell you. i've been in fred browning's rooms." "that's nice!" observed dee. "what's the idea?" "i had to go somewhere. i couldn't come home." "drunk?" dee shot out the monosyllable with a sharpness which made the other wince. but she answered promptly: "i was that. and i wasn't the only one. that bacardi rum is hell." "who was with you?" "nobody." "you and fred? alone?" "yes." "_con!_" "i know. but i was so sick." "at the party?" "no. i wasn't any worse than the rest. everyone was going strong. emslie had a wonder!" "what will he think?" "he's done his thinking," returned the beauty obstinately. "he pulled a rotten grouch because i danced too much with freddie at the club, and after we got to the grants' he wouldn't pay any attention to anything but the punch. not that i cared. i was enjoying life with freddie. so we decided to pull out at two o'clock." "yes; but if you were all right then----" "i was until we got into his car. then the punch hit me. it was the change into the air, i suppose. i went all to pieces, just as we were passing his apartment. so he took me in there. it wasn't his fault. i was terribly sick and then awfully sleepy, and when i woke up----" "woke up?" "yes. fred was bathing my face and telling me that i had to pull myself together and go home.... what are you looking at me that way for, dee?" she concluded plaintively. "con, did anything happen?" "anything happen?" repeated the other in a dreamy voice. "i--i--don't know." "you don't _know_! you must know." "yes; i would, wouldn't i? though i was completely sunk. anything might have happened," said she, slowly nodding her lovely hair-beclouded head. "con! think!" urged dee with impatient anxiety. "i wouldn't care," declared the beauty recklessly. "i'm crazy about freddie.... but it didn't; no, i'm sure of that now. freddie's an awfully decent sort, dee." "he hasn't too pious a reputation. and when did you take on this sudden hunch for him? i thought it was emslie." "so did i. until--dee, did you ever have a man that you've always known suddenly look different to you?" "no. not enough different, anyway, to make any difference." "it's hard to explain. something in the way he affects you changes and all the world changes with it. that's how it was with fred, and, i suppose the same way about me with him. though he claims he's been mad about me for months." "that's a blessing, considering," remarked dee grimly. "suppose you were seen going into his place?" "we weren't." "so far as you know." "if we should have been, it's a sweet little scandal for the cats, isn't it!" "in that case it's up to freddie. it's up to freddie anyway." "freddie's all right," declared connie with conviction. "if he hadn't been--dee, when i came to, i told him i didn't want to go home." "you wanted to stay?" said the sister slowly. constance nodded. "i wasn't quite sobered up. but anyway i did want to stay. you can't understand that, can you?" "no; i can't." "because you're a cold-blooded little fish. i'm still feeling that dam' bacardi or i wouldn't be talking to you this way." "was fred feeling it, too?" "if he was, he had a grip on himself all right. he's a lot squarer man than people give him credit for, dee." "lucky for you he is." "oh, i don't know. what's the difference!" retorted connie perversely. "i guess those sort of things happen a lot more often than any of us know about." "what sort of things?" interpolated a voice new to the parley. the two sisters whirled about. just outside the door stood patricia in her tousled nightgown, hot-eyed with curiosity. "what sort of things?" she repeated. "how long have you been there?" demanded mary delia. "long enough to hear a lot," answered the unperturbed patricia. "since before you asked con did anything happen, and she said first she didn't know and afterward that it didn't. what did you mean? _what_ didn't happen?" with a sudden pounce the lithe dee was upon her and held her, half-choked against the wall. "if you breathe a word of this, scrubs, i'll half kill you." "leh--heh-heh--me alone!" whimpered pat. "i'm not going to tell anybody." "see that you don't, then." "you told on me about warren graves." "that was different." "how, different?" "you're only a child. you've no business playing silly tricks like that." "wasn't it a silly trick of con to----" "go back to bed," ordered dee with a powerful shake which seemed to the unfortunate victim to loosen her eyes in their sockets. she crept away but paused at the door to say wistfully and sullenly: "just the same, i think you might tell me what didn't happen." late the next afternoon fred browning came to the house, having called up constance at noon. dee came down to him. "is everything all right, dee?" he asked anxiously. the girl nodded. "yes. the family didn't wake up. i'll send con down right away." but before constance arrived, little pat entered the side room where he was nervously waiting. she looked at him solemnly, entreatingly, hesitatingly, then burst out: "mr. browning, will you tell me something?" her earnestness amused him. "why, of course," he said, quite unsuspecting. "i always like to help the young to knowledge. but don't make it too hard." "what was it that might have happened to con last night, that the girls wouldn't tell me about?" he stared at her, completely aghast. "you young devil!" he breathed. constance's quick footsteps sounded on the stairs, and the inquirer was fain to flee, unsated of her curiosity. but she peered back, and her breath came quicker as she saw her pretty sister walk straight, eager, and unashamed into the man's waiting arms. pat deemed it the part of prudence to keep herself aloof the rest of the day. later fred browning had a cocktail with mr. fentriss and a brief talk on the subject of constance. and so they were married. chapter vi moth-like, patricia hovered around the mystic radiance of constance's wedding festivities. they had let her come home from school for the occasion. reckoned too young for a bridesmaid and too old for a flower-girl she occupied an anomalous and unofficial position in the party. dee, who, as maid of honour, had opportunity to exercise her executive faculties in managing the details, found her irritatingly in the way. "under your feet all the time," said she to the bride. "the kid is crazy with curiosity. i never heard so many questions." "yes," assented constance fretfully. "she keeps asking me how i feel and staring at me as if i were going to die or have an operation or something." dee laughed. "she got hold of fred yesterday and put him through a catechism while he was waiting for you to come down. he actually looked rattled." "she's a pest, that child! school doesn't seem to have toned her down a bit." "at least it's taken the slump out of her shoulders. she's got a kind of boyish swagger that isn't bad. for her kind of style, i mean." "oh, style!" repeated the elder sister contemptuously. "she'll never have any more style than a kitten. i wish you'd keep her out of my way." to accomplish this, however, would have entailed an almost continuous vigilance. the elaborate ceremonial of marriage and giving in marriage with its trappings and appurtenances, its vestigial suggestions of sexual-sacrificial import, its underlying and provocative symbolism had stirred in the youngest member of the family an imagination as inflammable as it was unself-comprehending. constance's matter-of-fact mind could not interpret the eager and searching scrutiny of her sister, though it made her restless and uneasy and vaguely shamed her. the afternoon before the wedding, pat tiptoed in upon her as she was resting on mona's sleeping-porch. "connie," she half whispered. "well?" returned the bride crossly. "where are you going?" "going? i'm trying to rest." "where are you going after you're married? to a hotel?" "what do you want to know for?" demanded the elder sister, raising herself on her elbow to look at the younger. "nothing. i just wanted to know." "well, you won't. not from me." "oh, verra-well! you needn't get all fussed up about it." "oh, _don't_ be hateful, pat. i want to rest." "i'll go in just a minute. but---- con?" the bride sighed, a martyrized sigh. "what is it?" "when you get back--when i get back from school, will you tell me?" "what is the child getting at! tell you what?" "everything." "i don't know what you mean," fended constance. "yes, you do. you know." the older girl flushed a slow pink, then laughed. "you're a funny little monkey! why should you want to know?" "well, i've got to go through it sometime, myself, haven't i?" reasoned the girl. "oh, have you! well, you can find out then." "i think you're mean. you'd tell dee if she asked you." "i wouldn't tell _anyone_. it's disgusting to be so--so prying. where do you get such ideas?" pat reflected before answering. "don't all girls have 'em?" "if they do, they don't talk about them." "oh, that's all bunk," declared the cheerful pat. "if you've got the idea inside you, you might as well spit it out.... i'll bet men tell." the bride looked at the clever, eager, childish face with sudden panic. "if i thought they did," she began, but immediately broke off, taking a plaintive, invalidish tone. "do go away, scrubs! you're making my head ache. and for heaven's sake, don't stare at me to-morrow like you have to-day. it gives me the creeps." "it gives me the thrills," returned the alarmingly outspoken ingénue, as she danced out. throughout the ceremony of the following day, pat's interest was divided between the bride and an equally absorbing prepossession. she had, so she told herself, fallen desperately in love with one of the ushers, a boston man named vincent. to her infatuated eyes he was _adorably_ handsome, and _so_ romantic looking, though quite old. probably thirty! on the previous evening he had chatted casually with her for five minutes, finding the odd, eager child with the sombre eyes and the effortful affectation of grown-up-ness mildly amusing. going up the aisle he had made her heart leap by giving her a little friendly nod. during the ceremony she brooded on him, building up the airiest of vague and roseate sentimentalities for the far future, and for the near, nursing the belief that he would surely seek her out as soon as possible at the reception. when she saw him, later, quite forgetful of her in his interest in virginia platt, a slight, flashing brunette of the wedding party, she was both chilled and infuriated. he did not even ask her to dance, though once he crossed the floor toward her, only to turn aside at the last, hopeful moment. it was terrible to be young and queer looking, though she had done her careful best for her elfish little face and immature figure. others came for dances, however; selden thorpe, the rector's son, the most often. him she deemed "interesting looking," with his pale face, bristly hair, and hard, grey eyes, typical of the unconscious egotist. though he danced well, here pat could overmatch him, for she had the passion of rhythmic movement in her blood. "you've got the fairy foot all right, little one," said he, investing the epithet with his conscious sophomoric superiority. pat felt offended. she wanted so much to be grown-up that evening. but she feared to alienate her escort's budding interest if she showed any resentment. "anyone can dance with as good a dancer as you are," she replied sweetly. he gave her an appreciative glance. "can they? i guess we could enter for a prize all right." "we could make some of 'em hustle to beat us," she declared gaily. "could you make a getaway some evening, and we'd slip over and try it out at one of the big places?" "would you take me?" she cried, delighted. but her face fell. "there won't be time. i'm going back to school." the talk languished after this disappointment. the number was over and they were seated in a remote corner of the little conservatory. thorpe wondered what he could find to talk to this kid about. "engine completely stalled," he thought ruefully. on her part, patricia experienced a sense of dismal vacancy. what was there in her mental repertoire to interest this worldly collegian? the memory of the party at which she had seen him gambling came to mind as a hopeful bridge over the widening conversational chasm. "been winning much lately?" she asked brightly. "winning?" he looked puzzled. "at what?" "craps. i heard you stung the crowd for a hundred dollars at our party." he was flattered and lofty. "oh, i did pretty well. where'd you hear about it? you weren't at the party." "not for long," confessed pat. "but i was among those present for a little while." connection of ideas recalled to her warren graves and his light-hearted allure. she wished he were beside her on the settee instead of selden. she could almost hear his voice, bantering and tender, "sweetie," and feel the warm pressure of his arm. with him there would have been no anxious necessity of searching for topics of conversation, whereas with selden---- why not experiment a little, she thought, daringly. she let her hand slip carelessly from her lap to her side. it came into touch with his. the contact gave her a shock as unexpected as it was painful. she had failed to notice that he held a lighted cigarette. "ouch!" said pat, and licked the wounded knuckle with a sharp, pink tongue like a young animal's. "let's see," said the youth. he took her hand, glanced at it, and set his lips to the reddened skin cavalierly enough. "that better?" he asked. pat nodded. she stared intently at the solaced spot wondering what the progress of the game would be. in thorpe's inured mind there was no room for surmise. to him this was all formula, the parliamentary procedure of casual love-making. he drew the yielding fingers into his left hand and slipped his right arm across the slim, girlish shoulders. she leaned back a little from his embrace. "well?" he questioned, an easy laugh on his lips. "well, what?" she whispered. he bent and kissed her. it was a quick kiss, adventurous and playful. not so had warren graves's eager and searching lips closed down upon hers. pat was both disappointed of her expected thrill, and unaccountably relieved and reassured. a queer, inward fluttering which had unbalanced her thoughts for the moment when the appropriative arm encircled her, was stilled. suddenly she felt quite mistress of herself and the situation. she proceeded now according to a formula which she was improvising, and which millions of girls had improvised before her. "what did you do that for?" she murmured. "didn't you want me to?" pat abandoned her formula before it was fairly under way. "i suppose i did," she admitted. expectant of the usual "no," he was startled, amused, and a little roused. "did you?" he said. he drew her closer, bent his mouth to hers again, felt a swift stir at the sweet, soft pressure, followed by a sensible chilling as she turned away to say thoughtfully: "i wonder why i did." "you're a queer kid," he observed genuinely. "but there's something mighty sweet about you." "is there?" she cried, charmed with the direct flattery. "i suppose you wanted me to because you like me," he pursued. "wasn't that it?" "i don't know. i like being petted." "oh! _do_ you? by any-old-body?" "i don't know," she repeated. "i've never been but once before." "did you like that better than this?" "it was different." "different?" his interest and curiosity were piqued; his vanity, too. "well, i can make it different, too." "no," choked pat in sudden panic as she felt his lean, sinewy arms encircle her crushingly. "don't, sel!" she twitched her face away from his. immediately her alarm gave place to a stimulus of sheer delight. she had distinctly felt him tremble. an epochal discovery! for she was, herself, quite cool. she possessed then the mysterious power to arouse men out of themselves, while remaining self-possessed, to affect them in this strange manner more than she herself was moved. "pat, dear!" whispered the youth, avid and insistent. he had ceased to seem formidably old to her now; she was his superior. she kissed him again, but lightly and pushed him back. "bad bunny!" she mocked. "we ought not to, sel." "oh, what's the harm?" "someone might come in." "come outside, then." "oh, let's go back and dance. i'm afraid of you." she gave him a sidelong glance with this gratuitous lie. "come, i love this trot." they danced it out, he holding her closer than before, she letting her cheek press his from time to time. she yearned to the feeling of his young strength, yet was quite content for the time, with the experience of the evening as far as it had gone. when they returned to the conservatory again, she made him sit in a chair opposite to her. his sophomoric assurance was quite tempered down; the unformed child whom he had danced with condescendingly and as a kindness earlier in the evening, was become imperatively desirable now. he chafed at her aloof attitude. "i'm coming to see you," he said with an attempt at masterfulness in his tone. "i'll come to-morrow. keep the evening open." she shook her head. "i'm going back to school." "are you?" he looked dispirited. "will you write to me, pat?" "can't." "well--you'll be home for vacation, won't you?" "of course." "so'll i. i was going to a house party on staten island. but if you'll be here i'm coming back." "will you?" her tone was almost indifferent, though she was aflame with triumph, inwardly. "that's nice of you." "i will if you'll be glad to see me." "of course i will." "awfully glad?" he pressed. "oh, i don't know about all that," replied pat, the coquette. "you're going to kiss me good-bye?" he pleaded. "perhaps. just a little one." when she had slipped from his embrace, her gaze was far away. "what are you thinking of now?" he asked jealously. "of connie." "what of her?" "i wonder where they are now. i was thinking," she continued as if speaking to herself, "that i'd like to see her to-morrow morning." "why to-morrow morning?" asked thorpe. he was a youth of slow imagination, but he was not stupid. suddenly he laughed. "oh!" he cried. "so _that's_ the idea! you little devil!" "no; it isn't," denied pat, her cheeks flaming, and ran back to the ballroom. at the entrance she collided with scott vincent, who was looking for a vanished partner. "pardon!" he said, cleverly saving her from a recoil against the door! "oh; it's the infanta!" he looked into her vivid face with appreciative amusement. "don't you want to give me this dance?" he asked. her hot cheeks cooled. she considered him appraisingly though her heart beat quicker. he was so very good to look at! "no; i don't," she replied. "no?" he laughed. "you're frank, at least. perhaps you'll be franker and tell me why." "because you didn't ask me earlier." "indeed! but i hadn't seen you," he protested, surprised at himself at being put upon the defensive by this child. "i don't like not being seen," retorted pat, with a calmness worthy of an experienced flirt. "well, i'm damned!" said vincent softly, under his breath. he began to be interested in this quaint specimen. "oh! come! give me a chance to make amends. how about a little supper?" "no," answered pat with perverse satisfaction. "i'm going to bed. good-night, mr. too-late." she darted away from him, triumphantly satisfied of having left a barb behind her. he wouldn't forget her soon, _she'd_ bet! at the turn of the stairs she peeped down expectantly. sure enough! there he stood staring after her, his comely face clouded with perplexity and disappointment. it gave pat a sudden heating of the blood; but this was the thrill of satisfaction, of something achieved, quite different from the unsated yet delicious longing experienced when she had looked down before from that same vantage point upon warren graves. even more than before she was aware of a power within herself, perhaps greater than herself, to allure men. and subtly, profoundly, she felt that the touchstone of that power was denial. scott vincent would remember her, selden thorpe would think of her with longing, because she had denied them both. pat slept happily that night, the sleep of a little venus victrix. chapter vii it was to her second daughter that mona fentriss made, after due thought, disclosure of her condition. dee was shocked and incredulous. she had no profound affection for her mother. none of the girls had. but mona had always been _bonne camarade_ with them in her casual and light-hearted way. and she had made, as few women make, the atmosphere of her home. without her the house was almost unthinkable; it would not be the same place; not only sadder and duller, but essentially different. in this way chiefly would she be missed. "you'll have to be the one to carry on the housekeeping job, dee." "i?" said mary delia. "mother, i don't know the first thing about it." "you'll learn. you're clever." "besides, i can't believe that you're going to--that you're right about yourself." "ask dr. bob." "he's been hinting at something. but he seemed afraid to come out with it when i tried to follow up. is that the reason why you wanted me to marry bobs?" "partly." "i can't seem to think of him in that way. but then, i can't seem to think of any man in that way." "not even jimmy james?" "not even jimmy, much as i like him." "when we talked about this before you said----" "yes; i know. probably i'll marry him one of these days. but when he tries to make love to me, i curl up a little. am i abnormal, mona?" "i don't know," answered mona reflectively. "we women are queer machines, dee. perhaps it's just that jimmy isn't the right man." "then i haven't met the right man yet. it would be pretty weird if he came along afterward, wouldn't it? so perhaps i'd better wait." "no; i think perhaps you'd better not, if you really like jimmy. there might not be any right man for you, in that sense. some of us are made that way." "yes; i suppose so. but why choose me to run the house? con would do it better, wouldn't she?" "possibly. but if she's to do it, i'd have to tell her what i've just told you. and i don't want to break in on her happiness." "oh, happiness," murmured dee in a curious tone. "you don't think she's happy?" queried the mother. "or perhaps you don't believe in that kind of happiness. cynicism at your age is a pose." "it isn't that. but i don't believe con and freddie are going too well together." "why not?" "freddie's hitting the booze quite a bit. besides, he hasn't as much money as con thought. not nearly. and she's a high-speed little spender, you know." "yes; she's certainly that," agreed mona, bethinking herself of the monthly bills which came in after the eldest sister's allowance had been expended in a variety of manners for which the spender was cheerfully unable to account. "doing fifty thousand dollar things on a fifteen thousand dollar income won't speed 'em up the road to happiness," opined the shrewd dee. "she'll make a hash of it, if she doesn't pull up." "doesn't she care for fred, do you think?" "in one way she's crazy about him." dee's curled lip suggested the way; also that she neither comprehended nor sympathised with it. but mona laughed, relieved. "well; that's rather essential, you know, in marriage. i'll talk to connie about extravagance when i come back." "as a preacher on that text," began dee wickedly; then bent over to give her mother's hand an awkward and remorseful pat. "i'll do the best i can, of course. and don't think i'm not--not feeling pretty rotten over this," she continued, huskily and a little shamefully, like a boy caught in a display of emotion.... "you say, when you come back. going away?" "oh, just a run over to philadelphia to spend a couple of days with the barhams," replied mona carelessly. "you and i will have to do a little figuring about the housekeeping, too, on my return. and you can pass it on to pat when you get married." "pat! she'll be a grand little housekeeper when her turn comes. i pity poor dad." "she and your father understand each other, though, in a way," mused mona. having meditated over this conversation with dubious feelings, dee, who had a sane instinct for facts, went to call on dr. osterhout at the little laboratory attached to his bungalow. this was on a tuesday. her mother had left the previous noon. osterhout emerged from rapt contemplation of a test tube to find the girl standing over him. "hullo," he said. "what are you invading a bachelor's quarters at this hour for?" "afraid of being compromised, bobs?" she retorted. "hadn't thought of it. why put such alarming ideas into my head? but my reputation will stand it if yours will. besides, a physician is immune. one of the perquisites of the profession." "it's as a physician that i want to talk to you." his face changed; became grave and solicitous. "what's wrong?" "i want to know about mona." "has she told you anything?" "yes." "i've wanted her to for some time." "then it's true." "yes; it's true." "how long, bobs?" "uncertain. it isn't progressing as fast as i feared. but--not very long, dee." he spoke with effort. "a year?" "perhaps. if she's careful." "but she isn't careful. you know mona." "no. she isn't. it isn't in her to be." "ought she to be running off on trips?" "of course not. but i can't stop her." a note of weariness, of defeat had come into his brusque voice. "poor old bobs!" the girl went to him and set a hand on his shoulder, brushing his cheek with her fingers as she did so. there was nothing repellent to her sensitiveness in contact with him, nothing of the revulsion which she experienced under the eager touch of men, tentatively love-making. bobs wasn't like a man to her so much as like a faithful and noble-spirited dog. "it's hard on you, isn't it?" she murmured. his eyes thanked her for her understanding and sympathy. "it isn't easy," he confessed. "i won't hurt you any more. but just one question; is it quite hopeless?" "i can't see any chance of cure." "poor old bobs!" she said again, this time in a whisper. "if i were a man i'm sure i should be wild about mona. i can see that even if she is my mother. she's so lovely; and she's so young; and she's"--dee smiled--"she's such a bad child." "no; she's not," he defended doggedly. "she's just a little spoiled because life has always petted her. and now the petting is almost over." "yes. that's hard to believe, isn't it? of mona! she's always had her own way with everyone and everything. but she's got courage. she won't flinch. bobs, do you remember a talk we three had, months ago?" "yes." "i'd like to do something for her before--something that she wanted. and for you, too. it wouldn't do any good, would it," she asked wistfully, "if i were to marry you?" "not a bit." she smiled, awry, but withal, relieved. "what a bear you are! isn't that your phone ringing?" "let it ring. this isn't office hours." "a hint for me? having proposed and been rejected, i'm off." she brushed his cheek again. "old boy," she said, "it _is_ going to be tough going for you. worse than for any of us. good-bye." concentration upon his work being dissipated by this disturbing visit, osterhout threw himself on the settee and dropped out of the world into a chasm of dark musings. if mona had ever really cared for him, he mused--if he had been her lover--might he have been her lover, as she had hinted?--had she lovers? or were the other men merely playthings of her wayward moods, of her craving for excitement, for adulation, for the sunlit warmth of being loved? at least he had not been a plaything; her regard for and trust in him were true and sincere. better these, perhaps, than the turmoil and uncertainty of---- yet, that temptation that she had held out to him; was it just an instance of her wickeder bent of coquetry?... or could he have made her care?... damn that telephone! he roused himself with a wrench and went into the next room where the intrusive mechanism was thrilling. long-distance had been trying to get him.... wait a moment.... a man's voice, low, eager and strained came to his ear over the wire. "dr. osterhout?" "yes." "can you come to trenton immediately? by the next train?" "who is speaking?" "it's very important," went on the nervous and insistent voice. "it's a--a very important case. critical." "who are you?" "is that necessary?" queried the voice, after a pause. "certainly. do you suppose that i am going out on any wild-goose, anonymous call?" "then i was to say," said the voice, "that mona needs you." "mona! is she ill?" "yes." "where?" "here, in trenton." "where in trenton?" "at the marcus groot hotel. you'll be met at the train. for god's sake say you'll come." "i can get the one o'clock," said osterhout. "good-bye." going over on the train he had time for scalding meditations. mona in trenton! at the marcus groot hotel. when she was supposedly visiting the barhams at their philadelphia apartment. and all this atmosphere of secrecy thrown about it by the unknown man. but was he unknown? the voice had seemed dimly familiar to osterhout. surely, he had heard it before. feverishly he mustered in his mind mona's admirers, canvassed them over, vacillated between this and that one, and shook with a jealous and amazed rage which horrified while it tore at him, as sidney rathbone hurried up the platform to meet him. but in a moment he had mastered himself. "thank god, you're here!" "how is she?" "a good deal easier. she's been terribly ill." "heart?" "yes. she wouldn't let me call any local physician." "when was she taken?" inquired osterhout as he stepped into the waiting taxi. "this morning. about eight o'clock." in his anxiety rathbone was beyond any considerations of concealment; the revelation was absolute when, at the hotel, he took osterhout directly to the suite of rooms, as one having the right. mona greeted the newcomer with a smile, grateful, pleading, pitiful. mutely it said: "don't be too harsh in your judgment of me." hardening himself to his professional state of mind, osterhout made his swift, assured, detailed examination. "what's the verdict?" whispered mona. he nodded encouragingly. "you'll be all right," he said reassuringly. from his case he produced some pellets. "not an opiate?" she asked rebelliously. "i want to talk to you." "no. it's a stimulant. but i think you'd better not try to talk for a while." "i must ... sid, dear, go into the other room, won't you?" rathbone nodded, speechless for the moment. his hollowed eyes were full of the slow tears of relief. he bent over the sick woman's face for a moment and was gone, obediently. "i want to tell you," said mona, as soon as the door had closed, "about this." "there isn't any need," returned osterhout. "no. there isn't," agreed mona. "the situation explains itself, doesn't it?" she smiled at him, equably but without hardihood. "it does." "are you being my wise doctor or my reproachful friend? are you thinking to yourself: 'mona, i wouldn't have thought it of you!' because, if you are----" "i'm not." "you mean that you would have thought it of me. how dare you, bobs!" she demanded elfishly. he did not respond to her raillery, which he recognised for the expression of tortured nerves. "i wish you wouldn't talk," he said. "i will," she retorted mutinously. "it won't hurt me. at worst, it won't hurt me nearly as much as to hold in what i want to say. bobs, was this attack brought on by--by my foolishness?" "very possibly. it certainly didn't help any," he replied grimly. "suppose i'd died here," she mused. "i very nearly did." "so i should judge." "what a scandal there'd have been! and what a text for the pious! 'the wages of sin is death.' d'you believe that, bobs?" "it's a useful bogey to scare people who are more timid than they are wicked." "i'm not timid," she proclaimed. "and i don't feel particularly wicked. only anxious over how this is going to turn out." "what did you do it for, mona?" he burst out painfully. she gave him a sidelong glance. "oh, i don't know. boredom. and he begged me so. poor sid! he does love me." "the dirty scoundrel! if he loved you, would he----" "of course he would!" she broke in, with impatient contempt. "don't indulge in cheap melodrama. it's because people are in love that they take risks like this." "then you love him," said osterhout dolorously. "i don't know. he sways me. but--i don't think i'm in love with him, as you mean it." "yet you----" "yet i came here with him. does that seem so terrible to you?" she spoke in a tone of half-tender mockery. "i can't understand it, except on the ground that you love him." "because you don't understand me. and there are twenty-one different definitions of love." "do you understand yourself?" "yes; i do," she asserted thoughtfully and boldly. "and i'm not afraid to accept myself as i am. i don't shut my eyes to the picture just because it's my own. i'm not a sneak." "no. you're not that." "and if i take the chances i'm ready to face the consequences," she said without defiance, but as one who enunciates a principle of life. "the consequences? of this?" "if necessary. it isn't the first time." he winced and shrank. "ah, i'm sorry if that hurt you!" she cried contritely. "never mind. there are others than me to be thought of." "you do the thinking, bobs. i'm not up to it." "i will." "that's like you," she murmured gratefully. "where are you supposed to be staying?" "at the barhams', on walnut street. only sue is at home." "can you arrange it with her?" "to back up my lies? yes; sue will stand by." it was characteristic of mona fentriss that she should use the short, ugly, and veracious word. "then i shall take you to a philadelphia hospital." "am i as bad as that?" "it's the simplest way to cover the trail. you were taken ill at the barhams'; you wired for me to avoid alarming the family, and i had you transferred to the hospital. but there's a risk." "of being trapped?" "not that so much. of bringing on another attack." "you'll be with me, won't you?" "yes. we'll get a car and take you over." "then i'm not afraid," she said trustfully. "but--'we'; do you mean that sid is going along?" "i supposed you'd want him." "i don't." wise though he was in human nature, mona was always surprising osterhout. he made no comment, but went into the front room. rathbone, his finely cut face mottled and livid, lurched heavily out of his chair. "is she going to die?" he asked, looking pitifully unlike the traditional villain of such a drama. "perhaps," returned the physician shortly. "because of--was it this that brought on the attack?" osterhout eyed him with grim distaste. "it didn't help any," he answered, as he had answered mona. "good god! if she dies through my fault----" "you should have thought of that before." "i love her so!" groaned the man. his face changed. "i'll know what to do," he muttered in quiet, self-centred determination. "and what's that?" demanded the physician. "nothing," replied the other, startled and sullen. osterhout reached him in three steps. "suicide, perhaps," he said. "that's my business." "it is. if you're a low, dirty coward." rathbone straightened. "i won't take that from any man." "lower your voice, you fool! and listen to me. if she dies and you kill yourself, do you realize what that would mean? it would be advertising this situation to the world. scandal and shame for the family. oh, it's an easy way out for you. but can't you be man enough to think of others a little?" "isn't it scandal and shame anyway?" "no. it isn't," returned the doctor energetically. "i'm going to get her out of it. all you have to do is to obey orders." "i'll do that," said rathbone eagerly and brokenly. "i'll do anything you say. and if ever i can repay you----" "if you try to thank me i'll kill you!" retorted osterhout, snarling and livid, suddenly losing control of himself in his jealous anguish of soul. the other stared in his face, amazed but unalarmed by the outbreak. "ah!" he breathed. "so that's the way it is with you. well--god help you! i'm sorry. but i know now you'll do your best for her. that's all i care about." he turned toward the door of the room. for the moment osterhout started forward to intercept him, then drew back with a face in which shone the bitterness of yielding to a superior right. when rathbone returned, both men had recovered their self-command. "get your things together; send for a maid to pack hers; settle your bill, and get the easiest riding car you can find to go to philadelphia," were the physician's brief directions. "where are you going to take her?" "to a hospital." "when can i see her?" "that is for her to say." "then you don't think she's going to--that there is any immediate danger?" said the lover hopefully. "i think she'll pull through this time, though there is still danger." "i'm glad you're with her," said rathbone simply, and went. quite as much time was devoted by dr. osterhout in the days immediately following to covering the devious trail of his patient as to treating her medically. after a consultation with mrs. barham, in which each solemnly pretended that the other entertained no suspicion of mona's slip, he wrote a heedfully worded letter of misinformation and assurance to ralph fentriss, explaining that his wife had been taken to the hospital after a mild attack, more for rest than anything else; that no member of the family was to come over, and that she would be in condition to return home in a few days. this latter was true, for mona's recuperative powers were great. none of the family came. but to osterhout's surprise, he ran upon patricia while walking down broad street on sunday. she was with a pretty and smartly dressed girl a little older than herself. "what are you doing here, pat?" he demanded. "week-ending with cissie parmenter." with an aplomb amusing in one so young she indicated her companion. "she's my b.f. at school. cissie, this is dr. bobs. you know about him." "yes, indeed. how d'you do, dr. osterhout." "and what manner of creature is a b.f.?" asked he quizzically, taking the extended hand which was ornamented with a valuable ruby. "best friend, of course, stupid bobs," returned pat. "what kind of a bat are you on down here?" "your mother's been ill. she's in hospital here," he answered and immediately wondered whether he had not spoken unwisely. "hospital?" pat opened wide eyes. "is it dangerous?" "no. she's coming along very well." "take me to see her." she turned to cissie. "i'm plunged, ciss, but the luncheon's off for me. tell the boys. you may have my c.t. see you this afternoon." "i don't know that you ought--" began osterhout, but was cut short by a quick: "then she's worse than you pretend." "no; but i don't want her excited. however, you may see her," he decided. he took her to the hospital and left her there with her mother. on his return for his evening's visit he asked: "how long did the bambina stay?" "we had a long talk. bob, did you notice any change in pat?" "no; i don't think i did. i wasn't thinking about her." mona's beautiful eyes grew pensive. "but you were right about her; what you said before." "as to what?" "she is going to be attractive to men in her own queer style. there's something about her, a femininity--no, a sheer femaleness that's going to make trouble." "for her or for others?" "for her possibly, because of its effect on others. she understands it a little herself, already, for she's very precocious. and she's proud of it. but she's afraid of it, too. such a talk as we've had! she's a frank little beast. your respectable hairs would have stood on end. i've been frank with her, too. i had to be; there may not be much time. _morituri te_--what's the silly latin, bob?... oh, don't look like that, my dear! i didn't mean to hurt you. and i've hurt you so much, haven't i?" "it doesn't matter." "because you're so good to me. so it does matter. why are you so good to me, bob?" "you know, mona." "but i want to hear you say it.... no; i don't! that's my badness coming out again. and i'm going to be good now in the time remaining to me. can't you see me, with a saintly expression of face and piously folded hands, waiting submissively like--like somebody on a sampler? somebody very woolly?" in spite of his pain he smiled. "that's better," she cried gaily. "cheer up. i want you in good mood because i've something to ask you. there's something i want you awfully to do, and you won't want to do it." "is it very foolish?" he asked indulgently. "imbecile to the verge of asininity.... do you believe in spiritualism?" "no." "what a flat and flattening negative. but i'm not to be flattened. if you don't believe in it, there couldn't be any harm in carrying out my silly little scheme." "which is?" "i'm going to want to know about pat. if i don't, i'll worry." "about pat?" he queried, not comprehending. "but, as she's away at school i'll be no more in touch with her than you." "i'm talking about afterwards." "afterwards?" "yes. after i'm dead. what makes you so slow, bob? i want you to write me." "what? spirit letters? through some cheap fraud of a medium?" "oh, no! direct." "do you believe they'd reach you, my letters?" he asked sadly. "not the letters themselves, certainly. i don't know that i actually _believe_ anything about it. but what is in the letters might sift through to me in some way we don't understand. it _might_, bob," she pleaded. "i've heard of strange cases. and, anyway, i should think you'd like to write, in case you miss me." "miss you!" he repeated hoarsely. "yes; i'll miss you." "then wouldn't you give up just a little, tiny time to writing me?" she cajoled. "just a promise to please silly me. after i'm dead you needn't keep it, you know, if you don't believe that i'll know." "any promise i made you i'd keep, living or dead. what would i do with the letters if i did write?" "you know the built-in desk-safe in my room? you could put them there. you'll have the combination, for you're to be executor of my will. there's a large drawer at the bottom.... of course it's all foolishness. but--won't you?" "you know i'll do anything you ask." "yes; i know. poor old bob! write me about all the girls; but principally pat, just as if she were yours, too; all that you'd hope for her and fear for her; her problems and growth and dangers. she'll have 'em. perhaps i'll come back, a haunt, and read your letters--you must make 'em very wise, bob--and whisper your wisdom in the ear of pat's queer little soul, and warn her if need be.... bob, do you know what i really want for the girls?" "i might guess." "not goodness; that's for plain girls. nor virtue, particularly; that's more or less of a scarecrow. i want happiness for them." "only a little, easy thing like that?" he taunted gently. "well, i've had it; a lot of it. 'i've taken my fun where i found it.' bob, i'm a pagan thing! and perhaps after i've gone where the good pagans go, i'll send word back to you and invite you to follow--if it's a proper place for a dear old fogy like you. it may not be an orthodox heaven, old boy. but there'll be something doing if mona goes there!" but it was not until six months later and from her own house that lovely, pagan mona fentriss went to her own place. went with an expectant soul and a smile on her lips, unafraid in the face of the great, dim guess as she had been in every threat that life had held over her. part ii chapter viii the front door-button was out of commission. since constance had come to live at holiday knoll, bringing her husband with her and taking over the management of the place, the bell had developed a habit of being out of order. so had many other fixtures, schedules, and household appurtenances. constance always meant to put them aright, and sometimes did. but they never seemed to stay put. as a housekeeper, ralph fentriss used to remark with humorous resignation, connie was a grand little society beauty. of the beauty there could be no question. as she sat now, on this winter's night, the glow of the reading lamp showing warm and soft upon her loose, rose-coloured lounging robe and her dreamy face, she was a picture which, unfortunately, lacked any observer. fred browning was out. fred was often out in the evenings now, though they had been married less than two years. not that it mattered greatly to the young wife. fred had ceased to stimulate her senses; he had never stimulated her imagination. she got along well enough with him, and equally well without him. substitutes were not wanting. but just at the moment she rather wished he were there, because she thought she heard someone at the front door, though it might be only the beating of the blizzard, and it was so much trouble to rouse herself from the easy chair and the flimsy novel. that so many things were so much trouble was the bane of constance's life. her soul had begun to take on fat. presently her lissome body would follow suit. yes; there certainly was someone at the door. she could discern now an impatient stamping. probably bobs, although he had said that he could not come before nine to see the baby, who was constantly fretting. another superfluous trouble in a world of annoyances! we-ell; on the whole it was less bother to go to the door than to look up a maid. tossing her book aside she walked into the hall. as she passed, she pressed an electric light button. only one globe out of the cluster responded, and that weakly. "damn!" said constance. "i forgot to phone the company." she threw open the front door. in the storm centre stood a man. he wore a long coat lined with seal, a coat which the luxurious constance at once appraised and approved, and an astrakhan cap which he lifted, showing fair, close waves of hair. he peered into the dim entry. "is this----" he began, and then, in an eager exclamation, "mona!" constance drew a quick breath of shock and amazement. "_what!_" "a thousand pardons," said the stranger. "a stupid error." he spoke with the accent of a cultivated american, but there was about him the vague, indefinable atmosphere of an older, riper, calmer civilisation. "am i mistaken in supposing this to be mrs. fentriss's home?" he asked courteously. "no. yes. it is," answered constance, still shaken. "i would have telephoned before presenting myself, but the wires are down. what a furious storm! my taxi," he added cheerily, "is stalled in your very largest and finest local snowdrift. is mrs. fentriss in?" "my mother?" faltered constance. he gazed on her keenly, incredulously. "your mother? that's hardly possible. yet--yes. you are wonderfully like her." there was a caressing intonation in his voice as he said the words. "permit me; i am cary scott." "oh!" gasped constance in dismay. cary scott, the old romance about which she had heard her father joke her mother more than once, concerning which all the children had felt a lively curiosity because it was supposed to be "different" from mona's other little adventures; cary scott here in the flesh and in tragic ignorance of her mother's death! commanding herself, she drew aside with a slight, gracious gesture which bade him enter. bowing, he passed into the hallway and shook the snow from his coat. not until he had reached the door of the library did she gather her forces to tell him. "hadn't you heard about mother, mr. scott?" she asked very gently. her tone stopped him. his eyes were steady as he raised them to the lovely, pitying face before him. but hollows seemed suddenly to have fallen in beneath them. "not--?" he whispered. she inclined her head. "nearly a year ago." "why haven't i heard? why was i not told?" he demanded. "father wrote you, i think. you must sit down." she pushed a chair around for him and, laying light hands upon his shoulders, slipped his coat back. "take it off," she said. he obeyed. he was like a man tranced. seated under the lamplight he stared fixedly into a dark corner of the room, as if to evoke a vision for his appeasement. sharply intrigued, constance took the opportunity of observing him at her leisure. he was, she decided, a delightful personality, all the more engaging for that touch of the exotic, that hint of potential romance which the men of her acquaintance did not have. no woman would have called him handsome. his features were too irregular, and the finely modelled forehead was scarred vertically with a savagely deep v which mercifully lost itself in the clustering hair, a testimony to active war service. there was confident distinction in his bearing, and an atmosphere of quiet and somewhat ironic worldliness in voice and manner. he looked to be a man who had experimented much with life in its larger meanings and found it amusing but perhaps not fulfilling. reckoning him contemporaneously with the implication of that betraying "mona!" of his first utterance, constance thought: "he must be nearly forty to have been one of mother's suitors. but he looks hardly over thirty." she heard him sigh as he drew his spirit back from far distances, and was sensitive to the power of control implied in the composed countenance which he turned to her. "you should be constance fentriss." "constance browning," she corrected. "i'm an old married woman of two years' standing." "grand dieu!" he muttered. "i think of you always as hardly more than a child. as i used to hear about you. one loses touch." "you had not seen my mother for a long time, had you?" "very long. many years. but one does not forget her kind." constance, who had not seated herself during this passage of speech, crossed to the mantel, and lifted from it a heavily framed photograph which she placed in the visitor's hands. "that was taken a few months before she died." "unchanged!" he breathed. something imperative in constance's burgeoning interest in the man drove her to ask: "did you--were you very much in love with her?" there was daring in her tone; but there was compassion also. because of his sense of the latter he answered her frankly: "no. not, perhaps, as most people understand it. love asks much. i asked--nothing. it was not," he smiled faintly, "as one falls in love and falls out." "ah?" she returned, questioningly, tauntingly. but he held to the graver tone. "she was all that dreams could be, and as unattainable as dreams. if she was like an angel to me, i suppose i was like a boy to her. she used to tell me about you and your sisters." again he smiled. "once she said, 'wait and come back and marry one of them.'" "but you did not wait," accused constance. "nor did you," he retorted with that swift, ironic eye-flash which she was to know so well later. she welcomed the change to a lighter, and more familiar vein. "how should i know?" she mocked. "you sent no word of your claim. is mrs. scott with you?" "no," he answered shortly. then, in suaver tone: "it is more than a year now that i have been out of the world. the east; wild parts of hindustan and northern china; and then the south seas. i have a boy's passion for travel." "but not for your native land. you _are_ an american, aren't you?" "i have been. and i want to be again. but i shall need help." "we fentrisses are terribly american. don't you want us to reclaim you?" "would you? then i may come back?" "you must. father will want to see you." "and i him. he is well?" "very. where can he find you?" "at the st. regis for a few days." "do you think a few days enough to re-americanize you?" "say a few years, then." he rose and turned to give a long look at the portrait of mona fentriss which he had set on the table. "you have been more than kind to me," he said gravely. "i cannot thank you enough." "i'm afraid i was clumsy and abrupt." he shook his head. "it must have been a shock to you." "yes. but--dreams do not die. and i still keep the dream. and perhaps"--he lifted an appealing gaze to her--"perhaps, as a legacy, some little part of the friendship. i may hold that as a hope?" "yes," said constance. her fingers stirred in his as he bent and touched light lips to her hand. out into the tumultuous night cary scott carried two pictures, mother and daughter, strangely alike, strangely different, which interchanged and blended and separated again, like the evanescence of sunset-hued clouds. but it was the visual memory of the living woman which eventually held his inner eye, the pure, smooth contour of her face, the sumptuous curves of the figure beneath the suave folds of the clinging robe, the chaste line of the lips contradicted by the half-veiled sensuality of the wide, humid, deer-soft eyes. a delicate, but unsatisfied sensuality which might yet, as he read it, break down under provocation into reckless self-indulgence. sensitive by nature to beauty in all its implications, inner and outer, he felt the enveloping atmosphere of her youth and sweetness, and sought, to match it, the swift intelligence, the eager responsiveness which had been mona's. had the daughter inherited these qualities of the mother? if she had, she would be irresistible. mona fentriss, whatever relations she had maintained, in her wayward, laughing course of life, with other men (wholly unknown and unsuspected by cary scott) had been to him all that was demanded by the ideal which he himself had formed of her; had given him a friendship infinitely wise and sweet and clear in spirit. of constance he had asked the chance to win a like friendship. yet in his heart, at once hopeful by instinct, and cynical by experience, he knew from the evidence of those hungering eyes, that if she gave at all it would be more than friendship. and, if she chose to give, would he choose to take? from mona's daughter, at once so subtly like and unlike mona? was he already a little in love with her? the question was still unsolved when he went to sleep. after he left, constance returned to her book. presently it dropped from her hand. dreams seeped into the craving eyes. her husband found her so when he came in at midnight. "what are you mooning over, con?" he said testily. he was prone to the impatient mood when he had had too much to drink. "i?" answered his wife. "oh! ghosts." "rats!" said fred browning. "come to bed." chapter ix "who's the princely party holding con's hand in the library?" patricia, home from school for the easter vacation, slouched against mary delia's door as she put her question. the child had begun to take on the florescence of the woman. her meagre face had filled out; the lines of her slim figure had become firmer, more gracious; the knowing eyes deeper of hue, more veiled of intent. she was still sallow, but the reproach of "pimply little gnome" was no longer applicable. her trusted dr. bobs had promised her the complexion of a peach if she would hold to his stern regimen of diet for a year, and as she had been fairly faithful, though with an occasional lapse into her besetting sin of gluttony, the clarification of her blood already showed in a soft lustre underlying the duller tint of the skin. her teeth had whitened in perceptible degree, and her tongue reddened from its former furry grey of replete mornings. she glowed with a conscious and eager vitality. startled by the form of the question put to her so abruptly, mary delia looked up from the golf glove which she was mending. "is he holding her hand?" she said unguardedly. "figure of speech," returned the airy pat, perceiving, however, that there was something in this. "they look pretty chummy, though. who is he, dee?" "cary scott." "meaning little or nothing to muh. where's he from?" "all over. he was a friend of mona's." "old like that! he doesn't look it. visiting our flourishing village?" "he's come back to live, i believe." "here? and connie's annexed him, has she? married?" "no; not here. he comes down week-ends. yes; he's married, i believe, but not very much." "business?" "he's invented some new mechanical thing that the mills have to have, and he makes a lot of money out of it." "crazy about con?" "he's here a good deal." "how does freddie take it?" "between cocktails," returned dee laconically. pat thought for a moment. "is con getting tired of him?" "wouldn't you be?" "i? oh, i'd be sick to death of any man in a month! but i thought con would turn into the domestic breeder kind." "i don't blame con so much. freddie's quit his business for drink. they're miles in debt. con's more extravagant than ever. that's the reason they're living here on father. pretty boring for him. he's getting sore, too." "no wonder. the house is like a pig pen." "con doesn't pay any attention to it. she hasn't any interest in anything except clothes, and men--principally scott." "then she is nuts about him." "i don't know. you never can tell with con. but i know this; bobs is worried." "poor old bobs! he has his troubles with us. but i don't see that this scott party is any francis x. bushman, the male beauty-spot of the movie screen. how does he work his little game?" dee tossed the repaired glove into the basket and regarded her sister. "why all the eager questions, sweetie?" "don't be nawsty, pettah," retorted pat, who well knew what "sweetie" in that tone meant. "i'm awsking you." "not thinking of organising a rescue party, are you?" "i might at that." "a fat chance you'd have against con. why, he'd chuck you under the chin and tell you to run away to your crib." "then i'd put up my innocent, childish lips and ask him to say nighty-nighty nicey-nicey." "yes; you're pretty good at that innocent, childish lips stuff," remarked dee placidly. "about time you were outgrowing it, i'd say." pat glowered. "oh, you go to hell," she snapped. "no man would ever want to kiss you. you--you dead fish." dee laughed. "wouldn't they? i wish they didn't. it's a rotten nuisance." pat's ill humour vanished in interest. "you are a queer one," she said. "how does jimmieson james like your views?" dee shrugged her slim, clean-muscled shoulders. "he dangles along." "better haul him in before he wriggles off the hook," advised the worldly pat. "come on down and show me the new suitor." "do your own butting-in," yawned dee. "i won't." "oh, verra-well! here's trying." finesse did not mark pat's irruption upon the _solitude à deux_ in the library. "'lo, con," was her opening. "seen t. t. around here?" constance's companion arose and viewed the new arrival with surprise, amusement and expectation. the latter was not immediately fulfilled. "no," said constance with significant brevity. "it's in the conservatory." which was a guess. "i've looked," said pat. which was a lie. she directed a guileless gaze at cary scott. "i think you must have been sitting on it," she said; "my copy of _town topics_." "no; i assure you," he returned. there was a moment's pause which he relieved by turning to constance. "this is miss patricia?" he asked. "yes; that's the infant," returned constance so disparagingly that pat at once decided to see it through. "only half an introduction," she said, greatly fancying herself for her aplomb. "what's the other half?" "cary scott, at your service, mademoiselle." he made her an elaborate bow, twinkling. she held out a hand, large, firm, and nervously modelled. "oh, yes. dee's been telling me about you. such a lot." "a charming historian. i hope the history borrowed some of the quality." "it wasn't so dull. con, are you driving down for dad to-day?" "no. you are." "oh, _very_ well. i can take the car, then. good-bye, mr. scott. it was really an awfully interesting history. i'd like to hear more of it some day." "that's a precocious child, stancia," said cary scott, giving to the special name which he had devised for constance a caressing quality. "she's a terrible brat," replied the other. "she is your sister and therefore has for me a shadow of your delight about her." "how foreign you sound when you say those things! i love it in you." "do you? but you use the word 'love' so lightly." "i don't think of it lightly. no," she whispered, reading the swift fire in his eyes and holding him back with a light hand upon his shoulder. "not again. not now. that other time--it frightened me." "don't be afraid of me," he murmured. "i can wait." "ah, but i'm more afraid of you when you wait than when you seek," she smiled, and he reflected, with warm recognisance, that for once she had shown a gleam of subtlety, that subtlety which had so enthralled him in the mother, for which he was ever eagerly looking in the daughter. "you'll be at the club dance saturday?" she added. "since you are to be there. _cela va sans dire._" scott, delayed from reaching the club house early, found the dance in full swing when he got there. it was one of the largest and gayest of the season. the eleventh commandment as promulgated by mr. volstead, "thou shalt not drink except by stealth," had made every man a walking bar-room. having neglected to provide himself with a flask, scott was quite discomfited when constance, sitting out one of the three dances which were all that she had allowed him, railed at him with a charming air of proprietorship for his negligence. "i might pass out on your hands and you'd have nothing to revive me with." "possibly i could borrow some from this youth," said he as a young fellow with his shirt gaping open where a stud had deserted its post, wavered toward them. "that's billy grant, pat's latest flame," said constance. "he's got a wonder, hasn't he!" the youngster steadied himself to approach them. "miss-zz brow-owning," he said politely, "could you tell me whe-ere patiz?" "no, billy. i haven't seen her," replied constance promptly. "i've los' her. and thissiz my dance wither. seccon-extra." onward he lurched on his quest. "do be a dear, cary, and get pat out of billy's way," begged constance. "of course. where can i find her?" "she's coming through the further door now. go and stop her. tell her this is your dance and why." pat greeted the applicant with her quick, wide smile. "yes, i know," she said. "billy is rather sunk. come on. i'm all for this music." she slipped into his arms, her body already swaying to the impulses of a half-barbaric, half-languorous waltz.... "i would never have thought you'd dance so beautifully," she presently hummed, setting the words to the consonance of the music. "why?" he asked, amused. "men of your age don't care much about it. bridge for them." "do i seem so stricken in years?" "grandfather stuff!" she laughed up at him impudently. "you do and you don't." ever alive to physical impressions she added: "you're terribly strong, aren't you?" "rather. it was the fad to be in my set in paris." "your muscles are like steel; i like the feel of them. no; they're not like steel at all. that's just one of the things people say because other people say them. they're like rubber, hard, live rubber." "i see that you're of an independent turn of expression," he commented mockingly. "you seek the just word." "but they are, aren't they? how do you keep that way?" "a little riding. a little fencing. a little boxing. a little swimming. at my advanced age, you see, one must preserve oneself." "now you're laughing at me. i like it.... why don't you applaud?" she demanded indignantly as the music fell silent. "don't you _want_ any more of this dance with me?" "certainly i do!" he clapped violently, she joining him. "will that serve?" contentedly as a purry kitten she nestled to him as the drums signalised the resumption of the tune. "let's not talk this time," said she. they merged silently into the current of physical rhythm about them. responsive to the music by instinct, guiding with the intuition of the perfect dancer, scott looked about him on the crowded scene. the measure had swollen to a fuller harmony, taken on a throbbing, suggestive quality, and he sensed the reaction in the close-joined couples around him. the girls danced by him with their eyes drooping, their cheeks inflamed, a little line of passion across their foreheads. they seemed to cling to their partners with tightening grasp, each couple a separate entity, alone with the surge of the music and what it covertly implied, the allegro furioso of tumultuous, untamable blood. he glanced down at the young girl in his arms. her lashes, long and fringed, all but touched the swell of her cheek; her lips were lightly parted for the rapid breathing; a little pulse beat in her neck. "good god!" he thought. "this child! does she know what it is that she is feeling?" he felt an access of sheer pity; thought that he must speak to stancia of this. the music panted itself to silence. pat lifted smiling, unfathomable eyes to his and let them drop. "oh!" she breathed ecstatically. "what shall i do with you now, miss pat?" he asked. "oh, stick me anywhere. this is the supper number. billy's my provider. i think he's on the veranda." misgivings beset scott that the errant billy would prove a doubtful source of supply, but he took the girl out into the dimness. propped against a corner pillar, young mr. grant gazed upon the moon with an expression of foreboding, which was almost immediately justified by the event. he leaned upon the railing, and it became evident that he would not be supping that evening. quite the contrary. "down _and_ out," commented pat, equally without surprise or resentment. "let's go. take me back to con. someone will come and get me; i've turned down a couple of the boys for supper." "perhaps," said scott formally, "you would honour me by accepting me as substitute for the recreant billy." pat gave a little, hoarse crow of delight. "how _divine_ of you!" she was at that stage of articulate development where only the highest-pressure adjective would serve her facile emotions. "come on. i know the best corner in the place if somebody hasn't snitched it already." the corner proved to be unsnitched. established there, pat gave her cavalier a large and varied order, only to countermand half of it. "i almost forgot bobs's darn diet," she grumbled. "you know bobs?" "dr. osterhout? yes. we have become quite friends." "i'm glad of that," she said gravely. "are you? why? you like him?" "i _adore_ him. i would have thought that you two would be friends," she added thoughtfully. "now i wonder why you should think that?" he smiled, but instead of awaiting her reply he set out for the food. pat wondered, too. by the time he had returned, however, her restless mind had taken another turn. "how long have you known us?" she asked. "us?" "the fentriss girls. we're us." "ah? some two months or more." "and you're almost one of the family." "how do you arrive at that flattering conclusion?" "from dee, and dad. and you say bobs has taken you in. _and_ con. especially con. why aren't you having supper with her?" "because i happen to be here." quietly though the words were spoken a palpable hardening of his manner warned her against further impertinences along this line. for the moment she shied off, and, removing a macaroon which she had filched from his plate after once denying it to herself, from between her teeth, inquired casually: "got anything on your hip?" not yet fully initiate in the argot of his native land, scott looked his inquiry. "a drink. a flask." "do you want a drink?" "why the amazement, grandfather dear?" "is that a recognised part of your dear dr. bobs's diet?" "bobs would have a fit. he doesn't know little pat is out. but wouldn't a touch of hooch put a bit of a dash into the proceedings about now?" "i assure you, i am finding no lack of interest in the proceedings," he returned drily. "meaning, 'don't get fresh, little child.' well, i'm no rum-hound. by the way, do you take that patronising tone with connie?" "suppose you satisfy your curiosity on that subject by asking her." "now you're trying to flatten me out like a worm." she contemplated him with mischievous daring in her eyes. "i don't see it," she stated deliberately. "i don't see it at all." "what don't you see? i should have thought that very little escaped your singularly sharp faculties of observation." "you and connie. i don't get it." his stare met her glance and turned it aside. but she persisted, half laughing: "if you weren't old enough to be her father---- yet you're not clever enough to be onto her. she's got you going. do you know what's the matter with con?" "while your views are doubtless valuable, i am not aware that i have invited them." "blighted! but i'm going to tell you just the same. nothing above the ears." "above the ears?" scott stared in puzzlement at the two blobs of sub-lustrous, dark hair which effectually concealed his youthful partner's organs of hearing. "oh, no brains!" she cried impatiently. "must i talk baby talk to you?" "you might talk comprehensible english," he said sternly. "and you might also find a more suitable topic than criticism of your sister." she was daring enough to try to meet the cold fire of his gaze, but not steadfast enough to endure it. "now you're angry with me," she accused, her breath catching a little. truly cary scott was angry with her. but anger was secondary to a sudden, startling realisation. he felt as if a clear, blinding, chilling light had pierced to a cherished place of illusions, betraying its voidness. no brains! it was sickeningly true. all through these weeks of his yielding to stancia's physical charm he had unconfessedly harboured the knowledge, met and denied its disappointments, its deadening negations in a score of phases, by refusing to think them out. now this bratling of the devil had thrown the ray of her withering and brutal candour upon his false spiritualisation of a gross attachment. stancia was gentle, she was sweet, she was provocative, she was adorably lovely to look upon; but--no brains! for a man of cary scott's fastidious type of mind, it was a disenchantment beyond all hope of restoration. _nulla redintegratio amoris_; the ancient philosopher was right; there was no such thing as a return upon the road of love. and, now he knew that it never had been love. however potently the attraction of stancia's beauty might draw him, he would always know it for what it was; not the true fire, but a baser flame. enlightenment! and in time, thank god! but he was in a still rage with the little prophetess who had revealed the omen. out of the long silence came her half whisper: "i _am_ a little rotter, aren't i! but i just couldn't help it!" inadequate though the plea was, he felt inexplicably appeased of his wrath. when he was still meditating what he should say to this amazing child, footsteps, heavy and not all of them steady, sounded on the veranda immediately outside the window at which they were seated. voices, unmuffled by any considerations of caution, came clearly to them. "_quelque_ chick, what!" "i'll telephone mars that she is! and coming every minute." "too easy, say i. you can hug her to a peak." "something to hug, too, that little treechie. she's got a teasin' little way with her." "guess she teases herself as much as she teases the other feller." "that teasing game is likely to be double-barrelled," put in a deeper voice. "what was it the old woman in that play said about the flapper? 'precarious virginity.' pretty wise, that." "it might also be wise," cut in cary scott's chiselling voice, "for you gentlemen to air your opinions in some less public spot." "oh, gawd!" said one of the voices. "who the devil's that?" another. "le's beat it," a third. the footsteps thudded away. "chivalrous young america!" commented scott to pat. "a companion piece to sisterly loyalty." he had meant to sting her, but he was amazed at the spasmodic constriction of the face which she turned to him. he had not expected that she would be so much affected by anything he could say; in fact, he had reckoned her rather a thick-skinned and insensitive little person. but now her eyes were set, and her cheeks sallow with ebbing blood. "the girl they were discussing," he pursued, with a view to giving her time for recovery from his too successful stab, "is presumably some man's sister; perhaps the sister of one of their friends. if he had been sitting here----" "she isn't any man's sister," said pat chokingly. then he understood. "but they called her 'treechie,'" he said stupidly. "that's one of my nicknames." "my dear!" said scott pityingly, at a loss for the moment in the face of her shamed and helpless fury. he laid his hand on hers. "do you believe it? what they said?" she whispered. "no; no. of course not," he answered soothingly. "you _do_. anyway, it's true." "can you tell me who those fellows are?" he asked grimly. "i'll find a way to stop their foul chatter." "you can't mix in it. what good would it do if you did half kill them?" for she had read the formidable wrath in his face. "besides," she concluded sullenly, "i tell you it's true." "why is it true, pat?" he asked gently. "because i'm a cheap little idiot. i never realised--i never knew men talked--that way--about girls." "men don't. those were callow boys." "not all of them. the one that--that spoke about the play----" she stopped with her hand to her throat. for a moment he studied her working face. "it's hardly worth while, is it?" he said gravely. "you've come to the end of that phase, haven't you? how old are you, pat?" "eighteen. almost. and i've been a terrible necker ever since--since i began to be grown up. most girls are." "are they? why?" "i don't know. the boys sort of expect it," she answered childishly. "and it's--it's fun, in a way." she wriggled like a very schoolgirl. "i got billy away from celia bly that way. and now look at the damn thing!" she laughed and the tension was temporarily relieved. "anyway," she declared resolutely, "here and now is where i quit. there's nothing in it. unless," she added with an astounding naïveté, "it's somebody that i'm quite crazy about." anger and pain had left a faint fire still in the eyes which she turned to his. "i'm glad it was you that were with me when it happened, mr. scott." "i was afraid that it only made it the harder for you." "no. because you understand." he was by no means sure that he understood at all, but he made no denial. "have you got any daughters?" "no." "i wish i'd had someone like you that i could talk to," she said wistfully. "dad's all right. i adore dad. but i couldn't talk to him like this. i can to you. isn't it funny! do you like me a little, mr. scott?" her face, upturned to his, was one anxious, honest, hopeful plea. "yes. i like you very much," he returned soberly. "you might adopt me," she pursued. "on account of mother. you were fond of her, weren't you?" he regarded her with a slight frown which vanished as he realised that this was no adventurous impertinence such as her references to constance. "i don't see how you could help but be; she was so beautiful.... but no; i couldn't be anyone's daughter but dad's, even adopted." "granddaughter," suggested scott mockingly. "i take it all back!" she cried, her spirits quite restored. "you aren't nearly as old as i thought you were; and twice as nice. we'll just be friends, won't we? and i'll be awfully good and never say anything catty about con again. come on; there's the music. let's dance. this is somebody else's but i don't care." at the door she stretched her arms above her head in a long sweep, a hovering, expectant gesture as if she were going to give herself into a profound and enduring embrace, then leaned to him as the swirl of the rhythms caught them. he felt her fresh young cheek pressed to his, close and warm, and drew away a little. "what's the matter?" she asked naïvely. "don't you like it?" perplexed for the moment and a little startled by the sweetness of the contact, he did not answer at once. "i thought we were to be friends," she murmured mournfully. with a sudden understanding he realised that she had nestled to him as unconsciously as a kitten; that her natural expression of the merest comradeship was physical. in a manner, innocently so. after that dance he did not see her again until, just before her departure, she dashed up to him to say, "i've been _terribly_ good all evening. it isn't so hard." then, peering at him anxiously: "you don't despise me, do you, mr. scott?" the innate pathos of it made it hard for him to control his voice, though he answered easily but sincerely: "how could i? we're friends, you know." "yes," she assented with deep content. "we're friends." at home dee asked her: "did you try your rescue party, kid?" "what rescue party?" returned pat dreamily. "oh, _that_! i trow some not! _he_ won't be the one that needs help when the water gets deep." "i suppose not," acquiesced dee. she thought that pat meant constance. chapter x wandering into the drawing-room on one of her infrequent and languid tours of inspection, constance was astonished to find mary delia contemplating herself in the full-length mirror. she was clad in a new and modish bathing suit. "what do you think of it?" she asked her elder sister, turning slowly about. "there's certainly plenty of it," was the disparaging reply. "where are you going in it; to church?" "to the dangerfields' round-robin tennis." "going to play that way?" "yeppy. we're going to fool the hot spell. after the tennis we christen the new swimming pool. it's the biggest private tank in captivity." "i thought wally dangerfield was that. i don't see why you want to mix up with that set, dee." "what set? they're the same set as the rest of us. what's the matter with wally and sally?" "nothing much except their pace and the way they get talked about. you know there have been half a dozen near-scandals at their place already." "not near me," returned dee cheerfully. "i can take care of myself." "i grant you that. but won't jimmy be awfully sore? he doesn't like the dangerfields." "jimmy is sore," was the indifferent response. indeed, mr. jameson james, an insistent formalist in his ideas for women though not at all in his ideas of men, had most unwisely essayed a veto upon dee's attendance, only to be reminded by that untamed virgin that they were not yet engaged, and that, even if they were, it was by no means certain that she would meekly take orders from him. she spoke with unruffled good humour. mr. james had departed in great ill humour. "i like jimmy when he's furious," remarked dee. "he's so much more human." "you'll lose him yet," warned constance. "who's your partner for the tennis?" "paul de severin was to have been but he's held up in washington. i thought i'd borrow cary scott if you don't mind." "why should i mind?" returned the other moodily. "he isn't my property." "had a scrap?" "no." constance brooded for a moment, then made one of those disclosures characteristic of the peculiarly frank relations existing between all three of the sisters. "dee, freddie's been borrowing money from cary." dee whirled and stared. "the devil!" she ejaculated. "he'll never pay it back." "i don't suppose cary expects it back." "what does he expect, then?" "i don't know," answered constance slowly. "humph! i do. are you going to pay, connie?" "if i did pay--that way--would i be half as rotten as freddie?" demanded the wife savagely. "that depends. are you in love with cary?" "i don't know," muttered the beauty. "i thought i was. then i found out about freddie and it sickened me so that i don't know where i stand." dee ruminated. "perhaps that's why freddie did it. he's no fool." "he's a drunkard. that's worse." "poor old con! i wonder what cary thinks of it all." "that's what i'm afraid to think about." "then you _are_ in love with him. see here, con; have you been borrowing from him, too?" constance's exquisite, self-indulgent face was set and hard as she stared past her sister. "he's paid a bill or two. i didn't dare take them to father." a soft whistle on a single, low note issued from dee's lips. "that's not in the book of rules." "i know it. but he was so wonderful about it. you'd think that i was the one conferring the favour by taking his"--constance gulped--"his money." "yes. cary's a thoroughbred. whatever happens i can't see that freddie has any kick coming. _maquereau!_" "what's that?" "tasty french slang. the english is shorter and uglier. con, how much are you in for?" "too much.... you marry money, dee," counselled constance fiercely. "it lasts. the other thing doesn't." "with me it doesn't even begin. then i can take cary?" "of course. i almost wish you'd never bring him back." "it might be safer," agreed the other. "i'll go and wire him." dorrisdale knew the elaborate establishment of the dangerfields, built out of war profits at the back of the golf course, as "the private athletic club." everything about it was based upon sports, and the clique which frequented it was linked in a common bond of physical fitness, a willingness to bet any amount on anything, and capacity for hard drinking. it boasted expensive stables, an indoor and two outdoor tennis courts, a squash and racquets building, and, in the middle, the sixty-foot swimming tank just completed. sally dangerfield, a big-eyed, softly rounded brunette whose air of rather amorous languor concealed a feline vitality and strength, had a penchant for small parties, many in a season. this opening tennis party of the season included but eight couples. walter dangerfield, robust, hairy, loud-voiced and generous of hospitality, announced to the arriving guests that there would be first and second prizes worth striving for, also that, while it was a long time between sets, it would be a shorter period between drinks, in proof of which he indicated tubs of ice housing bottles of the famous dangerfield punch. the intense, unseasonable heat bred an immediate thirst, appeasement of which enhanced the joyousness of the occasion if not the quality of the tennis. thanks to a quality of comparative abstemiousness on the part of both, dee and her partner won against a pair who were normally their betters. the prize was a magnum of champagne apiece, and that they should celebrate by opening it immediately was, of course, _de rigueur_ in the private athletic club. the swim which followed was signalised by the appearance, upon a specially constructed raft, of a "submarine cocktail" invented by the host for the occasion. by dinner time the party had accumulated what was universally regarded as a highly satisfactory start. over the luxurious repast the heat settled like a steamy blanket. it was too hot to talk, it was too hot to sing (though several ambitious souls tried to pretend that it wasn't), it was too hot to dance between courses, it was too hot to do anything but drink. there was a gasp of relief when the hostess announced that coffee would be served outside, and a groan of disappointment when a splash of lukewarm rain heralded a thunderstorm which came booming and belching up from the west. pent within the stagnant house the guests established themselves in the big living-room and offered various suggestions for amusement, each of which was promptly rejected as calling for too much effort. wally dangerfield was just saying, "the time has now arrived, children, for a new and spine-tickling drink which--" when the crash came. it seemed to precede rather than follow the blinding stab of radiance which ripped through the outer darkness, dimming the electric lights to futile sparks for the thousandth of a second before they went out. the great, stone structure rocked with the concussion. one thin, high shriek sounded. then silence. wally dangerfield's voice boomed through the blackness: "anyone hurt?" "i'm alive." "present." "battered but in the ring." "missed _me_." "whose hair is that singeing?" "kamerad! call off the big bertha." the replies came, shaky, flippant, with forced laughter, with bravado. it beseemed good sports to show a front under fire, and they did it. matches were struck. servants came with two feeble candles. the entire electrical establishment of the house was out of commission. the host promptly dispatched a car to the local plant with instructions to bring back an expert if it was necessary to kidnap him. with that one terrific discharge the storm had spent its greatest fury. it retired, leaving the steaming world immersed in humid heat, and the air full of rotted electricity. the guests tingled to it; it thrilled in their senses as well as their nerves. after the sobering sense of peril escaped, there followed a relaxing reaction of solvent ties and conventions, of sudden and reckless audacities. a warm puff of wind doused one of the feeble candles; the other was only sufficient to produce a provocative twilight. a silence significant and languorous, broken only by murmurs and snatches of soft, protesting laughter settled upon the dim room. even dee's nerves of iron responded. leaning back on her divan to catch a wandering breath of air she felt a man's hand pressing upon her shoulder, a man's breath soft upon her neck. with her ready young strength, she pushed back the wooer. "not for me," she said quietly. "oh, don't be a prude," implored a straining whisper. "everything goes to-night." she thought it was harry mercer's voice. evading him she got to her feet, made her way toward the door, and stumbled upon a chaise longue occupied by two close-clasped figures. "beg your pardon," she said nonchalantly; but she was vaguely stirred by all this suggestion, not to disgust, which would have been her normal retroaction, but to a wistful wonderment. _what_ did they see in it? what was it that she was missing out of life? was she abnormal? or just fastidious? across the room she could discern the sumptuous outlines of sally dangerfield's figure, dark against the background of a flannelled figure. "why not start something, sally?" she suggested. the hostess laughed. "it's starting itself, isn't it? haven't you got your self-starter working? but i guess you're right. help me find some more lights." "why lights?" murmured a sleepy-toned protestant. "it's more comfortable as it is." "who said 'comfortable'?" growled another. "it's hotter than ever." "wish i were back in the pool," said a woman. "grand little idea!" boomed dangerfield. "let's all go in!" "what! in our wet things?" objected young mrs. redfern. "i wouldn't put my clammy stockings on again for a million swims." "why wear stockings?" "why wear any thing?" cried someone in a tone of inspiration. "_that's_ an idea" shouted dangerfield. "a swimming party, _à la_ adam-and-eve in the warranted respectable darkness. who's on?" "come off it, wally!" said a woman's voice. "you've got only one pool." "we'll splice two tennis nets together and run them down the middle for a barrier." "why not?" cried the high-pitched, excited voice of mrs. carson. "we're all married here." "not that i know of," remarked dee. "not that anybody knows of for me," added emslie selfridge in a voice of mincing propriety. "wanted, a chaperon." "you two can stand on the bank and be policemen," suggested the hostess. "one on each side." "not on your life," objected one of the men. "one go, all go!" the popping of a champagne cork expressed the explosive quality of the neurotic atmosphere. "come on, dee," whispered sally dangerfield. "if you quit now it will gum a good game." "oh, well, you can't bluff me," returned dee aloud. "i hate bathing suits anyway." there was a shout of acclaim. the party organised and moved forward across the dripping courtyard under the guidance of a pair of lights. the men rigged the nets while the women retired to the squash court, designated as their dressing room. there they disrobed with feverish laughter and jerky bits of talk. this adventure had given a fillip to even their sated appetite for sensation. "who'll go first?" asked one in the gloom. "match for it," came the answering suggestion. "oh, piffle and likewise pish!" cut in viccy carson's shrill giggle. "i'll be the goat. put a dimmer on that light, someone." a moment later dee heard her call at the end of the passage: "anybody present in case i fall in?" several male voices answered: "stout sport!" "who's the pioneer?" "sally." "no; it's little viccy." "shinny-on-your-own-side!" called mrs. carson. "listen for the splash. come on, you girls!" "we're coming." two splashes almost simultaneous echoed sharply against the bare walls, followed by others mingled with shrieks, laughter, chokings and gurglings. dee, reluctant, found herself alone in the passage way. like many women of unaroused temperament she preserved a sort of remote and proud consciousness of her body, a physical reticence. the gross implications of contact, the prurient stimulus to the imagination in what was going on in the pool, held her back. yet she was conscious of some participation in the excitement, too; the lewd mob-psychology of that mixed group spurred her while it revolted her finer instincts. but it was her sportsmanship that finally urged her forward. after all, she had agreed to join. backing out now would be pretty yellow. her hand was fumbling along the open door when another burst of merriment checked her. "i've caught me a mermaid over the net." "reel her in, bill." "so've i. mine's got a bathing cap on." "no fair, bathing caps. this is the garden of eden." "no; it's the fountain of eternal youth. steady on the net, there!" "students! students!" cried sally dangerfield in a voice of chiding laughter. "care beful!" "who's who in this part of america? call the roll." the roll! dee's hesitations were resolved. she must go forward now. she stretched out a groping hand and held it, stiffened in mid-air. footsteps were close behind her; heavy, shod footsteps. "who's there?" she challenged sharply. no answer. she turned, angry and uncertain. the footsteps had stopped. she had gathered her forces to call when the appalling thing happened. over her burst a great flood of light. every globe in the passageway and the court back of it was sending out its pitiless rays upon her nakedness. a bisected bar of radiance shot forth into the tank-room, illuminating it from end to end. pandemonium broke out; shrieks, flounderings, catcalls, and above it all the thundering profanity of wally dangerfield calling down vengeance upon the fool who had played the trick. with the trained athlete's readiness of action in a crisis, dee turned, leapt backward, tore the heavy door loose from the clamp which held it open, and slammed it. "saved!" yelled a gleeful voice outside. dee heard a short, deep, dismayed exclamation behind her. she bent forward against the closed door, her proud little head bowed against her wrists. with a click the darkness shut down again. the footsteps came toward her, but she was no longer afraid, for she had seen; she was only bitterly ashamed. folds, cool and light, enveloped her shoulders; she smelt the odor of wet rubber and gratefully drew the long raincoat about her. "turn on the light, please," she directed quietly. it flashed, intolerable to her eyes. when her vision could bear the strain she looked up and saw the man standing a few paces away with his kitbag of implements beside him, dressed in working garb. his face was pallid, amazed, and beautiful. "i never thought to see you again," he said breathlessly. "you've seen all there is of me to see," giggled dee with the inanity of sheer nerve-shock, and could have killed herself for hatred and fury at her untoward response. he made no comment upon this; only looked at her with incredulous pain. "what are you doing here?" she asked. "repairing the electric plant. i'm a workman. as i told you." "i thought it was a joke." "no." he listened to the confused sounds from beyond the door. "i seem to have been inopportune," he remarked with quiet grimness. "a swimming party, isn't it?" "yes." "more or less informal, i judge." dee felt a hot wave submerging her. "you could see for yourself." "quite so. you were on your way to join it?" "yes, i was," she retorted defiantly but with an incredible inclination to weep. "pray don't let me detain you." "please," whispered dee. his face changed. he took a step toward her, and stopped. a shriek, too authentic in its terror to be misinterpreted, penetrated the heavy door, followed by a babel. "turn on that light!" "open the door." "no! no!" "she's drowned, i tell you." "damn it, where's that switch?" the electrician threw the door open, made a quick movement along the wall, and every detail of the scene leapt forth into bold significance. the women were huddled along the side of the pool, all except plump mrs. grant who was absurdly striving to draw an end of the net about her, and sally dangerfield who was bending above the slim, motionless nudity of viccy carson, stretched along the stairs. "i stepped on her," wailed sally. "she was lying on the bottom." half of the men had scattered for their clothes. the others stood, shamed and uncertain, except cary scott. in the face of reality in this calamitous form he had remembered an early emergency regimen, thrown himself down beside the woman, and with lips pressed to her inanimate mouth was striving to stimulate her flaccid lungs to induce breathing. desisting for a moment he called: "she's alive, i think. get a doctor." "phone for osterhout, somebody," shouted dangerfield. "wire's down," groaned grant. "then get a car and go like hell!" "my car is outside," said the electrician. "where am i to go?" "i'll show you," said dee. "quick!" together they darted into the night. crossing the pebbled courtyard, dee involuntarily cried out. "what is it?" he demanded. "my foot. i forgot i had no shoes. it doesn't matter. go on." he swung her strongly into his arms and did not set her down until he had reached the car, when he lifted her to the seat. it was as well that he had. such was the yielding of her body in every nerve and muscle as he took her that she could not have stood upright. a light in dr. osterhout's laboratory showed him at work over some test tubes. "bobs!" called dee. "come out. there's been an accident. we've got a car." in less than a minute they were retracing their course at wild speed, the electrician driving with consummate control while dee acquainted osterhout with the main facts. as they came to a stop in the yard dee turned to the volunteer chauffeur. "will you wait for me?" she asked in a tone that made osterhout turn to look at her. "yes." within they found the victim violently ill in the midst of a half-dressed and vastly relieved group. "none the worse for it," osterhout reported to dee after attending the victim. "a little too much water for comfort. and something besides water, wasn't there?" "yes." "a good deal of it?" "plenty for all hands." "a rough party?" "about the usual, at this house." "don't you think you're out of place in that gallery, dee?" "oh, don't lecture me, bobs," said the girl wearily. "i'm through." but it was another, not bobs, who was the inspiration of that resolve. to the other, patient in the sighing darkness, she returned. "she's all right," she informed him. "but it was a close call." "scott saved her, i expect," he replied absently. "he knew the method." "do you know cary scott?" she asked, startled. he hesitated. "i did once. i should hardly have expected to find him at this kind of an orgy." "it isn't as bad as it looks," she defended weakly. "you told me, didn't you, that you were going into the pool with the others?" "yes. but you don't understand. will you wait until i go in and get my clothes on?" "i--don't--think--so," he said with palpable effort. she gathered all her resolution. "aren't you going to take me home?" through the darkness came the sound of a deep-drawn breath. "no," said his voice, both hard and sad. only the sadness remained as he continued. "you see, i had idealised you." "you needn't have," she retorted bitterly. "i'm just like other girls." "so i see. i wish to god i'd never seen you!" "there's no reason why you should ever see me again," she answered with rising spirit. "not the slightest," he agreed dolorously. "good-bye." she turned and went into the building. as dr. osterhout had no car, scott and dee drove him back to his place. "who was your friend in the service car, dee?" asked the physician. "his name is wollaston." cary scott gave a start. "wollaston! you know, i thought i caught a glimpse---- then i supposed that my eyes had gone wrong in the sudden light. he was in working clothes, wasn't he?" "yes. he was the electrician from the plant." "stanley wollaston? electrician? it can't be the same." "it is. he recognised you and said that he used to know you." "know me! good god! i should say so! we were in hospital together for weeks in the war. afterwards i visited him at their place in hertfordshire. he was a poet and a dreamer then. i remember now. i heard that his branch of the family went broke." "where did you know him, dee?" asked osterhout. "oh, it's a long story, bobs," said the girl lightly. herein she said what was not true. it was a short story; short and vivid and bewildering. in the darkness she ran over the whole scope of it, every detail as clear as if it had not occurred nearly a year before: the breakdown of her motor car in the open country near rahway; the stranger on the bank of a stream who had put down his rod and come to her aid, a roughly dressed stranger with questing eyes and a quaint turn of speech; the long and patient tinkering, with the mechanism, ending in a second collapse; the luncheon offered and shared, the talk that followed, a long, long talk such as dee had never before known, running through luminous hours, touching all the realms of fancy until the incredulous sun turned his face from them and went down; the drive back to the village where she left him; his final words, "i am resisting an intolerable temptation when i say no more than good-bye and thank you," and then nothing until now. scott's voice broke in upon her meditations. "i must find out where he is." "i don't believe i would, cary," she advised after osterhout had bidden them good-night. "what? not look up old stanley? why not?" "i think he's cut himself off from all the old life. he--he's a queer person." until the car drew in at holiday knoll scott thought that over in silence. then he laid a friendly hand over dee's. "old girl," he said gently, "you seem to know a lot about him." "so i do. you can learn a lot in an afternoon." "there's a lot to learn. he's a wonderful person. pretty tough to find him like this.... are you really interested in him, dee?" "who? me? i should _say_ not!" returned dee hardily. "i'm going to marry jimmie james." chapter xi ripples from the swimming party spread to wash far shores. although the participants had been sworn to secrecy, the details had of course been whispered confidentially, adorning themselves with rich imaginings as they travelled. for this, the inopportune electrician was blamed, the indictment against him being strengthened by the astounding fact that wally dangerfield, seeking to bribe him into a promise of silence, had been effectually snubbed. to the indirect procurement of the outsider was attributed a specially lively brace of paragraphs in _town topics_, even less veiled than was typical of that journal's transparent allusions. penetrating within the virginal confines of the sisterhood school where it was naturally upon the index expurgatorius, the publication entranced pat and also contributed in no small degree to her prestige. having a sister who was involved in a t.t. scandal was feather for any girl's cap! pat cherished the glittering ambition of one day appearing in those glorifying pages herself. she wrote to dee begging to be told all about it. in return came a letter informing her of her sister's engagement to jameson james. connie also wrote saying that it had come off at last, it was a very good thing, and everybody was satisfied. but the genuine opinion of the betrothal went forth from the pen of robert osterhout to, or perhaps only toward, the dead mona. "i do not pretend to understand it, my dearest," he wrote, "and what i do not understand i do not like. the scientific spirit of resentment. dee is still unawakened. james has no appeal for her; of that i am satisfied. it will not be he who interprets for her her womanhood. perhaps it will not be anyone. nevertheless, our proud dee has grown inexplicably docile, almost meek. and jimmy inspires me with a daily desire to kick him, by adopting a condescending attitude toward her, as if he were doing quite a noble thing in marrying her. such is the position in which she has been put by that infernal 'dangerfield dip' episode, as it is generally called. in some way, though i don't know how, the engagement was the result of that party. from what i can learn, the swim _au naturel_ was playful rather than vicious; but the scandal has been lively. there was a strange passage between dee and a workman who seems to be a gentleman under cover, which puzzled me. disturbs me, too, a bit.... how you may be laughing at all this, my darling, with your wider, deeper vision! "holiday knoll will be duller when dee leaves. to me it has been an empty shell since your bright spirit went out of it. yet i derive my sad satisfactions in looking after the girls as best i may and in trying to make myself hold to the belief of some intangible contact with you through these letters. ralph is at home very little. when pat comes back the place will liven up again. perhaps my tired old ears will recapture from her some of the music of life with which you filled the place.... i wish that dee were less still and self-contained. she doesn't talk to me any more; not as she used to." to all the fentriss household dee was a puzzle in the days following her engagement, not less to herself, osterhout suspected, than to the others. home early from school, because of an outbreak of scarlet fever there, pat complained to him, sitting perched on an arm of his chair with a hand on his shoulder. "bobs, dee is moony." "is she? and what is 'moony'?" "you know she is," returned pat, scorning to waste time on obvious definitions. "isn't her engagement going all right?" "so far as i can judge. she hasn't confided in me." "bad sign. in some girls it would be a good sign. not in dee," pronounced the oracular pat with her head on one side like a considering and sagacious bird. "has she talked to you?" "no; she hasn't. bet you she will, though. dee's a lot more chummish with me than she used to be." "because connie is married. that throws dee back on you." "it ought to throw her back on jimmiejams. i'm not wild about t. jameson james, bobs. he's rather a sob." "what have you got against your future brother-in-law?" "oh, he's so stiff and bumpy. so darn impressed with his own correctness. and it's mostly bluff. he tried to kiss me last night." osterhout's face darkened for the moment, but he said: "why not? you're only a child to him, and one of the family." "brotherly stuff; i know. only it wasn't too brotherly. well," she laughed knowingly, "i don't suppose he gets much of that sort of thing from dee." "dee's a strange little person," said the doctor absently. "she'd be my idea of nothing to be engaged to if i were a man." which opinion she later expressed, in slightly modified terms, to the subject of it. "oh, well, jimmy understands," responded dee negligently. "i don't believe any man understands. i don't believe you understand anything about it yourself." "don't i!" muttered dee. pat stared with all her big eyes. "well, _do_ you?" "pat," said the other, fidgetting with an unlighted cigarette--she had taken to smoking, although it was bad for her golf, since her engagement--"you've kissed men." "what if i have?" retorted pat, instantly on the sullen defensive. "everyone does. you have." "men have kissed me. it's different." "i'll cable the emperor of japan it's different," chuckled the slangy pat. "what do you get out of it?" "you've got a nerve to ask me that; you, an engaged girl!" "i'm asking because i don't know." "tell you one thing, then," said pat earnestly. "i wouldn't marry any man that couldn't make me know." dee murmured something that sounded like "might just as well." thus interpreting it the younger sister returned: "yes; you might. you're different." "i'm not different. i always thought i was, until----" "until!" cried pat in great excitement. "until what? who's the man? and when did it happen?" "it never happened." "then you're a dam' fool," replied the other with conviction. "if i was crazy about a man i bet i'd kiss him if it was only for--for experiment." "i've always thought that sort of thing was imbecile. sort of sickening." "do i know him?" demanded the practical pat. "no." "evens and odds i do. tell pattie," she wheedled. with face gloomily averted, dee pursued her main preoccupation. "do you feel when you kiss a man as if all your nerves were strung wires and an electric shock went flaming along them and then died out and left you _plah_?" "oh!" jeered pat softly. "and you claim that you've never been really kissed." "i haven't. but he--he lifted me in his arms once. and i felt his heart beating.... and then afterwards, do you hate and despise yourself for letting it affect you that way?" queried the neophyte of passion, interpreting dimly the sharp revulsion of her undefeated maidenhood against its own first weakening toward surrender. "no. of course i don't. why should i?" pat reflected. "i have been ashamed, though--a little. but that was because of what someone said to me about it. a friend. he made it seem cheap." "cheap? oh, no; it wasn't cheap. but that's what i felt; that ashamedness afterward. as strongly as i felt the other. stronger." instinctive psychologist enough to know that the rebound is never as powerful as the impact, pat disbelieved this. "just the same i think you're taking a big chance marrying jimmy. why don't you marry the--the thriller?" "don't!" snapped dee. "you're making it cheap now." "but why don't you?" persisted the junior. "i couldn't." "is he married already? that _would_ be binding!" "no. i don't know," dee amended with a startled realisation of how little she did know in comparison with what she felt. "he might just as well be. i'll never see him again." "i would," asserted pat. "if it was that way with me. if he was the only one." "of course he's the only one. could you feel that with any man? i can't understand that," marvelled dee. "oh, no! not with just anyone. i'd have to like him. quite a good deal. it isn't so hard to like 'em when they make love to you. but i'm off'n that stuff," sighed pat, turning demure. "there's nothing in it." again she thought of mr. scott and that evening of disastrous revelation at the club. his influence had persisted. she quite prided herself that it had. she had thought much about him as one might think of a benign guardian and had written once to bespeak the continuance of their friendship. "how's con's affair coming on?" she asked, as a logical mental sequitur. "with cary scott? he's away. back in paris for a couple of months' stay." "do you like him, dee?" "yes. a lot." "he isn't the man, is he?" demanded pat sharply. dee's laughter was refutation enough. "catch me poaching connie's game. it couldn't be done." "oh, i don't know," replied the other airily. "mr. scott's got too much brains for old con. do you think she's crazy over him?" "i think she misses him." "when's he coming back?" "in time for the wedding, anyway." "the wedding! when is it, dee?" "second week in july," said dee without enthusiasm. "so soon! am i going to be a bridesmaid?" "no." "oh-h-h-h-h!" wailed pat. "pig!" "you're to be maid of honour." pat gave her little, hoarse crow of ecstasy. "how darling of you! that's _too_ divine! are you going to give me my frock?" dee nodded. they talked clothes, absorbedly. when she got up to go pat leaned over and kissed her sister, the first time since they were children that she had done this except as a formality of family life. "i almost wish you weren't going to do it, though, dee," she murmured. "i don't," said dee resolutely. chapter xii "if i could find it in my heart, dearest one, to blame you for anything, it would be for sending little pat to the sisterhood school." (so wrote robert osterhout to mona fentriss.) "with the best of intentions they wreck a mind as thoroughly as house-wreckers gut a building. it was your choice and i dare not change it. even if i could persuade ralph to take her out of that environment and send her to bryn mawr or vassar or smith, which is where she ought to be, she would rebel. she has a contempt for 'those rah-rah girls,' a prejudice bred of the shallow and self-sufficient snobbery which is the basic lesson of her scholastic experience. to be sure, they have finished her in the outward attributes of good form, but most of that is a natural heritage which any daughter of yours would have. she can be, when on exhibition, the most impeccable little creature, sparkling, and easy and natural and charmingly deferential toward the older people with whom she comes in contact--when she chooses. for the most part she elects to be calmly careless, slovenly of speech and manner, or lightly impudent. to have good breeding at call but not to waste it on most people--that is the cachet of her set. "but these are surface matters. it is the inner woman--yes, beloved--our little pat is coming to conscious and dynamic womanhood--which concerns me now and would concern you could you be here. appalls me, too. but perhaps that is because my standards are the clumsy man-standards. what is she going to get out of life for herself? what does all this meaningless preparation, aside from the polishing process, look to? if hers were just a stupid, satisfied mind, a pattern intellect like constance's, it would not so much matter. or if she had the self-discipline and control which dee's athletics have given her, i should be less troubled. but pat's is a strange little brain; hungry, keen and uncontrolled. it really craves food, and it is having its appetite blunted by sweets and drugs. is there nothing that i can do? i hear you ask it. yes; now that she is at home i can train her a little, but not rigorously, for her mind is too soft and pampered to set itself seriously to any real task. in the days of her childish gluttony i used to drive her into a fury by mocking her for her pimples, and finally, by excoriating her vanity, got her to adopt a reasonable diet. the outer pimples are gone. but if one could see her mind, it would be found pustulous with acne. and there can i do little against the damnable influence of the school which has taught her that a hard-trained, clean-blooded mind is not necessary. the other girls do not go in for it. why be a highbrow? she is so easily a leader in the school, and, as she boasts, puts it over the teachers in any way she pleases. in the days before she became aware of herself it used to be hard to get her to brush her teeth. to-day i presume that her worthy preceptresses would expel her if she did not use the latest dentifrice twice a day. but they are quite willing to let her mind become overlaid with foul scum for want of systematic brushing up. "dynamite for that institution and all like it! nothing else would serve. with all your luxuriousness, mona, your love of excitement, your _carpe diem_ philosophy of life (pat, who has 'taken' latin, does not know what _carpe diem_ signifies), your eagerness for the immediate satisfactions of the moment, you never let your brain become softened and untrained and fat. the higher interests were just as much a part of the embellishment of life to you as were flowers or games, music or friends. what inner friends will little pat have? not literature. shakespeare she knows because she must; the school course requires it. but he is a task, not a delight. thackeray is slow and dickens a bore. poetry is a mechanical exercise; i doubt whether a single really beautiful line of shelley or keats or coleridge remains in her memory, though she can chant r. w. service and walt mason. swinburne she has read on the sly, absorbing none of the luminousness of his flame; only the heat. similarly, balzac means to her the 'contes drolatiques,' also furtively perused. conrad and wells are vague names; something to save until she is older. but o. henry she dutifully deems a classic and is quite familiar with his tight-rope performances; proud of it, too, as evincing an up-to-date erudition. as for 'the latest books of the day,' she is keen on them, particularly if they happen to be some such lewd and false achievement as the intolerable 'arab.' any book spoken of under the breath has for her the stimulus of a race; she must absorb it first and look knowing and demure when it is mentioned. the age of sex, mona.... her standards of casual reading are of like degree; she considers _town topics_ an important chronicle and _vanity fair_ a symposium of pure intellect. "yet she has been taking a course in literature at the school! "science has no thrill for pat; therefore she ignores it. futile little courses in 'how to know' things like flowers and birds and mushrooms have gone no deeper than the skin. no love of nature has been inculcated by them. she hardly knows the names of the great scientists. einstein she recognises through having seen his travels chronicled and heard vaudeville jokes about him. but mention pasteur or metchnikoff and you would leave her groping; and she doubtless would identify lister as one who achieved fame by inventing a mouth wash. however, she could at once tell you the name of the fashionable physician to go to for nervous breakdown. "her economics are as vague as her science. politics are a blank. but to be found ignorant of the most recent trend of the movies or the names of their heroes, or not to know the latest gag of some unspeakable vulgarian of the revues--that would overwhelm her with shame. her speech and thought are largely a reflection of the contemporary stage. not the stage of shaw and o'neill, but of bedroom farce and trite musical comedy. thus far she compares unfavourably in education with the average shop girl. "in music and art the reckoning is better. but this again is largely inherited. if the sap-headed sisterhood have not fostered, they at least have not tainted her sound instincts in these directions. she has followed her own bent. "as it is a professedly denominational school she has, of course, specialised or been specialised upon as a churchwoman. a very sound and correct churchwoman, but not much of a godwoman. no philosophy and very little ethics are to be found in her religion. worship is for her a bargain of which the other consideration is prayer. she gives to god certain praises and observances and asks in return special favours. 'i'll do this for you, god, and you do as much for me some day.' her expectancy of assured returns she regards as a praiseworthy and pious quality known as faith. blasphemy, of course. not the poor child's. the sin, which is a sin of ignorance and loose thinking, is upon the sanctified sisterhood. they have classified the deity for pat: god as a social arbiter. "the sisterhood are purists. naturally. but purists only by negation. all the essential facts they dodge. true, there is a course in hygiene. it is conducted by a desiccated virgin who minces about the simple and noble facts of sex life as if she were afraid of getting her feet wet, and whose soul would shrivel within her could she overhear the casual conversation of the girls whom she purports to instruct. all that side of knowledge and conjecture they absorb from outside contacts. a worse medium would be hard to conceive. from what pat indicates of the tittle-tattle of ingénues' luncheons, it would enlighten rabelais and shock pepys! and the current jokes between the girls and their boy associates of college age are chiefly innuendo and _double entente_ based on sex. pat cannot say 'bed' or 'leg' or 'skin' without an expectant self-consciousness. some reechy sort of bedroom story has been lately going the rounds, the point of which is involved in the words 'nudge' and 'phone.' every time either word is used in pat's set, there are knowing looks and sniggers, and some nimble wit makes a quick turn of the context and gets his reward in more or less furtive laughter. it is not so much the moral side, it is the nauseous bad taste that sickens one. the mind decays in that atmosphere. once pat said to me: 'bobs, you and mr. scott are the only clean-minded men i know.' think of what that means, mona! the viciousness of such an environment. yet the youngsters themselves are not essentially vicious; not many of them. they are curious with the itchy curiosity of their explorative time of life, and they have no proper guidance. the girls are worse off than the boys who do gain some standards in college. but our finishing schools, churchly or otherwise! hell is paved with their good intentions. pat's is not worse than the others, i suppose. but the pity of it; the waste of it for her. hers is such a vivid mind; such a brave, straightforward little mind; at war with that hungry, passionate temperament of hers, yet instinctively clean if it could be protected from befoulment. i have been talking biology with her and she absorbs it with such swift, sure appreciation. the day of trial for her will come when the lighter amusements pall and her brain demands something to feed on--unless before that time it becomes totally encysted. "cary scott's influence on her is good. she likes and respects him and is a little afraid of him, too. he has a quality of quiet contempt for cheap and shoddy things to which she responds, though not always without bursts of her fiery little temper. if he were less of the natural aristocrat in all the outer attributes he would not impress her so. meantime i am glad to see him take some interest even though it be but a playfully intellectual one, in anyone who will divert his mind from constance. sometimes i have thought disaster imminent in that quarter. disaster! how readily one falls into the moralist's speech, and how your dear lips would quirk at that tone from me, dearest. yet a liaison between those two would be potentially disastrous. for connie has nothing to give to a man like cary scott except her beauty. if he is the man i think him, he will never take her for that alone; or, if he does, be long satisfied with it. yet her charm is terribly strong.... i wonder whether you really loved cary scott, mona, as i have loved and still love you...." coming downstairs after writing this letter, from the dead woman's room where a desk had been set aside for him as executor of her estate, osterhout found cary scott, dressed in evening clothes, waiting in the library. on his return from his trip abroad scott had unobtrusively resumed his established place at holiday knoll. he had seen as much of constance as before, perhaps more, because dee, between whom and scott a very frank and easy friendship had grown up, was occupied with jameson james to the partial exclusion of other associations, and therefore scott was less with her than formerly. he did not like james. scott and the doctor greeted each other cordially. "you have a festive air to-night," remarked osterhout. "yes. it's the special symphony concert this evening. i'm taking constance." "no, you're not," contradicted a hoarse and gay voice. pat smiled upon them from the entrance. the two men turned to look at her. she stood, one hand above the tousled shimmer of her short, dark hair, lightly holding by the lintel. in her eyes were laughter, anticipation, and a plea. her strong, young figure preserving still much of the adorable awkwardness of undeveloped youth, had fallen into a posture of stilled expectancy. she wore a sweater of some exotic, metallic blue, a short, barred skirt, and woollen stockings, displaying the firm, rounded legs. "you're taking _me_. aren't you?" she added in the husky, breaking sweetness of her voice. into the minds of the two men darted diverse responses to the appeal of the interrupter. cary scott thought, "what a child it is!" wiser and more cognisant, through experience of the years, robert osterhout said within himself, "good lord! it's a woman." "why the charming substitution?" inquired scott in the manner which, to her unfailing delight, he used toward pat as toward any of his older associates. "con's got a headache." cary scott understood perfectly. this was subterfuge on constance's part. she was unready to face the issue. there had been a preamble between them on the previous evening; tacitly it was understood that this evening was to determine their future relations. and now she was shirking the crisis. or was she merely playing the part of the "teaser," drawing back the more to inflame his ardour--and perhaps her own? of the two hypotheses scott inclined to the former. it was more in consonance with her natural inertia of character. if she were in love with him it was not the kind of love which justified itself by daring, by taking the risks, by boldly facing sacrifice. inexplicably he felt a quality of relief mingling with his natural pique. he was well satisfied to postpone, to let the decision go, to find relaxation in taking pat to the concert. in the companionship of this eager, acute, vivid child he would breathe a clearer atmosphere, with something of a mental stimulus, a tingle in it, that which he most missed in his association with the married sister. all of this rapid cogitation was quite without reflected effect upon his imperturbable manner as he said: "tell constance that i'm so sorry, won't you? and that i appreciate her sending so delightful a substitute." "oh, she didn't send me," answered pat composedly. "it's all my own idea." "a very good one," grunted osterhout. "pat's a connoisseur of music. but don't keep my infant out too late, scott." "all right, pop," returned scott with mocking deference, as the older man left. "how long can you wait?" demanded pat of her escort. "i can't wait at all. my car is champing at the leash now." pat's illumined face fell. "but i can't go this way." "why not? i like you that way." "but you're always so awfully correct. i look like a mess." "you look like"--he searched for and found the picture--"like a mediæval page." she made a grimace. "yes. a boy." in frank unconsciousness she set her hands with spread fingers against her breasts. "flat, like a board," she said disconsolately. "i like it," he reassured her. "it's part of the charm." she gave her characteristic soft crow of pleasure. "_that's_ the nicest thing you could possibly say to me. d'you mean it? really?" "of course i mean it. why not?" "i thought men liked girls to be just the other way. all rounded." she peered at him doubtfully. "perhaps it's because you're old," she surmised. taken aback for the moment he interpreted the innocent speech too literally. "i'm not as old as that. though i don't suppose--i rather wonder what you meant by that." "oh, nothing! just that the point of view must be different. isn't it? less personal." "it's very personal in this case," he retorted with a real warmth of friendliness for this strange and appealing child, "and quite simple. you're a very delightful little pat. i like your type. _petite gamine._" "what's that?" "isn't french taught in your school?" "it's taught; but it isn't necessarily learned," she answered, summing up in that flash of criticism the essential falsity of the whole finishing school system. "i see. you know what a gamin is?" "gamin?" she gave it the english pronunciation. "oh, yes." "_gamine_ is the feminine. but there's a suggestion in it of something more delicate and fetching; of verve, of--of diablerie. as there is in you. it's hard to say in english. i could describe you better in french." "could you? then i'll learn french. and i think it's divine of you," said she, employing her favourite adjective, "to like my funny, flat figure. you know," she added, sparkling at him mischievously, "you're taking a chance on this concert thing." "any special chance other than that of being late?" "oh, i shan't be a minute, now that i needn't dress. yes; you're taking a big chance. i'm an awful nut over music. it does all kinds of things to me. i'm quite capable of falling on your neck and bursting into sobs if they play anything i awfully like." beneath the lightness he sensed a real emotion. "are you really so fond of it? then i'm doubly glad that you're going." "i _adore_ it. really good music, i mean. oh, i do wish i could play or sing or do something worth while." "have you ever tried?" she shrugged her shoulders. "too lazy. if it wasn't for the boring practice i might do something." she raised her voice and sang the opening bars of the hindu sleep-song. "the devil!" exclaimed cary scott. all the huskiness had passed from the voice, which issued from the full throat, pure, fresh-toned, deep and effortless. "you ought to be ashamed of yourself," he declared so vehemently that she pouted. "now you're scolding me." "because you're letting a voice like that go untrained." "lots of people like it as it is," she said resentfully. "then they don't recognise what a really lovely thing it might be, properly handled. why haven't you taken lessons?" again the shrug. "i did. but i stopped. too much trouble. will you teach me?" "i? heavens, no! you want a professional." "what! and practice an hour every day?" cried the horrified pat. "two hours. three probably. it would be worth it." "i'd be bored to a frazz." "you're bored with anything that means work, discipline, self-restraint. aren't you, pat?" "are you going to lecture me again? i love it," she observed unexpectedly and with a brilliant smile. in spite of himself he laughed. "no. i'm going to take you to the concert. get your hat." settling herself in the car like a contented kitten, pat presently said: "there's something i want to tell you, mr. scott. only it isn't too easy to begin." "why not? we're friends, aren't we?" "right! that makes it easier. you remember at the club; what we talked about?" "yes." "i've been awfully good--about that. i haven't, at all. at least, nothing serious." "i am flattered to have been so good an influence," he remarked with his faintly ironic inflection. constance would not have caught it. but little pat's ear was truer. "don't josh me about it," she protested. "nobody's ever tried to be a good influence for me really. except bobs. and he doesn't know." "why doesn't he know?" "too old. but," she added in afterthought, "you're old, too, aren't you!" "terribly." "i'd almost forgotten that," she said thoughtfully. chapter xiii coming out of the concert hall after the last, culminating burst of harmony, cary scott drew a deep breath of the night air. lover and connoisseur of music though he had always been, never in his recollection had it so penetrated his being as now. better programmes he had listened to, more perfectly rendered. but the companionship of the intensely responsive young girl, her superb and poignant vitality concentrated upon the great waves of sensation which had swept over their spirits, interpreted the numbers for him in a new measure. timidly, tentatively at first, then more boldly as the ardent influences took hold upon her, pat had yearned to him in the semi-darkness which surrounded them. the sweet, firm curve of her shoulder first, then the close pressure of her knee; soon her fingers, creeping to his hand, clasping and being enfolded, the fragrance of her light, quick breath, rhythmic upon his cheek. it seemed as if she had become subtly the medium and instrument of all the splendour of sound, as if the music were flowing in the currents of her woman's body out upon him and around him in a submerging flood. now they were in the open air. she walked beside him, her face dreamy and demure, the faintest of smiles implicit in the up-slanted corners of her mouth. "wasn't it--magic!" she breathed. "yes, magic," he assented. they located and entered his car. for a time the intricacies of the traffic engrossed his attention. as they passed into the light-shot spaciousness of the park he turned to her. "well?" "don't let's talk. i want to just remember." he nodded and she leaned to him momentarily again, kitten-like, caressing, grateful for his understanding. he, too, was glad of the respite, for, man of the world though he was, he had been strangely, unexpectedly shaken. it was pat who, long minutes later, sighed and broke the silence with the hoarse, enticing sweetness of her tones. "what did you do it for, mr. scott?" "i? do what?" he was surprised by the directness of the attack. "oh, well! i, then. you know. what did you let me do it for?" he made no reply. in his stillness was a sense of expectancy to which she responded. "i warned you what music did to me. but you--you needn't have let me----" she paused. "do you like me a little?" she murmured. "yes. a little." "only a little?" she teased, half child demanding the comfort of affection, half conscious coquette. "not more than that?" "perhaps a little more," he smiled. "but not half as much as you do con," she said deliberately. he was silent, his attention apparently engrossed in a heavy truck which gave them bare passing room. "do you?" she insisted, daring greatly. "do i what?" "like me as much as you do con? half as much, i mean." "if i did do you think i should tell you?" "why shouldn't you? but i thought you were crazy over con. she thinks so." scott hummed one of the passages from the final number of the concert. "oh, _very_ well. i'm only making conversation. i don't really want to talk at all. i'd rather think. all the rest of the way home." arrived at holiday knoll, he stepped from the car and held out a hand to her. "good-night, pat." "aren't you coming in?" "i think not." "ah, do," she wheedled. "just for a minute." he turned to look at the broad, rambling house. a dim light burned in the library; a brighter one in dee's room overhead. constance's room was dark. he was vaguely glad of that. "i haven't even thanked you yet," she observed. "you needn't." "then you ought to thank me," she asserted daringly, "for taking connie's place. do come in. perhaps i can find you a drink." "i don't want a drink, thank you," he returned; but he followed her through the door. "it's us, dee," called the girl, projecting her voice up the stairway as she led the way to the library. "mr. scott and me." "all right," dee responded. "i'm in my nightie or i'd come down. have a good time?" "gee-lorious!" said pat. she took off her hat, fluffed up her short, heavy hair with a double-handed scuffle characteristic of her, and moved forward to the table. in the diffused soft radiance of the one light, scott stared at her. her pose was languid, her eyes sombre with the still passion of lovely sounds remembered. slowly the lids drooped over them. she tilted her chin and in her effortless, liquid voice of song gave out the exquisite rhythm of a melody from the tschaikowsky fifth which they had just heard. "don't, pat," muttered scott. "don't you like it?" "i love it. so--don't." she moved toward him, her throat still quivering with the beauty of sound, and lifted her hand to the bright, curt waves of hair at his temple, brushing them lightly back. a dusky colour glowed in her cheeks. as the dim echo of the music died, she leaned to him. her lips, light, fervent, cool, softly firm, met his, lingered upon them for the smallest, sweetest moment as a moth hovers in its flight from a flower. then she, too, was in flight. "good-night," she whispered back to him from the doorway. pat's challenge to stancia's supremacy gave scott plenty to speculate about. his first sentiment was amusement that this daring child should have deliberately elected to enter the lists against her older and more beautiful sister. but what was pat's interest in him? flirtation? evidently. he guessed that it was the dash of diablerie in her that had inspired the experiment. nevertheless, he was conscious of a rather excited interest in and curiosity about her, not as a precocious child, but as a reckonable woman with distinct provocations of person and mind. in comparison with her, scott reflected (and was shocked at his own disloyalty in so reflecting) stancia was becoming insipid. he discovered, in thinking it over, that there had grown up an impalpable embarrassment between stancia and himself, and that it seemed to have been growing for some time; an inexplicable thing between those two who had approached so near to embarkation upon the love-adventure perilous. had she noticed it? he wondered. had he been so bold as to put the query to her, she would have hardly known how to reply. she was conscious that at times she failed to hold his interest; that his mind seemed to wander away from her; but, in the self-sufficiency of her beauty, she set that down to a quality of vagueness in his character. he was unfailingly gentle, considerate, and helpful wherever, in her luxurious and hard-pressed life, she allowed him to help. and he asked nothing in return. this piqued, even while it relieved her. for she was no longer adventurous. the layers of fat were insulating that soft and comfort-enslaved soul. scott, striving to maintain the appearances of a loyalty which he did not really owe (how he thanked his gods for that now!) found her loveliness growing monotonous, her inertia of mind, irritant. "nothing above the ears," pat had said; wicked little pat, whose vividness so far outshone the mere beauty of the elder. the harsh truth of the slang had stuck. his next encounter with the girl was several days later when he was keeping an appointment with stancia in the library at the knoll; the merest fleeting glimpse of the boyish girl-figure as it passed through the hallway, followed by the heart-troubling, deep thrill of her voice raised in the tschaikowsky melody.... "i've asked you twice," he was conscious of stancia saying plaintively, "and you don't pay any attention." "i really beg your pardon," apologised scott. "awfully stupid of me. of course, i shall be delighted to stay to luncheon." as he was leaving early in the afternoon, pat hurried after him to intercept the car. "take me down to the village with you, mr. scott?" "indeed i will." she jumped in. "i don't want to go to the village," said she in quite a different tone, as the car took the curve. "i want to talk." "it's a worthy ambition. so do i. where shall we go?" "anywhere." he whirled the car around an abrupt corner and headed for the open country. "i cried that night after the concert," pat informed him. she was staring straight in front of her. "my dear!" he murmured. "i'm _not_ your dear." "no. you're not. i must remember that." "not a bit--to-day. i've had time to think." "so have i." she whirled on him. "have you changed, too?" she demanded with animation and dismay, quaintly negligent of the implied inconsistency. "no. i haven't changed." "i'm glad," said she naïvely. then, stealing a glance at him, "do you still like me--a little?" a little? how much did he "like" this bewitching child? was "like" a sufficient word at all for the feeling which had taken such puzzling growth within him? he could not have answered the query to himself satisfactorily, and had no intention of defining his attitude for her benefit. "tell me," she whispered. "i think you might." "i have many things to tell you, little pat," he replied with his foreign precision of speech; "but that is not one of them." "it's the one i want to hear," said willful pat. "first, do you tell me: why did you cry that night?" "conscience. no," she contradicted herself thoughtfully; "that's a bluff. i don't know. sort of nervousness, i expect." "that is what i feared for you; that you would brood over it and make yourself unhappy----" "it wasn't that at all," interrupted pat simply and promptly. "but i did want to see you again and know that you didn't think--that i wasn't too awfully--that i didn't seem just a fresh kid to you." "no. you didn't." "was that being '_petite gamine_'?" she threw a sidelong glance at him. "was it? you should know." "after all, it was only a white kiss." "a _what_?" "white kiss. there are white kisses and red kisses," she explained unconcernedly. "you have no right to that kind of knowledge," said he sternly. "where did you come by it?" "i told you," she muttered gloomily, "that i used to be a terrible necker." "yes. but--that sort of thing! don't you know that's dangerous?" "would it be with you?" she asked with direct and naïve curiosity. "there is no question of it with me," he answered rigidly. "but, so far as that goes, no. i am old enough to know how to control myself." "then you're different from most men," she returned bitterly. "good god, child! have you learned that already? at your age?" "since we're telling each other our real names," said pat in her levelest tones, "the first time i was kissed i was hardly fifteen." "you seem to have been unfortunately precocious." she flashed a smile at him. "are you jealous?" the amazing realisation came to him that he was. but he answered steadily: "what right should i have to be jealous of what you might do?" "suppose i _want_ you to be?" this he chose to disregard. "i don't believe that you understand yourself, your temperament." he was trying to hold himself to a tone of cool diagnosis. "i wish i were your dr. bobs for fifteen minutes." "well, i don't," she retorted. "bobs's middle names are sterling worth; but i'd rather have you lecture me. _you_ understand." "i understand that you are of a very high-strung, neurotic, excitable temperament." gloom overshadowed her face again. "you're not telling me any news about myself." "then you must see how perilous it is for a girl like you to be what you call a necker." "oh, as far as that goes," she answered coolly, "i've always got my foot on the brake. every minute. if things get too hectic i can always see the ridiculous side of it and get up a laugh. it's a grand little safeguard, being able to laugh at yourself." "i suppose it is. as long as you _are_ able." "anyway, i've been terribly proper ever since you talked to me that night at the party. wise virgin stuff! do you know you've got a lot of influence over me, mr. scott?" "have i? i'm glad of that." "so am i. but i don't quite know why you should have." she pondered. "unless it's because there's something about you that makes the other men seem clumsy and--and _local_." he laughed. "i'm very flattered." "don't make fun of me," pouted pat. "i'm serious. particularly about your having influence over me. since our talk i've passed up all sorts of chances to have a flutter. i don't believe i've kissed three boys, in all." despite himself scott queried acidly: "and were they red or white kisses?" "well, one of them might have had a dash of pink in it. no; i just said that to tease you," she added impulsively. "i really have been boringly good. it isn't too easy, either." "pat, why don't you talk to dr. bobs about yourself?" "i will if you want me to," said she submissively. "it would be a good thing, assuming that you would talk frankly." "where shall i begin? by telling him about us?" she inquired demurely. upon this scott's inner commentary was, "you little devil!" aloud he said composedly: "if you think it significant. but what i said was about yourself." "oh, i'm well enough," said she carelessly. "are you happy enough?" she gave him a startled glance. "why should you think i'm not happy?" "i didn't say i thought so. i simply asked you." "well, i am." but there was a hint of defiance in her tone. "and you _do_ think i'm not." "i think you're restless and discontented." "what makes you think that?" she asked, curiously, leaning over to him so that the warm curve of her arm pressed his. he glanced not at her but at her encroaching shoulder. "because of just that sort of thing." she snatched her arm away. "i hate you!" "better hate me than yourself. as you did that night at the club." tears welled up in her eyes. her chin trembled and there was a soft, heart-thrilling catch in the huskiness of her voice, barely controlled enough to enunciate: "i don't see why you're so mean to me." "why, it's a child!" he exclaimed in mock self-reproach. "and i keep forgetting and treating it like a grown-up." "that's why i love to be with you. i want to be treated that way." "oh, no! you merely think you do. in reality you want to be petted and flattered and coddled and approved in all your cunning and silly little ways. that would be very easy. only--it isn't part of our compact." with one of her mercurial changes she flashed a smile at him. "i'd nearly forgotten. you were to be my wise and guiding friend, weren't you? is that why you're telling me that i'm restless and discontented?" "well, aren't you?" "not more than the other girls." "is that an answer?" "no. yes, it is, too! why should i be different?" "because you're you." "'be-_cause_ you're _you_,'" she sang gaily to the measure of an elderly but still popular song. "i like to have you say that. how do you think i'm different?" "ah, that i can't say. you see, i don't know the girls of your age much." "no; you're always playing around with the married women," she remarked calmly. "well, you don't miss much. they're a lot of dimwits, the girls of my age here. no snap. if they can get a couple of rounds of bridge in the afternoon and a cocktail before dinner and a speed-limit whizz around the country in somebody's car, or a few hours of jazz, or a snuggling party with some good-looking boy on the porch, that'll keep them from suicide for quite a spell." "i see. they seek the same distractions from the prevailing restlessness----" "you needn't finish," she broke in. "yes; we're all alike. there isn't a girl that doesn't go in for spooning if she likes the boy--and a lot of 'em aren't even too particular about that--except maybe the standish girls, and they've been brought up as if their house was a convent. at that, ailsa standish told me the conundrum about why girls wear their hair covering their ears. d'you know it?" she enquired with a palpable effect of brazen hardihood. but she turned her head away from the quiet disgust of his look as he answered: "yes, i know it. but you've no business to. it strikes me that you're in a pretty rotten set." "it's the only set in dorrisdale," defended pat sullenly. "and we're slow compared to some of the other towns." "well, if you think it's worth it," he began slowly when she cut in, with a sort of cry, throwing out her hands, those large, supple, shapely, capable hands, in a gesture of despair and appeal. "but what's a girl to do?" "doesn't your school give you anything?" "not a dam' thing that i don't want to get and get easy. all they try to do is make it easy for you to get through. they won't even issue diplomas for fear some of the girls couldn't pass the exams and their people would get sore on the school. i study when i feel like it, and that isn't too often." "will you do something for me, pat?" "yes; i'd love to," was the eager reply. "make something of your voice. you can do it with a little work." at the last word she assumed an expression of distrust. "how much work?" "two hours a day, perhaps." "two hours a day! for how long?" "a year of it would give you a start." "two whole hours out of every day for a year? what do you take me for; a machine?" scott's nerves quivered with the strident rasp of the voice, like the squawk of a dismayed and indignant hen. "why, i wouldn't have any time for anything else." "some days have as much as twenty-four hours in them," he pointed out. "however, you might make a start with an hour." "i might," she admitted dubiously, "while i'm in school. but when i get out i want to have some fun. and i'm going to." "so, it seems this influence which i am supposed to have over you doesn't go very far." "now you're disgusted with me again. but i can't help it. i'm not going to be a _slave_ just to be able to sing a little." "it might be more than a little. and it seems to be the one quality you have which might be susceptible of development." "now you're talking like a school teacher. and you're not too flattering, are you? don't you think i've got any brains?" "yes. but i don't think you're going to find them of much use." "i suppose you'd like me to go to college," said pat contemptuously, "and learn the college cheer and how to play basketball." "you might even learn more than that. however, if you're satisfied with your present status, that settles _that_. suppose we talk of something else." this did not suit pat at all. she promptly said so. "i want to talk about me. you almost always do talk to me about myself. i wonder if that's why i like to be with you more than anyone else," she concluded with one of her accesses of insight. "it's an extremely interesting subject." "now you're laughing at me again. and a moment ago you were angry. but you're still disappointed, aren't you?" "a little." "i think that's rotten of you!" she murmured. "i suppose we ought to be going back." she sighed. "i don't want to a bit. can you turn here?" it was a narrow and tricky road. as the car came to a stop after backing she laid her hand on his. "kiss little pattie and tell her to be a good child and she'll be awfully good," she murmured elfishly. scott completed the turn before he answered: "no, little pat. no more of that between you and me." on the return journey she was silent and thoughtful. at the post office in the village she asked to be set down, and, getting out, looked up at him, her eyes limpid with sincerity. "please, mr. scott, keep on liking me," she said. "it's awfully good for me." chapter xiv semicircles of weariness hollowed robert osterhout's eyes as he opened the door and entered mona's room. it had been a hard night for him. memory had been delicately dissecting his nerves. striving in vain to lose himself in his experiments he had turned, early in the morning, to his communion with the dead woman. the letter, that pitiful solace for the unremitting pain of loss and loneliness, was in his hand now as he closed the door behind him. " ... as for pat," he had written, "she is one of those born to trouble the hearts of men and to take fire from their trouble. of the tribe of helen! if i could see her safely married---- safely! as if there were any safety in marriage! not under our present system. look at connie. though, for that matter, my misgivings about her and cary scott seem to have been misplaced. that flame has flickered out. she will perhaps settle down from sheer inertia. but hers is hardly what one would call a safe or successful marriage. dee's may be better. not that she is specially in love with james. but her training at sports will stand her in good stead. she will go through with it. dee is first and last a good sport. nevertheless, i sometimes wish she had waited for the really right man, if there be any such for her. "mona, there are times when i could believe in trial marriage, with suitable safeguards, of course, against children. if i were a philosopher instead of a medical man i should certainly favour the system. but my technical training prejudices my judgment. of course, we do have trial marriages, and commonly; or trial alliances, which is the same thing without the same name. if the truth were known i suppose that most men who marry the second time, marry their mistresses. how many other experiments may previously have gone into the discard as having proved unsuitable, is another question. selection of the fittest. the notion that men never marry the women who give themselves is fictional cant, one of those many falsities which society propagates under the silly delusion that they are safeguards of virtue. "what an experiment it would be to bring up a young girl in an atmosphere clear of all the common lies and illusions! you had begun to do it with pat, i think. i wish that i could carry on. but it is too blind a venture for a worn and uncertain bachelor like myself. nevertheless, when pat does put questions to me i give her the truth. and she has a flair for truth. an enquiring and pioneering sort of mind, too, which would be a fine equipment if only it were trained and disciplined. as it is, it is a danger. she will explore, and exploration, with her temperament--pat ought to marry some man much older than herself; a man of thirty at least, clever enough to understand her, patient enough to bear with her caprices, and strong enough to compel her respect. he could make something real of her, for there is essential character in pat. or is it only the charm of her personality that makes one think so? i could wish that cary scott were not married. though, of course, he is too old for her. he takes a great deal of interest in her and has much influence over her mind; but his interest is not that kind of interest, naturally. he has been talking to me about her; very shrewdly, too. he thinks her of the dangerously inflammable type. i fancy that she has been making a confidant of him. he thinks that i should talk to her plainly. i feel rather alarmed at the prospect; the modern flapper knows so formidably much!" opening the safe to add this letter to the accumulating pile in the centre compartment, osterhout was conscious of a subtle and troubling impression. he felt that some alien hand had intruded there, some alien eye had seen those words, so sacredly confidential, sealed in the inviolable silences of death. yet that, he knew, was impossible. no one in the world except himself had the combination of the safe. could mona herself, mona's spirit, returning to the room she had so loved and so permeated with her personality, have entered there to absorb the essence of the confidences which she had demanded of him? but if that were so, why should he feel that sense of invasion, since the letters belonged more to mona than to him? nevertheless, the thought was a blessed appeasement to the thirst of his heart. he clasped it to him. but presently his underlying materialistic hard sense reasserted its ascendancy. he set it all down to imagination; smiled tolerantly at himself for a sentimental self-deluder. for a long time pat did not come to pay him the expected visit. but the day before her return to school she appeared in his laboratory. "bobs," she announced pathetically, "i've got a sore throat." "let's have a look at it," he directed, leading her to the window. she tilted back her face, while he explored the recesses of the accused organ. "sore throat, eh?" he remarked. "at least your mouth is clean, which is more than could have been said of it a year ago. you've got a breath like a cow." "'snice," purred pat. "i'm a good little dieter. but what about my throat?" "well," answered the physician judicially, "it might be diphtheria or it might be scarlet fever, but _i_ think it's that guilty feeling that comes of telling lies about itself. your throat is no more sore than my pipe." "i know it isn't," admitted the unabashed pat. "but i'm kind of wrong inside. way-way inside, i mean." "the patient must be more specific if the physician is to be of use." "bobs, am i a fool?" "i suppose so. most people are." "am i a dam' fool?" "as to degree we come to a consideration of definition which----" "mr. scott thinks i am." "hello! who's making this diagnosis? cary scott, or you, or i?" "do you think i ought to go to college?" "too late. you couldn't get in now, thanks to that infernal, mind-coddling, brain-softening school of yours." "it isn't! i love the school. they let you do whatever you like." "which is, of course, the best possible course for a finished product like you." "oh, _well_! who cares? i don't." "then why come to me?" "i don't think i'm getting everything out of--of things that i might," said pat plaintively. "that's the beginning of wisdom. why this divine discontent? have the movies begun to pall?" "oh, _have_ you seen doug fairbanks in his last? he's _too_ flawless." "evidently they haven't begun to pall. if i could be assured of its being his last i would gladly go to see the too-flawless doug. but my dull artistic appreciations do not rise above charley chaplin. but we wander. we were discussing your way-way inside, weren't we? why its sudden discomposure?" "i thought you could tell me. you know so much, bobs. i'm getting bored with the things i used to like. i think it's talking with mr. scott. he's so different, and he makes the rest seem dull." "yes; scott is a bit of a prig," said osterhout with intention. "he isn't!" flashed pat indignantly. "he's the best dressed man at the club. jimmie james says so." as the physician smiled at this naïve refutation she added: "well, a man can't be a prig and look the way mr. scott always does, can he?" "obviously not." "it's only because he's been about the world so much and knows such a lot about music and art and books and--and things." "well, you've had the advantages of a liberal and ladylike education yourself. kindred spirits. don't fall in love with cary scott, infant. remember he's a married man," smiled osterhout. "fall in _love_ with him? why, i'd as soon think of falling in love with you! he's old enough to be my grandfather! but i think he's awfully good for me," she added naïvely. "don't you love to talk with mr. scott, bobs?" "oh, i just _adore_ it!" simpered the doctor, clasping fervent hands. "now you're laughing at me," she pouted. "he's always laughing at me. that doesn't help much." "sometimes it does, bambina. it might even teach you to laugh at yourself." "i do that, too. and sometimes i cry at myself. all night." "do you?" he scrutinised her. "at your age? what do you cry about?" "just about myself. because nothing seems worth while except--except queer things." "that's morbid. or else it's a pose." "it isn't a pose. i even don't like school as much as i did. bobs, i want to leave after this term. d'you think if you went to dad you could talk him into letting me?" "much more likely that you could. what's your plan? launch yourself socially on a waiting world?" "don't be spit-catty; it doesn't suit you. no; i want to come back home and run the house for dad and have some fun. i've been taking domestic science, and i know i could do it better than con. she'd be glad to be rid of the bother, anyway. i thought i'd work at music, too. do you think i could do anything with my voice, bobs?" "don't ask me. any crow knows more music than i do. i think it would be good for you to tackle anything steady and regular. it would keep you from being too introspective." "nice bobs, to give me all the big words for nothing! that means that i think too much about myself, doesn't it? i know i do. and i talk too much about myself, too. i came over here just to talk about myself and to get you to talk about me," she confessed simply. with an air of considered maturity, she added: "it isn't much fun for me to talk to boys of my own age. they're always wanting to tell you about themselves, or else to make love to you. generally it's love-stuff." "indeed! do you go in much for that particular indoor sport, pat?" "oh, it isn't all indoors. there's porch swings, and limousines; all that helps. are you shocked, bobs?" "i'm interested. the habits of the young of the species are bound to be interesting to a scientist." "you said something when you said 'habits.' everybody does it. didn't you when you were young?" "it's so long ago that i've forgotten. but i don't think my sisters did. not promiscuously." "if they did you'd be the last one that knew about it," the sapient pat informed him. "and i hate the word 'promiscuously.' besides, it isn't true. i don't. not any more." "great grief, infant! you talk as if you'd been at this sort of thing for uncounted years!" "i've been over twelve for some time, you know," she observed lightly. "perhaps it's as well that you reminded me. you seem so permanently young to me. however, speaking medically, i should say cut it out, infant. cut it out for good. it's no good for you. it's no good for any young girl; but particularly not for you." she knitted her pretty brows at him, thinking it through. "i get you, stephen," she said presently. "though i'm not so different from other girls, only a little more so than some, maybe. but you're right. sometimes i've felt like a nervous wreck. i wish that i didn't know so much about myself. or else that i knew a little more." "you know quite enough. at any rate you spend quite enough time thinking about yourself. where do you suppose all this leads to, pat?" "i don't know. lots of time to think about that, isn't there? i suppose i'll get married and have a lot of kids some day. i like kids." "it would probably be the best thing for you." "do you think so? but i'd be a rotten wife, bobs," she added, a cloud settling down upon her expressive face. "what kind of a training have i had to marry and have children to bring up?" "about the same as most of your set, haven't you?" "yes; and look at them! there isn't one of them that's true to her husband." "great lord, pat----" "now, i _have_ shocked you." "yes, you have. not the fact--though it isn't a fact so sweepingly--but that you at your age should know it or think it." "oh, i don't mean necessarily that they go the limit. but they're all out for a flutter with any attractive suitor that comes along. bobs, tell me something; if a married woman goes necking around isn't she more likely to--to go farther than a girl is?" "depends on the individual. it isn't the safest of pastimes for anyone, as i've suggested to you." "but it's such fun to make 'em crazy," returned the irrepressible pat. "only," she added pensively, "it isn't such fun when you feel kind of crazy yourself. yet it is, too. when i get married i'm going to everlastingly settle down and never look sideways at any other man. bobs, what makes you think i ought to marry a man thirty years old?" "it's about the right age for you. it will take a man of some wisdom and self-control to manage you, little pat." "more grandfather stuff!" she muttered fretfully. "i don't want to marry a settled old thing. i want someone with some fun left in him." "two or three years from now thirty won't look so senile." "probably not. dee's marrying a man over thirty. bobs, do you like dee's engagement?" "no; i don't," he answered, and straightway wished that he had not been betrayed into that frankness. "neither do i. jimmie james thinks he's first cousin to the almighty. dee won't stand for that." "she seems devoted to him." "oh, she'll see it through. dee's a good old girl. but i wish she wouldn't. have you told her what you think about it?" "certainly not!" "well, don't bite me. would you have if she'd asked you?" "perhaps. i doubt it." "i'd have thought she'd have come to you. dee's awfully impressed with you, bobs. lots more than i am. would you tell _me_ if i came to you?" "of course." "why the difference, i wonder? never mind, old dear. i'll make you a promise right here that i won't marry anyone without your consent. only, you'll have to give your consent if i want it very much, you know. won't you, bobs?" "probably," he said. she waved him a kiss and was gone. he returned to his interrupted task. in the midst of a test which should have absorbed all his attention a sudden query jarred itself into his brain. how had pat known that he thought it desirable for her to marry a man of thirty? certainly he had never told her so. he had never told anyone so. except mona. chapter xv consciousness of virtue warmed pat's heart as she jumped from the train at dorrisdale and sniffed the shrewd october air with nostrils that quivered like a kitten's. she had been working hard at school, ever so much harder than there was any real need for, on her music and domestic science, and now she was to enjoy some deserved recreation. for this was the week of dee's wedding and she had five days of unmitigated gaiety in prospect. she peopled her plans with the figures of those who were to be participants of and ministers to her pleasurings, nearly all of them, it is significant to note, of the masculine gender. there were the local youth of her own "crowd," with half a dozen of whom she had "had a flutter" more or less ardent, in the last year; the out-of-town contingent whom she had long known from the viewpoint of childhood and upon whom she aspired confidently to try her burgeoning charms; and two or three unknowns who were to be of the wedding party. cary scott had a place in the mosaic, too; but not an overshadowing one. the easy effacements of time, so potent upon a youthful mind, had dimmed, though they had not erased, his image. she was expectant of livelier excitements than association with him afforded. nevertheless there was an abiding feeling of assurance in having him for a secure background: she looked forward happily to being approved by him for having worked so hard, much as a playful puppy looks for a tidbit as reward of a trick cleverly performed. furthermore she had a surprise in store for him. "what's doing to-night?" was her first question of dee, after their greetings. "dinner-dance at the vaughns'." "everybody going to be there?" "all that are on hand. some of the party aren't here yet." "who's back of my crowd?" "selden thorpe, billy grant, monty standish; he was asking to-day about you." "that stiff!" commented pat, doing a pirouette. "no more pep than a jumping-jack." "neither would you have if you'd been brought up in a bandbox. but he's begun to lift the lid and look around. and he's a winner to look at." "maybe i'll have a shot at him. dee, i'm out for trouble this trip. i've been being good so long it hurts." "you look it; the trouble-hunting, i mean," commented the elder, appraising her maid-of-honour. "they ought to put a danger signal over you, pat. where do you get the stuff that you work on the men? your features are nothing to hire out to an artist, you know. and yet----" pat laughed delightedly. "aren't they? well, you and con have got enough cold and haughty beauty for the family. being a bride is becoming to you, dee. you look stunning." indeed, dee's clean-cut, attractive athleticism seemed to have taken on a new quality. her eyes had grown more brilliant; there was a higher glow of colour in the clear skin; but a more analytical observer than pat might have discerned in the little, straightening lines at the corners of the firm, sweet mouth, a conscious effort at nervous control. "oh, i'm all right," said she, carelessly. "when's cissie coming?" cissie parmenter was the philadelphia schoolmate whom pat had adopted as "b.f." "to-morrow night. you're a peach to let me have her. what'll we do with her wednesday, dee? only the actual wedding party are asked to the dangerfields', aren't they?" "that's all. i'll get cary scott to run her in town for luncheon." "isn't mr. scott one of the ushers?" "no. he and jimmy aren't very strong for each other. i'm using him as my general utility man for the show. dad's no good for that, and bobs is too busy." "cissie'll be all fired up about mr. scott. i've told her about him." "did you tell her he was married?" "of course. you don't think that would cramp cissie's style, do you? she'll show him some thrill if he gives her half a chance. not that he's too brisk a pacer, himself. how's his little flutter with con going?" "all off," answered dee, laconically. "does con miss it much?" "no. she's having a mild whirl with emslie selfridge. he's safer." "safer than mr. scott? couldn't be. i think scottie invented safety first." "do you?" returned dee drily. "well, you've still got _something_ to learn about men, infant." "i've got something to teach 'em, too," laughed pat impishly. "will he be there to-night?" "who? cary? no; he's in washington. gets back to-morrow noon." this suited pat well enough for her projected surprise. it went with her temperament that she should have a taste for dramatic effect. assuming that mr. scott would report himself at the house shortly after his arrival, she planned to keep the early afternoon free. watchful at her window, on pretence of taking a nap, she saw his car come up the drive and hurried down to the music room where she seated herself at the piano and began to strum casually, taking up the accompaniment of a song as he entered the front door. it was sketchy and sloppy, that accompaniment, the performance of a jerry-trained hand, but it served as background to the fresh, deep, unforgotten voice, which met his ears and checked his footsteps. "if love were what the rose is and you were like the leaf." she completed the stanza, conscious, through her woman's sense, of every slow step that brought him nearer to her. all the falsity of method, the cheap trickery of intonation which had been coached into her for the song, could not wholly devitalise the velvety passion of the voice. as the final word died away she whirled about. "mr. scott! i didn't know _you_ were there." "didn't you?" he smiled down into her eyes with that quietly ironic look of his which seemed to mock at himself as much as at that to which it was directed, taking her outstretched hand. "i'm glad to see you, pat. but--didn't you?" "you know i did," she confessed. "i was singing at you. did you like it?" "yes." unsated of her lust for praise, she persisted: "don't you think my lessons have done me good?" "have you been taking lessons?" "certainly i have. you told me you wanted me to. i've been working _terribly_ hard." "how hard?" "a whole hour, some days. or pretty nearly." "that _is_ toil! under whom?" "one of the teachers at school. she's _very_ good." "a professional?" "she used to sing in a choir. she says," pat dropped her voice impressively, "there are lots of voices on the stage not as good as mine." "doubtless." "i wish i knew what you mean when you say that, that funny way," she said pathetically. "i think you're awfully queer to-day, anyway." her manner changed from petulance to pleading. "do you think i've got a terrible lot to learn before i could try?" "try? what?" "going on the stage." "i think you've got everything to unlearn," he said calmly. silently she gazed at him. the tender upper curve of her lip quivered. she turned back to the piano, jangled a discord which was intended to be a sad and melting harmony, and told her little, feminine lie in a muffled voice: "and i did it all on your account, too." "were you going on the stage on my account?" around she whisked again, jumped from the seat and went to him, her face alight. "that's what i _adore_ about you. you never let me put over any bunk. what makes you so awfully clever about girls, mr. scott?" "not clever at all," he disclaimed. "i'm simply being honest with you. and," he supplemented, "hoping that you're one of those rare human beings with whom one can be honest successfully." "oh, i am," she averred fervently. "but you simply _smeared_ my feelings. i thought you were going to be perfectly thrilled and i get no come-back at all! don't you like my voice even a little bit any more, mr. scott? you did, before." "there's a quality in it that--that---- but what's the use! you won't do any honest work with it." "you don't think i'm any good at all, do you?" she said peevishly. "we were talking about your music, weren't we?" "ah, but i've done a lot besides music since i saw you. and i've been fearfully good and proper. aren't you proud?" "of you? very," he smiled. "of your influence." she took a fold of his sleeve between finger and thumb and idly pleated at it, keeping her intent gaze fixed there. "nobody's ever had half so much over me. i've always done exactly what i liked and never done anything i didn't like." "it's a delightful world, isn't it, pat? but sometimes those things have to be paid for." at this she raised her eyes, thoughtful and honest eyes, now a little shadowed. "i've always known that. and i'll always be ready to pay. whatever else i may be, i'm not yellow, mr. scott. i'll take what i can get, and if there's a--a come-back, i'll take that, too." "yes. you've got courage. _Ça se voit._ that sees itself." he had dropped unconsciously into the emphatic french idiom. "does it? how can you tell? you don't know me so well." "no; i don't." "yes, you do," she contradicted him and herself. "i think you know me better than anyone ever has." again she let her glance fall. "i know that you will face whatever comes, unafraid. that is in your face. no; it's in the way you bear yourself. in any event, there it is." "but you did hurt my feelings. terribly! i thought you'd like my music--and maybe pat me on the head--and say 'nice little girl'--and give me a kiss and a stick of candy." she slipped her fingers down to his wrist, let them creep to the palm of his hand where they clung. "say you're glad to see me again, mr. scott," she murmured. "very glad." "but"--she tilted her face toward his, turned it away, whispered--"i don't think you act so--very." his free hand clamped strongly, friendlily down upon hers for a moment, then released it with a tap. "are you trying to flirt with your grandfather, pat?" he mocked. not for the first time in their intercourse pat said savagely, "i hate you!" but this time she said it to herself, with the wrath of disappointment and shamed uncertainty. she turned to take her music from the piano. it fluttered from her grasp to the floor whence he retrieved it. pat's heart gave a bound of exultation. she had seen his hand shake as it held the sheet out to her. "wouldn't grandpa like a dance with granddaughter this evening?" she challenged gaily. "as many as granddaughter can spare from her little playmates." "come early then and avoid the rush," she advised. "i'll keep what i can out of the wreckage. now i must send dee down to you. she's got a million things for you to do." the million things proved exacting enough to keep scott in town so long that the dance was well under way when he reached it. pat passed him on the floor, floating beatifically in the arms of this or that partner, never for more than a few turns with anyone, for the rush was on for her favours. after dancing contentedly enough with such partners as he could pick up, for several numbers, scott looked about to see whether there was any hope of his cutting in on pat, but failed to find her on the floor; so, as the rooms were rather close, he wandered outside to smoke a cigarette. the soft carpet of the lawn tempted his tired feet. he strolled around the house, intending to re-enter by the far end of the vine-shrouded piazza, when, turning the corner, he came abruptly upon a couple deep in shadow which did not prevent his making out that they were close-clasped. noiselessly though he stepped back he saw the girl's face strain back in attentiveness. pat's startled eyes peered after him in the dark, unrecognising. cary scott swore. then he laughed. the laughter was more bitter than the curse. chapter xvi miss cissie parmenter strolled down the broad stairs at holiday knoll, looking neither to the left nor the right. she was freshly painted with considerable taste, and arrayed with such precision and perfection that she would have suggested a handsome and expensive species of toy but for the sleepy and dangerous eyes which were as profoundly human and natural as the rest of her was delicately artificial. in their depths one could surmise volcanic possibilities. she was small, daintily made, and languid of movement, not without a hint of feline strength. though her regard was apparently fixed upon far-away things, she had at once observed the man in the library. "you're mr. scott, aren't you?" she said in a cool and lazy voice, advancing with hand outstretched. "yes." he took the hand. "and you're miss parmenter?" "yes; i'm cissie. you know, mr. scott, i'm a social outcast for the afternoon." "it wouldn't strike one as having weighed on your spirits." "buoyed up by the prospect of meeting you. aren't you appalled at having a total stranger on your hands all afternoon?" "on the contrary, i'm thrilled," he returned with the conventional answer. she let her slow gaze sweep over him estimatingly. "you're not a bit like i figured out," she murmured, having decided upon the direct-personality gambit, as promising the best and promptest returns. "no? well, youth survives these disappointments." "fishing," she retorted. "no; i shan't tell you how much nicer you are than the prospectus. what are you going to do with me?" "whatever you permit." "oh, have a care of yourself! that might take you far. but i can decide better after eating. where do we go for that?" "how would the ritz do?" "music to my ears. can you get a cocktail there?" "i think it might be managed, confidentially." "that'll do nicely for a starter." "a starter? i see. and for continuance?" "i'm feeling a little down to-day. what would you prescribe?" "i've heard that that medicine with bubbles in it possesses a self-raising quality." "from now on you're my family physician. but i'm sinking rapidly." he contemplated her curiously. "believe me, miss parmenter, i don't want to spoil sport before it begins, but--how old are you?" "twenty-one. beyond the age of consent--for drinks. it's all right; i know how to say 'when' to a bottle. and i'm not so old but that you might call me cissie if you like. i think it would help pass the time." "and as i'm still short of forty, i suppose, on the same principle, you'd better call me cary." "how nicely you play back! and pat told me you were slow; nice, but slow." at the mention of pat's name a little surge of anger and contempt went through scott's veins. but he answered lightly: "i'm a plodding old party, it's true. but i do my best. now, as to practical details i'm afraid that the ritz would draw the line at champagne." "that's a blow." "but i bethink me that there's a locker at a country club up toward the frozen north that i have entry to, if that isn't too far." "if you'd said albany it wouldn't be too far for me." "what would be too far for you, cissie?" she gave him her eyes, alight with gleams of mirth and appreciation. "don't let me stop you," she laughed. "there are days when my brakes need re-lining. let's go!" throughout the drive, cissie alternated between urging her companion to put more speed on the car, and light, slangy, clever, suggestive chatter about theatres, athletics, movies, and the sort of thing that fills the society columns of the daily newspapers. at the luncheon she drank two cocktails, half of the pint of champagne which was all that she would permit to be provided, and then declared herself fit for life again. "what'll we do now?" was her way of putting it. "what time do they expect you back?" "five sharp. so, of course, i shan't be there. i never am. play golf, mr. scott?" "just an average game, miss parmenter." "all right, cary; i'll take you on for twenty on our handicaps." "you bet fairly high, don't you?" "yes; and what's more, i pay up when i lose. if the bet isn't good enough, just to make it more interesting, i'll throw in the odds of a kiss if you win. do you know anyone here who'd loan me a pair of shoes?" that matter being arranged, cissie, playing with cool precision, proceeded to beat him by three and one. "now i'll have a highball, please, and we'll trail for home," she directed. "we won't be more than an hour late if you hit it up with that hearse you drive. are you going to claim the loser's end of the purse?" "the loser's? oh, i see. but i thought that was the winner's." "don't fall all over yourself with unbridled enthusiasm," she jeered. "you've got to give three more rousing cheers than that to wake me up." "just at present i'm busy with the car. but to-night is coming. what dances will you give me?" "the lucky numbers. seven and eleven. aren't you flattered?" "almost as much flattered as i am delighted." she twisted in her seat to confront him. "cary scott, you're a good bluffer, but it doesn't go with me. you haven't fallen for me one little bit!" "i? like an avalanche," he protested. "i find you as charming as you are--startling." "ah, that startling stuff; you know what that is, don't you?" "i'm not sure that i do." "i'm showing you my line; that's all." "and now i find you bewildering. be kind to the stupidity of one who has not yet become fully acclimated to his own amazing country." "yes; anyone could tell that you don't fully belong with us. you see, every girl has her special line to show, nowadays." "like a commercial traveller?" "you've said it! it's whatever is supposed to fit her personality best. you go to a character reader--there's a wiz in carnegie hall, who lays you out a complete map for twenty-five dollars--and she sizes you up and lays out your line for you." "is this line, perhaps, equipped with a hook?" "eh? oh, sure!" cissie laughed. "hook and bait. yes; it's a fish-line, all right." "and what is your specialty?" "haven't i shown it plain enough? it's the lively and risky with just enough restraint to lead 'em on. i'm supposed to have passionate eyes, you know." scott laughed aloud. "i like you, cissie." "it's about time!" she exclaimed. "you haven't, up to now. and i've been working pretty hard on you." "that's very shrewd of you. i mean it, this time. it's realler than the thing we've been playing at." "good man! it's mutual. you can have the kiss if you want it, just for liking." "but you'd rather i wouldn't." "and _that's_ very shrewd of _you_. you're right; i like you that much ... cary, i don't wonder pat's batty over you." "pat? you're quite wrong." "and i'm wrong in thinking you're crazy about her, i suppose." "equally." "pat's line," remarked the astute miss parmenter thoughtfully, "is the minnesota shift up to date; all tomboy, you're-another, take-it-or-leave-it one minute, and the next you know she's a clinging vine and you're it. she can do it with those wonderful eyes and that throaty, croaky, heart-breaky voice of hers. it knocks the boys cold. and i'd think it would be just the line to catch an old--a man of the world like----" "an old man like you, you started to say," prompted scott. "no occasion for embarrassment on my account." "don't fool yourself by thinking that age makes such a difference to girls, these days. they think it does at pat's age, but a couple of years more makes a big diff. most of the boys i used to be crazy about look like sapheads to me now. they're too easy. there's more pep in experience; and," remarked the youthful philosopher, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall. pat's a pretty wise kid, at that. she isn't all '_petite gamine_.'" "evidently she has no secrets from you," said scott, vexed. "we're b.f.'s, you know. i suppose you think dirty me for trying to cut in on her with you." "i don't know that i'd thought of it at all." "now we're very old and stately," said the girl with mischievous alarm. "it makes us coldly dignified to be teased.... heavens! are we home already? good-bye, and thank you for a corking afternoon. see you to-night." she waved him a farewell, but reappeared as his car came back around the curve at the side of the house. "don't forget the lucky numbers, cary," she called, in her high, sweet drawl. "no danger," he answered, wondering just why she had come back to say that. he understood when, in the hallway back of cissie, he caught sight of pat's surprised and frowning face. "the little devil!" he chuckled. but, he thought the moment after, was cissie playing her own game, or pat's? within doors pat rushed the tardy guest upstairs and followed into her room. "do hustle," she said crossly. "you're gumming the game." "hustle is my ancestral name," stated cissie. "i'm right in high to-day." "i'll bet a bet you are," was the reply with a tinge of bitterness in it. miss parmenter's pleasantly decorated face took on an expression of innocent frankness. "what ever made you tell me that your scottie man was slow? i think he's a winner. i've fallen for him like--like an avalanche." "you can have him. but where do you get that cary stuff you were working?" "start a bath for me, will you, mike? oh, _that_. he asked me to. we're awful pals. just like that." she crooked her two perfectly manicured little fingers together pat grunted. "you know you told me to go as far as i liked, _dee_-rie." "well, you did, didn't you?" "oh, not half," cooed the b.f. "he's going to drive me back home after the wedding." "that won't break up my summer!" shouted pat, from the bathroom, above the seethe of the foaming faucets. she felt a definite sense of injury, not against cissie so much as against mr. scott, who represented, to her annoyed mind, a defection on the part of her own presumptive property. had cissie really lured his interest away? or had he lost interest in her, pat, anyway? upon this point her misgivings were allayed by calling to mind the tremulous hand with which he had recovered that sheet of music. yet he had resisted the lure of her touch, the mute offer of her lips. accustomed to the potency of physical appeal upon men, she felt at a loss. true, what had drawn her to scott had been his enjoyment of that in her which underlay the surface, his capacity for appreciating in her qualities and potentialities which she herself felt only dimly and doubtfully when the influence of his presence was remote. yet that he should find her attractive on this side, while holding himself under restraint against her more direct advances, puzzled and discouraged her. especially if he were, in fact, embarking upon a whirl with cissie parmenter. pat knew cissie's methods--or thought she did. in truth she decidedly underestimated the b.f.'s acumen as well as her adaptability to various kinds of camaraderie. pat determined to make herself extra-specially attractive to mr. scott that evening at the dance. unfortunately to be extra-specially or even ordinarily attractive to a person, you must first draw that person within the radius of attraction. to pat's discomfiture mr. scott evinced no interest whatsoever in her; barely any cognisance of her existence and presence at the dance. with the other girls in the wedding party he had early dances, to their obvious satisfaction, for in some occult way, though not of the party proper, he had come to be a central figure of interest. he was deemed "unusual," fascinating, "relieving"--a word which had recently come much into vogue in that set. cissie parmenter had been exploiting him. the party was notable for its pretty girls; but pat, though on the score of actual beauty she was far behind in the running, glowed among them with her dark, exotic radiance, like a flame among flowers. she was beset with admirers competing for such fractions of dances as they could get. every man in the room had been a suppliant except mr. scott. in that atmosphere of adulation pat seemed to become more quiveringly, femininely, alluringly alive. she exhaled delight, like a perfume of her ardent soul. yet in all the excitement of her pleasures, she was waiting and hoping and manoeuvring.... twice cary scott had danced with dee; three times with connie, who was her old, lovely, wistful self for the occasion; pat didn't feel any too comfortable about that. once he had danced with cissie, and once sat out with her on the piazza; and pat didn't feel at all comfortable about that. here it was the twelfth dance and he hadn't come near her. between two numbers she caught sight of him just outside a door, and then and there deserted a lamenting partner. "_mister_ scott!" he turned, and, in spite of himself, felt his breath quicken. she was so superb in the sure luxuriance of her youth; so appealing in the poise of her body, the turn of her head. "having a good time?" he asked courteously. "gorgeous!" she said mechanically, "who you taking in to supper?" "your very charming little friend, miss parmenter." "oh!" said pat. "that's terribly nice of you. if it weren't for you," she added viciously, "i'm afraid cissie'd be having a dull time." "i haven't noticed that she's had many dull moments," he answered, smiling slightly. pat stamped her foot. "then you've been watching her all the time. i think you might have----" she choked a little. "night air too much for you, pat?" he inquired solicitously. "no; it isn't.... _aren't_ you going to ask me for a dance, mr. scott? you didn't last night, either." "surely your programme is already full to overflowing." "it is. but i might do some shifty work with it." "thoughtful of you. but you would doubtless find it more amusing to sit out, or perhaps i should say stand out, the later dances in some remote nook with some attractive youth." he was speaking quite slowly and softly. "i might even say ... any attractive youth." she moved closer to him, with puzzled eagerness in her eyes. "won't you please tell me what you mean?" "consult your memory," he suggested. "surely it will go back for twenty-four hours." illumination came to her. "was it you who came around the corner last night?" "it was." pat's eyes fell. but there was a light in them which he would have found hard to interpret, harder than he thought her next plaintive, exculpatory words: "it's been so long since anyone has petted me." "and you require a certain amount of petting to keep you up to form," he remarked with cold contempt. "you've got the _meanest_ way of speaking," she muttered, before making direct response. "well, if nobody ever pets you, you get to feeling like a social leper; as if nobody cared about you. that's a ghastly feeling." "i'm sure you're quite competent to guard yourself against it." "well, you wouldn't pet me," she said very low, "when you'd hurt my feelings. in the music room." "how very remiss of me!" her attitude changed. her boyish shoulders straightened. her firm little chin went up. "how much did you see last night?" "sufficient to suggest that i was in the way." "were monty and i clinched?" "quite so." "and you went on right away?" "naturally." "if you had stayed," she said calmly, "you might have been of some use. monty was pickled. he was just going to crash when i grabbed him." "is that true, pat?" she met his searching look with unwavering eyes, her nostrils wide with pride. "do you think i'm so afraid of you--or of anyone--that i'd lie about it?" to look at her and disbelieve was impossible. "besides," she added, her voice breaking a little in self-pity, "i told you i was through with that necking game." "how do you want me to apologise, little pat?" her unerring instinct for the charming, the compelling move inspired her. "i don't want you to apologise. i want you to dance with me." "any and all that you'll give me--and with all gratitude and contrition." "i'll filch out two; the fifteenth and the fifth extra. you must be watching. and--about supper--couldn't you?" "no. not possibly. how could i?" she smiled, ruefully yet with a shining quality in her disappointment. "of course you couldn't. it wouldn't be you if you did. i don't care--now." until the fifteenth number scott did not return to the ballroom but wandered outside in dreamy and restless expectation. what he expected, he could not have told. he was conscious chiefly of an enormous relief in the discovery that pat had not gone back on her good resolutions. but this was only part of what he felt. the callowest sophomore could hardly have found himself more eager or less certain of his ground, than did cary scott, man of ripened wisdom and wide experience of women though he was, as he entered to claim his appointment. "but i tell you, monty," pat was saying to a tall and particularly handsome youth who stood before her, programme in hand and a look of almost ludicrous disappointment on his face, "you've made a mistake. you've mixed your dates with cocktails." "i told you last night i'd stay off it," muttered the youth, "and i've done it. and now you're throwing me down." "oh, come around later," said pat carelessly. she slipped into scott's arms, whispering: "don't let _anyone_ cut in." after a few turns she continued: "do you know it's ever and ever so long since we've had a dance together." "it might be a thousand years in its effect on you. you were almost a little girl then and i--what was it you called me?--your wise and guiding friend." "aren't you that now? you must always be," she returned quickly. "and for me only. do you like cissie, mr. scott?" "immensely. she's charming." "better than me?" challenged pat. in the measure of the dance he caught her close to him for a moment and felt the little, excited access of laughter which ran through her body like a tearless sob. "what do you think?" he queried. her cheek fluttered against his. "then that's all right," she breathed. "you dear!" whispered scott. he felt himself losing his head; told himself that this was inexcusable foolishness, unfair, unworthy, sterile trifling with evil chance. yet he lacked the force to draw back. "would you mind very much," asked pat deprecatingly after a pause, "if i renigged on the fifth extra?" "indeed i should! unless"--he tried for a light tone--"there's some special reason for it, such as that you don't want to give it to me." "oh, i want to _terribly_. but i'm in such a mix-up and that dance would straighten me out ... i thought perhaps you'd wait and take me home. i'm going quite early; about three. will you?" "yes." "we'll walk through the lawns; it's only three minutes. watch out for my signal." she was giving him orders as one with a proprietary claim. scott thrilled to it. he would not let himself think to what it was leading. his mind was absorbed in the delight of her, that dark radiance of personality, the sweet compulsion of her charm. he would have waited all night, though a little time before he had thought himself beginning to be bored. it did not seem long when he saw her coming toward him, her wrap over her arm. "quick!" she directed. "or there'll be a howl about my leaving. i'm not even going to say good-night." then they were in the autumn-spiced darkness together, her arm linked in his. it seemed quite natural that her fingers should slip into and twine themselves about his palm. "isn't it a grand little world!" she chuckled softly. "i've had such fun to-night." "you're a wonderful little pat," he replied unsteadily. "d'you really think i'm wonderful? sometimes i think so myself. other times"--she hunched her shoulders in a gesture peculiar to her--"i think i'm just like everyone else." "like no one else in the world." "because no two people are alike, of course. i'd hate to be exactly somebody's twin.... you're that way, too. you don't remind me of anyone i've ever seen. most men do." they had come to a gate which resisted pat's attempt, being locked. "oh, very well!" she said, addressing it, "i'll just climb _you_." she attained the top, agile as a cat. but in getting down she tore her frock. "oh, hell!" she cried lamentably. "are you shocked, mr. scott? you don't like me to swear, do you?" "i like you to be your very self, pat." "it's easy to be that with you. you're an easy person to be with," she meditated. she stopped under the shelter of a small arbour spanning one of the sideyard paths of holiday knoll. clematis in full glory covered it. the faint, rich odour of its late blossoming, dewy and fresh and virginal as if the aging year, after all its fecund maternity of summer, had again put forth its claim to imperishable maidenhood in the blooms, enveloped them. she turned upon him the slant challenge of her eyes from beneath the clouding mass of hair. "do you truly like me," she wheedled, "better than cissie?" as if the words were torn from the depths of him and forced through his constricted throat, he answered: "i'm mad about you." "oh-h-h-h-h," she crooned, and there was both dismay and delight in the sound. "i didn't _want_ you to say that." "i didn't want to say it," he muttered. "i didn't mean to say it." he stared intently before him; his brain felt numb. there was an appalled sense of inner catastrophe, wholly unforeseen, inherent in the impossible situation. "oh, why did you have to go and say it?" she wailed in childish resentment. "it spoils everything." he made no reply. her intonation changed, became daring and seductive. "it's just a--a--sort of fatherly interest, isn't it?" "no." "now you're angry. but it ought to be." "do you want it to be?" "no, i want it to be--as it is. yet i don't." he gathered himself together. "i'm sorry, little pat. suppose we agree to forget it." "i won't," she mutinied. "i don't want to forget it." "i do," he said moodily. "then i won't let you." slowly she lifted her hands and held them out to him. the finger tips were icy cold to his clasp. he could hear her quick, unsteady breathing. "pat! little pat!" he whispered. a smile blossomed upon her curved mouth, tender, tremulous, persuasive. she swayed forward, lifting her face, half closing her eyes. with the gasp of a man whose last strength of restraint is shattered, he enfolded her, crushing his lips down upon hers. only the one long, slow kiss in the breathless silence, and all the world forgotten in its ecstasy. then pat pressed herself gently back from him, looked eagerly, curiously, triumphantly into his face, and stood clear. "my god, pat!" he groaned. "i didn't mean to do that." "i did," she said. from the roses drooping below her breast she detached a bud, crushed to a perfumed splotch of colour in the fierce pressure of their embrace, and held it out to him. "keepsake," she breathed. "it's red, red, red. it's the colour of life. my colour. pat's colour. good-night, mr. scott." "mister" scott! after that fusion of lips and longings. chapter xvii insistent jangling of the telephone woke scott next morning at the club. he was prepared for the rough sweetness of pat's voice in his ear. "is that you, mr. scott? aren't you up yet? lazy!" "good-morning, little pat. what time is it?" "i did wake you up, then. it's terribly early--for me. only nine. aren't you surprised to hear me?" "not a bit." "oh! you expected me to call up. boasting, aren't you? i didn't intend to call you." "but i intended to call you. what changed your mind?" "oh, i don't know," she said evasively. "i woke up early myself, and i suppose i felt lonely. when are you coming out?" "just as soon as i can get there." her soft, elfin chuckle was the reception which this announcement got. "quick, then! i want awfully to see you now. and i might change my mind later." throughout the hurried processes of dressing while he breakfasted, scott strove to quiet and command his thoughts, to find some clue to this tangle of passion wherein he had become ensnared. incredible that he should so have lost himself, after the warning of the earlier experience. she, too, had been carried beyond her depth by a feeling presumably uninterpretable to her inexperience; so he believed. true, she had been through sentimental encounters before, by her own admission, but he too fatuously assumed that these were of minor and transient import, that it had remained to him to awaken her. "boasting," pat would have said. she was awaiting him in the music room. "i thought you were _never_ coming," she sighed. "but the others aren't up yet." she half lifted her arms, expectant, enticing. "wait," said he. she gave him a quick glance, puzzled, apprehensive, a little angry. "you're going to scold me. it was all your fault." "absolutely. if there is anyone to be scolded it's i." "it _wasn't_," she declared with one of her vehement and point-blank reversals. "i did it." her face took on its most impish expression. "bad bunny! i don't care." "i care," he said evenly. "more than i could have believed it possible to care. i love you, pat." "oh, no!" she protested. "i didn't want you to say that." "what did you expect?" he demanded, taken aback. "did you want this to be just a cheap and easy little flirtation--a flutter, as you call it?" "no-o. i didn't want it to be that. i wanted you to--to like me. but why did you have to say _that_?" "as a justification. no, not quite that; nothing can justify me. but as an excuse, not for myself, but for you." "for me? i don't understand." "think, pat." his voice was very gentle. her dark, delicate brows drew down in concentration. "yes; i think i do see. you mean you would not have kissed me that way without--without thinking a lot of me." "i mean that i should not be here now if i were not deeply and wholly in love with you." "and you're telling me to keep me from feeling ashamed of myself." "yes. there is nothing shameful in my feeling for you, inexcusable as it is." "i think," she pronounced slowly, "you're _the_ most divine man i've ever met." "oh, no," he refuted bitterly. "just a weakling. but i give you my word, dear love, if i could have foreseen this i would have gone to the farthest corner of the earth rather than have it come about." she lifted startled and wondering eyes to his. "why?" "you know how things are with me, pat. you know i'm not free." a lively interest animated her expression. "oh, yes. though i've never thought of it much. tell me about your wife." he winced. "what is there to tell?" "tell me what she is like? is she dark or fair? are you very much in love with her?" "pat!" "well, you must have loved her or you wouldn't have married her, would you? doesn't she care for you?" "i will tell you this much," he said after a pause. "we are completely estranged. but as she is still my wife in name and likely to remain so, i cannot discuss her. not even with you." "oh, very well!" pat's familiar imp had taken possession of her face again. "it's none of my business, of course." "that is not quite fair of you, is it?" "of course it isn't." she caught his hand, pressed her cheek down into it, and was violently crushed into his arms, her mouth quivering beneath his kiss. "my god, how i love you!" he groaned. this time she accepted it. "do you?" she crooned. releasing herself she drew him over to the divan, where she snuggled close to him. "i believe you do. it seems so funny. but i don't see that it makes much difference, your being married." "this difference; that it's all wrong, and unfair to you, and only means suffering later on." "that isn't what i meant." with lowered face she plucked nervously at his coat sleeve. "i mean--suppose you were free; you wouldn't want to marry me, would you?" "good god, pat! i want it more than anything else in the world." "little me?" she crowed in delight. "that seems awfully funny. you're so--so different, and you know so much, and i don't know anything." she pondered the matter. "if i was ten years older, or you were ten years younger i think it would be _thrilling_! but of course there's nothing in that," she added briskly. "you're married and that's settled. am i acting like a rotter?" "i am," he answered hoarsely. "i'm sorry, little pat. i've been a beast. but i think i've got your point of view, now. it's rather a shock--but there won't be any more of that kind of love-making from me." like a little, lithe tigress she pounced upon him. "there will!" she panted rebelliously. "i want it to be so. i love to have you pet me." "and i haven't even the strength to resist that," he muttered. "i love you so." "then you must be very nice to me all the rest of the party, and i'll save out as many dances as i can for you, and you can take me home again to-night. couldn't you come back a little while this afternoon, late?" "i'd go anywhere in the world and give up anything in the world for a moment with you, pat." "then be here at five o'clock. all the others will be dressing or bathing or gabbling. we'll have the place to ourselves again. aren't i nice to you, mr. scott?" "how can you call me mister, after this?" "i don't know," she said pensively. "it seems more natural. but i suppose i _could_ call you cary. cissie did. i was furious at her." "no need. there's no room for anyone else in my heart or thought but you." "but you're going to run her over to philadelphia in your car." "am i? i hadn't heard about it." "aren't you? what a liar cissie is! then you're going to run me over when i go back to school. will you?" "of course. but what will the family think of all this?" "nothing. i'm only the infant to them. if they did think anything about it it wouldn't make any special difference. they'd think it was a lovely joke." "you mean even if they knew that i am in love with you?" she gave him a glowing glance. "they'd say, 'little pat's gone and snared herself a real live man.' you don't know this family." suddenly she drew away from him, jumped to her feet, and darted to the door, where she stood smiling and poised. "what's it all coming to, anyway?" she laughed. what, indeed? scott put the question to himself, but in no spirit of laughter. toward womankind cary scott had much of the continental attitude. since the separation from his wife and the freedom of action which it implied, he had played the game of passion, real or counterfeit, in sundry places and with sundry partners, always married women hitherto, and always within the code as he interpreted it. but there remained in him enough of the american to inhibit him from the thought of a purposeful siege upon a young, unmarried girl of a household wherein he was a professed friend. besides, he loved pat too well, he told himself, to harm her. it was incredible; it was shameful; it was damnable; but this child, this _petite gamine_, this reckless, careless, ignorant, swift-witted, unprincipled, selfish, vain, lovable, impetuous, bewildering, seductive, half-formed girl had taken his heart in her two strong, shapely woman-hands, and claimed it away from him--for what? a toy? a keepsake? a treasure? what future was there for this abrupt and blind encounter of his manhood and her womanhood? he could find no answer. but of one fact he was appallingly certain: that all the radiance, the glamour wherewith he had surrounded the figure of mona, all the desire which the soft loveliness, the reluctant half-yielding of constance had inspired in him, were merged and submerged in the passion that had swept him into pat's eager and clinging arms. to what bitter and perhaps absurd end? for he was bound, and she hardly more than a playful child. he recalled her strange look as she had left him. what might one read in it? a glow of possessiveness? a gleam of bright mockery? or the undecipherable sphinxhood of the woman triumphant who knows herself loved? chapter xviii with unwearying strategy pat made opportunities for being with scott thereafter. each time they were together alone she came to his arms as sweetly and naturally as if she claimed him of right; each time until the evening before the wedding when, as he drew her to him, she twitched away with a boyish, petulant jerk of the shoulders. "what is it, pat?" he queried. "nothing. i don't want you to pet me. that's all." he had the acumen to suspect that this might be a first crisis in their newly established relations, though he did not fathom her purpose. "very well," he assented quietly. "you are quite right, of course." this did not suit pat at all. from her youthful suitors she was accustomed to woeful protests. "am i?" she retorted perversely. "i'm _not_. there's nothing right about it." "no. but there is this. i shall never make any claim upon you except as you wish it." "well, i don't wish it. not now." a dart of lightning flashed through her clouded look. "i might to-morrow." his brows lifted, enquiringly. mockingly, too? pat wondered. you never could tell with mr. scott. what would he say? he said nothing. "d'you know what i mean?" demanded pat, who didn't clearly know herself. "perfectly." "what?" "coquetry. that's a form of dishonesty between us. and between us there is no reason nor place for anything but honesty." she came to him then, encircled him closely, drew her lips from his, after a time, to murmur: "you understand me so. when you say things like that i'm crazy about you." against his better judgment he said: "i wonder how much you really care for me, pat?" "oh, an awful lot! or i wouldn't be acting like this. but," she added with pensive frankness, "i've been just as crazy about other people before." "i see. it's the normal thing for you to feel this way toward someone." "oh, well; you expect to have somebody in love with you," she explained. "think how _lost_ you'd feel without it. and it's natural to play back, isn't it? now i've hurt you." she spoke the words with a kind of remorseful interest as an experimentalist might feel pity for the animal under his knife. "that doesn't matter. one gets used to being hurt." all woman, at this she tightened her embrace. "i don't _want_ you to be hurt. i _do_ love you. only with me it doesn't last. but there's never been anyone who _interested_ me as much as you do. i don't see what you find in me, though." "'said the rose to the bee.'" he forced himself to laugh as he gave the quotation. but within, the cold disillusionment of whatever blind hopes he may have felt, which had underlain his passion from the first, asserted itself. what constancy could he expect from this will-of-the-wisp girl? and what could a lasting attraction mean for her except such unhappiness as he knew himself fated to suffer? he took his resolution. whatever might come to him he must so command himself and his actions as to safeguard pat in every possible way. already, he knew, his intellectual influence over that unsated, groping, casual mind was strong enough to outlast any change in the more purely physical attraction which she felt for him. if he could find the strength to crush down his own passion, he might still mould her to make something of herself, direct her ardent temperament into channels through which she would eventually come to safe harbour. there lies in every man of strong mentality a trace of the pedagogue. scott had it. if he could not be pat's lover, he might find some self-sacrificing satisfaction in being her guide and mentor. that he was prepared for self-sacrifice was the best evidence in his own mind of the quality of his love for the girl. in his lesser affairs he had sought only self-satisfaction. "my dearest," he said, "i think we have come to a turning-point. we've got to stop this sort of thing." she cuddled closer to him in the remote darkness of the swing where they sat out two successive dances which she had contrived to save for him. "i don't want to!" she rebelled. "do you think i want to! but i'm thinking of the risk." "you said there wasn't any danger with you," she teased. "boasting, were you, when you claimed you had self-control enough for both of us." "i'm not thinking of that kind of danger." "what then? oh, of our being trapped! but there's only one more day after this," she pleaded, "and then i go back." "but you'll be coming home again before long." "by that time i may be crazy about someone else," was the calm reply. "which is pleasant for me to contemplate," he replied grimly. "it's a mess, isn't it? what d'you expect me to do? what do you _want_ me to do?" "if it's a question of the best thing for you," he said, speaking slowly and with effort, "that would be for you to fall in love genuinely with some man who would understand you and safeguard you----" "you _want_ me to marry? do you, cary?" "it will almost kill me," he said between his teeth. "but--it's the way, for you." "probably it is. i'll make a rotten wife," she said, as she had said to dr. osterhout. "you could make heaven or hell for a man. but marriage alone isn't going to be enough. there are other things." "you mean--children?" "that, too. but what i meant was some background for yourself. your music, or reading, or some interest to fall back on." "why?" "because you've got an eager and active mind, pat. a half-starved mind, if you only knew it. it's going to demand things when the novelty begins to wear off." "when i get tired of my husband?" "i hope you're going to marry a man of whom you won't tire," he said gravely. "but there's a certain monotony about marriage. many women tire of that. then is the danger time." "then i'll send for you." a devil sparkled in her eyes. "i wouldn't come." "not come! not when i needed you?" "from the ends of the earth if you needed me. but not for any caprice. i'd put you on honour there. happiness doesn't lie in that direction, little pat. what i want for you is happiness." she brooded upon this darkly. "i believe you do," she whispered after a time. "more than for yourself." "more than for myself," he repeated. "why not?" "don't make me cry," she said. "it tears me to pieces to cry. and then, i'm such a sight!" "nonsense!" he returned brusquely. "you're not going to. what is there to cry about? 'men have died,' you know, 'and worms have eaten them, but not for love.'" "what's that from?" she asked, seeking relief in the turn. "ibsen?" "not exactly," he smiled. "it was said as a reminder by a charming and rebellious pat of her time named rosalind." "oh, i know! 'as you like it.' aren't i clever! the rosalind reminds me of something. aunt linda's here. have you seen her?" "no. who is she?" "my very pettest aunt. she's an old peach. i'll take you to her if she's broken away from the bridge game. but first----" she lifted pleading and hungry eyes to him. "well, pat?" "our being so--so _dam'_ good and proper doesn't have to begin until i go, does it?" he swept her into his arms, held her close and long. "oh, pat! little wonderful pat," he breathed. "what am i ever to do without you?" "i don't want you to do without me," she murmured. "i want you to be always somewhere--somewhere where i can find you if---- be careful! here comes some butt-in." they returned to the dancing floor, where pat after a survey drew scott by the hand across the room to a group in a corner. "here she is," she announced. "that's aunt linda." before she could go further with this informal presentation a circle of importunate claimants had swept about her. "how do you do, mr. cary scott?" said the lady before whom he found himself standing. "mrs. parker!" he ejaculated. pat's description of "old peach" was decidedly overdrawn as to the adjective, though not as to the noun. aunt linda was a slim, twinkling, rose-complexioned woman of thirty-five, gowned in a work of art and characterised by a quality of worldliness which, like scott's own, was a degree above mere smartness. she carried with her a breath of the greater outer world. moreover she was, if not beautiful, extremely attractive to look at by virtue of a sort of eternal fitness. "you've forgotten me," she accused lightly. "or at least, my name. i'm miss fentriss." not a muscle of scott's face testified to his surprise at this unexpected denial of a perfectly remembered name. "so stupid of me," he confessed. "won't you try a round of this dance?" "no; i'm not dancing. but you may take me to some cooler spot, if you know of any." no sooner were they beyond earshot of the crowd than she said: "so you have not forgotten taormina." "i have forgotten whatever you wish me to forget." "always the perfection of tact," she mocked. "it would be more flattering that you should remember. though not too much." "a cliff of beaten gold overlooking a sea of shimmering silver, a waft of perfume on the air, the charm of beauty and mystery, both of which still endure after these seven years." "shall i dispel the mystery? i was mrs. parker then only because an independent-minded vagrant such as i am finds travel in europe more convenient under a married name than as a miss. so one does not take, but invents a husband. here and now i am ralph fentriss's half-sister and patricia fentriss's aunt." "something of an occupation in itself," he reflected aloud. "it is. what, if one may ask, are you doing in that gallery? pat curled herself on the foot of my bed this morning and discussed the universe for an hour. chiefly you." "vastly flattered! _et après?_" "afterward? that is for you to answer, isn't it? why are you laying siege to the child's mind?" "because i dislike waste. it is too keen a mind to be frittered away on nothings." "has pat been making love to you?" the question was put without the slightest alteration of the easy tone. "really, that's a question which----" "don't pretend to be shocked. women always do make love to you, don't they?" "you didn't," smilingly he reminded her, "at taormina. hence my blighted life." "no. i preferred to have you make love to me. you did it so expertly." "and wholly unsuccessfully." "what did you expect? a correct young married woman going on to meet her husband by the boat! would you have been so vehement if you had known me to be an unmarried girl?" "i haven't made it a practice to make love to unmarried girls." "why select pat, then?" she paused, giving him time to speculate upon what pat might or might not have unintentionally revealed to this shrewd observer. "i was twenty-eight then," she pursued, "and i found you a dangerous wooer, even though i knew it was not _pour le bon motif_. pat isn't nineteen yet." "mademoiselle has taken the ordering of this matter into her own hands?" he queried mildly. "_dieu m'en garde!_" she laughed. "it is as an old friend of yours that i speak." "then i am prepared for the worst," he sighed. "strike!" "still of a pretty wit." she spoke sharply, but her eyes were not without kindness for him. "danger, mr. cary scott! danger!" he did not pretend to misunderstand. "let me assure you that i am not wholly without principle, miss fentriss." "you? granted. but what of pat? has my scapegrace little witch of a niece any principles whatever? i doubt it." so, after all, he had misunderstood. "are you, then, warning me of danger to myself? _c'est à rire, n'est-ce pas?_" "it is not to laugh at all. i am serious. i have been watching you this evening when you were with pat and when you were only following her with your eyes. your expression is not always guarded, if one has learned to read the human face." he flushed. then there came upon him the reckless desire to ease his soul of the secret which filled it. she had invited it, and he instinctively knew that to this serene, poised, self-sufficing, sage woman of the world he could speak in the assurance of sympathy and without fear of incomprehension or betrayal. "it's true," he said beneath his breath. "i love her. i love her as i never dreamed it possible to love." "and you've told her so." he made no reply. "i know you have because i know pat. she's as greedy as she is shrewd; she'd know and she'd never be happy until she'd had it out of you. and then she'd be sorry and blame you for speaking." "yes. i've told her," he muttered. "inevitable that you should have. not that it makes any particular difference, but you're still married, aren't you?" "yes." "any prospects of change?" "prospects? no!" "ah, well; i haven't an idea that pat would marry you anyway. she appears to regard you as rather an elderly person, quite delightful to play with, but belonging to another world. her infatuation will probably die out." "give me credit for being decent enough to hope and know that it will." "yet there is no certainty about it. your appeal to her senses may be temporary, doubtless is. but you have taken hold upon her mind to a degree which she herself does not appreciate, and that is a more profound and lasting influence. i wonder if you did it deliberately." "no. yes. i don't know whether i did or not. it may have been at the back of my brain all the time." "that sounds more like pat's honesty than your own diplomatic way of looking at things. it would be quite incredible that she has exerted a counter-influence upon you." "why incredible, since i love her?" was the quiet reply. she gave him a swift, estimating glance before she went on: "i'm very fond of pat, mr. scott. most of my money will go to her eventually, unless i marry." "which is inevitable," he put in. "which is the most improbable thing in the world. and i want to see her happy. she has great possibilities of happiness, and great possibilities of tragedy. it is a tragic face, rather; have you noticed that?" "it is a face impossible to analyse." "true enough. it has the mysterious quality that quite outdoes beauty. men go mad over that type of face, though one doesn't find it in poetry or painting. i wonder why? is it because genius doesn't dare that far, because it is untransferable even for genius? perhaps it is genius in itself. didn't some poet say that beauty of a kind is genius?... what are you going to do with pat, mr. scott?" "nothing. what is there to do?" "_laissez faire?_ there's danger in letting things take their course too. there is danger everywhere in this sort of affair. let me interpret a little of pat's mind for you. she is a combination of instinctive shrewdness, ignorance, false standards and beliefs, and straight thinking. there's an innocence about her that is appalling, an innocence as regards life as it really is. one might say that her ideas of the more intimate phases of life are formed mainly from the trashy, sexy-sentimental plays and the more trashy motion pictures that she loves. she believes that sin is always punished in the direct and logical way. if she should surrender to a man she would expect first, to have a baby at once; second, that the man would naturally despise and abandon her; that's what the modern drama teaches, on the ground, one supposes, that it's an influence for safety. and perhaps," continued the analyst thoughtfully, "it is. though i'm rather for the truth myself. but there are other things taught in the same school that aren't so safe. did you happen to read a fool book called _the salamander_ some years ago?" "yes; but i didn't think it so bad." "because you're a man and don't understand what the effect of it has been. a salamander school of fiction and drama has grown out of it. the central idea is that if a girl is 'pure' she can get herself into any kind of situation, take any kind of chance with any kind of man, play the game of passion to the limit and yet come out unscathed; virtue its own safeguard, and that sort of thing. why i saw a play this winter which was written to prove that a girl of to-day could spend a night alone in a house with a man with whom she was in love without any thought of harm. yet the censors suppress honest portrayals of life as it really is. it's a great little world, cary scott, if your mind doesn't weaken. but i think mine _has_!" pat, passing by on the arm of a worshipping partner, stopped to give them a smile. "what are you talking about, you two?" "you've guessed it; about you," returned the young aunt. for a hidden moment pat's eyes met scott's and shot forth their ardent message before the sweeping lashes curled down. "leave me a few shreds," she called back gaily. "pat considers herself a miracle of astuteness and knowledge," pursued the aunt. "having been taught the gospel of lies and trash, she is sure of her own natural inviolability. if anything in the world ought to be banned from the access of pat and her kind, it is the salamander-story of the girl who always comes out right. it isn't true; it never will be true; it never has been true. women aren't that way." she let her pensive, grey gaze wander to the doorway wherein pat had vanished, then return to meet scott's. "i know," she said coolly. "i've tried." chapter xix slow and stately, the measure of the lohengrin wedding march pulsated through the church; much slower and statelier than herr wagner ever intended that it should be delivered, unforeseeing that his minute directions would be universally disregarded off the stage in order that the bride might make her progress up the aisle less like a human being with a happy goal in sight than like a rusty mechanism directed by a hidden and uncertain hand. even to that halting rhythm, however, mary delia fentriss, owner of her own name and her own maiden self for the last time, managed to walk like a proud and graceful young goddess to the accompaniment of something more than the usual hum of admiration and excitement. t. jameson james stood awaiting her, looking handsome, well-groomed, perfectly self-possessed, and even more self-satisfied. as dee turned she raised her head slightly and let one slow look range over the gathered congregation, a gesture inscrutable to many, though the more romantic among the women deemed it conventionally suitable, as a farewell glance proper to the drama of marrying and giving in marriage. but two men in that assemblage, both observers of humankind, both genuinely caring for dee in diverse ways, read that look and were secretly disturbed. the rector caught his cue and swung into his part with all the empressement due to a highly fashionable occasion, the ceremony proceeded, its gross symbolism of sex worship, broad paganism, and underlying acceptance of women's slavery as a divine system, thinly cloaked in the severe beauty of the words; and dee fentriss was mrs. t. jameson james. returned to her father's house for the post-ceremonial festivities, dee admitted pat to her room where the last packing was going on, and was caught in a swift, hard hug. "oh, dee! you looked lovely." "did i?" said the bride indifferently. "you surely did. where are you going on your trip?" "secret. washington first, if you want to know." pat lowered her voice though there was no one else in the room. "dee, aren't you scared?" "of course not. don't be an idiot!" "i'd be. no; i don't know as i would either, if i was crazy about the man." pat, thinking aloud, did not see her sister wince. "i'd be too curious about--about what came next. you'll tell me, won't you, dee? _everything?_" the bride laughed not over-mirthfully. "wait till you're older, infant. though i believe that's what they always say and i don't know why they should. had a good time?" "_the_ most priceless time!" "that's right. i wish i could always be at the top of the heap, as you are." "sometimes i'm at the bottom. i'll have a poisonous grouch after this." "will you? you're a queer kid. by the way, do you know that mark denby is quite nuts over you?" denby was best man, an attractive but not highly intelligent baltimorean. pat shrugged her shoulders affectedly to hide her satisfaction. "he's all right in his way." "be nice to him to-night, will you? you haven't shown him much." "low speed," remarked pat. "i wouldn't think cary scott was specially high speed, though he's a dear. you've been playing round with him quite a bit." "well, that can't hurt me, can it?" said pat, a little impatiently, as one suspicious of criticism. no such notion was in the mind of dee, who answered promptly: "no. best thing in the world for you, i'd say. but do give mark a run for his money this evening." "oh, very well! i don't have to marry the bird, do i?" dee laughed. "you might do worse. he's got lots of money and you could manage him like a lamb." "i don't want a lamb. i don't want anything yet but to have a good time." "shoot along and have it, then." thus it was that cary scott was mulcted of several expected dances with no other explanation than a whispered "i'll tell you why later," which, however, left him not ill-content. just before the bridal couple left he got his first private word with the busy maid-of-honour. they stood together on the tile of the loggia, now a bower of greenery and a narrow thoroughfare for the guests going outside to smoke. pat's first words were: "oh, cary; did you _see_ dee's face?" "yes." he did not need to ask her when. "what did it mean?" "i don't know. nothing probably." "you know it did!" her confidence in his understanding, her appeal to him in this, the most intimate of family matters, thrilled him with a new sense of their rapprochement, was stronger testimony to his claim upon her inner self than a thousand kisses. "you're fond of dee, aren't you?" she pursued. "i'd be fond of her anyway, aside from her being your sister and the person closest to you in the world. she is, isn't she?" "but she doesn't know as much about me as you do," murmured pat. "in some ways she does, though. after all, you're only a man.... but dee's a wonder, isn't she?" "she is a fine and high personality." the jealous coquette in pat asserted itself. "finer than i am?" "much." his answer was grave and sincere. pat made a little face at him. "i don't think it's nice of you to think anyone is nicer than i am." "i love you, pat." she quivered a little with delight of the words. "it would make no difference if another woman were as far above you in character as the stars are above the earth; it would still be you and no one else in the world for me. is it enough? or do you want rather to be flattered?" "no," she breathed softly. "i want you to--love me." there was the faint hesitancy over the committing word which she always evinced. "just your own way. but dee---- oh, bobs!" she exclaimed as the doctor entered the place. "come here." "hello, bambina. ah, cary." osterhout's face was moody. "what's on _your_ mind?" demanded pat. "you look grouchy as a bear." "nothing," he disclaimed. "did you notice dee, in church?" osterhout's heavy gaze lifted to study pat's face, then passed to that of scott. "did you see it, too?" he muttered. "bobs, _what_ was she looking for?" "what could she have been looking for?" he fenced. "it was so helpless, so hopeless," went on the girl; "and yet as if she had one hope left and weren't going to give up without--without looking." osterhout had his own private interpretation of that last, long quest of the bride's eyes before she turned them to her bridegroom, but he was not going to betray it. "all of us are a little high-strung," he opined. "imagining a vain thing. dee's all right." he passed on his way. as if by thought transference there flashed into scott's mind the strange passage between dee and the electrical repair man, his old acquaintance, stanley wollaston, at the famous dangerfield "swim _au naturel_," and the memory of her possessed, dream-haunted face. could t. jameson james ever evoke that yearning? scott knew that he could not, and a great pity for dee filled him. pat left him, not to return until the party was dispersed, all but a few heavy-drinking remnants who had stood by to help ralph fentriss finish up the punch. later pat and cary passed them on their way to the clematis arbour. the girl's face was sombre and thoughtful. "i wish she hadn't married him," she burst out. scott sought to reassure her. "it's all right, dearest. as osterhout said, we're all emotionally stirred up----" "i wish she hadn't," persisted the girl. "it must be terrible to go away--like that--with a man--when you don't love him!" "oh, nonsense!" he strove for a light tone. "she does love him. otherwise why on earth should she have married him?" pat's brows were knit, her gaze far away, fixed upon visions. "i wish it was us," she murmured. "you and i. going away. to-night. together." "my god! pat!" "i _do_. i wish there weren't any laws. i hate laws." the terrible, fiery desire seized him to claim her then and there, to bid her leave everything for love and go with him to the ends of the earth, to overwhelm her with the force of his desire; to make her believe that with him she would know a happiness greater, fuller, more real than anything in her petty and tinselled prospect of life; seized and scorched and convulsed him, until she felt, through the hand which she had let fall upon his arm, the tremors shake his strong frame; felt them and exulted, through her woman's dim alarms. "no!" he said hoarsely, in a voice which told how spent he was by the struggle against himself. "not that, pat. not for you. i'd give the soul out of my body to take you away with me. you know that, don't you?" "yes," she assented. she was daunted by the depths of passion which she had evoked. but only for the moment. the reaction brought back to her her hoydenish flippancy. "you don't for a minute think i'd go, do you? i was only wishing!" "for god's sake, don't wish!" "i _do_ wish there weren't any laws. there ought to be a world where we could go when we're tired of this one, where laws and rules and things don't count, and we could come back when--when things got too hectic there." "fools think there is, and go there. but they don't come back." "let's pretend that there is such a world," she besought childishly, "and that we can go there whenever we want to. there you could kiss me as much as you liked whether people were around or not.... there's nobody around right now in _this_ world, cary.... "i've got to go in," she sighed at last. "and i don't want to at all. tell me good-night." his last kiss was very tender, very gentle, long and almost passionless. "that's good-bye, my darling," he said. "i don't want it to be good-bye." she stretched out her arms to him. "oh, i do wish it was us!" he took her hands, pressed them to his hot eyes and released them. "good-night, pat. go in. please!" "i will," she acquiesced, obedient for once before the pain in his voice. "but you're driving me over to-morrow, aren't you?" "to-morrow is another day," he said. almost was pat convinced on the morning following that she had made a mistake in commandeering scott and his car for the trip. the train would have been far quicker and possibly more amusing. for scott was unaccountably silent all the early part of the drive. having arrayed herself with much selective thought for the occasion, and being conscious of her charm as set forth by a gown that clung to her budding form, and a tight little, bright little hat prisoning her dusky, mutinous hair, pat resented the lack of attention she was receiving and thought proper to "jolly" her companion into a more fitting frame of mind. she elicited little response in kind. "you're about as gay as a hearse this morning," she observed with annoyance as the car swung aside from the main highway to a more sparsely travelled back road. "this isn't anybody's funeral that i know. where are we going, anyway?" "by a route i like to take when i've plenty of time. we'll reach the maple swamp in time for luncheon, i've packed a hamper. i'm sorry if i'm dull, dear." "you're quiet. i don't know that you're dull, exactly. i don't quite see you ever being dull. but i don't want to be quiet to-day. it gives me too much time to think. and thinking's the very thing i want the least of right now. i just want to be happy--because i'm with you. there's nothing to be solemn about, is there?" "nothing!" he agreed. but though he talked with his usual charm thereafter, she was resentfully conscious of the effort it cost him. arrived at the luncheon place he ran the car up beside a stone wall enclosing a coppice which was all ablaze with the last, defiant splendour of the year. autumn was going down with all colours flying. pat snuffed the keen scented air with nostrils that quivered. "oof!" she cried. "i'm ravenous. what a spiffy luncheon! coffee? hold out your cup. when and where shall we lunch together next time, i wonder? isn't there an old song or something, 'when shall we two eat again?' oh, no; it's 'when shall we three meet again?' i'm glad there aren't three of us here; aren't you?" she chattered on. "you don't look glad about anything. what are you thinking about so hard?" "only that we aren't likely to see each other for some time." "some time?" her face showed alarm and suspicion. "you're not going to see me any more at all," she accused. "is that it?" he smiled wanly. "hardly as bad as that." "when, then?" "how can i tell? business----" "business!" she echoed scornfully. "you're going away--from me." "for a while." "why?" she demanded, "when i need you so much?" "no. you don't really need me." "when i want you, then?" she said imperiously. "isn't that just a little selfish of you?" "of course it is. have i ever pretended to be anything else? i always get what i want if i can, and i never give up anything i want without trying for it. why should i?" "an unanswerable proposition," he made reply, with his subtly ironic smile. "but the tide never runs all one way; i'm afraid that you've got some harsh disillusionments in prospect." "i don't care. if i have to pay, i'll pay." "it may hurt." "let it! i'm not afraid." "because you've never been hurt. if i were a praying man i'd pray that you never may be. but that's foolish of course. life will hurt you. it hurts all of us." "has it hurt you, cary?" "it is hurting me now--a little. not more than i deserve." "why do you deserve? you couldn't help liking"--he smiled--"being in love with me, could you?" "i could have helped making love to you." she had a superb gesture. "could you, though! when i wanted you to? what harm has it done?" "so long as it hasn't harmed you----" "it's helped me. that's why i can't bear to think of your going. i'm going to miss you so terribly!" there followed the little, slighting, boyish, devil-may-care hunch of the shoulders. "not for long, though. i never do. i go crazy over someone and think he's the whole thing and i can't see anything in the world without him, and then, pouf! it's all over." "so may it be with you now." "you _want_ it to be?" "i don't want you to have the pain of missing me as i shall miss you. but i'm afraid you're going to feel it more than you think." "boasting!" she retorted, but there was no conviction in the word. "no; i'm not boasting. but i've given you something, pat, that you haven't had from your minor flirtations. much that you won't readily forget. nor do i want you to forget it all. but--i want it to drop into the background for you." "background? i don't understand." "when the real man for you comes along into the foreground of your life----" "you want me to compare him with you?" she broke in quickly. "perhaps that wouldn't be quite fair to him. i've had more opportunities, more experience of the world than your younger lovers are likely to have had; you can't expect quite so much of youth in some ways. but before you commit yourself finally, suppose you ask yourself whether you care for the man more than you have at any time for me; if, in case you married him, you would miss out of your life together certain phases that we have known." "but of course i shall!" she cried. "what boy do i know that could understand me as you do?" upon the naïve egotism of this he made no comment. "i haven't made myself quite clear. before you decide, go back to our association, go back to all the associations you have had hitherto, and ask if the new one will take the place of all of them. if not--don't." "you're trying to keep me from marrying someone else because you can't have me, yourself," she accused. "do you think that of me, pat?" "oh, no; no! i don't. you know i don't. what makes me so hateful?" she threw herself upon him, pressed her face close to his, turned so that their lips met; then drew back with a questioning look in her eyes. "that was a _very_ white kiss," she murmured discontentedly. "you're so strange to-day." "there's more, pat. it isn't so easy to say." her intuition leapt to meet his thought. "it's about this." she touched her cheek to his again. "with other men. i won't, if you don't want me to." "i can't claim any promises from you. you wouldn't keep them anyway." "i _would_," was the instant and indignant response. "no; probably i wouldn't," she amended, her voice trailing off, "after you'd been away from me for a while. but what's the harm, cary?" "i've told you; it's dangerous." "and i've told you; it's not, for me. suppose i'm in love with the man. must i act like an icicle?" "ah, that is a different matter. if you're really in love." "but how am i to tell whether i am or not without letting him make love to me?" the naïve logic of it left scott without adequate answer. after all, these direct contacts were the very essence and experiment of mating, the empiric method which inexorable nature prescribes. had the modern flapper, with her daring contempt of what older generations considered the proprieties if not the normal decencies of social intercourse, only reverted to a simpler, more natural method? of course, carrying the scheme a little further, there were obvious arguments against it, arguments which he did not care to advance to pat. "only be certain," he said after a pause, "that it isn't merely a casual fascination." "you know i'm past being an easy necker," she replied with a touch of self-righteous reproach. "i know that you are of a sensuous temperament----" "oh, i hate that word!" "i didn't say 'sensual,' my dear. i said 'sensuous.' you are one of those fortunate people who are vividly alive to all impressions of the senses. but with you, the sensuous beauty of life is linked up with imagination. that is why physical attraction alone won't suffice for you in the long run; sooner or later your mind is going to awaken and demand the things of the mind." the morbid look of introspection darkened down over her face. "you talk as if i had a mind. i'm an awful fool. you make me forget it when i'm with you----" "because it isn't true. you're a woefully uneducated, untrained, undisciplined child. but you have the hunger of the mind, the discontent. just now your senses are hungry" (she winced and flushed) "and so you don't feel the deeper hunger. you will in time. it is for that time that i am anxious. the time of the second dreaming." "tell me," she begged. "the first dreaming for you," he prophesied, "will be passionate and romantic. you may be carried away by mere physical beauty or superficial charm. i have known women of your type marry their chauffeurs or elope with gypsy fiddlers." pat gave a tiny snort of disdain. "probably you are fastidious enough to escape that extreme. but unless the man you choose can satisfy what is deepest in you, you will awake from that first dreaming to an empty world. and afterward, unless you have found something to satisfy your craving mind, will come the danger and the seductiveness of the second dreaming." "will you come back then?" she challenged. "i shall be a middle-aged man then; though i suppose you regard me as that now." he forced a wry smile. "no; i shall never come back, in the way that you mean." "i'll make you," she laughed. "unless you've stopped caring." "i shall never stop caring." "if i get engaged shall i bring him to you? and if you say not, i won't marry him." scott's face contracted. "no; my dear. i don't think i could quite endure being put in that position." "i don't suppose i'll _ever_ understand about you," she sighed. "we ought to be going on, oughtn't we?" she looked at him expectantly, but he only set about packing the things into the hamper. it was her turn to be thoughtful and silent when they re-embarked in the car. as they neared the city, she said suddenly, "come to the parmenters' this evening." "i think not, pat." "your voice sounds hard as iron. why not?" "i don't think it's wise." she affected not to understand him. "they'll all be out. cissie told me so." "we said our good-byes last night. i don't think i could stand it again." a long silence followed. "i wish i'd never teased you," said the girl. "i wish there was nothing between us that i had to be sorry for--things that i've done to hurt you, i mean." "they are nothing, compared to the sweetness and magic of it," he said. "don't let yourself think of what doesn't matter." "yes; that's like you." she went on with down-drawn brows and face darkened in thought: "whatever happens don't ever think that this hasn't been the best thing i've ever known in my life. when i've been crazy over men before i've never had a thought for anyone but myself.... i wish there was something, anything that i could do for you, dear," she concluded with passionate wistfulness. "there is. be yourself; the real self that you are now." "i'll try. oh, i will try! but it's so hard with you gone." at the door of the parmenter house she did not raise her eyes to his, but her strong young hand clung within his fingers in a fluttering clasp. "good-bye, cary, _dear_." "god keep you, my darling." she had to grope her way in past the astonished maid who opened the door. chapter xx "wisdom may be where you are, dear and lost one." so wrote robert osterhout, seated in mona fentriss's sun-impregnated room, which seemed still to be fragrant of her personality. "certainly it is not here. all of us had the sorriest misgivings over dee's marriage, and behold, it has turned out better than most matrimonial arrangements of this ill-assorted world. they have been married for nearly six months and all goes as smooth as machinery. one could not say that dee is rapturous; but she is not a rapturous person. she seems to run evenly in double harness with james and makes an admirable mistress for his establishment. i wish i could really like james. if he makes dee happy i shall have to like him. but he is so infernally self-content. and equally content with dee, evidently considering her a part and portion of himself. absorptive--that is what jameson james is. "i should have been equally skeptical of pat's management of holiday knoll. another instance of the fallibility of human judgments, for she runs the place excellently, as even ralph, who prophesied a hurrah's nest from which he would have to take refuge at the club, now admits. i dare say the bills are something to shudder at. "connie also has a new occupation: another baby coming. at first she was querulous; now she is quite taken up with the idea. and the extraordinary pat has seized upon this to bring connie and fred together again. fred is cutting down on the bottle and showing interest in business. connie has quit her nonsense with emslie selfridge; it was only a make-shift, stop-gap sort of flirtation, anyway; the marriage may yet be a success. if it is, credit to pat. but imagine the bambina becoming the managing director of the family, the schemer for happiness, the adjuster of difficulties. she bosses ralph within an inch of his life. all of this does not seem to interfere with her raids upon the male portion of the community, who clutter up the place largely. "cary scott has quit us. why, i do not know. can it be that he was seriously interested in dee? there is no doubt of her strong liking for him, but i would have sworn that it was quite unsentimental. possibly his feeling was deeper; the abrupt cure of his infatuation for connie has never been clear to me. in any case, i miss him. he has brains and charm and, i think, character. atmosphere, too, which the men of our lot lack. i've had a letter or two from him from california. through a friend who lives in paris i have heard about his marriage, too. his wife is of the leech type, a handsome, heartless, useless, shrewd beast who hates him because he revolted against her taking everything and giving nothing, and who will never, out of sheer spite, give him his divorce. they say he has amused himself widely; yet he retains a reputation for decency even in the more rigid circles of the foreign community there. "that queer little mystery of pat's mind-reading of which i wrote you, remains unsolved. i have tried to catch her napping on it; made careless mention of having talked with her before about marrying a man of thirty. but she is not to be trapped; maintains an obstinate reserve. it is too much for me. she is developing fast, but into what i cannot say. conscious, conquering womanhood, i should say; yet she is still so much the simple, willful child with it all. what i fear for her is the difficulty of adjustment to life when she meets with the severer problems. she is so uneven. too much background and no foreground; the background of tradition, habit, breeding, _les convenances_ (which she recklessly overrides yet always with a sense of what they imply), the divine right of being what she is, a fentriss, and the lack of what should fill in, training, achievement, discipline, purpose, any real underlying interest in life. cary scott was, i believe, giving her something along that line; the more reason for regretting his defection.... pat declares that she will keep a vacant place for him at the family dinner party which she is projecting for next week." the dinner party was designed by pat, to convince the fentrisses, one and all, of her competence to run the house. "mid-victorian stuff," fred browning called it, but he announced himself as for it, as did also dee james, while her husband was graciously acquiescent. ralph fentriss was humorously obedient to any whim of his youngest daughter's, while connie was delighted with the idea. osterhout was of course included, as was linda fentriss, bird of passage between winter sports in the adirondacks and a yachting trip in florida waters. the gastronomic part of the dinner was a marked success, aided by a contribution of three bottles of champagne from the private and dwindling cellar of the head of the family. he summed up the verdict after his second glass in a toast proposed and responded to by himself: "we fentrisses! we're a damned sight better company for ourselves than most of the people we associate with." to which satisfying sentiment there was emphatic response, participated in by robert osterhout. it struck him, however, that if there were any exception on this occasion, it was the second daughter, who alternated between long silences and fits of febrile gaiety quite unlike her usual insouciant good humour. he thought that he caught a look of relief on her face when the men retired to the loggia with their cigars, since the new household tyrant had ruled against anything but cigarettes in the other parts of the house. the women took possession of the library and pat established herself beside dee, who sat on the lounge near the half-open door leading into the loggia. "who's the angel-faced athlete i saw you skating with last saturday, mary delia fentriss james?" was pat's opening remark. "saturday? where were you?" "on the bank in my runabout. you were some conspicuous pair! he's as good as you are, almost." "were we so good?" said dee, coolly. "meaning that you don't choose to tell." "wrong guess. his name is wollaston." "not in my social register." "a few people manage to exist without being." "don't be catty, pettah!" "don't be an imbecile, baba!" "all right. i'm off'n him as a subject for airy persiflage. but i will say that he's a wonderful looking bird--for a skating instructor." dee laughed. "you didn't expect to get a rise out of me that way, did you?" but there was a harsh quality in her mirth which made pat thoughtful. "when are you going south?" she asked. "i don't want to go till the first. t. jameson wants to go next week. we'll probably go next week." "like that!" commented pat. "but why be bitter about a jaunt to the sunny? i wish it was me.... give ear: what's old bobs growling about?" the heavy voice of dr. osterhout penetrated to them. "all very well for the club. but i wouldn't have the swine in my house." to which ralph fentriss's musical and tolerant tones replied: "oh, you can't judge a man solely on the basis of his business, can you, now?" "if his business is that of a panderer, i can." "rough talk," murmured pat to dee. "who's the accused?" "because peter waddington's newspaper," put in browning, "has violated some technical rule of the medical profession----" "technical nothing! it isn't technicality. it's ordinary law and order and decency. look at that column. abortionists, every one of 'em." "oh, myo-my!" whispered pat, vastly enjoying this. "they're waxing wroth." "a very useful contribution to the social system," said jameson james in his precise enunciation, with a lift obviously intended to be humorous. "i always understood that those fellows didn't deliver the goods," remarked fred browning carelessly. "whether they do or not," retorted osterhout, "has nothing to do with the question. that thing"--he snapped his finger against the offending print--"is an invitation to commit murder. but aside from that feature, if you men think that sort of stuff is decent to have lying around a house where there is a young girl----" "oh, pat would never think of looking at it," said her father easily. "if she did she wouldn't know what it meant. it's veiled." "i wouldn't be too sure of that," remarked browning. "pat's a wise kid. not much gets past her, nor any of the girls of her age for that matter." "you make me sick, all of you," vociferated osterhout. "you wouldn't talk about these things before young girls, yet you'd admit the stuff in this form. i'll see that this specimen doesn't befoul anyone's eyes." there was the rustle of a newspaper being violently crumpled. "where's the damned waste-basket?" "chuck it in the wood-box and forget it. have a drink," advised browning. her quick and prurient curiosity stimulated, pat made instant resolution to retrieve that newspaper and see for herself later how they did these things. presently the men came in and joined the group in the library. pat sang for them to her father's accompaniment, also to his delighted surprise, for, with his natural taste he appreciated the genuine quality of the voice. then there was poker, family limit, meaning fifty cents. at midnight dee called for a round of roodles, declaring that she was tired out. she had previously announced her intention of spending the night at the knoll, as james was taking an early morning train to attend a sale at which he expected to pick up some polo ponies. pat, going upstairs last, as befitted the châtelaine, heard dee moving about in the bathroom, and went to her own room to wait. when all was quiet she slipped on a dressing gown and tiptoed downstairs to rifle the wood-box of its denounced print. there was a single light on in the loggia. astonished, pat crept to a viewpoint and peeped in. dee, with an intent and haunted face, was smoothing out the newspaper upon her knee. chapter xxi before she was fully awake next morning pat had come to a daring resolution. to prepare her way she got up, went to the loggia, and looked in the wood-box. no newspaper was there. the maids had not yet made their rounds; therefore dee must have taken it up with her. dee did not appear at breakfast, but at ten o'clock she came down. her face was weary and apathetic; her lithe body seemed to have lost something of its poise. sorely compassionate and thrilling to the sense of secret and adventurous matters pat seized upon the first chance of speaking to her alone. "dee, did you take a newspaper from the wood-box?" dee's expression was inscrutable. "yes." "the one bobs was grouching about? i wanted to see it." "you!" the exclamation was pregnant with astonishment and dismay. it crystallised pat's suspicion as to dee's motive in taking the paper. the older woman rose slowly, walked across the room and stared down into the thoughtful face of the younger. "what do you want that for?" "just cussed curiosity." "bobs is a nut," said dee listlessly. "there's nothing in that paper. i tore it up." "dee, are you _that_ way?" "none of your business." "con told me when she was." "con's a cow." "she's tickled pink. i should think you'd be." "oh, would you!" dee's self-control broke. her face worked spasmodically. "i'd kill myself first." the badinage faded from pat's lips. "that doesn't sound like you, dee. i'd think you'd be a sport about it anyway." "pat, i can't have a baby." "rats! you're as strong as an ox." "it isn't that. i'm not afraid that way." "what else is there to be afraid of?" "it isn't fear. it's--it's disgust." "disgust?" pat stared. "i don't get you." "pat, listen to me," burst out the sister, her hands twitching, one over the other in a nervous spasm. "whatever you do, when the time comes however much it may seem the thing to do at the time, don't, don't, _don't_ marry a man you aren't in love with. it's a thing to make you sick of yourself every day of your life." "dee!" "it is. i'll never talk to you like this again. but i tell you now; do anything, take any chance but that." pat's voice was hushed as she asked: "do you hate jimmie-james so much?" "not as much as i hate myself. but i've got cause against him. he hasn't kept to his bargain. he hasn't been on the level." pat's eyes widened. "you'll never make me believe that the correct and careful t. jameson has been straying off the reservation." "i wish to god he would! it isn't that. it's worse--for me. i oughtn't to be spilling this to you, pat." "oh, go ahead! get it off your chest." "i married jim under a private agreement. we were to live together for a month, and after that if either of us wanted to quit we were to just say so and stop being husband and wife without any legal separation or any fuss of that sort. the house is big enough for two separate lives." "no house is," denied the sapient pat. "i don't know much about marriage, but i know that much. it's a fool arrangement." "i thought it would be a clever sort of trial marriage. trial marriage"--dee gave a short and bitter laugh--"doesn't work out so well after the ceremony. if a girl is going to experiment, she might better make her experiments before---- oh, damn it, pat! i don't mean it. i think i've gone crazy mooning over this thing." "what was wrong? wouldn't jimmie keep to his part of the agreement?" "no." "bum sport," pronounced pat. "and he knew you wanted to quit?" "yes." "why?" dee's body writhed under its loose covering. "i can't explain." "has it got something to do with--with the other man?" "what other man?" it was not like direct dee to fence, pat reflected. she persisted: "the one you told me about." "i never told you about any man." "oh, _well_! you talked about that thrill stuff----" "don't!" gasped dee. "i'm sorry," said pat in swift contrition. "is it as bad as that? then i suppose it is the angel-face on skates." the hard lines melted out of dee's face. "yes," she whispered. she seemed to find relief in the admission. pat took her courage in her hands. "dee, is it his baby?" "if it were, i'd want to have it," was the low, vehement response. "i'd be proud to have it." for the moment pat was awed. passion she understood well enough; but not in this degree. she gathered her forces again. "is it jimmie's, then?" "yes; it's jim's." "you say that," marvelled pat, "as if you were ashamed of it." "i am. god knows i am!" she bowed her proudly set head in her hands and rocked it to and fro. "pat, there's nothing so rotten and shameful in the world as marrying a man you don't love." "you didn't have to," said pat, gaping. "what did you do it for?" "the usual thing: convenience. and because i was afraid of making a fool of myself by--with someone else. it couldn't come to anything, the other thing. so i got reckless and took jim. it wasn't a fool that i made of myself; it was something worse. shall i tell you?" "no. don't think it. you did the right thing." "of course! as we figure it out. and i've paid for it. but i won't pay for it this way. i won't! i won't!" "i would," said pat slowly. "if i went into it i'd go through with it. you've got to be fair to jimmie. does he know?" the smile called forth by the query disfigured dee's mouth. "no. and he never will know, what's more." "you're going to get out of it? you're going to one of those people in the newspaper?" "yes." "isn't it terribly dangerous?" "what do i care if it is?" "dee, why don't you go to bobs?" "bobs?" she hesitated. "i couldn't go to bobs. he wouldn't help me out anyway. doctors aren't allowed to." "he'd do anything in the world for you, dee." "if he would, that's all the more reason why i couldn't go to him with this," muttered dee obscurely. pat had an inspiration. "i could. i'll tell him. i'll tell him the whole thing. except about angel-face, of course. i'll tell him he's just _got_ to get you out of it. let me, dee." "oh, go ahead! i don't care. i don't care about anything. i wish i were dead." "don't be an ass. we'll fix it." pat was exuberant with the sense of great and delicate affairs in her hands. "i'll go right now and tackle him. if he sends for you will you come?" "yes," agreed dee listlessly. "you're a good little sport, pat," she added. the response was curt and unexpected: "are you?" "for not going through with it, you mean?" "yes. on jimmie's account. it's as much his as yours." "_is_ it!" bitter laughter followed. "he's no right to it. he's no right to _me_." "why didn't you quit him, then? i would have. in a minute." "i couldn't. you don't know." "you could have come home. of course there'd have been a stink-up, but----" "i wouldn't have cared. i'd have done anything to get away from him. but he found out--about stanley." "stanley? oh, angel-face! dee, _had_ you?" "no; _no_! there was never any question of that between us," she said moodily. "i did meet him, though. it was accidental at first, for i never meant to see him again after i married jim. after that we met once in a while, for walks and in places like the skating rink. that was all there was to it, but jim found it out and used it to blackmail me and hold me to the marriage. white slave stuff, on the respectable side! but bobs won't do anything," she added dully. "you'll see." pat caught her in a sudden, reassuring hug. "leave it to me," was her commonplace but confident rejoinder to this baring of a woman's self-wrought and therefore doubly grim tragedy. having carefully rehearsed her form of attack upon the family physician pat went to his bungalow. "why the face so solemn, infant?" he greeted her. "i've got something serious to say to you, bobs." "what devilment have you been up to now?" "it isn't me," returned pat, with her usual superiority to the laws of grammar. "it's dee." "hello!" his expression changed. "anything wrong?" "yes. she's going to have a baby." "dee," he murmured, "a mother." he lost himself in musing, seeming to forget pat's presence. "but she doesn't _want_ to be a mother." "eh?" osterhout quite jumped, startled by the emphasis which pat gave to the assertion. "oh! that's unimportant. they often don't in the early stages." "dee never will. never! _never!_" the physician smiled tolerantly. "and you've got to help her out of it." "i?" the scandalised amazement in his expression tempted pat to mirth, but she restrained herself. "help her out! in what way, may i ask?" "you needn't may-i-ask in that hateful tone. you know perfectly well. doctors do those things, don't they?" "oh, certainly! by all means. it's the backbone and mainstay of the profession." "now you're being sarcastic. and it's terribly serious." "you go back to dee and tell her not to be a damned fool. she ought to be ashamed of herself for sending you on such an errand. i don't understand it in dee." "liar yourself, bobs. she didn't send me. i came. and"--a little breathlessly--"if you don't do it for her somebody else will." "somebody else? who?" "i don't know yet. one of these people in here." she produced the newspaper page which she had extracted from dee. osterhout swore vividly and voluminously. "just what i said! leaving such filth about where girls can pick it up." he rose, shuffled over to pat, took her chin between finger and thumb and peered down into her limpid, troubled eyes. "what's behind all this foolishness?" came the stern question. "oh, bobs! be good and help us. she can't have the baby. truly she can't. i mustn't tell you why, but you'd say so, too, if you knew." his face darkened. "what's this? isn't it james's child?" pat was virtuously indignant, notwithstanding that she had put a like query herself a few moments earlier. "of course it is!" "then it's probably the very best thing that could happen to her." "won't you believe me, bobs," pat implored, "when i tell you----" "i'm going to put you out of this house in a minute if you don't stop talking such trash." "you won't help her?" "not by so much as stirring a finger." then pat, offering up a silent prayer to the genius of histrionics, played her trump card. "will you help--me, then?" her eyes were cast down; that was in the rôle she had assumed; but she heard his pipe clatter to the floor, felt the insistence of his stare fixed upon her. "_bambina!_" it was long since he had called her by the old pet-name of her childhood. the realisation of what the reversion implied almost broke down her resolution. but he instantly recovered his self-command; was wholly the physician. "tell me about it," he said gently. "what is there to tell more?" she threw out her arms in what she deemed the proper gesture. "are you sure?" "yes. or i'd never have come to you." "who is the man?" pat shook her head. she had not invented the man even in her own mind. "tell me, pat." her lips set firm indicating (as she had seen determination "registered" on the screen) that rather would she die than betray her lover. "the damned scoundrel has got to marry you." "he can't." "why? is he married?" her head inclined slowly. she was quite pale with emotion now, living into her part thoroughly. "then i'll drive the dirty whelp out of town. pat, you're not going to leave this room until you tell me." "real old mellerdrammer stuff," thought pat. sadly she said: "what's the use, bobs? i'll never tell. he'd marry me if he could. oh, you needn't go guessing," she added hastily. "you've never seen or heard of him. word of honour." he went over to the window and stood, staring out into the soft, grey drizzle of an early thaw. when he turned to her his face was set in a still resolution. "pat, you're absolutely certain that he can't marry you?" "absolutely," returned pat, with the conviction of truth. "then, will you marry me?" "bobs!" she started to her feet, astounded, incredulous. "you're joking." "i'm in dead earnest." the irrepressible coquette within her seized upon and dominated her. "do you mean to say that you're in _love_ with _me_? with little pat?" she crowed. "no." "oh!" the coquette retired, discomfited. "i'm offering you a marriage of safety; a marriage of form, only. i should never make any claim on you." "i couldn't," she gasped, still in the grip of utter amazement. "do you see any other way out?" he asked with grim patience. "but why should you do it?" "why shouldn't i? i'd do it for your mother's sake if for no other reason. it isn't as if i had anything else to do with my life. you needn't be afraid of my ever bothering you; and when the time comes, we can get a quiet divorce." pat fell back into her chair, her brain still whirling. "no. no. no. no. no! never in this world! i couldn't even think of it." "if the idea of me as a pretended husband is so repulsive----" "it isn't. i think you're _divine_. i _adore_ you. not that way, though. and i couldn't mess things up that way for both of us. i'd kill myself, first." she was winning back, though badly jarred, into the drama of it again. "bobs, you will help me through. the--the other way." "what! a criminal operation? why, i couldn't if i were willing. i'm no obstetrician!" pat had the grace to turn red. "no. not you, of course. but if you'd just send me somewhere--to one of the men in the paper----" "that would be just as bad." "then you'd rather stand by and see me ruined and disgraced," she cried hotly. with a swift change to beseeching softness she murmured, "mona would tell you to help me if she were here." again osterhout turned to look out into the colorless tumult of the storm: "you're wrong, pat. she wouldn't. she'd know me better." "then what am i going to do?" he prowled up and down the room like an anxious bear. "i don't know. we'll have to get you away somewhere. oh, bambina! how could you be such an infernal little fool? why didn't i look after you better?" "poor old bobs!" said she softly. "how could you know anything about it?" "one thing you absolutely must not do," he pursued vigorously, "is to go to any of those scoundrelly quacks in the paper." "it's easy enough to tell me what _not_ to do." "you've got to go through with it. i'll make the arrangements when the time comes. just try not to worry any more than you can help." pat nodded her assent and farewell. but inwardly her mood was anything but acquiescent. if bobs, her trusted stand-by of so many years, wouldn't help, well--outside in the drizzle she drew out the newspaper and scanned the second legend in the discreet looking column. it gave an obscure address in newark and was signed "dr. jelleco." chapter xxii what work osterhout was able to do in the two days following pat's revelation was mainly mechanical. neither his mind nor his real interest were enlisted. pat's supposed situation absorbed both. there were so many phases to that problem! if only mona were alive. that thought came to him with more poignancy than for a long time past. he would have taken pat's secret to her at once, without hesitancy. could he take it to any other member of the family? certainly not ralph fentriss. nor the helpless constance. dee? he shrank from that idea with an invincible reluctance. life, he more than suspected, was not treating dee over-tenderly. he took his perplexities out into the bluster and whirl of a wild afternoon, and came back weary and a little quieted to find the subject of them stretched out on his divan, fast asleep. her face, he observed pitifully, showed not only exhaustion but a deeper strain. he touched her limp hand and spoke her name softly. at once she sprang half erect, like a startled animal. "oh, bobs! it's you. i'm so glad you've come. i'm afraid, bobs." "no, dear; you mustn't let yourself be," he soothed her. "there's nothing----" "you don't understand. and i've got to tell you. that's what i'm scared about." "haven't you told me the whole thing, bambina?" "no. i'll--i'll tell you on the way over to dee's." "to dee's?" "yes. dee's ill. you must come at once." he caught up his hat and gloves; his overcoat he had not taken off. "what is it?" "bobs, it's--it's _that_." "that? what? can't you speak out?" out in the air she took a deep breath. "it wasn't me at all that was in trouble," she announced desperately. "not you?" stupefaction was in his voice. gathering wrath superseded it as he demanded, "is this some kind of an infernal joke?" "no. it was dee all the time. as i told you at first." "then why in the name----" "you wouldn't help her because she's married. so i thought you might help me, if you thought it was me, because i wasn't." "an admirable little game. but i'm still not sure that i quite get the point of it." his voice was so ugly that pat's shook as she said: "the point was to get you to tell me, if you wouldn't help me yourself, about one of those men in the newspaper----" "dee went to one of them?" he broke in. she looked up at him piteously, pleadingly. "bobs, it was _terrible_. he was so--so ghastly business-like." "what did you expect?" he returned grimly. "and now she's ill?" "yes." "fever?" "i--i think so." with a barked-out oath he increased his pace. pat, striding fast to keep up said: "bobs, dear; dee doesn't know about it." "about what?" "about my pretending that i was the one. it was my own notion." "then you will tell her," he ordained with chill command, "as soon as she is well enough to hear it. if she gets well enough," he added. "if? bobs! you don't think there's any real danger----" "of course there is danger. what do you think fever means in such a case? you take things into your own hands, perpetrate a piece of criminal folly----" "bobs! i couldn't have stopped her." "you could have told me the truth and let me handle the situation. she would never have dared if she knew that i knew. now, if dee dies----" "don't, bobs!" "it will be your lie that killed her." for once the reckless soul of pat shrunk back upon itself in awed remorse. "you've never spoken to me that way in your life," she whimpered. "i've never felt toward you before as i feel now." "i'm sorry, bobs. but i had to do it. i'd do it again to save dee." "save her? aid her in a cowardly shirking of her first duty as a woman and a wife. it is bad enough to find you lying to me. but to find her a coward and a slacker----" "you're more angry at her than you are at me, aren't you?" said pat, in wonder and some resentment. she did not like to have anyone else put before her even for indignation. he made no reply, but turned in at the gateway to the james ground. as they passed under the portico she stole a glance at his face. it had, by the magic of his will, become calm, cheerful, self-possessed, exorcised of all wrath and dismay, the face of the confident, confidence-inspiring physician going on his duty of aid. pat marvelled and admired. for her it was a long and thought-haunted half hour before he emerged from dee's room. "is it bad?" she whispered, striving to read his expression. "no. a slight nervous shock. nothing more." "oh, bobs! i could cry with thankfulness." "save your tears," he advised, "for those on whom they might make an impression." "you don't like me much, do you?" she sighed. "did you tell dee about my trick?" "haven't i made it clear that you are to make that explanation?" "what if i don't choose to?" "i think you will. whether you like it or not." pat said with slow malice: "shall i tell her that you asked me to marry you?" "why not?" "oh, _very_ well!" she could think of nothing more effective to say. he took his coat and hat from the chair upon which he had tossed them. "bobs." he turned at the door, eyeing her with an uncompromising regard. "don't look at me in that poisonous way. say you're sorry, or i'm sorry, or something." he did not move but seemed to be considering. when he spoke his voice shook her with its gravity: "it is not going to be easy to forgive you, pat." "how about dee?" she shot at him. "that is between dee and myself. she at least did not lie to me." pat flamed with a sense of unmerited injuries. "oh, you go to hell!" she muttered. but her eyes were wondering and frightened after he left her. dee's voice calling gave her something else to think about. she ran upstairs. "what were you and bobs quarrelling about?" demanded the patient. "nothing." "you were. was it about me? is he very bitter against me?" "i'll tell you to-morrow. you must go to sleep now." "there's something back of this." dee jumped from her bed and set her back to the door. "you won't leave this room till you tell me." "get back into bed," implored the alarmed pat. "i'll tell you. truly i will." "tell, then." pat related the tale of the stratagem with increasing relish in the unfolding of the drama. "pretty clever of little pat, what?" "i'm sorry you had to lie to bobs, though." "i've kept the best of it. when i told him, bobs asked me to marry him." "asked _you_?" "yes. isn't that a scream!" between nervousness and exaltation of her diplomatic powers pat burst into laughter. "and you laugh?" the mirth died on her lips. "don't you think it's fun----" "you--dirty--little--beast." "what did i do?" faltered the younger sister. "why pick on me? i did it all for you anyway, and i think it's pretty rotten, if you ask me, to----" "you didn't laugh at bobs for me." "i didn't laugh at him at all. i was too paralysed." "if you had i hope he'd have killed you. i would." a monstrous conjecture rose in pat's excited brain. "he isn't the man, is he? it isn't bobs that you're crazy about, and the other man just a bluff? it _couldn't_ be." "why couldn't it?" "dee! it _isn't_." "no; it isn't. but there's no reason why it couldn't be with any woman who had heart and sense enough to know him for what he is. he's the best and finest person i've ever known. and when he does the biggest and noblest thing a man could do and offers his name and honour to shield a little heartless fool, he gets laughed at." "but it wasn't any of it true," cried pat feebly. "don't you see what a difference that makes?" "no. he thought it was true." "oh, very _well_! i guess i'm pretty rotten. but i'm just as fond of bobs as you are, dee fentriss. only, the idea of marrying him--well, it's a scream. that's all; a simple scream." "oh, do get out of here," said dee wearily. she slumped down into her bed and drew the covers up. "good-_night_," said pat, and made her exit. before the hall mirror she paused to contemplate herself. "there you are, pattie-pat," she remarked, with the little triple jerk of the head that set her shaggy locks rippling over her ears and neck. "you still look pretty good to me. but if this family was running a popularity contest with peanuts for ballots, you wouldn't get one shuck. lord-ee! i wish cary scott was here for just one minute! i need moral support." chapter xxiii spring was turbulent in the sap of young trees and the blood of young humans when mary delia james rolled along fifth avenue in the quietly elegant limousine provided for her special use by a correctly generous husband. nothing about her suggested participation in the turbulence of the season. rather, life with that most unvernal young man, t. jameson james, would have served to allay any tendencies toward ebullience which she might otherwise have exhibited. she gave the impression of a cool impassivity. the car had just turned into a side street when her languid expression livened. she signalled to her chauffeur, leaned out of the window and called: "cary! cary scott!" the object of the summons turned in mid-crossing and came back, his eyes shining with pleasure. "dee! it is good to see you again. how's james?" "all right, thank you. what do you mean by turning up and not letting us know?" "unexpected," he explained. "i hardly had time to find it out before i was here." "the telegraph, that useful invention, is still operating. get in; we're blocking traffic. you're dining and spending the night with us, of course." "if i stay over," he answered dubiously. "i don't know yet. tell me about the family." "as usual. we're all flourishing in true fentriss style." "pat? and mr. fentriss? and the brownings?" "separated. no; i don't mean fred and con," she amended, laughing at the dismay in his face. "dad and the brownings. fred's sticking to business _and_ to con; they've got a cottage over beyond the club; addition in june, not to the cottage, to the family. pat's running holiday knoll like a veteran, though just now she's in boston. she'll be sunk in desolation when she finds you've been here and she's missed you." "perhaps i'll be back again when she returns," he said carelessly, but his words belied his inward resolution so to arrange his schedule that he would run no risk of the peace-destroying encounter. as a minor determination, he decided to accept dee's invitation for the night, since it involved no danger of seeing pat. "yes; pat's quite doing her job," continued dee. "it's good for her to have the responsibility. but she's still a queer, restless, morbid kid. you saw a lot of her at one time, cary. i always thought you had a steadying influence on her. what's the matter with pat, do you think?" "the fever of the age, perhaps." "oh, we've all got that. but pat's temperature is particularly high. she rushes from one whirl to another, playing billy-old-hell with mark denby one week, and emslie selfridge another, and selden thorpe, a third, and what does she get out of it? not even excitement, or else she's a little liar. she's beaten it now because she says she's bored to suicide with this place." "and you yourself, dee? how is it with you?" "oh, i've everything i want," she said restlessly. "everything should include happiness; i'm glad." "what's that? don't know--yeh." her voice was hard. "please stop looking at me like a solemn owl, as if you were probing for symptoms. bobs does all that i need in that line." "osterhout? how is he?" "go and see him. he needs stirring up. you _are_ coming to us to-night, aren't you?" "only too charmed. what's this place?" he asked, as the car drew to the curb. "my tailor's. will you wait for me?" "heavens, no!" he laughed. "i'm nearly forty now. can't spare the time." "then account for yourself before you go. what brings you here so suddenly and without any announcement?" "a peculiar mission." "private, for a guess. not hooked, are you, cary?" "nothing of that nature. it's private, but not secret, from you. in fact, you may be able to help me." "i? in what possible way?" "i want to find stanley wollaston." at the name a slow colour rose in dee's cheeks until it tinged even the broadly and beautifully modelled forehead. "he's gone away. to richmond. i can give you his address." "good! i've some important news for him. there's no reason why you shouldn't know it. his aunt in england has died and left him the estate. stan's lean days are over." the rich hue ebbed out of dee's face. "he'll go back, then," she mused. at once she recovered herself. "i _am_ glad," she said. "i knew you would be," he answered. but he thought with pity: "she still loves him"; and, with uneasiness, "and still sees him." he continued: "he'll be going back within a month at the latest. i'll go on to-morrow to find him." he got out, bared his head, and helped her to alight. "at seven o'clock then," she said. "shall i get some people in? who do you want to see?" "no one else in the world," he answered with such conviction that she smiled up at him. "you _are_ a dear, cary. i can't tell you how much we've missed you. pat almost went into mourning." she did not see his expression change, ever so slightly, as he turned away. business of his own kept scott busy most of the afternoon. when he reached the club he found jameson james waiting to motor him out. james was amiable in his stiff and carefully measured way. scott went to his room immediately upon their arrival, bathed, dressed, drank the preliminary cocktail which dee had mixed with her own hands and sent up to him, and had started to go downstairs when he stopped, his breath piling up, as it were, in his throat from an emotion half dismay, half rapture. the unforgettable, luscious huskiness of a voice floated up from below. "dee; where are you? _do_ come and hook this last hook for me. i can't get the dam' thing to stay." he took a step forward. pat looked up. "oh, _mist_-er scott!" she crowed. "it's too flawless to see you again. i thought you were _never_ coming back." chapter xxiv he walked back with her to holiday knoll after dinner. pat's face was thoughtful, moody. as they paced in silence he studied it intently, with passionate longings, with passionate misgivings. out of a reverie she spoke. "i've never missed anyone in my life as i've missed you. you were right." "about what, pat?" "that day you took me to philadelphia. you said i'd miss you more than i thought. d'you remember, i told you then what i thought about it. 'oh, well, i'll miss him for a few days and then--pouf!'" there followed the impatient, boyish wriggle and hunch of the lithe shoulders. "'it'll be all over.' it wasn't all over." "for me it has never been over. not for a single minute." "have you wanted me so much?" beneath the conscious coquetry there was a more wistful note. "oh, god, pat!" his voice sounded thick and rough. "there has been no colour or savour, no music or fragrance in life without you." "why did you go away?" she demanded accusingly. "you know, i had to go." "why did you come back?" "not to see you. i didn't want to see you. dee told me that you were away." "she told me you were here. i'd phoned over about some clothes. so i just thought i'd like to see you again. don't scowl at me. you look as if you think i ought not to have come." "no; you oughtn't." "are you sorry i did?" he looked away from her into the wind-swept night. "are you angry because i did?" "i love you," he burst out. "god, how i love you!" she laughed softly. her hand slid down his arm, clasped for a moment the wrist in which his pulses leapt madly to her touch, wreathed itself, cool and strong and smooth, around his palm. "and i love you," she half-whispered gaily. "i'm terribly in love with you"--a pause of deliberate intent--"to-night. because you've been away from me so long." "ah, yes, to-night!" he made no effort to keep the bitterness out of his voice. "but, to-morrow----" "to-night's to-night," she broke in happily. "we've got lots of it to ourselves. it's only nine o'clock. i broke away early on purpose." arrested by the look on his face, she added with exasperation and protest: "cary! you're not going to play propriety to-night? when we haven't seen each other for so long?" she shook the gleamy mist of her hair about her face, gave a gnomish bend and twist to body and neck and peered sidelong at him from out the tangle. suddenly her face darted upward. her mouth met his in a grotesque parody of a passion-laden kiss. "oh, bad bunny!" she admonished herself in mock reproach. he stopped, gazing at her from beneath bent brows. "you hated that, didn't you?" she said. "yes." "because it wasn't real?" "because it was mockery." "_petite gamine_ stuff. but i'm not _petite gamine_ to-night; i'm something else. i don't know what i am. do you?" "no." "don't be cross with me. whatever it is that i am, it's sorry that it kissed you that way. i didn't mean to make a josh of it." he smiled. "one might as well try to be cross with a moonbeam." they had come around by the side street, and now he held the garden gate back for her. the house was dim. pat kissed her hand to the clematis arbour. "d'you remember?" she murmured. "is there one moment ever spent with you that i've forgotten?" "would you like to forget?" "there are times when i would give anything in the world to forget." "but i don't _want_ you to forget." "you want me to have to bear this always?" "no. i don't want you to be unhappy about it. i want--i don't know what i do want. except now. now i want to have this evening just to ourselves." she opened a side door, spoke to a servant, moving about in the kitchen. "it's all right, katie." then to scott: "aren't you coming in?" he hesitated, but when she added impatiently, "oh, don't be such a crab!" he followed her. "go into the small conservatory," she bade him. "that's _my_ work. i've fussed it up into a sort of den." she bounded upstairs and ran into her room, shook out her hair, gathered it, studied herself in the glass. her eyes were brilliant, heavy-lidded, dreamy. she shook herself impatiently; her strong, supervitalised young body felt cramped and pent in the close-fitting tailor-made which she had on. she plucked at the buttons with hurried fingers, wriggled out of the garment which she kicked from her feet and left lying on the floor, tossed her corsets after it, and exhaled a long, luxurious "ooo-oo-oofff!" of satisfaction and voluptuous relief. opening the door of her clothes-press, she rummaged for a moment and pulled out a long, sweeping robe, which she drew about her, moulding it to the boyish set of her shoulders and the woman's depth and contour of her bosom. she caught up a cigarette, lighted a match, then, lapsing into thought, let it droop from her fingers until the scorching brought an angry "damn!" of pain. she threw the cigarette after the expiring match. no; she wouldn't smoke, much as her tense nerves demanded it. she would keep her mouth fresh and sweet for cary's first kiss. she ran down to him, putting on the far light in the hallway, so that only a dim glow invaded the conservatory-den. scott stood at the window in an attitude of attention. "what are you doing?" she asked. "listening." "music! a violin. oh, i know. it's a visitor at the eastmans', next door. he's good. and how _flawless_ of him to be playing just now. open the window. let's hear it all." he obeyed. she drew in to him. her ready fingers sought his palm. "want me to mix you a drink?" "no, dear." "that's better," she approved. "though," she added, with her old air of _gaminerie_, "it might go further and not get a call-down. what is it he's playing?" "'the Élégie.'" the violin was sobbing, panting, pleading like a woman in sweet distress. the wind swept the notes to them until the whole room was surcharged with the passion and grief of it. pat lifted scott's hand, cuddled it to her cheek, flipped it away carelessly, turned from him, drifted out of the den into the hallway, back again, and to the divan in the far corner, where she threw herself, snuggling amidst the pillows. her eyes grew heavy, languorous; in their depths played a shadowed gleam like the far reflection of flame in the heart of sombre waters. the long, thrilling, haunted, wind-borne prayer of the violin penetrated to the innermost fibre of her, mingling there with the passionate sense of his nearness, swaying her to undefined and flashing languors, to unthinkable urgencies. "oh, cary!" she breathed, in the breaking seduction of her voice, a voice that blended and was one with the resistless pleading of the music. and again: "oh, cary!" her arms yearned out to him, drawing him through the dimness. with a cry he leapt to her, clasped her, felt her young strength and lissome grace yield to his enfoldment. through her sundered lips he drew the wine of her breath deep, deep into his veins, until all his self was merged and lost in her passion. outside the great wind possessed the world, full of the turbulence, the fever, the unassuaged desire of spring, the _allegro furioso_ of the elements, and through it pierced the unbearable sweetness of the stringed melody. the strain died. was it after a minute, or an hour, or a night that was an age in their intertwined lives? he was back at the window, leaning against the casement, drawing the rushing wind into his lungs, his heart bursting, his soul a whirl of fire. behind him, in the gloom, sounded the shaken softness of her breathing. he bent his head upon his arms. "oh, god!" he said. "pat. little pat!" she came to him then, spread her gracious arms wide, flung the gleaming fog of her hair to the wind, enclasped him, claimed his soul with her lips. "i'm _not_ sorry," she panted. "i'm not! i'm not! i'm _glad_!" chapter xxv nothing irked pat more than being awakened too early. consequently katie's knock upon her door, at the third discreet repetition, elicited a plaintive growl of protest. "oh, _go_ away!" "special delivery letter for you, miss pat." "shove it under the door and don't bother me." she flumped over in bed, burrowing her face among the pillows like an annoyed baby. very much did pat wish to sleep. until long after midnight she had lain awake, thinking excitedly. to be roused out of the profound oblivion which she had finally achieved, thus untimely, was a little too much. but that letter got between her and her rest. from cary scott, of course. she visualised the oblong blue stamp, insistent, intrusive, "immediate." oh, _well_! up she jumped, caught the envelope from the floor, and dived back into bed to read it. it was mainly repetition of what he had said last night when they parted: nothing but the absolute necessity of going would have taken him away from her at such a time; he would be back in a few days at the latest; she must wait until then; must not let herself worry, must not make herself unhappy, must trust in him. it ended, "i love you, pat." through the quiet directness of the wording pat felt the stress of an overwhelming emotion. it was not so much worry or unhappiness that filled pat's thoughts as a confused and colourful bewilderment, a sense of unreality. there intervened a reflection from her mis-education through the media of flash fiction and the conventional false moralizings of the screen. in a variety of presentations they all taught the same lesson, that when girls "went wrong" they invariably "got into trouble." she passed her hands down along her slender, boyish body and experienced a sharp qualm of fear and disgust and anger, a visualisation of gross and sodden changes in those slim contours. it couldn't happen to _her_. in spite of the movies, other girls "took a chance" and "got away with it." ada clare, for instance, according to common gossip; nothing had happened to her. cissie parmenter had lightly hinted at "experiences." pat thought it would be exciting to tell cissie. but would it be safe? she would like to have cissie's reassurance that everything would be all right. but why should she need reassurance? she steadied herself with the thought, entertained wholly without idea of blasphemy or irreverence, that god wouldn't let anything like that come about, the god to whom she had paid such assiduous homage by going regularly to church and asking every night for what she specially wanted on the morrow or in the further future. it was her naïve idea of an unwritten pact with the deity that the performance of her little ritual, be it never so self-seeking, entitled her, of right, to definite rewards and exemptions, claimable as required. this was one of them. surely he would keep to his part of the bargain. otherwise, what good would religion be to anyone? it occurred to her uncomfortably that he had somewhere said, "the wages of sin is death," which she secretly deemed bad grammar even if it was in the bible. but pat did not really feel that this was sin; rather it was accident. technically it might be sin; she admitted so much. but if it were really sin she would, as a sound christian, feel remorse. and she did not feel remorse. therefore it could not in any serious sense be sin. irrefutable logic! what did she feel? she asked herself. a sense of the fullness of life, of adventure boldly dared. she had met one of the great crises of a woman's life, _the_ crisis, indeed. it must be so, since all the stories and movies and plays agreed on the point. the singular aspect of it was that she was conscious of no inner change. she was the same pat fentriss, only a day older than yesterday. being a "woman," if this was it, was not so different from being a "girl." and mr. scott. according to the conventions, as she had absorbed them through the sensationalised and distorted lens to which her intellectual vision had become habituated, the lover should lose all "respect" for the unfortunate girl, this being the first symptom of the waning of his love. well, it wasn't working that way with _her_ lover. the few, broken words of parting last night, the still passion of his letter, told a different story. possibly, reflected pat, the people who set forth what purported to be life, on screen, stage, and the printed page, didn't know so much about it after all. or possibly she and cary scott were different from other people. she felt convinced that she was. from this she fell to speculating upon scott's probable attitude toward the ingenious and comforting theory of conduct and responsibility which she just had formulated specially to fit the present crisis. somehow it did not seem quite satisfactory in the illumination of his imagined view. she had thought of him always and rather mournfully as a non-religious if not actually irreligious man; but it was disturbingly cast up from the depths of her mind that if cary scott had a god, he would never try either to make cheap excuses to nor shift responsibility upon him. and suddenly in that light her exculpatory arguments seemed shallow and paltering. this uncomfortable consideration she thrust determinedly into the background, and concentrated her thought upon her next meeting with scott. all things considered, she was not, on the whole, sorry that he had gone away, assuming, of course, that he came back very soon. it gave her time to think, to figure things out free from the immediate glamour of his presence and the disturbing gladness of his return after the long disseverance. did she really love him? she supposed she must; otherwise---- yet there was still strong within her the impulse toward the companionship of youth which had inspired her petulant remonstrance to dr. bobs over his opinion as to the desirable age for her husband: "i don't want to marry my _grandfather_!" would she marry cary scott if he were free? even now she doubted it. not at once, anyway. she wanted her own freedom for a time yet, freedom to enjoy life, to range, to pick and choose. but she had made her choice. tradition would hold that she had taken an irrevocable step, committed herself. tradition be damned! she didn't believe it. would cary take that view? if, on his return, he should assume the proprietary attitude, evince a sense of possessiveness--pat clenched her fists but at once softened with the recollection of his sure comprehension, his unerring tact, his instinctive sense of her deeper emotions and reactions. so far as the immediate future went, he was not free to marry her, nor likely to be. that problem need not be faced now. suppose later she fell in love and wanted to marry someone else; what would be her course then? oh, _well_! let that take care of itself when it came. meantime she had something more immediate to look forward to in cary's return. she anticipated it with a mingling of trepidation, eagerness, warmth, and excited curiosity, the latter element being predominant. on the following morning she had another letter, and still a third on the day after. she quite gloried in his devotion. but she did not answer the letters. she rather wanted to but found a difficulty in beginning. she preferred to plan out what she should say to him when they met again, and was in the act of building up a quite thrilling and eloquent statement of her feelings when the phone summoned her. "pat?" it was dee's voice, queer and strained. "can you come over at once?" "yes. what's happened?" "jim has been hurt." "jim? how?" "hit by a car." "oh, dee! is it bad?" "yes. i think so. they're bringing him here." "i'll be right over." pat made a dash for her runabout. when she reached the james house there were two cars in the driveway, dr. osterhout's and a large touring car strange to her. there was blood on the steps which pat mounted. "is he killed?" she asked, chokingly, of a maid who was hurrying through the hall. "no'm," said the girl. "i don't think so." then added in awe-stricken tones: "he was swearin' somethin' awful when they brung him in. the poo-er man!" pat followed her to the front room. dr. osterhout's head was thrust out, at her knock. "what can i do, bobs?" she asked. he nodded, approving the steadiness of her voice and control. "locate a trained nurse and bring her here." "i'll have one in half an hour. how is he?" "bad." within the time prescribed pat was back with the nurse. she found dee in the library waiting. the young wife's face was sallow, her eyes wide and shining and fixed. "oh, dee! don't!" begged pat. "you look so afraid." "i am afraid," was the monotoned reply. "is he going to die?" "i don't know. that's what i'm afraid of. i'm afraid he isn't." "_dee!_" "i know, i know how it sounds. i don't care. when the word first came they said he was killed. i was glad." pat stared at her aghast. "why should i lie and pretend?" whispered the wife fiercely. "why shouldn't i want to be free of him? you know how it is between us. i'm a marriage-slave to a man who has no thought of anything but himself." she gulped and writhed in an access of strong physical nausea. pat's strong hands fell upon her wrists. "stop, dee! you mustn't let yourself go that way. tell me how it happened." "i don't know anything about it. the marburys' car struck him, down near the station." "poor jimmie!" "poor jimmie? poor me! shall i tell you what happened last week?" "no. not now, dee. you're----" "i'm all right, i tell you. and i'm going to tell you. we fought it out to a finish. he wants to have children. _children_, after the agreement he broke! well, i couldn't tell him the whole reason why i wouldn't; but i told him this, and it's true, too, as far as it goes. i said to him: 'jim, if you'd ever had one single thought for anybody in your life but yourself i might feel different. but if there's anything in heredity i'd as soon hand down idiocy to a child as your strain. now, if you want a separation, get it.' what do you think he said? 'oh, no, my dear. that's heroics. i'm just about the same as other men. you don't get off so easily. as for selfishness, you didn't marry me in any spirit of altruism.'" "he had you there, dee." "yes; he had me there. then he said, 'i'm going to hold you until you make good or break away yourself.'" "'then i'll break,' i said. 'i'll leave you.' he only smiled. 'you won't find it too easy,' he said. i could have killed him." "are you really going to leave him?" asked pat, wide-eyed. "i was. now"--she jerked her hand upward--"how can i? what kind of a brute would i look?" "perhaps he will die. poor jimmie!" "if you say 'poor jimmie' once again i'll scream at the top of my voice." a man in chauffeur's livery came down the stairs. he looked beseechingly at dee. "i couldn't help it, mrs. james," he gulped. "i never seen him until he grabbed the kid an' then i couldn't turn." "what kid?" asked pat. "didn't you hear how it happened?" "no. tell us." "i was comin' down the road by the turn above the bridge when a little girl run out from the curb. mr. james must have been right behind her. i honked and the kid stopped dead. i give the wheel a twist and the kid jumped right under the fender. i knew there wasn't no chance, but i jerked her again and felt her hit somethin' hard, and the kid yelled once, and there was mr. james under the wheels. he'd seen the little girl and he made a dive for her and shoved her out from under just as i--i got him. it was the nerviest thing"--the man's rough voice broke. "he must-a knowed he didn't have a chance. a--a--man's thinkin' little of himself to do that for a dago kid he never seen before." dee was leaning forward with fixed stare and twitching lips which barely formed the words: "did jim do that?" "yes'm. he sure did. he'd oughta get the carnegie medal for it." "and the little girl?" said pat, thrilled. "he saved her?" the man shook a doleful head. "he shoved her out from under my wheels and she rolled right into a truck passin' the other way." "killed?" he nodded, speechlessly. dee burst into laughter. she laughed and laughed and laughed. chapter xxvi never in all her career of coquetry had pat devoted more careful planning than to her meeting with cary scott when he should return. at first sight of him all her elaborate campaign was dissipated in consternation. "_mist_-er scott!" she cried. he had come out from the city direct to holiday knoll and was standing in the library, as she came downstairs to meet him, the morning light brilliant on his haggard face. at her exclamation a wry smile twisted his lips. "still that, to you?" he asked. she moved toward him slowly, a little shyly, with fluttering hands outstretched, lips upturned, rather from the wish to comfort his manifest suffering than from any impulse of passion within herself. he drew her into his arms, bent over her, kissed her gently. she felt him tremble in her clasp. "what is it, cary?" she whispered. "you look _too_ appalling." "i haven't slept very well." she drew back to survey him. "i don't believe you've slept at all," she pronounced. "have you?" "it doesn't matter." "it does! you mustn't take it that way." his expression told her that her coolness amazed him. and, then, suddenly, by reflex from him, it amazed herself. it was so exactly the reverse of the programmed course of events as presented in the familiar media of her reading. she, the woman, the "betrayed," was striving to comfort and reassure him, the man, the "betrayer." "did you expect that i should take it lightly, pat?" "no, but----" "i love you," he said. no more than that, hardly above his breath. but it was as if he had pronounced the final word of passion, of yearning, of devotion; his full confession of the bond which is at once primal and eternal between man and woman. she dropped her head. the thick clusters of her hair rippled forward, almost concealing the eyes which she lifted, aslant, alight, mischievous, yet craving, to his. "do you?" she whispered. "do you truly?" she nestled again, close in his embrace. "and you, pat?" he asked. "i don't know," she answered, troubled. "i've hardly been able to think--since. i suppose i must; but----" "we have a great deal to say to each other," he began gravely, when she broke in: "i've had so much else to think about. have you heard about poor dee?" "dee? no. what is it?" "it isn't exactly dee. it's jimmie. he was run over by a car three days ago." "not killed!" "almost. it's his back. bobs says they can save him but it would be kinder to let him die. he'll never be anything but a helpless log." "good heavens! poor dee! i must go over there." "we'll go over together. i'll tell you as we go." she ran to get her hat, returned at once, setting it in place on her mutinous hair, stood studying him for a moment through half-closed eyes, then leapt to him, flung her arms about his body, pressed her cheek to his, murmuring, "it's _too_ flawless to have you back, cary!" outside, she said, "dee was going to leave him." "no! for what earthly reason?" "i can't tell you. yes, i can. i can tell you anything--now." she flushed, but looked at him unflinchingly. "it's strange, isn't it?" "it's unutterably sweet," he said. "it's the companionship that is deeper and more lasting than any other association." "but there's always been that between us," she mused. "only, it's different now. i don't quite understand; there's so much i don't understand, cary, dear. but i know that i want to tell you. i don't believe dee would mind." she repeated dee's bitter protest over james's breach of faith, her refusal to accept maternity, her recent resolution to quit her husband at whatever cost of scandal. "and now she can't," she concluded. "you mean that she won't." "yes. dee's a good sport. she'll stick to a man when he's down. the worst of it is, she told him why she wouldn't have a baby of his; because he was just a bunch of pure selfishness. and then he goes and pulls a real hero stunt and deliberately throws his life away for a dago brat--and doesn't save the darn thing, anyway," concluded pat, her lips quivering. "where does that leave dee?" "was it what dee said that drove him to do it?" "no. it was too quick for that. he did it instinctively. it must have been in him all the while to do the big, self-sacrificing thing when it was put up to him. like the men on the _titanic_ that everybody thought were wasters. that's what makes it so rotten for dee. she thinks she's misjudged him all the time. i believe she'd give her life now to have a child for him." "well?" queried scott. pat shook a mournful head. "no, never. not a chance. haven't i told you? he'll live in a plaster cast the rest of his life if he does live. i wouldn't!... i've had a hell of a time with dee, cary." "poor darling! do you think dee will want to see me?" "yes. i'm sure she will. perhaps not to-day." "has this really turned her to james again, pat?" "has it made her really love him, you mean? how could she? women aren't that way. but all she can think of now is her remorse." he paced along beside her in deep thought for a time before he said: "was there any other reason for her leaving him?" "the other man?" she gave him a quick look. "i suppose that had something to do with it. cary, was it a rotten trick for dee to marry jimmie?" "i'm afraid it was, rather. poor child! she's paying for it." "do women always pay for it?" "no. sometimes the men do." "you know dee's man, don't you?" "yes." "do you know where he is now?" "not at this moment. but i know he is intending to come back here in a few days." "to see dee?" "i'm afraid so." "he mustn't." "no; he mustn't." "can't you stop him?" "if i can reach him." "cary, you _must_ stop him." "is she still in love with him?" "terribly." "i'll do my best." at the james house they found dr. osterhout. pat went up to dee after bidding cary come to the knoll directly after dinner. going out with the physician he asked how serious james's case really was. "as serious as it could possibly be," was the grim reply. "he'll live." "then pat was right. he'll never be any better?" "not much. a paralytic. with a good deal of suffering." "can't you help him die?" muttered scott. the medical man turned an uncompromising look upon the other. "when i acquire the wisdom of deity, then i'll assume the prerogatives of deity. not before." "it's a merciless attitude. in a case like this----" "in a case like this," the physician cut him short, "the man's life may be valuable to others if not to himself. and suppose after i'd killed him, as you so casually suggest"--the other's gesture of protest did not serve to stop him--"and some new operation was discovered that would restore this kind of case; where should i stand with myself?" "is that likely?" "it's most unlikely. but it's possible. in any case, we doctors do not kill." "you don't give a thought to dee." a ripple of pain twisted the harsh features. "i'm trying not to. my business is with my patient." "does he know?" "yes. he wormed the truth out of me. he wants dee to get a separation." "a separation? i don't understand. what is his idea?" "to relieve her from being tied to a corpse, as he says. he's taken to thinking of others besides himself at this late date, has t. jameson james. a close look at death sometimes works these miracles." "trying to make his peace with heaven?" "no. he's honest in this, just as he has always been in his selfishness. he's thinking only of dee." "does he really care for her, osterhout?" "i think he'd die without her." "isn't there a good chance of his dying anyway?" "nothing to bank on." "what does dee say to the separation idea?" "won't listen. just turns away and stops her ears." more than ever convinced that wollaston must be kept away from dorrisdale at all costs, scott put in the hours between his talk with osterhout and his appointment with pat, striving to locate the englishman on the long-distance telephone, but without success. upon his arrival at the knoll, scott found only ralph fentriss in possession. "pat is just starting back from dee's," said the ostensible head of the fentriss household, after a hearty greeting. "she telephoned. pretty rough on dee, this, isn't it?" "she's standing up under it like the sport she is," said scott. they chatted of local matters, fentriss being patently restless. at the sound of pat's step on the threshold he said with relief: "you'll excuse me, cary. i've got a business engagement downtown." the visitor repressed a smile. so ralph fentriss's evening "business engagements" remained a constant quantity. a casual sort of father. had he been less casual, had pat been less unprotected--a throb of remorse and self-contempt sickened scott to the core of his heart. how could he have let himself be so swept away!... pat stood before him in the doorway, and at once his bitter self-accusation sank into nothingness before the delight of her victorious charm. how could he have helped being carried away, loving her as he did! she tossed her hat on the table, her gloves at him and herself into the arm chair. "now we can talk," said she. "_you_ begin." at their morning meeting it had seemed to him that the indeterminate and hovering tragedy of the james household had aged and sobered pat, given more of the womanly to her elfin fascination. now she seemed again all _gamine_, provocative, elusive, challenging. he stood looking down at her gravely. "owl-face!" she mocked, protruding the tip of a red tongue. "pat, will you marry me?" the smile died from her eyes and lips. "how could we? you're married." "i'll get free." "how can you?" "i'd rather not tell you." "you've got to tell me," she retorted imperiously. "yes," he admitted. "i've got to, if you insist. you've the right to know." she softened. "have i? tell me, then." "i have--evidence." he spoke with an effort. "against your wife?" "yes." "why haven't you used it before?" "i haven't wanted to. and--i considered that it would not be entirely honourable." "if it wasn't honourable before, how is it now?" demanded the keen pat. "i don't know that it is," he muttered. "but there's another question of honour now, a paramount question, between you and me." "tell me why it wouldn't be honourable to use your evidence," persisted pat, ignoring the other issue. "you're making it very hard. it's true that she--my wife--has been unfaithful. but that was after we had been long separated in everything but the formalities, and morally i was in no position to blame her." "you'd been untrue to her?" "yes." "with another woman. were you _very_ much in love with her, cary, the other woman?" she asked wistfully. for a moment he hesitated, too long a moment, for a flash of hateful intuition shot through pat's quick brain. "there was _more_ than one. there may have been a dozen. oh, i think you're _revolting_!" "i'm not going to lie to you, pat. i regarded myself as free of all responsibility to her----" "you're free of all responsibility to me," she choked. "don't think that i want----" "no. i am bound to you by the strongest tie i have ever known. i love you." "you've loved a hundred other women," charged pat, savagely revelling in her exaggeration. "i've loved no one as i love you." despite the banality of the words there was in his speech a quiet force that calmed and convinced her. "not so that i ever wished to be free and marry." "of course," she said loftily, "there's no reason why i should be jealous of your past." "it is your future that i have been jealous of always," he replied. "that is a thousand times harder to bear. and now i am asking you to give it to me." "you'd do a dishonourable thing, a thing you consider dishonourable, to be free?" she asked. "to marry you," he said doggedly. "yes. there's nothing i'd stop at." she gave her little, delighted crow. "i believe you wouldn't. but i'm not going to let you." "you can't prevent me." "i wouldn't marry you if you did." his brows took on their ironic lift. "that is heroics, pat; motion picture heroics. 'to save the other woman.'" pat pouted. "it's misplaced nobility, my dear. she isn't entitled to it. she doesn't care for me. you do." "not enough to marry you, though. not enough to be _sure_. it's all so puzzling, cary." her deep, soft voice shook. "i--i don't understand myself. but i'm just not sure. is that terrible of me, dear, not to want to marry you?" "don't you love me, pat?" he asked, incredulous of the doubt itself. "i suppose i do, now. if it would only last, like this." "but it can't go on like this," he cried hoarsely. "why can't it?" she murmured protestingly. the eternal feminine within her, eternally static, eternally conservative, eternally fatalistic where its own interests are concerned, was asserting itself. better the thing as it is, however precarious, than a step in the dark. change, to a woman's apprehension, is a challenge to the unknown. "surely you must know. surely you must realize the constant risk, the constant danger----" "of being found out? i'm not afraid for myself. you know, cary, dear, i never can quite believe in danger until it comes. i suppose i ought to. i suppose i ought to feel different in lots of ways. yet i don't feel different. not really. tell me why, cary." he bent and kissed the sweet, troubled eyes, the soft, questioning lips. "my darling!" he said brokenly. "my little pat! i wish to god, i'd never come back----" "no; don't wish that. i think i'm glad you came, anyway. it's been very dull without you, cary," she added with childish plaintiveness. "then why----" "don't ask me any more whys to-night. please! my head's so tired with thinking. throw open the windows. wide! i want to breathe the spring." he obeyed. the soft, odour-drenched, earthy wind flowed in, surrounded them, englamoured them, swept them into each other's arms. "i'm so tired, cary, dear," murmured pat. "so tired! just hold me. hold me close." chapter xxvii the night was warm, moist, astir with vernal growth. the trees whispered tender secrets to each other. flowers were being born in the grasses. clouds formed a light coverlet above an earth too fecund of dreams to sleep soundly. dee emerged from the side door of the james house and moved down the cedar path, soft as a wraith. the still mansion oppressed her. for two weeks she had hardly stirred beyond earshot of her husband's petulant, pathetic need of her. her young blood craved air, the expanses, the sense of space and quiet. definite verdict had been pronounced that afternoon upon t. jameson james by dr. osterhout, after a careful résumé of the case with the consulting surgeon. "he'll last indefinitely. as long, one might say, as he has the will to live. five years.... ten. twenty, if he can stand it. much depends on you, dee." "will he get better?" osterhout moved uneasily. "better? stronger, a little. not really better. a wheel-chair existence at best." "i can't conceive of it for jim." "he'll adjust himself to it after a fashion. people do. but he'll be difficult, dam' difficult. have you thought any more of his offer to release you?" "no. and i won't think of it." "i wouldn't have supposed you would, being you. you're a good sort, dee. and a good sport." he rubbed his forehead with a stubby forefinger. "as for your own status--you want me to be frank, don't you?" "yes, bobs." "it's a life of--well, practical widowhood for you. you understand." yes; she had understood, and with an influx of relief. her loyalty would keep her beside her husband, helpless, whereas she would have left him had he been his normal self-centred, self-sufficient self. more; she would now gladly have forgiven him the breach of their private marriage agreement, have accepted the full regimen and responsibility of wifehood could she have borne him the child he wished, the child which might have brought an enduring and saving interest into his ruined life. but from that hateful duty she was absolved; the more reason for standing by him through his ordeal. at worst, she was now free to be faithful in thought and spirit to the man to whom, had he been husband or lover to her, she could have given her all in glorious surrender. he stepped from the shadow of a cedar and stood before her. "dee!" "stanley!" her hands flew to her breast. "how long have you been here?" "hours. since dark." "why didn't you send word?" "would it have been safe to write?" "quite. now." "how, now?" "don't you _know_? haven't you seen cary scott?" "not since i left baltimore. i came the first moment that i could after making arrangements. our arrangements." they had stood apart. but now he reached forward, took her hands, crushed them to his cheek. at his touch she flamed and trembled. "when can you come with me, dee?" "with you? where?" "to england. the divorce can be arranged, and our marriage follow. you can trust me." "oh, yes; i can trust you," she answered dully. "then, when?" "i can't go with you, stanley." "can't?" he repeated incredulously. "when i can feel your pulse leap when i touch your hand, when----" "i love you with every breath i take," she cried low and passionately. she snatched her hands from his grip, wreathed them back of his head, drew his lips down upon hers. "i've never dreamed what it could be to love as i love you." "come with me," he said. the wife looked about her like a trapped creature. "i've got to make him understand," she muttered to herself in travail of spirit. "i've got to make him see and--and help me. stanley," she pleaded, "be kind to me and don't stop me till i've finished telling what i've got to tell." she related the accident and its sequel in few and simple words. for a time of pulse-beats wollaston was silent, then: "poor devil!" he murmured. "poor, poor devil!" "so, you see, dear love----" "i see nothing but that we belong to each other. you can't deny that kiss and what it means. you can't let me go back alone, dee.... shall i stay?" "oh, no! no! i couldn't bear it." "then you must come with me. now. to-night." "for god's sake, stanley, don't! don't kiss me." she was fighting for strength, for breath. "don't make me----" "dee! _dee!_ where are you?" the petulant, flattened voice of helplessness came like a stab of pain through the night. a light, tenuous and sharp, flashed out from the wrecked man's window. its ray touched the cedar overshadowing them. dee answered at once. "i'm coming, jim. just a moment. good-bye, stanley." he gathered her into a slow, overmastering pressure of body to body, face to face. "dee, i love you. i want you." "i know. god, how i know!" "as you love and want me. what does anything else matter!" "oh, love; don't make it so bitter hard for me! i can't leave him. he needs me so. i can't! i can't!" "dee! the pain has come back. where are you?" "coming, jim, dear!" she turned away from wollaston without another look; heard him thrashing through the bushy growth like a man blinded; felt her knees sag and give way. she toppled slowly forward and lay, face down upon the earth that gives life, that gives courage, that gives endurance to bear the deadliest hurt, her fingers tearing in agony at the young grasses. presently she heaved herself up and went into the house. her mouth was firm, her eyes tearless. a good sort. a good sport. chapter xxviii for two weeks pat and scott lived in a paradise of constant dangers and passionate adventure. fate played into their hands; james, as he recovered a little strength, developed a strong inclination for scott's society, and insisted that he remain at their house as guest. the two men played chess and bezique. to dee, in her time of ordeal and sacrifice, it was a relief without which she must have broken to have the invalid taken off her hands for a good part of every day. twice daily pat came over from the knoll, often staying to luncheon on her morning visit and returning directly after dinner to make a fourth hand at bridge whenever james was in fit condition to play. as a matter of course, scott took her home and ostensibly left her while he went for a long walk alone, before returning to the james place. in reality those hours were spent with pat in her conservatory. "when are you going to get tired of me?" she asked pertly, one gold-studded night of stars and soft winds as they sat together at the open window of the secluded room. she was perched on the arm of his chair, her hand overhanging the back to touch the short curls at his temple. he drew her palm downward and spoke with his lips lightly pressed upon it. "when that planet yonder tumbles down out of the sky into your lap." "but you ought to, you know. they always do." "still obsessed by the movies," he interpreted playfully. "this is the real world we're living in." "sometimes i wonder if it is. it doesn't seem too real." "you're a phantasm yourself," said he jealously. "i never quite grasp and hold you." "yet i belong to you, don't i? or is that just a--a silly form of words that hasn't any real meaning?" "it's a phrase. you belong to yourself. you always will. there's that quality of the eternally unattainable, the eternally virginal, about you." "is there? i love to have you say that! do you _truly_ think it, cary?" "in the depths of my heart--where you live." "but it wouldn't be so if we were married." "it would always be so, my darling." ever keenly interested in her own character and its reflex upon others, she took this under thoughtful consideration. "i've never felt that i could really belong to anybody. not even to you. if i could think it, then perhaps i'd want to marry you. does that mean that i don't love you, cary? or what?" "not as i love you," he replied with gloomy patience. "it means that i've got to wait." "here?" she flashed at him with her bewildering smile. "but you've been threatening to go away again." "i ought to," he groaned. "i just haven't the will power. it would be like giving up hope to leave you now." "poor darling!" but there was a touch of mockery in her pity. "if it weren't so terribly dangerous for you." her proud little head went up. "i told you long ago that i always did what i wanted. if i take a chance, i'm willing to pay for it. i'm not afraid." "because you've never suffered. you've never had to take punishment." "have you?" "i'm taking it now, in the thought of our separation. pat, for god's sake let me get free, if it is only to be ready, in case----" "no; no; no!" she denied vehemently. "i won't be--captured, compelled. you can go if you want to, as soon as you want to." "pat!" "yes; i know." her lips brushed his cheek in sweet contrition. "that was mean of me. but i just--don't--want--to--marry you." she spaced the words with rhythmic deliberation. "i don't want to marry anybody.... and have a lot of kids.... and look like con does now. she _waddles_.... cary, were you her lover?" she demanded abruptly. "no!" "i couldn't _bear_ it if you had been. but you'd say that anyway, wouldn't you? even to me?" "it's quite true. i never was." "if anyone asked you that about me you'd swear by all your gods you weren't. wouldn't you?" "yes." "you'd lie about it? i _hate_ to think of your lying. i wonder whether i would if it was put up to me or whether i'd admit that we are lovers." she brooded darkly for a moment over the word. "i didn't mean to be, you know," she added naïvely. "whatever fault there was is mine," he claimed hoarsely. "if there is any just god----" she slipped her fingers over his lips, cutting him short. "don't, cary. don't say 'if.' of course there is." "then he will hold me responsible; not you." she rose, giving her shoulders the quaint, sliding wriggle with which she was wont to slough off, symbolically, problems too troublesome for solution. "oh, if those things are going to happen, they happen," she muttered. "that's the fate part of it. but i do suppose we can't go on forever. we'll crash, some way." "does anyone suspect? dee?" "i don't think so. she's got troubles enough of her own these days. if it's anyone, it's con. she's been asking some snoopy kind of questions." "what questions?" "oh, i don't know. i told her to go to the devil; that i was over twelve, and she told me i'd better remember particularly that i was." "i don't like that," said he. "oh, well; i don't like it much, myself. but what can she do?" "talk." "not outside the family. con isn't that kind. she might tell fred." "that would be a pleasant complication," he observed grimly. "there will be more and more complications all the time," she fretted. "if you only weren't married!" "but i thought----" he began eagerly. "then there wouldn't be any kick. we could be supposed to be engaged. i suppose we _would_ be engaged!" she added brightly, as if a new thought had struck her. "being engaged implies being married eventually," he pointed out. "not these days," she retorted. "it doesn't hold you up for anything and we could snap out of it when we got good and ready. only--this isn't the kind of thing you can snap out of, is it?" a cloud darkened the vivacity of her face. "we're terrible boobs, cary.... let's stop it." "that's wholly in your hands, dear love." "yes," she said discontentedly; "you've always put everything up to me; let me go my own way--that's why i've gone so far. i wonder if you knew that was the way to get me. you're so dam' clever.... like what's-his-name--mephistoph--no, macchiavelli, wasn't it?" she dropped to the floor in front of him, clasped her hands over his knee, turned upward a shadowy and bewitching face, speaking in a lowered voice. "listen, dear. next week i'm going back to philadelphia, to finish out my visit with cissie. but--i won't go to cissie's, not till the next day. we'll have that time together; that'll be our good-bye. and then you must go away." "if you wish it so," he assented steadily. "i _don't_ wish it so. but it's got to come some time. you say so yourself." "yes; it's got to come some time. unless----" "i know the unless. i don't say i'll never send for you to come back. i might." "i'll never come back except with my freedom. and if you send for me it must be for good and all." "i wish i could, cary. i wish i were sure," she said wistfully. she jumped to her feet. "tell me good-night," she commanded, holding out her arms. "and you're to come early to-morrow and take me for a long walk." overnight, luck, which had so befriended the lovers, turned against them. they returned from their morning's tramp, weary but elate with the vigour of strong sunshine and woodland air. pat, her glorious eyes welling light, paused by the open library window. "is there anything in the world that we haven't talked to a finish to-day, cary?" she demanded, laughing. "nothing, dearest." "yet to-morrow we'll have just as much to talk about as if we'd never spoken a word to each other. it's rather wonderful, isn't it? what makes us that way?" "companionship. the rarest thing in life or love." she swung herself in by the window. "come on, companion," she invited. as he followed, she detached a few sprays from the huge cluster of wild purple violets at her belt, and set them in his coat. "decoration of companionship," she said. "and"--she stretched up and kissed his lips--"reward for a happy morning." there was a stifled exclamation. constance rose from the depths of the big arm chair facing away from them and confronted the pair. pat burst into harsh laughter. "trapped!" she exclaimed. constance's face with its strained, expectant, apprehensive expression of imminent motherhood, was white. "pat, i think you'd better leave me with mr. scott," she said. "i don't," snapped pat. "if you've got anything to say, say it." her eyes burned sombrely, angrily. she was furious with her sister for having surprised her. a puzzled, helpless look came over constance's face. "i wouldn't have believed----" she began lamentably. "how long has this been going on?" "none of your business," returned pat coolly. "it will be father's business. i shall phone him now." "wait, connie," put in scott with quiet authoritativeness. "wouldn't it be as well to consider consequences before making more trouble than can perhaps be undone?" "you're afraid, are you? well, you can run." "i shall stay here, if you phone, until mr. fentriss comes." constance swayed, irresolute, uncertain on her feet. "how far has this gone?" she muttered. scott rallied his defences. "you're not to think that this is just a casual, cheap flirtation," he said. "if i could make you understand how deeply and honestly i love pat----" "honestly!" echoed constance with scorn. "i won't split words with you. and for myself i've no excuses to make. i ought to have held myself better in hand. but as for this sort of thing--my kissing pat--it's the first time and it will be----" "oh, piffle!" pat's reckless voice broke in. "tell her the truth, cary." constance looked from one to the other. her lips quivered, curled down at the corners like a grieved baby's. she began to sob in short, quick, strangled catches of the breath. suddenly a dreadful look convulsed her face. she pressed her hands down upon her abdomen. "oh!" she cried. "ah-h-h-h. the pain! pat! i'm----" scott jumped to catch her, barely in time to break the fall. he eased her into the chair. pat was beside him instantly. "phone for bobs. quick! tell him to get dr. courcey. no. you go for courcey, it'll save time. second house around the corner. tell him to bring everything. all his instruments and a nurse. don't come back. i'll write you." as he hurried to the door he heard a shriek, then pat's strong, soothing voice: "all right, con, old girl. the doctor'll be here in five minutes." such was their parting, one of life's sardonic emendations to the plots and plans of lovers. chapter xxix "some kind of internal explosion has taken place in our little family, dear one (wrote robert osterhout to his dead love); and is still taking place, which is rather a deliberate method for an explosion. they are keeping me out of it; even pat will not confide in me. therefore i infer that it is not so much her trouble as the others'. con's baby is now six months old; she had a bad time of it but the son is a lusty creature. about the time of his birth there was a quarrel between con and pat not wholly made up yet. but while con was so ill, pat stood by, a tower of strength. from the way in which she gave up everything to look after con and her household, i was almost ready to suspect a touch of remorse. but what about? there was the contemporaneous phenomenon of cary scott going away so abruptly, quite without explanation. i ask myself whether it is possible that the old fire flamed up between con and him and pat was in some way involved. a tangled skein! "dee troubles me, too. she has grown so subdued and inert. her devotion to james would explain it, to a casual observer. it isn't enough for me. there is something else. she withdraws from me, too; but she has always given me less of her confidence than the others. it is a sort of shyness, and at times it hurts. i so long to help her. but you can't help another person who lives in a fourth dimension by herself. "pat is back in the rush and whirl of things, going faster than ever, but she does not seem to be getting as much fun out of it as of old. she is as little comprehensible as ever." to pat herself, her mental processes were difficult of comprehension. it was now six months since she and cary scott had so strangely and inconsequentially parted and he had gone back to europe. on the whole, she did very well without him; but that there was a gap she could not deny to herself. being uncompromisingly what she was, she filled it with other masculine interests. rather to her surprise she did not find herself specially tempted to venture upon forbidden ground with any other man. the barriers once down, she had supposed that self-control would be more difficult. but curiosity is an important component part of sex-attraction to the untried, and her curiosity was appeased. perhaps, too, scott had been right in imputing to her an instinctive quality of virginity, constantly at war against but not incompatible with her passionate temperament. certainly the substitute interests seemed dull and insufficient as compared with her association with scott. at times she missed intolerably that unique understanding and companionship which he had given her, and these times became more instead of less frequent as the weeks lengthened out, which was both unexpected and perturbing. she was seriously annoyed with him, too, because he had respected religiously her injunction against writing, and when, three months after his departure, she herself had written lifting the embargo, he had returned, after a long silence, a single sentence: "when you send for me i will come; but you must be ready to accept all and give all." choosing to interpret this as an attempt to bully her she was properly wrathful. by way of logical reprisal (though how it was to affect him she would have found it difficult to say) she "stepped on the gas," as she would have put it, and speeded up an already sufficient pace. local eruptions followed. "all the old cats are squalling their heads off at me," she complained to osterhout. "what would you expect?" said the philosophical doctor. "of course _you'd_ take that side," retorted the aggrieved pat. "why should they?" "for one item, the broken vandegrift-mercer engagement." "i didn't do it!" disclaimed pat. but she dimpled a little. "you're popularly credited with having had a hand in it, not to say a face." "don't be coarse, bobs. what right had bess vandegrift to be sticking _her_ blotchy face between the curtains----" "what right had you to be kissing bess's best young feller?" "liar yourself, bobs! i didn't kiss him. he kissed me." "it's a fine distinction. maybe a shade too fine for bess." "i haven't kissed a man," declared pat virtuously, "that is to say really kissed, since--well, never mind that," with hasty but belated discretion. "i didn't want harry to kiss me. troo-woo-wooly, bobs. though i did suspect that he might get interesting and try.... she's a sob, anyway." "then, there's stanley johnston----" "all off. tackles too hard!" said pat. "and mark denby. you keep him rushing back and forth between here and baltimore like a demented drummer." "oh, mark's like the pig that forgot he was educated. he doesn't count." "who does count at the present moment?" "nobody. that's the big trouble," said pat fretfully. "they none of 'em give _me_ any thrill. i'm bored, bobs." "pose of youth," opined bobs. herein he was wrong. pat really was bored, though she would not admit to herself the reason, deep and effective in the background of her willful soul. life was flat, stale, tasteless. men were either unenterprising guinea-pigs or bellowing rhinoceroses. women were cats. she loathed the tame and monotonous world. it was boredom, combined with a provocative accidental discovery, that led her to the reckless adventure of the washington heights flat and edna carroll. in an earlier age the fentriss family would have referred to edna carroll with hushed voices, if at all, as "that woman." in this enlightened and tolerant time she was humorously characterised by the three girls as "ralph's flossie." little was known of her. she lived somewhere outside the social pale and fentriss's liaison with her had endured for many years. constance was sure that she was of the flamboyant, roystering, chorus-girl type. dee inclined to the soft and babyish siren. pat speculated rangingly, and had more than once endeavoured to pump osterhout, with notable lack of success. from some unlocatable purlieu of gossip had issued the rumour that ralph fentriss was going to marry her, perhaps had already done so secretly. constance was outraged. dee was cynically amused, but skeptical. pat was hotly excited. entering the city by one of the upper ferries one day in search of a dressmaker's assistant, recreant in the matter of a dinner gown, the youngest daughter was startled to see her father's car drawn up opposite a pleasant looking apartment house on a quiet side street. at three-thirty in the afternoon! the truth leapt to her mind. profusely blooming flowers made beautiful the third floor window ledge; there, pat decided, was the nest of the bird. fearing that her father might emerge and find her, she hastened away. on the following morning, full of delightful tremors and keen anticipations--for this would be something, indeed, to tell the girls--she returned and pressed the third button in the entry. the light click of the release almost sent her scuttling out, but she gathered her resolution, composed a demure face for herself, and mounted the stairs. in the top hallway stood a slim, tailor-made woman with glasses pushed up on her forehead. pat at once made up her mind that she was attractive in an alert, bird-like way. "whom are you looking for?"' asked the woman pleasantly. pat liked her voice. "does mrs. fentriss live here?" "_who?_" said the woman in a tone which made pat regret that she had chosen that particular form of opening. pat faltered out the enquiry again, not knowing what else to do. the other's brown and dancing eyes grew formidably cold. "why do you ask for mrs. fentriss?" "i thought this was where she lived." "there is no mrs. fentriss here." "perhaps i've got the wrong apartment." "no. i think you have the right one. who are you?" entire frankness appeared to the intruder the method of sense and safety. "i'm pat. patricia fentriss." "i thought so. by what right do you come here?" two tiny spots of reddish flame shone in the wine-dark eyes. pat decided that she was _very_ attractive. "please don't be angry with me." "you're hardly here as an emissary of the family, i suppose." "no. i--i just came." "in that case hadn't you better just go again?" "if you tell me to," said pat, downcast and humble. the other hesitated. "i can't conceive what you mean by this visit," she said with severity, into which, however, had crept a mitigating quality. "was it just vulgar curiosity?" pat nodded so vigorously that her hair flicked forward about her face like wind-whipped silk ribbons. "you're frank, at any rate. i like that." abruptly she stepped back. "as you're here, come in." pat obeyed. "you're awfully good to let me." "am i? that remains to be seen." she led the way to an airy, daintily furnished front room, a conspicuous feature of which was a big arm chair with a drawing board across the arms. "what's that?" asked pat with lively curiosity. "my work." "oh! are you an artist?" "of a sort. i make fashion drawings." "how diverting!" pat was recovering herself. "can't you go on working while we talk?" "are we going to talk?" the corners of the firm mouth crinkled up, a dimple affirmed its existence, the brown eyes twinkled, and pat incontinently and most improperly fell in love with her hostess. "i think you're _too_ delightful!" "i can be quite otherwise, on occasion--to impertinent people." "don't scare me again," begged pat. "i won't be impertinent. though i want to be, terribly." "as that is what you came for, perhaps you'd better be. why did you ask for mrs. fentriss?" "isn't that what--what you're called?" "certainly not." an inspiration struck pat. "we heard that you'd married dad." the hostess replaced her glasses, seated herself, and began to ink in a sketch. "did you?" "is it true?" "no. we are not married." no good, that line. a chilling thought followed. "he isn't likely to be coming here, is he?" "why? are you afraid of being caught?" "i can't think of anything more poisonous." "don't be alarmed. he couldn't get in if he did come." pat searched her mind for movie evidence. "hasn't he got a key?" "no. why not be honest and ask directly what's in your mind?" "i--i don't know how," confessed the visitor. "for a singularly forward young person you don't get on very fast. how old are you?" "nineteen. but i know everything about--about everything." "if you don't it isn't for lack of enterprise," was the grim reply. "and what you don't know, you suspect. in this case your suspicions are quite correct. but it doesn't follow that ralph--that your father comes and goes at will here, in _my_ place." there was the slightest emphasis on the possessive. "oh! i thought they--they always had--had a key, and--and----" "and paid the rent, and filled the place with luxury and orchids, cigarettes and champagne. you've been reading cheap novels. the rotten-minded little fiction writers don't know everything. they don't know anything about women." pat leaned forward. "are you going to marry dad?" the artist's face hardened. "you were sent here to find that out. well, then, i am." "i'm glad," said pat simply and sincerely. the older woman took off her glasses, rose, walked across to the lounge where pat was seated and set her delicate hands on the girl's shoulders, staring into her face with an inscrutable expression. "why do you say that?" "because it's true. i'm crazy about you--already." the other sat down limply. "what kind of a person _are_ you?" "an honest one." "then i'll be, too. i'm not going to marry ralph. i can't. i've got a husband. he's no good. i haven't lived with him for years. i had a devil of a life. i was going to kill myself when i met ralph." "were you so poor?" asked pat sympathetically. "poor? do you think it was a question of money with me that took me to ralph?" retorted the other with slow anger. "no. i don't know why i said that. but you're so young." "so is he," was the defiant reply. "he's eternally young. that's what i love in him. i loved him the first time i ever saw him and i've never stopped. but if you've come here looking for a common kept-woman----" "i haven't. oh, i haven't!" broke in pat, squirming. "anyway, you know all about me now. all except my name, edna carroll. what are you going to tell your family?" "not a word." "aren't you? you're a strange little witch." "do you like me a little?" asked pat, slant-eyed and demure. "yes; i do. you're very like ralph in some ways." "then may i come again?" "no." "why not?" "i should have thought you might understand without my drawing you a diagram." "conventional stuff!" scoffed the girl. "how do you get that way? i'm coming anyway--edna." edna carroll laughed uncertainly. "i'm insane to let you. but i'd love to have you. what would your father think?" "he's not going to think at all. we won't give him the chance. will you ask me to your parties?" "how do you know i give parties?" "you're the kind that always draws people around them. besides," added the shrewd pat, "there's a violin and a clarinet on the piano. i don't suppose you play them _all_. and i'm mad about music." "inheritance," murmured edna softly. she let her darkling glance rest on the piano bench where ralph fentriss had so often sat to make his music. "very well. i'll ask you sometime." she was as good as her word. it was there that pat met leo stenak. chapter xxx the episode between leo stenak and patricia fentriss was headlong as a torrent. she heard him before she saw him; heard, rather, his violin, expression and interpretation of his innermost self. the raucous sweetness of his tone, which he overemphasises and sentimentalises, and which is the cardinal defect of his striking and uneven style, floated out to her as she stood, astonished, in the exterior hallway of edna carroll's flat. when it died into silence, she supposed that the number was over and entered just as he was resuming. her first impression was of a plump, sallow, carelessly dressed youth with hair almost as shaggy as her own, and the most wildly luminous eyes she had ever looked into, who turned upon her an infuriated regard and at once pointedly dropped his bow. his savage regard followed her while she crossed the room to speak to her hostess. this was no way to treat high-spirited pat. quite deliberately she took off gloves and wrap, handed them to the nearest young man and remarked to the violinist: "it's very nice of you to wait. i'm quite fixed now, thank you." a vicious snort was the only response. the accompanist who had trailed along a bar or two before appreciating the interruption, took up his part, and the melody again filled the air. in spite of her exacerbated feelings, pat recognised the power and distinction of the performance. nevertheless, she refrained from joining in the applause which followed the final note. at once the musician crossed to her, which was exactly what she had intended. "you don't like music," he accused, glowering. "i love it," retorted pat. "then you don't like my music." "better than your manners." "i care nothing for manners. i am not a society puppet." "if you were, perhaps you would have waited to be presented." "i am leo stenak," said he impressively. if not unduly impressed, pat was at least interested. she remembered the name from having heard cary scott speak of a youthful violinist named stenak who had appeared at a red cross concert the year before and for whom he had predicted a real career, "if he can get over his cubbish egotism and self-satisfaction." "i've heard of you," she remarked. "the whole world will hear of me presently," he replied positively. "where did you hear?" "from a friend of mine, cary scott." stenak searched his memory. "i never heard of him. an amateur?" "yes." "amateurs don't count," was his superb pronouncement. "any friend of mine counts," said pat coldly, and turned her back upon him. he flounced away exactly like a disgruntled schoolgirl. "don't mind leo, pat," said her hostess, coming over to her with a smile of amusement. "he's a spoiled child; almost as much spoiled as you are." "i don't mind him," returned the girl equably, but inside she was tingling with the sense of combat and of the man's intense and salient personality. she was sure that he would come back to her. late in the evening he did, with a manifest effect of its being against his judgment and intention, which delighted her mischievous soul. most of the others had left. "they tell me you sing, miss fentriss," he began abruptly. "a little," replied pat, who had been devoting what she regarded as hard and grinding work to her music for a six-month. "rag-time, i suppose." contemptuously. "_and_ others!" "know the _chanson de florian_?" "of course." "well, it's light sort of trash, but it has a melody. i've written my own obbligato to it. if you like i'll play it with you." "i don't like, at all, thank you." "you owe me something for spoiling my andante when you came in. i played wretchedly after that. you did something to me; i was too conscious of you to get back into the music. won't you sing for me?" his manner was quite amenable now; his splendid eyes held and made appeal to her. "but i'm an amateur," she answered, still obdurate. "and amateurs don't count." "it isn't every amateur i'd ask. come on!" he caught up his violin. "ready, carlos?" he said to the accompanist. pat gave her little, reckless laugh. "oh, _very_ well!" she sang. it seemed to her that she was in exceptionally good voice, inspired and upheld by the golden stream of counter-melody which surged from the violin. at the close he looked at her intently and in silence. "well?" queried pat, thrilling with expectancy of merited praise. "you sing rottenly," he replied with entire seriousness. "thank you!" pat's sombre eyes smarted with tears of mortification. "but you have a voice. some of the notes--pure music. your method--horrible. you should practice." "i've been practicing. a terrible lot." "pffooh! fiddle-faddling. you amateurs don't know what work is!" "do you think my voice is worth working with?" "perhaps. it has beauty. you are beautiful, yourself. where do you live?" pat laughed. "what's the big idea, mr. stenak?" "i will take you home when you go. i wish to talk to you." "i'm not going home. i'm staying with friends downtown." "then i will take you there. may i?" "yes; if you'll play once more for me first." though it was quite a distance to her destination, stenak did not offer to get a taxi. he observed that as the night was pleasant, it would be nice to walk part way, to which pat, somewhat surprised, assented. immediately, and with no more self-consciousness than an animal, he became intimately autobiographical. he told her that he was a russian, a philosophic anarchist, with no belief in or use for society's instituted formulas: marriage, laws, government--nothing but the eternal right of the individual to express himself to the utmost in his chosen medium of life. all his assertiveness had left him; he talked honestly and interestingly. pat caught glimpses of a personality as simple and, in some ways, as innocent as a child's; credulous, eager, resolute, confident, trusting, and illumined with a lambent inner fire. "i was rude to you at first," he confessed. "i am sorry. but i could not help it. i am like that." "you shouldn't be," she chided. "tell me what i should be and i will be it," he declared. "you could make me anything. when you came into the room, even though i was angry, there was a flash of understanding between us. you felt it, too?" "i felt something," admitted she. "but i was angry, myself. how silly of you to give yourself the airs of genius!" "i have genius," he averred quietly. such profound conviction was in his tone that pat was ready to believe him. as they turned to the elevated stairs he asked: "will you come to my studio soon for music?" "who else will be there?" "nobody. just you and i." "no. i couldn't do that. ask mrs. carroll and i'll come." "why should you not come alone? are you afraid of me? that would be strange." "of course i'm not afraid of you. but----" "i will not make love to you. i will only make music to you." pat reflected that it might well prove to be much the same thing. when she left him it was with a half promise. before the week was out she had gone to his studio. within the fortnight she had been there half a dozen times. she was drawn back to him by the lure of his marvellous music--"i play for no one as i play for you," he said--and by the fascination of his strange and single-minded personality. not only did he play for her, but he made her sing, experimenting with her voice, pointing out her errors, instructing her, laughing to shame her impatiences and little mutinies, himself patient with the endurance and insight of the true artist. ever responsive to genuine quality of whatever kind, pat let herself become more and more involved in imagination and vagrant possibilities. in the matter of love-making he was faithful to his word. while she was his guest he never so much as offered to kiss her, rather to her resentful disappointment, to tell the truth. but when, one november afternoon, he was walking with her to where her car was waiting, he said without preface: "colleen, i love you." he had taken to calling her colleen after hearing her sing an irish ballad of that title. pat liked it. she gave her veiled and sombre glance. "do you _really_ love me?" "you know it. and you?" "i don't know." "i think you do." "i think it would be very stupid of me to fall in love with you." "why?" "we're not the same kind at all. some day i shall marry and settle down and be good and happy and correct, ever after. you don't believe in marriage." "i believe in love. and in faith to be kept between two who love. don't you?" "when you play to me i do. you could make me believe anything then." "then come back, colleen, and let me play to you." "no," said pat, in self-protective panic. she could not make herself look at him. "when are you coming again?" "i don't know," she answered, and popped into her car as if it were sanctuary. wayward thoughts of his flame-deep eyes, his persuasive speech, the subtle passion of his music made restless many nights for her thereafter. edna carroll, suspecting the progress of the affair, questioned her. "what are you up to with leo?" "just playing around." "with fire?" "he's got it all right, the fire. i wonder if it's the divine fire?" "how seriously are you thinking of him, pat?" edna's piquant face was anxious. "you wouldn't marry him?" "are you afraid for me?" "no. for him." "you're too flattering!" "i'm in earnest. you'd ruin him. you're too selfish and too capricious to be the mate of a genius. and he's going to be a great genius, pat, if he keeps himself straight and undivided. you'd divide him. he's quite mad over you; told me so himself." "how do you know i'm not mad over him?" "god forbid! it would never last with you. because he isn't your kind, you'd grow away from him and he'd be wretched and that would react on his music." "and you think more of his music than of me," pouted pat. the artist in edna carroll, humble and slight in degree though it were, spoke out the true creed of all artistry which is one. "not of him. of his genius. where you find genius you have to think of it and cherish it above everything." "above love?" said pat. she understood enough of this pure passion to be a little daunted. "above everything," reaffirmed the other. "you needn't be afraid. he doesn't want to marry me." "whether he does or not, it's a dangerous fascination for both of you." vacillating days followed for pat. there was a week in which she did not trust herself to see leo. he telephoned and wrote frantically. she did not answer his letters. but one day she met him fortuitously on the street, and went to the studio with him. there he broke all bounds, poured out the fire of his heart upon her: he loved her, wanted her, needed her; she was part of his genius, without her he could never reach his full artistic stature. she loved him, too; he felt it; he knew it; he defied her to deny it, and she found that, under the compulsion of his presence, she could not. he was going to boston on the following day, for a week. would she come and join him, if only for a day? she could make up some tale for her family; pretend to be staying with a friend. and he would take her to a great singing-master, the greatest, a friend of his whom he wanted to hear and try her voice. wouldn't she trust herself to him and come? pat denied him vehemently. but she was stirred and troubled to her own passionate depths by his stormy yet controlled passion. he had not so much as touched her hand. in the hallway, as they went out, she turned to him and yielded herself into his arms. "oh, _well_!" she murmured, her voice fluttering in her throat. "i don't care. i'll come. only--don't rush me. give me time." they parted with the one kiss of that embrace. instantly she had agreed, the spirit of adventure rose within her. she was recklessly jubilant. three days of alternating morbid self-examination and flushed excitement followed. she looked forward to the meeting not so much with conscious physical anticipation as with the sense of something vivid and bold and new coming, as relief, into the too monotonous pattern of life. the rendezvous was arranged by letter. she was to take a late afternoon train, and he was to be at the back bay to meet her. looking from the window as the train pulled in she saw him restlessly pacing the platform on the wrong side. he had on a new overcoat which did not fit him and was incongruously glossy as compared with his untidy hair and rumpled soft hat. as his coat slumped open, she was conscious of an unpressed suit underneath. probably greasy! at the moment he dropped one of the brand new gloves in his hand--she could not recall ever having seen him wear gloves--and bent awkwardly to recover it. his head protruded; his collar, truant from its retaining rear button, hunched mussily up, and she looked down with a dismal revulsion of the flesh, upon an expanse of sallow, shaven neck. unbidden, vividly intrusive, there rose to the eyes of her quickening imagination the image of cary scott, always impeccable of dress and carriage, hard-knit of frame, exhaling the atmosphere of smooth skin and hard muscle. in fancy she breathed the very aroma of him, clean, tingling, masculine, and felt again the imperative claim of his arms. from the groping figure below her, glamour fell like a decaying garment. she forgot the genius, the inner fire; beheld only the outer shell, uncouth, pulpy, nauseous to her senses. with cheeks afire and chin high, she walked up the aisle, turned into the ladies' room and found safe refuge there, until the train moved on. at the south station she took the next train back to new york. the image of cary scott bore her unsolicited company. she went straight to edna carroll with the story. edna was alarmed, relieved, puzzled. "but, after going so far, why--why--why?" she demanded. in response pat delivered one of those final and damning sentences upon man which women express only to women: "when i saw him that way i knew that his socks would be dirty." chapter xxxi "i'm off of men," confidently wrote pat in her diary. "there's nothing to it for me. from now on i'm going to be so nice and careful and mind-your-steppy that the place won't know me. all the old cats in dorrisdale will purr when i come around. i think i shall take up slumming. anyway, no more flutters for little pat. i've reformed." in proof of which she comported herself with great circumspection for a space of several months, to the surprise of all and the discomfiture of sundry amatory youths of her circle. the word went about that pat fentriss was slowing up. while as much fun as ever in a crowd, she was less approachable in a corner. pat, her peculiar radiance deepening and ripening, was content with the crowd. her quickening intelligence was impatient of the callowness and shallowness of her contemporaries among the youth of the suburb. to fill her time a new and purely unselfish interest had come into her life; not so showy as the slumming which she had considered, but of far more practical beneficence. at the time of t. jameson james's accident she had devoted herself with centred enthusiasm to the sufferer and his household. later as the tragedy became a commonplace to her mind, she drifted wide of it. it was natural to the shallow fervours and shifting interests of her youth that she should unconsciously drop out of mind that silent and shadowed personality in the big house across the town. when she did think of it, temporary self-reproach would send her there two or three times in a week. but there seemed to be "nothing that she could do"; and she would drop away again. it was an episode of one of these visits that changed her attitude. on her arrival dee had told her that jim was probably asleep; she could creep up softly and see; the attendant who pushed the wheeled-chair was out. tiptoeing to the open door pat peered in at the crack. t. jameson james lay very stiff and still on the window divan, apparently sleeping. pat was just about to turn away with a sense of relief when she noticed the hand nearest her. it was so tightly clenched that the flesh around the nails was white. his head turned quite gradually, bringing the contour of the face into view. she saw that the eyes were closed, but in the corners two drops of water gathered and grew, slowly, slowly, as if wrung from the very core of a soul's repressed agony. the drops broke, darted, trickled down like rain along a windowpane. a slight shudder lifted his breast. then he was immobile again. pat crept away until she reached the refuge of the lower floor. she ran into the garden, kept on running to the far extent of the grounds, flung herself down and so lay. she did not collapse; she did not cry. but presently--unpoetic and anti-climactic though it be to record plain facts--the stress of sudden emotion on top of a hearty luncheon had its logical effect. pat was violently sick. as soon as she recovered breath and poise, she returned to the house with a plan in mind, stamped noisily upstairs and entered the sick room. "hello, jimmie-jams!" "hello, pat." his face lighted up a little; she was miserably conscious that he had always welcomed her with a smile. "how are you feeling?" "all right." this was his invariable formula. "don't lie to me!" she closed the door, lowered the window, and turned upon him. "jimmie!" "well?" "swear!" "all right. i swear. what's the secret?" "not that kind of swear. cuss. rip it out. blast the ceiling off the roof. let yourself go." he peered into her face. it was solemn, intent. "i don't know what----" he began. then he broke off and let himself go. such virulent, vitriolic, blazing, throbbing profanity pat had never dreamt of. it comprehended the known universe and covered the history of the cosmos, past, present, and future. when he had finished and lay back exhausted, she enquired: "feel better, don't you?" "yes. how did you know?" "i saw you a few minutes ago when your eyes were holding in. but you couldn't help--there was----" she touched her own eyelids. "you're a ---- liar, pat!" exploded the correct and punctilious t. jameson james. "that's right. go to it if you haven't got it all out," approved pat. "no; i'm through. lord, that did me good!" "cussing to yourself is no good. you've got to have somebody to listen. ever let anyone hear you really loosen up before?" "no. i've always been too--too"--he grinned--"hellish dignified." "well, you send for me when you need an audience." from that time a bond of special sympathy and fellowship was established between the life so disastrously wrecked and the life so triumphantly burgeoning. every morning after breakfast pat called him on the phone and every noon she came over for an hour's chat, until dee, grateful beyond her self-contained power to express, threatened to sue her sister for alienation of her husband's affections. nothing, of however much appeal to pat, was permitted to interfere with this regimen. through this it was that she had her quarrel with monty standish. after three years of hard-working athletic obscurity, standish had suddenly blossomed out into flaming football prominence. his picture appeared in the sporting pages of the metropolitan dailies; his condition was the subject of commentary in the papers, as serious as that accorded to an ailing king. he was of a gallant and alluring type, a bonny lad, handsome, spirited, good-humoured, well-mannered, sluggish of mind as he was alert of body, but with a magnetism almost as imperative as pat's own. he had quite withheld his homage from her, ostentatiously refusing to compete in the circle of her adorers, so she was the more surprised and gratified when he asked her to join his sister's party for the big game. it cost her a real pang to decline, but when he hotly resented her refusal and demanded an explanation--he was rather spoiled by all the local adulation and newspaper notoriety which were the guerdon of his prowess--pat declined to be catechised. there was a scene, angry on his part, scornful on hers, and he departed, darkly indicating that if princeton lost the game on his side of the line the true responsibility for the catastrophe would rest upon her contemptuous shoulders. how t. jameson james got wind of the controversy she never knew, but on the day of the game he called her to account. "why didn't you go down to princeton?" "didn't want to," she said airily. "monty standish asked you, didn't he?" "he said something about it." "they say he's the greatest end we've had for ten years." james was a princeton alumnus. "he's a good-looking youngster, pat." the girl flushed and her eyes shone. "he's a winner to look at," she agreed. "they tell me you've added him to your collection." "that's all guff," replied the inelegant pat. "is it? the point is that you wouldn't go because you felt you had to come here. isn't that so?" "i didn't want to go, anyway," lied pat gallantly. "i'm worn with football twice a week." "well, you've got to stop spoiling me by coming here every day. it's bad for me; the doctor says so. i won't have it." "are you going to close the house to me?" retorted pat saucily. "you'll have to hire a guard. go on, swear, jimmie." "oh, you go to the devil!" said the invalid, laughing. "if princeton loses to-day----" but princeton won and pat was saved from the undying remorse which should (but probably would not) have consumed her spirit had standish "fallen down" and involved his team in defeat. he came back the following week-end, a hero of the first calibre, and undertook to ignore pat at the saturday dance at which he was unofficial guest of honour. it would have been a more successful attempt if his eyes had not constantly strayed from whatever partner he was with, to follow pat's pliant and swaying form in the arms of some happier man. on the morrow his stern resolution, already weakened, was totally melted by a talk which he had with t. jameson james, who had sent for him ostensibly to ask about the game. for a front-page newspaper hero he was amazingly humble when he called up pat to ask if he might come and see her. pat, her heart swelling with pride and not without a flutter of other emotions, said that he might if he would apologise properly. mr. standish did apologise properly and handsomely, and, by the time the apology was concluded, pat was mildly astonished at finding herself in his arms being fervently kissed and returning the kisses with no less fervour. she was further surprised to find, when he bade her good-night, that she was engaged to him. but the really astounding feature of the whole matter came when she awoke the next morning to a sense of the prevailing luminosity of the world and the conviction that she was thrillingly in love. she had thought that she was through with all that. for a long time, anyway. chapter xxxii they had been engaged for four months. on the whole pat found the status highly satisfactory. everyone heartily approved the match. because of monty's college duties, which pressed sorely upon him as he was having constant difficulty in keeping up, they saw little of each other, a fortunate circumstance, as the glamour of her lover's physical beauty and personal charm persisted in her mind when they were separated, creating a romantic figure, to which no special mental attributes were essential. had they been thrown more constantly together she might have been disillusioned by the torpid and unimaginative quality of his mind. but in their brief association over week-ends they were surrounded by others, and when they were alone his ardent love-making eked out the scantness of his conversational resources. if, sometimes, cary scott's words, "companionship, the rarest thing in life or love," recurred to her, arousing unwelcome questions, she put them away. scott's image had dimmed again, in the hot radiance of this new attraction; she determinedly kept it far in the background. but there was one unrelenting memory which refused to be permanently immured in the past. when the time for the wedding was set, mid-june immediately after monty's graduation (if he succeeded in graduating), she realised that she must face that memory and dispose of it, for her own peace of mind. her uneasy thoughts turned to dr. bobs. perhaps he could lay the ghost. "bobs, what do you really think of monty?" she had gone to his office, nerved up to the interview. osterhout considered. "he means well," was his judicial pronunciamento. "what a rotten thing to say about a girl's best young man! what's the matter with him?" "stupid." "then you didn't really mean your congratulations." "certainly. it's an excellent engagement." "am i stupid, bobs?" she pouted. "no. but i think you'll be perfectly satisfied with a stupid husband." "i don't know what makes you so _revolting_ to-day!" complained pat. "i'd be bored to death with a boob around the house, and you know it. he's not stupid." "if you're satisfied, i am," said the amiable bobs. "i don't have to live with him. he's a prize beauty all right. _and_ rich!" "there you go again. i don't care. (defiantly) i love monty, and that's enough. anyway i didn't come here to talk about him exactly. it's something else. bobs, do many girls confess to their doctors?" osterhout looked up sharply and frowned. almost word for word mona had put that same query to him years before. but pat's face was more child-like, graver, than that of the lovely, laughing, reckless mona had been. "probably more than to their priests," he made reply. "that's what a doctor is for." "yes!" she cried eagerly. "please be just the fentriss family physician for a few minutes. make it easy for me, bobs dear." indefinably his manner changed with his next words, became quietly attentive, soothing, almost impersonal as he said: "take your time, pat. and when you're ready, tell me as much or as little as you wish." "it isn't too easy--even to you. can't you guess?" "ah," said he, after a pause of scrutiny. "so that's it." "don't look at me." she put her hands up as if to shield her face from flame. "just tell me what to do." "are you in trouble?" "of course," said she impatiently. "do you think i'd come bothering you---- oh, no! not _that_ way. though it might have happened. now you _do_ know." "go on, pat." "aren't you shocked?" her eyes darted up at him, at once supplicating and defiant, from out the tangle of her vagrant hair. "not a bit. we doctors don't judge. we help." "oh, bobs! you _are_ divine. i want to know--it's awfully hard to put it--to know whether--if _he'll_ know--when we're married." "he?" osterhout groped in a murk of bewilderment. "who?" "monty, of course. don't be _dumb_." "_monty?_ isn't monty the man?" "oh, no!" for the moment osterhout was startled clean out of his professional attitude. "who is?" he said sternly. instantly pat was mutinous. "i won't tell you." "i'm sorry i asked it. it's none of your doctor's affair who he is. you want me to tell you whether your husband, when you marry, will know that you have had experience before." "yes," answered pat under her breath. "i'll answer you as i always answer that question." "always! have you had it asked you before?" a slight, melancholy, tolerant smile lifted the corners of the strong mouth. "my dear, every doctor who has had among his patients specimens of the modern, high-strung girl has had that problem put up to him. the answer is simple; no, he won't know--unless you tell him." she drew a soft breath of relief, but almost at once her face darkened, as the import of his last words made its way to her quick sensitiveness. "do you want me to tell him?" "that is not a question for a physician to answer." pat stamped her foot. "stop being one, then. be bobs again. shall i tell him, bobs?" "has he ever told you anything of that nature?" "no. perhaps there isn't anything to tell. though i don't suppose he's exactly one of them dam' virgins. what do you know about him?" osterhout gave himself full time to debate the answer within himself before responding. "there was a raid last year on a notorious roadhouse near here. several of our best youth--if you reckon them by family--were caught. montgomery standish was one of them." "ugh!" shuddered pat. "a vile joint like that! why didn't you tell me before, bobs?" he shrugged his shoulders. "you'd have to go pretty wide of your own set to find a boy with a clean record. monty is no worse than the rest." "what _beasts_ men are!" "he might say, if he knew anything: 'what crooks girls are!'" "you don't mean that it's the same thing," said pat beneath her breath. "he goes to a rotten place, probably drunk----" "undoubtedly." "and--and---- oh, it makes me sick to think of it! it isn't the same. i may have been a silly little fool, but--oh, bobs! can't you understand?" "who was the man, bambina?" at the old term of affection her face softened. "can't you guess, bobs, dear?" she whispered. a blinding, burning illumination lighted up his memory of a hundred small, vitally significant facts, against which the sudden certainty stood forth, black and stark. "cary scott, by god!" pat's face was set. her eyes, sombre but fearless, answered him. "the damned scoundrel!" "he _isn't_." "isn't? a man of his age to come into a house as a friend and seduce an innocent child!" "he didn't seduce me any more than i seduced him." "don't talk infernal nonsense." "it's true; it's _true_, and you've got to believe it. it was as much my fault as his." "was it your fault that he left you, like a coward?" "he didn't. i sent him away. he wanted to get free and marry me, and he would have done it if i'd let him. he was terribly in love with me, bobs. monty doesn't love me that way. nobody ever will again." "well, why wouldn't you marry him?" queried the amazed physician. "oh, _i_ don't know." she gave her shoulders the childish petulant wriggle of old, again the _petite gamine_ of scott's patient love. "he's so old." "then why in the name----" "you're full of whys, bobs. it happened; that's all. nobody ever knows why nor how in these things, do they? i--i just lost my footing and drew him with me, if you want the truth of it." "i'm beginning to believe you. but i still think he's----" she flattened a hand gently across his lips. "no, you don't. he's the best man i've ever known. except, perhaps, you, bobs. if you were in monty's place and i came to you and told the whole thing you'd marry me anyway, wouldn't you?" "yes, of course." "but you don't think monty would?" "i didn't say so. he's very young and--and unformed." pat fell into a reverie. "it was really my mind that cary seduced. he drew my mind into his and--and sort of absorbed it, so that i couldn't get any satisfaction out of other associations. you wouldn't call him a damned scoundrel for that----" "i'm not so sure i wouldn't." "--but it's the thing he's most to blame for. it's worse than the other. it goes deeper." "you're getting profound, pat, as well as clever." in spite of his perturbation, the doctor smiled. "though you're talking casuistry." "i don't know what that is. i'm talking sense. i've almost forgotten that cary and i were lovers. but there's something way down deep in my mind that he'll never lose his hold on." "you're in love with him yet, then!" "i'm not!" she denied vehemently. "i'm in love with monty. violently." "i wish he were ten years older. or a thousand or so wiser. then i'd say, 'tell him the whole thing.' as it is, no. he's marrying your future, not your past. if you're going to play straight with him----" "absolutely!" she averred. "i won't look at another man after we're married." "what about that restlessness of the mind, though?" "all done with. what's the good? you have more fun if you're stupid.... you were always wanting me to marry somebody old enough to be my grandfather, bobs, but----" "ah, yes," he cut in grimly. "now you're going to answer me some questions. how came you to know that, about my wanting you to marry a man over thirty?" "if i tell you, you'll be paralysed." "go ahead. paralyse me." "i read it in your letters." "what letters?" he asked, stupefied. "the ones to mother. oh, bobs, i think they were too flawless. no one but a darling like you could have written them." "wait a moment." he put his hand to his head. his science-circumscribed world of materialism was toppling about him. "how did you know about them? that i was writing them? where to find them?" "mother told me." "mona? pat, i want the truth." "i'm giving it to you. before she died, when i saw her there in new york, she told me how she had made you promise to write and put the letters in the safe; and the real reason was, not that she thought she would ever come back to read them, but she thought you were the wisest and best man in the world, and she knew how fond you were of all of us, and she wanted me to know what you thought and be guided by what you said. i suppose she figured that you'd say more about me that way than you ever would to me. so you did." osterhout gave a great laugh, partly of relief, partly of tenderness. "that's so like mona! her passion for intrigue, just for the sake of the game itself; her eternal loving cleverness. there are mighty few people, pat, in whom affection is a thing of the mind as well as the heart. your mother was one of them." "so'm i," asserted pat promptly. "what's the matter now, bobs?" for his face had altered again, his brow drawing heavily down, his eyes become still and brooding. "it won't do, pat. you're not telling me the truth. not the whole truth. after your mother died, i changed the combination of the safe." the girl's laugh had a queer, strained quality. "i know you did. what of it?" "how could you get the letters to read?" "i couldn't, at first." "but you claim that you did. how?" "well--it was a dream. at least, it must have been a dream. or else--i don't know. mother came back one night and took me by the hand and led me into her room to the safe, and when i woke up the door was open and the numbers of the combination were in my brain as clearly as if someone had just spoken them in my ear." "were you frightened, pat?" "not a bit. isn't it strange? after that i could open it myself, any time." "pat, do you really think," he began hoarsely, and stopped. "do i think it was her spirit? i don't know. it was _something_." "it was something," he repeated. "something from the other side. a lifting of the curtain. for you; not for me. well," he sighed, "no more letters." "why not?" "why should there be? whatever i've got to say to you i can say direct, now that the secret is out. it was really to you that i was writing all the time, so it appears." "it wasn't. it was to her. how do you know she doesn't know; doesn't read them--and love them? you must keep them up, bobs." he shook his head. but his veiled glance roved to the mahogany desk in the corner. instantly pat interpreted it: "there's one there. an unfinished one. let me read it." "as you like. it's only just begun. about your engagement. it doesn't matter anyway now. a lost illusion." from a locked secret drawer he took the letter, only a single sheet. an inspiration came to pat. "i'm going to add a p. s. may i?" "yes." seating herself she ran through the few brief words, then wrote busily. having finished she leaned back in her chair to consider her companion. "bobs," she announced with deliberation: "i think i'll let you read what i've written. shall i?" he held out his hand. she put the missive into it. he read: "dearest: bobs thinks he is still in love with you. he means to be faithful, poor old boy. but he really loves dee. she knows it, way inside her; the way women know. and she is coming to care for him, too. that is why she is so shy and stand-offish with him; not a bit like con and me. but he hasn't the sense to see it. it's time he knew it; that both of them knew it. poor, brave old jimmie-jams is going to pass out one of these days, and be rid of all his pains. he knows it; he told me last week--we're the greatest pals ever--that he wouldn't last a year. there was someone else that dee was crazy about; but she's given that up. it's over. so when jimmie-jams passes along it's up to bobs, if he's a man and not an old fossil, to step forward. dee's been a widow long enough. that is what you would want for them both, isn't it, dear? i know it is." osterhout walked over to the window. his face was white, his bulky frame trembling. the betraying sheet of paper fluttered away from his fingers. suddenly warm arms were about his neck; soft lips were pressed to his cheek; a breath that wavered against his ear like a fragrant breeze of spring formed the words, gaily spoken: "oh, bobs! who cares a darn for a lost illusion when the reality is so much sweeter!" chapter xxxiii from the time when dr. osterhout assured her of her secret's safety, pat knew that she must tell her fiancé, before the wedding. some quirk of feminine psychology would have justified her in concealment, so long as there was risk. the chances of the game! but to go forward upon the path of marriage in perfect safety and with an unsuspecting mate--that was, in her mind, _mean_. curiosity, too, that restless, morbid craving to know what exciting thing would result, pressed her. the daring experimentalist was rampant within her. how would monty take it? what would he do? ... how should she tell him?... opportunity paved the way. a group of her set were at holiday knoll on a saturday evening, discussing the local sensation of the day. generously measured highballs had been distributed, and in the dim conservatory, lighted only by the glow of cigarettes, they discussed the event. a betrothed girl of another suburb had committed suicide after the breaking of her engagement and gossip ascribed the tragedy to the inopportune discovery of an old love affair. with the freedom of the modern flapper, margaret thorne, half lying in the arms of nick torrance on the settee, declared the position: "it was the teddy barnaby business. two years ago we all thought they were engaged." "weren't they?" asked someone. "more or less," asseverated the sprightly miss thorne. "chiefly more, from all accounts. then johnny dupuy came here to live, and she shifted her young affections to him and caught him." "do you think he found out about teddy?" "sure--like--a--bible." "how?" "why pick on me for a hard one like that?" "perhaps she told him," suggested one of the other girls. "she wouldn't be such a boob; no girl would," offered a languid girlish voice. "it'd be the square thing to do." this was a masculine opinion, and jejune, even for that crowd. "don't know--yah!" declared miss thorne, meaning to express her contempt for this view. "it was up to dupuy to look in the mare's mouth before he bought." the discussion played about the subject with daring sallies and prurient relish, the final conclusion of the majority being that the fiancé had "got wise" and the girl had killed herself because he broke the engagement, "as any fellow would" (monty standish's contribution, this last). "what if she did go to him and own up?" suggested selden thorpe. "it'd be just the same," opined standish. "he'd have to quit." "oh, i don't know. it doesn't follow." "wouldn't you?" "i don't know that i would. it depends." "you'd be a pretty poor sort of fish if you wouldn't." "maybe, if i thought as you do. but we don't all think the same." "some of us don't think at all," put in pat acidly. "we just talk." "meaning which, treechy?" inquired torrance. "oh, nothing!" "i know john dupuy," proceeded thorpe. "he isn't just exactly the one to draw lines too strictly." "i grant you that johnnie would never win the diamond-set chastity belt of the world's championship," said the daring miss thorne, and elicited a chorus of appreciative mirth. pat did not join in it. she was thinking fast and hard. after the rest had gone monty stayed on, as of right. something in pat's expression struck even his torpid perceptions, as he put his arm around her and drew her to him for the customary "petting party." "what's all the gloom about, sweetie?" she released herself not over-gently. "monty, would you have done what dupuy did?" "how do you mean?" "broken off your engagement--on _that_ account?" "why, yes. any fellow would." a convincing reason, for him. "selden thorpe wouldn't." "i'll bet he would. he's a bluff. he makes me sick." "well--then--you'd better break ours." "i don't get you, pat." "it's been the same with me as with elsie dowden. i've been meaning to tell you." "i don't believe it," he said violently. "it's a try-on. a trick." "it's true. you've got to believe it." "who's the man?" bayed monty like a huge dog. "i'll never tell you." he gathered his powerful frame together as if to spring upon her. if he did, if he beat her to the ground, choked her into helplessness, pat thought, she would hate him and love him for it. but his rage ebbed, impotent of its culmination, a little pitiful, a little ridiculous. "wh-wh-what did you do it for?" it was almost a whimper. "i don't know. i didn't mean to--at the beginning." "did you love him?" "yes. i thought i did." "you love him now," he charged, his fury mounting again. "i don't! i love you." "this is a hell of a thing to tell a man you say you love," he faltered plaintively. "you'd rather i hadn't told you. i'm not built that way! i had to tell." instantly he was suspicious. "had to? why did you _have_ to?" "not for any reason that you'd understand." the slight emphasis on the "you" was the first touch of bitterness she had allowed herself. "wouldn't he marry you?" "i wouldn't marry him." monty perceptibly brightened. pat's womanly intuitions, supersensitised by the strain of the contest, told her why. if, to his male standards, she was a maiden despoiled, she was at least not a woman scorned; her rating had gone up sensibly. "where is he now?" "i don't know. i haven't seen him for a long time. i'll never see him again." "pat," with an air of resolute magnanimity--"if you'll tell me who it was i'll marry you anyway." at that her pale cheeks flamed. "i'm not begging you to marry me, monty. i'm not that cheap in the market." "you _want_ our engagement broken?" "that's up to you. absolutely. if you think, now i've told you, that you're so much better and purer than i am because i've done what i did----" "what d'you mean, better and purer?" "i suppose you've never had any affair with any girl----" "are you trying to pretend to believe that's the same thing?" his voice was incredulous, contemptuous. "why isn't it the same thing?" young mr. standish suffered a paralysis of scandalised amazement. "because it isn't! for god's sake! you talk like one of those radical freaks that spout on soapboxes." "i'm not so sure they aren't right about this man-and-woman thing," declared pat recklessly. in so speaking she felt that she had broken with conventionalities far more than in anything, however bold, previously enunciated in their talk. monty's square jaw became ugly. "i'm giving you your chance. you won't tell me the man's name?" pat preserved the silence of obstinacy. it was more convincing than any negative. also more exasperating. "good-_night_!" bellowed her lover, and strode from the room. almost immediately he was back, endued with a sad and noble expression. "nobody shall ever know about this from me, pat. you're safe." for three nights pat washed her troubled soul with tears. her family knew that there had been a lovers' quarrel; that was all. pat waited for monty to break the engagement formally or send her word that he wished her to break it. through all her grief of bereavement which, she repeatedly told herself, was the most sorrowful depth that her life had yet touched, that any life could touch, she impatiently awaited the definite solution. relief from the strain of uncertainty; that was what she craved. on the fourth evening monty reappeared. all his nobleness was gone. he was haggard, nerve-racked, forlorn. he threw himself upon her compassion. he implored her. he would forgive everything; he would forget everything; he would make no conditions, if only she would take him back. life without her---- "all right, monty-boy," said pat, really affected by his suffering. "i haven't changed. i love you, monty. but if ever you let what i've told you make any difference, if ever you speak of it or let me know that you even think of it, i'm _through_. that minute and forever." humbly, abjectly, the upholder of man's superior privilege accepted the absurd condition. the stronger nature had completely dominated the weaker. back in his arms again, pat savoured the delicious warmth of a passion the more ardent for the threat of frustration; the triumph of a crisis valorously met and successfully passed. but an encroaching thought tainted the rapture of the moment. what was it that he himself had so confidently said to selden thorpe? was her splendid and beautiful young lover, holding the views which he had proclaimed and surrendering them so readily, indeed "a poor sort of fish"? chapter xxxiv again pat was happy in her engagement. she frequently and insistently assured herself that she was. certainly she had no just complaint of monty. he was all that a lover should be when they were together; he kept to his pact and never in any manner referred to pat's confession. but when he was away she sometimes wished that he wouldn't write so often, or, at least, expect her to answer so regularly. his letters added nothing to his charm. they innocently bristled with i's; but it was the monotony rather than the egotism of his style that annoyed her. her answers, at first ardent, vivid and flashing like herself, soon became mere chronicles of petty events, interspersed with protestations of love. they were temporarily genuine enough, these latter, since each time he was with her she was re-warmed in the glow of their mutual passion. but she could not stifle all misgivings. incompetent though she was to analyse comprehensively her changeful emotions, she nevertheless had disturbing gleams of self-knowledge which added nothing to her confidence in a future whereof monty standish was to be a large part. pat dimly recognised herself for that difficult and composite type of girlhood which, though imperatively sexed, will never fulfill itself through physical attraction and physical satisfactions alone. for such as she there must be the double response; if the mating be not both mentally and physically sufficient, ultimate disaster is inevitable. brooding upon these self-suspicions she would fall into moods of silence and withdrawal puzzling to the matter-of-fact lover who would sometimes grow quite petulant over her perfunctory responses to his good-humoured ineffectualities of companionship. once when he rallied her upon this she burst into angry tears and snapped out: "i'm so dam' worn with piffle and prattle," and darted upstairs. but at their next meeting she was so prettily contrite and yielding that his vanity was quite soothed. as the wedding day drew near, pat dismissed whatever doubts she may have had, in the excitement of fitting-out. it was on one of these shopping expeditions, when she had gone into town by train, her runabout having suffered an attack of nervous breakdown, that, crossing the station plaza she came face to face with an old but unforgotten acquaintance. she saw his keen pleasant face light up, could read in his half-dismayed expression the struggle to remember exactly who she was, and went to him, holding out her hand: "you've forgotten me, mr. warren graves." he took the hand. "indeed, i haven't! it's pat. little pat." she nodded. "better than i gave you credit for." "i'm awfully sorry, but i have forgotten the rest of it." "pat'll do," she laughed. "no; but let me think back." "want any help?" "it was a party, somewhere about here. a corking party. i'd had one drink that i remember and some more that i don't. a funny, delightful kiddie was floating around outside like cinderella. she wouldn't go in and dance with me, but--let me think----" "i wouldn't think too far," urged pat, her face tinged with pink. "ah, but i've got the name now!" he cried, triumphant and tactful at once. "fentriss. miss patricia fentriss, alias pat, alias the infant, alias the demon----" "what a relieving memory you've got!" "--who stood at the bend of the stairs and said good-night so sweetly that i never quite got over it. but, i say; you _have_ grown up." he looked at her piquant, provocative, welcoming face and continued, with a gleam of mischief in his eyes: "now that i'm recovering from the shock i seem to recall an older sister protruding from a door most inopportunely." "aren't you afraid you'll miss your train, mr. graves?" "i'm not going to the train." "you're carrying that satchel for exercise?" "i'm wishing it onto the parcels stand while i take a delightful young lady to luncheon." "surely you must be keeping her waiting." "i'm daring to hope she'll come with me while i pry myself from this baggage. will you, pat?" "oh; you're asking me to lunch with you?" "such is my dark and deadly purpose." "i ought not to. but i want to." he laughed delightedly. "you haven't changed a bit inside and most marvellously outside. then you'll come?" "you'd make a fortune as a mind-reader. there's a condition though." "name it; it's agreed to." "that you'll forget all about that foolishness of ours at the party. i was only fourteen." it was his turn to flush. "you make me ashamed of myself," he said with such charming sincerity that pat let fall a friendly and forgiving hand upon his arm for a second. "but let me tell you this. when i left your house that night i was more than a little in love with you. oh, calf-love, doubtless. but--it makes it a little better, doesn't it?" "yes," answered pat gravely. "it makes it a lot better--for both of us." "then we'll forget all of it that you'd wish forgotten," said he. in her italicised moments pat would have described the luncheon that followed as "_too_ enticing." but pat did not feel stressful in the company of warren graves; she felt quiet and attentive, and wonderfully receptive to the breath of the greater world which he brought to her. he had been in the diplomatic service since the war, in several european capitals, had read and thought and mingled with men who were making or marring not the politics alone, but the very geography of the malleable earth. after a little light talk, in which pat was conscious that he was trying her out, the _rapprochement_ of their minds was established and he settled down to talk with her as if she had been a woman of the international world in which he moved. her swift, apprehensive intelligence kept him up to his best form. as the coffee was finished he said reproachfully: "you've made me chatter my head off. and i'm supposed to have rather a gift for silence. how do you work your spells?" "by being sunk in admiring interest," she answered, smiling up at him as she put on her gloves. "you've given me the most delightful hour i've had for years." "but it needn't end here, need it?" he protested anxiously. "don't you want to go to a matinée, or something?" "there aren't any. it's friday." "so it is. but there are always the movies." pat knew that she ought not to go; there were a dozen important errands to be done. but: "oh, very well," she said. duties could wait. pleasure was something you had to grab before it got away from you. the philosophy of the flapper. at the "motion picture palace" they got box seats, the chairs suggestively close together. she wondered whether he would try to hold her hand; also whether she would let him if he did. probably she would; there was no harm in that, and it gave a pleasant sense of companionship. most of the boys with whom she went to the theatre or movies expected it. apparently warren graves didn't. he made no move in that direction. piqued a little, nevertheless pat liked him the better for it. monty might perhaps have objected if he knew. and, with a start, she discovered that only just then had she thought of monty standish. he had been, for the time, quite forgotten in the interest of a more enlivening and demanding association. what the "serial" of the play was, pat could hardly have told; "some hurrah about the west," she informed t. jameson james afterward. at the conclusion of it there came a "news feature," showing scenes about the building where the league of nations session was being held. various noted personages appeared, walked with the knee-slung, unnatural stalk of the screen across the space, and vanished. then it was as if a blinding flash had been projected from the square. an unforgettable figure stood out amidst the crowd, the face turned toward her, the eyes, with the faint ironic lift of the brows, looking down into her soul, arousing a tumult and a throbbing which left her hardly breath enough to gasp out: "cary scott!" "do you know scott?" asked her escort interestedly. "yes. he used to visit in dorrisdale. do you?" "quite well. everyone on the inside in europe knows him; he's one of the men who are doing big things under the surface at the conference." "tell me," urged pat as they left the place. he sketched scott's career as confidential adviser to several of the most important of the protagonists in that titans' struggle. "he's a sort of liaison officer, knowing france and this country as he does. he's had a rather rough time of it, lately, poor chap." "is he ill?" pat had a struggle to control her voice. "no. a domestic smash. his wife--that was--is a demonish sort of female. however, he's got well rid of her now. to be accurate, he let her get rid of him. over-decent of him, all things considered." "perhaps she had cause, too." pat hated herself as she said it. but she craved to know. "nothing of that kind," was the positive reply. "scott has been living like an anchorite. they say he was hard hit here in america. as to that, i don't know. certainly he has been devoting himself to his work with no room for any other devotion. which is more than can be said of his ex-wife." "i never met her," pat heard her voice saying, and quite admired it for its tone of casual interest. "she didn't come to dorrisdale." "speaking of dorrisdale, i'm at washington for a while. mayn't i run up to see you?" "no. i'm afraid not." "that's a little--disappointing." "you see, i'm going to be terribly busy until my wedding." "wedding? oh! all my felicitations. i didn't know." "yes. i'm to be married to monty standish next month." even as her lips spoke the words her soul denied them. in the dominant depths of her, she knew that she could never marry monty standish now. her thoughts, so lightly detached from her fiancé by the easy charm of warren graves, had been claimed, coerced, irrevocably absorbed by the swift-passing phantom presentment of her former lover. the bond created when she had given herself to him was as nothing compared to this imperative summons across the spaces. after a night of passionate struggle, succeeded by resolute thinking, she wired monty to come on. when he came, she broke the engagement. it was ruthless, cruel, unfair. pat had no excuses, no extenuations to offer. she simply stood firm. monty returned to college, failed of his graduation, and let it be known among his indignant friends and relatives that pat had ruined his career. hot and righteous though his wrath was, he never so much as hinted at pat's secret. stupid, unstable, self-satisfied, spoiled; the plaster idol of an athlete-worshipping age; but nevertheless a gentleman within whom one flame of honour burned clear and constant behind its dull encasement. pat's family variously raged, begged, and protested. pat let them. they prophesied social ostracism for her. she shrugged away the suggestion as improbable in the first place and not worth worrying about anyway. but she would have gone away had it not been for her self-assumed responsibility to her broken brother-in-law. and it was from him that her main support came. from the first he stood by her unquestioning. "you're awfully good to me, jimmie-jams," she said one day as she was wheeling him in the garden, having dismissed the attendant. "what did you really think when i told you i wasn't going to marry monty?" a smile of justified cleverness lighted up his pain-worn face. "i'd never thought that you would." "cute little jimmie! why not?" "too much brains. he'd never keep you interested and you found it out in time." "not too soon," observed the girl with a grimace. "the family are still raising merry hades about it." "naturally. you don't think you're entitled to any sunday-school award for good behaviour on the thing, do you?" "no. i don't," admitted pat. but she pouted. a silence fell between them. it lasted for a full turn around the garden. tired of pouting, pat broke it. "want to play bezique, jimmie?" "no." "want me to read to you?" "no, dear." "what the devil do you want? oh, i'm sorry, jimmie! i believe i've got nerves. never knew there were such things before." "pat, stop the chair." "what's the idea, jimmie?" "come around here where i can see you." "as per order." "i know the man." "what man?" "the other man." "i've been acquainted with several of 'em in my life." "so i've been given to understand. i'm talking about the man on whose account you broke your engagement." "you're seeing things, jimmie. monty himself is the nigger in that woodpile." "what about cary scott?" the look with which she faced him did not waver. "well, what about him?" "he's coming back." "coming back? here?" still her eyes were steady, but there was the faintest catch in her breathing. "well, no; he isn't. i just said that as an experiment. though, of course, he might come if you wanted him. you do want him, don't you, pat dear?" "sometimes. other times i don't. how did you know?" "when you've nothing to do but think," he explained, "you get tired of thinking about yourself by and by and begin to think about other people. i've been thinking a lot about you since we got to be pals." "you're a dear, jimmie-jams." "i'm an old crab. but i'm fond of you. and scott was good to me, too, when i was first laid up. when you think hard enough about people you're fond of you begin to see things about them, even things they may not see, themselves." "even things that maybe aren't there at all," she mocked. "this is there," he asseverated. "there's no use your pretending. when we talk i'm always catching echoes of scott's influence in what you say. you're a different pat from what you were before you knew him. i don't think you get on so well with yourself." "you _are_ clever, jimmie. i don't. and it makes me furious." "at him?" "yes. i don't know. at myself, too." "i had a letter from him last week. we've carried on a desultory correspondence since he left." pat's eyes livened. "what does he say about me?" "how do you know he says anything about you?" "don't tease. tell pattie." "you ought to know scott well enough to realise that he isn't the sort to display his feelings in a show window. but there are lines that one could read between. have you written to him, pat?" "no." "aren't you going to send for him?" her face darkened with troubled memories. "i couldn't. you don't understand. i couldn't, jimmie." "i could write." "you shan't. you mustn't; if you do i'll hate you. promise." "all right. i promise. but don't you really want to see him ever again?" "sometimes i think i'll die if i don't," she said simply. "other times--i don't know." "why not find out? won't you let me write?" "no; no. you've promised." "very well. i'll keep to it. take me inside, slave." he did not write. he cabled. chapter xxxv faint spice of budding clematis was fragrant in the air at holiday knoll. on her way to the street pat passed through the arbour with a little, warm shiver of recollection. how long ago that other october seemed, that night when, amidst the scents and seductions of the year's late warmth she had opened her arms and her lips to cary scott in that first, unforgettable red kiss of their passion; how far away; how deep buried under other, varied experiences! would he ever come back? it was many weeks since james had talked of him, suggesting the possibility, and the subject had not again been brought up. would she really want him back if she could have him? and what would she do with him if he came? or he with her? or fate with them both? pat had become a good deal of a fatalist. it was a convenient theory and dovetailed neatly with her religion, enabling her to compound with her conscience at the smallest expense of self-blame. fate, she felt, had saved her from marrying monty standish, which was a large count to its credit. chiefly because of monty she was now going down to the village. for he was due back after a long absence for repairs to his damaged heart, and the local old cats had prophesied that pat would leave town, for a time anyway, "if she possesses a grain of decent feeling." pat purposed to do nothing of the sort. neither monty standish nor any other living specimen of the male sex could run her off the public streets! for excuse she had some marketing to do, and she set forth with her most nonchalant air and independent shoulder swing. she'd show 'em whether she was ashamed or afraid to meet monty! after pervading the town for a while she would run over for her daily chatter with jimmie-jams. jimmie was growing very frail and weary and had a look of eager, anxious expectancy, these days. pat thought that she knew what he was waiting for. there would be a big void in her life when jimmie got his release. emerging from the fruit shop where she hoped to find an avocado pear for him, she saw a man standing on the curb. his back was turned, but there was that in the set of his shoulders, the slender grace of the figure, the poise of the head which startled her heart to one great throb of excited delight. here, indeed, was relief from dull days, food for that greed of excitement, of "thrill," which life had not yet begun to sate for her. "_mist_-er scott!" he whirled about. his face lighted up. taking the hand which she held out, he said, with the old, mocking half-lift of the brows: "still that, pat?" "what are you doing in dorrisdale?" "i've just been telephoning miss patricia fentriss." "she's out." "so i was informed. i begin to suspect it's true." both laughed. pat, quite charmed with herself for the light and easy manner in which she was carrying off this potentially difficult situation, committed the error of looking up into his eyes. there she read a hunger and a want that made her avert her gaze. she sought hurriedly for something to say. "i didn't even know that you were in this country." "i wasn't until last night." he had fallen into step beside her. "i was going to the jameses'," she remarked a little lamely. "i go there every morning." "yes; i know. james has written me. you make life bearable for him. it's rather wonderful of you, pat." "i like to go there," she said in disclaimer of his praise. "will you come with me?" "yes; if i may." for two squares that was his only remark. pat grew restless. "you're not too conversational," she complained. "i was thinking," he said quietly; "how very lovely you've grown." "have i, cary?" the soft echo of the old, throaty crow was in her voice. "i ought to be a ruin. i've had troubles enough." "troubles? you? haven't you been well?" "d'you think that's the only kind of trouble a girl can have? there are others! i came near having the worst of 'em four months ago." "why then?" "date of my wedding," said pat briefly, with intent to create a sensation. she failed. "yes; i heard you were to have been married," he remarked calmly. "and the rest of it?" "that you broke off your engagement? yes." "who told you?" "i found a letter when the ship docked. from james." pat's eyes snapped with suspicion. "did jimmie write you to come back here? from europe, i mean." "he cabled." "jimmie's a---- never mind what he is. i'll tell him to his face, when we get there." but when they got there t. jameson james, it seemed, was not feeling very brisk. well enough to have them come up to his room; oh, yes, that; and warmly glad to see scott again. after a few moments' talk, however, he displayed symptoms of weariness. he even hinted that he would be better off for the time without visitors. pat, with the perverseness of her excitement and anticipations, insisted on staying to read to her brother-in-law as usual. this he vetoed outright. "no. i don't want you. i'm sleepy. take scott over to the knoll for luncheon. he's probably famished. and dee had to go to town, so there's nothing to be had here. run along." her hand being thus forced, pat issued the invitation, and she and scott left the sick-room. but they had not reached the front door when she turned and darted upstairs again. throwing herself down by the cripple's couch she caught his head to her bosom and cherished it there. "oh, jimmie! you promise-breaker. you old liar! i adore you." she pressed a swift kiss on his cheek and was gone. mr. t. jameson james made a face at the devil and chuckled himself to sleep. rejoining scott outside pat commanded: "tell me everything you've been doing in the big, big world." he was unprotestingly obedient, cheerfully impersonal throughout the walk to the knoll. but never had she been more conscious of the quiet compulsion of his charm. her arms ached for him. they entered the house by the side door. instinctively pat turned toward the conservatory, but some inexplicable revulsion of feeling checked her. "no; not there," she said. "let's go to the library." no sooner had the door closed behind them, than she turned to his embrace not so much yielding to as claiming him back. after the long kiss she stood away from him, but with her hands still clinging upon his shoulders. "that makes it seem all real again," she breathed. "have you grown so far away from me as that, my darling?" "well, i was going to marry monty standish, you know," she reminded him. "yes. why didn't you?" "i couldn't. you were in the way." "pat! that's what i've feared and dreaded more than----" "wait. it isn't what you think. and it isn't all. before i was engaged to monty i ran away with a boy to boston. and you spoiled that." "i don't understand," he said dully. "i left him before--well, before anything. because"--she whirled away from him, flung herself upon the lounge, and blew him an airy kiss--"because i happened to think of you at the wrong time. or perhaps it was the right time. anyway, his collar gaped. like a sick fish. and yours always set so beautifully. so i beat it." she was all _petite gamine_ now. "you're always getting in my way, cary. aren't you 'shamed?" he smiled at her his little twisted, tolerant smile. "you don't change much, do you, little pat?" "oh, i'm fer-rightfully changed. much more serious. years older. lost my girlish illusions. all that sorta thing. you won't like me nearly as much, you're so serious yourself." her eyes blazed with enjoyment of the situation and the excitement of his proximity. "most of the time i haven't believed it, though. have you?" "believed what, pat?" "about us. all of it, i mean. that we were--lovers. it got to seem like a dream to me; something way, far off. in another life. or like something that had happened to some other girl. it didn't seem real to me, not even when i told monty." "ah, you told him?" "had to. what'd you think i'd do?" "knowing your courage and honour, that's what i'd think you'd do." the hard, excited glitter softened out of her eyes. "i knew you'd want me to, cary. of course i never told him who the man was." "and is that what----" "what broke the engagement? it did for a while. then he came back. but i couldn't stand it. nothing above the ears, cary. it wasn't even the first dreaming for me. you remember what you said that day you drove me over to cissie's about my marrying, and about keeping you in the background of my mind?" "yes." "but you don't stay there," she complained childishly. "you're always popping out and spoiling things." she gave him a challenging look. "i was sort of keeping you for my second dreaming." scott laughed. "pat, dearest, are you flirting with me after i've come four thousand miles----" "what did you come for?" "for you." her loosely clasped hands stirred and parted. "well--here i am." "that's not enough." "you don't want much, do you?" she murmured. "everything or nothing now. you know i'm free." she nodded. "i can see what's coming," she said with a pretence of demureness. "if you've hopped across those four thousand miles from a sense of duty to the weeping girl that you left behind----" "_pat!_" "don't bark at me. it frazzles my nerves. i haven't done any weeping over you, cary. too busy with the thrills of life. would you have come back, i wonder, if you could have known everything that's been going on. suppose i'd stayed in boston that time?" "well?" "wouldn't that make a difference?" "in my wanting to marry you? no." "suppose," she said more slowly, "i'd had an affair, a real affair with monty. like ours." a spasm of pain passed over his face. "i shouldn't blame you. how could i?" "wouldn't it make any difference in your loving me?" "not an iota." "wouldn't you even _care_?" she flashed in resentful wrath. "care? good god, pat, if you saw a man in torture----" "oh, don't, cary, dear," she cried, startled and remorseful. "it isn't true. it's just my sneaking, rotten curiosity to know how you'd feel about it." she pursed her lips, musing darkly. "i wonder," she began. "have you been true to me? not that i've got any right to ask or that it makes a bit of difference in my young life whether you have or not, but just----" she broke off, leaning forward, studying his face as he looked at her in silence. "_cary!_ why don't you say something? i _would_ care. i'd care like hell." "i came back," he said slowly, "because you are the one and only woman in the world for me and always have been since i saw you. is that enough answer?" "from any other man in the world it wouldn't be an answer at all. from you it's enough." "will you marry me, pat?" she jumped to her feet, walked over to the window, and looked out to where the clematis blooms trembled in the wind. "oh, i suppose so," she said fretfully. "if you want to take the chance." "what chance, dear love?" "the chance every man takes that marries a girl of the kind you men all seem to want to marry. how many of the married set here d'you suppose are true to their husbands?" "i don't like you cynical, pat. you've been letting something poison your mind." "not me. i see things as they are; that's all. ask con. ask dee. ask bobs. ask any of 'em. you know you could have had con if you'd really wanted her. and then i butted in." her chuckle was full of diablerie. it still persisted in her tone as she continued: "cary, what would you do to me if i went straying off the reservation after we were married?" "nothing." "oh, don't be so calm and superior and noble about it," she fretted. "you'd tempt an angel to try a flutter just to see whether she would get by with it." "what do you want me to say, pat?" "i want you to tell me honestly how you think you're going to hold me if i do marry you." "come over here." she walked across to him, defiant, daring, provocative. "well?" "you love me, don't you, pat?" "you make me when you're with me." "and when i'm not?" "that's just the trouble. you're there all the time, parked just around the corner and you won't let me love anybody else enough to--to do any good." "and if i asked you now," he said, low and insistent, "you'd come back to me and be to me what you were before. wouldn't you?" there was a quickening in her shadowed eyes, in her soft breathing. "you know i would," she whispered. "how could i help myself?" "then you couldn't very well marry anyone else, could you?" "i've tried. it was a fliv, as you know. what's the answer?" "isn't it plain enough? why not try me--on your own terms?" "where do you get that 'own term' stuff, cary?" she demanded suspiciously. "do you know about dee and jimmie; their arrangement?" "no." "it's a secret. but you belong to us," she added sweetly; "to the fentrisses. so i'll tell you. they were to stay married for a month and after that if either of them wanted to quit, they were just to live like unmarried people without any fuss. only jimmie wouldn't keep to it. that's what made the row." "would you like to try that plan?" he asked in an inscrutable tone. "would you do it?" she looked at him doubtfully. "would you really let me go after a month if i wanted to?" "after a day. do you think i'd try to hold you against your wish?" "then i don't think you can love me much," she objected with perverse jealousy. "it strikes me as a perfectly fair bargain to both. i certainly ought to be willing to take the chance," he said reasonably, "if you are." "if _i_ am! cary! you mean that you--might--want--to leave _me_?" a startled incredulity made the words jerky. "one can never be quite certain how these things are going to turn out, can one?" he observed with a fine air of judicial detachment. "shall i have my lawyer draw the agreement?" "cary; you're laughing at me," she accused. "far be it from me, in a matter of such serious import----" "you are! you're hateful! it isn't fair. you know that's the way to hold me and you know you don't mean to let me get loose for a single minute. i don't like your knowing so dam' much about women," she continued plaintively. "it makes it so uneven." "i'm trying to be fair," he pointed out. he drew a chair up to the writing desk. "suppose i just sketch out the scheme. 'this agreement,' he dictated to himself, speaking the words slowly, 'between patricia fentriss----'" "scott," she interposed. "--scott--thank you, dearest--and--cary--scott--for--the--space--of--one--month--after----" she bent across his shoulder, put a soft hand over his mouth, then slipped it aside to make place for the yearning of her own lips. when she finally leaned back from him it was to say judicially: "i offer an amendment. let's make it twenty years instead of a month. but, oh, cary, darling!" her eyes darkened, brooded, dreamed, grew sombre, subtle, prophetic as she gave voice to her warning. "as a husband you'll have to be a terribly on-the-job lover. there are so many men in the world!" finis internet archive (https://archive.org) note: project gutenberg also has an html version of this file which includes the original illustrations in color. see -h.htm or -h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h/ -h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/ / -h.zip) images of the original pages are available through internet archive. see https://archive.org/details/unforgivingoffen scotiala the unforgiving offender * * * * * * john reed scott's previous fiction successes the first hurdle and others the last try in her own right the impostor the woman in question the princess dehra beatrix of clare the colonel of the red huzzars * * * * * * [illustration: pendleton put his arm through his bridle-rein and came forward _page _] the unforgiving offender by john reed scott author of "the colonel of the red huzzars," "the last try," "the woman in question," "the first hurdle," etc. with illustrations in color by clarence f. underwood [illustration: logo] philadelphia and london j. b. lippincott company copyright, , by john reed scott published april, printed by j. b. lippincott company at the washington square press philadelphia, u. s. a. to the knockers with whom i used to lunch at the pittsburgh club this book is affectionately dedicated by the one who never knocked contents chapter page i.--montague pendleton and some others ii.--the return of the offender iii.--the vacillator iv.--a question of friends v.--the cut of one's clothes vi.--on the bridle-path vii.--an offer and an answer viii.--the summons ix.--hopelessness and threats x.--at criss-cross xi.--the overton meadow xii.--a matter of light xiii.--the unpopular guest xiv.--noblesse oblige xv.--in the conservatory xvi.--the unanimous opinion xvii.--dolittle's tale xviii.--the truth by persuasion xix.--the arrest xx.--the turn of things xxi.--obsessed xxii.--the silver candlestick illustrations page pendleton put his arm through his bridle-rein and came forward _frontispiece_ the offender they stood leaning on the stone balustrade the unforgiving offender i montague pendleton and some others the grill-room of the otranto country club was filled with the usual saturday afternoon throng--the card players, the tennis players, the golf players, and those who chose to do nothing. around a large circular table in the centre of the room were gathered a crowd of the younger members, who had sufficient youth in them to ignore rheumatism and neuralgia and the other penalties bred by damp flannels and wet shoes. they had come in from court or course, and not stopping for a bath and a rub and fresh garments had plunked themselves down in vacant chairs, and joined in throwing once around for the drinks. in an hour or so they would get the belated hot shower and the change of clothes, and be none the worse for the delay. happy youth! a little way off, around another table similar in size, were those who dressed first and drank afterward. they were not so noisy--their spirits did not bubble forth. other tables were scattered through the room for such as wished a quiet chat with a friend or two--or a game of cards; though there were not many who could play amid such confusion. the ninth and eighteenth holes were directly in view from the south windows and a foursome was on the former green. a caddy came scurrying across toward the club-house; a moment later one of the servants hurried out with a pitcher of water. he poured four glasses and offered them to the players. the last to be handed the tray was a tall, heavy, elderly man with a jowly face and coarse features. "if you've all got as much as you want," he said, "i'll take the rest," and ignoring the glass he grasped the pitcher, and burying his beefy nose in its depth, drained it of the last drop. "a-h!" he ended, wiping his expansive mouth with the back of his hand. "i have never got over my boyhood liking to drink out of the pitcher. it tastes different. don't you think so?" "why not have a pitcher served at your table instead of a glass, emerson?" one of the players asked. "i'd like to but mother won't let me!" emerson laughed. "she says it's not _au fait_, or _savoir faire_, or _on dit_, or something or other." "it's not '_deshabille_,' you mean?" some one suggested. "damn if i know what it is, but you understand!" emerson laughed again. "my wife is a climber and she lugs me up with her, but i'm a powerful drag at times, i fear--especially in manners. however, i tell her that i put up the money and she and marcia can supply the rest what's necessary." they went down to the locker rooms, nodding to three men in the grill-room window as they passed. "poor old emerson," said pendleton, looking after them. "he is all right at heart but such a blundering bounder. among the men he can get along, but the women are a bit trying to him, i fancy." "the emersons must have climbed over the bars while i was away--how did they arrange it?" asked sheldon burgoyne, who had been abroad for the last three years. "easy. they have a very good looking daughter who went to dobbs ferry--she got to know the nice girls there and made good with them. her mother has the social bee and is a schemer. emerson has the requisite collateral and--attention to this part, please--he owned a bit of ground which the country club simply had to have, and he consented to sell it--if, and when, we would elect him to membership. naturally, we elected." "i see," mused burgoyne, watching his cigarette smoke float lazily out the window. "what do you see?" devereux smiled. "the usual thing. father is impossible, but a good sort--mother is a pusher and, i dare say, fat--yes?--and daughter is not only a beauty but also something of a winner. is she captured yet?" "not officially!" pendleton answered; "but i understand that she is not without suitors," with a bit of a smile. "with papa having the stuff! i reckon not, malvolio," returned burgoyne. "give a woman money, and looks and some slight social position, and you can trust her for the rest--even if the boys are backward, which in this instance isn't likely." "the emersons are not the only 'new' ones the club has admitted recently," pendleton remarked. "not by several dozen, my friend!" exclaimed devereux. "in ten years society will have passed from the control of those who are to those who weren't." "progress!" said burgoyne. "the march of improvement for the bettering of the species. new blood--new blood!" "just so! aristocracy of dollars is replacing aristocracy of birth," pendleton commented. "it's the way of the world, since time began--money is the basis of our social structure, on it we stand, without it we fall." "doesn't culture count at all?" devereux asked. "culture isn't considered in the first instance," pendleton replied. "it's an asset but it isn't in the least essential. riches with culture are desirable, but riches alone are sufficient. culture is decreasing as riches increase." "just a trifle iconoclastic!" laughed burgoyne. "you always were an idol breaker, pendleton." "is this proof of it?" pendleton asked, indicating those in the grill-room. "hum!--i reckon not," burgoyne confessed, letting his eyes run over the crowd. "here are sixty or seventy of our _best_ people, and how many belonged two generations ago--or even one generation? you and devereux and i, and a half dozen others perhaps. the rest were nobodies. yet to-day they outnumber us ten to one.--they have bought their way into the old clubs--their children have bought their way into the exclusive dancing classes, their wives have bought their way through the fashionable charities into the fashionable cotillons. money--money--money! everything is money and money is everything. the golden key unlocks all doors." "the old order changeth, giving place"--began burgoyne. "sentimentalize, that's right!" pendleton exclaimed. "it's about all that's left to us to do--except to go along with the bunch, and keep our hands in our pockets to keep theirs out." "aren't the new ones even _honest_?" burgoyne asked. "they haven't shown it as yet." "do you think our ancestors were any different?" "possibly not--but they are dead and we are entirely respectable!" smiled pendleton. "moreover it required a century for them to pry open the doors--and culture was acquired while they were prying. now--the doors are jimmied open while you wait." "i thought you said they opened them with a golden key," burgoyne remarked. "they pry them open with the gold key, sir captious--is that plain to you?" "it's the survival of the fittest," suggested devereux. "on the basis of the dollar mark--yes." "which we have agreed is the universal basis now-a-days," said burgoyne. "tell me, who is the young woman who has just driven up in the cart?" pendleton glanced out in time to see a tall girl in a blue gown and a picture hat toss the reins of the dancing bay to a groom and spring lightly from her high perch. "_that_ is miss emerson," he answered. "does the world-wanderer approve of her style?" "pretty fit!" was the reply. "especially fit with such a father. is it the mother?" "no--it's _not_ the mother," said pendleton decidedly; "and we can't go back any further. i'll present you if you wish." "she _is very_ good looking," burgoyne reflected. "if you go upstairs you'll likely see plenty more with the same opinion," devereux remarked. "she is the most popular girl in the club, if attentions count and the number of the attentioners." he pushed back his chair. "i think i'll go up myself--come along?" "not now, thank you," burgoyne declined. "i shall sit here with pendleton and be put wise to the changes that have occurred in my absence." "you'll keep him busy--as changers we're in the chameleon class. so long!" and with a nod he went upstairs. "_he_ hasn't changed!" burgoyne laughed. "no--dev is the same innocent fusser he always was--coming down every year to the debutantes, as blithesome as a boy and as harmless. it's an avocation with him--when business hours are over. and it's astonishing how well he does both." "who is he fussing now--in particular?" "miss emerson--he has been fussing her for two years--and she plays him well." "seriously, you think?" "no one takes devereux's attentions seriously--not even himself." "two years is a long time with our friend. he used to last a year at the most, then flit away to another bud. i didn't see her close but she looks at least fifteen years younger than he." "about that, i fancy," said pendleton. "moreover, one can never judge what devereux's actions mean--except that they don't mean what they would naturally imply." "do you think he is actually interested in the emerson girl?" burgoyne inquired. "i don't know--i question if he himself knows--only it has been, for him, most unusual and lasting." "how's the girl?" "you mean, what is her attitude toward devereux?" "no--how is she herself?" "pretty good sort," said pendleton. "i don't know her well at all; i see her at the dances--at dinner--at cards--across the tennis net--on the golf course--the way one meets, you know--and she impresses me always as distinctively likable. a square girl, i should call her." "that is high praise from you, old man," burgoyne remarked. "i shouldn't want higher, if i were a woman." "oh, piffle!" pendleton scoffed. "it isn't piffle, nor nonsense, nor anything of the sort," returned the other. "i knew the time when your _ipse dixit_ went far to make or break a debutante." "forget it, sheldon! don't cast up my past sins--i'm trying to bury them." "are you succeeding?" "i hope so! at least i've deluded myself with the idea until some reminding friend comes along and digs up a bunch of them and shakes the bones." he touched a bell. "take mr. burgoyne's order," he said to the boy. "i'm going to drink a silver fizz--have one." "not on your life!" exclaimed burgoyne. "i'm not fond of soap suds as a beverage. i prefer them with my bath." "every one to his taste," said pendleton. "there goes miss emerson again, with devereux _et al._ in tow," nodding toward the window. "she looks like a thoroughbred," burgoyne reflected, watching her swing across the links to the tennis courts. "it's a pity she has such a bounder for a father." "the mother is worse; he is good natured and tries to be liked--she, however, comes pretty near being impossible." "but she is a schemer--a manager, you say?" "and she has managed this campaign to perfection, i admit. she must have lain awake nights for years scheming the moves. i saw it begin ten years ago--when the emersons first appeared at a quiet summer hotel where some of our nice people went. she worked slowly, being content to make progress by degrees--to pick up a nodding and speaking acquaintance with the old families, and have her daughter get to know their daughters. children, you know, are neither discriminating nor particular; if they like one, they don't ask for credentials. that is how marcia emerson got to know those who later, when she went away to school, became her friends. the campaign of _ma mère_ has never relaxed in all those years--but it has taken many ramifications. the club's needing the piece of ground was a fortunate accident--of the dame's foresight. she heard one day that we had bought here--the next day she had put the idea into emerson's head to buy also. she meant to get in--and she got." "one always admires a general!" commented burgoyne. "at present i suppose she is engaged in stalking a prospective son-in-law?" "precisely--and she has him stalked; but daughter may spoil her plans--she has a mind of her own where she is intimately connected, i fancy. she has not got that black hair and dark eyes for nothing." "hum!" said burgoyne, watching her with an appraising glance. "she sure is a looker--i don't blame the fellows for dancing attendance. if it were a couple of hundred years earlier they would be rapiering one another behind the coffee-house at sunrise.... who is the man madame emerson has selected for her daughter?" "our friend." "not warwick devereux?" pendleton smiled acquiescence. "good lord! does devereux know it?" "i fancy not!" pendleton laughed--"but those who are looking on with a knowing eye are wise to the mater's plan. oh, she is a manager and a schemer all right." "does _miss emerson_ know it?" burgoyne asked. "if she does she's not betraying it--though she can't be blind to devereux's dollars nor to his worth." "nor to his family," the other added. pendleton nodded. "it will be a great stroke for mrs. emerson if she can marry her daughter into the devereux-d'este connection. then she can rest from her labors and her works will follow her. she will have arrived." "she is a trifle slow in coming into the dock, however," burgoyne observed. "give her time--she's headed straight--has been from the start--and she has never missed a port yet. i've great faith in the old girl--she'll land dev for the daughter, i'll bet a fiver on it. he is too old to stampede--she must drive him in slowly." "you're mixing your metaphors!" burgoyne laughed. "maybe i am--but she'll not get mixed in her purposes. have another drink?--no?--then let us go up and sit on the piazza, and look at the real thing--the butterflies whose frivolities and frivoling make a country club endurable." "or unendurable!" his friend added. "depends on your point of view--and also your digestion. for my part, my digestion being normal i enjoy watching them--their methods: their little schemes, their jealousies, their punishments, their petty deceptions and meannesses--all interest me in a casual way. i like to sit back and study them--they amuse me." "is that all they do--amuse you?" burgoyne asked. "haven't they any kindness or generosity or unselfishness?" "not much--certainly not here at the club. every woman's hand is against every other woman, and she usually has a hat-pin concealed in it--if that's possible. it's trite but true that a woman is a good hater and a poor forgetter, and is utterly without conscience in matters of friendship or of truth." "where did you acquire all your cynicism?" burgoyne demanded. "with my years--and on the piazza!" "well, you would better find an optimistic chair and a clearer vision. you're flocking too much to yourself." "take the four yonder playing auction," pendleton continued, when they had settled into a retired corner. "they are as lovely young matrons as you will meet anywhere--far above the average indeed--and they are inseparable; yet i myself have heard every one of them put the knife into the other three, and then give it a twist besides." "and from it you argue----" "from it and innumerable other instances i argue that, as among themselves, women have no conception of friendship--as men regard it. men are more charitable;--though it is the charity of indifference--and it is without distinction as to sex. so long as he himself is not affected he cares nothing--when he is affected the woman always receives consideration." "exactly! the woman receives consideration from the man--and the man receives consideration from the woman. the man is in advance of her only in his indifference, and that is due mainly to temperament, and to his preoccupation in other things--he hasn't the time. the woman _has_ the time." "and if she hasn't time she finds it. i tell you a woman has neither charity nor justice toward a woman," pendleton reiterated. "you are putting it too broadly," said burgoyne. "as a general proposition it can't be put too broadly." "what were you doing with yourself while i was away?" burgoyne demanded. "observing life around me!" "through blue glasses and with a misanthrope's eyes." "i was not aware of it." "of course you were not! no one ever is---- it requires a friend to make himself popular by telling you." "what shall i tell _you_?" laughed pendleton. "anything that's disagreeable--so long as it is the truth." a rather large woman came down the piazza, nodding this way and that. she was beautifully gowned, in the very best taste and in the style that was calculated to soften her embonpoint into a gentle plumpness. a flush that was charmingly natural glowed on cheek and lip, her eyes were dark and delicately pencilled, her hands were bare of gloves and sparkled with rings. as she passed the corner where pendleton and burgoyne were sitting, she bowed effusively, and when they both arose and returned it she suddenly veered across. "i'm so glad to see you!" she radiated. pendleton presented his friend. "welcome home, mr. burgoyne, if i may," she greeted. "mr. pendleton, won't you and mr. burgoyne dine with us here this evening?--just a little informal party--with some auction later?" pendleton's glance shot questioningly at burgoyne and got an answer. "thank you very much, mrs. emerson," said he. "i shall be delighted." "it will give me much pleasure, you are very kind," burgoyne assured her. "just as you are, no dressing you know--at seven-thirty on the piazza." and with a smile and an intimate little nod she went on. "will you please tell me why you signalled me to accept?" pendleton inquired. "because i wanted you to accept." "so i gathered--but why? why?" "i want to see how the old dame does it--and whom she has." "couldn't you see quite as well without being in it?" "possibly--but i want to be in it.--never refuse anything that promises enjoyment if you can accept, is my policy. i'm beginning to follow the line of least resistance--i've reached the age to justify it." "piffle!" said pendleton--"you talk like a man of sixty." "i'm thirty-four, which is quite old enough to warrant one in taking things by the smooth handle." "even mrs. emerson?" "even mrs. emerson. moreover, i want to observe the daughter--and the table is an excellent place." "you want to observe the daughter?" pendleton inflected. "sure i do! isn't there a campaign on to marry her to our old friend devereux? i want to look her over--and, as i said, i don't know a better place than the table for the display of one's manners and inherent breeding--or the lack of them." "don't you think that devereux is competent to judge for himself?" "no one is competent to judge where the heart is involved; but don't think that i shall offer him advice--lord, no! i only want to see for my own satisfaction--and miss emerson is a strikingly handsome girl." "the latter is nearer the truth, i reckon!" laughed pendleton. "i should think you would have had a surfeit of pretty girls in three years' picking abroad." "i never get surfeited with pretty girls. i'm like the chap in the song--'oh, you dear delightful women, why, i simply love you all.' that's piffle, too, i suppose." "not at all," pendleton observed. "i should call it a simple ebullition of spirits--otherwise plain drunk." "who--i?" "no--not you--the fellow in the song. there will be a bunch more here, with similar delusions, about--eleven o'clock." they smoked a while in silence, with a bow, now and then, to some one that passed, or a word about some one that arrived or departed. the piazza was filling up with the late comers, and with those from the grill-room. the tables were being set for dinner--rubber-shod waiters flitted about--the tinkle of glasses and the hiss of siphons punctuated the chatter of the crowd. "how many are actually enjoying themselves?" said pendleton with a wave of his hand to include every one on the piazza. "possibly half," burgoyne answered--"the rest are bored to death." "half!" pendleton laughed. "there isn't one in ten who wouldn't rather be somewhere else at this moment." "then there are about a hundred and fifty people who are putting up an amazingly good bluff." "bluff! what does that signify? life is made up of bluff. we all are bluffers--it's a game of bluffer and bluffee--with the devil getting the one who is bluffed too often." "you run to over-statements this afternoon!" burgoyne remarked. "what is the matter; been pinched in the stock market--has some girl given you the mit--or are you letting some fool doctor tinker at you?" "which do you think it is?" "it wouldn't be the first, and it couldn't be the second, so it must be the third.--don't do it, pendleton! a doctor is the most awful habit a well man can acquire--he never gets over it." "go to!" laughed pendleton; "you're not in the fashion. it is the fad now-a-days to be treated by a specialist." "a woman's fad, not a man's," said burgoyne. "it _isn't_ the stock-market, is it?" "i'm not on the wrong side, if that is what you mean." "and it couldn't by any chance be a woman?" "it could but it isn't.--i reckon i'm just naturally cynical." "get over it, pendleton, get over it--it's an awful habit for yourself and those around you! be cheerful, old man, be cheerful. it's just as easy and a whole heap more enjoyable. look at me--why, i can----" "enjoy the prospect of dining with mrs. emerson! that is sufficient." "sufficient unto the mother is the daughter thereof. there are always compensations, if we only let ourselves see them." "what if the daughter isn't there?" pendleton suggested. "that would be a calamity," burgoyne answered. "however, we'll hope for the best." "are you thinking of entering the lists?" "go to, again! i said i'm interested for our friend!" "how?" "to see if miss emerson is worthy of the distinguished honor in store for her." "what earthly good will your 'seeing' do, if you don't tell devereux what you think?" "none in the world, my friend!--it's pure----" "curiosity," pendleton interjected. "i thought that you had overcome your early affliction by travel." "which is worse--curiosity or a grouch?" laughed burgoyne. "neither is worse--they both are reprehensible and to be avoided. i'll make you a proposition--i'll get rid of my cynicism, pessimism or grouch, if you will get rid of your curiosity, or interest in the affairs of others, as you term it. is it a bargain?" "it is!--but we'll have to go to the emerson dinner!" burgoyne stipulated. again silence. presently burgoyne spoke--a trifle low. "i see harry lorraine is here--how does he take it?" "you mean the loss of his wife? like a ninny. he has backed and filled until he has lost all sympathy. one day he thinks he will, the next day he thinks he won't. either he should have got a gun and chased amherst to the ends of the earth and shot the life out of him, or he should instantly have filed his suit for divorce. to my mind, he has only one course open now--to take her back and let by-gones be by-gones--if _she_ will take him." burgoyne glanced at the other thoughtfully. rumor had it that pendleton himself was very fond of stephanie mourraille before she married harry lorraine; but rumor often lied, and he had not been here to verify it himself. he knew that she was a handsome, dashing woman, somewhat self-willed and given to having her own way, but amenable to influence and altogether lovable. when he went away lorraine was crazy about her and the courtship was at its height. a little later, while he was in europe, he got cards to their marriage. then suddenly, after a year and a half, a friend's letter told him, _inter alia_, that stephanie lorraine had run off with garret amherst--a man twice her age, and with a wife and four children--and that they were supposed to have gone to india. four months ago he had encountered them in paris--at the café laurent in the champs elysées; but when he started over to speak to them, they got up hurriedly and changed their table for one in a remote corner, so he took the hint and did not recognize them. "what in the devil possessed her?" he asked. "amherst is not particularly attractive." "no--at least he is not attractive to the men--but they say he is the devil among the women, in a quiet way. i reckon it was his reputation that first caught stephanie. after that he played her and--landed her. i didn't think, however, he would completely lose his head and run away with her." "amherst always struck me as exceedingly cool and calculating," burgoyne observed.--"still, one can never tell what love will do!" "_love!_" exclaimed pendleton. "i wouldn't dignify it by any such name. call it what it was!" "if you call it _that_ then why did they run away? they could have gratified it quite as well had they remained within the bounds of the conventional." "it was the conventional which hampered:--they wanted to be unrestrained in its enjoyment. when a man and a woman reach that state they're little better than insane." "i never took stephanie to be one of that sort," burgoyne reflected. "she wasn't--until amherst played his usual game--and got caught in his own net. my idea of it is that she wouldn't yield until he proved his devotion by taking her away, and finally she got him so crazy he succumbed." "i fancy that both of them have regretted it sadly enough long since." "i'm sure of it. i understand that amherst has made overtures to his wife looking to a reconciliation; and as he converted almost all his property before he left, she is considering whether a half loaf, with financial ease and amherst, isn't to be preferred to no loaf, no money, and no amherst. she's forty, you must remember, and not particularly good looking at that. she's not likely to have another chance, if she divorces him. so i'm betting she will permit him to return--_for the children's sake_." "and stephanie?" asked burgoyne. "there isn't any child there." "i don't know!" said pendleton slowly. "normally she should be subdued and retiring--keep out of the way for a year or two. but you never can tell. much depends on lorraine's attitude.--if he were only half a man! but he isn't--he's a damn nincompoop." "how could lorraine go gunning for amherst when he didn't know where to gun?" asked burgoyne. "he at least could have held his peace and shot amherst on sight. but he didn't even do that--he sniffled, and cried, and bemoaned, and didn't know his own mind for an hour at a time. i've no patience with him." "it seems not!" agreed burgoyne. "but you must remember lorraine is young, and that not every one is blessed with your calm determination and decision. i rather think the majority of men would do as he has done--temporize." "temporize! maybe--but he didn't even temporize; he shilly-shallied like a weather cock." "i see--you think that because stephanie lorraine had the courage to run off, and may have courage to return, she thereby has proven that she has nerve sufficient for both of them, so they would better hitch up again and go on in double harness!" laughed burgoyne. "that may be the truth!" said pendleton, "but all i said was that if she will take him back he would better take her. they are about equally culpable, so they can wipe off the slate and start afresh." "do you really think that is possible?" burgoyne inquired. "certainly it's possible!" "here--in this town?" "why not?--it is their _own_ affair--no one has a scintilla of right to question their decision. a husband may take his wife back, surely!" "granted, in the abstract--but what will be society's judgment upon the wife?" "the men will forget it. the women will cease to remember--after a time." "after a generation or two!" burgoyne remarked. "it depends on the woman herself--on how she acts," said pendleton. "somewhat--but it depends more on the women and how they feel. you said, a moment ago, that women were poor forgetters. this is one of the crimes they never forgive nor forget." "not exactly. they never forget the woman who has been unfortunate _before_ marriage and has been found out. they have a slightly different code for a married woman who has gone wrong and is caught--and then rights herself. if she is prudent and has money, caste, and friends, she'll pull herself through after a year or so." "she will be more apt to pull through if her husband sticks to her," burgoyne replied. "i thought that was understood!" pendleton responded. "and if the husband--divorces her?" pendleton raised his hands. "i don't know," he reflected. "again, however, i think that it depends on the woman and money and caste and friends. what would be impossible for some is easily possible for others." "how would it be with stephanie lorraine?" burgoyne asked. for a while pendleton watched the smoke circle from his cigarette and was silent. then he dropped the cigarette into the ash tray, slowly drew out another and lit it. "she has money and caste--and she used to have plenty of friends," burgoyne added. "she hasn't as many friends as she once had," said pendleton, slowly; "though what she has are powerful. lorraine's and mrs. amherst's friends will be against her--and the fact that she ran away with such a fellow as amherst will be more against her than anything else. if she had chosen a popular young chap, instead of a middle-aged rouè-on-the-quiet, society would be more ready with forgiveness." just then devereux rounded the corner, with a paper in his hand, and hurried over. "have you seen the _evening telegraph_?" he asked. "no?--well, amherst has come back!" "back--to america?" asked burgoyne. "back to _this town_--and gone again--with mrs. amherst and the children--to europe! what do you think of that?" burgoyne gave a soft whistle of astonishment. pendleton shrugged his shoulders a trifle and smiled grimly. "you're not properly appreciative of news," declared devereux. "why don't you say something?" "you don't appreciate news yourself," burgoyne answered. "we are simply dumb with amazement." "is that the way it impresses you?" devereux demanded, looking at pendleton. "not at all!" said pendleton. "i'm not surprised. it is just what i expected of amherst." "but mrs. amherst--to take him back!" devereux exclaimed. "it is the way of expediency under all the circumstances. she was wise." "well, i'd be damned if i would take him back!" devereux declared. "i don't fancy you would, dev!" pendleton smiled. "you're not a woman, you know." "does the _telegraph_ say anything as to mrs. lorraine's whereabouts?" burgoyne asked. "they can't locate her but they think she is in new york," devereux answered--and went on with his news. pendleton, who was facing outward, suddenly leaned forward. "the _telegraph_ seems to have made a poor guess," said he. "yonder is mrs. lorraine now." "where?" burgoyne cried, starting around. "in the victoria--coming up the drive." "god!" burgoyne exclaimed. "what a daring thing to do! and she is alone, too." pendleton got up. "i'm going to meet her--will you come along?" he asked. "i will, indeed," said burgoyne. "i like stephanie--and i like her nerve." ii the return of the offender others than pendleton had seen who was the occupant of the approaching victoria. and the news spread like the wind, with a bustle and a buzz that swelled--grew louder and louder as the horses swung swiftly along the front and drew up at the entrance--suddenly to be hushed to a fearful calm as montague pendleton and sheldon burgoyne stepped out to meet her. she saw the two men, and sat leaning on her sunshade, a smile on her lips, waiting--but without a glance toward the piazza and its expectant crowd:--a slender woman, gowned in white, with a great black hat topping auburn hair and shading a face that was almost flawless in its proud, cold beauty. "my dear stephanie, i am _glad_ to see you!" said pendleton. "do you mean it, montague?" she asked, giving him her hand with a dazzling smile that softened her whole countenance and made it very tender. "we do, indeed!" said burgoyne, bowing over her other hand--while pendleton took her sunshade. there was a momentary pause. she looked from one to the other a bit questioningly--smiled again--and with a hand in each of theirs stepped lightly from the carriage. "we have a table just around the corner--shall we go to it?" pendleton suggested. she shot him a glance from under her half-closed lids--a glance of appreciation and gratitude. "if you don't mind," she replied--"i'm a bit afraid of these people." they went slowly down the piazza; and the crowd, which had been dumb with amazement or curiosity or looking, suddenly began to talk like mad, and to occupy themselves with the tea things or with one another. mrs. lorraine saw--and with a haughtily amused smile, with never a glance at any of them, with her head held high and her body turned a trifle so as to converse with pendleton, she threaded her way between chairs and tables and people to the place reserved. "did you ever behold such brazenness!" exclaimed mrs. postlewaite when mrs. lorraine had passed. "the shameless woman!" mrs. pearce echoed. "it is a disgrace to the club!" pronounced mrs. busbee. "it is a disgrace to society!" declared mrs. porterfield. "what shall we do to manifest our disgust and disapproval?" "leave at once--it is positively contaminating to be near her," decided mrs. postlewaite. and they went straightway--summoning their cars with much to-do and ostentatious show. "play! play! be absorbed in the game--don't let on you've seen her!" whispered young mrs. carstairs, as mrs. lorraine drew near.... "i didn't know what to do--i was facing her," said her partner, mrs. chilten. "it didn't matter greatly what you did," smiled mrs. burleston. "she didn't look at any one--she ignored us all." "she doesn't care a rap what we do--and she has proved it by coming here," said mrs. westlake. "she has got pluck, all right." "i should call it effrontery," said mrs. carstairs, "hardened effrontery." "i think she is to be pitied," mrs. westlake remarked. "are you prepared to pity her by offering friendship?" mrs. carstairs asked. "it doesn't look as if she were asking any one for either pity or friendship," was the answer. "moreover, i've known stephanie lorraine a long time--and she isn't that sort." "when a woman runs away from her husband with a man--and comes back, she isn't any sort, in my opinion," mrs. carstairs sniffed. "i hope, for the honor of our sex, that your opinion isn't ours as a class," mrs. westlake smiled. "on the basis of _honor_, mrs. lorraine could not be even considered," was the retort. "i bid one on no trump--let us play cards and not fuss," interposed mrs. chilten. "and every one will do as she thinks best, anyway," said mrs. burleston. "i bid two on hearts." the men had been in a quandary. some timid ones had followed the women's lead and were looking elsewhere as mrs. lorraine went by--others, bachelors mainly, would have got up and bowed had she given them a glance, or even the encouragement of not ignoring them. "i didn't know whether she would care to speak to me," said devonshire. "her attitude was not especially melting." "the atmosphere on the piazza through the initial part of her progress wasn't calculated to thaw," remarked smithers. "i never saw so icy a reception as the women gave her." "they didn't have much on her," said westlake. "she handed them as good as they sent--and handed it first. _i'm_ for mrs. lorraine." "so are all the men, i fancy--but we would better not let our wives know it!" laughed devonshire. smithers nodded. "they take her--conduct as a reflection on themselves." "it is a queer trait in woman--a queer trait," reflected westlake. "something is radically wrong with them, it seems to me, when they have no pity for their kind. a man will condone the indiscretion, but a woman never. why is it?" "and those who have themselves broken over and have not been found out, are the most unforgiving," added devonshire. "it's mighty queer!" "it was a mighty kind thing for pendleton and burgoyne to do," said westlake. "i felt like applauding." "so did i," echoed the others. "and it doesn't detract a bit from the bravery, that pendleton is said at one time to have been in love with stephanie mourraille," remarked smithers. "it rather increases it--and proves its truth," said westlake. "as for burgoyne, he evidently is going to take her as he left her--cut out the interim. however it is, it was a classy thing to do. i shall tell them so." "i wouldn't," devonshire advised. "you might say it to burgoyne but i should be shy of saying it to pendleton. it is not the sort of praise that will appeal to him, i fancy--it is at the expense of the woman, you know." "h-u-m!" westlake reflected. "i hadn't thought of that--but it's a pretty fine spun reason." "all the same, i wouldn't," was the reply. just then a servant delivered a message to burgoyne and he arose and went into the club-house. mrs. lorraine, pendleton, and he had been keeping up a rapid fire of small talk, without a reference to that which was uppermost in their own and everyone's mind. it obtruded itself at every turn of the conversation and everything that was said seemed in some way to hint at it. it was a relief when burgoyne left--it gave them time to catch their breath, so to speak. pendleton drew out his case, selected a cigarette with great deliberation, chose a match from the box on the table in front of him, struck it, and very carefully made a light. she sat back in her chair and closed her eyes, as one does who has been subjecting them to strain and needs to rest them. then the tension of her nerves relaxed a trifle--she opened her eyes, to encounter pendleton's looking at her questioningly. "well?" she said, with her sweet smile. "what--is it?" "what is what?" he answered. "what is it that you want to know?" she asked. "nothing." "what is it then i can tell you?" "whatever you wish to tell me." "what would you soonest know? ask--i am willing that you should. i shall be glad to answer--you." "i was wondering, stephanie," he said, after a pause. "i was wondering--why you did it?" for a little time she did not reply. "why i--went off with garret amherst, you mean?" she said low. "good lord, no!" he exclaimed. "that is your own affair. i meant why you came to this place of all others in town, this afternoon." "a fit of bravado," she answered. "i had already done so much that a trifle more didn't matter. moreover, i was curious to see what"--she made a slight motion of her hand toward the crowd on the piazza--"they would do. i saw!" she added with a bit of a laugh. "was it wise to try them all together?" he asked. "wouldn't it have been better to let them make up their minds gradually rather than to force them to a decision in a moment?" "of course--i know it, but i've been so much a fool lately that i'm reckless--i reckon it is in the blood. my father lost his life climbing mountains, you know. mine takes a different form, that's all--i run to the unconventional. run is a good word, isn't it?" she smiled. "yes--particularly the run _back_," said pendleton. "you think so?" she demanded. "i'm sure of it, stephanie--perfectly sure of it." "what did i run back to?" she asked. "lorraine, if you want him!" "i don't know that i want him," she shrugged--"and i don't think he'll have me. harry lorraine is a weak, vacillating fool--that's why i left him. if he had the strength of a man--just an ordinary man--he could have saved me from amherst. he would have taken me from him, at any rate; he could have found us at any time. my mother knew where i was--after the first two weeks." "i thought as much," pendleton commented. "he wrote me three letters--at intervals. in the first, he was coming over to kill amherst on sight." "he had the right idea." "yes--and i'd have blessed him if he had only done it!" she exclaimed. "but instead he sent a second letter casting me off finally. and then another--that whined and plead and threatened and sneered, and ended by leaving me in doubt what he meant to do. i didn't care, of course, but a woman likes to think of the man she married as strong enough to do something in such a crisis. she wants to respect the man she has left, so she can respect the other man more. and they both failed, montague, they both failed miserably. lorraine as a husband was poor enough, but amherst was--beyond words. i came to despise him. you remember one day at granger's, when i came in with him; and later i asked you how you liked him--you always spoke plainly to me, i think--and you said, 'he is a mongrel--a vicious mongrel'; and i was indignant, and left you abruptly--remember the episode? well, _i've_ remembered it many times--for he has shown it. he _is_ a mongrel--a vicious mongrel, montague. had harry lorraine found us out then and even beaten him, i would have thrown my arms around my husband's neck for very joy. but he didn't. instead of coming--he wrote!--_wrote_! instead of descending as an avengeful jove he indited epistles! can you imagine anything more ridiculously absurd?" "no," said pendleton, "i can't even imagine it--but different men, different minds, and different methods." "and amherst was worse," she went on. "i know that you think i ought to have realized it before--i went off. i didn't--until it was too late. he is too immaculate--too nice--too everything. most men can wear their clothes and be careful about their personal appearance without seeming to be--without obtruding it on their wives or mistresses. amherst, i soon discovered, could not. that was the first thing to get on my nerves. then his--habits began to grow natural and--disgusting. he is only veneered--and the veneer is very thin." she hesitated--flushed. "and he was a--brute.--a miserable brute, montague--and the break came at last. we had quarrelled, and quarrelled, and quarrelled for months--every time longer and bitterer than the others. that last night it was dreadful, and i ran into another room and locked the door. i would leave him in the morning, i decided. i was at breakfast when he walked in and said: "'i'm going back to mrs. amherst. i advise you to go back to lorraine, if he will take you. i sail from cherbourg to-morrow. i have your transportation, if you wish to accompany me to new york.' "i positively laughed with joy. 'if mrs. amherst wants you she is welcome to you, heaven knows!' i answered. 'i'm charmed to be rid of you, nor will i trouble you for the transportation. i prefer henceforth to pay my own way, thank you!' "he wavered a moment--and hesitated. i ate my rolls and drank my coffee. then he held out his hand. "'good-bye!' he said. "'good-bye!' i answered, and nodded as indifferently as i would to a chance acquaintance and just touched his fingers. "he turned and went out. that is the last time i've seen him. i sailed on the celtic three days later, and came straight home--to my mother's house, that is. i told her everything. i have told you, montague; i owed it to you because of old times, and because you have not forgotten them. it was a brave thing you did, you and burgoyne--though i fancy that you led off and he only followed after. but to not another shall i ever voluntarily open my lips on this matter." "that is the wisest course, i think," he approved. "there is no excuse for my conduct, according to the standards of society," she admitted--"nor shall i attempt to excuse it. my defence is worthless, as a defence. when i left with amherst i was never coming back. we were to be married as soon as we were free. we thought both the others would divorce us at once. at least that was what _i_ thought--and what amherst _said_. i realize now that it was only a subterfuge with him; he wanted to get me off for a while and try me. it's nice to think, isn't it? and when he had tried me for a few months, he tired of me and tossed me aside like an old toy. i ought to have known that i was simply a new plaything for him, and was to last as long." "you poor child!" said pendleton. "your mistake was in not appraising amherst at his proper value. he is pure cad; and you didn't know it until--after." she shook her head. "he showed me only his nice side," she said. "i thought him the most fascinating, the most gallant, the most dignifiedly handsome man that i had ever met. did the men know him for a cad?" "some of them did." "did you?" he nodded. "if you had only warned me!" she sighed. "what good would it have done? you would have scorned advice--resented it. though i think i would have risked it had i the least notion of whither you were tending." "i wish you had risked it!" she exclaimed. "it might have made me realize what i was doing. i had no one but lorraine to depend on." "you had yourself, stephanie." "myself was the one thing i ought not have had," she replied. "lorraine should have taken me away--out of temptation. if need be he should have knocked me down with a club like a cave man and dragged me out of amherst's clutches." "again what good would that have done? you would only have panted for amherst the more, and have gone to him at the first opportunity." "it would have saved me--and i would have seen amherst then for what he is--a coward." he shook his head. "you think now that you would, but i doubt it," he replied. "no one can say what would have happened, if what did happen hadn't happened. moreover, while as you know i have little enough respect for lorraine, yet hadn't he the right to suppose you would do the conventional thing rather than the unconventional? did he have any cause to suspect you and amherst?" "i think not," she admitted--"more than that i was nice to amherst; and that, in public, he seemed to be fond of me in a well-bred way. _you_ never would have suspected, montague?" she asked. "i never gave it a thought; because i considered you--not that sort. the last one, indeed, who would be led into any such foolishness, stephanie." "you thought me too calm and cold, doubtless?" "not exactly. i thought you too indifferent to men, and much too fond of society." "and you didn't know how fascinating garret amherst could be--when he wished." "it's an accomplishment he doesn't waste on men," smiled pendleton. "i wonder if he has played his fascinating way with mrs. amherst?" she reflected. "this evening's _telegraph_ says that they have gone to europe together." she laughed lightly. "you see," she said. "he is already rehabilitated. no one blames the man for long. it rather adds to his attractiveness indeed--particularly with the woman. he comes back, and all his clubs receive him; society blinks its eyes a bit, looks shocked and welcomes him. yet it raises its hands in horror at me! society never seems to realize that a woman cannot commit the unpardonable sin alone--a man has got to be her accomplice." "it's rotten philosophy, stephanie, but it's the way of the world," he said. "it's the way of the world and i was aware of it, you mean," she replied. "certainly, i knew it before and i know it now--but i didn't think of it at the time. look at these dear people--pretending not to notice me, yet watching covertly like a cat a mouse. and you're coming in for your share, too, montague. they are simply perishing from curiosity--to know what we are talking about. they will hold you up to know, when i'm gone." he smiled and raised his shoulders a trifle. she knew well that none would venture to mention the matter to him. "i'm going, now," she said. "will you escort me down this path of sweet charity flanked by gentle spirits, mr. pendleton?" "i would ask you to dine with me to-night but unfortunately i'm promised to the emersons--burgoyne and i." "they _are_ getting on!" she remarked. "two years ago and they would not have had the nerve to ask _you_. it's the daughter, i suppose?" "you mean that she is the reason for my dining with them--or the reason for their coming on?" he asked. "the latter largely, the former possibly," she replied with an amused look. "miss emerson is a very pretty girl," he said. "beauty with money is a valuable asset for marriage with some needy scion of the aristocracy," she observed. "it is not confined to the needy in her case," he replied. "i beg your pardon, montague," she apologized. "oh, i'm not affected!" he laughed. "since _you_ wouldn't have me, i've retired." "you never gave me the chance to have you--you never asked me!" she laughed back. "no--you were too occupied with lorraine to give me the opportunity to ask you." "lorraine?" she inflected contemptuously. "you didn't say it _that_ way _then_," he replied. "no--i was too blind to see." she arose. "i am going," she said; and went down the crowded piazza with the same contemptuously ignoring smile as at her coming. as they neared the entrance--the eyes of all whom they had passed upon them, the eyes of all those who were yet before them busy elsewhere--a tall, good-looking young fellow sauntered out from the club-house and met them, face to face, before the door. it was harry lorraine! for an instant husband and wife confronted each other--while the onlookers gasped, and gaped, and were silent. never had they thought to witness such a scene! even pendleton hesitated, uncertain what would be mrs. lorraine's course. assuredly it was a most unfortunate contretemps--a trying moment. she, however, did not seem to mind it in the least--the smile still lingered on her lips as she paused and looked the man, whom she had sworn before god's altar to love and to cleave to, calmly in the face. it was a look of inquiry--is it to be an armed neutrality, or is it to be war? then suddenly lorraine's face changed. his startled surprise vanished--he saw only the woman who had shamed him and disgraced herself; and without a word, either of reproach or of greeting, he turned from her and went back into the house. a soft rustle passed over the craning throng, growing quickly into a buzzing of whispers and low laughter:--lorraine had refused even to recognize her! the next instant the victoria drew up and pendleton handed mrs. lorraine in. "that was harry lorraine's last chance," she said, as montague bowed over her hand. "i shall never go back to him now." iii the vacillator lorraine, a scowl on his face and wrath in his heart, went slowly down into the café--never seeing whom he passed--and made his way to a secluded table in the darkest corner. for a time he sat staring at the wall--across his mental vision floated pictures of his courtship and his short married life--of the beautiful woman he had caressed and who had caressed him--whose arms had been around his neck--whose ruddy head had lain on his shoulder--whose lips he had kissed--whose form he had embraced in a fury of tenderness--of the woman who was his wife--who was his wife for yet a little time longer, until the courts could cut the bond asunder. the uncertainty that had dominated him was ended. he knew his mind _now_--knew whether he loved her still or whether that love was turned to hate. why had he not known sooner? why had it taken him so long to realize it? why had he vacillated like a pendulum--not sure of himself nor of his feelings? why had he had _any_ feeling for her since she had none for him?... he laughed--a little, bitter laugh--and turned his face deeper into the shadow. it was not pleasant to contemplate. it had been misery for him every day since that shameful one when he had found her gone--and waiting, dazed and unbelieving, had read the truth in the newspapers--the horrible, damning truth, that she had given herself to another man. and now--she had returned; flung aside by the man. would he receive her! take her back! take someone's else leavings! a dishonored woman--lower than the hired ones who stand for pay, honest in their dishonor. had she lost all idea of the fitness of things? was she dead to every sense of shame that she should thus show herself at the club--to all the mob--and flaunt her degradation before their very eyes--to their vast enjoyment and bitter tongues? and then to have met him--by accident, it was true; but none the less had she remained in seclusion it would not have happened, and he would not have been compelled to bear the ignominy of that scene, while a staringly curious crowd looked on, laughing slyly and with zest. it was horrible! horrible! he buried his face in his hands and groaned in spirit. the humiliation of it all pressed down upon him with overwhelming weight. he was ashamed to leave the club-house--he was ashamed to remain--he was ashamed to be seen--he was ashamed to---- "what's up, old chap?" said a hearty voice beside him. "can't you put, or have you been guessing wrong in the stock market--like the most of us lately?" lorraine looked up to see steuart cameron stretch his long length in a chair opposite and draw out his tobacco bag. "oh--is that you, cameron?" said he. "no--that is, i've been feeling a--bit out of sorts the last day or so--stomach, i reckon. have something?" "no, thanks--i've cut it out for a month," replied cameron, neatly rolling a cigarette and licking it. "do you know," striking a match and holding his head to one side while he deftly applied the flame--"i never before realized how long a month was--it's been a week since yesterday." "at that rate your month will be over in about four days," lorraine replied, with a forced laugh. "that is an idea--i hadn't thought of it," said cameron. he had seen the meeting on the piazza and had followed lorraine down for the purpose of being with him--after a little. he was lorraine's particular friend, and he knew that presently it would be well for the other to have some one to talk to. lorraine relapsed into moody silence. cameron smoked and rattled ahead, without pausing for answers nor seeming to note their absence. occasionally lorraine stirred himself to throw out a reply, only to fall again, after a moment, into silence. cameron talked on--with never a word however which could imply that he was waiting for his friend to unburden himself. he was aware that lorraine must break out to some one--the longer he waited the surer it was, and the less likely that he would choose his confidant. he would go off like a delayed explosion--say things that later he would give much to unsay, and which would be much better unsaid. but the unsaying being impossible, it was best that he should say them to him--who would forget them. it is not many friends who will voluntarily consent to act as safety valves for the overflow of another's feelings--and then not tell. and cameron's patience and consideration were at last rewarded. lorraine shook himself--as though to get rid of his thoughts--and sat up. "cameron," he said, "what shall i do? stephanie is back--she was here in the club--just now. i met her on the front piazza--before them all!" "i know," said cameron, "i saw it." lorraine regarded him thoughtfully. "and you followed me here so as to--it was mighty good of you, steuart." cameron smiled sympathetically. "what do you think you want to do?" said he. lorraine made a despairing gesture. "i don't know--except that i shall never take her back," he replied. "um--what else is there to decide?" cameron asked. "whether i also shan't kill amherst!" exclaimed lorraine. cameron shook his head. "it is too late now!" "too late for what?" "to kill him." "why?" "if you've cast off stephanie, you've let him out." "_what?_" lorraine demanded. "_i've let him out?_" "to my mind, yes. if another man goes off with my wife, i'm not justified in killing him unless i'm ready to take my wife back. if she is worthless it is folly to kill because of her. the killing is for her honor--for having led her astray." "and is my honor not to be considered?" asked lorraine vehemently. "how has your honor been affected?" returned cameron gently. "my god!--how hasn't it been affected! didn't he run away with my wife?" "he ran away with something that you say you don't want," cameron pursued. "that is why i don't want her--because she betrayed me." "because she betrayed you may be valid ground for you to kill _her_--it certainly isn't ground for killing _him_." "amherst is the man in the case, isn't he?" "in the case _with her_--and her you have refused to recognize. the ethics of the situation are involved and debatable but i repeat that this much is clear: unless you are willing to take her back, you have no justification nor excuse for killing amherst." "as you said before!" lorraine remarked. "as i said before--and as i shall say twenty times, if necessary, until you see reason!" "suppose i _had_ taken her back--what then?" "then," said cameron slowly--"it would depend on what _she_ wanted. your first duty would be to her." lorraine frowned and stared at the table. "you may be right," he admitted, "but what do you think is my duty to myself under the circumstances?" "if i were in your place," cameron answered, "i should first consider whether to take her back----" "i have considered, i tell you--it is impossible." "then i should forget her and everything connected with her. i should turn the case over to my attorneys and go away until the trial. when the divorce is granted, i should resume my old life as if i had never been married." "and amherst--what would you do about him?" asked lorraine. "i should not think of him. to me, he would not exist." "you have never been married!" commented lorraine bitterly. "you cannot know the impulse to violence--the impulse to kill. i want to see him die--to choke him with my own hands--to feel his struggles--his writhings--his gasps--to prolong his agony--to watch his face in the death throes--to feel his last breath--sometimes, that is. at other times, i am indifferent. i don't care what becomes of her or him--nor myself. why is it, cameron, why is it?" "it was the uncertainty--till you've made up your mind what to do," cameron answered. "but it is over now, old man. you have decided.--moreover you're likely to have plenty of time to master your impulse to homicide. amherst has gone to europe with mrs. amherst. they will likely be gone a long time." "with mrs. amherst!" lorraine exclaimed. "she has taken him back?" "so to-night's _telegraph_ says." "h-u-m--i suppose some people will think i should do that too." "many persons, many minds," replied cameron. "however, it's no one's affairs but your own--so let them all go to the devil." "it's different with amherst," lorraine reflected. "he's not smirched so much." "so society thinks." "what do _you_ think?" "i think it is a question which concerns only the parties interested--so deeply concerns them, indeed, that no one else has any right to an opinion." "in the abstract, no. but, in the practical, society's view must be considered--it says the woman's case is very different from the man's--and it may make the husband feel it if he takes her back." "not for long--if he has the courage of his conduct, and fights," said cameron. "however, you are not confronted by any such condition. you've met the situation according to custom. it is up to her now to do the fighting back." "i'm not concerned for her; she's just a--woman," said lorraine curtly. "no--you're not concerned for her," replied cameron slowly; "not concerned further than every man is concerned for a woman--that she gets fair play and a square deal." "i'm perfectly willing for society even to forget her past, if it wishes," said lorraine. "i'm not vindictive. i'm indifferent. i'm done with her forever." "you look at it in the proper spirit, old man," cameron encouraged. "the time when men took the law into their own hands is past--with one exception, possibly. your course is dignified, and thoroughly within your rights." it had been easier than he had anticipated. lorraine was steadier than he had thought--had borne the meeting with reasonable fortitude, considering the circumstances and the provocation. he leaned over and put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "old fellow," he said, "don't misunderstand me--but--don't let your feelings run away with you and say things to others that you will regret. you'll have plenty to try you--plenty to make you forget--plenty to anger you--but don't! don't! bear in mind that this is an occasion when silence is more than golden." "i've been fairly steady--don't you think?" lorraine asked. "i came down here to avoid people--to get away. if i only could get away from myself it would be much better for me. my thoughts are what madden." "don't think," advised cameron--"it may be difficult--but try it." "i've got to try it--i've nothing else to do," was the bitter answer. "good!--you've the right idea!" "i've been doing little else than thinking for the last year and a half," lorraine continued. "it's the sight of her that stirs it up afresh, just when i thought it overcome. i tell you, cameron, you must go through what i've gone through, loving your wife, to understand and appreciate. it is well enough for you and the rest of my friends to caution prudence--to resume the old life--to forget--to choose the expedient way--but try it! only try it!" he brought his fist down on the table. "it will be the damnedest hardest thing you have ever attempted!" "there is no possible doubt of that, lorraine," cameron agreed. "but you're up against a hard proposition--one that tries men's souls, and takes a man to meet and handle. you've handled it with great credit thus far, old chap, and i want to see you handle it so to the end. we're all interested, you know--interested because we're your friends." "i know you are," said lorraine. "i appreciate your regard more than i can say. i'm not going to make a scene with--stephanie; nor do anything to amherst--if he keeps away from me. this unexpected meeting with her hasn't bereft me of quite all my senses--though it did stagger me for a moment. i'm all right now, cameron. i'll be strictly conventional, hereafter, never fear." "i'm not afraid," cameron smiled. "the fateful moment has passed. you'll be right as a trivet henceforth." he gave his order to a passing boy, and this time lorraine joined him. "are you staying here for dinner?" lorraine asked presently. cameron nodded. "i'm dining with the emersons--a sort of a pick-up crowd, i fancy--at least i'm a pick-up. i wasn't asked until about half an hour ago." "the emersons sure are coming along," lorraine remarked. "it's the gold key with them, all right--and they use it on every occasion. i venture they try for burgoyne--he has just returned from abroad. he is sort of a celebrity, and a near-celebrity is better than nothing." cameron smiled and drank his high-ball. he had heard lorraine holding forth before on the emersons and their kind. "look at the old man there!" lorraine went on. "he is a good-natured bounder--but he ought to be tending bar in a corner saloon rather than hob-nobbing here. and as for mrs. emerson!----" "how about the daughter?" cameron inquired. "except for her family, miss emerson is all right. only i shouldn't want to marry her--i'd be afraid the children would breed back." "with grandpa's money, and the present day advantages and forced culture!" laughed cameron. "i reckon not, my friend, i reckon not." one of the attendants approached with a telephone instrument and connected it with the wire at the side of the room. "some one wants to talk to you, mr. lorraine," he said, placing the transmitter on the table and handing him the receiver. "excuse me, cameron!" said lorraine. "hello!" * * * * * * * * * * * "yes, this is mr. lorraine." * * * * * * * * * * * "this evening--at seven-thirty!" * * * * * * * * * * * "why--yes--i shall be very glad to!" * * * * * * * * * * * "not at all--the pleasure is mine, i assure you." * * * * * * * * * * * "yes--good-bye!" he put down the receiver and the man took the instrument away. "i'm elected!" he remarked. "to what?" "to mrs. emerson's pick-me-up." "why didn't you decline?" cameron asked. "decline! how the devil could i decline--when she held me on the telephone! damn the telephone, anyway." "it's the old game!" laughed cameron. "a man is helpless when a woman gets him there. he would dine with his cook, or take the laundress to the theatre, if she asked him over the telephone." but to himself he was thinking: "mrs. emerson knows of that scene on the piazza and wants to have the most talked-of man in the club at her table to-night. she is long for the main chance." iv a question of friends stephanie lorraine, choosing a round-about route through the park, drove slowly homeward--passing on the way numerous acquaintances and erstwhile friends, who, if they were men, looked their surprise and spoke pleasantly; if they were women, pretended not to see her, or, having seen her, either looked away or bowed distantly--very distantly. the more unstable their social position the more distant was the bow. just at the exit from the park, her victoria was stopped by a sudden congestion in the traffic ahead. preoccupied, she did not notice it until she heard a voice exclaim: "why, stephanie lorraine!" gladys chamberlain in riding togs and crop was at the curb and holding out her hand in greeting. "you dear girl! how do you do?" "pretty fit, thank you," stephanie smiled. "when did you get back?" "several days ago. i'm at my mother's,--if you care to come around." "why _surely_ i'll be around, stephanie--i'd ride back with you now, but i expect to meet my groom here with my mare. will you be home to-morrow?" mrs. lorraine looked at her intently for an instant. "do you appreciate just what you are doing?" she asked. "certainly i do--i'm going to visit an old friend--who is a friend still--and always will be, i hope." stephanie put out her hand again. "thank you, gladys, but i think you ought to know that the club-house piazza refused to recognize me a few minutes ago." "i'm not controlled by the club-house piazza, stephanie dear," said miss chamberlain gently. "you may be very lonely in your friendship," stephanie warned. "the only two who spoke to me at the club were montague pendleton and sheldon burgoyne--the rest didn't even see me." "i would bank on pendleton, and on burgoyne, too. they are _men_." "they came to the front of the house to meet me--assisted me from the carriage--escorted me through the crowd to their table--sat with me--and montague went back with me and put me in the victoria. it was a brave thing to do--and i told him so." "how like montague pendleton," said gladys. "and it was brave too of you to go there and beard the old dowagers and tabbies to their very faces. they can't but respect you for it." "they are more likely to view it as shameless effrontery," stephanie answered. "let them--they are apt to say anything for a time. then they will hurt themselves playing follow-my-leader--and trying to distance her." [illustration: the offender] "who is the leader?" stephanie smiled. "whoever starts first," said miss chamberlain contemptuously. "they're all afraid to commence anything unconventional, but when _one_ ventures they all break after her, and then it's bally-ho! for the race. you've noticed it, surely?" "i can't say i have--but then i've not been very observant of the dowagers and the tabbies." "and of course they like you accordingly. well, who cares? you didn't have to regard them--before, so why regard them now? they'll come around, stephanie, never fear. if you make the pace as hot as you seem to have made it this afternoon, they'll be along in full cry shortly. wait until some of their men folks have had _their_ say--there will likely be another thought coming to them then. i've great faith in the men--they prevent us from becoming cats." a groom rode up leading a spanking bay mare. touching his hat he dismounted. miss chamberlain swung up lightly astride and gathered the reins. "until to-morrow morning then--at eleven?" she asked. "whenever it suits you," stephanie smiled. "i'll be there on the dot," said gladys--and with a little laugh and a nod she rode away. stephanie continued her drive homeward. the way was pleasanter now--she was not alone--gladys would stand by her--and with gladys would come others of her old intimates. the first was the hardest--the rest would follow in time, depending on the independence of the individual and the extent and force of the opposition. it might take a year for her to be rehabilitated--for society to white-wash her or to forget--or it might take only a month. at all events, she was going to try it. she would rather enjoy the struggle--enjoy fighting those who were opposed. she always had despised the conventional ones--those who were afraid--those whose god was society's good opinion, and who worshipped at the altar of commonplaceness and custom. true she was a false wife, branded so all could see; but she knew that, except for the brand, she was not alone. she was in good company; only, the others were ostensibly regular, while she had broken over and had left no room for doubt nor for exercise of a discretionary blindness. she had been honest about it--she had gone away never to come back, she thought. she had staked herself openly and unreservedly before the whole world, with the intention never to seek for restitution. the others staked nothing unless found out--they broke the seventh commandment with impunity, but discreetly and with due regard for the conventions. and the very ones who were breaking, or had broken it, would be the most frigid to her now. she smiled a bit sarcastically. it was the way of the world, and she knew it years ago, so she had nothing to cry over. they also were doing the conventional and the proper--and looking out for themselves. when she had melted the ice around her sufficiently for them to sail up to her without endangering their own crafts in the floe, they would come promptly and with dispatch. until then she was aware they would hold off. when she arrived at home a limousine was standing before the door. her mother was entertaining a visitor in the piazza-room, and she passed on upstairs. presently mrs. mourraille entered. she was an older edition of stephanie, except that her hair was black and her eyes grey--the honest grey that one instinctively trusts and is rarely deceived in. now they bore the trace of suffering, and her hair was beginning to whiten--had begun during the last year, her intimates observed. stephanie arose quickly from the dressing-table, where she had been straightening out her own auburn tresses before the glass, and gliding swiftly over bent and kissed her mother on the cheek. "sit here, dearest," she said. "i noticed mrs. parsons was with you when i came in, so i didn't stop." "i saw you," mrs. mourraille smiled--"and so did mrs. parsons!" "what did she say?" "not a word vocally; but she said many things by her face--chiefly bewilderment and concern." "some other faces have shown similarly this afternoon," said stephanie. "did you meet many that you knew on your drive?" "yes--i went out to the country club--the place was crowded." "my dear! was it wise?" exclaimed mrs. mourraille. "was it wise, so soon?" "judging from the general result, i should say not!" laughed stephanie. "but it will give them something to talk about the rest of the afternoon, and furnish a topic for dinner. and for that they should be grateful to me." "my dear!" marvelled her mother. "oh, you should have seen the preoccupied air of every woman on the piazza--and there were scores of them there. it was positively chilling." "didn't any of them even speak to you?" "not one!" "who were there?" asked mrs. mourraille, her lips tightening. "every one in town, i think. it was the regular saturday afternoon crowd--and then some." "did you give them a chance to speak, dear--or did you go haughtily through them, looking neither to right nor to the left?" "come to think of it, i went right through them--to a table in the remote corner. however, it made no difference. i might have forced some of them to bow but it would have been a holdup and they would have been justified in taking it out on me afterward. this was the better way. no one can feel hurt--and every one can choose at leisure what she will do." "wouldn't it have been wiser to let them choose at leisure, in the first place, rather than to force them to choose quickly, with the chance that they will reverse themselves at leisure?" suggested mrs. mourraille kindly. "you mean that i shouldn't have gone to the club?--possibly. but i wanted to see--and, as i remarked to montague pendleton, _i saw_." "was montague with you?" exclaimed mrs. mourraille. "he didn't accompany me--he met me at the club-house--he and sheldon burgoyne." and she explained. mrs. mourraille expressed her appreciation of their actions in praiseful terms--then she asked: "were any of my particular friends there?" "it doesn't matter, mother dear. i won't get you into any snarl any further than i've already drawn you." "let me determine how far in i shall go," her mother answered quietly. "i simply want the information now--i'll decide later." stephanie named them. "but you must remember, dear," she appended, "that i didn't give them much opportunity even to show a disposition to recognize me. and more of my own friends were there than of yours--and they didn't show any particular eagerness to speak. i can understand their feelings and position. my advent was like a bomb hurled into the crowd. they chose the safest course, which was to sit still and pretend not to see me. i reckon i'd have done the same had i been one of them. they will all come around in time. gladys chamberlain has already led off; the rest will follow more or less rapidly--according to disposition or their fear of society's frown." she talked rapidly, seeking, for her mother's sake, to make light of her position. and her mother understood, and smiled in indulgent appreciation. she had been averse to stephanie's going out that afternoon, even for a drive. she never for an instant had thought of her going to the club. she wanted her to remain passively at home until her coming had ceased to be the latest wonder; until the talk had died down, and people had got used to the new situation and had decided what they would do. it was a case for slow progress and patient waiting. but stephanie had ever been impulsive, and a trifle headstrong when the notion seized her. mrs. mourraille knew what it meant--she herself had been like stephanie until she had broken her inclinations to the ways of expediency. there was no utility in crying over what was past. no one regretted her daughter's _faux pas_ more than she, but the business now was to overcome its results and have her start afresh. assuredly this episode at the club was not to her idea of the proper style of campaign. "it is most unfortunate, stephanie, most unfortunate!" she observed thoughtfully. "only one thing could be more unfortunate--for you to have met harry lorraine there and have had him deny you before them all." "then the most unfortunate has happened," stephanie replied tranquilly. "my husband did meet me on the front piazza--and, before them all, he turned his back upon me and walked away." "the brute!" cried mrs. mourraille. then her grey eyes half closed in contemplation, and for a little while she was silent. stephanie leisurely brushed her hair and waited. "do you think he quite realized what he was doing?" mrs. mourraille asked presently. "i don't know," said stephanie indifferently. "moreover, it doesn't matter. it finished me with him utterly. i wouldn't go back to him now if he got down on his knees on the spot, and before all of them implored it. i thought i despised him before; now i'm sure of it--and i hate and loath him beside." she got up, and crossing to her mother sank down on the floor beside her and took her hands. "dearest," she said, "it will all come right some time. i'm glad to be free of harry lorraine, though i'm sorry i did what i did with amherst, for your sake--and a little for my own now. but it is done and it cannot be undone; and we're not given, either of us, to crying over milk that's spilt. let us be glad rather that i'm quit of amherst without a--drag.... it wasn't by any fault of his that i am, however. i don't want you to be made to suffer for my folly. i know you can't escape feeling it, but you must not make my quarrel yours. let me fight it out alone. i'll go away--take an apartment of my own, where i won't weigh you down by my presence, and make your friends shy of you and your house. i'll----" "my dear little girl, you'll do nothing of the sort," mrs. mourraille broke in, kissing the auburn head. "the milk is spilt, as you say--so let us forget it. you don't want lorraine, so we'll not consider him. we'll consider you, and the future." "and you!" whispered stephanie. "we won't consider me--except indirectly. whatever is best for you, dear, is best for me. we will fight this out together." "you sweet mother!" said stephanie, drawing the dark head down beside her own. "you shall be in reserve; i'll be on the firing line--and i won't let them get through to you." her mother smiled in tender clemency. "i'll be wherever you want me and whenever," she replied.... "we might go away for a time," she suggested. stephanie shook her head. "i'll go if you want very much but it doesn't appeal to me. it will only postpone, by the length of our absence, my restoration to--good standing!" she smiled. "you wish to stay here?" "yes--among my friends--to the end that i may learn who they are." "you may have some bad quarters-of-an-hour, and receive some shocks beside," her mother cautioned. "let them come--i've received enough shocks already to make me _immune_. it will be amusing, diverting, serve to make the time pass more rapidly." "my child!" said mrs. mourraille kindly. "you don't appreciate just what you are saying." "i do, mother dear, and what it means also. i have to face it, so i may as well get out of it what i can, and meet it with a smile. i may be wrong, but to my mind there is nothing like indifference for such a situation." "that is the best way to look at it, if you can--but can you? can you be philosophical under the slights, and snubs, and bitter tongues?" "i think i can--at least, i mean to try," said stephanie quietly. "with gladys chamberlain and pendleton and burgoyne, i'm not alone. they will stand by me--if i don't offend again.... and you need not fear, dear," answering her mother's look; "i'm not going to amherst-it again--with any man." "have you seen the afternoon papers?" mrs. mourraille asked. "you mean--about amherst and mrs. amherst? no, but montague told me of it. it's better so--there is only one of us now for society to get accustomed to. moreover, his peace is made, and for him the rest is easy." "it is always easy for the man," mrs. mourraille observed. "yes--and i can understand: his sin is not so scarlet--it's not continuing, so to speak. ended it is ended. we women have got used to the social evil in the man, but we can't get used to it in the woman. the ethics of it are a thing apart--good to theorize over, but it is the practical view that controls and will control in my case. i realize that i have nothing to hope for from the equitable argument. i'm a woman--i know what to expect from the women. i'm not blaming them. i've no one but myself to blame. man and woman may be equal before the law where men are the judges, but they are not equal in society's court where women are the judges. i shall get small show there, mother dear, small show there! with rare exceptions we women are cruel and bigoted toward our sex, with all the characteristics of cruelty and bigotry on parade." she kissed the elder very fondly. "now go or i shall not be dressed for dinner." ... "i suppose," she added, "there won't be any guests." "not this evening," her mother answered. "do you wish me to ask any one--for a time?" "i wish you to do just as you have always done, _ma mère_. i'll have my dinner in my room whenever i'm _persona non grata_ to your guests." mrs. mourraille stopped in the doorway and smiled back at stephanie. "my guests will meet my daughter or they won't be my guests," she said quietly. stephanie, in the mirror of her dressing-table, threw her a kiss. "no! no!" she said. "but if you don't mind, you might sometime ask montague pendleton and sheldon burgoyne." "together?" "n--o!" stephanie hesitated. "i think i'd rather have them apart; at least i would rather have montague alone--sheldon doesn't matter." v the cut of one's clothes the emerson pick-up dinner party was a decided success. even pendleton admitted it. as for burgoyne he was quite enthusiastic--possibly because he sat on miss emerson's right. pendleton was on her left. lorraine had been taken by the hostess--she was not going to let such an opportunity escape her. old emerson was sandwiched between mrs. burleston and mrs. smithers, and was talking like mad of everything but what he should. his wife could, at intervals, catch portions of his conversation, and she made frantically discreet efforts to flag him, but with no result--either because of the numerous cocktails he had imbibed in the grill, or because he refused to understand. as it was, mrs. burleston and mrs. smithers, as well as the others near him, were convulsed with merriment as he rattled on, serenely indifferent to his spouse's signals and attempts to distract him. "now you see, my dear," he whispered confidentially, leaning over mrs. burleston, "it is this way: when me and sally--sally was my first wife--was married--we didn't have nary a red--nary a red. she done the cooking and housework, including the washing, and i tended bar for mcdivit. you don't remember mcdivit, i guess--course not. he was a fine man--a fine man! he kept the old baroque house--now the imperial. and i was such a good bartender and mixed 'em so well, only knocked down ten per cent., instead of twenty-five, like the other fellows, that one day he says to me, says he: "'bill, you're a good fellow--i've been a watchin' you and i think a heap of you. i'm goin' to set you up in business. what would you rather be?' "'i think,' says i, 'i'd rather be a gentleman.' "'a gentleman!' says he--and smiled sort of knowing like. "'yes, sir!' says i; 'a gentleman--one what makes his living skinning another gentleman--legitimately.' "'you mean you want to be a lawyer?' says mcdivit. "'not i,' says i. 'they skin only the leavings. i want to skin the big wad. i want to go into the promoting business--i want to sell something i haven't got to somebody what doesn't want it.' "'good!' says mcdivit with a twinkle in his eye. 'i'll go you.' "and he set me up--and i've been going ever since--accumulating. there's a heap of profit selling something you haven't got--though you have to be a bit nimble to keep within the law. but i've succeeded purty well. later i got to buying something that some one else wanted before he knew he wanted it--and that's profitable--especially if he wants it bad or has to have it. why this here club--i worked it beautiful. it didn't know it wanted the new fifty acres, till after i knew it--and had bought it. that's how i came to be in the club, you know--part consideration for the fifty acres. oh, it's a great game! a great game when you know how to play it, and are lucky. i'm both. i'm worth a million and a quarter and i started with nothing--and i'm the same good fellow i was when i tended bar for mr. mcdivit. success don't spoil bill emerson. no siree!" he paused a moment. "sally, my first wife, you know, she died soon after i left mcdivit, and when success came i married maria--the present mrs. emerson, that is. she made a pretty good strike when she found yours truly, don't you think, my dears?" he ended, grinning broadly. "i do, indeed, mr. emerson!" smiled mrs. burleston. "you are a find for any woman." "so i have often told maria--when we're exchanging compliments--like married people do, you know. i guess burleston and you hand each other the same, hey? they don't mean nothin'--just hot air--that's pretty hot however when it first blows out!" he laughed. "poor old dad!" said miss emerson to pendleton imperturbably. "he is telling the story of his life. did you hear him?" pendleton shook his head. "i was engaged otherwise," he replied, looking at her with a smile. "which is very good of you--but i'm not sensitive, i realize that every one knows what father is and was--it is not a secret that can be hid. he started with nothing, either socially or financially, and he has come up to where he is--wherever that is. i'm not ashamed of it, though i will admit i would rather have been born in, than have climbed in. but ours was an honest climb, so to speak. society saw us climbing, and stood aside and permitted it. we bought our ladder, we bought the right to use it, and we bought our way up the wall and down again on the inside. he also bought my education and polish and helped me to make good. that is my duty--to make good. i've been aware of it for years--since i first began to make friends among the nice girls, indeed. and i'm trying to make good, mr. pendleton--i've been trying to make good ever since. it's the business of my life to make a social success, and, with father's fortune as an inheritance, to marry well.... you know it--every one knows it--so why dissemble? moreover, it is a legitimate business for a woman, so why be ashamed?" she said it in the most casual tones--as though she was commenting on the weather or the latest play. why dissemble? why be ashamed? everyone knew it! there was something refreshing in her candor, in her frank appreciation of the situation, and in her acceptance of it as the immediate problem for her to solve, with but the one solution possible that would spell success. she understood that her entire education had been directed with that end in view, and if she did not attain it she would be a failure. "there is nothing to be ashamed of," pendleton assured her. "nevertheless you are wondering why i talk this way to you?" she went on. "and i don't know why myself--unless it is my father in me. he has a way, at times, of becoming intimately personal concerning his affairs," with a bit of a smile. "your father is a good fellow," said pendleton, seizing the opportunity to shift the conversation. "father is _dear_!" she returned; "a dear, unselfish man--with me, at least. he may set mother on edge by fracturing the conventions, but it never bothers me. he has the inherent right to fracture them--and he does it very naturally!" she laughed. "i love him, and i'm not ashamed of him either." "good girl!" commented pendleton. "you're not a snob--like the most of the new-rich." "i try not to be, at all events." "what do you try not to be, miss emerson?" burgoyne asked, breaking into the talk. "a snob!" she smiled. burgoyne raised his eyebrows. "every one is more or less a snob, miss emerson; don't you want to be in the fashion?" "i don't like the fashion," she returned. "consider," he said. "is there a man in this club-house who doesn't think himself a little better than his fellows by reason of more money, more social position, more popularity, more athletic ability, more brains, more something?" "i can't answer for the men!" she laughed; "but if you ask me as to the women, i'm afraid i'll have to plead guilty. we are all snobs, on that basis, mr. burgoyne. it's only a matter of degree." "everything is a matter of degree," burgoyne answered, "from the powder on your face to a municipal councilman's venality." "is there any powder on my face?" she demanded. "altogether impersonal," he assured her. "but is there?--i detest powder!" "so does every man--if the women only could be made to believe it. if there is one thing that is disgusting, it is a white-washed face. let them put it on if they must, but let them rub it off--all of it. a shiny nose isn't half as bad as a powder-smeared one." "mr. burgoyne, i must know if there is any powder on my face," she repeated tragically, facing him. he looked long and carefully--so long and so carefully, indeed, that she dropped her eyes, though she did not turn her head. "no," he answered. "there isn't a single trace." "did it require so long to make sure?" she asked. "i was looking----" "yes--i noticed you looking," she remarked. "i was looking for--powder. if you think i might be mistaken, i will look again." "you couldn't be mistaken--after such a critical and prolonged--scrutiny!" she laughed. "and it won't be necessary to look again, sir--just at present." "will the 'present' be very long?" he queried, with assumed gravity. "i cannot tell--it will depend." "upon what?" "circumstances." "of what nature?" "of different natures--yours and mine." "more especially yours, i presume?" "no--yours, i should say," she replied. "why mine?" "to give you something to guess." "i'm a poor guesser," he protested. "i thought as much!" she mocked. "it's a masculine failing, i--understand." "say rather it is a faculty distinctly feminine--and raised to the nth degree." "what are you two talking about?" demanded pendleton. "i haven't the slightest idea!" miss emerson answered. "have you, mr. burgoyne?" "if i have, i can't find it." "who ever knows what they are talking about at a dinner party?" said pendleton. "moreover, who cares? it's all bubbles, usually, that burst the moment they are blown." "is it?" asked miss emerson, with a significant smile. "dinner talk i mean," explained pendleton. "occasionally we strike deeper--then it's something else than bubbles." "how do you distinguish?" burgoyne asked. "most people don't, my friend--hence the bubbles." "precisely--you're one of the don'ts," said pendleton. "which being the case, let us change to something more entertaining than bubbles," burgoyne retorted. "i'll take miss emerson, and you amuse yourself for a space with your left-hand opponent." * * * * * * * * * * * "what do you think of miss emerson?" pendleton asked when, several hours later, he and burgoyne sat smoking on the terrace. "i should say she is a thoroughbred--if it were not for her parents. she has all the characteristics of the well-born--except that she isn't. it must be a sore trial to the girl always to have mother and father to contend against." "possibly she doesn't consider it," observed pendleton. "possibly she accepts the condition and makes the best of it. i've never noticed that she seemed to feel it in the least." "which makes her all the more thoroughbred," burgoyne declared. the other nodded. "just so--and what is more, i've yet to hear her retail scandal or malicious gossip, criticise her friends or acquaintances, or question their motives. pretty remarkable in a woman, sheldon." "exceptional, indeed," burgoyne agreed. "but it comports with her presence. she is an exceptional looking girl. her _tout ensemble_ is wonderfully attractive--to me, at least." "you're not the only one to observe it, my friend, as i think i told you. ask devereux, if you doubt. he says every blithering idiot in the club is hot foot after her--himself included. are you going to get in the running also?" "there appears to be too much competition--the pace is too fast for me. why haven't you been in it yourself?" "for the same reason--and one other: i'm too old," pendleton chuckled amiably. "poor chap!" burgoyne observed. "who would ever have thought it to look at you!" "age is as one feels," said pendleton. "i feel sixty--therefore i'm not chasing after the petticoats. i leave that for those younger in years and spirit. i am content to stand back and look on--to sniff the battle from afar, like the old war horse." "who always has another battle in him," rejoined burgoyne. "however, i would be quite satisfied to have you look on were i a contestant. the honorable montague pendleton is, i fancy, a dangerous rival for any woman's affections." "it would seem so!" laughed pendleton. "i mean, if you should care to be a rival." "thanks, that is better--one likes to fancy himself the very devil with the women, even when he knows he isn't." "what is stephanie lorraine going to do?" burgoyne asked presently. "you mean after this afternoon?" said pendleton. "i do not know. i fancy she doesn't know either. the meeting with lorraine was most unfortunate, if she sought reconciliation." "yes; but if she didn't, it doesn't matter in the least--aside from its giving the mob fresh food for talk." "i didn't hear anything said at our table!" smiled burgoyne. "hardly!" said pendleton. "mrs. emerson chose to have the sensational guest in preference to the sensation. in deference to lorraine and ourselves everyone refrained from mentioning what was uppermost in their minds. they have made up for it since, you may be sure." "i think i shall go around to-morrow and call on stephanie," burgoyne announced. "do it, sheldon--she's going to need all the friends she has--most of the women will side with lorraine, you know." "that is what makes me so strong the other way," declared burgoyne. "added to the fact that you're not married. if you had a wife to consult, the chances are you would either think differently--or not think. the unfortunate thing is, the men will have little or nothing to say about it. it is the women that stephanie has to placate, and she has anything but a rosy path cut out for her, i'm afraid. we men don't understand woman--we never have understood her and we never shall. we see only the surface of her nature--that is all she ever permits us to see--and it is very pleasant to look upon. under the surface, however, is hidden a fund of petty meannesses, which she reserves exclusively for her own sex. she knows better than to vent them on us--we wouldn't tolerate it for a moment." "are you speaking generally or with specific reference to stephanie lorraine?" queried burgoyne. "both. it is a general proposition applied to a specific instance." "aren't you a bit hard on the women?" burgoyne asked. "i think not--but i don't ask you to believe me. if you're happier not to believe, all right. every man to his experience and what it teaches him." "has your _experience_ taught you any such doctrine?" "my experience, together with my observation, has taught me all of that and much more. the trouble is i don't follow it. i can't withstand the feminine fascination and charm--nor my fondness for their society and so on. i'm a good deal like the fellow who couldn't resist the alluringly beautiful color of the red-hot iron and grabbed it with bare hands instead of with tongs." "you advise me, then, to go after miss emerson with tongs?" laughed burgoyne. "i decline to advise you--you're quite of sufficient age to advise yourself," pendleton responded. "to return to mrs. lorraine," said burgoyne. "the women didn't manifest much charity this afternoon, i must admit. they were as cold as the proverbial ice water." "yes--'seeing they see not'--as some one has it." "and until they or some of them will consent to see, i fear that stephanie will be very lonely." pendleton nodded. "it might have been better if she had remained abroad for a year or two--till the thing died down. now it will depend on stephanie herself whether she can force society's hand." "is that her idea, do you think--to force society's hand?" "i don't know that she has formed any idea. she has been home only a day or two, you must remember." "judging from this afternoon--i should say she hasn't," remarked burgoyne. "to come to the club was about the wildest thing she could have done--and then, as a climax, to meet lorraine right in the centre of the spot light! he seems to have known his mind when it came to the pinch. i understand he gave her his back." "he did. so far as they two are concerned the decision is made finally," pendleton replied. "the last hope of a reconciliation is past." an hour later, when the piazza was almost deserted, two men came from the house and sat down some little distance away from the quiet corner where pendleton and burgoyne still lingered. "who are they?" said burgoyne. "porshinger and murchison," pendleton replied--"both new ones, also, since you've been gone. they are long on money but short on breeding and manners." "how did they get in?" "climbed in some way--otherwise bought their way in. porshinger is a capitalist, who capitalized some of the board of governors; and murchison is a big broker who gave a couple of them tips that eventuated. _voilà!_" "they are bounders, i suppose--like emerson?" "of a different kind. emerson is a good sort--these fellows are bounders of the offensive type. emerson wants to be a gentleman and tries to be one--porshinger _et al._ neither wants to be nor tries. it is a great thing, now-a-days, being one of the governors of a fashionable club--when the new rich are climbing upward on the golden ladder. many impoverished fortunes have been restored, even to affluence, by prospective candidates for admission." "has it come to be so bad as that?" said burgoyne astonished. "it has. within the last two years there have been at least a score of candidates elected to membership in this and other fashionable clubs who have bought their election by before-and-after favors to certain members of the boards." "what are we coming to?" burgoyne exclaimed. "the aristocracy of dollars. in a few years those of moderate means, like ourselves, will be rooted out of our place by the gold hogs. they will make it so expensive that we cannot belong. already the old families are beginning to drop out because of the cost: the doubled dues--the higher priced card--the increased style of doing even the simplest things--and, if they have wives or daughters or both, the elaborate dressing that is necessary if they want them to look even half decent and to be asked anywhere. they can't afford to keep up the pace. so there's nothing to do but to drop out. our time is coming, burgoyne--we may last longer because we have no feminine appendages, but our limit will be reached, also--it is only a question of a very little longer." "well, we shall be in good company at all events!" laughed burgoyne. "yes, that is the recompense," commented pendleton. "but it riles me to go down before these contemptible crowders-out, like the two yonder." burgoyne did not respond immediately and porshinger's harsh voice came floating over. "did you see the lorraine episode this afternoon?" he chuckled. "she came _here_--actually had the audacity to come here--and she bumped into lorraine right there on the piazza--and he gave her the frozen face _hard_. it was great." "just what lorraine should have done," murchison replied. "it's an infernal shame that our wives and daughters should be subjected to such effrontery. the woman has about as much idea of decency as a professional of the street--to come still warm from amherst's arms and flaunt herself before them all. i should have thought the little shame she has left would have held her from this last atrocity." "she's a mighty good looker all right!" the other remarked. "i don't blame amherst--not in the least." "sure--she's a screamer--the tall, willowy sort--kipling's vampire kind, you know the style?" porshinger laughed. "i wonder who will be the next one. i should not much mind taking a flyer at her myself." pendleton pushed back his chair sharply and got up. "come along," he said to burgoyne. "i may need your help." he drew out his gloves and crossed the piazza to the two men. "well, you have the requisite amount in your clothes," murchison was saying. "but i fancy you'll have to move fast if you want to stand any chance." "why?" "because she has----" the rest of the remark was cut short by pendleton's gloves falling with a snap across porshinger's mouth. "what the devil!" cried he, sitting up. crack! again the gloves came down, and a button marked the skin of the cheek till the blood oozed out. "i don't like the cut of your coat, mr. porshinger!" said pendleton. "and just because i don't like it i'm going to give you a thrashing. stand up and defend yourself. i don't want to hit even a cur when he's down." "what in hell do you mean?" porshinger shouted. "i've got no quarrel with you, pendleton! what in hell do i care whether you like the cut of my coat or not--i'm no tailor." "aren't you? i thought you were--i apologize to the tailors," said pendleton easily. "put up your hands, you dirty scoundrel, or haven't you a single spark of courage in you?" "i don't understand you!" protested porshinger, edging away. "what have i done to you, pendleton?" "i've told you i don't like the cut of your coat," was the answer. "put up your hands, if you don't want me to take my stick to you." "the man must have lost his mind! mr. burgoyne, can't you do something?" porshinger cried, retreating until his back was against the railing. for answer, pendleton's left shot out and tapped porshinger lightly on the nose. "put up your hands," said he, and tapped him again. murchison sprang between them. "stop!" he cried. "what do you mean, pendleton?" "i've already answered that question several times," pendleton replied. "sheldon, will you be kind enough to take charge of mr. murchison?" "come to think of it i don't like the cut of your coat either, mr. murchison," said burgoyne. "oblige me by standing aside." "what's the matter with you damn fools?" demanded murchison. "are you trying to pick a fight?" "yes," said pendleton quietly, "but we are meeting with very poor success;" and he tapped porshinger a third time--and harder. "well, if that's what you're after we'll accommodate you!" exclaimed murchison. "porshinger, let's give them what's coming to them"--and picking up a chair he let it drive at burgoyne's head. the next few minutes were very busy for all parties concerned--and when the astonished servants, attracted by the noise of overturning tables and shifting feet, hurried to the scene, porshinger and murchison were bearing their contusions down to the wash-room, while pendleton and burgoyne, without a scratch upon them--except for abraded knuckles--were in their chairs and smoking peacefully. "what was it all about--why did they start the rough house?" porshinger demanded, while they were repairing the damages. "don't you know?" asked murchison. "if i knew i wouldn't have asked you!" the other retorted. "they overheard our talk about mrs. lorraine and resented it, i think," said murchison. "hell! i might have known--pendleton and burgoyne met her when she came here this afternoon. well, i fancy we can square off with them; mrs. lorraine is a pretty fair target--and pendleton is not invulnerable to those who know how to reach him." "you would better let pendleton alone," cautioned murchison. "what! i think not. i'm not that sort. he started the fight so i'm going to accommodate him. didn't like the cut of our coats, didn't they? what the devil did they mean by that--what's our clothes got to do with starting a rough-house?" he reiterated. "i don't understand--they didn't mention the lorraine woman's name!" "no, that is just it!" murchison remarked. "they didn't mention her name; they chose some fool pretext for a quarrel so as not to mix her up with it. i've read of the thing, but i've never seen it before. pretty neat dodge: i don't like the cut of your coat, or whiskers, or cravat, or trousers--so i'll knock your infernal block off. biff! and the lady's name never mentioned! it's damn neat." porshinger looked at him in disgust. "why don't you go and tell them so!" he sneered. "they'll likely be courteous and biff you again." "probably they would," admitted murchison good-naturedly. "i didn't know they were so handy with their fists," porshinger growled--he was bathing an eye in cold water. "maybe we were only particularly unhandy with ours," the other remarked. "at any rate, they're better than us, all right." "better at the fist-game, yes," retorted porshinger. "we'll see now if they're better at some other games, damn them." "better forget it--and hold our tongues," murchison advised again. "forget it? not me! i never forget an injury--and i usually square off my debts. see!" vi on the bridle-path the talk which stephanie and gladys chamberlain had the following morning was prolonged into the after luncheon hours. it was an intimate, personal conference, wherein stephanie recounted every material incident of the amherst affair. she told her friend all, freely and without reserve: how the affair started; how it progressed; of lorraine's indifference or blindness; how it culminated; where she and amherst went; what they did; how they avoided their acquaintances; how she grew to hate amherst; his brutalities and meannesses; their slow rupture; the final break; the return, with the episode of yesterday on the club-house piazza, and her husband's refusal even to recognize her. "he wasn't altogether accountable, i fancy," said gladys kindly. "he has had his trials too, stephanie, you must remember." "i do remember--or i try to," stephanie replied; "but i can never forget his conduct or his want of conduct--his stupidity and want of sight. he could have saved me, and he _didn't_." "would you have given up amherst, if harry had demanded it of you?" "yes--if he had _demanded it like a man_. if he had thrashed amherst within an inch of his life, i think i should have adored him." "instead, he did the usual thing--thought that his wife could be trusted, or he didn't perceive. in either of which events, i don't see that he is much to blame. give henry lorraine his due, dear. he isn't much of a character possibly; he is irresolute and hesitating despite his size and appearance. yet i had hoped that you would make it up--for your sake." "for my sake!" marvelled stephanie. "it's a lot easier, you know," gladys nodded, "to resume the old life, than to cut out a new one--now." "perhaps so--but how long would the reconciliation last?" "long enough for society to forget the past. if the husband forgives, who else may say a word?" "it may be the way of expediency; it is not my way," answered stephanie. "however, if harry lorraine had made the slightest sign of forgiveness--of recognition when he saw me--even if he had but bowed, it might be different. now, i am done with him forever." "don't you think you put him to a rather hard test?" asked gladys. "without a word of warning you encountered him on the club-house piazza, before the assembled mob, and he--failed. could you expect anything else from one of his character?" "possibly not," admitted stephanie, as she daintily flicked the ash from her tiny cigarette. "he is true to type, and it is the type to which i object. between taking him back (assuming that he would have me back) or fighting it out alone, i much prefer to fight it out alone. it may require longer, but it hasn't the drag.... i had thought of going elsewhere, but that will only postpone the struggle a little while and will make it all the harder when it comes--for sooner or later they are sure to find me out. i even considered changing my name--that, too, has innumerable obstacles, with the necessity of living a lie and the constant fear of being detected." she flung her cigarette out of the window and flexed her silken knees under her. "so, on the whole, i thought it better to return and fight. i can down it soonest, if at all, at my home; and then it will stay down. i have a nasty thing to confront. i've been all kinds of a fool, and no one realizes it more than myself; but i'm not going to be weighted down with harry lorraine, nor to sacrifice myself again for him--no not even for a little while, not even for my rehabilitation. he didn't save me when he might, and i'm not going to give him another chance. i prefer to make my way alone without any aid from him." "without any aid from him, possibly, but not _alone_," gladys replied. "some of your friends are standing by you, and more will follow--many more, i hope, and soon. i shall ask margaret middleton, arabella rutledge, helen burleston, and sophia westlake to lunch with us tuesday. they will do as a starter, i think." "my dear gladys!" stephanie exclaimed, "i don't deserve such friendship as yours. i am----" the other interrupted her with a gesture. "you are stephanie mourraille to me--no matter what you did or may do. isn't that enough? so let us forget it." "i can't forget it, dear," stephanie answered. "well, you can make a bluff at it!" gladys laughed, as she arose to go. "i'll telephone you to-morrow about the luncheon, unless i see you before then. what are you doing to-morrow morning?" "i've nothing to do," said stephanie. "i'm not pressed with engagements as yet." "i hope not--i want mine to be the first," gladys returned easily. "i'll be at home all morning so if you can come over you'll find me in." "do you quite appreciate what you're about to do?" stephanie protested. gladys stopped and looked at her thoughtfully a moment. "stephanie," said she, "if you are going to play this hand through you must not think for your friends. let them think for you, and act as they see fit--and don't you be bothering about what is _past_." "i'm _not_ bothering--except for my friends," was the answer. "and your friends are amply able to look out for themselves. they are not obligated to do anything for you unless they choose. you just sit tight in the saddle and give the mare her head--above all, don't fret her. you understand." "i understand," said stephanie, "but i fear i'll do nothing but fret them, so to speak--at least for a time. under the circumstances, i'm rather a weight to carry, especially when the going is apt to be both rough and heavy." "you can never tell what the going is until you ride it," said gladys heartily. "sometimes the field worse on the surface is the best underneath." after gladys had gone, stephanie grew restless. she tried to read, but she could not keep her mind on even the print; as for the story, it made no more impression on her than a passing carriage.... presently she laid the book aside and tried to sleep.... it was futile also--more futile even than the attempt to read.... finally the restlessness became unbearable in the quiet of the house. she sprang up; she would go out--maybe the soft spring air and the out-of-doors would calm her. she wanted to go--go--go! to do something.... she dressed hurriedly--putting on a quiet street-suit with a small hat, and a white veil to conceal her face from the casual passer-by. as she passed her mother's door mrs. mourraille saw her. "i'm going out for a walk," stephanie said in answer to the look of polite inquiry. "i must do something--i'm as nervous as a filly." "it will do you good," replied mrs. mourraille. "do you wish me to go with you?" "if you don't mind, _ma mère_, i think i can walk off better alone--you understand?" "perfectly, my dear," her mother smiled. "we understand each other, i hope," as stephanie bent and kissed her. once on the avenue and swinging along at rapid pace, stephanie felt better--the restlessness was having vent. it was sunday and the people she passed were mainly of the working class. they were out for an airing on the only day of the week that permitted. occasionally she encountered some one whom she knew, but the veil was excuse for neither seeing them, nor noticing that they saw--if they did. now and then, some man would stare impertinently at her; but it lasted only for the instant. she was passing, and she did not mind--for there again the veil was her protection, though she knew that, like enough, the veil was the reason or the excuse for the stare. she reached the entrance to the park and turned in, choosing presently a bridle-path that took off from the main drive. it was retired and quiet, and ran amid the great trees from which vines hung in huge festoons of verdure. the path was soft and in fine condition, and on the turf that bordered it the foot fell without sound or shock. overhead the birds whistled and sang, the wind played lightly among the leaves through which the sun penetrated timidly as though uncertain of its welcome. after a mile or two she unconsciously hummed a song, and realized it only when it ended and the break came. she smiled to herself, and began to whistle softly one of the airs from _in a persian garden_. when it was finished, she whistled it again. presently she came to a rustic seat--a plank between two trees. she had walked now for more than an hour and the cool shade and the quiet spot appealed to her. she sat down and undid her veil. she would stay a moment and rest her eyes--the white mesh had been more than usually severe under the glint of the light through the foliage. not a soul had passed her since she had entered on the bridle-path. the noise of the city was very distant--she could scarcely hear it. at intervals came the faint clang of a gong, the whistle of a locomotive, the exhaust of an automobile on an up-grade. she did not see the man who, his horse's bridle rein over his arm, rounded the turn and came slowly toward her. her back was toward them and on the soft path the steps of the horse were almost without noise. when she did hear them and, startled, swung suddenly around, it was to come face to face with harry lorraine. the recognition was mutual and simultaneous. he stopped and surveyed her with scrutinizing glance--a bit of a frown furrowed between the eyes, the eyes themselves half closed. she regarded him with a look as impersonally indifferent as though he were the most casual stranger, then shifted it with interest to his horse. "so!" he said, after a moment's steady stare. "you have returned--after your paramour has cast you off. whom do you wait for now, i wonder?" the cold insult of the words were more than she could endure. "not you, at all events!" she retorted. he laughed mirthlessly--a hollow, mocking laugh that seemed to wrench his very soul. "no, not me," he answered--"even _your_ effrontery would hesitate at the same victim twice." she shrugged her shoulders and made no reply. he waited, while the horse drew over and began to crop the grass at her feet. at length, he spoke again. "what do you intend to do, mrs. lorraine--have you come back with the purpose of driving some bargain with me--a bargain that will leave you a trifling semblance of your good name?" a slight smile curled her lovely lips but she made no answer. "because, if you have," he went on, "i warn you that it will be unavailing." the idea of his warning her of anything now, after the way he had stood back and let her drift upon the rocks, was so intensely absurd that she laughed. "_you_ would warn me!" she inflected. "warn me!" and she laughed again. "do you think you are capable of warning any one?" he saw her meaning and his face grew pale with anger. "you think that i might have warned you before?" he broke out. "yes, i might----" "and you did not!" she interrupted. "therefore you are a contemptible knave not to have saved your own wife." "i might have warned you," he repeated slowly, "if i had suspected you were in danger of forgetting your marriage vows." "then you were a fool for not realizing it.--_you_ had plenty of warning." "plenty of warning, yes--in the light of the after events. but no warning whatever on the basis of trust and confidence. i never thought of your being _crooked_, until you proved it before all the world." "just so!" she exclaimed. "i proved it before all the world--which think you is worse: the woman who does, or the husband who through blindness or indifference suffers another man to rob him of his wife before his very eyes?" "the wife who is worthless is never missed!" he retorted. "then what quarrel have you for my going?" she demanded, "more than hurt vanity?" "it's not your going--it's your coming back that irritates me." "irritates!" she laughed. "i am sorry to have irritated you--sorry to have irritated one so childish. it may affect your mind, mr. lorraine." "if my mind has survived the last two years, i think it can survive a trifle more. nevertheless," he sneered, "i am deeply sensible of the consideration you would show me." "what are you going to do about it?" she asked sharply. "i don't quite follow your train of thought," he answered. "of course not--it was dreadfully involved," she mocked. "i beg your pardon, mr. lorraine. i meant what are you going to do now that i _have_ returned--divorce me?" "yes--divorce you," he answered bluntly. "and without delay?" "as quickly as the courts can cut us asunder." "i am glad," she said. "i rather feared you might make overtures for a reconciliation." "a reconciliation?" he exclaimed incredulously. she nodded. "you seem uncertain of your own mind--your letters, you know, were rather childish and vacillating." "i know my own mind now, thank god," he answered, his voice tense. "if i didn't know it before, it was because your beauty had befuddled it into imbecility. oh! you may smile, with all the assumed credulity you can muster, but nevertheless you know in your own heart that i speak the truth. i _did_ love you--loved every part of you, from your glorious hair to your slender arched feet. loved your proud, cold face, that can glow warm enough upon occasion--i've seen it glow for me--and often; and your lips that were made for kisses--and your arms--and your flawless shoulders, white as marble, and soft as----" her derisive laugh broke in on him. "be careful, sir, or the recollection of my charms may cause you to change your mind _again_," she cautioned. for a space he was silent. and she was silent, too--waiting. at last he spoke, slowly and deliberately. "no," he said; "the time when you held me by a smile and a nod has passed. you are just as beautiful, just as alluring, but your body is soiled with the touch of another's hands. your lips, your hair, your arms, your shoulders--everything--have all been defiled by amherst's caresses, and by yours." "am i then so polluted?" she queried. "at least," slowly stretching out her lithe limbs and looking herself over, "i see no trace of it--neither do i feel it in me." "your honor is not sufficiently developed to feel it, there's the pity," he answered. "you will catch another man with the same indifference you forsook me, or were yourself forsaken by amherst. and your basilisktic beauty will be fatal alike to them and to you." "are you a prophet?" she asked. "one does not need to be a prophet to foresee the apparent," he retorted. she laughed pityingly. "you had me unpolluted--why did you not keep me so?" she asked. "i was yours, why did you not hold me fast? you could had you tried. if i am as beautiful as you would have me believe, you were not alone in knowing it. therefore it was for you to guard me; you were my husband--and you did not. hence you are either faithless or incompetent, so you have only yourself to blame." "a naturally good woman doesn't have to be guarded," he sneered. "which shows how little--how very little--you know!" she smiled. "you are scarcely fit to be out of the nursery, harry--you need a guardian, not a wife." "the divorce court at least will relieve me of the wife," he retorted--"and i shall not want another very soon." "i trust not," she replied. two horses trotted quickly around the bend--their riders rising and falling in perfect time. an amused smile broke over stephanie's face when she recognized helen burleston and devonshire. as they flashed by, the former nodded pleasantly, the latter raised his hat. their surprised looks, however, were not concealed--nor lorraine's embarrassed acknowledgment. "we are creating a scandal--a fearful scandal!" stephanie laughed. "husband and wife, about to be divorced, have been caught talking together in a secluded bridle-path in the park. what can it mean?" "it can mean anything their imagination may suggest--except the truth!" exclaimed lorraine. "no one will ever believe it is a chance encounter." "thanks," said she. "you do me that much credit, at least." "yes; i fancy i may truthfully assume that this meeting is unpremeditated on your part as well as on mine--though you doubtless are expecting some one," he sneered. "else why are you here?" "for _once_ you do me an injustice," she replied ironically. "the circumstances speak for themselves--a secluded by-path, unfrequented on sunday afternoons, especially by pedestrians--the thick veil which you have just laid aside, doubtless to prepare for the greeting." "all of which you know perfectly well is not the truth!" she laughed. he answered with an expressive shrug. "it is not the way of those with whom you intimate that i properly belong, to appoint a rendezvous for such a place," she remarked. "their ways differ--this is your way. you are rather--unconventional, you know." "have it as you will," said she indifferently; "though, if you are correct in your assumption, don't you think the man is very laggard at the tryst?" "or you are early!" he cut in. "ah! perhaps he comes!" as the canter of a horse was heard around the bend. a moment later, montague pendleton came in sight. instantly the occurrence of yesterday at the club--pendleton's pre-nuptial admiration, together with the rumors current at that time, flashed to his mind. he leaned forward and bent his eyes on stephanie's face--to meet her amusing glance. "perhaps he _does_ come!" he said. "perhaps i am _de trop_." "then why don't you go?" she asked indifferently. it was like a blow in the face--and it angered as a blow--sharply, hotly. he took a step toward her--recovered himself--stopped--glared at her an instant--then faced pendleton, who was just at hand, and motioned for him to stop. instantly pendleton drew rein and dismounted. his surprise he concealed under the well-bred air of courteous greeting. "what does it mean?" he thought. "have they become reconciled--is it a chance meeting--has stephanie reconsidered--has lorraine made his peace for the affront of yesterday?" one glance at lorraine's face, however, answered him. there had been no reconciliation--no peace made; rather had the breach widened, if that were possible. he put his arm through his bridle-rein, and coming forward took stephanie's hand and pressed it meaningly--and got an answering pressure back. then he nodded pleasantly to lorraine. "you will pardon me for intruding!" lorraine exclaimed. "i didn't realize, until a moment ago, that mrs. lorraine had an appointment here with you." pendleton understood a little now--and he turned to stephanie with a politely interrogating air. "mr. lorraine seems to be laboring under some excitement, stephanie," he said, "may i ask you to explain--if you think it worth while. i'll not misunderstand, however, if you do not." "mr. lorraine does me the honor to think that i have an appointment to meet you here--and that he has discovered us," she answered, unperturbed. "is that what you mean, lorraine?" pendleton inquired. "that is exactly what i mean," he burst out. "else why do i find her here and waiting--and why do you come?" "don't be foolish, lorraine," said pendleton kindly.--"you don't mean that--you're overwrought and nervous----" "i'm not overwrought nor nervous!" lorraine exclaimed. "and neither am i foolish any longer. i _was_ blind _once_, but i'm not blind now. amherst's gone--and you're substituted." pendleton looked at him doubtfully--was it hurt pride or just plain jealousy? he could not determine. stephanie _had_ lost amherst; but she had come back and lorraine had denied her--and yet, here he was positively shaking with rage, because he thought he had surprised her in a rendezvous with another man. he had cast her off before all the world, and yet he wanted still to dictate as to what she did! pendleton glanced at stephanie; she flashed him a smile, and shook her head not to become involved in a quarrel. "well, what have you to say?" sputtered lorraine. "before i answer," returned pendleton calmly, "i would like to know by what right you ask?" "by what right i ask! by what right do you think i ask. isn't she still my wife?" "she is your _wife_--but you have lost all right to supervise her actions. she is free of you--absolutely free. you made her free on the club-house piazza yesterday. you have no more authority over her than any other man--you have less, indeed, for you renounced even that when you disowned her and cast her adrift." "so long as she bears my name, she shall not trail it in the mire in this town by a vulgar, public assignation, if i can prevent it. i have cause enough without that disgrace!" lorraine declared. "until the courts have divorced us she shall be decent, ostensibly at least--afterward i don't care what she does nor when." pendleton frowned. "that is discourteously blunt language, lorraine," he replied. "it is not the time nor the _occasion_ to mince words," lorraine retorted. "you are here by pre-arrangement and----" "that is a lie--and you know it's a lie," pendleton answered. "in the light of _her_ past or of yours?" was the sneering question. pendleton hesitated what to answer. the man was plainly laboring under intense excitement. his hands were trembling, his face was flushed, he was beating a tatoo on his boot with his crop. suddenly stephanie spoke. she had remained sitting down until now. "i think it is better that i should continue my walk," she remarked. "you men are not apt to come to an understanding, so let us go our respective ways. mr. pendleton, i thank you more than i can say--and i shall be glad to see you at my home any time you choose to call. i shall wait until you both are gone." "come, lorraine!" pendleton laughed good-naturedly. "we will go together." on stephanie's account he was willing to do anything to get him off. "no--we will _not_ go together," lorraine replied curtly, ignoring the other's friendly tones and manner. "you'll go first, and i'll follow to see that you don't come back." his bearing was quite as insulting as his words, but pendleton did not seem to notice. it was the indulgent man and the complaining boy. and stephanie understood and gave pendleton a quick glance of appreciation. he was trying to save her from further annoyance, she knew, and she loved him for it, but she had endured so much the last two years that she was hardened to a callous indifference. once she would have been shamed to the earth by lorraine's accusation; now it made no impression on her--she simply shrugged it aside. indeed, she found herself studying its revelations as to her husband's character, and pitying him for this exposition of his weakness and vacillation. "perhaps i would better go first since mr. lorraine is so exacting and distrustful of a _friend_," she interposed. "good-bye, montague," giving him her hand; "i seem to be unfortunate lately with all who are disposed to be nice to me. it won't always be so, i hope; i am not all bad!" she smiled. and with never a look at lorraine, she passed in front of him and went down the path toward town. lorraine watched her go--and pendleton watched lorraine. when she had passed around the bend, the former turned slowly and encountered the latter's eyes. "pendleton," said he impulsively, "i apologize! i didn't mean it--i think i'm crazy--i must be crazy. won't you shake hands with me?" "of course i will, lorraine," pendleton replied. "and you don't need to apologize to _me_--apologize to stephanie. she is the one you owe it to." lorraine's face hardened. "what do you think she owes me?" he asked. "we are not computing the balance on the amherst affair--we are dealing with the present instance, and in it you were wholly at fault. because she slipped once, doesn't imply that she slips constantly, nor does it excuse you for assuming that fact. good god! man, give your wife credit for regretting her mistake and wanting to live it down--it's the normal and rational way to look at it. be a little charitable in your view--stephanie needs it--we all need it." "do you mean that i should not divorce her--that i should take her back?" "that question you must decide for yourself." "i ask for your opinion." pendleton shook his head. "you must decide for yourself," he repeated, preparing to mount. "i shall decide for myself--but i want your opinion," lorraine persisted. pendleton let his hand rest on the pommel of his saddle and considered. what was the best for stephanie--to return to lorraine or to be free of him? he was not sure she knew herself; yet he wanted to help her even in a little, if his advice would be a feather-weight toward that end. "tell me!" exclaimed lorraine again. he made a quick resolution--it could do no harm--it would still be for her to determine: "i should by all means take her back--if she will have you," he answered. "if she will have me!" lorraine interrogated in surprise. "you think there is any doubt about it?" "candidly i do--very material doubt, indeed." "you say that with knowledge--you have talked with her!" lorraine cried, instantly suspicious. "i saw mrs. lorraine but a few minutes at the club-house, yesterday. is it likely she would discuss you there?" pendleton replied. "it was not until she was leaving, remember, that she encountered you and your--rebuff." it was an unfortunate speech. pendleton realized it as the last word was said. it brought to lorraine's mind the scene of yesterday, and his decision--made before them all. he had refused to recognize her then--should he reverse himself within twenty-four hours--make himself the laughing stock of every one--prove himself a mere will-o-the-wisp? he had been about to dash after stephanie and apologize--to ask her to come back--to forgive and forget the past. but now he was not so sure--he must take time to consider--must ponder the situation gravely--must---- he looked at pendleton, indecision showing in his face and sounding in his voice as he replied: "it is a serious matter--i must think over it, pendleton, i must think over it. i will know what to do to-morrow--and to-morrow is time enough to decide a matter that has been in abeyance for two years." pendleton nodded. "very well," he replied. "i said it is a matter for you alone to decide; but if you will be advised _you_ will decide it without taking counsel with anyone. make up your own mind, lorraine, and then stick to it." "you're very right, and i'll do it," lorraine answered; and with a wave of the hand he trotted away. "i wonder," pendleton mused, as he went slowly down the hill, "what it must mean not to know your own mind any better than lorraine knows his--to be as changeable and as irresponsible--to keep debating and putting off a decision for two years--and then be no nearer it than you were at first." vii an offer and an answer lorraine took pendleton's advice. he did not take counsel with anyone--not even with cameron, with whom he dined at the club that evening, and afterward played billiards until bedtime. the thought of what he had said to him yesterday, as to his intended course of conduct, may have deterred him, as well as a hesitation to admit the instability of his own mind. yesterday he was fixed on divorce--to-day he was not so sure. the real reason for his uncertainty was his wife's beauty. yesterday he had not noticed it--had not time to notice it, being occupied with the instant. but this sunday affair was quite different. he had been alone with her--and he had seen again the adorably beautiful woman--whom once he had possessed, but possessed no longer; who was colder to him now than a graven image. the trim, slender figure in its close cut walking-skirt; the narrow, high-arched feet that she put down so well; the small head, with its crown of auburn hair; the cold, proud, high-bred face that once had been so tender for him, he now saw in all their loveliness--recollected in all their perfectness. and they weighed heavily in the scale--almost balancing her sin. nay, there were moments when they did balance it, and a trifle more--until he grew hesitating again and doubtful.... and the hesitancy gradually grew less, and the doubt gradually decreased. then one afternoon in the latter part of the week, as he was coming from his office, the day's work done, he saw her ahead of him on the opposite side of the avenue. and he became so absorbed in watching her that he was three blocks beyond his club before he realized it. guiltily he turned and retraced his steps; and alone, in a quiet corner of the lounge with a high-ball and his face to the wall, he fought it out with himself. and having fought it out, he did a most unusual thing for him--he acted straightway upon his decision, and did not wait for it to cool and himself to doubt and hesitate and change. he pushed the bell. "call a taxi!" said he to the boy. when it came, he gave mrs. mourraille's number. there was a click, as the flag went up, and they whirred away. "you need not wait," said he, handing the driver a bill as the car drew up before the house. the man touched his cap and shot off. lorraine crossed the sidewalk, went up the steps and rang the bell. the aged butler answered. he had been in the mourraille family for a generation, but even his automaton calm was not proof against such a surprise, and he failed to repress wholly the amazement from his face and manner when he beheld who stood in the doorway. "i want to see mrs. lorraine a moment, tompkins," said lorraine, and went in with the utmost nonchalance. there were no instructions against admitting lorraine, so tompkins could do nothing but bow him into the living-room. then he went slowly up to the library and gave the card to mrs. lorraine. she took it from the tray, wondering as she did so who was calling on _her_, and read the name--and read it again. then she frowned slightly and remained silent. the butler stood at attention and waited--waited so long, indeed, that mrs. mourraille glanced up from her evening paper, having observed the whole thing, and inquired casually: "who is it, stephanie?" her daughter passed the bit of pasteboard across--then nodded to tompkins that she would be down. mrs. mourraille's heart gave a great bound--if, in so placid a woman, anything ever could bound--when she read the name. the thing for which she had hoped--for which she had prayed--for two years was that stephanie would make it up with her husband, and go back to him. it was the better way--the way that made everything as nearly right as was humanly possible--the easier way for everyone. if he overlooked her fault, who else had any cause to cavil? she had been much too wise, however, to urge it unasked. it must come voluntarily from stephanie--then she could add her counsel and encouragement. but better even than stephanie was lorraine himself--and what else could his unexpected coming mean than an overture for a reconciliation! "you will receive him?" she asked quietly. stephanie nodded. "i suppose," she said, "it is some arrangement about the divorce--but i can't understand why he should come in person to make it." "perhaps it is a first step in an attempt to effect a--readjustment of matters," her mother suggested. stephanie had risen--now she paused, and a smile flitted across her face. "as you hope it is--and hope also that it will be successful, _n'est ce pas_?" she said, bending down and kissing her. "what i hope, dear, is that you will do the best for yourself," mrs. mourraille answered--"and you can alone decide that best, and hope to remain satisfied with the decision. go and see what harry wants; it was a great deal for him to come here, and you should not keep him waiting." "particularly as he may change his mind if i keep him waiting long!" she laughed; and with a little caressing touch to her mother's cheek, she went down to the living-room. lorraine was standing with his back to the fireplace, nervously drawing his gloves back and forth through his fingers. he came forward and offered her his hand--and after just a second's hesitation, she touched it momentarily. it was as though she said: "as the hostess, i cannot do less, but i don't in the least fancy the doing." "will you sit down, mr. lorraine?" she said perfunctorily, letting herself sink into a chair with the lithe grace he remembered so well. she was perfectly at ease--with the air of one who entertains a casual visitor. she looked at him, politely interrogatively, and waited for him to begin. it was his move, and she did not intend to help him in the least. lorraine was not so tranquil--his agitation showed in his slightly flushed face and in his manner. he took out his handkerchief and passed it across his lips. when he did speak he knew it was with an effort and unnaturally. "stephanie," he said, "i want to apologize for what i did at the club-house, and what i said yesterday--will you let me?" "certainly," she replied impersonally. "an apology is one thing that you can tender and one thing that i can accept." "it does not right the injury----" he began. "no, it does not right it," she concurred. "any more than your apology will right the injury you have done me," he added. "and mine was the greater injury," she observed. "i know it. there is no apology i can offer that will be effective--so, why try?" "don't try!" he exclaimed. "just let us forget it, and take a fresh start." he leaned forward and took her hand--and she, in sheer amazement, suffered him to retain it. "i am willing to forgive, stephanie, if you are willing to come back to me. will you do it, dear?" for a moment she had the impulse to ask how long this notion had actuated him, and how long he thought that it would last. then the keen injustice of the taunt came home to her, and with it a sharp sense of just what such an offer meant from _him_. aside from everything--of blindness when he should have seen, of supineness when he should have acted, of vacillation when he should have known his own mind, of all the other deficiencies of which he was guilty--there yet remained the ever present, ever damning fact that _she_ was a guilty wife; and that he was willing to overlook the past, and to restore her to the place she once had, made all his shortcomings as nothing in comparison. it mattered not how soon he might again change his mind--that was not the present question. he had offered. he was waiting for her answer. she had but to accept--and the thing was done beyond the fear of change. "will you do it, stephanie, dear?" she heard him say again--she did not know how often he had said it. she released her hand and sat staring down at the rug at her feet. it was a senna prayer rug, beautiful in coloring and soft as an autumn twilight in the tones, but she was looking back into the past--its lost opportunities and forsaken shrines.... presently her glance shifted to lorraine--and lingered, speculatively, appraisingly, as though casting up the balances. it swept him slowly from head to foot, pausing long upon his face--so long, indeed, that he shifted uneasily and smiled in self defence. "will you do it, stephanie, dear?" he repeated. she slowly shook her head. "i cannot," she answered. "why can't you, dear?" he asked. "because i do not love you!" "what has that to do with the question?" he replied. "neither do i know that i love you--we must try----" "i know," she interrupted; "you don't love me--and love is the one thing that could heal the wounds the past two years have made--for us both." "do you love that scoundrel amherst?" he asked. "i do not," was the calm answer--"and you have termed him rightly--he _is_ a scoundrel." "do you love any other man?" "i do not!" looking him straight in the face. "then let us try it, stephanie," he said. but she shook her head again. "it is not just to you----" "let me be the judge of that," he cut in. "neither is it just to me," she ended. "you will take me back for the sake of appearances. you think to save me and yourself some temporary unpleasantness by obviating a divorce--by preventing scare headlines in the papers. you don't see that you would be making untold unpleasantness for us both through the remainder of our lives. when we are apart and need only the court's severing decree, why should we assume a life of wretchedness for both? i bear the heavier burden now. i am content to bear it for a little while--until the world has forgotten--rather than to purchase that forgetfulness by a reconciliation which would be only in name--and scarcely in name, indeed." "why should it be only in name?" he asked, leaning toward her. "it won't be with me, dear." "you are very good to say so," she replied--"but you'll think differently in a month--in a week possibly. amherst will be ever between us--you will always see him; and as time passes you will see him only the more. nothing we can do will remove him--he will be persistently present--you can't see me without thinking of him--and of what i did with him. and that can have only one result--renewed unhappiness for us both, and eventually the final break. therefore why not let the break be now--when it is anticipated by every one and is so much easier for us both?" she might have added--what was in her mind--that with a man of strong and resolute purpose the experiment would not be so hazardous of success; but with one of his character the issue was not even doubtful--it would be decided before it was begun. a spasm of anger had crossed his face at her reference to amherst and herself, and for a moment she had hoped that he would recall his offer--but as she talked it passed, and when he spoke it was with quiet resolution. "wouldn't we better eliminate amherst from the question?" he asked. "i understand that episode has ended!" "it has, indeed!" she answered,--"as between amherst and me--but it can never end as between you and me." "as between you and me it is as we make it," he returned. "i engage that i shall never, by word or act, refer to amherst, nor to what you have done. it will be as though it had never been. is not that satisfactory?" "you can't engage to control your thoughts," she replied; "and thoughts tincture acts, however much we may strive to avoid it. it's generous, more generous than i can say, for you to offer to take me back--but it cannot be, harry. we may as well face the matter as it is--there need be no concealment between us surely. i do not love you--i never shall love you. you do not love me--you never can love me. it is much wiser to end things now than to drag them along a little while and end them." "why do you say i do not love you?" he asked. "because you admitted it yourself a moment since, and because, aside from that, i know it." he made a denying gesture. "i loved you when we were married," he broke out. "we both loved then--or thought we did--but we both have learned much, since that day at st. luke's." she sat up and bent nearer to him. "and one of the things we have learned is that we are better apart--and i have proven it--by running away with another man. and you have proven it--by not following instantly and taking me from him--or killing him." "what have i proven by my present attitude?" he demanded. "your magnanimity--but not your love. and as i said, love alone would justify a reconciliation now, or give the slightest warrant for the future." for a time he made no answer, looking at her steadily with thoughtful eyes. at last he spoke. "am i to understand then that you refuse my offer?" he asked. "i refuse!" she answered. "for both our sakes--yours as well as mine--i refuse your offer." there was a finality in her manner that left him no present ground for hope. it was useless to argue further at this time, and he knew it. he arose to go. she arose also. then a sudden, irresistible impulse came over him. scarce knowing what he did, nor the reason why he did it, he seized her in his arms and crushed her to him. she fought him in silence; with all her strength she strove to break from his encircling arms--that held her only the tighter, while his face drew slowly nearer hers. her breath came in fierce gasps, as closer and closer he pressed her--his lips ever nearer and nearer to her own. "let me go!" she panted. "let me go!" but he only smiled. the perfume from her hair, the warmth of her body, the intoxication from her person were working their due. he was only a man--and she was only a woman. he kissed her on the lips fiercely--once--twice--a score of times--straining her to him with an intensity that left her helpless. "you coward!--you coward!--you coward!" she kept repeating. and every time he kissed her more fiercely than the last. then, suddenly as he had seized her, he loosed her and stepped back--so suddenly, indeed, she swayed and almost fell. "you beast! you miserable beast!" she breathed, wiping away his kisses. he laughed, a low mocking laugh. "did you call amherst a beast?" he asked. "you miserable beast!" she repeated. "who has a better right?" he queried. "you miserable beast," she said again. "who has a better right to kiss you than your husband? your lover?" he sneered. "go!" she cried, pointing to the door. "go! and never speak to me again." "why all these melodramatics?" he inquired. "what have i done that is wrong--how have i offended?" "i have asked you to leave the house," she answered. "if you go quietly at once well and good. if you do not"--laying her hand on the button in the wall behind her--"i shall ring for tompkins and bid him summon the police." "still melodramatic!" he laughed. she pressed the button. "you shall decide whether the butler shows you out or summons an officer," she replied. tompkins appeared in the doorway and waited. she looked calmly at lorraine, and lorraine looked at her--then he held out his hand. "good-bye!" he said. "good-bye!" she answered, and turned away. he took a step toward her, and dropped his voice so that tompkins could not hear. "and i'm not so sure _now_ that i want a divorce," he said--"and _you_ can't get one." her only reply was the slightest shrug of the shoulders and an expressive motion of her hands--she did not even take the trouble to turn her head. and after a second's hesitation, lorraine faced about and strode away. viii the summons a month went by and lorraine made no move to obtain a divorce--neither did he appear to seek a reconciliation. at first society was aghast with wonder, then it gradually accepted the course as one of lorraine's eccentricities of character. at the beginning he had made no secret of his purpose to institute suit whenever personal service could be obtained on her--although he was of course aware that personal service was not necessary in such a case. he had a rather quixotic idea of the matter, it seemed. now when he was given the opportunity, and had openly expressed his intention to proceed forthwith, he suddenly veered off and became non-committal and non-communicative--even to his intimate friends. they did not know--no one knew from him--that he had offered reconciliation and that stephanie had refused it. on this he was absolutely silent. he had been injured enough before all the world without giving it fresh food for gossip in this new injury that was almost as searing to his pride as the other. to have his wife run off with another man was humiliating enough, but to have his offer to forget and forgive, and to reinstate calmly declined, was mortifying to the last degree. even to cameron he could not bring himself to confess such a shameful thing. and the more he brooded over it, the greater seemed the wrong and the more he grew to hate--not stephanie, but amherst. amherst's was the injury: if he had not led her astray there never would have been the scandal--and her love would not have been lost. no--stephanie was not to blame! it was amherst! amherst had entered his home and had robbed him of his dearest possessions--his wife and his wife's love; made of him a mock and a jest--a thing despised or pitied, as the case might be. he imagined that he was the butt of all society--the forsaken husband at whom they were laughing slyly for his incompetence in not protecting his own. but instead of confiding his notion to cameron or to some other friend, as he was wont to do, he buried it deep in his heart--and fed upon it until it became the main-spring of his life: to square accounts with amherst. and as amherst grew the blacker to him, stephanie grew the whiter--until finally he even acquitted her of all voluntary wrong. she was amherst's victim, as much as himself. which, only to a certain extent, was true. amherst had led her astray--but she had gone willingly, and with never a thought of the husband who was too weak or too heedless to hold her to propriety and duty. and though he nursed his wrath to keep it warm, he did not venture--yet--to intrude on stephanie again. he went his usual way; and with the craft of his passion he was changed only in one respect:--upon the subject of his married life, its past and its future, concerning which he had once been so voluble, he now never spoke. and unless he spoke first, no one could speak to him. though every one marvelled exceedingly--and many expressed their marvel to one another in becoming or unbecoming fashion, depending on the respective point of view and the respective disposition of the expressor--usually a woman. stephanie, meanwhile, went her way with the same air of contemptuous indifference that she had shown on the club-house piazza the afternoon of her reappearance. at first, society had resented it--a few resented it actively--but soon they began to soften a bit, and not to be quite blind when she was in the vicinity. stephanie lorraine was of unimpeachable birth. her ancestors had been in society as long as there was any society to be in--except aborigines; and if one, under such circumstances, assumes an attitude of superiority, the general herd will follow in time--even though the way be through the avenue of the divorce court. the difficulty in the case was that mrs. postlewaite and mrs. porterfield--the "queen p's," as they were called--were a trifle recalcitrant. they ruled society and they had not approved of stephanie's doings even before she married. she had been quite too disregardful of conventions. her affair with amherst was shameful enough, they averred, but when it had culminated in the elopement, they were outraged beyond words--figuratively speaking, that is; there was no paucity and little repression of language in the actual. and when she suddenly returned, without a warning or even an intimation, and came up to the club-house in the most casual manner--as though she had done _nothing! nothing! nothing!_ they were enraged at her "effrontery." it was the end of their reign, they saw, unless she were made to pay penance for her offence in sackcloth and ashes. the younger set would defy their authority--they were near to defying it now, with their new-fangled ideas and disregard for every convention that stood for the old order. they might overlook some things, even though they were bizarre and questionable, but stephanie's offence was beyond the pale. if she were permitted to come back to all her old privileges, and to go unpunished by society for her crime against it, then the reign of the dissolute and depraved had begun. and they shook their heads gravely, and with much decision resolved that it must not be. so they let their decision be known and set quickly to work. it was acquiesced in by almost all elders and by those who naturally follow the leaders. of the others, the majority thought that there was no haste in the matter, and composed themselves and awaited developments. the few who were independent, and accustomed to do as they pleased, were uninfluenced by the rest--but they waited also. and those that the queen p's had thought would receive stephanie with open arms--the fast members of the younger set--held off, and even edged away. they realized that the lorraine affair had made their own conduct all the more marked, and they were afraid to take her up. as one of them put it: "a fellow feeling's all right--but we're not running an eleemosynary institution at this stage of the game." the degrees of intimacy, moreover, could be gauged by the manner of salutation. some did not speak at all--some spoke only when it could not be avoided--some spoke when the occasion required--some spoke always but with a certain reserve--some spoke naturally, but went no further--some were as they had always been--friends. and stephanie met them in kind. gladys chamberlain, elaine croyden, dorothy tazewell, margaret middleton, helen burleston, sophia westlake, and a few others among the women, were her friends. pendleton, burgoyne, croyden, mortimer, fitzgerald, devereux, westlake, devonshire and a score of others among the men. there is never a dearth of men where the woman is a beauty and well-born--that she is also a woman with a past only adds to her attractiveness. to but one person, other than her mother, did stephanie reveal the incident of lorraine's visit--and then not until some time thereafter. it was one evening when she and pendleton had dined together alone at her home--mrs. mourraille being out of town for several days--and were sitting afterward in the piazza-room in the moonlight. "stephanie," said he--after a pause, and apropos of nothing--dropping his cigarette into the ash tray on the taboret between them and lighting another, "what do you make out of lorraine--isn't his conduct exceedingly queer?" "in what way?" she asked. "in not applying for a divorce." "is that an exhibition of queerness on his part?" she smiled. "it is--he never does the natural thing. what would be idiotic in a sensible chap is just what one expects from him. that saturday at the club-house--afterward, you know--he was going to begin action on monday. and sunday you had the peculiar scene in the park where he threatened you with its immediate filing and so on--yet since that day no one has ever heard him mention divorce." "rather an unusual time for harry to hold to one opinion!" she laughed. "i should say a change is long overdue." and when pendleton looked at her with a puzzled air she added: "he told me he would not get a divorce--and that i could not. i'm waiting for him to change his mind again and to file his papers. i am advised that once filed they cannot be withdrawn without my consent, and that i am permitted to press for a decision." "he told you that sunday in the park?" he exclaimed. "no--it was somewhat later in the week. he came here, and--offered to--take me back--to forget and forgive. and i declined." "you declined?" he marvelled. "did you appreciate what you were throwing away, stephanie?" "yes--a worthless man, for one thing," she replied. "and what else?" he asked, leaning a bit forward. "a life-time of incompatibility and discord." "and what else?" "the opportunity for society to overlook my--sin," she answered. he nodded. "just so--and you choose against society. was it wise, stephanie; was it wise, do you think?" "what do _you_ think it was, montague?" she asked with an intimate little smile. "i think it was very foolish," he replied promptly; then added--"from the point of expediency." "and very wise from the point of happiness and myself--_n'est ce pas_?" she smiled. "yes," he said; "unquestionably, yes--but few would have had the courage to refuse." "let me tell you about it," she broke in. she disliked praise even from her best friends, and she feared pendleton would not remember. "mother was dreadfully disappointed, i fear--though she has not mentioned the matter since. it was the expedient way, of course; it would minimize the scandal, and things would go along pretty much as before. that is just the difficulty. i couldn't return to the old way. i could not endure it for a moment--not even long enough to make a show at the reconciliation so that i might purchase society's forgetfulness. no, not even if i could be assured, before going back to him, of ultimately being divorced." "i understand," he said. "you always understand, montague," she replied. "you're the most satisfactory of friends." he made a deprecatory gesture. he was as averse as she to praise. "you were about to tell of the lorraine offer?" he reminded her. and she told him all--not withholding even the final scene. "i am not surprised," he remarked, when she had finished. "it is just what one might expect from lorraine. he was not too strong-minded to start with, and this affair seems to have put him entirely to the bad. he is keeping his own counsel now, however, which is suspicious. as you say, he is long overdue for a change of mind, and it doesn't seem to be forthcoming. how does he act when he sees you--if you've noticed?" "it is rather queer but i haven't seen him since that afternoon. possibly because i've been at the club very rarely--not over a half-dozen times, i should say--you were with me on the most of them." "at least he has been quiescent," pendleton added--"and sticking to business, i hear, most assiduously. in that respect your coming back seems to have steadied him." "i'm glad to have done him some good indirectly," she smiled. "he still is just a boy," said pendleton, "despite his thirty years. he has always had his own way, with nothing to settle him until this came--and it completely unsettled him. so much so that very few of the men had much sympathy for him. it went to you, stephanie, instead. in fact, the men had the matter right from the very first; they knew lorraine, they knew amherst, and they knew--other things, as well." "and the women?" she asked. "oh, damn the women!" he replied.--"i beg your pardon, stephanie--but it is mrs. postlewaite and mrs. porterfield and all their kind, i mean. a small number are discriminating and broad minded, like gladys chamberlain and elaine croyden and sophia westlake and a few more. they are friends--the rest are worthless bundles of dress goods--manikins, if you please, pulled this way and that by the fetish of the commonplace and the proper." "don't tell mrs. postlewaite!" laughed stephanie. "she would have a fit." "it might do her some good if she had. i despise those people who are so smug and self satisfied in their assumed superiority that they think their _ipse dixit_ inflates the social balloon. it's a positive pleasure to have some one kick a hole in it just to show them they're wrong." "as i did, you mean," said she. "however, it would have been quite as effective had i made another sort of kick. i punctured the balloon, all right, but its entangling folds may stifle me. at least they are pretty stifling at present. it would be a small matter if i were a man--a man can do things and be none the worse for them; but i'm a woman--and it is a powerful big undertaking, montague, for a woman to kick the social balloon. generally the balloon flies back and overwhelms her." "it's not going to overwhelm you," he insisted. "not if you and the rest of my friends can prevent--and i think you can," she replied. "i am fortunate in my friends--that is where i'm very, very lucky." he smiled sympathetically. he knew what she did not:--the governors of the country club were meeting that night and her resignation as a member would likely be requested. the queen p's and _their_ allies had accomplished so much of their plans for her punishment. the majority of the board was made up of men who sought to be popular, and who kow-towed to mrs. postlewaite and her clique as the ultimate authority. the popular thing was to run with the sentiment, and so they were running. the few younger members were sure to vote against it, but they would be too weak in numbers to control. he would not tell her, however, for something might yet intervene to prevent--the want of a quorum; the want of a sufficient majority; the want of anything would cause the matter to be postponed. as an echo to his thoughts came her next remark. "i have considered, montague, that it might be well if i were to resign from the country club," she said. "i know that almost all the women members are violently opposed to me, and it seems scarcely just to the few friends i have there for me to put them on the defensive and oblige them to make a fight. the queen p's are hot against me, and they can render it exceedingly unpleasant for the meager opposition, if they are so minded--and i think we may assume that they are. what would you advise?" for a while he was silent--his fingers playing slowly over the arm of his chair. he was disposed to answer no--she should not be forced into resigning, at this late day, by all the sentiment the infernal women could muster. had she acted promptly on her return it would have been entirely voluntary; now it savored too much of compulsion, and yet without any one bearing the responsibility. on the other hand, if she permitted the club to _demand_ her resignation, she did not make the actual opposition any more violent, while all those who opposed such radical action--and he knew their number was not small--would naturally be favorable, in a greater or less degree, to her cause. in other words, she would stand to lose none and to gain many. "what would you advise me to do, montague?" she repeated. "i would advise you not to resign. hold on--and let them do the resigning for you, if the governors are so minded." "you mean you would let them request my resignation?" he nodded. "it will make you friends--assuredly it will lose you none. that is where a woman has the advantage over a man. a club can kick a man out and no one ever questions its justice--but it is different with a woman. she is entitled to something more than mere justice--a certain courtesy and consideration must always be hers, together with a proper regard for her sex. mere justice to a woman becomes injustice--and injustice always reacts on itself." "you are considering the matter only as it affects me," stephanie insisted, "while i'm concerned as to the way it affects my friends. what ought i do out of regard for _them_, is the question." "whatever is best for yourself," he answered. "they are friends, you know." "but i don't know what is best--moreover, for myself i don't care a rap one way or the other. it is nothing to me to belong to their club, or to chatter small talk and scandal, to lunch and dine and go to the horse-show, and fancy i'm having a glorious time. i'm not a debutante any longer. i've seen enough of life to know the shallows--and society is the shallowest of them all." "yes you do care, stephanie," he said. "you think that you don't, and all that, but everyone cares for them to a greater or less extent. it's only a matter of degree--life is made up of degrees, and social amenities, their obligations and duties are a part of life." "i suppose you're right," she admitted, "but, just at present, mine are in an infinitesimal degree," and she crossed her knees and leaned back in content. "at this moment i haven't a care in the world." "miss philosopher!" he smiled. "_mrs._ philosopher, you mean!" she corrected. "your pardon!" said he. "for the moment, i quite forgot." "it might be well to forget it forever," she reflected. "i am very willing," he replied, regarding her with indulgent eyes. she gave him a quick glance, then looked away and a dreamy expression shone in her eyes. "montague," she said presently. "is there no way that i can procure a divorce?" "i'm afraid not," he answered very kindly--"unless lorraine permits it. he has offered you a home and to take you back, and you have refused; so that disposes of desertion or non-support. and if you try to convict him of having been--indiscreet--he can set up your own indiscretion as a defense." "isn't incompatibility of temper a ground for divorce?" she asked. "yes, but it would not apply in your case, if he opposed the suit." "it all rests with him then," she remarked, with a shrug of denuded shoulders. "unless he wishes to be free of me, i must stay bound. it doesn't seem quite just--and it's _very_ irksome." "it is entirely just," he said, "but it _is_ irksome to you--and foolish in him to hold you. however, it is his right and he alone is the judge. the sensible thing would be for him to divorce you on the ground of desertion. it would accomplish the result with a minimum of unpleasantness for you both." "then it would be the first time that he ever did the sensible thing, when he could do the reverse," she remarked. "aren't you a little bitter?" he smiled. "bitter!" she said thoughtfully. "probably i am. i can't pardon him for his supineness, his silly disregard of my danger. i may be wrong--may be doing him a deep injustice--but i shall never forgive him for letting me sink into amherst's clutches. a pretty mess i have made of my life so far!" she commented, with a sarcastic little laugh. he leaned forward and took her hand--and she let him take it. "don't, dear!" he entreated, with all the tenderness of the strong man. "it is not such a mess as you think. it will work out for your advantage--it has already done so--you're free of both lorraine and amherst. isn't that something?" "if i _were_ free of lorraine i think i should be satisfied; it would be worth everything else--but i'm not." "not legally free, but free in fact," he answered. "and you'll be legally free also in a short time--a very short time. lorraine's present mind can't last much longer, stephanie." "i hope you're a true prophet," said she, withdrawing her hand--as tompkins appeared to light the candles in their big glass shades. "i wish i were as certain of something else as i am of that," he reflected slowly, studying the coal of his cigarette, but watching her face with deliberately avowed surreptitiousness. and she observed it and inferred what he meant, and her pulses beat a trifle faster, but beyond a smile, which she contrived to be half-puzzled, half-questioning, and wholly fascinating, she made no answer. she was lovelier now, he thought, than he had ever seen her. her figure, in its clinging narrow evening gown, had rounded into the most adorable curves, though retaining all its youthful slenderness. two years ago she had suggested what to-night she was--a glorious woman. and the flawless face, ordinarily so cold in its beauty, was soft and tender as he had never thought to see it. he bent over and deliberately looked her in the eyes--and she, from the recess of her chair, knowing that he would come no further, calmly looked him back. neither spoke--yet the one told a purpose formed, and the other did not warn him to desist. "do you realize just how lovely you are?" he asked. "yes," she smiled. "i have my eyes and my mirrors--and an admiring maid." "but you haven't----" he began--and broke off. he was about to say "you haven't a husband to tell you." and she guessed his words instantly--but not his exact meaning. "'i haven't a husband to tell me,' you were going to say. why didn't you say it? it would have been no more than the truth." "i was not thinking of lorraine as the husband," he replied. she gave a little gasp of surprise at its unexpectedness--a gasp that ended, however, in a smile and a shake of the ruddy head. "please give me a cigarette," she said, extending her hand. he drew out his case and offered it to her. "is this all that i may give you now?" he asked. "all!" she replied, passing a match across the tip. "all--now.... what is it, tompkins?" as the butler appeared in the doorway and bowed. "the telephone, madam!" monotoned tompkins. "did you get the name?" she asked. "the homoeopathic hospital, madam; they want to speak to you at once." "what can it be?" she exclaimed, turning to pendleton. "come into the living-room with me, montague--i'm afraid of hospitals--dreadfully afraid--even by telephone." pendleton arose and accompanied her. "it is nothing," he assured her. "i am mrs. lorraine," she said, when she reached the receiver. "what is it, please?" "this is the hahnemann hospital, mrs. lorraine," came the answer and pendleton could hear it on the other side of the table. "your husband was seriously injured this evening when his automobile collided with a street car. he was unconscious when brought in, but revived for a moment and has asked for you." she raised her eyes to pendleton. he nodded that he had understood. "is he conscious now?" she asked to gain time. her mind was in a whirl. "no--he relapsed almost instantly. it is impossible to tell now how seriously he is injured. he has bled profusely, from several superficial wounds, but we fear he has been hurt internally. he may also be suffering from concussion. we thought it best, mrs. lorraine, to advise you of his condition and that he asked for you," the voice went on, a trifle apologetically. "you did very right," she replied. "i'll come to the hospital at once." she hung up the receiver and looked at pendleton. "you heard?" "everything." "what _could_ i do?" she demanded. "nothing but what you did." "but i don't want to do it--i don't want to see him--i don't wish him to die, but----" "never mind," he said tenderly. "you don't have to go--you are quite justified in not seeing him. and his condition is not dependent upon your presence or your absence. do exactly as you choose, stephanie." "but _if_ he should die! if he should die, having asked for me, and i having been told and then not hastening to him at once! as a fellow human--not as a wife--is it right that i should deny him what may be his last request?" "a request he has already forgotten in unconsciousness," pendleton replied. "under all the circumstances, your duty depends wholly upon your own desires--to go or not to go as you think best. you are not obligated to consider anything else. hence i approved of your first determination to go to the hospital; when you changed your mind and said you would not go, i approve of it also." "what do you _advise_ me to do?" she asked tremulously. "i should advise you to go," he said quietly. "and stay?" "that can be determined later." "and will you go with me?" "i'll go anywhere or do anything you want, dear," he replied. ix hopelessness and threats throwing a wrap over her evening gown, stephanie hurried out and into pendleton's car, which was standing at the curb. he sprang after, opened the throttle and they whirled away. "how long will it take to get to the hospital?" she asked. "about fifteen minutes--if we are not held up by traffic when we come off the boulevard." "i suppose i ought not to feel indifferent at such a time," she said presently. "but i do--and i won't hide that i do. i'll try to meet what the occasion demands but nothing more. if he still wants me, i'll go to him. if he is conscious and hasn't asked for me again, i'll come away. it will be a relief to come away. i have no longer any duty to him. at least i feel that i haven't--and so why pretend the one or do the other?" "would you rather not go?" he asked, slowing down. "i would _much_ rather not go," she replied--"but i'm going just because i'm not sure of my duty in the matter. i swore at our marriage to love, honor and cherish him. i don't love him--i think i never honored him--i'm not sure that it will do any good for me to cherish him--but i'll try to be kind while his life is in danger--when the danger has passed, the cherishing shall cease." she stole a look at the man beside. "a queer philosophy, you think doubtless--and possibly it is; but toward some few people, my husband among them, i have as much feeling as a piece of marble--rather less indeed. don't try to understand me, montague--you can't; i don't understand myself." she was overwrought, he saw. this sudden call to confront a condition such as she had never anticipated--the distressing fact that lorraine, injured maybe unto death, had asked for her--had stretched her nerves to attenuation. it was not for him to tell her what she should do. in truth, he did not know. the one thing that made it difficult was lorraine's request. if it were not for that he would not have hesitated. but it is hard to refuse a dying man--or one who may be dying. "steady yourself, stephanie!" he said, as the car ran in under the _porte cochere_ of the hospital. "i am steadied," she answered. "i'll be all right when we enter--i'm not going to collapse or shriek or make a scene, you may be sure." he rang the bell, gave the name, and they passed into the reception-room. in a moment a white uniformed nurse entered--a woman of middle age, quiet and business-like. "mrs. lorraine?" she asked. "yes," stephanie answered. "i am mrs. bangs, the head nurse, mrs. lorraine. your husband has not regained consciousness, i am sorry to say. doctor wilton has been advised of your arrival and he'll see you just as soon as possible. will you come into the resident physician's office and wait? it will be only a moment, i'm sure." they crossed the corridor, were shown into the office, and the nurse went about her duties. there is not much sentiment in a hospital attendant--at least toward those not patients--and the patients themselves are but cases in the abstract. stephanie looked at pendleton and smiled. "you see--i'm steady," she said, holding up her hand. "a trifle too steady for an injured man's wife, i fear--though, i suppose, they all know the state of our--affairs." "every one knows it--if they've read the newspapers," pendleton returned. "and it's safe to assume that they have; and that they believed all they read as well--and then some. it's a common failing. i'd do the same about someone else, i reckon--if it happened to interest me." "_there_ is just the difference--it wouldn't interest you, nor me, nor any right-thinking person." "then the right-thinking persons are very scarce in this world!" she smiled. "i shouldn't call them scarce," he replied--"very much in the minority would be better." dr. wilton entered the room at that moment--the rubber-soled shoes having deadened his steps in the corridor. his was one of the old families, and so he was no stranger to stephanie or to pendleton. he was familiar with the peculiar situation--and, man like, sympathized with stephanie. he responded to the look of inquiry in her eyes before she had time to ask. "your husband, mrs. lorraine, is resting quietly. the concussion is slight--and unless something develops internally, which we can't yet tell, he will likely recover. he has had four ribs broken, has sustained numerous cuts and bruises, and has lost much blood--but these are merely temporary in their effects." "has he recovered consciousness?" stephanie asked. "at brief intervals--but not for any length of time." "is there any indication that he is hurt internally?" "it is too early to know certainly; though the character of the accident and the wounds make it very possible. there was a slight hemorrhage, but that has ceased." it was as if he were discussing the case with an ordinary visitor or a reporter. he already knew she was not likely to be particularly interested, but the impersonal manner in which she asked and received his account of her husband's accident--certainly grievous and possibly fatal--was most indicative. he found himself wondering why she had taken the trouble to come at all. and she read something of what he thought, for she remarked, without preliminary: "the hospital said over the telephone that he had asked for me when he was first brought in--and i came because of that. has he asked again?" "i think not, mrs. lorraine--nor for any one." "may i see him?" the doctor hesitated. "you may--if you very much wish--but we should prefer not." "can i do him any good by seeing him?" "not a particle. he is, pardon me, much better as it is--with the surgeons and nurses. in such cases, the presence even of one nearly connected is frequently a deterrent, and excites the patient unduly." "i can do nothing then?" she persisted. "absolutely nothing," he assured her. "and in event of his needing me?" "we will telephone you." "you think i should not wait?" "i do," he said. "it is quite unnecessary. at present, mrs. lorraine, your husband is in no immediate danger." either harry had revoked his request, or doctor wilton was making it easy for her.--at all events, she could depart with the equanimity of a duty done. "then i will go home--depending on being advised on the instant, if i am needed," she said with the most bewitching smile and holding out her hand. the doctor took it in a friendly grasp. "i think that is best, mrs. lorraine," he replied. "i suppose you know nothing of the details of the accident?" she asked. "no--we leave them to the newspapers and the ambulance chasers," he smiled. "our record begins with mr. lorraine's entry here." "i will depend then upon the hospital notifying me if i am needed," she repeated, and with another smile and a nod she went out. "thank heavens!" she exclaimed, with a sigh of relief, when they were once more in the car and turned toward her home. "i've done as much as the circumstances warrant--at least, to my mind. the next move is up to him and the hospital." "you've done all that anyone could demand," he said. "more than was necessary, i think." "which being the case, i'm going to forget it, except that twice a day, until he is out of danger, i shall inquire for him by telephone. now let us talk of something else." it was on the fourth day thereafter that doctor wilton himself called stephanie on the telephone. "mr. lorraine has asked for you," he informed her. "he knows that you were here the night of the accident and it pleased him greatly. will you come some time this morning, if it is convenient?" "it is not very convenient," stephanie responded; "i am going out of town--to criss-cross--this afternoon for a couple of days, but i'll stop in for a moment. i can't well break the appointment at this late moment." "very well," said he. "i'll just tell him i have concluded it is unwise for him to see you for a day or so." she drummed a moment on the table. "no, i will come," she decided--"at eleven thirty--will you please see that i am admitted promptly?" and at eleven thirty she was there and doctor wilton received her. "the nurse will remain, i suppose," she remarked, as they reached the door of lorraine's room. he understood. "if you do not object," he replied. "it would not be well for her to leave her patient--in his present condition." lorraine glanced up as the door opened--and when he recognized his wife he smiled and put out his hand. "i'm glad to see you, dear," he said. "i'm glad to see you so much better," she replied, taking his hand, but not offering to kiss him. "you had a narrow escape!" "rather close call," he admitted. the doctor, after a word to the nurse, had gone out--and the nurse remained. lorraine's eyes glanced at her impatiently. she was occupied with the chart. "you're ever so much stronger--aren't you?" said stephanie, inanely. "i suppose so--i think i am.... they told me of your being here the evening i was injured. it was very good of you to come, stephanie." "i came because they told me _you_ had asked for me," said she quietly. "i did--i thought i was going to die; and i wanted to see you again--just to--apologize." "don't think of that," she replied hastily. "you're not going to die." "they say i'll probably pull through now--my head is all right--but i'm pretty weak." "of course, you're weak," she echoed. "who wouldn't be weak with all that you've endured." she simply did not know what to say to him. the last spark of affection was in ashes--cold ashes--else would it have been warmed, at least a trifle, by the sight of him lying there, injured and helpless. he smiled faintly--and the nurse came to the rescue. she looked at mrs. lorraine meaningly. stephanie nodded. "your nurse intimates that it is time for me to go," she remarked. "and the nurse is in command." she reached down and took his hand. "good bye!" she said. "you will come again!" he questioned. "certainly, whenever you wish--and the nurse lets me." he smiled--and she, with an answering smile, went quietly out. he closed his eyes and lay quite still. the nurse came to the bed; played with gentle fingers a moment upon his wrist, and went softly away. it was pretty hopeless, he reflected, pretty hopeless! stephanie cared no more for him than for an utter stranger--probably less. she had come in response to his request, but she had let him know that it was because he had asked for her and not of her own volition. and when she did come, the talk had been the veriest of inanities; and the nurse had remained in the room the entire time--at stephanie's behest he had little doubt. her "whenever you wish," had really meant, "but don't wish".... he did not see why she had taken the trouble to come at all, since he was nothing to her--why she had not simply answered that she would not come, that she no longer recognized any obligation toward him. everyone knew the facts of the last two years so why should she not be candid, even brutally so? this visit was nothing--nothing but ashes to them both--nothing but the proof that the rupture was beyond repair. and he loved her still!--loved her as in the days of courtship, though it had been obscured by the hate and injury of the recent past. if he could not affect her now, even so far as to win a look of regard, his case was forlorn. if his condition would not melt even a little the ice of her reserve, there was small hope. but he _would_ hope!--_would_ hope! it was not her fault--it was amherst's. he acquitted her--she was a wronged woman--he was a wronged husband! amherst was the villain! amherst was---- there was a light touch on his shoulder. he opened his eyes--the nurse was standing beside him, a glass of orange juice in her hand, a smile on her face. "it is time to take your nourishment," she said. for a moment he was tempted to refuse--but she smiled again, very sweetly; and put the glass to his lips. "now, try to relax and sleep a while," she suggested. "is that an order?" he said faintly. "an order," she answered, dropping her hand on his forehead and smoothing it with deft touch. he smiled up at her,--and closed his eyes--and presently he slept. * * * * * * * stephanie, when she left the hospital, went on to the shopping district. it was the first time she had been down town since the day before lorraine's accident--and she very quickly noticed the difference in the attitude of many that she knew and met. there was a more manifest cordiality, slight in some cases, more open in others, but unmistakable nevertheless. more people looked at her in a friendly way, and would have spoken had she given them the chance. but _she_ never saw them, or looked right through them--depending upon whether hitherto they had been negative or positive in their hostility. from all those who had spoken heretofore, she accepted the additional smile or word of greeting--from all those with whom it was an initial effort she declined the overtures. mrs. postlewaite passed down the aisle just as stephanie was turning away from the glove counter, and the _grande dame_ relaxed sufficiently to glance at her in a personal way and to give her the chance to return the glance--her manner even indicating that, if stephanie were brave enough to speak, she might condescend to acknowledge it with the faintest nod. it was plainly a look of permission--but stephanie never looked; though taking due care to let mrs. postlewaite know that she saw. and the ancient lady's face congealed into impassivity--and they went their respective ways. she knew, of course, what had caused the change. it had become known that she had visited her husband at his request--and they assumed a reconciliation was likely to follow. she finished her shopping and went out to her car--to find it with a deflated tire and the driver just beginning the repair. she glanced at the clock on the dash. it was after one. she was much later than she thought. "is that the correct time?" she asked the man. "yes, mrs. lorraine!" said he, touching his cap but without raising his eyes from the wheel. it would be too late to go home for luncheon, by the time the repair was made, so she turned back into the department store and took the elevator to the dining room on the top floor. the place was crowded--the head waiter and the captains at the far end of the room, as usual. there was no empty table in sight, and stephanie paused at the door. instantly the eyes of a hundred women focussed on her. at the same time marcia emerson, sitting some distance down the room, saw her and getting up hastily came forward. "won't you join me at my table, mrs. lorraine?" she asked. "it's for two and i'm alone." it so happened that stephanie, since her return, had not encountered miss emerson, therefore there could be no memory of glances withheld nor of greetings lacking. it was very polite in her and she could not well refuse, though she would have been better satisfied had marcia not done it. "i shall be glad to join you--you're very kind," she answered. an audible buzz went up as they passed down the aisle to their table. some who were not acquainted with her were simply curious to see the noted mrs. lorraine--others, who knew both well were startled at the one's temerity and the other's acquiescence. why marcia emerson should endanger her social position, none too strong with the powers that be, was more than they could understand. never independent themselves, they could not appreciate intrepidity in another. in such a case, they trimmed their sails to the leader's wind and were content to remain under convoy. so far as they were aware, the wind had not veered with any strength to mrs. lorraine's quarter. and even though some had heard of the prospective reconciliation, they waited to take their cue from one of those powerful enough to indicate an assured course of action. "i assume you know how rash you are in inviting me to your own table, and in coming the length of the room to do it," she remarked. "i am distinctly _persona non grata_ at present." "you're not to me," said marcia heartily. "i don't follow mrs. postlewaite and her clique. i do as i wish, and where i wish it. your affairs are your own--they concern only those directly involved. i'm not involved, therefore it is an unwarrantable impertinence for me to interfere in the slightest--or to judge. i've been out of town for the past three weeks is why i've not called--which, i hope, you will pardon. i didn't know you intimately before you went away, but if you'll permit it we will start in just where we left off." "it may hurt you with the conservatives," stephanie warned. miss emerson shrugged her shoulders. "and that might injure my standing in society, since i've not a too secure footing as it is. let it, i'll take my chance as it pleases me to take it, not as some one else would make me take it. i'm responsible for my friendships, and i'm not going to have anyone tell me who they shall be--or who they mustn't be. imagine a _man_ submitting to any such dictation!" "i can't imagine it!" smiled stephanie. "he would laugh in their faces--or else tell them a few truths in very plain english." "exactly! we women are silly fools in the way we submit to being controlled. we haven't any independence even in our clothes. we let a few shoddy french modistes, and their _demi-mondaine_ assistants at the longchamps races, prescribe what we shall wear, and we follow with the abject servility of slaves--never pausing to think whether the fashions are becoming, or hideous, or grotesque. and we change them every three months--so the tailors and dressmakers can overcharge us four times a year. _a man!_ i should like to see the tailors who had the hardihood to try it. they make his clothes as _he_ wants them, and they make them the same way and the same cut year after year. a man can wear out his clothes, and be in fashion until they're worn out if it takes five years. his hats are the same style year after year, his shoes are the same last, his collars and neckties vary practically not at all. there is something fine about a man's supreme indifference; making the tradesmen do as he wants, instead of as the tradesman wants--as we do. and it's all because we are afraid; afraid of being behind the styles--behind some one who has something newer than ourselves. we forget that we control the styles, and that if we would simply refuse to change there would not be a change--and the modistes would become--as the men's tailors are--purveyors of goods, not dictators of styles." "it is absurd, of course," agreed stephanie; "yet who is to break the chains that custom has welded? we women are more or less fools--and the shopkeepers and their class trade on the fact, and laugh in their sleeves while doing it. and we know we're fools and that they're laughing, but we pretend ignorance. it must be very amusing to a man." "if he takes time enough to notice it--or if it doesn't touch him in the pocket," marcia returned. "more especially the latter!" stephanie laughed. she saw mrs. porterfield coming down the room with mrs. postlewaite. as they neared, she glanced at them with the casual look of a total stranger, and went on with her luncheon. miss emerson remarked it and smiled inwardly in appreciation of the situation. it was beautifully carried off. the queen p's were being deliberately ignored--not mrs. lorraine. as they passed, both dames nodded pleasantly to marcia. then mrs. porterfield, catching stephanie's eye, bowed slightly but with unmistakable deliberation--as though she wished to impress the act upon all who witnessed it. stephanie instantly returned it in just the way it was given--with precisely the same manner and deliberation. then a little mocking smile crept into her eyes and lingered. "i know it is bad taste to comment on what does not concern one," marcia remarked, "but do you quite appreciate the honor that has been done you?" "i understand the honor--even if i don't appreciate it," stephanie replied. "it is the first indication that the icebergs are preparing to melt." "i love the way you first ignored her, and then acknowledged her bow with a manner that was a perfect replica of her own," marcia laughed. "are you going home?" stephanie asked, when they were drawing on their gloves; "and have you your own car here? no?--well, won't you let me drop you on my way?" "indeed, i will," said marcia. "mother took the machine and left me to the tender mercies of the street car." as they came out of the store, two men who were passing took off their hats and bowed most deferentially. "who were they?" asked stephanie, as the car started. "charles porshinger, on the outside--and henry murchison," marcia answered, with a look of quick surprise. "they must be new people--at least, i've never heard of them." "they've been in society about a year--they both belong to the nice clubs, and are not married." "it's comparatively easy for an unmarried man to get in," stephanie observed. "all that he needs is to present a good appearance and to have a friend or two to vouch for him." "and if he happens to have money, it is pretty easy to--get the friends!" marcia smiled. stephanie nodded. "to _buy_ the friends, you were about to say. yes, it _is_ easy now-a-days--entirely too easy." then she suddenly thought what she was saying and to whom--and stopped. but marcia only laughed--and answered: "father is married--and has a daughter. we're in another class, and we're a bit--acclimated now." "and that daughter," said stephanie heartily, "has made good--you belong!" "mrs. lorraine," began marcia presently, "i don't want to seem impertinent, but did you really intend me to infer, from what you said as we came out of partridge's, that you did not know porshinger or murchison?" "yes indeed," stephanie replied. "i not only don't know them, but i have no recollection even of having seen them prior to to-day. why do you ask?" "i will tell you," said marcia--"and you may make out of it what you can. last evening i was up at the club-house until rather late, and four or five of us were sitting in a sheltered place on the north piazza. while we were there, porshinger and murchison came out and sat down just around the corner. after a short while all of our party went in except mr. burgoyne and myself--and he was called, a moment after, to the telephone. left alone i could not but hear porshinger's and murchison's talk. we had been making a good deal of noise, and they evidently thought from the silence that we all had gone in. but however that is, i heard murchison say: "'is there anything new in the lorraine matter?' "'not much,' said porshinger. 'the thing is coming along though, never fear. pendleton, the snob, is not invulnerable. i've found a way to reach him, and it's only a matter of a little time till he will be having troubles of his own--and mrs. lorraine also.' "'better leave well enough alone,' murchison cautioned. "'that may be your way--it's not mine!' retorted the other. 'they started the fight, now i'm going to accommodate them. they will think merry hell has broke loose before i'm through with them.' "then mr. burgoyne returned and i heard no more. can you understand it?" stephanie shook her head. "i can not," she said--"but possibly mr. pendleton can explain it. i shall tell him, if you don't mind, the next time i see him." "tell him by all means," marcia responded. "you have my permission." x at criss-cross criss-cross, the chamberlain country place, was two hours out by a fast train. mrs. chamberlain had been dead a number of years and gladys presided over her father's establishment with the ease of careful training and the assurance of an only child. she met stephanie at the station when the latter arrived late that afternoon, and they drove back to criss-cross by a round-about way that stretched the two miles into twenty--during which gladys learned all the happenings of the last week in town, particularly the present attitude of the queen p's and their followers, resultant from lorraine's accident and stephanie's behaviour incident thereto with the prospect of their reconciliation. "marcia emerson seems to be an exceedingly nice girl," stephanie observed. "two years have done wonders for her." gladys nodded. "marcia is a dear!" she replied. "she's a good sport in everything, and she is something to look at besides. the two years that you were away have made her. i don't blame the men for being crazy about her. the only drawback she has is her mother. she's a pusher. she thinks she's put marcia in society, whereas marcia has come in naturally, and the old lady rides on her train, so to speak. i can't abide mrs. emerson! to me she has about every obnoxious fault of her class. old emerson is not half so bad; he is honest and amusing--and the men like him, i understand. i've asked marcia down to-morrow, for the week-end--you don't mind, i hope." "not in the least--if _she_ doesn't mind me," said stephanie. "she knows you are to be here. mrs. emerson, however, may throw a fit when she knows it!" gladys laughed. "is any one else coming?" stephanie asked. "just a few--your friends, of course: dorothy tazewell, and helen burleston, with montague pendleton, sheldon burgoyne, warwick devereux and steuart cameron. two tables of auction, you know--and plenty of go to the crowd." "mayn't i be a wet blanket?" stephanie suggested. "why?" was the astonished query. "do they also know i'm coming? they may not care to be housed up with me for two days." "sure they know. you're too timid, my dear--when did it come on you?" "abroad, i reckon," stephanie replied. "i appear cold and calm enough, but it's all bluff, gladys. the truth is, i'm scared to death." "i shouldn't care to pick you for a dead one!" gladys laughed. "you have a way about you, my dear, that is rather chilling when you choose to make it so. you know what we used to call you--the disconcerter." "that was before i----" she paused. "now _i'm_ the one who is disconcerted--inwardly at least." "assuredly it's not outwardly," gladys declared. "i hope it isn't--but you never can tell when i shall fail to carry it off. i am always thinking--whenever i'm talking to anyone or walking the street--what must be in the other's mind: amherst and me." "forget it, stephanie--forget it!" gladys exclaimed. "i only wish i could." "_don't_ think of it." "i don't believe it's possible." "make it possible." "how?" "by making yourself interested in some one else--and some one else interested in you." stephanie looked at her friend with an incredulous smile. "the latter ought not to be especially difficult," gladys went on--"as to the former, it depends upon yourself." "would you suggest a married man?" stephanie asked. "married or single, it makes no difference; though the single man is unattached and easier to make obey orders." "and what of lorraine?" "lorraine isn't worth considering--he doesn't count." "i grant you that, but----" "oh, i know, you're tied by law--but you're free in fact." "perhaps!" reflected stephanie. "moreover, there is no earthly reason why you should let lorraine interfere with your enjoyment of life," gladys went on. "i assume that you don't intend to repeat the--other experiment--so why shouldn't you do as you please, so long as that pleasure doesn't transgress the proprieties." "you know i was at the hospital?" said stephanie. "yes--the night of the accident." "and again to-day." "i call it very considerate in you," gladys declared. "maybe you don't know that harry has offered to take me back." "i didn't know it--but i'm not surprised. he always is doing things too late. you're not going back?" stephanie shook her head. "no--i'm not going back--ever," said she. "have you told him?" "yes--before the accident, not since." "he is just silly enough to fancy that his mishap and your visits to the hospital have changed your decision," gladys remarked. "not likely. my visits were very brief and--calm." "the disconcerter!" gladys laughed. "i tried to be--distant," stephanie confessed. "then you succeeded--i can't imagine anyone presuming after that." "the difficulty is you are not mr. lorraine." "to my mind the whole difficulty is lorraine himself," gladys declared. "if he were half a man your trouble never would have started. you were about as well fitted for each other as--pardon me--an eagle and a chicken. the only thing surprising is the length of time you hung together. of course, it's a pity you didn't select some other way out--but i don't know that it's not the natural way, after all. only----" "why did i choose amherst, you mean?" remarked stephanie quietly. "i don't exactly know. propinquity, opportunity--perversity--especially the last." "but more especially because he is a slick-tongued scoundrel with the odor of eminent respectability and a perfectly fascinating way with women," said gladys. they were mounting a steep hill. near the crest, she threw quickly into second; and when they were over it went back again into high. "what started us on this subject anyway?" she exclaimed. "i beg your pardon, dear--i never thought what i was saying." "nonsense!" smiled stephanie. "i don't mind in the least--with you. truth is, i rather like it. harry lorraine is nothing to me--and never can be. i'm not sensitive because he happens to be my husband. my poor judgment in making him such is too apparent for me to deny that i was a fool--neither can i deny that i took the worst possible way out of a bad bargain by running away with amherst. i admit i've been headstrong and willful and everything else idiotic. that possibly is my saving grace--my readiness to admit it--after it is too late. i suppose society will consider him marvellously magnanimous in offering to take me back, and me a stupendously silly woman in declining. in fact, it won't believe that such a thing is possible. it already assumes that a reconciliation is to be effected. mrs. postlewaite was willing to speak to me to-day, and mrs. porterfield actually did bow." "you are coming along!" gladys laughed. "the queen p's having indicated--it is for their followers to do likewise." "what will they do, however, when they know the truth?" stephanie inquired. "stampede--if they haven't committed themselves too far." "they haven't--it was a tentative recognition only." "it's perfectly absurd for two old women to set themselves up as the absolute arbiters of who shall be in it, and what shall be done to stay in--and for society as a class to follow them abjectly," gladys declared. "they are the high priestesses of the conventional; and it's the fear of transgressing and being cast into outer darkness that holds every one to their narrow-minded ritual. i'm ashamed for my sex--they're so like sheep. they follow blindly after the leaders who in turn follow their fetish, the customary; and it's useless to hope for a change. we've always done it; i reckon we always will do it--and those of us who aren't tractable and won't submit are viewed with suspicion, and may be driven without the fold if we transgress too far. i'm thinking of starting a society of my own, in which the members will attend to their own business so long as they don't interfere with property rights. i'm inclined to think it would be mighty popular--especially among the younger set." "there isn't a doubt of it," stephanie agreed, with an amused smile. "suppose we suggest it to the rest--the order of do as you please--we will call it." "you don't need suggest it to the men--they belong already. no one controls them. i wish i were a man!" "you do quite well as you are--and are a lot more worth while," said stephanie. "you can get a dozen men, my dear. which one have you picked out for yourself, in the present instance?" "i hadn't thought!" she laughed. "pendleton is for you, of course--that is all i know now." "why of course?" said stephanie. "you can answer that better than i." "not _your_ reasons, my dear." "do you object to montague being allotted to you?" gladys asked, with a sly smile. "not in the least----" "and do you fancy _he_ will have the slightest objection?" "you will have to ask him." "i'm asking for _your opinion_, not for his." "montague is very adaptable," stephanie remarked. "adaptable!" cried gladys. "he may be _now_--he hasn't been in the _recent_ past. your influence has evidently been softening--i shouldn't have thought of asking him if it hadn't been for you." "thank heaven, i've a softening influence on some one," said stephanie. "without a doubt--yes." they were starting down a long, steep and winding grade. she cut off the spark, threw into second and opening the throttle let the gas shoot into the cylinders to cool the engine. "my recommendation that you get some one interested in you is rather unnecessary under the circumstances, don't you think?" she remarked. "how about my getting interested in some one?" stephanie inquired. "on second thought, it is not necessary--and it is better that you shouldn't. you can handle pendleton much more easily if your affections are not engaged--except in a rational way." "you might explain what you would call a 'rational way'!" "i can't be specific!" gladys laughed; "rationality depends on the circumstances of every case--and the individual view." "which is a trifle difficult to analyze," stephanie remarked. "don't you wish to have montague assigned to you?" the other demanded. "i'll give him to dorothy, if you don't--she will be content." "won't you have some trouble in giving montague to anybody--unless he's entirely willing to be given?" stephanie smiled. "he isn't one to stay put, i fancy--whose place is this?" she ended, indicating a garish country-house, some little distance back from the road. "it is new, isn't it?" "as new as the people who own it," gladys answered. "the woodsides live there. they belong to the pushers clique--and they are trying to pry their way through the outer portals. i don't like them." "so i should infer," said stephanie. "who are their friends?" "they haven't any--yet. they're trying to get in--nobody has any friends until they're in, my dear--and not many after they're in. they're pirates until the second generation." "do they belong to the club?" "yes--that's no recommendation _now_." "i think i don't know them!" stephanie reflected. "of course you don't. they came up from the weeds recently--along with porshinger and murchison and berryman and their ilk." "who are porshinger and murchison?" stephanie asked. "bounders. plenty of money and an unlimited supply of brass. you know the sort. they are friends of the woodsides and are down here very often. you may be afforded a view of them to-morrow." "i saw them to-day--they spoke to marcia emerson as we were leaving partridge's." "well, did you see much?" remarked gladys. "i saw two men--well groomed and superficially presentable." "you saw it all then--you won't care to go deeper." "you say they have money?" "great wads of it." "what is their business?" "capitalists and professional directors," gladys replied. "they are on about every important board in town--including the tuscarora trust company." "where did they make it?" "oil--principally and first. afterward they made it everywhere. i think they must coin it, to tell you the truth. if you sold them a piece of swamp and scrub oak, gold would be discovered on it the next day. they're buying their way into society; already they seem to regard it as an asset to be realized on. it is only a matter of time until they capitalize it, issue bonds on it, and have the stock for their own profit--you understand?" "not exactly!" laughed stephanie, "but i catch your idea: they are exceedingly objectionable and offensively rich." "exactly!--and not a lot more beside. they are worse than bounders, they're muckers. that is about the meanest, most contemptible thing one man can call another, isn't it?" it was easy to see that gladys reflected her father's opinion of porshinger and murchison, and it disturbed stephanie. if one of mr. chamberlain's disposition so considered them, then, beyond question, they were a bad lot and she must warn montague at the earliest moment. she could not understand how pendleton and she had offended--when she had not even so much as a recollection of ever having seen them before to-day. and it was a joint offence, at least she was joined in it someway, for they had distinctly mentioned her name and included her in their meditated revenge--that is, porshinger had included her, murchison, as she remembered, had been against it. "this mr. porshinger," she said--"is he particularly vindictive?" "vindictive?" was gladys' puzzled interrogation. "that is a bit strong, maybe. unforgiving--unrelenting, is better." "why do you ask?" the other inquired. "i just wanted to know." "so one would naturally suppose," said gladys. "however, i did hear a man, whom i consider thoroughly discriminating, say one day recently that he regarded porshinger as vindictive as an apache and as cruel, without conscience and without mercy. is that sufficiently definite?" "appallingly so!" stephanie replied. "do you mind telling me who has fallen under his displeasure?" "i have." "you!" cried gladys. "why you said you didn't even know him--that you had never seen him before to-day." "precisely!" "then will you tell me what you mean?" "i will tell you what i was told--you can help me guess what it means," she answered. and she told her. "it surely is astonishing!" was gladys' comment when she had heard stephanie's tale. "it's true to the worst they say about him--to strike at a man through a woman! or rather to strike at you because somehow you are involved in the injury which montague appears to have done him. tell montague at once--he will know what it means and he should be warned. can't you imagine what it is?" "i haven't an idea," said stephanie. "strange!" reflected gladys, with a serious shake of her head. "you are intimately concerned, it seems, and yet you haven't done a thing. well, we shall have to wait for montague to solve the riddle." she surmised that it had something to do with stephanie's return--that she was the _casus belli_--but she did not suggest it. and stephanie, while thinking the same, did not voice it; it seemed too far fetched. moreover, it was predicated on pendleton's voluntary defense of her in her absence. and the latter, she thought, would be assuming much more than the circumstances warranted, and would make her appear exceedingly well satisfied of his regard. "you're very fortunate to have been warned thus early," gladys continued. "montague will have time to prepare--at least, he won't be taken completely unawares. father knows porshinger in business, and he says that if a man gets the best of him to the extent of a nickel, he will square off though it takes a year. of course i know that a man's method in business isn't necessarily carried into his private life, but porshinger does not come under that class." "how about murchison?" stephanie asked. "not quite so bad--he is rather better mannered and has more feeling. the conversation that marcia detailed illustrates the difference between the men, i should say. murchison was for letting well enough alone--which only seemed to make porshinger the more determined." "on the whole, porshinger must be a very pleasant fellow to have camping on one's trail!" smiled stephanie. "i'm curious to hear montague's opinion." "i'd rather hear him express it to a _man_--it would likely be a trifle more picturesque!" gladys laughed. "what can porshinger do?" stephanie asked. "what _can't_ he do with all his money and financial influence! god is on the side of the heaviest bank account." "all things being equal, i grant it; but there is a wide difference between montague pendleton and charles porshinger as men--and i've faith in the blood. it will win, gladys, it will win." "blood doesn't count for much in these automobile pace days," gladys responded. "it is the money that talks." "blood counts for much in such a contest." "not where money is the basis of everything except eligibility to hereditary societies of the self-glorification stripe." "you're too pessimistic!" laughed stephanie. "my dear, you haven't a father who is an officer in the tuscarora trust company--and you haven't seen the men who visit him. it's a sad commentary on what we are coming to--and the elevation of the parvenu. let's change the subject. i'm becoming excited; the next thing i'll ditch the car, or run into a telegraph pole." "heaven forefend!" exclaimed stephanie. a little later, as they spun down the macadam near the criss-cross gates, they passed a station-wagon drawn by a spanking pair of bays. the man in it took off his hat and bowed. "there is porshinger now!" said stephanie. gladys nodded. "he has come out to spend the night at the woodsides', i reckon--it's their conveyance." xi the overton meadow "i see the lorraine woman is with gladys chamberlain," observed porshinger, as he and his host were enjoying a good-night smoke in the billiard room, and incidentally knocking the balls about. "hum!" replied woodside, as he made a neat gather along the rail. "when did you see her--come down on the same train?" "no--passed them in the car, as i came from the station. what's she going to do--make it up with lorraine, if he recovers?" "search me!" answered the other. "will he have her?" "you're a little behind, josh--everybody knows that he has offered and she's undecided." "well, i wish him success. she's a damn good looking woman--better looking even than when she ran away with amherst--don't you think so? oh! i forgot you didn't know her then." porshinger shot a sharp look down the table--and followed it with a smile. "i don't know her now--to speak to," he said. "but i have no trouble in recollecting two years back--and i quite agree with you. she is even better looking now. i don't wonder that she turned amherst's head." "it's a cold head, she turned!" woodside laughed. "i fancy she found it out soon enough, and that they had a parrot and monkey time of it until they broke finally. the ways of the transgressor are full of punctures." "you refer to only one sort of transgressors, i imagine," porshinger remarked, with a thinly veiled contempt. "yes at that moment i did," said his host indifferently; "but it applies to every one--you and me included," and he steadied himself for a massè. "you know the chamberlains well enough to--happen in?" asked porshinger presently. "want to meet the statuesque beauty--hey?" woodside laughed. porshinger nodded. "she does rather appeal to one," woodside confessed. "if i weren't married, i think i would take a flyer myself." "don't let that stop you--marriage is no disqualification with her; she's proven it." "she has proven it _once_--she will be mighty careful not to let it happen again," said woodside. "to the extent of running away, yes," porshinger sneered. "otherwise she is but wiser in the _savoir faire_, so to speak." "that is a damn cynical way of looking at it, porshinger!" "you're welcome to your view, my friend," the other shrugged. "you pays your money and you takes your choice," commented woodside. "there is no possible doubt about you paying your money," porshinger assured dryly. "she will come high." "if she is in the market--that is," woodside amended. "most women," sneered porshinger, as he clicked the balls down the rail, "have their price--even mrs. lorraine." "well, that need be no obstacle to you," woodside retorted. "you have the price. what you haven't got is the girl--can you get her?" "my dear fellow, i don't know yet that i want her." his host laughed lightly. "you want to look her over first," he said. "i understand. well if you do want her i wish you luck. i should hesitate about going up against that chilly beauty--she can make you feel like thirty cents if she's so minded." "she'll not have a chance to make me feel like thirty cents, depend on it," porshinger boasted. "you evidently don't know her," woodside remarked. "do you know her?" his guest inquired. "i've seen her at the club, and she has the grand manner--such as you read about in books. she can humble you with a look, patronize you with a smile, humiliate you with a frown." "she must be a wonderful woman!" porshinger laughed. "i'm anxious to meet her." "well, we may happen over to-morrow evening and you can see whether it's to be a freeze or a thaw. i'm rather inclined to the notion that it will be a freeze--and a fairly hard one, too." "you're a cheerful sort of sponsor," porshinger remarked. "better not risk your reputation as a prophet of evil." "don't make me your sponsor!" woodside exclaimed. "i told you i didn't know mrs. lorraine." "you know gladys chamberlain, don't you?" "yes--in a sort of way. i think she and mrs. woodside exchange calls, once a season, down here--not in town. why don't you work old chamberlain--you're in the tuscarora with him?" "that will serve as an additional excuse for the 'happen in.' i want the meeting to be casual--without any suggestion of pre-arrangement." woodside nodded. "all right!" he agreed. "we'll try it--but what the lady may do to you is quite another question." "which we will let the future determine," replied porshinger, as he clicked up the last point. there was one thing, at least, about porshinger that was normal--his love of country life. incident to this was his fondness for taking long walks in the early morning--a characteristic not at all accordant with his present station. he acquired it in the days when his occupation in the oil fields made it the regular manner of life. seven o'clock the following morning saw him on the highway, clad in knickerbockers and stout shoes, a panama pulled down over his eyes and a light stick in his hand. it was a glorious early summer day, with just a line of haze along the distant hills; the air was soft with the breath of the open country; the dew was still heavy on grass and shrub. as he swung along, whistling merrily as a school boy on his way to a vacation-day frolic, he did not in the remotest degree suggest the cold, hard man of finance, compared to whom an arctic night is as a torrid afternoon. it was the one occasion on which he permitted himself to relax and be entirely natural. presently, away off in front on the macadam road, he noticed a pedestrian--who, as he slowly decreased the distance, was resolved into a woman--and, as he gradually overtook her, into a tall, willowy figure, in a short walking skirt, high tan shoes lacing well up the leg, and a small continental hat, set at a rakish angle. "who is it?" he kept asking himself--and then there came a sharp turn in the road and he recognized her. it was stephanie lorraine. a momentary smile of satisfaction crossed his lips, and he extended his stride a trifle. here was an opportunity, better than any of woodside's devising, for him to make her acquaintance--quite by accident and altogether informally. and for her to snub him, if she were so minded, with no one but themselves to witness it nor to remember. he came up with her a little farther on. as she glanced casually at him he raised his hat and said, bowing and pausing as he did so: "good morning, mrs. lorraine!" stephanie knew who had been behind--she had heard his quick, sharp step a long way back and had contrived, as only a woman can, to see who it was without betraying that she had seen. and she had decided what she would do, if he overtook her,--and she was intending that he should overtake her--and speak; also what she would do if, by any chance, he did not speak. "good morning, sir," she replied. it was politely indifferent, yet at the same time courteous. it neither repelled, repressed nor invited. "it is a charming morning," said he, appraising the situation as he saw it. it was just as he had anticipated. she had no thought of snubbing _him_--she was very well content to take him as one of the circle to which she belonged, and to treat him accordingly. "perfectly lovely!" she answered. he shortened his steps, so that he remained a trifle in advance and appeared to be slowly passing her. "it's the cream of the day, to me," he said--"particularly at this season of the year. i don't know that i should call it so _all_ the year." "no!" she said. "nor i--here in the north." she saw what was coming--and it came. "if i present myself to you properly, may i walk along?" he smiled--"we're going the same road, it seems." "are you willing to be sponsor for yourself?" she smiled back. "only in exceptional instances," he bowed and removed his hat. "permit me to present charles porshinger to mrs. lorraine!" she held out her hand. "i'm glad to meet mr. porshinger," she said. he fell back into step with her and they swung along, appraising each other while they talked--only stephanie's appraisal was also with a woman's natural intuition. and the more she appraised him the less she liked him, but the more she set herself to win him--slowly and discreetly, as a clever woman knows so well how to do. and for all his shrewdness in the affairs of men, he was as a child in the ways of women. presently they came to a stile and stephanie paused. "i leave the highway here," she said. "i go back through the fields--there is a path running around the hill. do you know it?" "no--but i should like to know it," he invited. "won't you show it to me?" "it will take you out of your course!" she suggested. "i have no course this morning but the one you fix," he said. "take care, _m'sieur_!" she warned. "i may be a poor--navigator." "i'll risk it, _madame_--both your skill as a pilot and your ability as a captain." she shot him a look from under her long lashes. "very well," she replied and sprang lightly to the stile. he was before her at the steps, however, with hand extended to help her.... for just an instant, her fingers rested in his; then dropped them, and she was over. a faint smile touched his lips as he followed. the path was scarcely wide enough for two; and the high grass on either side confined it even more, so that he was perforce obliged to walk just a shade behind--and talking is difficult when one precedes the other. but it gave him a fine opportunity to observe the woman before him, and he made the best of it. the morning sun was spinning her auburn hair to gleaming copper, and beneath the dead white of her cheek the blood pulsed faintly pink. the trim, slender figure was, for all its seeming listlessness, alive with latent energy and spirit--her shoulders, even under her jacket, he could see were beautifully proportioned, her neck was slender and long, but not too long--and her feet, even in the heavy shoes, were slim and arched, and she put them down _well--distinctly well_. a subtle perfume floated back to him, and he found himself bending forward to catch a fuller fragrance. then the path widened and, half turning, she waited for him to draw up. "this path evidently wasn't made by the socially inclined," he said. "it wasn't. it was made originally by the cattle which pastured here--and do so still," she added, as they passed a copse of trees and undergrowth and came upon a herd of a dozen cows with a brawny bull at their head. the latter, at the sight of the two strangers who were invading his domain, flung up his head and stared at them with a distinctly hostile air. "his majesty does not seem pleased with us!" she laughed. "no--i should say we don't make a favorable impression, judging from his attitude," he answered, glancing carelessly toward the animals. "he's not properly appreciative of the honor you do him, mr. porshinger," she remarked. he did not quite like the words--he thought he detected just a touch of irony; but she flashed him a smile from her lash-shaded eyes, and the suspicion vanished. "he doesn't want any one poaching on his pasture," he said. the bull suddenly put down its head, pawed the earth, and bellowed. "i think we would better hurry," she remarked, quickening her step. "it's only a protest!" he laughed. "he is like the average man--he makes plenty of fuss and racket but doesn't do anything that _will really_ correct the trouble. and the trouble continues--just as we are doing." another bellow, and fiercer, came from the bull--and he began to trot slowly toward them. "he's coming!" exclaimed stephanie, beginning to run. "make for the nearest fence!" counselled porshinger, and stopped. the bull kept straight on until he was within a few feet of porshinger--then he paused, pawed the earth again, and let out another bellow. stephanie, glancing over her shoulder, saw the situation and halted. "come on, mr. porshinger!" she called. "get over the fence!" he answered sharply, not taking his eyes off the angry beast. "i shall get to the fence when you----" the rest was drowned in the voice of the bull. he let out a terrific roar and charged straight at the man before him. stephanie gave a shriek of terror. porshinger sprang swiftly aside--and the bull tossed the air instead of the man. when his head came up he saw only stephanie in front of him, and bellowing again he bore down upon her at full speed. "run! run!" cried porshinger, as he raced across the field in pursuit. stephanie stood as if petrified. "_run!_" yelled porshinger again. "_for the love of god, run!_" with the enraged brute almost upon her, she came suddenly to life. sweeping up her narrow skirts above her knees, she turned and fled. she could hear the thundering of the hoofs behind her, and drawing closer and closer, while the fence seemed far, far away. she heard porshinger's cries, and knew that he was trying to divert the bull and to help her in the only way he could. the fence was nearer now--and so were the hoof-beats behind her. she dared not glance back--and yet the temptation was well-nigh irresistible. how close was the bull! how close was the bull!--would she reach the fence in time?--would she reach the fence in time?-- it was well for stephanie that she was fond of athletics and sports and was still given to taking regular exercise. and she ran as she had never run, her breath coming in gasps--corsets are not made for such strenuosity--until the blood seemed to congest in her head and her heart, and black spots floated before her eyes. there was a last frightful moment--the hoof-beats were pounding at her heels--the fence was just ahead, a stout rail fence.--would she reach it?--could she spring over it if she did reach it? then her hands closed upon a post. and not caring how she managed it, nor what might be the exposé, she sprang somehow--and fell--and got across just as the bull came crashing into the panel. then she collapsed in a heap on the ground, while the huge beast roared and foamed in baffled rage a few feet distant. as porshinger vaulted the fence farther down, stephanie recovered herself and, pushing down her skirts, sat up. "you're not hurt?" he cried breathlessly. "not hurt--except in my vanity!" she laughed. "_it's_ punctured badly." "just so _you_ aren't punctured," he returned. "it was a close call! you and the bull were right together at the fence--i couldn't tell whether _he_ tossed you over, or whether you jumped. you looked as though----" "please forget how i looked!" she smiled. "and hand me my hat. now if you will you may help me up.--thank you, mr. porshinger." she was seriously shaken, and he saw it. "come over and sit down," he said, leading her toward a rock near by. "you will feel better for a moment's rest." "no--i'm all right," she answered;--"but i _will_ sit down until i've put on my hat. it's a fortunate thing the fence held. ough!" she shivered, with a glance at the bull, who was still pawing the ground in baffled rage, and frothing at the mouth. "it was a fearful feeling with those awful horns just behind me, and expecting every instant to be gored and tossed." "it must have been fearful," he sympathized. "why is it," she said with a quizzical smile, "that a woman is always afraid of a bull and a mouse?" "they wish to be extreme, i fancy!" he laughed. "also there is a lot between a bull and a mouse that they are afraid of!" she added. "animate or inanimate?" he asked. "both," she answered. her hair was awry and she straightened it as best she could, removing her gloves to do it the better. he remarked the long, slender fingers, with the filbert nails and the crescents shining at their base--and he stole a look at his own ill-shaped hand, with its thick, formless, heavy-pointed fingers and hairy back. for the first time he regretted the difference. her hair temporarily put to rights, she stuck the pins--which were scattered on the ground and which porshinger collected for her--in her cocked hat, and fastened it into place. then she got up, suffered him to brush the dust and dirt from her clothes--she helping--and they resumed the walk. "adieu, your taurus majesty!" she called, with a farewell wave of her hand toward the still indignant and frowning bull. "i'll see that he is killed to-day," porshinger volunteered. "indeed, you'll not," she said. "he was defending his own pasture and his own kind. you would have done the same if you were a bull." porshinger winced despite himself. there was something distinctly unpleasant in the comparison. she had not called him a bull. yet that, doubtless, was what she considered him--uncouth and untamed, not broken to polite society. "i suppose so," he said thoughtfully. "it may be an apt comparison." "what is an apt comparison?" she asked. "comparing me to the bull!" "preserve me then from you, if it is apt!" she laughed. "i want no more bulls in mine." was he making sport of her or was he serious, she wondered?--and could not decide. reading his every action through her knowledge of his declared purpose to injure pendleton and her, she was prone to suspicion. true, he had done what he could to save her from the bull's attack, but any man, were he only half a man, could not have done less. "is that an invocation?" he asked. she looked at him questioningly. "is a bull amenable to invocation?" she replied. "will he withhold his attack if you pray--very hard?" she had touched the matter rather closely; and he, not knowing that she knew, was puzzled at its significance. while she, seeing that she had ventured almost too far, tactfully changed the conversation. they regained the highway, a little farther on, and tramped rapidly homeward. at the entrance to criss-cross, stephanie stopped and held out her hand. "it is too early in the morning to ask you in," she said. "my hostess won't be visible as yet. she's not an early rambler--like we are, mr. porshinger. thank you for saving me from that horrid bull." "and a less strenuous time on our next walk," he replied, bowing awkwardly over her hand. "you do walk 'most every morning, don't you, mrs. lorraine?" "every morning that it is convenient," she answered. "will it be convenient to-morrow morning?" he asked. "not to-morrow," she replied. "i've something else on," and with a little nod she turned away and went up the drive to the house. "send my breakfast up in half an hour," she said to the butler, as she passed through the hall. once in her room, she rang for a maid, got out of her dusty walking suit and into the grateful shower bath--having first protected her hair with a rubber cap. then she dressed, put on a flowing silk kimono, and went in to her breakfast, which the servant was just laying on the table by the window. in the midst of it, there was a knock on the door and gladys entered. "had your breakfast?" stephanie inquired. "an hour ago," gladys replied. "you take the early morning hours to walk; i take them for my correspondence and household orders. you win this time--it was a beautiful morning. where did you go?" "out the churchville road, across the path through the overton property to the henrystown road, and home." "the path through the overton property!" exclaimed gladys. "i forgot to warn you that they are using those fields for pasturing cattle, with a vicious bull among them. did you see him?" "yes, we saw him," stephanie answered, buttering a roll. "did he come close?" "fairly close!" "weren't you frightened?" gladys asked. "a trifle." "i should have been scared stiff." "on the contrary," said stephanie, tapping an egg with the tip of her spoon, "i think you would have been scared into the quickest action you have ever known." "what do you mean?" gladys demanded. "i mean that you would have made a record run for the fence," slowly measuring the salt. "is that what you did?" "precisely what i did--and i just made it." "you just made what?" "the fence." "do you mean the bull actually attacked you?" "no--he didn't get quite close enough to _actually_ attack--he missed me by the fraction of a hair. i went over the fence just as he banged into it. we had a nerve-racking finish--the bull and i. i won it by an eyelash." gladys laughed merrily. "your pardon, dear! but i really can't help it--the idea of you and overton's bull sprinting it across the field! it's too ridiculous. and you won, dear, you won!" she laughed again. "all the bull could do was to stand at the fence and look." "if he had any sense of propriety he _didn't_ look," stephanie remarked--"especially when i was going over. i must have resembled a broadway beauty chorus." "and no one but the bull on the ball-headed row!" gladys bubbled. "possibly--i was in too much haste to observe whether mr. porshinger saw or not." "porshinger!" cried gladys. "porshinger! what in heaven's name was he doing in overton's pasture?" "walking with me!" was the demure reply. "walking with you!--stephanie lorraine, will you explain yourself?" "sure!" said stephanie, and explained. at the end, gladys selected a tiny gold-tipped cigarette from the case on the dressing table and carefully lighted it. "what is your plan?" she asked, from back of a thin cloud of smoke. "i haven't any plan," stephanie replied, pouring herself another cup of coffee. "it was only a reconnoissance, made on the spur of the moment----" "made on the horns of the bull! i should say," gladys smiled. "what is your next move?" "i don't know." "do you want me to ask him to criss-cross?" "no--not yet." "well--if you do, i'll ask him," said gladys. "we're in this thing to win, you know. but it would not be wise, i think, to have him and montague pendleton at the same time." "no, decidedly no!" said stephanie--"at least, for the present." xii a matter of light pendleton was late in arriving at criss-cross. he was the last of the party to come in, and he hastened to the quarters, the servant showed him, in the bachelor end over the billiard room in a separate angle of the house. once there, he flung off his business suit, plunged through his bath, flourished his safety, cutting himself in his haste (who ever saw a safety that was safe?) and then proceeded to dash into the clothes laid out for him. "damn!" he exclaimed forcefully, as a stud that had been insecurely fastened slipped from its hole and retired gracefully under the bureau. he was down on his knees searching for it when there was a knock on his door. "come in!" he shouted, without looking up. sheldon burgoyne entered, stopped a moment with a quizzical smile, and without a word sat down. it was not a time for speech--_on his part_. pendleton presently retrieved the stud and arose, red in the face and angry. "why didn't you say something?" he demanded. "i thought it was a time to be quiet," burgoyne replied. pendleton paused, with the stud half in, and looked at him. "hum!" he grunted. "you _do_ have a glimmering of sense, it seems! why is it, if you drop a stud or a collar button in a room a hundred feet square with only one piece of furniture in the place, the infernal thing will dash under it? talk of a chicken, or a mule, or a pig--they're not in it with the article under discussion." "so i have observed!" burgoyne remarked. "the chap who invents a non-hiding stud will make his everlasting fortune. of course, the reason for the seemingly peculiar is perfectly evident--it is the law of direction and applied force, that's all. i'll illustrate it on you, if you wish." "it is not at all necessary!" said pendleton. "is every one here, i wonder." "yes--you're the laggard--you're generally the laggard.--why didn't you ever marry, pendleton?" "because i was too much occupied attending to my own business," pendleton answered. "i had never observed it!" the other grinned. "there is nothing peculiar about that--you never observe anything but the ladies." "do you criticise my taste?" "far be it from me!" pendleton laughed. "who are here--do you know?" "dorothy tazewell, helen burleston and marcia emerson, the men are steuart cameron and warwick devereux. we all came down on the same train. stephanie lorraine, i understand, came yesterday." "thank heaven, it is a congenial crowd! how is miss emerson--as fascinatingly pretty as ever?" "more so!--more so!" exclaimed burgoyne. "she is pushing stephanie hard for first place," with a bland smile--which pendleton saw but did not remark. that he had admired stephanie mourraille was no secret, pendleton knew; and that the admiration had not decreased since she had become stephanie lorraine, society could very readily infer. for his part, he did not care what they inferred; and when he had intimated to stephanie that he might be coming around her too much, she had put her hand on his shoulder--he could feel it there now--and had asked him, if _he_ objected? her inference was too plain to miss and he said no more--at the time--though he felt a bit culpable for not doing it. "how are you and devereux hitting it?" he asked, to shift the talk. "not in time!" smiled burgoyne,--"not at all in time. it's like a two-step and a schottische." "who's doing the schottische?" "both--at different periods. miss emerson is the only one who is always in step." "because she makes the step?" pendleton laughed. "you rather like to dance, don't you, burgoyne?" "it isn't a question of like or dislike. it's a question of what the lady wants--and whom she wants. devereux is a fool about her, and i think i'm getting dippy too. nothing serious, pendleton, nothing serious, i assure you; but she is a mighty attractive girl and we both know it. you understand." "i understand!" pendleton answered. "what did i tell you the first day you saw her--at the club, wasn't it?" "yes--the same day that you met stephanie lorraine when she drove up alone--you remember?" pendleton nodded--finished knotting his tie, drew on his waist-coat and coat, picked up his gloves, and he and burgoyne went down-stairs, just as the clock was striking eight. immediately dinner was announced, and they went in without partners, and found who they were when they got to the table. pendleton was not surprised to find he had stephanie lorraine on his right; in fact, he would have been a trifle disappointed had she not been there. it was becoming the rule among stephanie's few (at present) friends always to include him in their invitations, and always to put them together when it could be done without making too much of a point of it. she was looking particularly fit this evening, in a dull green gown, with a collar of emeralds about her soft white throat and a copper-gold net binding her copper-red hair. she met him with the familiar little nod that she reserved for him alone, and looked up at him with a bewitching glance as he placed her chair. "i am surprised to see you!" she smiled. "here?" he asked. "anywhere!" she answered. "is it a pleasant surprise?" "of course." "anywhere?" "everywhere!" "everywhere is rather more comprehensive than anywhere!" "is it?" she inflected slyly. "did you mean it so?" he asked. "perhaps." "you're doubtful?" "sometimes." "when are the sometimes?" "it depends--on the sometimes." "will there ever come a time when there won't be any sometimes?" he asked, bending toward her. she looked at him--a dreamy, thoughtful light in her eyes. "i wonder," she said--"what do you think, _mon ami_?" "i don't think--i _hope_," he replied. she smiled faintly, but with entrancing sweetness. "thank you, montague," she said low--"i shall not forget--at present, i don't dare remember--you understand?" "i understand," he answered--"more's the pity.--how is lorraine?" "better--he sent for me yesterday." his eyes sought her face questioningly. "i went--and stayed a minute," she replied. "i hope i wasn't in too great hurry to get away. it was ghastly, however--perfectly ghastly! i trust he doesn't send for me again. don't let us talk about it," and she gave a little shudder and reached for her sherry. burgoyne, on her left, caught her eye as she did so and raised his glass. "how!" he said. "when did you join the army!" she asked, as the glasses were replaced. "whenever we drink a toast to a pretty woman!" he laughed. "it's better than the navy's 'sweethearts and wives.' sometimes it is a trifle awkward to drink to them both, you know." he did not realize how it would sound to her until he ended--then he tried to gasp it back. but she only smiled. "i don't mind from you, sheldon," she said. "i didn't mean it!" he protested. "i was only talking." "just keep on talking," she replied. "i know you didn't mean it _that_ way.--and it is true enough sometimes--and _sometimes_ one doesn't care to drink to either," and she smiled slightly. "how lovely marcia emerson is, this evening," she remarked. "from another woman that is a compliment indeed--but you can well afford to be generous, stephanie, you can give them all cards and spades and little casino--and the ace of hearts." "so long as i retain the jack of hearts, _n'est ce pas_?" "and since you retain all the other hearts--your own included," he replied. "consider yourself curtsyed to most profoundly!" she laughed. "now let us return to miss emerson. warwick devereux seems to be making pretty fast going--can you overhaul him?" "i?" she nodded. "yes, you--can you?" "why should _i_ try to overhaul him?" he asked. "for divers reasons--too numerous to mention--the main one is across the table." "i see." "i hope so--and another reason is your disposition to be generous." "as well as to annoy," he supplemented. "you mean i will try to annoy dev?" "i don't think the lady will be annoyed, if you were to try the overhauling act. you know dev--and so does she, i assume. if she does want to land him, you'll be a relief. in either event, she'll be grateful--and a grateful woman can do much for the gratefulee, especially when he is a man." "where do i come in?" he smiled. "that is for you to find out," she replied. "you think it is worth trying?" "don't _you_ think so?" "i don't know. i might overtake--and then not want the trick when i get it. or i might want the trick--and then not be able to overtake." "certainly, you might--but you have to risk something in the game; and you're a good gambler, sheldon--or you used to be. have you lost your nerve?" "i'm older!" he replied. "three years!" she smiled. "moreover, i understood that the race is on." "not exactly--i'm just trailing--keeping the field in view." "rather full view, isn't it?" "well, i don't require a glass," he admitted. "you're lying back until you're sure what you want, and see a chance to get it?" she said. "that is too comprehensive," he replied. "at present i'm simply looking on--and being entertained." "there is no possible doubt that you're being entertained!" she laughed. "how does dev like it--is he being entertained also?" "sure--anything entertains him until he tires of it." "he has not tired of miss emerson yet--and it has been a long time _for him_. in the normal run, he should have butter-flied away to half-a-dozen girls." "he has never before had a marcia emerson to keep him on the jump," said burgoyne. "he is used to having the girls go down before his money and birth like scuttle-pins. she is a new experience for him--and he's half tempted to become serious. if i press him too close he may become serious, and i don't want that to happen--just yet." "till you know if you want it to happen ever?" she laughed. "do you fancy that marcia emerson doesn't know--or at least suspect?" "i haven't thought," he admitted,--"except that she hasn't yet made up her mind about devereux. if she concludes that she wants him she'll get him without the least difficulty, i'm sure." "and if she concludes that she wants--someone else?" "meaning me?" he inquired blandly. "meaning you," she replied. "if i'm too close she'll get _me_ easy--hence i'm riding far aback. good term that--far aback!" "perfectly good term, sheldon--but not true in point of fact. if miss emerson wants you she has only to beckon, and you'll burst a girth to come up. all you nice men are alike--at the mercy of a beautiful woman when she calls." "the vampire!" he reflected. "'a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair!'" "maybe"--she reflected. "at any rate, i shall not dispute it. but men like vampires--_beautiful_ vampires." "'down to gehenna and up to the throne; he travels the fastest who travels alone.'" he quoted. "again there is no possible doubt of that," she replied. "the difficulty is that he rarely travels _alone_. the vampire usually gets him, and he carries her too. we women are all more or less vampires--just as you men are more or less rogues." "i reckon you're right," he admitted. "at the best, it is simply a matter of degree--and we notice it only when the particular man and woman aren't properly mated. then she is a vampire or he is a rogue, as the case may be." "now you know what to look for. a vampire who will mate your rogue!" she laughed. "is miss emerson the vampire?--that is what _you_ have to determine." "or am i her rogue!" he laughed back. "it's a pity we don't always match up, isn't it----" once again he bit off the words and tried to catch them back. and once again she smiled indulgently. "you never can know how you're going to match up until after you've tried it--and then it's too late," she answered. "that is the pity of it, sheldon, that is the pity of it." "the pity of what?" asked pendleton, who had happened to catch her last words. "the pity of not knowing," she replied, dismissing burgoyne with a significant smile and turning to pendleton. "not knowing what?" he asked. "nothing absolutely." "rather heavy talk for a dinner," he observed. "it wasn't heavy--sheldon and i were discussing the vampire and the rogue." "heavens!" he ejaculated. "and we agreed that every woman is more or less vampire and every man more or less rogue." "a trifle cynical, to say the least," he remarked. "don't _you_ agree with us?" "as a general proposition--with exceptions--i'll join the party." "but we also agree that the exceptions are only a matter of degree." "you mean there are no exceptions?" "exactly!" "but there are infinitesimal degrees?" "i--suppose so," she hesitated. "very well, i'll go along with _you_. what degree do you think i am?" "we also were of a mind that no one knows until after marriage what degree the other is--that is the pity of it." "in other words, marriage is an eye-opener!" he laughed. "well we are unanimous on that point also. in fact, i'm ready to agree with you on anything, for anything, and at any time." "thank you, montague--thank you, very much," she replied, with a quick glance through her long lashes. "i want you presently to agree with me--about something." "it's done!" he replied. "what is it?" "i cannot tell you here--wait until after dinner, when we are quite alone. i'll manage that--there will be time before auction begins." "if we're to be _quite_ alone," he said, "can't you manage that auction doesn't begin?" "don't ask the impossible!" she smiled. "moreover, auction is an excellent game." "when one isn't more agreeably employed," he added. she shot him another glance. "you say nice things to me, montague," she remarked. "i do more than say them--i _mean_ them." "nicer things even than you used to say," she mused. "and i mean them even more--if that is possible." "you are spoiling me with compliments." "i want to spoil you." "why?" she asked, a bit startled. "because it pleases me to do it--and," leaning a little closer, "because you deserve to be spoiled in the proper way." "i didn't deserve it--once," she answered. "you're a different woman from what you were--once, stephanie." "people seem to think so!" she said, a trifle bitterly. "i didn't mean _that_," he answered quietly. "i mean that there has been little enough in your life of late to spoil you, so i shall try to make it up to you. may i?" for a moment she did not answer--bending her head lower over her plate. then she turned and faced him--the adorable smile on her lips. "you may spoil me, montague,--if you think it wise," she said. "i'm a wilful creature, you know." "i'll risk the wilfulness," he declared--"it is little enough to risk." "pendleton can tell us," came cameron's voice--"if he will stop talking trash to mrs. lorraine long enough to answer." "and talk trash to you instead, i presume," pendleton remarked. "certainly, what is it?" "how long has porshinger belonged to the club?" asked cameron. "longer than he ought," said pendleton dryly. "we know that!" the other laughed, in which the table joined. "but was it last year, or the year before--you were on the board of governors, weren't you?" "not when _he_ came in," pendleton replied. "consequently it must have been within the last two years; since my term expired. sorry i can't help you out." "why is it that every governor fights shy of having voted for porshinger?" cameron asked. "if you press them, they all side-step the responsibility. porshinger isn't such a bad fellow as a whole." "taken as a whole!" exclaimed devereux. "lord save the mark! the dose is prohibitive--very little of him is more than sufficient for me." "what is the matter with him--except that he's a bounder and all that?" cameron asked.--"there are many in the same class, and some of them 'belong.'" "true enough," devereux agreed; "but we tolerate the belongers who belong, on account of their families--at least for a time. those of porshinger's stamp are just plain bounders; they have nothing to go on except themselves." "would you rather be a bounder with porshinger's wealth and financial position, or a bounder with only a family behind you?" cameron inquired. "me for porshinger!" burgoyne declared. "he has the money and may improve--the other chap is hopeless." "he is at the next place--woodside's, i understand," miss chamberlain broke in. "suppose we ask him over and try our softening influence on him." "sample him before tasting," cameron suggested. "shake well before taking," devereux amended. "we shall ask pendleton to do the shaking--so it is thoroughly done!" cameron laughed. burgoyne gave pendleton an amused smile, which the latter returned. they were thinking of the episode on the club-house piazza. "you're not serious, gladys?" cried mrs. burleston. "it is for the table to say," gladys submitted. "vote, please--you begin, dorothy." "i vote for--that we have him over," said miss tazewell. "so do i," said mrs. burleston. "marcia, how do you vote?" asked gladys. "with the others," miss emerson acquiesced--but she hesitated just a trifle before she said it. "and mrs. lorraine?" stephanie did not understand the hostess' game, but she caught her significant look and acquiesced. "i also will vote with the others," she replied. "the gentlemen, of course, are of the same mind as the ladies so it will be unnecessary to ask them." miss chamberlain smiled. "therefore it is unanimously resolved that mr. porshinger be invited to criss-cross and to make one of the party. we need another man anyway. i don't hear any objection so the resolution stands. i shall telephone him in the morning." "and he will be bounder enough to come!" muttered devereux. "of course he will," said gladys--"it is just because he is a bounder that we're going to ask him. you don't suppose i would venture it on you, or any other gentleman--to take you from another house where you're a guest for the week-end!" "cameron, what possessed you to inquire about porshinger? you're responsible for all this fool thing!" declared devereux. "it was a perfectly harmless inquiry," cameron protested, "which turned out to be loaded. i beg your pardon, devereux, i shall never do it again." "remember i shall expect you men to be civil to him," miss chamberlain cautioned. "do you _actually_ mean to ask him, gladys?" said burgoyne. "i never was more serious in my life. moreover it is the will of the table." burgoyne held up his hands. "oh lord! oh lord!" he exclaimed. "it isn't all bad," cameron remarked. "if we treat him half decent maybe sometime we can all borrow an extra wad at the tuscarora." "touching that matter," laughed devereux, "i have known such things to happen." "but not touching porshinger," cameron observed. "the man who touches him will be a fencer indeed." "he'll be a burglar!" devereux retorted. "why are _you_ so quiet?" turning to pendleton. "why don't you say something?--join in, join in!" "it's not up to me to say anything," pendleton replied, as he sunk his fork into the asparagus salad. "it's your funeral as much as anyone's!" devereux exclaimed. "not at all--it is miss chamberlain's. she will have to bear the responsibility and the burden--and be nice to him in future. we are obligated to nothing except to be civil to him while we're at criss-cross. it is not worrying me in the least--moreover, i'm not in need of money." "now you have it, devereux!" said cameron. "want any more?" "not at present, thank you!" devereux laughed. "meanwhile we have until to-morrow before the bounder arrives. i'm going to enjoy the time while it lasts--it is short enough as it is." "how are you going to enjoy it?" asked mrs. burleston. "making love to you." "why should mr. porshinger's coming interfere with you making love to helen?" gladys inquired. "'oh, the fascinating widow!'" sang devereux. "do be sensible, dev," mrs. burleston exclaimed. "ask of him something possible!" gladys laughed. "dear lady, you speak with a cruel tongue----" "but with a true tongue," she interjected. "perchance--yes! verily i say unto you that unless you wear red hosiery in the autumn the truth isn't in you and you shall surely be damned." "there is not the least doubt of _your_ being damned," remarked cameron. "you mistake the sex--i don't wear _hosiery_. i wear socks." "i'm not so sure!" cameron retorted. "that could be taken as a reflection on me, but you naturally referred to the ladies. 'twas a most ungallant speech, monsieur, a most ungallant speech! remember it not against him, mademoiselles--he knows not what he does." "what a clown dev can be when he tries!" smiled pendleton. "his facial expressions make funny what otherwise would be rotten." "and it is so absurd in him, who is such a wonder in business," stephanie added. "the man has a double nature, surely--and i can't say that i care for this side. it doesn't fit!" "on the contrary, it seems to me it fits admirably. he is able to throw off his cares and forget them--and to make a boy of himself. that may be the reason he is so shrewd--he comes at business fresh every morning. i think it was a pretense at first, but it has become second nature now." "i like a manly man, not a combination of a man and a harlequin," said stephanie. "a man like mr. chamberlain or--you, montague," with a tantalizing smile from under her lowered lids. "don't tempt me!" he warned.--"don't tempt me!" "it is perfectly safe to tempt you--_here_." "it may not be on the piazza." "the temptation _passes_ when we leave this room," she enjoined. "i am not so sure," he threatened. the hostess arose. "does it pass?" stephanie asked. he only smiled, and drew out her chair. "does it pass?" she repeated as she faced him. his only answer was another smile. "very well, sir; i'll not go on the piazza with you until you acquiesce--and neither will i arrange that we are quite alone, as i had intended." "you win!" he laughed. "the temptation passes--for to-night." half an hour later, the coffee finished, mrs. lorraine arose and went into the house. presently a servant very quietly summoned pendleton to the telephone. stephanie was on the landing when he entered the hall, and she met him at the foot of the stairs. "i'm the telephone," she remarked. "i had hoped so," he smiled. "where shall we go?" "on the side piazza, where the lights are not burning." he held back the portieres, and they went through the library and out into the star-light night, where the silver crescent of the moon was cutting its way toward the western horizon. all was still save for the faint hum of voices at the front and occasional laughter. "it's a perfect night!" she breathed. "how much better the country is for one than the dirt and noise and bustle of the big town. the peace and calm--the _dolce far niente_ of it all--is very, very restful." "it's the place for women who don't have to work--and the men who can afford not to," he said. "everyone is gravitating toward the country--the pure air, the pure water--the simple life that is not quite so simple as it once was." "but it's simpler than town life--heaps simpler," as she led the way to a remote corner, where two chairs stood apart. she took one.--he drew the other close over, and sitting on the arm reached down and took her hand. "you said the temptation passed," she admonished--while suffering it to remain. "this isn't temptation--it's admiration, adoration----" "flirtation!" she laughed. "whatever it is, it _isn't_ flirtation," he said. "you know that, don't you, stephanie?" she gave him a fleeting look. "yes, montague, i know that," she answered softly--and quietly withdrew her hand. "now sit down and let me tell you what it is i want you to agree to--we haven't much time, you know. devereux will be on our trail if we're absent too long." he whirled the chair around and sat down--then calmly leaned forward and, in a masterful matter-of-fact way, took possession of both her hands. "will that make you more amenable?" she laughed softly, yielding them to him. "i'll agree to anything you wish, _now_," he responded. "but it's not exactly right, montague," she protested. "i know it isn't," he admitted; "when we want, we do a lot that isn't right. what is it you have to tell me?" "it's about porshinger--" she hesitated. "you knew gladys was going to ask him?" he said. she shook her head. "no, i didn't--she did it on the spur of the moment, i'm sure, though she may have had this matter we are coming to in mind. you're puzzled--and i don't wonder. tell me, montague, did you ever have any trouble with porshinger?" "not especially!" he said, trying to throw surprise into his voice. who had told her? "not especially!" she repeated. "what does that mean?" "perhaps you would better tell me what _you_ mean," he said. "yes, i think i would," she replied, "and it's this: i lunched with marcia emerson yesterday at partridge's--then i took her home in my car. on the way she told me that a few nights prior she was up at the club until late, and while sitting alone on the piazza she had overheard porshinger and murchison--who were seated around the corner from her and evidently thought they had the place to themselves--discussing you. it was only a few words, but they were significant. murchison asked if there was anything new in the _lorraine_ affair. "'not much,' said porshinger. 'the matter is progressing; pendleton is not invulnerable--i've found a way to reach him, and he soon will be having troubles of his own.' "murchison advised him to leave well enough alone; to which porshinger replied that that might be murchison's way but it wasn't his way--that you had started the fight, and you would think 'merry hell was loose' before he was done with you." "is that all miss emerson heard?" asked pendleton. "y--e--s, that is all." "are you sure, dear?" "there _was_ something else--it's of no consequence, however. i don't recall it now!" she fluttered. "wouldn't you better tell me all?" he said quietly. "isn't what i have told you sufficient?" she parried. "tell me the rest, stephanie," he urged. "he called you a 'snob.'" he smiled. "you're keeping something back." "you _have_ made him an enemy?" she evaded. "i'm afraid i've also made him an enemy of some one else--and that she is hiding it from me. tell me, dear, weren't _you_ included in the threat?" "i'm a poor hand at evasion," she sighed.--"yes, i was included. he said--'and the lorraine woman too.'" "i thought as much!" he exclaimed--"the miserable, skulking coward!" "but i don't understand!--what is it all about--what does it mean?" "it means that burgoyne and i had some words with porshinger and his friend murchison the night of your return. it was up at the club and late and no one saw it. they have been so quiet about it since that i thought it had been dropped. i didn't realize what a vindictive brute we had stirred up. well, we will try to be prepared for the great man!" he laughed. "this fight," she began---- "i didn't say there was a fight," he interposed. "no, you didn't say it--but there _was_ a fight, and it was about me--something that he or murchison said in your hearing, and which you resented.--wasn't it, montague?" "you're very knowing!" he smiled. "i don't ask you _what_ it was--but _if_ it was?" she persisted. "something of that sort," he admitted--"though the--ostensible dispute was over the cut of porshinger's coat, as i recall it. your name was not mentioned." "but _they_ understood?" "it seems so." "tell me about it, montague," she begged--"the fight and all." "it doesn't tell well," he objected. "tell it anyway!" "it was just a scrap between us, nothing more." "but i want to hear it--you did it for me, so why shouldn't you tell me?" he looked down into the soft eyes upturned to him--and yielded. "it was this way," he said.... "it was foolish, i suppose," he ended, "but one doesn't always stop to consider under some provocation. i never for an instant thought it would involve _you_ in his spite. i didn't credit him with being so small and mean." "and now i want you to promise me that you will take every precaution to guard yourself against him," she said. "myself!" he exclaimed. "yes, myself for the purpose of protecting you." "and for the purpose of protecting yourself also," she broke in. "i am persuaded that porshinger means mischief." "what persuaded you?" he smiled. "the man himself." "you don't know him?" "i met him this morning." "at criss-cross--he was here?" "no--i met him on the churchville road--while i was taking my early morning walk." "had he the effrontery to address you?" "very respectfully and very courteously--i did not resent it in the least.--you see," as he looked at her doubtfully, "i myself was trying something, montague." "trying to put salt on the tiger's tail?" he smiled. "after a fashion. i was reconnoitering--trying to find out his weak points." "did you succeed?" "a little--he is like all men--fond of a pretty woman and--her figure." "which you might very readily have inferred," pendleton remarked. "no," said she. "some men with his characteristics are totally indifferent to women. i found out also that he is sensitive about his personal appearance--he wants to look and act a gentleman--and that he will do much to be received by our set." "do you consider such weakness very vulnerable?" he asked, amused. "most undoubtedly--he will forego much to advance his social position." "and _you_ think of helping him on?" "not that exactly," she reflected. "i think to use it to our advantage--though how i've not the least idea as yet." "i think you don't appreciate what manner of man porshinger is, my dear," said he soothingly. "he is as cold as ice and as hard as armor-plate." "i inferred as much--and such men are usually easy to influence if they have a hobby. porshinger's hobby--concealed though it be--is the social whirl. let him but think that he's whirling and anything is possible." "you're not thinking of--flirting with him?" he asked, puzzled. "no--just trying to make him like me well enough to forego his revenge. if he foregoes me, he likely will forego you also--as a matter of policy." "my dear child!" smiled pendleton. "i'm not concerned about his revenge--not in the least. he can't hurt me, and i don't see how he can hurt you--_if you let him alone_. the danger, with his kind, is in being nice to them and in having your motives misunderstood and misinterpreted. since you have met him, you can be politely nice to him but--tell me about this meeting on the road," he said suddenly. "did it seem to be premeditated on his part?" "i don't know--but i think not. he overtook me about a mile from the overton stile--you know the place. he merely raised his hat and spoke casually--as one does in the country--and was passing; then held back; and i gave him leave, by my manner, to accompany me--which he did as far as the criss-cross gates." "were you going or returning?" "going--we returned by the path through the overton property." "why do you smile?" he asked. "at something that happened--not with him, you foolish boy, not with him--with the overton bull." "the what?" pendleton exclaimed. "the overton bull--he assisted me over the fence." "you don't mean it?" he cried. "if you had seen me going over you would think that i meant it!" she laughed. "however, i'm quite satisfied that you didn't--there was altogether too generous a display of silk hosiery and lace." "you prefer that porshinger should see.--what was the bounder doing?--why didn't he protect you?" he demanded. "he couldn't--he tried to protect me, but the bull avoided him and made for me." "he is a bull of sense," said pendleton. "i compliment him on his discrimination." "but you can't say so much for me?" she smiled. "you need some one to look after you, dear--some one on whom you can depend----" "a matador?" she suggested. "very effective so far as the bull is concerned--but not the sort you seem to require." "you mean something that will keep off undesirable acquaintances." "precisely." "what would you suggest--measles or smallpox?" "i would suggest a husband." she shrugged her bare shoulders. "you forget that i already have a husband--a mr. lorraine," she replied. "that is precisely why i suggest the need for another." "one can't have two husbands, montague." "not at the same time--and be lawful," he answered. "do you mean that i should try another--amherst?" she asked. he held up his hands. "god forbid!" he replied. "i mean 'according to god's own ordinances,' and so forth." "who would have _me_?" she said bitterly. he leaned a bit forward and looked at her intently. "i'm a tainted thing--amusing, good to look at, to chat with, to while away the time with, like the high class _demi-monde_; but for anything more--no! no!" "you don't think that," he replied.--"you know----" "i know what the world says of a married woman who does as i have done. it may tolerate her but a man never marries her--or if he does the world punishes him by loss of caste." he leaned closer, bending down until her hair brushed his face and its perfume rose about him like a cloud. "i am ready to risk it, dear one," he whispered. "i am ready to marry you the moment you are free." "you are ready to marry me?" she breathed. "no! no! montague, i was not playing for that, i was not----" "stephanie, dearest, don't you love me?" he asked. she looked at him steadily an instant--then over her face broke the entrancing smile, and she put up her arm and drew his face close to hers. "yes, sweetheart," she whispered--and kissed him on the lips. but when he would have gathered her into his embrace she stayed him. "no, dearest," she said, "i will not let you be an amherst, even in a little--nor would you yourself. i am not going to provoke a fresh scandal that will involve you and make of our--love a reproach. suppose some one saw me in your arms--what would be the natural inference--with my recent past?" "no one would see," he pleaded. "we must not risk it--for your sake, we must not." she put out her hand and slipped it into his. "you may hold me as close as you like in fancy--you can't hold me _too_ close--but help me to be strong, dear one, help me to be strong!" "you are right," he reflected.--"just another kiss, and then----" she held up her face--and their lips met. as they did so, the lights suddenly flared up in the room directly in the rear and through an open window fell full upon them. he straightened up instantly. "no one saw!" he said, glancing around toward the house. "one can never tell," she answered, with a nervous little laugh. "some one _may_ have seen." she got up hastily. "let us go in, we have been out here long enough--and devereux will be on our trail." he took her hand and drew it through his arm, and they passed down the piazza and into the house. * * * * * * * and some one did see! porshinger and woodside were coming up the walk just as the light flashed out. "look there!" the latter exclaimed. porshinger nodded. "a new one on the string," woodside continued. "oh, these fascinating women!--you may be able to use that kiss to--advantage, my friend. two on the string are not too many, unless _you_ would be the only one.--hey?" but porshinger did not answer--and woodside, with a sharp glance at him, said no more. he did not understand. as for porshinger, after the episode of the morning, he did not know whether to be pleased or sorry. he walked on a few steps--hesitated--stopped. "on the whole, i think we'll not drop in," he remarked--"at least, not this evening. it might not be a propitious time; moreover, miss chamberlain may consider me as an intruder. you have no right, woodside, you know, to take me there, even in a happen-in, without her express permission." whereat woodside stared--and then laughed. "precisely my idea!" he remarked--and faced about. assuredly he did not understand. xiii the unpopular guest "my offer to include porshinger in the party rather met with opposition!" gladys laughed, as she and stephanie sat alone together in the farmer's boudoir that night. she balanced her slipper on one silken toe and surveyed it critically. "i thought sheldon burgoyne would choke and that warwick devereux would have a fit. as for montague pendleton, one never can tell from _his_ manner whether he is sitting on a red hot stove, a piece of ice--or an easy chair. though my private opinion is that he liked it the least of any of them." "no, you never can tell by montague's manner," stephanie agreed. "it is always severely indifferent outwardly, and no one ever gets behind the scenes--with him." "no one--but stephanie lorraine!" gladys smiled, "and she won't tell. in fact, you two are much alike in temperament--the calmly placid sort on the surface, and the devil knows how turbulent underneath." "you flatter me indeed," stephanie replied, drawing one gleaming coppery braid slowly through her fingers. "i consider it a very great compliment to be likened to montague, even in a little thing." the other looked at her speculatively a bit, drumming the while with slow fingers on the dressing table in front of her. stephanie, with a dreamy, absent air, continued drawing the braid back and forth against her cheek. "it's a pity!" reflected gladys thoughtfully. stephanie continued to toy with her braid and did not seem to hear. "it's a pity," gladys repeated.--"a grievous pity that you didn't marry montague pendleton--instead of harry lorraine." "it's more than a pity--it's a calamity," replied stephanie imperturbably. "why don't you marry him now?" gladys demanded. "simply because it's contrary to the law of the land for a woman to have two husbands at the same time. harry lorraine happens still to be alive." "why don't you get a divorce?" "i haven't any cause--and he hasn't any pluck." "you can go to reno," gladys suggested. "what will reno accomplish--if he opposes it! moreover, i don't want a reno divorce. i should never feel that i _was_ divorced." gladys smiled and was silent. "it is better than amherst and six months in europe, you are thinking," stephanie added. "and you're quite right; that was hell--perfect hell." gladys picked up her hand-glass and studied her face in an impersonal way--as though it were the face of a stranger. "and you think," she said presently, "it would be a heaven with pendleton?" "by comparison, yes--a perfect heaven," was the answer. "you would be willing to risk it?" stephanie ceased playing with her braid, and leaning forward took a cigarette from the case on the table. "yes, i should be willing to risk it," she replied,--"if he were to ask me--and lorraine were out of the way." "i think," said gladys, laying aside the mirror and drawing her slender feet up under her, "i think he will ask you, if lorraine gets out of the way in a reasonable time. but you mustn't expect him to wait forever--a man is a fickle beast at best, you know." "beast is an appropriate term for most men!" stephanie exclaimed.--"but it doesn't apply to montague." "possibly it doesn't--you never can tell, however, until you've lived with a man and tried him." "montague is a _dear_!" stephanie declared. "of course he is a dear, a perfect dear," her friend agreed--"and you are not taking much of a chance, but there is a chance." "_he_ would be taking an infinitely greater chance," said stephanie. "he would be taking no chance whatever." "with my past?" "your past is what warrants you--you have been tried in the fire and all the dross fused out of you. i would rather trust you _now_ than--myself." "you think that all the bad is out?" "i do, indeed!" "i wish i were so sure of it," stephanie mused. gladys laughed softly. "you _are_ sure of it, dear. montague pendleton himself couldn't drag you out of the straight and narrow--and that even though you were to love him madly." she got up and going over perched herself on the other's chair-arm. "forget the past--your friends have forgotten it. be thankful that it _is_ the past--and that once more the sun is shining. you have those who are devoted to you, and you have--montague." stephanie drew the other down and kissed her. "_maybe_ i have him!" she smiled. "you said that i have him for a reasonable time--that man is a fickle beast at best." "the reasonable time varies with the man!" gladys smiled back. "with montague pendleton it is likely to be forever. he loved you, i think, before your marriage--he loves you still. isn't that an assurance of the future?--now let us get back to the porshinger matter. i didn't telephone--i wanted to discuss the invitation with you. i know that mrs. woodside is absent and he's simply down with woodside, so we could ask him well enough. and, on the whole, i think it would not be a bad scheme. you're afraid of him for montague, as well as for yourself. he is a climber, with enormous wealth and power--and he's coming over the wall, so why not assist him? he will be grateful and it may cause him to relent. he will know that if he injures montague he will injure his chances for society. moreover, the sooner we start to draw his fangs the better it will be for you two." "i don't think montague will approve," said stephanie. "i told him marcia emerson's story, and he laughed at my fears--though admitting there _had been_ a difficulty and that i had to do with it. then i also told him of the walk with porshinger and of overton's bull; and while he didn't say much, i could see that he didn't like it." "all of which goes to prove his affection for you--if you doubt it," gladys remarked. stephanie smiled an answer but did not voice it--and gladys put her arm around her friend's neck and was silent also for a moment. presently she said: "was montague actually averse to porshinger's being asked to criss-cross?" "in a mild sort of way, yes--but nothing vehement, i assure you." "it isn't montague's way to be vehement," gladys observed. "at any rate, i think we'll try the experiment. i'll ask him over to-morrow in time for tea, explaining that we need another man--and so boost him up the wall a bit. we can size up the situation--his amenability to kind treatment principally--and if it's not promising we need go no further with him. but i'm inclined to the notion that being nice to him will be exceedingly effective. he impressed you as well-mannered and fairly agreeable, didn't he?" stephanie nodded. "so far as i could judge superficially he is no different from the men we've known always. i found him very pleasant and courteous. whether it was natural with him or only company manners i didn't try to find out." "naturally not.--well, we'll turn the wild animal loose among the tame ones and see what happens. _we_ can at least enjoy the fun.--_you_ don't object, my dear?" "not in the least!" stephanie laughed. * * * * * * * the following morning woodside came out on his piazza, a queer look on his face. "you're wanted on the telephone," said he to porshinger, who was sitting looking out over the valley. "mr. porshinger, this is miss chamberlain," said a particularly sweet voice, when he had answered. "yes, miss chamberlain, how do you do?" said he. "i want to know if you won't come over to criss-cross this afternoon and join us at tea, and stay for dinner and the night? mr. woodside has been exceedingly nice and says he will excuse you--now you be equally nice and _come_, won't you?" "why certainly, certainly--i shall be delighted," porshinger responded; "but i can't stay the night. i'm going back to town on the midnight train. i must be there early in the morning." "that's _very_ good of you--we shall be glad to have you for the evening--at five o'clock then--good bye, mr. porshinger!" porshinger hung up the receiver and went slowly out to woodside, who was smoking like a chimney. the latter glanced at him with a shrewd smile. "getting on, aren't you?" he remarked. "i don't know whether i'm getting on or getting under," porshinger replied. "you're getting both, i should say. it won't be long until they have you under hack with the rest of the men." "you think so?" "i'm perfectly sure of it--you'll be so satisfied to be _in_ that you'll eat out of their hands. you may be the devil in business and the stock market--also adamant--but you'll be an innocent little lamb and a wax baby in the women's game. they won't pick your pockets--oh no! you'll hand out everything you have and hustle for more to give them--and do it cheerfully." "you seem to be wise!" porshinger retorted. "i am wiser than you, at any rate. you've been too absorbed in acquiring money to give any time to the petticoats--except those of a certain kind, and you don't learn anything from _them_ but bargain and sale. you have a new experience coming, old man, a new experience! these people don't care a damn for your money----" "then why am i asked?" porshinger interrupted. "because you're wanted--for some other reason." "hum!" said porshinger. "maybe i'm wanted to play the clown." "it is entirely possible!" laughed woodside: "though a likelier guess would be that they want to inspect you--to size you up, and to try you out, and to play auction with you. however, you've got two of them at an advantage--that kiss on the piazza last night ought to be good for something." porshinger blew a cloud of smoke high in the air and watched it whirl away on the morning breeze. "it ought to make the fair widow--mrs. lorraine, i mean; i'm always thinking of her as a widow--more--obliging," his host commented. "you're a bit of a beast, woodside!" porshinger observed. "oh, i don't know!" was the response. "when it comes to that there isn't much choice between us, charlie, old boy. you know perfectly well it's her face and figure that's the attraction." "well, do you blame me?" "hell, no!--i rather envy you the chance." "the chance of what?" asked porshinger. "the chance to _improve_ on acquaintance. you have accepted, i presume?" porshinger nodded. "if you will excuse me." "sure--delighted to facilitate your campaign." there was just a suspicion of mockery in the words--and porshinger detected it. "so you think it is a campaign when one tries to know new people?" he inquired. "i wouldn't put it just that way!" was the laughing reply. "what?" "i shouldn't call the chamberlains and their house-party _new_ people." "don't be absurd; you know what i meant. there are circles within circles in society, and----" "we are in one of the outer circles and aiming to climb into the inner ones, i understand. miss chamberlain's invitation is a big boost for you--if you make good. if you don't make good, you are in for a nasty tumble. query:--are you invited that you may tumble, or are you invited that you may climb--in plain words, are they making sport of you or are they not?" "i scarcely think that they will make sport of me!" porshinger laughed. "i'm not accustomed to being used that way. moreover, they are too well bred. our intimates might do it, woodside, but not these people. that is why i'm for climbing the fence--understand?" "pooh!" woodside scoffed. "they are no different from other people, except that they think they're more exclusive." "and think it so successfully that every one who is outside wants inside--yourself among them, my friend, yourself among them." "i don't give a damn for them!" woodside declared. "maybe you don't--but mrs. woodside does--and you do too, if you'd be honest. everyone does, josh, everyone does. it's a humanly universal failing. let some set themselves up as particularly exclusive and the rest are wild to get in with them." "hell!" muttered woodside. the two men smoked a while in silence--then woodside spoke. "it's mighty queer," he said, "and altogether lucky for you." porshinger raised his eyes and waited inquiringly. "altogether lucky!" the other repeated. "you back out of a 'happen in' yesterday, and receive a 'come-in' to-day. can you explain it?" "i can't explain it--unless it is the result of my walk with mrs. lorraine, yesterday morning. however, i'm frank to say that i didn't play a particularly heroic part in the bull episode; so unless i made an impression otherwise i reckon that isn't it." "has miss chamberlain been especially friendly before this?" woodside asked. "not at all." "how about the others at criss-cross?" porshinger shook his head. "might it be old chamberlain?" "possibly--but i think not. he never allows business to dictate his friends, i understand." "good thing when you can afford it!--well, there must be _some_ reason for asking you." "a particularly sage observation. button! button! who has the button?" "butt in! butt in! you're the butt in!" amended woodside. "get out!" laughed porshinger, flinging a magazine at him. "i haven't an idea what is the reason, but i'm perfectly sure it won't be declared this trip, and possibly never. don't look a gift horse in the mouth, josh." "better be sure it is a gift horse," was the answer. "however, you for it, my friend--it's your funeral, not mine." "i'm going to it a pretty live corpse." "you'll need to be very much alive, i take it. i should be afraid of that gang. they're so damn dignified and unobtrusive in their self-assurance. you can't tell what they are playing for nor how. as i said before, you're a wonder for business but you're in the novice class in this woman's game. you have my best wishes, my friend--also my prayers. you don't care for the prayers? oh, very well." at the same hour on the piazza of criss-cross, gladys chamberlain confided to her guests that porshinger was coming to them at five o'clock. "any objections?" she inquired, looking at devereux. "plenty of them!" he answered; "but i'll save them for an exclusively masculine audience." "how about you, steuart?" she asked. "same here!" replied cameron. she turned to burgoyne. "and you?" "ditto!" said he. "really i am overcome by such gratifying unanimity!" she laughed. "you too, montague, i suppose?" "not at all," pendleton answered. "i'm in the hands of my hostess." "which is exceedingly polite but means nothing," cameron explained. "it was meant to mean nothing," devereux interrupted. "was it, montague?" gladys asked. "it was meant to mean whatever you wish," said pendleton. "whatever is agreeable to you is my desire. if you wish porshinger what have we to say or to do--except to be agreeable?" "oh, certainly--miss chamberlain knows that we'll be agreeable!" devereux exclaimed--"also that we do object to porshinger. what is the use of spoiling a particularly congenial crowd by having a bounder run in on us?--however--orders are orders. we'll turn out the guard to receive him and do him full reverence for your dear sake, gladys." he tossed his cigarette away and arose, "miss emerson, i have the honor to ask you to go for a stroll--wilt come, sweetheart, wilt come?" "coming, dearest, coming!" laughed marcia. "tarry only until i get a sunshade." "at the foot of the steps, i will await you. haste, little one, haste, i pray." "you will be back for luncheon, i presume?" gladys called after them, as they went down the walk. "not if i can persuade the beauteous lady to elope with me," replied devereux. "otherwise, we shall be back--and hungry." "what is the reason for this unusual tack of gladys?" burgoyne asked pendleton in an undertone. "you mean as to porshinger?" "of course." "friendship and interest, i presume," pendleton answered. "bosh!" said burgoyne. "what is it--do you know?" "i told you: friendship and interest--in mrs. lorraine?--and incidentally in your humble servant." "good enough! but just where does it come in, please--what does it consist in?" "in drawing his fangs--porshinger's fangs." burgoyne looked puzzled. "you remember our little fracas with porshinger and murchison up at the club some time ago?" said pendleton. "sure--that is what makes his coming here embarrassing--though they both have utterly ignored it since." "only outwardly. porshinger has threatened vengeance on stephanie and me, it seems. the women heard of it--gladys and stephanie, that is--and have a scheme to propitiate him, the first course of which is this invitation to criss-cross. subsequent courses will depend on how this one goes down with all concerned. it's nonsense, certainly, but as he _can_ injure stephanie, if he sets himself to do it, i don't feel justified in opposing it." "the infernal scoundrel!" burgoyne exclaimed. "do you actually think he contemplates taking his revenge on a woman?" "to be quite candid, i don't know. however, judging from his business methods, he is mean enough for anything." "can he reach _you_?" "if he should try, yes--he has sufficient power, with his enormous wealth and its ramifications, to reach almost any one in some way or by some means." "he is a good hater, i've always understood," said burgoyne. "i'm not alarmed," pendleton answered. "doesn't he include me in his revenge?" "in the story stephanie told me your name was not mentioned. moreover, you'll remember that you trimmed murchison, while i did for porshinger." "i don't like it--i mean this invitation. the women are lending themselves to--placate the rotten beast." "nor i," pendleton returned; "but just because stephanie is involved, i dare not protest. gladys says porshinger is going to get in anyway--it is only a matter of a short time, and that the end justifies the means. i made light to stephanie of their apprehension, but nevertheless it is serious. it was a grievous blunder to begin that fight--and porshinger knows he can even up with us best, and hurt us most, by injuring stephanie. if he can knife me also, so much the better." "i don't like it!" burgoyne reiterated. "on the other hand," pendleton continued, "stephanie says, and gladys supports her in it, that if she is nice to him, in an ordinary acquaintance way, he may get a change of heart." "i doubt it." "so do i--but she has the right to her opinion and to act on it." "more than likely she will only injure herself by being nice to the cur," said burgoyne. "are you sure she isn't doing this on _your_ account, pendleton?" "no, i'm not sure," he answered. "i've tried to disabuse her mind of the notion that he can hurt me, but i don't know how successful i've been." "hum!" burgoyne thought. "you never can tell what fool ideas a woman has--when she cares for a man." * * * * * * * at five o'clock porshinger drove up to criss-cross in the woodsides' car. a servant took his bag, and another showed him up to the west piazza, where tea was being served. "i'm so glad to see you, mr. porshinger!" exclaimed gladys, with a welcoming smile that fell on fruitful soil. "you know every one, i believe." porshinger did not _know_ everyone, but everyone greeted him as though he did. the women smiled and nodded, the men "how-are-you-porshingered" him in the careless fashion of their kind, and went on with their talk and high-balls. "rye or scotch--or will you have some tea?" asked miss chamberlain, pointing to a vacant chair beside her. "i'll have some rye, if i may," porshinger answered. "help yourself--they're on the side-table there." he helped himself and returned to her. she met him with just the word needed to start the conversation and the moment was relieved of embarrassment. then she picked out a topic mutually negative and sufficiently interesting, and they tossed it lightly back and forth. presently cameron glanced over and broke in. "possibly mr. porshinger can tell us," he said--"do you know whether betheson has sailed yet for china to take up those railroad concessions he has succeeded in financing?" "i'm not sure," porshinger answered. "i think he was to sail this week--i understand that he arranged for the money in new york and started at once." "the tuscarora didn't get aboard then?" "no--we were offered the underwriting but we didn't fancy going so far away. it looked like a good thing, however." "so betheson thought!" devereux smiled. "he will likely make a pot of money out of it," burgoyne chimed in. "if he doesn't spend two pots in the attempt," added pendleton. "which is altogether possible--and has been known to happen!" porshinger laughed. and so, the ice being broken, the talk became general. the men, for courtesy's sake, tried to treat porshinger as one of them--and succeeded in making him feel reasonably easy. they could not quite make him forget the fact that he was _not_ one of them, but that was something beyond their power. politeness can do much, but it cannot reach far enough to make one feel an insider, who knows that he is an outsider. however, they did their best, which was very considerable; and porshinger realized it--which was to his credit. after a while the women went off to dress, and presently the men threw away their cigars and betook themselves to their rooms. porshinger having bathed and shaved, got leisurely into his evening clothes, and then drew a chair close beside the window. woodside's place was visible a mile away--perched on the side of a hill among the huge forest trees. it looked calm and quiet and peaceful, and he wondered if he would not be better there than where he was: among strangers--an uncongenial interloper to them, a conscious intruder to himself. they had been very courteous, very kind, very considerate. miss chamberlain had been particularly hospitable. mrs. lorraine--he smiled in contemplation--mrs. lorraine was entrancing--mrs. lorraine would bear cultivating--mrs. lorraine would--he shook himself and sat up. mrs. lorraine was occupying too much of his thoughts. his was a campaign for social recognition first--and if pendleton and burgoyne were well disposed and inclined to forget the past, he might be willing also to forget.... mrs. lorraine looked particularly well this afternoon!--never had he realized what a superb figure was hers!--how exquisitely proportioned!--how winning her face behind its cold loveliness!--what a charming foot and ankle! she--he got up sharply. what was the matter with him? was he actually getting interested in this coming divorcée--did she appeal only to his senses? then, like a flash, came the recollection of the scene on the piazza the night before--and he laughed a little mockingly. _he_ would be but one of them. the fruit had been already tasted by amherst and pendleton--and the lord knows how many others. at present it was pendleton--next month it might be he--or another!... she _was_ marvellously good to look at. never had he seen one who was her equal, who even approached her.... well, he would try his hand--try to be one of them--and then to be the only one, if she still held his fancy. of course it would have to be done discreetly--so that none would know but those he had displaced. he smiled! it might be that she was honest now--since the amherst affair--but it was most unlikely, most unlikely. his own eyes had seen what would convict her of being dishonest. mrs. lorraine still--her husband helpless in a hospital--and her lover with her _here_!--no, it was not in the range of the possible. she was bad all through--with the badness that allures men because it is garbed in the robe of inherent respectability and high social position.... he lit a cigar, and as he smoked he considered the question--its bearing on himself socially and his prospects. he saw that it meant he must overlook the fracas with pendleton--must lay aside his resentment and turn the other cheek toward mrs. lorraine if he were to have any hope of success. then he smiled again. it would be but another sort of revenge on pendleton; to take her from him--a more refined revenge than to injure pendleton in his bank account or to have some thug beat him up. here was a new view of the matter; made so by the incident he had overseen the previous evening.... yes, on the whole it was the best way--decidedly the best way. he would get mrs. lorraine, and his revenge on pendleton at the same time.... of course she _might_ not be obtainable. she might hold to pendleton--it was an old attachment, he had heard, and she might be faithful to him. but he could offer inducements that were likely to be particularly appealing, and of the sort that usually won. if she were not to be lured from pendleton, then he could take up the other matter. there was no haste; he was a good waiter as well as a good hater--and a generous lover. with mrs. lorraine he would be more, much more than generous.... well, he would see how the adventure promised.... in the gathering shadows of the evening, he saw mrs. lorraine and pendleton come out on the open piazza below him. they stood leaning on the stone balustrade, and though he could hear the murmur of their voices the words were not distinguishable. [illustration: they stood leaning on the stone balustrade] she laughed softly, infectiously, intimately; and pendleton's mellow tones joined in.... porshinger's eyes glowed.... yes, she was good indeed to look at. good indeed! the call of the woman came up to him--and he yielded. so far as he was concerned, the game was on. pendleton was an obstacle, of course--but it would be a positive pleasure to overcome him. he was rather accustomed to obstacles, indeed they were just enough of a deterrent to add zest to the conquest. he came down-stairs a moment before dinner was announced, to find that he was to take his hostess in. "i am greatly honored," he said, as he gave her his arm. "not at all, mr. porshinger; you quite deserve it," she replied. "why should i deserve it?" he asked. "didn't you save my guest from the overton bull?" "i most assuredly did _not_. she saved herself by beating him to the fence and over it." "you helped. you delayed the animal long enough for her to get a start--and moreover you tried to attract him to yourself, you know, so the end justifies the reward, i think." "a large reward for a trifling service," he remarked. "the trifling and the large--depend on the respective points of view!" she smiled as he placed her chair. when he turned to take his own, he saw that mrs. lorraine was upon his right. "your reward is out of all proportion even from your point of view," he said, with a significant glance at stephanie. "do you object?" gladys asked. "does a thirsty man refuse drink?" "not if he is thirsty--and not always if he _isn't_." "i trust i shall always be thirsty--and deserving." "it is up to yourself, mr. porshinger," she said. and he understood. he was being given his chance to make good--to make friends--to make himself popular. if he failed, he would have only himself to blame. his look wandered around the table. pendleton was just across between mrs. burleston and miss tazewell. cameron was mrs. lorraine's partner. presently she turned and greeted him with a smile. "i hope you suffered no ill effects from the unfortunate experience of yesterday," he said. "none whatever!" she laughed. "not even a bruise. i might fancy i flew over the fence, if i didn't know otherwise. however, i avoided the overton path this morning." "you walked this morning?" he asked. "i walk every morning, when i'm in the country." "i wish i had known--though doubtless you had company." "the more the merrier," she returned, with her spoon poised critically over the grape fruit. "i shouldn't take the rest to be early risers," he reflected, running his eyes around the table. "come, tell me--didn't you go alone?" "which would be tantamount to saying that the others are not early risers." "would they object?" "no--i don't imagine they would--did you walk this morning?" "i wasn't an early riser, either!" he smiled. "you see, i didn't know you had the habit." he saw that she had avoided his question--doubtless pendleton had been with her. as a matter of fact, she had walked alone. "we shall have to try it some other sunday morning," he suggested. "is your walking confined to sunday mornings?" she asked. "my visiting at country houses is confined to week-ends--more's the pity." "don't you ever take a vacation--a long vacation, that is?" "i've never found time." "you've been abroad?" she asked. "on business--never for pleasure--and i come home the minute the business is finished, sometimes before." "don't you expect ever to take a vacation?" she inquired. "certainly--when i get the opportunity." "you mean when you're dead." "possibly!" he laughed. "you ought to have enough. you could stop this instant and be the wealthiest in the state--one of the very wealthiest in the nation." "what are a few millions!" he minimized. "a few! do you call thirty _few_?" "who said i am worth thirty millions?" he asked. there was just a trace of pride in his voice--and she detected it. "aren't you?" she smiled. "to be candid, i don't know. i can't tell from day to day--values fluctuate, you know. i may be a million poorer one day and a million richer the next--and not have changed a single investment." "the bounder!" she thought. "though it is really my fault--i led him on." for an instant pendleton caught her eye; and she knew that he had heard, though he was seemingly occupied with mrs. burleston's chatter. as for porshinger, having found that mrs. lorraine was interested in his money, he thought to appeal to her by an intimate little talk; he was doing this and that and the other, he was considering thus and so; he had done mighty things (which was true enough), and he promised to do more. he confided it all to her in an indefinite, impersonal way--and flattered himself that he was making a deep impression. and he was--though not in quite the way he assumed. presently he turned back to miss chamberlain, and stephanie looked at cameron and smiled. "did you enjoy it?" he asked, amused. "some of it," she answered. "you see now what gladys has done?" "she has but anticipated the inevitable." "and made _us_ in a way responsible." "no one is responsible for the inevitable, steuart--except the man himself and the power of his money. the combination is irresistible." "in these days, yes," he replied. "as a people, we have become utterly commercialized--we have put everything on the basis of dollars, our social life along with the rest. it is pitiable but it is true. we have no traditions left--or rather we have _only_ traditions left. in some of the towns in the south, they still honor their traditions by living up to them--dollars won't buy a way in, you have to _belong_. but with us--" he ended with a shrug. "look on your other hand, if you doubt it." "what are we going to do about it?" she asked smilingly--"accept the inevitable, or be exclusive all by our lonesome?" "we wouldn't be alone if we would pull together," he commented. "united we stand, divided we fall. it's the same everywhere," she replied. "we're not united because the old spirit of class has departed. it's every one for himself now--and no quarter given nor expected." "well, i can stand it if you women can," he remarked. "don't you think that it is woman who is commercializing society, so to speak--who is accepting money, if you please, to let the outsiders in. she wants a rich husband--if he happens to be her social equal, well and good, but it's the money that moves her." "that may be true so far as it goes--but it doesn't go far enough," he replied. "we men also are to blame. daughters marry where their parents let them. it may be indifference in our sex and premeditation in the women, but both are about equally culpable. there is small choice between us. we have got far away from our old moorings of respectability and conservatism." "and we're drifting toward liberality and opportunity for everyone--which is the better, think you?" "_yonder_ is an instance of it," he said, meaning porshinger. "why is it you men are so hostile?" she asked. "because he doesn't _belong_--as you know quite well. you can't make me believe for an instant that _you_ want him in--or gladys either. there is something behind this prank of our hostess. she is using porshinger to subserve some purpose. what is it?" "you must ask gladys--i'm not a mind reader!" stephanie laughed. "possibly i should make more progress if i asked porshinger," he retorted. "you doubtless would make more of a sensation," she returned. "who would make more of a sensation, mrs. lorraine?" devereux asked across the table. "you!" said stephanie. "a perfectly self-evident fact," agreed devereux. "i can always be relied upon to do the unexpected--it's the way of all original men." "and idiots!" cameron added, in a perfectly audible aside. "what kind and courteous things my friends _think_ of me!" devereux remarked. "you should be very grateful!" observed gladys. "grateful? i'm positively prostrated with gratitude, my dear girl. so much so that i'm afraid i have not strength to play auction later. moreover, mr. porshinger may not play on sundays." "don't worry about me!" porshinger laughed. "i'm not worrying about you a bit--i'm worrying about our hostess. she is _so_ thoughtless at times. an awful failing, mr. porshinger, an awful failing, particularly in one's hostess.--yes--i knew you would agree with me." "my dear man," porshinger began, "i----" "don't mind him, mr. porshinger," gladys interrupted. "he is a bit wild in his talk, at times--nothing dangerous, however. he just can't help it." they all left the table together and went outside--where the coffee was served. porshinger found himself, by intention, beside mrs. lorraine. "i think i owe the pleasure of dining at criss-cross to you," he remarked presently. "did miss chamberlain tell you so?" she inquired. "not expressly--but by inference." "which is not at all," she smiled. "the hostess is always responsible for what guests she asks. you were convenient, we needed another man, and you consented to come, which was exceedingly kind of you. if i am at variance with what you have been told, you can take your choice." "i was rather glad to be obligated to you--along with miss chamberlain," he replied. "it's a new sensation in me to be obligated to anyone--it is always the other way." "you have many men coming to seek favors?" she said, turning the conversation to him and away from herself. "many men!" he laughed--"hundreds of them indeed. it's one of the penalties of wealth, i suppose." "and one of the privileges also, it seems to me," she replied. "that depends on the applicants--the larger number are without the least claim of merit; simply barnacles that one has to hew away. i leave it to my secretary--he does it for me and gets quit of them." "it must be a very pleasant feeling to help the deserving and needy," she reflected. "the modern business man hasn't much time either for the deserving or the needy, mrs. lorraine," he answered. "he's not an eleemosynary institution--he's a hustler. if he isn't a hustler, he's not for long--in the way the game is played now-a-days." "i suppose not," she said slowly--"and it seems a pity." "why?" he asked. "why does it seem a pity? it's the natural way--to kill off the drones and incompetents." "that doesn't make it any the less cruel--and not every one who is killed off is a drone or an incompetent." "then he is not fitted--which is the same thing in the end." "no, it is not the same thing--there is a wide difference. a man may be a poor financier but an admirable musician--or a poor musician and an adroit financier--and all that ails him is that he was started wrong." they were passing the angle where she and pendleton had sat the prior evening, and he looked at her thoughtfully. he could see it all again, as clearly as if it were occurring now:--her upturned face and enchanting smile, pendleton bending over her with the air of entire possession. surely this could not be the same woman who walked beside him--so calm, so dignified, so thoroughly sure of herself. it was incredible! and yet his eyes had seen.... and was pendleton the only one?--were there others also?--might he be one, too?... he did not quite feel so sure of himself, nor of her, as he did before dinner, up in his room alone with his intentions. with some women, the sort whom he knew by experience, his question would have been sharp and to the point. but stephanie lorraine was--different. he could not bring himself to it--his courage was weak---- suddenly he realized he was staring at her--and that she was looking at him questioningly. "i--beg your pardon," he stammered. "for what?" "for my bad manners--i forgot myself." "you mean that you were staring at me?" "yes--too long--at one time, i fear." "i don't feel any ill effects!" she smiled. "a woman gets used to being stared at, especially in these days of tight skirts--and scanty other things." "_you_ would be stared at if you wore crinoline and hoops," he answered, with an attempt to be gallant. "i undoubtedly should--as a perfect sight!" she laughed. "and a mask also," he added. "i should then be mysterious:--'who is it?' they would ask." "you would have individuality and beauty, whatever you wore," he averred. "you did better that time," she remarked. "i am exceedingly glad. it encourages me to hope that in the end i may not be such a--duffer." she raised her eyebrows and gave just the slightest shrug of her bare shoulders. "whatever i should call you, mr. porshinger, i shouldn't call you a duffer." "i scarcely know whether that is complimentary or not," he said. "what do you think it is?" "i don't think--i don't know what to think. at the best, i take it to be--negative." "which is safe--and exceedingly sane. you will never err by being too optimistic, mr. porshinger." "so one learns in business!" he laughed. she suppressed a smile. it was always business with him. apparently he could not get away from it even at a dinner party or for an evening. the men called him a bounder--and not without reason. but she was going to be nice to him, if he would let her, and see what would come of it, whether she could manage him without his being the wiser. she had learned a lot about him from himself, yesterday morning and again this evening; and while it was not of the pleasantest, yet she would play her part without any excessive repugnance. some women could have liked him for his money--a great many women, indeed--and tried to get him into the family either directly or indirectly, but none of it for hers.... of course, there was the chance that she was playing with fire, that porshinger, being familiar with the past, would try to presume on it, and--she must be prepared for that contingency, if she were unable to control the situation. he was a masterful sort of man, but masterful men are easy to manage if taken the right way and handled with tact and finesse. which is true enough with the men of mrs. lorraine's own class--but she did not know the porshinger kind. she lost his words for a moment. when she caught them again he was ending: "so you see, as i said, it is the way of the business man." "yes--of course," she answered vaguely--"it's a good way, as the world goes i dare say." "none better--none so good!" he declared. "that is why we are at the top of the heap to-day. we are a hundred years ahead of our fathers, so to speak." "and our sons will be a hundred years ahead of us?" she asked. "likely enough, if they don't go asleep on our achievements." they were passing again the angle of the piazza. "didn't i see you here last night with pendleton?" he asked abruptly. "i really don't know," she replied. "perhaps, i was--i don't remember." "i'm sure of it," said he--"the light flared out suddenly from this window and showered you with its brightness." he looked at her with a reminiscent smile--and she understood. he had seen pendleton kiss her--and he meant to kiss her himself. well, at least, she knew now how to handle him. "it was not i," she replied carelessly, as she turned into the house, "i was not on this end of the piazza last evening." he smiled again, tolerantly. "perhaps i _was_ mistaken," he answered. xiv noblesse oblige porshinger played auction until he had just time to change his clothes and catch the train back to town. the game at his table had been rather stupid--a very colorless lot of hands, no large penalties--and had ended with the score about even. pendleton had no opportunity for a quiet word with stephanie--possibly by her intention--and she went off upstairs with a nod and a backward glance from the landing. her glance, however, could say much when she was so minded. "come in, girls, and gossip a bit," said gladys, as the four of them were passing her door.... "what did you think of porshinger, helen?" "as an auction player he is pretty fair," mrs. burleston replied. "i didn't form any opinion of him otherwise. it wasn't necessary." "there is a certain set to his jaw that i don't care for," miss tazewell remarked. "he has a trick of dropping it, and then gathering it up and pushing his upper lip back with it. he makes me nervous." "did it interfere with your play?" laughed gladys. "it disconcerted me. i couldn't keep my eyes off him when he did it--which was about all the time." "maybe that is the reason he did it!" stephanie smiled. "i never observed the peculiarity." "perhaps he reserves it for the card table and other weighty affairs of life," mrs. burleston suggested. "didn't _you_ notice it?" demanded dorothy. "not particularly--though since you mention it i do recall something of the sort." "you must have been blind, helen." "i wasn't looking in mr. porshinger's face, my dear," retorted mrs. burleston sweetly. at which miss tazewell laughed. "you could infer that i was," she replied good-naturedly; "but i hope you won't!" "i thought porshinger wasn't so bad," gladys remarked. "he handled himself very well at dinner, and was most polite,"--with a glance at stephanie. "he seemed to talk enough," said mrs. burleston. "didn't i overhear him discussing business with you, stephanie?" "he didn't discuss much else," mrs. lorraine replied. "i wonder if he _was_ an oil well shooter originally?" remarked dorothy. "i've heard so." "i've heard so, too," mrs. burleston replied. "it's interesting because he has survived. they all are killed in the course of a few years--about five is the outside limit for them, i'm told." "i reckon he got his own well before the limit expired," dorothy commented; "and he also got about everyone else's wells in course of time--including the gas wells. then he became a financier and proceeded to get suckers." "whom did you hear say that?" laughed gladys. "warwick devereux, of course--whom else?" "why is it the men have such a contempt for porshinger?" mrs. burleston reflected. "they all seem to despise him." "a man's judgment of a man is rarely at fault," observed miss tazewell, from behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. "except when the man is a rival in business or love," gladys remarked. "then he is apt to be a bit biased." "which would include about everyone," was the answer. "i've never heard of porshinger being in love." "you've heard of him being in _business_," dorothy smiled. "something of it!" gladys replied. "do you like him?" "that is what i'm trying to find out--by asking him here." "have you succeeded in finding out?" "isn't that rather a leading question?" miss chamberlain asked. "why did you want to find out?" miss tazewell persisted. "i wanted to anticipate the crowd," gladys explained. "in a year everyone will be trying--and most of them will be finding him very agreeable." "mainly because you started it. you entertained him--the mob will follow like sheep." "you rate me quite too high, my dear," said gladys. "do i? we shall see." "unless you all join in with me," gladys added. "i prefer to wish you a false prophet--and that porshinger won't be taken up. he hasn't a single thing about him that is attractive--except his money." "and the fact that he is _not_ married--and wants to get in," adjected gladys. "why don't one of you three marry him?" "why not all of us marry him?" said dorothy over her shoulder, as she went out. "i haven't a doubt he would be entirely willing--if you can arrange it together, and be peaceable!" laughed gladys. "you might submit it to him!" dorothy laughed back. * * * * * * * "well, what did _you_ make of him?" gladys asked, when the others had gone. "not much--but enough to know that he is dangerous," replied stephanie, holding out one silken ankle and inspecting it critically. "it seems to me you've made out very considerable. is he too wild to be permitted with our tame animals?" "he is pretty savage, gladys, pretty savage. i don't know that i care to see him except in a crowd. to be perfectly candid, i'm afraid of him." "afraid of him!" her hostess marvelled. "mercy upon us, what has happened? what did he do to-night in the few minutes you were alone--kiss you?" stephanie shook her head. "no--he didn't kiss me." "tried?" "no--he didn't try--he didn't even so much as touch my gown, to my knowledge." "was it his talk?" "yes--and no. it was his manner, which was strictly proper and yet most indicative of what he was capable. i tell you, i am afraid of him!" "you mean that his talk was suggestive?" asked gladys. "no--not in that way--yet it was suggestive of what he could do if he had the opportunity." she laughed a little consciously. "you see, last evening on the side piazza--when montague and i were alone--he did something a trifle beyond the conventional. just as he did it, some one turned on the light in the billiard room directly behind--and porshinger saw us." "where was _he_?" "i don't know." "how do you know he saw you?" "he told me." "what! baldly told you?" gladys exclaimed. "not that he had seen--_it_, but that he had seen _us_. he told the balance with his look and his smile--and what he didn't say." "what ailed montague that he got unconventional--or rather what ailed you that you let him?" "the evening, i reckon, did for us both--and the miserable lights did the rest. i'm inclined to hold you responsible, my dear, for our being seen." "but not for your being--unconventional. i reckon montague is alone responsible for that, while you, with your fascinating beauty, are responsible for nothing at all but the impulse.--are you going to quit him--porshinger, i mean?" "that is the question--and i don't know the answer. if i quit him, he will be revenged on montague; if i don't quit him, i shall have to fight him for my reputation--or so much of it as is left." "is he so bad as all that?" gladys exclaimed. "he is. his one vulnerable point is his overweening desire to get into society. that fact may make him controllable. i'm between his satanic majesty and the deep water. _what to do_, gladys, _what to do_?" "do nothing," counselled her friend. "be amiably polite, and refuse to see anything that you don't want to see or to infer anything that you don't want to infer." "suppose he doesn't leave it to inference?" gladys raised her eyebrows. "in that event, you tell montague--and leave the rest to him. i rather fancy he will beat the life out of porshinger; and i rather fancy he will enjoy doing it--very much enjoy it, indeed." "the difficulty is, you can't beat the life out of a man--even figuratively speaking--without creating a sensation, getting yourself talked about and, like enough, into the law's clutches." "if _you_ would be left out of the sensation and the talk, i reckon montague wouldn't mind in the least," gladys remarked. "no, i fancy he wouldn't--but i should mightily. he isn't my husband." "not yet, unfortunately--you'll have to endure harry lorraine a bit longer. pray that the longer may be very short--oh! i'm not wishing him a corpse, stephanie--before his time; but i would not prolong the time." stephanie smiled a little wanly. "unfortunately you are not the ultimate one. he must go his course to the end, and so must i--alone--and yet together, unless he reconsiders. that, however, does not particularly interest me now--or rather this matter of porshinger interests me much more. i'm going to have trouble with that man, gladys, i'm sure of it." "aren't you anticipating, my dear?" asked miss chamberlain. "certainly, i'm anticipating what i'm convinced is in future for me. if it shouldn't happen, i'm fortunate to have escaped." "and if it never threatens, you're unfortunate in having anticipated." "i'm unfortunate anyway, so a little more or less won't matter," stephanie answered. "you unfortunate? a woman with your face and figure and presence--with true friends, both male and female--and montague pendleton. oh, no! my dear, _oh, no_!--oh, you may shrug those pretty shoulders. i know what you mean--but that is past and passing. you've had an experience, a wonderful experience, and you're the better for it, i think--and as you yourself know. it hasn't hurt you; it's only made you appreciate who are your friends and proven the extent of their regard." "was it just to my friends to have their regard for me put to such a severe test?" "why not? it didn't hurt them. either they did or they didn't at the pinch--when you returned and looked for countenance. some were timid about granting it, but granted it; others granted it straightway." "like you and montague and burgoyne!" stephanie exclaimed. "the others were only a bit shy, my dear. they all believed in you, you may be certain of that. most of them didn't feel sure how their overtures would be received--and _you_ didn't give them much help. you were as hard as flint and as cold as an iceberg." "because i thought everyone would pass me by. my experience at the club that first afternoon didn't augur well for me--except with montague and burgoyne. then _you_ were--just the same, and the skies brightened." "and now you're clouding them again by this foolish fear of porshinger," said gladys. "let alone! don't you know the old maxim: 'never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.'" "my dear gladys, don't you think that i have troubled trouble sufficiently to want a brief intermission?" "of course you have!" sympathized gladys. "and to be entitled to it?" "i should say so." "then why should i borrow trouble unless i had a presentiment of it impending? however, it hasn't cast me down, and it's not going to cast me down. neither shall i refer to it to anyone, not even to montague--until i must--and i hope that i shall never must." she kissed gladys good-night and walked to the door. "maybe my dinner didn't quite agree with me!" she laughed--"though i'm not usually troubled that way." "wouldn't you better consider telling montague?" gladys urged. "no--well, i'll think over it to-night. sleep is a great clarifier." "if you can sleep there isn't much the matter with your digestion, nor with your porshinger worry," gladys called after her as the door closed. stephanie did not take her walk the next morning. it was raining heavily, and when the men drove off she waved a farewell to pendleton, who had glanced up at her window, and went back to bed. pendleton caught the flash of a white arm and raised his hat; but when the others followed his look there were only the closed curtains to greet them. "i wish you wouldn't do that, monte," said devereux. "what?" pendleton asked. "take to yourself what isn't meant for you--that farewell was for me." "go back, dev, and get it--or another," recommended burgoyne. "i'll do it----" "you'll go to the station first," interposed cameron. "we have no mind to miss our train." "oh, very well!" said devereux, sinking back. "as you will, malvolio--i'll return anon, or next week." "if you're asked!" smiled pendleton. "a timely provision, monsieur--we may none of us be asked--particularly as we weren't much pleased with having porshinger rung in on us." "oh, damn porshinger!" said cameron quietly. "what got into gladys, do you suppose?" "we will delegate you to investigate, dev," remarked burgoyne. "you want an excuse for returning." "i don't need any excuse, thank you, dear," devereux replied. "well, tackle her without one and feel yourself laid out in a cold bath." "i likely would!" devereux laughed. then he became serious. "what the devil _was_ her idea in having porshinger? gladys chamberlain is the last one to be inoculated with the money madness that seems to have afflicted the rest of the social world." "yes," said cameron, "if she had been any of a score of women, i should say that she was fascinated by his wealth, but i'll not believe it of gladys." "she has no need," observed burgoyne. "old chamberlain's got enough, the lord knows!" "what do you think, pendleton?" demanded devereux. "i don't think." "merely negative, or do you mean you don't want to think?" "a little of both, thank you," said pendleton. "i believe you have been confided in by the lady!" devereux exclaimed. "then if that be the case----" "sure thing--you daren't babble!" admitted devereux. "however, she has a reason, and i'm damn curious to know what it is--though i bet it is a woman's reason, which is no reason at all." but pendleton did not enlighten him by so much as a look, and the next moment the car drew up at the station. that afternoon, when he was about to leave his office, pendleton had a telephone call from the hospital. lorraine wanted to see him, the resident physician said, and would he come around before dinner; something seemed to be on lorraine's mind, to be worrying and exciting him. he was much better and it would do him no harm to see pendleton a short while. "i'll come at once," said pendleton. lorraine was sitting up in a pillowed chair when he entered. "how are you, pendleton?" he said somewhat weakly, and holding out his hand. "i hope i'm not too much of a bother to you." "not a bit," replied montague. "i'm glad to see you so far on the mend. i feared that you were pretty much all in, from the newspaper accounts of the accident." "i thought so myself--or rather i didn't think until later. however, i'm not so much battered up as they had thought, and i'll be out in a week; a trifle bruised and cut and sore, possibly, but nothing serious. my head is all right--the injury was only temporary, thank the lord!" "that's a great comfort to know," pendleton answered heartily. "if one's head is right, the rest will soon come around." "yes--yes," said lorraine. "i'll be out of this in a week." he glanced impatiently toward the nurse, who was standing in the window. "i'll be out in a week," he repeated.--"miss sayles, will you excuse mr. pendleton and me a moment--i'll call you when we're through.--it will take only a very short time." "i'll be in the corridor," the nurse smiled--with a glance at pendleton, which he understood as a warning not to stay too long. lorraine waited until miss sayles had gone out and closed the door quietly behind her, then he said:-- "i haven't much time, nor have you any to waste, so i'll not beat around the bush, pendleton--we'll cut the preliminaries and come down to the facts----" he paused, and pendleton wondered what was coming. was he about to make a scene because of anything he had heard in regard to stephanie? "it's this way," lorraine went on:--"i don't know whether you know it or not, but i fancy you do.--i've made an infernal damn fool of myself in the way i've treated stephanie. i see it all now. i've been lying here and thinking, and thinking, with nothing else to do, and it's perfectly plain, perfectly plain. it was all my fault originally. i had her--and i lost her--and i've no one but myself to blame in the first instance. if i'd been careful of her--had appreciated her--she would have had no occasion to make a mistake. amherst wouldn't have had a chance to work his smooth way with her. damn amherst! i could choke the life out of him--_damn him! damn him!_" "don't excite yourself, lorraine," pendleton cautioned. "why not leave this matter until you are better and able to be about?" "no--i must say it now. it will do me good to say it. i'll try not to get excited. i'm not excited now--see?" he held up an unsteady hand. "at least, not much. we'll let amherst rest, for the moment. i'll handle him when i'm quite fit--if i can ever find him. do you think i'll find him, pendleton?" "certainly you will find him," montague answered soothingly. "and now you wait and tell me all this some other time--to-morrow." "no--now--to-day," persisted the sick man. "listen! you were stephanie's best friend before the wedding. you've always been a friend--until she went away. i want you to be her friend still, pendleton. she needs a friend who is trustworthy--who is dependable--who won't be misunderstood by the world. she won't have _me_--i tried--i offered to take her back--to let the past be buried--to forget and forgive--to be all to her that i should have been. but she declines. i went to her house and offered--plead with her--besought her--without avail. she visited me the other day, at my request--but she hasn't softened toward me. i don't know that she will ever soften. i'm afraid she won't. yet i mean to try, pendleton--i mean to try; and though it takes a year, or ten years, i shan't give up. i shall never give up, pendleton, i shall never give up!--will you help me--will you be her friend?--stand by her at this crisis--when she won't have her husband, yet needs him more than she ever needed him? won't you try to take my place toward her--you understand, old man; guard her--protect her--sympathize with her? you were fond of her once--you still are fond of her. she may let _you_--she wouldn't let me.--save her, pendleton--save her from herself, if need be.--you will, won't you, you will?" he ended, his voice sinking to a mere whisper. "my dear lorraine, i'll do anything in my power for stephanie," said pendleton. "but i think that you are unduly apprehensive. she is not without friends--she has plenty of friends, and they are staunch friends. gladys chamberlain, helen burleston, dorothy tazewell, marcia emerson, burgoyne, devereux, cameron--they all are for her. we have just come from spending the week-end at the chamberlains. in a few months the amherst episode will be forgotten, even by the queen p's. don't worry, old man, it will only retard your recovery. as for you and stephanie, you two must work that out alone. but you can depend on us being for stephanie _always_." he reached down and took lorraine's hand. "you know that, don't you? we all will stand by her to the final call." "i thought _you_ would, montague, and it's mighty good to know of gladys and the rest. a woman can do much at such times." "and you mustn't think of it until you're out of this place," pendleton urged. "your business is to get well; we'll look after stephanie, you may depend on it." he moved toward the door, and miss sayles appeared at the same moment. "here is the nurse to send me away!" he smiled. "good-bye--and we'll look for you at the club in a week." "good-bye, pendleton, old man," said lorraine faintly. he sank back among the pillows and closed his eyes. he could see it, though the other had tried hard to hide it. pendleton had no interest whatever in him--he had forfeited all claims for sympathy by his vacillating course. all the men had lost patience with him. they might feel for him as a victim of bodily pain, and try to make it easy for him because thereof, but he knew--he _knew_. he had been a fool--he was still a fool maybe in trying to make it up with stephanie--yet it was the only decent thing to do--the only thing he wanted to do. he made a gesture of despair--and the nurse came over and spoke to him. but he did not hear, or did not answer--and after a moment she went back and sat down. she understood in part. everyone in town was aware of the lorraines' troubles--and _she_ knew, also, of stephanie's visit to her husband and how it had terminated. as for pendleton, he went to the club dissatisfied with himself and with what he had done. he had no patience with lorraine's conduct and lorraine knew it--at least he had never been at any pains to conceal it--and now he was constrained, by regard for an injured man, to appear to help him, when _he_ hoped for nothing so much as stephanie's divorce. she was committed to his care--to him, who was the last man lorraine should have selected to trust.... and maybe lorraine also knew it--and chose him because of that very fact, tied his hands by trusting him, with full confidence that he not only would not violate the trust, but that he would be vigilant to see that no one else trespassed. he had not credited lorraine with so much foresight and knowledge of specific human nature. it might be he erred in the credit, but nevertheless it bound _him_.--_noblesse oblige._ xv in the conservatory "how does porshinger seem to be doing?" asked miss chamberlain, as five weeks or so later she and stephanie were having luncheon together in town. "very well, indeed, so far as i can judge," the latter answered. "i don't know anyone who is more competent to judge," gladys smiled. "he now is your shadow. any indication of any attempt on montague?" "none.--indeed, he has been rather complimentary of late to montague, in a mild sort of way." "beware the greeks bearing gifts." "i am being aware.--montague doesn't like it at all; in fact, we've quarrelled." "quarrelled with montague!" cried gladys. "i can't believe it!" "we've quarrelled nevertheless, and all because of porshinger. montague insisted that i was encouraging the 'bounder,'--and one thing led to another until i flashed out. montague lost patience and grew angry--and we fought." "like two children!" the other laughed. "what in the world ever possessed you to quarrel with montague pendleton, the best friend surely a woman ever had?" "i think it was the devil!" confessed stephanie. "the devil at the very least," agreed her friend. "have you given him no chance since to make it up?" "i've seen him only once--on the street. i think he has been away." "how like a woman!" gladys remarked. "to quarrel with the one man who is devoted to her, absolutely devoted to her, and who hasn't a selfish thought where she is concerned! stephanie, i feel like shaking you!" "i feel like shaking myself," stephanie replied. "by the way, didn't _you_ ever quarrel with your best man friend? i think i can recollect several at different times--for instance----" "of course you can recollect--but don't!" gladys laughed. "however, none of the interested parties was a montague pendleton. good heavens! my dear, do you realize what he has been to you--what he is to you?" "i think that is just what made me quarrel--the perversity of the woman. i'll make it up, however, and he _will_ let me make it up, and we will be better friends for this little disagreement. the nice thing about montague is his broad-mindedness." "_one_ of the nice things," amended gladys. "he has got several more--more, indeed, than any man i know. i never could understand, stephanie, why you----" she broke off and jabbed her fork into her salad. "why i didn't marry him instead of henry lorraine, you were about to say," stephanie finished. "neither do i--it is only another exhibition of our sex's perverseness. and i've been paying the penalty for it ever since--and it is a long account." she shrugged her shoulders expressively. "you're going to the croyden's ball tonight, i suppose." "i am invited. i never miss anything at the croyden's, if i can help it. they do things _well_. you're going, of course." "i don't know--i feel rather listless today." "get over it," said gladys briskly. "your mother is away, so come and stay the night with me and we'll go together." with the result that at ten o'clock the chamberlain car deposited them at the entrance of the croyden country-house--a huge place, with great, wide piazzas on all four sides, but so arranged that they minimized the extent of the house and made it seem only of average size. in the dressing rooms they came upon helen burleston, dorothy tazewell and arabella rutledge. they all went down-stairs together, and greeted their host and hostess. presently they were found by devereux, burgoyne and cameron, and the eight of them strolled out on the west piazza. burgoyne was with gladys and stephanie, and gladys enquired: "where is miss emerson, sheldon; you and devereux haven't both lost her, have you?" "we haven't found her yet, i fancy!" burgoyne laughed,--"at least, i haven't." "then it is safe to infer that she hasn't arrived. you're a good hunter, sheldon." "thank you, my lady--i appreciate the compliment from one who has so often been the quarry yet never has been caught. how many scalps dangle at your belt, i wonder?" "not yours, at all events!" gladys laughed. "no--not mine," burgoyne returned sadly. "i have been prudent even though it has been at the expense of my happiness." "how cleverly you have concealed it!" gladys retorted. "until now, alas!" "perhaps we may strike a bargain," she reflected. "a bargain!" he protested. "how sordid!" "how does miss emerson view the question--the general question, i mean?" "i haven't asked her!" "you haven't asked her _yet_," she corrected. "but i think--i think she would at least not style it a 'bargain,'" he replied. she tapped him with her fan. "try it, sheldon--try it, my boy!" she said. "'faint heart never yet,' you know." "brave heart has failed in some instances," he replied. "witness your girdle and its appendages." "precisely--but it's because they were brave that they hang there. they at least had a chance of winning, and they took the chance." "and lost!" he ended. they had entered the ballroom; and porshinger, who was standing in a corner at the other side, sighted them and bore down in pursuit. miss chamberlain saw him--as did plenty of others--and she indicated to burgoyne that he should dance with stephanie. she herself stopped beside mrs. burleston. burgoyne understood--and putting his arm around stephanie's waist he swung her away. porshinger saw the play--and smiled--and burgoyne detected the smile and knew its cause. "that fellow porshinger," he remarked, "is becoming entirely too persistent." "do you think so?" stephanie laughed. "i think so--most decidedly. what does pendleton mean by permitting it?" "what has mr. pendleton to say about it?" she inquired sweetly. "what have i to say about it, either?" he replied. "just this, stephanie: we're your friends--we've been your friends from the cradle, so to speak, and i, for one, am not going to let that miserable bounder compromise you without making a strenuous protest. it's beginning to be talked about in the clubs and drawing-rooms. his attentions to you are causing comment. you don't know it, of course, but it has become decidedly marked in the last couple of weeks. at least half the people in this room saw you enter, saw porshinger start across--and they stopped talking and watched you. maybe you didn't notice it, but gladys and i did, and----" "i noticed it," stephanie answered, "and it is absurd--this talk. mr. porshinger has never been anything but most courteous." "of course he hasn't. all _your_ friends know that, but----" "i have a bad reputation back of me," she interrupted. "well, i can't see how i shall ever manage to keep out of its shadow. however, i promise to be more circumspect. to be quite frank with you, sheldon, i positively dislike porshinger. i'm doing this with a purpose." "i know," he said; "but you can't afford it--it's too compromising. you can't control porshinger. he is a cad--and you don't understand cads. they are not governed by the same instincts as the men of your class. your scheme would work with them but will _not_ work with porshinger. he will misinterpret and _presume_." "i think i can control him," she answered. "he has manifested no disposition to presume." "oh, no!--the disposition and the presumption will be synchronous in their manifestation, if i know anything of cads--and porshinger's kind in particular. i wish pendleton were here--where has he been the last four weeks?" "i haven't the slightest idea." he looked down at her thoughtfully. "well," he said, "i wish he would come back and get on the job. he is shirking his duty." "and that duty is?" she asked sweetly. "to look after you--now don't flare up and explode! you know that every woman needs a man to look after her--and pendleton is the particular man for this particular woman." "don't be silly, sheldon!" stephanie laughed. "that's better--more natural to you. gee! what a dancer you are! there is more ravishing rhythm in your swing than any one's i know. it's simply perfect." "i might say the same of yours." "don't. i'm intoxicated enough as it is." "just imagine i'm miss emerson!" she smiled. "if you'll imagine i'm montague pendleton." she did not answer--and he surmised the situation. "you two have quarrelled," he said. the faintest shrug of the lovely shoulders answered him. "now _don't_ do anything rash--before you make it up," he cautioned. "i'm a little surprised at pendleton letting you quarrel with him. i thought he was too superior a being for that; but you never can tell when----" he smiled at her significantly. "there may be method in his plan, but i--no, assuredly, you never can tell!" "no, you never can tell anything for sure," she replied enigmatically. the music stopped. they were just beside miss chamberlain and cameron, and the four strolled out of the crush to the punch bowl on the nearest piazza. "may i have the next dance, mrs. lorraine?" said porshinger's voice behind them. cameron, who was close, touched her arm. "it is promised to mr. cameron!" stephanie smiled. "how about the next?" porshinger asked. she felt burgoyne's fingers close lightly around her own. "it is taken also--mr. burgoyne gets it!" she smiled again. "which one may i have before the cotillon?" porshinger persisted pleasantly, refusing to be rebuffed. "you may have the--fifth," she replied. "you mean the fifth from now or from the beginning?" "the fifth from the beginning," she answered, as cameron bore her back to the ballroom. "i didn't know if you wanted to dance," began cameron, "but i----" "it was very good of you, steuart, very good indeed," she replied. "i would much rather dance with my friends than with----" "your enemies," he appended. "i don't say so." "no, _i_ say so. meanwhile, let us forget porshinger and enjoy the music. you sure are a dancer, stephanie!" "so sheldon says!" she smiled. "i'm delighted that i haven't lost that too"--then gave herself up to the slow languorous waltz, so intoxicating in its swing that it fairly lifted them up and bore them along without an effort. "thank you!" said cameron, when it ended. "it was entrancing--simply entrancing! don't dance so with porshinger, i pray you; he may not be able to withstand temptation." "i knew i could trust you, steuart!" she laughed. "i'll be more prudent with the other." and she was--dancing it in the formal way, with tight held body, yielding just sufficiently for the dance but not a shade more. and porshinger noted the difference; and he said, as the music ended: "i'm afraid i'm rather an awkward dancer, mrs. lorraine. i don't seem to get on as i should." "i did not notice it," she replied. "at least, i didn't get on as cameron or burgoyne did." "you must remember that i have danced with them for years--we know each other's steps." "yes, that may be it--for i can modestly say that i am not a poor dancer. it struck me that we were not in accord temperamentally--we didn't catch the spirit, so to speak. we were treading the minuet rather than dancing a two-step." "you mean we were doing it decorously rather than in a romp!" she laughed. "i don't like rompish dancing, mr. porshinger." "nor do i; but there is a happy medium--as you showed with burgoyne," he replied calmly. "that is what i had in mind." "when you have known me as long as they have, our steps doubtless will fit as well also." "let us hope that it won't be so long deferred," he answered, bending down and whispering it confidentially in her ear. "when may i have another try--may i have the third from now?" "i shall dance no more before the cotillon," she replied. "then sit out another with me," he pleaded--in the certain compelling manner he at times assumed; and which she tolerated because it amused her, and because it was porshinger who did it--and she was playing a game. "here is the conservatory; let us investigate the abode of the flowers," he said. she hesitated a moment, then permitted him to lead her in. she had seen gladys chamberlain just ahead of her. "how charming! how entrancing!" she exclaimed, as they entered. "a veritable fairyland." "it is very pretty," porshinger agreed. "you don't enthuse. look how the light falls on the palms and the cactus and the rhododendron, yet you don't see whence it comes." "it comes from the roof!" he laughed. "nevertheless, i grant you the fairyland--a maze of flowers and foliage, with _you_ the fairy, madame." "the fairy-madame!" she laughed. "how romantic." gladys had disappeared, but other couples were strolling about. "which shows how important is a comma," he remarked. "let us sit yonder," indicating two chairs well hidden by a palm, "while i enjoy my little trip into fairyland with the fairy." it was not far from the entrance and stephanie complied. "do you know," he said presently, "we are almost quite concealed by this tree--what a charming place it is, so near and yet so far." "particularly so near!" she rejoined. "and particularly so far!" he smiled, apparently all unconsciously letting his arm fall around her waist but without touching her. the next moment he suddenly drew her to him and bent over. "just one," he said. and before she could so much as struggle he kissed her on the lips. "you vile coward!" she panted, held close in his arms yet writhing to be free. "you miserable cur! you----" "why struggle so, stephanie--no one saw," he whispered. she was but pretending. she tore herself loose--only to be caught back again and crushed closer. "let me go!--_let me go!_" she gasped frantically. this was no pretense, and he realized it. he had thought it would be otherwise--had thought that she would be a yielding beauty--and the mistake angered him. he was not given to making mistakes. she had drawn him on--and now---- "you didn't struggle so with pendleton on the porch at criss-cross," he said, kissing her again and again.... "aren't mine just as sweet and worth as much as his?" once more she tore herself loose and sprang away--made a step--then stopped and faced him. he had risen and was moving slowly after, a mocking smile on his lips. "you will please take me back to the ball-room," she commanded. "i am not minded to provoke comment by returning alone." "i am always your most obedient servant," he replied, with a bow and another smile. in silence they passed from the conservatory and into the ball-room a little way. there she dropped his arm. "you will do me the favor of never speaking to me again," she said--and left him. "spirit!" he muttered, as he turned away. "spirit--or a damn good player! i don't know which." he gave an admiring chuckle. "god! what a looker she is!" xvi the unanimous opinion lorraine did not come out of the hospital in a week. it was two weeks before he quit it, and three weeks until he was able to leave his house and go down town and to the clubs. he found a hearty welcome awaiting him from everyone; even those whom he knew but slightly shook his hand and congratulated him on his recovery. some of the men had dropped in at intervals--cameron the most frequently, but pendleton not at all--though they all were too busy to do more than inquire, and then forget him in the rush of affairs and society. he heard occasionally of stephanie--read in the society news of her being at the burlestons' and the tazewells' and the chamberlains', and others of her old friends who were loyal. pendleton's name always was included; and once or twice he had noticed porshinger's--with a frown. what was _he_ doing there--how did _he_ come to be included? he had intended to ask cameron--but every time he had forgotten it until cameron had gone. the truth of the matter lay in the chamberlain invitation. porshinger had seen to it that that fact was promptly noted in all the papers, and society--at first a bit gasping and incredulous--had been more or less quick to follow suit. if the chamberlains were taking him up, who else could refuse? so miss tazewell's fear was verified--as was miss chamberlain's prediction--that it was only a question of being first. true, neither mrs. porterfield nor mrs. postlewaite had given him the light of her countenance, but that would come in time--a reasonably short time. just as soon as they were assured of his desirability, he would be formally viséd by them--and his social career would be easy henceforth. it was the afternoon of the day after the croyden dance that lorraine first got up to the otranto club, and had his curiosity gratified--at least as to the reasons for porshinger's inclusion. he found warwick devereux absorbing a long, cold drink on the side piazza, and was hailed to participate. "mighty glad to see you around," said devereux. "must be a month since your accident." "i'm mighty glad to get around," lorraine replied. "what have you been doing while i was in a hospital?" "do you mean me individually, or is the question intended to include the social world in general?" "both--the latter first, if you don't mind; it will comprehend much of the former." "hum!" muttered devereux. "i suppose that is meant to be courteous, harry, but i don't know. well, the main thing that we have been doing, we've been doing to ourselves--making damn fools of ourselves, to be accurate." "that is interesting!" laughed lorraine. "how did we manage to do it?" "it doesn't require management to do it," the other remarked, draining his glass. "the management is required when we _don't_ do it--only, on this particular occasion, we have been more than ordinarily successful at the damn-fool business." "what have we done now?" lorraine asked. "break it gently, devereux, break it gently!" "we've been taking up that bounder porshinger. by _we_ i mean society. we have been helping--no we've actually been dragging him up the wall with the gold chains and the gold ladder he has provided. did you ever know such--asininity?" "it's pretty bad," lorraine agreed; "though i reckon it was about due. porshinger was bound to get in so long as he didn't marry wrong, though i didn't think _we_ would _lift_ him over the wall. how do you explain it?" "naturally enough!" devereux snorted. "everyone was waiting for someone to start--but everyone was afraid to start. then gladys chamberlain started--and the rest of the women followed like a lot of geese." "like a lot of geese is good," said lorraine. "society is like nothing so much as geese, in such matters. yet what surprises me is that gladys chamberlain should take him up. she doesn't need his money, and it isn't possible that she likes him. i don't think she even knew him, certainly not more than to bow to, when i went on the injured list. why is it, do you suppose?" "it occurred suddenly down at criss-cross. some of us were there for the week-end; porshinger was at the woodsides'. gladys announced at dinner that she was going to have him over, and asked our opinion. we gave it to her, burgoyne and cameron and pendleton and i, but it didn't faze in the least. he came. we were courteous to him, of course. he was unassuming, but talked shop to the women beside him all through dinner--and there you are! the rubicon was crossed." "but _why_ did gladys do it?" "search me!" devereux exclaimed. "she is the last one to act on impulse in such a matter." "search me!" devereux reiterated, with a lift of his hands. "only, you don't want to try to explain things by the reasonable route--you won't succeed, harry. woman isn't a reasonable creature. she's an exotic, an eccentric, who doesn't always eccent." "is that a discovery?" asked lorraine. "not at all," retorted devereux. "it's a self-evident fact, that is why i told you. understand?" "have another high-ball?" laughed lorraine. "yes, thank you!... harry," said he, as he poured the scotch and slowly shot in the carbonated water, "it may be impertinent, it is _damned_ impertinent, but you'll not misunderstand me--sometimes a friend's impertinence is a proof of his friendship.--what i want to say, old man, is this:" he pushed back his glass and looked at the other thoughtfully a moment. "why don't you make it up with stephanie?" "for the simplest of reasons, devereux," lorraine responded. "she won't make it up." "she won't make it up!" warwick marvelled. "have you tried her?" lorraine nodded. "before my accident--and later at the hospital," he said. "it was respectfully declined." "she surely doesn't mean it! she would be a--it would be most extraordinary." "stephanie's an extraordinary woman. moreover, i can't blame her. she can't forget, i think, the day of her return and my denial of her before them all on this very piazza." "you were a fool!" exclaimed devereux pithily. "you're putting it mildly!" lorraine admitted--"but--oh, well--she came so suddenly, so absolutely unexpectedly that i acted before i thought." "i can understand, but--stephanie can't." "stephanie can't--and she won't. she won't accept any excuse. she says that if i'd been a proper sort of husband amherst wouldn't have had a chance." "which is peculiar reasoning," devereux commented:--"if you don't guard me, you're to blame if i go wrong." "woman is an exotic--an eccentric!" quoted lorraine. "she is. do you need any further demonstration to prove it? and are you not going to try to persuade her?" devereux demanded. "i am, indeed." "that's right, lorraine--don't give up! you started wrong, very wrong--end right. stephanie's worth it--despite the past." "the past be damned!" lorraine exclaimed. "i've forgot it--buried it. so far as she is concerned, it never existed. but----" he brought his fist down on the table till the glasses jumped and rattled--"it's another thing with amherst!--it's another thing with amherst! sometime, devereux, sometime----" he ended with a gesture. "i know how you feel, old man," said warwick soothingly, "and i reckon i'd feel like you do; but amherst is gone, and i don't imagine will be back for years--if ever. you just forget him. if you had done something at the time the law would have been lenient--but not now. moreover, it will only renew the scandal and react upon stephanie. oh! i know it's hard to let him go--but it's the wise course now.--if only you _had_ broken his head at the time, or filled him full of lead! now your opportunity is gone, and you must put the idea away from you." lorraine beat on the table and said nothing; and devereux, after watching him a moment, said nothing more. lorraine was a weak character, whom opposition sometimes makes the more determined. and while warwick did not care particularly for him, he wanted to save stephanie the embarrassment that a revival of the affair would be sure to cause. so far as the two men were concerned, they might fight it out and welcome--and if they killed each other, it would not be much loss to the world. from which it may be seen that pendleton's view-point was the view-point of devereux--as well as of most of the men. presently lorraine spoke. "i wonder where amherst is?" he said. "abroad," devereux answered. "i mean, where abroad?" "in siberia or the congo or australia or anywhere that's far off. i should bury myself." "more than likely he is in london or paris," lorraine insisted. "more than likely he is," devereux admitted. "i hear that he has converted all his real estate, and has slipped his moorings for good and all." "you mean that he is never coming back?" "such is the report from an authentic source, i'm told." lorraine smiled a bit grimly. "_never_ is a long time," he said. "i'll not believe it--and i shall hope not until i die.--someway--somehow--i'm going to square off with amherst. it may be years, yet i shall do it--and do it well." "what if stephanie and you make it up--you won't think then of harming amherst?" said devereux. "no--i suppose not--at least, not openly; but if we don't make it up----" another gesture ended the sentence. devereux frowned and was about to answer; then he pulled himself up, and with the slightest lift of his eyebrows busied himself with his drink. there was no use in arguing with lorraine--he would not know his own mind more than an hour anyway. "there is another contingency, lorraine," said he:--"suppose you don't succeed in effecting a reconciliation with stephanie--what then?" "i'll never give up trying," lorraine replied. "but if your efforts after a time prove fruitless, will persistence be of any avail? won't it simply make her more irreconcilable and unyielding?" "you mean will i divorce her--or permit her to obtain a divorce?" devereux nodded. "most assuredly not!" lorraine declared. "if _i'm_ not to have her, who belongs to me, none else shall." "sort of a dag in the manger business?" devereux smiled. "not at all.--i'm simply keeping what is mine." "not exactly--you will be keeping what _was_ yours but is yours no longer." "you think that i should let her go?" "if a reconciliation is impossible, i think that you should let her go. what is more, you should make it possible for _her_ to get the divorce." "you mean i should admit----" "not at all--though that is a minor matter, and wouldn't hurt you in the least if you were to admit it; under the circumstances, you are entitled to break over. however, that is neither here nor there; she can procure a divorce for non-support--if you don't contest it." "yes--if i don't contest it!" lorraine sneered. "one might fancy that you contemplated marrying her yourself, devereux." "i don't contemplate marrying her, and you know it," said devereux imperturbably; "though for my part, i should consider myself very fortunate indeed to win her. but someone else probably _will_ want to marry her, and she may want to marry him--and you will be only the dog in the manger, lorraine, only the dog in the manger--with the sympathy of not one soul in all the world." "i don't care for sympathy!" lorraine exclaimed--"and i shouldn't get it if i did--from you men. you always favor a pretty woman. you all have been against me from the first. you think it was all my fault amherst had a chance to ingratiate himself." "wasn't it?" devereux asked. lorraine stopped and stared. "they went off together, didn't they--was that my doing?" he demanded. "not directly--but indi----" "am i responsible for what a low-down dog like amherst does? hadn't i a right to presume he wouldn't do it? hadn't i a right to trust my own wife? is a husband to be suspicious and suspecting? isn't he justified in presuming innocence rather than guilt?" "as a general proposition, yes; varied, however, by the _dramatis personae_--and the circumstances." "what should i have done?" lorraine demanded. "anything but what you did do," returned devereux kindly. "but that isn't the question that confronts you now, and is up to you for decision, and which you alone can decide. don't make another blunder; you can't afford it--and neither can stephanie." he leaned forward and put his hand on the other's knee. "consider well, lorraine. stephanie and you are young--the world is before you. make it as easy going for both of you as you can. you are a long time dead, remember." "at least when we're dead we're done!" lorraine broke out. "maybe you are--but i haven't heard of anyone who knows; and you'd best not chance it when it is so easy to do the right thing now." "and the right thing is?" asked lorraine sarcastically. "what is best for you both--if you can't be reconciled, then be divorced." lorraine smiled a sickly smile, and made no answer. "gratuitous advice is rarely acceptable, i know," devereux went on, "but it is honest and well meant, and comes from a life-long friend of you both. now, lorraine, we will say no more on the subject."--he struck the bell. "take mr. lorraine's order," he said to the waiter. but lorraine shook his head. "i think i've had enough," he replied--"both of liquor and the club, for this time. i'm going home and think it over. i'm a bit tired and out of sorts. so long!" and went slowly out, got into his car and drove off. devereux watched him meditatively until he was gone; then he too shook his head--and sat drumming on the chair-arm with his finger tips. "what is it?" asked pendleton, who had approached from the rear. "what do you see, dev--a pretty girl?" "do i look it?" said devereux, glancing around. "now that you favor me with your full countenance, i can't say that you do," the other smiled, swinging a chair around for his feet and sitting down. "you are evidently bunkered or have topped your drive. i beg your pardon for intruding--don't let me interrupt, i pray." "i wasn't playing mental golf--i was thinking." "i see," said pendleton. "a good occupation--continue to think, if it isn't too exhausting." "i was thinking and wondering," devereux continued--"why stephanie mourraille married lorraine. what in the devil's name did she see in him anyway!--what _could_ she see in him!" "qualities which you and i and the other men are blind to," said montague dryly. "woman has the power of endowing the man with whom she imagines she is in love, with every attribute that he should normally possess--and rarely does. we're all deficient, devereux, at the bar of popular opinion--it is only a matter of degree." "well, i should say that lorraine is the maximum degree--and then some," was the reply.--"and that stephanie knows it at last--when it is too late. why didn't you marry her, pendleton? everyone thought _you_ were willing--and _she_ ought to have been." pendleton sent a smoke whirling upward, and followed it with another, and another--but said no word. "it's a bit personal, i know--and you shouldn't answer," devereux admitted--"but all the same, why didn't you?" "maybe stephanie wouldn't have me," said pendleton slowly. "the more fool she!" the other exclaimed. "yet it's like a woman--they never know what is best for them when they have a choice to make--at least, they choose wrong thirty-five times out of fifty." "and forty-five out of fifty they think they are the winning fifteen--and fifty times out of fifty, it is no one's business but their own," pendleton replied. "you're right in theory," devereux admitted, "but you're wrong in practice. we have some business with our friends' affairs--enough to regret when we see one of them, especially a woman, going on the rocks from very heedlessness of the buoys that mark the channel." "why not chain in the channel so they can't get out of it?" asked pendleton. "they would break the chains from very perversity and go on the rocks just the same," devereux averred. "the only way is to provide a pilot who won't run amuck." "you're mixing your metaphors, old man!" "maybe i am, but you know what i mean." "stephanie chose a pilot," pendleton reminded him. "not at all--she chose a blockhead--a fool. now she is paying the price for her error--and i'm mighty sorry for her. the simpleton now is crazy to effect a reconciliation, says he will never give her up, and vows vengeance on amherst. i advised him, if he can't effect the reconciliation--which of course he can't--to let stephanie divorce him. but nay! nay! if _he_ can't have her no one shall have her, he declares--she is his wife and she is going to stay his wife--et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. it makes me sick! i asked him why, for stephanie's sake, he didn't forget amherst and not stir up the nasty scandal afresh? he answered that he would do nothing if she returned to him, but if she did not, he would----" he imitated lorraine's gesture. "i don't know what that gesture means, but i assume it threatens something dire." "and the pity of it is that he is just a big enough fool to do it," said pendleton. "if he had acted at once, and shot amherst down for the vicious beast he is, everyone would have been glad and the deed would have been amply justified. now it is worse than foolish--it's asinine." "just so," devereux responded. "you can't blame him, of course, for feeling bitter, but i haven't any sympathy for him now--he has shilly-shallied so long he would best forget it. altogether stephanie seems to have made a devil of a mess of it--with her husband, and the amherst matter, and coming back the way she did, and refusing lorraine's overtures for a reconciliation, and _now_ his attitude. it makes a pretty problem in human frailties--and mistakes. there isn't a thing about the whole affair that is normal. why in thunder didn't lorraine get killed in the recent accident? no one would ever have missed him!" "those that will never be missed are usually the ones that can't be killed," pendleton remarked. "however, so long as amherst stays away there will be no killing--and lorraine, in the meantime, may see reason. let us hope for it--for stephanie's sake." "and if lorraine does go into the killing business, i trust he will make a thorough job of it and wipe out both amherst and himself. clean the slate!" "a clean slate for a fresh start," said pendleton. devereux looked keenly at him. "for a fresh start?" he inflected tentatively. but pendleton had resumed his smoke rings--and for a time there was silence. presently devereux spoke: "i didn't see you at the croyden's last night." "i wasn't there," replied pendleton. "i came in from new york this morning. was it interesting?" "the croyden functions are always interesting--some more so than others, but any of them will do for mine, thank you!--lucky chap, croyden!" pendleton nodded. "not many girls would have done what elaine cavendish did: throw convention overboard and--because croyden was poor and wouldn't, and she was rich and loved him--bridge the chasm and made it easy for him to cross to her." "elaine's a girl in a million!" devereux declared. "i wish there were some more of that sort." "would you pick one?" pendleton asked. "would i pick one? well, rather, my friend." "why didn't you pick elaine?" "i wanted to but she wouldn't be picked--by me." "i can't remember that you fussed her especially." "i can't remember it myself; but i reckon i read my doom beforehand, and didn't go up against it. elaine is a winner for looks, pendleton. she was the loveliest thing last night i most ever saw--in a shimmering silver gown and--there was only one woman who was her equal in looks: stephanie lorraine. _she's_ unbeatable--simply unbeatable!" "i'm sorry i wasn't there!" laughed pendleton. "you should have been there. that bounder porshinger was playing the devoted to her--had her in the conservatory for a half an hour." he glanced slyly at the other. "so long, indeed, as to occasion comment. i overheard some of the dowager tabby-cats mewing over it." he paused a moment, then asked seriously: "pendleton, why don't you warn her of porshinger's attentions? _you_ can do it. he is up to no good, you may be sure--at least, no one will ever credit him with any good where stephanie is concerned. you understand, old chap." "do you mean that people will suspect _her_?" pendleton demanded. "you and i and her other friends and the right-minded people won't, but there are a lot who will. it well be a fresh bit for them to roll over their tongues and to infer and imply the scandalous. the question is whether she can afford to have them do it--now." "she is simply courteous and nice to him," pendleton replied. "i know she is. yet why not be simply courteous, and let it go at that; what is the good of being _nice_ to him?" "no good at all--but----" "i told gladys she would regret having porshinger to criss-cross. it's all due to that sunday, damn it!" "i don't think so," pendleton said, with a shake of his head. "it may have accelerated it by a few weeks--porshinger was sure to get in anyway." "get in! of course he would get in!" devereux exclaimed. "but he wouldn't have come in through the chamberlain doorway--nor have had any opportunity to know stephanie well. i can't see what gladys meant by it--and yet she must have had some object. she is the last to do things on impulse." "here she comes--you might ask her," pendleton remarked, as miss chamberlain appeared on the piazza through one of the low french-windows. both men arose and bowed. "may i sit down?" she said. "i'm tired out and--thirsty. get me some tea, please--and some toast, the soft kind." she removed her gloves and put up her veil. "it is charming here." "_now_ it is!" said devereux. "warwick," she smiled, "i've long ago learned that when you flatter you want something! what is it? out with it." "he must be in a condition of perpetual want," pendleton derided. "when gladys is around, i am," devereux agreed. "she keeps me on starvation rations, don't you know." "isn't that better than letting you starve?" gladys asked. "it is not comparable to being well fed," he responded. "i can't devote all my time to providing for the needy," she smiled. "you might at least give me the time you confer on mr. porshinger." "so--that is the fly in the ointment, is it?" she asked. "you're likely to find before you are through with him that you're the fly and not porshinger," retorted devereux. "then i shall look to you and montague to come promptly to my rescue and fish me out." "it would have been wiser never to have got in. however, as first aid to the injured, monte and i are some class--and we're likely to be called on to fish someone else than you out of the ointment--that is to say, out of your friend porshinger's clutches." "i confess that i don't understand you," said gladys. "do you, montague?" "do you, montague?" sarcasmed devereux. "well, seeing that we're just discussing the matter when you blew along, i sort of reckon he does. tell the lady what it is, monte; you advised me to ask her." "tell her yourself, you tattle-tale!" laughed pendleton. "gladys will understand the spirit in which _i_ said it." "you must admit that you didn't and don't approve!" "certainly--as i've already told gladys; but i've not asked for her reasons. they are her own, i take it." "and i'm just curious, you think? well, let it go at that. i am curious, i admit it, to know--and pendleton advised me to ask you, gladys--why _you_ invited porshinger to criss-cross the other sunday? you see what has been the result: the bars are down. why did you do it?" "because i wanted to do it," she replied sweetly. "undoubtedly. you don't do much that you don't want to do--but what was your ulterior motive?" "was it so bad as that?" gladys asked. "worse--far worse, i suspect." "then don't voice it--keep it dark." "i will. i'll go away and leave you with pendleton--and with an insane curiosity to know just what i suspect. in fact, you will give him no rest until he tells you.--see?" and with a laugh and a nod he arose and strolled away. gladys watched him with an amused smile until he turned the corner of the piazza--then she spoke. "he doesn't suspect the real reason?" she asked. pendleton shook his head rather shortly. "no more than that there _was_ a reason," he answered. "a reason which, i fear, was very foolish and absurd. you see where it has led and is leading?--were you at the croydens last night?" "for a little while." "did you see stephanie?" "only for a moment." "where?" "i don't recollect--in the drawing-room, i think." "was porshinger with her?" "not that i remember." "it is none of my affair, perhaps--more than a friend--but do you think it wise for stephanie to have porshinger dangling around her so much? i've been away for two weeks, and devereux says that he has become exceedingly attentive recently--so much so, indeed, as to occasion comment of not the kindest sort.--i don't want to say anything to her on the matter, but _you_ can--so, if you consider it expedient, you might mention it to her." "why don't you mention it yourself, montague? you have the most influence with stephanie, surely!" "i don't think so," he replied, with a bit of a smile. "a quarrel?" she asked. he nodded. "just before i went to boston.--it's nothing serious, but i'm not exactly in a position to influence her until we have made it up." "then why don't you make it up?" gladys demanded. "you would think you two were children." "we _are_ children. i'm ready to make it up any time, but i don't want to start it by finding fault with her recent conduct. it would hardly be conducive to the makeup, do you think?" "the idea of stephanie and you having a misunderstanding!" she exclaimed. "you ought to be sent back to the nursery--you overgrown infants." "granted again," he agreed. "whose fault was it?" "both, i imagine, to be accurate." "do you mind telling me what it was about?" "no--i don't mind telling _you_, gladys. it was about porshinger. i cautioned stephanie about letting him show her attention. she--well, one thing led to another and--we quarrelled. i had to leave town the following morning. i wrote to her from boston; i was there a week, and she never replied to the letter." "maybe she didn't get it." "not likely; moreover, i passed her on fifth avenue last week--and she never saw me." "_did_ she see you?" gladys asked. "certainly she saw me; she looked straight at me." "and _you_ didn't speak?" "of course i didn't speak." "wasn't it just as much in your place to speak as in hers?" gladys inflected. "i thought not. my letter put it up to her." "if she had received it. if not?" "i'm assuming that she received it. not many letters go astray." "why didn't you ask her if she had received it?" "would you?" he laughed. "no--i think i wouldn't--but i'm a woman, you're a _man_." "and my action was womanish, not mannish, you imply!" she acquiesced with a nod and a smile. "you might expect it from stephanie--and excuse it; but i've not much patience with you, montague pendleton!" "i see you haven't!" pendleton grinned. "well, i'm properly humble and contrite." "according to your idea of the proper humbleness and contrition, i suppose," gladys retorted. "which, however, is beside the way," he suggested. "let us get back on the original road. i'll ask stephanie if she received my letter, if you'll do what you can to make her see reason in the porshinger matter. the latter is too sore a subject for me to broach, until you have had your say." "aren't you unduly sensitive! she hasn't done anything but be nice to him." "she has done enough to provoke talk and 'set the old tabby-cats mewing,' as devereux says--he heard them mewing at the croydens. i don't like it, gladys. stephanie is hurting her chances for complete rehabilitation because of a foolish notion, as you know, and----" "i don't know that it is foolish," gladys interrupted. "well it is, nevertheless--and because of her quarrel with me. she's headstrong and a bit wilful and we must look out for her--you and i." "which _you_ proceed to do by quarrelling with her." "i was justified in quarrelling with her--you should have heard what she said. however, i admit that in this instance justification isn't an excuse. i'll apologize and make a fresh start--if she will let me." "she'll let you!" laughed gladys. "has she mentioned our quarrel to you?" he asked eagerly. "not a word--but if you show the proper spirit, she'll be only too glad to make up. i know it--trust me. you are the one man, montague, whom she will permit to advise her." "she didn't permit it--she resented it." "because you went at it in the wrong way. stephanie lorraine is the easiest girl in the world to manage if you handle her right--but if you don't----" an expressive shrug ended the sentence. "i think she has become more so, since the amherst affair--which is entirely natural." "i know it. i should have made every allowance for her," pendleton concurred. "i'll fix it up with her if she will let me." miss chamberlain smiled satisfiedly. "she will let you, never fear, as i said before." she drank the last of her tea and put down the cup. "i just learned today," she said, "that shortly after stephanie's return a resolution was introduced, by one of lorraine's friends on the board of governors, requesting her resignation; that after a desperate fight it was held over until the next meeting--when it was voluntarily withdrawn by the mover. is it true?" "it is true--but i didn't know it had got out," he answered. "i heard it only this morning. it was pretty well kept--for a board secret." "yes--about four weeks overtime. why is it that some one on the board always leaks?" "why is it that almost everyone on the board leaks?" she amended. "talk about women not being able to keep a secret. if there is anything more gossippy and leaky than a man's club, i should like to know it." he smiled tolerantly, with a good-natured air. "different sexes, different minds," he replied. "but the same delight in gossip!" she retorted. "however, to return to the road, as you would say. what caused lorraine's friend to have a change of heart, do you suppose?" "lorraine's accident and stephanie's visit to him at the hospital occurred on the same evening the governors met. the postponement of the resolution was owing, i understand, to a hard fight by a couple of her friends on the board. the subsequent action of the proposer was due to these facts--and to lorraine's request." "i see," nodded miss chamberlain. "altogether that first visit to the hospital--and the subsequent one--were the two wisest, most politic things stephanie ever did. they accomplished more for her rehabilitation than she could have effected in a year's time. even the queen p's were mollified and were disposed to be nice--which stephanie hasn't let them be yet, however. she _is_ a bit wilful, montague." "she may be wilful in her resolve not to accept lorraine's offer of reconciliation," said pendleton. "what is your opinion?" "on the ground of expediency, it would be better, beyond all question, for her to accept," said gladys, "but if it were i--i'd die first. i fancy stephanie is of the same mind." "i fancy she is," pendleton agreed. just then stephanie herself appeared in the doorway. she saw gladys, and smiled and came toward her--not seeing pendleton, who had his back toward her and was hidden by the tall chair in which he was sitting. "hello!" said gladys.--"come and join me in a cup of tea." pendleton slowly arose and turned--and stephanie stopped short with a smothered exclamation! xvii dolittle's tale she recovered herself instantly--and took pendleton's outstretched hand. it was a lifeless hand she gave him, however. it said plainly to him that it was offered out of respect to the conventionalities and nothing more. and her smile was as purely formal as the handshake. there was no warmth in either. "i did not mean to intrude," she remarked. "intrude!" marvelled gladys.--"why what an idea, stephanie! montague and i are not--now if i were someone else, it might be apropos. this tea is cold--let me order another pot." pendleton went over and pushed the bell. "i don't care for any tea, thank you," said stephanie.--"i'm going to town in a moment." "i'll ride with you, if you wait a few minutes until i telephone," offered gladys. "i may be able to hasten it if i call up at once. excuse me a moment!" and she hurried into the house. pendleton repressed a smile and bowed. "won't you sit down, mrs. lorraine?" he suggested. she shrugged her shoulders ever so slightly, and took the chair he offered her. "this is an awkward situation, mr. pendleton," she observed, "but it will last but a moment--and if you will bear with me, i'll see that it doesn't happen again." "suppose i want it to happen again--many times," he said, leaning forward. another shrug of the shapely shoulders. "you're asking me to believe impossibilities," she returned. "i'll make them very real, if you will promise to try to believe them." a third time the shoulders did duty. "i suppose miss chamberlain has been made aware of the state of affairs and is trying to give you a chance to apologize," she remarked. "and i take the chance.--i apologize, stephanie! most sincerely and humbly apologize." "for what?" "for anything i did or said that i shouldn't." "that you shouldn't," she repeated.--"who is to be the judge of what you _shouldn't_ have done or said? that was just the point on which we split--you thought you should and i thought you shouldn't." "i am willing to let _you_ be the judge," he replied. "then you confess that you went beyond all bounds?" "i will." "and were arbitrary and dictatorial?" "i will." "and unkind in your inferences and conclusions?" "even that i will confess.--you know that i had no intention of being either unkind, nor arbitrary, nor dictatorial." "i know only what you said at the time, mr. pendleton; from it there was no other conclusion to draw. however, it won't profit us to discuss it now--you've apologized; i accept the apology on the condition that you don't offend again." "but i'm going to offend again. at least, i'm going to speak frankly about a matter, in the hope that you'll not be offended--but that if you are offended you'll be warned nevertheless--and heed the warning. shall i proceed?" "you may use your own judgment," she returned. "first, i want to ask if you received my letter, written from boston the day after our--quarrel?" "i did not." the servant came with the tea and toast, and placed them on the table. "how many lumps, mrs. lorraine?" the man asked, sugar tongs poised. "i'll serve it--you may go!" said stephanie. then she looked at pendleton. "did you write me a letter?" "i most assuredly did!" he replied. "do you care to tell me what was in it?" "it was mainly an apology for what had occurred the previous evening." "what else was in it?" he smiled--"nothing much--just a word or two of--regard." she poured the tea, and broke off a bit of toast. "i think," she remarked, examining the toast critically, yet watching pendleton the while furtively from under the long lashes, "i think that letter alters the proposition somewhat. you did the decent thing promptly--and i'm sorry i didn't know it. i too said things that i didn't mean--and if you'll forgive _me_, montague," holding out her hand to him, with a bewitching smile, "we will start afresh." "if i'll forgive you, sweetheart!" he exclaimed. she withdrew her hand and held up a warning finger--though the smile still lingered undimmed--then she nodded ever so slightly. "my dear stephanie, i'll forgive _you_ anything when you look at me like that!" he breathed. "i'm always ready to look at you like that, if you won't find fault with me when i've been abominable," she whispered.--"no, stay where you are--you forget we're on the club-house piazza." he made a motion of resignation and sank back in his chair. "i should not have said it if we hadn't been there--and broad day besides," she observed. he smiled his answer. "moreover, montague, you know that all such little demonstrations are strictly forbidden," she warned. "when will they be permitted?" he demanded, leaning close to her. "who knows?" she answered. "who can read the future--such a future as mine, my friend." "i will essay it," he replied. she laughed softly. "_you_, montague!" she said. "yes--may i try it?" she shook her head. "it wouldn't be wise. it might raise false hopes; and a football of fate hasn't any right to hopes--they are too expensive of disappointment." "how do you know what i shall read?" he asked. "you wouldn't venture to read anything that wasn't nice." "i'll read what i see," said he;--"and the first thing i see is far from nice." she regarded him a moment thoughtfully--and he waited. "what is it?" she asked finally. "it is--porshinger!" he answered--and braced himself for the explosion. and it came--though not in the way he had anticipated. "porshinger! porshinger!" she cried tensely--her sensitive nostrils aquiver, her eyes flashing, her cheeks suddenly aflame. "i hate him!--i hate him! he's a beast, montague, a beast!" "there isn't a doubt of it, sweetheart," he said soothingly. "i rejoice that you have found him out at last." "i _always_ knew it--but i didn't think he would dare try his ways with me." "what did he do, dear?" pendleton asked--"was it at the croydens' last night?" "yes--in the conservatory.--he--kissed me by force--and repeated it at least half a dozen times before he released me.--i did nothing to tempt him, montague--_absolutely nothing_!" "except to be nice to him," pendleton added quietly--"which _he_ isn't able to understand." "isn't able to understand in stephanie lorraine--with her past!" she said bitterly. "that is the bounder in him," he explained. "he thought, because i went wrong with amherst, that every man could be an amherst--if he only had the opportunity!" she exclaimed. "did he say _that_?" "he laughed and said: 'why struggle so--no one sees us?'" "he _is_ a beast!" pendleton gritted. "and when i did break from him, he caught me back again, saying: 'you didn't struggle so the other night with pendleton,' and kissed me again and again, whispering:--'aren't mine just as sweet and worth as much as his?'" "my god!" cried pendleton.--"did he see me that night at criss-cross?" "i think so--at least the day after, when he came there to dine, he let me infer from what he said that he had seen--i never told you, because i might have been wrong--and i didn't want to worry you." for a brief space pendleton did not trust himself to answer, if indeed he had the power, so overcome was he by shame and anger, and the rush of hatred that well nigh choked him. then it passed, and he was cool and calm--preternaturally so, indeed--though the intensity of his feelings was betrayed by the flashing of his eyes. his first words were a confession of his own atrocious error. "my poor stephanie! i am shamed beyond words--to have brought this thing upon you by my folly." "you are not responsible--it's myself," she said evenly. "do you think that he would have dared it but for the amherst affair?" "i gave him courage--i am guilty too," he objected. "you don't know the man. he thinks everything must bow before him--thinks he can buy anyone if he but have a chance--thinks every woman has her price--and that i am openly for sale. he can't understand that what a woman may do once, she would burn at the stake rather than do again. he's a beast! montague, a beast!" "a human beast unfortunately--whom one can't kill with impunity," pendleton reflected. "moreover, i doubt if it would be wise to kill him." "good heavens! no!" she cried. "neither do i know just how the matter ought to be handled. of course, you will ignore him in the future----" "i shall never _see_ him!" she declared. "but if he sees you--forces himself upon you----" "he would not dare." "he _would_ dare! he is vile enough to dare anything--to do anything. he has no notion of decency nor of right when it crosses his purposes. he has neither conscience nor shame. he is what you styled him: a beast--a vicious beast, i should add." "what would _you_ do with a vicious beast of his kind who forces himself upon you?" she asked. "i should take care to have some one always with me," he replied slowly--"and i should appeal instantly for protection, if he made the slightest attempt to intrude." "and suffer him to circulate some horrible tale about me?" "you have to chance that," pendleton answered. "if he does, your friends will then be in a position to make such a protest as he will be apt to remember." "meanwhile, the harm will be done," she replied. "if he _can_ harm you," he observed. "you're a trifle too sensitive of your position, dear. it is not what it was--when you returned. surely your word is equal to porshinger's." "many will be glad to believe his story--whatever it is," she protested. "you see, i was friendly with him--and my past is--not in my favor." "those who believe it, you won't any longer want to know; nor need you care for them--you will be well rid of them. and your past is _past_; don't let it worry you, sweetheart. you're obsessed by it." "i'm afraid i don't know just what obsessed means, montague," she said, with a wan little smile. "you attach undue importance to it; you've--got it on the brain, so to speak," he explained. "i see," she said slowly. "maybe i have it on the brain--but it's very natural under all the circumstances--and when i'm trying to live down my past. it's dreadfully hard, montague, dreadfully hard for a woman to live down her past. you men can never know how hard it is--you have no past." "you make it harder than it is, stephanie," he said, "though i think that no one knows it except me--you conceal your feelings marvellously well." "thank you, montague--i have tried to hide them from this cold and heartless world we call society. and i _have_ been indiscreet, i know. striving to appear indifferent, i overdid the part. it _was_ foolish of me to encourage porshinger, even a little. i ought to have realized what a dangerous man he is--i ought to have been warned by you, instead of showing anger at your well meant and entirely justifiable protest. i have only myself to blame--which makes it all the harder." "nonsense! dear.--you did what you thought was right, and because you thought it was right--and because you feared lest porshinger would injure me. now we are going to stand together--and let lorraine help you, if he will--without any obligation on your part," he added, as she made a vehement gesture of protest. "we shall see whether he has sufficient manhood to defend his wife if porshinger starts his slanderous tales." "suppose his first tale is of--us--and what he saw on the criss-cross piazza?" she remarked. "i will deny it." "and what--shall i do?" "you need do nothing--except preserve the dignity of silence." "but if my husband hearkens to the story, and demands an explanation from us both?" "still the same course for us," pendleton replied:--"you indignant silence--me denial." "and have society in general laugh knowingly and believe--and even our friends accept the denial hesitatingly." "what other course can you suggest?" he asked. "there is but one other course--tell the truth," she said. "and raise a greater scandal--and put you in porshinger's power?" he objected. "if you admit his tale as to me, won't you practically admit whatever he may choose to say regarding his own experience with you?" "you may be right!" she said wearily. "i do not know--whatever you think best i shall do." "i've got you into this miserable difficulty and i shall----" "my dear montague, dismiss that idea. i got myself in it by my own insane actions with amherst." "and i gave porshinger the occasion he needed by the fight here and the kiss at criss-cross. i tell you i'm more to blame than are you." he leaned over close. "if lorraine would only divorce you, dear--and you would marry _me_ you wouldn't need care for porshinger's tales. they would have lost their point, and no one worth while would ever give them a thought." "my _dear_ friend," she exclaimed, looking at him with a serious smile, "it is not for such as i to think of marriage. i have made too fearful a mess of the one that still binds me." "that it still _binds_ you is the material point--nothing else matters to me." she sighed and leaned back. "what if lorraine does not believe your denial?" she suggested. "i think he will believe it," pendleton replied. "he asked me at the hospital--it was the day i returned from criss-cross--to look out for you--to protect you from yourself." "you never told me," she interrupted. "no--i never told you--and i proceeded almost immediately to quarrel with you like a little boy." "because of his request?" she smiled. "forgetful of his request," he said contritely. "i've been a poor sort of friend to you, stephanie. i never was lorraine's friend and i think he knew it; i fancy that was why he asked me to look out for you--but i've done it atrociously. i'm a miserable----" "you are the best friend i have, montague!" she exclaimed, leaning forward and putting her hand on his arm,--"the best friend a woman ever had--you believe in me still, after i've done everything to forfeit your trust." "i do--i'm only too glad to believe in you, sweetheart." "you mustn't call me sweetheart, dear--i mean," with a rush of color to her cheeks, "i mean, you must not _now_.--it is unwise--and some one may overhear." "and when we're where no one can _overhear_?" he whispered. the entrancing smile flashed for an instant across her face. "wait until then," she answered. "we have more serious matters confronting us. what shall we do in event of porshinger effecting anything against me, directly or by his tales? i'm fearfully afraid, montague, fearfully afraid!" "don't be afraid, stephanie, don't be afraid!" he counselled. "let us do as i suggested--it is the best plan.--here comes gladys; does she know about porshinger?" "no--i've not told her yet," she said hastily.--"yes, it was a very gorgeous affair--we're discussing the croyden ball, my dear"--as miss chamberlain came up, "but then all their affairs are gorgeous and in exquisite taste." "they are, indeed," assented gladys; "but i thought that last night they surpassed themselves. i never saw anything so charming as the conservatory. you know how huge it is, and there wasn't a light visible, yet the illumination was so subtly subdued that you seemed to see all about you, and yet you didn't--you know what i mean, montague. i'm a bit vague----" "precisely!" said pendleton. "you couldn't trust yourself to believe anything that you thought you saw"--and he shot a glance at stephanie. "you have it exactly, just the idea i intended to convey!" she laughed. "you are a very satisfactory man--isn't he, stephanie?" "i'm not committing myself by any rash admissions," stephanie smiled--and gladys knew that the quarrel was ended. just then a motor car, driven at reckless speed, dashed over the hill and up to the club-house--and harry lorraine sprang out. gladys glanced swiftly at stephanie and around to pendleton. "i see him," said stephanie quietly. "he seems to be in a bit of a hurry," pendleton remarked, as lorraine hastily crossed the piazza and said a word to the doorman. the latter saluted and replied. lorraine turned quickly in their direction--then hurried over. "he is coming here!" said gladys wonderingly; while stephanie frowned slightly, and pendleton began to drum lightly on one knee. "i hope you will pardon me if i'm intruding," lorraine apologized as he came up, "but i've a matter that won't bear delay--at least it won't bear delay according to my view.--may i sit down?" he looked at stephanie, and she, with a glance at the others, answered indifferently. "if you wish." "i telephoned to your house, stephanie," lorraine went on, "and they said you were here, so i came straight back--and i'm fortunate to find gladys and pendleton with you, for they are your friends and they will stand by you, i know." he was greatly agitated; his tones were high-pitched, his words bitten off short, and his hands trembled with nervousness or with the tension of his feelings. "we will stand by stephanie you may be sure," said pendleton--"as we have stood by her in the past." "and as i haven't!" lorraine exclaimed. "you're right, i haven't--but i'm trying to stand by her now. do you know what i overheard billy dolittle telling old baringdale this morning?--it was this--he said that in the conservatory at the croydens' last night he saw my wife in that cad porshinger's arms. i knocked him down with my stick--drove the end of it straight into his stomach--it is an old fencing trick, you know, pendleton. when he got up i gave him another in the same place. it put him out. then i went on the hunt of stephanie--to know how she's going to meet the slander. it can't be the truth--at least, not the _way_ he told it--porshinger _must_ have used violence. didn't he?" he demanded. "he did," stephanie answered instantly. "he kissed me by force." "i knew it!--i knew it!" lorraine cried. "well, i'll fix him--porshinger, i mean. there is only one way to handle such as he--i'll prosecute him." "you will what!" stephanie exclaimed. "i'll prosecute him--for assault and battery on my wife. i'll show the dirty scoundrel something he wasn't looking for." "you're wild, lorraine!" interposed pendleton quietly. "you won't help stephanie by any such proceeding--making her testify in a magistrate's office and then in court before a gaping crowd--subjecting her to all the shame of publicity. why don't you--" he leaned a bit forward and spoke persuasively, "why don't you try the end of your cane on porshinger also?--it would be a lot more satisfaction to you--and so much quicker." "it wouldn't accomplish the same result--it wouldn't put him in jail," lorraine objected. "it will put him in a hospital if you thrust hard enough," said pendleton. "that ought to satisfy you." "and put me in jail, if he prosecute." "he will not prosecute, never fear." lorraine shook his head. "it won't do!" he declared. "stephanie has nothing to lose and everything to gain by my prosecuting him. the tale is going--what dolittle knows will be public property in a day. the way to meet it is to have porshinger arrested at once. show that stephanie is not afraid to face the issue. if she remain quiet under the story she tacitly admits its truth." "but my dear lorraine,"--pendleton began. "i'm not to be deterred, montague--i didn't protect my wife from amherst, but i will protect her this time." he arose. "you'll hear of porshinger's arrest before night.--it will take him a little by surprise, i imagine," he flung over his shoulder as he strode away. pendleton sprang up and overtook him. "look here, lorraine!" he said, curtly. "don't be a fool--you think that porshinger will bear the brunt of this, but you're grievously in error--it will be stephanie who catches all the recoil. be sensible," he urged, his hands itching to shake lorraine. "think of the defence that porshinger will make if he is disposed to fight--and if you _arrest_ him he is sure to fight--that is the cad in him." "what will he say?" lorraine demanded. "that what he did was with stephanie's permission." lorraine laughed shortly. "just so--and a jury won't hesitate long when it's a question of veracity between a pretty woman and a mere man. silence might be the wiser course, _if no one knew_, but that is not the case--everyone knows it now, or will by night. you know dolittle quite as well as i--don't _you_ believe stephanie?" he suddenly demanded. "of course i believe her," pendleton answered impatiently. "she told me about porshinger's conduct just before you came up, and we were discussing what to do----" "but you didn't know that it had been overseen?" lorraine interrupted. "no--we----" "exactly!--and dolittle's story puts another aspect on it. we've got to fight, and fight at once." he signalled his motor with his stick, and it rolled up to the doorway. "i'll telephone you as soon as the warrant is issued," he said, and flashed away. pendleton looked thoughtfully after the receding car, then he came slowly back to his place. "i don't know that the fool isn't right," he muttered.--"but why the devil didn't he act as promptly in the amherst affair?... i couldn't stop him," he said, in answer to stephanie's inquiring look. "he has gone to have porshinger arrested." "it doesn't much signify!" stephanie shrugged. "since billy dolittle saw it, the tale will be spread broadcast. he doesn't like me, you know, so that will be an additional animus--and harry's stick didn't make him feel any the more lenient!" she laughed shortly. "i think i should like to have seen those thrusts--they're about all the satisfaction i can get out of the miserable affair. however, i'm pretty well hardened by this time--one more nasty story won't matter." "and it all comes back to me," said gladys.--"if i had not invited porshinger to criss-cross, this wouldn't have happened." "nonsense!" stephanie interrupted--"you're not to blame." "no--_i'm_ the guilty party," interrupted pendleton. "i started the trouble when i had the dispute with porshinger over the cut of his coat." "but you wouldn't have had that dispute if porshinger hadn't spoken slightingly of stephanie," gladys remarked. "and porshinger would not have had occasion to speak slightingly of me if i hadn't gone off with amherst," stephanie concluded. "so the primary guilt is mine--together with the further humiliation of having misjudged porshinger. on the whole, i've succeeded in making about as complete a muddle of things as can well be imagined." "i confess that i'm puzzled what to do," pendleton reflected--"whether to block lorraine or to let him go on--and we must act quickly if we're to block him. it resolves itself, of course, into which will occasion the less talk--and i'm free to admit i don't know. it looks to me like a case of 'you'll be damned if you do and you'll be damned if you don't.' what do you think, gladys?" "i think there isn't much choice. we're in a split stick. one way we face porshinger's story and meet it with a passive denial, the other way we take the bull by the horns--that is, lorraine forces us to--and tell the truth in court. as there can't be any question of blackmail, the latter _may_ be the better--it has the merit of sincerity, of faith in the facts. on the whole, i think that it will damn less than the passive denial of dolittle's story." "i agree with gladys:--we haven't much choice in the matter," remarked stephanie hopelessly. "lorraine is forcing the issue.--we simply have to meet it. i'm smirched anyway, but i shall be smirched less, it seems to me, by assuming the offensive." xviii the truth by persuasion just then porshinger drove up in his car. the hour was early and the east piazza was as yet occupied only by mrs. lorraine, miss chamberlain and pendleton. he sighted them at once--stood a moment as though undecided, then came slowly toward them. "can it be possible he will dare to join us!" gladys exclaimed. "anything is possible with _him_," stephanie answered contemptuously--and turned her back. "surely he won't have the effrontery!" gladys insisted and looked away. "i can't think that even _he_ is cad enough for that," pendleton remarked, busying himself with his cigarette. that no one glanced up at porshinger's approach did not faze him an instant. it was one of the secrets of his success in life that, having come to a decision, he always saw it through. he knew his own mind--which is more than the average man does. "how-de-do, everybody!" he greeted. "may i sit down?" suiting the action to the word. "miss chamberlain, i salute you! also mrs. lorraine--and mr. pendleton. bully day for golf--what do you say to a foursome?" stephanie arose, looked straight at porshinger with a deliberately ignoring stare, and turned to miss chamberlain. "will you come into the house with me, gladys?" she asked. "excuse me, montague, please." pendleton had instantly found his feet--porshinger was a trifle slower. gladys bowed perfunctorily to the latter, and followed stephanie. pendleton resumed his seat and slowly lit another cigarette. porshinger laughed, a chuckling sort of laugh. "i'm squelched, did you notice it?" he remarked. "i noticed the intention, but not the desired result," pendleton answered very coldly. porshinger's small eyes flashed a keen look at him--had stephanie been telling them the truth--or only part of it? he had felt certain she would tell nothing--simply let it be inferred that they had had a disagreement; but there was something in the atmosphere that suggested---- "a slight disagreement last night at the croydens' over a trifling matter," he laughed easily. "it's funny how a woman can make a man pay up for a little thing. you might imagine from the way she acted that i had done mrs. lorraine a grievous wrong." pendleton smoked and was silent. in truth, he could not quite determine just how to meet the matter, knowing the facts and of lorraine's contemplated action--whether to show he was aware of anything more than the actual incident of the moment, or to tell porshinger his opinion of him. the latter, however, would entail the possibility of violence if porshinger elected to become offensive in his statements as to stephanie. he _wanted_ to smash porshinger's face into a nothingness--yet that would be only a temporary personal satisfaction, and would complicate the matter still more without accomplishing anything. porshinger, on his part, had sunk his desire for vengeance into his desire for stephanie. he could not understand a woman with her flagrant past except on one hypothesis--and he was willing to forget pendleton's recent attack if he could supplant him in her affections. he had no possible doubt that pendleton had taken amherst's place--and he aimed to displace pendleton. that a woman could make one bad step and then right herself beyond even the possibility of making another was, to his mind, utterly absurd. and the last few weeks had but confirmed him--she was playing him, to be sure, but coming closer every day, until he had only to put out his hand and take her. he had put out his hand last night at croydens', but something had gone wrong. he had been a trifle premature--possibly because he did not quite understand these society women's ways. however, it was only a question of a little time. he would pluck the fruit eventually, of that he had no doubt. stephanie was not really angry--only piqued at his awkwardness and want of appreciation of the proper situation. he would show her that he did not mind a temporary rebuff, would, in fact, disregard it entirely. if she was inclined to punish him a trifle, she should have her way. money was king in the end--and money would win. her present conduct--this leaving him without a word, but with an ignoring look, was somewhat disconcerting and altogether unexpected. however, he assumed it was simply another exhibition of a society woman's seeming reluctance to yield, and the desire to make her conquest worth while. yes, it _was_ a trifle disconcerting. he was at a loss what to say, because he did not know how much, if anything, stephanie had told of their quarrel. he glanced covertly at pendleton--pendleton was smoking and looking dreamily up at the sky. "my idea of a foursome didn't seem to take well with the ladies," he adventured. "no, didn't seem to," pendleton answered dryly. "do you think mrs. lorraine and miss chamberlain are coming back?" pendleton's patience was fast slipping its moorings. "judging from mrs. lorraine's manner, i should say _she_ was not----so long as you are here," he replied. porshinger refused to take offence. "i thought so myself!" he chuckled. "have a drink, pendleton?" "no, thank you!" pendleton declined sharply. "do you mind if i have one?" "not in the least." "do you mind if i stay here?" pendleton blew smoke rings and made no reply. "from which i might infer--a number of things," porshinger laughed. "but i won't. i had one quarrel with a pretty woman over nothing last evening; i'm not going to have another quarrel with a good fellow this afternoon." it was evident to pendleton that porshinger never suspected that stephanie had told more than the simple fact of their quarrel, or else he was trying to draw him out so as to know what story he had to meet and overcome. just then dolittle's voice came around the corner. "have you heard the latest scandal?" it enquired. "no--what is it?" said another voice, which pendleton recognized as emerson's. there was a moving of chairs and the two men sat down. pendleton took a long draw on his cigarette. he saw what was coming. porshinger, however, did not see, and like the majority of his class, he craned his ears to overhear. "it's pretty hot stuff!" laughed dolittle. "were you at the croydens' last night?" pendleton glanced at porshinger. the latter's face was suddenly creased by a frown. "no--but marcia was," emerson answered, with the parvenu parent's pride in the daughter who has been included. "she didn't tell you, i fancy?" "i've not seen her.--she takes her breakfast in bed, you know." "no--i didn't know," said dolittle airily--then hastened to add:--"but most women do so, i understand." "i don't know about most women," emerson returned bluntly. "of course, you don't," dolittle interjected pleasantly. "an old married man isn't supposed to know about such things. hey!" and he laughed. "but to return--have you ever been in croyden's country-house? it's down the valley." "sure, i have," said emerson. "then you know how spacious it is, particularly the conservatory, and how the lights are arranged so that you seem to see all about you but you don't--the palms and the other big plants are concealers." porshinger stirred uneasily and whipped a glance at pendleton--who had gone back to surveying the clouds and pushing smoke rings toward them. "yes," said emerson; "i remember the conservatory perfectly. it's a beautiful room, a beautiful room!" "well be that as it may," dolittle went on: "it was just before the cotillon, and i was in the conservatory with--never mind her name--when stephanie lorraine came in with the fellow porshinger----" porshinger half arose; then sank back and his eyes sought pendleton--who was still occupied with the clouds and the smoke and his reverie. "it's amazing how such an infernal bounder can get intimate with a woman like mrs. lorraine, even if he has more money than brains--and even if she has a bit unsavory past," dolittle continued. "there are plenty in her own circle who have sufficient money to occupy her attention. however, as i was saying, she and porshinger entered and took a sheltered little nook, which apparently was concealed by the verdure----" "where were you?" asked emerson. "i was just a little way off, and could see through the leaves. presently i happened to glance over and saw--what do you think i saw?" "give it up," said matter-of-fact emerson. "i saw--mrs. lorraine in porshinger's arms!" "you don't say!" exclaimed emerson. "yes--and he was kissing her well, i can tell you." "hum!" reflected emerson. "did your--companion see it, too?" "sure, she did." and pendleton knew from his tones that dolittle lied. "hum!" muttered emerson again. "is she discreet?" "do you mean, will she tell? certainly she'll tell. do you fancy a woman would let such an opportunity slip?" "or some men either!" emerson remarked quietly. "what do you intend to imply by that?" dolittle bristled. "it's not particularly hard to understand," the other answered. "you mean you question _my_ telling it?" "i think it would have been kinder to mrs. lorraine if you had cautioned your companion not to tell--and followed your advice yourself." "well, i'm damned!" dolittle sneered. "learning propriety from a bar-tender." "it doesn't make a heap of difference where you learn it, so long as you do learn it," said emerson good-naturedly. "the only trouble with you is you never can learn it--you're too all-fired conceited and satisfied with yourself, my young friend." pendleton came suddenly to life. "do you hear what they are saying, porshinger?" he demanded curtly. his tone angered porshinger, who had been at loss what he should do. "your conversation wasn't likely to drown it!" he retorted. "and do you propose to sit calmly by and hear a woman maligned, with _you_ named as the guilty party?" "what if she wasn't maligned?" sneered porshinger.--"what if it's true?" "you miserable cur!" said pendleton. "oh, you needn't think that you're the only one!" porshinger laughed. the next instant, pendleton had him by the throat--then he released him and flung him in the chair. "you're too contemptible for a man to touch, even in fight," said he. it was no use for porshinger to struggle physically against pendleton, and he was well aware of it, one experience had already proved it beyond the possibility of doubt. so he sat back and carefully straightened his tie. "the board of governors shall have a report of this affair," said he. "i overlooked your previous assault; but you'll have to pardon me if i decline to overlook this one." "report and be damned!" pendleton exclaimed. "i'll be delighted if you do." "and meanwhile, there are other ways of reaching you, my friend," porshinger added. "i've already reached you through the lady we both admire, so you may have my leavings if you wish them. they're not so bad--as you doubtless can vouch for." again pendleton sprang forward; porshinger instantly cringed deeper into his chair. with his cane raised to strike, pendleton recovered himself. "you are not worth even a broken stick," he declared--and turned away. the noise of the scuffle had distracted dolittle and emerson from their own quarrel, and they had come around the corner and were staring in amazement at the other two. "i'll break you, you snob," porshinger sputtered. "i'll take every dollar you have, if it costs me a million to do it." pendleton shrugged his shoulders indifferently and continued straight over to the other two men. "mr. emerson," he said, "i want to compliment you on what you have said to this cad dolittle. yours was the conduct of a gentleman." then he turned to dolittle. "as for you, you miserable retailer of scurrilous gossip, i'm going to give you an opportunity to finish your tale." his right hand shot out and seized dolittle by the top of the waistcoat; at the same time his left hand grasped the other's left wrist. in a twinkle dolittle's arm lay extended palm upwards across pendleton's right arm, and pendleton was standing close beside him. it was all done in an instant--and before dolittle realized what was happening he was absolutely helpless. pendleton had but to press down and the arm would snap like a pipe-stem. dolittle's first struggle was also his last. his right arm was free, and with it he swung heavily at pendleton's head--only to be lifted off his feet by a slight downward pressure on his left wrist. the pain was so excruciating he cried out.--the blow was wasted on the air. "it's no use, dolittle," said pendleton. "you can't touch me and you can't break my hold--though i can break your arm as readily as i can break a commandment--and what is more, i'll do it unless you finish your tale!" "it was finished," dolittle answered, balanced uncomfortably on one foot and perfectly helpless. "not at all!" said pendleton easily. "you have forgotten the most important part--please listen, mr. emerson--the most important part, i say. let me remind you what it is." "it isn't anything, i tell you!" dolittle exclaimed. "think again!" pendleton admonished, accompanied by the faintest pressure--which instantly brought a spasm of pain to the other's face. "you will, i'm sure.--now this is what you omitted to relate. you told mr. emerson that you saw mrs. lorraine being kissed by porshinger last evening in the croyden conservatory, but you forgot to add that he kissed her by force and despite her struggles.--repeat it, please." dolittle was sullenly silent. "do you hear?" asked pendleton, beginning to apply the pressure. dolittle stood the agony for an instant--then he wilted. "i neglected to add, mr. emerson," he gasped, "that porshinger kissed mrs. lorraine by force and despite her struggles." "i thought you could be depended upon to tell the whole truth," pendleton remarked, easing up a trifle on his grip so that the other stood at ease. "then if you want the whole truth, why was it that the lady went back to the ballroom _with_ porshinger?" dolittle sneered. "i'm coming to that," said pendleton, tightening his hold again. "repeat, please--and immediately mrs. lorraine was free and out of porshinger's grasp, she ordered him to take her back to the ballroom, so as to avoid the comment that might be provoked by her returning alone." with a scowl of fury, dolittle repeated the words. "thank you," said pendleton. "and one thing more--if i hear of your telling this story any other way than with these truthful additions--and if you don't amend, before this day is over, the tales you've already told, i shall cane you within an inch of your life--understand. i don't think the woman with you saw--but if she did, better warn her also--though i don't doubt, if she did see it, she will tell the truth. now, go!"--and he flung him away in contempt. "you damn bully!" dolittle choked. "as you wish!" pendleton laughed. "i've found my muscular development of much use for such abominations as you.--mr. emerson, will you do me the honor of joining me in a drink?" "that i will, sir!" exclaimed emerson. "with pleasure, sir, with pleasure! where shall it be, mr. pendleton?" "here, if it please you. this is preferable to indoors on such a fine day." he touched a bell. "take mr. emerson's order," he said to the boy. "my dear sir, it was great--great!" emerson exploded. "you deserve a vote of thanks from every man who has a wife or daughter. you're a credit, sir, a credit to your class and to the club--by god, sir, you are!" "it was a difficult situation to handle," said pendleton--"and i'm not so sure i handled it properly; however, it was the best i could think of on the spur of the moment. moreover, it was the simple truth that i forced dolittle to tell." "i haven't a doubt of it," emerson declared. "and what is more, dolittle knows that it is the truth, if he actually didn't see it. he's a pup, sure enough." "you slander the pup, mr. emerson!" smiled pendleton. "i do, indeed. i beg the pup's pardon. he's a--what is he?" "he is the same as porshinger--an abomination." "that expresses it exactly--an abomination," emerson agreed. he glanced quietly around. "he has joined porshinger--they are scheming trouble for you, i'm afraid." pendleton smiled indifferently, and lit a cigarette. "i wish i had your nerve," said emerson admiringly. "to flout both porshinger and dolittle--make them both your vindictive enemies, and not to seem to care a damn. that's what you fellows call _noblesse oblige_, isn't it?" "most people would call it rank idiocy, i fear!" pendleton laughed. "then me for the rank idiots. here's to more of them, mr. pendleton, here's to more of them!" he put down his glass. "who's this burning up the speed regulations? gee! he certainly is hitting it up some." "it looks like mr. lorraine's machine," pendleton replied. the car dashed up and made a spectacular stop--to the injury of the tires and the machinery--and lorraine jumped out, followed by a man in a shabby uniform with a shield on the front of his waistcoat. "what's this?" said emerson--"a plain clothes man in disguise--or," as lorraine and the man drew near, "a constable in regalia?" pendleton smiled slightly but did not reply. lorraine, his eyes on porshinger, made his way directly across to him--giving pendleton a preoccupied nod as he passed. "there is porshinger--the man with his back to the railing!" said lorraine. "serve your warrant, officer burke." xix the arrest the two were near enough for porshinger to hear what lorraine said, and his eyes suddenly narrowed like a snake's and took on a look as venomous. "is this mr. porshinger--charles j. porshinger?" the constable inquired, with an important air, that was at the same time slightly apologetic. "yes!" said porshinger. the word was fairly bitten off. "i've a warrant here for you, sir," the constable continued. "for me!" porshinger exclaimed. "what do you mean, fellow--do you know who i am?" "it don't make no difference to me who you are, sir. i'm doin' my duty, in the name of the law, and i'm arrestin' you because i've a warrant here what orders it." "arresting me for what?" porshinger demanded. "for assault and battery." "at whose instance?" burke passed the warrant across. "this gentleman here is the prosecutor, i believe," he said. "now come with me and see the magistrate. he'll fix the amount of bail." porshinger took the warrant and read it. "so!" he sneered. "what do you think to gain by this business, lorraine?" lorraine ignored him. "the prisoner is in your hands, constable," he remarked. "i suggest you would better take him along--the magistrate is waiting. if he doesn't want to enter bail, take him to jail." "take me to jail!--me to jail!" cried porshinger. "that's where i'll have to take you unless you enter bail, or arrange with the magistrate. i've got nothin' to do but to take you, mr. porshinger," said burke firmly. "won't you take my word that i'll appear there before six o'clock and enter bail?" porshinger demanded. "i'll take nothin' but you, sir. i must obey my warrant, and you've got to obey it too." "do you know who i am?" said porshinger again. "i know who you are, all right, but that don't make no difference to me, as i said before. i don't know nothin' about the merits of the case; whether you're guilty or innocent is none of my business. i'm executin' my warrant, and i'm a goin' to do it--so come along." "i suppose you'll at least let me telephone to my lawyer?" said porshinger. "sure, sir; if you do it at once, with me along with you." "oh, certainly. i wouldn't lose the pleasure of your company!" mocked porshinger. "and then you'll let me ride with you in my car to the magistrate's office?" "no, i won't," burke smiled. "we'll go in mr. lorraine's car. you might forget to tell your buzz man where to stop." "my dear officer, do you know you're piling up a lot of trouble for yourself in the future?" "i don't know nothin' at present but my warrant, mr. porshinger--so come along and do your telephonin', and then let's be off. it's four o'clock now, and if the magistrate's office is closed, it's you to the jail in default of bail--understand?" "what!" cried porshinger. "that's it," replied burke. "then let us be going, by all means," said porshinger sourly. he crossed to where lorraine was sitting. "it's a new rôle for you, mr. complaisant husband--to defend your wife!" he sneered. "you would better have stirred yourself after amherst--it might have been to more purpose. now--you're brave enough to drag her name through the mire of a court--and wash all your dirty linen, including hers. i don't want to tell all i know regarding mrs. lorraine, but i'll tell enough to show that there was no _assault_. i _did_ kiss her--a number of times. she's a very kissable lady--but it wasn't by force. _oh, no!_" lorraine gripped his chair arms until his knuckles were white, but he controlled himself. then he arose. "it was because i knew you were such a poltroon that i prosecuted you rather than horse-whipped you," he replied; "and i am careful to abstain from physical violence. you would be only too ready to prosecute me, and so muddy the water. you're too despicable, porshinger, even to talk to," and he turned his back and walked away. "you might as well start another prosecution, since you seem to be strong on them at present," porshinger went on. "why don't you prosecute the new amherst?" with a look at pendleton. "the new amherst!" cried lorraine, whirling around--"the new amherst!--what do you mean?" "you poor, blind cuckold!" was the mocking retort. "you've horns growing all over you. you never see anything until it is too late. you're an easy mark, sure enough. oh, it isn't i--i'm not in the amherst class, thank god!--but your dear friend pendleton _is_," raising his voice so that pendleton could hear. a contemptuously amused look came over lorraine's face, and he broke into a derisive laugh. "i'm obliged for the information!" he replied. "no doubt you are. if you doubt it, you might ask what your wife and pendleton were doing on the criss-cross piazza, one night about five weeks ago. that was what first put me wise as to mrs. lorraine's--possibilities--also capabilities." "you damn coward!" cried lorraine, springing toward the other.--then he stopped. "no--you don't lure me to offer you violence," he said. "time's passing, mr. porshinger," said burke's voice behind him. "if the magistrate's gone, don't blame me." "ah! thank you for reminding me," porshinger answered. "come, we'll go to the telephone," and with a sneering smile at lorraine, and another at pendleton as he passed him, he went into the club-house--burke following just behind. porshinger got dalton, his personal counsel, on the wire. he was just leaving for the day, he remarked when he recognized porshinger's voice. "i wish you would send some one around to magistrate swinton's office at once," porshinger directed. "i've been arrested--yes, that's what i said--i've been arrested for assault and battery, and the officer is going to lock me up if i haven't bail ready. i'm out at the otranto club now--but we're coming right in, and i'll meet your man there. you telephone the magistrate we're coming, will you?--what?--yes, they know who i am, but it don't influence the fellow with the warrant--he says he has to take me--which is correct, i reckon.... yes, some one will suffer, you're damn right!... what is it about?--the assault?--i'll tell you when i see you. some people have got themselves into a hell of a mess.... yes.... very well. good-bye.--now, my man, i'm at your service." side by side they crossed the piazza and entered lorraine's car. "tell my machine to follow," said porshinger, to the servant who opened the door. during the drive, porshinger did not speak, and burke was discreetly quiet. when they drew up at the magistrate's office, burke hopped out and offered his hand to the other, who ignored it. lorraine's car immediately drove off, and porshinger's took its place. "ah! dalton, you came yourself, did you? i'm glad to see you," said porshinger. "there wasn't any need, i suppose, one of your young men would have been able to handle this matter." "i thought it best to come myself," dalton replied. "no trouble, i assure you--just simply a case of bail. everything is arranged. all you have to do is to sign your name. then we'll waive a hearing, and let the matter come up in court, if you want it to come up," with a sharp glance at his client's face. "otherwise, we'll have the district attorney's office pigeon-hole it." "i'm not sure what i want," said porshinger. "well we'll waive the hearing anyway, and you can take your time to consider." "i'm not sure i want it waived," porshinger answered. "i'm inclined to fight." "don't do it before the magistrate," the lawyer advised. "he is sure to hold you, and it will only make the matter more prominent. you're playing into lorraine's hands by doing it. for some reason, he seems to want the facts aired. so it's your policy to suppress them--no matter if you're as innocent as to-morrow. a _woman_ is involved--and you must submit to a few adverse inferences for the general good of your cause. society will forgive much in such a case, _if you're quiet_--it will never forgive you if you make a fight." "that is your advice?" "on general principles, yes," dalton replied. "there is force in your argument," porshinger admitted. "however, i don't know--let the magistrate fix the hearing--we can waive it any time before, i suppose?" "you will have to come around here and renew your bail," said dalton. "why is that?" "if you waive the hearing you give bail for court; if you don't waive the hearing your bail will be to appear before the magistrate at a time fixed." "hell!" exclaimed porshinger, "i don't want to come here again, if i concluded _not_ to go to a hearing.--well, waive the hearing. we can give the lorraines all they want in court--and something more." they entered the rear office where the magistrate was awaiting them. porshinger was introduced, he waived the hearing; the bail was quickly arranged--one thousand dollars for appearance at the next term of court; dalton and he signed it; and they went out. "a lawyer isn't supposed to go bail, but i fixed it up with the squire," dalton remarked. "it's a mere form in your case--and i thought it well not to mention the matter to anyone. moreover, i hadn't time to get another bondsman. i knew you didn't care to be kept waiting." porshinger nodded. "have the lorraines become reconciled?" dalton inquired. "lorraine has become reconciled, the ninny--but mrs. lorraine hasn't, i hear. problem, isn't it?" "social problem!" laughed the lawyer.--"the unforgiving offender." porshinger smiled. "it may be that way--i can't quite comprehend it, however. why should lorraine prosecute me if his wife's not reconciled to him?--and she plainly isn't, or wasn't last evening." "which nevertheless is not material to the issue," dalton replied. "it is: did you commit an assault and battery on mrs. lorraine last night?" "i kissed her in the croyden conservatory," said porshinger bluntly. "hum--did she know it--i mean, was the kissing with her consent?" "sure it was," he lied. "but she told?" "no--we were overseen by dolittle--and he told." "most unfortunate!" smiled dalton. "it's perfectly plain now. to defend herself, mrs. lorraine tells lorraine that you kissed her by force--and lorraine rushes off and prosecutes you. it's a pretty mess. everybody knows it, and everybody will be talking, and everyone concerned will be more or less smudged. i'm sorry for you, porshinger." "why sorry?" porshinger demanded. "since when has it become a crime to kiss a pretty woman?" "it hasn't. your crime wasn't in kissing her but in kissing her so bunglingly as to be overseen. society never quite forgives one, particularly a new-comer, that sort of clumsiness. it is always remembered against him." "not if he can buy forgetfulness," said porshinger easily. dalton's glance flashed an instant over the other's face. "perhaps--it's sometimes done, though not often. you may be an exception, porshinger. i trust so." "you can do anything if you're willing to pay for it--and keep out of jail," was the complacent answer. "i'll supply the money; it will be up to you to keep me out of jail--understand?" xx the turn of things for a while after porshinger and the constable had departed, lorraine sat thinking. those last words of porshinger's, which he had seemed to laugh to scorn, none the less bred suspicion. "_you might ask what she and pendleton were doing on the criss-cross piazza, one night about five weeks ago._" what did it mean? there must be some basis for the insinuation--some fact that was suspicious on its face. he did not want to mistrust pendleton; he would _not_ mistrust him; he would frankly tell him what porshinger had said and accept his explanation or denial. pendleton was fond of stephanie--had been fond of her before the marriage--had stood by her nobly since her return. it was not credible. it was a scheme of that miserable brute to embroil him with stephanie's best friend.--yet he would like to have pendleton's denial. he would feel better--yes, decidedly better. there would be a satisfaction in having the denial--in hearing it. he got up and crossed over to where pendleton and emerson were sitting. the latter remained a few moments, then excused himself, on the plea of having to dress for golf, and went off to the locker-rooms. both lorraine and pendleton were silent--the former staring at the floor, the latter gazing through his cigarette smoke out on the links, which were beginning to fill with players. "well--it's done!" said lorraine presently. "not exactly," pendleton replied. "i should say it's only begun." "the beginning is done, at any rate," lorraine returned. "it's easy to start something, but it's quite another thing to finish it." "no doubt about that--the difficulty with me hitherto has been that i never started. now----" "now it is a question whether it wouldn't be better if you _hadn't_ started." "do you think so?" demanded lorraine. "candidly, i don't know what to think," said pendleton. "it's such a miserable mess all through. we want to do the best for stephanie, but i admit _i'm_ not competent to judge what the best is under the circumstances. however, the attack has been made--it only remains now to fight it out on your plan. have you any plan, lorraine?" "plan!" answered lorraine vaguely. "no--i've no plan--other than to punish porshinger for his dirty conduct toward stephanie, and to meet dolittle's nasty tale with the truth." "very good!" nodded pendleton, "but that is the conclusion, not the plan. what if porshinger fights--and is supported by dolittle? what if he says that stephanie was willing and that he did not use force?" "i'll take stephanie's word in preference to a thousand porshingers and dolittles!" lorraine declared. "and so will i--but will a jury? you have not consulted counsel, i suppose?" "no--i've not consulted anyone. i acted solely on my own responsibility because i was satisfied it was right." "and what is more important to stephanie--will the public accept her word and believe it?" pendleton reflected. "certainly it will. i haven't a bit of doubt of it." pendleton shrugged his shoulders. "i wish i had your assurance," he replied. "there is only one thing about it that isn't doubtful, to my mind." "what is that?" lorraine demanded impatiently. "that stephanie will be damned utterly unless her story is accepted." "she is damned if dolittle's story is accepted. this is the only means she has of clearing herself--to fight openly. unless"--he paused and looked hard at pendleton--"unless she will consent to a reconciliation and resume her place as my wife." "i wish someone could persuade her of that," pendleton answered instantly. "it is her best and wisest course. it would relieve the entire situation." "you will tell her so?" lorraine demanded eagerly. "i _have_ told her so--many times within the last few weeks. i told her so to-day." "and she----?" pendleton shook his head. "it doesn't seem to appeal to her, lorraine." "i will do the next best thing--i'll stand by her," he exclaimed. "if she won't have me for husband, she can't object to the moral and active support of the man who has the first right to render it. indeed, if i am with her, if i instituted the fight, what has society to say?" "that is the proper attitude, lorraine," pendleton replied. "it will go far to sustain stephanie's story." "i'll do everything in my power to make amends for the past," lorraine went on. "maybe it will soften her a little toward me." pendleton said nothing. "there is one thing i wanted to ask you, pendleton," he went on, after a moment's pause. "i trust that you won't misunderstand--that you'll take it in the right way." "certainly, i'll take it in the right way," pendleton answered heartily. he knew what was coming and was ready to meet it. porshinger had not raised his voice in vain; though what he had intended for a threat was a warning also. "i want you to explain," said lorraine, "what porshinger meant when he said, just before he went off with the constable: 'i'm not in amherst's class, but your dear friend pendleton is--if you doubt it, you might ask him what your wife and he were doing on the criss-cross piazza, one night about five weeks ago.'--don't imagine that i believe the scoundrel's insinuation for an instant--that you and stephanie were guilty of even the most trifling indiscretion. i trust you, pendleton--you're not one to be swept away by passion or sentiment--and i think that stephanie has had enough to steady her permanently. yet what did he mean? was it just thrown out for viciousness, or was there something happened at criss-cross which his vile brain distorted into vileness? can you guess--can you imagine what basis in fact he could have?" "my dear lorraine, no basis in fact i can assure you," pendleton answered very quietly. "i've been at criss-cross several times within the last five weeks when stephanie was there. i was alone with her on the piazza repeatedly, by day and in the evening, but there wasn't a time when gladys or any of the guests could not have overheard our conversation or seen our acts." "god save me for a quibbler!" he thought. "a lie by inference and intended to deceive--though true enough in word--is none the less a lie. yet for stephanie's sake, i am remitted to it. the little woman was right--and i was a fool!" lorraine put out his hand; and pendleton took it, feeling like a dog but smiling ingenuously. "woodside's place adjoins criss-cross and porshinger visits him, you know; he was invited to the chamberlains, one sunday when we were there," pendleton observed. "he might have seen me with stephanie at that time; he might even have used a field-glass from woodside's or say he did; and he might have seen us sitting together and concocted a story to fit his purposes." "more than likely concocted it while he was saying it!" lorraine exclaimed. "he wanted to embroil me with you--split the opposition into fighting among themselves, when they should stand together. well--it hasn't succeeded. nevertheless i thought it best that we should have it out at once, so as to have no misunderstanding hereafter." "it was much the best way!" pendleton agreed--"much the best way. i thank you for giving me a chance to deny--and for accepting my denial." "my dear pendleton," lorraine exclaimed, "you don't think i would have made that request of you at the hospital--to watch over stephanie--to protect her from herself--if i had doubted you or ever should doubt you?" "i shouldn't suppose so!" pendleton answered. then he switched the conversation--it was too acutely personal--he was writhing under it. he would much have preferred to tell lorraine the truth--and stand shamed. but he might not on stephanie's account. "i think i'll go in and telephone cameron about the case, and ask him to look after it," said lorraine. "it needs a lawyer. it would have been wiser, i admit, if i had had a lawyer from the start." "_before_ it started," amended pendleton. "will you be here this evening?" pendleton nodded. "then i'll ask him to talk it over with you also. i'm very tired. i think i'll go home presently, if you don't mind." pendleton wanted to take him by the shoulders and fling him into his car--anything to be rid of him. "not in the least," he replied--"i'll talk it over with cameron." presently lorraine returned. "i've told cameron everything," he said. "he will be here about six o'clock. i asked him to see you. i'll call you up to-morrow. good by!" after a moment, pendleton arose and went into the house. choosing a magazine at random from the table, he crossed to a retired corner of the big living-room and buried himself behind it--not to read, but to think. it was a peculiarly difficult situation; arising from causes simple enough in themselves when taken separately, but extraordinarily complicated when considered together. stephanie, gladys, lorraine, amherst, porshinger, dolittle and himself--everyone a party acting independently, so to speak, yet in effect acting together to attain the present embarrassing condition. naturally a woman was at the bottom of it--she always is in such matters--and she would be the one to suffer for all their foolishnesses and mistakes. stephanie would be pilloried because porshinger and dolittle and he himself had acted the cad--one by nature, one because he was a malicious gossip, and one because he was a natural born damn fool. the last was quite the most to blame because he should and ought to have known better. the more he pondered the situation, the more hopeless it became. amherst was out of it now except as an original cause. lorraine was only in it by right, and out of it on every other basis. dolittle was in it by reason of his disposition to meddle in the affairs of others; but porshinger and he were in it because they were guilty against stephanie. technically lorraine had a perfect right to prosecute porshinger--and porshinger deserved to be prosecuted--but what of himself? who was the more guilty of the two? he had betrayed an implied trust. it mattered not if stephanie loved him--it mattered not that she had no reproaches for him; he was guilty none the less, and had only complicated the matter for her, for porshinger had seen them--or at least he knew. and stephanie, the innocent cause of it all--of his and porshinger's audaciousness--was to be the real victim because of dolittle's babbling tongue and lorraine's misdirected energy. the whole thing, however, came back to dolittle, so far as the present complication was concerned. if he had not seen--or had been blind though seeing--it would never have arisen. however, none of these matters confronted them now. there was small profit in searching for causes, or for whom to blame. their business was to meet a present condition in the best way possible--and there appeared to be no best. all were equally bad. the more he thought over it, the more hopeless it all was and the more futile every effort to save stephanie. she was bound to be smirched, take it whatever way one would. if the prosecution was abandoned, then dolittle's story would be believed no matter how she treated porshinger in the future. if the prosecution was persisted in, then porshinger's story of the willing victim had to be met by stephanie's story of violence--all the nasty details threshed out for an eager populace--with stephanie the real defendant with all to lose and nothing to gain.--and if porshinger dragged him into it, by telling what he saw on the criss-cross piazza, the verdict would scarcely be in doubt and the---- in disgust with himself, he sprang up and crossed the room to a distant window. it was a lovely prospect that lay before him--the fields, the trees, the close-cut fair-green of the course dotted with the players, all under a lazy afternoon sky--but he did not see it. he saw only the miserable situation into which he had put the woman he loved--and who loved him--and whom he was utterly unable to help save in one way: marriage. and she was married to another! whom she would have none of, but who was determined on a reconciliation. even if he acknowledged the criss-cross affair to lorraine, it would effect nothing for stephanie's salvation. lorraine might be moved to divorce her, and that very circumstance would establish porshinger's defence and prove dolittle's nasty story. guilty of the one, she would be deemed guilty of the other. it was a dark prospect for her. her rehabilitation, which had appeared so sure, had suddenly been wrapped in blackness---- "is it so very absorbing--i mean the prospect?" said a low voice behind him. he turned quickly, with something of a start, and met stephanie's intimate little smile. "i found it so," he replied, taking her hand. she laughed softly--the beautifully modulated laugh that pendleton loved, and that had rung in his ears for many years. "you were not looking at the prospect, my friend--confess it," she said. "i was not," he admitted. "you were thinking of--me; of the trouble i have been--and am--and always shall be. were you not, montague?" "no! i was not. i was trying to think of some way to help you out of your trouble." "and wishing i had never--come back!" "you know better than that!" he smiled. "because there isn't any way to help me out of the trouble," she went on. "i've got to take my punishment." "you have already taken your punishment," he answered. "that which is in prospect is not due you." "i have incurred it none the less," she said. "it is but the result of what has gone before. if i had not merited _that_ punishment, i would not be threatened now. the one wouldn't have happened--and the other wouldn't matter." "you mean?" "that porshinger would never have been in a position to take advantage of me--and that _you_----" she broke off with a fascinating smile. "may i supply the rest?" he whispered. "do you think you can be trusted?" she asked. "i'm afraid i can't be trusted for anything where you are concerned." "not even to defend?" she smiled.--"i'll trust you, montague--for anything." "you see how i've betrayed your trust." "nonsense! we were equally culpable--equally indiscreet. now we are to be punished equally. you by your conscience, and i openly. please think no more about it." "if only you were free!" he exclaimed. "which i'm not--and haven't any prospect of being. like all vacillating people, lorraine has suddenly become possessed by a fixed idea, and right or wrong he will cling to it until he dies. why couldn't it have been to divorce me, instead of to keep me? however, it is profitless to wonder why, when to wonder won't make it any different." she gave a little gesture of despair. "do you think lorraine will actually have porshinger arrested--or is it only an evanescent fancy?" "he _has had_ him arrested--here. within half an hour of his departure, he was back with an officer and a warrant--and the officer has taken porshinger to the magistrate's." "it's just as well, i suppose," she reflected. "we can have everything out in court at once, and not have it in detachments forever. the more i think of it, the better i like lorraine's course--if i must fight; and, as you have said, we can't avoid a fight if i am to have a shred of reputation left. the amherst affair well nigh damned me--only you and gladys and a few others, and my mother's position, enabled me to regain a little of what i had lost--caused society to suspend its final judgment on me. now if i'm guilty of this porshinger matter, it will be taken to show such a natural aptitude to go wrong--such a disposition for the unmentionable that there is only one course open to me: to go away and never return. so far as the town is concerned, i might just as well be dead--better, indeed." he nodded gravely. he, too, knew that it was as she had said. even lorraine's attitude in the matter would have no effect. society would have none of her--she would have condemned herself. "you are not going to lose," he encouraged. "it is not a pleasant alternative to be sure, but it is the only one possible under the circumstances, and we're going to carry it through. it may be a bit unpleasant while it lasts, but it will soon be over--and all the sympathy will be with _you_. porshinger is such a contemptible cad that no one of right mind will doubt you for a moment." "no one of right mind _should_ doubt," she admitted--"but only the future will reveal whether my past hasn't overcome their right minds." "why don't you forget your past--it's past!" he exclaimed. "as i think you have said to me many times, montague!" she smiled, "and as you know is impossible." "it is not just to yourself to remember what your friends have forgot." "what my friends have _overlooked_, you mean--they can never forget." "then _you_ overlook it," he said. "i wish i could," she replied. "you can. it's simply a rule of action." "don't you think i try to act the part?" she said sadly. "it's try, try, try all the time. i'm about worn out with trying." "it succeeds, dear," he encouraged. "no one would ever know that you are not as calm and unconcerned as you appear to be. even i would be deceived, if you yourself had not told me otherwise." "i'm glad i've acted the part so well," she smiled. "i only hope i can keep it up to the end--if there is ever to be an end." "it can always have a certain end, stephanie," he whispered. "thank you, montague; i'll not pretend that i don't understand--nor that i----" she broke off, and looked by him and out to the distant horizon. "it is no use for us to discuss the impossible," she said softly. "it is going to be the probable," he declared. "then wait until it _is_ the probable." "and then it is going to be the _fact_." she shook her head--but an adorable smile came into her soft blue eyes. "you seem very sure, my friend," she whispered. "i am very sure, dear," he replied. "very sure, indeed." "you must not call me dear," she reminded him. "dearest, then," he amended. "nor dearest, either." "darling!" "worse still." "sweetheart!" "not even sweetheart." he sighed.--"you're very hard to please!" "do you think so?" she asked naïvely. "in the matter of names, i mean." "appellations of friendship were better." "but it isn't friendship!" he laughed. "not friendship?" "well, call it friendship, if _you_ please. i'll call it something else." "a riddle!" she exclaimed. "to which the answer is found on the next page--shall we turn it?" "do you think it wise?" she asked--"wise to turn the new page before we have finished the old?" "no, it is _not_ wise," he answered slowly. "you are right, _stephanie_. you see i call you simply stephanie, but it is hard to have to read what doesn't interest me." "if it is hard to have to _read_, what do you think it is to have to live it?" she asked. "it must be hell!" he replied. "it _is_ hell," she admitted--"hell of my own making--that is what hurts." "don't let it hurt, stephanie," he pleaded, taking her hand. "it will all come right very soon--very soon, i'm persuaded." "by what?" "by the natural turn of events--they can't go against you much longer." "the only turn that would help me would be for porshinger to die suddenly--and lorraine to become reasonable and give me my freedom." "if porshinger were to die suddenly," he repeated thoughtfully. "yes, that might clarify the matter very much. unfortunately porshinger isn't cultivating death these days--he has quit shooting wells, you know." "and he hasn't any cause to shoot himself," she remarked. "he has plenty of causes but he won't recognize them!" pendleton smiled. the postlewaite carriage drove up with a flourish, and mrs. postlewaite descended with heavy dignity and becoming condescension. her arrival was an event at the club-house--only equalled by the arrival of the other queen p; and she was fully aware of the fact. the doorman and a couple of "buttons" danced out--and continued to dance during the royal progress inward--while a crowd of her satellites, who were on the piazza, rushed forward to meet her. "it is very amusing--mrs. postlewaite's assumption of greatness," pendleton remarked. "not half so amusing as society's according it to her," stephanie returned. "bluff and arrogance wins mostly." "if one has the requisite manner and cool nerve to carry them off," she amended. "i don't see anything wanting in the lady immediately in our fore!" pendleton smiled. "only in her case, she has been doing it so long it has become part of her life--she actually does it naturally and by arrogation of divine right. it must be pleasant to have such a comfortable feeling about one's self." mrs. postlewaite, in her progress down the piazza, glanced casually in and saw them.--she paused, considered an instant; then facing around, and dismissing her attendants she came over to the window. "stephanie, dear!" she purred, in her most gracious tones, "will you come out a moment. i've something i want to tell you." _stephanie, dear!_ it was the evidence of the return of the royal favor--the piazza had heard it--the entire club-house would know it in a moment--it would spread like the wind. even stephanie's equanimity was startled into a calm surprise, which showed in her face and in her heightened color. and coming _now_--of all times! "certainly, mrs. postlewaite," stephanie answered. "and bring montague along. i want him to hear it too," the _grande dame_ went on. "what does it mean?" stephanie whispered, as she and pendleton passed toward the door. "you heard what she called you: 'stephanie, dear'?" "yes!" "then there isn't much doubt." "but at this juncture!" she marvelled. "mrs. postlewaite knows the exigencies and the juncture too, never fear. the turn has come, sweeth--i mean, stephanie." she shot him a bewildering smile; the next moment they stood in "the presence." "stephanie, dear," began mrs. postlewaite, without any preliminary, "i have heard of mr. dolittle's nasty tale of what he saw last night in the croyden conservatory; i have also heard of harry's prompt prosecution of that unspeakable porshinger, and i want to tell you that i and mrs. porterfield are ready to testify in your behalf. we were on the little balcony overhanging one side of the room; we saw porshinger make the attempt, your indignant repulse, your seizure again, your freeing yourself, and then your making him take you back to the ball-room. the last was delightful! i saw it all, my dear--and i'm proud of harry lorraine, because he chose to believe your story rather than that horrid dolittle's, and to prosecute porshinger instead of a disgraceful use of physical violence." "you're very kind, mrs. postlewaite," stephanie replied--"very kind----" "not at all, my dear, not at all! we shall take particular care to tell it. it is fortunate we happened to see everything, and so can vouch for your story in the face of dolittle's scandalous tale and porshinger's lie--he will lie, of course. now, if you don't mind, we will let by-gones be by-gones--and start fresh." she laid her hand intimately on stephanie's arm. "and we'll have tea together here to bind it--just we three. will you, my dear?" "of course, i will, mrs. postlewaite!" stephanie responded, with a happy little laugh. the porshinger episode was over--the victory was theirs. just then, from somewhere downstairs, came a voice calling so loudly the whole piazza heard:-- "i say, fellows, do you know that amherst is in town--got back this morning? i shouldn't be surprised if the damn scoundrel would actually have nerve enough to come up here and ask us all to take a drink!" pendleton deliberately leaned forward and took stephanie's hand in his--and held it, with a reassuring pressure. "as you were saying, mrs. postlewaite," he remarked, "i hear that the croyden ball was a charming affair, though i was so unfortunate as to miss it." xxi obsessed when tea was over mrs. postlewaite arose. "come around soon and see me, stephanie!" she smiled, and with an intimately gracious nod, she resumed her progress down the piazza. "where is gladys?" pendleton asked. "on the other side, playing auction, i think; don't disturb her, montague--and if you will call my car, i'll go home. i've had about enough excitement for one afternoon." she breathed a sigh of intense relief. "the last is very gratifying, isn't it, my friend?" "mrs. postlewaite and mrs. porterfield, of all others!" exclaimed pendleton. "the best witnesses you could possibly have. it's too lucky for words! your rehabilitation is effected and porshinger is undone. he will be cut by everyone and expelled from the clubs. it is a social waterloo for him." "but it doesn't relieve _you_ of his revenge," she objected. "it will make him all the more determined to square off." "don't let that bother you, dear--i mean, stephanie!" he laughed. "you're free of him--he won't try his dirty tricks on you--and i'm a man, and it doesn't matter. i can meet him half way and then some. in fact, i'm hoping he will be kind enough to give me the opportunity." "i'm afraid for you, montague--indeed i'm afraid!" she repeated. "nonsense, little woman. don't you worry about me--i tell you there is no need. _you're_ out of it now.--i admit i _was_ mightily concerned for you; that is why i didn't favor gladys' and your scheme to placate him: because it involved you. he could have made it most unpleasant--as he did--and as he didn't, thanks to mrs. postlewaite." he put her in her car, with the courteous deference he always had for a woman--were she but a beggar who accosted him on the street--and which was always just a shade more courteous and more deferential to _her_. "when shall i see you again?" he asked, as he bent over her hand. "this evening, if you wish!" she smiled, with just the faintest pressure of her fingers. "you are very good," he murmured. "i most assuredly _do_ wish." "i'll expect you then--at nine, montague. i want to--talk over--matters--amherst, you know." "at nine!" he answered, and the car rolled away. pendleton went in through the club-house, and out again on the east piazza where miss chamberlain was playing auction. she saw him coming and motioned to a chair beside her. mrs. postlewaite was a little way off, holding her usual court. gladys glanced toward her and smiled. "we all know it, montague," she said. "everyone in the club-house and on the links knows it--and it has been telephoned to town, i dare say: mrs. postlewaite asked stephanie to have tea with her here. it's the sensation of the--year." "and for a sensation mighty satisfactory," pendleton returned. "those of us who have been for stephanie all through can take courage--our course has been approved by the ultimate authority," gladys observed. "if we hadn't been staunch for our friend, the queen wouldn't have come around." "she'll hear you, gladys," warned mrs. burleston. "let her--i would confide the same thing to her, if she asked me.--i've never come under her authority. i'll double your three hearts, helen." "by!" said miss tazewell, after a pause to consider whether she should take her partner out of it. "by!" said miss rutledge promptly. "i'll go back--your lead, gladys," said mrs. burleston. there was silence until the last card fell--mrs. burleston had made good her contract. "that's ninety-six below, and a hundred above, and simple honors," said miss chamberlain, as she put down the score. "you had a bully hand, helen." on the next deal, miss rutledge was the declarant. gladys spread out her cards; then, with a significant look at pendleton, arose and moved out to the rail. "what else have you to tell me?" she said, as he joined her. "how did you know?" he smiled. "i guessed it--from your manner!" she laughed. "a woman's intuition, if you please." "it's more than tea for stephanie," he said. "you have only part of it.--the porshinger matter is won." "he has plead guilty!" she marvelled. "better than that." "what--better! how can that be?" "mrs. postlewaite and mrs. porterfield witnessed the whole episode, and have voluntarily come to stephanie's assistance--to deny dolittle's story, and with an offer to testify against porshinger." "oh, delightful!" gladys cried. "the queen p's actually witnessed the whole occurrence?" "yes--from the little balcony which, you know, runs along one side of the conservatory." "does lorraine know it?" "no." "where is stephanie?" "gone home." she looked at him thoughtfully. he looked at her and smiled. "i'm sorry for you, montague.--lorraine will be the more determined than ever on a reconciliation." "i've a bit more news," he replied seriously. "i was so pleased with the postlewaite matter it clean escaped me, for the moment.--i've just heard that amherst is back." "here--in town!" she cried. "so i understand--he arrived this morning." she held up her hands helplessly. "what a complication!" she breathed.--"what will lorraine do, do you suppose?" "i give it up," he replied, with a shake of his head. "no one can depend on him for anything--but if he is still of the mind he was this afternoon, it would be just as well for him and amherst not to meet." "we're waiting, gladys!" came mrs. burleston's voice. "coming!" gladys replied.--"you'll do your best to keep them apart, montague?" "yes--i'll do what i can; but i may have a devil of a job, and then not succeed. lorraine's himself again, you know--which means he is as erratic as a crazy man. however----" "where is he now, do you know?" "he said he was tired and was going home." "then let us hope he'll stay there until morning," she said. "and that some kind friend won't call him up and put him wise," he added--and they went back to the game. "montague, will you either stay here or go away--_far_ away, that is," dorothy tazewell requested--"down to the grill-room would be about right." "wherefore this happy consideration!" pendleton laughed. "so we can continue our game, stupid, without the attendant interruption of having gladys desert us every time she's dummy." "by which i might infer----" pendleton began. "whatever you wish that is complimentary--or otherwise; it's a free for all.--two royal!" and she smiled at him with roguish demureness. "i'm squelched," said he, with affected sadness. "i _was_ just about to ask you all to take dinner with me here this evening, but of course it is out of the question now. i'm awfully sorry it happened, you know. it's the----" "go 'long with you, montague!" mrs. burleston exclaimed. "how can one remember the cards while that sirenly seductive voice of yours is playing on the diapason." "yes, run along, montague!" agreed dorothy--"or you'll have to pay my losses; it's a quarter of a cent a point, too, and i can't afford to lose." "me for the tall timber," he declined. "mercy! montague," gladys exclaimed. "one would think you were warwick devereux." "i was wondering if anyone would recognize the impersonation!" pendleton laughed.--"what is it," he asked, as a servant stopped beside him and stood at attention. "mr. cameron is waiting in the grill-room, sir," the man replied. pendleton nodded in dismissal. "how about having the dinner to-morrow evening?" he asked.--"good! that's very nice indeed--will seven-thirty be convenient? all right--seven-thirty it is." the grill was comfortably filled; the talk was of but one subject:--amherst's return, what it signified and what would follow. "it's too late to kill him," said devonshire, as pendleton entered the room, "but if i were lorraine, i should get me a good hefty raw-hide and beat him within an inch of his life, paying particular attention to his handsome face. when i was through with him there wouldn't be much beauty left, i can tell you." "but can lorraine do it--has he the strength?" asked smithers. "in such a case the rightness of his cause would give him strength," devonshire returned--"and any decent chap who was handy would lend him assistance if it was needed." "the trouble is with lorraine himself, i think," carstairs remarked. "it isn't that he hasn't the nerve, but that he hasn't the determination, the stability, the something essential in the man who _does_. i fancy he has changed his mind on the subject of what to do in this matter as often as he has changed his clothes. he is a queer compound--none other like him." "and yet he is a mighty attractive fellow at times," smithers observed.--"it wasn't until this amherst affair that he revealed anything particularly vacillating." "he never before had occasion to reveal it," devonshire explained. "the trial came--and he wasn't equal to it. some of us might not be equal to it either, if we were in similar case. it's a mighty difficult case, my friends. moreover, lorraine has done the decent thing now--he is anxious for a reconciliation." "it's decent, after a fashion," smithers agreed--"it would be decenter if he first followed your notion and beat up amherst--beat him until he couldn't walk; half killing would be about right, to my mind." "this is all very well by way of discussion but what by way of prophecy?" said carstairs. "i'll lay a bottle of wine that lorraine doesn't do a damn thing." "so will i," smithers agreed. "that is why amherst has the courage to come back. he despises the man he has wronged." "he may be fooled," said devonshire. "i trust he will be," carstairs remarked--"but i doubt mightily." "you hear what they are saying, pendleton?" cameron asked, with a jerk of his head toward the other table. "i hear," said pendleton. "have you seen lorraine today?" "no--only talked with him over the telephone." "he hasn't heard of amherst's return?" "he didn't mention it." "the evening papers will likely have it." "i suppose so--i didn't know of it until i came up here--where it's the event of the day." "you can't much blame them--knowing all the circumstances and the parties as club-mates do." "what do _you_ think lorraine will do--anything?" asked cameron. pendleton carefully knocked the ashes from his cigarette and studied the bare coal a moment. "i think," said he slowly, "that it would be just as well for amherst to keep out of lorraine's way." "you do?" said cameron quietly. "why?" "because lorraine seems to have become possessed of two ideas--and like all weak men he is becoming obsessed by them. one idea is to effect a reconciliation with stephanie; the other is to be revenged on amherst. i have tried to persuade him that if he would do stephanie a service, he must do amherst no physical hurt--it would simply revive the scandal and react upon her, and probably terminate any chance he has to have her return to him." "what chance has he?" cameron asked. "none, to my mind." "not the slightest in the world, to my mind either," pendleton replied. "but the question now is, i think, which idea will prevail:--the hope of reconciliation with stephanie, or vengeance on amherst. i admit i won't even attempt to predict. it will depend on the circumstances of the moment." "with the chances in favor of violence," said cameron instantly. "i fear it--i've feared it ever since stephanie's return. why the devil does lorraine do everything too late?" "it is the nature of the animal, i suppose. some men seem to do everything backward." "what do you say to both of us going to see him after dinner, and--well, trying what we can do? he may listen to us." "if you wish i'll go--but i've given him my views on it once to-day; and while he seemed to agree, i know it was only half-heartedly. however, it will do no harm for you to go.--amherst's return may have set him wild. lorraine at his worst is a crazy irresponsible--and i'm rather inclined to look for the worst." "very good!" said cameron. "now about this miserable porshinger affair. we----" "the porshinger affair is easy," pendleton interrupted. "mrs. postlewaite has cleared that up beautifully--and stephanie also." "what!" exclaimed cameron, "mrs. postlewaite?" pendleton nodded. "mrs. postlewaite and mrs. porterfield were witnesses of porshinger's assault on stephanie," he replied--and he told the story. when it was finished, cameron's face wore a most satisfied smile. "it is the end of porshinger!"--he laughed, "he is busted for good. the case will never come to trial. stephanie is completely vindicated by mrs. postlewaite's story. she need never think of him again. she has been a bit foolish in her conduct toward him, but that is only a passing matter, and will be lost in the general satisfaction at his complete discomfiture. what a fool he was--to risk his social life on a single throw!" "he didn't imagine he was risking it," pendleton rejoined. "he thought that she was dazzled by his money and quite ready to be his. the fellow is simply drunk with his financial success. he thinks anything is within his reach; that it is simply a matter of price, and he has the price. as between him and amherst there is mighty little choice. amherst is a seducer; porshinger is a purchaser who trades on the other's crime to procure a victim." "the truth is, lorraine would be justified in killing both," cameron declared. "i think that i should start with porshinger," said pendleton--"to me he is the more contemptible and the more criminal. to try to drag a woman down after she has made a mistake, and is endeavoring to make amends for the past! such a man is a monster." "you're right!" said cameron, "right as gospel! and yet lorraine may not--because in amherst's case he dallied too long, and in porshinger's, the law would view it as absolutely unjustifiable." "oh, surely!" pendleton responded, "i know that you're not recommending violence--just stating what, to my mind as well as to yours, the circumstances warrant." "i wanted to discuss lorraine's case with you, but it isn't necessary now," cameron remarked. "porshinger will be only too glad if it is dropped. lorraine can't object, for stephanie is cleared of dolittle's nasty story." "our trouble, it seems, isn't any longer with porshinger, but with amherst and lorraine--either to keep them apart or to persuade the latter to be sensible," pendleton observed. "i confess that, if it were not for stephanie, i wouldn't meddle in the affair. they might go their own gait. i'm disgusted with lorraine." "i don't blame you," the other nodded. "but, you see, lorraine is a client of mine and i've always been fond of him, though naturally i don't approve of his course with stephanie." "you can go to him this evening--i shall refrain," pendleton decided. "if you need me for anything, i'll be at the mourrailles'. for heaven's sake! don't tell him--he may veer around and get notions as to me.--let us have dinner. shall i order, or do you want anything in particular?" "only a pint of sparkling burgundy--anything will do for the rest," cameron answered. then he raised his hand for the captain of the waiters. "will you please have mr. lorraine telephoned at his apartments that i'll be in to see him on an important matter at eight o'clock this evening." xxii the silver candlestick stephanie dressed with more than usual care that evening. it was the first time in two years that she had really wanted to dress for anyone--to look her best as a woman. the gown she chose--after much deliberation--was black, unrelieved by any color and made severely plain; against it the dead white of her arms and shoulders shone like ivory. she stood a moment looking in her mirror; then she took from her jewel-case a sapphire necklace--smiled at it in recollection--and clasped it about her slender throat. they were the only jewels she wore--even her rings were laid aside. she wondered if _he_ would notice the sapphires--and the absence of all other ornaments. it had been _his_ wedding gift, and he might have forgotten--yet she would wear it on the chance that he would remark it and remember. she might not permit him any liberties, but she would grant him the privilege of inferences. she laughed softly to herself--and ran her fingers caressingly over the jewels. his wedding gift! the only one, of all the hundreds, that she cared for now--the only one that did not suggest to her the memories of the past--of her mistake in choosing--of her broken vows--her hideous experience. but his sapphires brought only the joy of living--the hope that some day, by some means, her freedom would be won and she would be permitted to yield herself and all she had to him. for she realized now--as she had long known, indeed--that he was the only man she cared for--the only man who cared for her and had cared through all the horrible past. she took one last look in the mirror--at the tall, slender figure in the clinging black gown; the lovely neck and arms and shoulders; the flawless face with its proud, cold beauty, that to-night was warm with tenderness; the glorious hair piled high on the aristocratic head like a gleaming crown of gold--and then went slowly down the stairway, as joyous as though she were to be married to pendleton that very night. all through dinner--which she had alone, mrs. mourraille being absent--she thought of montague. not hopelessly as heretofore, but with a satisfied anticipation of present property. she did not attempt to analyze it--indeed, she was quite aware it did not admit of analysis; it was the intuitive knowledge that comes at rare intervals to women--never to men. near the end of the meal, the desk 'phone in the living-room rang. the butler answered it. in a moment he returned. "mr. pendleton wants to know, madam, if you will be at home at a quarter to nine this evening?" he said. "say to mr. pendleton that i shall be here and very glad to see him!" stephanie replied. the man went to deliver the message. "montague is impatient," she reflected, "though, as i never before knew him to be impatient, he must have a very good reason for coming a quarter of an hour earlier.... yet why did he telephone at all--why didn't he just come?--tompkins, was that all mr. pendleton said?" "yes, madam!" tompkins answered, "but, if you please, it wasn't mr. pendleton himself; leastwise, i didn't recognize his voice." she nodded in answer and finished her ice. "i'll have coffee on the piazza," she said, and arose. as she did so, the ship's clock in the hallway chimed one bell. "half after eight!" she thought. "fifteen minutes more until i see him. i'm as nervously anticipatory as a débutante about to receive her first proposal. what _is_ the matter with me! i'm actually becoming afraid to meet him--to meet an old friend--the best friend a woman ever had!" she laughed to herself, and sat down where, from the electric light at the corner, she could see his car draw up at the curb. tompkins brought her coffee, served it, and was dismissed. she drank two cups eagerly--to steady her nerves--then poured a third, and sipped it slowly.... presently the butler came out to deliver a telephone message from miss chamberlain; when she turned again, she was just in time to catch sight of a man coming up the walk and almost at the steps. she sprang up and glided quickly into the house. she wanted to meet pendleton in the brightness of the living-room rather than in the subdued light of the piazza. she wanted him to have the benefit of the first impression. she was quite aware of her exquisite loveliness--more alluring to-night than ever before. and of the sapphires--_his_ sapphires alone adorning her. she flung herself in an easy chair, crossed her silken knees with fetching abandon and caught up a magazine. there was no ring at the bell, however--and she waited, impatiently. he should have rung--should be in the hall-way now--and yet tompkins was not even come front! it was very strange!--possibly he had gone around to the piazza, thinking that she might be there. she half turned--one hand on the chair arm, the other on her knee--and glanced toward the piazza door. there came a step--and a smile of happiest greeting sprang to her face--to be chilled the next instant into frigidity. "_you!_" she exclaimed indignantly.--"you!" garrett amherst bowed low. he was a trifle over the medium height and slender, with black hair just turning gray, and a face that women would call handsome, but that men would call effeminate because too flawless. the eyes had a peculiarly cynical expression about the corners, and the clean-shaven lips, while firm set and classic, were full and red. "yes, i!" he answered, and the voice was wondrously low and musical. "i am fortunate indeed to find you alone, stephanie." "i cannot say as much, mr. amherst!" she scorned. he laughed lightly. "time was when you were more than glad when i found you _alone_." she glided swiftly toward the bell--but he was before her and blocked the way. "don't!" he said gently. "consider--and don't. you may call--yes, you may even ring for the servants--and what, think you, will be the inference with _me_--me alone with you here--by appointment?" "my servants never infer what it is impossible for them to believe!" she spurned. "they know i left you in disgust with myself and loathing for you--you unspeakable poltroon." he put out his hand as though to stay her. "you misunderstand, stephanie dear," he said softly. "i've not come to reproach you, nor to find fault, nor to cast up the few unpleasant things in an exquisite past. i've come----" he took a step toward her--"i've come, dearest, to beseech you to forgive--to come back to me--to let me make amends." he held out his arms. "you're the only woman in the world for me--i know it now--i knew it as soon as you had left me. i've come clear from india to tell you--to take you away with me. won't you come, dearest, won't you come?" "you would dare!" she exclaimed tensely. "you would----" "i would dare the gates of hell for you, sweetheart!--to hold you once again in my arms, to pillow your dear head upon my shoulder, to bury my face in your ruddy tresses, to have you----" "what folly--what silly folly!" she interrupted. "i am no longer your paramour, thank god! i am trying to be an honest woman--to regain the place i lost by reason of your seductions and false tongue. do you think i would forfeit it again even though i loved you to distraction?" "you _do_ love me, stephanie--you----" "i loathe you!--your honeyed words and pretty beauty that once led me astray are now simply reminders of your abominations, and the proofs of your depravity.--i ask you to leave the house at once, mr. amherst." "you mean it?" he whispered. "you actually mean it?" "i _do_ mean it," she replied. "it may be difficult for such as you to comprehend--but _i mean it_. now go." he looked her in the eyes a moment, then he humbly bowed his head. "i will go," he said contritely. "i will go----" suddenly he leaped forward--and his arms closed around her, pinioning her hands to her sides. "but i will kiss you another time before i go--and maybe i shall----" she fought him silently--unwilling even for the servants to see her in this man's embrace. she evaded his every attempt at her lips--she struggled--she buried her hair in his face--she felt his breath on her neck--she was carried slowly across the room--her hair burst free and fell in waves around her, enveloping her face and shielding it somewhat from his attempts. "you siren!" he panted. "you siren!" "you devil!" she gasped. "you worse than devil!--loose me! i tell you--loose me!" "i'll loose you," he breathed,--"i'll loose you--when i've had--my----" he raised her in his arms and bore her toward a couch--crushing her to him in a mad ecstasy that left her well-nigh senseless. she felt herself strike the couch--felt herself flung upon it--tried to cry out and could not! with a final desperate effort that exhausted her last atom of strength, she strove to thrust him from her. but he only laughed--and shifted his hold. "not yet, sweetheart!" he panted.--"not yet----" she closed her eyes in helplessness and sickening fear. it was useless--she could not---- then she felt amherst's grip on her torn loose. she opened her eyes--to see him and harry lorraine grappled in furious fight. she struggled up--and watched--fascinated and silent; forgetting either to summon help or to flee. round the room the men reeled, locked in each other's arms--staggering against chairs and tables--hurling them aside--overturning them--crushing the bric-a-brac under foot. they were down and up, and down and up--they rolled over and over, fighting without method--lorraine striking wildly in the fury of insane rage, which gave him strength but deprived him of the power of thought. amherst--taken unaware and weakened by his unhallowed passion, but with a trifle more deliberation in his manner, prevented the other from doing him serious harm.... both had been cut by the broken ornaments or by corners of the furniture. neither man spoke. lorraine's face was set in the fury of hate--amherst's in the fury of desperation. lorraine was venting the pent up wrongs of months of brooding--amherst was fighting for his life! he had no doubt of the other's intent to kill. he was trying to get away--to break his assailant's hold.... but through it all lorraine managed some way, somehow, to keep his hold--and slowly to work his hands toward amherst's throat--one of them was already there. amherst made a frantic effort to unloose it. they staggered down the room--swept a cabinet bare of antiques--swayed a moment back and forth--then went down, amherst underneath. as they writhed on the floor amid the fallen débris, lorraine's hand touched a heavy, silver candlestick.--he seized it by the stem--there was a flash--and with all the strength of his insane fury, he brought it down on his enemy's head. amherst's arms relaxed--his eyes closed and the blood gushed forth. again the candlestick rose, and fell; this time squarely on the temple--and with crunch of metal on bone, the fresh spurt of blood, amherst's body crumpled into an inert mass. once more lorraine's arm went up---- "don't hit him again!" said pendleton quietly--yet sharp as the crack of a whip. "you are striking a dead man, lorraine." the candlestick slipped from lorraine's fingers and he staggered up--the frenzied look on his face slowly faded into one of unrelenting comprehension. "yes!" said he, glancing down unmoved at amherst's body. "he is dead--damn him! i'm glad i killed him! the beast!---- thank god! i came in time, dear," he exclaimed, turning to stephanie. but stephanie had fainted. lorraine sprang toward her--to be brought up by pendleton's quick command: "let her alone for a moment--she has only fainted--and tell me how this happened." lorraine, suddenly weak, collapsed on a chair. "never mind--i'll get some brandy----" "no--i'm all right," lorraine said huskily.--"it is well for you to hear before she wakes.--i was restless after dinner. i didn't wait for cameron; i went for a walk, leaving word for him to remain until i returned. i don't know how long i walked, but presently i was aware that i was before stephanie's home.--the lights were burning--the shades were drawn. i went in on the piazza, with no purpose, nothing but a desire to see her--you understand? as i passed this window, i noticed the door to the enclosed piazza was ajar.--i pushed it open and entered. i heard a queer sound in this room, like persons in a struggle. i dashed across--and saw--saw stephanie flung upon that couch, and amherst bending over her. for an instant i was paralyzed! i saw stephanie try to force him back; heard him laugh in triumph and say something. then action came to me and i hurled myself upon him. we fought all over the room--you can see how we fought--he to get loose, i to get a grip on his throat and choke the life out of him. i must have had the strength of a demon, for amherst, i think, is the stronger man. how often we fell, i do not know--sometimes he was under, sometimes i was. and all the while, 'kill him! kill him!' was ringing in my ears.... we went down again, i on top.--my hand touched the candlestick--i grasped it and struck.--i would be striking him yet if you had not stopped me." he got up slowly, his face unnaturally flushed.--"i'll go to the police station and give myself up. let the carrion lie where he is until the officers come. you look to stephanie--it's better----" he staggered, put his hands to his head, swayed a moment, then pitched forward to the floor, and lay quiet. "good god!" cried pendleton. springing to lorraine's side, he tore open his waistcoat and placed a hand over his heart--no beat responded. he listened!--it was silent. lorraine was dead. he looked at stephanie--she was still insensible. what should he do? two dead men, an unconscious woman, and himself! what was best for _her_? an instant he thought.--then he strode across, and was gathering her in his arms to bear her from the room when she opened her eyes. she gave a gasp--saw who held her--the startled look vanished--and she smiled. "montague!" she said weakly. "montague! how did you get here--how----" she caught sight of the two forms on the floor--stared--then shuddered in sudden remembrance. "dead!--both dead!" she whispered. "let me down, dear--i'm not----" "you must come away," he said, putting her down but keeping his arm around her. "this is no place for you, sweetheart." she suffered his arm to remain, and stood looking at lorraine--amherst she had recoiled from in horror! "they killed each other?" she questioned faintly. "no--lorraine killed amherst--and then was stricken either by apoplexy or a heart attack--the victim of his own frenzied emotions." "i see!" she whispered.--"i see!" "come outside, dear--you need air, and i must summon a physician and the police." "can't we do--anything for harry?" she asked. "nothing." "at least, we can put him on the couch." "it is wiser not." "must we let him lie on the floor?" "since he is dead, it is best not to disturb anything until the police come," he replied--and slowly led her from the room. as he did so, steps crossed the piazza and the entrance bell rang. "they must not enter, montague!" stephanie exclaimed--"they must not enter!"--she sank on a chair.--"go--tell tompkins i am not at home to anyone!" he met the butler at the rear of the hall. "mrs. lorraine is not at home--whoever it is must be sent away," he directed. "yes, mr. pendleton!" the man bowed. passing the doorway to the living-room, tompkins glanced in--and straightway his immobility of countenance vanished. he stopped, staring--terror and amazement blended on his face. "the door, sir, the door!" said pendleton sharply. "yes, sir--yes, sir!" the butler answered--and sprang to obey. "is mr. pendleton here?" came cameron's voice. "no, sir; mr.----" tompkins began--when pendleton cut him short. "come in, cameron," said he, "you're just the man i want." "lorraine didn't keep his appointment with me," explained cameron, as he entered. "and----" "lorraine is here!" pendleton answered, drawing the other over to the living-room door. "good god!" was cameron's amazed cry.--"_lorraine!_ and who is the other?--amherst! _amherst!_ dead!--what does it mean?" "they both are dead," said pendleton. "lorraine killed amherst with yonder candlestick--and then, a moment after, was stricken by apoplexy or a heart attack." "you were here?" cameron marvelled. "i came in just as amherst received the fatal blow.--lorraine was explaining how it all happened when he himself was seized and died instantly." "and stephanie?" pendleton turned sharply to the butler, who was standing open-mouthed behind them, and said:-- "tompkins, call up dr. hubbard at once and ask him to come over immediately." he waited until the man had gone and the door was closed behind him--then he lowered his voice. "stephanie was here through it all--she had fainted on the couch." "where is she now?" "in the piazza-room!" "how much does she know?" "everything." "who else knows it?" "no one." "not even tompkins?" "not even tompkins. he and the other servants were at dinner--their dining-room is in the rear downstairs." "you are positive? they," with an expressive gesture toward the floor, "must have made considerable noise." "if you had seen tompkins' face when he came to answer your ring, you would not doubt," pendleton replied. "then why bring stephanie into the affair? let her know nothing--let her be upstairs--anywhere--so long as she isn't on _this floor_.--how did _you_ enter?" he asked suddenly. "through the piazza-room." "are you prepared to take the risk of being--implicated--to relieve stephanie?" cameron asked. "i understand," pendleton answered. "i am willing to take the risk." "and stephanie can--if the extremity arise," cameron went on, "tell the facts and relieve you. we may have to confide in the front office, but i think even that will not be necessary. fix up the story with her while i notify the police. i'll use the upstairs telephone." "what do you want me to tell?" asked stephanie, entering the hall from the dining-room door. she had regained her composure--and save for a slight flush on her cheeks she appeared as calm and self-contained as ever. "we want to save you the painful experience of having to relate what happened--there," pendleton replied, with a slight motion toward the living-room. "you can say that you were upstairs asleep--lying down after dinner--that you heard nothing of the fight until something aroused you and you descended to find cameron and me here, and the----" "how will you account for _your_ presence?" she interrupted. "by the truth--that i came to call, entered the house by the piazza and the living-room just as lorraine delivered the fatal blow, lorraine's explanation of the deed, and his own sudden death." slowly she shook her head. "do you think the police will believe it?" she asked. "certainly--why should they doubt it?" he answered. "do you think the public will believe it?" "of course!--and what have the public to do with it anyway?" "they might ask, both the police and the public--and the police will _have_ to ask if the public demands to know--what you had to do with the killing? your friendship to me in the past; your--devotion in the present; my--love, they will say, for you; the coincidence of lorraine's and amherst's visits, coupled with your own, and that _you_ survive while _they_ died--all, all will make most startling inferences, don't you think, montague?" "not in the least, dear!" he smiled, though he knew she spoke the truth--at least so far as the public was concerned. to it there would always be something unexplained about the tragedy; something that either he or stephanie could have made plain--and would not. "my reputation and standing in the community, and the reputation of my family before me, is sufficient answer to such inferences," he added. again she shook her head. "no man's reputation should be taxed--where murder has been done and self-interest can be imputed--when the truth can be told by an eye-witness," she decided. "i shall have to speak eventually, so it is much the wiser to speak at once--to delay will only breed doubt of my tale. i shall tell the story, dear." "no--you shall----" "yes, dear; i shall tell the story." it was final. even pendleton realized it. "am i worth it, little woman?" he asked. "it is _i_ who am not worthy," she replied--"i never have been worthy of your--love." he held out his arms. "sweetheart!" he cried. she went to him, with an adorable smile and a sigh of supreme content. "if you wish it, dearest," she whispered, "if you wish it--after a little time." finis _new stories by john reed scott_ since the publication of "the colonel of the red huzzars," mr. scott has written continuously for an increasing audience. his stories of american life as well as his valerian romances have pleased thousands of readers, and each new novel from his pen shows the versatility and skill of a master of fiction. "the first hurdle and others," his latest work, is mr. scott at his best. the first hurdle and others by john reed scott _author of "the colonel of the red huzzars," "the princess dehra," "beatrix of clare," "the woman in question," "the impostor," "in her own right," etc._ _frontispiece in color by james montgomery flagg mo. cloth, $ . net. postpaid, $ . _ "it is the one book of short stories that is worth reading from cover to cover."--_pittsburg dispatch._ "the stories are entertaining, live and well written."--_chicago tribune._ "mr. scott's ability has grown remarkably as a writer of fiction. they are written with skill and humor."--_indianapolis news._ "the same vivid imagination and rapid manner that was liked in 'the colonel of the red huzzars' and the 'princess dehra' are manifested in mr. scott's briefer work."--_hartford courant._ "they are all interesting."--_new york sun._ _illustrated booklet, "the writing of a series of great romances," sent on request_ j. b. lippincott company publishers philadelphia _john reed scott's most dashing and spirited romance_ the last try by john reed scott _author of "the colonel of the red huzzars," "the princess dehra," "beatrix of clare," "the woman in question," "the impostor," "in her own right," etc._ three illustrations in color by clarence f. underwood. mo. cloth, $ . net. postpaid, $ . . this is a totally independent story, complete in itself, but in effect is a sequel to "the colonel of the red huzzars" and "the princess dehra." in it for the last time the duke of lotzen tries to win the throne of his forefathers. not openly nor in kingly fashion does he go about his work, but sneakingly, with all kinds of murderous designs upon the life of the rightful ruler of valeria. then, when everything else has proved futile, lotzen plays his last card--he abducts the lovely dehra, queen of valeria. how armand meets this last try of lotzen--which is played out to a finish in the capital of the kingdom with peace and quiet on every side--how he and lotzen fight a duel to the death in ferida palace, is told with a vividness, a finish and a dash, which mr. scott has never surpassed. it is the last of the trilogy and, we think, the best. "spirited, graceful and absorbing at all times--hats off to john reed scott."--_boston globe._ "a novel none should sidestep, for it would be missing the best one of the season."--_grand rapids herald._ "romantic, ingenious and stirring fiction."--_n. y. times._ "a tale of adventure that never slackens its headlong pace. it is a lively and altogether satisfactory piece of fiction."--_new york tribune._ j. b. lippincott company publishers philadelphia "_'the lady doc' is a stirring and deeply-appealing volume._"--_boston globe._ the lady doc by caroline lockhart _author of "me--smith."_ _illustrated by gayle hoskins. mo. cloth, $ . net._ the lady doc is a woman physician graduate of one of the "diploma mills" who settles in a typical little "cow-town" of the far west. the town is in process of booming and the "lady doc," being a woman of strong personality and more than average looks, enters with avidity into the difficulties which arise. she allies herself with the local "ward mcallister," who has his own troubles when he attempts to draw social lines among the crude westerners, and many humorous and tragic events follow. there is also a merry little "biscuit shooter" with an unusual history who gains a lover in the young easterner who arrives just when things are beginning to get interesting. "the humor is at times irresistible."--_philadelphia press._ "a compelling story--one so absorbing that hours slip by unnoticed until the end is reached."--_chicago tribune._ j. b. lippincott company publishers philadelphia +-------------------------------------------------+ |transcriber's note: | | | |obvious typographic errors have been corrected. | | | +-------------------------------------------------+